Awake Life with Brian Marc Zimberg

Brian Marc Zimberg
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Awake Life with Brian Marc Zimberg

Author and creator of “Access Points - The Modern Life Meditation Plan”, Brian Marc Zimberg hosts Awake Life - offering keen insights into an ever deeper awakening to your “True-Oneself” and living life as the greatest expression of YOU. Helping you experience, even amidst today’s hectic, high-paced lifestyle, the peace of meditation that is available to you in every moment. Through inspirational talks and conversations with leading writers, thinkers, and scientists, he asks what is it to “wake up” and to actually LIVE an awake life.

Episodes

  1. 10/29/2018

    The POWER of GRATITUDE NOW

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode.   Hi everyone, it’s Brian Marc Zimberg, author of “Stop Smile Breathe Be” and creator of Access Points, The Modern Life Meditation Plan. In today's episode of Awake Life I want to talk to you about something that you probably have come across in your spiritual journey or, if you're on a self-help journey and that is this notion, this practice, this idea of gratitude. Odds are, on your journey you've learned about gratitude, that it's good to be grateful, that you can maybe have a gratitude journal, we talked about back in the 80s it was a big deal. We know to be grateful brings joy, brings connection, brings some kind of healing even. So, we've learned these things. But, what I’d like to ask you right now is to kind of just drop all your ideas of gratitude and everything you've learned in the past about that. What I mean by that is, just listen with fresh new ears so that - my goal for this video for you is for you to be able to grasp, utilizing gratitude in a deeper and more profound way that can really create a lasting transformation in your life. Everything we do here on Awake Life is to really wipe away the dust, the misconceptions, the myths that keep us from experiencing directly our infinite divine nature, that which is already whole and complete. To point you in the direction of recognizing that meditation and the infinite peace of who you are, what I like to say lately the nectar of your own Divine Self, Oneself is available right here and right now. And as I talk about in Access Points, as we learn to shift our attention out of our mind and let our attention rest in being itself we recognize that, just like in the center of the hurricane, in the center of the storm there's complete stillness, that the truth of who we are, our True-OneSelf is already still whole and complete and actually the ground that holds everything. Gratitude is a doorway right directly to the connection of your own Divine Self. I want to take a look at gratitude on multiple levels today. First of all, we need to kind of have a conversation about the ego. We don't need to go into an entire ego conversation and explain what the ego is right now, we do that in some other videos and that could take a little while. Let's just talk about the ego being the mental mind structure, I like to call it in Access Points, the survival animal that keeps your attention stuck in your mind and it's constantly on the look for survival. It's protecting you, of course, it's protecting your physical body and it also protects your identity of being someone and something separate. It's maintaining its identity in your mind but I'd love for us to take a look at and to understand is that the ego is constantly in fear and operating from a place of lack, it's constantly in need. We talked about that one of the main patterns that keeps us stuck in our mind is that the mind is constantly, either creating a problem or solving a problem. The ego is creating a problem every moment or solving a problem every moment. The ego is constantly judging the moment, finding and looking for imperfection. Again, it's looking for imperfection in problems because it needs to protect itself so it's already assuming that something's going to be wrong, it's constantly in neurosis. In that neurosis the ego is in a lack mentality. The ego is in need, it needs something to be different, it needs something to be better, it needs to make sure it is okay and in that lack mentality we have fear, we have unworthiness, deep shame because there's a sense of lack, there's a deep sense of lack that is running the operation. Gratitude is like magic in this notion because gratitude, in the moment you're grateful, in the moment you're grateful there is no need, there is no lack, there is actually complete contentment. To have no need means that for that moment you are free, you’re abundant, you’re whole, there's no problem, there's no issue. Gratitude is such a key tool to utilize on our journey in our daily life, to open the doorway to our True-OneSelf, to experience the inner peace of meditation that is available right here and right now. One of the most beautiful things about being grateful, it stimulates this place of no need, therefore it also stimulates you being in the moment because for a moment in gratitude you’re present, you’re here, you're full and we all know that being present brings us closer and closer to the infinite. When we're present there's a timelessness that exists and that timelessness has a vibrancy to it. It allows you