Working with energy & the elements to achieve inner balance (Live talk)

using archetypes. Although the talk was given within a Tibetan Buddhist context, the theme is generally applicable. If you're interested in learning more about energy and the elements. This is a slightly longer talk. So get yourself comfy, grab a cup of tea or coffee. And I do apologise if the questions from the audience are relatively soft spoken. But they should be audible. I hope you enjoy.

Okay, so today we're gonna go over what we did last time for those who were injured last time as we spoke about the context of energy in general, as we experienced it, in relation to the elements and the Buddhist concept of energy and emptiness. And it was quite a quick talk and read through it spoke at quite a high level, but it was also fairly in depth with some of the

Buddhist terminology. So today, I want to redo that framework, because when we look talking about the elements, and how to work with the elements in our life, we actually really need to understand like the framework because the elements or aspects of energy, if we can understand how energy works in general, and how energy is everything, we understand the rules of energy, it makes working with the actual elements in our life, not conceptual, it makes it

energetic. And therefore we can see actual shifts happening with the elements as opposed to just ideas or, or concepts, that often as humans, that's our tendency to go into concepts and ideas and thinking. So we'll go over all of that today. And feel free to interact with Christians, if anything I say,

doesn't make sense. So when I was thinking about where to start today, last time, we started with what's called like, the Buddhist creation story is close to creation story in Buddhism as we can get, which comes from the Dzogchen teachings. Dzogchen is the very, very, deep teachings around the nature of reality and around emptiness. So basically transforming our view of separation into that of pure connection with everything. And in role, maybe touch on that a

little today. But before we even go into the teachings, I want to start even one step back. So yesterday morning, I was walking with a friend and Newlands forest, and she said to me, she was interested in starting to meditate. She hadn't ever done anything like that before. And I said to her, oh, well, why do you want to meditate? What is it that's calling you? And she said, Well, stress? And she said, Well, what else could they be? Why else would I meditate?

And I said, Okay, that's that's a worthy, you know, that's, that is a worthy cause for us to want to meditate. There could be stress, there could be perhaps even health benefits, you know, we've missed with when we study mindfulness and meditation, we can see that there are certain external outer benefits to us. But there is a deeper aspect to meditation as well. And we see that more with perhaps balancing our emotions and inner elements

who we are. But there's even another level deeper than that. And that's a very subtle level. And in Buddhism, it's called the secret level. Now, secret doesn't mean it's because it's special or advanced, and only a few people can get this special just means that it's not something tangible, that we can easily relate to, in this human form. It's something that's outside of our normal frame of reference. So it's not something physical, it's not even energy

that we can see or feel. But it's it's like very subtle form of energy. And when we are getting into meditation, we might start with those outer aspects first. So the physical benefits of meditation, even the

emotional benefits. But as we get deeper and deeper into our practice, and not just meditation, but any form of practice that we do so for instance, you know, even these vegetariana practices, the mantra practices, it could be even something that's not even within Buddhism, any practice we do to really get within ourself. And we, we can start to really drop into this question of What is sitting underneath all of this, and this is this very

subtle level. And ultimately, what we are aiming to do is to create some distance where we can observe, we start to observe ourself, and observe our surroundings. And from that, we can start to see that we've got certain templates or operating systems that we've got installed within us that are effectively

running our life. And these things, these templates are almost like to think of it as a member of, you know, in the old days, that the school teachers used to have those projectors, and they take a piece of perspex and rattle it and projected onto

the, onto the screen. It's like, we've got these very deep seated templates that that we've got installed within us, perhaps we've been born with that, from past labs, or if you'd if you don't resonate with past labs, but you know, your your circumstances in this life that you've been born into, or otherwise, it's templates, or operating systems, or habits that you've created within this life because of things that have

happened in your life. And that might even be in response to trauma, or anything that's happened to you in your life, I think we there is a danger sometimes when we start learning about karma, and because these patterns and templates are effectively our karma to believe that we've got these things because of something we've done wrong. So it's not that we've been a bad person, or we've we've behaved in a wrong way. And therefore now we've got this template that's creating a lot of loss or

suffering in our life. It's just how the energy operates. So we mustn't view these templates as something that's inherently wrong with ourselves because trauma can happen to us. And even once we start this process of seeing our stuff, and being able to observe and see our stuff, which we'll talk about more a little bit how we do that, we things can still happen to any of us at any point, we can get sick, we can lose loved ones, we are all ultimately going to face our own

mortality and death. And what happens is, when you start to see these templates that effectively rule our life, at the moment, unconsciously, you start to bring them into the larger start and make them conscious, you stop attaching, you stop attaching so much identity or or weight to them. So you can, you can have that behaviour or habits pop up in your life, but without the attachment that goes with it.

And therein lies your little bit of freedom from some of the suffering that these habits or obscurations normally cause in in our life. So, so to my friend, I said, a very simple way I said, you know, the very deep part of meditation can help us to really get into looking and seeing ourselves truly as who we are. And the first level I've seen hooby eyes, often we start to see us stuff. So we start to see all of our sticking points and our

contractions. And the more and more we see our stuff, it's it's, it's like a, you know, black and white, you can't see, you can't see dark without luck, the more we see our stuff, the more we can also start to see that we a lot bigger than just these knots and contractions, there's a lot more spaciousness around us. And in that space, we realise that hang on, I'm not just this, you know, formed identity that I've created in this in this embodiment, but

