Life is when Wishes end

Good morning.

This morning, I want to answer questions again, questions which reached me through email or letter. I love answering questions. Each and every question touches me so very much. It's these questions which come out of life, out of this human ordinary life, and there, I can talk about what it's really about in this life when I hear these questions. Otherwise, I forget. You know, I don't know what to talk about. But when I get these questions, then I remember. Then I can talk. So, let's get started with the first question.

Oh, and by the way, if you have a question, you can write to me via email or via letter. And if you're interested, I'm totally happy to receive your question. And I will answer in a video. I will also answer via email or letter, but the real answer everybody should be able to hear, and that's why I give the real answer in a video, and if you want to contact me on my website on the "Ask me" page, you find the information you need, and I'm looking forward to your email or letter. So, now the first question.

"Dear Mikael, I have been meditating for many years now, and I have always had a very strong connection with Jesus. My prayers are directed to him. But now, since I have been doing the Samarpan Meditation, I always have a bad feeling at the beginning. It feels like I'm replacing Jesus, pushing him away, a bit like cheating, and I would rather stay with Jesus. It feels so secure. I know it doesn't matter, and I've listened to your videos, but the feeling remains. How should I deal with it? Do you have any advice for me?"

Thank you for your question. Thank you so much.

It's wonderful when you feel such a strong connection to a saint like Jesus, to a Guru like Jesus, because... you say: it feels secure. It makes it possible for us to surrender. Maybe we cannot surrender to life because it feels dangerous, but with somebody like Jesus, we feel safe, and there we can say yes. There we can say: "Life, yes, your will be done."

So, it's a good thing.

We are humans, and we know that Jesus is not God. We know that the Guru, in my case, Swamiji, is not God, but with him we feel safe and carried. And such a being like Jesus is a medium for us, a medium for our surrender, a medium for our longing to God. And through him, we experience God, the peace of God, the energy of God. But the destination is God. The destination is to discover yourself, to discover your true identity, your soul, and that is all the same. There's no difference between your soul and God. They're connected. They're one.

And Jesus puts it very nicely, he says: "I am the way", and that's what you experience. For you, he is the way. He was describing the role of a Guru. He didn't say: "Me, Jesus of Nazareth, I am the only way", but he said: "I am the way. I am a medium for you, a medium for God to come to you", that's the role of a Guru.

That's the role of each and every true Guru. But then he says: "Put God first". It's about God. It's about surrender to God. It's about discovering God. But he's the way. These are the two things which come together there. He's the way. With him, through him, it's possible for you, but he's not the destination. He's just the way.

And when we meditate, when we do the Samarpan Meditation, it's like we connect to that what it is truly about. We do that, what this is truly about: when you do the Samarpan Meditation, you surrender. You let go of all of your wishes, all of your thoughts. You surrender. You just rest here in the crown chakra with your attention. For me, it's like sitting at the door to the temple, how it's being said in the Bible.

We are sitting at God's temple, at the door to Heaven. And that's what Jesus was talking about. So, when you meditate, you do what Jesus advises you to do. Put God first. He didn't say: "Put me first". He said: "I'm the way so you can put God first. I enable you to surrender. I make it possible for you to trust. I make it possible for you to feel safe and secure, so then you can surrender, then you can give up. Say yes."

So, Jesus wants you to do what he discovered for himself too.

He makes it possible for you, and that's what you do in the meditation. The meditation is not a contradiction to Jesus. The meditation is not a replacement, a new religion. Every religion preserves the knowledge of the path, and Jesus is the path if Jesus is your Guru.

And the meditation is where you practice that what Jesus brings to you. That's what he does. When he prays, he sits and surrenders. He doesn't speak to God. Of course, it's being put into words so we understand, but he surrenders to life. He surrenders to God. He sits there with the energy of "your will be done". It doesn't mean that he sits there saying these words. That's what's happening. This is the surrender, and that's being described with these words of prayer.

And that's "putting God first".

So, Jesus is for you the inspiration and the possibility to surrender. And that's practically what you do when you do the Samarpan Meditation. So, in a way, when you meditate the Samarpan Meditation, you are even closer to Jesus than ever before. Of course, when you meditate, there is no imagination of Jesus. You don't think about him, quite the contrary, you forget everything, but you're closer to his essence, to his energy, to his Father, to God.

And I'm very happy about your question because it's important to understand this difference. Swamiji advises... It's like this that... I said in the beginning: it's natural and good that we have somebody on the outside, somebody like Jesus, somebody like Swamiji, a Guru, where we can surrender to. We know Jesus is not God. We know the Guru is not God, but God becomes tangible for us through this medium. But the important thing is what comes through the medium. The medium itself is not important. It's like a pipe in your house bringing water.

The important thing is the water. You want to use the water. You don't worship the pipe. You drink the water. And that's the case with a Guru like Jesus as well. Your love for Jesus, your surrender to Jesus makes it possible that you can drink what comes through him, and that's what you're experiencing in meditation. And Swamiji says: it's important not to focus on the physical body, on the physical appearance of the Guru. This is not good for you, and it's also not good for the Guru. We want to put our attention to the energy which comes through the Guru.

