Pain, the Zero-Sum Game Destroying Humanity, and Why You Are the Antidote! With Teal Swan

Teal Swan 0:00

We've created a food system, which is not beneficial for our well-being, and that causes us pain. We are experiencing one of the greatest global takeovers in terms of government, which creates pain. We've got a situation where our relationships are falling apart, especially the relationship I'm the most focused on, the relationship between men and women, which is an absolute disaster right now we're going in the direction of mass awakening, and to be completely honest with you, it's, it's like a necessity that this happens. The human ego has gotten to a place that is so extreme with narcissism, more and more and more so, because we become more and more and more and more separate from each other, more and more and more convinced that we don't depend on each other. If this continues, they will not be able to maintain relationships, not just with each other, but with everything that shares this planet with us. We are at a point right now where, if one person decides, I win, I don't care if you lose, all of us are screwed. The thing is, is that you personally vote in this life with your thoughts, your words, your behaviors, your decisions, and your actions. So, the question at all moments of the day is, How can I be the antidote to what I see in the world? So, if what I'm seeing in the world is cruelty, how can I be kindness? Now, I really do need you to get it. Doesn't feel like it most of the time, because we look at these big deal systemic issues, and we're like, what the hell am I gonna do about it? Right? The effect that a single individual can have on those that they interact with, it's amazing, really. When you watch it, so you go to the store, and you interact with the person that's crossing the counter in a specific way that will change the totality of the way that that person operates relative to every other customer. And if they are impacted by you in that way, it starts to become this kind of positive virus that spreads all the way out from someone, it touches corners of the globe that you could not imagine that you can touch.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:52

Hey, I know it can get annoying when YouTubers ask you to subscribe, but if you do subscribe, you are supporting the channel, and you are getting notifications of new videos, and it only takes a couple of seconds. Thank you so much, Teal Swan. A warm welcome back to the Wisdom from North Show. How are you?

Teal Swan 2:11

I am happy to be on the show again.

Jannecke Øinæs 2:15

You know, I actually checked, Teal, and this is your seventh time on the Wisdom From North show, which means that you've been the guest I've had most on on the show ever, really, which is amazing.

Teal Swan 2:28

Yes, it's true.

Jannecke Øinæs 2:30

And I was thinking about it because we've been doing this for a long time. I think we had our first interview back in 2014 where we talked about the law of attraction, and it has nearly been seen by around 500,000 people, so we're still doing this, isn't that amazing? I love meeting you again.

Teal Swan 2:49

And today's world, doing anything for this long as a modern miracle, so yes,

Jannecke Øinæs 2:54

isn't it? Yeah, I'm surprised by myself, actually. But today I feel we're going to have a deep conversation, especially about pain, because we're seeing a lot of chaos and pain in the world today. However, before we go there, I would like to properly introduce you. For those who might be new to you, you are a spiritual, a world-renowned spiritual teacher, you are a human development expert, a thought leader, a best-selling author, an international speaker, a very successful YouTuber with over 2 million subscribers, and now you have also created 10 meditations, like a compilation of meditations for pain relief. We're going to dive into why. However, how do you feel our conversation today might expand people's minds and consciousness?

Teal Swan 3:48

I want our conversation today to be changing the way that people are approaching the struggles that they're facing, because we are at a time right now where escapism and avoidance and coping mechanisms and the normal stuff we jump into when we get in pain, it's not going to work. In fact, it's going to dig us deeper. So, if we know how to address the pain that we're feeling, whatever that pain might be, we will sail through this little surfing lesson and difficulty with a lot greater ease.

Jannecke Øinæs 4:19

Wonderful, and I'm actually curious to hear your metaphysical perspective on this, because I've heard from actually another episode where I saw you were interviewed that you are traveling a lot out of your body, and then you're observing humanity, and I found that very, very fascinating, and then from this perspective, what are you seeing then that motivated you to create this this product to help people with pain relief?

Teal Swan 4:50

Well, we have created a human society which is very out of alignment with the well-being of a physical human, so. I think that's the baseline understanding that people have to have, so we've created a food system which is not beneficial for our well-being, and that causes us pain. We've created an emotional climate in our society, which is not conducive to well-being and creates pain. We are experiencing one of the greatest global takeovers in terms of government, which creates pain. We, you know, what I'm.. let's expand further on this. We've got this dynamic right now where the world over, like people in general, are starting to feel like the government is really not for them. I mean, really, really not for them. That kind of peaked when Covid hit and did not get better. We've got a situation where our relationships are falling apart, like globally and in friendships. Yes, but most especially the relationship I'm the most focused on after viewing the human race is the relationship between men and women, which is an absolute disaster right now. So, what you have is this like huge kind of conglomerate issue where the well-being of humanity is just like the support structure for it is not there, and so when that happens, you just see pain levels rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, like that. And what's difficult about this particular circumstance is that it's also coming with like a burnout, because one of these elements that makes this not conducive for people's wellbeing is complexity. We have never been in a time as a human race where life is more complex, like it's so complex most people feel like they can't do it.

Teal Swan 6:30

So you're also starting to see this kind of burnout happen because we're spending so much of our time in fight or flight mode. Let's talk about burnout per minute. Burnout is really about being stuck in fight or flight mode chronically, so that could literally look like chronic stress that happens in a, is it in a human existing in the human society today is so extreme that you're just constantly in the state that the body can't actually maintain, so when the body can't maintain that that state, you go into a burnout state. So many people across the world are in this chronic burnout state that when we require them to do something like take a big action to answer to their own pain, it feels beyond reach, and even feels like more pain to try to do it, which is why you see such a widespread use of coping mechanisms. It's why so many of us just binge watch Netflix, it's just, or doom scroll. I mean, there are addictive mechanisms going on there as well, but it's like most of us just don't really feel like we can do the necessary things to get ourselves out of pain. So, I was watching this on this global level, going, I need to be able to create some kind of an answer to this pain that doesn't require a lot from people. So, I thought to myself, what could I do for that, and the answer was these guided experiences, like they can be compared to meditations, but what they really are is guided experiences that are specifically about pain, and so each one of them does a different thing with pain. So my thought is you could be somebody who's just like a stressed out mother who's got children, and you just can't add one more thing to your plate, and you're in pain about your marriage, or you could be a person who's sitting in a hospital bed who quite literally can't do much, anything in between, and you can just put on these experiential exercises, and just all take you through it. That's why I created this product.

Jannecke Øinæs 8:20

Sounds amazing, and I'm going to dive deeper into it. However, I am very curious myself about the experience of observing humanity outside your body. Could you just share some details about how what that means? Actually, are you sort of picking up on a frequency? Is that something you see? Like, how does that work?

