Ep031 - Finding the Path to Liberation
Play video below. You can read along with the transcript under the video.
This was the final episode of the Light Haven Podcast before Aquarian Light was born. We introduce the challenging yet rewarding process of shedding illusion to discover inner peace.
Description
Once we begin to do the work, we discover the pitfalls of the ego as it presents various deceptions to keep us trapped within its illusions of pain. This discussion brings out the ways we miss blind spots, what it means to walk a path of spiritual development and how to be humble and honest with ourselves enough to hear the wisdom of Divinity that is always speaking.
AQUARIAN LIGHT - EPISODE 31
Finding the Path to Liberation
Instructor 1:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Light Haven podcast, the podcast for all things spiritual, mystical and energetic. My name is Ruth, Mystery Student towards the Awakening of Consciousness, and today we have Adonis with us to continue on the topic that we approached when we discussed conscious willpower. Sort of the follow on from that previous conversation. Hello Adonis!
Instructor II:
Hi I'm Adonis, I'm also a mystery student and initiate on the path of initiation. I think we broached that topic also a little bit last week, or was it two weeks ago, I forget exactly how much time it was but yes, we were talking about conscious willpower and the ability to affect reality and I'm sure a lot of the listeners found that to be maybe provocative or interesting and I think a good followup it would be to talk about what are the things that create the most obstacles in us being able to utilize these powers, I guess, you want to use the word powers, that are within us right is their natural ability that we all have access to and just from observations and being in many esoteric spiritual communities it seems to be that the biggest obstacle sometimes in itself is actually that of mystical pride. And I don't mean mystical Pride as in someone who's like very overtly becoming like a large cult leader type figure and is like really full of themselves but I mean in a sense of the identification with our own spiritual path, this identification still with Maya. We think that just because we found spirituality, we found these esoteric topics that we are now free from illusion and we just start to create more illusion, and we stop our progress on the Path.
So at best right we stunt our progress at worst we can even start to develop the Consciousness through sheer force and will of the ego and then we become the opposite of what we want to be. Even though that we believe to be very righteous sometimes we can become… a good example would be like agent Smith in The Matrix. We start to defend the construct itself and we're doing this all out of thegoodness and the spirituality that we have in our heart, but what really is happening is that we are doing negative things and we believe them to be positive because the ego is tricking us. The ego is clever. They say the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions. I mean the most extreme example of this, just look at World War II. There was a man who did terrible, terrible terrors to the planet and he got his start in actually the occult and esoteric ideas. He actually twisted lots and lots of ideals in esotericism that are not negative but made them so negative that some of these things we aren't even allowed to say anymore. Symbols, names of people, things like that. The whole time he thought he was helping humanity and creating a Super race, leading humans into the Super race, which is the ideas that are actually in spirituality that we can transcend our form and become super-humans but it isn't certainly genocide of the majority of the planet because of their appearance for example. So something got twisted along the way through his ego and like I said that's a very extreme.
Instructor 1:
You have a a down to earth example of an everyday spiritual Seeker how does mystical Pride manifest for them?
Instructor II:
Well as I was saying before, what where we normally see is rather than starting to get into thenegative, we see a stunting of progress. When we come across these teachings and we we feel we start to grasp them intellectually and we don't actually comprehend them, what the ego can do is the ego can pretend to be talking to us such as Source would talk to us. So we still have yet to learn how to actually listen to our intuition. We have yet to learn how to really listen to the universe when it's speaking around us. We think because we have these thoughts and feelings that the ego can control we believe that we are now hearing from God and you know the the ego tells us this and then even though it makes us feel like we're doing good and we feel good about ourselves it sneakily turns us away from the things that we actually have to do to awaken Consciousness. So we might be like doing the practice(but) we're not doing them right, we’re not actually looking into anything, we’re not actually dissolving any of the ego and then that can be a problem, right. It's really tricky because we hear things that maybe don't resonate with us at the vibrations that we're at at a lower state, and what we need to realize, is that everything that we like everything that we dislike every opinion that we have is the ego pretty much. Maybe 1% actually comes from like the divinity that's within us but we don't listen to that and we don't hear it. So everything is ego even things that aren't necessarily negative and it's okay that we have all these egos I mean we're here to learn from the construct and be here, but the the problem is that we start to have these resistances to things that maybe others further along on the path may tell us from what they've learned through direct experience, and we don't like that. So there's a resistance there and it's easy really to find something else that's similar that lines up with like “being spiritual” but “it's okay to do this” right. There’s a tremendous amount of black magic schools. I mean there's also just basically organized religion itself, not to offend anyone, but the truth is these are schools that used to have esoteric value, were changed by the politics of society. It's very easy to be like “I'm spiritual” and now find a different type of spirituality that fits my narrative as opposed to… A lot of people get paranoid, you hear about cults, and there's all these things nobody wants to get caught up in something where they can't leave, or you know they're forced to pay money.
Instructor 1:
But that's why it's good to have discernment, if we're talking about joining a group you don't have to join a group to be spiritual.
