Free To Be: What Does It Mean To Be Free?

What is freedom? What does it mean to be free to be ourselves? Elementally, freedom means to understand fully who we truly are at all levels of our being. As a culture, we put so much emphasis on our identifications on the "form-base" level - our degrees, our status, our job, our titles. Join Dr. Shefali Tsabary in exploring how to get to know ourselves based on different levels of our being.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our second free to be class.

So what is freedom?

And what does it mean to be free to be ourselves in the we-ness of our relationships,

In the we,

In the us of our dynamics?

Really elementally,

Freedom means to understand fully who it is you truly are.

And no,

Despite me saying it over and over again,

I cannot say it enough.

We do not know who we truly are.

Now knowing who we truly are is on many levels.

So even though you know who you are on the material level,

I'm a woman,

I'm so tall,

I have auburn hair,

I have so many degrees,

I've written so many books,

I have so many relationships,

I'm a mother,

I'm a father.

That is knowing yourself on the form-based level.

So most of us say,

Of course I know myself.

So yes you do,

But on which level?

You know yourself on the material level.

Most of us know ourselves and know who we are in context to others always on the material level.

This is how we were raised.

And right now we have this college application scandal in the US where celebrities have,

Celebrities and the elite and the,

You know,

The superior privileged class have been buying college admissions all to say that the great impetus on identity through labels,

Status,

Titles,

Wealth,

Belonging,

Attachment to institutions is the way we define who it is we are.

That is why this college scandal has rocked the nation right now in this moment of time because it not only exposes elitism and how we overcoddle our children and how we are ruled by fear,

But more than that,

It shows how as a culture on this earth dimension,

We put so much emphasis,

So much onus on where we go to college,

Who we meet in college,

What we will get out of the college.

As one example,

We are ruled and bound by our identifications on the form based level.

How I look,

Who I know,

Where I went,

Where do I want to go,

Where I am on the career ladder,

How much money I make,

How much status I have,

How many labels I have,

How many books I have,

How many things I have,

How many possessions I have,

The zip code,

You get my drift.

It's all identification based.

This is what it means to know yourself on the form based level.

This is how we raise our children and this is how you and I were raised,

To be a certain kind of girl,

To be a certain kind of boy,

To own certain kinds of things,

To dress in a certain type of way.

We check our sense of worth based on these affixations,

These ways we affix ourselves to things and relationships,

All on the material level.

Yes,

All of us,

For the most part,

Know who it is we are on the material level.

That's the basic way of knowing who it is we are.

When I'm at workshops,

I will do this thing,

You can do it at your workshops,

I ask people who are you?

I am,

And everyone says,

All the mothers,

A mother,

A sister,

A daughter,

A provider,

An artist,

An entrepreneur,

A surgeon,

A pregnant woman,

A widow.

We label ourselves,

The I am has an attachment to it based in the material world,

So much so that we truly believe that the I am is what comes after that word am.

I am that.

We believe it fully and we are not just wanting,

We have to be a plethora of things in order to feel that the I is complete.

This is the tragedy of our raising.

This is how we raise our children.

I always say,

We don't just raise our children to be successful and happy.

No,

No,

No,

A little dab of Julia Roberts,

A little dose of Michael Phelps,

A little bit of Yo-Yo Ma,

A little bit of Mother Teresa.

It needs to be a million affixes after our name.

We affix to a million attachments and each one dictates who we are,

Meaning you can be pretty,

You can be skinny,

You can be rich,

But oh my goodness,

Now you're not married,

Everything goes away.

You can be pretty,

You can be rich,

You can be skinny,

You can be married,

But now you're not a parent,

Everything goes away.

This is the travesty of this kind of manic attachments in the material world.

They all have to be present in order for the I to feel whole.

All of them and one not there loosens the hold of all the others in its ability to keep us together.

One not there,

The entire ball of world comes undone.

Look in your own life.

You may have six things,

But you don't have the seventh.

You can have 20 things,

You don't have the 21st.

It is an unceasing,

Unerringly,

Unrelenting series of manic attachments that we keep on the conveyor belt of.

And this is how capitalism thrives.

At my talk at Mindvalley,

I called it the parenting industrial complex,

Right?

But it is not the parenting industrial complex.

It is the industrial complex of capitalism that compounds itself in the parent because the parent is the most fear based,

Right?

Because we don't understand what a parent is and that's why I write the books I do.

So the capitalist industry sees the weak link,

Ah,

The parent.

Let's use the love of the parent to poke on their fear and poke on it and poke on it and poke on it.

Oh,

Your kid is not a cellist.

Oh,

Your kid is a cellist?

Okay.

Is your kid a skier?

Oh,

Your kid is a skier?

Damn this parent.

Does your kid know how to speak four languages?

Is your kid no braille?

Does your kid volunteer in,

In Namibia?

Does your kid volunteer on its head?

Right?

This is how the industrial complex of capitalism thrives on the fear of the parent.

This is why colleges charge $80,

000.

This is why pre-Ks charge $100,

000 because it's telling the parent,

Don't worry.

We're going to set your kid up with all the identifications that you yourself were raised by,

But maybe your parents were too poor or maybe you were just too dull,

But we are going to handle it for you.

So this college preparatory,

You know,

Place that all these parents went to get assured that their kid would succeed fed on this fear.

But we all have this fear.

We were all raised to know who it is we are based on identification.

This is the sickness of our culture.

You and I are infected.

I really wasn't going to start like this.

I was going to start with optimism.

