>>Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. I have done over 550 of them now, and if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So, if you appreciate it, and would like to help support it, there is a PayPal button on every page of the website: batgap.com. My guest today is Louise Kay. Welcome, Louise.
>>Louise Kay: Thanks.
>>Rick Archer: Your welcome. Louise was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. And if that name doesn’t remind you of a song, then you have a gaping hole in your musical upbringing and you need to Google it, because it was a lyric in one of the best rock songs ever written. I’m not even going to tell you what it is, you have to pique your curiosity if you don’t know what it is. So, but any case, Blackburn, Lancashire is in the North-West of the UK near Liverpool, that should give you a hint… After graduating from university she worked as an English teacher for 15 years. During this time, she began to question the deeper meaning of life. This led her to the path of spirituality, where she found a strong resonance with the teachings of non-duality. I’m reading this prepared bio but we’re going to go through all this from Louise herself in a second, this just gives you an overview… In her early 30s, Louise felt a deep call in her heart to visit India, where she experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Shortly afterwards, Louise began channeling and traveling the world sharing this gift for several years. During this time, she experienced a deepening and integration of her initial spiritual awakening. And, as she opened more to this non-dual truth, the channeling faded away, and a new form of expression revealed itself from deep in her heart. Louise now holds group events and retreats around the world and offers “Embodied Awareness” private sessions. Her passion is to sit together in presence and hold gentle unconditionally loving space for all emotions, all sensations, and all experiences which arise in the moment in order to support the integration of unresolved energies and allow the unfolding of the divine in all who feel the call. Now, initially Louise had said, “I don’t want to talk so much about my personal stuff, let’s talk about living in the present moment, recognizing our true self, integration of our emotional traumas, and how the way we relate with our inner – outer experience affects our state of being.” And I kind of pleaded and cajoled her a little bit and said, “Yeah, yeah, we can talk about all that. But let’s… Can we also talk about your personal stuff? Because it’s interesting.” She said, “All right. Yeah, we can talk about everything.” So, that’s what we’re going to do. We have plenty of time. And already a couple of questions have come in from people in previous days. And, those listening are welcome to send in more questions, and we’ll get into them. Okay, so, It’s funny, one thing I said to Louise in emails prior to, in previous days was… “I can’t figure out your accent, you don’t sound like you’re from near Liverpool. You don’t sound like The Beatles at all. You have this unusual accent, there’s a little bit of a sound a little bit like Neelam”, who’s Polish and she said, “Oh yeah”, she said, “I’ve done so many different things and traveled all over the world and taught English as a second language.” She said, “My accent is totally, totally screwed up.” But anyway, you’ve been around, that you just told me, you have this beautiful earring thing on… Show people that thing, it’s really cool. And she said she got that in Brazil, when she was down there… Who was it made by?
>>Louise Kay: The Indigenous women in the Amazon. I don’t remember the name of the exact tribe…
>>Rick Archer: Really neat. So, let’s take it from the top. These interviews are very conversational. So, you don’t just have to respond to my questions. If something comes up, that you’d like to talk about just, go at it, and don’t wait for me to ask, but, let’s start a little bit chronologically. This is a good opening question… A lot of people I interview, had some inklings, even as little children that there was something different about them. They were super sensitive, or they had some kind of subtle perception, or everyone in the world around them looked crazy. Or, they felt like they were in unity or something or other, and then that usually faded during their teenage years, and then they rediscovered it when they got a little older. So, was there anything like that for you?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, definitely. I was an ultra-sensitive child.
>>Rick Archer: Were you like… Super emotional or… How ultra-sensitive?
>>Louise Kay: Like, I wasn’t crying all the time, but my parents told me that if… They didn’t even need to scold me, if they just said like, “Louise, don’t do that”, then I would cry and… I was also kind of physically sensitive, my skin would flare up in rashes if chemicals touched me. So it was on multiple levels I experienced this sensitivity. I was just kind of very, very, gentle as a child. And it was challenging for me to be around stress, or when people were projecting anger, it just like… I felt everything.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: And something in me just felt like this… “Something’s not right about this.” I didn’t know what it was, but just a general feeling of, “Doesn’t feel right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” And I was very childlike also. As the other kids started to mature in kind of teenage behaviors, I could never really relate to that. When the other kids were interested in experimenting with drugs and alcohol, it just didn’t make any sense to me. I was like 14 years old at home and still interested in playing with Legos… And something didn’t mature or develop in that way. I never really went through that teenage experience, and then…
>>Rick Archer: You didn’t miss anything, let me tell you.
>>Louise Kay: And somehow, even into adulthood, something never really kind of matured, or developed. And this was one of the big parts of my transformation in my spiritual journey, that it was not just like a spiritual awakening, I experienced a lot of integration of trauma and… I’m jumping on now, but we can come back, but… I also experienced what seemed like maturing on a human level, as a human being, and kind of that child likeness kind of caught up with the rest of me.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. But, you do have a gentle air about you and kind of an innocent quality… I think. It’s like Christ’s famous saying, “Except ye be as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So I think it’s good. I mean, that, most of us got all crazy when we were teenagers, and in many cases did a bunch of damage that had to be repaired later on. So, you were spared that, it seems… Congratulations.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, it kind of brought a different bunch of challenges with it.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: I think, I can see that…
>>Rick Archer: There’s an old Bengali saying, which says that, “If no one comes on your call, then go ahead alone.” And, what that means to me is that, if you have to sort of live a solitary life, because you just can’t relate to all the people around you and what they’re doing, then so be it. It’s much better to do that than be a conformist and do stupid things just because everybody else is doing them.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, there’s another nice one… I think it’s Buckminster Fuller is it? And he says, “To be well, to be well adjusted to a sick society is not a good measure of health.” Something like that…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s a good one.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: I saw him speak one time. And then there’s that Rudyard Kipling poem, “To be a man”, he said, “To keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs” … some line like that. So, anyway, that’s good. I see it as a blessing personally to be able to hang on, not through trying but to spontaneously retain that sort of innocence and purity that you came in with. Which is challenging… I mean, it’s a wild world you know? There’s so much bombarding us, and, like you say you were. The super-sensitivity was a blessing too because it kept you from bumbling into stuff that you otherwise might have, but immediately had a reaction. So you recoiled from it. It sounds like a good thing.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, my system developed like everybody, kind of survival mechanisms and ways to… Unconscious ways to get through… To survive this challenging world. And through the awakening process, those were revealed in the light of consciousness, and they started to fall away, because they’re not necessary anymore. My system kind of learned how to operate in its natural way.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s great. Just a quick comment, which is that, I think some people systems they’re not only very impressionable, but they also are kind of sticky. They retain the impressions easily and others are more kind of porous, you feel the thing and it passes through, but then it doesn’t cling to you. Did stuff start happening to you, which you would now recognize as sort of spiritual awakening, but at the time, you didn’t know what in the heck it was?
>>Louise Kay: No, not really that I remember like that. I think in my early 20s was when I started to question the deeper meaning and investigate this underlying feeling that I’d always had, that, “What’s up here? What’s, what’s the real meaning of all this? What’s going on? What’s the purpose of life? Who am I?” And… At some point, for me, one of the major kind of turning points was that… I came across the book, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. And when I read that book, it affected me in two very profound ways. The first one was I for the first time in my life, recognized that I was able to observe my thoughts. And that created some kind of separation. And the other one was, I was able to feel and experience for the first time what he refers to as the “energy body”, because he points to these things in the book. And interestingly, those two aspects now are the things that I focus on in the sessions and body awareness sessions that I do with people. So that was really a profound stepping stone in my personal journey, reading that book, and I always recommend it to people now.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s a good book. There must have been more developing before you took off for India… What led up to that departure?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, I’m just trying to remember the kind of the chronological order because it’s quite some years ago now. I actually came to Amsterdam, where I am now. And… I’d gotten divorced. And I came to Amsterdam for kind of a fresh start. I felt called to coming here. And as this feeling started to grow… This call to go to India. I heard about the spiritual side of it, and something in me felt interested in it. And I, at that time, when I was in Amsterdam, that I also met my partner Gilad, and, in a way he was kind of one of my first spiritual teachers because, he was much further down the rabbit hole than me at that point. He had been going to Satsangs, and doing Vipassana retreats, and he spent two years in India on a motorbike and… I was just like, thirsty for more and he really opened the door to me, to a lot of information that I was just ready to hear. And then, Amma came to town.
