March 17, 2025 • 60 mins
In our latest "Ponder On This" episode, we continue our exploration of relinquishing, diving deeper into what it means to truly "let go" on the spiritual path. This practice creates space for authentic self-emergence, much like a snake shedding its old skin to make way for the new one already formed beneath.
Relinquishing isn't about denial or deprivation but rather about releasing what no longer serves our growth. The episode examines the three rules for disciples that the Tibetan offers, with special attention to the pride of mind – that tendency to believe our way is right and others are wrong. This pride of mind represents the most challenging aspect to surrender in our spiritual growth, as mental attachments often prove harder to release than physical possessions or emotional patterns.
The conversation explores how relinquishing applies to group work and spiritual communities. When we stand "shoulder to shoulder in the one work," differences naturally fade in importance. This shift from personality-based interaction to soul-based connection allows us to move beyond criticism and the need to control others, creating more authentic collaboration. The discussion touches on finding balance between firm principles and flexible responses – how to maintain core values while adapting to life's fluid nature.
The episode concludes with reflections on the spiritual path not as rigid adherence to texts or teachings, but as living the wisdom they contain. There's a poignant observation that "you could go back, but you don't belong there anymore" – highlighting how spiritual evolution naturally leads us to release what once seemed essential. We invite you to join us in exploring how to "let go and let love" in your own spiritual practice.
Meditation Mount and HeartLight Productions are pleased to present Musings from the Mount – a weekly podcast with host Joseph Carenza and guests in conversation exploring a range of topics drawn from the Ageless Wisdom teachings. New episodes every Monday.
If you enjoy this podcast, please consider donating at MeditationMount.org
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the Musings from the Mount Podcast.
I'm your host, Joseph Carenza.
In this episode, we continue with part two of our exploration on relinquishing, that seemingly simple yet challenging practice of letting go.
In the course of this conversation, we examined the three rules for disciples offered by the Tibetan, with special focus on the pride of mind, or what Michael calls "the last bastion to crumble".
(00:30):
We discuss why mental attachments are often the hardest to release, how relinquishing applies to group work, and how the delicate balance between honoring spiritual teachings, while not becoming imprisoned by them.
So whether you are navigating relationships in spiritual communities or seeking to free yourself from outdated beliefs, this conversation offers practical wisdom for living with an open heart and mind, and we hope you enjoy it.
(00:57):
If you do enjoy this podcast, please consider going to meditationmount.org and donating.
Your donation helps us to bring you this podcast as well as all the other programs the Mount produces, both today and in the future.
We are incredibly grateful and honored by your support.
Back to the podcast and part two of Relinquishing.
(01:23):
All right, we are back with part two of the topic of relinquishing.
And I think just the simple phrase "let go".
I mean, it's one of those things where it's super, super simple, super obvious, but not necessarily easy to do.
And those are always my favorite topics.
(01:44):
Yeah, I remember that very simple phrase growing up, like, "let go, let God".
Yeah, I was thinking of that earlier today when I was driving here, and how I grew up with that phrase, too, and how somehow that's become triggering for a lot of people just because of the God part.
But the important part is just let.
Go for me, is let go, let God is let go.
(02:10):
And let the soul, which is that wise center of being that knows what it has to offer, allow that to influence, to inspire, to infuse us with its light and its love and its wisdom.
Therefore, let go, let God isn't like some other beings going to come in and direct me from the outside.
(02:35):
It's like, don't drive with the brakes on.
Just let go.
And relinquishing really is letting go of the past, letting go of that which has gone before.
And not that it was bad, but we know that everything that exists as a form has a life cycle.
And its job is to take the indwelling spirit to a new level.
(02:59):
And then it falls away.
It decomposes.
So you have the creation and destruction.
You have composition, decomposition.
These two aspects of form, life are always present.
And I Think we're standing at an age now where we are witnessing the rapid decomposition of some of the things that were really solid for us before.
(03:24):
And what's coming are new ideas that for some people seem heretical, seem scary, and yet they haven't emerged fully.
So we're in this no person's land where we don't know where to turn.
So let go.
Let God, or let go and let your own inner wisdom guide your life really is a true aphorism.
(03:48):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening.
And there couldn't be a more apt sort of ethos right now than to let go.
And if you're going to fight this wave, I think you're going to drown.
A change is coming to everything.
It's going to touch every aspect, and there's always going to be people who are probably going to go out and.
(04:11):
And live in the wilderness and try to stay not part of it.
That's interesting, too, because you're still living in reaction to something.
But for us, we're doing a podcast, so we've already embraced technology on some level, and we're not falling into sort of the Luddite character.
(04:33):
I was just about to say we are not techno Luddites.
But one thing that's interesting, and we were talking about this before we started the podcast, is how does this affect groups and organizations specifically, like sort of esoteric folks?
There is a tendency to sometimes latch onto a text or to a group of words in a certain way, and we tend to sort of box ourselves in, but then we're seeing all these different aspects arise that.
(05:02):
That kind of transcend text.
Well, I go back to what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago.
The text, the written text, the things we study are the forms that represent the truth that is part of the lineage.
And there comes a time when there needs to be a new dispensation, a new iteration, a new understanding of that truth.
(05:27):
However, if we hold too dearly to the forms and insist that this is the gospel, rather than the gospel is a conveyance of truth, and it's time to create another form of conveyance, doesn't mean you throw the Gospels out.
(05:48):
It simply means that you're open to the natural cycle of life, which means spirit.
The indwelling life seeks constantly to generate new forms that can reveal new aspects of itself, deeper dimensions of itself.
And every form has a limit.
(06:09):
Every form has a limit.
The indwelling life is infinite, but a form is finite.
It's temporal, which is not Good or bad, it just means it can only serve a certain cycle.
Now, you may repackage what you had before in a new way with a slight modification.
But unless you are willing to shed the skin and allow the truth, the naked truth, to stand there.
(06:37):
And I think what you and I both realize is the difference between reading the text, studying the text, and becoming like a scholar and going out and living it and enjoying it and feeling it with others on the path.
You gave this example of watching a YouTube video about a dog breeder and you wondered, well, do they actually go out and roll in the grass with them and have fun with the dogs, or are they just into the science of breeding?
(07:03):
And it's like, are we into the science of study and not into the art of living?
I think that's exactly.
That's what I noticed is somehow ended up on these videos about.
I was doing research about German shepherd Malinois because we have one that's quite feisty and, you know, so we get in.
You end up with all these high level breeders and they know everything about the breed.
(07:24):
But I never see them just like rolling around the yard, rubbing their belly, just, just loving the dog.
And I was like, you know, that's, that's the thing that has really made the biggest difference with our dog is just like that close time, you know, like relating to it with the heart, you know, and, and really just.
And like having endless patience.
So, Joey, how do you roll around in the grass with the Tibetan's text and sort of have your belly rubbed?
(07:52):
I think that's a great question.
And for me it's one, One thing is I don't attach to the words like a gospel, but I look at it as the best, you know, the best application at the time it was written, you know, and that more will be revealed.
(08:12):
And the way that it's revealed is to experience life while holding those texts with you and then saying, oh, look at that, does that line up?
Does that, how does that work?
But you have to live it and live it through the heart.
Well, when you live it fully, then you notice the limitations of the form of the text, not the truth of the text.
(08:34):
And therefore you let go of its.
If you like, hold over you as a belief system, but really as a guiding light, you allow it still to be a guiding light and it morphs.
This is this fluid age we talked about in the first episode.
Here we're in liquid crystal time, where the impulse that we're picking up from the indwelling life needs an immediate Response in a way that does not distort, that fully represents to the best of our ability, the fullness of the impulse, the beauty of the impulse.
(09:13):
Therefore, if I'm fixed and believe that I can only behave in this way, or this can only be in this way, my indwelling life is restricted to expression through a particular singular form of expression.
And that can be limiting, that can feel imprisoning.
(09:34):
Although we believe we're being faithful to God, faithful to the scriptures, faithful to the truth, what we're doing is being, if you like, captured by the form.
So the whole idea of relinquishing for me is this continuous letting go.
And one of the things, maybe we should just do a brief recap of what we covered in episode one.
(09:56):
Although I can't remember much of what we actually said.
But what I remember in the essence was relinquishing is the letting go of that which no longer serves.
It's the ability to open the heart wider, to receive more.
You said an open hand holds more sand.
And we added to that by saying an open heart not only holds more love, but.
(10:20):
But can receive more love, but can give more love.
And I think that's what it is.
Relinquishing is an ongoing process of expansion of our ability to know life, to understand life by participating in it in a different way.
(10:42):
So it's applied study, it's applied wisdom, it's not book learning.
And that's one of the things in the Agni Yoga teachings, they talk about just book learning or dead letter study.
If you just read the text for what they are and they don't come alive in you, the truth hasn't come alive in you.
(11:03):
The words and the, if you like, the thought forms of what that truth represents is there, but it's not the truth.
The truth is when you touch it and when it touches you.
And the relinquishing creates a space where there's no separation, there's no veil between you and the experience of being you in the world.
(11:31):
I think that's what we're looking at.
Yeah, yeah, like get out of the way.
And we're humans, so we see the world through the lens of the human, which is this personality.
And we like to identify ourselves with either accomplishments or some of the inherent traits that we have.
(11:57):
I mean, not everyone is born with the ability to hold large sets of data in their head at the same time.
And just like not everyone can throw a fastball, you know, and.
But it's the lived experience is that experience of being human, of being in this world and this group initiation that we're going through, I mean, those two experiences are just as valid.
(12:18):
Right.
And I was sort of thinking about the journey of humanity from like a youth, youthful, sort of free spirit to a wise being.
And I was thinking, often we talk about teenage delinquents.
I was thinking humanity starts out as a young delinquent.
And if you're delinquent, it means you haven't fulfilled the promise.
(12:39):
You're delinquent on something you haven't delivered.
And what we're saying, we're moving from humanity, the young delinquent, to humanity, the wise relinquant.
So is somebody who relinquishes a relinquant?
Yes.
