Overcoming the “I Can’t do meditation” Myth! With Tom Cronin

Tom Cronin 0:00

It's an ancient practice that's been around for 1000s of years that we call it a transcending meditation, or Vedic meditation. It has this incredible quality to take the mind deeper and deeper and deeper. Have we spent much time mastering these Super Human Powers? Have we been interested in them, or are we more interested in what the Kardashians are doing that's wrong through Tiktok. This is the big conundrum with spiritual sequences that we're so obsessed about seeking, whether it's in a shopping mall on Instagram or in our spiritual practice, and we're still looking for something special and magical but natural fact, what's the most profound experience that I find is just peace.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:41

Tom Cronin, a warm welcome to the show.

Tom Cronin 0:44

Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Jannecke Øinæs 0:48

I'm excited to dive deep with you today about especially meditation, because you are a leading meditation master. You are an author of six books. You are a coach, a speaker, a producer of the portal and the founder of the stillness project, and you have vast knowledge when it comes to going within and finding that stillness. And maybe we'll learn more about that today. For everybody who's like, I can't meditate, I can't meditate, maybe there's a way in, and maybe you have some some hacks that we can learn today and why it is so important and crucial to find that inner stillness. But I know that you haven't always had that stillness inside, like, how did you end up on this path?

Tom Cronin 1:37

Well, usually we make changes in life because of pain and suffering, and that was very much the case in my life. Usually, pain and suffering is a catalyst for change, and that's what the portal film was all about. How many people went through crisis, and then from there, they propelled themselves into a new way of doing things. And so for me, I was experiencing immense levels of pain and suffering, a lot of addictions, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, insomnia, even constantly being sick, cold, flus, viruses, and then that led to, eventually, a full blown nervous breakdown. And in that was very dark times for me, where I was even questioning whether I wanted to continue on with my life. I was a broker in finance, very much like Wolf of Wall Street in the film. And it was in that bleak, dark time, you know, we kind of get to that point where it's, you know, break down, or break through. That's really in Sanskrit. We call this Rashi. A Rashi is one of those definitive moments where the current trajectory cannot be sustained anymore. It really is a fork in the road. And a fork in the road means one way or the other way. It can't be the same way. Must be one or the other. As far as left or right, can't be straight ahead. And so I'd reached that trajectory in my life where it was that that bleak, and I was really questioning whether I wanted to continue on with life. But that's when I found meditation. And it seemed like in all of my addictions and everything that I was doing when I found meditation was like, Ah, now I understand this was what I was looking for. This was what my quest was all about, and that was a big game changer for me. So that's how I found meditation. Was actually watching a documentary about a property developer, and he was talking about how successful he was and all those sorts of things, but there was a tiny slither in that story about how he used meditation for his success. And so, you know, for me, that was like a light bulb moment. You know, I'd never come across meditation before. It was in the mid 90s, and that's when I picked up the Yellow Pages book we have here in Australia, and searched up M for meditation, and started to ring all the different centers for meditation. And that's when I started to learn meditation.

Jannecke Øinæs 3:43

Now, from what I understand, you probably had all these struggles because of some traumas, I would assume, because we usually have struggles in our lives, because we actually struggle with something that's that's a deeper problem. Now, do you think that meditation solves that, or do we also need to do? You know, therapy, Shadow Work, other things to release these traumas that are inside.

Tom Cronin 4:12

If I see yes to that, we I don't think there's one thing that can fix everything. I think we need a very holistic approach to, yeah, to living a fulfilling life. But secondly, when it comes to where I was at, personally, I don't really feel that. And trauma is such a widely used word these days, we can kind of almost put everything into the bucket of trauma. But for me, it had been an accumulation of being in the sympathetic nervous system. That's the stress response. So when you're on a hectic I had a really beautiful childhood. I had a wonderful parents. I had a very healthy, wholesome growing up in the country. I was never abused. I never had any violence in my life. I just had a very wholesome, healthy existence. But when I got into a trading room floor. And the nature of that environment was so high octane, super cortisol induced and super adrenaline induced, which means that you're in the sympathetic nervous system state, which is the fight flight. And when you're in fight flight, consistently over long periods of time, you're reducing, if not eliminating, the production of oxytocin, serotonin and even melatonin, the biochemicals for sleep, happiness and love, and you're producing high levels of cortisol, adrenaline or epinephrine. So over long periods of time, by default, you're going to actually morph into a fairly traumatized state just because of day to day living. And that's unfortunately, where a lot of the world's at. Not everyone is in trauma, right? Sorry, not everyone has had trauma, but everyone is highly stressed just about and so what happened with meditation, which I couldn't find anything else to fix me from that problem, like I'd seen doctors, I'd been put on medication. I was seeing therapists. I was doing so many different modalities, and none of them were really having the effect of being getting me out of the sympathetic nervous system state and putting my body into the parasympathetic nervous system state. And when that started to happen with these deeper meditation styles, my biochemistry completely changed. I stopped producing cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine, and I started producing the oxytocin, serotonin, melatonin, so I started sleeping better. I started feeling happy. I started feeling more at peace and more love. And that's because I was starting to ultimately in a more spiritual essence. I was starting to connect to my very core of who I was, which is, some would call it source. Some would call it divine. Some would call it God. And until we can start that process, everything else in my mind is a band aid. Everything else

Jannecke Øinæs 6:41

interesting, very interesting.