Teal Swan 8:45

When I go out of my body, I.. it depends on what I want to focus on, what it looks like. That's the answer. So, most of the time, what I will do is zoom out completely, so I'm looking at the globe, and that starts as a very physicalized type of thing. It's as if I was to take a physical human and literally just remove them from the atmosphere, and they're just observing Earth. Then what I'll do is adjust my aperture. It's like adjusting an aperture to look at the collective of humanity. So human consciousness is in and of itself its own entity. So if you adjust your aperture from non-physical dimension towards humanity, you start to visually see whatever you want to look at in terms of humanity. I love to look at the emotional body first and foremost, because that's the most important element of what human beings are experiencing in their physical life. So, let's say that I adjust my aperture to watching the collective emotion, emotional vibratory frequency of humanity. I will start to see geometric patterns, I'll start to see colors, a lot of movements, and I know how to interpret those, those things based on the fact that I've always been able to see these things. So, like, if I'm with somebody in the room, I'm able to. See the frequency of joy, for example, so I could look at the collective of humanity and tell who's experiencing joy or who's experiencing depression, these types of things. So, if you look at the world, you start to see this kind of map. Now, what you'll see is things that are general, meaning it's the totality of humanity that's experiencing something. So, the fact that humanity is caught in a fight or flight mode will show up as this very specific looking kind of static, and that is just the, it's like literally the world over, actually. But you'll see obviously pockets of intensity to that. So, what you get ultimately is this map where some things are general and some things are very, very specific, like Germany, for example, continues to stand out as, as this, it's like an area of absolute depression, so it will, it will quite literally visually look almost like on a topographical map, you'll see the vibratory frequency of depression, but it will literally look like this recession in energy, so you even get, like, the, you know, a topographical map, right, where you're is that what you call it, the maps where you kind of can see like elevation changes, it'll look, there will be elevation changes with these frequencies that I'm watching as well, so that's just the emotional aspect, there's many other things that I could adjust my aperture to, essentially seeing it's no different than just shifting your personal frequencies, so you're matched to a different channel. So I could go watch any area of the globe if I want to. I could, I could watch Africa, I could watch one specific tribe in Africa if I wanted to. It's just all about like where you're zooming in and what you're zooming in to. So it's visual feeling, it's sounds, it's all of it

Jannecke Øinæs 11:41

Wow, I mean, I'm asking also because I've been out of my body myself, but I've never been able to do that. Like, I couldn't sustain it, I couldn't control it to the degree it sounds like you can. So I'm quite.. I'm just amazed. Thank you for sharing that.

Teal Swan 11:58

Mostly I can control it. Mostly, sometimes I get sucked out of my body at nighttime. I'm like, oh, that was great, didn't control that one, but yeah, it is nice when you can control, control it more, because I mean, I think it's a big reason why I can do what I do with my job. It's very important to be able to take in the collective, because it's so easy in our individual perspectives to just get kind of locked into our circle, you know, when we say, oh, all people, it's usually just the people that we're around, and believe me, that's a snapshot, you know.

Jannecke Øinæs 12:31

So true. And isn't it a paradox that we hear a lot? I would say that the vibration is raising, that the thin, the veil is getting thinner, and many are speaking about we're moving towards the golden age, and at some point things will be better, and still I hear you're saying that it feels like things are worse, that there's more pain than ever. So, what's going on here?

Teal Swan 12:58

What's going on here is that we're in, we're in an age where human behaviors are definitely going to be shifting here, because we're going in the direction of an awakening, like a mass awakening, and to be completely honest with you, it's, it's like a necessity that this happens. My frustration with these conversations around the golden age is that it's like not the full picture of what's going on here. The full picture of what's going on here is that the human race cannot keep playing a zero sum game, so what you're seeing is a crisis around that the human being is an interesting species with all of this potential, and at the same time inherent in all of their potentials and positive traits are all of these really negative potentials, negative traits. So, when you have the capacity for self-awareness, you can get into extreme identification. This is what most people in the spiritual field are talking about when they're talking about the human ego. The human ego has gotten to a place that is so extreme with narcissism, more and more and more so, because we become more and more and more and more separate from each other, more and more and more convinced that we don't depend on each other, so there is a kind of a built-in I need to caretake you and you need to caretake me in order for this to work mentality, which is gone, so now because we're living in such separate spaces, people are actually more willing to play a zero sum game than they ever were before, what a zero sum game is, for those of you that don't know, is it's basically I win, you lose. So humanity is at a point where they quite literally will not be able to maintain relationships if this continues. They will not be able to maintain relationships, not just with each other, but with everything that shares this planet with us. That's a very dangerous game in today's world, because in today's world, if somebody plays a big enough zero-sum game, everybody's screwed. We should know this right now with what's happening down with this whole conflict around the Strait of Hormuz. Right, we are at a point right now where if one person decides, I win, I don't care if you lose, all of us are screwed. It so that kind of feeling that most of us are getting around that conflict was like, oh, that's a very important thing to register that feeling, because what we're doing right now is looking down these two paths. One path is humanity continues to choose into the zero sum game, they continue to choose their own personal survival, they're going to call it survival. It's really what's in my best interest, regardless of the impact on others, and by virtue of doing that, they actually go extinct, because if you, if you're in a closed system, in an interconnected closed system, like Earth is, and you play enough of a zero-sum game against the environment itself, it's game over. Other option is that we awaken to this and go, wait a minute, this isn't working. Wait a minute, I need even more awareness. Wait a minute, as my awareness is increasing, I'm not going to play a zero sum game anymore. My goals are going to shift, my priorities are going to go in a different direction. So, right now, you're seeing this, you're seeing both, you're seeing the manifestation of both people who are going deeper and deeper into this kind of egoic shadow, and people who are like, whoo, you know, waking up through necessity, and the question is, How bad does it have to get for the collective of humanity to awaken, but what we're watching right now in this, this big collective shift, or things like decentralization, humanity braiding its consciousness with tech, egalitarianism, a lot of move away from power structures. I have noticed what else. Oh, you're going to see a lot of things like the shift from power being externalized to the power being within. You're also going to see things like a real focus, rather than on status and the accumulation of things, a real focus on things like soul purpose. What is it that genuinely makes me feel fulfilled versus what is it that I need to do to gain a high position within society? Radical transparency also is another thing that I'm watching, where people are just.. it's like they're done with the whole game, the whole facade, they want radical honesty, they want radical transparency, and so you're watching a shift in the priorities and the values of humanity at large. Now, obviously, if that kind of a rudder shift happens within humanity, we end up at a different destination. Society is built in a whole different way, because society has to answer to the values of the individuals that are creating a society. So that's my take on this golden age, but it does sort of bother me when people only focus on the one side of this thing, you know?