>>Rick Archer: Right? So you’re behind me here, huh?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. And, I didn’t really know much about her but, I felt interested and, I went along and that was really like my first taste of India, going there in a huge hall and they’re playing the Bhajans, and it’s really got this India feel. I loved it. I waited hours and hours. I mean, you’ve been, you know how it is. And finally, I think it was like 3am, I was in line, and I got this hug from her. And it was really strong. It hit me and I felt a bit like, “Whoa, I need to go lay down.” And there was this like back room where you could just go rest or whatever. I think some people were sleeping there. And I just went lay down on a mat and I closed my eyes. And, this purple light appeared like a tunnel opening up here, and I felt this rush of energy and then I heard this voice. “Go to India, what you seek, you shall find there.” And, I knew it wasn’t my voice. And it was only when I… Last year went to see Amma again for a second time, that I realized that it was Amma communicating telepathically with me because she did it again, and… I realized. But it was very powerful when I heard those words, like it struck right in my heart and something in me knew, “I have to go.” I had been feeling this call. And that was like the turning point for me.
>>Rick Archer: It kind of gives me goose-bumps hearing you say that because I’ve had so many experiences with Amma like that, where, I mean, people think, “Oh, that’s cute. She hugs people. Yeah, I’ll give her a hug, she can give me a hug.” But, there’s something much more profound going on. And the level of insight that she has, even in 30 seconds of interacting with a person, the impact that that can have on their lives is really quite remarkable.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. It’s Amazing.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay, so that was a wakeup call. So, you managed to get to India?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, I quit my job. I left my apartment. I got a one-way plane ticket. I didn’t know how long I was going to stay or…
>>Rick Archer: Can you tell us a bit about that adventure? Inwardly and outwardly…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. I think India is really something else. And it’s not something you can… Before I went, many people who’ve been, said to me, “You know, you can’t explain it, you won’t know it. You won’t understand it until you’ve been.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? I know what India is like, I’ve seen it on TV. I know what to expect.” But when I got there, I really understood what they were talking about…
>>Rick Archer: I’m curious. As a sensitive person, what was your first impression when you landed in India and sort of got out at the airport, and the feeling in the atmosphere?
>>Louise Kay: Complete and utter shock. It’s like landing on another planet. The intensity is just so overwhelming. And at that time, my system hadn’t integrated a lot like it is now.
>>Rick Archer: Had not integrated. Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: Had not… So, for example, if I heard loud noises it was really overwhelming. Like, I would have to cover my ears and…
>>Rick Archer: And everybody’s blowing their horns.
>>Louise Kay: Like, I’ve never taken acid, but I imagine that, walking through those streets of Parrot Ganj in Delhi is similar to taking acid. Like the…
>>Rick Archer: Sensory overload.
>>Louise Kay: The sounds, the smells, and people coming in your face, trying to… From all directions; photo, money, trying to sell you something. I was like in a trance like this… And, my boyfriend was just kind of leading me.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, the reason I asked that question is, when I first went there, there was that. There’s the noise and the dirt, and the craziness, but there was also something in the atmosphere. Maybe I was just a mood maker, or maybe I was imagining it, but there was something subtle in the atmosphere that I didn’t feel in the West. Do you know what I mean?
>>Louise Kay: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. There’s something about India. It’s like, divinity is in the air.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, exactly.
>>Louise Kay: It opens your heart somehow. And there’s definitely this magical mystical quality.
>>Rick Archer: Some kind of softness, deep softness.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s because it’s so ingrained in their culture, and they have such a deep understanding of these spiritual truths. It’s kind of commonplace for them in a way.
>>Rick Archer: They really do. I’ve been participating in a webinar with Swami Sarvapriyananda who’s a leader of the Vedanta society, and mostly it’s Indians in the webinar, a few Westerners, but I’m so impressed with a lot of the questions that all these Indians are asking. They’re just like, holy mackerel, they really have this stuff in their blood, you know?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. And you feel it, it’s everywhere.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: I mean, you’re walking on the streets, and you hear chants, and Bhajans, and they’re just singing to pray for the awakening of all humans on the planet… It’s incredible.
>>Rick Archer: Which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of poverty, and the rip-off artists, and all kinds of crazy.
>>Louise Kay: Absolutely.
>>Rick Archer: …stuff. I mean, the whole spectrum of humanity. But there is…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: …definitely that element there. That there’s…
>>Louise Kay: It’s definitely a country of extremes and…
>>Rick Archer: …Yeah. Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: You just see everything. You see on every corner is just a new shock that you could never have imagined that you would see. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about it, why it kind of keeps you living in the present moment when you’re in India. Because you’ve got to stay present, there’s just so much activity going on all around you and so much to catch your attention. It’s this aliveness that’s there.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned you had an awakening there. What was that?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. So, I went to Rishikesh at the foothills of the Himalaya and… I was going to a few different teachers that are there. And one of the teachers I was going to was a Satsang with Mooji. And I went there pretty much every day for six weeks. And one day, I was just following his pointing’s. And. It was like the mind was transcended in that moment. That is the best way I can describe it. And, after that, I experienced some days of… Feeling like everything was a dream. And nothing felt real. And, things never really went back to how they were before, after that experience.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. You said… You were already a little kind of “spacey” in a way. So, did you get any more spacey after that? Did it take you a while to integrate or stabilize in that?
>>Louise Kay: No. I don’t think I became more spacey. I think the opposite started to happen… I think. As there was more awareness and more consciousness in the system, there was more and more clear seeing of contractions in the body and, unconscious patterns that were playing out. And there was this real, like, single pointed attitude, or focus, that this is the path of truth. And this is what is required. And so every little thing that came up, like everything that triggered the system, was like it was used to deepen, and to surrender deeper. And as that was happening, a lot of integration and transformation was taking place. So, that space in us kind of became more and more grounded. And the system started to integrate and become more clear. And I mean, it’s still going on. I…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. I think it’s a lifelong process really.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. It seems to me that it’s infinite.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. You have a blog post entitled: “Challenges: gateways for growth”. So it kind of reminded me… What you just said reminded me of that.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, yeah. And, There’s a recognition that when we experience challenges in life, our mind tends to project that, “Life’s not serving me, or something’s going wrong, or this shouldn’t be happening.” But really, life is supporting us, because when we zoom out from the limitations of that little mental box, and we’re able to understand the bigger picture that… What’s happening is the unfolding of consciousness, and from that perspective, there’s a recognition that each challenge is like a mirror, or an opportunity for us to deepen in presence. To see something where maybe we are acting out some unconscious pattern or behavior. There is a gift for us in every challenge if we have the eyes to see it.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, one thing that helps me in that regard is that I’m more or less constantly aware that the universe isn’t dumb matter. It’s sort of the divine play, everything is permeated with the divine. And so things don’t happen arbitrarily or randomly or accidentally, everything is sort of imbued with intelligence. Every little thing from the falling of a leaf, to the crash of two cars, or anything that happens is somehow part of this cosmic dance. In my opinion, everything is ultimately designed for our evolution, for our growth, even though it might not seem that way in the narrow picture… if we could sort of expand out enough and see the big picture, we would realize that, all as well, and wisely put.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, and part of our spiritual maturing is when we give up that effort to control life, and manipulate life, and demand that life be a certain way. And we give over that power to this divine intelligence, and it can run things. It can run the show, much more efficiently than our mind.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. There’s a definition of humility I once heard, which is that, “Humility is the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way.” And if you think about it people are always talking about… Sort of, not acting from ego and, “Let go and let God,” and all that stuff. If you do insist that things happen in a particular way, then your kind of like, you’re not, “Letting go and letting God,” you’re trying to run the show and, your own individual intelligence is so limited compared with the cosmic intelligence that, just throwing a monkey wrench in the works, as they say, and, I may also ask a little question here that came in. Well, this one relates in a way to what we were talking about in terms of, I asked you, “If you got more spacey?” and you said, “No, I got more integrated and in a way better able to interact with things.” Someone named Natalie from the Midlands in the UK asked, “I live more and more in a state of presence. And I find it difficult to take the world ‘out there’ seriously, which is a good thing for me. I am joyful, light-hearted but, some people think I’m uncaring and lack compassion when I refuse to join in their stories of fear and victimhood. How can I best support them at this time and yet stay true to my vibe?”
