Seeing the truth of life is like removing the fearful filter that we look through,
The dirty lens.
And so you can see more clearly.
You see yourself more clearly,
You see other people more clearly,
And you see life more clearly.
And in that clarity is a flavor of love.
As you go about your life doing what you do,
Are you seeing things that aren't really there?
Are you imagining monsters?
It gives rise to a pushing away of love.
The confusion says it's not safe to love.
And this is all because of an innocent misunderstanding.
Because we're not seeing clearly.
This is why it's the most important thing.
So,
Welcome to this spontaneous session entitled,
Holding Space for Love to be Seen.
And I feel like I'm going to do this more often with this title.
I might change it up a little bit,
But the title isn't so much about what I'm going to be talking about.
It's more about just holding space.
Just hanging out together for this hour.
And we get to see what comes up in that space.
And in the holding space for more love to be seen,
It kind of speaks to the nature of what I do in my work.
Which is also a reflection of my intent for living.
Holding space so that love might be seen.
In the context of my work and being here with you right now.
It's really about just showing up with some emptiness and some openness.
And allowing ourselves to kind of look beyond the noise.
Look beyond the confusion.
And clarify what's really happening.
Seeing more of what's true.
And in the recognition of that,
You can't help but experience more love,
Compassion and freedom.
And this,
And my goodness,
This is what I love so much about the human experience.
Is the things that we long for,
Which in some way can be expressed as love,
Compassion and freedom.
They're already here.
They're already available.
It's already real.
It's already true.
And it's just a matter of can we come home to what is real and what is true.
And as you come home to what is real and true,
You recognize that what you crave is already here.
We don't have to go run around trying to connect with it.
Trying to capture it.
Trying to find it.
We can just come back to reality.
We can come back to reality and then see that,
Oh my goodness,
All is well.
So,
Welcome.
Excited you're here.
And as we begin this with,
You know,
Not really much of an agenda about what to explore.
We're just going to take a few moments of silence to kind of drop in.
And then from that silence,
I'll speak.
And then as I'm speaking,
If you have questions,
You can write them in the comment section.
I guess it's wise to point out that 99.
2% of my offerings and my recordings that you listen to,
They're all spontaneous talks.
Which is,
I don't have a plan.
I just show up and I start talking.
And a lot of those recordings are from events and retreats where I just show up.
I sit down,
I be quiet,
And then I wait for something to be seen.
Something that wants to be shared.
And it's just,
It's very,
Very spontaneous.
And so that's what's going to happen here now.
Is to just kind of relax into the presence of this moment and see what life wants to say.
And if you have any questions,
You can write it in the comments and then I'll do what I can to speak to those things.
Sharing my perspective.
So let's just enjoy some silence for a moment.
And then we can see what happens.
You know what I find both fascinating and beautiful about life and being human?
That here we are right now and there's lots of people watching from all over the world.
Lots of humans.
And each one of these humans,
Including myself,
We're traveling our unique path.
Some are younger,
Some are older,
Some are here,
Some are there.
Some are happy,
Some are sad.
Some long for this and some long for that.
And in the diversity of all of those human experiences,
There's this fundamental equality in what we're all searching for.
Longing to connect with.
It's like we all love the same thing and we're all afraid of the same thing.
As you look underneath all the stories about what we love or all the stories about what we're afraid of.
At the core,
It's all the same.
Let's just recognize that for a second.
Looking at our fear,
We can tell all different stories about what we're afraid of.
But when you unravel those stories,
It points at a fundamental inadequacy that is afraid that we're not enough.
And when you look at what it is that we love or long to love,
In some way there's this declaration that says,
I wish I could just be as I am,
Which is the embrace of what I am,
Which is love.
There's a profound simplicity there,
A profound simplicity that isn't lost and confused in the noise,
But just comes home to the heart of the matter.
It's like we can be so distracted by all the things we think we're afraid of,
But really we're afraid of not being enough.
Which is such a beautiful invitation to just come home and embrace yourself as enough.
To let go of all the stories and just come home and extend to yourself the love you're looking for.
To let go of all of those fantasies where the world finally loves you and you do it.
Let go of all the fears of the world not loving you and let the world be the world,
Not needing its approval,
Not needing its love.
But recognizing that the love you crave is a love that begins and ends within what you are.
Isn't that fascinating?
