Trauma: A Spiritual Perspective – Turning Wounds into Wisdom

Aum namo bhagavate vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So, this is a continuation of the series that we’ve been asked to speak on, which is on well-being. And tonight the topic I was given was Trauma, A Spiritual Perspective, Turning Wounds into Wisdom. So, three kind of ideas there. One, of course, is trauma, and my understanding is we’re addressing psychological trauma, not physical trauma. And a spiritual perspective would, of course, mean that perhaps we are going to look at things in a different way, so expect it to be a little different. And then the third part of it, turning wounds into wisdom. So, we’ll be addressing these things as we go.

So firstly, the definition of trauma that’s generally accepted: “Psychological trauma is a lasting emotional response…” so that’s one part, “…to deeply distressing events that overwhelm a person’s ability to cope, often resulting in fear, helplessness, and long-term dysfunction.” So that’s the definition we’re going with.

So, I just have a little admission to make, just so nobody’s in the illusion. I’m not a certified health professional. Okay? And nor am I offering or proposing any specific type of therapy. There are many qualified professionals who are doing that already. And what I’m going to be presenting, though, is a spiritual perspective. And this perspective, some people may find helpful.

I’m not going to insist it’s the only perspective, or it’s the right perspective, for instance, or anything like that. There are different perspectives, and I will share something that is from a very ancient source of wisdom that people might find beneficial.

So, I’m going to premise what we’re going to discuss on two things.

The first one is, in all of the dharmic traditions, meaning Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, all of the different dharmic traditions, and beyond, there is a little bit of a formula that’s embraced. And the formula is this: ignorance equals pain and suffering, that if I am experiencing pain and suffering in my life, to the degree that I am being impacted by that, I will be fundamentally embracing something that is actually untrue as being true. That might sound a little shocking to some people, but I promise if you are patient and open and continue to listen, you will come to, perhaps, begin to appreciate that reality.

The other thing that’s fundamental to our conversation, our discussion, is that what I’m going to broadly describe as material existence, and spiritual life, they have two completely different underlying paradigms. A lot of people, when we raise these terms like materialistic, or materialism, or spirituality, people kind of, they have some sort of idea what that means, but many people are not actually very clear on the subject, whereas in the tradition that we are coming from, they are two distinct energies: the energy of life, and that which is comprised of atomic particles and reactions in between atomic particles. And they’re two distinctly different forms of energy. They have different characteristics.

Another thing that we’ll sort of explore, to some degree, is what the mind is and the role that it plays in our happiness. It’s kind of mind-blowing that the mind is so influential. It is so dominant in everyone’s life, like to this really massive degree. And yet a lot of people, and I’m talking about high-level professionals, struggle to clearly define what the mind is and how it’s connected with the body.

There are many people who mistakenly think the mind is a function of the brain. But very high-level neurologists say, “No, that’s not a fact.” The mind is not a function of the brain, and they don’t know exactly what it is.

So, you’ve got experiments that some of them have done in part of doing neurosurgery, where they absolutely know that a certain part of the brain is associated with certain types of thoughts or ideas, or recollections and things. And when they perform a lot of brain surgery, the patient is required to be conscious. They, of course, sedate the area that they’re operating on, but because when they start removing part of the brain, they want to make sure they’re not going too far, in the wrong direction, and causing substantial injury, and so they’re conversing with the patient while they’re operating.

And this surgeon, one of the top surgeons in the world, he says he’s just astounded how so many times he’s been removing a portion of the brain that is said to be associated with and responsible for certain types of thinking and stuff, and yet here they are removing it, and the person is still having that function, that capacity. And so, he said, it’s just utterly astonishing for somebody that is deeply involved in this field to come to the appreciation and the understanding that the mind is actually not a function of the brain. And it’s sort of like they’re not very clear about it.

You have situations, for instance, there was one famous situation where you had Siamese twins that shared a brain. They were co-joined in the body, the upper part of the body and the head, and they shared a brain. And yet they’re two different personalities. They have two different kinds of likes and dislikes. One of the twins can be aware that the other twin is feeling some itchiness on the right arm. They can be aware of that kind of thing, but yet they disagree with each other. One can study and learn particular things, but the other one doesn’t have access to that. They have their own interests, and they’re studying and learning something else.

And so when you read these kind of studies, it’s sort of like, it’s really confounding for most people because of a lack of real clarity as to what is the mind exactly, how is it connected with the physical body, and how does that all work?

