All right, let’s get to this because I’m always so fascinated by the coming together of so many of us into one place and it really, really is fueling my new thoughts about the world. I was almost going to say a new consciousness, and I think it is a new consciousness. I’ve been predicting a transformation in consciousness my whole life. And I’ve said on The Gathering Room before, when I would ask what it was, I would hear in my head a quote from T.S. Eliot, “Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought.” All right, so that made sense because if you’re going to have a transformed consciousness, the way you think after that transformation will be fundamentally different from the way you thought before. So there’s no way we could be pre-informed, right?

But I think it’s happening, y’all. And for me, a big epiphany. I mean, it happens in little epiphanies—ping, ping, ping—and sometimes big epiphanies—kapow—that take me months to integrate. But a big one was when I suddenly thought, okay, we have this pyramid-shaped society, everything’s rigid, everything’s materialistic and people are always trying to claw their way up this pyramid. That’s what is created from the consciousness we’re in now. What would the new consciousness create?

And I suddenly had in my mind the image of a pool of clear water, mirror-like, calm, but with everybody there, everybody in it representing drops of water. I don’t know—big drops, little drops, it’s all the same. It’s hard to tell when you’re intermingled in a pool of water. So I stayed with that for a while and then I came up with this idea of, oh, the pyramid is actually in the pool. There are people dissolving their consciousness of rigidity and hierarchy and materialism and going into this fluid egalitarian consciousness, and I started to watch it happening.

And lately, like just now, like this last week, it got to the point where among the Wayfinder Life Coaches, anybody who’s been through the Wayfinder Life Coach Training, I’ve been doing this thing that I call Pool School where we talk about how they can actually make a living but not in pyramid consciousness, in pool consciousness. And the reason I’m offering it to them is that they’ve already been through a system of teaching that allows them to let go of their ideas very fluidly. And we had this one, the very first meeting, and I thought it would take a long time to sort of get people from one perspective to the other, and they just were like, boom, boom, boom! Their minds were opening like crazy.

And I was very excited because that showed me that once we can let go of our preconceptions, we can get into the consciousness of the pool. And this is what I want to talk about today because I’m trying to shift my own consciousness. I have the concepts and I have a feeling about it in my body and my soul, but my mind—that cultural implement—is always the last to the party, right? So I find myself still thinking thoughts that are born of the pyramid and locked in the pyramid.

And I challenged my folks from WLCT, I said, “When you hear me using pyramid language, call me on it.” And they did and it was awesome. So I’ve been running things through my head and finding things that I’ve always thought because of the pyramid—because it taught us all to think—and trying to translate, what would pool thoughts be? So what would this awakened consciousness think instead of the things I’ve been thinking all my life?

So if you’ve ever seen, there’s a video of Bruce Lee, the great martial artist and filmmaker who managed to come over and introduce the martial arts and martial arts movies to America, even though it was brutally racist and he didn’t come speaking English or anything. But he was a genius in many ways, and they interviewed him once and they said, “What’s your philosophy?” And he said, “Be like water, my friend. Be like water.” And the guy interviewing him, I can’t remember who it was, but he’s like, “Okay…” But that’s because Bruce Lee was coming from a system of philosophy that had included something that was very much like pool consciousness.

So when you think like water instead of thinking like a rigid pyramid-shaped block, the pattern in your head becomes very different. So I just wanted to come on here today and pitch a few common things that I think many of us say to ourselves and then—so that’s the pyramid shape of our minds—and then give you a pool alternative so that you can start to let yourself out of the pyramid-shaped thinking. The pyramid becomes a pool by dissolving. And I think it will do that sociologically, but it does it psychologically first. 

We all have pyramid-shaped thoughts in our heads: “I have to do better, I have to achieve more,” whatever. That’s like, on a pyramid, you can always go higher, you can build more, there’s the top. In a pool, saying “I have to get higher” is insane because water can’t be built up, and it can’t be dug down. “I’m worse than someone else. I’m below someone else.” No, we’re all the same. “Yeah, but I want to be on the surface.” Well, you’re intermingled with everything so how can you be divided from the people that you say you’re competing with? There’s just a whole different way of knowing the world when you start to think like water. So I wrote some out today, and I want to offer them to you and just see what it does for y’all.

