Superpowered Mind with Clare Dimond

Hi Clare. Hope you're well? Just finished reading Well, and loved it. Thanks! I've had a year out from reading 3P you're books but now seem to have got a taste for it again. I'm now reading HOME and finding it pretty all-engrossing. Loving the humoured too😀. I have a question for you about universal mind/ consciousness. How do we know it's something universal rather than just a phenomenon of the brain that all brain owners have? I think about the space which is the gap between thoughts. It's a space of peace and ease. Is it universal though? Or just what my brain does when it's not doing its usual busy work? It's this spiritual 'universality' which I struggle with.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” ― C.G. Jung

So powerful and clear explanations are coming from your videos of the THEM course.Thank you very much for all your wisdom you're sharing with us.Listening to Day 28 the words struck me where you're explaining how relationships can be held when we don't need anything from the other person, especially words: ''They don't even have to stay alive''.A question came up: '' What would grieving look and feel from this sane place?''Remembering my grieving over loss of a close friends and later after loss of my father due to cancer. It was a lot about me and not so much about them really. It was more about how their death will affect me, what will I be lacking after they're gone etc.Would love to hear your thoughts on that :)

I’ve just listened to todays message and have a quick question perhaps you might be able to clarify. If we are feeling all feelings without resistance aren’t we feeling our conditioning rather than reality? When, for example, I feel anxious, it’s coming from thinking, not actual reality..??

You recently said that everything that’s happened to us had to happen.Why?

what’s real about the patriarchy- about the systemic oppression of women, particularly women of color? Or flipped- the systemic prioritization of money and power controlled by white guys? It doesn’t appear to be a particularly nourishing system on a global scale for anyone. In this conversation, it feels like we are focusing on our individual mind/body systems, that getting into them helps access what’s real, AND it does feel to me like there is some level of “real” collective trauma looking to be revealed and healed- versus “personal” trauma…

Hi lovely Clare,Can you say more about what is happening when the ego's needs for validation, approval, being liked, etc. *do* seem to be met? What is that? Sometimes it seems like a temporary respite, like giving a piece of candy to a child who is tantruming. Other times it seems like presence/connection emerges and there's simply life unfolding and then the mind labels it as "belonging" or "being seen/heard/validated". Can you share more about that please?

Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship Terrence Real

The real you is a field of intelligence in which the person you have identified yourself with, all other persons, as well as the environment in which they exist, all co-arise and co-evolve as a result of your own self-interactions. Deepak Chopra

Psychedelics Listener question

When you’ve been friends with someone for many years and then they start to delete you and ignore you but find many reasons to avoid you but they are saying they aren’t….is it time to leave the relationship?

I think what’s happening is I’m looking for myself/home in the otherI need them to feel okOr the insecurity does The need for attention/belongingAnd I look to thought for the answerBut I am also the space that sees that

Hope you are well. A lot has changed for me in a positive way since we last connected. Far too long for an email but again my gratitude for the membership. Finding THEM very helpful. Wondered if this could be covered in a podcast or maybe I should ask on the webinar? 6 weeks ago I found myself effortlessly signing up for online dating 9 years post divorce. I’ve had no other relationship since the divorce as bringing up kids, working full time and caring for elderly relatives and just didn’t think I had the capacity to look or take on someone else. My husband had been unfaithful so I was also very scared of getting hurt again. In the 6 weeks of online, I’ve have two conversations by message leading to nothing as both ghosted me but then unexpectedly connected with someone last week and had a couple of dates. Felt very comfortable and there was a strong physical connection. Plenty of chat back and forth before we met and in between but now little. I’m feeling like a love sick teenager, with every What’s App notification, wondering if it’s him, wondering why he’s reading messages but taking a day to reply, why wasn’t in touch sooner given we had a lovely time, he was keen and he was a gentleman. Did I read the signals wrongly? I’m feeling rejected and a bit confused. I wanted to be open and clean in my communications but online dating seems to be a game that has to be played and I’m not sure of the rules so may have been too much too soon. It was lovely to have male company and attention again and I unexpectedly thoroughly enjoyed myself. Having withdrawn myself for so long I don’t want to retreat again but also don’t want to be feeling this needy. Wondered your perspective. I know you talk of your experiences.

