Unleashing Love: The Power to Reshape Perception

The thrill of a near-death experience swept our guest, author Don Miguel Ruiz, onto a spiraling journey of spiritual awakening and we can't wait for you to hear all about it. Don't miss out on the captivating anecdotes and insightful nuggets of wisdom as he vividly recounts this life-altering event and the profound lessons he learned from his mother on mastering dreaming. We can assure you that this conversation promises to provide a fresh perspective on how detaching from the story of our lives can lead to experiencing a deeper reality.

Fasten your seatbelts as we proceed on this spiritual joyride with the second part of our dialogue, where we uncover the essence of love and its power to shape our perception of the world. Prepare to be intrigued as we decipher the enigma of our spiritual eyes and the emotional reflections they formulate. We guarantee that you'll be left seeing love and joy in a whole new light. Towards the end, get ready to regain control of your time with a little help from our friends at Free Time Solutions, a promising discussion on time freedom and success services. We look forward to your company as we continue our exploration into spirituality and personal development. Stay tuned and don't forget to join us for upcoming readings, interviews, and guest hosts.

Transcript

Heather Ross: 0:01

Welcome to At the Table when we are connecting entrepreneurs, discovering missions and building communities with purpose Body, soul, mind and Business. With Charlie and Heather, with Free Time Solutions.

Charlie Hoffman: 0:17

Good morning. Welcome to another episode of At the Table with this week's weekly reading. We're currently reading the Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz and we just started Love People Use Things by the Minimalist Joshua Fields-Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. We will not be reading this on the recording, but we are going to finish up the Voice of Knowledge on the recordings. Once we finish the Voice of Knowledge, which I think this week might be our last week working on this, we're going to go offline to read, but we will still be bringing you some knowledge and experience and what we've learned as we read the books online that Monday, along with some mindset tools and things like that. So continue joining us there and we will see you when you get there. Let's go ahead and get into the Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz this week. This week, we're on chapter 11. Oh, let's sit here and there's a chapter 12. So we will be reading next week also. Yeah, so this week and next week, and that's it. Chapter 11 is Opening Our Spiritual Eyes A Reality of Love All Around Us. Okay, let me switch cameras and we'll go ahead and get started. Chapter 11, opening Our Spiritual Eyes A Reality of Love All Around Us.

Charlie Hoffman: 2:00

Another opportunity for me to encounter the truth occurred during a car accident that was so dramatic that I almost died. There are no words to explain what I experienced, but the truth made it obvious that what I believed was a lie. Like most people, I used to believe that I am my mind and I am my physical body. I live in my physical body, it is home and I can touch it. And then, in my near-death experience, I could see my physical body asleep at the wheel of my car. If I was perceiving my physical body from outside my body, then it was obvious that I am not my mind, I am not my own physical body. Then the question became what am I? In the moment when I came face to face with death, I started to perceive another reality. My attention expanded so much that there was no future or past. There was only the eternal now. Light was everywhere and everything was full of light. I could feel my perception go through all of these different realities until I recovered the attention and could focus on one universe at a time. I was in the light and it was a moment of total awareness, a pure perception. At a certain point I knew that the light has all the information about everything and that everything is a lie. I can say that I was with God, that I was in bliss, that I was in a state of ecstasy, but these are just words that I know. After the accident, my perception of the world changed again, because I knew, not just as a theory, that I am not this physical body, and I began a search that was different from my search before the accident. Before the accident, I was still searching for perfection, for an image to satisfy the main character of my story. After the accident, I knew that what I was searching for was something I had lost myself. I took more.

Charlie Hoffman: 4:14

It took more than a year for me to recover from the impact of seeing my own creation from outside my body. My first reaction after the accident was to try to deny what had happened. I tried to feel safe in my world of lies and tell myself this is not true, this is just an illusion. I thought that surely it was just a hallucination caused by the accident. I created all kinds of stories to justify that experience, and I know that many people do the same thing. They try to forget about it, to keep going with their ordinary story. But something deep inside was telling me no, this is real. Fortunately for me, I felt the doubt and thought what if that experience was real and everything else in my life was the illusions? After that experience, I wasn't the same, because I couldn't believe my own story anymore. I needed many answers and I started to read every kind of book to try to find them out. Some people described a similar experience, but hardly anybody could explain what happened.

Charlie Hoffman: 5:22

I finished medical school, returned to my home and went directly to my grandfather to tell him about my experience. He just laughed and said I knew that life would have to make you see the truth the hard way, and that is what happened to you, because you have always been very stubborn. I told my grandfather that I wanted to experience that reality again, to see if it was true, without an accident, of course. My grandfather told me well, the only way you can do it is to let go of everything, just the way you did in the moment when you died. When you die, you lose everything, and if you live your life as if you've already lost everything, you will have the experience again. He gave me many clues and I tried many times to do what he told me, but I failed. My grandfather died and I hadn't made it yet.

