A 10 Part Course On Holistic Health & Living: Replanting Beliefs

We're taking a deep dive into holistic living on this 10-part course in aligning the mind, body, and soul. This is part 1: replanting our beliefs. In a way, our physical world is simply a mirror of our internal world. This means (in this context) that when we are in joy, everything around us falls into a shade of joy, when we are in anger, anger surrounds us. Our filter of reality very strongly paints the external world that we experience. So first step, tend to our mental forest!

Transcript

Welcome everybody.

So this will be the start of our 10-part course on how to live holistically with life,

How to create health and bring about health in our life.

So in this episode,

We're going to start our journey.

But before we start our journey,

I want to talk about what is this journey?

What is the journey of health and healing?

I have a beautiful teacher,

Kimana Nichols,

Who used to say,

Health is not a destination,

Rather a direction in which we're walking.

We're either walking toward health or away from health.

So let's talk about health as the idea of regeneration versus destruction.

Am I moving toward regenerating or am I moving toward destroying?

And if we look at nature,

We see that everything natural moves toward regeneration even with destruction.

Nature kills in order to regenerate.

And when there is an imbalance of destruction,

It starts to move away from regeneration.

It's no longer regenerating.

So when we get sick to the point where we're no longer regenerating,

We need support from medicine,

From others coming in,

From healers,

From doctors in order to come back towards regeneration.

There's a beautiful community called Temera.

It's in Portugal.

They're a wonderful community and they believe that regeneration and health comes from a very simple idea.

When we're living in symbiosis,

In harmony with the land around us,

With the beings and animals and humans around us,

With our head and our hearts,

When all of these things are in harmony,

Then the natural flow of energy that comes is health and regeneration.

And when we are all supporting,

When nature is supporting us,

When we are supporting nature,

When everything is nourishing everything around us,

Then harmony brings this idea of spaciousness,

Health,

Regeneration.

So this course will be about restructuring our beliefs,

Seeing the world in a new way so that we can start living in harmony and in that space of harmony,

A natural occurrence is healing and health and regeneration and growing and evolution and expansion.

So that's what this course will be about.

I have two little meditators next to me.

We have Buddha and one that represents Hanuman,

This god of playfulness and silliness and devotion and connection to the divine and trust in the divine,

In the divine process.

So they're here to support me today.

And we'll start our first class.

So I'm very minimal in my transmission.

I'm in a very simple place and I'm located in Bali.

So there might be sounds that come in,

There might be roosters,

There might be people working in the fields.

Hopefully this is a quiet space enough that we can get the transmission across.

But I really want to emphasize the material rather than the presentation.

And that's why I'm choosing a very minimalist presentation because this doesn't matter.

What matters is the oral transmission of what we're speaking about and the content.

And that's where I want to focus on.

So if there are sounds that are coming,

That's the natural world.

The crickets don't consider humans.

They just sing when it's time to sing.

And I want to include that beautiful aspect of reality.

That's the realness.

That's so much of our recording and so much of our production tries to isolate the content.

And that's not real life.

And I want to just really include this beautiful earth and planet that is all around me in the transmission as well.

So I want to invite that in and also let you know that that's part of this transmission is what other crickets and birds are going to be singing that can be heard.

That's part of it too.

That's the divine.

That's divine.

Beautiful.

So our first class today is going to be speaking about belief and our belief systems and how our perception alters and frames the world that we see.

So we're going to talk about two concepts and we'll expand from there.

So we have the subconscious mind and the conscious mind.

And we'll talk about the subconscious mind as the field and the soil that grows our beliefs.

And if our beliefs in this metaphor are trees,

Then a fertile subconscious soil is the best time to plant beliefs.

And in this metaphor,

If the subconscious is our soil that grows the belief,

Then our conscious mind,

What I'm aware of,

Where my awareness is,

My awareness is the gardener,

Is that who cultivates,

Who waters,

Who plants the beliefs,

Who chooses,

Okay,

How do I want my garden to be?

