Leanora Rose - Mysticism, Shamanism, Somatic Integration & Unification, Embodiment - BatGap

[Music] welcome to Buddha at the gas pump my name is Rick Archer Buddha at the gas pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people I've done about five hundred and thirty of them now and if this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones please go to bat Capcom dat GAAP which is obviously an acronym for Buddha a gas pump and look under the past interviews menu or you'll see all the previous ones organized in several different ways this show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers so if you appreciate it and you would like to help support it there's a PayPal button on every page of the site I guess today is Leon Ora we'll just go by her first name she has a last name too but we're just gonna go by Leonar welcome to NR thank you lovely to be here yeah Leonora's down in ubud bali which is in indonesia and so she's down there it's summertime it's morning I'm in Iowa it's six o'clock in the evening and it's we're having a snowstorm then it's amazing we can have this conversation so let me tell you a little bit about Leonor Leonor founded embody truth in 2012 as a way to support an integral approach to awakening and enlightened body meant the work has originally inspired through a personal Awakening and culminates into a coherent and disposable map helping others navigate the terrain and a few minutes ago I asked what lien are what she meant by disposable again we're gonna get into that in a minute using a direct felt sense experience a somatic meditation practice supports unification integration and embodiment of all phenomena traumatic material identity essence back to stillness Leonarda provides one-on-one sessions for those awakening as well as online group programs for ongoing practice learning and support born in Africa she has lived in seven countries including London and California I don't know about London but California considers itself a country a life of contrasts from far to corporate America a variety of careers from IT to cottage industry within a land-based permaculture project in New Zealand for 25 years and as I mentioned she currently lives in Bali so welcome again thanks right you're welcome now I have a paragraph here I could read that I pulled off your website where you say my own journey with healing began in 1991 with the spiritual emergence and subsequently a variety of resulting health issues and so on and so forth but rather than read that paragraph maybe we should just start with your personal story you know it's I'm sure you could tell it in a coherent way and might be more interesting than my reading about it okay yeah I think you know probably what's valuable in the story is what is what I learnt as a result of it and of course when when something kind of mystical or strange happens to you you have no idea about anything so that was the case for me but the the catalyst for for an awakening was an absolute giving up it was you know I tried plan a through plan Zed and you know not not really you know getting lots of results but not really feeling satisfied or feeling authentic perhaps you know and so there was a place where you know the mind had no wealth nowhere else to go and I gave up and it was quite a cathartic experience of giving up you know so I was crying and so on like that and through this giving up there there the first thing that happened was I had experience of emptiness and the experience for me with like a deep knowing like an instantaneous connection to a knowing of who I am you know to a kind of an aha a sort of recognition of something I'd never felt in my life but but still knew it and the next piece of that journey was a very small quiet voice that I'd never heard before that came out of me and it was my voice it was my true voice and I hadn't listened to her before I had no had not accessed her and basically she said something along the lines of I want what she wanted it was like a prayer like I want a simple life close to nature and I want to share it with someone so at the time I was sort of you know corporate woman in the rat race and it wasn't very satisfying I had a lot of contrast in my life so you know it had upbringing in Africa on a farm and I'd be you know this at the time this happened I was in New Zealand but I was still working in IT and so you know there probably what hadn't been space to listen to that little voice or to find it but the the emptiness or the the experience of that and the knowing that came with it kind of brought out this request and and it was it was kind of like integrated with divinity it was like the request was not an ego request it was coming out of that that emptiness and my expression of that emptiness and basically what I asked for happens my future partner arrived the next day okay and you know within sort of a month or two I quit my job and and moved to a simple life close to nature and I'd love to tell you I lived happily ever after but I didn't you know and then came all the stuff that was in the way of being that emptiness orchestrated by divinity in my life and so what what came out was the contrast of what was not that yeah yeah that's very well put well there's a few things in what you said that we can unpack one is this giving up thing and yes that's a kind of recurrent theme with people I know are do shanti sort of gave up before he had this big awakening and you know there's as many examples where as long as the person is even in the bhagavad-gita is I think where Arjuna's saying I'm gonna do this I'm not gonna do that he's sort of very sort of adamant about what he's gonna do and then finally he sits down and just says I give up you know basically you tell me what to do you know to where Krishna and then the whole teaching kind of unfolds because he's well you know as long as one feels one can fend for oneself and do for oneself one isn't very open receptacle for what could come in or come through or come out yeah the giving the giving up thing is a hallmark of required because you know we tend to us most of us in fact I'd almost say all of us at different levels perhaps you know we're perceiving and running our life through everything that we know and and and some of that might be conscious and some of that might be unconscious you know like some of its hidden in your body in the soma but some of it you're conscious of and so they're giving up is not just a giving up of what you're conscious of it's like a giving up completely it's like they're everything I know everything I believe everything I think is in the way you know so but giving up is sort of required but you know there can be a there can be an awakening all of a sudden to that which which is was you know the catalyst was turning my life in a different direction but there can be a practice of that as well you know and I find with people that I work with that it's inherently there in every meditation is there's a Trier and a looker and you know something orchestrating the thing and you know getting underneath that mental structure you know is where the the juice really is and where where alchemy can happen yeah I'm glad you said that because some people might hear say this and think all right great giving up I'll do that but then you know it's it's not quite that simple necessarily and yeah I mean sometimes people have to be sort of backed into a corner before they can do it but as you say it can also be undertaken in a systematic way and incrementally happen yeah I I think that's valuable I think there's lots of ways that it can happen like being backed into a corner is is a is a very common way you know it's like you know your mind kind of goes I'm broken I don't know what to do yeah I'm thinking about coholic synonymous that's basically one of the things is you hit bottom and you realize I'm powerless I have to resort to a higher power in order to attack I can't do it on my own yeah oh that was yeah exactly yeah but there's also you know I was kind of feel that there's like forces there's a force which is say our ego or our mental structures and everything we know and believe and that's kind of based on like a survival and it's based in time it's relativistic it's me me and other me and my life me and this and that and then there's another force which is also inherently here all the time which is that the divinity or emptiness and that force can inspire us you know it can tap into an inspiration in our practice so I find it valuable to kind of work in a balanced way with both those forces yeah I'm glad to hear you say that - because some people seem to lean heavily on just sort of there being no sense of a personal self and really relinquish and we have no free will and relinquish in any sort of it go ik control or sense and but I think there can be a both/and arrangement where at least that's been my experience so far I mean maybe it'll change but where life is multi-dimensional and there's you know there's the wave but there's also the ocean and it doesn't have to be either/or yeah I'm very into and yeah variant and it's in fact the you know the way that I practice is very about inclusive inclusivity so it's not you know because if you are picking something you're excluding something and therefore there's a relational dynamic in that you know if I don't want it or I want I want this but not that but inclusivity is more like sort of unconditional love you know so even the bits that you don't like you open to and when you do that something transforms within you so I like to say love is the way and love is the destination you know love is actually the process of connection yeah what I experienced over the years was there was this sort of transition from you know just a exclusively individual perspective and blocked into that too you know a profound much more universal one but as that transition progressed there were periods of time where I don't know that there was a tendency to lean too far one way or the other like to become passive and not be decisive and let just let anything happen because I'm not trying to assert my individuality for instance or maybe just swing back from that - too much assertion and it was kind of like learning to ride a bicycle or something it took a while to get the balance and - and for the transition to have progressed to this to the point where there was sort of no problem anymore can you relate to what I just said totally you know one of the things that I mean I call that polarity and you know the Buddhists used to talk about the middle and they probably still do let's talk about the middle way it's like that balance point yeah so you know when when you work with I think you have to experience both ends of the polarity to find the middle hmm and so what what I found you know energetically when you work with with polarities that if you integrate either one it gets you closer to the other one it gets you closer to the center for example if if you if you feel trapped they in your life and the polarity to that is I'd like to be free so you can have the experience energetically in any moment by choice by inducement of trapped you know by uttering up a feeling of traps or a story about being trapped and you can also have an experience of what freedom might feel like I mean it's not true freedom it's your country that view of freedom but if you if you embody trapped fully if you really fall into traps 100% then it will actually take you to freedom and when you fully embody freedom it will it will illuminate what's what feels trapped in there what's what's not what's in the way of freedom will become illuminated so when when you do those things it's like those positions soften and you know trapped and freedom or riding the bike becomes you know possible yeah and your your yeah it's a journey as you shared it's it's really a journey of exploration of those two polarities hmm as you're saying that couple images came to mind one was of people who have been in prison and who have used that time to discover inner freedom and who became very free even though they were in prison you know inwardly and and also you know let's say somebody like Jeffrey Epstein who had all the money in the world and private jets and his own Island and all this stuff but was very trapped by his you know of his obsessive narrow-minded selfish tendencies and is and then ended up paying the price for it I don't know if you've been following his story but there he's just a case in point there are many people who were you know how about all the money in the world and everything else and they're miserable you know because they're sort of trapped in something they haven't found the subjective freedom yeah in fact the looking for it has got them trapped yeah well they're looking in the wrong direction yeah looking for love in all the wrong place do you find that with your we'll get into what sort of meditation practice you do and advocate but does it kind of allow for a kind of an alternation alteration yeah altered alter ate alternate go back and forth alternation between sort of unboundedness and then back into the field of boundaries and then unboundedness and back into the field of boundaries and that going back and forth like that in and of itself cultures the the mind and nervous system to be able to integrate both together yeah that's a lovely description yeah you know one of the first elements is really creating a stability in the