Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Lawrence:
You know, it’d be like a carpenter thinking he’s just a hammer. Well, that wouldn’t be so good. We’re the infinite thinking we’re just this finite one little being. And so awakening consciousness is to add the fullness, not get rid of the finite. We’re going to add to it the fullness. So now it becomes a clear vehicle in service of the highest, the divine within, the divine that’s all beings, all creation.

Guy:
Guy here. Just a quick one from me as I welcome back to the podcast today, Lawrence Edwards. And I just love this man. He is a beautiful soul. Anyway, it’s the second time I’ve had Lawrence on the show. And if you enjoy this episode today, be sure to go back and listen to the first one as well. Because in the first one, we get into his personal journey and his own spiritual awakening. And today we dive into the journey of spiritual awakening and the soul’s evolution. One thing I’ll say about Lawrence, every time I sit with him and I’m in his presence, I just feel the world’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be right. He’s just got that presence about him, so much wisdom. So if you’re watching this on YouTube especially, be sure to let me know in the comments below what you think of the episode today. Let me know where you are in the world as well. Connect. It all helps as we get beyond the walls of technology. And the last thing I want to mention as well, tickets are selling very well for our Bali retreat, Mastering Your Inner Mystic, which is this July 2024, end of June, early July 2024. There’s still some spots left. Be sure to come and join us. All 21 of our previous retreats have sold out. And we will be in Northern New South Wales in Australia in May as well. So if you want to come and experience this work for yourself, come meet us in person, come and join us. Anyway, enjoy this episode with Lawrence. It’s awesome. Much love from me, and I will see you soon. Lawrence, welcome back to the podcast. It’s so great to see you, sir.

Lawrence:
Good to see you. My delight to be on with you.

Guy:
We’re talking off air, and it’s typical as things start coming up, it’s like, nope, let’s just hit record because it’s too good to miss. But obviously, this is the second time you’re coming on the show, and I don’t want to dive back into your background in history and your journey, because we’ve already, we’ve covered that on the podcast, but I’m sure things will come up today as well around that. But just for the new listeners, if you were sitting on an airplane and somebody said, Oh, what do you do? Or something like that, and he was a complete stranger, how would you, how would you answer that?

Lawrence:
I’d say I have the privilege of being able to serve people and walk with them along their spiritual journeys. and share what I’ve gained through my background, personal experiences through yoga, meditation, kundalini, Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist teachings and traditions and great teachers I’ve studied with. And so I do my best to just share that and support people as they deal with the obstacles in life.

Guy:
Yeah, beautiful. And I gotta ask you, before we get into the kind of meat of what we’re gonna talk about today with everything, is that since our last podcast, I see how busy you keep yourself. I’m subscribed to your newsletters. They come through every week. You’re holding space. You’re sending out newsletters constantly. There’s books happening. Like, what is it that drives you, you know, that you continue to be of service like this?

Lawrence:
Right, that’s a beautiful question because I think it’s true of, I think it’s our highest calling, everyone’s highest calling. I just heard it so clearly I couldn’t ignore it. And that’s to love and to serve, to know and to serve. It’s the last chapter in my book, my first book, The Soul’s Journey, Guidance from the Divine Within. It culminates, the path culminates in being available, accessible. Once you know, then what do you do? Oh, you serve. You serve all beings with love. You serve to help all beings become free of suffering. You serve with love wherever you’re called to. And so what you see that comes up on e-newsletters or books, there are books that have been asked to be written or inspired poetry that keeps coming up in meditation. And, you know, people who’ve read those works of mine know that it’s a, Or as Andrew Harvey spoke about, he says, oh, Lawrence is one who has this long love affair with the great mother, the goddess Kali, and she speaks to him in meditation. And that’s what I then share with everybody and hope that it inspires, uplifts, motivates people to do the work, walk their path, really know the highest truth in their heart, in their being, in their life.

Guy:
How does she speak to you? Is it like a knowing? Is it a sense? I know because you had your own awakening. I’m always curious to know how that information comes through to then be able to just allow it to come out for others.

