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The Soul Has a Schedule with Kimberley Lafferty
253 Plays17 days ago
Mystic, leadership development sherpa and tantric Buddhist lama in the lineage of the Dalai Lama, Kimberley Lafferty joins Scott Schwenk for a conversation that spans the hunger to grow, awakening, death, devotion, embodiment and feminine leadership, and what it means to surrender to the soul’s timing. From her experiences as a householder teacher and practioner (rather than a monk) to her reflections on divine love and karma, Kimberley shares stories that are as raw as they are revelatory.
🎧 Tune in for a poetic journey through following a deep calling, faith, and the mystery of being
Kimberley Lafferty - Buddhist Lama, Developmentalist, Yogini
Kimberley Theresa Lafferty is a seasoned teacher-practitioner specializing in”developmental spirituality,” an integration of ego development psychology and Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana. She leads multi-year, private spiritual education cohorts with the Confluence Experience. Kimberley has completed more than three years of non consecutive solitary retreat in the lineage of the Dalai Lama, and was one of the first female bodied westerners to receive the title of “Lama” from her teacher. Kimberley holds advanced degrees in Human Development and co-leads, with Terri O’Fallon, the penultimate Minds I year-long developmental course of Stages International. She is an active Board member for the Association for Spiritual Integrity, and is a wife and mother to a teen son, which deeply impacts her worldview and practice.
https://confluenceexperience.com/contact-us/
Scott Schwenk - Master Coach, Spiritual Teacher, Culture Architect
Scott’s teachings, courses and private mentoring guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Scott spent several years living and studying in a meditation monastery which introduced him to the core body of Tantric meditation traditions which continue to flow through each of his teachings. Scott continues to study and teach from two key Tantric lineage streams.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
Scott’s teachings support the entire person to not only progressively recognize, stabilize and embody our inextricable oneness with the source of creation (Waking Up), but also to resolve the wounds of the past (Cleaning Up), continually expand our capacities for wider and more inclusive perspectives on any moment (Growing Up) and creatively and joyfully participate and collaborate with all of life as a loving thriving human being (Showing Up).
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction and Meditation
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold the breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:41
Speaker
Ah. Now let's dive in.
Guest Introduction: Kimberly Lafferty
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody, to The Choice to Grow. And this show is growing and with your support, and I'm so grateful to all of you who are choosing to follow, share, like, leave your comments of what you're learning and growing through with the support of the episodes.
00:01:06
Speaker
Today's guest is another friend who I really treasure in so many ways. And her name is Kimberly Lafferty, Kimberly Teresa Lafferty. And she is a Lama in Vajrayana Buddhism, in the Tantric tradition of Buddhism.
00:01:22
Speaker
We'll get into what that means and how you get there. She's a seasoned teacher practitioner, meaning we're all still growing. So she's an incredible teacher with her own community and is still growing, specializing in constructive developmental psychology and Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana.
00:01:39
Speaker
And this is really, really important. This merger, this confluence, this co-support of the insights of advanced psychological understanding with the complexity and the incredible incredible refinement of this ancient tradition called Vajrayana Yoga.
00:01:57
Speaker
She leads multi-year private spiritual education cohorts with Confluence Experience. That's the name of the operation, confluent the Confluence Experience.
Kimberly's Spiritual Background
00:02:08
Speaker
Kimberly co-leads with Terry O'Fallon, the pen ultimate Mind's Eye year-long developmental course of Stages International.
00:02:14
Speaker
And I'm finishing my last month of that year-long cohort. She's an active board member for the Association for Spiritual Integrity, Yes. Kimberly is also a wife and a mother to a young son living in a remote valley of the North Cascades of North America, which deeply impacts her worldview and practice.
00:02:34
Speaker
I met Kimberly first in Sedona, Arizona. We were all there for an integral theory conference, and particularly we connected at the Metaware Retreat, Later Stage Practitioner Retreat,
00:02:48
Speaker
afterwards. was a small, curated, all of us in a house. None of it was planned, and it all was emergent. We created the retreat as we went with this amazing group of people. And Kimberly generously shared practices with us that she's been working with for very many, many, many years, including one of the things that I still remember is the cards that you carry that or have a little ring on them that have all the many vows you took in becoming ah practitioner and in becoming a Lama so that they're still present with you.
Embodiment vs Empowerment
00:03:22
Speaker
And this piece really touches my heart because, well, there's a saying that my teacher makes often. She says, don't just stop at empowerment, go all the way to embodiment.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I try and teach this, I try and practice this. And what it can look like is having physical reminders in the space of what we are practicing, what we are reminding and remembering.
00:03:48
Speaker
so And also, I'm getting Nino Kimberly much more deeply in the Minds Eye course cohort. It's a small group of people from all over the world. I don't have much more to say to introduce you, but just deep, deep bows, deep thank yous for being you, showing up with all that you are.
00:04:07
Speaker
Hi. hi Hi, Scott. What a delight. And hi to all the listeners listening in the future, throughout space and time, just welcoming you here.
00:04:18
Speaker
This is going to be fun, Scott. I adore you. i feel like we're echoes of each other in different worlds. And I'm fascinated by what you bring. um Yeah. And excited to where where this goes.
00:04:31
Speaker
So thanks. So i was going to ask you a different question. Maybe we'll get to it later. What do you hear when you hear the choice to grow? But I actually really am interested in asking you, What does it mean from your seat at this stage in your life today to play the role of a Lama?
Journey to Becoming a Lama
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thanks for clarifying at this seat, because there's certainly ah a history of it and a story. I've had five, six different cohorts and individual students. I am a Lama, so to speak, but in cohort learning and groups of people sign up, ah usually not publicized or so very lightly.
00:05:10
Speaker
um in a relationship with me and each other over time, a minimum of three years, it can be up to seven, depending on the emergence of the group and what practices they complete, frankly.
00:05:24
Speaker
It stops at seven, huh? Yeah. i for up to now, I like a beginning and an end. um So that's one thing that's different. It's not like I am your l Lama forever.
00:05:35
Speaker
um The way, although that relationship is there, it is it, expresses and evolves. Sometimes it just becomes friendships, you know, but the relationship stays there. So yeah, I, what it means now with this cohort um
00:05:54
Speaker
has actually become even more clear in this moment, including an experience that I've had over the past two weeks. And my intention with this cohort was to utilize, and we're in year four, right, three and a half right now,
00:06:10
Speaker
utilize what guru yoga, which is a huge part of Vajrayana Buddhism, sometimes known as Tantra, um often not what people imagine when they think of Tantra.
00:06:22
Speaker
But guru yoga is a big part of it. But how to keep the juice and the joy and the power of a lineage and a teacher and having something to bend your knee to, right? the like As Ken often says, and others, the ego needs something to bend its knee to, Ken Wilber.
00:06:39
Speaker
Um, yeah. And how to do that without being silly or without, um, having it be all about me. So performative or performative and also yet acknowledging there is, it's not a performance, but there is an embodiment of something other than Kimberly. That's also happening when I'm in that seat.
00:07:03
Speaker
The many things I could say about it, but one of the shortest, uh, few sentences that might encapsulate it is when I am on the seat, I'm the lineage holder and I'm teaching when I'm holding space. I'm the lineage holder and I'm teaching. And now with this mature cohort, many of which have who've done lengthy solitary retreats, many group retreats, many of them just completed five weeks solitaries in their life and also going away from their life.
00:07:31
Speaker
um The guru has also moved to the collective, that golden shadow that we tend to project on the guru. in this mature cohort has also moved to be emergent through the collective without it not also being me or somebody else, another teacher when they take the seat.
00:07:51
Speaker
So
00:07:54
Speaker
yeah, that's what it, being a Lama means that now, it's that I unabashedly say I have the the authority, the power, the empowerment, the experience to hold this when I'm holding it.
00:08:08
Speaker
And also when i we're in relative reality with each other, just people, humans also, um it's the power is in whoever in the collective. like It emerges through conversation and relationship and community.
00:08:26
Speaker
So that's what it means now.
Tibetan Buddhism Journey
00:08:31
Speaker
um po How does one become qualified in your tradition to become a l Lama?
00:08:38
Speaker
And yeah is it something that one would even want if they knew what was involved? Right. Well, I can tell you how it happened for me. um And I'm even going to share so ah something that I don't know if I've actually ever shared publicly. i first...
00:08:57
Speaker
I had an experience. I had a, what in our developmental psychological world, in the world of adult development, we might call a state experience. When I was 28, other worlds would call it a Satori or an enlightenment experience. And it came of course, from a dark night, you know, from being completely just dissolved.
00:09:21
Speaker
It came through dance and it also came through asana. ah yoga asana pose i was in pachimottanasana which is forward fold uh spontaneously and um clear light experience we would call in my tradition now it also did push me into another stage it actually was ah probably a what we call a fourth person perspective stage just really stabilized and was expanded um but the state experience was probably non-definable i'm i'm almost it's
00:09:54
Speaker
hard for me to define state experiences these days. um And then I went looking for who could not only sort of explain something that I didn't doubt at all, but have a conversation about it. I knew I wasn't the only person, obviously, having these experiences.
00:10:15
Speaker
And I found Tibetan Buddhism, and they were having the conversation I wanted to have. Did my first 30-day retreat shortly thereafter. met Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who I told the experience to and told, you're not supposed to talk about the extraordinary experiences in my tradition. i don't know about yours.
00:10:34
Speaker
Depends on which which arm of the tradition. When I was growing up in Sutta Yoga, in that ashram, there was an experiences department and after intensives and whatnot, they would collect experiences, you know, and then teachers would weave them. They were archived and alphabetize or whatever, and people could weave them into their talks like, Oh, once an experience happened with this practice, blah, blah, blah.
00:10:55
Speaker
However, in my Sri Vidya practice, we're encouraged to keep these things very quiet.
00:11:01
Speaker
So both are true. Both are true. Well, you can tell your teacher, right? So it took a some time, but I got an audience with Lama Sopa Rinpoche at Kupan Monastery outside Kathmandu.
Teaching and Retreats
00:11:14
Speaker
And some of your listeners may be familiar with it. The 30 day Lama Rin retreat at Copan is kind of famous and in the, you know, the first, second, third generation of Tibetan Buddhist galupa circles.
