The Time of Global Shift

April 27, 2002 in Louisville, KY

John Major Jenkins on the Mayan Calendar, with Q & A


John Major Jenkins (JMJ): I want to take a few minutes here to sum up some important points on the Mayan calendar, which I think would be good for everyone to chew on a little bit. As long ago as 1904, a man named Joseph T. Goodman did research and figured out the correlation between the Mayan calendar and our modern calendar. Ever since that time, esotericists and interested people have been speculating on the meaning of the year 2012, because at that point we knew that the end of the 13-baktun cycle was in the year, 2012 A.D. This was then later confirmed by J. Eric S. Thompson.

The interesting thing is that my research has also shown that this is a rare astronomical alignment and it really does seem that the Maya intended the year 2012 to target this rare alignment – which I talk about in my books, the alignment of the solstice sun with the galaxy. Now, it seems to me that any discussion of what 2012 is all about should refer back to the true intention of the original people who invented the Long Count calendar that gives us this date of 2012.

So I think it is very important to always include in discussions of 2012 the material we find at the early site of Izapa. I think this is a fascinating site and it is completely ignored in the academic literature as being of such importance – even though we do know that the Long Count system was invented there, as well as the Maya Creation myth.

So we not only have the astronomy of the Long Count calendar that culminates in 2012, but we have the Creation mythology that goes along with it. And specifically, we can look at the monuments of Izapa, like we did last night in the slide show, and see the ball court monuments that tell us a lot about what the Izapans believed about 2012. Remember the slide that portrayed the throne and the head birthing through the legs of the throne monument – this is all about birth, and the ball game metaphor refers to the alignment as well on another level.

This is the meaning of their game, which is a co-creation, pointing to the fact that human beings must participate in these great cycles. We are indispensable participants in these great cycles of creation. And finally, we saw the serpent head devouring the sun. That represents some kind of dangerous process that could be involved, like a potential abortion of the process, or something like that. Or simply, it points to the death that necessarily precedes a new birth.

I just wanted to point out a few of these things and emphasize that my work is not about my own personal system. 2012 is not “my” end-date, and I think that there has been, especially lately, a lot of jumping on the 2012 bandwagon with new age prophecies – but they are not referential to the original Mayan understanding of what this date points to. I think it is always important to remember that the meaning of the year 2012 and the material that we find at Izapa go together, hand in hand.

I guess that kind of sums up what I wanted to say, but finally, again, I am not presenting this work as my own system, my own model or something like that. My work has been in service to reconstructing their ancient cosmology, the ancient Mayan cosmology that culminates in the years around 2012.

David Wilcock (DW): Very briefly, John, what is the major difference between what the Maya say in their writings about 2012 as opposed to prevailing new age viewpoints?

JMJ: Well, first off, you don’t really find the Maya “saying” anything about 2012 per se; what you have to do is look at the iconography of the monuments. There is a level of ambiguity in there because it’s not a literal statement that you can find. There are only four Mayan books surviving, so data from other fields must be sought out, like archaeo-astronomy or iconography or hieroglyphic decipherment.

The main difference between the new literature and the ancient cosmology is this: In the newer prophecies and the modern literature there is often an emphasis on the destruction of the world, you know the idea, “The world’s going to end” at such and such a date.” I encounter this in interviews, radio shows, and sometimes I don’t give them what they want in terms of this doomsday thing (like they want to hear me say, “The world is going to end! The Maya predicted the world’s going to end!”).

Well, the main thing I see in the metaphors that you find in their carved monuments is that the World Age doctrine is always about rebirth, the transformation of humanity into something new in order to survive the chaotic energies of transformation. The main difference between the old and the new presentations is that the original Mayan material recognizes a higher perspective and suggests that time is cyclic, and thus, “the end” is ultimately about rebirth. A lot of the more recent interpretations of 2012 are filtered through the linear imprinting that we get through our Judeo-Christian tradition, as far as I can tell.

