Being Whole

The Vajra Heart teachings make the ancient and esoteric spiritual teachings accessible to the contemporary mind. In one sense a synthesis or blend of teachings that originate in Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, Shamanism, and Mystic Christianity, the Vajra Heart teachings arise as a current path to spiritual and psychological freedom. With meditation, inquiry, and the art of presence, these teachings address the core of human suffering and confusion, and introduce the Truth that is disguised by consensus reality and its viewpoints. What exists within the core of every being is innately free, alive, and precious. These teachings convey the understanding to live these innate possibilities in a real and full way. These teachings are intended to revolutionize the consciousness of those who come into contact with them, and spark a transformation in those ready to come Home.

Transcript

I mentioned that this practice of being satisfied is an unconventional one.

But really all spiritual or awareness based practices are unconventional.

Or at least they should be.

In that they are breaking the habitual spell of our conventional consciousness.

You know,

That statement alone doesn't need to be made into something dramatic.

It's not as though we are calling for a complete upheaval or exit from our ordinary state of consciousness as much as just a little turn.

You know,

Something that provides just a slightly different perspective.

So anytime we begin to experience what is real and what is true within ourselves there is bound to be a sense that it's unconventional.

And the reaction that many of us have to that is often that it feels uncomfortable.

Because we tend to associate what is comfortable with what is conventional,

What we know,

What's familiar.

The practice of being satisfied is just that.

The practice of being whole and complete is just that because if we look at the driving mechanisms behind our ordinary consciousness,

Which we usually call egoic consciousness.

I don't love that word ego because it's been too,

There's been too many devilish connotations put to it.

When our ego is not a devil at all it's simply a misunderstanding.

And it's almost impossible for one to initiate an unconventional moment.

It would be like sitting down to your bowl of cereal in the morning and every morning you just start digging in with your right hand and suddenly your left hand just takes the cereal.

It would be a moment so unplanned that it's very hard for us to pull off within ourselves such an unplanned moment because the first thing that most people do is they start planning that unplanned moment even just a second before.

Now I'm going to eat with my left hand.

And what's interesting about that is that you're already,

You're still in your conventional mode of consciousness,

Of planning something.

Being satisfied is a very rigorous task because it's not something,

As I mentioned in meditation,

It's not something you can pretend to do.

This might seem,

As you try it on,

It might seem like one of those practices that is like fake it until you make it,

Fake being satisfied,

But you realize pretty quickly that you can't do that,

That you can't fake being satisfied.

The only thing you can really do is try to convince yourself that you're satisfied or lie to yourself that you're satisfied when you're not.

But if we can open to the larger possibility that being satisfied doesn't necessarily mean what we think it might mean,

That being whole or being complete may not equate with the formulas or ideas we have in our head about being whole or complete.

That it may not be our wholeness and completeness that is missing but that our ideas about wholeness and completeness may be a little bit off.

I was talking to someone recently and I was in a moment of argument with my son and I was a little bit fierce with him and I was a little bit frustrated with him.

And the person I was talking to was expressing surprise that I got frustrated,

I guess because if you play the role of a spiritual teacher you're not supposed to get frustrated.

I guess that's the formula that some people have.

And it was such a funny thing because there was this sense that,

And I ended up speaking with this person,

There was a sense that if I were whole and complete I would never be angry.

If I were whole and complete I'd never feel sad.

If I were whole and complete I'd never get a disease.

If I were whole and complete I wouldn't have to wear glasses anymore.

If I were whole and complete I would be my ideal weight,

You name it.

All of the different modifications we make to what it means to be whole and complete.

And of course we can see if we look at this,

It's a very deep misunderstanding,

Actually it's a very superficial misunderstanding of what wholeness is.

Because when we talk about wholeness and completeness we are talking simply about the wholeness and completeness of our inner being.

But because we live identified with our body and its experience we tend to translate wholeness and completeness into body conditions.

So that means wholeness and completeness will translate as looking a certain way,

Feeling a certain way,

Acting a certain way,

All of those things which are very misleading to really understanding the heart and essence of wholeness and completeness.