And maybe you can see this,
Maybe you've touched upon this,
That the real love that we crave,
It's not found in the world.
It's not found in other people.
Sure,
Sometimes it's nice for the world to say,
I love you.
Sometimes it's nice for somebody else to say,
I love you.
But you can't hold on to that.
You can't rely on that because it always changes.
And so there's such a freedom in gently releasing this want.
A want that looks for love out there.
And if anything,
We can just release that right now.
You don't have to release it for the rest of your life.
Just release it right now a little bit so that you can come home a little bit more.
I'm having a drastic weather change right now.
It was sunny and now it's pouring rain.
Maybe you can hear it.
And it's amazing too,
When you recognize your inherent worth and value,
When you recognize that you are whole and complete,
You can let the weather change.
You can let life be life.
And in its change,
In its transformation,
In its unfolding,
Whatever the weather might be,
You can find a beauty in it,
In a way that says,
Well,
If it's raining,
It's supposed to be raining right now.
How do you know it's supposed to be raining right now?
Because it's raining.
This too shall pass and it might be passing right now.
Oh my goodness.
Can I also mention how important this discovery is?
And from my perspective,
And this is something that you have to come to find for yourself,
But this inquiry,
This willingness to investigate what's really happening,
This inquiry that looks beyond the noise,
We could even say this spirituality,
If it's in its appropriate context,
Making contact with the sacred is the most important thing.
Because if I don't see,
If I'm lost in the imaginary chaos,
Then that chaos gets seen everywhere.
Another way to look at this is like,
If I'm not being kind to myself,
Then I will be unkind to others,
Which is why it's really important to be kind to yourself.
And that kindness to yourself is seeing the truth of yourself,
Seeing the truth of life.
Because naturally,
When you see the truth of life,
It's impossible to be unkind to yourself.
And it's so amazing too,
Because seeing the truth of life is like removing the fearful filter that we look through,
The dirty lens.
And so you can see more clearly.
You see yourself more clearly.
You see other people more clearly.
And you see life more clearly.
And in that clarity is a flavor of love.
And so as you go about your life,
Doing what you do,
Whether you're going to work or running a business or in relationship,
Are you looking through a confused lens?
Are you seeing things that aren't really there?
Are you imagining monsters?
And in all of these things,
It creates a distortion that gives rise to agitation.
It gives rise to a pushing away of love.
The confusion says it's not safe to love.
And this is all because of an innocent misunderstanding,
Because we're not seeing clearly.
This is why it's the most important thing.
Petra asks for me to speak a little bit about self-forgiveness.
And Eleonora asks,
What about the humility in self-forgiveness?
So let's talk about forgiveness.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
You know,
And a lot of these concepts like love,
Like forgiveness,
Like compassion,
Like freedom,
There's the way that the world sees these things,
Which from my perspective is upside down,
The way that it's seen in the world.
And there is a deeper discovery about what they really are beyond what we've been told they are.
And so let's look at the misunderstanding of forgiveness in the way that we maybe traditionally are taught about forgiveness.
Because I also find that clarifying a lot of the confusion around these things helps greatly in seeing them more clearly.
Because,
And so often this is the case,
It's not about something new.
It's about letting go of the confusion,
The misunderstanding.
And as the misunderstanding is clarified,
Then the reality of it shows itself.
And so the confusion,
And again,
I'm just going to ramble a little bit here,
Let it hit you where it hits you.
And again,
I'm speaking on a pretty deep level here,
Which also has the capacity to be understood.
So be careful in your interpretation of what I'm saying.
But let me start with this.
The confusion in the world's idea of forgiveness is that there is something to forgive.
And in the most authentic nature of forgiveness,
It's the recognition that there's nothing to forgive.
Because in a way it's already forgiven,
And also in a way that what I think happened that needs to be forgiven didn't happen in the way that I think it happened.
And that might sound pretty intense,
But we'll dive into it a little bit here.
And I'm going to point to these things in their most simple context,
And maybe through the simplicity,
You can see how it expands into the complex.
So,
For example,
Just to illustrate,
Say that I send somebody a text message,
And they don't respond to my text message.
So initially we can think,
Okay,
There's an opportunity to forgive them.
I can forgive you for not responding to my text message.
And even for that to be a possibility,
I first have to be disturbed that you didn't respond to my text message.
It's the disturbance that gives rise to the potential for something to forgive.
And so let's look at what happens here.
