Caroline Myss - Pebbles in the Well: Learning to Listen to Your Soul

okay i would like to start with a prayer before we go anywhere else and when and i this is um i don't want to think of this as an ordinary workshop i really don't i would like to think of this as more of a more almost retreat somewhere if a retreat and a workshop and a sacred space can be created that is how i would like to think of our time together in these days we have and i am always mindful now of the beautiful prayer thought of thomas merton this day will never come again we'll never have a chance to be together like this again as we will these next days and so um i deeply believe that when you enter into prayer that you enter into prayer so close your eyes and i i want to give you an image that we're going to be working with and i want you to imagine that you are walking into a forest a beautiful forest and you are by yourself and it's misty and it's quiet and you come upon a well a beautiful well and you approach it and you look down and there's water clear beautiful water the water of your soul but you you don't know that yet you don't know that but the the well is calling you it's there's something in it there's a mist that almost is refreshing you your face your whole your whole body as you breathe it that mist is is is actually coming into your sinuses into your head it's just it's fragrant it's not fragrant it's like an elixir and you stand there and you say i am listening i am listening i am listening that's all and you say i am listening then as you stand there how will you come to me lord how will i know you how will i recognize you i know you will come for me you will slip into my being perhaps in the middle of the night while i sleep maybe you will come to me when i'm not looking for you when i'm distracted staring into an oncoming storm fearing my immortality or maybe you will come to me in the midst of a lie that pours out of my mouth effortlessly you will let me know you are listening as i listen to myself say something that is not true as easily as if i were giving the time of day i tell myself that lies are insignificant that they don't matter how do i know what matters what is insignificant what if i'm being tested observed did you know i put my conscience to sleep years ago or maybe that's how you will come to me you will awaken my conscience like a sleeping dragon one day when i'm weakened by disease or fear or loneliness and i will be forced to face the truth that i fear you i fear truth you are truth itself and i feel that power rumble like an earthquake through my being each time my eyes look into the eyes of another human being one word of truth exchanged through the eyes of another is enough to bond two human beings for eternity the power of a sacred union no wonder we fear truth no wonder i fear you how will you come to me lord you will come through truth you will make me need you and i will come searching you will make me shed my skin my illusions my weaknesses like boils ready to burst on my flesh and then when i'm broken too weak to deceive even myself there you will be already resurrecting my soul somehow lord i found this truth already lodged in my heart you've already come for me take a very deep breath and wake up now off we go huh so let me describe that got to you huh let me describe how i'm going to set up this how i've set up this this um experience we're going to share in spiritual direction there's a natural progression to the way you seek god it was just a natural progression there is a natural progression too if i said okay i would be your spiritual director there is a a natural way our dialogue would be because there's a there's a way we are designed an organic archetypal way that we are designed it's just the way we are our nature is stronger than anything else and our nature has a way of seeking itself and if this follows that you know i i had a really fascinating one of those wonderful and um this year because i've been teaching now for quite some time i'm not new at this and so through the years i have had the so many experiences so many conversations with people who have shared with me that they are looking for something they're seeking they're looking for their highest potential any potential they're looking for where they belong they're looking for the next step they're looking they're seeking they're looking they're seeking they're seeking their looking so i said to an audience this year i looked at them and i said how is it at your age you don't know what you're doing how is that possible how is it possible that at your age you don't know what you believe how is it possible that you have no idea what you believe in or or or a sense of what it is that sustains you on the inside how on earth is that possible how high how is that possible that you have no idea no clarity no assurance of a god that you trust how is that possible and it was like throwing ice water on their face it was as if no one had broken the spell for them made them realize that the time comes when you have to know when you have to look into yourself and ask what what do i believe what actually do it when this when they when the life of the seeker stops and the life of the committed devotee begins when you actually reach a point where you have to say i'm not searching anymore i've been searching because i didn't want to make a commitment to anything because i like the life of the searcher it is irresponsible it doesn't come with any commitments i'm not as lost as i look i'm not as lost as i look there comes a point where a person has to say i actually need to now put my feet to the fire and ask myself very different questions not instead of what is it i'm looking for to what is it i actually believe i have to ask more mature questions i have to go deeper instead of outside inside and deeper i just want to say something there are people here from other countries and i want to say to you that if i say something that you don't understand because of a language barrier because unlike me you speak many languages i speak slang fluently i want you to stop me i don't want you to miss anything i want you to put up your hands so that i will stop what i'm saying and say it again clearly is that agreed for all of you from foreign countries okay great for those of you who speak english make it the best you can okay so we're going to progress in kind of a natural way that follows an organic path in us because what's true of everybody is that at some point every human being they live long enough et cetera let's say as the person goes through life they're gonna ask certain questions they're gonna wonder about their life they're going to ask could you turn your phones off please um the next time i'm not nice about it i'll get very short-tempered i don't mean to but that's the way i'm going to get i'm going to warn you ahead of time phones and me when i'm lecturing are not a good combination okay after that