I always have this intention to start with cheery optimism,

With great,

Great glee and cheerfulness about the human condition.

But before I can even finish a sentence,

I'm just a rock hurtling down this fast paced hill to doom.

And I make you join me and then,

You know,

Just leave you after an hour to your own devices and say,

Go,

Go,

Go.

Don't drink too much.

Well,

This is just the way it is until we understand the trap we are in and see through it for its delusion.

We will not be free.

So being free is to understand that we don't know who it is we truly are.

And what does that mean?

It means that we have to know how we know ourselves and then understand,

Oh,

We only know ourselves so much in a piecemeal fashion that we are missing the whole boundless existence of who we truly are.

So first,

We have to begin with how we know ourselves in the false ways in order in order to then progress into knowing ourselves in the true ways.

How can we be free to be when we believe that we can be free in the inauthentic way we are being?

Because freedom will only come when we let go all the inauthentic ways we have been raised to be and then venture forth,

Like I said,

In the dimension beyond right and wrong,

As Rumi talked about,

In a dimension that you and I have not even really touched.

In that dimension,

Unknown to you and me yet,

Lies freedom.

There lies our true self.

In order to get there,

We have to go through a process,

Which is what I hope to take you on.

In order to go there,

We have to first see where we are.

And where we are right now is in a cesspool,

In a guttural,

Vomit-filled,

Toxic cesspool of lies which have conditioned and indoctrinated us and seduced and beguiled us into believing that we are the teacher,

The professor,

The scientist,

The wife,

The mother,

And the woman who lives in the mansion and the man who has the corporate corner office.

And that's who we are.

That is who we are only on one dimension,

Only on the dimension of form.

And the dimension of form is the most rigid,

Myopic,

Small-minded sliver of a way to be.

This is why we can never find true intimacy,

Because we are not intimate with ourselves.

We are only intimate with ourselves in relationship to our identification.

Meaning,

If I'm married,

I'm happy.

If I'm a mother,

I'm happy.

Then if I'm a mother and my child loves me,

Then I'm happy.

If I'm a mother and my child loves me and my child is a successful child that I want to have love me,

Then I'm happy.

You see,

It's just an endless domino effect of one more chain in the noose that binds us.

So the I am is really complete in itself.

I am,

We are.

Period.

It is a complete sentence.

But because we do not have an experience of the I am,

We are,

Oneness state,

We keep entering inauthentic,

Detached,

Superficially detached,

Not spiritually detached relationships where we are disconnected from each other.

Because understand this,

Imagine this.

How can we be deeply connected to another?

When between us and the other are a thousand transactional conditions,

Unspoken,

But very present.

Right?

So between me and Nirvana,

Between me and mana,

Deep intimacy that I'm yearning for is a thousand obstacles.

The barricades are high between me and intimacy.

I want intimacy.

You want intimacy.

I want true love.

I want true love.

But how can we have it if what lies between us and true love are a million conditioned transactional realities that need to be met before I get there?

It's impossible.

Conditioned realities can never be met because conditioned realities,

Transactional realities are always conditional.

They are always up for change.

If it rains,

I'll be happy.

Okay,

Great.

I'll be happy two times a year.

Right?

So when there are barricades between me and true intimacy that are really checkboxes that we need to check off every day,

We will never enter true intimacy.

You and I cannot be because our being can only exist when all those things are checked off.

True intimacy is the I am state without any checkbox,

Without any condition,

Without any desire for a transaction to be complete.

Do you know what this means?

This means things quite simply as you come for this class,

You have no condition expectation.

You come for this class.

I am not even here.

I am not even part of your judgment process.

I'm not even the teacher.

You come for this class fully aware that you come to connect to you.

Even if whatever I say turns you off,

You stay in a deep connection to you.

You go,

Ah,

I'm connecting deeper to me.

I don't exist.

You see,

I am not in your reality because I'm external to you.

When we arrive at that place where we can encounter a situation where the thing on the outside,

The X on the outside doesn't even exist because we are so grounded in the I am this of our own deep inner connection that is transcendence.

What does it mean on an even more simple level?

It means you go shopping with your girlfriends to Macy's and the entire store is full of junk.

Your state of equanimity simply doesn't change.

You are deeply in fact connected to yourself because everything is junk.

There is no condition transaction that has to be checked off in order for you to stay as gleeful as before you came in because your connection to the I am this stays the same.

Now imagine in a relationship with your child where no matter who they are,

Who they turn out to be,

Who they may never turn out to be,

Has no bearing on your I am this.

The I am intimacy that you long for can only exist when the conditions within your own mind,

Body and soul,

That deep,

That thread of connection is so polished like a diamond,

So untarnished,

It reflects off its own light with such a radiance that it doesn't need to borrow from any light on the outside in order to shine.

This is the true purpose we are here to shine your inner diamond,

To shine your inner connection to your mind,

Body,

Soul,

Where your I am,

No matter where you are,

In poverty,

In a tornado,

With the most gorgeous movie star of a man or a woman,

With a pimple,

With a wart,

With cellulite,

With a buffet or with crumbs,

Stays whole.

Now imagine that.

That is when you are free to be.

When you have achieved that state of inner resplendence and worked on yourself,

Right,

This is not going to come easy to us.

It has not come easy to anybody,

Not even the Buddha.

You have to hone it,

You have to shine it,

You have to polish it,

You have to tend to it,

You have to nurture it,

You have to deeply cultivate it.

This is the marriage you need to be undertaking.

This is the journey.

This is the college application.

This is the PhD.

This is the union.

