Ask Your Guides - Live - 9/27/24

Recorded LIVE - 9/27/24 - An unscripted collaboration among teachers, addressing questions from the Insight Timer community.

Ask Your Guides! With Lou Redmond, Darius Bashar, Charles Freligh, Saqib Rizvi, Jessica Amos: A Roundtable of Wisdom: Insights from Five Inspiring Teachers -- a one-of-a-kind collaborative session featuring five of Insight Timer's most beloved and inspiring teachers. These five extraordinary individuals, who are not only renowned teachers but also cherished friends, have come together to share their wisdom and experiences in a truly special way!

Please check out their profiles on Insight Timer and follow them!

Host Teachers: Melanie Underwood and Violet 108

Please join our Insight Timer Group "ASK YOUR GUIDES" to continue interacting with the teachers and the community.

Transcript

Okay,

Good.

All right.

All right,

Everybody.

Welcome.

So we are very excited.

Special treat tonight.

We've got these five amazing teachers,

Who are also friends.

And most of you know them,

I'm gonna just go around.

I'm going to start with you,

Lou,

And let you introduce yourself.

Yeah,

So hi,

Friends.

It's good to be on this live.

I've been haven't been on a live in a while.

I've been on Insight Timer since 2016.

So I feel like I'm an OG in that way.

And yeah,

I have many courses on here.

Many of you maybe have taken some and for those I'm just meeting,

It's really special to spend this time and also to have this space to connect also with people that have become friends.

And I think Insight Timer is that has that community aspect of it.

And so it's really cool to see as we've grown as teachers sharing on the app,

How these connections and friendships have formed over the years.

So what a special time to share it with some of my friends.

Awesome.

Jessica.

Hi,

Everybody.

It's really good to see you all and to be here with new friends and old friends.

I've been on the app since 2018.

Actually,

Before that I downloaded the app in 2012.

And it was just a timer app.

And then came back and started uploading content.

And like Lou,

I have a lot of courses on here,

A lot of just really basic stuff,

Relationships,

Shadow work,

Inner child,

All the nitty gritty,

Get down to it kind of stuff.

And it's just been such a blessing to be on this app with all of you.

So really happy to be here today.

Excellent.

Charles.

I'm Charles.

It's always interesting in the introduction portion,

The practice of just trying to focus on what someone is saying and not preparing what you're saying,

Especially for someone who's historically quite socially anxious.

But I was trying to do that.

So Charles and I'm not sure when I was maybe around the same time as Lou,

I imagine,

On Insight Timer originally started doing it just because it was like a creative outlet kind of thing.

And then it turned into a career or like a career opener,

Like opened up so many different avenues that just would not have existed if not for this platform.

So I'm incredibly grateful for this.

And grateful for this time is the five of us have a meeting every week for a while now,

Like just us.

And so it's like quite cool to,

And kind of meta to be doing it in this way too.

So nice to be here.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Sakim.

Yeah.

Hello everyone.

It's good to see you.

Although some of you see me quite regularly here on Insight Timer,

I do a lot of lives.

I started,

I've been using Insight Timer since,

You know,

As Jessica said,

When it was just a timer,

But I joined Insight Timer in 2018 and I have just stuck to this platform because,

You know,

What I find is that there is a,

There is a community here.

There is a community feeling here.

It's not just,

You know,

Like other social media platforms where you are just posting content.

It's almost like dead content and you are just not really forming a community there.

So the,

The,

The value of community that I see here is,

Is really has been really heartwarming has been,

I have been able to connect with many of you through this platform.

And I'm today very joyful to,

You know,

Be with my friends and do this together.

Awesome.

Can I,

Can I just jump in and say,

Because I feel,

I feel like I'm getting a chance to play basketball with Michael Jordan.

The analogy is that Sakim has heard me talk about this before,

But he is the greatest of all time on Insight Timer live is Sakim Brisby.

So I'm like,

I'm in an Insight Timer live with my friend Sakim is like being on the court with Jordan in the 90s.

So I just want to just say that.

Well,

Imagine how,

Imagine how Melanie and I feel being here with all of you.

So it's times five for us.

Darius.

Hi,

This is so cool.

I have my phone here watching the chat and then you all on the screen.

And if I didn't have ADHD,

I definitely do now.

It's awesome.

My name's Darius and I have been on Insight Timer since week two of the pandemic.

I am a professional photographer.

And as you remember,

Everything shut down in week two,

And I accidentally found myself making meditations.

There's a calling coming through,

Found this website called what Insight Timer.

So strange.

Never heard of it before.

I'm like,

Maybe I put a meditation up in here.

And it took like two,

Three weeks until they approved the meditation.

And then like 250 meditations later and four years later,

I am loving this platform,

This community.

It's my favorite place to make content because it's just full of intention and meaning and people who want to go deep and aren't looking for superficial connections.

And yeah,

The type of content I love making is usually around accessing our hearts,

Slowing our minds down and finding that thing our soul wants to express.

A lot of it's around the belief that all of us are creators and all of us are artists and there's something we're here to create.

And it's an honor to be here with this beautiful group of humans today.

So thank you.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

And now I'm going to let Melanie do the hard work because she's got to keep up with these questions.

So take it.

Take it away,

Melanie.

Thanks,

Violet.

Thank you guys so much for joining.

So one of the questions that we have is,

What is your personal meditation practice look like?

And what is your favorite form of meditation?

Don't all answer at once.

Hmm.

Did you want us to hit that little cute raise hand button?

No,

Just spit it out.

Just old fashioned,

Like,

Okay,

Guys,

I could kick things off.

My meditation practice shifts with the seasons and it's fluid and it's there to serve me instead of me being a servant to it.

So currently,

My jam is actually someone on inside timer.

It's binaural beats,

10 minutes to 20 minutes.

It's the ritual beforehand that's so important as well,

Like the grounding,

The stretching,

The journaling,

The smudging,

The just setting the tone in the atmosphere for that sit with I like to think about it sitting with God.

And it's just opening my heart and not trying to make it about an end and just letting whatever is there be there.

I don't think I prescribe to any specific technical meditation.

It's more about just opening my channels and allowing whatever is there to flow through me.

That's beautiful.

And if you pair that with some journaling immediately afterwards,

It's killer.

It's like the best ideas I've ever got come through that process.

But the secret is don't do it for the outcome.

You got to just kind of like leave it open and then paradoxically,

Cool things happen.

And I don't know if you guys are looking at the chat,

But everyone is saying how amazing you all are.

And Darius,

A lot of people here go to your artist creative mornings and love it.

So just giving you that since I don't want to increase anyone's ADD,

I'll pay attention to all the screens.

So what about the rest of you?

What do you do for meditation?

I'll riff off.

Oh,

Go ahead.

You go.

Okay.

This is what our car is like.

I'll riff off Darius for a minute.

Really similar.

It's very seasonal for me.

It's very much like my practice.

I have so many practices,

Meditation practices and tools in the toolbox at this point that a lot of it is what I'm feeling seasonally.

But every day it's the same.

I would say that even just making my morning coffee as part of my morning meditation,

Just like the meditation of getting up and doing that same routine.

Every day I get back in bed.

This is my meditation practice.

I get coffee.

I get back in bed.

I read usually something that is very inspiring to my spiritual practice,

Something I'm studying deeply that connects me with God and the God within and self.

