I'm Oprah Winfrey, welcome to Super Cell Conversations, the podcast, I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us. Starts right now.

One of my favorite questions to ask on Super Soul is what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn? The responses are always thoughtful, unique and deeply personal. My own answer to that question has taken a lifetime to learn. I've struggled with my weight for much of my adult life, and I now realize I've been lying to myself about it for just as long. Lying is something I abhor, and lying to yourself is the worst. The deepest part of myself, I think I always knew that I was using food to repress my feelings, any hint of discomfort or agitation that could lead to confrontation or rejection or anyone being upset with me would cause me to eat.

And after talking to so many people on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Super Bowl Sunday, I knew my emotional eating stemmed from a childhood spent getting punished for expressing my feelings after a few weapons, as they were called in my day. I learned quickly how to push my emotions down. I understood even as a six year old and a five year old and a four year old, that my feelings would not be validated.

So even though I knew the root of my weight issues, I only recently discovered how to fix them. As a spiritual seeker, I understand that this journey requires you to not only embrace all that is holding good in your life, but also to continually examine the long buried wounds hidden beneath your carefully crafted surface.

This is what I mean when I say turn your wounds into wisdom, it turns out when it comes to my issues with weight, I needed to take a bit of my own advice. Despite the freedom I felt in forgiving those who hurt me in the past. It's taken me years and many super soul conversations to understand that another unresolved issue existed under the extra weight I was carrying. I realize now that even though I've had the kind of career that brings with it an element of power, versions of my childhood abuser continually showed up in my life disguised in other forms.

This person might have been wearing a skirt or a different pair of pants, but the same relationship dynamic was there. I allowed abusers to cross boundaries rather than confronting them. My childhood history of physical and sexual abuse conditioned me to be silent and overbearing and uncomfortable situations, I pushed those feelings down with food. Years after I became known in the world, I found myself at my father's house with one of the men who had molested me. I couldn't fully explain it to myself at the time, but there I was in the kitchen making eggs for him.

He told me he liked his eggs over easy and I thought, oh, my God, I'm standing here making eggs for this man who abused me and I don't even know why I'm in the room. Looking back, this was a seminal moment for me, I reverted to the silence of my nine year old girl self who thought that speaking up would cause me to be blamed. It is finally clear that this type of compliant relationship has replayed over and over in both my personal and professional life, if I ever became upset about something rather than speaking out, I reverted to the silence of that nine year old girl, just like I did years later.

But making those eggs for a man who had molested me, I finally realized if I was ever going to establish a healthy relationship with my weight, the key was to confront whatever needed confrontation instead of suppressing and eating it. Making that connection feels like a light bulb has finally been switched on a whole room full of them. Aha. Not only have I broken open, I've broken through. Shedding the weight now isn't about meeting goals on the scale or fitting into a dress.

It means allowing myself to tell the truth and live in truth on every level, especially when I'm not happy about something. I have claimed my own freedom by telling people what I really feel at all times, even if it means the end of a relationship for anyone living with layers of shame, suppression or secrecy, certain triggers may force you to confront all of those feelings you've kept at arm's length. So many spiritual teachers have shared on super soul how our greatest epiphanies reveal themselves in times of deep turmoil and despair.

Losing a job, addiction, a breakup, the death of a loved one, illness. These are the types of struggles that can just break us wide open. Best selling author of Eat, Pray, Love and frequent Super Bowl Sunday guest Elizabeth Gilbert calls these bathroom floor moments. Others call them Dark Night of the Soul. Before you start looking outside yourself, asking why me, why me, why me understand that nothing is happening out of order with you, your life is always speaking to you, just like my weight was constantly reminding me of what I thought I had resolved.

When that reckoning comes for you, remember, it's really your life trying to push you in another direction, the universe is opening the door to your next great journey and know this for sure. No experience you've ever had is wasted. Challenges provide opportunities that force us to search for a new center of gravity, don't resist resistance only causes more struggle. You can't win if you're fighting the truth, instead, persist in finding and letting it break you open.