Instructor II:
Exactly, a true esoteric group or a true mystery school. There are still a few but most of them can be misleading. You know, if you're being asked for money, and I'm not saying like “oh you can donate” or something, but if you're like being straight up asked to pay for something, for spiritual knowledge,that's a red flag. If you're being pulled into something and there's a feeling that you can't leave and you're like obligated to be there, that’s a red flag. The real esoteric work you're supposed to do yourself. And then when in doing the work yourself, what somebody that's further along on the path can do, is they can point you in a direction. They could say; “well from my direct experience I find that this and this is not good for you anymore…”. Now we can hear that, and we might have a resistance to it. We need to discern between being controlled or is there a resistance to something that we don't like because we don't like it. And the and the issue is that resistance in itself is the ego, so it doesn't mean that we have to immediately change, and do these things. It's an opportunity for us to observe why there is that resistance, and then explore ourselves, and then naturally we end up coming to these conclusions ourselves. So you should never feel pressured into coming at a conclusion but just because you don't like what something sounds, well, then you're supposed to explore for yourself. That’s the point. And instead, we give into these resistances, we give in to these identifications that we have, and we get these feelings like anger and things like that.
There's this idea that you have to be so Zen that we don't feel things, but there's a difference between feeling something and observing it and then using it to learn, and allowing ourselves to identify with it and become consumed and using excuses like “oh, well it's natural to have feelings.”Well yes, it is natural to have feelings, and if you have apathy and feel like a robot that would also be an ego, but we need to understand that observing something and realizing that it's not you is very different from not feeling the feelings that we get. Even the negative thoughts and feelings are the most valuable tool for us to learn about ourselves and to actually awaken more consciousness. So we need to be in these situations that are unpleasant, but it's how we react to what is unpleasant that is how we advance.You see it all the time in spiritual communities, there’s going to be members there that are not really truly interested in Walking The Path. They may be very egoic, and members like this also tend to speak more because as opposed to more experienced members who may want to let people work through things, there will be certain members who want to answer everything because they're full of pride and ego. For us, when we're new, we need to be able to discern that oh well, this person is giving me maybe not great advice, and the only reason I like it is because it strokes my ego. People shouldn't be necessarily telling you what something is or isn’t, they may give a suggestion, you might not like the suggestion, and like I said, there's time to observe that, but when you have people literally telling you your own psychology that's usually a red flag. Even if it sounds good because it aligns with what your desires are. We can fish around and find a person that's saying something in the way that we want the answer to be, and that's the ego. The ego is looking for the answer that it wants so that it can continue to be and exist.
It all comes around down to the concept of mystical pride. And this is not mystical pride like “I think I'm a prophet, I’m Jesus.” Obviously that is also mystical pride, but it's in the sense of like… Well we all walk our own path right? Well that is true, but things aren't black and white. As we talked about with the causal plane. While it is true, we all have our own unique circumstances and lessons to learn, in essence the path that our Being has to go through in the internal worlds to fabricate the Soul, there is a process that all of us go through. It manifests differently for each of our own unique situations. But to start to be like “I'm identified with the fact that I'm so unique”, well then you're not disidentifying,and you probably haven't even actually entered the path yet, because if you're identified with form, if you're identified with the idea of your own personal path, then you haven't actually unplugged from The Matrix, or the construct whatsoever.
Instructor I:
These are very interesting ideas and I guess I would want to bring some more context to this for some of our listeners who may not necessarily be connected to any of this so just to to back up a little bit and provide some more explanation on what it is that we are discussing because we are mystery students so we know a lot of people that are studying the spiritual mysteries from ancient traditions and when they watch this video then they'll know exactly what we're talking about. This video is also public to people who maybe are interested in spirituality and they're brand new so what I would say to add an additional layer of explanation for what we're talking about…Bianca and I have been discussing for a while how to observe yourself, how to separate between the ‘observer’ and ‘observed’, how to see the egos, and how to work on dissolving them. We've been unpacking this slowly over quite a few episodes recently because if you have never studied yourself, or you've never studied this kind of ancient wisdom, then these things can seem very out of reach, and just a concept. They can be something that someone can grasp intellectually but not necessarily practice correctly, which is exactly what you were saying is happening even inside of Mystery Schools or groups and communities people are adopting these concepts and this vocabulary. But the inner work is not taking place to the extent that they think it is, and after the passage of time in working with or attempting to work with these tools they can start to get puffed up and believe that they have come to a certain level. So if we are going to explain this process to those who are new I would summarise it in the way that all of these tools lead somewhere and that's what we mean when we say ‘The Path’. When we say ‘The Path’ we're talking about a very specific direction that one can go to come towards what has been called Enlightenment, Liberation. And the reason I'm adding this context is because in our podcast we never talked about that part before. We’ve been very much focused on working with the psychology in the here and now and improving your life, but the next stage of where these tools lead is to have a spiritual life. To gradually achieve fundamental change. And there are steps after that, so we start with the self-observation. Separating between the ‘observer’ and ‘observed’. Knowing that we're made of many parts that we could call aggregates or egos, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. We’re working to dissolve these parts of us that bring pain to us and those around us. And then there's more after that.
So in the podcast we can only go so far because it is for a general audience, but for those who are interested they're welcome to contact us and we definitely can talk more about these topics. But suffice it to say that there is a whole journey that leads all the way to Enlightenment, and some people are on this journey and other people think they're on this journey. So hopefully that helps what we're talking about, to make more sense…
Instructor II:
Yeah, there's a great Morpheus quote from “The Matrix” where he says there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path, and it's pretty spot on. Sadly, the directors of the Matrix probably had a fall themselves at some point, but at some point they were clearly very locked in on esoteric ideals.