complete spacious openness. And we can start to tap into the total awareness of what is called in Buddhism, the word is called emptiness. And emptiness is often causes a lot of confusion with Westerners we don't quite understand. You know, emptiness could almost sound like a nihilistic point of view that there's nothing in nothing is true. But emptiness just means empty of a separate existence, or empty of an innate identity, because everything is

connected. So another word for the word, emptiness could be openness. It's just everything is permeable, and everything is completely related and interlinked in this big energetic soup. So if we could see things as they truly were right now, it might even seem like we were sitting in the ocean, we have this. This energy that is absolutely everywhere it's through acid is assets in our thoughts, and it absolutely permeates everything in our

life. So when we start to use things such as meditation to see our stuff, we actually allowing ourself to relax into a much bigger expanse of who it is that we truly are. So it's it's a good exercise to truly ask yourself a question why Do I do practice? Why do I meditate? Why do I come to practice such as medicine, Buddha? What is my motivation for doing

that? Because it's easy for us to sometimes fall into a mindset of, you know, praying to a third party, in this practice and asking for help and assistance. It's, it's, it's not creating separation, but in fact, it's actually enveloping the openness and expense of everything. But it's good to ask yourself these questions as we go along our path and truly understand what it is for us, that's motivating us to show up and do our practice.

So when we can start to see the templates that run in our lives. And we start to feel that openness, we would, it's not enough, unfortunately, it's not enough. Because if we could, if simply the act of sitting and seeing, perhaps, let's say, reusing the example from earlier, let's say, I've got the template running in my life of anger. It's a karmic tendency, and it shows up in my life in

multiple different ways. Now I've started a meditation programme, I start to observe and acknowledge this anger and how it shows up in my life. And perhaps, after seeing it for a while, I see that I'm so much more than just my anger or my story. Just that recognition alone isn't necessarily enough to transform it. Otherwise, it would be easy for all of us to simply become enlightened in a very conceptual way, because we could sit identify it, and off we go, we actually have to work

energetically. And this is the this is what the benefit of the elements. This is why the elements are spoken about in spiritual teachings, not just in Buddhism, but in all all disciplines so much, because the elements are the actual tools that we have available to us energetic building blocks of energy that we have available to us to shift and work with. Work with the energy. So we want to use the elements to effectively create balance in

our in our life. And when we can create balance, it allows us to go even deeper into understanding our own consciousness, it's like layers of an onion, we take off the first layer, so perhaps the outer layer of anger, you managed to shed, there'll be like a deeper programming and a deeper programming. And as we go and recreate balance, you can get really much deeper within ourselves, until we can bring out those very deep, unconscious programmes that we've had running perhaps for lifetimes.

So the key thing is to firstly understand energy and how the energy works. And then to also understand how all the elements fit into that. So in the coming weeks, we'll go more into the actual elements themselves, we can talk about each element, and how we work with it. But today we're going to speak about, like the laws or the rules of energy. And this is, although it's it is in all the Buddhist teachings, it's also there's a lot of more scientific, Western

approach to energy to. And actually, all of those paths or ultimately end up saying the same thing is that everything is energy. There's no getting around it. And energy cannot be destroyed, it only transforms I think Einstein actually said, and when we can understand and recognise that that experience of the energy helps us relax into that experience of openness, which is ultimately gets us past these identities we've created into into a non

jewel experience of life. So I've sort of jotted down a few points just on one of the the laws or rules of energy. This is this is not in any particular order. This is just from the way I prefer to related myself. So the first one we've really covered, which is that everything is energy. And energy in Buddhism is what we call emptiness. So in Buddhism, when we hear the word emptiness, you can also think of the word energy.

And in the Buddhist teachings, especially in those dakshin teachings, and what we learn is that energy has its own innate awareness. So the, the manifestation of energy, the energy is inherently aware, it's self luminous, it knows itself. And that's a very important point to contemplate, and ponder because it has remarkable practical

application in our life. So if we think of, for instance nature's energy and energy is away, well then nature is away It has not an A, not in a personal way but nature has its own awareness of its energy. And much like our body if we think of our own physical bodies, separate from our awareness our mind our body is for my body is energy and our body then to has its own awareness. But how often do we even listen to the awareness that our body has we don't we override everything with our mind.

And now, the reason for this confusion and now I'm going to touch on that the the blockchain creation story again, that we spoke about last time briefly. The best way that it is described in the teachings in the zog Jean text, there's a very, very old old text I'm not gonna try and pronounce the Tibetan name. But what it says is in the beginning, okay, it

actually starts like this. And, and Tenzin wangyal Rinpoche Shea, who is the teacher of the bond tradition within Tibetan black, which was the original shamanistic school in Tibet, prior to Tibetan Buddhism. But the teachings are very aligned and is recognised now as part of one of the schools of Buddhism. And he says that, we should think of the story not as the truth not as not as an effect, but something

that is truer than fact. So it's not a linear, analytical, logical thing, we should think of these stories as something that's much deeper and lands within our heart as opposed to our head. So the story goes that, in the beginning, there was the great mother. And the great mother was this deep expanse of dark blue. Okay, this dark, dark blue energy, okay. And within the mother, it says the winds blew. And he says in the book, he says, nobody knows why the winds

blowing. So there's no, we don't get our lives, the answer to why did the winds blow in the first place, but the winds of the energy moved. And with this movement, I like to think of it as like a cord, you know, like a snake, as I use the example the last time this, this kind of snake of energy started to move, and the faster the energy moves, it created like a current within within this, this great mother. And this current started moving so fast, that it was able to

observe itself. So look back on itself, and see the great mother. But in that moment, there was a misbelief, or a misconception that it this current snake of energy was something separate from the grandmother. And so we had in the separation, this subject and object awareness that started to arise, and the faster the winds move, the more and more and more separate everything seems to

become. And that is why in Buddhism that they speak about the long, which is the A, or the wind element that moves within the body, because the faster and the more uncontrolled, our inner wind or inner energy is moving, the more likely we are to be scattered, and to and to feel the separateness.