We start with Elizabeth Lesser. You can either break down and stay broken down and shut down or you can break open, and it's a decision you make, it's a commitment. I am going through a very hard time. I'm not going to waste this precious experience, this opportunity to become the best me. So through that experience of getting divorced and becoming a single mother, I lost everything. My financial security, my self-image, my support, my home.

I was really a single mom and everything changed for me. And in the depth of that loss, I found out who I really was. I began to trust who I was. I began to find a genuine me that could withstand anything. And if we fight those times and fight the bad opening, we live sort of half of a life. But when we open into our brokenness, that's when we blossom. Next, Gabriel Bernstein, sometimes when we wake up to spirituality and you know this, you've seen it everywhere, you know what hits the fan and everything falls apart.

And those are the moments when we get to work. Those are not the moments when we drink, but they're not the moments when we go back to the addiction. Those are the moments when we get those moments of showing up to help you show up. Everything comes up so it can be healed. Yeah, must be healed. So this is willingness to pay attention to the assignments that are coming to you and show up for that.

And now, Father Richard, your success is hardly ever your true self.

Only your early window dressing gives you some momentum for the journey. But it's never the real goal.

So the real goal is you do not know that. However, in the moment it just feels right and good necessary.

Your success feels really good and is for a short while.

It doesn't teach you anything, everything meaningful. I'm going to say up to the age of 30, you need some successes to create your ego structure, but it's an arbitrary number. But after 30, everything I've learned has been from humiliation, sin, failure, rejection, betrayal.

Yeah, that's the difficult times. Teach you so much. That's when my soul expands. Now, I don't like it and I don't know what afterwards too. You know, you want to get rid of it. But then two days later in the surrendering, the accepting, the seeing. I realize I'm larger.

I'm larger. I just love that, don't you? Now let's listen to Ali McGraw. Didn't you have at 65, we're talking about aging gracefully, being who you are, because I think being spiritual is about coming into who you really are.

I think you're really, really meant to be. That's that's what the path looks like for me when you turn 65. Was that a scary moment? Was it a no, it's a moment of reckoning. It's like, well, this is real.

You know what I did? It was so funny. I keep a journal only when I travel. And I went to this place that a friend owns in a little corner of Mexico. And I brought a book and brilliantly colored pens. And I locked myself in my room and I wrote the The Today I'm 65 thing. And I said stuff like, Am I ever going to have sex again in read or do I have to do something about the third chin in a hideous electric green?

So I couldn't, like, hide behind the kind of truths you talk about with your best girlfriend. I told myself some of the vanity scares and I wrote and I cried and I wrote and I write.

And then I got so bored with it, it was like two days of drinking tea and writing my true scary stuff and a lot of other things.

Were you scared not to be called pretty anymore? I was scared about all the things that we're taught we should start getting scared about. And I wrote them and then I went, OK, that's it.

And I felt like it's time, you know, you got that one down. Let's go on and live.

It was a very jubilant day. So it was an exorcism of sorts. It was a total with that.

Wow, the sky sale is now on. And who doesn't need a pick me up at this time of year? So get award winning Sky TV and our best ever wi fi with ultra fast broadband together from just 50 euros a month for 12 months. Well, that's nice. That's a feel good saving from us. So save big on the sky sale search sky fifty today. New Sky customers only availability subject to location, minimum term and further terms applied for more info see Skydeck reports lesbian's.

Today's episode is supported by Chopra, Your best you is waiting inside wellbeing is a journey. Let Oprah and Deepak Chopra be your guide. Over the past seven years, Oprah and Deepak, I produced over 300 meditations that will last a lifetime, transform every aspect of your life with a complete 21 day meditation collection from the pioneers and well-being for a limited time. You will also get a year of the Chopra app putting a comprehensive guide to well-being in the palm of your hand.

Unlock the full 21 day meditation library now before it goes away forever. Visit Choper dot com, slash Oprah and start your journey today. Sarah Bandaranaike, was it a surprise to you the way that simple abundance was received not just by my staff and by myself, but the way the world responded to that book?

