keep noticing who you are noticing awareness asking yourself am i aware is it's so interesting because when you notice who you are you feel this absolute relief travel all through your body which means prior to that you were tense you were holding on to life [Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every
single one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now today i have the honor and privilege to sit down with one of my favorite authors someone who has impacted millions of lives over the last couple of decades and someone that i was just sharing with i never believed i'd ever get the opportunity to sit down with because back in 2006 and before when i
was reading her work and interacting with the work that she was doing in the world i never believed i'd get this opportunity and so today i feel extremely grateful to be sitting down with the one and only rhonda byrne and for those of you that don't know and i mean they'll literally be like 0.3 percent of you that may not know there's an internationally renowned
best-selling author that is best known for a documentary and book titled the secret ronda's work has massively transformed millions of lives around the world and her newest work is a continuation of her previous insights and it's called the greatest secret i've just finished reading this book i genuinely cannot wait for it to be in your hands and so we'll be putting the link to the
book uh with the podcast so make sure that you go and grab this whenever you have that moment during this conversation uh that you are accessing the greatest secret ronda welcome to on purpose and thank you so much for doing this oh jay thank you so much do you know as you were doing that intro i got very teary because uh just uh when you're mentioning
changing the lives of millions of people i really to this day you know it um it just affects me it's so humbling and uh i'll i'll receive a letter from somebody and it's honestly it's like the very first time that i've read a letter and somebody's life has changed and it's never altered over the years it just affects me the same way so i just had a total meltdown listening to
you then so thank you that's amazing i i love hearing that because i i feel so similarly that it's such a honor and and humbling opportunity to have an impact on anyone and so i i love hearing you say that and it's so beautiful and i i know i heard recently that you actually moved and you moved home is that true i was going to start there because i almost feel like
the act of moving is such an interesting journey in and of itself physically mentally emotionally spiritually and i wanted to ask you what your move was like and what that journey was like on each of those levels well i love it because you always end up by throwing material things out you know i don't need this and i don't need that so it's it's a real cleansing to move i
think and go through everything and i don't need any of these things anymore and and i mean sometimes i give away things and then i'm like oh gosh i really didn't need that but who cares you know who cares but do you know can you believe this i moved um next door to where i was next door right that great is that crazy and so um i'm on and i'm on a property that is uh
85 acres of orchards and avocados and oranges and lemons and all of those things and what absolutely gets me all of the time in life and i never tire of it is the way that life or the universe always lines up everything i've ever loved in my life and so always always absolutely always like open fires and this property has deer walking all over it and for me coming
from australia we don't have deer in australia and so it's just oh my gosh so amazing to wake up in the morning and there a deer outside my bedroom window and i mean just squirrels jumping everywhere and so yeah i it was um it was really really beautiful a beautiful move actually and it was effortless absolutely effortless um and uh and kind of a new you know when you move it's sort of a
new but then at the same time you take you with you wherever you go right and so um and so it's always really good to just be working on the inner part of ourselves because then when you take you with you you have a fabulous life what was the thing that you were happy to let go of physically or emotionally of that space and what was something that you rediscovered
maybe that you'd forgotten about that you thought oh i actually am excited to take this with me actually i had moved a year earlier so i'd had a massive plans when i moved i had been in a really really really big house for like 15 years and so that was amazing because i was just giving away everything do you would you like this would you like this and so this move wasn't as great um
because i'd already cleaned everything out for the year before and so let me think i mean the things that i loved about the house that i was in was the incredible sunrises and sunsets and that i got to see those that house had massive orange trees everywhere and so the orange blossom was absolutely intoxicating i think jade you know all the things i
love in life are the things that are freaky you know they're not they're not anything that kind of money buys and um and the house was that i was in was full of light um and absolutely beautiful but then the house that i've moved to and it didn't have open fires to the other house and i love open fires another house that i've moved to has opened fires it has all of the light
it has the orange trees the orange blossom it has a beautiful view across the ocean ocean front views so it has the sunrises and the sunsets and uh so it's just everything kind of lined up for me with with the house that i'm in um after being in the previous house but i'm trying to think of things that you know really i think i just gave away