So, in effect, ultimately, what we are really doing on our spiritual path is to calm the moving, energy, calm, the moving winds, moving mind, the more calm and balanced you can bring that energy, the more able we are to stop that division that we create, and to actually see that everything is one. And it's such a simple but

beautiful story. And he says that, this creation, even though it happened long, long, long ago, it isn't something that's bound by time it happens in every single moment of our life. Every single time we take a new form. So in Tibetan Buddhism, we talk about borders, borders are gaps in between two states of energetic being. So for instance, we have the border between life and

death. We have the border between wakefulness and sleeping, there's there's various bodies in our life and every time we enter the body, so that's every single day, every moment in fact They even say blinking is a bado. It's a pause between any two points of energy, we have the opportunity to still our mind, and to recognise that our true nature isn't separate, like the snake energy that believes it's separate. But in fact, everything is one. Which is, you know, it's it seems so simple.

But we have to work with that energetically and not just conceptually, because I feel like this is one of the hardest things of being human. In this in this day and age, as we've become so mental, we've become so obsessed with thinking and thoughts and and the element has become out of control. And our planet elementary presents this fast thinking mind. And we process everything intellectually, but we're not bringing it back. Physically, we're not integrating it in an

embodied way. And therefore, it's very, very hard for us to make that make that reconnection. So this is how we have the the separation. And we could also call this duality, you often hear about people speaking about duality. That's, it's, that's another name for it. Yeah. That's the very reason that we've experienced this morning, like we have. Because you have created a movement into stillness, and something's happened. So that's the same thing.

Beautiful, yeah. We've created a moment of shared stillness. Yeah, that's absolutely beautiful. And you can feel it. It's not just Yeah, and that's the difference. That's what he's talking about, about experiencing. It's almost like a sperm to the earth. And you know, it's it's the movement towards unification becoming that if we can't talk it, we've got to become a movement and the students at the same time.

So it's an interesting metaphor, and I think that it's that we already all that, so it's just remembering that we are already right. Now, we are in non duality, right now, we are not existing in a dualistic separate, you know, people say, three dimensional world with everything separate and coarse and impure. We are right now at this very moment you can touch your body you touch the earth, we are here in non duality, and we are in in Buddhist terms, we

call this a pure land. Right now we are sitting in a pure land our bodies are our own pure lands that we live in, in this in this expression of our energy and it's not that there is some something else out there when we do these practices such as medicine, Buddha we are it's not saying I this is a realm where the medicine Buddha's living it's up there and away from me and our kind of access certain one day hopefully I'll have calm good enough karma You know, that's that's like almost a very

Christian kind of mentality of like, if I'm without sin, and I'm good, I'll be chosen to go to heaven. That's actually Heaven is right here on Earth. It's it's every single moment, it's the only issue is that we forgotten we don't see it because of an incorrect belief. And that's why we're going to talk about the state of energy now the state of energy are very important because if energy comes in, so if we accept everything is energy, okay, energy comes in three different states, or

forms. So I mean, not just three three groupings, okay, that's a simplification. So it comes in a very subtle state. So for instance, now the energy I said, That's, we can't really see it, we know that this energy but we can't actually feel it or attached it in any way. It comes in a more in slightly more embodied but still not physical, as you know, as this could be. And it's like maybe a feeling the feeling that we can all feel is isn't is a more manifest form of energy. And I call that the

energetic state. So we have the subtle state, we have the energetic state, and then we have the physical form of energy. So if we use the water element, as an example, with the water element we would have water can be us. It could be hot, you know, in a form, ice, it could be liquid, or it could be dissolved and evaporate. into steam or or even beyond that into vapour that you can't even perceive because right now there's water in the air that we breathe in, we just can't see

it. So in every single element, that's why I say if we can understand the rules of energy, we can actually work with any element because every element has its own states that it manifests in. And it all has to be can call it course, energetic or subtle. Those are the three states that we we need to think of everything. And in in Buddhism, they speak about the three

bodies or the three kaios. And you'll often hear them now even in the Medicine Buddha practice, we did we speak about the, the bachelor or the Buddha, body, speech and mind, body, speech and mind are the three representations of the course energetic and second. And so the body would be the form, the speech is the energetic, which makes sense, you can hear speech, but you can't, you can't really see it, but you know that there's an energy there. But actually,

speech isn't just speech. speech is also as symbolism, because speech, essentially communication is as attaching meaning to words, the whole construct of language is around symbolism. And therefore, to have Buddha speech is also to be able to see symbolically. And that's why the second vehicle the second body, is also called the dream body or the astral body. Because in our dreams, we looking at our life, symbolically, we are able to

use archetypes. And so the whole that whole middle energetic speech body is, is very, very

interesting. And just one more fact before I move on, is that the practices we do such as the surgery and medicine, but our practice falls within, if we look at pact Buddhist practices that would fall within this speech realm, because what we doing is we creating a visualisation symbolism, we say roots of the speech, symbolic words, in order to create our own Pure Land, and then we dissolving it back within

ourself. So some teachers say that a bit and Buddhism is actually a tradition, that is all around sacred visualisation. Because the main practice vehicle that is chosen in Tibetan Buddhism, as opposed to perhaps using for instance, is the symbolic vehicle we using symbolism, to help us transcend how we see things to how things truly are. So that's like, that's the second layer of energy. And then the third layer is the subtle, which, in if we look at body speech in mind, would be our

mind. Now, they can also be some confusion where we think of mind or certainly are always do being, you know, doctrine ated Westerner. The word mind, for me means brain. It's, you know, I always think of brain and thinking. But actually, in Buddhism, the mind is our heart. The mind is the heart centre, it's, it's the hole in the mantra, it is our awareness. So our awareness doesn't derive from our thinking brain, our awareness actually

derives from our heart. So the thinking brain and effect is a tool that we use in this physical form to problem solve, and so forth. But we've become so confused that we identify our thinking, as, as who we are, without recognising that, in fact, we so much more than just our thinking, brain, and therefore mind is actually hard.