The foundation of real spiritual understanding is based upon the principle that I am an eternal spiritual being temporarily residing within this body. While I am residing in the body, I lend life to the body, the body displays symptoms of life. It functions in a way that it shouldn’t. On many levels, it doesn’t follow the second principle of thermodynamics, but anyway, we won’t get into all this stuff. But as soon as the living being leaves, then the body displays its actual nature, and now begins to quickly break down into more—simpler molecular components and elements.

Materialism is the idea that the body is me, that I am this body.

And that includes what is understood in the yoga system. You actually have two coverings, two bodies. They refer to them as body, sarira. The first one is called the sthula sarira, which means the gross physical body. But then there is a second body, it is called the linga sarira, or the subtle body, or astral body, and it is comprised primarily of the mind. So, it is understood that the mind is a covering of the self.

Is this okay? Or…? Yeah? We’re managing all right? ‘kay.

Proof that I am not the mind and I am separate from the mind is, I can try to control my mind. The fact that I can try not to feel some fearfulness, or to feel some anxiety, or that I want to focus on something because I’ve got to remember this, or I’ve got to pass an exam, or I’m taking a driving test, and I’m there doing the written part of the exam, and I have to remember things; the fact that I can struggle to exercise control over my mind and utilize it in different ways, or to insulate myself and try to calm my mind down, you know, “Don’t be thinking about that. Don’t, it’s okay. Don’t worry.” It’s like I can talk to my mind. The fact that I can even attempt to do any of this is proof that the mind is not me. Because if it was me, I couldn’t have that separate thought.

So, these are some of the foundational ideas. The fact that all living beings, with very few exceptions, the fact that everybody identifies the body as being the self doesn’t make it true. It is just a very popular idea that people are deeply immersed in and deeply confounded by. And of course, we know that that is the foundation for all unhappiness, at least according to the ancient rishis, the great saintly teachers, from time immemorial, they have presented this understanding.

One of my spiritual teachers has stated,

“The more one is freed from material identification, the more one can realize that the spirit soul is qualitatively as good as the Supreme Soul.” [Bhagavad-gita commentary by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada]

So, the point being, the more a person can come to experience the reality of their spiritual existence, how they are existing apart from this body—we are not dependent on the body for life. The body is dependent upon us for life. The symptoms of life disappear as soon as the living being leaves. In Sanskrit, the term for the spiritual being, they don’t use a word like soul, they use a word atma. This word atma, it literally means “the self,” who you are, the self.

So in this subject of dealing with trauma, I’ll just let you know, I’ve done already previously a series of seven different talks in a series called Weathering a Storm. And I did this early on in the COVID pandemic. Do we still remember that or we forgot already? I mean, it was like everybody was losing the plot and flipping out and doing all of these, you know, six feet distance, like that’s going to stop you from catching COVID, and all kinds of weird stuff. And people were really stressed and in panic, and there was all this imposition, you have to stay home, you can’t go out, you can’t go to public places, and it was having a pretty heavy effect on many people in society. And so that spurred me to do this series. However, this is not specifically about or related to COVID, that whole COVID epidemic. This is about life. This is about the things people will face.

It’s absolutely essential not to live in a fantasy land. This world is not perfect. There is fundamentally probably more unhappiness than there is happiness. Sorry, that sounds like a bummer, but you got to get with the program. I mean, how much time are we immersed in extraordinary happiness in one day? If you do the math, how many minutes in the day, and how many of those minutes was I elated in happiness? It’s kind of like, oh my God, this is not looking very good when you look at the math. It’s pretty ridiculous. But we’re constantly remembering past things and hoping for future experiences.

But in reality, life, you must expect that it’s going to be challenging. To say the least, life is filled with challenges. There is no perfection in the material world. Perfection lies in that which is spiritual, that which is eternal. That which is temporary, constantly changing, when we try to extract the happiness that we seek from it, more often than not, you will be disappointed or at least a little let down. It’s not what’s promised on social media and in advertising. So being very realistic about life is actually really important for your health and well-being, mental and physical.

So, in this series, which I called Weathering a Storm (I’ll put a little link when I post this video. I’ll put a link to the series and anybody that’s interested, you can go check it out.) So, the first talk, the title was This Too Shall Pass. This is profound, this idea. And this is really, really important to be able to actually grasp this idea and see it in relation to my life and things that I may be going through. This too shall pass.