I'll just sometimes read half a page.

Something that really blows my mind or breaks me open,

And I'll just sit and I'll marinate in whatever that is.

Sometimes it's the same poem that I read every day,

Day after day.

There's one prayer that I've been praying every day since May this last year.

Sometimes one little piece of that prayer will just break me open.

I'll just repeat that line over and over,

And that'll become my prayer,

My mantra for my day.

Then sometimes I pair it with journaling.

Then sometimes I get up and I turn on some music and I do some movement here in my living room.

Sometimes it's a walk.

A lot of times in the wintertime especially,

I find that I get up the earliest at 5 a.

M.

I light candles,

And I also sit here.

That's when I go into my deepest practice.

I call it my cave season,

And I'm preparing for it right now.

That's where I do a lot of my dreaming and meditation and my transformation space.

I could go on and on about all the different ways that meditation is available,

But that's basically what it looks like for me every day.

A lot of times I don't have a regular practice,

But I actually do.

That's the practice.

It feels good for me,

And I think that's the most important thing.

Charles,

Were you going to add something to that?

Sure.

I could go,

Yeah.

I will say for a long time I had a consistent,

Very deep morning meditation practice.

The meditation portion was probably 20 to 30 minutes.

Then it would go into an hour,

Two hours of starting at five and set up my day really nicely.

Then my son was born a little over two and a half years ago.

It totally threw off my meditation.

It's still something that I'm attempting to get back to.

Maybe not what it was,

But find something new.

I know sometimes that might feel good if you see us and you think that probably these people meditate no matter what.

You might not or find yourself struggling with it sometimes.

It's certainly something that I am in the process of attempting to get back into on a regular basis.

There's a part of me that is like,

So yeah,

Obviously it would be best for me if I meditated every day.

Then there's another part of me that still doesn't a fair amount of the time.

Although I was getting back into it and then COVID happened last week.

Now I'm reorienting,

Recentering.

So all that said,

In terms of style of meditation,

There are two that I particularly am fond of.

It's just words and it's just one particular language of this stuff,

But I like the language of Zen.

In Zen,

Zazen,

Sitting meditation practice,

And there's a particular form of it of just counting your exhales one through 10.

That's your whole intention with a certain posture that's upright,

But not forced or rigid,

And just giving everything to counting the exhales one through 10.

Then whenever you lose your focus,

Just starting back at one.

You might do that for 20 minutes and never get past three,

And that would be great.

Those are just the reps of noticing when you become distracted and start back over.

If I meditate,

That's what I'll do.

Then I might move into Shikantaza,

Which is just sitting,

Literally just sitting.

That to me is the ultimate form of meditation.

It's not doing anything in particular other than just being and being your conscious,

Aware self.

That's my sense of maybe what meditation is or what it's doing,

Is it's helping you return to a natural state of being relative to all the ways that we've become chronically inflamed and tensed through our experiences and through our expectations and things like that.

Meditation is just helping you come back to a natural homeostasis.

Those would be the two,

If I had the consistent meditation practice.

Hopefully,

I'll be getting back into that.

It would consist of those two practices.

Lu,

You want to go?

Sure.

I feel like I'm not allowed to say what I'm going to say.

I'm in a period of deepening my practice significantly.

It's like a real love affair.

And through that,

I've been using a different app called The Way.

I feel like I can't say that in Insight Timer,

But there's a teacher named Henry Schuckman,

The Zen master,

And he created an app completely different than Insight Timer.

You literally can only do one thing each day.

You can't do anything else but the next thing that's on the app.

So,

I've been doing that for the last six weeks.

And I haven't had guidance in a very long time.

Before that,

My practice was influenced more so in a kind of insight Vipassana style of body awareness or breath awareness.

And so,

It's been really cool to go through a process with someone.

And what I've been doing is also remembering that times in my life when things moved the most and things unfolded deepest were times when I was really deeply devoted to my practice and spending like an hour sitting.

Something happens in that second 30 minutes that is hard to get in the first 30 minutes.

So,

What I've been doing is I'll do 30 minutes of guidance from the app in the day,

And then I do a 30-minute silence.

And I might go through a mix of things.

I might do some gratitude.

I might do some visualization.

And then I'll always speak out loud the prayer of St.

Francis and the Lord's prayer.

And then I might do also just like this.

It's another biblical prayer,

But in Judaism,

It's Hanani,

Meaning like here I am.

And so,

I'll try to connect with God,

With the Creator,

And just be like,

Hey,

Here I am.

Here I am.

Teach me,

Use me,

Guide me.

And yeah,

That's been a really sweet,

Sweet way to show up.

And I swear in that second,

If you can create the time for an hour,

That second 30 minutes,

So much of it's how my podcast,

I have a podcast that got birth from those second 30 minutes.

And so,

Yeah,

There's just a lot of creativity and insight and inspiration that comes from that for me.

Yeah,

For me,

I realized that it is not only setting meditation,

Something similar to what Jessica was saying,

Different forms of meditation.

And I realized that when I started meditating,

I was doing this meditation on average half an hour a day.

Sometimes it would go up to an hour,

Sometimes reduced to 15 minutes.

But what I realized that during the rest of the day,

The day was better because I was meditating.

Still,

I was going back to my old patterns and repeating the same patterns,

Getting stressed and getting worked out and not really being conscious.

So,

I asked myself this question,

How can I really carry this throughout the day,

This meditation practice and make it a total meditation,

24-hour meditation.

And one of the important aspects was walking meditation.

And walking meditation,

It might not be exactly how I do is not exactly how maybe it is done as a Zen practice or a Buddhist practice,

But it's more of like activating my intuition.

So,

What I found was that my intuition was more active when I'm actually moving,

When there is movement.

While I sit,

I want to connect to my being,

Really not do anything as Charles was saying.

But while I'm walking,

The intuition gets activated.

So,

I get a lot of answers.

So,

These would be like two major practices.

One is sitting practice,

The other is walking practice.

And in my walking practice,

I would,

You know,

Let's say if I'm walking for one hour,

First half an hour,

I'm just,

You know,

Being mindful and preferably in nature and observing the elements of nature.

And in the next half an hour,

I would ask myself a question and I would start walking again.

And usually the answer,

You know,

Comes up and usually it's like a deep existential question about my life.

So,

That activates the intuition.

In the sitting practice,

Usually,

If I have to give it a label,

I would say it's more closely related to a non-dualism,

Where although it was not something because I was,

You know,

Studying non-dualism or anything like that,

I just realized that I have to come up with my own way of,

You know,

Meditating and what really works for me.

So,

I started kind of,

You know,

Becoming aware of all the elements of the ego,

Which involve the,

You know,

The thoughts,

The emotions,

The body,

But eventually then also observing that who is observing the ego,

Who is observing the thoughts,

Who is observing,

Who or what is observing,

You know,

The body and emotions and all that.

And that brought me to that,

That brings me to a state of awareness and that I found was more related to non-duality.

So,

Yeah,

These are my two major practices.

Thank you all for sharing that.

Deb asked a question,

What is the most unexpected new thing you've tried this year and did anything surprise you?

Is that enough?

Obviously,

Deb would need to clarify,

Is it new thing like new practice or just like any new thing and what surprises?

I think it's how you interpret it.

