 Hi everybody. So, growing up, all of us heard spiritual, timeless messages. Whichever religion we were part of, or no religion, probably all of us heard, well, be a good person, which basically means something like be loving to other people. If we were lucky, we would also hear be loving to ourselves, be forgiving of ourselves and be forgiving of others. Perhaps we also heard to trust God, trust life, trust the process. Perhaps we also heard, you know, be diligent with your personal growth. You know, what other timeless spiritual messages have you heard for a long time? I'm curious if you want to comment below. You're welcome to. But my message today for you is, man, it is hard to actually apply those timeless spiritual messages. Whenever they are said, it always sounds like, well, of course. You know, it sounds like, well, just love other people. Oh, just practice unconditional love. You know, random acts of kindness, you might say. Or, oh, just forgive yourself. Just love yourself. You know, just trust, just trust in God. All will be well. And they always, I guess the word is glib, right? They're just said as if, well, it's very simple. But simple is often not easy, especially when it comes to personal growth. Sorry, I got to adjust something on my camera here. And I just wish that one of the core timeless spiritual messages or personal growth messages would be, it takes a lot of time to apply the other timeless messages you're going to hear. But I don't remember hearing this. Usually it's like, well, why can't you just be more loving? Or why can't you just forgive yourself? Or why can't you just trust, you know? It's sort of that attitude that's been taught to us, whether it's in spiritual literature, right? Or by spiritual authority figures. Or even just by friends and family. Because it's hard to empathize with another being's experience. If I am feeling good today, if I'm feeling well fed, well slept, emotionally balanced, and I see you treating somebody with not as much love as I think you should treat them, it's easy for me to say, well, why don't you nicer to that person? Or if I'm feeling good and confident and you're feeling down, well, just cheer up. Life is good. It is very hard to be in other people's shoes. Because, well, we are in our own shoes. We have two feet and we wear our own shoes. And at the same time to take on another human being's frame of mind is extraordinarily difficult. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of life experience to say, I've been there. I can understand how difficult it is for you to be loving right now. For you to love yourself right now. For you to trust in life right now. And so, I wish that that was one of the core spiritual timeless teachings. It takes time and maybe there's two of them I want to suggest. Growing yourself, applying what sounds so simple takes not just a lifetime. I think it takes many lifetimes. I believe we have multiple lifetimes. I don't know what you believe. But because it takes so dang long, we are blessed to be given many, many, many lifetimes. Who knows how many? Thousands? Millions? I don't know. But I noticed how slow I'm growing in this life. Have you noticed how slow you're growing? How you thought you're so mature now and one single comment from your parents or your family member or somebody on the street randomly can trigger you into becoming your 12-year-old, 6-year-old self again. How slowly do we grow? True change, therefore, is gradual change. Because sure, you can be easily triggered as I can. All of us can be easily triggered by different things. I don't know what that is for you. You think you're so mature. Well, next time you find yourself emotionally down or negative, you are triggered by something and you may have been surprised perhaps. Oh my gosh, that thing brought me down. At least you're aware of it. When you become aware of it, that is one sign of growth. Oh, I didn't used to be aware of this kind of thing. I used to just be triggered and then go down a negative pathway emotionally, mentally, maybe physically. But now I'm aware that I was triggered. Now I'm aware that I'm emotionally down. I don't have to follow that emotion into the physical manifestations which further create a vicious cycle. Perhaps you're aware. Perhaps you still go down those physical routes or whatever. Perhaps you still follow in your emotions, but at least you're more aware of it. Awareness is, this is yet another glib and seemingly simple spiritual lesson. Oh, awareness is the first step to change. Oh, it sounds so simple. Oh, awareness is the first step. Awareness can take an entire lifetime just to build awareness. I don't know, 100 lifetimes just to build awareness before we can take whatever the next step to change is. And of course it's always a spiral learning. Awareness, decision to behave differently. Experience of behaving differently. Awareness again, decision and then the behavior and then the awareness and decision to be whatever the cycle is. It's like we just keep on spiraling, hopefully a little bit more deeply each time. Hopefully, sometimes not. Sometimes we have to go back to because it's a similar situation. Not exactly the same, but it's similar. We think it's the same, but it's not the same trigger. It's similar and so we have to practice again. We have to be aware again. We have to experience backsliding again. We have to experience rock bottom again because it's a different type of rock bottom this time. It's a slightly different type of trigger this time. Even though we practiced it last time, we thought we were done with that last time, but now it's different. True change is gradual change. And what hopefully that does is to help us be a little bit more self-compassionate about our journey of change. And perhaps a little bit more self-compassionate of others in their journey of change. It takes us thousands of lifetimes, millions of lifetimes. It'll take them millions of lifetimes too. I don't know what lifetime they're on right now. They could just be on lifetime 10. And they have to get to lifetime 25,000 before they'll behave the way we want them to behave. We might need another 25,000 lifetimes before we behave the way we want to behave in this lifetime. It's going to take time. So just love each other. Just be compassionate to yourself. Now you can hear how glib that is and how, well no wonder it's glib or cliche. It's because it takes time. It takes a lot of experience, experimentations. And a lot of just, you know, trigger after trigger. Rock bottom after rock bottom. Hopefully not so many. Hopefully we are gentle with ourselves and we don't hit rock bottom. And rock bottom sometimes is out of not being gentle with ourselves or with others. Anyway, that's all I want to say today. Thank you for being here and thank you. I hope this is helpful in some way. Take care.