I want to touch on what you actually were just saying in that aspect so you said you focused mostly on just the observation and the psychology and really without getting too deep into these aspects and to not blow people away with mystical occult ideals, really that is what the spiritual path is. It is knowing our psychology, and working around that to finding our true nature and delete this programming conditioning, like we talked about last episode, the Matrix code that you're trying to delete from our our systems through practices of self-observation. So I mean that doesn't really change right that the issue is though is getting started. The hardest part is getting to the point where we actually have come to the comprehension that the reality is an illusion, and now we're working on our psychological aggregates. The actual practices don't change too much. Sure, there might be like certain things here for energy work and stuff like that, but in essence all we do is observe ourselves. We obviously get better at it and then we get rid of deeper and deeper rooted issues. As that goes along we advance on this path internally, so it's not necessarily anything super different.
But there are things that we need to be careful of and one of those is the ego. The psychological aggregates are not necessarily intelligent, but they are very clever, and they know when we are coming for them. They are able to use their control over our minds which we are not yet in control of, to trick us into thinking we are doing something when we are not. So our willpower, which is what we spoke about in the last episode, is beyond the mind and it's superior to the mind. The fact is though, we don't access it and we allow the ego to then use it unconsciously because we get trapped in the trappings of the mind and the intellect and it is the mind and the intellect that rationalises or makes excuses for us or gives us anxiety and fear and and puts doubts in our mind, makes us not listen truly. And really, the most important thing at the beginning is to listen to The Source. We have to truly listen. The universe is constantly speaking to us all the time, everything is consciousness, everything is vibrations. I think we might have mentioned this also in the previous episode, but it's not just like straight up talking in your head, or your feelings in the body. It could be a synchronicity in the environment, like in essence the construct is really just a projection of ourselves because we’re made of consciousness and everything is this Unity at a certain level of existence. So there's always signs. The more you awaken the more you notice everything. The most insignificant little thing could be a sign, so how do we connect to that knowing?
We think that because we study a little bit or we now grasp some concepts with our mind — which our mind actually cannot grasp or ever connect to this Superior level of knowledge — but we think that oh, now we think we're listening. We’re listening to God, of course, because he's speaking to me. I hear him right now in my thoughts. Well that's not God, that’s the ego, right? We have the angel and the devil on our shoulders. That's basically what it is, right? Here's your actual intuition you’re not really listening to, and the little devil is here, and he's like “oh yeah you should listen to me”, and we usually listen to that guy because he comes through a little bit more clearly, because we're not in tune to listening to this one. But they're both there.
That's the biggest thing at the beginning, is learning to truly listen to that. People don't realize it's not something that it's just like “oh, like, I now listen to Source”. It's a knowing, when you're connected you know. I'm not going to act like I'm spiritual master and that I’m walking around all day connected to Source. But in little births, when we have these downloads as some people might call them, or comprehensions, we know that the universe is speaking to us. We know, and it's just that's what we should be looking for, and not really trusting the things that are in our mind because everything in our mind is designed to trick us. We're supposed to learn from these things. So there's that aspect. And also even for people that have large amounts of Consciousness, waking up maybe evenmore than myself… I would say there there's a lot of people that had spontaneous awakenings, for example, but they still have not detached from the construct. For example, they may have psychic abilities opened up, they may see the elementals in the environment, but they're still attached to physical form, because they haven't done the work to detach from that. You could still think of the body as like part of you and not realize that you're really a being of light. Just because you have more abilities there’s… well I don't know if want to get into this to too much but I'll say it just really quick. There's even beings and races on other planets that are more advanced and clearly more consciously Advanced humans that are also living within the construct, that have no concept of… well they do have a concept, I suppose, of the causal dimensions, but to them it's just… they’re beings that have evolvedfurther because still their idea is of this physical reality, and they're obsessed with physicality, and they're still attached to the material, so in their concept of things they have no concept of internally evolving oneself. In a way they're not wrong, we do have to evolve into these beings, but they think it's like something that you do physically, and your species evolves. So that would be wrong.
Instructor I:
I’ve heard: two things that you've mentioned. You’ve talked about listening to source, and you've talked about detaching from the construct. For the benefit of all who are on board and they want want to make these changes… Maybe they are very sincere students of the path or spirituality, or they're working with psychology, whatever the person that's listening who has decided — yes I want to make a change… Can we separate out and go step by step with these two points someone who is not sure if they have been listening to Source or their ego? We'll start with that one first, and then we'll come to detachment. What should someone do when they say — yes I want to listen to Source. How do I start to build this connection, and how can I trust it? How can I know?
Instructor II:
First and foremost, the most important practice towards working towards connecting ourselves back to our true spiritual nature is meditation. Meditation with the intention of quieting the inner self and dissolving the chatter, the psychological aggregates that surround us.
Instructor I:
And what is meditation, because there's a million and one definitions and instructions as well so some of our listeners may understand meditation to be “a” and some understand it to be “b”. So for the purpose of what we're saying, what do we mean?
Instructor II:
Meditation is being able to basically still the mind enough that you can detach from the construct, but our goal at first is not really to reach somebody. I would be at amiss if I were to say that that's something that I even do myself all the time, maybe that’s the goal in totality, but when we're first doing our practice, it still is useful for receiving information from source. And how we can do that is to relax ourselves and to really learn to clear the mind of all images and thoughts, and begin to withdraw from physical senses, and reach a state of inner stillness. At first, really, the goal of meditation is just to reach that state. I know a lot of people will sometimes get distracted with these sensations because there's a lot of nice energies that come up in the body, but you can't be distracted by those either.