00:11:25
Speaker
um And I told Lama Zopa about my experience and my experiences, and he immediately told me to start a Dharma center where I lived. And he gave me a name and he basically said, you need to start teaching.
00:11:38
Speaker
I was like, dude, this is my first, first, or you know, 30 day retreat. But what do you say to the Rinpoche? you know Yes, please. Thank you. Yes, please. Okay.
00:11:49
Speaker
And I did i did for a year with a genius, amazing, wonderful partner at the time, my partner at the time, amazing man. I'm now in deep retreat and crest on teaching others, and and which led to other things. But so from the beginning, I was being pushed to teach.
00:12:06
Speaker
Now recognize up to then, I was a corporate girl you know because I needed to pay my student loans, who was very dissatisfied and had that kind of existential crisis at 28 because of that, um lost my spiritual compass, and wanted it back, yearned for it, came crashing down, here we go for the rest of my life.
00:12:26
Speaker
So um then with, you know, Lama Zopa led to another teacher and to a deep intensive study. um Then you start to do retreats. You go, I went through intensive sutra study. I went through and seven years of Tantra college, did my requisite retreats, which in the Vajrayoguni Bajogini tradition, you need to do a minimum of four.
00:12:48
Speaker
um they They usually take about five weeks solitaries. And I've done multiples of those. I was, you know, I've done a lot of solitary retreat. When it it's counted up, it's more than three years, three days and three months. So in my tradition, you can do, you do it as part of your year and then you go out and teach and then you study and then you go into retreat and then you go out and teach and then you study. So it becomes a sort of lifestyle.
00:13:16
Speaker
ah So then my teachers told me and then they told me. Yeah. Yeah. And started calling me Lama publicly. That's how it first happened also. So, yeah.
00:13:28
Speaker
So there's also the contextual ability to give teachings. You know, this is something I continue to learn about. Sometimes stumble over is like when I'm going to give an important practice, especially one that requires an empowerment,
00:13:43
Speaker
I need to know enough about the background to give the context to the student. Oh yeah. So here you are being asked to go teach and you're like, well, what do I teach?
00:13:54
Speaker
Oh, well, I was really fortunate because my main teacher, Geshe Michael Roach, was a Princeton scholar, a Sanskrit scholar, presidential you know scholarship from Princeton.
00:14:10
Speaker
um And the first American Geshe. And so what he did ah was he took the Geshe program, which is like 20 years of study, which he did, went to India to do for us, and um turned it into courses.
00:14:29
Speaker
you know and turned made it available in these courses, which then I had translated and then you know learned enough Tibetan, I'm certainly not a translator, learned and enough little Tibetan to sort of be able to understand, learned to you know the Sanskrit alphabet. And once you know the Sanskrit alphabet, Sanskrit is so poetic and short and you look up the roots you can not that you're your own Sanskrit scholar, but you can get so much meaning from just looking at the roots of a Sanskrit word because it's the mother tongue.
00:14:56
Speaker
It's the Indo-European language. And so I learned enough to do that and had master teachers myself. Ken Rinpoche Lopesang Tarchin in New Jersey, ah who's you know strong in the Dalai Lama lineage, the Dalai Lama many teachings. So um I did have material to had great teachers and we created curriculum.
00:15:17
Speaker
you know, and made these teachings that were usually only available to monks, available to Westerners and women and me. You know, the other thing I wanted to say, too, i think the reason I was pushed to teach probably too young, i certainly have made many mistakes, you know, but was in my corporate life. I was i ended up being I did different things, but I was like national training director.
00:15:42
Speaker
for a very, very long, you know, I was a trainer. And so there's something I'm not going to, I'm sure that influenced my teachers telling me to teach also. Sure influenced me. and I grew up in a training and development household. My mom was a corporate trainer and executive coach who started handing me books in seventh grade that she was reading for business.
00:16:02
Speaker
Right. So, right.
Ethical Teaching and Innovation
00:16:06
Speaker
So there's that. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting thing as I contemplate my own life as a teacher and how long it's taken to willingly take the seat with the understanding that there's always tremendously more to learn and the humility that's required for that, but to take the seat.
00:16:24
Speaker
I'll never forget, I was i was giving a workshop. At that point in time, it was the ecstatic breathwork that I was traveling around with. Many years ago New York City, it was Robin Quivers' apartment, who's Howard Stern's co-host.
00:16:38
Speaker
Amazing woman, amazing, amazing woman. And afterwards, this gal, Ariane, who was at the workshop, this South African, she took me to dinner afterwards to go get a tasty burger. And she looks at me, she goes, from now on, when you're done teaching, stay in the seat.
00:16:55
Speaker
Don't wobble in the seat. It's confusing for people. i was like, oh, but at that age, and there's always been, as far as I can recall, there's always been something that's it's more than Scott, that's not owned by Scott, that has been able to move through. That's right. and lots of different ways.
00:17:17
Speaker
But i I just didn't feel... comfortable with it for so long because of my own shadow my own unresolved growing up experiences and attachment wounds and insecurities like how could i be stable in the seat with this i don't want people to think that i am actually fully you know anything right yeah so that's an interesting thing is like to navigate and juggle like there's so much more that we don't know
00:17:49
Speaker
but what is it to be firm without claiming an identity? When when you're doing a role, what is it to be firm without claiming an identity or claiming any attainment and being of service, but not giving more than one is qualified to and not giving less than the student is ready for?
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Well, you know, any, to me, you're, that's an indicator that you are a qualified teacher, the fact that you're asking this question.
00:18:21
Speaker
The fact that this is ah a. wo Was or a wobble or is, you know, the fact that you're holding this polarity, you know, apparent polarity, right ah between lots of things like divine and human or Scott or not Scott or whatever it is, the fact that you're holding it.
00:18:39
Speaker
That struggle should be there or that question, at least, if not a struggle, should be there in any good teacher, in my opinion. um And this is what we've seen through the Association for Spiritual Integrity, too.
00:18:51
Speaker
um Yeah, it's a constant question. And. ah We've all could tell stories of where we we can learn the most, I think, from those who did it poorly.
00:19:03
Speaker
yeah Don't do that, you know, and try new things, constantly innovating.
Preservation of Tibetan Texts
00:19:10
Speaker
You know, one thing I wanted to say, too, about empowerments.
00:19:16
Speaker
Something I really appreciate about Tibetan Buddhism is Vajrayana is it's so so scholarly. The Himalayas were hard to get into, you know, until the Chinese came in. Right. But they were hard to get into.
00:19:28
Speaker
So in a lot of these big mountain hilltop monasteries, there are old texts, you know, sometimes the last of their kind. And one of the thing organizations that some of my my teacher and friends have done is they they're like the Indiana Jones of the world. Literally, they have for 30 years gone around, found that last crumbling text or two or or a whole library, hired local, often women, you know in North India, in Mongolia, in Tibet, to input the text, to it translate them and input these crumbling leaf texts.
00:20:05
Speaker
um and then so offer it to the world for free. you know And so I have a one of the great, and this is one of the great things in modernity, I have a plethora of texts that are also what I teach. right So I have Six Yogas in Ropa, or I have Padampa Senge Silver Egg, or I have the Yoga Sutra, you know and a translation that has recently been found, or a ah ah copy of it, a version of it, that's been found recently in the Himalayas. It's so...
00:20:34
Speaker
um one One thing too, a nice thing about having an American teacher as one of my main teachers is, and this does not happen in other Tibetan Buddhist centers as far as I'm aware, I'm sure it does, but as far as I'm aware, I haven't seen it anywhere else, is we had our entire Wong text.
00:20:54
Speaker
I did not get this from Lama Zubur Rinpoche when I got Chenrezig empowerment from him. We did not get a Wong text. My American Geshe teacher, who you know has his own controversies, they're light compared to many others, um translated the text, gave it to us, spent four weeks talking about it in class before we even went into the Wong.
00:21:14
Speaker
The Wong means empowerment, right? In Tibetan. And then we had it. So when I do an empowerment, you talked about this, I have a text. Does it mean I always follow it?
00:21:28
Speaker
Yes and no, you know, but there's a text that's this ancient, like 2,000 year old text or something that is about ritual and recitation, which we've lost a lot of the time.
00:21:40
Speaker
So that's helpful. Like I actually have a text for it. I think it's important to possibly insert something here and bring some of the listeners along about these texts on the whole in the variations of Sanskrit and Tibetan are not simply words about something.
00:22:01
Speaker
And they exist on at least three levels. there's They tell a story, like the Vedas tell a story. They are prescriptions or sadhana manuals for how to do and what to do in a practice.
00:22:13
Speaker
And they are also living energy streams through the sound pulsations that each of these letters and they're their framing make that literally shape and direct universal power.
00:22:27
Speaker
And that is the thing that we miss as Westerners when we approach a tradition or a teacher where we're going to have to learn text or spend time with a lot of um syllables in, say, Sanskrit or Tibetan and go, well, why do I need to do this? Can't you just give me the English translation?
00:22:48
Speaker
the question I really dislike the most, and I try and be as patient because I get it, is every time I give a mantra and an empowerment, people ask many, many times, what's the translation of this into English? I'm like, you can't, you need at least 50 to 100 words to maybe get remotely at the sense of the sound pulsation and the power.
00:23:10
Speaker
The entire Sanskrit alphabet, probably similar to Tibetan, is a mantra and is used in very powerful ways to transform what we think of as fixed and solid reality whether it's the fixed and solid reality of my identity that carries pain about what my mother did or didn't do or whether it's the seeming fixed reality about a wall or a stone yeah that's right so beautiful
00:23:41
Speaker
Everybody just take a breath in and a breath out and let that settle in. Because that is wisdom. That is wisdom. Yes, yes. The power and the mystery of it.
00:23:53
Speaker
The mystery of these ancient, beautiful rituals. and that the all the sages and saints or any practitioners realization in the lineage of that text or teaching or mantra is embedded there like there's so much energetic support it's not simply a thought i think instead of another thought beautiful yes yes absolutely
00:24:26
Speaker
i let me i want to let me ask you about this. One of the. shifts from I think of it as like Sutra, which are the open teachings is like the logos, right? Like what does the Sanskrit mean? Yeah. Tantra is the mythos, you know, and there is ah surrender or ah that's somewhat required to the unknowing, right?
