Your Desires Point Toward The Stars - When You Get Quiet

Desire stops being a guilty want and starts looking like a navigation tool, the inner “stars” we search for when life feels cloudy. We work out how to separate fear-based programming from inspired curiosity so the next step becomes clear even when the big plan is not. 

• the origin of desire as “asking for stars” to find direction 
• desire reframed as guidance rather than selfishness 
• ego as the story of being a body and being alone 
• survival needs and Maslow’s hierarchy as drivers of motivation 
• socially constructed wants and the pressure of “should” 
• boredom defined as a message that we’re meant for more 
• a personal wake-up call around work, debt, and maintaining stuff 
• learning to listen through silence, meditation, and self-hypnosis 
• a 30-minute daily practice with no phone and no distractions 
• where ideas come from and why inspiration arrives when the mind slows 
• sorting worry thoughts from exciting thoughts that feel alive 
• shifting from five-year plans to the next inspired action 

Thanks for hanging out today, and thanks for listening and interacting, and have a beautiful day.

Transcript

Weather Check And Why Desire Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:09

We are online.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Cloudy day. Cloudy day, windy, wind coming right in from the south.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

But it is not snow and it is not rain, at least not yet. So we celebrate the little things.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Try to get some stuff done.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

This moment we're focused on talking about for the final time. The third time in the final time. It's not the third time for us. We've been talking about it a lot. We uh had a nice day yesterday. We ended up not recording the conversation, but we had a nice conversation with Barb. And it was really a lot about how to find and follow inspired thought. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Let's uh start where you started this morning.

Desire Means Asking For Stars

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yeah. So I I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I looked up the the etymology of desire, and it comes from an old nautical term meaning to long or miss or request stars to be seen in the night sky so that they could navigate. So when there wasn't stars, they would say the the Latin version, I think. I don't know if I can say this. De Ciderare. Oh man, I butchered that. So they would say that, maybe in their own languages, of course, to want four stars, to request stars to be seen for navigation.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

So a desire is about the stars and direction. It's kind of nice. It's an it's you know, it's for me, reframing starts in a lot of different places, and all you really want to do is think about things differently. You know, you can say, Oh, I never thought of it that way. It's kind of nice because it opens the door to new ways of thinking. It reminds you that your program is incomplete. It reminds you that your program can be shaped or changed, that you don't have to think things the way you always have. And I like I liked that this morning when you told me about that. You know, it it it puts the word desire in a different place in my mind. It's you know, there's there's a lot of stuff around desiring about wanting. You know, there's there's a lot of questions that that were raised with, you know. I have a lot of desires, you know. That was I heard that, you know, from from my parents. Now say my father, you know, you have a lot of desires, and it was kind of like almost being chastised, you know, that you you're you're not allowed to want that much, you know, what we want, what we yearn for, and and and sometimes it's very practical stuff, you know. I I want some ice cream, I desire ice cream. Sometimes it's you know, I I desire practical things, and sometimes it's it's desiring I want some new clothes, I want some new shoes. And I like thinking about desire being of the stars for the purpose of navigating my life. I like that idea that maybe inside of us there is there is a deep awareness of the direction we're meant to go. And our desires are what guide us along that path. And that's that's a neat way to think of it. You know, we're quick to yeah, we're we're quick to judge concepts of ego, but I'm I'm learning more and more that you know, in a world of duality, there is that which I want for all, and there is that which I want for me. And ego is can be a driving force, but it can also be a real hurdle to trip over to get where you want to go. Yeah, what comes to mind is the old saying, you know, the fingers pointing at the moon.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

How old is that?

Ego Driven Wants Versus True Direction

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Um it's an old, old saying. It comes from I learned it when I was studying the Tao Ta Ching years and years and years ago. And, you know, the the master said, My words are like fingers pointing at the moon. If you focus too much on my finger, you'll miss the moon. Right. And, you know, I I like that idea that these words, the history of these words can help us reframe and reconsider. Well, where are we headed and why are we headed there? And where is the inspiration coming from?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah, man, I think, you know, when we think about what you mentioned just a moment ago about ego, I want to preface with, you know, sometimes the ego helps us, but when most of the time I think it kind of gets in the way, it it creates fear, and you need to have this and you need to want for that, and this is what you need to do as a human and to to boost the ego. And I think the ego can get in front of desires, it can lead you to desires that you might think you want. And I think, yeah, I there's my mind gets caught up with all the the side notes of that, where you know, I I I say you might think you want, but maybe you do want. Right. There's just so many levels to this. But in the broad sense, the ego can be driving many of our desires. And I think it's mainly out of fear before we started talking here. I think, you know, I wrote, I wrote, speak on the truth that desires are born with you, but fabricated desires are born of fear. And I think we've touched on this a little bit. And I don't want to paint, you know, with a wide brush here, but think of a lot of the desires that you have in life, and the idea of fear, if we dig far enough down, let's actually I I'm I'm being prompted to change out the the word fear for survival. Survival. So many of our desires are born of survival.