Instructor I:
Some people tell me that when they sit down to start meditating they can't deal with all the thoughts and images coming up and they don't know how to get past that into a state of stillness.
Instructor II:
The goal is to learn how to ignore that. We don't have to try to forcefully get them to stop because that will just create more resistance. Like we said before, thoughts, all these images, these visualisations that we have, also thoughts being visualised… If we can visualise, all of these things are ego, so when we try to force to stop the ego we're going to be met with resistance because we haven't actually detached from it. It's more, I would say, if we just kind of stop and let it be, and let these thoughts just go through.
A good example would be; when a child throws a temper tantrum, if you ignore it, eventually the child looses steam. It doesn't get its way and it stops crying or stops throwing the tantrum, or breaking things. The ego can be like that as well. So if we just sit there and observe the thoughts, and don't reallydwell on them, judge them more or try to stop them, and we just let them be, they'll slowly slow down and stop themselves. So it's really important to just relax, maybe focus on the breath. But we want to get to that…
Instructor I:
That was important key what you said that not uh not following the thoughts along and getting lost in thought but not resisting. It's that neutral balance between getting carried away or trying to fight them.
Instructor II:
I also think it's important not to be concerned about time either. At the beginning it may take a really long time for our mind to quiet down. We may sit down and say “oh well I need to get to this point in 30 minutes” and we're sitting there for 30 minutes… And the mind still chatters, and we're like “I'm done meditating because it's been 30 minutes…”. It's not exactly how it works. We need to get to that point where it gets quiet and ideally we would like to, in all of our sits, get to the point where at least we withdraw from the senses. Because when we're at the point where we have withdraw from the physical reality around us, even if we don't get any images or nothing comes through from Source yet, even if we're not that great at receiving, we're reaching the state where we would receive. And then when that becomes consistent in our practice, it doesn't matter if we receive something every single time, we sit or not, we’ll be capable of receiving and in that state really be at the beginning of our practice, it’s more up to Divinity. Our abilities aren't developed, it’s more up to what the Universe what it wants to show us, when it wants to show us. And it's not it's not like an automatic thing — like I satdown and I had a good sit and I quieted my mind and now I'm going to get visions. It doesn't work that way. So there's that aspect too: no expectations. And it's okay if we just reach that state and nothing happens, that's okay too. It’s an ego that wants something to happen, that we're chasing these experience, so there's that aspect of it as well. And the other thing to remember is that when we do start to early on get fleeting experiences, and this could also apply I would say to dreams (which is another way that Divinity will try to contact us), but we have to remember that we are still full of ego. So that these things are also very subjective. You see this a lot with a lot of times people that are have had spontaneous awakenings, so they they have these spiritual experiences that come through a lot because they just awakened a bunch of consciousness, but they haven't really detached from eg. They are getting some type of information from the universe, from Source, in a download, and there's truth there, even from an outside perspective, more objective perspective, there's truth there. But then they're adding all these subjective twists onto it, that fit a narrative or that is fear-based or anxiety based, or intellectual based. Trying to explain something that's more abstract… A lot of the time things would be more abstract and there’s no words for it, so when we try to put words to it we need to be careful not to do that as well. But yes…
Instructor I:
Is there anything that people will be familiar with that fits within this description to help them know what you're talking about?
Instructor II:
Well yeah here's an easy one that probably everybody has had multiple times in their life — a vivid dream. Yes, it could be very subjective, and symbolically we might be seeing something that represents an ego in in us and some type of silly thing that relates to a TV show that we like, but within the narrative there's some underlying psychological element that if we were paying attention, hopefullywe're able to understand and comprehend.
Instructor I:
Then the person who misunderstands it may come away and say: “I understand that I am a Reincarnation of Cleopatra”, because they put their own lens on it.
Instructor II:
Exactly. And really what happens is that you were shown some type of ego that you have, and maybe you have an affinity for Egyptian mythology and this ego in the dream manifested itself as this queen. And now you think you actually were that Queen in the past life which would be in error. We can visit past lives, by the way. That’s a little bit more advanced and probably not for this episode. But yes, most of the things that happen in our dreams, especially like when there are dreams that aren't lucid, that we don't have conscious control over… It's great that we start to remember our dreams because that is a step forward in consciousness but we have to remember that almost everything that we're seeing in the dream world is completely subjective and clouded by our ego. Because the ego is so active in our dreams, because we're sleeping at night, while there's value there, we have to realise that there's also a ton of subjectivity.
Instructor I:
This is what people can start to do when they want to learn to hear from Source. As they are careful and intentional, they begin to maybe receive guidance in the form of visions or some kind of an intuition, a feeling, a knowing that comes from their meditation or their dreams… Then how about when they are not meditating or sleeping when they're just going through daily life and, again, they're very new to these things… What can they do or stop doing to make sure that they are listening to Source?
Instructor II:
Well it's very important to just stop and take awareness in the present moment as much as possible. I mean we're bombarded with impressions and stimuli all day, especially if you live in a big city. You know, we’re constantly being hypnotized from all different directions, so before we really trained to realize everything that we're processing or not processing, but taking in anyway… The best way is to even set random alarms on your phone, and whenever it goes off, just take a few deep breaths,try to think of where you are, how you got there, what are you thinking, what are you feeling. Just observe all these things with no judgment. It doesn't really matter it's more just being present, not thinking about the future, not being in the past, not daydreaming, and just being in the now, in that moment. The more we do that as we are awake in the awake world, we also will have more chances of waking up in our dreams as well, which is a very useful realm to explore our inner state, considering we are in our inner state at that point in time.