nervous system and resilience and what I found is it depends where somebody is as to where where you know you start you start where you are obviously the unboundedness can is a polarity to the focus it's a you know the unbound this is kind of a polarity to a boundedness or something contracted and my favorite way of doing things is to help people cultivate the expansion at the same time being able to hold the contraction yeah when you do that they resolve themselves like if you let them cohabit the field and you don't pick one or the other you know they there's an integration and a shift that happens and it just happens of its own accord but sometimes depending upon person's capacity or training or how they do things you might flick from you know unboundedness to something smaller yeah but if you if you if you you can cultivate it sometimes people just need to be guided into that as a possibility and then it becomes part of the practice sometimes you also go through a period where it's either/or like I did this back at mainly in the 80s it was most um intense where I would feel free and unbounded and blissful and smooth and everything else and then so thing would happen I feel gripped and I couldn't wait to go to sleep that night to just get out of feeling gripped and then yeah and then maybe a day or two later I'd be all free and unbounded again so there was a sort of yeah vacillation back and forth and then of that eventually worked itself out yeah I think I think that's a really valid point or really and you know it's very fundamental to the work that I do because you know I I know in my own journey like after I had that experience I proceeded to have you know amazing states of unbounded consciousness and they were pretty much always followed up with the contraction yeah yeah there's a dynamic at play here and it's very informative to how I've created my work so it's like when we're contracted you know we have a sense of self that is excluding things not feeling safe or whatever and the safety comes from the unboundedness often or from Birch Worlds prompt connection you know but the consequences the nervous system has to recalibrate yeah and so you know it'll come back with the contraction again and you know you you have to learn to ride the waves if you're ocean metaphor you know it's like if you go into reactivity when you're in a contraction like I don't want it and it's horrible and I want to get out of it then it's going to contract even more hmm whereas if you do this thing that I could like call it cohabit where you where you cultivate a spaciousness or the unboundedness and the contraction to cohabit they resolve quicker it's like having better dancing from one polarity to another it's just holding them both yeah yeah good it's good you mentioned the nervous system because I think there is a neuro physiological component to this or course and there's a thing in the sort of the Indian understanding of physiology I don't know whether it's Ayurveda or what or Tantra or something but that we actually in some way have two nervous systems and they alternate functions and it's actually correlated with the breath that's why people do alternating breath pranayama because it's sort of balance is out these two nervous systems and one of them they oh that one rest while the other is active and then they switch and that's how but ordinarily that they're not really culture to develop properly but when they are that's how one can maintain absolute pure restful silence in the midst of the most dynamic activity because yeah each these two nervous systems are taking care of it that doesn't mean we have to spinal cords or brains or I'm not saying that it's a it's on a subtler level yeah that's sympathetic and the are synthetic yeah it's not even that it's some some other whole understanding they have but anyway it's just that's kind of a side point but there is neuro physiological component and and because of that we can't expect to have the whole thing accomplished in day one because it takes a while for the for the physiology you know neuroplasticity and all the physiology to you know purify and modify and learn to function in a new way absolutely I mean I think that's highlighted in my awakening experience of you know like I mean I used to read things years ago about people awakening and you know near-death experiences and all sorts of things and it always seemed like something happened and they were done that's how I would interpret it oh no something happened and they were done yeah I was not having that experience you know it was like something happened and everything that was not done got illuminated and actually I you know I was quite ill so I had this sort of wounded healer kind of element to my journey which has taught me many many things so you know it is all about in the end what's happening in our physiology and what's happening in our body and the body takes a little time to catch up sure yeah I think that this notion of at some point being done is a notion that is important to dispel because I think that nobody's ever done and if you think that somebody is get to know them better yeah and and and if you're expecting that there is this sort of goalpost that you're going to reach then you're always going to feel dissatisfied because you're never going to reach it now you know you may and you may sort of undervalue what you actually have reached because you're expecting the sense of finality but it's not going to come go ahead and comment on that bit I might have well very important and just I wanted to totally agree with you and what want to add to that is that you can be done in this moment like you can be in a unified ultimate state of consciousness in this moment and then you know a siren goes off or a dog barks and you can be undone you know and you might get more and more masterful at staying in in a potent powerful place but there is no done because if we're one with everything with the whole universe it's like being in this relativistic existence of of having a human body is you know I don't even think I don't even feel it's done when you die you know I wouldn't be surprised if Ramana Maharshi is working something out on some level who knows yeah well some people consider that heresy but I just sort of feel like souls evolved for forever and maybe there's the option of Juno merging into the ocean and having no remnant of existence individual existence whatsoever we'll see what happens but that excludes the human thing and you know there's this whole topic which I've heard you speak eloquently about before of you know bypass yes you know and so you know my my thing and you know I did the bypass I did the bites I'll speak time but you know it it was not not it's not complete and you know outside of the discussion of there is no done but there's there's a calling to bring you know divinity into embodiment like to embody stillness sort of embodied identity and become the unique expression of that in the moment so this paradoxical sense of being in anchored in the one at the same time being a unique expression of that one yeah without that being two places with that just being you know one place and so that embodiment you know is to resolve the bypass and I think a lot of the old non dual teachings were more about climbing the mountain and finding the I am and then you know being in a cave or sitting sitting with that you know it's like I'm done yeah is the downward journey to bring that back into the body and yeah you know there's a another element to this which is that one can feel I mean one can reach a state where there's contentment you know pretty much perpetual 24/7 you know deep profound peace of mind you know one could look at that and say well that must be done I mean but I think there's still always room for growth I mean because we're talking about sort of a a deep absolute level of one's life but on a relative level we have a heart we have an intellect we have senses we have all these faculties that we use to navigate life and is there any end to the refinement of those and you know the and as that refinement progresses to the effectiveness with which we can live life yeah be of value to others you know I think if there was an end it would be pretty boring and you wouldn't need to be here so there is no end I've given up with any kind of end point many many years ago but what what what what tends to shift when you move out of the state or the mental structure that's looking for a place to land you know looking for home looking for happiness looking for whatever it's looking for when you move when you see that structure and resolve that structure then you move towards more being a unified being and then you're always just engaged in the moment and the simplicity is beautiful and there's nowhere to go but everything every moment is you're at you know you're not so much entrenched in time with I'm here and I don't like it and I need to be there and so that you know the time dimension is really pulling us out of the moment and putting us on this task but if you look deeply at that task there's an identity or an eye you know a sense of self that is not okay with the moment that wants to be in a future moment you know um you're talking a bit earlier about if we're really one with the divine then there's still the whole universe I think you said something like that and I would say that you know the universe itself if we consider how it manifested and evolved over the billions of years seems to have this evolutionary agenda you know there's this greater and greater complexity and greater and greater evolution of forms such as ourselves who considerably reflect upon what the whole thing is and so on and you could say if you really attain oneness with the divine then you're just one with that would that among other things with that feature of the divine that is promoting the evolution of the cosmos and so that promotion you become a you know a pretty effective tool for that promotion and that is never done because obviously the universe is a huge deficit yeah I mean when when I'm listening to you I'm thinking of this you know there's something fundamental and unchanging and this and then there's constant change yeah you know there's there's something that isn't moving it still and is unchangeable and fundamental and primal I'm already and then there's something that's moving you know there's activity energetic activity and so on and so and it's different in every moment the unchanging even in respect is different like our deepest connection to stillness can go deeper and deeper it's like what limits our connection to stillness is is the activity or the sense of I you know the sense of Who I am you know is existence limits our access to non-existence or it may seem so I mean it yeah or we can develop as we were saying earlier we can we can develop boundaries and boundless boundless simultaneously and thereby for not be limited by the boundaries yeah so I mean the key that I'll bang there is that there's no endpoint to that journey of discovery like once you've discovered the universe let's say that there was a finite thing called the universe which you know is debatable then you might want to discover the Metaverse so it's like there are galaxies upon galaxies that we you know we have no connection to and whether you're going out in that expensive way or whether you're you know going down into the smallest particle or a term or fro photon you know whatever you're looking at in the smallest is also infinite you know so you have you have there this huge paradox and you know the mind doesn't know what to do with that you know how can the smallest thing be the biggest thing and how can the biggest thing be you know well that you know the totality or Brahman is said to be smaller than the smallest and bigger than the biggest an Iranian Mahato mejia and and that can become our experience yes yeah okay so let's get back to your story a little bit where we were kind of getting very philosophical here which is fun but it's so it sounded like you had this sort of spiritual emergence in 91 you were kind of up against the wall and you surrendered and there was this big shift that was there an initial sense of tremendous relief when this big shift took place like you you mentioned it a little bit later all this stuff started to come out but did you get a respite from whatever it was you know beleaguering you and you fit you felt kind of AA huge breakthrough kind of thing well I it did two things it it showed me who I was you know in a deeper level and it destabilized who I thought I was good when you know so can I say that yes and though on the one hand yes and the other thing was you know it was like unplanned conscious manifestation so what I prayed for manifested quite quickly yeah and and that felt you know really valuable because it was like as a soul or as a connection to divinity as a uniqueness I I asked for something so it wasn't like oh I'd like a Mercedes you know it's not like it's not a that kind of manifestation out of lack yeah I saw some some meaningful stuff I asked for something that was meaningful to me as a soul and who I have been in touch with and so you know what you asked for has to be meaningful to the soul otherwise you're gonna get all the things that are in the way of you being yourself yeah so what I found is that you know the task is really to become yourself which is an integration and unification