Boredom As A Signal You’re Meant

SPEAKER_01 7:22

We we talked about that in the in the first the first time we talked about desires, we were, you know, we were on that continuum that has, you know, I have the my desires, I have what I want, I have what I need. We talked about needs and the human needs that we have, and we delved into Maslow's hierarchy, and we we got an idea that you know a lot of what we're on a day-to-day basis sort of yearning for is that base survival security belonging stuff. Right? We want uh we want to fit in, we want to survive, we want to feel safe. There, you know, that's that's really born of survival, and which is which is a fear of sorts, right? It is it is an anticipation of not having it that creates in us an emotion of fear, which drives us. And that's what the the humanist psychologists were about, understanding motivation. And we talked about that, and we sort of separated that, and that's part of the reason I love talking about the stars today, because there's that world, and then we started talking about on the next day, we talked about sort of the social construction of reality, how our anything that isn't a base need, a lower need, a survival kind of need is very much shaped by the world around us, telling us, you know, what we should want, what we should desire. And so in the sequence, we're trying to move past that. And I like the idea that that the stars are navigating us, that there's a purpose behind our lives. You know, I think, you know, we talk about ego, and I I was sitting here thinking, well, it's not so much ego. Ego is, you know, if we're looking for a definition, I would say that ego is the idea that you're a body and you're alone. You're a body and you're alone, and that you need to take care of that body in a world that's up to get you. And you need to find your own individual way of going. And ego then can become, you know, that story that we tell ourselves that is sometimes I'm not good enough, and other times I'm way better than others. And those are the kinds of sort of ego expressions that we don't like again, and we see them in others and we try to check them in ourselves. But if we took ego in another direction and acknowledged, you know, that there's more to me than this body, and and I'm not alone, then really ego starts to become more of an idea of uniqueness, a genuine, clearly, meaningfully different aspect of creation. Each of us brings a uniqueness with us. And so I think as we head in that direction and we talk about where do these desires come from? Where are the meaningful desires, right? Where's our yearning for the stars and the direction that we were meant to go, rather than the socially constructed direction we were meant to go? And and something beyond just getting through today, right? You know, taking care of ourselves. There's nothing wrong with taking care of yourself. You're just meant for more, you know. When we when we define boredom in our work in hypnosis, you know, we use the definition, you know, it's a message. All emotions are messages. All emotions are a response to the interpretation of the situation we're in. And boredom is the message that we're meant for more than this. I'm meant for more than this. I'm meant for more than sitting here. I'm meant for more than watching TV. I'm meant for more than playing this silly game some more. I'm meant for more than going to work and coming home and falling asleep on the couch. And so I just like that idea of desires. I thought, you know, that's a good way to start. It's the stars that are going to guide us. So how do we differentiate then? Because that's really where the question began, right? The question began with Brian sort of saying, how do we differentiate between socially constructed desires, right? I want a Ferrari, I want a big house, I want, you know, Prada. How do we differentiate between that and sort of more meaningful desires, higher desires, maybe, the stars we're yearning for, the direction that we really want that is uniquely ours.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Well, I liked what you said in our first in our first podcast about desires where you know it's like uh you're you're feeling like I'm not sure why I want that, but I would really love to accomplish that or move towards that. And maybe just asking yourself, well, why do I want that? Why do I want the Ferrari as opposed to I don't know, working with elderly or something? I don't know. I'm not sure. Exactly. There's so many that you could use.

