The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on The Desire to be Loved.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our series of meetings.
As this will be our last meeting for this year, we are fortunate to have a question about Love. Here is today’s question, « I’ve heard you say that the desire to be loved can become a barrier to be loved, a barrier to receive love. Could you say a few words about this? »

Yes, it seems strange, on one side we desire to be loved, we so much want to be loved, accepted and seen for who we are and yet this desire remains unmet whatever we do to have it met. And usually we do a lot to have this desire met. We become obedient, flunky, we please and become followers, but we don’t see that in doing this we deny ourselves. It is this denial, which is wrong, not desiring in itself.
Being loved is as essential as breathing and everyone, without exception, is worthy to be loved. This does not mean that everyone is loved. It is an evidence that there is a lot of indifference, of resentment and hate thrown at some people. It happens within families, within societies and also within nations.
It is essential to be loved simply because being loved sets the direction to recognise that, at the core, we are Love. Love is the very substance which we are made of. Love sustain every living dynamic whether inner or outer and without love we shrink and wither away.

Our desire to be loved is coming from an emptiness in our hearts. We desire love simply because we miss being loved. As a child, as a teenager, as an adult, we haven’t been loved to our heart’s content and naturally we feel an emptiness within, we feel that something is missing. At the most we have been accepted, tolerated but not loved. Our practical needs have been fulfilled but this is not enough to be called being loved and we instinctively want to put an end to this crave and feel satiated.

Our desire to be loved is certainly not wrong, like any other desire, it points to what we are missing. In a previous talk, I mentioned that the root of desire is to be found in the inborn longing for each human to be whole. There is in each human being a longing for Union; a union with our ‘Essence’. Essence or ‘untempered consciousness’ is what we are born out of and this longing for union is a driving force which subconsciously pulls us from unconsciousness to consciousness. This longing for union is the very movement of Life, it is Life itself. Love is not separate from Life, Love is an expression of Life, a quality of Life and we long to be in union with Love which is at the very centre of our being.

The problem comes because of our upbringing. As a child, as a teenager, our parents are the ones who are supposed to manifest love to us, so that we can feel being loved and recognise that Love is an intrinsic part of our being. Unfortunately, most parents fail in this task and what we receive is a practical caring and rarely a heart-to-heart connexion. Besides missing this heart-to-heart connexion what remained embedded in our psyche is the belief that someone should provide us with love, someone should love us in order to feel whole. This belief makes us seek love from those whom we are in a relationship with. The trouble is that those from whom we seek love are themselves empty of love and the relationship becomes a begging game for both partners which generates frustration, resentment, anger and a great deal of pain since the desire for being loved remains unsatisfied.

As mentioned earlier, one of the barriers to be loved is coming from desiring itself since when we desire we tend to deny parts of ourselves. Not only do we deny ourselves by ways of pleasing and being obedient but we also deny the reality of our closed hearts. Not being loved is creating a deep pain which we tend to push away and avoid feeling. Not being loved also create a deep resentment towards those who were supposed to love us. Seeking to be loved by someone also creates a barrier since the focus is on wanting love from outside.
Whenever the focus is on the outside and not turned inwards, a barrier is created. Bringing an end to the pain of not being loved will require us to turn the focus on ourselves and take care of our closed heart, take care of the resentment that our closed heart carries, take care of the pain in our hearts and most of all, let go of the belief that we will be fulfilled when someone will love us.

The moment we start turning our focus inwards, love appears. The very fact of taking care of our difficulties, of taking care of our lack of being loved, brings a quality of love to this turning inwards. When we remain in a ‘no’ towards our pain, towards what or who created the pain, we are in a refusal, in a denial of our reality. The deeper the pain, the stronger the ‘no’. We become imprisoned in our ‘no’, imprisoned to the point that we don’t any longer know how to reverse the process and free ourselves from this imprisonment, from this emotional bondage. 
The pain of not being loved is so deep in our hearts and so unbearable that it seems that we have no other choice than to fight with it, to say ‘no’ to this excruciating pain of not being loved. With the ‘no’ comes resentment towards those who created the pain. Our inner world is in an emotional crisis made of pain and refusal and we are at a loss on how to end this unbearable and seemingly unending situation. We try all sorts of ways to end our suffering, yet all our ways fall short. « If only I could try a little harder, be more obedient, please more, be more considerate, then maybe I will be loved.»

This reminds me of a Lucy, a woman who was exactly in this situation of trying hard to be loved. She was trying so hard that she accepted all the abusive behaviour that her husband was inflicting her, cheating, blaming, humiliating and physical abuse. Her desire to be loved was so deep-rooted in her that she simply could not rebel, she simply could not say no. She was even feeling guilty for not trying harder, guilty of not being considerate enough towards her husband. It took quite some time for her to recognise and access the root cause of her pain of not being loved, simply because she was denying herself. She also had a deeply anchored belief of not being good enough, of not having the right to exist. Once these beliefs were seen for what they were, simply a belief, something started to change in her, some acceptance started to arise and she became able to bring a caring attention to her issue. 

To deal with any issue acceptance is the key. Yet before acceptance can arise, recognising the reality that we are facing is a must. Remember the transformative trilogy steps. Recognise, Accept and Express.

When we follow these steps, our inner attitude is already love-driven. It is love driven simply because when we follow these steps we are moving out of judging ourselves for having this emotional bondage and we are engaging into a more loving relationship with ourselves.
Love yourself a little more each day, be in acceptance with what is and express what needs to be express.

I’d like to conclude this talk with the answer given by a Zen teacher to Tallis, a 12-year-old boy who was asking him: 'what is love?'   

« Tallis, love is the radiance, the fragrance of knowing oneself, of being oneself. Love is overflowing joy.
Love is when you have seen who you are; then there is nothing left except to share your being with others. Love is when you have seen that you are not separate from existence. Love is when you have felt an organic, orgasmic unity with all that is.
Love is not a relationship. Love is a state of being. It has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not in love, one is love. And, of course, when one is love, one is in love but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
And who can be love? Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubt, in love one trust. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears; hence there is no question of loneliness at all. When one is not, how can one be lonely?
Tallis, don't be afraid, this existence is not your enemy. This existence mothers you, this existence is ready to support you in every possible way. Trust, and you will start feeling a new upsurge of energy in you, that energy is love. That energy wants to bless the whole existence, because in that energy one feels blessed. And when you feel blessed, what else can you do except bless the whole existence? »

Let’s stop here with these words and take a short pause before we come to your questions.
Questions from Participants…

All right, it is now time to end this meeting. I’m confident that this series of meetings gave you more understanding on how we are functioning at the personality level and that they can be an incentive for you to recognise that you are lovable as you are, that you are worthy of being loved as you are.
Yes, challenges are bound to come your way, meet them with openness, with an open heart, with an open mind, they will be an opportunity of transformation for you. Existence is always compassionate, it always brings us what we need to face in order for us to mature and remember, Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it is about dancing with the rain. So, dance with the challenges that Existence brings you, they are blessings in disguise as Rumi would so beautifully word it.

Before fully closing this meeting, I’d like to give a warm thank you to Niya for organising these talks and, of course, also to Jane for making my words available to you in your language.
A warm hug to all of you and thank you for your patient and attentive listening.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_25-October-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Abandonment and Insecurity.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our series of meetings.

Today’s question is, in some ways, very similar to the one we had last week. It must be from the same person who prefers to be general rather than owning her question. Here is the question, « Could you please talk about how an intimate relationship can trigger our insecurity and our trauma of being abandoned. Why are we always attracted by those who are able to trigger our trauma and our insecurity? »

Not every relationship triggers insecurity and abandonment, this seems to be specific to the relationship in which you are involved in. As a child or teenager you must have felt abandoned, either physically or psychologically or most probably both. This abandonment triggered a deep insecurity for you and your nervous system is still trying its best to cope with the stress and the insecurity that being abandoned created. So many situations can create a feeling of abandonment for a child. It can be the loss of a parent at a young age, it can be the indifference of one of the parents, or the transfer of attention when a second child is born. It can be when one or both parents have to go to work and the child is left alone or left with an elderly person. It can be a lack of support during studies or difficult to live situations.
A widespread feeling of abandonment is the one triggered by the arrival of a sibling. When a second child is born, by necessity, the mother’s attention and affection are transferred to the new born and the elder child starts suffering from this transfer of affection and attention. A feeling of abandonment kicks in. 
Amelie, a young student, suffers from abandonment since an early age because her mother took more care of her own parents and siblings than of her daughter. In fact, Amelie’s mother was repeating her own mother’s behaviour of taking care of her siblings rather than her children. Amelie’s mother also suffered from being abandoned by her mother. It is quite common to repeat or take on the same attitude in life that one of our parents had.
This reminds me of someone else who was telling me how her mother was quite fierce and strict. At some point during her session, this person noticed that she was in fact acting in the same way with her own child as her mother did with her. She was quite surprised and shocked to recognise this behaviour pattern in her.
Existence brings us so many possibilities to experience abandonment! These abandonment situations tend to repeat over the years, creating a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity and sadness together with a compulsion of wanting to hold on to whomever we are in a relationship with.

Since these abandonment situations can be many and have different intensities, gaining clarity on them is essential. Using the following questions, ‘What were the situations when I felt abandoned? What is a physical or a psychological abandonment? What is both?’ can be a useful way to gain clarity and peace of mind on your abandonment issue.
Make a list of these situations where you felt abandoned and next to each of them, write down what feelings came up for you at the time. Doing this will help you gain clarity as well as make a distinction between the situations and the feelings which are triggered by the situation. The situations are not in your control, they are anyway past and you cannot change them. All that you can do is to take care of the feelings related to the abandonment situation. Feelings are an essential part of you and it is your responsibility to take good care of them so that you can free yourself from their entanglement and live harmoniously with your feelings as they come and go.
Fear, sadness and helplessness are the main soil on which a feeling of abandonment can spring. Feeling being isolated and lonely often comes with these abandonment situations. Yet in this case, loneliness has more to do with not being understood, rather than being abandoned. Not being understood is probably the core element which feeds a feeling of abandonment.
It is important therefore to recognise what it is about you that has not been understood. It may have been a deep-rooted insecurity which brought a need for company, it may have been a fear of being alone or a desire to be supported. We tend to focus our attention on the resentment and the pain that an abandonment situation creates. Yet, in doing this we overlook the fact that it is the unsatisfied need which created the feeling of abandonment and as we look deeper into this unsatisfied need it becomes possible to recognise that a deeper need is calling for attention; the need to be understood. Something about you has not been understood, thus the question that you can ask yourself, ‘What is it about me that has not been understood?’
In a previous talk on being understood I was mentioning that it is vital that a person feel recognised in her individuality, in her specificity of who she is, especially during childhood. This is what being understood means and it seems that in your case this understanding hasn’t happened. It may have to do with the fact that no one was able to truly recognise you, or that due to some fear you keep your heart closed and unconsciously hide yourself behind some protection mechanism.
You are fortunate to be in this specific relationship, it gives you an opportunity to better understand what your abandonment trauma is really about and how it affects you. Besides, it is not only this relationship which triggers your abandonment trauma, if you look a little bit closer you are bound to recognise that many situations in your life act as a trigger to your abandonment issue.

In your question you are associating insecurity with abandonment in a relationship. Insecurity in a relationship is not necessarily due to an abandonment issue. Insecurity in general and within a relationship is mainly due to a lack of self-confidence. A lack of self-confidence has multiple sources and eventually lead to a fear of being abandoned. It would be worth finding out whether your insecurity is linked with your fear of being abandoned or not. It may have to do with some other unmet needs.
Check whether what I am saying is relevant for you or not.

This reminds me of Susan, a married woman who had a deep need for security. Her need for security was so intense that she regularly asked her husband to hold her and support her in the different aspects of their married life. Yet her frequent requests became too much for her husband, so much so that he started disagreeing with her demands and became often absent from home for that reason. Her husband attitude left Susan helpless and at a loss. She started to feel abandoned, yet her feeling of abandonment had very little to do with her husband’s behaviour. At some point during a session, Susan was able to recognise how insecure she was and where this insecurity came from. A controlling father whom she was afraid to displease and from whom she wanted a heart-to-heart connexion which he was unable to provide. Recognising this, she started to feel more at ease with herself and could begin to trust herself a little more which put an end to her abandonment feeling.

Coming back to your question and to be able to answer you more accurately, I would need to know what you are insecure about and what is your abandonment issue about. How does this abandonment manifests in the relationship which you are currently in?

The second part of your question is « Why are we always attracted by those who are able to trigger our trauma and our insecurity? »
It seems that you are looking at your issue from the point of view of being abandoned and fearing being left alone; in doing so you keep yourself entangled with the pain that the abandonment created. A different approach would be to look at your issue from the point of view of missing something.
‘What is it that I miss?’ and further ‘What is it that I long for?’
Approaching your abandonment from this angle will immediately discard the victim role, the ‘poor me who was abandoned’ and bring you into a more responsible position of questioning what it is that you miss and desire so much.
When you ask yourself this question, ‘what is it that I miss?’, you are most likely to find that you are missing is a caring connexion, missing a sense of security, a sense of wellbeing. You are alone and you feel insecure which in turn brings forth a desire to be accompanied, to be supported. With this approach, you’re not in a victim role anymore, you are on a positive exploration for that which will make you feel whole again.

When we feel abandoned we find ourselves empty, we find ourselves missing something and naturally we tend to look outside for what we miss since we have been abandoned by someone. In reality it is not so much the person that we miss but what the person provided for us, mainly a feeling of security, of wholeness. It is that feeling of security, that feeling of wholeness that you try to regain in each person that you are in a relationship with. Yet looking outside for it may satisfy your need for a short time, but since it is subject to the willingness and capacity of the other it can therefore be short-lived.
This is what happened to Susan.

Another aspect of being triggered is that all undigested, non-integrated psychological traumas call for being digested, integrated. Existence or Life is geared towards harmony, towards wellbeing and when our nervous system is in stress, it tends to find ways to recover from stress in order to return to a more harmonious functioning. Since your abandonment issue has not yet found a resolution, you are unconsciously sending chemical signals (pheromones) saying ‘please come and fulfil my insecurity’ and these signals are unconsciously picked up by those who are likely to match your request which they do in the beginning, yet they also want to fill in an emptiness in their being, so it works for a while, yet not for long.

You are attracted by those who will trigger your insecurity simply because you are looking in the wrong direction. You move in life with the belief that someone will fill your insecurity hole. Your childhood experience was that a sense of security was given by a parent, by someone and you keep looking for a ‘someone’ to fill your inner emptiness, but this is bound to fail.
I could compare this with being hungry. When you are hungry and want to stop the hunger sensation, you eat and at some point you feel satisfied and the hunger sensation disappears. If you stop eating too soon, the hunger sensation remains and it remains until you eat to your heart’s content or rather to your stomach's content.
In a same way, you are hungry for a caring connexion; your hunger is not about food but about a deep desire to be recognised, accepted, held, cared for and supported. Your parents have never given you the opportunity to satisfy this hunger so you look for it everywhere and try to satisfy it within the relationship that you are in. The problem is that your partner is also unable to fulfil your desire for a real connexion.

In order for you to come to term with this abandonment issue, you will need to face what it is about you which calls to be fulfilled. What is the core need which created so much pain in you?
And for this you will need to bring the focus back to you with the two questions that I’ve mentioned earlier. ‘What is it that I miss?’ and further ‘What is it that I long for?’
Turning your question from ‘Why are we...’ to ‘Why am I...’ is not going to help you even though the focus will be on you and not turned to a generality. It is not going to help you because ‘why’ does not matter. What matters is the reality in which you are in, your current reality.  And the reality in which you are in is that the pain of being abandoned is still an open wound which calls for care and healing. That heartbreaking pain is what is important, nothing else is. Gather the courage to face the pain of your broken heart and you don’t have to do this alone, you can be accompanied, supported in facing your pain. You simply need to ask. Support is always available when needed.

For various reasons it may be difficult for you to ask. You may have the following though form, ‘what’s the point, anyway I will never get what I want, I’ll never be understood’, or as mentioned earlier, you want a specific person to satisfy your need and you carry resentment towards that person. Another possibility is that you carry shame around asking for help, it may seem like a begging for you and you would feel humiliated to beg for help. Wanting help to come to you without asking for it is a common child brooding strategy. It is similar to want someone to come to you and satisfy your need.
The opposite is needed, it is you who need to make the steps; help comes when we are ready to receive it, when our mind opens to the possibility of accepting that we are on the wrong track, that we don’t know. It does not come when we request, when we are in a ‘it is my right to be helped’ attitude, a little humbleness is needed for help to bear fruits.

Let’s stop here for today. I trust that with this talk your understanding of what you need to do to resolve, to integrate your issue of abandonment will have clarified and that you will be able to make the needed steps in order to bring peace to your heart.

Let’s make a short pause now before I answer your questions.
Questions from Participants…

Right, it’s now time to end our meeting today. I look forward to our next Zoom meeting where I will answer a question on the Desire to be loved.
Thank you for your patient and attentive listening.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_18-October-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Fear, Expectations and Acceptance.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our series of meetings after our Self-enquiry retreat interruption. This 5-day self-enquiry retreat was an intense and fruitful time for those who participated. An opportunity for them to come closer to experience their original face, a face which has nothing to do with the personality. I’m happy and grateful that we could do this retreat online. A warm thank you to Niya and the team for organising and supporting this process. Not every participant pondered on ‘what Trust is’, yet I’m confident that everyone’s self-confidence has strengthened by participating in this retreat. Thank you to all of you.

Let’s now come to the reality of now with today’s question. « We have three basic fears. The fear of not being able to survive, the fear of being hurt and the fear of not being loved. Why is it that the expectations that we have on others, together with the requests to fulfil our needs make us unable to accept ourselves as well as not accepting others? »

I’d first like to draw your attention on how the question is phrased. Using ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ indicates that our questioner is merely intellectualising something that he or she cannot overtly connect with. Generalising or intellectualising is a tendency that some people have when they dare not expose their own issues. It is a common escaping mechanism and it would have been more fruitful for our questioner to own his question by using ‘me’ instead of ‘we’.
I strongly recommend using ‘me’ when you raise a question. It will help bring the focus on you, rather than on some unknown entity.

Besides this point, it seems that in this question there is a discontinuity between the assertiveness about the basic fears and the question about expectations. What is most probable is that our questioner is unconsciously trying to bring attention on his own fear, his fear of not having his needs met.
As I mentioned in the series of talks on Fear in December last year, fear can have a wide range of origin; mainly depending on how we have integrated our childhood environment. The three fears mentioned by our questioner, not being able to survive, being hurt and not loved, have to do with his own childhood environment, with the way that he was considered and treated as a child. Even though these fears are common to many, they are not necessarily ‘basic fears’ since fear is multi-layers. One fear tends to hide another fear in the same way as the Russian Matriochkas dolls do by hiding a smaller doll inside the first one and so on until the last tiny little doll appears. The layers of an onion is also a good illustration of this multi-layering. In the case of our questioner, the fear of not being able to survive translates into the fear of not having his needs met. Yet underneath his fear of not having his needs met, there is another layer of fear which has to do with the fear of being oneself. Asserting oneself, expressing our needs, expressing our desires requires courage. The courage to dare expressing ourselves as we feel right to do.

Unfortunately, most of the time we have given up expressing our needs and our desires mainly because we did try before, yet without any result. We gave up and formed the belief that ‘it is pointless to express my needs, anyway, they will never understand me’. These words or similar ones are often expressed during individual sessions.
Even though on the surface we have given up the desire to have our needs met, this desire remains as a strong craving in us and it manifest as expectations. We expect that someone will fulfil our needs and this becomes particularly true within a relationship. Both partners expect that the other will fulfil their need.
In a recent session, Judy was struggling in her relationship with her boyfriend and was at a loss on how to make him understand that she did not accept his disorderly behaviour. She tried many times to speak about this with him but she could never really make her point and she ended up bearing his behaviour, even feeling guilty to ask him to change. She never really dared to express herself since she was afraid that if she did, he would leave her and she did not know how she could cope with being a single mother. Her need for recognition could not be met.
The boyfriend was himself in a similar situation, he could not understand why she did not understand him, why his behaviour was not accepted, why she could not accept him as he is. Since both of them had the same need of being understood, recognised and accepted, none of them could fulfil their partner’s need and the consequence was that both of them closed their hearts to the other and started living as strangers. Both carried a strong resentment towards the other and were not able to come to a satisfying solution.
This case is a good illustration of how we want the other to fulfil our need and how we close our hearts when our needs cannot be fulfilled by the other. I’m sure that you can recognise similar situations in your life.

Our questioner asked, « Why is it that the expectations that we have on others, together with the requests to fulfil our needs make us unable to accept ourselves as well as not accepting others? »

It is worth looking a little deeper into this matter and understand what is it that brings a person to expect from others and to close her heart when her expectation is not met.
We generally expect from others when our basic needs have not been met during our childhood. As a child we were dependent on our parents to fulfil our physical and psychological needs. Some of these needs were fulfilled, yet some remained unfulfilled and it is these unfulfilled needs that are still active in us. That’s why we look for someone to fulfil them and unconsciously project on our spouse, on our partners or on our friends the responsibility to do that.  
Projecting this responsibility on someone else maintain us in dependence and it keeps us in a childish state. By doing so, we avoid being responsible for our own needs and most important, it helps us keep the initial pain away.
You can refer to the talk on the need to be understood and the exercises that I suggested during the talk on Relationships and Co-dependency if you would like to clarify this aspect for yourself.

To be able to have our needs satisfied, we first need to recognise them accurately. Just as fear can be multilayer, needs can also vary according to each person’s development and a person may have more than one unfulfilled need. Yet what is important to recognise is the insecurity that comes with not having our needs fulfilled. Feeling secure is most certainly our basic need, all other needs are pointers towards this basic need for security. You may have noticed for yourself that once a need is fulfilled worry disappears, you feel at ease, contented and the feeling of insecurity has disappeared.
The feeling of insecurity, being insecure is the base on which all our different needs are spreading from. Living our life is easier when we feel secure and trust. It is not possible to feel secure when one or more need is not fulfilled. Often it is simply a question of recognition. In the case of Judy, as it is for many people, it is not really the unfulfilled need which is creating a problem, it is the belief that the need cannot, or will not, be fulfilled which is in the way.
When we believe we don’t trust. It is not a question of trusting someone but more a question of trusting oneself.
We mistrust ourselves. There are various reasons for this. Being judged, criticised or humiliated creates pain in our hearts, just like being abandoned or not being understood does. This pain can become so deep that we fear being judged, criticised or humiliated. But in reality it is our painful hearts that we fear to sense and not the judgement, criticisms or the humiliation.
This is where many people miss the point and indulge in different psychological fears, thus missing the reality fear of sensing their painful hearts.
Try to understand this point. What you fear is not so much the judgements from others or the violent and abusive situations that may come your way, what you primarily fear is to sense the pain of your heart.  Your painful heart is a reality and because your heart is painful, you do the best that you can to fight or escape feeling that pain. You are constantly in a fight or fly mode with your painful heart.

I’m just reminded of a person who strongly believed that the judgement voices in her head were true. The judgements came from her family members and she could not detach herself from the judgement that she was not good enough and will never succeed in life. She was completely identified with that judgement, not realising that it was simply an idea that one of her family members had about her. She did not trust herself and did not recognise her qualities, her value. In other words, she gave more importance to her family members ideas about her than to herself. Once she could recognise this, something shifted in her, the identification with her belief started to dissolve.
   
What is also frequently in the way is that we are often blinded by the idea that our need can only be fulfilled by one specific person or met in a specific way. We tend to cling to our past experiences and this makes us oblivious to the fact that our need is met in the present. During individual sessions, I often need to point to the person that right now, within this relationship, she is understood, she is accepted. It eventually does take some time for the person to recognise the fact that yes, at this moment I am understood, I am accepted.
When this recognition is fully acknowledged by the person then the need is fulfilled, it dissolves and the closed heart opens. Intellectually recognising that I am understood or accepted does not suffice, it is a good beginning, yet not enough. To completely dispel the need, the recognition needs to enter the core of our being, it needs to eradicate all beliefs and become a ‘yes’. ‘Yes, this is true, I am understood’ or ‘yes it is true, I’m accepted’ and when this acceptation takes place a deep relaxation and peace follow.

When we expect our needs to be met, we resent. We resent because our expectation is not met. It is resentment that makes us close our hearts and when our hearts are closed, it becomes difficult to accept others. It also becomes difficult to accept ourselves because we fear meeting with our painful hearts. The fear to meet with our painful heart is a deeper layer of the fear of meeting oneself and for many people the fear of meeting their painful heart act as a strong barrier towards freedom, towards a genuine acceptance of themselves.
I’ve mentioned this many times, acceptance is the key. When we are in denial of our pain, we close ourselves to the beauty that we are, we close ourselves to our innocence, to our creativity, to our spontaneity. We turn the strength of our capacity to move forward in life into stubbornness, into a ‘no’ to who we are and as a result our lives are luck warm, uninteresting, dull.
You have needs, accept that it is so, you have fears, accept that it is so. It is this acceptance that will unlock your painful hearts. When we accept we are manifesting love, we are manifesting what we are. Be in acceptance and all will be well.

Let’s stop here for today and make a short pause before I answer your questions.
Questions from Participants...

Ok, let’s stop here for today. Thank you for your patient and attentive listening and I look forward to next week Zoom meeting where I will answer a question on Abandonment and Insecurity.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_11-October-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Stubbornness and Determination.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our series of meetings.

Some of you mentioned that I often talk about stubbornness in different ways, so I’d like to continue this series of talks with the following question. « I’ve heard you mentioned that stubbornness is a good ally and that it can also be our worse enemy. I don’t quite understand this contradiction, could you explain further on this, as well as what the difference is between stubbornness and determination? »

I can understand that it is difficult for you to grasp this apparent contradiction since stubbornness is often labelled as a negative attitude and rarely seen as a positive one. Stubbornness is primarily the expression of a refusal, of a ‘no’. No, I don’t want this, whatever ‘this’ is. It can be something that a person does not want to accept doing or refuses to say or does not want to admit. What really matters is the unwavering of the person’s attitude.
It is easy to recognise this unwavering in a child who does not want to speak to mama or papa any more because he felt so hurt by their blaming words or because he is punished for having done something that his parents did not allow. The child will be brooding for some time and then unwillingly because brooding isolate him, he will return to his usual way of connecting with his parents. Yet internally, since he is hurt, he will have a ‘no’ and carry resentment towards his parents.
Brooding is a temporary form of stubbornness, often seen with children. A child or an adult can also use brooding as a way of influencing others in order to get what he wants.

When a child is beaten, he feels humiliated which will tend to lead him to not express his pain of being beaten, he will repress his tears and bear the beating. His resentment towards the one who beats him is so strong that he takes revenge by not showing his pain and his tears. The main drive in this attitude is to not show any sign of weakness since appearing weak would create a power-related relationship. From being a victim, the child moves into being a tyrant, ‘I will not surrender to you’ becomes his main motto. It is also a way of taking revenge over the person who is inflicting the punishment.
The humiliation, the psychological pain is so intense, goes so deep that there is no other possible response than to resent and hate. Because of this refusal to appear weak, his resentment and hate cannot be expressed overtly, they transform into a deep-rooted ‘no’, a stubborn ‘no’.
In this situation, not appearing weak as to do with wanting to win over someone, it is a power struggle to not let the other person be the winner.
This form of stubbornness is resentment driven. We are hurt and because we cannot openly rebel, we resent. It is a revengeful attitude. We want to take revenge on the one who has hurt us as well as not show that we are hurt.
‘I will not talk to you any more’, or 'I will not love you any more’, or ‘you’re not my mama/papa’ are the usual thought forms that accompany the resentment.
I’m sure that some of you can recognise this unwavering attitude in yourself or in your child or in your spouse.

Fear of doing something or moving in an unknown direction can also trigger resistance in a person. This resistance can be reinforced and become a stubborn ‘no’ when the person is being forced to do what it does not want to do. Being forced creates resentment and stubbornness.
When a person is accused, wrongly or not, of having made a mistake, or of not being in accordance with a certain norm or criteria, shame will arise with a strong reluctance to admit having made that mistake. Resentment towards the humiliating person will usually follow like a shadow.
Whether it is being forced, made ashamed, humiliated, not respected, not considered, left alone or abandoned, all these situations will create pain in a person together with a strong resentment towards the one who is creating the pain. As the hurt situation repeats, as we are blamed or humiliated with words like ‘it is wrong to cry’, ‘what face do you have to cry’, ‘don’t be weak, be strong’ or even ‘shame on you’, we try our best to pretend that we are not hurt. We want to keep a face and appear strong. Yet in doing this we delude ourselves by pushing away the pain of being hurt. Pushing the pain away creates a double bind. We shut ourselves to the pain, not wanting to feel it and we become resentful towards the one who created the pain.
Pushing our pain away seems to be a natural tendency, yet by doing so we reject that part of us which is in pain, thus creating more suffering. Being resentful also seems to be a natural tendency, as we want to push away the person who created pain for us. Yet by doing so we close our hearts and isolate ourselves. We imprisoned ourselves in a double-sided refusal. This is how stubbornness becomes our worse enemy. It creates our prison walls with no way out.
This unhealthy circle is unfortunately common to many people and it becomes a strong stuck point in which many are trapped in. The ‘Autobiography in Five Chapters’ is it a pretty good account of this double-sided refusal and the way out of it.

When we are in a refusal to admit the obvious, we are denying ourselves. Our stubbornness then becomes our worse enemy in the sense that it prevents us from opening ourselves to ourselves.
What to do in this case?
The only thing to do in this case is to recognise that we are in this strong ‘no’, that we are saying ‘no’ with all our being.
However, fighting this 'no' by wanting to impose a ‘yes’ instead of the ‘no’ is what most people try to do since they have the thought form, ‘I should not say no, I should say yes’. This attempt is bound to fail because you’re opposing another stubbornness to the already existing one. It becomes a tug of war between two stubbornness. The only intelligent thing to do is to say yes to the stubbornness, yes to the no. ‘Yes, I am stubborn; yes, I don’t want to open my heart; yes, I don’t want to admit this pain in me; yes, I don’t want to feel this pain’.

Moving out of stubbornness is a step-by-step process.
First the recognition and the acceptance, ‘Yes it is like this’. Then questioning, ‘What is this stubbornness really about? and ‘What pushes me to be stubborn, to have this strong no?’
These two steps will create an opening. You’re not fighting the stubbornness any more; you have accepted it and you are giving it space to express what it wants to express.
As you open to the stubbornness different feelings will most certainly pop up.

• A feeling of shame may arise first, since being stubborn is considered negative. Allow the feeling of shame, sense how it manifests in your body and expresses all the thoughts, the ideas or the beliefs that come with it. ‘Yes, I’m ashamed to be stubborn; it is wrong to be stubborn; I should not say no; what will people say about me?’ and so on.

• Once the shame feeling has been recognised, accepted and expressed what may then come to the conscious mind is helplessness and insecurity. ‘I don’t know what to do; I’m at a loss with this; I feel alone in this, I need help.’ Once again, give space to these feelings and thoughts, express them as well as you can.

• At this point fear usually arises. The fear to honestly open to the stubbornness ‘What will happen if I let go of this stubbornness, will I survive?’ This fear is the fear of losing an identity that we have taken on a long time ago. There will also be the fear of discovering, of unveiling the vulnerability that the stubbornness is veiling.

Once we gather courage to face and express these different feelings as best as we can, a door opens to the truth of who is the one behind the stubbornness. What we usually find is a heartbroken little girl or little boy, totally helpless, desperate and utterly sad. A child who simply wants to feel secure, loved and most of all to be accepted as he his.
When we accept our stubbornness, its direction changes, its quality changes. It moves from a strength against something to a strength for something. It moves from denial to affirmation, from rejection to support. It moves from being our worse enemy to being our good ally.

Stubbornness as a Good Ally
The positive side of stubbornness can be found in our protection mechanisms. We can have an unwavering ‘no’ when we don’t want to do something which does not feel right for us. This often happens to children when their parents tend to force them to do something that does not feel right for the child.
I remember the case of a child who did not want to go back to his boarding school on a Monday morning because he had belly pain. His mother was insisting that he should go back to school, she would not tolerate such nonsense of faking pain to avoid school. But the child remained unwavering in his request not to go to school and claim of his belly ache. The stepmother was called for support and she noticed at once that the boy was not faking, so they call a doctor who identified an appendix inflammation. The child was sent to the nearest hospital for immediate surgery. His stubbornness of not wanting to go to school saved him.
I’m sure that you can recall situations in your childhood when you felt that it was not right to do something. Felling not right to do something is quite different from not wanting to do something. Feeling that it is not right comes from inner wisdom and not from a refusal or a denial.

A healthy stubbornness does not divide, does not exclude any part of us, on the contrary, it includes and embraces all parts of our being. It becomes a strength, a moving forward energy. All the intensity that was put into a refusal, into denial is now available to support a move forward in a direction that feels right for the person. It acts as an arrow aiming towards its target.
Unlike the toxic stubbornness, which carries a rigid, fierce and violent energy that is abusive to its owner and those around him, the healthy stubbornness carries a softness, a relaxed, yet firm determination to attain a goal. It is supportive of the person’s desire to achieve something. It is not stubbornness any more it becomes determination and as such it brings passion and joy into the person’s life.

Moving from stubbornness to determination is not necessarily easy for the simple reason that we tend to hold on to our stubbornness since it protects us from feeling our painful hearts. Not wanting to feel our painful hearts, we close our hearts and this isolates us, makes us feel lonely and unable to truthfully connect with ourselves as well as with others.
Unlocking our closed heart will require a willingness to open, it will require patience, it will require understanding and most of all it will require compassion. Compassion towards this one who has been hurt and feels isolated and lonely. Once we start looking at our stubbornness from this angle, love is at play.
Love is the only key which can unlock any closed hearts.

I do hope that with this talk, your understanding of stubbornness is now clearer and that you use this understanding to move from Stubbornness and Determination. In the next few days, we will start a Self-enquiry Retreat. This retreat can be a wonderful opportunity for any of you to test how steady your determination to meet in your authenticity is. All you will have to do during the retreat will be to expose the bogus, the fake you, the beliefs that you have about yourself. By doing so your true self, your authenticity will reveal itself effortlessly.
Your authenticity is, in truth, the only thing that counts.

Let’s stop here for today and make a short pause before I answer your questions.
Questions from Participants...

All right, let’s stop here for today. Due to the Self-enquiry Retreat starting this coming Saturday, we will resume our weekly meeting on Tuesday, October 11th. I look forward to this next Zoom meeting where I will answer a question on Expectations and Acceptance.
Thank you for your patient and attentive listening.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_27-September-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Stress and Mental Exhaustion.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to this new series of meetings.

Today’s question seems to be a good topic to start this new series of talks since many of you are most probably concerned in one way or other by the effect of stress in your life.
Here is the question. « Recently we hear that many people are stressed to the point of being mentally exhausted and becoming seriously ill or depressed. How can we stop this mental exhaustion? »

During a previous series of meeting on Fear, I mentioned about the startle reflex that our nervous system generates when we are surprised or face a potential threat. When we fear, stress is generated and this manifest in our body at different levels mainly with the increase of heart rate and blood flow.
What we call stress is in fact a chain reaction of three different elements. An outside situation, a response from our nervous system followed by some action. 
Stress starts with what scientists call the HPA-Axis activation. To say this in simple words, in response to a certain situation our brain sends a signal to our kidneys via the sympathetic nervous system to release adrenaline into our blood system so that we can fight, fly or freeze. If the potential danger gets too overwhelming another hormone, cortisol, is then sent in the blood stream to help cope with the situation. This is a normal and healthy response from our sympathetic nervous system that regulates our survival mechanism. Once the situation is dealt with, all levels of adrenaline and cortisol return to a normal ratio via the parasympathetic system. The parasympathetic system, known as the ‘rest & digest’ system, is part of the neuro-vegetative system which regulates all our vital functions such as resting, digesting food, excreting waste, crying, salivation, or becoming sexually aroused.

In short, stress is a reflex reaction, both physiological and psychological, of the body in the face of a difficult situation that requires adaptation. As such, stress is part of a healthy functioning of our body-mind system and it has its advantages. It stimulates motivation, it enables a better estimation of the situation at hand and helps deal with it. It also stimulates the joy of doing something that we like.
The quest for a boost of adrenaline is quite common to those who like to take risks in dangerous sports or more commonly, those who enjoy a rollercoaster ride at the fair. I’m sure that you’ve all enjoyed a boost of adrenaline at some point or other in your life. We usually call it excitement. It can be the excitement of buying a new outfit, the excitement of receiving a gift, of going for a trip, or meeting a friend or a lover. All these situations are stress related in the sense that they provoke a release of adrenaline in our body.

This is to say that stress is part of a normal and healthy functioning of our body-mind system. The unhealthy or toxic stress comes from an overload of cortisol in the body, the chemical hormone responsible for stress. When excessive or repeated physical, psychological or emotional arousal is being experienced by a person, our nervous system keeps producing cortisol to the point that this stress hormone accumulates in our nervous system and create a mental exhaustion or burnout syndrome. It is common for those who are in a prolonged stressful environment to become depressed, ill or have suicidal thoughts.
Situations that are creating stress are sometimes obvious, such as an overload of work, financial difficulties, relationship difficulties or parental difficulties. School studies and exams are the number one cause of stress for children and teenagers. Unfortunately and mostly due to wrong beliefs about education, their stress remains most of the time unnoticed and thus not taken care of.
What is less obviously stress related is illnesses, physical or psychological traumas and all fear related situations. Control over others and hypervigilance, which is a subtle form of control, are also stress factors.
A young child afraid of the dark or afraid of ghosts is experiencing stress and the only thing that he needs is a supportive parent who will make him feel secure without denying his fear.

Mental exhaustion, stress or burn out syndrome are not specific to Chinese people, they are quite common all over the world these days.
Recently Anabelle, a woman in her mid-forties, was telling me how her life as a mother was difficult with her two teenage daughters who are constantly arguing and behaving improperly, breaking the established rules. She kept on talking about what the girls did and how she was at a loss about what to do with this situation, blaming herself and feeling guilty for not being a good mother. She was not realising that the situation was too much to handle for her and that she was overstressed. In fact, the whole family has been overstressed for a few years since they went through a terrorist attack in their African home town. From that day onwards, the two girls have been bedwetting every night and their rebellious behaviour is most certainly acting out of a deep fear linked with the stress of the terrorist attack.
In some ways, stress can be defined as a fear of not being able to cope, or a fear of not being able to make it. This is particularly true for babies during the birth phase when there is something obstructing the natural flow of the birth. It can be the umbilical cord around the neck of the child, a wrong positioning of the baby or the mother’s tensed womb due to a fear of giving birth. Giving birth can be a stressful event for the mother but also for the baby. The baby’s stress remains unnoticed and uncared for, yet he will probably carry all is life remains of this fear of not being able to make it.
Repressing feelings and emotions is also stress generating for the nervous system and when the repression is carried for long it can cause mental exhaustion and serious illnesses. All the person’s energy is burned out in trying to cope with the stressing situation.
Just as it is important to recognise when we are in a shock state, it is important to recognise that we are stressed. Stress and Shock State are in fact almost identical since both are the outcome of the HPA-Axis activation, a release of cortisol in the body. 

You ask, « How can we stop this mental exhaustion? »
Well, this all depends on the situation which is causing the stress and sometimes it is a combination of different situations that are creating an overload of stress.
The example of Anabelle is interesting. Her stress started at an early stage of her marriage with financial difficulties when her husband could not provide the necessary bills to be paid for his work as an independent plumber. Anabelle helped her husband by doing the billing for him, yet this was a tedious task for her, which created stress and resentment in her. Then a child was born, and a second one a year or so later. She was at a loss on how to be a mother with her two daughters since no one was there to help her. Her husband went to work in a different city and only came back home once a month. This situation was also creating stress for the children who became rebellious. And then came a terrorist attack in the city where they were living. The whole family was deeply shocked, even though none of them were physically injured. The relationship with her husband became difficult since Anabelle did not feel understood nor emotionally supported by him. She tried to cope as well as she could with all these situations, yet even her trying to cope was a source of an increase of stress.
It is the combination of these different stress factors that brought Anabelle to reach exhaustion and become depressed to the point that she did not see any meaning in living. Suicidal thoughts started to kick in, and she was deeply depressed for about two years.
Since she was mentally exhausted and depressed, she could not clearly see what was creating stress for her. It all seemed to be a huge mountain of unbearable situations overwhelming her psychologically as well as emotionally.

She reached out for support and what helped her in the first place was to recognise the chain of situations which created stress for her. Clearly identifying the source of stress helps reduce the impact of stress in a person, simply because when we are stressed we tend to amplify or magnify the reality of the situation which is creating stress. By doing so we make it worse than it really is.

Recognising the sources of her stress helped Anabelle to create a distance with them. This is an important point because it is not always possible to remove the stress factors, the causes of stress. In her case, as a mother, she still had to take care of her two rebellious daughters.
Expressing her overload, expressing her thoughts and the feelings that she was entangled with helped her release the emotional charge that she was holding.
The accumulation of stress together with the difficulty to talk about it and to be understood is, itself an additional stress factor which generates an emotional heaviness for the person. Once a person connects with her stress and starts communicating about what she is experiencing, deflation takes place in her chest and with it comes a relaxation, a sensation of space, of lightness.
After her emotional release, which was mainly crying silently, I suggested a resting period to Anabelle, so that her parasympathetic system could do its work undisturbed.

To summarise, here are the steps to move out of stress

• Ask for support
• Clearly identify the source of stress
• Create a psychological distance from the source of stress
• If possible, remove the source of stress
• Express the thoughts and the feelings linked with the stress situation to remove its emotional charge. 
• Rest and digest
• Be gentle to yourself in becoming physically and mentally active again.

Of course, in the case of Anabelle, not all her stress was released during the session. It will take some time to free herself completely from her overload of stress, mainly because it is a multilayer stress. The good point is that she recognised that she could unburden herself by recognising and expressing what was stressful for her. She felt understood and accompanied in this process which help her to understand that she can now move in a healthier direction. She also mentioned that she could trust herself more to keep moving in that direction.

I’d like to add a few comments to the above steps.
Just as stress factors can be different for each person, the response that a person will bring forth to her own stress factors is unique to each person since the response will mainly be an outcome of the person’s upbringing. Some will bear stress until complete exhaustion, some will develop and illness in order to remove themselves from the stress factors, they will escape from their stressed reality by being ill, which is quite different from developing an illness due to stress factors. Others will be unwilling to make the needed decisions to remove the stress factors because it would imply radical decision-making such as giving up a job, moving to a different location, or ending a relationship.

The consequences of prolonged stressful situations are both physical and psychological. It generally leads to a chronic fatigue syndrome with multiple side effects such as sleeping problems, low immune system, digestive problems, muscle or joint pain and headaches to name a few.

An important point to realise is that we often put the responsibility on the stress factor rather than on ourselves. ‘It is because of this person or because of this activity that I am stressed and became mentally exhausted’. This is an old-aged habit of avoiding responsibility.

Taking responsibility for oneself is an important healing factor in the process of moving out of a chronic fatigue or burnout syndrome. Taking responsibility implies following the above-mentioned steps first and then continuing with setting up a daily routine activity in order to regain a full-living potential. Setting up an activity which allows spending time for ourselves in a pleasant environment will also prevent us from falling back into the negative thinking that stress is inducing. This daily routine needs to be both physical and mental such as gardening, creative writing or painting, clay modelling, dancing or practising sport. Participating in enjoyable physical and mental activities with others will support a return to a more peaceful state where the body and the mind are not stressed. The idea is to get the body and the mind gently back to a normal, non-stressful functioning. Engaging the body and the mind in some activity and resting whenever it feels appropriate.

Taking responsibility also implies questioning the reasons which made me remain in such a stressful environment. ‘What was I trying to achieve or to gain by remaining in this stressful environment? Why was I not able to say ‘no’ or to move away from what became a stressful environment?’
This questioning is the last step of moving out of stress, it comes last, it comes after having dealt with all the physical and psychological symptoms that the stress factors created. It would be pointless to start with these questions since the mind is already in an overload condition.
What you will most probably discover with this questioning is that you have a tendency to let yourself enter stressful situations because you fear to be yourself. For various reasons you dare not be yourself, you dare not say ‘no’ when it feels right to say ‘no’. The fear to be oneself comes most of the time from unsupportive parents or teachers who did not allow you to express yourself as you felt like to do, or because they punished you when you did. It also has to do with not being understood and not being treated respectfully.
Earlier on I mentioned that stress can be defined as a fear of not being able to cope, or a fear of not being able to make it. This is true, yet this is only the outcome of a deeper fear, the fear to be oneself. Stress finds its roots in the fear to be oneself.
So if you want to stop mental exhaustion, as you’ve mentioned, you will need to look into your fear of being yourself.
Remember that it is pointless to want others to change, to be different; they cannot. All that you can aim to do to bring an end to stress or to stop mental exhaustion is to say, yes to you, as you are, and not as others want you to be.    

With this talk and the previous ones, you have plenty of elements to support a return to a genuine expression of yourself which happens when there is a direct connection between what is felt inside and what is being expressed. In other words, when you express your truth.

Let’s stop here for today and make a short pause before I answer your questions.
Questions from Participants...

All right, let’s stop here for today knowing that we will meet again next week with the interesting topic of Stubbornness and Determination.
Thank you for your patient and attentive listening and I look forward to meeting you all again next week.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_20-September-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on moving from Personality to Awakening.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Monday zoom meeting,

It feels right to have our last topic of this series on ‘moving from personality to awakening’. It is a good follow up to our last meeting is also the perfect follow-up to the retreat that just took place during this May holidays. The question raised is the following: « From the aspect of awakening, since experiencing our true nature is enough, why do we need to know and recognize our personalities? Can you share something about the process of moving from knowing our personality to experiencing our true nature and what is meant by living our true nature?’»

From the standpoint of awakening, dealing with personality issues is not needed since our True Nature is not concerned with the personality and is in total acceptance with what is. True nature is beyond the personality realm. Yet this does not mean that one who is awaken does not have a personality. A personality is needed to function in life, to respond to what life brings otherwise one is simply like a vegetable or a new born baby, completely dependent on others to be fed and attended to.
Awakening is the lived experience, the realization that there is no duality and when duality cesses to exists, Oneness is present. Awakening is a state of Oneness, of melting in existence. Not that we are Oneness or that we have become Oneness, not even that we are one with existence, all these are dual standpoints, the only reality (or ultimate truth as some of you like to word it) is Oneness is. A total disappearance of duality.

This total disappearance of duality can last for a few seconds, a few minutes or for a whole life. In Japan they use different words such as Kensho, Satori or Samadhi to point to the depth of an awakening. I could use the comparison of putting a toe in water as opposed to fully immersing the whole body in it. This does not mean that there are degrees in awakening, whether it is Kensho (a short-lived experience) or Samadhi (a life lasting experience), awakening is the same. Awakening is the total disappearance of the identification with what we refer to as ‘me’. And when this identification disappear, only Oneness remains.
It is the identification with a ‘me’ which creates duality.
In a previous talk on Personality and True Nature, I mentioned that awakening is about regaining connection with our essence, that it is about living from our essence and not from this sense of ‘me’. I also mentioned that the personality takes its source in the identification with a ‘me’. Our personality is a multi-layered duality and you can recognize this multi-layered duality when you are talking about ‘me and my sensations, me and my feelings, me and my ideas, me and my thoughts, me and my judgements’. It is always about ‘me’ and something other than ‘me’. Thus the question: ‘Who is this me?’ whom I constantly refer to.

You’re asking: ‘Why do we need to know and recognize our personalities?’ precisely for this reason that it is the identification with the personality which is holding back a full immersion in Oneness. It is common for participants in awareness retreats to experience Kensho, a short-lived experience of Oneness. Yet, what brings them back into duality is the identification with their personality, the identification with a sense of ‘me’. It is this identification with the personality which creates a barrier to fully experience Oneness. Please understand that the barrier is not the personality in itself, the barrier is the identification with the personality and the whole work on the personality is to recognize what we are identified with and how this identification operates so that the identification can dissolve by itself.
We all tend to carry judgement about ourselves, negative ones and positive ones. These judgements easily turn into a belief and when we believe that we are like this or like that, we start behaving according to this belief, to the point that the belief become our identity. And this makes our life miserable and painful; it is our beliefs which are creating suffering, nothing else is.
Since you’re all done some work on yourself, you must have had this experience of seeing through a belief that you were carrying. You believed that you were not lovable, that the whole world was against you, that you were this or that and one day you’ve realized that it is not true, that this was only an idea put into your mind by others or created by your painful heart. And when you see through a belief, there is an immediate relief, a deep relaxation follows this recognition.
Once a belief is seen through it effortlessly dissolve. Walking on the path means seeing through all our beliefs, all our identifications.
In a way it is not so much our personality that we need to recognize but our beliefs and mostly that we are identified with those beliefs.

‘We need to know and recognise our personalities', for two main reasons.
One is to dissolve what prevents us from being in contact with our True Nature and the second is more practical, more down to earth since dissolving our beliefs help us to live a more relaxed and joyful life.
When doing the work on the personality, a person can gain on both of these two aspects.
Out of fear, out of humiliating and painful situations, we have learned to close our hearts. We have learned to protect ourselves and since this protection mechanism took place early in our lives we have forged the idea that this is who and what we are and we live our lives from this protection mechanism, from our closed heart instead of living it from our true self. Thus the benefit of challenging our beliefs, challenging our identification so that we can regain access to our hearts.
You ask: ‘What is meant by living our true nature?’ living our true nature first means living from the heart, living from an open heart. Regaining access to your true self is to live from an open heart. Look at young children before they become too ‘educated’, they live from their open heart, they are spontaneous, natural, innocent. Yet not aware that this is their true self. Working on our personality, on the inner child, brings awareness to these qualities so that we can consciously live from them and not from a closed heart. This is the first meaning of living our true nature.
The second aspect of living our true nature is a direct consequence of the first one. With an open heart, we live in acceptance with what is and it is this acceptance that opens the door to this other dimension of reality, Oneness.
Oneness is not accessible for the mind since it is not a concept but a lived experience. This lived experience can be felt and lived in different ways. It can be felt and lived through Silence, through Vastness, through Tranquillity or through Love.
Silence, Vastness, Tranquillity and Love are attributes of Oneness and during intensive retreats, it is not uncommon for participants to experience one of these aspects of Oneness. It is the same experience of Oneness lived from a different aspect simply because one is more naturally tune to one of these characteristics. 
You are asking about ‘the process of moving from knowing our personality to experiencing our true nature'.
If you have understood me clearly, you already have the answer to this question. We are born as a being without a personality, as we grow in years we acquire a sense of ‘me’ which is useful to move about in life. It is this sense of ‘me’ which becomes our personality. However due to our education, our growing up environment and the traumatic experiences that we go through, this sense of ‘me’ becomes distorted, our personality is the outcome of this distortion. We generally close ourselves; we close our hearts for not being recognize, understood in our genuine expression.
By bringing clarity to this distorted sense of me, by recognizing the false in us, inevitably the true self arises and with it an open door to our true nature. When you are wearing a blindfold and earplugs, it is not possible to see and to hear. This is the condition that ‘education’ has put you in. Thus the need to first take of the blindfold and the earplugs, only then seeing and hearing can start. 
My whole intent through these talks and answering your questions is to help you take off your blindfold and earplugs, but you are so attached to them, so identified with them that they act as a second skin. ‘The process of moving from knowing our personality to experiencing our true nature’ is not about putting soothing cream on your second skin, hoping that it will magically dissolve, it is about peeling of this second skin. And this can be painful and give rise to much fear. With this second skin, with your blindfold and earplugs you feel protected, you feel safe, you’re in a little bubble where no hurt can reach you, where no hurt can affect you. 
This is no different than living in fantasy land.

In January last year, answering this question raised by one of you « I feel that I am living in a fantasy world and fighting for my life to be happy and relaxed. What is fantasy and what is reality? » I pointed out that fantasy is the interpretation of reality through different filters. These filters can be based on hope or on despair since they are for most part the outcome of a person’s experience or based on beliefs when they are the outcome of the social environment in which the person lives, not to forget the outcome of the collective mind.
I also gave a tip to put an end to this dreaming state. When you catch yourself thinking, observe the thoughts that you are having and you will immediately be in contact with your filters. At that moment, instead of remaining in fantasy land you can stop and ask yourself: 'What goal am I trying to pursue with these thoughts?'
Please listen to the talk again for more details.
A spiritual teacher once said that to be conscious is not a game. « To be conscious is to go through a deep surgery and the problem is that you are the surgeon and you are the patient. Consciousness is painful, because you will have to drop so much which you have carried your whole life thinking it to be very valuable.
But once you succeed, then all the pain seems to be just nothing, because the bliss that descends on you is incomparable; the pain that you suffered looks so tiny and so meaningless. But that is in the end. Gautam the Buddha used to say: « My path in the beginning is tremendous pain; in the end, tremendous blissfulness. But patience is needed. »
This is what the process of moving from knowing our personality to experiencing our true nature is, a deep surgery with no shortcuts and heaps of patience.

Two main hindrances usually come in the way to this surgery. One is impatience and the second one is fear, they usually go hand in hand, when impatience is around, fear is not far away and vice versa. We are often impatient in front of a challenge, in front of a pain. We want it to finish as soon as possible. We become fidgety, agitated, even angry that the uncomfortable-to-live feeling or the pain does not go away. We often have no patience towards that which we don’t like or disturb us, we want to get rid of it as soon as possible either by escaping from it, avoiding it or denying it. These are the most common strategies and I’m sure that you understand what I’m talking about since you’ve all had such experiences.
Impatience is in fact escaping the reality of what is. It goes together with the fear of facing our reality, the fear of facing ourselves. In a previous meeting I talked about the fear of being oneself yet during that talk I did not explicitly mentioned the fear of facing oneself since the talk was more oriented towards being oneself in facing life or others. The fear of facing oneself has similar characteristics, it is the fear of facing what is sometimes referred to as our inner demons. The rage, the hate, the shame, our destructive violence and mostly the excruciating heart pain of having been abused in different ways, humiliated or rejected.
It does take courage and patience to walk on this path towards our true nature. An expressive representation of this path are the Zen pictures of the Ten Bulls which you can download from my website and read them at leisure. These pictures illustrate the different stages of the practitioner's progression towards awakening to his True Nature. With few words, each image precisely describe where the student is on this path.

To conclude this series of talks I’d like to draw your attention to the last one, the tenth one because it will certainly challenge your idea of what being enlightened is. After reaching the source (the 9th picture) the now enlightened student returns to the world.

« Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive. »

« Inside my gate, a thousand sages do not know me. The beauty of my garden is invisible. Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs? I go to the marketplace with my wine bottle and return home with my staff. I visit the wine shop and the market, and everyone I look upon becomes enlightened. »

Once the source is known, what else to do but to simply returns to ordinary life and share with others in simplicity and humbleness what has been discovered. Some will understand, some may not, some may be drawn to the path, some will not. All is welcome, knowing that existence will find its ways to lead everyone to the Source.

All right let’s stop here for today knowing that some ‘digestion time’ is most certainly needed to fully understand what has been talked about today.
Before fully closing this meeting, I’d like to give a warm thank you to Niya for organizing these talks and of course also to Jane for making my words available to you in your language.

A warm hug to all of you
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_09-May-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on shifting from Doing to Being.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Monday zoom meeting,

As a follow up from last week, today we have a question about the longing to live truly and simply and a second one about being open and true. Here is what our first questioner is saying.  « I always expect to live out a real life, but I am trapped in a ‘fake life’ day by day. Being fake has brought endless pain and torture to me, and it makes me depressed and difficult to connect with others. I long for living truly and simply, but why can’t I? I feel that there is a gap between ‘what I want’ and ‘achieving something’, I don’t know what the gap is. And I don’t know how to bridge the gap and keep my heart and actions in true alignment. »

The good thing is that you can recognize that you are trapped in what you call a ‘fake life’. Yet making a distinction between a ‘real life’ in which you would like to be and a ‘fake life’ in which you are trapped in does not make sense. Life is life, it is always real, never fake.
You say: ‘I long for living truly and simply, but why can’t I?’ You can’t because your expectation to live a ‘real life’ rather than a ‘fake one’ is taking you away from reality and away from yourself. It projects you in a hypothetic future which will never arrive since ‘real life’ is always about the present moment and not about past or future.
By recognizing that ‘being fake has brought endless pain and torture and makes me depress’ you implicitly recognize that it is not really life which is fake but more your attitude or behaviour in life. This is of importance because it brings the focus back on you.
Being fake comes when we pretend to be different than we really are, when we are not in alignment with our hearts. It is the outcome of a false sense of self. If you recall what I have mentioned in the talk given in April last year about ‘A genuine expression of myself’ and the one in March 2020 about Truth and Being True you will already have some indications on what makes you unable to live ‘truly and simply’, as well as having some hints on the direction to take.

Just saying that you are trapped in being fake is not enough, it is important to objectively be conscious on what being fake means for you. When you say that ‘being fake has brought endless pain and torture and makes you depress’, you are naming the outcome of being fake and keep silent on how you are acting out this being fake and most important, what drives you to be fake. Maybe it would be more accurate to use a past tense and ask what drove you to become fake since being fake must have started quite some time ago.
When we look at an issue with the intention of taking care of it, we have to consider its different aspects, and in which order these aspects came into being. In this case the first element to consider is not so much the endless pain and feelings that you are suffering from but more the motivations that drove you to become fake. Once we identify the cause, the other two aspects, the acting out and the outcome, will already have lost some of their grip.

You long to ‘live truly and simply’ and you say that it is not possible for you. Why is that so, why can’t you live truly and simply? What is in the way for you to live truly and simply?
I mentioned earlier that it is your expectation of living a ‘real life’ which in the way, but this is not the only factor. What is also probably in the way is a preconceived idea on what ‘living truly and simply’ could be. Because of your pain, you inevitably aspire to something different, a state where pain, torturing ideas and depression would not be there, but unless you have previously experienced such a state, you can only imagine what that state can be. Your longing seems to be more oriented towards a desire to escape this difficult-to-live state that you are in. Even though this longing is natural and can act as a driving force to pull you out of your current state, there is a need to remain open to whatever wants to come and not forge any preconceived ideas about how living life should be for you.
What’s more, since you are mentioning that ‘I feel that there is a gap between ‘what I want’ and ‘achieving something’ it seems that you dare not be yourself. For some unknown reasons at this point, you fear being yourself, more precisely, you fear asserting yourself. The fear of asserting yourself is what your ‘gap’ is made of.
Why would you fear asserting yourself if it was not due to a fear of being blamed, judged, or humiliated, in other words, of not being accepted as you are. Your childhood must have been paved with rejecting situations, you were most probably not supported in your actions, in your attempts to express yourself as your heart wanted to. Your desire to be accepted, included, and loved made you compromise and put a veil on the rebelling voices that were bound to arise. It hurts not to be accepted, not to be supported and consequently it is natural to cry it out in any way that feels right. It seems that this crying out was not possible for you, otherwise there would not be a gap between what you want and achieving something.

What you are mentioning reminds me of a young student who was telling me about how he had to pretend, to please and most of all to be polite during his early childhood to be liked by his parents and other family members. After some sessions, he could recognize and admit that this was his behaviour pattern; he did feel sad to have taken on such behaviour, yet he could also recognize that it was his way to survive within his hardhearted family environment. This recognition led him to take the decision to not pretend anymore and to be true to himself. Asserting himself was not an easy step to take for him but he made it and felt more confident and stronger after that. This strength and confidence changed his ways of relating and consequently his life changed too.

Bridging the gap means stepping out of a victim role, stepping out of bearing your pain, stepping out of pretending to be someone else than you are. Your depression is only the outcome of bearing your pain and bearing the pain is in some ways rejecting yourself. To ‘keep your heart and actions in true alignment’ you will have to stop rejecting yourself and accept that you are depressed, painful, and live in a fake way. Transformation can only come when we are in tune or in alignment with our immediate reality, whatever this reality is. Acceptance is the key that will open the door to a new life for you.
I want to add that your longing for living truly and simply is probably not the only thing that you deeply long for. Finding out ‘What is it that I truly want?’ will bring peace to your heart and with it a possibility to live from the heart in connexion with others.

