Latest / Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry / Episode 48: Crisis as a Catalyst for Inner Transformation

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Episode 48: Crisis as a Catalyst for Inner Transformation · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  Okay.
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  Hold on.
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  Good afternoon, everyone.
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  And welcome back to another conversation with Amoda Maa
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  Hello, Amoda
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  Hello, Kavi
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  So today we are going to, it's kind of in the last two or three weeks, but always in
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  the Amoda Maa teaching, we come across people who sort of have touched equanimity, touched
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  peace, touched the grace of beingness and found something like maybe one, it could even
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  call it stable as an experience of awakened consciousness. And then crisis, now how we
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  define crisis will come up in this conversation. But a crisis may occur. And suddenly the storm
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  is raging and suddenly, one is lost in the storm and there's a tendency, I think we're
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  talking about a tendency here for the for the advanced or maybe not even advanced spiritual
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  seeker to feel that they've lost something, they've lost the grace, lost the peace, lost
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  the equanimity, and maybe even a sense of failure on the path of awakening, you know, because of this
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  crisis that has come, bitten or unbidden. And so today we're going to kind of unpack that a little
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  bit, I'm going to ask Amoda questions about, you know, primarily, you know, in a nutshell,
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  can crisis be a catalyst for transformation? So there's a lot in there because it seems very
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  relevant to being in the world really. This is the nature of how awakened consciousness kind of
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  interacts with the world, which is a very dramatic crisis-oriented place. And maybe that's
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  just the human experience. So with that, all that being said, I'm going to hand the floor over to
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  you, Amoda, to unpack this a little bit, to speak to it at the outset, and then we'll naturally kind
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  of flow along and see where it goes. Okay? Thank you. Yes, this is the spiritual seeker's dilemma.
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  how to abide as peace, how to abide as presence in all circumstances. And the belief or the
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  sense that I got there and then something comes along in life and I'm no longer there
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  is very common, very prevalent.
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  How to deal with this dilemma, how to approach this dilemma.
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  There's a number of ways of exploring this, but perhaps we can start with,
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  First of all, if you like opening up our understanding of peace and presence,
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  it's very common to believe that peace is an experience of nothing turbulent taking place.
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  that our peace is actually dependent on circumstances.
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  And even for the spiritual seeker who's in some ways gone beyond that, when stuff happens,
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  it's easy to be sort of thrown back into that belief.
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  or at least the desire to feel peaceful.
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  And so we have to kind of really open up to within ourselves an understanding or a knowing,
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  or at least a willingness to know that there is a peace that passes all understanding,
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  that is not dependent on circumstances.
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  And that's really pointing to the realization that that which is aware, that which is ever
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  present in all circumstances, whether they're turbulent or calm, is never changed.
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  There's a quality of being, there's a quality of awareness that never changes.
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  And that's something that very often on the path is a deepening realization and one that
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  when stuff happens, when crisis happens, when a challenge comes along, when intensity or
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  turbulence comes along.
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  when we're, if you like, called to deepen that recognition. So what I'm kind of saying
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  here, as well as a number of things, is that awakening isn't a static state. So a true,
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  found genuine awakening that brings us into the realization of true nature, it doesn't
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  stop there because the human journey continues and the human journey is like the waves on
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  the ocean. It's always changing and turbulence can come and unexpected circumstances come
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  and that has nothing to do with awakening or not. And it's in those turbulent moments
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  or circumstances or times of our lives, even in the awakened realization, the deepening into
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  what is really peace, what is really presence, what is really the recognition of awareness
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  as the ever-present state. It's like it matures, it becomes more and more
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  matured or embodied through the experience of that crisis or turbulence.
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  It's not that something's gone wrong, it's not that you've lost something,
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  it's a call to more fully, more deeply embody and realize it.
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  So such circumstances, the storm is a powerful catalyst for a deeper transformation for the
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  embodiment of that transformation, the embodiment of that realization. And I think that knowing
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  that, understanding that and really being willing to embrace that is the beginning of it. It doesn't
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  end. It's an ever deepening journey if you like. Because at some point we're all going to meet death
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  and awaken or not that can also bring up fear or resistance or whatever hasn't really been
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  examined because we only meet death once. And it only, we can only meet it when it actually takes
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  place. So there is another possibility to know the light of beingness. So every aspect
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  of life as we move through the human experience is another invitation, another invitation.
