Ep 143: Wonder, Ecstatic Bliss & Our True Motivations

Have you ever felt the tug-of-war between the urge to flee from life's relentless challenges and the deep-seated desire to lean into its opulence?  This episode is  a heart-to-heart that's as much about the pursuit of ecstasy as it is about the courage to face life's truths. 

We navigate through the landscape of our emotions, contemplating universal love, the solace of solitude, and the invigorating flow of creativity.  We consider whether we're truly seeking to engage with life's richness or merely attempting to escape its grasp. This isn't just a conversation; it's a mirror held up to the soul, challenging us to confront what lies beneath our yearnings for wonder and ecstatic bliss.

As the episode unfolds, we don't shy away from the tough questions. We probe into our collective pursuit of enlightenment, to discern whether we're illuminating the nooks and crannies of our existence or simply wrapping ourselves in the comfort of fantasies. It's a call to embrace the full spectrum of life's experiences, from the blissful to the brutal, and to do so with authenticity and an open heart. 

Join us to kindle purpose, connection, and inspired living.

Chapters

• 0:02 Embracing Life With Catherine Llewellyn
• 11:05 Aim for Truth and Light

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 143. So today I would like to talk about wonder and ecstatic bliss. So no, I have not been self-medicating, unless you count pure water and a healthy diet and plenty of fresher. So, wonder and ecstatic bliss. So I'm just going to reel off a few descriptions of feelings in relation to that and, as I go through these, I invite you to see how they resonate with you. Are these experiences that you have had? Are these experiences that you would like to have? Are these experiences that sound just weird you don't have anything to do with? Just see how you resonate before I go on to the next part of the conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:12

So, feeling washed with universal love have you experienced that? Would you like to experience that? Feeling held, contained, supported have you experienced that? Would you like to experience that? Feeling part of a wonderful momentum and creative flow Is that something you've experienced? Is that something you'd like to experience? Feeling cleansed, liberated, light, spacious Is that something you've experienced or something you'd like to experience? Feeling great clarity, purpose, sense of meaning have you experienced that or would you like to? And the last one feeling a supreme joy of solitude whilst having a peaceful appreciation of connection with others. Is that an experience you've had, or is that experience you might like to have Now?

Speaker 1: 2:31

For me, those phrases and there could be many, many more those are just the ones that came through for me. Even the words in those phrases, to me, are uplifting and encouraging somehow. But why do we want these experiences? It seems to me that there are two broad kind of motivations for wanting and desiring these sorts of experiences. The first one is the motivation to escape from life and the second one is the motivation to embrace life in its fullness. And depending on the motivation that we have, the way we will actually engage with looking for any of those experiences will be different and the result will be different, and I'm being quite pedantic about this and saying this is so. However, I would invite you to actually explore this and see what's true for you, because my truth is not your truth, your truth is not my truth, unless it is. So. You know, let's just play around with this and this is quite a short episode, so, although this whole conversation could be a very long one, this is just designed to open up a bit of a conversation. So those two motivations for wanting these experiences, one of them being the motivation to escape from life and the other being the motivation to embrace life. So that first one motivation to escape life that motivation is actually seeking a feeling of no pain, a feeling of no problems, in other words, an escape from the reality of the difficulties of life.

Speaker 1: 4:29

Now, if something is an escape from the realities of life, it is, by definition, a fantasy or a sham. So, in other words, if our motivation for seeking any of those experiences is actually a motivation to escape from life, then what we're really seeking then is a fantasy, a sham, a simulation. And if we put our energy into seeking that and this happens consciously and unconsciously, more often unconsciously actually with this one because who wants to say to themselves I want to seek a fantasy that will escape me from the realities of life? People don't say that to themselves. They might say I want to break from the discomfort and the awkwardness and difficulty of life, but we don't tend to say to ourselves I want to exit from life altogether and completely divorce myself from the reality of life. For the majority of us, that's not what we're saying Now, very sadly, there are people where there is what they're saying, and that's very sad for someone to be in a place where that's truly where they are, but for most of us, most of the time, that's not the case.

Speaker 1: 5:51

It's a temporary respite that we're looking for. However, even if it's a temporary respite, what that's seeking for a disconnection from reality or an escape from reality and wanting a sham, a fantasy, a feeling of no pain ultimately produces emptiness, because it takes us away from the richness of the truth of life, and the way that we're constructed psychologically is that something in us knows that that's not right, knows that it's not fulfilling, so it creates a sense of emptiness. It also creates a sense of jadedness and exhaustion, because the whole thing about our energy and our capacity for aliveness and vibrancy it all depends on everything being in flow. It depends on being authentic, being real. So whenever we're actually deceiving ourselves in any way or investing in a fantasy in any way, what that does is it puts us out of sync with ourselves, and that's an energy drain and that creates jadedness.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So if you've got emptiness and jadedness, what you eventually then get is despair and pointlessness, which then makes you even more want to escape, and this can be a downward spiral, and I haven't experienced this for a long time, but I have experienced it and I used to call it the abyss. I'm in the abyss, and the thing about an abyss is you can't see the way out. Now, of course, we do find the way out. Things happen, people help us, etc. So why am I talking about this?

Speaker 1: 7:37

It's incredibly depressing, purely because it's just a really useful reminder for us to try to be awake to what our true motivation is when we're seeking some of these incredible experiences. Are we actually seeking these things as an escape from life or, alternatively, are we seeking these experiences as part of a motivation to embrace life? So, when we're following that motivation, what we're actually seeking is truth and shining light in every corner. So shining light on ourselves, on our upside, our downside, on our shadows, as well as on our strengths and our capacities. It means that we become an investigator profoundly curious, courageous, interested, actually humorous as well, not taking ourselves overly seriously, because our priority is the embracing of life, and life itself contains the ridiculous, the humorous, the tragic, the exciting. Everything is contained in life. So when our motivation is to embrace life, we are seeking truth and we are seeking to shine light in every corner.

Speaker 1: 9:04

Now, the result of this, of doing this, however much we do it, the more we do it, the better produces integration, because it means it helps all those aspects of us that may seem to be in conflict to accept one another and to integrate. It creates self-knowing, self-love, connection with the collective and connection with the divine and, ultimately, oneness and joy. So you can see why that one is obviously preferable. It requires more courage. It requires us to get off our posterior and actually receive life and be open to it. And the thing is in life that the more we follow the escape motivation, the more familiar that becomes, the more comfortable in a way that becomes. And the more we pursue the embracing motivation, the more familiar that becomes and the more comfortable that becomes. So wherever we are in our lives let's say you're sitting there thinking, oh God, I'm 80% escape motivation. That's cool. You can bring that down to 70%, you can just shave it back a little bit to 65%, and the more you do that, the more you're switching across to embracing life. And the thing about embracing life, and all those beautiful effects that that has, is that we get stronger, we get brighter, we get more resourceful, we get happier. So that means that our transition from the escape motivation to the embracing life motivation is accelerated by the very effect of the very transition that we're making. So it's really all good is what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 10:56

So the questions really I invite you to consider this coming week are what am I aiming for, what am I open to and where am I putting my energies?

Speaker 1: 11:05

So what am I aiming for in terms of? Am I trying to escape the difficulties of life or am I aiming for embracing life? What am I aiming for, embracing life? What am I open to? Am I open to truth, light in every corner, or am I simply open to comfort and an alleviation of pain and discomfort, unhappiness, awkwardness? And where am I putting my energies? Am I putting my energies into truth and light in every corner, or am I doing the feel, no pain, fantasy? So I'll leave that with you. Have fun with that and I wish you a wonderful week and I will see you next time. Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.