Special Episode 5: On Life and Death

Maureen: [00:00:00] I’m Maureen Whitehouse

Christian: [00:00:01] And  I’m Christian Camerena.  And this is Miracle Renegade.

Maureen: [00:00:05] Well, we’ve been doing an awful lot of talking about what our perspective means to our experience of life. And especially during these times when we’re watching the evolution of a pandemic.

Christian: [00:00:17] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:00:17] It’s poignant for us to notice that there are so many attitudes and ideas and perspectives that are being thrown out there on a day-to-day basis. And people have been really hungry for information. Rightfully so, because it’s a time that’s very confusing. And at the same time, I feel like we’re getting stuffed full right now with so much information that might not necessarily be helpful.

And so I want to quantify now how we’re gonna approach this during this episode, that if it’s peaceful, It’s helpful. Let’s make it really simple. And we have enough complicated things going on in the world right now.

Christian: [00:01:02] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:01:03] If it’s peaceful, it’s helpful. If it promotes fear or anxiety or separation, it is not helpful.

Christian: [00:01:11] Yeah, that’s pretty simple.

Maureen: [00:01:12] Yeah. So it’s pretty basic here. We can go back to basics now. What’s most fundamentally important.

Christian: [00:01:21] Yeah. So, going from there, uh, I want to talk about death.

Maureen: [00:01:25] Oh Whoah.

Christian: [00:01:26] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:01:27] Yeah, that’s one of the fundamental things that runs everyone’s life for sure.

Christian: [00:01:31] And we all run away from it.

Maureen: [00:01:32] And we run away from it. Okay. So let’s during this episode run right into it then.

Christian: [00:01:37] Yeah, I –

Maureen: [00:01:37] With our eyes and hearts wide open.

Christian: [00:01:39] Definitely. Cause, over the years, I’ve had like a detachment to death. I’ve had friends die. I’ve had relatives die. My dad died who was relatively young  and, I never actually, I didn’t see him pass away. I had to be there with my brother because, it was just a whole complicated family mess. A lot of like family drama – don’t really need to get into it. But, I, I always had this feeling that I didn’t have to go to a funeral because I’m not going to remember the corpse. I’m going to remember the person. And a lot of people used to get really angry at me for this. And I would always give my condolences and, my respects and like really heartfelt eulogies, but I’m not going to go to a funeral cause it’s, I understand for the family and it’s just not for me.

Maureen: [00:02:29] Right.

Christian: [00:02:29] But, over the years, I – I can’t even look at roadkill without , like just turning away and going aghhh, and  running.  So I’ve, I’ve  had the question. Am I afraid of death? Really?  I can read about it. I can see it in movies. I can play it in video games.  But it’s still not known. I don’t know – I don’t even know what death is really.

Maureen: [00:02:52] Wow. This is a good one to unpack. So let’s just start with the basics. If you believe that you’re a body, then you think you’re finite. Then you are most definitely, somewhere, somehow within you, afraid of death. Because no one wants to see the end be the reality of things.

But

A few things in life, have us moving into a common experience. Pretty much everybody eats, everybody drinks water to sustain their physical body. Everybody breathes and everybody dies.

Christian: [00:03:31] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:03:32] Everyone’s born, and everybody dies. So when you begin to see those as the fundamental commonalities, why don’t we explore these things a little bit more and when we do that, we realize  everything can be sacred, everything. So how do you treat something sacred?

Christian: [00:03:51] Oh, precious.

Maureen: [00:03:52] Truly. And you, you contemplate it more naturally. You cherish it more sincerely.

Christian: [00:03:58] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:03:59] Look at ourselves as precious beings who are doing something phenomenal every day, showing up to a world that we feel separate from in separate bodies, wanting to be whole and complete.

Christian: [00:04:14] So what’s the role of the body? We have the commonalities. So what is the role of the body now?

Maureen: [00:04:21] Okay. So  let’s just get everybody to have a little bit of a personal experience of what the body is to them individually.

Ask yourself “who am I?” Just right now. Ask yourself, “who am I?”

I’m not going to fill in the blank right away, but see what you said for yourself. And if right away you  came up with a function, I’m a lawyer, I’m an accountant. I’m a mother, I’m a kid. I’m a student. If you  came up with a function, notice how all those functions will be finite. They’ll have a mini death to them. And –

Christian: [00:05:00] Oh wow.

Maureen: [00:05:01] If you’re afraid of death, then you’re going to do everything you can to hold on to that identity. I want to be regarded as the best sibling.

Christian: [00:05:10] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:05:10] I want to be regarded as the best child. I want to be seen as the best student or conversely, the worst student, because that’s an identity too.

Christian: [00:05:20] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:05:22] Every identity that we choose to resonate with gives us  a label that let’s us know we exist.

Christian: [00:05:29] Mmhm.

Maureen: [00:05:30] And if you don’t have a label of some kind on planet earth, how do you prove you exist?