Tom Cronin 6:43

Just Just to add to that, sorry, it doesn't mean those other things don't add value. But until we get to the very crux of the problem, this immense disconnect from source, there's always going to be some degree of suffering,

Jannecke Øinæs 6:57

right? This separateness that we feel. And I've come to learn how important it is to calm down the nervous system and the vagus nerve. I've learned much more about that lately, and that, oh, my nervous system is activated now to spot that, and how, how important it is to be aware of that. So I'm not walking around like that, because I think that we we're often not aware, like you were probably not aware before you just hit the wall.

Tom Cronin 7:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, we don't know what we don't know. And normally, unfortunately, it for most of us, it takes a crisis or some major catalyst before we get this, you know, impulse to change and do something differently. But it doesn't have to be that way. We can actually adapt before we get to crisis. It's just that usually we we wait for that stark, dark moment. But the beautiful thing is, and what I'm learning more and more over this long, winded journey is to really trust the process and that the information, the teachers, the guides, the knowledge, will come when we're ready to hear it, to see it, to find it. And sometimes it just needs that bleak, dark moment for us to finally go looking in the place that we wouldn't normally go looking, and that's usually within.

Jannecke Øinæs 8:19

So in your meditation practices, you said that you found sort of who you were, or you connected to something deeper. I'm curious about that. Could you explain what you mean? Because I haven't had that same experience. I meditated, and it gets sometimes a bit more quieter than other times, usually I hear my thoughts, and I've had some mystical experiences, but I've hadn't had this feeling of, oh, this is who I really am. So I'm curious about how is that like?

Tom Cronin 8:51

Yeah, so what happens in these deeper, transcending meditation styles is we actually lose the eye. There's no I left, and we transcend the thing that's actually looking for the experience. And this is the thing that can get in the way sometimes with spiritual seeking, is that the seeker itself is the part of the problem, because as long as there is a seeker, we can't actually find the thing that we're seeking, because we actually are it when there's no seeker. I know that sounds a bit convoluted, but what happens in transcending meditations is we use a particular primordial vibration or mantra that lures the mind away from the field of relativity and duality, which is this subject object phenomenon where the ego is interpreting the world's information around it and getting some feedback loop to the ego to get some sort of sense of identity, some sense of personality. And when we go into these deeper meditations, we actually completely melt away that ego, then what we find is that there is an existence that exists without the ego. And. We call this being or presence, some will call it the higher self. Some will call it the divine or source. And I was only just teaching some group of people this afternoon, just a few hours ago, and the lady that was riddled with anxiety, extremely stressed and had never experienced meditation before. In her first meditation, she dropped into that state, and she said it was like the deepest, sweetest piece and an incredible bliss washed over my experience. And that's the very essence of who we are, not as an individual or the personality or the ego that's looking for that experience. It's the experience that happens when we've gone beyond the personality of the equal, the identity, because that's always there, which is actually source itself,

Jannecke Øinæs 10:48

interesting. So you can experience that immediately, and it can take a long time, and well, I guess the universe works in mysterious ways. So I don't know. Can we set an intention for something like that too,

Tom Cronin 11:01

no, because it's the ego that's setting the intention. What we're using is a meditation practice itself. It's an ancient practice that's been around for 1000s of years that we call it a transcending meditation, or Vedic meditation, is another name that I it goes by. And the the beauty of this practice is that through the repetition of that mantra, it has this incredible quality to take the mind deeper and deeper and deeper, to the point where it actually transcends the process of thought, yet it still remains conscious and awake. And so now we're in a very profound state we call it Tulia, which is being awake but not having a thought. Now if you're awake and don't have a thought, then who are you is the big question, because you identify as you through your thoughts and your feelings, but when we transcend your thoughts and your feelings, now you're starting to experience you as being, and being is the very core and the internality of who you are, beyond the physical, mental and emotional impermanence of who you think you are.