It's really important to observe and it's just as important to be suspicious of subjectivity. Like I said, that's where the mystical pride comes in, and it's like: yes, we you know created these egos, some of them could be conditioning that was planted in us, and karmic, but a lot of it is just because we like things, we get attached to things, we like them, and we created egos. And then we're supposed to learn our lessons and then detach from them. But we created these things, and now we have an affinity for a lot of these things. We have to ask ourselves a lot of times, when we think we have Intuition, or we think we are you know getting this divine message that goes along with something that's pleasurable for us — what are the real motives there? Are we listening to to God and doing this for a truly altruistic, sacrificial reason, or is it a good thing that also is in line with bringing us a desire, or avoiding facing our fears and anxieties…? Is it out of Pride because it makes us feel better about ourselves or superior to others? All these things are not from Source, but they could be masked behind I'm doing this nice thing, I'm making this donation so I can feel like so good about myself, or you know, I’m going to go and make sure everybody sees how generous I am, and I'm helpful to other people on social media because I'm so spiritual. You're not in that situation to be truthful. You may be doing something with the external illusion of being spiritual, but you're doing it to stroke your pride. So yeah, there's a lot of that, and especially fear-based things. There’s a lot o — “I’m going to do this because it allows me to avoid the facing the things I’m scared of about myself”, which is a huge deterrent to actually beginning the work, because then you're not doing anything you're just lying to yourself and just staying stagnant.
Instructor I:
One thing I want to unpack is you mentioned life in a busy city, and impressions, how we are bombarded by so many things that call for our attention. We're talking about someone who is walking a spiritual path, and the pitfall of mystical pride comes from believing that we are doing certain practices but we never even learned how to listen to the Universe, or Divinity, so now we are offering some suggestions for the remedy and being lost within impressions. (???) Illusion is a big way that we stay asleep and don't begin to wake up and see reality. Can you talk a bit more about Impressions and those constant things that crop up and fight for our attention?
Instructor II:
Let’s imagine we're walking in the middle of Time Square and you there's cars, there's honking, there’s people everywhere, people bumping into you, being loud, taking pictures of things, there's the the big billboards that are like electronic and flashing colors all over the place, and there's all the things going on around you. Can you walk through that and self-rememember and realize that you are not your physical form and that this reality around you is all illusion, and that you're this eternal being that's just going through a lesson? The answer probably is no because you're taking in all of this, but atrue Master, for example, could go sit in the middle of Time Square, by the place where they have the Broadway tickets, right like right in the middle of that spot, that little triangle, and sit there and meditate and go into Samadhi. That’s what a spiritual Master could do. So it really doesn't matter how much noise there is or even if there's people brushing by you or all of that, because you're not becoming identified with your surroundings. So that's why we talk about impressions. This is literally everything that comes in, everything, whether it's TV, when you open the phone and you look at social media, everything that we take in sensorily, so that could be visual, auditory, through the sense of touch, taste, when we eat something… All of these things are impressions. When I say the word impression, I mean: something that we then relate to something and create a conditioned response. So whether it's positive or negative, right, like if I mentioned food, this food I like the way it tastes now, I’m conditioned to like this food and I form an ego around. This is something I like, whereas this food I don't like the way it tastes, I want to spit it out. I've now developed the conditioning, this aversion to that, and every time I taste that food I don't like it.
Instructor I:
What about people that say there's nothing wrong with that, the specific example of, say, an ego that likes to eat a certain food. They might say: what’s the big deal?
Instructor II:
Right, so there's not necessarily a big deal in liking something, or disliking something. The issue is in becoming identified with it and this is where we come back to: we can taste something and know that it tastes good but when we become like: “ah like that food is what I'm about”, or like: “I can't eat that because it's so gross”… We don't have to like the way it tastes. We also have to realize that it doesn't really matter because it's not real. It’s just an illusion, right? The thought that makes us think this tastes gross and the thought that makes us think that this tastes good is in itself an ego. So as long as we are aware of that, that doesn't mean we have to go around doing things we don’t like, but are we aware that it's not us that dislikes or likes this thing. There's a big difference with that. So for example if there's something I don't like to eat, we'll stay on that example, I obviously usually don't eat it, right?But if I'm not identified with that fact, let's say I go to someone's house and they cook up something with this in it and normally if I'm identified with that I'm like “ah, that's gross, I can't eat that, that’s bad for me”, whatever reasoning it is — you know we can come up with a million different reasons why we won't eat that thing. But you realize that “oh this person made that and maybe it's just nice to not say anything, take that, eat it, whatever…”. To be honest, karmically that is the truth. Somebody’s to do something for you there, is a benefit to just doing the right thing, and you would suck it up because it's like: oh well this doesn't taste good to my pet: but who doesn't it taste good to? My ego, not me.
Instructor I:
So I should cook you some mushrooms… (???)