Christian: [00:05:36] Yeah, I don’t know. The Truth about Labels

Maureen: [00:05:37] Whereas, each of us has a Soul, a Spirit, as I’m going to say, and keep repeating and repeating until everybody gets this, that all of us join life with a common denominator  – you came in with your first breath, you’ll leave with your last, the breath is your Soul, the animating part of you – if everyone has a breath, why are we not focusing on that breath as an indicator of how we’re showing up to life? We hyperventilate our way through the day.  We’re panting. We’re needing to get somewhere we’re not. It indicates that we’re just not in a peaceful state. If our breath is slow and peaceful and relaxed and spacious, it means that your mind is viewing things with more space. More space to see what’s not apparent.

Christian: [00:06:33] Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I know that we touched on space. But what’s the symbol of space then?

Maureen: [00:06:40] It’s the “nothingness” that we all crave, even though we don’t know it because we think nothingness is death, but an empty mind is a peaceful mind. So by that, I mean, we’ve talked about so many different ways to get out of uncomfortable situations by referring to the Truth of us instead of defaulting to this person who’s reactive  and defending their physical body and only showing up in a physical body with that being their foremost identity.

Christian: [00:07:09] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:07:10] The way we do it is from time to time, we just let ourselves be. And that might look like meditation, where you’re just focusing on the breath  – this breath in,  this breath out. It might be looking at the vastness of a sunset or sunrise. It might be just being with yourself  in the grass, looking at the sky. It might be being in an empty room and realizing if that makes you crazy , or if it feels liberating. To be able to be just with whatever is.

Christian: [00:07:45] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:07:45] For the people out there who’ve slowed down a little bit, in the midst of this pandemic, and become more thoughtful or deliberate in your actions. Then you can feel this, that there’s a part of you now that’s arriving that might not have been  as evident before this, that there’s a part of us that can just abide –  that can just embrace whatever is, as it is.

Everything that changes and shifts and is transitory is part of the world of form. We too are part of the world of form, but we also have this formless aspect of us, that’s the animating force of us. That’s the space that is filling the room that you’re in and without it there’d be nothing. And if we start to focus on the space, believe me, if that’s the one shift everybody who’s listening made in their life, you’re going to find life is amazing. Because you’ll start to notice the space and how things are put in the space  and how nature respects space and loves space.

Christian: [00:08:49] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:08:50] And thrives in space.

Christian: [00:08:53] Yeah. It’s, something I’ve noticed when I’m making music. That, uh, I’ll have pretty much a flow, right ? And I plug in these instruments and I have like five instruments I really go to, but they always plug in almost in the same space. Just because it amuses me. I just tickles me.

Maureen: [00:09:14] And your mind just finds that you’re clicked into creativity at that time. So not knowing what something is exactly when you’re in a creative mind is one of the coolest spaces to be. One of the most amazing artists out there can’t remember his name right now, but I’m sure people listening will, Brazilian artist who makes his art out of garbage!

Christian: [00:09:35] Oh wow.

Maureen: [00:09:35] The biggest garbage dumps in Brazil, he takes the garbage from the people who are collecting the recyclables and makes art out of it. That’s a stunning creation.

Christian: [00:09:50] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:09:51] So symbolically, can you feel that, how liberating that is? That if we understand that this too shall pass this too, shall change in a good way, in a happy way, then things like a virus, things like sickness and, and even death. We see them as transitions into new expansive experiences.

From Bodies to Looking at Ourselves as Divine Creations

Now you got to stay with me for a little while to be able to get that fully.

Christian: [00:10:15] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:10:16] You can see yourself when I asked that question earlier on, “Who am I?” You can see yourself as a physical structure, human body, or as a Soul. Let’s keep it easy again, just one of two choices. And again,  it’s the place of infinite possibility and potential. You can make anything once you resonate with that unboundedness.

Christian: [00:10:41] Yeah

Maureen: [00:10:42] Because that’s the fodder for creation, for creativity. Now, if we look at ourselves as Divine Creations, instead of just bodies, then this little life we live here on planet earth at any specific time, and in any specific space, is not all there is. As quantum physics and Einstein and everybody who’s genius caught on to, because our genius also abides in that space. Many people don’t know their genius because they don’t spend any time in space.

Christian: [00:11:15] Yeah, I – I

Maureen: [00:11:16] I mean a spacious mind that resonates with that space.

Christian: [00:11:20] Those geniuses, like Einstein, they get these aha moments when they’re not thinking. And it’s when they’ve given themselves space away from their work or their family.

Maureen: [00:11:30] So you just touched on it. Genius is not thinking. No labels, no forms. So think about what happens when you get with your family, or you start to do things rote, based on labels and identities that you’ve just learned how to navigate life with.

Christian: [00:11:45] Yeah. And it feels  like, I’m trapped in like a, like a like, a role  Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, okay. I am just this role, you know?

Maureen: [00:11:53] And it’s what everyone’s trying to escape when they say, “I want freedom!”

Christian: [00:11:57] Mmhm.

