This audio program is produced by Center for Soul Arts with author and teacher Rhonda LaRue.
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Please visit us at www.
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Hi,
This is Rhonda LaRue.
The podcast you're about to hear is a 30-minute set song from this weekend's retreat here called The Art of Breakthrough.
It's a meditative talk and inter-seeing on what it takes to really change and the nature of true radical transformation and awakening.
You will be entering into this set song from a rather lengthy guided meditation that occurred just beforehand.
So in order to sort of step into the inter-seeing,
It would be great to take a few deep breaths and relax into a quiet state as you proceed to enter into the set song.
Blessings on your journey.
Don't you think you can just let your own mind's eye still feel as if you are the hawk soaring over your life.
So don't worry about whether you actually see it or not.
Just allow that sense to be there.
And the hawk stays up in the air looking over your life through a connection to your breath.
So as you breathe,
The seeing,
The long,
Sharp seeing from the heights increases.
And my words are just like pebbles.
You're not really thinking about them.
You're just letting them be pebbles falling into the lake of you.
And you're more interested in watching the ripples,
How the pebbles ripple and how the little waves come,
Little sparkles of water come.
So it's very sort of meandering,
Just being in the ease of the lake of you.
So when I ask a question,
It's not something your mind tries to grab and come up with the right answer to.
It's something you hear as a living question,
A question that brings you more alive.
It actually gives you insight.
The question itself sparks something.
You're not even worried about whether you see it or not.
You just let the question spark something.
So what does it take to change?
What does it take to find our freedom,
Our authentic self,
Our true nature,
Our life purpose?
Don't go in your head.
Let the question be a living question.
So that seeing,
Like the hawk's bird's eye view,
You can actually see what it takes.
You might feel it.
Those songs spoke about it,
And all those songs were about liberation in a way,
About what it takes to actually be in our true nature.
And if you let the bird's eye view just be with that question,
You'll see the quality within you,
Within me,
Within each of us that disallows it,
That stops it.
It's just a quality.
It's a certain quality.
What keeps us from falling in love with our life?
What keeps us from knowing what it is to be in inner peace and awake to our life?
What's the withholding?
See,
If you can notice from the bird's eye view that all it is is a simple part of us that withholds,
That refuses.
You can say,
Oh,
It's because I'm afraid,
Or oh,
It's because I'm not worthy enough,
Or oh,
Because what if there's nothing there,
Really?
The mind comes in and justifies,
Comes in and justifies,
And so we jump onto the justification and lose track of what it is.
It's just a withholding.
All it takes is surrendering into letting go.
It is honest to God,
That simple.
Will you let go?
If you won't,
You stay in your strife.
Will you give up the things we say we want to give up,
But we really don't because all it takes is putting it down,
Actually.
Will you put down anger?
Will you put down defeat?
Will you put down confusion?
We actually keep those things and say that we're a victim to them.
We're not a victim to them.
We choose them and hold on to them for dear life,
Afraid to death,
And put it down.
We then wonder why we're soulfully bankrupt and disconnected and lost and confused and suffering and disheartened.
That's one of the biggest ironies of the whole experience of living.
It's actually a refusal to surrender,
A refusal that's kind of almost,
If you look at it with me from that bird's eye view,
You can kind of see why.
It's almost like a weird false pride,
Almost stubbornness to refusing to just put those things down.
You can call it fear or not knowing how,
But if you really look at the energy of it,
It's kind of like a frightened little six-year-old,
Sort of a stubborn,
I won't,
I won't,
I won't.
I can't,
I can't,
I can't.
But on the other side,
The one simple act of putting it down is your freedom and is your healing and is your insight and is your joy.
It's almost like we're afraid to live without our resentment,
Are afraid to live without our confusion,
Are afraid to live without our doubt,
Because who would we be then?
That's exactly the apex of where it all stops,
Who would we be then?
So we're afraid and so we don't.
And then go on trying little,
Little strategies to kind of put a little band-aid on it,
But don't do the real transformation.
So we feel better for a little while.
The basic is never quite stepped through that doorway.
