Episode 5: Are You Trapped in The Prison of Your Mind? or The Prism of Awareness!

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:24

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher, davidji.

davidji: 0:31

And heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:41

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into.

davidji: 1:11

Hi davidji, Hello Elizabeth, I’ve been thinking about this concept that we’re going to dive into today and it really stems from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I know, don’t touch that dial yet, I’m sure you’re like what Maslow hierarchy of needs Wasn’t that from 1942 to 1949? Yes, but we are still living those deep teachings and that theoretical underpinning right now. So Maslow pretty much said that we have these innate needs. We have these needs that we are automatically driven to fulfill, driven to meet these needs without there being a reward separate from the fulfillment of the need. There are five levels of needs. The first one is the physiological needs. We need to breathe, we need to eat, to drink, to pee, to poop, to be warm. Think of that. Those are like needs. We’re not saying if you give me more oxygen, I’ll breathe and then win a prize. We are doing these things without expectation of reward, known as deficiency needs, and every being on the planet, regardless of culture or civilization or orientation towards life, is on a mission to meet those needs innately. Once those needs are being worked on, we can move to other levels of needs.

davidji: 2:35

The next level, after those basic physiological needs, are needs of safety and security. We need to feel safe. We need to feel safe in our homes, in our apartments, in our cars, walking down the street. We need to feel safe in our relationships. And this is so important because the next level up is the level of love and belongingness. The next level above that is esteem and meeting our social needs, such as appreciation, being appreciated and acknowledged and recognized. Come down a few levels here. If we’re not meeting our needs of safety and security, we can’t experience love. If we’re not feeling that the person who’s walking towards us on the other side of the street as we cross the street, if we believe that they’re not playing by the same rules as us, we can’t even see them as one of us. And we know right now in our society, explorations into the diversity, equity, inclusiveness and belongingness realm these are so important Can’t even access any of that stuff if there’s not an underpinning or a foundational element of safety and security, a phrase that’s really gotten some bad press over the last three, five, ten, perhaps, going back to the eighties, when Ronald Reagan was president the concept of law and order.

davidji: 3:55

We might think, oh, I don’t know, I want to live in a world of such law and order. It seems so rigid, so structured and certainly disenfranchising to a whole bunch of people in that process. But each of us needs to know that we’re all playing by the same rules. We need to know that in our workplace. We would probably say, oh, the deepest underpinnings of diversity, equity and inclusiveness trainings are really based on have their foundational elements in this concept that we’re all playing by the same rules and that no one has the extra advantage or playing by a different rule book at all. So this is really important to me and I wanted to stress this because there are people that I know Elizabeth, I’m sure you know them too.

davidji: 4:40

Some of your clients are probably in this category where they’re struggling to find love in their relationships and yet they’re not feeling safe in their relationship.

davidji: 4:51

And I would say if you think there’s love in that relationship, it might in fact be Maya.

davidji: 4:56

It might be an illusion If you’re stuck in that one and you’re not really making some kind of effort to establish near safety and security. We need to know that we can walk to work or go to work without being attacked, that we can go outside and throw out the garbage or go get water or go do anything and feel safe in that process, that we can do that and not feel threatened, because anytime we sense that we face a mortal threat, we’re going to have all this episodic and chronic stress embedded inside of us and guess what happens next? Just no way we can move to love. So what’s been your experience? We can talk more about the other levels, but the level that if you’re not feeling safe in something whether that’s work, whether that’s a musical group, you’re contributing to a band, whether that’s in a think tank, whether that’s in a mastermind, pick your environment, whether that’s in a family unit that you’re not going to be able to experience love and belongingness.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:53

I love this topic. I love it. So I always say safety is your portal, Safety is your portal. And so there’s a lot of ways for us to create that sense of safety in our bodies Working with the root chakra, working with affirmation. And when I’m listening to you speak, if we’re not really dealing with the tigers running after us like cavemen, we all have those tigers in our lives, right. So if I’m feeling unsafe or anyone’s feeling unsafe in a relationship they’re in, where I think people go is to you’re talking about love, like maybe it’s more Maya. That’s where I feel people go into this place of deserving and worthiness. Do I deserve this love? Why am I deserving of this level of love? And so people fall into this unworthiness place when they’re feeling unsafe. I think it’s a very old egoic part of the human self that everybody has this feeling of not enoughness and when we’re feeling unsafe we regress into that and so we go into this. Deserve my thing about deserving.