Yeah.

I mean,

My interpretation is anything because I like to get off of the meditation and dig deep into who you all really are.

Yeah.

Deb did say spiritual or practice,

But I'm open to all responses.

Totally open to any reply,

All new things.

I'll call out Charles for it because Charles,

I don't know if it's maybe been a little longer than a year,

But I know your kind of connection to drawing feels like that's something that's really blossomed since I've known you that feels like not exactly meditation,

But also I know that you draw a lot of like connection and inspiration through that.

Yeah.

And I,

For whatever reason,

Didn't even think about it,

But I would say totally.

It's actually,

And it is something that has connected very deeply to like a spiritual practice or to certainly meditative practice.

So my wife is a faculty professor at this university nearby.

And so I like as her,

I also do some adjunct teaching.

Basically I can take college classes for quite cheap.

And so for a long time,

I had wanted to develop the skill of drawing.

And for a few years,

I had thought about taking a drawing class at this college,

But it felt like it's like a huge time commitment.

And it's also the classes are like right in the middle of the day,

Sort of in the middle of the work day.

So you're losing out on potentially earning.

And so it felt a bit selfish potentially,

But also something about it.

I think Darius,

You said,

I think probably several of us said something about like getting in touch with something that's calling from here,

Like something that you really want.

Maybe you don't have to intellectual or rational reason as to why,

But it's just like,

That feels right.

Like that would be,

That would feel like a good thing to do.

And taking a drawing class is like,

Yeah,

Totally.

Like that would feel very deeply like a right thing to do.

Over time I've come to trust to do that.

Actually it tends to create some sort of return tangibly,

Even though you don't know how or why like that's going to happen.

But so I ultimately did decide to do that.

And so I took drawing one and now I've taken drawing two and currently I'm in painting one,

Which is a whole different world.

And it makes me feel like really,

It's quite humbling because I'm around these other people.

I'm like,

How did they do that?

Like are they using different tools than I'm using?

That's one nice thing.

It puts me in like a place of being a total beginner and like bad at something,

Which can be quite nice in a space that's safe.

It's also nice to be in a space where I'm not in the role of like in charge,

But someone else is in charge and teaching me a new skill.

And certainly with art,

Like it's in order to create something where if I'm trying to create representationally something and make it actually look like the thing,

It's like,

It requires me to get out of my head basically,

And to not try to make the thing,

But just focus all my energy on paying as close attention as possible to what I'm seeing and then kind of let the thing happen.

And then somehow it creates something that actually looks like that thing,

Which I think is a,

It's a nice analogy to just presence or,

You know,

Having a conversation or like trying to express yourself,

Like get out of the way of trying to create the thing and just focus your energy and attention on being present or listening or listening to yourself.

As soon as I get up here,

It's going to come out mangled and contrived and they're just not going to be real.

So yeah,

That's been a new thing.

It's like just so like fun.

And when I go there,

It kind of,

It's I've said,

It kind of feels like church when I go to that classroom.

It's like,

Like it just feels really right.

And there's also a part of me each time that doesn't want to go.

That's like,

I would just,

I would like,

This is just like three hours of my day that I could just be doing something that like,

That I want to do or just relax because it's quite hard and it's like definitely work,

But it's quite rewarding would say.

So yeah,

Thanks for reminding me of that Luke.

Anyone else?

I could share a simple practice that was an addition.

Like I tweaked it a bit from what I was doing before and anyone can do it.

It's really simple.

I don't think I need to tell anyone about how powerful gratitude is and how it changes your neurology and physiology and everything,

Your reality.

I used to,

And I still do this before I meditate,

I'll write three things I'm grateful for.

But before that,

Before I open my eyelids in the morning,

I try to think of three things that I'm grateful for.

And your brain is in like a theta brain frequency and it's a different place at that moment.

And the things I come up with are so silly,

Especially if you do it,

You know,

The first couple of days,

It's like the bigger things,

The family,

The friends.

And then if you do it for like 10,

20,

30 days,

It starts getting really silly and,

And equally sacred.

And you kind of realize,

I talked about this earlier today that anywhere you point,

There is something that has blessed your life.

Like this pen is a therapist to me,

All the things I've written down with this pen,

This fan that keeps me cool during the zooms,

This cup that like someone very special to me gave me,

Like literally everywhere I point,

There's something I can be grateful for.

And it's a really powerful practice that I don't do this,

But many years ago,

Probably if I'm honest,

Months ago,

I would pick up my phone and start checking emails or God forbid,

Social media and the neurology and the physiology of your brain,

It changes.

And it's like,

You've activated a very reactive brain all day.

So that practice has in a very simple,

But very profound way made a big impact in my life.

Before you open your eyes,

Find three quick little things that you're grateful for.

I can share.

For me,

I don't know if it will qualify as a spiritual practice or not,

But it has been traveling without any plans.

And that has been really fascinating.

Last year,

I got my,

I moved from India to Canada five years ago.

And last year,

I got my Canadian citizenship.

And so I always had this in my mind that once I,

You know,

I get the Canadian passport,

I can travel more easily,

I can travel more easily,

You know,

As compared to the Indian passport,

Because on Indian passport,

You require visa for almost every country.

Whereas in Canadian passport,

You can travel without visa.

And so I have been traveling and what I realized that there is a,

There is a lot of joy in traveling without any plans.

And sometimes,

You know,

It would happen that even I have to,

I have decided to travel to a certain country next day.

I haven't even booked my flight or,

You know,

Decided.

In fact,

I haven't even decided where I'm going next.

And just in that moment,

Intuition will come up and I will go there.

And I always find that,

You know,

Traveling this way actually really is,

You know,

Opens up many new avenues.

Because when we travel with plans,

We just go to a particular place or a city or a country,

And we do that thing and we come back.

But when we go without plans,

We are open to surprises,

We are open to,

You know,

Miracles happening.

And so these miracles would happen.

And,

You know,

Once I reach that place,

That city or that country,

I would realize that I was supposed to be here because I was supposed to meet this person.

And if I wouldn't have come here,

I wouldn't have met this person.

And,

You know,

All those synchronicities start lining up.

So it has been really,

It has been scary because sometimes I would be like,

You know,

Maybe the flight,

If I book last moment flight tickets will be double or triple or,

You know,

If I,

You know,

Maybe I will end up with no money in my bank account or something like that.

But somehow when you trust and when you go with the flow,

Things are managed somehow.

The universe,

I don't know,

You know,

How that happens,

But the universe somehow supports you when you,

When you stay in that state of flow and without any plans,

You do things.

Although planning is still important,

But there's also a lot of value in doing things without any planning.

So,

Yeah,

I don't know if that qualifies as spiritual,

But that has been a really powerful practice for me.

Are you going somewhere next?

I am not sure yet,

But it might be India,

But still I'm like undecided.

I'll decide maybe last two,

Three days before I book my flight ticket.

Yeah.

I got the experience,

Saqib's last minute planning,

Like up front me and Saqib this last weekend,

Charles was supposed to be there with us.

We went to a Zen monastery for like an intro to Zen meditation retreat.

And Sunday we're driving home,

Or maybe we talked about when we were driving up and I'm like,

Okay,

So when you leave and Saqib's like,

I don't know,

I haven't booked anything yet.