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  So, I hear a lot in what you're saying. And the first thing is, in a way, I hear you
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  speaking to some of the sages of the past, or some of the wise ones, St John of the Cross,
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  who, you know, some of these mystics, for instance, who found their freedom through suffering,
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  which is the same thing, because ultimately what we're talking about crisis is a modern
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  word for its creating suffering.
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  Yes.
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  And in a way, they're sort of nuanced modern idea, and particularly in the Western, individual
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  is that somehow spirituality is going to offer either an avoidance or a distance from the
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  human experience which has suffering implicit within it, as you just said.
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  And so this is a, you know, you're talking about something which is very important to
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  to understand it's not just about impermanence, it's about the crisis of being human, which
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  obviously has very many different ramifications for each human being by talking about not intellectualising
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  it but actually becoming intimate with one's experience, whatever it is.
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  Yes, and so another way of saying this, or perhaps exploring this, is to invite
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  within ourselves, the invitation is to meet reality without any commentary, without any
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  narrative, without this shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't be happening because I'm awakened.
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  So if it is happening and I'm awakened or have realized a certain awakened consciousness,
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  then it means that I haven't, I'm not good enough spiritually, I haven't got there yet,
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  I've lost it. And so this kind of battle ensues with reality. And so the invitation is that whatever
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  happens, whether it's crisis or injury or challenge or death or loss or something unexpected,
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  to continually meet that without a commentary about it, to meet the nakedness of the experience,
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  which is part of the human experience. Pain is pain. Intensity is intensity. It's not something
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  that gets erased. And to continually meet it, if you like, with the deepest surrender of the
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  narrating mind, and that's an ongoing invitation.
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  Right, right. So I hear that very clearly from you, that it's an ever unfolding, ever
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  deepening journey. It's very alive. It's an alive inquiry. It's an alive meeting, meeting
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  intimacy.
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  Yes, yes. And I think one of the primary errors, what we go back to the beginning of this conversation,
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  is on the spiritual path, this either conscious or unconscious idea that if I realize something,
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  if I realize true nature, if I taste the grace of awakening and so on, that's it.
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  That's it, that's the end. There's no more turbulence, there's no more, yeah, and so
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  on. And yes, the way that we meet turbulence changes. But when the next wave of turbulence
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  comes, and that's unexpected, then we're called to meet that again in this way. And that's
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  often overlooked because of this idea that it shouldn't be happening. So yes, it's a living
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  inquiry, it's a living embodiment. And we can go to the situation or the story or whatever it is
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  of Jesus on the cross. Who can we can say? Who we can say was the light of beingness,
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  the embodiment of the light of God and yet when he's crucified, what does he say? Oh,
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  Father, why has thou forsaken me? What does that mean? That means that I've lost it. I've
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  lost that light of Godness in me because I'm in so much excruciating pain. There's physical
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  pain. There's also psychological pain because of the injustice of it. He was crucified. It
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  It was very unjust.
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  There was no reason he wasn't a criminal and so on and so on.
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  And then he had to go deeper.
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  He had to go deeper than his.
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  Vicked himself.
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  Oh, father, why has thou forsaken me?
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  It's not the circumstance.
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  It's the internal experience.
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  It's the internal landscape.
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  And I'd like to think that, you know, in that,
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  he was able to go deeper into the peace that passes the understanding.
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  Was it just after he had said that, that then something deeper happened to him,
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  and then he said into thy hands, I can't remember the exact words, I give myself,
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  which to me interprets in that way as a deeper surrender. Even this, even this, as the statement
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  is right, even this. Because the world has injustice in it, the world has physical and
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  psychological pain in it, and the world has misunderstanding in it, and the world has division
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  and this, that and the other. The world, the world is a, is a, is a, we could say a cesspit
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  of division. And Jesus was not immune to that. He lived in the world, in the marketplace,
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  on, yeah, on a human level. And so even he had to meet a deeper place or be open or be willing
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  for a deeper surrender. And that's for all of us in a small way or a big way when the shit hits the
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  fan, so to speak. So, can I ask you for, you know, I'm going to put you on the spot and say,
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  you know, and invite you, can you find something within yourself, you know, that some experience,
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  a direct experience that is actually, because the kind of question is, as an awakened teacher,
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  that you are, had an experience many, many years ago, 20 years ago. But then there's still been a
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  life, and we've had quite a life since I met you, that has involved much in the world. I mean,
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  And we moved to America with, you know, or meant so many things.
