Embodiment Through Releasing The Idea Of A Higher Self

What if the idea of a higher self actually stands in the way of our life path? The challenge is that it inevitably creates a "lower self" essentially creating a split within us similar to the "good" and "bad" self or our "righteous" and "evil" sides. Yet, this is a common teaching in spiritual communities.

Let's explore this and see what we can do to bring us back to oneness within.

Transcript

So today we're talking about embodiment through releasing the idea of a higher self. Why do we want to talk about this? In a lot of spiritual teachings we have this idea of a split self, Like there's my good side and my bad side, My righteous side and my evil side, My highest self and my lower self, My enlightened self and my dense self. You know we have this idea and the problem is is that for as long as we believe that we'll actually never become enlightened. We'll never find happiness, We'll never find inner peace because we're divided. One of my favorite quantum physicists is David Bohm, Lots of you guys know. He was very interested in quantum physics obviously but his greater interest was actually human consciousness and how to alleviate human suffering, Which is why he was good friends with Krishnamurti for over 30 years and they had all these great dialogues. But one of the theories that David Bohm talked a lot about was the importance of being individual. What he took that word to mean was individuated, Undividable. That the key to happiness, The key to joy was to be undivided. And this is really interesting. Can you imagine yourself undivided? I mean we talk all the time about being whole, We talk about that, But even within that context we still split that whole in half like well here are the things that I'm really good at and here are the things that I've really accomplished and I figured out and inside that wholeness there's these other things that I'm still working on. It's not really undivided. You know what I mean? That's where whole doesn't necessarily mean undivided because now you have these two parts of yourself that are kind of warring against each other and even if it doesn't feel like a war it's still like well you guys are over there and I'm over here. Lots of you guys know that I'm addicted to Ted Lasso. We already watched the whole, It's a TV show on Apple, Highly recommend it. I think it's one of the most beautiful teachings done through comedy and brilliant writing I've seen in a long long time. You would know this without the Ted Lasso reference but it's a show about a soccer team or a football team in England and when they practice they split the team into two and they practice against each other. In many ways that's what we treat ourselves like. Like there's the first string and the second string or the starters and the ones we've got to fix. What if that didn't exist? What if everybody plays? What if everybody's equal? What if everybody is equally important? Imagine right now in your own consciousness, Imagine everything about yourself right now is perfect and I really mean that. I'm not just saying that you're awesome and special. I really mean I want you to feel what it would feel like inside if right now every single aspect of you was perfect. Every aspect of your life is perfect. Every aspect. Doesn't matter what your relationships are with your parents or your partner or your kids or your money situation. I think it's all life. It's just life. It's not a good life or a bad life. It's not the life I'm hoping for, The life I hate. It's just life because the challenge is it's like in Taoism where they'll say if you call something beautiful that means that something else is ugly. The very act of judging something to be good requires something else to be bad. Otherwise the fact that something is good means nothing. Unless there is something ugly in the world beautiful means nothing. But what this does is it creates these two parts of ourselves which whether we like it or not are at least at war with each other or not if not at war one side is severely neglected. As long as two parts of us exist we will not achieve the enlightenment we desire. The first question we have to ask ourself and this is a question that each one of us has to ask ourself. Right now in this moment what do you believe enlightenment is? Does enlightenment mean that you eat a certain way? Does enlightenment mean that well I do these ritual practices and I do like what does enlightenment mean? And it's an interesting question because in all of our spiritual studies our yogic studies our tantric studies our Christian studies our Hindu studies our Muslim whatever it is what is this state of being that we seek? Because it's so curious that we're sort of chasing something that maybe we can't even describe. So maybe we can't describe it but what if we what would it feel like? And again every one of us would have a slightly different description of this so I highly recommend taking this to journals or something at a later time. What would enlightenment feel like? Feel like inner peace? Does it feel like balance? Does it feel like lightness of being? Well wouldn't we get that when all of our parts like each other? All of our parts love each other? Imagine imagine putting a I love doing having a piece of paper with a line down the middle and imagine right now you said okay