Louise Kay Transcript: Nonduality, Trauma Integration, and the End of Channeling

Louise Kay interview

Summary

Louise Kay describes how spiritual awakening in India changed her relationship with thought, emotion, and everyday life. She explores how challenges can reveal unconscious patterns and how presence can help us meet our own feelings and others’ distress.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can spiritual awakening become more grounded and integrated in daily life?
• How can difficult experiences support spiritual growth?
• How can I support someone in distress without trying to fix or change them?
• How can I remain present when other people’s fear or pain affects me?

Key takeaways

• Awakening can make unconscious patterns and bodily contractions easier to recognize and release.
• Challenges can serve as opportunities to deepen presence and uncover habitual reactions.
• Letting go of the demand to control life allows a larger intelligence to guide events.
• Meeting your own feelings with gentleness can help others feel seen without needing to fix them.
• Sensitivity can be difficult, but it can also deepen awareness of yourself and those around you.

Transcript

Rick: 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: Thanks.

Rick: You’re 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. In any case, Blackburn, Lancashire, is in the northwest 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 that 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.

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 and 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. 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 this, 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. I’ve done so many different things and traveled all over the world and taught English as a second language. My accent is totally, totally screwed up.”

But anyway, you’ve been around. You just told me, you have this beautiful earring thing on. Show people that thing; it’s really cool. And you said you got that in Brazil, when you were down there. Who was it made by?

Louise: The Indigenous women in the Amazon. I don’t remember the name of the exact tribe.

Rick: 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 they rediscovered it when they got a little older. So, was there anything like that for you?

Louise: Yeah, definitely. I was an ultra-sensitive child.

Rick: Were you, like, super emotional, or how ultra-sensitive?

Louise: I wasn’t crying all the time, but my parents told me that if they just said, “Louise, don’t do that,” they didn’t even need to scold me, then I would cry. I was also kind of physically sensitive; my skin would flare up in rashes if chemicals touched me. So it was on multiple levels that I experienced this sensitivity. I was just very, very gentle as a child. And it was challenging for me to be around stress or when people were projecting anger. I felt everything.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: And something in me just felt like, “Something’s not right about this.” I didn’t know what it was, but I had 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 14 years old at home and still interested in playing with Legos. Something didn’t mature or develop in that way. I never really went through that teenage experience, and then—

Rick: You didn’t miss anything, let me tell you.

Louise: And somehow, even into adulthood, something never really matured or developed. This was one of the big parts of my transformation in my spiritual journey: it wasn’t just a spiritual awakening; I experienced a lot of integration of trauma. I’m jumping ahead now, but we can come back to it. I also experienced what seemed like maturing on a human level, as a human being, and that childlikeness kind of caught up with the rest of me.

Rick: 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, 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: Yeah, it kind of brought a different bunch of challenges with it.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: I think I can see that.

Rick: There’s an old Bengali saying, which says, “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: Yeah, there’s another nice one. I think it’s Buckminster Fuller, is it? He says, “To be well, to be well adjusted to a sick society is not a good measure of health.” Something like that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Louise: Yeah.

Rick: 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 super-sensitive. That was a blessing too, because it kept you from bumbling into stuff that you otherwise might have, but you immediately had a reaction, so you recoiled from it. It sounds like a good thing.

Yeah, my system developed, like everybody’s, kind of survival mechanisms and 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.

Louise: Yeah, my system developed, like everybody’s, kind of survival mechanisms and 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: Yeah, that’s great. Just a quick comment, which is that I think some people’s systems are not only very impressionable, but also 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: No, not really, that I remember. 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: “What’s up here? What’s the real meaning of all this? What’s going on? What’s the purpose of life? Who am I?”

At some point, one of the major turning points for me was that I came across the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. When I read that book, it affected me in two very profound ways. The first one was that, for the first time in my life, I recognized that I was able to observe my thoughts. That created some kind of separation. The other one was that 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. Interestingly, those two aspects are now 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. I always recommend it to people now.

Rick: 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: Yeah, I’m just trying to remember the chronological order because it’s quite some years ago now. I actually came to Amsterdam, where I am now. I’d gotten divorced, and I came to Amsterdam for a fresh start. I felt called to come 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.

At that time, when I was in Amsterdam, I also met my partner, Gilad. 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. I was just thirsty for more, and he really opened the door to a lot of information that I was just ready to hear. And then Amma came to town.

Rick: Right? So you’re behind me here, huh?