And they used to have a saying in the days of sailing ships. It’s like there was no GPS, there was no radar, there was no communication to get weather reports. You’re just sailing along blind, heading towards your goal. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, you begin to see indications on the horizon of, “Uh-oh, we got a problem.” And along comes a powerful storm. And fundamentally, what they would have to do in a powerful storm, one person may be above deck and their job—and they’re often tied up there to the wheel, trying to sort of like keep the boat somewhat on course. Everybody else is, they’ve tied all the sails, and they’ve gone below deck, and they’ve closed the hatches, and they do what’s called batten the hatches. They put a batten through the handles so it can’t fly open, because there’s going to be enormous amounts of water washing over the deck. And they just have to sit down there and ride it out, knowing eventually this too shall pass.

This is not a bad strategy for dealing with things, to find some equilibrium, to find a place where you can begin to sort of like refocus, and not get swept away by what’s happening.

Then the second talk is on the serenity prayer. Very simple prayer.

“Grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change. Grant me the courage to change those things which I can, and grant me the wisdom to know the difference.”

You can live by this. You can use this to manage so many areas of your life, relationships, how you are focusing, what you’re doing. It’s not a false coping mechanism. Like sometimes, people will put an elastic band on their wrist and when they get all kind of like they’re getting overly anxious, they start pulling it, and the pain from that sort of snaps them out of their mind going down a thing that’s not good for them. That doesn’t solve the problem. It may distract you, but it doesn’t really solve anything. But if you’re doing other things to make it so that you can cope, then it’s a good idea. This serenity prayer is something that you can actually use to begin to address your life and things that you are encountering, and be able to make things better.

Then the third talk was on Taking Back My Life, regaining control, and that could apply to so many things and mean so many things. But fundamentally, it was about not becoming a victim of one’s emotions and fears, learning how to step back and take a deep breath and to consciously begin to consider, how should I deal with this situation or this person or whatever, how should I deal with it in a way that will produce a good outcome for me.

The way that we often address things in anger is—when people get into fights and then you get this rising emotion of anger, and then you end up saying things that will never make your life better, and it will never make your relationship better. It will never help with what’s going on. But we say it anyway because we’ve lost control. And so, this is about not being overly responsive to emotions, being able to step back from things, and thoughtfully consider how should I address this to at least not make it worse and hopefully make it a little bit better. What can I do? And of course we’re not trained to be this conscious, this thoughtful, which is really problematic.

So then fourth one was My Choices, My Life. “I don’t know why I married you!” Because you made the choice. You decided. You chose to be blind. Even when you saw signs that, whoa, this looks a bit dangerous, your desire for something was so strong that you became a creature who was hoping against hope. Even though I see all the danger signs, I’m just going to jump and do it anyway, and I’ll fix them later when we get married. I’ll whip them into shape. I’ll change the way that they’re thinking and whatever. And it’s just like, what?

A fundamental reality is—and this is the way I used to start the programs that I ran in prison: I’d ask everybody, “How many of you guys sitting here actually had a plan that on this day, at this time, you were going to be sitting here in this prison? Was that anybody’s plan?” And everybody laughs. They think it’s ridiculous. Nobody has a plan to go to prison. And I said, “Well, doesn’t that indicate to you that you’ve lost control of your life? Because you are engaging in actions, you are making choices where you desired another kind of outcome. But this is what you got. It means you’ve lost control. You’re not making choices that produce good outcomes.”

And when we become too emotional and emotional in our response to things, we’re never going to make good choices. And my fundamental advice to people, in a heightened state of emotions: Don’t speak. Don’t make a decision. Don’t take any action. You need to go away and calm way down, and when you’ve calmed way down, to begin to consider how should I deal with this that will make my life better.

It’s so important to recognize that wherever we’re finding ourselves in life, we cannot deny our role in making choices, making decisions, choosing to do things. Maybe we were naive, maybe we were ignorant, but that doesn’t mean that you escape the consequences of choices. And so just that idea and understanding that, can help a person become very resilient and become more focused on solutions rather than just reacting to a bunch of negative things.

Then the fifth talk was Dealing With Anxiety. I’ll just read a little thing I did: “You are an eternal spiritual being residing in a temporary material body, in a temporary and constantly changing world. Unrealistic expectations of life destroy inner peace and lead to anxiousness.”

These ideas that I’m sharing, it’s not possible to just take it like that and sort of like understand it, because we’re talking about conditioning. We, the eternal spiritual being residing within this body, have become deeply conditioned by many concepts and ideas and ways of dealing, and what we think is valuable, and what we think we should be chasing. We’re influenced on so many levels with different things. And what’s really important is don’t be ignorant. That’s easier said than done.

