Waking Up Can Be Shocking

The good news is the Creator/Amma/our Souls are stronger than anything. Just as the truth always eventually surfaces, love wins over time.

The bad news?

In the highest spiritual perspective, nothing is truly bad. Even the worst evil is fear or ignorance, which unconditional love will heal or transform over time.

Understanding this truth can be challenging for Westerners whose perceptions have been imprinted inside a technological, patriarchal culture.

We can feel alone, confused, helpless on our spiritual journeys. The Creator does NOT loom large in most of our therapies.

Even our therapeutic approaches can just feed our egos and be manipulative to make us feel better, rather than really facilitating a much deeper understanding of the truth of us.

We might learn to build our houses on sand rather than on rock, with the inevitable result that our pain will return again.

Premasudha's words and energetic input help us accept our deeper Natures. How relaxing this is!

Music: Jenna

Transcript

We're going to begin with asking for grace,

Calling for grace,

And an invocation to Ama,

To the creator.

Please feel the grace.

You're in it.

You're surrounded by it.

You're made out of it.

I'm just open to receive.

There was a lot cooking all last night and this morning,

And I really want to speak about,

Reach out to you about,

Invite you in about Premasuddha's understanding about what it's like to be in the Western culture and faced with raising kids,

Having a husband,

Earning a living,

And just dealing with oneself in our culture.

And how incredibly lost,

Alone,

Separate,

Confused,

Upset,

Angry,

Sad,

We can feel.

There is great understanding about these states and about this experience.

Premasuddha is not talking to you intellectually.

I'm talking to all levels of you.

Your intrinsic identity,

Your human personality,

Your deep subconscious material.

I am talking to the whole package,

And package is such a misnomer,

The whole treasure of you.

I'm hoping that the result of this satsang will be greater clarity.

And even if you have to listen to it several times,

You might experience a kind of a bell ringing deep within you,

A kind of feeling of the penny dropping in a useful way.

And if that doesn't happen,

Don't worry about it,

Because it will happen in the future sometime.

You know,

The East talks about these thousands and thousands of year old traditions.

They talk about love.

They talk about service to humanity.

They talk about if you want to become enlightened,

Choose a virtue and serve it with all your heart.

Live that way.

Keep it with you,

Front and center,

Every moment.

When you forget it,

You remind yourself.

So,

Premasuddha set off in the service of love,

Like 40 years ago.

Now,

If you live that way,

What is not pure within you will come up to be healed.

So,

As you walk this way,

Your shadow material will be cleared,

Gradually.

We're so lucky to have Amma here.

That's really an inadequate sentence for the gift that she is.

But,

You know,

She offers all the meditation practices and the bhajans to help us kind of hold on to something as we go forward in the great kind of insecurity of seeking to bring in our true nature.

Because it's very insecure for the ego.

Because the ego has to die.

I want you,

Though,

To really understand,

Like to understand,

To get conscious about what it's like to be imprinted by the Western conditioning.

It's like being able to see the fly in the ointment,

To understand that your perception of reality is imprinted with this in ways that you might not understand,

You might not be able to see.

So,

In the West,

We're getting huge numbers of modalities,

Of techniques to work with ourselves.

And they're coming from a good place.

I mean,

You know,

Somebody's come up with them to try to help.

But in fact,

A lot of these techniques are coming from technological,

Mechanical,

Manipulative man kind.

It's underneath is kind of,

You know,

A lot of our techniques,

We don't in the West,

You know,

We have this culture of,

You know,

Say,

Church going,

Although it's becoming far less common,

But everybody would meet on a Sunday and sing and have a group high.

There wasn't the same tradition of looking inside that is in the East.

Thousands of years of looking inside.

Okay,

We Westerners,

We don't have that.

And we have this,

You know,

Pattern going to church,

Hearing a sermon from somebody who may or may not be awake,

And experiencing the group high,

Which doesn't hold.

Which is why,

You know,

The comments about,

Well,

Somebody goes to church on Sunday,

But behaves badly the rest of the week,

Because group highs don't hold.

So,

Lacking this deep focus on the inside,

We've come up with a whole bunch of techniques that have a little bit of truth in them,

But they're actually implemented often to manipulate ourselves into some kind of happiness.