davidji: 7:03

Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:04

And if you look up the word deserve, it’s about reward and punishment about earning, and so am I here to earn your love or am I here to share? Now, relationships are full of challenges. I’m not saying that they aren’t, but to be living from that place is a difficult place to be, and so it’s a lot of drama, a lot of Maya, as you said, and for those who don’t understand what Maya is, it’s disillusionment of yourself and of the other. There’s a lot of projection, a lot of repetition of patterns. So anyone out there feeling like they’re hitting their head against the wall and these particular patterns in their relationships, that’s not a problem.

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:45

Welcome to Earth. You are human and just awaken to what are the patterns in your life right now? What do you find that keeps coming up with yourself, in your love relationship with your kids, with your parents at work, whatever it may be, just note it, write it down. Now. You can become a prisoner of this, or it can be the place that you rise up. I call it. Are you in prison or are you in a prism?

davidji: 8:14

Prison or prism Love that.

Elizabeth Winkler: 8:18

Yes, so again, perfect for the shadow in the light.

davidji: 8:22

one foot in the light, one foot in the shadow makes me think of those Usually have this in the final scenes in a lot of movies, where they’re like chasing the person who’s committed the crime, runs into the fun house and they’re firing at the mirror because it looks like them. But it’s just a mirror and as they keep moving through the process, everything is a false lead.

Elizabeth Winkler: 8:41

Yeah. So when we are in a pattern of behavior, what we typically have done is I get activated, something activates me, something upsets me, my heart lights on fire. I shut that down. I say no, I can’t handle this. This is not okay, this shouldn’t be happening. These are all things I want to eliminate from your vocabulary, should and all these sort of things. But we’ll get to that. I shut my heart down, I run to my mind, my personal mind. If I go to my personal mind, guess what? All I can reference is the past. What am I in the prison of my personal story, at the prism Correct, if you notice you are in particular patterns, it’s okay, you’re human, that’s all right, no judgment.

Elizabeth Winkler: 9:24

So just take an elevator from your head to your heart. Take a breath, pause, know that there are other pathways. Now Are they pathways we walked? No, they are uncertain. That makes people uncomfortable. The ego likes to know certainty. It likes to know what’s gonna happen. Guess what we don’t know.

Elizabeth Winkler: 9:43

Getting more comfortable with not knowing is part of this prism self. How do you stay grounded? How do you stay safe? You ground it to the body I’ve talked about before. Grounding into the body, using your body as an anger, feel the heaviness of your body on the planet right now, feel the seat beneath you, feel your foot, feel your hands touch something that’s your home, your inner self, your inner body, right. So, getting grounded into the self and getting grounded into the present moment and you are Master of getting us into the moment.

Elizabeth Winkler: 10:18

davidji, getting into the present moment is part of the prism. One foot in that light and one foot in whatever you’re working with and Then asking what’s the next Right action or what’s wanting to be birthed in this moment. What’s not working? Maybe it’s not. What’s calling me one of my drawn to what do I desire instead of what do I deserve? What do I desire from a deeper level of this moment? You may have first have to look at what’s not working for me. Those are great teachers to look at. Okay, I keep going into this room and I keep finding the same thing and I feel abused or I feel brought down. That can be the place that lifts you up ultimately.

davidji: 11:01

This is so fascinating because I’m talking about needs which have embedded in them all these hints of foundational elements Never to be confused with the shoulders, never to be confused with the worthiness or whatever. As beings on this planet, we need to feel safe. It’s not a question of am I worthy, where do I deserve it. It’s actually an innate, foundational, elemental need of every single person on the planet, and so when those needs are not met Especially specifically safety and security that throws everything out the window. That’s when we start to question why am I in this relationship? That’s when we start to question Am I worthy of love? Am I getting love? Am I being adored? We’ve all had our hearts broken.