Lawrence:
Yeah, yeah. Well, sometimes it’s literally in words. One has to understand that when I’m talking like this, It’s, there’s only one, there’s only the divine. The play is that there’s two or more. But in meditation, when I am in this state of dissolution, it’s the voice of myself. It’s the voice of the divine within. But that voice can wear different faces at different times. It can wear different costumes in a sense for different people. Somebody, it might be Buddha. Somebody else, it might be Krishna. Somebody might be Jesus. Somebody might be Mother Mary. For me, it’s been so consistent, this great goddess that was mind-blowing. I’m just sort of a Westerner, grew up in the suburbs of New York, and Kali, Mahakali, Mahakali started showing up in meditations and talking to me, giving me instructions. And that was, you know, 30-odd years ago. Took a bit to let go. OK, well, this will get integrated by her grace. And and as you know, as a licensed mental health practitioner, as a college, you know, having run psychiatric institutes, I know the danger of listening to voices can what doesn’t have integrated. So I say that a little tongue in cheek, but this is really that’s that powerful presence. And that’s what comes through.

Guy:
Wow, incredible. I guess one question is, especially when you first started leaning into that and thinking, okay, this is showing up, how do you know that those voices are of the highest good? Is it because of what you’d been through previously?

Lawrence:
Yeah, I mean, I had been doing meditative work for many, many years, had wonderful teachers who I could also go to. I’m saying, this is coming up in meditation, and get there, feedback, you know, a great master will say, Okay, you know, hold, hold steady, be present with that. Let’s see what unfolds. And they’re always like, you know, just sublime highest truths. And so nothing wonky. You know, you can you can see what happens when the mind gets involved. And when people’s, you know, their individuality and their own psyche starts to um contaminate it because that’s that’s really what happens so often is people get inspired by a an experience of meditation then they try and act on it do something with it but what are they acting what are they doing with it they’re now using the vehicle of their mind and body in any any contractions, any distortions, any limitations that are part of the vehicle or mind and body are going to get imposed even on what might have been a high and beautiful and pure truth that they experienced to begin with.

Guy:
So true. There’s a couple of things you said about, you know, what am I going to do with this now that I know, and it’s to become of love and service and to spread a beautiful message, because you want to see other people light up like yourself. I ask this question many times, and I do always still ponder on this. Why then do we have to go through this hero’s journey almost first, to be all me, all self, this is all my problems, this is all my pain, to metamorphose into that aspect of ourselves that was ever-present all along? I mean, if you look at the state in the world right now, it’s I mean, whatever we focus on, we get. So if we’re always in fear, we’re just going to see more fear anyway. But I’m just curious to hear your perspective on these things.

Lawrence:
Right. Well, you know, the hero’s journey is an archetypal depiction of how do we go from being caught in that sense of I, me, mine, my prevails, my this, my that, to who am I as the infinite? as beyond abundantly full. Well, because we’re so identified with that very limited sense of self, that limited ego mind, and it’s the identification with it that causes the issue, not it, it’s just the structure that’s meant to serve the highest. But if our consciousness becomes just completely wedded to that, identified with all I am is this mind, this body, this identity is this guy in the 21st century dealing with life as it is. That’s a very contracted view. And while most people would call it reality, except the mystics, they would say, no, that’s actually just, you know, an atom’s worth of reality in that. And so the various traditions and paths and what’s symbolized by kundalini awakening, this power of the infinite to know itself as infinite. Well, kundalini is awake in terms of it’s that’s also the power to know the finite as if you were just the finite. That’s the other side of kundalini. That’s the ordinary functioning of kundalini. Maintain the body, maintain a sense of limited self. It’s not until we evolve literally across lifetimes to have explored that, got sick of it, done with it, and then have to do the work of going, OK, now I need to unfuse consciousness from vehicle of consciousness. It’d be like a carpenter, think he’s just a hammer. Well, that wouldn’t be so good. We’re the infinite thinking we’re just this finite one little being. And so awakening consciousness is to add the fullness, not get rid of the finite. We’re going to add to it the fullness. So now it becomes a clear vehicle in service of the highest, the divine within, the divine that’s all beings, all creation. But until we can know that, until we’ve done the hero’s journey, the hero’s journey is one of leaving the confines of the ordinary world, meaning conventional society and reality, with all their definitions of what’s a man, what’s a woman, what’s a child, what’s an adult, what’s this, what’s that, that we’ve identified with. Leave that behind They start to throw open the doors. And then we have to see, oh, what are all the hidden unconscious identities that have come from family traumas and ancestral things and things that people might encounter? We have to know all that’s got to be set aside to say, no, I want to know infinitude of being. That’s what Buddha set out to do. His intention was, I am not going to stop until I have found how to relieve and free everyone from suffering. That meant, how do I get to know the infinite as the ground of all being, all beings? And he then left a path for doing that. Well, that’s the mystic’s path over and over again. That’s the hero’s journey. So we have to shed those limitations in order to come to know the infinitude. We didn’t take on those limitations by accident. That too was part of how this universe was created by the infinite. So it said that Shakti Kundalini creates the veil that hides the infinitude of being so that we can know as the infinite what it is to be finite. Because if we didn’t forget our infinitude, we’d never take being finite seriously. Isn’t that funny?