Today’s second question will bring some elements that may help you to ‘keep your heart and actions in true alignment’. This person is asking: « Teacher, you always say that it is important to be open and true, can you share something about the relationship between ‘being open and true’ and ‘awakening and enlightenment’? »

Yes, being open and true is important. Yet we need to understand what is meant by being open and true. Although these words are simple to understand, putting them into practice is often difficult, mostly because of the hurts that they have given rise to in our past. Not that being open creates hurts, but because when we are open, we are exposed to the judgments and criticism from others. Look at young children, they are living with an open heart, they relate from their open hearts; they are true to themselves, but their openness often brings them judgements and criticism from their parents, teachers, or elders. Their openness is not understood, they are not understood, and this creates a lot of hurt and pain which in turn brings them to be fake. They become good little boys, good little girls, very polite, very studious, very obedient, yet also very resentful and helpless. They become fake like our first questioner. It is their desire to be loved, cherished, supported which makes them abandon their truth, abandon their openness to the profit of compromising; they compromise and start to live from a false self, a self that their parents wants them to be and they do this because of their vital need to be accepted. The result of ‘education’ is generally a closed heart. If we want to live openly and be true, or ‘living truly and simply’ as our previous questioner was saying, we need to regain our capacity of being in life with an open heart. This is what working on the inner child and on the personality is about. Because of hurts we have closed ourselves; we have isolated ourselves and this brough misery and pain. To regain our innate joy and innocence we simply need to open our hearts again. But this is the difficult part for most people. Not that they don’t want to open, they do, but the wounds are often so deep and the protection mechanism so strong that it becomes a real challenge to open their hearts again.
This is where openness and truth come into action. Truth and openness go hand in hand and are easy to put into practice. They are like can openers. When you look at something without preconceived ideas or judgements, immediately you are open to the truth of what is. You need to understand that it is not about opening your heart directly, it is not possible, but more to open to what is, to tell the truth about what is, about the reality at hand. And the reality at hand is usually a painful state made of different feelings, anger, sadness, despair, hate, loneliness and so on.
What is needed is an openness to that, an openness to all the ‘no’ that we carry. We need to stop the denial of our feelings. The truth of your inner reality is most probably in line with: ‘I don’t want this, or I’m afraid of that, or I hate my father or mother.
Opening to the inner reality that, for whatever reason we carry, is what being true is about, what being open is about. One needs to first be open to his inner reality, to see it as it is and truthfully express it.
This is what participants are requested to practice during the awareness intensive retreats. 

Last week when I mentioned about the acceptance of what is with words such as: ‘I am closed, yes; I am angry, yes; I hate, yes’, I was pointing to being open and true. All these little ‘yeses’ are like small rivers leading to a bigger one and a bigger one and finally to the ocean. In the same way being open and true will lead you to an awakening to the reality that you are at the core of your being.

Awakening is enlightenment and enlightenment is awakening, they are one and the same reality. They are not two different realities as you seems to imply when using the conjunction ‘and’. Awakening or Enlightenment are not two different realities, these two words are pointing to the same reality, the Consciousness that you are and the question is to awaken to that reality that we are at the core of our being.
Yet, for awakening to take place, one needs to be open to what is, to recognize and accept the truth of who one is in this moment. In reality, it is not really a truth but only a belief which is taken for a ‘truth’. Once this ‘apparent truth’ is communicated fully, it effortlessly dissolves and leave space for another ‘apparent truth’ and so on so forth until all ‘apparent truths’ are dissolved. This is what the metaphor of peeling the onion is about.
These ‘apparent truths’ that we take for granted are in fact identifications. We identify, we believe that we are like this or like that, that we are this or that and the whole process of awakening is about disidentifying from all our beliefs, from all that we hold for true. It is about discarding what is false in us and for this there is obviously a need for openness and truth, otherwise there cannot be any possibility to awaken to what we are at the core of our being.
You ask about ‘the relationship between ‘being open and true’ and ‘awakening and enlightenment’?’.
Please understand that there cannot be any awakening or enlightenment if there is no openness and truth. To awaken to your true nature, being open is a needed and essential ingredient. Without openness, awakening or enlightenment is not possible. This is why I often insist on being open and true from the very beginning.
The difficulty to open arises because we don’t trust. Instead of trusting we fear.  We fear what we may discover about ourselves. We fear meeting with the pain, we fear meeting with our so call ‘negative’ feelings. We fear facing ourselves and carry all sorts of judgements about how we should be. By and by we have learn to protect ourselves instead of trusting. Protecting ourselves is the natural outcome of having been betrayed so many times by those who were supposed to protect and support us.
But we also have forgotten to trust life or existence and mostly we have forgotten to trust ourselves. Trust is another aspect of being open and without trust being open becomes difficult, if not impossible.
Trusting means that we welcome whatever comes as a potential benefit for our growth. Remember the ‘Guest House, this poem from Rumi where he compares our being human with a guesthouse.

« Every morning a new arrival; a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness, they all come as unexpected visitors.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.»

Rumi describes poetically the attitude that we need to take towards our inner world. When we welcome without judging that this is good or that this is bad, when we are open to whatever comes, we trust and when we trust, life becomes effortless, easy. Awakening or Enlightenment, remember that these two words are pointing to the same reality, is the flowering of being open and true, is the flowering of trust.
Trusting also implies that we need to move from ‘doing’ to ‘being’. Doing has become our habitual pattern. Since our minds are goal-oriented, we are constantly busy doing something, trying to achieve some goal. Whether it is a goal for a better life, for a better relationship, for some spiritual achievement such as being enlightened does not really matter. All are part of ‘doing’ and as such they made us forget that being is our innate reality.
‘To be or not to be’ was Hamlet’s question in a play by Shakespeare. The modern version of this question is ‘Who am I?’. Who is this one who acts, who thinks, who speaks, who hears?
It needs to be clearly recognized that doing is only an activity, that thinking is only a mind activity, that whatever activity I take part in only defines me according to social ideas and concepts but it does not say anything about the being that I am.
We are human beings, not robots and the whole purpose of awakening is to awaken to being. Being has nothing to do with being something or someone or not being something or someone, all the attributes have to disappear until only ‘I am’ remains. It is only a question of recognizing it, ‘I am’ full stop. Awakening is the lived experience of ‘I am’ and to experience this truth, openness and trust are needed.
This is what those of you who will participate in the coming intensive retreat can experience.

All right let’s stop here for today.
Due to the 5-day coming retreat there won’t be a talk next Monday. We will resume this series of talks on Monday May 9 with a question about ‘the process of moving from knowing our personality to experiencing our true nature.’ I’m quite positive that those of you who will participate in the 5-day coming retreat will experientially understand this process of moving from personality to true nature since these retreats are specifically geared to provide an opportunity to dissolve personality identifications so as to awaken to our true nature.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_25-April-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Overcoming difficulties on the Path.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Monday Zoom meeting,

In today’s talk I will do my best to bring answers to your concerns about the purpose of this work and the difficulties that you are coming up against. I can understand that some of you, seeing no real changes in their life are doubting the benefit that they can get out working on themselves. I often meet people who are saying something similar to this questioner: « I’ve been working on myself for many years now and my life has not changed; I am the same as I was before I started working on myself. Then what is the point in investing myself in this work? »
Yes, what would be the point in investing time and money in this work if it didn’t bring any changes. It would seem to be a waste of time and a waste of energy. But is it really true that nothing has changed for you, that you are the same as you were when you started working on yourself?
Let’s look into the different options that could make you overlook the changes that have already taken place.

Since our minds are generally goal oriented, purpose oriented, it seems to be normal to expect a ‘return on investment’ as businesspeople put it. After having worked on myself I will be a better person, I will be enlightened, and life will be well and easy. This whole idea of ‘return on investment’ is somewhat childish and in some ways part of a greedy mind, a mind hankering for recognition. The focus is then on the future and not on the reality of what is.
Overlooking changes can come as a follow up to reading or hearing about people, teachers or masters, who have seen their lives transformed by walking on this path. The desire to resemble, to be like them create such a gap that changes become unnoticeable compared to their accomplishment.

Do note that this desire to resemble someone is not specific to this path; you can see many people, from all walks of life, wanting to resemble their preferred artist or political leader by imitating their dressing code, taking on their ways of speaking, their ways of behaving.  This desire exist naturally in each of us when we’re in our teens and don’t exactly know how to be, when we look for a ‘father or mother figure’ to guide us in life, to give sense to our life. We then project ourselves in this person and this projection becomes a goal to attain. We are not ‘here’, we are leaning forward to ‘there’.
Out of reading books or hearing talks on self-growth or spirituality, a person can gather preconceived ideas about the path and its outcome. Then that person will simply expect to have the same experiences or insights as those which she has read in books or heard in talks. This expectation creates a blindness which veils all possible changes that are taking place. What is not seen in this case is the uniqueness of each individual and with it, the uniqueness of each experience. Even though, at the core, we all are one and unique consciousness, often referred to as ‘Oneness’, our incarnation makes us distinctive individuals with distinctive, yet comparable experiences.
Not long ago someone was raising the following question: « Can I change my personality by reading books or listening to talks? » To which I replied that reading book or listening to talks have rarely changed anyone; just as reading about the benefit of drinking water has never quench anyone’s thirst. Intellectual understanding won’t do. It is a good way to start with, yet only a lived experience will bring changes, will bring a durable transformation. You need to practice what is being proposed, you need to question and investigate about what is going on for you, then transformation will follow naturally.

Just this morning, during an individual session, a person was realizing that although she has been working on herself for quite some time, she had not realized, up to this moment, how much she has been fighting against herself and not accepting her condition. In not accepting herself, she failed to notice and take into account the changes that had already taken place in her.
We are sometimes so much identified with what we are doing or going through that we don’t have enough hindsight (not to be confused with insights) to perceive any change that may have already occurred. This is why I often ask people to look back on how they were six months ago and when they do so, they suddenly realize that, yes, actually something has changed in me, my life is not quite the same as it was.
When we do this work diligently, when we invest ourselves fully in this work, and I assume that this is what our questioner has done, we are bound to go through changes, it cannot be otherwise since this work is a transformation process. Yet not in the way that we imagine transformation to take place. In this work transformation happens negatively; is more a building-down process than a building-up one. The image of the chrysalid turning into a butterfly is a good representative of this transformation process. One has to die to the beliefs, to the preconceived ideas that one is holding for true before a new birth can take place. This is the meaning of letting go, of the ‘empty hand’ image.

The following question will help clarify this point. « When I open my heart and face myself truly, all that I can experience are emotions, body sensations and beliefs. Loneliness and pain are the two main feelings that are constantly there. Then, what is the meaning of meeting myself and healing my inner child? »
That’s right, when you open to yourself you will not experience anything else than feelings, sensations or thoughts, for the simple reason that these, together with bones, flesh and liquids are what this body organism consists of and function through.
So, other than sensing, feeling and thinking you won’t find anything else.

This being said, and as you may have noticed yourself, as humans we are gifted with a vast panel of sensations, feelings and thoughts, ranging from pleasure to pain, from joy to despair and from thoughts to ideas and beliefs. This vast panel enriches our experience of being alive. What’s more, this vast panel does not only manifest on a linear level, it is also multi-layered. Each sensation, each feeling, even each thought can be felt or experienced at different levels of depth. It can range from a shy smile to a belly laughter, from frustration to resentment and hate, from sadness to extreme despair and suicidal thoughts.
The depth of each sensation, of each feeling, of each though is almost unlimited; it can be shallow or ‘ocean deep’. The depth of the perception is very much linked with our openness to it.
I’ll talk more about this with the next question, but for now let’s come back to the two main feelings that you have recognized, loneliness and pain.
Saying that there is pain and loneliness is not enough, it is only touching the surface of something much deeper. You are mentioning that ‘these two main feelings are constantly there’.  They are bound to be constantly there if there is no attempt from your part to enquire any further into them.
Some enquiring work is needed.
What is this pain about? How does it manifest in me? How does it restrict me in my daily life? And the same with the loneliness. What caused this loneliness? Am I feeling lonely because my pain is not understood or because I am not understood in having this pain? Am I feeling lonely because no one cares for me, because I don’t have any support? Am I feeling lonely because I fear being rejected and don’t dare to ask for support? Abandonment may have created this feeling of loneliness.
Clarifying all these different aspects of your pain together and of the loneliness that you are experiencing will be helpful to dissolve and heal the pain that lays in your heart.
When you ask: ‘Then, what is the meaning of meeting myself and healing my inner child?’ It seems to me that these two feelings have defeated you. You’ve given up, your loneliness is so deep that it almost becomes despair. In meeting yourself you can only find yourself and what else will you find other than the one who is in pain or the one who is fighting or avoiding feeling the pain and the loneliness.
See this point clearly, since the pain and the loneliness are felt, are experienced by someone, the question which spontaneously come is: ‘Who is this someone?’ ‘Who is this one who is painful and lonely?’ Is it really you, the adult that you are or is it the little child that you once were? Depending on how much you are identified with this little child that you once were it can be a combination of both?

Besides, if you enquire further with ‘Who is aware of these feelings?’ you are bound to realize that it is you, the adult, who is aware of these feelings. Yes, these feelings most certainly belong to this little one that you once were and are felt through this current body organism, but it is ‘you’ at this very moment who is aware. Thus, the question: ‘Who is this me who is aware?’ or ‘Who Am I?’ which we use during the awareness retreats.

This recognition can bring a great transformation since it creates a separation between the one who is aware and the object of awareness. The feelings are there, the pain is there, and I am aware. Such questioning and recognition can lead you to experience the nature of what you call ‘you’, ‘me’ or ‘I’. Come to the retreat at the end of this month to tackle this question.

Without going to such depth at this point, what I can say in regard to your question ‘what is the meaning of meeting myself and healing my inner child?’ is, that meeting yourself as you are now will uncover the wounds that are active under a superficial layer of being fine.
This little one that you were must have gone through some difficult times and difficult situations without proper support and these painful moments or situations are still acting as thorns in the heart of this little one that you once were. It is this little one, this ‘inner child’ who needs help, support and whom other than you, the adult that you now are, can give this support.
This child that you once were is still calling for support, for understanding, for care, for love. He could not get it from his elders, you will have to give it to him so that these wounds can heal and bring peace to your heart and mind. It will help discarding what is false and what is not needed in you so that you can regain a real sense of self and live from it.
It’s in your hands to do the work and in this you’re not alone, support is available.

The answers to the following question may help you understand what is meant by going deeper. « I feel that all the negative emotions and pain can’t be finished at all. In what way can the negative emotions and pain be finished? You are often telling us to ‘fully be with the feelings and the pain and experience what we were not able or allowed to experience in the past’. How can this lead me to the ultimate truth? »

The problem comes when we categorize and separate feelings, sensations or thoughts into positive and negative, into pleasant and unpleasant. It is this categorization, which creates the problem, not the sensation itself, not the feeling itself and not the thought itself. We tend to choose what we feel good with and discard what we don’t feel good with. So, the first thing is to not categorize, to not to label a sensation, a feeling or a thought as ‘negative’ or even as ‘positive’.
Your perception that the ‘negative’ emotions and the pain will never end is totally subjective and has no real basis. Or rather, it is based on your difficulty to be with what is experienced as uncomfortable. As human we tend to want to prolong what we feel good with and shorten what we don’t feel comfortable with. It is difficult for most of us to be with something that we consider ‘negative’ such as pain or difficult-to-live feelings. We just want to be done with it or finished with it as quickly as possible. This seems natural, yet it is a sign of impatience, of insecurity and mostly of non-acceptance of what is. 
When we are in this mind-frame of wanting something to pass away as quickly as possible we don’t look at it directly; we tend to avoid it or escape from it. Avoiding or escaping are primarily a protection mechanism yet escaping can become a well-set tendency for some people and it can even turn into a strong resistance to admit. This resistance come when we fear being judged or blamed, when we have been humiliated in the past for showing some vulnerability. What is not seen in this case is that instead of moving towards freeing ourselves from the pain and the uncomfortable feelings, we give them power, we reinforce their grip on us and consequently we start to psychologically fight them. The desire to maintain these feelings at a distance, to keep them under control becomes our main subconscious preoccupation and as long as we do this, these uncomfortable feelings will continue to haunt and trouble us.
Sometimes I see people trying hard to fight with some difficult-to-live feelings, thinking that if they fight hard enough they will eventually win over these feelings, make them disappear. But this ‘wining over’ never happens, however hard these people try. It is this fighting against which generates your thought form that ‘all the negative emotions and pain can’t be finished at all’.

The answer to your question ‘In what way can the negative emotions and pain be finished?’ is simple; stop fighting, stop wanting things to be the way you want. I am reminded of a Haiku from Basho.

« Sitting silently,
doing nothing,
the spring comes
and the grass grows by itself »

Let life follow its course; everything has a beginning and an end. When we stop fighting, when we stop wanting to control the course of life, suddenly we enter a new world, a relaxed world, a peaceful world, the world of acceptance of what is.

When we accept the pain and the feelings that come with it, a relaxation takes place, we are no longer fighting an ‘enemy’, we are befriending the pain and the feeling. It is this befriending that will support the healing of your pain. The pain and the so-called ‘negative’ emotions have a significance, they are telling you that something is not in order, that something needs to be taken care of, that something needs to be seen. Paying attention instead of pushing them away will be a step towards their melting. Welcome them as Rumi is inviting us to do in his poem ‘The Guesthouse’. They come to clear you out for some new delight, they are, in disguise, the wisdom voices of Life.
I know from experience that it is not easy to befriend pain and the feelings that come with it, but one needs to gather courage and dare make a step towards these difficult-to-live feelings. In reality, not much is required, just a willingness to face our pain, a ‘yes’ to who we are in this moment. This is why I often say, as you are mentioning, to ‘fully be with the feelings and the pain’.

You have to understand that there are two possible ways to handle pain and feelings. We can talk about them or talk from them. Talking about is simply going in circles, avoiding connecting with the pain and the feelings; it is never direct and thus cannot lead anywhere, it keeps them endless.
Talking from the feeling is quite different since it implies that we are connected with the pain or the feelings and that we express from that pain or that feeling. The connection and the expression are one, there is no gap, no separation and this is what leads to a healing.
Fully being with a feeling and expressing it as it is felt help us melt the traumatic experiences that we could not deal with as a child for whatever reason. When people are in individual sessions, they often talk about difficult events and their related feelings that took place for them in childhood and layer by layer, gaining confidence, they come in contact with and are able to express from the feeling, as if they are reliving that specific situation. To quote Doctor Janov, ‘they are able to cry the cry that they could not cry and laugh the laughs that they could not laugh’.

In connecting with and expressing fully these difficult-to-live feelings one can free himself from past traumatic events and regain a genuine sense of self. That’s why I choose to use ‘Innocence Regained’ as a title for the workshops on the inner child. It is the quality of innocence, the spontaneity, the creativity, as well as a sense of strength and confidence that your true self is made of.
As for your goal-oriented question ‘How can this lead me to the ultimate truth?’ the answer is quite straightforward since you are already the ultimate truth. The ‘Ultimate Truth’ is not something that you will get once you have removed all the negative emotions and pain. You are already it and it has nothing to do with your Doing, it has to do with Being. Whether you take care or not of these negative emotions does not matter and has no influence on the ‘Ultimate Truth’. So, there is nowhere to go to and nothing to attain. What you call the ‘ultimate truth’ is only a mind-made concept like the carrot in front of the donkey’s nose to make him move forward. In last week’s talk I mentioned that we are life and to experientially recognize it, to live it, is what awakening is about; it is what the ‘ultimate truth’ is about. It is not a question of getting to the ‘ultimate truth’ it is a question for Being the ‘ultimate truth’ and for this all that it requires is a shift from Doing to Being.

All right let’s stop here for today.
In our next meeting, while answering your questions, I will talk more about this needed shift from Doing to Being.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_18-April-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Life & Suffering.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome to this new series of Zoom meeting.

In this new series of talks I will do my best to bring answers to your various concerns about the purpose of this work, about the difficulties that you are coming up against, about what seems to be an endless unfolding of negative emotions, about your concern around awakening and around true-self or true nature.
Reading your various questions, I can sense that some of you have this feeling of groping in the dark, are having very little sense of what is going on for you; a feeling that walking on this path leads nowhere but to more suffering. This is a common phase which is part of a rebirthing movement on this path; just like the chrysalis who has no clue about the butterfly that she will become, when we walk on this path we have no clue about what our true self can be, let alone what our true nature is. This is where the guidance of someone who has already walked the path can become handy because he understands what you are going through, were you are at. Your questions will help pinpoint aspects of this path that you are struggling with and I trust that the clarification that I will bring to your questions will enable you to move forward with more confidence, will enable you to courageously face what is still uncomfortable or even overwhelming for you. Metaphorically speaking I will hold your hand as long as needed for you to regain a genuine expression of yourself, a true sense of self.

You’ve heard me mentioned many times that ‘Life has no goal other than to be lived’, that’s why I’d like to open this new series of talks with this important question raised by one of you.‘You often tell us that ‘Life has no goal other than to be lived’ if this is so then what is the purpose of all the suffering that one can experience in his life?’

I can understand that it can be difficult for you to fully grasp this idea. The problem comes from the fact that our human mind is purpose oriented, goal oriented and this is so, mainly due to the fear of what is unknown. Having a goal or a purpose sets our mind moving in a direction. A move from here to there. This movement tends to create a disconnection from our immediate reality. We project ourselves in a hypothetic future, forgetting who and what we are to the profit of who and what we will be or could be. This projection towards a hypothetic future is one of the main sources of suffering.
The other source of suffering comes from the identification to our past. Because of unresolved past traumas or conflicting situations, we tend to remain identified with the one that we were when these past experiences took place.

What is ‘Life’?
Let me first clarify what is meant by ‘Life’ in this context, since the word ‘life’ can carry different meanings. In this context, the word ‘Life’ refers to the principle or the force which sustains every living organism on this planet. It is often referred to as a ‘Life Force’ or as ‘Qi’ in Chinese culture. This somewhat invisible, yet perceptible ‘Life Force’ can be felt when you touch a tree or hold the stem of a flower for instance and for those who are familiar with sensing their energy flow, sensing this ‘life force’ in the lower belly (Hara or Tant Tien in Asian culture) is quite easy.  

This ‘Life Force’ is not only the ‘fuel’ which gives us life and maintain us alive; it is also our ‘driving force’ which supports and guides us throughout our existence, providing that we are open to trust it. Just as our gut system is often referred to as our second brain, this ‘Life Force’ is our most intimate wisdom voice. Trust and wisdom have very little to do with our thinking brain, their source comes from this ‘Life Force’. The more we are open to it, the wiser we can become. 

The beauty of this ‘Life Force’ is that it is unconditioned and available randomly. We can see it in the flapping wings of bird, in a blossoming flower, in a child’s eyes full of wonder or in the glowing face of a contented person. We can feel it, sense it, live it but we cannot think it. It is ‘Here’, always here and never ‘there’. It manifests and shines silently without any expectation to be noticed. It has no other purpose than to be lived. We are Life, we are this throbbing pulsation of life and to experientially recognize it, to live it, is what awakening is about. 

For this to take place we have to move from doing to being. You may have noticed that doing occupies a large part of your life. Doing covers a wide range of aspects. We are being busy with this or that. Not only on a practical level but also and mostly on a mind level. Yes, deeds have to be done, yet they can be done in a relaxed way and forgotten once they are done. But our mind is often putting a judgement on our actions. It can be a negative one such as: I should have done better; I did not do good enough = I’m not good enough or a positive one: I did well; I’m so good at this, which can turn into: I’m much better than XYZ.
Our minds are not only busy with judgements towards our actions but also busy with trying to solve all kind of problems. Problem solving is probably the core purpose of our thinking mind. Problem solving can range from very materialistic desires such as: how to be rich or how can I access power position, to more psychological ones like how to be accepted or loved; they can also tap on the spiritual realm such as how can I become enlightened.

The thinking mind is goal oriented and as such it has a positive side to find new ways in doing things, through experimenting and discovering. Discovery in Science and Technology are the pure products of this goal-oriented mind and we do benefit greatly from our goal-oriented mind.
Yet, our goal-oriented thinking mind has also its downside. As mentioned earlier it tends to create a disconnection from our immediate reality as it projects us in the future or keeps us tied up with our past. It is this disconnection from our immediate reality which is the source of suffering.
You are asking: ‘If this is so then what is the purpose of all the suffering that one can experience in his life?’
I will mention it again, ‘Life has no purpose other than to be lived’. Living life also mean meeting the challenges that life brings. The challenges that we meet during the course of our life are there to support our awakening to the reality of what is. One could say that their purpose is help us move from the false to the true; to awaken us to the reality of what is.
We tend to life our life blindly, taking refuge in the past or in the future for the simple purpose of avoiding our inner reality since our inner reality is often loaded with painful memories of traumatic events.

What is suffering, what makes us suffer?
Understanding the nature of suffering will make it easier to dispel our fear to be alive and also brings us to the acceptance of what is.
Suffering is only a psychological human concept. In reality there is no suffering. Yes, physical or emotional pain can be there and it can be difficult to be with it. Thus different options are possible.

• We can bear it and we do this by clinging to our past and taking on a victim role.
• We can push it away by escaping into the future with the ‘Hope syndrome of a better tomorrow’.
• We can also deny it by refusing to admit that we are painful; the ultimate ‘no’ to what is. 

These are the three most generally used options which are protection-based. We tend to protect ourselves from feeling the pain by using one or a combination of these options. These protection strategies become obvious for those who are taking individual sessions with me with the purpose of regaining their true identity.

Suffering is the outcome of a refusal, of a denial. When we have a ‘yes’ to what is happening for us, immediately our mood changes, something relaxes, easiness and joy sets in. When we have a ‘no’ to what the reality is, we contract and it is this contraction which brings suffering, not the situation.
The cause of suffering is always a denial of the reality as it is.

Many situations, especially during childhood created pain for us.  Whether they were physical or emotional pains they all led to a feeling of being heart-broken simply because we felt very much alone with the pain and with the situation. There was generally no one to understand, to support and guide us through the difficult time that we were encountering; this added a layer of loneliness to our pain. It also often added a layer of resentment towards the person or the situation. These different layers, the pain and the different feelings that accompany the pain, are still active, unnoticed, in the adult that we have become.
These layers are keeping us in bondage with our past, we unconsciously cling to our past, simply because it is what we know and what we know is precious in the sense that it gives us a sense of security. We are constantly in search for security, to feel secure, even if this security is upside down. As a child we survived because it was better to have a ‘bad’ mother or a ‘bad’ father rather than no mother or no father at all. We had no choice but to compromise in order to hush this feeling of insecurity.
It is easy to observe this in your daily life, in the different relationships or situations that you can be involved in.
We fear to be ourselves, to feel ourselves, to sense ourselves for the simple reason that we want to avoid any contact with the pain that lays at the centre of our hearts. We keep our pain at distance with a constant denial of who and how we are with the desire to be different than we are. And whether we unconsciously cling to our past or project ourselves in a hypothetic future, it makes us live in fantasy land as a someone worded it a year ago when raising this question: « I feel that I am living in a fantasy world and fighting for my life to be happy and relaxed. What is fantasy and what is reality? »

Suffering begins with denial, drop denial and suffering will cease immediately. It is the refusal of our traumatic past experiences which is our primary source of suffering. Hence the necessity to consciously encounter our denials. Stepping out of denial will clear the way to regain our unblemished heart.
I can already hear some of you asking: ‘But, how to drop denial?’ As mentioned many times, the way out of denial and the remedy to suffering is to move from repression to acceptance; to have a ‘yes’ to what is.
Earlier in this talk I mentioned that we tend to protect ourselves from feeling pain by using different options; by bearing it, by pushing it away or by refusing to admit that we have a broken heart. All these options create suffering, they are the core source of suffering.
Once these options have been seen through and dealt with to some degree, a person interested in regaining her true-self can recognize that a fourth option is possible and available. It is possible to make use of the suffering or rather to use suffering in order to mature, to recover our true identity, to recover our unblemished heart.
This fourth option is in itself a complete revolution, a 180°degrees turn. When we recognize our suffering and express it to the best of our ability, we move from denial to the acceptance of what is. We move from fighting against to self-respect, we move from indifference to concern, we start caring for the being that we are and by doing so we soothe and pacify ourselves. We enter the dimension of love. 
Love is the natural dissolving ingredient to suffering. Love opens the grounds to our true self, to our innocent self which has always been there in the background; it was only veiled by our denials. With love we can access what a questioner once referred to as a genuine expression of what we are.

In turn, this fourth option will lead the way to recognize that our True Nature has nothing to do with our personality or with our true self. Our True Nature simply is. It is not attached to any ‘me’.
Just as physically growing goes through stages, from infancy to adulthood, ‘spiritual’ growing also goes through stages. One cannot jump the gun; just like becoming mature is a process, awakening to our true self is also process. It is a deconstruction process since we need to let go of all the ideas and beliefs that we have unwillingly and most of the time unconsciously, taken on board from elders, from others.

This letting go is difficult. It is difficult because of our need for security. In order to feel secure which happens when we feel loved and accepted, we have compromised with our own truth, we have given it away to the profit of believing what others imposed on us and consequently started to live through their eyes instead of our own wisdom.
If we want to recover our integrity, access our true self and further our true nature we have to throw away, to discard all the borrowed knowledge that we have taken on. We need to return to a point of not knowing, to a point of insecurity. Being with this not knowing, being with this insecurity is the difficult part. It needs courage, determination and most of all a willingness to be in acceptance with what is.
I will mention it again, ‘Life has no purpose other than to be lived’. To be alive, to feel alive does not need any know-how. Just see young children in a playground, they are fully alive, they are throbbing with life. They instinctively know how to be alive. Just like you, they are the very manifestation of life. The problem is simply that you have forgotten it and are now searching everywhere except within your own heart.
Stop searching; Remember, you are Life!

All right, let’s stop here for today.
In the next talks I will take the different questions that you have raised about the difficulties that you meet on this path.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_11-April-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘Fear’.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Tuesday zoom meeting,

Our last topic for these series of talks will be on the Fear of Death since many of you have raised questions related to this specific fear. As you may have understood from our last meeting the fear of death is quite different from the fear of survival, even though they can be linked since death is the end of survival. The fear of death is the fear of something unknown together with the fear of not existing anymore. But remember, the fear of death is mostly an imagined fear; it may have its roots in a traumatic past experience, yet most of the time the fear of death is simply the fear of something unknown.

We usually know what living is about but we don’t know what death is about and we will never know since in death all-knowing cease to exists. Death is the end of the body-mind apparatus and this is really what we are most afraid of; to not exists anymore as we know ourselves to exists. Death is the end of a body-mind lived experience, the end of an incarnation in this life realm. Everything that comes alive on this planet, humans, animals, plants, mountain and valleys will disappear one day. It is a natural cycle, a law of life and also a law of evolution. Yet there is something which does not die and this something which does not die has been sought by many people since the beginning of times.
This is why in many religious and spiritual traditions, the emphasis is on ‘Die before you die’ so that one can experience that which does not die and when the physical death comes along, the person can serenely accept death and let the body-mind organism finish its incarnation journey.
This is very different from the quest for immortality which is a quest for eternally prolonging life in this body form. The discovery of ‘The Fountain of Youth’ or of the ‘Philosopher Stone’ occupied many seekers since early centuries. In Chinese tradition, this quest goes back as far as the Jade Emperor and ‘The Peaches of Immortality’.
Whatever form it takes, the quest of immortality is simply a denial of life since the seeker’s desire is to eternally remain in his current physical form. It is not only a fear of death and dying, it is also a complete misunderstanding of what life is.
Life is a constant cycle of birth and death; what we often don’t realize is that we are not fixed in a definite form, our body is in a constant evolution from the moment of conception to the moment of death. Many cells in our body die every minute and are replaced by new ones. Death and birth is a constant happening within this body-mind system, yet our conscious mind remains unaware of this happening and that’s good otherwise we would spend our life time being agitated and most surely become frantic.

The fear of death, although essentially based on the fear of the unknown can range from a simple apprehension to anxiety or even to thanatophobia, an extreme form of the fear of death and dying. The fear of death can also manifest is accordance with different objects of fear. It can be the fear of illnesses, the fear of body pain, the fear of losing life, the fear of not existing anymore, the fear of being alone or the fear of the actual act or moment of dying.
Your questions on this topic are good examples of this wide range. Actually the form through which the fear of death manifests does not really matter. What matters is how we can move out of this fear before the physical death comes along.

Let’s look at one of your questions on this topic. This person is writing: ‘I can see that I am very afraid of death, not only I fear of death, but I am also controlled by all sorts of fears, such as the fear of having conflicts and facing others’ anger. I can subtly feel that it is a fear towards death. I want to see it clearly, but once I try to see, then I realize that the fear is subtly hidden in my mind. I don’t dare to face the fear. Yes, I fear facing the fear towards death, which is like an unbreakable circle. What should I do?’

Looking at your question and at the one which I’ve answered during our first talk, I can understand why you write that you are controlled by all sorts of fears. Fear seems to be your daily life companion; it follows you in many aspects of your life. My sense is that you see fear everywhere in you, even though there may not be any. You seem to be like someone reading a medical dictionary and believing that he has all the illnesses described in the dictionary. Unknowingly you are attached to your fears, they give you a sense of existing; they have become part of your personality.
Who would you be without your fears?
I’m not denying that you are afraid and feel insecure and that you fear certain type of situations. You certainly do, and this awareness is helpful in identifying and taking care of these fears. However, spending time in taking care of each fear is a bit of a waste of time and energy. Fear is like an octopus; it has a head and many arms. In ancient Greek mythology they use the symbol of the seven heads Hydra which the hero had to fight in order to reach immortality. The difficulty was that when a head was cut, two new heads would immediately appear. In the end, the hero defeated the Hydra by cutting its main head with a golden sword.
All the different fears which are creating a difficulty for you are only in fact the extension of one fear and it is not as you think it is, the fear of death. It is not so much a fear of death as a physical event that you fear but more a fear of not existing on a psychological level. A sort of psychological fainting.
Your words ‘I want to see it clearly, but once I try to see, then I realize that the fear is subtly hidden in my mind’ tend to point in that way together with the fact that you mention that ‘you fear having conflicts and facing the others’ anger’.
Your fear is not really a fear of dying as such but more a fear of not existing and this aspect of fear is actually quite common to many people. In fear we tend to faint, to disappear, especially when we have a difficulty with facing the reality at hand such as facing someone’ anger.
Next time, when you are facing someone being angry at you, do your best to observe what is happening in your body as well as the thoughts that arises. What you may discover is that it has a taste of ‘déjà vu’. It may have to do with one of your parents being controlling or even abusive towards you. It may have to do with a school situation. The important thing is that you allow connecting with the uncomfortable sensation and feeling.
Through your different questions it is obvious that you are basically insecure, lack of self-confidence and tend to do your best to prove that you are Ok as you are, so that recognition can come your way. Being recognized for who you are is probably your main longing. Yet being recognized by another has a prerequisite; we first need to recognize ourselves. Not just being aware of what is going on within us, which is something that you are familiar with, but more recognizing in the sense of accepting that you are how you are. What seems to be missing for you is a yes to you as you are. You are confused, yes; you are resisting, yes; you are angry towards your child, yes; shame is there, yes; fear is there, yes. A yes to all these various feelings and thoughts that arises in connection with the different situations which are filling your daily life. Within the family, at work or with friends.
Saying yes to your feelings, to your thoughts, to who you are in the moment will stimulate your life force, it will give you strength and also give you the spine that you are missing.
Recognizing, connecting and saying yes to the insecurity in you would be a better option than ‘wanting to clearly see this fear of death’. In a way the fear of death or for you the fear of not existing is too far away to be seen clearly. Start with what is closer to you, the insecurity. Notice, make a list of all the situations where you feel insecure together with the feelings that arises in those situations. By doing this, in addition to what I have already mentioned, you will start taming this latent insecurity, you will gradually gain confidence in you. This would be the most fruitful direction to take.

As mentioned earlier, the fear of death can manifest in various forms, yet it always hide something deeper as this person is sharing. ‘I am afraid of death, especially the death of my family members. When a doctor implied that my wife and child might have obvious illness, I became anxious and seriously frightened. When I face this kind of situations, my chest and belly become tense, and some terrible ideas and pictures appear in my mind, then I become so anxious and frightened that I collapse and develop a behaviour pattern of looking for an authoritative doctor. I become painful once the fear is triggered. In daily life, I experience this feeling from time to time, and I also listened the audio meditation “Stepping out of shock” guided by Rakendra. I have been in this fear for many years’.
It seems quite normal to be worried when one of our family members is being ill and even more so when the illness is a critical one. Yet becoming anxious and seriously frighten points towards something quite different than fearing the death of a family member. It is not really death that you fear, it is more a feeling of being abandoned and being lonely as a result if one of your family members was to pass away.
I remember your previous questions where you mentioned that you were seldom understood and supported by your parents. You probably felt abandoned and rather lonely during most of your childhood and now that you are married and have a child, this fear of being abandoned surfaces more strongly as they become seriously ill. The roles are upside down, they need your care whilst you would like to be taken care of and be listened to.
I can understand that you have been with this fear for many years and your desire for an authoritative doctor can be an indication of the lack of a supportive father figure. The fact that you are collapsing in front of this situation shows how insecure you are. It is normal to be affected in such a case, yet not to the point of collapsing. It is the little boy in you who is collapsing, he does not know what to do, he is at a loss, helpless and all he wants is a supportive person who could handle this situation for him.
In previous questions you mentioned about your strong need to be accepted, of being understood and the fear to be requested or forced to do something that you don’t really want to do. It seems to be the helpless little boy that you once were who is running your life today.

You are mentioning listening to the ‘Stepping out of Shock’ audio but it does not seem to have helped you that much. If you truly want to step out of fear and shock, a little courage is needed. The courage to investigate into all these uncomfortable feelings that are alive in you and the first step in order to do this is a ‘yes’ to you as you are. I often mention this because without a ‘yes’ to you and how you are, no transformation can take place. ‘Yes’ is a starting point and it is often misunderstood since it is believed to be the opposite of ‘no’ and a request to be different that we are.
The ‘yes’ that I am talking about is not the opposite of ‘no’, it is also not a request to be different than you are. The ‘yes’ that I am talking about includes all the ‘no’ that you may have. It is the acceptance of what is.
We often live in denial; denial of situations, such as the one that you are facing; you don’t want your wife and child to be ill, you have a strong ‘no’ to this and this is perfectly normal. We are also in denial of ourselves, we deny our feelings, we deny our behaviours, we deny our thoughts by the simple fact of wanting to be different than we are. Wanting to be different is an escape, a falsehood, it is living in dreamland. How can we be different than what we are? It is not possible. Yet we do try hard to move in that direction and by doing so we miss ourselves. What is needed is a ‘yes’ to all our denials, to all our ‘nos’, including our desire of being different. All these denials, all these ‘nos’ have their purpose, they protect us from a deep heart pain. This is why, if we want to heal this deep heart pain, we have to start with a ‘yes’, an acceptance of how we are.
The fear to be ourselves is also a fear to face our dark sides, our so call ‘negativity’. And the only way out is to have a ‘yes’ to this ‘negativity’. The ‘yes’ that I am talking about, the ‘yes’ that is required is a ‘yes’ to all the ‘nos’ that we carry; it is the acceptance of how we are, with our ‘positive’ sides and our ‘negative’ ones. It is the acceptance of the Yin and Yang within us.

In this current situation, it is the fear of facing your helplessness, of facing your despair which is being triggered. It would be more accurate to say that it is the despair and the helplessness of the little boy that you once were. This helpless little boy needs your attentive care, your support. He needs to be seen, recognized and accepted for who he is, a helpless little boy. Have you ever accepted this little boy that you once were? Have you ever taken the time to truly connect with him?
As the adult that you now are, you can give this support and care to this little boy that you once were. That’s what he needs from you, that’s what he craves for. Do your best to give this to him and you will soon see that your fears will meld and disappear.

I’m just reminded of a question from a mother. ‘My child is 10 years old; he is afraid of death and ghost and has a lot of imagined fears, what to do?’
You have to understand that the world is quite a threat for a child. By nature a child is insecure and he project his insecurity on all sorts of objects whether real object or imagined ones like ghosts. This is natural. Your task as a parent, and many of you are parents with young children, is to make your child feel secure whenever he feels insecure. But often parents are not able to make the child feels secure because they are themselves insecure. A few days ago someone aged around 40 told me that she was afraid of walking in the dark because there were many ghosts. This simply shows that she is insecurity or fear-based. Ghost don’t exists, they are simply the outcome of an imagined fear; mostly the fear of something unknown. Your child is not afraid of death, unless he had a traumatic experience, he is just afraid of what he does not know.

If unfortunately your child had a traumatic experience, such as seeing the dead body of a family member a serious illness or an accident; it is your role as a parent to talk with him, to take his fear into consideration and support him to dissolve this traumatic event. Saying ‘don’t be afraid’ or similar words will not help him since he fears something. On the contrary he will feel being wrong to have this fear and will probably do his best not to feel afraid in future in order to please mama or papa. His fear will simply move to his unconscious and be active from there. This is what has happened to most of you; as a child your fears were not taken into account, they were laughed at or turned into humiliating words instead of being understood for what they were; a simple child insecurity.
Whenever your child tells you about his fear, be in empathy with him, trust his feelings; understand that he is not lying, he is really afraid. Hold or hug him, make him feel secure by listening patiently, by understanding him, by letting him talk openly about his fear. Sometimes, more than words, it is a simple attentive presence which dissolve the fear in a child.
Try this next time and see his reactions and of course, don’t forget to take care of your own fears! 

The fear of death can become a real one when we are in some unfamiliar environment like this questioner is mentioning. ‘I remember a diving experience in Palau. I became afraid of seeing the vast and blue see. I dive down to the seabed and suddenly entered darkness with no sight, I became shocked and escaped. Recently, I thought about the feeling that I was experiencing at that moment, I was afraid to die and get no help from anyone, because I was alone there. Teacher, please talk about the topic regarding the fear of death and loneliness. Thanks!’

Diving in the sea is not something natural for us, there is often a little uneasiness to face the underwater environment, even though we have the suitable equipment. What you are describing ‘I became shocked and escaped when I entered some darkness’ is a natural reaction. You were surprised to meet this new environment and since you are not an expert diver you simply panicked and thought that you were going to die. A totally natural reaction. The good thing is that you did not die since you are raising this question! You came back to the surface and went ashore. What you could have done is to simply rest for a while and let the shock state pass away on its own accord or talk to someone about your panic attack. You may have done that, yet your fear of dying remains. What actually remains is the shock state, that moment of surprise when you realised that you’ve entered a dark zone and was alone there.
It seems that you are confusing being alone and loneliness. The feeling of loneliness is quite different from being alone. In that situation you were simply alone and as such feared not being able to take the right action in order to pull you out of this situation. Yet you managed since you are here today! It is wise and recommended not to dive alone unless you are an expert diver. This being alone in that situation has nothing to do with loneliness, yet for you it seems that being alone and loneliness are linked.

I can understand that there is in you a feeling of loneliness since you believe that you would have no one to rely on, to support you. This feeling of loneliness belongs to your childhood experience, a time when you did not feel supported, did not feel understood and basically did feel not accepted. Unfortunately these feelings are still active in you today and are triggered at the slightest matching experience such as the one in Palau. Your past experiences are veiling the reality, they are also hindering your actions.
When you write: ‘Teacher, please talk about the topic regarding the fear of death and loneliness’. I sense desperation. Something like: ‘please talk to me’ any subject will do, just talk to me, be with me. The fear of being alone lays behind your words and yes, in that fear of being alone, loneliness is present.
Although this feeling of loneliness needs to be taken into account, it is not the primary feeling that you need to take care of. It seems to me more important for you to recognize all the beliefs that you carry about yourself. ‘I’m stupid, I’m not good enough or not worthy to be loved; I’m not as important as my brother, etc. Make a list of all the beliefs that you carry and recognize where they come from. You can use the talk that I gave on this topic in March 2018. You were even present during that talk. You can find it on my website and can also read this one from May 2020. This should help you to understand better your beliefs and how to dissolve them. The second point on which you need to put your attention on is the repressed feelings in you such as anger, despising and jealousy. Find safe ways to express these feelings, expressing them will also help dissolving the beliefs and on top bring more self-confidence.
And, last but not least, you can always call on me for support; it will help you to not feel alone with all this. Just like sea diving requires the help and guidance of a monitor, diving into our inner world works best when we can have a supportive hand to accompany us in this journey. Support is always available; you simply need to ask.

I would like to end this series of talk with this question. ‘It happens to me that I don’t know what the meaning of existing or living is, thus, it could be possible to finish my life artificially. My fear is about not being able to find out the meaning of life, and then I will have regrets when I am dying in future. Sometimes I am in urge to find out the meaning of doing one thing. What should I do?’
I can understand that you don’t know what the meaning of life is, however searching for the meaning of life is bound to lead you astray.
As I mentioned many times ‘Life has no goal other than to be lived’.

Searching for a reason to live, to exists is bound to make you go bananas. You simply have to come to this reality ‘I exist’.
It seems that you are very much trapped in your mind and thus disconnected from your feelings and a sense of reality. You are dreaming your life, hoping for some miracle to happen. You live in insecurity; as a matter of fact, you are insecure. You don’t know what to do and how to be. This is the first thing that you will need to face, your insecurity; the fact that you don’t know how to be in life, let alone knowing who you are. Stepping out of the mind is not easy and requires a great deal of courage, of determination and not everyone is not ready for this journey. Not that it is a difficult journey, no; the difficulty dwells in the attachment that we have to our thoughts and beliefs, only to avoid the simple reality that we are hurt, that our heart is full of pain. We keep protecting ourselves from facing the reality of our painful heart and unless we start facing our painful heart, we will never understand what the meaning of existing is. There is no need to search for a meaning of existing. The meaning will become obvious once you allow yourself to face the reality of your heart. You are a human being, a living being. Everything is you is alive, everything in you is throbbing with life, even your creative mind. But you are lost in this firework of thoughts and ideas about you and how you should be and thus miss the only important point. ‘I am alive’, ‘I exist’. You also miss the beauty, the joy of this realization.

Don’t miss the point, instead of searching for the meaning of existing, put your energy into facing your feelings, your beliefs, your thoughts and out of this endeavour the meaning of existing will reveal itself to you. It is not far away, every breath you take reveals the meaning of existing; paying a little attention to your breathing may help you to discover this reality and help you to die without regrets. Once you will have realize that existing is the very core of your being, it will be easy for you to die without regrets, to die with a smile on your face. Don’t wait for the last minute, die before you die!

Right, let’s stop here for today. A lot has been mentioned today, as well as in the previous talks, around the topic of fear. It would be good for each of you to listen to this talk and to the previous ones again since it happens that sometimes we mishear or don’t understand a point. Listening or reading the talks again helps clearing possible confusion.
These 4 talks on Fear will have given all those who attended, an opportunity to shift your understanding of fear and its different facets. I’m confident that you will relate with fear in a more healthier way.

Thank you everyone for your attentive listening and I am sure that we will have other opportunities to meet in the near future. Soon it will be a New Year for you, the year of the Tiger. A new possibility for each of you to roar like a tiger and asserting: ‘I exist’.

Before we close this meeting, I’d like to give a warm thank you to Niya for organizing these talks and of course also to Jane for making my words available to you in your language.
A warm hug to all of you
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_10-January-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘Fear’.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Monday zoom meeting,

In our last two meetings I’ve mentioned how Fear and Shock can strongly impact our lives, to the point that we put aside our own strength and power and consequently Fear being ourselves. Please understand that the purpose of these meeting is not to feed your mind with concepts but more to support you in regaining confidence in being yourself. My answers to your questions are simply pointing to what you need to look at in order to free yourself from the beliefs and ideas that you carry about yourself.
This being said your questions today are related with survival and the fear related to not have enough to survive. Here is how one person words it: ‘My issue is about money, I have a deep sense of lacking money, I feel poor even if there is some money in my bank account. Poor is like a curse for me, and I easily become painful when I face situations regarding to money. The fact is that I easily make myself be in a state of having no money and always lack of money. I like to buy some unfit discount clothes and then become regretful, but I just continue this pattern. I think this pattern has to do with the poor of my family when I was a child. I don’t know how to be free around money and enjoy the happiness which money brings’.

Money is a sensitive subject for many people and the fear of not having enough money to survive can become a constant headache for some individuals as it is for our questioner today.
In our first meeting I mentioned that there are two types of fear; reality fear and imagined fear and in dealing with people’s mind I have noticed that Psychological or Imagined Fear is a common pattern for many people.
Imagined fear is the leftover trace of a past fear experience. What has now become an imagined fear has its roots in a real threat and this is particularly true with the fear of survival that some of you are encountering.
Survival is certainly the main concern for all living species, whether humans, animals, or plants. Without food, air, or water it becomes impossible for any living being to survive. This is easily observable in nature with animals and plants. It is a little different for humans since they have a wider spectrum of possibilities.
Yet in the animal and plant world fear is absent; for them it is only a question of using all the available potential in order to live life and when death comes there is only acceptance. It was the same for our ancestors, yet with time and the development of intelligence things became a little more complicated in the sense that humans started to fight in order to survive. Survival became a constant fight, and due to wars, famine, or economic reasons this fight for survival has been a reality for many people around the globe in the past centuries and it continues to be so in some countries for the same reasons.

In China, this fight for survival became quite obvious in the late fifties with ‘the three years of natural disaster’ and later on with the cultural revolution. People were fighting for their lives; it was a reality for them and not a mind imagination. People had to fight adversity if they wanted to survive, it was a real struggle for them with fear as their constant companion.
Fear of dying, fear of not having enough food to survive, these fears were part of their daily reality; these fears were real and not imagined ones. By and by the situation changed, the reality became less threatening, and people could regain living life without fearing their next day.
Yet these hard times left a trace in people’s mind. Their memories survived, not just the historical memory, but a cellular memory which is carried on from generation to generation. When a person has experienced fighting for survival, she will unconsciously pass on her fear linked to her fight for survival to the next generation, through stories, behavior patterns and more insidiously through giving birth since the fear has been registered at a cell level. The reality fear of these hard times has transmuted into an imagined reality.
And this is what has happened to you, the questioner. Your fear of not having money is not part of a reality, it is imagined fear, it is a left over passed on to you by your parents, by your grandparents. They had to face that reality, they had to fight for their survival and feared what their next days could be like, and they have unconsciously passed on their fear to you. But your situation is not the same, there is no real threat for you. Your economic situation is largely different from that of your parents, yet implicitly, you fear not being able to survive if your bank account comes next to nil; this creates a fear in you together, although you are not mentioning it, with a feeling of shame for being poor.
Check if there is shame associated with your fear.

You put the focus on money because money has, since historical times, been a gauge for wealth. We give a lot of importance to money, not realizing that money is only a mean for acquiring or exchanging goods. Intrinsically money has nothing to do with being rich or poor, it is only a useful exchange tool. It is the mindset of the person which makes her feel rich or poor. Poverty is merely a social concept, a comparison concept. In India there are a lot of people who don’t have any possession, sometimes not even a roof under their head, yet you can see them smiling; they are happy, they are happy because their heart is open. Their happiness has nothing to do with money, it has to do with the joy of being alive. The fact that they are materially deprived does not make them poor, it simply makes their lives more difficult to live in this materially-oriented world.
Wealth, richness tends to bring misery, not happiness; it tends to make people greedy, stingy and power abusive. Trying hard to become rich hides a poor heart, it hides the shame of not being good enough. And this is probably also one of your beliefs; not being good enough. You most certainly judge yourself for being the way you are and whish that you could be different; yet you don’t know how to free yourself from your behaviour patterns around money.

The first thing for you is to recognize and accept the feelings and thought forms that you have around money. I suggest that you make a list so that it becomes clearer for you what these thought forms and feelings around money are exactly about. 
You can also use some specific communication exercises around money or guilt to clear this issue.
This will lead you to recognize, and this is the second and more important point, that these thought forms and feelings around not having money are not really your, they were passed on to you by your parents. They are a direct product of your parental genetic heritage.
Each of us come to this life with a parental genetic heritage passed to us at conception and then on from mother to child. We cannot escape this parental genetic heritage, we are born with it and have to do with it; yet it is in our hands to transform it so that the past no longer haunts our hearts, so that we can live with and from an open heart, live a life free from feelings that belonged to our elders. Our task in life is to fructify this heritage; if this heritage is fear and recoil based, we can turn it around into strength, openness, and expansion.

Here is an ancient Indian story to illustrate this.

« A great king had three sons, and he wanted to choose one to be his heir. It was very difficult, because all three were very intelligent, very courageous. Whom should he choose? So he asked a great sage, and the sage suggested an idea.
The king went home and he asked all the three sons to come together. He gave them each one bag of flower seeds and told them that he was going for a pilgrimage. ‘It will take a few years, one, two, three, maybe more. And this is a kind of test for you. These seeds you will have to give back to me when I return. Whosoever protects them best will become my heir’. And the king left for his pilgrimage.
The first son locked them in an iron safe, because when the father comes, he has to return them as they are. The second son thought, ‘If I lock them up just as my brother has done, these seeds will die. And a dead seed is not a seed at all. And my father may argue that ‘I had given you live seeds, there was a possibility for them to grow, but these seeds are dead; they cannot grow’. So he went into the market and sold the seeds and kept the money with the thought that when my father will be back, I will go to the market, purchase new seeds, and give him back something better than the first son’.
As for the third son, he went to the palace garden and threw the seeds all over the place.

After three years, when the father came back, the first son opened his safe. His seeds were all dead, stinking. And the father said: ‘What! These are the seeds I have given to you. They had the possibility to bloom into flowers and give great perfume, and these seeds are stinking. These are not my seeds!’
Hearing his father coming, the second son rushed to the market, purchased some seeds, came back home and said to his father: ‘Here are the seeds’. The King said: ‘You are better than the first son, but yet not as capable as I would like you to be’.
He then went to the third son with great hope, and fear too. ‘What has he done?’ The third son took him back into the garden and there were millions of plants blooming, millions of flowers all around. And the son said: ‘These are the seeds you had given to me. Soon I will collect the seeds and give them back to you. Right now they are getting ready to be collected’.
The King said: ‘You are my heir. This is how one should behave with seeds’. »

This is the meaning of fructifying a heritage.
Let this little story inspire you since what you write is ‘I don’t know how to be free around money and enjoy the happiness which money brings’. A little courage is needed for you to let this transformation take place in you and I’m sure that you will manage once you decide that enough is enough and take action as I have suggested. The main point for you is to recognize that this fear and behaviour pattern are not yours, they come from and belong to your elders. Once you truly recognize this, you’ll experienced a deep relief and be free to enjoy the happiness which money brings’.

Fear of survival can also come as this participant is writing: ‘I am always worried that I don’t have enough money, so that I keep earning money. How can I feel rich in this case?’ 
Dear, life is not about getting rich, it is about living with an open heart, aware that you are alive and when you live with this awareness you feel rich in the heart because you can share your joy of being alive. Life is simply about being consciously alive, not about acquiring wealth. This awareness of being consciously alive is a treasure more valuable that any money can ever bring you. Whatever you spend your life doing does not matter, what matters is being consciously alive.

I can understand that you are worried if you don’t have enough money but you haven’t asked yourself this question: ‘What pushes me to get rich?’ May be for you the question is more in this line: ‘What do I want to get this money for?’ The most likely answer is: ‘I want to be recognized and loved’. Your survival is not depending on having money, your survival is depending on the though form: ‘If I have money I will be recognized as a good daughter and loved by mama’. You are desperate for this recognition and getting rich is only a mean to make your dream come true. The problem is that this recognition has not happened to this day and money only got you into more trouble.

Try to see clearly that your worrying is not really about money, your worrying is about wanting to be loved, which means for a large part being recognized in your innocence, recognized in your honesty. Your honesty has not yet been recognized; on the contrary it has been bashed. Whenever you wanted this honesty to be recognized, humiliation came your way.
The other aspect of your eagerness to keep earning money has most probably to do with the fact that you want to be seen as someone who is responsible, trustworthy, someone important. You have interchanged the word love with the word money. Money will bring me the love, the recognition that I so long for.
Does this makes sense for you?

You are asking: ‘How can I feel rich in this case?’ You will never feel rich as long as you keep pursuing this quest for earning more money. Drop this idea and turn your focus on the despair that your heart is filled with. Take care of this despair, see or better recognize this little girl in you who is craving for recognition, who felt abandoned when her sister was born. This was a crucial turn for you and your quest for earning money, for gaining respectability started then and there. Forget about earning money and concentrate on this aspect of not being recognized, of not being important anymore. Make a list of all the situations in which you felt not recognized. Start with the present days and gently recall more ancient situations. Once you’ve made that list, return to the most recent situation, focus on it and notice the feelings that arises as you connect with that specific situation. 
Doing this will help you in different ways. It will help you gain clarity on your actions and the motivation behind and mostly help you connect with the feelings that your heart carries. Once you connect with a feeling, allow whatever form of expression that arises.
As a child or teenager no one really took responsibility to support you in your difficulties; you must have felt left alone, abandoned and this created a deep pain in your heart. You had to manage by yourself and taking responsibility, such as earning money, became another attempt for you to be considered, recognized and thus love. Yet deep in your heart you don’t really want to take responsibility, to be responsible, the weight of being responsible is a burden on your shoulders. What your heart wants is support and to be supported is natural and also a sign of recognition.
By doing the suggested practice you will take responsibility for you, for your own growth and this is the only responsibility that you need to take. In doing this you will support this little girl in you who crave to be supported. She is the one who needs care and attention. As the adult that you are you can give her that. It will bring a resurrection, a new way of being in life. It will bring you the freedom that money cannot bring you. The freedom to be happy without a cause.

In this next question the fear of survival takes a different aspect, it becomes the fear of the unknown. Here is the question that this person is raising. ‘In my daily life and work, when I encounter something that I don’t know the answer and result, I tend to have chest tension and belly ache because of the fear of the unknown, I am worried that my health may become bad out of this and I would be more uncomfortable, what to do?
Because of the past experiences, I am worried that my girlfriend would leave me and have a relationship with someone else; when I checked with her, I became restless because of what she had texted to me. Shall I review every insecure communicating process and experience feeling fear?’

It is not possible to know the answer to everything and this is good because not knowing becomes an invitation to enquire further, to discover; it tickles our curiosity and we can learn and grow from it. In the retreats that I facilitate participants sit for hours pondering on the question ‘Who Am I?’ or ‘Who is in?’. They have no clue of what the answer may be; their minds are busy attempting to provide the right answer, but the answer that they come with never really fit with the question; their minds always fall short until at some point they realize that they don’t know who they are or who is in. When experienced, this not knowing is like a revelation and it becomes the starting point. Only from there can the real answer arise because at that moment the mind has stopped providing answers. It becomes silent and, it is in this silence that the true answer can arise. It will arise as a felt experience, not as a though or a feeling.
So it is good that you don’t know the answer and the result. It can become an opportunity for you to understand something new about you. And this opportunity is given to you by ways of sensations in your body. Your chest becomes tense and your belly ache. Accept this as a starting point, your body is giving you some clues that will help you to move forward.
Yes, fear may be there, yet gather courage and allow yourself to be with these uncomfortable sensations, they are a blessing in disguise. They are telling you that something is too much, that something has remained unattended for, uncared for. What you may discover, if you allow yourself to be with these sensations, is that they are the manifestation of an unresolve inner conflict and are veiling what seems to be a strong feeling of abandonment. May be a physical or a psychological abandonment or a combination of both.
Which is why you are mentioning in the second part of your question your fear about the possibility of your girlfriend leaving you for someone else and your restlessness in the communications with her.
Does this makes sense for you?

There is no need for you to ‘review every insecure communicating process and experience feeling fear?’ What is needed is that you recognize how insecure you are. The feeling of fear is only the outcome of a deep inner insecurity. Focussing on the fear of the unknown would not necessarily lead you in the right direction. What could be more helpful and easier for you would be to list the different situation where you feel or have felt insecure. Not just the situation but also what you felt in those situations, including your thoughts and beliefs. There may be a thought form of not being good enough or not adequate enough.
Check it for yourself, I’m only giving you some guidelines.
School times and school situations are also an excellent environment for building insecurity.
Check this too.

Remember that your fear is only the product of your imagination. Based on past unresolved experiences your mind simply anticipate the worse. These past experiences have left a trace in your mind and in your heart too. Unless you recognize and take care of your painful heart, insecurity will always prevail.
For you too, a little courage is needed. Refrain from indulging in being a victim of your lack of confidence, gather courage and turn the focus towards this one who is insecure in you. That one needs your help and support; he has been left alone for too long.
Can you hear him calling?
Allow your busy mind to slow down for a moment so that you can hear this inner cry, this inner pain which has not been taken care of so far. Being oneself requires passing through these uncomfortable heart aches and for this courage and acceptance are the only tools that you have at your disposal.
I’m confident that you can make it and will find back your strength and self-confidence while passing through these uncomfortable heart aches.

All right, let’s stop here for today.
It’s a new year and I’m confident that each of you will find ways to let happiness pervade your heart and consequently your life during 2022. Happiness or the joy of living is not something that can happen in the future, it is already there within you. You simply need to re-discover it or better to uncover it since it has been covered or veiled by unnecessary fears.
Do find ways to listen or read this talk again, I’m sure that it can help you understand better what has been said. In our next meeting I will talk about the Fear of Death and how it can impede our lives as well as responding to some of the questions that you have already raised on that topic.
Bye for now and all the best to each of you in 2022. 
See you all next week.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_03-January-2022

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘Fear’.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Monday zoom meeting,
As mentioned in our last meeting I will start our meeting today with saying a few words about Shock and the Shock State so that you can recognize Shock when it comes your way. I will also answer your questions related to the difficulty in making choices.
The startle reflex is the surprise reflex, independent to the type of surprise. It can come from receiving an unexpected gift or from an outside stimulus such as a horn blowing, a clash of thunder, an alarming news, an accident or someone shouting and acting violently.
All sorts of situations can trigger the startle reflex in us. The startle reflex prepares the body for action; the breathing is altered, the muscles are tensing, the heart rate intensifies, the blood flow increases and the eyes widen. Once the danger is identified, adequate action follows and the body gradually returns to its normal pace. This cycle is easily observed on domestic animals or on new born babies.
However, when the outside stimulus is intense or repeated, the startle reflex can freeze which leads the person to experience a more long-lasting shock state such as coma, fainting or mind loss. These shock states can vary in intensity and length and temporary veil the person sense of direction and ability to focus.