Louise: Yeah. I didn’t really know much about her, but I felt interested, and I went along. That was really my first taste of India, going there in a huge hall where they were playing the bhajans, and it really had this India feel. I loved it. I waited hours and hours. I mean, you’ve been; you know how it is. Finally, I think it was around 3 a.m. I was in line, and I got this hug from her. It was really strong. It hit me, and I felt a bit like, “Whoa, I need to go lie down.” There was this back room where you could just go rest or whatever. I think some people were sleeping there. I just went and lay down on a mat and closed my eyes.

This purple light appeared, like a tunnel opening up here, and I felt this rush of energy. Then I heard this voice: “Go to India. What you seek, you shall find there.” I knew it wasn’t my voice. It was only when I went to see Amma again last year, for a second time, that I realized it was Amma communicating telepathically with me, because she did it again. I realized. But it was very powerful when I heard those words. It struck right in my heart, and something in me knew, “I have to go.” I had been feeling this call, and that was the turning point for me.

Rick: It kind of gives me goosebumps hearing you say that, because I’ve had so many experiences with Amma like that. 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. The level of insight she has, even in 30 seconds of interacting with a person, and the impact that can have on their lives, is really quite remarkable.

Louise: Yeah. It’s amazing.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, so that was a wake-up call. So you managed to get to India?

Louise: Yeah. I quit my job, left my apartment, and got a one-way plane ticket. I didn’t know how long I was going to stay or…

Rick: Can you tell us a bit about that adventure, inwardly and outwardly?

Louise: Yeah. I think India is really something else, and it’s not something you can… Before I went, many people who’d been there 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: I’m curious: As a sensitive person, what was your first impression when you landed in India and got out at the airport? What was the feeling in the atmosphere?

Louise: Complete and utter shock. It was like landing on another planet. The intensity was just so overwhelming. At that time, my system hadn’t integrated a lot of what it has now.

Rick: Hadn’t integrated. Yeah.

Louise: Hadn’t… So, for example, if I heard loud noises, it was really overwhelming. I would have to cover my ears…

Rick: And everybody’s blowing their horns.

Louise: I’ve never taken acid, but I imagine walking through those streets of Paharganj in Delhi is similar to taking acid. The sounds, the smells, and people coming in your face from all directions, trying to get a photo, money, trying to sell you something. I was in a trance like this… My boyfriend was just kind of leading me.

Rick: Yeah. Wow. 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: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. There’s something about India. It’s like divinity is in the air.

Rick: Yeah, exactly.

Louise: It opens your heart somehow, and there’s definitely this magical, mystical quality.

Rick: Some kind of softness, deep softness.

Louise: Yeah, yeah. 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: They really do. I’ve been participating in a webinar with Swami Sarvapriyananda, who’s a leader of the Vedanta Society. Mostly it’s Indians in the webinar, with a few Westerners, but I’m so impressed with a lot of the questions all these Indians are asking. They’re just like, “Holy mackerel!” They really have this stuff in their blood, you know?

Louise: Yeah, and you feel it. It’s everywhere.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Louise: 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: Which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of poverty, rip-off artists, and all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, the whole spectrum of humanity. But there is…

Louise: Absolutely.

Rick: …definitely that element there. There’s…

Louise: It’s definitely a country of extremes, and…

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Louise: You just see everything. On every corner there’s a new shock that you could never have imagined you would see. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about it, and why it kind of keeps you living in the present moment when you’re in India. You’ve got to stay present; there’s just so much activity going on all around you and so much to catch your attention. There’s this aliveness that’s there.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned you had an awakening there. What was that?

Louise: Yeah. I went to Rishikesh, at the foothills of the Himalayas, and I was going to a few different teachers there. One of the teachers I was going to was Mooji, for satsang. I went there pretty much every day for six weeks. One day, I was just following his pointing, and it was like the mind was transcended in that moment. That’s the best way I can describe it. After that, I experienced some days of feeling like everything was a dream, and nothing felt real. Things never really went back to how they were before that experience.

Rick: 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?

✨ Consciousness and the resting point of awareness

Louise: No, I don’t think I became more spacey. I think the opposite started to happen. 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. There was this real single-pointed attitude, or focus: This is the path of truth, and this is what is required. So every little thing that came up, everything that triggered the system, was used to deepen and to surrender more deeply.

As that was happening, a lot of integration and transformation was taking place. That space in us kind of became more and more grounded, and the system started to integrate and become clearer. I mean, it’s still going on. I…

Rick: Yeah. I think it’s a lifelong process, really.

Louise: Yeah. It seems to me that it’s infinite.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. You have a blog post entitled “Challenges: Gateways for Growth.” What you just said reminded me of that.

Yeah, yeah. There’s a recognition that when we experience challenges in life, our mind tends to project that life’s not serving us, 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, we’re able to understand the bigger picture: what’s happening is the unfolding of consciousness.