Preparatory Practices in Vajrayana Buddhism
00:24:50
Speaker
To letting this sound the recitation. Okay. You need to go in, in my case, into about, it's going to take about five weeks. You need to go into solitary retreat, no phone.
00:24:59
Speaker
no books, no people. you know We do it really strict. you know No cognizing, basically. All that is to eliminate the the the the tendency to to do everything through thought as an intermediary.
00:25:12
Speaker
Right. And through identity, often no mirrors. And then you have to say 110,000 mantras. Right. right You have to do this. Same mantra or different mantras? ah same The first 100 are the same.
00:25:25
Speaker
The last 10,000 is a like a purifying one, like one to clean it up get ready to get out basically. And is that preparation for the main retreat practice or that is the retreat practice?
00:25:38
Speaker
That is the preparation for completion stage. It's called ah and I'll explain what both of these are. It's called a Lerung and it means to get fit. It means to get yourself ready for the completion stage practices, which are in, you know, Anuttar Yoga Tantra.
00:25:56
Speaker
um empowerments and practices, whatever deity you're working it with, whether it be a mantaka or vajjyogini or chakrasanvara. These are the Anottara Yoga Tantras.
00:26:08
Speaker
um Completion stage is what You I hear you often describe actually, Scott, it's um working with the some people call it the subtle body. Some people refer to it more as the causal body.
00:26:21
Speaker
It's more than the energetic body. It's the pranic body. ah Maybe what people think of as chakras or energy centers working with pranayama with with your breath, with the eight limbs of yoga. It's working with the body more.
00:26:34
Speaker
and the energies and powers and desires of the body that's been in a way purified or gotten ready, you know, and included in that our embodiment practices as well. But a lot of it is four times a day in this Lerong.
00:26:47
Speaker
You sit down and you do a sadhana, as you described, a ah very m poetic um story. Yes, but it's like it's a meditation instruction manual, 200 pages long, you know, of somebody's state experience, basically.
00:27:03
Speaker
you know, and visualizations and ah moving around and interactions. And the heart of it is where you basically ah turn into light and turn into a star. And if you look at pictures of how a star is born, it looks like a like her and looks it looks like what the sadhana is describing. It's really interesting.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think I forgot the second part of your question. Yeah, and I think your my question started with your question. Right.
00:27:38
Speaker
Well, let's just take a breath and tune in. And everybody, let's just take a pause moment because Kimberly and I have a lot of collective information and training. And...
00:27:49
Speaker
At moments, if you're feeling fire hosed, I invite you back to the opening, which is soften the soles of your feet, soften the palms of your hands, soften the corners of your eyes, region of your ears, tongue, pelvic floor.
00:28:01
Speaker
You don't have to understand anything we're talking about for this particular podcast episode to be of great benefit. There is and endless
00:28:16
Speaker
I want to say army, but I want a better word army of energetic beings, support sending support, energetic support through this. Like we're not just here for our own sake. we're We are aware that there's an energy that's present as we choose to tune into these things.
00:28:34
Speaker
So you don't have to understand the words. You can listen more than once and you could actually kind of take it in like you're reading Braille, like like listen with your hands or listen with your skin as opposed to trying to listen with the intellect.
00:28:49
Speaker
And certain things will stand out and you can definitely ask questions and we'll try and do a Q&A at some point together. it'd be fun. Yeah. So getting the nervous system fit is really what I hear and see through a lot of these practices that I'm doing, that you you teach, um that others are doing, getting the nervous system
Balancing Spiritual Practice and Responsibilities
00:29:10
Speaker
fit. And what I mean by that is I've recognized that there are certain practices I've had to take it down a bit because I started experiencing what in my tradition we call heat symptoms. So reactivity, like hostility or agitation or anxiety or panic or overwhelm or sleeplessness can be indications of too much heat.
00:29:28
Speaker
And all forms of alchemy, which is what we are talking about here, transformation through alchemy, through sound pulsations and awareness, requires fire, visible or invisible fire. But we need to be able to handle the amount of fire that's moving.
00:29:44
Speaker
And so more isn't always better. And it's important to be able to help the nervous system and the physical body be able to work with and hold these energies without fragmentation.
00:29:56
Speaker
What do you have to say about that? So much. m For us Tibetan tantra, we call it lung. Lung. Lung is one of those words that means many different things. But one of the things it does mean is this wind disorder. It's considered a wind disorder. It's interesting. In your tradition, it's heat.
00:30:12
Speaker
But it comes from the fire of too much practice. um What we're getting fit for for these practices, which is often in our fire practices, that's the first completion stage practice you get to. Tumor?
00:30:25
Speaker
Tumo and versions of it, you know, that working with the subtle heat points in the subtle body. But yes, ah for Tumo. Yes. um Yes. So this getting fit, it's getting fit the nervous system. Yes. But also the physical connection of the the mind and the body is very much used and articulated. It said our mind rides on our winds, our prana, you know, and affects the body. It's like the connection between the mind and the body is considered your thoughts that ride on your prana.
00:30:59
Speaker
And so it's utilizing both inner thought with sadhana and mantra and checking our mind, making mind object, subject object throughout, which is what those cards that I carry around are for. With your vows?
00:31:13
Speaker
When the mind does come up, we're working with it and getting to quiet mind. um And then getting the body fit too. And that doesn't mean looking like whatever we're supposed to look like, but getting- Six pack abs.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's nice, but um it's it is, there is, and that's part of the thing you get with Tantra, and the importance of embodiment because the embodiment is connected to the mind.
00:31:38
Speaker
you know Mind as not the thinker, but you know Tibetans use mind more as I mean, it's almost the closest Western correlate might be soul or consciousness, sort of like a subtle sort of consciousness.
00:31:52
Speaker
Not quite universal mind yet, though, right? Or is it? It is. Mind is the relative side. It's the relative side. Like it has no, it's not negative or positive.
00:32:03
Speaker
In our developmental language, would we call that timeless boundless awareness? that we would call the closest correlate for timeless balance awareness, I think, is what we call clear light mind, which is the tantric definition of emptiness, actually, and mind of clear and knowing, luminous and aware, you know, clear and knowing, luminous and aware.
00:32:25
Speaker
That is the nature of mind. Yeah, that's according to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. That's how we do it. Yeah. Hmm. So we're talking about, in in part, managing the amount of practice.
00:32:42
Speaker
yeah And some of what we've said so far is like, too much is too much, and it's not necessarily better. However, many practitioners I've come across who are newer to these practices, at least in the current lifetime,
00:32:56
Speaker
can mistake discomfort and being out of one's comfort zone for being too strong about practice and then not really break through. What would you say about that?
00:33:07
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, it depends where you are on the path. Like if um one thing I've tracked is, especially when we're just stepping into real, what we would call renunciation, like making our spiritual awakening a priority.
00:33:21
Speaker
Maybe we had a disaster happen that pushes us into it. You know, like we get sick or someone gets sick or someone dies or, you know, or maybe we do the soft path of renunciation where we have everything we want and we're still not happy. But there did there there does need to be this sort of I need to practice. And that's when you go hard.
00:33:38
Speaker
And find a teacher and find a community that can reflect back to you. Don't just go by yourself in your office on Google. you know go you You want to learn something, you've got to take it seriously.
00:33:49
Speaker
you know So at the beginning, it's time to put the gas pedal on without leaving your family and leaving your house and quitting your job and doing it. you know Stay responsible, stay grounded. you know, we've also found as the awakening occurs, as are we learn how to focus, as we learn to be saturated in what's under the narrative, as we practice our meditations in a variety of traditions and ways, and we have to find the ones that are best for us, as we get under it and get taste liberation, let's say, you know, see our thoughts are just wisps more and more and look for the self that we think is there and is not.
00:34:28
Speaker
you know, look under are our meanness and see there is no me the way we thought. The more we taste that, the less we need, ah little gas goes farther, I found, right? Like you don't, it's not that you're not practicing anymore, but it's more allowing, you know, there different stages we go through um once we've gained these realizations. And A pragmatic thing i have found is I need to do less yoga to get the same result than I used to, um which I guess would make sense. So I need to go a little less hard there.
00:35:05
Speaker
I think it's all very personal. However, one of the most important offerings we can give i ourselves and practitioners is um the signs of when it's gone too far, the heat, you're talking you were saying anxiety, and ours lack of sleep, um cranky for no reason,
00:35:25
Speaker
um and but eating too much or not being able to eat, um headaches, um go easy. This is a big, this is a daily correction that one does when you're really practicing hard, when you're doing tapas, when you're changing up the habits and doing your meditations and doing your physical practices and doing your mantras ease up so you don't get too much heat as you say and know what those signs are and that's why being in a community and having a teacher is so important something we haven't touched on yet here is the importance of some of the things we can do to support the body like
00:36:05
Speaker
in ayurveda is really really really profound for supporting the body and it's so much of it is about oil high quality oil just about in every orifice and on the skin yes you know like i have oil drops that go in the nose in the ears on the top of my head and then abhyanga which is head to toe i remember beginning um i was beginning a practice um to Chandi, there's a there's a an epic that even Indians don't know about as much anymore, but it's right up there with the Vedas, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, all those, which is the Devi Mahatmyam.
00:36:49
Speaker
And it's 700 lines of how the goddess overcomes the demons, which we understand with right teaching are the inner enemies, like attachment and aversion, endless desires that give birth to endless karma and stuff like this.
00:37:04
Speaker
Well, this practice, in order to be effective, because it's working with a wrathful deity, we could say, or another way to say it is Ugra, which means an upsurge of profound force,
00:37:18
Speaker
In that force, there's going to be heat. And so one of my friends who's a teacher in my teacher's lineage has said, you have to minimally three times a week be doing this abhyanga, this head to toe oil massage. Yes, yes.
00:37:30
Speaker
And I've noticed if I go too many weeks without doing abhyanga, I start to feel off because I have a very deep practice that's daily and full of a lot of fire. And I have to do this.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes. um What are the things that you offer to your students right out of the gate that are physical interventions, whether it's dietary alterations or Cold or hot exposure.
00:37:58
Speaker
Right.
