Latest / Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry / Episode 57: The Power of Aloneness and the Path to Wholeness

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Episode 57: The Power of Aloneness and the Path to Wholeness · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

• 0:01
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Just record. Oh, yeah, that's because I'm co-host. When you Co host, it doesn't give you an option where to record it to. Now it just records it automatically. So every time you push the button it does it instantly. It's
• 0:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: it didn't used to do. It used to give you the option to record to a local computer or the cloud.
• 0:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But you only get that option as the host now, not as anything else.
• 0:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Okay.
• 0:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Well, greetings once again, everybody, and
• 0:45
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: welcome back to another conversations with a modemar. Podcast it has been quite a long time. And we've been very busy with retreats and reorganization in so many ways of the foundation that we just haven't had a chance to do a podcast even though the longing and the yearning and the desire is great. So here we are. We finally managed to get some time.
• 1:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and I'm going to be exploring a deeply important spiritual
• 1:17
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: matter and human matter with omoda ma. But 1st of all, I think I'm going to say hello to her. Hello, Emoda!
• 1:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Hello! Carrie!
• 1:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So. Let me see how we're going to get into this at some point, I think.
• 1:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Certainly in our experience, at some point on the deep spiritual path of inquiry
• 1:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we have to, and inevitably do meet aloneness, our aloneness, and that aloneness
• 2:00
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: is a doorway brings up a million things. It's actually a portal to something that we're hopefully going to explore and unpack a little bit. But that's on the spiritual path.
• 2:14
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And there's a greater context in many ways, because there's a cultural paradigm if you like.
• 2:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: You know that this.
• 2:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: that this seeking that this avoidance kind of sits in, and that is the great fear of loneliness. So we're going to be talking in some ways about loneliness to aloneness, and what it means to
• 2:43
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to stop turning away from the fear of our loneliness. I think it's I don't know from what I've seen around. You know there are. There are people there are commentators. There are very wise people who are talking about the devastating consequences, both in the physical body, the emotional body, the spiritual body, and in the culture itself of our fear of being alone, but
• 3:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: our recognition in a certain way that we are alone, but that aloneness is not embraced. So actually, it just leads to a great feeling of isolation.
• 3:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: a great feeling of separation. Separation is one of the key things that is talked about in culture. In many ways. The deeper you go, but also in spiritual, the deepest spiritual inquiry. So this conversation is somehow going to open up what it means to shift from this great terror or feeling of loneliness.
• 3:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: We're not really going to explore the physical manifestations, but there are physical manifestations.
• 3:54
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But we're going to see if we can open this up with amoda to really kind of get to get to a deeper exploration of it. So, having said that, try to introduce it in a certain way, I'm going to read a piece that I think actually, emoda. This might be from a new book that's in the in the pipeline that's coming to fruition in the garden of the Emoda Ma. Teaching foundation. Is this correct?
• 4:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: This is correct. Yes.
• 4:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Can we see when this is is likely due? Is it this year next year, or.
• 4:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I would estimate that it's this year.
• 4:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Excellent. Do we have a working title, or is that secret.
• 4:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: No, we couldn't say it's called the way of Openness.
• 4:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So very much reflective of the current iteration of the teaching.
• 4:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes.
• 5:00
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Let me read this section, then, and then I'll
• 5:04
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we'll dive in. The spiritual search is nothing other than the longing to come home
• 5:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to die into the open space of now we yearned for the void, and yet we fear it.
• 5:20
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The longing for relationship, like so many other longings.
• 5:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: is at its core an attempt to fill the void of beingness.
• 5:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: We fill this void with countless activities.
• 5:35
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Some are harmless, others less so.
• 5:40
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: but both stem from the same impulse
• 5:43
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to avoid the raw, singular aloneness of being.
• 5:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: When the discomfort of solitude arises, we instinctively seek distraction.
• 5:56
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: We fill the space with activity, pottering around the house, picking up the phone, making another cup of tea, keeping busy with chores, anything
• 6:08
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to avoid stillness.
• 6:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: These distractions may be harmless, but when the discomfort runs deeper, we may reach for more harmful escapes. Another drink.
• 6:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: another cigarette, another dose of stimulation.
• 6:26
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: In doing so we become trapped in a cycle of numbing and seeking.