This is the love affair.

This is the sex.

This is the intimacy,

Without which you will never find intimacy in your life outside.

You and I know the cliché,

What is on the outside is a mirror of what is inside,

But it is profound,

That cliché.

It's a spiritual cliché.

The outside mirrors the inside,

Meaning if you see lack on the outside of you judging this and you're judging that and you're like,

This Macy's experience was a piece of a waste of a time and I could have done a million more things with myself and you're begrudging and bemoaning and denying and upset and bitching,

That projection onto reality can only exist because the seeds of that judgment existed inside.

Because you yourself,

Me myself live in a conditioned reality within myself.

I'm split within myself.

You see,

I'm full of judgment within myself.

So when we are full of judgment within ourselves,

We're constantly subconsciously checking up boxes.

Am I good?

Am I good?

Am I pretty?

Am I not?

Am I rich?

Am I good enough?

Am I valid?

Am I worthy?

Am I approved?

Am I not?

Am I belonging?

Am I not?

Am I intelligent?

Am I not?

Am I sweet?

Am I not?

Am I kind?

Am I not?

All these adjectives are constantly being titrated within,

Measured within based on whether or not the seeds of those seeds get met,

Sometimes don't get met.

So we are constantly living in perpetual persecution within.

But it's so subconscious.

It's so part of our deepest implant,

Imprint that we are not even aware.

But this is the deepest layer of our psyche,

A conditioned reality within.

So because we're not aware,

We think,

Hello,

Macy's had crap.

And because they have crap,

I'm really upset.

We don't understand that it looks like crap because we have crap inside that we judge.

Now,

If we have crap inside that we don't judge,

We won't judge the crap outside.

And because we judge the crap inside into good and bad and then feel happy or sad accordingly,

Every other moment tethered by a string,

Good,

Bad,

Good,

Bad,

Our mood goes up,

Our mood goes down.

Oh,

You like me?

I'm so happy.

You don't like me?

I'm not happy.

We're constantly being led.

If we could see the inflections of how we keep moving from within according to the circumstances outside,

We would understand how fickle we are in our I am-ness.

So because we are constantly calling the condition being met inside good,

Then outside we're constantly checking off.

And our mood and our feelings and our sense of worth get tethered to this outside situation,

This external entity,

This person,

This thing,

This possession.

It is nothing on the outside that can even pique our interests or even charge us,

Even touch us,

Tickle us,

Leave alone,

Wound us.

Nothing on the outside has the power unless we within have given it the power,

Which means that we don't have power within.

Our inside,

I say is full,

Is a sieve,

Is full of holes.

So those holes are longing to be filled.

So we're longing.

And when the friend doesn't love us,

The hole stays a hole.

So we don't like feeling this hole.

So we get very upset with the friend and we go,

Okay,

I'll go look for another friend.

And we keep looking,

Little realizing that the holes are longing,

Yearning to be filled by our own intimacy,

By our own glorious,

Sexual,

Sensual,

Wholehearted,

Openhearted,

Divine love.

Our own eyes need to be looking within with this enraptured passion.

Do we see ourselves with enraptured passion?

Do you long for your own body with a burning sensuality and desire?

Do you look in the mirror and make love to your own being,

Not in a narcissistic way,

In a way that truly sees your own essence?

Do you see who you really are,

Your essence of who you are beyond your pimple,

Your warts,

Your wrinkles and your cellulite and your status and your achievement and your capacity to have brawn or muscle or intellect?

Can you see deep into your own essence and recognize your own spark?

So the answer is no.

So the answer is no.

Then how can we be finding love on the outside or freedom on the outside or asking our partners,

Our children,

Our lovers,

Our mothers to please honor our essence,

To please fill our needs,

To please give us the permission to be free.

We begrudge the other,

You know,

She doesn't let me,

He doesn't let me,

He can't handle the truth.

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

We have created the conditions for that in authenticity because we don't dare.

And there is a price to pay for authenticity.

Trust me,

Right?

You will lose people and that's where you have to make a choice.

So you know,

Rumi said,

Don't look for,

I wrote it down somewhere,

What is it?

Your task is not to seek for love.

You know that famous quote.

It is not to seek for anything on the outside,

Not to seek for love,

But instead to seek for the barriers within yourself that block you from arriving at love.

So love is everywhere.

Love is our essence.

Freedom is love.

Love is freedom.

It is our birthright.

It is who we are.

We are not bound in this material world.

Unless we understand that we have squeezed this limitless spirit that we are,

This speck of the cosmos that we are,

This ray of the sun that we are,

And I don't mean this poetically,

I mean this as literally as I can.

Unless we understand the power that we are because we are a mirror of the God that we believe is on the outside.

Just illusion,

There is no God on the outside.

There is no other divine on the outside.

God,

If he was or she was,

Would want us to understand that we are.

So our interpretation of the divine is skewed and screwed up because a God,

The divine,

The benevolence of this omniscient being state would never want us to think we are of sin.

We are lesser than.

We are lower than.

We need to bow to.

That beautiful being state would want for us to flower into its exact mirror because we are that.

The Buddha said,

If you see the Buddha on the outside,

Kill it.

The Buddha knew,

Don't fall for the illusion that the wise,

The divine,

The omnipowerful is on the outside.

The potency that you believe lies outside of you is inside.

So because we were raised in a material world to believe that we are our hair,

Our beauty,

Our face,

Our body,

All those things,

Now we're screwed.

We're screwed.

It pretends to give us freedom by saying,

But you can be a thousand things.

