0:00 Okay. So, let's get our souls here. I know your bodies are here. Let's get our souls here. No one's allowed to have jet leg in my class. You know the rules. All right. Here's Teresa. Hover over me, God. Hover over me, God. Bless this. Bless this journey I'm about to take. Take me down deep. Take me down deep into the reasons you brought me here. Take me down deep. Bless this journey. Amen. Even the coffee maker.
0:48 Boy. Okay. I'm going to begin this. Um, I have notes and then I I I usually sort of use them, but this I I I want to first say that um I'm going to begin this with a little reference to the Camino. A lot reference to the Camino. You're on the Camino. This was on my bucket list. And that's how this workshop came about. And so before I got here, I walked this for I I sampled it with three Camino beloved Camino sisters who they'll always be for the rest of my life. And the the gift of having a true guide
1:37 who's here, Martin. And I asked Martin to to speak about the Camino at the end of this to share the history because Martin, as we discovered on this trip, is um educated in theology and the spiritual tradition and the soul of the Camino as well as the history. So I I asked him, would he please share this so you could ask questions as well because I I hope you have questions. What I you know it's why why would something be so important? Um and I'm going to weave this in because one of the themes is about having a
2:23 journey. And you know what I realized is that it's really true. Life is only a journey and and the power of the word journey. You know you people can call life an experience or they cannot call their life anything at all. But if you take a word and you bring it into your life as a focus, one word, then like a bridge, all of the experiences of your life come together and you begin to cross the journey of your life through that one word. Your life becomes a journey. Your life
3:11 becomes an experience. Your life starts to take the shape of meaning. Whereas before you took that one word, your life was frag sorry your life your life was fragments floating that had no fundamental core magnet that gathered the fragments together. This is something I have seen in people who are looking for that core magnet. What's the core magnet? What is my core magnet? What is it? Is it is it meaning? Is it is my life an experience?
3:57 What is it? So when you call your life a journey but then you want another magnet. What kind you want to modifier? Is it a sacred journey? Is it a meaningless journey? What word do you want to modify your journey? I wanted mine to be a sacred journey, a holy journey. I don't want it to be a meaningless journey. Why would anybody? But I will tell you that in my 35 years as a teacher and I'm not just a teacher.
4:42 I am hardly just a teacher. I am a healer. I am a mystic. I'm a writer. I am so many things now in this world. And I know that the consequence of seeing your life as a meaningless journey. Fragments you in such a way that your biology begins to hear that word. And it begins to influence your
5:28 biography. And so the parts of every day of your life, every day of your life, you wake up and the whole of your life becomes a portrait in meaninglessness. And you engage every person looking for them. And you start a dialogue with them. that unconsciously says, "Can you give my life meaning? Can you see meaning in me? Is there a way you can see value in me? Is there anything that I'm doing that is of value to you?
6:14 You don't even realize you're asking that person that question, but you are. But you are. And everything they do, you interpret as I'm meaningless. They left in the middle of the conversation. They didn't hold the door open for me because I'm meaningless. I'm meaningless to them. This is how powerful that word is. You know, I wrote a book. One of the books I wrote was invisible acts of power. And one of the and I asked people to send letters to me about acts of
7:01 service. And I'm not even sure I'm going to get through this story and what people have done for the you and what you've done for others. And I really thought maybe 200 maybe 100 people would take the time to share those those stories with me when in fact I got over 1,200 in one week. Now I have to tell you that reading 1,200,300 stories of profound sharings of how one human being changed your life is overwhelming. It's overwhelming. But I wondered what was overwhelming
7:47 about that. This is what I call human life scripture. These stories are alive because people want to say, "Look how this human being changed my life." And they want to keep sharing because these stories are the transfer of grace. Look what happened just when I needed it. This man wrote me and said, "I used to have a lot in the world and then I lost it. It just through one thing after another and I became homeless without a home. If that's not the most frightening thing in the world. I lost my dignity.
8:36 And he said for him, walking into a store for food was the most frightening thing in the world because walking in anyway because he might get a door slammed in his face, which for him became symbolic of the most frightening, humiliating experience at all. So after he begged down the street, which was not as humiliating as having a door slammed in his face, as having someone walk ahead of him and slam the door, what was more humiliating was it took more courage for him.
9:22 After he would get this money, he would he would position himself outside this grocery store and kind of look and watch until he thought the coast was clear, until he thought it was safe for him to get into that grocery store in his dirty clothes to kind of buy his six or $7 worth of food. And on this day, he thought the coast was clear. I met this man. I met him. He dashes in and just as he's walking in
10:09 the door, a businessman dressed up like he used to be dressed up cuts into his path. He was frozen. He wanted to run away, he said. He wrote me, but someone was behind him. And now he was flanked on both sides. And he could only go forward because he was already in the store, you know. Yeah. So he thought this he thought this man is going to slam the door in my face. But in fact the man held the door open.
