The Ultimate Guide to Happiness, Forgiveness, and Purpose with Teal Swan

When somebody has that breakthrough around their own, the sort of worthiness of their own essence, it's not this transcendental, oh my gosh, the world is so amazing, buzzing state. It's... Teal Swan, spiritual teacher, international speaker, and best-selling author. A lot of people tell you to forgive people or forgive things. Yeah, they're just doing that for their own sense of comfort. Forgiveness is something which cannot be forced. I know that's a controversial view, but I... She's inspired millions of people to live with truth, authenticity, freedom, and joy, and is on a mission to transform human suffering into an empowered and authentic life. You never want to do affirmations that don't feel believable. I know that I'm flying in the face of what most people think about affirmations by saying that. I don't think it's healthy to lie to yourself. Discover how to navigate guilt, forgiveness, purpose, and building a life that's aligned to your true self. Sometimes I feel we stress too much on our past. Give it to me! I obviously have very different views on this whole thing. What's your take on guilt? This is the juiciest thing we've talked about yet. People who love themselves make happiness their number one goal. They know that everything else falls second to that. They realize that the only motivation for anything that any person does in this life is that person thinks it'll make him or her feel better and lead to happiness. Upon first reading this, it may not make sense, but I ask you to look deeper. This is an exercise in understanding and compassion, which may begin with other people, but eventually end with you. This is direct quote from your book, How to Love Yourself, and I love this quote, and I wanted to start with that because I wanted you to kind of expand on that because a lot of people, when I first read it, I had to read it three times. I'm like, oh, wow, that's, yeah, it's deep. I mean, let's explore this. What does this mean? Oh, what it means is that the only reason anybody ever does something is because they think it's gonna make them feel better, right, so we could say that ultimately their goal is happiness, and this goes all the way from, the reason why I want that Ferrari is because I think it's gonna make me feel better, all the way to the reason I just killed somebody is I think it's gonna make me feel better. Like every single thing a person does, that is their subconscious aim, is the intention for happiness, but most people, especially the people who don't love themselves, they're not doing this in a conscious way. They're doing it in a subconscious way. The difference is people who are really either love themselves or in the practice of loving themselves, what they do is they commit to that as a conscious practice. I want to be happy and I wanna go for it directly. I don't wanna do it in this roundabout way. It's no longer gonna be, hmm, I'm gonna get a job because I think that job is gonna bring me happiness. It's happiness is my ultimate goal. So what is it in my life that would bring that about for me? And there are many elements for a person. Most of them that do, you know, have something to do with their top values. And the reason why it is so interesting to me is because that's not how we operate, I think. We always operate, oh, I'm doing this for that person. I am doing this for my family. I am doing this for, because, you know, society. There's always that that I'm doing this for. But what you're saying, and which I agree with, is a lot of us, most everybody of us, basically, in some way or another, are indirectly doing it for our happiness, but we're not turning it on. Like, we're not going, oh, that's why I'm doing this. And what I want you to expand also on is how does one make that discovery and become present and accepting of that idea? Because I find that to be really difficult. Like, people don't accept the idea that they're doing it for their happiness. They have to play it out. So let's say that you were gonna ask somebody, or let's say, this is somebody who's asking themselves. Let's say that they are like, oh, well, I did this for my mom. Okay, well, what did I think I was gonna get out of doing this for my mom? Okay, maybe they say harmony. And what is harmony gonna give me? A sense of internal peace. Okay, well, even right there, you can see it's for you. So I'm telling you, you'll never end up anywhere else, even if it's down to a person being so connected to another person that they feel this high degree of compassion and empathy. The other person's happiness makes you feel good. Still the same thing. Doesn't it feel selfish? And if it does, how do we become accepting that it might be selfish? Yeah, it is selfish. But what we're dealing with in this universe is this profound understanding of oneness. Well, the first part of accepting that it is self-centered is to work yourself into the understanding that there's no single act that is not selfish. And what I'm saying is when you do that work of, and what would that give me? And what would that give me? You will find that to be the case with any action that anybody takes. That's undeniable. When you've got an undeniable truth, all of a sudden you have to accept it. Okay, so you're accepting that it's innately selfish. Now we get to question the rightness or wrongness of self-centered behavior. What is it that makes selfishness good or harmful? We live in a universe where one of the most ultimate truths is oneness. Now, this is entertaining because it means that we are innately self-centered. But it means you are me, and I am you. Your happiness is my happiness, and my happiness is ultimately linked to your happiness. The problem really with self-centered behavior comes when it becomes a zero-sum game. There's nothing innately wrong with doing something because it makes you feel good. It is when doing something that makes you feel good comes at the detriment of something or someone else. That's when this starts to become dangerous. Oneness, fantastic idea. I totally understand, and I relate to it. And I actually feel that oneness in humanity, especially in meditative states. Oneness, as I understand, as your explanation, or my understanding of what you just said is that we are all one in a way, or I am you, you are me. When one is operating from a self-centered behavior or selfish behavior, however we wanna call it, how does one know what's good and what's bad? And what is the change in approach? The change in approach is, I want you to imagine that in between us right now is a pane of glass. And if I was to shatter that pane of glass, we end up with these shards. Ultimately, they're all one, do you see? They're all a part of this pane of glass. And the higher truth is that they're all interconnected. With that being the reality, coming from that lens, right? You are me, and I am you. We are the same, we are all the glass, right? I can't do