process between who you think you are and who you really are yeah so when you say to discovery what you really are is that something you could describe not really yeah I didn't think so but it's it's a it's an you know that I don't really have a great description but it's like it felt whole unified complete at home peaceful you know those kinds of qualities were part of it but I think the inherent deep connection to it you know change the nervous system that the inherent that even that tiny moment of can action changed me forever kind of thing you know in a very profound way yeah yeah I'm sure it did one way of looking at it is that on the level of the nervous system there's a tremendous restfulness associated with an experience like that and what does the nervous system do when it gets some rest it starts to purify you know like when we sleep it we sleep at night we have dreams because there's impressions coming out that have been lodged in the nervous system exactly yeah exactly I was wondering you in your notes are on your website you say that you had this spiritual emergence and then subsequently a variety of resulting health issues you were trying all kinds of healing methods but you're going through chronic fatigue PTSD multiple cancel chemical sensitivities neuralgia migraine allergies and a whole host of other complaints so it sounds like it really kicked up a dust storm when you had this this breakthrough because I guess the nervous system had to completely restructure itself indeed you know for me the one of the things I started researching after that was near-death experiences because there was a resonance to that and as an infant's about six months of age I had a near-death experience that was quite painful so if I didn't know the relationships between things at that time and it took many years to kind of come to some conclusions that were not a place to get stuck but a place to help you know guide me and so the pain or the situation of that early trauma was in my soma you know was in my system and you know I studied trauma for many years and I taught trauma healing and various other things but it was not enough you know like everything about my journey has called me to go deeper and deeper and deeper and I study a place that I call the life death gateway or I explore a place that I call the life date death gateway and you know I've been called there by my soul by the situations that happen to me it's like on the one hand had this amazing touchstone of emptiness you know that which became a touchstone which informed my journey and you know eventually became more embodied in me as I did the work but you know there were these extreme polarities of this sort of divine state versus you know an incredible amount of trauma so yeah I actually found Samadhi in the middle of a neuralgia journey you know which is you know most people say you can't have neuralgia without a painkiller and you know I my guidance was not to use a painkiller my inner guidance had been knowing that that was not how to heal you know it was actually you know to get somewhere else so I remember I used to get like 50 hours of you know severe nerve pain in my face and I ended up finding Samadhi in there and then I cultivated that and eventually I stopped having neuralgia and migraines and you know post-traumatic stress anxiety panic all those symptoms kind of you know laughs but in some way I got attached to this place where you know it was quiet and safe peaceful and nice you know that's the the bypass i ho know well that nothing wrong with being quiet safe peaceful nice but you were hiding out there and and avoiding things it sounds like I yeah I felt you know okay I found safe I found God I found safe you know I found joy and you know things were nice and they were pleasant and then somewhere along the process the universe it's got to blame somebody pulled the rug out from underneath me and I went on this journey of dropping any mastery I thought I had and learning to master vulnerability which is that more of a journey of embodiment it's coming bringing bringing what you found at the top of the mountain bringing that into the body to resolve at a deeper level so I think of like healing is a sort of spiraling you know you you you've got something going on right now and you work with it and you clear it and you think you're done but you're not it comes and gets you again and you just go to a deeper layer and a deeper level and so on the ultimate level is embodiment of stillness you know so that's the journey that I've been on and that's the journey that really shapes my work with other people yeah do people who work with you or approach you to find out about this stuff ever sort of get a little fearful that if they had some spiritual breakthrough they might have this huge Pandora's Box opened the way you did and have all kinds of things happen to them so anybody I would say that nobody said that to me yeah but I think I remember in one of my groups some time ago I said I in a question are you willing to become totally completely new you know just as a something for them to consider you know and the common response that I got was yes but I'm scared and and that's that that's that too it's like some part of you knows you've got to let something go and you've got to change the status quo and another part goes yeah but I'm scared and that's those two forces yeah there's an Indian story where this guy is living in a little Hut and somebody comes along and says hey you're the king you belong in that palace over there and he starts to leave to go to the palace of anything oh my Hut I better go back you know it doesn't feel safe out here and who knows if it's really my palace and you know all these doubts come up so you're scurries back to the hut yeah and that and that's that comfort zone you know if you you know for me the surfing is how to ride that edge of the comfort zone if you if you stay comfortable there's the comfort zone tends to shrink on you and life gets smaller if you go too far past the edge of the comfort zone you can retrigger your trauma and get overwhelmed so you know it's kind of a little it's that little dance and knowing how to find your resources to help you whether it's through your breath through connection you know through what you've cultivated in your practice that can help you when you hit that go too far on the edge of your comfort zone and I find that the more people do that that they kind of more available to that edge and surfing that edge so life becomes more adventurous or more exploratory you know because they're not living so much in the fear and and that they know when something awful happens you know if they go too far over the edge that it will pass that they just need time to integrate it go for a walk in the woods or whatever you know help the process so yeah it's you know it's scary to the one that doesn't want to change but to the part of you that really knows I got to do something different you know it's kind of like yeah let's do it yeah interesting I have heard stories of people you know wanting to work out trauma and all I imagine this is true of conventional therapy too and then getting even more seriously traumatized because of the way they go about it or the way that the teacher who's guiding them guides them that kind of thing yeah yeah absolutely that can happen that can happen you know I'm taking plant medicines people can get reach Ramat eyes you know it's like it's basically stuff that's not integrated yeah you know you have to metabolize life in our body and so if you get too much good or bad you know nice or not nice not not that I'm judging either one they're both equally important but you know it's about integration so you know whatever experience you have you can talk about it and it's like in the past but it's only valuable when it's integrated when your systems recalibrated from the wisdom that that integration gives you and then that increases your capacity and your resilience and then you can i comfort zone edge you know in in a more skillful way have you ever done sent medicines no I've never felt called to do that I've helped people who couldn't integrate from their journeys in that and I think it's a really good thing for people you know for some people not for everyone yeah yeah and obviously having it's like doing a session with me or you know it's like what's so valuable - I feel any journey any sacred journey is what is your alignment and intention you know so people might have the wrong alignment and then they'll get you know some crazy experiences and that can happen in a session it's like you know if you you got to check check in what is my alignment who's looking at this session what's really going on yeah well you know we were talking we were talking about all that you went through after your initial awakening and we we didn't quite say it explicitly but you know we're pretty much alluding to the idea that the nervous system and psyche can you know be a huge dump of all kinds of impressions all kinds of garbage that has accumulated over who knows how long and you know the sort of the safety first approach would be to just you know systematically at a pace that we can handle clean that stuff out and a lot of times people really want the shortcut you know and so they go to an ayahuasca session or something without having even touched all that stuff and they just they hope that the plant can do it for them or the DMT or whatever it is yeah and there definitely have been all kinds of train wrecks as a result of that I really love maybe someday they'll be I don't know it's too undisciplined I imagine too to expect there to be a objective survey of the success rate but it's well I think it's it's subjective based on who's running the session yeah what their skill level is and what kind of space they're creating how sacred it is a certain setting yeah you're gonna do that too so you're gonna do it with yeah you know take the time and then if you're gonna do it you know you need to do some exploration about what's motivating you because if the motivation isn't sacred then you know you may not have as nice and experience as you'd like or whatever so yeah I mean I think there's so many variables in there that but you know in another picture I've heard from people who've done you know I did eight ayahuasca journeys and they've had quite a lot of transformation yeah so good tonight that one of those things that everyone has to choose if it resonates it's good if it doesn't yeah and I mean there's research at Johns Hopkins and NYU and other places with psilocybin and they're people who were getting over chronic depression and alcoholism and all with you know just one or truth to psilocybin journeys so it's one of those things like we talked about the beginning about you know the diversity of although the things in creation and we just can't sort of polarizing into a one way or another and say it has to be this way yeah and it is can be like a kid in a candy store or you know I mean we have the internet now we can find out anything and everything and we can learn you know so we have an outside research station our computer that tap into a lot of information out there and and we have a lot of access to a lot of choices yeah interesting well that's kind of what I tried to provide with that gap is an access to a lot of choices there's a was a categorical index page under under past interviews where you can see all the categories of types of people have spoken with and and the sentiment behind this the thought behind it is that you know it's a vast diverse universe people themselves are diverse and that they're or you could say there is many paths to God as there are people and obviously there's some groups and similarities but everyone has their own journey and you know one one size does not fit all yeah I agree with that yeah let's see reading on here so you became a meditator you said did you sort of teach yourself did you learn some kind of practice or what yeah so the the new partner was a meditator and he said I think I think you should learn to meditate and I was thinking along the same lines and I learnt to meditate from somebody in the neighborhood who was a Buddhist and then I got pulled into Buddhism for a while then maybe about 15 years so that style of meditation was the partner Insight Meditation and I dabbled off in Tibetan Buddhist for a while which offered me some other windows and and then you know I kept reaching limits that that people couldn't I didn't get the right guidance for let's just say all right or I wasn't able to hear and it was like you know so I could go to a meditation and end up kind of unable to walk or something you know and the and the teacher the teacher would all you need a doctor and like I know it only happens when I meditate so this was actually a big clue about how the mind affects the body and it's also a big clue about preconscious trauma so it's like I couldn't I couldn't say you know something happened in my childhood that that created that that the root of the root of that stuff was preconscious I think my conscious mind did not know about it so that actually took me into a particular focus in regard to trauma healing which is I what I was interested in in the early days and that particular focus was preconscious trauma and there wasn't a lot of this is 30 years ago 25 years ago there wasn't a lot out there and whatever was out there I