Maureen: [00:11:57] And they don’t really know what that even means. You know? Do you want to run wild, naked? Do you want to do anything you want or does it feel like you want to get out of the box that you perpetuate when you only identify with labels? Including a body? So let’s go back to that one. So, you’re either a physical structure or an unbounded Soul or Spirit, and  and listen to how our bodies operate. Every month we have new skin. Our liver is new every five weeks.

Christian: [00:12:36] Oh wow.

Maureen: [00:12:37] Our brain changes its content of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen about every 12 months. So that means that day after day, as we inhale and exhale, we’re giving off what were our cells and we’re taking in food and oxygen, water –  new cells. And all of this is intermixing in our body to make the contents of an organism. So what keeps us the same, historically, if we are changing so much? Every part of us changes all the time.

Christian: [00:13:21] Yeah. It must be our roles, right?

Maureen: [00:13:23] You’ve got it. The role is based on our memory.

Christian: [00:13:28] Ah, okay.

Maureen: [00:13:29] We have cellular memory. That’s why we value the past so much, even if it was painful.

Christian: [00:13:36] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:13:36] How hard it is for people to transcend their past, even if it was just 10 minutes ago and somebody pissed you off at the grocery store, it’s really hard to let that go because we are so bound to identities.

Christian: [00:13:49] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:13:49] Foremost being the body, that – guess what it does? – Gets sick and dies sometimes.

Christian: [00:13:54] Yeah. But I can see why people would keep remembering the past. Cause every time I look into the mirror, I see the guy that has been with me for the last 33 years, you know?

Maureen: [00:14:06] Yeah. But every single molecule of your body has been replaced thousands of times and that’s everybody.

Christian: [00:14:12] Wow.

Maureen: [00:14:12] That’s everyone on the planet. So if we’re being replaced thousands of times in our lifetime, what does that mean? When, when you can literally say one of the ways to access the miraculous is change your mind, change your life. Miracles collapsed time and space. Change your mind radically? You’re going to have a radical life change. It’s what happened to anybody symbolically through mythology, who became a hero overnight.

Christian: [00:14:38] Hmm

Maureen: [00:14:38] They changed their mind! That’s all that happened. They had a revelation of some kind.  Revelation, according to the world of the miraculous is when you get just a hit it’s a vertical hit. There’s no disputing it. You don’t have to argue with it. There’s no room for argument. It’s just – a hit. It happens in the present moment. A hero watches themselves show up where they normally would have had a different patterning that was based on labels and pasts and future. Maybe this will happen. Maybe that’ll happen. And all of a sudden, there’s no room to think.

Christian: [00:15:08] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:15:09] They just act. And that’s a vertical insertion of the Divine into a horizontal world of experience. That’s a Miracle – collapses time and space.

Christian: [00:15:18] Ohh. I – I, you’ve said this, like, even during this pandemic series, you’ve said that four or five times. But it’s now hitting me that yeah, like there’s this like life I’m living… but the lightening bolt that you say just kind of opens everything else up. Right?

Maureen: [00:15:33] Perfect. You got that. So now watch how important our minds are or these memories and these beliefs that are formed out of memories. If our minds are full of information and we are then being “in-formed” by all this information, our past and all these experiences we’re having well, what’s a form? Your physical body.

Christian: [00:15:58] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:15:59] You’re “in form” because you have a past.

Christian: [00:16:02] Ohh.

Maureen: [00:16:03] In the world of the miraculous…   bear with me because this is a little bit nebulous and ephemeral…

Christian: [00:16:08] Well death is.

Maureen: [00:16:10] Yeah, it is. But  we think it’s quantifiable. Cause we have a body, we bury it, we burn it, we do something with it. We have a ritual around it and that seems to be real and finite. Terribly so, for the people who someone has left behind. But the Spirit is being freed to its utmost capacity. For the very freedom everyone seeks on earth, to not be bounded by time and space and all these memories and thoughts that don’t feel peaceful and having this form that was in-formed by the past.

To the Top of the Mountain – Memories and Bodies

Christian: [00:16:45] Oh, wow.

Maureen: [00:16:46] Memory for the most part, informs our bodies and our minds, and has us in this space where we’re  captive to living this linear experience of life –  past, present, future. Very few of us have been entirely present.

Christian: [00:17:03] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:17:05] I’d say that if you’re in nature, you have a good shot of watching beings that are in the present moment. You know, acute senses. They have hearing for miles. And I just heard that butterflies can smell a scent  miles away there look it up. It’ll floor you. What nature has and the capacities we then have to be able to experience. I know that when I was pregnant each time I got this super nose where I could literally smell someone, if I was at the back of a huge store, like target or Walmart , I could smell people walking in the front door.

Christian: [00:17:45] Wow.

Maureen: [00:17:45] I’m serious about that. It was not fun. Because everything smells on earth. Everything made me nausious at the time! I remember going to the doctor’s office and I told him , I have this super nose. And he said, “Really? How do I smell?” I said, “Very antiseptic.” So, so I knew then that that was just a window into our ultra human capacities. That if we started to focus on things that really mattered –  i. e., peace. We would find that we are so resourceful and so amazing. If we didn’t label ourselves. Look what’s happening now with people being so frustrated at the way we’ve labeled each other –  via race, religion, beliefs, sex, gender, whatever people need to grab onto to say you’re different from me. I’m different from you. This makes me unique. This makes me important. This makes me valuable. This makes me – Alive.