i get very nice but there it is okay so um that said um we're going to start here with human beings by nature by nature we are we need instructions we are from the time we're born from the very moment we're born we are creatures that must have mentors we must have teachers we must we must be given instructions direction there isn't one part of us that doesn't need direction our bodies need to we need directions on how to work our body we need directions on how to work our mind we need teachers and directions on how to work our emotions you don't scream you manage your emotions and we need directions on how to work and understand our spirit every part of us requires a director every part of us every single part of us without a director without a physical director intellectual directors who are called teachers without a physical director you know people of the body the world of physicians the world of gym the world of the physical without that we would make it we certainly would we would develop we would be forced to figure out how we worked on our own and we would because our own fundamental nature would take over as our teacher our nature would take over our instincts would take over and our instincts would become our teacher and and our fundamental instincts are programmed towards survival and this is this and this is you know fascinating to me but they they're programmed to manage our survival not our how do i say not our higher highest potential not at all instincts are developed are our primary to survival and so your physical body without a mentor without someone to say no no darling don't put that in your mouth that's bad for you no no no darling don't do this no your body needs rest your body does this this is good for your body this is not good for your body without that you would be forced to learn all things by yourself to learn physical wisdom you would not learn the finer things nor would you learn for example how to develop for like an athlete what would it take for you to develop a really strong body what would it take for you to develop a really healthy body this would require a mentor if you really were to understand the finer points of your body you must have a mentor because you on your own you would not be able to take the distance or understand why is my body hurting here why is my body hurting here what does it need what does it not need you would only be able to operate at the survival level are you with me okay mentally the same thing emotionally the same thing but the important thing here to understand mentally and emotionally is that you would be driven by fear and superstition you would not be driven by intellectual curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge but you would be driven by the pursuit of of survival appetites animal appetites you would be driven by the need to control the need to acquire because the fear in you would be incapable of allowing you to strategize at a higher level to deal with questions of purpose and meaning because nobody would have instructed you to say now that's nothing to be afraid of that's nothing to be afraid of you would not have been instructed to see at a higher level are you here with you you you would not have been instructed to think differently you would just have been instructed to i'm afraid of the dark therefore the dark is bad if i don't understand it my only way is to kill it this is what happens when a human being is not instructed to move past the fear level we must have instructors to guide us to direct us past our own instincts otherwise the instincts take over and the lowest part of our instincts take over this was beautifully dealt with in the in the um book what was it animal farm wasn't it animal farm yeah and um were they were these kids just were left to grow up by themselves on an island or was it lord of the flies that's it lord of the flies and they and and they went to their lowest common denominator not their highest and in this in in an amazing to me and i and this feeds into exactly what i'm teaching you right now all these programs called survivalist these horrid programs are really saying to you at the collective that we are progressing regressing to our primal selves because we are in fact returning to a level of base fear we're going this we're we're regressing to that level of survival instincts again and for this reason now we're going to move to the soul the soul requires direction too human beings need to need to have direction on how the soul in them works that they have a soul that what is the soul's purpose just like you have to understand how does the mind work what does the mind need it needs education it needs training it needs it needs this is what the mind needs otherwise left to its own devices what will the mind do you risk the mind becoming a dark instrument you risk the mind wandering off and creating nasty things doing dark things becoming a criminal mind if the mind is not managed the mind will go off and do other things with itself because it it must create the mind has to create the mind has certain curious things the body the human being must have union on all of its parts because each part serves such a critical purpose the soul contains the conscience the soul is the guiding mechanism that maintains an authority over by the mind so that when the mind starts wandering and thinking about doing things that aren't so so good the soul kicks in and says where do you do what are you thinking about that for get over here what are you doing that for get over here and it slaps the mind around because that's what it's supposed to do that's how we govern our own nature it's our inner governance system this is how we govern this is how we manage our interior selves this is what conscience is about in our own inner direction when that mechanism is turned off when we're not in touch with that mechanism the mind's left to wander and it takes instructions it's got to take instructions from i don't know it'll take instructions from what it sees what it wants maybe emotions gone crazy maybe physical instincts it'll go down to the lowest common denominator in its own nature you following me here so i want to back up here i just need to pour this i'm now on a new kind of water i have to bring my own water i feel ridiculous about it but there it is i'm turning into one of those whole food people anyway okay um i cannot emphasize enough how important one of the operative words is and that is the idea of the body mind spirit modality has only been applied to we kick it we engage it when we get sick and that's it it's only been conveniently applied to health we have a health crisis it's never been applied as deeply as we need to understand the way in which we actually function as a whole system that requires the active conscious dialogue participation in order that we function like a a system in which our conscience participates actively in decisions participates in how our