So the first thing is: “I have to prove myself. I have to prove that I’m worthy. I have to prove that I have done as well as other people on the pyramid.” There’s a pyramid shape in school: You do better, you do worse. There’s a pyramid shape in work. There’s a pyramid shape in parenting: “Oh, my children are better than that other person’s children, or I’ve done a better job parenting.” There’s always a way to do better, to be higher.

But in the pool, you’re just part of the pool. There is nothing you can… See, I get inarticulate because it’s hard for me to talk about it. Your inherent position in the pool is not different from anyone else’s because everyone is part of an intermingled consciousness, and no one can be higher than anyone else. So worth is not something you need to earn in the pool. It is something that reveals itself when you stop holding yourself rigid. When you relax, your inherent worth blossoms out of the relaxation. How many times have you been with somebody who has been stiff and rigid at work and then they finally start to relax and you’re like, “Oh my God, I love this person.” That’s movement from the pyramid to the pool.

Here’s another one. “If I mess up, I’ll lose my place. I’m striving. I’m striving. I’ve got a place.” Well, water has no fixed place. Nothing essential can ever be lost by making an honest mistake. Everything is just flowing, and obstacles do not block the path; they are the path. My way to succeed is to flow through failures, what looks like failure, but is mingled with success, and everything is about learning, learning, learning.

Another pyramid thought: “If I’m resting, I’m wasting time.” Nope. Rivers do not apologize for flowing into lakes and becoming still, and they don’t apologize when they flow back out of the lake and start moving quickly again. It happens by its nature. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling really compelled to allow myself to flow at the speed that something in me has decided. And I try to hit the gas like, “I’ve got to get this much done every day.” It doesn’t seem to be working anymore. It’s like when it flows, it flows. When writing flows, when whatever, meeting people flows. When they flow, they flow. When they don’t, they don’t. I can’t even feel guilty about it. I can’t even feel like, “Oh, I really should be…” No. It’s just like it flows when it flows and this is the way that life creates everything. If you try to dig up the carrots to see how they’re growing, they die. Nothing in nature is keeping a schedule. It’s just alive.

So here’s a big one: “I have to control what happens.” So, I have rigid things, I can put them in blocks. I can keep them. I can hoard them. I can do all this stuff. Well, you can’t. Try controlling the ocean. Try controlling that because even if you build great big levees and things, ultimately the ocean is so much bigger than you are, and you can’t control it. So the old hippie saying is “You can’t control the waves, but you can learn to surf.” So you can learn to play in water by becoming a part of the water. The surfboard becomes a part of the water. It’s very, very inclusive where pyramid thinking is exclusive.

“I need to be exceptional” is a pyramid thing. “I need to be up high where everyone can see me.” In the pool, being present is the only thing that matters. Am I really experiencing what I’m experiencing? And can I feel that when I stop fighting for exceptionalism, I can feel myself as part of all the beings around me and the divine creation of it all. All I have to be is present. That’s always going to be enough.

There’s “I have to become a better person.” That’s pyramid. Even though it seems very virtuous, it’s still: “I am not enough. I need to be better.” In the pool, your deepest nature is perfection. It is exactly as it is. And when you notice that, you sort of plunge into the reality of having always been enough and not really having the ability to make yourself better or worse.

Okay. There’s “My value depends on what I produce.” In the pool, my value is innate and what I create is an expression of the value I always have, not the source of any value. In the—water cannot be more water. But when we become calm and joyful, there is a kind of bubbling up of the light and creativity that we all are, and that flows into the pool. I think that is actually the origin point of the pool is from within each of us when we allow ourselves to be who we truly are.

Here’s the final one: “I should always be strong.” It makes no sense in the pool. Flexibility always outlasts rigidity and everything is always changing and water knows that. It doesn’t try to be stiff and rigid. It’s always flowing. That’s its nature. That’s how it does its work. That’s how it gives life to all things. You can have water without light in this world down in the deep sea vents. Sorry, you can have life without light. You can have life without soil, like plants that grow in the air, but you cannot have life without water.