But actually it's a big trap because all those thousand things,

You know how parents tell their children,

You can be anything you want.

A cellist,

A violinist,

A pianist,

A oboist,

A skier,

A harpist,

A juggler.

But all those things are things that they have to do to be.

So the minute you tell someone you can be anything out of this list of a hundred things,

Right there is the trap.

It's a lie.

You don't have to tell a child you're free to be.

The child already was free to be.

We have so contorted this lie.

You're free to be within the list that I give you.

This is where the original sin occurs.

We split the child off from their essence because the child was like,

I am,

I am,

I am,

I'm already free.

Was there some mistaken sense that I wanted to be in a prison that I thought I was coming to earth to be under the eyes and tight fist of a warden?

No,

I don't think so.

I came here to be free.

I'm ready to be free.

You just feed me,

Clothe me,

Guide me a little bit,

But I'll find my way because I'm connected to my heart.

I'm connected to my feelings.

I know that I am going to be safe.

Look,

I give myself to you,

The infant says to its parents,

To this,

This very evil world that we apparently live in.

Look,

I'm coming helpless,

Hapless,

Vulnerable.

I'm giving myself to you.

So obviously I'm already connected to a divine source that says I'm going to be okay.

I come with trust.

Who trusts more than an infant?

But you see,

Because the infant is so small in might and such a little unformed entity we think that we go,

Oh,

Okay.

You know,

We don't understand the powerful spiritual significance of who we were when we first came into this form.

We were filled with unabiding trust.

We just gave,

We just surrendered because there was no separation between me and you.

I was one.

You were one in the womb.

The separation of birth is the first mood shock,

But it was only a physical separation.

It wasn't supposed to be a spiritual separation.

Spiritually we were supposed to still be one,

But you see the mother and the father,

Even in the womb had created a separation.

What will we name it?

What is its gender?

Let's get the color according to the gender.

Which school will it go?

What zip code do we live in?

Already when the kid,

The baby,

The infant was in the womb,

There was separation.

If the parents understood spiritual oneness,

Then the physical separation that occurs at birth would be the only separation that occurred.

The emotional and spiritual connection would still be so deeply embedded that the child would simply unfold and grow connected to who it is they already are and are meant to be,

Which could be a million things and iterations of their original essence.

We don't know,

But the doing that they would do would only be an expression of the deep inner connection.

The doing that they're doing in our doing and the way we raise our children is a deep reflection of disconnection.

It is the doing that they have to do in order to get worth.

It is the doing that they have to do in order to belong.

It is a doing that they have to do in order to be happy they're told.

Do you see the original separation,

The original sin occurs because the parents put form based identifications on the essence of the child.

This happened to you.

This happened to me.

It's deep in our imprinting.

It's in our DNA.

So we have forgotten who it is we are.

We have been told you are your attachment.

So when you are your attachment,

You keep looking to attach.

You've been told you're only going to be happy if you're married.

You can't be alone.

Who was I talking to today?

I can't remember.

Maybe it was someone here or maybe in a class I did that I was talking about being alone and they were saying to me,

It's just got to remember who,

Oh,

But they'll be alone on holidays,

You know?

And I said,

The whole construct of holidays is a manmade construct.

So now if you're alone on the holiday,

It's a great sign and calling for depression.

But if you were alone just the day before the holiday,

It's okay.

You see what I mean?

How we've created such junk to then attach to,

To then get upset about.

So when I was encouraging this person to be alone or telling her,

Let the other person be alone and she was like,

No,

But then she'd be alone on the holidays.

You see,

This is what it means to have a conditional reality on the 25th of December.

If you're alone,

Depression,

24th,

23rd,

22nd,

No problem.

On the 14th of February,

If you don't have a partner,

The whole world tells you,

Ooh,

What's wrong with you?

But on the 13th and the 12th,

You're fine.

That's why all single women in their thirties and forties and men in the men don't buy into this so much,

But we women will acquire just one Valentine's to be over already because it's so much pressure because we bought into this pressure.

We bought into these constructs that who it is we are would be these things.

And then we're happy when it's checked off and unhappy,

But there are a hundred things,

As I said,

So we're constantly an emotional puppet.

You know,

It's just exhausting.

Why do we tell our children life is tough?

Because we have made it tough because as long as we are our attachments,

We will constantly look to attach.

And then when the attachment is good to us,

We're happy when the attachment chooses to be attached to someone else,

We call them a cheater,

A liar,

Betrayer.

Nobody's cheating on us.

Nobody's betraying us.

There is nobody to attach to really,

Because all of that is an illusion.

All of it,

All of it.

If I can tell you that our children are our greatest teachers because they teach us the illusion of this attachment.

That's why I call my daughter Maya.

Maya means illusion because I know I'm forgetting every day and I'm thinking she's mine.

So I called her Maya,

Illusion to remind me.

So if the child who quote unquote has your DNA,

Has your genetics came from your womb,

If it was birth,

If there I'm saying it's an illusion,

Khalil Gibran said,

They come through you,

They belong not to you.

If the mystics understood this essential wisdom that even children are not yours,

Right?

That illusion that they are yours.

They're the children that came through you,

Right?

We should always say,

If you say my children say my children,

Right?

I always go my children.

Or if I got extra energy,

I go the child who chose me to be its mother in this lifetime only,

Fool that the child is.

Or the child who chose to come through me,

Poor child,

Right?

So as long as we understand when we say my child,

What we really mean,

Then we will understand the essential truth of all relationships.