things to you that cause you harm without causing myself harm. The more conscious we become, the more we start to live from that space, and therefore there's a natural desire for a win-win. There's a desire for you to be happy, because that's an integral part of my own happiness. When we have to worry about what we call selfishness in society is when an aspect, a shard of that pane of glass perceives itself to be separate, in fact, from the rest of the shards in that glass, and perceives that it can go off and do something that's good for it, no matter the negative impact on anything else, and it's fine because there's no repercussion for that. What you have is a profound state of connection versus a profound state of disconnection. So vibrationally speaking, these two states are as different as they get. And if let's say somebody is in that state of feeling disconnected, because I mean, it's probably stories that they've told themselves, behaviors, whatever it is. Ways that they were treated by others. Ways they were treated by others that led them to become that individual, that shard that thinks they are them, and they're out for themselves, and they're all by themselves, right? How do we, as say, a collaborative environment, or as oneness, work with somebody that is operating independently, as themselves? Treat them like they can trust you. They have to have a taste of what a win-win looks like. They have to have a taste of what it looks like for people to consider them. They're stuck in their protectors, that's all. If you wanna look at this from a psychology perspective. I mean, these are individuals who are stuck in the aspects of themselves that have had to adapt to a dog-eat-dog type of a perception of reality, and underneath that is these very vulnerable aspects that have never been directly answered to or spoken to. If you start caring for those vulnerable aspects underneath the protectors, they start to reciprocate. They start to perceive themselves as being connected again. Let's see if this excerpt kinda connects to the thought that we were just talking about. The one universal truth is that thought is the trump card in this universe. Our universe is managed by the law of mirroring. This law indicates that only vibrations can match up and share the reality in the physical dimension. The reason this applies to diet is that you can only be attracted to foods that match your own vibration. This is why when you are sad, you might gravitate towards ice cream, which is not the healthiest choice. When you are happy, the food you gravitate towards are the foods that match and therefore reinforce happiness. It's from a different section of the book, but it talks about similar ideas. The context in which I was writing that in this book is that when you are thinking thoughts and things like that that resonate at a vibration of self-love, then naturally actions will mirror and match that, and so will people, places, things, circumstances, events that includes things like food. So naturally, what's going to happen is you're going to meet people who resonate more at that frequency of love, right? Or even self-appreciation. You're going to be matched to opportunities that are self-loving. You're going to be gravitating towards foods that vibrate at that frequency of what is good for my body rather than what is not good for my body. It's just we live in this universe that is managed by law of mirroring, what most people call law of attraction, so you can't escape that, that whatever it is that you're focusing on, whatever it is that you're thinking, whatever it is you're saying and acting dictates your vibration, and your vibration dictates people, places, things, circumstances, events that you're matched to. So true, and I want to relate to that story because one of the biggest changes in the past three years or so have completely transformed my well-being, like my body itself, my physical being as well. I was not overweight, but kind of not really healthy. I didn't have any health practices. I was very unfocused as a person. All of the signs to not loving yourself could be very evident for anybody that understands it, especially when it came to my physical body, and it just came from what I recognized later on was because how much of A, my programming was because I grew up in India where food is like the essence of everything, and it's foundation of everything, and I grew up in a not-so-wealthy neighborhood or not-so-wealthy household, and so food was the thing, like your survival all the time. So that kind of built some behaviors and also built this, I don't know if it's self-hate, but definitely not self-love for my body, and so I used it to create wealth and abundance for myself, but in the process completely lost track of where my body was, and one of the most profound practices that helped me change it is something that you also talk about in the book, which is called, you call it mirror work, right? And I did that thanks to another different friend of mine who told me that you should try this, where you just look at your body and just thank it and just start to love it again by actually saying it, even if it feels stupid and dumb and feels really ridiculous when you first do it, but as you do it, you start to realize, and at least that was my experiences, that's when my body started telling me what's good for it and what's not good for it, otherwise I was just stuffing it away, and that's why I also resonated with this statement because it's so rarely, we always talk about diet cultures and we talk about what food to eat, what food not to eat. And nobody agrees. And people think, oh, that's the fix, that's the fix. And I found for me, and that's why I relate to what you write as well, is for me, the biggest change was not finding what's the right food or the wrong food, but being so tuned in to know, do I even need food right now? Am I just being or feeling hungry, but I'm not hungry, I'm just overwhelmed or anxious or sad, and I'm just responding to it by saying, how do I suppress this emotion and sort of accept this emotion? Totally. By eating something. So expand more on that and expand more on the mirror work part, because I think that's a very powerful, rarely talked about self-love practice that you have a whole chapter on. Mirror work is any practice that you do with a mirror where you're interacting with yourself as if you're on the outside of yourself. That's the beauty of a mirror, is that you're able to meet yourself as if you're meeting another person. You're able to see things about yourself by doing that. You're able to project love toward yourself. You're able to have conversations with yourself. I even have a real aggressive practice where you do journey work into your own eyes, where you're essentially penetrating through to your own soul in that way and coming to a deeper understanding of yourself by doing so. But obviously that changes the relationship that you have to yourself. We're not very