Okay.
But don't get identified as being a relinquant.
That's the verb that sets you free.
(13:00):
It's not a noun.
That is your identity.
Right.
So having said all of that, we're going to go back to some texts that were written many years ago, and we're going to follow them religiously.
No, we're actually going to read them.
Those of you who have been part of the podcast before, you know we are reflecting on some of the teachings of the Master dk, the Tibetan, that have been compiled in a book called Ponder on this, which has taken themes from all of his books and put them together and categorized them.
(13:31):
And we're going through the one on relinquishing, and we have reached a point where we're about to dive into the next level of exploration.
Maybe we should just read the last paragraph that we finished on last time.
So there is some sort of segue here.
Okay, so what we ended on last time was the soul has to relinquish all the soul, the sense of responsibility for which other disciples may do.
(14:00):
The relation between disciples is egoic and not personal.
Egoic with a capital E, not egotism, but egoic as the ego, the higher self.
The link is of the soul and not of the mind.
Each personality pursues its own course, must shoulder its own responsibilities, work out its own dharma and fulfill its own karma, and so answer for itself to its Lord and Master.
(14:26):
The the soul and answer there will be.
That's how we ended the first episode.
So let's continue reading from this next paragraph.
The establishing of an inner contact and relationship with other servers in parenthesis, based on a realized oneness of purpose and soul love, is magnificently possible.
(14:54):
And for this, all disciples must struggle and strive on the outer plane, owing to the separative mind.
During this age and time, a Complete accord on detail, on method, and on interpretation of principles is not possible.
But the inner relationships and cooperation must capitalize, italicized, must be established and developed in spite of the outer divergences of opinion.
(15:23):
When the inner link is held in love, when disciples relinquish the sense of authority over each other and have responsibility for each other's activities, and at the same time stand shoulder to shoulder in the one work, then the differences, the divergences, and the points of disagreement will automatically be overcome.
(15:50):
He's saying, look, you're responsible for your ecosystem itself, with its own dharma and karma, but you're not separate.
We're all fractals of this one life.
But you don't get to control other people's lives.
But what you do get to do is to join at the deepest level with them, because that's where the unity is found.
(16:15):
That's a big section of kind of what I was talking about, especially with.
If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably of the sort of person that is part of a spiritual community or at least on a spiritual path, and when you bump up against other ideas, other people, sometimes we tend to take it personally and we tend to get invested in it in a weird way.
(16:38):
And this is saying, hey, it's not your responsibility to manage those people or manage those things.
You know, you have to manage your own.
Your own thing and meet them at a higher level.
Yes.
It's basically, don't interfere.
And yet, if you pick up beyond a shadow of doubt through your heart that what somebody is doing is actually destructive to the group purpose, you.
(17:08):
You.
You're allowed to call a timeout.
Yeah.
To do an evaluation.
Yeah.
I love that.
In business, we used to call a breakdown.
I like to call a breakdown, which means we're currently going in the direction that is off course.
Yeah.
We agreed to go here.
I.
(17:28):
I believe we've gone off course.
I'm going to call a breakdown.
So we can figure, are we still on course?
If we're not, how do we get back on course?
Not blaming anyone, but how do we get here?
What are the.
What was the drift.
This got us off course.
That we were unaware of.
Yeah.
And so you don't interfere, but it doesn't mean if somebody is about to destroy something which is being built by the group for the good, you don't just let that happen.
(17:57):
Yeah.
If you go back to the Buddhist teachings, they're all about compassion and loving kindness.
But if you see somebody mistreating a child, a human or Animal.
You step in.
Yeah, that's right.
So what the Tibetan says next, there are three rules which are important to disciples at this time.
(18:19):
He's always giving like three rules or five rules or something.
It's great.
It's like.
And then, yeah, once you've mastered those three rules, but there's only one rule, and that's love.
That's the one law.
So these are the three rules and we're going to look at them and see what they actually mean to us in 2025.
(18:40):
Relinquish or sacrifice the age old tendency to criticize and adjust another's work and thus preserve the inner group integrity.
More plans for service have gone astray and more workers have been hindered by criticism than by any other major factor.
(19:02):
Yeah, we've covered this in a podcast on criticism is that energy follows thought.
And what I'm doing, I am actually sending out thoughts that are unhelpful, maybe unloving, but they dismantle and they're caustic.
(19:23):
Criticism is caustic.
It erodes, it corrodes, and it eats away at the fabric that we're weaving together.
And therefore it's not part of the life of a server, the life of a soul on earth.
But it's so easy because I judge myself all the time.
(19:48):
Therefore, if I judge myself, I'm willing to judge others.
Sure, that's.
Yeah, but I think sometimes we.
That's not always the case sometimes when people.
I just.
I happen to have observed over the years of your careful approach to this kind of thing.
So it's not.
I don't think you're the average person out there who's firing off criticisms.
(20:13):
Well, for me is if something shows up on the field and needs to be made evident, you do it in a way where it's an aha.
It's not the.
It's not a punishment.
Right.
Remember we said, are you in a classroom or a courtroom?
Yeah.
Are we here to learn together?
Therefore, we look at what's getting in the way of us achieving our goal.
(20:38):
But we don't criticize each other.
We don't pass judgment on each other.
We help with group evaluation, which means that each person has to evaluate their own motivations and whether they are being honest with themselves.
I told you that what I have written on my altar on a piece of paper is a very powerful statement I've been using for the past year.
(21:03):
I live in integrity with myself.
And when I really get what that means, sure, I'm free to do whatever I want.
But really, when I understand where that comes from and deep inside of me, there's only one way to act in any situation.
Yeah.
(21:24):
Not in a rigid way, but it comes from a place of non judgment, compassion, clarity though.
I think you have to have clarity and compassion together.
Yeah.
It takes a lot of strength to be flexible.
You know, I mean that's.
Yes, that's sort of the, you know, I was thinking, how do you phrase that?
But it does take a lot of inner strength, discipline, training, love to be able to move like the water.
(21:51):
Because if I'm rigid and I have to adhere to a rigid belief, I can snap.
Yeah, that's right.
But if I have the ability to bow and go with the wind, that if I'm a willow tree, my principles are not broken.
(22:12):
I have flexibility.
Not in the deep ethical sense of who I am, but my flexibility in I have a rigid response.
I'm able to go with the flow, be like water, as Bruce Lee would tell us.
Yeah.
Anything else on this first one about criticism, Joey?
(22:32):
I mean, I have seen this in all the organizations and teams and different things I've been part of and been a leader of over the years.
I mean this was something that I noticed especially on tour because you're living and working with the same people sometimes for months and months, sometimes in cases of years, and often in confined areas.
(22:57):
I would imagine the ultimate example of this playing out would probably be like a submarine crew where like there's literally no going outside.
So and, and you have to, you know, from what I understand, like the rules and the procedures are so rigid.
Ultimate.
I mean not rigid but so firm.
(23:18):
But then when you see like I've watched again another YouTube, YouTube videos of documentaries and sort of stuff of submarine crews and they all seem very like loosey goosey fun but like they follow the strictest rules, you know.
But see, that's it.
When you adhere to principles, you can hang loose.
(23:38):
Yeah.
Because you're not hanging loose on your principles.
Right.
You're just not reacting in like a knee jerk way to things.
Yeah.
And it seems like, you know, there's this level of support and you know, like there's in.
I used analogy of a submarine again, there is no, there's no benefit to the group if you're criticizing one person and dragging them down.
(24:03):
You need to, you need to correct.
Address the problem and find a way to support them in fixing the problem.
Because you can't just swap somebody out if you're, you know, a mile under the surface.
You know, that's right.
Yeah.
So I think in organizations, I've noticed that criticism is like a little cancer.
It's a little drop of poison that starts to infect and then it goes.
(24:27):
And then it moves its way into the whole organization.
But there may be some truth to what they're observing.
But the act of criticizing is like an acid that corrodes, and it may come from a place where that person wants to be seen as more important, or there's something inside that we don't know, but it's.
It's not coming from a place of loving kindness and understanding.
(24:52):
And so that's what we're talking about here, is that we don't interfere with others.
We're here to support it.
The group process, as he says, when you stand shoulder to shoulder in the one work, then the differences, the divergences, and the points of disagreement will automatically be overcome.
That was in the previous paragraph.
(25:12):
So let's go to number two in his list.
So the Tibetan says, relinquish or sacrifice the sense of responsibility for the action of others, and particularly of disciples.
See that your own activity measures up to theirs, and in the joy of struggle and on the way of service, the differences will disappear and the general good will be achieved.
(25:41):
Yeah, this will take time.
But he's.
It's.
I mean, the temptation is so great to interfere and.
Or be responsible for others and feel it.
Although it's said that a master, when he takes on a pupil, is responsible for their karma.
Yeah, you mentioned that in an earlier podcast.
(26:02):
Maybe we could sit on that for.
Just stay on there for just a second.
And how this is a perfect example of that, how that's supposed to now be changing, like, it's not about that master.
Societal relationship is a little different now.
It's a group.
However, if you are.
If a master takes you under their wing or places you in their heart, you're part of their ecosystem, therefore they do.
(26:27):
It's like, if I eat food, I've got to choose what kind of food I put in my body.
Now, if a master chooses to put you inside his Auric field or her Auric field, then that's a choice, and you live with the consequences.
So it's not in the same way as you're taking responsibility for the whole of another person.
(26:49):
It's just that you've assumed a level of stewardship for another aspect of life.
Okay, I see it that way.
Sure.
It's a tricky one.
It's a fine.
It's a razor's edge, this one.
Yeah, it is.
It is a tricky one.
But my understanding of.
Because now we're free to be guided by the soul and work together in groups.
(27:11):
And yet the master embodies soul consciousness.
And this is how the master is allowing self organization inside the system of group disciples.
The master, or the enlightened ones are still responsible for implementing the plan and managing the project workers, supervising the project workers.
(27:35):
But they're not doing it with an iron rod or a whip.
They're given some latitude for learning.