Jannecke Øinæs 17:42

Are you.. do I understand you correctly that you're actually talking about the split that might happen? You said that we might go down this road and humans might be extinct, and others are waking up to, you know, being more transparent enough is enough. Like, are we seeing two groups of people here going different directions,

Teal Swan 18:02

we are actually, however, the people who tell you that they are going to be able to on planet earth create their own bubble reality built for just them are not in reality about the web of life on earth. Like this is something that I'm teaching a lot to right now, because it's an unpopular view, because everybody who's been in the law of attraction communities would love to think that they can create their own reality built for them, and that that is the name of the game here. They're forgetting that the law of what we're calling the law of attraction, which is really the law of mirroring, is a rule that exists within the context of a consensus game, basically. So one of the things we did before coming down to this time space reality is to say I am going to be entering into a consensus reality, that means we're all co-creating this whole situation, that means we're all at the effect of each other. What we're calling the love mirroring slash law of attraction is actually like one element of the overall game, so if this is interesting to you, I can kind of go more down this road. Is it interesting to you? How this..

Jannecke Øinæs 19:08

yeah, yeah, I love conversations about reality. What is reality, and to understand, because sometimes I can find myself feeling there's a lot of words around this, and I really don't understand. Do we split or don't we split? And in what way will we split? Is it an actual split? Is it a physical split? Is it a metaphorical, philosophical split?

Teal Swan 19:37

Okay, to help you understand this, I've got an analogy that I think I think I have mastered the way to describe this to people. I want you to imagine a video game, right? Imagine that you decide I am going to be part of this game world. Now, the game world that you become a part of is a consensus game world, which means that there are multiple players. Everybody who's in the game is a player, okay. All of us are playing, and we're, and so when we bump into each other in this game world, we're going to affect each other. However, within that overall structure, you've got sub rules, just like in any video game, and that's what dictates the individual player experience. So, what we're calling law of attraction is just one of those rules of the game world, which is that based off of the way that you are personally vibrating now, the way you're personally vibrating has is a very complex picture. People love to oversimplify it, as always, so you've got you've got all kinds of things, you've got desires, you've got past traumas, you've got the totality of the content of your subconscious mind, you've got what you're consciously focused on, your behavior, actions, words, thoughts, all of these things amalgamate to this personal vibratory frequency. Well, in this game world, in our analogy, it's basically a mirror construct, so it's going to reflect you, and in that way, what you, as an individual player, are going to line up with within the game world depends on your own personal vibratory frequency, so when people are becoming obsessed about the law of attraction, which is where a lot of us jump into teaching. It's very, it's actually a very limited element of the game that they're focused on. So, you could consider level one to be, I would like to have conscious control over what I'm a match to within the game world, but just because I'm able to do that does not make it not a consensus game world, right? It just means that you're, you've got a little bit more control over what people you're running into in that game, other players, what things within the game world you're going to be a match to versus another person. Does that, does that make sense? So we're looking at two different layers of the same game, but that's not the only intention for the game. There are other intentions. Not everybody who's in the game world is in the game world to try to create their own personal cushy nest. I'll give you an example. Most of us don't want to be a match to war, right, but by virtue of the fact that we've got internal conflicts going all the time, we are going to be a match to war within the game world, right. Let's say that you had the capacity to completely integrate, so there was no more war within. You'd think, okay, well, then there will be no more war externally. Now, you'd be right to a degree, right? If every single player, every player within this construct was able to end the internal war, there were there could not be reflection, so there would be no war within the game world itself. However, this is a consensus type of world, so there's going to be war over here, where there's not war over here. The minute that this whole thing changes for you is that if somebody who has integrated an internal war suddenly has the intention or the awareness. Wait a minute, this entire game world is actually a part of me now. All of a sudden, war is part of their reality again. They're a vibrational match to it.

Jannecke Øinæs 23:15

right. I mean, you mentioned in the beginning that the human, the human is so complex. I just find that this is quite complex as well. No easy answer to, like, how to attract your dream life or how to attract your dream soulmate. I mean, it's not that easy. I've come to understand that. Back to the split, though, or what can we do? Like, I obviously want to create a dream world,

Teal Swan 23:44

and I do, I get what you mean. So, this, so that's what I was trying to give you this analogy for. Thanks for keeping me on track. So, within the game world, those people who are awakening to all of these things, they are a match to different experiences within the game world. So, could that manifest as like two types of societies. Yeah, technically it could, but here's why I think it will. It won't is because people who are awakening are awakening to the fact that the totality of the game world matters, not just their own personal experience. And so it's what I'm watching is that people who are awakening are not wanting to go off and live in a bubble, they're wanting to integrate all the beings who are out of alignment, they're wanting to pull the totality of humanity into alignment, not just experience their own abundance, but also abundance for the person starving over there in that country, because of that strong desire coming from the individuals that are awakening, it's unlikely that there's going to be this type of split, like what I'd say is like the individuals who are essentially saying, well, maybe there will be those of us that exist in 5d and those of us that exist in d, that is a thought you can only have if you are not. Awakened enough to not own other beings as a part of yourself, and that will end. It ends like it's the inevitable thing that on the path of awakening you must wake up to the fact that all things are you. So, no, it's I don't think that that physicalized, vibrationalized split is going to happen, because the people who are on the path of awakening will not let it happen. They're going to turn back in the direction of those aspects of themselves, which is other people that are out of alignment, and they're going to start pulling, pulling.

Jannecke Øinæs 25:37

Interesting. Speaking of pain, is that the same as suffering? And has, I mean, you did speak about it, but to me, we've seen pain on the planet forever and suffering forever. But is it time now to sort of face it more and release it? And will that take us to the next level?

Teal Swan 26:01

I personally, I am frustrated with myself for having ever taught about the difference between pain and suffering. There's a lot to being in my line of work that really sucks about teaching to a time, and then those very teachings should be made obsolete because what's done with them is not correct. I don't like it when people now differentiate between pain and suffering. Suffering is simply, if you would like to look at the definition, it is just this: it is the state of being in pain, that's it. Most of the time we associate suffering with a greater intensity and a longer duration. All that means is that we have not responded to pain like we should, so right now what's got to happen is always been what had to happen with pain, but most of us were never able to do, which is we have to recognize that pain itself is like an internal crying child that is calling out for your notice and your assistance within pain is all kinds of very important information about what is not a yes for us, what does not work, what needs to change, unless we go in the direction of our pain, so as to ascertain that message and really lovingly respond to the pain that we're in, or that other people are in. It's going to continue. That's when we're going to call it suffering, is when we have not been able to respond to the pain in a way where that pain would be dissolved.

