82 - Relaxing Into Your Radiance

Your innate nature is an incredible radiance of peace, love, and joy. Nothing you have to do. It is flowing through you now just as strongly as it flowed through Jesus and Buddha. But why doesn't it feel so? Because we have frozen much of it into pain. Experience and feel your creation inside. Then, see it outside. Pain emits lots of radiance. Even a life of pain is born of love....even if maladaptive. How to let it all melt back into recognizable and enjoyable love and wellness.

These podcasts are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. They are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. They, also, all stand on their own. But, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it.

Though I am a psychotherapist, these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful. They are not psychotherapy. Please reach out to a psychotherapist if ever needed.

Transcript

Hello, This is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust your day is going well. Today, Let's talk about your radiance, Your beautiful radiance. You know that since all there is is one, Like Jesus said, The Father and I are one. That means no Jesus, Just one. Buddha talked about the one in your experience in meditation. When you let everything else go, You know that you can't be those things and what remains is you, Which is the one, Because everything else can be let go. So this one, This beautiful one, The same one that radiated beautifully through Jesus and Buddha and all of the Hindu saints and the Muslim saints and the Taoist saints, All the saints everywhere, Every religion and beyond religions, That same radiance is you and it's flowing through you all the time because there's only one. You are no different than Jesus. You are no different than Buddha. Yes, They were more open in their incarnation and they were flowing, But you're the same one as they are. The Father and you are one. Just like Jesus said, Those that come after me will do even greater things than I do. And he said, I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you. We're all connected. We're all one. So you are such a beautiful being. Why is it that sometimes you don't feel that way? Why do a lot of us not feel that way at times? Well, We start out with the same radiant light. That is who we are. That's our nature. There's no stopping that. There's nothing we have to do to become that. That is what we are. And as we come down through our incarnation, We use that light. We manifest with that light. If it's free flowing as it rolls down through us and flows through us, It radiates as light out of us, A very powerful aura that does miracles and healing and it's made of well-being and peace and we feel it, We bathe in it, Joy. However, If we decide to create things with this infinite light, Eventually we allocate it in different ways other than pure radiance and free flowing energy. For instance, You can look at your aura now. Like you can look at how you feel right now and you will notice a variety of things all happening at the same time. Beauty, Light, Love and peace. And to the degree that you've decided to use some of your radiance and twist it off into hurt, Pain, Anger, Separation, Things like that, You'll notice those things in your body too. That's how you're using your infinite radiance. You're using it in a variety of ways and you can see all those ways both inside your body and how you've created your world outside of you. That's how you're choosing to spend your radiance. Although it's counterintuitive, You might say, Oh my goodness, Look I feel so muffled and shut down and angry and hurt and I don't forgive people and I've had all these traumas that I hold on to and I'm shaking inside and I have all this PTSD. It's like I'm a kaleidoscope inside and my light shines through and it's split up into a million different little troubling pieces. I must hate myself. No, This is the counterintuitive part. Everything you've done, You've done because at some level, At some point in your life or your existence, You felt that it was the best thing to do. You might have been misinformed but you thought at the time it was the best thing to do. For instance, Let's say somebody that you care about, Like let's say your family says that you're a horrible person or that you're stupid or let's say they just unfortunately they have their issues and they project them on you and they tell you all these bad things about yourself. Well, You want their love. They're your family, Right? They're your mother. They're your father. You want to be like them. You want their love. So how do you get their love? From a little kid, It might make sense. I'll agree with them. I'll be just like my parents. They say I'm bad. I'll agree with them and then they'll love me. So I'll say that I'm bad. I'll say that I'm stupid. We all agree. Everything's fine. They can love me because we all agree. I'm on their side. So after a while, We internalize that. Oh, I'm dumb or I'm slow or I'm a bad person or I'm guilty or whatever. I'm a big problem. Whatever we do it because we love ourselves. Everything that you have going on inside is happening because you do love yourself and you might do it in a maladaptive way. But you're loving yourself. This is your expression of love. Now, As you become clearer and clearer and you become attuned to your