physical body works with our soul body works with our soul instincts our physical instincts our mental instincts this is an instinctual system of life and this is how we have to understand ourselves the second thing you really need to understand about yourself is that you thrive on truth you thrive on it you thrive on it you absolutely thrive on it the the breakdown in the human system breakdown is when you fall out of alignment with your comfort zone with truth personal truth speaking truth here however it is you deal with truth and this is where the spirit the soul in you comes in the just like the the the you need direction for the mind the role of the soul in you is that it is the a vessel of truth that's its role its role is that it is the it animates your conscience it animates it participates in how your heart talks to you how do you actually feel about this about love what do you actually love how do you know what it is you are being guided to do what's the truth here what's the truth how do you sense what's going on in your life what is unfolding in your world right now how do you actually sense what you're being directed to what do you feel that's unfolding if you have no rapport with that level of soul truth you will always think that what's coming into your life is financial it's a job it's there to glamorize you you'll always go to your lowest common denominator of what's unfulfilled in your wounds you will always do that you will always do that what's unfolding must be something to make me feel better because i was wounded you will always always always do that because you have absolutely no sense of who you are on wounded none the identity you will go to will always be your wounded self always are you are you with me here because you have absolutely no sense of who you are in any other place what is spiritual direction about is you finding am i who what is it i believe what are the truths in me now you know in mysticism there's a path that the mystics especially john of the cross or teresa of avila that they they kind of follow that is just a given it's a given it's a given and this path kicks into you and it's going to kick in in spiritual direction it just is organic and that and the dark knight it just kicks in and it kicks in in healing it just is it is in our nature and the first step of it's called the purge you're going to purge and and what the purge is about is about you getting out of you everything that is not truth you purge it's a purge you have to clean out that in you which is not truth which is not truthful which the things you have clung to in you that you know are not true you got to get rid of them you got to purge and this part is extremely painful this is when you sit down and say okay let's talk about because the reason you would seek a spiritual director in the first place is those beliefs are bothering you it's not it's not me as a spiritual director i'm looking at you and i would say what do you what would you like to talk about i know that's what you want to talk about because you're bursting inside i know more than you i know what you need to talk about i'm not going to pull it out of you i'm going to wait till you pull it out of yourself but i know that's what has to happen you are on the brink of the purge so i'm going to tweak it i'm going to tweak it because what i know what i know is there comes a time that when you when a person is searching searching searching you're not searching you're trying to figure out how to stop beli claiming you believe things that are not true how to get out of cycles that go nowhere that go nowhere how to start asking questions that actually take you somewhere and to stop asking questions that have no answers here's a question that has no answer why did this happen to me stop it it doesn't have an answer i'll give you an answer because it did because it did it doesn't have an answer what would you tell someone you hurt who finally came up to you why did you hurt me what would you tell them i didn't mean to i didn't know i hurt you i wasn't thinking about you i was thinking about me and now i never think about you or you'd say i wish i could do it differently now i really do but i can't those are the only answers you could give someone and how would that change your life see it wouldn't it wouldn't change your life at all would it so there comes a moment where you realize i've got to stop asking those questions i have to stop asking questions that have no answers and move on so when we look at the purge i want you to just look at something on the outside and then we're going to go into you through the years through the the decades but in particular in the last 60 years since we entered the nuclear age we which is almost like the cap on the 500 years of what we call the age of reason the irony if you will of the age of reason is that it took us into the era of being the most unreasonable we've ever been we've never been a more unreasonable species we've gone as unreasonable as we can get we've never made more unreasonable choices we've never become more unreasonable nor have we ever ever for all of our science stuff have we ever made decisions that reflect how little we understand about ourselves thinking that we understand so much about ourselves we in fact are making decisions that show how very little we understand about ourselves because the decisions we make indicate that in fact we we are going in exactly the opposite direction just as we enter the era of psychic energy of energy just in the era when we should be more conscious of how the whole fits together we are making decisions that separate us even more just in the era when we are becoming when we should have become conscious of what consciousness is we're becoming even more ferocious about endangering species and about disconnecting from the earth when in fact we should be more connected do you see we're going in the opposite direction and just as we entered the era of spirituality in the 60s we've never become more disconnected from our spirit we've gone in completely the opposite direction we haven't become more connected to our spirit we have never been less that's how i want to begin this with you i want to put you on alert that we've never been less connected never never at all in the in the world of spiritual for all these years that i've taught the things that i have received the most criticism for through my 30 years is mentioning prayer in the so-called consciousness age is mentioning prayer in a classroom he's mentioning the soul i just told my dear friend heath that teaching spiritual direction for me was one of the biggest risks i've ever done because for the longest time people were angry would say i had you have to say goddess instead of just god i have an issue with this i have an issue with that it's religion it's this or that bit okay and and it's it's a very interesting thing we have gotten very mental what has this got to do