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, there’s a there’s a lot of fear getting triggered in the collective right now. Oftentimes, when other people are experiencing challenging emotions, like, their system gets overwhelmed by fear or anxiety, or anger, or sadness. If we’re sensitive, and we’re able to feel them, it can feel uncomfortable in us, and often the mind wants to change that inner experience and it says, “Oh, this doesn’t feel good. I don’t want to feel like this.” So, the way that I want to escape this feeling is by making “them” change. And then, we can try to convince them to behave differently, or try to fix them, or heal them, or change them some way. And really what that is, is an escapism from the experience of the now. And, when we are able to fully surrender to our own inner experience, and open to what it touches in us, and we do feel other people when they’re in pain, because we’re connected to them. And so, to feel the pain of another is to feel the pain of me because there is no other. It’s all me… And then, we can just very gently, “Oh, there’s this contraction here, a tightness there, there’s anxiousness in the belly”. Be very gentle with that. Our system begins to hold a space of unconditional love for their system, and their system begins to feel seen and validated. And we don’t even have to say anything. It’s all taking place on the felt sense. So, their system can begin to open and relax, just from feeling the peace that’s emanated by us being deeply present and anchored in being.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, look at your experience with Amma and mine. I mean, there’s somebody who is really anchored in being. You get into her vicinity and boom! it shifts your whole awareness. It’s not like she’s doing anything to you. It’s just that she creates and enlivens an atmosphere around her that everyone else kind of entrains with, or aligns with, which is quite transformative. Just using that as an example of what you just said.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Okay, another question came in that’s kind of similar so, let’s ask this one also. This is from Angela in Inverness, which I guess is in Scotland, right?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: “How do you overcome feelings of guilt regarding all the people suffering so much in the world? I have felt this since I was a child and have devoted myself to a life of service to others as a Nurse. I still feel like I can’t be happy when my fellow humans are suffering.”
>>Louise Kay: Well, if we’re not happy, because other people are suffering, then we’re becoming part of the suffering. So, it’s not helping at all. The key is to dis-identify from the thoughts that are running in the mind. And, usually, the thoughts are something along the line of, “There’s so much suffering in this world. I can’t live with all this suffering. I need to fix the world. It shouldn’t be like this” … Some kind of negative thread running through it. And when we identify with that story, and believe it, then, our system responds to that, and generates emotions of a matching vibration you could say, so we start to feel depressed or hopeless. When we begin to dis-identify from the thoughts and draw our attention back, and recognize that… “These are just thoughts passing through, and it’s nothing to do with me. I am the open space of awareness, and sensations are arising in the system,” and we gently open to feeling and allowing the sensations, and we let go of any idea that anything needs to change or be different than it is. Then instantly there’s peace. It’s only our idea that, “Things shouldn’t be like this”, when we believe that, that we start to suffer. And when we’re at peace we start to contribute to the collective peace. Like you were saying Rick, we begin to emanate a peace, a joyfulness, an aliveness… And others are affected by it.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, I always when that point comes up, I always think, well, if you can’t swim, you’re not going to make a very good lifeguard. You know? And if you think of it like, if Jesus, or Buddha, or Ramana, or any of these people had the perspective of, “Oh my God, there’s so many suffering people around me. What am I going to do? It’s really bumming me out, you know? And I’m getting, I’m starting to suffer too because of them.” Then how much help would they have been? To all the people who came to them?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, so it’s really about embodying the teachings and living it moment to moment, regardless of circumstance or experiences, because, inner peace is always accessible to us. When we enquire into our deeper nature. That which is here before thought. Or, before any experience or before any sensation arises. Then there’s a shift in our perspective, a shift in our attention, where we recognize there is this background stillness. And that its very nature is peace. And there is no separation between “that” and “me”, that’s what “I am”. And most of us just believe that we’re the body, or the conceptual self, the story that we told about ourselves. And that causes us to suffer because we perceive reality through a filter of separation, where there’s “me” and all the “others”. And with the simple shift, there’s a recognition that, “That’s not me, and, I am this formless essence, this infinite spaciousness.”
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. I was actually going to ask you a question about this. When I hear you say that, I very strongly get the impression that you’re not speaking hypothetically. You do have a quality about you that seems very genuinely peaceful and radiates that quality. So if you could, could you describe your subjective experience, like right now, what is it like to be Louise?
>>Louise Kay: Well, if anybody really looks with fresh eyes, and honesty, they will discover the same thing. Because it’s the same for all of us. What is here is awareness perceiving. And the sounds are perceived. And we don’t need to try to hear sounds, it’s just happening. All by itself. We can’t even stop hearing them. Images, colors, and shapes are perceived. And it’s the same thing, we don’t need to try. It’s happening automatically. And this body’s breathing. And it’s performing all kinds of intelligent functions all by itself. So, some thoughts arise and pass through. Everything is happening by itself. The intelligence of life is dancing. And, awareness perceives that.
>>Rick Archer: Good. So, it’s like Eckhart Tolle said in, “The Power of Now.” And yet, I don’t know how people take Eckhart Tolle’s teachings to heart but, I would say that it’s not something one needs to try to do or anything like that, it should somehow, ideally become one’s natural way of functioning. But is there a kind of a… Well, here’s a question that came in. “How do we get from here to there?” Some people might say, “Sounds good, but it’s not working for me. I don’t sort of feel like I’m, you know, able to function the way Louise is describing, or the way Eckhart Tolle described.” And here’s a question from Rajiv in India, who asks, “Is there a need to do any type of spiritual practices and meditations if there is no psychological suffering arising in a mind body organism?” And we could just modify his question slightly because whether or not there’s psychological suffering… What is your attitude toward the importance, or efficacy of spiritual practices as a way of helping to develop the style of functioning that you’ve just described.
>>Louise Kay: So, I mean, I can just speak from personal experience. To me what seems to be the key component is a deep interest in awakening, and a willingness to give everything to that. Everything, like the willingness to die for that, that level of willingness, like, “I want this more than anything else.” And that often expresses itself in not a desire from the mind, but a longing from deep in the heart, like this longing for truth. And it’s almost like a yearning quality. And to feel that call to, to know oneself as God. And, I don’t think that can be manufactured. It’s like, it just comes if it comes when it’s the right moment. And to, practice as much as possible, living every single moment fully present, and just perceiving what’s here right now. The breath, the sounds, the images, and the thoughts. And whatever thought arises, not to take it as the truth. To allow the attention to rest as the silence, or the spaciousness, beyond thought. And to become aware of the inner body, and the sensations in the body, and whenever there’s a contraction or a tightness, to bring the attention very gently into the body, and just open to feeling it. And allowing it to be there, being present with it, allows for the release of unprocessed emotions or blocked energies from the physical and energetic body. And to practice self-enquiry, so to ask, “Who am I? What is it that’s perceiving? What is here when there is no thought? What is it that is aware? Is there any separation between me and that which is aware? What is it that knows experience?” This kind of enquiry. So, kind of a combination of this.
>>Rick Archer: That triggered two questions in my mind. One is that when I hear people say what you just said, I sometimes think about the importance of not only feeling or processing whatever comes up but increasing the capacity to do so. And it’s like, if you had a cup of water, and you have a handful of mud and you throw it in the cup of water, it’s just going be totally muddy. But if you throw that cup, that handful of mud into an ocean, or a large lake, it has the capacity to dissolve it. So, I think you know where I’m going with this. What would you say to that?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, so when we start this practice of being aware of the energies is in the body and present in the body. Oftentimes, we initially become aware of an underlying sense of anxiety, that something, that feels uncomfortable, and contraction, or tightness, in the system. And, when we become aware of it, it can feel worse than when we weren’t present in the body, but it was still there. It’s just we become more aware of it. And as we begin to consciously feel it our system opens up, and these energies begin to release, and usually they release in layers and the system has a natural intelligence. So, it kind-of knows how much it’s capable of processing at any given time and… It brings some up, and then there will be a release, and then usually a period of integration, which can often be interpreted by the mind as, “Oh what happened to my spiritual journey? I was experiencing so much energy, everything stopped and slowed down.” But no… The system is processing and it’s preparing for the next deepening or the next level which is bubbling up. I often use this analogy with people, I have this program called “Integrating Emotional Trauma”, it’s one of the focuses of the work I do with people and, in meeting these energies and allowing them to release from the system in a healthy, gentle, loving way. Because, if we don’t know how to meet it, it can be really overwhelming. And, I often talk about this analogy of a soda bottle, that if you shake it up, and then you take the lid off, it’s just going to… So, all of this energy will just come out and overwhelm the system. When we’re in tune with the system and the body’s natural intelligence, we can turn the lid a little bit, and then some energy releases. And then we wait and turn it a little bit more and… It releases in a healthy, gradual, natural way. So I tell people, “Don’t be in a rush to get to that end point.” It’s not about getting to the end point when, “I’m healed, or everything’s fixed or this energy is released”, that’s another trap of the mind that, “I’m awakened when such and such happens.” The recognition of our true nature is instantaneous. When there’s that shift in the focus of attention to the background stillness. “I am that”, and there’s peace. And from there, we begin to include the sensations to allow for the integration and the release of trauma on the human level.