Some shock states are the outcome of a physical situation and as such easily recognizable and treated accordingly. Yet, when they are the outcome of psychological situations, they are likely to go unnoticed and easily slip into the unconscious where they become more difficult to recognize and consequently to be taken care of. The main consequence is that they imperceptibly veil our conscious mental capacity.

To give you an example, not long ago, a student in session was telling me how, as a young child, she was repeatedly confronted with violence between her family members. She was not herself mistreated; she only witnessed violence happening; this created in her a huge panic feeling together with a deep-seated shock state. Since her family members were busy repeatedly fighting with each other, there was no one to take care of her panic and shock. She was left alone to deal with these feelings. Her survival mechanism set itself in place and pushed away these uncomfortable feelings to the unconscious so that she could manage living her life. Yet the insecurity and the panic were still active in her, unnoticed to her conscious mind, yet greatly impeding her sense of being and her actions.
This seems to be a dreadful case, but actually it is a common one for children. Many children do witness situations in their family or at school that will shock them. The problem is that these shock states remain for most of them unseen and unfortunately rarely cared for.
Child abuse in any form will also generate a deep-seated shock state. The feelings of shame, of anger or hate will be noticeable yet not necessarily expressible because of the shock state. The shock state will act as a muffler to prevent feelings from being openly expressed.

To some degree or other we all have experienced being in a state of shock, not just once but many times in our childhood and adult life. They may have range from mild ones to deep-seated ones. What is important to understand that a shock state is a frozen form of fear with a high level of stress and like any fear it prevents us from being natural as well as impeding our mental faculties. We can become oblivious of many things, have no sense of direction, have difficulties in learning or integrating new aspects of life as well as having a sense of being not good enough, not performant enough which makes us feel insecure to face life.

A question raised today is a good example of an unspotted shock state. This person is asking: ‘I feel that I need to make many choices in my life. I fear making choices because I am afraid to regret in future, and I am also trapped by feeling regretful and remorseful. Making choices and remorse are the issues that I struggle with’.
We do have to make choices in life and yes, sometimes it can be difficult to choose what we feel would be the right option for us. We need to ponder, find the pros and cons and decide from there. Using our mind to ponder and make choices is certainly useful, yet it can be counterproductive since it brings with it the possibility of regrets. Regrets are insecurity driven; they often are the expression of the thought form ‘I should have done better or known better’ which often extend to ‘I’m not good enough’. They are fear of being oneself in disguise. They are also pointing to the fact that the choice that we’ve made was only an intellectual one, a mind choice. Our whole being was not involved in the decision making.
When we make a spontaneous choice or a heart choice, our whole being is involved and we move forward happily with no regrets whatsoever, even if the option we chose turned out not to be the most suitable one. The important factor is following our heart and going with it. This alone brings joy.
As mentioned earlier, pondering over different possibilities can be useful and needed in some cases, yet what I sense in your question is that your difficulty to make choices has more to do with wavering, with hesitating. Wavering is insecurity based; fear based. It is the fear to be yourself, the fear to own your choices, the fear to face the world saying yes, I choose this direction. I’m sure that you can recognize this insecurity in you which manifest strongly in your difficulty to be at ease with expressing yourself in front of your parents, to be at ease with your ideas and with your gender.

It is not so much about making choice and remorse that you are struggling with; it is with taking a decision. Decision making, being decisively requires a stable sense of self, a self-confidence and your self-confidence is not very strong, it is shaky and almost non-existent. Insecurity is what is predominant in you. Insecurity pervades most, if not all, your actions and behaviours. Can you recognize this?
Recognizing and accepting the fact that you are insecure will set a solid base to enquire further. Where is this insecurity coming from? What situations did I experienced that made me feel insecure?
It may have to do with your mother going to work and leaving you alone, it may have to do with your father criticizing and blaming you. It may have to do with your preference of being a boy rather than a girl. The possibilities are multiple and they are overlaying the original shock or trauma that made you feel insecure. It can also be a combination of different situations. The only way to access the root cause is by unwinding the thread of the different situations and for this your only tool is to connect with and express your feelings. You will need to move from your mind to your heart.
Unless you start moving in that direction, you will always struggle with making choices and taking decision.

For the moment, let this struggling aside and put your focus on how insecure you are. Recognize how this insecurity plays a large part in your daily life, in your study, with your friends or family members. Become aware of the thought forms and the beliefs that are at play in your mind, pinpoint them and check where they come from. If you want results, invest yourself diligently and patiently. Patience is needed because in patience there is love, in patience there is care and remember that whatever choice you make, whatever decision you take will be the right one for you. It will be the right one because it will match with the one that you are at this moment. And, if after a while you understand that it was not the right decision, the right way to go, accept this as a learning, be compassionate for the one you were when you made that choice and took that decision. When we trust our intuition, when we trust our heart rather than our mind, we cannot go wrong. Being wrong does not exists, it is only an idea in the mind which arises out of comparison. When we stop comparing, whatever takes place is simply a move forward. Keep moving forward without fear, you can’t go wrong you can only grow up out of your move forward.

The Fear to be oneself and consequently to make a choice can also manifest as this questioner writes: ‘I have this desire in me to rebel and destroy. As if there is a new me ready to come out of my body. How can I face this inner child?’
By necessity we have learned to refrain our impulses, especially when they are labelled as ‘negative’ by society, such as rebelling and destroying. We become obedient. Being obedient is a choice that we make in order to fit with what our environment wants us to be. It is not a deliberate choice, a choice made in full awareness, but more a survival mechanism which leads us to compromise in order to bring us what we want. Compromising seems a safer option and more likely to bring us what we most want which is to be loved and accepted as we are. The problem is that in compromising we deny ourselves by blocking off these impulses which, with time, will fall into our subconscious mind. They are still there, yet anesthetized, put in a dormant mode with shame as their guardian.
Do you recognize this layer of shame in you?

What is generally not understood is that these impulses are simply the expression of our life energy which wants to manifest, be alive and expand. These impulses are not wrong, they may be a little distorted expression of our life energy, but certainly not wrong as such. It is society, through parental education which label them as wrong, mainly because they carry within them a strength which would rule out the established authority. Strangely enough, society condemns these impulses on individual basis but uses them to conquer and fight political ideas and wars. Curious contradiction!

It is essential to understand what brings us to rebel.
Rebelling has its roots in unfairness. We sense that what is being done to us, how we are treated, does not feel right and consequently we rebel. It is a natural and healthy reaction; it is a manifestation of our life force, our life energy. It is a ‘no’ to the way in which others are treating us, whether it is physically or psychologically.
We don’t usually see them as such but all illnesses are also a form a rebellion. We fall ill because we unconsciously don’t want to face a certain situation and when ill, the body engages in fighting against the disease.
Rebelling is a fight for survival, if we did not have this rebelling reaction, we would turn into a yes saying person, obedient as a slave, without any stamina whatsoever. We would not be living life we would be enduring life. So it is good that this desire is arising in you, you have kept it in the shadow for too long. Actively rebel!
Understand that you did not dare to openly rebel because you did not trust yourself, you did not trust your capacity to be yourself. You feared being blamed, humiliated, rejected or psychologically abandoned. On the surface you did not rebel, yet deep in your heart you haven’t stop rebelling since early days. Your rebelling was under cover; it was not an open rebellion. Out of fear to be rejected you didn’t dare manifest openly this rebellious energy but it was there and I’m sure that you can recognize the ways that you were and are still using to rebel.
It may have been indifference, coldness, despising, resentment or cold violence. See what resonate for you.
Destruction is also a natural and healthy reaction. It is a component of rebellion, a deep-rooted survival mechanism active in our body when there is a virus threat for instance.
Yet the often-unbearable pain which arises when we have felt threatened, humiliated or shaken in our identity leaves us with no other option than turning this pain around, using anger to strike back and destroy the source of the hurt. Anger is then brought to a paroxysm and becomes destructive; it turns into a killing energy often accompanied with a desire to hurt. It shifts into a revenge mechanism where the victim becomes the tyrant.
I’m confident that each of you has had the opportunity to observe this mechanism at work within you. You may not want to openly admit this because you would feel ashamed, but I’m sure that secretly in your heart you can recognize this.

It is in everyone’s hands not to go that way and transform this potentially destructive energy into a positive one instead of throwing it onto another. We can first express this raw energy by beating a cushion or tear up a piece of cloth or paper. We can also use painting, writing, dancing, boxing or any martial art to channel this energy into a positive thrust. What is important is to engage the body in these actions because when we engage the body our life force is stimulated. And when our life force is set in a constructive way something can be achieved because we step into our integrity, into our truth. We step into: ‘I am here’, ‘It is me’, ‘I exist’.

Let this new ‘me’ as you call it take whatever space it needs, allow this desire to rebel and destroy to materialize in any form that feels convenient for you. It will bring you to a full acceptance of yourself, it will bring you to freedom, the freedom of being yourself. Have no fear, you can only benefit from these desires as long as you channel them in the right direction. 

Making a choice, taking a decision can be heartrending when we are shocked based. This person writes:
‘I grew up in my grandparents’ home. My grandparents have 8 children, there were quarrels and fights at home every day, I was the most ignored and unimportant one, I couldn’t feel love but only felt being judged. I’ve married and had a child, but I don’t want any contact with my original family members at all since I am afraid that they will disturb my peaceful and happy life, I also don’t want to be requested and ordered. If I cut off the connection with them, I think I would be hurt as well. I live in the fear and fear of being hurt by my family members, I want all of them to die’.
 
Your question is very similar to the case that I was mentioning in the beginning and a good example of how a shock state can impede our decision making. Living in such an environment as you describe is bound to put you in a lasting state of shock which is why you don’t know which way to go and are wavering between connecting and rejecting.
This wavering is quite understandable considering the environment in which you grew up and it should not be treated lightly. On the contrary, let it be the base on which you can heave yourself out of this indecisiveness which characterize your current attitude.
A ‘yes’ to being in a shock state is needed.
You are at a crossroad and both options, connecting or cutting the connexion would seem to bring new pain for you. On one side you would like to have a connexion with your original family simply because it is your family of origin and as such you have a bond with them. On the other side, you fear being hurt again by their potential requests and demanding attitudes. It is quite understandable that you feel stuck between these two possibilities.
Moving out of this frozenness will require that you start recognizing how much you have been hurt by being ignored and consequently express your anger towards your original family members. The hurt and the rejection seems so deep that you don’t even mention that your family members are in fact you parents. The hate is so strong that you want them to die.
Find safe ways to express this hate, this anger that is sitting at the bottom of your heart. You have the right to be angry, you did not receive the care and the love that you were entitled to receive, moreover, you were treated as unimportant. There must be in you a feeling of unworthiness which is bound to pervade your behaviour even though you say that you have a peaceful and happy life.
My sense is that underneath this apparent peaceful and happy life there is a tiger ready to pounce. Let this tiger come alive. As I mentioned in the previous question, give space to the rebel in you. Find ways to consciously express this destructive energy without hurting anyone, not even yourself.
Unless you do this to your heart content, you will never be really at peace. Your current peaceful and happy life is simply shallow.

You are mentioning that ‘You live in the fear and fear of being hurt by your family members’. This fear is not real, it is only a projected fear based on your past experienced of being mistreated. The problem is that this fear keeps you in a sort of ‘victim’ role, where you remain powerless, unable to take action, unable to decide and unable to say ‘no’ when you are being requested or ordered. The fear keeps you living your connexion with your family members from the point of view of the child and teenager that you once were. And from that standpoint, of course decision making is difficult, if not impossible.
It is impossible because behind the fear there is a little girl who is holding on to a deep desire of being accepted and loved from her original family members. Recognize this as well as the fact that you are not that little girl anymore, you are an adult and as such you have the power to discriminate and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when needed.
Once you see this clearly, a change will immediately take place in you, you will regain your own strength and confidence.
To dispel the imagined fear of being hurt which is blinding you and veiling your life force you need to take care of this little girl's painful heart by recognizing and expressing the different feelings that have been stored there since many years.
For now, leave decision making aside and simply recognize where you are at, what are the feelings at play within you and above all, ask yourself what is it that you truly want. Let the answer emerge from your heart, no need to involve your mind, this would lead to more confusion. It may take some time for your heart to allow the answer to surface, so be patient and considerate. Take it gently and at the same time find safe ways to express your feelings, not directly to your family members but on your own or with the help of someone neutral.
It is important to do this if you want to regain self-confidence together with the joy of being alive.

Before I end this talk today, I’d like to share something with you about being shocked. Last Saturday was Xmas day and I intended to spend a quiet day, just having some leisure time at home. However I opened my mail box and found a document with your latest questions. Reading it I immediately felt overwhelmed with all these questions, there were too many questions, it was certainly not the Xmas gift that I had expected 😊. While reading your questions, I became aware that I was in a shock state; my mind would not function, something in me wanted to faint, my energy was drained. I felt exhausted and the only thing that was sensible for me to do was to move away from the computer and make a pause, which I did by lying down until the shock state dissolve by itself, which eventually happened after some time.
A shock state can strike at any time and the only thing to do, once we have recognize that we are in a shock state, is to give our nervous system and our body the time and the space that it needs to process it.
Simply remember this when a shock state strike your way😊.

All right, let’s stop here for today. Do find ways to listen or read this talk again, I’m sure that it can help you understand better where you are at. In our next meeting I will talk about the Fear of Survival and how it can impede our lives as well as responding to some of the questions that you have already raised on that topic. Bye for now and thank you everyone for your attentive listening.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_27-december-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on the Fear to Be Oneself.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,

The common thread in your various questions this time is Fear and more specifically the Fear to be yourself, the Fear to go about in life, the Fear of survival and the Fear of death.

With this in mind, I’ve organized our four coming meetings around these different subtopics and will take your questions onboard accordingly. 
For those of you who participated in the Inner Child workshops, you may remember that in these workshops, I propose some exercises to recognize and experience Fear since fear played an important part during childhood and often left some visible or sometimes more hidden imprints in our psyche. Your various questions are a clear sign that these hidden fear imprints are impeding your lives today.
Considering this, I feel to start our meeting today by saying a few words about Fear. We’ve all experienced fear at some point in our lives and probably more so during our childhood time but what is Fear exactly, how does it manifest and how to deal with it when it comes our way?

Fear is simply a natural and healthy response from our nervous system to help us face and cope with unknown and potentially harmful situations. The universal trigger for fear is the threat of harm to our physical, emotional, or psychological well-being. This threat can be real or imagined, thus Fear can be divided in two main categories:
• The first one is Reality Fear
Reality fear is linked with an immediate danger that calls for a prompt response.
For instance, you cross the road and a car comes your way or you are in the country side and out of a sudden a dog comes barking at you. It’s night time, you’re walking alone in a dark deserted road and a stranger comes your way or you are in a train or a bus and an angry person in fierce attitude is threatening everyone.
All these situations will trigger fear in you and will call for a response, either fight, fly or freeze. The Fight, Fly or Freeze response is common to all species, it is our protection mechanism. With the Fight or Fly response our nervous system intuitively knows that we have a chance to escape the danger so it will send the appropriate signals for us to move in the best possible direction. We will either use the energy of anger to confront the situation or we will run to safety if we feel that we cannot handle the situation.
When, for some reason, the situation is too overwhelming for our nervous system, its response is to Freeze. Freeze means that the body and the mind contract to escape from the reality at hand. Being paralyzed, fainting and coma are the most common body freezing reactions. Being blank, disconnecting or dissociating are possible mind freezing reactions.
These responses are simple, immediate, and innate to our nervous system; we have no control over them.

However, I need to add that even before fear arises, what we experience is a surprise effect, generally known as the ‘startle reflex’. This surprise effect is an instinctive reflex which puts our nervous system on alert and prepares our body to respond to the threat in the best way possible for us.
Once our response is given, either fight, fly or do nothing, all the energies which were gathered in order to pounce, fly or freeze, instantly ease off and we return to a relaxed state.
This is the response sequence that our nervous system generate towards any situation that is felt as threatening. Startle and Fear come to a peak, a response is given, their intensity subsides to finally leave us. As a protection mechanism, Startle and Fear are our good friend, our safeguards and we can be grateful to have this protection mechanism at our disposal.

The problem with the startle reflex, which is by nature transitory, short lived, is that it can sometimes develop into a more long-lasting Freeze response also known as ‘Shock State’. Understanding Shock and its effects is important. I will talk more about this in our next meeting.

When a threat is felt as overwhelming, which is often the case for children since their nervous system has not yet reach its full maturity, the nervous system is not able to respond in its normal and efficient way; it freezes into a state of shock which will allow Fear to leave a trace in the nervous system and become psychological in the sense that fear will unconsciously influence our mental and emotional state.
When this takes place, Fear is not anymore something immediate and real, it becomes a mental and emotional projection in the future. Fear becomes psychological.

→ Psychological Fear is imagined fear, it has no immediate reality whatsoever. It is the leftover trace of a past fear experience. As an example, when a young child is regularly confronted with a violent or abusive parent or teacher, he will instinctively fear people who have a position in life even though they mean no harm to him. The subconscious fear of authority is probably the most common psychological fear for many people.
See if this is true for you.

Fear has a wide range of intensity. It ranges from Terror, Horror, Panic, Dread, Anxiety, Nervousness to Agitation as the mildest form. When people take part in an individual session, they often show some agitation in the beginning. This is a sign that they are about to face something that they have a difficulty with. It can be something simple that they are ashamed to talk about, it can be a sensation or a feeling that they dread to face.
The physical symptoms that accompany these different forms of fear, also vary in intensity, yet they all have common attributes such as dilated eyes, high pitch voice, shortness of breath, cold sweat, trembling and contracted muscles.
The associated mental symptoms range from a blank mind, confusion, loss of bearings (sense of direction) to disconnectedness. Disconnection from sensations or feelings is the most common observed sign.
Dealing with Reality Fear is somewhat easy and does not need much know how, it is instinctive; we simply have to let our nervous system do its work and after some time a return to normal functioning takes place.

Dealing with Emotional or Psychological Fear is not as simple and requires a great deal of courage, of trust and of determination since Psychological Fear is multi-layered and often rooted deep in our unconscious where we have no access. Yet, it is this multi-layer format which can help us to patiently unveil and dissolve our deepest fears.

Psychological Fear is multi-layered with various depth of physical sensation, with a wide range of feelings (Guilt, Shame, Despair, Insecurity), of thought forms (Unworthy, not good enough) and of behaviour patterns (Pleasing, Manipulating, Controlling). In their turn, all these uncomfortable sensations and feelings will generate a fear. The fear of meeting and facing these difficult to live sensations and feelings with, in the background the fear to face the original fear. This could translate as: ‘I’m afraid to be afraid’ or ‘I’m afraid to meet my fears’ or more precisely: ‘I’m afraid to sense these uncomfortable sensations and feelings’ which means that it is not so much the original fear that we are afraid to meet, but more the uncomfortable sensations and feelings that fear generates.
Does this resonate with your own experience?
Do you recognize in you this fear of meeting the uncomfortable sensations and feelings that the original fear generates; this latent insecurity which pervades your actions?
If yes, then we have a starting point; this is the thread that we can use to gently lead us towards the dissolution of the original fear.

→ Dealing with imagined Fear
To illustrate this multi-layer concept I’ll take one of your questions in order to unveil the original fear which is actually a common fear for many people; the fear to be oneself. Your question is: ‘I fear being different from others, not good enough in their eyes, yet I want to be like everyone and I don’t want to be excluded. I don’t know how to face this fear within me’.

Your fear of being different from others indicate that at some point in your life you have been compared with others. Maybe a sibling, maybe a school mate, maybe even a parent who boasted about how brilliant he was at your age. Hearing these comparisons, humiliation and shame settled in together with the desire to prove that you’re not what they say or on the opposite, with a feeling of giving up, a helplessness in front of such strong expectations. Both attitudes are probably at work in you. Sometimes wanting to prove and sometimes giving up, being helpless.
These two attitudes, proving or giving up seems to be active when you write ‘I don’t know how to face this fear within me’.
Since you fear being different from others and not good enough in their eyes, there may be in you a desire to prove that you are good enough by wanting to face the fear in you. Facing the fear would prove to others that you can manage, that you are good enough.
Is there such a desire in you? Check if this resonates for you or not.
If there is, then it is not your fear that you are concerned about, but more the image of you that you show to others. It becomes a distorted attempt to present a good image of you which leaves your fear active in the background.

Not knowing how to face your fear also shows, and this is of importance, that you are insecure and hesitant to confront the manifestations of the fear in you. You are at a loss, helpless, not knowing what to do, maybe even desperate and hopeless. Is this aspect more familiar for you?
My sense is that both attitudes are active in you and that it is not really wanting to face your fear which is underling your question but more a desire to feel secure since insecurity has become your base foundation. The various questions that you have raised since March-20 are all pointing in this direction.
Fear brings insecurity and insecurity brings a wide range of feelings but unless we allow ourselves to feel insecure, we won’t be able to dissolve the original fear in us.
You don’t know how to face this fear of being different from others and consequently the possibility of being excluded. Right, this is where you need to start. This not knowing will bring different feelings, yet the most important one is the feeling of insecurity. Allow yourself to be and feel insecure and in this allowing, some memories or images will pop up.
Maybe a little girl who was often compared with others, who was afraid of being rejected and mostly who so much wanted to be accepted and loved by mama or papa.
See this little girl that you were, so insecure, so fragile and most of all so much not understood for what she is and wants. Have compassion for this little girl that you were, she went through a hard time, not really supported, misunderstood and most of all not seen for who she was since comparison with others were the norm. She must have had this though form: ‘I’ll never match their expectation’ together with the fear of not being loved, of being rejected for not being ‘good enough’. Unworthiness is probably one of your beliefs.
But most of all, it seems that, for some reasons, this little girl could not rebel, could not say no, could not express her anger and frustration to be treated in the way she was treated. Remembering some of your previous questions I can say that your fear is not so much the fear of being different and be excluded but more the fear to be yourself.
Does this make sense for you? Can you relate with this fear to be yourself?
Can you recognize how this fear plays an active part in you?
Then the question for you is not so much about knowing how to face this fear of being different or excluded but more how can I be myself?
And the answer to that question is simple, allow yourself to express yourself, to say no when needed, to be angry, to be sad, to not know. Allow yourself to express your feelings, your ideas, your desires. You have been prevented to be yourself, now it is time to say Yes to you; dare be different, you are a unique being, so let this uniqueness manifest. Open the door of your heart. Stop hiding, stop making yourself small, stop pretending and you will soon discover that your fears will have vanished. A Yes to you, to who you are, how you are is the only needed step.
Be yourself and all will be well.

The Fear to be oneself can manifest in different ways and the following question shows another facet of this fear. ‘I compare myself with others and I sense that I care about others’ opinion towards me. I also care about gains and losses and pursue fame and fortune, yet I feel deeply frustrated. How can I overcome this lack of self-value’.
It is not that you lack self-value, it is only that you believe that you have no self-value. It is a belief that you’ve taken on. You are valuable as you are. Your seemingly lack of self-value was imparted on you by one of your parents, maybe even by both, so it is not yours, it is only their idea of you that you have integrated and made yours. You now believe that you are not good enough as you are; it is this belief which brings you to compare yourself with others and pursue fame and wealth.
As a child and teen-ager you were not accepted as you are and consequently it is Acceptance that you seek through the eyes of others or through the pursuit of fame and fortune.
When we are accepted, we also feel loved. Acceptance and Love go hand in hand. It is this lack of acceptance that you have suffered during your childhood and teen-age time which brought you to believe that you don’t have any value. And through your actions and behavior you are trying to prove that you have value and thus can be accepted and loved. This must take a great deal of effort on your part, and I can understand your frustration since what you most want (be accepted & loved) remains unseen, missed.
You take your lack of self-value for granted, for something real whilst it is not a reality but a belief. There is nothing that you need to overcome, since overcoming needs efforts. All you have to do is stepping out of this belief and for this no efforts are needed, only the simple recognition of yourself as you are. A simple yes to you as you are, with your qualities and your flaws.
You have heard so often that you were not the way that you were supposed to be that you’ve lost contact with your real being and the fear that settled in you is the fear to be yourself. If you are yourself, if you dare express your feelings or your thoughts, your experience is that you won’t be accepted, you won’t be loved and that is heartbreaking. It tears your heart apart and that pain is almost unbearable.
This recognition that you are as you are, is acceptance and it will bring peace to your heart and mind.
Forget about trying to overcome your so-called lack of self-value and see the obvious; you are as you are, and this is totally fine. Acceptance is the key.

The Fear to be oneself can also manifest as this participant is writing. ‘I so much want to be cuddled in an attentive, soft and loving way, but I can’t have my needs met from outside. No one can understand or fulfil this simple need of wanting to be cuddled. What can I do?’

Putting the attention, the focus, and the responsibility on the outside to have our needs met comes from the fear to be oneself, the fear to express our needs and desires. I can understand that you want to be cuddle in a soft and loving way. It is one of our basic needs, just as to be treated with respect is. It is natural for a child to be in this need, to have this desire, his wellbeing depends on it.
But you are not a child anymore, you are an adult, and you can express your needs, desires, and frustrations as well as pondering on their origin, their source. It may well be that the people around you do not understand your need or don’t know how to fulfil it when you ask to be cuddled in an attentive way. Yet subtly blaming them by generalizing that no one can understand you will not lead you anywhere expect into frustration and anger.
As an adult you can ponder upon what makes you so much long for this loving attention. What you are bound to discover is how much you are insecure without this loving attention. It is the feeling of insecurity, which maintains your need active. The feeling of insecurity is acting as a ground on which your need manifest. It is this insecurity and this need for security which prevents you from being yourself.
Your need is not really to be cuddled in an attentive way; your need is for security. If you were cuddled in an attentive way, you would feel contented and most of all secure.
You ask: ‘What can I do?’ What you need to do is to recognize how insecure you are in the various situations that you meet in life and have a yes for this one in you who feels insecure. Allowing yourself to be with this feeling of in security will gently and surely dispel the fear to be yourself since the reality is that you are insecure. Gather courage to face this one in you who is insecure and you will meet the strength which is hidden behind this insecurity.

We often fear being ourselves because we fear being rejected, excluded or abandoned. We so much want to be loved and accepted that we are ready to give up who we really are to the profit of what others wants us to be. It is a foolish bargain. We also fear to be ourselves since we dread feeling our painful heart.
The remedy is simple, recognize, accept and express. Acceptance is the key.

With this talk and the questions that were raised, I trust that you have understood that being yourself is a priority. However, do not simply believe in what I say. My words are only pointing the way. You will have to ponder, to check for yourself, to make your own experiences in order to discover your reality. It will be your own recognition, and not that of another, that will set you free from your fears and uncomfortable behaviour patterns.
I’m only here to support you in discovering your inner reality, not to feed your mind with ideas or concepts.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening; In our next meeting I will talk about the Shock State and how it can impede our lives as well as responding to some of the questions that you have raised.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_20-December-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘personal transformation’.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today’s question is about Fear & Protection. ‘I am afraid to be hurt and I feel the need to protect myself. I would like to stop being afraid and being constantly in a protection mode but feel at a loss with this and I don’t know what I need to look at to be able to step out of this fear and protection mechanism. Could you help me stepping out of this fear and protection mechanism?’

The need to protect oneself is part of our natural survival mechanism and as such absolutely normal. Yet when this need is fear driven it becomes a compulsion and generates more trouble than it can bring contentment. It leaves us in a constant insecurity mode with its load of worry, anxiety; we become anxiety driven and, in some way, psychologically handicapped.

As mentioned many times, the first thing is to say ‘yes’ to this fear and protection mechanism. ‘Yes, I am afraid and consequently I protect myself’. This acceptance is needed to be able to go further.
I can understand that you would like to stop being afraid and stop being constantly in a protection mode but this desire is only a mind desire because if you could stop this you would have stop it. Wouldn’t you?
The fact is that you cannot stop it and feel at a loss with it and don’t know what to do or which direction to take for this behaviour to cease. Moreover, other than living you at a loss and desperate it may also bring a sense of guilt or shame for being helpless or powerless with this.
The only possible attitude to have in the face of this is acceptance; accept that you cannot stop this behaviour pattern; accept that you have no control over it; accept that this behaviour drives you.
Accept: ‘yes I don’t know what to do; yes I am at a loss with this’. This acceptance will automatically bring relaxation and with it the possibility to look with sharper awareness at this issue.

Fear can be a powerful ally yet it can also be our worse enemy; it mainly depends on the way we connect and deal with fear. One thing to remember is that without the feeling of fear we would not survive, fear is an intrinsic part of our survival mechanism. Not only for us humans but also for all living beings. Fear helps us to survive potential dangers and as such fear is a useful and essential mechanism.
The mechanism of fear is simple; when there is a potential threat, our nervous system reacts by creating a rush of adrenaline in the body which provokes the fight or fly reaction. We either fight the danger or we run away from it and once one or the other action is taken our nervous system relaxes and our body returns to a normal pace. Since fear is a deep and vital survival mechanism, it is fortunate that we don’t have any control over it. In this sense fear is our powerful ally in life.

Yet fear can become a dreadful enemy when it does not leave us and remain held inside of us and blocks our nervous system from clearing fear out. This may happens when a fear is too overwhelming or, and this is often the case, when there is a constant source of threat coming our way. A child who is often or regularly criticized, blamed or beaten will tend to freeze in his openness and responses and since he has to go about with his life, he will unconsciously tend to overcome the fear by taking on controlling behaviour patterns.
When we try to push fear away and refrain from looking at fear directly we tend to fall into two main patterns; we either become helpless victims or the opposite, powerful controllers.

In both cases anxiety takes the lead. Anxiety is the toxic side of fear, it is fear upside down in the sense that anxiety is the anticipation of fear; danger is not yet there but we imagine that it could come. Anxiety is what most people are entangled in because their experience as a child was fear based and they could not fight or fly; they had to take the blow. This blow could have taken different forms; physical when beaten or psychological when being criticized, blamed, or shamed. It is the unpredictability of the caretakers which created anxiety in the child; and there is a fair possibility that this fear to be hurt which you are experiencing comes from your childhood environment.
When fear becomes incontrollable, it can also turn into all sorts of phobias and the phobia can become so intense that those who are phobia prone can lose all sense of reality and fall into a complete uncontrollable panic mode which can lead to various types of obsessional behaviour patterns and even to paranoia.
More generally and through the ages, fear has also been used as a tool to control people; the fear of punishment has ruled a vast majority of civilizations and still does; religion is for most part fear based. Fear has also become an element of education imposed on children from early childhood; ‘if you don’t behave well mama will not love you anymore’ is probably the most common sentence used by parents all over the world to make their child behave as they would like him to; this leaves the child with no other option than to become an obedient puppet attempting to be love and fearing what may come his way if he does not behave as he should.

Dealing with fear is not an easy matter since it can have such a wide range of effects and be deeply anchored in our psyche. Since its roots are unique to each individual, fear is best dealt with on individual basis; yet there are some easy exercises that can truly help regulating our nervous system to rid itself from an overload of fear.
After this talk I will show you one exercise which we can do together. This exercise will help you to ease your nervous system and bring relaxation.  

You say: ‘I am afraid to be hurt’ and ‘I don’t know what I need to look at’
Ok, but what kind of hurt do you fear? Is it a physical or a psychological hurt; is it a mix of both, which is generally the case for many people? This is the first thing that you need to specify otherwise it is too general and difficult to tackle. One can feel hurt by being abandoned, by being criticized, by being made ashamed, by seeing others hurting themselves. There are so many ways of being hurt.
Once you are more aware of the way that you fear being hurt, allow some memories to surface of time when this specific hurt took place. Did someone said or did not say something; has someone done or did not do something that you expected. It pays to be specific.
It may have happened yesterday or anytime recently and not necessarily in your childhood, even though the source can most probably be found in your childhood. But it is easier to start with the present and allow the feelings which are still fresh.
Once the feeling starts moving in you, the feeling itself will lead you where you need to go, so there is no need to worry, simply trust what wants to take place; your body, your nervous system know better than your mind so let the motion follow its course, it won’t harm you nor overwhelm you even though you might fear that.

Because we fear what we don’t know we tend to use our rational mind to control everything and therefor block the natural flow of feeling. In this process of stepping out of fear and protection we need to let ‘allowing’ and ‘controlling’ play their part as they want. Sometimes you will sense that one feeling comes first and as the feeling is being expressed, a thought comes in which tends to stop the feeling, that’s fine, allow this since the though may bring a different feeling, express this feeling and keep on like this.
For instance someone fears to be criticized. Upon remembering a specific situation the first thing that comes is anger together with the urge to blame the other. Ok, let this anger and blaming be expressed and as you express this a thought may come in: ‘I should not be angry, I should not blame, it is wrong’. The feeling of shame creeps in; that’s fine, accept this, let it be. Allowing and expressing this feeling of shame will probably bring in its wake a feeling of sadness and so on until something inside settles and you start feeling more relaxed, as if a weight has left your heart. I’m confident that many of you have experienced such a process.
Moving with the flow as it wants to happen, is the right direction to take. Moving with the flow as it wants to happen, is the right direction to take. Some time ago I gave a talk on Trust & Openness and this is exactly what is needed when we want to free ourselves from some issue or entanglement that we are caught in. It is about being open to what wants to come, without any expectation, without any preconceived ideas.
There is no need to specifically look at your protection mechanism; this mechanism will loosen at its own rhythm as long as you support openness to what wants to happen when you connect with a situation where you sense your fear to be hurt.
Remember to be specific about your fear and more specifically about your hurt; this is essential, without this going any further will be difficult.

Before I answer your questions, let’s practice one exercise knowing that when we fear we immediately contract and if we keep this contraction, there is no possibility for our nervous system to release the stress hormones that fear generates.
In order to release these stress hormones, we will first contract our upper body by taking the position that I am showing you and remain in this position for a few seconds in order to feel the contraction as much as possible.
Then we will open our arms, our mouth and stick our tongue out with the sound haaaaaa for a few seconds.
Repeat this for a few times and then laugh loudly and madly. 
To be more efficient you can remember a situation where you felt fear, contract, then open your upper body, stick our tongue out, make the sound and finally roll into laughter about you and that situation.
You can practice this exercise a few minutes every day.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening and, if and when fear comes your way, remember this little exercise, it will help bring peace and relaxation. 
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_29-December-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on zoom platform on different aspects of ‘relationships’.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Tuesday zoom meeting,

The question raised today by a participant fits well to conclude this series of talks on relationships. She writes: ‘Could you clarify how Love and Self-respect can combine within a relationship? I do want to be loved, yet I don’t want to feel imprisoned by my partner’s love. How can I balance my need for love, self-respect, and freedom?’

If you recall what I’ve said all along our weekly meetings this month you will notice that I’ve put the emphasis on ‘you’ and not on the ‘other’ within a relationship. This implies that it is essential to respect yourself within the relationship. Your question brings forth a common misunderstanding about what these 3 words Love, Self-respect and Freedom are about.
Love and self-respect are not different, they go hand in hand. When love is present, self-respect follows automatically and when you respect yourself, love expands. The problem comes because you look at this matter from a distorted perspective. Your thinking is upside down. You put the other first and you want the other to love and respect you. This distorted way of looking at reality happens because you don’t really turn the focus on you. In a way you have lost yourself for the benefit of the other and you hardly exist in your own eyes. You are in a constant denial of yourself. Judging yourself for being this or not being that, in other words, wanting to be different than you are. You want to match with what others expects of you so that you can be accepted, liked or love by them. What you are not seeing is that in doing so you simply deny yourself and become a ‘love beggar’.
Each of you can check how relevant this denial is for himself.

In a previous talk on Sexuality and Love I was saying: « There is, in each of us a deep longing for love. At our core we are love but most of the time, if not always, we have lost this inner connection with the love that we are and we tend to seek it through or via the other; then sexual activity becomes a search to fulfil this longing for love. When we are searching to fulfil an aspect of us that we miss, we are simply using our partner to get what we miss inside; we try to fill in an emptiness that we have inside. We fall prey of becoming ‘love beggars’. »

The word self-respect is clear, it starts with you; it has nothing to do with anyone else, but you constantly live through the eyes of others and follow others’ ideas about you in order to have your needs fulfilled. In doing this you cease to exist; you have made a puppet of yourself. The starting point of self-respect is: ‘I exist’. ‘I exists’ implies that I am standing here, in my own strength, ready to face the world to which I can say yes or no according to what feels right for me and not according to some preconceived ideas or moral rules.
Yet to be able to say ‘I exist’ one needs to realize that one is alive, that one is an expression of life, that one is Life itself in this unique form. But this is seldom recognized, and thus the obvious is missed. Intellectually you know that you are alive, but this knowledge is purely from the mind, it is not a lived experienced. ‘I am alive’ or ‘I exist’ is not the conclusion or the deduction of a though process, it must be a lived experience and it is the lived experience that makes the whole difference.
When ‘I exist’ is recognized, self-respect follows like a shadow because self-respect is simply the manifestation of this recognition. Self-respect is a ‘yes’ to who you are, this implies that you have to say ‘no’ when it does not feel right for you.
See young children who have not yet been ‘educated’, they have no concept about self-respect or the fact that they exist, yet they are the living proof of this. Watch them and see for yourself.

The problem is that you have been trained not to love yourself, not to care about yourself but more to please others in order to be loved in return, in order to have your needs fulfilled. ‘Mama will love you if you listen to her. Papa will be proud of you if you top the rank at school. Don’t be selfish, being selfish is wrong; think of us, don’t make us ashamed’.
How many times have you heard these or similar words? It is true that being selfish is not a way to be in life, but self-respect has nothing to do with selfishness or being selfish.
A selfish or egocentric person is a heart-closed person who follows her mind, her desires and not her heart whilst a person who respects herself act from an open heart. Most parents are in reality selfish persons since they seldom allow you to be who you are, they want you to be at their image. They don’t see you as you are, they see you as someone who needs to be domesticated, educated to fit with their ideas of how to be in life, to fit with society’s rules and moral ideas. Your parents are also the product of such education, they simply repeat what has been done to them, so how can they support you in loving yourself. It is not possible.
Out of this counterproductive education you fear being rejected or not loved by the other and it is this desire to be loved and accepted which makes you dis-respect yourself by not saying ‘no’ when it is needed. See for yourself how many times you say ‘yes’ to situations for which in reality, you have a ‘no’ to. Sexual activity is probably the place where this is most noticeable. Don’t believe me, see for yourself.

You say: ‘I do want to be loved, yet I don’t want to feel imprisoned by my partner’s love’.
You want to be loved because you don’t love yourself, because you are not confident. The very desire of wanting to be loved is an indication that something is missing in you. It is an indication that insecurity is what your personality is based upon. You are insecure and you want to be reassured. It is not really love that you want, it is reassurance, security. You are like a little child who wants to be held because he feels insecure.
Have a look whether what I am saying is relevant for you or not.
The feeling of insecurity covers a vast area for a child, the world in which he is growing is so unknown and so unfriendly that’s why it is normal for a child to feel insecure and seek security in the arms of his parents. Yet their role is to support the child in gaining confidence and independence rather than blaming him or rejecting him for being insecure. Whether it is a boy or a girl, parents often say humiliating words to a child for showing his insecurity and it is quite probable that this is how your parents treated you when you were feeling insecure, when you wanted some tenderness or wanted to be free to go and play with other boys or girls. You did not received the love and support that you were entitled to, this is what makes you ask: ‘how can I balance my need for love, self-respect, and freedom?’

Although you are not a child anymore, you want to be loved because your basic needs are still screaming for fulfilment inside of you. And rather than taking responsibility in taking care of these unfulfilled needs, you ask your partner to fulfil them in a way that would be acceptable for you. You probably also judge yourself for having these needs and feeling insecure. This pattern has imprisoned you in a fear-based attitude. You missed being love, yet there is a deep fear that this ‘love’ will become a way to imprisoned and control you, just like your parents ‘so called love’ did.
The love that you’ve received from your parents or caretakers was not really love. Yes, I’m sure that they did their best to support you in various aspects, yet their support was a subtle form of control since they were insecure themselves. If you are a parent yourself, you will most certainly understand what I am pointing at because it has become your problem too.
I’m pointing to this insecurity that most parents have in being a parent. They feel at a loss with their child or children. Most parents don’t really know what to do, what to say, how to support their child. There is a gap, sometimes a huge one between parents and children and to fill in this gap most parents think in terms of ‘educating’ and controlling rather than accompanying and supporting. Their insecurity can even make them overprotective, thus the feeling of imprisonment that you fear and the freedom that you want. Parents are not to be blamed, they do what they can but since they haven’t really been loved themselves, how can they convey Love to their children. Their ‘love’ is in reality a form of obligation. Since they’ve had the child, they feel that it is their duty to raise that child as best they can but often their heart is not with it and this can have many different causes such as an unwanted or difficult pregnancy, a girl instead of a boy, a challenging marriage relationship or financial difficulties.
The child is not often welcome as he should be, and this generates suffering for the child.

True love cannot imprisoned anyone, otherwise it is not love but subtle ways to control. True love supports, true love keeps you free, true love roots you in your being which helps you express your aliveness; True love gives you wings to fly and express your creativity. True love does not give you any ideal to follow. True love leaves you free to simply be yourself.
Your need for freedom is based on a false idea of freedom, it is based on the fear to be controlled. As a child you must have been restricted and controlled, so automatically you want the opposite. Who wants to be controlled? No-one wants to be under the power or the influence of someone else, except perhaps those who cannot decide for themselves. The majority of people want to be free, but mostly to be free to do what they want and being free to do what you want has little to do with freedom. It is not freedom, it is irresponsibility, selfishness and a subtle form of control which says ‘go to hell’ to those who control.

True Freedom has to do with acceptance, the very fact of accepting makes you free. When you sense that someone is trying to control you, different possibilities are available. You can choose to fight against this controlling person, or you can choose to run away from that person, yet these two attitudes are based on a non-accepting attitude. Once you’ve realized that the person is in a controlling mode another choice is possible. You can choose to say yes, you can choose to accept that this person is in a controlling mode. You can see that this person is acting in a controlling way, that it is her way of behaving and that her way of behaving has nothing to do with you. You can see all this, and it is this recognition which creates acceptance. The acceptance of the reality as it is leaves you free.

It is not a question of finding out ‘how to balance your need for love, self-respect, and freedom’, but more a question of freeing yourself from your unsatisfied needs. You will have to recognize, as a lived experience, that love is what you are and that in reality you are already free. Participating in a self-enquiry retreat can bring this experiential understanding to you.
As mentioned during our first meeting, a relationship starts with you, so if you want that the relationship with your partner becomes a healthy one, where love and respect are the basic ingredients, start by considering yourself in a much more respectful and loving way. It is pointless to want your partner to be different than he is and ask him to be more considerate to you. He is as he is, accept that this is so, and use this as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Remember, the key is to respect yourself rather than bear more than you can handle and, most of all, follow your heart rather than your mind or other’s ideas of how you should be.
Another word for self-respect is ‘integrity’. Integrity means being whole, undivided and most of all uncompromising with what feels right for you. In putting your attention on you, by and by you will start to be clearer about what feels right and what does not feel right for you. This will automatically bring forth a caring attitude for this one that you are and with it a strong motivation not to compromise. Love, Self-respect and Freedom are in your hands and not in anyone else’s hands.

I am confident that these 4 talks on relationship will have given you, and all those who attended, an opportunity to shift your understanding of how to be in a relationship and that your relationship will become healthier.

Thank you everyone for your attentive listening.
With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_28-september-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on zoom platform on different aspects of ‘relationships’.

Dear friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Tuesday zoom meeting,
Following our last meeting on fear of the other gender, a questioner wrote: ‘I fear men in different ways and specially around sexuality. Could you talk about the fear of the other gender in the context of sexuality? I do want to have sex with the man I love, but I don't want to be seen as a sexual addict or a sexual tool. How can my sexual desire meet with morality?’

In our last meeting, I mentioned that sexuality in a relationship is often a tabooed topic. Sexual activity does take place in a relationship, yet no one really dare to openly talk about it. Sexuality has become a sensitive topic where fear and shame are playing the main repressive roles. In a relationship it is perfectly natural to talk about what kind of food or clothes that each one likes, but there is often a deep silence on how each partner would feel at ease with sexual activity, on what each partner likes or dislikes when having sex. Sexual activity is often reduced to a reproduction role or a male dominant sexual impulse to which the woman has to comply with.

The first thing to understand is that sexuality is a natural and vital part of man and women physical organization with the main purpose of reproduction. Yet humans differ from animals in the sense that they are gifted with the capacity to sense pleasure and pain. This capacity enables men and women to experience pleasure and/or pain during a sexual intercourse. They even have the possibility to bring pleasure to a more ecstatic and spiritual level which other species are not bothered or gifted with since their main purpose remains at the level of survival of the species. 

Your fear around sexuality may have various origin and it may not necessarily be linked with man as such, but more with man’s power-oriented attitude. Just as men and women are not speaking the same language, men and women differ completely in their physical and psychological approach to sexuality. It is obvious that man is of the Yang type with his erected penis, while woman is of the Yin type with her vagina shaped to receive and absorb. This physical difference is already a gateway for various fears and shame to arise in both genders.

Fear & shame in the context of sexuality
Probably more than in any other context, it is in the sexuality context that fear, and shame are playing an important part in inhibiting both partners. Shame is usually overlaying fear and thus becomes the most inhibiting factor. The only way to dissolve shame is by bringing it in the open, first by recognizing it and then by express it.
In sexual activity shame takes over from the very beginning and most probably the first aspect of shame to arise is the shame of doing something sinful. ‘Girls should not play with boys’ or ‘you’ll be labelled as a whore/prostitute if you engage in sexual activity with a man’. Parental and society judgements are playing a large part in inducing this type of shame and guilt.
To dispel this specific shame, I suggest doing guilt clearing communication exercises. For those interested I can give you the magic formula to use.

Then comes body-shame, the shame of being naked, the shame around the shape and size of the genital areas or the size of breast. So much shame is concentrated on the appearance of the naked body for both genders. Showing oneself naked is often a difficult moment since nakedness has been banned by most societies.  
The possibility to dispel that specific shame is to spend time with your partner, both in your birthday suit, looking at each other and expressing the thoughts that arises, the desires and the repulsions. Doing communication exercises on this point with your partner to release all the judgments that you carry on your own body and on that of your partner will be of tremendous benefit for both of you. This can be challenging of course, yet when it is done from a place of love and respect, it becomes beneficial for both. See a young child, boy of girl, they are not ashamed of their body, they are not afraid of being seen naked, it is only because of parental and society creeds that ‘toxic shame’ sets in. Remember the talk on shame and the difference between natural shame and toxic shame.
It is important to dissolve, even if only partly, these two shames so that you can be more at ease to tackle the different fears that you may have and after practicing the communication exercises that I have just mentioned, you will notice that the fear of being seen naked has melted and what now comes forth is the fear of being touched wrongly.

Being touched wrongly is probably the main fear and source of frustration for women. Women and men have a hard time in understanding each other on this point. This is the realm where they really don’t speak the same language and where their approach to the other gender is often antagonistic.
Man is usually not interesting in taking time to approach the women with care, he just wants to ‘have it’, to satisfy his sexual urge and he can be tactless in doing this. This is experienced as a brutal invasion for a woman, and it is bound to generate fear, frustration, anger and repulsion. This repulsion of being touch wrongly usually put women off having sex and bring forth the famous: ‘not tonight dear I have a headache’. It may also be that out of some social beliefs or fear to be rejected, a woman becomes submissive, being the unwilling humbly servant of her spouse. When this behaviour is being acted out, it generally lead women to just bear and become insensitive, frigid. Although not usually labelled as sexual abuse because it happens within a marriage, this tactless behaviour from men it is exactly that, a sexual abuse.

Women speak a different language since their sexual chemistry is different. In sexual activity women are on a completely different planet. Their sexual arousal needs time and for this they need a softer and smoother approach where playfulness, gentleness and respect are the main ingredients. A woman can feel very vulnerable during sexual activity and this vulnerability is not often considered by their partner.
Once again, the only way out of this ‘language’ problem is to communicate. It is the responsibility of both partners to find ways of communicating their likes and dislikes. There is a need for a woman to say stop when something does not feel right for her. She needs to show her partner what would be the right way for her, how she would like to be touched and so on. Very often women feels that they are not respected when having sex, but they also carry a part of responsibility in this. When they let unwanted touching take place without saying a word, they are not respecting themselves. Respecting oneself needs to be the norm in every situation, including during sexual activity. This also applies to men.
I’d like to emphasize it again, communication is essential before, during and after having sex. And by communication I don’t mean saying or whispering sweet words during an intercourse, I mean being strait forward about what is happening for you on a sensing and feeling level. I understand that it is not always possible to communicate in this way with your partner since he may not be open to this or may find it too challenging for him.
Just try and see what is possible with your partner.

There are many other fears that a woman or a man can be confronted with around sexuality. Just to name a few. The fear to deceive the partner, to not be performant enough, the fear to express one own’s pleasure or the fear of expressing and acting out sexual fantasies. What is important is that each partner recognizes what is the most problematic fear for him and start to take care of that specific fear.

Since sexuality is a natural activity, where do these fears come from?
Fear and shame around sexuality have two different origins.
One comes from your own experience. You may have been mocked, blamed, humiliated or even abused in the context of sexuality which created shame and fear in you. The other comes from a distorted education made of false ideas, beliefs and wrong assumptions.

Fear in sexuality may arise because of traumatizing past experiences when having sex, especially the first few times. It may also be there because of sexual abuses during childhood. Many children, boys and girls are sexually abused during their early childhood and because of shame or fear to be rejected if they mention this; it becomes difficult for them to talk about this abuse, let alone being believed and understood by their elders. Sexual abuse during childhood has certainly a deep influence on a person’s adult sexual life. Yet sexual abuses, especially towards women are unfortunately also very common whether in the work environment or at home. The ‘promotional abuse’ or the ‘in house abuse’ continue to reinforce the original trauma.
Where sexuality is concerned, men’s power-oriented attitude often becomes abusive towards women, and this has become an accepted norm in many societies. Fortunately, the very strong veiling silence on women and child abuses is slowly lifting since the victim of such abuses tend to speak out nowadays.
I would encourage those of you who have experienced a sexual abuse situation to take courage and bypass the shame that you may have about this so that you can talk about it and dispel the pain that the abuses has created. It may not be easy at first, but that’s the only way to free your heart.

Besides traumatic experiences, fear around sexuality arises because of distorted education and social ideas and beliefs. Fear and shame creep in when, as a child or teenager, you are told that it is a sin to have sex before marriage or that you need to keep your virginity for the ‘right’ man, or that it is shameful to masturbate or that you may catch some diseases or be pregnant if you have sex out of marriage. All these are society imposes ideas to keep men and women enslaved and they tend to strongly inhibit sexual activity.

When you write: 'I do want to have sex with the man I love, but I don't want to be seen as a sexual addict or a sexual tool. How can my sexual desire meet with morality?’ You are accurately describing some of these society moral restrictions. Being a sexual tool means that you give yourself up to the profit of another. It means that you have abandoned yourself, it means that you are not valuing yourself, that you are disrespecting yourself in order to gain something. It may be affection, it may be security or money, it does not matter, what matters is that you have disowned yourself and this is the real sin. Yet, since you also mention the fear of being seen as a sexual addict, I sense that the meaning that you are giving to these words ‘sexual tool’ is different and more in line with the fact that your desire for sexual activity is strong.

A strong sexual desire is not only a man’s prerogative. Sexual desire is an energetic inner movement share by both genders. Yet again because of imposed social ideas, because of morality, women are supposed to be desireless sexually. This is such a puerile and irresponsible idea used to keep women under man’s control. It is true that men and woman are not speaking the same language, especially in sexuality. They do differ in their approach of sexuality, but the source is the same. Sexual desire is an innate drive common to both genders and one should not be afraid of one’s own sexual drive.
Your question reminds me of a question raised by a female student in a face-to-face session. She was asking: ‘In the intimacy relationship, how can a woman be sexually active? Our culture thinks that women should be indirect, if she is too active and direct in the relationship, she wouldn’t be loved and would be labelled as a prostitute’.
Such a load of misleading ideas to keep control over women! The probable reason for this controlling attitude is that if a woman is free to let her sexual desire follow its course, then the man will be at a loss, he might feel insecure, not knowing what to do. The missionary position with man on top, is a very controlling position, it keeps the woman tied up and enable man to control his pleasure. If the woman takes the ‘horse position’, she has the control of her own pleasure and de facto that of the man. It is only a question of who is in control. Being sexually active for a woman is considered shameful only because of man’s insecurity and man’s power-oriented attitude. When a woman is sexually active, she can become wild, and man is often afraid of what he cannot control. It is a pity because of his fear man closes the door to creativity and playfulness. Sexual activity can be such a playful and enriching moment when both partners are relaxed and free of pre-conceived ideas. 
There is the need for another cultural revolution, a revolution where women would be free from men’s control, especially regarding to sex.

Your fear of being seen as a sexual tool or a sexual addict has also to do with the fact that you care about others judgments on you. ‘What are they going to say if I show that I have sexual desire?’
Shame is lurking behind your fear. You are afraid of your own energy and more specifically about what others may say about you. Check whether there are other areas in your life where this fear of others’ judgments on you is active. I would not be surprised that this fear pervades in different areas of your life.
If the man you love truly loves you, he will accept your need to be active during sexual activity. So let your sexual desire follow its course, seriousness is a killer in this matter, forget about what he or other may think or say and be playful with your own energy, this will open the doors to some more ecstatic moments for both of you.
Your sexual desire will never meet with morality since morality is imposed by society, be clear on this point. The only important point for you is to be at ease with your desire and for this communication with your partner about it is essential. Sexuality is a sharing of energy, and it can only be brought to its peak when the heart is involved and when mind does not interfere.

Having sexual activity in a natural way, that is without shame, fear or guilt, requires a great dose of patience and honesty with oneself. Each of us have the capacity to express our sexuality with confidence and in a relaxed way. For this we simply need to regain our ability to say what we want or don’t want, to ask for what we want without embarrassment and quickly leave situations where we feel unfulfilled or humiliated. All these are enormous psychological achievements that each of you can accomplish, their outcome will bring self-respect and freedom to you.
All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening. In our next meeting we will conclude this series of talks on relationships with a question on love, self-respect and freedom.

With love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_21-September-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘relationships’.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our Tuesday Zoom Meeting,

At the end of our last meeting I talked about the backlog of fear that we accumulated during childhood and how fear become a hindrance to express ourselves freely and fully, especially within intimate relationships. Fear covers a large array of situations in a relationship, including sexuality, our next topic. Yet our questioner today brings fear in relation to the opposite gender and writes: ‘Because I have been hurt by my husband, I started to escape from the relationship. Is there a possibility of meeting the opposite gender without fear? What can I do to build a comfortable and relaxed relationship with a man?’

It is a sane reaction to flee from a relationship when we have been hurt by our partner. However, since you are not specifying what the hurt is about and what you mean exactly by escaping the relationship, it becomes difficult for me to answer you on this point since there are a large range of possible answers, yet none may fit your case. Remember, it pays to be specific!
Your question about the possibility of meeting the opposite gender without fear, puts the emphasis on the other gender. Once again, I’d like to emphasize that it is not only the opposite gender which can generates fear in a relationship. Any partner who is authoritative, controlling and abusive can generate fear in the other partner. You might have seen this happening in your original family where for some reasons mother was the controlling and authoritative one and father a more easy-going person.
This being said, it is a common fact that men in general are more abusive within a relationship than women and unfortunately violence to women in relationships is more and more making the headlines around the world these days. In many countries, especially where religion dictates social behaviour like India or Muslim countries, women have almost no rights and very little freedom of movement, they can only stay in the shadow of men.
In many aspects the equality man/woman is far from being the norm, even in western countries. As far as I’ve seen in my travel and working with people, eastern countries are not better off on this matter. Since centuries, society around the globe has been a male dominant society where men have imposed their power over women, treating them almost as slaves and as sexual objects; only good enough to undertake domestic task and give birth to children, as if women were sub-humans. Even though if nowadays in some countries, women have gained respect and their social status has largely improve, the male dominant power-oriented attitude still prevails in many subtle ways which is bound to bring fear, resentment and aggressivity in women towards men. You have to remember that fear has a counterpart, hate; and underneath a layer of helplessness there is often a strong layer of destructive energy towards that which created the fear. This is why there is a necessity, when you want to meet the other gender on a sane basis, that is to say without fear, to also look at the destructive energy within you. I will come back to this aspect in more details later, for now I want to shade some light on what makes men so power-oriented.

There are different aspects to be considered in order to understand the root cause of this man power-oriented attitude.
One aspect is to be found in the early human settlements. In those prehistoric days and only until recent decades, life was mainly about survival. Immediate survival of the environment as well as the survival of the community as a whole. Due to his physical capacities man was the one who innately took on the role of provider and protector, whilst women were more prone to be in a caring and nurturing role. What was needed and relevant in these early developments of society seems to have set the base of men and women psychological world.
Another aspect which needs to be considered is that in his very structure, in his DNA, man has a built-in outgoing and conquering attitude which can be symbolized by his erected sexual organ. This outgoing and conquering attitude permeate all aspects of man’s life. It has to be so since Life on this planet is mainly governed by a male/female principle. Life blossoms and regenerates on account of this male/female principle. You can clearly see this male dominance at work in all living mammals. 
The problem with humans is that this innate dominance has turned into a psychological dominance. Over the course of time, man has turn this innate outgoing and conquering attitude into a power-oriented attitude. Man wants to control and have power over everything that he can lay his hands on. The history of every nation and every religion is based on man’s conquest for power, it is based on men taking power over other men and more specifically over women. Unfortunately this attitude still prevails in our modern times with wars, economic and intellectual domination. It seems that man has not yet raised to a mature status and still lives in the same way as his prehistoric ancestors.
Yet what is seldom seen is that this power-oriented attitude is actually fear based; on the surface man appears strong, powerful and controlling, yet this surface layer is only skin deep, underneath this upper layer there is fear and vulnerability. In many cases, man is a mouse hiding under a lion or a gorilla skin.

I’ve mentioned the above for you to understand that man’s power-oriented attitude is not simply a modern characteristic but more the outcome of many centuries of social conditioning. In a similar way, women have also inherited from their foremothers’ characteristics which brought John Gray, a modern American writer to name his book on intimate relationship: ‘Men are from Mars and Women from Venus’ in order to emphasize the differences and the difficulties encountered within relationships. He writes: ‘Men and women don’t speak the same language since Mars is the god of War and Venus the goddess of Love. The two sexes are not alike in their way of acting and expressing their feelings’.
I would encourage all of you to read John Gray’s book above as well as his second title, ‘Mars & Venus in the bedroom’ which is related to sexuality within relationships, our next week’s topic.

Men and women don’t speak the same language and are not alike in their way of acting and expressing their feeling simply because their brain is geared or wired differently. Man is built, so to speak, to hunt, to take power over the world around him and to protect, he is outgoing and extrovert whilst women are more about receiving, nurturing, and absorbing in order to transform. Their physical difference, especially around their sexual organs also plays a large part in their inability to understand each other.
What complicates this already complex interaction between men and women is to be found in the way that man are treated in their early development age. A man may have had a controlling mother and/or a violent father and as an adult he is unconsciously repeating the same behaviour pattern that was put on him. He may have been treated like a prince and forged an arrogant attitude especially around women. His sexual development may have been tampered with, which is bound to leave scars in his adult sexual life. He may also have tried to live up to the expectation of his parents and fears not to be loved if he does not meet their expectations.

Society in general also imposes its models on how man should be and behave. The honest and reliable man, the hard worker, the loyal and filial one, the dutiful one, the good father, the sexual performer. Man tries so hard to live up to so many archetypes imposed by society that he loses himself and disregards his own truth. Because of all this, man generally feels weak and insecure inside, but because of his male status he cannot allow himself to show his inner world and has to compensate by wearing different masks that fits with what he is supposed to be.
Insecurity is the main source of control and power, the other is revenge and many men and women fall into these traps. It is mainly a protection mechanism from the hurt felt inside.

Once the root cause of man’s power-oriented attitude is understood, the possibility of meeting the opposite gender without fear arises naturally knowing that it is not really man that you are afraid of, it is what he represents, the authority, the power as well as the abuse of power, this is what you are afraid of. This does not discard the fact that some men are actively acting this power-oriented attitude and can be violent and abusive, in which case, the obvious thing to do is to move away from them.

If we consider that men are associated with Mars, the ancient Greek god of war, let us not forget that women, although associated with Venus, the goddess of Love in the Greek mythology, are likewise wrapped up in a similar psychological conditioning in the sense that they are also imprisoned in various society archetypes of how they should be and how they should look, with on top of that the fact that most of them have similarly suffered the same damaging development in their childhood, undermining their blossoming as a self-confident woman.