Jannecke Øinæs 27:38

And do you think all pain has a cause, has a metaphysical cause.

Teal Swan 27:49

You mean, like, are we talking about physical, physical, like in terms of physical ailments, or what?

Jannecke Øinæs 27:53

Both, both actually, all pain is all pain. I mean, I understand it's a big question, because it takes us way back to reality, the big reality question. What is reality? But okay, let's do physical pain. Then, yeah, does all physical pain have to do with a metaphysical cause, like maybe I'm not voicing my opinions enough, so I lose my voice, for instance.

Teal Swan 28:20

Absolutely, there's not a single physical ailment that does not have its roots in mental and emotional patterns. Those things that transcend the physical, I mean, we're saying that, but emotions, you can actually track them in the physical body. But this is why we're trying to essentially have these conversations that are almost impossible to have, because we're trying to draw lines where they don't actually exist, everything's braided, but yeah, for the sake of this conversation, yes, there is a quote, metaphysical root to every single thing that you're experiencing, that includes accidents, because that's the one that people love to go to, where they're like, well, what about not if I got in a car wreck, oh, believe me, what has to be going on for you to get in a car wreck on a vibrational level is quite extreme,

Jannecke Øinæs 29:03

right. So nothing is a coincidence.

Teal Swan 29:07

No,

Jannecke Øinæs 29:09

and the pain, then would you say it's for us, like from the universe perspective, the universe is giving us that pain, or our higher self, or our spirits, in order for us to see something within us grow, expand.

Teal Swan 29:28

Not always. No. Here we go with the complexities again. It is absolutely true that in the context of reincarnation and things like this, right, you, you're essentially choosing a type of pain, most people are choosing into real themes of pain. You will notice, like, it, like, I'll give you an example. Somebody will choose into the theme of abandonment to work with in this lifetime. So, you can think about this like a specialized kind of a classroom. So, for example, let's say that that I want to master something like. Freedom. I'm going to opt into oppression because there is no possible way for me to understand, fully understand, or fully master freedom unless I am essentially exploring the meat of oppression. So, at that level, yes, your quote soul is basically choosing to experience a specific type of pain. It's not like it's accumulating this pain, though, across lifetimes. It's more that it is activating it. So I may choose to activate the same type of abandonment pain in lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. The entire point of that experience that I'm describing is transmutation. It's, it's personal alchemy. Those of you who want that sort of baseline understanding of transmutation, it's essentially turning lead into gold. So we start off with something like abandonment, and where we alchemize this is to, oh, I'm in the space where I am completely and totally in a space of ownership, positive ownership, right. For example, so in that respect, yes, you've got pain that is being activated for us. It's not the universe doing it to us. We are very much choosing into this before we come into this as conscious creators, as a part of the universe. We're choosing into this kind of specialized classroom, however however, not all pain is for you. A lot of pain can happen because you're experiencing something that is truly out of alignment for you, and rather than being able to do something about it, you're stuck in it. Now, when I say do something about it, that could look like all kinds of things based off of what circumstance a person is in. It could look like changing our perspective, it could look like taking a completely different action, it could look like changing a behavioral pattern, and when a person does not do those things in response to something that is out of alignment for them, they will stay in pain. I can't tell you that, that's for you.

Jannecke Øinæs 32:04

Well, if you get out of that pain and you master it, it would have been for you. You learn something from it, you're making a change. I mean, when you are in pain, I believe most people want to get out of the pain, absolutely, and feel something else. Yeah, so in a way, it is a message that something is out of alignment, which I mean, it depends on how you look at it, I guess.

Teal Swan 32:28

Always, I

Jannecke Øinæs 32:28

would say that's for us. Yeah, it always does. Yeah, and then sort of, how to handle the pain is that to go right into the core of the pain to feel it, do we have to feel the pain.

Teal Swan 32:43

Absolutely, the only way out is in, because of what I'm describing, because there's so much information within pain, and it's only by going directly into it, directly straight towards that pain, that that awareness can bubble up to the conscious mind. That is what enables us to transmute a situation, that is what tells us this is a no for me, this is a yes for me. That's the direction I need to go in, that's the decision I need to make. This is the pattern change, this is the action shift.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:18

And what about that pain, where you're not really sure what you're feeling, you're just feeling like you're hurting, and you can't really pinpoint what am I feeling. I'm just hurting inside, like you don't have words for it, you don't have a way to understand it with your mind, you just know you have everything on the outside, but you can't pinpoint what it

Teal Swan 33:40

is, it's not a thing that just means that a person does not have a good enough process for for the information coming to the conscious mind.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:49

Okay, like it's not nice.

Teal Swan 33:51

What you're describing is literally not a thing. Like, I need people to get that, because this also makes people very intimidated. And when I say it's not a thing, I don't mean people aren't experiencing exactly what you just described, they are, but when I say it's not a thing, there is not a pain that exists that is just coming out of nowhere, that you just don't know what it is, that you can't verbalize or pinpoint, it's not a thing, it just means you haven't spent enough time really with it in a way where you can gather that information, and unfortunately, with pain, it requires quite a lot of presence in order to offer that up, and even more so if you are a chronic self-abandoner.

Jannecke Øinæs 34:28

Hmm, right. If you are abandoning yourself, so you're not really feeling what you're feeling, so you don't have that context. You're saying you really need to be present. Oh, yeah, observing, yeah. Okay,