If the one that came through you wrecked your body,

Right?

Beguiled you in form that it's yours.

You see,

That's why this dimension is so tricky because the child is really the symbol of the trick because the child really came through the form.

Looks like you,

Or looks like something like you look like,

Or like your partner looked like,

Or the mother looked like.

So it's telling you,

Ah,

You're getting trapped,

Aren't you?

You're thinking I come from you.

You think I belong to you because I came from your genetics.

You think that the coming from you is really you.

You think that you are me and I am you.

Not in the oneness state,

But in the ownership state,

In the possession state,

In the controlling state,

Right?

And yeah,

We go,

Yeah,

I fell for it because you wrecked my body.

You exhausted me.

You drained my finances.

But little do we realize that all of that is in the form.

So the child really fools us.

You see,

The child teaches us form formlessness right there.

And if we can master the form formlessness,

Duality,

Non-duality of this relationship,

We can do it anywhere.

You can drive in New York,

You can drive anywhere.

That's why I started my teachings through the parenting process because the greatest delusion will be our greatest salvation,

Right?

It is the greatest trap.

It's not fair to us parents.

It's really actually a cruel joke having children because they're like,

Take care of me.

Give me all your money.

I'll suck you dry,

But I don't belong to you.

I'm my own sovereign being.

After they've left you high and dry,

Wrecked your heart,

Left you alone in your old age to just be decrepit and run away with your millions and all your energy and zest,

Right?

And given you nothing.

It's the greatest trap.

But if you understand early that it is the greatest trap to teach you about your greatest salvation,

Then you understood all the lessons of wisdom possible,

Right?

You understood,

But we don't understand.

That's why we wreck our children.

We send them to great colleges and we give them half our life savings to send them to travel teams and cricket teams and tennis teams and baseball teams.

And we think that they're going to be in the hall of fame.

And because we have still got our own living to do.

Sorry,

Child,

Through the child.

Sorry,

We still have to live through you.

So whatever we learned,

All the conditioned realities of the self that we attached to,

We now project onto our children and live through them all in the name of loving them,

All in the name of setting them up.

Right.

What a great lie.

But it's not our fault.

I do it.

You do it.

It's just such a damn trap.

Even my calling my daughter,

Maya,

The way I call her Maya is like with so much control.

Maya,

How dare you?

Right.

So it's like telling my kid,

Breathe,

Breathe,

Meditate.

It doesn't matter what words you say.

I'm like,

Oh,

I'm so wise.

I call I called it.

I call my daughter illusion.

It doesn't matter.

I still get ensnared all the time because this culture,

This dimension tricks us because it wants to make money at the end of the day.

It's found a way to make the engine of capitalism go where few have and everyone else is in lack and the pendulum keeps swinging between scarcity,

Abundance,

Scarcity,

Abundance.

And there's a trap that if you work hard enough and you look pretty enough and if you marry right enough and if you marry again right enough,

You enter the needle will go to abundance.

And then if you don't,

The needle will be in lack.

All of us are trying to move that needle to abundance.

But abundance is not a form based reality.

Abundance is a formless reality.

Abundance can only be found in the realm of the formless,

Which means you have to let go and detach from all your identifications in the form.

Who wants to do that?

None of us.

We want to be in form and be in the formless.

Taki Shabari,

Is there any way I can please attach to all my inauthentic relationships and still find authenticity?

I don't want to give up my marriage,

But I want to be authentic.

But I'm suffering and I'm lying every day in the relationship,

But I want to stay in the relationship.

Can I please do both?

Can my kid please be pushed?

Can I push my kid?

Can I please motivate my kid?

But really not.

It doesn't work like that.

You can't have one foot here,

One foot there.

Now you can have one foot in form as long as you understand that that foot is only going to play in a very temporal transient way.

You cannot have your foot,

One foot in form and one foot out of form.

You can have one toe dangling playing in form,

But the only way to find liberation is out of form,

Out of the material world.

So love you see,

Which is our original state,

The state we are longing for in relationship,

That state cannot be found in relationship.

The love state is a state of freedom.

And in order to be in the love state,

You have to be in the freedom state.

To be in freedom means to get out of the cages,

The imprisonments.

Imprisonments of what?

Of all your attachments,

Of all that you believe the I am is that is really not.

And when you get that and you're willing,

You're willing to just slough it off without a care,

Knowing that you have full immunity in the formless world.

If you knew that you could let go of all of this and if you were guaranteed the joy and the love and the rapture that Hafiz and Rumi and the other Buddha talked about,

Jesus perhaps talked about,

If you were guaranteed,

Then you would give it all up.

But again,

It's conditional.

And as long as you stay in the desire for conditional guarantees,

You will not enter formless.

You see?

So this journey that I wish to walk with you,

I can't take you on any journey,

But I can walk with you and you can perhaps take me,

Is a journey away from attachment.

Because that is the only way to move the needle beyond the desire for lack abundance,

Lack abundance into the other realm where we understand that abundance can never go into lack because true abundance lies in eternal abundance.

The needle cannot move out of abundance when it is in the field of eternal abundance.

Just like I said,

There is no opposite to love because true love has no opposite.

It is an endless oceanic reality of just cosmological infinity.

The needle between what we call love-hate is not true love.

It's attachment-hate.

Attachment that makes me happy.

Does it make me happy?

I hate it.

In the same way,

The abundance lack that this capitalist environment has pretended to allure us into,

That you can be abundant if the moment the abundance has an if to it,

Has a condition to it,

It is false abundance.