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  They haven't always been easy.
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  What's happened to Amoda in that time?
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  Has the boat been shaken?
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  Has the ground, you know, what's your human experience, your harmony between the two,
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  ever unfolding journey.
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  I think looking back over host 20 years, there's been a very
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  rich human experience and I mean rich in that it has many adepts and breaths of experience
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  both challenging and I don't know what the opposite of that is.
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  Exquisitely beautiful.
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  Yes, all of that.
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  And I would say that all of it has been met in the way
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  that we're speaking.
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  Certainly, there has been no--
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  for myself, I can say that I did not
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  rail against the turbulence of life.
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  It just wasn't my way.
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  I think I'd come to such a deep place of surrender that I can't live any other way.
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  I can't be any other way.
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  So whatever is is and whatever human experience it is, it is.
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  I don't think I don't feel that there's been any resistance to what is.
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  There are some situations that sometimes are intense and require digging in deep.
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  But that's usually to do with a very worldly situation.
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  Money.
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  And one that I'm perhaps not familiar with previously or have experience in or skill and
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  need to navigate.
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  And that can be difficult.
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  But I can honestly say that there's no, I got it, I lost it.
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  I can honestly say that there hasn't been any resistance to the human experience.
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  I can honestly say that the abidance of presence and openness has never veered.
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  I mean, we can look back right from fairly early on after awakening, which is when we
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  met.
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  And one was your journey of quite severe and sudden and chronic illness and the meeting
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  of that.
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  And then very shortly afterwards, a few years after that, the death of my mother.
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  And see, if you like, turbulence, that that created, which could have been drama.
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  But I think I can honestly say that wasn't met from the drama, from the victim.
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  I think what ended for me through everything, categorically, was the victim's self.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  That's what came undone.
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  So whatever happens, I might not like it.
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  Of course, I wouldn't certain things I don't like.
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  I'd rather they weren't happening.
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  But I don't go there.
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  It's not like that.
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  The victim of life, the victim of circumstances
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  truly has come undone.
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  And even in the midst of those challenges
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  or feeling out of depth or what to do,
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  what action to take. I think what always reveals itself, that everything is an opportunity for growth.
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  And in my case, I feel that the growth is actually on a worldly level. And the undoing of fear,
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  you know, whether it's fear around money, which is something karmic and historical that I've
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  carried or the fear of, I don't know, whatever it is usually it's going to do with money, or,
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  you know, to do with the mechanism of the world, which is a little bit like Jesus
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  railing against the tax collectors. It's that kind of situation.
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  We had that right, didn't he? He had that right?
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  He did, yes. So, you know, the matrix of the world, which is actually built of unconsciousness
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  and greed and corruption. And I don't rail against that, but you know, when it hits home,
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  there's a sense of that. But I feel it's a call to growth on a worldly level, on a human level.
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  I don't feel that the abidingness, abidance of presence or openness actually ever changes.
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  It just is what it is. There's nothing. Yeah, I don't feel a victim. There's no
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  kind of.
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  I hear you very clearly because in my experience of it has been through the rather dramatic
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  sometimes the whole thing with me, your mother, and then America navigating the matrix of
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  the system in America has had its very hairy and still does have its very hairy kind of
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  moments, but I would say that you've led the way between the two of us, primarily, I think,
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  because of the abidingness, because of the groundness, of the end of the victim self. And that in
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  a sense is the end of the tight knot of me. So still the experiences continue, but their experiences
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  that come and then yes, they have an energetic impact and they need to be attended to. But
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  it's almost like when they're done, they're done. The duck that gets into a kerfuffle on the pond
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  deals with it and then off it goes again. There's nothing like you said this morning
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  in one of our events. There's nothing polluting about it anymore. So,
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  You know, whether one frames that as being a catalyst for transformation or just dealing
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  with what is as it arises in a sort of synonymous in a way, but as what I hear is that the end
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  of the victim is the end of the tight knot of me.
