Our Life Is Our Spiritual Journey

No separation exists between life and our spiritual journey—except in our point of view—not even in the way we earn our living. Even if we work in a job where we don’t yet give the gift we came here to give, we can still be loving, kind, and helpful to others, making our work a gift to the Creator.

If we separate our need to feed and house ourselves from our spiritual journey, then we are living in a perceptual split that makes deeper self-witnessing impossible. When we turn to the Creator, our soul energy can flow in, and our witnessing reflects the neutral quality of unconditional love.

It is the feminine aspect of humanity that opens the door to our true selves. Without her natural celebration of life, her nurturing and emotional Nature, and intuitive instincts, there will be nothing but fear, control, and conflict on earth.

When we offer ourselves the warm, loving embrace of a divine Mothering energy (visible in Amma), we can let go of fear and anger and embody our soul energy.

Transcript

A really Asking for grace.

Asking for grace with our whole hearts.

Asking for Amma's grace.

This warm nectar that at least some of us have experienced and we all will finally experience.

Of just how much we're loved by Amma,

By the universe,

By the creator,

By all of nature.

And may we have the courage to let go of any training in alienation,

In any fears of this love.

May we have the courage to let that stuff go and open to our true nature.

And open to the love within everything and express it in our lives.

To feel it and express it.

To have the courage to feel it and then to express it.

That's the hero's journey.

And it's a safe journey because there's only love in the reality,

Even though we might not all the time.

Many blessings and great gratitude to you all for coming.

Yeah,

Beautiful.

So yesterday we talked about the split that we can often feel.

You know that the spirit that we were living our lives and we're on a spiritual journey and the two things are separate.

Okay,

You guys,

This is very understandable.

But maybe you can work with it consciously to move through this because,

You know,

See tomorrow you're on your deathbed.

So where is the split between your life and your spiritual journey?

Where is it?

It does not exist.

Your life is your spiritual journey.

Truly,

I mean,

You're on your deathbed and it's kind of like,

Oh,

Where have I been?

I thought I was on the journey but I miss the fact that every breath I take is my journey.

Every action,

Every thought,

Every experience of divine truth.

The whole casserole is my journey.

Okay,

You guys,

I understand the split.

I so understand it.

But know it's a split.

It's inside you.

It's a schism wallowing you off from your true nature.

You may,

There are a couple of ways to earn money.

There's one where we're directly in essence.

We are,

Our soul created us to do this particular work.

And when you're doing work like that,

You really know it.

And there's other work that isn't really coming so much from your soul,

But more like just,

You know,

To enable you to feed yourself.

It's all your spiritual journey.

Even if you're doing a job like that,

It's like you can be fully present.

You can be kind.

You can express love and compassion to your workmates.

You can do your job in an honorable way.

You can turn it into a gift for Amma,

A gift to the Creator.

There is no,

There's no separation except within our point of view.

The thing is,

This split is so common.

And I,

Please,

I hope you don't give yourself a hard time about it.

But I hope you work with it because it really does keep us shallow.

And the other thing about running the split,

It makes it hard to really witness your journey.

It makes it hard for you to really move into true witnessing,

Which is when you allow your soul to witness your journey.

You see,

When the ego is witness,

When we're doing a fake witnessing,

And we're witnessing from our ego,

There will be judgment and criticism of ourselves.

When you allow your soul to witness,

It's a neutral thing.

It's like,

Say,

You just get an experience of being out of alignment.

Like,

You might get an experience of,

It's hard to put words to,

But I know that it's possible.

Say,

For Pramasutra,

For example,

Something that was common is I would experience how I was pushing the river.

It would just be kind of a direct experience of,

Oh,

I'm pushing the river.

It wasn't my ego going,

You're pushing the river.

It was coming from my soul,

So it had a neutral,

Very clear quality.

And it is the process of witnessing,

Of letting your soul witness,

That actually shrinks your ego because you just can't do it any.

Say,

I would get so much data about how I screwed things up by pushing,

Like created scar tissue,

Alienated people,

Got tense,

And all of those things gradually pushed me into surrender.

It's sort of like,

Well,

What I'm doing isn't working.

And I would have an experience of sorrow that I was screwing things up.

See,

You know how Christ said,

Except as you become his little children,

You cannot enter the kingdom of God.