It takes being willing to not know who you will be with those things put down.
You have to be willing to maybe find nothing.
That's why taking off the masks that we all put on is so hard for us to do,
Because who would we be then?
How will we survive?
What do we do when danger comes our way?
What do we do when we're betrayed again or when something unsettles us?
But if you look from the bird's eye view,
You realize that if you actually have the courage to put down the very thing that is your own jailer and face not knowing who you are without those things,
That what you find is what true nature and what the freedom of your being is.
The freedom of one's being is not an identity.
It's an essential quality of awakeness,
Essential quality of relationship right now to this moment in the vulnerable not knowing of what it is,
Just like I have no idea what I'm going to say,
None.
When you give up that you're a person,
That you're an identity,
That you're all these little masks that you've been wearing that we all had to put out when we were children,
We had to to survive.
It was necessary.
They're not wrong.
They're not evil.
They just now at some point become your jailer.
You're too big for them and you can't sustain life in them any longer at some point.
But they saved your life at some point.
So you're supposed to say,
Thank you.
And now it's time for me to release myself into this bigger space that's way too big for these identities and to face what it is to be a true being,
Which is not a known entity.
There is no Ronda.
There's me in relationship to this moment,
This moment,
This moment.
It's a dance.
It's not a person.
You're a verb.
You're not a noun.
When you make that little tiny monumental quantum leap shift,
Then you know your authentic self,
Then you are living your life purpose.
It's in the movement.
It's in the awareness of that state.
It's giving yourself to that state.
And this is all a foreign concept and content to the mind who keeps you very,
Very blocked in a very superficial linear understanding of what your life really is.
It does that to all of us.
That's why we feel longing.
That's why our hearts feel discontent.
It's trying to wake us back up to this deeper essence of ourself,
To the real connection of living before we die.
So the paradox in what we're actually doing in this unusual teaching process that I've come to give is we're actually using the content you think you are,
The story and the struggles you think you are,
As a doorway to realizing that all that has to be done is seen through,
Set down,
And have the guts to walk into the unknowing place.
And in doing that,
There is a leave taking.
There is a turning to say goodbye to the old.
It's almost like a graduation.
It's like putting down that which sustained us up to a certain point and now is killing us.
It's become too tight,
Too rigid.
It's not life-sustaining anymore.
Nobody teaches us in this culture about consciousness and conscious opening and conscious development.
And just like there's the terrible twos or the awkward thirteens,
There's this call to our higher self time,
Too,
That we're developmentally each brought to at some point in life.
Most of us,
If we're lucky,
Most people later in life.
Like the forties are a really big time for that to start really starting to hound us.
Tragedy brings it upon us faster usually.
So it really is this longing of the heart to put down the burden,
As Shelley said,
Tired.
I'm tired.
I want to put down the burden.
That's a universal statement for people at some point when you want to find your heart is longing,
Your soul is longing to be alive before you die,
To have that charade taken down.
And experience what it is to be in this world still doing your stuff,
But with this underlying knowingness of peace and of listening and of relationship to each moment without needing to know what it's going to be.
Once you no longer need to know what each moment is going to be,
There is no way you can't be safe.
It's impossible.
There's nothing to be safe anymore.
It doesn't even come on that dimension.
And it's terrifying to the ego to hear this conversation,
And it wants to constrict and restrict and go right back into that little box where it's quote unquote safe.
Well,
How safe is it?
Safe for what?
For life?
So everything we're doing this short weekend is for that light to come on,
For that breakthrough,
Because that's the light that sets you free.
Everything else is a band-aid.
The things you're working on are not it.
It's what you're seeing in the process of doing it.
It's teaching you how to become aware of this deeper wisdom language that is outside the domain of the little tinkering mind that keeps trying to get you to go back into the box where it thinks it's safe.
It's giving you a direct experience of exactly where you have to be in order to have this breakthrough and to therefore find what it is to find your essential and know your essential self and your true nature and a place of peace.
I have no interest in little feel-good band-aid life coaching retreats.