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  And I'd just like to say in sharp contrast for you, I think that's why you can speak
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  to it so well, because I think in the you that I didn't know, but the you that you've
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  spoken about in the past, there was very much to me and there was very much the deep seated
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  sense of the victim of life. I mean, I would still say that you were probably mystically
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  talented or you gifted or graced or something even during those times. But there's the end
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  of the victim, which is why I think you know this very well.
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  Yes, you're absolutely right. I think that's the way it was. I think I had a natural proclivity
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  to surrender as a way of being. But I did carry a sense of punishment being punished by life being
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  I'm loved by God really. And it was subtle and it was hidden and sometimes it played itself out
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  out, and certainly it came more and more to the forefront of my, you know, awareness,
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  conscious awareness that that was a something that I was, that was playing out in me. And
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  it came to an end by itself in awakening. I didn't know it was awakening, but then I
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  I realized that's what it was.
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  Yes, it's no longer here.
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  And what's also realized and is
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  sort of the foundation or the ground is,
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  I really saw, I really knew, I really realised it's all a dream.
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  It's all a dream and yet we have no escape from it.
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  We are in life as life as long as we're alive and knowing it's a dream, seeing through the veils
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  doesn't make it less exquisitely beautiful or exquisitely horrible. Yeah, it is what it is.
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  The dream is the Leela. The dream is the playing out of the Leela, the polarity, the duality,
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  the black and white, the up and down, the left and right, the sun and moon, the night and day.
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  the pain and pleasure all of it plays itself out and that's inescapable whilst we're alive.
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  And yet it's impermanent yet it's like the waves that are constantly rolling on the ocean.
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  They never stop, they can be calm or they can be stormy and it's forever the waves and yet
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  as long as we're alive to experience the waves. And yet, all the waves are, if you like,
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  moving and playing themselves out, the Leela is expressing itself in the ocean of beingness.
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  And the energetic realization of the ocean of beingness, and you know, even oceans not quite
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  right, because an ocean has a kind of coast around it, but really, an ocean that has no
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  beginning or end. There's no coastline. There's no shore. It's a common down.
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  Eternal. It is the eternal ocean-ness of it, which is the oneness, the totality. When
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  that's truly realized energetically, not intellectually or philosophically or conceptually, energetically,
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  Then the waves are just the waves and they're not separate from that.
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  And when the one who is alive and has conscious awareness, this form comes to an end, or at
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  least this vehicle comes to an end, then that dream is undone, that Leela is undone.
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  It will continue in another conscious awareness.
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  But it just sort of changes everything.
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  It undoes the victim, it undoes the drama.
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  There's only the exquisiteness of the human experience which has extremes of one entity
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  to the other.
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  You were, when you were young, you were found yourself and be notes to you, unbidden by
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  you probably I would hope in a kind of war situation in the Mediterranean and Europe.
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  And I know that that had a huge impact on you as a child, but then subsequent to that,
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  the dislocation, the shock, the trauma, if you like, endured for many a year. In fact,
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  it shaped some of your life. I just want to include that because the wars are raging everywhere.
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  I mean, it could happen here in the US. Everybody, there are lots of warmongers and they're always
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  have been, but there is certainly a war consciousness that's arising as well as the peace consciousness
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  at the moment. There's a threshold when the bombs start dropping that you haven't got the
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  luxury of contemplating, "How am I going to meet this?" And that becomes beyond even direct, really.
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  I'm not sure what I'm actually asking you here, I'm just kind of wanting to speak to the impact of that, if in a way.
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  Well, there's two, I think there's two, having use of dialogue here.
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  One is how it was then, and the other one is perhaps considering how it would be now.
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  Yes, I think so because the conversation can be from an awakened in a way,
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  it certainly as a child, and by the way, it wasn't Europe.
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  Oh, yes, it wasn't Europe.
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  It wasn't part of the European Union.