Deep into THEM course I came up with the question about giving and receiving feedback.To give some illustration to this question I can recall my own example that happed to me while giving feedback to leaders of my team at work. As I presented my point of view what's working and what could be done differently I got the answer from two of the leaders as they both said, that this is just mine projection and point of view and that they don't see it that way. So my feedback just bounced back.I felt cut off with this single sentence answer feeling like my opinion doesn't matter.And as I looked at it later and also today my conclusion is that it's difficult for me to be a part of that team which doesn't accept or at least openly discussed feedback of employees. Being in THEM course keeps me wondering: ''Is my conclusion about this event childhood need to be heard or adult response to it''? What' real here? Is the difference that makes the difference between the two in the feeling?

'HOME The return to what you already are' by Clare Dimond Sunday Book

To travel a circle is to journey over the same ground time and time again. To travel a circle wisely is to journey over the same ground for the first time. In this way, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the circle, a path to where you wish to be. And when you notice at last that the path has circled back into itself, you realise that where you wish to be is where you have already been ... and always were.Neale Donald Walsch

Hi Clare, I still stumble and ruminate about this whole notion of change. I know you answered already a lot of questions and the anwers are logical, but this system here just keeps asking and not knowing. So the thing is: change just happens if for the system it makes no more sense to sustain a behaviour. Ok so far. And when and why this happens, who knows? Something has been seen, heard whatever. Suddenly the systems sees things differently and what made sense yesterday doesn't make sense anymore. So this sounds like there is nothing to do, no attitude to take, no whatever to initiate this change. But still there is seeking and wanting to change. Where does this come from? And still and this is my main question there are tons of people who claim to decide to change or decide to do things differently and it worked for them. What is this then? Delusion? It was just the system ramdomly changing things and they just think they had a say in it? Or what? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Can fulfillment and satisfaction co-exist with longing/desire or does the arising of longing and desire have to arise in a system of unfulfilled needs?

I'm wondering what your take on this is. I have heard that what we are is life living through us. Do you think this life or consciousness can have the desire to live through us in a different way, or is it completely neutral?

I have a question that I have been chewing on for a bit.It goes like this.Where does the "understanding" often spoken of, happen?It seems to me that it would have to happen in the "system" also spoken of.And the skill or ability to observe or witness the thoughts and feelings that come out of the system, would also have to be trained into the system would it not?Maybe even the realization that there is no self, would be something that would also have to be trained into the system, regardless of where that realization originated.Then with that realization and those skills or abilities, the system would take that in and use it if it makes sense, therefore changing the system and allowing for more possibilities.

Continued from 8 July I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

Do you see any value in things like somatic exercises that calm the nervous system or is that just nother way of avoiding and not feeling ?

The body-mind, the system, the robot, the unit... Wonderful Words

I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

I’ve been pondering the experience you often described of sitting with a feeling and inquiring into what arises as a healing space of awareness, where a shift happens. And while I’m sometimes aware that there is no me to do it or anything, I wonder what actually happens when a shift occurs and how whatever happens takes place? When I think there is a me doer, I wonder how best to inquire into it, to see through it, make it transparent?This may be the result of way overthinking it, and if so it wouldn’t be the first time.An example might show my pondering:I talk on the phone with my darling, beloved sister. She shares with me what’s been happening in her life and I note an edge in her voice when she tells me of something particularly good that has happened to her. I hear this “edge” as bragging, a subtle putdown, and feel annoyed and jealous. I’m aware that I’m feeling this and then add on top of this a level of self-recrimination and guilt, as annoyance and jealousy aren’t “good” emotions. I love my sister and feel I should be happy for her, period.So I feel all of this and sit with it. I feel diminished and I feel icky. And then I inquire about what’s going on. I see old childhood rivalries and competition for parental love and attention. I see where, sometimes when I talk with her, I am annoying and bragging. I own it. I allow as we’re both human we’re entitled to express human emotions. I see that our reactions come from our body/mind systems of how to be in the world. I allow as what I heard in her voice was my own projection. I’ve taken an endless deep dive into my psychology. This may be well and good, but it feels like drowning in concepts and beliefs. Every “rational” explanation feels like another card in a house of cards that is built on vapor, going nowhere. How is this healing?I wonder who is doing this diving and feeling and inquiring? Is this the body/mind busy defending its existence? Is this a process, a practice, for healing that, like Bryon Katie’s The Work, becomes steps to be followed when a constriction is felt? Or is this inquiry description only of what happens when feelings are felt with inquiry, not a prescription? What makes the shift, the flip from personal to impersonal? Sitting with the feelings and inquiring into them can feel like endless, pointless suffering. What is it in feeling the feelings, asking in curiosity about them, that shifts to the allowing of it, the accepting it, the witnessing it?