Life’s Challenges as the Unfolding of Consciousness

Louise: Yeah, yeah. There’s a recognition that when we experience challenges in life, our mind tends to project that life’s not serving us, 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, we’re able to understand the bigger picture: what’s happening is the unfolding of consciousness.

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’re acting out some unconscious pattern or behavior. There’s a gift for us in every challenge if we have the eyes to see it.

Rick: 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. Things don’t happen arbitrarily or randomly or accidentally. Everything is 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 expand out enough and see the big picture, we would realize that all is well and wisely put.

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 expand out enough and see the big picture, we would realize that all is well and wisely put.

Louise: 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. 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: Yeah. There’s a definition of humility I once heard: “Humility is the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way.” If you think about it, people are always talking about not acting from ego, “Let go and let God,” and all that stuff. If you insist that things happen in a particular way, then 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 you’re just throwing a monkey wrench in the works, as they say.

I may also ask a little question here that came in. This one relates in a way to what we were talking about in terms of my asking 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: Yeah, there’s a lot of fear getting triggered in the collective right now. Oftentimes, when other people are experiencing challenging emotions, like when their system gets overwhelmed by fear or anxiety, anger, or sadness, if we’re sensitive and able to feel them, it can feel uncomfortable in us. 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, heal them, or change them in some way. Really, what that is, is an escapism from the experience of the now.

When we are able to fully surrender to our own inner experience and open to what it touches in us, 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 say, “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. 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: 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: Yeah.

Rick: 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: Yeah.

Rick: “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: 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. Usually, the thoughts are something along the lines 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.

When we identify with that story and believe it, 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 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, 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: Yeah, I mean, whenever 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 this: 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 starting to suffer too because of them,” then how much help would they have been to all the people who came to them?

Louise: 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.”

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.” With the simple shift, there’s a recognition that, “That’s not me, and I am this formless essence, this infinite spaciousness.”

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.” With the simple shift, there’s a recognition that, “That’s not me, and I am this formless essence, this infinite spaciousness.”

Rick: 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: 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. 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. 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. Some thoughts arise and pass through. Everything is happening by itself. The intelligence of life is dancing, and awareness perceives that.

Rick: 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 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?” 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: 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 not as a desire from the mind, but as a longing from deep in the heart, like this longing for truth. And it’s almost like a yearning quality, to feel that call to know oneself as God.

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. Whatever thought arises, don’t take it as the truth. Allow the attention to rest as the silence, or the spaciousness, beyond thought.

Become aware of the inner body and the sensations in the body. Whenever there’s a contraction or a tightness, bring the attention very gently into the body and just open to feeling it. 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 practice self-enquiry, asking, “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: 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. It’s like if you had a cup of water and you had a handful of mud and you threw it in the cup of water, it’s just going to be totally muddy. But if you throw 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?

Yeah. So when we start this practice of being aware of the energies in the body and being present in the body, oftentimes we initially become aware of an underlying sense of anxiety, something that feels uncomfortable, and contraction or tightness in the system. When we become aware of it, it can feel worse than when we weren’t present in the body, but it was still there. We just become more aware of it.

Louise: Yeah. So when we start this practice of being aware of the energies in the body and being present in the body, oftentimes we initially become aware of an underlying sense of anxiety, something that feels uncomfortable, and contraction or tightness in the system. When we become aware of it, it can feel worse than when we weren’t present in the body, but it was still there. We just become more aware of it.

As we begin to consciously feel it, our system opens up, and these energies begin to release. 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. It brings some up, and then there will be a release, followed usually by a period of integration. The mind can often interpret this as, “Oh, what happened to my spiritual journey? I was experiencing so much energy, and now everything stopped and slowed down.” But no, the system is processing, and it’s preparing for the next deepening or the next level that’s bubbling up.

I often use this analogy with people. I have a program called “Integrating Emotional Trauma.” It’s one of the focuses of the work I do with people: 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 them, it can be really overwhelming. I often talk about the analogy of a soda bottle: if you shake it up and then take the lid off, 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. 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 endpoint.” It’s not about getting to the endpoint where “I’m healed,” or “Everything’s fixed,” or “This energy is released.” That’s another trap of the mind: “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”—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: Do you think there is an endpoint? Have you reached an endpoint?

Louise: No. My sense is that the formless and the form are both infinite in nature. 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 that it gets much easier to meet it and be present with the sensations, because it’s less intense. The energy is dissolving, and our presence is deepening. So it just gets easier.

That’s a good thing, but as we move deeper in the system, we start to access ancestral traumas and collective traumas. Even past-life traumas can start to bubble up. So it’s better to change the way we relate to 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: Yeah, I agree. And I think there is an end, but, 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, integration, and growth in various ways.