read and it also took me into you know exploring the shamanic tradition and you know I I went down various avenues and I also became interested in what's called developmental trauma so you know when you have severe trauma early on in the womb at birth you know before the age of two those kinds of things are harder to heal and I had that kind of situation and did you know ease of that start coming up in your practice you don't have any conscious memory you know like I remember being on a retreat once probably 25 years ago and at 2:00 in the morning being awake and experiencing what I would call pure terror and like there's no sleep gonna happen here so I went and sat in the meditation hall and I was sitting in the meditation hall in an experience of pure terror and my body just burst out in chicken pox interesting real chicken pox yeah I had the chicken experience vidura Chaya I haven't had as a child for some reason huh so you know fortunately there was a German doctor on on in the groups there no that's chicken pox you know and that was also the beginning of having neuralgia so it was induced by meditation they became a lot of clues that when I meditate it brings stuff up yeah and what became an exploration some years ago was not just the trauma healing which is the sort of top down you know let's look at and feel you know experience reacts perience what's stored in the soma but was also a bottom-up approach is like if I sit in stillness yeah what what's what's happening so there became this sort of relativistic way of working with meditation of exploring who's who's looking you know who's experiencing this what's my perception about and how do you see your perception when it's entangled with your awareness and how do you disentangle so that you can discern what's pure awareness and what's you know mental structures muddled in and those mental structures are shaping us from what what happened to us in the past but if what happened to us in the past is preconscious you don't have the story you can't use the story to tap into it you know but it's going to come at you in some form yeah because it needs to resolve itself so the system is always trying to recalibrate to wholeness that's the force that we have within our sense and so it's a lot of my path is the feminine kind of water path of surrender you know devotional surrender and yeah so that's that kind of touches on I kind of get the impression that even that even though you've done a whole lot of different things and explored a whole lot of different areas that you never had one teacher that who knocked it out of the park you know who was sort of really a master that you've had to work a lot of stuff out on your own and you've had helping hands and friends along the way but never anybody who you know perhaps was you know an ultimate final type of teacher I think that's true you know my teacher at the moment is the inner experience and has been for a long time but there has been so many great teachers you know Buddhism served me to a point and then I needed to find more information because I kind of reached the edge of that and you know add add your Shanti's books were very very very valuable to me I'd read a paragraph sometimes and my whole system would recalibrate so you know there's been a lot of teachers life of course itself is the great teacher yeah there's there's been a lot of teachers but I I never felt you know I sometimes drawn like to Taoism or something and I thought oh that's gonna take me 25 years to really understand them you know and and it's more mental stuff and so I was I'm very you know felt sense in the moment kind of thing that really all the teachings are here inside us really and so at some point I I kind of stopped being so informed I'm still informed by teachers of course you know but they're not my they're not my kind of go to my heart and my own system is my go to you know so yeah well it's interesting I mean it's interesting that you could read a paragraph by Audia and have your whole system recalibrate it seems like you there's a couple of things one is your inner guidance is really good you know you it's big it's I think a lot of times people can be kind of like delusional about what's guiding them and go off on all kinds of tangents but it seems like yours has served you well and and it's also it seems like your your whole system is very amenable to change and evolution like you know a lot of people might most people would read a paragraph by anybody and say oh that's nice but they wouldn't it wouldn't trigger a big you know transformation or readjustment but it seems like yours is your system is very fine-tuned and able to kind of gain a lot of benefit from whatever you yeah so yes and you know I I have had you know support from external sources but like I would always reach a limit and ultimately I was on this journey of you know like I had to discover something that that like nobody knows how to help me with or something like that you know and at points of time it might have felt like a curse but it was also a gift you know because it had me constantly reaching towards resolution and having you know development developmental trauma is like there's a lot of development that happens to the human body you know pre to Age 2 and so if that if you get trauma or significant trauma at that time you know that that development doesn't happen how it's supposed to happen because it gets derailed and you know your consciousness might go out of the body and not be able to come back and you know so you know there's a task I mean I was involved I don't know 10 years ago with a small group of people who had mapped out different states of consciousness it was called the Institute for the Study of peak states of consciousness and I got involved with them you know so I did go down lots of different avenues looking you know but I had a thread yeah you know which I want to be the best me you know so it was like I had that thread and and so I didn't discard things easily you know but I would reach a point where it's like okay I got that yeah and you know one of the one of the qualities of what happened to me and what what it's severe trauma can do to people is a hyper-vigilance hmm so you know your awareness which is hidden your perception which is hidden for you has a hyper-vigilant state that you're blind to you know and that hyper-vigilant state is like wow I can sense what's going on 50 meters from me you know so it becomes really fine-tuned but what's driving it is the safety you know keeping safe kind of thing and so yeah so you know you're very empathic I was super empathic you know perhaps overly so it's taken it took many years to unwind empathy and stages you know from being I could go out and and somebody's sore throat would end up in my body you know like that is like a it it's empathy or the journey of empathy is this discernment of what's mine and what's not mine even though I know at the deepest level it's all mine yeah so there was lots and lots of pieces over you know I've been at this for 30 years lots and lots of pieces of you know evolving to an embodied connected kind of place and I'm not done yet you know I've still got challenges that that keep me curious but I just book you know I remember that when I was sharing that the particular piece that I remember which really shaped how I I started meditating afterwards he you know I been meditating and I opened the book and there was a paragraph about I can't remember the words of course but it was about being open and curious and that is that boundlessness and focus that is that sort of feminine receptivity and that masculine you know penetration and it was like I just thought like I read it and I kind of closed the book and I went into open and curious and buh you know it was like something major happens and I thought that's really cool that's great and it reoriented thanks to add your blessings it reoriented how I proceeded from there you know it gate it gave me something so it wasn't you know a six-week workshop it was literally a moment that's fascinating um a couple of points you but what one was about sort of being hyper-vigilant you know and kind of like having to sort of be on guard all the time because of having been traumatized it reminded me of this guy that I see in the local Walmart who obviously is a veteran judging from the decals and things he wears on his clothing and he he comes into Walmart with this giant German Shepherd on a leash which I guess is you know it's allowed because it's a service dog for traumatized people they can bring a service dog into stores and everything and he has like a big hunting knife on his hip which is and and this is five of him around him of the guy has really been traumatized and he and the he feels the world as this huge threat he needs to sort of protect against yes and it's sad you know I mean there's a lot of in the u.s. of course since we've been engaged in so many Wars there's a lot of traumatized people who were either institutionalized there's a high high sense of high case incidents of suicides that are analogous and so on so many traumatized people walking around with all that bottled up and there are some nice programs actually where various kinds of meditation are being used to help people with this to PTSD and with with a great effectiveness side comment but it's worth mentioning and perhaps anyone listening to this has PTSD they might this might give them hope that you know proper kind of meditation practice can help to heal it yeah very much so you know and and it's a it's a journey I think you know with with dramatized like the veteran is like super traumatized and can't live a really happy healthy life but in in another level we're all former ties it's just a degree you know we're here we're here on earth school - you know discern who we are and who we're not and getting a boy that's pretty traumatic as well of Stanislav grafts points these days yeah yeah I did some of his work - and being born is traumatic because you know I think that's where the power over dynamic can get set in you know the path the energetic pattern of a power and the masculine power over the feminine because the feminine her back which is a very vulnerable position she should be squatting perhaps you know whatever and you know the the it's considered a dangerous thing so you've got all the hospital staff on alert you know and it's like it's not a pleasant - welcome to Planet Earth kind of experience come in the bright lights and somebody snaps you on bottom yeah got an epidural so she can't feel it you know and that affects the baby I do a lot of my early work was actually navigating to birth because birth is one of those kind of developmental events that really shapes who we become and so you know I did a lot it I don't do that kind of navigation I just see what wants to unfold now but in those days when I was really focused on healing and preconscious healing it was like let's go so you know let's go to birth and and you're wrong you know Ruth drama yeah my clients before I see rewire how how that experience was because it was traumatic you know you had the mother was became powerless and the drugs were put in so she's kind of like non compos mentis and then then you've got the medical staff doing it to you you know that taking the power away from that feminine in that natural you know animals birth we burn they do it although you know I mean there's pluses and minuses here because a lot of people who have the incidence in certain cultures of people dying in childbirth is very high and yeah you get into situations where you really want the surgeon to be there or whatever yeah we don't need to throw the baby up Probert punt yeah one other thread that I wanted to tie up before I forget was something you said a few minutes ago about how you you you went through a phase or maybe still are where you're so empathic that you you know if you'd go into a crowd and pick up somebody's sore throat from 30 feet away or whatever do you feel that there's been the trend in your life towards being a kind of a washing machine where you can sort of process more collective trauma or collective stress that's in the atmosphere without it clinging to you yeah I mean that's that's a big question and a good question I think it's about mastery over your empathy you know so in the early days I didn't have the mastery so you know going out would be like or you know I'd have to come back and recover you know I might be on my back for a half a day or whatever and to recover and you know the thing that turns things around is that curiosity and and and you know yeah I wanting to wanting to know you know what's what's why is this happening to me or what's you know what can I do about it what what's you know and it became you know that empathy became now I feel masterful in it but it became an exploration of you know what am I responsible for and what am I not responsible for you know so what I was doing is I was I was being responsible for everything yeah yeah and it has a toll and and then also there's this sort of transference that can happen so you know for example if you're kind of out in the universe in a in a sort of heavenly realm but not in your body then things happen in your body and so I remember when I first started working with some friends you know saying let me show you some things and I would feel empathically you know lates let's say a pain in their body and it