conscious of the relationship we have to ourselves, to be honest, because we're just walking around kind of in this meat suit every day. That's how most of us experience life. And from the inside. And so we're not very aware of what our relationship with ourself looks like. And it's not until most people get in front of a mirror and start doing mirror work that they're like, whoa, I am in a relationship with me and right now it's not a good one and I want it to be different. And you can't imagine how you respond to these positive messages that you might take for granted. I mean, you wouldn't take for granted in another relationship. You understand how walking up to your friend and being like, I am so proud of you would just be like, wow, transforming for them. You never think about what it might do to yourself to look at yourself in the mirror and say that to yourself rather than the constant, what most people are doing, you know, beratement that is going on internally. It changes your whole relationship to what you do with yourself. You start to develop self-compassion. Obviously you make different choices in life and what's, I think, even more powerful than making those different choices full stop is that you have awarenesses, like what you're saying, these awarenesses that just generate out of your being because you're in that space where you're ready to understand yourself better. Where maybe, you know, for the first time you go into the kitchen to go snack on something and you're like, why am I doing this? You know, all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm in a conscious relationship with myself. Right now I can feel the part of me that emotionally is just wanting to stuff this in my mouth because it sedates some kind of anxiety that I have, for example. Oh, wait, that's the genesis of me understanding that I have anxiety. Now then, you know, that naturally gives rise to a, well, do I want to just stuff my anxiety down? If you start practicing things like mirror work or other self-love techniques, it's not possible for you to do that because you suddenly perceive, wait, I'm damaging me. You know, you're almost like de-acclimatizing to this way of being with yourself that is so brutal. So pretty soon your actions start to be, instead of, oh, I'm gonna stuff this in my mouth to shut down my anxiety, I'm gonna actually respond to my anxiety. What is this really about? Do I need to go seek reassurance with somebody else? Do I need to go outside? Like simple practices that could really be helpful. Oh, yeah. What do you feel, based on your experience and work with people, are the most common emotions that are present in society right now that we tend to suppress, not only with food, but other habits, harmful habits, let's just call it. Futility. Right now, futility would be the top of my pick for humanity, for the emotion that they're trying. You have to tell me what futility even means. Okay, so futility. Non-native speaker here, like futility, that's a new word I learned. Futility is when the doing of something feels like it's not gonna work no matter what. So it's almost like the energy that I wanna give you to show you futility is, let's say that you're wanting to, say, build a sandcastle, but the waves just keep crashing the sandcastle. Yeah, you're just like, there comes a point where you're like, you know, I can't build it. It's not gonna work. Right now, futility is what is setting in in such a huge way, collectively, for humanity. And humanity's answer to that futility is to suppress it through distraction. Here's Instagram, here's Facebook, here's TikTok. And it's just a way to essentially get away from the fact that most people feel like no matter how much effort they put towards whatever it is that they're wanting, it's not gonna amount to anything. And why does that happen, hopelessness? Hopelessness has happened because we were given a formula. All through the 90s, I would even say, we were given a formula for how to succeed, and that formula doesn't work anymore. A lot of that is down to economic recessions. You know, COVID made that about 1,000 times worse. The fact that you've got the older generation still in the job market. Basically, that standard model for how to put your energy towards something and see a result is no longer something that is available to, especially the younger generations. And so, it was a sort of, well, nothing that I'm gonna do is gonna get me out of the situation. You know, for millennials, it's nothing I'm gonna do is ever gonna make it so I can afford a house. For the younger generations, it's even worse. It's like, why would I even depend on something that's stupid? Okay. Yeah, that's what's creating this. Is it because it actually doesn't work, or is it because our expectations have become a little flawed because of the stories that we hear? It's both. It's definitely both. You've got all kinds of influences going on right now. All the way from, you know, that standard template, which did work in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s, did work. Guess what? It doesn't work anymore. That's for sure. Are you competing with more people in the workplace? Yes, you are. Do things that used to matter, like degrees, matter as much? No. You've got all those types of factors. At the same time is, you've definitely got the fact that when a lot of people are getting onto social media sites like this, they're seeing a completely unrealistic version of what life is. Whether that's, you know, these little precious moments that seem to be all that anybody's life is, but it's not. All the way to, you know, this Instagram influencer being like, oh, look, you're not living a life unless you're in this hotel in Nepal. You know, it's not a realistic life for the majority of people to go for. And so if that's where they're, you know, aiming is after all the plethora of that, it's gonna feel like they're not getting anywhere. I feel in my experience, it's like hope is built on the wrong foundations in society, at least from my experience for the community that I serve. It feels like they've been told, become successful overnight, or all relationships are easy. Oh, yeah. You know, a relationship, you know? Like women are like this, men are like this. There's one template for everything, and that's the truth. Instead of saying there is your truth, and you have to discover it, and your journey that you have to appreciate, at least that's my experience of life, is there's all templates work and none of them do. Till the time you don't make it yours, you have to take the template, understand it for yourself, and see how you implement it in your life, and how it becomes real for you, because it's nuanced, and it's very hard to teach nuance. It's experiential. It's like you do it, and then you go, I can say, go do mirror work, talk to yourself like this, and your body will talk back to you. And there's a friend of mine like, my body ain't talking back to me. I was