Hello and welcome to the final session of the course.
I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable.
You can close down the eyes if you wish and take a deep slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Just gently begin to open your mind to today's quote.
To contemplate the words with a free and open and supple mind.
To welcome in possibility and expansion and growth and to allow yourself for the next few minutes to just sit and be with whatever arises.
In a moment I'm going to share with you quote to contemplate.
Then we'll sit in silence for a minute and just let it percolate.
Then we'll talk about that quote and see where the discussion leads us.
Today's quote comes from Maphreen Chan,
An Asian American speaker and author.
And it goes,
Lay it down,
All of it,
The weight of all the words that don't belong to you but to someone else.
And listen once more to that voice deep down that tells you who you are,
Who you are,
Because it belongs to you.
Lay it down,
All of it,
The weight of all the words that don't belong to you but to someone else.
And listen once more to that voice deep down that tells you who you are,
Because it belongs to you.
So I chose this quote to be the final quote of this course,
Because it's encouraging you to tap into the deep inner space of wisdom.
Maybe it's intuition,
Maybe it's guidance,
Knowledge,
This deepest part of you that is truly you.
I talk with a lot of people in the classrooms here,
With a lot of my coaching clients,
With a lot of students who struggle to find,
To know,
To understand themselves.
You know,
Who am I independent of the conditioning of society,
Of my education,
Of the religious upbringing,
Of my parents,
Of the time and place and space of my birth.
This idea of laying it all down,
All of the words,
All of everything that doesn't belong to you,
Is beautiful.
Because if we can strip away everything else and reveal the truth that lies within,
That core fundamental essence and being,
Then from that place of the self we can act.
This quote points to metaphysics,
But also to just everyday self-awareness.
I'll speak on that one first.
Self-awareness,
I think,
Is one of the most important things you can have.
To know who and what you are will allow you to best take action in this world.
If you know you like and value certain things,
Then when a decision comes up,
You can best choose.
If you know you dislike certain things,
Or certain things are triggering,
Or confronting,
Or overwhelming,
Or just not that enjoyable,
You can make better choices moving forward.
And from a metaphysical perspective,
A more woo-woo perhaps perspective,
Spiritual perspective,
This core understanding stripping away what we are,
You know,
What are we as our core,
There's an analogy I like to invoke,
Asking people if they are their big toe.
I mean,
Look down,
Look down at your big toe.
Are you your big toe?
Or are you something that has a big toe?
Right?
Now,
If your big toe was to be removed,
Would you say that who you are has been fundamentally altered?
Perhaps,
But perhaps not.
I mean,
Yes,
It's an important aspect of the body,
But you can pretty much survive almost unhindered without it.
What about the leg?
What about an arm?
What about internal organs?
What is it that makes you?
Could we strip this process back to being something,
You know,
Beyond the body?
Are you the thing with the body?
Or even further,
Are you the thing with the mind?
Are you consciousness expressed?
Are you consciousness,
You know,
Looking through this particular flesh body in this moment?
You know,
This is going into deep non-dual spirituality,
And a lot of religions and spiritual practices,
Both dual and non-dual,
Consider this,
You know,
What are we at our essence,
At our core?
Is there nothingness?
Is this it?
Are we just a connection of firing neurons?
Are we a spirit inhabiting a body temporarily before we return back to the source?
Are we the source itself expressing itself and seeing itself through a limited perspective as a form of a play of consciousness?
You know,
We're getting quite deep here and perhaps a little bit away of this quote,
But what I hope to do with this final session is ask you to fundamentally consider who and what you are.
Because if you can strip back to the feeling of the self,
Whatever that means for you,
You'll be able to best make decisions moving forward.
Trusting your intuition,
This voice inside that speaks truth,
Your truth,
That tells you to do certain things or not do certain things,
Not out of anxiety,
Out of fear,
Out of rumination,
Depression,
Out of conditioning,
But out of deep and true love,
Self-love.
And love isn't even the right word.
Compassion,
Connection.
I'm not sure if English has the right expression for the feeling I'm trying to evoke here,
But maybe resonance is a better word.
Resonance with the divine,
With the whole,
With eternity,
With consciousness.
But let's bring this back right down to earth,
Right down to our practical experience in everyday life.
Because as I've said before,
I like to approach things from a secular,
Agnostic perspective if possible,
Because then we can apply our spirituality as it presents itself uniquely to us.
But if it works without any of that,
Then it works,
Right?
Consider the purchases that you've made over the years,
The actions that you've taken,
The pathways that you've chosen,
The hobbies,
The workplaces,
The friends,
The partners,
All of these things.
How much of it was your choice and your choice alone?
And how much of it was an attempt in some small way to appease someone else?
Maybe not even someone real,
But the idea of someone.
Do you get your partner flowers because you believe they're an expression of love?
Or do you get them because she believes it?
Or do you get them because that's just what you do with your partner?