I also see almost the entirety of the Alice Bailey books as I go back to, let's say, a parent raising a child.
All you're really doing is trying to give them the wisdom that you've learned and the wisdom of, you know, just common sense, best practice.
(27:59):
All this stuff, trying to get ready for them to go out into the world.
But the moment they go out into the world, it's.
It's all of, you know, the world is the world.
And it's, it's.
It's going to take its turns and it's going to be the craziness that it is.
And, and, you know, like, I feel like that's how these books are.
They're trying to give us all this information about how this thing that's coming up that we're going to have to go through, but there's no describing it until you actually go through it.
(28:23):
Absolutely true.
And yet there is something in these books that sets, off, if you like, a resonant signal inside the soul.
So when we meet the situation, something reminds us, ah, this is how.
If I were fully in touch with my soul, this is how it would be acting.
(28:44):
Yeah.
So this becomes like a surrogate.
Yeah, There you go.
Okay.
But a surrogate ain't the real thing, right?
That's true.
Yeah.
So number three.
All right, all right, here we go, Joey.
Relinquish the pride of mind, which sees its way and its interpretations to be correct and true and others false and wrong.
(29:07):
This is the way of separation.
Adhere to the way of integration, which is of the soul and not of the mind.
This one is probably the biggest one at play in the world at the moment, Whether it's religious warfare, political, social, woke, non woke, whatever language you use for splitting things in two and believing that the others are wrong and we are right.
(29:39):
Pride of mind.
It really is like a peacock.
It's sort of showing it, strutting its stuff.
Yeah.
Not to bring more enlightenment and wisdom to the world, but to show, you know, look at me.
Yeah.
And I think the pride of mind is the most dangerous because the mind is the most difficult to relinquish.
(30:06):
Or all the beliefs that are manufactured inside the mind and crystallize as beliefs are the most difficult to relinquish.
We said before, it's easy to give away physical things.
You know, all right, I'll give this away.
I don't need this.
Or I'll let go of these emotions.
I'll move through this, hang up.
But when it comes to letting go of your beliefs, because at that stage, the last holdout of the personality is clinging to the life raft of beliefs.
(30:39):
And to relinquish beliefs, you know, the fear of drowning is huge, but it's an act of liberation.
And so we're knocking on the door, Joey, that you have named.
When we have to relinquish the idea that we can be saved from by the things we study, the only way we can be saved is by the love that we generate.
(31:06):
Right.
And the loving communion we have with other beings.
I'm not sure what.
What else to say on this one, but I'm sure you have some thoughts on pride of mind.
I mean, this is.
This is.
This is the one that, you know, it almost should be number one in the list, if you're going by importance.
(31:29):
But the relinquishing of the pride of mind is the one where I think everyone wants to be an expert on the text, but sometimes you conveniently forget a couple passages.
And I think this is one of those passages we tend to forget, especially when we do a deep dive into any of these aspects.
And this is also one of the ones that's hardest to live.
(31:52):
You know, it's one thing to be able to memorize this text and debate it and to pontificate on it or to eulogize it or proselytize it, but to live it.
This is a tough one.
I agree.
And why it's tough for me occasionally is that when the mind becomes the master and not the tool or the instrument of the soul, that is used to bring clarity and.
(32:21):
Yeah, yeah.
I think it was Alan Watts that said, like, the mind is a good servant but a bad master.
Exactly.
And that's exactly what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And when we fall into that trap, you know, it's.
And it's easy.
It's easy to slip into that, you know.
Well, because I've noticed that we tend to.
I tend to.
(32:41):
Or we tend to imagine sometimes that we're being inspired by the soul, but really it's an aspect of our personality that's masquerading as the soul in order to justify what it's doing.
I've seen that in communities where somebody believes they're being guided by their soul or guided by God, and they're told to do this and told to leave their family or they're told to do something, and it's really an excuse for just carrying out what your deep desires are.
(33:14):
Yeah, Nothing wrong.
It's a stage of learning.
But the stronghold of the mind is the last bastion to crumble.
Yeah, sure is.
It's a tough one.
So pride of mind.
So that's why they always talk about humility.
(33:37):
Humility isn't sort of walking along slowly with your head bowed.
We've said this before.
The Tibetan talks about humility as an adjusted sense of right proportion.
You don't aggrandize yourself, you don't diminish yourself.
And I've said you learn to stand in the sweet spot of your own sovereignty and you act from there, where you are who you are.
(34:02):
You're not acting out who you would like to be seen to be, but you are genuinely coming from an inner place and building up your capacity to have the form express that inner place rather than having a crystallized form that becomes your source of identity and you project that out.
(34:27):
So if I project my beliefs out into the world, my beliefs are my mental understandings of some truth.
But if I live in my heart and I'm kind and fully engaged in life, I'm rolling on the grass and having life rub my stomach and I'm rubbing life's stomach, then I'm in a more authentic relationship with things.
(34:48):
And my mind doesn't decide what is and what isn't.
My heart knows my heart is the greatest organ of discernment.
So we talk about discerning mind, but I think what he's hinting at here, a discerning mind really needs to relinquish all the biases, as you said, the weights, the weightings that have it be out of true and cause it to say, this is true.
(35:19):
Your version is not true.
Being aware of your own weights and measures is an important.
If you imagine we're all just walking algorithms, you have to understand how you wrote the weights and measures.
And they were written through your life experience, through your generational trauma, through your DNA.
(35:39):
You inherited certain things and then the way that those played out in the experiences of the world.
And the phrase unbiased means not being pulled to one side or the other, standing in truth, being true, standing.
So you are like an engineering thing There's a trueness to it.
(36:03):
And then you trim and adjust things so it comes back into true.
And the way that we make sure the mind comes back into true is to let go of all these beliefs, prejudices.
A prejudice is an incredible bias.
It pulls us to one side.
(36:24):
And it's not that you don't have those things, it's recognizing that those patterns exist whether you put them there or not, but that is that they are.
And then adjusting in F1, you adjust your brake bias depending on the circuit and depending on the curve that you're going into.
Right.
So it's acknowledging that there is a bias there, but understanding it and using it in right proportion.
(36:51):
Right.
So what does the Tibetan say about the three rules he's just given us?
These are hard sayings, but they are the rules by which the teachers on the inner side guide their actions and their thoughts when working with each other and with their disciples.
This is how they comport themselves with each other.
(37:14):
So they're not just giving out rules.
This is saying, this is how we live.
Let's codify how we live and put them into three rules for you.
The inner integrity is necessarily a proven fact to them.
To the disciple it is not.
By inner integrity we mean the coherence of life, the union that comes when loving wisdom pervades the inner realms.
(37:51):
So to the inner teachers, the outer differences are abhorrent, abhorrent.
They leave each other free to serve the plan.
They train their disciples, no matter what their degree, to serve the plan with freedom.
For in freedom and in the sense of joy and in the strength of inner cooperative love is the best work done.
(38:18):
So this is where you have this wonderful balance and right relationship between what you were saying, firmness of principle and flexibility of form and response.
So it is sincerity which they look for.
(38:41):
Sincerity means your desire to live on the outside.
The truth that you sense on the inside, the willingness to sacrifice the lesser when the greater is sensed is that for which they search.
I mean, that's a result of when the inner reality becomes so strong, then these biases are just self corrected because we don't lean to one side or the other.
(39:10):
We stand more in true or in truth, the spontaneous relinquishing of long held ideals when a greater and more inclusive presents itself as their guide.
And this goes back to what you're saying, when something comes along that says, oh wow, that explains it more clearly, that makes more sense, that becomes the new working model.
(39:37):
Yeah, I feel like that's inherently baked into this and I Think it gets overlooked.
There is a sense of best practices and best available data and best available practice.
At the moment they're best practices, but they're evolving practices.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, that's what a best practice is.
The highest evolved practice we have so far.
(39:59):
The sacrifice of pride and the sacrifice of personality.
When the vastness of the work and the urgency, the need are realized, sway them to cooperation.
Basically.
We don't have time to play these sort of personality games.
Yeah, yeah.
(40:21):
Explicitly.
And addressing the fact that this is a group project now, I think that the switch has been moved from master to disciple, master to disciple.
And now this is a group endeavor.
And so the things that worked, it was almost like they put in this holding pattern until the time and now is the time.
(40:43):
So those old patterns aren't going to make as much sense.
And if you're fully invested in perfecting that pattern, then it's not gonna, maybe there's gonna be some reluctance to relinquish a little better, some growing pains or some expansion pains or, you know, and.
Inside a group you're gonna have people who have different degrees of ability to let go of things and others who are still holding on.
(41:11):
And that's the beauty of learning together in a group.
Yeah, absolutely.
Everyone learns from each other, regardless of their, if you like, their level of maturity.
Because mature souls learn one of the lessons and the qualities of a soul, compassion and patience.
(41:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Try dealing with 85 pound German Shepherd Malinois.
Well, try dealing with an out of control humanity that's supposed to be the project workers carrying out the plan.
This is what the enlightened ones are doing, going, what do we do?
(41:55):
Do we crack the whip?
But imagine being the patience.
You have to have to be an entity who is here to help us and instruct us but can't directly touch us.
They can only send down these kind of like, you know, hot air balloons saying, you know, here's the message, just try to do this.
What they can do though, is hold us in a field of love, which is a palpable contribution when you think of Kuan Yin, the female bodhisattva.
(42:26):
Yeah, into the story.
I think most people know the story.
Kuan Yin had earned the right to enter Samadhi heaven and was about to make the transition when she heard a cry from the earth.
A woman crying, and it really touched her.
She came down and realized there are still people suffering.
And she said, I will stay until all the suffering has ceased.
(42:50):
So she's there holding the field for us.
Making sure that we're not the last ones.
But not just the last ones, but holding a field that will allow us to grow because we grow in love.
And if you've got a being that has sacrificed or made sacred their life by holding a sacred space for others, wow.
(43:13):
That is the ultimate act of sacrifice or relinquishment.
So when you think of relinquishment, Kuan Yin gave up her right that she'd earned to enter this other level.
