So I’ve been thinking about this a great deal lately. As you know, I spend a lot of time doing spiritual practices, everything from doing the dishes in a very centered space psychologically, all the way to dreaming huge dreams and watching magic make them come true. And I have a lot of tips and tricks of the trade that help me feel like I’m making progress.

But here’s the thing. Lately, the message I’m getting is that so many of us are trying way harder than we need to, that we are pushing ourselves to do and do and do. Even if the goal is I will not do, I will—the paradox of it—I will strive harder to do not-doing, I will strive harder to think about not thinking.The whole idea that somehow we have to make this happen, I will confess it, it runs through all my work. All my work is like, here’s a technique, here’s a practice, here’s what you could do every day.

And ironically, I’m going to give you another one today, but it’s meant to get us not through the effortful part of awakening, but through the part that is done for us. And this, I think, is really hard for people who take responsibility for their lives and are really trying to be good. It’s hard for us to understand or fully internalize the idea that if we’re on the path to awakening, there is a huge percentage of it that is just done for us. And it is only done for us when we can release our attachments.

So I talk a lot about how things don’t cause suffering, but attachment to things causes suffering. Desire, for example, to want something wonderful—that doesn’t cause suffering until you are attached to wanting the thing. My family and I have been cruising around the country looking for a place to live because a few months ago we just felt like that was the thing to do. So based on faith alone, we’ve been driving around in this car full of kids, animals—well, there’s only one kid, but she sort of makes it feel like the car is full of kids—and a smattering, a motley crew of adults and one dog, just drying around randomly in an area of the country where we feel we’re supposed to live and not finding anything.

And every time we come back discouraged from one of these expeditions, there’s a feeling of exhaustion. Like what more could we do? We felt like we were sort of moved to take some steps on faith because it felt like our next step, our next step along the path. Some of the things that take us toward awakening are all inward, like sitting in meditation and letting go of things that you feel attached to. But sometimes it requires that you go out and act. You follow an inspired action that you feel deeply is meant to be part of your path. And you go out there and in those times of action, it’s very difficult not to attach to the things you’re supposed to do.

So as we drive around looking for a place, say we’d see a house that one of us liked, and one of us would become very attached to wanting that particular house, but the rest of us didn’t like it. And then at a different house it would happen, but it would be a different person who was attached. So we’ve been going through this real sort of intensive course in desiring without attachment and in doing, even though the doing never seems to bear any fruit.

And that is really typical of the way enlightenment works and the Asian traditions and the mystical Western traditions—that you go and do things and you see no progress, and you want things and they’re taken away so that you learn to want them without being attached to them. It’s a very tight-ropey process.

So I’m always talking about going inside ourselves to find what we feel is the next best step. And today I sat down to think about you all, and I tried to feel into what would be the next best step that most of us need.

And what came to me very, very strongly was this. The message was: They’re all trying so hard. They’re trying to do without attachment. They’re trying to be good without seeing any progress. They’re trying to tunnel their way through the mountain without ever seeing the light because even if you’re very close to the end of the tunnel, you still don’t see the light. They’re tired and they don’t understand that they are surrounded by forces and beings and consciousness that is aching to help them, to do it for them for a while.

So please tell them this, and this is the download I got. Imagine yourself standing by a pool. Make it a swimming pool if you like swimming pools. If you like ponds or lakes, make it that. Make it any kind of pool. And you’re exhausted from trying and from trying not to try. And you’re exhausted from being attached and trying not to be attached and then trying not to be attached to not being attached. And the paradoxes of awakening have turned your brain into mush and your body is exhausted and you still have to deal with the toddler in the car seat and the dog who insists on sleeping on the gear shift and the fact that you’ve worked and worked and worked at something and your wishes still haven’t been granted.

There you are in your full exhaustion, and there is this pool. And you walk into the pool and as you go in, you realize it’s exactly body temperature. There’s no feeling of chill, there’s no feeling of heat. You are walking into something that feels like no-thingness because it’s exactly right for you. It is completely and totally comfortable.

And you take a few more steps, it gets deeper, it gets deeper, and you can feel that this is different from other water that you’ve been in. It feels denser. It feels more supportive. And you keep walking in, and the sensation of being surrounded by warmth and this gentle pressure on you gets stronger and stronger, and you keep walking in and you keep walking in.

