 that aspect of it and especially the community for grounding me in that so blessings to everyone here and thank you Charles for the course. Okay so hi everyone I think I have to restart because I forgot to press the uh streaming button so uh yeah hi everyone this is Patsy Eisenstein and welcome you again this is a repeat we just um uh have a little glitch forgot to press the start button uh welcome you all to the last session of living in the gift 2021 and I would like to first thank the um the our facilitating team on live chat Nori, Connie and V and maybe some other members who are there to interact with you and all of you welcome you with my whole heart and right now I want to also bring up Shivani to say a few words to everyone um so here you go Shivani hi thank you um yeah I was just said before and say again I just really appreciate the course of course and um he really valued the connection and the community and the conversation circles and getting to know people more personally uh it was just a gift to be with everyone and I look forward to uh just bringing along further on nas and keeping our connections going and we need to know each other deeper and thank you Charles and Patsy and everyone thank you and would you like to say a few words I think we did go live Patsy so I'll just be very short and say much gratitude Charles for the course and this entire community again thank you well guess what um good appreciation is like a good meal is oh my gosh we're all laughing now Patsy's like am I fired so now we don't know like who's heard what and everything but we're having fun here and uh we all love Patsy so much and Todd and Shivani um yeah I'm feeling so grateful just even to be in this field of of uh you know all being devoted to the same thing that we recognize when we see it even if we can't always name what it is but then it's like there it is so um yeah really grateful for you guys okay Patsy we'll talk after this session okay so we have a lot of wonderful questions and some are challenging and in fact in our time those challenging questions really bring out truth and beauty and really just help us to check in to ourselves and with one another like what do we want you know alive you know so I'm very excited about that so uh so our first guess wait wait wait wait can I just say a little thing first sure um yeah hopefully you guys can't hear the lawnmower outside I've arranged with my neighbor to mow his grass every time that we have a live call just you know to to bring the gift of practicing patience to all of us I hope you appreciate that um but I wanted to say like yeah and just also to kind of give a nod to the elephant in the room which is all the controversy recently that's sprung up around my work I um uh it's you know I mean at moments it's looked like wow like my whole career is falling apart you know I'm getting canceled for all these things like Facebook considers me a dangerous person you know and like my polisher like repudiated me and everything and I was like um you know when when I don't know if probably a lot of people have had this experience when things fall away what is left is the things that don't fall away the things that are really important and I've just had in the last few days so many incredible experiences of gratitude last night um last evening we we uh took our year old son Kerry he saw a lot and I took Kerry to the beach and and there he was like we were just standing there and he was out in the waves frolicking in the waves and I was like wow I get to experience this such a beautiful moment and I've had like so many of these moments of intense gratitude and um that it brought to mind someone who wrote on on the forum about hey Charles you know this is seems to be so much about giving what about receiving and um I really want to what it brought to mind was um all the things that people do that I do even or especially um to not receive uh the the person in the in the in that comment thread gave the example of of when someone gives them something like they're like already rushing to see how they can pay the person back or how they can give it forward or something like that um and and maybe I and I've experienced that too and like someone would give me a compliment I would often brush it off uh like Charles you know your work has changed my life okay and I'll be like oh that was really you you know like just too quickly to push it away so so really um to I really at the beginning of the course I said gratitude is the feeling of having received the full feeling of having received but it's also a gateway to fully receiving because like that experience at the beach with my son like that was happening that gift was offered to me and it is only with gratitude that I fully received that gift and then then I am so deeply nourished that I have the capacity to give forward because obviously giving and receiving have to be in balance because we're not the ultimate source of the gift we are the the the vessel of the gift where the the uh transmission station of the gift so yeah and I would also just add that that to to fully receive is also an act of generosity because it creates the um desire obligation and even necessity to give in turn so by fully receiving you're also affirming yep I'm going to be in this play of giving and receiving I'm going to be fully in this world I agree to be in debt to the world because I acknowledge having so richly received I affirm that I am part of I am this vessel of giving and receiving so to not fully receive can be a way and this is how I've often used it to be can be a way to kind of stand back from life a little bit to not be fully present in the world to not fully accept life I mean really that's the ultimate act of receiving is to receive life itself to step into this into this realm fully to accept the gift of creation you could say so um yeah so I'm really happy that that this uh topic of receiving was brought up and just wanted to also share with you you know where I am right now it's been quite an extraordinary time and I'm really happy to be able to share some of that with you so back to you Patsy okay we're gonna bring up Haika so Haika is a another very wonderful member in our community and she made some wonderful observations and questions in the gift course she lives in Hong Kong right so Haika thank you for getting up so early to join us and I welcome you and I'd like to have you and Charles have this conversation of your story and sharing thank you thank you Patsy hi Charles hi um I'd like to say first of all that um the the course just came at the right time for me um because it's it's quite a challenging time uh and it's it's not the only one but it's one of the lifesavers that I'm hugely grateful for at the moment and the the question I asked was around the synchronicity and sacrifice modules I'll just call up the question so I get everything in um so it's around fear and I was wondering if you have any suggestions around the work with fear that arises when you're basically willing and you have enough courage to hazard yourself in in a difficult world and that that obviously creates a huge amount of vulnerability and for me like presencing and being kind to myself is a kind of the obvious things but I thought maybe have something more to to say about it and um so I was actually practicing uh sacrifice and being open to synchronicity pretty intensely and intentionally and I've had pretty amazing results um however I still have these I know waves of fear come up sometimes fear and doubt um yes but specifically around my my