There is this quality to what flows in the world that is at the heart of living itself. So notice when you’re thinking these thoughts because they are pyramid thoughts. So here’s a little list: “I have to. I should. I must. If I don’t X, then Y.” “Not enough” is a classic pyramid phrase. “Too much” also. “I am behind.” Water, a drop of water is not behind another drop of water in the same pool. And “better than” or “worse than”—those are all pyramid thoughts.

The pool is more like, “What’s my truth right now? What wants to happen? What is flowing? What brings more life?” Because water is life. “What would kindness do right now? What would the embrace of something completely flexible, what would it be? What feels truest?” I already said that. “What is sufficient for this moment?” Just allowing yourself to rest in the commingling of all the energies that make up the pool. And “How do I act if nothing needs proving? How do I act if there’s no below or above? How do I act if I know I already belong?” Because a drop of water can’t be taken away from the pool.

So I know this is a crash course, and I’m interested to see how easily you can do it because talking to the people who have been through WLCT, they picked it up so incredibly fast compared to what I expected, and maybe it’s just how we’re all being ready. I don’t know. Or maybe their training in letting go of their thoughts and when their thoughts are causing suffering is helping them make the shift, but it seems to be happening very quickly to them. So I thought, well, I’m going to just give this on The Gathering Room and see how people are before they go through WLCT or if they never do. But if you want to, that’s good.

Anyway, so I now want to run a little version of our meditation, the Space, Silence, and Stillness meditation, but I’m going to change it up a little. I’m going to ask you to imagine space as fluid, as something fluid. And this is part of shifting the idea that we are matter in like we are hard matter in a blank space. Shift that to we are all part, we are a fluid part of a fluid medium. There is no separation. Even to say there’s stillness around me, says that we’re separate from the stillness and we’re not, not in pool language. So I’m going to phrase it a little differently this time, and I would love you all to join me.

So let’s do that, and then I will take some questions. All right. So first get relaxed, deep inhale, long exhale, let yourself blow out all the air and then shake your body out, shake out any tension and get in a comfortable position. And now imagine that we know that every atom in the human body is 99.13 more nines, empty space, but even the part that is supposedly matter is still just a cloud of energy until consciousness causes it to collapse into a point. So let’s look at it in its wave state. Let’s look at every atom in its wave state. So even the particles, the infinitesimal particles that make up your atoms, we’re going to see them as fluids now. So there is actually—there’s no separation.

Let’s start with that question we always use: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? But instead say: Can I imagine the fluid nature of everything that is making up my eyes and the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine space as flowing gently, warm, like water, and all the particles of my atoms going into their wave state and floating with the current of love. Is it possible for me to imagine every person on this broadcast or listening to this recording as part of the gentle fluidity that we all are not a hard particle and all of us put together just flow, just openness, just mingling, just perfect blending between us and everything else?

We feel the silence in which this flow is generated where energy comes seamlessly through us into us outward to as many people as feel that wave. And we imagine the stillness that is the silence through which the wave motions move, and that’s true of sound waves too. Can I imagine the stillness through which sound waves travel like waves in the ocean? Can I surrender all the particles of my body to the flow, the wave action that is everything we see as matter? Can I imagine losing all the rigidity and the comparison and the painful thoughts that come from thinking of myself as separate? Can I imagine the sweetness that comes with the resonance between me, every wave of energy and every atom resonating with the wave energy of every atom and every other person who has joined with me in this consciousness?

Feel that flow moving all the way around the world, all the places I mentioned when we came in. There is no separation. It is all one ocean of love. Feel it. Feel it. This is not a metaphor. This is the truth as physics has shown us. We are all just waves, and the pool, I think, is where our consciousness is meant to go next.

So here’s a question: “Is the idea of running out of time or being behind in life a hierarchical pyramid script?”

Absolutely. “I’m behind, I’m behind.” If we’re on a track and you’re running and I’m chasing you and you start to fall back or I start to fall back, I can think I’m behind, but if we are drops of water in the same river, how does that even compute? There’s such turbulence in a river and that sounds negative, but there’s so much mixing and how can you say that a cup of water is separate from all the drops of water that make it up? We are all the same water. So how can I be behind you? We are all just in the pool. There’s no “behind” in a pool.

