The Most Important Practice | Authentic Living #4

I love these cliff faces we have these rocks you know rising up and everybody finds them so beautiful I mean look at these trees as well though I mean I love the we haven't got any kind of spring blossom or anything coming yet It's just past the solstice.

But yeah,

People love these cliff faces.

You get old crows nesting in them and everything.

But there's actually a very dark sort of secret with these.

This area was called Hell Hole Rocks.

And this stone is the yellow Yorkshire stone that all the houses in the town are built out of.

And all the surrounding area.

It was at its absolute peak during the.

.

.

You know,

The so-called industrial revolution where all the kind of cotton was being taken out of India.

And brought to the northwest of england to be processed into all sorts of things and our entire town was kind of built Sort of out of that.

It's good to know your history,

You know.

And then at least we can kind of walk our way together through it instead of being in denial and stuff.

And uh.

.

.

You know,

The local people who lived here,

The house I live in would have been in the slum area.

Uh and uh and people would have just worked in the factories kind of processing the cotton and um so nobody did very well out of this apart from from the you-know-whos and uh uh yeah so this this rock was way out there back then uh and this was a quarry and there's another bit sort of further along And it was average two people a week would be crushed to death by the rocks.

And so every house in our town,

Every house in the towns all around that is built from this stone has got blood on it,

You know,

Blood in it,

Blood of.

.

.

Of the past of colonization and blood of.

.

.

The local population,

And as I say,

The best thing we can do.

Is,

Um,

We see what it is and walk our way together,

Don't you reckon?

Yeah,

So this place has actually got a name.

I've said this already,

Hell Hole Rocks,

It's called,

For the very reason that you came to work in the quarry,

You were working in the Hell Hole,

And your life expectancy,

I think at that age,

Was well under 40.

At that point.

So,

Yeah.

Anyway,

That's not what we're going to be talking about on this walk.

I just came up here to see how it was looking.

You seem to slip into that vibe for a minute.

I think that's maybe one of the reasons I don't come up here too much.

There's still maybe an echo of that.

Look at this mushroom though.

So we've leveled off a wee bit now.

Still a bit of puffing and panting to go.

Anyway,

Welcome.

Just thought we'd have a little check-in.

This is our fourth Authentic Living video.

If you want to see the others,

They're on some platforms and not others because of the content that we put into things.

So,

You know,

Do have a look around.

And it's just really lovely to be out for a little walk and talk with you.

Some of you will recognize this walk,

Actually.

We've used it in quite a few of the older videos.

Actually,

We've been making videos,

What,

Going back 13,

14 years.

And so there's loads of that stuff around.

But this new series is aimed at those of you who,

You know,

Starting to kind of want to take your practice a little bit more seriously.

So I just wanted to check in with you,

See how your practice is doing.

Please leave in the comments or the reviews or wherever this is.

Let me know how you're getting along.

That'd be fantastic.

And I kind of wanted to talk to you today.

I wanted to talk to you today.

About uh what i feel is is the one real practice so you know these videos the authentic living ones they're for people just kind of kind of starting to kind of be a bit more serious with what they're doing and um then of course we have got the open space for those who are kind of you know they know where they want to where they want to go or they're starting to trust the path and uh usually when we first kind of start out told you still be some puffing and panting going on uh we're kind of leveling out now and then we're going to go down it's beautiful when we go down uh usually when we kind of start out we're kind of looking around in all sorts of different places might be within the religion we've been raised in uh we might find ourselves being drawn towards buddhism or dao te ching or something like that and uh And so we might sort of come to think that that doing things.

.

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Sort of that way is the way to do things and it might be for you and we also think that and this was me for a long time that kind of getting all my ducks in a row every day was what it was all about you know so I had to get this much meditation in I had to do this much yoga and whatever else you know I had to eat this way had to live this way who turned out to be a cult i'm stuck in there for nearly 10 years you know you start dressing like people and all sorts of stuff you know and um or you're seeing somebody on on videos maybe on here and you kind of start to adapt to their thing you know take their stuff on oh i need to dress like this i need to talk like that i need to be mindful all of this sort of thing all of the time and actually we mistake those outer things for the practice we even mistake meditation for the practice and You know,

The only thing that is actually the real practice,

And this is a secret,

Actually.

I'll just give you a little bit of context to this.

There's a bookstore that gets in rare books for me.

And one of the guys there,

He kind of knows who I am and what I do.

And I'm kind of like,

You know,

He's kind of seen what I've been doing kind of more recently and so on.

And he says,

Please,

Whatever you do,

Don't start sharing this stuff with people.

You know you're kind of like up here kind of thing but don't don't share this stuff around i think i may have said this before uh anyway but it's a story i like so i'm going to tell it a lot more times and that absolutely convinced me then to kind of uh the way that we've been going in the last few years it's absolutely convinced me that this is completely necessary and as we said in the last video uh thank you for those of you tuned into the last video i know it was quite a quite a strong strong session that one um Thank you.