It's not a deep healing of the core wounding.

It's like Band-Aids,

Many,

Many Band-Aids,

Like a smorgasbord of Band-Aids.

This is what I'm wanting to,

It's almost like a—funny,

I'm getting the words to say to shake you a bit,

But it's a very non-violent shake.

It's a very loving shake.

But some of you are using the same kind of self-manipulation techniques to get an outcome on the spiritual journey,

Rather than a full frontal goal,

Wanting to awaken,

Become your true nature,

And help humanity.

No,

It's really understandable.

It's like,

When I look back at my own life,

I was clearing levels of manipulation and ego for years and years and years.

And the stuff isn't bad,

But it's to be seen through.

It's such a tall order,

You guys.

There's great understanding about what a tall order it is to wish to walk the journey with the Western mind,

And that it hurts as we learn to turn inward.

So,

I'm going to come back to the modalities,

You know.

Some of the modalities are just,

They're based on manipulation,

And if you keep doing them,

You will finally get an experience of separation from the universe,

Because that's what the modality was built on.

A kind of separate,

Trying to figure it out,

Trying to get an outcome without a surrender,

Without a deep surrender.

It's kind of often,

But our techniques can be an avoidance of the deep surrender,

Which is key to the journey.

And,

You know,

This is in a way,

So what do we do about all this?

I mean,

What's the solution?

I mean,

If you see it,

It will help you navigate in your life.

You will become less deluded.

You will become more honest.

It will be easier for you to go inside.

This is what I'm basically saying.

If you see how bankrupt so many of our Western ways are,

Our techniques,

That it will just make it easier just to ignore them,

To just go right to your heart,

Go right to the Creator,

Right to Amma.

Right.

But when we do that,

We often experience the underlying heart pain of our core wounding.

This has to be faced very,

Very gradually,

At a pace that can be handled.

See,

Our confusion is not our fault.

This is kind of what I'm wanting to transmit to you.

Any confusion or fears,

None of it is your fault.

It's coming from our culture.

It's coming from our conditioning.

It's coming from other lives.

But maybe we can make a breakthrough.

It's not even we make a breakthrough,

It's maybe,

You know,

Maybe a breakthrough of understanding that happened just as a result of the sincerity of your heart,

And the sincerity of Pramasutra's heart,

And the transmission of unconditional love that this is,

Where we all get together.

And so,

The unconditional love becomes enhanced.

It becomes bigger,

Stronger.

And that has absolute power,

You guys.

Unconditional love is infinitely powerful.

And this is why progress gets made on our journeys,

Almost despite ourselves.

Almost,

Yeah,

Despite our delusions,

Insecurities,

All of that.

Progress gradually gets made because you are a being of unconditional love.

That's the truth of you.

And if there is sincerity,

And a willingness to experience truth,

A willingness to know what truth is,

A willingness to stay true.

Okay,

This is for the group.

If there's a willingness to stay true,

Despite short-term loss,

Or even if it seems like the movement into truth is totally going to cause you to get screwed,

I don't know,

In some way,

Professionally,

Economically,

Whatever.

If there's a willingness to keep going anyway,

Real progress will be made.

You see,

We Westerners,

We're big on the outcome.

We're big on,

I want to take this action for that,

For this particular outcome.

So we say,

Okay,

I've done five years of meditation,

And I don't feel any change.

And we get frustrated.

And the way out of this is to turn and look inside,

You guys.

Always the answer is to stop the outer focus on outcome,

Turn and look inside.

And maybe you'll see the reasons for the lack of progress,

You might see that even though you're maybe doing a 20-minute meditation practice twice a day,

That the rest of your day is filled with pretty negative thoughts.

Yeah,

There's a bit of discomfort in some of you,

Because this nails it.

But bless your hearts,

Like Premasuddha had terrible trouble with negative thoughts.

So like,

It's all good.

Just seeing them,

Just observing your negative thoughts neutralizes their power a lot.

And,

You know,

Don't underestimate,

You know,

The strength and courage it takes to keep walking the sincere journey in face of such an outwardly focused culture.

And maybe be a little gentler with yourselves.

You know,

On one hand,

You know,

Premasuddha,

I so,

So want you to let yourselves be gentler with yourself.