DW: Are the Maya hieroglyphs actually translatable into words that have then been decoded, similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphics?

JMJ: Sure.

DW: OK. So is there a quote or something that you could use to say that this image [shown on screen] appears to be talking about the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, for example?

JMJ: Yeah, to some degree there is that. Many of the Mayan monuments describe mundane historical events, but some of the Long Count monuments are dated with the date 13.0.0.0.0 These are called the Creation monuments, and they are talking about the beginning of time and the end of time, because time is considered cyclic. That date in the Long Count calendar applies to the beginning date, but it also applies to the end date.

And what the hieroglyphs say is something like, “On this date the image is made to appear.” So then you have to look on the hieroglyphs for the image, and it’s basically this term “halaj koh.” This is a complex sort of thing that we would have to go into much deeper to really understand, but in short, it has to do with the sun being in the middle of the cross that manifests at the end of time.

Scott Mandelker (SM): So what I would like to do now is see if people would like to make some final comments… you know, like how you felt about the weekend or any questions you still have for any of us.

Attendee: Thank you again for this wonderful weekend, it has really been inspiring and exhausting. My question to you is not about something I have had a whole lot of experience with, but I am curious about what your thoughts are on sacred sites, though I have not read the Ra Material. I am wondering if there are, in preparation for this transition, any particular sites of importance. I’m specifically thinking of the Serpent Mound, and so on, and I’m wondering if there is any value in spending time in those places, or if you have any thoughts about that in general.

SM: Carla, then David…

CR: I think there is a lot of value in groups gathering and offering energy to power sites. I think what people forget is that the energy is shifting. So the challenge is to find the new power centers. They are going to be somewhat displaced from the places we always thought were the power centers. But I hope it’s in our future somewhere, probably seven years or so down the line, to start forming groups. But this will need to be done with someone’s angelic financial help, because it will cost a whole lot to do something like this, and as a concerted group, to move around and try to do a ring around where the new energy is coming in. I would love to see that happen.

DW: All I would want to say on that point is to just reiterate the fact that if you look at the world as a whole, you can actually see a series of 120 triangles superimposed across the surface. This is what Drs. William Becker and Beth Hagens called the “unified vector geometry 120 polyhedron.” This actually has all the five platonic solids in it, all the basic geometries that go into it in one grid, and it shows up on ancient maps and ancient structures, so they knew about this grid too. And at those points on the grid at which you have the highest amount of spiraling energy, this is a torsional energy streaming out of the earth.

When you build an earth mound, such as a Serpent Mound, you are building a passive torsion generator. This means it is harnessing the energy that is coming up from the earth. If the pyramid – and there is some Russian research that determined this – has a 70 degree slope angle, really steep, then it focuses more of this energy straight up. Whereas if you have a really shallow angled pyramid or mound, it focuses more of the energy down.

The great pyramid of Giza is sort of the perfect fusion between up and down, because it had to serve both purposes and it is also on the earth’s navel. This is the exact point of balance where there is the most amount of land mass north to south, and east to west anywhere on the planet. It’s the fulcrum, the balancing point of the whole earth’s sphere. So basically, the grid is shifting, and when you look at the earth mounds and what is there now, it represents a part of the planetary healing and restoration project that was done after the fall of Atlantis. In most cases, these were designed to heal the ozone holes, get rid of the radioactive energy from the nuclear war that had happened, purify the water, heal the crops, heal the land, heal the people, heal their minds. And, as Carla said, it does need to be done again and we do have the technology.

A 144-foot-high fiberglass pyramid costs about a million dollars to build, but it doesn’t have to be that big. You could build 22-meter pyramids which are half that size for about half the money. I think once people who have some funding available to them realize what you can do, you know, things like curing cancer, possibly curing Alzheimer’s disease, and so on, then a lot will happen. Just with a couple milliliters of water sitting in this pyramid for a couple of days or something you can do this.

