Ep43 - Living In Gratitude

In this episode, we look at giving thanks for life itself, and how we often think that we need more. We frequently fail and forget to see all the good things that are already here, and the beautiful simplicity of the many moments we miss by thinking we need more.

As the wonderful teacher George Pranksy said, "Be grateful in your highs and graceful in your lows." Please sit back and enjoy the show!

FIND OUT MORE: https://linktr.ee/unminding

DONATE: https://theunmindingproject.com/support

SPONSOR: https://www.vemp.xyz/

Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is provided for general information only. It is not intended to, and does not, amount to advice which you should rely on. They are not in any way an alternative to specific advice. You must therefore obtain the relevant professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action based on the information in these podcasts. If you have questions about any medical matter, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare providers without delay. If you think you are experiencing any medical condition you should seek immediate medical attention from a doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Transcript

In this episode, we look at giving thanks for life itself and how we often think that we need more.

We frequently fail and forget to see all the good things that are already here and the beautiful simplicity of the many moments we miss by thinking we need more.

As the wonderful teacher George Pranksy said, be grateful in your highs and graceful in your lows.

Please sit back and enjoy the show.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Unminding.

How are you Molls?

Yeah, I'm really good, how are you Gem?

Yeah, I'm good.

Excited for tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

We've got lots to explore.

It's going to be a real open conversation.

First of all, want to say thank you to our sponsors which are VEmpire, you can check them out at v-empire.io

Yeah, so nice to have you all here.

How's your week been Molls?

Yeah, busy, really busy.

My son's 21 on Sunday so I've literally just dropped him off, he’s just off to Amsterdam.

So yeah, his first birthday is not spent with me but I guess when they get to 21 you do what you like.

Yeah.

Well what were you doing at 21?

Exactly!

When you were saying goodbye to him, Was it sort of sad or were you excited?

Mix of excitement and a little bit of sad!

I'm sure you'll be video calling.

Yeah, I'm sure, we're very different now.

At least I can stay in touch with him.

Happy Thanks Giving everybody.

Yeah.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Whatever country you're in.

We don't really celebrate it over here but we have lots of, the majority of our listeners are American actually.

So thank you all for listening and happy Thanksgiving to you.

Yeah, thank you Gem, that's lovely.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

And if you're listening on the podcast, hello.

This was recorded probably four weeks ago on Thanksgiving, but it's always good to explore gratitude and that's what we're going to look at tonight.

And something Gem and I found out this week is we've been looking at the wrong stats for our podcast.

And we have been thinking that we have, by the time the spaces have aired, maybe 500 people listening to it.

And we thought we got 500 downloads on the podcast, but it turns out we have 2000 listeners a week on the podcast.

So that's really, really great.

So we're really growing.

So thank you to all of you that listen to that, all of you that are listening now on the podcast and all of you that share the podcast, we really appreciate it.

It is quite amazing really.

We've had a few of these moments along our journey that we thought, oh wow, actually we're doing many more numbers than we actually thought.

So it's been a real surprise and just really grateful to have you all on this journey and it's through word of mouth that people get to hear.

So keep sharing your stories and keep contacting us and letting us know that we've helped you or you've heard something in the podcast.

So I want to say thank you to Patricia Cole.

She's always sending lovely messages and not so fast for always supporting us as well and just being on the journey with us.

We really are here to create the new mental health revolution and you are all part of it.

So thank you to all of our listeners.

Yeah, thank you, everybody.

It's a lovely subject tonight.

So if you are joining us in your new what I want you to do is just slow down a little bit.

Don't carry all your problems with you into this hour.

I just kind of leave them at the door.

Listen to me and listen to Gem and anyone that speaks, just listen with a really open mind.

You don't know anything that you could hear, anything that might change your life.

Ultimately, that's what we're pointing to.

We're pointing to an understanding that definitely has the potential to transform lives.

It's transformed ours and it's transformed countless other people's lives.

So it's just about getting a little bit quieter.

Our minds are so noisy.

We get so caught up in this world and the material things and the problems.

I think on a day like today, a day that is called Thanksgiving, to just sit and be, just find a deeper space within you where those problems can fall away.

It's a really beautiful understanding and it just requires a different kind of listening.

It's not a listening to work it out or to analyse.

It's just a listening as if not you're listening to music.

Just let it wash over you.

Don't try and work out music when you listen to it.

You just let it be.