When you ask: ‘What can I do to build a comfortable and relaxed relationship with a man?’ the answer which naturally comes is: take care of your own inner world, especially the destructive energy that is lurking at the bottom of your heart, ready to pounce at the slightest alert.
This destructive energy can move into different directions. It can easily fall into presenting you as a victim of man’s power-oriented attitude or transform you into a nagging and aggressive person towards men, making you the abusive and power-oriented person. This destructive energy can also turn against you and become the blaming voices that tells you how unworthy of being loved you are, how horrible or how not good enough you are.
Do what is needed for you to first become comfortable with yourself, by putting the attention on you so that self-confidence and trust in you can arise. The fear is there because you are insecure, take care of this insecurity and self-confidence will follow like a shadow. It is in your hands to become a fully mature person and discover or recognize that all is not all black and white, that there is not a clear-cut male/female difference, that each gender carries some characteristics of the other gender and that these characteristics have also to be integrated to form a mature person. In last week’s meeting, I talked about aloneness. Aloneness is the result of integrating both principles. In your culture you have the Taoist symbol of Yin & Yang which clearly illustrate this difference and complementarity between men and women in pointing out that in each part there is an element of the opposite part.

To build a comfortable and relaxed relationship with a man, you will have to take care of your insecurity and fears in their different manifestations; you will also need to recognize and integrate your masculine side. Understanding and accepting who you are and how you function is a needed step to first build a comfortable and relaxed relationship with yourself. Remember, you are the most important person in your life, that’s why you come first and when you are self-confident and at peace with yourself, the relationship becomes easy-going, the fear of the other is no longer relevant. Acceptance sets in, and with it all worries, all problems disappears and love flows.
Each of you can achieve this understanding and become an independent and unique individual.

All right, let’s stop here for now knowing that our next week meeting will be on the sensitive and often taboo topic of sexuality in relationships. Another area where fear is often present at different levels.
Thank you everyone for your attentive listening.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_14-September-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Relationships.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Our host, Niya, asked me to do a series of talks on ‘Relationships’ since it seems that many of you have difficulties with your spouse within your relationship. Looking at the various questions raised I can understand how relating with another in the context of an intimate relationship generates difficulties for many of you.
In this series of 4 talks we will look at the different issues that can arise from being involved in a relationship, such as: fear of the other gender, sexuality, love and self-respect and how these issues can be resolve for the benefit of both partners. I’m confident that these September talks will be of help for many of you.

One of you raised this question: ‘I am at a loss and unhappy in the relationship with my spouse. I don’t know how to be in this relationship, nor what is meant by being in a relationship. Could you clarify what a relationship with the other gender is supposed to be?’

This question: ‘What a relationship with the other gender is supposed to be?’ is most certainly the first point to look at and gain clarity on. I first want to point out that being focus on the ‘other gender’ is narrowing the subject. Some of you are in a male/female relationship and some of you are in a same gender relationship, yet similar issues are arising. This means that it is not so much the gender of the partner which is the problem but more ‘the other’ itself. Whether you are in another gender or same gender relationship does not really matter, what matters is the inter-dynamic with that specific ‘other’.
It is generally taken for granted that it is always the other who is the problem, but is this really the case?  Pondering on ‘what another is’ can bring us to understand why we encounter difficulties in relating with a specific other. To make it short, we usually don’t see the other as another but more as a provider of our needs, the other then becomes an instrument to satisfy our needs.
It would be a fruitful practice for each of you to enquire on ‘what another is’ and you can do this either alone in your leisure time or when you do communication exercises with a partner.
There is also an obvious fact about ‘relationship’ which is often overlooked. The obvious fact is that we are constantly in a relationship, whatever we do, whatever we set our eye upon becomes a relationship simply because the duality ‘me’ and ‘something other than me’ is always at work. We live in duality and some of you may remember the talk that I gave on ‘Personality and True Nature’ some time ago where I was emphasizing that everything is centred on or revolves around this ‘me’.

Understanding that we always relate from a ‘me’ point of view is of importance. Because of this, we tend to put the focus on what is outside of us, the ‘other’ in the context of a relationship, and we would like this ‘other’ to see us as we are and mostly, we would like this ‘other’ to match our expectations and our needs so that we can feel safe and secure. What we overlook is that ‘this specific other’ also wants to be seen as he is and have his needs and expectations met.
In most relationships none of the partner is being seen for who he is, and this inevitably leads to conflicts in the relationship. Conflicts arise because of ‘me’ and my needs, ‘me’ and my desires, ‘me’ and my expectations on the other as well as ‘the other’ needs, desires, and expectations on me. This is what turns the relationship into a disappointing and awkward journey which does not match the anticipated and promising fruits of the first meeting and the following ‘honeymoon’ period.
I’m sure that you have all noticed and experience this, whatever gender relationship you are involved in.
One thing is certain, a healthy and fruitful relationship cannot be about both partners fulfilling each other’s needs. This would be more like a begging or a pleasing relationship and unfortunately this is the type of relationship that most people are in.
Check whether this is true for you or not.

What is a heathy relationship?
It is quite simple really; a healthy relationship is a relationship based on mutual respect. Respect for oneself and respect for the other are the fundamental basis of a healthy relationship. Alone we are somewhat limited, together we can expand. A healthy relationship combines Alone & Together.
Alone does not mean lonely, alone means integrity and self-respect. Aloneness is a strength on its own, it means living in self-confidence, in a total acceptance of who we are. Aloneness is the radiance of love. And when two aloneness meet to form a togetherness, a healthy relationship is born and this relationship can blossom because the two aloneness move in the same direction, they expand in love and generate beauty and creativity.
As you may have understood from what I have just said, the needed ingredient for a healthy relationship to materialize is, for each partner, to be rooted in their aloneness. You may remember the talk that I gave in April about ‘Intimacy & Relationships’. Intimacy is Aloneness; Aloneness is Intimacy, these two words have the same meaning. If your desire is to be in a healthy and fruitful relationship, read that talk again and do the needful to regain your aloneness, to regain your integrity, your true face.
All the talks and workshops that I propose are geared in this direction, they aim to guide you into regaining your aloneness so that you can choose how to live your life and what type of relationship you want to be involved in. I can only point the direction and support you on the way, yet I cannot walk the way for you.

How to be in a relationship?
As for you the questioner, since you are 'at a loss and unhappy in the relationship with your spouse and don’t know how to be in this relationship', it seems obvious that you have not yet regain your aloneness, and that the relationship you are in is also not a healthy one.
Other than regaining your aloneness, which would be a priority, what are your possibilities to change something and bring this relationship to a more happy level for you?
First, drop any idea of wanting to change your partner, of wanting him to be different than who he is. Let this be crystal clear, he is how he is, and you will have to manage with this for now. Once you accept the fact that your partner is how he is, then a miracle takes place, you have a choice!
You can choose to leave him and discontinue the relationship because the way he is does not match your aspirations and your idea of a healthy relationship.
Another possibility if you want to maintain the relationship, is to choose to learn from him about you. Instead of being a ‘pain-in-the-neck’ in your eyes, your partner can become a ‘teacher’. Every situation where you are triggered by his words or behaviour can become an opportunity for you to learn more about yourself. Using the self-enquiry question: ‘What is it about me that is revealed in this situation?’ will allow you to move in the direction of regaining your aloneness. Practicing this self-enquiry question will enable you to turn the focus on you, rather than on your partner, and by doing this you will understand better what your unsatisfied needs and desires are. Gaining clarity on your own needs and desires will also lift off the weight that you unconsciously put on your partner by wanting him to satisfy your needs and desires. Consequently, your relationship with him will effortlessly improve.

The main point in this, is to respect yourself rather than to bear more than you can handle; expressing the truth of your heart to your partner will have a positive effect on both of you and on the relationship. Communicating from the heart, rather than reacting and blaming is preferred and essential. Yet it may be that your partner is not open to this for various reasons; in which case you can also choose to seek the help of a neutral person in order to speak the truth of your heart and regain your aloneness.

When a relationship becomes unhealthy, to the point that one feels at a loss and unhappy, a subtle separation is created and both partners start to live in a sort of indifference and unconcern for the other. On the surface they are together, yet the relationship has no longer any meaning, it is no longer a priority and has nothing to look forward to. When this happens, and it seems that this is what you are going through, it creates a sense of loneliness and helplessness. This is why you don’t know how to be and feel disorientated in this relationship.
Rather than taking on the victim role, let this be an opportunity for you to bounce back and discover what it is that you really want. Once what you truly want is clear for you, make whatever needed steps to give it to yourself.  
Knowing what we want is essential because it is only from that point that we can move in the right direction for us. I often ask this question: ‘what is it that you really want?’ to those who come and see me and the answers that I often get are: ‘I want freedom, or I want unconditional love’. Although these answers are true in some ways, they tend to come from and intellectual point of view and are not a heart-felt response. In the majority of cases the very first thing that our heart craves for is to be understood.
For many people their life story is built on not being understood in their needs or rather in one essential need. This essential need can be different according to the person and the environment in which she lived in as a child, yet it is the very fact of not being understood which is the key point. One cannot live without being understood, one can only survive and living one’s life in a survival mode is exhausting and painful.
In March last year I talked at length about ‘The need to be understood’ and you can refer to that talk if you want to better understand this essential need.
To summarize, being understood needs two components.
The first one is to be able to clearly express what we want and the second is that the other understands and accepts what we are expressing. The talk on ‘Communication Cycles’ may help you to clearly grasp this aspect of communication and of being understood. 
These are the two main aspects of being understood, yet we can only act on the aspect that concerns us, which is knowing what we want and expressing it as clearly as possible. Although we can be clear about what we want, it can be difficult to express it for the simple reason that we have a backlog of fear ready to surface.
This backlog of fear has to do with the relationship that you had with the people around you when you were a child, mainly your parents and elders and also your teachers. All the relationships that followed tend to be based on this first relationship environment.
As a child we often feared expressing ourselves, either because we were afraid of an authoritative or violent person and out of that fear, we learned to repress our feelings. It can also be because we were repressed when expressing our feelings or our needs. The fear to be rejected or excluded together with its counterpart, the desire to be loved and accepted are playing a large part in our disability to express ourselves clearly.
In both cases it was the overpowering or control of the other, whoever this other was, that made us repress our desire to be understood. We simply gave up having our needs or desires met, seeing that there was no possibility to be understood. This attitude of giving up being understood still prevails in the adult that you have become. It can manifest differently with each individual, yet the core pain of not being understood remains vivid in your heart and it leads to these feelings of being at a loss and unhappy that you are experiencing in your current relationship.

As a child you did not have much choice, but you are not a child anymore and you can see that there are different possibilities to choose from to regain your aloneness and be in a relationship that is nourishing for you. It depends mainly on you and not on your partner to do the needed steps to live happily, either on your own or with a partner; the only recommendation that I can give you is to follow your heart rather than your mind.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening. Our next talk will be on the topic of fear of the other gender and more specifically of men since men tend to represent power and authority.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_7-September-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects of ‘personal transformation’.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
The question today is: ‘How can I distinguish between a genuine expression of myself and an avoidance of my inner reality or an avoidance of the present moment and of a situation at hand?’

Some of you may remember the talk that I gave on Truth and Being True where I was mentioning that it is possible to make distinction because as living beings we are gifted with Intelligence and Discrimination. In that talk I also gave a little exercise about questioning the reality of our perception and the beliefs that we carry.
Raising such question seems to indicate that you sense that you are living from a false sense of self and not from what you call a ‘genuine expression of yourself’. It may not be completely clear for you what this false sense of self is, but the doubt is there, and this is a good point because now you can move forward and support your awareness of what is false in you.

Let me briefly remind you what the false sense of self is and how it come into being.
The false sense of self is a mind construction generated by all sorts of beliefs and ideas that we mainly took on during our childhood. It is also, and for a large part, generated by the painful events that we’ve experienced during that time. 
The painful events and the beliefs created a disconnection from our inner world. Our behaviour became a composed one, a pretending one, made of denial and repression and we ended up trapped in this disconnected world, with no other option than to live in fantasy land, in hope and expectations.
It is an obvious fact that many people are not truly present, they are constantly somewhere else, disconnected from the reality at hand, lost in some ideal world that they would like to live in. This dysfunction is not intentional of course; it is generated at an unconscious level and the consequence is the development of a false sense of self.
The connection with reality and our true self is lost and we end up with what you are mentioning; a difficulty to distinguish between a genuine expression and an avoidance of our inner reality. It would be wrong to blame yourself for not being able to make the distinction, no need to judge yourself, simply accept that this is the case for the moment.
'Ok, for the moment I cannot make the distinction, fine, this is my limitation at this moment, and I accept it.'
Once this acceptance is settled, it becomes possible to move forward and clarify what is preventing me from distinguishing between reality and avoidance.
From what I have said earlier about the false sense of self, you may have realized that the false self is always in avoidance; it is incarnated avoidance, it is like living in a thick fog or in a constant self-hypnosis and to be able to move out of this self-hypnosis is not an easy affair.
It is not an easy affair because even though we try to our best to express what is going on for us, we remain stuck in the story of our life. Story telling is the dedicated driving force of the false-self, the driving force of avoidance since story telling is always about the person and never from the person. It is always about what is happening to the person, with or without emotions but the person is never really involved.
The story, however beautiful or horrible it is, is simply the context, the envelope; what is important is the person, not the story. Yes, the story helps to understand the context within which the person has being affected, but it is the affected person who matters, not the story.
And this is where many people miss the point, they keep circling within their story, blaming and judging, telling how helpless they are and how unfair it was for them. They tends to never consider the one who lived this story, as if the story happened to someone else.

Remember what I mentioned during the talk on Intimacy & Relationships. ‘I’ or ‘me’ is the centre point from where every perception starts; it is always about ‘me’, not ‘me and my story’ but only ‘me’. This appears to be a difficult point to integrate for people because it seems to carry a flavour of selfishness. But this is not the case, there is no selfishness in putting your focus on ‘you’. If you can understand this, immense changes will start to take place.
By putting your attention on ‘you’ and not on your life story, you will already start to make a distinction between avoidance and reality, since you are the main actor in your story. And to help you going further, remember the question: ‘Is this true?’ By using this very simple question the distinction will effortlessly set itself in place.
One thing needs to be remembered though. Since you are living from a false sense of self, you can only start from there. Thus, the well-known image of peeling an onion. You will move from one layer of imagined reality to another layer of imagined reality, even though this newly met reality seems to be more real, it is also something false, yet closer to a genuine expression of yourself than the previous one, and so on so forth.

Let’s now look at what a ‘genuine expression of myself’ is.
What you call a ‘genuine expression of myself’ arises when there is a direct connection between what is felt inside and what is being expressed. In other words when you are what you express.
I see many people expressing anger, but they never get free from their anger, why is that? This is because their anger is intellectual and not felt anger. In a one-to-one session the other day a student was telling me how much anger she had towards her mother. I asked her to take a cushion and express her anger physically and with words. She beat a cushion without saying anything for less than one minute and said that she felt better. This was not really an expression of her anger; this was just a way to satisfy her mind and appear as a good student, in reality, her beating had no effect at all.
There were two reasons why it did not have any effect. The first one was because she did not really dare to express her anger since she had the fear that someone may hear her and consequently judge her. The fear to be judged was so strong that it prevented her from connecting with and expressing her anger.
The second was that she had the belief that she was not good enough and felt so sad that her parent did not treat her well. Sadness was overlaying her anger. Once she managed to express her sadness and the fact that she wanted to be praised, suddenly anger pop up and this time it was from her belly, a connection with herself was established and she could recognize the difference.

When we are in this connection with ourselves, every though, feeling or sensation that is coming out is a genuine expression of who we are. It can easily be recognized by the person because it has a different taste, a different sound, even the body becomes different, it relaxes and this genuine expression of who you are in that moment can be perceived by those around you. You are seen in your authenticity.
Here is the beautiful Zen story of Toyo to illustrate this.

« Toyo was only twelve years old, but he wanted to be given something to ponder, to meditate on, so one evening he went to Mokurai, the Zen master, struck the gong softly to announce his presence and sat before the master in respectful silence.
Finally, the master said:
Toyo, show me the sound of two hands.
Toyo clapped his hands.
Good, said the master. Now show me the sound of one hand clapping.
Toyo was silent. Finally, he bowed and left to meditate on the problem.
The next night he returned and struck the gong with one palm.
That is not right, said the master.
The next night Toyo returned and played Shamisen* with one hand.
That is not right, said the master.
Again, and again Toyo returned with some answer, but the master said again and again, ‘That is not right’. For nights Toyo tried new sounds, but each answer was rejected. The question itself was absurd so no answer could be right. And when on the eleventh night Toyo came to the master, before he could speak anything the master said: ‘That is still not right!’
Then he stopped coming to the master.
For a year he thought of every possible sound and discarded them all, and when there was nothing left to be discarded any more, he exploded into enlightenment.
When he was no more, he returned to the master and without striking the gong he sat down and bowed. He was not saying anything and there was silence.
Then the master said: ‘So, you have heard the sound without sound!’ »

*Shamisen, a 3 strings japanese music instrument. 

At that moment Toyo was, to quote your words, a genuine expression of himself, nothing was in the way; he was an expression of truth.
If being and living from a genuine expression of yourself is your aim, then like Toyo, you will need to recognize and discard what is false in you, all the ideas and beliefs that you have accumulated about yourself. They are not you, they are what others have told you, they are others opinion about you which, by necessity, you took on. They are the voices in your head, the ideas, and behaviors patterns that you took on and identify with. Remember, they are not you.
With what I’ve said today, and with the mentioned previous talks, you now have all the elements needed to give life to this genuine part of yourself. The answer to your question “How can I distinguish between a genuine expression of myself and an avoidance of my inner reality?” should be clearer for you by now.
Each time you are expressing yourself, have this question in mind: ‘what is it that I really want to say?’. This question will help you cut into the false and redirect you to the essential and when you recognize a belief or some judgements, use: ‘Is this true?’ to inquire into what your inner reality is.
It will not necessarily be an easy and smooth ride because we do have the habit of clinging to what we know and fear what we don’t know. Our controlling mind comes in the way, and it makes us think that ‘It is better to have a bad mother or a bad father than no mother or father at all’.
This or similar thoughts are signs showing how much we fear being alone, how much we fear jumping into the unknown and cling to an idea of security and a need to be loved. Yes, for a child, love and security are crucial, essential; but you are not a child anymore so you can let the adult part in you gather courage and make the needed step to face these parts or aspects of you that have unconsciously been kept in the dark. It needs the same stamina that was produced when, as a child, you started to stand on your two legs and made your first walking step. At that moment there was no hesitation, no questioning, no ‘what if?’, no controlling mind; the life force within you made you do it. Let this life force play its part again, let it support you in your thirst for authenticity.
Give it a try, see what happens and let me know.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_28-April-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Behaviour Patterns and Control.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
This topic on Behaviour Patterns and Control is also related to the The Inner Child Fantasy world question.

Someone asked: 'Can you talk about the behaviour patterns that we adopt as a child such as fighting, pleasing or dissociating and how we are using these behaviour patterns as a strategy to control our environment.’

Behaviour patterns are many and can vary in their expression depending on each person’s environment. Probably the first thing to understand about behaviour patterns is the reasons for their manifestation, their root cause and what make us adopt a certain behaviour pattern and not another.
The root cause
A behaviour pattern is primarily a defence mechanism that our nervous system sets in place to protect our integrity. It is not that as a child we decide to take on a particular behaviour pattern; behaviour patterns set themselves in place according to the situations that we face within our environment.

→ If the environment is friendly and welcoming then we tend to adopt an open and friendly behaviour pattern.
→ If on the contrary the environment is perceived as threatening, which is often the case then our nervous system will respond accordingly by providing us with an appropriate behaviour pattern.

I’m sure that you’ve all heard about the fight and fly response which is a deep-rooted survival mechanism not only for us human but for each living being. The behaviour patterns that will set itself in place are based on this survival mechanism; they are either: anger (fight) or fear (fly) based, with off course some variation and intermingling. Behaviour patterns are also and mainly a response to our psychological and emotional environment as a child; they are an attempt to have our basic needs met.
As you all know for yourself, as a child we have some basic needs such as being seen for who we are, being understood and supported, being respected and most of all accompanied or said in a nutshell: being loved. Yet these needs are seldom fulfilled and this creates an aching heart in us. Our need to be loved is so deeply embedded in us and so fundamental to our survival that the desire to have it fulfilled will veil the reality of our immediate environment and create a feeling of Despair with its counterpart, Hope.
In the mist of our despair, the following though-form arises. 'I hope that if I behave the way I think that my parents want me to behave, I will have my needs met, satisfied'. And in order to do that we start developing behaviour patterns which fits with our hopes.
Do understand that this development takes place in the unconscious part of our psyche; it is not that the child says to himself: ‘I will behave like this in order to have my needs met’, no it is not so. This development is a response from our nervous system which is always geared towards survival.
So we can say that our behaviour patterns are in fact and in essence, a survival mechanism organized around the psychological and emotional environment within which we lived in as a child.

→ If the psychological and emotional environment we live in as a child is fear-based, we may tend to develop a Victim or a Pleaser behaviour pattern or the opposite a Rebellious or a Fighter behaviour pattern.
→ If our emotional environment is anger or violence-based, we may tend to develop a Victim or a Pleaser behaviour pattern and rarely a fighting one.

Please understand that these are tendencies and not a law in itself; many variations can be found since each person is unique.
As long as we keep wanting our needs to be met, we will fall prey of hope and dependency in our relationships. To be able to see the reality for what it is, we have to step out of our child sugar coated imaginary world.

As shown on the PPTs below, there are numerous behaviour patterns, yet we could divide them into 4 major categories based on how, as a child, we emotionally related to our environment. Please note that this list is not exhaustive and can be different for each person.

You are asking: ‘How do we use these behaviour patterns as a strategy to control our environment.’
Controlling our environment is an age-old survival attitude, probably as ancient as life exists; all species have developed strategies in order to control their environment in order to survive. For us human our survival is more a psychological survival than a physical one and because of this we have develop strategies or behaviour patterns linked with our psychological needs in order to have them met as mentioned earlier.
For example someone who takes on the Victim role because he did not receive the attention that he was entitled to receive will have these kinds of thoughts: “It is not fair, the whole world is against me, nobody loves me, I feel so hurt, I’m so lonely, no one cares about me; it is their fault.”
That person will spend a great deal of his time crying and weeping in an attempt to raise attention: ‘Look at poor me, how hurt I am’. Yet underneath this Victim attitude, there is a Tyrant in disguise because resentment and anger are not far away. By his never-ending lamentation the Victim is trying to force attention. Moreover he is in a strong ‘no’. ‘No, it should not be like this, you should give me what I want; it is your fault if I am miserable’.
On one side crying and weeping and on another demanding to have his needs met. Both of these attitudes will tend to drive people away and reject such a person. The exact opposite of what the victim wants. Who wants to bear the constant lamentation of a victim? Who wants to bear the constant blaming of a tyrant? No one except maybe the Saviour/Rescuer which is another common fear-based personality type.
The Saviour also known as the Rescuer or the Provider will do anything and everything that he can in order have his needs met, which is to be loved, like the victim. He so much wants to be loved, appreciated and recognized for his value that he is willing to sacrifice himself and even sometimes put his life at risk in order to get that. His main tool is to please, to say yes; to obey. Pleasing is another side of the Saviour. He does not know how to say ‘no’, he is like a doormat, you can wipe your feet on him, he will still say thank you for using him.
The Saviour cannot bear to see someone miserable because it reflects his own misery. He is a Pleaser in disguise! Just as the Pleaser is a Saviour in disguise. He pleases in order to be recognized, to be appreciated but also in order to save ‘these miserable/poor people’. There is a subtle element of superiority in both the Pleaser and the Saviour. By acting the way they do, they take on a despising attitude of being better than you.

You may have observed this in your own family (parent or nuclear). Couple relationships are often ruled by these behaviour patterns; this leads to misunderstanding, confusion and even hatred between husband & wife as well as between parents and children or even between children. They also lead to co-dependence as mentioned in the talk About Co-Dependency.
Although these behaviour patterns are an attempt to control our environment in order to have our needs met, they seldom work as you’ve most certainly have experienced yourself.
They don’t work because they are not a strait forward, open request; they are detoured ways of asking for what we want and are built on hope. Moreover they subtly carry the energy of resentment; sometimes in an open way like when we are angry or rebellious; yet most of the time the resentment stays hidden in some unconscious part of our psyche.
Remember, it is the hope that the need will be fulfilled that creates a behaviour pattern, nothing else; so we can say that behaviour patterns are like soap bubbles built on thin air. They have no reality; they are just a mean to hopefully get our needs met which they never succeed to do.
The problem is that over the years we tend to identify with these behaviour patterns and forget what we actually want. We become a Victim-Tyrant or a Pleaser-Saviour, not seeing that we’ve taken on these roles in order to cover our aching heart. Not only these roles do not bring us what we deeply want but they also veil our life force and our true personality. As such, they have a serious impact on our lives because they prevent us from living with an open heart, innocently. They make us live a restricted and controlled life, a life of survival.
When we’re identified with a certain behaviour pattern it veils our discernment, it veils our faculty to discriminate, to see what the reality at hand is. Thus there is the need to recognize and understand how we function, what sort of behaviour patterns are we caught in so that we can see the need and the hurt that this behaviour pattern veils. And by taking care of our need and our aching heart (recognizing, accepting and expressing), the behaviour pattern will fade away and disappear because it won’t be needed any more.
It is as simple as that!

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_20-October-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Loneliness and Connection.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today we have a question from a participant about loneliness and connection. She is asking: « Can you talk about loneliness versus a fulfilling connection? I feel so lonely and desperate, I long for love, for trust and I am craving for a complete connection. What is wrong with me, what can I do about this? »

First of all, I’d like you to know that there is nothing wrong with you. You are simply the unfortunate outcome of a non-loving environment. Your loneliness and crave for what you call ‘a complete connection’ are simply the consequence of a deep love starvation. As a child you were not loved enough, cared for enough, supported enough and certainly not understood in your needs. All this created a sense of loneliness in you, together with the desire for a warm-hearted connection. There is also nothing wrong in this desire which is simply the expression of something missing in you. The ones who were in the wrong were your caretakers, certainly not you. Let’s this be clear in order to prevent any ideas of guilt or blaming yourself for not being good enough; refrain also to fall into victimhood, this would lead you to a dead end.
Let me also point out that being alone and being lonely are not the same; we can be alone and perfectly happy about this, just as we can be with relatives or friends and feel lonely. Loneliness is not the outcome of being alone, it is the outcome of a missing connection; it is lack of togetherness.

You say: « I feel so lonely and desperate »; all right, I understand that this is your reality today and probably has been for many years; yet loneliness is a feeling that can be triggered by a wide variety of situations or events and finding the probable sources of your loneliness is important. Once the particular kind of loneliness that you are experiencing is pinpointed, it will be easier to find ways to address it.

When one of the parents is absent because of his work or because of sickness or any other reasons, a child will feel that he is missing something, but this does not necessarily generate a feeling of loneliness since the other parent is present. Yet when a child is repeatedly left alone, mainly because both his parents or caretakers are busy working or attending some other matters, the child will feel abandoned, this physical abandonment will no doubt create a feeling of loneliness. It can also be that parents are more concerned about the child’s studies than of the child himself; the child is then not seen for who he is but only for his scores at school or his achievements in life. The result is a deep sense of unworthiness for the child. He will form the thoughtform that he can only be worthy if he matches his parents’ expectations which he will try his best to achieve in order to get their recognition and be considered. Yet being considered can be a false antidote to loneliness.
In the same way, when a child is not included in the family discussion, when his words or opinion are not being considered or treated seriously, the child will feel excluded, left out which leaves him with a deep sadness and a feeling of loneliness.
What is common to the different situations that I’ve just mentioned is the element of ‘not being understood. For a child being understood in his needs, whatever these needs are, is equal to feeling secure. Look at a young child running towards mama or papa, simply to be in their embrace and when he is in this embrace, he feels safe, protected, and relaxed. In this togetherness his need has been understood and met.
Not having our basic needs met or not being understood in our basic needs will create resentment together with a feeling of being denied or unwanted; the perfect grounds for loneliness to grow.
About a year ago we had a Zoom meeting about ‘the need to be understood’ together with some exercises to help clarify what was not understood about you. Being clear about our needs and what has not been understood about us is an essential step, especially when we want to identify the source of our loneliness. I would therefore encourage you to read the talk again and do the proposed exercises to clarify your needs as I sense that something is not completely clear for you.
Let’s come back to your desire of 'a complete connection’.
What does every child or I should say every human being long for? Everyone longs for what you’ve named a ‘complete connection’, a warm-hearted connection. And what does a warm-hearted connection bring? It brings a sense of security, of stability and most of all a sense of togetherness. We’re not alone anymore, someone is with us and we feel accepted, included, in other words we feel loved.
It is this sense of togetherness which is missing for the majority of people and they unconsciously seek it relationships, in sex, in sports, in work or in leaderships, not realizing that what they are doing is simply avoiding facing their feeling of loneliness.
Every one of us knows what a complete connection is since we’ve all experienced this sense of togetherness when we were in the womb, it was unconscious of course, yet nonetheless crucial for the little being that we were. The baby and the mother were one, there was no separation, separation arose at the moment of birth and from that moment onwards each being starts to crave for a ‘complete connection’, a re-union with what was felt as a unity. Thus, the importance for a baby to be touched, to be held and later on for a child to be physically and psychologically supported; a great suffering is generated if a baby or a child does not get this. Separation is the seed of loneliness and whether it is a physical or a psychological separation, it does not matter as far as loneliness is concerned.
Your craving for a complete connection is quite understandable and I would say very normal, you must have missed both physical contact and psychological support.

You write: « I feel so lonely and desperate, I long for love, for trust and I am craving for a complete connection. »

You are bound to feel desperate; this is part of feeling lonely and when we are lonely, we do crave for love, for someone to trust and for a real connection. I’m saying this to emphasize that what you are experiencing is perfectly normal. You are not wrong to crave for love, to long for trust and connection. It is part of feeling lonely; all you need to do is to accept that this is the case, that this is what is happening for you. If you don’t admit and accept that this is your situation, you are simply anchoring your loneliness deeper because you will be denying an essential part of you.
Refrain from doing this, be open to your feelings, be honest about your feelings, don’t hide them and give them the space that they need by expressing them. Yes, I yearn for love and I feel miserable from being cut from love. Yes, I long for trust and be trusted. Yes, I crave for a fulfilling connection.
Being in accordance with your feelings will help a resolution to take place.

You are mentioning that you long for trust, this seems to indicate that not only you haven’t been trusted in your actions or aspirations but that your caretakers were also not trustworthy. They probably deceived you in many ways by not keeping their words, by denying you with their expectations and most surely by not understanding you in your needs and desires. With such a background, trusting anyone, including yourself becomes impossible.
Your craving for a complete connection also indicates that up to now you haven’t been able to trust anyone.
Trust is an essential element in our growth; we come to this world completely dependent and vulnerable and can only rely on our caretakers for all our needs. We depend on our elders for protection, for support whether this support is material or psychological.
Even though trust is inherent to every living being, it comes as a seed and to develop into self-confidence, attention and support are needed. It is part of parental education and responsibility to support building trust in their children and when this is not happening the child develops a lack of confidence, becomes self-doubting, indecisive, timorous, and even mousy. Insecurity, worry, anxiety and fear become the person’s regular companions.
A ‘complete connection’ as you call it, is impossible without trust. To be fruitful a connection can only be based on trust and love, it needs trust from both sides and trust is not possible without love. Love and Trust go hand in hand, without love there cannot be any trust and vice versa.
All you need is love as the song goes. Yet love starts with you, not with anyone else. Bring love into your life, into your inner world. Love is an acceptance of oneself, a yes to who you are, as you are. It is a true fact that you did not receive enough love from your parents or caretakers, but you can start loving yourself a little more by accepting your current condition.

You ask: « What can I do about this? » 
Probably the first thing that you can do is to clarify your situation. Clarify your needs, clarify the source of your loneliness. I was recently talking with someone who had a similar issue and what came out at first was how confused this person was. Reading your question, I sense that it could be the same for you. This is why I would strongly encourage you to bring clarity into the different aspects that I’ve been talking about today.

Take some time to ponder on what your needs are, first make a list of all your needs and then discard what does not feel essential for you. Second, in front of each need write down how you would have liked this need to be fulfilled in the past. Be as specific as possible with each need and for each need, there may have been different possibilities of fulfilment, write them all, regardless of what happened in reality.
In doing this, by and by the one or two essential needs for you will emerge, you can also add to this, the exercises proposed in the talk about ‘Not being understood’.
Once you have gained more clarity about your needs, continue with what I have mentioned in previous talks and workshops, ‘The Transformative Trilogy’

• Recognize (what is)
• Accept (that this is the case)
• Express (what needs to be expressed)

Actually, recognizing is not enough because I became aware that many students do recognize that they feel angry, sad, or lonely but they don’t want to admit that this is the case, they would feel ashamed to admit the fact; their pride is in the way. Pride, fear, and shame become the barrier to the possibility of acceptance; they create a stuck point which needs to be dealt with before acceptance can kick-in. So, check whether pride, fear or shame are active within you and if so, to what degree do they prevent you from accepting your reality and expressing whatever needs to be express.

In your question you are mentioning that you long for trust. As I said earlier, trust in inborn in each of us as a seed which needs support to develop. Since you are not a child anymore, it becomes your responsibility to give yourself this support and develop trust in your own capabilities and thus become more self-confident.
I’m sure that you can do it, just like this student who was telling me how desperate he was, even to the point of wanting to commit suicide. He talked about his despair, his helplessness and loneliness but was unable to really connect with it, simply because he was too afraid of what might happen if he did connect with his despair. Fear was the obstacle; however, at some point he managed to be with his despair, not pushing it away, not avoiding it; a yes to it, and to his surprise, something started to change in him, an openness was created and with it some acceptance kicked-in with, in its wake, a happiness and a sense of being more free. This gave him more confidence to open further.
Trust and acceptance go hand in hand; when there is acceptance, fighting disappears, relaxation takes over and love starts to flow. It is as simple as this, yet sometimes difficult to undertake because of fear, pride, or shame; perseverance is needed.

I trust that this talk will have clarify what was not clear for you, at least partly. It is now in your hands, do your homework and if you need more support, know that support is available.
All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening; let’s now move to the questions that some of you raised today.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_14-April-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Abandonment & Loneliness.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today’s question is about Abandonment.
'As a child I felt abandoned and not included by my family members which made me feel lonely and sad as if there was a deep hole beneath my feet in which I could fall. How can I deal with this abandonment trauma?'

Unfortunately this feeling of abandonment is shared by many. Many of us have been through this dreadful experience of being abandoned in some way or other and at different ages of our lives. Abandonment can be lived as a physical or as a psychological experience and sometimes as both. Whether the experience is lived physically or psychologically, the deep emotional pain that it creates is the same.
Physical abandonment can be lived at a very early age; although cutting the umbilical cord does not truly separate a baby from his mother since the connection with the mother remains unbroken, profound and essential for the baby’s wellbeing as long as he remains very close to the mother. But often after birth, when the baby is put in a cradle separated from his mother, he starts experiencing a feeling of abandonment. At that early age the feeling is not conceptualized as abandonment, yet it is nevertheless experienced and may have a profound influence on his further development. It is more as a feeling of insecurity that is felt by the baby since he has lost contact with the mother, his source of security and the only way that he can manifest his feeling of abandonment and need for security is to cry.
The mother is the first source of security for a child, the father comes second and later on the home as a family and as a dwelling; all become vital sources of security for the child during his growth.

The feeling of abandonment arises when we are separated from our source of security; it creates a deep insecurity in us which, if prolonged or repeated, can lead to anxiety and even to phobia. The separation can be physical such as being put and left in a barrel for long period of time or being driven away from the family and sent to some relative. Indifference, not being paid attention to and not being understood at a young age are also sources of insecurity leading to the feeling of abandonment.
In my experience with dealing with people’s issues and traumas over the years as brought me to understand that if the feeling of abandonment is common to many individuals, it does not necessarily come from outside, from careless parents or caretakers, it can also come from the child itself. 

Alan is a good example of this.
Alan told me that when he was around 4-year-old his mother was seriously depressed and he even witnessed her attempting to commit suicide; during that period Alan was so afraid that his mother would die that he decided to be a very good boy and never create trouble for his mother. He became obedient and never asked for anything, whilst his siblings and other family members were constantly asking for his mother’s attention. He did want his mother’s attention but could not express it in any way fearing that if he did it would be too much for his mother and she would die; his parents thought that he was doing fine and did not need much attention to him. Alan started to feel excluded; he felt being an outsider to the family and unconsciously was jealous of all other family members who were getting all of his mother’s attention. He even considered himself as an orphan, emotionally cut from his own family members. It took Alan a long time to realize that he was unconsciously the creator of his feeling of abandonment when he decided to not be of trouble for his mother, so afraid that if he was, his mother would not survive. Having no mother at all would have been a greater disaster for Alan.
It is the feeling of insecurity that came with the thought that his mother could die linked with his decision to be a good boy that created a deep feeling of abandonment in Alan.

A parent leaving the family for work or because of divorce, a suicidal attempt, an illness or the death of a parent or close relative, even the death of a dear animal are situations that can create in a child a deep insecurity together with a feeling of abandonment.
Not being understood, not being supported or even ignored are also sources of the feeling of abandonment. Likewise, this feeling can arise from the rivalry between siblings when one child is preferred over another. So many different situations, physical or psychological, can be the source of a feeling of abandonment.

In your question you are mentioning that you felt not included by your family members. Not being included is another possible source of insecurity and abandonment for a child. To feel secure a child needs to be included in the family decisions. Moving to a different city, moving house, living with different family members or even going to a new school are situations that a child need to be informed about beforehand. The child may not like it because the environment that he is used to will end and he fears the uncertainty of what he does not understand but at least he is included in the new arrangement and this is important for him. What would be optimum for the child would be to be prepared in advance to the new situation to come and being explained how this new situation could bring some positive change for him. Often parents have this thought form that a child is too young to understand or they may themselves be at a loss on how to bring the news to the child and thus don’t say anything which put the child in a done deal situation which is bound to create frustration and resentment for the child. A child or teenager can understand any situation providing he is informed in a truthful way and considered as a full member of the family and not as someone who has no say.

Since it is essentially about insecurity, the feeling of abandonment will not only bring a feeling of sadness and loneliness but also other feelings such as: fear, resentment, anger together with a desire for revenge. Shame will also play its part in the sense that when someone is not included or left out from a group (siblings, family or social) this person will form the thought, which will no doubt turn into a belief later on, that it must be because she is not good enough or not worthy of importance that she is left out and not considered.
Unworthiness has often its source in a situation of abandonment. 

People with abandonment issues will also form related behaviour patterns and will have difficulties in relationships because they fear that the other person will leave them.
It is the fear of abandonment that will lead people to become ‘people pleaser’ and co-dependent with a need for continual reassurance that the other loves them and will stay with them. They will be unable to trust others and may push others away to avoid being themselves rejected; their relationships will often be unstable and unhealthy with a constant need to control their partner. Some may even project their fear of abandonment on their children by overprotecting them; holding on to their child as if their life depended on the child’s attitude towards them. Some may frequently fall sick with no apparent cause, simply to attract attention. Eating disorders, addictions of all sorts, lecturing or tongue lashing at others are possible signs of an early abandonment issue.

You ask: ‘How can I deal with this abandonment trauma?’
Whenever we want to deal with an issue, whatever the issue is, the first thing is to clarify the issue and in your case be as clear as possible about what made you feel abandoned and not included, otherwise it becomes too general and difficult to give proper direction.
What you can do is to first set a time where you will be alone and not be disturbed so that you can connect with a situation of abandonment or exclusion that happened to you recently.
Yes, the roots of your issue are most probably in your childhood, yet allowing the memories of a situation that took place recently will be easier for feelings to surface.

→ Where were you? Who was with you? What happened? Let the situation becomes as vivid as possible. What was said or done? What were your thoughts? What feelings were triggered?

Remembering all these aspects can help you to reconnect with the situation again as if it was happening now and the only thing to do is to express what comes, thoughts and feelings in whatever manner they come as if you were unwinding a spool of thread.
Let this image and sensation of this ‘deep hole beneath your feet in which you could fall’ arises; what feeling comes with this image?
Sadness may not be the first feeling to arise; fear will probably be the one together with a strong ‘no’; no, I don’t want to fall in this hole. Allow this as much as you can and when it becomes too much, almost overwhelming come back to the present moment; recognize that you are in your room, totally safe, that no one is threatening you, that you are not going to fall in any hole; take a few deep breaths and when you feel ready, connect again with the situation.
Repeating this ‘touch and go’ can be a useful way to gently tame the fear and allow other emotions to surface. The main point is to express whatever comes, even the judgments that can arise. Remember, all is welcome.

As you do this you will notice that by and by the fear becomes thinner, you will notice that you feel more confident to be with the feelings that are arising for you. Remember everyone is unique and the way that your nervous system has integrated the situation is also unique and most important, you have no control over it. Your only option is to be willing to face the situation again and to allow whatever wants to come and to express it as it is felt inside. Healing can only take place at its own rhythm; it cannot be forced.
If you feel that it would be too much for you to handle on your own, consider taking some individual sessions; a supportive hand is useful, especially when we are dealing with abandonment issues.

The feelings of loneliness and of sadness inevitably come from being excluded or abandoned, yet these feelings are not specific to abandonment issues. Not being understood, not being supported or being blamed also carries their load of sadness and loneliness. We tend to feel miserable and sad when we miss someone or something and it is this ‘missing’ which creates a sense of loneliness. We suddenly find ourselves alone and most specifically not understood in our need and desire for security, for company, for consideration. We simply miss human warmth. Sympathy, kindness and compassion are loneliness best antidotes, use them without moderation.

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_5-January-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Setting Bounderies.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today's Question: ‘Many people are afraid to express saying ‘no’. Why are people so afraid of setting boundaries? Can you share something about how to come forward for ourselves and how to set boundaries?’

People are afraid to set boundaries mostly due to the fear of being judged and/or rejected. They so deeply want to be accepted and loved that they are ready to let themselves be abused in all sorts of ways in the hope of being accepted, in the hope of being loved. This is indeed a very tricky and unhealthy behaviour pattern. This pattern is unconscious of course; it is unconscious because the pain of having been judged, humiliated and rejected in the past has been buried deep down in their psyche. It is this heart-breaking pain that has set them on a journey of closing their hearts, of saying ‘no’ to the world around them. So in a way these people do set a boundary; yet this boundary, this ‘no’ is not a healthy ‘no’; it is a despising ‘no’, often associated with a desire to take revenge. The problem is that this boundary is so deeply buried in their unconscious that it becomes difficult to be recognized directly and to be articulated and expressed as ‘no’ or ‘stop’. A true expression of this ‘no’ would be: ‘I feel hurt’ followed by something like: ‘please love me or don’t abandon me’ but the depth of the hurt is so deep that it becomes impossible for them to openly express this.
This heart rendering pain together with the desire to be accepted and loved leads them to take on various behaviour strategies such as pleasers, providers, saviours or manipulators for the sole finality of being accepted and loved. The problem is that these behaviour strategies don’t really work and do not enable establishing any satisfying boundaries.

Saying ‘no’ sets a boundary; yet a boundary can be based on different motivations. It all depends on the maturity level of the person. Those who were present on the September 29 Zoom meeting will remember that I mentioned about the healthy ‘no’ and the ‘distorted ‘no’.
A person who is free from the dependency of other people judgments will have no problem to assert a healthy ‘no’ and set boundaries; her life will be easy since a healthy ‘no’ is based on self-confidence.
This reminds me of a person who was very much tied up in others judgements and who was constantly struggling in her work, in her family and social life to make her understood. She often felt used and abused by others around her since she could not set any real boundaries. She participated in workshops, took individual sessions and was progressing in a better understanding of her difficulty yet without really solving her issue so to speak until one day she experienced that she actually existed independently of any other; that all the judgments that others were having on her had intrinsically nothing to do with her. This realisation set her free, she became an independent individual. Her life started to change radically from then on. She became self-confident and able to set boundaries when needed.

On the contrary, a person who is living through the eyes of others, a person who is tied up by others opinions and judgements will not have the capacity to express a healthy ‘no’ and set healthy boundaries. All her ‘no’, if she is able to express them, will be distorted ‘no’ since they will contain an emotional charge and her life will be a constant inner fight and a split between wanting to be respected and wanting to be accepted and loved. 

You ask: ‘how to come forward for ourselves and how to set boundaries?’
Coming forward for oneself requires having the courage and determination to face the heart-breaking pain that one carries. Yet before facing the pain we need to recognize the different layers that are veiling and protecting that pain. Often, we have a ‘no’ to face our broken hearts simply because it is painful and we fear connecting with that pain. The protection mechanisms are so strong that it may even seem that we will die if we allow the pain. This is why it takes time to face that pain and we can only move towards that pain as the defence mechanisms thinner. And for the defence mechanisms to thin a ‘yes’ to what is, a ‘yes’ to who we are in the moment is needed. We need to have a caring attitude towards that part of us who is in pain as well as towards that part of us which is protecting the pain.
Recognizing, accepting and expressing are the fundamental pillars to move through our defence mechanisms, together with a respectful attitude towards oneself. Perseverance does not mean trying hard to break through or forcing the barriers; on the contrary it only reinforces the defence mechanisms by creating a split in the person. Patience and compassion are the needed ingredients for this journey towards freedom. Setting boundaries implies a strong ‘yes’ to oneself, it implies loving and respecting oneself.

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_13-October-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Co-dependency.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,

Today's question is about 'co-dependency'.
Someone asked: ‘In personal development, it seems most of the people have an issue about “co-dependence”, why do people depend on others? Can you share something about this topic?’

First of all it is not only in personal development that people have a co-dependence issue; most people are co-dependent, often without knowing it; it shows more in personal development simply because people are expressing their issues. The answer to why people depend on others is quite simple; people depend on others because they are not capable to depend on themselves. They have not attained maturity; they are still little boys or little girls craving for love, recognition and support. It is the unfulfilled childhood needs in them that drive people to be dependent on another. Co-dependence manifests in different ways yet there are some main indicators that shows that a person is co-dependant.

• Lack of self-confidence, not able to say no, to set boundaries
• Living through the eyes of others, caring about others judgments
• Controlling and manipulating
• Indecisive, relying on another to take decisions

As mentioned earlier the source of co-dependence originates in childhood. A child is naturally dependent, essentially on his mother during the first 2 to 3 years of his life and to a lesser degree on his father. After that period even though he still depends on his parents for all his basic needs, a child starts to gain independence. What the child needs and should normally receive from his parents all along his youth is physical and emotional care, understanding, recognition and most of all support in different ways. When this is provided, a child becomes naturally self-confident and acquires maturity.
Unfortunately it does not always happens like this; yes, in most cases practical needs are fulfilled but it is rarely the case for psychological needs and it is these unfulfilled needs which keep the person in dependence. See for yourself and around you; how many of you feel unsupported, unloved and not understood and how much are you hoping to be loved unconditionally? Hope is also a sign of dependency.
When our needs have not been fulfilled at a time when they should have been, we tend to seek them in the persons that are around us. It can be a teacher, a priest, a political leader, a friend and most often a life partner.
Most people who are in relationships, whether it takes the form of marriage, of friendship or of work, are actually co-dependent people. Co-dependence is quite different from interdependence. In every society, there is economic interdependence between all members of the society; living self-reliantly is not possible. We are all dependant on others for food, clothing and shelter and work is the exchange channel. Our work provides us with money with which we can satisfy our basic and non-basic needs.
This interdependence must not be confused with co-dependency. Interdependence is healthy and needed whilst co-dependency is the unhealthy psychological behaviour of unmet needs.

We are all involved in different relationships, at work, with friends or with a life partner and we can check our degree of dependency in these three areas. One obvious criterion is ‘insecurity’. If I feel insecure in some ways in a relationship, this is an indication that there is some dependency. Insecurity leads to control and to hope.
A child will have this thought form:

→ ‘If I study well at school, papa & mama will be happy and they will love me.’
His study is not for himself, it is to make papa & mama happy. Later on in his life he will continue this pattern in his work, in his friendships and with a life partner. All is efforts will be towards making others happy; his wellbeing depends on others being happy.

A teenager will have this thought form:

→ ‘If I look cool, I hope that this boy (or that girl) will notice me.’
Dressing well, being cool will attract the attention of another; this is another way of being dependent on others opinion.

An adult will have this thought form:

→ ‘If I take good care of my husband and the child, I hope that my mother-in-law will like me and say something good about me.’
Or this one,
→ ‘I better rely on my wife to take a decision otherwise I may make the wrong one.’

These two examples show the insecurity and the lack of confidence that the person is in; and they are not far from the one of a child doing his homework for papa & mama.
In these examples the person is not doing what she does for the simple sake of doing what she has to do, she is always acting in the hope of getting something in return for her action. This is typical dependency behaviour based on insecurity, unfulfilled needs and hope. 
I’m sure that you can find a wide range of examples like these ones in your own life. Just check for yourself.

The way out of co-dependency is simple yet not necessarily easy. The person needs to have some awareness of his behaviour and ponder about it. ‘What am I acting out with this behaviour pattern?’ or ‘What am I trying to get in behaving in this way?’ and the answer may be: ‘I want to get recognition, be praised or be included’.
Whatever the answer is, it always point to the unfulfilled need that is active in the person. The next step will be to consciously take care of these needs and by taking care of the need the dependency will subside and later on disappear.

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_13-October-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Intimacy & Relationships.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today’s question seems to be a continuation from our last week topic, the question is: ‘Can you talk about intimacy and intimate relationships? What is true intimacy? And how can I recognize my need for intimacy? Is it necessary for me to be involved in an intimate relationship and if yes, what makes an intimate relationship fruitful?’

Intimacy is essential to every living being. Intimacy is the condition of being intimate, of being in a close relationship with oneself. Unfortunately, like many human characteristics, intimacy is often, if not always, related or associated with another person and this is where the core aspect of intimacy is being missed.
Before we go further, let me briefly clarify something about relationships. The word relationship is generally understood as a relationship with something or someone outside of us, yet what is not seen and clearly understood is that a relationship can only start with ‘me’. Everything, including relationships, revolves around a centre point and that this centre point is always ‘me’. ‘I’ or ‘me’ is the centre point from where every perception starts. To make it clear for you, simply ask yourself this question: who is hearing this voice right now, who is watching this video meeting? The obvious answer is: ‘it’s me’, I am the one who is seeing, hearing, listening, etc.
Let this be clear to everyone, without ‘I’ or ‘me’ there no possibility for any relating or relationships to exists and also no possibility for intimacy or intimate relationships. We always relate from this ‘I’, even though most of the time we have no clue about who or what this ‘I’ is. It is not the purpose today to find answers to the question of who or what this ‘I’ is but if you want to better understand the nature of relationship and its implication within interpersonal relationships, please review the talk on Dependence & Co-dependence and if you want to find the answer to who or what this ‘I’ is, come and participate to the awareness intensive retreats.
For now, let’s just concentrate on intimacy since it is now clear that intimacy starts with ‘me’, the one that I am, with my qualities and my specific traits. ‘Me’, in this context, includes our three realms, our body, our feelings, and our mind or thinking process. If I relate with myself with dislike, if I have judgements about my thoughts, about my feelings or about my body then there is no possibility for intimacy but only space for denial and rejection.

Intimacy needs openness, it needs understanding, it needs love. True intimacy is nothing else than an honest connection with oneself, an openness to what I am; true intimacy starts with a yes to who we are, as we are.
This is what true intimacy is.

Consequently, if I cannot be intimate with ‘me’, how can I be intimate with someone else, it is not possible. Intimacy is then diverted into the expression of a need, a need for companionship, a need for security, a need for sex, a need for being cared for; all these needs are simply variations of a need for love. Intimacy is, in this case, simply a cover up for loneliness. And this is what most ‘intimate relationships’ are, a mutual satisfaction of needs and a hiding place for loneliness.

You are asking: ‘How can I recognize my need for intimacy?’
In some ways, this is a strange question because you seem to be confusing intimacy with a need which would require to be fulfilled for you to feel satisfied or be at peace. Let’s be clear, intimacy is not a need; intimacy is a way of being with oneself, a way of relating with oneself. You are simply confusing the word intimacy with the need of being cared for, accompanied. And this is what most people do when they long for what they call intimacy or a ‘fulfilling relationship’. What they are longing for is togetherness, not intimacy. Please check if this is the case for you.
However, this being said, a need for intimacy can also be understood as a need for truthfulness, a need for something real as opposed to hypocrisy and phoniness. When a person is living in honesty with herself, there is a natural tendency to expect the same from others, simply because our nature is to be open and when two persons relate from openness and honesty, trust is flowing, love is flowing, it brings nourishment for both. In such exchange, harmony prevails and with it a deep sense of peace and relaxation.
What you call ‘My need for intimacy’ could also have its roots in this natural desire for reality or truthfulness.
There is in each of us a longing for reality, for truth, for honesty and openness simply because this is the natural way to live, and we did live innocently during our early years. Unfortunately, during that time we also experienced situations where our innocence was severely crushed which left us with some indelible memories and heartbreaks. By and by these repeated heartbreaks made us close and isolate ourselves, we started to live in hiding, in fantasy and most of all in pretence. On the surface we kept a friendly face, we pretended to be strong, to be nice, gentle, and helpful, whilst inside we felt weak, resentful, and mean, constantly judging ourselves and others. We lost our openness, our innocence to the profit of being fake, insensitive, and even sometimes malicious. Intimacy disappeared, judgment and denial became our relating norm.

You ask: ‘Is it necessary for me to be involved in an intimate relationship?’
Of course, it is.
It is, in the sense that the starting point is you and how you relate with yourself. Your question indicates that there is a fear; no doubt a fear to open to another person but mainly and most important a fear to open to your inner world. Start from this fear; opening yourself to this fear, opening to your inner world is the birth of intimacy and to gather courage, you can remember this little poem from the Sufi teacher and poet Rumi: ‘The Guesthouse’.

By opening to your inner world and being intimate with it, you will regain self-confidence, you will regain self-esteem and with it the desire to share with others in a fruitful way, in a constructive way will arise.

Your last question is: ‘What makes an intimate relationship fruitful?’
As I have mentioned earlier, most of the so called ‘intimate relationships’ are in reality a mutual satisfaction of needs and a hiding place for loneliness. In this sense, they are far from being ‘intimate’. It would be better to call them ‘Satisfy my needs relationships’ or ‘Beggars relationships’.
However, being in a relationship does have some advantages; with a partner you are not alone, it brings a sense of security and some of your needs are covered. Being in a relationship makes it also easier to face the challenges that life brings, and each partner can benefit from this association.

Yet, one needs to understand that within most relationships, quite a lot is going on at an unconscious level between the two partners. When self-intimacy is missing, each partner will unconsciously project either an ideal or flawed person on the other and at the same time he will project his own unconscious qualities, feelings, or desires that he ignores or refuses to recognize in himself.
Projections are relationship’s slow killers since one partner is expecting something from the other partner which that partner is actually not able to give. Most people who come to me with questions are in this entanglement. ‘If only my partner would be different, my life would be so much better’. They want their partner to change, not realizing that they are projecting their own desires on that person. The range of projections can be quite vast and specific to every person, yet they seem to have one common aspect; the desire to be ‘unconditionally loved’.
Since these projections are not the reality, they very quickly lead to dissatisfaction.

With time, this dissatisfaction deepens and easily turns into bitterness, into resentment and quarrelling takes the lead. The movie ‘The war of the Roses’ is brilliantly portraying this, and I’m sure that you know people around you who are in this kind of relationships.

This being said, what can make a relationship intimate and fruitful?
A relationship can be called ‘intimate’ when the partners are open to themselves and to each other. When they are not afraid of sharing their feelings, their affection, their love; when they can be heart naked with each other, when they can relate innocently like a child, without fear, without hiding their feelings and their pain.
When you share yourself from your heart with another and when this is received and understood by the other, then immediately love flows. Love has nothing to do with words like ‘I love you’. Love is the substratum and the outcome of openness. Some of you may have experienced this during an intensive retreat when both partners are open to each other. This is the miracle of being open, it unlocks all the doors; one can then experience togetherness, a sense of union or wholeness. The other is in front of you yet there is no separation, there is a merging, a flowing together and each one feels nourished and contented.
The fear to open to yourself and to the other is the barrier, become fearless, innocent, and spontaneous like a child and all your relationships will be intimate and fruitful.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening; let’s now move to the questions that some of you raised today.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_21-April-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Fantasy Versus Reality.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today’s question is about Fantasy & Reality.
« I feel that I am living in a fantasy world and fighting for my life to be happy and relaxed. What is fantasy and what is reality? »

Fighting for your life to be happy and relaxed is a sure sign of living in a fantasy world. You ask: « What is Fantasy and what is Reality? »
Fantasy is what mind is producing most of the time. Mind dwells in the past and/or in the future, rarely in the present moment and Reality is always in the present moment. Have you noticed that mind is a constant firework of thoughts, sometimes beautiful and bright ones and sometimes awful and nightmarish ones? Mind gives you all sorts of ideas, beliefs and concepts which can greatly influence your feelings and your senses. Mind can be like a hypnotic drug putting you in a sort of trance and distort what you perceive.

Just last week there was a question from Katia which illustrate this capacity of the mind to live in fantasy land. She, or rather her mind, had this fictional desire to defeat her father and be strong and Helen was mentioning: « If I can connect with my heart then I would be able to forget what happened. » I also recently heard of someone who had a ‘crush’ for someone of the opposite sex and that person started to fantasize on how life with this person could be much better than with the one she is currently living with. Romantic love can be a heart opening and you suddenly feel that you have wings to fly in heaven and so much passion for life; it is nonetheless a reality blinder.
I’m confident that everyone one of you can find examples of your own mind’s favourite fantasies.

Such ideas or passionate moments are pure mind fantasy and one has to realise their futility. Having such thoughts or ideas is like living in dreamland, in hope; just like a child who has no other option to ease his pain than to dream of a better and ideal world.
For most part Fantasy is the outcome of Despair and Hope; in a recent Zoom meeting I was mentioning that Hurt creates Despair and despair creates Hope. When a child is psychologically or physically hurt he enters in a shock state and as a result he dissociate from reality. But since he has to continue living his thinking mind creates fantasies, hope for a better world as well as hope for revenge.
Our need to be loved is so deeply embedded in us and so fundamental to our survival that the desire to have it fulfilled will veil the reality of our immediate environment and create a feeling of Despair with its counterpart, Hope.
Fantasy and Hope are similar words since they point in the same direction; the unreal.

Swami Prajnanpad, an Indian sage used to say that « mind does nothing else than not seeing things as they are but interpreting them based on past experiences. »
And this is what Fantasy is; the interpretation of reality through different filters. These filters can be based on hope or on despair since they are for most part the outcome of a person’s experience or based on beliefs when they are the outcome of the social environment in which the person lives, not to forget the outcome of the collective mind.
When you catch yourself thinking, observe the thoughts that you are having and you will immediately be in contact with your filters. At that moment, instead of remaining in fantasy land you can stop and ask yourself: 'What goal am I trying to pursue with these thoughts?'

Bringing awareness to our thought processes always pays and what you are most likely to find is that you are trying to tell yourself a story; either a comforting story because you feel miserable or a story about blaming or taking revenge on someone or some situation because you have been hurt. Stories can be innumerable in their variation since they are linked with each person’s personal development. Yet you will notice that they all have the same root; being hurt. And since the hurt is still pervading as an ache in the person’s heart, mind is doing its best to divert the pain in all sorts of twisted ways, seeking for some ideal resolution which of course always remains in the future with the well-known ‘if’.
Remember Katia's desire to win over her father. Why does she has this strong urge? Simply because she has been deeply hurt as a child by her father and she feels powerless; her upset has not yet found a satisfactory resolution; her heart is still bleeding.
I’m quoting Katia, not because she is doing something wrong but because what she explained about her desire to win over her father. It is a perfect example of fantasy land and exposing this will support her out of her mind's fantasy and help her come to some reality; a reality which she actually started to connect with when she spoke from the wounded little girl in her during our short exchange.