mostly kind of clothes and things like that and a few appliances and um yeah just just sort of things like that you know not her in my previous house i gave away everything i gave away barbecues and i was like saying to people do you need a juicer do you need this do you need that and i was just giving away absolutely everything which i love and you know when i moved from australia
to the united states this was just prior to the secret being released i came with two suitcases that was it i left my home everything that i had collected over gosh 20 years or whatever it was i left it all behind and i came here with two suitcases and it was for the release of the secret and i just intuitively knew that the united states would be the
country that lit the secret up first and that i needed to be in the states so uh so i tr i traveled here i had two suitcases and then everything that i owned back there i gave it away i gave it all away absolutely everything yeah except for two things two things that i that i ended up by having shipped over that one you can see behind me there that tapestry
right can you see that yes yes i could see it and see and see that border yes that border and those two things those two things i brought with me they were just like really special to me but everything else i gave away so i'm really good at letting things go and just actually i'm great now letting things go um especially especially material things i'm not really attached jay
anymore you know i used to i had decades of attachment and um and i don't think attachment in the end is a lot of fun absolutely i mean it's really beautiful and i have all of open space here and i think that that reflects the way that i feel inside and my journey of the greatest secret is just like this freedom and and openness to life and just this trust
and faith in life this total faith that life has got everything under control yes well let's let's start there at the beginning of the greatest secret you you share this beautiful thought around how you know what keeps us from the greatest secret is a belief and i really liked how despite the incredible success of the secret you've continued on this journey
to continually seek for a deeper secret and the greatest secret as you call it and you say that a belief has been blocking us this whole time from this secret tell us about this belief where does this block of a belief come from and how is it created such a strong hold on each and every single one of us well the belief is that we are separate and that we are individual
and that all that we consist of all that makes us up is just a body and a mind and i think the majority of people will consider that they're a body and a mind and the name that they've been given and the story uh of their life and i was born here and parents did this and i do this for a living and siblings and the story that we then ca we identify with and carry around with us and and
and those stories this story it doesn't matter what the story is it doesn't matter how fabulous your life has been it does not compare to who we really are and so we have this belief that we are limited basically in a nutshell that we're a limited individual that we're born and that we die and and that's kind of it and the truth is we're we are so much more than that we are
certainly having the experience of being an individual and we're certainly having the experience having a human experience but ultimately it is not who we are and we were never born and we never die and we are if i were to sum up everything that we are it's almost the opposite to everything we strive to be so we are all the intelligence that there is we are all
the beauty that there is where all the happiness that there is we are pure love without any judgment whatsoever um we are complete and utter freedom which is why freedom means so much to us why we will fight and struggle to be free uh and so we and and we have total knowing of absolutely everything in the moment of knowing it we are infinite and we are eternal and
that is what is actually experiencing this particular form and so we have a belief that we are an individual that we're separate that we're born and that we die and our mind reaffirms that over and over and over again through all of its thoughts and with everything we say with every thought and every single thing that we say and actually doesn't the world
affirm that over and over that we're that we're separate um but we are unlimited we are absolute perfection and and i'm not talking about the name or the ego i'm not talking about that because we we all can see what egos can get up to you know they can get they can cause a lot of trouble egos why egos want approval they want attention and they want to be right all
the time they judge all of the time and so you know they're not they're not something to uh to attach ourselves to and to identify with when we are this incredible being that is lists full happiness and so um and so we can have a life where we are living as an individual human having an individual human experience but from the perspective of the infinite being that we are
in which case we will never be touched by negativity no matter what happens and we will remain in lasting happiness no matter what and it is and this has been my journey really from the secret to to now um and i was searching seven days a week i was jay i'm just like i was just like one of those crazy people and like if this there is this law that governs our mind
then there is definitely way way more to discover and so i just searched and searched for religions and spiritual traditions and read thousands of books and it was until 2016 that i had this experience where i realized who we are and i was like why haven't i seen this why haven't i what is it how could i have missed this and uh and from that moment of realizing that there was this