• 6:33
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: always moving, always running from the void.
• 6:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yet this very aloneness we flee from is the doorway to something profoundly alive.
• 6:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: What we resist in solitude holds the key to liberation.
• 6:51
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: In turning toward the void rather than away, we discover its hidden vitality.
• 6:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Death is the doorway to rebirth.
• 7:02
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to the unfiltered aliveness of now.
• 7:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: How do we discover this aliveness by turning softly toward the void, instead of running away.
• 7:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: by resting deeply in silence, in solitude, in the empty vastness of being
• 7:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: sometimes reading your words out. I don't really want to
• 7:36
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: kind of continue speaking, because they speak into the essence of us. They speak into the void of us. They actually have this capacity to bring us into the very aloneness or depth that we that you we point to, that you point to.
• 7:53
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But we are on a podcast so I think silence won't really work. So let's somehow open this up.
• 8:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I'm going to hand, to you to see where you want to.
• 8:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: how that how that stirs in you, moda.
• 8:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Hmm!
• 8:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I think, 1st of all, I should say that
• 8:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: this void of being that's being offered as an invitation to true aliveness and wholeness and freedom is
• 8:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: not necessarily about the outer situation in the sense of
• 8:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: renouncing the world or renouncing our lives and living in, you know, as a hermit that's not necessarily
• 9:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: necessary.
• 9:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So that's not really what's being spoken about.
• 9:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's more of an inner
• 9:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: solitude or inner singularity.
• 9:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: We could say that void of being reveals itself
• 9:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: when we stop following the movement of mind.
• 9:52
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the movement of mind that's always seeking something, seeking something more, seeking fulfillment in
• 10:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: something, usually an object or something that we can have, or something that we can do. So there is an external activity, but it's always seeking something.
• 10:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and that seeking of something is the avoidance of the void of being.
• 10:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's seeking to fill that void of being so.
• 10:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The distractions that we that you just read out
• 10:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: whether they're simple distractions of the everyday activity, and not all of that is a distraction. But
• 10:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: very often, when it's unexamined, a lot of it is moving away from
• 10:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: this moment from the emptiness of just this and the compulsion of that.
• 10:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: or whether it's something more, a more harmful, if you like addictive cycle
• 11:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: which could be the seeking of relationship over and over again the seeking of stimulants over and over again, something to fill that
• 11:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: emptiness of at the core that many people
• 11:20
  Amoda Maa Teachings: have not really allowed themselves to meet in themselves.
• 11:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So it's it's a very sort of often unconscious
• 11:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: moving away from that, and then trying to fill it up so that it's not
• 11:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: met in the intimacy of one's inner self.
• 11:42
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's it's that that's really being offered as a doorway, and sometimes that may include or necessitate
• 11:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: not filling up our days or lives with endless activity
• 12:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and and just being with oneself. But it's not really so much the external, but the internal relationship.
• 12:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So I just wanted to say that
• 12:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: first.st So it's not about necessarily, you know, living as a hermit. It's not not at all, but it is taking the opportunity or the space to be with oneself.
• 12:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: because that constant moving away doesn't allow us to.
• 12:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Well, there's a number of layers for this.
• 12:40
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Oh, yes, there are many, I know.
• 12:42
  Amoda Maa Teachings: On a more
• 12:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: surface layer or immediate layer. The 1st layer, if you like, which is necessary, is simply the avoidance of feelings.
• 12:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and usually that feeling is one of discomfort or
• 13:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: vulnerability, or, you know, loss, or some kind of
• 13:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: we could say heartbreak, some kind of tenderness in the heart and for many people. That's the scary
• 13:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: proposition, and so much of life is spent
• 13:22
  Amoda Maa Teachings: avoiding that. So so that's a kind of top layer, if you like or 1st layer is to allow feelings which become emotions which then become stored in the body
• 13:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as tension, as perhaps anxiety, as stress, as a certain agitation of the nervous system.
• 13:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And eventually, as disease, it
• 13:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it allows us to to be with those feelings, so far from them being
• 14:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: feelings or emotions or energies that
• 14:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that harm us. They're actually the doorway into true healing and wholeness. And you know, for many people, including spiritual seekers who who have experienced what we might call trauma, or hurt of some kind
• 14:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: which every human being has experienced to some degree.