The Should Life And Social Programming

SPEAKER_01 13:06

I think that there are, yeah, yeah. I think that we're really driving at the idea that we are shaped into someone who doesn't see themselves as worthy or deserving and believes they have to earn things, and that their relative position to other human beings, that comparison, which steals joy, as they say, that that desire for superiority to move past inferiority, to become someone of note, someone who is admired. These these things we tend to fall into social constructions. And if you say, you know, I want this because, and you have a good rational reason why you want something, that's that's just not a higher desire, right? That's that's a practical desire. That's if you can if you can explain why, then you've thought this through. This is logical, and it relates to you and your own view of yourself, who I am, what I am, right? Then you can go back to Maslow's hierarchy and you can sort of tick off the box, where does it sit there? And and this is important because you know this is the way we were raised, this is the way we do think. When you're in a position where you're you're saying, I'm not sure really why I want to live in another country, why I want to learn how to sail, why I need to write poetry or paint. I'm not sure why. It's not really about a why, it's just about a completeness, it's about a living, it's about being alive. You know, these I think are the the hints that say that, well, this is part of your higher purpose. This is part of your your true desires, your yearning for the stars. This is part of your seeking direction. And I think we can differentiate that. You know, we come back to that question, and I think it's just such an important question. What do I want? What do I want? And that's such a hard question. It's such a hard question for me. What do I want? I'm so full of shoulds. You know, I should I should be this, I should do that, I should. I've got a long list of to-dos today, and they're all things I should do. And there that not many of them are things that I want to do. You know, what do I want is an important question. And so I guess what I'm driving at here, and I hope we've adequately differentiated between, you know, desires that were that fulfill us, desires that drive our lives, desires that we were really here, we've really come here to pursue, versus desires that are shaped by society and keep us locked into a pattern of living. And I really believe that, you know, as we're living in a time where we're supposed to be questioning that. We're living in a time where we're watching things all around us decaying, falling apart, a system that we grew up in and it's not working anymore. And we're starting to see the truth behind it. We're starting to see that it serves some people and doesn't serve most people. We we're starting to realize that we are so lost in not knowing what our true desires are, our own yearning for stars and navigation and direction. We have no sense of our desires because we've just covered them in this programming. We've buried them deep below a world of shoulds, of who we should be and what we should do, and and ideas that just didn't exist 200 years ago. 200 years ago, people didn't get up and say, I had to have a career. People, people didn't weren't born and asked, who were you going to work for and what were you going to do? Right? This isn't what people were. People lived, they they they lived rurally, they lived on the land, they lived in alignment with nature. These were just different ways. And so I think that when you just see that contrast between the development of society today, and I'm not saying it's all bad or it's all good or anything. I'm just saying that it is. It's developed, and we compare that to past societies, we compare that to past worlds and what human beings were doing. We can see in a deeper, better way how much we are programmed to believe in belonging and fitting in and being accepted as so much more important than being who we uniquely are and expressing that uniqueness in the way that we we intended to express it. You know, I come back to context, right? If you are a body, if you are an individual, if you're in a crazy world that's out to get you, and that's it, well, that's your context. And I can understand why you would take on the shoulds and try to live a life within society. And okay, but if you see yourself as an eternal being, as a spirit in a body, in a particular time, having a particular experience, bringing forth a uniqueness, a genuineness that you are deeply and completely in a world that has developed that way. Well, now it's a challenge. Now it's a your context is one of how do I find my way into being that unique, authentic being that that I was meant to try to be.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

And I think that most of our desires that are soul-led desires instead of human ego-led desires, or should desires, or I need to or have to do this to get along in society. I think they're born of creativity as well. I think they're very creative desires because we are at our essence creators, creative beings. But I also think that in terms of asking ourselves, what do I want? You know, we're not, we're not often given the platform or the ability to stop and ask ourselves this. I know during the I don't see it as a joke. You know, it's not like the joke during the pandemic, but during the pandemic, so many people changed careers, they had time to think, they had time to say, what what do I actually want? They started breaking baking bread. You know, that's the joke of the pandemic. But, you know, there's there's all these creative endeavors that were born from that. And people could actually ask themselves, oh, what what do I want now? I have all this time on my hands, maybe. And what is it that that I want to do? But I think that a lot of us are scared to ask that question. What do I want? Because it probably means that some things maybe need to shift or change.