In our last Zoom meeting, at the end of my exchange with Helen I asked her to tell me: 'what is it about you that had not been understood?’ In that moment she was not able to find out what it was but I’m sure that she will at some point. This may seem to be a strange question, yet it is an important question because it will cut through all minds’ crap and lead the person to understand and realize what has created the hurt in the first place.
Actually I could have made this suggestion to each questioner last week because in finding what has not been understood about me by mama or papa or those who took care of me during my childhood, I can bypass and even wipe out most of the filters which are preventing me from seeing my inner reality.
This question can be applied at any point in your adult life, with your spouse, with your boss, with your friends; it is not specifically related to childhood situations. When you become clear with what is it that has not been understood about you, you can then express your need in a simple way.
I remember a participant telling me how much she suffered from work overload but did not dare to say anything to her boss because she feared to be rejected or even fired. She struggle with that issue and had the belief that all her trouble came because she was not good enough and that she should work harder to be worthy of appreciation. She looked at why she could not dare to express herself, why she was afraid of authorities, why she was always enduring and forcing herself to be a good worker and felt so crushed down. But this did not bring the desired resolution. The resolution came when she asked herself: ‘What is it about me that had not been understood?’ It became obvious to her that it was that she did not wanted to be forced. In her childhood she was constantly forced to do things that she did not wanted to do, put on clothes that she did not like, eat food that she did not like, take responsibilities for her siblings and in some ways she became the family scapegoat. At the time she had no other option than to obey and do as she was told; she could only swallow her ‘no’, partly because of the fear of being blamed and punished but mostly because of the fear to be rejected and not loved. This ‘discovery’ changed her life.

You may have noticed that at first Katia was talking about her story and desire to win over her father and after I said a few words to her, she fell into the little girl in her who was so hurt by father’s attitude. At that moment Katia was not talking anymore about her story but expressing from the part of her who is hurt. And this made a huge difference; she moved from fantasy to reality. Of course, her inner reality is not yet the ultimate reality but it is the reality in which she is living in and one has to start with this reality.
Reality is what is and not an idea in the mind; for Katia, reality is living with a broken heart and fantasy is her ways of seeking revenge. Her reality is distorted; she lives in a false reality which she believes to be her truth. Out of despair she hopes.
We keep living in fantasy land because we are afraid of facing reality, our inner reality and often our inner reality is not only uncomfortable, but also painful.
The outer reality can also be uncomfortable and saddening but what is important is how we meet with reality, whether it is the outside reality, or our inner reality does not matter, what matters is how we deal with reality. We can either push it away and deny it or accept it for what it is. Acceptance sets us free; remember the talk in November about repression and acceptance. When we accept something, immediately there is relaxation; when we repress or deny, immediately there is tension and tension is the feeding ground for fantasy.

There is a beautiful poem from Erich Fried an Austrian born poet and writer which can illustrate the difference between fantasy and reality.

« It is madness – says reason
It is what it is – says Love
It is unhappiness – says caution
It is nothing but pain – says fear
It has no future – says insight
It is what it is – says Love
It is ridiculous – says pride
It is foolish – says caution
It is impossible – says experience
It is what it is – says Love »

I’m just remembering what a Zen master told me during a silent Zen retreat: ‘Accept what is because it is what it is and not otherwise’. I struggled a lot with what he said because it was so painful for me to sit silently for long periods of time, and I was cursing him silently inside for telling me this. How can I accept this excruciating pain in my body? My mind was in a constant fighting mode with the pain and with the teacher because of his words. Yet at one point acceptance kicked in, a yes to the pain and suddenly I felt peaceful, all fighting had disappeared, the pain was still there but it did not disturb me anymore. At that moment I was accepting the reality of my situation and this acceptance made a whole difference.

Acceptance of what is because it is like this; is the key to enter reality; to move away from denial. And when we are in accordance with our inner reality, we suddenly find ourselves in tune with the world around us.
Buddha is reported to have said the following words: « The mind, which is unattached to all things in the world, does not think, does not feel; it is fluid and flexible. »

Attachment is what keeps us away from reality and because we identify with our thoughts of hopes and our denials we keep living in fantasy land and never feel fulfilled.

In one of today’s questions Isabella is asking: 'What does real life looks like? Why does fantasy world exist?’
Isabella, real life looks bright and shiny, constantly joyful, and creative with playfulness all around; there is an easiness of living in real life whilst fantasy is made of false hopes, despair and struggle. The fantasy world exists because of denial; we deny our feelings, we deny our pain, we even deny our qualities and consequently live in the hope of a better future. We live with the thought form: ‘If only I had…’ If only I had a better spouse, better friends, a better job, more money, and so on…, my life would be so much more enjoyable.
Remember Helen's words: ‘If I can connect with my heart then I would be able to forget what happened’.
If only it was like this, if only ‘they’ could change, if only ‘they’ could listen to me, or see me, hear me, understand me then my life would be fantastic and I would be happy. The list of ‘if’ can be endless, yet all these ‘ifs’ will never bring you happiness; they will always lead you to hopelessness, to misery and to resentment. Stop avoiding, stop escaping, face your insecurity, face your loneliness, face your painful heart; a Yes to you is needed.

Reality starts with a yes to who we are, as we are, with our pain, with our flaws, with our qualities. The Spring Festival will soon be there, let this New Moon lead you towards more acceptance of yourself, as you are, with your pain, with your sorrows, with your hopes and despairs, welcome everything, refrain from being selective, all is welcome, even a smile on your face, even laugher. Remember to laugh your heart out daily in this New Year to come.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_12-January-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Trust & Openness.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today’s question is about Trust. “I can’t trust myself, just as I can’t trust any other person and I also cannot open myself to accept the kindness and offering from others. Could you talk about trust and openness?”

Trust and openness go hand in hand; there cannot be any trust if one is not open to himself. Look at a baby and you will see both, openness and trust being expressed, for sure not in a conscious way, yet truly manifested. Trust and openness are qualities shared by all living beings.
The problem with us human is that we very often live from a mind point of view and get entangled in words, ideas or concepts and forget what reality is like, feels like, taste like.
During the intensive retreats I sometimes give this question: ‘Tell me what Trust is’ to some participants in order for them to taste the reality of trusting. As they go through this enquiry process they usually come out with all sorts of ideas or beliefs about trust. These beliefs or ideas may be interesting but they have nothing to do with trust since trust is not a concept or an idea but something which can be lived. It may take some time for these participants to actually experience trust; but once they do, then they know without a doubt what trust is and all their ideas or beliefs about trust are gone.
This is why I would encourage our questioner to participate in an intensive retreat and ponder on this question.

The needed ingredient which enables participants to experience trust is the element of openness. It is because they are willing to be open to whatever arises for them in connection to their enquiry that trust can be felt, experienced.  Without some degree of openness nothing can really fall in its right place; whether it is about inner or outer situations some openness is needed.
Just as there are different levels of depths for trust, there are different levels of depths for openness and sometimes we have this false idea that openness means that we should be totally open, not even realizing what totally open could mean or imply. Recognizing that we are close and not able to open is indeed the first layer of openness; yes, it is a surface layer but openness nonetheless and this calls for recognition too. To be able to enter deeper levels of openness one needs to first put the key in the door lock and turn it so that the door can open.
Openness and trust work in a similar way; they are step-by-step processes very similar to the step-by-step process of learning to walk for a baby. First there is crawling on four legs, then sitting straight followed by a desire to stand and only then making a step with a helping hand becomes possible and this will be followed by another step and so on so forth. This is how we become self-confident and build trust in our own capacities.
Remember; trust and openness have nothing to do with ideas or concepts or even with understanding. Trust and openness are tangible sensations that one can recognize, embody, and express. They are always available to us since they are our core qualities; yet for many people these core qualities are veiled by fear and beliefs and thus not accessible. To be able to let these core qualities function as they normally should function one need to have the willingness to look at what it is that is veiling them, and this can only be done by turning our focus inwards.
Understanding intellectually what trust is will not be of much help, what will really be fruitful is the inner experience of trust and no one can give this experience to you, you have to realize it by yourself.

It also seems that there are different directions for trust; trusting oneself, trusting others or trusting life and many people tend to put their focus on trusting others. In reality, as far as trust is concerned, ‘trusting yourself’ is the only thing that matters at first. Without trusting yourself, trusting life is not possible. And as far as trusting others, your own experience shows you that it is rarely possible, so… don’t go that way.
I’ve mentioned earlier that openness is the key which will open the door to trust. Once you have certain willingness or openness to look inwards with integrity, what you are likely to bump into is the very fact that you cannot trust, that you are not trusting and moreover that your heart is closed. Even though this reality may be uncomfortable, saddening or possibly shameful, it is your reality, and you will have to deal with it, take care of it if you want to regain trust in yourself. 

Some weeks ago, in the context of problem solving, I mentioned about emotional bondage. Not trusting and being closed is exactly this: an emotional bond. So rather than trying to push it away, blaming ourselves for it or trying to break through it as forcibly and as quickly as possible, a better option is to look at it directly and the first step is to say yes to this inner reality.
Admiting that, ‘Yes, I am not able to trust and yes I have a difficulty to receive kindness and offering from others.’ is the first step and very often the most difficult one to make for people because they will feel that something is wrong with them or that they are not intelligent enough; shame may also creep in if they admit that they don’t trust.
Once this step is made, looking a little deeper becomes possible and it will be recognized that under this layer of not trusting there is insecurity and fear about some possible outcome such as rejection or blame if I say or do this or that. It is the fear, often unconscious, of possible negative outcomes to my action that are preventing trust. The other element that can be recognized is that the heart is closed, which indeed prevents me receiving and giving. In order to be open and to trust, these two aspects, fear and the closed heart, need to be taken care of.
Fear is quite a vast topic and in a next meeting I will talk more at length about fear. For now I just want to mention that the fear to trust is different from the fear to open our heart; even though it seems that our hearts are closed because we fear to be hurt in some ways. It is true that we have been hurt and consequently closed our hearts; yet the main reason for closing our hearts is resentment and anger and not fear.
It may seem strange to you that Fear and Anger are at work simultaneously in mistrusting and not being able to open to receive, but it is so. It is the distorted side of anger and of fear which are at work inside of us which create this mistrust issue, not their natural side. In last’s week talk I mentioned that feelings are playing a healthy role in maintaining a balance within us; yet not when they are distorted and create an emotional bondage as it is the case with mistrust and a closed heart.
Sometimes, because of social conditioning we try hard to be open to others and carry the belief that we should be open; that it is wrong to be closed and that we should trust. When we are in this frame of mind we are avoiding seeing that our reality is: ‘I don’t trust, and I am not open’. We then tend to live in denial of our inner reality by escaping it in every way we can, simply because our inner reality feels too overwhelming and for many too shaming since they keep comparing themselves with others. We fear meeting ourselves and as a result we fall in denial mode. When we are in denial, we are not only escaping the pain but also the good parts of us, our strength our wisdom, our creativity.
Therefore, recognizing and accepting that ‘yes, this is my reality, I am resentful and angry, and I closed my heart to those who hurt me as a result’, is part of opening to my inner reality and as such it will already bring some relaxation together with the possibility to look more deeply at what made me unable to trust, at what is this fear to open about, at what made me closed and resentful.
Without this recognition, without this acceptance no transformation is possible.

“I can’t trust myself, just as I can’t trust any other person and I also cannot open myself to accept the kindness and offering from others. Could you talk about trust and openness?”
The person who raised the question was probably not aware that her question is merely a statement linked with the intellectual desire to know more about trust and openness. The statement is perfect in the sense that she is recognizing where she is at; yet it misses mentioning about the feelings which are coming with the fact that she is not trusting and not opening. Instead she asks to hear about trust and openness. In doing so she closes herself to the possibility of going deeper and prefers to hear about trust and openness, not realizing that hearing about trust and openness will not give her the chance to experience what trust and openness are; it will simply give her ideas and possible beliefs about trust and openness but not the real thing, the real thing can only be experienced, not believed, not thought about.
Unknowingly our questioner is escaping a possible confrontation with himself, a confrontation which could give him or her, a real taste of trust and of openness. Hopefully, after this talk our questioner will be able to consciously choose in which direction he or she wants to go. Yes the fear to meet with his or her wounded heart may be there but with a supportive hand this fear can easily be overcome. It is only a question of conscious choice.

As you may have understood from previous answers that I’ve been giving to some of you, a dialogue with the person is needed for me to understand what this person is really struggling with and what aspects or feelings need to be recognized and supported.
We are all different and come from different backgrounds and even though the way that we have perceived and absorbed our environment as a child is unique, it commonly comes to not having been love and supported enough. This is why healing our inner child’s trauma basically boils down to understand what has not been understood about us so that we can finally feel recognized and most of all, understood in our essence and thus regain our capacity to open and trust again.

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_22-December-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Unworthiness and Worth.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
What I often hear from many people is a strong belief of unworthiness, a feeling of not being lovable, that’s why I’d like to open this new series of talk with this question raised by one of you. “There is in me this belief that I am not worthy and not lovable as I am. This makes me sad, desperate, and almost suicidal. It does not seem to be in my power to drop this belief. What is it that I don’t see or understand about me?”

What you don’t see or don’t understand about you is that you are worthy and lovable as you are; but you strongly believe that you are not. Your belief is the problem, nothing else is.
As you are, with your qualities, with your flaws, you are lovable. You are worthy of attention, of being accepted, of being treated kindly; in other word of being loved. Being worthy or lovable does not require any specific abilities or behavior patterns. It has nothing to do with merit or deserving, with obedience or filial respect; being lovable is inborn to everyone, it is everyone’s birth right. Every being is lovable, every being is worthy of attention and of respect, including you.

Your belief arose because of judgments from others, most certainly from your parents or caretakers who wanted you to be according to their standards, who, with their judgments, prevented you from being the sensitive child that you were, who prevented you from expressing your true feelings. Their attitude was a complete denial of who you are, they didn’t see you as the perfect being that you are. They saw you as an object which can be manipulated according to their desire. Moreover, they probably told you again and again, in a despising tone that you were just a ‘meathead’ or a brainless child who only knows crying or making mistakes. They may also have made you believe that your opinion did not count, that they were the sole deciding ones.
Over the course of time, it is the repetition of such judgements with their load of humiliation that made you believe that you were not worthy or not lovable; yet the reality is that these judgments have nothing to do with you. They don’t define you; they don’t see you as you are; they are only someone else’s idea of you, nothing more.
But you were only a child and as such needed to feel secure, protected and loved, so you took these judgments on board and tried hard to match with your parent’s expectations and ideas of how you should be; you may even have tried hard to prove that you were not what they were saying. You became an obedient and pleasing child, compromising with your own feelings. What else could you do? This also must be seen.

You need to understand and accept that you did not have any real choice; that rebelling openly was out of the question because in rebelling you would lose your parent’s affection; you would lose their consideration, and this was not acceptable. Your only choice was to bear it and repress all those feelings that were arising, especially the hurt and the unfairness. Resentment, anger, hate together with the desire for revenge came along. Thoughts of revenge, of murder or even suicidal thoughts kept filling your mind and these thoughts are still active in you to this day.
Of course, there is sadness and despair in believing that you are unworthy but what you are also not seeing or understanding about you is how much repressed anger or desire for revenge you carry. It hurts deeply to be humiliated in such a way and this hurt is so painful and hard to bear that we hide it under some pretense of being strong and unaffected; yet underneath this layer of protection there is hate with, in its wake, a desire to avenge. These feelings and thoughts need to be recognized, accepted, and expressed before the actual pain can be felt, accepted, and expressed.

In November last year I talked about ‘Repression and Acceptance’. Repression is a denial of oneself, a denial of who we are. We usually deny what we cannot absorb, what we don’t know, and we generally tend to deny what is felt painful when we don’t have any option to express our pain or when there is no one to support us in going through our emotional crisis. This denial sets itself in place mostly unconsciously, it is not the outcome of a conscious decision which makes it difficult to uproot. This denial veils our inner reality and prevents us to clearly connect with our inner reality.
To be able to come out of your belief of being unworthy you will need to recognize and accept all the feelings and thoughtforms that you carry. Remember, acceptance is a yes to what is, whatever this ‘is’ is. A yes to your belief, a yes to your sadness, a yes to your desire, a yes to your helplessness in dropping this belief.
Acceptance is the very simple fact of being in agreement with the reality that we meet, whatsoever this reality is. Yet very often, although we see the reality that we are hurt, sad, angry, or resentful, we refuse to admit this reality. We often carry a strong ‘no’ towards our inner reality. This ‘no’ attitude also need to be accepted and expressed for what it is.
Acceptance is the key!

You say: ‘It does not seem to be in my power to drop this belief.’
You are right, it is not in your power to drop this belief and the solution is not about dropping the belief that you are unworthy or not lovable because your mind would immediately replace this belief with another belief. It is also not about convincing yourself that you are lovable or worthy which would be just another belief. The resolution resides in realizing that you are not these judgements, that these judgments are not you, that they do not define who you are.
Questioning where these judgments are coming from and who is their author or initiator will clear the way to regain the vitality and the freedom of the one who you really are.
If you recall the talk which I gave on ‘Beliefs and Dissolving Beliefs’ in May last year where I mentioned a step-by-step practice, you already have a valuable key to challenge and melt away your beliefs. I also suggest practicing the following homework which I recently gave to someone who was struggling with this belief of unworthiness.

Whenever you become aware of a judgment do the following:
• Do your best to hear the judgement as clearly as possible, hear each words of the judgment as they are spoken.
• Recognize the impact that these words have on you, the feelings, or the emotions that these words trigger and express these feelings.
This alone is already a valuable step, and you can continue with:
• Checking if you can recognize the voice behind the judgment; who is uttering this specific judgment?
• Once you’ve recognized who is uttering the judgement, say out loud to that specific person: ‘This is not me, it is your idea of me; I am not like this’.
Be as firm as possible, as energetic as possible to send back the judgment to its author. Use your voice and body gesture to express this sending back and as you do this, if a feeling or an emotion arises, express it.

Practicing this little exercise will help you in different ways. It will bring clarity and confidence. Clarity in identifying the judgement and whom it came from in the first place. Clarity in the impact that the judgement had on you, and last but not least, it will enhance your confidence in expressing what feels right for you. 
By and by you will regain a self-esteem that was lost, a sense of dignity and self-respect. With this newly recovered self-respect you will become worthy and more lovable in your own eyes which is what really matters. A sense of compassion for this abused being that you were, may even arise. Trusting you, trusting your own voice rather than that of others will become a solid reality for you; it will become an anchored in the truth of you, the truth of who you are.

It is all in your hands, hope will not be of any help, so forget about hope, gather courage, and make a step towards the reality of you and you will see that the belief, the sadness, and the despair will melt like ice in the spring. Not only it is worth doing but you are also worthy of living a joyful life.

All right, thank you everyone for your attentive listening; let’s now move to the questions that some of you raised today.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_7-April-2021

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Problem Solving. 

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,

Today’s question is about Problem Solving. « In my daily life I keep meeting various problems, at work or in relationships and for most of them I feel at a loss and don’t know what to do to solve these issues. Could you say something about this difficulty? »

Everyone is encountering challenges in their life, sometimes small challenges and sometimes more difficult ones and it does happen that we are at a loss in front of some situations. We can look at the difficulty in terms of trying to find a solution to the problem and eventually solve the issue but in the context of personal development or spiritual growth problem solving is irrelevant. And this is where I’d like to bring everyone’s attention since I often receive questions asking me for a solution to a practical problem or sharing some intellectual point of view that the person has.
It is not that these questions or sharing are wrong in themselves, but they totally miss the point in the context of personal development. In a previous talk I mentioned that if you want to become a free individual, a mature person you will have to put the focus on you and not on whatever is happening outside of you. Yes, describing a situation is useful to understand the context but the main point is about you and your reactions and feelings in regard to the situation.
It is your life; you are the main actor of your life, no one else is. Never forget that it is always about you and not about someone else. Pay attention; bring the focus on you rather than on the outside. I will probably never repeat it enough; You are the only important person in your life, so why not give yourself a chance to grow and live a happy life by taking care of you.
Taking care of you is important, not only important but essential and no one can do it for you. Someone pointed out that we are all ‘damaged goods’ since most of us did not receive the love, the care, the attention and the support that we were entitled to receive as a child. This is a fact and we can victimize ourselves about this and remain in a constant resentment and complain mode or, and this is my proposal to you, take this ‘damaged good’ that you believe yourself to be as a challenge from existence in order to grow and blossom to your full potential. It is a choice that you can make; a direction that you can take and most of all a decision to turn your focus towards what is important and the only important item in your life is: ‘You’.

Not long ago I sent someone a little humoristic video about the answer that a psychologist consultant is giving to someone who came to him for advice. His answer consisted of only two words. ‘Stop It’. This was, of course, only to poke fun at therapy yet it carries a deeper implication when related to personal development.
It was the same word ‘Stop’ that an Indian teacher, Papaji, used to answer his American student, Gangaji when she was telling him about her life problems. On hearing this word, she truthfully stopped and became enlightened as a result. Papaji’s meaning was: ‘Stop all your mind activities’.
Without going to this extent of stopping all your mind activities, do stop looking outwards and instead put the focus on you. It is you who is important, not the situation, not the other, whoever they are.
I can understand that this is not an easy thing to do this since our mind tends to avoid what does not feel comfortable, still, this is the direction to take and the efforts to make, especially in the beginning, if you want to become free from the emotional bondage that you are trapped in and become a free individual.
Don’t be mistaken, it is not the situation in itself that is the cause of suffering; it is the emotional bondage in which you are entangled in which creates suffering. The situation is as it is and does not need to change; what needs to change is your emotional implication and response to the situation. When there is no emotional entanglement, the resolution of a problem can be very clear.
It is your emotional entanglement which needs to be looked at, which calls for being taken care of and this is where I can be of support for you.

Although at some point in the past I’ve talked about how we can free ourselves from emotional bondage, it would probably be a good idea at this point to review what is meant by emotional bondage as well as how to free ourselves from it. 
Emotional bondage means that we are tied up, in bondage with our feelings; they tend to run our lives rather than be at the service of our wellbeing. Everyone has feelings, feelings are part of our emotional make-up and as such they play a healthy role in maintaining a balance within us. Whether it is sadness, anger, fear, or shame they are all part of our regulating system in order to help us face situations that we encounter in life.

Anger and fear, the ‘fight or fly’ responses are our main survival mechanism; it would be very difficult for us to be in life without these two feelings. They protect us; and in similar way sadness and tears help pacify our aching hearts just as natural shame is our wisdom regulator since it prevents our egos from inflating by reminding us that we are limited beings.
Broadly speaking a feeling arises because something in us is felt threatening or painful so the feeling acts as a regulator of our nervous system to maintain a healthy balance. This is why it is important to allow their expression if we want to live happily.
The problem only comes when our feelings are repressed, whatever the reason for this repression is. It can be because we are not allowed to express, because we feel guilty for having this or that feeling or because our parents were themselves not expressing their feelings so we did not learn and understood that it was Ok to express our feelings and consequently expressing feelings became something shameful.
When we repress a feeling, the feeling does not disappear; it simply moves into some unconscious part of our psyche waiting to be expressing at the nearest opportunity. The more we repress a feeling, the more the feeling will have a grip on us and the more it will push to be express in ways that can often be disproportionate to the situation. It is easy to see this at work when someone makes a huge fuss about something which is in reality not a big deal. This reminds me of someone telling me how she used to get enraged when her mother-in-law was changing her flower pots arrangement; in a similar way, I hear from many parents about how they scold or even beat their child for not doing their homework or making small mistakes.They all could see that the expression of their feeling was disproportionate for the situation but at the same time they feel at a loss about doing anything to change this.
I’m sure that you all can relate to this and even find similar examples in your lives.

The solution is not about blaming or throwing anger at the person or even trying to change this ‘shabby’ (stupid in Chinese) person but more to look at the disproportionate explosion of feeling in a caring way. It is also pointless to blame yourself for having these emotional bonds; they have their reasons to be there. I’m well aware that when we turn the focus on ourselves and not on the outside we start to uncover what feels uncomfortable and this is where most people don’t want to go. They don’t want to feel uncomfortable, they don’t want to feel lonely; they basically they don’t want to connect with themselves because they fear to meet with their pain. Unfortunately, there is no other way if they want to live a free and happy life. 

Often, we find ourselves in the desire to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling, yet when we have this desire, no transformation is possible, and we simply reject a part of ourselves. Once this rejection is seen, already some change is taking place. This is why I very often talk about the transformative trilogy: recognize, accept, and express. These are the three pillars for a supportive and sustainable transformation to take place.
Recognizing comes first, because it is not possible to deal with something that we are not conscious of.
Then accepting that this is the case opens the door to understand what this feeling wants to tell us.
Finally, expressing helps create a discharge of the stuck energy and this ‘expressing’ can take different forms, not only emotional release as many people thinks. Verbal sharing, writing, painting, dancing can be used as well as different bodywork techniques.

Walking this transformative path alone is not an easy thing; support is needed and as mentioned just now support can take many forms. Outside support is needed because our mind can easily delude us and relying on a supportive hand can be encouragement, an incentive to drop our fears and to gather the needed courage to trust ourselves, to trust life or existence. Because ultimately it is only about trusting and nothing else; a famous song says: ‘Love is all you need’, I would change this to: ‘Trust is all is you need to walk your life’.

I’d like to summarize this talk by emphasizing this point; stop raising questions that are not related to you directly. Ask questions related to your difficulties in dealing with your emotional world, with feelings which create a problem for you and forget about others, you are the only important one in your life.
And remember not expressing is going against the aliveness in you, against Life; not expressing is ‘Life killing’. Stay alive and express yourself, you can only gain joy and happiness out of it!

Thank you for your attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_15-December-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on different aspects on Repression and Acceptance.

Someone asked: « Many people are not able to express their emotions, they are repressing instead of expressing. Can you share how can we move from repression to expression and from expression to acceptance? »

Yes, this is unfortunately true, many people simply repress instead of expressing. Their motivations for repressing may be different but in a long run they all suffer from repressing their feelings and emotions. As mentioned in the previous topic, escaping is a form of repression. We tended to repress out of fear and when we repress we contract physically and psychologically and this contraction leads to tensions in the mind as well as in the body. In turn these tensions lead to sickness, whether physical or mental. Unexpressed feelings will sooner or later turn against us into all kinds of physical or mental disorders.

Our reasons for repressing come from education, from social conventions and also mainly from fear. Fear to transgress established conventions and be blamed, punished or excluded for doing so.
For a child, repression is activated mainly from the fear to be rejected, not included, abandoned or be forced; in other words, from the fear of not being loved. The need to be loved, included and understood is so strong in a child that he would rather repress his feelings and his emotions rather than express them.
A child would often choose to be obedient and not be a disturbance for his parents in the hope of attracting their attention, of being seen and included by them. But parents are often blind and cannot recognise that in behaving like this their child is actually acting out his need to be accepted and loved. They can only see the obedience on the surface and feel satisfied and proud with this; they completely forget that their child desperately needs them. For the child this parental attitude is excruciating; he is painful and at a loss but he does not know what to do to change his situation. When the pain becomes too intense for the child and when he sees that nothing is changing for him, he may start acting out a rebellious attitude in order to get his parents interested in him. The child might stop being interested in school or become lazy and indifferent, he might choose to stay up late at night and play computer games or become sick; all this in order to attract his parents’ attention, in order to be taken care of. This rebellious behaviour is merely an unconscious way of taking revenge since the child is not able to express his feelings clearly and openly; his rebellious attitude simply becomes another form of repression.
Some of you have children and to a certain extent, they may behave in the way I am describing. Beware; it is a disguised call for help and support. Don’t miss it!

What is often overlooked when we repress is that we unconsciously do harm to ourselves. We repress because we feel hurt for not getting the attention that we want to get and also because we don’t dare to ask for what we really want since we fear to be rejected in our request. Rather than taking the courage to ask for what we want, we escape into all sorts of behaviour patterns or mind fantasies and in doing so we are building up resentment, anger and hate.
This is exactly what is going on for our questioner today and last week's one; their questions are not related to them but to some intellectual generalization; in doing this, they are unconsciously escaping connecting with who they are. This is also an indication that they are repressing their feelings, not only their feelings but their life energy too.
Not expressing is going against the aliveness in us, against life; it is ‘Life killing’ and some even die out of doing this. Stay alive and express yourself, you can only gain joy and happiness out of it!
The strange thing is that even when there is the possibility to express, even though people know that they have the permission to express, that it is safe for them to express they will find all sorts of excuses not to express. I see this constantly happening during one-to-one sessions. I encourage people to express but they often find all sorts of excuses not to do so. I understand that there must be a deep-rooted fear in them which prevents them from expressing. It is not that they don’t want to express, they have a willingness to express but they seem to have a certain loyalty towards their repressing mechanism. Who will they be without their repressing behaviour? They have formed a certain image of themselves and they unconsciously cling to this image, it is who they are, at least this is what they believe. But until this barrier is unveiled, no true expression will be able to manifest.

Moving from repression to expression is not an easy task for many people; it requires a jump into the unknown and the unknown is by definition scary! To enable this jump some support is needed; the support to express that parent could not give can be found elsewhere; in all kinds of workshops or growth-oriented activities and well as in one-to-one sessions. Existence always provides opportunities; we only need to make use of them.  

The questioner is asking: « How can we move from repression to expression and from expression to acceptance? »
It is a misunderstanding that there would be a sequence of steps before one could move towards acceptance. Whether we are repressing or expressing acceptance can occur. Acceptance is not tied up with expressing, it is a misunderstanding to think that we have to move from repression to expression and then to acceptance as if acceptance is conditioned by having to express. It is not so. Acceptance is independent from repressing or expressing.
Acceptance is a stand-alone affirmation; it is self-sufficient in the sense that it is not linked with any attitude or behaviour pattern.
In March this year, I mentioned that acceptance is a difficult concept to understand for our mind since we constantly live our life from a mind point of view and rarely from ‘Being’.
Being means that we are life, we are life being lived, manifested; yet we keep ourselves in a constant thinking and evaluation mode which made some people say that: ‘We are not living our life we are only dreaming it away’.
Life is a constant unfolding of events which are taking place without any evaluation that this is ‘good’ or this is ‘bad’. It is only us humans, who, with our thinking  and controlling mind, define, make a distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or in this case ‘expressing’ and ‘repressing’. From the point of view of being, everything is acceptable even repressing.

What is acceptance?
Acceptance is simply a ‘Yes’ to what is. It is not relevant whether it is about a situation which is outside of us or whether it has to do with our own thoughts, feelings or sensations. Acceptance is the very simple fact of being in agreement with the reality that we meet, whatsoever this reality is.

If our inner reality is in a repressing mode, there is a need to be in accordance with that fact, with that reality. ‘Yes, I am repressing’ and I could add: so what!
This is a crucial point because unless we accept the fact that we are repressing, nothing can fundamentally change. I call this ‘owning’. We need to own our resistance, our feelings, our thoughts, our qualities, whatever is happening within us.
Many people that I meet in one-to-one sessions or in workshops have some resistance to admit that they are angry for instance, or hurt or that they need help. They can easily recognise that it is so, yet it becomes difficult for them to make the step to a full ‘yes’ to their feelings. Not wanting to admit seems to be so deeply anchored in them that they become stuck with their ‘no’, with their resistance; they hold on to their ‘no’ as if their life depends on it. And in a way it is true, at some point in their life, their life depended on saying ‘no’. It was crucial to say ‘no’ when facing a certain situation, but the problem is that this situation is long gone and not threatening anymore so there is a possibility of a letting go of this ‘no’, and for this letting go to happen, a ‘yes’ to this ‘no’ is first needed. ‘Yes, I am resisting, yes I have closed my heart, yes, I don’t want to talk to this person’ and most important, ‘yes I am hurt’.
Admitting our inner reality is essential before one can open to the ‘no’, to the resistance, to the closed heart, to the pain that this closed heart carries. It is the opening to the resistance, the acceptance of the resistance that will allow healing to take place. Resisting the resistance only reinforces isolation and misery.
There is no ‘yes’ button that one could switch on; for this ‘yes’ to be uttered, to manifests, the controlling mind needs to let go and this cannot be forced, it is an inner process of recognition and when this inner recognition happens, a deep relaxation follows immediately.
Relaxation is the other side of acceptance.
Do remember that without having a sincere ‘yes’ to your resistance, no sustainable transformation can take place.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_3-November-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Addiction and Escaping. 

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Today's question is about Addiction and Escaping.
« People often escape their fear and pain by having all kinds of addictions. You even mentioned that meditations, mindfulness and self-awareness can be ways of escaping. Could you say something about addiction and escaping? »

Remember the fight or fly behaviour that one can adopt. Addictions and Escaping are part of the fly behaviour; they are fear-based. And what do we want to escape from? We want to escape from our inner misery, from our loneliness, from our aching hearts, from our tensions and in order to do this we take on specific behaviour patterns. All behaviour patterns are in essence escaping mechanisms.
Escaping means that we enter into a search for something which will give us what we want; the search can be to fulfil a need as we’ve seen in a previous talk; yet behind the desire to fulfil a need there is also an attempt to escape from the painful reality that the unfulfilled need creates and this is what all addictions are attempting to do.
Why do people smoke, drink or take drugs, simply to forget or to cover something that feels intolerable for them. Addictions are a cover up for pain and it is pointless to try stopping an addictive behaviour. Pointless because it will be replace by another addiction.
As a teenager, in order to be included and accepted I became a smoker, some years later I wanted to stop this addiction and I did manage to stop smoking but I only replaced it with being a non-smoker which is still an addiction. Yes non-smoking can be an addiction in the sense that the avoidance to feel the pain which was covered by the first addiction was still there, it just changed form. For sure it is healthier to not smoke than to smoke, but the addiction remains in the form of being a non-smoker; the only change is the direction that the addiction takes. I was still covering the pain of not being accepted, of not being included.

Other than smoking, drinking or taking drugs which we usually consider as harmful addictions to our health, any ‘doing’ can become an addiction; eating, not eating, work, shopping, sex, reading, meditation, the search for enlightenment, acquiring knowledge; all these activities which in themselves are blameless and not hurtful can turn into addictive behaviours. Even not doing anything can be an addiction.
It is not what one does which creates the addiction; it is the compulsiveness in doing what one does which is an addiction and this compulsiveness comes from not being able to connect and feel one’s aching heart. The compulsiveness in doing is a major escaping mechanism.
We fear meeting with our aching hearts, we fear connecting with our feelings and we even become afraid of meeting with our fear. We carry the belief that if we allow connecting with our feelings and with the pain that our heart carries we will die. It is this fear of dying that we try to avoid at all costs in escaping to meet with our feelings. It is not that we would really die; in reality it is the fear of being overwhelmed by a strong emotional release which we believe we cannot face. In order to avoid facing the fear of meeting with our aching hearts we occupy ourselves in all sorts of ways.
The way out is not about trying to stop or change our escaping mechanism, the way out is to recognize that we are in a constant ‘doing’. We have become compulsive doers for the simple reason that we want to avoid feeling a deep emptiness inside of us which the pain creates. Not only our heart aches but we also feel lost and helpless with our aching heart and in order not to feel this emptiness we move from one addiction to another. The bulimic-anorexic person is probably the most known example of switching between addictions.

The key point is that ‘doing’, any kind of doing, has become the norm in order to avoid connecting with our aching heart; to avoid feeling miserable and lonely we escape in ‘doing’. Check for yourself how much ‘doing’ is present in your life and even when you don’t know what to do you occupy yourself with checking your mobile phone. Isn’t that so?
Please understand that I am not saying that ‘doing’ is wrong; doing is necessary when we want to achieve something; sitting silently doing nothing will not top up your bank account; you will have to roll up your sleeves and get to work for that. Doing is necessary to provide and satisfy our practical needs. Practicing meditation, self-awareness, yoga or any health-oriented technique is also needed when we want to become physically and spiritually healthier. For transformation to take place doing is needed.  
What I want to emphasizing is that it is the compulsion of doing, which is the source of unhappiness, not doing in itself. It is the source of unhappiness because it is an escape from the reality that we are. Just like a child escape in his fantasy world to avoid feeling his aching heart, the adult escape in compulsive doing. In a way compulsive doing can be seen as the extension or the continuation of the fantasy world of the child. 
I have noticed in many people and it has also been my experience that the search for enlightenment, that practicing meditation can become a subtle way to escape our aching hearts. ‘Once I will be enlightened all my problems with be solved’. This is what most enlightenment seekers have in mind. The search is then diverted from its intended purpose; it becomes an escaping trip, a journey to escape our misery.
Here is a little story to illustrate this point; it is a poem from the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

« The poet has been searching for God for millions of lives. He has seen him sometimes, far away, near a star and he started moving that way but by the time he reached that star, God had moved to some other place. But he went on searching and searching, he was determined to find God's home and surprise of surprises one day he actually reached a house where on the door was written:
‘God's Home.’
You can understand his ecstasy, you can understand his joy and just as he is about to knock on the door, suddenly his hand freezes. An idea arises in him: ‘If by chance this is really the home of God, then I am finished, my seeking is finished. I have become identified with my seeking, with my search. I don't know anything else. If the door opens and I face God, I am finished.
The search is over and then what?’
He starts trembling with fear, takes his shoes off and runs as fast as he can. He used to think that he had been running after God but today he runs as he has never run before, not looking back. The poem ends: ‘I am still searching for God. I know where his home is, so I avoid it and search everywhere else. The excitement is great, the challenge is great, and, in my search, I continue to exist. God is a danger; I will be annihilated. But now I am not afraid even of God, because I know where he lives. So, leaving his home aside, I go on searching for him all around the universe.
And deep down I know that my search is not for God; my search is to nourish my ego.»

Change the word ‘God’ by ‘aching heart’ and the story describe beautifully how we escape our pain. We know exactly where to look but we take a different direction and lose ourselves in doing. It is reported that after many years of practice a Zen student came to this conclusion: «There is nothing that I can do anymore; I simply need to stop searching and let myself be found.»

Take this advice, stop escaping and let yourself be found. Let your aching heart come close, value it, take care of it and in doing so you will discover a hidden treasure. This of course needs courage, perseverance and discrimination and you all have these capacities, make use of them. It is about moving from doing to being; it is about moving into acceptance.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_3-November-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Communication Exercises.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this special Zoom Meeting,
As I came to know that many of you are involving yourself in one to one communication exercises, I’d like to bring some additional information so that each of you can gain more benefit out of such practice. Some of you may recall a talk that I gave a few years ago on Communication and Communication Cycles. If you feel inclined, this talk is available for you to read on my website in the Perspective section.

Why take the trouble to sit with a partner and communicate about what is going on for us? What is this practice about?
May be the first reason to practice such exercises is because we would like to clarify what is going on in our mind or solve an issue that we have. Yet this we can do by using writing or drawing, so what is so special about these one-to-one communications exercises. What is special about these one to one communication exercises is that they give an opportunity for the person to express herself unconditionally and most of all to be understood.
In a Zoom meeting in March this year I gave a talk on the need to be understood; I would suggest to everyone to read or listen to that talk again because being understood it is of tremendous importance for everyone. And this is what these one-to-one communication exercises can provide, the contentment of being understood.
During that talk in March I mentioned that being understood does not simply mean that the words that are spoken are understood. Yes it is important but it is only the apparent layer, the essential part is that the person feels recognized in her individuality, in her specificity; for who she is. And this is of importance because this recognition allows life to flow. We are life, life flows through us and when life is being recognized, it blossoms. See a child who is being understood in his needs, whose needs are met; he immediately feels contented and a smile arises from his heart. Being understood is essential for our growth, as essential as our physical needs; that’s why I would say that being understood is not only essential but vital too.
Unfortunately as a child we have seldom been understood by our caretakers; our needs, our desires were for most of them not understood and thus not met and as adults we are still trying to have these child needs met which often generates distortion in relationships.

Yet to be understood as a person requires the meeting of two elements:

→ One is that we express what we want to express as clearly as possible. This is part of our responsibility.
→ And second that there is a listener who is willing and able to receive and understand our communication.

Without these two active elements no understanding can ever take place and frustration will prevail.
In that talk on Communication and Communication Cycles I was developing this point and mentioning that for communication to be fruitful six steps are needed.

1 → Becoming aware that something in us wants to be communicated (identification)
2 → Expressing it exactly as it has been identified (expression)
3 → It being received and accepted by another (acceptance)
4 → It being understood by another (understanding)
5 → It being acknowledged by the other for what it is (acknowledgement)
6 → Noticing that it has been fully received and understood by another (fulfilment)

The drawing shown will give you a clearer idea of these steps. 

These steps can be summarized as follow:

• Identification
• Expression
• Openness/Acceptance
• Understanding
• Acknowledgement/Response
• Fulfilment

Whether you are the communicator or the listener do your best to follow these steps when you are practicing these one-to-one communication drills.
Both roles are important.
If you do these exercises with the only desire to be understood and don’t really care about being a listener, you are completely missing the point. Being the listener is of equal importance as being the one who communicates.
Remember that in these drills you are not facing a therapist; it is not an individual session where you can completely give the responsibility to the therapist and where he can guide you or give suggestion. You are with a person who is like you, with similar issues, with similar unconscious beliefs and preconceived ideas. So it is not a question of letting go of your responsibility. It is a question of being more conscious, more aware.
More aware of what we want to communicate and how we are communicating what we want to communicate. This, so that what we communicate can be understood by our partner.
These one-to-one communication drills requires being self-responsible, even more so because no-one is monitoring you in your practice.
There are three most common pitfalls that one can encounter in doing this type of exercises.

→ Probably the main pitfall is that very often we are not really communicating but having what I would call verbal diarrhoea, a nonstop talk. Our mind is simply following an impulse to talk and is pouring out words. In this case we are simply looping within our own mind as if we were talking to ourselves and we are using the other person as projection support. Stating our point has become primary; being understood becomes secondary.

→ Another important pitfall is to not have a direction, an aim or a track to follow and to simply talk randomly about what comes to our mind. In doing this we soon fall into story telling which often leads to sharing how miserable or how great we are.

→ The third main pitfall is that out of shyness or shame we communicate without looking at our partner or with a tendency to close our eyes when communicating. For various reasons, many people have a fear to communicate about themselves and they unconsciously use this strategy to bypass their fear.

When we practice these one-to-one communications it is common in the beginning to fall in these pitfalls, especially if there is no one monitoring the drills. And for those who have been practicing these one-to-one communications, check for yourself if at some point you have fallen into one or more of these pitfalls.
Being aware beforehand of these pitfalls will help you to get back on track if and when you become aware that you have unconsciously fallen into one of those pitfalls. Yet if you follow the guidance that I am about to give you, the risk of going astray will be limited.
The first thing is to understand the dynamic that is at work in these one-to-one communication drills, also call dyads.
There is you and a partner, one is communicating and the other is listening and each of you takes equal turn in these 2 roles during the 40 minutes that the drill lasts. It is not a conversation with a partner where you would share something about you. It is a precise question and answer and both partners need to follow the given guidelines.
The guidelines are as follow:

•  All instruction given to a partner should start with ‘Tell Me’.
•  The focus of these one-to-one communication exercise can be defined each time. Yet once it is defined the person need to stick with it and once started, refrain from changing the focus, even if it becomes difficult for you.
•  Use a timer so that each person has 5 minutes of communication in a total cycle of 40 minutes.
•  These communication drills can be done with different instructions in order to clarify and even clear issues that are creating a problem for a person.

The easier instruction to start with is this one:

« Tell me something about you that you think I should know »
Let your partner tell you what he wants you to know about him and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

The listening partner gives this instruction to the active partner and then remains attentive to receive the communication from his partner without making any comments, approval, or disapproval.
When the partner has finished the listening partner says ‘Thank you’ and gives the instruction again; this cycle continues until the 5 minutes are over, at which point the roles reverse.
The now active partner should not comment on what his partner has said but only comply to the instruction given.
This five minute changeover continues until the 40 minutes are over.

The purpose of this instruction is to help the person to bring more awareness to what she feels is important for her to communicate to this partner, and to express it as clearly as possible. The listening partner’s role is to receive and understand the communication. If what his partner is communicating is not clear the listening partner can say: ‘please clarify this’ in order to fully understand the communication.
It is important to respect this procedure and the wording in order to avoid any side tracking.

Once you have become familiar with this first instruction and are able to communicate about you and not about others, you may want to bring the focus to a more specific topic which is important for you. It can be any of the following: money, sex, illness, abuse, drinking alcohol, smoking, a goal that you have in life, having children, relationship or marriage, death & dying (or getting old).
In this case the instruction will be slightly different in order to include the chosen topic.
The instruction will be:

« Tell me something about you, in regard to money* that you think I should know »
Let your partner tell you what he wants you to know about him regarding money and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

As you can see the only difference from the previous instruction are the words ‘in regard to + the topic’. The rest is exactly the same and the procedure for this instruction is the same as with the previous instruction. In this example the person will talk about her and money.
Once the topic is defined, stick to it until the end of the communication exercise, even if you become blank and don’t know what to say; keep going with the same topic.
It is advisable to do at least 2 rounds of 40mins with the same topic.

Once both partners are at ease with communicating and listening it is possible to use a more advance instruction format such as these two steps instructions.
The first instruction

« Tell me something about you that you want me to know »
Let your partner tell you what he wants you to know about him and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

Then give the second instruction

« Tell me how communicating that changed our relationship »
Let your partner tell you how communicating the above has changed something in this relationship and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

Continue this cycle for at least 20 minutes.

Some explanation about this format.
The receptive partner starts with “Tell me something about you that you want me to know.” This gets the active partner to communicate something to the receptive partner. Although what you say is not of primary importance, it should be something that you really want the other to know. It should be fairly short and not your life story. Keep it short enough so that you can spend some time with the second instruction.
With the second instruction “Tell me how communicating that changed our relationship”, you notice what happened for you when you gave your response to the first instruction. And second, you turn your attention from what you’ve communicated to the relationship you have with your partner and consider what occurred in this relationship after communicating what you have communicated.

•  What was my motivation in saying what I’ve said?
•  What was the effect in me of saying what I said?
•  What changed in me?
•  Did saying what I’ve said changed something in this relationship?

If any doubt, confusion, or argument, stop the exercise, find help and proper tutoring to overcome the difficulty which is arising. Once both partners are clear on the procedure, start the dyad fresh.

It is not uncommon to have issues around Shame or Guilt. With a specific instruction, it becomes possible to clear beliefs around Shame or Guilt.
Use this specific instructions when dealing with Shame or Guilt.

« Tell me something you have done, that in your own estimation you should not have done »
Let your partner tell you what he has done and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

Do the one above for 20 mins (2 rounds) and then do the following one for another 20mins (2 rounds).

« Tell me something you have failed to do that in your own estimation, you should have done »
Let your partner tell you what he has failed to do and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

When clarifying Shame or Guilt, I suggest doing 2 rounds of 40 minutes each and after that finish with this instruction (2x time 5mins each)

« Tell me what you have gained in doing these exercises »
Let your partner tell you what he has gained and when he is complete say:
« Thank you »

This is quite a lot to integrate hey! Practicing, practicing and practicing again and again is the only way to truly benefit from these one-to-one communication exercises. My experience with this practice is that the closer we can be with our inner reality and communicate it clearly, the more fruitful it will be. Remember that each partner has to take on a responsible attitude for what he communicates. These drills are not a conversation or a sharing with a friend; they are tools to know one-self better and gain maturity through dedication, perseverance and care. When you partake in these drills remain open and relaxed.

Here is a little note for those of you who have participated in the awareness retreats with me.
Although the one-to-one format of communication in the retreat is quite similar, there is an important difference in the way of practicing the given instructions. Not only the questions are different but the intention is also different. It is different in the sense that within a retreat the focus is on intending to directly experience oneself and not merely to understand better and clarify aspects of our personality. One format is personality oriented whilst the other is geared to go beyond the personality.
It is advisable not to mix these two formats of communication since they have different purposes.

Thank you for your attentive listening and now your questions.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_4-August-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on the Obstacles to Awakening to True Nature.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting.
In my last talk I was mentioning that Enlightenment, Awakening or True Nature are only pointers or sign posts that can help our minds to turn its focus into a direction which is beyond mind understanding. Remember; ‘Enlightenment is not what we think’.
Yet since we are gifted with a thinking mind and a persistent compulsion to think rather than to feel or sense, the access to Tue Nature becomes a potential arduous and almost impossible task.

Any acquired knowledge, any book, any practice, will not be of any help to experience the ‘isness’ that True Nature is. Yet ‘isness’ or True Nature is here, so what can be done to enter experiencing ‘isness’?
The answer to this riddle is actually quite simple when we understand the nature of the mind, the nature of the thinking process and the nature of identification.
The mind is a very good tool which can create and discriminate; as mentioned during the talk on truth, we are gifted with ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Discrimination’ and one way to bypass or to go beyond the thinking mind is to use it for what it can do. During that talk I also proposed some exercises to uproot the false sense of self and its beliefs in order to come to what is real. The same principle can be applied when we want to return to True Nature.
You may have noticed that the thinking mind is single pointed; it always go in one direction and this direction is always towards something; whether this towards is directed towards the outer or the inner does not matter. What matters is to recognize the single pointed direction. Mind is like an arrow; it shoots towards a target and has the capacity to pierce it. It is this capacity of the mind that can be used to go beyond it and enter or experience True Nature.
We have to first recognize and marvel about the capacity of the thinking mind to create. Mind is like an illusionist. Just like a magician can make a dove come out of a folded handkerchief; the mind can make us believe that there is a ghost where in fact there is only the wind moving a curtain. In India they use the metaphor of a rope being taken for a snake. The mind can make us believe that we are strong and confident whilst the reality is a total opposite. The thinking mind has this incredible power to create illusion, yet it also has the power to discriminate and dismantle the illusion. In other words it has the power to create and dissolve any hindrances.
In many instances and more so during awareness retreats, I point out to the participants that our focus is always on what we are aware of but rarely on the one who is aware. We are aware of many things; that we have a body, that we have feelings and thoughts or memories and that the world is happening and unfolding around us but our mind tends to forget or be oblivious of the one who is aware, the one who is holding the bow and shooting the arrow.
To be able to go beyond the thinking mind, the one holding the bow needs to be taken into account. Therefore a question like: ‘who is aware?’ becomes a useful tool to bring the focus on the one who is aware. Although this is not obvious for many, but the first thing that we tend to discover when we start using this question is that it is always ‘me’ doing something or being aware of something. I am doing this, I am feeling this, I am sensing this, I am aware of this, etc.
Using this question, one can start to notice that actually everything revolves around ‘I am’. Whatever we do, say, feel or think, it always points or comes back to ‘me’. Recognizing that it is ‘me’; that I am the one from where everything starts is an important realization. Some of you may remember the ‘Ten blind men’ story which points exactly towards this realization that ‘me’ is rarely taken into account.
Although there is obviousness about the fact that it is always ‘me’; many people, for various individual reasons, have a hard time realizing this, let alone accepting it. This difficulty to accept that it is ‘me’ comes most probably from a fear of being responsible. If I accept that it is ‘me’; that I am the one who acts, that I am the ‘doer’ of all my actions, thoughts and feelings, it implies that I am responsible and this is sometimes difficult to accept.
The acceptance of being the doer is difficult because it involves taking responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions and shame often comes in the way, especially when our actions or thinking and feelings are not in conformity with some moral standards that we have taken for established laws.
For many people it is difficult to accept that they are angry, sad or in fear. They can recognize that there is anger or sadness in them and express it to some extend but to actually admit or own these feelings is a different matter. Simply because they hold on to some moral standards that it is wrong or shameful to be angry or sad and that they should be different. This can also sometimes give rise to a form of stubbornness in not wanting to admit that one is sad or hurt which manifests through these often-unspoken words: ‘I will not let you win over me’. This attitude has its origin in the wounded child; a very hurt child who does not want to let his caretakers see how much he his hurt.

Owning being the doer is an essential step towards regaining a sense of being present and upright; it gives a sense of identity, a recognition that ‘I exists’, that ‘I am here’ and that ‘you’ are different than ‘me’. This ownership gives a sense of strength, of confidence and power which is heart-warming, gratifying and very useful to go about in life.
I am aware, I am doing, thinking, feeling or sensing this or that is the vast field within which we generally live our life in. We have become ‘doers’, compulsive doers, compulsive thinkers; so completely engrossed in our doing to the point that we don’t imagine anything else. Sitting silently doing nothing has also become a doing. ‘What are you doing? I am doing meditation, I am meditating.’
Unconsciously we have become identified with being the ‘doer’, with this sense of ‘it is me’. ‘Me’ has become our identity and we usually live our lives without questioning its authenticity.
But is it true; I’m I really the doer of my actions, of my thoughts or of my feelings? At first glance yes, there seems to be an obviousness of the fact that it is me speaking, looking, hearing or acting and not anyone else. Acknowledging that it is ‘me’ and not anyone else is essential and in some ways empowering and fulfilling.
Yet this sense of ‘it is me’ is nothing but identification and as mentioned during the last talk, all sense of identity, of identification, needs to fall before True Nature can be realized. Even though everyone longs for an end to their suffering, an end to their aching hearts, which is quite natural; it is not so much the aching heart which is the problem; it is the thought form that it is ‘my’ pain, that it is ‘my’ aching heart which creates suffering. I am the one who suffers is the problem; identification is the real disease. Dissolving the identification with this sense of ‘me’, with the ‘doer’ will not only bring an end to suffering, it will also open the door to experience True Nature.

Stepping out of the identification with being the ‘doer’; dissolving the ‘me’ identification has been the pursuit of many spiritual schools and over time different approaches have been laid out for this purpose.

Devotional approaches are certainly the most common and have spread all over the world through different formats. Whether in the East or in the West their main characteristic is, for a person, to devote her focus towards some higher entity or divinity who will provide all sorts of benefits if the devotion is practiced well. The main sought benefit is to be set free from suffering. Faith and beliefs are the main pillars to these devotional approaches which are heart oriented and feelings based.

Dissolving identification can also be done via body-oriented approaches such as Yoga, Tai Chi, Zen Archery or Ritual Dancing to name a few. Through movement, all these practices aim to dissolve identification so that any personal doing disappears and only moving remains. In China this is known as ‘Wuwei’.

And last but not least, mind has also been used to dissolve identification with self-enquiry practices. Challenging the reality of the nature of the ‘self’, the ‘I’ or ‘me’ helps put the focus on ‘that’ which is aware, on the awareness itself by moving from obvious identifications to more subtle ones until no identification remains.
It is a negative approach in the sense that the emphasis is on questioning the reality of this ‘I’ that we take for granted until the realization that actually ‘I’ or ‘me’ is only a construct of the mind and has no reality whatsoever. Yet the thinking mind cannot come to this realization because it would imply its own extinction which for the mind is not acceptable.
What is needed is a leap out of the mind and this leap can only occur when the mind fails to find a solution, when the mind recognizes its inability to explain, to understand, to comprehend and stops trying. It is in this moment of surrendering of the mind that True Nature reveals itself. As long as we hold on to want ourselves, situations or others to be different than what they are, we are in the grip of the thinking mind, in the grip of the doer. When there is acceptance of what is, suffering disappears and True Nature shines.

Whether a person chooses to practice a devotional approach, a body related or a mind related approach, the common factor that will enable experiencing ‘isness’ is always the act of surrendering. Suffering has its roots in our tendency to want things and situations to be according to our estimation and not according to what they are. This tendency is what some people have called the ‘ego trip’ or the ‘power trip’. The ego or power trip is simply a pure identification with being the ‘doer’, living our life as we please; not realizing that in fact the reality is that we are being lived, that it is Life, which is breathing me, that it is Life, which is carrying me, supporting me. This recognition that it is Life constantly unfolding and not me doing something is what surrendering is about. We unconsciously take ourselves for being the center from where everything revolves around and by doing so, we miss Life and at the same time create our own suffering.
We are living beings yet unfortunately thinking has taken the predominance and we have forgotten that our roots are in life, that Life is our essence, the very substance that we are made of. Looking at a starry sky or into the infinity of the blue sky can remind us that there is something which is much vaster than our limited body and personality; it can help us surrender to this vastness, to this infinity that in reality we are.

As mentioned in this talk today, from a mind point of view ‘Identification’ is the obstacle and more specifically identification with being the doer or the centre around which everything revolves. ‘Me, myself and I’ are the obstacles to realize, to experience True Nature, to awaken to ‘Isness’. There are no other obstacle because who is it that wants to experience True Nature if not ‘me’?
True nature is and does not need ‘me’ and from True Nature’s point of view, there are no obstacles or problems; all obstacles, all problems are simply a construct of the mind and as such, totally acceptable and part of ‘Isness’.
Wanting to experience True Nature or wanting to be enlightened are simply constructs of the mind, a pure illusion created by the identification with something labelled as: ‘me’.

« When ‘I’ exists, the world appears, when ‘I’ disappears True Nature appears. »

Thank you for your attentive listening and now your questions.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_21-July-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Enlightenment & True Nature.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Enlightenment, True Nature, in many people’s mind, these two words carry a lot of preconceived ideas, unfounded beliefs and mostly a certain idea of hope. Hope for a different life, for a better future and mostly hope for an end to suffering.
And for those who are following a spiritual practice, there is often, even if it is not conscious, a sort of arrogant attitude linked with these two words. Something like: ‘I am a seeker, I am on the Path, I belong to a special group of people who are concerned with meditation, with spirituality. We are out of the common masses’. In Zen this attitude is called the ‘Zen Stink’. Beware of this!

In this talk today, rather than highlighting what enlightenment is and comfort your thinking minds, I’ll do my best to point to what it is not, in this way you won’t have something to hold on to, a goal to attain to or a creed to believe in.
An American teacher once wrote a book named ‘Enlightenment is not what you think’. He did not say: ‘Enlightenment is not what you think it is’; only: ‘Enlightenment is not what you think’.
And this is exactly what enlightenment is about; it is not what we think. All thinking, any kind of thinking is not part of enlightenment. There is no thinking process that would lead someone to enlightenment. There are no methods either to attain enlightenment; it happens and it has appended for many people over the course of time, yet this happening is not dependent on any method whatsoever.
One of the best example is the one of Buddha; Buddha wanted to know what is beyond death, what does not die and he spent many years trying to attain to a state of non-suffering, practicing all kinds of techniques without any real success until one day he got so fed up that he said: ‘that’s it, I’m finished with all these practices, let it be’. And it is in this letting be that he awoke to True Nature.

The common meaning of the word ‘enlightenment’ is when we suddenly and abruptly understand something that we did not understand before. The famous ‘Eurêka’ that Archimedes exclaimed when he discovered his formula on volumes is a good example of what the word enlightenment means. He had been pondering for days about finding a formula on volumes and liquids but his mind could not come with the correct formula. He gave up and decided to relax and take a bath. The moment he entered his bath something clicked, he realized what he was looking for since days. In that instant he knew the formula, he knew without a doubt because he had experienced it.
In spirituality circles this word has a slightly different meaning; it means awakening to something which is beyond any mind concepts. It is not possible to ‘become’ awakened or enlightened; wanting to be awakened or enlightened is simply a fantasy of the mind, just like wanting to become a ‘great poet or a great soul’, it has no substance whatsoever.
However, this desire to be enlightened is common to all seekers who are ‘on the path’ but one has to see that this is nonsense. It is nonsense because this is a mind desire and enlightenment has nothing to do with desire and the thinking mind. Enlightenment is part of an idea that there is a certain ‘state’ that one could attain where everything would be flawless, smooth and pain and emotion free; like we imagine saints to be.
There is no such saintly state. Enlightenment is not a state that one could attain.

Yet there is in each human being this desire for something different, for something that is not of this world; a different sort of consciousness where suffering is no longer present.

This desire comes from two very different sources.
One source is that each human being carries an intrinsic pull towards wholeness, towards a return to a sense of unity, where everything is as it should be, safe and peaceful and where suffering is not present. Some call this wholeness: ‘True Nature’, others ‘Essence’ or ‘Consciousness’ and Buddhists call it ‘Buddha Nature’.
Whatever name is given to this sense of wholeness is not important; what is important is to recognize that there is an inner longing for wholeness. A longing is different from a desire. A longing is an aspiration towards something that we want to be in union with; it comes from a deeper part of our being whilst a desire mostly comes from needs that have not been fulfilled on the personality level.
This pull or longing to return towards wholeness is there because we have been in wholeness at some point in our life or better say we were this wholeness, yet at the time we were not conscious about it simply because our brain was not yet at its full potential.
This longing is there and we unconsciously search to fulfil it through different means because it has become mixed with our unfulfilled childhood needs. Sexuality is probably the most ‘at hand’ and natural possibility to return to this wholeness simply because during sexual intercourse one can experience a moment of union which is quite similar to wholeness. Sexual orgasm is a doorway to wholeness and it has been used as such by different ‘spiritual’ schools in India and in China.

The other source for this desire to be enlightened comes from discontentment, from being unsatisfied with our condition, in other words from suffering. It is no more a longing, it has become a desire to end something or to be someone special and as such it is part of our personality like any other desire. ‘I want this because it will take me out of that’ or ‘I want this because it will make me special’. This desire comes from a denial of reality.
Whether a longing or a desire, enlightenment is not something that one can attain by doing something because enlightenment is not a thing, it is not a thing or an object that one can grab, it is not a state that one can attain, it is not even a process that would take the person from A to B, from unconsciousness to some imaginary super state of consciousness.

So what is enlightenment then you may ask?
I could word it like this: “Enlightenment is an awakening to our True Nature; it is the realization that we are”. But even saying this is only food for the mind and cannot give a true sense of the reality that is. It is only pointing to a direction and this direction is not really a direction but more an experience, a realization. Buddha used to call this realization ‘Nirvana’. Nirvana means the extinction of desires. Become desire-less and the doors of Nirvana or True Nature will flung open.
The only way to know this True Nature that teachers over the centuries have been talking about is to enquire in order to experience it; just as the only way to know the taste of watermelon is to bite into it. Then you know; there is no other way. Many books have been written about True Nature, many explanations have been given about its qualities and the ways to attain this ‘Nirvana’; yet all these writings are only describing something that is now taken as an object or a state to attain; they don’t deliver the taste of True Nature and they cannot because it is not about ‘seeing or understanding’ it is about ‘being’. Not about being someone or being something but simply being.