But then there's some of you that you come to Premasuddha and you're less than sincere,

You're less than sincere deeply.

You're playing games on some deeper levels,

And Premasuddha will give you a push back on yourself,

Because I'm wanting you to see that.

I'm wanting you to see the deeper games going on underneath.

So there's several of you that this is going on with.

And at the same time,

There's huge understanding about what an insurmountable task it feels like to move into truth in our culture.

And yet,

You guys,

It gets done,

Because God does it,

Amma does it,

Your soul does it.

If you're really sincere and honorable,

And really interested in truth,

It will happen.

Nothing can stop it.

If you have a very deep sincerity and a love of truth and a love of the Creator,

It will happen.

But lots of times,

We've got a withhold underneath of kind of,

What's in it for me?

And Premasuddha sees this a lot in people.

What's in it for me?

And it's kind of,

What that question is,

What's in it for my ego?

Well,

Not much.

There isn't much in it for your ego at all,

Because your ego is going to have to die.

You know,

The reason for society,

In lots of ways,

We organize ourselves to be able to feed ourselves and meet the human needs for bonding and have some kind of culture.

And if the culture,

If all of this is based on a green light to moving into truth,

Then human life becomes pretty ecstatic.

But if the culture is based on,

Don't do it,

Run from your hearts,

Then human life becomes pretty tough.

But just seeing this can free you.

Awareness frees you.

Seeing more frees you,

Because you no longer buy into it.

You just start ignoring it.

You start ignoring our culture.

You just start quietly going inside.

You learn how to do it.

And then you just live this way.

You know,

The Chinese,

There's an old saying about that if you just eat the same thing as everybody else and dress the same way,

You can do what you want.

Right.

You guys,

Truly,

Pramasutra does not underestimate what it's like,

Because on top of all this,

That we're in an outward culture,

Outward-looking culture,

And when we go internally to God,

One of the things that we will meet is the old understanding of God as a punishing God.

Okay.

Like,

Oh my goodness.

So somebody's just learned how to go more to their hearts and up will come patterns of,

You know,

Punishing.

Like,

You know,

God is a judgmental guy,

A fellow in the sky who rains thunderbolts upon any person who's making any mistake.

Now,

This is not true,

But it's part of what comes up in the clearing,

The,

You know,

The sort of Old Testament stuff.

But it was all over the earth.

It wasn't just in Christianity.

You can see in the old,

In some of the old stories,

Again,

These streaks of judgment in the East.

You know,

And Pramasutra's talked about how then Christ came in the West,

And Christ was a comforter,

And the New Testament is softer than the Old Testament.

And now we have Amma,

And it's like the Creator is soft like a mother.

She's our beloved mother.

And Amma has said,

I've heard her say so many times,

You know,

Reminding us that she's our mother.

We can expect a mothering energy coming from her.

This is the new thing for us.

This is the shift,

You guys,

That where if you shift to the inside,

Gradually,

It will take you to the experience of that the Creator is this loving mother energy.

Right?

And this is what it can be so hard to believe,

Especially for us in the West,

Because we're raised in this alienation,

And we're in a patriarchy.

So,

I'm not wanting to depress you.

I'm wanting you to see what you're up against,

In a way,

And why you might have some difficulty with the journey.

Or,

You know,

Even difficulty with Pramasutra,

Which is widespread.

And Pramasutra loves you so,

And I so understand the difficulty of getting one's sort of mind around that we can really gradually learn to live in truth.

Because you can.

You see,

The good news of this time is that there's no witch burnings,

Right?

And this kind of work is so under the wire.

It just,

It's like it travels like gas,

You know?

It goes through all the sides of the windows,

And the little holes in the wood,

Or under the door.

It just flows in.

The feminine energy is like that.

It just flows in,

Like wind or water.

You can't really fight it.

You can't really fight it.

You know,

Pramasutra is so hoping with all her heart that talking like this helps free you,

And that you don't listen and go,

Oh,

It's impossible.

Don't do that.

I'm just showing you the lay of the land so that you can learn how to navigate.

Right,

Good.

Good.

There are a couple of you who you're,

It's like being,

You're being tortured inside your,

Your heads are really,

Being really hard on you.

So,

I'm bringing love to you.

Good,

Good.

