Superpowered Mind with Clare Dimond

Can you talk a bit more about how experiencing emotions is not the same thing as suffering?

If we take grief as an example - it would seem that the system learns grief as a way to support the body's need for resources. We aren't expecting grief to go away once it's learned that there's no self. So when does grief transition into suffering?

I've listened to your podcast on "What do you mean by feel the feelings that arise".  Can you give any pointers on how to do this when you're in the middle of situations where it seems like this isn't possible.  For example, I've been trying to go deep into the body when I have panic, or panic attacks at work.  This results in a sort of confusion as to what I'm doing at work as the focus isn't on the task at hand and I'm kind of out of it in terms of the job flow.  Do we just do the best we can?  I'm thinking of your public speaking situations.  If you ever do get uncomfortable any more, are you able to go into the body and still stay on track?

Thanks Clare,

I don't know why this is so difficult for me.  I do ask the questions about what I am etc and everything you point to makes sense and yet the" I" still hangs tight. 

I wonder if you can speak a bit about readiness you often mention in the context of being ready for this sort of conversations? It looks like the system presettles itself so the experiences arised in the body can be felt, questioned, looked at and it doesn't look so frightening anymore.

I hope you are keeping well... I love all your work and pointings to who we truly are..it's been so helpful....

I wanted to ask you what is it like for you living from a place of openness and surrender... What does it feel like to let life live you?   I know you said it wasn't always like that for you, especially around speaking up at meetings and the anxious feelings that arose from being in certain situations.. 

How has life changed for you?   Do you still experience your conditioning and learned behaviours or are they only very faint and in the background...how do I get out of my own way? 

I'm curious as I'm exactly as you used to be afraid to speak up at meetings and shy away from public speaking as my face goes bright red and I basically say the bare minimum 😊...

It's ironic really that I ended up in an organisation that is all about marketing, a lot client facing  and surrounded by Uber confident people who can speak off the cuff..  I really feel like a fish out of water and have ended up where I am as I had no clue of my true nature and what my heart really longed for.. 

Apologies for the long winded email and so many questions!

I heard another non-dual teacher mention the intense friction that we experience when our thoughts and feelings clash.

The statement really resonated but I haven't got a clue why.

Could you have a go at speaking to this?

I was recently triggered by a conversation with a friend and 'I' have been unable to let it go since.

I am meeting up with her again.  'I' want to put it all behind me, move on, whilst at the same time wanting her to see where she is wrong, how hurt I was, in short I want to control the whole situation!

I know that 'all' I have to do is notice everything that is going on, bringing awareness to it, without having to do anything to 'fix' it.  

But how do I sit with something that is so thought based?  How do I sit with the feelings when they are only there because of my thinking?

Is it simply noticing all that?  Of course the I wants it all to go away, so I notice that too?

REST by Alex Sooting-Kim Pang. The Sunday Book 

Listener question 

I've been listening to the book Rest more today and it is bringing up a question. I wonder if you would consider it for the podcast? 

The book seems to suggest that our ideas about creativity are wrong and that what is really needed is a slow pace to life and space for play in order to allow the subconscious to do what it does best; that contrary to the dogma that we should work harder, creative genius is a product of this more restful existence.  

This is where I get stuck. It seems that everything is stacked against us here (as the book also points out). Almost everyone I know feels overworked. There is an apparent reality to a hypermodern demanding non-stop world?  

If everything 'out there' is created in this conscious space does this mean that this apparent busyness and overwork are sort of an illusion? That if it makes sense to the system then choices will be made to opt out of that somehow and and choices to remain in the 'rat race' happen because it makes sense based on beliefs? 

I can increasingly feel myself opting out of this as a result of this conversation...finding space where I believed there to be none, but I also find myself back in the middle of it regularly. 

The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts. 

David Bohm

I recently became aware of how deeply domestic abuse is rooted in my family.  As I'm reading See what you made me do. 

7 years ago I left a marriage of 22 years of crazy abuse, and now I'm watching the cycle repeat itself with my eldest son and his wife. 

I don't know what to do.  She is very much in the place of protecting him and justifying the abuse.  I have tried to broach it before but if I bring it up with her she will most probably tell him and it will backfire and hurt her more. 

 It will also alienate her from me and make it more difficult to help her in the long run. 

I have thought of giving my son the book 

"See what you made me do" and asking him to read it. 

That may make it worse too. 

I'm feeling confused between understanding the relative truth and the truth in this situation.  I don't want to fall into spiritual bypass either. 

I'm also wanting to see more deeply into what's really going I here so I can help clients in similar positions. 

Can you help me shed some light on this please Clare. 

All this talk in the REST course of sitting with discomfort and feeling what is asking to be felt has made me realize that I really haven’t a clue how exactly to do this.

From my earliest childhood I remember my emotions were problematic for my mother who often told me, “Don’t be like that.” I could see my emotions were frequently in turn annoying or too needy or overwhelming or terrifying for her to deal with. My father, while kind, was mostly emotionally absent in my life. 

Having no real role models for dealing with feelings, I turned to food at a young age and still use it to numb and cope. 

Another strategy I’ve employed my whole life is to journal about feelings. 

Now when I hear you talk about exploring the edges of the identified mind’s comfort zones, I’m wondering how exactly to do this? 

When I try to sit with  feelings I find myself trying to name them and narrating the experience. Or I write about them and similarly find myself involved with choosing the closest labels. Inevitably this leads to writing words that invent and describe the psychology of the system, complete with numerous finger-pointing stories.

Intuitively this feels more removed than what you’re describing. That the words are a dodge, a movement away from feeling them.

It is a little embarrassing to ask, but what do you mean by and how to feel the feelings that arise? How are they witnessed when they’ve been blocked out by the system for most of my life?  I would appreciate any pointers you could offer.