I send a text message,
And then you don't respond,
And so I get disturbed.
The real issue here is the disturbance.
Now,
Why am I disturbed?
Well,
The mind says,
I'm disturbed because you didn't respond to my text message.
That's the story.
Now,
Let me ask you,
Is that really true?
Is that really why you're disturbed?
And to fast forward,
I'll say,
No,
It's not why.
You're not disturbed because someone didn't respond to the text message.
You're disturbed by what you think it means.
Just see that for a second.
Am I disturbed because they didn't respond,
Or am I disturbed by the meaning I created by their nonresponse,
Which I interpreted as,
It means I'm less than.
Do you see this?
I interpreted their nonresponse as a form of rejection.
You didn't respond.
That means you rejected me,
And that hurts.
Because in my interpretation of rejection,
It means I'm less than,
And that hurts.
So because you didn't respond,
You hurt me.
You made me feel less than because you didn't respond.
Do you see the blame there?
And so naturally,
The way that we do this in the world is,
I forgive you for making me feel less than by you being you,
By you not responding to my message.
I don't care about why you didn't,
But I was hurt.
I felt less than.
It must have been because of what you did or didn't do.
And now it's up for debate if I will forgive you or not.
So see,
There's something to forgive,
Which as a side note,
Or maybe super relevant,
We are giving that person an extraordinary amount of power over our internal life.
We're saying that you responding or not responding has the power to make me feel less than.
Now,
Is that true,
That they have that power,
Or do you give them that power,
Which is really the power that you have to give away power,
Right?
In giving them that power,
It doesn't mean that they have that power.
It means that you have the power to give up your own power.
Now,
When you look at this more clearly and you investigate the hurt that's felt,
And you see,
Oh,
This hurt isn't responding to what happened on the surface.
It's responding to my interpretation.
Okay,
So do you notice this,
That when I said that real forgiveness is realizing that there's nothing to forgive,
When I recognize profoundly that you not responding to my text message isn't what made me feel rejected,
Then I realize that I don't need to forgive you because you didn't make me feel this way.
It was my misunderstanding,
And so I don't need to forgive you.
There's no need for forgiveness.
What there is is a clarity,
A deeper understanding about what I really am,
A deeper understanding about how this works as being human,
And what our emotions are really about.
So you see,
This is in a very simple context with the illustration of the text message,
And naturally this can extend and extend,
Expand and expand,
And you'll probably hit a line somewhere where it has a difficulty crossing that line,
Right?
And one way somebody might say,
Okay,
Well,
It's fine with a text message,
But it's not fine if somebody scratches my car,
Right?
It's not fine if somebody burns down my house.
It's not fine if somebody steals my money.
It's not fine if someone punches me in the face,
Right?
And so we all have this different line,
And another person,
Their line might be the text message.
And so you have to figure out where that line is for you,
And it's very easy to find.
You just look at your own experience and see where you refuse to accept the reality where somebody else didn't make you feel rejected.
And then you work with that line.
You investigate that line.
Like,
Is that line really there,
Or did you put that line there?
And this is what I've discovered for my whole life.
I mean,
Looking out throughout this whole journey,
It's like I can tell all sorts of fantastic stories about people in my life that need to be forgiven or whatever,
But the more I look at it,
And again,
Speaking to my own experience,
You're free to have your own,
But when I look at my own experience,
It's so profoundly obvious that nobody made me feel a certain way.
Nobody disturbed me.
Nobody actually has that power,
That my experiences of being disturbed were actually opportunities for me to see more clearly what's going on.
And so in a roundabout way,
All of these people have helped me to see reality more clearly just by being as they are.
And that might be tough,
But another way to illustrate this is like,
My goodness,
And this is so beautiful,
Another way to illustrate this is like our relationship with life.
Do you notice that as you live life,
There's things that life does that you can blame life for disturbing you?
For a simple example,
The sun was just out,
And I was thinking about,
Okay,
When I'm done with this video,
I'm going to go take a walk because I love walking,
Especially where I live,
It's gorgeous.
And then it started raining.
Now,
If I was disturbed because I didn't get what I wanted,
I can say,
Oh,
It's because life is being live that I'm disturbed,
So I'm blaming life,
Which presents an opportunity to forgive life.
But then I realize,
Oh,
Life is just being life.
Life is doing what life needs to do in order for life to be life.
