“We are here to retreat from the trouble, so that actually when the trouble returns, we have a bigger capacity, a stronger foundation to meet whatever appears.”
When we choose to walk on a spiritual path, our first aspiration may be to transcend our problems or at least transcend the world’s problems. From the mundane to the catastrophic, problems are part of living a human life. So where is peace? What if true fulfillment is realized when we actually stop trying to transcend what Gangaji calls “trouble?”
Read The Other Awakening from Hillary Larson, about what's possible when you stop trying to run, and turn and face the trouble.
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?