So you could even use the word heart, if it helps you, it helps me to just get over that conditioned thinking whenever it's, it's like whenever I think of the word God, I think of like an older black man in heaven, I can't help it. So I use a different word. And it's the same with this if mind, you can use the word heart. So everything has these three states. And because remember, energy can never be destroyed, it can only change states. So now we look at how energy works

and flows in our life. And so we look at the energy of creation, and the energy of the solution or destruction or death. So life follows these patterns. And we can see this through mythology through you know, stories over the ages, these stories of birth, death and rebirth. Even the story of Jesus you know, the story of birth, death and rebirth, it's it's a, it's a common, symbolic pattern that we can understand because it is the nature of of any

energy. So when we create energy flows from a subtle form, to a physical form, and when we dissolve, we dissolve physical form, back to subtle form. And we can think of anything, I like to use the example of a cake, we have an idea, inspiration, even the word in spirit hits,

I'm going to bake a cake. We then visualise that we can even speak our choice out in within our inner voice or even externally, we then using our abilities, we manifest and we put everything together, we take all the elements that we need, we take water element element, put it into the oven, fire element, we bake a pancake, and out pops are manifested cake. So that's the energy of creation. And everything follows, because energy is a law, energy is a rule, everything follows this.

So therefore, what creates an entire planet was the subtle energy that bought our planet into being for not just our planet, but the entire solar system. If energy always follows that rule, that means that absolutely every single thing that's ever been manifested, came from a subtle inspiration, into something we can attach to you. And that goes not just for physical forms, but even for our personalities, our habits, and

our traits. And this is why we often see if you're a person that's perhaps has a lot of fear, you'll find situations in your life that will bring up their fear in multiple ways, because we create from that very, very subtle imprint. Effectively, it's the teacher has got her little perspex fear, slide out, and she's you projecting it across your entire life, this this, this imprint. And this takes us to the very next important point of energy, energy is capable of holding

patterns. And it can hold patterns for aeons and aeons and aeons of time, all we have to do is look at our solar system, not just our solar system, but the entire universe. You know, the stars and planets don't just fly around haphazardly, you know, think of our particular solar system, it's like, there's always a pattern, it's perfect. And those sometimes something can come along and disturb the energy and the disruption will then set a new pattern into being. But energy holds these

patterns. And what's so beautiful is if you look at the representation of an atom, and you know, everything is made up of atoms, including the cells in our body, everything we can attach to, when you look at the representation of an atom, you've got a hate, I'm not super sad isn't the nucleus in the middle got the nucleus and you got protons and electrons fly around it. And actually, it looks like the solar system, it perfectly holds that pattern.

And so if energy is capable of holding patterns, but happens on all different levels of energy, subtle, energetic, and gross, even so that's why if you have a pattern, or a habit of anger, that energy pattern is going to therefore be the template that manifests everything in your life according to that pattern. And we can have multiple we all do have multiple multiple

patterns, or habit momentums. In our store consciousness or Elia consciousness, we've got all these imprints that we've created, and hold over aeons of time. So this is why it's so important to understand energy. Because we can sit today and say, I'm done with fear. I'm not today I've made a decision. I'm no longer going to be afraid. And I walk out of here and a couple hours later, I'm back in my same fear state of mind.

That's because I haven't gone energetically I haven't followed the rules of energy to get back to that templates, and work at that level. I've just made a conceptual decision, and that's why there's this misalignment. So because energy holds the pattern because energy flows from subtle to gross. If we want to get back to subtle to change the pattern. What do we have to do? We have to embrace the energy of dissolution, or death or destruction. And so if we've got the cake,

we're going to eat the cake. Our life is going to come to an end our physical elements are going to dissolve every night when we fall asleep. Our energetic body dissolves and recreating our dream, our dream consciousness. So this this pattern of birth, death, and rebirth is so critical in our life. But in this world that we've created, we don't like to

talk about the solution. We don't like to talk about death, we hold it away, we don't want to talk about the shadow, we cry, and we feel bad for being upset. But actually, that part of the journey is as important

as the creation journey. So although all the we addicted to creating, we are addicted to progress and wanting to create new all the time, but we only we're always going to be creating from the same state of consciousness unless we actually embrace the solution destruction death in our life, in order to truly get back to our patterning, see our patterning for what it is, stand back from it, recognise that we are so much more than it and then create, well not create a new pattern, what we actually

want to do is just remove and remove layers. Essentially, I read a quote the other day, and I don't have the book with me, and I forget the name of the master who said it. But he said that our entire life, if we are on a Buddhist path or a path of practice, is a lesson in dying. It's about just removing, removing layers, removing identity, and becoming as identity lessness as possible and as open and free as we can

be. So it's not that we want to put a new template into being and this is sometimes where you know, champion ciampa speaks about spiritual materialism. And you often see this especially in like the New Age movement, where people put these new templates into being of being lightworkers, or, or spiritual people or whatever. And then they go off with good intentions and create from that.