And then your feet leave the bottom and your arms go out and you find yourself effortlessly floating on this perfectly warm, buoyant liquid. And you realize you don’t have to do anything, that you can relax completely like people do in the Great Salt Lake or in other high-saline lakes where the body is more buoyant than in just regular water.

You realize you can let go with everything. You let your head go and it stays. Your face stays above the water. You let your arms go and they float perfectly. You let your legs go and your torso, and everything is held. And as you lie there, every single muscle in your body starts to relax because it’s all held. And the more you are relaxed, the more you relax each muscle, the more you feel that you are held.

And then you start to realize—because your heart begins to relax—you realize that you’re not in water. You are in the essence of beings who have loved you all your life and who are showing up in this fluid form because they yearn to carry you. And all your sorrows and all your hopes and all your fears are known to these consciousnesses, these beings of consciousness. They’re all known. It’s not just a pool of liquid you’re floating in. It’s a pool of consciousness that understands you completely and loves you absolutely. And it wants to carry you for a while. Its request is just, “Please let us do this for you. You work so hard, and we love you so much. Let go for now.”

So with every breath, you feel this more strongly. You can feel yourself pervaded with the love of these beings, and you start to breathe more deeply. And then you realize that if you want to, when you want to, you can relax so completely that you dissolve into this pool of consciousness that is so loving. It is so easy, it’s so completely at rest and at peace.

And if you let yourself dissolve, your fingers go, your toes, and then all the way up your arms and all the way to your torso, but it’s not frightening. You don’t lose your sense of who you are, you just feel that these beings of love and you are the same thing. And then you start to realize that if you completely let go, you can hold others the way you are being held without any effort on your part. And you can invite anyone who is in suffering, in sorrow, in fear, you can invite them in because you are not alone in supporting them. In fact, there is an infinite amalgamation of consciousness whose job it is to hold and love and heal and facilitate the awakening that is meant to come.

So if you can just do this little meditation for three or four minutes when you get really tired, when you lie down at night, or when you have a chance to take a break during the day, you can do it sitting up. You can do it standing, but it’s better if you can lie right down flat. And what happens during those periods I’ve been using this, there’s a sort of rejuvenation that seems to come from a cellular level. It’s so relaxing.

And as I started doing this in our car yesterday as we drove around with our motley crew and our one screaming toddler who sounded like 20 and our dog who would not get off my lap, something amazing happened. We found the place that we’d imagined. We found exactly the place that we’d seen in our mind’s eyes when we let ourselves dream wildly of a place we’d love to live.

Now, we haven’t bought it yet—I’m hoping it will happen. I’m trying not to attach to it. So I’m using this metaphor of being held by the consciousness that’s around us. And I believe it is not only real, it is the quickest way to dismantling your ego and coming into enlightenment, and in the meantime, making you accessible to your own dreams.

As I’ve often said, the one thing I can tell people to repeat that makes them feel most like they’re telling the truth is the sentence, “I am meant to live in peace. I am meant to live in peace.” And when you go into this liquid visualization, if you can find yourself in peace, here’s the deal. Everything you have ever asked for is sent to you from these loving beings, but they always send it to your real address, and you are meant to live in peace. So if you go into peace, they are able to deliver to you the things that you have asked for.

It is peace that lets us let go of our attachments, let go of form, let go of all effort, and then all the work we’ve done, none of it’s wasted. It brings what we have asked for into one of two forms. And the first form is exactly what we wanted. And the second form is something even better. I know life is hard, but try this. It works. It’s worked for me. It’s worked for so many people I’ve coached. And I know it’s going to work for you.

All right, here are some questions. Someone says, “I got so excited when I uncovered a deep yearning to change careers and return to study, but it’s so expensive that all I do is endlessly research how to afford it. Any guidance?”

Yeah, in between the effort to find out how to afford it, make sure you do these let go exercises because it’s like you push hard and nothing moves during the times you’re striving and stressing. And then you let go completely, nothing happens except then, for some reason, the universe brings it to you. The sort of three-part equation is intention (you decide what you want), attention (you put a lot of attention on it. How do I afford this?), and then no tension.

And the whole resting in the water, resting in the consciousness thing is to help you get to that last step because so many people here are such hard workers that we don’t go to that last step. We don’t let go of tension, and then we’re not in peace. And the things we’ve ordered are all being sent to our real home address. And it feels to us like it’s not there. It is there. You have to go to peace to get it. Good luck with that. You won’t need it, but you have my fondest wishes.