infinite self, What at one time seemed to be a good use of your consciousness and your radiance, Twisting it off into pain or hurt, Things like that, No longer seems to make sense. And therefore the saying to see is to be free. When you see clearly, You see that what you thought was a cobra in the corner of the room is just a rope when the light hits it. It's just a rope. And so it doesn't make sense to torture yourself any longer believing that it's a cobra. Same with our internal workings. We just see clearly and we let it unfold. So let's say you have two choices. You can stay cut off from yourself, Separate from your true self, And you'll live a very dramatic life, A life of hurt, Pain, Being the underdog, Will you ever triumph? You're like a movie character and you're living a 3D drama, A 3D movie, And you are alone. You're cut off. It's you against the world or your group of people, Your tribe against the world. Very dramatic and it can be a fun way to live life, Though very painful in the end. Your second choice is to let those stories go, As we've talked about in past podcasts, Relax and let the separation melt out of your system. To see is to be free. The way that I used to escape my thousands of hurts and pains as a child is I would scoot up into my head and I would watch stories that I would create. I would hallucinate daydreams or fantasies, Things like this. I would like to watch lots of TV, Which is really a fantasy on the TV screen, Right? I would get lost in stories. That's what I think most people do. When I decided it was too painful to do that, To be cut off from myself, I slowly stopped doing that. I stopped getting lost in my stories. So the second option, Which is to awaken rather than being lost in the drama of our lives, Of the separation of our lives and our stories, Is to quit doing that. To just, As one monk friend of mine said, To do nothing is to do too much. It's to do nothing. To just be connected to everything. You'll notice that the source of every hallucination or thought, I'll call them. Underneath it is an emotion, A tension, A feeling. You might even say that emotions are encoded in our body as tensions. If you quit going up into your head, Into the fantasy and the daydreaming and figuring things out and trying to escape the hurt by coming up with a plan or a way to get through life, A philosophy, If you stop that for a moment and just do nothing, You're just silent, You'll notice you have a combination of well-being inside of you, But probably you've created a lot of hurt. And you'll notice that hurt and you'll notice that the fundamental desire is to flee back up into your head or get lost in some other external story, Internal or external story. But if you don't do that, You'll just feel hurt. And as you feel hurt, Awareness is curative. It's like an ice cube in the hot sun as you put your attention on it and you connect to it. You don't get lost in the story. You don't even care about the story to a large extent. Instead, You just simply feel the energy of this nugget of hurt that's coming up inside of you and it will slowly, Over time, Melt. I mean, I hope it melts fast, But my mind tends to melt slowly. You see what happens for yourself. And when it melts, It turns into what it originally was that I encapsulated and turned into an object of hurt. It originally, Everything is made of love, Well-being, Happiness. It's made of my radiance. And by my radiance, I mean the oneness, The oneness that's you, It's me. It's only one. There's only one. So it's all of us. It's made of us, Our true nature and it untwists out of the position of hurt. It relaxes and releases the pent-up, Radiant, Joyful, Loving energy. And that then is added to my once diminished aura. My aura is always there. It's just been turned into a bunch of hurt and pain, As well as bliss and well-being and peace. There's some mixture of all those things happening at the same time. So if I want to enjoy my aura, The first thing to do is start with where I am. Just sit still. To do anything is to do too much. So just sit still and feel what I feel. And that's my aura. Oh, I'm depressed. That's my aura. I don't want to get rid of it because that's my power. It's just compressed into depression and possibly anxiety or anger or and or lots of other things. That's all of my aura. It's like a bunch of water and some of it has been frozen into jagged forms. But if I want to retain all of my moisture, All of my water, I don't get rid of the jagged ice. I don't try to get rid of it. Instead, I just let it melt and then it forms into one vast ocean of water. Well, That's who you are. You're a vast ocean of well-being. That's who you are. That's who we are. I like Joseph Campbell's quote where he says, The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, To match your nature with nature. I like that. That's when you melt. When you're totally melted, You're like the depth of the ocean, The depth of the Grand Canyon, The beauty of all nature. We've discussed it in the past, But the reason why nature is so radiant and we love to be in the midst of it is because it doesn't think. It's not twisted off into little, Into a kaleidoscope of various thoughts and feelings and issues. It just flows. And when we're in the midst of it, We start to resonate and those parts of us that aren't twisted off feel so good and they come to the forefront. We