around letting go the need and the drive to try and control that my hopes and my desires will somehow be fulfilled and um I know if I do that that I can you know become more open to to fulfilling my my potential um but yeah as I said the the fear just just pops up every now and again and um yeah and as I was writing that it was it was interesting that tears were coming up and that I could feel two things there was like a part that was happy and excited and then again that I guess that the fear that got instilled through my parents through through our society through the scarcity mindset and um I do have a sense of some basic trust and and um some I guess I'd call it natural color courage um which I think is essential otherwise I probably could do it and yeah I just mentioned that I'm recently having a huge life change and um I kind of know that I need to take things slowly and and trust but for me personally what what comes up specifically is is a fear around um being alone and never never again being um belonging to anything ever again and so a little bit of backstory a lot of people in the Naz community know I'm basically going to leave Hong Kong and I'm I have no idea um what I'm going to do I'm just following some synchronicities and and offers I I had to go to the states for three months and yeah that's that's what I'm doing and I have no idea how my life's going to pan out from here on. I can thank you for for sharing that um where you're at right now um yeah and this you know this is not about bulldozing over fear fear has a beautiful and sacred function in life to maintain maintain us in a in a in a world like if I'm driving my car over icy roads that I have fear and the fear helps me focus on staying safe sometimes though fear becomes obsolete it doesn't feel protective anymore it feels limiting and you'll notice a readiness in yourself in a sense of adventure and I I can I think all of us can hear in your voice like there's some of that you know like you're kind of excited for this incredible adventure that you're having you're letting go uh into the unknown you're gonna like everything's going to change and there's a readiness there and that readiness co-exists with some fear but if but it seems like fear that you're kind of done with and maybe there's other fears that you're not done with and that they're still protecting you and listening to those fears is called being prudent and and so it's not yeah this is not the war against fear um it's I think this might have even been in the in the meditations like what am I ready to let go of and this is not a what can I make myself be ready to let go of so that I can live in this glorious world of gift and synchronicity it's it's just actually like being honest what am I actually ready to let go of where's that readiness that coexist with the fear and um yeah I feel uh kind of like giving you a send-off into into into the adventure and um yeah we'll be I hope you keep us keep everybody on nas posted you know what what the adventure brings but you look ready to me and brave thank you and yeah haika you know um one of the one of the things that I notice with the fear is like the more you let it the more you express it and let it be visible uh the more you get to process it uh I have a I have an experience with fear I used to be a very fearful person and one time the life pushed me to a point where I couldn't hide behind anything but to be with that fear and I thought I was going to die from having the fearful vibration in my body and then but what I discovered was that it just dissipated when you get to an extreme point so I thought that you know so from that point on I no longer fear what I thought I fear uh so I wanted you know share that with you and then encourage you to use our community as a a processing place for us to hold you through your next journey before you we love you thank you very much pati so do you feel complete haika yeah I guess so it it just feels like um I'm kind of surfing of waves sometimes and then I fall off my surfboard and then I've got to get back on again but that's the kind of feeling I have but yeah you're both your charles and your words and encourage me thank you very much and thank you to the community they've already been hugely supportive yeah thank you too see you back at nas home our home see you um so so charles uh next uh next friend uh his name is uh claudio he's from sweden uh and he he recently moved to united states and been living here for three years and when I heard that oh claudio I think you need to turn off your speaker or or mute just for a second here yeah but uh but if he does detach that this whole conversation would have that feedback no zoom will figure it out it'll don't worry about it okay okay so anyway so uh so when I heard claudio moved to united states I thought oh wow you know it's very interesting like people still want to move to united states and he had an awesome perspective that I thought it was really refreshing so that's why we have invited him here today to speak with us so thank you claudio um welcome you and I'm gonna turn it on my video so you can talk with charles hi everyone my name is claudio hi charles I'm very glad and honored to be part of this converse conversation um I actually come from switzerland but I was living in sweden prior to coming to america um I am my mother is from switzerland and my father is from angola in africa and um I would like to share um with you story uh personal story of um healing and also of seeing with generous eyes and I thank you very much for inviting me um to share my story today um I went back to angola when I was 30 and um my story starts two years before where um I was practicing energy healing with a teacher and um I have a friend who called me and he told me um oh you know um there is a jennifer who is at the hospital and I was like oh really what's going on and it's a senegalese friend who used to organize tours in senegal and all west africa uh with with swiss people and jennifer was part of this tour they went to senegal and they spent one one month together there um and upon her return to switzerland she had an infection in her um gallbladder and um the doctors had to operate her um and alas knew that I was kind of into natural medicine and he just alas and is my um senegalese friend he called me and he asked me if I could do something for her to alleviate the pain and so I said yes of course and I try to follow this synchronicity that Charles speaks about being a bit um overwhelmed not knowing really what to do so I felt like sitting meditation and um trying to recollect the different points of you know chinese medicine and qi kong I used to teach qi kong so I knew the qi kong healing aspect and then um something told me not to touch anyone until I get to the hospital um and so I followed this sign and uh encountered many people on my way to the hospital um that I could have given my hand or shake hands with but I kind of followed the message I arrived in the room and um there were five med doctors that were gathered around her bed and the doctors were talking about the surgery that was happening next morning and then I took the advantage to ask them is it okay if I give a massage a foot massage to Jennifer and then they said yes of course and then everybody left and my hands were very warm and I was feeling like oh you know it's it's another qi kong feeling and uh so as soon as I put my hands on her she immediately um fell asleep immediately like from one second after the other and then I felt an amazing feeling through me um