I can argue with that because I didn't get what I wanted,
Or I can see that it can't be any other way.
Life is going to be life.
And what I also recognize is I don't need to get what I want in order to feel whole and complete.
And if I don't need what I want in the future to be whole and complete,
Now,
Then I'm not disturbed by not getting what I want.
Like,
I might prefer or enjoy a walk later,
But if for some reason that doesn't happen because life is live,
It doesn't mean that I need to be disturbed about it.
Because another part of the confusion in being human is we think that life is about getting what we want,
Which is really an effort to try to fix ourselves or to make ourselves whole and complete because we see ourselves now as inadequate,
Which is,
You know,
Adorably silly.
And so as we go through life,
We see more and more clearly that life is not the problem.
Life doesn't need to be forgiven.
If there's anything that needs to be forgiven,
It's to forgive the mind's misunderstanding,
Which is really just recognizing that,
Oh,
It's an innocent misunderstanding.
Mike,
That's so,
It's so powerful.
And I understand for some people,
You know,
On your journey,
Where you're at,
That might be really difficult to see,
Especially as we've encountered,
You know,
Really painful things.
And I get that.
And if it hurts,
I'm really,
Really sorry.
But at the same time,
There's a profound opportunity in this life to see beyond that noise,
To see beyond the conditioning,
To see beyond what you've been taught about forgiveness,
What you've been taught about love,
What you've been taught about freedom,
And see something more real and true.
And so on the topic of self-forgiveness,
My goodness,
And can you connect the dots here?
Maybe there's nothing to forgive.
Wouldn't that be something?
Or do you want to spend your life thinking that there's constantly something to forgive every day because you're not being how you want to be,
When maybe how you are just makes perfect sense for right now.
And I would also suggest that the more you think it needs to be forgiven,
The more judgment you have for it,
And the more judgment you have for those parts of yourself is also what makes it difficult for those parts to change.
That's a big one.
My goodness,
We could sit here for hours and explore this stuff.
My goodness.
So yeah,
That's what I have to say now about self-forgiveness.
And I think in my library of stuff,
Too,
You'll find some.
.
.
I think there's something that's called.
.
.
There's a meditation called Forgive Yourself,
Please.
And I speak a little bit more in depth to that.
Wow,
That's so beautiful.
On the same note of maybe there's nothing to forgive,
Maybe there's nothing missing,
Right?
Because so often in our human journey,
We think something's missing.
And in the assumption that something's missing,
We spend our lives trying to find that something that's missing,
Only to ultimately find out,
Oh my goodness,
Nothing's missing,
Which means I can come home and be present now,
Which means I can enjoy the life that's being lived now.
I don't need to wait until I finish my collection of things before I enjoy myself.
I can be alive now.
Hooray.
Ta-da.
That's beautiful.
All right.
Any.
.
.
Oh,
Wait,
Here's a question.
Blossom says,
Will stuck energy from past inside our physical body naturally dissolve during non-duality meditation?
Asking because I'm wondering if we need to do shadow work.
You know,
Let me say this about those things.
It doesn't dissolve because of anything that you do.
And this is really important.
It dissolves because of the energy that you bring to what you do.
And so in that,
It doesn't matter what you do.
What matters is the energy that you bring to it.
And so when you're doing meditation,
Are you doing it because you're afraid of not being enough and you think that if you meditate,
One day you will be enough,
And that's going to be a disaster?
Or are you meditating as an opportunity to make contact with what's real and true,
To honor life,
To honor presence,
To honor the truth of what you are?
Like,
Are you meditating from a space of abundant sincerity?
Or are you meditating from a place of fearful lack?
Which is,
Are you meditating trying to get something?
Or are you meditating as a way of celebrating what is?
And it's the same.
It's about relating.
How are you relating?
And it's like when you go into a relationship,
Do you go into a relationship to get love?
Or do you go into a relationship to share the love that you are?
You see,
It's not the relationship itself.
It's what you bring to it.
And this is the thing that's often confused,
Is we think the answer is in that thing.
No,
The answer is in you and what you bring to it.
And so in this,
We can let go or release our grip a little bit about what we should be doing or what we shouldn't be doing,
As if there's a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do.
There isn't.
All of these paths are just paths.
And whatever the path is,
Is an opportunity to discover you.
It's not an opportunity to discover some prize along the path down the road.