Anytime someone comes to work with me,
I take it as a genuine call for radical,
Complete life transformation,
Whether it takes a weekend or 12 years.
The miracle is,
Even though there's a part in each of us that resists and is afraid and closes down even if we don't want to,
The other part of you brought you to something like this.
Do you know what a miracle that is?
Do you know how unlikely it is?
Do you know how many people on this planet actually have the guts to come to something like this to allow their life to change,
No matter how incapable they may feel of it?
So something in you is way stronger than the old confusions,
Hurts,
Betrayals.
And all we have to do is this slight little tiny shift of our perception.
And while we still recognize the part that feels afraid and maybe closed down and maybe a little,
Not even knowing what's going on,
And maybe a little constricted,
All the while that might be going on,
One tiny little turn to also look at the miracle of something in your soul that is longing for something deeper and more that brings you to sit in something like this for a weekend,
One little glance to recognize and appreciate and give some honoring to that.
And it's just,
Wow,
That's amazing.
The whole journey of healing is actually only about honoring,
Honoring,
Listening,
Listening,
Honoring.
It's all it takes.
We just don't honor because we get sloppy or we fall back into little self again and fail to honor.
That's why I pushed some of you guys a little bit to do some things that are honoring even while we're here,
Like asking Gretchen to clean little things to just start recognizing.
And I said,
Oh,
It's all about honoring.
That's how it opens.
It's not honoring to help Jodi or to,
You know,
Pick up Feronda.
It's learning that the act of listening and honoring itself is what opens the doorway.
It's a kind of awareness that stays very present,
Doesn't get back lost in the little self.
Your focus is only always on the little self and all the struggles we're trying to get free of.
You can never get free because you're identified with them.
You have to go outside like yesterday,
Outside of that identification.
It can still be there,
But you can't only be it where you will never break free.
So just a little bit of awe for the miracle.
It's a little tiny bit of awe.
It doesn't have to be hope for fixing yourself.
That's the small self again.
That's getting stuck in the small self.
It has nothing to do with yourself.
A little bit of awe at the miracle of a soul that longs for something more and to just give a little more energy toward that instead of all of it to,
Gosh,
How can I,
Will I ever?
I don't know how I don't get it.
I'm not good enough.
Let that stuff be the chattering mind.
That's why meditation is meditation.
It's learning to let that parade through in and out,
But you don't become identified with it.
It just comes in and it goes out.
The thing that holds you to your soul and to the journey of your soul and to the place where your freedom already automatically exists is to stay in awareness of relationship in the moment,
Which means surrendering into not knowing what's going to happen any moment and being available to it.
That's all it takes.
That's what in essence we're doing by doing these projects out in the studio.
We're not doing art therapy.
We're not doing crafts.
We're actually learning a sacred art of what it takes to stay present and aware to the mystery of the moment and not manufacturing it,
Directing it,
Which is all from the small self.
You will never break free from that place.
You're learning the art of surrendering into something much bigger and much more profound and that is your true nature.
And it requires not knowing.
That's why I was saying yesterday,
No,
You don't create it.
It shows you.
You're the hands.
That's the whole point of these quote unquote projects.
They're not projects.
They're not art.
It's teaching you actually how to be awake.
You're directly experiencing it.
It's a different place.
The self isn't really there in a kind of a way.
You're more in relationship.
Look at how you created.
You weren't really there directing it.
You were in relationship to what was being shown to you.
That's true aliveness.
I don't know why this,
But this just wanted to happen.
Many of you said that yesterday.
That's perfect example of being in that essential self.
Then the mind tries to get it and go right back into the box again.
Did I get it?
Did I get it right?
Do I still get it?
I'm not sure.
And then you get trapped again.
The spiritual muscle is about seeing that tendency to go back into the box and having enough spiritual muscle that you go,
No,
That's the mind trying to put me back in the box.
I come back to listening and honoring.
I just come back to listening and honoring.
Once again,
Listening and honoring.
So these things that you're creating are not your creations.
They are your wisdom teacher giving you the incredible honor of showing up.