But it's still an inauthentic template, because all templates take us away from who it is that we are, which is completely open and free. So it's good to start identifying and I laugh, we holding patterns, positive and positive and negative. It's not only our negative stuff, it's sometimes even the positive persona that we're trying so hard to cultivate. That isn't actually even authentic, because anything created as is actually inauthentic for using

basic, basic terms. So is there a question anyone wants to ask, is there? Is there a comment that anyone else? Yeah, it's this question of Judaism. So, actually, in fact, what you're saying is by creating a template, a concept, we're creating a Jew dualism? Exactly. The one is what exactly moving away from that falling online, following those high understandings or templates.

Exactly, exactly. And there's a really good Buddhist writer, Andrew holistic, and he he writes on dream and sleep yoga, but he he also talks about illusory form and understanding dualism in our waking life. And I love the way he says it. So he said, If we think of, of emptiness as openness, and we think of the initial confusion, that there when that energy moves the first time within us and creates the confusion that we separate, think of that like your muscle going into cramp,

okay. But because you've been born with your muscle in a cramp, you don't actually know that that you don't even know it's in a cramp because your muscles always been in a crack. So he calls that the primary delusion. So the first illusion that's like the core delusion that we're trying to get back to is the delusion of separateness.

But now that we've already created separateness within our separate state that we see ourselves, we see ourselves, we've got secondary delusions, and the secondary delusions are, what I would say are those templates are our habits and, and our tendencies. So we work like an onion, we first work with those outer layers of our, our tendencies and our habits. So that we start to help that

muscle contraction to relax. And once we, once we've done that enough, we can then recognise the primary contraction and that is, there's no dualism, that everything is one. So I just want you to just catch that shirt. I want to just take that word that you just use, recognise. So I think that that's one of the one of the really useful, skillful means that Tibetan Buddhism has Buddhism

pass is that word recognise? And I think that's where you pierce through this natural acceptance of evolution and distract or what? What's a NASA? distraction? Yeah, so evolution and digital creation and dissolution, okay? That, that, that business of working with templates, you just use the word recognition. And that is one of the major, major words while you are living your life, if you've looked in the pool is still punk rock from the word

go. And you've seen this. And it's created a parser and an inner, and it cyphers cyphers. That is word recognition says there is no difference between the inner and outer. That word is, is that sacred place. That's almost like you don't have to know. That's the reason we've got mind. That's the reason that we've been supported with a brain to in order to have a good partner with mine. That's the word of recognition. And yeah, that's my opinion. Yeah, and recognition means a huge word

for all of us. Huge. So whatever you do in your life, and and stop the resistance with what is with the flow of what is and in there penetrate with recognition. It's, it's, it's, we can make it complicated or complex. It's a simple process, and do that time and time and time again, whether we call it meditation or practising our Buddhism and with the, with a good teacher, with the empowerment of a good teacher who has penetrated that it's it's, it's not difficult. Yeah, let's get some practice.

make it difficult. Let's practice that's why we use the word practice. It's just exactly as Lindy says. It's time and again, making multiple opportunities everyday in our life, to see and to firstly see our stuff, see the see our contractions, but then to recognise that we are more than that, which is what I said right in the beginning, whereas we we've got our stuff, but we actually a lot more, a lot more

open, open in that. But unfortunately, we first recognise we see it, but it's it's not so easy necessarily to get rid of that operating programme. Yes. There is, as you said, it's not the decision. Well, from now on, I'm not going to feel for Oh, yeah. Because that would all be in the mind. So how do you do? Okay, so we're going to get her that's exactly what that's exactly. We're getting to work with the energy, okay, we have to work it we work

energetically. And within Buddhism. There's different schools of Buddhism. So we have we have like Mahayana Buddhism, which is the very seated soul meditation, doing like loving kindness, meditating on compassion, then we have vegetariana Buddhism. So this the school pours into vegetariana Buddhism, which is the tantric so it's, as I explained earlier, it's using visualisation and mantra. And

then we have Maha Mudra. Which means great perfection, which is the Zack chain teachings I mentioned in the beginning, which is kind of like the ultimate state. But this is a very important thing. If you today decide I'm going to start doing sub chain or my hammer teachings and you picked up a text and you started to read all the stuff. It's not going to you can read it, but it's not going to energetically happen for you.

You have to work through a vehicle to get there and that's exactly why in Tibetan Buddhism, they have the nano process, which is doing purification techniques, in order to prepare yourself to get to the very deep nondual teachings. And those purification techniques are not just sitting on a cushion. There are physically you are doing prostrations you are saying

certain mantras. It's actually all about shifting the energy in the body, balancing the energy in the body because when the energy in the body is balanced, it helps us to get to that deep mind or heart makes it a lot easier for us without the confusion. Even the yoga Schools, you know, yoga, we know yoga in the West mostly as the poses, and the breathing. But actually yoga developed in order to prepare the body and the energy to sit in meditation to go within. So it's it's a

process of evolution. And that's why the special Yana School of Buddhism is such a gift to the world, because it's, it's known as like, it's like a faster vehicle. And using visualisation, using that second energy, body of visualisation, and dream work, and so forth, helps us to access that state quicker than if we just maybe did seated meditation.