Yeah. To me, our true nature is divine perfection. It’s all that is. It’s the formless essence that animates all form. It’s oneness; it’s connected; it’s unconditional love, peace, beauty. And we’re also this temporary expression of form, which is imperfectly perfect. There’s always room for improvement. We can always become kinder, more compassionate, more loving, more gentle on that level.

Divine Nature and the Imperfectly Perfect Human

Louise: Yeah. To me, our true nature is divine perfection. It’s all that is. It’s the formless essence that animates all form. It’s oneness; it’s connected; it’s unconditional love, peace, beauty. And we’re also this temporary expression of form, which is imperfectly perfect. There’s always room for improvement. We can always become kinder, more compassionate, more loving, more gentle on that level.

Rick: 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 the top priority, that 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?

It’s not a prerequisite to go to India for this. Awakening can happen anywhere, in any situation. It’s more about our inner state of being, and giving our attention to every single moment, wherever we are, whoever we’re with, whatever we’re doing. The primary focus is within.

Louise: It’s not a prerequisite to go to India for this. Awakening can happen anywhere, in any situation. It’s more about our inner state of being, and giving our attention to every single moment, wherever we are, whoever we’re with, whatever we’re doing. The primary focus is within.

Rick: 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: Absolutely. It’s not that when we become fully present in this moment, fully aware of our inner experience, 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 we’ll become much more efficient.

Rick: Yeah. There’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, which is, “Yoga is skill in action.” 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.

Yeah, because then our actions don’t come from 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 in harmony with that unified nature. So we contribute positively to the collective field, rather than creating more stress and chaos.

Louise: Yeah, because then our actions don’t come from 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 in harmony with that unified nature. So we contribute positively to the collective field, rather than creating more stress and chaos.

Rick: Yeah, good. A 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’s asking for a bit of elaboration.

Louise: So if we pity someone, then usually there’s a story running in the mind, like, “Oh, poor them. They’re suffering.” And we’re perceiving this moment through a filter of that story. We’re experiencing the other person as a concept, as a story in our mind: “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, we begin to feel people from a deeper level and relate to them from that deeper level. 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. That opens us up to this flow of unconditional love. 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: 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: Yeah.

Rick: 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 anything; it just started happening. So let’s talk a little bit about that episode, or that period of your life.

Finding a New Direction After Awakening

Louise: Yeah. So that was after I’d been to India and experienced this nondual awakening in Mooji’s satsang. There was a recognition that it wasn’t true to go back to my old life. There was no question; I wasn’t going back to teaching. My money started running out, and there was a realization: “Okay, well, what am I going to do now?” 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 really wanted. I kind of gave up the personal desire and said, “Okay, just your will is…” I’ve forgotten the second half of that quote. Can you finish it for me?

Rick: “Thy will be done?” That kind of a thing?

Louise: “Thy will be done.” Yeah. And I made a prayer. This prayer just really came from my heart: “Please”—just speaking to the intelligence of life—“please use me, or show me what you want.” If it had shown me, “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.

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 was 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, almost like paralysis. I felt this kind of pressure come here. It felt like something wanted to come through, like information wanted to come through.

Rick: Did it feel like a chick was trying to hatch from an egg? Almost as if there was a…

Louise: Kind of…

Rick: …pecking from the inside?

Louise: Yeah, kind of…

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: And I had this feeling like if someone were to ask a question, then this tap could open, and it could just flow out. At that moment, my partner came into the room. I was in this deep state of paralysis where I could barely speak, and I just kind of whispered, “Ask me a question.” And he did. He looked at me—I’m lying on the bed—and said, “What’s going on with her?” I said it again: “Ask me a question.”

Rick: He said, “What do you want for dinner?”

Louise: And he said, “Louise, are you okay? What’s going on?” So I realized, “Okay, he’s not going to get it.” I came out of this meditation, and then I told him my experience. The next day, I said, “Okay, I’ll try it and see if that happens again. This time, ask a question.” So I did it again, and then he started asking questions, and this information started coming through, which turned into channeling. I was doing that for a few years, and…

Rick: Let me ask you some questions about it. I’ve interviewed some channelers—Bashar through Darryl Anka, Suzanne Giesemann, 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 comes through, in a way.

I have a few questions that I sometimes wonder about. Obviously, your intuition was opening, your third eye, sixth chakra, and so on. These are sort of skeptical questions, but they might help clear other people’s doubts and understanding, too. I wonder if sometimes people who do this are just tapping into a deep level of creativity, where you can fabricate all kinds of stories and information, like a good science fiction writer or something. It’s not that you’re actually channeling some collective from the Pleiades, but that’s the explanation or definition used to give some kind of context to what you’re saying. It’s not actually coming from these beings 500 million light-years away, or whatever it is. It’s coming from the unified field, the field of all possibilities, the home of all knowledge from which all information comes and in which all information resides.