happiness that arose inside of me and then with everything that i did from 216 to 220 that happiness just became deeper and deeper and and then i would just notice things like that person you know when they would do something or other they used to bother me a lot that didn't bother me anymore and how was i ever bothered by that and that particular subject doesn't
bother me anymore and so i was just finding that i wasn't reacting to life my the reactions were all dissolving i didn't judgment was dissolving i was just whatever was happening i'm like it's fine it'll be okay and and so with letting go of all of those things including the belief that we're a limited being um we become free really truly free and then we will live a life that's
described as heaven on earth or nirvana um a life where we know we don't die and the body ends sure but but who we are does not and so yeah that's been that's been my journey between my journey well well it's beautiful hearing it because i was very fortunate enough to at least learn about that intellectually when i was 18 and i first met the monks that i lived with
and then when i went and lived as a monk for three years in india and across europe when i was 22 to 25 the text that we studied uh whether it's the vedas or the gita introduced me to that at least intellectually and i say at least intellectually because i believe that a lot of these ideas begin intellect before they truly become realized yeah you're absolutely right and um and
i think in 216 you know it was it was and it was a realization of who i am but had i was i completely living that no i remember thinking oh my gosh i've lost it now you know i i had it and now i've lost it and of course you can't lose it because it's who you are you know but you've got to go you've kind of got to go on this a bit of a journey you don't have to there are some people
that oh gosh they will just hear it and that's it they will leave it they will live like that for the rest of their life yeah and they they just enjoy and i've had some letters from from some people that that has happened to you for me it was more of a journey and uh but oh wow when you just in it definitely intellectually is the beginning and there's nothing
wrong with that at all because that's where right that's where you start and then and then it's sort of the diligence to keep noticing um who you are noticing awareness you know noticing uh asking yourself am i aware is you know one one way one way to begin am i aware and even in secret i talk about that you know remember to remember that you're aware and to be aware and so
it you just keep coming back to noticing who you are it's so interesting because when you notice who you are you feel this absolute relief travel all through your body which means prior to that you were tense you were holding on to life you know the kind of white knuckle and everything and so um i mean i just oh my gosh it's just like this
incredible thing that we that we have and and and then you know and then you look out and you see people suffering and um and that part's you know really challenging because you you you want to help everybody and so so that they don't suffer anymore and um i remember with my teeth i remember with my teacher really early on and i would be like oh i've lost and i've lost it and
and uh and why don't i have it all of the time and she said she would say oh because you haven't suffered enough is what you say to me you need to suffer some more you know and then and then you really really really it's going to mean more to you than anything else in in life and uh yeah it's a it's it's a wonderful thing but oh my gosh in your 20s jay heaven i remember
learning that definition which you described so beautifully of sachitananda and the idea that we are full of knowledge eternal and full of bliss and i remember one of the ways we were trained to understand that is we had no mirrors in the ashram and without a mirror you lost conception of your physical self because you no longer could check how you looked and
the other one was i remember when i first started i would and i know you used the beautiful word awareness in the greatest secret i remember i used to write on a little post-it note when i'd wake up in the morning i'd have it next to my bedside table and then on the uh by the place where i brush my teeth that i am awareness yeah yes that's beautiful yeah to remind
myself to remind myself in the morning to wake up with the understanding that i'm not this body oh brilliant that is brilliant people should do that people should do that i mean that is absolutely fantastic yeah i am awareness because the moment that you say like our mind can't comprehend awareness it can't it can't comprehend that the mind is sitting in awareness and so
and so the really beautiful thing is is that saying something like i am awareness or am i aware the mind just goes quiet you know just really quickly and one when the mind's quiet then all that there is is awareness or consciousness or whatever if the word doesn't matter you know i tried to choose the word that i felt was the simplest that people could
kind of understand but the moment the mind drops there there is awareness and so and so ah i love that i am aware i love it oh thank you yeah it was i you know it's that's why when i was reading your book and i hope you can tell like when i was reading your book i felt so happy uh because when you were sharing this was the greatest secret i i couldn't agree with you more i i
don't think there is is a deeper secret at the beginning of knowledge and we were always we were always told that this is the first lesson you'll learn and and the one that will take your whole life to live like to actually practice uh and and and and so when i was reading the book i was just it was so beautiful for me because i i could totally see how much you care