So,

Yeah,

I don't even know where I'm staying like after the retreat ends.

And my mind would be just constantly thinking about,

Oh my gosh,

The price is gonna be so much like during the whole retreat,

I feel like I would have been able to really settle in,

But Saqib was just in it and totally unfazed by it.

So,

It was definitely inspiring.

And then I also just want to say,

Because they mentioned like we all meet each other pretty regularly and hearing Darius share about his practices just reminds me like how much I appreciate Darius.

I'm sure a lot of you listening probably appreciate Darius for this too.

It's just how if I'm in a maybe not the greatest mood,

Like Darius has always this kind of uplifting energy to him that is just infectious.

And I used to think I was maybe a positive guy,

But I realized when I met Darius of like,

Oh,

Yeah,

Like,

No,

I'm not.

No,

I'm actually pretty,

I actually can complain like the rest of them.

But Darius,

Yeah,

Just hearing his practices,

I'm sure so many of you out there feel similar.

So,

I just wanted to,

Yeah,

Speak to that.

Lou,

You get a heart.

You get a heart.

Can you see my heart?

Can you see that online?

I think you can.

Yeah,

You can see it.

Only you can see it,

Lou.

Nobody else can see that.

Darius is sending you some love.

But also,

I'm on the app right now and I'm gonna go heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart.

What up?

Oh,

Snap.

Dropped the phone.

Heart,

Heart,

Heart,

Heart.

It's funny to see ourselves on the app like this.

I'm not used to that.

It's a different vibe.

Dude,

There's a little socket and a big socket and they're right next to each other.

It's amazing.

Jessica,

Did you want to add anything?

Yeah,

I can share.

I thought I might just share this prayer I've been saying every day since May.

It's taped to my wall so you might hear it.

Someone sent me this prayer in our community and she's like,

I just thought that you would love this.

It's from this woman named Tosha Silver.

She wrote a book called Outrageous Openness and she also has another book called Change Me Prayers.

There's a bunch of books by her.

She's wonderful.

I feel like her work has come into my life literally after 10 years of what everyone here is really talking about and maybe longer as I've always just had this really strong desire just for intimacy with life.

There's not the separation between here's a spiritual practice and then here's regular life,

But the ordinariness of life is the sacred practice.

It's all one.

And just this desire I've always had for that intimacy with life and God and God is within me and God is in everything.

There's nothing that God is not touching and God knows me intimately by heart and each of you by heart intimately.

That means that the God in me that knows me intimately knows you intimately and everything is just touched everywhere.

There's nothing that's not known from this unnameable,

Unknowable presence that's everywhere.

And I just have always just felt like that's my ultimate desire in life is to be just constantly coming back to that remembering.

And this prayer just sums up where I'm at right now with all these years of desire and study and reading and the morning practice that we're talking about,

My meditation practice,

And this prayer just hit me deeply.

So I'm going to just read it.

If you want to close your eyes or just listen,

This is the prayer I've been saying every day since May.

It's been really powerful for me.

So just maybe taking a deep breath in,

Deep breath out,

Centering the body,

Relaxing the body.

Divine Beloved,

Allow me to give with complete ease and abundance,

Knowing you are the unlimited source of all.

Let me be an easy,

Open conduit for your prosperity.

Let me trust that all my needs are always met in amazing ways and it is safe to give freely as my heart guides.

And equally,

Please let me feel wildly open to receiving.

May I know my own value,

Beauty,

And worthiness without question.

Let me allow others the supreme pleasure of giving to me.

May I feel worthy of receiving in every possible way.

Change me into one who can fully love,

Forgive,

And accept myself so I may carry your light without restriction.

Let everything that needs to go,

Go.

Let everything that needs to come,

Come.

I am utterly your own.

You are me.

I am you.

We are one.

All is well.

The things that have unfolded for me just because of this prayer in my own heart and life.

It's maybe even not even noticeable to anyone else,

But the feeling is exactly what it is I've been longing for,

Which is to really continue to surrender,

To trust that all my needs are always met in amazing ways.

It is safe to give freely as my heart guides and to carry that light without restriction.

So this is just everything.

It's everything to me and that's my new thing this year.

Well,

That brought me to tears.

So thank you.

That was really beautiful.

It's a beautiful sentiment and I know I can see from the chat everyone really resonated with that.

Good.

Yeah.

I haven't been looking,

But I love all the hearts.

Delilah is asking where she can get it.

I will post it in my link after this live,

Delilah,

Because I know exactly the prayer you read.

I love Tosha Silver.

So that gave me chills.

I love it.

Good.

That's hard to recover from.

I think I listened to that.

Was that from Outrageous Openness?

I think I listened to that book.

I remember like in 2017.

It's not actually in Outrageous Openness.

It's in her book called It's Not Your Money.

And that is a really great book because it seems like it's about money.

And I picked up all her books.

I read this prayer and I was like,

Boom,

All of them.

And I read them all and I'm on my third time reading Outrageous Openness.

I started reading the book that mentored her and I'm on my third time reading that as well.

I go deep.

I read things a lot over and over and over until they permeate.

But this one was in It's Not Your Money,

Which is not about money.

It's about none of this belongs to us.

And it's that open-handed living.

And that's actually what it's from.

So it's beautiful.

I recommend all of it.

Thank you.

Well,

Megan,

Who is a teacher here on Insight Timer asked,

What does self-compassion mean to you and how do you practice this?

I could just say the first,

Probably a variety of ways,

But it just makes me think of one particular thing.

Sure,

Many of you are familiar with the concept of the inner child,

But that's just what it immediately brings to mind for me.

This is just something that's happened in my own experience of whatever you might call inner child stuff.

You can think of different versions of yourself from different times,

But there's one particular version of me for whatever reason that I remembered one time and now just comes to my mind whenever I have moments of.

.

.

Even right now,

As I'm speaking,

I could feel myself get a little bit anxious or feel a little bit of heart pumping,

That kind of thing,

Which in the past would play into a story that was very self-critical and shameful.

So whenever I have that feeling now,

It brings to mind a particular memory of me that was in middle school.

And I might've shared this with some of you in the group before,

Maybe,

Maybe not.

And I wore a basketball jersey to school and I didn't wear an undershirt under it.

And there was one person that it seems like maybe quite small,

But a person pointed it out and they were like,

Hey,

I can see your nipple through your shirt.

And it was the beginning of the day.

And I felt just so embarrassed and so ashamed.

And then I had to wear it the rest of the day.

And it's all I was thinking about.

And that was also at a point in my life where I was pretty self-critical,

Quite self-conscious,

Wanting to be like other people that were cooler than me,

That looked a certain way or acted a certain way.

And I will say that I'm no longer that way.

And I feel quite happy with myself and proud of who I am,

But I still have the moments like that.

And it can be kind of nice and ultimately sweet to call up a vision and a memory of that me that's like still here,

Still totally here and is me and is what's happening in my body when I feel like this,

Because there's another part of me that's like,

This isn't scary at all.

It's like,

There's nothing at stake whatsoever.

There's nothing scary about this moment,

But there's a part of me that's like probably terrified.

And that's that me that I can kind of call out and envision.

And then it turns what could be like kind of a bad experience into like a really sweet internal experience of like,

Who cares?

And that could be minimizing too,

Like who cares?

Like,

Shut up.