The realization ‘I am’ is the first step towards ‘being’. It is not about, ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, but simply ‘I am’. However ‘I am’ tends to fix something, to define, to stop a movement, the movement of Life; something like: ‘Amness’ would be better because it would point to a continuum, something flowing. Yet even ‘amness’ carries a sense of identity and the doors of Nivana will not let any identity pass through them.
All sense of identity, and identity means identification, need to fall before True Nature can be realized. Even ‘being’ True Nature will not allow passing through the Gateless Gate as Zen calls it; because even in being a zest of identification lingers. To enter Nirvana or pass the Gateless Gate all identification have to be dropped and when all identification have disappeared, one is not and when we are not suddenly everything ‘is’.
In a previous talk I mentioned that ‘it is Life which is breathing us, that it is Life which is carrying us, supporting us; that we are Life itself’. It is not that ‘one is Life’ but more ‘Life is’.
‘Is’ is not something static, it is a constant motion; ‘Life’ is a constant motion, never at rest, always expanding or contracting, yet expanding or contracting silently, effortlessly and painlessly. To underline this notion of movement some sages have even coined the word ‘Isness’.

Bashō, a Japanese poet found a way to expresses ‘isness’ with this Haiku:

« Sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes
and the grass grows by itself. »

Native Americans are expressing it in this way:

« What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time.
It is the shadow which runs across the grass, and loses itself in the sunset. »

Enlightenment, Awakening, Realization, True Nature, True Self, Nirvana or Buddha Nature are only pointers or sign posts that can help our minds to turn its focus into a direction which is beyond mind understanding. Remember ‘enlightenment is not what you think’.
Yet since our mind tends to think and therefore create hindrances to this possibility of awakening to True Nature, in an upcoming Zoom meeting I will put the focus on these hindrances and ways to deal with them.

Thank you for your attentive listening, now let’s take some time to look at your questions.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_7-July-2020

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on Zoom platform as an introduction to a series of Q&A.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Before I answer your questions today, I’d like to say a few words about the work that I propose so that you clearly understand the direction that I aim at in supporting you with your personal issues.

My interest is not so much to help you function better on a personality level but more to guide you towards experiencing and living your True Nature, who you really are. It is my understanding and my own experience that we are Life; we are Life manifested in this body form and when I say Life I am referring to ‘that’ which is alive in us, the Life force or Life energy that we are.
This life force manifests in numerous and various forms, just look at the world around you and you will see that every living entity, whether a mountain, a river, a plant, an animal or a human being, is a unique expression of this Life energy. Everything on this planet is vibrant with Life and except for humans all these expressions of Life follow their natural course.
As human we have the potential to distort this natural course, not that this distortion is done voluntarily; it happens unconsciously due to a survival mechanism; yet the outcome is that we lose the connection with our True Nature, the connection with this Life energy that we are and become identified with a self-created personality; a false identity. The work on the personality is only the first and basic steps to help this reconnection to take place. We can only start from where we are at and most of the time we are lost and very much entangled and alone with our issues and identifications.

If we want to be in alignment with what we are, if we want to be in alignmentwith the life that we are, it becomes our responsibility to consciously make the needed steps to return to our real home.  It is not about artificially jumping into some high states of consciousness; it is not about becoming enlightened; it is more about being in tune with our nature, with the life energy that we are. We are born out of Life; we are the sons and daughters of Life and the only way that we can honour Life if by becoming what we are and we are Life itself. The finality of this work is not to become a better person, a saint or to believe in some supra consciousness or deity, the finality of this work is to be Alive, to be totally alive within this body mind system.
When we are able to stand on our two feet and be face to face with Life we become Life itself; we are Alive for the first time; for the first time we are a true human being. We have regained our True Nature; the circle is then complete and we can live in the environment that we are in without fears, without problems; all ‘problems’ have disappeared, what remains are only situations that we need to attend to, to deal with. We are free. This freedom is accessible to all, it is everyone’s birth right, we only have to claim it.
It is towards this freedom that I aim to guide you, and for some of you this freedom is very near, just a few more steps are needed. It only needs the simple recognition that it is Life, which is breathing me, that it is Life, which is carrying me, supporting me.
What could be more beautiful, what could be more honorable, more magnificent than to be Life itself?
From the very moment of conception, even before our birth take place to the moment of death, we are this pulsation of Life in a human form; our sole responsibility is to become conscious of it. It is towards this responsibility that I aim to guide your steps.
Unconsciously we have disowned ourselves; we are living away from ourselves, in a dream made world made of ideas and beliefs and we continue dreaming and hoping for some enlightened states, for some miraculous realization whilst the only thing to do is to come back to the reality of now and our reality starts with our body, with our so-called personal issues. The work is simply about owning yourself again. Owning yourself is the greatest marvel that can happen to you. This is why I will always encourage you to recognize, accept and express whatever is coming up for you, because these are the steps towards being a free living being. Acceptance is just another word for Love; Love is acceptance; accepting yourself as you are, is what owning yourself means.

Now your questions...

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_2-July-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Personality & Spirituality.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome back to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
After this short pause, I’m able to resume our weekly meeting and I’d like to continue from where I’ve stopped last time when I clarified the direction that I aim at in supporting you. I mentioned that working on the personality level is merely the first step towards something much vaster and more fulfilling which can be called Spirituality.
Personality and Spirituality are nothing but man made concepts. Man likes to conceptualize, to name anything that he sets his eyes upon; yet in conceptualizing man wipes out the very essence of Life and thus misses his own nature.
This being said, conceptualizing is however useful to gain an intellectual understanding on how we function and how we fit into what we call the world or existence.

You may remember that in our last talk I mentioned that we are an expression of Life manifested in this specific body form and that the only important thing is to realize that we are vibrant with Life, that we are Life itself. In a nutshell this is what this work is all about.
In order to achieve this or better to realize one’s own nature, a few preliminary septs are needed and understanding these concepts of personality and spirituality will be useful. It will be useful because it will help clarify the path you are treading on and shed a light on some specific terms or aspects of this path.

The fist point to understand is that Personality and Spirituality go hand in hand; there would not be any spirituality if there were no personality and vice versa. Personality and Spirituality are complementary opposites. They are opposites in the sense that they refer to and take into account two different aspects of Life and they are complementary in the sense that without one, the other would not exist. We need to keep in mind that although each concept has its own specificities, in the end they are both an expression of Life.

The Personality concept 
Since the closer to us apart from our body is our personality, let’s have a look at what this concept is mainly pointing to.
Personality is defined by most psychologists as the characteristic sets of behaviours, cognitions and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors. Quite a broad definition that would need a thorough explanation!
My aim in this talk is not to enter into a discussion about the different personality approaches or even to use the common differentiation of personality types and personality traits but more to clarify and be practical about what is common to each individual.

What we call ‘the Personality’ is actually centred or focus on one and only parameter and this parameter is ‘me’. Everything is centred on or revolves around this ‘me’, hence the term ‘ego’ in Latin or ‘persona’ in Greek. Every young child discovers and starts experiencing in his early years what I would call a sense of ‘me’ when he begins to recognize that: ‘I’ am here or ‘it is ‘me’.
This ‘I am here’ or ‘it’s me’ is not at all self-centred or egoistic; it is a physical experience that each child is going through; a down to earth level of ‘me’ standing on my own two feet with a sense of strength, of openness to life in general together with the joy of simply being alive, existing. Watch a child starting to walk and stand upright for the first time and you will notice his proudness, his strength; the child cannot conceptualize or even word what he is experiencing but through his body language he is saying: ‘it’s me, I’m here’.
Prior to this discovery the child was living in non-separation and had no idea of ‘me’ or ‘mama’ but with this experience, all of a sudden there is separation; there is ‘me’ and there is something other than me. It can be a person or an object. Even though language and conceptualization are not yet fully mastered, a division is created; the world now becomes a relationship between ‘Me’ and ‘Something other than me’.
As the child grows up and his brain develops, this division becomes more and more obvious. At first it is related to: ‘Me and my belongings’ (my toys, my mama, my papa, etc.). For a child this is not about possessiveness; it is about building a sense of security which he needs in order to grow.
As the child develops and goes through the different phases of his growth this sense of ‘me’ expands and becomes more centred on the person and becomes:

• My feelings
• My thoughts
• My body and its limitations
• My ideas, judgements, beliefs and expectations
• My belongings (my house, my bicycle, my friends, girlfriend/boyfriend and later on my wife/husband, my child, etc.)

This self-centredness is part of a normal growing process; the positive side of it is that it helps us set boundaries and acquire confidence in our ways of relating with the world around us. Yet the down side is that it tends to screen out the connection with our true nature since we now mainly relate with the world around us from this ‘me’. We have lived with this ‘me’; we have lived from this ‘me’ for as long as we can remember. ‘Me’ has become our identity, we have taken this ‘me’ for granted and have never questioned its reality.
‘Me’ has become our identity and we tend to naturally hold on to this ‘me’ since it is all that we know and also because of an intrinsic fear that is being generated through the identification with this ‘me’. “Who will I be without this ‘me’?” 

Although it manifests in the foreground, ‘me’ is only the apparent centre or outer layer of our personality. Our personality is a multi-layered structure, in the same way as our body which is a multi-layered structure from skin to marrow. On the surface or conscious level we find the most obvious, our ways of relating with the world, our behaviour patterns and personality traits, our ideas and beliefs and our emotional world.
Yet this conscious level is not autonomous, it is driven by a deeper level where thought process, feelings and memories originate and even below this subconscious or pre-conscious level we find the ‘Unconscious’. The unconscious is the seat of our preverbal memories, of our feelings and vital functions connected with our nervous system.

What is generally overlooked is the sense of separation and the duality that ‘me’ generates. You may have noticed yourself that there is always ‘me’ and ‘something other than me’. 

• ‘Me’ and ‘you’
• ‘Me’ and ‘my body’
• ‘Me’ and ‘my mind, my ideas, my beliefs’
• ‘Me’ and ‘my feelings, my emotions’
• ‘Me and my actions, my doing’
• ‘Me’ and ‘my story’, the story of this ‘me’.
• And for those more ‘spiritually advanced’ there is even ‘me’ and my ‘awareness’ or ‘me and enlightenment’.

Understanding this constant duality at play is a needed step in order to break free from this ‘me’ identification and from the suffering that it creates. It is the duality and this sense of separation which is the root cause of our suffering. Since everything is now ‘other than me’, we have lost the connection with our inborn reality and at the same time created a deep suffering. The suffering can be summarized as being the loss of our true identity which is the Union or non-separation from our true nature.
So it is not the personality that creates the suffering; it is the identification to the personality which create suffering. The personality in itself is not at fault, even though it may be flawed in various ways; the personality is needed and very useful to go about in the world. Without a personality we could not survive in this world. We do need a personality; yet a healthy one and not a too distorted one!

Understanding clearly that it is not the personality that is at fault but our identification with it will help us to break free from our identification with the personality. The identification is the problem, not the personality. 
Spirituality in a broad sense has been known over the centuries for being the resources, the means to dis-identify from our personality in order to return to this Union or non-separation from our True Nature.

The Spirituality concept
Spirituality is mainly associated with religion, any form of religion and the most common meaning of spirituality, whether is the West or in the East, is that trough some devotional efforts the adept will save his soul an access some sort of heaven.
In this context Spirituality is based on hope and on belief. The belief that if I behave well and worship accordingly, I will reach heaven after my death or in a next life; if I don’t behave well and don’t worship accordingly either I will go to hell or be forever doomed. A western variation of this is that if I behave well and worship accordingly, Jesus or God will come and save me and I will forever sit on his right side.
Most religions operate in this childish way based on punishment and reward, they are fear-based religions.

Another accepted understanding of spirituality is that beyond our personality, beyond our usual understanding of the world, there exists another realm that a person can connect with in order to become immortal. In a different way this is also a quest for immortality and in that sense it is a refusal of our mortal form; this form that we are confined to from birth to death.

The personality can be called the form. Spirituality is about that which is beyond the form; it is about the formless. The form is limited, our body appears to be limited and in some ways it is, when we consider it from our usual mind’s perspective. Yet if we broaden our view we can realise that this body is not just limited to what we can perceive with our senses. We are much more than our physical body. Since ancient times it has been discovered by sages that we are not just this body envelope that we can see and experience. Like the colours of a rainbow or the sound scale, our body is an expense of energy, ranging from basic red energy to higher purple and white energy. Not only do we have a range of energy bodies but our consciousness is also going from a basic down to earth understanding to what some sages called a super or higher consciousness. Science is now coming to these same discoveries.
Over the course of time, many methods have been developed to explore these realms that are beyond our thinking and conceptualizing mind.

The link or the thread of all these different approaches of what is referred to as Spirituality is something that is often overlooked. What is overlooked is that Spirituality is all about Life energy, the energy of Life in manifold manifestations.
As mentioned earlier and also in our previous Zoom meeting we are an expression of Life manifested in this specific body form; Life is what we are and the only important thing is to realize that we are a vibration of Life.
All concepts about Spirituality, all efforts to reach, to attaining some specific state, such as immortality, enlightenment or Buddha nature will fall apart once we realize and experience this simple truth. Life is what we are and as the saying goes, ‘Life has no goal other than to be lived and enjoyed’.

This realization is what ‘Spirituality’ is really about.
I would like to illustrate this by taking the example of Buddha’s teachings; his teaching is all about the extiction of desires and refusals, the source of suffering created by identification. Buddha called this extinction ‘Nirvana’. Nirvana in Pali, means extinction, it does not mean paradise or any special state.
His teaching is often misunderstood ‘I should not have any desires’ and if I have, then I am a siner and I won’t enter Nirvana. The person having these ideas falls prey to beliefs and behaviour patterns.
What needs to be understood in buddha’s teaching is that it is about dis-identifying from the cause of suffering, which is our identification with a ‘me’. It is dis-identification that is the core of spirituality, the core of all ‘spiritual’ teaching.
The Indian sage Ramana Maharshi was teaching the same thing in a different way. He was constantly bringing those who came to see him towards questioning who is having this though, who is having this belief, who is having this emotion. His only concern was that the person start to question: "Who is this ‘I’?"

Personality and spirituality are not separate, they are inteconnected since they are a variation of life; they are the song sheet of life. Life can sing its song throught the infine variety of forms and our task as human being is to tune in to Life by moving from personality to spirituality. 

From Personality to Spirituality 
Over the course of time and according to different cultures or religious orientations, sages have developed numerous methods or techniques to lead those aiming to discover or realize their True Nature.
They range from passive such as Vipassana, Zazen (silent sitting) or active meditation techniques like Dynamic, Mandala or Sufi Whirling to specific practices like Yoga Tai Chi, Chanting, Tantra, Calligraphy, Archery or Tea Ceremony to name a few. Most of them are body-oriented practices in order to bypass the thinking mind. Most of them are body oriented practices in order to bypass the thinking mind.
During the talk on truth, I mentionned that we have been gifted with Intelligence and Discrimination, in other words, with awareness. Awareness is our capacity to discriminate the false from the truth and bring what is unconscious to a conscious level so that it can be dealt with and leave us.
Questioning this sense of ‘me’ is the purpose of all spiritual teachings and in order to do this, over the centuries different ‘self-enquiry’ methods have been developed. Self-enquiry simply means enquiring about the authenticity of what we refer to as: ‘me’, also called ‘the self’ or ‘I’ in order to discover the true nature of this ‘I’ of this ‘me’; another way of saying this would be: ‘Is it true?’, is this ‘me’ a tangible reality?

Self-enquiry is a quest for truth and this quest require a plunge into the reality of what is and leave aside what we dream or imagine the reality to be. The knack of self-enquiry is to bring the focus, not on what is ‘other than me’ as we usually do but on ‘me’ and to question its reality.
Self-enquiry is about discarding what is not ‘me’, like peeling an onion, not this, not this, not this, until nothing more remain to be discarded and it is then our True Nature reveals itself.

From personality to Spirituality is a journey of many rewards, a journey worth travelling on and this is my invitation to you, now that you’ve regained a sense of strength, of openness to life in general and the joy of simply being alive with the work with the Inner Child, to continue your journey with the awareness intensive retreats.
In these retreats we use a specific self-enquiry method derived from the Japanese Zen tradition that is designed to lead the participant to directly experience what is referred to as ‘True Nature’.
Tomorrow we will start an online retreat specially geared for this purpose and thanks to the Covid-19 pandemy it will probably be the first time ever that such a retreat is proposed on line. I’m confident that these 5 days will unfold seamlessly for all and that identification will disolve effortlessly.

I’d like to end with this talk with a quote from Marianne Williamson, an American writer and lecturer.

« Inner peace doesn't come from getting what we want;
it comes from remembering who we are. »

It is said that Buddha used to give his disciples this advice: ‘Remember, Remember, Remember’, which could be rephrased as: ‘don’t forget who you are’.
 
Thank you for your patient and attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_23-June-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Sexuality and Love.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
As this will be the last talk of our Zoom meeting series, I’d like to talk about Sexuality and Love. I’ll do my best to clarify what these two different energies are and how they can be combined in order to bring moments of bliss for the persons involved. However, for this to happen, a few pre-conceived ideas and taboos need to fall apart first. 

Sexuality is our primary energy
Sexuality is our primary energy as well as the source from where we came to be a living being. Without sexuality we would not be here to talk about it, we would not exist. We are the outcome, the product of a sexual intercourse; but more than that we are a manifestation of the energy of life, we are the embodied manifestation of life energy. It is this life energy that makes us breathe, stand, walk, see, hear and talk. This Life energy is our partner for life, without it we cannot exist.

This life energy is mainly stored in our genital area and its main purpose, other than to keep us alive, is to be used for procreation, for the survival of the human race. This is not specific to human beings; all forms of life on this planet depend upon this law. The main difference with us human beings is that we are gifted with the ability to enjoy and to be consciously aware of our sensations and feelings. We are also gifted with the ability to think and conceptualize what we sense and feel. And within the context of sexuality, our capacity to think and conceptualize tends to create numerous pre-conceived ideas, beliefs and taboos which often channel twisted behaviour patterns around sexuality.

Pre-conceived ideas, beliefs and taboos around Sexuality
One of the first taboos around sexuality is probably the naked body. In the western world, the bible mentions that when Adam & Eve, the first human beings on earth, discovered that they were naked, they immediately started to hide their nudity and more specifically their genital parts. In that moment shame was born.
Although they are the source of and the production of our life force, the genital parts are the most vulnerable parts of our body and as such they need to be protected. Yet protection does not necessarily mean hiding but hiding these parts has become quite common among human beings and this tendency generates shame and shame deviate sexuality from its natural course by creating moral standards.

Observe young children, they are not at all ashamed of their nudity and moreover they are very curious about these parts of the body and every child wants to know why little boys this little dangling thing between their legs have whilst little girls have a hole. Childlike curiosity is without any taboos, without any pre-conceived ideas, without any shame; it is pure innocence. We are not born with moral standards, they are given to us as we grow and for a vast majority of people, nudity has become an issue because of moral standards. Most of men and women are concerned with and judgemental about their body appearance which in turn creates issues when related to sexuality.

One of the main problems with the human mind is that when something is hidden it immediately creates a tension in the mind; a desire to seek for this hidden thing, to see it, to touches it or even to possess it. The hidden object becomes desirable and since sexuality has been tabooed by so many different civilisations throughout the centuries it is probably the most desired item on the list for many people.
Sexuality is probably the most desired and also probably the most fear generating topic. Because of moral standards and possible illnesses Fear and Shame are playing a large role in restricting sexuality from being lived naturally.
It is always a good exercise to become more aware of our fears and shame around sexuality and question their relevance. I would encourage you to use the following question format to clarify your fears and your shame around sexuality. 
→ ‘What are my fears around sexuality?’
→ ‘What am I ashamed of around sexuality?’
This is something that you can do on your own or, for better results, with a partner using a one-to-one communication format with the ‘Tell me...' form such as: ‘Tell me about your fears around sexuality’ or ‘Tell me about your shame around sexuality’.
Remember that healing takes place when we express our feelings and when what we are expressing is being received without judgement, when we are understood.

What is actually meant by sexuality?
Sexuality is a general word which covers different manifestations of our Libido or life energy. The most obvious manifestation is the fact that life energy is gender related; it is divided into two specific principles: the male principle and the female principle; each one having its specific characteristics and functions. In order to be able to reproduce Life both functions have to combine as illustrated in the Tao symbol. This is the primary aspect of sexuality shared by all living beings where giver and receiver are strictly fixed in their roles assigned by nature.
What we call sexual desire is in reality a strong spur of energy which comes from our life force and manifests as a pull towards the opposite gender. This energy can easily be noticeable, just rub your hands together for a little while and then separate them about a couple of inches; what you will sense between your two palms is similar to the density of the layer of sexual energy. If the other gender is in the same layer of energy, both can choose to follow this energy or not. It is a choice that we can make and not a compulsion. It is important to remember that we always have the choice to move or not to move with this energy. It is part of our responsibility.

Sexuality and beyond
Sexuality for us human, can go far beyond this initial aspect of being a mere reproduction factory or the uncontrollable impulse to have sex. Nature has gifted us with some additional faculties which can play an important role in the evolution of our consciousness and the first one is the faculty to experience pleasure and its opposite, pain.
Due to some specific hormones and nerve endings on our skin and in different parts of our body we are able to experience sexual pleasure. This implies that touching can play an important part in sexual activity and touching is not limited to our hands; it can be done with any part of the body. The sensations are taking place at the skin level, yet the centre of pleasure is located in our brain. This has its importance because it implies that sexual stimulation can happen without any physical contact. This is particularly true when people are having ‘wet dreams’ or when they are watching explicit sexual videos or have mind sexually related fantasies. In these situations only their creative mind is involved.

Sexuality and Love
Intrinsically love has very little to do with sexuality or with sexual attraction, yet people often talk about ‘falling in love’ and ‘making love’ when they have sex. Love is a completely different energy which involves the heart and not the sexual organs. Love is an intrinsic aspect of our life force and as such love becomes a weaver who bring people together at the heart level and when sexuality blends with love something quite different from being simply physical can take place.
There is, in each of us a deep longing for love. At our core we are love but most of the time, if not always, we have lost this inner connection with the love that we are and we tend to seek it through or via the other; then sexual activity becomes a search to fulfil this longing for love.
When we are searching to fulfil an aspect of us that we miss, we are simply using our partner to get what we miss inside; we try to fill an emptiness that we have inside. We fall prey of becoming ‘love beggars’.
True love making implies that both partners are already conscious that they are love and they come together to sublimate this love. This is totally different from ‘having sex’, it is more related with the third aspect of sexuality, the spiritual aspect of sexuality.

Sexuality and Spiritually
For many people spirituality and sexuality are far apart, as if they were two completely different aspects of our human nature. The reality is quite different. It is different because spirituality is not something which is mind related, spirituality has nothing to do with ideas and beliefs, it has to do with life energy, it is the uttermost flowering of life energy. It is life energy in its ultimate expression and expansion. Spirituality and sexuality are both experiences and not thought forms; they are the manifestation of the same energy. Sexuality is the most basic manifestation of life energy whilst spirituality is its highest manifestation. This is why some religion or spiritual schools have used sexuality as a mean to reach to the highest realms of consciousness. The Indian map of the kundalini and its 7 energy centres is a vivid example of that.
As mentioned before we are the embodied manifestation of life energy and as such we have the potential to allow our life energy to move from the sex centre to the heart centre and further to the crown centre and we can do this alone or with a partner.

Sexuality, Awareness and Responsibility
Our sexuality and by this I mean the way we relate with and use our sexual energy, can move into different directions. We can use it selfishly, just for our own enjoyment; we can use it carelessly; we can use it to dominate or overpower another; we can use to abuse others; we can use it for a mutual enjoyment with a partner or we can also refuse to use at all. As mentioned earlier we have the possibility to use this sexual energy as a way to raise our consciousness. The spectrum of possibilities is quite wide and it becomes only a matter of how much awareness do I want to bring in my sexuality.
The choice is clearly in our hands and the important question becomes: ‘what do I want to do with my sexuality?’ Or said differently: ‘what do I want to use this life energy for; what direction should I give to my sexuality?’
Raising such questions is not only a way to bring awareness to our sexuality; it also generates a sense of responsibility. Consciously choosing how we relate and use our sexuality is a must when we want to live a harmonious and fulfilling life.
It is a choice that we have, yet I know that this choice is limited; it is limited because of our beliefs and preconceived ideas around sexuality, around love and around spirituality.

What are these limitations?
As mentioned in a previous talk our limitations come from our past experiences and from what we have assimilated from our parents and the society we live in. Our limitations around sexuality are for the most part mainly psychological and consist of all the beliefs and pre-conceived ideas that we have around sexuality. These beliefs can be challenged and overcome with the different exercises mentioned during this talk and the talk on beliefs. Make use of these exercises, they have the power to bring saneness in you.
Our limitations also consist of the physical abuses perpetrated on us as children, whether they are clearly physical sexual abuses or non-sexual abuses, these physical abuses will play a large part in impeding a healthy relationship with sexuality.
When we have been physically and/or psychologically abused as a child we carry a ‘no’ inside, a very deep ‘no’; yet we had to survive so this ‘no’ was buried deep inside of our heart and a behaviour pattern that seemed fitting with our environment was adopted. This survival mechanism happened unconsciously, it was the best response our nervous system could come up with but it did not removed this ‘no’; it only put it aside and the ‘no’ is still there and quite tangible when it comes to sexual activity. In sexual activity we are ‘naked’ in the sense that we are vulnerable and often entangled between desire and refusal. We want to experience pleasure; we have a longing to melt in love with our partner and at the same time we have to deal with various inhibitions and fears that are emerging during sexual activity. Fears which range from shyness to a deep fear of being mistreated, not understood in our inhibitions and in some ways abused together with a lot of shame and lack of self-confidence.
As mentioned earlier Fear and Shame are the two most obvious feelings that restrict our relationship with sexuality, thus the need to take care of these two feelings appropriately. 

Because of our social upbringing, because we want to appear strong and smart or polite we tend to bypass our ‘no’, our fears and our shame and allow ourselves to be abused in various ways. The most obvious one is saying yes to have sex when we don’t want it, saying yes to be touch in ways or areas that we don’t like or don’t feel good about.
When we allow this to take place we are betraying ourselves by not taking responsibility for our needs and desires. It is easier to play a victim role and blame our partner for not caring enough, for not respecting us, for not giving us what we feel we deserve rather than daring to set our limits and assert our needs.
Many people fall into this trap. A healthy sexuality implies that we express our needs, our fears, our likes or dislikes and our shame to our partner. It also implies that these needs, these fears, these likes and dislikes together with the shame are understood and respected.
When we do this, when we express our needs, our likes and dislikes, sexuality can develop into a much more pleasant and loving relationship because the heart start to be involved. And when the heart starts to be involved, love emerges and with it the possibility to go beyond a hormonal related sexual activity. Sexual activity can then turn into a meditative time for both partners. From sexual partners they become Love partners and from Love partner they become Spiritual partner, using sexual activity as a dance to expand their consciousness. It is no more about ‘having sex’ or ‘making love’; it is about allowing oneself to enter a non-doing space and to be taken by the flow of sexual energy into its uttermost realms. It is about a complete let go of desire and needs; it is about surrendering to the energy of life which moves in us, allowing life to carry us to its ultimate peaks with both partners disappearing, melting and merging in the energy of life. 

This is what sexuality can be for each human being. Without exception each of us is entitled and intended for this; nature or existence has given us everything we need to fulfil this potential. It is our birth potential; we only need to move towards it and claim it.

I’d like to close this talk on sexuality by encouraging you to use the mentioned exercises in the different talks in order to let go of all your beliefs and ideas around sexuality so that your ways of relating and acting your sexuality can become shared blissful and fulfilling moments.

This talk might have stimulated some specific questions for you, different from those that you have already raised. Feel free to send these questions for our next meeting since right now I’d like to answer the questions that you’ve already put forward.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_19-May-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Beliefs and ways to Dissolve Beliefs.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to our weekly Zoom Meeting,
Some of you may remember a talk on beliefs that I gave in a public meeting a couple of years ago and throughout the recent talks and the questions that you’ve raised, I’ve noticed how much beliefs are playing an important part in the lives of many. This gives me an incentive to refresh the understanding that we have about beliefs and how they hinder our energy as well as review different ways to dissolve their grip on us.
When I talked about Truth in March, I mentioned that we are all gifted with Intelligence and Discrimination which help us to separate the true from the false; and during that talk I also mentioned about a practice to challenge and dispel any preconceived ideas or beliefs. And when talking about Shame I did briefly describe how, through the internalizing process of a feeling, a person can be led to become identified with a thought form or a behaviour pattern which will in turn becomes a belief.
I am well aware that beliefs can sometimes be so deeply anchored in our subconscious mind that they becomes difficult to be recognized, let alone being dispelled. Bringing a little more clarification on this topic will make it easier for you to challenge the truth of your beliefs.

As you all know a belief is an idea or a thought form that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion; something that we give credit to whether it has a reality or not. When we believe, we have the conviction that what we believe in is the truth and as mentioned in the talk on truth we always have the possibility to challenge the reality of our belief with this question: ‘Is it true?’
This is one approach; another way of looking at our beliefs is to become more aware of their source. Where do beliefs come from or, if we want to take responsibility for our thought forms, where did I pick up this belief?
Most of the time, if not always, we pick up beliefs from others, from family members, from friends, from teachers or from priest because we assume, and this is another belief in disguise, that they must be right since they are older or have a position in life.
Children are born innocent, guileless. They don’t know much about the world around them and consequently they take for granted what elders are saying or affirming.

• When a parent frequently tells his girl child that men are dangerous and that she should not approach them, the girl will believe and follow what the parent is saying and become distrustful towards men.
• When at school you are told by teachers that you are a hopeless case since your scores are so low, you form the belief that this may be true, ‘I’m a hopeless case’ and there is no hope for me to change.

During our childhood we tend to pick up beliefs from our elders but not everyone does, some rebel and take a different attitude. So what in reality makes me believe what I believe?
If I can recognize that what the other persons says is her point of view and obviously not mine then I won’t take that belief on board. But this discrimination is difficult to have for a child and there may be an investment for the child to adopt that belief; so the question that can arise is:
‘What pushed me to take that belief on board; why did I do that?’ another way of saying this can be: ‘What was my motivation for taking this belief on board?

And you may well be surprised by the answer. It may be because you wanted to please someone, to get approval or be accepted by someone or be included in a group, whatever that group was, family, school or a community.
Often as a child we feel insecure or fear someone and in order to bypass this feeling of insecurity or this fear, we adopt the belief from that person.
For example:
• My father had the belief that women should not get involved into politics. Taking on my father’s belief about women will keep me on his side, I will be approved and be accepted by him and probably the most important is that to be on the same side as my father will give me sense of security.
• Or the mother is constantly worried about money in her marriage, cursing existence for not giving her the man that she thought she deserved and who could bring a good income for her and the family. And you want mama’s attention, love and care so in order to get this love and attention, you agree with her that yes there is fate and bad luck.
Finding out your motivation for taking a belief on board will gently allow a melting of your belief because you will understand the reasons behind your belief.

Let’s go through a little exercise right now and you can write down the steps.
First find out a belief that you have
‘I believe that…’
Now ask yourself: ‘Where did I pick up this belief?’
The more clarity you can gain on the origin of your belief, the easier it will be for a transformation to take place. Once you have recognized where the belief came from, ask yourself: ‘What pushed me to take that belief on board?’
This practice has three steps:

→ What is my belief?
→ Where does it come from?
→ What was my motivation for taking this belief on board?

Write it down so that you can practice this at home. When you proceed step by step as proposed you are taking responsibility for your belief and this has its importance in the process of letting go of beliefs or pre-conceived ideas.

Up to now I’ve talked about beliefs that come from others, from outside of us. During the talk on Shame I mentioned about the internalizing process of a feeling. The same is happening for beliefs. Your belief can come from a repeated situation that you have experienced.
For instance as a child you were often expressing your feelings or desires, yet each time you did that you were blamed or made ashamed of. The belief that such a child can form could be that expressing my feeling is wrong and shameful and maybe even further to: ‘I am shameful to have feelings or desires’ or ‘I am wrong’
In this case your belief does not come from you seeking attention or love but from your experience of elders imposing their attitude on you, from elders not respecting you.
The way out of this type of belief will be to consciously allow the expression of your feelings and desires in a safe environment, an environment where you won’t be judge, condemned or made ashamed of.

From what has been said and your own experience in the little exercise of tracking back where your belief come from, you can understand that the problem is not really with or about the belief that you thought had a grip on you but more with or about your motivations or your experiences. It is not so much the belief that is important but more his source and you are the source of the belief. This means that for transformation to take place, the focus should not be so much on the belief itself but on you.
It is ‘you’ who wanted to be loved, approved, respected, etc. and in order to get what you wanted you took on a belief with, in its wake, a behaviour pattern.
This recognition, when it happens, will completely eradicate the belief from your mind because you are now dealing with the root cause of your belief. And this is how transformation can take place, when we bring our awareness to the root cause of any phenomena and give support to what calls to be taken care of.

A completely different way to deal with a belief in order to dispel it is to draw a representation of the belief and I would encourage you to try this different approach at home and see where it takes you.
Start by drawing an image, a representation of your belief, using paint or colour crayons, letting your subconscious guide your hand. Once you’re done with the drawing, write underneath what your belief is. Then look at the drawing of your belief and ask yourself these questions:

→ Was this easy or uneasy for me to draw this?
→ What feelings came to me as I was drawing?
→ What thoughts or memories came to me as I was drawing?

Once you’ve done all this, start talking to the representation of your belief; say anything that comes for you while looking at this representation of your belief. Yes it may sound a little bit weird but nonetheless try this and see what the results are for you.

What I’ve mentioned up to now only concerns conscious beliefs, beliefs that we can easily identify. Yet there is another type of beliefs, a more insidious type which I call ‘unconscious beliefs’. An unconscious belief is a belief that is active within us even though we know perfectly well that the reality is different. This type of belief is generally fear based and often has its roots in early childhood, when we cannot really discriminate the false from the truth.
The fear of darkness or the fear of ghosts is shared by many people, even though they have no reality. It can also be that a parent who wants her child to behave well will frighten the child with some horrific stories or spells such as ‘the wolf is going to get you if you don’t behave’ or a common one for girls: ‘impure girls will never marry, stay away from boys’.
Such stories or spells will go deep into the child subconscious and later on in life, even though the child will have forgotten about it, such stories or spells will continue to run his behaviour.
Can you relate to this? Has this happened to you?

It is not easy to recognize and dispel these beliefs because they are not obviously conscious. Yet by questioning our behaviour we will be able to gently bring this belief back to our conscious mind and then be able to deal with it like with any other belief. Remember that bringing awareness to our beliefs and expressing their contents enable transformation to settle in effortlessly.
In order to gain even more clarity on your beliefs, you can add a couple of steps to the previous procedure.
You start with the two first questions:

→ ‘What is my belief?’
→ ‘Where did I pick it up that belief?’

Once you have the belief that you want to explore and you have recognize where you picked it up you can look for the associated thought forms that come with the belief.
If I take the example of the belief: ‘I have no value’. Some of the associated thought forms can be: ‘no one will love me’, ‘I will be always alone’, ‘I will never find a good job’ or ‘I will never find a suitable partner’.
These are all ideas that we form in our mind in relation with the initial belief and they can also become themselves beliefs. In order to uproot these ideas we can use the following question: ‘What are the thought forms associated with this belief?’

Furthermore, when we believe something we tend to act in accordance with the belief, so if I believe that ‘I have no value’ my attitude in life or behaviour pattern may be to isolate myself and be helpless and depressed or on the opposite to try hard to prove that I have value, become strong and very energetic.
To make these behaviour patterns clearer to us we can use the following question: ‘How believing what I believe made me act in my day-to-day life?’ Before moving to the final one: ‘What was/were my motivations for taking this belief on?’
The practice now comes with these five steps:

→ What is my belief?
→ Where does it come from?
→ What are the thought forms associated with this belief?
→ How believing what I believe made me act in my day to day life?
→ What was my motivation for taking this belief on board?

The false always dissolve in the face of clarity; this is why bringing awareness to our beliefs and our thought forms will make it possible to painlessly dissolve beliefs.

With this talk and the exercises proposed you now have in your hands valuable keys to challenge and melt away your beliefs and thus regain the vitality and the freedom of your true-self.

Before answering some of the questions that you’ve already put forward, I’d like to thank you all for your patient and attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_5-May-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Shame and ways to dispel Shame.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to our weekly Zoom Meeting;
Tonight I would like to talk about Shame and ways to dispel shame.

It is a well observed fact that a vast majority of people live in shame and suffer from its insidious aspects. Shame is for many people so much part of their lives that they even don’t imagine that they could, one day, be free of shame. This may be your though form and you may even think that you are doomed to be forever shameful. Remember that it is only a thought form and with this talk tonight you will have an opportunity to understand shame through its different aspects and realise that it is possible to free yourself from shame.

We have all experienced shame at some point in our life and often sooner than we can usually remember; but was it really shame or was it something else that was labelled by others as shame?  On many occasions, as a child, we’ve experienced what I would call a ‘natural shame’. ‘Natural shame’ is a healthy inbuilt device shared by all human beings on this planet which helps us understand that as human we are limited beings.
Even though it is a well observed fact that our mind has a strong tendency to deny its limitations to go beyond what is already known and Science and Technology are good examples of this constant pursuit of beyond, of more; the fact remain that we are limited; we are physically and mentally limited beings. Face a typhoon, an earthquake or the current corona virus epidemic and our limitedness will strike us right in the face.

Our most obvious limitation is our physical limitation. Our body structure only allows a certain range of movements and however creative our minds can be, we are equally mentally limited, even though we’d like to think that we are not, natural shame is here to remind us of this arrogant tendency.
A young child meeting a stranger will automatically experience natural shame as shyness and the recognition that ‘I don’t know’ is a sign of humility and truth; an expression of ‘natural shame’.
Modesty, shyness, embarrassment, humility, and humbleness are all aspects of ‘natural shame’; an inner feeling that keeps us aligned with wisdom.

The other aspect of shame, widely referred to as ‘toxic shame’ by psychologists is not inbuilt; it is passed on to us, or rather dump on us from outside by our caretakers, our elders, our teachers as well as our so called friends and by society in general through its restrictions and taboos. It is this ‘toxic shame’ and not ‘natural shame’ that is damageable for people since toxic shame creates a deep sense of unworthiness in a person.
For those of you who have participated in Connecting with our Inner Child, you may remember that in that workshop we do spend some time looking at the feeling of shame and the different ways that it manifests within us as well as the feelings and behaviour patterns that shame generates.
In this talk tonight I would like to go more in details on this topic of ‘toxic shame’ by first looking at how shame comes into being, how we can recognise it and what are the behaviour patterns that shame generates. Once it becomes clearer for us how shame operates, we will be able to finds ways to free ourselves from the bonds of shame.

Before I talk about Shame, I’d like to say a few words about Guilt, mainly because guilt and shame are often confused since the feeling of guild looks very similar to the shame feeling. A person will feel guilty about having done something which, in her estimation, is wrong and this guilt may or may not generate a feeling of shame.
The basic difference between Guilt and Shame is that guilt involves the awareness of having done something wrong or failed to do something whilst shame is the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonourable, improper, or ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or by another.
When someone feels bad about the behaviour they exhibited, they are experiencing guilt.
When someone feels bad about who they are as a person they are experiencing shame.
Shame is about our personal self while guilt is about our actions, acts or failures to act, events for which one bears responsibility. That’s why it is possible to easily free oneself from guilt by using some specific guilt related communication tools.

This distinction being made, let’s now look at ‘toxic shame’

♦ What is toxic shame?

On the contrary to ‘natural shame’ which helps us to recognize our limits and stay in tune and aligned with our environment, ‘toxic shame’ is a pervasive feeling which create in us a deep sense of worthlessness and failure. Toxic shame creates a split in us in the sense that it tends to control everything that we do or say; this implies that a shame-based person will guard herself from exposing herself to another and will also behave similarly towards herself.
Shame, like all other feelings and emotions is a transitory feeling, something which comes, has its momentum, and then leaves us. Yet when shame is internalized, it is no longer present as a transitory feeling, but it becomes our identity. We identify with being shame, in the same way that some people will identify with being a loser, a victim or someone who ‘knows it all’.
These identifications are the behaviour patterns with which we operate within society; they are our ‘masks for society’. And according to the situation which we are involved in, our family, our work or with our friends we can wear different masks.
Can you relate with this?
Does this sound familiar for you?
With the drawing shown, do you recognize one or more of the masks that you wear according to the situation at hand? 

This internalizing process is not at all a conscious process, it happens independently of our will or knowledge; we usually internalize a feeling when the feeling it being repeated over time.
Recently someone told me about the fact that as a child and teen-ager she was many times promised something but when the time came for the promise to be fulfilled, there was always some adjournment. Of course, this generated sadness and frustration for that child, but it also generated, beneath these most evident feelings, a feeling of betrayal and of abandonment together with a strong sense of not being understood which, in turn, gave rise to a feeling of loneliness. Although these feelings were not conscious, they were nevertheless active within this person and since this situation kept being repeated over the years, these feelings of betrayal, of abandonment and of loneliness anchored themselves in her subconscious mind; they became internalized, and the person became identified with loneliness and the fact that never getting what was being promised was her fate. 
Abandonment needs to be understood in a broader sense and not only at a physical level. For instance; when as a child, you are never allowed to express your anger or your tears and are instead asked to repress these feelings, there will come a moment when you will reject these feelings as if they should not be there, as if you are ‘wrong’ to have these feelings; in doing so you have abandoned or rejected a part of you and that part becomes shameful. Shame is then internalized; you become shameful to have such emotions or feelings. And this is particularly true when a child starts to have sexual related pleasure feelings.
‘I am a mistake, I should not exist, I am unworthy or I’m dirty’ all are shame-based beliefs that come because of abandonment. Even though they may be strongly anchored in a person, they are only thought forms, either imparted on us by others or derived from a distorted sense of reality, a conclusion that our mind forms which soon become a belief; if I’m not getting what I had been promised it is because ‘I must be unworthy’ or ‘I’m a bad child’.
When identification sets in, the feeling disappears from our awareness and move in some subconscious part of our psyche. We no longer recognize it as a feeling. We simply think that we are like this that this is who we are. It is only when we discover how much a feeling is crushing us, how much we are at the mercy of that feeling that we become aware that we have internalized a feeling and become identified with it.
To recognize our identifications is not obvious and it does take a good share of awareness for the simple reason that these identifications have become like a second skin or rather have become our invisible protective skin.
All internalized feeling become toxic feelings in the sense that they veil our true self, that they veil our energy, our spontaneity, and our capacity to discriminate.  Shame and shock are by far the most toxic ones.

One thing to remember is that identification is the deadliest psychological dis-ease, much more deadly than the corona virus in the sense that it creates in us a false sense of self and hides our real self or true self. As mentioned in the talk about Truth last month, this false self is the unfortunate outcome of our protection mechanisms and since internalizing is also a survival mechanism, we are all identification prone. We cannot escape this internalizing process which becomes the source of many types of addictions as well as codependency within relationships. We cannot escape it but the good news is that we can free ourselves from it.

♦ Recognising shame on the body level, how do I know that I am ashamed?

When we are dealing with shame or any other feeling for that matter, it is important to recognize how the feeling manifests in our body. In the audio series on ‘Embracing our Inner Child’ (day-12 audio 7) I’ve talked at length on how shame manifests in our body, so I’d like you to listen again to that talk, and practice the guided meditation included in that series to free yourself from the shame that binds you.

♦ The five main operative mode of shame

→ Imparted shame (humiliation from others)
In most cases shame derives from being humiliated by others and for a child home and school are certainly the two main grounds where humiliation can take place. I’m confident that many of you have been more than once humiliated by a teacher for making a mistake in a school exercise, or blamed and shamed by parents for not having good results at school?
Humiliation is widely used to gain power over others. It can take the form of humiliating words or despising looks and the tone used can also carry a humiliating intention.
I’m quite certain that each of you knows a wide range of humiliating words since as a child we learn these humiliating words to gain some sort of power, to appear confident and strong in front of our school friends. Humiliating words are also often used to mock or ridicule others. Schools' playgrounds are a favourable milieu for humiliation to take place.
Gratifying or praising words can also become a source of humiliation and subsequently bring shame.

→ Parental shame as an educational tool 
Parents are also shame carrier, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously in the sense that they use shame to educate their child. To push a child to have good results at school, they might say: ‘I am ashamed of your bad school results!’ or ‘You are making me ashamed with these poor results!’ Comparing a child with another child is also a way of shaming.
This is sheer manipulation, and it will reinforce shame in the child by adding a second layer.

→ Integrated shame 
When shame is integrated as something personal it becomes a belief. A person who has been humiliated countless times by being told that she is stupid, ugly, or too fat or too thin will start to integrate this as being her own norm. It becomes her believed standards and her attitude in life will circle around the belief that she is stupid or ugly. She must be since so many people have told her. Body shaming is affecting many people, especially women.
Shame has slipped under the belief; shame has become a belief.  Shame implies that we don’t fit with the system; that we are not acting according to what is supposed to be the norm. When we feel bad about who and how we are as a person we are experiencing shame.

→ Emotional abuse
Parents who are shut down emotionally, who are not manifesting their feelings or emotion are shame-based people and as such they will not have the healthy mirroring effect that a child is entitled to have; consequently the child will not be able to recognize his own feelings and moreover these shame-based parents will generally prevent their child to express his feeling with the thought form that expressing any emotion or feeling is wrong and shameful.
For the child this is a form of psychological abandonment, and the child will most certainly come to this conclusion: ‘I must be wrong to have these feelings’ or ‘I am ashamed to have these feelings’ and because he is being condemned for expressing his feelings, he will think that: ‘I’m unworthy of their love since I have these feelings’.

It can also happen that when a parent disappears physically, either because of work, divorce or death the child is then deprived of a parental reference and in such cases he either idealize the lost parent or falls prey of shame by blaming himself for the disappearance of the parent. A child may have this kind of thought form: ‘It must be my fault if father has left mother, if they have divorced’. The child will feel guilt and remorse for not having behaved well and it is this remorse that will turn into shame.

→ Sexuality and gender related shame
Being a girl and not a boy is, in many countries, a source of shame for the parents and for the child who must bear this parental shame. Being an unwanted child is also an important source of shame for a child. We are sexual beings defined by a gender and every child, girl of boy, will be curious about their sexual organs, especially when it becomes a taboo to show them or talk about them. A young child is not afraid, nor ashamed of being naked, but as he grows older and mainly because of parental shame, hiding nudity becomes the norm, not only the norm but showing nudity becomes sinful and shameful. Parents who are not informing their child about what sexuality is and how it functions leave their child in a muddle, in confusion, especially when puberty start flowering. Girls are often at a loss with their first menstruation and their breast growing and so are boys with their penis. These are all shame providers if not handled rightly and subject to much unease, dissatisfaction and mostly shame when it will come to sexual intercourse.

When sexual abuse happens, especially at a young age, shame is being anchored at the deepest core of the person and thus it becomes difficult for the person to have a healthy and fulfilling sexual life afterwards. All abused children, whether boys or girls will remain with a sense of being dirty and having been forever soiled, they have become impure and because of the shame that the abuse created it will not be easy for these persons to talk and express the feelings related to their abuse.

♦ Behaviour patterns that shame generates

Earlier on I mentioned about behaviour patterns or the masks that we use in society according to the different internalized feelings and since shame is a direct consequence of being criticized, disapproved, condemned, or mocked, in other words humiliated, it creates typical shame related behaviour patterns such as arrogance or obedience with of course their opposite: rebelliousness and false humility. Shame also gives rise to quite a number of other feelings or behaviours such as those shown on the drawings.

♦ Strategies used to avoid shame

Shame is certainly the most difficult to live feeling and because of this, we have developed strategies to avoid experiencing the feeling of shame in us. It is still there of course but in hiding, as if it does not exist.
Justifying our actions or behaviours is often shame related; just as not wanting to admit that we made a mistake or having this or that feeling. Pretending to be other than we are, is a common way to hide our shame.
According to some parents', boys should not be afraid and certainly should not cry and to avoid the shame feeling of being afraid or crying, boys and later men, tend to deny their fear and shut down any tears; they become warriors, fighters, mountain climbers, trying to prove in any way they can that fear has no grip on them.
These common strategies are of course mostly unconscious, and we tend to genuinely think that shame is not part of our psychological make up whilst it is.  

♦ Ways to free ourselves from the bonds of shame

The ways to move out of the bondage of shame are quite simple, yet they require a great deal of courage, determination and patience.
Taking responsibility for our errors, for our mistakes is certainly one of the ways to prevent toxic shame from enchaining us. And when shame is already binding us, understanding its components and its physical and psychological ways of binding us will come as a helping tool.
Yet the main shame liberating device is to talk about it and express all the feelings related to the shaming events or situations.

In this talk today I’ve tried to bring as much clarity as possible on what shame is and how it binds us; I’m also quite certain that much more can be said about shame and how it interrelate with all our other feelings yet the main point that I would like to emphasise is that we need to recognize and accept our shame if we want to free ourselves from it. There is no other way. Without recognition, acceptance and expression shame will continue to bind us.
I know from experience and from working with people that this is a difficult and lengthy process, yet such a rewarding one. Not only will you free yourself from the bonds of shame but you will also regain your innate joy and walk your life in love and contentment.

Let's end this talk for now so that I can answer some of the questions that you’ve already put forward.
Thank you for your patient and attentive listening and I'll be happy to meet you again next week.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_21 April 2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform on Relationships & Co-dependency.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to our weekly meeting,
Tonight I would like to talk about the nature of relationship and its implication within interpersonal relationships.

We usually think that relationships are merely about me and another and sometimes we even narrow it down to couple relationships. This is probably so because couple relationships are what people struggle most with on a day-to-day basis. I hear from many of you how worried, unhappy and distressed you are in your interpersonal relationships and how much you would like some change to happen.
There are multiple reasons for dissatisfaction to occur in relationships and it seems to me that these reasons are often overlooked because the nature of the relationship is not clearly understood.
With this in mind, I would like to first bring a little more clarity on the nature of relationship and then have a closer look at what makes interpersonal relationships challenging.

You may not have noticed it, but we are constantly involved in relating with everything that is around us as well as within us. We connect with the outside world through our five senses and with our inner world through sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Each time we establish a connection with something outer or inner, the very moment that we set our eyes or any other sense on something a relationship is created.
Notice the relationship that you have with your body, with your feelings or your thoughts or with something outside of you like a car passing in the street, a situation in your vicinity or with an actor in a movie.
Have you noticed that a relationship takes place?
If you have, you may also have noticed that most of the time it is a like/dislike relationship.
And if you have not noticed it, at your next opportunity, bring a little more awareness in your relating.

The relationship may be momentary like seeing a bird passing in the sky or reflecting on a problem or it may last a lifetime, like the fact that from birth to death we relate to the world outside of us as well as with our body, mind, and feelings. In both instances a relationship takes place and with it comes thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
Whether we like what we see or sense or dislike it is not so relevant at this point. What is essential at this point is to notice that a relationship is taking place. This is the significant point to understand because interconnectedness or relationship is the essence of Life.
Everything is interconnected on this planet, not only on the outside with what is directly visible to us but also in the ‘invisibleness’ of our body and psyche.
We can be alive only because trees and plants are transforming carbon dioxide into oxygen. Trees and plants can only live because humans and animals are producing carbon dioxide and what is referred to as the ‘Food Chain’ is nothing but a continuum of interconnectedness.
As humans, we can move, feel, and think only because of the interconnectedness of millions of chemical molecule reactions happening within us; we are a living illustration of relationships. Since interconnectedness is the very nature of Life, from birth to death relationships are constantly manifesting within us as well as with our outside environment. Life is a constant relating and relationships are everywhere we set our senses on, but we usually don’t notice them and take it for granted that things are the way they are.

What is the essence of relationship?
The essence of relationship is this mysterious and tremendous force that makes Life possible, not just life as we know it on this planet but Life as the immensity of the universe. Some call it ‘Consciousness’, some call it ‘Divine Presence’ and some call it ‘Love’.
For us human, ‘Love’ is probably more accessible because we can more directly relate with it. In some form or other we all have experienced love at some point in our life and I’m confident that every one of you have an object, a plant, an animal, a person or a part of you or a quality that you like, which you are fond of, that you love.
Love is not only the base, the foundation, but also the very substance which binds and unites everything in Life. Love is the invisible fabric of interconnectedness; love weaves relationships because Love is in everything; Love is what we are made of and what makes us function in life.
At the core we can only relate from Love since Love is what we are, yet on the surface things become a little different mainly due to the nature of our incarnation. And this incarnation will have a serious impact on our future relating and relationships.

Relationship at our human incarnation level
As human beings, we are born dependent; it is a fact that cannot be overlooked; just as it cannot be overlooked that we are born with the capacity or better say, the ability to become self-sufficient or independent. This reality is not specific to us humans; we do share this with the animal world, at least the warm blood species.
It is obvious that a baby cannot survive without his mother feeding him and caring for his well-being. Babies and toddlers depend a lot on physical contact in order to feel secure and as they grow up, it is support and recognition in their actions which help them acquire self-confidence. For the most part of his development, a child lives in the dependence of his parents; he needs his caretakers’ support to have his physical and psychological needs met in order to develop into a full grow mature and independent adult.
Parents or caretakers are the need providers at the beginning of our lives. They need to provide us with everything, ranging from food to shelter, from recognition to support, from warmth to affection in order for us to mature and become self-sufficient.
Dependency is normal and natural for a child; it is his source of security, even though children rapidly gain access to their autonomy and swiftly become independent in their movements, they need to return to and reconnect with their source of security. 

By nature, this dependence tends to fade away as we grow older and we naturally move towards independence, to the point that we leave home and start having our own life, yet in most cases interdependency still prevails and will prevail for a long time since this independence is often only happening on a physical realm. Most people will continue to be psychologically dependent and for some, materially dependent. This is so, mainly because their basic psychological needs have not been met.
These unmet needs are the reason why most relationships and especially interpersonal relationships become a source of struggle for many.

Earlier on I mentioned that the fact that we may like or dislike what we see, or sense is not so relevant, that it is secondary. This is true when we consider the essence of relationship, but when relationships are being lived, likes and dislikes become primary. It is the changeable reality of their psyche which becomes the primary concern for people when relating with something or someone or themselves.
The way we relate with our body, with our feelings and with our thoughts is generally driven by our likes and dislikes, it is also a good indicator of how we relate with the outside world.
Check for yourself how you relate with what is closest to you, your body, your mind, and your feelings. How many judgements, how many likes and dislikes do you have concerning your body, your thoughts, and your feelings?
Quite a fair amount, I’m sure!
And this is only about you; from you to you!
The good news is that all these judgements, these likes, and dislikes have been imparted to you by others, by your parents, by the society. They are not yours, so with a little awareness it will be fairly easy to let them go.

Interpersonal relationships
As you are well aware of, relationships are not limited to our physical and psychological environment, they are also interpersonal, and this is where they tend to bring challenges and become the main source of our frustration and unhappiness.
In this talk I will leave aside the child-parent relationship since most of you have participated in our different Inner Child related workshops and are well aware of the dynamic at work within this type of relationship.
Other than with ourselves, as adults we relate within three main different contexts; family, work, and social context and within each of these contexts we tend to encounter difficulties in relating.
As part of this talk on relationship a little exercise will help you bring more awareness on the difficulties that you meet within each context.
Write down the different contexts listed below, leaving a large gap between them.

→ The relationship with my parents, with my siblings and with other family members
→ The relationship with my child or children
→ The relationship with my work colleagues, my employer or employees
→ The relationship with my friends
→ The relationship with myself

Now take a moment to ask yourself this question: ‘What difficulties do I meet in the relationship with my husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend?’ whatever is relevant for you and if you are not in a couple or intimate relationships use your closest family member.

One difficulty could be: ‘With my wife/husband I have a difficulty to be understood’.
Check whether there are other difficulties that you meet within this relationship and list them. Refrain from being selective; write every difficulty that you encounter from the strongest to the smallest.
And when you are done with one relationship, move to the next one.

→ ‘What difficulties do I meet in the relationship with my child?’
→ ‘What difficulties do I meet in the relationship with my mother-in-law?’
→ ‘What difficulties do I meet in the relationship with my brother, with my sister?’
→ ‘What difficulties do I meet in the relationship my work colleagues, with my employeror with my employees?’

Continue making a list of your difficulties with every context that is relevant for you. 

What you are likely to discover as you go through these different relationship contexts is that the same difficulties or very similar ones are occurring, regardless of the relationship context. What you will find will most certainly circle around: Fear, Shame, Jealousy and Frustration.

Why is that?
It is like this because the eagerness to relate which prevails in the beginning of any relationship soon fades away to the profit of those unmet needs that are screaming to be met. The interconnectedness is still there because of the essence of relationship, yet it has sunk so deep into the unconscious part of the psyche that it becomes barely perceptible and what is now appearing on the foreground for both persons in a relationship, are the psychological needs that have not been met. Mainly the need to be understood, accepted, respected, and included.
Yet very often, the need will not show itself directly but indirectly through the attitudes or feelings that I mentioned earlier; mainly Fear, Shame, Jealousy, and Frustration.  

In the context of working with people, I’ve noticed that this is the experience of many, and it was certainly mine too at some point in my life.
Not long ago in a session a person told me that she was afraid that her marriage was going to collapse because her partner decided to live separately since he could not understand her needs. For someone else it was the blaming and constant humiliation from her partner that made life unbearable. And for another one it was the fear of authority and the insecurity that this fear created that was hindering the relationship.

I’m sure that you can relate with these examples, they may even apply to you is some form or other. Do they sound somewhat familiar and resonate with how you relate with the different persons in your immediate environment?
Although these persons were suffering from the relationship as it was happening, they could not figure out what was really going on and how they could find an adequate or satisfactory solution to their issue mainly because their focus was on the other. And you might have noticed this as you connected with your difficulty in one specific relationship.
You may have found that ‘with my wife/husband I have a difficulty to be understood’.
This is what it looks like because we tend to put our focus and the responsibility on the other. It comes from an old habit of being dependent when we were children; besides it also helps us to skip being responsible for our own needs.
Putting the focus on the other has its advantages, it helps us project on the other our likes and dislikes, it keeps us clean of any imperfection and we can claim our right for the other to be different, be to our liking.
« If only my partner, my child, my mother-in-law, my boss was different! If only they could change! My life would be so much easier and fulfilling. »
Isn’t this a recurring whine that you’ve heard or uttered yourself?
Yes, if they were different your life would be for sure more enjoyable; but it is not the case, it is not the reality. Wanting the other to be different from what he presently is, is living in dreamland, it is hoping for some miracle, it is also a waste of energy and time, although some people do enjoy whishing this!

This tendency to put the focus on the other can only lead to frustration, blame, resentment, and anger together with a deep feeling of helplessness, despair, and loneliness.
A more fruitful way, yet not necessarily an easier way, is to turn the focus towards oneself in to recognise our own difficulty, our own needs and the projections that we throw on others.
Rather than saying: ‘With my wife/husband I have a difficulty to be understood’; check whether it would be more accurate to say: ‘With my wife/husband I have a difficulty to make myself understood’.
In this way, the focus is on ‘me’ and something can be done. I can do something about making myself clearer about my need to be understood. I become responsible for my need, and this will make a huge difference in the relationship because there will not be any blaming, any humiliation, any hurt anymore.

In the previous talks, I gave you some exercises geared in this direction. I expect that you’ve been practising them and are now able to recognise what your needs are and further, dare to express them in a responsible way.
The primary problem with unmet psychological needs is their distorted ways of being acted out. And this is what needs to be taken care first because these distorted ways are a sickness within relationships, any relationship, whether couple, social or work relationships. The acting out of unmet psychological needs is much more harmful than any physical sicknesses because they create hurt and can literally destroy a relationship.
The other significant problem with unmet needs, likes and dislike is that they create a dependency. Although we are adults, we still behave as children wanting to have our needs met by our partner on whom we often project our father, our mother or other significant person in our life. We become dependent on our partner to fulfil our unmet needs. Most couples live in a state of codependency, each depending on the other to fulfil his own needs.
One thing to be remembered is that unmet needs have most of the time become unconscious and have created a related behaviour pattern, an acting out. Most behaviour patterns are unmet needs acted out. This is what is being pointed out and emphasised in various ways through the different Inner Child workshops for the participants to bring awareness to these shadow parts of our psyche.
We act out our unmet needs by unconsciously taking on a behaviour pattern, a role that we play to have our need met.
To have his need met a person will behave as a caretaker, a pleaser or a saviour or play the role of a victim, of a tyrant, of a manipulator or of an escapist. Roles or behaviour patterns are numerous and interchangeable; the important is to recognise the need behind the role. That’s why conscious role-playing in growth work has its importance in recovering a healthy personality.