Because it will keep most people trapped in a game that goes on perpetually forever,

Possibly,

Of always trying to find completeness and wholeness where completeness and wholeness don't lie.

Right?

I mentioned at the very beginning of meditation that we should not begin to look for wholeness or completeness as a feeling,

Because feelings come and go,

Just as the body comes and goes.

That we won't find our wholeness and completeness on the level of things that change.

If we begin to consider wholeness and completeness at that deeper level,

Beyond the things that we can notice coming and going,

Changing,

It becomes very difficult to identify what is whole,

What is complete.

And so often we ordinarily just look for it as a certain kind of feeling.

So as I mentioned in meditation,

This is an incredibly simple practice.

One because the wholeness and completeness of who we are is already immediately available at any given moment.

Immediately available.

Always here.

Always present.

And yet very difficult,

This practice,

Because of all of the misunderstandings we have about wholeness and completeness.

So the many things that a person will have to go through in accepting their wholeness and completeness as true are the many misunderstandings that they have about it,

And possibly the energetic or emotional permutations of those understandings.

For example,

If I feel that to be whole means that I won't be angry ever,

Then I'm going to probably undergo a very long journey of continuing to get angry,

Frustrated with myself that I'm getting angry,

Using it to prove to myself that I'm not whole and complete,

Only in the long run to realize that my anger is a part of my wholeness and completeness.

But if I fight against that,

If I fight against anything in my experience,

I end up fighting against my wholeness and my completeness.

Because to be whole is to be total.

That doesn't mean to be whole is to be only a part.

If we say,

I am whole when I am happy,

But I'm not whole when I am sad,

There's something very wrong with that equation.

Because happiness is not total.

Happiness and sadness is total.

So a true human being has happiness and sadness.

That's what makes the human being whole.

A human being doesn't realize wholeness by being only happy.

That's the misconception we have about these things and the misconceptions that will arise to be worked through,

To be understood in our consciousness in order to realize our totality.

I prefer actually the word integrity,

Because integrity simply means having all of your essential parts.

It means you have everything you need.

You have everything available to you.

You have what's necessary for a human being to have,

Which is everything you have.

But as we begin to look at this or experience this more fully,

As we begin to accept this invitation of wholeness and completeness,

There's a whole host of different things that will arise.

Some of you,

I'm sure,

As you accepted that,

Kind of got that piece I mentioned later on of what now?

If you accept your wholeness and completeness,

Really,

Truly,

You realize that much of your life energy is spent seeking completeness.

So what to do with all that energy?

What to do with all that seeking?

Suddenly your life goes from,

Because we seek wholeness and completeness in a variety of different ways.

We seek it in just about everything we do.

Take for example the food you eat.

You eat food often to have an experience of some kind that feels good.

If you were simply eating what your body needs as necessary,

Your food might be very bland and boring and there wouldn't be much stimulation to it.

But we don't usually eat that way.

We eat in such a way that the food is also stimulating.

And that's a beautiful part of life.

I'm not saying we should stop doing that.

But we eat in such a way to have that stimulating component.

Often that stimulating component is wanted from some state of lack.

We feel that something's missing in us.

So we want our food to be a little spicy because we don't feel spicy enough.

We want our food to be a little sweet because we don't feel sweet enough.

And that's just food.

There's a whole lot of other arenas out there.

But the idea is if we can identify in our consciousness this search or this desire for wholeness,

And we can begin to accept,

Not believe,

Accept that it is true and that it is real and that it is here now,

The many things that are obstacles to realizing that wholeness just begin to surface so we can see them.

You know,

I generally called the obstacle dissatisfaction.

We may notice some dissatisfaction present in us.

But real wholeness and satisfaction will include that dissatisfaction within it.

There will be room for that.

How can I be whole?

How can I be total without that?

But there's a very mysterious thing that happens then that the dissatisfaction,

The unhappiness that we bring into ourselves as part of our totality is transformed by becoming part of the totality.