Instructor II:
Basically (laughs)… But you understand what I mean though, in that sense so…
Instructor I:
I do…
So we're talking about Liberation, and that leads me to the second point that I wanted to touch on, and we're already kind of unpacking it. We have been discussing this Detachment from the construct. So we're using this vocabulary to describe non identification, liberation, freedom. Someone who is very attached to everything in life, what they can touch, taste, feel, desire, pleasure, what they are pursuing, their goals and their dreams, things that make them feel prideful and Superior, and they think this is so good, it's so nice… What can we share with someone like that to help them see through this illusion? And besides, that person that is identified, someone that is really trying, and they don't know a way forward, they don't know how to disidentify?
Instructor II:
Well realistically if someone is completely identified, and enjoying, there's not much we could do for them, I mean we can't force somebody to not identify. I think of the another example (???) said Do “The Matrix” so often, and this would actually be someone… Actually wait I’ll come back to thisactually. Anyway, the point is, we can't make somebody disidentify from something because it's their choice. Everybody has free will, I mean, if we explain to them really: I mean at that point you're explaining somebody who is identified with their role in the construct right, it's like agent Smith or something… It’s like if you were to say: oh you're not you, and you need to know who you really are. Their answer to you will be like: “well I'm this person that does this job…”. And if they're attached to that, they'll never be able to detach from the construct, because they don't even know who they are, their true identity of their actual soul and essence. But for someone who is trying, and just maybe getting caught up in this thing, it's just to remember what I think I said earlier: that any type of resistance, anything should be observed. It doesn't mean this is right or wrong, it’s not saying not to control somebody, or telling somebody: “oh as soon as you are angry about something that means you have to drop that behavior”. No, because really, we have to comprehend and learn about these things. So it's not for me or for anybody else to tell somebody what to do or what not to do, but the advice would be: if you're experiencing resistance about anything that comes forward, like there's something there that is involved with our ego because like I said, what we dislike what we like, is related to Ego even if it's something that's good for us. So when we experience it, it's just an opportunity for us to explore ourselves, instead of avoiding anything that it has resistance to because it's convenient. It's hard to go and to fight against this resistance, and that's where you'll move forward. There's also a sense, and I'll actually now come back to the example I was making, that karmically… So if we talk about somebody who is completely ignorant, and like they're in the construct, and they're like: “My name is Joe, and I'm a plumber, and that's all there is to life”: they don't really get bad karma for doing things that are egoic because they don't know any better. But there is to some extent the idea that once you become knowledgeable about these teachings, and you start to practice, and now you have becomefamiliar with the concepts and then you continue to I guess feed the ego, there’s Karma behind it.
Obviously the worst case scenario would actually be somebody who has already detached from the construct and going back. Two examples: one was the one I was thinking about in the past, because we were talking about “The Matrix”, but the guy who goes and betrays Neo. He knows better and he's just like: “ah but I love this stake, and I want to identify with it, I'm going to choose to identify with this…”. And there's severely negative karma attached to something like that. The other example I would think of, that many Christians might be familiar with, is Sodom and Gomorrah and the symbology of Lot and his wife are walking out and they're being initiates, and God says: “don't look back, don’t look back, just keep walking the path and don't worry about it, just whatever you're attached to doesn't matter just let it go and surrender”. But when she turns back she gets turned into salt. And that's what happens if you know better, and you've left the ego behind, and then you're like “ah but I really like it, and I want to come back”. Then the karma is severe, and that's what happens to people that choose a path of awakening of the consciousness through the ego. But we don't need to really get into that deeply at this point in time.
Instructor I:
I would say just briefly regarding that example of Sodom and Gomora, that it's a symbol of leaving behind a life where we were chasing things that made us feel good. But in specific reference to some of the details of that story, we are by no means singling out any groups, or not supporting people who make certain choices, we are simply looking at the symbology of the myth. We are not saying that that is a real story, or that some of the hatred and bigotry that has come out of many mistaken ideas around that story. We are not supporting any of that, but it's more just the concept of looking back at where you came from, and wanting to go back to indulgence shall we say.
Instructor II:
Yes that's absolutely true, all beings are one, so we're in no way looking to put down or marginalize any groups of people. There's a unity and a multiplicity, as we talked about in the prior episode, but we are all one and yet also all individuals at the same time. But at the same time all of us are in essence our own God, if we can reach that potential.
Instructor I:
But not someone else's God.
Instructor II:
Yes that’s very important, yes. Which is why everybody must do the work on their own, and why, like I said, when one of the red flags of a group tells you: oh this is how you have to do it, or believe this, or you can't leave, and all these things, that's even if they're giving you maybe some of the practices and the wisdoms of esoterism, that’s a red flag that it may be a school of dark arts. I don't like using ‘evil’ and ‘good’, but just something that is leading you towards an egoic awakening, which leads to very bad karma later on in existence.
Instructor I:
You also mentioned a term that we've never introduced on the podcast before and that is self-remembering so because it's come up we're going to talk about it now and I think it will be very educational and beneficial to the listeners so can you briefly at an introductory level give us a run through of what we mean by self-remembering. What are the benefits and how to do it?
Instructor II:
When I talk about self-remembering, and maybe again to hearken back to what we talked about last week, it’s the concept of… We have these multiplicity of all these psychological Aggregates which are constantly taking us over, because we're unconscious and asleep, at the wheel of our vehicle, and they create these false versions of. And in essence, our actual self, or as they would say in in New Age — your authentic self, when you're aligned with your higher self, you act as your authentic self is when the vessel is being controlled by your soul, your Being, higher self, whatever. When we we talk about self-remembering it's the difference between being in the present and connected to that stream, and it doesn't even need to be like necessarily a divine experience at that point in the moment, but it's just like being aware that you are not all these things that are in your sphere, is a good way to think of it.But like in your orbit all these thoughts and emotions, everything around you: it's not you, and just remembering that these things are not me. Who is me is “I am the one observing these things”. It's just being able to remember, that then allows us to observe the things that are causing us suffering, and eventually maybe later on take them into meditation and remove them from our psyche.