The Midlife Wake Up About Stuff

Silence Practice To Hear Inspiration

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Or that you need to reject portions of your programming. I think one of the most difficult things is differentiating our uniqueness from our program. It's really hard for me. It's really hard for me to say, well, who am I beyond how I've been trained and educated and controlled and my context of who I am and what I am and what I'm supposed to be doing, and who I'm supposed to become, and what I'm supposed to have, and where I'm at in my life, and what that lifestyle is supposed to be. And there's a there's a whole lot of, yeah, there's a whole lot of just survival stuff in there, and there's a whole lot of belonging stuff in there. But somewhere underneath all of that, and I think for many of us, almost to the point of being denied, there is the desires, that which you want to address, that which you Yearn to engage. I think there is a learning to listen to yourself that is the missing piece. And that's really what I want to talk about. I think that that's the stuff, you know, like how do I know what my desires are? And how do I know what I want to be doing in life, not what I should be doing? But how do I know what's a program and what is me? Right? Because some of these programs feel good if you're successful. What do I know is a distraction instead of that which leads me, the stars that lead me towards where I'm really meant to go? You know, how do I find that? There is a learning to listen to yourself. That it's interesting, you know, that that we're talking about this because Hillary and I are at that place in our life where we're trying to learn to listen to that. I am seeing the truth of a life where I have accumulated and I have owned, possessed, I have aspired, right? On, you know, uh we build a constructed reality, a socially constructed reality that says you you you reach this point in your life, and then you find a partner, and then you have children. And then through that process, you acquire and create a home. And that home becomes your focus and your career becomes your focus. And then from there, you go through that career for years and years and years, years and years and years. When you think about it, you know, you're talking about, you know, something that's, you know, akin to giving up a third of your life, right? And and certainly half of your aware life, of your adult life. And and you do the things that you're supposed to do. You know, you get yourself a nice big fat mortgage. You get yourself a nice big fat car loan, right? Because that's what you get. It's not, it's you, you you want the home, you want the car, but what you get is the debt. And then you spend a lot of time and a lot more money caring for those things you've got. Right? They're they're just constant. They're just constantly demanding time and money from you. And you try to fit in those peaceful moments where you enjoy the view, where those peaceful moments when you have connection with the family that you created, but you spend way more time on the other stuff. And then you're supposed to feel accomplished because you've reached a certain age. And if you haven't let your body break down, if you haven't experienced illness, you can talk about retirement, which is supposed to be a period of time where you don't work. And I think about that as craziness, right? Like, don't work. I uh most people I know don't know what to do other than work. You know, that they they'll fit in a game of golf, they'll fit in some hobbies, but they still need to feel that driving force that they think is what gives them meaning. And then there they are, surrounded by their stuff, and their family has moved on, and so there's a certain amount of loneliness. They're not going to work anymore, so there's a certain amount of loneliness, and then there's sort of a wake-up call that they're spending most of their time taking care of their stuff. And I believe that all too many people experience that as what life is about, that that gets described as a good life. And so for me, I've spent most of the last 20 years trying to unwind my mind. And I've been using hypnosis as the basic methodology for that. And I have come to the place in my life where I'm seeing the programmed nature of that, I'm seeing the illusory nature of that, I'm seeing the waste of my human energy in that. But I don't know what I want. But I know what I want is to no longer own a lot of stuff that I have to take care of and own a home that I have to take care of and pay for because it's not serving me. I'm serving it. I'm not, I have my moments where I enjoy my coffee and I feel like look what I did, here I am, and now I'm in retirement and I see the whole thing is falling. And I'm looking backwards and I'm enjoying that wake-up call, and I'm realizing, and this is huge for me, and I'm speaking for me, but if you relate, then great, because then we're talking about the same thing. I haven't a clue what I desire. And anything that I might say that I desire, I'm afraid of, or I think it's a waste of time, or I think that I'm deluding myself into thinking something can come of it. I anything that I would desire seems like a distraction. It seems like a fork in the road, and the one road is really well established, and this little path, I might have the urge, I might have the desire to go down that path, but it doesn't make sense. And I'm a logical guy, and I'm a practical guy. And so I think that for many people, and you don't have to be in retirement mode to wake up to this. In fact, I think we wake up to it many, many times. And many, many times we just take a deep breath, put our head down, and keep charging along the road we're on. Um, but we wake up many, many times in our lives and say, well, wait a second. And then we hear about the people who are doing things differently. And we we get excited about that. The people who are traveling the world while they work, people who get a bus and they pile their kids in the bus and they they live as they move across the country and they do their schooling at home on the bus, in beside a mountain or beside a river, or these kinds of things. And we look at them with great admiration. And that can happen at any time in your life. But I believe the question becomes where did that impulse, where did that inspiration come from? Where did they suddenly discover some stars that was leading them to move more towards their purpose? Where does inspiration come from? And I think it has to be listened for.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah. And not in a fear state. I think, you know, I'm I'm still learning how to do this. I can't say I'm very good at it. But I think just sitting in in meditation or just finding some silence in your life and asking yourself, I know we keep coming back to these words, you know, what do I want? What do I want? I think there should be some uh uh, you know, oof to that eye. And sitting with the emotions that can come from that, because I know when I asked that, I'm gonna say a year ago, over the over the past two years, I've been asking myself that. And I didn't quite ask myself in the way of what do I want. It was more like what brings me joy. And I couldn't find a lot. And that was sad to me. And so I think it's important when you first start asking yourself this, what do I want? Yeah, it's important to not run away from those emotions and really choose to to the the image that's coming to me is almost like you've got a butterfly net and you're cat, you're out there and you just choose to like go after it, go after it, get get the butterfly. Don't run away from it because it's in the running away that we like Les said, we put our head down and we just keep going, and then 10 years pass by and we look back and go, oh shit, I could have, I could have done this or I could have done that. I know when I was going back to school, you know, I I was like, oh my God, I'm I'm this age. I don't know if I want to be this age going back to school. And then I thought, you know, when I'm this age, I'll look back and go, oh, I wish I had gone to school. I'd be done this by now. And so I went. And and you know, whether that was the best thing for me, I'll never know. It was on my path, it was meant to be in some respect. So that's what I did. But I think, yes, at any age, I would say hopefully younger and younger, right? What do I want?