So if you can just kind of find that stillness and if your mind is chattering, that's okay.

Just kind of notice that and notice that that's not really you.

We can see our minds.

That points to me that we're not our minds.

There's a witnesser there and it's like, what's that witness?

What's that?

That's kind of the exploration that we go on in the Unwinding project.

We look at something a little bit deeper, and that depth is really just the potential of who we are, the truth of who we are before our thinking that we tend to get so caught up in.

And the more that we go into this being what's really interesting that we're talking about gratitude tonight is that the more we explore this understanding, the more we see beyond our own thinking, the more we actually discover a natural gratitude.

We discover the gratefulness that isn't false.

There's a lot of bullshit out there about gratitude.

Like, you've got to find ten things every day to be grateful for and write a gratitude journal.

And that's all a function of the intellect and the mind.

And what we're pointing to here is something that's before the mind.

And actually when you touch that a really natural state of gratitude comes through really different from the forced having to write it down.

It's really just in that being that we get really grateful to be alive.

It's not a superficial gratitude.

It's this source of gratitude.

And we can just be in that moment and that feeling can come through.

And as it comes through, it's like things drop away.

We’re not comparing, we're not judging.

We're just seeing through the eyes of love.

Gratitude really, I suppose, could be like an unconditional love is where we sit and we observe, and we just see that this is all that we've got.

This moment has to contain everything we need because it's the moment that we're in.

And if we can see beyond the ego, beyond all the superficiality of who we are and what we make up, this fundamental and truthful form of gratitude, this deeper sense of the appreciation of life comes bursting through.

It is here right now.

It's not something that you've got to do.

It's who you are.

And that's the beauty of seeing, this understanding of seeing through our own thinking.

We fall away from the doing mind, and we come into the being mind.

And in the being mind, we can just be grateful for the moment.

Can you see how that can come away from the gratitude of, oh, well, I've got nothing to be grateful for.

Like, maybe your life's falling apart, but even then it's like, well, I'm breathing, my heart's beating.

Maybe I've got food to eat.

It can be so simple, but we complicate it so much.

So we're always coming back to this simplicity in this beingness.

It's in your life right now.

This gratitude is in you right now.

It's not something outside of you.

It's not something you have to find.

It's your true nature.

And we can get so caught up and so lost in thinking that we have to acquire things in life to feel grateful for life without seeing that life is the thing that we should be grateful for.

Stripping it back to who we are.

It's stripping it back to this depth of understanding, of seeing that my thoughts aren't true.

Okay, so this is really where the principles come in, is that we're always saying that thought isn't true.

So the thinking that takes you away from gratitude, what's that?

What's the thinking that you judge your life?

What are the thoughts that you say your life isn't good enough?

What if they're not true?

What if you don't need more to be grateful?

What if you're sitting in the middle of everything that you need right now, but because of thought that isn't true, you're not seeing that.

So what the principals do, these three principles that we teach, they attempt to explain the nature of the human experience, and they do it really beautifully, in my opinion.

There's a beautiful quote from a man called Jack Pransky.

He says, all we are is peace, love and wisdom and the power to create the illusion that we are not.

If you think of that in what we're speaking about tonight, the sense of gratitude that we'd all like to be in is that that's another thing that we take ourselves away.

We create the illusion that life isn't good enough.

It can be hard sometimes.

I get it.

Sometimes we go through things.

It can be really hard to see.

But when we drop out of our conceptual mind and we drop into a deeper sense of who we are it really is the most natural thing in the world to be grateful.

It really is the most natural thing in the world to feel loving.

We take ourselves away from that by believing thought that isn't true because thought is fundamentally imagination.

It's not a solid set thing that is telling you the truth.

It's a fluid thing that is always coming and going.

There's no fixed thinking.

There's thinking that can appear fixed because we habitually think it over and over again because we have a belief system around it.

But that doesn't mean the thinking is true.

So when I'm working with people and they're maybe catastrophising their future and they have these repetitive thoughts and it's like, well, it feels true because I have it over and over again.

How does that mean?

It's true that's you mistaking it for truth.

You're mistaking repetition for truth.

There's no truth to that repetition of silk.

Just because you have it more than once or you have it a thousand times or you have it 100,000 times doesn't make it true.

It's just that you've somehow held on to it and you've kind of taken this fluid thing and you've fixed it.

You've calcified thought.

And again, this understanding allows us to see through that because we can catch ourselves in our unhelpful thinking.

