Contributing to our June Series, Lola and Gaylon share how we move through Four States of Consciousness in their conversation titled, “Co-Creating Life”.
Transcript
This “talk” is electronically transcribed. Please excuse any errors or omissions.
Lola: All right. Our topic today is the Four States of Consciousness. Some of you are familiar with this concept. If you could explore the, To Me state, the By Me state, the Through Me state, and the As Me state, that there are essentially four primary states of consciousness that we are moving through. Now, these are not stages of development as we’ve talked about before. It’s not like, “Oh, thank God I got to By Me, now hopefully by the time I’m 29 I’ll get to Through Me.” It’s not like that. It’s like always moving in and out of states of consciousness. My request of you is to just explore, “What state of consciousness do I find myself in this now moment? In this now moment, do I have the experience of life happening To Me? Do I have the experience of life happening By Me?”
Lola: All of a sudden I’ve begun to wake up to myself as a creative capacity. “Am I relating to life as happening through me in a surrendered state? Am I relating to life as, As Me? There is no distinction between life and me.” Just ask yourself, and likely you’re having multiple experiences around different issues in your life. You could be sitting here right now having a relationship with money that feels at a To Me state of consciousness, and having an experience in your career as a By Me state of consciousness. Gaylon. We didn’t have that up here the whole time? The To Me, By Me, Through Me, As Me? I really thought I was working something out with you all. Okay, there we go. All right. You see this? Yes?
Audience: Yes.
Lola: You did not previously see it?
Audience: No.
Lola: Okay, great. Let me just do that again. Life is happening to me. I am at the effect of something. I am a victim of circumstance. When you begin to… Well, no, you actually are. If you think no, you’re delusional. You all [inaudible 00:02:28] have To Me experiences on a daily basis. Someone cuts you off, you’re in a To Me state if you’re in a triggered reactive experience around them. To Me, life is happening to me. An ascending movement is By Me. It’s a waking up. “Holy smokes. You mean something else is possible than being a walking reaction? Really?” The possibility also exists.
Lola: The way that this works is, from To Me you go up. It’s like you literally wake up. When you begin to cultivate a lived experience of a By Me state, you have greater access to a Through Me experience, which is actually like sitting down. It’s like… Conversations I’ve been having with people a lot these days are in By Me, states of consciousness. “Let me just do more, do more, be more, be more, be more, be more.” I said to a client, this week actually, “The best marathon you actually could run is not the one that you’re scheduled to run in October. It would be the marathon of how long can you sit, because you are in a perpetual state of productivity. You don’t even know yourself independent of productivity. Through Me begins to realize that what you’re experiencing is not only from… like you was a locomotion. What do you want to say about that?
Gaylon: Several things.
Lola: Okay.
Gaylon: Hello everyone.
Audience: Hi Gaylon.
Gaylon: When you’re working through these four stages of consciousness, and as Lola has already stated, we work through these different stages, through different things. When you are going from To Me to By Me, before you get to As Me, one of the things you have to recognize is, you can’t surrender something that you don’t have control over. A lot of times people walk into places like Bodhi Spiritual Center or other places of consciousness growth and they’ll say, “Well, I’m doing these techniques and I’m not getting the results that I desire.” Because they haven’t gone to By Me. They tried to jump to As Me and Through Me without any level of control over their own thinking.
Gaylon: One of the things that I learned very early in my study of metaphysics is a quote from the Reverend Dr. Johnnie Colemon, who was my mentor. She would tell people all the time, “I am the thinker that thinks the thought that makes the thing.” That’s By Me. I really want you to get that. I am the thinker that thinks the thought that makes the thing. That is the origin. That is the genesis of you taking your life back, all right? Before you could get to the place of surrendering to a higher power within you, you have to first of all recognize that thoughts are things. You have to recognize, first of all, that you are a co-creator with life and that you are manifesting life by the way you think, feel, and about what you say and do.