Where Ideas Come From In Quiet

SPEAKER_01 31:08

And and well, I'll jump in and say I'll jump in and say that that's I think that's beautiful. I think, you know, I'm I'm gonna sound nuts here, but I think that the dysfunction in our world and the way as young people are walking into the world and saying, this this story you told me I'm supposed to live doesn't work. I can't make it work. It's it's it's not happening the way you said it might, you know. And when the story, when the when the way of life becomes unaccessible, the first thing we do is blame others, right? We blame the system. We but we but what we need to look at is well, maybe that's not meant for me. And maybe this is my opportunity to create something different. And I think that there's some, there's, there's a, it's not a coincidence that we have a whole generation of people frustrated at the way the world is run and how it makes this dream they've been sold an impossibility, and that makes everything unfair. I don't think it's coincidence that at the same time, all of the structures of our world are coming into question, and our leaders are showing themselves to be, you know, not worth following and not worth listening to, and pretty self-centered, pretty self-focused, pretty, you know, our leaders on all dimensions are very self-serving in the way they exercise the authority that we've given them over us. And we're seeing that at the same time that we're having the frustration that this idea of a good life is not attainable. And I think that that's a good thing because it it causes us, it gives us the opportunity to stop and say, wait, what do I want? What do I want? Do I think I should have a house or do I want a house? What do I want? Do I want to live in a subdivision with all the good schools? Is that really what I want? Right? And and as they as they strive and they get frustrated, my hope is that they turn inward and ask for an awareness of their true desires. What do I really want out of this life? What do I really want for me, by me, to me? Right? What is that that's inside me that yearns for the stars? I think that the first step is getting quiet. Step one is getting quiet. And that's really hard to do in our world. You can't hear the inspiration inside you. You can't hear the inspiration that can come to you when you are busy. I used to uh when when students, you know, I loved these people because they really wanted to live well. They really wanted to do the right thing, they really wanted to feel good about themselves, and they would come to me and they would be a mess. My students would come to me, they'd be a mess, and it's just the truth, right? It's just the truth. It was such a hard time for them in a world that wasn't working well, and they were trying to find their place in it. And the most powerful things that I taught them, when they'd come to me in that state, I'd say, okay, well, here's where you start. I want you to spend 30 minutes every day by yourself with nothing but your thoughts. Pull yourself away from everybody, find a spot that is beautiful or at least safe. You know, find that spot and just sit for 30 minutes. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to get anything done. Don't let yourself be distracted by any form of entertainment. Just be with your thoughts for a little while. And at the end of that, if you wanted to write some stuff down, do that. But don't do it with the purpose of writing stuff down. Do it with the purpose of trying to slow your mind and disengaging from all the processes that you're engaged in. And of course, they'd come back to me because they'd want to talk about it. And the things that they would talk about would be how at first it was really uncomfortable. At first, they thought they couldn't do it. And isn't that amazing to actually think you can't sit quietly, that you're not built to sit quietly. And then they'd have a breakthrough where they would do it, and they would start to have thoughts that they'd never had before, and ideas would come to them. And then they'd continue and they'd start to get in a bit of a habit of doing this. And this, you know, to be honest with you, you know, if if if five people approached me, you know, only three of them would even try it, and only two of them would stick with it. And maybe one of them would get some deep inspiration. But what matters is that if you can do it, it works. You start to know yourself a little bit, and that's a wonderful journey. Now, ideas come to us, and I think this is important as a hypnotist. I think it's important for, you know, for me, it's always been, you know, where do ideas come from? For me, that was always my thing, right? The reason I wanted to understand the mind, the reason I took psychology courses, you know, and and psychologists can't tell you where ideas come from because they're busy just measuring ideas. Where do ideas come from? Random ideas that show up in your mind, where does that come from? You know, when you slow the mind down and you get past your worries, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, you're running to-do list in your mind. When you slow yourself down and you sit just quietly with yourself, ideas come to you. Ideas out of nowhere. And if these ideas solve problems for you, great, right? That's that's that's inspiration. That's worthwhile. You know, you know, Einstein talked about that, Edison talked about that, the the big inventors talked about that, how they would be quiet and then inspiration would come to solve a problem. And that's a worthwhile thing. But sometimes the ideas that come aren't about solving the problem. They're about who you are, they're about what you yearn for. And that's the stuff you follow. And I'm gonna say that that is the feeling of curiosity. That most of us don't have curiosity. We're constantly trying to solve problems, and we know how to do research, and we know how to Google, and we know how to ask Chat GPT, and we know how to get answers to problems that may or may not work and may or may not suit us and may or may not be good, but we know how to do it. But what we don't, what we haven't learned how to do, what Chat GPT does, what the phone does for us, is it takes the place of our inspiration. It takes, it gets, it's a solution to imminent problems rather than the guide that leads us to the stars, to our desires. And I think that that is the essential part. I've played with this. It is hard, it is so hard because your problems are the first thing that come to your mind, right? The first thing that comes into your mind is all the things you need to do, your to-do list and your and and your worries, right? And I don't know many people that don't have constant worries about money. How even when they talk about what they really, really want, the conversation goes immediately to how am I gonna get the money?