I'm just gonna go with my old ways and on the left side the column is for good and the right side the column is bad or the right side is the column is my higher self and the other side is my lower self. And you put everything on there that you would define yourself as. My highest self loves puppies and loves doing retreats and loves doing yoga and is really caring for other people and is a great listener and loves to read the Bhagavad Gita. Like whatever you think your good side is. And your lower self can't stop overeating, Sometimes has a bad temper, You know sometimes says too much and pisses people off and really doesn't want to heal the rift with their father. What if? This is the list. And now imagine those two sides looking at each other. What if they were all friends? What if we didn't judge ourselves that we really don't want to fix that relationship? Maybe we've tried and we've been hurt enough and we're gonna let it go. What if the fact that I like to overeat just means I really love food? What if the fact that I get really angry is because I really have a lot of passion in life and I really get pissed off when people don't take life seriously? What if I say things that upset people but maybe that's my role in life? Maybe I meant to be a disruptor. And again I'm not saying that these qualities necessarily lead to happy family environments. I'm not saying that we can't have a witness mind and observe our behaviors and learn other things. I'm just saying we have to start with the idea that everybody's friends. Imagine what that feels like inside right now. That everything that you judge yourself to be wrong or whatever distracted or can't make a decision or staying with a relationship longer than you should, Whatever. What if you were like, What's not wrong? It's just what I'm doing. You know it's not wrong that it's a blizzard today here in Canada on the first day of spring. It just is. You know imagine the torment I could cause myself by tormenting myself because it's snowing out instead of what I'd like it to be doing. So I grew up in Toronto, Went to university, Studied math, Married a dairy farmer, Moved to the middle of nowhere and became, Well I was programmed for a while and then I had babies and I was a farm wife. And so I hung out with a lot of farmers. Like that was my life. I lived in a rural area and I hung out with farmers. Every so often you know I would come across somebody and they would be so happy. And they are not what we might have called spiritual people. They went to church on Sundays, Maybe slept through the sermon, Had some nice coffee after with people. They loved their wife, They loved their kids, They were nice to the cows and they were really happy. And it was always interesting talking to them because they really accepted life. Life just was what it is and they took it as it came and they made choices and they met the challenges and sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. But they were actually quite genuinely happy people. They were enlightened, Working on the farm, Just living. You know it's that saying before enlightenment, Chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, Chop wood carry water. We all talk about, Oh if I was enlightened I would be like this and I wouldn't have all these issues and da da da da. And then we go and we buy a statue of the Buddha, Especially the laughing Buddha. And the dude's obese. I'm pretty sure most people didn't put obese on their highest self side. Can you imagine if you did? My goal is to be like the Buddha in all aspects. Can you imagine for a moment how happy you would be to eat whatever you wanted, Do whatever you wanted, And just love your body no matter what it was or wasn't? Kind of sounds like enlightenment to me. I have a good friend who used to come and teach at my, I used to own a train station that I had, I would teach all my classes out of and stuff. And so I had a friend that lived about an hour from here and he studied Chinese medicine. And I always called him the monk in blue jeans because he just walked around in total bliss all the time. And so he used to come to my train station and teach a program called food Dharma. And it was really really interesting. And he once told me a story about when he met the most enlightened person he'd ever met. He was down in, I don't know where he was, Whether he was overseas somewhere. And he was living with his family. And they said, Oh, We'd like to take you to our guru. This guy's amazing. And so, You know, My friend's so excited. So off they go on this trek to go find the guru. And they would start winding through the streets. I really wish I could remember where it was. But anyway, They're winding through the streets of, You know, Wherever it was. And they finally get into this little, Little, Little tiny street. And there's this guy sitting there. And he's kind of got tattery clothes on and his hair is all messy. And he's got like five teeth. And he's sitting there smoking a cigarette. And he's got these bright eyes. These bright sparkly eyes. And he just looks up at my friend. And he says, Hello. And my friend literally like just shivers went through his body. Because this guy was truly enlightened. Is that our goal? Hanging out on the corner with our friends smoking cigarettes with our teeth falling out? Like is that it was that on our good side? It's