It is simply status and lack,

Or again,

Attachment and lack.

So really the core of dysfunction is attachment in the material world.

The Buddha said and the Buddha say that the true self is the self that cannot be labeled.

The true self is the self that cannot be attached.

The true self is the self beyond views and beyond beliefs because our attachment is not only to relationships and to things.

Belief that is a fundamental belief that the I am needs to be attached.

So as long as you're attached to that belief that the I am is something,

It doesn't matter what it is,

That belief is what is at the core of the illness.

So the Buddha said true wisdom is when you have no more beliefs.

Forget the belief in the God and belief in the partner and belief in the child and the belief in the wealth and in the status and the achievement.

The belief that you need to have those beliefs is the core belief that you need to exterminate.

Then you are without belief and then the I am returns to its original state,

Which is our original state.

And then you are truly one of consciousness.

You are one with consciousness.

And as long as you are connected to that divine source that you truly are,

You do not lose your way.

And if you lose your way because you're part of this form based world and your toe goes to play,

The rest of you pulls it back.

And your truth is about being connected to divinity.

So there's a saying by Hafiz I wrote that down too because they're so beautiful Hafiz and Rumi.

Now,

If I find them,

I'm attaching to them.

Ever since happiness heard your name,

Hafiz says,

It has been running through the streets trying to find you.

What does this mean again?

There is no love on the outside.

There is no happiness on the outside.

This is all your right.

You are happiness.

You are love.

You are joy.

The fact that you believe you're not is because you've attached to a conditioned reality and the condition is not being met in this moment.

So by Rumi another quote,

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

What does that mean?

You cannot find your lover or you cannot look for Mr.

Right or Miss Right.

It is something that is simply not achievable and these dating sites and all these sites that promise you,

Sure,

They make it convenient,

But at the end of the day,

What this is saying that your true lover will be recognized when the true lover within you is intimate with you.

When your lover within you is an intimate reality.

When you are so seduced by your own being,

When your own life experience totally captures your imagination,

When your experiences,

Your moment by moment breath,

Your moment by moment encounters,

Everything is a source of devout worship.

When you revere your totality of your life experiences as they are,

That means you are in a deep state of loving yourself.

You are your greatest lover because your life and you are intimately one.

You are revering everything that occurs and that can only occur again when you're deeply with the divine connection of the universe,

With the oneness of who it is you really are.

There's no condition.

So if there's a sad experience in your life,

You're deeply reverent to it.

You don't discard the sad and go,

I don't want to feel sad.

When your partner cheats on you,

You deeply worship that experience.

You go,

Come,

I want to learn.

I invite you.

When you fall ill,

You don't bemoan and begrudge it.

Everything in your experience is seen as separate from you.

Then when you are in that state of rapture with your life,

With your body,

Even with your poutiness,

Even with your jealousy,

You are in love with your different parts of you because you see yourself as a divine being having a physical experience.

You understand.

Then you're in a deep state of inner worship.

Now you will meet people,

You will have experiences that also revere you.

Doesn't mean they make you happy.

Doesn't mean they make you rich.

Doesn't mean they applaud your ego.

It just means they keep revering your evolution,

Meaning you're in the flow of your evolution.

Even if they knock you,

They're serving you.

You know why?

Because you see everything as of service because you are in service to yourself.

So unless we are deeply entwined with our life experiences and become the lover to ourselves,

Become the love that we seek to have,

Then only in that profound state of wholeness are we completely free.

Then if somebody cheats on us or somebody doesn't like us or somebody says bad things about us,

We laugh.

I know it sounds absurd.

How can we laugh?

We laugh because we understand the divine Lila,

The divine play of it all,

Because only a toe is in this form-based world.

The rest of us is understanding and cultivating our relationship with our infinite potential,

Our infinite essence,

Big mind.

Who am I really?

And then the reverberations of the waves in the ocean can disturb,

Can hurricane,

Can tornado,

Can bring up the gravel,

Can kill the fish.

Of course we can be jealous.

We can be envious.

We can be rude.

We can be dumped.

We can be the dumper.

We can be the greedy.

Of course we will have reverberations of the form-based world.

But we understand that this is only a mere sliver of our vast potential.

So when we cultivate a sense of ourselves beyond the material world and what are the other layers,

I talk about it in my other courses,

But to touch upon it here,

We then understand that,

Oh,

I am not my thing.

I'm not my partner.

I'm not my mothering.

I am not my role.

Now,

Who am I?

When you begin to ask,

Who am I?

You now move into the next dimension.

You move into the dimension of the psychological.

You begin thinking and realizing that,

Yeah,

I am from my family.

I am not an identity myself.

I'm these traditions,

These generational patterns,

These karmic imprints,

Whatever you want to call it.

I'm coming from somewhere.

And connected to the psychological,

I'm also biological.

I am genetic.

I am inherited.

I am of a DNA that comes down a long legacy.

I am both biological and I'm psychological.

Now I'm understanding myself both as a biological being and our biology is deeply gendered.

A man and a woman's experience are exquisitely different.

Doesn't mean we are not equally human,

But it's really a fallacy to say that a man can understand a woman and a woman can understand a man.

Yes,

On an emotional level and maybe on a spiritual level,

But on a biological level,

We are different.

And it is in the understanding of this that we are wise.

We are afraid,

You see,

To say this.

We believe that how can we not be equal?

I'm not saying we're not equally human,

But we're not equal in terms of our biology.

We have different drives,

Different hormones,

Different cycles,

Different rhythms.

We have a period every month.

