Show Notes:
https://www.ananda.org/yogapedia/samadhi/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought
The basic outline of this particular episode is that when life sucks, it is because of one thing only: a phenomenon called separation. This episode describes what separation is and how to move towards a sense of the opposite of separation: oneness. I use examples from New Thought, Hinduism, Christianity, spiritual psychology, twelve step philosophy and science to demonstrate how each system defines separation and how each system teaches to move towards oneness.
I thank you for listening, and I know that it is no accident that you are here. I affirm your greatest good! I affirm your inherent divinity, and that that divinity shows up in your life as wisdom, prosperity, peace and unconditional love. I know that you are the place where God shows up in this world. I love you, and I support you.
Fearlessly Feral Living is sponsored by Center for Spiritual Living Carson City Nevada, a teaching chapter. If you wish to contribute financially to support this project, you can go to www.cslcc.org and click on the donate button.
lternatively, you can go to https://www.patreon.com/Fearlesslyferal?fan_landing=true and become a member!
Your gifts contribute to the ongoing production of this podcast, as well as to supporting Wednesday Night Wisdom and other ongoing activities sponsored by CSL Carson City.
We also have a private Facebook group called Fearlessly Feral Living where we discuss podcast topics and other things too! You can join by going here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/255310015873757/?ref=share
I’m currently serving as Interim Minister for Mountainside Center for Spiritual Living in Placerville. I speak there every other Sunday, and currently all Sunday services are online via Zoom. Future speaking dates are May 31, June 14, June 28, July 12 and July 26.
Show Notes:
https://www.ananda.org/yogapedia/samadhi/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought
The basic outline of this particular episode is that when life sucks, it is because of one thing only: a phenomenon called separation. This episode describes what separation is and how to move towards a sense of the opposite of separation: oneness. I use examples from New Thought, Hinduism, Christianity, spiritual psychology, twelve step philosophy and science to demonstrate how each system defines separation and how each system teaches to move towards oneness.
I thank you for listening, and I know that it is no accident that you are here. I affirm your greatest good! I affirm your inherent divinity, and that that divinity shows up in your life as wisdom, prosperity, peace and unconditional love. I know that you are the place where God shows up in this world. I love you, and I support you.
Fearlessly Feral Living is sponsored by Center for Spiritual Living Carson City Nevada, a teaching chapter. If you wish to contribute financially to support this project, you can go to www.cslcc.org and click on the donate button.
lternatively, you can go to https://www.patreon.com/Fearlesslyferal?fan_landing=true and become a member!
Your gifts contribute to the ongoing production of this podcast, as well as to supporting Wednesday Night Wisdom and other ongoing activities sponsored by CSL Carson City.
We also have a private Facebook group called Fearlessly Feral Living where we discuss podcast topics and other things too! You can join by going here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/255310015873757/?ref=share
I’m currently serving as Interim Minister for Mountainside Center for Spiritual Living in Placerville. I speak there every other Sunday, and currently all Sunday services are online via Zoom. Future speaking dates are May 31, June 14, June 28, July 12 and July 26.
Fearlessly Feral episode #3
Welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living! Broadcasting to you from the Woogie Ranch, out here in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I’m a half hour away from the nearest gas station and grocery store! This is a podcast devoted to using New Thought principles to ensure successful creative living. Successful living begins from within us and moves outward. Change your thinking and change your life. Today we are going to talk about what to do when life sucks!
I’m sure you know what I mean by life sucking. You get overwhelmed and get in a fight with your partner and want to run away. You, or your partner, receives a diagnosis of a life threatening illness complete with prognosis for an end date. You know, one of those “you’ve got six months left to live“ sort of things. You lose a job. You get in an accident and break something, or there is a fire and all your stuff is gone. Or, you know, theres a nasty little virus and all of a sudden you’re locked up in your own home. Can’t go anywhere.
Back to some more suckiness.
it might be something as simple and as deep and profound as life just doesn’t feel right. You aren’t sure why, but things dont seem to fit. You show up for work and all the other stuff you show up for, but the joy, if there is any, is muted. A pale imitation of true joy. You haven’t done a belly laugh in months. Or years.
The bottom line is that for whatever reasons, You are angry, frustrated, depressed, can’t see the humor in anything, can’t see the good in anything. You are lonely, ill at ease. You are restless, irritable and discontented. You might feel as if you simply dont fit in the world anymore.
All of that. With so many reasons for a sucky life it’s a wonder that I could even think that there is a way to live without the suckiness. Not only do I think that, but I insist on it, for me and for you.