But the other level didn't mean she disappeared and didn't have contact.
It just meant that she had no karmic liability or responsibility to the earth.
(43:39):
But what touched her out of love was compassion for those who are still evolving.
And so she decided, I can be of help.
And that's it.
So you've got the bodhisattvas, both male and female, holding a loving field for all of us now that love can be felt.
(44:01):
I mean, that's part of what gives me hope, is that we're not alone.
We're being held.
So let's carry on.
We've got about a few more paragraphs if we want to go through the whole of this section.
(44:21):
It is essential that the disciples shall learn to sacrifice the non essential in order that the work may go forward.
So here we have to look at our lives through an inventory.
What's non essential?
That's really important in a group endeavor too.
Because a group can chase its tail over stuff that's not essential to the mission.
(44:45):
Very easily we get distracted with little pet projects.
And pet.
I guess pet projects isn't.
I guess that's fine.
I mean, like it's not that a project is.
Well, it takes precedence.
Our attachment to the form of how something's supposed to be rather than what it actually can be.
(45:11):
Yeah.
Little as one may realize it, the many techniques and methods and ways are secondary to the major world need.
There are many ways and many points of view and many experiments and many efforts abortive or successful.
And all of them come and go, but humanity remains.
(45:38):
All of them are in evidence of the multiplicity of minds and of experiences.
But the goal remains.
Difference is ever of the personality.
When this law of sacrifice governs the mind, it will inevitably lead all disciples to relinquish the personal in favor of the universal and of the soul that knows no separation and no difference.
(46:09):
Ah, that's.
It speaks for itself, doesn't it?
That one.
Yeah, that's it.
I don't.
I have nothing to add to that.
Then he carries on then.
No pride nor a short and myopic perspective, nor love of interference in parenthesis so dear to many people, nor misunderstanding of motive will hinder their cooperation with each other as disciples, nor their service to the world.
(46:43):
That last paragraph really wraps.
Or that last kind of passage.
Yeah.
Relinquish the personal in favor of the universal and the soul.
Yeah.
But when we do that, Joey, we still can take care of ourselves because we're part of the universe.
So it just means don't aggrandize the part over the whole.
(47:05):
Serve the whole.
And then the soul and the whole automatically nourish and take care of its constituent parts.
But if I'm just in it for the part, trying to grab what the part believes it needs to survive, I've missed the point.
It's a false map I'm following.
(47:26):
Yeah.
There's no fulfillment that way.
That's right.
There's only colonization.
Well, because the energy follows the thought of.
I think of this as if you're obsessed or focused on taking credit or on correcting.
Then that's where the energy is going, not to the ultimate project or mission.
(47:49):
And so there is one final paragraph in this section which I think we should read together and sort of.
It ends on a crescendo.
Okay.
The great renunciation becomes possible only when the practice of the little renunciations govern the life of the disciple and a group.
(48:15):
So you don't go for the big one.
The big one is made up of all the small acts because it's not measured by quantity, size.
It's the quality of our actions in things both great and small.
The renouncing of ambition, of all personality ties, and the renunciation of all that hinders progress as it is revealed to the eye of the soul lays a sound foundation for the final great transference between, based upon the renunciation of that which for ions has connoted beauty, truth and goodness, and which has seemed the ultimate goal of all aspirational effort.
(48:58):
Now we're building up to something you're saying, well, look, what you thought was the goal.
Actually.
No, that has to be let go of as well.
Yeah.
And now we're going to come into a reference to a historical fact that's recorded in the Bible.
But just as an example of this, okay.
(49:25):
The endeavor to see that which lies ahead and beyond the apparent finality of soul fusion faces disciples among them, some of you at this time, and that all of you may penetrate beyond the veil of the soul and.
And eventually see that veil and then quote, unquote, rent from the Top to the bottom, and thus be enabled to say with those of like degree it is finished is my earnest hope.
(49:55):
So this goes back to the master Jesus on the cross, when he said, it is finished.
Right.
And then he also says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And they're like, well, you know, I thought you were going to take care of me, you know, where are you?
You're going away.
(50:16):
I'm not going away.
You've got to give birth to me.
That's the resurrection.
First you got to crucify, which is the ultimate relinquishing.
Yeah, sure is.
That's what the renunciation is.
So then will open for you, as for others, the way of the higher evolution and the glory of the Lord will be seen in a new light, the light which will dim and throw into the shade all previous goals and visions.
(50:45):
So it talks about the glory of the Lord.
This simply means the inherent beauty, love, truth, luminosity of the indwelling life about whom naught can be said.
Agni Yoga talks about the origin of.
Of origins.
(51:05):
Yeah.
Because that's about as close as you can get to it.
Yeah.
And in the Tibetan teachings, he talks about the one about whom naught can be said.
And there's not much you can say about the one about whom naught can be said.
Yeah, funny how that works.
But it has to be experience.
I think this is what it's pointing to that we're here to not just experience, but to embody, to manifest, to reveal.
(51:30):
Each one of us is a point and promise of revelation.
So the relinquishing is a natural stage or a series of stages in the process of revelation and ultimate manifestation in time, space and substance of the spiritual promise that lives at the heart of life.
(51:54):
If we lose sight of that, it becomes this really tough struggle.
Why is this happening to me?
Why is the world in this way?
Why?
Why?
Why?
So what else can you think of when you reflect on relinquishing?
(52:15):
Just that last passage.
Tell me what you.
What hit you when it hits the way of the higher evolution and the light, which will dim and throw into shade all previous goals and visions.
To me, that is like, you can see that if you take it out of the esoteric context and just look it into the way we look at a new discovery or a new scientific theorem or something.
(52:41):
And if it turns out to be true, it's just like immediately everything else folds away, like, okay, no, this new way explains it better.
So we.
In that same way, it's just like this peeling back of this, peeling back and peeling back of this onion of truth and beauty getting back to the one.
Yeah, it's like whether it's a string theory, but then we want truth with no strings attached.
(53:06):
How can you have string theory with no strings attached?
Yeah, there you go.
But I'm thinking that it's the difference between seeing yourself as a highly evolved caterpillar rather than realizing when you're the butterflies, this is what it was all about.
The other was how we get to this point.
(53:26):
Yeah.
I also think about it too, in the way that especially maybe more so for mothers, but I think this happens to most parents is like that moment that first child is born, the focus of everything in life becomes this new thing and everything else falls into the background to some degree.
This doesn't happen for everyone, but I can attest to that.
(53:48):
That was my experience with certain parents.
But it is what it is.
But no, as we evolve as a group, we elevate sort of the things that we thought were so important, including sometimes the dogmatic adherence to different things just.
(54:08):
Is just going to fall by the wayside.
It's just not going to have the same light to it.
Because we're moving from adherence to routine of practice, like say your prayers before you go to bed, to the lived experience of loving kindness moment by moment.
(54:39):
I think my sense is all of this is bringing us into a place where life can be born inside us, can come alive in us.
We spend many incarnations trying to understand life or scholars studying life.
Very rarely do we dive into the ocean of life and really get wet and.
(55:02):
And swim with the dolphins, swim with the angels, swim with each other.
So relinquishing, actually, when I really embrace it, there's a sense of relief in it.
Oh, man.
I know what it's like when I clean out a closet or get rid of the thing.
(55:25):
I don't need these anymore and I don't want to allow them to stay.
And so my kids have to take care of them when I've left the planet.
So why don't I do the cleanup now?
And this is same with our emotions.
Why don't I do the cleanup now?
Same with our mind, our beliefs.
Why don't I do the cleanup now?
(55:46):
The cleanup happens through the fire of transformation, the fire of love, through the process of relinquishing, or what they call here, sacrifice and renunciation.
And so what you do when you put everything in the fire of love, fire burns everything except itself.
(56:07):
Fire burns up the non essentials, the non Essentials are the forms that brought us to this place that are no longer needed to be carried forward.
Yeah.
So it's like, in a very strange way, I've had to relinquish my idea of what relinquishing means.
(56:31):
Oh, I understand that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's not sackcloth and ashes.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not sitting in a cave and.
Meditating or beating myself up because I'm not pure.
Yeah.
Alan Watts has another great one about that when he was talking about how when Westerners go over to some ashram in India or something, and then they're shocked to find out that the guru has a girlfriend or smokes cigarettes or listens to music, and they're just like, what do you mean?
(57:02):
It's like, well, there's no purity test here.
Well, because we have our images and ideas of what purity means.
If I'm not critical, if I'm loving and kind, then that loving kindness will flow through all my activities.
Now, if I smoke cigarettes, that's a choice that I have to agree on and weigh what effects it has on the universe.
(57:28):
That is, Michael, my ecosystem of self for which I have stewardship.
So that's a choice.
And there are consequences of all our choices.
I believe what we're learning is that there are consequences of being alive, but there's also a deep reason for being alive.
That's the mystery.
The deep reason for being alive is so that life can be revealed, particularly, as we say, in time, space and substance.
(57:58):
So if I have an image in my mind, if I paint it on a canvas and show you, go, wow, what a beautiful painting.
At the moment, we can't share mind images, although we will be able to later.
There'll be whole galleries we can explore together and actually paint together.
There's gonna be collective painting on the inner level.
That's how I see it.
(58:18):
I do, too.
So we relinquish our paintbrushes.
So, Joey, final thoughts to wrap this up.
There's only so many words you can use.
Well, for me.
And you know what?
I was trying to remember where this came from.
Whether it was a card I pulled or it was something, but it came to me.
And it was personally.
(58:39):
But it was this idea that.
Or this thought that you could go back, but you don't belong there anymore.
And to me, that hit hard, that the relinquishing of my past, of my old ways of thinking, yeah, you could go back, but you don't belong there anymore.
Well, you can't go back because you've changed your frequency and everything is about resonance.
(58:59):
You could go back, but it would be so painful because there would be dissonance.
Yeah.
And that's exactly what happens.
I mean, I lost 90% of my friends when the big shift happened in my life.
Yeah.
Not because I was better than them, because we were oriented to different things.
(59:19):
We were orbiting different suns.