would show up in my body you know like my body was sort of a place that that's how I observe it yeah and so you know there was I was doing that and I would I would just feel it and feel it and it would go away and then it would go away and then but my curiosity was was that yours or mine you know it yeah it only showed up when you came into into my room you know so was it yours or mine and then I got to a place where I felt I didn't really know the answer to that but I felt that if it's in my body then it's mine to work with and so it then it became like you know that person is helping me find something that I'm unconscious of you know so interesting when you would work something out for somebody it was almost it's almost like a collaborative arrangement where perhaps both people had something worked out and you were the the catalyst right yeah so you know at the deepest level it's it's ours yeah yeah I was gonna say that because if you think of it from a God's eye view nothing yeah their mind everything is thank God yeah and I had that view you know it was quite I was quite let's say entangled with that view in a in a good way and a bad way at the same time so you know I was getting hit with things like that and I had to disentangle from that view is like I had to come from that kind of a God stayed into a separate little me state that could look after herself in the body and not pick on everybody else's stuff yeah so so it's a process of discernment and you know now often for example if I'm in a session with somebody and I'll oh what what's happening for you and I've got a pain over here and I go and I don't then what I what I what I do is I know that that the person who's perceiving is actually you know the perceiver is actually in the process of creating that pain that there's a entanglement between the experience and the experience in that person yeah in that person so it it helps me redirect them like you can focus on the pain and be willing to have it but it doesn't clear and the reason it doesn't clear is because there's a mental structure that's attached to it and you've got to actually kind of reverse your curiosity and find out who's looking at it you know bring your attention to who's perceiving exactly that the who that's perceiving is fast I mean one point that comes to mind when you say this is that in your case you were able to process all this stuff because you had this experience your breakthrough and you kind of became more oceanic you could say in your awareness and yeah to use that word I mean if if I take this cup and try to dissolve tablespoon full of mud in it it's I wouldn't want to drink it that's gonna really muddy up the water but yeah if I took a tablespoon of mud and dumped it in a swimming pool or in an ocean it would just the swimming pool or the ocean would be able to handle it so you know it seems to me the best way to be able to resolve all these knots that are yeah is to have that unboundedness yeah absolutely absolutely accurate for me it's like there are levels of exploring perception and one of the first levels or the first doorways that is really helpful is to it's just to expand your connection instead of being in your head kind of looking at your body is actually to feel your wholeness and allow that to be as big as it feels comfortable to be it's like you don't have to define it and just in doing that the problem shrinks like you said you know the mud doesn't affect the ocean it affects your cup so you know that that puts your perception in this kind of bigger God state type view where the problems are less significant to you whereas if you're a small little ego looking at it it's a big problem yes so like you can shift by working energetically that way and then the other thing that you can do is come to love so come to love is more like kind of you know notice the part of you that doesn't want this mud you know and and notice your attitude or your alignment or your mood you know the things that are kind of generally hidden from you because you're so busy looking at the mud you don't realize that you're trying to get rid of it and that's not loving rejected overshadows you so you you're so overshadowed but you don't even realize you're stuck in it is that what you're saying yeah yeah yeah I mean that's very true and you think of people who think it would be a really good idea to rob a store or kill a person or do some terrible thing you know it's like like Jesus said forgive them father they know not what they do you get totally overshadowed and blinded and gripped by the the impulse and I think the reality for all of us is that we have a lot of blind spots it's you know but we can't we don't know that we have blind spots we'd become dependent on leaving off you know yeah though in some it's like how do i explore how can I see the blind spot you know and so there's different ways that you can employ just to notice your mood or your attitude you know as an energy so dealing at that sort of source energetic level it's not not a mental contemplation level yeah yeah that's the I thought I've thought about this before the tricky thing about Maya if we want to use that word is that the first thing it does is blinds you to the fact that you are deluded yeah delusion is is deluding yes is so strange there's this phrase again in Sanskrit that translates as the blinding darkness of ignorance yeah yeah okay a question came in from someone here this is from Vesna in Calgary Canada Carl Jung described the healing power of the sacred when he stated the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and in as much as you attain to the numinous experience you are released from the curse of pathology even the every disease even every disease takes on a numinous character and then that was all quote from jung and then she says it seems that the attitude is secure and not the sifting through of emotions thoughts nice question yeah a complex question because you know one has to look at what's motivating you you know like is is the numinous in your attitude a place to escape to so that I don't have to deal with the emotional dross and so that's a bypass yeah or can I have that balance of you know allowing and this is the way that I like to work is it's allowing the felt sense of emotions or sensations in the body and so on yeah and invoking stillness at the same time it's like contrasting and when you do that contrasting you know stillness is the Luminess it's the ultimate place that use your serenity surrendering to it's also the origin point of you it's the origin point of your experience it's the origin point of your perceiver you know it's the origin point of your body so you know everything's arising out of consciousness so you know if we can surrender into that it the stuff that isn't true dies you know the lies that we're telling ourselves the pain that we've got because those are coming from a reality based in time so they're relativistic whereas the numinous is in the present moment but you know you can go chasing the numinous and then what's really happening there is that you're you've got an escape plan from avoiding your you know darkness or whatever so you know the answer to the question is different depending on who's asking it in that context but it's yeah good question anyway you know one thought that popped in when you were saying that was that you know it's okay I guess in a way that meditation is can can be a refuge or going inward can be a refuge we just can't hide out there all the time obviously and I've seen cases where people have tried to do that well for instance the Beatles wrote dear Prudence about prudence Farrow who was staying in a room far too long meditating and got really you know nutty because she was overdoing it and I've seen people and she of course was on a meditation course but I've seen people do that in regular real life too where they just sort of go too much on the inward stroke and are afraid to or reluctant to engage in the outward stroke because you know the world just they're they they sort of over sensitized themselves without proper integration and the world just seems too rough and gross and challenging to to deal with yeah I can relate to that too from my own journey it's it's you know when I'm sitting meditating I'm the queen of all I survey kind of thing you know it's like I'm in control and when you go out you know there's all this stuff that happens and if you're sensitive it feels like a thousand times stronger you just want to stay in the closet yes avoidance it's an avoidance and and really ultimately what my stick in the ground is is that we're here to embody that stillness so the meditation practice is life life is the meditation yeah you know you can you can do your practice on your pillow and that that gives you power and support and skill and but you got to take it out and you've got to live it and so it's like you know can I can I hold maintain my field in connection to it in Times Square New York or something you know it's like it's a practice you know so I I do a lot of practices that are about living it you know being with being authentic as you're as you're out in the world and be and I think you know playing on the word authentic I think that you know it may be authentically inappropriate and unnecessary and undesirable for someone who if they to go to let's say heavy metal concerts or hang out in bars or you know do all kinds of other things that some people like to do they might they might feel a it's really not my thing that doesn't make them an escapist or someone who's trying to hide from the world it's like you know the various scriptures of different traditions emphasize the value of keeping the company of the wise and and and pure people because it's very conducive to growth and the opposite can be very deleterious exactly it's the Sun but you know you might need to go to a heavy metal concert just to feel what it feels like to have your system disorganized you know so well acting yeah I'm I actually really enjoy getting into intense situations once when I like running through airports and stuff they're chaotic just because it the consciousness yeah it shakes it up in the contrast is fascinating between you nothing's happening there's absolute peace here and yet there's this crazy airport yeah exactly I think that's so valuable because then you know the do you do you survive or do you get go into overwhelming that experience you know and I I think that's you know your mind can think I'm not going to do that because I won't like it and then your comfort zone keeps shrinking and you become a spiritual bypass you know because it is very very seductive to have peace anytime on you know and so you go are just but you know we're here in this world we're all in it together and it's a mess and you know it's like how do we get to a place where we can be loved in action rather than love in reaction let's be loved in action and and that requires a resilient nervous system and it requires you know practice and it requires testing you know you take it for a test drive yeah so you know you might not go to the heavy metal concert to start with you might go you know just to a big crowd at a classical music concert yeah start with baroque pushing the edges in such a way that you know I think we need safety but I think we need growth I think one without the other is dangerous yeah no that's good balance the middle way as you said earlier um here's a question that came in from Wesley in Albuquerque I resonate with your experiences my awakening has emptied out the mind and opened the heart and as it moves down the body through deeper surrender I come to this dense contracted energy in the stomach there's a lot of pain fear and trauma in there as I open to and continue to surrender the energy the energy opens and at the bottom of it the body stops it stops breathing not intentionally and just before blacking out fear takes over and comes gasping back to life any thoughts oh I could come in on that one you go ahead it was that's a big that's a big experience yes so so it's wonderful that you go into the pain and you know that that takes you somewhere and then it seems to take to a freeze like the breath stops yeah like that Samadhi character is to give Samadhi when the breath stops yeah but it can also be characteristic of the freeze you know so that that you know I don't know if if the breath stopped while he was breathing in or out or between the breaths so you know the stopped breath can be the free states like a like too much fear and you just stop and it's a little bit like a shock in the system you know so that's one point the other thing is what I found as I got more and more involved in my own journey was that what's happening in the gut you know the gut brain the intelligence of the gut our instincts out how we digest not just food but how he digests emotions how he digests an lie is reflected in the mind it's reflected in the brain and so I work very much with the polarity of masculine and feminine or mind and body or head and gut and so sometimes the what's happening this is the blank spot yeah there's the blank spot is the perceiver and the perceiver is also the creator so if if you're doing this meditation and you've got this thing in your gut you kind of know that it's not related to this moment unless there's a tiger in the room with you it's it's related to a past moment so you know what we're doing as we go into it is