Michael A. Rodriguez ‘The Uncreated Light Of Awareness’ Interview by Renate McNay

hello and welcome to conscious TV my name is Renata McNee and my guest today is Mikey eight Rodriguez what does the S stand for Angelo Angelo a beautiful my cake is a spiritual teaching and author and he has a book which is not published yet and the working title is the uncreated light of awareness and I was very fortunate to read it already and we don't know yet when it's coming out but it's something to look forward to he brings a different perspective in which I really appreciated well-done regular so Mikey yeah first of all let me ask you what is the uncreated light of awareness yeah it's a title that I chose because it's paradoxical it's actually an allusion to the Christian tradition the Mystics in the Christian tradition sometimes refer to God as an uncreated light or as a dazzling darkness and my experience as the realization began to unfold here was that it was a perfect description for what we might term the absolute yeah when we look for consciousness in other words we can't find it as such it's not in space or time and yet it's shining radiantly as the reality of this moment yeah so it's uncreated in the sense that it has no objective qualities it can't be tasted or touched or smelled or felt or heard or even intuited it simply is and how did it how what happened that you came to realize it mm-hmm what was your path to this realization well it's a long 22-year journey sure well it actually started earlier it started like this I don't know how old you are Oh 40 but it started it started when you were little boy already then that's true um had this big question yes what's on the other side of the universe and when it ends and yes somehow that question when I was six or seven spontaneously arose in my mind when you get to the end of the universe what's on the other side yeah and for some reason that mystified me he was almost a Zen Cohen I pondered it and the mind couldn't grasp the answer to that but it somehow began a process of inquiry into the nature of reality that led me into first literature and art and academia and concurrently with that a spiritual path so what was the connection from this question to what what drew you into what was it that drew you into art and literature well I was essentially pondering the mystery of the universe yeah what is the nature of what we call the world mm-hmm and that's those are the questions that great art asks and they plumb the depths of the mystery of creation so it was very natural for me to move in that direction just because I first of all had an English teacher in high school who woke me up to the beauty and grandeur of literature and poetry and I found myself marveling at the beauty of great art in the same way that I was marveling at the infinity of the universe as a young boy it's really the same curiosity same passion the same passion yes yeah did you find out what's on the other side of the universe well I found out the answer to that question in my direct experience yeah so we talked about that in a moment so you say you already when you saw great art or lit recited great literature or read it you went into a Samadhi where where you you disappeared mm-hmm yes and I didn't think of it in those terms early on but that was the experience the experience was of losing myself yeah in the overwhelming boundless beauty of classical music or poetry or drama it was an immersive experience for me whenever there was an encounter with great art and actually a lot of the more embodied realization that happened much later started then much early on when I would disappear and drop down into the felt sense of being whenever listening to a great symphony or piano concerto or whatever it was there was a total immersion in the beauty of that and all boundaries would disappear and the sense of self would fall away and it would just be spacious boundless beauty and that's that's what I was yeah I couldn't find any place where I stopped her started it was just an immersive beautiful experience yeah you know I just remembered when you were talking about that disappearing when you looked at great art the many years ago I saw I saw this documentary on television where they explored a phenomenon which happens in Italy in there in Florence in the officiant and what happened was that the people were not everybody but some people they they got lost they did not know anymore who they are they were wandering around sitting there completely gone and could not recall who they are and and so they they all would end up in the mental hospital there in Florence and after two three days they would slowly come back and this is what you are saying you know they were hit by a missile Angelo's by day yes by the energy which was coming as a transmission there's a transmission that wasn't explained in the documentary that was not it just talked about this phenomenon this unexplained phenomena yeah well that great art stops our mind mm-hmm when we when there's an encounter with a transcendent work of art that comes directly from the source in a conscious way by an artist who's working at that level yeah it completely demolishes the separate sense of self yeah and it makes one transparent to the beauty of that experience and it can be disorienting perhaps I you're describing in those cases where people were disoriented to such an extent that they had to end up in a mental institution for a few days that was never my experience like right Minka but in luck in my experience it was blissful from beginning to end and it was connected to what the in Vedanta is called Satchidananda which is being consciousness and bliss that those are the three constituents of reality and that was always my experience of art that it somehow evoked being consciousness and bliss and and that led you to become a fierce seeker for the truth yes it did so um you you went out and you met spiritual teachers like Tony Parker yes I'm I really I have I have some of her books and