I'm going to organize it like this.

I want mango trees.

I want papaya trees.

That's the filter of reality.

That's the conscious mind or our awareness is that who chooses what comes in and what we're planting.

Now,

The truth is,

Is our conscious mind isn't always aware of what's coming in.

And that's what I want to talk about today is how do we choose the beliefs?

How do we become more aware of what beliefs we're planting and gardening and how to start tending to that garden in a more conscious way?

Because sometimes our gardener is sleeping and someone sneaks in and plants a belief.

And that's what we'll talk about today.

So last year at this point,

So in 2018-19,

I was spending some time in the community and I was speaking to this guy.

And we're having a wonderful conversation about beliefs.

And he brought up this idea.

He said,

You know,

People are really stupid.

And it was really interesting when I heard that.

I said,

What makes you say that?

And he said,

I just notice all the time that people say the stupidest things and it drives me crazy.

And I heard that he had this belief that people are stupid.

That's not necessarily the truth,

But that's what he believes.

So it's his truth.

And when I heard that,

I felt this like contraction in my body.

So I kind of,

I was like,

I'm going to try that belief on precise.

And when I tried it on precise,

When I kind of tried the clothing on,

I was like,

Yeah,

People are stupid.

I realized that that would bring me a lot of frustration and a lot of separation.

I noticed my body was feeling judgmental when I said that out loud.

And when I say try it on precise,

What I mean is I closed my eyes and I said,

People are stupid.

And then I listened to what my body was feeling,

What I felt was contraction and separation and judgment.

And then I imagined myself in different situations with that filter.

I go to the store and someone says something like,

Oh,

They're so stupid and I'm smart.

That's what it means.

I'm stupid and I'm smart because it's always in comparison to something.

And I noticed,

Okay,

Well,

This belief is bringing me separation.

That when I say this and when I filter life through this,

I actually feel separated from people.

And then I asked myself the question,

What do I want my beliefs to support?

Do I want my beliefs to support separation or do I want my beliefs to support connection?

And I realized like,

Oh,

I want my beliefs to support connection.

That's not the truth for everybody.

Some people want to feel separate and that's totally fine.

I don't necessarily actually believe that,

But that's okay.

There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to feel separate.

But in my experience,

I found that connection is so much more inducing of supporting of growth and growth together and evolution.

And so I asked myself,

Okay,

What's a belief that is on the same level but supports connection?

So instead of people are stupid,

Separation,

Contraction,

I was like,

Okay,

Well,

What would provide expansion and connection?

And I thought people are just doing the best they can with what they have.

And all of it,

I was just like,

Oh,

That feels really good.

And I even want to just take a moment to look at my face when I say them.

I'm not trying to contort my face in any way,

But like people are stupid.

I'm seeing my eyebrows are coming down.

I'm like,

Oh,

Contraction.

I'm like,

People are doing the best they can.

I'm even looking up and my face is relaxed.

And I'm like,

Yeah,

People are just doing the best they can with what they have.

That feels so good to say and to believe.

Now the truth is,

Is neither of them are true.

They're just beliefs.

They're just a filtration system.

And I can choose if I'm aware and conscious,

What belief to plant.

And based on that belief,

That's just how I'll see the world.

If I believe that people are stupid,

I will see all the times that people are stupid.

If I believe that people are doing the best they can,

I'll see all of these times.

Because they're both there in this holistic experience of life.

It's just what we're attuning to.

And we have the choice to attune to whichever frequency we want to attune to.

It doesn't mean I'm ignoring the other.

It doesn't mean I'm pretending that people don't make mistakes.

I'm just viewing it,

I'm choosing to view it through a different filter.

What's happening for me?

And that will alter everything in my life.

So it's my choice.

So that's when I realized that we have a choice in the beliefs that are planted in our forest.

That based on what we want to support,

We can choose which beliefs are there.