Teal Swan 34:42

and you know, most of the time the pain that we are experiencing is coming from a very vulnerable aspect of ourselves, usually a part of ourselves that we have, without knowing it, screwed over over and over and over again. So I want you to imagine that you are like a child of mine, and I have made. All kinds of decisions that are just horrible for you, and then I learn, you know, from Teal Swan that I need to be present with my emotions, and so I'm like, all right, I'm here, just I'm ready for you to go away. So, could you just like tell me when I approach you in that way with that attitude, you're going to just shut down, you're going to be, you're actually going to get stuck in your own pain and not offer it up. So the attitude with which I go towards my pain has a lot to do with the outcome of what I'm going to experience. I cannot go towards myself in this analogy, I cannot go towards myself with that attitude, I'm going in, so I can get out. It's resistant in nature. We really need to learn to go towards, towards the pain with real care. That means I want to understand you, I want to feel you, I want to see you, I want to get you. I see you as, as valuable, not that I love being in pain, absolutely not. It's that I have a curiosity, and I genuinely want to. I want to understand you. That type of self-compassion and self-care is what enables the content within pain to kind of open up and come towards the conscious mind, and some of that is practice being able to be with uncomfortable sensations, which is real hard, especially in our current society, which, quite frankly, treats pain as if it's a personal failure. See, it's harder. We're making it so hard as a society to approach pain in the correct way because of our attitudes towards it and our attitudes about what it means, but when this whole thing shifts, and you're able to be really, really present with, with the pain, you're able to ascertain the information, you are no longer confused, you know exactly why you're feeling that way, you know when it started, you know exactly what needs to be done about it. Now I'm not going to say that it's going to be like a perfect, like a, it's not a perfect recipe, because sometimes what will happen when you go into the pain is that you become aware of all of it, you are full clarity, okay, full clarity, but you come out sometimes and you're like, whoa, now I'm up against the problem of exactly how to shift this, what actions I know, what actions I know what needs to happen, but a lot of times you'll end up in a lose-lose type of situation, where it's like, okay, I can, I've got a let's say that it's a woman who says, I've got a husband who's an alcoholic, I am feeling this way because I feel completely torn back and forth, one day this guy is loving and he's safe, the next minute he's totally not loving. It's like he should. He doesn't deserve to even have a relationship. He's that terrible, and I'm afraid of him. Okay, so you realize that that pain is almost like the brakes being put on towards this person who at once should be your safe space, but instead is not, and you're in this intermittent reinforcement pattern, okay, that awareness is really beneficial, because you know exactly what it is in your life that is not working for you well. That's exactly the kind of experience that is necessary for you to say, "I can't keep doing, I can't keep doing this thing where I feel unsafe with you. So then there's a conversation, "I feel unsafe with you directly with the husband, right? I don't feel safe with you, and this is not fair, because in my marriage I should be able to feel safe. My husband should be my safe place. No, I'm not going to say that he's going to respond well. He may be like, whatever, I don't have a problem. You may need to escalate. It may be really, may not be just like, oh, look, I feel great now that I experienced my pain, but I would still ask you, for that woman in that circumstance, is it better to set a hell of a hard boundary and be like, I'm actually done doing this, or should she just stay sort of stuck in this suffering where she doesn't really know what's going on, she just doesn't really feel very good,

Jannecke Øinæs 39:02

I No, I think she should say what she means, for sure. But, of course, that can also end up in pain, losing her husband, but eventually maybe it's best for both, or he stops drinking, exactly, and actually wins her back. Yeah, interesting. We spoke a bit about spiritual bypassing, and that fascinates me. I've been there myself, sort of ascending away from myself, escaping away because of pain, right? I understood that. However, is there paradox here. Can we get too stuck in dealing with our pain, meeting our pain, and at some point we also need to think positively and connect with our pleading friends and do all the positive thinking? Like, is it important to do both, have a balance in this? Because if we go too much in shadow, we can stay in the shadow work and sort of not be able to drag ourselves up.

Teal Swan 40:06

The only time I have ever seen somebody get stuck in the negative shadow work stuff is when they have a pattern against positivity. It is natural for people to gravitate in the direction of positivity and what feels good. In fact, you don't have to work hard at it most of the time. When people go into the pain, they have this awareness of whatever it is. What'll happen next is, hmm, I'm kind of interested in going outside. Oh, it's really pretty. I would never have been able to notice that bird. I was in too much pain before. So that kind of buoying effect is actually quite natural, so if what's happening is a person is just in that, like almost me eating themselves alive, and the sort of the negativity is that they're afraid of positivity, and that's a here it's a huge thing, especially if people are raised by bypassers,

Teal Swan 41:01

there's all kinds of negative things that people can associate with positivity, like there's so many patterns I could just see here all day, probably listing them for you, but like, let's just do one, so that people get it right. One of the most prevalent patterns I notice when people are stuck in what you're describing is that they're so afraid of disappointment. Now, I hate that word, to be honest with you, because when we say disappointment, it really doesn't sound like an extreme word, you know. The experience, however, of really getting your hopes all the way up here and thinking something amazing is going to happen, only to get slammed to the ground, is actually one of the most tormenting things. It's so tormenting that most people will electively choose to stay safe by staying on the ground. Well, what happens is staying on the ground is staying depressed, being in pessimism. Well, staying in pessimism and staying sort of in the pain is your way of never experiencing the fall again, and that is a very common pattern when people are getting stuck in what you're describing.

Jannecke Øinæs 42:04

So, what do we do? How do we find that balance with, I mean, doing the spiritual work, with the positive thinking, with the light work, and the shadow work? If you could give some tip for those who are confused about it.

Teal Swan 42:17

The tip is, if you are feeling pain, it is calling out for your attention, it is pain is basically pay attention, integrate now. So, whenever that pain happens, you got to go towards it, right? And go into that, go as deep as you can, right. What will happen is a natural transmutation. When that natural transmutation starts to happen, you will experience relief. Relief is your is your key. Once you start to feel a little bit of relief, that's when you go in the direction of, oh, look, I'm doing something that makes me feel positive. Oh, look, maybe I'm doing a positive exercise. The rest of the time, feel free to do the light work stuff. What I don't want you to do is to be in avoidance. When we start to do these things out of avoidance, we are in a lot of trouble, and if we start to really ask ourselves, what am I avoiding right now? I think for people who already know they've got a little bit of an issue with this way of coping, they should just ask themselves, what am I avoiding right now? What am I avoiding right now, especially when we're doom scrolling, you kind of know when it's like, oh, you know, there's like something's gnawing at you, but you're, you know, we gotta anytime we're in avoidance mode, we're gonna get ourselves in trouble with these types of positive exercises and experiences, but the rest of the time fine,

Jannecke Øinæs 43:34

wonderful. Another question, I'm curious about, how is the most effective way from your perspective to change a negative belief system that you're aware of, that you're having.

Teal Swan 43:46

Guess what, I'm actually already right now in the middle of a process of releasing a brand new belief work process that is going to demo. I'm telling you, it takes other belief work processes and demolishes it, makes it look like an absolute joke. Oh my goodness. Okay, so the best way, the best way to transform any of these beliefs that you have is actually not to start with the belief that you think you have, it's to start with the unwanted experience that you're having in real time.