she seemed to be have been a wonderful teacher how was your experience with her it was really formative she was really my first major teacher I had met with her initial teacher Philip Kaplow who was a Zen master and then afterwards went to meet Tony in upstate New York and I had read her books in college and had been turned on to her by a professor I had who was teaching Eastern philosophy and she was his teacher so when I first heard about Zen I felt immediately at home and then when I met her there was a deep resonance with her sharing and pointers and she was a remarkable being she was incredibly powerful in her ability to ask questions and what was the most important thing for you which in what she said what what what did you take away for your own journey yeah I think one of the most beautiful things about Tony was that she would ask genuine open-ended questions rather than making so many definitive statements it's very rare so what do you mean by that she asked open well she would she would genuinely wonder with you is it possible in this moment yes to be aware of the fear that's arising in the body but it was a genuine question it wasn't rhetorical she was right there with you so it was a explosion it was an exploration between you two yes in the immediacy of the moment and she did that with everyone and it was really beautiful because it there was a space of infinite possibility one didn't know the answer in advance yeah and acceptance I got incredible acceptance and allowing yes in that space yes it's incredibly surrendered it's a wandering she would wonder at things and there was something really genuine about it she wasn't on some trip she was really with you in the trenches yeah looking at whatever was arising in the moment and emphasized many other teachers you had this experience with nisargadatta yes through Tony so Tony on the last day of a retreat and this was early on this was I was probably maybe nineteen eighteen or nineteen is his early days she read on the last day of a retreat from I'm that yeah and something about it completely seized my being and I just fell madly in love with Miss Arg adata mhm and he became my greatest teacher and you you said in your book you literally merged with Nyssa God's being yes how did it feel what what do you mean by dead mm-hmm you merged with what yeah well that's a relative statement and so it's just a way of speaking it's not absolutely true because what was realized was that there was no merging of one thing in another the realization was that I've always been what I call boundless awareness but in describing that journey it's a way of talking about the impact that he had on me in a relative sense so I immersed myself and I am that every day for a couple of decades and would read it over and over and over again in the book the book I am I am dead and all of his other published writings that of talks that that are out there but it was I am that specifically that had a profound transmission of truth for me and I became one with his pointers over time I knew they were right I knew they were true the moment that I heard them so they hit your own wisdom yes I remember I had the same experience when I first got hold of I am dead I mean it was the clearest most penetrating uncharted yes yes yeah incredibly potent yeah not an ounce of power was missing despite the fact that was translated yeah and I often think of the translator Morris Friedman as an extraordinary being he was able to take that original language and translate it in a way where the power was not lost when outside yeah it's really quite an extraordinary feat yes yeah so I have a lot of gratitude to him because without him I never would have found this re danta hmm and I can't imagine my life without in this Argonaut oh yeah so by this time and then you studied Sufism and then you came across Carl Jung and yes you came in contact with your shadow yes yes I pure Val ayat Inayat Khan the Sufi master was my teacher for a short period and I learned a lot from him he was an amazing being yeah and so I was immersed in the Sufi tradition for a while and then in college I started becoming immersed in Carl Jung's teachings and immersed myself in his collected works for many years and learned a lot about the nature of consciousness from his descriptions of what he calls the process of individuation and of shadow integration yeah it was a very important part of the process but you um you became quite depressed at that time you lived in a monastery you said and you well I was a little studying at Harvard University right yeah that was in graduate school right when I was working on a master's degree in comparative religion at Harvard yeah yeah and that was a period where I lived in a monastery for a couple of years mm-hmm and how it was dead it was an incredible experience it was another resonant experience that the the atmosphere was permeated with silence and prayer and liturgy and that has always felt like home to me by this time did you have your own practice I did this was deep into the search yes oh I was already immersed in Zen practice and zaza in particular yeah and self-inquiry through nisargadatta and also ramana are she so with self inquiry you you mean um Who am I this inquiry yes and but not apply to logical inquiry no not at all well there's a mental aspect to it at first but it's not a mental answer that one receives the answer of course is the silence before and after that question and underlying the question itself but at first you're looking for the answer in the realm of the mind and that's the search that's what the search is is a mental movement to try and understand what this is to find out who I am but the purpose of the I am Who am I question is not to arrive at a mental answer did you experience something what what was your experience with it well the experience ultimately yeah was a direct insight into the nature of pure consciousness which shifted the identity from a thought based entity to an awareness based non