So that was one aspect.

What am I wanting to support?

Am I wanting to support getting more money?

So I believe that the universe will give me money when I need it.

And that supports that.

That's a belief that supports it.

Does it mean it's true?

Not necessarily,

But it doesn't matter because it's true for me.

And that's how I'm orienting myself toward the world.

So our beliefs orient us in a way that we view the world in a certain angle.

And that's a powerful idea.

So that was the first experience that inspired me to realize,

Wow,

I want to tend to my garden in a conscious way.

And then something else happened.

A few months later,

I was at a movie and I was in the movie theater and I was watching an advertisement for a phone company.

And they were selling or advertising an international plan.

Like we have this international SIM card that you can use when you're traveling.

And what they did is they created a scenario in the advertisement that this man was traveling to Thailand from Australia.

And he was at a restaurant and he asked the waiter,

Hey,

Is there internet here?

And the waiter was like,

Sorry,

No internet.

And he goes to the hotel and he says,

Is there internet?

Is there wifi?

And they're like,

Sorry,

No wifi.

And he does this a few times.

And then the representative of the company,

Of the phone company comes on and says,

It's tough to travel.

And there's,

It's hard to find internet.

Use our internet plan for only $30 a month when you go traveling.

And something really interesting was happening because this is after I had just come from Thailand and Bali and I've been traveling Southeast Asia and I witnessed something very interesting.

That the concept of what was happening was that this company as an advertisement fabricated a scenario in order to sell their product and to make their product valuable.

And the concept was it's hard,

The belief that they were planting,

That's what was really happening.

They were planting a belief that it's hard to find internet traveling and it's challenging to travel.

Therefore,

You should buy our SIM card.

But it was very subtle because they didn't say,

Hey,

It's hard to travel.

You should buy our SIM card.

They just fabricated a scenario where you were actually interpreting this man's challenge of traveling and therefore,

Wow,

That looks challenging.

My rational mind believes that I should buy this SIM card.

Now it was really just an advertisement,

But what was happening was those who have never traveled before were being implanted with little beliefs that it's hard to travel and it's hard to find wifi abroad.

And neither of those are true.

And that was something that was really interesting because even though this was just an advertisement,

What I was seeing that they were very subtly planting beliefs in people's heads that it's hard to find wifi.

That's not the truth.

In Thailand,

It's very easy to find wifi.

And not only is it easy to find wifi,

But you can buy a SIM card there for a month for like $6 and they were selling this for $30.

And so they were preying on people's lack of knowledge and what's the word I'm looking for?

Um,

Yeah,

Just of,

Of lack of experience.

They were preying on that and naivete.

And it was so fascinating because that's when I started realizing that beliefs are being planted all the time.

So imagine a forest in our mind and some of these beliefs are our beliefs and some of them are beliefs that were planted and they're being planted all the time.

Now what's interesting is that we have the ability to choose which beliefs take root or not.

And the ability is our awareness.

It's our awareness because I watched this advertisement and as I was watching it,

I was like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

These aren't true and I am not allowing them to be planted.

So someone came to the gate of my garden with these two seeds and they said,

Would you like to plant these?

Or they were trying to sneak in and I said,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

No,

No,

No,

No,

You can't plant that here.

This is my garden.

This is private property.

Uh,

Thank you.

Please leave.

But when we're not aware,

Then those sneak in.

And what I started realizing is that when we're little kids,

We don't necessarily have that awareness that we're given all of these ideas and beliefs that were planted.

And when they plant and take root and become trees,

And then 20 years later or 30 years later we become aware that we have this garden of beliefs,

We start looking around and we start saying,

Whoa,

I actually didn't plant that tree,

But it's so strong.

And this happened with me that I'm so open and encouraging and of empowerment around sexuality and self pleasure.

But then I realized that when I was living with roommates,

If I wanted to go pleasure myself,

I wouldn't say anything.

I would just kind of sneak off to my room.