It is like becoming a little kid,

And you just are kind of like a little kid,

And you get data from your soul.

And it's just like a little kid getting data from the parents in the same undefended way.

Like when the child,

A small child,

They have to follow what the parents say.

They want to.

They're open to it.

And when they displease the parents,

It's crushing.

It's the same with our souls,

When our souls are witnessing.

It's from a student's experience.

It's like,

You know,

As I witnessed that I had pushed the river yet again,

It was crushing for me.

But it was my ego getting crushed,

You guys.

And some of the things,

Like,

You know,

Hermes just talked about that I just have this enormous drive.

So,

You know,

Even our frailties are the other side of our strength.

The fact that I was able to push the river would kind of be inevitable with the kind of personality I am.

And,

You know,

It's like what's good is bad,

And bad is good.

It's like,

It's great to have drive to move ahead,

But not if you're pushing the river.

So,

It's like learning how to,

I want to say manage yourself,

And I don't mean it in an ego way,

But it's through love and understanding of yourself.

That your life gets solved.

And this love and understanding of yourself comes from your soul who loves and understands you,

Like you guys.

Our soul gets us,

Like our soul has walked us through maybe thousands of lives.

Does it understand our minds and the traps we're to fall into?

Yes.

Yes.

Are we bad?

No,

Not at all.

This is the gig.

The other thing I want to highlight about that is this in prison,

Gerald was talking about,

You were talking,

Gerald,

About how you felt incredibly peaceful,

You know,

During a sound therapy session with a client,

And it carried over afterwards.

Okay.

So,

What happens is on the journey,

If we're doing our like soul work,

Our ego lets go through our sessions with other people.

It's one,

It's like Amma talks about how the soap of selfless service,

When we do selfless service from our soul energy,

When we give our gift,

That we came here to give,

Every session with a person accelerates the person and us.

Right.

And so,

As you open up to this soul energy,

The soul energy comes through in the sessions more and more powerfully,

And more and more magic happens.

So,

It is a lot how Prama Sutta evolved,

Was helping to free other people,

And then that assisted Prama Sutta,

And,

You know,

It keeps taking Prama Sutta deeper and deeper into silence now.

And especially for Westerners,

With our extroverted,

Outer focused consciousness,

Helping other people is is so useful to make progress on the journey.

Because,

You know,

We don't have thousands of years of spiritual traditions of meditation,

Although we may have had lots of Indian lives,

You know.

So,

Some of the some of the spiritual knowledge might be just under the surface in us.

And as we go forward,

We access it,

Just like I've talked about how Prama Sutta's had a lot of Buddhist lives.

So,

I,

This compassion surfaced when I needed it.

What will happen is,

If you hit really rough times during your life,

The material from other lives will surface,

Or you can ask that what you learned in other lives surfaces in you,

That you have more access to it.

And all these things,

You have to be aware that you,

To get,

You know,

The gifts from other lives,

You might also have to learn how to embrace material that's coming from other lives,

That was where you made mistakes.

And really,

To get involved with accessing material from other lives,

It's,

It's,

You have to be pretty sturdy.

So,

You know,

Be careful.

Be careful if you,

If you're doing this.

You know,

For Prama Sutta,

The best way that worked for me was just,

My life brought this information as I needed it.

I,

I didn't go looking for it.

There's a little bit of separation,

And it's part of it that's coming up,

And part of it's from,

You know,

Even the beginning of the satsang,

Where I'm highlighting the split many of us have around earning our living and our spiritual journey.

Or being to our physical needs as being separate from the spiritual journey.

So,

Some of that kind of alienation or separation is coming up.

And I'm just going to give it to Amma,

Ask for her grace.

Amma is the creator here in human form.

We are all so beloved.

You know,

A really good thing about being a Westerner is,

There are,

You get many kicks at the can.

You know,

Whatever your soul wounding,

You get many opportunities to face it and heal it.

You know,

In traditional,

Say in the aboriginal societies,

There's often like one chance to do it.

There's,

Yeah.

So,

If you fail that,

It's very serious.

Whereas with us,

You can have a like a,

You can really screw up and still recover yourself and make progress on the journey.

And that's the great thing.

So,

It,

You know,

We have to see the good and the bad.