The old Indian analogy is of a salt,

A doll made of salt.

If your obstacles or your dissatisfaction is like a doll made out of salt,

When you put it into the ocean,

It is dissolved.

It is made into the ocean.

And this is the great alchemy or mystery of alchemy that we have available within us that by inviting whatever our experience may be into the wholeness of who we are,

Into the totality,

It's transformed.

But we can't begin with an attitude of I'm going to change this or I'm going to get rid of this because if we begin with that attitude,

We're divided.

We're divided in feeling like I'm whole,

But still there's this thing out here threatening me,

My sadness,

My fear,

My anger,

My confusion,

My low self-esteem,

Whatever it may be.

And so we find a dilemma within ourselves as we begin to practice that you can't simultaneously accept your wholeness and push some part of yourself away,

That in that a division is created.

And this gives rise to a very serious,

I have to say serious playfully,

A very serious spiritual schizophrenia where you feel like you're a divided thing,

A Jekyll and Hyde.

It's like you have this very enlightened side of yourself and this very unenlightened side of yourself.

And most of us get busy trying to figure out how I'm going to get rid of this very enlightened side of myself,

How I'm going to meditate it away,

How I'm going to yoga it away,

Pray it away,

Fast it away,

You name it.

But no matter what you do in prayer,

Meditation,

Fasting,

Hallucinogenics,

You name it,

There it is again.

Because it has not become a part of your totality yet.

And so it's remaining there on the fringe waiting to become a part of you.

If we can begin to see our work of being whole as that,

As including all of our experience into ourselves,

Rather than rejecting,

Fighting or resisting,

Rather than dividing ourselves between what is spiritual and what is not spiritual,

Then we start to understand what wholeness really means.

And those misunderstandings we have begin to drop away.

And what we find in that is a whole human being.

And a whole human being is really just no bullshit,

Just no nonsense.

It's like there's not this game of what's spiritual and what's not spiritual going on.

It's kind of why,

Who said it?

A house divided cannot stand.

Was that Christ or was that someone else?

I don't remember.

Someone else probably.

But being divided,

There's no strength.

There's no standing.

There's no solidity in being divided.

Being total,

There's solidity.

But it's not the kind of solidity that we might imagine as an experience without doubt or an experience without anger or an experience without sadness.

It's an experience that includes being human all the way.

That's why when you find a really enlightened being,

They're very unassuming.

And they're extremely human.

You couldn't even tell they're enlightened because they're not doing anything special to be enlightened.

They're not proving their enlightenment to anybody.

They simply demonstrate ordinariness,

Which is exactly the opposite of what you would be looking for,

Right?

Because such a person doesn't live with this division in them anymore.

When you meet a very spiritual person,

Run.

Run away as fast as you can.

Run.

Because that person has a major division in their being between what is spiritual and what is not.

And you'll see this very spiritual side.

And it's lovely.

It's beautiful.

It's a great demonstration of what's possible within us.

But you'll find if you hang out long enough,

There's this other side that hasn't been welcomed.

That hasn't been loved yet.

Hasn't been incorporated yet.

And in such situations,

You'll often find a person who is very resistant or very negligent of the human part of their experience.

There'll be a subtle form of denial that's going on.

Like,

I don't get angry.

I don't have sadness.

That kind of thing.

There are great performances out there that put on shows like that.

I've met them.

They can be very convincing.

But they're not total.

They may have great energy about them but they're not total.

And I think our work here,

What we're involved with is the business of being total.

And I can say from experience,

Knowing both sides of that spectrum,

That being total is much more fun than being divided in such a way.

Any questions you might have about that?

Or insights coming to you?

Disassociation is a good,

It's a good,

You know,

Basically when we talk about dissociation,

We are talking about what I was describing,

Split,

Right?

That there's some part of us that sort of splits off from maybe an uglier part of ourselves or something.

And I'm not saying we do this consciously.

A lot of times it goes on unconscious.

So we have no idea it's even happening.