and it was almost like it was flowing for me as well and then it happened maybe 20 minutes of a massage and I couldn't even think what I was doing it was just basically was just feeling this love and uh and I couldn't use any of my techniques and then I just left she was still sleeping and the next morning Alassan calls me and he tells me oh what did you do to Jennifer and I was like oh what what what happened um how was the surgery and then he told me there was no surgery and I was like oh why and then he told me the doctors came and then they didn't they didn't understand what happened they took a scan and the the gallbladder was completely normal and then I was like oh really and then um I wanted to talk to Jennifer and then he said oh but she already left the hospital they said this this is kind of a miracle and she can I mean they don't know what happened but there is no need for her to stay in the hospital I'm sharing this story because then my teacher told me oh you are a healer now you should you know portrait yourself as a healer so I said okay so I asked someone who had Lyme disease for a long time a friend of mine to come and I even said to her you know I can maybe heal you and things like that because I was thinking I should follow what my teacher was saying and then I did one time I tried to reproduce the same thing nothing happened and since then I kind of was afraid because I felt a bit ashamed you know and I didn't do any healing anymore and now comes to my second part of the story is when I was 30 I came back to Angola for five years and there was an employee of my company that called me five in the morning saying her son is dying and her son was three years old two days in the coma in the hospital already and and then I said but where are you and then she told me the name of the hospital it was very poor and not well organized hospital and I said I'm coming immediately and so I took my wife together we went to the hospital and the child was already having all yellow under his eyelids he had a celebrity malaria so it shows that it was already infecting the entire body so we took him we brought him to a very good hospital we drove fast we arrived there the doctors they did give him kineen the blood transfusion and and the doctor said 90 percent of the children they die of malaria because of malnutrition it's not because of the plasmodium itself it's because of anemia they don't have enough iron in their blood so he was giving all this speech that he's not gonna make it and then came back this memory and I put my hands on him and I tried to to invoke this love again and and then he died in my wife's arms and and so I'm linking this story to seeing with generous eyes because this is a prime example of you know the fact that it's not the result that counts because I felt I felt so much love flowing also for this child and seeing death and life being being in this generosity supporting life in the case of Jennifer and supporting death in the case of Cristiano the most important was to be there and to do what we can and also the story shows me how it's actually possible to this to have this more beautiful world that Charles you you say that our heart know it's possible and I think it's not only our hearts like you write it in the last chapter of your book it's it's also our mind know it's possible and our soul and also in that first story to know that our body and the physical realm also knows it's possible it's possible to transcend the blockages of the body it's possible everything is possible if we are fully in this in this hope and I think the difference between the two stories is that in the first one Jennifer had hope Alassan had hope I had hope my teacher had hope everybody had hope and in the second story nobody had hope so I want to just to say one more thing is that um Charles you said that we sacrifice our identification to a belief system that is in us and I think I kind of sacrifice this identification with the healer because like you very well said in the beginning of this conversation it's it's ultimately source that is that is the gift it's not we and we are just a vessel and we cannot choose when we when it's going to come but it can come and I wanted to testimony that it can come because it happened to me thank you Claudia for that story I'm sure everybody can feel feel the presence of this story and I'm just going to let it operate on us a little bit and not hurry to interpret it or comment so but I would just encourage us actually to take you know half a minute or so to um revisit the images the story you vote one big difference between the first part of the story and the second is that in the first part you were not trying to be a healer and in addition to the hope aspect that's another aspect that that is that distinguishes the two I believe in both you were a healer death is not the ultimate catastrophe from the soul's point of view so thank you unless Claudia unless you want to say anything more I'd like to honor your story by not saying too much about it but you're welcome to add more if you would like to you're muted those yes I I would like to add another portion that comes to me me is that the few months later the death of the three-year-old boy in my in my wife's arms my wife and I we felt very much like going to an orphanage and trying to help a child and we had discussed about that for a long time this just came as a very fervent and intense message and we found the we it happened that a friend of ours was an attorney and told us out of the blue oh you know I helped sometimes people to adopt the children and then was like oh really and because in Angola nobody I mean it's very rare that there is a full adoption they don't this idea so much in the cultural mindset it's people from the orphanage are more like to support at home and and things like that so we went to an orphanage that the attorney showed us and we immediately found a child that this was the youngest and she was in such a bad situation health wise she was one and a half year old Evania and and she became our daughter our second daughter all the paperwork we managed so many difficulties but we managed and I gave her the swiss passport she came to Switzerland with us and and I think this is part of the healing of this second portion and also maybe understanding that things would have been maybe different and we don't know exactly what happens in life we can't know like you says Charles we can't know the way but we can know the next step so and you know when we say that when things fall away we can ask ourselves what are the things that don't fall away and I would like to just say that what didn't fall away throughout the three stories is is the love the love that is always there and I hope we can keep this love together as a community throughout the very difficult times that we are facing and that we will be facing even more I believe beautiful beautiful thank you so much for sharing this and for for living that story thank you so much Charles thank you everybody yeah thank you Claudio okay so um wow it's gonna be a interesting transition to the next one um so are you are you ready Charles yes okay so our next guest is Sarah she's um in us community member of course and I also get to meet her and stay with her uh twice now you know with her and me uh so this is one of the things that for me I consider something that uh we're transitioning into to use the internet in as possible way to connect people in a real way so and Sarah lives in Sarah lives in um Asheville North Carolina uh and thank you Sarah