I’d love to hear your reflection on these teachings. They assume free will, duality, and mastery are our best intentions. When Seneca was an advisor to Nero, he served alongside an aide named Epaphroditus, the owner of a slave named…Epictetus.Yet between Seneca, who was the richest man in Rome, Epaphroditus, who was one of the most powerful men in Rome, and Epictetus, who as a slave had no power at allit would be the slave who was the most free.How could that possibly be?Seneca himself would say that to be free is to belong to yourself. It is to be in charge of your mind, your will, your self. It is to insulate yourself from pointless obligations, from other people’s expectations, from materialism and the slavery of cravings or aspirations.“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power,” Seneca said.Seneca would know, for he was acutely aware that he lacked such power. So did Epictetus. Not only as a slave, but also as a witness to Nero slowly buying and trapping Seneca in a gilded cage. In the end, Seneca couldn’t even quit his job without permission. It was the ultimate prison—one with no walls.Seneca was not a singular figure in this regard. Epictetus saw countless other people who were unable to walk away from a job they hated because they were walled in by big houses and fancy titles. He saw people contorting themselves to get on Nero’s good side. He saw all the limitations and constraints that come with money and power. He saw how jobs that needed to be held for years in order to get ahead narrowed the choices of the ambitious who held them, like chains attached to their own yoke.Epictetus was horrified by what he saw. “It is better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind,” he would say, “than to live anxiously amidst abundance.”“Freedom is the prize we are working for,” Seneca wrote, “not being a slave to anything—not to compulsion, not to chance events.” Then he said, “show me a man who isn’t a slave.” To money. To work. To fear. To whatever everyone else is doing. To alcohol, to cigarettes, soda, material possessions, bad habits, followers on social media, anchors on cable news. Indeed, we have many masters.

'If there is no doer does that mean there is no doing?' Listener question

If thoughts create our reality what do we do because we do not choose our thoughts and we cannot change our thinking. What do we do to have a better experience. When we are in depression our thoughts are constantly awful negative and dark. They are on a loop and you don’t get a break from them. How do we change them.

I have a lot of respect for you, have read all your books, and resonate with how you "teach" about life and how you help people. Honestly, I am at a point where I don't know whether to reach out to someone who I respect, or just try to stop saying and feeling the same things over and over. It has taken me several months feeling this way to decide to finally write to you. As you have said many times, we can't stop the thoughts that go on repeat in our brains/computers. This is a difficult email to compose, as I really have no business taking up your precious time, so I'm apologizing up front. My hope is, you will read it, and make some sense of it.I am 64, two time cancer survivor, divorcee, and full of unrest. When I was sick, I lost everything, and to make a long story short, I was one week from becoming homeless, and all I have been able to do is put bandaids on my entire existence and financial situation. It is the only way I can describe it and as truthfully as I can. "Reality!" LOL! I was able to keep my home, although like many, I am living month-to-month, and so close to the losing it all. At my age, job prospects are very slim to none when the income level I need is higher than most. My biggest regret is not paying cash for my home when I could have. I listened to everyone BUT my own wisdom. Here in America, we get brainwashed into going into debt, so we have a credit rating, AND, supposed tax benefits that have all gone away. Who knew I would get sick, lose everything, and not have anyone or any thing to fall back on at all. Like many have said and thought............why me? I have made many, many mistakes. Am I being punished? Why would GOD, (The way I choose to define the Universe.), hurt itself, after giving us the greatest gift of all, "FREE WILL." It makes no sense. To get right to the point, I wake up every day, thinking the same "thoughts", with a feeling of complete unrest, unhappiness, and all the other words to explain the emptiness I feel. I don't have any more to say about it other than I want to hand it off to GOD, the Universe, Universal Mind. My question is this. How do I let go? Truly let go? I want to be free. Why do I keep on shouldering everything I do? We are all one?There are no more words, analogies, sentences, or ways to explain. I know in my heart I want to continue looking within, turn to the inside, my heart and soul. I want to so badly. I don't know how. If someone could answer the question of how to turn inside, to be ourselves, to just be, and could actually make it happen, it would help a lot of people. Is it possible to feel like I have never truly been me other than when I was younger. I have a medal I had made when I was a child. It says, "Keep That Winning Feeling!". I felt that "special feeling", and knew enough back then to recognize it and want to keep it. I have been chasing it ever since. I know it's LOVE. Feel free to respond if you want to. As I said above, you are very well respected, and in my heart, you are someone who "gets it". Life, Love, whatever this is. While writing this, a thought came to me that said the word, TRUTH. I have always looked to the outside, whether it was my mom, counselors, teachers, friends, stuff, etc. looking for direction. Not to get all wu wu, I would love answers from my GOD. How do I know it's TRUTH/WISDOM coming to me within?Thank you for your time and I hope this makes some kind of sense.