Within interpersonal relationship, the behaviours are often of opposite match, they fit together; for instance, one of the partners is in a pleaser or caretaker role whilst the other is in a victim or beggar role; a complementarity is in place and it works well for both and the relationship seems to be harmonious. But in reality it is only harmonious on the surface since the basic need of each partner is not really recognised, and thus fulfilled.
It can also happen that the behaviours are in total opposition, for instance when we have a responsible or reliable person together with a dreamer or an escapist, then both partners are in trouble and fight and blame each other continuously; the relationship does not work.

Within any interpersonal relationship both persons are acting out their needs, even though they may have the same need such as being considered, recognised, accepted, respected, or understood. This makes it impossible for any of them to truly understand the other. Although the unmet need maybe the same, the role played can differ because of the psychological environment that the person grew in.
Whether at work, in your family circle or with friends, I’m sure that you can recognise how these situations are familiar for you and from what I often hear, this creates unhappiness and frustration. Many of you simply bear it, not knowing what else to do.

Coming to term with our own needs
The good news is that there is always a solution and I’m sure that you know what the solution is. But the question is: ‘Am I ready to make the needed steps or do I prefer to remain in some uncomfortable but known security or comfort zone?’
If you truly want your interpersonal relationship to function, to be a harmonious and loving one, you’ll have to come to terms with your own needs.
The first point is to recognise what is the main need hiding behind your acting out and for this you already have some elements on how to do this with our previous talks and the exercises proposed today.
The second point to understand is that the other person has no obligation to fulfil your need, it is not his role. Just as it is not your role to fulfil the needs of the other, except when you are in a parent/child dynamic.
You will have to come to term with your own need so that you can first establish a true maturity in you and relate from this maturity and not from unmet needs. Your dependency will prevail until a true maturity is established; until you stop projecting your lopsided inner world on the other.
Taking good care of your need first will certainly change the dynamic at work in your interpersonal relationships and it might also have a positive effect on the other person.

Before we end this talk, I’d like to mention that if you want to clarify your side of any of the relationships that you are involved in, you can use the exercises that were proposed in this talk and in the previous ones as well as using this format of question: ‘What do I want in this xxx relationship?’ (be specific) 
To bring clarity and understanding within couple relationship there is also the possibility to practise specific couple related communication exercises with your life partner if he or she is willing and interested. It does need a strong commitment of both, so that it does not turn into a boxing match.

The recommendation and prerequisite to practise these couple related communication exercises are that both of you are involved in growth work and have participated in personal development-related workshops. If that is the case, connect with me for the guidelines.

My aim in this talk was to give you a broader understanding of what relationships are and can be so that your way of relating can change and your life can become more joyful, more harmonious in future. Remember that any relationships can become a nurturing source providing your own needs, likes and dislikes are out of the way.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening during this momentary relationship. Let's have a short pause before I answer your questions.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_7-April 2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform about the Need to be Understood.

Dear Friends on the path, 
Welcome to our weekly meeting.
Following our last week Q & A, tonight I would like to talk about one specific need that everyone longs for: the need to be understood.

I’ll try to be as clear as possible so that you can understand what I am trying to convey. And as I say this I immediately feel a wish to be understood in my passion for sharing with you what I call ‘this work’.
Through these talks, and especially this one, it is not so much guidance or knowledge that I am trying to convey to you, even though there will be some, but more the passion for this which is alive in all of us; the passion for being curious about who we are and what we are.
What I’d like you to understand is that I am curious and passionate about what makes us alive and how we can de-construct what is false in us so that the Life that we are can blossom to its full potential.
The need to be understood is always about something in us that we carry and which calls to be revealed, brought to the open so that it can bare fruits and be shared.

In the exercise that I will propose at the end of today’s talk, you will have an opportunity to understand and know better what it is about you that longs to be understood and in some ways, ‘you’ is the main focus of this talk. Remember, in this work, it is always about us and never about someone else or something outside of us.
 
But first I’d like to make a distinction between Needs and Desires (wants) so that we are clear on this point.
What are Needs?
A need is a basic function in each human being; it is something that is necessary for a person to live a healthy life. As most of you certainly know, we come to this world with three basic needs: being fed, protected and cared for. These are our existential needs, without them we would not be able to survive.
As we grow and develop, our needs also grow and develop in the sense that their range widen and become more focused or more specific. Hence we find ourselves with two categories of needs:
Physical needs such as the need for food, for exercise, for rest and play. These are often referred to as: Objective needs.
And
Psychological needs such as being accepted, being supported, being respected and being understood to name a few. These are known as Subjective needs.

These psychological or subjective needs are just as important for our growth as the physical ones, yet with the difference that when they are being met and nurtured during our childhood and teenage time they tend to subside and are no more in the foreground of our preoccupations. They subside because confidence, self-esteem and maturity have naturally grown roots.
Yet most of the time these psychological needs have not been met and the person remain immature, childish even though she may be 40, 50 years old or more. And this becomes the source of unhealthy relationships, where each partner is endlessly and insistently asking the other to fulfil his needs thus creating a co-dependant relationship.
Since it is a very common situation I will talk about co-dependant relationships in our next meeting in April.

Physical needs are about ‘Having’, we need to have air, food, water, warmth, rest, play, protection (clothing, shelter), reproduction and sex in order to be alive and go about in life. They are a must for our incarnation.
Whilst Psychological needs are about ‘Being’, they are concerned with the development and the wellbeing of our hearts or essence which in substance is Love & Acceptance. Thus being loved is like a large umbrella that embraces: being accepted, being seen or recognized, being understood, being supported, being accompanied, included and valued to name a few.

With inner work and right understanding we might reduce or even completely let go of our psychological needs as we become rooted in our Essence or Being but it will not be possible to discard or let go of our physical needs since they are vital for our survival.

Let’s now have a look at Desire
When psychological needs have not been met, not only do they create a deep emptiness inside of us which makes us behave like beggars but they also give rise to cravings and desires.
Desires are wanting oriented and are entirely psychological, even though they may express themselves physically, since they are a craving for something outside of us (the desire for) or a wish to be other than we are (the desire to).

Desire for and desire to

→ The desire for power, for fame, for knowledge, for sex or for approval are certainly the main ones. Even the desire for enlightenment or for God is mainly a psychological craving.
→ The desire to possess, to please, to gain something, to better others, to hurt, to have a child and to control (self or others).

What is the seed of desire?
In ancient times most people were born out of a need, the need to perpetuate the lineage or the race or simply in order to support parents and elders in their old age and this is still the case in many areas around the world, especially rural areas. It is part of a need for security.
Yet as the economic situation improved something changed and nowadays most people are not born out of a need but out of desire; the desire to have a child, the desire to have sex, the desire to procreate, to be a mother or a father or even the desire to be respected or complimented by others for baring a child.

Note that whether we are born out of a need or out of desire, something does not feel right in the sense that Love is absent. Rare are those who are truly born out of Love.
I’m mentioning this because it does make a difference whether we are born out of a need, a desire or out of Love. It gives an imprint to the child to be and this imprint will influence his life by creating related behaviour patterns linked with the psychological environment of his parents.
What was originally a need for survival has now becomes a desire for power or a mean to attain or achieve something. 

Where is the root of desire to be found?
The root of desire is to be found in the inborn longing for each human to be whole. There is in each human being a longing for Union; union with our ‘Essence’. Essence or ‘untampered consciousness’ is what we are born out of and this longing for union is like a driving force that subconsciously pulls us from unconsciousness to consciousness; an energy which steer people to seek for means to attain some form of bliss or ecstasy trough sex, spirituality or religion and often nowadays through drugs. Something that will take them beyond their usual conditioned lives. This longing for union is the very movement of Life, it is Life itself.

The problem with desires is that they create a psychological tension in the individual and consequently a suffering; just like unfulfilled psychological needs do and it is the extinction of desires and psychological needs that Buddha was talking about; not about the extinction of our basic needs. Being desire-less is possible whilst being need-less is not since from birth to death we will always have physical needs. This is also the aim of any spiritual or growth work to free ourselves from the grip of desires.

The Need to be understood
Now that a clarification between needs and desires has been established, let’s look more specifically at the need to be understood.
Out of all the psychological needs that we carry, some are basic, and some are superficial. The need to be understood is probably the most important one as it is deeply rooted in our nature of being a human being.

What does being understood implies?
Being understood does not simply mean that the words that are spoken are understood. Yes it is important but it is only the apparent layer, the essential part is that the person feels recognized in her individuality, in her specificity for who she is. And this is of importance because this recognition allows life to flow.
We are life, life flows through us and when life is being recognized, it blossoms. See a child who is being understood in his needs, whose needs are met; he immediately feels contented and a smile arises from his heart.
Being understood is essential for our growth, as essential as our physical needs; that’s why I would say that being understood is not only essential but vital too.

If you remember, in a previous talk I mentioned about my stubbornness and how this recognition from someone helped me to understand something about me that I could not see. What I did not mentioned when I last talked about this was that after having been caught red handed in this stubbornness, I started to ask myself: ‘What is this stubbornness really about? What am I trying to manifest through this stubbornness?’ And by and by I began to realize that actually all that I wanted was to be understood and certainly not judged. So I went on with this question: ‘What is it about me that had not been understood?’ I stayed with the question and very soon some answer came: ‘I need connection, I need contact, I need to feel alive, let me be alive!’

Of course this answer is linked with my personal story and the fact that my parents were afraid to let me move around and ‘explore the world’ which made them keep a tight and strict control over my comings and goings.
The connection that I needed was more on the subtle level of a mutual understanding, the recognition that as a child it was crucial for me to allow my vitality to flow otherwise I would die. And in some ways I did die of sadness for not being allowed to let my overflowing vitality express itself as it wanted to. Unconsciously I put a blanket over it and became the good boy that my parent wanted, especially my father.
It was my experience, yet I am quite certain that many of you share a similar predicament, the difference would only be an environmental difference.
This understanding about what I really needed came as a result of someone telling me about my stubbornness; it was the triggering point for me to realize something about me that no one had understood so far, not even me!

The need to be understood has two sides and each sides is itself a two sided coin.
Being understood by someone, especially by our parents is vital as a child and a necessity as an adult. But most important is to understand oneself and this is of primary importance because if we don’t understand ourselves, if we don’t understand the deep longing is us, how are we going to express this need or longing and be understood about it? 
This is the double-sided coin that I was talking about. If we don’t express our need, our longing, how can we be understood by another? It is not possible. No one will understand us if we don’t first clearly express our need.
As children, parents are the ones who are supposed to recognize and fulfil our needs. But often the problem is that they haven’t themselves recognized their own need, so how can they recognize their child’s need. It is not possible!  And since a child is not able to conceptualize and articulate his needs or longing, it becomes difficult for him to clearly express his needs other than by acting them out.

As adults we have to understand that it becomes our responsibility to be understood; it is not entirely in the hands of the other to understand us. It is our responsibility to clearly articulate our need or what we want and to get it across to the other in a way that it can be received and understood.
But for that we do need to know what we dearly want. And to find it is often a long and winding road because what we dearly want has been buried long ago in our unconscious.

What I’ve just said may clarify for you why I often mention and insist on the transformative trilogy: Recognition, acceptance and expression as a key for transformation, as well as the emphasis on asking people who come for individual session: 'what do you want?'
Knowing what we want or what we need is a key step because when we can express our needs and are understood by another in our specificity, we feel cheerful, contented and relaxed and when we are not understood we become disappointed, depressed, frustrated or even angry and revengeful.
See the importance of these two sides: being understood and making yourself understood.

I am certain that much more can be said about Needs or Desires and Understanding,  but for now I would like to propose that we put into practice what has been talked about.

The practice is simple and you can take it home with you, all you need is a notebook and a pen.
Here is the question that you will need to ask yourself:
What is it about me that has not been understood?
With these related focus:

•  By my parents as a child
•  By my parents as an adult
•  By my spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend
•  By my boss (if you have one)
•  By my co-workers (if you are in that situation)
•  By my friends
And last but not least:
•  By me about me

List these different instructions with a large gap between them so that you will be able to write what comes out of your questioning.
The procedure is simple:
You ask the question out loud and you let it resonate in you for a while: 'What is it about me that has not been understood by my parents when I was a child?'
You may want to repeat the question a few times in order to ‘wake up’ your subconscious mind. Don’t be in a hurry to try to find an answer, let the answer come to you. Your subconscious mind knows it already, it just needs a little time to bubble up to the surface and be noticed by your conscious mind.
Remember: the question, then a pause or silent waiting and in that silent waiting something will emerge, it will be the answer to your question.
It can come in the form of a memory, a sensation or a feeling. All are Ok. Then briefly write it down starting with these words: What has not been understood by my parents (in this example) is… and then your discovery

The idea is to be spontaneous in your answers, and not let your mind interfere too much by analysing, searching or trying hard. Be curious and playful. What you will most certainly find is usually positive, yet it can be something that will bring tears or a strong emotion, be prepared knowing that it is totally Ok to have this need or longing, even if you feel shameful about it and ashamed to communicate it. In any case, for the moment you are only writing it down, so allow being shameful if it comes!

Now the second part of the practice:
Ask yourself this question: ‘Why has this (what you have recognized in the first part about you) not been understood by…?’
Was I clear about my need?
Did I express my need clearly?

As mentioned earlier, sometimes we are not understood because we are simply not clear about our need or don’t express it properly and think or have the belief that the other will or must understand us; taking for granted something which is not necessarily obvious.

This little exercise can also be done with a partner.
And for those of you who are not familiar with the Awareness Intensive retreats, it is this format of communication: recognizing, accepting and expressing to a non-judging listening partner that is being proposed and practiced during those retreats.
Sharing with a partner what has not been understood about you is more effective in the sense that when you express your issue and consequently your reality, this reality is being heard by someone and this is exactly what you are looking for; that your reality is understood by someone; that you, as a totality, is understood.

Being understood by someone is crucial for our development and wellbeing, especially as children and teenagers. It brings peace, relaxation and contentment as well as a sense of being taken into account, a sense of existing. It brings self-confidence and maturity.
This is good and needed, yet understanding oneself is even more important and this is really the point that I’d like to make with this talk. Because when we understand what is going on within us we start to discover what it is that we really want. We start to discover what has been missed about us and what we so much long for.
One thing is certain; you will never be understood if you refrain from expressing yourself and more specifically your needs.
As our meeting is coming to an end I’d like to encourage you to dare. Dare! Make it a point to express yourself as fully as possible, to your heart content, so that understanding can arise and fill up your hearts with contentment.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening.

With Love,
Rakendra
On Line Meeting_24-March-2020

The following text is the transcription of a video talk given on Zoom platform about the importance of Truth and Being True in growth work and more specifically in the work with the inner child.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this Zoom salon,
As mentioned in our last week salon, tonight I want to bring to your attention the importance of Truth and Being True in growth work and more specifically in the work with the inner child.

1. In the context of the work with Inner Child what is Truth about?

Is Truth something that someone should tell us about? Is it something that we need to believe in? Is it something special that we need to say or a certain behaviour that we need to take on?
No, it is none of that. Truth has nothing to do with ideas, beliefs or with something external to us; Truth arises in a person when there is a direct connection between what is felt inside and what is being expressed. In other words when you are what you express.
You can see this happening in young children, their behaviour and/or their speech expresses exactly the tempo (the nature) of their inner world. In their spontaneity, they are a direct manifestation of Truth.
Unfortunately this is seldom the case for the majority of adults. For various reasons, adults tend to be disconnected from their inner world; there is hardly any relevance between their speech or behaviour and their inner world which means that they are often in denial or in dishonesty with themselves. This dysfunction is not intentional of course; it is generated at an unconscious level and the consequence is the development of a false sense of self.
This false sense of self cause adults to live far away from their inner world, far away from their true self and this tends to generate a profound unhappiness which is often coupled with bitterness.

The aim of the work with the Inner Child concept is to dispel this false-self so that the innate self or the True-self can emerge. Said differently, working with the Inner Child helps moving from the false to the truth, from denial to acknowledgement and further on, to acceptance.

And this is probably one of the most difficult tasks that one can endeavour because the false is so much present, so much imbedded within us that it becomes difficult to be recognized for what it is; a falsity, a multi-layer falsity.
The difficulty becomes even more challenging when we try to pierce through its layers because regaining access to our ‘True-self’ can only be done by using our false-self as a tool to move through the layers of the false-self; simply because the false-self is the only tangible entity that we have at our disposal.
With this in mind, regaining access to our ‘True-self’ seems to be an impossible task or an unsolvable riddle and you may wonder: ‘How will it be possible to use the false-self to dispel the false-self?’
Trust me, it is possible.
It is possible because as living beings we are gifted with Intelligence and Discrimination.
Intelligence is the ability to acquire, understand and use knowledge and discrimination is the ability to make distinctions, to differentiate. Without them we would not be able to survive; they are both our driving force and protection mechanism and we all use these two qualities in order to go about in our daily life.

The intelligence that I am talking about has nothing to do with the level of our IQ and I would like to add that intelligence and discrimination are not specific to us human beings, they are intrinsic to life itself. They are the very foundation of life, the core elements of Life. Life only exists because of these two principles: Intelligence and Discrimination. If it was not so we would not be here to talk about it, we would not exist. Look at Life around you and you will be able to recognize its intelligence and capacity to discriminate in order to grow and flourish.
In our endeavour to pierce the layers of the false-self and move towards our ‘true-self’ through the layers of the false-self these two principles: Intelligence and Discrimination are going to be our reliable and supportive allies.
This talk and the practice of the exercise that will follow will show you how these two principles can be used in order to dispel confusion and gain clarity.

But first things first

2. What is the ‘False-self’ and how does a false-self set itself in place?

The false-self is a created entity that sets itself in place unconsciously, that is to say independently of our will, in an attempt to reduce the anxiety associated with instinctive desires and painful feelings resulting from traumatic events, inappropriate education and unfounded beliefs.
The false-self is the unfortunate outcome of our protection mechanisms.

Children are in essence innocent, vulnerable and dependant. They don’t know much about life and the world around them and they certainly need proper guidance, support and direction to make their way into adulthood. Yet a child also has an inner sense, an ‘inborn knowing’ of what feels right or does not feel right for him. Although he cannot conceptualize it, a child senses and feels what is energetically happening within his immediate environment and this perceptiveness is Intelligence and Discrimination at work.
With education and the various challenging situations that he encounters in the course of his growth a child starts to lose his capacity to recognize what feels right or does not feel right for him. Moreover, he is often not even given a chance to express his views and feelings and instead has to obey or follow what his elders are telling him. In order to go about in life (to survive) a child tends to take for granted what his caretakers or elders are telling him; unconsciously granting the adults with his trust along with this though form: ‘they must know better since they are my parents or elders’.
In doing so, over the years, the child starts to deny his feelings and his sense of truth in favour of those of others. By and by, he unconsciously loses connection with his true-self and start behaving from an obliging self, a false-self in order to have his needs met.
Not only does he unconsciously start to behave from a false-self, but his identification with this false-self begins to creep in and identification has the power to blind us and cover our innate Intelligence and Discrimination.

3. How can we identify, recognize the false-self?

Recognizing the false-self is, in some ways, quite easy. The false-self feeds on judgments and not on facts; it feeds on comparison and unfounded beliefs, it feeds on fear and control. Emotions, rather than feelings, are the false-self preferred territory.
The false-self will claim that: ‘it can’t be true’, even in the face of reality. The false-self will tend to generalizes and collect straws. ‘They are all against me’ or ‘I hate everyone’ are some of the false-self motto.
If I have a belief that the world is out to get me, or that nobody loves me, or that my partner, friends or family hate me then I will find lots of evidence for this. And I will ignore any evidence that contradicts this. All these little pieces of ‘confirming’ evidence are carefully collected along with our irritability about each situation. This is the false-self at work.
To give you an example, not long ago in an individual session, a person was totally in this dynamic of: ‘I’m not supported’ and she was connecting with many situations in her life where she had not been supported, expressing her rage and despair of not being supported. When her emotional discharge was over I asked her: ‘When was the last time that you felt supported? She could not pinpoint any situation when she had felt supported, her answer to my question was: ‘I’ve never been supported, non-one has ever supported me.’
This is a typical false-self pattern and she could not recognize that in this very moment I was supporting her in clearing out her issue. When I pointed this to her, she hesitated for a moment and then recognized that actually, yes, in this current situation she was being supported.
What happened was that she was so totally immersed in her false-self that she overlooked the reality at hand. Her intelligence and discrimination was blinded by the false-self, by her protection mechanism because that’s what the false-self is; a protection mechanism.
In order for this person to step out of this veiling mechanism and regain access to her discrimination and reality, she only needed a little push. After that she could recognize that: ‘Actually yes, I did have been supported at different times in my life’ and she could recall these moments of support.
Relaxation and joy started to kick in and she felt more true (truer).

Another way for the false-self to exist is by maintaining himself in a story. Story telling is by far the dedicated propulsion force of the false-self. When people come to this work with the Inner Child, they start telling the story of what happen to them; the hurts, the humiliation, their disappointment, their anger or behaviour patterns that are hindering their life in the hope to free themselves from all their undesired painful feelings.
There is no doubt that their story is true, that they are not inventing; these painful situations did happen and they did get hurt and traumatised, yet telling the story about the hurt does not really help a healing to take place because the story in itself is not related to the truth of the person, it is always about the person.
When a person is talking about her issues, she usually talks from her thinking mind and the thinking mind is always disconnected from sensing and feeling and whenever we say something that is not connected with our inner senses or feelings it does not really convey the truth of the person. The story may be true but the connection is not happening.
When this happens, we talk from a ‘false sense of me’, a disconnected sense of ‘me’. It is the false-self at work.
For sure, speaking about what happened creates an opening and helps unload a burden that is often felt as too much to carry. It is a needed step and the person might even feel more relaxed after telling her story which is a good point, yet it does not generate any real changes for the person because it all comes from a false sense of self.
Change will arise when a connection between what is felt inside and what is being expressed takes place. And when this connection is taking place, not only does the person feel true, the sound of her voice is also different. In this sense we can say that Truth has a sound.
And some of you may have experienced this when expressing a feeling during an active meditation for instance. You express and you keep expressing the same feeling and still it does not feel complete, it feels like this feeling has no end, that you’re doomed to be with this feeling forever. Yet at one point, as you keep expressing, a connection takes place inside of you, the expression changes completely and it feels as if you are expressing this feeling for the first time. What follows is a sense of freedom, of wholeness and of completion. I’ve made it, I’ve expressed what I have been trying to express since a long time.  
Has this happened for some of you?

4. Stepping out of the False-self

Stepping out of the false-self implies taking a step back so that discrimination can take place. Using intelligence and discrimination to challenge, to inquire and to doubt your beliefs, your ideas and your judgments is the key to unmask the false-self. One needs to be curious as well as challenging by raising the question: ‘Is this really true?’
Whenever you catch yourself telling a story about your issues or having a judgment on someone or on yourself remember that story-telling and judgments are a distortion of reality whilst feelings and facts are real occurrences. By remembering this you will challenge the false-self. And when you do this you discriminate, you separate the false from the true and thus come closer to the truth of who you are.

Much more can be said on Truth and Being True but for now I would like to propose that we put into practice what has been talked about.

The practice is simple and you can take it home with you, all you need is a notebook and a pen.
On one page list some of the ideas and/or beliefs that you have about yourself.
For example:

• ‘No-one loves me’
• ‘I always make mistakes’
• ‘I’m not worthy of love’
• ‘I’ll never make it’
• ‘I’m more intelligent than others’

It can be negative or positive statements.
Once you have listed 5 ideas or beliefs about yourself, arrange them in increasing order, from the least strong to the strongest for you and leave a good amount of space between them.
Now take the first one, read it aloud a few times so that situations linked with it can come to your consciousness and write down these situations in a few words below the statement.

Once you’ve done this, ask yourself this question: ‘Is it true that no-one loves me?’
Or whatever your statement is.
Repeat the question a few times in connection with your statement.
Question, challenge, inquire and be curious, is it really true? Wasn’t there moments when I was loved, when someone did love me?
And briefly write down these moments or situations where you actually felt being loved opposite to the situation where you did not felt being loved.
After having done this close your eyes and pause for a moment.
Now open your eyes and look at the two sides; can you truly say that no-one loved you?

When you realize that no, it is not true, I did have been loved a few times; your false-self is unveiled. You enter in truth you are true to yourself.
Truth is not something extraordinary, truth is simply what is real and when you express the reality, you are truth.
You’ll be able to continue practicing this in your own time later on. 

We are now coming to an end of this video meeting and I’d like to conclude with these words: “It is not who you appear to be that is important; what is important and can give a meaning to your life is to become who you truly are”.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening. We will make a pause now before answering the questions that you’ve already put forward.
Time for questions…

With Love,
Rakendra
On Line Meeting_10-March-2020

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform about clearing personal issues and the relationship between Mind- Emotions and Body.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon,
Tonight I’d like to clarify why clearing personal issues can be difficult and the relationship between Mind- Emotions and Body.

A questioner asks: « I’ve taken many individual sessions to deal with my issue of abandonment but I am still with the fear of being abandoned. Why is that? »

A transformative path usually starts, but not always, with an attempt to understand what is going on for us. For most people it is a difficulty encountered in their life that sets them on this journey. It may be a conflict in relationships, a divorce, a depression, an illness or the death of someone dear to them that makes them feel at a loss, not knowing how to resolve the situation, not knowing any more how to be in life, how to continue living. They can be in confusion or even in a state of shock so they start seeking help to sort out their confusion and hopefully resolve their issue.The first doorway that is most generally taken is to consult a counsellor or a therapist in an attempt to solve the issue by way of intellectual understanding.
The first doorway that is most generally taken is to consult a counsellor or a therapist in an attempt to solve the issue by way of intellectual understanding.
This seems to be quite an appropriate way to proceed, since our mind or more specifically our thinking mind, has taken the foreground of our lives. For the majority of people life is lived through or via intellectual understanding.
As such, intellectual understanding is an ideal and wonderful tool that we have at our disposal to grasp and resolve any situation that life presents us with. Our thinking mind with its logical approach and intellectual understanding helps us to move forward and it is certainly a common experience to many that once we understand something, a relaxation arises together with a sense of confidence and we regain our capacity to move forward and be creative.

Yet, what is not seen is that intellectual understanding only deals with what is apparent, it does not deal with the root cause of the problem which very often lies in the subconscious or even further in the unconscious part of our brain.
The hidden aspect of intellectual understanding is that it is also linked with and at the service so to speak, of another part of our brain; the reptilian brain which is in charge of and monitors all the vital functions in our body-mind systems such as breathing, heart beating, digesting, etc. and most of all our survival.
All our behaviour patterns in life are underlined with a survival mechanism. When we get angry for instance it is because we feel threaten in some ways. When we cry, it is to unburden our hearts from something that is felt as too heavy and thus threatening for our life. Most of our actions in life, our behaviour patterns are an indirect response of this survival mechanism.
To summarize, intellectual understanding only serves as a plaster covering the source of the problem; yes it help us to move forward in life but without dealing with the source of the issue. It simply helps us to momentarily feel safe.

Why is it so?
It is so because of two factors.
One is that the root cause of the issue is not seen and thus not taken care of and also because our nervous system is geared towards survival and therefore put aside what it cannot digest.
But this is not all, our nervous system is also geared towards health and aliveness and as such does its best to bring to the conscious level what has not been digested so that it can be processed, dealt with in order for us to live freely and more vividly. This is why we often find ourselves in similar situations, similar behaviour patterns; a taste of ‘déjà vu’. And you may have noticed this for yourself; that although you may have dealt with an issue, it tends to comes back recurrently in your life through different situations and in different forms.
Have you observed this?
The reason for this is simple, the core of the issue or its root, has not yet been seen fully and moreover, the original feelings linked with the issues have not been expressed from that place where it originated from; I’ll say more on this later on.

Rose came to see me because the relationship with her boyfriend ended abruptly and she does not know how to deal with this situation.
Here is Rose’s account:
“I am a little bit lost and don’t know what to do; my boyfriend left me for another woman and this is the second time that this happens. My previous boyfriend also left me for another woman. What is happening to me, why can’t a man stay with me for more than a few months? Am I not lovable? What is wrong with me? It seems that all men are unreliable. Of course I’m jealous of this other woman, who would not be. Is she better than me, prettier than me? What does she have that I don’t have?  I feel ashamed and guilty for not being strong enough to keep a man with me. What am I supposed to do, run after him, beg him to stay with me just like my mother did when my father left her for another woman when I was 7-years old? I don’t want to lose face and end up depressed and miserable like her.
I hate this guy! Such a prick! I also hate my father for abandoning my mother and leaving us in misery. I also hate my mother for being so weak and not standing for what she wanted.
Am I going to end up like her? Is our family doomed, Am I doomed to stay alone all my life?”

Although Rose was actually talking to me about what happened for her, she was so completely absorb by her story that it felt that she was, in some ways, simply talking to herself; angrily reliving the drama of her life in an attempt to gain some understanding and approval that she is not wrong, that it is not her fault. She could not go any further than this level of communication.
Yet deep down, she carries the belief that she is wrong and weak, together with a strong guilt feeling and unworthiness to be with a man. But she could not connect with these feelings and did not notice that she had fall prey of a belief. She was simply using her thinking mind in an attempt to gain clarity on her situation.

What is then needed in order for Rose to see her situation more clearly and come out of her belief?
She needs to understand that she is not only her thinking mind, that we are not only thinking beings, that we are also emotional beings with feelings and emotions. Every human being has feelings and every life situation that we encounter triggers at least one feeling.
When we see a sunrise or a sunset or the immensity of a starry night, we are in awe and feel touched by the beauty that lay before our eyes; we may feel love seeing a dear one and when we see someone being mistreated, we may feel sad or angry. It is common to feel joyful when we succeed in achieving something and when we failed at something we may feel inconsolable and even ashamed.
The feeling spectrum is quite vast and like a rainbow it has different shades or nuances.
Feelings are not the problem; the problem arises when we are not able to express our feelings as they are, as they manifest in us. Numerous situations, especially in childhood, create pain in us and if we cannot express the feelings that comes with these situations because it is not allowed, or because we are afraid of being judged or mocked, or because we are ashamed of expressing, then the feeling falls into some unconscious part of our psyche and remain there until we become able to deal with it.
Repression is the problem, not the feeling in itself and when we repress our feeling it creates a disharmony inside us and this disharmony is not only uncomfortable, painful; it also creates what some people call the ‘Emotional body’ or the ‘Pain body’. And unless we start taking care of this ‘Emotional body’ our lives will remain lukewarm, half lived and joyless.

How can we take care of this ‘Emotional body’?
Simply by allowing a connection with our feelings and letting the feeling express itself. As mentioned earlier our nervous system is intelligent. We have the inbuilt capacity to express our feeling and we do it via emotions. An ‘emotion’ is nothing else than the outburst of a feeling; it is a feeling in motion, the visible part of a feeling. One could compare it to the visible part of an iceberg; on the surface is the emotion and underneath is the feeling. It is the feeling that gives birth to the emotion, not the opposite. So we can use the emotion to lead us back to the feeling and when we are able to consciously be with the feeling a transformation takes place.
Yet it is common for some people to get entangled in their emotion; to become identified with their emotion; believing that this is what they are and that by emoting, that is to say indulging in emotion, using it dramatically they will gain the recognition or the object that they want to get. This way of emoting is very similar to a child making a tantrum when he is not happy about something or when he wants something badly. The emotion is lived without any awareness, without any consciousness and therefore keeps the person in emotional bondage rather than freeing her. This is the typical attitude of the ‘drama queen’, who plays being a victim whenever she can simply to get attention.
This not the right approach.
To free oneself from the ‘Emotional or Pain body’ one needs to consciously live the emotion in connexion with who the person was when she originally felt this feeling and most of the time it is related to the child that we once were.
When this alignment takes place we feel a true connexion with ourselves and this brings a transformative shift of our energy; we feel liberated, more spacious inside, more relaxed and with it usually comes joy and contentment.
For instance if it is a feeling of abandonment related to me when I was a child, I need to allow myself to ‘fall’ in that place of the child that I was and express the emotion and the feeling from that place of a child and not from the adult that I am now.
Doctor A. Janov, who was a pioneer in this field, talks about the ‘Tree of Feelings’ linked with the ‘Three Lines of Consciousness’. As you can see on the image below, each line of consciousness refers to a specific part of our brain.

And when we express a feeling it is that specific part of the brain that is involved as shown below.

In the case of Rose mentioned earlier, she was talking from her cerebral cortex, the thinking mind, the adult mind. Therefore no real resolution of her issue could take place; for that to happen she would need to express her feeling of abandonment from the second line, the time when she was a 7-year-old child, when her father left her mother.
It does take time to ‘walk back’ to the source of the hurt simply because our nervous system has put in place resistances in order to protect us from overwhelming feelings; thus the need to ‘unlock’ these resistances one by one. It takes courage and determination.

Alan came to see me not long ago; Alan was a 7-month premature baby who suffered a lot from not being the girl that his parent wanted and from his father’s constant humiliating words as well as from a neglecting mother. Anxiety, constant worry, fear and depression are his day-to-day companion since as long as he can remember. In order to survive and counterbalance his aching heart he disconnected not only from feeling his feelings but also from sensing his body and took refuge in his mind. 
And because of this it will be difficult for Alan to benefit fully from using a mind oriented approach. He will gain much more if he starts his journey by using a bodywork oriented approach. By doing so, he will bypass the resistances that his mind has put in place. It is a well-known fact that the body knows better than the mind. This is also why in the individual sessions that I give I encourage the person to sense what is happening in her body and to let the body talk or express whatever it feels right to express. 

Do know that it is not the privilege of our mind to carry memories and just as we have a thinking brain, we also have an emotional brain which is located in our belly and more specifically in the wall texture of our guts. It is this understanding that Bioenergy uses to release traumatic feelings accumulated in the body thus enabling a more natural and healthy flow to return to the body.

Furthermore, it has been discovered that all the little tiny cells of our body carry memories of past happy and traumatic feelings. Just like the computer hard disk stores information, our cells also store information and they do this record-keeping of memories systematically from the first cell that is created in womb of the mother after the egg has been fertilized until the body dies.
This understanding has an important implication because not only our cells carry memories of our personal feelings, but they also register our mother’s feelings during the 9 months that we spent in her womb. And this has an influence on our belief system and later on our behaviour patterns.
Unfortunately, unlike a computer, we don’t have a delete button at our disposal to empty or clear our cells from their memory; the only thing that is in our hands to do, is to allow a caring connection with our feelings and our body in order to authentically face these ‘non-supportive’ memories so that a transformation can follow on its own accord. Thus the importance of letting our chattering and judgemental mind become a little more silent so that we can regain the capacity to let our body talk, to let our body lead the way towards these memories that keep our hearts painful.
It is about being with what is and not with what we cherish or would like; it is about allowing not knowing, it is about letting life flow within us as it wants, without interfering; trusting that we can only benefit from letting go. This requires courage, perseverance and above all a non-judgmental attitude towards oneself.

I’d like to complete this talk by answering our questioner the following: “Many people live their lives with a feeling of guilt for not being good enough, for not being capable enough, for not being worthy of being loved. But these are only assimilated beliefs, they have no existential truth.
We are all born lovable, at our deepest core we are ‘Love’ and as such we all have   an intrinsic capacity to self-heal, it is only a matter of where we put our attention.

Thank you for your attentive listening. We will now make a pause before answering your questions.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_November 2019

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on the relationship between Responsibility and Freedom.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon; tonight I’ve been asked to talk about: « The relationship between Responsibility and Freedom and how this relationship impacts our day-to-day living. »

Let us first consider what is usually understood by responsibility and being responsible.
Often when we talk about responsibility we are referring to ways of behaving according to usage or conventions imposed by our social environment. The driving rules for instance, the law that one should not steal or commit a crime or abuse another in any way.
We consider that it is our responsibility to drive safely, that it is our responsibility not to harm another, our responsibility to follow the rules and laws of the society that we live in. And if we fail in these responsibilities we can feel guilty, be blamed, taken to court to be fined or even jailed.

Every community, every society, every country has a vast array of usages, rules and laws to ensure the social welfare of its citizens and it is a general understanding that everyone has to comply with these usages, rules and laws. In other words, everyone has to be responsible or bear the cost of it.
In addition, there are also some unspoken, yet commonly accepted attitudes about raising children or supporting elders that we usually refer to as responsibilities. Even for children, whether at school or at home, elders asked them to be responsible by behaving according to some social agreements labelled as ‘education’.
It is true that all these commonly accepted attitudes, rules and laws are needed to ensure a smooth and harmonious living among people. Yet, what is not seen is that all these so-called responsible attitudes are driven by social agreements and as such they do not really let rise to a sense of responsibility. They are more in line with obligation, duty and accountability since when one fails to comply with these agreements and rules it can become an offence done to the other or an unlawful act which may generate guilt, shame or even punishment for the ‘irresponsible’ person.
Although these are commonly referred to as responsibilities, I would rather call them ‘outer responsibilities’ because they are dictated by usage, by law or by social standards. And since they do not come out of one’s own understanding, they tend to enslave us by generating an obligation to comply with the imposed usage, rules or laws; we become obedient beings rather than individuals genuinely responsible.

Considering what I’ve mentioned above what then would 'true' responsibility be and what does being responsible implies?
Responsibility is the ability to respond; it is a ‘response-ability’.
And to be able to respond in accordance with a situation at hand, inner freedom is needed.
Responsibility and freedom are the two sides of a same coin. There cannot be any responsibility without inner freedom, nor can inner freedom be without a sense of responsibility.

As you all know, and have most certainly experienced for yourself, we are often governed by all sorts of beliefs, conditioning and behaviour patterns. These beliefs, these conditioning or behaviour patterns act like a veil on our energy and on our capacity to respond in life. They imprison us rather than leaving us free.
We like to think that we are free to think or do what we want but this is not true.
Our so-called freedom is shallow and if we are honest with ourselves we can recognize that in reality we are not free but driven by all sorts of ideas and beliefs connected to the personality that we are and unless we start emptying ourselves of the beliefs and ideas that we consciously, and unconsciously, carry it is not possible to be responsible, to act in a responsible way.

Another insidious way of acting out what I call ‘outer responsibility’ is the following example of Eve.
Eve is a young woman who, in her early childhood, had to bear the divorce of her parents with her mum leaving the family cocoon to start a new life with another man. Eve believed that it was because of her that her mum left the family. She believed that it was her fault and consequently felt guilty about her mother abandoning her and her father.
From that day on, not only did she took on the responsibility of being a mother to her own father in replacement for the wife that he lost but each time her mum ran into trouble by not behaving according to the law, Eve felt that it was her responsibility to come to her rescue, that it was her responsibility to help her mother out of these situations. And this was emphasized greatly by her family members and friends who were also pushing Eve to take these responsibilities by saying words like: ‘It is your mother, you have to help her, it is your filial duty; it is your responsibility’.
Her family members and friends were driven by this social agreement and not considering Eve at all. Their focus was only on the ‘outer responsibility’. And because Eve had this abandonment issue and believed that it was her fault that her mother divorced, she took on the belief and the attitude that she had to be responsible for her mother. In many ways this made Eve’s life complicated and full of dramas.
Eve’s case is quite interesting because not only she took responsibility when she did not have to, which created trouble for her; but her attitude also made others not take their own responsibility. Strangely enough and up to now, her different boyfriends were all men who could not take responsibility for themselves.

Do remember that as human beings we are a manifestation of life and thus are born free of ideas and conditionings; we only acquire them as we grow up, which implies that we can discard them and regain our inborn freedom.

And this is where being responsible begins; it begins when we endeavour to set ourselves free of all these ideas and conditionings that we consciously and unconsciously carry.
I would say that this is our foremost responsibility.
If we want to be responsible beings, the first step is to set us free from our beliefs, from our conditionings, projections and behaviour patterns. At this point I’d like to emphasise that to be free from our beliefs, projections and conditioning does not necessarily mean to change them for different or better ones; it means not being identified with them.
Let this be clear, it is the identification that is the problem, not the beliefs or the conditionings.

In the example of Eve mentioned earlier, it is when Eve became aware of her behaviour pattern and expressed what she really wanted to express (the pain and the rage of being abandoned) that she realized that her understanding of responsibility actually came from her desire to have her mum staying with her. So her responsibility was not a genuine, heartfelt responsibility but only a distorted response to a strong unconscious desire in her.
As she expressed what was truly there for her, she took responsibility for herself and the outcome was that she gained in relaxation and freedom and she is now able to clearly see that the responsibility that she took was in fact the other side of her desire to not be abandoned.  

When we dis-identify from the beliefs, the projections or the conditionings we gain inner freedom and as we do this a sense of responsibility will start to emerge; a sense of responsibility that has nothing to do with usages, rules or laws. It will be a sense of responsibility driven by a free heart and not by a thinking mind.
It will not be an ‘outer responsibility’, a responsibility imposed from outside but a sense of responsibility that will arise from the core of our being and to make a distinction I call it: ‘inner responsibility’.
And this is what inner freedom generates; it generates a sense of ‘inner responsibility’ which we could call 'true' or heartfelt responsibility.
We become able to respond wisely to any situation that comes our way because we are not identified anymore with the beliefs, the conditionings or the behaviour patterns that compose our personality.
Our response to situations may not be in accordance with outer usages and rules, but it will be in accordance with our hearts, in accordance with thoughtfulness for others, in accordance with Love. And this is where heartfelt responsibility comes alive, when we act in accordance with our hearts, with Love, when we are in tune with Love.

The impact on our day-to-day living
When, in our daily life we function on the basis of ‘outer responsibility’ our relationships are somewhat damaged because outer responsibility does not include love, only usefulness, efficiency. We tend to go about in life with do’s and don’ts, invading, imposing on others rather than being considerate and respectful. In many ways our communication with others is often aggressive, violent and disrespectful; mainly because it is based on needs, desires and projections.
Check for yourself how you communicate with your spouse, your children, your elders and your friends and how they communicate with you.
Additionally and mostly due to desires, needs and projections, most people go about in life in a state of dependency from others. Most of the relationships, whether they are couple relationships, parent-child or adult-elder relationships are co-dependent relationships.
If your relationship with your spouse or child is a co-dependent one, it is bound to bring unhappiness to both and your responses to situations will only come from an understanding of outer responsibility.
I invite you to check for yourself how you act and what your part is, in the different relationships that you can be involved in.

You might argue that we are all interdependent, which on one level is true. Man cannot subsist by himself; he needs other fellow humans to be able to live in this world.
If I want to eat food, I need to find someone who can provide food for me, if I want to have a roof over my head; I need someone to build a house for me. We are all part of a survival yet fascinating life chain where nature (the planets, the plants and the trees), animals and humans are all inter dependant. This interdependency is part of the nature of life; it is the essence of life.
Yet this interdependency has nothing to do with co-dependency. Co-dependency is the result or the outcome of immaturity. Immaturity is when we haven’t emotionally grown up, when we live our lives from our emotions, when as adults we behave like 5 or 6 years old, afraid of being abandoned, rejected, hurt and most of all wanting to be loved.
What we could not get from our parents we try to get it from our spouse or our children. We look for a ‘soul mate’, a ‘charming prince’ or the ‘perfect lover’ whom, we hope, will provide us with all of what we desire, whom will fulfil our needs and most of all love us unconditionally. The problem is that such a person does not exist so we end up with a partner who is trapped in the same needs and desires as we have.
Since we don’t have this ideal partner, it is quite common to project our desires and our unfulfilled needs on our children, imprisoning them in responsibilities that are not theirs.
We become co-dependent because we are not emotionally free. And as long as we are co-dependent, we cannot be genuinely responsible; we can only function on the basis of ‘outer responsibility’.

On the other hand, when we are free from our emotional conditioning and connected with our ‘inner responsibility’, we bring honesty and gentleness in all our relationships; our relationships become harmonious, loving. They are based on unbiased and fair exchanges.

It is in our hands to set ourselves free from our emotional conditioning, projections and needs and move in life from a state of ‘inner responsibility’ rather than blindly following ‘outer responsibilities’. The outcome may be the same; we will follow the usages or rules of our society if it is needed; not because we are diligently obedient but because it feels right to follow these usages or conventions.
A Zen master used to say: “Freedom is the capacity to stop at a red light”.
What he meant was that it is the inner attitude of the person that makes the difference, not the outer attitude.
When we live from a free heart and free mind, we bring a heartfelt attitude to all our relationships. Our response-ability flows in tune with our wisdom voice and not according to our thinking mind; our response-ability brings awareness and love to our environment.

I’d like to end this talk by mentioning that: “The choice to regain our inner freedom and become mature adults is always ours; it is only a question of setting priorities and being considerate for this unique living being that we are”.

Thank you for your attentive listening. We will now make a pause before answering the questions that you’ve already put forward.

With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou_27 September 2019

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on the Influence of personality types in our life.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon; tonight I’ve been asked to talk about: « The influence of personality types in our life »

Before we look at how personality types influence our life, it is necessary to first understand what a personality type is and how it comes into being.
Personality types start their existence in our childhood as a response to our psychological and emotional environment. They are an attempt to have our basic needs met and in that sense they are not wrong.
As you know for yourself, as a child we have some basic needs (being seen for who we are, being supported, being respected and most of all accompanied. Said in a nutshell: being loved) When these needs are not fulfilled, it creates an aching heart in us and with this aching heart comes a feeling of Despair together with Hope.
Because our need to be loved is so deeply embedded in us, so fundamental to our survival, this need acts as a veil on the reality of our immediate environment. As a child we are not able to see the reality for what it is and instead we keep longing for our needs to be met which makes us fall prey of despair and hope.
Hoping that if I behave the way I think that my parents want me to behave, I will have my needs met, satisfied. And in order to do that we start developing personality types or behaviour patterns. Please understand that this development takes place in the unconscious part of our psyche; it is not that the child says to himself: “I will behave like this in order to have my needs met”, no it is not so. This development is a response from our nervous system which is always geared towards survival.

So we can say that our personality types or behaviour patterns are in fact and in essence, a survival mechanism organized around the psychological and emotional environment that we live in. For instance if the psychological and emotional environment we live in is fear based we will tend to develop a Victim or a Pleaser personality type. If our emotional environment is anger or violence based we will tend to develop a Rebellious or a Fighter personality type. Please understand that this is a tendency, not a law and many exceptions can be found since each individual is unique.
As shown on the PPTs below, there are numerous personality types, yet we could divide them into 4 major categories based on how, as a child, we emotionally related to our environment.
(Please note that this list is not exhaustive)

Yet, although these personality types are an attempt to have our needs met, they seldom work as you’ve most certainly have experienced yourself.
Why is it that they don’t work?
They don’t work because they are not a strait forward, open request; they are detoured ways of asking for what we want and are built on hope. Moreover they subtly carry the energy of resentment; sometimes in an open way like when we are angry or rebellious; yet most of the time the resentment stays hidden in some unconscious part of our psyche.

Remember, it is the hope that the need will be fulfilled that creates a personality type or behaviour pattern, nothing else; so we can say that personality types are like soap bubbles built on thin air. They have no reality, they are just a mean to hopefully get our needs met which they never succeed to do. The problem is that over the years we tend to identify with these personality types and forget what we actually want. We become a Victim-Tyrant or a Pleaser, not seeing that we’ve taken on these roles in order to cover our aching heart. Not only these roles do not bring us what we deeply want but they also veil our life force and our true personality. And as such, they have a serious impact on our lives because they prevent us from living with an open heart, innocently. They make us live a restricted and controlled life, a life of survival.

As mentioned earlier all personality types put a veil on our life energy in order to preserve us from feeling our aching heart. Yet it is important, if we want to let go of the personality type that we are in, to recognize how these personality types are driving our life.
How do we act out our desire to be loved?
More than often we use not just one personality type but fluctuate between 2 or 3.
For instance someone who takes on the Victim role because he did not receive the attention that he was entitled to receive will have these kinds of thoughts: “It is not fair, the whole world is against me, nobody loves me, I feel so hurt, I’m so lonely, no one cares about me; it is their fault.”
And that person will spend a great deal of his time crying and weeping in an attempt to raise attention: ‘Look at poor me, how hurt I am’.
Yet underneath this Victim attitude, there is a Tyrant in disguise because resentment and anger are not far away. By his never-ending lamentation the Victim is trying to force attention. Moreover he is in a strong ‘no’. ‘No, it should not be like this, you should give me what I want; it is your fault if I am miserable’.
On one side crying and weeping and on another demanding to have his needs met. Both of these attitudes will tend to drive people away and reject such a person. The exact opposite of what the victim wants. Who wants to bear the constant lamentation of a victim? Who wants to bear the constant blaming of a tyrant? No one except maybe the Saviour/Rescuer which is another common fear based personality type.
The Saviour also known as the Rescuer type will do anything and everything he can in order have his needs met, which is to be loved, like the victim.
He so much wants to be loved, appreciated and recognized for his value that he is willing to sacrifice himself and even sometimes put his life at risk in order to get that. His main tool is to please, to say yes. Pleasing is the other side of the Saviour. He does not know how to say ‘no’, he is like a doormat, you can wipe your feet on him, he will still say thank you for using him.
The Saviour cannot bear to see someone miserable because it reflects his own misery. He is a Pleaser in disguise! Just as the Pleaser is a Saviour in disguise. He pleases in order to be recognized, to be appreciated but also in order to save ‘these miserable/poor people’. There is a subtle element of superiority in both the Pleaser and in the Saviour. By acting the way they do, they take on a despising attitude of being better than you.
You may have observed that in your own family (parent or nuclear) couple relationships are often ruled by these personality types and this leads to misunderstanding, confusion and even hatred between husband & wife as well as between parents and children or even between children.

When we’re taken by a personality type, so identified with it; it veils our discernment, our faculty to discriminate, to see what the reality at hand is. Thus the need to recognize and understand how we function, what personality type we’re in so that we can see the need and the hurt that the personality type veils. And by taking care of our need and our aching heart (recognizing, accepting and expressing), the personality type will fade away and disappear because it won’t be needed any more.
It is as simple as that!

I’d like to conclude this little talk with these words: “It is not who you appear to be that is important; what is important and can give a meaning to your life is to become who you truly are”.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening. We will make a pause now before answering the questions that you’ve already put forward.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, July 2019

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on the Path of knowing ourselves.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon,
Tonight, I’ve been asked to talk about: « The path of knowing ourselves » with the following questions: ‘What is awakening and why is the work on the personality important to know the truth of ourselves?’
This is quite a vast topic but I’ll try to be as clear and to the point as possible.

The first thing is to understand how our personality and what we call the True Self or True Nature are interconnected. In some ways, we could compare our personality to an iceberg floating on the ocean of our Essence or True Self.
The surface of this iceberg represents the conscious part of our personality with the behaviour patterns (how we act and react in life) our emotional world and our thinking apparatus. A little underneath is the subconscious layer where are stored the ideas and beliefs that we have on ourselves and on the world around us together with some not yet conscious feelings.
Underneath these two layers is the unconscious layer, which is also multi-layered and it is in the upper part of this unconscious layer that the root cause of all our feelings, ideas and beliefs are stored.
All the above are components of our personality.
But our unconscious does not stop there and as we descend into the depth of this unconscious layer we will find our vital functions (breathing, heart beating, etc.) which can also be affected by the various traumas encountered during our life. Yet these are not part of our personality but of our human nature and at the very depth and containing all of the above is Our Essence, the ocean in which this iceberg is floating and also made of.

Understanding this, you can recognize that actually our personality is like a wave on the surface of the ocean. It is made of the same water as the ocean, it is not different from the ocean; it is the ocean in a different arrangement, in a different appearance.
The problem arises when the wave (our personality) starts to think itself separate from the ocean and starts to identify with itself. It is ‘me’, I am the wave and the ocean is something other than me.
This phenomenon happens spontaneously around the age 2 or 3 when a child starts to recognize that ‘It is me’ and this recognition is greatly emphasized by his environment. Everything becomes a duality. There is ‘Me and Mama’, ‘Me and Papa’, ‘Me and You’. And by and by this ‘Me’ becomes the centre around which everything other than me revolves.
Check it for yourself, isn’t it your experience?
To fully recognize this is already a huge step towards awakening.

This phenomenon is called ‘identification’ and ‘awakening’ is the dismantling of this identification. And because this identification occurs with the arising of the personality, there is a need to work on that level first in order to dis-identify from ideas, beliefs and thought forms that carry.
Since within the personality we also carry various traumatic situations that have influenced the building of our personality, these traumas do call for attention and healing too. And since most of these traumas and beliefs that we carry were formed during our childhood, working with the Inner Child concept is a needed step towards this dis-identification.
The work on the Inner Child will help bring a dismantling of some of our ideas & beliefs but most important, it will bring peace to our aching heart and when our heart is at peace, our mind becomes peaceful as a result and a peaceful mind & heart are needed for those who aim to know themselves more deeply.
It is for this reason that I strongly recommend the work on the Inner Child if you are interested in knowing yourself and awakening to your true nature. It is almost a prerequisite when we want to embark on a path towards awakening.
If you understand rightly what I have been saying up to now, you will recognize why this work on the Inner Child and on the personality is so important. It is also important to understand that on the personality level we live in thoughts, our mind is very active and awakening has nothing to do with what we think, with ideas or beliefs, it has to do with experiencing, directly experiencing who we are.

For various reasons and mainly to avoid an aching heart, we tend to refrain from experiencing our feelings and the consequence of this is that we live via our mind. Our mind act as a controller to prevent us from feeling what is felt as threatening for our life. Our mind helps us to stay in a sort of comfortable layer. We are not totally happy but also not completely unhappy and we tend to stay in this grey zone.
The work is firstly about moving away from our mind set of ideas & beliefs into sensing and feeling what is going on for us inside. And in order to do this we need to bring awareness to what is. Cultivating awareness is therefore an essential step towards awakening.

Awareness is about bringing what is unconscious to a conscious level so that it can be dealt with and leave us. And once we become more familiar with our inner space, we will be able to notice that besides the mind activity, besides the emotional activity, besides the sensations, there is also something that can be called silence or stillness.
And when we go deeper into awareness, we can perceive that actually silence or stillness is always there underling the perception of tensions in the body, underling feelings or thoughts.
This Silence or Stillness is our True Nature; it is the very stuff that we are made of and we can sense that it is always there whatever action we take, whatever move we do.
This recognition needs to happen on an experiential level, it needs to be your experience and not just an intellectual understanding as it can be at this moment.
Once this experiential understanding has arisen, that silence/stillness is underling everything, the next step is to allow a merging with this silence/stillness. And for this merging to take place the focus needs to change slightly to awareness itself with the recognition that: ‘I am this awareness’.
Please understand the difference between I am aware of something and I am awareness. We are constantly aware of something, whether it is outside or inside of us, yet this understanding is not obvious and it needs to be clear as a bell ring that I am aware that I am aware and further on that I am awareness itself.
Translated on an experiential level we can recognize that I am not seeing but seeing is happening, I am not hearing but hearing is happening, I am not speaking but speaking is happening.
This can only happen when the sense of ‘me’ has left, when the identification with ‘me’ and ‘something other than me’ has disappeared. The doer, the one who is aware, has disappeared and in that disappearance awakening is taking place.
The problem is that you cannot do it; you cannot force it to happen. It happens but without you doing anything. That why some paths put forward devotion or surrendering as their main focus of teaching.
 
To summarize, awakening refers to this moment when you understand experientially that you are awareness. Please also understand that this is not the end. Awakening is not the final step! Sorry to disappoint you!
Once you have awakened to Reality or True Nature, whatever name you give it, you will need to cultivate this awakening, meaning to deepen your merging in it and this has no end.
Yet before awakening can take place, working on the personality level is a needed step. That’s why I would encourage you to participate not only in workshops geared towards clearing the personality but also participate in retreats where you can more directly access these realms of silence and stillness with the practice of self-enquiry within a silent environment.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening, the next part of this WeChat salon will be answering the questions that some of you have raised.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, March 2019

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on the Personality & Inner Child work.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon,
Tonight, within the context of the Embracing Our Inner Child audio series, I’ve been asked to talk about: « Why is the Inner Child work important in order to have a full grown healthy personality? »

The first thing to understand is what the personality is and why this personality does have all kinds of issues and therefore cannot be a full grown healthy personality.
Our personality can be compared to the weaving of a piece of cloth which is not made of just one thread but of many different threads and this weaving starts in early childhood. So not only our personality cloth was weaved with many treads but also with many knots and holes which gave rise to a heavy heart with unbalanced emotions, body tensions and consequently unhappiness.
The way to regain a healthy and joyful heart as well as a stable peace of mind is to understand how this weaving has been weaved so that the knots can untied and the holes be filled in order to let emerge a full grown healthy and mature personality. And to bring this peace of the heart, working with the concept of the Inner Child is the most beneficial way.

You may wonder, and this is the question that was raised tonight, why working with the concept of the Inner Child is the most beneficial way. Isn’t there other ways?
In a nutshell, there is no other ways because a heavy heart and consequently an unbalanced personality is the outcome of how we have lived our childhood and working with the concept of the Inner Child is helpful to tackle and understand our personality, our ways of functioning in life and this work also allows our emotional world to regain a natural and healthy flow.
The work on the Inner Child is efficient in regaining a full grown healthy personality because it takes into account and helps reconnect with the different aspects of our emotional world which are the foundation of our personality. Yet when we are talking about the personality, what are we exactly referring to?
We are referring to a multi-layer and inter-related association of character traits, thought patterns, ideas and beliefs and most of all feelings and their emotions that is active partly in our conscious mind and partly in our unconscious.

In some ways, we could compare our personality to an iceberg floating on the ocean. 
On the surface, in the conscious part we find our character traits or behaviour patterns (how we act and react in life) and our emotional world.
A little underneath in the subconscious layer are stored the ideas and beliefs that we have on ourselves and on the world around us together with some not yet conscious feelings.
Underneath these two layers is the unconscious layer, which is also multi-layered and it is in the upper part of this unconscious layer that the root cause of all our feelings, ideas and beliefs are stored.
All the above are components of our personality.
But our unconscious does not stop there and as we descend into the depth of this unconscious layer we will find our vital functions (breathing, heart beating, etc.) which can also be affected by the various traumas encountered during our life. Yet these are not part of our personality but of our human nature and at the very depth and containing all of the above is Our Essence, the ocean in which this iceberg is floating and also made of.

As you can start understanding our personality is not simple and straightforward, it is complex, has multiple facets and therefore carries many issues or better say, unresolved conflicts. And just like a jigsaw puzzle, before we can come to a complete picture, we need to identify the different pieces and how they relate with each other in order to form the final picture and this is what the work on the Inner Child work is doing; it processes by identification or better say by dis-identification and expression.

The character traits that are on the surface of our personality are the manifestation or the results of the way we have been educated, they are the outcome of the ways we have been in relationship with our parents or those who took care of us during childhood and these character traits are sustained by our emotional world and the ideas and beliefs that we carry about ourselves and the world.
And because the Inner Child work helps identifying, connecting with and expressing these inner conflicts and bring their root cause to a conscious level so that they can be seen and accepted for what they are, it becomes an efficient way in regaining a full grown healthy personality.

Let’s take an example.
You are in a couple relationships and your partner does not give you the attention that you would like or expect from him and you become frustrated, resentful or even angry and you start to blame him, have arguments and claim that he should give you the attention that you deserve.
If you look closely at this situation you will find that actually the key point is not that your partner should fulfil your expectation but that you have an expectation and that this expectation is based on an unfulfilled need; the need to be accompanied or taken care of.
And this need has its root in childhood, for some reason your parents did not give you the attention that you would have liked, that you needed; they were busy with their work and in some ways did not pay much attention to you and this made you feel insecure, unloved, uncared for.
And this need for care and attention is still very much present in you as an adult and at the slightest opportunity this need will surface. This need will surface, not openly but in roundabout ways because you have disconnected from the original pain that the unfulfilled need created. Yet that pain is still greatly alive in you. But because you had to move on, because you had to grow up, you found ways to put this pain aside and took on a behaviour pattern, a character trait that attempted to have your need met. You became needy, dependant or pleasing. But as you might have experienced yourself it seldom worked to fulfil your need and it does not work because first of all your partner is also in a similar pattern and most of all your behaviour is disconnected from original need.

The Inner child work will help you recognize the need at play, reconnect with and express the feelings associated with that need so that a healthier ‘me’, a more peaceful ‘me’ can arise. Consequently your personality will change and become more mature because it will not be based on unfulfilled needs anymore but on a more loving and understanding of yourself.
Its efficiency (the Inner Child work) lies in the fact that the root cause of the behaviour patter is seen for what it is and that the feelings that accompany this pattern and the original need are expressed.
When something is expressed fully and in tune with what is true for the person, it melts away, disappear and give place to relaxation, peace and maturity.
As I’ve mentioned in some other talks the three components needed to come to this maturity are:

→ Recognition
→ Acceptance
→ Expression  

As mentioned at the beginning, all our adult behaviour patterns are the outcome of the ways we have been in relationship with our parents or those who took care of us during childhood. This is why it is important, if we want to have a more mature and healthy personality, to take care of these unresolved inner conflicts that took place during our childhood and teenage life.
The outcome of the work on the Inner Child will be a personality that is not based on unfulfilled needs or desires but on the reality of what is. You will be the actor of your life instead of being a puppet reacting to situations that life brings you.
This does not mean that you won’t have any feelings or emotions anymore; you will have because you are human beings and feelings and emotions are part of being a human being, but these feelings and emotions won’t be based on unresolved inner conflicts.