Yes. Did you kind of lose your mind? I tried very hard not to. One minute I was doing the carpool and changing the kitty litter and writing about gratitude and being told that no lifestyle book based on gratitude will, you know, is ever going to catch fire.

And then the next. I was asked to do it. Yes. In a word, I was it blew it blew my mind.

Blew your mind. And I would say I'd been a person who practice gratitude.

And what simple abundance did for me is to ritualize, to bring into my life on a daily basis the experience of practicing gratitude. But it's really difficult, I think, when not just money, but real wealth you hit and you were not prepared for it, even though everybody who's watching us right now, you know, would love to win the lottery and everybody says you won it when it comes, you have to really be ready for it.

Were you ready? No, I was not. And, you know, that was such a completely head turning, heart turning flip on your given what you can handle. So I tried. I tried my hardest.

So you quickly rose to that lifestyle. Yes. Yeah.

Did you know what you could afford and couldn't afford at that time?

No. I also didn't know as I took on staff, I also didn't know how much that was all costing.

So you took on you had nine assists. I had nine assistants, nine assistants, their salaries, health insurance. There are more.

Yeah, but, you know, I made every money mistake a woman could have personally and in business. But their mistake.

Did you make those mistakes? I really thought it would continue. I really thought it would continue because I was putting out the best that I could do. I did not slack.

You were like a rock star with a hit album, hit book.

Who thought that I will just continue to make the hits and the hits will keep on coming and I'll go on tour and it'll be here forever, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So you married again? I did. After seven years I met a man that I had originally met in my 20s and I thought, this is it, this is it. I thought it was my love story, you know, and I believed very much in it.

And it turned out it wasn't a love story. We were all right for the first couple of years, although he told me that I was no good with money, despite the fact that I made no money, made the money, I was no good at handling the money.

And you believed that because there was a part of you that would have to be the only way you could accept that is there is a part of you that believed that that was true.

So how could you allow yourself to be berated for money that you had earned the first time it happens? You think that's a little out of line? Yes, I call those the whispers, yes.

Time is always. Hmm, that's strange. You should not be talking to me that way. Yes. Right.

And I also wanted his approval. And since I had not accepted that simple abundance was a phenomenon. Huh. Since I thought it was a fluke, maybe he was right.

But then then you start to get beaten down.

So the next question is, why do you stay home? The first two years had been all right.

I put it in quotes. You know, I thought that. It wasn't that bad because I love the way you say it wasn't that bad, and you who wrote simple abundance you're willing to now live with wasn't that bad.

But I think all of us make compromises. I remember in my 20s being in a relationship with someone who didn't hit me, and that was my that was that was my bet.

Because if you ever hit me, I'm not going to be hit.

But you would allow yourself to be demeaned in other ways. I figured that out in my 20s. And I think that's really the real lesson for everybody. Even though you had all of the trappings of success and you look like it and you walk like it and you're the click of your Manolo Blahnik on the pavement, said, I am successful that still somewhere inside you must have not felt that. In an authentic, pure way, in order to put up with somebody berating you, I'll accept that, I'll accept that.

But you get battered down and you become very, very vulnerable.

Are you saying that you stayed because you felt dependent upon him at that time or you felt that you were tied to him or you didn't recognize but know by the time that that you know, and it happened around our second anniversary, he'd really changed his behavior toward me.

And at some point I said, why are you treating me so mean? I don't know what's happened. And he said, because all the money's gone. I realized all the money's gone. That couldn't possibly be true. I can't possibly have heard that. And it was true what disturbed you the most? The fact that all the money was gone or the fact that you didn't matter as much because all the money was gone?

Oh, the fact that I didn't matter. OK, you know, it was like, what? So you were only here because I had the money. Yeah, that that was the realization for you that was and then I was ashamed. And then the very things that he was saying, I started to believe somebody hits you, you know, to get at it.

You're not going to hit me. Yeah, that's right. But when it's these angry, vicious things that are said. Hmm.

