Teal Swan

You cannot have a sense of self without also simultaneously having a sense of other. Identity served universal expansion because source (otherwise known as united consciousness) could not become conscious of itself from a platform of non-identity. There was no contrast inherent in that. Oneness cannot comprehend oneness except from a vantage point of separation. Just like a fish cannot conceive of water until it has experienced air. And so, identity was conceived. A more practical way of explaining this as it relates to you is that the separate self, or ego is the necessary condition for you to experience oneness or enlightenment. Whenever we associate something with our self, we identify with it. It becomes part of us. We make it the same as us. This is what attachment really is. It is identification. And if that thing we identify with is ever threatened, we experience it as a threat to our own survival (a personal attack). One could argue that identification is a good thing when we identify with things that cause us to feel good. But the thing is, the minute we identify with something that causes us to feel good, it contains within it the seeds of it’s own opposite. Worthiness carries the seeds of unworthiness; excitement carries the seeds of disappointment. Far more troubling however, is that we often identify with things that cause us to feel bad and as such, we must keep those things alive in order to keep our own sense of self alive. A great many spiritual teachers will emphasize the importance of dis-identifying from things outside you, most especially other people. But it is my opinion that when it comes to identification, it is not other things external to us that cause us the most amount of suffering. It is identification with things we perceive to be internal to us. We are the most identified with the three primary aspects of ourselves; our body, our mind and our emotions. Each of these three aspects is inherently a different expression of source consciousness. We mistake these expressions to be the totality of who we are. A bit like a painter who has become so identified with his painting that he has forgotten that who he ultimately is, is more than his painting. We think we ARE our emotions, we ARE our body and we ARE our thoughts. And as such, we are so attached to them that they affect us immensely. They cause us to suffer. Those of us, who have painful emotions, painful thoughts or a painful body, suffer to the degree that life is a torment.

A great many of us on this earth expect disappointment in our lives. We live painful lives of constriction. And the restriction we suffer from is the restriction of joy. We do not let ourselves get our hopes up. In fact, we do not let ourselves feel positive emotion because feeling positive emotion makes us feel vulnerable to hurt. Most of us who expect disappointment, experience ourselves as a disappointment. We experience ourselves this way because growing up, we felt as if we were a disappointment to our parents or teachers or some other authority figure. We are hyper critical of ourselves. Nothing we ever do is good enough to mean that we have worth and value. The basic fear that lies beneath the surface of those who expect disappointment is the fear that powerlessness is the truth of our existence. This powerlessness stems from the belief that you do not create your own reality. The only people who fear disappointment are those who think that they do not ultimately have control over their lives. In this episode, Teal explains how to overcome the expectation of disappointment and then explains what to do when we experience an actual disappointment.

Those of us, who find our way to spirituality, usually have done so as the result of being in pain in some way. Our needs have not been met. We feel an empty dissatisfaction with life itself because of it. Most of us are also not strangers to self-abuse in its multitude of different forms. But even though we feel better once we find spiritual truths to live our life by, our ways have not completely changed. We use spiritual truths as a tool to beat ourselves with. And one of those spiritual truths that we use to torture ourselves with is sacred to us. It is the teaching of independent self-sufficiency.

Discover the mystical world of the crown chakra, sitting at the top of your head and acting as a bridge to the cosmos. Learn how this energy hub connects you to your highest potential and divine source. Uncover the significance of an open crown chakra, associated with intuitive knowing and spiritual enlightenment. Explore practical techniques like meditation and visualization to align your energies. Delve into the evolution of chakra colors, from deep violet to radiant white, as you journey toward awareness and unity.

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When we become aware of this aspect of life, we begin to live our lives differently. We begin to allow the qualities of that consciousness to penetrate through our lives. We become living embodiments of that consciousness. This is what the concept of living Buddha or living Christ or becoming an embodiment of the higher self is all about. This incorporeal, united consciousness is imbued with certain qualities such as unconditional love and awareness and spaciousness and presence and creation and destruction and stillness and expansion etc. Spiritual teachers are here to help people to allow these specific qualities to shine through them. But spiritual teachers tend to focus on or specialize in teaching other people to embody one of these qualities, whichever one they determine from their individual identity is most important to embody. This would not be a travesty if this united consciousness were straightforward. But it is not. It contains many contradictions. For example, one of the qualities of source is stillness; the other is expansion (which is a kind of movement). A teacher of stillness can teach stillness to the degree that their disciples reject expansion and thus disallow themselves from embodying the expansion aspect of their higher self and experiencing the beautiful gifts inherent in that experience. A teacher of expansion can teach expansion to the degree that their disciples reject stillness and thus disallow themselves from embodying the stillness aspect of their higher self and experiencing the beautiful gifts inherent in that experience.

If it is poorly tended, it is the root of the damage that we do to each other on this earth. It is the heart of war. It is the destroyer of connection and as such, it ruptures relationships. When conflict arises, we are being called to embody greater depths of intimacy and harmony. We are being called to become as aware as possible of ourselves relative to a subject. We can either answer that call or allow the conflict to drag us into deeper levels of unconsciousness. We can seek a meeting of minds or we can become reactive and try to end the conflict through power struggle. The struggle for power and control is the enemy of conflict resolution. Relationships involve the inevitability of rupture. The degree of security and joy felt within a relationship is really about our capacity to create repair. People, who cannot repair ruptures in relationships, cannot do so because they feel power and control over others is safety. When conflict arises their ego, which is in a state of fear, immediately seeks to win or to punish the other. Their ego seeks to stay safe and survive by being right, justified, good, and victorious so that the other person is the one who is wrong, unjustified, bad and loses. The down side is that this person cannot maintain relationships. This person also remains unconscious. This person lives in a state of starvation as they lack secure connection and intimacy.

Complaint is the act of expressing discontent or dissatisfaction, finding fault or negativity in something. Complaining is indicative of a state of suffering. If we are complainers, we have 2 glaring primary unmet needs. The first is for our pain to be seen, heard, felt and acknowledged. We feel alone with our pain. When we complain, we are desperate to have someone acknowledge our pain. In fact, we feel incapable of moving forward until someone does. And the second unmet need is to feel good about ourselves. We need to feel as if nothing is wrong with us and as if we are worthy and have value. In this episode, Teal offers a radical new perspective on complaining.

First, we have to understand what commitment is all about. Commitment is a state of dedication. But we can simplify commitment in this way: To commit to something is to give your energy to something… To put yourself into something. The more committed you are to something, the more of your energy and therefore yourself you put into that thing. If you sit with this idea of commitment for a minute, you might already be experiencing the awareness of what exactly scares you so badly about commitment. If not, I want you to ask yourself “What is so scary about giving my energy to something or putting myself fully into something?” I’m going to give you a hint here: Most fears on this earth, (if not all of them) boil down to the intense fear that something will be lost. For example, even if your fear is that you will gain problems, the flip side of that fear is the fear that you will loose inner peace.

In this episode, Teal provides the listener with a lesson about the history of Christmas. She also reveals the truth about Santa Clause. Teal then goes on to address the question of what parents should tell their children about Santa Claus.