Jannecke Øinæs 12:04

Are you able to also have that experience here and now being awake? Yeah,

Tom Cronin 12:11

the beautiful thing with the practice through regularity, and this is where it comes. Really interesting as we move through these stages in Vedic philosophy, we call them the seven states of consciousness. So the first state that everyone's in is that they think. And Descartes, the French philosopher, coined that famous phrase, I think, therefore I am. So he identified his existence by the fact that he thought, but obviously he wasn't a deep transcendental meditator, because he would have realized that he existed even without thinking. So the second stage of consciousness that we go into is deep sleep, where we actually lose any sense of conscious awareness whatsoever. And we do that every night, and we drop into that state of sleep where there's no dreams and there's no thoughts, and so we're completely asleep and unconscious at that point. Then we come into dream state, the third state of consciousness. Now the ego re emerges in your dream state, and every dream that you have revolves around you. You are at the center of every one of your dreams, which is this idea that you exist as a function of your thoughts and feelings again, but this time you're asleep, and then we come into waking state. Now most people just move between those three states of consciousness, morning and evening, deep sleep, dream state, thinking state, but as a deep, transcending meditator, we go in our meditation into this transcendent experience of just in being without thought. Now we're awake but not thinking. Now, when we do this on a morning and evening basis, and throw in some regular retreats where we're doing this on a regular basis throughout the day, we eventually stabilize or weave that experience of being into our thinking states of the first state thinking and the fourth state, Turiya becomes a fifth state, where we're having this simultaneous experience where I'm aware of presence or being, or what we call in Sanskrit, satshi, Kuta, the Silent Witness, witnessing Tom, the thinking and the feeling and the physicality. So now I have four things going on. I have witnessing and thinking. I have feelings and I have a physical form. So we have this, the highest self, we call it, and the lower self, which is your three vehicles, the physical, mental and emotional. So you can, yes, absolutely integrate that, and that's the ultimate, one of the ultimate goals along the journey in the seven states of consciousness, getting at least to the fifth state, where this becomes a stabilized state of noticing that you're not just thoughts feelings of physicality, but you're also the witnessing of those things as well.

Jannecke Øinæs 14:31

So I lost you on the fourth. What was the fifth and the sixth and the seventh?

Tom Cronin 14:38

So the fourth is when we close our eyes in meditation, we transcend beyond the external world, transcend beyond our thoughts, transcend beyond our feelings and physicality. We experience this vast, quiet, peaceful void or spaciousness that is extremely serene and extremely blissful. Now when we do this in the morning and evening practice where we go into meditation and come out into activity and into meditation. Into activity. The fifth state becomes something where the inner state of being becomes stabilized whilst we're an activity. So whilst I'm talking to you, there's awareness of being, being experienced whilst I'm talking and interacting with the world. And that's the fifth states. We have these two things happening at once. Tom, the personality integrated with being itself, which is no personality, and then the sixth state of consciousness. So now I'm having an inner awareness of being whilst I'm having an external awareness of the world around me, but the sixth state of consciousness is one where we actually integrate that state of being into the integrate integration of the world around us. And so we start having immense levels of compassion and connection, because we start seeing the same being in others as well. So once I witness you, I witness you, yes, the personality that thinks and feels and has a physical form, but also witness the divine in you as well. I witness that in the bee and in the trees and in the birds and in the wind that's brushing my cheek and the salt water that's drying on my skin and the smell of freshly cut lawn on a summer stain. So this is a beautiful interaction with the world around us, and that's a sixth state of consciousness. And then

Jannecke Øinæs 16:17

I'm very...have the order.

Tom Cronin 16:23

So the seventh state is a very advanced state we call Unity Consciousness. It's a state where really, we're experiencing the very essence and fundamental truth of all reality, that everything is interconnected and everything is part of unified field, if we transcend this idea that we're a very temporary human construct and a very temporary, fleeting dust ball that's floating around, a very temporary spark that's in a solar that's the center of a solar system that's part of a huge multi galaxy and part of a huge or ginormous, ginormous universe. And at the very subtle level of all of that is this eternality of the unmanifest. And in unity consciousness, we start to experience that as, yeah, a non dual experience. We're having a dual experience and a non dual experience at the same time. In Unity Consciousness is the full realization of that unified field happening simultaneously at once.

Jannecke Øinæs 17:20

Now have you experienced this seventh stage of consciousness?

Tom Cronin 17:26

I definitely have moments of it more and more. So these seven states are a sequential process that we move through, and we can actually go quite far into these seven states and oscillate back again, depending on if I'm running late for a plane, Tom starts to re emerge, if there's, you know, a sister. She on the way here tonight, and I in front of me, there was a car crash, and I had to stop and help the two people involved in the crash. There was a motorbike in the car. It wasn't too serious, but they were very shaken, and I had to sit down and sit with them and make sure the whole process unfold properly. So there are times of more pressing nature of life where we can come back from this unbounded state of just being a unified field and just this wonderful embodiment of lovingness and a custodian of God's work into your own your own personality and your own ego. So definitely, I experience a lot of Tom still these days, but I experiencing more and more due to my work and my sitting and my meditation, more and more of that unified experience as well.