love nature. Well, That's the goal of our life, To match our heartbeat with the beat of the universe, To match our nature with nature. Feels right, Doesn't it? This is who you are. So how do you open to your complete radiance? How do you let it flow? Well, You flow, You connect. Connection is flowing. So you connect to everything. Some of what you're connecting to is yourself as peace and love and well-being and light. In the beginning, Perhaps in our world, A lot of what you'll connect to are these objects you've formed inside, Which will be hurt, Fear and anger. And it doesn't feel good to connect to them, But it's in the connection that they melt. It's in the connection that they transform. If you get involved in the message they have embedded in them, You get lost in the story. It's like an addiction and suddenly you get stuck into the story of that pain. So and so did this and that was wrong and I hate them and let me work this out in my head and let me do this and that and oh, I don't even want to think about it. Maybe I'll repress it some more. You know, It goes on and on. It's a story. As you're involved in that story, Though, You re-freeze it. You freeze it even more deeply, Perhaps. So there's no way out getting lost in the story. If you want to sort things out and you feel compelled to do it on some level, Then of course do what you're led to do. And more deeply, You just watch the pain and don't get involved in it. You're involved in that you can feel it because in the feeling of it, It expends its energy. It rotates around and and it releases itself eventually. That's how it melts. An ice cube has to melt. You have to let it, But it's cold and nobody likes to let it. So we jump into our heads. I think I told you the story once I was in India and this German guru was talking to another German and that German was saying to him, How come when I ask the same question as William does, You treat me very stiffly and harshly and deeply and with him you're just nice and no problem and you treat him much more nicely than you do me. And he said to the other German, He said, Well, I treat you that way because you can handle it. You have a very strong nervous system. So I'm pushing you to resolve your issues on a deep level. You've built up strength. Referring to me, He says, He doesn't have a very strong nervous system. He can't take it. So I'm just nice to him. And he was, It was right. It's funny, But it was so true. And he told me in order to build your nervous system so that you can handle things, Stay with your fears, Your hurts, Your anger, Just watch them. Don't get involved in them. Don't try to escape them by jumping into your head or distracting yourself by doing another activity. Allow them to be present. Connect to them. At first, You will only be able to connect so deeply because that's all the strength that you have. Later though, As you build strength and capacity, You can stay connected to everything, Even pain. And isn't that what life is about? It's just connection. When the personal self relaxes and releases, All those repressions relax and release too. So we're able to be present with everybody, Everything, Now. Sometimes you read people say, You need to be present now. You need to be here now. Well, You are here now. There's no way that you cannot be here now. So that's a non-issue. What the real issue is, Is can you connect to what's here now? Even if you can't connect, Can you connect to that? Can you observe yourself not being able to connect? That's a connection. That then melts the next layer, Which says, I can't connect because that too is attention. That too is a feeling. So often when I'm not connecting, When I want to flee into a distraction or a thought or a fantasy or some sort of activity, I noticed that there is a feeling that's propelling me. It's like an addiction to get involved in a thought, To get involved in an activity. That itself is a feeling. So I'm getting better and better on observing that feeling without getting lost in it. And guess what? As I do, It melts. And as it melts, So melts the addiction that was trying to require me to escape into another thought or feeling. As I stay present and I'm connecting rather than escaping to the inside fantasy of these thoughts and feelings, Which keeps them frozen in place, Then all this kaleidoscope of hurts, Pains, Distractions, Addictions, Melt. And as they melt, I become more radiant. It's like the ice cubes melting back into the ocean. The ocean becomes more and more vast. In my personal life, Let's say my inner flow, My inner ocean, My inner radiance was, Let's say 20%. Let's say I was 80% ice. My ocean wasn't very large. So anybody around me wasn't going to feel much radiance. They were going to feel more ice, More jagged edges. As more and more of that ice has melted through the years, My ocean has gotten larger and larger and larger, More depth. And the ice, The hurt, The pain has gotten less and less and less because it's turned into joy, Wellness and well-being. Immense radiance, Beautiful radiance. That's you. That's me. We're one. As we melt into radiance, The personal self, The separation and therefore the personal self loosens and it starts to dissolve so that we can flow through it and use it as a tool rather than being lost in the story of me. So we can be in this world but not of it. We can hold things lightly, Enjoy