with you it's taken everybody along for the ride that through the centuries in the age of reason we've grown very comfortable reasoning our way through the cosmos and developing a very reasonable relationship with an off-planet god a god we can reason with which is a god you're going to begin to break down in our days together a god that your god the god that you somehow or other have an idea about is an off-planet god that is a product of the last 2000 years which includes a little bit of the handiwork of the renaissance that it's a god that is up there up there somewhere up there out there that is a god of reason there must be a reason god must have a reason it's got to be a lot and that the god has a courtroom the god of justice earth justice according to your court of justice that the god has a way you have an idea of this god that comes from a school of reason a school of reason do you are you with me here and that what have i done and that this has allowed us to put god in our mind but not in our being and this is my important thing that it has withdrawn our notion of god so that it's the divine is no longer real for us in the organic sense of being in in the air we breathe in the the in the atmos sacred atmosphere in the sacred atmosphere rather it's so we so people will ask well what is the soul what is grace these are theories for us they're not real they're not real god is well what is god i don't really know i mean i mean if if it were a real force nobody would dare put their hand on a bible and swear to tell the truth and not tell the truth nobody would dare do that if it was if the divine was really real a live sacred force in our world nobody would dare do that but they do it all the time nobody would dare walk on sacred ground without taking their shoes off and we do it all the time nobody would dare say i have no idea what i believe in and sit at a table and say oh yeah i have a spiritual practice and then decide but i'm busy today i'll get around to it if this force were real to you in the sense that it was once real to moses or to abram or to teresa of avila or to any of these individuals you would get up and your spiritual practice would be your life not a minute not 10 minutes on the side not walking with a bottle of water on your side that sword your spiritual practice would be the whole of your life you know when i when i when i returned to mysticism not return when i got ushered into this world because of an encounter with teresa of avila which turned my world upside down turned it upside down and brought me into the world of mysticism into the world the veil between worlds evaporated for me evaporated and i it was an elation that all that i had wondered to be true believed to be true became true and a grand mal seizure blew open my brain but the result was the fire on both sides became the fire so when i'm teaching you i am not telling you theory and i cannot i have a lot of proof that i cannot prove except that i cannot tell you something that is not truth it won't come out of my mouth it it i i tell you well it's not possible of course it is but not this not this believe me um that the what was i doing what i i deeply believe now is when i would go back i went back to the scriptures and now when i look back and read for example where it says abram abram was visited by angels in the physical i totally believe that happened in the physical totally as it says in the old testament i absolutely believe that's what happened that the physical angels came and he said to his people go serve them dinner and they dined in the tent and that as time progressed and we got to the time of jesus the angels would appear as light light and then when you read stories like saul was on his way to jerusalem and the light came and it knocked him he had a vision and it knocked him off his horse and he was blinded for three days and as you read these mystical experiences you see the pattern and this is important for you you see the pattern that the light gets external and it blinds those even down to the apparitions even down in the east whether it's east or west when the celestial world when the holy world when the holy comes to you there is a blinding until you settle until you're able to to look until you're able to to to come near that light and that blindingness is is this ferocious force that always says like like the way god called the prophets it's so beautifully he would call them and like abram said i am listening to which god said fear not for i am the lord and i am calling you i am calling you this is how the prophets answered ferocious wind would come or this incredible light and all i would say is i am listening i am listening and i give that to you as your first prayer your very first and deepest prayer i am listening that's all the power you i am listening stop thinking that you are ready for extraordinary instruction stop it you haven't even learned to listen you're greeting your first is i am listening and you hear fear not for i am calling you just you and you are responding and in those days the response was the divine messenger came and said you god is calling you now i just want to hit this pause button and say these great stories speak of this universe in which i love to think of this i love it that there was this time when with moses or or or noah or um francis of assisi or or all these great saints that i lusciously love to hang out with in my head that in their world there was nothing much between their world and heaven it wasn't all this chaos it was not all this chaos that we live in it wasn't all this distraction it wasn't all the distraction at all this is a big deal there wasn't distraction it was their world the physical world silence they didn't have buses and trains and planes and boats and and email and computers and distraction it was silence absolute silence in the heavens and during those centuries centuries the focus of everything was physical survival and the survival of the soul the survival of the soul which was everything which was today we would say that's the most preposterous thing i've ever heard of that someone would actually give make a decision where they would measure what would happen to my soul if i do this what's the consequences to my soul if i do this what's the consequences here to my soul if i do this to my soul what are the consequences i've never met anybody who's ever asked me that in 30 years i have never met anyone who has asked me that question if i do this what's the consequences to my soul and the curious thing is their illness or their suffering bears witness to consequences to their soul so if you think i'm jabbering a history lesson think again we now wear the consequences of our soul in our psyche and in our medication why because as the mystics well laid out the soul is the vessel of truth and it has to purge itself and the way of purging was always confession but we just we did away with that it wasn't just