We were.
Whatever analogy you want to use.
And therefore, the relinquishing really is to clear the space so that life can show up in its most full and glorious way through us.
(59:41):
Not despite us, but through us.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you, Michael.
Thank you, Joey.
And we'll do our best to let.
Go and let God.
Let go and let love.
Let go on that love.
I like that.
I like that.
Let go on that love.
Let's do that one.
(01:00:01):
All right.
Thanks.
Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the Musings from the Mount Podcast.
I'm your host, Joseph Carenza.
In this episode, we continue with part two of our exploration on relinquishing, that seemingly simple yet challenging practice of letting go.
In the course of this conversation, we examined the three rules for disciples offered by the Tibetan, with special focus on the pride of mind, or what Michael calls "the last bastion to crumble".
(00:30):
We discuss why mental attachments are often the hardest to release, how relinquishing applies to group work, and how the delicate balance between honoring spiritual teachings, while not becoming imprisoned by them.
So whether you are navigating relationships in spiritual communities or seeking to free yourself from outdated beliefs, this conversation offers practical wisdom for living with an open heart and mind, and we hope you enjoy it.
(00:57):
If you do enjoy this podcast, please consider going to meditationmount.org and donating.
Your donation helps us to bring you this podcast as well as all the other programs the Mount produces, both today and in the future.
We are incredibly grateful and honored by your support.
Back to the podcast and part two of Relinquishing.
(01:23):
All right, we are back with part two of the topic of relinquishing.
And I think just the simple phrase "let go".
I mean, it's one of those things where it's super, super simple, super obvious, but not necessarily easy to do.
And those are always my favorite topics.
(01:44):
Yeah, I remember that very simple phrase growing up, like, "let go, let God".
Yeah, I was thinking of that earlier today when I was driving here, and how I grew up with that phrase, too, and how somehow that's become triggering for a lot of people just because of the God part.
But the important part is just let.
Go for me, is let go, let God is let go.
(02:10):
And let the soul, which is that wise center of being that knows what it has to offer, allow that to influence, to inspire, to infuse us with its light and its love and its wisdom.
Therefore, let go, let God isn't like some other beings going to come in and direct me from the outside.
(02:35):
It's like, don't drive with the brakes on.
Just let go.
And relinquishing really is letting go of the past, letting go of that which has gone before.
And not that it was bad, but we know that everything that exists as a form has a life cycle.
And its job is to take the indwelling spirit to a new level.
(02:59):
And then it falls away.
It decomposes.
So you have the creation and destruction.
You have composition, decomposition.
These two aspects of form, life are always present.
And I Think we're standing at an age now where we are witnessing the rapid decomposition of some of the things that were really solid for us before.
(03:24):
And what's coming are new ideas that for some people seem heretical, seem scary, and yet they haven't emerged fully.
So we're in this no person's land where we don't know where to turn.
So let go.
Let God, or let go and let your own inner wisdom guide your life really is a true aphorism.
(03:48):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening.
And there couldn't be a more apt sort of ethos right now than to let go.
And if you're going to fight this wave, I think you're going to drown.
A change is coming to everything.
It's going to touch every aspect, and there's always going to be people who are probably going to go out and.
(04:11):
And live in the wilderness and try to stay not part of it.
That's interesting, too, because you're still living in reaction to something.
But for us, we're doing a podcast, so we've already embraced technology on some level, and we're not falling into sort of the Luddite character.
(04:33):
I was just about to say we are not techno Luddites.
But one thing that's interesting, and we were talking about this before we started the podcast, is how does this affect groups and organizations specifically, like sort of esoteric folks?
There is a tendency to sometimes latch onto a text or to a group of words in a certain way, and we tend to sort of box ourselves in, but then we're seeing all these different aspects arise that.
(05:02):
That kind of transcend text.
Well, I go back to what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago.
The text, the written text, the things we study are the forms that represent the truth that is part of the lineage.
And there comes a time when there needs to be a new dispensation, a new iteration, a new understanding of that truth.
(05:27):
However, if we hold too dearly to the forms and insist that this is the gospel, rather than the gospel is a conveyance of truth, and it's time to create another form of conveyance, doesn't mean you throw the Gospels out.
(05:48):
It simply means that you're open to the natural cycle of life, which means spirit.
The indwelling life seeks constantly to generate new forms that can reveal new aspects of itself, deeper dimensions of itself.
And every form has a limit.
(06:09):
Every form has a limit.
The indwelling life is infinite, but a form is finite.
It's temporal, which is not Good or bad, it just means it can only serve a certain cycle.
Now, you may repackage what you had before in a new way with a slight modification.
But unless you are willing to shed the skin and allow the truth, the naked truth, to stand there.
(06:37):
And I think what you and I both realize is the difference between reading the text, studying the text, and becoming like a scholar and going out and living it and enjoying it and feeling it with others on the path.
You gave this example of watching a YouTube video about a dog breeder and you wondered, well, do they actually go out and roll in the grass with them and have fun with the dogs, or are they just into the science of breeding?
(07:03):
And it's like, are we into the science of study and not into the art of living?
I think that's exactly.
That's what I noticed is somehow ended up on these videos about.
I was doing research about German shepherd Malinois because we have one that's quite feisty and, you know, so we get in.
You end up with all these high level breeders and they know everything about the breed.
(07:24):
But I never see them just like rolling around the yard, rubbing their belly, just, just loving the dog.
And I was like, you know, that's, that's the thing that has really made the biggest difference with our dog is just like that close time, you know, like relating to it with the heart, you know, and, and really just.
And like having endless patience.
So, Joey, how do you roll around in the grass with the Tibetan's text and sort of have your belly rubbed?
(07:52):
I think that's a great question.
And for me it's one, One thing is I don't attach to the words like a gospel, but I look at it as the best, you know, the best application at the time it was written, you know, and that more will be revealed.
(08:12):
And the way that it's revealed is to experience life while holding those texts with you and then saying, oh, look at that, does that line up?
Does that, how does that work?
But you have to live it and live it through the heart.
Well, when you live it fully, then you notice the limitations of the form of the text, not the truth of the text.
(08:34):
And therefore you let go of its.
If you like, hold over you as a belief system, but really as a guiding light, you allow it still to be a guiding light and it morphs.
This is this fluid age we talked about in the first episode.
Here we're in liquid crystal time, where the impulse that we're picking up from the indwelling life needs an immediate Response in a way that does not distort, that fully represents to the best of our ability, the fullness of the impulse, the beauty of the impulse.
(09:13):
Therefore, if I'm fixed and believe that I can only behave in this way, or this can only be in this way, my indwelling life is restricted to expression through a particular singular form of expression.
And that can be limiting, that can feel imprisoning.
(09:34):
Although we believe we're being faithful to God, faithful to the scriptures, faithful to the truth, what we're doing is being, if you like, captured by the form.
So the whole idea of relinquishing for me is this continuous letting go.
And one of the things, maybe we should just do a brief recap of what we covered in episode one.
(09:56):
Although I can't remember much of what we actually said.
But what I remember in the essence was relinquishing is the letting go of that which no longer serves.
It's the ability to open the heart wider, to receive more.
You said an open hand holds more sand.
And we added to that by saying an open heart not only holds more love, but.
(10:20):
But can receive more love, but can give more love.
And I think that's what it is.
Relinquishing is an ongoing process of expansion of our ability to know life, to understand life by participating in it in a different way.
(10:42):
So it's applied study, it's applied wisdom, it's not book learning.
And that's one of the things in the Agni Yoga teachings, they talk about just book learning or dead letter study.
If you just read the text for what they are and they don't come alive in you, the truth hasn't come alive in you.
(11:03):
The words and the, if you like, the thought forms of what that truth represents is there, but it's not the truth.
The truth is when you touch it and when it touches you.
And the relinquishing creates a space where there's no separation, there's no veil between you and the experience of being you in the world.
(11:31):
I think that's what we're looking at.
Yeah, yeah, like get out of the way.
And we're humans, so we see the world through the lens of the human, which is this personality.
And we like to identify ourselves with either accomplishments or some of the inherent traits that we have.
(11:57):
I mean, not everyone is born with the ability to hold large sets of data in their head at the same time.
And just like not everyone can throw a fastball, you know, and.
But it's the lived experience is that experience of being human, of being in this world and this group initiation that we're going through, I mean, those two experiences are just as valid.
(12:18):
Right.
And I was sort of thinking about the journey of humanity from like a youth, youthful, sort of free spirit to a wise being.
And I was thinking, often we talk about teenage delinquents.
I was thinking humanity starts out as a young delinquent.
And if you're delinquent, it means you haven't fulfilled the promise.
(12:39):
You're delinquent on something you haven't delivered.
And what we're saying, we're moving from humanity, the young delinquent, to humanity, the wise relinquant.
So is somebody who relinquishes a relinquant?
Yes.
Okay.
But don't get identified as being a relinquant.
That's the verb that sets you free.
(13:00):
It's not a noun.
That is your identity.
Right.
So having said all of that, we're going to go back to some texts that were written many years ago, and we're going to follow them religiously.
No, we're actually going to read them.
Those of you who have been part of the podcast before, you know we are reflecting on some of the teachings of the Master dk, the Tibetan, that have been compiled in a book called Ponder on this, which has taken themes from all of his books and put them together and categorized them.
(13:31):
And we're going through the one on relinquishing, and we have reached a point where we're about to dive into the next level of exploration.
Maybe we should just read the last paragraph that we finished on last time.
So there is some sort of segue here.
Okay, so what we ended on last time was the soul has to relinquish all the soul, the sense of responsibility for which other disciples may do.
(14:00):
The relation between disciples is egoic and not personal.
Egoic with a capital E, not egotism, but egoic as the ego, the higher self.
The link is of the soul and not of the mind.
Each personality pursues its own course, must shoulder its own responsibilities, work out its own dharma and fulfill its own karma, and so answer for itself to its Lord and Master.
(14:26):
The the soul and answer there will be.
That's how we ended the first episode.
So let's continue reading from this next paragraph.