You’re just tapping into that and serving as a channel for it. That’s my first question.

Louise: Well, ultimately, everything is coming from that field. Whether it’s directly from that field or through a Pleiadean collective, where are they getting the information from?

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Louise: And really, there’s no way to know this. I don’t know the answer. 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. If it resonates and you find it helpful, great. And if it doesn’t, great.”

Rick: Good answer. Did you find yourself saying things that Louise Kay had no knowledge of, but that were just coming out all of a sudden?

Louise: Rarely. Most of the time, it felt like this energy, or these beings—I’ll just speak like that—were using information that was already somewhere in the system. 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, the information was able to come through.

Rick: It’s interesting. So, 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: Yeah, that’s what it felt like, like they could use what was here.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: And they were coming through this. For the most part, there are a few cases when little bits came through.

Rick: So, obviously, you wouldn’t have been able to channel in Japanese or something. You had to use your instrument; it wasn’t designed for that.

Louise: Yeah.

Rick: 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: I don’t really know. In my experience, 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 affects it. I don’t really know. I just kind of surrendered to it and let it happen.

Rick: 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: 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.

Rick: Did you sometimes ask—what was it, “Aikon”? That was the name of the collective you channeled?

Louise: Aikon.

Rick: Did you sometimes ask them your own questions, or just field questions from people you were doing this for?

Louise: No, I never asked them anything personal. It felt like it wasn’t for that. I just never felt the need to, either. It felt like it was for other people.

Rick: 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: Most of the time, I felt energized after it. A few times, afterwards, I felt tired or drained if the person interacting with Aikon wasn’t really interested. A few times, they were just kind of aggressive and…

Rick: So you mean somebody in the audience? They were being kind of mean or rude or something?

Louise: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: Yeah, I think because my system was so open and kind of vulnerable when I was in that channeling state, it would affect me. But it only happened one or two times.

Rick: Okay. What else? There were one or two other things. Oh, yeah. So, how long did you do it altogether?

Louise: The channeling was about two years.

Rick: 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: Yeah.

Rick: …clean toilets…

Louise: Yeah. I actually didn’t really have that in mind. It just kind of organically started growing. I was doing it for fun, and friends were like, “Oh, this is fun. I want to ask a question.” Then word spread, and someone else wanted to ask a question. I thought, “Hey, why don’t I do sessions for people doing this?” I put a few videos on YouTube just for fun, and it kind of exploded.

Rick: Those videos are still there, if people want to see them. I’ve found that healers and channelers and things like that often become very popular. I sometimes get the feeling that people like someone who can do it for them, as opposed to someone who 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: Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m feeling much more resonance with what is being shared now.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: 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.” One of the main messages of Aikon is, “Look, we’re not interested in that. We want to support you to get in touch with this yourself, to…”

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: …get in touch with your own inner knowing, to really empower people. To me, it feels more important that we give up that projection and connect to our own inner knowing and our own inner guidance.

Rick: Yeah, and of course that happens with earthly teachers, too, where in some cases it seems to be all about them. “Oh, aren’t I special?” 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: Yeah, I always tell people, “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: Yeah. I’ll tell you a story I just heard the other day from Swami Sarvapriyananda. Some guy came to Ramana and said, “Ramana, what should I do?” Ramana said, “Know yourself.” And he said, “I’m a great devotee of Narayana.” Ramana said, “That’s fine.” Then he asked, “When I die, will I be able to go to Narayana’s abode?” Ramana said, “Sure.” He said, “Oh, great. Will I be able to talk to him?” Ramana said, “Sure.” Then he asked, “Will Narayana talk to me?” Ramana said, “Oh, yeah.” So he asked, “Well, what will he say to me?” Ramana said, “He’ll say, ‘Know yourself.’”

Two questions about the channeling still. 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 chakra could get cleared out even more and become wide open?

Louise: No, it didn’t really feel like that. It felt like the clearing and the integration were happening in the whole system.

Rick: Well, okay. So it wasn’t just enlivening this chakra; the channeling actually had a clearing and integrating effect on all of you, on your whole system.

Louise: 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. There were a lot of traumas in the system that came up, a lot of releases, and a lot of seeing of unconscious conditionings and behavioral patterns. As they were more seen, they began to fall away. As the energies were processed, the system started to open, and a higher consciousness began to move through.

Rick: 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: That’s my sense.