Gaylon: Why don’t you put my quote up there please Nick? The Michael Beckwith quote. All right. Beckwith wrote, “Embodying and living from the realization that they are co-creative beings with dominion over their life structures, manifestors begin to reap the benefits of self-empowered living. With a growing understanding that thoughts reproduce after their own kind, they begin setting intentions and activating them through visualization and affirmation. The term metaphysics enters their vocabulary.” Leave that up just for a second, because I want to just get to the place of embodying and living from, because that’s key. Embodying. Taking on this as your truth, and then living from the realization. There is a difference between revelation and realization. I’m sure you have people say, “I know I saw this. I had a vision.” That’s a revelation, but until you embody it and start to live it, it’s not your realization. The realization allows you to then become a manifestor or a co-creator where you’re not living from a victim mindset.
Lola: I oftentimes say, “Lots of people have lots of ideas in the shower, but far fewer people get out of the shower and then actually become the thing that could realize the vision.” How many times have you gotten a brilliant idea in the shower? So many.
Gaylon: Yes. When you start thinking about being a manifestor, one of the things that I often remember is this thing that we teach people in this Basic Truth Principles class where I come from, where we tell people that, “The primary cause of suffering is your forgetfulness of your divine nature as a spiritual being with dominion over your thoughts and feelings.” If I don’t know who I am, then I believe life is happening to me. I can only begin to manifest or create the experiences that I desire by realizing that I have the capacity to do so. That is the origin of the awakening.
Lola: This next state of consciousness, again not relating to these as linear, is Through Me, and there’s a great quote out of The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, one of… I mean it’s one of my favorite books. He talks about this idea of, “We need not coerce. We do not create the power, but we must let this great power operate through us.” There is this great paradox. You are the presence of all that is. You are the God body. You are the manifestation of this infinite reality, but not at the level of personality. You have a personality, and that’s a beautiful thing, but something else is moving. You don’t breathe you, is how I oftentimes explain this. Something is breathing you. It is not separate and apart from you. For me, in a lot of stuff that I’m moving through in my own life right now, I’m noticing, I have such a good muscle around creating that By Me consciousness. That is so, so well exercised for me, but I’ve really been getting the sense that, that’s not the next game for me. The next game is really allowing, surrendering, letting.
Lola: On my work that I prepared for moving into this calendar year, I just kept seeing everywhere, “Let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go, let go,” and that can feel scary. When you know yourself as a creator to actually move into a kind of surrender, which is very different than apathy. Very different quality.
Gaylon: Yeah. I think the reason why we have challenges surrendering is, because we don’t like to feel vulnerable. There are times in our lives when we have allowed ourselves to become vulnerable to other people who might have been functioning at different stages of consciousness, primarily the To Me. In that victim, and victim, and victim, and victimizer consciousness, what ends up happening is, you allow yourself to become vulnerable, and then somebody potentially abuses that trust. Then someone says, “You need to become vulnerable and surrender to the spirit within.” Whoa, what is… I need to keep my control measures. Don’t tell me to let it go after it’s taken me so much work to get it together.” But this is-
Lola: It really did take a lot of work for me to get it together. I mean, you were right.
Gaylon: Yeah. This is the paradox. I’ve been explaining to several of my friends lately that there is a intimacy of spirit that goes beyond words and thoughts. You have to get to the By Me so you can get to the place where you can see it. You can’t see from To Me, to As Me, or Through Me. It’s like in Star Wars when they do the hyper drive, and they go from lightspeed, from one place to another. That’s a lightspeed jump. You have to get your mind under control and put your life together, and then you’re asked to give it up. This is how the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches it. “Abraham, you’ve been praying for this son for years.” This is not a literal story by the way, this is a allegory, is to teach a lesson. Abraham’s 100 years old, Sarah’s 80 years old. We finally got the baby. Isaac was born. Isaac in Hebrew means joy, that Isaac was their joy, but the attachment to it.