being more alive, more appreciative, more grateful so to live in gratitude is to actually live in peace. Imagine if you were able to train yourself to become more grateful, not just more grateful about some things but to actually become grateful all the time. It's a beautiful thing to become more grateful all the time. You start to come to a centered space and yourself as abundant, not lacking. Let's take a look at gratitude on a couple stages, on a couple levels and then we'll bring it in someplace where you can really start to have gratitude so often, that'll become a regular thing for you. You can implement this starting immediately in your life and I can promise transformation for you, if you really hone in on this. First off, I want you to take a moment and just be grateful for somebody in your life. There's scientific studies now that say that listen, writing down something that you're grateful for about somebody works. In fact, the studies show that the more specific you can be the better the effects it will have on creating more joy, more fulfillment and as I'm saying more openness, more beauty in your life. Take a moment right now and think about somebody that you care about. Great, and just, if you want to, if you're someplace and you're not driving a car you can close your eyes for a minute if you’d like to, you don't need to and just for a moment tell yourself in your own head, I am grateful for, say the person's name so, for me I'll be grateful for my wife right now. I am grateful for Barbara and just notice when you say that to yourself what it stimulates in you. You might be saying, well you chose somebody you're not congruent with or you're angry with, that's okay. Let's get more specific. I am grateful for Barbara's smile. I am grateful for the way Barbara enjoys my hug so now you. You are grateful for somebody, you say it to yourself, I am grateful for – great. I am grateful for something specific about that person, go ahead and say that to yourself now. Great. Notice, when you were grateful in that moment, was there a problem but it's stimulating you. Say it to yourself again, I am grateful, something specific about them, say it to yourself again and right away check, any problems, any issues in that moment? Infinite reality that is right now already is okay, already is perfect, already is whole and complete and the utmost truth of who you are you’re awaken, conscious self is already whole and complete. Gratitude is a doorway to the infinite. That is something you most likely have done before, written in a gratitude journal, taking a moment to be grateful for someone. We have Thanksgiving in America, we teach our children, we were taught as children to say thank you and to be grateful but it's lip service in some ways until we really can connect to gratitude. How often do we take that in deeper, really deeper, a deep gratitude where we're not so distracted by all our thoughts and everything we think we got to achieve in our life and everything we got to take care of and we actually just take a moment, it could be 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute for gratitude. I want you to really start finding and inquiring into gratitude in your life and the experience of gratitude in your life, we're going to blow up gratitude so clean and big it's going to become a real doorway to happiness and a real doorway to freedom for you. Okay, we've looked at level one of gratitude, how we can be grateful for somebody. You can also be grateful for a circumstance in your life, like grateful for your home, grateful for your business and again you've probably done this kind of gratitude before. I want to take it closer to you. One step closer to you is, I want to take a look at being grateful for breathing. Now, when you're grateful for breathing, since breathing is happening all the time there's a possibility to start being grateful all the time. Let's take a look at this together for a moment. Have you ever had to do anything to breathe? Of course not, right, breathing happens on its own, breathing is constantly happening and that which holds everything together, the universe, the cells in your body communicating with each other, your own breath happening. On this journey you may have learn about breath techniques and how we can rewire our nervous system with breath, you've maybe done yoga and you've done breathing and there's a certain kind of breath there that helps center us. Breathing is obviously crucial, it brings oxygen to our brain and to our body, we cannot be alive without breathing so breathing happens on its own, it is divine gift – breath. Ah, can't hurt you right. Go ahead for a moment with me, take a breath. Now, I want to ask you to be grateful for breathing. Take a breath. Take a second breath, take three and say to yourself I am grateful for breathing. I am grateful for breathing. Focus your attention on your breath. You can do it the way I like to do it, notice that nostrils and the air as it passes inward and outward or out of your lips as it passes inward and outward and just say to yourself as you're breathing, I am grateful for my breath. What is your experience, when you just say I am grateful, I am grateful already there's that openness and there's that movement towards no need, freedom from the ego,