Guy:
Yeah, wow, there’s a lot in there. This might seem like a silly question, I don’t know, but what does the divine get out of it by us being here in the density of it all?

Lawrence:
Yeah, so in the question is our humanity. What do we get? The infinite is infinitely creative. It’s an expression of its infinitude. If it couldn’t know what it was to be finite, it would have a limitation. So in its expression of all its infinite nature, creativity, consciousness, it creates all that’s conscious, all that seems unconscious, all that’s finite, as well as remaining purely infinite in its consciousness. So it’s just a total all-embracing consciousness, and it’s its nature to create all that is.

Guy:
Wow. I’d have to sit with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Lawrence:
It doesn’t need anything. It’s not out to get anything. It’s just expressing the fullness of its own nature, which is beyond imagining. So the mind only comes to know truly in silence, in absolute silence and stillness. Because the mind is always trying to act like the instrument for knowing. It wants to encode it in words, it wants to give it an image, it wants to give it an idea, it wants to have an inspiration. Those are all within the limited domain of mind. The infinitude of being is utterly beyond that and ineffable. Knowable because it’s the nature of consciousness, not knowable on that level by ordinary mind. That’s humbling for the mind. It’s hugely humbling. It’ll fight that tooth and nail, trying to come up with just the biggest, grandest concept, enlightenment framework, whatever it could come up with, to try and hold what that is. And it’ll always fail.

Guy:
Yeah. Well, I’m always continuously proven wrong and surprised. The moment I think I’ve got the hang of something or, oh yeah, it’s like, no, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel then that this particular period in our lifetime, there are more people yearning and leaning into this at this present time? I just think when I was like 20, I didn’t even know any of this existed. I was completely removed. And now it just feels like my world, maybe it’s because where I just lay focus, but it feels like there’s more and more people yearning for that deeper truth, that deeper connection, from what I can see.

Lawrence:
Yeah, I mean, I do think there is, and I think there’s, you know, people have been turned off or realized that having material success, having material goods, still leaves one unhappy. That deep fulfillment, deep happiness, though it was seemed to be framed in having all the material wants and needs satisfied, then what? So now that more and more people have their wants and needs, not everybody, we need to help those who don’t. But even those who do, they go, oh, this didn’t do it. I mean, I remember working, a person came to me, Um, very wealthy. And, and, you know, she said, I have, you know, in her checking account, she said, I have $16 million in my checking account. Um, that’s a small fraction of what I have. Um, and I’m always in fear and I’m always worried. So that’s the, that’s the human psyche getting that, Oh no material possession and realizing that the. The ordinary mind, as it’s ordinarily employed, is at the command of the ego mind. The ego mind is about prediction and control. It evolved that way. It helped us survive, you know, being in jungles and not getting eaten. Prediction and control is a major concern for the mind. And it brings that concern to spiritual practice. It brings that concern to relationships. Things aren’t predictable if they’re not controllable. The ordinary man gets very ill at ease. And we are in a period of turmoil. And so some of the old paradigms, addiction and control, aren’t working. And that causes some segments of the population to want to become even more controlling, even more fear-driven in their pursuit of control. Well, that’s why you wind up with fascism, fundamentalism, things like that. That’s that fear driven, I gotta control it. It’s gotta be under my control. I’m gonna make it under my control and that’s it. And all those paradigms aren’t working for people. And there’s those who have gone, no, this isn’t the way. This is a huge evolutionary step in human evolution to go from that individual survival mode that Darwin talked about in terms of the survival of the species was guaranteed by the survival of the individual. And that works on a small population in an animal setting where there’s lots of resources. We’ve gone past that. We’re facing problems now where we have to be awake as a collective. We have to be awake to knowing that, oh, we’re in this together. This is where oneness really becomes real. And that if we have a vision of our unity, then there is no other to exploit, control, dominate. There’s only the one. There’s only my own self, my own divine self manifesting as that person, this person, the environment. How could I dominate, exploit, control that? I want to come from a place of the natural wellspring of love and compassion that says, I want all beings uplifted. I want the preservation and the flourishing of life, of your intelligence, your creativity, your capacity for being all that you are is going to make all that we are even brighter. That’s a very big shift that is being demanded of humanity right now because What we’re facing in terms of global wars, global economics, global pollution, environmental hazards, these demand collective answers. We are in it together. Huge change for humanity.