Jannecke Øinæs 44:20

Okay,

Teal Swan 44:21

I'm giving you the serious preview. Oh man, like I wasn't gonna drop this, but I gotta drop it. Okay, okay. So you start with whatever you do not like about your current life. So let's say I was gonna use the previous scenario. I am married to an alcoholic. Well, what about that do I hate so much? I hate the fact that I feel like I'm without a partner, or maybe you identify the thing you hate the most, because there can be several beliefs linked to several layers of this. Let's say that what you hate is the intermittent reinforcement, because it's this horrible feeling in the body. Okay, based off of that one experience, you're then going to come up with a metaphorical image to write. Present it. Why am I saying a metaphorical image? Because oftentimes when the brain comes up with a metaphorical image, you're engaging the subconscious mind in a much better and much more juicy way. So, let's say that I'm that woman and I have that situation going, and I'm in this intermittent reinforcement pattern. I may see myself on an out of control merry-go-round, like a terrible merry-go-round, you know, the one from the horror films. Now that I've got that image, I can ask myself, when was the very first time that I remember feeling like this in my life? Now, what this is going to do is it's going to bring you back to the origin experience that is, in fact, where you created a belief as an adaptive coping mechanism to deal with an experience that was really traumatic for you, so let's say that I'm this woman, and I asked this question when I see this merry-go-round, and I see an image of myself in my childhood home trying desperately to get my dad's attention, and one minute he's really present, and the next he's on his phone, shooing me away, so I really can't predict when I'm going to be received and when I'm gonna get pushed away. Ready for this. This is where it gets juicy. I'm gonna ask myself at that point, what is the first thing that I made this mean? Like, I'm basically looking for the surface belief, and it may be something like I'm at his mercy. Okay, well, now we're going to start digging. Now this is the most difficult part of this process, but it's the most important part. We start to dig for the deepest root belief that is underneath this. I am at his mercy. Okay, well, what would that mean? Why would that be so bad? Why? Why I'm at his mercy, because I'm powerless to get his attention. Okay, I'm powerless to get his attention is a belief in and of itself, but we're not going to leave it there. We're going to keep going. I'm powerless to get his attention. What does that mean about me, or why I'm a failure. Weird. Okay, so let's say that that's the root belief. I am a failure. You would never have consciously thought that that belief had anything to do with being married in your adult life to a man who's an alcoholic, and yet it does. Here's where things get really interesting. One of the things that people haven't worked out, and it's why trying to replace beliefs is so incredibly difficult, is that we treat beliefs as if they are something that is happening to us. Makes sense. I'm a little kid, I'm in the circumstance with my dad, of course. I would believe I'm a failure. Uh, oh, what if beliefs in and of themselves are adaptive coping mechanisms? Now this is the truth about belief that people haven't figured out yet. I came up with the thought I am a failure because that was the best way to keep myself safe at that time. Let's figure out how. Now, this is this is the real challenge for getting rid of a belief, thinking I'm a failure. How might this benefit me in the situation with my dad? It may cause me to go away from him and stop trying so hard. If I believe that I am a failure, then I'm not going to try very hard, and that's a very painful experience, right? Trying and trying and trying and trying, and it never actually working out for me, is so painful that believing that I'm a failure causes me to turn away from my father and towards myself. So maybe I go to my room and I start playing by myself instead of trying to procure his attention, I that's just one. What will happen when you do a process like this is, you will end up with, like, you know, between five and usually different ways that that thought benefited you. Now, when you start to see how, how creating these thoughts essentially was you saving your life. You can't actually dig your teeth into the fact that they're true anymore. It is the need for a belief that gives a belief power. Very important sentence I just said, because it means if there's no more need, there's no more belief. But when you start to see that, oh, I created this thought because it benefited me at that time, you can't be like, oh, I know 100% it's true. It literally, it literally just starts to dissolve. On top of that, you can work with with soul contracts, because belief structures are one of the primary things we're opting into when we're coming into this life experience. Remember, how I said we're sort of choosing into the specialized classroom. One of the ways we choose into the specialized classroom is by adopting beliefs intentionally, so there are some soul contracts to deal with in some of these beliefs, but once you start to do that, what, and you take your child self that's in that scene, and you essentially give the healing, you do the transmutation, you give the healing experience, you help that child to understand the. Full arc of that narrative. Okay, you were ignored by dad, because you were ignored by dad. You came up with this belief that felt better. Was it the reality? Let's peel that back and look at what the actual reality is. And it's usually something 10 times more painful than I'm a failure, right? If I'm a failure, I can do something. Either I can be like, okay, I'm not trying, which is self-preservative, or I can be like, because I'm a failure, I got to try twice as hard. That takes you down a completely different road, right? That person could do either or both, sometimes, because we all know that we can create splits in our consciousness. One part of us can be like, I'm never going to succeed, at the same time as one part is like, you know. So, once we have that full arc, and the child self sees that full arc and is able to admit to what the painful reality is underneath it, and it's not only actually, it's not only painful, sometimes it's the, you know, a child self. This is the hard part about being a child. A child self is in an egoic state of being. They make everything about themselves, and there's lots of reasons for this. Some of it has to do with child biology, some of it has to do with that's how we gain empowerment. We gain empowerment by personalizing things. However, when we get into the reality without that belief of what the reality was, maybe it's something like my dad really didn't care about having children, and I can see it. I can actually see it now. To admit that when I was five years old was too difficult, but now I can admit my dad didn't actually want children. That's why he's behaving like he's behaving. Does that have to do with me now? Then you can play the game of putting yourself in different scenarios, or looking at other children. Is any child unlovable? No. Well, then what? How do you explain the projects where kids get abandoned, completely abandoned? Is it because the child is somehow unlovable? When you start to do this game, you're like, no, actually, it wouldn't have mattered. I could have been the best kid in the whole universe. If a dad doesn't want a kid, then he doesn't want a kid. Okay, but accepting that makes it starts to depersonalize the entire thing, and you start to see the reality of what was going on, and then that belief will shift. Now, the important thing about doing beliefs this way is we don't want to shift a belief into something positive, we want to shift it into whatever is real. Now, sometimes that's going to look real positive. Sometimes it's not, but it will always feel it has a very specific feeling, even when it's when the realities and the truths don't necessarily feel amazing. It still feels a very, very specific breed of good to be really grounded in reality. So, instead of the belief being something like, what do we serve? I am a failure. The truth may be I was a child, that's it. Not like I'm successful. We're not looking to actually swing the pendulum in any way. Sometimes that can happen, though. Sometimes it can be like, wow, actually the reality was the opposite. That's okay. It's just I don't want us to be fixated on we need to replace it with something positive. We're not there, like this is a whole whole different, better wave, higher level breed of replacing beliefs. But yeah, that process is what will actually do it for you.