for coming up to contribute your question and story with us I'm gonna have you talk with Charles now yeah thanks Sarah just uh unmute yourself in well I really was hoping not to be the next person after like such a humbling story um so my heart is kind of out there it's racing but um yeah that is I think um interesting I don't know my question was rather long um because I was trying to convey this feeling of frustration that I have um when I took the course I felt like I kind of got blissed out from your ideas and like I was also reading the book in in tandem with the course which was helping sink in a lot and I I just feel frustrated mostly in that I'm like I don't know what my gift is I feel like there's there's so much that I could do and I and I'm almost in this um that like a place of like choice paralysis um and how can I you know just move forward in one direction when I'm like kind of distracted with so many options uh yeah are you the one who um trying to remember from the questions where you have like kind of pressures or influence from your father or is that another person that was you yeah so there's there's like kind of the practical thing and you're doing uh nanny work and stuff like that right very humble kind of work which society does not say is I mean society you know directly or indirectly says well that's not you know a worthy way to spend your life and sometimes it can be hard to distinguish what is coming from inside and what's coming from outside like um is it just is it just society that thinks that or maybe you know you have a feeling too that this is not what I'm meant to be doing right now and that's the feeling to to pay attention to because our world needs I mean probably needs nothing more than people giving loving care and enlightened attention to children that doesn't mean that that's yours to do but it means that maybe it's yours to do it's not like an unworthy path society says it is like economics you know like you'll make a lot more money if you go into you know hedge funds than into caring for children uh but I don't think the world actually needs more hedge funds so that's a rather extreme example but it's really about like another thing I remember reading your your your post um part of the generosity of the world of the universe even is that the that the role that that we are meant to play like as we are recruited into the bootstrapping of the more beautiful world our hearts know as possible the role that we're meant to play feels good it feels exciting it feels like yeah I want to do that it's not that you have to fight what you really want to do in order to go about the grim business of fulfilling your duty that's that wouldn't be a very generous universe if that were the case it's like there's a feeling there'll be a feeling of of of joy and of excitement of lightness like yeah like like um backtrack um like uh hike it right like the this feeling of of excitement in an adventure you know so to learn to trust that which is actually to trust the generosity of the universe is requires a lot of unlearning that the right thing is the hard thing to to tune into that feeling of like what actually feels exciting what choice that lays that lay before me that lies before me is um makes me feel happy and excited to wake up in the morning and I'm just what happens if I just trust that it may not conform to what your father thinks is the right path may not conform to what your rational mind thinks is the right path but like for me when there's so many so many choices so many paths and each one of them has all kinds of reasons why I should choose that one all kinds of financial reasons all kinds of ethical reasons you know this isn't going to help the world and that is and and like how do I choose it's a maze how do I choose I have to choose by something else and it's not that my knowledge of the world and of the impact of what I do has no effect but I trust my mind to process that and then I choose well I would like to save that I do I'm working at it but to choose from the heart which is what do I care about what makes me feel happy and excited what is what makes me like what is part of receiving the gift of life oh I get to do that I like doing that um yeah I can I can end there um maybe um if you if you uh have any anything to add or maybe that's enough um yeah I think I do have like a touch more because I have I transitioned into nannying because I was following that feeling and now I have a sense that it's time for me to let go and move into something else but I like holy cow don't even know what that is and part of me becomes so depressed where I want to press the redo button on my life and just like how do I redo this story well yeah okay so just like intuitively intuitively what I'm getting is that yeah it's it's it was the right choice when you made the choice it was what you were meant to be doing and now it isn't and you recognize that and you are now your antenna is out for the next thing and you have the gift of you know maybe some stable nannying things that are going to support you as you open to the next thing as you follow other leads as you declare yourself open to it and and you know that declaration in its truth will you know maybe if you believe in this you know manifestation stuff maybe it will magnetize those things to you but at the very least it will attune you to to looking for them and saying it out loud and like maybe you talk about it on nas you know maybe you talk about it you put it out there to your friends and ideas come in and and opportunities and and one of them you're like oh that feels exciting and I'm going to follow that and I have this base like you're being taken care of by the nannying um it wasn't a mistake and and it is also no longer yours to do that that seems reasonable yeah yeah so thanks Sarah um yeah thank you and thank you for just sharing this vulnerable thing you know with so many people and you know also like I can guarantee you that you're not the only one um facing this kind of thing so yeah I was gonna say that too you know Sarah you you're young and it's very natural to go through a sorting process and I remember it myself uh having being in that place not knowing what to do next and and nothing that came out feels exciting so I remember what I did was like okay then I'll settle with the next peaceful things and that that built so we're here with you and for you so thank you Sarah so see you very soon so August is our next guest um hi August and August is from uh Belgian right August I'm actually from Texas I moved to Belgium yeah I moved to Belgium this year oh well welcome you uh and I'd love to hear your inquiry and questions with Charles yeah thank you um yeah I well I think my inquiry has been basically answered by being invited to join this session and and hearing everybody's amazing stories um yeah at first of all I just wanted to say about Sarah's story it's like every pretty much all the little phrases she used like list out and then choice paralysis and then hitting the redo button on every single one of us was like yeah yeah that's it that's what I mean so yeah you're definitely not alone I think a lot of people are feeling like that these days um so my inquiry on NAS was am I getting something out of this course and I say I think it's my questions already been answered you know just by just by listening to these amazing stories and feeling nourished by them um and I think that's part of the problem is that I want to make the story about me like what am I getting about this like where's the you know the result