But we can see it sometimes that when we,

This is a good conversation piece here because if we look at what it means to be present or what it means to be fully ourselves,

Often what will happen is a subtle dissociation.

But what happens is very interesting is that if you come to the present moment or if you come to being yourself in a moment and there's a dissociation,

It's almost like stretching a rubber band back and then letting it go.

It snaps and it hits you.

In other words,

Your dissociation comes right up to catch you.

It comes right up to be a part of the experience.

And it comes right up as,

Well,

What now?

Because almost you could probably say,

I'm going to bring in my own overlay here,

What you could almost say is that we split ourselves from boredom.

If I enter the present moment,

There's this initially very stimulating,

Very alive experience,

But then very quickly it's boring.

It's like,

Well,

What now?

You know what I mean?

So your boredom catches up with you.

And then what we normally do at that point is we think,

I got to meditate deeper.

I got to meditate harder.

I got to get more into the present moment.

I've got to get further away from this boredom.

Whereas I like the distinction we have here between dissociating and disidentifying because when we disidentify from an experience,

This is a careful point and one that we could actually spend many,

Many weeks talking about and maybe we will.

Disidentification with our experience.

Do you all know this term,

Disidentification?

I'm seeing a few mediocre responses here.

Disidentification is typically a practice that is taught where one looks at a part of their experience,

Such as their boredom,

Their sadness,

Their pain,

And sort of declares within oneself,

I am not that,

Right?

That one begins to see oneself as consciousness or awareness and recognizing that consciousness and awareness are separate from the content,

Feelings,

Thoughts,

What have you.

So it's a basic element of meditation to be able to get some space between who you are as witnessing consciousness and the content of what you're experiencing,

Your thoughts and your emotions.

Often this is called disidentification.

You're not identifying with your thoughts or emotions anymore.

You're identifying with your witnessing awareness.

But what usually happens in the practice is more like dissociation,

Is that we begin to dissociate ourselves from this experience.

We begin to separate ourselves from this experience,

But it doesn't resolve this experience.

It doesn't heal it.

It doesn't transform it.

It doesn't change it.

So what becomes necessary at a certain point is to begin to understand my,

Are you all keeping up with me here?

This is some subtle points,

Is that disidentification comes through inclusion,

Meaning that when I can digest an experience,

Such as boredom,

Hatred,

Anger,

Sadness,

When I can digest that,

Fully take it in,

Then it is turned into food and it is metabolized and it is transformed versus trying to separate myself from that experience.

Whatever you try to separate yourself from will grow a tail that will tie itself to you and follow you wherever you go.

Whatever you digest becomes a part of you.

And if we knew the simple mechanics of digestion,

We would have no fear about this.

Because when you put a carrot into your mouth,

Do you fear becoming a carrot?

Do you fear like,

Oh no,

What's going to happen when I eat this carrot?

Am I going to turn into a carrot?

No,

You wouldn't say that at all.

But if you think of digesting your anger,

Do you not fear that it's going to take you over,

That it's going to dominate your consciousness or your fear or your sadness or whatever?

Same thing.

It's the exact same thing.

Disidentification or energy experiences,

They're just food to be metabolized,

To be brought in and digested just like a carrot.

And disidentification happens when you take that fear in,

Metabolize it,

And realize it didn't do anything to you.

That's where disidentification happens.

Now you not only have metabolized your fear,

But you've disidentified from it as a real state.

You don't believe in it because you've brought it so fully in to digest it,

Metabolize it,

And ultimately dissolve it.

So we should be very careful of this technique that's taught.

It's everywhere in non-duality of separating oneself from the experience.

Because although it can be very useful at a certain point to understand,

If you're all wrapped up in your drama,

It can be very useful to step outside and see your anger from a bigger point of view,

From a witnessing place.

That's very necessary.

But it won't change it.

It won't transform it.

It won't heal it until it's digested.

Yeah?

If you remember nothing from our time together,

Just remember that.

That alone can be immensely powerful.

