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The Light of Being in Everyday Life: When Awakening Becomes Fully Lived · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  You are listening to the Amoda Maa podcast.
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  In this series, Amoda explores her essential teaching through conversation and excerpts
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  from interviews and events.
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  Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
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  So how does this light of being, this light of awareness,
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  this knowing of awareness, this open space
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  that perhaps has been recognised?
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  How does it become embodied?
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  How does it become lived in the everyday life?
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  So it doesn't remain as a transcendent state, something beyond you, just to be accessed in meditation or now and then.
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  It remains as a state somewhere above you or beyond you.
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  When that state is believed to be it,
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  it in the sense of now I've arrived, now I've attained, this is it.
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  And then there is an attachment to that.
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  There is a craving for that.
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  There is a yearning to stay in that,
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  because in some ways it can be preferable to the ordinary every day,
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  which is full of strife and movement and challenge and so on. Why not remain in that pristine state of being
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  somewhere beyond the human experience?
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  But it serves no purpose in that but becomes a spiritual veneer
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  and possibly or commonly another subtle egoic identity.
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  And then our everyday actions, behaviour and our personhood somehow need to match that pristine state.
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  and then you get the 'I am a spiritual self' syndrome, or 'I am a spiritual teacher' syndrome,
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  which may be attractive to some, but doesn't really fully serve,
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  only serves the upholding of that.
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  So how does it become embodied?
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  And not so much how, but what does it look like?
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  When it becomes embodied.
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  And we have to be careful with this word embodied.
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  Another word I'm not particularly happy with.
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  Because it's got the word body in it.
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  And it's not just about the body.
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  It's very often misinterpreted as what I feel in my body and then those feelings have to be spiritual or blissful or so on.
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  It's not really limited to the body and body it really means lived, fully lived in the human experience, all aspects of the human experience.
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  in some way we can boil down to one aspect of the human experience, which is relationship.
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  And I don't mean relationship just in the term, in the sense of partnership or marriage
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  or friendship, but the relationship to everything.
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  the human realm, what we might call duality, we are relating to everything. There is a perceived
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  and convenient and functional subject-object relationship,
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  But how does the collapse of the subject-object identity filter into that necessary functional
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  subject-object navigation? In other words, how does non-duality, how does the non-dual
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  Realisation, filter into, that everyday dual necessity.
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  It's not something we can manufacture, it's not something that we can practice, it's what
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  happens naturally, organically, when we neither claim the pristine open state of nothingness
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  as an identity or an arrival place or an attainment, we don't claim it, we don't take ownership
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  of it when we don't take ownership ownership of it nor keep trying to get back to it or
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  stay in it but remain open to it as a deep seeing then it starts to organically filter
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  in because already the whole energetic system is a little more open and in that opening
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  it can move the light of being, can move as an ongoing reality. What does it look like?
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  It looks like a gentle quieting of the nervous system.
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  In other words, less inner agitation, unless defaulting to the agitated state as a habitual
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  position, so that when agitation may arise in response to a situation, internal or external,
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  are less likely to give our allegiance to that and then react from that place. So the
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  quieting of the nervous system means there's less reactivity, even if one is triggered.
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  doesn't knee jerk, there's not a knee jerk reaction from that place. If you like, there
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  is spaciousness around the trigger, so it can be held in that space and not necessarily
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  can hold off and then the whole self reacts from that place. There's less. So there's
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  an inner quietness that takes place. An inner quietness on all levels, the nervous system
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  and also the chatter of the mind tends to quiet. Quiet and by itself it recedes a little more
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  into the background. There's less inner posturing. The whole inner posture softens. In other
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  words, the self doesn't need to take a position internally in order to defend itself, protect
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  itself which results in my position against your position. My rightness against your wrongness.
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  There's no position to take and if there's no position to take, then there's a deeper
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  capacity for listening, not defending but listening.
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  listening takes place from openness. You don't have to defend your position. There's no right
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  or wrong whether that's listening to yourself or listening to others or even listening to
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  the world, the listening is open, not defended, therefore there is no barrier. The whole
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  The polarity of defence and attack comes undone.
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  You can most likely see the ramifications of that in relationship.
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  Most relationship or friendship or any relationship is
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  is built unconsciously on the need to agree with each other, to have the same position.
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  And then we can be in harmony, then we can be in love, then we can take a position up
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  together.
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  But if our positions are different or seemingly in our position, then we're enemies.
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  Whether that's expressed or not, and there's a battle that goes on, a push and pull that
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  goes on.
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  If we take up a position, we need approval.
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  We need approval for that position, that it's okay, that it's right, that it's validated.
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  We don't need validation when there's no position to take up, when the inner posture
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  is soft.
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  There's no need for validation.
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  There's no need for approval.
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  In that sense, we can give ourselves fully, wholeheartedly, as love, just as we're invited
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  to give ourselves fully and not withhold from life itself,
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  not withholding ourselves.
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  In the realm of all activity,
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  Usually we can bring it to the realm of what we do in the world, what we do in our lives,
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  our work, our creativity and so on.
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  It's lived as listening and from that listening action takes place without agenda for the
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  self, much of what we do as an expectation of an outcome, always to do with the self,
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  in the sense of upholding the posture of the self as good enough, worthy enough, loved
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  enough, approved of enough, recognized enough, belonging enough. I'm not talking about the
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  fundamental practical issues of shelter and taking care of the well-being. You might
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  think that that's to do with an agenda for the self. No, that's a natural physiological function,
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  all physiological organisms, whether it's another creature, a human being, or anything that's alive,
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  will have an inbuilt system for maintaining well-being, maintaining its survival as a life form.
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  So we protect ourselves from harm, we need shelter, we need sleep, we need nourishment,
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  we need warmth. These are not agendas for the self. I'm talking about the psychological self,
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  the ego identity, the me identity that has an agenda for needing to belong, needing to connect,
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  needing to feel it's good enough because it's essential, not it's essential, but it's core wound
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  is not being enough unless there has been a realization of innate wholeness.
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  So when it comes to what we do, how we act, how we move in the world, it's not the driving force is not
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  agenda, the need for an outcome in order to uphold that sense of self. So it has a free flow in it,
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  It has a natural movement unimpeded by self-s agenda.
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  And it doesn't matter what that is, whatever role, whatever expression it has.
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  There's also a not taking our role so seriously.
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  That doesn't mean being frivolous.
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  What I mean when I say not taking our roles so seriously, it means just not identifying
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  with them, not identifying as someone, a writer, a teacher, therapist, whatever.
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  Throughout the tight shell of identification, that role has more movement in it, more space
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  to serve something, to serve God.
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  More can flow through you.
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  There's also a softening of fear instead of being driven by fear or impeded by fear.
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  When fear comes undone or the capacity to just allow fear, then certain things that we
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  can't do, won't do, that are limiters, limitations, no longer are limitations. It's not that
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  the personality changes, it's just that we could stand in the fire of being seen or not
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  being seen, whatever it is, being seen by ourselves. So there are many, quite radical
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  and yet very human, if you like, transformations, transmutations that take place.