    26 min
  2. How to Connect to Your True-OneSelf vs. Higher Self

    12/19/2017

    How to Connect to Your True-OneSelf vs. Higher Self

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode. Hi, welcome everyone. It's Brian Marc Zimberg, number one best-selling author of “Stop Smile Breathe Be” and creator of “Access Points - The Modern-Life Meditation Plan”. In today's video, I want to take a look at a spiritual concept that is often misunderstood and gets in our way to our real personal transformation and spiritual evolution and that's this idea of our Higher Self. So often our Higher Self is what people think of is something that's our better self, our soul self and the issue with that is I really think it's time for us to reframe that and take a look at what is our True-OneSelf. In this video I want you to have a palpable shift in this understanding. Often our misconceptions and our ideas of our Higher Self get in the way of our own growth. So, the idea your Higher Self is this separation right away, you see, it's this idea of higher and lower. Right? There's this Higher Self that is the better you and there's this Lower Self which is the not good you, or that more human you, and there's the Higher Self which is the so you. So, what that does right away is it says that there's this better you over here and lesser you over here. This idea of higher and lower automatically has this existing and focused our intention stuck in this world of separation. Now, if you listen to some of my other stuff you know that when we are in our mind we're automatically in separation. When we're existing in separation, we are in the fear of survival. When we're separate, we are something that can be destroyed.  So existing in separation with this idea of Higher Self is already putting ourselves into an identified fearful representation of who we are as supposed to being in alignment with our True-OneSelf.  Now, what is our True One-self? Our True-OneSelf is that which is already whole. That which is One with everything. You've had that experience out in nature. Remember a moment in nature, we looked out at some beautiful Vista, some an inspiring scene, some beautiful sunset or sunrise. For me, it’s coming around that PCH highway and you see this awe. You know, just these moments we have and in that moment you're one with everything. You're there. You're not there. Everything's okay. Everything's whole. That moment of Oneness is here right now. It's actually here in every moment. And the only reason we think that nature can only be experienced out in nature is because we identify that experience as something outside of ourselves. Or, if we're on a spiritual journey maybe you have epiphanies or realizations and in those moments you have glimpses into that Oneness and that experience. The truth is that moment is here right now. So we need to learn how can we align ourselves with our True-OneSelf, that which is already whole. The truth is you are already One. You are already whole. You're already connected with everything in this moment. And there's only our tension stuck in our minds, in our individual perspective, in the world of separation, that keeps us in a struggle. That keeps us suffering. That doesn't allow us to be at peace. When we align with our True-OneSelf we start to have clarity. And that clarity, the choices that we make in life, every little moment we're making these choices, and when they're made in alignment with Oneness…Right? Oneness first. God first. Oneness first. Our attention is with Oneness first, not in the world of separation, but in the beautiful endless soul that you are, that is one now. When our attention is there, our choices and our alignment rise from there.  And in that, we start to live life in a fluid flow, or incongruent with what is already whole and at peace. When we're in this idea of Higher Self, we have this judgment mind, you see. Again, Higher Self is based on this idea better. So, my Higher Self is more godlike, my Higher-self really takes on the role of our self-conscious which is like our parent voice and the teacher's voice and what those society and world has told you is right and wrong. So now you're existing in this voice which has an endless way of beating the heck out of you. Right? There's a voice inside of you that knows how to get you and put you down. And tell you what you're doing is wrong. And tell you what you should be doing is better. And that voice is endlessly on top of You. It's intelligent for you to assume that this voice that can beat you up will never go away. And what I'm saying to you is - when we tie into this idea of Higher Self, although it can be a good idea for kind of walking on the line of looking how we are doing in life, we're constantly judging ourselves. And when we live in the world of judgment, we're beating ourselves up.  So what happens when we free ourselves to live in the world of acceptance and awareness? Instead of being in the judgment and the critiquing mind, which is often what our Higher Self is, we shift to a perspective of Oneness.  And from that Oneness, we shift to just simple sense of Awareness. An Awareness that is acceptance, is that which already is whole and accepts everything as it is now.  That's the great allowing of life. That's a great opening and the Openness opens your heart to the moment. Instead of you trying to be good and live in the moment - you allow, you let go. And you end up living open to the moment, receiving the moment. And there's space then for good to come and bad to come arising and falling in your True-OneSelf. So, how do we connect to our True-OneSelf? Well, one of the greatest questions we begin to ask ourselves is “Who am I?”. You see, it's a question that we can always ask and never really get an answer to if we don't land on a thought or a concept. See, who you are, you are not your thoughts. You're not your body. You're not your emotions. You're not your feelings. Take that in for a moment.  If it comes and it goes, thoughts come and go, then it's not really the core you, it's not your True-OneSelf.  Your True-OneSelf is always present. It doesn't come and go.  It includes that which comes and goes, but it's always here and present. Therefore, it's always reliable. So I want to leave you in this video with that which is completely reliable and trustworthy. If at your core you find yourself to already be whole, then you're already there. You're already whole and complete. You're already fulfilled. You see, it's the simplicity and the beauty of simply being and allowing. From the space, we flower into a greater transformation of consciousness. You're not your thoughts. You're not your body. You're not your feelings. Those are part of you,  but they come and go. And the truth of who you are – you are CoreSelf. When we exist in the space of allowing, we come from our Core True-OneSelf. That was just, IS the baseline, the absolute and is already whole. We don't come from this idea of better any longer, or more, or right and wrong. The minute we step out of the whole world of separation…You see, I often teach it. Meditation, which is really enlightenment, is really our attention stuck in our mind. Right? Which creates separation, which equals suffering. So the moment you're willing to allow your thoughts to come and go - you're willing to allow your emotions to come and go, you're willing to recognize that your body is temporary in its way it is and even how it looks throughout your life. And you recognize this space that holds everything, then you recognize your True-OneSelf is always here. Your True-OneSelf is always present. Oneness is already here and whole. Instead of trying to be better and judge ourselves for the Higher Self and LowerSelf and being caught in the world of judgment, we start to exist in simply allowing and awareness. So I want to share with you two ways to start focusing on how you can kind of just enter that space that you're already in. See that's the joke. You can't really enter the space that you're already in because you're already there and what we'll be doing throughout the show is looking all the ways in which keep pretending that we're not our True-OneSelf.  So, for now, I want to talk about the witness. The witness is this perspective that is seeing you. Let's say there's a camera over there and it's watching us, okay? You're watching me right now and you can notice this third perspective that's watching you watching me. You get that? Pretend like there's a camera videoing you watching me right now. You're listening to this or you're in your car. Pretend there's a camera as you're driving that car or doing whatever you're doing and that camera is shooting you from over there. Right? So, it's an angle over here. So that witness perspective, I want you for a moment to move your attention to that witness perspective. It seemed difficult and all that, but I promise you it's not, you just go ahead. So for a moment just notice this perspective that's easy from here. It's crazy, but you'll notice it takes nothing for you to notice this perspective. Why? Because that's what is the perspective of Awareness itself. And who you are at your core is Awareness.  Notice this witness that just sees what is, without a problem, without judgment, just sees what is always present, always here. Throughout the day start to just notice that perspective. It's like stepping out of your mind and all this chaos and all the noise, for a moment just noticing this. Without changing anything or without getting rid of anything, just noticing this perspective.So by noticing this witness perspective we just start noticing Awareness itself. An Awareness has no separation. Awareness is your True-OneSelf. See this is the beauty - simply Being.  Another way to recognize our OneSelf in any moment is that you just notice “I am”. Believe, I talked about this in one of our earlier videos, but today three times notice the witness and also today three tim

    14 min
  3. The Truth About Spiritual Awakening and Enlightenment - How to Awaken Now