entity so that silence became what I am and I was directly realized by consciousness itself not by a person so it's a little bit tricky for me to sit here and yeah talk about myself as having realized something because that's not of course exactly how it is it's consciousness that wakes up to itself as such yeah and consciousness by its very nature is infinite eternal and showing up as all of this yeah but which is a beautiful experience but as you say in some time somewhere it does not it does not really liberate you this kind of experience there's still you know you we have this experiences of who we are but then the work starts right the process of integration you mean yes yes and and you had as you were telling me earlier which I just wrote down somewhere yes you had a very complicated childhood which led into great suffering so there were what was quite some work to do for you I guess it was a complicated childhood but also full of a tremendous amount of love yes and a tremendous amount of self-sacrifice and care and yeah I'm very grateful and I was very lucky in many many ways and I'm still to this day very grateful for it for that it was also complicated in in some ways but that's what was necessary it was the the sand in the oyster that polished it yeah that leads to the realization of what you really are without that there's no motivation yeah to find out who we truly are and I'm grateful for all the challenges that were present in this in his life yeah so when you had when you went through the depressive times and you say you have you written down of the number of wounds that I had not been met and integrated yet how did you work with this ones how did you learn to integrate them and understand them well Carl Jung's pointers were very helpful in that regard in terms of shadow integration and so I drew on that heavily I will say that the realisation of what is the truth of myself clears up a lot of confusion and it gives you a reference it gives you oh yeah I rot eclis it's a it's not a reference point for say but it no I know what you mean yeah rather than being a psychologically driven self yeah which is a very contracted state it's a more expansive place of being it's a place less place you can say so nothing refers to separate self any more experience doesn't refer to someone in particular and when that's realized a tremendous burden is released the burden of having to work it all out and that it's about me and so when that's not there there's just much more flow in well-being synchronicity but the body of course as you know retains the memory of trauma yeah for many years sometimes decades or even a lifetime so the work became about once the realization was clear and had clicked and that there was no going back and there was no forgetting that or remembering it even it's simply the natural state of self-knowledge then the work was to take care of the body mind mm-hmm by being really gentle and loving and compassionate with it and softening as I call softening into whatever residual trauma might be lurking in the system so whenever something would arise to meet that lovingly and gently and softly and allowing it without expressing it or avoiding it but to just let it be there in the system with the full knowledge and understanding and insight that it's a momentary empty appearance made out of consciousness and its tendency is to shape-shift and move and to self liberate so there's not really doing in this process it's a passive allowing for these stale stuck energies to simply be felt and acknowledged embraced and then released which is what they want to do energy just wants to be by nature wants to release itself and it's just because we deny that we deny the shadow bury it underground that it continues to recycle in the system over and over again so it's just giving us a clue and everyone knows this it's a clue that something is not being met we're lovingly embraced well I also find the torturing part in this whole thing is the mind yes you know the mind doesn't just go and leave you alone yeah the mind comes over and over and over and tells you all kinds of stories about it and it does revenge and all kinds of things that that I find ah that I find so exhausting you know and you need to really welcome being present and you need to have a practice in place to cope with that yeah and that early on that was certainly my experience it becomes less of a practice and more of just the natural state of being yes eventually and for at this point there's no practicing of that or say yes because there's just a free flow of energy in the movement that doesn't refer to a center of experience yeah but absolutely in the beginning vigilance is required because there's tendency of consciousness is to be narcoleptic exactly it just won't fall asleep yeah it's infinitely intelligent and it has a capacity and a tendency to identify with whatever arises in the field of awareness so it takes a little bit of earnest vigilance early on so that one remains awake so that that work can continue that work of integration but it does become more organic and less laborious just becomes natural just the animal natural state yeah you say something interesting which I was bottled about let me see if I find it yeah I read your word it is correct knowledge or understanding of ourselves that opens the door to liberation not the spiritual technologies we use such as meditation isn't it meditation which helps to prepare the ground also for for this opening to the direct knowledge how do you see that one speaking in part there from a perspective of gianni yoga which was my path if we're speaking a relative sense can you just explain what it is sure the Gyana yoga is one of the major yoga's in the Vedanta ya system and it's the path of wisdom and there are other there are other paths as the bhakti path the path of devotion and there's the meditative path path Raja Yoga and karma yoga which has selfless service those in the major yoga's there all right none of them is