Gaylon: Then spirit says, “Take him to the mountain and sacrifice him.” “What? I’ve been praying for this, I’ve been working on this. This has been my heart’s desire.” “Sacrifice him.” The willingness to sacrifice, what you discover is, anything that’s supposed to be in your life in the right way, you don’t have to surrender, and there’s always a ram in the bush. You will see stages of these levels of consciousness being taught allegorically through narratives that tell us that anything that we allow the human personality to attach to at a level that ends up being before the spiritual intention that resides on our souls will be asked to surrender to put it back in place.
Lola: On that note, what are your thoughts? Yeah. The idea is we really would love to have… One of the things that I’ve been enjoying less and less is talking at, and preferring talking with. There’s an opportunity to submit questions online. There are two mic runners on each side of the room. If there’s something that you’re navigating, that you’re wanting support around, then we want to support you in shifting that. What I know is that, any question that’s asked, there’s some gift for all of us. Karisa.
Carissa: Thanks. What’s coming up for me is this idea. When you’re in a community like this, and you understand the law of attraction and blah, blah, blah, right? You get it. You’re like, “I’m going to attract some shit today,” like a green sweater. There it is. Then when you’re looking at the bigger things of like, “I’m calling in a partner, I’m calling in this job, I’m going to create this whole realm that has never existed for me before.” There’s a line in the paradox where it’s, okay, you can bypass yourself when you are so attached to the law of attraction, which is… Then you can’t surrender. Does that make sense?
Lola: I think so. What’s your question?
Carissa: To talk about that.
Lola: Great-
Carissa: That place.
Gaylon: Okay. I think where you’re coming from is-
Carissa: Do you know what I’m saying?
Gaylon: I think when you’re coming from is, you learn this material, this information. You’re part of this conversation about-
Lola: You do the work-
Gaylon: … universal laws and et cetera, et cetera. Then you’re looking up and saying, “Okay, how come it works here with the smaller things and it’s not working here with some of these things that really matter to me. Would that be?
Carissa: It still can work, but the question is around the surrender because I feel like the law of attraction, kind of, mentality can get into the way. It’s like, “Well, no. I focused this long and this hard, and I know these things are coming, but if I let go mentally of what I’m drawing in and I can’t step back, there’s no room for it to come in.
Gaylon: Okay. Here’s the thing. This is what I always explain to people, because we get kind of caught up. What’s your name?
Carissa: Carissa.
Gaylon:Carissa?
Carissa: Yes.
Gaylon: Yeah. Karisa, this is where we get caught up. There is no law of attraction in you, all right? There’s just the law as you. You are the law of your own being. We get caught up through these books. It’s 11 laws, it’s 15 laws, it’s 12 laws. There’s one law. The law of your consciousness, and all of these ways and books and things of that nature are just ways of explaining you, all right? That’s all it. It’s just the elephant. I’m touching the leg, I’m touching the trunk, I’m touching the side, I’m touching the tail and saying, “That’s what a elephant looks like.” That’s what we do to the universe. That’s what we do to God. That’s what we do to ourselves. First of all, let me just say that.
Gaylon: The second thing I would say is this. With that paradox change, potentially this is what this gives you. If I’m the law of my own being, if I’m always my own experience as a part of my own individual life and as a part of a collective consciousness, then that which I am creating has its own stages. Now, what I would suggest would be this, because I think you want some practical pragmatic answers. Let me give you one.
Gaylon: Couple of things have just popped up. Two things. One, I want you to go to a store and buy a bunch of greeting cards, and… Just listen, just listen. Buy a bunch of greeting cards, and I want you to anonymously send them to people that you really like and some people that you’ve probably had some issues with in the past. Google them if you need to know their address, but this is what I want you to do. I want you to write something really nice and don’t put your name on it, so your ego can’t take credit. Because we love to give, “I let this person off the hook, look how righteous I am.” Now, what does this have to do with what you’re saying? What it’s saying is, it’s a step and stage in surrendering the need to be recognized even when you’re holy.