So the way I might think of it, instead of “I’m being behind” is “Everything flows.” The human brain, psychologists even use the word “flow” to describe the state we’re in when we’re doing something that’s almost too hard for us that we care about a lot and we’re fully engrossed in that. That’s flow. So I would say instead of “I’m behind,” I would say, “Where’s flow? Where’s flow? I’m going to get into flow now.” And I know how to get into flow. And it’s when I’m in flow that I make things that people say, “Oh, that makes me feel like I’m in flow. I would like a bit of that, please.” And as I’m telling my WLCT people, that’s how I make a living. I tell them, I’ve never actually run a business. All I do is live in the pool. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to make my living. I’ve tried to compete in pyramid consciousness. It never works for me. And then I get completely off the pyramid and go, “I think I’ll meditate in the woods for a while.” And somehow abundance drifts toward me through the pool, so there’s no behind. That’s not possible.

Question: “I keep finding myself immersed”—keyword—”in other people’s emotions and stories and being projected upon and I no like it. How can I firm up my boundaries while also dissolving in the pool with everyone?”

Well, the idea that you have to be rigid and firm and keep people out goes away in the pool. So yes, you’re immersed in other people’s stories, but if there’s no resistance in you, it flows through you. And my experience and the experience of teaching these Wayfinders the other day is that the truth flows in, and the flow kind of remains like a river that’s always flowing, and what doesn’t belong gets gently—it gets flushed out.

So the story comes in, “My mother was bad to me and you’re bad to me, you’re just like my mother,” whatever the person is projecting on you and you think, “Oh, okay, that’s what the person is thinking right now. Is it true?” No, I’m not—I don’t know. I don’t think I’m like their mother. I don’t think I could be like their mother. Okay, that’s not going to stay. That just runs through me.

There’s that saying, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, an insult bounces off me and sticks to you.” I don’t like that because then somebody’s always got sticky insults on them. And I like to think, “You’re an attack and I am air. When you find me, I’m not there.” It flows. Everything that isn’t true doesn’t last in a fluid environment. It’s just gone. And only the truth keeps repeating itself over it. It will repeat itself no matter how many times you look at it, it will always be flowing the same way. But lies—they dissolve very quickly when you start to look at them really, really closely from a data perspective.

All right: “How does money work within the pool theory?”

Isn’t that the big one? This is the one Rowan and I, my lovely partner and Karen, though she’s more sanguine about it, we’ve been talking about this constantly and what we’ve realized is both of us have worked like absolute dogs to learn many things, to produce many things, but nothing we’ve worked on ever actually brought in the money. The money came from some mysterious other thing and Ro actually said, “I think that work is not related to money the way I thought it was. I think maybe work is like a drug. It’s like a story I tell myself to make myself feel confident that money comes in, and it’s actually— it’s the confidence that’s bringing it in.”

I know this is very woo-woo. It’s very new age, but y’all, it is my experience. The pyramid does not work for me with money. And the pool, it just floats through. It just floats. It’s so weird. It’s like doing a trust fall and realizing I can always float on water. And people say, “Well, maybe I can’t do it. I have low body fat.” I’m like, “No, you can learn to float on water.” You can learn to enter a pool abundant state where money floats to you. But I am early days on this myself, y’all. So thank you for joining me in that, but I actually really think I’m going to figure out how that works.

“How do people in poverty work within the pool of theory?”

Everything wants to flow between, everything wants to be level in a pool, right? So when I have abundance and I’m in a hoarding, clutching, grabbing mentality—pyramid is all about grabbing, clutching and hoarding—I don’t give to anybody and I need to stay high because you never know what would happen. But when I find an imbalance between myself and others, and I’m not also in a state of thinking, “Oh, I am bad if I don’t raise them up” because I’ve tried to do that with many, many people and I never could quite do it. But when I allow the balance to find itself, I find myself sharing wealth—and all kinds of wealth—with people, not out of pity, but because the nature of the physics wants us to be at the same level.