But if you have unrealistic expectations, like “This person that I’m feeling all emotional about now, I can live with them happily ever after. We will forever be in love, and everything will be wonderful.” Do you find people in the world that have experienced that? There’s probably a rare few, a rare few.

But we often have—I sometimes do some marriage counselling, or people when they’re about to get married, and I tell them, “You have to learn to talk honestly to each other,” because mostly this whole thing about relationships is built on dishonesty. I want to hide all of my bad characteristics and my bad habits and my bad things, I want to hide them from that person because if they see them, maybe they won’t love me. And the other person’s thinking the same thing and they’re doing the same thing. Where’s the honesty in that? And then I’m putting on this wonderful external appearance. “I’m the perfect person, and I’m going to make you happy and feel love and everything will be wonderful,” and yet inside you’re empty. How can you share something that you don’t have? Sorry. You know, you want to live a good, healthy, and happy life. Being realistic is really important. Coming to grips with reality.

So, talk number six was Building Sand Castles on the Shore. This is not a viable strategy to live a good and happy life. Right? We did that when we were kids. I don’t know, some people might be still doing it. You go to the beach and everybody works so hard to build this, wow, awesome sandcastle. And then the tide comes in and washes it away. Does that sound like life? A lot of people experience this type of thing, a lot. And so being realistic and not building sand castles on the shore and expecting that’s going to be there forever is critical.

And then the last one, number seven, was Head in the Sand is not a Strategy. A lot of people, when they encounter challenges and difficulties, then they just want to be like, put their head in the sand, and pretend it’s not there. “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. Yaah yaah yaah yaah.” [Mimes hands over ears] like that’s going to make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference. You have to actually begin to face challenges that you are encountering in your life and examine, “Am I expecting too much? Am I—”

This is a big subject and I’ve spent too long speaking on these things anyway. But you may find that this series is extremely helpful even related to the subject that we’re talking about because the subject is complex.

In terms of the wisdom aspect of things, turning wounds into wisdom, this is a consistent message in the ancient yogic and Vedic texts. They always relay these amazing accounts of individuals who were often confronted with unbelievable, almost, challenges, like desperately bad challenges, and yet they were able to overcome. The overcoming of these challenges was not trying to plug the dike.

You know what that means? In Holland, they have the dikes all around and if a hole comes in and the sea starts trickling in, you know it’s going to get bigger and bigger, and it’s going to break, and it’s going to flood, so you put your finger in there so the water won’t come through in the hope that that will be the solution to things.

They weren’t seeking to plug the dike. They always sought to transcend the great difficulties that they faced. Transcend literally means to rise above.

So, there was one personality, his name was Narada, Narada Muni. And in the account of his life, the story was very much about this principle of taking shelter in that which cannot give shelter. This is really important, and this ties into most of what we’ve talked about before. In this case, it was related to his mother. (Is it too hot with the door closed? Yeah, it’s better with it open, yeah.)

So, this idea of false shelter, I do not mean this in a cruel or demeaning way or anything. It’s practical reality. Have you ever been in an earthquake, like a massive earthquake? I’ve been in one, 7.8, and it went on for like almost two minutes something. That’s a long time to be where everything is moving and buildings are coming down and it’s just like—And what is a child’s reaction to such a dangerous thing? Mummy. They want to take shelter in mummy to save them from what’s happening. Can mummy save them from what’s happening? No. Even if the child races to the mother’s arms, if they’re in a situation where a building’s coming down or whatever, they’re not safe. I know this sounds rather disturbing to a lot of people. Hey, this is the nature of the world in which we live.

And the idea of false shelter is the idea of becoming very clear as to where I should place my trust, where I can find actual shelter, and not just because I have an attachment or a belief that I will be protected in something that therefore I will be. That’s not the reality.

Is this okay talking about this? Anybody? Yeah?

So, there is a text in an ancient scripture, a Vedic text, called the Bhagavat Purana that addresses this. And I’ll read you the translation.

“Persons devoid of atma-tattva…”

Sorry, you probably don’t have a clue what that means. Atma means the self, your own spiritual self. And tattva means the truth, the truth about the actual self.