Jannecke Øinæs 18:38

And do you feel then that your suffering is disappearing.

Tom Cronin 18:43

Suffering will always disappear the more we become realized in our true nature. Suffering is a result of the disconnect between our true nature and ourself. And I remember Esther Hicks saying, as she was telling Abraham, that the degree of suffering is the degree of the separation between the high and the lower self, and that as we become more and more embodied and stabilized in this source energy and source realization, the unmanifest, because we would always ask anyone that's had any degree of, I guess, understanding and relationship with the divine or God or source of the higher self, we would all Know that the divine doesn't suffer. It's a human experience, and we've got to look at causes of human suffering. And of course, it's if you get abused or beaten, and there's some horrible things happening on the planet even now, but even then, we can still see that an immense level of suffering is the degree of the separation that's happening between us and our higher self and our true nature, which motivates me to admit to do the work. Because what I find is with my students and myself as well, I have immense levels of suffering in my life, and it's simply there is still some degrees of discomfort, but I still I'm not enlightened, and I still have my own anguishes and challenges that I have to go. Happen with at times, it's quite a sorrowful and challenging process moving towards enlightenment, because we're constantly in the process of learning and letting go, learning and letting go, learning and letting go. And that letting go is like having, sometimes your arm ripped off you, or, you know, some part of your own identity that you've been so attached to for so long. It's like a cloak that you've been using as a way of hiding yourself from the world, and all of a sudden that cloak gets stolen off, you feel quite stark and naked, and there's pain in that. So yeah, definitely still experience degrees of pain and suffering, but the the the length of the bliss and the love and the compassion and the kindness gets longer, and the degree of the suffering gets reduced as we go further along the path. This is what I've noticed anyway myself.

Jannecke Øinæs 20:47

I've noticed sometimes that people write about awakening and enlightenment and the spiritual path, that I'm afraid of losing myself, my personality, the I feeling and you spoke about you know that we connect with something more. But what about me? I don't want to lose me. What do you say to that

Tom Cronin 21:07

The ego doesn't want to lose itself. Yeah, so you are already the divine. You are already source. It's not that you ever were not source. It's just that there's a forgetfulness that happens, and the forgetfulness is the identification with your thoughts and feelings, and that's what you don't want to lose. You don't want to lose thoughts and feelings, because that's your perceived self and perceived sense of identity. And there is definitely a sense of loss along the way, when we go through that relinquishing on the clutching of the identity and the ego. But the one thing that I can assure you is that what replaces that is immense levels of liberation, greater levels of bliss, greater levels of love, because it's the eye that suffers, because the eye is in this pain, pleasure dynamic, and this sense of needing to belong, which is kind of absurd to think when there's only omnipresence. So you know, all suffering comes from just not remembering out your nature predominantly.

Jannecke Øinæs 22:06

Do you think that this enlightenment, or the seven stage of consciousness, is this available for everyone in this lifetime?

Tom Cronin 22:15

It's the nature of everyone. It's the nature of an amoeba. It's the nature of a solar system. It's the nature of a meteorite, it's the nature of bacteria. It's the nature of fungi, yeah, okay, it's the degree of what something is aware of its existence, right? Of course, the fungi doesn't have much awareness of its existence, but as a human, why we have so much suffering is because we have this greater levels of awareness of our existence. But because of that, there's a stranglehold. Some call it the occupant. It's the it's a stranglehold the ego that's firmly entrenched in the vessel that says I need to be I. Because that's like, you know, you're saying I don't want to lose my eye. Well, it's like the eye is saying I don't want to lose my eye. But the highest self is just like, isn't she interesting? How much she's holding on to her? I it.

Jannecke Øinæs 23:02

Now, what do you say to those who say, I can't meditate. I've tried it, and they just get so restless and because of what you're saying. You know, when you were a broker, life is like that, and we have demands, and we have work. And many, many people are working from eight to four in Norway, at least, and then we pick up the children and and, yeah. So how do we get that capacity to sit down and meditate?