Or it could be like,

For me,

It's totally fine.

You are awesome the way you are,

Just like everybody is.

It helps to have a child now too,

Because you want to give that same thing to yourself that you would want to offer to your child.

But that's what that brings up for me.

And even as I think of it now,

I can envision that me with a variety of different ways I could describe that me.

It was just like so subconscious.

Now,

I just want to be like,

Hey,

It's like,

You're great.

And that's always a nice feeling to,

And then it comes back to who I am right now.

And it helps to then express that really genuinely to other people too.

So that's what that brings to mind,

If that makes sense.

I think it makes perfect sense.

And I know a lot of people are agreeing and saying how much your meditations on inner child work have meant to them.

Oh,

Good.

Yeah,

Charles,

Didn't you used to do like a weekly inner child live,

Like a while ago?

I did,

Yeah.

Yeah,

It popped up with a client that I had for a long time.

She just asked one time if I would lead her in the moment in an inner child guided visualization,

And I'm like,

I could try.

And then it just sort of came,

Like it created this thing that we would do on a regular basis of like going in and like kind of into your mind and finding where the inner child lives and seeing like which version of it it is and just kind of observing them and then going in and having an interaction.

So yeah,

There was for a while I was doing that.

It might be nice to revisit that.

But I was doing that on a weekly basis as a live session.

Yeah.

And I can just speak off of that,

Charles,

Because it's very similar,

But different language.

And hey,

Megan,

Thanks for being here and for saying hi.

It's good to see you here.

But having a language of parts work is really helpful for self-compassion.

So I'm sure,

You know,

Some of you familiar with internal family systems.

I've learned a version of IFS through various coach trainings,

But simply being able to notice when we're activated in any way or we're unconnected from if we have the foundation that we are whole,

Perfect and complete as we are.

So any moment when we're not accessing that,

In some ways we're off,

Right?

We're missing some fundamental T with a capital,

Like truth.

And so noticing and speaking in a way that says,

Wow,

A part of me is feeling anxious or a part of me is feeling lack.

A part of me is just feeling like I'm not there.

And,

You know,

Building that sort of relationship and being able to witness it.

And often,

Like as Charles says,

It's often has a,

You can call it an inner child part potentially,

But you might not even have to.

And I,

You know,

Had a moment and when we're doing this,

It allows us to want to create some perspective,

To be the witness of it.

And I had a moment on Monday.

If you get a sense maybe of my work or maybe not,

I don't know,

But I always say like,

I find myself continually trying to balance my ambition with appreciation.

Like I have this,

Like I'm an Enneagram three and I've studied a lot of the Enneagram to understand this more,

But almost this feeling of this insatiable feeling of needing to strive and succeed and like be someone.

And,

You know,

I know that this is not leading me to the true freedom that our paths are meant to lead.

And I was just on Monday,

It was just Monday.

What is it?

Friday.

It was on Monday.

And I was just feeling,

It shows up for me as like,

I'm not there.

And like,

I don't know what to do to get there.

And it was feeling it so strongly on Monday.

And I'm like literally washing the dishes.

And I'm noticing,

And I'm able to like shift into like,

Wow,

This part is really feeling like not there.

And just that shift and being able to witness it as like,

I know this part of me,

This insatiable drivey part of me.

And I'm literally washing the dishes.

And I'm just like starting to just tear for it.

I'm like,

If someone just,

If my wife walks in,

She's gonna be like,

What the hell is going on?

And so,

Yeah,

I just,

I tell that story.

But,

You know,

Just having that language of a part of me is experiencing this really helps,

I think,

To have a more compassionate view.

And if we did some unfolding work,

We'd probably find that there was some wounded child at the root of that.

But we don't even have to go into the why.

And we don't even have to get to the answer of all the things that happened.

But just that relationship,

I find,

Does a lot of the work for us.

Mad Fientist I could riff on top of that.

A huge fan of parts work,

Huge fan of IFS changed my life.

And the question around self-compassion,

I think it's like the most important thing,

Actually.

I think it's the starting point.

You know,

I think a lot of us would relate to the the saying,

I am a soul having a human experience.

But when we really go deep into what that means,

It's so powerful.

I'm a soul having a human experience.

And this is my human,

That for whatever reason,

I chop down and I mute and I,

You know,

Disrespect and I don't let them be who they truly are.

And if you really think about it,

If your soul chose to come here now in this in this body,

It's because this human is your access point to the human experience.

I can't touch anything without his hands.

I can't taste anything without his tongue in his mouth.

I can't go anywhere without his feet.

So when I went deeper in that soul having a human experience,

It was like,

Holy shit,

My human is my soul's mate.

And that like rocked everything,

Right?

My human is my soul's mate.

But for some reason,

I am not treating him with that level of sacredness.

And if we don't have that self-compassion,

Don't have that self-love that as the foundation,

Every interaction we have,

There's some sort of deficit,

There's some sort of like leakage,

Right?

I know a lot of people on Inside Timer want to,

It's not just like,

Oh,

It's not just about me.

It's not all about me.

It's about filling our cups so we can give back to our communities,

To our families.

And so it's like the most important thing,

Finding ways.

And it's nuanced.

It's not just like,

Oh,

You're good.

And I'm going to let you rest today.

It's like,

No,

I'm going to kick your butt.

You've been resting too much.

And I want to do what's best for you.

And it's like,

So it shifts,

Right?

Sometimes it's like,

No,

We're going to rest.

We're going to have boundaries.

We're not going to go say yes to this thing.

It's like treating myself the way I would treat what Hollywood or society has told me to treat that soul mate over there.

Why is it so much easier to be nice to everyone else?

What would happen if we applied those same principles to ourselves?

So it's,

It's a,

It's a really big question.

And I think without it,

You're,

You're in trouble.

I can share.

For me,

Self-compassion is very much linked to self-awareness and it's very similar to,

You know,

What Darius,

You,

Lou,

And even Charles was saying that it is about very much also related to self-worth.

But I realized that the more self-aware I am,

The more compassion I have for myself automatically,

Because,

You know,

Especially with related to this path that we all are following,

You know,

Almost all of us,

We are following our hearts here.

You know,

I don't think anybody is doing this work,

You know,

That I have to do this like a job or,

You know,

This is something that I must do,

Or there is no should or must.

We are doing it because we love it.

And this is where we want to be.

We could have done so many other things and,

You know,

And be a part of the,

Of the regular life.

But what happened was that as,

As I started on this journey,

Initially,

There were like a lot of like self-doubts because I was like,

You know,

I have a different path.

Maybe I'm not earning as much money as my MBA mates are earning.

You know,

I'm not,

I'm not maybe,

You know,

Wearing new clothes every day,

The way my friends are wearing.

I'm not socially,

You know,

Socially socially great in that sense,

Not a social idol.

I'm not,

You know,

I'm not having maybe the life,

The way a normal person would have a life.

And then I would find myself like judging myself for all these things and almost like explaining myself,

Like,

You know,

Why am I a meditation teacher?

And someone would say that,

Oh,

That is that your full-time work?

And I would like,

Yeah,

That's my full time.

I would like,

I would be hesitant to like really confidently say,

Yeah,

That's my full-time work.

But eventually I realized that I'm not being self-aware here.

I'm,

I'm judging myself.