That's, for instance, also why I don't have a photo of my Guru here. What you see here in the back is not a photo of Swamiji. It's a picture of his energy body. It's a picture. It's a painting. It is a symbol for the energy body of this medium where the energy of God flows through, and that's the important thing. It's not the person. It's not the human being Swamiji, it's not the human being Jesus who we are in love with, who is bringing us God. It's this energy. So, when you meditate the Samarpan Meditation, you are closer to Jesus than in any other way possible.

It's interesting: when you are a Guru, when somebody surrenders to you and somebody worships you and somebody loves you, it doesn't give you anything. It doesn't matter to the Guru. It matters to the disciple. Your love for Jesus matters for you, because it opens you for God. So, you don't have to be worried that you betrayed Jesus. He doesn't care. What he cares about is that you find fulfillment in this life, and he shows you the way. So, when you do the Samarpan Meditation, where you come closer to yourself, to your soul, to God, then he's happy. He's totally happy.

There's this one instance in the Bible where Jesus teaches how to pray. He said: "This is how you pray. Thy will be done."

That's how you pray. "Thank you". You give thanks, and you say: "Thy will be done". That surrender. He's teaching us surrender, and that's what you do in the Samarpan Meditation. You surrender. Samarpan means surrender. That's why that's the name of this meditation, because we forget everything. We just forget everything we know, everything we find important, everything we want, everything we think, we forget everything. It's just resting with our attention here at the crown, which is our connection to all the things we cannot see in this world.

No contradiction. No reason to worry.

I love Jesus, and I feel closer to him and I understand him better than ever since I do the Samarpan Meditation. That's why I speak about him so many times. Because then when you meditate, slowly, slowly, that which Jesus is talking about becomes your own experience, more and more and more. And he can only be happy about that.

And I know, as a human being... that's why it's so helpful to have a Guru, because we experience it so tangibly. You love Jesus, and it's easy to feel that we would betray him if you do anything other than just loving him yeah. But remember what he said: "I am the way, But the destination, that's God, Heaven, your soul." And the closer to you come to your own soul, the more intimate you feel with Jesus, I can promise that.

So, next question.

"Dear Mikael, I love listening to your videos, and I feel so much enriched. A thousand thanks for that. Now to my question. For a long time, I have not been able to sleep through the night, and I'm lying awake for 1, 2, or 3 hours. I usually go to bed at 9 o'clock, I read a bit, and then I fall asleep around 10 o'clock. The sleep before midnight is worth its weight in gold, because then, afterwards, I lie awake for up to 3 hours from 1 or 2 AM onwards.

And then, I usually wake up in the morning between 6 and 7, and the amount of restful sleep I got is definitely not enough to keep me fit and focused throughout the day. On those days, when I don't have anything important to do, I'm fine with it. On all other days, it bothers me a lot because I feel exhausted, and my memory no longer functions satisfactorily. What can I do to sleep through the night again and wake up feeling refreshed and mentally fresh?"

Thank you. Thank you for this question. So many people know this, and I'm very happy to say something about it.

I want to answer on 2 different levels. First, I want to say something which is not directly to you. I want to talk briefly about sleeping problems in general, because many people have occasionally the experience that they can't sleep at night.

And when that happens, the best thing you can do is not to think about it, not to worry about it, but to just accept it the way it is and to be as restful and as quiet as possible. You can't sleep, but you can still rest. You can just pretend it's the afternoon and you're lying in bed, you close your eyes, and you try to get some rest in between. That's the best you can do.

The most important thing is not to think. When you lay in bed at night, you can't sleep, and then, when you start thinking, maybe you think about that you must sleep because you need your strength the next day, or you think about the things you have to get done the next day, or you think about the things you screwed up the day before, or you think about the beautiful thing you experienced, or you think about the beautiful thing which might happen tomorrow. These things will keep you awake. The best thing is not to think at all. Just rest. Be quiet inside.

And don't wait for sleep. Just rest. And what also helps is going to bed early. The writer of this letter does this anyway. The earlier you go to bed, the better it is for your sleep. The sleep the human body gets before midnight is a very special sleep, because during this time, certain processes can happen in the body which don't happen afterwards, and this is connected with the sun cycle, with the energy of the sun, the solar cycle. Our body does certain things according to the position of the sun and the day and light rhythm.

And there are certain things which happen in this rhythm before midnight. And when you sleep during that time, it's the best for your body. That's why in earlier times, this was called the "beauty sleep", because during these hours before midnight, the body gets a quality of rest which doesn't happen later. So, going to bed early is great. Meditating is great. When you're meditating each morning, you learn to become quiet and to let go, and this will improve your sleep dramatically.

So, now about your specific question. I said I first say a few things which are not directed to you because I know that your situation's different. I know you tried all this, and there are people, many people, who have the same experience like you. I'm living with a person like this. My partner, she has this almost every night; not every night, but at least every second night. She has phases where it is like this for her, and then sometimes a few days in between where she can sleep through, and then there come times again where she is up for 2 or 3 hours, maybe even 4 hours every single night.

