Changes, And How To Deal With Them

The world and so many people have been going through major changes. Father Carel-Piet van Eeden and I talk about how to deal with changes. We look at it from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective. We also talk about the battles we have with our ego and how meditation and prayer play an important role in assisting us in dealing with changes.

Transcript

Aloha and welcome.

I'm Cindy Palos here.

This is Spirit Speaks with my friend,

Beautiful father,

Karel Piet van Eeden in South Africa.

I'm in Maui.

Aloha.

Hello,

My dear friend.

How are you doing Cindy?

I'm doing good.

It's so interesting.

I've gone through so many changes and I'm kind of in the midst of them still.

And so I know I'm about,

It's hard to judge where,

But I feel like there were three or four major things that happened and I've gotten through a few hurdles,

But I have more to go and all of them seem to involve change.

Not the lightweight,

But major change.

And I've thought about it a lot.

So I asked you,

I said,

Can we talk about change?

And it's a powerful subject.

And I think a lot of major changes are going on with many people and the world right now.

I think that was part of what happened with COVID last year.

Don't you?

Yes.

I think for many people,

It was the speeding up of unresolved change that we were forced into now suddenly making these changes and implementing them into our lives.

Yeah.

And the concept of it,

Because I've written many things about change.

And on the whole,

When I think of change,

I understand metaphysically,

Mystically and spiritually very much about the role that change plays.

I was going back and I found a few poems,

Some recently that I wrote,

This was this last week.

I think if I wait here patiently,

If I sit and pray,

Will the answers that I need find a way to me today?

I know,

Lord,

You are always there.

Although sometimes I cannot hear.

I asked to listen closer and for my mind to be clear.

Speak to me,

Dear master,

Please help me to be strong and to find the right direction so that I may serve and carry on.

If I wait here patiently,

If I sit and pray,

Will the answers that I need find a way to me today?

Sometimes I cannot see what it is I need to make the changes necessary.

Perhaps I'm fighting what I perceive.

Change is not an easy thing,

But all things change.

And when we cling to what we must let go of,

So we must be free then to grow.

Lord,

If I wait here patiently,

If I sit and pray,

And if I plead,

Will you help me to see what's the best way to deal with all the changes facing me?

And this,

Of course,

Brought up a lot of elements.

Prayer,

Doubt,

Needing the strength to believe and to have hope,

Which comes up when you face some heavy changes.

And I can weigh those like a Libra in the scales and know that they're both there.

But when you're in the middle of it,

It's still like,

Okay,

You're in that pathway to change still.

And change is a lot easier if you're not involved.

Or if you can be objective,

Or if I can pray or if I can meditate on it.

But in this daily life,

You know,

Time brings changes without a doubt,

You know,

We all change with time.

But then the question does,

Change,

Time change as well.

So you're going through changes as well.

When we go through these changes,

What do you see as the positive?

Let's stick with the positive.

What is the positive?

What's the positive things you see that happen with difficult changes?

The emotions and I think we need to not sugarcoat it.

It sucks.

It truly sucks at times.

And there are many positives,

Of course.

And I'm just always scared that we get bogged down in toxic spirituality.

And you know,

It's all part of the goodwill and yes,

It is.

But it doesn't change the fact that it sucks.

And in time,

We start understanding why these changes happen.

And that is my solace.

When I go through these changes and yes,

Everybody,

A lot of people are going through major upheaval.

People are scared,

People are frightened,

People are angry.

And because of all these changes that are being forced onto them.

And when you are in that moment,

For me,

It is important to acknowledge that you are not comfortable.

And then we take that step further and then we go into the meditation and we ask for that silence and we ask for the grace to listen and the grace to hear the Lord's answers and the spirit that speaks to us.

Today,

We had an extremely powerful mass for me.

It is the celebration of the Holy Trinity today.

And in the prayer that came out constantly,

God just allow us the space to become silent and to hear the reason,

To hear your voice in all of this.

And that is something that I think we really need to or could focus on is with this whirlwind going on all around us,

Just to become silent and to hear and to feel God's presence.

Exactly what you mentioned in this poem of today,

It is such a beautiful,

Powerful poem that you wrote.

These things are happening,

We are not going to change that.

And you mentioned time now as well.

Does time exist?

We can go off on the massive discussion on that as well.

For me,

Something that is coming up more and more is that in this universe,

God is experiencing God's self through every single configuration of atoms possible.

And for that to be true,

We need to go through change that hurts us as well.

Because that is how we are moving into our own holiness.

But it still sucks.

I couldn't agree more.

And again,

There's that we could get into the Zen behind it as well about the emptiness and nothingness.

And in that space of nothing is of course,

There is no time but at the same time,

Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.