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

This is a really typical kind of mind-based, socially constructed mental process program that we all go through. And you gotta go through that and you gotta allow that, and then you gotta still stay quiet.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Yeah.

Sort Fear From Excitement Then Act

SPEAKER_01 39:39

And so it's not like suddenly a bolt is gonna hit you out of the sky. But what happens is you start to become good at quieting your mind and just being and opening yourself up to inspirations. Where did that idea come from? Ideas will start coming to you out of nowhere. They're gonna not make sense, they're gonna seem weird, right? Now you can you can accelerate this process by using meditation, you can accelerate this process by using self-hypnosis. You you can take yourself into a theta state. And in that state, you become much more open to this. That takes a lot of practice. Even when we have clients who come in and say, I want hypnosis, I usually think it's gonna take two or three sessions before they're even good at going into hypnosis. It's not that they can't be hypnotized, it's just they're just used to using their mind for other things. They're used to just keeping their mind active. They've actually been trained to think. If I'm not constantly thinking about my problems, I'm gonna find myself in trouble. If I don't actively worry, I'm gonna find myself in trouble. And they've been taught to fear. And I got to keep an eye out what's this hypnotist doing? Are they gonna program me to give them all my money? All these kinds of things, right? So these is the stuff that it takes a while as a hypnosis subject to learn to be good at. And so it sounds so trite, but it is the path. The path starts with sitting quietly by yourself. The path engages the observation of your mind rather than the utilization of it. And then when you start observing your mind and you start observing your emotions, and you start seeing how your emotions come about, and you start seeing how your emotions bring messages, right? For me, that's been the magic over the last 20 years is I've learned that process and I try to teach it to my clients. I try to teach them that this is what's going on in your mind, this is where it's coming from, these are the sources. Now being aware of it and then observing it and then stepping back from it. Now you are in a position to use your mind, you're in a position to ignore your mind when it's out of control, you're in a position to calm that mind so that it can be useful to you in a more meaningful way. And then inspiration starts to come. Ideas, where did that idea come from? When you start having that experience, where did that idea come from? Now, let's differentiate between fearful ideas and inspiring ideas. Understand that if there's a fearful idea that comes to you, that's not inspiration, that's programming. You've been programmed to be afraid, you've been programmed to be a warrior, you've been programmed to be concerned with fitting in and getting what you need. So just evaluate the ideas when they come. If you can step back and observe them, then you can say, well, that's a worry idea. That's not inspiration. That's the idea I've got to calm. Right. And the technique I teach people all the time is just, you know, imagine while you're sitting there quietly that there's a table in front of you. And you take that idea and you put it on the table and you say, I can pick it up later if I want. Right now, that's not what I'm going for. Right now, that's not what I want to pay attention to. And then I'm going to say something that you're going to think is nuts because it's nutty and it feels nutty. You're going to get an idea that looks nutty. You're going to get an idea that seems crazy. You're going to get an idea come to you that you think is, what? What? What's that? You're going to get an image, you're going to get a vision, you're going to get an idea in some form. And the strange thing about it is it feels good. It feels good. It's exciting. It's joyful. It's interesting. It's enticing. It draws you. You're going to get an idea like that. And that's the good stuff. And no matter how nutty you want to label it, no matter how crazy. You're out there, you want to say it is. Those are the ideas worth writing down. Those are the ideas worth observing. Those are the ideas that are probably the stars getting revealed by the clouds. So you have