• 14:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's the 1st avoidance. So the invitation is is to be still inside, and to allow those, let's call them feelings, emotions, energies, to to fully be met, to fully be allowed. And that's the 1st port of
• 14:54
  Amoda Maa Teachings: healing, if you like, but also allows us to go even deeper than that, because underneath all that
• 15:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is a is the core wound of separation.
• 15:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, the belief, the sense that I'm a separate self.
• 15:14
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes, very much.
• 15:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Voided. Yeah.
• 15:19
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Well, I, yeah, because the core of your teaching of our teaching is predominantly about the second one. The you know, that's where the really our work is, if you like, and yes, you do have to
• 15:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: consider and speak to the what we call the surface level. There are no levels in that sense, you know, but but it's that the surface level discomforts that you're talking about are not separate from and point themselves. They're the very pointers to the next level down, which is that
• 16:02
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we have been culturally, societally, you know, conditioned in a way to into this world with a fundamental belief that we are alone and separate, and that's a very bad thing.
• 16:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and we cannot handle that.
• 16:21
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And so everybody runs away from it.
• 16:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: The culture is about running away from that. And in that there is a terrible impact of that. So I just wanted to say that so that you know that can lead into this that you're talking about, which is the second layer or the deepest layer. Let's let's call it, which is the existential.
• 16:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes.
• 16:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Fear of aloneness. So let's just go to that.
• 16:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's right. It's an existential
• 16:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: layer, if you like, not a circumstantial layer. It's not about the circumstances of your life, although the surface layer. The 1st layer shall we call it? The top layer
• 17:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is usually about events that have happened, things that have happened where you've been let down, where you've.
• 17:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes, yes, I want to.
• 17:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Where you've been hurt. But under so once that has been met.
• 17:15
  Amoda Maa Teachings: yeah, then the possibility of the existential layer revealing itself. And that's where the real doorway is.
• 17:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And again, for those who are on the spiritual path. That's the layer that usually will
• 17:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: come up, there'll be a sense of it, and and the fear of meeting that is is the same, and the avoidance of that is the same as as the any other layer, if you like
• 17:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: which is ultimately the fear of
• 17:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: death in the sense of the death of the self, construct
• 17:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the construct of me as a body, a mind a separate entity which gives us some sense of
• 18:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: temporary, if you like, solidity or or security, but ultimately has no security in it, because this
• 18:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: body, mind will eventually die.
• 18:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So the fear of that, the fear of meeting
• 18:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: what is imagined as a void, the void of nothingness that I don't exist is is the the, if you like, preventative to just
• 18:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: relaxing into it.
• 18:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: relaxing into it, because that's what the invitation is. So what usually comes up at the edge of that layer is a sense of abandonment
• 19:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: again, not circumstantial abandonment, but existential abandonment, that somehow I've been abandoned by God by life, by existence, that I exist separate to that, and therefore I have to fight for my survival. I have to fight for love I have to fight for.
• 19:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I have to prove my worthiness, because ultimately the core wound is one of unworthiness.
• 19:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And this is really the core wound of existential separation, which is illusory, but seems very real.
• 19:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: whilst we identify with mind, body, and my life, me and my life and me as a
• 19:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: independent self, a separate self. And so that's the invitation is to. It's the invitation of meditation. It's the invitation of inquiries, a spiritual inquiry. And it's the invitation of deep relaxation
• 20:07
  Amoda Maa Teachings: into just this.
• 20:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So that is the not following the movement of mind that wants to grasp the next moment
• 20:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the next thought, the next, whatever it is that is
• 20:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: seeking as a sense of security to just stop.
• 20:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And that's a very intimate and internal invitation.
• 20:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Right here. Just stop!
• 20:39
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Relaxes the agitated mind, even though you don't know there's a not knowing in this, and that allows
• 20:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it actually allows
• 20:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: what we might call the void of being. And if we take the word void out of it, because that's kind of scary to the self, the void. It's going to swallow me up this big black hole. But if we just
• 21:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: take that word out, although it has some.
• 21:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: There's a pointer in that. But let's take that out. If you just relax
• 21:15
  Amoda Maa Teachings: into well, we have to use some word we could say now, emptiness of being well, that's also a little bit scary what to call it. But
• 21:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: yeah, because it is, it's empty of self.
• 21:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's empty of grasping.