The establishing of an inner contact and relationship with other servers in parenthesis, based on a realized oneness of purpose and soul love, is magnificently possible.
(14:54):
And for this, all disciples must struggle and strive on the outer plane, owing to the separative mind.
During this age and time, a Complete accord on detail, on method, and on interpretation of principles is not possible.
But the inner relationships and cooperation must capitalize, italicized, must be established and developed in spite of the outer divergences of opinion.
(15:23):
When the inner link is held in love, when disciples relinquish the sense of authority over each other and have responsibility for each other's activities, and at the same time stand shoulder to shoulder in the one work, then the differences, the divergences, and the points of disagreement will automatically be overcome.
(15:50):
He's saying, look, you're responsible for your ecosystem itself, with its own dharma and karma, but you're not separate.
We're all fractals of this one life.
But you don't get to control other people's lives.
But what you do get to do is to join at the deepest level with them, because that's where the unity is found.
(16:15):
That's a big section of kind of what I was talking about, especially with.
If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably of the sort of person that is part of a spiritual community or at least on a spiritual path, and when you bump up against other ideas, other people, sometimes we tend to take it personally and we tend to get invested in it in a weird way.
(16:38):
And this is saying, hey, it's not your responsibility to manage those people or manage those things.
You know, you have to manage your own.
Your own thing and meet them at a higher level.
Yes.
It's basically, don't interfere.
And yet, if you pick up beyond a shadow of doubt through your heart that what somebody is doing is actually destructive to the group purpose, you.
(17:08):
You.
You're allowed to call a timeout.
Yeah.
To do an evaluation.
Yeah.
I love that.
In business, we used to call a breakdown.
I like to call a breakdown, which means we're currently going in the direction that is off course.
Yeah.
We agreed to go here.
I.
(17:28):
I believe we've gone off course.
I'm going to call a breakdown.
So we can figure, are we still on course?
If we're not, how do we get back on course?
Not blaming anyone, but how do we get here?
What are the.
What was the drift.
This got us off course.
That we were unaware of.
Yeah.
And so you don't interfere, but it doesn't mean if somebody is about to destroy something which is being built by the group for the good, you don't just let that happen.
(17:57):
Yeah.
If you go back to the Buddhist teachings, they're all about compassion and loving kindness.
But if you see somebody mistreating a child, a human or Animal.
You step in.
Yeah, that's right.
So what the Tibetan says next, there are three rules which are important to disciples at this time.
(18:19):
He's always giving like three rules or five rules or something.
It's great.
It's like.
And then, yeah, once you've mastered those three rules, but there's only one rule, and that's love.
That's the one law.
So these are the three rules and we're going to look at them and see what they actually mean to us in 2025.
(18:40):
Relinquish or sacrifice the age old tendency to criticize and adjust another's work and thus preserve the inner group integrity.
More plans for service have gone astray and more workers have been hindered by criticism than by any other major factor.
(19:02):
Yeah, we've covered this in a podcast on criticism is that energy follows thought.
And what I'm doing, I am actually sending out thoughts that are unhelpful, maybe unloving, but they dismantle and they're caustic.
(19:23):
Criticism is caustic.
It erodes, it corrodes, and it eats away at the fabric that we're weaving together.
And therefore it's not part of the life of a server, the life of a soul on earth.
But it's so easy because I judge myself all the time.
(19:48):
Therefore, if I judge myself, I'm willing to judge others.
Sure, that's.
Yeah, but I think sometimes we.
That's not always the case sometimes when people.
I just.
I happen to have observed over the years of your careful approach to this kind of thing.
So it's not.
I don't think you're the average person out there who's firing off criticisms.
(20:13):
Well, for me is if something shows up on the field and needs to be made evident, you do it in a way where it's an aha.
It's not the.
It's not a punishment.
Right.
Remember we said, are you in a classroom or a courtroom?
Yeah.
Are we here to learn together?
Therefore, we look at what's getting in the way of us achieving our goal.
(20:38):
But we don't criticize each other.
We don't pass judgment on each other.
We help with group evaluation, which means that each person has to evaluate their own motivations and whether they are being honest with themselves.
I told you that what I have written on my altar on a piece of paper is a very powerful statement I've been using for the past year.
(21:03):
I live in integrity with myself.
And when I really get what that means, sure, I'm free to do whatever I want.
But really, when I understand where that comes from and deep inside of me, there's only one way to act in any situation.
Yeah.
(21:24):
Not in a rigid way, but it comes from a place of non judgment, compassion, clarity though.
I think you have to have clarity and compassion together.
Yeah.
It takes a lot of strength to be flexible.
You know, I mean that's.
Yes, that's sort of the, you know, I was thinking, how do you phrase that?
But it does take a lot of inner strength, discipline, training, love to be able to move like the water.
(21:51):
Because if I'm rigid and I have to adhere to a rigid belief, I can snap.
Yeah, that's right.
But if I have the ability to bow and go with the wind, that if I'm a willow tree, my principles are not broken.
(22:12):
I have flexibility.
Not in the deep ethical sense of who I am, but my flexibility in I have a rigid response.
I'm able to go with the flow, be like water, as Bruce Lee would tell us.
Yeah.
Anything else on this first one about criticism, Joey?
(22:32):
I mean, I have seen this in all the organizations and teams and different things I've been part of and been a leader of over the years.
I mean this was something that I noticed especially on tour because you're living and working with the same people sometimes for months and months, sometimes in cases of years, and often in confined areas.
(22:57):
I would imagine the ultimate example of this playing out would probably be like a submarine crew where like there's literally no going outside.
So and, and you have to, you know, from what I understand, like the rules and the procedures are so rigid.
Ultimate.
I mean not rigid but so firm.
(23:18):
But then when you see like I've watched again another YouTube, YouTube videos of documentaries and sort of stuff of submarine crews and they all seem very like loosey goosey fun but like they follow the strictest rules, you know.
But see, that's it.
When you adhere to principles, you can hang loose.
(23:38):
Yeah.
Because you're not hanging loose on your principles.
Right.
You're just not reacting in like a knee jerk way to things.
Yeah.
And it seems like, you know, there's this level of support and you know, like there's in.
I used analogy of a submarine again, there is no, there's no benefit to the group if you're criticizing one person and dragging them down.
(24:03):
You need to, you need to correct.
Address the problem and find a way to support them in fixing the problem.
Because you can't just swap somebody out if you're, you know, a mile under the surface.
You know, that's right.
Yeah.
So I think in organizations, I've noticed that criticism is like a little cancer.
It's a little drop of poison that starts to infect and then it goes.
(24:27):
And then it moves its way into the whole organization.
But there may be some truth to what they're observing.
But the act of criticizing is like an acid that corrodes, and it may come from a place where that person wants to be seen as more important, or there's something inside that we don't know, but it's.
It's not coming from a place of loving kindness and understanding.
(24:52):
And so that's what we're talking about here, is that we don't interfere with others.
We're here to support it.
The group process, as he says, when you stand shoulder to shoulder in the one work, then the differences, the divergences, and the points of disagreement will automatically be overcome.
That was in the previous paragraph.
(25:12):
So let's go to number two in his list.
So the Tibetan says, relinquish or sacrifice the sense of responsibility for the action of others, and particularly of disciples.
See that your own activity measures up to theirs, and in the joy of struggle and on the way of service, the differences will disappear and the general good will be achieved.
(25:41):
Yeah, this will take time.
But he's.
It's.
I mean, the temptation is so great to interfere and.
Or be responsible for others and feel it.
Although it's said that a master, when he takes on a pupil, is responsible for their karma.
Yeah, you mentioned that in an earlier podcast.
(26:02):
Maybe we could sit on that for.
Just stay on there for just a second.
And how this is a perfect example of that, how that's supposed to now be changing, like, it's not about that master.
Societal relationship is a little different now.
It's a group.
However, if you are.
If a master takes you under their wing or places you in their heart, you're part of their ecosystem, therefore they do.
(26:27):
It's like, if I eat food, I've got to choose what kind of food I put in my body.
Now, if a master chooses to put you inside his Auric field or her Auric field, then that's a choice, and you live with the consequences.
So it's not in the same way as you're taking responsibility for the whole of another person.
(26:49):
It's just that you've assumed a level of stewardship for another aspect of life.
Okay, I see it that way.
Sure.
It's a tricky one.
It's a fine.
It's a razor's edge, this one.
Yeah, it is.
It is a tricky one.
But my understanding of.
Because now we're free to be guided by the soul and work together in groups.
(27:11):
And yet the master embodies soul consciousness.
And this is how the master is allowing self organization inside the system of group disciples.
The master, or the enlightened ones are still responsible for implementing the plan and managing the project workers, supervising the project workers.
(27:35):
But they're not doing it with an iron rod or a whip.
They're given some latitude for learning.
I also see almost the entirety of the Alice Bailey books as I go back to, let's say, a parent raising a child.
All you're really doing is trying to give them the wisdom that you've learned and the wisdom of, you know, just common sense, best practice.
(27:59):
All this stuff, trying to get ready for them to go out into the world.
But the moment they go out into the world, it's.
It's all of, you know, the world is the world.
And it's, it's.
It's going to take its turns and it's going to be the craziness that it is.
And, and, you know, like, I feel like that's how these books are.
They're trying to give us all this information about how this thing that's coming up that we're going to have to go through, but there's no describing it until you actually go through it.
(28:23):
Absolutely true.
And yet there is something in these books that sets, off, if you like, a resonant signal inside the soul.
So when we meet the situation, something reminds us, ah, this is how.
If I were fully in touch with my soul, this is how it would be acting.
(28:44):
Yeah.
So this becomes like a surrogate.
Yeah, There you go.
Okay.
But a surrogate ain't the real thing, right?
That's true.
Yeah.
So number three.
All right, all right, here we go, Joey.
Relinquish the pride of mind, which sees its way and its interpretations to be correct and true and others false and wrong.
(29:07):
This is the way of separation.
Adhere to the way of integration, which is of the soul and not of the mind.