We see through it.

We're not as reactive.

We stop reacting to all this thinking that we have that actually causes us so much trouble.

It really is shitty to live in silt that is unhelpful and negative and believe it to be true.

I get that.

But we don't have to do that.

We can catch ourselves and we can look within.

And your guide to that is your feelings.

Your feelings are always guiding you back to what's true.

What we've mistakenly done is we've taken bad feelings and made them mean something.

We've taken a bad feeling and so we get caught up in our minds and we're projecting a negative future and catastrophising and feeling like shit.

We think, well, because I feel bad, that must be true.

And actually, that bad feeling is actually telling us that we're overthinking when we come back into a good feeling.

That's telling us that our thoughts are on track.

So we've really got lost in a misunderstanding of the system of being human.

Being human actually has a guidance system built in that we've forgotten about and another one of those feelings that we get to know that we're on track is gratitude is being thankful.

And you will know people that haven't got much, that are incredibly grateful within their lives.

And you will know people that have what would look like too much and are ungrateful, and they're always searching for more.

It's seeing what's in built.

It's seeing who we already are.

It's seeing that life is coming through us and we're projecting onto the world.

And that creates how the world looks to us.

So if we're in a good feeling, the world looks great.

If we're in a bad feeling, the world looks bad.

But we've taken that to actually be a true reflection of the world.

When it's not, it's us.

It's always us.

What happens is we get into such resistance, we can really resist our experience and that resistance.

We can't feel gratitude when we're in resistance to our experience.

It's impossible because we're in a fight, we're not in flow.

Gratitude comes when we're flowing.

Gratitude comes when we're seeing that everything is as it should be, no matter what is happening.

Okay, I may be going through a shit time.

Life can look shit at times.

Okay, well, this is how it's supposed to be.

And I've got a navigation system within me, and I have wisdom that will guide me out of that.

And even in the shit time, I can be grateful for the guidance system that I have that will get me through those bad times.

And that is an innate guidance system.

That is who we all are.

But we take ourselves away from it with habitual thought.

That isn't true that we believe.

So this is going beyond what our minds are saying.

It's going beyond our beliefs that actually keep us stuck.

So many of our belief systems that we've all completely made up, there's no validity in our belief systems.

If there was, it all have the same ones, and we don't.

For most of us on this call, we spend a lot of time on Twitter, we see the different opinions, and it shows you how minds can create such a fixed view of the world.

And we can get really lost in thinking that fixed view is helpful when it's not.

Being fluid in life is helpful.

Understanding who you are is helpful.

Knowing that you have an inner sat NAV is helpful.

Knowing that your feelings are actually guiding you, they're not against you.

That when you're feeling bad, is saying, don't listen to thought right now.

Don't listen to what your mind is saying.

Come back home.

Explore something within yourself.

Find out more of who you are to have a better experience of life.

It still blows me away is that this inner change, when we reflect, when we go inwards, when we stop trying to manipulate the world, and we reflect more on who we are, and we kind of dig a little bit deeper.

That's where we have inner changes, where we challenge our belief systems and our thinking and our opinions and the way that maybe we see the world or ourselves or other people.

When we challenge that and we see through aspects of that, the world will change because it is a reflection.

And that's what's always really fascinating to me, is that when people come back and they go, well, wow, life's changed, and they go, yeah, because you've changed.

The fundamental nature of that change came from you.

It wasn't the world changing because of any other reason than something within you shifted and then that allowed the world to show up differently for you.

It's so simple, it's so beautiful, it's just so true again.

It still blows me away.

I said, well, how that really is true, it really is an inside job.

But we forget and we try and manipulate the world to give us the feeling that we're looking for when it was never contained in the world.

It always came from us.

Of course, life is going to be challenging at times, but the insights that you get from this understanding will change your life.

Because you once you begin to see through the eyes of these principles or through whatever it is that brings you to awaken to the inner worlds, you can't unsee that.

When you see that the only thing that needs to change for your world to change is you.

You can't unsee that.

That always strips away a lot of belief because you're actually then starting to see through the victim mentality that so many people can live in.

You've become empowered.

You see where you're holding yourself back to your own belief system.

That's what we're always doing.

The illusion of life creating our feeling falls away.

And as that illusion begins to fall away, there's so much that comes out of that because this dictum mentality falls away, this empowerment comes in, we become much less affected by the world.