In general, of course, there's exceptions, but in general, it helps us to use the energy effectively quicker to get back to that natural state of being. And there's other ways to also use the energy. So one way is through these practices, but also using the elements, working with nature and so forth, also helps us to bring that energy. So we're going to get to exactly your question that's coming. Okay, I just want to quickly finish off these last few rules of energy. And then we can speak

about that. So the next role of energy is that it has a Yang and Yang aspect to it, we can also call that masculine and feminine. And in the bow, which is the Chinese spiritual philosophy. They say that when that initial energy they have a similar understanding, when that energy moves, it kind of splits into two the two two aspects that's that Queen, Lindy always speaks about and it has the the two aspects and that energy is

Slack, magnetised. And that's very important from your work with the elements, this point is hugely important because an element, we can have maybe an excess, like Yang of an element. Or we can have too much a yin aspect of an element. And it's about balancing Yin and Yang, or masculine and feminine is another way of looking at it constantly. And that's one of the tools that we can use to create to create that balance.

And then, very interesting, when that energy, we've got the energy of two, and the sounds very like mystical, but the energy of two becomes three. And we can see in all traditions, this concept of the Trinity, or three fold energy or body speech and mind. There is something that connects there's a third mystical aspect that connects Yang and Yang, or masculine and feminine. We see it in Christianity we have, you know, God, the Father, God, the Son, and then we have the Holy

Spirit. So it is that energy of the Holy Spirit, or in Buddhism, we'd say that is the speech or the the dream state vehicle that connects the two. So in simple layman's terms, what that means is we have something that's very subtle, that we can't access, we have something that is material that we can connect to. And then we have that spirit, or that energy that bridges the two. And then the energy itself has different aspects. And that is what we get to now, which is what we call

the elements. So within so if we go back to that original creation story, we have that snaking energy, the foster and foster that energy moves. It breaks, it breaks up because now remember, the moving mind is what creates the perception of separation. So the faster the moving man, the more separate things seem.

So the nature of energy on a very subtle or pure state in an evangelistic way, is that it has these it has qualities they call the enlightened qualities, okay, so if we look at all, we can call them the five elements, the five lights, or the five qualities, it's the same, ultimately the same thing. And depending on the level that we are perceiving energy, subtle, energetic, or form or gross, we see the elements in a different

way. So if reviewing the elements in our world right now, it's easy for us to view the elements in a physical way. And it's also easy, fairly easy for us to Rick start to recognise the elements in a symbolic, energetic way. So what I mean by that is if we use the element for simple one Earth, we can identify with the earth element in our life. But we can also identify with its energetic qualities, we can say someone who's earthy, is perhaps grounded.

We, there's a lot, there's a lot that we can connect to there's stability. There's, there's so much in the words that we use with the elements, it's quite astounding, we, we already know

all the answers. And symbolically, you know, we speak about feeling stuck in the mud, or walking on the clouds, we use so many terms being burnt out, you know, what is the analogy of being burnt out, you have had an abundance of the fire elements caused or so bad the wind, because as we know, especially in Cape Town, the wind fuels the fire, and that is left your water and your earth element depleted. So burnout happens when your earth and water are lower your

fire in your a, a Hi. And interestingly, we can, this is a obviously all elements have got masculine and feminine qualities. But in general, most of the teachings say that the elements that are called to masculine fire and air, the elements that are core to feminine are water and earth. So we can see in our planet at the moment, you know, even over the past few 100 years, we've had an abundance of the masculine energy, which is in the Chinese word, use the word Yang energy.

So it's all been about progress, about intellect, about God in the sky, because, you know, it's that air or fire, we can't quite grasp. So you know, it's about God in the sky, as opposed to God, in essence in the earth. So when we look at, when we look at the world in a symbolic way, it's actually pretty easy when we start to use the symbolism behind the words to figure out

where we are. So right now, just take 30 seconds, and try and think where you are, energetically Do you consider yourself to be very earthy or grounded, or perhaps lacking the earth element or stability? are you connected to any of the elements in particular, so maybe you've got a huge need or feeling to be with water? Or to be maybe in a deep cave? Just trying to think of the natural environment? What calls to you? No, I'm not going to tell you

too much. Because it's something that's you'll know the answers within yourself and see if you can connect to where you're at right now. So don't let anyone wants to share.

It's always interesting when we listen through other people's experiences, Adam, you've been working with the elements so you Yeah, so I I came from a dance retreat that a week long retreat of moving constantly in silence to music with people several hours a day and whilst kind of trying to become more aware of this element and how they manifest in

the body. And so for me, the fire element is very prominent, both just in my life in general, I have always had a lot of heat, I'm always sweat sweating, and you're not gonna have a lot of energy. And and so that manifests in in desire and attachment to because that elements correlate so there's a lot of attachment to whether it's food or something to the feminine. And and the way that I see it manifesting in my life is that the I see sometimes creates the

end and other people. So my my fire deck, my abundance of fire energy and I suppose desire, I can see manifesting and other people as as insecurity, volatility

and jealousy. I see that manifesting and so I see this interplay between myself and the world it's fine and interplay between fire energy so right now I'm I'm sitting with how do I bridge that that how do I transform that, that that attached version of desire to the kind of seductive nature, the Rather rather than dealing with how to be in kind of quiet or connection with everything rather than that rather than the some one particular object of desire or something that I

attached, so I'm sitting a lot of that, trying to just be in a state of Bledsoe union with everything as the feminine rather than something else that we want to give that spontaneous response rather than you're holding response that was spontaneous, it relates more to to the element like that that's being spontaneous, the manifestation is like, you talking when you add image, you can de identify, when you started using hold of that fixed station itself, then you can

feel very unstable. And then because it is the reaction to that, that you cling to things to kind of try and manifest with with the fire element. There's this kind of this need to validate the self through the through sense of creating union, like or out of connection of like, ownership in in some ways.