>>Rick Archer: Do you think there is an endpoint? Have you reached an endpoint?
>>Louise Kay: No. My sense is that the formless and the form are both infinite in nature. And once we work through what Eckhart Tolle refers to as the “pain body”, and that begins to dissolve, what happens as it’s dissolving is, it gets much easier to meet it, and to be present with the sensations because it’s less intense, because the energy is dissolving. And our presence is deepening. So it just gets easier. And that’s a good thing but, as we move deeper in the system, we start to access ancestral traumas, and collective traumas. And even past life traumas can start to bubble up. So, it’s better to change the way we relate with trauma, and enjoy it, and use it as a tool for deepening in presence, rather than trying to get rid of it and get to the end.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, I agree. And I think there is an end but, and like you said, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your true nature. But that also doesn’t mean you’re perfect, if there is such a thing, or that there isn’t going to be ongoing purification, and integration, and growth, in various ways.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, to me, our true nature is divine perfection. It’s all that is. It’s the formless essence that animates all form. And its oneness, it’s connected, it’s unconditional love, it’s peace, it’s beauty, and… We’re also this temporary expression of form, which is imperfectly perfect. And there’s always room for improvement. We can always become kinder, more compassionate, more loving, more gentle on that level.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, I forget exactly how it went but, there was some Zen monk or teacher who said to his students, “You’re all perfect just the way you are. And you can all use improvement.” A little earlier you were saying how, it’s important that our desire for this be top priority, we’d be willing to die for it. So, this is kind of a dumb question but, does that mean everybody should just quit their jobs and go to India and get a nanny for the kids and, just… take off?
>>Louise Kay: It’s not a prerequisite to go to India for this. Awakening can happen anywhere. In any situation. So, it’s more about our inner state of being, and, where, every single moment, wherever we are, whoever we’re with, whatever we’re doing, giving our attention to that. The primary focus is within.
>>Rick Archer: What if you’re a Surgeon, or, an Airline Pilot or something, and your job demands, really intense focus… People’s lives depend on it… Can you do that and still have your primary focus be within without diminishing your focus on the task at hand?
>>Louise Kay: Absolutely. It’s not that when we become fully present in this moment fully aware of our inner experience that we become like a zombie. Actually, we become much more efficient because our energy is not being wasted on thinking about conversations that we had with our husband or wife this morning, or what I’m going to do after the surgery is finished, we’re more distracted then… It brings us fully present into the now. And, in that, we become connected to the universal intelligence. We become part of that unified field. So, it’s more important, and they will become much more efficient.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, which is, “Yoga is skill action.” And what is meant by yoga there is not the physical postures but being in union with the divine results in greater efficiency and skill in our active life.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, because then our actions don’t come from the conditioned behaviors, and the egoic self, but they’re born from a deeper wisdom. The words that we speak arise from the silence, and the actions that arise, are actions that are beneficial to the whole, and are in harmony with that unified nature. So we contribute positively to the collective field, rather than creating more stress and chaos.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, good. Question came in from Dan, in London, who asks, “Would you be able to describe the difference between compassion and being sorry, or pitying people? How can one be compassionate without themselves suffering?” Similar to that other question, but perhaps, it is asking for a bit of elaboration.
>>Louise Kay: So if we pity someone, then usually there’s a story running in a mind. Like, “Oh, poor them, they, they’re suffering.” And we’re perceiving this moment through a filter of that story. And we’re experiencing the other person as a concept. As a story in our mind, that, “This happened to them, and now they’re suffering.” When we become deeper in presence, and we’re more in tune with this unified field. Then we begin to feel people from a deeper level, and relate to them from that deeper level where, it’s not a conceptual self “Louise” relating with a conceptual self “Rick”, but there’s “me”, experiencing myself in another physical form, looking back at myself and enjoying the beauty of seeing myself in another form. And, that opens us up to this flow of unconditional love. And the compassion is a result of this opening and relating on a deeper level rather than from the mental conceptual level where everything is perceived through filters of separation.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. That’s nice. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And you have a blog post, entitled “Seeing The Divine – You can see everyone’s true being if you look with the right eyes.”
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Let’s loop back a little bit to your personal story. At a certain point channeling started happening. I don’t think you tried to develop it or something, it just started happening. So, let’s talk a little bit about that episode, or that period of your life.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. So, that was after I’d been to India and experienced this non-dual awakening in Mooji’s satsang. There was a recognition that, “It’s not true to go back to my old life”, and just, there was no question… I wasn’t going back to teaching. And my money started running out and there was a realization, “Okay, well… What am I going to do now?”. And there was a clear feeling in the heart, of wanting to allow this divine intelligence to use this physical expression for whatever it wanted. I was totally open. And, that was the only thing that I wanted really. I kind of gave up the personal desire and said, “Okay, just your will is, is…” I’ve forgotten the second half of that quote. Can you finish it for me?
>>Rick Archer: “Thy will be done?” That kind of a thing?
>>Louise Kay: “Thy will be done”. Yeah. And, I made a prayer. And in this prayer, which just really came from my heart, like, “Please (just speaking to the intelligence of life), please use me, or show me what you want.” And if it had shown me that, “Okay, I want you to”, I don’t know, “Clean toilets for the rest of your life”, I had the willingness to do that. I just didn’t care. I just wanted it to be in alignment with that deeper knowing. And so, I don’t remember if it was the next day or the day after, and, I never really made the connection at the time, it’s only looking back that I made the connection between what happened next and that prayer. I was lying on the bed meditating. And my body went into this kind of numb state… Like, almost like, paralyzation and I felt this this kind of pressure come here. And it felt like something wanted to come through, like information wanted to come through.
>>Rick Archer: Did it you did it feel like a like a chick was trying to hatch from an egg? Almost as if there was a…
>>Louise Kay: Kind of…
>>Rick Archer: …pecking from the inside?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, kind of…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: And I had this feeling like if someone were to ask a question, then this tap could open, and it could just flow out. And at that moment, my partner came in the room. So I was in this deep state of paralyzation where it was like, I could barely speak and… I just kind of whispered, “Ask me a question”. And he did. He looked at me, like I’m lying on the bed, “What’s, what’s going on with her?” and I said it again, “Ask me a question.”
>>Rick Archer: He said, “What do you want for dinner”?
>>Louise Kay: And he said, “Louise, are you okay? What’s going on?” So I realized, “Okay, he’s not going to get it.” And I came out of this meditation. And then I told him my experience. And, the next day, I said, “Okay, I’ll try it, and see if that happens again, this time, ask a question”, and so, I did it again. And then he started asking questions and this information started coming through, which turned into channeling. And… I was doing that for a few years and…
>>Rick Archer: Let me ask you some questions about it. I’ve interviewed some channelers, Bashar through Darryl Anka, and Suzanne Giesemann, and Paul Selig, and others, and it’s very interesting. They all take on a different way of speaking as you did when you used to channel, it’s like a whole different voice in a way comes through… I have a few questions that I sometimes wonder about, one is, well, obviously, your intuition was opening, third eye, sixth chakra, and so… These are sort of skeptical questions but, they might help clear other people’s doubts and understanding too, one is, I wonder if sometimes people who do this are just kind of, tapping into a level a deep level of creativity, you know? Where you can fabricate all kinds of stories and information, like a good science fiction writer or something… And, it’s not that you’re actually channeling some collective from the Pleiades. But, that is the explanation, or the definition, that is used to give some kind of context to what you’re saying. It’s actually not from these beings 500 million light years away, or whatever it is, it’s actually just coming from the unified field. The field of all possibilities. The field of the home of all knowledge from which all information, and in which all information resides… You’re just kind of tapping into that and serving as a channel for that. That’s my first question.
>>Louise Kay: Well, ultimately, everything is coming from that field. Whether it’s directly from that field, or it’s through a Pleiadean collective, because where are they getting the information from?
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, good point.
>>Louise Kay: And really, there’s no way to know this. I… I don’t know the answer. And a lot of people asked me that when I was channeling, like, “How do you know that it’s real?” And I always said, “I don’t know that it’s real, but, I just invite you to listen, and if it resonates, and you find it helpful… Great. And if it doesn’t, great.”
>>Rick Archer: Good answer. And did you find yourself saying things that Louise Kay had no knowledge of, but they were just coming out all the sudden?