They don't even know what that means.

We give birth from our body.

We extend into two or three when we get,

When we're pregnant.

All that they don't have a clue about.

They have a rise and fall of testosterone on a diurnal basis,

Which drives them crazy.

We shame them for it.

We have no idea what it means to be ruled by another brain.

We are vastly different.

So when we begin to understand and probe deeper into the reality of our existence,

Meaning we're not just our things and trinkets and trophies,

But we are more,

We are a biology.

We've come from a species.

We have evolved.

We are psychologically intertwined with generations past.

Now we transcend the material.

Automatically,

Just at this level,

We have now begun a deeper inquiry into who it is we truly are.

Just by moving away from the material,

I can tell you 75% of our stress will leave us.

But the problem with this next level of psychological,

Biological is we do it superficially.

We do not probe deeply.

We go in there to simply change our circumstance.

We don't do it to disrupt patterns and to evolve and to master our own unique biology.

So we do it.

We dabble into that realm only to master the material.

You see how meditation is being sold these days.

It's being sold to make more money,

Sold to do better on exams,

Sold to get more focused,

Sold to find your life partner.

So we dabble into the spiritual,

Psychological,

But only to,

It's conditional,

Only to master in the material.

What the hell?

That's not why we're moving dimensions and evolving.

But you see how this trap of the material world exists everywhere in most motivational teachings,

In most seminars you go to,

In most meditation teachings.

It's a trap.

You know,

It sounds spiritual,

But it's never spiritual if it's selling you something in the material world.

Right?

If it's selling you something in the material world,

Like this course,

I am telling you nothing in the material world.

Divorce the material world.

Don't even look at the material world.

I'm saying detach from the material world.

That's true wisdom.

No,

Really anything that sells you something to go back into the material world is a layer,

Is a lie,

Is a trap,

Is fake.

It's fake motivation.

It's just motivation.

Rah,

Rah,

Rah motivation.

It's not deep transcendent wisdom.

I'm sorry,

I'm judging.

I know,

But what to do?

I have to tell you,

Tell you,

Tell you,

Don't waste your money on fake bullshit that takes you back into the material world.

It will keep you in the washing machine,

In the conveyor belt of human suffering.

So then after the psychological,

Biological,

If you transcend and you evolve,

Which most of us will not because most therapists will keep you stuck in the conveyor belt of the psychological.

Really you hate your mother,

You hate your mother,

You hate your mother.

Stay in the marriage,

Be in the marriage,

Go on dates in the marriage,

You know,

And they keep you in the,

Just the cyclical existence of psychological suffering.

So then hopefully 1% of those people will get tired of wasting their money on therapists that I am.

That's why no one sees me for long really.

And if they do,

I beg them not to.

And then they beg me too.

And I don't know how to get rid of them really.

So I keep raising my prices and then they keep coming and I go,

This is not working because you cannot be in the cauldron of psychological existence.

I've told you what your problem is.

Now we need to evolve.

So then the next level is the spiritual,

Which is when you begin going on meditation retreats.

And go find a truth that is beyond your mother,

Beyond your father,

Beyond your patterns,

Beyond the material attachments.

And you go sit in the cave of your solitude existence and you suffer yourself,

Right?

You suffer being with yourself,

Which is the most inordinately tough thing to do,

Right?

If anyone's been on a retreat,

You want to jump out,

Crawl out of your skin.

You know,

You will steal,

You will sleep with anyone just to escape the retreat.

But what you're really trying to do,

Endeavoring to do is please,

I'm tired of me.

Can I have a screen?

Can I have a pill?

Can I have some wine?

Can I please distract myself from me?

But look what we're really saying,

That we cannot sit with ourselves.

We are boring to ourselves.

Isn't that a tragedy?

And we want to find rapturous love and have somebody make delirious desiring,

Passionate sex and intimacy,

Have sex and intimacy with us.

How?

We cannot even sit with ourselves for six hours at a time.

How?

What I'm talking about is intimacy.

Intimacy with the self then floods out.

It literally pours out into intimacy with others.

And those you're not intimate with,

You won't be around anymore because you are only going to start becoming interested in deeply intimate relationships where you can be honest and you begin to realize,

Oh,

Well,

Every time I'm honest with this person,

She kind of belches.

So I need to not meet her much because I'm giving her indigestion.

Imagine how many people I give indigestion to.

So I leave them happily,

But it takes bravery and I do miss the form of them.

And sometimes I trick myself to go,

So what if she was judgmental most of the time and was scorning at me and furrowing her brow at me?

It's okay.

Till then you begin to realize as you evolve that you have to be uncompromising in your desire for intimacy,

Right?

But as you become more intimate with yourself and don't bullshit yourself and stop judging yourself,

The more and more you become a non-judger within,

You won't be able to be with people who judge you from outside.

You'd be like,

Okay,

Enjoy your judgment.

Peace,

Right?

You just won't be able to tolerate it.

The reason we stay with people,

Okay,

This is a big,

Big teaching,

Which I'll do in week,

I don't know,

Five,

Six or seven,

The reason we allow people to judge us and we take it,

I'm talking about judgment that is abusive,

Judgment that is derogatory,

Judgment that is degrading,

Judgment that is belittling,

Judgment that is fear inducing.

Yes,

All of us have been there.

The reason we allow that judgment to be part of our psyche when we know it is not for evolution,

We know that person is an income poop and hasn't evolved one bit,

But we listen to them lapping up their judgment of us.

You know why?

Because that same judgment,

That same judgment,

If not worse,

Is being judged by the inner judger to ourselves.