So changing that that fire energy to something, which is, yeah, so it's more it's more about sacred, sacred union or sacred quedo connection with the terms that I've been coming across, seductive, clear with the world, rather than the world as a whole, rather than an individual object of desire. Yeah, that's interesting. And you see, using the archetypes or using a story is also very

helpful. So one of a tool that we can use in that energetic space, is actually the tool I love mythology and storytelling, because the archetypes can help us to identify with ourself in a less personal way, which is what you're seeing, you want to transform that relationship from being very, very personal into something that's less personal

and more symbolic. And in that way, there's a teacher called Richard rad and he speaks about, he says, we have a gift, or sorry, we have a shadow, we can transform the shadow into a gift. And ultimately, we can transform the gift into the city. And the city is the word for the enlightened quality of that. But we have to work in

that order. So like what Adam is sharing is we're not taking the fire element and immediately trying to get into the enlightened city or quality of that, we're working through the archetypal energy, the symbolism, to really understand it and work with it so that we can bring energetic balance to it. And likewise, I would, I could offer in that situation is to not just look at the fire element, because all the elements work in relationship to one another. So we can never really just work with one

element. It's constantly a dance. And again, that involves all of the elements. And in fact, the way I see the fire element, so we've got Earth, which also if we talk to some people know of the chakra system, Earth would be our base chakra, it's the connection down into the earth, we then have the water elements, which is the sacral chakra, which is all about

our connection. So whereas earth energy is about our connection to our tribe on Earth, the water element is about our connection with one another, which is interesting because it's around the energy of procreation and surround, creating, not just physically but anything that we want to manifest in our life. We then have the element of fire or, as you said, which is connected often to our passion, desire, attachment, but fire elements even and then we've got a Mackay which is connected to

the heart. Fire if you think of fire, it's less of an element. Because if we think of everything in that three, the three states of energy, form earth, water, energy, and a subtle, so how does fire fit into their fires actually, even though it's an element fire is an agent of change. Because fires job is a changes those three, those three elements of fire can heat water, it can heat a fire is an agent of change. And it's interesting to work with their energy as an as an

agent of change. So why desire for instance, desire is telling you that there's some desire towards a change of an energetic state doesn't have to be attached to a particular storyline we can work with desire as as more of an archetype. So thinking of your life in archetypal terms, and reading up and learning about the archetypes can be very, very helpful, then you're working at this at this level of the of the elements.

And then so we mentioned the earth element, the water element, the fire element, the element which is at our heart, which, of course, is we think of the heart, but we have the lungs, you know, it's the energy of breathing, which is the last element that comes when we are born physically as a baby, it's kind of the last element that forms because all of our other elements in our body we in the womb, we already created. And the third last element that we

connect to. And similarly when we die, is that the breath stops and when the breath stops, we are we die. So this connection of the is very important, because is that which connects us to the subtle. And then we have the space element in the Indian traditions, they speak about the upper chakras as being connected to the ether elemental space element. And it's always the heart, the

heart is the meeting point. But subtle air is something we can still know, we know the air we, we breathe it every single day. So it's not foreign to us as something like space is a kind of a bit of a foreign concept to us, because it's hard for us to understand space emptiness truly, other than in a very conceptual way. So the heart is always that meeting point. yes to Him. So,

just a quick question. I was wondering, sorry, I was actually reading immediately before you said that love relationships between spaces as an element and emptiness, and then you you actually brought them together yourself. So, could you say is that the same thing. So again, space is the container, space is emptiness. So therefore, space is energy. So we call space the fifth element, but it is, it is the first and the last element, because it is the source from

which everything arises. And it is that in which everything dissolves. So it is the ground, you know, ground of experience is, is the spaciousness, and the other elements play within the space. But we ourselves, even if we look archetypically, we can also see how much space do you make space in your life for for yourself? Do you make space? Do you follow your space? I put a lot of stuff, you know how much what is your relationship lack

of space? And that actually goes very much into silence as well. Because space and silence are so connected. How much space do you allow? It's it's quite a big one. And it's quite fundamental.

Because if you filling up your space with so much other stuff, it's going to be very hard for you to stand back and see all your operating templates and, and stuff you need to have you need to create that space, which is the container in order to truly see how it is wood, because in traditional Chinese medicine, they don't have air as one of the elements. But they have a word. If you have anything I'm sorry, I don't know if you have the time to go. No, no, I can

tricky. So I know in Chinese they have they have a different they also have the metal element for the loans. Yeah, which is a element. And what is what is this space? What is the equivalent of the space elements, but they speak about it in a different in a different journey. So it's the earth, the earth and the water, which gives rise to the the word. And the word ultimately becomes the metal which goes back to the mineral to the earth. It's a

slightly different cycle. But actually, because I've recently spent quite a lot of time learning about the the DA and the Chinese elements, because it is interesting that it's different. But it's actually not really different. It's different terminology, but it's it's still the same five aspects. Ultimately. Yeah, that's how I feel about everything. Exactly. And you know, 10 cent rank or Mr. Shea in that

creation story. He says when that energy is moving, everything so everything starts with the five lots, which aren't lots like we would see physical lots, it's five, its luminosity. They say in the teachings or awareness, there's five aspects of awareness, which we correlate to a light or to a different colour. Okay. And as this goes faster and faster and faster, and therefore separation seems more and more and more, we see