And when you get right down to it, the reason for the suckiness is not any of those outer things I mentioned. Life happens. It does. And the reason for the suckiness is not any of those inner things, or any diagnosis.
The reality is, there is one reason and one reason only that life feels sucky. Hear me when I say this: one reason only.
It is called separation.
Now, this is a bit of a jargony term, so let me try to explain it in plain language. Which is going to be difficult to do because describing separation is a bit like describing the color purple. In other words, it is almost impossible to describe it, you have to SHOW it. But this is an audio medium, so I’m going to do the best I can here to verbally explain it.
Like a drop of water in the ocean: how do you separate the drop from the entire body of water? You cant, and if you try, the drop soon fades away, evaporating into nothingness. But keep that drop in the body of water and the body of water sustains itself, a part of a cycle of nature of rain and river and providing moisture to the air, endlessly cycling in its own little world of oneness, each step of the way nourishing and feeding the next. No separation.
In Hindu terms there is a thing called samadhi.
It is a Sanskrit word meaning a perfect union of our souls with spirit. Another meaning is a state of oneness. The yogis say that to achieve samadhi one must meditate. I found this to be true. And they also say that there are two levels of samadhi: one is when we experience a state of oneness when meditating. The other is when we experience that state all the time. I’m aiming for the 24/7 variety. And I am here to tell you it is possible to do so. How can you tell when you’ve achieved oneness? All fear based motives go away. Have you ever had a coach ask you what your motives are for doing something? Go ahead, ask yourself. What are my motives for doing this? Keep repeating the question to yourself until you boil it down to the most basic of all motives. Either I am doing it because I’m afraid of losing something I already have or not getting something I want. OR....I am doing it because it is a perfect way for me to embody and express my own unconditional love. No expectations for return in the behavior or decision. Just love. That is oneness. That is samadhi. When the ego gets out of the way and allows us as perfect godlings to express ourselves in that way. By the way, ego is everyone’s favorite whipping boy. They seem to use it as a catch all for everything negative and bad that goes on in our lives. Not so. Ego is just doing its job, which is to protect us. And ego hates change. Because the unknown is very threatening. And the ego does its job very well by resisting change at all costs. Even if it causes us to argue for our limitations. When we are in samadhi even the ego is quiet. Because it feels safe and secure.
Christians call that state of oneness mystical marriage. I like to think of being in the state of oneness as eternal communion. Again, it is not something we do once a week when we attend church. The meaning goes much deeper than that. We let go of anything keeping us from feeling as if there is a god in our lives. In Christian lingo, that’s called sin. In new thought lingo, we look at sin from the viewpoint of the original meaning of the word. In the days the Bible was written, sin was an archery term. It meant you missed your target. As in, hey dude, when you fired that arrow off you totally missed the target and now that arrow is in that tree off to the right over there! You need to practice some more and aim again! Today, in new thought language, it means we made a mistake. We correct the mistake, we make amends, we set things right, and we are well on our way towards that sweet communion which makes all things right in the world. Mystical marriage. Oneness. Not separation.
In quantum physics it is described in the concepts of non-locality and tangled hierarchy. Non-locality has demonstrated that we are all connected. Tangled hierarchy is like that state of new found romantic love. You are all wrapped up in one another, each interdependent on the other, and you do not feel complete or whole unless you are with your new found love. And when you are not with them, something is missing.
That is what separation feels like. Something is missing. It feels lonely. In fact, when I am coaching someone who tells me they are lonely, I know it isn't about a lack of people or relationships. Have you ever had the experience of feeling lonely in a crowded room? That’s separation.
Separation feels not safe. And from that sense of not safe we take measures to protect ourselves. I live in rural Nevada. Out here, when people don't feel safe, they arm themselves. It is not uncommon to see people walking around with a pistol on their hip. It is also very much not uncommon for folks out here to carry a concealed weapon. There are guns everywhere out here. Do you see the measures we go to to make ourselves feel safe in a world which can feel very unsafe when we feel separate from anything which resembles a bigger picture? My belief is that this is where all war begins, whether it is war on a personal level or war on a global level. And my belief is that this is where all that us and them mentality begins. I’m right and you are wrong. That mentality. It all stems from separation. Strive towards a sense of oneness and all that nasty tendency to fight goes away.
I hope this gives you some idea of what separation feels like and looks like and what its opposite: oneness, looks like and feels like.