So in this form,

There is time.

In the emptiness,

There isn't time.

But we are in that space here on Earth in this time and space,

Which is the meeting,

In many ways,

And the cross in many way of the meeting of time and form.

And as you absolutely I agree with what you said,

We are experiencing God in this form and God is experiencing us in this form.

That part that is God experiencing us,

I like that part to feel better than the part of us.

And that feels really good.

And that,

Of course,

Is that part that feels totally 100% capable.

Of course,

This is where we turn our will and our ego over to God.

And that is that surrendering part,

Which is just like a way of death battle.

It's like the ego's death in our battle with accepting and surrendering ourselves to God's will and letting go and seeing that in that space that we're turning it over to.

It's a good thing,

But that part of it that is experiencing the part that sucks in it is going,

Well,

Yeah,

I guess I go through this and I get to that.

But the idea is,

Wouldn't it be nice to have a lot more of that when you're going through this?

And so that's where the meditation,

That's where the prayer comes in.

That's where the inspiration comes in.

That's where the remembering comes in.

And those are some of the great gifts that you go through to break on through to the other side.

And of course,

In Buddhism,

They have a different basic precept of understanding than in Christianity.

Christianity,

I think of in myself,

As I think of the mastership of love and understanding God's love as embodied by Christ.

Buddha embraced and understood that the suffering and that was his inspiration to finding enlightenment was why is there all this suffering,

Seeing the suffering,

Getting out and living it for how many years?

I mean,

Many,

Many years he was out there in the wilderness and in many ways and roles,

Just getting deeper and deeper to understanding what the suffering was and how to get past the suffering.

And that's a little harder path than the path of love.

But then again,

Christ had to be crucified.

So we have this drama,

This life Dharma and drama that involves the plays and the roles that actually,

Even in Christianity,

Even though it's love,

That some embrace that suffering of Christ on the cross,

You know,

And remember that more than they remember sometimes the love aspect.

And it's interesting when I see people like Russell Crowe and others who just remember the passion,

The movie,

The passion,

Where it was all about the whole movie about the suffering on the cross,

Right?

Okay,

Well,

You're taking Buddhism to the suffering to the higher level here,

You know,

You know,

And then we go through the guilt that we experience sometimes is,

Well,

You know,

You would go to the Jewish people,

Look what you did to Christ.

I have to laugh,

You know,

It's because,

Well,

What part are you embracing?

So that is part of the change to how do we embrace our freedom from suffering?

How do we embrace the change?

How do we embrace turning our will over to God's will and what that entails,

What that truly entails to let go of your ego?

Is that not one of the meanings of life that we are now asking?

I think it is a constant answering of the question every moment is how do I do this?

Because we can reach levels of deep meditation and connection with God.

And tomorrow,

We might lose it again,

Because somebody has shifted the goalposts.

I think that happens last year.

And we see it happening more and more profoundly.

We know in our lives,

We having change happen to things that are quite sacred to us.

And things that are being taken away from us,

We our perception is that things are being taken away from us without reason,

Things that are maybe helping the world.

And what do you then do with that resentment?

Because that's what I'm feeling.

I feel resentment towards people and situations that are changing what my contribution is to the world.

And then trusting in God to know that God is now taking away things that have been taking up my time to fill it with my choice.

It's empowering,

But it's still not,

It's a challenge.

And for me,

It's a daily exercise now of,

Okay,

This is happening.

I'm not going to change the situation necessarily.

In neuro-linguistic programming,

We are taught that when you are in an uncomfortable situation,

You can try and change the situation.

You can change the way that you look at the situation,

Or you can leave.

And those are basically.

.

.

You're a linguistic,

Because for some reason,

You're the second person this week that's brought it up to me.

I have a friend whose mother is going through major,

Major heart surgery and this coming week,

You know,

On Tuesday.

And she just was saying she's studying neuro-linguistic programming and you just brought it up too.

And I think that there is some keys there and I'd like to explore what you just said,

The three ways.

Let's explore the three ways you deal with it in neuro-linguistic programming.

Okay.

So when there's an uncomfortable position or situation,

You can change the situation.

You can try,

But you cannot change the external.

You can only change yourself and you can try and put an influence into the external.

So the second thing that you can do is you can change the way that you perceive the situation.

And that is where your power is.

In NLP,

We call it reframing.

And the example that I always use for people to see that we don't use the same eyes ever.

If I see a dog,

I will run to it and I will play with it because yay puppy.

If somebody else sees a dog,

The same dog,

They will run away because they have had a negative experience sometimes with dogs.

So does that then make the dog good or bad?

And that is where the power of reframing comes in,

Where you then go through exercises of trying to see things from a different viewpoint or if you then really go into the neuro-linguistics,

How to hack the subconscious to have a different response to that stimulus from outside.