Tom Cronin 23:32

Firstly, we've got to understand that there are different meditation styles, and some meditations just won't get you there. If the calm app has 100 million people on that app, and most of them are probably listening to Matthew McConaughey reading bedtime stories, which is really nice and it will calm them. Is nothing wrong with that, as the app's definitely playing an integral role in helping people feel calmer. It doesn't give them direct experience to their source, to not their source, to source itself, because we can't personify source, and so we do need to find techniques that have that capacity. And that's why I made the film the portal. Because the portal is to enter in through that pathway to that other realm that's not a world of physical or emotional or mental duality, which is you interacting in some sort of relationship with the world, and so that busyness that busyness that you talk about, I've got to do this. I've got to do that. One thing we know definitively that enlightenment is possible for humans, because they've been achieving it for 1000s of years. And what we can see with those people that are enlightened is one common denominator. They just simply allocated more time each day to sitting and closing their eyes using a particular meditation style that enabled them to access source that is the transcendent experience beyond thoughts and feelings, and whether it's sitting or plant medicine or yoga, whatever your technique or methodology is, but finding that that pathway that works for you and I use Vedic meditation or trans. Meditation because I find it much more accessible and almost instantaneous for for many meditations and many meditators. You know, my students today, nearly all of them transcended in their very first meditation in a four session course that's happening over the four days. So that efficiency of that practice was so compelling for me, and why I chose to use it for the last 30 years, and why I chose to teach it. It doesn't mean there's not other methodologies, but I would look around for different techniques that are going to give you that direct experience that's not only not only making it easy, but also making it extremely pleasurable and blissful. Because if it's not pleasurable and blissful, we're going to supersede it with watching Netflix and what three of the students said on the course today was, oh, when you started to talk and bring us out of the meditation, I didn't want to come out. And the reason why they didn't want to come out that meditation was because it was so profoundly blissful. And if the meditation is uncomfortable, a stressful experience where you're forcing the mind to stop thinking and it's conflicting with your experience, then it's just it's going to be really hard to fit it into your day. So we, we practice a blissful meditation that makes it very compelling.

Jannecke Øinæs 26:14

I get curious about that course and that technique. So could you share more about your your hack when it comes to meditation, it sounds like you talked about the mantra, and I've been practicing that before, and that has been successful for me as well, like when I've been using mantras, that's when I've had my my mystical experiences. Actually, I'm not that good anymore to meditate as much as I did, but I used to, it used to work very well for me. So sometimes there are, like, secret mantras. Other times or, like, I don't know, there's just so much around this. So what is, sort of, your method, in a way,

Tom Cronin 26:55

yeah, we use a set series of mantras. They're called beach mantras, and there's 1000s of mantras like Om Mani Padme ham and om man om nashabaya. These are mantras that are sort of designed for chanting, and we call it japa mantras, where you have your japa beads and you do the mantras with your japa beads, but they're not transcending mantras. They're actually meant for repeating and and continually repeating and never forgetting them, but even repeating them out loud or repeating with a jump of bead. Whereas the transcending mantras are to actually the design of the mantra, the cognition of the mantra to be used is to actually get to a point where there's no mantra at all and there's no thoughts at all. You've transcended the mantra, transcended the thought, transcended the feeling and transcended the physicality, so all layers have been transcended, and now you're in just conscious awareness itself, which is a very peaceful place. So each student will get their own mantra based upon when they were born. They're called Birth sounds, in my way, I teach it, and then we deliver that over four particular sessions, so that we really give them a deep understanding about the science and the spirituality of the practice, but also help them really refine their meditation and support them with the learning of their meditation. And then, after the fourth session course, we give the students ongoing support on a weekly basis, where we have our group meditations together on Zoom.

Jannecke Øinæs 28:18

Nice, seems like a course for me. Um, me, the monkey mind. In your perspective, what is that, that voice that keeps talking to us like I'm one wondering about, Is this me, or is it ego? Is it a different entity? It just keeps on talking and I've managed to not identify with it and serve it, but still, I'm fascinated about who is this being?

Tom Cronin 28:51

Yeah, it is. It's your ego. So the me that you said, and the ego that you said, it's all of that. It's the nature of the mind to make a lot of noise, to think, that's why a lot of people are struggling with insomnia these days, and it's in large part, partly because there's too much cortisol and adrenaline in their blood, and we can do things to offset that. But generally, a lot of insomnia is the fact that the mind just doesn't want to stop telling the story, and doesn't want to stop being in the story. It loves the story, loves the drama, loves the identity, and so it will sabotage your life. And it doesn't really care whether it's giving you negative thoughts and positive thoughts. It really just rips through your life and causes all sorts of havoc. Generally, it's in the future worrying or in the past, regretting. And so generally, your life beyond the mind. It's extremely peaceful, extremely blissful, and it's only ever in the now. Conscious awareness is only ever witnessing this moment, but the mind just has no fun in that place, so it's going to cause absolute havoc in your life by being in the future in the past. So we definitely need to reclaim our sovereignty from the mind and realize that we're not the thoughts and we're not the mind. We have that as a vehicle and. And how we use that vehicle is really, really important.