You know,

First I decided to follow my heart and now I'm judging myself for following my heart.

So I really need to like become aware and conscious of why did I start on this journey?

And you know,

What is the reason that I constantly remind myself?

And as I do that and become aware of myself,

I,

I,

Then I start accepting myself for who I am.

And then if somebody asked,

Like,

You know,

Is the,

Is this being a meditation teacher or full-time job?

I would say,

Yes,

It is.

We know with a lot of confidence rather than being like,

You know,

Shaky about it or something like that.

So yeah,

Self-awareness leads to self-compassion.

All these answers are so beautiful and there's so many ways to enter self-compassion.

And I think that this is like illustrates that we all in many ways have to find our way into compassion for ourselves.

I know that I have found it through inner child work as well,

Too.

It's some of the most loving work I've done.

I've also come to it through setting boundaries,

Speaking my truth,

Learning not to betray myself for approval,

Like all the things that are being said here.

But I'm sitting here thinking,

You know,

What is the compassionate way for me?

I think that it evolves over time.

It first just started with like,

That's part of why I even came to meditation to begin with.

Chronically anxious,

Chronically angry,

Chronically resentful,

Chronically worried,

Chronically reactive,

Chronically everything.

And then all the judgments on top of it of like,

I don't like how I'm showing up.

I don't like the way that my tone of voice is coming out of my mouth.

You're not even liking how I'm showing up in the world and then judging that,

Too.

And I would say the compassionate thing and the difficult thing was actually coming to a meditation practice and sitting with myself and observing myself and finding guidance to do that.

I came to it through Oprah Winfrey's 21-day guided meditation challenge with Deepak Chopra.

There's no prideful way to come to yourself.

I mean,

It's just in some ways,

It's humbling to realize that you need help and to be given language that,

You know,

From other people who've been there and are walking the path and can help give some language to it.

And as I started just engaging with people that represented like,

I like how they show up.

I like how it feels to be around that person.

I started recreating a body of language and a practice and a willingness to sit with all of this discomfort of the human experience and practicing not trying to escape it,

But to embrace it and recognize that if this is the experience I'm having as a human being,

Then this is obviously part of the human experience and to not reject it,

To not push it away,

To not grasp for it.

And I think that my inner language has become very much like,

You know,

Similar to the parts work,

Similar to inner child of like,

Oh,

Darling,

That there's the part of me that has been with me every part of the way that understands,

That sees me.

And I think that's always what I come back to is the self-compassion of I am seen,

I am witnessed,

I am understood,

I am heard 50 trillion times over,

50 trillion cells.

This is what I gave my TED Talk on actually almost exactly 10 years ago.

I was having a panic attack because I was invited to give a TED Talk,

So I had a panic attack.

So I gave a TED Talk on my panic attack,

And it was all on finding the compassion in that moment.

And also like even Sokob saying or Lou saying,

Like not being attached to the story,

Like being willing to not have the second arrow,

The third arrow,

The fourth arrow,

Judgment after judgment after judging that I'm having a feeling,

Judging that I'm judging that I'm having the feeling,

And just being willing to come into the present moment,

Which I think is what meditation has done for me actually.

So just being here,

It's brought me to my inner child,

It's brought me to compassion,

It's brought me to the aliveness of how much grace there is actually in life.

But I hope that this is giving everyone here,

I know it gives me a new language just sitting with all of you every week.

I mean,

The five of us,

I'm given a new language all the time.

So being around people who practice what it is you want to be experiencing actually really brings a lot of self-compassion because you're in the environment where you put yourself is sort of what then you take on.

So there's a lot of things that could be said.

We could have talked about this the whole time,

I think,

But I know we're almost at time.

Yes,

And I want to wrap up with this.

Oh,

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Oh,

Jessica,

I just thought you had found,

I thought you said you found meditation through that Swami in the Himalayas that you were visiting.

That's right.

Yeah.

I just,

I sat in meditation on a mountaintop as you're supposed to.

And your guru found you there.

Yes.

So Adriana,

Who is a teacher here on Insight Timer wrote in the chat,

And then you inspired so much more,

Jessica,

And that she learned self-compassion from your Open Hearts Club.

And that is related to the last question that Jessica from the chat asked a very long time ago.

What does it mean to you to live with an open heart?

Beautiful.

Well,

I'll just speak to that because,

Adriana,

I know you,

And I know that you're on here doing your work,

Too.

So Adriana is now on Insight Timer doing lives as well.

So I love you,

Sister.

What does it mean?

I think about what Michael Singer says in the beginning of his book,

Untethered Soul.

One of the first lines I remember reading in one of the first chapters is to open your heart so wide that it can never close,

To be willing to hold all of it.

And I think about when people talk about grief,

It's the same.

Grief can feel so big,

And we can feel so small inside the grief,

And it's our work to expand and expand around the grief to begin to create a larger container where the grief might still be the same size,

But we are expanding our container to hold more with more love,

With more openness,

With more compassion.

And I think of it as like tending to that garden,

You know,

Of like even what Darius was saying,

Like we cannot pour from an empty cup.

We must tend to our own garden,

Tend to your garden,

Grow around the grief,

Grow around it,

And let your container become so big that the things that felt big,

That feel big now,

Feel small inside of it,

And be around other open hearted people.

Learn from the people who are in front of you in that way,

You know,

Who are practiced in it.

Anyone else?

I can share.

For me,

To live,

You know,

To have an open heart would mean,

And it's a great question,

Would mean to really become like a child as,

You know,

Charles was talking about the inner child,

To really become a child again,

Because I feel that children are so much better at loving others than we are as adults,

Because as adults we develop like a lot of labels and,

You know,

A lot of ideas around whom we can love,

Whom we cannot love,

A lot of rules.

And so,

You know,

We have a lot of labels that,

Okay,

This person is my partner,

So I can only say I love you to this person.

I will not say I love you to anyone else,

You know,

Or this person is my friend,

So I will only open myself up to this friend.

Whereas children don't think that,

You know,

Even today we have labels and divisions around,

You know,

In the racial sense,

Around color,

Around nationalities and all that,

And we become so afraid of opening our hearts to everyone.

But if you think,

Look at a child,

You know,

If another child is sitting next to that child,

The child will not think what is the color of the skin of this person.

The child will not think what is the religion,

What is the nationality,

What is the label here,

You know.

The child,

If the child is feeling love,

The child will just go and give a kiss to that,

You know,

Person,

That child sitting next to it.

And so I feel that the best way to open your hearts is to become like that child again.

And definitely,

You know,

As Charles was saying,

That practice of inner child healing is very valuable because not only inner child healing is about,

You know,

Healing oneself from our past traumas,

But it is also about,

Like,

Becoming that child again and going back to our true child nature.

And I guess from my own experience with my child now,

That will also be quickly to become maybe very sad too,

Or like,

You know,

Maybe that's a cost of it to live with an open heart,

Both to express and feel love,

But also to feel pain and sadness,

Like,

Very fully.

But then at the same time,

He can cry,

And he's really crying,

He's not faking it,

But then a couple seconds later,

He's happy again.

But it's maybe because there's no restriction,

Like,

He feels it,

It's expressed fully,

And then it's allowed to pass.

I think that's a lot of maybe what happens in like a meditation practice too.

It's like you're probably a lot of that tension that we develop is a blocking of all that feeling.