And she meditates. Since many years, she's meditating, much longer than I'm doing. She goes to bed early. She does all the right things. She doesn't drink coffee. She doesn't eat chocolate. She doesn't do anything which would prevent her sleep, and still it happens.

There are two things I want to advise you to do. The one is: let go of the wish that this changes. Say "yes" to it. And with saying yes to it, I mean not to say yes so it can change. This is not a yes. No, what I mean is let go of the idea that it should change. Let go of the wish that it should change. Let go of the idea that it must change, but instead, say: "Okay. It is like this. I accept it. I will not think about it anymore. It is like, this is how my life is. Okay. I let it be like this." For you, this is very important.

The second thing I would like you to do is realize that this is not your life. The day you have to live after a sleepless night is not your day.

I'm telling you how I live.

When I get up in the morning, I meditate. And after meditation, I pray to God. I pray to Swamiji and say: "Thank you. Thank you for this new day. This is your day. I have nothing to do with it. This is your life. This is your day. Do with me whatever you want during this day. And that means: it's your responsibility, God, not mine. You tell me what to do. You give me the energy to do things if you want to get them done. Otherwise, I won't do them."

The same with the nights: "Thank you, God, for this day. Now, this night is your night, not mine. Let me do during this night whatever you wish. If you want me to sleep, I'm willing to sleep. If you want me to stay awake, I will be awake. It's your night, your responsibility, but then don't complain tomorrow if I don't have energy."

The same is with the meditation. Swamiji says: "It's not in your hands how your meditation is." He says: "Give the responsibility to me." If you have a meditation which you don't like, you think you do something wrong, you think you can't do it right, then know: it's not your fault. You blame your Guru. Blame Jesus. Blame God.

When you have the feeling that you do something wrong during meditation, you say: "Swamiji, this is your fault. God, this is your fault. Don't blame me." And that's how we do it with every day as well.

And this is not a mental exercise. This is not a trick to find sleep. This is acknowledging the truth of life. In reality, and maybe you have heard this, in reality, there is no "I" who can do anything. In reality, everything which happens through us, through our hands, through our intellect, through our knowledge, through our abilities, all this doesn't happen because of "me". It happens by itself, by the energies which we receive, by the desires which we receive, by the inspirations we receive.

In reality, there is no "I" who can do something. You have heard this, I know, but that doesn't help. But you can remember this every morning and every evening, when you feel responsible how this day is going. Remember: "This is not my day. I have no say here. I have no responsibility." You say: "God, this is your day. Do with it whatever you want. If you want anything to be done, give me the strength, give me the desire to do it, give me the motivation, and give me the joy I need to do it. Otherwise, it won't happen." That's how you live.

And that's the only problem you really have with your sleepless nights. It's not a problem at all to lay awake at night. It's kind of nice. It's dark. Everything is quiet. You have a wonderful opportunity to rest and to sink deep into yourself. The only problem is this thought: "Oh, tomorrow I need to be strong and alert and intelligent, and I have to have it together so I can meet the responsibilities of the day.

Otherwise, I will not be able to take care of the kids. I will not be able to take care of the job and the household and for God knows what." And that's the problem, this feeling of responsibility. And when you realize that this is not your responsibility, the problem disappears, and then you will discover something very, very interesting.

You know, normally, we have this feeling that because we feel responsible, because we feel that it's so important that we do certain thing, that's why we can do them. But this is not true. This is an illusion. This is the illusion of the ego. And when you dare to try out what I suggest to you, to acknowledge the truth.... As I said: this is not a mental trick.

This is acknowledging the truth: "This is not my day." I shared in my last video about a dream I had. In the dream, I didn't have any hands. They were being cut off. And I realized through the dream: "I don't have any hands", meaning: "I can't do anything. This is not my day. This is not my night. This is not my life."

When you dare to acknowledge this and allow to happen what happens by itself... You follow your energy. You do what you have the strength to do. I mean, you are willing. You are willing to do everything. You are willing to fulfill your responsibilities and your tasks and your duties, and you just do as well as you can with the energy you get, with the clarity you get, more you cannot do. So, you give up the responsibility, and you hand it back to God, back to life.

And then you will discover that everything happens easier, better, faster than before. We think, this feeling of responsibility is the driving factor in our life, but this is not true. The opposite is true. It's a hindrance, it's blocking.

And I suggest this to you not because I believe that this will change your sleeping pattern. I don't know whether you will ever experience another kind of sleep. But you know, it's like this: what you experience is something very profound. Our task in this life is to discover who we truly are.

And ordinarily, we believe I'm this body. This is me. As I said, we believe this is my life. This is my day, my night, my responsibilities, my wishes, my goals, And the only task we have in this life is to discover who we truly are, to discover our soul, to discover God. And the soul, God, they have nothing to do with "your" responsibilities in life. This is all imaginary. This is all illusion.

