(bell chimes) - The feeling, first of all, needs to be acknowledged and accepted. You can't start with letting go, so you have to start with acknowledging it and accepting that it's there because it's part of what is, the is-ness of the present moment. Whether it's an external
thing or an inner thing, it is what is, and to deny or to argue with
what is creates suffering. So you acknowledge, you
accept that it's there. Then, how much time you need to be with it depends, varies, from person to person and what kind of feeling it is and so on. And then the question arises, what is the link between that feeling and your thought processes? The person needs to find out whether the thought processes keep that feeling alive continuously, whether they renew by
playing out, for example, a past scenario in their minds, by reviving memories from the past, by dwelling on certain
narratives that are painful, repeating them in their minds. That gives renewed energy to the feeling. So, the first, the most important thing is to be aware of both levels. What's the level of my thinking? How does that contribute to the
perpetuation of what I feel? And so you also then acknowledge that, oh, these are the
habitual thought patterns that go through my mind in
relation to the feelings. And then the, you would begin to realize that the letting go, the most important step
in letting go of feelings, is to cut the link between your thinking and what you're feeling. How do you do that? You do it by being aware of your thinking and realizing that that thinking is pain. It feeds the old feeling
and the narrative, whatever it is, is a painful narrative, and you realize that you've
been keeping it alive for some years, and there's
some, enough awareness, you realize that it has no purpose except to make you unhappy and
to perpetuate that feeling. However, it has, you need,
and this is how you can help or any counselor or therapist
or spiritual teacher can help the other person by observing the feeling and seeing how the mind,
the mental narrative, sorry, both the mental
narrative and the feeling seem to have a life of their own. And if they have been in
there for a long time, they don't want to go. What they want is, they want you to be identified with them. They don't want you to
be conscious of them. So this is really the mind
aspect of the pain body and the emotional. If the pain body's
predominantly an emotion, but there is a mental
aspect that the pain body needs to rise up into your mind in order to feed on
certain types of thinking, in this case, the old narrative. So you alternate enough awareness to know that this thing does not want to go, because there's a momentum
behind thought patterns that have been active in
your mind for a long time. So there's a momentum behind it, so you need to be acutely
aware of the process of how it creates further pain. And when you look through it and see that's actually what it does, then you've recognized that
you cannot be deceived anymore by completely believing in
it every time it happens. In other words, you see that you create your own pain, ultimately. When you see that, that's
the beginning of the end, and then you can reach a stage when the pain is no longer, the feeling is no longer
fueled by thinking, then you arrive at a
stage where you realize, I don't need the feeling anymore. In fact, you don't need to let go, because then, when you do not revive it and it continuously,
it subsides by itself. So you don't need to
actually say, I must let go. It lets go of you, rather
than you need to let go. It's because you're no
longer giving it energy. You're no longer feeding it. So, that's the process. So, you need to let go is a bit like saying you need to forgive. That's another one like that. You need to, you really need to forgive. Okay, I'll try. (audience chuckles) I'll really, have you
forgiven your parents? Yeah, I think I have, but. (groans) (audience laughs) The forgiveness again in a
similar way happens naturally when you look, when
first of all you realize that no human being can act beyond their level of consciousness
at that time when they act it. So if you haven't forgiven your parents and then you can see they
behaved the way they did because they could not
have done otherwise. My father, for example,
I loved him dearly. Well, especially after I became conscious. (audience laughs) Before I became conscious, I had a love/hate relationship with him, and I found him very obnoxious, but there was love there,
too, emotional love. But then when I was free, I
could love him unconditionally, and then I could see that pattern in him that produced so much,
gave me so much pain, his uncontrollable anger. Mostly, fortunately,
not directly towards me, but directed towards my mother, but the anger that was
directed by my father towards my mother hurt me probably more than it
hurt my mother as a child. And his anger was so explosive, it could flare up at any moment, so you're always walking on eggshells. And when I was seven,
eight, I already knew, my mother had seemingly never learned it, I already knew what comment that she made would immediately produce the anger. (woman laughs)
I knew that when I was seven. She didn't, never learned it. (audience laughs) And so I was ready, I was
listening to my mother saying, oh no, she's saying that. (audience laughs) And so there was, I had a dream when I was seven or eight, and I was asleep and I had this dream, and in the dream I was,
there was a bag under my bed, and in that bag were the
body parts of my dad. I had cut him up and had
all put all his body parts and then hidden it under the bed. (woman laughs)
So I was, I didn't, the actual cutting up wasn't in the dream. It had already happened somewhere else. (audience laughs) - [Woman] You were just cleaning up? - Yeah, so I was pushing him under my bed, and then still in the dream at that moment I heard the front door opening
and my dad was coming in, and I ran towards him and
gave him a hug. (laughs) So that shows the conflicting feelings. And then later I realized, I realized where that anger came from. I don't need to go into this. Of course, it goes back to a childhood, how he was treated in his family, the seventh child, the youngest child, nobody wanted him anymore,
the mother was tired, she wasn't giving much attention, not treated well by his
female, his sisters, and so on. Long story, I don't need to go into that. It came all from there,
it originated from there, anger towards his mother
and so on and so on. And later I realized he
could not help himself. He did not have the awareness. He was taken over by this anger. And the moment I realized
that he acted according to his level of consciousness at the time, I didn't need to forgive anymore because there was nothing
to forgive anymore. I had, and that's a beautiful thing. So again, similar to
letting go of feelings, when enough awareness comes in, the feeling lets go of you or becomes transmuted into something, an energy field that is good. And so forgiveness, again,
cannot really be practiced in the same way that letting go can't really be practiced. It just happens, and then that's what is. (waterfall rushes)