So I’ve never accumulated a vast fortune. I suppose I might have if I tried really hard. But I was always much more interested in staying in the sensation of levelness. And I’ve gone too far in the direction of overgiving, and I’ve gone too far in the direction of trying to hang on, which didn’t work at all. And when I’m in flow, I find that the balance between me and other people is… it’s regulated by something I don’t quite understand. This pool consciousness, it’s just coming online in my mind. But I do know that in a pool society, there would be no poor people. There would be no super wealthy people and billions of people living in poverty. That is not how pools work. And we can find it in our personal lives, and then I think it will start to fractal out in a larger way.

Question: “Even if we’re not separate, how do we mend the pain from society or culture putting us in our own separate boxes with our nuclear families? How do we heal without running off to a commune or a family compound?”

If you know you’re not separate, then people could put you in boxes all day long, you just won’t fit. They’re trying to pour water into a cardboard box. They can’t contain you. I mean, people have tried to contain me. The Mormon Church tried to claim me as its writer of letters. Then I was like, “I’m not Mormon anymore. I’m going to write a book about how I left.” And I mean, they could, and then they tried to control me by saying, “You can’t put that information out there.” And I’m like, “It’s out. What are you going to do about it?” I mean, the internet is a way that we can flow so much more fluidly than humans ever have been able to flow, and nobody can put you in a box unless you believe you’re going in there and that it’s the only place you can go. They can think whatever they think. If you’re water, you flow out.

[Question]: “What does physics have to teach us about separation?”

Well, I mentioned everything in its quantum potential state is just energy, just wave energy. There is no sharp separation between any two wave frequencies. They combine, they create more waves and ripples of energy, but you can’t say they’re separate really.

Two more questions: “What if things don’t work out with a love interest? AKA, how do you get over a broken heart with the pool perspective?”

Well, the first thing is you don’t think that person completed me because how does one… You’re looking at a pool, there’s one cup of water over here, that’s you. There’s another cup of water over there, that’s them. How can you say they complete you? The whole pool completes you. So they flow off and you go, “Oh, I loved that mingling of those two energies.” But guess what? You are held by all kinds of love around you, from other human beings, from spiritual forces, from animals.

I mean, there is so much love. The pool is made of love and you cannot be separate from its support. So yes, we grieve. Yes, we lose. Yes, we have all kinds of pain in our lives, but as we lose our sense of separation, like if you question the thought, “I’m nothing without that person” or “I’ve lost that person,” one part of the pool can’t lose another part of the pool. And as you realize that, your consciousness clears out.

Now doing this means you have to be able to adjust your own thinking very powerfully, which is why I’m offering it to the Wayfinder Life Coaches because they’re not all life coaches, but they all know how to do that. So find a methodology that lets you free yourself from the thoughts that are keeping you trapped and you will go into the pool, I promise you.

Final question:” I’m finally starting to live in and express my truth. I’m so proud of myself, but there are parts of me that feel scared and panicked. How can I feel peace and lean into my truth and flow?”

Beautiful question. I think all of us can join you there because all of us are in the same pool and we all feel the same things, right? So just know this. If you’re scared and panicked, it’s an illusion. You’re not out of the pool. The pool is the ultimate reality, but fear and panic only come from the illusion of solidity. “Oh my God, I’m going to die.” Really? Are you sure? That thought makes you suffer? Maybe the dead and the living aren’t that separate. “I’m panicked because life is a bitch and everything’s hard.” Well, huh. So you’re doing things that allow you to feel like a failure, to feel like you’re behind, to feel like you’re inferior. For a drop of water to have that illusion is so very painful, but the drop of water is still a drop of water. And as you lean into the truth, as you so beautifully put it, peace comes of itself as you let go of the rigidity of the lies and feel the truth below it. The fluid, blended, never ending, always loving truth. You can never drown in water if you are water, and you are. We all are.

The water I call the pool comes from the center of each one of us and it supports all of us at once at the same level. And this is the consciousness I believe is coming in. So you’re going to hear me talk about it a lot, but that’s what I have to say about that today.

Thank you so, so much in this beautiful, international, global pool of minds. Just feel it. How amazing to be alive right now. See you again on another Gathering Room. Bye.