Uh some people came past with their dog and i don't like inadvertently filming people uh so yeah uh as we said in the last video um only those with the kind of ears or the hearts or the spirit to hear what's being said is gonna say it is gonna hear it So,

Absolutely no need to kind of not not teach as it were to kind of not share because only those who can actually receive will hear it in the way that it is kind of meant and you never know it might drop a drop a hint in somebody else's direction not that you have to come my way in any way at all you know so simple little thing i want to kind of just share with you today tiny little sort of uh truth from the past,

In a way.

Is is the your ordinary life so it's not the meditation it's your ordinary life that is the true practice and I don't know about you,

But I spent so much of my life trying to be somebody else.

Know i grew up uh very poor uh i only live in a little house now i don't have loads of money or anything um i uh do my practice as it were but i realized as kind of i kind of woke up into myself as the light of of true self began to kind of shine through things for me that that is only available to me and to all of us.

Uh inordinariness not in kind of crazy practices of course you can go off on retreat and do some very deep practices isolate yourself and kind of live in a cave and all sorts of things we're going down now and you can do you know all sorts and you get you get that you create an environment for it but then you begin to mistake the environment for the light of true self.

And so.

.

.

It's a.

.

.

It's awareness of the light of true self.

As natural as possible brought into your ordinary life,

You know?

And you don't have to look like anybody else you don't have to dress all in white you don't have to say special words you don't have to change your religion you don't need to do anything at all if the path you're practicing is true it will lead you to the light of true self and uh and then that is that becomes part of your life through living your ordinary life you know so you put the washing on You make your cup of coffee,

You make your.

.

.

Know your eggs and toast you kind of take the kids to school mine are grown now so um it's wonderful uh and just seeing them getting on with their lives don't interfere too much but be there and they need dad you know and uh And that's it,

You know,

That love,

That ordinary love of life is the thing itself.

And as you allow this,

As you allow yourself,

And I know it's very hard for some people because what we do is we create constructs hoping that they will work out.

And of course,

You've got to imagine a future.

You have to imagine a future.

With you know this kind of uh kind of collapsing reality because and this is what we're seeing right now is uh you know a lack of imagination that any other way would be possible uh other than the path that we set on maybe two or three hundred years ago and that if anybody disagrees with that um then uh then of course then then you know they're not part of humanity or something like that or that we introduce that there might be another way but at the same time we can actually kind of mess up our imagining as well by not actually allowing the light of true self to inform our imagination and to come from that so what we do is we buy into an existent model as it were but actually egoically we're kind of still hanging on to stuff you know a lot within kind of intentional community and so on which is what i found when i was in the cult and um and they've degraded so badly these days but they're still around anyway and you know the thing is i've been realizing recently is is that Well.

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While the urge is in you to try and save people we can get very caught up in that and um and actually then miss out on actually doing our own practice and actually what will change the world more than anything is yes we do have to be engaged with the world just like we have to know our history and walk our way together with awareness through that and make make right as best we can as we go along you know and if we're not willing to do that then we can't do anything like this you know what we're talking about And we could even do that from a kind of false way,

You know,

Guilt and pity and all sorts of nonsense.

But actually,

Just actually turning up with awareness,

Allowing our hearts to crack with love,

Just like we do for our families and so on.

And that's beautiful.

This woods.

You've got to see this woods.

Some of you will recognise this one.

I'm sure if you saw our video of my poem years back now,

Of a poem of mine,

An ecological poem called There Were Birds.

With my wife actually sort of speaking the poem instead of yours truly.

I actually wrote it to be a very difficult to speak poem because I wanted people to be tripping up so that they engage with the actual message of the poem and we had such fun in here 32 takes I think it was but it was filmed on this very path here but look at these trees Get my hat out of the way.

Yeah.

So that's it.

I mean,

You know,

It's a tiny me message.

Something that we've been realizing recently in the kind of open space area is that I've actually been sort of filtering the practices.

So some of you will notice that I'm not sharing sort of multiple different practices so much anymore.

A Nidra for this and a practice for that.

You know,

You've got to because you've got to meet people where they're at.

So you do a bit of that.

But we've actually noticed something.

And so I'm allowing that to kind of come across the lines a little bit.

People now who have been practicing in the way that we're talking about,

Allowing it to be their ordinary lives.

And to kind of inform their daily life from like say the awareness practices and and what we'll do is we'll outline kind of like the the couple of practices that are most effective and we'll do that on the retreats and so on so that you can begin digging into those And they've been kind of sticking with them now.

I think we're up to.

.

.

Sort of three to five years of people kind of working quite directly with these practices.

And it's interesting round about the three year mark.

Suddenly people really come back into their own lives.

And the thing is,

Is that if you try to jump through that hoop,

As it were,

Of not doing the kind of the just turning up that it takes and the kind of inner integration that kind of hints at you in tiny ways each day.

Then you can't kind of jump to that place,

You can't pretend it.

That's why we call this authentic living,

You know.

So you live authentically your own life and you allow it to be informed and you allow the practice into your life and you allow that into every aspect of your daily life.