    11/27/2017

    The Truth About Spiritual Awakening and Enlightenment - How to Awaken Now

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode.   Welcome everyone. It’s Brian Marc Zimberg, number one best-selling author of “Stop Smile Breathe Be” and creator of Access Points - The Modern-Life Meditation Plan”. Welcome to episode one of “Awake Life”. In today's video, we're going to take a look at the Big “E” word in spirituality, and that's “Enlightenment”. What is it really? Why are you interested in enlightenment? In fact, why is it important for you to be interested, if you're not interested in enlightenment. Odds are, if you're watching this video right now, you're already on a self-help journey of wanting to be better and improve yourself. And then you’ve probably gotten to a point where that was exhausting, and you're on the spiritual journey, where you want more peace and more happiness in your life.   So this show is called Awake Life and we're going to explore what is it to “awaken”, and what is it to live an “awake life”. So many of you probably have already gotten to the point, or maybe you're at the point right now, where “you think you’ve had enough of this life, then hang on, (singing) because everybody hurts” - excuse my bad voice - but you know that's the truth of it, you know? Life can be a grind, life can be a struggle, and odds are to get to the place of awakening, spiritual awakening, or interest in enlightenment, you first usually come to a place where you're ready to just give up.   You know, Buddha said “life is suffering” because basically, all our desires lead to a temporary fulfillment. So let's look at the context of your modern day life, because I'm really interested in the practical understanding of what is in enlightenment in a modern context? You see we live in a modern world, I mean, if you are desiring enlightenment because you want to run off and be a guru, and live off, and be a monk in a mountain somewhere? Because you can do that, right? But no. Odds are you have a life, you have a family, you're in the context of this world.   So Buddha said that desire leads us to things that are “temporary fulfillment”. So if we look at that in the context of our modern life, we achieve things. We’re told our whole life we can go get something and achieve it. So we learn how to be achievers, and when we achieve something, how does it feel? Think of something you've achieved in your life. It's temporary. We have a temporary moment of achievement and it feels good, and we can be excited, exhilarated, and other people around us can be excited for us, but it slowly fades away. Right? The fulfillment, that happiness, fades away. When you have a relationship and you get “love love love love love” and all the sudden you're whole, and you’re complete by another, it tends to… fade away.   We can learn the skill of relation and sustaining this love, but understand that everything you grasp in the outer world... fades away. That happiness doesn't last. You buy a nice car that you want so bad and it makes you feel great in the beginning, right? It’s like when you buy a cellphone, you take care of it good, and it becomes, whatever it gets chipped and it’s like OK… who cares? Because it gives us this temporary fulfillment, and we realize that that gives us temporary happiness. And at some point, that material, you know, illusion, becomes not enough. And we get to this point where we have this disillusionment, right? We either start feeling frustrated, or we realize there's something more to life. We feel this sense of pain, or meaninglessness, or what the hell is the point of all this already?  And a warning along the journey, you should know, if you're in that space right now, is that there's this existential funk that can happen there. You know this, what's the point?  And it's, I feel like giving up. I want to quit.   And when it goes even deeper, that's really where depression and even suicide can ensue. Where it literally seems pointless and meaningless. And I’m sure many people out there have felt this way, kind of like… I give up. What's the point? Or, am I screwing up my children? Or, I can't hold it all together. I'm sick of the holding it all together. Let's be honest with each other here. It's exhausting. Life can be exhausting trying to keep it up, and keep it together, based on what you've been told it's supposed to be about. (sigh) When you realize that -  it's key. It's a key disillusionment, and if you've already been on the journey and you’ve realized this… “Amen”! If not, it's coming for you. That's why you're here. There's no mistaking in our meeting right now.   So first off, it is not pointless and meaningless, it's actually full of a point. The point is that emptiness is not meaningless, but is actually fullness.  It’s fulfillment, and when we discover enlightenment truly, we discover true fulfillment. We discover fullness. Endlessness. We discover emptiness that is vast, infinite. That, you are one with that which is whole. You are already, complete, now.   So you know, along the road, we kind of have this dawning of “this isn't enough.” There has to be another way. There has to be something more. I want to know the truth”, right? I want to know what's real. I want to stop lying to myself. I want stop living “out of program”. I want to stop being “stuck in my mind”, and I want to live from reality. I want to live from truth. And we dawn on the idea of spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual awakening.   You know first, before we can really talk about what enlightenment really is, we need to take a look at what enlightenment is not, OK? There's a lot of misconceptions, and myths, and misbeliefs, and understanding about this, and it keeps us kinda on the spiritual journey, on a hamster trail, trying to get to a destination. Often people think of enlightenment as this final permanent state, right? “When I reach enlightenment, I'm going to have, I’m going to be blissed out. I'm only going to have have positive emotions. I'm only going to feel blissed all the time. It makes me grin, you know? That’s enlightenment.” Or maybe enlightenment is that you can turn to a light body and disappear. Now I'm not saying that that can't happen, but the truth in the matter is enlightenment isn't those things. You still will be a human being. You're still, emotions will still come and go, you know? Some of the greatest sages still died of cancer, right? Osho had back pain. Paramahansa Yogananda did preserve his body and had a glowing light, but he was a yogi. So is the goal of enlightenment for us each to be a yogi? You see, there is development of our consciousness, and maybe we can be moving towards a light body, but let's get real for a moment. What is spiritual awakening? It is waking up… to reality.   So let's take a look for a moment at when you have a nightmare, or you have a dream, alright? You probably can remember a time where there was someone trying to kill you in a dream. Somebody was chasing you. You were scared. Can you remember that time? Think of a bad dream you had, and then you woke up. You're like, “Oh, it was just a dream”. Now go back in the context of that dream. In the dream it was real. Right? You didn't know you were dreaming. Like, if a lion is chasing you and wants to kill you, salivating, running after you in your dream… you're going to feel fear. You're going to be running. You're going to be sweating. You're going to be... scared, right? You're going to be… suffering. But when you come out of the dream, you wake up.   So it's very possible, my friends, for you to start to recognize that these atoms and molecules, that your photons are seeing me and seeing this world, that you're buying into the thoughts in your head, and you're calling that “reality”. It's creating your suffering. It's creating the struggle of your life. It's time to wake up. It's time to wake up and realize it's just a dream. [Sighs] Yes, it IS real in the context of creation, in the physical manifestation of infinity. And you, as an individual, have the divine birthright to awaken to the truth of who you are. To awaken. I mean, imagine the glory of the opportunity, through all this evolution. What is it? Billions of years going by, coming to this individuation and form. Your D.N.A., possible to turn back on its own awareness, and awaken to its truth. For life, for G-d, to awaken in the creation… at itself.   You know that's the difference, of what we call, in the Hindus, Leela and Maya.  Maya, the illusion of life, right? We're caught in our minds. We’re caught as an individual. We’re separate, therefore, we can be destroyed, and life as a survival. We’re a survival animal. We're stuck in that process.   When we awaken, when we step out of the dream, right? When the lion isn't real, and the fear is false evidence appearing real. But not because it's a good teaching. Not because it’s a good idea, but because we really have a shift. This shift is crucial, because when you’ve awakened, which if you already had an essential experience, you’ve already awakened… then something… without a question… without a doubt, you know that you’re freedom itself. That who you are, is love itself.   In the moment of spiritual awakening, if you've been there already, you know, call it an essential experience. If you had that moment, for me, it happened profoundly and deeply in Joshua Tree Desert in 1996. At the end of a mushroom journey, on the come down. I felt, like, a light hit my chest. It was beyond just that… It was clear to me that everything was One. That I was whole. That I was it. That I am it. That G-d is it. That everything is One. Everything is perfect.   In this essential experience, we break through the veil of illusion. We see the wizard on the other side, and we get the cosm