And I didn't want to admit that I had made a disastrous mistake, but I just want to say this to anybody who's listening to us right now, that it always, always, always and you know this it's always about you. It's always about you. Nobody can speak to you in a way that demeans your spirit unless you are willing to be demeaned or feel that you deserve that. And so would you agree with that? Yes, we just cannot it can't be.

Well, that's the same idea as you can only betray yourself. That's right. It was betraying myself on many levels. But then, I mean, our story has a happy ending. And I left. Yes. Yeah. That gave you the courage to get up and leave that. My daughter came over, she was worried about me. She surprised me for Christmas and Mom. What's going on? She said he's sucking the life out of you.

He's not making you happy. Mm hmm. And I said she's right. And then I said, I don't know how to help myself. She said, Mom, you've helped millions of women. Wow. She said, I'll help you help yourself. Wow. I said, I don't know. I don't know where to begin. She said, well, will begin. So you ended up on your sister's doorstep with your cat and one suitcase and one suitcase and divorce proceedings start divorce proceedings.

That is an amazing story from simple, abundant abundance, real abundance, thorough abundance to on the doorstep.

Was that good for you? Yes. Yes. Because I never wrote a book like that. I mean, I was I was writing for my life. I was not writing to make it. This was my life, that my life on the page, understanding money, seeing how money, my mistakes with money, how that had influenced all. That's so interesting.

Have you reached a place of serenity for yourself? You say in here that you wrote this book to save yourself, right? Are you there? The place of peace in the same way with authenticity, in simple abundance. Some days are more authentic than others. Some days are more financially serene.

I loved your chapter that you did on Tomorrow is another day because it is as it is, you can get up and you have a chance. You know that famous line from Scarlett O'Hara? Tomorrow is another day and I often say tomorrow is another day. Scarlett, we can try it again.

And the real truth is, is that having made mistakes really is the universe's way of pointing you in another direction to say tomorrow is another day.

Scarlett, right? Mm hmm. Yeah, I really felt that when the car pulled out of the driveway in England, even though I was leaving everything behind, didn't know what would happen. I really felt that you. Heaven-Sent sure. She got it. She got you.

Carolyn Mays, I need you to be fully present, just fully present, and to appreciate all that is in your life right now, just no matter where it is, no matter where it is, no matter what it is to appreciate fully and what a person does, I can't pay my bills.

I lost my job, OK? I'm in the depths of despair, in the depths of despair. And still, I need to say to you, you need to say to me, you had your life focused on something that didn't belong to you and a path that didn't belong to you.

Yes, you did or you wouldn't be here. You locked in on something that did not belong to you, someone that didn't belong to you. You didn't let go of it yesterday, that didn't belong to you. You hung on to a rage that did belong to you and you wouldn't let it go.

You lost track of being here and that is true. Or this is what you did, a track of being here. Yes. Now or something happened to you. And you said this. It shouldn't have and you never got over it.

Oh, one of those things happened and you said it shouldn't have happened to me. I promise you that happened when someone finally said it's not my life. I don't know how I lost my purpose. No, you didn't. You did not lose your purpose. What you lost was this sense that you thought certain things shouldn't happen to you. And they did as if you were excluded from the ordinary, everyday things of life and you can't get over it.

So to live with no judgment, no expectations and no expectation, no expectation in this sense, think about this. Expectations are that certain things should not happen to you that happen to ordinary people. I got it.

People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt. Please, God, make me anything but not ordinary, huh?

Right. Yes, yes, yes. And because they do that, they feel like they should be protected from ordinary things.

That's right. So when something happens like an illness, poverty, any kind of catastrophe. I can't believe this happened to me. Llewellyn von Lee, you talk in in transformation of the heart about the journey to spirituality being painful, that it is, you talk, as we talked earlier, about the crucifixion of the ego and yours was very painful.

Yeah, very, very painful, because when I came to my teacher when I was 19, I was so arrogant. You know, I meditated for a few years. I'd done half a yoga. I'd had some experiences in meditation, and I really thought I knew something about it. And one has to learn humility. You have to learn patience. You have to learn that it isn't about you. And those are all painful lessons. We don't learn them so easily.