'No-brainer'. Wonderful words of the week

I think ever since I discovered your teaching I discovered this knowing that everything is ok, even or especially when I was experiencing very difficult situations and feelings. Even in the middle of a breakdown or panicattack something inside of me remained calm and knew that I was ok. (this might sound like spiritual bypassing but it really didn't feel that way at all).Last week I discovered a whole new level of panic attacks. I felt like I was going to choke (I'm not sure if that's the correct word in english. I am looking for the word of not being able to breath and dying from it). I was so scared that this would never stop, and that I would have to spend the rest of my life in this hell. Also it felt like I had to control those feelings, because if I wouldn't I probably would actually choke because of the panic-attack.This feels very much like something I shouldn't write. I guess I feel very exposed..And I am not sure what my question is. I just feel like I have lost my inner compass and have no idea how to go on from here. I would love to hear your perspective on this..

Thank you for replying to my question about ADHD a while back. I have a few follow up questions. Maybe a bit too many questions for a podcast question but I have finally structured this so am sending.Do you feel that all relative distortion on a mental level is rooted in trauma and that it is important to understand what that that relative tauma was? If we take Gabor Mate understanding of environmental circumstances as the source of the condition do we need to know the seed of the original trauma? Is working with the created beliefs and constructs enough to break up the illusions and effects created by the initial trauma which may well have happened preverbally and is unconscious? In the mental health condition known and labelled as ADHD my understanding is that the environment/genetics have affected the way the brain develops and functions at an early age and this in turn affects our relative experience in many ways. The effects are particular ways of doing, thinking and behaving which the medical model calls a diagnosis. Is it healthy to want to change the experience of the relative with medication for this experience? I have come to accept that I would like to do this and have started on medication but at the same time I don't like taking medication everyday. The medication seems to be helpful in helping focus and continued attention with tasks. Accepting everything about me as it arises is also part of engaging with the healing part. The medication is giving me a clearing space and I am grateful for that. I feel a bit more realistic and clearer about everything and kinder to thoughts about thoughts.

Hi Clare,This is a follow up to the podcast where a listener asked you to speak about what it's like for you. Can you share more about when this exploration becomes fun and light?thank you,

Is there free will? Listener question

Please could you talk about a subject that you have probably addressed, directly or indirectly, a thousand times already – control! I am tying myself in knots trying to formulate the question… I get that trying to be in control IS the problem and keeps the illusion alive that we can be safe. Because of this understanding I seem to have dropped the trying to be in control. This appears in many areas of my life, but one in particular is my behaviour around overeating/comforting, where I now feel totally out of control. Am I using my understanding as an excuse to do whatever I want? Where and how do I get to the place where my system does what is in its own best interests. And yet doesn’t it anyway? You talked in a recent podcast about treating the body like a pet, giving it good food and exercise etc. But when I am out of control I don’t care about any of that, I am in full-on self destruct. I hope you are able to extract from this what I don’t know how to ask!

That was a fantastic webinar just now. It's one of those concepts that I feel I really understand as a whole and I think I followed along with you pretty well but now that I've had time to ruminate on it all I have so many questions!!!The main bit that is sticking with me and making me feel confused is around strong emotions and feelings. I understand how this concept could seriously help people suffering from depression, anxiety etc but what about the good stuff!? What about the amazing love I have for my kids and partner or my wonder at the nature I live in or my daughter's fierce love for her pony!! I felt terribly sad that that would become sort of devoid of meaning and irrelevant....if I was to constantly be in the 'absolute'. I feel really interested in it all and I think I'd like to join this Wednesday's webinar - about helping others as I'm training to be a therapist.To hear the webinar, click here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l892tmik8q92q3a/AACh_zFvhcv9drqC6gfWnsrXa?dl=0

Our greatest contribution to humanity is our awakening. It is to literally leave the state of consciousness that the mass of humanity is in and discover the truth of our being, which is the truth of all beings. Adyashanti

If thoughts create our reality what do we do because we do not choose our thoughts and we cannot change our thinking. What do we do to have a better experience. When in depression our thoughts are constantly awful, negative and dark.