Gaylon: Second thing, that’s a real practical exercise. When I come back I’ll be looking for you. That’s why I asked your name.
Lola: What’s your address? [inaudible 00:18:41] I was going to say. If you got a card, she didn’t play the game.
Gaylon: Yeah. Send it to Christ Universal Temple. You can Google it.
Lola: Put some money in it.
Gaylon: Yes, that will be a better thing. Second quick thing so we can go on to the next question would be, sit down and write a list of… Play the game of, if money wasn’t an issue, if time wasn’t an issue. If whatever you think is holding you back wasn’t an issue, “I would do,” and just complete it. Because now you’re stepping out of just, “I’m trying to make life happen,” and seeing what is really trying to be born in you, all right? Those are the two things. I’m waiting for my card.
Lola: Let’s ask another question. Who else has a question? Right here. Jay?
Josh: Hi, my name’s Josh.
Lola: Hi, Josh.
Josh: For me, I learn these lessons through pain. I learn what is for me through pain, unfortunately, by going to the wrong thing many, many, many times, and then, through humility, finding where I should be. Is there another way to do this?
Lola: Yeah. I have two thoughts about that. Number one, Ernest Holmes says, “We actually have learned all that we need to learn through suffering.” You actually don’t have to evolve through the contrast of pain, and Gaya and Katie Hendricks would say, “That is the fundamental upper limit.” That, we actually have the capacity to experience good, and greater good, and greater good, and greater good, but because we have been conditioned and programmed by pain as required contrast, we manufacture pain to work out our growth. You actually could have an eternally positive experience of life, but similar to the last question, who you would become or who you would have to be would be distinct from who you are now. It’s actually a great… Would you be willing to consider that pain is not necessary?
Audience: Yes.
Lola: We’ve actually historically said, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is by choice.” But I would actually go so far as to say, pain actually doesn’t even need to exist. One of the things that we practice a lot here is the practice of body sensation. We do this thing called presencing, body sensation, feeling state, next thought. The very first thing we practice in body sensation is describing the actual sensation. It is extremely difficult for people to omit words like hurt, sore, pain. It’s so hard for people to develop that skill, because we don’t actually know what life is like without pain, which is not the nature of life. It’s literally a program that has been conditioned.
Gaylon: One quick thing. Be careful that you don’t get the high from the emergency. Some of us get the high from knowing that we can produce under pressure. Stephen Covey talks about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, four quadrants. One of them is urgent and emergency. When you step out of the emergency phase of life, what it allows you to do is look at what you really want to give birth to, as I mentioned to Karisa earlier. I would suggest you do the same exercise, because if you’re doing that exercise, what you’re not doing is allowing life to react and then saying, “Okay, I get my high from making stuff happen, and pulling rabbits out of the hat, and creating miracles.” That’s a real thing for our society right now, but it doesn’t allow for contemplation. It doesn’t allow for reflection. It doesn’t allow for the intuitive knowing to function outside of the mental noise of the timeline. As Beckwith says often, “Pain pushes until vision pulls.”
Lola: Yeah. The thing is that, to go to your earlier point, you can’t jump from To Me to As Me. If you hear what I say and say, “Oh, pain is not necessary,” then all of a sudden today I’m going to start walking in a positive experience. If you have spent the last 40, 50, 60 years, believing that pain is real, the odds of you just making a leap to pain as not being real is impossible. You have to recondition your mind. It’s a practice. All right, another question, thought? Yeah. David.