for people and and for what journey you want them to take but isn't it fascinating that we almost and you said something really beautiful and you talk about in the book about how actually we are free and we have complete freedom but we limit ourselves but isn't it fascinating that we think that the body and mind keep us safe so like the very things that are
actually keeping us imprisoned we think that they are our safety totally and don't you think you know also with what's happened in the last year that that we had this idea or or or most people have this idea that they work really really hard to get safety and security you know to accrue things and to have money in the bank and to have a house and all of those
all of those things to have safety and security and this world event that came along shook that and actually showed everybody what is the truth and that is that we will never find safety and security in the world and the reason we won't is it's always changing always changing but we are the only safety and security in existence [Laughter] we're trying to get on the outside what
we are on the inside and that is not to say to to enjoy this incredible world i mean this is a miracle this is miraculous this this experience of this world and it is here for us to enjoy in every way that each person wants to enjoy it but to know who we are to to instead of spending our whole life trying to fill ourselves from the outside world which will never
ever work is to spend just a little bit of time on the inside like waking up to i am awareness and or asking am i aware and one of the things that i found that was really fantastic and there's so many incredible practices and i'm sure oh my gosh she would have done so many fabulous ones i would love to hear about that um one of the things that all of the
things in the greatest secret all of the things that i did and the teachers that are in the greatest secret were my journey all of them from the secret through to now every single one of them changed my life in in one way or another some i followed for a couple of years and um and some for a month and but all of those teachers played a really really big part in my life
and so the practice in the greatest secret that had the greatest effect on me and that i would say for anybody is the best thing you can ever ever ever do and that is to never resist negative emotions and instead to do the exact opposite which is what we have not been told to do which is the opposite to resistance is to welcome so resist is push away and welcome is to pull in
embrace yeah embrace exactly exactly and to embrace those negative emotions because the most incredible thing happens when we do embrace them when we allow them to be there when we don't try and change them when we don't try and when we don't want to make them go or or do anything but just allow them to be there they just evaporate they just evaporate and the more that
you do it the faster they evaporate because when i started i would feel a strong emotion and it would maybe last 30 seconds 45 seconds or something like that and then gradually gradually ever way but the more that i welcome the weaker they get each time you welcome a negative emotion just gets weak a week a week or weaker until you don't have a trace of that negative emotion
in the body at all anymore and when you don't have a trace of it you're never going to feel it explain to us as you do in the book what does it mean to truly embrace and welcome a negative feeling what does that mean in practice because i i couldn't agree with you more and just to help people as they're listening and watching the thinking you know what i just right now i'm just
there's so much negativity in the world i'm watching the news i'm stressed out about this my kids are at home i'm having to homeschool how do they welcome that and and i agree with you we resist completely we don't want to feel negative we don't want to because it's not pleasant you know feeling negative feelings so and so when you when you feel a negative
feeling arises in you notice the feeling don't focus into the feeling because if you focus into it you'll just make it stronger the mind is really powerful so don't focus into it but notice the feeling and so and just welcome it so it's almost like you could imagine just putting your arms out like this arms out to the side of you and just allowing the feeling which is
simply energy that's all it is even fear it's just energy and just allowing it to pass on through one thing that i did was i would imagine putting my arms around and embracing the feeling and and pulling the feeling in close to me and i just found that that was amazing for me i think people can try all kinds of different things like i just imagine that that feeling was one
of my oldest dearest friends that i loved so much that i hadn't seen in decades and they arrived at my door and i was just like could not get my arms around them fast enough and that is what i imagined with each of the feelings and i mean at one point in my life i did that with depression and so i wrapped and that's really how i learned how powerful this practice is
because uh when i wrapped my arms around the depression it just dissolved and her and the relief i mean the relief that you feel when the negative feeling dissolves is so good it's worth every it's like a high and the heart and the reason it's like a high is because when you dissolve the feeling there's you underneath and who you really are and so you get a flash of who you
really are this kind of joy and happiness and so yeah that's what i did i would embrace the feeling and hold it in without focusing on it notice it but don't focus into the feeling and and just let it dissolve and i promise the next time you feel that feeling it will never be as strong when you do it and so you do the same thing the next time that feeling arises
