How are you feeling right now?
Are you feeling happy?
Do you have feelings of gratitude and love?
Or are you feeling lonely and depressed?
What I'd like to discuss today is how to go past the feelings of negativity and the feelings of positivity.
It's really hard to try to get over something that's negative,
Like sadness or depression or anger or jealousy.
And why would you want to get over being happy?
Happiness is beautiful.
And it's fun.
It's good to be happy.
We love being happy.
Of course we all do.
If you think about a spring,
If a spring is pulled and tension is on it by pulling it apart,
When you let it go,
It springs back to the other position from one extreme to the other extreme.
And that's what we're doing going throughout our lives.
Going from happiness to unhappiness with no direction,
No clue as to how we get into this pit of unhappiness.
And actually we're just coming down the valley of happiness.
We can't have both at the same time.
Or can we?
So let's get into that.
My name's Doug Grummins.
Thanks for joining me.
And let's talk about how our emotions affect us and how we can get past those effects and move on using things like Tantra and maybe yoga,
Maybe a little bit of Buddhist thought should come into it.
But anyway,
Let's get into it.
Like I said,
Life is a spring,
Like a mechanical spring.
And it goes from one extreme to the other because we don't know anything about the middle and how to be happy and content in the middle.
Let me tell you a little story.
I went to Starbucks in Virginia Beach one day.
I actually go there quite a bit to read.
And I love reading my Osho books and Alan Watts and all kinds of insightful teachers teaching us all these beautiful things.
But I read in one of my Osho books a story about a king.
And as I sat in Starbucks this one day,
This really pretty young girl,
Probably about 19 or 20 years old,
Was ordering a coffee and she sat down and she just basically broke out in tears.
And she was really sad.
And I could see all this sadness about her.
And I didn't even know the girl,
You know,
But I walked up to her and said,
Hi,
My name is Doug and I'd like to tell you a story.
And some of you may have heard the story before,
But bear with me and let's get it so maybe a few more people can enjoy this story too.
So I believe this is a Sufi story,
But I love the Sufis.
There's so many beautiful stories that they share and their wisdom is very in-depth and very beautiful.
But anyway,
I sat down with this young lady in Starbucks and I said,
Well,
Once upon a time there was a king and he was really,
Really sad one day.
I think he lost a member of his family and he was really sad.
So sad that he felt like he couldn't get over it and he couldn't get past it.
So he asked all the wise people in his kingdom what he should do about his sadness.
And of course,
All kinds of people gave him all kinds of advice,
But none of it seemed to help.
None of the advice seemed to help the king.
So our king went to a fakir,
A very wise person in his kingdom and asked him,
You know,
What shall I do?
I can't get over this sadness.
And the fakir said,
Okay,
Give me a week.
And the king gave him a week.
And what happened was the fakir,
He forged this ring and he gave this ring to the king and he told the king,
You know,
With this ring,
You'll come to understand how you can get over being sad.
And the king took the ring and there was some inscription on the ring.
And the inscription wrapped around the ring and it said,
And this too shall pass.
So when you're happy,
You're going to realize that that's going to pass,
That time's going to pass.
And then you're going to go into another period.
And if you're like the spring and you have that spring effect,
You'll go from one extreme to the other extreme and never right into the middle.
So this ring was very wise,
Wise inscription put on the ring,
You know,
And this too shall pass.
I mean,
That can go as well as saying that,
You know,
All your love affairs,
You may love somebody.
Human love,
Unfortunately,
Is usually not permanent.
And some couples defy that statement and they are married,
You know,
Their whole lives and have this incredible love.
But that's rare and far in between.
Human love was not designed to last.
And I think the reason why human love was not designed to last was that human love can give you a glimpse into divine love,
Into a greater love that exists beyond what we humans normally encounter.
And I think when I think of divine love,
I think of the teachings of Tantra,
Of Saraha,
One of the most famous tantric masters.
So Tantra is this incredible offshoot of Buddhism.
There's Hindu Tantra and then there's Buddhist Tantra.
I've studied both,
But I really like the teachings of Saraha.
And what Saraha is basically trying to say is,
Tantra is not indulgence and it's not repression.
When you think of that spring again,
Going from one extreme to the other extreme,
Always bouncing all the way from one extreme to the other extreme and no peace because it never stops in the middle.
So Buddha's teaching is teaching us that we all live in the middle.
We all live in this essence of now.
And really between the past and the future,
This now is all that exists.
And of course we all know that.
I'm not trying to turn everybody into Buddhists or anything,
But I'm just trying to get you to understand a teaching that sprouted from this train of thought of being in the middle.
And Saraha basically says,
You can use love,
Human love,
Or you can use anything negative or positive.
Both of them can be used as a transformative way to go beyond these things,
To go beyond human love,
To go beyond human anger or jealousy.
Also one of the key aspects to take into mind when you think about Tantra,
The word Tantra is associated with the word technique.
And technique is a tool,
A transformative tool to take you past this either what you're looking at as indulgence or repression.
So let's just take anger for example.
Anger is a good one to look at at first.
So if you're feeling anger and you're in the heat of this moment,
And if you're feeling anger you're really not centered,
You're really pulled to the periphery of your being.
And anger can be contagious,
You know.
It's this horrible thing that it's like you step on a mound of ants and they go crazy and you know,
Want to attack and kill you.
But if you take anger and.
.
.