I wouldn't say,

Hey,

Uh,

Max,

You know,

To my roommate,

I'm going to go pleasure myself.

I'll see you in 20 minutes.

I wouldn't say that.

So when it actually came down to it,

I realized that there was still shame around pleasuring myself.

Even though we talked about it all the time as a household,

We would have discussions about empowerment,

How amazing it is.

But when I would actually go pleasure myself,

I wouldn't say anything.

So what I was realizing is that I had two trees that were planted.

There was the tree that I had planted consciously that self-pleasure is a beautiful practice of loving ourselves.

And then I had this other tree that was planted from when I was a little kid that was,

You should be ashamed or this is not okay.

And I was in the process of hacking down that other tree and planting a new tree that was taking the nourishment,

But it takes time.

So that's the next concept we're going to look at is that when we've had beliefs that were planted for so long that they're running in the background,

We don't even necessarily always realize them.

But it takes time for us to cut that tree down.

It's not one day that we can just uproot it.

We have to hack it down and take the roots out and dig it up and then plant something new to take that nourishment from the soil,

To take its place.

A belief that's of equivalent value that instead of limiting us,

Actually empowers us.

So those are the two types of beliefs that we're looking at.

Limiting beliefs,

Beliefs that hold us back and empowering beliefs,

Beliefs that propel us forward.

So I'll include a meditation that is attached to this lecture,

This talk.

And this meditation will help us become aware of what beliefs are located in our forest.

Because there are two times at which we can catch beliefs.

When they're coming in,

Which is the easiest.

When a belief is about to be planted,

Our filter,

Our conscious mind can choose if it's planted or not.

That is the easiest way to say yes or no.

And then we have the ability to walk around our garden and start to look at the beliefs.

And that can happen in meditation and that can happen in life.

If we're starting to become aware and really conscious,

We'll see these beliefs come up in our life and we can catch them.

That's how we can notice,

Oh,

I'm really triggered right now because I believe that she should do this or something.

That's a belief that all of our frustration comes from our own attachments and our own beliefs.

It's never from anybody else's behavior.

It's how we receive it.

And that's a really good time when we get triggered to sit down and say,

What belief is propelling my frustration right now?

Is this a belief that I want to keep watering?

So lastly,

This last aspect that we're going to look at is when is the time that our soil is most fertile?

So we can induce states,

Theta and alpha waves.

Usually our mind is in beta waves where moving,

We're thinking,

We're in like maybe fight or flight mode where our awareness is very active.

But when we enter into states of meditation,

Hypnosis,

We can use breath work,

Psychedelics,

All of these bring us to a space of,

They call it receptability,

When our guard isn't up.

So it's almost like when our farmer is asleep,

It's easier to plant beliefs.

Now people take advantage of that.

That's what our society does is they very subtly sneak past our farmer and plant a belief and then it starts growing without our permission.

But what we can do as the farmer is we can say,

I want to create a safe and conscious intentional environment that I can plant a belief while my farmer is asleep.

Because when my farmer is asleep,

There's no resistance because the filter also brings resistance to new beliefs.

The farmer is the mind.

The farmer is like,

I don't know about that.

But if there's a belief that we want to plant or uproot that's been there for a long time or a new belief that we find resistance to but we know in our heart is a belief that we want to plant,

We can induce states of consciousness that essentially lets the farmer go to sleep and makes the soil more fertile.

So it's time that we can uproot beliefs and plant beliefs easier.

So these states are through meditation,

Through hypnosis,

Through breath work,

Psychedelics and these are just a few of them.

But it's whatever tool we use,

Excuse me,

Whatever vehicle we use to bring our mind to a state of quiet and easefulness where the thoughts aren't going as quickly,

When our mind goes to sleep or entering into theta and alpha waves.

We're more receptive which is why hypnosis is such a great tool because we're more suggestible,

They call it,

Or more receptive to new ideas.