• 21:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's empty of avoidance.
• 21:35
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's empty of movement.
• 21:40
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So it's not about the self being still or the self being silent. It's about the end of self, at least in that moment. There's no self in it.
• 21:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and the beauty, and I don't know if I'm running ahead now, but I have to in some ways is that this is the doorway
• 21:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: to the end. It is the end of separation, because in beingness, in emptiness.
• 22:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: we are, if you like, returned to our natural state.
• 22:22
  Amoda Maa Teachings: our natural state, which is whole and full and complete.
• 22:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's both empty and full at the same time, and and that's where we no longer
• 22:39
  Amoda Maa Teachings: feel separate or disconnected.
• 22:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: There's nothing to fill up, because we're
• 22:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: full of the aliveness of being which expresses itself as life itself.
• 22:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The life that is moving through us.
• 23:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's not. It's not that, if you like. That is
• 23:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the issue. It's the layers that bring us to that that appear to be an issue, a problem, an avoidance, a scary place, and so on.
• 23:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay, let's just take a breather for a second.
• 23:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: because what you know, what's actually being talked about is huge.
• 23:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's huge. It's a, it's a okay
• 23:54
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: life as we know it, for most people, is predicated on the separate self, separate self being me alone.
• 24:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: moving in in the world. I don't. And it's not even questioned.
• 24:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's an assumed reality that we're all in.
• 24:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and in that in that reality that we take to be real as separate
• 24:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: individuation that we are innately on the core level, the existential level
• 24:33
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and on the human level. I search the world for things to give me a sense of completion. Because what I'm really looking for.
• 24:43
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: if I did but know, it is completion
• 24:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: that all addictions, all grasping for love, all desires, all movements of the mind that you're talking about are actually innately
• 24:58
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: the search for union, the search for completion, the search for wholeness, and if we did not know that as a culture, but as individuals as well, then we might be able to get below that terrible feeling that we have of the existential abandonment that we that we feel
• 25:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and we don't, that in that sense, then we don't live. In reality
• 25:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we live in some strange, made up
• 25:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: reality that we call normal life, but that normal life is filled with
• 25:35
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: a sense of separation that we're trying to complete. And that's why I say, this is huge.
• 25:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Thank you.
• 25:44
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: That's why I say this is huge, because what you're talking about is simple. The relaxation of the need
• 25:52
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: for the mind to move or the mind moves. But you're still staying here, but it opens into.
• 26:03
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: doesn't. It opens into an ocean that many aren't prepared for in a way that's why usually spiritual? The spiritual journey happens in degrees quite honestly happens, you know, a little bit at a time, because probably it would overwhelm many human beings, and only a few are prepared for it.
• 26:24
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Am I? Am I describing it quite, quite accurately, in a way.
• 26:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I think you are. Yes, and very beautifully
• 26:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as you speak. I was struck by the possibility of how we relate to children, and how much
• 26:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: of that in conventional society and culture for for many
• 26:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I don't know. Thousands of years has
• 27:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: reinforced that sense of separation and that sense of not enoughness, and that sense of Oh,
• 27:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Unworthiness in the sense that yeah, almost distraction doing, having, achieving, and all of that is unconsciously encouraged.
• 27:35
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And not that children don't have an exuberance that shouldn't be suppressed in any way. But
• 27:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: children are much closer to to innate beingness to their natural state of wholeness, and some of these.
• 27:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: if you like, unconscious, deeply conditioned ways of relating to children,
• 28:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: simply pushes them more into separation or the identification with separation.
• 28:13
  Amoda Maa Teachings: certainly through schooling and all of that, and I think that if we could be with children
• 28:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: from our own, a deep presence and silence
• 28:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: again, I don't mean verbal silence necessarily, but within
• 28:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: children would attune to that and align to that and know that innately know that they're absolutely okay as they are. They're enough.
• 28:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: they're enough, and I certainly know that for myself. As a child I was more naturally attuned to that.
• 28:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But it wasn't.
• 29:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It wasn't allowed, if you like.
• 29:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's like, Well, you've got to do something you've got to express yourself. You've got to yeah, and so on. So. And that's just a minor sort of
• 29:15
  Amoda Maa Teachings: situation, but for many they're really pushed the other way. So it just struck me, as you were speaking. That
• 29:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: much of what we see now is the fear of being with oneself, and the sense of being
• 29:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: separate. Self either has to fight for its survival or get to the top or prove itself to be worthy, or prove itself worthy of love, or whatever it is.