Jannecke Øinæs 30:03

Do you know any studies like on newborns and toddlers and children like, do we develop this ego mind with all the chat chatter? Is it almost like we're accumulating more and more stories? And I'm curious, like, when a newborn is born, are they without that ego voice? Are they pure consciousness? And then we just add on stuff?

Tom Cronin 30:32

It's open to discussion. My perspective isn't necessarily subjective, so I'm sure there'll be listeners that will go, no, no, that's not true. So my perspective is that we don't come into the world as a clean slate. We have many layers that get added to that particular imagine it's like a canvas that you get to paint on. And someone says to you at the age of you're just born, and they say, Okay, this is your Canvas, and you're going to paint lots of things on that through life. The problem is, you're not getting a white, clean canvas. What you're getting is a canvas has already been painted on. And so when we come out of the womb, we have not just the color of our eyes and the shape of our nose and the shape of our lips from my mother and father and grandparents and great grandparents, we have a genetic code that is also constructed and formed before we actually emerge out of the womb. So you'll notice with siblings that some have very specific personality traits, one like their mother, and another one might be like their grandfather. And so this is ancestrally passed on, and so we have a number of different layers before we even come out of the womb, which is the ancestral energetic and personality code, the way our mind thinks will be influenced largely in part, by our parents and grandparents, but we most likely also have some past life conditions as well. So as a soul, what experiences so I know in my past life, it's very apparent in this life, some of the experiences that I had in my past life, because they're emerging quite strongly in this life, but they're very unique and different from my brothers and sisters and my mother and father. So I have influences on my personality level from my parents and grandparents, but I also have influences from my past life and experiences that I had in my past life as a soul as well. And that seems to be quite apparent as an experience in this life, and then when we go through, particularly the first seven years of this life, we're adding more layers onto our personality and ego, so it becomes extremely Think of it like plasticine. It's already like you've got a big lump of plasticine or Play Doh, and it's already reshaped in some particular way because of your past life experiences and genetics. But then even in this life, it's like every experience is prodding and poking it and molding it and twisting it and distorting it. And so by the time we get to 1520, 2530 3550 it's extremely distorted at that point. And that's where people go. Okay, it's time I start clearing this out and start doing retreats and meditation and yoga and breath work and plant medicines or whatever else they're doing to start re clearing all of those, those accumulated layers of stress and identity, I guess,

Jannecke Øinæs 33:05

yeah, the unlearning process,

Tom Cronin 33:08

yeah, absolutely.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:10

Um, I bet a lot of people are listening to this are curious about meditation. So what is your recommendation about when to meditate and how often during a day?

Tom Cronin 33:19

The way I teach it is quite structured. I recommend to meditate twice a day for 20 minutes. And I really like that. For me, I like the structure of that, the yang of that some people might be like to be maybe a little bit more fluid with their meditation, is just do whatever they want to do. I think having some structure to our meditation is important to make it something that we really integrate into our day. So for me personally, I recommend 20 minutes, once in the morning, usually for me after exercise, and then meditating after I've done my activity, and then once in the early evening before dinner, sort of between, even between lunchtime and dinner times, another good time to do it, and maybe just a little sort of wind down before bed at night as well, like some gratitude or visualization or something or some reading.

Jannecke Øinæs 34:07

I'll jump over to something completely different. A lot of channelers on my show are speaking about the shift of consciousness, and we're recording this on the day that the US president is going to be elected. I'm going to stay up tonight. What are your perspective on what's going on on the planet, like, when it in terms of consciousness, or under our evolution?