wrong it's just based on our temperament and what we resonate with of course coming from the saga data I resonated with the path of wisdom that was his path and that was the transmission that came through to me so as nisargadatta says realization is more of the nature of understanding and that was a very important thing for me to have heard because I knew that realization was not an experience that's what he was saying it's not an experience it's more of the nature of understanding so that shifted the way that I was looking for myself and helped me release the attachment to whatever experiences were arising which were not the point so a lot of quite fantastic experiences arose energetically in the body mind during this whole process very esoteric kinds of things where there was knowledge and knowledge of experience that was of subtle rounds and subtle states of being and certain information was coming through being downloaded in a sense about the nature of life and consciousness so easy to identify with them isn't it it's so tempting yes and it's I'm not dismissing those things because they're very they're an important part of what unfolded here but I knew that identification with them meant spiritual ego and I was clear about not falling into that trap of course that can happen I suppose with knowledge as well but with the direct insight into true nature one realizes it's not an experience and that it's not personal and so the tendency to grasp on to and make something out of a passing experience was really not there for me yeah which I'm grateful for I let's talk a little bit about because you went five years through a period of purification and I shamak a transmutation yes which is called poverty by meister eckhart right yeah I was always interested in and can you and can you talk a little yeah I feel myself getting energized by the question because it's I love I love talking about this it's it's it's my great passion and in life is to share this yes yes that that period of a five year period the alchemical transmutation is kind of a Jungian term for that process where you're becoming some something substantially other than you were my striker has a beautiful pointer he calls it a state of poverty which we normally think of as a negative state but he was referring in that in that sermon to a state of inner void or emptyness and so there was this realization over and over again this soft gentle surrendering into what he calls the uncreated ground and I call uncreated light of awareness the uncreated ground over and over again dying into that and as that and that's a state of poverty but that's this is because you cannot take anything there like right you cannot take anything there he says you have I caught meister eckhart says you have to want and desire as little as you did before you were born so it's an emptying it's a self emptying process in the Bible the Philippians as a famous passage that speaks of this the kenosis of Jesus which means the canosa's is a Greek word for self-emptying yeah and Jesus empties himself of himself in the foot washing as well and it's the emptying or the melting down the ornament back into its formless uncreated nature which is formless the formless presence of awareness which is the reality of this moment boundless free open spacious uncontained unformed and the more that that is recognized as oneself that I refers to that it does not refer to a separate self it refers to whatever it is that's aware in this moment which is uncreated we can't point to it or grasp it measure it weigh it in any way what did help you to recognize that over and over again as your true nature what helped was the joy of discovering the beauty of being nothing in particular or in general that's such a beautiful realization and it's blissful it's painful to be contracted and separate but when one realizes that the natural state which is this open expansive presence of awareness it's already fully here nothing has to be done to achieve this that that's already here the body and the mind rest from feverish seeking or for fear those two engines that keep the self going desire and fear which makes the whole world run in a sense but to let go of the grasp on either desire or fear and to rest back into and as the uncreated ground as Eckhart calls it is incredibly nourishing and healing and it sends ripples of healing energy through the body in the mind and it's very simple and anyone has access to this it's just a simple allowing of the body in the mind to fall back into the arms and the embrace of consciousness or of God or the divine whatever word resonates with you and it's sweet and healing so the body loves it actually and it starts to want more and more of that and that becomes what you start to put your attention and give your heart to rather than on things that are momentarily satisfying but ultimately make you feel miserable because they're volatile and unpredictable and subject to change and disappearance and of course the challenge is how do you bring that into life yes yes that is that is challenging yeah and particularly in inter personal human exchanges because our tendency the body's tendency is to pick up the energies that are around us because we're empathetic beings and we feel what is in the air we feel other people's tension when they have it sometimes we don't know in my experience having leaving out his experience or my experience or my mother's experience or my grandmother's experience we're often living in other people's nightmares mm-hmm we live in other people's nightmares in an individual sense and in a collective sense in the terms of the human nightmare and so it's very important to wake up from well all dreams all together and to realize what doesn't come or go and that helps orient the body mind and then there are triggers of course and there are buttons that are pushed because there are deep precognitive fears in the system about intimacy and connection and love which is what we're all seeking but at the same