where we've got to look at in my way is that we look at these two elements of consciousness one is the experience and the other is the experience so the experience there tends to live you know somewhere around the eyes or certainly in the head sometimes out of the body can be so loss of dissociation at that level but that experience has a relational entanglement with the experience in the gut and what we want to do is discern that so in in the in another way of looking at it it's for me it's like the masculine always has an agenda the dysfunctional masculine and that the divine masculine Shiva if you will is you know able to be with the body with whatever's happening even death yeah so what we're doing there is we what I found is really valuable is rather than just working on the experience at some point when you've felt everything one needs to look at bring stillness in firstly that stabilizes the nervous system and contrast stillness to the experience in the guard and then the other part is to to bring awareness to what's what's in the head looking at it yeah it's very hard to explain this in words but you are four practices which help people to do that right is that help people to do that and I guide people because it's like you know you can write down the practice and nobody knows what you're talking about so you know my maps and my guidance often you know the first foray into that and it took me many years but I've been able to guide people into that in I know shorter windows of time which is very rewarding yeah that brings up a good point which is a lot of times personal instruction is it is really feel replaceable you just can't get it from a book in the way you can from an actual conscious person who can you know instruct you in the right way yeah and yeah I totally agree yeah because you know what's relevant in the moment it might not be what the words on the book are saying what's relevant in the moment is what's actually happening in the moment and so if you have a guide like for me i mean i'm empathically aware so I can sense you know when somebody's connected or when somebody's not connected or if they've got a pain here you know some of the pain they can see some they can't see cuz they have blind spots you know so it's really just like having a set of eyes or an awareness that isn't tainted by your egoic position or your perceiver you know that's kind of more clean yeah that can help you illuminate what's the obstacles in your path and help you transform those obstacles by basically experiencing stillness in relationship to them yep you know that's good yeah like a traffic cop he's up on a higher thing and you can see all the traffic coming from every direction and he has a perspective that you know the yeah the person in that each individual car doesn't necessarily have yeah and but I think what's really important is like as a guide I don't have an agenda I don't have a plan for recessions or even group group things it's like I'm guided by what's happening in the moment right right and so you know the plans are always in the way agendas are always in the way so it's really like I feel like I'm listening to the person's soul yeah and their soul is guiding the journey that's nice yeah and I imagine this is something you can turn on and off at will you don't just go through the grocery store checkout line and get a whole read from the person's soul yeah yeah I know I'm not into that yeah just one little quick comment about fear and the when when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier I guess it was in the late 40s or early 50s as he was approaching the speed of sound there was this huge shaking in the plane and he had just really hold onto the stick or whatever they call it and but as soon as he broke through it all got smooth and you know just and I've talked to so many people over the years who have kind of approached this threshold of the absolute we might call it or whatever and encountered this this fear that they had to somehow deal with their breakthrough in order to they might retreat from it or they might actually get through it and then it's it's all peace on the other side that fear is gone and it's sort of there's a kind of a fundamental fear that the upon Ishod say all fear is born of duality this is sort of a fundamental fear us from at that point where duality initially emerges that we may have to traverse as we get into unity yeah your description of is accurate and often I I'm working with somebody and they they'll say oh there's this big black empty spot in my chest you're gonna go you know part of what's interesting is I'm separate from that spot so I'm I'm in a place of separation from it and I'm looking at it and and you know it doesn't dawn on me that I can go in it or if I go near it I might feel fear but you know many people if if the stability is in the field you know like I feel like in some ways about resonance like I'm holding a place that that is loving and safe and so in that in that in that context many people can go into that place and you know everything dies there you know all the mental structures that are causing your suffering they just can disappear there you know so it's a very very powerful place but there has to be a willingness you know it's everybody's choice and some people it can take a while you know to get through that threshold and other people will just jump in and go it's nice here or I feel such really yeah you know it's um you know there isn't a formula it's really what's happening in the moment and you know kind of what you know is possible for people and I like if I'm working with somebody with a trauma I I don't see them as a traumatized person I see them as divinity mm-hmm you know and and and that helps direct them you know that helps create a pathway so I don't go into reaction I don't get engaged in the story I don't get lost in the drama it's like I listen what I'm listening on this thing empathically so when people are speaking you know emotions are coming through and I'm feeling that in my felt sense and that's informing you know everything and so it's really firstly just to get them out of the story and to connect you know is a valuable piece yes to get deeper than the story what's really going on in the emotional body and in the physical body and stuff hmm you've been doing this for quite a few years do you feel that um is it your observation that the things are kind of heating up in the world in terms of people awakening and the ease and rapidity with which people can awaken and so on and so forth you feel like the field is kind of getting more lively and it's they say that that's saying a rising tide lifts all boats do you think that there's the tide is rising yeah you know I I hover in the center point of not knowing and that's a fair answer one view ago you know like if you look at the personal journey of going through trauma and finding your true self it's the same thing on the external it's like a fractal of that you know so I can look at what's going on and go oh if people are awakening people are awakening more easily you know amazing children are being born and then at the same time I can go oh my god autism rates are really high and and you know mr. t is gonna start World War three any minute and you know so they're co-arising you know and kind of haast it kind of has to be that way it's like you know very increasing we have to give up you know voting somebody in that we think is gonna sort it all out for us right now and we have to we have to find our sovereignty or reclaim our power and and reclaim community and and not be in these little separate isolated fear-induced you know like the whole system is seems to me I'm on my soapbox now it's like it seems to be to support generating more and more fear yeah so it's like everybody can so easily get seduced and polarized into a position and then get really attached to that position and that position is creating something and you know it doesn't actually resolve anything it's just like now you've got people that you're in opposition to because you have a position that's different and then you have people that I feel like you're try because they have the same opinion as you yeah you know we've been doing this for thousands of years it really does work you know the we're moving from this dualistic Piscean age to the age of aquarius so you know let's hope at a planetary cosmological level that we're really being encouraged to come into a unification with ourselves and get out of this traumatic drama yeah well the polarization is seems to be greater than ever at least here in the US and politically and in society and I kind of wonder it's interesting to sort of you know you can't really see the trends of history as as well as you're living them as you can in retrospect and it's it'll be interesting to see where this all leads I sort of feel like it's a natural part of huge changes that are afoot and it's you mentioned you know possibly World War three I mean there's also the climate change issue and and yet these you know dire problems are counted about are kind of counterbalanced with what appears to me to be some kind of global Awakening which I don't think is coincidental it's somehow related somehow creating rising to meet the challenge and it'll be fascinating to see how it all works out I think right at the beginning of this conversation you talked about you know people come to awakening when their back is against the wall yeah and you know like we can be apathetic and complacent when you know we've got a little fence around our property and the supermarket still provides us food but you know if some if that fence got knocked over or the supermarket's stopped providing food you know that would you know get us active that would instantly move us out of apathy yeah yeah so you know the apathy is kind of like a disease of you know advanced civilization you know we we've lost touch with the land we've lost touch with where food comes from you know and all those things and I think you know I'm not saying we have to go back and be cave people but I think that there's an integration of you know heaven on earth that is you know that balance point yeah I forgot that I'm talking to somebody who did permaculture for 25 years and I think stuff like that is definitely gonna be part of the future if we have a future it's got to be yeah and I think you know when there's I'm sure in the u.s. the dramas bigger than how I listen to it here from Bali but you know when there's these big dramas going on they polarize us and they consume us and we it's like going down a vortex and we don't always come out of it you know then there's just the next drama but I think you know that sort of love in action is like if you look at that big drama there's like not a lot that you can do or maybe there is some it depends on who you are but what you can do is you can plant the garden or you can you know you can do things and it's like the things that inspire me as I see you know some dude in in India who spent 20 years planting you know five million trees or something uh yeah those are the things that are really inspiring it's like you know let let the cats and dogs you know kill each other but let's you know let's take steps towards what we want what do we want to create yeah and also we're getting a little bit I know we're jumping around little bit here but I think of examples like you know Gandhi or Martin Luther King or gratitude Bert for that matter who just one person said I'm just gonna sit here and you know things have to change and then it was like the crack in the in the dike or something that the whole thing just began to flood from the intention of that one person they have served as an agent of change so I think also you know what seems really really obvious to me is that most people are looking outside themselves you know whether it's at Greater or Donald Trump or who you know whatever we're looking at it's outside it's like the dramas out there but what's really powerful and valuable is to meet you know the inside yeah and and that's where the transformation and the shifts happen it's like we've all got to you know take those steps and collectively as we individually do that that changes the active that influences the collective and and then we don't have to get polarized into you know something that's just consuming our time consuming our energy making us feel defeated but rather that we're you know refocusing reframing reclaiming our power and then doing what we can do in our own community yeah also you've talked about how you know the waking up to the inner dimension enabled you to deal with great trauma I think that's going to be a necessity more and more for people in the world to weather the storm that's blowing and it will blow harder the you know the the anchor is that inner silence and I think it's going to be an essential feature for anyone's life if they want to you know survive and be happy yeah I agree yeah absolutely I agree yeah the question came in from Greg in London who Greg is up late it's like 1:30 in the morning in London Greg said hi I really resonate with Leonor's story and wanted to ask if you could please share some tips on the following there's three points here I'm going to read we can take it one by one if you want yeah that so first one how can we be more embodied as opposed to being so much in the head right practice well help yeah I practiced practically