Embraced by life Podcast

Scott Kiloby's Living Inquiries are an exceptionally effective tool for seeing through our beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world. This is a conversation about the Living Inquiries between Nic Higham, Mike Jenkins and Senior Facilitator Fiona Robertson.

Non-duality author and speaker Unmani shares about the paradox of being, the role of the teacher, and other topics in this interview which took place at the end of a recent retreat in Tiruvannamali, India, February 2013. Sher is joined by Living Inquiries Senior Facilitator Deena Wade. Unmani is originally from the UK, but has lived a nomadic life in many countries since the age of 18. Unmani is the author of two books, "I Am Life Itself," and "Die to Love." For more information on Unmani including schedules for her public talks and retreats around the world, her newsletter, podcasts, books, etc., visit www.die-to-love.com. You may also visit Deena's website at www.theradicalinvestigation.org and her blog at www.easeofbeing.org.

In this Embraced by Life podcast Nic Higham and Michael McCaffrey talk with writer and speaker Jeff Foster and take a fresh look at addiction. Surely, unless we get right to the root of all our addictions, and begin to shine the love of awareness itself into those unloved places, our addictions will just shift from one object, substance or person, to the next. We stop drinking, we start eating. We stop eating, we start shopping. We stop shopping, we start gambling. We stop gambling, we start checking our text messages fifty times a day. It's all a search for love, as the great mystics and teachers throughout the ages have been reminding us. This is an ancient and timeless message. Addiction is not there to be 'cured'. It is not a disease, but a misguided search for love, for home. The 'addict' in us is not there to be fixed or manipulated, or even punished. It's there to be loved to death. Featuring music from:- Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Played by 'nedding09' via YouTube) First Aid Kit - Dance To Another Tune Ben Howard - Keep Your Head Up Brett Dennen - Darlin' Do Not Fear Abba - Knowing Me Knowing You

Non-duality author and speaker Scott Kiloby shares about his work with addiction and compulsion through a method he calls Natural Rest, also the title of his new book coming out in early 2013. “Addiction,” Kiloby writes, “is the constant movement to escape from the present moment and the uncomfortable thoughts and feeling of the past.” For this reason, he explains, “virtually all humans are addicts.” Joined by Living Inquiries Facilitator Deena Wade, this interview with Kiloby explores the natural rest that is available to each of us as we allow energies to rise and fall “within an impersonal indestructible presence – rather than within a personal story.” For more information, visit Kiloby’s sites: www.livingrealization.org, www.livingrelationship.org, www.naturalrestforaddiction.org. Wade also has a site at www.theradicalinvestigation.org.

Nic Higham talks with teacher and author Jeff Foster about anxiety. They take a fresh look at the experience we call anxiety, fear and nervousness and ask: can we discover an ever-present stillness amidst the stormy waves of life? A freely given peace beyond comparison, judgement and condition; this silent, restful background of being that we are. It seems that we have forgotten who we really are – the vast ocean of consciousness that unconditionally embraces its beloved ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ children with equal tenderness, that loves its ‘dark’ and ‘light’ waves to death, that holds its ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ with equal understanding. Life is not the problem. Thoughts and feelings are not the problem. The waves in the ocean are not the problem. Being human is not the problem. It never was. The ‘problem’ begins with the ‘solutions’ that we are offered, the paths we follow in our misguided innocence, and in our fear. We do not need solutions to the non-existent problem of being alive here and now. So many spiritual teachings and practices present themselves as the ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of being human. They are all about getting rid of what we call the ‘negative’, escaping painful emotions, transcending feelings, stopping thoughts, fighting the darkness, attracting the ‘positive’, floating above our humanity, leaving imperfection behind and becoming perfect and enlightened. But why are we so deeply afraid to embrace our humanness in its totality, to deeply allow the present moment exactly as it is? Why the constant war against thoughts and emotions? What exactly are we trying to protect? What exactly do we fear? Our deepest fear is not the fear of death, it is the fear of life. It is the fear of living, really living, of truly being alive and awake and unprotected here and now. For life includes everything, not just the ‘good’ stuff or the ‘positive’ stuff. Yes, it’s joy and it’s bliss but it’s also pain and sadness, fear, anger and confusion. To truly be alive is to admit that you cannot protect yourself from any of it. So we close off from life, we numb ourselves, we try to block out half the waves in the ocean of consciousness. But why do we fear the waves in the ocean when we ARE that very ocean? Our fear of life, which we mistake to be the fear of death, stems from our forgetfulness of who we really are. When you are all that appears, what is there to fear? Who you truly are, as the capacity for anxiety or fear, cannot be anxious. As this open capacity, you are never ‘the anxious one’. Bones can be broken, images can be shattered, hopes and dreams of what should be, or what could have been, can die, yes – but who you are remains present, always. It cannot be harmed and does not decay or age. In discovering this ever-present deep acceptance at the heart of all present experience, fear of life comes to an end, and what remains is an effortless willingness to not run away from thoughts and feelings, and meet them as dear old friends. You are Home, always, and even in the midst of the rubble of dashed hopes and plans and failed dreams, in the lostness you have always feared, in the absence of a future, this peace calls your name, and will find you in the darkness.

Amidst the restless and chaotic waves of life can we find a place of deep rest and freedom? This is a preview of the November 2012 Embraced by Life podcast with teacher Jeff Foster.

Jeff Foster talks with Nic Higham about discovering deep rest in depression. How can depression be a call to awakening? How can we come to see the light of unconditional acceptance seeping through the broken structures of our lives? Is it possible to relax into deep rest, to let that rest infuse every part of us? To break our hearts open again and again…to show us who we truly are? Jeff says, "Perhaps our depression is not a sickness but a call to break out, to let go, to lose the old structures and stories we have been holding up about ourselves and the world and rest deeply in the truth of who we really are. Conventional wisdom would have you turn away from melancholy rather than face it. Well-meaning friends and family and self-help gurus may want to fix you, to get you ‘back to normal’, to make you more ‘positive’, whatever that means. What if the ‘normal’ no longer fits? What if you need to shed your half-shed skin, not climb back into it? What if sadness, and pain, and fear, and all of the waves in life’s ocean, just want to move in you, to finally express themselves creatively and not be pushed away? What if you are not nearly as limited as you were led to believe you were? What if you are vast enough to hold and contain all of life’s energies, the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’? What if you are beyond both, an ocean of consciousness, unified, boundless and free, in which even the deepest despair has a resting place? What if your depression was simply you calling yourself back Home, in the only way you knew how?"

Is it possible to hear criticism, even insult, and find deep acceptance in any response that emerges in the moment – grounded in the unshakeable knowing that what you really are doesn’t need defending? And then, being radically open, is it possible to find a nugget of truth in what they are saying, even if it results in momentary humiliation, and destruction of the image of the one you thought you were? This doesn’t mean you become passive and weak. Quite the opposite. You stop identifying as ‘victim’ or ‘hurt one’, and stop seeing the other as ‘enemy’, and you remain open and vast, the infinite capacity for all life, for all thought and sensation and feeling. And here, in the midst of conflict, you discover the place where conflict ceases to be conflict at all – and wake up to a love beyond reason. Yes, every human relationship is a constant invitation to let go. Your mother, your father, your friends, your lovers, your co-workers, everyone you meet – here are your final gurus, your ultimate teachers. Listen to them.