like, listen, it's your experience. I don't know how you will feel that experience. It felt like to me that my body tells me now, you're not hungry. You're just this, right? I feel like my body's talking back to me. You might be, I just don't feel hungry. And that's fine too. Like you have to adapt it. It's nuances. It's not the same language. And in my experience, it feels like the expectations are so high, especially for the generation that just came in, because of all the, for what it feels to me, wrong stories that they were told, because they were just set in these big impossible dreams, and everybody's a billionaire, and everybody's a trillionaire, and we are such a large economy, and everything's good. But it's not. It's life. Life's gonna give you a good ball here, and a bad ball there, and you gotta figure it out. Yeah, I don't really think that people are equipped right now to deal with challenges. They seem to think that if challenges happen, it's a message that you shouldn't be continuing to do whatever it is you're doing. But that's also piling on top of the fact that most people, especially in these younger generations, they're being told what type of life is of value, rather than figuring out exactly what values they specifically have. When you hook into your own unique values, it's much easier to be resilient when challenges hit you, because you're still choosing what's most important to you. And most young people today do not have a handle on what is important to them. Nor is anybody helping them out with that. Instead, it's, you know, whatever they see in TikTok, that should be important. This should be important. And I'm telling you, it's real surface stuff. It's shocked me, in fact, you know. And it's easy to be excited about the surface stuff, because it's surface stuff. It looks exciting. It may or may not be actually that exciting once you are leaning into life. Another point that I feel that may be happening in society is that we overall have reduced our self-worth, or how we see ourselves, is we don't value ourselves as much as people, as we probably should, in a way. So a question I have for you, because you give a phenomenal technique in the book, which I would love people to explore, where you talk about taking inventory, or personal inventory. You say something to the tune of developing self-worth is by creating three personal inventories. The first is list of endowments. Second is a list of capabilities and potential. And third is a list of contributions and success. I want you to elaborate on that. Okay, so first thing that I want to say is that we could be addressing self-worth at this sort of egoic level, which is what I am suggesting to do in these exercises, and we could be addressing it at a completely different level as well, which is that something innately has worth regardless of whether you have a list of endowments or not, right? If I was to walk you into the middle of the woods and show you a tree and say, does this tree have worth, your answer would, most people would be automatically yes. And it's like, well, that's funny, because it's really not doing anything other than sitting there. And most people can touch into the fact that they feel a sense of worth in the existence of something, regardless of the endowments that that thing possesses. However, we right here are as people living in a society where our egos, our personal sense of identity is very much a part of our everyday life, which is why it's beneficial to participate in exercises like this. So one of the things that I suggest people to do is in this inventory, the first thing that they're doing is they're writing down almost like a list of the positive character traits, or positive traits of self that doesn't even need to be related to character that they actually can resource. Whether that's, oh, I really, really like the dimple on my left cheek, or whether it's, I'm very dedicated, nothing can get in the way of what I'm wanting, or I mean, it's a whole list for each person, right? And one of the best things you can do with this if you're struggling is to involve the people in your life that like you and say, listen, I'm doing this exercise. If somebody was to come to you behind my back and say, what are the best things about me, what would you write? You can send an email to your friends and have them send it back, and you'll start to see these themes. Maybe everybody's like, you're really funny, dude. Okay, so funny goes on that list. The next one is capabilities and potentials, but it's gotta feel believable to a person. You never wanna do affirmations that don't feel believable. I know that I'm flying in the face of what most people think about affirmations by saying that. I don't think it's healthy to lie to yourself regardless of whether you're lying to yourself into one day believing it or not. It's self-gaslighting, I think it's crap, and it's also very weak because when you've- And that's why they don't come true because you don't even believe it. There you go. So the best thing is to pick things that are actually believable. So if you're writing something like, I know I have the potential to quit smoking. You may not have quit smoking, but when you write down, let's say that's an accessible thought to you. Yeah, I think I do have the potential. You write that down as a potential. Capability, I have the capability to listen very deeply when people are telling their stories. Write down the capability, right? You could do things as small as, I donated $100 to homeless relief, and that feels like a contribution that I'm proud of. Successes, I got a degree in engineering, might be one of those. It could be whatever feels like any kind of achievement to you yourself. It should be something you can actually feel, right? I learned to do really good makeup. It's whatever it is. I don't want people to get lost in the idea that it has to be big things or middle things or small things. It's like anything should go on that list that you can actually resource as some kind of an achievement, some kind of a, those are like the badges, you know? I feel my contribution, and so I feel my worth in this way in the world. And something that I think it's important for people to understand is that all of us, each and every one of us, have affected somebody's life in some way. Some of us have made a life of it, but others of us, it's like, did you give that seat up on the bus to that one woman? We're impacting each other's lives all day long. And you don't know. Like, if I went right now and I went, let's say that you did that, you gave your seat up on a bus, I went and I talked to that woman. I said, did that dramatically change the way that your life experience went? She might look at me and be like, yeah, not only that, it made me have hope in humanity. Okay, well then, you can't look at me and say that your worth isn't there. I mean, if you touch literally one life, one life, that's it. It's worth it, and that doesn't need