Lisa Natoli: Joy of Being

I really appreciate that.

Oh my gosh.

Are you kidding? [laughs] That's my joy.

[laughs]

Completely.

Completely.

So what is it that you have a hope for, an intention around, that would people would take away from reading the book? What was ...

what benefit would it give them?

Well, I want people to really see the, the practical nature of all these spiritual teachings.

So A Course in Miracles, Advaita Vedanta, non-duality, because for many people, they've heard the words, "I'm whole and perfect, I'm not a body." They don't have the direct experience of it, and they don't live as this open spaciousness.

They keep thinking, "I'm still a body." So I still have experience of a body.

That doesn't change, but there's no more identification with the body as me.

So it's, it's still part of the experience, but the identification is now as awareness, as consciousness, as the I am, as this light.

And everything, including the body, is an appearance and a dif- disappearance in the openness.

So that's why I wanted to put a lot of space in here, because there's, there's a lot of ideas I think people are not familiar with.

Mm.

That the body is memory.

Mm-hmm.

That the body is imagined.

Mm-hmm.

That ...

So we've heard these things.

Mm-hmm.

But we often don't take the time to be quiet enough to actually investigate w- what that means, that we're just a bundle of habitual chronic things we learned, that we then carry through life thinking, "Okay, I'm, I'm a girl, I'm a boy, I'm," uh, the I am, then the characteristic.

I'm not good enough, or I'm great, or I'm failing, or I'm a success, or I'm sick, I'm healthy, I'm this, I'm that.