And the extent to which you're capable of treating them that way is the extent to which you can break through.
If you think they're your project that you're doing something to,
You're in your box.
If you're treating them as some kind of amazing sort of holy mystery of how the soul speaks and is trying to communicate with you,
Then you're in the place of breaking through and healing.
If you take it as an honor,
You're being honored by what's showing up.
Whether you like it or not is immaterial.
You're being honored by your own soul's wisdom.
So we can be stingy and say,
Well,
I'm going to wait until it proves it knows what it's doing before I'm going to surrender.
That's what we kind of do.
So we just betray and just walk away and turn away from the very thing we most long for,
Which is the connection to our souls out of this kind of stingy fear,
Out of this funny,
Weird,
Stingy fear.
We have to see that.
You have to see it.
Your life could be changed like this right now,
Today,
Completely transformed forever.
With that one seeing,
If that's one seeing totally flooded into you,
And you allowed it,
Allowed it as opposed to shut down around it or tried to protect against it or rationalize why it's wrong or how it's better.
Make sure it's this way.
If you totally got that,
Your life would be utterly healed in an instant.
Our truth isn't out there.
It's right here.
It doesn't go away from us.
We go away from it.
It's always right here.
Your wholeness is right here right now.
It's no place you have to go achieve.
It's already here.
You're just doing something that refuses to accept and see it.
That's what we all do,
And that's where we suffer.
We call that the root of suffering.
That's where we all suffer.
It's coming to see that.
See that,
And you're on the road of being set free.
See that,
You are free.
The culture and society and our own habits of living in this other way are so ingrained in us that it does take a while to really be steeped in this so that it's how you live.
It's going to be really easy to go home and just fall right back into exactly how you were before and go,
Yeah,
Cool,
Retreat,
But I lost it.
It also is really,
Really easy to have it utterly change your life.
All you have to do is follow in the same way we're doing now out in the world.
Everything that happens is an ingredient of your listening and your honoring,
And it's your worthy teacher showing you the way into your greater truth.
Then we get kind of greedy and say,
Well,
It's not good enough.
It's not fast enough.
It's not true enough.
I can't see it clearly enough.
There has to be a falling in love with the process,
A falling in love with the whole mystery of your life.
Everything that brought you to this point in time and that is sitting there as readiness offering you a doorway to your own inner wisdom,
And it's a lifelong walk.
It's not like voila,
I'm here,
Now no more problems.
It's lifelong.
But once you see and you know you've walked through the door,
It doesn't matter that you still have struggles or old remnants of things because you've made a fundamental shift.
It's a seeing shift that takes place that some people would call awakening.
And it's such a relief.
It's such a relief to put down this little bully mind that wants to try to pretend like it can control everything.
You don't control hardly anything.
There is no control.
The sphere of letting go of control is when you really start to see it instead of be it,
You recognize how absurd.
There is no control.
It's an illusion.
It has a song so that we could die today.
It could come right now gone.
So it's only about and we always about how much you want to put everything down to be in stillness to come from that empty place of not knowing who you are because you're alive to the moment.
I have no idea what the next moment is.
That's how you stay alive to the moment.
It's a constant willingness to surrender into that.
That's how you live.
That's dying and being born again in the Christian tradition.
That's understanding nirvana in the Buddhist tradition.
Slightly different words,
But saying the same thing.
It's a radical shift,
An awakening of a second dawning of a deeper perception.
When we're a two year old,
We're six months old and we don't know language yet.
And then we know language and that's a huge breakthrough.
Well,
This is a huge breakthrough.
The whole understanding of a language we didn't even know existed because we were trying to see it from within the structural box of the ego self which cannot understand it.
If you stay in the,
Well,
I don't know what she's saying or how am I going to do it or I don't get it or I never can anyway or if you stay in there,
You're back in your box.
If you feel a little tinge of like this huge open unfathomable field,
This huge mystery that you don't have a clue and it has sort of a taint of of it maybe adventure some excitement to it.
That would be sort of an honoring feeling.
That would be a yes to your soul's own wisdom.
