Superpowered Mind with Clare Dimond

Exploring the space of effortless decision making

Continuing our look at decision making with an exploration of what intuition is.

Listener question : I'm thinking about doing something but is it just my ego driving me?

Listener question (follow up to 'Is it my fault?' podcast) This is what comes up, not necessary as an astute question. While I listen to the podcast it it all makes sense, but when I’m back in thinking and feeling it’s a deep painful shitshow. So what I hear is that the I, the Ego is the biggest blind spot. Instantly it feels doomed and incredible painful and hopeless with no way out. Maybe that’s my core trauma of being inherently bad as a person? Really don’t know how to not feel that. However I remember times when there was inner peace and immense love not only in this exploration, but in my courageous life as well. Don’t know if I do myself a favour, it’s so confusing being in this exploration and having therapy at the same time feels like clutching straws.

Exploring the 'gifts' that make transparent the idea of how things should be and how I should be.

Exploring how a profound realisation of wholeness involves integration of everything that confronts or conflicts with the idea of what is OK. Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries.― Carl Gustav Jung

Exploring the paralysis, effort and confusion that can result from the 'editor' when really the whole system is designed for sanity x

Readiness and unconditional love

Listener question: I suppose I’m again in the thick of it (triggered by painful events at work) with overthinking, panic, hotflushes, insomnia, crying meltdowns. I thought I could be more resilient by now. I need again a lot of emotional support and tender loving care. But I perceive the world as brutal at the moment and it doesn’t help to know it’s all thought created. Is it all my fault?

The conundrum of 'there is only this' / seeing this is the end of suffering as we know it

Listener question: is life a continual unfolding of seeing more of the self arising and then it dissolving as more of the truth is seen? My impression is that the self doesn't "end", it arises and more is seen as that happens.

Listener question: Is it possible to have shift and the self dissolve without the hopelessness?

Listener question : why are "wants" are not met. When we do not really want it, we just think we should. Example... People want to go to the gym. After 2 weeks they withdraw from it. Why? I assume they do not really want it. They just want to feel better/satisfied/worthy and going to the gym is just a tool for achieving it.Or in this case it is not "wanting" but "needing"?What do you think?

Listener question: My 'nice' life (the exact opposite of a messy life) - all a dance of protection and control. Keep life on an even keel! Don't ruffle feathers! It feels like I just havent been present to much of it. Always somewhere else and taking the CEO position of managing the NICE Life Corporation very seriously.So tedious, boring and ludicrous. Should be a relief that I don't have to do it anymore but writing this ut just seems like i don't know how to let it get messy.Some stuff just needs to explode through. Biggy is around my marriage that is Nicely manged and no real reason to end or fair to my hubby who adores me. Would really love to see this differently as we have so much good stuff between us. Just dont want to continue being NICE. Mirror mirror on the wall......want to bite his/my head off. Need a good raging rant or to get drunk which would be a first as NICE never allowed either of tbose!!!!So where am I? Trying not to be NICE yet holding madly on and shit scared of what might be said out loud that shoudn't be aimed at anyone.

Question from several listeners: why would we look at behaviour if there is no separate self or objective reality? Isn't that just about fixing the self?

Listener question: The more I realize that I am not the doer, life is completely predetermined (because of all the things which happened before I had no influence on like upbringing and genes and because of time and space). I just have the feeling of self will but it is an illusion. The feeling of worthlessness, senselessness, nothing to hope for and fix and aim for brings me to a very desperate place.

Listener question: Ok if we are life’s unlimited potential itself, why is it that the self seems to have a contracted dense heavy default mode? It’s almost like a magnetic pull to heaviness, overthinking, and unhelpful patterns that are obvious toxic and not in line with the deep lust for aliveness that seems to get lost underneath it all.

Listener question: ‘It really makes sense that this body here would move out of the way of whatever would damage it....the form will do what is necessary [in that moment] to survive. And it can do this without any concept of self, any concept of past or future, any concept of separation.Our concept of self is not what is keeping us safe, keeping harmful others at bay. Response is happening regardless of the idea of self.’ [taken from SANE: getting real with reality]Would this apply to the damage of rejection and the threat to survival it poses, or is that a concept that only a separate self can come up with?

Listener question: if everything is perfect then why would we look at insecurity or behaviour? Isn't that just what is?

Listener question: Is it not just as much to learn about the illusion of self and others when we feel great? I was thinking about when we are in love and when we feel "on top" and "in the flow" when for example work seems to go very well. When we are in love we have this illusionary thinking about "the other person" and maybee underneath a scenario of how great it will be together and also we maybee have a great feeling about "our self" when the other person is also in love. Isn't this as much an illusion and a posibility to learn as when we are afraid of someone or that we are not liked by "the other"?And when "the self" think it is doing great at work, getting fabulous results etc and everything seems to flow, it is very easy for "the self" to unconsciously take credit for it and feel safe. But often when we feel good we tend to think that this is how it is supposed to be and that we are on the right track.

Listener question: I have a question, on behalf of my wife. She suffers from severe chronic pain. I would like to read her some of your writing, probably starting with SANE. However, to her, the idea that she should look on these intolerable conditions or circumstances as just part of the content of life, or as something to be accepted as just part of the Present, is insulting and like a slap in the face. It is hard, maybe impossible, for her to NOT believe in the reality of the constant pain with which she has to live. To her, if the universe is 'Life' and she and the pain are part of that Life, then the universe sucks and Life is not much more than cruelty and misery and a horrible joke.What do you tell someone who lives with such conditions? Do you have any ideas for how I might be able to help her cope in the Present?