10:57 And then what this man did was he turned around and said, "Excuse me, sir." And used the word sir. and he thought surely he was addressing someone other than me. And he said, "I looked around and thought, who is he talking to? I'm a man in rags." He said, "But he was talking to me." And he asked me for directions. He was a stranger in town and he asked me for directions. And he looked at me as though I had an expertise. He said, "I do have expertise, but who sees expertise in rags?"
11:45 But he did. He said, "Then he said, "Thank you to me." Then left. And he said, "He left me with dignity and I rose from the dead." That's the meaning of resurrection. And this is resurrection Monday. And I wanted to start with that story and the commamino and the meaning the true meaning of what of what it means to give grace to one another and the living of what we really are
12:34 capable of doing for one another through one act or how easily we can destroy another person and what it means to become a conscious person and decide I I want my journey in life to be a sacred journey. And what that means is I must become mindful of every act I do because every act holds the power to return a person to life or to take it out of them. When I went on the book tour, by the way, for that book, he wasn't my audience.
13:22 I met this man and he's a working man again. Amazing, huh? Okay, so one of the I only sampled the Camino, just sampled it. But even still, I think that makes what I have to say all the more profound, at least for me. And that's that um one of the jewels I hope to animate in you is um the significance of this time in which we are living.
14:09 And I think it is a hugely significant jewel. It's great big huge is that we've made a profound transition. We've crossed a huge holy bridge. And that bridge is not one you can see, but one that is um has is changing the context, the contours and actually the physical design of humanity. Um, we are in the land of three of the greatest mystics
14:55 who ever existed in the Christian in the Catholic Christian tradition. Teresa of Avala, who you know is very beloved to me, John of the Cross and Ignatius Lyola. These three great, profound, holy saints lived around the same time. Certainly, John and Teresa knew each other. John was Teresa's spiritual director. Ignatius Lyola developed what's called spiritual direction. And I will be speaking to you as a spiritual director. These three saints
15:42 have formed for me my mystical voice more than any. So I can say in a sense my soul is a Catholic is a Spaniard. I don't know how that happened but my my second language is so easily Spanish. I feel like I'm a I I'm I'm a away from Spanish. I mean, I can remember I uh I only took two years 50 years ago and and I didn't do too badly here. I'm this close away. I feel like I could dust it off. It's somewhere that somewhere I'm Spanish and I can't seem
16:29 to get the key. Get the key. I got to find that key. I must be Spanish somewhere, but I can't get in. Somehow, if someone would just give me the enough paella, it would come out. But anyway, um in that time after that time as as the world entered the age of enlightenment, the profound age of mystic, the mystic, the hearing from the inside, that rich voice of
17:17 heaven of God. Never mind the craziness of the church. We'll deal with those nuts later. But what is a mystic? The rich experience of perceiving from your inside world to the outside as your primary lines of communication. went dark and people began in the western civilization. They'd already they began to go into a love of the intellect.
18:04 And I Jimmy, you might really enjoy what I have to say later because I've fallen in love with Pythagoras. It's a serious love affair. We'll get to that later. But as the as we became more mental, this facility, this faculty in us began to dim and we started to look at the world through this love of reason. And it was essential because along with the inner mystic was this sense the reptilian intuitive
18:51 which was the superstitious part of us because we had an absence of intellect. The way we reasoned had all the indicators of frightened children. So we if we couldn't find a logical reason, we had to go for a superstitious one. And when the age of reason came along, we grabbed on in order to get rid of that reptilian reasoning. So if we fast forward to today, the way the value went was that we have so extended our reasoning power that we've become unreasonable
19:38 into the point of madness. So that if something cannot reason, it has no value. And this is where we've pushed ourselves. We've created a god of reason. So we say there must be a reason for why things happen as they do. And that reason has to be logical. We've created a God in which we want our prayers answered in a very reasonable way. We want our guidance to come in in a very logical, reasonable way. I'll do this, but I need proof. And I need the proof to be very, here's the operative word, practical.
20:27 Very reasonable. It has to have reasonable practical use for it to qualify as the type of guidance I'm going to follow. Can you relate to this? Yes. No. >> Okay. So, it's the God of practicality. That's a very popular god. Now if we look at what's happening now, we are in a world where that template of practical logical decision making is falling apart.