So we can work with somebody intentionally and say,

Hey,

These are beliefs that I want to view food differently,

I want to view this differently.

So we go into a state of hypnosis while someone we trust plants these beliefs.

So that's the last idea here is that through meditation,

Through these different practices,

We can actually find ways to plant new beliefs and that's a powerful tool and to uproot other beliefs.

So it's almost like a great time to do a switcharoo whereas when we're not in that space,

There's more resistance there.

There's more resistance,

The roots are much more held in the ground instead of the soil being loose.

So that's an idea about beliefs.

So let's do a little recap of what we talked about today.

So beliefs shape the way we see the world.

Our forest shapes the way that we take in the world.

Beliefs are neither true or untrue,

They're just a way of viewing and receiving reality.

We have different beliefs that support different things.

So we have beliefs that support expansion,

Connection,

Empowerment and we have beliefs that support separation,

Contraction,

Limiting ourselves.

We as humans have the ability through the development of our awareness and our consciousness to choose what kinds of beliefs come in and we water.

But sometimes it takes time.

It takes time to develop that awareness and it takes time to uproot the beliefs that we've been practicing for the last 20 or 50 or 80 years.

The longer you've been practicing a belief,

The more stable it's rooted in and the more time it takes to uproot.

But there are certain times where it's easier to uproot and plant beliefs and that's when we're in a more suggestible space when our mind is quiet and our subconscious is more readily available to plant.

There will be a meditation connected to this,

To looking around our forest and tending to our beliefs.

It doesn't necessarily matter what beliefs we have,

Rather I want to put an emphasis on the importance of choosing those beliefs and being the farmer and tending to our own garden and not being a helpless,

Asleep gardener that is not tending to the garden and just lets whatever beliefs come in.

Our last example of that is when you were a little kid and someone said,

You're a bad singer and now you don't sing anymore because that's a belief that's there or it's not okay to do this or you should be ashamed of this.

And that was someone else's belief that they planted in their garden.

This first talk is connected to tending to our own garden,

Being the masters of our own domain and choosing how we see the world.

That's literally what it means to design your own reality,

To choose your own reality on a foundational level.

How am I choosing to see the world?

It's a practice,

It's a constant practice that takes awareness and dedication and devotion to tending your garden every day,

Every other day,

Once a week.

More tending is better,

Doesn't mean you have to do this every day but if you do it two minutes or five minutes,

You'll start to see that your skill will get much stronger.

So thank you guys for listening to this first conversation about beliefs and how we receive the world.

May you have a beautiful and fruitful forest of many amazing fruits that are super tasty and nourishing you because whatever beliefs you plant,

That's what will nourish you.

If you plant trees that are wonderful and tasty and nourishing,

Then that's what you'll get.

If you plant trees that are decaying and full of food that is taking away from your body,

Then that's what you'll get as well.

So may we all have gardens that nourish us and support us toward whatever we believe serves us,

Whether that's separation or connection,

May you do it consciously.

Thank you for listening.

We'll end today with three ohms because it feels good to ohm.

We'll just clear the mind and then we'll say together,

Hari Om,

Hari Om Tat Sat.

May it be to the divine.

So we'll take two inhales and exhales and just receive the information,

Receive everything and just know that whatever lands need to land.

We'll join in three ohms.

Vipenil.

Om.

Vipenil.

Om Vipenil.

Om Vipenil.

Om Vipenil.

Om.

Sitting for a moment in the stillness.

Feeling the spaciousness and the aeration in the soil of your garden.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for being here and taking the time.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Enjoy your meditation.

Have a beautiful week.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you.

Reviews

Look forward to the doing the other 9 lessons. A simplistic scenario making this a very adaptable approach. Thank you ✨

Great, thank you

Great!

Beautiful…thank you!

Enlightening talk. Look forward to hearing more from you. Thank you for sharing your love, light, and knowledge with the world. ✌️💜✨

When will the other parts be made available? Looking forward to them.