So, the way life helps us with this task, the way life wakes up out of this illusion that we are somebody, out of this illusion that this is my life, I have to do it... The way life does this is by making it impossible for us to keep believing in it, because we run against our limits. You notice: I can't do it. And life does this with all kinds of things. Some people have a severe accident. They can't work anymore, and then they discover how life happens anyway.

Other people experience it in other ways where they discover... They feel: "I must do this. I must do this, otherwise, something terrible will happen", but they can't. And they're in total agony, in total stress, and they let go. And then they discover how life does it when they give up, when they surrender, because they were forced to surrender. And that's what life is doing with you in this way, in a very gentle way.

Just by depriving you a little bit of sleep every night, you are being shown: this is all not in your hands. You can't do it until you surrender, until you say: "Oh, I forgot. I totally forgot. This is not my job. This is not my day." This is how we discover that we are not the body. This is how we discover that we are not the ego. So, life is helping you, and whether this help will go away when you learn this lesson or not, I don't know, but once you learn this lesson, it doesn't matter.

When you realize, and that's the key, that this is not your life... when you realize: "Oh, thy will be done, also today", very practically, you know. This is not a spiritual imaginary exercise. This is not a mental exercise. This is practical. This is real, saying: "Thy will be done. Okay, with the sleep you give me, with the strength you give me, I'm willing to live this day. It's yours. Your will be done. According to what you give me, I will live." More is not possible, and more is not needed. It's that simple.

And then the agony, then the stress you feel will disappear. And then when you can't sleep at night, you can enjoy it, because you know: if you would need more sleep, God would give you more sleep. You can count on this. Really, you can count on this.

So, life is helping you right now to learn the one thing we need to learn in this life. That's the only thing we are here for. And all the experiences you have, the difficulties you experience, they help you in this realization. That's why it's very good that you meditate. And this surrender you do in the Samarpan Meditation, this letting go, now bring this into your day.

Meditate in the morning, and then maybe you feel totally tired, you feel you have no strength, you have no clarity in your head, and with the same way you meditated, start your day with a let go: "Okay, God, here I am. Look at me. I feel like this because you gave me this night. Now let happen whatever needs to be happening." With this let go start your day. With this let go, live every day, and then you will discover a completely new way of being.

I said: this is the one and only thing we have to discover: who we truly are. And on that way, the only thing which is needed is surrender. That's what we learn through the Samarpan Meditation. And with this surrender, a new life starts, and then we discover: everything happens by itself. In the outward life, in the practical life, and in our spiritual development, in our way to God, on our way to Heaven.

Thank you for your question. Thank you.

So, let's see what else is there.

"I've been trying to set up my own business for 5 years now. I have completed a training as an accompanying Kinesiologist. I created my own home page. But unfortunately, I have not seen any success so far. That's why I continue to work as an employee even though I don't enjoy the work very much, just in order to finance my life. My wish was and is to work as a kinesiologist. At the same time, I spent a lot of..." I want to stop here for a moment before it goes on.

This is very interesting. I really resonate with this what you just wrote, because I experienced this so many times in my life. We feel energy for something, and we get the clear knowing this is the way. We know this is this where it's going. We feel it. And then we do everything we can do to support this, and it's not happening.

I experienced this many times in my life, and the last time I experienced this is with the videos. Three and a half years ago or four and a half years ago, I keep forgetting, I think it's four and a half years now... It's that long ago that I had the first inclination that videos want to happen through me, a very clear inclination. It came out of the blue. It was totally clear: this will happen.

And I did the same thing like what you did. I started preparing everything I could. I created my website. I prepared my little office so I can make videos here. I took care of the lighting and the audio, and I purchased a used camera and so on. So, I got totally ready. I made test recordings and all kinds of things, but it didn't start. Whenever I wanted to really start, I noticed: "No. it's not time yet." And if I would have started, I would have probably noticed it doesn't work.

And then three and a half years later, I was ready. Three and a half years later, suddenly, I noticed: I think now it's starting. So, I prepared the last bits and pieces which I needed to do, and I started. And since then, it's just rolling and going, and I get so much response and support. It's amazing. I'm really blown away, but it needed these years for me to just sit around and get ready. I didn't do anything to get ready. This is just happening by living.

I continued my work. You I work as a as a web programmer. I enjoy my work, but I felt like you. I felt like actually, the only thing I want to do is videos. That's all I want to do. All my energy wants to go there. And yet, I just kept doing my job as well as I could with as much joy and love for the clients and enthusiasm I could, and I just wanted to say I waited, but I didn't wait. I was really living my life day by day knowing that I will know when it's supposed to happen.

That's how I lived. And it's still like this. Now I do videos every week, but I still work. I know that there will be a day in this life where the computer work will drop away, and my all of my energy and all of my time will go into the videos and into whatever wants to develop out of this. But it's not time yet. And life tells me, by what's happening in my life, what life wants from me now.

I get more and more support for the videos, so I can have more and more time for them, but it's not time yet. I can't do it yet to only do that in my life. So, I still work. I don't know for how long. Gradually, it will probably become less and less and less, but I don't worry about it. I don't think about it. I let life decide, by what's happening, practically. These practical things, this is how life guides us.