Yeah.

For example,

One of the things in my reading,

I heard about was sometimes,

You know,

When people were left up in the mountain for six weeks,

Like Abraham was,

Without food or drink,

And he would be reduced to licking the dew off the rocks.

But six weeks,

No proper water,

And he lived.

And that,

No proper water or food.

And,

You know,

When you tap into the universe,

Energy,

Really extraordinary things can happen.

But some people,

You know,

Came back from six weeks in the mountain and were a little bit scrambled mentally.

So,

They were just taken care of.

So,

With us,

You know,

For the rest of their lives.

So,

For us,

We have lots of chances,

Lots of opportunities.

We can get stuck of real difficulty,

And we can get really,

Really humble and allow the transformation.

There's no ceiling.

Again,

I want to highlight humility,

You guys,

Being open to learn.

Please,

Please,

Please.

I,

I so notice sometimes speaking with you,

How you just casually dismiss something.

And it's like,

Okay.

And I said before,

It's like,

You don't,

Don't,

It's not like you have to believe everything,

But just listen and let it be.

You don't have to do anything with it,

You can let your life show you whether it's true or not.

You know,

In my experience,

There've been,

You know,

People who walk right by an opportunity to move into truth.

I mean,

I often think like,

How many people walk by Jesus,

You know?

Or look at Amma.

I mean,

I know there's still people in,

In and around where Amma lives,

Who don't get her at all.

Just be open to learn.

Right.

And I'm feeling this,

Actually from the whole group.

It's as if there's this feeling,

As if the door to remembering why you paint is,

There's movement around the door.

It's like it's,

It's getting thinner.

It's,

It's becoming easier to open it.

It's like you're wanting to open it more,

Or you're being open to opening it.

Yeah.

That's very beautiful.

And it's as if even your soul energy is coming in through,

A little bit through the door.

Under the door,

In the,

You know,

Around the outline of the door.

It's as if it's,

You know,

It's coming in like wind a bit.

Yeah.

You know,

As encouragement to open.

I mean,

You know,

It is your true reality.

I mean,

The true reality is true reality.

It's like,

You're here for a reason.

Like,

That's,

I mean,

That's just the bottom line.

You know,

We think about that paying the rent and feeding ourselves is the bottom line,

Or in a business,

You know,

The bottom line.

And it's like,

We're here for a reason is the bottom line.

The reason why we're here.

That's it.

And as we open to that,

We will get more and more support from the universe.

And,

You know,

If you're sincere in your heart,

You just get taken care of.

You get saved.

You know,

On the journey,

We'll have experience of being very close to the Creator,

United with Allah,

Feeling her within us,

Feeling her grace within us.

And we'll also have experiences of being,

Feeling very separate.

It's like closer than close and farther than farther,

Farther than the farthest.

Both those things.

It's like birth,

There's contraction and expansion.

And the contractions hurt.

It's like our experience of separation hurts.

But as we feel it,

Take it to the Creator,

Ask for help.

And separation melts and turns into an expansion.

You know,

In my experience,

There's no other way to do the journey,

Except to go through these periods.

And the more you're just willing to embrace your experience and do your best,

The more progress you make.

Sometimes I feel that the biggest obstacle to this understanding becoming more commonplace is because of how we,

How we approach feminine energy.

Like,

I'm reading a book about a midwife in the 1700s in the U.

S.

And her whole life,

It's devoted to being accompanying with women with their birth,

And just helping neighbors generically,

And some,

You know,

Turning flax into fabric.

It's,

It's such,

She is so bonded.

She experiences life and death in her ordinary life with a midwife.

Her focus is on the well-being of all the people around her.

She's willing to do anything,

Really,

To help them.

And she carries this orientation to the Creator.

She's always talking to the Creator and asking for help.

And it's just beautiful.

And it's like,

Where has that gone?

Like,

We don't live like that anymore.

We've gone into much more of a linear,

Mechanistic way.

So even as I'm working with you guys to,

You know,

If this work is true,

Then it really is midwifing you more into truth.

The,

The technological,

Mechanical,

Linear,

Linear mind,

The analysis and all that of the linear mind,

It's like to get through to you,

To get through to your hearts.