Instructor I:
Great, and when someone wants to practice self-remembering how do they do it? Is it something that they do in the morning or is it something that they do in the afternoon? Do they schedule it or what's the process?
Instructor II:
It’s something we do in the now, and I can't stress that enough. There's never a future or a past time that you do this, you do this now, and then you do it in another now, and then you hopefully do it every now for the rest of existence, because time is an illusion in itself. Time it's a dimension, a dimension though like how we move through space. If we were in the fourth (dimension) we could move through time, the effect of time though as we know it as we move through time because we're living in a three dimensional world is not real, it's an illusion. In higher planes of existence everything is in the now and exists all at the same time.
Instructor I:
So to summarize, someone who wants to take up the practice of self-remembering and they set the intent that they're going to do it it, shouldn't be like: “okay I'm going to start this from tomorrow”, but going to start this now. And then they hold the intention to remember their authentic self from moment to moment and continually remind themselves to remember their higher aspect, their higher wisdom whatever you want to call it. One of my favorite ways that I've heard it described is to “Remember your Being” because that also reminds you to be here and now. We've heard that advice in so many different spiritual schools, those who have applied it have noticed the benefits straight away. (???who) “Remember your Being” means to remember the higher self, to remember God inside of you,to remember the light within you, the divine spark, the essence, whatever you call that.
Now there are a lot of people, and we've been talking about mystical pride, who say: I'm remembering my Being, because they've been studying these tools and they also believe they are hearing from their Being. But it's the same question: how is this happening that they are sometimes feeling that they're remembering their Being but then receiving information that could be misguiding them.
Instructor II:
Like I said, that you, the ego itself is clever, it knows it can pose as our Essence. It could pose as our higher self also, it it's very easy for it to get this by us early on when our experiences with Source are either non-existent, and we just believe we've had some, or we've had some but they're very subjective because we still are attached to reality. So even when God speaks to us, it's through a lens of ego. So still it's a little bit like fishy, and there's still some information that's coming through that's stuff that we planted there. Well, not us, but the ego planted there. So then other like allowing it to kind of cloud and shift the knowledge, we just have to be careful to really question and discern the subjectivity of the experiences that we have, until we actually have experienced objective reality. And if you were to ask how do you know one has experienced objective reality -- you will know it. It would be something that's so different and abstract from this 3D plane that you will know. Also, there is an all knowing that happens when that happens as well, because you're connected into all of the knowledge that is and will be. If you haven't experienced that, and that doesn't mean that you haven't heard from source, and that you haven't had experiences… like I said — even a vivid dream is usually some type of message from Divinity. If we were conscious enough to remember our dreams, there's definitely messages from Divinity, but until we've experienced objective reality, we can't definitely say: oh this experience is 100% true. We have to look at it through the lens of where is the ego in this, even when it's coming from Source.
Instructor I:
And what about classic excuses that the ego of mystical pride gives or these false lenses that tell us — this is a message from Source — but it's the ego. What are some of the things that these egos say to deceive us?
Instructor II:
Well, first and foremost, like I said a little bit earlier in the episode, when we hear advice or hear things that we don't like, the ego is quick to be like: well we all walk our own path and nobody can tell me about my path, I know better. That's like the biggest most common thing. Yes there is truth to it because the ego always uses something with a semblance of truth. That's why it's so easy to trick us. It’s never something that's a bold lie unless we're really, really unconscious. There may be certain situations where somebody is just completely delusional, but for the most part, usually these things have an element of truth to them. So okay, we'll take that, we each have our own path and nobody could tell me what to do, I do the work for myself, whatever, but nobody's telling us what to do in the moment. So we may just give a suggestion to think about it. But we don't want to think about that so we immediately have resistance to that, and then we're like: well I know better, and I walk my own path, so I'm never going to actually take this advice. Or it’ll use time, so it'll be like: well that's really painful and I don't want to face that all at once right now because it just hurts too much to face it right now, these traumas, and I want to get rid of these traumas but if I wait till later to face them… Or like: I’ll just do that later. Well later never happens because the future doesn't exist. There's only more nows. So if you're always saying “oh well I'll just get around to that later” or “I'll work on that aspect later”, well then it just has you delay it indefinitely. So that's another trick that the ego uses as well. And then there's plenty more too, I mean we can project onto others. Sometimes maybe if we don't like the advice that we get, we'll be like: that person's being arrogant and they're full of pride, or maybe it’s:they’re mean and abusive or something like that, and really that's our own inner perception projecting as well. Because someone could literally give us advice that's neutral, and we could even get the same advice from multiple people that's neutral, but based on “well I have a problem with this person right now because they told me something I didn't like, so I'm angry. They're being mean to me.” Now this other person tells me the same thing but because they're on my good side, oh they're affirming everything that I said even though they didn’t. We just hear what we want to hear. This person is my enemy so they're saying something I don't like. Like this person, I like them, so they're just telling me what I want to hear even though they're telling me the opposite and that's how the ego says it, just everything is flying over our head. We're not actually listening to the advice that's coming down from Source through people that are further along the path. Because what also ends up happening too is as some of the more advanced students, because they are connected to Source, when we ask them questions, the answer that comes down is unfolding down from their Being, to tell us. So you know, the same answer will come from multiple people, they all will say the same thing, maybe in their own waythrough their own personality, but they're saying the same thing. But we can pick and choose what we like to hear or what we think we're hearing because we're not actually listening, and basically the entire thing is going over our head. And it could go over our head… There’s people that could be in the practices for years, and they still haven't learned how to listen, truly listen, to Source.