Tom Cronin 34:37

Yeah, there's definitely evolution, and it's playing out in a big way. And, yeah, it's really exciting because we're seeing, I call it altitudes of development. It's actually not what I call it. I think it's the work of Dustin deparna and Ken Wilber. But altitudes of development is the spiral in evolution of not just an individual, but also the collective. And the collective is evolving, and we're moving up out of spirals. Into high levels. And where we're at now in our collective is it's very polarized. We're in what I call Green Zone, which is very activist type mentality, and so that's why we're seeing some of the most polarized types of experiences happening on the planet. This is the most polarized election we've ever seen. We had polarity with the obviously COVID and vaxxers and anti vaxxers, we see polarization happening with veganism and meat eating, and a lot of polarization happening, which is really just a sense of people becoming more conscious, more vocal, more opinionated, more aware, having more information. But it's just not yet at that point where we're all enlightened, and so it's just part of a prelude to the next level. I think it is going to be quite challenging over the next few months, if not two years, because we're going to see a portion of the population really waking up and really starting to transcend, or see through a lot of the veneer of what's been created for a long time on the planet, and that realization you can't undo that. When you start to see, oh, that's been going on for a long time, and maybe that's not a good thing, but the people that have been doing that thing for a long time, they're going to be like, well, we're going to try and stop you from thinking otherwise. So you're going to see this conflict happening of people waking up and the people that don't want them to wake up, really challenging that waking up process. So it's going to be interesting. It's going to be a little bit Prickly, a little bit uncomfortable, but we use the analogy of the caterpillar morphing into the butterfly. It's Margaret, but Barbara marks Hubbard's analogy of the evolution of the caterpillar morphing into the butterfly, and within that caterpillar there's a resistant immune system that's suppressing the imaginal cells of the future version of itself, morphing into the butterfly. The resistant immune system doesn't want to see that change, which is happening inside you as well. That's the ego saying, don't lose yourself. Don't become enlightened, because then that's the death of me. There's a beautiful book by Richard Sylvester called, I hope you die soon. He's talking about your ego, obviously, because then you'll be free. But, yeah, I think what we're going to see is this gradual accumulation, because it's what happens in the caterpillar, the accumulation of those imaginal cells, the congregation, the communication, collaboration and proliferation of those imaginal cells, that's the butterfly cells within the caterpillar start to overwhelm the resistant immune system. Eventually we get through the chrysalis moment, and what was a crisis now becomes a chrysalis because the crisis was the resistance of the suppression of the imagine the immune system and the imaginal cells challenging that resistant immune system. So now we've got crisis happening. We've got happening. We've got conflict, but that was just the prelude to the chrysalis. And so the chrysalis is actually the tipping point where it's like, oh, this is going to actually transform, cause alchemy, and turn into the butterfly, where it now starts to propagate the forest and contribute to the world. And we see this with all enlightened people. They're becoming immense contributors.

Jannecke Øinæs 38:04

So do you know anything about when will become butterflies?

Tom Cronin 38:11

It's already happening. Okay? The process is already happening. Because the fact that you're in Norway, and I'm here in Australia, and it's nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, my time, and we're having this discussion actually is indicative and an affirmation that this is actually already happening. The fact that there's 100 million people on the calm app, in some way, shape or form, inquiring about meditation, there's countless YouTube videos on meditation and spirituality that wasn't happening 20 years ago. So it is actually already happening. The transition is already in place. We haven't crossed the chrysalis. That's the only thing. So what we don't know is whether, as a human species, whether AI environmental or nuclear, will wipe the human species out. So this is a 5050, chance of it possibly happening. We may cross over into an enlightened planet, or we may not. That's the fun thing that we just don't know yet

Jannecke Øinæs 38:57

Is that information you've received in your meditation practice,

Tom Cronin 39:02

partly, partly through discussions with some, many, many people in very high levels of consciousness, but also people that are just scientists as well, and they're just giving us scientific data.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:15

Wow. It seems like when we start meditating, we access so much more. Would you say that you also become more psychic, that you receive these superpowers, actually, that you know, you're much more intuitive as well?

Tom Cronin 39:34

Yeah, absolutely. Because what's happening is that the more and more we meditate, the more we're acting accessing. We call it spirituality or spirit, but really what we're talking about is the ethereal, celestial and the subtle layer of reality. And we know that that subtle layer of reality that has gamma waves and ultra waves and Wi Fi frequencies and all sorts of things in it that we can't see and touch, but we know that they're there. And so what we're starting to find with humans, as we become more awakened and more connected to that subtle fear. Or we start accessing more layers, or, sorry, more more, as you say, superhuman powers and capabilities. And we're going to start seeing humans really evolve into the next level of the species. Some will call it superhuman. Some will call it just enlightened. But really what happens is we start accessing clairvoyancy powers, psychic powers. We start understanding more about timeline travel and time warping and all sorts of things start to play out. And I think this is the exciting part, that humans have the capacity to be superhuman or enlightened, but just on mass. We just haven't quite got there yet, but we know that, you know, our entire Christian calendar is based on a man that had superhuman powers, and he spent a lot of time, some would say, in the east, mastering these superhuman powers between the ages of 12 and 30. So it's a matter of, have we spent much time mastering these superhuman powers? Have we been interested in them? Or we're more interested in what the Kardashians are doing than scrolling through Tiktok mm, or who's getting or who's getting elected, right? Yeah. So we're very distracted because we're very fascinated by the external world at this point in time. We just don't give much time to that subtle inner world, and that's something that will change with time.

Jannecke Øinæs 41:16

So these are the good news. I think we're going to make it I want to focus on that, because I know what focus what we focus on will grow?

Tom Cronin 41:25

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're going to make it too.

Jannecke Øinæs 41:28

Oh, good. There were two,. What is the deepest spiritual insights you've received through your meditation practices?