The yeah,
But yeah,
But yeah,
But is the closed door.
So it really comes down to that simple old saying of which dog you're going to feed in this life.
Which are you going to make your God?
You're going to make your God the no,
No,
I better keep up the illusion of safe.
Are you going to make your God the wow,
This unfathomable mystery,
But I have to sacrifice knowing in order to be there.
That's the that's the crossroad.
Anybody who lives their purpose in an inspired way,
Whether they can put these words to it or not have made that leap.
That's where your purpose lives.
So one way to make the most gain the most power from something as small and yet very intense and deep as this day and a half would be to actually allow yourself to see it as a crossroad.
And which way you're going,
Which which when you're saying yes to.
Are you ready is a time to say I'm going to walk the path of opening and seeing new things that I had no idea even existed.
New perceptual breakthroughs that my soul is longing for.
Even I know the price is I have to put down this need to know it,
Control it,
Make sure I'm safe.
All the things that the little box prison requires.
Or no,
I can't do it.
I'm going to go stay in the box.
Then know what you're doing.
Because then there's really no reason to go looking for freedom or life purpose because you've chosen the box.
And then you just want to,
You know,
Find little things that will tinker with that and make,
You know,
Little affirmations and try to manipulate it a little bit.
That would be the way to make the most powerful moment of this day would be to really reflect on,
Wow,
What am I saying yes to this time in my life?
Which way am I going?
You don't get to know what the what it looks like.
And the truth is,
Even if you pick the box,
You don't get to know what it looks like,
Except that you know it's going to have the same the same stories of suffering because they're not going away.
So that part's not going to go anywhere.
And interestingly enough,
Some part of us sort of almost wants to almost prefers to stay with the known misery than the unknown.
At least it's familiar.
I guess I better stay there because it's familiar.
It's miserable,
But it could be more miserable the other way.
So I guess I'll stay with this misery.
You really want to wake up to what the mind does.
Become a student of the mechanisms of the mind.
And that's what we've been doing is things to put you outside of the identification of where you think you are so you can see it more clearly so you can see the whole gig.
Sort of like,
You know,
The greatest frontier.
You already learned already learned how to sort of survive life,
How to take care of ourselves,
How to have our homes,
How to have our free learned that stuff.
It's just satisfaction because we haven't said yes to this incredible aliveness adventure that life is really about.
And you have to die to yourself in order to have that space.
That's again,
Another one of those interesting metaphors of the Bible and other religious traditions.
The death and the resurrection.
You die to the old self.
Old self is actually put down.
Doesn't mean you don't get to keep your interesting personality characteristics.
You do.
You just don't carry it anymore.
You don't identify with it.
You have to willingly step into the unknown without any need to know what that means,
Even though fear is going to be there.
Those are all natural things.
Just don't cow down to it because you know you're God before you die is being true.
Being true is being in the moment,
Being awake to it.
So you just get clarity on that.
Which way am I going in this life?
You know that film The Matrix where you have the choice of the two pills.
One pill that is truth and the other one that keeps the illusion.
So if you can let yourself again remember that you're a hawk soaring over your life right now while you're sitting here breathing in the lake of you.
You're not listening just to the little mind guy.
The little mind guy is there.
But you're not only that.
You're also soaring above in something much wider and more open and much more unknown.
And so both are going on simultaneously.
You're not identified with the little thoughts that come through.
You're seeing them.
You're not denying them.
You're just not being utterly identified with it and trapped in it.
You're soaring more freely.
And as you soar more freely just notice what it feels like to have been drawn to find something in yourself and to feel it so close.
And right now those pieces that you're working for are offering themselves to you as that.
They're your communication to that truth of you.
You deserve the absolute utmost honor you can give them because they are truly trying to show you your own truth.
And if you can be in awe of that you will be in alignment with your true nature.
Just in awe of it.
That's all.
Your own life is swooping down and trying to give you a hug and a kiss and saying welcome.
Thank you.
I'm right here.
I'm so glad you're seeing me.
And I know you've suffered a long time to come to this place.
Let's turn the corner now.