Guy:
RL Oh, yeah. So how would you then define the antidote to that prediction and control and becoming part of the collective? Because I feel, especially something I’ve grappled with over the years is recognizing the divinity within myself and coming from that place, but there’s still that other part of me that’s like, oh, freaking out. You want me to let go here? Are you shitting me? You know, that kind of thing.

Lawrence:
Yeah, yeah. Well, you started out asking, why is this hero’s journey and why is it so long? Because that’s deeply ingrained to see others and to feel, oh, if they have something, I’m gonna have less of it. Our conditioned mind is based on that fundamental ignorance, what the Buddhist tradition, the yogic tradition, mystic tradition, the basic ignorance of not knowing the truth of who we are, our divinity, and that we are intimately unified with all beings, with all creation. So that’s why the mystic traditions have aimed at cut the root of that ignorance And then spontaneously, you’re free of that paradigm of, I got to predict, I got to control, I got to exploit. No, no, I want to see flourish. I want to bring love. I want to bring compassion. That’s what’s rising in my heart. If I’ve slain the dragon of fear that comes out of a limited sense of who I am, then what opens up is that capacity for selfless love, selfless compassion. that willingness to say, oh, I wanna see all beings flourish.

Guy:
Can we lean into then the word dharma and living dharma and break that down a bit as well? I’m intrigued to hear your perspectives as well, because I feel as well it’s quite easy sometimes if there’s all this pressure, or it feels like pressure that’s been put upon us externally. that one thing is just that I can just go into my little meditation cave and just be in my little spot, but then I don’t know, almost ignore what’s happening, so then I can just be spiritual.