time pushing it away because there's a discordant subterranean mechanism at play that blocks the very thing that we're seeking so once that is uprooted then there's more of a free flow but at the same time there still some triggers that get pulled and there are times when the body and the mind will simply self contract out of habit yeah so the work as I experienced it as I as I share it is to be used as gentle and loving and soft with oneself as possible in those moments and to just allow the reactivity without identifying with it without expressing it or rejecting it or avoiding it and to just be the energy of it in that moment it's not referring to anyone it's shared it's it's a it's a co-created energetic uprising two nervous systems meeting and then activating each other yeah but I don't see it as I see it as a creative process of unfoldment in the timeless presence that does not unfold and in that sense it's joyful it doesn't have to be painful because it's not goal oriented anymore before awakening you're trying to make yourself perfect and to get the body perfect and have all your circumstances and situations in order which of course is impossible but when you wake up from that you know trying to met micromanage life as though that could be done by a separate enclosed encapsulate itself when you wake up from that then there's still an integration process but it's not goal-oriented anymore it's just the joy of being which includes pain sometimes nothing's left out yeah it's all included yeah and I think that's an important thing to realize because we I think early on in the spiritual search where we think that our all our pain will go away on every level and that's not true that there's certain amounts of pain that are just part of life well that's also what is shown in in the path of Jesus yes very very hearted Buddha yes yeah that's true unnecessary dream of suffering running through this earth it is in the group mentality the group mind and the human consciousness it is it is and you become more sensitive to that in a sense yeah and it's also learning to find freedom within this suffering yes because there is suffering all over you know and you cannot separate you know yourself from it no um and I think the image of the bodhisattva is an important one and from the Buddhist tradition of yeah pouring oneself back into the human experience so that your entire life becomes permeated with the understanding and there's a desire genuine desire that arises in the heart to be helpful so yes that's right and it's that that that is what I appreciate a lot in the Christian path is there you know the mind has to drop into the heart and I just had had interviewed Cynthia ball show and she's very beautiful on that subject it looks very beautiful you can experience that with her and that is that is a journey in itself yes yeah yes and and being vulnerable to it I think is important it is for me anyway being vulnerable to the reality of human suffering unnecessary suffering can come to an end thank you logic yes yeah so I you know just separate being absolutely yes that unless that's clear there's still a confusion about what's true but once that's clear there's still pain it doesn't necessarily refer to someone it's an empty its his experience here it's just an empty appearance that has a beginning and an end but it's fully felt it's fully allowed nothing is rejected anymore here anything is allowed to be it's a key but I guess about allowing it's similar to surrendering but allowing is somehow it's less reloaded or word exec yes render has so many connotations to it yeah so spiritually yeah complex so what led into this five five years period of poverty both you are you throwing yourself into eating and drinking non-duality from Moochie and and rupert rupees fires yeah yeah I had many many teachers yeah along the way I'm countless and if I were to make a list of it it would be too long to read yeah but during this period it was specifically Mooji and Rupert Spira yeah who were profoundly influential in waking up the consciousness Mooji is such a incredibly overwhelming powerful being hopped for incredibly more cheese oil hot he's all heart yes he's also highly intelligent yeah but he his dominant expression is pure love and that transmission came through very strongly he also cut he helped to cut the umbilical cord to the psychological mind that's one of the things that he is remarkably good at yeah and that was essential to sever that identification so that the consciousness was no longer did in the sense of the psychological self but seated in itself and I would say he is perhaps the one to think above all others for that in addition to being a remarkably good teacher and incredibly loving being and with rupert it was the opposite so where's Mooji was emptying helping to empty me out in the sense of poverty that we were to discussing about Meister Eckhart because Mooji sort of emphasizes the path of negation although he does the other the other path of inclusion as well it's the emphasis in my experience was on self-emptying and then with rupert my experience of him was the path of inclusion so that I realized experientially and directly through Rupert's extraordinary pointers that everything is consciousness I mean I learned many things from Rupert but that was probably the most profound awakening that happened through his teaching was that everything is consciousness and that became a living realization not something that I mentally understood or could recite from a book but it woke up the living realization of that which I had yearned for for decades because I knew that that was true but I couldn't see it directly until I could and it transformed everything hmm so I had these this dual but it was in an exercise get it with you I mean he's he is a master investor can you do the to this realization yeah it was many things and it was going to satsang it was reading his writings it was listening to his talks it was doing his guided meditations I