>>Louise Kay: Rarely. Most of the time, it felt like this this energy, or these beings, I’ll just speak like that, were using the information that was already somewhere in the system. And my sense is that, maybe not enough integration had happened for that information to be shared directly. And so, they were kind of giving a helping hand somehow when that connection was made. It was able to come through…
>>Rick Archer: It’s interesting. Yeah. So, I mean, if they if someone had asked you about, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, you wouldn’t have been able to say much… Even if those beings knew about it, it wouldn’t have been able to come through Louise Kay very well. They had to sort of play with what your equipment provided.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, that’s what it felt like, like they could use what was here.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: And they were coming through this. So, for the most part, there are a few cases when little bits came through.
>>Rick Archer: So obviously you wouldn’t have been able to channel in Japanese or something but… you had to use… Your instrument wasn’t designed for that.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, okay. Those who are listening to this, if you have any more questions about channeling feel free to send them in too. What else was I wondering about it? Why this… Change in tone of voice? Why do channelers sound a little strange when they do it?
>>Louise Kay: I don’t know really. In my experience it was that… I would connect to this energy, and then it would somehow affect the energy of the body and the voice, maybe the information coming through had a different frequency than if it just comes directly from here, and that effects it. I don’t really know. I just kind of surrendered to it and let it happen.
>>Rick Archer: Were you, kind of a trance channeler like Edgar Cayce, where you didn’t even know what was going on? Or were you aware of yourself sitting in a chair, and at the same time doing the channeling?
>>Louise Kay: No. I was fully present all the time. So, I was kind of learning from that information that was coming through and applying it in my own life. And…
>>Rick Archer: Did you sometimes ask, what was it? … “Aikon”. That was the name of the collective…
>>Louise Kay: Aikon.
>>Rick Archer: That you channeled, did you sometimes ask them your own questions? Or just field questions from people you were doing this for?
>>Louise Kay: No, I never asked them anything personal. And it felt like it wasn’t for that… It felt like… I just never felt the need to either. It felt like it was for other people.
>>Rick Archer: And did you notice any deleterious influences from it? Did you feel tired or drained or anything like that, as a result of it?
>>Louise Kay: Most of the time I felt energized after it. And a few instances, afterwards I felt tired or drained if the person that was kind of interacting with Aikon was, like a few times it happened that they weren’t really interested. And they were just kind of aggressive and…
>>Rick Archer: So you mean somebody in the audience? They were being kind of mean, or rude, or something…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, I think because my system was so open and kind of vulnerable. When I was in that channeling state that…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: It would affect me, but it only happened like one or two times.
>>Rick Archer: Okay. What else? There was one or two other things? Oh, yeah. So how long did you do it altogether?
>>Louise Kay: The channeling was about two years.
>>Rick Archer: Okay. And, it became an income stream, right? You were able to travel around the world and channel, and people would come and… you didn’t have to…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: …clean toilets…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. I actually didn’t really have that in mind. It just kind of organically started growing where I was doing it for fun. And friends were like, “Oh, this is fun. I want to ask a question.” And then, word spread. And, someone else wanted to ask a question and, well… “Hey, why don’t I do sessions for people doing this?”, and I put a few videos on YouTube just for fun, and it kind of exploded.
>>Rick Archer: Those videos are still there, if people want to see him. I have found that, I mean, Bashar is, I think my second most popular interview and, the others are pretty popular too. I have found that healers and channelers and things like that… people often… they become very popular. And I sometimes get the feeling like, people like… Someone who can do it for them in a way? As opposed to someone that says, “Here, practice this technique and see me in a week or see me in a year.” There’s some fascination with somebody who can sort of help do it for us. Do you know what I mean?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m feeling much more resonance with what is being shared now.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: With the channeling, there’s also a lot of projection, like, “These beings are all knowing, and I can just ask them the answer and they can tell me what to do.” And one of the main messages of Aikon is that, “Look, we’re not interested in that. We want to support you to get in touch with this yourself, to…”
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: … get in touch with your own inner knowing to really empower people. And, to me, yeah. It feels more important that we give up that projection, and connect to our own inner knowing, and our own inner guidance.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, and of course that happens with Earthly teachers too, where in some cases it seems to be all about them. And, oh, “Aren’t I special?” And, people project all kinds of things onto them and, begin to actually undermine their own common sense, and their own, capabilities, whereas other teachers really seem good at keeping things balanced, and not letting people get into that dependent state.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, I always tell people like, “No matter who it is that tells you something. It doesn’t matter if they’re the most enlightened being on the planet, your own inner knowing comes first.”
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. I’ll tell you a story I just heard this the other day from Swami Sarvapriyananda. Some guy came to Ramana, and said, “Ramana, what should I do?”, and Ramana said, well “Know yourself”. And he said… “I’m a great devotee of Narayana”. And Ramana said, “That’s fine”. And he said, so, “When I die, will I be able to go to Narayana’s abode?” And Ramana said, “Sure”. And he said, “Oh, great. Will I be able to talk to him?” And he said, “Yeah”. And Ramana said, “Sure”. And he said, “Will, Narayana talk to me?”. And Ramana said, “Oh, yeah”. And so he said, “Well, what will he say to me?” And Ramana said, he’ll say, “Know yourself.” Two questions about the channeling still, as you did it for two years. And, initially you had felt this awakening in the sixth chakra. Did that sort of open more and more as you did the channeling? Did the channeling become a means through which this this chakra could get cleared out even more and kind of be wide open?
>>Louise Kay: No, it didn’t really feel like that… It felt like the clearing and the integration was happening in the whole system.
>>Rick Archer: Well, Okay. So it didn’t just enliven this… the channeling actually had a clearing and integrating effect on all of you, on your whole system.
>>Louise Kay: No. It didn’t feel like it was the channeling that was doing that. It felt like the dedication to living fully present in the now, and meeting everything that came up, and… There were a lot of traumas in the system that came up and, a lot of releases happened and, a lot of seeing of unconscious conditionings, and behavioral patterns. So, as they were more seen, they began to fall away. And as the energies were processed, the system started to open, and a higher consciousness began to move through.
>>Rick Archer: So that happened regardless of the channeling and probably would have been happening whether or not you were channeling, channeling was just something that was going on.
>>Louise Kay: That’s my sense.
>>Rick Archer: Okay, good. And then so, finally, what was the intuition that it was time to stop channeling? How did that realization come about? How did you make that transition?
>>Louise Kay: There was a growing feeling of something just wanting to express like this, without the channeling. And… I had an intuitive knowing that the channeling was going to come to an end. I could feel that something new was birthing. And, Aikon spoke to me directly one day… it was only the second time they had ever spoken to me directly, and they said, “We, we shall be leaving soon.” And I knew it, and, it felt right before they said it. So, I wasn’t like disappointed. It was more like, “Oh, yeah, I know”. And then, it was pretty quick after that information came that it… Fell away. And I was doing group channeling meetings in Rishikesh at the time, and I had these posters all around town. So, I showed up at this meeting and everyone came to see me channel, and I said, “Look, it’s not true for me anymore.”
>>Rick Archer: Interesting. Did they want their money back?
>>Louise Kay: Well, it was by donation so… Some of them walked out, and some of them stayed, and yeah… It was really nice. They came to me and said, “Oh, I appreciate that you’re following your truth.” And…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s good.
>>Louise Kay: It was nice.
>>Rick Archer: Do you get the feeling that there are higher entities of various sorts like Aikon who are, there could be a great many of them, who are very much concerned about and involved with the condition of the Earth at this time. That are, doing what they can, from their level, to… Help it out?
>>Louise Kay: My sense is, yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Okay, good. A few questions came in, let’s do those now. So, Rohel, from Spain asks, “Why do spiritual teachers often place oneness above many-ness? Can oneness and many-ness not go hand in hand, like equals so to say… I’m fine with both. Why would many-ness be an illusion or construction? Why would there even be many-ness if oneness would suffice? It’s a good question, actually.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. Well, when we experience and perceive reality and relate with the world from the perspective of many-ness, we’re relating from a perspective ultimately of separation. And that sense of separation is painful for us on some level. There’s a deep sense, underlying that, “Something’s not quite right, something’s not quite fulfilled.” And… We often try to fill that hole… Get that fulfillment through experiences or waiting for something to happen in the future. And it’s often related to our conditioning that we picked up, like, when you meet your life partner then you’ll be happy, because they’ll make you happy. Or when you get successful then, people recognize you and you feel like you have some worth or value. Or when you get rich, then you’ll be happy. And so our focus becomes on striving to get, and attain, and achieve these things. And it’s always focused on some point in the future, “When I get there”. And, that causes us to miss the beauty and the intimacy of this moment. We never really experience a deep fulfillment or satisfaction, because that’s just not possible from that perspective of separation. It’s fragmented. And so when we look deeper, and we go beyond the physical reality and the conceptual sense of that individual self. And we open to what I call our true nature, which is our formless essence. This… pure, open, space, of loving awareness that loves to dance and create, and express itself in form. It brings a deep sense of fulfillment and inner peace just in being… And we don’t need anything outside to complete us or make us happy. Just in being itself there’s already a deep satisfaction. And… It’s not that the formless and the form are separate from each other. They… There is no separation between them. The formless is the essence that animates the forms. And the form is temporary. So it’s born, and it dies, and the formless essence is unchanging. It’s… It’s infinite. Yeah, most people have heard the analogy of the ocean… That, the waves arise. And it seems like the wave is somehow separate, but it’s made of the same water. And, it’s born from the ocean, and it lives its’ limited life, its’ expression of form, and it returns to the ocean.