Jannecke Øinæs 53:21

Thank you, that was super deep. That was like a short masterclass. Thank you for that. super helpful. I think I have to listen to that again to get the really depths of it. A big, big question, and I would love to hear your perspective, seeing all the gruesomeness we're seeing on the planet right now with the Epstein Files, with the wars. I have always been curious whether that is soul contracts that we choose certain roles that I'm playing, the villain you're playing, you know, the victim, or if there's actual darkness, a dark agenda that is something else than we're just playing a role right now in this incarnation. Do you get my question?

Teal Swan 54:06

What's interesting to me is that you're, you think that they're mutually exclusive when they're not,

Jannecke Øinæs 54:14

right?

Jannecke Øinæs 54:14

So, how do they go together then?

Teal Swan 54:18

I don't understand how they don't go together. Can you explain how they don't go together first, so I can, because

Jannecke Øinæs 54:23

okay, okay, right, so okay. From one perspective, everything is love, and then we split into all these parts. This is a thought perspective. We split into all these parts to experience light and dark, but it's not love. So then I need to experience the opposite. For instance,

Teal Swan 54:43

I've got it.

Jannecke Øinæs 54:43

Or is there another force? There's

Teal Swan 54:46

just.. let's just start here. Okay, let's.. I get it. So this.. this is what helps. When you do this, we can.. when we hit our first roadblock, we'll just stop with the roadblock. Okay? When people say that source is love, what does that mean? That means the collective of every. Thing that is is unified, that's all it means. Love is not this pure positive state of being. Love is to take everything as a part of the self, so it is essentially another word for oneness. Source itself was in a state of oneness, yes, until it thought the thought I. Now here's the thing, a state of oneness does not imply pure positivity. Within that oneness, there can be unlimited potentials. Potential energy is full of a full range of manifestations of darkness, of light, of L polarities. So that's how they're not mutually exclusive,

Jannecke Øinæs 55:42

so isn't source love and light? Is it just as much darkness as it is light?

Teal Swan 55:49

Absolutely, absolutely. See, it's the languaging. This is what frustrates me. Welcome to my job. The language is very, very, very difficult, because people will take it to a place where it's not actually meant to go, because we have an association with love as being pure positive, that's not the definition of love.

Jannecke Øinæs 56:15

What is the definition of love?

Teal Swan 56:17

Oneness. To love is to take something as a part of the self now, naturally, when I do that, I start to develop a kind of let's use a positive identification with you. If I start to form a positive identification with you, then I things like appreciative notice tend to be a byproduct of that.

Jannecke Øinæs 56:36

Yeah, so there is something positive with it, then,

Teal Swan 56:43

What if.. okay, so play the game. Demons exist within this universe, just like serial killers exist within this universe. So, how do you explain that? If it's all just pure positive, to love is to take all things as a part of the self,

Jannecke Øinæs 57:04

right? That is a stretch for a human. I got to say, at least for me, but when I look into myself, I feel my pure essence is love. That's what I am, that I'm not evil inside, that I want good for others, like I really want good for others. Yes, I have my ego, and we all have our ego, and I feel that if the separation feels feels real enough, then I can go into darkness, because I feel lost. I feel separate, but when I feel that wholeness, I feel love, and then I don't want to hurt you when I feel oneness. I don't want to hurt you, I want to help you. Yep, and that is something positive, that is love.

Teal Swan 57:53

I feel like the perspective difference between where you are and where I am is so extreme because you're experiencing there to be a split that doesn't inherently exist.

Jannecke Øinæs 58:07

Okay,

Teal Swan 58:09

I just.. I, you need to be able to imagine a thing where there is nothing outside of it.

Jannecke Øinæs 58:19

that is hard.

Teal Swan 58:21

That's the hard part. You have to imagine something where there is nothing else, so everything that exists, there's just.. there's one energy, and it's everything in existence. Serial killers, first-time moms, people who wish harm, people who save people.. like all of it exists in a kind of a soup, a curry. Thank you. I figured it out. How to make this make sense to you? It's a curry source itself is a curry of all of these things. What it is trying to do is to self-actualize. What that means is to look at the potentials within yourself and to decide consciously which ones you are going to bring forth.

Jannecke Øinæs 59:03

So nothing is preferred.

Teal Swan 59:05

Of course, there is something preferred. That's what you're tapping into. What you're tapping into is the fact that when source did this thing, where it started breaking apart, and oh my goodness, if all the realm of potentials are within me, then that means to both sides of the spectrum, basically. Then, essentially, source is going okay. Well, after experiencing myself to the degree that I already have, I am aware that what I want is love. Now, when source says what I want is love, there's no way for it to separate what I want is love from what I am is love, I because there's nothing, there's nothing outside of it, so it's basically that,

Jannecke Øinæs 59:48

that's good, that's good, that it is preferred, then

Teal Swan 59:52

it's

Jannecke Øinæs 59:53

something,

Teal Swan 59:53

here's the problem, though, when source itself fragments. All elements of that source have free will, so if I was to take a sheet of glass and shatter it, all of the different parts of that glass have free will. Uh, oh, well, what am I supposed to do when an aspect of me perceives itself to be separate? What am I supposed to do when an aspect of me is willing to play a zero sum game?

Jannecke Øinæs 1:00:28

Love that too.

Teal Swan 1:00:29

Exactly,

Jannecke Øinæs 1:00:34

so that's what we're, that's sort of the goal, the intention, the preferred, that is where that is the ultimate spiritual quest.

Teal Swan 1:00:47

Yep, good luck, because it's really, really difficult. Yep, that's why many years back, basically, I did this video that's called The Lesson of Lucifer in Christ, which is about this, which is that the biggest mistake that people make is by doing this. I'm on the light side, that's the dark side. Fight the absolute message of Christ. Doesn't matter whether it's Him or any other spiritual teacher, was Lucifer is a part of you. You haven't really mastered love unless you can love Lucifer, and not from a space of, aren't I an amazing, loving person for loving what's evil? I mean, genuine love. You are literally a part of me. I cannot separate you from me. I cannot separate your best interests from my best interests. It is not possible, and I want you with me. Until we can get there, we're not actually practicing love. So, it's ironic, because some of these religious, you know, groups and spiritual groups that are, you know, convinced that they're the lightest, or in fact the darkest. They're the ones that are maintaining and creating the separation, most especially because they can't recognize those elements within themselves.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:01:55

Yeah, I mean, we are seeing guru's falling. I feel it's a time of the guru's falling,

Teal Swan 1:02:01

that's a complex thing too, though, because that's also an intentional takedown

Jannecke Øinæs 1:02:06

by whom.