confession in the christian the native americans would go to the native would go to a medicine man people always had within their traditions some place of going and saying i need to purge the demons the darkness the things that the reptiles as theresa would say in me that are possessing me because these demons are watch the way this works they are eating my mind and they are destroying my heart so which this is how it works you cannot have body mind and spirit work together and not get how they work together i have to purge my soul my soul has become toxic i've acted against my conscience i've acted against my moral code my ethical code i've acted against my beliefs and i'm going to say a great big huge bunch of things now great big huge but um not but in the last one a pattern that was initiated in the 1960s is a pattern that is anathema to human nature and our soul nature what was initiated in the 1960s was this idea that we could go off on our own and do our own thing without direction that we didn't need direction that we could just do our own thing be our own thing do whatever we wanted ethically spiritually morally we could just do whatever we wanted we could just take flight and in the process of that we threw out babies with bath water it is okay to go and do to to pursue the self when the self's had enough direction on how to manage the self you understand what i'm saying once the self has been schooled on the self then go ahead and take the self on a on a long as brony would say walk about or a hero's journey in the language of jung then it's fine because you know how to manage your soul you know how to manage your heart you know how to manage you and you understand your nature but to take off and decide beca and to and to dismiss the needs of the soul as if there's no sacred or to declare that you understand the sacred just out of arrogance because what we are what people have done is they've become experts on what they don't believe and novices on what they do and an expertise on what you do not believe is not a functional theology do you understand and as a result people have no beliefs at all and as a result of that it's given people license to not have a conscience and we've taken the word conscience out and substituted consciousness which has no meaning at all to think you're conscious means that you're recycling and as a result of that people live without any direction on their inner choices so they and to keep going there no one's helped there has been no way to help people get to know who they are what they believe what the significance is of having a belief of having or how to examine what it how do you even know what it is a belief feels like what's a belief feel like how do i know i'm believing something what happens if i don't have any belief where will i go what do i become vulnerable to if i don't have a belief what happens to me in this spiritual world if i don't believe anything am i vulnerable to something is there possession well maybe not by the exorcist do you remember that movie did you see it by some gargoyle but what about the psychic free radicals that people generate am i a magnet for that what happens if i don't pray does it matter so you see what i'm saying these days today because we have grown up thinking none of that matters we can declare what we believe and say there's no evil in the world why because i said so because i've declared it because i have built the universe according to the way i want it to be because that suits me because i've said that that's the way it is because that makes me feel good but i do like the angels so i've kept them i've kept them and i've decided it's not important to pray every day but when i think about it and of course when i mill and i've decided there's a goddess i don't say the word god because i don't like the sound of it you don't get to do that you don't get to do that you don't get to do that you get to say this what what has always been and what will always be long after i'm gone we start there what has always been what will always be long after i'm gone long before i was here i don't get to rearrange the cosmos at all get a grip on yourself get a grip on yourself number two get adjusted to what teresa of avila tells her nuns you're not special whoever told you that lied to you stop telling yourself that that's one of the worst drinks of kool-aid you will ever ever take it is torturous you will live your life looking for something special to do whatever that means and everything in life will disappoint you everybody will disappoint you that is a curse to believe that you are special the greatest gift you can give yourself is to recognize yourself as a humble person living a humble life within your own human nature within this human planet within this planet that governs all of us stop looking to be the exception to the rules you are not an exception you are governed by the same rules everybody else's and now you're going to learn the rules if you say you're special you think you exist outside the rules and that's when you get in trouble that's when you get ill and you say things like i can't believe this happened to me and why not because i'm special and the rules don't apply to me well then jump off the building and see if gravity does i'll meet you at the bottom i would love all those people those those absolutely boring boring people who send christmas cards see my special children to actually send those unbelievably boring people someone should send them one say you are so boring don't you ever send me one of these boring christmas cards again really they should send a christmas card that says see how ordinary my children are this year finally they'd get a christmas card back from me thank god you've come to your senses okay are you with me here and i cannot tell you how much you're going to relax into a relationship with the sacred because the more you think you're special the worst you're the worse your spiritual life is the more you fear god and the more you fear the truth because unless people are enforcing your specialness you have nothing to do with them and all the special mythologies they've just got to tell you look at do you think i'm special now get out of here everything's got to be about you and your specialnesses okay you got to buy things that say special on it why do you think they started that marketing specialty okay i'd ask you for questions but i'm not interested right now you don't get to have questions right now now [Applause] so now imagine you come into my office as a spiritual director and the first thing you we would discuss somebody ask you what do you believe so what do you believe what are your beliefs in this in in god in this universe and in yourself what do you believe about yourself what do you believe now that's a huge question what is a belief what's the difference between can you feel the difference in yourself between a thought and a belief does it weigh