I think the demand for this is going to spike. But we also have to figure out how to map the grid when it changes. And that is going to be one of my projects after the Ascension, I know, because I am still going to be around here. I’ll be helping to direct that process, you guys can consult with me after we ascend and we will work on this together. (laughter)

JMJ: Regarding the temples and pyramids and sacred sites in Mesoamerica, especially in Mexico and Guatemala, the problem is that they are shut down, you know, they are operated by the government and they are now tourist sites. And the Maya people around there don’t have access to do ceremonial work inside these temples. So this is a big problem, as these places require ceremonial activation, and the people to do it, I believe, are the Maya. So one of my hopes for 2012 is that, at the very least, it would be like a rallying cry for the Maya to reclaim their self-determination.

Attendee: In the next ten years how will time change, how will we experience it, and will it accelerate or collapse? I have heard some talk about those two things happening with time. And have you also heard about the “Shadow” people and are they from the 4th density? This came from the Art Bell show. Are they more negative?

SM: Again, there is so much that we could be saying, a lot of people say time is collapsing, time is accelerating, but that doesn’t really mean anything if we don’t know, “what is time?” It is not this thing that you can squeeze. In my experience, time is really a measure of the intensity of experience that can be consciously participated in. It is a measure of our conscious experience.

The acceleration of time would then mean an increasing density of experience that we are able to assimilate per moment, and that the moment becomes a richer or fuller experience. That can be called an expansion of time, or would you call it an acceleration or a collapse? I really don’t know.

On higher planes, epic journeys can occur in a span of but three minutes of Earth time or 3rd-density time. What is happening in this is that our three minutes measured here, when it occurs on a higher plane, a much greater amount of experience can happen in such a short period of time. Now, I think that is what is happening now on Earth to humanity, and whether you call that a collapse of time or an acceleration of time, it is certainly an increasing densification of experience, a capacity for increased density of experience.

That is an expansion and an increased sensitization of the conscious mind. You can also call it an expansion of the field of awareness. So a lot more can happen and can be assimilated more rapidly. That is going to continue happening to us, and many people already have the experience that their days just pass so fast at this point.

We can think, now it is already the middle of 2002 – so whatever happened to 1995? To me, five years ago seems inconceivable. But there is also an increasing efficiency in which souls are now able to experience the passage of time, and so as we evolve there is less friction, fewer charged situations, a less emotionally charged life. And so things move more smoothly through us, and so each day may seem to just come and go, come and go, come and go.

Actually, this is also a quality of higher-density life. And again, this increased density of personal, conscious experience will intensify for many of us, and will keep on happening, for sure. So it is also a great time for spiritual practice, and certainly for joining together in groups of like mind. And of course, if you want to follow the solo path of meditation, more of you will surely open faster.

DW: I used to be a little bit naïve about what “shadow people” where supposed to be all about and what the whole thing was. Before I was going to go on the Art Bell show, we had a conversation on the telephone, and I wasn’t nervous to be talking to him because I grew up meeting all these famous people, because my father was a music journalist and we would go backstage. So I was in a relaxed mood.

So I was talking to Art Bell and I said, “You know, there are a lot of ETs that are helping the planet at this time, positive extraterrestrials coming to the earth at this time and they are trying to help out humanity. Maybe the Shadow People that you talk about, maybe that is what this is about.” Though I was ignoring for the moment the meaning of the word, shadow, which is darkness. And in his classic-Art-Bell, deep voice, cigarette-smokers drawl, he said, “Well, I am really not sure you would want to have that perspective if you have the data that I have.”

What are you talking about, Art Bell? I certainly wouldn’t want to meet with one of these beings in my living room. So what I realized was that Art’s understanding in all this email he was getting is that these are basically negatively oriented entities who are penetrating through the earth’s protective grid and are being called here based on the nature, or the people who invite a negative contact. Which basically means that if you are behaving in a manner, that through free will, is opening you up to such an experience, then you can meet them.

