How our Experiences are Dissolving us into Unconditional Love | Colin Kim | TEDxUCLASalon
everybody good afternoon my name is Colin Kim she just mentioned and before I get started I'd like to offer a note of gratitude to my dear friends and mentors guru Singh guru Donn his wife Jenny Benjamin and also my closest friend Robin hiden a lot of the wisdom that I'm sharing with you today has come through developing conversations over maybe the past 25 years of my life with those four people and I adore them for that what I need right now or what I have actually is a hundred dollars for a volunteer your hand went up first okay they've gone up what's your name okay so we got Angela here let's have a round of applause for Angela you can go ahead and have that right away that's yours to keep yes and what I would like you to do and we're gonna help her out I want her to try and blow up this balloon as big as possible in ten seconds so we're gonna count we're gonna clap and count down from ten so it's gonna be about this fast ten nine about that quick okay you're gonna take this balloon okay and on the count of three we're gonna get started come down I want you to try and blow that balloon up maybe even so big that it will pop but you can't use your teeth or your fingers okay Cumpston on the redhead circle or it's not official okay are you ready Angela okay Ready Set let's go ten nine eight seven six five four three two one okay it didn't happen but that's okay what you've given me you're going to sit down I see you the reason I use this blue an example is because what I wanted to demonstrate you know when you get a balloon from Hallmark it's fresh like this but when a balloons been inflated it looks wilted and say this after me I'm not a wilted balloon I'm a fresh happy balloon I am a fresh happy balloon you know what's interesting is a resilient person is someone who knows that they're gonna be wilted and then can return themselves back to that original state and I want to talk about this spiritual science of exactly how that happens the brain is as majestic as it is it's a little dinosaur it's gone very little unchanged in some would say thousands hundreds of thousands millions of years that's a whole different conversation but the brains gotten very little of brain has gone very little unchanged you could say that the brain is like the TSA at the airport the brain in its fundamental I've as long as possible and it's just separate its primary function away from the things that we feel like thoughts and feelings and romance and all the other colors of life so the brain is constantly padding things down for weapons to make sure we're that we're safe and the way that it does that scientifically is by taking a really deep breath in and this is there's other things that contribute to this which I'm gonna share with you but the main thing is is taking a really deep breath in inhaling positive ion which I'd like you to do with me now take a deep breath in and then pause you observe the observation and as you exhale we exhale negative ion in fact the word namaste nama means the Divine Name so even if someone offends me the divine name of that person spiritually is the fact that they're connected to the great one spirit can I get a thumbs up on that you understand so we have to be able to see through the offense to be able to talk to the nama-stay is the sound that our breath makes when we have a satisfied exhale so - namaste isn't just a salutation like Aloha in Hawaii - actually namaste is actually a physical experience you can have which is to inhale the present moment and before you exhale you have to figure out how to resolve the situation with a Content spiritual exhale and if we don't do that what happens is the present moment it locks onto our spine because on some deep level the soul knows let's say someone bumps my car to Trader Joe's and I say stupid I mask it with my face if there's an ethnicity attached to that that I was programmed as a child to resent her black I could go on and on and on there might be a negative attachment with a word that I call the person but my soul on some level has a agenda with me to dissolve me into unconditional love and one of the ways that the soul has its way with our physical body is when we take the deep breath and we take a deep breath out if a present moment doesn't go through our body like a ghost going through a wall that's what we want to do in the yogic teachings at least we want to transcend the present moment we want to help the present moment through our consciousness like a ghost going through a wall and if that doesn't happen it doesn't make us bad people it's what Buddhism and Kabbalah and you know the yogic and Hindu teachings called the life condition of being a human being but if it doesn't make its way through our consciousness it attaches to the spine it goes up the elevator to the of the spine to the brain where it gets stored in the brain as a file to be worked out later in life is healing and we often work out that healing we call them lovers that's a joke we actually will select people we will actually pull events specifically intimate relationships into our life to heal our childhood and that's when romance graduates from something even higher than romance to spiritual partnership spiritual partnership is something different than romance spiritual partners are people who understand the variance of being inflated and deflated what a traumatized person is and this is the question on the second point I want to make with you it's interesting that two people can have the exact same experience and one person will be completely broken and traumatized for the rest of their life someone's gonna be like that's me and then another person can be like you know what that was a really shitty day even a person who was innocently victimized so let's just stay light with me here