davidji: 11:58

Then what’s our next step? How are we showing up? Are we showing up whole and then attracting people who are attracted to whole beings, or are we showing up as broken? Broken people attract two types of people Meddlers, fixers. That’s one category of people who you attract. If you show up broken and predators, you attract that person who wants to take advantage of your brokenness. And that’s why, so often, when our hearts have been broken, when we’ve been shattered, when our sense of self has been challenged and we’ve stepped away from experiencing the fulfillment of the need.

davidji: 12:35

Is the need being met? If I don’t feel safe, I’m going to appear unsafe and afraid. What do I attract? What’s the message I’m sending out? What energy am I sending out into the world?

davidji: 12:47

Now, let’s say you interact with no one, but that same internal conversation is going to be having inside your head. So you’re going to be saying to yourself there’s like that voice inside of you, that being inside of you who’s going to say and this is a voice we heard as a child at some point you’re not good enough and you can’t pull this off. And that message being sent from our head or our heart or who knows where it’s being sent from. But we are the ones who embedded it there. We’re the ones who, for the very first time, at some point, began to say the same thing as the person who questioned us initially. We will then question ourselves. We heard someone else say oh, come on, you can’t do that. So then we mimic that, then we mirror that and we reinforce that, and suddenly it’s 10, 20, 30 years later, and that’s not a healthy internal conversation.

Elizabeth Winkler: 13:39

I have a hack for that Yogananda Paramahansa. Yogananda, who I love, love, love. Out of biography of a yogi for anyone who wants to dive into the depths.

davidji: 13:49

Which was George Harrison’s favorite book, and he used to give that to everyone that he ever bumped into.

Elizabeth Winkler: 13:54

Deep Jobs’ only book on his iPad.

davidji: 13:56

How about that? That’s a mic drop right there, and the place that he wrote autobiography of a yogi is down in Encinitas, which is right down the road Self-Realization, fellowship, and there’s one up in your neck of the woods.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:07

There’s several. I started going there when I moved to LA, when I was 22.

davidji: 14:12

So he came to the United States in the 20s and one of his claim to fame that I write about this just a little bit in Secrets of Meditation was that he performed at Carnegie Hall in front of several thousand people singing hey, harai sandari. He had all of Carnegie Hall and in the early 50s, at the end of a speech that he was making, left his body.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:35

Yes. So he had a teaching, I guess you could call it that. If you have a thought that you are going over, thoughts that you keep having, just say the opposite thought. Our minds are dual. So if I keep thinking I hate this, I love it. I have the I’m fine with it mantra that I use all the time for the mind, because the mind’s never fine with anything. Pretty much works, but even better is, I love it. Usually the mind’s just complaining about something. So if you have a particular thought that you’re struggling with just as an experiment, say the opposite. Why? Because it collapses. Dualism, right. So if I’m saying this, I say the opposite. Shadow in the light. Here we go, that’s right.

Elizabeth Winkler: 15:13

It makes it collapse.

davidji: 15:15

What if?

Elizabeth Winkler: 15:16

this wasn’t true Exactly. So play with these things. Play with these things, see how they work for you. Now, is that the whole game? Absolutely not. When we work with mantra or we work with something like saying the opposite, it releases the grip of the personal mind, the prison I was talking about saying stuck in the pattern. That’s not the whole game. Getting out of the mind is a battle sometimes. So once you’re out of the mind, go into the body. What are you noticing in your body? I’m saying I’m not enough in this way, so I’m more than enough, and then just dropping that, come into the body, get in contact, and that’s when I like to work with the heart out, comey with people and just working with the activation and seeing where that takes you.

davidji: 15:58

But our vocabulary of emotions is not good, right? People ask us how you doing and we’re like, okay, it’s so binary, it’s either myth or good or hanging in there that we have to this, and growing up in New York, of course you’re not actually supposed to answer the question. That’s just how people say hi when they say how you doing. But our vocabulary of emotions is really small, as well as our vocabulary of fear, and so we have this whole concept of Needing to. You mentioned some of this before.