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  It was a British colony.
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  Oh, yes, yes, it was, yes.
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  And then it wasn't.
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  So as a child, and I was 11, 12, 13, it was terrifying.
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  That's all I could say.
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  As a child, I went completely into trauma.
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  As a child, I didn't feel protected by my parents because they were children too.
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  As a child, it was a huge shock.
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  As a child, my nervous system was impact and I became mute, literally mute and very contracted.
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  And that carried over into my early life, you know, early adult life.
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  And it, yes, it shaped my experience.
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  It shaped my, I don't know if you'd call it personality,
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  but it shaped my expression, my way of being in the world
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  and what people perceived and how I perceived myself and so.
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  No, we don't need to necessarily go into more detail,
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  but how is it now?
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  Well, I really can't tell you.
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  I don't carry that trauma anymore.
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  I don't carry that contraction.
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  I can remember it, but I don't go back there to relive it or to resolve anything.
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  It's done.
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  It certainly opened my up to the possibility, even at a very young age, that anything can
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  happen anywhere.
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  What I found when I came back, we did originally live in England.
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  I was brought up in London.
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  But when we returned to London after the war, we were evacuated.
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  I was quite struck by a certain understandable complacency that war happened.
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  I didn't really speak to anyone back.
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  But war happens somewhere else.
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  War happens in the unfortunate countries.
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  War happens in the, I don't know,
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  underprivileged countries or the ignorant countries
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  or whatever it might be.
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  It doesn't happen in the civilized countries.
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  Although of course, first World War,
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  second World War did happen in the civilized countries,
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  but at my age, that was not a reality for my peers.
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  And I was struck by that.
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  And I think I carried with me the very real possibility
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  that anything can happen anywhere at any time.
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  And that was actually something very valuable
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  because I didn't sort of fall back into complacency
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  or privilege or some imagined safety or comfort zone.
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  I didn't experience life like that.
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  And certainly my life wasn't like that.
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  it was full of unexpected changes and losses and so on.
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  How would it be now not carrying that trauma
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  and not carrying that, yeah?
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  Well, I can honestly tell you, I just don't know.
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  I really don't know.
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  I can't even imagine it
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  because I don't live in the imagination.
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  to say, well, it's not gonna really bother me.
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  I'll be abiding in peace or anything like that.
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  I have no idea, Cali.
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  If war struck,
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  I'm sure there'd be a terror.
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  I'm sure there'd be, oh, no, not this.
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  I don't know.
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  And maybe then there'd be a deeper,
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  just like Christ on the cross, Jesus on the cross.
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  I can't remember the phrase, but in this I give myself to you. It's almost like what
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  will be will be. And I expect without expecting that that would be part of it. And yet the
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  the physical organism, the physiological organism, the human alive, yeah, will probably be terrified.
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  Of course, it's a natural reaction response to danger when contracts into a ball.
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  It's a very primitive primal sort of experience.
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  I mean, every creature will do that.
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  You do what you need to protect yourself and so on.
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  But there's a certain place where you have no control.
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  And I would imagine that I would not go mute again like I did when I was a child.
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  Yeah, there's a maturity now and so on, you know, that we allow that.
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  So but I haven't got a clue.
• 5:31
  So I think I just wanted to include that as a, you know, just to include that very real
• 5:32
  experience because there are people experiencing it now, you know, and it does kind of, it does
• 5:33
  bring it home all the time and does kind of make it really sort of touches me somewhere
• 5:34
  very, very deeply that experience because you and I investigate the human experience
• 5:35
  and the insanity of the rampant egoic even mechanism as it's manifesting in the world at the moment,
• 5:36
  which is close to a kind of insanity, who has been around for a long time, but is inflicting
• 5:37
  itself on many folks. And I think when you're speaking, I hear a difference between going back
• 5:38
  to what we were talking about at the beginning, which is the kind of crisis. Some of that is crisis
• 5:39
  of a domestic kind, of a smaller kind, but then creates the kind of contraction. And then what
• 5:40
  we're talking about is that almost the other end of the pole here, that is a very direct,
• 5:41
  sort of visceral animalistic. If somebody's going to start bombing you, you're going to respond
• 5:42
  like an animal, nothing that spirituality will do to change that. One's reflection,
• 5:43
  or into a relationship to it might have some bearing, but actually, I think we were talking,
• 5:44
  weren't we, in a way, at the beginning about the crisis of one's own,
• 5:45
  finding it, losing it, having it, which can happen really, very easily. Many human beings are living
• 5:46
  on the edge of that, you know, can be derailed by something that comes through the mail,
• 5:47
  can be derailed by a family member, can be derailed by the partner leaving.