to be a human life. You know? One of the things in my experiences is that the journey from what I think you call ego-based self-worth, is that what you said, yeah? Ego-based self-worth to knowing, an inherent knowing of I am worthy, and there is no need for a because, it's just because. So that journey took a long time. It took a very long time. I feel like maybe anywhere between, I wanna say maybe 10 years. It could have been a little longer, it could have been a little shorter, but it feels like at least a decade, because it's, again, past programming things, stories that we tell ourselves, stories especially that we keep telling ourselves, even if they had no evidence of truth in the world outside, made me believe that my worth was associated because I can work really hard, which is very true, which is why I worked really hard in the first maybe 15 years of my life, 10 years of my life, like my working career. I started really early for an Indian to start working. I started working at 17, which in India, nobody does. Started working only after graduation until I'm 21 or 22. Started getting jobs, started making my own money, doing everything by myself, because I felt that I'm not worthy as a person for whatever reason I had labeled that in my life. But it was only through, I feel like the only way I could get to the place of today, being in a place where I'm like, I'm worthy, and I don't need a justify or need a justification for it is because I did all of what you just said, is to get all of those exercises, including asking people, hey, why do you think I'm good? And often I was told things that I didn't see any value in. Well, yeah. I was like, what? Yeah, it's because we take for granted the things we're the best at, for sure. I've noticed this when people have innate traits that are like incredible positive traits. It's like a meh, it doesn't take us any effort. So we don't assign any particular worth to it. And that's especially true if what we have as an incredible talent is not valued by those around us when we're younger. We don't get the reflection very young. Wow, this is amazing. Maybe it's something else. How does a journey look like from your perspective, like going from ego-based, figuring out, let's say somebody who's listening to this thing and going, wow, I think I have to start here because I need to first believe that I can get to that place where I just feel I'm worthy. Is there a journey, a pattern that you've seen that occurs? It just happens to you, it falls in your lap. I mean, I've definitely met people who have had this as an intention, and so they've gone on like shamanic journeys in the middle of the Amazon rainforest about this, and that's how they found a sense of innate sort of essence worth, if you will. But the vast majority of people, what it is is that when they actually commit to finding a sense of worth in their identity, in their separate ego, and they start doing things in favor of self-love, that deeper awareness of a worth that is not really defined by what you do or don't do, or are or are not, just literally happens upon you. It's an experience kind of like falling in love is. If you're like, how to go fall in love? I'm like, look, it's just gonna happen to you. Take these steps, it will just happen to you. That's what happens. And what's the experience of feeling I'm worthy? Like in the ultimate sense? Yeah, like just as a being, if I'm experiencing I'm worthy, what's my experience of life? It's profound calmness. When somebody has that breakthrough around their own, the sort of worthiness of their own essence, it's not this transcendental, oh my gosh, the world is so amazing, buzzing state. It's that when we are in a state of anxiety around our own self-worth, we're in that constant tension. And when we have the awareness of worth, that intrinsic worth, that tension goes away. So you'll start to hear birdsong. You'll start to be able to experience almost the joy in not doing. You become much better at being rather than doing. And a lot of your actions become more deliberate and much more focused towards whatever it is that feels compelled through you, rather than I'm gonna go chase worth in some way. It feels like you have gotten off of the rat wheel. So obviously getting off of the rat wheel and coming out of that constant anxiety causes it a profound internal calm. Let's switch gears a little bit. There's another very wonderful area that you cover in the book that is often difficult to explain, experience, and also to practice, I feel like, at least has been for me, is which is where you talk about forgiveness. Oh. I don't remember the exact code, but it was something to the line of, if you've truly forgiven someone, you will not tell anybody ever to forgive someone. That's very interesting because a lot of people tell you to forgive people or forgive things. Yeah, they're just doing that for their own sense of comfort. Yeah, I obviously have very different views on this whole thing because of a lot of different things, not only this universal understanding that I possess, but also having gone through such a profound experience of actual forgiveness. In a space of genuine forgiveness, it's like there's nothing left to forgive. You have so much deep understanding of every angle of the situation that occurred, and there's been such deep healing that has occurred that there is nothing needed left. It means you're done, you're done with it. And I mean genuinely, not like a bypass, not like, I've just forgiven them. Like, that is a bypass. I've got 600 steps here that I need to go through in order to weave what has happened into the tapestry of who I am so that it adds to who I am rather than continues to detract from who I am. And yet I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna jump straight to, I wanna be done with it. That's avoidance. So forgiveness is something which cannot be forced. I know that's a controversial view, but I'm genuinely sticking with this. When you have gone through something that is profoundly life-shattering, profoundly traumatizing, you need to drop the concept of forgiveness entirely. What you need to do is to focus on healing. Now to heal, what does that mean? It means usually to experience the opposite or to experience some form of resolve. So your work is about doing that. Your work is about creating the repair. Your work is about experiencing the opposite. And the steps you take, the journey you go through to get to that improved state will naturally bring you to a space where forgiveness, what people are calling forgiveness, naturally occurs. That means there is no more disruption in your being towards the other person or towards the event or circumstance that occurred. It's almost like I need nothing from you. So let's say I have a situation. Let's hypothetically assume I have a situation where I'm finding it really hard to forgive someone. I'm just done, I'm just done. I want something that I can hold on to so at least I can