Rick: Okay, good. And then, 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: There was a growing feeling of something just wanting to express like this, without the channeling. I had an intuitive knowing that the channeling was going to come to an end. I could feel that something new was birthing. Aikon spoke to me directly one day. It was only the second time they had ever spoken to me directly, and they said, “We shall be leaving soon.” I knew it, and it felt right before they said it. So I wasn’t disappointed. It was more like, “Oh, yeah, I know.” Then, pretty quickly after that information came, it fell away. I was doing group channeling meetings in Rishikesh at the time, and I had these posters all around town. I showed up at this meeting, everyone came to see me channel, and I said, “Look, it’s not true for me anymore.”

Rick: Interesting. Did they want their money back?

Louise: Well, it was by donation, so… Some of them walked out, and some of them stayed. It was really nice. They came to me and said, “Oh, I appreciate that you’re following your truth.”

Rick: Yeah, that’s good.

Louise: It was nice.

Rick: Do you get the feeling that there are higher entities of various sorts, like Aikon—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, and are doing what they can, from their level, to help it out?

Louise: My sense is, yeah.

Rick: Okay, good. A few questions came in. Let’s do those now. 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.

Separation, Manyness, and the Sense of Unfulfillment

Louise: 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.”

We often try to fill that hole, get that fulfillment through experiences, or wait 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, 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 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. 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. 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 infinite. Yeah, most people have heard the analogy of the ocean: the waves arise, and it seems like the wave is somehow separate, but it’s made of the same water. It’s born from the ocean, and it lives its limited life, its expression of form, and it returns to the ocean.

Rick: 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, Gaudapada did a commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad, and the whole thing is this deep logical argument about how creation actually never arose in the first place. The rope never became a snake, and so on and so forth. And it’s definitely true at its own level. But then even he wrote another whole scripture, which was all in praise of the Divine Mother and the divine play of creation, and so on.

So if somebody tries to emphasize one particular perspective to the exclusion of all others, it usually ends up being a kind of 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: 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”—and the system is totally clear, that expresses through the system. Wisdom, peace, love, harmony—that’s its nature. So it doesn’t need to think, “Oh, is this the wrong, right, or wrong thing to do?” It just naturally contributes harmony.

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. 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: 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, “Oh, well, 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 unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Absolute reality does not negate or obviate relative realities and the rules which govern them.

Louise: 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.

🕊️ Past lives and spiritual development

Rick: 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. In fact, there’s immediate feedback. Wouldn’t you say, Louise? I mean, if you do go off the mark a little bit, you get smacked more readily and notice it, and it helps to keep you on track.

Louise: 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 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, everything they say or everything they do is the absolute truth. We need to really be vigilant and discerning.

Rick: Hear, hear. I really, I heartily agree with you. In fact, I, along with Jack O’Keefe, Craig Holliday, 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. 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. 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: Yeah.

Rick: Do you have any more comment on that?

Louise: Not right now.

Rick: 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: Who is this question from?

Rick: Marilyn in Texas.

Louise: Thank you, Marilyn.

Rick: So, do you remember the question, after I gave you that flattering and embarrassing compliment from Marilyn?

Louise: Maybe just run it by me one more time.

Planning for the Future Without Fear

Rick: 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: 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 Rick and I want to schedule a Skype call, we can have a conversation about, “When is there a free spot in your calendar?” And as we’re talking, our attention is fully present in the now, and we’re deeply connected.

If fear-based thoughts arise, then it’s great that you’re already aware of those thoughts. It’s not necessarily that the best way to deal with them is to try to avoid them by making plans, but rather to simply observe them and not give them any power. 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 fear, then life is going to reflect that back. 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…” Everything’s kind of logical and analytical, trying to avoid things or manipulate and control life.

When we give up all that and just be, then the desire of what we want to do in the future doesn’t come from the mind’s desire. It comes from a deeper intuitive knowing. It’s like we’re operating and relating with life on a different level. So the key is to not engage with those thoughts. 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?” Most of the time, we become aware that there’s a contraction somewhere. Then we just be with that, feel it, and give it gentle, loving attention. As we give it that gentle, loving attention, it begins to soften and open, and that energy releases. It stops producing those fear-based thoughts. It creates space in the system for that natural flow of life to express.

Rick: Let me make up a concrete example. This is probably not what Marilyn is thinking about, but it might help to bring it down to Earth a little bit more. Marilyn is from Texas, and the COVID pandemic is pretty bad in Texas. 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. There are 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.

A lot of people are actually saying that they feel like fear is the greatest pandemic right now, more than the disease, although I don’t know if I agree with that. A lot of people are feeling fear, and—

Person: For good reason.

Rick: 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. Don’t make me wear a mask.” And there’s this kind of stigma about being careful in some people’s minds. So there’s a lot of fear in society right now. Maybe Marilyn is obviously feeling some fear for some reason. I don’t know what the actual reason is, 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 address her concern?