let's say people hear this as they great I want to do it I should okay I'll practice what do I practice yeah so we practice feeling a connection to the felt sense of the whole body that's a good start and opening you know taking an attitude of openness willingness sincerity so kind of aligning with what I would call like a sacred connection yeah that you feel that you're going into a temple your your system is your temple is this something you try to do all the time and all day long or something you do in a meditative state you know maybe first it depends if you're just starting or if you've quite skilled you know ultimately you want to live yeah yeah but you know it's baby steps often so your your recalibrating your nervous system as you go in that and it's like changing from the inside out like everything that you do ripples out through the whole system so you know the mind says I've got this problem I need to fix that first then I've got that problem I need to fix that that this isn't that this is more of a Transfiguration it's like you're connecting with a resource which is your true self that knows who you are knows why you're here knows what you should be doing it's already known and so you're just tapping into that vibration yeah and that's giving that vibration power yeah and that's giving you inspiration so you're still going to meet the dark side because there's a little person in there with a story that you know it's not working for me or I've tried everything or I'm not good enough or you know whatever the little story is you've got to meet the storyteller so part of part of the journey is to be willing to feel the experience fully through a felt sense connection yeah that takes you out of the mental level and into the energetic level where everything is just vibration and resonance so when you're there that your willingness to meet the experience will transform the experience however it works to a point because there's a there's an identity or a sense of self a position that's that where it usually blind - yeah and we're looking through those glasses and those glasses are keeping us stuck so at some point we we're exploring what we're looking through you know what that blind you know we're becoming unblind we're clearing our visual channels if you fall so you know that that's that's a piece and you know that you know there's a lot that you might find just in doing that you know you can just do that might take you some years before you feel like really masterful in that yeah yeah because how much truly you have like some things are easy to be with and some things are like overwhelm okay good and I would just remind people that you know if that little explanation she just gave doesn't seem adequate to get you on the path of doing this in a systematic way then you know Leonor offers one-on-one and group sessions and maybe that would get you anchored in some sort of practice that could be it can be more self-sufficient with I think also you know that people if they do that I really do that they get a results and the result is encouraging for them to keep practicing that's a good point all right I'm talked to people say well I tried meditating and it nothing happened you know and and for me it was like kaboom the first day and so I have never had a problem doing it regularly because the results are so great so yeah if you do try something you don't get any results try something else cuz something's gonna work for you people that have a trauma and you go okay just feel what's in there it's like I don't want to feel that it's horrible right but if you can love what's in there you know love is the way and the destination if you can open to it and allow it it's got gold and jewelry on the other side of it you know it's kind of like it's you've got to go through it and I change your relationship with it yeah and there is something to be said for intention and motivation I mean there's a saying I keep coming up with all these sayings they say in India one of them is you know if you take one step toward God God takes a thousand steps toward you or sometimes it's spoken of in terms of the Guru but I've seen again seen so many examples so when people have the intention just the sincere intention sometimes it's even a prayers like yeah well yeah it was we do right you're like help me something's got to change here and then come home you get results yeah and there's this acknowledgment I don't know the way show me the way no it's the acknowledgement of giving up I don't know the way which is true because you've never been there before and then the invitation to be shown the way you know and those two together from the place of sincerity you know are really powerful yeah a sincere entreaty like that is heard and yeah and one gets a response yeah okay so here's Greg second question to work with and we've talked about a bunch of this already but you know maybe add something little thing how to work with and uncover preconscious traumatic experiences okay well they'll reveal themselves to you and you're ready and you know they they're kind of here and they're shaping the conscious experiences so sometimes it doesn't have to be this way like you can go directly into the absolute or stillness or whatever accessibility you have to that qualit qualitative experience and that will help yeah that will help that just helps recalibrate the system and that's like the end point it's the the endpoint of healing is to return to self capital s it's like you're inducing the end point by bringing it in to meet the trauma yeah and the two when they're together they kind of resolve things change and they resolve themselves but another way of looking at it is that your conscious trauma is shaped out of your preconscious trauma yeah good point oh you know it's a it can sometimes be doesn't know like I say you can go directly there you can invoke stillness and not need to know all the stories and all the trauma points along the way and things will resolve energetically and you'll just be different and you don't know why and that's cool yeah you don't need a new story you can just not have a story or you might track back so it depends on the person and their capacity in their skill you might track back to you know what happens yesterday when you had a drama with somebody and if you feel into that experience all the way to its root you're going to find the preconscious in between you and the root so the root being stillness so you know it depends on whether you're working in time or whether you're working in no time or some combination thereof yeah so like what what I did in my own journey is I exhausted what I founded it in trauma healing and you know that that whole technology or the technologies that are out there have improved and it you know being fine-tuned and they're really coming on board and I really respect them but my curiosity was you know I had thousands and thousands of traumas you know it was going to take lifetimes to get through it so you know my curiosity was like what's the origin where's the where's the you know how did this get created without my knowledge you know where did this come from and it comes from one place the root of all trauma is the leaving of self Capitolinus so the resolution of all trauma is the return to self and I felt so much more powerful to have that as a stick in the ground then pull me with all my traumas because that position of I've got a lot of traumas is keeping you stuck in I've got a lot of traumas yeah it's good point so what you're saying is that unless you get to the root you could muddle around with a million different traumas all your life but if you can get down to the very root of them all you can uproot them all in one one shovelful perhaps yeah so for me what I found was the biggest blind spot I had because I apparently had a lot of trauma was that you know something's wrong with me and I need to heal it that was my orientation and that orientation perpetuated the problem you know so at some point this is why you know turning things around and looking at who's looking and looking at that person's attitude or orientation or position or identity yeah once you start doing that you collapse the thing that's holding you in this position like if you think you've got ten thousand traumas then you've got ten thousand wrong with it yeah you know so if you could if you could reorient your position to I'm here to be me that if I'm here to fix myself I'm here to be me I'm here to share the gift that I am in the world that that that has so much more power and it's like what you were saying just before Rick is like the power of the light or the power of that intention you know I always use this metaphor if you if you made the whole room dark completely black you couldn't see a thing couldn't see your hands and then you lit a match this tiny little match can you illuminate the room it's funny I was gonna use the same metaphor I was thinking okay I'm gonna say this as soon as you fit in you said it must be in sync yeah yeah it's a great metaphor I mean you can analyze the darkness and you can keep sin there that's a hundred things you could stumble into and bang your shins on and there's no end of problems as long as it's dark in there but you turn on the light even a little match or a candle and all of a sudden okay there's no darkness is somehow dispelled and I see all these things so I'm not gonna bump into it well that I used I used that metaphor because you know the first kind of what I call soul initiation that is valuable for people is to move from the head to the heart and I say what you need to know is where the light switch is and the light switch is more accessible in the heart usually the head because the heads got all the sorts of ideas in it so if you go down into a dark room or you end up in a dark place depends on the person and their their neurological wiring but a lot of people have the capacity if they've done some practice to find the light switch and turn it on and so you know the light illuminates the shadows so a lot of people get clingy about the light I just want the light I don't want the shadow you know so that's a relationship with the light based on fear because if you if you incent the light being outside you if you embody it you no longer need to find it it's just there so the other thing that the light does is it illuminates the shadows you know so it's not about finding the light and clinging to it but it's about knowing that you are the light knowing it like embodying the light letting it be you taking the light to stillness or your essence so that it integrates so that you are the lights yeah and that is going to illuminate the shadow and that goes back to this early part of the conversation between the openness and the contraction hmm you know at the openness goes like she's open let's show it to her you know it is like you know and then all the stuff but that in alignment with that big expansive openness that you are will get revealed in that now most people give up before that happens they go this technique doesn't work I just want the light you know I don't want all that stuff you know so it's not for sissies you know but it's it is it's really a worthy way to live your lie I think you may have just answered Greg's third question which was Oh how to find and work with blind spots this whole discussion of light I mean yeah yeah there's actually an infinite number of ways to play but what we're trying to do is you know in a sort of pithy statement is what what what's happened is that who I think I am is enmeshed with awareness so awareness is looking through this filter and it sees what it sees and what it sees is not true so it's like I need to disentangle the filter of my perception from pure awareness and so stillness is a doorway into that clarity that stillness will illuminate what's not still basically and what's a sense of I nice you talked about you said on your website that foundational to all the work that you do with embody truth is the practice of sovereignty the felt sense of exploration of experience perception with with contrast to stillness if you refer to these three aspects as a triangulation and call it the Trinity so if that's foundational to all the work you do maybe we should talk about that a little bit we already have but maybe we should yeah we yeah we've been there's the fundamental unchanging reality which has got many names but none of them really describe it so I like to call it the absolute so you know that's one of the elements and that's actually the origin point of all trauma it's also the origin point of the body it's the origin point of conscious awareness so the other two elements are the experience which equates to the feminine or body and the experience which equates to the mind or the masculine so you know you need the discernment you need that triangulation so I learned this the hard way because I didn't have the try it you know I got to Samadhi and I big I became Samadhi or I became a spiritual you know kind of bypass from the body and you know part of that was to do with developments or trauma but you know eventually I had to discern you know what the difference was between the mind and the body or the head and the belly and you know the starting point I use is the heart because the heart consciousness is the light lives easily it's more easily accessible there so you know for me the sovereignty I call it heart centered