Ayurveda's Role in Spiritual Practice
00:37:59
Speaker
Oh, so much. Yes. I've written papers on it. um Well, the first thing is, i ah for me, just personally, Ayurveda was a game changer. And I found Ayurveda. And I'm not saying it's for everybody, but just to report to you people, you know these are important information, right? like And i was going this is when I was in retreat three months a year, you know going home you know very intensive retreat time.
00:38:22
Speaker
Now my retreat is more emerged in my life as well, not quite as intensely now that I'm a householder and have a child and everything else. um yeah Yeah. So warm water, like baths. If you go but over more than one night without sleep, contact your teacher, contact your community right away. More than one night is not okay.
00:38:43
Speaker
um It must sleep. Naps. Yeah. Warm water, swimming, water, especially on the heat. Water brings it down. brings It's basically considered, ah as I said, um chronic disorder.
00:38:56
Speaker
You know, and um too much wind, really, especially in the heart prana value, which is at our heart and goes down our arms, often from too much meditating. Don't go read a book on emptiness.
00:39:08
Speaker
Go watch Netflix.
00:39:11
Speaker
Really the opposite, like um no sugar, you know, Ayurvedic diet really helps. it Game changer for me, as I said, it got everything straight after that as I was going hard. Oils.
00:39:25
Speaker
oils um you know, find your doshas and I can recommend, you know, I don't get a kickback for this, but Banyan Botanicals has a great free dosha assessment for listeners out there. scott you agree?
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. and So doha dosha, just for your listeners, dosha is your type. If you don't know that, like there's three qualities and we are a mingling of them. You could be triple of something. God bless you. But ah you have pita, which is fire. You have kapo, which is water and you have, uh,
00:39:55
Speaker
Vata, which is air. And so these air imbalances are Vata imbalances, like things like flying in an airplane can stimulate a Vata imbalance. and It's important to get in water and get grounded. But carry on.
00:40:07
Speaker
Banyan Botanicals has a free assessment to get a sense of your, they'll ask you all these questions. You want to go deeper, you actually sit with a Vaidya, really gifted Ayurvedic practitioner who will check your eyes, check your tongue, and sense with their wisdom stream direct interventions for you.
00:40:25
Speaker
that That is the game changer. Abhyanga is also a game changer. The oil, you can do it in your shower. um I recommend doing it somebody else's house or at a gym. I learned this the hard way and I clogged my pipes and I ruined towels.
00:40:39
Speaker
So I do it at Equinox. God bless you, Equinox, where I know the crazy, crazy industrial washing of those towels. So I abhyanga, I chill for a few minutes and then I go in the steam room, which is a different form of abhyanga.
00:40:53
Speaker
And then, you know, Towel it off in the shower. Sauna's good. Yeah. But basically ease up. And I do want your listeners to hear this. If you've been one you know you've been meditating hard, you've been and doing all the things, you know um ease up a little bit. like Go on a walk in nature. yeah you know um Have a good laugh.
00:41:16
Speaker
That can help. Hug somebody with good energy. Yeah, that's it. That's it. self-massage too you know i was a massage therapist while I was getting started in LA with all my different modalities and i forget that I was really good at it you know people would like you know condonesse magazines would write about it and like this and I'll remember something oh wait I don't have to wait to go pay somebody like I just need to start and like start paying attention with my hands to what the tissue is doing and they're in it
00:41:50
Speaker
it forms a deeper intuition also about relating to other people. if we're really If I'm really paying attention to like I'm massaging my shoulder or my forearm after a workout, and I'm paying attention, I'm not just pushing, um it's like it's a collaboration between the part of the body that's being touched and that which is touching it,
00:42:10
Speaker
it informs how i show up with all of life because how much of my life at least did i show up like a puppy with huge legs that didn't know how to operate with too much power entering into a small room didn't know titrate or like bring the energy down or use less force and actually sense that yes it's beautiful yes i love that scott How do you do that?
00:42:38
Speaker
What's it like now for you as you walk through the world?
00:42:45
Speaker
Well, today is different than two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I was reading too much news and was getting really overwhelmed and getting caught in ordinary mind into like, what if and oh my, and things are going to be as opposed to wait a minute, I and all of us are the distribution mechanism for sources blessing stream.
00:43:08
Speaker
And I'm not helping anybody by getting lost in the tumble of a projection of a story of what could happen, you know, with this, that and the other thing. So today, where I stand walking through the world is more and more consistently
00:43:26
Speaker
feeling in the world, but not of it. Mm hmm.
00:43:31
Speaker
And that's not like all day 100%. Like if I see somebody, dude, I find really attractive, like, whoa, hey, hot guy. um But it's never lost. And in fact, even 2016, when I did nine ayahuasca ceremonies, awareness never went away.
00:43:51
Speaker
in any state, no matter how intense, whether there was hallucinations or body was shaking or I went into twice, I went into serotonin syndrome, which can be really dangerous. Too much serotonin dumping in the in the experience at once and like heart rate spiking and dropping, temperature rising and dropping.
00:44:07
Speaker
There was never a loss. of basic awareness. yeah I'm gonna tell on myself, well so once before quarantine, five days before we went into quarantine for this whole COVID business, I had been teaching, I taught the very last class at Wanderlust Hollywood.
00:44:23
Speaker
It was an evening breathwork class. And I was somewhat tired when I got home. i had food in the short ribs in the slow cooker that I was excited about. And I remembered I had this bottle, I had been microdosing LSD for a while.
00:44:39
Speaker
And I later shifted that to psilocybin under supervision. um But I had this bottle, I was like, you know, going to put that in the fridge for a rainy day. Surely there's residue in there.
00:44:49
Speaker
So I don't think i've ever told this publicly. um It feels kind of vulnerable, but whatever. So i I got some purified water. I sucked it up into the little bottle, squirted it it out of into the spoon. And thank God I did not eat that whole spoon of water.
00:45:03
Speaker
I don't know if I would still be here today to talk about it. yeah So when we talk about if you've ever any of you done psychedelics, there's a period of time when you're coming up, you haven't yet gotten to the plateau of where you're going to be for the majority of the journey.
00:45:17
Speaker
And so it took six to seven hours to come up before it stabilized. And so I'm sitting in the chair in my room that I used was used to sitting in for private sessions. And I stayed there and there was a yantra, like the one behind me, but different in front.
00:45:35
Speaker
And there was tons of visual distortion, audio distortion, but basic awareness never went away. The basic knowledge that all is well, there's a ground of being and I'm rooted in it, never went away. It's like some version of like early blush awareness that there's a healthy parent energy inside of me, despite what I didn't get from my own physical parents, that can provide grounding, that can provide clarity, that can provide support.
00:46:11
Speaker
And so that's just continued to grow in all of this time. So I wonder, ah like can i ask you about that? Is that okay? Yeah, for sure. so um So the healthy parent would be a part, right?
00:46:25
Speaker
If we're talking about it, be like, it may be a capital P part, right? That kind of healthy parent energy, which is so important that we cultivate along with our spiritual awakening. It's so essential that, you know, as we get under the the narratives and begin to see the nature of our mind, love, we know we're on track when love for self and others is the tangible result. It's like the tangible feel we have.
00:46:49
Speaker
Right. So, but you being aware, what I hear as a developmentalist that I would ask more about you being aware of awareness naturally without effort, I would assume just as it is, as this rising might be fifth person perspective, really just solidifying.
00:47:08
Speaker
Right. When, yeah when, when you don't have the distractions of the world and the vicissitudes and stuff, it's just, it's right there. yeah It's always right there. When you're in a and experience, it's always right there.
00:47:19
Speaker
Yeah. And in my case, um fifth person perspective really solidified or dawned quite strongly.
00:47:29
Speaker
ah guess it would have been six years before that, six or seven years before that. And then got tested by Terry just to check it out. um That didn't mean that all the lines of my attention were accessing that fifth person perspective. Sure, sure. And then you went into those psychedelic experiences and you will never lose it because it's right there. Interesting. I have a similar thing happen. Psychedelics are more new to me. It's a recent experimentation. I've been always the one that just held it and didn't do it.
00:47:57
Speaker
I don't mean held journeys, but hold the stories from my students and friends. um But I have that same experience, always already aware.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, and in my case, you know I've been a microdoser for a long time, using that for health protocols.
Role of Psychedelics in Spiritual Practice
00:48:15
Speaker
And you know i have there is dementia and Alzheimer's in my family, so some of it's just been prophylactic in that regard. Also, just to keep working with the plasticity, supporting the body's neuroplasticity as I'm doing these practices to quicken the embodiment.
00:48:33
Speaker
yeah um i don't recommend that anybody just jump into any this full disclosure jump into any psychedelic work uh without really knowing what you're getting into and ideally the first few times being under supervision by somebody who's got a therapeutic background who really knows what they're doing and knows how to adjust if something gets a little wonky um yeah i started practicing serious yoga and i don't mean physical yoga i mean the other seven limbs right when i was 22 august 13 1994 the lights came on and never went off in a meditation intensive at the city of yoga meditation ashram
00:49:13
Speaker
And we were right away in that in in that intensive introduced to what they called the witness. ah witness We would probably call that metacognition at this point in the terms of the level at which I was able to access it back then. I don't think it was the full awareness of awareness.
00:49:30
Speaker
Right. Metacognitive awareness. Right. like like I could observe my thinking, could observe my mind, could observe my body, could observe my emotions, and then it just grew and grew. yeah it is.
00:49:41
Speaker
yeah And I think in my case, it like slipped in in the middle of the night unannounced that it it kept gradually increasing to greater awareness of just bare awareness. And I'm sure there's much more to be aware of than I yet am but it's it's it wasn't like there was a sudden oh, this is awareness of awareness, like kaboom, like a flash of lightning. You just kind of just gradually through the practice, the consistency of practice.
00:50:10
Speaker
oh Oh, and I will say, actually, as I think I just flashed in my mind, the cover of Michael Singer's first book, The Untethered Soul, really helped me to realize, oh, this is awareness of awareness.
00:50:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. What people are codifying is that Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I'd love to have a deeper conversation, sort of. The nerd in me tracking throughout our stories and our these decades since we've both been practicing for quite a while, the different states, they just kind of geek out about that.
00:50:44
Speaker
My guess is you have stayed access through all the tears because of the practice, because of that of the practice, basically.