Christian: [00:18:46] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:18:46] I have a place on the planet. If everyone could give that up and just say, be a lover of reality –  you’re here. You’re important. Just because you breathe, you’re important. Now, if you truly acted that way as though you could bring something delightful to this planet that no one else has the capacity to do.

Christian: [00:19:06] Mmhm.

Maureen: [00:19:07] You have something that you brought here that’s unique. Go inside. You’re not going to find it out there. Go inside, find out what it is. Tap your heart. Tap your Soul. Close your eyes. Open your inner ears and let yourself value yourself enough to know that the world sorely misses you when your Spirit doesn’t arrive.

Christian: [00:19:29] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:19:29] What everyone’s needing right now is to recognize that you’re the answer. You’re the answer that someone’s seeking. Someone out there needs you. They need you being the person who aligns with the Soul that’s win-win.

Christian: [00:19:44] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:19:44] If you can’t do that, don’t beat yourself up because you’re not going to find it with limited human capacity. You’re going to find it by go sitting it out, in your bedroom alone and relaxing and breathing, doing something that makes you laugh, makes you smile, makes you remember who you are. That you resonate deeply with peace at a core level. That the reset is peace. We all deserve this. Everyone deserves this. If you feel that you’re overextended or that your body’s tired or worn or sick, you need more quality time with yourself. If you can just be with yourself  you’ll watch how healing that is on every level. Remember we have a finite part of us, that’s going to be left behind on planet earth and go back into the ground, be part of the earth once again.

Christian: [00:20:34] Mmhm.

Maureen: [00:20:34] But we have this part of us that’s perpetually in a state of peace, and unbounded awareness. Unbounded awareness that we are eternal. And only experiencing that. So when you go off into that room by yourself and you click into that part of you that knows who you truly are, remembering the question we asked right up front, “Who am I?” –

Christian: [00:20:57] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:20:58] If you say I’m angry, I’m tired, I’m upset. I’m a worn out, you know, put upon mother. I’m the person who’s the slave-maid around the house. If that’s your identity, be prepared to have a very finite and limited experience, a very short fuse as people call it.

Christian: [00:21:14] So are you saying like, if I say, “who am I?” And I say that,  “I’m a function” or, “I’m – I’m Dominican” or something. I’m still looking from the outside?

Maureen: [00:21:25] Yes, because happiness is found in the empty mind. The mind that doesn’t have enough room for identity.

Christian: [00:21:32] So. So, okay. Uh, bringing this to death, right? You’re leaving this body. If I die and I’m free –  what are you leaving behind? Cause I guess I can achieve that now, if I just know what to leave behind.

Maureen: [00:21:47] Ok, so respecting what is, being a lover of reality, what you’re leaving behind when you leave planet earth is your vehicle to communicate here. It’s a vehicle of communication. You’re right there. We’re communicating across this table, with these mics,  because I have a body, you have a body, enough of an identity to be able to do this.

Christian: [00:22:10] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:22:10] When people go into mystical experiences and they say, “I am that I am, I am, you know,  the death of death  and it is  in me.” When they say these cryptic kinds of things. It’s because that’s a mind that cannot grasp limited form in any way. That’s the unbounded mind they just tapped.

So mystics give us windows of what it’s like to be in a space that’s so spacious that your mind is open and empty and  receptive and loving of everything. Our traditions, our various spiritual traditions, see that that’s what has happened to people who’ve arrived in oneness. When they  show up unbounded in a physical body, it looks like ecstasy. It looks like poetry in motion. It looks like yoga poses, just moving spontaneously.

Christian: [00:23:00] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:23:00] And it is something that we can then quantify and emulate in the hopes of getting there. Easiest path is just to love yourself here and now. Especially in the midst of challenging times. We’re having some crazy challenging times out there right now, with a lot of things that are divisive. If however, we look at people coming with a purpose – to Love, to advance and evolve humanity  – we’re going towards Love. We’re either going away from it, which feels like separation and pain, fear, or we’re going towards love. And that’s why it looks like it’s linear. But really, truly away from it is separating from ourselves. The nowhere to go, you’re separating from yourself. Where’s that is that linear. Is that, past present future? No, it’s now. If you’re connected with yourself now, you know it. And you know, you can’t maintain it unless you do it in the next minute, the next minute and the next minute. It happens now.

Christian: [00:24:04] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:24:05] So being in Love is, is a statement. It’s a Truth. It’s Unbounded Reality that you access in this very one moment.

Christian: [00:24:17] Wow.

Maureen: [00:24:17] Does that make sense? Is that too “out there” to be able to grasp?

Christian: [00:24:22] I – I’m understanding what you’re saying. That it’s almost  like a state of mind, right? It is a little bit out there for me, to be quite honest.