and then the time after that it's going to be weaker it just gets weaker and weaker and weaker until you get to a point where you're like i can't remember the last time that i got angry i just can't remember when did i ever get angry you know you're just or agitated or impatient or and so you do it with every feelings so so my to give people a really good guide
i would say that unless you're feeling really happy joyously happy welling up inside of you you have a negative feeling pretty good you don't need to know what the name of it is to welcome it you just welcome you it doesn't matter about its name it doesn't matter what it is just welcome the feeling or embrace the feeling or allow the feeling to be there and then you will begin to
resolve dissolve these negative feelings that are actually masking who you are the more you dissolve them the greater the happiness the rises within you beautiful i love that and i encourage everyone right now who's listening and watching to to do that practice to give it a go to experience it and experiment with it because what rhonda's saying is is something
that it needs to be experienced it needs to be felt it needs to be put into practice it's it's not something that you need to overthink or overanalyze actually do it and and feel it and you'll figure out how it works for you rhonda i'm intrigued what what is the first thing you do in the morning [Music] to start your day what is it that you do that you feel
starts your day because i feel that a lot of the times what i'm noticing especially now in the culture we live in whether it's reaching for our phone whether it's looking at the news we're starting our day with energy that's already putting us in the wrong direction or pushing us in the wrong direction what are you doing what are you encouraging people to do first thing in
the morning to start with this understanding that we are awareness to start with this understanding that negative feelings need to be embraced it's so amazing because the first thing i do now is i lay in bed and as awareness so i be awareness and i just lay there for a particular amount of time just feeling the joy and the freedom of the eternal being that we are
and uh and just lay in an awareness and so that's what i do absolutely every single morning and what's extraordinary now i mean at the beginning it was like i felt like i had to remember to remember to do that but that doesn't even kind of make sense but i that's what i felt i felt like i had to remember to do it and now at the moment i open my eyes is just
awareness just fills the room and the joy just fills the room and so i lay i lay in that prior to that i would wake up every day in gratitude yeah yeah prior to that was gratitude was and you know jay even now if life gets a bit um bumpy or something happens just something not really negative but just something where everything isn't flowing then i will just look at gratitude and and through
awareness just be so grateful for the fact that we are this infinite being and that no one dies i'm so grateful to be aware of this and to know this it's quite you know it's that's also quite humbling that somehow or another in this lifetime is that i had this awakening and realization of this and um because as you say i agree with you 100 i there is nothing greater than knowing
who you are there's nothing there will never be anything greater than that a thousand years from now 10 000 years from now nothing will be greater than knowing who you are and being who you are and it's just step by step little step by step and now's a really good time because the ego is being challenged the mind is being challenged as being hit on all
sides with with the disharmony and the and the disruption on the planet and so now is the best time ever to really like welcome those emotions and and to look toward to look in the direction of who who you are instead of who you are not yeah absolutely absolutely and and i just want to address because i feel like someone may be listening to us and thinking well
well rhonda j how does this help me be successful be happy live the life i want how does you know how does this create it and i just wanna and i wanna dive into what rhonda's going to have to say about this but i just want to address it from from how i see it the understanding is very simple that as rhonda's saying we're not our body and if we think we're our body
we will surround ourselves with things that are good for the body but if we're not the body then none of those things can actually satisfy us and an example that we'd always learn from the vedic tradition was a fish out of water that if you took a fish out of water you could give it a mansion you could give it a car you could give it jewelry you could give it money but that
fish will die because it's not in water it's not where it belongs and it isn't in its natural habitat and and so similarly understanding that we are awareness gives us the opportunity to do what is right for us as awareness to truly feed that awareness because i think the challenge that we think about when we think about success or happiness we think of success and happiness on the
basis of the body and the mind and that's why even after accumulating everything we still feel dissatisfied because those things only touch the body and mind correct rhonda correct correct and and and really the best thing that could happen to everybody is that their greatest dream comes true because when your greatest dream comes true the dream that where you are
absolutely convinced that when this dream comes true that is when i will really be happy the best thing that can happen is that dream comes true because when it does you will realize that there is something missing and that happiness that you thought you would have doesn't last and so it's you know it's it's it's such a beautiful thing and for people who have been