00:50:55
Speaker
When I was little, I wouldn't say little because I was i didn't feel little at the time. i was i would have been
00:51:03
Speaker
My memories of it that stick out are like... nine ten years old ah still living in rochester new york my dad had bought us a house after splitting up with my mom and there were these two oak trees in the front yard and one in particular that was just easy for me to climb up to and i would sit in it for hours and it was the other day that i realized when i looked at the experience through the lens of memory i was meditating but i wasn't trying to meditate it was a spontaneous non-thinking presence
00:51:36
Speaker
where I felt one with the sphere of nature.
00:51:44
Speaker
So I'd say, yeah, it did start pretty young. um
00:51:52
Speaker
and I think that's part of what made it so confusing. you know for There were a few years after I came out as gay that I thought, oh, maybe my confusion a lot of my confusion was not knowing I was gay and being feeling other from that.
00:52:03
Speaker
I think the other was I natively, as a child, didn't see the world the way people seemed to be saying they were seeing the world, and it created this kind of cognitive dissonance and this distrust in my own knowing that has taken decades to digest and get back to what's true here
00:52:33
Speaker
while giving room now to other people's experiences without having to convince them of my view or or change theirs.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah. So when you were a child, that view that you would share wasn't affirmed or seen or reflected or mirrored? No, no. My parents were doing the best they could with all of their stuff. i mean, they were maybe like yours.
00:52:57
Speaker
They were in their early 20s when I was born. And they were not in a settled relationship. pretty much in any area of life.
00:53:08
Speaker
Yes. It sounds very familiar to mine. Yes. Yes. Right. i I feel that I have a similar, my parents have a similar age and i also had spiritual experiences.
00:53:20
Speaker
Let's call it that, or, you know, deep state experiences. Sometimes we use that term often with concrete reality, like nature, right? With the concrete, we call it the concrete collective of jokes form with nature, with animals,
00:53:33
Speaker
You know, with so embodied, we're so embodied, you know, we don't have all these complexities layer on layered on. And so we are nature, you know, our bodies are merged with it at the same time.
00:53:45
Speaker
um And i that was my refuge in many ways. ah My parents were also doing the best they can. I wasn't hit or I was safe. i was safe you know Physically, I had food and shelter and all of this. was hit.
00:53:57
Speaker
You were hit. Yeah. Yeah. By my dad. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. not like ah like Not like punched or anything. i mean, it was like what was considered normal in the seventy s which was spankings with a hand or a belt and Man, he really knew how to pack a wallop.
00:54:13
Speaker
Dang it, little Scott. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, samsara, you know? Yeah. Samsara. People doing their best and losing their mind. Yeah, so it's so clear. but you know And I'm not bypassing this, Kimberly. I know you know what I mean. Yeah.
00:54:31
Speaker
Where I sit today and I contemplate those things, I can see his background. I can see his upbringing. And I have so much compassion. you know And the man has cut me out of his life entirely five years ago, right after my mom died of cancer.
00:54:46
Speaker
I really feel tremendous camp and compassion. There are certain times when something will arise and I will let myself go, fuck that guy. But it's not like it's a, I wish him any harm. In fact, I hold him in prayer for his happiness, for his highest good. may And may he end his life resolved.
00:55:03
Speaker
Yes. Resolved. However that gets there. Really resolved. Yes. May it be so. May he end his life resolved. Yes. It's beautiful. Well, that is the fruit of the path of practice, you know, of where you are now and and how we can, we find compassion. We know we're on track when we're finding compassion, you know, for him and also the part of you that still says, fuck you once in a while, you know.
00:55:32
Speaker
Totally. Totally. yeah I kind of want to cycle to, um and we can keep exploring states because I'm super happy to explore states, I kind of want to cycle to, know, i'm aware and I'm deeply respectful and appreciative of preliminary practices in Buddhism.
00:55:49
Speaker
And Daniel P. Brown being one of the only examples of a lineage holder who found a way around it that worked, that was vetted by his lamas, around doing the seven things of 100,000 times, 100,000 physical frustrations, 100,000 guru mantras, I don't know the others.
00:56:05
Speaker
But like as a teacher, i have so much of an easier time working with people who've applied themselves consistently to training their mind and body.
00:56:17
Speaker
What are you seeing as a teacher in terms of are there skillful replacements? How do you put them out in front of students and and show what why it's so beneficial so they really want to do it and follow through kind of thing?
00:56:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, the one of the things i'm so I love so much about Galukpa Tibetan Buddhism in particular, which is the lineage of Jay Tsongkhapa. And for your listeners, this was like the Shakespeare and you know Plato of Tibetan Buddhists um philosophy.
00:56:54
Speaker
He lived 1357 to 1419. Was he the first Dalai Lama? Yeah, he felt he was not the first Dalai Lama, but the first Dalai Lama then came in his lineage. and he was ah So he was the guy that reincarnated as the first Dalai Lama? No. No. I don't think. No. He doesn't have reincarnation.
00:57:12
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, which is unique. He's so amazing. he you know and I mean, I can go off the lineage is supernatural in origin always. It's always Manjushri comes down and gives them the text and he channels Manjushri. It's awesome, which I love.
00:57:27
Speaker
you know i Give me all that. you know This is part of our history. um This is where everybody that gets into the Harry Potter of it all. And it is real. It is real. People can fly. People can leave imprints in rocks of their hands and feet. like These things actually happen.
00:57:43
Speaker
But that's not why we practice. That's not why we practice. And it's part of our human story. It's our humanities, you know, are these stories which we find. So Jason Kappa and, you know, of course, his students in the lineage, they developed this thing called the Lam Rim.
00:57:58
Speaker
And it's a course of path of practice and it's developmental. It's developmental both in practice and in realization. And then Sutra goes to Tantra. And so there is a journey and that one goes through. And I also in the past years have um you know crossed with that developmental understanding. And so I am looking for you know my the people who do best with me and my tantric cohorts tend to be late fourth person but generally centered late fourth up through six plus now as we're going you know and growing. And so that kind um I don't have to spend years teaching construct awareness.
00:58:41
Speaker
you know, what we would call, which, you know, and, and we still review it and go over it because we have being able to explain it skillfully and then teach others construct awareness, I think is one of the great gifts of Galukpa Tibetan Buddhism.
00:58:55
Speaker
Bring us that, that sharp arrow that hits the point. Just tell us construct awareness for the new listener. Like, what does it mean to be construct aware in one's own life? Yes. so everybody who's listening, I want you to just look around in your room.
00:59:11
Speaker
We'll start there. We'll do this quickly. The idea is even starting with concrete objects, everything that you see it's just colors and shapes.
00:59:22
Speaker
And we can take it much farther than this, but we'll just say it's colors and shapes. Your eye cannot see computer or cup. Your eye sees shadow and light.
00:59:38
Speaker
And we could even go much farther, right? Into empty space that it's seeing. And then your mind comes along and goes cup, computer, or even voice. Like you can't hear me right now.
00:59:53
Speaker
You can't hear me speaking words. I am clicking and grunting. These are clicks and grunts and vibrations.
01:00:03
Speaker
And your mind, as we call it in Tibetan Buddhism, is coming along and making meaning of that. It's piecing together these things and making meaning on that. And so in a very, you know, even concrete, gross form sense,
01:00:20
Speaker
What you're looking at is an idea in your mind. You can't actually see cup out there. You can't hear meaning in my words. They're not shooting across space, time and space at you and somehow entering and making meaning because we're all hearing something different.
01:00:35
Speaker
Some of you are like, oh, this is cool. Some of you are like, this is weird. I'm out of here. And that's great. And so the meaning making is coming. We're looking at what we call constructs or qualities or ideas.
01:00:48
Speaker
We haven't even moved to our thoughts yet. what we're looking at when we're looking at our thoughts. right which are just clouds in the sky coming and going. they're off they're kind Everything is a construct, idea, reality itself. it's ah can be very When one can sees this themselves directly, which needs to happen, you can get through through logic. ah you know we We spend months doing logical, conceptual, and galukpa training on this because it's helpful when we're walking around in the world to remember what's happening.
01:01:21
Speaker
Right. And then there's more Shakti pot pointing out instructions. We get saturated in this realization that is often beyond words. Right.
01:01:32
Speaker
That everything is arising actually in me, in the big me, even Kimberly, even Scott.
01:01:39
Speaker
So. That was more than a sentence, but that's what it was. Great. More than a sentence worked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So okay the people you work with tend to be, it's easier for you when they're at least construct aware, much easier, and they tend to be more and more. Yeah, or late or because late fourth perspective, we begin to see our projections, small p projections um upon reflection.
01:02:07
Speaker
And so then we can practice like there's something in us that can feel the truth of the idea of construct awareness, you know,
01:02:21
Speaker
We begin to see our own and that's a game changer. You know, late fourth is a game changer. When we can begin to see our own projections upon reflection, not just other people projecting on us, but see our own, that's a game changer.
01:02:36
Speaker
So are you kind of extrapolating that in the lens of the conversation of preliminary practices that any practices that skillfully and and efficiently lead to construct awareness can be beneficial as preliminary practices?
01:02:49
Speaker
Yes, and one needs focus to get there. And I believe one needs an ethical way of life. I mean, yamas, niyamas, who am I to argue? You know, um many of the great traditions point us to training our mind to not be suffering all the time.
01:03:09
Speaker
yeah There's a book that just came out that I'm listening to where I'm loving how the Lama, the female Lama, is pointing out the non-harm, the way she's unpacking it. The book is called How Not to Miss the Point.
01:03:21
Speaker
I don't maybe I heard about it from you. I'm listening to it on Audible. Unfortunately, she's not the one reading it, but the reader's pretty good. And she's talking about that the that the non-harming practice, that it was a much different explanation than I expected. She's like, so imagine that you're at the top of a building and there's a giant boulder and somehow you're able to move it towards the edge of the building.
01:03:43
Speaker
And then you wait until somebody's right below and you push it over so it crushes them. She goes, that's doing harm.
01:03:52
Speaker
And there are so many ways that we do this with our words or intentions or actions or our withholding. Where are we crushing from a willful nature anything?