Maureen: [00:24:31] So let’s get back down to basics again that everybody can relate to, and that you learned in junior high science. A cell is built around matter. And it forms a specific pattern.

Christian: [00:24:45] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:24:46] So you have a cell and it’s holding itself together based on a memory. If it’s working really well and you have a healthy well body, it’s because most of your memories, your cellular memories, are very happy and peaceful. Copacetic.

Christian: [00:25:04] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:25:04] Love. If you have a body that feels really sick and tired it’s because your cells’ memories are going wild. If the past was all there was, if this linear time was all, there was, there’d be no possibility for miracles because how can you heal yourself in the past? You can’t.

Christian: [00:25:25] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:25:26] But if you change your mind now, you change your cells’ memories now, by loving yourself now, by slowing down, breathing more deliberately now, loving now.

   I have clients, couple of young girls that have had their grandfather passed away from COVID –

Christian: [00:25:43] Yeah

Maureen: [00:25:43] And they were talking about how surreal it was to be, you know, on zoom calls for work one minute, and then to be sitting Shivah on the zoom call the next minute for their grandfather. And watching their grandmother not quite get it, and start to fall asleep during the ceremony.   

I want to be sure that we’re honoring the people that are in the midst of  facing death now so I’m not downplaying this, but I’d like us to use Reality for something that promotes peace rather than fear. And if you begin to understand how, how our hearts have to open, crack wide open now to be bigger and more capable of feeling than we ever have felt before, that people are not just numbers and finite and quantifiable, there was a human being who showed up on this planet to evolve this place. And if you showed up. On planet earth, you have evolved this place because if you had sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, and you had a parent, you by nature of showing up after your parent, were here as someone who was the next generation, the evolved version. If they were hurtful and harmful and you experienced a traumatic childhood, it’s because you were the next version to show up, to turn around and say, “Hey, I’ll show you the way.”

Christian: [00:27:00] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:27:01] But we can’t do that when we’re learning from people and seeing everybody else’s labels for us as the be all end all. You have got to spend quality time alone to access the miraculous. And I’ll tell you at first, you’re going to have everybody else’s voices, “the committee”, as people have called it, in your head, telling you who you are and that you’re too antsy. You’re too  upset. You’re too impatient to sit and meditate and be with yourself in a room alone.

Christian: [00:27:28] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:27:29] That is the ego telling you you’re somebody you’re not. You’re just a body and a wandering mind.

Christian: [00:27:36] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:27:37] You are so valuable that that could never be the truth. You came here for a purpose. Your Soul came here to evolve this place. And if you came into a painful life, it’s because you showed up to heal it. Recognize that we are love, that’s who we are, that’s who this breath is that we came in with and we’ll leave this life with. The Divine is Love.

Christian: [00:28:03] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:28:03] We embody Love at best. And then we don’t feel finite because you know it, you know, it, you know, it, if you’ve had anyone that you loved pass on in this lifetime and you’ve experienced that, then, you know, they didn’t go anywhere in your heart. They’re still here. You can still  connect with them deeply, think of them in moments that you have a challenge or a trial and all of a sudden, their  face comes up and says just the right thing.

Christian: [00:28:29] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:28:30] And people could say, that’s your imagination. And I’ll tell you this, Joan of arc said, “There is nothing else. There’s only imagination.” When people said, “Could this be your imagination that you’re hearing voices?” She said, “There’s nothing else.” Because truly if we’re unbounded and the way to know who you are is to have an empty mind, then everything else is imagination.

Christian: [00:28:52] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:28:53] Truly.

Christian: [00:28:53] You’re, you’re completely right. I mean, this table is imagination. Somebody imagined this table and then just built it, you know?

Maureen: [00:29:00] Exactly.

Christian: [00:29:00] And you can say that about everything that you see here. Somebody had an idea and then they put it on this planet.

Maureen: [00:29:06] There’s a lesson early on in A Course in Miracles, lesson 10 I believe it is, that says: every thought I think is not true.

Christian: [00:29:16] Now, what does that mean?

Maureen: [00:29:17] It goes on further, you know, it’s only less than 10, so you’re going to learn more and more what miracles are. But the gist of what that means is that if you can think it, then it’s bound by time and space.

Christian: [00:29:30] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:29:30] By a perception of things. If you Know it, then it’s true. You know, you’re in love when you know it. You know, it’s peace. You know, it’s spacious, you know it by how you feel. Can you explain love?

Christian: [00:29:50] No.

Maureen: [00:29:51] And can you explain peace?

Christian: [00:29:53] Yeah, n-I…

Maureen: [00:29:55] you can think that the opposite of love is pain or fear or all kinds of things, hatred. But again, that’s a concept. It doesn’t make you feel love any more, when you’re talking about the opposite. It’s, it’s so beautiful that we can’t quantify the very thing that we are. Truly. Just by knowing we can’t describe love. You can help someone know it. Or someone not know it.

Christian: [00:30:24] Yeah. Like I could explain to a partner, all the good things that I’ve done for her. Right?