Charlie Hoffman: 6:16

The next in line was my mother, and her explanation was a little different. She told me the only way for you to experience that reality is to master dreaming. To do this, you have to completely detach from what you believe you are. You have to let go of the story of your life. It's just like the moment right before your brain goes to sleep, when you are so tired that you cannot keep your eyes open any longer. In that moment you detach from everything. You don't care about anything in your story because you just want to sleep. When you can do this without falling asleep, you will have the experience again.

Charlie Hoffman: 6:56

I asked my mother to help me and because she felt compassion for me, she chose 21 people to train me in dreaming. Every Sunday for three years we went into dreaming for eight to 12 hours. Not one of the 21 people ever missed a Sunday. There were eight or nine medical doctors, lawyers and a variety of people with a lot of personal importance in the group, but according to my mother, only three of us really made it. Fortunately, I was one of them and after the first year of dreaming I finally had the experience again with full awareness. That was it.

Charlie Hoffman: 7:38

After that point, the other two years of dreaming were the greatest experience of my life. Each time I went into the state of ecstasy I was able to stay there a little longer. Then a few days later I would lose again and be back to the way I had been almost all of my life, or I was determined to experience that state all the time. There was no way I could live my life any differently. It took me three or four months to have the experience for the third time, but it happened again, and now I was staying longer. It became easier and easier, and every time I stayed longer and longer until that state became my normal reality.

Charlie Hoffman: 8:24

At first it was difficult to function in ordinary reality, especially in a hospital. As a medical doctor, I felt like nothing made sense to me, but in some ways I was functioning better. It was as though I could see two realities at the same time. I could see what really is, but I could also see the stories, and it was a big shock at a certain point just to see myself lying and to see everybody around me lying. So I didn't have any judgments about it. I could see that the people were making nonsense of their life. I could see them creating drama and emotional pain. They would get so upset over something that wasn't important. They would make up stories and lie about everything. It was amazing and even kind of funny to watch them do it, but I had to reframe from laughing because I knew they would take it personally. They could not see their own stories because they were blind.

Charlie Hoffman: 9:22

People have the right to live their life in a way they want to live it. But you have had the experience. But if you have had the experience I've been describing, you understand. Certainly many people have had the same experience. But then fear makes them try to deny what happened.

Charlie Hoffman: 9:43

Many times when I've given workshops, I see people go so high into love and they understand a great deal. But if they see something in their story that they don't like, they just deny the whole experience and run away. And if the truth hits their personal importance, they devalue everything and run away with a lot of judgments. I see this happen all the time, but it's okay because it's all the truth they can handle. It took many years for me to win the conflict between the truth and what is not the truth, because our lies are so seductive. The temptation to believe in lies is very strong. But the car accident pushed me to another point of reference. And, yes, now I know that there's another really reality, right here and right now, and it is more than the reality of light and sound that we normally perceive.

Charlie Hoffman: 10:34

There are many realities that exist, but we only perceive the reality where we focus our attention. I can say, according to my story, that the reality I experienced is a reality of love. The energy of love is just like the light that comes from the sun. The sunlight splits into thousands of different colors and the light looks different depending on what is reflecting the light. That is why we can see different colors, different shapes and different forms. Well, for me, the same thing happens in this reality of love. You perceive the reflection of the emotions coming from every object and as a light. The emotion of love looks different depending on what is reflecting the love. The emotional body creates an entire reality right in front of your eyes, in the same place that the reality of light exists. Of course, it's almost impossible to put into words, but I think it's worth trying.

Charlie Hoffman: 11:36

I want you to use your imagination to try to understand what I am saying. I want you to imagine that humans have been blind for thousands of years. We have no idea that light exists because we just don't open our eyes. But we develop the rest of our senses and we create an entire virtual reality through sound. Like that, we recognize objects through the reflection of sound. We give names to every object. We give names to every object. We give names to every object. We give names to every object. We give names to every object and emotion. We create a language, we create knowledge and we communicate through sound. That is our reality, a reality of sound.

Charlie Hoffman: 12:22

Then imagine that for some time in your life you open your eyes and you perceive light. Suddenly, a reality full of objects, shapes and colors appears in front of you. You cannot comprehend this reality because you have never seen light before. For the first time, you see flowers and clouds, and grass and butterflies. You see the rain, the snow, the oceans, the stars, the moon, the sun. Perhaps you don't even perceive these things as separate objects because you have no idea what you are perceiving. You cannot name anything you see. There are no words to describe your experience. You have to use the universe of sound to explain the universe of light. You try to compare colors with sounds, shapes with melodies. You say the color is red, like this kind of tone in the musical scale. The ocean is like this symphony.