Lawrence:
Right, right, right. But that’s, I mean, so there’s a lot in your question, because part of it is also being able to retreat into the truth. because that’s, you know, retreat practices have been a part of spiritual traditions. You run retreats, I’ve run retreats. So it’s being out, that’s part of the hero’s journey, where you step aside from all the demands of conventional life so that you can turn your attention. It’s a way of freeing attention so that we can give it then to what we know is this highest presence, our own divinity, our own self in that moment. Then after we’ve, you know, sort of had the cloth of our mind and body dipped in that, we come out again and go, okay, I’m refreshed here. Then we’re dipping it in the world that it feels like it got all sullied again. Oh, I better go back and sit in my thing routinely so I can stay ahead of this. But as we begin to really abide in that, to inhabit that, then it’s less and less affected by the outer world not because we’re disconnected from it, but because we see through it. And we see then also where’s that calling to walk that truth that we felt sitting in our meditation spot or doing our practice and say, now, how does that get walked into the world? How do I live that into my relationships? How do I live that into my family? How do I live that into my work? How do I live that into I’m driving down the road, somebody cuts me off. Am I awake there or did I lose it? Did the ego mind go, he cut me off, that’s my lane. Because the ego mind is all about self-appropriation. It’ll steal anything around. The parking lot has my pocket space. The road has my lane. It’s all going, me, me, me, my, my, my. No, no, let it go, let it go. When we talk about dharma, there’s dharma on various levels. There’s dharma as practice, but there’s a dharma of our roles in life, the dharma of a father, the dharma of a mother, the dharma of a son, the dharma of a daughter. In many ways, it’s about right living and living informed by the highest wisdom. Sometimes we are carrying that highest wisdom directly because we know it. Sometimes we’re carrying it because right now it’s more of a teaching that I really am committed to. So, you know, one might be committed to the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddha, or one might be committed to Ashtanga Yoga and the Eight Limbs of Yoga. And one might be saying, oh, the yamas and the niyamas, the restraints and observances. they’re all definitions of dharma. There’s ways of living dharmically in the world. Ahimsa, non-violent, being the ground of that, the foundation for that. And so what we’re doing is saying, no, there’s a higher order of being in congruence with what the divine is. And until I’m living from that spontaneously, I’ll have guidelines. Well, those are the rules. Those are the yamas and the niyamas. They give the ego mind an orientation saying, no, you can’t just go off and doing what you feel like, because then you’re going to get further and further out of congruence with the highest. So work within these parameters. Be loving, kind, compassionate, patient. Wow, that takes a tremendous amount of effort to be patient in the face of things not going right. Well, that’s what the yogic tradition talked about tapasya. It’s the heat, the friction that’s generated by practices rubbing up against the ego wanting to have its impulses to go do whatever it wants versus the restraints, the constraints that are being imposed upon it first by the disciplines of practice because that’s what purifies it. And then later, then the ego mind is pure and it becomes just a pure channel for your highest self to come through. that love that is just spontaneous, that patience that is inexhaustible, that equanimity that’s unshakable. These are your nature.

Guy:
Wow. Just I guess, a bit of a random question, but is it possible for a human to, the great masters are, not to have any of that friction left, to be just a pure vessel of the divine?

Lawrence: Yeah, and I think you see that in mystics across traditions, so it’s not like one tradition empowers people that way, because the foundation of every mystic tradition is the one, the divine. known and called by so many different names, but just the one. So living from that space of that all-embracing consciousness that doesn’t see another, all it sees is itself. So St. John of the Cross writing in a poem saying when he was given the vision to see through God’s eyes, he said, why did the church never tell me all God sees is himself? What a sublime, sublime opening. to know that and to then find yourself in opposition to a church that wants to talk about sinners and people denigrated and degraded. That’s not the vision of God. That was clearly why mystics across traditions have often been at odds with the bureaucracies of religions because they have a different agenda. Their agenda is different from just knowing the infinite, knowing the divine as yourself and living that into the world.

Guy:
And I guess the dance is when those frictions come up, that heat, that rubbing against the self is to bring the inquiry into it as opposed to judge it, the meaning and the story that comes along with it, which we’ve well rehearsed probably.

Lawrence:
Yeah, right. Well, the ego mind likes to justify its position. And so often, this is why surrender, the letting go, is what’s being called on, that the friction, the heat, the irritability, if we use that when it’s coming up by saying, oh, what am I attached to? What am I identified with here that’s causing this friction? Oh, it should be this way. It’s not that way. I’m getting annoyed. Um, that’s a big one. We have a hard time dealing with what is versus what we think should be or how it should be or how I want it to be because that’s how it should be. All those things that the ordinary mind generates, well, they come up against reality.

Guy:
When you were on your journey and had your awakening and realizations, was the ego part of yourself chasing any of that at first, or did it happen? Because I see a lot of people almost running away from the things that they don’t want to face to have that connection. with the divine, you know? They might have heard of having a Kundalini awakening, or they might have said, oh, I just want to have this experience, but not actually living the dharma, per se, of being in that.

