Teal Swan

At a certain point in our spiritual development, we are confronted with the fact that the very things that once liberated us are now the things that holds us prisoner. We realize that in wanting to feel better or think better, we are asking ourselves to feel and think and be different. We discover that by trying to feel better or think better, or be better, we are resisting ourselves. And then the whole game changes. We leave behind the desire for manifestation. We replace all wants for the want for oneness with ourselves. We stop wanting to heal because it no longer feels good to think that something about ourselves is broken. Instead, we begin to crave integration. The spiritual apex we begin to pursue is authenticity. Authenticity is an idea that appeals to us when we begin to live in the present moment. We fall in love with what is.

All plants possess unique energetic frequencies and those frequencies can teach a new way of thinking and being. Cannabis teaches about a great many things including: The path of least resistance, oneness, surrender, release, letting go, present moment, “Livity”, communion, allowing, the impermanence and illusion of the physical dimension, the frailness of boundaries, inhibition, the unhealthiness of control, the fear that lies behind the bold, confident mask of the ego and effortless being.

Spiritual bypassing is the cancer of the spiritual world. It is a disease that has run rampant in both religious and non-religious circles. Spiritual bypassing (or whitewashing) is the act of using spiritual beliefs to avoid facing or healing one’s painful feelings, unresolved wounds and unmet needs. It is a state of avoidance. Because it is a state of avoidance, it is a state of resistance. I personally, consider Spiritual bypassing to be the shadow side of spirituality.

Skepticism is the opposite of suspended judgment. It is the rigid judgment that absolute certain knowledge is impossible. This is why skepticism does not feel good emotionally to the skeptic or to those who are on the receiving end of the skeptic. It is tempting to think skepticism can be healthy but it cannot. There is no such thing as healthy skepticism. To experience how unhealthy skepticism is, next time you encounter skepticism, pay attention to and feel how skepticism robs things of energy and forward movement, a bit like water being thrown on a fire.

In this episode Teal Swan dives into the topic of abortion.

All of your relationships are a reflection of your relationship with yourself. The way you feel in your relationships is a reflection of the way you feel in your relationship with yourself. Self help gurus and Spiritual Teachers often teach their disciples this lesson and then proceed to guide people towards total responsibility for the state of one’s own life and relationships. But then, extending this responsibility further, they guide their disciples towards the state of complete self-sufficiency and independence from others.

Your mind is meant to be a tool that you can use to assist your intention for this life. But this is simply not the reality for most people. For most of us, our mind uses us. When painful things happen, our mind is pulled into the vibrational range of the event that occurred and is then a point of attraction to which like-thoughts are drawn. Soon, we are spiraling downwards and spiraling fast. You are the junction where two aspects of you meet, your eternal aspect and your temporal aspect. The way you feel is really about the vibrational similarity or difference between these two aspects of you. If they are far apart in vibration you experience negative emotion and if they are close together, you experience positive emotion. Your thought influences the vibration you hold.

There is a wholeness that calls to all people, we are born with its song ringing in our ears, and yet we come to know it first by its absence. For most people, the time comes in adulthood when the emptiness within us grows so large it can not be filled externally. And running from fears becomes a fight that we can’t keep fighting.

Teal Swan explains that accepting the badness within yourself is critical in order to become enlightened. The enemy of awakening is about always being identified with being good and maintaining your self-concept. This is difficult because we have the ability to re-frame anything, so that we see ourselves as being good or as doing a good thing when the truth is totally the opposite.

Life, we use this word all the time. But what does it mean? What is life made of? The answer is relationships. Your life is only ever as happy as your relationships. This includes your relationship with yourself. And relationships are the heart of our expansion in this life. Expansion was the purpose for this life. Expansion is all about contrast. Wanted and unwanted. Light and dark. So, we find that relationships are the source of our greatest joy and the source of our greatest pain.