Now, remember that I am positing here that separation is the cause of all suckiness in life. Whether it is inner suckiness or outer.
Ok.
Now enter the law of attraction. The law of attraction says that what we are is what we receive. If we believe in separation, if we based all of our thoughts words and deeds on the premise that we are an island in the world, all alone, not interdependent with our fellows and not interdependent with a god of our understanding, we are going to feel lonely, scared, threatened, not safe. And because of that we are going to want to protect ourselves. And we are going to lash out in fear and attack anyone who threatens us by thinking, dressing, believing differently than we do. We are going to be racist and bigoted and misogynistic and just plain miserable. And guess what, we attract what we believe, so we are going to attract things, people and situations which confirm our beliefs. We are indeed going to fulfill our prophecy about life.
Enter suckiness. Do you know someone who seems to be the victim of all sorts of misfortune? They get more flat tires than anyone else, they experience all manner of crisis and drama and trauma, every day. Every time you log into facebook you discover they’ve experienced another accident, fire, death, or some other bad thing. Sucky.
So in order for life not to be sucky, we have to do two things: we must consistently and persistently strive to achieve a state of oneness. We do this by various means depending on our beliefs. There is no monopoly on this stuff. If you are Christian, you might examine where you think you’ve sinned and confess those sins, pay your penance and receive that holy communion. Just remember that you can live that, you don't just do it once a week.
If you are a 12 stepper, you do introspection, figure out what you’ve done that has caused trouble for you in your life, share it, make amends for it and strive for connection with a god of your understanding.
If you are Hindu you meditate and strive to achieve that feeling of oneness during meditation, then you strive to carry it on and feel oneness all the time.
If you are a scientist, you become familiar with the concepts of quantum physics and believe the results of repeated experiments, that we are all connected on deep levels and that our observations have the power to affect outcomes, and you act accordingly.
And if you are new thought, like me, you recognize and believe that the relationship between me and god is unseparable, that god is a part of me and I am a part of it, that god needs me to express and I need god to express. And in so doing, I strive to be as godlike as i possibly can, all the while acknowledging with love and acceptance and compassion my own human shortcomings.
And if you love spiritual psychology, as I do, you make good use of the spiritual practice of self awareness through introspection, and you release with gratitude and love all those beliefs which cause trouble for you, and replace those beliefs with new ones that serve you better.
And then, on the occasions when shit does happen, because that is a part of life, you will still feel a part of. You will still feel oneness. You will still feel that sense of ease and comfort which comes from a knowingness that you are a very important part of something much bigger than you, and you will deal with it with grace and dignity.
And you will also be able to enjoy life on a much grander scale, because you are coming from a knowingness that you are a very important part of something much bigger than you.
So go with god, be 1 with nature, recognize your importance in this world, know your Truth with a capital T, and know that that truth is simply that you are a part of the universe, and it is a part of you.
Outro: thank you for listening. Ive got some links in the show notes.
https://www.ananda.org/yogapedia/samadhi/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought
The basic outline of this particular episode is that when life sucks, it is because of one thing only: a phenomenon called separation. This episode describes what separation is and how to move towards a sense of the opposite of separation: oneness. I use examples from New Thought, Hinduism, Christianity, spiritual psychology, twelve step philosophy and science to demonstrate how each system defines separation and how each system teaches to move towards oneness.
I thank you for listening, and I know that it is no accident that you are here. I affirm your greatest good! I affirm your inherent divinity, and that that divinity shows up in your life as wisdom, prosperity, peace and unconditional love. I know that you are the place where God shows up in this world. I love you, and I support you.
Fearlessly Feral Living is sponsored by Center for Spiritual Living Carson City Nevada, a teaching chapter. If you wish to contribute financially to support this project, you can go to www.cslcc.org and click on the donate button.
Alternatively, you can go to https://www.patreon.com/Fearlesslyferal?fan_landing=true and become a member!
Your gifts contribute to the ongoing production of this podcast, as well as to supporting Wednesday Night Wisdom and other ongoing activities sponsored by CSL Carson City.
We also have a private Facebook group called Fearlessly Feral Living where we discuss podcast topics and other things too! You can join by going here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/255310015873757/?ref=share
I’m currently serving as Interim Minister for Mountainside Center for Spiritual Living in Placerville. I speak there every other Sunday, and currently all Sunday services are online via Zoom. Future speaking dates are May 17, May 31, June 14, June 28, July 12 and July 26.
I’d love to hear from you!
Until next time, I am knowing fearlessly feral living for you and for me.