    26 min

  4. 05/28/2016

    How To Be Free of All Problems

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode. Hi! I am Brian Marc Zimberg, author of Stop, Smile, Breathe, Be and creator of Access Points, the Modern Life Meditation Plan, where we show you how to shift your attention out of your mind, and connect  to the most profound inner peace of meditation, and from there awakening even deeper into your True-OneSelf,Living a life of greater joy, happiness and true self expression where you become a contribution into the world. So, welcome! I always say I’m so glad for you to be here, because the truth is I’m here for the same reason that you are here. In today’s episode, I wanna take a look at something, a problem, that we all have to deal with and that’s...problems. Let’s take a look at problems together. What would it be for you to finally be free of all problems? Now, I’m not talking ridiculous here and I’m not saying that all problems will magically disappear. What I’m saying is, it’s possible for you to be free of problems. Now, in Access Points, we take a look at the operating system of the mind. We take a look at the mind like it’s a computer on your head, and we say one of the main functions of this operating system is to create a problem and to solve a problem. In fact, what I’m saying to you is, your mind is always doing one or the other. It’s always creating a problem or solving a problem. So, no matter how big or how small the problem is in your life, your mind will either be fixated on creating one or solving one, and then creating another one, all to maintain its identity of being somebody and something separate. We also talk about in Access Points that  your identity, your attention’s  stuck  in your mind, being identified with your thoughts, your body, and your mind is what creates all suffering in life. Now, the truth of the matter is, when it comes to problems, we spend so much time worrying and fearful about the problem itself. We are stuck in a  problem. We have an issue going on in our lives. Right? Perhaps we don’t have money to pay our bills, or we are having issues with our loved ones, a partner, or our children are having issues at school, or I’m having a problem with my job. All different  things that we can relate to. Problems, big ones, small ones, come up  all the time. We have massive world  problems that deep within us that we’d all like to deal with. You know sometimes somebody will say to you, ‘’You think you have problems? Watch this video on this poor person who lost their leg and they learn to walk’’. You know, we are blown away by that, and maybe for a moment, we reconnect to how grateful and lucky we are, but it doesn't really change anything because we’re  in our heads, we’re  the centerpiece of our movie, and our problems are real to us. The truth of the matter is, when you take a look at a problem, a problem is either going to be solved eventually or it’s gonna be a non-problem. It’s gonna dissipate  and go away and all the worrying, all the stress and chasing around and trying to figure out things and fixing, all the stress and anxiety in the background of  our minds about a problem ends up being a non issue. We spend so much time in the drama of our problem; we have a problem, what we gonna do about our problem, discussing with other people, stress, emotion, fear, worry, anxiety, because our circumstances, we are choosing to relate to them as a problem. All this  drama at the end, if the problem just goes away, we just wasted a lot of time, energy, emotion and stress on something that wasn’t even real because it went away. Or even eventually if we accept the fact that a solution will show itself, good or bad. If you are getting evicted from your home, it sucks! You can do everything you need to do, but eventually when the eviction is happening and at that moment you are being evicted and then what comes next will come next. No matter what, what will comes next, will come next. So, really what it comes down to, is our relationship to the circumstances. Our thoughts, our emotions, the people in it and what they are saying, what’s happening. These are all circumstances of our lives and it’s our reaction to these circumstances that creates our suffering and our struggle. When we’re believing  in our thoughts and a separate individual to be who we are, and that we have to get somewhere or do something, defend and survive, that’s the root of all suffering. When you add to that the mind is creating a problem and trying to solve it, it’s holding us in the identity of our mind whether this problem/solution scenario. Our relationship to our circumstances is only based on that problem/solution. So we are stuck in this minimal perspective paradigm problem/solution. What I’m I gonna do about this problem? I need to find a solution. So you choose your relationship to circumstance. When we’re reacting to the circumstances, to other people, to what’s happening, to our thoughts and emotions in life, and we are just a reactive animal, not choice being happening from you making a conscious, true, clear choice but instead our past and our programming, our thoughts, our emotions all creating a reaction within us. So, we are reacting to our circumstances in the paradigm of problem/solution and we are struggling. We’re suffering. So, would it be nice, ahhhh!! to finally be free of being stuck in problems and solutions? So, how do we do it? Let’s take a look! So, first of all, your true nature, your True-OneSelf is timeless. That, which is one with everything. Oneness, the meditative moment, truth, awakening. When you connect your True-OneSelf, the beauty of divine perfection is available. Openness, availability, clarity, always at peace. From that space, you are timeless, and in timelessness there is no problem because the problem obviously only exists in time. Right? So, from your True-OneSelf, we have a timeless experience, a space of no problem being whatsoever. Quantum physics says, you know, I’m paraphrasing basically but, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it. If there is not an observer of reality then  the floor down below that you are looking at right now wouldn’t even be there. Right? The observer  affects the reality. That being said, think about that, with your attention focussing on your problem, you are actually substantiating the reality of your problem. Right? We are making our problem even more by making our attention  in our mind, which is always creating a problem and solving it, reacting to the circumstances of our lives, and all of this  is substantiating the problem to be a reality. You can see where we get pretty stuck. So, let’s unstick! Let’s get unstuck! Let’s find a way that you can actually shift your attention out of your mind, connect to this True-OneSelf, this peace, this timelessness that is free of problem, and find a new way and a new relationship to problems in your life. Now, again, I wanna be clear, I’m not saying that you won’t have any problems or life doesn’t have problems. I’m saying that it is our relationship to this circumstances of our lives that will determine our experience of our lives. That when we are stuck in a problem/solution mentality and relating only as a separate individual not only we suffering or struggling, but life is full of anxiety and problems. To be free of that, we are going to learn how to come out of our mind and move to the timelessness. There is a great quote by Albert Einstein which goes along the lines of ‘’A problem cannot be solved from the level of consciousness in which it was created.’’ So, if a problem cannot be solved from the level of consciousness in which it was created, we need to shift to a different level of consciousness. We need to move to a different perspective to relate to this from a whole different way. Have you ever played the game by the name Boggle? Boggle?  If you don’t know what it is there is a bunch of little cubes with different letters on it. You put them in a square thingy, shake it up and all the little cube letters fall down, then you lift it up in your little timer and you find words inside of it and someone is looking from this side, I’m looking  from that side. And what’s amazing you play this game and you get these words and then you are stuck! You can’t see anymore words. But if you all of a sudden pretend to take on the perspective from this side, where the other person is playing, a bunch of new words start to open up to you. Same thing, right? Einstein’s saying we need to find a new level of consciousness in order to deal with the problem because it cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness it was created at.. Now, what is the greatest perspective you could shift to? The greatest perspective to shift to would be one consciousness. The level of your True-OneSelf, that when you are one with everything, the timelessness, the space of no problem. When we shift to that, we are free of all problem. That’s the greatest shift we can take. How we do that is, in Access Points we teach you how to “access”. We teach these one to three minute meditations that shift your attention out of your mind and give you that hit of  meditation   and in that moment you gain connection to clarity, to oneness and to peace. It’s like you are taking a retreat from all the thoughts, the anxiety and the battle with the problem. Looking for solution, all that anxiety. You just step out of there for a moment, you release from it, you let it go for a moment and in that moment, you connect to who you really are. Your True-OneSelf. Your True-OneSelf has no problem. The thought idea of what your body mind is saying  is a problem in your life.You know what I’m saying, it’s like the sun has no problem with your problems. Your True-OneSelf has no problem w