the visible result and yeah so I thought about a million things you know before um you know what am I gonna say what am I gonna you know ask this question to Charles um I don't know I think uh yeah I think my my question is kind of kind of answered and it's yeah just what you just talked about Charles that there's I don't know like where I'm going or or you know what's what's pushing me in the right direction and what what are the choices I need to make but there is some like very subtle underlying feeling like yeah this is a good idea you should take that living in the gift course like you know you're unmotivated and you're not trying very hard that thing is good for you yeah I mean this is not the thing that you know it's not like a Tony Robbins power weekend you know where you're gonna be all galvanized to like take life by the horns you know and change your whole life and and you know find motivation where you had none and stop procrastinating and I'm gonna be on it it's not it for some people actually it does have that effect but that's not my intention and I would say that there is something in what in one of the sessions like if you would just take one thing with you like there's because there's a lot of material in this course and some of the monsters are very very powerful and it's kind of you know what I have done is offered a sampler of different things people are not going to like apply every single one well most people aren't some people have them like on the refrigerator and stuff and have composed haiku with each one but you know if there's one that lodges inside of you um maybe just uh visit that one and you'll be like oh yeah and trust it to uh to work in you you know okay yeah and as long as you've put I mean the way to not get anything at all from the course is to not put anything into it you know if you just like kind of listen to the some of the sessions and you don't like actually give it attention and you don't do the exercises and you know like then you'll get as much from it as you would get from going and watching somebody take horseback riding lessons yeah yeah so you know and maybe it's not for you like maybe you know maybe you go watch the horseback riding lessons like yeah I don't think I want to ride it worse you know um and that's fine yeah yeah I think it is for me though I and now that you've mentioned the mantras um I was that was one thing I thought of and I thought was really cool because I like these yeah these pithy phrases that they wake up something in you and they just keep coming back to you um yeah so maybe if I may I just briefly briefly like to share these two Chinese sayings that I think are are kind of good mottos for the mass story and for what I'm feeling right now and the first one I wrote in my post was uh Wu Ji Bi Fan and Patty gave a perfect example it's like she got so afraid and she thought the fear was going to kill her and then when it was so bad that she thought she was going to die and just like dissipated like once things get to this extreme it's just like oh the other way so yeah I think that's that's a very hopeful saying for like we're this far with separation but you know intervening it's like it's about to fall down and we're just going to go into intervening so maybe that's where that baseline hope comes from that I feel like yeah I don't know what this is doing for me but I think it's a good and the second one is uh Chen Yi Mo Hua like to be imperceptibly influenced by something you don't know what it's doing and maybe only you realize like five years later oh yeah yeah that was a good idea I bet I did that otherwise this wouldn't have happened so yeah yeah beautiful yeah thank you can I can I ask one random question do you know Michael Michael win yeah I think yeah hold on because you live in Asheville right um yeah no I used to live in Asheville but the name is familiar yeah I'm trying to remember if I met him no um um yeah okay but I don't have to say no I don't really know okay yeah cool thank you Charles thanks well thank you I guess you know it feels so uh comforting to hear you use uh Chinese uh our faces you know the character yeah English you have to explain with like two paragraphs yeah that one Uji beef on is like very hopeful for our current times too in the world you know things because things seem pretty extreme and I'm ready for you know some something else so nice to meet you August and uh believe it or not at first I thought you were a female although you have a masculine with me but somehow I I picked up some feminine energy in you seeing you this gorgeous man you know I thought oh um it's you know I pick up something that you know is probably also part of you too you know the nurturing uh soft evolving you know like the in aspect but anyway I was super thank you Betsy that's nice to hear that uh funny story when I registered for high school um they were like okay uh yeah we're here to register August and then the lady said oh where is she oh wow no it's me yeah well thank you so I wasn't far off okay so yeah in that August thank you thank you so um wow that's all so very beautiful um and our next guest is uh Sally Ross uh so Sally made a uh beautiful sharing in a video form and I really like her story because her story uh that she encountered involved like some celebrities right Sally yeah anyway Sally is from Canada welcome you and I'll let you tell your story thank you Patsy hi Charles hi Sally welcome thank you so much um thank you Patsy for suggesting I tell the story again I'm sure there might be people on here that have already seen it um I had a random encounter with a stranger about a week and a half ago and this person was so um I loved earlier Charles you use the word um transmission station of the gift as being like when we're embodying that from source from you know not not knowing that we're not imagining ourselves as being the giver of the gift and this person was um such a transmission in that way and I encountered him in a moment that it was really meaningful for me but also because he was such um a transmission of so many aspects of the course so um I have to bring the story down from like 10 minutes to just a few so I'll try to do that um yes a week and a half ago I traveled to Vancouver for medical treatment um and the night before I received that treatment I was out on a walk I was staying in an Airbnb and I was really feeling the heartbreak of the drought um it's just I'm really like in my province right now I could probably get into tears about it because I really feel um the depth of the fires and the drought um and I live in Vancouver Island and you know we're in a so-called temperate rainforest area and we're just um yeah it's a really hard thing to experience um and just see how nature is is um being dried up literally so um and I was also I I lived in Vancouver for many years almost 10 years when I was in my 20s I I went to UBC and did two degrees there in fact that's when I first encountered your work so that was um many years ago now um and I went out took myself out on a walk and I rounded this corner on the way back to the Airbnb and suddenly there was this um beautiful shining very turns out very tall um black man sitting in a wheelchair and I just the light shining from his eyes was just instantly like boom I just wanted to enter his field just right there um and he looked at me and he said um I saw you walking earlier he must have seen me when I came around the corner before I looped back he said um you hold a good clip for someone of your height and so I didn't really know how to