Attendee: Regarding the physics you’re talking about, there are examples on the Earth in nature itself, regarding perpetual cyclic conditions and power. As regards to hurricanes and tornadoes, they too operate in a cyclic nature. And I find that interesting, even the sink full of draining water, when you get to the bottom it cycles down and it’s a swirl. I don’t know if that works with gravity and the torsion field or what! Do they work together?

DW: Yeah. The Russians have basically come to the conclusion that you have electrostatic magnetism, which is an electromagnetic wave, and you have gravity and torsion, or gravity and spin which is called gravity spin. And they basically break down the universe into physical vacuum matter and physical vacuum anti-matter, PVM and PVA. And it’s a blending of the different fields of electrostatic, magnetic, gravity and spin that determines how this breaks down. So there is a whole physics about all this.

Previous Attendee: This question is about the Mayan culture. Do you think that with this knowledge of astrology and other universal knowledge that they had contact with higher beings to help them engage in all this? I find it rather extraordinary that they could come have such accuracy and pinpoint things such as the solstices and so forth. So I wonder if they had that kind of help. What do you think?

JMJ: I don’t think that they had direct help in the sense of trans-oceanic voyages and all that; I think maybe some of that occurred, but I think their main wisdom came from their own accessing of the higher dimensional knowledge. That comes through direct connection with the transcendent, and the Mayan people are endlessly creative and clever in and of themselves, it is quite amazing to see…

Previous Attendee: Why did that culture pass away or die out anyway?

JMJ: They didn’t really die out, and that is kind of a myth in particular literature. There was a collapse in the Petan culture in Northern Guatemala, and that was due to a number of things. Well, the standard answer is that it was due to environmental degradation and greed, a proliferation of princedoms, all the princes going around and trying to get their piece of the pie and they just couldn’t sustain the continued growth of the Mayan civilization. It was an inhospitable area to begin with, but the main thing to remember is that Mayan culture didn’t really die out. In the highlands of Guatemala today there are 6 million pureblood Mayan people, still speaking the original dialects…

Previous Attendee: Is that the same civilization and type of culture?

JMJ: Yes. There has been a complete continuity of the building blocks of Maya culture, in particular, the sacred calendar. The calendar that they follow today, the 260-day calendar, is an unbroken calendar going back some 3,000 years.

Previous Attendee: OK, just one more thing here, as we’re speaking of Art Bell. I think his was a typical Hollywood response to aliens or beings that have come here to help. And it shows that in the Hollywood movie making industry, right, all the beings are evil and negative. I think they just want to condition us to believe that so that although there are beings helping us, they don’t want us to see them as such positive helping beings, but the opposite. I think that is how they want us to view it, and they want us to remain in fear, conditioned.

DW: Well, the term “shadow people” can be a label that different people would apply to the many different experiences they’ve had. I think what Art was referring too, and he got a little bit more specific than I mentioned, was some very fear-inducing, traumatic events – where some people were really scared shitless of these beings, which is definitely not the hallmark of a positive contact. I think Scott wanted to say something about the Central America here…

SM: Yeah, getting back to the Mayan-ET question, you can actually find in the Ra Material, in the first volume, that Ra says very directly that one of the Confederation groups, actually of their level which is 6th density, went to South America around 6,500 years ago. That was after the Egyptian contact they made 11,000 years ago (which we could consider to be 9,000 B.C.) – so it was 3,500 years after that, 6,500 years ago or 4,500 B.C., that this 6th density Confederation group went to South America. For me personally, I feel that the Mayans got a lot of their cosmic information from 6th density teachers. That has just been my view all along, based on the Ra Material and some other ideas.

DW: Lets not forget that the method of this contact can be visionary, ecstatic trances and dreams, where you don’t even necessarily even realize that you were contacted by such as 6th density entity.

SM: Right, and there’s another thing I’d like to say about the media portrayal of ETs as being generally slanted towards the left. The fact is, for those in a position of high temporal power and authority, the worst thing they could imagine is for humanity to realize that there is a higher power. There is nothing worse than for someone who claims to be the Wizard of Oz and to have the curtain pulled out from his face, and for us to see that there is actually just a little man behind a big puppet screen. To have humanity realize that, in truth, there are actually truly great beings with much more power and much more love, is to risk that humanity would flock to them at once.