We can really handle ourselves in the world.

We really come to a place of knowing that if it's all coming from me, every reaction, everything that I experience in the world is me, then I've got a lot less to be scared of.

I'm seeing through my own eyes and projecting that onto the world.

So if I'm in a low state of mind, the world's going to look shit.

I don't need to do anything about that because all I need is for thought to change, for my state of mind to change.

For the world to look great again doesn't mean to say that I've got to go around trying to fix everything to secure my well-being because my well-being is already secure.

I may come away from my well-being temporarily because I'm believing thought.

That isn't true.

But fundamentally, as you explore this understanding and go deeper, you see that your well-being is always intact.

Then you know the only reason you're feeling bad is because your thinking is off, because you're not seeing clearly.

You've got your shit goggles on, you know?

But they come off and suddenly life looks okay again.

It's like a loving disruption.

It's disruptive to who we are to begin to see this, because we're not who we think we are.

We're not this limited, fixed, static human.

We're more than that.

There's something within us that's more than that.

And we begin to see through our own thinking.

That's when we access this.

Because, as I say, every week, 100,000 thoughts a day, you know, they come and they go as we see.

We're not that thinking that allows us to explore, what am I then?

If I'm not thought, who am I?

And that's where we go into this deeper sense where I was talking a little bit earlier about the natural gratitude, not for things, but just for life itself that we get to taste that we get to touch, that we get to see colours, as I said, a heart that beats, eyes that see.

There's something quite wonderful in the human experience.

But we get so caught up in the idea of more, more that we lose sight of the innate nature of who we already are.

We get lost in the separation of identity.

We get lost in the insecurity of our egos.

But who we really are lacks nothing.

It's secure.

It knows oneness.

It knows that everything comes and goes and ebbs and flows, even us.

We don't have to be scared anymore.

Will we have experiences of fear?

Absolutely.

We're still having the human experience.

But we're accessing something deeper that we're seeing that the things that we long for, we already are, that they're not outside of us.

And we get to challenge all the unhelpful thinking that keeps us stuck in our lives.

We then begin to see the opportunities, we see the joy, we see the we wake up in a new world.

We see it differently.

Just something richer to the experience.

Once we understand this, once we see that we're not thought, we stop looking for peace and happiness and we realise we are peace and happiness again.

Do I see that all the time?

No.

But do I know it's true?

Absolutely.

Do I have access to that?

Absolutely.

Do I choose when I see it?

No, not at all.

But I know the availability is there for me to fall into well-being and peace of mind and happiness at any given moment, regardless of circumstance.

And I also know that I don't need to be fixed.

Who I am, how I am in this moment, in any given moment, is not broken.

I can be lost in thought.

I can be really caught out in my own mind and believe things that aren't true and even maybe believe that I'm temporarily broken.

But it can never be true.

It's not possible.

Who we are is invincible of course we're born and we're going to die.

But the energy of who we are that can't be touched, the resilience of that, the truth of that, when we see that, wow, such gratitude.

Such gratitude for knowing who I am, for you guys being here.

Look what we get to be grateful for.

For having these conversations, for connecting with each other, for getting to experience other humans and love them and see them smile and look at nature.

It's such an amazing thing when we fall out of our conceptual minds and fall into our hearts, we are grateful for everything.

There's such beauty there that isn't just available to me because I teach and I understand this, that's available to all of us.

And every person that's listening to this call would have experienced that at some point.

We've all had it.

You may have applied it to something.

You may have put a reason to it, but it was you.

That feeling came from you.

That was your creation.

The gift of this moment that technology has allowed us to come together and spend this hour together and explore this understanding and fall out of our conceptual minds, touch something deeper, have a fresh experience to explore who we are.

And all these little circles actually come from one source.

There's one energy that's created all things.

How do we grow?

We don't need to be fixed, but how do we grow and explore?

It's through challenging who we think we are.

It's through going beyond who we think we are.

It's seeing through thoughts that we've created that look like me, look like you.

And you really begin to dig into your thinking.

You'll see that your character, your identity, that's all that's all made up.

There's so much of that.

The character.

There's things we like in ourselves.

There's things we don't like.

There's things we'd want to change.

And it looks so fixed.

But when we kind of poke at it a little bit, we begin to see through that too.

And it's like, so, okay, I'm not sought, and even who I am is made up.

We were once babies that have this identity, and we formed it during our lives.