• 29:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is a lot of that, is very much conditioned, and not necessarily.
• 29:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know, inevitable in the human condition.
• 29:56
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: As as you speak. It strikes me in many ways that you know, for many, not always necessarily, but really, when we're born
• 30:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: for those very early early pre-verbal, you know, completely unaware of our
• 30:19
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: physical boundary. That's the self. There is no self when we're born. Even if it is this tiny little thing. We're intimately connected with nature, with our naturalness, with with the universe. In fact, we're steeped in oneness. In effect.
• 30:38
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: it's very, very natural. And as you're speaking what it reminds me of this relaxation, you know, of, of the search of the going into the deepest layers
• 30:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: that actually result in awakening or enlightenment or self-realization
• 30:56
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: is actually in many ways as simple as a return to that very, very, very naturalness. We make it complex because the in-between bit is where the self that has become so rigidified, almost like a growth, that we've talked. You know it's become rigidified. Something has to happen with that. But if something happens with that
• 31:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: through work, through grace, whatever, then the result is actually a return, not a return backwards, but a remembering or reconnecting with that very very naturalness.
• 31:35
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Absolutely, absolutely. It's not a regression, it is a remembrance. And yes, it's that. It's that innocence, it's that naturalness. It's that
• 31:51
  Amoda Maa Teachings: innate
• 31:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: oneness, that a child is, or an infant is not consciously aware of. But our return to it is a conscious return.
• 32:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and that allows us to live in a world of
• 32:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: seemingly separate objects, because that's how we function and have to function, but from a very different paradigm where we are no longer
• 32:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: isolated, we are no longer alienated. Whether we're alone or whether we're with people, friends, loved ones, whether we're, you know, surrounded by a thousand people, we're still not disconnected.
• 32:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter, because we're not seeking connection in order to fill
• 32:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: something that cannot be fulfilled in that way. That's already fulfilled. But we don't know it.
• 32:54
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So yes, it's it's radically a different dimension of being.
• 33:02
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So let me, just because I want to continue this a little bit. And I just want to get into because it's you know, we've painted a
• 33:10
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: excuse me, a glorious picture in many ways, and it's yeah, so that
• 33:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: the relaxation, etc. Etc. But I want to talk just a little bit about what the move you said about the movement, seeing the movement of mind.
• 33:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And I want to just get into that a little bit more, because when you say, see the movement of mind
• 33:37
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: to a lot of people there that it doesn't. They don't know in many ways what that means. I want to talk about how the the movement of mind is that the movement of self is that the movement of the
• 33:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: what mind is that, and what's what's the benefit. Or how do? How is that seen?
• 33:58
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Because for most people I am the mind. The mind is me. This is the me. So what's gonna what's gonna be invited here? What's gonna come undone? What happens when we see the mind? What do we do about that?
• 34:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Oh.
• 34:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: well, one has to start somewhere, if you like, and that starting place is usually
• 34:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: when one sees for oneself whatever
• 34:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: circumstance or however, your life is, one sees for oneself how one is
• 34:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: tortured or tormented by mind, just thinking, mind, thought, activity.
• 34:49
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay, so
• 34:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: we're just talking about thought, activity. Yes, the mind in itself is a wonderful function, one that we shouldn't try to get rid of.
• 35:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's a slightly different conversation. But in this sense the movement of mind is simply the thought activity that takes place.
• 35:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So for most people, or for many people, I should say there is such an entrancement with thought, activity.
• 35:22
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that it's like the self is is enmeshed in thought, activity, or identified with it my thoughts. And then usually there's an attempt to well, either it's so enmeshed that there's no clear seeing at all.
• 35:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: or that enmeshment
• 35:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: brings one to the place where well, I only want to have positive thoughts, or happy thoughts, or peaceful thoughts, because the other ones are tormenting me, and I don't like them, and rightly so so that would either bring someone to meditation practice or some kind of presence practice.
• 36:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Sometimes that's positive thinking practice. But that doesn't work either, but something opens the door to to
• 36:16
  Amoda Maa Teachings: attempting to, or seeing the gap between thoughts, and so on, so attempting to to find peace if you like.