This one is probably the biggest one at play in the world at the moment, Whether it's religious warfare, political, social, woke, non woke, whatever language you use for splitting things in two and believing that the others are wrong and we are right.
(29:39):
Pride of mind.
It really is like a peacock.
It's sort of showing it, strutting its stuff.
Yeah.
Not to bring more enlightenment and wisdom to the world, but to show, you know, look at me.
Yeah.
And I think the pride of mind is the most dangerous because the mind is the most difficult to relinquish.
(30:06):
Or all the beliefs that are manufactured inside the mind and crystallize as beliefs are the most difficult to relinquish.
We said before, it's easy to give away physical things.
You know, all right, I'll give this away.
I don't need this.
Or I'll let go of these emotions.
I'll move through this, hang up.
But when it comes to letting go of your beliefs, because at that stage, the last holdout of the personality is clinging to the life raft of beliefs.
(30:39):
And to relinquish beliefs, you know, the fear of drowning is huge, but it's an act of liberation.
And so we're knocking on the door, Joey, that you have named.
When we have to relinquish the idea that we can be saved from by the things we study, the only way we can be saved is by the love that we generate.
(31:06):
Right.
And the loving communion we have with other beings.
I'm not sure what.
What else to say on this one, but I'm sure you have some thoughts on pride of mind.
I mean, this is.
This is.
This is the one that, you know, it almost should be number one in the list, if you're going by importance.
(31:29):
But the relinquishing of the pride of mind is the one where I think everyone wants to be an expert on the text, but sometimes you conveniently forget a couple passages.
And I think this is one of those passages we tend to forget, especially when we do a deep dive into any of these aspects.
And this is also one of the ones that's hardest to live.
(31:52):
You know, it's one thing to be able to memorize this text and debate it and to pontificate on it or to eulogize it or proselytize it, but to live it.
This is a tough one.
I agree.
And why it's tough for me occasionally is that when the mind becomes the master and not the tool or the instrument of the soul, that is used to bring clarity and.
(32:21):
Yeah, yeah.
I think it was Alan Watts that said, like, the mind is a good servant but a bad master.
Exactly.
And that's exactly what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And when we fall into that trap, you know, it's.
And it's easy.
It's easy to slip into that, you know.
Well, because I've noticed that we tend to.
I tend to.
(32:41):
Or we tend to imagine sometimes that we're being inspired by the soul, but really it's an aspect of our personality that's masquerading as the soul in order to justify what it's doing.
I've seen that in communities where somebody believes they're being guided by their soul or guided by God, and they're told to do this and told to leave their family or they're told to do something, and it's really an excuse for just carrying out what your deep desires are.
(33:14):
Yeah, Nothing wrong.
It's a stage of learning.
But the stronghold of the mind is the last bastion to crumble.
Yeah, sure is.
It's a tough one.
So pride of mind.
So that's why they always talk about humility.
(33:37):
Humility isn't sort of walking along slowly with your head bowed.
We've said this before.
The Tibetan talks about humility as an adjusted sense of right proportion.
You don't aggrandize yourself, you don't diminish yourself.
And I've said you learn to stand in the sweet spot of your own sovereignty and you act from there, where you are who you are.
(34:02):
You're not acting out who you would like to be seen to be, but you are genuinely coming from an inner place and building up your capacity to have the form express that inner place rather than having a crystallized form that becomes your source of identity and you project that out.
(34:27):
So if I project my beliefs out into the world, my beliefs are my mental understandings of some truth.
But if I live in my heart and I'm kind and fully engaged in life, I'm rolling on the grass and having life rub my stomach and I'm rubbing life's stomach, then I'm in a more authentic relationship with things.
(34:48):
And my mind doesn't decide what is and what isn't.
My heart knows my heart is the greatest organ of discernment.
So we talk about discerning mind, but I think what he's hinting at here, a discerning mind really needs to relinquish all the biases, as you said, the weights, the weightings that have it be out of true and cause it to say, this is true.
(35:19):
Your version is not true.
Being aware of your own weights and measures is an important.
If you imagine we're all just walking algorithms, you have to understand how you wrote the weights and measures.
And they were written through your life experience, through your generational trauma, through your DNA.
(35:39):
You inherited certain things and then the way that those played out in the experiences of the world.
And the phrase unbiased means not being pulled to one side or the other, standing in truth, being true, standing.
So you are like an engineering thing There's a trueness to it.
(36:03):
And then you trim and adjust things so it comes back into true.
And the way that we make sure the mind comes back into true is to let go of all these beliefs, prejudices.
A prejudice is an incredible bias.
It pulls us to one side.
(36:24):
And it's not that you don't have those things, it's recognizing that those patterns exist whether you put them there or not, but that is that they are.
And then adjusting in F1, you adjust your brake bias depending on the circuit and depending on the curve that you're going into.
Right.
So it's acknowledging that there is a bias there, but understanding it and using it in right proportion.
(36:51):
Right.
So what does the Tibetan say about the three rules he's just given us?
These are hard sayings, but they are the rules by which the teachers on the inner side guide their actions and their thoughts when working with each other and with their disciples.
This is how they comport themselves with each other.
(37:14):
So they're not just giving out rules.
This is saying, this is how we live.
Let's codify how we live and put them into three rules for you.
The inner integrity is necessarily a proven fact to them.
To the disciple it is not.
By inner integrity we mean the coherence of life, the union that comes when loving wisdom pervades the inner realms.
(37:51):
So to the inner teachers, the outer differences are abhorrent, abhorrent.
They leave each other free to serve the plan.
They train their disciples, no matter what their degree, to serve the plan with freedom.
For in freedom and in the sense of joy and in the strength of inner cooperative love is the best work done.
(38:18):
So this is where you have this wonderful balance and right relationship between what you were saying, firmness of principle and flexibility of form and response.
So it is sincerity which they look for.
(38:41):
Sincerity means your desire to live on the outside.
The truth that you sense on the inside, the willingness to sacrifice the lesser when the greater is sensed is that for which they search.
I mean, that's a result of when the inner reality becomes so strong, then these biases are just self corrected because we don't lean to one side or the other.
(39:10):
We stand more in true or in truth, the spontaneous relinquishing of long held ideals when a greater and more inclusive presents itself as their guide.
And this goes back to what you're saying, when something comes along that says, oh wow, that explains it more clearly, that makes more sense, that becomes the new working model.
(39:37):
Yeah, I feel like that's inherently baked into this and I Think it gets overlooked.
There is a sense of best practices and best available data and best available practice.
At the moment they're best practices, but they're evolving practices.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, that's what a best practice is.
The highest evolved practice we have so far.
(39:59):
The sacrifice of pride and the sacrifice of personality.
When the vastness of the work and the urgency, the need are realized, sway them to cooperation.
Basically.
We don't have time to play these sort of personality games.
Yeah, yeah.
(40:21):
Explicitly.
And addressing the fact that this is a group project now, I think that the switch has been moved from master to disciple, master to disciple.
And now this is a group endeavor.
And so the things that worked, it was almost like they put in this holding pattern until the time and now is the time.
(40:43):
So those old patterns aren't going to make as much sense.
And if you're fully invested in perfecting that pattern, then it's not gonna, maybe there's gonna be some reluctance to relinquish a little better, some growing pains or some expansion pains or, you know, and.
Inside a group you're gonna have people who have different degrees of ability to let go of things and others who are still holding on.
(41:11):
And that's the beauty of learning together in a group.
Yeah, absolutely.
Everyone learns from each other, regardless of their, if you like, their level of maturity.
Because mature souls learn one of the lessons and the qualities of a soul, compassion and patience.
(41:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Try dealing with 85 pound German Shepherd Malinois.
Well, try dealing with an out of control humanity that's supposed to be the project workers carrying out the plan.
This is what the enlightened ones are doing, going, what do we do?
(41:55):
Do we crack the whip?
But imagine being the patience.
You have to have to be an entity who is here to help us and instruct us but can't directly touch us.
They can only send down these kind of like, you know, hot air balloons saying, you know, here's the message, just try to do this.
What they can do though, is hold us in a field of love, which is a palpable contribution when you think of Kuan Yin, the female bodhisattva.
(42:26):
Yeah, into the story.
I think most people know the story.
Kuan Yin had earned the right to enter Samadhi heaven and was about to make the transition when she heard a cry from the earth.
A woman crying, and it really touched her.
She came down and realized there are still people suffering.
And she said, I will stay until all the suffering has ceased.
(42:50):
So she's there holding the field for us.
Making sure that we're not the last ones.
But not just the last ones, but holding a field that will allow us to grow because we grow in love.
And if you've got a being that has sacrificed or made sacred their life by holding a sacred space for others, wow.
(43:13):
That is the ultimate act of sacrifice or relinquishment.
So when you think of relinquishment, Kuan Yin gave up her right that she'd earned to enter this other level.
But the other level didn't mean she disappeared and didn't have contact.
It just meant that she had no karmic liability or responsibility to the earth.
(43:39):
But what touched her out of love was compassion for those who are still evolving.
And so she decided, I can be of help.
And that's it.
So you've got the bodhisattvas, both male and female, holding a loving field for all of us now that love can be felt.
(44:01):
I mean, that's part of what gives me hope, is that we're not alone.
We're being held.
So let's carry on.
We've got about a few more paragraphs if we want to go through the whole of this section.
(44:21):
It is essential that the disciples shall learn to sacrifice the non essential in order that the work may go forward.
So here we have to look at our lives through an inventory.
What's non essential?
That's really important in a group endeavor too.
Because a group can chase its tail over stuff that's not essential to the mission.
(44:45):
Very easily we get distracted with little pet projects.
And pet.
I guess pet projects isn't.
I guess that's fine.
I mean, like it's not that a project is.
Well, it takes precedence.
Our attachment to the form of how something's supposed to be rather than what it actually can be.
(45:11):
Yeah.
Little as one may realize it, the many techniques and methods and ways are secondary to the major world need.
There are many ways and many points of view and many experiments and many efforts abortive or successful.
And all of them come and go, but humanity remains.