Okay, someone says, “Martha, I have a disagreement at a job that generates in me anxiety. I feel it in my stomach. Any recommendation?”

Yeah. First of all, realize that you are physically safe, and that even as scary as disagreements are, if you can manage to stay in peace during an interaction, even if someone is very even aggressive, if someone’s very unpleasant, if you stay in peace, they don’t have enough fuel to keep generating higher and higher levels of aggression.

So I just wrote a book about going beyond anxiety. There are a ton of processes in there that you can use, but the quick and dirty one is breathe deeply and slowly, which tells your brainstem you are not running from a predator. And then turn about 75% of your attention inward and start giving yourself kind self-talk: “I see you here. We’re okay. We’re not in any real danger. You’re going to be all right. I’ve got you. This is okay. We’re going to be fine.”

75% of your energy goes to kind internal self-talk. 25% of your attention goes to the other person or the other people. And I’ve done this in really scary situations when being deposed in court and things like that. And if you just keep the kind internal self-talk going, you can get through tremendously frightening experiences while feeling almost completely calm. So yeah, good luck with that as well and let me know how it goes.

Okay, someone says, “What do you do when your heart starts to dream up a really ambitious dream, which is both exciting and terrifying?”

In our Wilder community this month, our theme of the month is imagination. And we talked about—at our last get-together, we talked about what do you give yourself permission to imagine? And people started taking off the shackles of their imaginations, and they started having big dreams. There were a lot of dreams about communities of people who live in enlightened ways— that sounds very cult-like, but it was like being with a village of people you love and who are on your wavelength and respecting the earth and loving each other.

There were all these big, big, big exciting dreams. And we got, the whole group got very excited, I think, and a little bit terrified because when we let ourselves know that we’ve fallen in love with something, the fear that we won’t get it is the next thing the ego brings.

That’s where I am with this house we want to buy, this property, is that it’s a big ambitious dream and I really want it, and now my job is that when I get too tense and too anxious that my dream won’t come true, I wade into the pool of consciousness that is holding me up and saying, “Why don’t you let us do this for a while?”

For some reason it always says “us”—it always speaks in the first-person plural. I don’t know. But I do know that I can relax into it and then dissolve into it. And when I think about helping other people relax and being part of the buoyancy that holds them up, that really helps me dissolve. And then my big exciting dreams, more times than I can even tell you, have come true. Little ones too. All sorts of dreams have come true—in ways, as we say, in my family, “Never by logic, always by magic.”

It always comes in a way that surprises and delights me. And I think you’re going to have the same experience if you keep allowing the pool of consciousness to do what it wants to do for you and with you.

Next question: “The problem is when you’re in financial crises in this material world, you are more like a hot potato than feeling fluid. How to turn all real-world pressure into trust [of the] unknown?”

It’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s this whole, I mean, we know that way back, even in biblical times and New Testament times, that was one of the things Jesus kept telling his followers. He said, “Consider the flowers of the field. They don’t worry. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. If God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cut down and tossed into the oven, cast into the oven, how then will he not clothe you, oh ye of little faith?”

That was a long quote from my old Mormon background. What I was trying to say with it was: There is no insurance that we will be taken care of for the indefinite future in this physical reality. In fact, in this physical reality, the one thing we’re sure of is that one day we won’t have the wherewithal to keep going, and we will exit these bodies and be gone. So it looks from the material realm like all there is is fear. All that will happen is decay and decomposition and loss. And that we have to work and work and work in order to stay afloat.

And that’s why I think this image came to me so strongly is that something wants us to float. And it’s a backwards logic. So we think that if we strive hard enough, we’ll get enough stuff to feel safe in the world. And that is really, really hard when you’re without sufficient financial means. I know, I know how hard it is.

And yet I also know that the logic we use is backwards from the magic of the nonphysical track. In the nonphysical track, it’s not that you get stuff and then you trust you’ll be okay. It’s that you trust you’ll be okay, and then you get stuff.

I have never in my life been allowed to just get enough stuff to be okay without having to trust first in a situation where I wasn’t okay. I always had to trust irrationally that something was taking care of me and I had to find a place where I could relax my body into that belief.

And that’s what I was trying to do with this visualization. Because when you can relax your body into the belief that you’re okay, it seems to trigger a whole chain reaction that allows the world to take care of you or allows the non-physical element, whatever that is, to take care of you. So even though it’s so hard and scary, it’s still a good idea to take five minutes and go into the pool that is the consciousness supporting you and loving you and let all your cares and tensions go for a moment and feel that something is holding you up. 