David: Hi. My experience has been of doing the work and coming to Bodhi and then nothing’s happening. My question is how… You mentioned some really great things about, if money and time weren’t an issue. Could you talk a little bit more about, making the shift between To Me, By Me, and then By Me, Through Me. How to do that [crosstalk 00:24:14]-
Lola: I mean, my first thought, just having watched your journey, and I think it’s very, very, familiar for so many of us. Being able to distinguish your identity from your essence. When your doing this is coming from your ego or your identity, I would say pause. Now, if you don’t have the ability… Not you specifically, but the general, you, don’t have the ability to distinguish between your essence and your ego, or your essence and your identity, it becomes very difficult to know which one is speaking. Do you have a thought?
Gaylon: Yes. One of the things that happens many times is, we come here to places like this, and we, metaphorically, have a can of soup. We take the label off, we change the label and now we call it pineapples. What does that mean? What it means is, the belief system is still the same, and it’s surfacely been changed. But when you start to deal with the real things that are going on in you, what ends up happening is, this type of work, the By Me stage… Can you put the four stages back up please, just so I can reference it? The By Me stage pulls up something that-
Lola: State.
Gaylon: State yeah. State. Pulls up something that we call, in my brand of metaphysics, chemicalization. What does that mean? That means that you learn to go from To Me to By Me, and you are in the space now where you made some things happen at a surface level, but now you have to deal with the deeper beliefs, because now that you’ve taken some measure of control over your life and over your mind, now you have to deal with the things that have been suppressed. That level of intention starts to pull that material up out of the subconscious, and now it has to be healed. What it looks like is, I came to a place and I’m learning about the truth of God in me, and how I have power in my mind and in my thoughts, and then all heck breaks loose. Why? Is come up to be healed. What we do is we panic, and we suppress it back down until the next thing, and then it pulls up.
Gaylon: What I would say is this, and I don’t you at all. Look at what needs to be forgiven. I call forgiveness the liquid plumber of the soul. I don’t care how good your pipeline is. If its gook in the pipeline, the water can be great, the pipeline can be great, and it will stop up the natural flow. Notice what I said, the natural flow. There’s a natural flow to life. There’s a natural flow to you. You were created and designed to work with the flow. When we see obstructions in our lives, there’s obstructions in our belief systems that have to be addressed. What that means is, at the By Me stage you have to be really intentional about the forgiveness practices. Now, I know that they have classes and courses here that offer those types of things, and you can drill down with your leadership at a deeper level. But let me just give you this one quote from Gerald Jampolsky from a book called Forgiveness. He wrote, “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”
Gaylon: What we do is, we are still manipulating in our mind, would have, should have, could have. That’s To Me. As Lola was saying earlier, we want to live in the By Me, but we keep dipping into the To Me, because we have this story that we’ve made up that mama, daddy, life, me, school, significant others, or whatever should have been something other than what they are. The release of that allows the process of healing to truly happen. Also, just saying this because this is my belief, Lola knows I say this all the time. Sometimes, people who are in progressive spiritual movements are the most sensitive folks on the planet, with the empowered message being triggered by everything.
Lola: What do you have to say about that?
Gaylon: What I am… Yeah, yeah-
Lola: I mean, I sort of want to hear you say the next thing. [crosstalk 00:28:56]-
Gaylon: Yeah. The next thing is this. Part of discovering the truth and power within yourself is walking, talking, thinking, feeling, and believing from that empowerment, all right? For instance, when I was a young African American man and people were saying, “African American males are endangered species,” let me look that up. I’m not an endangered species. I’m not affirming that for myself, all right? That’s a mindset that you have to shift. I’m not going to allow somebody else’s label to disempower me, because now I have to live out that label. Every time you accept somebody else’s limitation, and you allow yourself to be triggered by it, you have to have the experience of the limitation.
Gaylon: What I’m saying is, when you get to this By Me, I’m still at the By Me, is being intentional with creating the type of consciousness that you desire. Releasing the things that need to be released, not at the surrender stage, but the beliefs that don’t correspond with what you’re seeking to manifest in your life. This is why you might have to do the affirmations, and the denials, and the visualizations, and the classes, and the workshops, and the seminars, and the reading, and staying up, and working on you to the place in which you can refine your consciousness to produce results that you desire. But if you want to do this process, and still be a victim, and still talk about what other people are saying, and what other people are doing, you can’t walk in your power.