Louise: Well, it would be the same with any decision-making process. If we try to make a decision based on the level of the mind, then the mind will rationalize, look at the information available, and weigh the pros and cons. That can be helpful, but there’s a way that we can access information on a deeper level. When we move from that place and take action from that place, it results in more flow, coherence, and harmony in life.

So we become very still and open to the silence that’s here beyond thought, beyond the mental noise, noticing the awareness in which the thoughts are arising. We rest the attention there, kind of tune in, and allow the knowing to arise from there. This is how we move through life. Life presents a situation, and we can either react to it 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. Then we take action on it. All of that energy that goes to, “Oh, what shall I do?” and worrying and fear—it’s just not necessary anymore.

Yeah. There’s a line from the Upanishads that 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?

Rick: Yeah. There’s a line from the Upanishads that 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: Yeah.

Rick: 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 foundational fear that underlies things all the time, wouldn’t you say?

Louise: 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 going to come from?”

Rick: 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: 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 easily. It’s fighting for its life, fighting for control, 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.”

What’s required, in that moment when that fear or lack of trust arises, is to surrender everything and open fully to that fear. This story of the Buddha comes to mind, when he was sitting in meditation and all the demons—the different demons—came to him in images. 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: It’s kind of the old hut-and-palace analogy. Let’s say you’ve been living in this shoddy little hut, and then off in the distance there’s this beautiful palace. Someone says, “That’s your palace. Leave the hut and move into it.” And you start to go toward the palace, 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: Yeah.

Rick: 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: Yeah. It’s one of the great spiritual paradoxes: “There is nothing to do; you are already that. It is done.” And at the same time, in time and space, this process happens. There’s an unfolding, and there’s integration. 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 and shifting backwards and forwards until we become more and more deeply anchored in this natural state of being.

I like the comparison to a baby learning to walk. First it’s crawling, and that, to me, feels kind of like the seeker mode. Then we’re meditating, practicing, and at some point it stands up. 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: I’ll always be a baby.

Louise: It just gets up, and then it falls down. It gets up and walks a few steps. 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,” which makes us think that something’s wrong. But it’s not. It’s perfect just like that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good. I mean, 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. 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: Yeah. So we experience this opening to higher consciousness, and in a way, that’s like the beginning. The process of deepening and integration starts. A lot of healing takes place on that journey. On that human level, it seems like there is no end to it.

Rick: Yeah. Somebody sent me a quote the other day, and I actually emailed it to you. 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. Here’s how it goes. It relates to what we’re saying:

And actually, 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: For me, I love the mystery and the magic of this universe, and I love not knowing. That’s part of the beauty of this dance of creation. It’s so immense, beyond what the mind can imagine. If we even just try to comprehend with our minds the size of the known universe and the billions of galaxies, to comprehend that is… there’s no words.

There is such beauty and magic in the mystery of everything. To see life through these eyes 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: That’s beautifully put. Have you written any books? You’d be a good writer.

Louise: No, I haven’t. Not yet.

Rick: Yeah. Do you tend to write little things? I know you have a bunch of blog posts. Do you express yourself in words, in written words, very often?

Louise: Sometimes.

Rick: You might start collecting that stuff. You could turn it into a book.

Louise: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. That’s beautifully put. It kind of reminds me of 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 unmanifest and all. It sounds kind of “plain vanilla,” but when you actually consider the wonder, mystery, beauty, incredible complexity, and vastness of the universe, it seems to me much richer, much more profound, in a way, than an emphasis on just unmanifest flatness.

Louise: Yeah. To experience that being from the perspective of the mind is the most boring thing in the universe. 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: Yeah. All the points you make are so good. Somebody was talking about depression the other day, and I was thinking of the old analogy of a fish being thirsty while it’s swimming in the ocean, or looking for the ocean, or some such thing, even though it’s immersed in the ocean. One of the characteristics of this ultimate reality that we keep talking about is Ananda, meaning bliss. If a person is feeling depressed or bored, or life seems to be empty and meaningless, it’s like that fish. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit?

Louise: I really love what Jeff Foster says about depression. I don’t know if you’ve heard his take on it.

Rick: I know Jeff, and I’ve interviewed him, but I don’t remember what he said about that.

Reframing Depression as a Call for Deep Rest

Louise: Okay. So, he turns “depressed” into “deep rest.” It’s the system just longing to stop, to… And I’m not quoting Jeff here; I don’t want to misrepresent him. It’s just to take a break and take a deep, deep rest.

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.” 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 are thought patterns and stories arising that we’re identified with, which are of a negative nature.

By watching them, by observing them, we’re able to disidentify 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. Often, it feels a distorted sense of pleasure by feeling suffering and feeling like a victim. So we’re able to disidentify from the mental level of suffering and look at what’s experienced in the body. How is depression experienced in the body?