successful then they get to that point and they're like they're not happy and they're not happy because those things were never going to make you happy in the first place anyway and so um but in terms of success i would say this that when you are who you really are when you're living from the place more of who you are than who you are not everything that you need and want
will fall into your hands effortlessly and you are actually the infinite being is effortless and the way to kind of tell who's in charge is whether it's the ego or the mind that's in charge or or who you really are that is in charge in any moment is effort and if you're efforting if you can feel this efforting then it's the ego and the mind and if
you're coming from a place of effortlessness where athletes call it being in the flow and everybody has these kind of descriptions it's where the mind has stopped and just everything is flowing you just feel like everything in the universe is just dancing your dance and singing to your song and so in terms of success when you are being more of who you
are that idea that was going to make you successful is what will come to you that original idea because the mind just recycles that's all it can do it's a program and recycles and the ideas that business kind of business ideas that have never been on earth they are coming from awareness they are coming from above the mine so when you are awareness that is when everything will
fall into your hands everything that you need and it just your whole life flows and you're just happy all of the time like there is it's just like the universe is just saying and i even wrote in the sacred you know the shortcut to the secret is be happy now right just be happy let go of all of the things that that you're saying why you can't be happy
and just be happy now because when you're happy everything just everything just falls into place it's so amazing so definitely for success that is the fastest fastest way to success is to be who you are and um it's not you don't we're not talking about going in a cave or you know or doing anything like that we are talking about living your life in the incredible form and human being
that you are and having the experience that you are but from a place of knowing that you are the infinite being that you are immortal and we are taught as jay said it's got to be through your experience it can't be through oh i heard you know want to talk about this and whatever no not interested in you taking on another belief what what it is is for you to experience
it and it is not hard for you to experience it because it's who you are already it's not anything that you have to go out and get in some ways it's almost frustrating isn't it i remember when i started it out i'm like it's who i am already but at the time you know it'd be like i can tell the minds mind's taken over at the moment and yeah it's already who we are and so we've just
what we've done is we've attributed everything that is awareness to the mind we've given the mind the whole thing and it's awareness that is hearing these words right now that is what's hearing these words right that is what he's seeing uh through these eyes it's awareness it's without awareness we wouldn't even know we're alive exactly well that's that's the thing
rhonda that you know i've i've heard a lot of people say that when they first saw an autopsy or they went to a funeral that's when they realized they weren't the body like that was when they've if you've ever if you haven't seen an autopsy i recommend everyone finds a way to visit the hospital and see just to see to see that allows us to disconnect from we're not this physical
body we get that but i feel that for a lot of people like you rightly said it's difficult to think we're not the mind because like you said we have given the mind all of awareness we think that that is us so so i think a lot of people are getting to the understanding that we are not this body i think i think people can get there to some degree at least in their mind
but then a lot of us struggle to get behind well if i'm not the mind then then what else is there tell us about how you start seeing the the the tell us about how you start seeing the fallibility of us thinking we're the mind so let's just investigate and look at the look at the mind and what the mind is and so it's really good for you to find out what the mind is
especially considering that most of us have given a total authority over our life and we believe all of the thoughts that it produces and which is the voice in your head and the voice in your head is not who you are so that was a really big revelation for me so so all that the mind is made of is thought beginning to end full stop it's thought and so
it's memory which is thought and it has images which is just thought in pictures but it's still thought and the current thoughts that we think uh and so all that the mind is is made of thought and so without a single thought and check for yourself the mind isn't there if there's no thought there's no mind and so when you begin to look at that and investigate that
then it's really quite interesting but then so so now we know that the mind is just thought and therefore when a thought comes and a thought goes if we were our mind then that means that when a thought comes and when a thought goes a little bit of us would go with it and then when a thought comes and the thought goes a little bit more of us would go with the thought if we were our
mind a bit of us would be disappearing with every single thought but if you look at it guess what you are there aware before a thought comes and you're there after it leaves so how can you be the mind and the other thing is what is aware of the thoughts in your head awareness is aware of the thoughts in your head because a thought is not aware a thought has no awareness