start to forgive. I understand that I cannot force forgiveness, but I wanna be done with the situation. What would you suggest I do? Admit that wanting to be done with something is avoidance. Do I have compassion for that state? Yes, I do, because myself more than anybody has been in situations where it's like you're just so sick of putting in the work, basically, that you wanna be in a space of peace. I get it. However, when you just wanna be done with something, you're not done with it. End of story. So what that means is you need to actually go in the direction of the very painful feelings that still exist. If the painful feelings and that turmoil still exists, you need to go into it still, not away from it. So you would be using processes to go into whatever it is that is triggering, whatever it is that is emotionally painful. Two of my favorite processes for that, one is the emotional experiencing process, two is the completion process, both of which I teach people to do. So going into those processes, you're able to create a kind of a relief for those emotional states. You're able to also understand the profound messages being carried by the emotion, because these intensely charged emotional states, they carry information, information about you, information about what you need, right? It's very important to learn that information about yourself so you can take the right actions to resolve whatever it is that you were struggling with. Most of us don't go deep enough into the pain to understand what the hell it is we need. You know, you might be, let's say the two people are both struggling with something that happened and that caused intense levels of jealousy for them. For one person, what they might need desperately and realize that they need after going into the emotion is they might need somebody who acts as an advocate rather than as an adversary, because that's what they never had and that's why they feel the sensation. Another person who goes into the very same emotion, around a circumstance, might realize that what they're so desperately needing is something like commitment. I need commitment from someone and I've never had commitment. Okay, well, that's two different roads actually that we're taking. So then you are able to take the steps and it's not about the other person, right? It's not about the person that screwed you over. It's about, okay, this person who decided to say that they needed an advocate is like, all right, what does advocacy look like? If a person was an advocate for me, what would they act like? What type of character would they have? Oh, wait, maybe I'm realizing that if somebody's on the codependence side of the spectrum, they're not gonna be somebody with a strong enough character to really be there for me because in a moment's notice, when they get pinched, they're gonna care more about not being in a conflict. So maybe that gives rise to the desire for strong personalities. Now, that even opens the door for even more healing. Oh, you know, what's interesting is that this is really reminding me of my mom when I was younger, let's say. Mom was somebody who really hated conflict and who didn't stand by any of us when she stood to get in a conflict because of it and it was deeply damaging. I want the opposite experience. I actually wanna be defended. Okay, so then maybe you ask one of your friends or you go find new friends and then you lay it down to them. You know, what I really want is defense. Then all of a sudden, you're in this new chapter of conscious relationships with friends where in friendships, people know exactly what you want from them and you're able to communicate exactly what you want from them and vice versa. And then maybe you have your next experience where something crap happens and it's like, your friend is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know? Wait, I have an advocate, you know? And then you can really bring that through your body and then this whole process brings you to a space where you're like, oh, wow. Like, I see that event that happened. I don't feel the same level of charge around it. I've got in my life people that are actual advocates for me. I understand why it happened. And actually, if that hadn't happened, this whole road that I just went down would have happened. And now my life is so much more rich because of it. I love that. And I'm curious of a few things here. Firstly, because you said you need more healing. Maybe you need more healing, right? Is there an end to it? Is there a way to realize, oh, I've got my healing. I can move on now. When does one know? And I'm not trying to put anybody down, but I've met people who've been healing. From my perspective, not such a big trauma. Like, from how they explained it all, like, I don't know why this is taking you seven years. Like, it's just, it's like, I get it and I have no one to judge, but at the same point in time, it feels like, well, there must be at some point they need to heal to move on. It feels like they will never move on. So I'm curious, is there a way for us to know? It feels like this is complete for now. Maybe for now, if not forever. Well, we have to separate healing from individual circumstances from healing in general. Because the picture of healing in general, you're never gonna be done with it. That is. Human experience, fine. Not just human experience, that is the grounds for expansion. But healing from individual experiences, yes, there is a point at which you can know that you are essentially done with it, but that's the point at which you don't care that you're done. So that's prerequisite number one. It's a little bit dangerous to look at somebody in the face and say, I'm done with it. Oh, believe me, that's an invitation for the universe to be like, oh, really? Try version 2.0. So first of all, you're not in resistance. But that's expansion, so it's probably good. Yeah, there you go. So you know essentially you're gonna be more likely to be done when you no longer have the need to be done and you no longer need, you're not even asserting it anymore. Because you're like, you know, if there's another layer I don't see, then there's another layer I don't see. You won't feel the same level of charge in your being, emotional charge. And you will have experienced the resolution to whatever it is that harmed you in the first place. And that is most likely, in the individuals you're describing, has not happened yet, the resolution. That or, you know, people can get stuck in a place for a long time when being stuck there is serving them in some way. Which is what I feel, at least in the experiences that sometimes I'm communicating. I'm like, it feels like it just serves them. It's like they don't wanna be healed. The story is actually serving the need, like you said, that they need. But instead of expressing it as a need, they're expressing it as a challenge in their life. Instead of just exploring, oh, my need is this. Let me just ask for what I need. So I see