Maureen: [00:30:30] Yes.

Christian: [00:30:30] I can be like –

Maureen: [00:30:31] Many people relate to this.

Christian: [00:30:32] Yeah. I can, I can fix the sink. And… but if I don’t, if she doesn’t see the love in it, then it’s just things I have done. And it just washes away.

Maureen: [00:30:41] As a function. As a system.  And you can get all angry because you didn’t recognize your system of a human body, or you can know that you’re love and that’s who you are, and you’re going to love no matter what. Where’s the finiteness to that?  We say things like God is Love.

Christian: [00:31:00] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:31:01] And then they put a face on God or they put a label on God and they make God be something they believe in or don’t believe in.

Christian: [00:31:08] Mmhm.

Maureen: [00:31:10] But do you believe in Love? If not, that’s the very reason you came to the planet.

Christian: [00:31:17] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:31:17] To evolve to the belief in and the knowledge that Only Love is Real, or worthwhile focusing on. So in the midst of these conflicts that we’re having now, if we get so sucked into the conflict – that somebody’s right and somebody wrong – then we’re going to stay there for quite a while. There’ll be a lot of lessons that are learned, valuable lessons in that, and a lot of pain and hardship that comes from that, from being stuck in time and space, because we experienced pain in our bodies.

Christian: [00:31:45] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:31:45] So if a lot of bodies are in conflict, the more bodies in conflict, the more pain it promotes.  But what if we looked at it and ask just one question, “Where’s the Love?” And you don’t resonate with anything else.  Right now everybody can use a shot of this. And instead of looking for the next news story, the next breaking event, look at it with this one question upper most in your mind, “Where’s the Love?” If you don’t find it, change the channel, turn it off. Or better yet, go into your empty mind and your open heart and see if you have the capacity to find a love in it. It might be in disguise. It might be in disguise as a call for love. This whole thing that’s happening right now with Black Lives Matter and lives seeming to be dismissible and extinguishable without any regard whatsoever.

Christian: [00:32:41] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:32:42] You know, if you look at that it’s horrific, it’s painful. It’s painful for people of any color.

Christian: [00:32:46] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:32:47] Horrific hurt. And how it’s going to happen, that this is extinguished for real, forever, is that we stop identifying with human bodies.

Christian: [00:32:58] Hmm yeah.

Maureen: [00:32:58] And start identifying with our creativity and the love and the joy that we can promote.

Christian: [00:33:03] People are fighting for that.

Maureen: [00:33:05] But we’ve been taught to fight rather than relax into our open minds  that are the utmost creative, because we are the ray of the Sun, the Sun being the Divine Author of all of this, that’s never left its home in peace, that only abides in oneness – unbounded, unconditional love – and we’re the ray of the Sun that touches the earth. At best, that’s what we’re embodying.

Christian: [00:33:29] Hmm. Yeah.

Maureen: [00:33:30] But how many people are doing that right now? So where’s the Love?” – that question – At least it’s the road back. Because if you are Love and you’re forgetting it in this moment, you’re forgetting all your power and all the gifts you came into this life with to heal it.

Christian: [00:33:43] Yeah. I see what you’re saying…

Maureen: [00:33:44] The more we get wrapped up in the stories and the identities and the conflict, the miles and miles and eons away, we are from the Truth of who we are.

Christian: [00:33:52] Yeah. I get, I get what you’re saying that by identifying with the fight, you just become the fight. You actually don’t solve anything.

Maureen: [00:34:00] Because your identity is too limited. Einstein said this perfectly, you don’t address the problem from the place that it started. All these problems are starting with a misidentity – that you’re a finite body that is stuck in some one moment that it can’t let go of. And it’s a painful moment. So you can identify with that and then therefore be a victim no matter where you go that’s what you’re going to see. Cause that’s your perspective. Instead of, “I’m an unbounded soul who came here to evolve humanity, I’m going to do this really peacefully and easily if I only identify with Love.”

Christian: [00:34:35] So tying this into… this is great…. tying this into death. All right, let’s bring that back to the individual. I, I am close to my identity. I am dying. It sounds painful. It sounds like riots on the streets. It sounds like I don’t know who I am. It sounds really tight. As I’m dying, what’s going on?

Maureen: [00:34:57] What happens when we leave our bodies, each and every one of us, is we become one with the formless unbounded. What that feels like is ultimate freedom. It feels like the best thing that ever happened to you, beyond what you could have ever dreamed – and more. It is something that feels like the liberation and freedom that we could only imagine might be possible, but we can’t even grasp it to the degree that we get to be it. When you are one with everything, it’s like the difference between – we’ve said this before on other podcasts that maybe you guys haven’t heard yet, but I’m going to say it again cause it’s a great analogy here – it’s the difference between walking down Fifth Avenue and your face is down, and you’re looking at the cracks in the sidewalk and you see bubble gum and cigarette butts, and you’re noticing dirt and just shoes. You don’t see anything but that. And then someone says, how was your trip to New York? And you say, I don’t know, it’s kind of dirty. And it doesn’t really do it for me.