• 36:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but that in itself is not enough, because that's still
• 36:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: drawing one's identity from thought activity.
• 36:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So at some point it has to go deeper than that, and that is the realization or the recognition, or the willingness to not follow the movement of mind, in other words, to not follow thought, activity to realize, and this is the much deeper
• 36:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: spiritual journey, if you like. We don't have to call it spiritual, but in a journey.
• 37:01
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Hmm.
• 37:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Which is to not try and stop thought activity, because it's just flotsam and jetsam
• 37:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that is in the field
• 37:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and is going to continue. Anyway, some of it has to do with kind of grooves or patterns that we've got into with with thought activity. And some of it isn't actually ours.
• 37:26
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Hmm!
• 37:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But to to to see that thoughts
• 37:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: are sometimes positive. They're sometimes negative. They're sometimes happy thoughts. They're sometimes unhappy thoughts, and therefore
• 37:42
  Amoda Maa Teachings: to try and hold on to one and get rid of the other is it's like grasping sand. It's just going to. You can't. Yes, it's yeah. But to realize that
• 37:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it's not the thoughts themselves that are the problem.
• 38:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's the following those thoughts, that is the problem, what does that mean? It means
• 38:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: there's actually something beyond thought.
• 38:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And that's awareness.
• 38:16
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Most people are.
• 38:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Think those 2 things are synonymous, that awareness is a kind of function of thought, but it's not
• 38:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: so. Awareness follows thought.
• 38:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: In other words, you get on a very basic level. You give attention to thought activity.
• 38:38
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But if you don't give attention to it, if you don't follow that thought.
• 38:45
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Then there's a initially, a kind of UN
• 38:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: unmeshing of or disentangling of self which is awareness
• 38:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: from thought, and that gives us spaciousness.
• 39:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, from there we go into a deeper inquiry. But I would say, that's the if you like starting place.
• 39:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Is awareness here now for everybody who's watching or listening.
• 39:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Hope so?
• 39:31
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yes, awareness is all there is.
• 39:36
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Is it not true? Whoever's listening right now?
• 39:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Is it not true that you are aware in this moment, as you listen to these words, these sounds, or these visuals.
• 39:50
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as there is thought, activity arising. Maybe you agree, or you disagree, or you like, or you don't like, or whatever is arising.
• 39:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Is it not true that there is something
• 40:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that you can call awareness that is aware of all of that
• 40:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: the content of your experience? Is it not true? Otherwise there'd be no experience.
• 40:16
  Amoda Maa Teachings: So that's kind of the 1st initial realization. It's fundamental.
• 40:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: And then.
• 40:23
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Ultimately this is the question, who am I? But if we, if we not phrase it in that way, because that gets confused in the mind, and also has a very spiritual
• 40:34
  Amoda Maa Teachings: kind of lineage to it. But if you just ask yourself, is it not true?
• 40:39
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But awareness is here something? Someone yeah, is aware of
• 40:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: what I'm experiencing, what is being experienced
• 40:52
  Amoda Maa Teachings: now, instead of seeing it, as I am aware, just notice the fact of awareness. It's here and then, whatever is being experienced which I call the scenery?
• 41:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Is it not true that it's constantly fluctuating
• 41:10
  Amoda Maa Teachings: whether it's thought or perception or sensation? It's forever fluctuating like the ripples on the surface of
• 41:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: water, the ocean, the pool, the river.
• 41:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But awareness is always here, and that awareness doesn't change.
• 41:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The awareness of something changes, but awareness itself doesn't change.
• 41:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's like a light bulb may go off.
• 41:45
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 41:47
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's a question if you like, or a seeing that many people are not
• 42:00
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: If you like. Ask or contemplating.
• 42:02
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yes, yes. Well, sometimes, or quite often, we're looking for it somewhere else.
• 42:09
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: busy on the path looking for the answer or the solution somewhere else. But actually, it's here right now.
• 42:19
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Everybody who's listening and everybody who's watching you and me are all experiencing or not even experiencing, but
• 42:28
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: are rooted in somehow
• 42:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: that awareness. It's not my awareness, it's not. Your awareness doesn't belong to anybody. It's the ground of being which we can call awareness.
• 42:43
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That is the way that awareness, as you just said, is the same.