21:15 where the senses in us have evolved to becoming multi-ensory where we have evolved to when you were growing up you were taught that you have five senses. Am I are you in agreement? >> When in fact you have many more senses than five. You have emotional senses, intellectual, psychic spiritual intuitive and several levels of intuitive. You have many more senses than five. But if you think you only have five
22:04 when all of your other senses are bringing in data and you do not have a way of acknowledging that. What do you do with all that sensory system? What do you do with all that data? How do you comprehend it? Where does it go? It goes into sensing and emotion and emotional reaction. That is often times it goes into emotional reactions as opposed to emotional intelligence. You get overwhelmed. You get overheated.
22:49 You get burned out. But you don't get the data that's supposed to come in. You get intuitive hits, but you don't know how to interpret them. And so you you begin to say, "I I don't know what's going on here. I am depressed. I'm anxious. I'm this." You use familiar words, but you don't get the information. What you are always respon describing to me or to yourself are the consequences of what you're feeling. So you can relate to that. So
23:36 I'm going to take this back to the Camino if you can believe that. So hold on to me. The significance that I that what I experienced on the Camino was an example of what I'm talking to you about and that we are living in two different realities if not more simultaneously in walking on the Camino. Just see how see how this is divided here where they put these platform together. Here are three. And then here's another. Can you see it everybody? These are just brick, just platforms put together, right?
24:22 Okay. Now, imagine that this one is the chamino and this one's a sidewalk. Are you with me? >> Okay. Now, when when I was on the chamino walking, and believe me, I just sampled it. I'm no expert. Martin's an expert. I'm no expert. And in fact, Girden and and my dear friend Eric, these two, they're experts. They've walked it. Um, everybody greets everybody with this openness that says, "Boy, Camino, bless the Camino. Bless you. Bless your journey." When you're on the commamino, it feels
25:09 like you have entered into this tunnel of grace. And when you're in this tunnel, this way of grace, this way of grace, this 1,000-year-old path that's been walked by who knows how many for everybody has their own reason. There is this sense of safety that everyone you meet is benevolent, has a kindness, has a reason, but will help you if you need it. We sat on a bench yesterday. We walked another 7 and 1/2 miles yesterday. We sat on a bench and shared an orange with
25:54 someone. Immediately had a conversation. That blockage you automatically feel with people doesn't exist. You open up a conversation. Everybody talks with everybody. There is no break. Now all I have to do is step over this thin line onto the sidewalk and it goes and you're back in the ordinary world. That's all I have to do is cross a a leaf and a twig and it goes and now I'm holding on to my purse, covering my backside and not greeting people with incredible openness.
26:40 I'm not doing that. I'm not embracing strangers. I'm not saying to someone bless you on your life journey, bless you. Bless you. I'm not doing that. I'm not looking at them as a fellow. And here's the operative word pilgrim, a fellow traveler in life. And then all I have to do is go here and life opens up. Everybody becomes a fellow pilgrim just like that. Everyone I see as sharing a journey. I am now sharing their journey. They're sharing
27:27 my journey. They are we are sharing the journey of life together through our souls. Now I see their souls and they see mine. Now I hold them with such respect. Such respect in my heart and in my soul. Now I greet them. Bless your life journey. I will never see you again. But I bless you. Now I come here. What is the difference? The consciousness is it does it matter that I I what is the difference
28:14 that I felt that consciousness so real it was tactile it's tactile I I to say I have to get back to that is a masterpiece of understatement I have never experienced tactile physical earth mysticism the mystical experience so grounded in my blood and in my bones as when I did that. That was the most real experience of God on earth I have ever felt in my life. I literally step and I'm in grace and everything I see, everyone I meet is blessed. I step out.
29:03 I'm back in this ordinary world. I thought, I got to get back there. I have to mainline it. I want to smell it. I want to taste it. I want to go every I feel like I've got to walk every one of these paths. I can't. I got to get back. I actually feel like when can I get back? I've got to get back there. I want to go back. I've got to get back next week. It's like a hysteria in my soul. I've got to get back. I have never experienced that. But then I thought and I thought I can't just have it there. I cannot just have it there. I have to bring it to others and I have
29:49 to say I can't just have it on the commamino. If I experience that, this is the new mysticism. This is how we are supposed to see the world as the chamino. This is what the journey of life is. This is our journey. My journey is yours and yours is mine. Because the first law of mysticism is all is one. what you do to what we do what we do to one we do to everyone that's the first law of Christ that's the first law of mysticism that's
30:37 the first law of science what is in one is in the whole and when I say that the world is changing and I'm talking about the mysticism the phenomenon of the time that we live in now is that the laws laws of earth science like the p like the painting of the cyine chapel the laws the fingers are touching now the laws of what the experiences that made someone the great mystics that they saw the oneness of the universe as God had created it are now blending with the earth science that they see that this and this world
31:24 are mirror images of each other, one in the form of energy and the other in earth. That one is mist and one is ice. And that they are simply reflections of each other. And that what we choose in our thoughts eventually, like mist falls into rain and becomes ice as it freezes. But it's the same substance. And that that is what our journey is about is learning to to to manage the mist that flows through us to become ice. We are ice makers.