everything but be attached to nothing or very little. And slowly that turns into being attached to nothing. So we can enjoy the best of all worlds. It's God becoming us, Flowing through an ever-opening incarnation and able to enjoy the beauty of a world that literally is made of love. All objects are consciousness or love that has been frozen into different objects. Dogs, Cats, Atoms, Molecules. It's all love. There only was one substance or only is one substance that is the infinite so everything that exists is made of that. And in separation which is necessary to form existence or a creation which is apparently quote unquote separate from the infinite, It has to be or it'll all merge together. There'll be no difference. So to get this painting called creation we have to have separation. Now this makes logical sense of course but as I've mentioned in other podcasts at some point you feel it. You can put your hand on a table and it just buzzes with joy. You can see the universe strobing in and out of nothingness and being created a million times a second and discreated a million times a second. I see these things. I feel these things. And yet it's a process to fully awaken because I and you have the momentum of our personality and all the stuff that we have put together including our habits, Our thoughts, Our actions. These things have a life of their own and even if you can see clearly and feel the universe as it is you can also feel your personality as it is as it is evolving. And right now mine is a mix of both pain and wellness. Fortunately mostly wellness but still some pretty hefty nuggets of pain and hurt and so on and so forth. So I'm always surprised and at this point believe it or not and I can hardly believe it I kind of feel good when life brings something up from deep inside that shows one of these nuggets to me. Hurt, Fear, Anger, Stress. The reason why they're not always so easy to let go of but they will they will let go of as they expend their energy but it's because it's like chronic PTSD and we've talked about this in the past that locks itself into your system very hard and chronic PTSD is a lot of little things that have happened for a long time they build up and it creates PTSD. Well that's life. Life has been rather traumatic every day day in day out in my life for a long time and now it's opening and it turns out everything is fine and as I relax it turns out that there is only one and as it turns out that there's only one my trust opens and blossoms because I trust myself and there is only one so it's only me and it's not an intellectual thing you feel it you are the power of the universe so all this comes together and it's a process at the same time you can be radiantly awake and yet still opening up still some of these ice cubes are melting every time one opens and melts I would say I feel more awake because oneness is becomes clearer or deeper or there's less separation in the system so therefore you experience oneness in this incarnation and you experience God as you more and more each and every day and this is true for all of us because we're all alike we have our own different twists and turns on our own personal stories but basically we're all the same now one other thing comes to mind to say you know when we have this pain inside like that German guru said that I was had a weak nervous system and he was right when you have a weak nervous system you quickly go into your fantasies you quickly go into your reactions in order to defend yourself or protect yourself or escape right so what are we afraid of in life what motivates us mostly to get through our day it's because we don't want to feel fear we don't want to be with these things we don't want to feel anger we don't want to feel abandonment and hurt we don't want to feel it so we'll do anything we'll get a new job we'll get a new relationship we'll start a war countries will start a war just so they don't have to be afraid politicians will have whole movements based on all these horrible people are gonna do things to you and we have to fight them and they'll get elected because nobody wants to feel their fear yes let's get rid of the outside source and therefore we'll have no reason to feel fear we won't have to be afraid anymore now it turns out that we do such extreme things simply because we have weak nervous systems we're afraid of a little tension in our stomach so we start a war we don't want to feel that tension in our stomach we don't want to feel a tight neck so we'll rob from our neighbors or we'll do all these things that's called separation we become a separate character in our drama of separation because we're so afraid to feel to connect we'll do anything but connect and yet when the pain gets to be too much and we finally stop and we connect take responsibility for our life and we connect all of that melts away and you are the radiance you've been looking for you are the love you've been looking for it's not God and you it's God as you you can't see God because God is the one doing the seeing there is no you there is no me there's only us as the one you're a beautiful radiant being that is a given the only thing that we wonder about for all of us is just how long do we want to wait before we let our ice cubes melt do we want to start today or do we want to wait a little bit longer there was a governor in India and he said I don't