The path is simply there as an opportunity of exploration,
Regardless of the path.
Because one person's path is being a business owner,
And that path will have its own opportunities that is the same opportunity as a path of being a monk.
And so the real question is what path resonates,
Not about what is the right path or the wrong path.
What path resonates,
What path speaks to you.
Like if the path of being a Buddhist speaks to you,
Then explore that.
If it's a path of Christianity,
Explore that.
Explore what resonates,
And guess what?
It might change.
And you know what?
In fact,
It will change.
And the disaster is thinking that whatever path it is,
Is the right or wrong path,
And so you cling to the path and don't listen to the inner guidance.
And you start forcing yourself to walk a path that you're not really interested in.
There's a beautiful fluidity to these paths we travel,
To where life brings you one path that resonates for a time,
And then that resonance will change because now it's time to explore a different direction to learn something new,
In the same way that the seasons are.
Sometimes it's this season because it needs to be this season,
And then other times it changes and becomes a new season because it's time for that season.
Kristen asks,
What about gratitude?
What's your suggestion to feeling grateful?
Awareness in presence.
Gratitude is an energetic state that recognizes what you crave is not missing.
You see,
And we can tell stories about gratitude,
Right?
Oh,
I'm grateful for this,
And I'm grateful for that.
But really,
Do you see how that invites an energy of wholeness,
That nothing is missing?
And so to put your attention on what you're grateful for invites an energy of wholeness,
Which also invites presence,
Because when wholeness is seen,
There's a great permission to be present.
And something to explore as it relates to gratitude is see if you can discover a gratitude that isn't grateful for this or grateful for that,
But is actually grateful for the whole thing.
Like,
I'm not grateful for the sunshine and not grateful for the rain.
I recognize that they go together,
And so I'm grateful for the whole thing.
The blessings in my life I'm grateful for,
But that doesn't mean I'm not grateful for what's perceived as the curses,
Because I see that the curses gave birth to the blessings.
If it wasn't for the curse,
There would be no blessing.
So I'm grateful for both of them.
See,
This invites a wholeness for the totality of life and the totality of what I am,
And I see that it all goes together.
There can be a fundamental trap when you split it in half and you're grateful for one side while rejecting the other side.
It can keep you divided.
But when you investigate the nature of life,
Like the rain and sunshine,
You see that these things aren't really divided.
They're actually expressions of the same thing.
It's life,
Right?
On one side of life,
There's sunshine.
On the other side of life,
There's rain.
They go together.
Isn't that beautiful?
It is.
It's amazing.
And it's so easy to miss this,
Especially as we get caught in our dreams of separation,
Thinking things are separate.
And this is the real value of spirituality,
To be still and know what's really true.
All right,
You guys,
Let's do a short five-minute guided meditation.
What should the topic of this meditation be?
It could be self-forgiveness,
Since we talked about that.
It could be gratitude.
Meditation for being enough as we are.
Yeah,
Let's do that.
Welcome to this short guided meditation.
We're going to spend about five minutes together,
Dropping into presence and inviting a deeper clarity that allows us to see ourselves,
Others,
And life with more love,
Compassion,
And freedom.
Let's begin by taking three deep breaths.
We are inviting ourselves into presence.
We can recognize that the mind moves,
Thinking about this,
That,
And the other,
Past and future.
But we can also recognize we are here right now.
Let us take three deep breaths and acknowledge the reality of where we are here now.
We can recognize that in this very moment right now,
There is no problem,
There is nothing missing,
And there's nowhere else we should be.
We can only be here right now.
As we connect more and more with presence,
We can recognize a profound gratitude for simply and effortlessly being alive.
There is a heart that's beating.
There is a breath that's flowing.
There is a life that holds you as you are.
No demand,
No expectation.
There is only a space that allows you to be.
Let's take three deep breaths and honor this space that allows us to be.
Maybe we can recognize a soft smile,
A great remembering that in reality,
Here and now,
I am enough.
Life is enough.
It's only the mind that says otherwise.
An innocent misunderstanding.
We can release the confusion and come home.
We can see what's real,
Not focused on the mind's imagination and all of its stories.
We can connect with the life that is here and now.
And in the truth of what is,
We see that we are enough.
And so let us go and celebrate that wholeness.
Let us share that wholeness in how we see ourselves,
In how we see others,
And in how we see life.
Thank you for sharing this time with me today.