    22 min

  5. 04/20/2016

    How To "Really" Love Yourself

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full transcript, videos and quotes related to this episode. Hi! I am Brian Marc Zimberg, author of Stop, Smile, Breathe, Be and creator of Access Points, the Modern Life Meditation Plan, where we show you how to shift your attention out of your mind, connecting to the most profound inner peace of meditation, thus realizing your True- OneSelf, and then living a life of greater joy, happiness and true self expression where we all become contributions to the world. In today's video, I want to talk about self love.   You've heard the concept of self love. You know, basically the more that we learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves and have appreciation for ourselves, all things can stem from there. We've heard of the idea that we can't really love someone else until you love yourself. And I'm sure you've had some realizations in the things you've read or done. You've had some epiphanies, you've opened some doorways into accepting and embracing and loving yourself. And that may have lasted for awhile, and for often for many people, it fades away. And when it fades away, we're back in our mind and the battle and the struggle of life with unworthiness, fear, anger, a deep self-loathing and hatred that happens for some people even. So, let's finally take a look at what self love really is. There's so many misunderstandings and misconceptions about self love. What self love really is, is learning to embrace and accept every single aspect of you. When we learn to embrace and accept all aspects of ourselves, we receive love innately. You see, so often self love is you trying to love yourself. The separate mind concept recipe loving yourself. You have to try to love yourself. Now, if you have a child, you don't try to love your child. You have an innate love for your child, right? You can't help it. When you see a beautiful sunset and you're blown away by it, you don't try to love that sunset. You have an innate love for that sunset. True self love is having an innate love for yourself. And when you learn to open and embrace all aspects of yourself, then there's a flowering of innate self love that just overflows within you. You don't have to attempt to try to love yourself. So, instead of you trying to love a part of yourself, from within you is a full opening, acceptance and embrace of love. You get the difference? There is an innate love emanating from you for yourself that has compassion, that has acceptance, that has love. And when we allow true self love, we connect to the Divine within ourselves. When you connect to the Divine within yourself, in that space, you start to really come to the core of self love, this deep appreciation and compassion that allows you to move into any aspect of yourself without getting lost in the judgemental mind that beats ourselves up, that creates a separate. You see, real suffering is when we are identified with our mind. When our attention is stuck in our mind in the beliefs, in the comments, and making too much meaning out of the emotions that we have. It is in those moments that we find that we have to try to love ourselves, that we are in the suffering, struggle and battle of life. Therefore, we have to apply a way to love ourselves. Because "Oh my God, I am being so hard on myself. I need to learn to love myself." And what we are really doing is we're not having a space of total love and acceptance. When we have a space of total love and acceptance of who we are, we can have a natural fluidity of allowing certain things to rise and fall, see good and bad fall, and rise and fall. Comments and ideas about ourselves can rise and fall. Sadness, anger can rise and fall. Judgement can rise and fall when we have space for it. If we don't have space for it, we are battling against it. The truth is that all suffering and struggle in life comes from us being identified with our mind. When we are in our thoughts, when we are identified with our mind, we believe ourselves to be separate. When we are fully in the belief of our own separation, we are in survival. And in that survival, we have to protect ourselves. And that's where the struggle and suffering in life comes, by being identified with our minds. You see, in the identification with the mind, everything is created separately. There is duality. There is good, bad. Right, wrong. And as we grow up in the development of who we believe ourselves to be, we decide that I have to be the good. Right? "Be a good boy or you won't get your dessert. Be a good girl or you won't get the new doll." We're shown our entire lives that we have to reach for societal concepts and ideas of what good is, and bad is no good. We don't want the bad. Be happy. Stop crying. So, in our mind, there is only duality of separation. The good and the bad. What happens is we habitually are reaching only for what we think to be the good part of ourselves. And we're pushing away everything that we don't like about ourselves or that we have been told is the bad part of ourselves. So what happens is we are torn, you see? We think in this ideal image of ourselves, we would only have all the good parts of ourselves. Like one day, you're going to be a saint. Who knows about that, you know? But we're working to only the good part of ourselves. And in that, we do two things the bad part of ourselves. We deny it. So, we pretend it's not there. We repress it or we indulge it. You know, a friend of mine was telling me he was so good. He was into drinking, he was using it to repress and hide from things. And he was going to a therapist. But the therapist couldn't even help him because he was lying to the therapist about how he was really feeling and what he was doing. See, when we build upon these lies to ourselves, we fester. We fester in an inauthenticity with ourselves. And really, there's nothing worse than that. We don't like this battle within ourselves. But we also don't like to feel unworthy. We don't like self-hatred. So we rather pretend it doesn't exist. When we pretend it doesn't exist, we are living that lie. We are building that lie. We are building that inauthenticity. What we want to be is authentic with ourselves. You see, when we embrace the good and the bad and we bring it into wholeness. Like the Yin and Yang. Like the Tao. When we embrace all aspects of ourselves, when we accept them without repression, without indulging. What's indulging anger look like? Roar, roar, roar, roar! (laughs) Right? We get angry, we indulge it, we go with it. Sadness, repressed. "I'm fine, I'm fine," when deep down, we're feeling like, you know, but we pretend that it's not real. Or sadness indulged, depression. " I’m the worst me in the world, there's no worse than me. What's wrong with my life? What's wrong with me? I'm so bad. I'm no good. I don't deserve to live." You know, all that comes from, the indulging of the feeling of sadness. And it comes because we don't want sadness. We only want happiness. Sadness is bad. It's a real immature way of dealing and looking at our emotions. Who we all are is the full, the full spectrum of all our emotions, all our feelings, all our thoughts. And when we're going to learn allow all of those here and exercise we're going to do later, you're going to learn to look at all the good and all the bad of yourself and finally get present to them. When we get present to all aspects of ourselves, we find that all of these things we are avoiding, they have a gift to offer us. Sadness, anger, fear, unworthiness. Each one in its seed is actually a doorway to greater joy and happiness. Believe it. It's the truth and I'm going to show it to you.  See, the mind has ideas and who you are and who you should be based on all those things we talked about, based on all that conditioning. So, what the mind is kind of trying to do is constantly maintain this identification of being a separate person. And it's doing it by helping you push away the bad and get the good. Divide, divide and divide. It's the endless battle of the mind. What we need to understand is that this duality battle of the mind will never stop. So, we need to become aware of it and be able to take one step back and away from it. The problem is as we push away the bad, we are disowning half of ourselves. How can we have the full embrace of self love if we're disowning half of ourselves? So, first off, it's not your fault. This is an operating system and a program of the egoic survival animal. Dividing and pushing away and separating the good and the bad. The great divide of the mind. So, now it's time to reclaim all of who you are. When we learn to embrace and accept every aspect of who we are, like I said, that is what self love is really is. When we are whole, we are integral. We are full, we are integrated. From there, we are in alignment . We are in alignment with our heart. We are in alignment with our True-OneSelf. We are in alignment with the Divine. From there, there is a fluidity in the flow of Divine through ourselves and really into the great expression of who we are into the world. When we are disowning half of ourselves, only reaching for what we think is the better part of ourselves and denying the other part of ourselves, there is no wholeness there. We are putting ourselves in a half. We are blocking the integral. We are blocking ourselves from being holistic and whole. What we all want is to experience that wholeness. The reason we have an innate nature within ourselves to become dawned upon, we want that connection to the Divine. Because we want to know what that wholeness is now. We want to experience what it is to be connected and feel full. The full embrace of love. How can we finally let everything that we are be here so we can embrace and accept it and feel the innate self love that you desire? That you deserve? That connection that can be moment-to-moment without the blockage of dividing yourself. It's time to