And the thing,

Yes,

Good,

Good.

Yeah,

I'm seeing big,

Big raw spots like a blister.

You know,

When you have a blister and it's popped in your,

On your foot,

And you've just got this big red hurting spot.

There are a couple of you who are there emotionally,

So bringing love.

That's it.

And there's love coming to all of you.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it.

And there's a feeling in many of around,

It's around this clarity.

It's around beginning to get a handle that you can rise up in this greater clarity.

You can rise up in this bigger awareness,

Like nothing can stop you.

I mean,

This is what Pramasutra's life has just,

This is what the example is.

It,

I'll tell you,

You activate your divine nature.

It doesn't matter what you're facing.

You activate and make room for your divine nature.

And your true nature,

The amma inside you,

The creator inside you,

It solves everything gradually.

You know,

I spoke yesterday,

Some of you,

About,

You know,

The shadow work,

Trying to find enlightenment through the focus on the shadow.

And you see,

This,

I feel,

Is where the Western way,

We get so confused,

Because in the East,

They're very clear.

You know,

If you want,

You want the creator,

You focus on love.

Focus on love.

Everything that is not loving you,

That includes your shadow,

Will come up to be cleared as a byproduct.

If you focus on the shadow,

If you focus on the darkness,

You will get a monstrosity of darkness to navigate through.

And how can light come in when you're focusing on the darkness?

And it's even you calling,

You're calling it dark.

And shadows are just dark because they've been repressed.

This material's been repressed.

And also,

The shadow work,

What it does,

Instead of having the I disappear,

It is the I that is sort of the king deciding what's shadow material and what's not,

And what's to be eradicated and what's not.

I think it's upside down and backwards.

The thing that got Pramasutta out of the shadow in my early 30s was his focus on love.

But what happens is,

If you focus on love,

The experience of unconditional love and your heart and the warmth and the joy gets stronger and stronger and stronger,

And the shadow dissolves.

You know,

Pramasutta actually feels great sorrow at what's going on in the Western culture,

And how confused even our therapies or approaches are,

And the great sorrow and confusion for people.

Like,

I can't stand it,

Actually.

I really,

I can't stand it.

And that's why I do this work.

Some of us are more at home with walking around in unhappiness than with coming out of it.

And again,

This isn't to beat oneself up about this.

It's to,

You know,

Have compassion.

Have compassion.

Because it's coming from the little child within who just felt there was no hope at all.

There is nothing more powerful than the love within you.

Than the Amma within you.

And the love within us will just wait for us to really call on it.

It waits for us to really give us a signal that we're willing to allow it in.

Now,

If we've allowed it in,

We will get an experience of the pendulum.

We will get experience of love and happiness,

And it will go back to joy and sorrow,

And it will be the ego saying,

You're not allowed to do this.

Don't believe it.

There's no hope for you.

There may be hope for your teachers,

But there's no hope for you.

Don't believe it.

Just watch it.

Watch it.

Turn to God again.

There's nothing—I mean,

God is invincible.

It's nothing.

You guys,

Everything is the Creator.

It's all made out of the Creator's energy.

What could ever control that or douse it or fool it or—there's nothing.

Nothing.

There's no energy that has a chance.

Please understand that.

Your heart is invincible.

It's like,

You know,

Remember I told you that,

You know,

My mom was a pretty scared unit.

Her dad had beaten her.

But on her deathbed,

When there was nothing else,

No hiding place,

No escape hatch,

She got it.

She got it,

And she made the shift of her lifetime and did her whole lifetime's work in a very short period of time.

Just keep going.

You don't know.

You don't know what day you're going to have a dream that changes everything for you,

What day you're going to meet somebody who inspires you,

Just knowing them has a transformational aspect.

You don't know.

You don't know.

Remember,

Everything that happens to you is coming from love to help you realize your true nature.

You guys,

You won't die if you see the inner games you're playing.

You won't die if you sort of trip over one of your ego games or machinations or its tricks,

And you suddenly see that you've been less than sincere,

You've been less than loving,

You've been less than willing,

You've been running from the creator actually inside you.

You won't die.

You just allow the correction.

Just allow yourself to become pure,

To become more sincere,

To just acknowledge that,

Yeah,

You were caught in your egos in ways that you didn't realize that you were,

And then genuflect.