respond to that but I mean just feeling his instant energy of welcome I just was immediately there and I was by myself in the city and so it was just an immediate moment of yes and um and so I approached him we taught we began to talk and I said well walking looks very different for you than it does for most people doesn't it and and he began to tell the story of how um 10 years ago he had um an accident on an over-roller coaster and became a quadriplegic he was paralyzed from the neck down rushed to hospital and um he basically hit the prognosis was not very good and they had to operate the doctor told him he did have his voice at that moment in time um the doctor told him that he they would have to operate through the front of his neck to get to the disc that they needed to replace and now the background to this man is that um I guess Patsy he he would have been a celebrity on some level um he had a singer-songwriter career and a performance career he was in the temptations for a while Charles remember you know the temptation yeah yeah yeah um my girl my girl and then he ended up in Vancouver in the late 90s and he was performing ever since and he had his own band and everything soul gospel rb r&b that was kind of his um style and so he basically he was told by the doctor like anything can happen here you might lose your voice completely you might um you know major vocal tone changes or whatever and he basically had to decide between the possibility of being able to walk again or the possibility of never speaking again that was sort of I mean knowing not knowing any any results or what the result would be so he went for the surgery and he fully recovered his voice um and he can walk but he's he showed me he kind of got up and he showed me how he walks with a cane um but in the conversation it was just such a reminder and reflection of all the things that we're focusing on in this chorus and on nas and um like some of the things he said to me like he quoted the Buddha as saying the world will always have enough for what we need and it will never have enough for our greed and he um one thing that I forgot to share in the video that um he shared was I I want to feel myself as if I'm a seed as if I'm a seed who's being who's giving itself to to grow and be shared and just blossom so he's you know he's basically intuitively teaching all the principles of the chorus as we're talking um and uh so everything that we talked about and then and then he was super curious about my life and I'm in this process of basically emerging from a lifetime of severe and debilitating chronic um pain and illness um I am this is this is my gift that I'm sharing I'm I've got a I've got a seed as um I've been working in integrative counseling and coaching with a number of clients over the past two and a half years and want to grow that a lot more um with having more energy and less pain which is the pain that I was living with was so unbearable that I didn't even know if I was going to make it this year like I was very much ready to make my transition after so many years of of agony um and you know it was just like and oh and when he stood up you know he's six foot seven that's how the whole conversation started like and him just noticing how I'm walking because you know he's just sort of checking out the scene and checking out all the people and um one of his things about how he perceived his possible recovery um was that you know all the bad prognosis are always coming at you from the medical side of things right and all that's not going to go well of course and and his language was like in his mind he said doctor that's not how I roll and so he had this very deep passion for knowing that he could and he has a very deep faith as well like very deep Christian faith um and he said things like you know I knew that if I put my if I put my faith in God that God would make sure that I'm always at peace and that I can move through this in a good way and um he did a lot of anti-bullying work and I think he continues to like share his story and you know give people a lot of motivation about healing and so yeah and there are a couple of other things that he said that I I may have shared on the other video but oh one of the things oh he did talk about um like giving the principle of giving as an actual receiving when it's given with gratitude when it's given with um you know the desire to just simply share and not have expectation about the result and how that's experienced as a giving and how we never run out of that feeling to give which you know we've talked about in the in the course as well um and then as we're sort of we're about to part he um he said uh I want to live my I want to complete my life as if I'm an old shriveled up lemon that has had all the juice squeezed out of it and um yeah and it was just like such an incredible like you know in the midst of that sort of real grief I was experiencing and just you know you know that instant feeling when that that human is like it's all soul there it's all love there and you just you just communicate and interact in that field and everything is safe and everything is um is given and received and there's more and more and more in the conversation so yeah it was really beautiful yeah and this image of of you know this man watching if he's watching you he's watching everybody right yeah and and appreciating them and most people probably don't um you know stop to talk to him yeah um so whatever gift of words you could give them is not available if you don't stop and talk to him you know if you if you just ignore him and it made me think of um the angels in our midst the the ones that are in human form and the ones that are not in human form and the idea that we're always being watched and appreciated and sometimes they pop up in human form did I in the course did I tell the story about the guy in the cell phone and the panhandler no not that I remember well it's like yeah this guy told me the story where where he was in a really depressed state just really down on life and unmotivated and yes really you know in a downward spiral and he goes he's walking down the street in a kind of sketchy part of town and uh this panhandler comes up and he's like hey let me borrow your phone and like you know how often do you I mean you know it's like some grungy guy wants to borrow your phone you know but but he's like okay yeah sure man and he gives him his phone and then the guy looks at him hands the phone right back he said and says live live brother and I like that totally changed the guys right yeah we have showed up told us or elsewhere I've told it somewhere before yeah yeah but but just like if someone demand your phone and then give it right back you know so yeah um yeah there are angels in our midst and yeah so thank you so much for and I just want to add one thing too and I I briefly touched on this in the video because I right after right before I made the video I'd finished session eight so with Orlan's interview because there's so much in there that I've been really even working with the praxis of um what he's the kind of gift that he's pointing to and I was thinking when Sarah was talking actually about that way of looking that way of seeing where um the gift is not what we think we need to give or the gifts that we we know are inside us to give but it goes deeper than that in terms of the transmutation of energy around what we're taking up from the world to find out the next level of how that can become the gift um and I I think there's so much of that in those of us that illness as