whatsoever and so the one that is aware of the thoughts is who you really are and so when you start to and just sort of sit with this a little bit i'm not suggesting that oh in this moment you're like oh i know i'm not the mind but if you just kind of sit with this and next time when you've got a whole lot of thoughts coming through your head that you remember this and
and and think about it oh i was here before all of these thoughts and i am here still here after they go fully intact none of me has disappeared and what was it that was aware because you could you could even ask this question am i the thoughts that i think or am i the one that is aware of those thoughts we never say i mind we say my mind or my body or we say my car
because we realize that we are not it right you don't say i mind you you know so it's it's so clear to us in our even our language that it's my mind that means my mind belongs to something that is me and hence the question is who am i because it's my body and my mind and i think what you just shared so beautifully is exactly that is that it is something that is existing
beyond the purview of the mind and thought simply and for anyone who's wondering and trying to intellectually wrap their head around this the reason why it's so powerful to understand this is because then the negativities of the mind and the body start to affect you less because you realize that they are not you and that they are not your life uh
and and that's the key that you know if anyone's wondering well how does this help me that's how it helps you is because you start to recognize that what happens to the body just like if your car has an accident you may feel a little bit of pain but you don't feel the same pain as when something affects your body directly and that the car is a shell and so similarly you start realizing that i'm a
driver inside my body and my mind and so even though my body's hurt yes obviously i need to go to the hospital and take care of it of course but that still isn't me no and um and you know lester levinson who is in the um who's no longer in physical form but who's quoted in the greatest secret and he would say that uh that our mind is was is just being created
for one reason and one reason only and that is to create what we want that's it full stop that's its job that's its tool to create what we want in this life and what we want to experience in in this life and that it's not our psychiatrist psychologist psychotherapist and tells us what to do and and believing our thoughts and hi jay i believe my thoughts for
decades it's just amazing that you would believe these thoughts in your head and and if if people just notice the next time and i hope there's no next time but that you feel agitated or negative emotional feel stressed it's because you were believing a whole lot of negative thoughts that's it you were just believing thoughts and and then that sends you you know into
into negativity and so our freedom is the mind is wonderful fantastic tool nothing wrong with the mind the only problem comes with the mind is when we think it is who we are that's the only problem and and you give this analogy which i loved you talk about how we're in this dream state uh and there's a need for awakening from that because when you're
asleep right when you're asleep and i think a lot of people feel that i think people right now feel an awakening in their life that's coming tell us about the awakening you're speaking about i just think you know when you've woken up i just think i know when you've woken up because um like if you're wondering oh am i asleep now have i woken up i just when you wake up you feel
incredible you feel so much lighter than you've ever felt you feel so much freer happier uh life just becomes miraculous everything is a miracle the little things that that you just kind of ignored before now are just things that will bring you to your knees because the sheer beauty and love of those things like sunsets and i remember in my life i would hear people speak of
these things and i remember i used to think oh you know i just need to be able to pay my bills you know forget about sunsets and all that kind of thing you know but uh but as you as you awaken it's it's uh it frees it just frees you from all of the all of the limitations and all of the conditioning that we've all had in our lives no one's to blame for that it's just kind of part of the journey
and you you just you just become free the feeling is incredible and you and people can have lots of little awakenings can they not you know along the way like a little and it's usually when you've seen through some belief that um you're like oh my gosh i used to believe that and that isn't true and then you just suddenly feel lighter and freer and so awakening is just a big
one of those it's just a huge sort of realization it's it's like a wow moment but instead it's a wow wow wow everyone can have it there isn't anybody that is that that can't have it everybody can have it because it's who you are already what are some of the daily rituals that people can do to experience what you're speaking about because as we both know it's not
a it's it isn't a life hack or it isn't an app download or it isn't a you know it it isn't it isn't a mechanical operational logistical read this three page you know it's not that so what is it like how do we make it more tangible for our tangible minds because our minds are wanting to do something daily and repetitively because it is repetition there is repetition