Human beings. We wanted to be easy, but it isn't because. Why must it be so painful? Because the heart has to break for the Sufi. The heart has to break open. Most people are so close, they are so contracted. It's all about me, me, me. Oh, I see. And that's what you mean by the crucifixion or the ego then that the heart breaks. And then he says, I am with those whose hearts are broken for my sake.

So by the crucifixion of the ego, you mean the heart has to break. You have to get taken out of the the sense that everything is happening for you, that everything is about you go. That's right. Yes. And so then you begin to live your life in alignment with the beloved, in alignment with God, asking God constantly in a constant state of how can I served. Yes, but I would say when you are in alignment and you are in service to what God wants you to do, it's also the most exhilarating.

The most stimulating. It is really I'm going to cry. And it was beautiful. It is. You want nothing more. You want nothing just to be in service for the rest of your life. Yeah, you do. Michael Beckwith, when circumstances and situations are pressing in upon us, the only way we can overcome them is to go within, to actually begin to ask very empowering questions with the awareness that this universal presence and its law will answer any question that you ask.

So if you're in a situation that is pressing on you and you ask what's trying to emerge in my life, what is my gift to share, what is my purpose, why am I here on the planet? Not just how can I pay my rent, not just how can I stop the pain, which are bad questions and not just even what should I do?

Not even what should I do, but what should I do. But the universal questions you ask, empowering questions.

The universe will answer these questions in a language and in a way that you can understand. There will be inner prompting. There will be intuitive hits, nudges, signs, symbols, dreams. It'll come in the language of the individual soul and heart. The difficulty is that when people are in tough situations, they ask disempowering questions. They say, what's wrong? Who's to blame? Yeah, why me?

Yes, those are the disempowering questions. So the universe will answer those two. It'll pull on the database of human experience and say you were born on the wrong side of the tracks or you were born on the right side of the tracks, or this happened or that happened will give you a bevy of excuses. But if you ask an empowering question, you'll get an answer to rise above the muck. So it's all about the question, the sincerity of the question, and then the ability and the willingness to to really listen, to really be available.

That's where the juice is.

And that is available to every human being, whether an individual is in prison, whether an individual's imprisoned by circumstance, imprisoned in their own mind about an event that happened in their past. It doesn't matter once you ask with sincerity, the universal answer. That's the way it operates. Elizabeth Gilbert, tell us about that moment of despair where you're in the bathroom. I'm not somebody who really grew up praying. We went to a very conservative Protestant church where you didn't really pray.

Yeah. You know, so I just started praying. I thought, oh, I've heard of this. Right. When people are in despair and they're sobbing and sometimes they pray. So let me give that a shot, you know? And I just started speaking directly. I had no experience how to do it, but I just said to God, I need your help. I don't know what to do. Please tell me what to do. And the decision I was struggling with was, do I stay in this marriage?

Do I leave this marriage? And I just kept saying over and over again, tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. And I I kept waiting for the big sort of Charlton Heston answer, yes, yes or no go, you know, and but that's not how it speaks to you. No, no. And what happened was that all of a sudden I fell into this pocket of stillness, unlike anything I had ever felt in my life, this divine quiet envelope of peace.

And I heard this voice that was my own voice, but not and in my head. And it said very clearly, go back to bed, this. And that was the answer that God gave me that night, which was you don't need to know tonight on a Tuesday at four o'clock in the morning what to do because you don't know and you won't know until you do know. But in the meanwhile, you need to sleep because you need your rest and you need your strength.

Go back to bed. I'll keep the watch. Mm hmm. Try it again tomorrow. Try it again tomorrow. And every night it can go back to bed. We're getting there. When you know you'll do it, you'll be watching. Cleanin Doyel. You say we, especially women, find out very early in life that there is a system to telling the truth that split us in two. Explain that to Glenn. Yeah, I felt split into my entire life.

There is the part of me on the outside that saying the things that I'm supposed to say, like I'm fine, just like this.

Disney in a film.

Yeah.

