We all play many roles in our lives: parent, child, student, seeker, teacher, boss, and many, many more. But what do we want our lives to be used for? In this episode, Gangaji shares her own experience of being in the role of teacher and addresses how the roles we play can serve the deepest truth—the truth of who we are.
Being Yourself host, Barbara Denempont, welcomes a special guest this month, Hillary Larson this month. Hillary shares her own experience of roles ending and beginning, and what her journey to the Amazon rain forest revealed to her about finding home.
Plus Hillary has a special invitation for you. You can join Hillary in supporting Gangaji's podcast and other programs through a matching grant. Find out how your monthly pledge can be doubled for a full year.
This month on Being Yourself, we return to the summer of 1993 in Boulder, Colorado. Gangaji speaks about the opportunity to break the trance of fear by directly experiencing fear itself.
“This is a kind of contraction against life. Direct experience is the medicine, the remedy. When you really experience fear, fear is not fear.”
“If your attention is on the story of how you do not deserve what is being offered, this is the continuation of self-denial. There is an open door in this jail, in this prison.”
When we seek freedom on the spiritual path, it is often freedom from our mind or mental activity. In this podcast, we focus how we can lock ourselves up inside a mental prison, not recognizing the door that is always open.
“To play the role of yourself, which is the transcendent role, the role of freedom, you have to trust something unknowable.”
The themes of belonging, freedom from identification, and trusting our direct experience come together in this month’s podcast. This powerful interplay of themes opens the mind to the heart and invites an inquiry: What does it mean to be free? Where do you belong?