That's why it resonates.

In my own life,

I grew up with a great guilt for being who I was,

Right?

All of us have to some degree.

I grew up in India,

You know,

Few people look like me.

I've got special attention.

I feel guilty.

My best friend always had a complex.

She told me about it generously because of you.

I had a bad childhood.

No one pinch my cheeks.

They only pinch your cheeks.

No one said I was pretty.

So she told me willingly and then people around me told me,

Oh,

You think you're that and you think you're all that and you're your dad's favorite and you're this one's favorite.

So I grew up with guilt.

Like,

Oh,

I'm so sorry.

Like,

I'm so sorry.

I'm making everyone unhappy.

I'll become fat.

It's okay.

I'll become fat.

No problem.

So I became fat for a long time to please everyone and the thing about fat people is so cute.

We become so big and we're like,

Don't see me.

Okay.

Don't see me.

I'm just,

I'm just becoming big,

But don't see me.

Right.

And then we just balloon out or we paint ourselves into clowns or we tattoo ourselves or we pierce ourselves or we silicone and,

And Botox ourselves all to not have the other ones see us.

Right.

And we're just like behind these layers,

Which are so clownish and apparent,

So larger than life where we're like,

Please don't see me.

I'm doing all this so you don't see me.

So it's this perverse thing we do with ourselves anyway.

And so this was my refuge.

And so then when I grew up and grew up meaning became an adult.

And then when people said to me,

You know,

You're not attractive or you're not beautiful or you're so stupid or you're whatever it,

Whatever it was that I've decided I was,

It was like rose petals in my ear.

I was like,

Oh please.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

I have succeeded.

Thank you for telling me I'm stupid.

Thank you so much.

You know,

Because I had so bought into that,

That it was a complete,

I attracted that.

We attract the level of healing that's within outside because now if somebody tells me I'm stupid in a non evolving desire,

Like if you,

If with evolving desire,

Tell me,

You know,

You got to tell me that thing you said really stupid and you're an evolving being.

I'd be like,

Really?

Tell me,

Tell me,

Tell me,

Right?

Because I want to evolve.

So it's not about pride,

But when it is coming from a place of destruction,

My wholeness within now is so precious to me.

It's such a beautiful vase.

It's such a beautiful fruit that I'm nurturing that I am a mother bear with it.

And now I will maraud the people who come and attack it.

I don't maraud,

But I release them with love.

I go,

I don't need you.

This is what I want for you.

This level of integration where,

Where outside degradation is so unfamiliar,

It's so jarring.

You're like,

What did you say to me?

And then you immediately flinch and you walk away.

But most of us,

You'll see in your life,

You allow the abuse,

You allow the degradation,

You allow the subtle put down,

You allow the control,

The stamping,

The domination because that inner judger,

That inner dominating person,

Perpetrator,

Persecutor,

As one person at Evolve once said,

Her tribunal of assholes was so loud.

No one had to be an asshole on the outside.

She was like,

Yeah,

Please,

These are the ways you can put me down.

Right?

And we lay ourselves for the slaughter.

So spiritual work is the key where we go and become intimate with the self.

And then we then transcend to the transcendent layer of existence,

Which is where we understand that all of this was a waste of time if we had just stayed who it is we were as children,

We would be just fine.

All of this we had to do to arrive at our original state.

So Rumi and Hafiz and the Buddha and Jesus and Muhammad and Tolay and Osho,

You know,

Notwithstanding Osho had some problems,

But for the most part understood the radiance of our infinite essence.

So if we are not deeply in love with our infinite essence,

We're not going to find people deeply in love with their infinite essence.

And when they're not deeply in love with their infinite essence,

They will mirror our lack of deep love with our infinite essence.

And that's why we have dysfunctional relationships.

But dysfunctional relationships are lovely.

They are inescapable.

I have had only a hundred of them because that is the natural way of evolution.

We must go through the torture of dysfunctional relationships till we arrive at our own wisdom.

And some of us never arrive there.

And that's okay,

Too.

We have many more lives coming.

It's okay.

We don't have to evolve into wholeness.

Don't think,

Please,

After this course,

You need to become whole as if you were running to become whole anyway.

No,

No,

No,

No one is becoming whole after this course,

Because none of us really believe that there's this thing called divine love of the self.

You're listening to me and you're indulging me and getting your money's worth for this moment.

But you're not taking me seriously.

You think these are poetic words,

Because if you took me seriously,

You would really be working on you and not bullshitting this life away thinking you're lesser than even a smidge or that you could find love on the outside or there is some soulmate,

Cute person on the outside to fulfill you.

No,

In the form,

Yes,

Of course,

You can have form-based experiences,

But they're not going to fill the inner void.

So if you really want to become whole and believe that this is possible,

Then it is possible for you now.

It's not after this course.

It is right here in your reach now.

You just have to tap into it.

So if you really want to tap into it,

When you leave me now in a few minutes,

Take yourself to a quiet place,

Maybe outside if it's pretty,

And go and feel who it is you are and connect,

Go,

Who are you?

And you may not get an answer because the answer is not going to come immediately.

The true self is so buried.

It's not even going to believe you that you really want to know it,

But we have to begin the courtship,

Right?

This is the beginning of the interlude.

This is the beginning of the symphony,

But how will it begin?

Not from me telling you you're beautiful,

Not by me telling you you're worthy,

But you going and being worthy with yourself,

Meaning going and being intimate with yourself.

Okay,

Everybody,

That is freedom.