differently in you it weigh differently to say no i actually know this is truth truth what's true is this is friday but there's no truth to it because where brony lives it's not friday so there are places in the world where it's not friday there's no what's a truth it's a truth for me it's a functioning truth for me that what's in one is in the whole that's absolutely true for me i do not i i cannot see nor viscerally experience how what is done to one affects the whole but i know that that's a truth a frightening truth one that i would take issue with if i could speak to god i don't like its mechanism sometime but i know it's a truth and it has caused me to force me to begin the journey of altering my behavior that long hard climb to recognizing even those that i cannot possibly believe i'm connected to i won't mention but it just but after a while when i settle down and take a deep breath it's all part of the human experience it's all part of the human experience but what is in one is in the whole that's all there's to it that's it end of the line you can't argue with it you can't stop it once you get that you have to live it you have to live it it's a truth that's all there's to it that's it done you're past the i think i will live it occasionally i think i'll live it when it's comfortable i think i'll do it on my own time no no no no no and the purge begins the the the beliefs that collide with it come out now maybe i should my little drawings i don't have many drawings those of you have been with me know my drawings but they're not many so you're gonna there's a little relief that goes with this i always draw this building because it's basically a great it's a great illustration to get how simple but effective this building represents you and how we progress in consciousness and that every floor is a different way of seeing your own world because you're the moving piece in the building you are you're the one that can go up and down so on your first floor you see the whole world you live in very literally through your five senses but imagine in your penthouse you see that you are by mountains and an ocean and the air is clear and there is no sound it's just the beautiful sounds of the world you live in but down on the ground it's traffic and there's street dust and and crowds and it's difficult and it's dangerous but up here it's just stunning and the air is clear and you see the night stars down here you can't see the sky because of the street lights so if you were to talk to someone who lived on their first floor in the next building you would say you know i live by mountains and an ocean and this they would say you don't even if for example even if they lived on the first floor and they would say no you live in the same building in the same address but totally different worlds totally different worlds and this is real you could have this experience in new york or in any place else that has a inability to see long island or the inability to see the hudson river you can have this kind of thing so this is in you and one of the journeys that happens in spiritual direction as you go from examining the god you want to the god that is giving up the god you want and eventually accepting the divine as is and stop expecting god to bring answers to you to your life mysteries and then you begin to to be open to what needs to be revealed without your personal agenda as you begin to mature as you begin to say okay enough of me what about you as you stop praying as a narcissist and you begin to pray and to listen okay i am listening i'm listening i didn't come with my agenda anymore because an agenda suggests that god screwed up and somehow god screwed up okay when you finally get to the point you realize i i don't need you to be my lawyer i don't need you to be my surrogate parent i don't need you to figure out to explain to me why you set me up with those parents i don't need an explanation for why things have happened as they did i'm going to stop asking questions that cannot be answered eventually you start rising but with every one of those the truth in your soul your soul will start speaking to you more loudly what does your soul feel like it feels like that the soul starts speaking to you more clearly because you are more open this is how the soul starts this is how this inner dialogue starts working you become able to ask deeper questions you start sensing it and then as you start acting on that truth you know it's the purge that the world around you will change to reflect the world within you that's just the way it is and they'll come places as you rise where you will stop and say i'm not going to go any further that's it that's as far as i'm going i i don't want to know anymore i don't want to pursue any more and i've told the story a thousand times it's a bit of an exaggeration but a lot this man did me such a favor did such a favor for me in in a class in england where he was saying that in his own spiritual journey he'd reached a place where he was beginning to understand the power of forgiveness that it wasn't about saying all right what you did didn't matter it was really about understanding that if i if you hurt me i i will get the desire to hurt you back i will it will activate vengeance it always does because that's our nature part of spiritual direction is what you are saying is i want to understand my nature and how it drives me what are you really seeking you're seeking to understand your nature and how it drives you and he recognized that actually forgiveness is my realizing that if i don't hurt you back that in you hurting me i'm recognizing that my desire to hurt you is equal to you hurting me that you've awakened in me a real nasty part that i didn't see you've awakened in me some really ugly nasty part that makes me what i realized is i got what it takes to hurt someone else to be just as ruthless whether or not it's to you or anyone else i got what it takes all i need is the right motivation and i can do the same thing you've done to me that's all it takes all i need is the to be provoked in the right way and i'm on this like a duck on a june bug and that's what you have shown me even if it's even if it's taking something even if it's like stealing an inheritance i may not steal an inheritance but if my security were threatened i don't know what i'd do i don't know what i'd do i have no idea what i do you just got there first you just got there first and that's why i'm so angry if i really had to admit it you got there first and the fact is i have what it takes to do this to you yeah i do you just got there first and that's why i hate you so much you beat me to the finish line so that what forgiveness is all about is saying i want to thank you for showing me that i've got what it takes to do what you did it's the biggest truthful admission you'll ever make and then you take it a step further and you say and i never want to do this to anybody i never want to do