And I believe we get to a point where suddenly we start picking at it and seeing it differently.

The cracks appear, and it's, oh, so I'm not who I think I am.

And we get to play.

We get to play with it.

We get to see beyond the separate self and the ego and see that those things aren't fixed.

I sometimes, or actually quite often get clients.

And at first they say, well, the real me is the one that I hide.

Maybe like the insecure one or whatever they think is wrong with them that they keep hidden is so interesting.

They think that's the real bit because they have to hide it.

And I go, that's just as much bullshit as anything else that's just thought that you're hiding.

It's not thought.

That's true.

And we all have it.

We all have our insecure thinking, but it literally is insecure.

Thought is thought good.

Thought is thought bad.

Thought is thought happy.

Thought is thought sad thought is thought.

So this is what we're coming back to here is just this essence of it's all thought that really helps us to simplify the experience that we're having, helps us to simplify life.

Because if I get too complex, if I get too in my head, I can go, whoa, I know what's going on here.

I'm lost in thought.

Doesn't matter what it looks like.

I know fundamentally it's one thing, it's the energy of thought creating my experience.

And if I can see that, and if I can get present in the moment, I can go beyond what's catching me out.

I can see through it, then my experience changes and then I get to see it a little bit differently.

It's like we are thought too.

Our life is created by thought.

We are thought.

Our experiences are thought.

But this true nature of seeing through that, that becomes clearer.

We go from kind of the old way, which would have been coping with it.

We don't have to cope anymore.

It's not something to cope with.

We don't have to cope with life or cope with thought.

It's beyond that now.

As we see through it, there's nothing to cope with.

It just appears and disappears.

What's true about thought is you'll have another one along in a minute.

Same with feelings.

They come and they go.

So again, your guide is your feeling.

You're feeling good.

Yeah.

Thoughts in a good place, you're feeling bad.

Don't listen to thought.

Don't believe the world that is being created in a low mood.

That's a low mood creation world, not a true world.

And notice are you coming from a place of feeling secure?

Are you coming from a place of feeling insecure, like another diet?

I'm feeling insecure.

I'm probably not seeing things clearly.

And look within, always go within.

That's where all the answers lie.

Not in the world, not in manipulation, not any of the things that you think you need to do to be okay in your innate okayness in your innate well-being.

So for me, my thinking doesn't have much credibility anymore.

I don't really take that much notice of it.

It's a lot of noise.

But what I do know is that if I'm caught in it, it's best for me to not add more salt and try and outthink my way out of it.

I'm probably really best just leaving it alone.

So I guess from this episode is to see that we're only ever experiencing one thing and it's coming from us.

And that thought and how the world looks is going to be a reflection of where that thought is.

And that’s when we have those moments of true gratitude, of peace and really being grateful just for being alive.

We've probably dropped out a lot of our conceptual thinking.

We've touched a deeper space and to me, that's what I'm looking for and where I need to go whenever I'm lost.

And when I touch that space, there's always something to be grateful for.

Always.

Without doubt.

So, yes.

Thank you.

And I'm really grateful for you guys that join us every week and that listen, so I'm going to pass over to Gem.

Wow.

Well, I'm feeling extremely grateful.

I'm not sure about everyone else.

I'm sure they are too, but the way that you explain it, it does feel like life sometimes is just one big old trick, going from seeing everything that you are, everything you are, love, you are whole, and then sort of getting tied up in your thoughts and it's dipping out, going from one to the other.

So one of the main things that I've learnt is that when I stop dragging up the past and previous things and just looking at what's going on around you, that's when those thoughts started to go away.

So paying attention to the things that you do want rather than the things that you don't want.

And we do have so much to be grateful for.

You were saying about the thoughts calcifying, then becoming beliefs.

As you guys know, we have so many thoughts a day and there's studies to show that 90% of those thoughts are repetitive.

So if we're continuing to have those same thoughts, those same beliefs, but not questioning them, then we can sometimes go through life on autopilot and not really being aware.

So really questioning these things is so, so helpful.

Yeah.

Being in the understanding allows you to deal with life or just be in life.

You don't see it as a challenge.

So I think gratitude is such an amazing topic because really, there are endless things that we can be grateful for.

We did have Nathan requested to come up and speak, so I'm going to invite you.

Nathan, thank you.

But yeah, some really beautiful points in their Molls.

Thank you.

You're welcome, darling.

Yeah.