Charlie Hoffman: 13:16

Imagine your emotional reaction to seeing so much color and beauty for the first time. You are overwhelmed with emotions and tears flow out of your eyes. Just by perceiving all of this beauty, your heart begins to open wide and love starts pouring out of you. If you try to describe your emotions, you say I'm in bliss, I'm in ecstasy, I'm in a state of grace. Then you close your eyes and again you perceive only the reality of sound. Now, even if you want to, you cannot open your eyes again. How can you explain that experience to yourself when there are no words to explain it? How can you explain a color or shape of the form of a butterfly? How can you share this experience with other people if they have never seen light? How can you believe that the reality of sound is the only reality that exists?

Charlie Hoffman: 14:13

Now we can understand why Moses came down from the mountain and talked about the promised land. What else could he say? Or we can understand what Jesus felt after spending 40 days in the desert, when he talked about the kingdom of heaven, or when Buddha awoke from under the body tree and talked about nirvana. When you open your spiritual eyes, the first thing you say is I am with God and the angels. I am in heaven and paradise, where everything is so beautiful. In the city of God, only beauty and goodness exists. There is no place for fear or suffering, it's just beautiful.

Charlie Hoffman: 14:52

People see that you have changed. They see your emotional reaction and know that something profound has happened to you. From my point of view, the reality I experienced is all of that together. It is ecstasy. All the time In my personal mythology, I experienced the reality of truth, the reality of love. It's a reality that belongs to all of us, but we just don't see it. And if we don't see it it's because we are blinded by all of the lies from thousands of years ago. If you can open what I call the spiritual eyes, you will perceive what is without the lies, and I can assure you it's a reality that belongs to all of us. But we just don't see it. And if we don't see it it's because we are blinded by all of the lies from thousands of years ago.

Charlie Hoffman: 15:42

If you can open what I call the spiritual eyes, you will perceive what is without the lies, and I can assure you that your emotional reaction will be overwhelming. For you, it is no longer a theory that your story is just a dream. Heaven is the truth. But the story you are perceiving right now is not the truth. It's an illusion. What is real is so beautiful and there is no words to explain it, but it is there. There is a whole reality created by the reflection of emotions, and in that reality you can see what is real is your love. I know that I used to perceive that reality before I learned to speak. I know that, before the voice of knowledge, all of us perceive that reality all of the time. What you are is something incredibly magnificent, and not just humans, but every animal, every flower, every rock, because everything is the same.

Charlie Hoffman: 16:40

When you open your spiritual eyes, you see the simplicity of life. I am life and you are life. There is no empty space in the universe because everything is full of life. But life is a force that you cannot see. You only see the effects of life, the process of life in action. You see a flower opening or a tree with the leaves changing colors and falling to the ground. You see a child growing. You see a human becoming old. You have the sense of time, but it's nothing but the reaction of life passing through matter. You don't see yourself, but you see the manifestation of life in your physical body. You can move your hand. You can see the manifestation of being alive. If you hear your voice, you hear the manifestation of being alive. You see your own physical body when you used to have little hands and very fresh skin than big hands. You see all these changes in your own physical body, but you still feel that you are the same person.

Charlie Hoffman: 17:48

The closest I can come to describing what you are is that you are a force of life that is transforming everything. This force is moving every atom of your physical body. This force is creating every thought. The spirit of life expresses itself through your physical body and your physical body can say I am alive Because that force of transformation lives in every cell of your physical body. That force has awareness to perceive an entire reality. That force feels everything. Your physical body is perceiving you right now. Your body can feel you, and when your body feels you, it goes into ecstasy. Your mind can also feel you, and when your mind feels you, you can experience such intense love and compassion that you don't think any longer. I see my physical body as a mirror where life, through light, I can see itself. I see my physical body as an evolution of life. Life is evolving. It is pushing matter, it is creating.

Charlie Hoffman: 18:57

The creation of humanity is not over yet. The creation of humanity is happening right now in your physical body. That force is helping you evolve. That force makes you perceive, analyze, dream and create a story about everything you perceive. Life is the force that God uses to create everything at every moment. There is no difference between humans, dogs, cats, trees Everything is moved by the same force of life.

Charlie Hoffman: 19:26

From my point of view, I am that force. Thanks to life, I create my art, I create my whole experience and it's amazing. Because of me, I have emotions. Because of me, I create knowledge and I can talk. Because of me, I create the story. The force that makes me think and tell my story is the same force that makes you read and understand. There is no difference and it's happening right now. I see myself growing older and I know that someday I will leave this physical body. When I leave this physical body. The body will remain, return to the earth, but life cannot be destroyed. Life is eternal. It was so clear to me when I encountered the truth that life is only one force acting in billions of directions in the creation of the universe. That force never dies. We are life and life is immortal. We are indestructible and I think this is very good news.