If we all knew without a doubt that there are these great benevolent beings existing and living all around us, totally available to us for to help make our world a paradise, then the existing power structure would be overturned immediately. So that is the biggest secret around. While David Icke says that the “Biggest Secret” is about those shape-shifting Reptilian evil leaders, that may be true about them, but it may not be the greatest secret being hidden from us. I don’t think that’s really the biggest secret – I think that bigger than that is the fact that there are these great beings of love and huge power all around that we could be in touch with. And no one knows they are there, or perhaps we could say, very few of us know that they are here. Is there another question?

Attendee: First, since the Mayans never broke their culture, is there any sort of historical or verbally handed down information available about the end of their calendar, and why it ends? That sort of thing.

And secondly, to Carla, you talk about the dark side and that we should integrate it, but I think that is something I haven’t grasped yet – just how to begin to integrate something like that. Part of that is the idea that one could have good intentions, but still be controlling and have that kind of tendency. So what would be an example of that? Ra says that we would have “no emotional charge”, or that in a situation where we are in balance we wouldn’t have emotional charge, but what about joy? Isn’t that an emotion, does having joy mean you are not yet balanced?

JMJ: Well, as for the first part of your question, the Long Count calendar itself was fragmented, even before the Conquest and certainly much more so after the Conquest. It was no longer carved and the Mayan people and different groups in Mesoamerica forgot how to do the Long Count. However, because the Maya Creation mythology encodes the astronomy of the Long Count in mythological form, it survived. It was recorded in the highlands of Guatemala, it became the Quiché Maya Holy book, the Book of Counsel, otherwise known as the Hero Twin Myth.

So that survives down to the present day. But it is in an encoded form, in the way that mythology encodes astronomy, so it needed to be deciphered. And so you can say that the knowledge of the Long Count calendar’s end-date alignment survived in an encoded form, down to the present day.

Abby Lewis (AL): I wanted to talk about the joy part of your question. Recently I did a Vipassana retreat, which is a ten-day silent meditation retreat, and I had the same question. Don’t we all want the good things, the good feelings in life? And what I learned, and I am sure Scott will have more to say about it, is what they say traditionally, that the good feelings create craving in us.

I could see that the two things that we have are aversion and craving. And that really it is a complete consciousness and neutrality that we are striving for that is the path to enlightenment. The path is not always seeking that joy, but it is to help us become completely integrated with all that is. I am still struggling with that, we are all very similar in this way; I am still struggling because this does not really make sense to me, but I am getting it slowly.

SM: First of all, joy is not an emotion, joy is a freedom from attachment. I wouldn’t call it an emotion at all, I would call it a freedom from grasping and a joy of being, a condition of enriched ‘livingfulness,’ a freedom from grasping and fear. There is a definitely a tendency in Buddhism to become like the dour-faced monk, Mr. Flat-line Emotion. And that often involves repression. But in the absence of grasping or aversion, “I want,” and, “I hate,” the freedom from these tendencies is joy. If you find you are not in joy, it is certain there is some grasping somewhere in your mind, coarse or subtle – if you look deep enough, you will certainly find it.

But if you are attached to joy that too is a problem, but overall, I would say you shouldn’t worry about joy – if you must worry, just worry about your attachments, grasping and aversion. As they decrease, innate happiness will arise or just be with you, which is a lightness of spirit. So that is not an attachment and is actually an expression of freedom, and is far from the kind of personal emotional patterns that get us into trouble.

The shadow part of your question, the integration of the shadow just means that we need to try to accept all that we do not like about ourselves (and later, what we don’t like about others). You don’t like fear, you don’t like anger, you don’t like sorrow, you don’t like confusion – just try to like each one of them, try to accept it all and welcome it as part of the greater self. Try to see them as not bad at all, don’t blame it, don’t blame yourself.