Lawrence:
I’m just curious. Well, from my own experience, I was having, and I wrote about it in The Soul’s Journey, I was having experiences when I was three or four years old, telling people about this exquisite, you know, visitation from the great mother, the goddess, just made of light looking over my crib. I mean, so I don’t think I’m usual in that sense, because it felt quite natural that, well, there’s a lot more going on here than these adults are talking about. At first, I thought they might have known, but then I realized, no, most of them didn’t know either. So things, you know, but I felt, I always felt led by that inner connection. That highlights something that’s not unique to me. Anybody who’s really gotten profoundly interested in spirituality, spiritual development, that already speaks to lifetimes of cultivating that interest. And so we come in with the good karma. We come in with the positive influence from practices done in various traditions in past lives. So that’s why, you know, people come in looking like, oh, they’re so far ahead and they’re only six. Well, yeah, fortunately, they did a lot of work in another life. But you do see that dance with it. Ego mind sort of sees like, well, there’d be really something good about this. But, you know, the ego mind, it’s it’s notions of what’s good have to do with more pleasure, more power, more something. I mean, the ego mind works off a deficiency model. It works off a sense of lack and want and need. That’s what drives it. And so often when it first hears about great mystics or what they’ve attained or this or that, it’s going, yeah, I could have that. I want that. It’s not thinking about the tapas you’re going to have to go through. It’s not thinking about the hero’s journey where it’s going to be stripped naked and, you know, Everything’s gonna go in some form or another. It’s not thinking about that It’s thinking about what am I gonna get a more power more money more sex hotter sex something? I don’t know And so it it begins relating where it is That’s fine If that’s its initial motivation, that’ll get cleaned up along the way as long as it stays with it It’s like it’s like Krishna talking in the Bhagavad Gita saying well even those who hate me who so hate me, they’re focused on me all the time, in the end become absorbed in me. So it wasn’t so much the motivation, it was stay focused and pursue farther and farther until you leave all those things behind. Because that’s gonna be the Shakti drawing you, that’s the power of consciousness saying, this is where you are, you’re gonna start with this, fine, we’ll go with that. and we’ll just keep going.

Guy:
Wow, I never thought of it like that. You mentioned as well In a past life, we might have already stepped onto the path and experienced, and we’re bringing that dharma into this life. It raises the question for me, is there an end goal of the soul through that evolution? What do you believe? I’m interested.

Lawrence:
Well, what I know from my experience is that, yeah, the evolutionary process of consciousness shedding first, you know, first, there’s a phase of the evolution of consciousness. And again, this is both in the soul’s journey and the book Awakened Kundalini. And there’s a graphic on it. It’s like the first half of the journey is about taking on form. It’s called Savriti. And that first half of the journey is lifetimes and lifetimes and lifetimes exploring what it is to take on this form, that form, another form, a different form. I’ll be a bug. I’ll be a giant. I’ll be a this. I’ll be a tree. I’ll be, it’s like consciousness exploring what it is to create, inhabit, experience. And it’s go, wow, wow, more and more and more. It’s blossoming in that. And then it goes, you know, I’m getting tired of this game. Um, and that’s where the intuition starts to arise because it never can separate itself out from The fullness of its real divine nature even limitations Unfolds within the body of the infinite. There’s no outside the infinite. There’s all one So even the illusion of separation is happening within The infinitude of being and so that’s what we’re seeing and so when we’re doing that That’s that phase of that evolution. Then the evolution, when it starts to go, oh, it’s time to wake up, then that’s where it is about, oh, okay, now I have to shed all those different forms and habit, the habit of inhabiting forms is what drives the mind. And there’s literally millions of lifetimes of momentum behind that. This is why it’s so hard. To retrain the mind it has so much momentum behind its past training Right. So then the shedding of forms and shedding of forms and shedding of forms to have that delight of coming back To pure union again a union that was never broken It was just forgotten And that’s why many of the paths talk about all paths are the path of remembrance It’s remembering the truth of who you are

Guy:
Is there a point where once we remember the truth of who we are, we don’t come back?