I mean,

What else can you do?

Okay,

I see.

I see what I've been doing.

Right.

See,

With the way that Prama Sutta teaches this,

You know,

When I'm talking about the difficulty in the Western,

The outer-focused Western culture,

And the difficulty walking an inward way,

The thing that this way of Prama Sutta puts as a support is this awareness of your body and the awareness of what the parts of your body mean psychologically and spiritually.

It's kind of like a prop,

In a way,

For your understanding to stop,

To help prevent real existential anxiety.

It gives you something you can work concretely with your own body,

Like noticing where the aches and pains are,

And keeping in mind what the meaning of that is,

And using it as,

Okay,

This is where my consciousness is,

This is what I'm moving through,

It's like giving you guys a ladder,

In a way,

To be able to work with yourselves.

So,

Prama Sutta,

I remember at Amaz Ashram a few years ago,

This deep pain in my shoulders came up.

It felt like two inches into my shoulders,

Just incredible pain,

And I just walked around with it for six weeks,

And I knew it had to do with taking too much responsibility at an ego level,

Like trying to figure it out on an ego level instead of learning to give it over to Amma,

To the Creator.

In an obvious way,

I was always giving things over to Amma,

But when this pain came up,

I realized that it was like an emotional complex,

And it was showing me a level that I hadn't been giving it over to Amma.

You see?

So,

You know,

Even though I was talking about the difficulty of the walking,

The journey,

If you really look at the body awareness material as a support to help you walk into truth,

It can become very useful to you.

You know,

What's happened in the past is sometimes people just used it in a machine,

Mechanistic way,

And did it,

Just worked with it from their heads.

But you see,

That won't work,

And it won't clear the body pains.

The thing that will really clear the body pains is allowing a transformation.

And the other,

I mean,

The main support,

We have Amma,

And she offers this smorgasbord of meditation,

Retreats,

And bhajans,

All these things to keep supporting us in our journey,

Especially for Westerners,

You know,

As we walk in this outward-focused culture.

But this is how cultures change.

It's small groups of people,

Individuals,

And small groups of people.

So the West,

Who knows,

It could become,

We could become a sterling example of learning how to make a U-turn.

Remember,

You guys are the point of power.

You're the point of power.

So,

Especially if you're having difficulty with premasuddha,

You look inside,

Okay?

That's what will solve it.

You look inside,

Make the shift,

And you won't have problems with premasuddha.

And I'll be your best cheerleader.

I'll go,

Hey,

Great,

You did it!

And I'll go,

Okay,

On to the next thing,

You know?

But don't battle with me,

Okay?

It's a waste of time.

All I'm trying to do is point you inside.

Yeah,

That's it.

And,

You know,

Premasuddha looks back at her teachers,

And I realize,

And even Amma for many years,

It's like,

I realized I had no understanding of the extent to which they loved me.

Very little understanding of this.

And my growth as a human being has been to see the love they had for me that I might not have been able to see at the time.

And really,

With Abraham,

It took me like 15 years to see it.

It was like,

Oh,

Mama,

How deluded I was.

And even Amma,

I remember,

You know,

That in the early days,

When she would give me hugs,

I could feel it,

But it was far more limited.

It was limited and kind of boxed,

In a way.

And I didn't realize that.

So just,

You know,

Just understand we're works in progress,

And we don't maybe see the truth yet.

And just keep the doors and windows of your mind open.

And please understand the truth is far more humbling.

Like,

It's very,

Very humbling to the ego.

It will be the ego's worst nightmare.

But you can learn to be kind of just equanimous about that.

It's like,

Okay,

It's sort of like,

Okay,

This sacred cow within me is being obliterated.

Here's another one.

Another one bites the dust.

Another strongly held belief bites the dust.

Oh,

Well.

But just remember,

Through all of it,

It's like you are so valuable.

You're such a treasure.

Like,

Just get that.

Yeah,

Please get that.

Please,

Please get that,

You guys.

You know how with your kids,

If you're a mom,

You just so adore them.

They're such treasures.

And even if they annoy you or whatever,

It's like,

Really,

You know what treasures they are.

And how much you adore them.

And that's what gets you up in the morning.