Lola: One of the things that you said on the Facebook Live that we did the other night was, someone’s going to condition your mind. It may as well be you. If you’re not in an active practice of conditioning your mind, then you’re essentially giving license to other stimulus to do that for you. What else is coming up?
Gaylon: There was a lady over here had a question.
Lola: Yeah, go ahead.
Audience Member: When trauma happens before the brain is developed, how would one move-
Lola: Can you hold the mic up closer?
Audience Member: Oh, yeah. Sorry. When one has trauma done to them before the brain is fully developed, but then you don’t realize until much later in life that you’ve been stuck in that, how does one move through that, or get to the other side of that?
Lola: I’m going to say the least popular thing perhaps, especially for mental health professionals in the room. If who you are is that, it’s very difficult, but if you actually have a context that who you are is greater than that, there’s much more available. If we only relate to ourselves in this dimension of reality, that becomes like a science question. But if you relate to yourself as an eternal being, an infinite expression of life itself, which by the way does not mean that there’s not great value in mental health services. But, my experience is that so often people are doing mental health work at a very superficial level, and then are frustrated that things don’t shift, because you’re only dealing with a very limited aspect of your being. If you have a context of who you are as greater than this, many more options become available.
Gaylon: Yeah, also what I would add is, couple of things really quickly. One, I am not my brain. I am not my body.
Lola: Exactly.
Gaylon: That by itself is a paradigm shift, all right? Because, if you can set intention to heal lungs, like I did 20 plus years ago when I almost died from an asthma attack. I know people who have allowed limbs to work in ways that they didn’t work previously. Body is at the realm of effect. Even scientists and quantum physicists are saying there is consciousness that works through the body. The brain does not produce consciousness. The brain is more like a radio or a receiver that receives consciousness that it flows through. Now, if the brain or the receiver like anything else, has any levels of damage, it interrupts the signal. What we have to do then is… This is not the platform to really drill down on this because I don’t just want to give you a surface answer. I don’t want to give you a surface answer, but it has to be quick.
Gaylon: The first step, as Lola’s stated is, to recognize that I’m a spiritual being, living in a spiritual universe, governed by a spiritual law. What does that mean? That means that the essence of me has never been traumatized. It means the essence of me is perfect, whole, and complete, and I choose… Now notice the word, choose… I choose to identify with my wholeness. All right, that has to be the first step because none of the techniques work without the choice of identifying with your wholeness, and then the work. Whether you’re working with a mental health professional or practitioner or a spiritual guru, it doesn’t make a difference. The choice still has to be made that, “Am I going to live from the standpoint of being a victim?” What I tell people is this, this is… I’m known for saying this statement. “I believe that there’s something radically right about you. The world will tell you that there’s something wrong with you. Religion will tell you, philosophy, society, sociology, medicine, but I believe there’s something radically right about you.”
Gaylon: If you can connect, how do you connect? This is why you do the work, the study, the prayer, the affirming, the visualizing, the visioning, the meditating, whatever. These are conscious techniques you use to learn about the, you, you might not be familiar with right now, But it’s a intimacy. It’s like, picture if you wanted to date the higher self. If you’re dating someone, there’s an intimacy in learning about how they move, right? Would you agree with that statement? All right, how does spirit move in you? There’s a intimacy to it. Now, what I’m saying right now might be well over somebody else’s head because you went To Me. “What do you mean how spirit moves through me?” Because, as Lola mentioned earlier with her client, we don’t slow down and stop long enough to be with ourselves without judgment.
Lola: Two more questions. There’s one right here.
Marie: Hi there. I’m Marie and it’s my first day with you. Also it’s a pleasure being here.