32:13 Okay. I also think that this is this moment in time where the rules, you know, it's like um um what is that called? An hourglass. And it's been turned upside down. It's been turned upside down. It's my microphone. I'm getting wired. Do you have a question while I'm up here? >> Nope. >> Yeah. Yeah.
33:00 >> Good. >> You could Can you turn that off? Yeah, that one. Otherwise, they're going to collide. Okay, great. Wait. So far so good. >> Now, it feels so good to be free. I don't do well contained. I wasn't meant to be put in a container. Okay. And I think you really need
33:47 I think you really have to it's hard to appreciate the significance of being alive now. The significance of this time you're living in. Because I mean any more than people at any time said, "Wow, I'm living in the Renaissance. Wow, Michelangelo's, you know, and Da Vinci and they're doing things interesting. Sculpting marble, painting ceilings. Wow, this must mean a big deal for me cuz I'm alive, too. So, it's really difficult to do this. and and and the historian in me, the the person who has read history since she was nine,
34:33 you know how someone says, "Well, if if I could live at another time, most people go backwards, but not me." I would go forward a hundred years and read how people wrote about and recorded the decisions we pe we collectively made to navigate the profound time that we are in now. I don't know that we're doing a very good job of it. And I and I think it's because we're terrified to understand that to get that we are living in a collision of power.
35:18 We're living when the horizontal consciousness is meeting vertical. To say it differently, it's like the end of the fossil world and the beginning of the solar. We are colliding in we are living in a collision of perceptions that are taking place in the world behind your eye where your intuitive senses are actually colliding with your physical and this is playing out in you to say it differently it's where your mystical senses what is called what I would call mystical consciousness iousness is actually fighting
36:08 to take to work in harmony with your physical senses to make themselves known. So I'll give you an example. The your inner senses operate at the speed of light because they're light senses. So you get a an instantaneous where you get a and you you know something that fast. All of you have had that. All of you have had an instantaneous sense. This is right, this is wrong. I like this. I don't. You read people. Well, here's a simple thing. How many of you people watch? You all do.
36:57 And how many of you when you people watch you just list people you go like this this person's this this person's that da you are literally going like that now when you are people watching you are it's a it's a fun game but you're actually doing archetypal readings. You're actually doing readings. And what you're doing is you're assessing the power that that person has. You're actually doing power profiles. You're actually looking at that person and deciding, is that person safe or not? What kind of power does that person have?
37:44 Do I see that person as a con artist or is that person trustworthy? Is that person someone who's a geek, a computer? Does that person look like a a worker? Or does that person look intellectual? Does that person look educated? You are making those decisions this fast because you can you're reading them that fast. Does that person have money or not? You're going that fast because you're doing all of this as a way of sensing, do I feel safe around that person? Am I threatened?
38:30 You're doing it that fast. And my point is, you're trusting your senses over what you see. And then your senses, that energy reports in to what you see to validate what you are energetically picking up. And if there's a collision, if somehow or other, your guts is picking up something that doesn't match with your eyes. That's when you have to decide which one do you trust. your gut or your eyes,
39:16 your horizontal sense or your vertical. This are these are your two sensory systems. When I do a reading, I don't I have to often times I can't see you. So I have to rely cuz sometimes you most people who ask me for my help are not in the same room. So I have to rely on my energetic intelligence system. You have that same system. The only difference between you and me is I trust it and you don't. I am not more skilled.
40:02 I don't have more refined senses. I trust and you don't. I don't look for the same physical proof that you do. I don't have the same God in me that you do. Your God is still someone that you want to reason with. And I know better. And that's the difference. You see? You see what I'm saying? My experience is is the more unreasonable you get, the more you realize it's the divine is not a reasonable force. Okay.
40:50 So where we're going today, where this is is that the experiences people are having are tending to bring their life more into a chaotic unreasonable journey. are tending to move them into a quality of mysticism, their own mystical experiences, their own inner mystic than ever before. So I I have some questions for you that I just am going to throw out there and that is um how does heaven filter
41:37 into your life? What would you look in your life and say this is God coming into my life? How would you look in how would you identify an experience of God? How would you say this is God coming into my life? Because here here are ordinary experiences and then you know how you see a bleep on a on a cardiac machine because be if you said ah that would be that would qualify as a God experience. What would qualify for you is something you would say ah I've just had a visitation of God. What would that be just for the hell of it?