When we really look with curiosity, we’ll probably find that there’s some pressure on the chest, or contraction in the belly. Rather than trying to get rid of that and making it wrong, if we just very gently say, “Ah, I see you, I feel you, and it’s okay that you’re here,” and 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.

When we really look with curiosity, we’ll probably find that there’s some pressure on the chest, or contraction in the belly. Rather than trying to get rid of that and making it wrong, if we just very gently say, “Ah, I see you, I feel you, and it’s okay that you’re here,” and 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: Yeah, that’s nice, and I like the “deep rest” angle, because sometimes depression can be caused by a backlog of fatigue. You’re just burdened by tiredness, and sometimes a few good nights’ sleep and some nice, deep, restful meditations can totally transform your perspective. But whether we call it fatigue or trauma or what, there seems to be a tendency for the system to accumulate stuff. 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: Yeah, we first have to meet what Eckhart calls the “pain body.” 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. They can be intense, and they can be really unpleasant. I often use this analogy of weightlifting. If you want to get these huge muscles, which is like being deeply anchored in presence—

Rick: Like mine. Yeah. You see?

Louise: —you’ve got to be able to lift those big weights, but you can’t lift the big weights until you start with the little weights. So you just meet what you can and be present with what you can, consistently, moment to moment, opening to the inner experience. 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: And would you say that the deeper traumas or the deeper impressions 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. 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: Yeah, it seems like that. And it seems like an onion, with these layers and layers. What I’m coming to understand more and more in this work that I’m doing with people is that 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: Well, we’re just about at 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 everyone listening to this will concur with Marilyn that they feel appreciation for what you’re doing in that way. You’re definitely helping.

Louise: Thank you.

Rick: What would you like to say in terms of how people can connect with you or interact with you? What do you have going on that people can plug into?

Louise: Right now, with this lockdown situation, I’m doing open Zoom meetings twice a week, online, by donation. The next one’s tomorrow, actually, so everyone’s welcome to join. They can go to my website, louisekay.net. I think it’s louisekay.net/zoom, the page to register for those.

Rick: And there’s probably a link on there or something. So you have an events page?

Louise: Yeah, it’s on the events page.

Rick: 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. Then you can click the “More Info” tab and sign up for it.

Louise: And then on the 31st of July and the 1st and 2nd of August, there’s an online weekend retreat, which is an opportunity for us to deepen into presence together, to meet these energies, or these repressed emotions and traumas in the system, and to explore together.

Rick: Have you done any of those before, weekend online retreats?

Louise: This is the first online one. Yeah, they’re usually in groups 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: 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: Yeah.

Rick: But it’s nice to get away to a retreat place if you can. I hope that goes well.

Louise: Yeah, and there’s a five-day retreat in North Carolina at the end… October 30th. We’ll see.

Rick: We’ll see.

Louise: We’ll see if life…

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: …what life wants.

Rick: You probably have an email signup thing on your website here, I see.

Louise: Yeah.

Rick: Subscribe.

Louise: Yeah. You can subscribe.

Rick: Yeah. They can stay connected with you, and then they’ll get notified of things that are going on. So people are welcome to do that. Well, thanks so much, Louise. I really appreciate your spending this time with us. 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. 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: Thank you, Rick. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. I enjoyed it.

Rick: Yeah.

Louise: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah, thank you. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching, whether on the live feed or later on. I appreciate your attention.

I just want to say briefly that you can subscribe to the YouTube channel if you like. Click on the subscribe button. And if you want to be notified every time I release one of these, click on the little bell next to the YouTube channel. It will notify you every time. But I only do one of these a week, so you’re not going to get bombarded with things.

The same goes for the email notification system on batgap.com. If you sign up, you’ll get one email a week, and a second one three days later if you don’t open the first one. It’s the “In Case You Missed It” email. There are a few other things there you might want to check out: the audio podcast, if you like to listen to audio instead of sitting and watching videos, and various other things. Just explore the menus and you’ll see them.

Thank you for listening or watching, and see you next week. Next week is a fellow named Andrew Hughson. When you look at his pictures, you might think, “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, came out of it, and is really bright-looking now and doing great things. So we’ll be speaking with Andrew next week.

The week after that is James Finley, an associate of Richard Rohr, a mystical contemplative Christian, and Cynthia Bourgeault. So I’ll be speaking with James.

Anyway, we usually have these scheduled a couple of months in advance, and there’s an Upcoming Interviews page where you can see who’s scheduled. Again, thanks for listening and watching, and thanks again, Louise.

Louise: Thanks, Rick.

Rick: You’re welcome.