Or perhaps because you saw your parents gifting one another flowers at some stage?
Or maybe from some sort of story or conditioning that you watched as a child?
That's just a small example,
But we can take it anywhere.
Is your pursuit of money,
Of wealth,
Of status,
Born of your desire?
Or is it born of the capitalistic nature of society that we find ourselves in?
Do you want to eat that food?
Or did you watch an advertisement?
Is the way that your relationships,
Your friendships,
Your life set up,
Based on a way you want it to be?
Or based on the way it's expected to be?
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Can we,
For a moment at least,
Lay down all of the words that don't belong to us,
But belong to someone else?
And listen once more to that voice deep down that tells us who you are,
Because it belongs to you.
I'm of the belief that modern society is far too noisy.
It's far too noisy because we have far too many options to distract ourselves from silence,
From our mind,
From letting the cement settle,
For lack of a better expression.
Think about it.
A couple of hundred years ago,
And backwards to the dawn of humanity,
The dawn of,
You know,
Life,
And backwards to the dawn of humanity,
The dawn of,
You know,
Life,
Evolution,
Creation,
Whatever you want to do,
We didn't have access to constant stimulus.
Our phones can play music and videos and podcasts and books and social media and all of these things that,
If we wanted to,
We could distract ourselves with forever.
And you might have this slight twisted narrative when you're looking at this.
At least I did.
I can unpick this in myself.
I was like,
Yes,
I see that.
I acknowledge that.
So I'm only going to watch educational videos.
So for years,
I would fill that silence with videos and content that was quote unquote teaching me something.
Learning about spirituality,
About economics,
About storytelling,
About all of these amazing things.
And don't get me wrong,
I've benefited from that knowledge.
But all of that was yet another distraction.
I was sort of tricking myself into believing that I was better than other people,
Because while they were filling the silence with useless stuff,
I was filling it with important stuff.
But nonetheless,
I was still filling it.
I was in an ego trap.
I was still afraid of the silence.
And I just believed that by filling it with education,
As opposed to just pure distraction,
I was somehow escaping the matrix,
Escaping that trap,
Not realizing that that's just another mental construct that I need to fight and get through.
But when I started putting down the distraction,
Stopped listening to the other voices,
No matter how positive and uplifting and educational they were,
And started embracing the silence of my mind,
Of the world,
You know,
Driving without input,
Walking without input,
Going to the toilet,
Doing the dishes,
Cleaning,
Mowing,
All of these things just allowing my thoughts to percolate,
The true version of myself started to reveal itself.
It started to reveal itself.
Me at a deeper aspect,
My core.
I found myself in my belly,
A place that was once blocked to me due to past experiences and traumas and other things.
Which,
By the way,
Adds another layer of thoughts and words belonging to other people.
But I cleared through that with meditation,
With introspection,
With prayer,
With invocation of healing and the divine.
And now I can sit in this space of myself,
And from that place of silence,
This voice,
This voice deep down starts to tell me who and what I am.
And my answer has become simple.
I am free.
I am free to be who and what I am in this moment.
And in the next,
And the one after that.
I am a flow.
I'm a process.
I'm an evolution.
I am energy transference.
I am me.
So I encourage you to lay it all down,
All of it,
The weight of all the words that don't belong to you,
But to someone else.
And listen once more to that voice deep down that tells you who you are,
Because it belongs to you.
So well done.
This brings us to the end of the session,
And also to the end of the course.
So as always,
I encourage you to check out the bottom of your screen.
You'll see the option to view the classroom,
Or to ask a question.
And with this session more than any other,
I invite you to take a moment to click through and share your insights.
And then to read through the answers from other students for this question,
And for the other questions,
And to perhaps listen to the replies.
Remember to start your responses with Mephrim Chan,
Or to restate the quote,
Lay it all down.
So that we all know which one you're referring to.
I say this every session,
But it really is an opportunity for deep learning,
Further introspection and insight.
By expressing yourself,
You are able to better understand yourself,
And giving other people around the world different ways and avenues towards their own inner wisdom.
And being that this is the last session,
I want to encourage you that if any single session or this course resonated,
That you can always come back to it.
Because the quotes that I've chosen,
And the format of this course,
Really lends itself to re-exploration.
Who you are now will change.
Over time,
Things will evolve.
So if you were to come back to this course in three months,
Or a year,
Or three years,
Your responses to those quotes will be different,
And thus the wisdom gained may evolve over time as well.
I'd like to also suggest that you consider my courses,
Discover Your Divine Purpose,
And Questions to Heal Your Soul,
Because they are presented in a similar way to this one,
Offering you questions and opportunities to contemplate with an open,
Supple and flexible mind.
I think it will resonate with you.
But either way,
I want to thank you from the depths of my heart for connecting with me here,
And have an amazing day.
This track was taken from my course,
Daily Contemplations for Living an Examined Life.
It's out now on Insight Timer,
And available via my profile.
I invite you to join in.