So,

“[People who are] devoid of atma-tattva [or truth about the actual self] do not inquire into the problems of life, being too attached to the fallible soldiers like the body, the children and wife. And although sufficiently experienced, they still do not see their inevitable destruction.” [Bhagavat Purana 2.1.4]

And I’m sitting here going like, for me, this is just like really cool. You guys might be terrorized by hearing this. I don’t know. It’s just like, it’s so blunt and to the point. But can I say, it is also incredibly compassionate. The desire of the ancient teachers, when they put forward these teachings, was to see that people become completely relieved from all suffering and all unhappiness. But they are laying down a fundamental principle: If you are going to be overly absorbed in the outer covering, the body, considering it to be the self, if you are going to look at this world as your home, a place that is safe and secure, that your relationships are going to last forever, that’s an illusion. It’s not really like that. Does that mean you should turn your back on everything? No. You should learn how to cultivate a good understanding of life, its purpose, relationships, all of these things.

So, the reference that’s used in a couple of places, “fallible soldiers,” you get somebody like, they surround themselves with bodyguards, soldiers with all these guns and they think that they’re safe. Are they safe from cancer? Are they safe from a motor vehicle accident? Are they safe from getting hit with a missile? Of course not. They’re surrounded by fallible soldiers who may seem to be able to protect, but actually long term, we understand that they cannot.

And so, when we take shelter and place our unlimited faith in that which cannot give us shelter, we are certain to experience unhappiness. It is only a question of when.

In the case of Narada Muni, he lived alone with his mother. His father wasn’t around, and there’s no account of what had happened there. He lived with his mother, and she would go out every evening to milk a cow that they had. He was five years old, and he—but he was like, he was different. He had been exposed to a group of great saintly teachers, and he sat listening to them and observed and took direction from them.

And so here he is at home. It’s getting dark and his mother hasn’t come home, and he’s gone out to now look for her. And walking around in the grassy field, he suddenly comes across the body of his mother lying in the grass, and he sees that she has been bitten by a snake and has died, and he is all alone in this world. All alone. And he made a statement, which was recorded later, that shows how exceptional he was in many cases, but it makes a very clear point. He said,

“I took this as the special mercy of the Lord, who always desires benedictions for those who are devoted to Him, and so thinking I started for the north.” [Bhagavata Purana 1.6.10]

So, he made this decision. He had thought that, “I have been utterly dependent upon my mother for all protection, for everything, but actually she can’t give me that shelter. I need some real, spiritual, eternal shelter.” And so he began this journey to search for that ultimate spiritual shelter.

So, this is kind of like a really serious subject. And all I’m pointing to is the fact that to experience traumatic things in life is not unfamiliar or unusual. Some people do very well through their life. They don’t experience too much. But I tell you what, at the end, it’s pretty traumatic when those around you start, experience what’s called death, when you yourself begin to experience it. These are the realities of life that we don’t face, and we don’t think of, and we don’t live in a way that we’re connected to this. And because of that, a lot of unhappiness exists.

There was another young person also who was subjected to, I mean, such traumatic things. It’s just like almost indescribable. It was like mind-blowing what he was subjected to at the hands of his own father, and yet he spoke eloquently about, there’s a word, abhaya, abhaya, how to become fearless even in the face of great traumatic things. And it will happen when one cultivates an understanding of their actual spiritual identity.

So, there was a whole bunch of examples that I had, but I’m going to just skip over it. But the fundamental idea was that you see in the lives of these personalities, that when they experienced tremendous adversity, they didn’t want to—they sought to transcend it. They didn’t want to just paper it over, or find a so-called solution so I don’t have to experience that. There was a deeper experience that stirred them to go like, “Oh my God, this is the nature of material existence, and I need to find some real, real solutions here, and it lies in uncovering my eternal spiritual identity.”

In modern psychology, the approach is generally to try and aid people, and I’m just overly generalizing, through different pathways to some forms of healing. And a second and really important part of it is then to try and build resilience. But the building of resilience has to be founded on truth. It has to be founded on clarity, not on wishful thinking.

So, there are quite a number of psychologists, not a majority, but quite a number of them, that argue that Western culture has actually shifted towards a higher sensitivity to perceived harm, a lower tolerance for discomfort, and greater externalization, meaning it’s always somebody else’s—I hesitate to use the word fault, but it’s always because of someone else, meaning my own decisions, my own choices have got nothing to do with it.

And yet, the importance of becoming empowered, taking charge of your life, is one of the key things that’s needed to make it so that you can step outside the—I would do things, courses, with different groups in Auckland, and one of them had to do with people that were subjected to physical, sexual, mental abuse and trauma. And trying to help people shift gears in their thinking is, and becoming empowered, is not easy, because sometimes it’s hard for people to hear what’s being proposed.