And this is a great relief when you can live it like this, when you when you know this. First of all, you know: okay, things take time. Our Intellect usually wants it to happen immediately. We feel the energy, and we think this means it should happen now, but in reality, we just feel where it's going. We feel the direction, but we don't know the timing of things.

That's why it's so important and so helpful to be patient. And then you see how things will develop. If you don't tell life how it should be, then you can relax.

You just are with how it is for you. You feel the energy. You feel this lust for this new occupation, for this new way of working, and you feel and see what life supports right now at the moment, and there's no contradiction between the two. Allow life to make you ready. Allow life to make life ready for the new. It takes time.

But the most important thing is to surrender to what life wants. Many times during these last years, I said: "Hey, life, if you don't want me to make videos, I'm willing to give this up. It wasn't my idea. You gave me the energy for it. You gave me the inclination. If you think it's not needed anymore, then I drop it. I'm willing to work as a programmer for the rest of my life. And if this doesn't work, I'm willing to work as a gardener or trash man or whatever. I don't care. Life, you tell me what you want from me."

That's the real learning. And the more we can put life into life's hands, the easier life has it to prepare us for what life really wants from us, this this kind of let go, this kind of: "Okay, life, you show me what's up today." And that's how I lived these years. I did my work as well as I could, and in between, again and again, I had energy to do some other preparation for the videos, and I did this. And so, things started happening slowly, slowly, slowly. So, now I want to go on with the email. The real question is yet to come.

"At the same time, I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of life. I read a lot about it and watch videos like the one you posted. And I meditate. The core messages in all these media are similar. It's about letting go, freeing yourself from desires and goals, accepting what is, resting in yourself, and focusing inwards. Now comes my question. How can this be reconciled with a normal life?

If I have no desires and goals, what is the point of my life? On the other hand, they say you should live as if every day is the last day of your life, savoring each moment and being fully in the Here and Now. I have a conflict within me as these two views contradict each other. I'm not sure what I should do in terms of my independence. This inner conflict has put me in a kind of paralysis, and now I don't know what to do."

You really hit the spot there with this question. This is a wonderful question: "What is life about, if it's not about my goals and my wishes..." How did you... You put it so nicely, in a nutshell: "If I have no desires and goals, what is the point of my life?" That's the one question so many people have. Thank you.

And that's how it is: what we perceive as our life, what we perceive as "me", is my goals and my wishes. If I don't have any goals, if I don't have any wishes, if I have no preferences, if I'm okay with whatever happens, there's no "me". There's no ego.

It's not that life becomes meaningless. It's not that life disappears when you have no goals and no wishes, but this illusion of me, that disappears.

And most people never lived their life even for a second. What we perceive as life is our wishes and our goals; that what we think about life; that what we want out of life. Wanting is just another way of thinking, and we believe this is life. But we never have lived even one second.

You write that you hear that one should let go of the wishes and the goals, one should just accept what is, be here in the moment. And you say: this is a contradiction to this other view that you should live your life fully and savor every moment.

And this contradiction is, of course, not true. There is no contradiction. But if you are a human being who lives in the wishes and in the goals, if this is where you experience life, then it's a contradiction.

But I tell you: before you do not give up your goals and your wishes, you have never lived life. You have never enjoyed life. You don't even know what life is.

You have never experienced how life is. You only see it through the lens, through the filter of your wants and goals and thoughts and wishes.

Once you let them go, then life starts. Then you begin to really live and enjoy life with everything it has. So, it's not a contradiction. Quite the contrary. Only when you give up your wishes and your goals, only when you start living in the moment, only when you say yes and accept everything the way it is, not wanting anything to be different, only then you can start living life, loving life, enjoying life, savoring every moment, only then. The contradiction you feel is only a feeling of the ego.

The ego says... You know, there's no such thing as an ego. The ego is basically a name for this feeling of identity, which is being created in us human beings by our preferences and wants and wishes and goals. These thoughts we have about life create the illusion that I am somebody who wants something and who can do something, but this is not possible. We cannot want anything. We cannot wish anything, and we cannot do anything. It all happens by itself, everything.

And for this ego, for this mental mechanism, living means thinking. Giving up the basis of my thinking, giving up the thoughts and the goals means: how should I live? And only from this viewpoint, there is this contradiction you are writing in your email.

But in reality, there is no contradiction. Quite the opposite. The one needs the other. If you want to live, you can only do this here in the moment. Just here. No wishes. No wants. Just here.

And that's what you practice in the Samarpan Meditation. You let go. I love this meditation so much because it's so practical. When I want to be with my attention here at the crown chakra, I cannot think. The moment I think about something, the moment I see something in front of my inner eye, the moment I want something or worry, I'm not here.

I'm one story lower, here, in the intellect, on the level of the third eye. But when I want to go up here, it's only possible when you let go of all these important things, and then you rest there, but it forces you to practice surrender, this meditation. And that's like the best help for living in the moment or for discovering how life really is, how you really are.