Five minutes. And then you can go back to worrying. But that five minutes is going to have a very powerful effect. And if you do it several times a day, a couple times a day, it’s going to accelerate the pace at which the universe can bring you what you’ve been asking for. You must go home to peace to get the things you’ve asked for, even though it’s so hard, and I know it is.

OK next question: “Sometimes I feel like I can’t align with people, even my favorite people. It seems I’m not getting enough letting-go time to align with myself. Do you experience this? Is there a way to connect to others?”

What I’ve been experiencing lately is intense sensations of a sort of spiritual progress. Very, very intense feelings of electrical buzzing in my body and at the same time, deep emotions. A lot of old trauma wounds have come up and been cleansed. I’m having these, it feels like I’m being realigned. And sometimes when I’m with other people and they’re not in that space, it’s very hard for me to connect.

But what I’ve found is that when you go through these phases, you need to be alone for a while. You need to find alignment with yourself. At first, it’s very new and exciting. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle or ski down the slope. It’s like, “Oh, I’m doing this! I feel really aligned. I feel really connected with spirit. There are miracles happening around me.” And people seem kind of weird or boring, but then it eases. Your nervous system gets used to it and it settles and relaxes and there’s less tension in the body.

Every time I do this meditation where I lie back on the forces that want to help me, I come back with less tension in my body and more love for other people. And it’s a very simple love. It’s kind of the way dogs or babies get delighted by people. I don’t have complex needs to align with them, I just like them. And it’s a really, really joyful experience. So just trust the process, align with yourself, take sufficient solitude to get that going, and then watch how joyful it is to go connect once that’s happened.

OK question: “How to tell if you’re in spiritual bypassing?”

Oh, I’ve done this too, where, oh my goodness, I really need to get my house ready to sell, but shouldn’t I meditate instead? I can tell because it feels a little bit like addiction. I’ve never been seriously addicted to any kind of substance, but there are times, for example, when I’ll eat more sugar than I want. And I know I’m eating sugar, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m anxious and I’m trying to think about something else, focus on something else so I don’t have to face my realities. And I’ve done that with meditation, and I’ve done that with prayer, and done that with reading spiritual books. And I know I’m in the same frame of mind I’m in when I’m chowing down on ice cream for no reason. You can tell if you’re honest with yourself.

So what I would suggest is deep integrity. Admit to yourself when it feels like you’re doing something powerful and positive, or when it feels like you’re just avoiding doing the dishes. And then you find that doing the dishes, driving around, whatever it is that you’re meant to do next in the physical world is also a spiritual practice and that God is right there in the laundry and the compost.

So last question: “I did your Wayfinder’s Compass course and when I do your meditation, I always see myself with a man on a boat near water and mountains. Is this imagination or a precognitive hint?”

I don’t know, but I’m really excited that you are going to find out! 

And by the way, speaking of The Wayfinder’s Compass, this is a course that I’ve done before. We’re running it again. I’m going to be there. There’ll be some recorded stuff, but I’m also going to be showing up live to talk about how we get through the anxiety of the time we’re living in and follow our internal compasses so that we know exactly where we’re meant to go next.

There may be a time—I used to think that when I would see scenarios in my head that it was always metaphorical. And then I started to see the things that had appeared in my head. And this was years ago, and I’ve learned that no matter how odd something may seem—I remember one of them was an elephant, and then right next to it were some penguins. I had this image long, long ago. And I went to South Africa years later and I saw the elephant exactly as it had appeared. And then later I was at a beach in South Africa. I didn’t know there were penguins and elephants in the same part of the world, but there they were, the penguins that I’d seen.

So I think sometimes we’re given these precognitive images so that when we get there, it’s like a God wink from the beings that are holding us up. So if you want to hear much more about this, come to the Wayfinder’s Compass course. Sign up for it. It’s going to be really fun. It’s going to be a wonderful community and a way that we can hold each other in this process of first pushing and then trusting and then trying, and then not trying at all.

This is all part of the art of navigating through the world. So I hope you join me in [The Wayfinder’s Compass], and I’m very grateful that you’ve joined me here. And I hope you can lean back and let the forces that love you carry you along today, tomorrow, the next day, and every day after that. Thank you for being here. See you soon on The Gathering Room again.