Podcast: Download (Duration: 11:56 — 2.7MB)
Just below the surface we all have a depth, stillness, peace.
Transcript:
Let’s call this ‘the way of the world’. If you check-in with yourself, every now and again, you’ll probably find your energy is up, and it’s about living in the world. It’s about the details, survival, entertainment. And that, in this dimension anyway, has a relevance. Yes, you do need to eat. Yes, you do need a place to sleep. Yes, you do feel like spending your time with people. Yes, this is relevant, on one level. But if you notice, it’s not fulfilling. It’s open ended, no matter where you get to.
Even billionaires are still greedy after money, billionaires, let alone millionaires. They’re still looking for more, and to be different. And to feel an elusive feeling, fulfilled or free from worry. It seems to be endless. In the East I think they call it the wheel of Samsara. It just goes round and round and round, it has no end.
And then you might say, “Well, yes that’s so. And what’s the alternative and how do I get in touch with it?” Well, what I am suggesting is, you do have something else. You are something else. If you want to see it exaggerated, turn your television on and go to the fashion channel and the fashion designers and how serious they’re talking about fashion – this year and it’s gonna be different next year. How they put all this energy into the impermanent, the frivolous.
To get in touch with the other, just imagine this. Just imagine this, now. Now, what I’m about to tell you in fact, I did experience in New York. Once I was living in New York and every week I gave an evening talk to people who are HIV positive, when it had just been discovered. And when you were discovered to be HIV positive, the doctor told you, “You have six months to live.” Now these people were some of the most responsive people I ever spent time with. Six months to live, and suddenly the essential and the unessential were very obvious. They didn’t bother with the unessential anymore. There was something else. And they were looking for the fulfillment in this something else.
You could imagine that you’re dying. You’re lying on your bed, dying. Now what’s important to you? What is meaningful to you now? And you will probably find there are a lot of regrets in there, on one level; where you didn’t go to, what you didn’t do, who you didn’t meet. You might find there’s a little ripple there, but there’s something else. There’s some depth. And again it’ll probably be regret, “Oh, I didn’t ….” But it’s not this frivolous thing it is, “I didn’t tell that person I love them. I didn’t go deep there.”
You see, there is that other level in you, in each moment. And when your energy goes up into the unessential, you’re out of touch with this deeper, more essential part of you which you have … in … each … moment. And it’s up to you.
If you’re looking for approval, if you’re looking for safety and security and predictability, you’ll stay up, and you’ll go chasing it on the wheel, round and round, ‘cause it doesn’t work. No matter how much money, no matter what your relationship’s like or your family’s like or any…. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t have that depth, that peace, that stillness, that aliveness, gentle, soft, loving, caring, including. That’s there … in you … now. And it’s up to you where you direct your energy, up to the unessential or take a deep breath and let it drop.
Maybe uncomfortable to start with because it’s sort of empty. Lots of things may come up that you’ve been working very hard to avoid. But you don’t have to deal with them. Let them come up. They’re like bubbles. They’ll come up from the depth and [popping sound from lips] gone. Let them come, let them go. Don’t even examine them, let alone work on them.
You have a depth. And you will live there, if you stop forcing your energy up into the unessential. You have six months to live. You don’t know how long you have to live. People are dying all the time, lots of people. And most of them weren’t expecting it.
So how do you want to live your life? Because you’re not safe, you’re not secure, you can’t predict anything. So you’re wasting your time, you’re wasting your energy, you’re wasting your opportunities. And of course, in a way nothing is wasted. It’s giving you an experience but the experience is that it doesn’t work, might as well get it now.
Drop down. When you drop down, you drop into … this … moment … just as it is. If you‘re very still, you’ll find there’s a tingling inside and there’s a tingling outside and they’re not separate. You are the tingling, the tingling is you. Everything’s tingling. Everything’s you. You are everything. Disconnect from what I’m calling the ‘unessential’. They’re essential on one level, on a practical level. But your main energy, let it drop … down … and allow yourself to feel that you are this energy, this universal vastness.
When you do allow yourself to drop down and feel this tingling, it’s like a mild sort of high. But it’s not an enforced one, it feels natural. It feels the way things are. So you’re sitting quietly, you’re allowing this sensation and then in comes a thought that, “I need to…. I am hungry. I should….” Be soft with it, be gentle, don’t go up. You can still have that thought, you can still have that need but you don’t need to go up to it. You can stay soft.
And if you do need to go and move and take care of something, do it slowly, do it gently. Stay … in … that … space. Don’t go up to do it. Do it from that space, gently, softly and I know this is a strange word but it’s appropriate, lovingly. You’re loving you. You’re loving the ground you walk on. You’re feeling one with whatever you’re going to do. Stay down, no need to go up, no need to contract, stay open, stay expanded, stay included and including, and your whole life will change.
People may think you’re a little weird, but they’ll sense there’s something about you, there’s something different. And there is, because your essential energy is no longer in the practicals. You’ll take care. You’ll take care. You’ll be amazed how things take care of themselves once you live in this other energy. Things seem to be like magic. You think to call somebody and they call you. A job looks impossible and suddenly it works out.
If you will allow yourself to stay in your essential self. [takes a deep breath]