a sense of where you really yearn to go as a being, as a unique aspect of the universe. And spend time with that and explore it. Because that's curiosity. And that's curiosity is the thing that leads you to where you're meant to go in the moment, not forever. I'll say that as a final point. You know, we're always thinking about what we should do with our lives. What should I do with my life? Where's my path? Right? Where am I going to end up? And a better question, a much more effective question that when inspiration answers it, it's really, really useful. It's not what am I going to do with my life? What is my path? It's what do I want to do next? What do I want to do now? Where is my curiosity leading me now? And in the busyness of our lives and in the demands of our lives, if we spent time just saving a website or making a note or carrying around a notebook and writing these ideas down. And then when we have downtime, that's what we use our computers for. That's what we use our phones for. Not to distract and comfort us, but to explore that little piece of something weird that came to you and stimulated your curiosity. What would that be like? How does that work? How can I make that happen? It starts with sitting, it starts with being calm and quiet. It starts with differentiating between fear and excitement. It starts with observing your mind rather than running with it. And it's hard in this world. There's nothing easy about it because the world's got you by the tail and it's swinging you around. And I know how that feels. Hope that helps.

Next Step Thinking And Closing

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah. I think it is helpful. Everyone says, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, when those inspirations come to you in in quiet thought, you know, moving away from the fear-based ones into the inspired ones that are just, you know, for your highest good and ultimately for for others' highest good, too. If you are on if you are living in your highest being, in your highest good, in the present moment, what is the next action here? What is next for me? I think that is pretty helpful for yourself, and others are going to notice that too. And and you may inspire others to do the same thing. As you were talking, I was thinking, you know, what is if we're if living in the present and asking, what is my next inspired action? Or what is what is my next, I don't know, what is my next action? What is my next step? Then I don't know, what does it say about when we try and create five-year, 10-year plans? Oh, what a what what is that about? But we're told that, oh, you need a plan, you need to know what you're doing, you need to have this five-year, 10-year plan. I, you know, I I think as we wrap up, I I know I'm kind of going off on tangents right now, but like I was thinking the other day while you were talking about when we're when we're getting out of high school and the guidance counselor says, What are you gonna do? You gotta pick, gotta pick what you're gonna do, where you're gonna go. And that's like one of the first times where you're just oh my god, fear is taking over, and that's driving the idea of where I need to fit into. Should I just follow my friends, what they're doing, and then you know, what would my parents want? Yeah, yeah, in the chat, programming, employers trying to keep us on board, heaven help us if we don't have a plan. Aimless living. Yeah, just all connected. So I think, yeah, sitting in silence, not running from the emotions that can come up from silence. It doesn't mean that your brain is like your mind is just totally silent. I think that's hard for most of us.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

I think it's possible.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

I don't even think it's possible. So you're not doing it wrong if you know thoughts creep in. But I think finding that time when we're not doom scrolling or watching TV or getting taken off into other worlds that that are just comfort. I think listening to what asking ourselves what we want, what is it that I want? And and if something comes to you, just asking yourself, okay, well, what is the next step towards that? What is my next step?

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Just follow the curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

So thanks for hanging out today, and thanks for listening and interacting, and have a beautiful day. See you later.