When I look back,
The hardest things by far was my feeling,
One of them,
Was my feeling of being a stranger in the strange land.
And I know this is not particularly uncommon,
But I would,
And I don't know,
Maybe other people would feel it as physically as I would feel sort of so separate,
As if there were big,
Heavy lines around my body of separation.
And there were,
Psychologically,
You know,
And they had to be healed.
But what I noticed is,
As I walked the journey,
I would experience separation and I would turn to,
You know,
Universal love,
Pray to Amma,
Focus endlessly,
Focus on self-compassion,
Anything to help myself,
And then I would connect up again.
And I'd go,
Yay,
I've got it now.
And then I would proceed on the journey and then something would happen.
And again,
I'd be feeling separate.
And again,
I'd walk around with that heavy feeling,
Often feeling very heavy physically as well.
And again,
Because I really knew nobody could save me,
I really knew this,
That no therapist or anybody could save me,
That I had to save myself.
So I turned to God with just this intensity.
And this was even before I met Amma,
An intensity of self-compassion for this poor fragment of God in human form who's walking around on the earth,
Feeling like such a lost soul,
You know,
And then I would connect up again.
And then I noticed that I would understand myself better,
I would understand others better,
And my life would go more smoothly.
And this happened over and over again.
And this is one of the hardest things to communicate to people when I'm working with them.
It's that it's an ongoing journey and darkness comes and feelings of separation and emotional pain come,
But you just keep cleaving to something beyond you.
It's genuflecting really to the loving intelligence that made you.
Especially for Westerners,
We,
You know,
It's hard for Westerners to bow our heads with humility.
We might bow our heads looking at our phone,
You know.
But with real humility,
That really works here because we're here for a much bigger reason than many of us even imagine.
And we're much more valuable,
Precious.
And what's in our heart is the truth.
And we might second-guess ourselves all the time.
I see that all the time,
People discounting themselves,
Second-guessing themselves.
And,
You know,
Maybe you're discounting and second-guessing the God in you.
So be careful with that.
You know,
So the feelings of separation were difficult and also just feelings of being unworthy were difficult for me.
And again,
It came down to,
I knew nobody else could save me.
I really knew I had to just keep going and believe in the best of me.
And even if I really screwed up,
Which I did a lot.
And,
You know,
The more you're on the journey,
The more you see your own frailties.
You tend to blame others less and you see your own frailties.
And that can be a trap because people get stuck in that,
But just give it over and ask for help and have compassion for yourself because we're all alive at a very difficult time.
It is not a loving time.
Most of us have big,
Gaping emotional wounds left over from childhood.
And we're just trying to pay our rent and feed ourselves and just do the best we can.
So there's a huge understanding of us and a huge compassion for ourselves,
And you can tap into it and it will bring your higher intelligence in.
But,
You know,
It's an up and down process and you have to be sincere for it to really occur for you.
No,
We can't just sort of think about the creator one day and then forget it for the next month and then think about creator again.
You know,
It has to be a constant focus.
And really,
I was in so much pain that it just was easier to keep that focus.
Yeah.
Okay,
Well,
I hope this helps and,
You know,
All my prayers and blessings and just keep going because it ends well.
They're ups and downs,
But it gets better.
Gets better.
Okay,
Bless your hearts.
