Hello and welcome.
No matter what time of day it is for you right now,
I'm so glad you're joining me.
This is Laurie Karpenos.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist,
Relationship coach,
And a three principles practitioner.
This is the first track I'm offering on Insight Timer on what I like to call an adventure into the unknown.
I think that sounds sexy even though it's about the mind,
Which could sound pretty academic.
However,
It's actually the opposite.
Let's face it,
The mind can never fully be known to us because it's formless energy.
It has no form to study under a microscope or through any physical means,
Including our internal apparatus called the brain.
The closest we've gotten so far is what we feel to be true.
The feeling that I get about the mind,
Which some people call wisdom,
An innate understanding a deeper intelligence,
Is a feeling of knowing something that I didn't realize I knew,
But I actually knew it all along as though it's what came along with me from the spiritual formless energy into the world of form via my mother's womb and birth canal.
As I mentioned earlier,
Some people call it insight,
Wisdom,
Intuition,
A knowing from deep within.
Now,
The amazing thing to me is that when I experience those moments in life,
It actually lifts me up,
Sometimes just a few notches,
But other times it feels like I'm lifted up to the stratosphere.
When I first began noticing this,
Now mind you,
It had occurred off and on before it was pointed out to me,
And it happens to everyone.
You'll see.
I think you'll begin to notice when it happens to you as well by the end of this track.
And I have to admit it felt a bit weird at first when I began catching on to this feeling of wisdom,
But then when I saw it play out in my everyday life,
I began to connect that feeling of knowing as a truth about how universal energy works.
It feels like I'm experiencing pure wisdom that is so often shrouded by my personal thinking.
No wonder Sidney Banks referred to it as divine mind,
The energy of all things.
I've noticed through the years that every glimmer I get brings me to an easier,
Nicer,
Calmer experience of life on planet earth.
At least it seems that way to me.
Some people call it higher levels of consciousness,
Where we realize the things we do with our ability to think that do us no good and can even be harmful when we follow our personal thinking,
Our ego.
We all know that persistent,
Nagging voice of pride.
I'm pretty sure you know it too.
The me,
Me,
Me of self-importance.
So I'll begin with a story from my past and how I happened upon this paradigm,
Which we could label a spiritual psychology or the intersection between psychology and spirituality.
But I like to call it a godsend.
Sure felt that way to me.
So this is what happened to me several decades ago.
I wonder if you can relate to any part of it.
I grew up in a middle-class family with two parents and one younger sibling,
A brother.
Well,
I thought it was a middle-class family,
But my brother,
Who was only four years younger,
Says,
No,
We grew up poor.
Though nothing really changed financially during our four-year age span.
My parents did not claim bankruptcy or go on government assistance.
We always had food,
Even if it was hamburger helper or cornflake chicken.
I know I was not malnourished.
My clothes weren't tattered in any way.
So,
I mean,
Maybe they were not the most fashionable in that day or as much as my friends had,
But I never felt disadvantaged.
They bought my brother a guitar and a clarinet and I received a flute and lessons so that I could play in the junior high school band.
My parents even bought me a piano so that I could play in the orchestra.
Though I have to admit,
I wasn't interested in either of those activities,
But they decided it would be good for me.
And that was the way things were done back then.
Parents were supposed to know best.
So when I asked for dance lessons,
My mother said it would be a waste because I would never use dance lessons,
But I could use piano lessons.
I couldn't wrap my head around that one and I never quite got the logic until I got a glimmer of the meaning of separate realities.
It actually gives me a chuckle now.
I mean,
To think that people think so differently,
That just can blow my mind.
I happen to love dancing to live bands.
I even took lots of West Coast swing lessons as I watched the ladies who had taken ballet,
Modern,
And jazz lessons in their youth glide so gracefully on the dance floor with their partners later on in life.
I'll tell you,
I did my fair share of questioning how piano lessons would be useful.
It was a reality that seemed so separate from my own that I wondered if,
You know,
I don't know,
Had I been adopted or maybe even from a different planet?
I don't think I ever really thought that,
But it is a fun idea to illustrate the point.
Those stories may have been my first inkling into what we refer to as separate realities,
Seeing things differently from entirely different perspectives.
Middle class or poor,
They're just words,
Yet worlds apart in our experience as the result of the meaning we give to those words,
Or any words for that matter.