this to a human being i don't want this in me this is what i'm crucifying i'm taking this to the cross and i'll see you later as soon as this part of me is dead and gone i'll come out then i'm going to come out i need to get this out of me i need to purge it because it is bad news so the first step is i'm i want to thank you and that's called forgiveness because there's nothing there really this is wicked but i finally see me and you me even though it may not be act to act somebody say how can you forgive someone who's killed your child you're stretching a lot you are stretching a lot i don't want to go there because these are crimes of such unique pain their unique pain and i have to put that how could those girls ever forgive ariel castro 10 years of being tied up in a basement you know this is where i would have to say okay then let's talk about the other side which is would i tell them never forgive stay angry stay hurt where does that benefit them who is the one that's going to suffer even more by keeping that demon in what is their option here do you see what i'm saying what's the option i would never say to them well then let me just say you just keep hating and i'm going to support that but in the forgiveness what this man realized is there's no other path there is no other path and then he said to me i can't i don't i don't want that truth to consume me like a fire because then i have to live it and it's right here you know it's right here it's just about to grab my heart and if it grabs your heart it's you know it's like being with someone and you're just about to fall in love with them it's this it's this close it's this close it's this close or you and you think i got to get away because if it if it comes any closer it's all over but the crying you know what i'm saying you think don't touch me don't come closer this is it i gotta get out and then he said to me i don't want to hear any more i gotta stop i gotta stop it right here because i i will have to be the most forgiving person in my family now because they don't understand this which means i'm going to be the one that has to be forgiving understanding data and i still need to be angry i still need my anger to survive with those people he said so i can't afford to let that truth get into me so it's like i can't afford to go up a level now this is really brilliant because in in as you pursue your own spiritual direction and you start asking what do i believe what don't i you won't ever come out you're gonna stay in there'll come a time when you think i'm so accustomed now to examining what is real and what is not that at some point everything's going to change in my life and maybe i should just stop asking at that same point you're going to know it's too late it's too late so i'm going to ask you some questions and i would like you to answer them if you don't mind as if are you ready okay i want you to um first of all just just say the prayer hover over me god just to yourself just hover over me god now when you answer this name three things you absolutely believe you absolutely believe that govern you that govern that you absolutely believe and by the way i'm not talking about that you love your children don't don't let yourself off the hook because i would ask you that if we were sitting in our first class so okay your next question what do you believe to be true about the god you believe in name three things what do you believe to be true this could include by the way that he's a man if god's a male i mean what do you believe to be true you believe in about the god you believe in uh-huh so so i want you to end this with what is it you need divine guidance in your life for right now right now if an angel showed up and said i'm a messenger give me the message i'm going up back up to heaven what is the one thing you need guidance on in your life right now write it down oh so okay i'm gonna i'm gonna bring you back for a second um eventually i'm going to let you share with each other but not right now uh but before you we go to lunch so these these sharing is going to be a very important part of this and and just sharing what it is you you believe what it is you're questioning it's going to be a very important part of this workshop together and examining what are my essential spiritual needs what are they what what is a spiritual need what is that in the first place um you know when when we discuss a spiritual need and i would ask you like what are your spiritual needs for example what does that even mean i would expect most of you to say i don't know i don't know what my spiritual need is i haven't got a clue i've never asked myself that i don't even know what that means and it's maybe you would say to me that's what i've come here to figure out i haven't got a clue i have never thought about that and a spiritual need is you know maybe some of you would say i may maybe i want to learn how to pray i don't even know what prayer is i don't even know if it's effective someone once asked me do you have any prayers that work i mean what what's you know what's praying i feel like i'm talking to the error that's fair because that is a spirit i mean if i if i what's the consequences of having a spiritual need not recognizing it and is there a consequence in my body mind or spirit that is the result of an unmet spiritual need and i don't even know it but i've been treating it like a psychological problem but it's in fact a spiritual one do i suffer from a spiritual crisis that i thought was a psychological or an emotional one is that possible and the answer to that is absolutely absolutely and that as an essential spiritual need is you you every human being and we'll talk about this but not today every human being needs time to reflect on how they are making choices in their life how and why you make the choices you do what motivates you whether or not your choices reflect what you really feel what you really want to say whether or not they're coming from you are being forced out of you whether or not what you do is compromising who you are or has integrity that you end the day feeling your spirit is going to sleep with you or is it fragmented through your life through the day where have you left your soul where is it where is it has is it all inside of you as you have come to rest for the night this is an essential spiritual need have you acted in integrity that way this is not a religious question this is the nature of the soul because it is an essential soul need that you that it maintain you your congruence that you are congruent that what you say how you feel how you live and your actions follow the same chord right through your chakra system that you do not act in misalignment that you don't have spiritual scoliosis that you don't give the strength that part of yourself to others to control because you are frightened because you're weak because you're dishonorable you don't do that because if you do you'll begin a life