It's just such a beautiful thing to explore, isn't it?

It's really hard to kind of put into words what seeing through the eyes of innate gratitude and unconditional love feels, right?

But we've all felt it and we all probably can't do it justice with words, but to kind of explore it a bit and point people towards it, that it's always there.

We did cover it with a lot of unhelpful thinking, but it is fundamentally the truth of who we are.

And to just glimpse that, even to me, it's life-changing.

It's a bit like life goes from black and white to glorious Technicolor.

All the things that we didn't see suddenly light up and we see them.

And that could be from the trio on the next street to you.

You may have not have noticed, or a flower in a neighbour’s garden.

There's such simplicity when we're seeing that.

But when the e goes in charge, the simplicity doesn't cut the mustard.

It goes from simplicity to bigger and better and more and more.

And you'll see the difference if you sit here and you listen, it's like, oh, yeah, of course, when I'm in more and more, bigger, bigger, shinier, brighter, better, of course, that's ego.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't play around and have stuff.

I love going shopping occasionally and we all want to play in the world of form and have things.

But there's a real beauty to also understanding this simplicity and seeing it in the little things, because that's when the ego is falling away.

They're the moments where the mind is just calming.

We're not getting so lost in the material world and we're coming home to a deeper truth of who we are.

Again, our guide will be we notice so simple things.

Beautifully set.

I could listen to you both all day.

By the way, this is Nathan, Nathan Wozniak.

I'm a good friend of Molls and Gem.

I just wanted to say real quick, very thankful as well.

I find it quite funny because it's Thanksgiving, although it's an American holiday.

I'm a Canadian running a US company, and you're both British and you have listeners from around the world.

But one thing that really touched me was being present.

And I think that's really ultimately what it is, right?

Being present, not being focused on the past, what it should have and what I'm going to achieve tomorrow.

But what am I doing today?

And I've definitely taken that path.

And it's so remarkable that you had this podcast today on a day that I finally took off, and Friday I took off in the weekend and I had worked 14 hours days, 14 days in a row.

And so I just want to say real quick, just really thankful to be here.

It's important to be present and do the introspective thinking and yeah, take the road.

Less travel.

I know it's a cliché pet that cat, take time to smell the roses, although they're all frozen here in Canada.

But nevertheless, just take time and be present and be aware of your surroundings because life is beautiful.

So that's all.

Thank you so much.

That's lovely.

And thank you for joining us.

It's nice that you've got the day off so you can be here.

And I totally agree.

It's in the present.

Again, presence is like the gratitude.

The Presence is there when we fall out of the conceptual mind, when we fall into the now.

And if you haven't listened to episode 36 of the podcast of this show, which is on all platforms, is Precious Presence.

And we spend a good hour, I think, in that one, really digging into Presence.

It's a really lovely episode, so I recommend anybody listen to that, too.

But, you know, every subject that we talk about.

I think we're at 38 episodes now, we're pointing back to the same thing.

We start with the subject and we end up at the same place, because everything is always pointing us home.

And that's what I love.

So that's why it's always reflected in gratitude, presence, love, oneness, beyond limitations, they're all qualities of our true nature.

And that's what's so beautiful, is exploring that.

True nature allows those qualities to be more available to us more of the time.

And we all have the same qualities underneath.

We are all presents, we are all love.

People obviously live very far away from those qualities.

We see that in the world, but ultimately, it's underneath us.

It's underneath the idea of who we are.

The concept of the character and the personality, that's great.

We're here to be human, but the love and the truth and the oneness is all of us.

It is.

Yeah, real quick, I was going to say, I'm a big Monty Python fan and I love this song, the universe song.

And I always think to myself, not to quote Monty Python, I apologise, I didn't mean to cut you off Molls.

But real quick, it's like I always look at the perspective of we're the third planet from this ball of energy and we're following it 73,000 through the universe.

We don't know what the hell is happening.

And it's just like we're all in this together, so it's pretty wild.

Anyway.

Yeah.

I think that when we look up, it's infinite.

We realise that how small the moment is, how tiny we are in comparison, but that infinity is us too.

So it's so interesting to look at these concepts and I can't work that out.

This is just something I play with.

It's like, wow, I'm so small and so infinite at the same time.

But these are really good things to explore, because they blow the mind.

The mind kind of goes into meltdown because the mind is a computer that can work with numbers, it's not a computer that can work with infinity.