Teal Swan 1:02:09

It's not a good idea if you are a government that wants to take total control over the people to have somebody out there that's essentially freeing people.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:02:21

Oh, definitely, I'm mean, I'm speaking about the gurus who are saying, 'Oh, there's only one way, and that's my way over the highway, but positive, wonderful, or positive. I mean, we come constantly back to these words, right, that are very limiting. But I'm, I'm saying spiritual teachers like yourself, I would say that are empowering people. I mean, that's a positive leader, or positive, that's an empowering leader, that's that's healthy, I think, for people, but the opposite, the leaders who are saying "follow me" I think is very dangerous, and they, for my sake, they can, it's okay if they fall, to be honest, yeah, because I think that's dangerous, like that's then we're right back to what some religions have been doing, and saying there's only one truth, and I think it's truth is truth from a perspective, I think we all have part of the truth, that's my truth, at least, yeah,

Teal Swan 1:03:14

yeah, I have spent enough time around those individuals to know what is going on the big desk, I mean, that goes in line with what we were talking about earlier, where people are shifting towards the power within. I noticed that a lot of people are not really interested in putting people on pedestals or listening to teachers or anything with anybody who's on top of them in any way.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:03:35

Okay, wrapping soon up this very interesting episode, I any tip on how to empower ourselves in a world where it seems like there's such a hierarchy there, like you mentioned, there are certain people who have such power to do like this, and everything changes for so many people.

Teal Swan 1:03:58

Yeah, the empowerment is to be the antidote to what you see in the world, and I mean this. If you really wrap your head around this particular concept, it will give you everything you need to operate in the world today, because you're going to lose it otherwise. If you try to basically go out there and try to gain power and try to do all these externalized things, you're going to be so overwhelmed. What I need you to remember is that you are a part of society. Society is an amalgamation of individuals, so the more individuals that are out there that are actually embodying the antidote to what they're seeing in the world, the more that the world is going to shift in alignment with whatever it is that you're doing. So, the most important thing you can possibly do is to make your personal vote. The thing is, is that you personally vote in this life with your thoughts, your words, your behaviors, your decisions, and your actions. So, the question at all moments of the day is, How can I be the antidote to what I see in the world? So, if what I'm seeing in the world is cruelty, how can I be kindness? Now, I really do need you to get it. Doesn't feel like it most of the time, because. We look at these big deal systemic issues, and we're like, what the hell am I going to do about it? Right, the effect that a single individual can have on those that they interact with, it's out of control. It's amazing, really. When you watch it, just something as simple as, like, okay, I'm going to be kindness, I see cruelty, I'm going to be kindness. So you go to the store, and you interact with the person that's crossing the counter in a specific way that will change the totality of the way that that person operates relative to every other customer. So, if you could just look at it, welcome to being out of body. If you look at this existence like a web, if you are doing your personal best with that one element of the web, you are impacting everything else that is touching you, and if they are impacted by you in that way, it starts to become this kind of positive virus that spreads all the way out from someone. It touches corners of the globe that you could not imagine that you can touch, because you have no awareness of it, it's kind of a tragedy for me. Who is somebody who's able to see a lot of these connections? It's tragedy, I think, that I can't just put goggles on people where they can see sometimes you're nice to one random person, and we're not just talking about niceness, there's plenty of other ways that you can vote in this life. Let's use something other than niceness. Let's say you say, okay, empowerment, empowerment, I want that, that's the antidote to this. Okay, so then you're constantly thinking, how can I be empowered in this situation? How can I be empowered in this situation? Well, guess what, when you're in that type of a mode and mentality, and other people watch you in that type of mode and mentality, it does have an impact on them. They probably are going to be like, all right, how do I get empowerment? So you're basically creating a positive virus of empowerment. There's somebody who's over in another country that will actually be at the effect of you getting into empowerment, but you won't see it because that's beyond the scope of your capacity to proceed at this moment. I just, why am I going on this tangent? Because it is so important to understand that the web of effect that you have got going as a result of making your personal vote in this life goes so far beyond what you can perceive, and so I don't. I just want you to remember that, not just get locked into this feeling that systemic issues are literally so large they are beyond your effect,

Jannecke Øinæs 1:07:23

but I love that. That is so important to know. And how could we know, you know, if we don't have the intuition to know it? Or I mean, we're not told this on the news or in school, right? That we have that effect.

Teal Swan 1:07:35

Yeah,

Jannecke Øinæs 1:07:36

but that is so powerful. Yeah, understanding our own power, I really. that, that really inspired me. Thank you, thank you. All right, so Teal, there are a few questions I ask everyone, and my first one is, what is self love to you?

Teal Swan 1:07:52

Okay, self love to me is to recognize, first and foremost, that because consciousness splits, I am not one being. You may call me Teal, however, within me I have all these different aspects of self. We call them sides oftentimes, but they can be like distinct personas. Self-love is when I am practicing taking all parts of the self as a part of myself, and therefore I am creating an internal state of harmony. I am creating an internal state of well-being. There is not an aspect of myself that I have pushed away, rejected, denied, suppressed, and disowned.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:08:33

That's beautiful. And what is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Teal Swan 1:08:41

Oh, I love that, because the subjectivity of this question is in fact what allows the universe to be infinite. The answer is multilayered. First layer of that is self-awareness. So, life is a hologram where the universe put itself to become self aware, so self experience leads to self awareness. That is the primary purpose for this life, as we call it. The second is for the purpose of expansion. There is nothing that we can do more as a universe in terms of discovering what is possible within our potential than bumping around here in this hologram of us to figure out how far we can stretch that boundary and how far desire itself can take us and then the third purpose for life is to come back to oneness, so that desire has already generated from source itself, what we're calling source, the universe at large. That desire to come back to oneness can only happen when egos are trapped in a mirror construct, because it's only by really recognizing the pain in. Of selfhood and separation, that the choice for love is going to happen again. Also, I would say that last thing that that is the deeper meaning of life is to be the aperture through which the creator observes itself and its creations.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:10:17

Wow, that was as deep as this episode. Gosh, thank you so much, Teal. And thank you for your wonderful meditations. I'll drop a link below. And for anyone who's curious to just learn more from you, where would you guide them to go?

Teal Swan 1:10:33

Tealswan.com is my website. I've got everything collected there. I've got like all and every social media that you can possibly have, just go to Teal Swan. Make sure it's my official account, you'll see that blue check mark. And then on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel. If you just type in Teal Swan to YouTube, you can find it. I pop up like crazy every single Saturday. I'm releasing a brand new video on a different subject, so if you tune into my channel, you will get different content every single Saturday.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:11:04

Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming back to the show, and all the best for your work too.

Teal Swan 1:11:09

Thank you.