sovereignty is this connection to the whole of me and and through the it's it's both a state of consciousness and the process and through the process of it you become more and more sovereign and you become more and more clear about what's you and what's not you you know it's kind of a willingness to own your experience so for example if I'm sovereign and I'm listening to you you know I'm feeling the response in my system to what you say yeah so if I get triggered by something I'm feeling the trigger and as you practice that you can resolve this trigger immediately while you're in conversation in the beginning you you take the trigger home and you work on it you know because the between the trigger you know the explosive emotional energy say and the source the absolute is a lot of things that shaped me that needs that need your time they need you you to commune with them they need to be loved by you and so that distance between you and the absolute becomes smaller and smaller as you clear the stuff out of your field so if you're just starting you know you you might not be able to do that while you're sitting having a conversation with someone but you take it home the practice would be to take it home and work on it on your own at home you know where it's safe and less disturbed by outer outer experiences good well put okay let me see if in the notes I took if there's anything else that I want to be sure to cover with you here's a nice sentence healing trauma completely and the resultant count recalibration toward coherence is purely a return to a singularity of an undivided self I like that sentence so I noted it down and here's another one what makes this journey so worthwhile is that as we heal we move toward our full potential yes how would you describe full potential what do you think someone living their full potential would be like I'll let you know well some what we've all moved somewhere in that direction so I mean what what is the full potential of a human being I think there's no attachment to any results you know so kind of a strange thing to you know try to get yeah it words around you know like what's full potential look like but you know so if there's no attachment there's no I that's in time that's looking for an outcome it's like I'm here in the moment and if I am here in the moment and you know there's drama people being polarized around me that just my presence can shift you know the environment so I would say that full potential has a strong influence on the field know that when when you can hold connection to your true self and your stillness you don't need to know what to do what to do emerges out of you automatically as a response to you know the people around you who are just expressions of you I've been in the presence of people who you know would come into a room and I didn't even I wasn't looking I didn't see them come into the room but all sudden it was like this wave of silence and coherence washed over me and I turn there they are [Laughter] yeah exactly so I think I think it's that you know the full potential is that you you're in service you know because you don't have a separate eye that's with which is the wound you know that the the separation is the wound you know the sense of separation is the wound so in some way we're all wounded and in another way I just feel the alignment to becoming self is much more powerful than being engaged with being wounded yeah and so if you you know as you do the practice I feel you have more influence you become more magnetic you know your field kind of supports other people in some magical unknowing way just by presence yeah yeah there's something you just said there I won't be able to express it in the same words but the the engagement with self or the attunement to self is more I would put in my words more charming or more alluring than in engaging with trauma or or wounded yes yes it's sort of like so we we kind of follow the we could say the natural tendency of the mind to seek your field of greater happiness and it sort of leads us effortlessly into self and then then the wounding or the trauma can be worked out much more readily yeah yeah can be a bit different if you're super traumatized you know it's not not so easy to orient that way yeah so you know we have less access you you know you would have less access to those kind of resources like some people really have can't you know like I work it's so interesting it's like I was I'm always in a sort of living question that's never answerable but it's like you know for example how can I best serve you know so might be oh you know you need to do a lot of trauma healing with people and you know focus focus on that and then it's like but I can't do that because that excludes this bit you know and then now I need to do this bit but that excludes that bit and so in journey I've worked with people from a range you know for severely traumatized to send me enlightened let's say you know that have been dating for thirty years and have a lot of capacity and and that's what's informed me because my polarity was that great you know it's like I had that kind of emptiness state of consciousness at the same time I had a lot of trauma in the body you know which actually shows you that a weakness has got nothing to do with trauma you know we still can clean up so you know I think it's just different you can't really I think every time somebody asks me what I do I give them a different answer because it depends who's asking would you say that there may be exceptions but in as a general rule the human nervous system has much more capacity to heal itself of trauma than than most people realize because most people most people don't heal it so the norm seems to be that it we're stuck with it but the theoretically there could be something provided for you know the masses which would enable millions of people to to be healed would thus heal a lot of trauma in the collective consciousness I I agree I get I keep my finger on the pulse on things like that because there is a lot of amazing you know whether it's technologies or therapies or whatever that are coming out that that are that that really understands you know even the even the traditional medical system has a field now called psychoneuroimmunology so instead of all those you know the psyche being separate from the neurology and the immune system being separate from the you know the rest of it it's it's getting you know that they're all in a Co regulating kind of way with each other and there are some books I'm trying to remember there was a guy called it was Norman Doidge he wrote a couple of books one was like the brain which changes itself and miraculous healing stories that he you know spent ten or fifteen years wandering around researching these kinds of stories and you know researching different technologies that that can help so there's a lot you know there's there's the ancient wisdom that's helpful there's the modern new things that are helpful but we're starting to come into that kind of coherent place you know this is the bit that's exciting it's life that we have access to a lot you know if we could get the people that are trying to prevent us to get it it could just flourish perhaps so I think you know my advice to people is that there is a way for you there really is a way for you and the journey of discovering is what's going to give you your wisdom and compassion and your way is unique so you know you can bounce from teacher to pillar to post you can you can work on your physical body your physical health your mental health your meditation you can work with healers you can work with whatever resonates to you but it's really your way you know that you are a unique piece that is unfolding and just opening to being shown the way will really kind of bring some of those pieces towards you that's great I should probably conclude it right there because I don't know if I could state it any better but I just want to maybe just to sort of emphasize your point that people should never feel discouraged because or feel that they are too broken to heal because there's as you use the word exciting a few minutes ago that it's exciting there's so many opportunities now so many interesting things bubbling up and our means of communication or such you know the the it's as you said earlier just a few clicks and we can find some nugget of information or knowledge that used to be squirreled away in a monastery and you had to study for 30 years before they would tell you about it so yeah so there's just a it's really a make hay while the Sun shines kind of a time that we're living in and try to remember that it's just one thought that defeats you it's just that one thought that defeats you you know that thought that you know it you know I'm broken beyond repair or the thought that I've tried everything and I'm gonna you know give up by all means that always a good step but it's always that you know it's that one thought that defeats us that's that one thought then we believe it and then we live in that belief and so you know mix with each other find your soul mates you know and do whatever enriches your journey and really trust that it's there it's all I like to say sometimes I'm guiding somebody and I go they can't find the light you know they've got so many mental traumatized structures in the way and I go you know I can feel your light and the light is there and it's waiting for you and it will wait for you forever mmm interesting yeah and and sometimes that just turns something for people you know it's I don't have cat sayings but it just came to me that's a good one you know even though I've lost connection with the light and I've lost connection with my true self because of you know the traumas and what happened to my nervous system the light is still there and it will always wait for you it is you yeah boy so that's a good note to end on I think it just it's very encouraging and uplifting and and people should really I mean I hope people take it to heart and whether they work with you or anybody else there's all kinds of opportunities out there too to live a really fulfilling life and if you're feeling discouraged just look a little bit more practice a little bit more you'll find you know seek and you shall find absolutely yeah so you want to kind of just summarize what it is that you do for people how you how they could get in touch with you what what sort of things they will do if they do get in touch with you and so on well I think it you know you can just look on my website and it's it's posted I'm sure somewhere in the in the notes here so linking to it from your page on back up okay so basically you know I I really do like working one-on-one with people because it's the most potent way you know to to help but my intention is always to help people be empowered and self-reliance so when people work with me I give them practices and I help them through the resistance to practice and creating a practice that's that dynamic not a habit you know and all those kinds of things so you know I like to set the scene that's going to be the most powerful for each person because it's not really me that does anything it's you that does it you know so I'm just kind of like a mystical guide or something like that and because I can't work with thousands of people one-on-one I've kind of clumped people together in groups if they want to continue to work and so I have a couple of online groups I have one start a new one starting which is called heart centered sovereignty which is a good place to start and then I have one that that people have been working with me for a longer window of time it's an endless group it's a subscription after you've done some work and you kind of know the basics you can come into that group and that group is called cultivating grace and so it's about living it in your life so it's very engaged with the day to day and the day to day practice and you know the big deep questions and people get exercises and they work in dyads and you know anything that can can help people in life and their journey towards being themselves sounds great well thank you for all you do thank you thank you for what you do I think it's really been a real pleasure to to meet you Rick and to share this time with you likewise I've really enjoyed speaking with you so and thanks to those who tuned in live and to those who are watching this later we really appreciate your participation and you know hope that you benefit from all this that's the point of it so I'll just conclude I've been speaking with Leah Nora there'll be a page on bat Capcom dedicated to this interview and with the appropriate links and so on the descriptions and so just go there and also that a link to that page is at the bottom of this video if you're watching it on youtube and there's also a facebook discussion group about each interview and there's a link to that with at the bottom in the description of each video on youtube and there's some other things on bat gap if you explore the menus a little bit such as an email mailing list audio podcast and things like that so just check and sign up if you're interested so thanks for listening or watching and we will see you for the next one thanks Leonor okay [Music]

Channel: BuddhaAtTheGasPump

Views: 14,902

Keywords: Meditation, awakening, death, empathy, consciousness

Id: YPDoImfpeCM

Length: 125min 1sec (7501 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020