• 42:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: It's the same.
• 42:48
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's the same. It's not my awareness or your awareness, although it comes through this vehicle. So then I can say I'm aware of this and that and this and that.
• 42:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but the nature of awareness, the fact of awareness is unchanging, unmoving.
• 43:07
  Amoda Maa Teachings: and its nature is essentially the same
• 43:12
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in all individuations. Whatever the experience is, the experience may be different, the content may be different, but awareness is the same again, that's a light bulb, possibly
• 43:28
  Amoda Maa Teachings: because it's in that that we are all one.
• 43:33
  Amoda Maa Teachings: all one. It's not separate awarenesses.
• 43:37
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it's the same awareness, and it has no boundary, it has no edge.
• 43:41
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It just appears to be separate, because I think of myself as this, mind this body, and so on. But it's the same. That's the place
• 43:52
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that we, if you like no oneness.
• 43:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: it can't be found anywhere else. That's the space. And in realizing that more and more
• 44:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: as it filters into our experience.
• 44:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: we no longer feel separate in that sense, functionally, yes.
• 44:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: but on the deepest existential level there's no separation, and therefore there can be no loneliness. There can be no aloneness
• 44:19
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in the conventional sense.
• 44:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Awareness is that to me, you know, and speaking poetically, you know, is the garden. There's a garden
• 44:32
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and everything, and all these individual flowers that we call ourselves are all growing in it, and the garden and the flowers are not separate from each other. But we've assumed that as the little flowers. We're all separate from each other, looking out across the garden, and we don't realize that the garden is the same
• 44:51
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: same God.
• 44:53
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And Jesus said, The kingdom of heaven is already here, but you do not have.
• 44:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Prize to see.
• 45:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And that's what this that means. The kingdom of heaven is the unified field of
• 45:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: beingness. Yeah, we use the word being or awareness interchangeably. It's the unified field that's the only place of peace and oneness.
• 45:21
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, and and true fulfillment.
• 45:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: But you do not have eyes to see.
• 45:27
  Amoda Maa Teachings: because we're looking the wrong way. We're looking for the kingdom of heaven in the things that.
• 45:32
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 45:32
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And the things that we do and the things that we achieve in our various identities as this, that and the other. Yeah, we're looking for love in the wrong place, and so on. Here it is. This is the true treasure, this is the true garden. This is the true kingdom.
• 45:49
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So the mind and the self is always moving outwards to find its completion. It's always looking, always searching.
• 45:58
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Follow. Don't follow that.
• 45:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Follow it.
• 46:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Don't follow that search. It's from here that all the riches that you
• 46:08
  Amoda Maa Teachings: need, if you like that are truly yours will will come, come to be whatever those riches are.
• 46:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: This. This is so beautiful because it in many ways. It's so simple, you know, to see, you know, to to recognize that as we said that awareness is here. Now
• 46:25
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and then it sees the movement of the mind, the thought, the thought, activity.
• 46:31
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and and there it is, just for this moment, that's all it needs. Just this moment. Don't try and prolong it, because you try and prolong it, and it is gone. Yeah. And thought will come back because we're habituated to the thought patterns that go round and round
• 46:48
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: by and by, with enough turning towards the awareness, giving that allegiance, that devotion
• 46:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: by and by the movement of mind becomes less concerning.
• 47:03
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Less concerning it, actually also becomes less visible.
• 47:07
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's like a
• 47:14
  Amoda Maa Teachings: movement of or whisper, let's call it, or whisper that moves a.
• 47:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 47:24
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It doesn't have the same substance.
• 47:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Well, yes, I think because the flower that we are has stopped being so neurotic about itself, because what it thought was its terrible loneliness has been realized as its great all oneness or whatever you know, the great union of things.
• 47:47
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: So do you think we've given for this session, this podcast and an opening.
• 47:57
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I think it's a very beautiful.
• 47:59
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: No means completely.
• 48:01
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Hat, but.
• 48:01
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Think.
• 48:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I think that's a very lovely place to end for today.
• 48:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Yeah.
• 48:06
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Yeah, the realization or the possibility of the remembrance that the kingdom of heaven is here in you as you.
• 48:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: The doorway is in you.
