#337 Snippets of wisdom: Understanding meditation and what is a spiritual teacher.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Agi Keramidas  0:03  
welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast. And this is another snippet of wisdom episode where I select my favourite most insightful moments from previous episodes. Today's snippet of wisdom is very relevant to the recent shift of the podcasts direction towards spiritual content. If you've missed it, go back to Episode 335, where I share with you the backstory behind this pivotal shift. And if you have listened to my story before, you might have heard me talk about when I was 20, studying dentistry in Greece when my best friend decided to drop out of university and he went to Siberia and became a shaman and a spiritual teacher. His transformation at that time instilled the elements of spirituality that I still carry with me. In 2018, I interviewed him and it was one of the very first podcast conversations ahead. So I chose a couple of snippets from that conversation with the shaman Northen Deer Alexander, and the first snippet is about meditation, the benefits it brings in some meditation techniques. And the other one is his answer. When I asked, what is a spiritual teacher? What does it mean? I hope you find his message and his answer as insightful as it has been for me.

Northern Deer Alexander  1:58  
The benefit of meditation basically, is to realise that there is a flow is stream of thinking in your mind, and you are clearly not involved in this stream of things. But really, who you are, actually your authentic being is outside of this stream of thinking and that this stream of thinking happens. By itself, it's a automated mechanism. The average person is identified with the stream of thinking, so whatever this thoughts are saying in your head, it becomes somehow your thoughts, you think that you are thinking these thoughts. So it comes from you, yes. So what the thoughts say it is your thoughts, it is what you have inside is your truth or something like that. So you follow it. So, if you have angry thoughts, then you are convinced that you are right to be angry. And this exactly, for example, in this case of being angry, if you think that you are right to be angry, this will perpetuate your anger, as long as the source of anger, which is somebody doing something to you Yes, is not changing. And then you are trapped into negative thinking and negative emotions, which have negative result in your life. For example, if you want to create something, and you have negative emotions, you cannot create because creativity and negative emotions is the opposite energy you cannot create while being angry, you cannot see your future while you are angry, or why while you are depressed, or why you are afraid of something. If you look forward to your life, this is the most important when you look forward in the life that is coming towards you from the future. Let's say you should be excited for what is waiting for you. If you're stressed, or disappointed, or just bored, waiting the same and the same or just not seeing anything in front of you just a grey, you know cloud. This will be like your creation of your future and nobody likes this. But this is how we live actually, we don't expect something great. But it's not about all about expectation is about your vision, the way you see your future. If you see the future as something that is your aspiration and that you are looking forward to it. It means you see something great there and you are going towards this thing. So you create this kind of path to connect you and this thing that you're expecting. Meditation will help you to cut this unconscious identification.

Agi Keramidas  4:54  
Yes, remember something that Eckhart Tolle said that if I can hear the thoughts whose thoughts are they, if it is someone else that is hearing those thoughts in terms of a technique meditation techniques that you mentioned earlier, is there something that you would recommend or something that people could start with on their meditation journey? Yes,

Northern Deer Alexander  5:21  
there are many meditation techniques. One simple very simple way of meditating is working in nature. But, you need to do it in such a way that you are not simply working in nature and thinking about your office and about your problems, but really allow yourself is while you work on nature to connect with your environment, and to appreciate your environment. If you cannot do this, then you have to focus on your breathing one meditation technique very known is to feel the breath the air that is coming inside and outside of you, this helps you to enter into a meditative state simply sitting down and observing your breath more advanced like more more helpful would be also to feel that while breathing in clean like fresh energy of life is coming to you like to have this feeling that like some kind of fuel some kind of energy is entering you and why you exhale the old energy like the old things in you going out. So what do you want to get rid of you exhale it and what you want to have like new you inhale it, okay, this is and you can meditate like this breathe in, like absorbing the something higher and new that you would like, even if it is not clear define just breathe it, breathe in the fresh air like this, you take new energy and when you exhale, let go of something like an old habit. For example, just every exhalation for you sit down for 15 minutes, every exhalation we will let go of a habit that you have. Spiritual Teacher is a general term that defines all the people who are trying to lead others into an evolutionary process to initiate them into a process of evolution with purpose of awakening, awakening of wealth awakening of the true essence of who we are, is all this knowledge says that we are born when we are born, we can let's say as a natural being, but then the education puts in us different ideas about for example, who we are, who we should be, how we should be, how we should live and so on. And many times these ideas are making us deviate from our nature. For example, that you should always act in a certain way, like some protocols in life, yes. Although these are okay for survival, and for like being able to behave naturally in a group of people with a mass of people and so on. If somebody identifies with this, and thinks that this is who he is, or who he should be in the essence, not externally, then the person loses himself and start acting in accordance to the programme that is putting him not to who he really is. For example, if you are in a job, like a military job, and I have nothing against military, but this is just an example it can be anything like doctor, lawyer, and you have to behave in your job in a certain way. For example, in military to give orders. And if you become identify with this trait, when you start giving orders, for example, to your wife, to your kid, or everyone around understand and you think that you are this person who has power over others, yes, it becomes a habit. So the spiritual teacher is somebody who has understood the nature of things in India they call this Dharma, yes. And his helping people by teaching them in initiating them to their true nature, to realign with their dharma with a naturalness to be natural to be themselves and to snap out of all this programming. That because this programme is is the reason of our happiness of disease of conflict. So this is a spiritual teacher, somebody who is teaching the Dharma, who's teaching the natural way of living.

Agi Keramidas  10:11  
Thank you for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this episode, can you find one person that you think it would add value to and share it with them? I would really appreciate you. It helps grow the show and it also helps you add value to people you care about. Thank you so much. Until next time, stand out don't fit in!