We have to listen, comprehend. There's also the fact of not speaking so much and thinking we know, and when we think we know we're just chatter chatter chatter, and we want to tell everybody else all that we know, and really it's making up for the fact that… Anybody who has walked even a little bit of this past will tell you we know absolutely nothing. The more that you do start to learn, the more questions arise. It’s not like “oh, now I have the answers to the universe”. It’s usually like we start out with a few fleeting experiences and we're like “ah I can't wait to like find out what this means”. And I'll get a little more consciousness. And you awaken a little bit more, and your level of Being goes up a little bit. And then you realize "oh well I got some answers and now I have even more questions”. Because what I thought the answers were going to be, or like in general, like somewhere in that range, it's so much more complex and complicated than that. Now just there's even more stuff I don't understand so maybe it's better to not worry about all these things. That's an ego in itself, too, the desire to know. I think I said; anything intellectual is basically ego. The ego knows how to trick us.
Instructor I:
Does the intellect have a place? And if so, what is it?
Instructor II:
Well the intellect does have a place in the sense that it's part of this physical machine and it allows us to interact with society and do practical things in this reality when we're the ones in control of it. If we use our mind to do some numbers, we did some math, that’s not a bad thing, that’s not the ego, to do an equation. But the issue is that the mind is out of control because the ego uses it. The ego also uses our emotions and other things as well but the mind especially. It's usually the last thing we have to conquer on the Path. It's represented by Jesus on Palm Sunday when he comes riding the donkey. The donkey represents the intellectual mind and him riding it in victoriously, valiantly or whatever is the symbol of him conquering the mind. Now he's in control of the mind and the mind listens to him. That's why he's riding it. There's also that Buddhist painting where the monk chasing the elephant and as he goes up the road it slowly turns from black to white, and it gets purified. At the end the monk is now sitting on top of the elephant that was running away from him and that signifies that he's tamed his mind. So it's a very common trope in most like religions and practices. If we get to that point where we've eliminated the ego from the mind and the mind is under our control, you think of a Jedi, right, then we can use the mind to do great things. But at the beginning and for a very long time, even past the beginning, the mind is definitely usually our enemy, the intellect is… Because we don't have the capability of using it at will. So that's actually something that we have to get in control of even before willpower. So it's another obstacle.
Instructor I:
And is it using the same methods that someone gains control over it?
Instructor II:
Yes, the methods on the path stay exactly same whether we're starting out at the beginning, we're just trying to heal some traumas so that we could detach from the system, or we're further along on the Path and actually trying to cleanse our emotions or our mind or even our willpower of all the aggregates that are there in the deep recesses of our mind (or psyche I think is a better word for that because not to get confused because the psyche also includes the emotional center and the center of willpower and things like that).
The practices are always the same, the hardest part is getting to the point where you're detached.It's almost as if it becomes like a a snowball effect as we gain further depth I would say. Most Masters say it takes many lifetimes to become a spiritual Master but usually in the Incarnation that they become a master they've through many lifetimes just gotten to the point where they're over the edge and they're starting from birth or relatively shortly after birth like: boom I'm detached from theconstruct. And then in like 20, 30 years they can wipe out the entire ego because now they're aware of it, they’re constantly observing. And then you also start to develop abilities as you awaken consciousness which just makes it even easier and easier to start wiping out the ego. But it's those first baby steps that we have to take to just enter the path. Like I said, actually entering the path internally, and starting to work on these defects as opposed to just doing the practices and saying that we're doing it while still running around attached to the Matrix… So that unplugging that Neo has to go through, that could take multiple lifetimes. It’s the biggest struggle that we face on this journey…
Instructor I:
So many good points that I think no matter where someone is at there will be something that people can start to do. So if you are completely new to doing the inner work and all this sounds like a lot then the starting point is to have a daily practice to meditate, to observe, and then the Path going forward is no different. It's just deeper and deeper levels of remembering the Divinity within, observing what is inside of you, and how you are reacting, and deepening your meditation practice. So thank you so much Adonis for sharing these things with us and thank you to all of our listeners who have come along on this journey and remember the Path to your best reality is in your hands to create when you become conscious.
Instructor II:
Yes, and remember to vibrate at higher frequency so you can maximize Dharma for the collective. And one last thing, I’ll just put a pitch out there, but we should bring some of our friends on here to talk about human design. I know there's one that would probably love to be on the podcast and also I haven't spoken with you and Bianca on one at the same time so anybody listening can put some pressure… (laughs)
Instructor I:
I think Bianca would love to have a conversation and there are quite a few friends actually that we have on a list that have already agreed to come on the podcast that we are just looking to find a time to to book it in because they're in different time zones. But I think there's so much more that we can unpack and we have so many beautiful precious Souls that we know that have something to share that can really benefit people so yes definitely keep following and keep watching because there is more good stuff coming. Thank you everyone.
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