And yet,

I don't know whether you really,

Like,

Whether this is clicked,

But spiritual movement comes in through the feminine.

We have the Statue of Liberty is a woman.

It's,

It comes in through the feminine.

If you don't allow your feminine,

It's very hard to evolve.

You,

If you don't allow your feminine,

You're just stuck in a very nuts-and-bolts approach.

Like,

Mechanistic approach.

So,

You could meditate for 40 years and still not reach your heart,

If you're doing it at the mechanistic level.

This is where it's like,

And this is where you guys,

It's like,

It's as if you're all,

You're all like,

Oh,

Fears of being weird or,

Or being deluded or being taught the wrong way.

And it's just,

I'm just wanting you,

Like,

To allow your intuition and your emotions and put a mother's embrace around your full selves.

I mean,

An Amma embraces us.

It's so feminine.

So,

You know,

And my experience with Amma's embrace,

My experience is that,

You know,

We have an opportunity for our souls to meet.

And my experience is she plants seeds for the future.

Even if there's resistance in the moment,

My experience is she will lift the resistance.

So,

It's such a meeting every need,

You know,

To help us evolve.

So,

You know,

Without this,

The feminine,

With the nurturing,

The cooperation,

The compassion,

The celebration of life on earth,

Without that,

We get fascist and warlike.

And,

You know,

Women,

We second-guess ourselves because it's,

It's,

Our true natures are not allowed.

And then the men are like,

They,

You know,

This is all primitivist experience.

The men are all desperate for real feminine energy,

Desperate for it.

They don't know where it is.

And lots of times with women,

They can't even find it in us because we don't know where it is.

And Pramasutra spent years not knowing where her feminine was.

Where is it?

Where is it?

So,

It's just like,

You know,

Pramasutra just accepted finally.

I just accepted,

Oh,

That's why the journey's been hard.

And then once I,

I knew the territory was this distrust of the feminine and,

And this resistance to acknowledging these deeper emotional material that was so uncomfortable sometimes,

It got much easier.

It was just like the gig.

Oh,

This is just the territory.

Yeah.

So,

You guys,

You know,

Use your dispassion.

Like,

Think about what Pramasutra is saying.

Like,

Use your dispassion to make your own decisions about your own life.

Like,

Like,

It's good to,

In a way,

Like,

Just sit and let it all wash over you.

But,

But,

You know,

Hopefully,

The heart of what I'm saying gets through to you and helps loosen your heads a bit.

Loosening them.

Yeah.

You know,

This is how big it is.

So,

Olga,

Who,

You know,

My,

I mean,

I want to cry.

Like,

Who lost her two children to dysentery when they were about six months old or something.

And it was a,

You know,

It was a time when you know,

The doctors are really pushing formula,

You know,

Just come in.

And so,

You know,

I guess the formula,

The problem with the heating or whatever,

Anyway,

They got dysentery and both die.

Okay.

So,

She never had any children after that.

And in her healing ministry,

Really,

I just want to cry.

She worked particularly with children.

Her work was most effective with children.

And it was because it was the heart.

It was,

You know,

It was her selfless service.

She knew the wounding of when you lose a child.

So,

She was just selfless service to the children and to the parents so that the parents wouldn't have to experience what she experienced.

And many years later,

She was an old woman.

She was brought in to do an experiment.

And the experiment was,

They had dysentery,

You know,

It sounds like a cruel joke from the universe,

But the scientists had dysentery bacteria.

And the test was,

If the dysentery bacteria,

When she was sitting in the lab,

If the dysentery bacteria lived longer when they were applying penicillin to it,

See,

So they're trying to kill it,

And then put her in the lab to see if her presence strengthens the life in the dysentery bacteria.

Because the presence of a realized soul does that,

Strengthens the life in everything.

And when the experiment was over,

And she was shown the Petri dish,

The bacteria thriving in face of penicillin,

She went,

Cute little critters,

Aren't they?

She saw God in them.

She saw their beauty,

Even though it was dysentery that killed her own children.

Now,

That is a triumph of the human spirit,

Is triumph of dispassion.

It is off the charts.

And it explains to me the power of the love,

How she could do these miracles,

Because she was carrying basically that God consciousness.

So,

Her journey,

You know,

It looks to Premasuddha like this transformation between this terrible wounding,

And it becomes her great gifts.