Christian: [00:35:57] Yeah

Maureen: [00:35:58] Then, you go to the top of the Empire State Building and you look at New York City  and it’s like, Whoa!  Look at that person, passing that person. Look at that car, going there and look at the clouds in the sky. It’s just boundless. So that’s even a fraction of what it feels like not to be bound by a body.

Christian: [00:36:17] Wow.

Maureen: [00:36:18] I-I’m not here to tell anybody, you know, let’s move on folks, everybody, usher yourselves out. That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, that that’s the reality of us that we are meant to bring to earth.

Christian: [00:36:31] Wow.

Maureen: [00:36:31] If this is our vehicle for communication, how are you going to access that, other than having a spacious mind?

Christian: [00:36:38] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:36:39] That’s as close as we can get to Space, and so personally, individually begin today, start to prove this to yourself. You don’t have to take my word for any of this. Start to prove this to yourself, begin to focus on your breath deliberately in that room by yourself and that Space by yourself. As you focus on your breath, identify with it as your Soul, as the Unbounded Nature of you that supersedes and transcends all limitation, and goes beyond this experience of being in a body now and always. Not just when you die. Now. You are in an Infinite experience at a Soul level right now.

Christian: [00:37:23] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:37:24] That’s why you can access miracles. When you do this kind of vertical shift, you’ve raised yourself up a little bit to see it from that perspective of the Empire State Building. You’re not seeing this limited experience anymore. If you are addressing a problem, like riots in the streets, from the place that the problem was created  you are looking at it like bubblegum on the street. You’re sucked into role and a function. Somebody else is a role and a function. And you’re doing something that’s terrifically difficult. That is a difficult position to be in.

Christian: [00:37:54] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:37:55] You’re finite. You could die any minute.

Christian: [00:37:57] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:37:58] Now, the only reason I can speak with authority on this is because I’ve been out and came back.

Christian: [00:38:02] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:38:02] You know, it’s the whole introduction to our podcast. I had an experience where I went out and came back. And I will tell you, it’s much more like taking off a really tight shoe that had your body bleeding

Christian: [00:38:15] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:38:16] And finally saying, “Oh, I’m free of that.” So, let’s give a moment of recognition and acknowledgement and truly a prayerful, Soulful moment to all these people who are dealing with this now. The hundreds of thousands of people who have been affected by the CORONA virus.

Christian: [00:38:34] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:38:35] Or any illness, you know, there were other people still out there who are dealing with dis-ease. Let’s just love these bodies. It’s our vehicle for communication. So for anyone making a transition into their Unbounded Nature, really, truly foster that recognition to the best of your capacity. Again, if you’re used to being in this finite mind that considers the body the be-all-end-all, this will be challenging for you. So give yourself a break. Don’t judge yourself don’t feel guilty.

But I’ll tell you, when my dad was leaving, I purposely went home. After I realized that he had left kind of the conscious state of awareness, where he knew we were in the room.  Everyone in my family was not as experienced as I am in life outside of the confines of a human body.

Christian: [00:39:24] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:39:24] And they were feeling really upset and it was a lot of pain and sadness going on. And I knew I wanted to connect with him once he left his body cause I knew he was about to, and that’s what I do with my counseling practice, with people, with everything I do. I, I use this world of form to illuminate Spirit.

Christian: [00:39:45] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:39:46] So we drove home, my daughters and myself, as soon as we knew that he had lost the capacity to see us or know us or acknowledge us in the room, we said our goodbyes to him in the physical body. I went home  and knew that the way that I would be able to communicate with him better would be in my own room in quiet. And sure enough, he came through and let me know very, very, evidently – we’ve talked about this on other podcasts, so just like keep tuning in and you’ll hear all about it – very, very evidently my father has been in contact with me since he passed, but that’s because I’m not afraid of this continuum. I don’t deny death. I don’t avoid death. I walked right into it with him and said, “Hey dad, you know, when you’re on your way through, make sure you touch base.”

Christian: [00:40:35] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:40:35] And he did. And does still. I’ve had multiple family members pass on to the other side since then. I’ve talked to all of them about the, the kind of fun experience I have with my dad. Isn’t that interesting, I can talk about death and say “fun” in the same sentence?

Christian: [00:40:51] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:40:53] And my father, you know, I had a great relationship. He’s doing awesome! He’s like the, the emcee of the Unbounded event. You know, he shows up and, and ushers the way for other people to experience this very tangibly. I’ve had other clients that have passed on and my dad showed up to help usher their way.

Christian: [00:41:10] Wow.

Maureen: [00:41:10] Unbeknownst to me. They didn’t know they were going to pass on. I didn’t know they were going to pass on. I was wondering why is my dad being so insistent in this that he shows up right now? Yeah. So I’ve had multiple experiences, not only of other people in this Unbounded state, allowing themselves to be in form just enough, not the physical body, but molecules collected enough together that their intelligence, their humor, their personalities still came in to be able to show us there’s no end to this.