what would you say we can do daily well one of the things that that you can do which which really helps disidentify with the body and the mind is to is to take so let me see so first of all take your body and um and just put your body aside over there because you are not the body so just like put that aside for the moment that is not who you are you you can
pick up the body in in a minute or two but just put the body aside and then put aside your name and the age and the description of you and also put it put it aside the story of who you think you are put all of that aside so now the bodies aside the stories aside um all of those other things are aside now what you're going to do is you're going to take the mind and
just for a moment you're going to put the mind aside and that includes all memory and all thoughts and all feelings and you're just going to put that aside as well just pop that aside and now very quickly notice what is left because what is left is awareness and so that is one way that's a really good way in the beginning to come back to awareness and it's like i think in
ancient tradition some of them spoke about it's like peeling the onion right so instead of us accruing we all we think we have to pile on all this knowledge and everything we go go through life and you know i need to learn more and i need to accrue more and i need to get all of these degrees and all of that has its place but it's never going to set you free and so
peeling away what we are not and seeing awareness is what will set you free and once you can get to the place i mean honestly the way that i did it was and i i put it in the book and it was three and it's three steps i would ask myself multiple multiple multiple times in the day am i aware and the moment i would ask am i aware awareness would be there there would be
this awareness and then i would go about my day and then i would ask again am i aware so i did that constantly that's a practice to do constantly after a while actually really short amount of time um days really uh or a week or two weeks when you go to ask am i aware you can't even ask the question because awareness is just completely there immediately like immediately
and so the second step is the first step transforms into the second step so you go from asking the question am i aware to automatically noticing awareness so then lots of times in the day notice awareness and then the third step is stay as awareness and the second step merges into the first step because when you notice awareness enough then you're going to find that you are
staying as awareness more and so what happens is just so people understand what happens is the mind is kind of in the potentially for many in the foreground at the moment and sort of running your life and um an awareness is so quietly beautifully magnificently quietly sitting in the background but when you ask the question when you notice awareness stays awareness
what happens is there's a total shift and awareness comes to the foreground and the mind goes to the background and that way you can use the mind whenever you need to use the mind it's great to make a date like for us doing this podcast it's really great for things like that but then you can stay as awareness and then your life is just absolutely
effortless and you just have incredible happiness and that's that's where it all is i love that rhonda that's it's been beautiful discussing this with you because i love that you really i really do believe it is this you're really challenging all your readers and and the people in the world to go beyond yes uh the body and the mind which really means to go beyond the
desires of the body and the mind which is really difficult because we've been trained to believe that the desires of the body and the mind are what will make us happy and so i i can you know i commend you and and feel great joy that you're putting this message out there and encouraging people to go in this direction and i want to ask you now what we call
the final five these are your final five questions and we do them in a fast five rapid fire so each answer each answer has to be one word to one sentence maximum [Music] so so rhonda these are your final five and the first question is what is your biggest lesson from the last 12 months discovering awareness beautiful what are you hoping to manifest in 2021 freedom and joy for as many people as
possible what do you know to be absolutely true about human nature that many would disagree with that that is ultimately not our true nature human nature is not ultimately our true nature question number four if you could create one law that everyone else in the world had to follow what would it be happiness is mandatory yeah that's right i would have the law
of happiness because then everything would be totally fine i love it and question number five final question beautiful very quick concise answers very very clear and amazing uh fifth and final question what is one truth that you try to live by every day as i try and live by as who i really am so the infinite being that we all are and awareness that i am that is the one that is the most
important thing in my life everyone that's rhonda burn the greatest secret uh if you want to dive deeper into your personal eternal journey then this book is a uh phenomenal guide to doing just that uh it's a lot heavier than it looks too it's like a it's a it's a i know right it's a heavy chunky what happened there the truth is heavy so it's a heavy book
it's uh it's uh you know it's a beautiful book i i highly recommend it uh to everyone who's listening and watching today rhonda it's been a joy spending this time with you i really look forward to meeting you in person and getting to do this again in person one day and i i'm really excited for all your readers the millions of people that will read this book and and take that next
step in their journey towards discovering who they truly are beyond the body and mind if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today