And her forgiveness of the dysentery bacteria is done,

I would say,

Premasuddha would say,

Done by God,

Because a human mother couldn't do it,

So it's the God in her that does it.

And I remember telling my friend,

Who I loved very deeply,

And she was a physio,

She was married to a doctor,

And I told her this,

And she said,

Oh,

I could never do that.

And I thought to myself,

Oh,

If you think,

Oh,

I could never do that,

You're basically saying that you are refusing to become a woman like Olga.

And this is how we refuse to God.

What happens as the creator flows into your body more,

What happens is your fear and anger leaves your souls,

Right?

Leaves your cells of your body.

So,

You know,

My experience,

The body becomes more flexible and relaxed,

Because without fear and anger,

Like fear and anger will create tension and rigidity.

And as you move in truth,

It comes off your cells,

And you become more flexible,

Relaxed,

And Amma says that a self-realized person is relaxed like they're sleeping.

It's relaxed if you think about that relaxation into sleep.

When you just wake up,

Just that state of relax,

Amma says that's what a self-realized person lives in,

Because they've released the fear and the anger.

And when you do that,

You get,

I don't know how to express it.

It's like being swaddled.

It's like you're buffered,

You're,

You know,

If I say you're surrounded by cotton wool,

It sounds like confusion,

And I don't mean that,

But there's,

You just don't get disturbed.

You're just peaceful.

It's like you're surrounded by something that is protecting you from the disturbances,

The poke of life.

You're just undisturbed,

Like a swaddled child who's safe in the swaddle,

Who feel very safe,

And they're being held,

And they're carried.

Now,

Progress on the journey,

You guys,

You start knowing what I'm talking about.

And even just a flicker of it,

Because it will start off like a flicker,

Just like a little bit,

And then,

You know,

You'll get the ego going,

And just keep talking to Amma,

Doing your practices,

Just keep doing whatever you need to help yourself,

And keep going.

You know,

Very old trees in the old growth forest,

You know,

The really big ones that are so big around that you can't even embrace them,

They're so big.

They have no trouble with bugs.

Yeah,

No,

No infestations.

And I remember long ago,

Thinking to myself,

Well,

I want to be just like an old growth tree and not be bugged anymore by the stupid things,

By the stupid things that bug us.

Please don't put a ceiling on your life at all.

I want to talk again,

This is,

You know,

About my mom,

And about how we can stop ourselves.

So,

When I was growing up,

She was reading all these books about evolution and everything,

So she would talk to me about that.

That's part of why,

That was part of the grace,

It's part of how I could proceed,

She would talk like that.

But she wasn't living it at all,

Which was part of what was very confusing.

But then,

You know,

When I started working with Abraham and had this big awakening,

My mom,

You know,

She felt early in her early years that it just wasn't possible to move into truth.

And then,

When I awoke and actually demonstrated that it was,

She kept the same game going by resisting it.

And I used to think,

What's going on with this woman?

She could just open up and,

You know,

She sees it in me patently,

She did.

She could just open up and open her heart and come along.

And,

You know,

I don't know what it was,

Whether she'd have to admit that she lived a life,

A lie,

When she didn't have to,

She couldn't admit that.

And whether that she couldn't admit it,

Because she couldn't,

She didn't have the humility to admit it.

You see,

Because if we have the humility to admit these things,

It can be done in a day.

So,

You have a hard day where you think your life's wasted.

Oh,

Well,

Then the next day,

Just get up and try again.

But if you don't admit it,

If you don't admit how deluded you've been,

How do you ever get over it?

So,

My mom,

You know,

To her credit,

She didn't have her deathbed.

So,

She did do it,

But it's sort of like,

What the hell?

Like,

Imagine what it would have been like for the family and for her grandchildren if she had opened up.

So,

Just,

You know,

The thing that we all have to get over ourselves and the journey,

It's very,

Very humbling.

You know,

Our egos have to get humbled into oblivion.

They get humbled so much they turn into dust,

Okay?

That's how it goes.

So,

If you won't let yourself get humbled,

How does your ego turn into dust?

And I'm not talking about miserable sinner stuff.

I'm talking about,

Wow,

I've been really just deluded,

Misguided.

And Pema Sutta has had so many experiences of that in my journey.