Lawrence:
Well, so now there, that’s an interesting, that’s a great question because the traditions look at it a little differently. The yoga tradition and even the Mahayana, I mean the Hinayana Buddhist tradition sort of looked at to begin with, enlightenment meant then you left that whole wheel of samsara. the wheel of the rounds of birth and death. And so you attained that, and then you took Mahasamadhi. So in the yogic tradition, when a great master leaves his body, it’s called the Mahasamadhi, the Great Samadhi, because it’s the final one. There’s no coming back. The Buddhist tradition, especially the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, took a slightly different view of it and said, you know, when you reach that state, you still have this feeling for all the beings who aren’t in that state, who are still suffering. And so that seed that came from Buddha, Sakyamuni Buddha, I mean, there’s been many Buddhas, Sakyamuni Buddha say, I want to free all beings from suffering, means that, oh, I can’t give up everything and just merge into bliss knowing that, oh, there are these countless beings still suffering. So in Mahayana Buddhism, we take what’s called the Bodhisattva vow. And it’s a vow to keep coming back until all beings in all universes on all planes are free of suffering. And that vow becomes the karmic seed to keep reincarnating. Doesn’t mean you all may, so there are Buddhas that or Bodhisattvas that may reincarnate on a non-material plane and continue to support beings becoming free from another plane, another level of consciousness. They don’t have a physical body, but they may take a physical body like so many Bodhisattvas and Buddhas who have been here on earth from Sakyamuni Buddha to, you know, Padmasambhava, Guru Padmasambhava. So they look at it like that, that knowing that other beings are suffering, that is a motivation to come back in some form to help others, all others get free.

Guy:
Wow. My mind is just going crazy now. I’m just like, wow. And what keeps wanting to pop in, I don’t know if it’s just this, is that beyond this plane level of consciousness, are there more than levels of teachings and beings at different, I don’t know, plot points through our evolution of us. Was it like physical and oneness, and that’s it?

Lawrence:
No, there’s a bunch in between.

Guy:
Yeah, would you like to elaborate about that at all? your knowing?

Lawrence:
Well, I take my cue from my teachers. It’s a bit of a distraction. I mean, our work is here and now. And when a being needs to know about other levels, they’ll be given that. Because you can spend a lot of time trying to explore those things, and your life is still crap here on Earth. So why not Clean up your life on earth, help all beings here. So that’s the practicality of Dharma.

Guy:
Yeah, yeah, fair enough then. But what’s opened it up to me is that as I continue my practice and awareness, the presence comes in more and more, and I’m feeling like it’s quite remarkable. And yeah, I’m just always in awe and wonder. I’m like, wow, this is incredible. And so my question would be then, do we have support? beings that are on other levels that are kind of like teachers or guides or supporting us as we evolve.

Lawrence:
Oh, fortunately, yes, we’d be. Our boat wouldn’t get out of the harbour heading to the other shore. Yeah, I mean, there’s, you know, and so many traditions talk about it in different ways, about how, you know, how many um you know these different levels of being come to support us and that when you do practices you know buddhas are showing up or you know if somebody’s more angelically inclined their positive energies in angelic forms will show up but that the infinite uh wants to support us knowing it’s shakti the shakti is the infinite one the consciousness of the divine and she’ll create forms on any level, all levels to support us and in fulfilling what then is her command. Remember, the pursuit of freedom, the pursuit of knowing in its highest level, that inspiration in spiritus is Shakti, is the divine, is a gift of grace. Without it, We’re just stuck in the world thinking that owning more, getting more, getting over on this one, doing whatever, is going to be it. It’s not until that power of the infinite starts to bestow its grace, starts to pull back the veil and go, no, there’s more than you could imagine going on here, that we are really pulled towards it. The ego mind identifies this and says, I’m driven to that. What’s driving you is actually the one. Welcoming you home, calling you home. Can you listen for the call? You get subtler and subtler, hear it more profoundly and deeply in every moment. Hmm.

Guy:
Wow. So bringing it all back. as we go into the last phase of the podcast then, to practicality, then I guess the key is taking it into our lives on a daily basis and almost giving up the chase to reach. There needs to be a motivation there to bring more awareness to the present moment than to start bringing that into our lives.