And if you are interested in the non-dual teachings and the teachings about being awake and realizing who you really are,

That teaching alone will serve you very well.

Because it's probably the number one thing I see,

Have seen in my own experience and I see with others,

Is the way we try to push certain experiences away rather than digest them.

Digestion is a very powerful force,

Both physically and psychically.

Psychic digestion is very powerful.

Do you have,

So I find myself getting caught between the,

I think I understand when I know something and there's a space between knowing it and implementing it that I have a hard time bridging.

Do you have an example of,

I hate asking how,

But yeah,

I'm out of it,

To go about implementing and adjusting that.

The how is about embracing and what it has to do with is that when an experience arises that needs to be digested,

And we all know the experiences that need to be digested because they're the ones we don't want,

Right?

If you want it,

It's not necessary to digest it.

It's not causing a problem for you.

It's not a rift for you.

So it's a matter of when that experience arises,

Becoming as wholly aware of it as possible,

Which means that you are feeling the sensations of it.

You're aware of where it's happening in the body.

You've brought the full capacity of your awareness,

Physical,

Emotional,

Mental,

All of it,

To attending to that experience.

And then the last piece to it is most important,

Which is allowing it,

To allow that experience to be there.

Not push it away,

Not fight it,

Not spiritualize it.

Just let it be there,

Right?

It's that simple.

It really is.

It's not that simple,

Is that when an experience arises in you,

You allow it completely,

Right?

When I say allow it,

Though,

I'm not speaking about indulging it.

Indulging is different.

If you indulge an experience,

That's like your sadness comes and you get all wrapped up in the story of it,

And you mope,

You know,

And you pout,

And you blame,

Versus allowing it,

Which is a very clean experience of just within yourself,

Feeling the full scope of that feeling,

That energy,

And what's going on in your body.

Okay?

So allowing the energy also then almost necessitates dropping the story.

We're not talking about allowing an experience as indulging the story of it.

Those are two different things.

In fact,

If you indulge a story,

If sadness comes and you're angry about it and you're blaming someone who made you feel sad,

It's a way of circling around your sadness.

It doesn't really get to it,

Right?

So sometimes it will be necessary to drop the story,

To drop the narrative that's going on so that you can contact what's actually there,

Whatever that is.

From there it's a matter of fully allowing it.

Feeling it,

Experiencing it,

And fully allowing it.

There's a result to that,

But I won't tell you about it because I don't want to set your consciousness up to expect something.

But if you follow those simple steps when something arises,

To be intensely aware of it,

Physically,

Emotionally,

Energetically,

And allow it to be there,

You'll see a shift.

If you don't see a shift,

It means that you're not fully allowing it.

And one of the subtle ways that we do that is,

I'm going to allow this sadness so that it will go away.

You see,

You're not really allowing that sadness.

Your agenda is to get it to go away.

You've got to be 100% okay with that sadness being there when it's there.

That's the only way you're going to see a shift.

And sometimes it takes work because sometimes you're not even aware of what you're feeling.

You know something feels off,

But you don't know what it is.

And even that's important.

I don't know what's going on,

But it feels off.

And I'm going to allow this experience of something feeling off.

I realize pretty quickly I feel agitated.

Now I have something to work with.

I'm allowing that agitation to be there.

That's what being present is.

You're being present with the experience you're having,

Fully,

Totally,

Completely.

That's part of what leads us to our totality,

To our wholeness.

That's the inclusion piece I was speaking of,

Allowing these things in to become a part of you.

You may realize the need for compassion.

You may realize that here's this sadness and not only do you have to allow it,

But you've got to love it up.

You've got to give it your heartfelt,

Devoted attention.

That you need to be tender toward it.

That may become necessary.

The first thing I would say is,

Well,

Thank you for sharing something that's vulnerable,

You know,

And being open and exposing in this environment.

So first I just appreciate that.

Often what ends up happening is that what we are given to digest becomes bigger.

And you know,

You get pretty good at digesting a carrot and then you're given an eggplant.