    27 min

  6. 03/21/2016

    How to End Suffering and Realize Peace - Stop Believing Your Mind

    Visit www.BrianMarc.com/blog for full summaries, videos and quotes related to this episode. Hi! My name is Brian Marc Zimberg, and I’m author of Stop, Smile, Breathe, Be and creator of Access Points, the Modern Life Meditation Plan where we show you how to shift your attention out of the mind, connecting to the most profound peace of meditation. And in that, awakening deeper into your True-OneSelf, from there living a life of greater joy, happiness, and true self-expression. Even more so, being a contribution as that in the world. In today's video, we're going to take a look at what the root cause of suffering is. What's the root cause of all the struggle in your life? I mean, wouldn't it be great to finally be free of all the worry, fear, doubt, shame? Wouldn't it be great to finally be free of suffering and struggling for life? So, what we want to take a look at is what is the core, you know. So many times, you've probably done things to try to get over suffering and stop struggling in life. So, if we go to the root of it, we should be able to free you. Free yourself in a new way. And that's really what I, what I want for you. What you want for yourself. And I am here for that for you.  So, the root cause of suffering, if we take a look, is identification with our mind equals separation. You see the minute we believe our mind, we believe ourselves to be a separate entity. And when we're coming from our mind as a separate entity, that separation equals suffering. Why? Well, let's take a look at this. Right? When we're a separate individual, we need to do what? What is the main program of a separate individual? It’s to survive.  To survive, it has to protect itself to make sure it's safe, to make sure it's okay. The number one program is always to protect itself to make sure that everything it does is okay.  That it’s always safe. It's always on alert. It's always on a lookout for danger. So it makes sense that fear would run this survival animal, in Access Points, I like to call it the operating system. It’s like the operating system of the mind. Picture it like, you know, like a little Apple computer we put on your mind, and this operating system has some main functionalities. And its first primary objective is protect the body. And as we know in many spiritual circles though, the body-mind, the ego is what it's called. Right? This ego believes itself to be separate. It's self-serving and a lot of circles they think you want to get rid of it. We'll have that conversation another time, but it's not worth trying to get rid of your own mind. Because the only thing it wants to get rid of the mind is actually the mind. So the root cause of all suffering is separation, is the belief that you are separate. When you are separate, you can be destroyed. And fear is a necessity. If we didn't have fear...imagine that you are in the ocean, there's a shark that starts eating you. You know when you're having your little spiritual..."We are all one. I'm one with everything. Oh hi, Mr. Shark." As he is eating your leg. "Oh you're eating my thigh. Hi, Mr. Shark." Right? The shark eats you alive. But everything is good and happy. There is no fear. So it's not about getting rid of fear. It's not that fear is wrong. It's a function of this operating system.  But when we believe our emotions and our thoughts to be reality, to be true, to be who we are, that we believe ourselves to be a separate concept, a separate thing that stands alone. And the truth is, you know, right? We're all one. You see that thought in itself, although it's nice, isn't going to do it for you. What I want for this show, for you, always is for you to look at deeper: What is the truth of who you are at the deepest level, what we call your True-Oneself. That's who you really are. When you dawn on that, when you awaken to that, when your intention shifts out of the trance of your mind and to that oneness. It just never ends. The beauty of who you really are is revealed. A full embrace and acceptance comes alive inside of you. A self-love starts to emanate more from yourself. This doesn't mean you become a saint or a perfect person. It means the burden of suffering of life is lifted. You are emancipated from mental slavery. Bob Marley said this so often in his song as he sang it...what was he referring to? "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, and none but yourself can free your mind." What self is he saying can free your mind? Well, what I'm saying is that is your True-Oneself, and hopefully for many of you who are listening right now, you’ve already touched that. You felt it. You've experienced that which is your True-Oneself. A moment of nature and a spiritual realization, in a book you read, an epiphany, in the birth of a child and the gaze of a loved one, in an awe inspiring sight. You felt the connectivity of love, of oneness, of something so much greater and bigger than “Me”. Me, me, me. So, the root of suffering is protecting Me. So, we all can comprehend and get that the body wants to be protected. The ego structure, the survival animal, the reptilian mind is programmed to protect itself. So, the number one thing the survival animal, the operating system, is to protect its physical body. But one