Words we commonly use in our society are so misunderstood between individuals.
Remember,
These two separate views came from two kids only four years apart who grew up in the very same household with the same parents.
The truth of it is the way we each interpreted what we experienced,
Good,
Bad,
Up,
Down.
It's always what each person makes of an event or situation.
Most of us would agree that things like war is bad,
But have you ever been to a movie with someone who couldn't understand what you loved or hated so much about it?
Later on,
My parents thought I had art talent and I should be a teacher so that I'd be home when my children were home.
Well,
I never thought I had much art talent,
Though I did enjoy drawing and painting as a child,
And I never had children,
Though I longed for motherhood.
But I know that they meant well,
Just trying to be what they thought was good parenting.
How innocent is that?
Long story short,
For the sake of the point I want to make for you,
Is that I was very unhappy and I wound up with a diagnosis of depression in a long line of depressed women.
I thought it was just life being difficult and not getting the things I wanted in life,
Until I began to see,
With all capital letters S-E-E,
I started to see my experience of life with new eyes in 1986.
A friend brought me to a talk by a man named Sidney Banks.
I remember how kind he was and his Scottish accent.
He would call me Dearie,
His name for all the women who would attend his talks.
That was before name tags,
Though I imagine even if we had name tags,
We would still all be called Dearie.
Just such a very sweet way of saying,
Of connecting,
You might say.
And the talks were always very informal,
But they were held in hotel conference rooms that were lovely.
I actually couldn't remember anything Mr.
Banks said in particular back then,
But I know he was speaking truth because it felt as though my soul was being touched.
And I will never forget the extreme feeling of relief.
I had no memory of feeling that level of relief before his talk.
So,
You guessed it,
I went to every talk I could.
And back then,
It often meant traveling across the country or even to another continent.
But I just wanted to learn more.
I wanted to learn as much as I could.
I wanted to live more often in that feeling of relief and contentment and satisfaction,
Right where I was with no expectation needing to be somewhere else or being with someone else.
Because the feeling was so beautiful and that feeling was coming from me.
It's the only place our feelings can ever come from.
It's from our own being,
Our own thinking.
I realized there was no place and no person who could bring me that peace of mind because they're all outside of me.
And I know that you have felt that too.
Maybe not to the depth I experienced at that time yet,
But that's possible for you.
I've witnessed others go there and this might actually blow your mind.
None of us ever want to retire because we love sharing what's brought us to new insights in life by a simple understanding of the true inside out nature of life.
The reason we live in separate realities is because we're born with the ability to think and to be aware of what we think.
We know we're alive because force energy,
Which Mr.
Banks often called divine mind,
I love that,
Divine mind,
Gives us the capacity to think anything we want and the awareness that we don't have to believe in anything that we or someone else thinks.
Now,
If that isn't a description of free will,
I don't know what is.
The fact that we have free will to focus on whatever we think,
We can focus on whatever we think,
Knowing that is immensely valuable.
I learned that a pleasant state of mind is my most valuable resource and I realize I'm human,
So I'm not going to be there 24-7.
But I know not to speak or act when I'm not in that sweet spot of life because I've experienced the consequences.
When I live from the negative stories,
I tell myself,
Even though they may look so real in the moment,
As though there is no other way to see this particular experience,
It's okay.
In fact,
That's valuable too.
It's a call to give yourself a rest.
It's a call to give yourself a rest.
Even if you don't see with greater clarity until the next day or the next week,
I guarantee you it will happen when you're not looking for it,
When you least expect it.
But I'm hoping this recording will help you notice it when it happens naturally more often.
I plan to offer more tracks for you soon,
But for now,
As you go about your life,
Perhaps you will become more aware of the moments you're already experiencing,
The feelings of peace,
Love,
Compassion,
Understanding,
And contentment when they occur to you,
Rather than tossing it aside as a fluke,
Like I used to do,
And most people do.
Because the negative stories we tell ourselves feel so compelling,
Like magnets,
Like we just want to magnetize ourselves to all our stupid thoughts.
But the feeling of peace,
Love,
Compassion,
Understanding,
Contentment,
Isn't that what everyone's searching for?
Though most of us can spend a whole lot of time looking for it outside of ourselves,
In a place or another person when it's already within you.
We are so impeccably designed to be a self-contained unit of love that wants to share love with others.
That's a miracle,
If you ask me.
Thank you for listening.