really interesting. When we start to break down these ideas of what we think enlightenment looks like. What we think happiness looks like. What we think inner peace looks like. Because I really think we've been sold a story. The story was sold to us by the church. By the Christian Church anyway. To say that no there's Jacob's ladder. You climb the ladder because essentially you are sinful. Because this is the other big challenge with this divide. It's not an even divide. Depending on where we are on our journey we might assume that most of us is bad. Most of us. So many people they'll come into our world here you know and they'll say yeah but you have no idea how messed up I am. Like I am so early in the journey. It's almost like what they're saying is most of me is dense and lower self. You know what do I do now? So we're kind of taught that not only are we divided but the second string is way stronger than the first string. What? But of course this is a very helpful teaching if you want to oppress people. Right? If you want to make sure people feel like they have crappy self-worth. They have no self-love. They have no sense of confidence. They're completely terrified to stand for what they believe in and stand in their conviction. Just tell them they're full of sin. Tell them they're base and dense and full of evil desires that are driving them. But if you do these five things then maybe you're saved. Maybe you'll become more enlightened. Maybe you'll become pure. Maybe you'll be a good person. In school it's interesting right because we're taught this as well that we grade everybody based on things. So we kind of like no but I'm not good at that. So these things I'm good at. I'm really good at English but I'm not good at math or I'm really good at phys ed and art but I'm not good at science or whatever. But what if instead school was simply sorting us based on our interests. And you look at you know that child and that child loves academics. They love mental gymnastics. That is their jam. That is just what floats their boat. That person over there wants to do physical experiments with things. That is what really interests them. This person over here is very tactile and they're very strong so they need to develop that. That person over there has excellent problem-solving things and they're really good at that. Like what if that's what school did? And if you got an A in that it just simply meant you were good at that. And if you didn't, If weren't good at that well then don't worry about it. That's not your path. Somebody else will be brilliant at that and they will be good at that. So there's a lot of negative stuff we can talk about in business people. It's really helpful if you're. . . I know people who have worked in the corporate world for a long time and it's definitely to the boss's advantage if people think that they always have to get better and better and better and better. It really works for the business. And obviously advertising definitely helps if they can convince you that there's something wrong with you so they can sell you something. So the fact that we have this belief system, It's pretty deeply ingrained in Kashmir Shaivism which is a branch of Tantra. They talk about the creation of the world and it starts with Shiva Shakti, The oneness. And then these two break into two and then there's all of these levels. There's like 36 levels of kind of the the self and all this kind of thing. And then the creation of Maya and then there's just it's a all the shackles that we've talked about in other the idea of time and space and limited ability and all these kind of things. There's all these little little moments that all the way go down and then we go down into the elements and all that and how the world is basically created in these 36 levels. And of course at the top is pure consciousness. And one of the most interesting things about it is that number 36 is earth, Number 35 is water, Number 34 is fire. Like these are the five elements at the end. And what's interesting is when they look at earth, The 36th level, The most incarnate aspect of reality, They don't consider it the lowest. They consider it the most complete incarnation. So at the very top you have Shiva consciousness, Pure consciousness, Pure potential for incarnation. And as you go down it's a little less conscious and a little more incarnate and it keeps going down all the way down through all the elements until eventually you hit earth. And earth is the quote lowest aspect of that incarnation. But it's not negative, It's the most complete incarnation. This is our goal. This is our goal alive here on earth. We don't want to leave this body. We want to experience earth. That's why we're here. So we want to embrace all the parts of us, All the aspects of us. That is how we are most complete. If you were to take that and put all the aspects of you and you could rate them according to which are more conscious, Less conscious, Whatever. Let more conscious, Less physical, Most physical, Less conscious, Whatever. And you lay it all the way down, All the way down to the very bottom. This is where you're really you. This is kind of, You know, Like when you're struggling with something and for whatever reason you're in crisis, Suddenly you're like, Okay, Hold on. I got to figure out where the rubber meets the road on this. I got to figure out