And what we've really found now is people are waking really back up to themselves,

Really getting themselves back when they thought they've been lost for years.

The weight is starting to come off.

Mental health is clearing up.

There's a joie de vivre about actually being alive.

Is not as it is and you know that we need to bring some new vision to that informed by the light of true self and it's an absolute miracle to see and we've been talking about this quite a lot so i want to kind of start sort of bringing that over so that for those of you who have got kind of the spirit that's open enough to hear that you might sort of begin on that path and then when you're ready you know we'll walk along sort of further together as it were you know but last thing i want to say i've already said it but i want to say it again do not give anything up thinking it's going to lead you forward uh because you've picked up that idea from somewhere and uh and what we do is we end up kind of going through the motions of the action uh a lot of the time i've done it i did it for 35 years you know i'm sort of 40 how long have i been meditating now started when i'm 14 and i'm 61 now However long that is,

Right,

Because my math is not mathing.

I've reached that age when my math is age is not mathing.

Around about the 35 year mark,

2012,

That was,

It began to shift.

It took me that long.

I was so stubborn that this would work out,

You know.

And if that's the way it is,

That's the way it is.

But it didn't and it all collapsed.

And then the actual thing sort of started to shine its way through.

So don't give anything up.

This is the bit I'm not supposed to teach,

Actually.

And you don't give anything up.

You don't give up.

Food you don't give up uh the things that you're interested in you don't kind of change anything at all actually um unless you see that it's actually truly helpful for you to do so so you know if you've got some kind of kind of covering up addiction sort of thing going on and you're actually aware that that's a problem or something then getting help for that of course is absolutely necessary don't give up your sexuality don't give up your as the light of true self,

Even in the smallest way is touched into.

And this is it.

This is the entire path.

First of all,

It is the discovery of that.

Which we might call the kind of the preparation stages and then you keep trying to you know trick the game there's got to be a way to kind of keep keep all the old stuff you know or i'm going to give it all up and i'm going to be a spiritual person or something like that and uh and uh yeah and so uh so we keep kind of coming up against it again and again sort of thing and having to kind of you know reboot kind of thing but with the ordinary stuff of life what happens is the light begins to kind of sort of touch into those spaces Then.

.

.

Those things begin to go in the right direction that they're meant to go.

So if you're somebody who has suffered from sort of attachment problems or from lust problems or from kind of,

You know,

Covering themselves up with sort of substances or something like that,

Or kind of being egoic in the world as a way of kind of trying to sort of force your position in the world and so on,

You find those things beginning to soften.

Intimacy and desire for connection in fact you know sexuality becomes more beautiful You find that you want to kind of naturally want to change your diet.

So you don't impose an idea on yourself that has a label attached to it and then go around telling others they're this or that because they're not doing things your way.

And all you're doing is taking on somebody else's conditioning.

But you actually start to listen to your body and your body says,

I would like to eat this food.

I'd like to be hydrated.

I'd like to not take poisons into my body,

You know.

And so your body will kind of begin to shine with the light.

As well but if you try imposing an idea on it thinking you can kind of shortcut things all that's going to happen is is you get the identity of the shortcut that isn't a shortcut it's the longest way around actually and uh yeah so just the place that you end up with and this is the bit where i think you know those who say please don't teach this uh worry is that you end up with an illuminated ordinary self.

Rather than somebody else's,

You know,

So your house still needs painting.

I'm still driving a 20 year old car i tell you what i'm not getting rid of my 20 year old car uh 20 year old 4x4 it's an incredible thing why would i do that um you know um Yeah,

All the kind of stuff that you kind of think,

Oh,

That all needs to change and I need to live,

You know,

With white curtains and all this sort of thing or whatever sort of idea of spirituality kind of comes to your mind.

And it all turns out to be not very much,

But you get yourself.

You get your own heart.

You get your own spirit.

And it's not an invention,

It's life itself.

And the reason that certain folk don't like this being shared is because it is so easy to mishear this.

And maybe some of you will mishear this.

And that's just the path you're going to have to walk if that's the case.

There's nothing much we can do about that.

And just think that then there's nothing to do.

False version of authentic is that ego way,

You know,

That ego way,

You know,

The blowhard version of it and so on is being authentic in some way and that you're already,

You know,

This,

That or the other.

So that's not the case,

As it were.

There is a process,

But the process leads you back to the truth of this here and now.

And then you find out that you were here and now along but you still needed to walk the path if you see what i'm saying so That never sounds right,

Does it?

But that's the mystery.

You have to travel to find out that you were already here.

But you can't bypass the travel.

All right,

My friend,

Lots of love to you.

I'm going to hang out with these trees for a bit.

I mean,

Look at these babies here.

Look up there.

And then I think a second cup of coffee.

You can't see the trees.

There they are.

Hello trees.

All right.

See you soon.

See you in the next one.

Open space people.

I'm going to do a separate video for you this month.

But I will attach it on.

So you'll get the whole run.

Authentic living people.

And those of you joining me on different platforms and so on.

Lots of love to you.

See you somewhere on the road.