Wow,

I really didn't get it.

I thought I got it,

But I really didn't.

And,

You know,

No matter how far one goes,

This being open to correction is crucial.

The true reality is our true nature.

It's not our physical self.

I mean,

Our physical self is part of it,

But the physical self is not the boss.

The human self is not the boss of things.

The boss of things is true reality.

Although,

You know,

I've told you,

Alma talks about how even our souls listen to our human selves.

And she tells a story about a child being on the bus with the mom and the child's crying because she wants a hand.

We're on a bus,

And the child keeps screaming so much that finally the mom goes to the bus driver and says,

Could we just stop and pick a banana from,

You know,

So the bus driver stops and they get a banana.

And Alma said when she was telling the story,

That is what happens with our souls too.

Like if our human self is really,

Like our soul will listen to our human self.

But what Premisade has found is that basically learning that you're the one to genuflect.

The human self,

Physical human,

You're the one who has to learn to genuflect with the divine.

And,

You know,

With our alienated upbringings and the trouble with our bonding,

You know,

Some of us are scared to face that.

And you can ask that,

You know,

Which we have to face along the way to bond to our true nature,

But you can ask that it happens as gently,

As easily as possible.

And any progress at all in a life is pater,

Is just so important.

Do you know,

There's a conductor who runs his own orchestra.

And this guy,

Premisade,

Feels that he's doing his true work.

He's not enlightened.

He's doing his true work.

So he's walking along doing his true work.

And over time,

His ego is dissolving,

It seems when I read about his earlier years and look at his later years,

Becoming more loving.

That's great.

It's fantastic.

Even to live like that.

We don't have to be perfect.

We don't,

You know,

Don't go,

Oh,

It's self-realization,

Or else I'm a miserable sinner.

No,

Just even bringing in a bit of the divine in your life is a triumph.

And this fellow spent 15 years driving around Europe in a bus with his,

You know,

With a very small orchestra,

Like 15 people.

And his intent was to make music available to the common man,

To reduce the snobbery,

To make it,

To make it meet the common man,

The ordinary man in the heart.

And it does that.

And he gives people the experience of heart opening that they might not be able to have at all in their lives.

That's good work.

That's,

It's good.

Maybe next life,

He'll go for enlightenment.

Maybe next life,

He'll be born almost enlightened.

Who knows?

We don't know these things,

Guys.

But any movement into essence at all,

Into any movement into our true Amah's natures at all,

You know,

A flicker of healing light,

A flicker of more compassion for humanity.

Just fantastic.

That's to celebrate.

Yeah.

And if you live like that,

Celebrating every step forward,

Every flicker of bigger understanding,

You know,

You are working directly with opening the door into truth.

That's it.

I mean,

If you're stepping back and criticizing yourself for not,

You know,

For not being farther along,

I mean,

The more you're criticizing yourself,

You know,

It is the ego,

And it is stuff that locks the door.

So,

You just,

Guys,

You have permission to really love and validate yourselves,

Okay,

In a whole new way,

In a whole new,

Exuberantly loving way,

Where you celebrate your steps forward,

Every flicker,

And you keep taking your failures,

And the dross,

And the self-criticism,

And all the judgments,

And we keep taking them to Amah.

Just keep taking them to the Creator.

You know,

It's so funny.

I've been looking at a phone with nobody's showing their picture,

And that's okay,

But I'm sure some of you are,

But anyway,

I'm just looking at all these photos of,

Like,

Snowmen,

You know.

So,

It's like a blank screen.

It's just kind of,

Oh,

Here you're coming,

Yeah.

It's just been like a blank screen,

And that's okay.

It's kind of brought forward.

It just brought forward what it brought forward,

And it was necessary.

It's all good.

I just want to thank you for turning up and joining in this.

I don't know.

It's like reaching out to the heart of the universe in all of us,

Reaching out,

Opening to Amah's heart,

Opening to the heart of the universe,

Opening to our hearts.

Yeah,

And,

You know,

The journey's up and down,

But,

You know,

Life's crazy these days,

So,

You know,

You might as well run with it,

And you're in my heart and my thoughts,

My prayers.

Yeah.

May you really know that and feel it,

And you really feel Amah's love with grace.

Thank you.