just threw myself wholeheartedly booth into Mooji and to record Spira and everything I did was an expression of the understanding that was unfolding even if I was eating a piece of fruit which I arrived out in the book I give these exercises that you put these things into practice so that they're down to earth rather than theoretical so I have many practical exercises in the book like eating a ripe peach yeah and trying to find in our direct experience yeah the tasted or the taster and noticing that all we actually experience is tasting there's nobody there taste it and there's nothing there that's tasted the reality of the experience is tasting yeah and that fills the totality of consciousness in that moment that's the reality of consciousness shining as tasting and it's the only thing through nature once the experience of tasting that's it yes I woke up to the beauty of experiencing and that it's all somehow necessary I mean this consciousness knowing itself so all our senses mmm Adobe's mm-hmm um into God and vice versa mm-hmm that's well said yeah if we can allow ourselves to become fully embodied and to be the reality of the sensing what we recall is sensing perceiving then consciousness wakes up to itself as the reality of all experiencing that there isn't a separate experiencer is experiencing an external world but that the senses are direct its direct as even the right word non-dual doesn't even the right word it's so it's closer than intimacy as I call it sensing and perceiving it's closer than intimacy because there are two things there I remember when I was I was due to interview Rupert I think Rupert was my first interview unconscious nearly 10 years ago and I don't know if his book was already out but I had a manuscript or Sam said something and I was lying in bed the next day Buster interview and I read I consciousness reading this word and I was gone and that catapulted me into into an experience that there is only experience experiencing itself yes exactly yeah exactly yeah so it was a direct transmission yes yes that comes through very powerfully I was writing yeah yeah there are some differences I say things differently than he does it's I I don't sure you happy I do I have it was a different way of saying things yeah on some issues very similar or identical but in other ways I think unique I've sort of developed my own language and way of expressing this that is really unique to my particular way of experience experience yes it's it was important for me to figure out what was true for me independently of all the teachers including Asarco Dada who had contributed to the understanding and then to put all that down ultimately and to be free of all conceptual roadmaps of any kind including the non-dual ones and now I don't even live in non-duality I mean the point is not to take on a new beautiful non dual concept but to be live free of all conceptual structures that's that's true freedom yeah tell me about through freedom mm-hmm what is through freedom well that's a good place to start perhaps is not being identified with any conceptual structure whatsoever and I actually have pretty much zero tolerance for concepts at this point because the the vibrancy and living reality of this is so clear to me that anytime someone and it's very subtle even in non-dual circles anytime can the conceptual structure arises my tendency is to swat it away because I can see I know that it's a prison and I don't have any desire to enter someone else's prison so or or my own for that matter so I think it's really being radically honest with oneself and not harboring any conceptual structure and to just have the courage to live as Eckhart says without a Y or without knowing what this is I use all these concepts because they're a way of communicating in the conventional sense but they're not my reality I don't sit at home thinking about these things in a conceptual sense so I would say that freedom would be there are many ways we could define that and there's no one way but a way in this moment that I could describe it it is not being identified with any conceptual structure whatsoever although there are free to play and dance as they are here with us um you know that when you say allowing everything is allowed yes but you don't touch it right let them touch anything yeah it's just the consciousness has a tense tendency to kind of grasp and over time you can just loosen that grasping so that that that knee-jerk grasping becomes reconditioned the consciousness can become reconditioned to be more in an open state in reality awareness is always already surrendered yeah we're pure awareness can't grasp onto anything it just allows everything including the grasping the consciousness grass but awareness is aware of that so the ultimate realization is that no matter what's showing up even contraction in the body mind aware this is untouched but the consciousness in the form of the body mind has a tendency to grasp so the meditation is helpful in that sense yeah I'm just reconditioning the body in the mind to be in a more relaxed natural non grasping state do you still have a practice I wouldn't call it that I think meeting with people is you could say my practice now is just being with people individually and in groups yeah and that an extraordinary healing energy comes through the end of the body and it's a deeply rich experience to work with someone one-on-one or in groups there's this this shared experience you know that we enter into together yeah and and so that's still incredibly healing on this body even even to this day yeah so you'll give satsangs and you work with people and how how how do you help people you tell me that people wake up in they do things you say saying well it's not about me of course well yeah in in that meeting in those meetings remarkable transformations occur and awakenings occur sometimes in the first session it's not uncommon that that happens yes and then there's a period of working with them over time in some cases of learning