As a conclusion and answer to: « Why is the Inner Child work important in order to have a full grown healthy personality? » I’d like to quote Doctor Arthur Janov who was a pioneer in this work on the Inner Child

« Working with the Inner Child help us cry the tears that we could not cry
so that we can laugh the laughs that we could not laugh. »

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening and if you have questions you can send them now.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, October 2018

The following text is the transcription of a talk given during a public conference on Communication and Communication Cycles.

Dear Friends,
Welcome to this evening talk,
Tonight I’ve been asked to talk about « How does communication works? »

Every day of our life we relate with others, trying our best to communicate our thoughts, our feelings or emotions and our needs and we do this with the subtle, yet crucial intention to be understood.
It seems that the sole purpose of communicating with others is to be understood. And this is very true because we need understanding. We need to be understood in our needs, in our desires but mostly in who we are. We want to be understood for who and what we are and by being understood we additionally mean being recognized or approved and certainly not judged. And when we are understood, magic happens, we feel joyful and contented.
Isn’t it your experience?

Yet is it always the case? More than often the answer is no. More than often the outcome of our communication with others is dissatisfaction, frustration with, in its wake, blaming and resentment. It can also bring a deep feeling of sadness together with the thought: ‘I’ll never be understood’ which can eventually turn into a belief.
Isn’t this your experience too?

To move out of this unhealthy loop we can seek ways of communicating better and choose from the various communication skills available on the market to be more performant in our communication. Yet this can be misleading because most of these skills are sale oriented and cunning for most. They don’t really consider the person since their aim is more about proving a point or selling a product.
Communication needs to be approached from a different perspective, a perspective of mutual respect. A communication always involves a minimum of two persons and forms a loop where the one who is communicating expresses himself to another in order to have his need met, whatever that need is. It can be the need to express an idea, the need to get something material or immaterial like respect or recognition.

The need does not really matter what really matter is the contentment that comes from expressing fully what we wanted to express and being received and understood in our expression.
The implication of this statement is that both parties have a responsibility in this communication cycle. One has the responsibility of expressing as honestly and as clearly as possible and the other that of listening and understanding what is being shared. Being open is the key factor for a fruitful communication.

A sound communication cycle occurs when 'A' is able to recognize and express what he wants to 'B', and when 'B' is able to receive and understand what 'A' wants. 'A' then recognizes and feels that he has been understood; the communication cycle is then complete.
To summarize, the needed components for a communication cycle to bare fruits are the following:

→ Identification
→ Expression
→ Openness
→ Understanding
→ Response
→ Fulfilment

The drawing shown will make it easier for you to understand a sound communication cycle.

1 → Becoming aware that something in us wants to be communicated (Identification)
2 → Expressing it exactly as it has been identified (Expression)
3 → It being received and accepted by another (Acceptance)
4 → It being understood by another (Understanding)
5 → It being acknowledged by the other for what it is (Acknowledgement)
6 → Noticing that it has been fully received and understood by another (Fulfilment)

The fulfilment aspect comes more from becoming aware that what wanted to be expressed has been fully expressed, understood, received and accepted by another, more that from it being satisfied (getting the apple in our example).
This way of communicating is what takes place in the Awareness Intensives retreats, that’s why they are so powerful.
Unfortunately such a sound communication is seldom the case, since the majority of people have conditioning filters operating consciously or unconsciously and most of the time a communication cycle looks more like this one:

In this example of a communication cycle I am a little unclear about what I truly want which is to be loved but I am not really aware of that because it is filtered by my conditioned mind, so ask for sex which is what I think that I want and further, I may also not be able to express openly that I want sex because of my conditionings, so instead I ask for a cuddle, hoping that it will turn into sex.
And since my partner has also his own conditioning filters he will not fully understand my request which will add to the vagueness of the communication cycle. He will respond according to his conditioning filters. He will hear 'a hug' instead of 'a cuddle' and because of his own conditionings he will not be able to act out this hug, so he will give me a big smile.

All these filters will combine and lead to a distorted communication or miscommunication and generate frustration rather than contentment. Yes, in a way some communication has happened, something has been achieved, a communication cycle has taken place but the outcome is far from fulfilment.
Sadly and to a certain degree, that's how most of our communication cycles are taking place in our lives, generating misunderstanding, sadness, frustration, resentment, jealousy and revenge. We can see this at work in couple relationships as well as in social relationships.
Isn’t this your experience too?

We’ve all experience these distorted communications at some point or other in our lives together with the frustration that their repetition generates. A frustration that can pile up to the point that we come to believe that: ‘I’ll never be understood’ or ‘no one understands me!’
Just as a sound communication cycle leaves the person with contentment and joy, a distorted one also leaves its emotional trace. Missed communications are the main source of anger and resentment in people.

This being acknowledge, how can we move out of this unhealthy cycle? How can we improve on our ways of communicating so that a natural fulfilment, contentment becomes the outcome instead of frustration and resentment?
We can improve our communication by becoming more conscious, more aware of how and what we want to communicate and with whom we are communicating. Very often, we are not really communicating but having what I would call a verbal diarrhea; a nonstop talk. Our mind is simply following an impulse and is pouring out words. Furthermore, we don’t really communicate with someone nor even to someone, we simply loop within our own mind as if we are talking to ourselves and use the other person as a projection support.

Realizing this, we can make a short pause in our communication so as to create a stop in our constantly active mind and in this gap we can ask ourselves the question: ‘What am I trying to say? What is it that I really want to communicate?’
This is a significant question because it forces us to take into account the filters that are operating within us. This question takes us out of an unconscious talk into conscious communicating.
And this is the key point; communicating consciously, with an awareness of what I truly want to communicate and the awareness that I communicate with another human being, not a robot. 
What is it that I really want to say?
This question will bring us to the first step of a sound communication, the identification. Knowing what I truly want to communicate is a crucial step. In the example above; wanting to be loved. Then being sincere in our expression and communicating honestly how we are and how we feel will generate an opening in the other person. When we stop pretending to be different than whom we are, immediately an energetic veil lifts and understanding takes place. It is clear that we cannot ask the other person to be an ideal listener, yet when we communicate sincerely and honestly it has an impact on the other person. An opening is created and with this opening, understanding follows.

In order to bring an understanding from experience on what is being talked about here, practical communication exercises are being proposed to participants using relating dyads.

From your own experience after these exercises, you can recognize that sincerity and authenticity are certainly the primary components when we are communicating and when openness and acceptance of what is are also included, a sound communication cycle take place for the benefit of both.
One thing to be fully understood though is that the contentment is not dependent to the satisfaction of the need or the desire. As mentioned earlier, it comes out of becoming aware that what wanted to be expressed has been fully expressed, understood, received and accepted by the other. The reason for this is simple, when we need or desire something, an energetic tension is created around this unfulfilled need and as we are able to complete a communication cycle, this energetic tension leaves us; it has been expressed and received, understanding has taken place and we know that we’ve clearly communicated what we wanted to communicate.
To summarize the steps:

→ I know what I want to communicate (Identification)
→ I communicate as clearly and sincerely what I want to communicate (Expression)
→ The other receives and understands my communication (Understanding & Acknowledgement)
→ I feel understood, contentment arises naturally (Fulfilment)

It may happen that for some reasons the other person does not understand or cannot hear what we are trying to convey. If we are open it is possible to accept that this is the case and in this acceptance the communication cycle complete itself.
Whenever we communicate with someone, our aim should be to consciously go through these steps. A little practice is needed to get the knack of it, that’s why I would encourage you to practice these simple communication exercises that we just did to become more familiar with sound communication cycles.
And once familiar with sound communication cycles, it is possible to go further with other specifically oriented communication exercises.
Bringing awareness to your communication will not only give you satisfaction, it will also help completing communications that have not been completed in the past, miscommunications that have left tensions in the body-mind system. It is meaningful to complete communication cycles because we are dealing with the completion of desires. A sound communication cycle is, one could say, equivalent to the extinction of a desire.

Thank you all for your patient and attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, July-2018

The following text is the transcription of a talk given during a public conference on how to transform behaviour patterns and beliefs?

Dear Friends,
Welcome to this evening talk,
Tonight I’ve been asked to talk about « How to Transform Old Patterns and Beliefs? »

On a self-development or spiritual path, the first thing to understand is that transformation happens on its own accord; we cannot do transformation; transformation is not in our hands, in our power. Yet we can do much for transformation to happen. And this is what we are going to look at and experience tonight; how to set the pace for transformation to take place.
Maybe the first thing to understand is that behaviour patterns and beliefs go hand in hand. Whenever there is a behaviour pattern, a belief is not far away.

A belief is an idea or a thought form that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion; something that we give credit to whether it has a reality or not. When we believe we have the conviction that what we believe in is the truth.
A behaviour pattern is a way of functioning or operating within our life environment. It is a way of managing our actions mostly according to past experienced situations. Very seldom do we act; we mostly react and our reactions are driven by our beliefs whether we are conscious of them or not. This implies that there is an association, a direct link between behaviour patterns and beliefs.

Behaviour patterns are not wrong in themselves; they are simply the outcome of a thought form, of a belief that we have. Yet very often we find that these behaviour patterns are inadequate and that they deserve us rather than serving us, thus the natural desire to change or transform them so that they don’t hinder us anymore.
And maybe you have tried to change certain behaviour pattern that you have and made efforts is this attempt. But did it really work?
May be yes for a while but sooner or later you felt back in the old groove and wondered why. The reason is simple and I’ve mentioned it a few moments ago, our behaviour patterns are driven by our beliefs.
And rather than spending time trying to change our behaviour patterns, let’s look at the beliefs that sustain these behaviour patterns.

• If I believe that eating meat is wrong I will become a vegetarian and most probably I will judge those who eat meat.
• If I believe that men are superior to women or vice versa, I will tend to act in a dismissive way towards women or men.
• If I believe that divorce is shameful, I will tend to stay in a relationship that may not be fulfilling for me.
• If I believe that fate exists, I will tend to be depressed.

These are just a few examples… and I’d like to invite you to participate in a little exercise to understand from experience, rather than taking for granted what I am saying. And together we will go through the different steps towards transformation of beliefs and patterns.

→ Take a moment to find out what beliefs you carry, the most obvious ones for now, the three or four most obvious ones.
→ Now, out of this short list of your beliefs, choose the stronger one, the most important one for you.
Once you’ve done that pause for a moment and hold that belief in front of you:
‘I believe that…’
→ And as you do so, notice whatever thoughts associated with this belief come to your mind.
Write them down
→ Once you’ve done this, find out how believing what you believe makes you act in your day to day life.

This first step will allow you to become more conscious of what your beliefs are and how they play a part in your life. Remember, we cannot transform what we are not conscious of and becoming aware or conscious is the first necessary step.
The second step is about understanding where that belief comes from. Where did I pick up this belief? Very often, if not always, we pick up beliefs from others, parents, friends, teachers or priest because we assume (and that’s another belief) that they must be right since they are older or have a position in life.

→ What made me believe what I believe?
Find out with your specific belief where and how you’ve picked it up.
→ Does this belief comes from someone else or was there a specific situation that you’ve experienced that gave birth to that belief?

Once again, the more clarity you can gain on the origin of your belief, the easier it will be for a transformation to take place.
If it comes from someone else, obviously it is not yours but only a thought form that you have adopted. And the question that you may now want to ask yourself is: ‘why did I take that belief on?’, What was or were my motivations for taking this belief on board?
And you will be surprise, may be it was because you wanted to please someone, get approval or be accepted by someone or be included in a group, whatever that group was, family, school or a community.
Finding out your motivation will gently allow a melting of your belief.

For example:
• I wanted approval and recognition from father so taking on his belief about women kept me on his side and gave me sense of security.
• Or mother was constantly worried about money in her marriage, cursing existence for not giving her the man that she thought she deserved and who could bring a good income. And you wanted mama’s attention, love and care so in order to get that you agreed with her that yes there is fate and bad luck.

On the other hand if your belief comes from a situation that you have experienced; for instance: as a child you were often expressing your feelings or desires, yet each time you did you were blamed or made ashamed of.
Your belief could be that expressing my feeling is wrong and shameful and maybe even further to: ‘I am shameful to have feelings or desires’.
In this case your belief does not come from you seeking attention or love but from your experience of others imposing on you, from others not respecting you.
The way out of this belief will be to consciously allowing the expression of your feelings and desires in a safe environment, an environment where you won’t be judge, condemned or made ashamed of.

From what has been said and your own experience in this little exercise of tracking back where your belief comes from you can understand that the problem is not with or about the belief that you thought had a grip on you but more with or about your motivations, your experiences.
The implication of this tracking back is that for transformation to take place, the focus should not be so much on the belief itself but on ‘you’.
You wanted to be loved, approved, respected, etc... and in order to get that you took on a belief with in its wake a behaviour pattern.
This recognition, when it happens will completely eradicate the belief from your mind because you are now dealing with the root cause of your belief. And this is how transformation is at work, when we bring our awareness to the root cause of any phenomena and give support to what needs to be taken care of.

It is our beliefs that are the drive of our behaviour patterns, therefore, trying to deal with behaviour patterns directly will not have much effect, yes a little can change can be put in place, but as long as the root cause is not seen, these patterns will continue to have a grip on our lives.
Remember, 99% of the time the beliefs that you carry are not from your own experience of reality; they were imparted on you from outside. This is why it becomes relatively easy to support a transformation to take place.

Remember the steps:
→ What is my belief?
→ What are the thought forms associated with this belief?
→ How believing what I believe made me act in my day to day life?
→ How did I picked it up that belief, what was/were my motivations for taking this belief on?

The false always dissolve in front of clarity this is why bringing awareness to our beliefs, to our thought form enable transformation to settle in effortlessly.

This being said, I need to add that there are two sorts of beliefs; conscious beliefs and also unconscious ones. And of course these unconscious beliefs are more difficult to spot and dissolve.
To make you understand what an unconscious belief is, I’ll give you a personal example.
When I was 9 years old I became very sick; I hosted a virus in my left leg that was eating the bone structure of the leg. The doctors were talking about cutting my left leg to stop the infection from spreading. The pain was so intense that most of the time I was in a sort of feverish coma, yet I could hear everything that was being said around me and I did hear the doctors and my parents talking about this eventuality of cutting my leg.
After a while I was taken to hospital for surgery and unfortunately, I woke up while on the operation table, completely shocked, screaming and shouting, not knowing what was really going on, not able to feel my left leg and I was afraid that they were in the process of cutting it. They gave me another dose of tranquilizer to calm me down and keep me unconscious.
When I woke up some time later I could not realize whether they had cut my leg or not because the whole leg was in plaster and I did not have any sensation from my leg. My parents told me that the doctors did not cut my leg but I could not really believe them. It was only when some sensation came back in my leg and that I could see with my own eyes that my leg was still there that I knew that they had not cut it. It took me seven months to recover and walk normally again.
On a conscious level I knew that my two legs were there; yet unconsciously and this I only discovered many years later, I was still with the belief that they were going to cut my leg. And because of that belief my whole left side was pulled in as a ‘no’ to: ‘I don’t want my leg to be cut’. And although I could see and feel that the reality was that my leg is here and function well, that it was obvious that it had not been cut of; the unconscious belief that ‘they are going to cut my leg’ was active in the background and created many draw backs in my body.
I had to work many hours psychologically and physically to access this unconscious belief because of the terror and panic that was linked to it. And when I discovered that I had this this belief, that it was active in me, it was both a shock to realize that I had carried this belief for so long and at the same time a relief because a deep understanding took place. Not only was the belief seen but its root cause too and the tension that was held in the body could then relax.
I’m relating this example because I know from experience that it is rewarding to take care of the conscious beliefs that we carry when we want to live a healthier and more natural life and it does pay off to go a little deeper and take care of the beliefs that are haunting our subconscious mind.   
And working with people made me understand that it is a common strategy to every human psyche to bury undesirable or unbearable beliefs in some corner of our subconscious mind until there is a possibility of clarifying it. Life or Existence is always health oriented, growth oriented, even if it takes years for spring to come.

I’d like to conclude this talk by encouraging each of you to question every belief that you have, one by one, using the steps that I’ve describe during this talk so that your life can enrich and take a different turn, a healthy turn, so that you become the master of your own destiny and not a mere believer. 

Thank you all for your patient and attentive listening.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, March 2018

The following text is an abridged transcription of the last talk from the Embracing Our Inner Child audio series.

Dear Friends,
I would like to clarify a possible misconception about working with the Inner Child concept and what is sometimes referred to as: ‘Our True Nature’. When we work with the Inner Child concept we work on the level of the personality, also known as the ‘ego’, and this work is mainly about:

• Clarifying the various elements that compose our personality
• Bringing understanding to the ways that we function in life
• Stepping out of non-useful judgments and obsolete behaviour patterns
• Bringing a loving attention and care to these wounded parts of us

All this, in order to regain the aliveness, the spontaneity and the creativity that was veiled during childhood.

This work with the Inner Child enables us to live a life more in accordance with our true aspirations, letting our intrinsic passion for life blossom. As this work helps us to gain a more loving attitude towards ourselves and consequently towards others, it also makes us permeable to another dimension; a dimension that is beyond what we usually imagine ourselves to be.
What we call ‘the personality’ is actually centred or focus on one and only parameter and this parameter is: ‘me’. Everything is centred on or revolves around this ‘me’, hence the term ‘ego’ (me in Latin).

• Me and my thoughts
• Me and my feelings
• Me and my body and its limitations
• Me and my ideas, judgements, beliefs and expectations
• Me and my belongings (my house, my car, my wife/husband, my child, etc.)

And this sense of ‘me’ is made even stronger when we start experiencing that: ‘I’ exists, that: ‘I’ am here, that: it is ‘me’; not in a self-centred or egoistic way but more on an experiential level, a down to earth level of ‘me’ standing on my own two feet with a sense of strength, of openness to life in general together with the joy of simply being alive, existing.
This is what working with the Inner Child can bring you to experience and consequently live this sense of: ‘I’ exist, ‘I’ am here, it is ‘me’.

Yet when we reach this level of understanding and experiencing of our personality, we can also sense that there is more to life than this personality realm, maybe this personality realm is not our life ultimate goal; maybe something vaster is possible. This questioning can also come with a sense of something incomplete, something missing.
And a question may spontaneously arise: “if so, then what is actually this ‘me’?” or “who am I?”
When such a question arises naturally, and not because of following some ideal or the beliefs that it fits well to be interested in such questions, a plunge into a different dimension is then kicked off. A plunge into what is usually referred to as: ‘spirituality’; a door to a ‘spiritual path’ opens and with it the search for ‘who’ and ‘what’ we truly are has started, the search for our True Nature, for our Essence.

In our first audio and in Connecting with our Inner Child I mentioned about our our Essence.

I mentioned that: « when a child is born, he is untampered consciousness, this new life is pure acceptance; this new life is pure stillness. This new life is what is often referred to as Buddha nature, True Nature or Godliness and that Aliveness, Joy, Acceptance and Stillness are what compose this ‘Essence’. Our essence is the first layer from which all subsequent layers will spring ».
And this is what spirituality is truly about: regaining connection with our essence, living from our essence and not from this sense of ‘me’. So when we are on a ‘spiritual path’ we are not searching for something that would be outside of us, nor even inside of us, but more regaining the capacity to live connected with our Essence.
When we are working with the ‘Inner Child’ concept we aim to regain the aliveness, the joy, the spontaneity of this ‘I am’ that we were as a child so that our lives can be lived in openness and creatively. And to regain this true sense of ‘me’ we had to recognize and discard, let go of, what we were not: the judgments that were put on us, the ideas and beliefs that we took on, the behaviour patterns that we took on in order to cover our wounds.
In the same way the work on a spiritual path or towards Our True Nature is also about recognizing and discarding what we are not so that living from our essence and not from a sense of ‘me’ can become a lived experience.
Questioning this sense of ‘me’ is the purpose of all spiritual teachings and in order to do this, over the centuries different ‘self-enquiry’ methods have been developed. Self-enquiry simply means enquiring about the authenticity of what we refer to as: ‘me’, also called ‘the self’ or ‘I’.

So please don’t misunderstand the Inner Child work with the aim to regain the capacity to live connected with our Essence or True Nature. Working with the Inner Child concept and Self-enquiry refer to two different realms of this human being that we are; the personality realm of our incarnation and the trans-personal realm. Yet, although these two realms are quite dissimilar, their form an undividable unity often named: Oneness or True Nature.
And just as you needed courage and integrity to embark on this work with the Inner Child concept in order to face and heal the wounds that were gathered during childhood, in the same way, Self-enquiry will require from you courage and integrity together with an unwavering desire for truth in order to let this Oneness or True Nature emerge.
The quest for Oneness or True Nature is the natural continuation of the Inner Child work; some even say that the Inner Child work is the needed bridge towards our True Nature. And the question that may arise for you now is: How to get there? What is this self-enquiry and how to work with it?
As mentioned earlier, self-enquiry simply means enquiring about the authenticity of what we refer to as: ‘me’, ‘the self’ or ‘I’ in order to discover the true nature of this ‘I’ of this ‘me’; another way of saying this would be: ‘Is it true?’, is this ‘me’ a tangible reality?
That is what self-enquiry is; a quest for truth and this quest require a plunge into the reality of what is and to leave aside what we dream or imagine the reality to be.

We naturally tend to hold on to this ‘me’ because this is all we know and because of the intrinsic fear: “who will I be without this ‘me’?”, “who will I be without ‘my’ story?” We’ve lived with this ‘me’; we’ve lived from this ‘me’ for as long as we can remember. We have taken this ‘me’ for granted; never questioning its reality and not realizing that actually this sense of me generates a separation, a duality and that this duality or separation is the root cause of all our suffering.
Haven’t you noticed that there is always ‘me’ and ‘something other than me’?

• ‘me’ and ‘you’
• ‘me’ and ‘my body’
• ‘me’ and ‘my mind, my ideas, my beliefs’
• ‘me’ and ‘my feelings, my emotions’.
• ‘me’ and ‘my story’, the story of this ‘me’.
• And for those more ‘spiritually advanced’: ‘me’ and my ‘awareness’.

Understanding this constant duality at play is the first step in self-enquiry and the knack of self-enquiry is to bring the focus, not on what is ‘other than me’ as we usually do but on ‘me’ and to question its reality. Self-enquiry is about discarding what is not ‘me’, like peeling an onion, not this, not this, not this, until nothing more remain to be discarded and it is then that Oneness or True Nature reveals itself.
It is a journey of many rewards, a journey worth travelling on and this is my invitation to you, now that you’ve regained a sense of strength, of openness to life in general and the joy of simply being alive after completing the work with the Inner Child, to continue your journey with the awareness intensive retreats.
In these retreats we use a specific self-enquiry method derived from the Japanese Zen tradition that is designed to lead the participant to directly experience Oneness or True Nature.

Simply see what feels right for you, knowing that when you let your heart guide your steps, you will never go wrong and never be deceived.
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, November 2017

One of the advantages of taking part in a long intensive is that some of the beliefs or pre-conceived ideas that we carry get shaken in their very foundation and can even be uprooted for good. As far as truth is concerned, the question one is working on does not really matter, what really matters is that one keeps at it day after day. Before I took this 2-week intensive, I was under the impression that when I will ‘get to the truth’, the ‘ultimate truth’, this very fact will liberate me, will free me of all mental conditionings. But first I had to get to that point of ‘being truth’.

Some years ago, in a 3-day intensive, I did experienced ‘being truth’; yet that experience did not actually liberate me. At the most it gave me this certainty that what I am is truth and gave me the ability to recognize truth whenever it is expressed, either in me or in another. I came to experience and understand that Truth arises in a person when there is an adequacy between what is felt inside and what is being expressed. In other words when you are what you express.
Yet I was still under the impression that I ‘had to be truth’ in its ultimate sense to be liberated.
Well… this proved to be a ‘true’ pre-conceived idea. As I was trotting along in this 2-week intensive, expressing each truth of the moment as it arose in my awareness out of my intention to have a direct experience of me – I was working with the question: ‘Who am I’, I suddenly became aware of this saying: ‘Truth liberates’ and at the same time I realized that I was liberating myself as truth was being said, moment to moment, simple little truth after simple little truth.
In that moment of understanding, all went upside down, a crack of laughter came out; I realized that the mistake was that I had turned truth into an object, a goal to be attained before liberation could take place.
This was a relief in two ways; there was no ‘truth’ out there to be attained as a prerequisite to some liberation and I was liberating myself right here and now by the very fact of expressing truth moment to moment. In a burst of laughter I realized that I was the craftsman of my own liberation.
What a joy and a relief this was!
This understanding certainly gave me juice to move on through deeper layers of my psyche and a confidence, a trust that all is all right as it is. It also made me understand more clearly what is meant by ‘look at the path rather than the goal’ or ‘the path is the goal’.

More later
Namaste to you all
Rakendra

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on being free from emotional bondage.

Dear Friends on the path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon,
Tonight, within the context of the Embracing Our Inner Child workshops series, I’ve been asked to bring answers to this question: « How do we get trapped in our emotions? » and clarify « what emotional bondage is ».

I’m sure that it is a well-known experience to all of you that sometimes you found yourselves entangled in one specific emotion that seems not to leave you. You are constantly angry or resentful for instance. Whatever situations life brings you, anger is roaming in you. Or sadness seems to be your life companion. It may also be fear, or shame or guilt and it feels like you’ve known this emotion since a long long time; almost as if you were born with it.

It is actually not so much the emotion that we are trapped in but more the feeling that sustain the emotion. And it may feel like an invisible net entangling us.

As a reminder, an ‘emotion’ is only the outburst of a feeling; it is a feeling in motion, the visible part of a feeling. You could compare it to the visible part of an iceberg. And although it is this visible part that causes relationship problems; it is not the source. The source dwells within the feeling. This implies that acting on the emotion to reduce it or dispel it may have some effect but will not actually solve anything.
I’m sure that many of you have tried to change behaviour patterns linked with a feeling or at least tried to regulate them as best you could and noticed that actually however hard you tried to change or control this emotional bondage, it is still active in you; whenever a certain button is pushed; the feeling and its emotion burst out and you are overwhelmed by it, feeling trapped in it and it leaves you helpless, impotent, at a loss with this.

So the question that naturally comes is: ‘How come?’, ‘Why am I trapped like this?’, ‘Why do I remain enslaved to this emotion?’
We remain trapped or enslaved because we don’t look at the feeling directly, we usually only try to control it so that it does not disturb us too much. Seldom do we take the time to question this feeling; to find out where it comes from, to understand what its root cause is.
We get trapped into emotional bondage because we cannot face our feelings directly. On the surface it may look like we don’t want to face this emotion or this feeling but in reality, it is part of an inbuilt and automatic mechanism to put aside what can be felt as a threat to our survival. We don’t have any say on this; it is part of the functioning of our autonomous nervous system, just like breathing is, just like growing old is. Everything in us is geared towards survival, so whenever a situation is recognized by our nervous system as potentially threatening to our survival it is put aside in order to keep us functioning in the best way possible. An adaptation you could say. We adapt; and this is not specific to human being; everything in nature is bind to this law. From plants to animals, all are bind to this law of adaptation in order to survive, in order to perpetuate the species.
I mention this because very often as human being we develop this idea that we are not good enough; that we should be different, that we have to work hard to change and this allows a feeling of guilt or shame to creep in.
It is really out of our control, out of our doing, yet because we also have a built-in health regulator system, a possibility of transformation exists.
So the root-cause of that feeling is put aside in some unconscious part of our psyche, where it stays dormant, waiting to be digested. Yet to be digested it needs to come to the open, to the conscious mind where it can be consciously felt and recognized for what it is and thus dissolve.
Existence is constantly giving us opportunities to bring the resolution of that bondage out but we seldom grab these as opportunities, most of the time we experience them as hindrances.

The feeling in itself is not the problem; the feeling is only the outcome of a situation experienced as painful, thus trying to fix the feeling will not bare fruits. What will bear fruits is a conscious acceptance of the situation, a yes to it. And this is often difficult because the original situation can be well hidden and our built-in health regulator system is also often incapacitated. So we are left with a sense of being trapped, enslaved to that feeling, with seemingly no other option than to fight it or bare it.
It is Fear and Attachment that are keeping us entangled in this non-healthy dynamic. 

Understanding this mechanism, understanding that it is not out of our doing that we are trapped into a feeling can help us take away any unnecessary guilt feeling and give us the incentive to have a look at how can I take care of this feeling that is creating trouble for me.
It is this change of attitude, not wanting to get rid of the feeling but accepting it and letting it tell us what it has to say that will allow our built-in health regulator system to kick in. In a sense we don’t have much to do, simply being with, allowing; yet this seems to be the most difficult thing to do, at least in the beginning.
Once we have this willingness to understand what is at play in our psyche, to look openly at what is driving us, a different gestalt starts to operate. By and by fighting disappears and Love settles in. It may take some time to come to the root cause of that feeling, to walk that path towards being free from this emotional bondage, yet a healing process is being generated and transformation takes place with, in its wake, maturity.
A more mature person will be the outcome.

The person who raised this question: ‘How do we get trapped in our emotions?’ most probably had a second question in mind, maybe something like: ‘and how can I free myself from this emotional bondage that I feel caught in?’
I’ve mentioned earlier the general direction to take; and that is to move out from the desire to get rid of the feeling and to accept that it is like this. This is a needed change and already a major change because you are moving out of judging yourself for having this emotional bondage and engaging into a more loving relationship with yourself.
And for this you will have to practice what I have mentioned in previous talks and workshops:
‘The transformative trilogy’:

→ Recognize (what is)
→ Accept (that this is the case)
→ Express (what needs to be expressed)

• Recognizing comes first, because it is not possible to deal with something that we are not conscious of.
• Then accepting that this is the case opens the door to understand what this feeling wants to tell us.
• Finally, expressing helps create a discharge of the stuck energy and this ‘expressing’ can take different forms, not only emotional release as many people think. Verbal sharing, writing, painting, dancing can be used as well as different bodywork techniques.

Walking this transformative path alone will not be easy, support is needed and support can take the form of participating in a workshop or taking individual sessions. Outside support is needed because our mind can easily delude us and the supportive hand of someone who has walked this path before can be an encouragement, an incentive to drop our fears and to gather the needed courage to trust ourselves, to trust life or existence. Because ultimately there is only trust; trust is all there is.
Acceptance is Trust and Trust is Acceptance, two words for the same reality.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening,
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, October-2017

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Rumi, excerpted from: The Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks

The following text is the transcription of a talk given on a WeChat platform on Western Psychology & Eastern Meditation.

Dear Friends on the Path,
Welcome to this WeChat salon,
Tonight I’ve been asked to bring answers to this question: « How can we combine Western Psychology with Eastern Meditation in order to come back to our True Nature? ».

Some of you may remember what I’ve said on this topic in a previous Salon in Hangzhou, yet it will be helpful to recall the main points for those of you who were not present at the time and it will also be an opportunity to go deeper.As you probably remember, in my talk in the last WeChat salon, I clarified the difference between Meditation and techniques for meditation.
To summarise what I said in that talk: all meditation techniques are designed to access a state of inner union or wholeness which can be called: ‘Meditation’, ‘True Nature’, ‘Buddha Nature’, ‘the Divine’, “the Self”, ‘Silent Awareness’, etc. many names for one single ‘experience’.
Moreover, in this approach, with these techniques, little importance is given to what we call the personality, simply because our True Nature has nothing to do with the personality level.
The Eastern approach regards what we call the personality as an illusion that we have to transcend. Or better said, regards the identification with this personality as an illusion.

The modern Western approach on the contrary gives much importance to the personality. I say the modern Western approach because in the past (10–13 centuries and before) the emphasis in the West was also on meditation and not on so much on the personality.
It is with the arising of modern age (17th century) and the development of knowledge and technology that a shift happened. The focus was then put more on the individual and how this individual could live and lead a better life, first materially and then psychologically.
When the basic material needs of food and shelter were fulfilled, the concern shifted towards fulfilling the psychological needs which in turn lead to the development of the psychoanalysis movement.

Psychology deals with the well-being of the human being, with feelings, with emotions with ideas and concepts, whilst the Eastern approach bypasses this to focus solely on the Self or True Nature. 
What the Western approach takes for granted and for real, the Eastern approach gives little attention to it or even denies it.
With this in mind, you can start to understand the difference of these two approaches:

→ Eastern Meditation
→ Western Psychology

To summarise:
Generally speaking, the Eastern approach declares that we are not the body, that we are not those feelings and that we are not the mind.  We are other than that, we are Consciousness to use one word. Our True Nature is Consciousness.
It declares that the separation that is created when we identify with our body-mind system is simply an illusion and that we have to see through this illusion to really be who we are.

The Western approach, on the other hand, puts forward that the only reality is this body-mind system and that if we want to live happily we have to take care of it physically and psychologically.
On its own, western psychology is helpful to resolve some basic suffering issues and this is already quite valuable; yet, for someone in search of his True Nature; western psychology will not suffice, it will need to be coupled with something else and that something else can be a self-enquiry method or some meditation techniques in order to better ease the way to this opening to what is real.

These two systems are radically different in their approach and may even seem antagonistic like day and night, like black and white.
It is not quite so and to make you understand more clearly how to understand this apparent dichotomy, take the example of the Tao symbol, this black-and-white circle with an opposite colour dot in each segment.
They seem to be opposite because our perception of ‘the reality’ is somewhat distorted and narrowed to focus on this side or that side and by doing so we keep ourselves in a dual perspective and we miss the fact that these two sides are in fact united in one circle. The key is the circle, not one of the sides or the other.
Similarly our approach to what we are needs to include both, the incarnation that we are and well as the non-manifested aspect.

→ On one level we are this body-mind system which appears to be a separate entity, independent, different from any ‘others’.
→ On another level we are the absolute, the non-manifested (our True Nature) which does not exclude anything, which is all inclusive.

Every human being is an incarnation that comes out of ‘nothing’, out of the ‘absolute’ and disappear into ‘nothing’. Before you were born you did not exist as a physical entity, after you pass away the body decays and returns to nothing.
Yet this time between birth and death is the manifestation of that ‘nothing’, just like a wave is a manifestation of the ocean. And for us human beings, this incarnation implies three main aspects under one roof:

→ A body and sensations
→ Feelings and emotions
→ A thinking mind

Plus…. and this is what I meant by ‘one roof’: the awareness of all these three aspects. That’s the circle I was mentioning before with the Tao symbol; the two sides that are united in one circle.
As human beings, we are all these: the awareness, the body, the feelings and the thinking mind.
The state of ‘Meditation’ is the inclusion of all these aspects. That’s why it is important, when we are in search of experiencing our ‘True Nature’ not to exclude any of these aspects.
We are multi-layer, multidimensional and each layer not only has its place, its function but is also inseparable from the other.
Yet, identifying with one aspect is a sure way to miss the whole, just like omitting one will lead to a misunderstanding of what reality is. And what is reality you may ask?
Reality is wholeness, unity, oneness, non-separation, non-duality. Said differently, reality is the inclusion of all there is, including the seemingly separation, the seemingly identification with an entity that we define as: ‘me’.

To come to this realisation, the easiest way is to start with what is directly at our reach. And what is directly reachable, palpable, is our body-mind system.
This body, these feelings and this mind are directly available to us, even if ultimately we have to transcend them in order to experience our True Nature.
The Western approach of psychology can be of a great help on this path towards our True Nature because it will help us to understand our functioning mechanisms as well as our psychological blockages. It will help us understand the cause of our suffering.
That’s why working on loosening the body, working with feelings and their expression, as well as making use of the thinking mind will help open and broaden our scope of understanding about what living is about, about what life is.
We are life at play, yet we are seldom conscious of this undoubtable reality.

While working on these three realms, body, feelings and mind, by and by the relationship between thoughts, feelings and sensations will be seen and with this observation, a de-identification from this play will start taking place which in turn will create openness for something wider to manifest.
When we disengage from our identification with the ideas and beliefs that we carry, it will automatically allow the experience of awareness to take place, simply because Awareness is our True Nature, two different words for a single reality, the reality that we are.

If we start from the other end, from the ‘spiritual’ end, the risk is to move into some dream land, some dis-incarnated land, like taking refuge on a mountain pick, completely cut off from the reality of this world, a kind of ‘spiritual schizophrenia’.
It can also feel like moving towards some seemingly inaccessible peaks.
It will be like talking about food while you are starving. This will not satisfy your hunger; you’ll have to eat real food first.
And only then, when you are contented with basic food, will you be available for more subtle nourishment. Just like you cannot write a book before you’ve learned the alphabet and how to put letters together to form a word and then a sentence.

That’s why I emphasise working on the personality level as a doorway to meditation.
Since most people are entangled in some emotional knots and mind sets resulting from their childhood experience, working on the personality level is needed to first make some room; to clean the space before something else can reveal itself.
And the active meditation techniques that I use, especially the dynamic meditation, are also geared in that direction of clearing the way for a state of meditation to arise.

Most of you have travelled by plane and you’ve all noticed that after take-off, the plane has to cross or go through a layer of clouds before reaching the ever and infinite blue sky.
You are the blue sky, each of us is this blue sky but each of us is also entangled in some clouds and for some, the clouds are darker, stormier.
But they are only clouds, the essential you is the blue sky.
Yet to realise this, a little clarification work is needed.

So, coming back to the ‘How’ question: « How to combine Western Psychology with Eastern Meditation in order to come back to our True Nature? ».

In the previous WeChat salon, talking about the work that I offer, I mentioned that: “Because we are incarnated human beings as well as ‘spiritual’ beings, working on both these areas is needed”.
And the form that I have given to my workshops matches the different phases that we go through in life. Since most of our distorted behaviour as adults come from childhood traumas, working on our childhood conditioning with the series of workshops: ‘Embracing our Inner Child’, is a necessary step.
As mentioned before, we are incarnated human beings, so in these workshops I weave work on the body together with work on feelings and their expression, since repressing has played a major role in many people’s lives. The thinking mind is also engaged to not only intellectually understand what is going on but also to bring clarity to what is being experienced.
And as we are also ‘spiritual’ beings, I’ve included an active meditation, dynamic meditation in all my courses. Dynamic meditation is a perfect meditation technique because it weaves together the physical and personality level during the first three stages and the spiritual level during the last two stages.
Once this personality level has been clarified, one can move on to the more in-depth approach with the Awareness Intensives Retreats. 

When working on the personality level we must not forget that we are not ‘just that’. And when working on the ‘spiritual’ level we also must not forget that we are also incarnated beings.
We are one connected whole, there is really no separation between the physical and the spiritual; it is all one.
This weaving is important to support a durable change, a durable transformation and the two main ingredients of this weaving are: Commitment and Acceptance.

• Commitment keeps you in line with the task at hand, commitment creates freedom.
On this, let me quote a Sufi mystic Aziza Sa'id:

“When you commit to your path, when you give yourself over to your way of growth, magic happens... obstacles get out of your way, mountains lay down before you, the sky opens up above you, and you will find yourself transformed.”

• Acceptance creates a supportive and favourable environment for transformation to take place.

Attending these workshops can become an opportunity for you to learn, on a practical level, on a tangible level, on an experiential level, how to combine Western Psychology with Eastern Meditation in order to come back to your True Nature because you will be working on in the full spectrum of what composes a human being; your ‘beingness’.
To close this talk, I’d like to encourage every one of you who would like a durable transformation to take place, everyone who senses this desire to come back to his True Nature to gather courage and participate in these workshops as well as in individual sessions where a more personal support can be provided.
Coming back to your True Nature should be your primary focus, not simply trying to resolve some issue that you may have in your life.

Thank you for your patient and attentive listening
With Love,
Rakendra
Hangzhou, July-2016

I am nothing. I believe that I am; my ego pretends to be the ruler, the king, the emperor; yet he rules on a kingdom of clouds, of inconsistencies, of illusions. I am nothing and my ego wants to be something, to be somebody, it wants to exist.
Yet I ‘know’ that I am nothing, I ‘know’ that it is Existence which is, it is existence which gives me shelter for a time, a lifetime. I ‘know’ that I am nothing and that Existence only is.
And this knowing enriches me, fills me with joy. I finally take my true place, I've found my true place, harmony in the world is again here; I do not disturb it anymore.
With this knowing, several generations of bragging, of blaspheming, of lies dissolve; humility is back, celebration can take place!

~~~

- Haïkus from Basho -
The old pond
a frog jumps in,
splash!
~
Sitting quietly,
doing nothing,
spring comes,
and the grass grows by itself.

During my stay in Taiwan I had this desire to learn more about the different kinds of tea. A friend took me to a 'Tea shop' where I could ask questions and taste different teas. Everything was going along smoothly, I was learning about 'White teas', 'Green teas', 'Oolong Teas', 'Puer Teas' and watching the art of brewing & serving these different teas as well as seeping them.
Our 'tea master' was preparing different teas for us to taste. In fact it is quite a similar experience to wine tasting – looking at the colour, smelling the fragrance, slowly seeping the tea. Watching our 'tea master' preparing the teas was too, an experience in itself.
Cooling the water in a little jar after it has boiled so that the tea does not get a heat shock, then poring the cooled water over the tea in a glass container, covering it whilst the tea is 'waking up', discarding this first 'brew', then adding more water for the tea to reveal its qualities. From time to time she would take the lid off this glass 'tea pot' and smell the inside cover to check the fragrance. When the 'right timing' had come, she would then pour the tea into our tiny cups for us to smell, see and taste.

Quite a ritual indeed! And what to say about the 'instruments' and 'containers' used… We experienced white teas, Green teas, 'Puer teas' and more fermented teas like Oolong teas until she asked us if we would like to taste a vintage tea, an 80 year old tea.
Vintage tea…, 80 years old?
I am surprised, are we taking about Tea or Cognac? – Allright, let's try…
The first sip was a bit 'oaky' and not too pleasant, may be because of all the other teas we had experienced before, may be because it was the 'first brew'.
Our 'tea master' pores us a second brew, little darker in colour, amber like. I take a little time to smell it and start sipping it gently.
Suddenly all my senses are on alert, something is happening here. A meeting is happening; it is as if the tea is talking to me, as if the tea has a soul. It is no more a tea, some nice beverage, it becomes like a friend, a communion is happening.
I am not drinking tea – not even tea is being drunk – there is no me and there is no tea – simply a merging, a oneness.
Blissful moment, divine moment, silent moment!
All I can articulate is: 'this tea has a soul'. That tea touched my heart; I fell grateful towards this tea for giving me such an opportunity, such a divine moment.

What an experience it was, not easy to find the words to convey what happened, especially after a few days. Can any tea – or any beverage - convey a similar experience? Most probably, I guess it only depends on how I am open to 'this moment'. The previous teas, the set up, the relaxed state opened the way for this experience to take place. Still this 'old fellow' has something and it would have been pitiful to miss it.
Namaste 'old fellow', I bow to you 'old fellow', saluting the Buddha within you.

In gratefulness
Rakendra,
Taichung, Taiwan Septembre 2007

In the Japanese Rinzai Zen School, riddle-like question, called ‘koans’, are used to provoke the practitioner to discover truth within himself. A koan cannot be answered through logic; the answer can only be experiential. When the mind is exhausted with trying and trying to figure it out, it gives way and you are then available to experience the existential truth of the answer.
Similarly, the awareness intensive uses traditional questions such as: ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What am I?’ to point towards a ‘being’ experience. More specifically oriented questions such as: ‘What Love is?’ are also used to experience a quality, an aspect of our essence.

Self-enquiring with such like questions brings the practitioner to become conscious of his beliefs, his pre-conceived ideas and mind frames about that particular aspect of himself. As he fully communicates what came out of his intention to directly experience his question, a clarification occurs, with, in its wake, a letting go.

Questions used during a 3-day intensive
Who is in → Tell me who is in
Who am I? → Tell me who you are
What am I? → Tell me what you are
Life → Tell me what life is
Another → Tell me what another is

Questions used during longer intensives
The same one as above plus:
Relaxation → Tell me what relaxation is
Trust → Tell me what trust is
Sexuality → Tell me what sexuality is
Beauty → Tell me what beauty is
Love → Tell me what love is
Truth → Tell me what truth is
Freedom → Tell me what freedom is
Alone → Tell me what you are like if completely alone
Consciousness → Tell me what consciousness is
Mῡ → Tell me what mῡ is
True Nature → Tell me your true nature

« It is all about discarding, not this, not this and ultimately when nothing remains to be discarded -- then is the explosion. Do not cling to anything, to any thought. Go on and on until the nothingness.»

♦ A Zen story….
« I have heard about a little boy Toyo and his meditations.
He was only twelve years old but he wanted to be given something to ponder, to meditate on, so one evening he went to Mokurai, the Zen master, struck the gong softly to announce his presence and sat before the master in respectful silence.
Finally the master said:
Toyo, show me the sound of two hands.
Toyo clapped his hands.
Good, said the master. Now show me the sound of one hand clapping.
Toyo was silent. Finally, he bowed and left to meditate on the problem.
The next night he returned and struck the gong with one palm.
That is not right, said the master.
The next night Toyo returned and played the Shamisen with one hand.
That is not right, said the master.
Again and again Toyo returned with some answer but the master said again and again, “That is not right”.
For nights Toyo tried new sounds but each and every answer was rejected. The question itself was absurd so no answer could be right. And when on the eleventh night Toyo came, before he spoke anything the master said: That is still not right!
Then he stopped coming to the master.
For a year, he thought of every possible sound and discarded them all, and when there was nothing left to be discarded any more he exploded into enlightenment. When he was no more he returned to the master and without striking the gong he sat down and bowed. He was not saying anything and there was silence.
Then the master said, so you have heard the sound without sound! »

Osho, excerpted from: A Cup of Tea
Letter 215

The schedule of the awareness intensive is quite a demanding one. This rigor allow a secure and supportive framework within which participants are able to put all other concerns aside and focus intensely on their quest. The days start early and finish late. Each day there are up to ten communication exercises (dyads). These are interwoven with other meditative activities such as active meditations, silent walks, working meditation, eating and resting meditation. In this way, the day becomes a 24-hour self-enquiry.

First Evening
20:00 – 21:00 → Introduction Talk
21:00 – 21:40 → Dyad 1
21:45 – 22:00 → Snack + 15 min to prepare for sleeping meditation
22:00 – 06:00 → Sleeping meditation [8h00]

Daily
06:00 – 06:15 → Wake up and get ready
06:20 – 07:00 → Dyad 1
07:00 – 08:10 → Dynamic Meditation [70min with explanation]
08:10 – 08:50 → Dyad 2
08:50 – 09:30 → Breakfast and Shower [40min - bells at 9h25]
09:30 – 10:15 → Work as Meditation [45min explanation included – bells at 10h10]
10:15 – 10:55 → Dyad 3
11:00 – 11:40 → Dyad 4
11:45 – 12:55 → Active Meditation or silent walk [70min explanation included]
13:00 – 13:40 → Dyad 5
13:40 – 15:00 → Lunch and Rest [1h20 - bells at 14h55]
15:00 – 15:40 → Talk & Questions/answers
15:45 – 16:05 → Silent sitting
16:10 – 16:50 → Dyad 6
16:55 – 17:35 → Dyad 7
17:40 – 18:20 → Active Meditation or silent walk [70min explanation included]
18:20 – 19:30 → Dinner and Rest [1h10 - bells at 19h25]
19:30 – 20:10 → Dyad 8
20:15 – 20:55 → Dyad 9
21:00 – 21:15 → Breathing exercises or Physical exercises for 15min
21:20 – 22:00 → Dyad 10
22:00 – 22:15 → Snack + 15 min to prepare for sleeping meditation
22:15 – 06:00 → Sleeping meditation [7h45]

Last Afternoon
13:40 – 15:00 → Lunch and Rest [1h20 - bells at 14h55]
15:00 – 15:40 → Dyad 6
15:45 – 16:25 → Silent sitting
16:30 – 17:10 → Dyad 7
17:15 – 17:35 → Integration Dyad
17:35 – 18:00 → End Talk

♦ Two timeless stories…
«The night Buddha achieved enlightenment, he sat under the tree and he said: "I will not rise from this tree again in my life if I don't attain enlightenment. Finished!" he said, "I am finished with doing anything for it. I am going to sit here -- this tree is going to become my death." A total decision. At that moment he dropped the 'decidophobia' completely -- a total decision. Just meditate on it! And that very night, by the morning he became enlightened.»

« I have heard one story about a Sufi mystic, Baba Shaikh Farid:
Once a young man approached Farid and Farid was taking his bath in the Ganges river, and the man asked him how he might find God. Baba Shaikh Farid took hold of him, led him into the water, and when they had gone deep enough, he forced him under the water. The young man nearly drowned before the holy man released him.
"Why did you do that?" he gulped incredulously.
"When you long for God as much as you wanted air while you were underwater," replied Baba Shaikh Farid, "you will find him."

« The desire should become so intense that you put all that you have at the stake. The passion to seek should be so total that not a single doubt is allowed to make you waver. The very intensity will bring truth. It can happen in a single moment! Just you need to become a total intensity of inner fire.
The decision should be total. It is arduous, of course, but everybody has to pass through that arduousness once. One has to pay for truth, and there is no other way to pay for it, you have to put your whole being on the altar. That is the only sacrifice that is needed. » 

Osho, excerpted from: The Search
Talk 6 - Taming the Bull

During the awareness intensive retreat participants are invited to follow a set of agreements designed to ensure a safe and secure environment for all as well as to support each participant’s process.
These agreements are mainly about maintaining silence at all time during the intensive and the removal of all peripheral distractions in order to allow each and every one to dedicate his full attention and energy towards his inner search.
Last but not least, these agreements are also about ensuring a secure and nonjudgmental environment so that each participant can open to himself and to others in trust.

The Set of Agreements
We ask that each of you observe the following set of agreements in order to facilitate your own process and the process of all other participants.

For the duration of this awareness intensive you will be in Silence and Isolation
This means:

• Observe silence when you are not in a communication exercise, do your best to minimize distractions and to be supportive of one another. Feel free to speak to the staff at any time you need help.
• Refrain from any physical contact with another as well as from all sexual activity, whether alone or with others.
• Remain considerate of others. Be flexible and tolerant of others, including the staff.

For the duration of this awareness intensive

• Let go of personal preening activities (beautifying) such as shaving and/or decorating yourself with makeup and jewellery.
• Let go of watches, alarm clock, cell phones, etc… we will take care of waking you up and calling you for all activities. We request that you be on time for all activities.
• Let go of journal writing, reading, listening to or watching any audio or video device.
• Let go of the use of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and recreational drugs.
• Let the staff know about any prescription drugs you may be taking or about any physical disabilities you may have that could prevent you from fully participating in this process.
• The food serve on the intensive is mostly vegetarian; only eat the food that is served, do not eat extra meal food of other participants. If you have brought any extra food or ‘feel good items’ we request you to keep them stored with your belongings and to refrain from taking them. Do inform the staff of any food intolerance you may have.
• Put other practices and disciplines aside, commit yourself to doing the given technique with full intention and as accurately as you can.

Confidentiality
Within the communication exercise, refrain from commenting on what your partner has said or from passing judgment in any way, either verbally or non-verbally.
Outside of the intensive, refrain from saying anything about another's process.

Please raise your hand to show your commitment to all the above agreements.
Thank you

A Sufi story….
« Commitment creates freedom.
When you commit to a movement, you make it with your whole body.
When you commit to a feeling, your passion will give power to your message.
When you commit to a dance, your feeling reaches beyond your limitations. 
When you commit to your path, give yourself over to your way of growth.
Magic happens... obstacles get out of your way, mountains lay down before you, the sky opens up above you, and you will find yourself transformed. »

Aziza Sa'id

This modern Zen like communication technique developed in the late sixties by Charles Berner has much in store, much more in it than it looks at first glance. It is a dance of Yin and Yang activities, with the partner in the interchange of roles of communicating and listening, as well as within oneself with the alternating of contemplating and communicating.
One aspect of it the technique is of being willful → to give the instruction - to intend - to set out to directly experience oneself - to communicate.  
The other aspect is of surrendering, of being open → to be receptive and listening without comments - to remain open to whatever occurs in the mind, emotions or body.

Like in the dance of life, doing and non doing are at work within this technique and the non doing aspect is by far the most important; it is the non-doing that reveals truth, not the doing.
Practicing this technique day in and day out during an intensive will take you far beyond what you have ever dreamt of for yourself.

The Communication Technique step by step
(with 5-minute Bell Changeovers)

Position
Two inpiduals sit facing each other, a comfortable distance apart. One begins as the receptive partner and the other as the active partner.

Instruction
The receptive partner gives the instruction: « Tell me who you are »

Reception
The active partner accepts it from the receptive partner.

Turning in 
The active partner sets out to directly experience himself, by first contacting the actuality of himself in the moment.
He gets a sense of who he is, in the moment, as best he can
Then, he intends to directly experience it
While continuing this intention, he remains open to it, and to whatever occurs in his mind, emotions or body as a result of this intention.

Communication
The active partner then gets across to the receptive partner whatever occurred as a result of turning in, not adding anything or leaving anything out.

Listening
The receptive partner watches, listens and fully receives the communication without commenting, nodding or evaluating in any way.

Continuing
The active partner repeats the process of turning in and communicating, keeping a rough balance of time spent in each, until the five minute bell sounds.

Acknowledgement
When the changeover bell rings, the receptive partner says, "Thank you." acknowledging his partner for his responses to the original instruction.

Change-over
The active partner then gives the instruction to the receptive partner and the roles reverse.

End
The dyad continues until the end-bell rings.

Tips and note
Do this technique as well as you can, and accept that. Do not try to be master it from the beginning but gradually work your way toward that.
This technique can also be done with cycle changeovers. That is to say that the change of role happens when the communicating partner has completed his cycle of communication. In this way of practicing there is only the one ending bell. The cycle changeover is a more natural way of practicing yet it requires both partners to really be focus and acquainted with the technique so as not to let the mind drift into something that did not arise out of the contemplation. For the above reason the 5-minute bell changeovers is much easier for beginners, it gives them a secure time frame within which they can contemplate and communicate without having any concern other than their intention.

Last but not least...
Gratitude and appreciation to Charles Berner for developing this communication technique and the settings that supports it.

♦ A Zen story….
« The nun Chiyono studied for years, but was unable to attain enlightenment. One night, she was carrying an old pail filled with water. As she was walking along, she was watching the full moon reflected in the pail of water. Suddenly, the bamboo strips that held the pail together broke, and the pail fell apart.
The water rushed out; the moon's reflection disappeared and Chiyono became enlightened.
She wrote this verse:

« This way and that way I tried to keep the pail together,
Hoping the weak bamboo would never break.
Suddenly the bottom fell out.
No more water; no more moon in the water
Emptiness in my hand. »

« Enlightenment happens when it happens; you cannot order it, you cannot cause it to happen. Still, you can do much for it to happen, but whatsoever you do is not going to function as a cause. Whatsoever you do is not going to bring enlightenment to you, but it prepares you to receive it. It comes when it comes. Whatsoever you do simply prepares you to receive it, to see it when it comes, to recognize it when it comes.
It happens... but if you are not ready you go on missing it. It is happening every moment. Every breath that goes in and comes out brings enlightenment to you, because enlightenment is the very stuff the existence is made of. But to recognize it is the problem, to see that it is there is the problem. »

Osho, excerpted from: The Secret of Secrets
Talk 17 - A little bit of sky

Active meditations are use during the awareness intensive to help participants move more rapidly through physical and emotional barriers as well as to anchor themselves in a meditative space, in awareness. They also help create a balance between physical and non-physical activities.
All activities during the awareness intensive: working, eating, walking, resting and sleeping periods are pointing in the direction of being a witness and letting go of this false sense of ‘being the doer’.
The way these active meditations are structured helps moving in that direction.
They are called ‘active meditations’ as opposed to other more passive meditation techniques like Vipassana or Zazen for instance. They were developed during the seventies by an Indian master, Osho (1931-1990)

The active meditations used in the Awareness Intensive retreat
Dynamic meditation is used every morning after the first dyad, it helps moving the energy and offers a space to let go of repressed feelings and emotions. It It eases the anchoring in the sex center, where our life force resides. The non-active phase of this meditation is an opportunity to experience 'being a witness'..

Read more about this meditation and its different stages.

Mandala meditation takes place around midday the first two days of the intensive. This technique helps opening the hara center so that the energy can move upwards, from the Hara to the third eye. This meditation stimulates focusing and helps centering in the ever present stillness. It is a very good tool to stay connected with our intention.

Read more about this meditation and its different stages.

Kundalini meditation is the late afternoon active meditation. It unblocks tensions accumulated during the day and creates a fresh empty space where silence can simply take over and expand. Listening to a partner in a communication dyad from that empty space becomes true listening.  

Read more about this meditation and its different stages.

Nataraj meditation is often used on the last day around midday. Dancing for forty minutes enables an intimate contact with oneself where feelings of joy and of celebration emerge naturally. This meditation is also an invitation to ‘dissolve in dancing’ and thus enter in a space where only dancing exists.

Read more about this meditation and its different stages.

♦ A Zen story….
« A great philosophical official, Riko, once asked the strange Zen Master, Nansen, to explain to him the old koan of the goose in the bottle.
If a man puts a gosling into a bottle, said Riko, and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?
Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, Riko!
Yes, Master, said the official with a start.
See, said Nansen, the goose is out! »

« It is only a question of seeing; it is only a question of becoming alert, awake. It is only a question of waking up. The goose is in the bottle if you are in a dream; the goose has never been in the bottle if you are awake. »

Osho, excerpted from: The Goose is Out
Talk 1 – The goose is out!

Silence is a tremendous help and support to any inward journey. In an awareness intensive participants are asked to maintain silence at all time except during the communication dyads.
All activities - working, eating, walking, resting and sleeping periods – are considered as meditation time and a support to the inner search.

One of these silent activities is known as ‘work as a meditation’. During a forty minutes period, a simple task is assigned to each participant. The emphasis is on ‘who’ is doing the task and on the quality brought to this action, more than on the task itself.
A Zen master used to say: “When you clean the room or the dishes, it is you who is being cleaned; the attention that you bring to your gesture, the totality of your gesture cleans you and, as a by-product, the room or the dishes are also being cleaned.”
This practice of doing a small task silently while continuing intending to directly experience the question at hand, helps gain the ability to be in the present moment; ability which can easily be transposed into daily life.

♦ A Zen story...
« A disciple had come to see Ikkyu, his master. The disciple had been practicing for some time. It was raining, and as he went in, he left his shoes and umbrella outside.
After he paid his respects, the master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella.
Now, what kind of question is this? You don't expect masters to ask such mundane questions, you expect them to ask about God, about Kundalini rising or chakras opening. They must ask about such important things, about spirituality.
However, Ikkyu asked a very ordinary question. No Christian saint would have asked it, no Jain monk would have asked it, no Hindu swami would have asked it. It can be done only by one who is really with the Buddha, in the Buddha, who is really a Buddha himself.
Ikkyu asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella. Now, what do shoes and umbrellas have to do with spirituality? If the same question had been asked to you, you would have felt annoyed. What kind of question is this? But there is something immensely valuable in it. Had he asked about God, about Kundalini and Chakras that would have been nonsense, utterly meaningless, but this has meaning.
The disciple could not remember who bothers where you have put your shoes and on which side you have put your umbrella, to the right or to the left. Who bothers? Who pays so much attention to umbrellas? Who thinks of shoes? Who is so careful? But that was enough, the disciple was refused.
Ikkyu said: Then go and meditate for seven years more.
Seven years! The disciple said just for this small fault!
Ikkyu replied: this is not a small fault. Faults are not small or big, you are just not yet living meditatively, that's all. Go back, meditate for seven years more, and come again. »

« This is the essential message, be careful, careful of everything and don't make any distinction between things; that this is trivia and that is spiritual. It depends on you. Pay attention, be careful, and everything becomes spiritual. Don't pay attention, don't be careful, and everything becomes unspiritual.
Spirituality is imparted by you, it is your gift to the world.
When a master like Ikkyu touches his umbrella, the umbrella is as divine as anything can be. Meditative energy is alchemical. It transforms the base metal into gold; it goes on transforming the baser into the higher. At the ultimate peak, everything is divine. This very world is the paradise, and this very body the Buddha.
So do the small things of life with a relaxed awareness. When you are eating, eat totally, chew totally, taste totally, smell totally. Touch your bread, feel the texture. Smell the bread, smell the flavour. Chew it, let it dissolve into your being, and remain conscious--and you are meditating. And then meditation is not separate from life.
Whenever meditation is separate from life, something is wrong. It becomes life-negative. Then one starts thinking of going to a monastery or to a Himalayan cave. Then one wants to escape from life, because life seems to be a distraction from meditation.  Life is not a distraction; life is an occasion for meditation. »

Osho, excerpted from: Take it Easy
Talk 26 – A Way of Life