want to awaken I don't want any part of it because my life is so good as a governor I've got riches and power and I'm enjoying it I want to be a separate character in a movie my own movie and that's valid there are upsides to being a separate individual so we can retain it we wouldn't keep doing it unless at some level remember everything we do we're doing it because we love ourselves on some level so we wouldn't keep doing it unless we felt it was an act of self-love even if it's so maladaptive and every action of separation eventually will end in pain it eventually will that's what Buddha found out right he found out in the life of separation as he walked through his kingdom his father tried to protect him from seeing death and hurt and poverty and trouble he saw from a separate mind and that's how everything looked a diseased mind can only see disease you can't solve a problem with the mind that created the problem that's why awakening finding out who we are when people used to come to Ramana and they say Ramana what about my life what should I do how should I act should I get this job or that job should I do this or that Ramana would laugh and he said well before we talk about your life let's find out who you are first because if you don't know who you are you're continuing to look through the lens of who you aren't and you're projecting your so-called life and trying to figure things out through a faulty lens so everything looks weird and comes out weird you start wrong you end it wrong it's like looking through a kaleidoscope and trying to figure out which way is up or what things really look like you can't do it nobody can so he would say find out who you are what does that mean it means stop and just connect to everything that's called meditation too right because when we sit down we have to stop we can't run off and do something so that's good training wheels that's a good beginning we stop and we watch our feelings we watch our thoughts we're aware of our thoughts but we're not our thoughts we're aware of our emotions but we're not our emotions which is a good thing because when our thoughts and emotions disappear and dissolve fortunately we're still here otherwise we'd be clinging on to those thoughts and emotions very tightly we would refuse to go to therapy when we need it because we would be afraid if we let some thoughts go we might disappear so it is fortunate that we're not our thoughts they're simply our creations some of them harm us and some of them help us and by the way speaking of therapy if you get caught in the emotional world and things are really difficult or PTSD or things like that get a therapist there are many ways to do it some costs more than others but find a therapist it's very helpful so often overlooked in the east because they're not used to perhaps the western mind and I think a lot of them could use some therapy their spirituality is infinitely deep we're just such novices but we do know about therapy over here and it does factor into one part of the whole and it is very helpful only if you need it but if you do don't hesitate call a therapist it'll fit into the big picture and it'll speed you along if you don't need it then no need so I'm not pushing therapy I'm just opening the door to say use whatever tool helps you okay my friends awakening together that's what we're doing relaxing that's when everything melts out of our system what happens into happiness that's the nature of our being awakening together that's what we're doing and the result of that is relaxing into happiness that's the name of this podcast and that's why so enjoy your relaxing into happiness your process after a while it actually becomes so enjoyable and so radiant as your life opens and opens and opens and it will I look forward to talking with you next time take care bye

Reviews

I think this is my new favorite! lol I’ll be listening to it at least one more time.. something you said reminded me of a line in the AA book. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle we find how the right answers often come when we do that.

it seems like contrary behavior, but it’s actually a way for God or the infinite to guide us, right?

OMGoodness. For those of us who are trained in Jungian based parts work and/or IFS, this was a lovely philosophical chat about HOW and WHY child parts or hurt parts of self are formed. AND the process of unburdening those deeeeep and often non-verbal parts of self. You had a podcast earlier (or two) on thinking in terms of opening chakras by leaning in. This describes a physical way of listening or dialoging with those parts that may not have language and are very protected by overwhelming feelings of fear, sadness, and anger (mad, sad, scared). Leaning in to the physical and emotional pain to move the energy, to really listen, to “melt” and update the story is such an extrodinary process and so amazing to witness in ourselves and our clients. Which number podcasts did you talk about chakras? The one where you say we may be awakened in one chakra but not another? I can’t find exactly the one that you said that! So powerful! I was like “ah ha” that is what I have witnessed in my clients. I love that you systematically give us all the tools to do this work ourselves. Thank you! 🥰

Thank you 🙏

William,
That was fantastic. Beautifully done and a powerful message!
Thank You 🙏,
~ Jennifer