You discover a totally new ground of your being. And after a while, you notice how absurd it was that you thought that having goals and wishes is something good and something enjoyable. After a while, you feel that this is a huge burden. I can only live in a let go, otherwise, life is unbearable. That's how it is for me.

Thank you for your wonderful question. Thank you.

So, let's see. I have so much fun answering questions this morning that I could go on forever.

"I read something in Shivkrupanand Swamiji's autobiography today that surprised me a little. Swamiji writes: "Ego is a defect of body consciousness." Can you say something about this? I don't understand. I thought we come to this world to have our experiences, and our ego is also a part of that experience. So, there can't be a mistake. How can something that is created by God be flawed? Everything has a purpose. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to make certain realizations. Isn't that right?"

Thank you for this really cool question.

You say: we come into this life to make experiences, and that's true, but that's only half of the truth. We come into this life to discover something. We have only one goal. This whole life has only one purpose. This life in a human body is our tool, as a soul, to discover who we really are.

This is like a game. This is the way God can experience himself and discover himself. Otherwise, he can't experience himself because he's everywhere and everything.

And for this realization, we need experiences which bring us to that point of realization.

And only us human beings can do this. No other animal, no plant can do this. It's like this animal, this human animal, has the added ability in its nervous system, in its brain, in its body, to realize something, to recognize something which is beyond the body.

But when we are born into the body and when we start living in the body, what first determines our experiences and how we perceive things is all through the body, through the physical senses of the body, through touch, through smell, through the sounds we hear, through the things we see through the eyes, through the things we feel in the body, the energy, the pain, the pleasure, And all these physical sensations and physical experiences feed into our brain, and there, the image of life is created.

The experience of life is created on the basis of these physical senses we have as a human body, and then we develop the feeling that I am somebody. We discover we have hands, and we discover that these hands can do something. They can grab something. They can move things. We experience that we can make noises with our mouth, and then other beings respond to that, and so on.

And out of all these experiences and these sensations, our brain creates the idea of "I am somebody who is doing something. I am somebody who wants something, doesn't want something", and so on. The whole ego is created. The ego is like an interpretation by the brain of what the brain perceives. The brain comes to the conclusion: "Oh, I am somebody. I can do something.

I have a name. I have a job. I'm alive. I will die." These are interpretations of our brain, and this interpretation we call ego, this identity we feel. Now this is not why we are here. This comes with the tool. We are in this tool, in this body, and this human body has another ability beyond the physical abilities. It has the ability to realize something which is beyond this life and beyond this body, and that's why we came into this life. We need this body to experience who we really are, to discover: "Oh, I'm not this body."

We discover something which has nothing to do with this body. We discover the soul, which came into this body, and which will leave the body when the body dies. The soul is still alive. The soul, you, you still exist, and that's what you don't know yet. When Swamiji talks about that the ego is a defect of body consciousness, it means: right now, all you know is what the body tells you, this physical world. But that's not the truth. This comes with the tool we are using for the actual job.

And then by all these experiences we have, at some point in our life or at some point in the many lives we have in succession, at some point, we come to the point where life forces us to realize that this, what we perceive as "me" is not the truth.

We start to use this unique ability we got as human beings to perceive God, to realize God. And once you are in this part of your life, once you start realizing this, then you see looking back: "Ah, what I perceived as me, what I perceived as the world, as the only thing which exists, that is not true. That was just an interpretation of my brain. This is just a false conclusion of the brain."

So, it's not that anything is wrong with the ego, but the ego is not the truth. It's inevitable... when you have a marvelous nervous system like ours which is capable of so many things, it's inevitable that in the beginning, this amazing apparatus makes wrong conclusions until it learns the truth. So, the ego is like a symptom we have to experience on the way to our destination.

It doesn't mean there's something wrong. It's not a moral judgment. It's not somebody saying: ego is bad.

But then you realize: "Oh, okay. The ego just belongs to the body. The ego, this idea of I am the body, the idea of I have hands, I do, I die, I live, this is this just is part of this consciousness which is being constructed on the basis of all these physical experiences which happen inside of a body.

But when you start going beyond this, then you realize: "Oh, that's not me. That's just part of the body. That what I perceived as my me, as my own identity, that has nothing to do with me. That's just part of the body."

So, yes, we are here to make all of these experiences. That's why we are here. But Swamiji is talking about the goal. Swamiji is talking about why we have these experiences, and that's the one part we normal human beings usually don't know about. We think we come into this life to have experiences, and we try to enjoy it as much as possible. But sooner or later, a human being comes to the point where he or she says: "This makes no sense. Just coming here, having all these experiences, this makes no sense.

I will die, then everything is over. Why did I come here in the first place? There's something wrong here." We know it. We know this can't be it. And Swamiji talks about the "it". Swamiji talks about why we have the experiences, what's the purpose of all this. And the purpose is that we discover who we really are. It's that simple. And then, once you discover that, you look back at your old identity you believed in so much, and then you see: it has nothing to do with me.