initiation is has been forced upon our journey in some on some level or has been chosen for our journey with our journey um is that we are constantly needing to find that space where that which we're up taking because we don't really have a choice needs to be worked with in a way that we're transmuting it into what the next emergence of gift from that it can be seen how it can be seen or how it can be revealed um and so yeah I I look are you are you mostly out of pain um there's an inflammatory process that's always underway at a lower level than like I'm I'm doing so much better I'm I'm and I want to participate way more in NAS like I want to do way more and share more and communicate more um excruciating chronic head pain has been part of the picture and that's why I couldn't I kind of dropped out mostly for a few months because I could barely be on the computer um but no I mean I'm doing so much better I'm so excited and just so ready to um collaborate and find my find my tribe and my people and yeah and find more people to help I just I have so much to give now and um yeah through the realm mostly through compassionate inquiry which is I did the year-long training with Gabor and it's such a foundational place um that I'm working with in myself I'm with clients now too so mm-hmm yeah great great thanks yeah thank you Sally yeah I'm gonna guess turn it back over to Patsy Patsy you're muted yeah thank you Sally I was just gonna say that you know welcome your help in NAS because we are we have the next project that's coming up that will welcome a lot of helping hands to help build local communities so our next guest is Joel Joel is from Mexico and I think his story has is relating to soldiers military experience I thought that was pretty amazing you know so thank you Joel I'd love to have you here to share your story with everyone yeah awesome I'm super curious as well so yeah tell me tell us yeah hi am I on yeah yeah okay hey hi Charles and Patsy hello everyone it's really an honor to be here and to be able to share my story so my name is Joel I'm not from Mexico I'm actually from the Philippines but I've and I've been working with the United Nations on and off since 2007 and my first station was in Jerusalem so one author said that Jerusalem is one of those places where the story of humanity is played out very intensely all the time it's in your face all the time and for me the story of humanity is the story of separation which I first heard from you Charles good versus evil us versus them you know the the long high wall that separates Israel from the West Bank and Gaza you cannot be literally separate than that right and there's a line that is drawn in the middle of the city no Palestinian can live up to the west of the line and most of the Jews stay away from the east side of the city and soon enough I was caught up in in the story the story of us versus them and nowhere was it more visceral than whenever I would have to cross a border or a checkpoint which was almost every day so in this story of separation I saw the young soldiers as the enemy whenever I would stop at a border crossing or a checkpoint I would feel my body stiffened my amygdala would send the alarm off and you know to get the body ready for a fight or flight response so you know I was very wary I was serious I was alert and it had its consequences so not a few times I was detained not a few times I was delayed not a few times the soldiers insisted on inspecting the vehicle which was a violation of international law and for for a lawyer like me but it was hard to let them do that and that even more send the whole situation um so I left Jerusalem in 2011 and then I returned in 2017 in many ways nothing has changed but something has changed and and that was by this time I had managed to include as part of my life a regular contemplative practice with this practice I was I'm able to better see the workings of my mind I could recognize as soon as I was getting triggered and with it the opportunity to find a more skillful a kinder a kinder response so whenever I would approach a border crossing I would do some or all of these of these practices so my teacher calls this first one stealth meta so I would bring to mind the soldiers at the border crossing and then I would send them wishes may you be well may you be safe may you uh be free from suffering may you live a live of ease and joy and then I would try to remind myself to always keep a beginner's mind I don't know mind that's uh one of my teachers says to see clearly that my preconceptions and judgments against the soldiers really have no basis in fact and then I oriented my mind to see the soldiers as just like me with the same hopes and dreams with the same fears for their family and for themselves with people whom they love and who love them there's this Buddhist concept of living in widening circles I love that term living in widening circles and seeing everyone as family and eventually as not separate from me which is the intervening the few Charles beautifully writes and talks about and then there's the Dalai Lama's wonderful practice of trying to see new people that he meets as old friends and then right before crossing I would take a few deep breaths and you know activating my parasympathetic nervous system um and I have to say that the quality of the interactions changed so much I would be smiling as I roll down my window and I would say Makore which is a colloquial Hebrew for saying how are you and it almost never fails to to elicit a smile from the soldiers so with his generous eyes I was able to see the soldiers as old friends as family as just like me in just one concrete example of how the interactions were became so good one time as I was waiting for my papers one of the leaders of the soldiers offered me coffee brewed from his special coffee equipment entirely unheard of so that was one of those moments and really it was about changing my mind's orientation as Charles says and in my case my meditation practices definitely helped me cultivate this orientation so that's it thank you for having me thank you Charles for being in the world and for for all the work that you do and I hope I can be more active in the community and somehow yeah well Joel thank you so much for that it's such a beautiful illustration of seeing with generous eyes you know it's just another way to put it like the and this is one of the I don't know if I said it in this course but I like to say it that that the story we hold about somebody invites them into that story so the story of oh yeah you're an old friend we are kindred we are children of the same creator or whatever version of it you have like and and and it's like you're actually in that story and expectation it's a really powerful invitation and it doesn't necessarily like always work but yeah it's pretty strong you know to invite to to hold that yeah yeah I try to do the same when I'm going through like you know security checkpoints you know at the airport or customs or something like that you know I'm like I kind of like feel like oh boy I get to meet somebody you know or like I feel like almost a delight a delight a little bit of adventure like oh yeah a new person yeah and sometimes it doesn't work it doesn't doesn't bear those results but very often it does yeah yes thank you joel yes patsy you had something you want to share also right yes seeing with the generous eyes I yeah so two one is a really quick one but they're a similar thing it's just a different version and one is irrelevant to the currently what happened with the community so