(45:38):
All of them are in evidence of the multiplicity of minds and of experiences.
But the goal remains.
Difference is ever of the personality.
When this law of sacrifice governs the mind, it will inevitably lead all disciples to relinquish the personal in favor of the universal and of the soul that knows no separation and no difference.
(46:09):
Ah, that's.
It speaks for itself, doesn't it?
That one.
Yeah, that's it.
I don't.
I have nothing to add to that.
Then he carries on then.
No pride nor a short and myopic perspective, nor love of interference in parenthesis so dear to many people, nor misunderstanding of motive will hinder their cooperation with each other as disciples, nor their service to the world.
(46:43):
That last paragraph really wraps.
Or that last kind of passage.
Yeah.
Relinquish the personal in favor of the universal and the soul.
Yeah.
But when we do that, Joey, we still can take care of ourselves because we're part of the universe.
So it just means don't aggrandize the part over the whole.
(47:05):
Serve the whole.
And then the soul and the whole automatically nourish and take care of its constituent parts.
But if I'm just in it for the part, trying to grab what the part believes it needs to survive, I've missed the point.
It's a false map I'm following.
(47:26):
Yeah.
There's no fulfillment that way.
That's right.
There's only colonization.
Well, because the energy follows the thought of.
I think of this as if you're obsessed or focused on taking credit or on correcting.
Then that's where the energy is going, not to the ultimate project or mission.
(47:49):
And so there is one final paragraph in this section which I think we should read together and sort of.
It ends on a crescendo.
Okay.
The great renunciation becomes possible only when the practice of the little renunciations govern the life of the disciple and a group.
(48:15):
So you don't go for the big one.
The big one is made up of all the small acts because it's not measured by quantity, size.
It's the quality of our actions in things both great and small.
The renouncing of ambition, of all personality ties, and the renunciation of all that hinders progress as it is revealed to the eye of the soul lays a sound foundation for the final great transference between, based upon the renunciation of that which for ions has connoted beauty, truth and goodness, and which has seemed the ultimate goal of all aspirational effort.
(48:58):
Now we're building up to something you're saying, well, look, what you thought was the goal.
Actually.
No, that has to be let go of as well.
Yeah.
And now we're going to come into a reference to a historical fact that's recorded in the Bible.
But just as an example of this, okay.
(49:25):
The endeavor to see that which lies ahead and beyond the apparent finality of soul fusion faces disciples among them, some of you at this time, and that all of you may penetrate beyond the veil of the soul and.
And eventually see that veil and then quote, unquote, rent from the Top to the bottom, and thus be enabled to say with those of like degree it is finished is my earnest hope.
(49:55):
So this goes back to the master Jesus on the cross, when he said, it is finished.
Right.
And then he also says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And they're like, well, you know, I thought you were going to take care of me, you know, where are you?
You're going away.
(50:16):
I'm not going away.
You've got to give birth to me.
That's the resurrection.
First you got to crucify, which is the ultimate relinquishing.
Yeah, sure is.
That's what the renunciation is.
So then will open for you, as for others, the way of the higher evolution and the glory of the Lord will be seen in a new light, the light which will dim and throw into the shade all previous goals and visions.
(50:45):
So it talks about the glory of the Lord.
This simply means the inherent beauty, love, truth, luminosity of the indwelling life about whom naught can be said.
Agni Yoga talks about the origin of.
Of origins.
(51:05):
Yeah.
Because that's about as close as you can get to it.
Yeah.
And in the Tibetan teachings, he talks about the one about whom naught can be said.
And there's not much you can say about the one about whom naught can be said.
Yeah, funny how that works.
But it has to be experience.
I think this is what it's pointing to that we're here to not just experience, but to embody, to manifest, to reveal.
(51:30):
Each one of us is a point and promise of revelation.
So the relinquishing is a natural stage or a series of stages in the process of revelation and ultimate manifestation in time, space and substance of the spiritual promise that lives at the heart of life.
(51:54):
If we lose sight of that, it becomes this really tough struggle.
Why is this happening to me?
Why is the world in this way?
Why?
Why?
Why?
So what else can you think of when you reflect on relinquishing?
(52:15):
Just that last passage.
Tell me what you.
What hit you when it hits the way of the higher evolution and the light, which will dim and throw into shade all previous goals and visions.
To me, that is like, you can see that if you take it out of the esoteric context and just look it into the way we look at a new discovery or a new scientific theorem or something.
(52:41):
And if it turns out to be true, it's just like immediately everything else folds away, like, okay, no, this new way explains it better.
So we.
In that same way, it's just like this peeling back of this, peeling back and peeling back of this onion of truth and beauty getting back to the one.
Yeah, it's like whether it's a string theory, but then we want truth with no strings attached.
(53:06):
How can you have string theory with no strings attached?
Yeah, there you go.
But I'm thinking that it's the difference between seeing yourself as a highly evolved caterpillar rather than realizing when you're the butterflies, this is what it was all about.
The other was how we get to this point.
(53:26):
Yeah.
I also think about it too, in the way that especially maybe more so for mothers, but I think this happens to most parents is like that moment that first child is born, the focus of everything in life becomes this new thing and everything else falls into the background to some degree.
This doesn't happen for everyone, but I can attest to that.
(53:48):
That was my experience with certain parents.
But it is what it is.
But no, as we evolve as a group, we elevate sort of the things that we thought were so important, including sometimes the dogmatic adherence to different things just.
(54:08):
Is just going to fall by the wayside.
It's just not going to have the same light to it.
Because we're moving from adherence to routine of practice, like say your prayers before you go to bed, to the lived experience of loving kindness moment by moment.
(54:39):
I think my sense is all of this is bringing us into a place where life can be born inside us, can come alive in us.
We spend many incarnations trying to understand life or scholars studying life.
Very rarely do we dive into the ocean of life and really get wet and.
(55:02):
And swim with the dolphins, swim with the angels, swim with each other.
So relinquishing, actually, when I really embrace it, there's a sense of relief in it.
Oh, man.
I know what it's like when I clean out a closet or get rid of the thing.
(55:25):
I don't need these anymore and I don't want to allow them to stay.
And so my kids have to take care of them when I've left the planet.
So why don't I do the cleanup now?
And this is same with our emotions.
Why don't I do the cleanup now?
Same with our mind, our beliefs.
Why don't I do the cleanup now?
(55:46):
The cleanup happens through the fire of transformation, the fire of love, through the process of relinquishing, or what they call here, sacrifice and renunciation.
And so what you do when you put everything in the fire of love, fire burns everything except itself.
(56:07):
Fire burns up the non essentials, the non Essentials are the forms that brought us to this place that are no longer needed to be carried forward.
Yeah.
So it's like, in a very strange way, I've had to relinquish my idea of what relinquishing means.
(56:31):
Oh, I understand that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's not sackcloth and ashes.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not sitting in a cave and.
Meditating or beating myself up because I'm not pure.
Yeah.
Alan Watts has another great one about that when he was talking about how when Westerners go over to some ashram in India or something, and then they're shocked to find out that the guru has a girlfriend or smokes cigarettes or listens to music, and they're just like, what do you mean?
(57:02):
It's like, well, there's no purity test here.
Well, because we have our images and ideas of what purity means.
If I'm not critical, if I'm loving and kind, then that loving kindness will flow through all my activities.
Now, if I smoke cigarettes, that's a choice that I have to agree on and weigh what effects it has on the universe.
(57:28):
That is, Michael, my ecosystem of self for which I have stewardship.
So that's a choice.
And there are consequences of all our choices.
I believe what we're learning is that there are consequences of being alive, but there's also a deep reason for being alive.
That's the mystery.
The deep reason for being alive is so that life can be revealed, particularly, as we say, in time, space and substance.
(57:58):
So if I have an image in my mind, if I paint it on a canvas and show you, go, wow, what a beautiful painting.
At the moment, we can't share mind images, although we will be able to later.
There'll be whole galleries we can explore together and actually paint together.
There's gonna be collective painting on the inner level.
That's how I see it.
(58:18):
I do, too.
So we relinquish our paintbrushes.
So, Joey, final thoughts to wrap this up.
There's only so many words you can use.
Well, for me.
And you know what?
I was trying to remember where this came from.
Whether it was a card I pulled or it was something, but it came to me.
And it was personally.
(58:39):
But it was this idea that.
Or this thought that you could go back, but you don't belong there anymore.
And to me, that hit hard, that the relinquishing of my past, of my old ways of thinking, yeah, you could go back, but you don't belong there anymore.
Well, you can't go back because you've changed your frequency and everything is about resonance.
(58:59):
You could go back, but it would be so painful because there would be dissonance.
Yeah.
And that's exactly what happens.
I mean, I lost 90% of my friends when the big shift happened in my life.
Yeah.
Not because I was better than them, because we were oriented to different things.
(59:19):
We were orbiting different suns.
We were.
Whatever analogy you want to use.
And therefore, the relinquishing really is to clear the space so that life can show up in its most full and glorious way through us.
(59:41):
Not despite us, but through us.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you, Michael.
Thank you, Joey.
And we'll do our best to let.
Go and let God.
Let go and let love.
Let go on that love.
I like that.
I like that.
Let go on that love.
Let's do that one.
(01:00:01):
All right.
Thanks.
Popular Podcasts
True Crime Tonight
If you eat, sleep, and breathe true crime, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT is serving up your nightly fix. Five nights a week, KT STUDIOS & iHEART RADIO invite listeners to pull up a seat for an unfiltered look at the biggest cases making headlines, celebrity scandals, and the trials everyone is watching. With a mix of expert analysis, hot takes, and listener call-ins, TRUE CRIME TONIGHT goes beyond the headlines to uncover the twists, turns, and unanswered questions that keep us all obsessed—because, at TRUE CRIME TONIGHT, there’s a seat for everyone. Whether breaking down crime scene forensics, scrutinizing serial killers, or debating the most binge-worthy true crime docs, True Crime Tonight is the fresh, fast-paced, and slightly addictive home for true crime lovers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.