E186: You Don’t Need to Rise—You Need to Release

Your growth comes in layers.

If you try to force it and skip a bunch of layers, you're going to go back.

If I have a very high spiritual experience or have something, even deep meditation, you're coming back.

Why? Because there's a reason you haven't finished.

There's a reason that you need to do forceful, and I'm not speaking against them, by the way, forceful, willful efforts in order to rise above yourself.

That's what you're doing.

You understand that? You're trying to raise the energy up through the different centers.

That's wonderful.

That is the process of yoga.

That has a lot to do with different spiritual teachings.

But the real question is, why do you need to do that? Because there's something holding you down, and eventually, which sometimes takes lifetimes for people to catch on, it's not about going up, it's about getting rid of what's holding you down.

If you're holding on to a hot air balloon, don't try to figure out how to get enough helium in it or hot air in it so that it pulls you up with it.

Figure out why is it not going up.

Its nature is to go up.

Is it not? And if you look, you will see it's not going up because I'm holding onto it.

[laughs] If I wasn't holding onto it, it would go up.

So the question is not now I figured out why it's not going up because I'm holding onto it.

That's not deep enough.

You started.

You caught on.

There's a reason it's not going up.

Now, the question is, why are you holding onto it? That's called working your way to the root.

Buddhists speak about working at the root.

The root is not why the balloon's not going up.

The root is I'm holding onto it.