davidji: 16:31

To earn something, I need to show up and deliver something. Now, yes, we all say trust has to be earned, but that really what we mean is behaviors need to be demonstrated so that people can see them and mirror them and accept them, as opposed to us reading each other’s minds in that process, earning merit Gain. Suddenly we start to realize we’re constantly trying so hard to get the Approval of someone else in a given moment and Maslow was very clear on this that’s four levels up, that’s four levels up. So still at the safety and security level, when someone’s I’m looking for someone to complete me. If you don’t feel safe, if you don’t feel secure in that, good luck with that.

davidji: 17:19

It can’t happen, and not until that level of love and belongingness is actually being worked on Can we then get to that level of feeling Appreciation from someone else. So imagine we have to go through the physiological round, the safety and security rain, the love and Belongingness realm, in order to have our need of being appreciated met. It’s even higher up than that, and if these other levels aren’t working and this is the thing that I want to stress, it’s a progression and if these other levels aren’t working or we’re not working on meeting the needs in these other levels, then we will struggle with the needs of our 4a’s attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance in the Appreciation that higher level to me is about receiving, which I see so much challenge With the people I work with, of being able to receive Anything.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:16

our world, our Western world, is hype. A I need to do, I need to do this. I more and more, I have to get. That’s obviously those lower levels we were just saying. You can get caught in that prison To be able to receive that yin energy is so gifting and I know for myself in a spiritual path when I was listening and working with lots of different teachers I was very attracted to more yang type teaching of people who spoke very directly to me like a knife, and I think it’s a shadow and a light of teaching. There’s a yin and a yang to teaching and I remember listening to after Michael singed the first time I listened to Muji who I called him my warm blanket, but at that time I couldn’t receive him. It was too yin for me. And then I always say to people if something’s not resonating for you, don’t throw it out. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have teaching for you, it’s just maybe not right now.

davidji: 19:10

In order for there to be transformation personal transformation there needs to be this divine fusion, this divine convergence. And when I say convergence, everything’s got to be there Message, messenger and timing. Because we could have the message. You’re vibing with this message, the messenger, you’re vibing with him as the messenger, but perhaps you weren’t ready. Or you were ready, you were so ready and he was the messenger, but the message was a yin message and you were yang. You can’t even see it, it’s not even making its way into you. So we think, oh, it’s just a window of timing, either I’m available here and I’m open to the message here. It’s got to be the combination, the trica of those three Message, messenger and timing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 19:57

And also not throwing out what got you where you are. So then people will be like oh yeah, I used to study with that person and then they felt done with it or they found something that they didn’t resonate with them and they throw it away. I’m not into that. I think everything brings you somewhere and then you develop in a new way and then you move on and then you develop. It’s all meaningful. It all brought us all our traumas. All of those things brought us to where we are and we can honor and learn and grow from all of them.

davidji: 20:23

Well, hold that right there, because we have an upcoming episode on Ancestral Healing. But before we say goodbye, remind us what’s that little step for us to feel safe when we’re not feeling safe? What’s that little internal mantra in a particular situation, if we feel blocked, if we feel we can’t step into it, if suddenly that voice inside of us is reinforcing no, I can’t actually get this done. What was that you said before?

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:51

I haven’t said it because you just said I can’t. Which is the thing. I can handle, this, I can handle. This is what keeps you present when that activation begins, because the moment you say no, I can’t, you run to the prison of the mind. If you’re already in the mind, guess what you say, I’m fine with it. Or you can say the opposite of the thought and then shift into I can handle this.

davidji: 21:18

Unbelievable From the sweet spot of the universe. This is the Shadow and the Light podcast. My name is davidji. I’m here with the transformation alchemy goddess Elizabeth Winkler, and have an amazing day. We’ll see you on our next episode and in the meantime, keep meditating.

Music: 23:01

The light has come to set us free. The shadow come to be God’s lover. The shadow come to set us free. The light is here to remove our demons and to bring new light. The light is here to remove our demons and to bring new light.