Tom Cronin 41:38

You know, I had a student come to me, and she looked very sickly. She was extremely overweight. And the first thing she said to me when she sat in the chair was, Are you going to teach me the astral plane, astral travel? That means to have some mystical, out of body experience. And it's interestingly, this is, again, like I said at the very beginning of this chat, that this is the big conundrum with spiritual sequence, is that we're so obsessed about seeking, whether it's in a shopping mall, on Instagram or in our spiritual practice, we're still looking for something special and magical but natural. Fact, what's the most profound experience that I find is just peace and just space and being no thing, being nobody, being nowhere, but being everywhere and being everything. And to me, what what I experience in that, and it's becoming more and more prevalent on a daily basis, in meditation and outside of meditation, is that all that remains with all that decluttering and clearing is just quietness, and it's not dynamic, it's not fantastic moral, it's not fantastical or anything crazy. It's just really beautiful and really peaceful. And I think we get caught up in the seeking and craving and looking for some profound experience, but natural fact, if we can just clear all that clatter and noise, what we're left with is something that's what's already there, which is just a really profound level of quiet, watchfulness and peacefulness and lovingness. There's one more do we want than just experiencing love? I mean, really, what more do we actually want? All these people are trying for some profound experience. But can you experience love every single moment? Can you be the custodian, the representative and the embodiment of love? Because what else do we actually want in life? What else is there possibly to experience?

Jannecke Øinæs 43:31

And speaking of love, I have a few questions that I ask or my guest. What is self love to you

Tom Cronin 43:40

You know, I hear this word so much, and I'll just have to say, I think self, love is the idea of duality, that there's me loving myself. You know, we hear this all the time in nice rom com movies, you know, learn to love yourself more. I need to love myself. I think the thing, what we've gotta remove is the self or the eye, and then what we find out is that there's just love. It doesn't need to be self love, and there doesn't need to be something that loves itself. It's just be love. Discover that you are love, and can you in your words and in your actions, in everything that you do, be the custodian the expression of that. Now quite often I'm not that as well. I'm caught in Tom the personality, and that's where the separation between the truth of what my reality is, which is that I'm just love and then the ego that steps in and distances myself from that. But ultimately, when I clear that ego out, or lease myself from the trappings of that, and integrate that maybe into the experience of being love and let the ego be the representative of that love.

Jannecke Øinæs 44:47

Yeah, that makes sense. And what is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Tom Cronin 44:55

Wow, there's no meaning. Actually. Humans really have got so caught up in making meaning. And if we take the humans out of the picture, is there meaning in a meteorite? Is there meaning in a quasar? Is there meaning in a gamma wave? It's a human construct. And we get so caught up in all this meaning when there's such a simplicity, which is just being. Now, of course, until we get stabilized in being, then we're going to need meaning. So if I was to answer that from another perspective, I'd say, well, the meaning of life is to come and have joy, to come and experience love, to come and smell the roses and have puppy dogs lick your face and make babies and meditate on a mountaintop and smell rain on tarmac on a hot summer's day. You know that can be meaning as well. So just being present and being joyful, being kind, being caring, and learning from our mistakes and making more mistakes and learning from those mistakes, and going through all the full gamut of what life is that's also part of the meaning of life. I think it's not easy being human. It's a very difficult journey

Jannecke Øinæs 46:09

indeed. Well, thank you so much. This has been very inspirational, and you really inspired me to practice meditation even more and try different ways to do it, maybe through mantras again. And I hope it was inspiring for everybody watching as well. Now, if people want to dive deeper with you, how can they do so you spoke about a course, for instance.

Tom Cronin 46:31

Yeah, I run courses so anyone can learn that meditation with me from anywhere around the world. Now, traditionally, that technique has never been taught digitally, that is, it's always, only ever been taught in person, but I'm a bit of a black sheep and maybe a bit of a rebel, and I just found that we have people all over the world that deserve the capacity and the right to be able to meditate using this technique, and most teachers are in very trendy suburbs like Venice Beach, LA or Paddington, Sydney. And so I think giving people the opportunity to learn from anywhere around the world is really important. So I now teach on Zoom. I also run personal courses in person, so people can find me at tomcronin.com or on my Instagram account. Tom Cronin, I love hearing from people, so they can send me messages. I love to hear from them. And I run retreats. We've got retreats in Dubai, USA, Australia and Bali, and yeah, I look forward to connecting in with people anywhere around the world, and hopefully being, you know, being part of this collaborative approach to bringing more consciousness and love to the planet

Jannecke Øinæs 47:29

beautiful. And I'll drop some links below here in the video description. Well, thank you so much for coming to the show and staying up so late in Australia to be a guest on the show today, and thank you for all the amazing work.

Tom Cronin 47:42

My pleasure. It's been great tuning in today and having a wonderful discussion with you. And thanks everyone who's listening, listening in on the recording, for sharing space with us here today.