I have been watching the violence in Israel in absolute horror. So many innocent people killed and injured. I feel angry not just with the perpetrators but also with my spiritual exploration because in these moments talking about reality and self seems to be nothing but bypass. A complete waste of time when what is required is action because of course this is real, this is actually happening. How do I not become disillusioned both with the state of the world and humanity and with non-duality that says there is no reality? 

When there is no do-er, no chooser, no decider - how can a pattern of abusive behaviour, particularly towards others, stop?  

The pattern of ‘wanting’ to intimidate others is noticed. It isn’t wanted…….but how will it or can it stop? 

Hi Clare, I am a listener of your podcast and I have a question I've been wrestling with for awhile that I'm hoping you can touch on. I am struggling with the teacher-student aspect of this understanding or any spiritual understanding for that matter. In my life, I feel like I constantly have so many questions about what is true or not, who is telling the truth and really just what is the truth? And listening to non-dual teachers, reading books, watching videos or anything is relieving a bit because it feels like I am getting an answer. But that feeling never lasts for very long and often I question the teacher themselves. I'm wondering if full understanding of truth is only possible through the self, with no external input. Is it necessary to come to the truth on my own. 
 I realize this is rather ironic that I am asking you, a teacher. However, I'm not sure what else to do.

Clare you talk about the I, myself. That it doesn't exist. If this is so then  who are we, and how  do we refer to ourselves? I don't understand the message you are trying to give.

It was a great podcast thank you! I appreciate the wild goosechase reminders.

The caveat seems to be that the mind will create resistance to feeling each time, there's no doer that does the resisting, it just happens, yet there's the witnessing of it happening that's also where the potential for it shifting is. The agenda is in the resistance. The witnessing of it has no agenda. For some reasons this feels like a paradox. Might be overthinking.

It feels​ like there's a separate me that is the one that wields the willpower to overcome the resistance and feel sensations (agenda)...instead of a mind claiming that separation is real and then claiming that the separate thought stream is the doer. 

I thought for a while whether I had any follow ups or anything but tbh I couldn’t take in your response. I keep asking people for help in the form of wanting advice or joining various courses, trying to find someone who gets it and to help me see what to do about various things, not just my daughter, but don’t seem to be able to receive the response and I’m not really sure what to do with that. 

As I write that I’m realising that that is what I’ve heard you talk about, the ask and the observing of the response. My response seems to be to not be able to take it in, the mind doesn’t seem to want to take in the response because somehow that makes it too real, too painful, so it just moves onto the next problem to fix. Always fixing fixing fixing but never still enough to actually slow down and look at what is going on. 

Or maybe my ask wasn’t clean, it looked like I was asking for how to navigate the relationship with my daughter, but as I get really still with that, I see that my question was an attempt to secure myself as being seen and loved by a system that, when identified, believes she isn’t. The situation with my daughter was a way to justify asking, so I suppose that’s why I couldn’t take in what to do, because it was never about that. 

See this is what my mind does, relentlessly analysing what the mind is doing and why and what that means and ugh, here it goes again! 

Hi Clare I have a question for you separate from this video. I wondered whether or not you have a faith, believe in god or a higher presence? If so how important is this concerning living in the present moment, actuality etc, or does it have no bearing at all?    

thank you Clare and the listener who wrote in about  their conditioning of wanting to run away during a wake. I understand that there is no doer that changes conditioning but is it true to say that they way we act and behave can change someone else’s conditioning. 

Email 1

thank you so for talking about my email i do get it clare but it's so hard for me to understand my conditioning when everyone else's conditioning is like the same i no it's not the same but they seem to be able to be a part of gatherings and parties and me i just want to run away

i don't even know how i got this programme in me because my family are Irish and growing up we always had massive gatherings and i always would be hiding somewhere mostly under a table .i did read a school report last night and in the report i was 8 years old it said she has lots of friends but she is very much a loner. she will choose to be by herself my parents were very sociable and loved to play Irish music and have a Hooley and sing song well 

So it's just so hard for me not be like them and join in and have the crack i would stay if i could lay down underneath the table and just listen  but thank you yer big stuff ❤️

Email 2 

hi lovely it's not the conditioning that needs to be dropped is it it's the mind telling stories like you're gonna faint, everyone is gonna see you on the floor i'm going to lose my vision my heart is beating so fast i'm sweating and my body needs to go that's what my mind is saying i no i have to have it all. I'm going to a 60th birthday tonight and of course I don't want to go it's crazy why does all this come at once