01:04:05
Speaker
Yes. so Yes, it's beautiful. And it's so true. And, you know, it's what I often find people who are ready for studying sutra and then
Realization and Ethical Living
01:04:16
Speaker
tantra too. And the preliminary thing I look for too, is that deep realization of I've got to stop creating my own, I've got to stop something. Like I'm, something's amiss.
01:04:27
Speaker
You know, like I, this is what happened to me. Like I have a fancy boyfriend, a fancy job, a fancy apartment. What am I doing wrong? Something's, I got to figure something else out. You know, I'm pushing the rock. I'm miserable.
01:04:39
Speaker
My relationships are not great. ah This is the rock of my life falling on all of us. So what am I going to do differently? And it is you know, it is we have all the power. This is one of the realizations. We have all the power in our capacity. We are so much more than we know.
01:04:57
Speaker
We have all of this capacity. to shift reality, not just for ourselves, but through the ripples that we ripple out for others. you know We have all the capacity to do this with, I believe, you know waking up as part of our toolbox. Being committed ah to the waking up process and getting used to the applications of waking up in our life, which are ethical ways of being and not in a, oh, you shouldn't have said that way.
01:05:27
Speaker
but in a Or, oh, I can't kill anything. Meanwhile, every time I wash my hands or breathe, there are bacteria that are dying from that. So I'm not going to stop breathing or stop washing my hands. No. But people do get trippy like that sometimes when they're worried about you know the imagined projection of a God I could piss off who will flick me like an ant to an eternal bonfire of suffering.
01:05:47
Speaker
Yes, it doesn't work that way. It's not fundamentalist. So having that developmental maturity in my community, And then while also holding our parts and shadow crashes that are going to come up sometimes, you know, is really helpful because when one of us might be having some sort of, you you know, getting caught into some of, you know, in the community or really, as you were describing, getting caught in ordinary consensus reality right now of too much news and and there's so much suffering, you just can't look away. You just can't look away. Right.
01:06:20
Speaker
And then someone else will be able to hold without bypassing at all. Help us remember. Yes, we feel you. We love you. You're compassion you know, and let's get under the narrative. You know, somebody else will hold us. I had a medical thing happen ah last week in all vulnerability with this group, and it was scary and I'm fine, but it was involved getting helicoptered out of my remote retreat location where I live. And Scott was aware it was going on. I appreciated you you holding that, too.
01:06:46
Speaker
You know, and and I in vulnerability as a teacher kind of almost circling back to one of the original questions of what's it like to be a Lama? I let my close private cohort know the Lama.
01:06:58
Speaker
Right. Being vulnerable. if I have an early part. Young Kimberly, who has medical trauma coming up, who's scared. And i' that it's more importantly, it's like I was aware of her in that moment and loving her. But more importantly,
01:07:11
Speaker
the impact that that little girl has had on my life of not getting into the doctor. Like she's still there, not integrated, obviously. Are you comfortable starting us at the beginning of the story? Yes. That this illustrates? Because as I replay it in my awareness, the parts you've told me, it holds everything we've been talking about.
01:07:29
Speaker
It holds the absolute and your recognition and your embodiment of ab or a later absolute or direction of absolute consciousness. It also holds the humanness in its rawness, its realness, wherever it still has fragmentation and pain and unfinished business.
01:07:44
Speaker
It holds the awareness that I'm embedded in many layers of collectives that are impacted by my existence. So as much as you're willing to play out, I think it would be wonderfully of benefit.
01:07:57
Speaker
Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you can give commentary along the way. Yeah, thank you. And feel free to interject anytime, know, and pause me anytime.
01:08:10
Speaker
So I had an experience last week, actually, that sort of relates to a lot of the things we've been talking about today. And even at the beginning of this conversation of what is it like to be a Lama? And I, yeah, and i I just to recognize too, it feels vulnerable sharing it. So those of you who are listening, please take it with...
01:08:30
Speaker
softness at the same time. And as I share it, May, the young part in me, which was the part that really got healed and integrated, it's a young Kimberly who had medical trauma,
01:08:42
Speaker
ah pre-verbal medical trauma as a baby and then at different points in my life, which has resulted in shadow, you know, that's I've been working for, you know, shadow is a term many may know, but basically a young part who takes over sometimes, you know, that that does that still needs healing, seeing and integration.
01:09:05
Speaker
um And this has still been very active in my life. So I had an experience where I was home. The power was out. There was a wildfire nearby. i live in the mountains of Cascadia in Washington state in a remote in our retreat place, a retreat location.
01:09:21
Speaker
And I was, of course, my husband was not home. I was here with my son, 14 years old, and it was dark. And I took a last glug of of a glass of water ah and I was in a bit of a rush. So probably not in my most, you know, centered. The power was out. There was a fire, you know.
01:09:39
Speaker
But I took a glass glug of water and and swallowed something sharp and it lodged. It felt like it lodged in my throat. And because I could feel it, I could turn. We also have no self-service out here.
01:09:50
Speaker
So, so just so you know. So get in the car, go to the first emergency room, meet up with my husband um in the um ER at a country hospital, which is two hours away. Takes us two hours to get there. I'm able to drive. I'm able to talk.
01:10:07
Speaker
ah but there's definitely something sharp in here. I'm able to swallow lightly. Get there. Country hospital does a scan. They can't find anything.
01:10:18
Speaker
And I am feeling, i am in awareness, something Scott and I have talked about on this. And I'm also aware that there's a physical part. My heart rate is a little elevated. I'm anxious. Do I have to go under? Is this what I've been avoiding, avoiding this little girl? We all have these symptoms.
01:10:35
Speaker
Maybe not all, but many of us still have these parts that need to be integrated. And even with me being a teacher, and I still do too, this is part of our humanity. And my husband, my wonderful husband at the time, who was driving back and forth, taking care of our taking our son home, taking care of our dogs, this two hour drive to me, two hour drive back.
01:10:55
Speaker
He said, why don't you reach out to your community, your the community I've been referring to, the current Tantra cohort. um Reach out to them and let them know, which the Lama might not do, right?
01:11:07
Speaker
um And I did, and I did it vulnerably and reached out to my collective and let them know I was going through this.
01:11:19
Speaker
This was the middle of the night. Many of them are are on the East Coast. As i as they're waking up, i could the it's almost like the the wheel starts to turn.
01:11:30
Speaker
As the collective wheel is waking up, the wheel starts to turn. Next thing you know, I'm being told I'm going to be helicoptered to University of Washington in Seattle over the mountains.
01:11:45
Speaker
for further because they don't really know what's going on in the country. They don't have what they need to get it out or scope down there. These four Dakinis, these four show up and within an hour. These women, Scott, they were the most beautiful.
01:12:01
Speaker
I swear they were seven feet tall. That's how they seemed to me. Powerful, all women, gorgeous power show up and surround me in all four directions. take me into the helicopter.
01:12:13
Speaker
One of them's a pilot. The other three three are around me. And the wheel is spinning. The light's coming. The sun is rising now on the West Coast, right? And my West Coast sangha and those who live in Australia, they're all you know getting on.
01:12:26
Speaker
And they go into, let's say, prayer. They go into intention at their various capacities. I'm in the helicopter. I'm lying there in Shavasana in a corpse pose, right? they Even though I can walk, they have to bundle you up and it's all very, I just surrendered to it with these four goddesses, you know, who were so emotionally aware.
Healing Through Community
01:12:51
Speaker
i think medical training has improved a lot in 20, I don't know, but they were so emotionally aware as well as physically capable. And Scott, I felt this wave of,
01:13:05
Speaker
prana of love. It was love. This tangible love by me being vulnerable with my own group as the Lama saying, I and scared. There's a part of me that's scared. You know, this they know this is hard for me. I've been human with them.
01:13:19
Speaker
I felt it and I felt the sharp object move on up and over to the left of my throat and then disappear. just disappeared.
01:13:30
Speaker
And I was in a sort of dream state. I didn't swallow. i i just, took I was in the in between a little bit, but I was also looking out the window at the mountains at the same time.
01:13:41
Speaker
It was as if all of our bodies connected. And by that, I don't, I know, you know, but I don't mean physical body, all of our various kayas connected.
01:13:55
Speaker
I get to University of Washington Hospital. It's very dramatic landing in the helicopter. I feel like I'm in a movie. Some very hunky EMT guys, the only guy that was there with me the whole time, comes up, rolls me out.
01:14:08
Speaker
The Dikini say goodbye. I go in oh Long story short, they can't find it. the And the object they had done... a CT, a CAT scan here on my my upper neck in the country hospital. There was an object there.
01:14:22
Speaker
I get to University of Washington, they can't find it. My throat is still a little sore, you know, all of us, but it's gone. They put me through a series of tests because they can't quite believe it. I'm there for another day, um but it's gone.
01:14:37
Speaker
And for me, there's the beautiful story of what happened and you could call it a miracle. You can call it whatever you want. I'm honestly reporting my experience deeper for me. was this intention that I was holding with this particular time and moment, like the original question you asked me of what's it like to be a Lama now.
01:14:57
Speaker
ah I wanted with this tantra cohort, my fifth, I guess, over 20 years, to integrate developmental awareness in the co-selection of each other.
01:15:09
Speaker
Also, when we're working with our parts to integrate developmental awareness that might come up, the relative self that might come up. And also to experiment with what in so many communities we're looking at as the leading edge, the collective. And what is the collective at sixth person perspective?
01:15:26
Speaker
How does it emanate, create, what's it look like? What's it feel like? And how can the Lama move from being somebody we project everything onto in a good way? It works. Llamas work, people, like they work.
01:15:42
Speaker
And if we understand how it's working, it can work much faster. But to move that into the collective so that the golden shadow is reowned by the collective consciously without mature enough to take the l Lama down.
01:15:55
Speaker
So here the guru, the Lama, was healed by the collective Lama. Like the individual Lama was healed by the love of the collective. So the collective healed the Lama, so to speak.
01:16:08
Speaker
Right.
01:16:14
Speaker
yeah there's so many things that are present with that most of them for me are not in words uh mostly in geometry movement movement of geometry as i sit here with the terms collective and individual and like almost like a kaleidoscope
01:16:37
Speaker
And you know we' we've learned from physics that reality can take the shape of a particle or a wave. When it takes the shape of a particle, it seems like a fixed location and an iine identity, but it's an appearance, a temporary appearance. When it takes the shape of a wave,
01:16:55
Speaker
Yes. There's no fixed location or identity, and we are both. And i that's what I'm kind of seeing in the in undulation of the of the of the geometry of the self and the cohort is like this liquidification of any fixed identities.