of self-loathing you will do that you will do that you will begin to hate yourself and in order to live with that you will target someone to blame you will do that absolutely you will you will not be able to live with that and so you will pick a target and say it's their fault that this is why you are as you are it is your mother's fault it is your father's fault it is someone's fault but it is not your fault and if you don't have a target you will then get an addiction you will get an addiction you will have to be an addict you have no alternative you will be an addict there is nothing else you can do there is no exception to this there will never be an exception to this this is the way it is because this is our nature and this is what happens when we are not in alignment to truth we become abusive we will become abusers self-abusers psychic abusers emotional abusers we will become abusers until we purge ourselves and because we know have means of purging we go to therapists therapists aren't purgers of the best sort but they're the best we've got because they don't they don't really fully comprehend the full journey of the purge they listen to complaining not purging are you with me here which part yeah a therapist therapy and i'm all i'm all for it let me say please i've had a spiritual director therapist for 15 years two hours a week jungian theologian so i i i do archetypal work it's i'm all for it but he's a spiritual director but in therapy unless the therapist understands the whole role of purging of the soul because that person has bargained with darkness and is very comfortable lying is very comfortable negotiating the soul unless understands that paradigm that that's what they're doing they're consciously breaking their ethics consciously they're consciously doing this and they don't know or want to stop they don't know how or they don't want to and that the consequences of consciously consciously breaking truth consciously disrupts the conscience and disrupts the neurology it's conscious now if a therapist doesn't get that a therapist won't go after it in fact because the person first of all will generally find excuses because knowing you are playing with the truth you will hate yourself you will you will you will you will but in order to deal with that you'll take a route you'll either decide to hate someone else and blame them it's not my fault it's not my fault or you'll go psychotic you'll go sociopathic you'll become bipolar you'll do something neurological you will do something disruptive you'll become manic you'll become depressive you'll find something that disrupts because we in the early 1960s we detached from the sacraments from just from and in any religion in our society we detached from any form of the sacred across the board but because we're primarily judeo-christian i have to use that but but we just detached and in europe here we just detached from any means and any idea that any rituals of conscience soul conscience were necessary we decided they weren't we decided it was okay for any form of behavior to exist that it was now up to us to do whatever we we could self-regulate we could give ourselves direction that's the word that we could give ourselves any directions that were required that we could do that from that point on we became self-regulating we deregulated from that point on the society disintegrated morally ethically everything because we just were on our own we didn't care we ceased to care about that in our society we just went mad and then we declared there was no evil because we didn't we just couldn't reign ourselves in and that we could do whatever we wanted and so we have and we've done it do you see what i'm saying okay we do whatever i want i'm not even being like a moralist i'm simply giving you history i'm absolutely giving you history i'm not even being like a moral i'm not pure on a moral pla i'm telling you history this is simply cause and effect historically and now we we actually need to create an archetype for people who tell the truth they're called whistleblowers we are so we have people who are married live together have babies have to go to a marriage counselor to tell the truth to each other because they they don't even know how to do that they don't even know how to do that because they don't tell the truth and it's astonishing to me that when people one of the biggest crises people say they don't know me why because they don't speak the truth nobody reveals anything you have to fill out a form when you're dating to put the truth down because it's what's true about me it's a big deal in a relationship say well they know me what the hell does that mean what does that mean they know you what are you talking about and now we have this this anomaly called the inner self my inner self tells me what's your inner self tell you my inner self tells me that i should talk to you about this why don't you just talk to me about this and leave your inner self out of it see my inner self feels this way and what i realized is the inner self is this anomaly ego of our time that we've created that is a shield so that that allows a person to speak the truth and not have that part rejected or humiliated because we never speak the truth anymore but if a person pulls out their inner self their protects take on it on the inner instead of saying it directly my inner self is telling me the inner self truth looks like it's half been a revelation from god and half their tender emotional self so you put the two together and you have their inner self and now they can do whatever they want it's the irresponsible divineness in them that says my inner self's telling me this isn't right why don't you just say i don't want to do this i'm irresponsible and i'm out of here but instead they pull out the inner self my inner self is telling me because nobody can speak the truth anymore now you got it that's how truthless we've become that's how incapable we are of managing truth it's just become this word like you're not coming near me with truth are you because i pull out my inner self i'm warning you i'm warning you i'll start speaking from my inner self i have to go process this this is how we've evolved and if you and and if you you look at we should have progressed so much more in healing for being this age of consciousness and in fact we've gotten even more toxic it's because we really have not ever dealt with the role truth plays and that's this did you are you following that here it's a very bold thing you guys are doing going into yourself like this i have to i have to say that kudos to you especially with someone like me take no prisoners okay i'm going to let you have a break

Channel: Caroline Myss

Views: 46,166

Rating: 4.8521008 out of 5

Keywords: self help, live speaker, spiritual, hope, ted, oprah, motivation, womens health, spirit, myss

Id: iIXczgEVDx4

Length: 97min 33sec (5853 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020