your point, but it's just my curiosity to say, wow, sometimes it feels like, and I am also learning every time. And that's why I'd like to invite guests and poke sometimes, just to kind of get my better understanding. So that was the first thing that I wanted to understand. Secondly, and this is a strong opinion, loosely held, that I have, is that sometimes I feel we stress too much on our past and too much on the story of the past. That's a strong opinion, loosely held. I know I'm asking a question to someone who is an expert in some ways on the past, probably, or past stories, probably. I hope it's a loosely held belief, yeah. It's probably not that loosely held, but being really honest, it's probably not that loosely held. But it feels to me that what served me the most, and it could be an avoidance technique. So I'm not debating that particular narrative per se, but what I've found is what's helped me the most is to find the need, like you say, find what do I really need in this situation? I need this. And then just to go, okay, so I can just be present to it and then move on. And I get really present to present instead of being present to past. When you go through experiences in the past, what happens is a fragmentation. So the best way to understand fragmentation is to think about water. When you're looking at a stream from above, you've got these different branches of water that go in these different directions. That is what the consciousness of a human does in a moment of trauma. And that fragmentation happens in very complicated ways on a non-physical level, and very, very complicated ways in terms of a, let's say, a personality spectrum level. So let's say that when you are, let's say four years old, you're four years old and all of a sudden, like let's say an older brother gets really, really badly injured. This can be a trauma nobody is helping you to work through. And so that changes the belief systems that you hold. That changes the way that you have to adapt to the world. You start to cope with aspects of your personality to the suppression of other aspects of your personality. And if it's not resolved, what happens is an aspect of your soul stream becomes trapped there. So let's say you've got me as an extrasensory. When I'm walking into a house, say the Airbnb that I'm renting right now, I'm able to actually see fragments of individuals that are stuck in that house at moments of trauma. This is why in shamanic circles, soul retrieval is such an incredibly important thing. These aspects of ourselves stay stuck in the past, almost like a skipping CD, calling us back there. And that's really super spooky when we live in a universe managed by law of mirroring, what most people call law of attraction. Because it means that if we haven't resolved that trauma that we're stuck in, we actually repeat it. So what you'll find is the people who wanna be done with it, who wanna be living in the now, the universe brings you your trauma again. It's an interesting conversation. Stop me if you feel like this is just tangential. You don't wanna talk about it. Oh, this is not, this is the juiciest thing we've talked about yet. Okay, oh, perfect, so that's great. So to me, and maybe because of the way I look at the world right now, or at least right now, is I see, coming back to the first point, we are all here for our happiness. So from that point of view, I'm simply, from my perspective, what I go is, this doesn't serve me. And I will always have, like you said, I will always have healing. I will always have trauma. I will always have a story of a trauma, and there is no end to it. The more I explore, the more I find. The more I look, the more I discover. Because I'm carrying a big box of trauma, if you wanna look at it from that point of view, it doesn't help me move forward. The only thing that helps me is to drop the box. I don't think so at all. When I work with people, I work with them specifically to mine through those boxes. And each time, it's like, the better it gets, the better it gets. I also have never worked with somebody and managed to get them to a place where they really deeply understand what it is that they are needing to experience without that deep mining process. When you work with people at more of that level of just what is accessible to their current awareness without really diving, like I'm describing, what they come up with is, it's like weak healing, in fact, compared to the gravity of when they really dive into it and really have those awarenesses. Like why, what is it about this moment right here that was so damaging? What is it that I decided in this moment based off of that decision? How did I start acting? How do I keep acting that way today? I mean, helping a person mine in this way makes it, it's such a more accelerated path to amplifying their life experience. It's like, oh my God, I wouldn't want to do anything else. It starts to become the one-two step. Further, further, further, further, further, further. And yeah, in my experience, the people who wanna drop the box are in avoidance because they think that it's just gonna be never-ending. Fair enough, fair enough. I think we have both our unique ways of approaching to life and I think both of them work in their own way for their own purposes, I guess. Moving on. So one of the things that you have in the book is this quote, which I love, and it is around purpose, which is where you say, we very often make mistake when we are searching for our life purpose because we look for what we are supposed to do or to have in this world, when in fact, our purpose comes instead in the form of what we are supposed to give to this world. It is only through the giving of this gift that we can ever receive and allow our true selves to express themselves into the world. Yeah, I feel like the majority of people, they're approaching life from this perspective of they're down here so that it's about what they can get. They're not really seeing themselves as, say, a part of the system of life here on Earth. So I think one of the best ways to make this make sense is to think about a car engine. Every single part of that car engine has some kind of a sort of gift to give, a way of being, a purpose in and of itself, and that purpose adds to the functioning of the entire system, right? So what I'm saying is the same way that a carburetor would be like, oh, I'm a carburetor, which means this is what I have to give, and because of knowing that that's what I have to give, I know my place within the grand scheme of things. We are all the same. When it is that we figure out what gift it is we have to give the world or what offering we have, that is when we find our place. That's when we're in profound touch with our purpose. Is there a pathway that you've found that people discover purpose? Yeah, it's a two-part thing. The first part is figuring out what it is that you give naturally that you love giving and that you don't need anything back for. That's part