01:17:15
Speaker
you and in In my learning and understanding of, we use the term guru mostly in in my traditions. We don't have the term lama. And Guru with a capital G, or Satguru, a teacher of consciousness, is somebody who's been typically been through a lot of training and practice and transformation.
01:17:39
Speaker
And these subtle centers called the Gurupadakams in the upper centers above the head have been opened by one's Guru, one has been told to be a Guru. And yet my fortune is that my teachers have been very clear all along the way to say, never mistake the guru for a physical person.
01:17:59
Speaker
The guru is is the aspect of consciousness that can reveal itself as it wills to itself. There's no other that it's revealing it to. It is itself. Like there's one source energy manifesting temporarily of or appearing as these different objects and beings and words and awarenesses but it's still the one appearing as many
01:18:28
Speaker
And so for a, like, you know, like training wheels, I mean, I needed training wheels when I moved from a tricycle to a bicycle, I needed the training wheels to develop balance. And then, you know, within a few bicycle rides, my body learned that balance. Well, these practices that we're all learning in various tantric traditions are like that.
01:18:48
Speaker
That we're like in the beginning, i need to focus on ah the embodiment of the guru in a person because I don't yet have that developed awareness of to recognize that this principle of energy called the guru is everywhere.
01:19:02
Speaker
Like it that's not something I can actually... yet use to transform my own consciousness. So I focus on something physical and then bit by bit by bit. And it sounds like what you're describing is that you're the maturity of your cohort is moving more and more, at least as a whole into the direction where that guru principle, that transformational principle of consciousness can move through the collective without negating that you're still the teacher.
01:19:32
Speaker
Without negating, I'm still the teacher. And then others are also teaching, they're doing their retreats. They are doing their retreats. And yes, yes. And that if you want The other thing aspect of Tantra in my tradition too is you're kind of the party line is you're doing it in one lifetime. like You do Tantra because you want to more than just being a bodhisattva, you're a tantric bodhisattva because you want to do it as quickly as you can for the sake of all beings that you you're impacting, right for the sake of ah this world that we're co-creating and interpenetrating with everybody else.
01:20:06
Speaker
you know, and that we can do it quickly with Tantra. And so if you have just like if you want to be, I'll use the same metaphor, and it's becoming um um a saint. It's like saint school. It's like master yogi school, kind of just like I want to be a concert pianist. If you want to be a concert pianist, you could try and do it on your own.
01:20:25
Speaker
Or you can find the best qualified teacher to teach you that. And then they reflect that to you in the mirror of our minds. well there's things we pick up this is important too there's things we pick up that are not spoken and that is something that uh is one of the most profound secret essences, secret, non-secret, like open secret essences of the teaching stream is that, and I'll use the example of um in the early days of of what was called Anyasara Yoga, which came out of Iyengar Yoga and is very centered on precise principles of alignment.
01:21:00
Speaker
When I would take a class with a certified Anyasara teacher, and they've had to go through hundreds and hundreds of hours of training and practice and filming them themselves and getting approval from the team.
01:21:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah, they could just walk behind my mat when I'm in down dog and my body spontaneously would find a better alignment without being told. That's what we're pointing at. Like when we talk about transmission, it's there's this it's like this super instant
01:21:31
Speaker
Communication. Like it's quicker than a cell phone. It's quicker than thought. It's infinitely quicker than thought. And so it speeds up the learning process. Like if, you know, I remember learning tennis and the people that were really, really, really in their body and good.
01:21:47
Speaker
I learned so much more quickly in that lesson. Oh, yes. And somebody just telling me what to do. Oh, turn your grip or do that. Like the words about had to go through my thoughts and then they get translated into well what was that look like in my body? Whereas transmission goes,
01:22:04
Speaker
from essence to essence. who Absolutely. Shaktipat. I mean, we could share some Shaktipat stories, I am sure. And Shaktipat listeners is is, I mean, how do you define it? Shakti energy pot. It's where do you get like whacked on the head or something. a descent of grace. And it can happen through, usually through through a teacher, but it can happen through ah photograph of teacher. It happens through look, touch, word, which can be a mantra or just a a Dharma talk.
01:22:34
Speaker
or will. will yeah yeah And it can happen through a being that is no longer in a body. like People are getting profound initiatory experiences still from Ramana Maharshi or Ramakrishna Paramahamsa or Padmasambhava Yashisogyal.
01:22:50
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. Agreed. Yeah. For me, interestingly, Shaktipats usually come physically like a whack on the head, you know, or touching the forehead.
01:23:00
Speaker
One of my biggest ones was the forehead touch, a Tibetan forehead touch, interestingly. and I think I'm a harder case, you know? Well, Pat, when I've heard the translation, one scholar described, so shipti is not like energy in a wall. In fact, those of you who care to learn more about Sanskrit, there's an incredible book by Rajiv Malhotra called Sanskrit Non-Translatables.
01:23:23
Speaker
And it makes the argument for the Sanskritization of other languages because Sanskrit really can't be translated, but it could be included as a greater understanding.
01:23:34
Speaker
Shakti is one of these words that's often just talked about as energy, but it's not like power in the wall. the power the wall, to my knowledge, is not conscious of itself. Shakti is the primordial principle of creation, maintaining the creation. and dissolving some horror of the creation back into its original essence without losing any of its power or any of its awareness and is in us otherwise our heart doesn't beat our lungs don't breathe and our eyes don't blink so shakti that's shakti it's a descent it's often referred to as a descent and then the pot is like a like a like a crack like a like a breaking open of a seal
01:24:13
Speaker
Sometimes it's really subtle for people. Sometimes it's tivir, tivir, tivir, like super intense.
Intense Spiritual Experiences
01:24:17
Speaker
And you're like, you know, on the floor and needing support for a couple of weeks, like Ramana Maharshi, you know, for two years, he was on the floor of a temple before he was found and supported and made to eat and like this. But he was in the catatonic state because the force of it was so strong.
01:24:36
Speaker
Yes, yes, it certainly can be. But that thank you. That was beautiful. And I know it was really helpful for those listening. Sometimes if you have these experiences that seem to descend, you're not crazy, probably.
01:24:49
Speaker
but the important thing probably to i get probably But the important thing is to have a teacher in a community too, to hold us in the in these experiences because there's spiritual experience, which is a lot what Scott and I tend to talk about together. And then there's also spiritual knowledge, which we also both have.
01:25:06
Speaker
you know and and Just because you have a big experience doesn't mean don't go do the practices. That's the thing that's really important because so many people are presenting who have been to some big plant medicine experience, had a very, very big experience that they're now remembering, but there's so much integration that needs to happen. They still haven't done enough work with their psychological mechanism and the reactivity or all the different things. So then you get this kind of spiritual superego yeah that's not only suffering in private, but it's creating suffering in public.
01:25:41
Speaker
and So we really still need to do the practices. And we have these great examples and vagera and in and in my tradition as well of you know just Yoga Vasishta, for example. you know Vasishta is this incredible sage said to be immortal.
01:25:58
Speaker
So one of the incarnations of God known as Vishnu takes a form as Rama. And this whole thick book, there's like 900 pages for the abridged version,
01:26:11
Speaker
is all these stories that Vasisha is teaching Rama. He's 16. He's an incarnation of pure consciousness, but he's in a body again. So he has to start going through the stages of ego development, just like you and I, from first person to second person to third person, and has to help the nervous system of that body and everything it inherited from his ancestry to make space and become coherent enough to hold the reality of being an avatar doing as little harm as possible to himself and others.
01:26:43
Speaker
That's right. That's right. It never stops. It just changes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like there's a couple of rumors, Buddhist rumors I always want to dispel.
Understanding Desire in Buddhism
01:26:53
Speaker
And one is that desire is all bad.
01:26:55
Speaker
you know Oh, please unpack that one. Please unpack that one. Oh, well, just you know ignorant desire is all bad. and you know hurting Hurting ourselves and others to try and get what we want, to put it really simply, is all bad.
01:27:08
Speaker
right And all of the just mental and physical suffering that comes from the chase, the chase the chase of some sort, whether it's food or sex or... you know And desire understood from and a place of awareness as arising as a as an impulse. It's considered in our tradition, the root of creation was the wind of desire.
01:27:29
Speaker
It's a leiki karma. It's called the karmic wind, actually. It's called the wind of desire that that was like the primordial movement to unify. with something. And people misunderstand to hear something like this and they're like, all right, well, my desire to go do hookers and blow then must be really, really spiritual and I'm just going to go to Vegas tonight.
01:27:50
Speaker
Yeah, I wish it worked. you know I mean, if that worked, Scott and I would be down at the bar right now. You know, I mean, if all of that worked, you know, it would be fine. And not that there's, you know, that can happen, too. But desire, when it's utilized for with wisdom, from awareness and even, you know, we can get very esoteric and understanding of the elements and nature and embodiment and what's happening physically.
01:28:13
Speaker
It's the most powerful thing in existence. I mean, we were born, we create life through desire, through the masculine and feminine energies coming together. And in Tantra, we do that in our bodies, you know, inside, bring the masculine and feminine together and become, you know, enlightened beings in Tantra, they're kind of a them.
True Tantra vs Neo-Tantra
01:28:33
Speaker
you know They're both. so So we hear people so many people in these neo-tantric circles and some of only seem to hear about you know sexual activity, but it doesn't seem to be wakeful. It seems to be the pursuit of better sensations. like What is the discernment between the sexual act so-called sexual activity that to my eye doesn't even look very sexual,
01:28:58
Speaker
um I mean, I know very little about consort practice, but what little I've heard from a a vetted teacher is that there's at least usually about 45 minutes of mantras that both are doing, and they have to be literally establishing their awareness as Shiva and Shakti or as God and Goddess or form and formlessness before even physically touching anything.
01:29:21
Speaker
Yes. Well, just to acknowledge that this is all now secret stuff. you know So I will be very careful and I can speak about it generally. i hold the authority to do that unabashedly. So I don't hesitate speaking about it generally um and at the same time being aware and cautious. So just for my setting the scene for that.
01:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, I can't speak to the Neo Tantra stuff. i um I don't know what that's all about. you know i It's not that. you know um In Anuttara Yoga Tantra tradition, after many years of practice, of ethics, of deep ah commitments reining in one's addictions and afflictions, doing the shadow work,
01:30:05
Speaker
You know, um doing the growing up process, um working with parts so that we integrate as much of them as we can ah before moving into meta where practices, whether it be a state or a stage, um all of these things are precursors to practicing tantric consort practice.
01:30:25
Speaker
Now it doesn't mean sex is bad. Like I am pro-sex, you know, I am a sex positive person. Just having sex to have sex is great. You know, fine. If that's what makes you happy, like I am awful, you know, very sex positive.
01:30:38
Speaker
um So again, nothing wrong with any of that from, you know, and also recognizing that's the seed I am now and how I see things now. Concert practice starts with a devotion to usually one other person.
01:30:55
Speaker
So it's a partnership that we might even use psychological terms of ah secure attachment, you know, um and where you feel you can be fully yourself. So there is.
01:31:08
Speaker
um a devotional aspect of being fully with that person and devoted to the person like you would guru yoga and Anuttara Yoga Tantra.
01:31:19
Speaker
Once you have and there's a whole list of qualifications, right? I mean, Tibetan Buddhists love their lists and their 200, 900 page books, right? The traditions do. um you know, there's a whole list of qualifications, but once you so you know have a ah partner you're working with, they're your guru now. Like there is a devotional aspect where, yes, you absolutely need to keep the view when you're in the bedroom, so to speak, of divine view of self and other.
01:31:46
Speaker
And the practice in my tradition is you're in relationship with them in some form. So it's off the cushion too. It's outside of the bedroom too. so Okay. So I had heard though, just as a quick question, yeah that one's consort is rarely one's partner, like one's life partner.
Integrating Spiritual and Personal Growth
01:32:02
Speaker
It's pretty much the opposite. It doesn't have to be, but it's pretty much the opposite in my tradition. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty much the opposite. That's a high bar for selection. you know like Not only, okay, how's his finances? How's his shadow work? Has he done enough therapy?
01:32:18
Speaker
Can he cook? Is he kind? Is he funny? And also, do you have a deep enough practice Yep, that's right. Which may or may not look like my practice.
01:32:29
Speaker
They may be agnostic or Christian, but the realization is there, which is where developmental understanding can come in, is important. right Say there's you know fifth person perspective stabilized, but they don't have a practice, but their fifth person perspective, their construct aware, that's a big part of it, right and loving and wonderful.
01:32:48
Speaker
right so yeah And yes And yes, um it is a list. it's It's being cautious of who you engage with. And there can also be pra that So that's like your daily practice, right?
01:33:03
Speaker
Is this relationship um and devotion while not ignoring Let me put it this way. your Your commitment at this level of practice is to be able to reside in clear knowing, clear light, luminous and aware, empty awareness, spontaneously, naturally interpenetrated with reality as it's arising in the form of your partner.
01:33:27
Speaker
So that means I'm seeing and devoted guru yoga way to seeing this person's ultimate reality and that they are the the embodiment and channel of divinity for me while at the same time being okay.
01:33:41
Speaker
with their relative reality and their shadows and their personhood and their personality you know that is evolving, is the growing up part. So like residing in the seeing, clear seeing of the waking up while being okay and working with the growing up part as we go, just like I need to do in myself.
01:33:59
Speaker
Just like I need to be okay with that scared little traumatized a girl in there while holding the
Practices for Self-Love and Overcoming Obstacles
01:34:06
Speaker
emptiness of it. And it took me seeing it to heal it. Like Scott, I watched her. The part of the story I didn't share is I watched her grow up in an instant and integrate.
01:34:15
Speaker
Like I watched her grow up in my mind and in an instant and integrate without story. without story. And that's the version of this the mirror last night, literally in the mirror last night.
01:34:27
Speaker
I was in an unexpectedly wide state of consciousness and I was pulled to the bathroom into mirror work, which is where I do Dan Brown's five forms of healthy attachment, like radiating it because I know I can for a client or a friend when they're in need.
01:34:45
Speaker
And so making that deep eye contact and then radiating safety and protection, attunement, soothing and comfort, express delight and support and encouragement, but staying and staying and staying mind would want to and staying and staying and staying and something, something something has shifted and it's not the first time of that practice it is an accumulation to that moment over time and it sounds like what you described like there was like a a moment and it was very simple there was no crowd of applause or anything was just like okay i can come out of the bathroom now
01:35:28
Speaker
Yes. yeah That's right. That's exactly how it felt. Like, okay, I can come out now and get myself a doctor or appointment. And yeah, any sort of fearings, are it just feels it's different now.
01:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's gone. Yeah. That's beautiful. What a beautiful practice that is. Yeah, I'm developing it and developing it. I probably should hold a little bit closer to the vest at the moment. i don't really care because it's not my original protocol, but this whole... And there's a huge threshold guardian to it. You know you talk about threshold guardians in Joseph Campbell's work.
01:36:05
Speaker
know To go into the temple of paradox, there's threshold guardians, or to go into higher states, there's threshold guardians. And the threshold guardian, one of the main ones is wandering mind. And one of the secondary, or but equally strong or stronger, is this aversion, this constructed aversion to one's appearance in the mirror.
01:36:24
Speaker
And the amount of time, and I realized I made some notes last night. We look at ourselves over a lifetime more than any other human ever has.
01:36:37
Speaker
And we carry the stain. of how we didn't get our attachment needs met by the way other people looked at us or be with, would be with us. And yet, how aware am I of all the different ways and moments I've looked at myself in a mirror?
01:36:52
Speaker
Did I radiate the things I wanted from those people in my so-called past? If not, now is the time. But the threshold guardians come up. I've given this practice so many times.
01:37:02
Speaker
Do the mirror work. Do the mirror work. Oh, I don't have time. Oh, I don't like how I look. And okay. okay, I'm telling you there's like a treasure trove of gold that you cannot exhaust in this practice if you'll do it.
01:37:20
Speaker
And it's going to take time to get into the practice, to get familiar. It's not a one-time practice. It's an accumulation practice. And everyone you ever interact with from a distance or up close will be of benefit because you chose to to step through the threshold.
01:37:36
Speaker
if That's beautiful. So the threshold guardians are what we need to step through. Yeah, and so we'll actually love through. That was the realization, fresh realization in the in the mirror. The overarching realization is like, oh, here's the five forms of healthy attachment. But the overarching thing was to outcreate the imprints, the subtle impressions with love, however long
Encouragement and Gratitude
01:38:01
Speaker
it takes. And because we all know, really, we do know what it is to let love move.
01:38:09
Speaker
Not attachment, love. We do. We knew it as a baby. And that's what blew our mom's hearts wide open, is being looked at with that level of love.
01:38:21
Speaker
To outlove whatever is arising. So the threshold guardians only appear to be threshold guardians. They're wisps. yeah They're wisps of clouds, if that. They're not even that substantial.
01:38:33
Speaker
Right. Like having a dream where you're getting where I'm getting chased by a ah nasty clown, this is like 15 years ago, waking myself up from the dream because it was so scary. and then And then realizing got to out love this.
01:38:49
Speaker
And somehow going back into the dream right where I left off and then Deciding I don't care how scary you are, if you're going kill me in the dream, going to profoundly let love come through me for whatever you are and radiate you with love.
01:39:04
Speaker
The whole thing just turned into something else like that. But we train for this. That's the thing that I hope to keep getting around. We train for this. We train for this.
01:39:17
Speaker
We do. You know, you got to train to learn to lucid dream, to know it's a dream. And then there's the next step of not just going lucid in the dream, but changing the dream.
01:39:28
Speaker
Right. With love. So you said the everything transformed through love. Right. Yeah. What happened? I love the scary clown just turned into a laughing face like it started laughing, but it was like a pleasant laugh as a sweet laugh. And yeah I don't know if this is how it happened then. It's so long ago. But in my memory, it was like the laugh was like, good job. You saw through the mask.
01:39:50
Speaker
Yes. And the deeper realization that's actually freshly a rising right now is that that clown, that scary clown, that murderous clown was one of my parts projected outward as though something out there was coming to get me. It was all inside.
01:40:05
Speaker
was all inside. Yes. There's no out there out there. That's right. Kimberly, there's a question I ask every guest, and it's okay it stands on the shoulders of this gorgeous quote that I've loved sharing for years from Shunryo Suzuki Roshi, who opened the Zen Center of San Francisco in the 60s.
01:40:23
Speaker
yeah And he would say, death is certain, the time is not. What is the most important thing? Mm-hmm.
01:40:42
Speaker
Loving awareness for self and everybody. Loving awareness for self and everybody. Yeah.
01:40:56
Speaker
Right now that's coming through. And if loving awareness is something listeners that is familiar to you, You know, that part of you, like think of maybe even how you feel when you see a baby animal, like a baby elephant or puppy or kitten. I mean, it begins there with this loving awareness, love blooming in you as a felt embodied experience.
01:41:26
Speaker
An awareness being saturated with that love and directing it towards yourself. and all beings. That's it. Just getting used to that, I think is most important right now.
01:41:40
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Thank you for this incredible dialogue. I'll remind us all that dialogue means to discover together and you're a fun dialogue partner. You're so willing to not know and discover together and and stand for what you do know. and Thanks.
01:42:00
Speaker
As I've said to several guests, thank you for everything that you've been through and sacrificed in life to be here in this way at this moment that we'll never know about. Thank you for all those choices in the small moments where you chose to grow.
01:42:14
Speaker
Oh, thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. And may this be of benefit in some small way to everybody out there. Yeah. Maybe so and so it is.
01:42:25
Speaker
So listeners, if you've been listening for a while, you know what we do next. We're going to join together into the big creative loving silence. And we'll do that for 10 to 20 seconds.
01:42:37
Speaker
And then we'll join together in the next episode. We're always connected in the universal
01:42:45
Speaker
So soften the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands like you're opening imaginary fists with your mind. Let your exhales become long. Each exhale an occasion to soften the body like you're setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
01:43:16
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
01:43:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.