And then the third option is always available to us,

Leave and go into a new situation completely.

So there are really beautiful exercises we can do and practical exercises.

A lot of times people complain and they say when we talk about spirituality and about all these things that we do,

But I can't implement it into my life.

And it's a real challenge for a lot of people.

And that is why I think the mindfulness movement is so strong because it gives people almost a tangible thing to hold on to.

And sometimes it might be a crutch,

But maybe it's a solution for a lot of people who need that nothing against the mindfulness movement.

It is powerful in our right and it is tangible.

So what neuro-linguistics would say is stand in a power pose.

If you are feeling run down,

One of the things that we believe is that the body and mind are systemic.

So what happens is the spirit and the aura.

So if you feel down you will hunch your shoulders.

And what that does is it makes you feel even worse.

And there's been beautiful work done by professor Amy Cuddy.

Can you repeat that name and how do you spell it?

Yes,

Amy Cuddy,

C-U-D-D-Y.

She did a powerful TED Talk where they did research on how your posture affects your mood.

They took it a step further and they showed how if you stood in a power pose,

How it changes your whole body.

Well and I do believe that yoga as well,

That yoga and the postures and where that all came from was a part of that putting you in postures that experience different states of mind.

So it's interesting,

I didn't realize that there was a neuro-linguistic programming that it embraced that.

And I am going to explore that and look at that.

Although I do believe in the path of metaphysics,

Which does embrace mindfulness,

Just not necessarily in that phrase or the same term.

Basically,

A lot of the elements of mindfulness in metaphysics and meditation and mystical path are very,

Very similar because you do the awareness,

You do the breath,

You go into your awareness of your body where a lot of mindfulness just stops right there at the awareness of the body,

Of your breathing and what you're doing.

And there certainly is a wonderful gift in slowing down and just being aware because we know how powerful the breath is.

The breath is another controller,

I think,

Of your state of mind.

We know that because one of my Zen friend,

Teacher,

Mentor,

Roshi,

Bill Kwong Roshi said,

Breath sweeps mind.

And so we do know that as you breathe differently,

You also can change the energy field of your mind.

And in mindfulness,

You do explore your breath quite a bit.

And I think the elements of that and metaphysics are also very,

Very close as well.

I'm not sure though,

In mindfulness,

If you ever get to that,

And I'm still exploring mindfulness,

But I don't know if it connects to that point where you see and connect with your soul and God.

Have you sensed that in mindfulness,

You can make that connection to God?

I think yes.

And it is maybe because the term mindfulness is not something that's really concrete.

In my mind,

Mindfulness includes what we do.

For other people,

It might be a specific set of exercises and of techniques.

So I can't really say yes or no to that.

But I think anything leads us to God.

Because God is everything.

It is just different expressions that we maybe use.

I think so too.

And of course,

Getting back to the change and where that goes through all of this,

You know,

I'm always seeing that there is that God element and everything,

As you said,

Everything leads us back to God.

Of course change does.

I mean,

This is where so many people's prayers this last year,

You know,

I mean,

I experienced the power of so many people's prayers.

I've been going through my path recently.

But so many people's prayers for other people as well,

Who have also been going through major changes.

And those prayers have an element and an energy to them,

Which is so powerful to explore,

Which is,

Of course,

Taking you back to God.

I do see so many times on social media,

I will pray for you.

But then again,

We go to how are the people praying,

You know,

Are they praying for the other person themselves or are they praying to God,

For the other person's awareness of God to work through them.

And I think that this is all in our whole world's pattern this last year,

Longer than ever,

As when we go through any world war crisis or any major situation,

That there's a prayer energy field that is set up and we don't necessarily know the whole realm of changes that may be happening,

We just know that maybe someone's hurting or there's a problem or someone's life and death,

Etc.

But we also pray for the world.

And when we do that,

As we're praying for the world,

You know,

In the changes the world is going through,

I can't help but wonder what else is going on cosmically as well.

Are those prayers I think often reverberated on to other higher levels of consciousness and God's consciousness that is affecting even more than we might know?

There is not one world that we are not aware of.

I think there are several worlds that we are not aware of.

And because we are on Earth,

Which is by many people seen as the lowest level of learning,

We've forgotten about our connection to the divine and to everything,

That we have a very powerful element of energy that we send out,

Especially if it isn't focused in prayer.

But then again,

What is pray?

And to me,

That is breathing.

You spoke about the power of breathing,

But I mean,

Every breath is pray.

So that means that every single thing that we do is sending out energy to the world,

The physical,

But also to these worlds that we cannot see.

And that is then again,

Even through these changes,

We can ask,

Where am I sending energy to?