And then to practice in this way is like a resensitizing to really being alive,

Which allows for maybe a lot more joy,

But also potentially more pain and to feel like the sadness of loss and impermanence and all that kind of stuff.

That's what it was making me think of too.

And I guess kind of gets to my answer of living with an open heart,

But it was making me think of a line from Dogen,

If any of you are familiar with that Zen figure,

It's just one of my favorites.

To know yourself is to forget yourself,

And to forget yourself is to be awakened by all things.

And for me,

That's like a really powerful one,

Like not to minimize yourself,

But like to really look at yourself and investigate your conscious mind.

This may be to forget any sense of a separate you or a story you,

Or a labeled you.

It'd be to go all the way back and kind of remember that soul having a human experience.

And then to forget yourself is like to open that feeling of a barrier of separation,

And then potentially to be awakened by a computer screen or a person or whatever it might be,

Because then you're actually seeing the soul reflecting through everything.

So it just made me think of that,

To know yourself really is to forget this idea of who you are,

And then to forget the idea is like to be awakened by everything.

So that's what it made me think of.

Anyone else taking notes?

There's some good stuff being dropped here.

I'm like,

If you're in like Sasha Silver,

Get her book.

Jeez.

I could jump and thank you for those answers.

Wow.

Just going to speak from my experience.

Living with an open heart is really freaking hard.

It's a lot of work because you've got to take everything you know and all the protection that we've placed around our hearts to keep us safe.

It's like constantly like taking off the protection after we've been hurt,

After someone's broken our heart,

After that idea didn't work,

After we got rejected and we felt the pain.

And then the natural thing is to guard it again.

And then it's like,

Despite all the pain,

I'm going to live with an open heart.

And it's like,

Why would you do that?

It's so much safer to protect your heart and just stay at home.

And I think for those of us that choose to do that,

One,

It's constant work.

Two,

It's sneaky because you think your heart's open,

But really there's this place in the back right here or the side that is actually closed off.

And it's transparent,

So it looks like it's open,

But there's this like,

Nope,

Can't get in.

So that's why groups like this,

Where we go deep and we reflect back to each other and like,

Hey,

That feels like it's a little closed.

Are you open to going deeper?

It's so powerful because sometimes we need help from other people to find those places that are guarded.

And I think for me,

The only reason I would do the crazy thing of living with an open heart is because it allows my soul to come through.

For me,

The heart is a portal to the infinite,

To God,

To soul.

And it's like,

This thing's trying to come through and I'm protecting it from all of this,

But then I'm keeping the soul expression trapped in there too.

So,

It's a lot of work and I think it's maybe the most important work we can do.

I'm going to take a different spin on this question.

I did a lot of heart work this year personally and what broke open my heart and the layers that I was being accumulated was actually grief and allowing myself to grieve experiences,

People that I never really allowed myself to grieve.

And I didn't realize that that was actually what was getting in the way.

And I'm by no means the first person,

I mean,

Many wiser people to talk about the heart-opening power of grief.

I would point anyone who's interested in the topic to Mirabai Starr,

Who's a mystic teacher,

She's beautiful.

And through her losing her daughter,

I believe,

I know it was her child,

That's what took her into the deepest part of her spiritual journey.

And so,

I think really allowing to live with an open heart demands us feel everything.

And so,

Grieving this year has really opened me.

And then I'll say one last thing that maybe is as someone who got onto the spiritual path about 10 years ago and thought that it was just about ah,

Love and like,

Let's be so open and like,

No,

No,

No,

I'm a hugger,

I'm a hugger.

Like,

Realizing that that's actually,

That that can be coming from a wounded,

Ungrounded place.

And that actually understanding people's boundaries or,

You know,

Also understanding that we could be really naive.

And so,

There's like a discernment and maturing I think that has come that I've noticed in my life where I actually might be less open on the outside,

But it almost feels like I'm more open on the inside and I'm just discerning and I don't need to placate the we're open spiritual people.

Like,

I don't know if that makes sense.

So,

Again,

It's like a little different spin,

But that's something I've noticed because I,

In some ways,

Had a phase of being that ungrounded spiritual,

I'm just wide open type of person.

And I look back and parts,

You know,

Compassion,

Have a lot of compassion for him.

And also realizing like what is a grounded,

Discerning,

Open heart actually,

You know,

What does that look like?

And so,

That's how I've been kind of navigating that this year.

It's beautiful.

All of you.

Thank you.

I have a burning question.

How did the five of you become friends?

Lou.

Tinder.

It was Tinder.

Yeah.

There's an inside timer Tinder.

I don't know if you guys are on it.

I thought it was Hinge.

Yeah,

In Tinder.

I've heard about that.

Oh,

Actually,

David Gandelman,

Some of you probably know who David is.

He,

I think,

Won.

He tried creating like almost like a meditation app,

Dating app,

Like for people that meditated.

I don't know where he's at in that,

But it's like a real thing.

Inside Timer is only with our dad.

Yeah,

I guess it definitely is.

For better or for worse,

Probably.

Yeah,

Probably.

You can have Gordon Mathers through this app.

They have.

I'm sure many people have gotten many messages they didn't want also through this app.

I guess I could say it because I guess I was the ringleader of this group.

I,

If any of you have heard my story,

Like I was deeply impacted by a mastermind group 10 plus years ago,

And have always wanted to kind of recreate that in different ways.

And I have in multiple ways.

But one of them was through just meeting Charles,

I think we connected in 2021.

And we were seeing each other's work,

Following each other,

Maybe on different social media platforms.

I know,

Jessica,

We had met in 2021,

Too,

At some time.

And then this can be a longer story short.

But I had Charles,

I interviewed Charles,

Charles launched a book,

The Will to Do Nothing.

Go check it out.

Amazing book.

And I interviewed Charles for a live event.

I was like,

I read it.

And it was super impactful for me that I wanted to like,

Hey,

Let's do a thing for this.

And then I mentioned Charles this idea.

And it was really Charles,

Like,

I have the idea.

But Charles was like,

Hey,

Lou,

When you're gonna,

You mentioned that mastermind thing,

Like,

Are you gonna actually do it?

I'm like,

Yeah,

Maybe I like,

Okay,

I'm gonna do it.

And so,

It started with me,

Charles,

Sakib.

And then I was just me and Jessica had met in person once.

And I was like,

Hey,

Would you want to,

You know,

Be in this group to meet weekly?

Here's the vision of it.

And that's how it started.

And then I saw,

I don't know how I got on Darius's stuff.

But I remember being on Artist Morning and being like,

This is amazing.

Something was just pulling me to what this guy is doing.

And I had a I have a podcast.

And so,

I was like,

I need to reach out to this guy.

And we do the podcast interview.

He just so aligned with a lot of the things that I feel like I live.

And literally,

At the end of the podcast episode that we recorded,

We're just meeting for the first time.

I'm like,

Hey,

Darius,

Okay,

I have this group we meet weekly for 90 minutes.

I would love to,

Like,

Invite you to be a part of it.

And Darius literally just checks his schedule.

And it's like,

Like,

Who is these people?

Like,

Who's in the group?

And then he's like,

Yeah,

I'm in.

Like,

It was no,

Like,

I'll think about it.

I'll get back to you.

Very important part.

You missed a very important part.