It's just a mistaken interpretation by the brain, by the body. That's all. Then you're free. Then you're not identified with the body and and with all the perceptions of the body and with all these experiences of the body. We get identified with all of this. So, we have to go through all these experiences to discover that we don't have anything to do with these experiences. It's an amazing game.

Thank you for your question.

"The second question has to do with meditation." She says "the second question" because this is the same questioner as the question I just read out. "You always say that we should just sit there and do nothing, that this process of awakening happens by itself.

I saw an interesting interview where the exact opposite was claimed, namely, that we should also prepare our body for this event, for awakening, because an awakening in a body that does not have a regulated autonomic nervous system is almost impossible. This body cannot relax deeply at all. It is in a permanent survival mode.

Only when we manage to free the autonomic nervous system from this mode do we succeed in awakening. As an example, Eckhart Tolle was mentioned, who only awakened on a spiritual level, similar to Susan Segal, whom you often cite, but not physically. Eckhart Tolle often sees his body as an enemy and talks about the pain body that one has to fight against. How do you see that?"

Oh, thank you. This is wonderful.

In a way, what you heard in this interview is true. There are a lot of misunderstandings, but the core is true. The core is: this body that needs to get prepared. That's true.

And for some people, this preparation happens after the awakening, and then, these people have a really hard time. For a long time, for years and years, usually it's 10 or 20 years, they have to do through the preparation afterwards. They have to go through all their pain. They have to make peace with all the things in their nervous system, in their body.

But for most people, it happens in a different way. For most people, it's that the preparation happens by life itself, and they don't even know about it. It happens through their traumata; through everything you experience in life. And then you discover meditation, and then the preparation continues through meditation.

And then, awakening happens as a natural, often overlooked process. We think, awakening is a huge event. We get prepared, and then we are ready, and then a huge event happens, and then, poof, everything is different, but that's not the way it works. Awakening itself is totally unimportant. I usually refer to this whole thing as a process, a process from being totally identified with this physical life towards a beingness where you know who you really are.

You know that you are this soul. You know that you are this part of God who has nothing to do with the body at all. And you live in a body, and you live in this life, and yet you know this. And during this process from this false identity as a body towards this true identity of being a soul, we have to go through a long process, because this body has to change for this.

It's an amazing task for the body.

Once this one holy man, I forgot his name, I don't know who this was, but it was a saint who was... I think he had a sick body, and people asked him: "Why is your body so screwed up? I mean, you're enlightened." And he said: "You know, when an elephant walks into a small room, the room is never the same again." And that's how it is with our bodies. When the truth comes into our bodies, when God enters our body, these bodies are not the same anymore. They change. They are forced to change.

So, yes, the body has... I don't want to put it this way, I don't want to say: "The body has to be prepared so then awakening can happen." But during this process from being totally identified as a physical body towards this life as a soul, the body is changing dramatically.

But you don't have to worry at all about first creating an autonomous and what... these funny words, nervous system blah blah blah... so then awakening can happen. You don't have to worry about this. This is what life is for. Life does this job for you. You don't have to worry about it. The meditation helps with this. If you want to support this process, you do the Samarpan Meditation.

And the magic thing about the Samarpan Meditation is that it promotes all the changes which are needed in your nervous system, in your energy body, in your chakras, in your psyche, without you knowing anything about it. You don't have to analyze yourself. You don't have to know the state of your nervous system.

You don't even have to know the state of your chakras and all this, but we just put our attention here to the crown chakra during the Samarpan Meditation for half an hour each morning, and just by doing this... we don't know anything about it, but just by doing this, so many processes are being triggered in our body.

The Kundalini energy is being called up, and for this to happen, all kinds of things have to be cleared up along the way. All the chakras have to be changed. Your whole energy has to shift. Your psyche needs to be changed, but this all happens automatically by life. And when you do the meditation, you can foster this process. You can fertilize it, but you don't have to know anything about it.

And it's also not true that awakening can only happen after you took care of all these things. This whole thing happens as a natural process. It's not a process and then an event. It's a process, and gradually, gradually, you mutate from a person who is totally identified as a body, worried, stressed, and tense, and slowly, slowly, you develop into a being which has no reason to be worried at all anymore, who has no reason to be scared and who knows who he is or she is.

And my nervous system is still tense. This body is tense. This body has experienced things in his life which it will never forget. I will be tense in a certain way all my life, but I don't care. I'm in peace with it.

So, what you heard in this interview has a basis of truth, but the interpretations I don't agree with at all. You don't have to worry about these things, and you don't have to develop a perfect nervous system, and you don't have to be free of tension in order to awaken. If that would be true, nobody would ever awaken.

And as I said, there are people, for them a big part of this whole process starts after an awakening experience, and then... as I said: this process everybody has to go through. But somebody like Eckhart Tolle, who experienced his profound awakening and then wrote about it, and who got known to the world, and maybe... I can't judge what's going on with him.

I would never have the arrogance to do this. But maybe it is like this, that part of this whole process he went through after his awakening process, after his awakening experience, and then the whole world watches this, and he's talking about the pain body and these things, and then people think: he's mentally awakened but not physically. I mean, this is nonsense.