like, You know, When like all all hell breaks loose, Like something happens and all of a sudden all these ideas you had, Okay, Forget all that. I don't care about all that. What do I have to do right now? Now we're at earth level. Now we're like, All right, What's the answer? Imagine embracing yourself like this. That there's not a single aspect of you that's bad or wrong or lowly or anything. It's just just you. I'm reading a book right now called Human Heart, Cosmic Heart by Thomas Cowan. It is fascinating. It is so interesting. I've just started reading it this morning. So one of the things I was reading about this morning is they were talking about the flow of blood and they were talking about water and how water, Actually there's a fourth state. It's not just liquid, Solid and gas. There's a fourth state between liquid and solid. They call it structured water and when water comes close to a certain kind of element like gelatin, For example, It becomes structured water which then it it will eventually go into solid water. It can become ice. What they were talking about was the health of a healthy river or a healthy stream and they said you'll know that a stream is healthy because the salmon, For example, Won't move. The water will be rushing by them. What happens when there's this structured water and regular water, There's this natural flow between them. It creates a perpetual movement like it's very very interesting science. But what's interesting is they talked about these salmon and when the salmon find this lovely space in between the regular water and the structured water kind of thing, They lie perfectly still. It's like the water slip streams by them kind of idea. And what's weird and what they said, Which is really rolling in my consciousness like right now, When they find the balance between gravity and levity, They are in perfect stillness and then all the food comes to them. They don't even have to swim around looking for anything. There's something magical about this balance point between the waters. And so they literally lay there getting fat and delicious or whatever fat and juicy and healthy and whatever and they don't actually move until they're going to spawn. And this is rolling around in my mind like crazy right now. And to me it has a lot to do with this interesting balance between the gravity of life and the levity of life. If English isn't your first language, Levity is lightness. Like a balloon has levity. Imagine that all the pieces inside of you matter. The parts of you that are afraid that there won't be money for rent next month. That's gravity. It's real. It's responsibility. It's good. But we must also have the levity of maybe hope or faith or courage or the belief in ourselves that we'll always meet the need. But there's some really happy place but everything has to play. We can't just be levity. We also need gravity. It's almost like there's nothing worse than someone who thinks they're perfect. Completely oppressing all gravity in their being. Because you can't even, You can't take advice for them. You don't, Because you're just like yeah but you're not even here. Like you're only thinking about all the parts of yourself that's what you believe to be perfect. And I'll tell you right now you're not perfect in your mind. You are oppressing all kinds of things that you don't like about yourself or you don't like about your upbringing. You don't like about whatever. You know in one of my classes this week we got talking about trust and what trust is. It's very hard to trust someone who will not look at the gravity parts of their life. Who doesn't like the difficult parts of their life. Who ignores them. Because if you drive something into the unconscious it snaps out. You can't trust them. They will suddenly say something mean or something will pop out of their mouth and it'll be sarcastic because the things that they have stored in the basement are trying to escape. Whereas to hang out with someone that's kind of got everything on the main floor and they're like yeah you know there's this there's that like whatever who cares. It's easy to trust them because everything's out in front. It's interesting also to think about the things we judge as wrong about ourselves. For example what if you think that in your opinion you talk too much or maybe people have told you you talk too much you're too loud and you don't listen and you're like ah I still have to work on that. Well one it's possible you're just in the wrong crowd. I remember when I was in high school I was dating this guy. I was 17 he was 23 and he was gorgeous like gorgeous and I considered myself very frumpy and plain and the idea that this gorgeous man wanted to date me was quite a coup for me. Well I will never forget going to his family gatherings and my family's very polite. My grandfather was a minister, My uncle's a minister, My parents are teachers. So my family was pretty Sunday dinner very careful and everyone prays and everyone uses the right silverware and everyone's very polite and so of course as teenagers our big joy was to try to shock our poor grandfather with teenage stories. Could we get grandpa to break his perfect minister face? So that was our kick at family dinners. I went to this guy's house for Sunday dinner and it was like Thanksgiving or something like that so there was like a million people there