Listener question: When you experience that awakening and realisation, how do you know the awakening and realisation, that feeling of total awareness and love, are not just more products of conditioning? How does anyone know that you are not just thinking and believing this is the reality of love and awakening?

Listener question: Staying with the contraction, not running away from it, we do get info. But how to interpret the info if the only reference point you are aware of is in the story you have lived? If life tells me to go right I will gladly go right. But isn’t my interpretation of what life is telling me always based upon good and/or bad within the story? Maybe even creating a new one as I sometimes see happening ( “God spoke to me and he wants me to……..(fill in whatever you want)..because I am the chose none”).. Am I not (even within the story) exactly where I should be?! And, accepting that, allowing that, not running away from that, is there anywhere else to go to find the peace and happiness and love we are here, at this very moment, with exactly the amount of money, energy, time and connection that is now experienced?! I think not..End of story..And then? Left or right? And why? Please throw me a life-line here…

Listener question: I have a question which relates to teenage children and my developing understanding around this conversation. As a parent I’ve loved, supported and guided my children on their path to become independent young people. When they behave in a way which goes against my own values, beliefs, and rules for living, I find myself in a state of suffering. I’m beginning to see that this suffering is caused by my own need to feel in control in order that my ‘self’ feels stable. I guess you would say that their behaviour is nothing to do with me and that I shouldn’t take it personally, but I do, as I feel it is my responsibility and I’ve always taken my responsibilities seriously, especially when it comes to my children. This is where I’m a little stuck, can you point me in the direction to see something different here please? It all looks so real when I’m in the thick of it all! Is it just a question of letting go of resistance and control?

Exploring how often, the asking is reinforcing the apparent reality in which the self cannot get what it wants.

Exploring the impossibility of a self existing separately from the body, mind or environment.

How can there be no such thing as rejection?

Exploring how the physical rules of how form works are generally reliable while the 'rules' of the self are not

Listener question: What am I?

Listener question: I've just finished reading 'Sane'. A challenging read for me to stick with if I'm being honest. I found myself constantly wanting to run ahead to the 'how to' section. I realise from my other reading in 'the conversation' that's it's not about the how-to. What I took away from the book, and I hope this was the point you were trying to get across, is that it's not about the beliefs that I hold about myself (I), but that the 'I' itself is just a set of beliefs. Correct? So the questions that spring to mind are, 1. how did they get there? and 2. what keeps them in place? Did I miss that in the book? Does it even matter?

Listener question: how do self fulfilling prophecies relate to this understanding?

Exploring why the understanding that Trump is a concept created by the mind can enable us to be and do what it is we demand of him (or any one else we have a reaction to).

Exploring what drives behaviour. As the self identity is transcended, the need to 'be someone' falls away leaving just the pure dynamic passion of life in form.

Exploring how behaviour is not controlled by a separate self, but it revelatory about what that self is believed to be or need.

Exploring how that thought - and the one underneath it - 'this should not be happening to me' are what fixes an apparent reality in place for the duration of that resistance.

Exploring Paul Hedderman's term 'selfing'

Exploring the two main differences between escapism and transcendence

Listener question: How would you explain non duality / spirituality to a ten year old?

Looking at Gangaji's words: We have tried everything to get rid of suffering. We have gone everywhere to get rid of suffering. We have bought everything to get rid of it. We have ingested everything to get rid of it. Finally, when one has tried enough, there arises the possibility of spiritual maturity with the willingness to stop the futile attempt to get rid of it and, instead, to actually experience suffering. In that momentous instant, there is the realization of that which is beyond suffering, of that which is untouched by suffering. There is the realisation of who one truly is.

Looking at Unmani's words: "Recognising who you really are, will destroy you and your whole life as you know it."

Looking at Alan Watt's words: "This image of yourself is obviously not real. Any more than the idea of a tree is a tree. Any more than you can get wet in the word ‘water’."

Looking at Tony Parsons' words, "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."

Looking at the quote from Deepak Chopra "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."

Continuing a conversation from a webinar yesterday about what happens when it is realised that reality is a hall of mirrors

Listener question: Can you explain the film metaphor?

Listener question: Clare, I have three of your books, I listen to your podcasts and I have watched some of your videos. Yet I cannot work out how to live a life that is not dominated by negative thinking, anxiety and occasional panic.......these thoughts were like the straw that broke the camel’s back with all the other shit in my life. I’m waiting for an appointment with a consultant. So I don’t feel well. I feel shit actually. I need to decorate some of my house but don’t feel well enough. I work long shifts that are very tiring and I look after someone some of the week. I sometimes feel that I just cannot cope with it ‘all’. It ALL. Is it really so much? Someone else might just cope with this stuff like water of a duck’s back, right?I try my circuit breakers (your podcast on this was great) . Meditation. Trying some exercise, wine, beer, food, etc and of course it doesn’t work. How could it? But I cannot grasp this ‘isness’ that you speak of underneath all this shit... How can I? Obviously not on the level of the mind. I listen, but I will never understand on that level, will I? I know on the level of thought that this is like living in the Dream... But how do yo free yourself from this ? How do you do it?

Exploring how this expression can add to the confusion or take it away

Question: If reality is made of thought then how do I change it?

Exploring how it is what it is... and it also isn't...

Exploring the circuit breakers of mental suffering and how they can never be the ultimate solution.