And then there's the part on the inside of me that's like scared and lonely and confused a lot. And what I think that happened is I really think that we are all truth tellers. I think we were just need to tell the truth. And so I think that people who it is very hard for the world to hear the truth from a woman. It's easier for the world to hear the truth from a man. Yes. But since negative emotions are less acceptable from a woman, right.

We end up sometimes telling our truth in different ways than words. Dangerous ways like this is, was the food for me, the boost for me. I think we tell the truth with something. Everybody tells the truth of something, whether it's they say I'm not fine with a credit card or they say I'm not fine with overeating or they say I'm not fine with booze or sex or unkindness or whatever it is. Which is why it's so powerful when you can integrate this two selves and tell the truth.

The story of what's going on on your inside with your words. Michael Singer, so we should look at our disturbances and see what our disturbances are trying to tell us about ourselves. It's like if your body started to hurt you, don't say shut up. You say I wonder what's wrong is trying to talk to me. That is your heart telling you something's wrong inside of me. You want to get it out. And so you just appreciate life as your teacher and then ultimately just we get it done.

How do you get it out? You relax and it will work itself out. That is my experience. You relax, you relax and don't touch it and relax behind it and it will come up and push its own way out. It's almost as if your heart doesn't want that inside. Yeah. And when you do that, you will start to feel something open up inside of you. I guarantee you. You call it spiritual, whatever you want, you will start to feel a strength of power behind you, not in front of you with the thorns are behind you where you've been leaning back into and it will support you and strengthen you and feed you.

And the rest of the stuff will just fall away.

Iyanla Vanzant now for Primal Fears. No. One, the fear of losing someone's love or having your love rejected the human mind just can't even handle that.

The fear of being powerless or helpless and therefore you're not safe in your being. So the fear of being on, say, the third fear is really the number one human addiction.

The number one human addiction is not chocolate, it's control. So that third fear is the fear of losing control, control of yourself, control of others, control of what will happen, how it'll happen, when it will happen sends the human ego into total meltdown. And then the other fear is just not being seen as valuable were the necessary. So anger is really the manifestation of one of those fears that you love is being rejected or that is going to be taken away, that you're going to be seen as helpless, hopeless, therefore vulnerable.

And, you know, the ego can't stand from ego, can't be involved because vulnerable means weakness to the ego. So I think you're perceived as being weak and you must do something to protect yourself and to show yourself to be.

And in order not to be vulnerable, you want to maintain control. So when you can't control how somebody is doing what they're doing, there's a fear there. And that takes us into and here's the thing about anger that I hope everyone can get, that you're never angry for the reason you think you are a whore ever. Aha. Because you're not born with anger in you. OK, we're not born with it. So something happened and you had that helpless, hopeless, vulnerable, powerless, lack of control response and that made an impression.

You see the experience made the imprint, the thing happened. And then on the soul there's an impression, an impression. And any time anything that looks like sounds like smells like is related to that first impression raises those feelings up in you. The anger is stirred up.

So you think you're angry because Booboo left? You know, that is really not the origin, the core. So Booboo was the trigger. Booboo was the trigger. Right now I'm trigger. Well, it's just coming into your life to remind you that there's something down there that you need to handle open right beneath the anger, there is a well of hurt.

And we stay at the anger because it gives us control, because we are afraid to go into the hurt, because right beneath the hurt is the love. This is what I want you to do. I want you to drop your hands to your side. I also want you to disconnect your brain. That means close your eyes, OK? Just take a breath. Well, it won't kill you and invite the hurt forward. Just invited for. Dr. Shefali Sabari.

With every conflict with your child, with every argument, with every eye roll that your child engages in, you have an opportunity to either step into your ego with control and power and dominance and hierarchy or you have a chance to look within, ask what in me is being triggered? Why am I reacting with this confused helplessness, this desire to seek control and turn the mirror inward? Ask, what about me? Is my child triggering right now? What about me?

What about my childhood? What about my grandmother's self?

Is my child reflecting because that's what your children will do. They will bring up all your stuff. Yes. PMA children, self-improvement means that I'm going to be different than I am now, so if the view instead is that there's nothing wrong here, I haven't done anything wrong. But there's things that are obstructing me from really fully feeling that. Well, then let's just look at those things and know them completely and utterly. Let's know our rage. Let's know our fear.