So these bigger concepts, that's why the mind gets quiet, because you can't cope with these big ideas, these truths of who we are.

It has to just go, woah.

No, not going there.

And that's where the thought quietens down and we find that peaceful space within us, because the conceptual mind just can't compute.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming up, Nathan, and a bit disappointed you didn't break out into song there.

We should all hope there's something light out there.

Let me look at the lyrics and I'll sing something to you.

But it's great because there's bugger all here down.

You're the first person to sing on the podcast.

Thank you, Nathan.

Yay.

More to be continued.

You're so funny.

Thank you, Nathan.

That was brilliant.

We did Happy Birthday actually, so that's a little fib, but that was brilliant.

Thank you.

Wow.

What I was going to say I've completely forgotten now that it was something if I could rewind, I could it was something to complement your point about whatever you just said.

Thank you.

No worries.

We did have a couple of other questions.

We are only about ten minutes till the end, so if anyone wants to come up and request last questions and you're more than welcome.

But I think a very valid question and you did touch on it at the beginning Molls, that holidays can be a really lonely and isolated time for many people, even if they're around people.

So for someone that's listening, that's really struggling to find anything to be grateful or thankful for and is not looking forward to Christmas and the festive season, what would your advice be to somebody that's feeling like that?

Well, I think it's beginning to challenge your own thinking, with all thought, we can say, is that really true?

Am I stuck in a mindset and a pattern that is really detrimental to me connecting with people?

Because what can happen is we can get so stuck in this belief maybe that I'm not sociable, I don't connect with anybody or I've got no one that kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

And as I said in the beginning, if we change inside the world reflects that back.

So I said it's always about stop just accepting that that's the way it is and start exploring more of who you are.

Challenging your own belief system can be a little bit uncomfortable at times to challenge your belief system.

It's not always an easy thing to do.

But the rewards and what we get to see on the other side of our own beliefs is immense.

And we have no idea what's there.

We have no idea what freedom is on the other side of any belief that we challenge.

But there will always be freedom because a belief will always keep us locked in.

It will keep us in a fixed world instead of a fluid world.

And ultimately, at the deepest sense of truth, none of us are ever alone.

None of us are alone because we're connected to all things.

There's one shared being.

The duality of life is an illusion.

There's just oneness.

So we can't be alone.

And actually what I love what you pointed to with the question was that even if I'm with people, I feel lonely.

Well, again, challenge.

Challenge thought, see what's true.

What is that telling you?

That saying that there's something missing but that missing isn't in the world of people because you're already surrounded by people.

That missing is something that you're not seeing about who you really are.

And the uncovering of who you really are will mean that.

Of course, sometimes we can get in thoughts of loneliness, but it wouldn't be a constant.

It would just be a transitory feeling because you'd have a deeper understanding of the human experience.

You'd have a deeper understanding of who you are.

And you would see loneliness isn't actually even possible.

When we touch the space of who we are before thought, it can't exist.

Just like we're exploring gratitude and unconditional love tonight, we can't not be loved.

We can feel unloved, but that's not true because we can't not be loved.

Because that's our essential nature.

Our being, is love.

So all of these thoughts that take us away from that, that's your doorway into seeing something deeper.

It's not changing the world.

It's challenging who you think you are and your thoughts around the world and how you show up in it.

That's beautiful.

Real quick, I just want to say, Molls, that was really beautifully stated.

And like, I wanted to be the devil's advocate and say, well, maybe if you're lonely around people, you're around the wrong people.

But I believe from what you're saying, my perspective is like, you'd have to be okay with being alone, okay with being okay with yourself, and then you'll never really have the wrong perspective of other people.

Perhaps that's what you meant.

Of course, you can think, I'm not really enjoying these people's company.

They're not really my cup of fee.

That's okay.

But that wouldn't be loneliness.

So what we're talking about here is, if it's loneliness in a room full of people, that's a kind of a red flag to do some inner work.

Absolutely.

And I always like to look at that as well as the term shame.

As we grow older, I believe that we can evolve past that feeling of shame.

Shame is something that's unnecessary, too.

I've learned that through clinical psychology sessions.

But there are certain things that we can evolve from as we go through this journey.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What I love about the beauty of the three principles and understanding thought is it doesn't matter what it is.

Shame, guilt, grief.

We can work our way through them.

We can begin to see them through the perspective of it's thought.

That's creating my experience of those things.