• 5:48
  Say enough, I've had enough of you, this relationship, and I'm off. That creates this kind of crisis
• 5:49
  where we're back in the identified self again. So there are degrees of this.
• 5:50
  Yes. I mean, I don't think now that we're speaking of it that I would go into victim modality.
• 5:51
  No, I know. Why is God punishing me? That's the ultimate victim modality.
• 5:52
  that that wouldn't be the case. It's just what happens. It's the nature of the world in its current
• 5:53
  state of consciousness. It's a tragedy, it's, yeah, and so on. But it's not a punishment from God.
• 5:54
  So I would like to think that that would not be the case that, you know,
• 5:55
  yeah.
• 5:56
  So let me, you know, we're kind of going to probably bring this to an end.
• 5:57
  And at some point, I hear what you're saying is a kind of all embrace it going
• 5:58
  back, not talking about war now, but talking about experience. I'm reminded of Krishna
• 5:59
  Murthy, the great Krishna Murthy. Let's just go to this one for a minute. The great Krishna
• 6:00
  Murthy said to his students, the difference between you and me is that I don't mind what
• 6:01
  happens. I know when I heard that, it completely destroyed me and has done pretty much ever
• 6:02
  sense because I couldn't doubt but believe him in what he was saying. And if I believed
• 6:03
  in what he was saying, there was a human being who could actually deal on a level with that
• 6:04
  quinimity with what happens inside him, inside him primarily. And he's kind of speaking to that
• 6:05
  because I don't mind what happens. For many of us on the path would be separated into,
• 6:06
  Well, I do mind this and I don't mind that. That's what we're talking about. I do mind this.
• 6:07
  But when that happens, I'm back in self. I don't mind. And what I hear you speaking to is a sort
• 6:08
  of way of speaking to that, which is all embracing. Is it possible? I always like to ask the question,
• 6:09
  is it possible for us to open more and more and more?
• 6:10
  Like I say from my own direct experience, yes.
• 6:11
  The end of the argument with what is,
• 6:12
  is the end of the
• 6:13
  veiled perception.
• 6:14
  What is is?
• 6:15
  Whatever is in your experience,
• 6:16
  which is always an internal experience,
• 6:17
  even if it seems to be instigated by
• 6:18
  something that happens.
• 6:19
  is what it is. And to argue with that is ludicrous. It's from that place of the deepest
• 6:20
  acceptance of what is as your experience that change can happen if change is required,
• 6:21
  if change is intelligent, you know, coming from intelligent action or, you know, we can
• 6:22
  call it wisdom or, yeah, I don't mean again, spiritual wisdom or intellectual history.
• 6:23
  But you know, either, either something can be done or something can't be done. Yeah.
• 6:24
  Either there's a situation in your life that you can address, that you can tend to, you
• 6:25
  can attend to, you can take action because it's intelligent. It's wise, you cut your
• 6:26
  hand, then some intelligent action needs to take place to stop the bleeding. War happens.
• 6:27
  You can't really do anything. Not from that. You can't do anything to stop the war, but you can
• 6:28
  stop the war within. So this is speech to the people in the prison, speaks to Viktor Frank or
• 6:29
  in the concentration camp. It's speaking to those over and over, which is, you know, for many of us
• 6:30
  in a way, an aspiration. But I think it's a light on the path to say, "Yes, this is possible. It might
• 6:31
  not be easy." It's just in John of the Cross. "Take my lofty principles and throw them to the wind.
• 6:32
  I'm here with God in this moment again and again." And forgive me the strength to love only you.
• 6:33
  What does that mean? That doesn't mean to love you as a deity over there.