Just love them so much.

When you see their sweet face at 5am,

You know,

It's like,

Oh,

It's just love that keeps a parent going.

And that's how we're loved,

Times infinity.

Even thinking that way,

You know,

Letting your mind just contemplate that.

But,

You know,

So Amma would say,

Or I've heard her say,

Don't think about how much Amma loves you.

Focus on loving Amma.

And,

You know,

The logic of that makes sense.

Because the more we love,

The more we can receive love.

The more we love,

Like if we free up our love for Amma,

Then we free up our love for everybody.

Including ourselves.

Nothing can stop a sincere seeker from making great progress over time.

Really,

It's impossible to stop.

And with every improvement,

You know,

Say,

Every,

Like,

If you notice that you're,

Just any improvement,

Give yourself a medal of honor,

You know.

Premasuddha was covered with invisible medals of honor that she gave herself,

You know,

At a time when nobody was validating her.

But these invisible medals of honor were just where I was loving and supporting,

Opening the door to let my,

The Creator within me to love and support my very human journey.

The other thing is,

We have not had,

You know,

The spiritual journey has been so highly organized in a way,

Or just not being done.

We don't have very many examples of just random people who,

Who just decide to live a true life.

So it's hard to judge whether somebody really is or not,

But you can tell by the peace around them.

If there's a feeling of peace and expansion in their company,

That's kind of it.

And if you feel,

Like,

Kind of instinctively safe,

A little bit at home,

Right.

And like I said,

All teachers have slightly different perspectives.

It's like,

We're all aspects of the Creator.

We're like snowflakes,

A little bit of a difference.

So the way teachers speak,

They're emphasizing different parts of the human experience,

And that will be their job.

And they'll even have disagreements,

Like,

Like what I said about the belief that the,

You know,

The right side of the heart is the part from where our minds create this whole universe.

Like,

There's some teachers that say it's the left.

But Ramana said it was the right,

And Pramasutra's example of that kind of feeling of a heart attack on the right hand side of my heart,

Which is where,

And when that happened,

The whole concrete reality of my experience just dissolved,

And it became like living in a fairy tale more,

Like living in a magic place.

That just became the ordinary thing after that.

But these things don't really matter.

What matters is these small differences.

What matters is the focus on love and compassion,

The focus on selfless service to humanity,

Seeing others as oneself,

Expressing love as much as possible.

A kind word from a stranger is one of the most spiritually accelerating things that can happen to us,

Especially when we're caught in our ego.

It immediately opens a door.

We get proof that what the ego is telling us isn't true.

You know,

That we're all alone,

And nobody cares,

And when you're the agent of that kindness,

It will come back to you in abundance.

Remember,

I was talking yesterday that when we look at the past,

We usually just experience kind of a guilt,

And we look at the future,

We're scared.

So there's kind of no place for us to stand.

This is how most human beings live.

And the way out is to become present in the moment.

You surrender.

It's a surrender.

You realize that whatever you're struggling with that's insolvable,

And you surrender,

And you immediately come into the now.

And now is one reversed,

Like winning a race,

One.

When you come into the now,

You've won.

And when you come into the now,

You have maneuvering room,

And you can walk.

The problem can be solved seamlessly.

So this is part of when I'm speaking to you.

Remember,

Premasuddha is speaking from the now,

And Mao Fen is speaking to individuals who might be caught right in the past and future.

But when somebody's speaking to you from the now,

It opens the door for you to come into the now.

Yeah,

It's very difficult not to be influenced and affected by somebody who's speaking from the now,

From being present in the moment.

Right.

And there's a tremendous invitation to just come into the moment.

Present moment.

And in the present moment,

We are actually in eternal life.

Christ said we were all in eternal life.

We're all actually in our soul energy.

And we're out of the illusion.

In truth,

We're in our soul energy.

Right.

May you feel cleansed,

Present,

And loved.

And hopeful.

Hopeful for your lives.

Please be hopeful.

Don't underestimate the creator.

Don't underestimate Amma.

Be hopeful.

Okay.

Bless your hearts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for meeting.

Yeah.

Just great gratitude to all of you for bringing your full presences and for being open.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Huge love.

Infinite love,

You guys.

Huge love.

Yeah.

Bye.

Bye.