the art of integration and embodiment what we call embodiment yeah the book the book embodies well consciousness in a relative sense it becomes more grounded in the experience of what we call the body it's just a label and a concept for something that's a process and a flow it's an energetic flow that we freeze in a mental concept of being a body but it's always in flux and so the more that one more the more the consciousness I should say surrenders back into the natural flow of itself we could call that a process of embodiment there's no person doing that it's consciousness itself that wants to be relieved yeah of the sense of containment because nothing in nature likes to be contained you put any animal in a cage and it will repel and it's the same thing with psychological the psychological mind it's like a caged animal which is why it's struggling to be free it's sort of grabbing onto the cage and shaking shaking it screaming to be let out and so when the realization is that oh wait thoughts aren't arising in my head the head and the body is just a mental image you're rising in consciousness and I can't find a beginning or an end to consciousness it dilutes the power of the thought and then the thoughts start to arise in this boundless awareness rather than in this tiny little space and that in itself is tremendously liberating healing so it's a beautiful um ending yeah Cynthia said earlier also which I resonate with which also you mentioned a lot this is an era where of embodiment yeah you know it was yes it was only ever transcendent transcend right and now and that's why we made a mess of our planet and mm-hmm a lot of other thing yeah yeah but people are waking out to the necessity of yeah including the body yes so well Thank You Mikey for coming all the way over your so to see us at conscious TB and Mike is going to do a short meditation after this interview now so please stay tuned and in the meantime I say thank you again and thank you for watching conscious TV bye bye you hello I'm Michael Rodriguez and I'd like to lead you in a short guided meditation into the natural state rather than being theoretical or intellectual I'd like to invite you to drop down in this moment with the attention into the felt sense of being and to soften whatever tensions are in the body or in the mind the key word here is to soften traditionally the word that's used is surrender but that word is so loaded with so many associations and preconceptions that I find the word soften simple and direct and clear and applicable normally when experience arises that we reject or that we pursue there's a hardening of the heart the human heart and of the body resulting in a density in the body in the mind and so all this meditation does is to soften that density making the body in the mind more permeable to the transparency of true nature there's any tension in the forehead in particular or the solar plexus or the stomach those are the three regions that the sense of the separate self dwells just soften them gently and rest in this moment as undefended sensitive loving conscious presence which is your natural state it is not natural to be defended and hateful and separate from experience your heart longs for love and connection and intimacy everyone's does the human heart contracts and expands both in the literal sense and emotionally so we're going to rest the human heart in the heart of awareness within which the human heart arises and subsides this is not abstract this presence is absolutely present it's the reality of this moment and so as we soften down into the felt sense of being to be the energy that we call the body we can soften that resistance to whatever is arising normally that Snee sense which pushes away experience or pursues pleasant experience gets lodged in the body and creates a very powerful illusion of separation and so the more that you soften that tendency the more experience will simply be a flow of energy and light without referring to anyone in particular or in general so we're doing this now in the comfort and safety of perhaps your bedroom or your den wherever you may be it's important to take this out into the world so that all of our experience is permeated by this understanding so that when challenging experiences arise with coworkers or family or friends the Pointer here is to soften in the moment of the arising of that tension or self contraction to soften it gently and lovingly with your best interests at heart wishing yourself well having compassion for yourself and to notice that the tendency of that contraction is to self liberate it actually takes a tremendous amount of work to keep it to keep it going and it doesn't take any energy to soften it it's a letting go to know that you're undefended sensitive natural self is both absolutely pure and innocent and also paradoxically absolutely strong and solid it's only the psychological self that's weak and brittle but this heart of awareness that I'm referring to which is synonymous in this moment with this felt sense of being and then beyond it as this pure presence is indestructible an OLE experience arises and subsides in that which is your true self the more you make this just a way of life the more it will just become the natural state again which it was in childhood when you were undefended and innocent and when a moment arises when it's necessary to take action and to be practical in some sense that can be done in the same Snatcher estate you never have to leave this the great fallacy is that we have to leave this in order to be practical and productive but the truth is that this facilitates the softening facilitates being practical frees up energy and vitality and life and love thanks for watching and may you be well you

Channel: conscioustv

Views: 79,198

Keywords: Michael A. Rodriguez, Non-Duality, Awakening, Spirituality, Awareness, Truth, The Uncreated Light of Awareness

Id: o-o_9KAScUs

Length: 65min 23sec (3923 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2016