That is an integration of the shadow, and it is not about being on the left-hand path today (being self-serving), and being on the right-hand path of love tomorrow – being OK with your negativity is itself not an invitation to selfishness. In fact, it is a powerful expression of service to others, the right hand path of love. This is about welcoming it all and not picking and choosing.

CR: One thing that I have really found helpful in working with the dark side and what people call psychic attack or psychic greeting was a book by Dion Fortune called Psychic Self-Defense. In it, she talks about experiencing an apparition of a wolf that appeared at the foot of her bed during her magical training – growling and snarling and looking like it was ready to leap at her and devour her. She decided that where the lesson was in this was to realize that the wolf was not separate from her, but the wolf was a projection of her, and what she needed to do was invite that snarling, biting wolf into her heart.

And so it might gnaw on you for a while before you charm it with your ideals and your stories, but in the process of taking that into your heart, you became filled with that strength and energy. You actually asked it to serve you by helping you gain more depth to the will by which you are striving for your ideals. So when you feel power coming at you that seems to be negative, it’s actually the universe mirroring to you a part of yourself that you need to work with. And the way to work with it involves waiting with it until you are able to offer it the hospitality of your heart.

It helps me a lot when I see a difficult human being, a person that I don’t initially see as the Creator, to simply to move my mind intellectually to a realization that I am looking right at the Creator and imposing that on myself. Even the worst murderer has a soul, everybody on Death Row is a shining perfect being, and all of us are murderers. So, I think it’s expanding your ability to receive catalyst without the necessity to respond involuntarily.

There are ways to dance with the shadow energy that really turns those energies from chaos into more of a rhythmic order, a unified color. And so then, those things that you had been seeing as ugliness become in their own way, parts of the thread that you are using to create the tapestry of your life, your being and your vibration. And you need those dark tones to make a beautiful tapestry, with enough contrast to be able to show up all the pretty forms that you are creating by dancing through life.

DW: I have a paraphrase of the quote you mentioned regarding the perfectly balanced entity. The reason why I think it psychically came to me to paraphrase it this way, which Scott didn’t really cover, is that you have an opportunity here to be of service in a situation which most people would think of as being emotionally charged. But you also have the opportunity to withdraw. So my paraphrase is this: that to a perfectly balanced entity there is no such thing as an emotionally charged situation, and there are only two choices. There is the choice to be of service or there is the choice to withdraw from the situation.

And I think for most light workers, it is important to give yourself permission to withdraw from a situation that would otherwise go on and evolve into screaming and throwing things. This is the point at which you would be exercising discernment and wisdom, incorporating higher centers of awareness into your process of human engagement.

So, you don’t want to overuse this kind of withdrawal from your toolbox of spiritual learning or else you are never going to be dealing with any conflict. But I think the point is that you don’t have to expect so much and expect yourself to be a perfectly balanced entity… I mean, what they are talking about here is an entity that has all of its chakras wide open, right?

They are saying to a perfectly balanced entity, there is no such thing as an emotionally charged situation. But that entity may very well discern that there isn’t anything they can do that is going to be serviceable in the situation, except withdrawing. And that is why, if you ask too many transient questions to Ra, they are going to start saying, “OK, your alignment is off” – and pretty soon they will just withdraw because they cannot be of service anymore. They are not going to get emotionally charged, they are not going to say, “you guys better change the way you are asking these questions.” They are just going to be gone.

SM: Yeah, and that is the difference between ‘love only’ and ‘love with wisdom’. It is the wisdom function that allows us to discern when no service is possible, either to the other or for our own evolvement – and thus when withdrawal or confrontation, in some way, may be effective. Ra also said that in the face of a conscious blockage, love alone is inadequate and won’t change them.