And as my thought changes, my experience will change.

And not only that, that no thinking is fundamentally true.

We're always in a transient experience.

It gets fixed by our resistance to it, which can sound kind of paradoxical, but it's in the fight against our experience that locks our experience.

And it's in the flow and the seeing that all experience is just that experience.

And it will come and go.

That allows change to occur incredibly naturally and in harmony with us.

And we allow it.

Again, doesn't mean to say we don't go through some shit times.

Of course, we all go through challenges.

But the more comfortable we get with our experience, the more gracefully we can go through them.

And the more gracefully we go through them, it looks to me like the better we handle them, the easier our experience is.

So to someone, just to finish off that original question about people being feeling lonely or isolated towards Christmas and things to somebody that say in that cycle, that has that repeating every single year, just question it.

Yeah, just question everything.

Anything that when you're not feeling good, question what's going on in your thoughts.

And if you're believing them, just question everything.

Yeah, I would say it's a really great start.

I think questioning your own thinking is like, well, why am I thinking like that?

Why have I made that up?

Why do I believe that?

Why am I making that true for me?

Because your belief system is what's making it true.

It's not fundamentally true.

It's a belief looking real that gives it the appearance of truth.

But a belief is made of thought that isn't true.

It's what we're rating.

Right.

Would you say for myself, I always say I speak in the first person in terms of my own experiences.

I don't speak for others.

I don't give people unsolicited advice.

So when I say this again, I'm speaking from my own experience, but I'm living in the other side of the country.

I live in Canada, so it's a huge geographic country with only 37 million people, which is quite small.

But, you know, I haven't seen my family in a couple of years because of COVID actually a few years, and it's been hard.

And I'm like, okay.

Then it started snowing and I'm isolated and I said, Well, Nathan, what do I have control of?

I have control of my breathing, how much I sleep, how much I plan to work, exercise, healthy eating and reframing.

And I think ultimately, for myself, again, speaking for myself, it's all about reframing my situation.

And you think the most of and the best of any most situations I won't say any situation, but most situations, that's what I did.

Whatever works for people.

I guess the principles were going a little bit deeper than replacing thought with different thought.

We're more seeing that it's thought, because then you don't have to do anything with it.

But everybody has their own way of seeing and experiencing and playing with salt.

So there's no wrong or right.

But I think for the sake of being really clear on what we're teaching here, it would be, I don't want someone to think they've got to replace salt with salt.

I want them to see it salt and it's an illusion now, then whatever appears for them after that fantastic.

But it's seeing through what we're making up in any given moment and what looks fixed to us, that is the most helpful thing, because I don't have to worry about anything other than seeing it.

Still, if I'm really caught up in my head, I know that all I need to do is clearly see that thought is creating my experience and that it's not true, and I'm done.

I don't have to think about reframing or replacing that thinking with other thinking.

Yeah, 100%.

And we can all sort of identify, because we all do that.

We can have days or moments where everything is so easy, we just glide through life and then we can have other moments where everything is a problem, but it's always us.

They can be the same situation.

It could be a job, it could be a car journey.

One moment it's lovely, and then another moment, it's terrible.

The actual physical thing isn't changing, so being able to see it from different angles and change our perspective and see through thought is the ultimate game changer.

So I think should we save the rest of the questions until next week, Myles?

Yeah, that would be lovely.

Thank you.

No worries.

It's a bit late today, so apologies and thank you to everybody for joining us.

Yeah, really wonderful conversation tonight.

Yeah, I just want to thank everyone for being here.

If you're on the podcast, thank you for listening.

Yeah, it's just really wonderful and I'm really grateful for our mind in and for you, Gem, and for us to get to share this every week and for what it's developed into.

Yeah, we're incredibly lucky.

Thank you to VEmpire again for being our sponsors and, yeah, just please keep sharing, keep joining us and just thank you for being part of our minding.

What I've got to finish on is an Eckhart quote and it's every person has to verify for themselves.

What can I be grateful for at this moment?

Sense the being that you are.

Not just the physical, but the sense of your own presence.

That's a great source of joy.

To feel your own presence.

It cannot really be defined, and that is the ultimate gratitude.

Thank you for that.

You're welcome.

The theme tune won't load.

Let me just try again.

Do you want to sing it, Nathan?

Next time for Christmas, I'll be nice and toasty!

Thank you to everyone for joining us.

Thank you, guys.

See you next week!