Let's know our resentment. This is what I'm saying. I got it. And I knowing it, listening to what you say about yourself and letting some of that negative self talk go, you know, then the fundamental thing is there. It's like the sun is always shining, but there's clouds obstructing it.

Cheryl strayed. What did the trail teach you, if you had to sum it up, acceptance? I really so often had to accept, accept the fact of the hour, the fact of the mile, the fact of the summer, the facts of my life. And over and over again, I found that if I could do that, everything else sort of gave way. And it led me to the next step, the next thing that was going to reveal itself.

And I think that that is such a powerful and important thing. We all suffer. We all have heartbreak. We all have difficult things. That's part of life. And that was a really profound thing for me to to accept that and to come to grips with that. And the fact that that journey that summer taught me, it gave me that that really grand sense of humility that I think you have to have to keep walking in ways both literal and metaphorical.

Deepak Chopra. What you can do in any situation, any situation, no matter what the challenges, you can always go to your state of being and how do you go to your state of being. You stop no matter what the challenges, you stop. A few deep breaths, his smile everywhere in your body. You observe what is happening in your body, in your mind. And then you proceed with loving kindness and compassion. Stop. S stop to take three deep breaths or observe p.

proceed with kindness and joy and love. That's the state of being is the highest form of human intelligence. Idea, Ashanti, we're not taught that difficulty can have a profound and meaningful, transformative effect on us. You know, we might be taught that in a way someone might say that, but what do I do? What do I do when I'm suffering? What do I do when I really feel overwhelmed? How do I work with the minutia of my experience so that it's transformative and not just another episode of Suffering in a lifetime of suffering?

What is the answer to that question? What do I do with it? Oh, I think the first thing is you have to be really unconditionally open to it and. Take responsibility. How have I gotten myself right here? Oh, that is the question, isn't it? Am I willing to see how I got that I got here choice by choice. By choice. By choice. Oh, that's a hard one, isn't it? It's it's really hard.

And it also has that other side, doesn't it?

Not because it's so if you want to blame other people, you want to say, well, if they hadn't done that, if they should have done that or I was so busy, I could.

Yes, but if we look at it this way, if somebody else was fully to blame for my current state, whatever that is, then that's it. I'm done. I have no hope. Right. If they're the real blame, I can't go back and change anything that's ever happened. Right. Right. If that's the reason. Yes, I'm stuck. That's hopeless, but when we realize that may have certainly affected how I experience this moment, there's a link there and there's usually things about it that we don't want to own up to.

And it's both difficult. And it's also once you start, you start to realize it's very liberating because the keys to your happiness are no longer in somebody else's pocket from the past. They're in yours. And that's that's empowering. Well, I was going to say. And that's powerful. That's right. Very powerful. Yeah. And I'm talking about people I've seen do this that have horrendously difficult pasts, extraordinarily traumatic, traumatic, violent past that can really come to see how am I sustaining that trauma?

How am I traumatizing myself? How am I continuing it? Not in the sense of being to blame for it. You know, not that I'm to blame for it, but since the past isn't here now, how is it that I'm keeping it alive? What's the dynamics? What's actually happening? What is it about us that we think we have to continue to live from our history instead of stepping up and out of our history, which is what you were saying.

The true definition of awakening is when that happens to you, literally, it lifts up and out of you. It's right. Yeah, that's what I felt at the time. An insight that came to me was at the time, of course, as a human being history. But as my essence, I realized I have no history. Eternity knows no history. Eternity is the eternal present.

So when you or I become that, we hold on a moment that is to that into eternity knows no history, really.

No, because eternity is always right now. Yeah. Any of us can check that statement out when we're completely present with anything. Yeah. All of a sudden at that moment for how long it lasts. There's no yesterday. There's no ten years ago. There's not even a minute ago. It's all gone. All it knows is this instant.

I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple podcast and subscribe rate and review this podcast. Join me next week for another super soul conversation. Thank you for listening.