the first one was you know I see uh uh sometimes if angels work in places like home depot you know like I go to home depot go through a cashier one time and you know whenever I meet strangers like you I get excited I just want to kind of connect from the soul and love level even for a second so this this lovely all the women you know and she said that I love my job every morning I can't wait to get up have a couple of my favorite coffee and go to home depot and work in the cashier so I can lock people up when they come through my station like for example and she's a retired woman I spoke to her and she's actually uh very well read a very educated sophisticated african american lady she has been through a lot of life and then in her 60s she decided to do that wow how generous she is you know and then second thing is um the story recently had unfolded uh right after you published the very controversial essay a very long one which I didn't read because it's so long so um and then later on like a couple weeks later I noticed that it stirred up a lot of things including um your publisher publicly canceling you I read that because it's short and then another public speaker kind of um thinking you were part you know criticizing and you know like it's just really difficult to read so I read that thinking that wow if I didn't really understand what you wrote and who you are reading those it would be so easy for me to label you as this evil person spreading vengeance in the world and but at the same time I also know that no that's not you so I get really angry and upset stirred up and also from that anger I move into a sense of despair and hopelessness thinking that why are we doing this you know we can just shut close down everything in fact call you on that I call you to tell you just that so that that's just a state within our own friends and family circle who know us who know our heart who um and our sincerity to help making a change in the world we could just do that you know no problem we can live first of our life just doing that without stirring up the waves but then you say something which you uh you say something very encouraging you said um just don't pay just don't give that any attention and then a day later you publish a two two articles one is to clarify the point that you're being attacked I read that I thought wow I wonder if people who have read that first and then go into your article would they be able to pay more attention you know kind of like an introduction in a very thick book you kind of guide them to what to look for in the essay and then so I thought that it's one one thing to come up and the second one was the letter that you share in our community only specifically to remind people to see to view these circumstances with generous eyes so I wonder if I I feel like reading it Charles but it might take me like three to five minutes to read it okay so uh you're muted but I assume that you say yes because you're not yes okay okay so I'm gonna read it um hi everyone I made this request on the common thread to my last article posted but I'm repeating it here to make sure that it is seen I'm grateful for the support comments here as well as the more challenging ones it is indeed quite an interesting situation I do have a request though it comes out of it comes out of some clarity I have that I must avoid all costs all costs any kind of war against those who have made the accusation against me first because I don't want to make this about me my experience is one of millions and rather insignificant compared to people losing their jobs let along what happens doing real math violence making it about me about what so and so said about various and big personalities distracts from the content of what I wrote about which is much more important so while I do appreciate the supportive impulses I'd like to make this focus away from what certain public figures are saying about me the reason I wrote this small follow-up was truly not in self-defense I realized that there were some significant misreadings understandable in the heat of the issue that needed clearing secondly certain forces social and psychological right of fighting they love a good drama I love drama too but in this case I'd rather not put any energy into drama of conflict and instead put it into the next chapter of the essay which is transcending I can't I don't know how to say that word geranium dynamics of scapegoating and dehumanization unfortunately I seem to have become a controversial person bordering on radioactive which might limit the reach of my words all I can do is to counter that it's all I can do to counter that is to maintain courtesy reason and peace in what I write and avoid attacking my critiques I would like to request something similar of you of course you can defend the ideas I put forth in the essay please do it out of service to the ideas and not out of personal loyalty to me the letter would be a dangerous path since I am as valuable as the next person I'm sure at least one or two things in the essays were mistaken or misleading it is inevitable as to the various public figures who have denounced me please let not let's not give energy to that whole drama I think the analysis of what some of them have said that I've seen here is useful and illuminating I think these public figures are mistaken in their critiques so I'm not actually criticizing any of the comments here just reminding others and myself not to let it slide into your wishes or dehumanization of the critiques because that is the same scapegoating pattern they are simply doing what humans being do in situation they are in so after I read this letter that you wrote to our community that kind of changed my energy completely I went from angry and fear and desperation to hope and feel empowered knowing that wow even in a situation like this I get to decide how way I want to focus to really shape my world and so I want to finish up with a quote that I I received from a book called cloud others that repeat that's my mantra reminder so that quote is each crime and every kindness birth our future so that's my reminder when I want to issue accusation judgment or opinions towards what I perceive I ask myself what am I doing thank you for me to share that yeah beautiful each crime and every kindness births the future it's so true and that quote reminds us of our actual power you know it's not each crime and every kindness that goes viral or that is seen or that you know there's no qualification there each crime and every kindness births the future nothing is wasted nothing is wasted and it goes back to the to um you know the choice of how to live our lives is it okay just to be a nanny just to be a nanny just to be a kindergarten teacher just to to work at home depot um our power does not lie in in how big or small the rule that we have and that's something that we know we know that everybody knows it so thanks for bringing that truth into our awareness patsy oh i'm i'm part of the whole beautiful truth and world i'm so honored and happy and to be here with you um so charles if you don't have anything else you want to add i want to close our event today and i want to tell everyone that there is a gathering in 15 minutes and you can access you know for our community to continue on the conversation that it's going to be uh facilitated by uh charry uh who is um on the live chat and our facilitator and Todd um if you'd like to join go there and click on the link and the password is gift thank you very much namaste namaste thanks patsy thanks you thank you everybody hi