So,

I had got a bunch of podcast requests.

And I was it was just like,

They didn't feel aligned.

And for some reason,

When his came through,

I swear to God,

Something was just like,

Don't check his podcast.

Don't do just say yes.

There's something about him.

So,

I said yes,

Sort of blindly went into this podcast.

Maybe 15 minutes into the podcast,

He's talking about insight time.

I was telling him about insight timer.

I was like,

Yo,

Is this thing?

He's like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

I'm on there.

In the middle of the podcast,

I'm checking Lou Redmond on Insight Timer.

I'm like,

This dude's legit.

Oh,

My God.

I didn't know he's like big time on Insight Timer.

So,

The whole experience kind of changed.

And by the end,

He had given me so many great,

Like,

Ideas and insights.

And he's just like,

He's done so many amazing things on Insight Timer.

And then he so generously said,

Hey,

We have this group.

I'm like,

Oh,

My God.

Hell yeah,

Let's do it.

Yeah.

And so,

We'll be hitting two years now in December,

Which is crazy to think about.

And we've talked about environment before.

I actually have one of my recent talks on Insight Timer.

It's called The Power of Your Environment for this exact reason.

It's like being around other people,

Especially if you're,

You know,

If you're in this,

We do this work very solo.

So,

To be around other people is just so enlivening and reassuring and inspiring.

And it just is like a grounding,

Inspiring force.

And it has such a big impact.

So,

You know,

I know,

Jessica,

You're talking about environment before.

But realizing that some of our work,

We don't even have to just,

Is this just making sure that we're getting around an environment that is supportive of who we want to be,

The goals that we have.

And so,

Yeah,

It's a real sweet,

Amazing,

Amazing thing that we have.

And I'm super grateful,

Super grateful.

And I don't run,

It's like,

We all run it.

Like,

We all lead it.

It kind of runs itself now,

Which is pretty cool.

And I've met everyone besides Charles in person.

We just missed it.

I've met everyone apart from Jessica.

What?

Yeah,

I was just saying,

I have met everyone apart from Jessica.

I've only met Lou in person.

We've got,

We have to get together.

I was gonna say too,

I joke with people,

Like when I talk to people about our group,

I call this my men's group.

And I don't even think about what I'm saying.

But people be like,

You're in a men's group?

I'm like,

Yeah,

I mean,

It's a mastermind group.

But it's just funny.

It's really cute.

Because at the time that I was entering this space,

I was also praying for more men in my life as well too,

Like brothers.

And I also feel like this gave me brothers.

And I'm just really,

Really grateful.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

I love having you there.

Just a follow up question to that,

Jessica,

Do you feel your masculine side comes out more in this group?

Or is it the feminine side?

I feel,

I don't know.

I feel like I have a lot of masculine in me and a lot of feminine.

I feel like my feminine comes out a little bit because you guys can be very like,

Masculinely focused.

And I'm like,

I show up and I'm like,

I don't like talk for 12 minutes or however long.

And I'm like,

I didn't make a point.

And you guys are like,

What's your question?

So I feel like that's a very feminine,

Actually,

Which is kind of nice for me,

Because I think as a creator and a creative and a strong woman who's independent and has been a single mom for so long,

I've had to carry a lot of masculine in my life because I haven't had masculine counterpart to that.

I've had to be the man in my life,

Really.

And we all have both.

But I think being with you all,

I've actually had to get uncomfortable with that art of letting myself be more in that sort of,

I actually have a lot of that in me.

And it does come out with you guys,

For sure.

And I get a little subconscious about it sometimes.

But also,

It's like a free space.

I feel very loved.

And I'm really grateful.

Yeah.

It so works.

And it's so needed at times when you bring it.

You feel balanced.

But like that feminine energy when you bring it,

It's nice.

Okay.

It's nice.

It balances us off.

Yeah.

I have a quick question for Luke.

Can I ask a quick question for Luke?

Go ahead.

Because I see in the chat,

There's a few people saying,

Is the group open?

Are we accepting new people?

And I think it's actually specific size,

But I might be wrong.

But I'm pretty certain you have a mastermind group that does something like this,

But in a different version.

I do.

Yeah,

Thanks for mentioning that.

But yeah,

I do have a group.

Because like I said,

I'm so passionate about this because it was the impetus for my own journey was getting around other people.

So,

I run a group for meditation teachers,

Coaches,

Creators,

Guides,

Practitioners.

That's separate from our group.

It is a paid offering that I have that I curate.

And we meet weekly too.

So,

You can always check that out if it calls to you.

Well,

Thank you all for being here.

Does anybody want to add anything else?

Is there anything that you want to let everybody know that you're doing?

Anything you've got coming up?

Feel free.

Dhaka is probably going live later tonight.

After this.

No,

Thank you for mentioning that.

But I'll be going live on Sunday.

9am Pacific time.

And I just want to say thank you for doing this,

Violet and Malini.

This is,

Yeah,

This is,

You have done a great,

You know,

Job here.

And also,

You know,

Really good service to us.

Because I think Lou was mentioning it before our live that we all wanted,

You know,

Someone to interview us so that we can do this live together.

And it was a synchronicity that you guys came in and you asked us to do this.

So,

Yeah,

We are very grateful for that.

Yeah,

I was saying I found out that you were the ones that manifested us because I didn't know where this idea came from.

I just decided to do this.

So thank you.

And thank you,

Lou,

For,

You know,

I've put out to a lot of teachers,

Invited them and some pay attention to me.

Some think I'm crazy and ignore me.

But,

You know,

Lou is always so responsive.

And when you suggested bringing your friends along,

I was thrilled.

And thank you,

Darius,

For accepting at the last minute.

You know,

This was this was awesome.

And,

You know,

For me to be here with all of you is just amazing.

I see all the comments going by how everyone's so thrilled to get to hang out with all of you.

And I'm like,

They have no idea how I feel.

So,

I want to thank you.

And I know we've gone over time.

And again,

If there's any.

.

.

I will say I saw Virginie donate and,

You know,

To support Violet does,

You know,

She's doing this all pro bono.

She's gathering,

She's doing so much work on the back end,

Violet and Melanie.

So,

Please,

Like,

You know,

Support them and what they're doing with Ask Your Guides through your donations.

Just share the love that the blessing circulated.

As Jessica says,

It's not your money.

So,

Let it move through the universe and love on these two because they're doing a ton of work.

And it's all just for the love of sharing and getting us together and all the other great teachers on Insight Timer.

So,

I want to give them a shout.

Violet Leong Thank you.

Yeah,

I always say all the time,

It lights me up just being here with all of you.

So,

Thank you all for being with us.

And with that,

Unless there's anything else,

I'm.

.

.

Oh,

Oh,

Gosh.

Oh,

Maz.

Oh,

Cute.

Wow.

He's getting so big.

We have another guest.

This is Zen Master Maz.

In the current.

I'm just taking over.

But we wanted to say hi.

Hello.

We love that.

Thank you,

Richard.

Thank you,

Everybody who donated.

And thank you,

Everybody,

For your time.

And thank you to our little special guest.

And,

You know,

It's hard for me to say goodbye.

So,

I'm just going to end the live.

I'm going to say goodbye.

And we will see you also.

Oh,

And the five of you,

If you ever want to do this again,

Call me.

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