of the biggest things, and this is really crucial, that to get this could change everything for you really if you take it in deeply. If you've already dawned on this and realized this, then let’s take it even further and deeper. And that is the ego mind is just as much as trying to protect its body and physical safety to not be destroyed. It's also trying to protect its identity with the mind and being somebody and someone. A somebody and someone special. Different. Unique. And that's true in the DNA of who you are. So, I'm not putting down your uniqueness. I’m Talking about the structure of the functionality of the ego mind that wants to survive. It wants to protects its separate identity. It wants to protect that it's somebody. It can be an inflated somebody, I'm the best somebody. I'm such a good somebody. Or the deflated somebody. I'm the worst somebody. I'm the saddest, most depressed person in the world. As long as it substantiates that it is an individual, that it's separate. You see, that's the whole crux of the suffering. Kind of why Buddha said life is suffering because the crux of this thing is that the ego structure trying to survive is also trying to make sure that it's not going to have its identity be destroyed that it's truly somebody and it has to substantiate itself in its survival and prove that it's somebody. In maintaining itself as a separate individual, it also maintains suffering because if you are a separate individual, then you can be destroyed. So, the question we really want to ask ourselves is: do you just want to just survive, or do you want to thrive? To survive equals the fear and the worry and the doubt and anxiety of protecting itself. And to thrive means to live from your True-Oneself. That which is one with everything. That has the overflowing of love and peace and centered. Always here, always full. Fulfilled.   So, if we want to thrive and live from there, we have to see how do we stay stuck in our minds which keeps us separate. You see, what it comes down to, you'll hear me often say that what meditation really is shifting your attention out of your mind. And the moment we learn to shift our attention off of our mind to awareness itself, we discover the truth of infinite peace. We discover the core of who were are. From there, we can thrive. So if it's stuck in our mind, our attention, how does the mind keep us stuck as a separate self? How can we finally be free of that? And therefore, be free of suffering. So what if you don't believe in the construct and the concept of who you are? The story of me. The story of you. Since you were born and we were told we have a name. And then we believe that name and the program begins. Right? Your parents tell you, what life is about what life would look like, who you should be, what you may be, what's right, what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. What are you going to be when you grow up? We go to school and we learn about winning and losing. Really getting it right and really getting it wrong. And also, there's something to maybe be ashamed of or something we have to prove. And even more a layer, it gets put it on top of us. And religion, society tells us how things should look and what is good and what is right, what is wrong or how am I supposed to be who I am. Our concepts and ideas that build this idea of me. And then you know, you may rebel against all of that. "Forget all that. I believe this and I think this." But think about how many times in your life have you for sure believe something when you're younger, and then some years later, you totally disagree with what you believed then. So funny thing is that even if we rebel against it, we're actually substantiating it. What are we really saying? We're saying that, "This is me and I disagree." Everything is built in the ego structure to substantiate “Me” as the separate individual. And the hope for mankind, let alone for your own peace and your own self love to evolve, to awaken, is to transcend “Me”. Not by getting rid of the mind, but by starting to recognize the main patterns of the mind that keep your attention stuck in the mind. That keep you separate therefore in struggle and in suffering. So one of the key takeaways really here is to notice that the root of suffering is to start noticing, to start noticing how much the mind is trying to create that it's somebody, that it's something. And the more we starting seeing the parading of the mind like that, the more we start to kind of pull out of the mind. The more we become aware of that pattern, the more we become awareness itself. We start awakening.  The mind is trying so hard to maintain that it is real, because

    32 min
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About

Author and creator of “Access Points - The Modern Life Meditation Plan”, Brian Marc Zimberg hosts Awake Life - offering keen insights into an ever deeper awakening to your “True-Oneself” and living life as the greatest expression of YOU. Helping you experience, even amidst today’s hectic, high-paced lifestyle, the peace of meditation that is available to you in every moment. Through inspirational talks and conversations with leading writers, thinkers, and scientists, he asks what is it to “wake up” and to actually LIVE an awake life.

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