• 6:34
  To love you the beloved. Because the beloved is everything. Everything. The godness of everything.
• 6:35
  There's one God not as an entity, not as a deity, not as something separate to us,
• 6:36
  but simply the one totality of beingness that is expressing itself as everything,
• 6:37
  Even if that expression is horrific, it's all of it.
• 6:38
  Give me the power, give me the strength to love only you, to love everything that arises.
• 6:39
  That doesn't mean that we love war, doesn't mean that we love tragedy,
• 6:40
  not in the conventional sense of loving. It means to open to it.
• 6:41
  To deeply, deeply accept what is taking place in my internal experience, in my experience,
• 6:42
  because anything else is adding to the division, is adding to the argument and is increasing the
• 6:43
  suffering. So as the heart in this, you see, I hear heart in this, and is as the heart kind of,
• 6:44
  let's say, opens, I don't really like that, but as one opens to the deeper levels of beingness,
• 6:45
  So does the victim necessarily, ipso facto, die in that they can't coexist, the openness of the
• 6:46
  heart and openness of beingness, and the victim cannot coexist?
• 6:47
  No, the victim dissolves in that. You could say, yes, the victim dissolves in the deepest
• 6:48
  acceptance. It's only when you're fighting something. It's only when you're arguing with
• 6:49
  something is only when you're resisting with something.
• 6:50
  And that's all up here, really, isn't it?
• 6:51
  Yes.
• 6:52
  It would have to be.
• 6:53
  Yes.
• 6:54
  And again, you know, there's often a misunderstanding of what the heart is.
• 6:55
  Yeah.
• 6:56
  Yeah, it's all feely, feely to do with feelings.
• 6:57
  Can you speak to that a little bit?
• 6:58
  You know, I like all these words that just
• 6:59
  a very almost reduced understanding of their deeper meaning. So the heart, it's like a gateway,
• 7:00
  if you like. It's a gateway to beingness. It's a gateway to the vastness, the unboundedness of the
• 7:01
  ocean, at which point you can't even call it heart, because the heart has a certain location,
• 7:02
  even energetically, metaphorically, but it's just a doorway. Openness is a doorway to that
• 7:03
  which is already open, which is the ocean, it's unbounded, the infinite, we can say the ocean of
• 7:04
  awareness, the ocean of beingness, and the deeper we go into that or the more that we
• 7:05
  open on a certain level, that openness is no longer something that we have to go through.
• 7:06
  It's just here always as an energetic, deep acceptance of what is.
• 7:07
  And the realisation energetically, viscerally, that open awareness, that open presence, that
• 7:08
  open beingness, just like the sky is always here, come what may, whatever storm passes
• 7:09
  through.
• 7:10
  Yes.
• 7:11
  That's beyond the heart.
• 7:12
  So, yeah, that's right.
• 7:13
  Nothing can touch the essence of us.
• 7:14
  It cannot be touched by the phenomenon.
• 7:15
  The phenomena of the world comes and goes.
• 7:16
  Nothing can touch the essence.
• 7:17
  Wow, that's an invitation.
• 7:18
  So yes, in that sense, I hear you saying, "Crisis can be an invitation or an opportunity
• 7:19
  for transformation, for the gateway of what we call the heart but isn't really a heart."
• 7:20
  Yes, and like perhaps we've just been exploring
• 7:21
  there's different levels of that.
• 7:22
  There's different depending on where we're at.
• 7:23
  First of all, even embracing the possibility
• 7:24
  that crisis can be a doorway for transformation
• 7:25
  or for deepening, and then everything else
• 7:26
  that we've spoken about.
• 7:27
  So depending on where each individual
• 7:28
  is on their own path of awakening,
• 7:29
  or even let's not call it awakening,
• 7:30
  just transformation or the human experience,
• 7:31
  then we can meet it in different ways. One is acceptance, one is willingness, one is
• 7:32
  surrender, one is ending the argument and then deepening and so on and so on.