• 48:19
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I think this is a you know, the potential for this in many ways. He realizes that
• 48:26
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: you know so many of our troubles that we fixate on so many of our wounds, our traumas, our troubles, our grievances, you know we we get caught up in the fixing mentality, and there's a place and a time for all of that. But also there's a there's a there's a there's a great healing
• 48:46
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: which I think you were talking about right at the beginning. There's a great healing in knowing this.
• 48:53
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: knowing the unbroken, and go back.
• 48:55
  Amoda Maa Teachings: There's a sort of innate intelligence
• 49:00
  Amoda Maa Teachings: in our natural state that doesn't come from thinking mind, but simply from the invisible field of beingness
• 49:15
  Amoda Maa Teachings: from which and through which life
• 49:18
  Amoda Maa Teachings: moves and unfolds. There's there's such an innate intelligence in that, but when we touch it, or rest in it, or abide in it or live from it.
• 49:30
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Then all unresolved emotions and feelings and will be metabolised in that
• 49:46
  Amoda Maa Teachings: that we don't have to keep on trying to fix ourselves, although support on the way is part of the human journey. But I'm talking about at this deepest level when we truly
• 49:59
  Amoda Maa Teachings: sink into it.
• 50:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: That's the true place of healing.
• 50:04
  Amoda Maa Teachings: It's also the true place of well-being on all levels, emotional well-being and physical well-being.
• 50:11
  Amoda Maa Teachings: because there's no separation in that dimension. And if there's no separation, then the whole system functions organically and holistically.
• 50:25
  Amoda Maa Teachings: you know, the need to attend to
• 50:29
  Amoda Maa Teachings: symptoms, whether they're psychological or physical symptoms comes from a essentially comes from a separatist paradigm. I'm not talking about just ignoring what needs to be tended to. But
• 50:44
  Amoda Maa Teachings: this, this sinking into our natural, innate whole state unified beingness
• 50:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: is actually fundamental to true well-being.
• 51:02
  Amoda Maa Teachings: And this is something that is also completely denied or ignored in conventional medicine or practices.
• 51:17
  Amoda Maa Teachings: I'm not talking just about physical healing, but on all levels, psychological healing, too.
• 51:23
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Well, yes, we operate from fragmented consciousness.
• 51:29
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and we have already separated off into mind, emotion, body, spirit, and all that sort of nonsense, really. And so we tend to
• 51:41
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: operate from the
• 51:43
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: neurotic self or the fragmented self. So when something goes wrong, then we kind of want to fix it or see it as a problem, and we don't listen to. And we're not aware of the of what you're talking about, which you talk about as natural intelligence. I do think there's value at some point I'm not saying, when of actually opening some of that up, to speak a little bit more to what natural intelligence might mean to you. But we'll save that for
• 52:12
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: for a different podcast maybe maybe not.
• 52:15
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: But
• 52:16
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I think that's a very intriguing place to
• 52:22
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: draw the this podcast to a close.
• 52:27
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: explored some of the problems, some of the loneliness. And I think we've invited a
• 52:32
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: a deeper seeing, I hope, you know, a deeper awareness that there's a possibility of
• 52:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: of letting go of some of that.
• 52:42
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: and coming into a deeper state of union and well-being and love.
• 52:49
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Bye.
• 52:50
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Into the garden. Everyone.
• 52:54
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay. Amoda is very good.
• 52:56
  Amoda Maa Teachings: Thank you.
• 52:57
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Okay. Well, thank you. Everyone for listening to our podcast. It's good to be back. And hopefully, we won't be as long before we do another one. If you're listening to this, please.
• 53:11
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: I don't know. Share it or find us somewhere. You know the juice for us is in the in the in-person retreats and offerings that we offer where we meet in physical form and deep transformation is possible. Where we explore this and many other kind of fundamental aspects of what it means to be walking a spiritual path in this world. And
• 53:39
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: they're very beautiful. And so the invitation is to come to those. And if you can't make it to those come to our public meetings online, come to our events. Yeah, or follow us on Youtube, follow Amoda on Youtube. You can also find me on Youtube. We're all over the the place in many ways, and we look forward to meeting you and seeing you somewhere in some way, shape or form.
• 54:05
  Kavi Jezzie Hockaday: Thank you very much for your wisdom and grace. As always. Namaste, everyone, take care, and we'll see you soon. Namaste.