Charlie Hoffman: 20:26

Once you open your spiritual eyes, you see the drape of your life. You see how much time you waste by playing with petty concerns, by playing with all of that nonsense and meaningless drama. You see how you keep yourself from enjoying a reality of love, a reality of joy. With your attention focused on what you believe, you cannot perceive this other reality If your attention is hooked by the voice of knowledge. You only see your knowledge, you only see what you want to see, not what is really there. You only hear what you want to hear, not what is really expressing its love to you. You only relate with what you believe, with what you know, with what you think you are, which means you relate with your story and you think you are the story.

Charlie Hoffman: 21:12

But are you really? You are neither the physical body nor the story. The story is your creation and, believe it or not, your physical body is also your creation, because what you really are is that force of life. All of us are only one living being and we come from the same place. There's no difference between any of us. We are the same. You can look at your hand and see that there are five fingers. If you focus your eyes on one finger at a time, you might believe they are different, but it's only one hand. It's the same thing with humanity. There's only one living being and that being is a force that is moving each of us like a finger on a hand, but all of the fingers belong to one hand. Humans share the same spirit. We share the same soul. There is no difference between me and you, not in my eyes. I know that I am you and I have no doubt at all because I can see it that way.

Charlie Hoffman: 22:16

Behind your story is the real you, and it's full of love. The goodness is right there, because what you are is goodness. You don't have to try to be good. You just need to stop pretending to be what you are not. You are one with God and it is effortless. God is here and you can feel the presence of God. Of course, if you don't feel God's presence, you need to detach from the story, because the only thing between you and God is your story. Once you find yourself what you really are, you cannot explain what you are because there are no words to explain it. If you use knowledge, you never know what you are, but you know that you are because you exist. You are alive and you don't need to justify your existence. You can be the biggest mystery in your own story.

Charlie Hoffman: 23:10

Points to ponder. There is another reality right here now, and it is more than the reality of light and sound that we normally perceive. In this reality, we can perceive the reflection of emotions coming from every object. In this reality, what is real is our love, the reality of truth. The reality of love is a reality that belongs to us. Before the voice of knowledge, all of us perceived this reality all the time. If we don't see it now, it's because we are being blinded by all of the lies from thousands of years ago. The energy of love is just like the light that comes from the sun, like sunlight. The emotion of love looks different depending on what is reflecting the love.

Charlie Hoffman: 24:01

If you open your spiritual eyes, you perceive what is without the lies. For you, it is no longer a theory that your story is just a dream. Heaven is the truth, but the story you are perceiving right now is not the truth. It's an illusion. Life is a force that you cannot see. You only see the effects of life, the process of life in action. You don't see yourself, but you see the manifestation of life in your physical body. You have the sense of time, but it's nothing but the reaction of life passing through you. What you are is something incredibly magnificent. You are life, and not just you, but every animal, every flower, every rock is life, because everything is full of life. All of us are only one living being and we come from the same place. Thank you for joining us for this week's Weekly Reading. I'm Charlie, your host, and welcome to the table. Thank you for pulling up a seat and we'll see you next time on our stage.

Heather Ross: 25:08

As entrepreneurs, we have a unique opportunity to make a positive impact in the world around us. In a time when the world is shifting towards supporting local businesses and embracing community-driven initiatives, it becomes even more important for us to give where heart leads us At the table. We believe in the power of giving back and that's why we have our cause of the quarter. This quarter, we are proud to support Perfect Pals, a local organization dedicated to rescuing and providing care for stray cats in our community. By supporting local causes like Perfect Pals, we not only make a difference in the lives of those in need, but we also contribute to the growth and well-being of our local community. We believe in small acts of kindness, and they can create a ripple effect of positivity, inspiring others to do the same. As we shift our focus solely from supporting large corporations to championing local businesses and giving back, we not only strengthen our community, but we also foster a sense of connection and unity. Together, we can create a thriving ecosystem where everyone can flourish. So let's follow our hearts and give where it truly matters. Join in supporting Perfect Pals and making a difference in the lives of these furry companions. Together, we can make our community a better place, one act of kindness at a time. Thank you for being part of our journey and for embracing the spirit of giving. Together, let's create a brighter future for all.

Heather Ross: 26:55

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Heather Ross: 27:46

Whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, freelancer, we offer comprehensive services tailored to your needs. Our goal is simple to give you back time freedom to do what you do best, while we handle the rest. So join us at the table and let Free Time Solutions empower you to take control of your time and unlock your full potential. Visit our website at wwwyourfreetimebackcom that's wwwyourfreetimebackcom to learn more and schedule your consultation today. Free Time Solutions your partner in success. Let's make the most of your free time together. Thank you for joining us at the table. Stay tuned for weekly readings on Sunday mindset Monday discussing our weekly readings on Monday and on Friday, our interview and, potentially, guest host Stay tuned.

Charlie Hoffman: 28:52

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