like his uncles and aunts and everybody there. I sat there and these people yelled across the table at each other. It was literally like 15 people yelling all at the same time. Yelling over the other person you know like it and they would stand up and they would go over and they would grab and they would do all this stuff. I was sitting there like what is going on? I had never seen. My family is steeped in propriety and politeness and all that stuff which is what I've been trying to unpack for the last 30 years but these people didn't and if someone pissed them off they'd be like well I'll tell you if you in the rest of the world or in your family or in your friends group they think you talk too much you should just go hang out with my friends family. You will fit right in and your ability to rise and yell over everybody else and not listen will work in perfectly and I say that jokingly but it's kind of like if you've ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the guy is totally from this total proper quiet home he's an only child the house is perfect everything is just you know like that and then of course he goes and visits her Greek family and there's just like a zillion people and everyone's all over the place. Neither one is wrong but from her family's perspective there's something wrong with him because he's so quiet and he thinks so much and he doesn't eat meat but from his parents perspective the Greek people were far too loud and they were far too boisterous and they were far too crazy. This judgment we have of ourselves is subjective. It's based in the context of where we are. Now all that being said if you really want to hang out with a particular group of people and they tend to be more quiet and introspective and all that kind of thing as human beings we have a witness mind. We have aspects of ourselves that are able to observe ourselves. They're able to observe the situation and realize aha I need to cultivate some new tools here. I don't have to get rid of my joy of being loud and boisterous. There's nothing wrong with it but if I want to do this I'm gonna have to cultivate some new tools. That's okay. I remember when I first we started going to Quaker meeting a long long time ago when the kids were small and Quakers there's no ministers or anything like that and what you do is you just sit in silence and you listen in silent prayer and on occasion people might speak and stuff like that. Well I will tell you it just about killed me. It just about killed me sitting there and not conversing. Then we would have discussion meetings and you actually had to just speak intuitively and you weren't allowed. It was the first time I'd ever seen where you weren't allowed to have dialogue. You weren't allowed to crosstalk. So if someone shared something you weren't allowed to say yes I agree with Peggy. You can't do that. You only speak from your inspiration. I was spinning in my chair. I just I was beside myself because I was the queen of crosstalk. I was the queen of oh I really agree with you and then I started thinking well why do you have to say that? Why do you have to agree with them? They've already made their point and I realized how many habits I had in doing that. So I developed a different aspect of myself. Can I also do the other still? Sure but I developed some new skills. All of us can develop new skills if we want to be part of different social groups but it doesn't make the other part wrong. This is really important. Now that being said I do believe there is a difference between what is truly ourselves and what is other that we have integrated. Now that I think is an interesting identification. I may truly love this or love that or whatever or I might hate this or hate that or I may struggle in these kinds of groups or I may have a lot of judgment but whatever whatever I am. The challenge I think comes when it's actually the voice of my father or the voice of my mother or the voice of the church or the voice of society. It's not me at all. It's not my lower self and it's not my higher self. It's not me. It's other. I think that is very useful to identify because the problem is when we have the beliefs and thoughts of other inside of us and these could be the other people's opinions It could be all kinds of things but all we know for sure is it's not us. When we can truly let those parts go I think we become enlightened. I think that's when we become peaceful and we become happy because we're just us and we just live our life and we just exist. So the last part I want to mention is this talk is called embodiment through releasing the idea of a higher self. Embodiment. One of the challenges especially in the Shiva-Shakti perspective that if you imagine Shiva is way up at the top and Shakti is at the bottom in that incarnate earth level. If we don't like something about our life, If we don't like something about ourselves, If we don't like something about our living arrangements or our childhood or whatever we will often try to ignore it instead of integrate it. But when we ignore it and we don't integrate it we don't actually ever move forward in life. It's almost like we can only move forward undivided. If we leave anything behind it always holds us back to that point. We actually have to bring it forward. On a really practical level let's say you are in a living situation that is harmful. It