>>Rick Archer: Good. I would just say to Rohel, that there are different teachings for different people and different levels of teaching. And no one teaching is necessarily appropriate for all people at all stages of their development. For instance, the… Gaudapada did a commentary on the “Mandukya Upanishad”, and the whole thing is this deep logical argument about how the creation actually never arose in the first place. The rope never became a snake, and so on and so forth. And it’s, it’s definitely true at its own level, but then, even he, wrote another whole scripture, which was all in praise to the Divine Mother, and the divine play of creation and so on. So, if somebody tries to kind of emphasize one particular perspective to the exclusion of all others, it usually ends up being a kind of a lopsided approach, which is not broadly useful. That’s my take on it. Okay, here’s another one coming in. Let’s see what this one is. This is kind of similar and interesting. Someone from Zandvoort asks, “Is right and wrong at the level of the soul? The same as right and wrong at the human level?”
>>Louise Kay: Well, I think we’d have to clarify what is meant by “soul” here? Because… I’m not really sure what the question is asking but… From the perspective of the formless, there is no duality, there is no right or wrong, everything just is. And it’s the mind which perceives reality through these filters of dualism, and segregates everything into right-wrong, spiritual-not spiritual, good-bad, desirable-undesirable, and it’s important, also, that we… Don’t fall into the spiritual trap of saying, “Oh well, there is no right or wrong so I can just do whatever I want.” When we know ourselves as our true self… Any word that labels it is insufficient. So, we can call it the “true self”. When we know ourselves as that, and the system is totally clear. That expresses through the system. Wisdom, peace, love, harmony, just… That’s it’s nature. So it doesn’t need to think like, “Oh, is this the wrong right or wrong thing to do?”. It just naturally contributes harmony. And it’s where we have these veils or filters of our conditioned behaviors or traumas, that act like a wall or a blockage to that natural expression coming through, that causes us, as humans, to act out evil in the world. So, all that’s required really is for us to look at these veils or these filters and see where they are. How they’re playing themselves out. And as they’re seen, from the perspective of higher consciousness, they begin to dissolve and fall away, and so that natural expression that comes through becomes more and more purified.
>>Rick Archer: Good answer. The “Tao Te Ching” has this section about how if everyone in society were in tune with the Tao, then you wouldn’t need all these laws, because people would act spontaneously rightly. And not, be harming each other in various ways. But it’s when the Tao is lost, and when very few people are in tune with it, that you need structures of law and… Moral guidelines and so on and so forth in order for people not to make a big mess of things and harm each other. So, like you say, and I have heard teachers actually say that… “Oh, well, it’s all, it’s all absolute, there is no relative, and therefore I can do whatever I want. It’s all an illusion, anyway.” Well… fine… end up in an illusory jail if you like, or prison but… “Render under Caesar what is Caesar’s” … That there are… absolute reality does not negate or obviate relative realities and the rules which govern them.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, and, it seems to me that this vigilance is required every single moment. Especially when one is performing the role of a teacher or therapist, to ensure that the ego mind doesn’t unconsciously hijack that role, to act out unconscious traumas in the system, and use the spiritual teachings to do so, because that can be very dangerous.
>>Rick Archer: Yes, it can. There’s a great quote from Padmasambhava, he said, “Although my awareness is as vast as the sky, my attention to karma”, which means action, “Is as fine as a grain of barley flour”. So what that means is, that you can be a very high being, and yet you still have to be on your toes in terms of, there is even a greater preciseness and delicacy, and, intuitive sensitivity… To… In fact, there’s immediate feedback… Wouldn’t you say, Louise? I mean, if you do go off the mark a little bit you… You get smacked, more readily and notice it, and it helps to keep you on track.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The problem can be that if the ego mind also infuses to the point where it says, “Okay, I’ve got it, or, “I know”, then life can be shouting something at you, and still you won’t hear it. It seems to me, that there can be teachers or expressions of life that are very, very clear, and have beautiful gifts, and have very clear pointings that are coming through. And, at the same time, there can be a huge distortion, or unconscious trauma, or… Something acting out that hasn’t been seen. So that’s why it’s so important that, as seekers, we don’t project that if somebody has experienced realization, or non-dual awareness, or they’re performing the function of a teacher… That everything they say, or everything they do is the absolute truth. To really be vigilant and discerning.
>>Rick Archer: Here, here. I really… I heartily agree with you. In fact, I, along with Jack O’Keefe, and Craig Holliday, and Miranda McPherson, and Mariana Kaplan, helped to establish something called the “Association for Spiritual Integrity”, which is: spiritual-integrity.org, to try to… Sort of popularize in the spiritual culture that ethics are important and are an important component of the spiritual path, which traditionally they have been understood to be. If you read Patanjali, or any of the ancient sources. A lot of times that’s been glossed over in contemporary spirituality. And there have been all these messy situations, and like you say, students might sit there really admiring a teacher, and the teacher seems so good in so many ways, and so inspiring, and yet, starts going off the beam a little bit and the students begin to think, well, “This doesn’t seem right, but… Hey. This guy is supposed to be enlightened, and I’m not so… What do I know?” … they abdicate their own discernment.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Do you have any more comment on that?
>>Louise Kay: Not right now.
>>Rick Archer: Okay. Here’s another question. This is from Marilyn in Texas, Marilyn asks, “How do we balance living in the present and planning for the future? I always feel like I have to plan life changes to navigate around constant unavoidable fear-based messages entering the mind. I love Louise by the way, I’ve been following her for a long time, her tender energy is so soothing. She’s a beautiful embodiment of the divine feminine.” And then she has two hearts on the screen.
>>Louise Kay: Who is this question from?
>>Rick Archer: Marilyn in Texas.
>>Louise Kay: Thank you, Marilyn.
>>Rick Archer: So, do you remember the question? After I gave you that flattering and embarrassing compliment from Marilyn?
>>Louise Kay: Maybe just run it by me one more time…
>>Rick Archer: Okay, she wants to know, “How do we balance living in the present and planning for the future? I always feel like I have to plan life changes to navigate around constant unavoidable fear-based messages entering the mind.”
>>Louise Kay: So, if we need to make plans for the future, we can make the plans while staying fully present in the now. For example, if me and Rick want to schedule a Skype call, we can have a conversation about, “When is there free spot in your calendar?”, And as we’re talking, our attention is fully present in the now. And we’re deeply connected. If there’s fear-based thoughts arising, then it’s great that you’re already aware of those fear-based thoughts. And it’s not necessarily that the best way to try to avoid them by making plans, but by simply observing them, and not giving any power to them. So remember that those thoughts are not speaking the truth. And you see, if you make a plan to do something that’s coming from a fear of experiencing a fear, then life’s going to reflect that back. And it’s not coming from your deeper truth. In order to allow the future to unfold from the expression of life, rather than the mind’s fear-based ideas, we have to first be fully present, and also, aware of how it feels in the body. We become like an empty vessel, and life moves through us, rather than us functioning from this mental level of, “Oh, what if this happens in the future? Then maybe I should do this…” And everything’s kind of logical, and analytical, and trying to avoid things, or manipulate and control life. When we give up all that, and we just be. Then the desire of what we want to do in the future, doesn’t come from the minds desire. It comes from a deeper intuitive knowing. And, it’s like we’re operating and relating with life on a different level. So, the key is to not engage with those thoughts. And when you recognize them arising. Bring your attention fully present in the moment. And notice how it feels in the body. Often, if there’s a repetitive thought pattern, then there’s an unprocessed energy or trauma on an energetic level that’s wanting some attention. So, it’s good to ask, “Okay, how does it feel in the body right now?” And most of the time, we become aware that there’s a contraction somewhere. And then we just be with that and feel that and give gentle loving attention to it. And as we… Give it that gentle loving attention it begins to soften and open, and that energy releases, and it stops producing those fear-based thoughts. It creates space in the system for that natural flow of life to express.