Christian: [00:41:38] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:41:39] That Only Love is Real, and nothing Real can be threatened. I am fortunate in that I really wanted to know firsthand: what is this about? Why would we come here to just get sick and get old and die?

Christian: [00:41:54] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:41:54] It didn’t make any sense to me if a benevolent Divinity was real. And so I just insisted on my own personal experiences by spending enough time with myself alone , with an inquiring mind, but I wasn’t inquiring outside for answers. I kept going inward, deeper and deeper and deeper. Now you talked a little bit about an experience that you had with your dad. Not needing to be there for his actual, physical death. Just talk about that. Cause that must have been your intuition or your soul helping you be able to connect in a deeper way. Maybe you didn’t realize it at the time.

Christian: [00:42:37] Yeah, it’s um – it wasn’t as tangible as your experience, but –

Maureen: [00:42:40] I have a lot more practice, you know, every day for 20 something years. So yeah, you’re doing pretty good,

Christian: [00:42:46] But it was ah, it was just like, it was just like this intuition. It was this gut, like –  I knew that I didn’t have to see him. And I’ve, I’ve had that with my brother in law, he also passed away. It’s just a feeling that I know that they’re okay.

Maureen: [00:43:03] So we said before this, when we were starting out the podcast, that our bodies are essentially memories. They’re memory banks, cellular memory.

Christian: [00:43:11] Yeah, yeah – I look at them like avatars.

Maureen: [00:43:13] Yeah! So now think about it. If your dad really is still here in your memory

Christian: [00:43:18] Yeah.

Maureen: [00:43:18] And you selectively choose the thoughts that feel like love, now you’re more connected with him by nature of that.   Now I’ll tell you, this pandemic is affording that possibility for many people. We are going into places that we haven’t gone to probably in our entire lifetimes, where slowing down and being deliberate is actually key to peace.

Christian: [00:43:40] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:43:41] You might feel like you were ushered into this experience because of a pandemic, but use it for all it’s worth people. Be a lover of reality. Let yourself see that you not performing right now might be the best thing that ever happened to you because now you can get into that space that, “I’m valuable. Even if I don’t perform right now.” What does that mean? That’s a real mind-bender. My whole life, people are telling me I was worth what my scores were, or my grades were, or my performance was. Now, let yourself just know that your worth is Infinite and that you came here – you, if you’re on planet earth right now – you came here to evolve this planet. You have everything within you that is needed and is necessary for you individually to evolve this place. The only thing you have to do is choose Love over fear. Now. Now. Now. You have access to it now. It’s a vertical experience that you bring to this world of time and space.

Christian: [00:44:47] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:44:47] It supersedes this world of time and space. It’s genius. It’s nobility, it’s authenticity, it’s caring and kindness. It’s spontaneous and it’s so real, you know, it’s real and nothing real can be threatened.

Christian: [00:45:06] Wow.

Maureen: [00:45:07] So I have this beautiful thing to read that I found that kind of highlights this and it might be more poetic than the way we were just able to speak about it. So I want to offer it to everyone.  This was written in a book called, “Women who Run with the Wolves” and it’s by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. When you’re listening to this, I’d really like you to keep in mind the things we spoke about, about  ideas that we are separate just based on skin color or ethnicity, or our beliefs or our,  orientations in life. Just keep that in mind that you know, that this is the first step towards healing any problems on the planet we’re having right now.  Rioting  gives us a voice to show how we can’t abide by this any longer. But this is how change takes place: by recognizing we’re all in this together. Our commonality is our breath, we came in with our first breath, we’ll leave with our last. That’s, who we truly are. The unbounded nature of us came here specifically to evolve this planet. And that is all, nothing more and certainly nothing less.

The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it. Like the Rosetta Stone, for those who know how to read it. The body is a living record of the life, given life taken life hoped for life healed.

It is valued for its articule ability to register immediate reaction, to feel profoundly. To sense ahead. The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature. The flush of recognition. The coldness of non conviction.  It speaks through its constant tiny dance. Sometimes swaying, sometimes a jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the center and rising hope.

The body remembers. The bones remember. The joints remember. Even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water . Anywhere the flesh is pressed , even touched lightly. A memory may flow out in a stream.

To confine the beauty and the value of the body to anything less than its magnificence is to force the body to live without its rightful spirit, its rightful form.  It’s right to exaltation. To be thought ugly or unacceptable because one’s beauty is outside the current fashion is deeply wounding to the natural joy that belongs to the wild nature.

Christian: [00:47:53] Hmm.

Maureen: [00:47:54] Now think of that. Not only to be labeled by your fashion, but to be labeled by the things that are limiting us to believe we’re just bodies, color, weight, size, height. Anything that limits us is not the truth of us.

We are eternal. We’ll supersede this experience of being humans in form in a way that will delight and surprise us beyond anything. Go in peace to all those who are transitioning from their human bodies. And we wish everyone well on their journeys, their eternal journeys, recognizing now for all of us on the planet that we are Divine.