one. Part two is figure out what it is that causes passion in a way where it just makes the hours turn into minutes. It's a profound sense of joy or contentment even, right? So yeah, if you were to marry those two concepts of joy and of figuring out what it is that innately comes out of you in that way, that sort of gift-giving way, your purpose falls in your lap because it can do no other than that. Beautiful. And I think purpose is such a big thing right now for people to discover. Like you said, a lot of us experience hopelessness in life or you give a very wonderful word for it. But purpose is something that can maybe give us more hope. On the other hand, there is a beautiful section that you have in your book around guilt. And I want to explore that topic with you. Because guilt is something that comes up. And it's, again, very hidden to a person. And it comes up often in conversations with people from all the way food guilt to bigger guilt in life. What's your take on guilt? First of all, guilt is something that is learned. So guilt happens when we've got a line and that line is a no versus yes line and we cross it. So let's say that in childhood you were taught that doing something for yourself versus somebody else is bad. You go and you do something for yourself, you're gonna feel guilt because you crossed that line. So breaking ourselves out of guilt is about questioning and deconstructing those lines we've built around ourselves. Because if we were growing up in households where we were, say, manipulated with guilt, or if we were growing up in cultures where there was a very strong idea of what good and bad and right and wrong is, then the way that it kind of looks on a non-physical level for people is like, I don't know if you saw this scene, it was like with Catherine Zeta-Jones. There was a scene where she was sort of snaking her way in and out of these red laser beams. I think she was stealing something in the movie. But that's how people look when they are surrounded with guilt. It's like they're surrounded by all these crisscross lasers where they can't even lift an arm without, you know? So we need to take them down. We're not gonna be able to operate in a way where we don't take them down. So that, like I said, it requires deep, deep questioning of right versus wrong, good versus bad, you know, tipping things on their head in terms of the way we think about them so that then we can and are willing to cross that line and don't feel the same way about it. And how does one build that understanding? Are there a set of questions, a thought experiment that one could have to start building that understanding, what's right and wrong? Or is it right and wrong personally or right and wrong universally? Both. I mean, I want people to start questioning things like a philosopher. I don't have a particular process myself for it, but it's almost like, like, let's say that, let's say that you're, okay, there's guilt around, say, going to something that you were really excited to go to instead of going to a family dinner. Mm-hmm. Let's make it like that. Okay, so start questioning. Is it wrong to prioritize this thing that I prioritized over, you know, going to that dinner? You can write a whole list of, these are the reasons why it's wrong, these are the reasons why it's right. Now, you're really looking at those things on that list being like, okay, which has more gravity, honestly, right? You could even get with things like that when you start to think of it philosophically enough, and you can involve your friends in this, by the way, if you have really philosophical friends, hopefully you do. You can involve them in this little debate process. You can even get to the point with things like this where you're like, wow, that's interesting. Me doing that is actually more loving towards the people in my life. How would I feel? You can even play it this way. How would I feel if I was just showing up to that, you know, somebody I loved was just showing up to hang out with me out of obligation? Would I want them to be there? Is that loving? I mean, you just literally start to tip things on their head and the process of doing that, of like stepping out of something and looking at it from all these different angles and questioning it. Let's use the word again. It's a process of disidentification to the point where it's like the stickiness is coming off of it, right? And I don't even need to help a person with that. What will happen is in that process of questioning, there will be a thought that you're introduced to around that subject that's like a, boom, like totally changed my way of thinking about that. Oh, I can't feel the same way about that anymore. So now when you do it, it doesn't cause the guilt to arise. I don't feel like people need to stress out very much about this process leads them down the road to hell, you know, which some people do because they feel like that sense of right versus wrong has to be some external construct, like what religion gave them or what mom and dad gave them. But you'll notice that this sense of conscience is really intrinsic to human beings. Most people don't want to hurt someone. So I feel like through this process of questioning, people actually learn where their intrinsic sense of right and wrong, quote unquote, is and isn't. So they're operating more through the world from the inside of what's right for me and what my conscience tells me versus I've got all these rules I've adopted and organized around myself like a barbed wire fence. Final two questions of our conversation for today at least. And the question is, one belief you would want to offer to someone you care deeply about? The belief that I would want anyone that I care about to hold within their being is that we are in an active co-creation and they have immense power of influence within the picture of that co-creation. And because of that, to never underestimate the amount of impact that they can have and do have. What is it that you've seen people believe that is, in your opinion, completely untrue? It's possible to just focus on whatever it is that you're wanting and to manifest whatever it is that you're wanting. That the picture of manifestation has entirely to do with focus. Where is it that people can find the best source of information or to engage with you, to follow you, what would be those places? All of my stuff, all of it, whether it's events or products or videos is on tealswan.com. But for people who are really wanting to go down the rabbit hole of information, YouTube is a place to go. If you go to YouTube, you find my channel on YouTube, just type in tealswan. You can go down the rabbit hole forever on different subjects, because I'm teaching people about all kinds of things, whatever it is that they're struggling with and whatever questions they're asking me. So believe me, it'll keep you occupied for a long time. Well, thank you. It was a delight speaking with you. You too. Thank you for joining us.