When I was growing up my father was absent and my mother had mental health issues and problems with alcohol. We never had anyone over to the house and at school I was bullied and found it very hard to even talk to others let alone make friends. Now that I am an adult I am on good terms with people I work with but I don’t have a partner or any friends. I am lonely but I don’t know how to go about creating good relationships.

Thank you so much for all your wonderful courses. I know I'm not active in your groups but I listen to you every day and I'm loving the content. Life is better but without really being able to pinpoint why or what's changed. I feel lighter, relationships are more content, and generally life seems to flow better. So thank you. I'm wondering if you can speak more about 'no separation'. At first I totally didn't get this concept because to the eye everything looks separate- and I assume we can all agree that there is an apparent reality of separate bodies and objects. Moving deeper in however, I'm beginning to understand the concept as in: nothing can exist outside of my perception- so moment to moment, life, and everything that happens, is being created from within me, and the life that this body-mind system is living is a playing out of its internal conditioning. Does that encapsulate it? Thank you PS. I know there's no 'I'. It's just so cumbersome writing 'body-mind system' all the time- and is it necessary?!! x

If you can speak to why experience shifts so radically from day to day in this exploration as ....it's perplexing. Yesterday was nearly a full day of in and out of suicide ideation, intense heat/pain/anguish and a deep desire to die. Then today somehow all of that was gone. I read an email a student sent that yesterday felt super attacking and led to a spiral of shame... to today it seeming more like information about what I could have done differently as an instructor to provide clarity. What's happening? Why is this so inconsistent? What happened from yesterday to today that the same content is not having the same level of intense reactivity?

Can you talk about how when it is reputation that is at stake this isn't physical harm?For example if someone posts complaints about you on multiple sites in an attempt to attack your character, is this only identity when it is also has effects in the apparent form?

The Power of Us by Jay Van Bavel and Dominic J Packer

Being is totally whole just being. And it is alive and fleshy and sexy and juicy and immediately this; it’s not some concept about ‘there’s no-one here’. It’s not some concept about ‘there’s nowhere to go’. It’s the Aliveness that’s in that body right now. There is pure beingness, pure aliveness.Tony Parsons

You say all words, actions and perceptions are results of the programme. Then you speak about intelligence meeting everything that arises. Is the programme playing when we only see the separate self and the intelligence when that dissolves or is it the same thing. Is the intelligence always meeting what arises but is veiled/limited by the program running? I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

I'm rewatching another video of the two of us speaking and my 'mind body system' is just talking and talking and talkinghow do you listen so intently, is that you're focusing on the aliveness expressing and not the content?

I notice that much thoughts have some layers. The first layer is a negative self image. On top of that are thoughts that want to do something about this. To top it of there are thoughts like “I’ll never get over this etc”.This morning I just sat with it. The first two layers dissolved until the negatieve self image. I continued to sit with it. Listened to it. There came thoughts like “I just feel so sad”. And then I felt all the sensations in the body (and cried). There was no urge to manage something or make the feelings go away. I feel lighter now. Is this what you mean with getting real? Or is this an perfect example of someone who is totally lost in the woods of his own thinking? Reason for asking this is a confusion about “it is just thought”. Because this very often used sentence implies that a negative self image is just thought and that someone don’t have to feel it / look at it / be bothered. On the other hand that feels like spiritual bypassing to me. Because the negative self image looks very real to me.

I have been listening to your podcast lately. I worked with a coach hoping for change around habits of overeating. And I have seen so many changes in many areas of my life but not in the area I was hoping for. I read on your website that you make subliminal recordings. It sounds so interesting. Is this something that could help me with this habit? I can see that there are so many layers to this habit. Using food to numb feelings I do not like, and the vicious circle of thought that repeats day after day. How do the recordings work? Is it a meditation? Do you keep listening to the recording until there is a change?

Hi Clare.I would really like to talk about meaning and why this planet exists at all. We come with nothing and we leave with nothing and in between it is our “purpose” to know who/what we are and then what? Madeleine Albright (just an example) died not long ago - what was her purpose? Did anything she accomplished matter at all? Creating a new world, but what should that look like then and does it even matter? Is this world simply to unveil us?

Act like a leader, think like a leader by Herminia Ibarra. Sunday Book