>>Rick Archer: Let me make up a concrete example. This is probably not what Marilyn is thinking about but, this just might help to bring it down to Earth a little bit more… So, Marilyn is from Texas, and the COVID pandemic is pretty bad in Texas. And let’s say Marilyn has kids and she’s trying to decide whether she should send the kids back to school in a few weeks. And, there’s implications to that… The kids might get sick, or maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for them, but they might bring it home to grandma or, the, a lot of people are actually saying that they feel like the fear is the greatest pandemic right now more than the disease, although I don’t know if I agree with that but, a lot of people are feeling fear… And…For good reason.
>>Rick Archer: Probably for good reason, and a lot of people are being kind of reckless and saying, “I’m not afraid. I don’t need to wear a mask, and I can go in the store. And don’t make me wear a mask.” And there’s this kind of like, stigma about being careful in some people’s minds. So, there’s a lot of fear in society right now. And maybe Marilyn is obviously feeling some fear for some reason, I don’t know what the actual reason but, if we take a concrete example like that, which actually has very practical implications, it could make a big difference what you do or don’t do, how would you then address her concern?
>>Louise Kay: Well, it would be the same with any decision-making process. So if we try to make a decision based on the level of the mind, then the mind will rationalize and look at the information available, and make pros and cons. And, it can be helpful but, there’s a way that we can access information on a deeper level, which, when we move from that place and take action from that place, then, it results in more flow, and coherence, and harmony in life. So, we become very still, and open to the silence that’s here beyond the thought, beyond the mental noise, noticing the awareness in which the thoughts are arising… and rest the attention there, and, kind of tune in, and allow the knowing to arise from there. And, this is how we move through life. So, life presents a situation, and we can either react to that, if we’re functioning from the mind-level, or we can respond to it. If we’re connected, and in tune with this deeper wisdom, and we’re responding to life, there’s never any stress or problems really… There’s just appropriate action that’s taken. These are the options, and this one feels right. And then, we take action on it. And all of that energy that goes to, “Oh, what shall I do and…” And worrying, and fear. It’s just, it’s not necessary anymore.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. There’s a line from the Upanishads, which says, “Certainly all fear is born of duality”. And you can kind of get that because, if you’re in duality, if you are separate from things, then things can threaten you. But if you appreciate the underlying unity of life, then what can threaten what? And who can threaten whom?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: And I think probably if one is, kind of, stranded in a dualistic condition… Then, even if you’re not feeling fear, there’s a kind of a foundational fear that underlies things all the time, wouldn’t you say?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like the system is in a constant state of fight or flight mode. It’s in a constant state of stress or anxiousness. “Where’s the next hit from life gonna come from?”
>>Rick Archer: Interesting. So hopefully, Marilyn, that answered your question. And if it didn’t, then feel free to send a follow up question. Here’s one from Tim in Victoria, British Columbia. He said, “I accept the premise that there is a fundamental ground of being-awareness that is intrinsically unified and whole. I have touched this ground on many occasions but find such a resistance to settle fully into it. This resistance seems to come from an inability to deeply trust. Can you share your understanding of the nature of trust?”
>>Louise Kay: So, when we’re surrendering fully to our true nature, what happens is the ego-mind doesn’t just say, “Okay, great idea. Yeah, surrender”. It puts up a fight. It’s not going to let you go that easy… And it’s fighting for its’ life, it’s fighting for control, it’s fighting to stay in charge. It’s saying, “No, you can’t trust that, that’s not safe. Stay here with me. I’ll keep you comfortable… It’s familiar. We know this, we’ve lived this together our whole life. I’m your best friend.” And what’s required, is in that moment when that fear arises, or that lack of trust, to surrender everything in that moment and open fully to that fear. And, it’s coming to mind this story of the Buddha, when he was sitting in meditation and all the demons, the different demons, came to him in images and it’s like that, we just maintain that inner Buddha nature, no matter what comes up, we stay still, and have the willingness to open and feel whatever arises.
>>Rick Archer: It’s kind of the old Hutton Palace analogy if, let’s say, you’ve been living in this shoddy little hut. And then off in the distance, there’s this beautiful palace, and someone says, “That’s your palace, leave the hut and move into it.” And you start to go towards the hut… And then you think, “Whoa, wait a minute, what if it’s not really my palace? Or what if I get eaten by a tiger along the way? Or, my hut wasn’t so bad? After all, it was actually kind of cozy.” And you see? So you scurry back to the hut…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: But yeah, like you said earlier. You don’t do this in one fell swoop. It’s not like you’re doing something wrong if you don’t find yourself having shifted into an all-pervading cosmic consciousness, or something like that on day one. It takes a while, stage by stage, level by level, to unwind all this.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, it’s like one of the great spiritual paradoxes that, “There is nothing to do, you are already that. It is done.” And at the same time, it, in time and space, this process happens. And there’s an unfolding, and there’s integration, and… For most people, even after there’s a direct experience of the true self or non-dual awakening, there’s a kind-of falling asleep again, and waking up, and a moving-shifting backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards until we become more and more deeply anchored in this natural state of being. And, I like this comparison to a baby learning to walk. Where, first it’s crawling. And that to me feels kind of like the seeker mode… And, then we’re meditating, practicing. And then at some point it stands up. And that’s like the first recognition. And then, what happens, the baby falls over again. But the baby doesn’t say, “Oh, I failed, I lost it, I can’t do it again.”
>>Rick Archer: I’ll always be a baby.
>>Louise Kay: It just gets up. And then it falls down. It gets up. And it walks a few steps. And the falling down is part of the process. It’s only the mind that has an idea that, “This shouldn’t be happening in the process. This isn’t part of the learning.” That makes us think that something’s wrong. But it’s not, It’s perfect just like that.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s good. I mean, the reality is what it is, people or no people, body or no body, universe or no universe. But, what we’re talking about is actually, living it as a human being. And therefore the instrument through which it is lived, has to be rendered more and more suitable for that state, it has to be refined, purified, integrated, and so on.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, so we experience this opening to higher consciousness. And then, in a way that’s like the beginning. And the process of deepening and integration starts. And a lot of healing takes place on that journey. And on that human level it seems like there is no end to it.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Somebody sent me a quote the other day, and I actually emailed it to you. And I think I’ll just read it out just for fun. It’s from something called, “The Kybalion – A study of the Hermetic philosophy of ancient Egypt and Greece”. And here’s how it goes, it relates to what we’re saying… “Do not make the mistake of supposing that the little world you see around you, the Earth, which is a mere grain of dust in the universe, is the universe itself, there are millions upon millions of such worlds and greater, and there are millions of millions of such universes in existence within the infinite mind of the all. And even in our own little solar system, there are regions and planes of life far higher than ours, and beings compared to which we Earth-bound mortals are as the slimy life forms that dwell on the oceans bed, when compared to man, there are beings with powers and attributes higher than man has ever dreamed of the gods possessing, and yet these beings were once you, and still lower, and you will be even as they, and still higher, in time, for such as is the destiny of man as reported by the Illumined. And death is not real, even in the relative sense, it is but birth to a new life. And you shall go on, and on, and on, to higher and still higher planes of life, for eons upon eons of time, the universe is your home, and you shall explore its farthest recesses before the end of time, you are dwelling in the infinite mind of the all, and your possibilities and opportunities are infinite, both in time and space. And at the end of the grand cycle of all eons, when the all shall draw back into itself, all of its creations, you will go gladly for you will then be able to know the whole truth of being at one with the all.” And actually I, that last line, you can know the whole truth of being at one with the all, before the universe goes back into dissolution, you can know it now, as you were saying, so maybe there’ll be some ultimate final knowing at that point but, you don’t have to wait for that.
>>Louise Kay: For me, I love the mystery and the magic of this universe, and I love not to know. That’s part of the beauty of this dance of creation. That… It’s so immense beyond what the mind can imagine… And, if we even just try to comprehend with our mind, the size of the known universe, and the billions of galaxies… To comprehend that is… It’s… There’s no words… And, there is such a beauty, and magic, in the mystery of everything. And to see life through these eyes. It brings life to life… To see the magic in every moment, and the beauty in even the most mundane things, the most everyday objects, the fact that we are alive, and experiencing this form. It’s incredible.
>>Rick Archer: That’s beautifully put. Have you written any books? You’d be a good writer.
>>Louise Kay: No, I haven’t. Not yet.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. Do you tend to write little things? I know you have a bunch of blog posts… Do you express yourself, in words, written word, very often?