For instance, one of the things that we would deal with, over the period of this course we would do, is to do with forgiveness, which is a massive subject all on its own. But as soon as I raise the word forgiveness, I’ve had people just stand up and leave the room, sometimes in tears. And they are often holding on to—they come back the next time and we talk about it and talk through it. They have the idea that forgiveness means I’m condoning what has been done to me. And no, it’s nothing like that at all. Forgiveness means to step outside the shadow of somebody that may have traumatized you. That’s really what it’s about, to be able to step away, to not be making decisions, living in the shadow and always reacting to what has occurred from the past.

But these are big subjects. They need time. They need to be dealt with very compassionately and carefully. But to be realistic about things is very important.

And so, there’s an observation that in the Western world in particular, there is a decline of what’s referred to as Stoic cultural norms, which has risen or is happening at the same time as a rise in reported mental health issues. And there is no claim that they are causative, one is causing the other, but they are observable and it is happening. And Stoicism, I don’t know if you are familiar with this—this is a philosophy that came out of Greece, and Roman times, about 300 BC it was—became relevant. And it contains enormous kernels of truth that are compatible with what I am talking about in the development of spiritual understanding.

So the definition is that, “It teaches personal virtue…” This is so important: to be honest, to be kind, to be good. These types of things are actually transformative for a person from the inside to making you be able to face life and deal with situations in a much better way. So,

“It teaches personal virtue, wisdom [wisdom is the key to unlocking ignorance and pain] and resilience by focusing only on what you can control, your thoughts and actions, while accepting external events with equanimity.”

So, of course, this is a yogic principle also where people talk about learning to live life in a very balanced way, where you are not overwhelmed by happiness nor distress, by honour nor dishonour; to come to this point where you can live in such a balanced space. And it’s not like artificially, in reality you are not reacting and being controlled by many of these things.

And so, the need to have a genuine spiritual foundation is, for me, obvious. If we embrace the spiritual perspective and strive for self-realization, then all other things, you will be able to resolve them. They will be taken care of. This I know to be true.

Another thing is—one of the things I was doing a lot of work with in drug rehab people and in prisons and stuff, and I heard a really good analogy one time, and that was: If you are driving a car, and the whole time that you’re driving, you’re looking in the rear view mirror, how is that going to work out for you? It’s only a matter of time before you’re off the road or in a serious accident. And this was used as an analogy for life. You cannot be fixated on the past.

You have to be looking clearly, where to from here? Where are we going from here? What is the outcome that we desire? What is the most desirable situation I want to be in? And question, so how do I get to that situation? And what steps do I need to take? How do I need to change my value system, the way I’m thinking about things, the way I’m behaving, my relationships? What are the things that I need to do to produce this outcome?

And people often are not accepting enough that, my choices, my life. My choices will result in the life that I am experiencing in the time that I have in this body. And learning to make really good choices and being able to do it is really, really important.

So, the most powerful way that a person can grow in self-realization to more deeply connect with my actual deeper spiritual identity, to discover who I truly am and to be able to live in that understanding, that realization, the most powerful way this will happen is, not just by cultivating some understanding, but engaging in the process of meditation that will begin to clear the fog, to cleanse the heart and the mind, and make it so that I can begin to see with more clarity, I can become more dispassionate, I can become stronger in my ability to step back and not be just swept away with my mind and everything that’s going on there and what I’m encountering in the world, and begin to clearly question, “How should I actually respond to this? What can I do to make my life different? What can I do?”

And it’s sometimes not just an action, it’s also how I’m going to process, how I’m going to think about. If somebody insults me, I can become deeply offended and then wallow in that hurt, or I can say, “Why am I going to surrender my heart and my mind to that person? They are not interested in my well-being. They are speaking badly of me. Should I buy into what they’re selling? Or do I want to just turn and go on with my life?” I can decide, I can decide what is going to affect me and how it’s going to affect me. And to learn this, to learn this fact is so empowering and can be so helpful for people in so many different ways.

Massive subject. What I’m going to ask you is—this process of meditation is a process—it’s not a mental activity—it is a process of just letting go and bathing in these spiritual sounds. Let them wash over our heart and our mind and bring about the transformation that make it so we can take more charge, more control of our life and live in a way that produces something very desirable, something very wonderful.

So I will use the Mahamantra, the Hare Krishna mantra.