And then you get pretty good at digesting an eggplant and you're given a steak,

You know.

So it's kind of,

There's an amplification process.

I would say absolutely that you're making progress.

I would not doubt that at all.

Because I can sense the sincerity in your practice of it.

I would say that probably what's happening is you're encountering bigger dimensions of things to be digested.

And sometimes those go beyond just even emotional experience.

They go into elements of identity.

They go into energetic properties that you can't clearly identify as emotional or even as relational.

And those become the harder ones to navigate because we often don't even have a psychic framework for how to metabolize those.

It's still the same process employed.

It's still the same process used.

But for example,

If a person were to go to a typical therapist,

The typical therapist is going to know mostly how to help a person digest their emotions,

Right?

As you become skilled at that,

You start facing larger and bigger dimensions of your consciousness,

Which we would call spiritual.

And in digesting those,

The therapist is probably not going to be able to help you because you are no longer on that same language.

You're no longer in that same territory anymore.

So I would guess,

Based on what you're telling me,

Is that you're confronting or being faced with larger elements,

Ones that your conscious mind may not recognize.

And so I would say usually when that happens,

We meet a sort of wall.

We sort of hit a wall where we can't seem to go any further or digest any further.

It doesn't sound to me like what you're saying is strictly emotion.

It seems like you're pretty skilled and fluid with that.

Not to say that you're perfect at it or anything like that,

But yeah.

I think that that's just the sense I get is that you're meeting things that are bigger than emotional or bigger than relational.

So what may be happening in a way,

I'm guessing here a little bit,

I don't have enough detail,

But is there can be a way of sort of latching onto relational or emotional dilemmas almost as a way of avoiding going into those bigger pieces because they can do things like expand your identity or they can do things like take you out beyond what you've known about yourself.

So what will happen in an individual is often a subtle kind of hanging on to some of the emotional turmoils and such because this expansion is so big or so unknown or so unpredictable.

That sounds to me like a little bit what you're describing.

It's hard to say without knowing more,

But I don't,

Usually when a person is not experiencing stress for lack of a better word in the digestion process,

It's because they are employing certain defense mechanisms that they don't realize.

I don't hear that in what you're saying,

But sometimes that happens.

When I worked in wilderness therapy,

We had a whole page of things we called techniques to avoid change.

We have a whole lot of techniques to avoid changing.

And so when we're faced with change,

There are certain sometimes unconscious techniques that we employ that we don't realize.

Certainly it's one of those two things.

Either there's an unconscious tactic that is sabotaging the process or you're meeting something bigger than what you've known and you're just sort of hitting that wall.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And why wouldn't it?

Reviews

Love

So helpful. Wish you would expand on that last topic of hitting a wall with this greater expansion or employing unconscious tactics and how to identify those.

Genius, I was wondering about what's actually being whole, all I see tells me to be whole but it was like a puzzle with pieces missing. Now it seems like I have all the pieces and can really start combining them until it gets good to see, it feels like a huge landscape and maybe there is not an end, but it really doesn't bother me anymore! ♥️ Thank you!

Incredible teaching on the common conflation of dissociation and disidentification.

Great perspective. Would love to add this to my site so others can listen.

Wonderful. This tied up perfectly what I have been processing for the last 24 hrs. Thank you.

Wow! Mind blowing. You cannot even imagine how much this has helped me understand exactly what I need to practice. Thank you, thank you, thank you! 💕

Great talk, wonderful perspective for people to gain a better insight, thanks 🙏👍👍

Very inspiring, meditation to a coming home.
Namaste 🙏🏼

I thought this was an excellent talk. So helpful. Thank you so much. ❤

Great insight & explanation about digesting experiences, emotions, thoughts etc. to truly allow acceptance one becomes whole. 🙏🏼

Outstanding information/insight

Thank you, sir! 👍

That was great!
Loved the fact that your subject matter and delivery were so real. Thank you and Namaste 🙇‍♀️

Brilliant. So clear. I have learnt from listening to you. Thankyou