>>Louise Kay: Sometimes…
>>Rick Archer: You might start collecting that stuff. You could turn it into a book.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. That’s beautifully put. It kind of reminds me of that the idea of God, which is that, the divine intelligence that is behind all this is permeating all of this. Because a lot of times in spiritual circles, there’s a lot of talk of the absolute and the un-manifest, and all… And it sounds kind of, “plain vanilla”, but… When you actually consider the wonder, and mystery, and beauty, and incredible complexity, and vastness, and all, of the universe, it seems to me much richer… Much more profound in a way, then, an emphasis on just un-manifest flatness being…
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, to experience that being from the perspective of the mind is the most boring thing in the Universe… It’s like, it’s torturous… but, to know oneself as “that”, and to be a part of this unified field of intelligence, is the most joyous experience.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. That’s… All the points you make are so good. Somebody was talking about depression the other day, and I was, you know the old analogy of a fish being thirsty while it’s swimming in the ocean? You know, or, looking for the ocean, or some such thing, even though it’s immersed in the ocean, and, one of the characteristics of this ultimate reality that we keep talking about is Ananda, meaning bliss. And if a person is feeling depressed, or bored, or life seems to be empty, and meaningless, it’s like that fish… You want to elaborate on that a bit?
>>Louise Kay: I really love what Jeff Foster says about depressed, I don’t know if you’ve heard his take on it.
>>Rick Archer: I know Jeff, and I’ve interviewed him… but, I don’t remember what it said about that.
>>Louise Kay: Okay… So, he turns depressed as, “deep rest”. And it’s the system just longing to… stop, to… And I’m not quoting Jeff here I… I don’t want to… And, just to take a break, and take a deep, deep rest, and often when we have the experience of depression, there’s this idea that, “There’s something wrong with me. I’m broken, I need fixing, somehow, I need to figure out how to feel differently, how to reject this experience that’s arising, I need to take pills, or change my diet or do something.” And, if we do the opposite of that, and we very very gently get curious about the experience and look closer at it. Then, what we notice is probably that there’s thought patterns and stories arising that are identified with… Which are of a negative nature. And, by watching them, by observing them, we’re able to dis-identify from those stories and recognize that that’s the ego-mind, and it’s creating a sense of identity through perceiving reality in this way. And often it feels a distorted sense of pleasure by feeling suffering and feeling like a victim. So we’re able then to dis-identify from the mental level of suffering. And look at what’s experienced in the body. How is it? How is depression experienced in the body? And, when we really look with curiosity, we’ll probably find that there’s like, some pressure on the chest, or contraction in the belly. And rather than trying to get rid of that, and making it wrong, if we just very gently… “Ah, I see you, I feel you, and it’s okay that you’re here”, open up to it and let it be okay. Then, that sensation, which is labeled as “depression”, becomes the gateway for deepening into being and accessing our natural state of joy.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s nice, and, I like the “deep rest” angle, because I mean, sometimes depression can be caused by backlog of fatigue, you’re just burdened by tiredness and sometimes a few good night’s sleep and some nice deep restful meditations can totally transform your perspective, but… whether we call it fatigue, or trauma, or what… There doesn’t seem to be a… The tendency for the system to accumulate stuff, and it can’t be a clear mirror or channel for that deep bliss that pervades everything if that accumulation is there, so we’ve got to clear it out.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, we first have to meet what Eckhart calls, the “Pain Body”, and in meeting it, and being present with it, we deepen in being because you have to increase your level of presence in order to be able to meet those sensations because they can be intense, and they can be really unpleasant. And I often use this analogy of weightlifting, it’s like, if you want to get these huge muscles, which is like to be deeply anchored in presence.
>>Rick Archer: Like mine. Yeah. You see?
>>Louise Kay: You got to be able to lift those big weights, but you can’t lift the big weights until you start with the little weights. And so you just meet what you can and be present with what you can consistently. Moment to moment. Opening to the inner experience. And as you do so, you’re able to lift bigger and bigger weights, and you’re able to meet more and more intensity of these energies.
>>Rick Archer: And would you say that the deeper traumas or the deeper impressions are, those are not the ones you’re going to meet initially, you have to start out naturally with the smaller ones. And, then you get on to the bigger ones. And the bigger ones don’t seem as big as they would have if you had started with them, because now you have more capacity to meet them. Would that be correct to say?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, it seems like that. Yeah. And it seems like a… It’s like an onion with these layers and layers. And, what I’m coming to understand more and more in this work that I’m doing with people, is when you get to the core of it, we all seem to have pretty much the same core trauma, which is a deep sense of abandonment… and feeling unloved or not worthy in some way.
>>Rick Archer: Well, we’re just about the end of our two hours. Here’s a nice concluding remark from Marilyn in Texas, who we spoke with earlier, she said “Thank you for sharing such helpful knowledge and raising up the love frequency in the collective.” So, I think that everyone listening to this will concur with Marilyn that they feel appreciation for what you’re doing in that way, definitely helping.
>>Louise Kay: Thank you.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. What would you like to say in terms of how people can connect with you or interact with you? Or, what do you have going on that people can plug into?
>>Louise Kay: I have right now, with this lockdown situation, I’m doing twice a week, online, open zoom meetings, by donation. Next one’s tomorrow actually so, everyone’s welcome to join that, and they can go to my website: louisekay.net, and they can, I think it’s: louisekay.net/zoom, is the page to register for those.
>>Rick Archer: And there’s probably a link on there or something. So you have an events?
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, it’s on the events page.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, there it is. I just went to it on the screen. So you click on Events, and it takes you to the Zoom meetings here. And then you can click the “more info” tab and sign up for it.
>>Louise Kay: And then on 31st July and 1st & 2nd of August, there is an online weekend retreat, which is an opportunity for us to together deepen into presence, and to meet these energies, or these repressed emotions, traumas in the system and to explore together.
>>Rick Archer: Have you done any of those before? Weekend online retreats?
>>Louise Kay: This is the first online one. Yeah, they’re usually in groups they’re in different cities. But everything’s on hold at the moment, because of the situation. So I say, “Hey, why not do it online?”
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, I hope that works out. I would have a hard time doing one because there’s always so much going on around here,
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: But, it’s nice to get away to a retreat place, if you can, but I hope that goes well.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah, and there is a 5-day retreat in North Carolina in the end… 30th of October. We’ll see.
>>Rick Archer: We’ll see.
>>Louise Kay: We’ll see if life…
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: …what life wants.
>>Rick Archer: You probably have a, an email signup thing on your website here. I see.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah.
>>Rick Archer: Subscribe.
>>Louise Kay: Yeah. You can subscribe.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah. They can stay connected with you and then you get notified of things that are going on. So people are welcome to do that. Yeah well, thanks so much Louise. I really Appreciate your spending this time with us and, I think we had quite a few people on there, well over 300 listening during the live one, and I’m sure there will be many more once we put this up permanently. So, I really hope that everything goes well with you. I hope your partner can manage to get out of India and come back to Amsterdam. Louise’s partner is stuck in India… We were talking about that before we started. And that, you continue to shine your bright light, because the world needs such lights.
>>Louise Kay: Thank you, Rick. It’s been really a pleasure talking to you. I enjoyed.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah.
>>Louise Kay: Thank you.
>>Rick Archer: Yeah, thank you. So, and thanks to those who’ve been listening, or watching, whether on the live feed, or later on, appreciate your attention. And, just want to say briefly that you can, subscribe to the YouTube channel if you like. Click on the subscribe button. And then if you want to be notified every time I release one of these, click on the little bell next to the YouTube channel that notifies you every time. But, I only do one of these a week so you’re not going to get bombarded with things. And the same with the email notification system on: batgap.com, if you sign up, you’ll get one email a week and, you get a second one three days later if you don’t open the first one. It’s in the “In case you missed it email.” And there’s few other things there you might want to check out. The audio podcast if you like to listen to audio things, instead of sit and watch videos, and various other things, just explore the menus and you’ll see them. So, thank you for listening or watching and… See you next week. Next week is a fellow named Andrew Hughson, who, when you look at his pictures, like, “How could he have been a serious alcoholic and spent time in prison? He looks like a bright young kid.” But, apparently he had that kind of experience, and then came out of it and is really bright looking now and doing great things, so, we’ll be speaking with Andrew next week. And the week after that is James Finley, who is an associate of Richard Rohr, a mystical contemplative, Christian Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault. So I’ll be speaking with James. Anyway, we have them scheduled, usually a couple months in advance and there’s an upcoming interviews page where you can see who’s scheduled. So again, thanks for listening and watching. And thanks again Louise.
>>Louise Kay: Thanks Rick.
>>Rick Archer: Your welcome.