the lats in different ways. So they first last and then we see the energy in it. And then he says Think about it, we have five fingers and five toes, we have five limbs on our body, we have five, well, four limbs and a head, I suppose five things that stick out of our torso, we have five sense organs, you know, he goes on and on our country member the entire list, but this energy of five is is very sacred. Because everything has been created from from that initial,

the in sacred template. Also another interesting thing with five is you have the 1234. And where's five, then in the centre, and your fifth is known in the American Indian tradition, as yours place have, you got across the centre, because it go into the centre of yourself your heart space, and that is the catalyst and that you that's the best word wasn't

mentioned. But that's what what was Nicki was also saying, that's the catalyst point in the case of, of Capitalising that alchemy that she's talking about, yeah, it's also a prime number. Five is also a prime number. Five is a very energetically it's contains everything. And even if you look at always think of that if you look at the symbol of the home, which is also again, it's the space element in the heart. So it is that thing of and interestingly, in numerology five, also being in the middle

has issues around freedom. And because five is contained with other numbers, often people that have got me to work with this energy of space, there's an aspect in their life of feeling like they don't have freedom or desire for freedom or wanting more freedom, or there's some issues around around freedom,

which is space. So there's just so so so much, but today, I just wanted to give you that overview of the rules of energy so that next time we can start looking at the elements of each of the elements, so that you can understand for yourself how to work with them to balance them in your everyday life. And, you know, I'll share just a very quick personal story. It's something that takes many, many, many years. And it's not a

logical path. It's not like we decided, today, I'm going to transform the water element of my life, you know, it's not, it's not something that happens like that. And using the example of the water element, what happened in my life is I started to become, about, four years ago, five years ago, extremely sensitive to seeing the environmental destruction and all the suffering going on

in the environment. And it actually caused me to have not one day that would go past me I wasn't in tears, I was just crying constantly. And you know, tears again, is actually a gift of the water element. And but his was in a way that actually aused me so much anguish that I ecame a bit depressed, like his environmental depression hat because I just could never

ee an end to it. And I had to eally sit with that and learn cceptance and just allow that o be but at the same time what was happening is I was having a lot of dreams about water. And always dreams of the ocean deep waters which I'm not an ex- Joburger I'm not like a wa er Baby, you know, going in he ocean too deep is a it frightening for me. So it wasn't, it wasn't like a ab streams and ponds. This was l ke big, vast, deep, deep blue po ls of water and seeing lots

of whales. And it was j st remarkable how it happened to my dream so many times it happe ed enough that I started to ay attention to it. And then I ad a dream that we were buildin a house this was about two ye

rs ago. And in my dream I ha a dream that there was a flood nd I literally saw taking buck ts of water and flinging buckets of water like this and snakes c me up at the rock behind my ew house and was spitting water at me and I took this as some s rt of Omen so we move into ur house and the very first Mon ay now that we in our house we h ve a flood but it wasn't like a ad it was a bad flood but it happened from the waterfall to the plumber had disconnected it incorrectly and connected

it incorrectly I should say and he whole house full of effo ts filtered water not the wo st thing although not not gre t. Okay. So we go through t is whole process of like gett ng the entire house dr ed admission. Whatever, let it o. exactly six weeks later we re sitting on the couch, mass ve storm middle of winter, he coldest day of the winter so ar because like seven degrees, h ge rainstorm, and lo and beh This rock wall behind my house I live kind of against the

mountain. So just start spewing water like a river. And the whole back of my house fills up with water like deep, deep, deep river water now, no internet. And there was nothing we could do. But this water covered vents came through every door flooded my entire, every square centimetre of the house downstairs. And there we were quite literally with buckets, like I had seen, because when the first flood happened, I thought oh, you see, it was

nonsense latrine. There we were with buckets, tossing the water tossing the water. And at that point, I mean, now I was a bit freaked out, okay, see floods, in six weeks, even the insurance company was like that has never happened statistically, ever, two floods in six weeks, all these dreams about the water element. At the same time, I'd actually been stung by a scorpion in the middle of all of this, which is scorpions, also very much around the water, the

water element. And I just couldn't quite I knew that there was a message, but I couldn't kind of put it together. Now this is over months. And doing a lot of meditation and a lot of looking and seeing I finally started to realise that what it was is archetypically, the water element deep, deep water represents the collective

unconscious. And this, this, this pain, and anguish I've been picking up in the environment, and all the tears that I had been shedding was because of there is this huge, like ocean of pain that I could feel that was sitting there and I was resisting it and not wanting to let it into my life. And hence the flat says, you know, what is not going to hold back, it's

going to come. And by recognising that and working with that and sitting with it and allowing the pain, allowing the tears to come instead of thinking, What's wrong with me, why am I depressed? You know, I'm bad for crying, just allow the tears allow myself to truly feel the pain. It was something magical happens. It transformed. And I just had a glimpse of what the enlightened quality of water is,

is mirror-like wisdom. So inst ad of that vast water represent ng pain, and anguish, it actua ly was showing me everything in he world reflected in it. ut mirrors you don't have to t ke on what's in the mirror. I 's just merely an observation. nd it was just this momentary g ft of recognising that enlighte ed aspects of the water elem nt that was given to me. And e er since then, I mean, I st ll obviously feel very, v ry deeply, I still allow myself

to need it. But I don't have t is anguished relationship to t. And so that's a very stra ge story. But that's how I'll be over years and years and ye rs and years can work with he energy of the elements and ow we allow them to change us. I 's an alchemy that that happe So we'll end on that today. And we can go more into the details in the few in the coming few weeks. Thanks