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Category: Spiritual Growth
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Welcome back. I wanted to tell you a story because it's been coming up lately and I think it's very very helpful to understand.
Well, first of all, Forest, what is your secret of success? This is
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part of it. This was a download that I received while I was in the ashram and it has benefited me to no end.
And it's a reorientation of how you see your spiritual life. And it's very very
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important. And so sometimes I'll say, "Look, I took everything in my life and I grounded it." People are like, "Forest, I'm not quite sure what that means." This is part of that recipe.
This is one of the ways that I took my
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spiritual life and I grounded it. So let's get into it.
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So this story is actually two downloads. The first download happened because I had come into the ashram.
I think I was there for maybe 3 or 4 months and I just felt so much pressure because there were
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all these rules. There was this very very strict way of living.
For example, I was used to going to the kitchen and getting something to eat anytime that I was hungry. The my Norwegian heritage shows up with my family and we wouldn't
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necessarily eat. We would graze.
We would just snack all day, right? As an example, in the ashram, there was only one specific time to eat with everyone and it was very, very strict.
There were all these conditions and rules. So, I
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was attempting to follow all of the ashram rules, get all of the subtle cues that they were giving me, listen to all the monks who were telling me different points of view on what I should and should not be doing. constantly
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pursue my spiritual life deeply, understand meditation and progress in meditation. And the the pressure was just immense.
And the monks were told to inform on each other. So I had people
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watching over my shoulder and informing on me while I'm trying to do all of this. That that was the culture.
They would inform on everybody all the time. And it was just it was just a wild mess.
And I remember I come out of my room.
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I'm going down the stairway to go outside and this this download comes. I don't even know to call it a download at that time, but it comes to me so clearly.
You are going to break. You are either going to let all this pressure go
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and relax or you are going to have a nervous breakdown. you pick.
And I'm like, well, maybe I think I should relax, right? I think I should relax about all of this.
And I just found a way to survive and relax and it saved
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me, right? Very, very important download.
And the next step after that was I kept getting this download that the things which you are reading in books and and attempting to understand attempting to
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find in meditation you're reading the story and you think you can find it in the same way that the story says it. If you attempt to understand your spiritual life from a book this way, you will
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never understand your own spiritual life. You'll be very good at listening to other people and their experiences, their interpretation of spirituality, but you won't necessarily blossom from within and begin to understand your own
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pathway. It's very good to use a system.
It's very good to listen to a teacher. It's very good to have a guru and a lineage and to follow that.
But that does not negate you listening to your own experience and your own intuition.
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So it's a back and forth. That's the way it is supposed to be in a traditional lineage.
There's a bit of back and forth. And what I was doing is I would only look to the descriptions in the books and the descriptions of the monks as they were talking to me.
And I was
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losing what was right in front of me. So I kept getting this download.
Stop looking at the book and start asking what does this actually mean? Okay, I'm reading the book.
I'm reading the scripture. What does this actually mean?
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What does it actually look like? How would this show up?
Are you experiencing any of this already? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but you've got to at least ask the question.
This process is a boots on the ground reporting of what
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is showing up in your life and being grateful for what is showing up in your life. Noticing what is actually showing up in your life.
And I started to realize the little tiny bits of success that I
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was already having, which before this process, I would just negate all of that and get down on myself that I wasn't good enough because my experience didn't look like that experience that I read in a book. What a crazy way to see your own
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life. Oh, it can't be good enough because I read this shiny bubble inside of a story.
So I started to find and figure out and understand that there were all these holes in the way that I was holding spirituality. I was trying
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to do it in a traditionalist manner. And that's a good beginning, but it will only get you so far.
You've got to pay attention and you've got to notice and you actually have to use your own intuition and your own common sense as
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best you can. and then ask your teacher if you're doing a good job or not.
That's a very very necessary process. So here is a wonderful example.
I was speaking with this wonderful yogini and
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she goes, you know, I'm going to this spiritualist group and I just feel like everybody is so far beyond me. I I'm just, you know, I am the baby in the group and they're all so far beyond me.
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And she goes, this one lady, she got up and she told us about how she had witnessed this lotus opening up in her crown. This gorgeous lotus was opening up in her crown.
And she had this
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beautiful vision and she goes, "Am I doing something wrong? Why isn't this happening to me?" And I'm like, okay, there's a few things here.
First of all, from all of our talks, I know that you are very kinesthetic. Your experiences
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in meditation tend to run in a kesthetic way. You feel things and you feel them very, very deeply.
So why are you looking for somebody else's vision when you feel things can kinesesthetically?
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Second of all, we don't know if that person had one experience and it was a one-off and they never come back to the spiritual path or she could be a very good deep spiritual seeker and she could have experience like this again and
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again. We don't know unless we're her.
We absolutely have no clue because we're not inside of her. We can make guesses but we can't really know what I know about you.
I told this yogini as she was talking to me, what I know about you is
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that you are getting the freeze response and you are having downloads and oh my god is that deep. I mean hallelujah.
I mean hallelujah deep. That's deep.
I mean very very very deep. So why don't
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you be grateful for the what you have because I know this is progress that that other person I don't know if it's progress or if it's a oneoff experience wonderful if it is that's okay nothing wrong with that but you I specifically
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know as you go through the internal process you're going very very far. She's like, "Wow, okay, that that reorients me in a wonderful way." And we're talking.
We're talking. And at the
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very end, she goes, "Oh, by the way, I'm having this deep meditation." And my whole crown feels like it's over the top of my head. And I'm like,
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"Now, do you see? Do you Oh my god.
Do you see? She's seeing it and you're feeling it, my dear.
That is the same exact experience. One is visual, one is
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canesthetic, but it is still the crown opening. So why would you look to somebody else's experience and go, "Oh, I covet your experience." ignoring the truth of having the same experience in a slightly different way.
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So what do we need? We need to be here.
We need to notice what is actually here. We need to be grateful for the little things that come to us and pay attention to them so more can be given because if
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you don't notice what you have, you certainly won't notice when you get more. Amazing, right?
It's so easy to get lost in a story. You build up this idea of what you think things are in your left brain.
It's an ivory tower.
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It's an intellectual ivory tower in your left brain. And it often has nothing to do with reality.
You think you know what's happening in your life. And often it's just a story.
You don't actually
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know what's going on in your life. quite possibly very often we are absolutely clueless about what is actually going on.
We just live in all of these stories. So you got to be careful where are you picking up your stories.
Who are
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you listening to? What books are you listening to?
And what are the stories that they are feeding you that you believe are real? Because if you live in all those stories that have to do with somebody else, are you here?
You're not
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here. To be here is to be in the right brain just right now.
That's it. So, I hope you loved this.
If you did, be sure to hit that bell down below so I can see all of you next time.