Lola: Welcome.
Audience: Welcome.
Marie: I have been noticing, I think similar to nature, you have a beautiful tree that provides shelter and breathes oxygen into this beautiful world. When a storm comes through it can become a nursing log. This duality with nature, I think, is reflected within my own being as well, of being so grateful just to be here, to be alive, and I have a wonderful job that allows me to know if I can take off and land safely no matter what happens between, I’m alive. But then there’s a part that has been very grateful, and yet wanting more. There’s deep level of contentment and then-
Lola: Divine discontent.
Marie: Yes. With the interwoven tapestry of these states of consciousness that we go in and out of in each moment, at our essence when we are there, even if it’s just for a moment, is there that, not… I don’t want to say struggle, but the tug of war, I suppose that’s a colloquial way of saying it, of wanting more and being content. How do we know, and how can we balance within these two, I think, wonderful places to just… What’s that in between?
Gaylon: Can I answer that first?
Lola: Please.
Gaylon: What was your name?
Marie: Marie.
Gaylon: Marie. Marie-
Lola: We’d like her to come back.
Gaylon: Yes.
Marie: You’ll see me. You’ll see me.
Lola: I’m just saying, be careful.
Gaylon: Okay. Level down.
Marie: No, no, no, no. Please-
Gaylon: Level down.
Marie: Bring up the intensity. I will come back.
Gaylon: The myth of life is perfect balance. It’s a myth. I was watching Good Morning America this morning, they were talking about the people walking in New York from one building to the next. They have the large poles, and they were walking on the wire. Why do they have the large pole? It balances them. But even with the large pole and all of that skill as they’re walking the tight rope, it’s a step, and it’s a step, and it’s a step. Every step of your life you’re going to have to create the balance. We think that we… Let me rephrase it. We interpret conflict as struggle, but conflict is just competing needs, values and wants. You want something, I want something. I think it’s right you think is wrong. All of this could be happening between individuals or inside one individual, which is what you’re talking about.
Gaylon: What I would say is love it all. Even as you have to sit down what no longer serves you, but guess what? As you sit it down, something within you is going to be striving for something else because you are an ever-evolving being in the process of becoming. You will never become, you will always be in the process of becoming because you are the image and likeness of infinity. When you look at it from that standpoint, there is no such thing as complete contentment because there will always be something pushing you to grow, pushing you to release, and pushing you to evolve into whatever is seeking to be born through you. This is a natural process, and if you judge it as something else, you will create a story that will put you in bondage.
Lola: All right. We’re going to take a-
Ameerah: I have a question. I have a question.
Lola: Well, Ameerah:. You have a microphone. Okay. Look, we’re going to do one question from online and then we’ll close with your question. Is that okay-
Ameerah: Okay.
Lola: All right, go ahead.
Sound Booth: Okay. We have one from Sharice L. Says, “To Gaylon’s point of being triggered and getting stuck in a space of blaming or accepting the others projection of our identity, how do we actually move forward from there? The immediate reaction for me is anger, for example, of someone calling my pretentious, when I express my confidence. One thing that I’m trying to build, my confidence. Yes, I am triggered. How do I allow myself to feel the emotion without trying to jump to this greater spiritual being that I’m obviously not. Am not yet.”
Lola: I would say, you are a great spiritual being. You haven’t fully realized that perhaps, and that’s where the practice lies. This is this idea of… I was with a client the other day and I said, “Do you have a rubber band?” He gave me the rubber band, and I said, “Now, if I take the rubber band and I make it larger, at a pace that’s friendly to the rubber, it’s actually very gracious with me. It’s stretches with me. If I take the rubber band, I go like this, it’s snaps. Like that.” That is true for each of us. You can stretch gently into this experience as opposed to being like…
Gaylon: Yes, I want to give her, Sharice L., a real practical exercise. I want you to look up A Complaint Free World, by Will Bowen. In A Complaint Free World, the book basically is based on the premise that we are very unconscious, and we have to learn how to become conscious of our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions through our words. What he does in the book is this. He says, “Put on a wristband,” he sells them, they say [inaudible 00:43:09], but you can use any wristband that you choose. Every time you complain, every time you throw shade, every time… Now, let me say this, verbalizing. Think it, verbalize it, you switch the wristband from one wrist to another. What does that do? It’s a conscious act, and the idea is to go 30 days without switching your wrist band.