In this case, we are not just talking about a portion of the self that we ourselves consider negative that is arising in the mind, a personal distortion that could be loved into harmony – we’re talking about a consciously service-to-self person, being or force that comes to us from ‘outside.’ I mean, at least in terms of the ones I have met, they know just where they are coming from and they want to be without love. Asking us for self-healing is the last thing on their mind.

And so the only way to render service to just such a person or being – or even have some hope of not getting hurt and knowing what to do in the situation – is to be with wisdom. In this case, it is the wisdom to speak the truth, what one social activist called, “speaking truth to power.”

That means that we don’t have to hold back from the service of objective truth-telling, even when that person may not be so happy about it, if they consciously reject our love and compassion. I think this is a somewhat advanced lesson and takes a bit of will involved, too. But there are situations when you are with someone that doesn’t want kindness, doesn’t want healing, doesn’t want harmony – and you can try and try and try, and they still don’t want your good works.

So if you don’t have your wisdom and will in play, you will be ineffective, impotent, and you may not even be able to withdraw from the situation, but rather, you’ll feel confused by the whole thing. And yes, they are still the Creator too and there is no blame either, and indeed withdrawal will probably be quite useful and your best course of action.

You can indeed speak the truth, but they actually don’t want the truth either, and yet this is a form of service to others. It is real service to them when you’re speaking truth to power and then you leave because there is no relationship – they are left alone to ponder just what they are all about. And that is why in higher dimensions the groups are segregated, because they’re totally clear about their intentions, and they both realize they have nothing to offer each other that the other would want.

CR: To answer another part of your question, a good example that the Ra group suggested for people that want the best but are actually service to self, are the radio preachers. They may honestly believe they are in a ministry that is very blessed and that they are inspired, but they are also asking poor people for money, lots of money, every day. And poor people are giving the widow’s mite, and they want to take their money. And I think when you watch people accumulating large amounts of money more than they need, then that is one good example of people that are trying to be of service and end up controlling instead.

Another example is people in your family, everyone has got one, most families do – where they say, “It is for your own good, dear.” And then they will just do the most amazing things, and you say, “That is not what I wanted, I don’t think that is for my good,” but they are just so sure that you need that, they want you to be safe, so they genuinely, with the best feelings in their heart, are driving you crazy. They are actually trying to control every moment of your life so that you can be safe, so that they can keep you safe, but this is control and not in real service to you.

Question: How would one recognize within one’s self, this activity of well meaning domination? This is like intending to help but having a heart blockage.

CR: You will find that out real soon after you give good advice, because if you are attached to somebody taking your advice, then you will be real disappointed when they don’t. If you give it and you are not disappointed when they go their own way, then you are on good sound land.

Personally, I have a slightly different take on joy, because of my own experience of coming into bliss as a state of consciousness that is permanent. At one point in my life, I realized, it was now accessible at all times, that there is a fundamental level of joy. I think that what that is, is the constant state of the universe. I just tuned into reality. And so I became aware of it and was able to trust that since it is always there, I can just lean into it.

And on my worst day, I mean, I can remember a day I was lying down in bed with a cloth over my eyes because the pain was so bright that I couldn’t stand even the light. And I had pillows over each ear because everything hurt my ears, I was very sensitized by pain and I was very close to death. I kept having a raising of the vagus nerve, what they call the hangman’s kick.

So, I was lying there realizing, “I am partially paralyzed but I am going to have to remember to breathe every time,” and I am in a 30-foot well of pain. I couldn’t eat, I could drink water only a little bit, and I could eat popsicles so I could have something to chew, because they are just colored water and that is all.

So it was about 10 in the morning and I was listening to NPR and I had a very, very bad pain flare. I thought, “OK, let’s square off against this. Is it worth it? Is this good? Are you happy with this life?” And the feeling in me was so strong, ”Oh yeah!” You know, I am listening to NPR, I have got some good music going, I got some thoughts I wasn’t aware of, some good interesting people were on there talking to me, sharing things with me and I was learning something new. Despite the pain, I found joy.

NOTE: The remainder of the session wasn’t recorded.