If I am in the middle of an extremely challenging position,

That allows us to channel more energy,

I believe,

Or we access a lot of energy through these changes.

And by becoming aware,

Mindful,

If you want to then use that term,

But if we can then become aware of what am I going to do with this ball of energy?

Because it is so powerful and I can use it in a negative way or a less than life thing and focus on the harm of the challenge that I'm facing or the change.

And maybe sometimes it is needed and sometimes it is okay to have a day of feeling sorry for oneself.

I really believe that.

But can you constantly then sink this low form of energy to yourself and to others?

And for how long can you do that until it really starts affecting you negatively?

And that is where being a way of your own power comes in very,

Very strongly and not my power,

But the power that God has given me,

The power of God flowing through me,

Because that is what creates this energy.

But we have the choice on how to use that energy and where we spend it on.

There's a lot of realization on this too,

Of the flow.

And I think you brought that up in the beginning of how we do flow through,

Hopefully with grace,

Through the changes and the roles that we do play.

We're able to do this when we're sleeping.

We can dream and play different roles and observe in different ways.

But the material form world is a much denser form world than the dream world.

And it's not as easy to move in that same grace flow necessarily as we do in the dream world.

And again,

Here we are merging what we have from what we get in prayer and meditation,

Our higher self spirit and working as,

Well,

I don't want,

I don't know if I want to use the term magicians,

But working as people who are aware as you,

And the weird term of that power and using it in our lives in a positive sense.

And a lot of times you get to a certain point in your life where you have to be aware,

Is this a power of good energy?

Is this a power of negative energy?

How do I combat negative energy with positive energy and not get into a battle with it?

How do we dissipate negative energy?

And again,

That is where we again,

Use what we have been taught on the inner levels and probably through many lifetimes of what our past is.

What's there in the good teachings that we find in our life through books and things that are given to us.

It's easy to read it.

It's harder to do it.

It's easy to believe it.

It's a little harder to enact it.

And I think we're at the point now where we have a huge amount of people who've transitioned this last year.

And we have this bridge of energy coming from higher levels to where we are.

And I do think it's really good actually to call upon that energy and use it when needed and know that even if we don't call upon it,

There is that powerful force of what is available to us to put into our life.

And we can put it all under the term of energy or God or any term you want really.

But I think we're at the point where we need everything we can get on that highest level to enact the changes necessary to bring the world to where we see it in our visions going,

Which is a higher state of consciousness for the world.

Most definitely.

And having that vision of the highest state I think is the first step because so many people are so caught up at the moment in fear that they cannot envision that world.

And that is a challenge.

And I think that is where the people who are aware are so crucial in sharing the vision.

It's not just good enough anymore to live for yourself.

And I mean that's one of Christ's teachings as well as to love one another as yourself.

So we need to share these messages and each in our own way you do not need to become a practitioner of metaphysics.

You do not need to become a doctor of metaphysics.

If you want to it's beautiful.

And I mean we know that the journey is one that's filled with wonder and awe and beauty.

But you need not to share light with the world.

And the world needs light so that it can see that future of where we are working towards.

And once that happens then we can start seeing the energy.

Otherwise we are getting into our cars and we start driving on holiday but we've never chosen the holiday destination which means we'll never get there.

I think we're just about out of time but I wanted to share the poem I wrote this morning.

A circle of life's projection spins throughout the world the center of our reflections mirrored in a precious pearl.

What pulls our perceptions what visions occur what magnet draws our direction what truth is there to really observe.

There is a greater power that can influence our mind it can help protect us and the circle of humankind.

Changes come and changes go and the ego can't control the way that time unfolds those changes from our soul.

And we find that spirit is a constant source and that circles flow from that energy that we come and go.

The circle of life spins throughout all time and space the center of God's perceptions experienced here face to face.

I always enjoy sharing my reflections and perceptions with you.

I just enjoy the exchange that we have.

You do beautiful work and people can find you and you do your wonderful work and healing you're also on Instagram and you have your your lovely sites and I hope people have a chance to discover all the power you have plus you're a wonderful counselor as well.

You're there in South Africa and I think a lot of people may have discovered the work that's being done with the white robe monks.

Benedictine.

I always have a dyslexically white robe monks of St.

Benedict of St.

Benedict because I think you're a wonderful spokesperson for them because of your perceptions and I hadn't known about them before I met you so thank you for that.

And I always will hopefully get back to being able to maybe doing another CD with you soon in the hands of God is one I still listen to every day and a beautiful gift with your music on that.

So thank you again for that.

And I'm wishing you all the highest and have a beautiful week and weekend next weekend and we will talk soon.

Aloha.

Have a beautiful week and a blessed one.

Thank you so much.