Lola: It’s also mental conditioning.
Gaylon: It’s mental conditioning. Now, if you think it and don’t say it, it doesn’t count, but the moment it leaves your lips, switch the wristband. What does that do? It will show you how often your belief systems go back to, To Me, because part of your evolution, as Lola mentioned earlier, is you catching yourself when you’re doing it. That’s stage one. It’s sort of like unconscious incompetence. That’s where most people function when they’re just reacting. The next stage would be conscious incompetence. “I know I don’t have this, but I’m still incompetent.” The next stage would be conscious competence. “Now, I know what I’m doing and I have to choose it consistently,” until you can live in unconscious competence, which allows you to subconsciously and automatically, do the thing that you’ve designed and conditioned yourself to do and be. As I said earlier, or as Lola quoted me, somebody’s going to condition your mind might as well be you. Shariece L. I’m challenging you to take on the complaint-free world challenge.
Lola: Well, I also think another great tool is nonverbal body movement and sound. If an experience is happening, the idea is not to suppress it because if you suppress it, it actually calcifies in your body. There’s something between not experiencing it and blurting it. The in-between is… Like you’re having an experience. To pretend like you’re not, is to actually trap it further in your body. Give yourself an outlet, and there’s something to be responsible for. All right, Amira. Close this out.
Ameerah: Okay. Why do we have thoughts in the shower? That’s not my question, I was just trying to see if you guys were paying attention.
Gaylon: I was about to give you a, “For real?”
Lola: I actually [inaudible 00:45:42] thought about that. You’re open and available actually. You’re open and available. You have access to a different level of creativity. You’re in the present moment differently. I actually think it’s a great question.
Ameerah: Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay. But the other question is, can we get that slide back up about To Me-
Lola: To Me, By Me. The four states of consciousness?
Ameerah: Yeah. Okay. By Me. Lola, you said that you’re really strong in that, right? Then there’s this letting go. How do you let go?
Lola: Well. Number one I should say, my father is an entrepreneur. If you’re going to actually succeed as an entrepreneur, you better have By Me down, because that’s all a mind game. I was raised in a household with strong By Me consciousness. That’s in my DNA, because you can’t take a leap as an entrepreneur and not have a right mindset. Anybody who’s ever tried to become an entrepreneur and not have your mind right, it is massive levels of suffering. Because I have a deeply intimate relationship with my ego and my essence, and I have a high capacity to discern which one is operating, for me, if I know that the movement, the next action is coming from ego, I don’t do it, because I’m not here for that.
Lola: My Through Me is actually very developed, and it’s just about honoring it more, and more, and more, and more, and more. In this time of transition here, there are lots of things that people are wanting, but if it’s not authentic for me, and they’re being asked of me, that is a house built on sand. I have to listen until what’s true for me is a resonant match with what’s wanted, and that’s a Through Me practice. All right. With that in mind, I would love to just appreciate the willingness to do this banter, and just appreciate your willingness to always create, and play, and affirm, who I am on the planet. In this iteration of Bodhi, this is Gaylon’s last Sunday with us-
Audience: Oh.
Lola: Right, right, right. In this iteration, and the last six years… I will celebrate seven years in a staff capacity at Bodhi on December 15th. Who you’ve been for me is just like an affirmation of my existence. Always standing for me being my greatest self. I just have nothing but huge amounts of gratitude for your own personal practice and the generosity with which you devote yourself here, and to me personally.