Lawrence:
Well, this is the part of the paradoxical nature of walking a spiritual path, a meditative path, a mystics path. At one point, Buddha was asked, how intensely should I practice? And he said, you should practice with the intensity of a person whose hair is on fire seeks water. Wow. Right? And then at other times, he’d say, you have to give up all striving. So we have to understand that for the limited mind, these kinds of teachings, they’re medicine for the moment. Somebody who’s like sort of lackadaisical and sort of, yeah, I’ll do a little this, I’ll do a little that. It’s just another thing on the smorgasbord of life. They need to get their intensity up. The infinite is not going to be known half-heartedly. You’re in it 100%. You have to be in it 100%. And how do you act on that? And where are the times when that’s just coming? No, I’m absolutely dedicated to these kinds of practices, this kind of empowerment. being in even a connection with a teacher, because without that, we’re stuck in our own ego mind. You know, if we’re not in relationship to somebody, I mean, I knew this even as a Jungian therapist, you can’t analyze your own dreams because the ego mind is blind to itself in so many ways. All the more so when you get into higher levels of consciousness without a trustworthy, reliable, selfless teacher helping just a mentor to reflect back An authoritarian trip and all the things that the ego might immediately would bristle about, but what’s going to support you being able to really get free and not just be running around the maze of the mind, convinced that its mirrors are reflecting the truth when they may just be reflecting its distortions.

Guy:
Yeah, no, that makes complete sense, doesn’t it? And that’s definitely been one of my ponderings is the dance of that total surrender. I’m just without the push, but then sometimes that willingness and that there’s a rocket under me going, and that drive behind it. And interestingly, since having, especially my son, now that’s my second child, There’s been this incredible new space opening for me where I was sitting in the space for nearly a week holding a retreat just 10 days ago, and it’s quite phenomenal what comes out of it and blossoms and these elevated divine moments. And then I come home and

Lawrence:
i’m grounded i’m here i’m a dad and i’m with my family and it’s just beautiful yeah and it’s like wow it’s it’s always all around me ever present if i yes and so that’s one of the things that gets cleared over time with again with practice is the ordinary mind is an either or instrument it lives in a world that’s facilitated by comparing contrast is that this is that it’s either or it’s all caught up in categories like that And the divine’s going, one, one, all this and more, all this and more, all one. And that one includes an infinitude beyond any form the mind or senses can even perceive.

Guy:
Yeah, gosh, so true. I get emotional thinking about it. Yeah, it’s pretty special.

Lawrence:
Oh yeah, it’s like, that’s what, moves us to just like fall over in tears. The meditations where you’re just, you’re sobbing out of the ecstasy. I mean, rapture and ecstasy are part of the meditative path. And because they’re a dissolution into the divine. That’s not just, oh, that felt nice. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, you don’t even have your pinky in the water then. Oh, no, no. It’s rolling on the floor, it’s falling over, it’s like, oh my God, oh my God.

Guy:
Yeah, wow, amazing, amazing. I’m gonna ask you one more question, Lawrence, to wrap up the podcast, but that is, essentially, with everything you covered today, which there’s been a lot, and it’s been beautiful, actually, what would you like to leave all the listeners to ponder on?

Lawrence:
Well, to know that this inner presence of the divine is there to empower you to take on the challenges that this life, this time on this planet is demanding of us. You know, we’re called to act in the world. And just like you’ll see in the mythic traditions, like the Mahabharata or the Rama the Ramayana, where certain beings, you know, whether it was Hanuman having to, you know, summon the strength to do this. Well, everyday life summons those virtues and strengths and they’re fed by the infinitude of our own nature so that we’re empowered to walk this higher wisdom, this higher knowing, this vision of what it is to be loving, kind, compassionate, patient, generous, Generous, that we wanna uplift all beings. We wanna see everyone free of suffering and to participate in the beauty of the world. We’re empowered to do that. So walk it into the world every day.

Guy:
Yeah, thank you. And where can I send people? I’ll put links in the show notes, because I noticed as well that you, I got your book the other week on Audible. Oh yeah. And it came through. Yeah, it was great to see the site.

Lawrence:
So where can I send people? Two websites, thesoulsjourney.com or anamkarameditation.org. And anamkara is an ancient Gaelic term, means friend of the soul. So it’s A-N-A-M-C-A-R-A meditation.org. And that’ll hook people up because we have over 150 free videos up on the YouTube channel, the Anamkara Meditation YouTube channel, and then other resources, podcasts, connection to yours and other ones that I’ve done on the Soul’s Journey website. So just trying to make it all accessible and freely available to people.

Guy:
Yeah, amazing, Lawrence. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. As always, I’m blown away. Just incredible. I really appreciate it. Yeah, great being with you. Thank you, sir. All right.

Lawrence:
Take care now.