but let's go to something deep like early sexual ization of a child whether it's participatory or not or even an innocent victim ization of a child something that deep what happens is and this has been reported through science you've seen this on 20/20 and primetime live when a traumatic event happens to the physical body the spiritual body sends a psychic sonic boom of energy outward away from the spine and the yogic teachings we call this the aura and it pushes beyond what the physical body can see into the the entire experience itself and that infinite sonic boom goes outward away from that are you still with me yep when it's doing that because the brains job is to keep us alive what the brain is doing is the brain taxes out the physical body okay I'm kind of imitating images you've seen that are frightening and then it's taking in all the data it can so people will say like I remember when that happened when I was eight there was a smell in the room I remember that there was a Kleenex box that I saw when I came in the door but I wasn't looking at it when it was happening all of that data comes rushing into the spine and what the traumatized person is doing is actually and it's it can seem unfair because the soul has an agenda with us to do this homework whether we participate or not so the soul is going to have its way and so what we'll pull circumstances into our life often people it can be demoting habits or even addictions to force us into the edge of what we think was possible will actually take field trips star tours out to the edge of who we think we are in that traumatic moment just I'm pausing down for emphasis just to demonstrate to our own self that were capable of surviving the event and because we're not going to repeat a rape or molestation the brain has this gremlin way are yes the the brain has this gremlin way of rican finding and figure a figuring the pulse of energy that expanded outward here's the thing that I'm here to share with you today the brain doesn't know the difference between the curse of suffering in life and running star tours out to the edge of who you are we don't want to do that spending our 20s 30s 40s and the rest of our life just running field trips out to what we think is possible be like oh well I survived I'm yeah we want to while our knees are young and we can still dance and the sex is good and we can meet other people the brain and it go back to the dinosaur part of the brain the brain on the deepest level doesn't know the difference between you taking a powerful deep breath locating yourself to the present moment and the present moment can be scary especially in the imagery that I'm sharing with you early on but you can insert your own life issues let's do another breath it feels good right any Hill real big breathing satisfies the brain so that your heart can get a chance with your point of view and a resilient person is someone who knows that that's their homework to do the person that's traumatized doesn't know yet that that work is necessary but they will force themselves either into suicidal behavior or into the processes that will dissolve them into unconditional love how I want to leave you today is talking about the gratitude portion of resilience I'm coming at you with the yogic teachings but I think these are pretty universal how can we have gratitude for this experience if we touch the iron and the iron wasn't sensationally hot we would continue to touch the iron it would hurt so at least in the yoga practice when events come into our life that cause us offense or frustration we actually have a huge dose of gratitude thankfulness thank you event Wow event you scared me Wow that reminded me of when I was 11 that one time it's like thank you event because I know that what you're doing event is you're dissolving me into unconditional love so that it can find my self-worth and give and receive love without any conditions being placed upon me thoughts feelings and emotions are facets of who we are but the facets that are cut into a diamond are not the diamond itself it's like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings just looking at the sparkles but forgetting that he's actually holding it you understand so when we when we get wrapped up in the feelings and the emotions of feeling wilted anywhere between the maximum stretch of who we are all the way to our shiny selfs which we love and we wait when it feels good in yoga we call that the life conditions you can actually get stuck in the emotional state of anywhere from your original state all the way out to the traumas and crisis's that you've had in your life and so with conscious deep breath we hold ourselves to that home work grace witnessed is unconditional love I'm going to close with this when you do the thing that nobody else can do you to your own self or also as a demonstration to anybody observing you and it doesn't mean spiritual egoism or hot dogging because that's gross but to truly stay connected to the great one spirit with your breath inhaling namah the true name of things it's hard to namaste when you're clicking like and unlike on Facebook everybody has a point of view but when we take offense to anything we turn off all of our spiritual gifts and what we need are kindergarten teachers kindergarten teachers are not they're immune to the smell of urine and bleach or maybe not and they just are loving people who are willing to tolerate it to do the highest good but that's what this world needs people who are resistant to offense who are standing located to the present moment not checked out and the self-help book but staying connected to the present moment using their life in a loving way so that anything and anybody that comes to their presence is released in the direction into the river of unconditional love themself well thank you so much I'm happy to be here with you today you