The body doesn't awaken. The body has nothing to do with this. And what he calls pain body, I call pain. It's just these feelings we have, these feelings we have to make peace with, all these things which come up in us while we go through this process. We have to make peace with all of them, and he calls it pain body. Other people call it by another name. It's all the same.

I experienced Eckhart Tolle 25 years ago in person, and I love him. I don't think that... what was written there about him... "Eckhart Tolle often sees his body as an enemy."

I have read Eckhart Tolle's book. I have experienced him personally. I didn't have the feeling at any point that he has any enemy, I didn't have the feeling that he perceives anything as the enemy.

So, my recommendation for you is: don't listen to these interpretations. Make your own experiences. Meditate. That's all you need to do. There's nothing else to do. And this whole process is a natural process happening by itself. Don't think about it. Don't analyze it.

Thank you for this cool question. I'm very happy that I could talk a little bit about this subject. Thank you.

So, I can't stop yet. I have to go on a little bit longer. I just have too much fun right now.

Okay. One last question, and then I stop for today. "People long for spirituality and awakening because they are suffering, because they are unhappy, and they want to escape from suffering. If we were happy every day, this desire for awakening would probably not even exist. What do you think?"

This is a nice question. Thank you. I guess it's true. It's like this. You know, there are two types of happiness in the world. The one type of happiness is what most people know as "happiness". You live in this physical world. You think you are this body, and all you know is physical experiences, emotional experiences, feelings, pleasure and pain. And that's what you live for. You get your pleasure, you get this experience of being happy out of physical experiences, out of feelings, and you think this is what life is about. That's happiness.

But when you have a life where you experience this kind of happiness, then you come to the point, at some point, where you notice: this doesn't satisfy me. You have this feeling: that can't be it. You don't know anything about what else could be there. You only know what everybody else knows, but you get this feeling: "Wait a moment. Okay. I'm happy. Okay. I have so much pleasure. I have all the joys I can wish for, but I'm not satisfied.

This can't be it. This can't be the purpose of life. This is not why I'm here." And you start feeling like this, although you don't have any idea about your true purpose of life. And when you are at this point, then the problems start in life, then, pain starts coming into your life, then, suffering comes into your life, to wake you up. Then it's like you have to go through a certain process to discover true happiness, your true identity.

It's like first, the false happiness has to lose its attraction to you.

It's like this: you can't believe it anymore. And when you are at this point in your life, you can't go back.

You start noticing: this doesn't give me anything, and then, things become painful simply because you can't believe the illusion anymore. You notice that all the things which you thought make you happy, they're just distractions. They were just distracting you from going inwards, and inwards is waiting pain, all the pain we were trying to distract us from, all the pain from our childhood and the pain from our parents and the pain of many, many lives.

And then, we start making peace with all of these things. And then, slowly slowly, as we make peace with all these things which were preventing us from going into the inward direction... The more peace we make with all these things, the more we are able to go inwards and to come closer to ourselves.

And the more this process happens, the more we lose the interest in all the worldly things because we know: they don't give us anything real... And the more we turn inwards, the more we discover our soul, a totally new level of life, which has nothing to do with this body... Then we discover a happiness which is different. We discover a happiness which is born out of being. It has nothing to do with experiences. It has nothing to do with the body. It has nothing to do with feelings.

So, life is a journey between this false and this true happiness, And you ask: if it wouldn't be for suffering, if it wouldn't be for pain, we would probably never have the desire to wake up.

In a way, this is true.

First, you lose the ability to believe in the false. Often, this happens to very successful people or to very rich people. They have everything, and then they discover: this is not it. This is not it. And then, they have to go through their pain. And the pain is a motivation because they know that the way back is not possible anymore.

They know: "In my old life where I ignored all this pain, in my old life where I was just distracting myself from myself, that life is not worth anything." That's what they know. So, they can't go back. And then they are stuck in their pain, and then they want to know how to get out. And they go out the other way, the other end, so to speak, inwards, into Heaven, into God.

It's an amazing game we play, an amazing journey. All we need is patience and a little bit of time.

And often, people perceive the suffering as a punishment, as something we have to endure because we were bad people or we did wrong things, but this is not true. This is a wrong interpretation of this whole thing.

It's just that we experienced many things in this life, in all these lives we had, but we never cleaned up. We never took care of all the feelings which were accumulated.

And that's what we have to do when we want to turn inwards. That's where the pain comes from. The pain is not a punishment. The pain is not a sign that we did anything wrong. It's just like when you enter a dirty room: before you can do something with it, you first have to clean up, and that's what we're doing. We clean up.

We feel our feelings. You make peace with everything. You let everything go. You turn inwards more and more and more. It's this process I'm talking about in every video. And then, slowly slowly, then you discover that happiness which really carries, which is independent of anything, which is independent of time and experiences.

Thank you for your question.

Thank you, everybody, for your questions. Thank you. I'm so grateful for your questions. I'm so grateful that I can say something about it. Thank you.

I love you.