hurts. It's difficult. Maybe it's similar to your upbringing so you don't necessarily notice it right away. Maybe it's living with people who are very selfish or narcissistic or however or abusive or just difficult. The most important thing we can do is fully embody that. To really own our actual life. Because when we actually own it and we don't try to hide it, We don't try to pretend it's not there, We don't drown it with drugs and alcohol and shopping and gambling and whatever it is that we do then we have a chance to change it. And this isn't changing ourself. This is paying attention to our circumstances so that we can make choices. It's like imagining you're in a room and the room is watertight and the water level is rising. If you ignore the fact that the water level is rising what's gonna happen? But what if you don't ignore it? You don't like that the water level is rising. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna figure something out. You're gonna figure out how to get out of the room. Because there's always a way out. You're gonna figure out how to get out. And you're gonna do it before it's a crisis. And this really matters. And this matters within every one of us. And that's maybe an extreme example. But it matters inside every one of us. That all we have to do is pay attention. And all we have to do is completely accept and realize, Ah-ha, Okay. And the cool thing is we just get to be all that we are. We are intuitive. We are interesting. We are struggling. We are courageous. We are afraid. We are everything. Like imagine actually getting to have a rich life. And then all of a sudden all of this comes together and you're walking up and someone looks at you and you say, Wow, You're really happy, Huh? Yeah. So everything's going well in your life? Well there's lots of things that are really going well and there's a lot of struggles right now too. Really? How can you be so happy? Well that's life. It's like you're sitting in that beautiful slipstream spot in the river. It all just is. It all is just happening. What more is enlightenment? What else is there? It's a very interesting thing. And the great thing is that means that every single one of us right now can be enlightened. Every one of us. Every one of us can find inner peace right now. Not after we do this course. Not after we do this yoga practice. Not after we do all that. We can actually find it right now. Imagine. And then from there we simply choose to do things because they bring us joy. They make us feel good. We might do yoga because we love the feeling of it. We might do yoga because we know that the water level is rising and I want to look and see and figure out a way out. Because my current perspective I can't quite find the latch. So I'm going to do some kundalini yoga or I'm going to do some meditation or I'm going to do some ecstatic dance so I can look at the situation from a different perspective. Just living. Not ignoring life. Not struggling. Not suffering. Just whatever is coming I'm in. Like true enlightenment. May you elaborate on it's not about changing you. I love the idea of growth. It's like when you look at a tree. When a tree is very small it's still perfect. It's perfect. And it grows. And it grows new branches. And maybe other branches aren't needed. But you just grow. But often what happens is sometimes we try to grow and we can't for some reason. Because maybe something is old and it's not required and you know it's not working anymore. For example, Let's say you grew up in a home that it was really important that you kept your wits about you. Because maybe you would be taken advantage of. Or maybe you had a sibling that struggled and your stuff would be broken. And so you always locked your doors and you always kept things you know under lock and key kind of idea. And then as you went out in the world maybe this really served you well for quite a while. But then you started to you know then you meet someone and you're like wow I really like this person. And they're like why are you always locking everything away? How come we can just share this or whatever? And you're like no no we can't we can't. And they're like oh. And then something in you starts to realize you know what I would like to develop the ability to let people in. Up until this point I couldn't. But I would like to develop that ability. Up until this point that other ability served me well and kept me safe. But now I'd like to grow into something new. There was nothing wrong with the way I was. But I'm now in a different environment. You know and that's an interesting thing. Literally living in a different environment. We just have to learn new skills. So we grow. But it doesn't make us wrong. It doesn't make our old self wrong. It's like saying that someone who goes to war and comes back shell-shocked or with post-traumatic stress. They adapted properly to a horrific situation. And now they just have to relearn. They have to train their nervous system to somehow live in a place of peace. But the way they were is exactly properly adapted. It's all about releasing the judgment of it. That's what changes because then suddenly then we're friends with it. Well thank you so much for being here and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

That was extraordinarily on point for me and just what I needed to hear. Thank you 🙏🏼💛🌕