• 7:33
  Well I remember for myself how it was in those ten years of being so ill, you know, that
• 7:34
  I was caught at death and had to take care and didn't know, was confused and railed
• 7:35
  against it and felt like the victim and all of these characters emerged and all of this
• 7:36
  desperation emerge and eventually I had to surrender and just give it all up really and still attend to
• 7:37
  what needed to be attended to. There was a great tenderness I know from myself and to the situation
• 7:38
  for both of us, great tenderness to what is and then attending to it, yes, in whatever way, but
• 7:39
  that attending didn't come from crisis, drama, trying to repress it, suppress it, stop it, fix it.
• 7:40
  it came from a much deeper intelligence, which meant that what was attended to had an intelligence
• 7:41
  in it and a healing capacity in it, a return to wholeness on an emotional, physical and mental level.
• 7:42
  But meeting it with tenderness was actually crucial. So many situations that we hear about or meet
• 7:43
  or have met in our lives, where perhaps somebody in a partnership, a marriage or whatever,
• 7:44
  one becomes sick and the other is frightened to even meet the feelings around it or the
• 7:45
  possibility of death. So it's suppressed. Well, that's not healing, that's not wholeness.
• 7:46
  So meeting all these with tenderness and allowing it all to be here, even the possibility of death,
• 7:47
  which we met with your situation,
• 7:48
  Or maybe he's not going to be here anymore.
• 7:49
  Maybe this is part of the playing out.
• 7:50
  And there's a great tenderness in that.
• 7:51
  Well, that's it.
• 7:52
  I think all these factors and ways of being actually had a great impact on the healing
• 7:53
  that has taken place.
• 7:54
  That's not what happens in the conventional world.
• 7:55
  No doubt.
• 7:56
  I mean, you know, you're tenderness without pampering, tenderness and leaving alone, tenderness
• 7:57
  without, you know, necessary, not bringing anything of yours, you don't have anything.
• 7:58
  Kind of really did allow organically this healing, if you like, you know, on many different
• 7:59
  levels of my being to just sort of play itself out.
• 8:00
  I had no idea what was actually going on.
• 8:01
  and is thanks to your tenderness is true and truth, to not turn it into something more than it was.
• 8:02
  Well, if I'm going to go, if I'm going to die, this is written in the records somewhere.
• 8:03
  Unlike my mother and her husband who got very ill and was dying, and she felt resentful.
• 8:04
  he'd abandoned her. She felt she'd been punished and let down and she resented him and that bitterness
• 8:05
  and resentment turned into a further contraction for him because he couldn't
• 8:06
  you know, express his own feelings. Of course, he died and it wasn't very pleasant. And this
• 8:07
  happens all the time in the world unconsciously. That's not the way to be.
• 8:08
  Wow. I'm saying with everything, have a pet or something, you know,
• 8:09
  you know, tenderness, kindness, being with it, not creating a drama or a victim out,
• 8:10
  self out of it. It's primary. And then if death happens, at least it's a release, a letting go,
• 8:11
  not a punishment. Yeah. I think, you know, in conclusion, I learn from you all the time,
• 8:12
  time, you know, that, you know, that don't, don't, to not split ourselves up anymore.
• 8:13
  Yeah, we've done the with the splitting up, not you and I, but everybody, we've been split
• 8:14
  up, we've separated ourselves, separated our experience, separated everything off.
• 8:15
  Well, this is, I want this and I don't want this.
• 8:16
  And that maybe of what has worked for some period of time.
• 8:17
  And then it stops working.
• 8:18
  And then what?
• 8:19
  you have to respond in a way at some point on the deeper and deeper levels to what you're
• 8:20
  talking of. Even this. Open up, open up, even this. And there is a deep grace in that because
• 8:21
  you end up in the arms of God. I swear to God, you in the arms of grace. That's what
• 8:22
  you're saying. So I thank you so much, Amoda. I think we're finished, huh? Okay, good. Thank
• 8:23
  Thank you so much everybody for listening. We hope you've enjoyed or been stirred or
• 8:24
  stimulated a little bit by this conversation with Amoda Maa. We'll be back soon with
• 8:25
  another conversation. Please like, subscribe if you're watching this anywhere like YouTube
• 8:26
  or something and that's it. Over and out from me, take care. Thank you so much, Amoda.
• 8:27
  Namaste to you.
• 8:28
  Namaste.
• 8:29
  Be well.
• 8:30
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