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(SQP-Ep.013 ~ Secrets of Life and Mind Revealed ~ Lesson 01 ~ w. Daniel Martinez Stahl)
Editor Note: Minor edits have been made from the original audio recording for easier reading.

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Intro Text: Welcome to the spiritual intelligence podcast, Awakening your inner power with Daniel Martinez Stahl, where we will explore, discover and integrate different aspects of our spiritual and human nature, so that we can all thrive and live life with more grace and ease, instead of struggle. 

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So, welcome to the Spiritual Intelligence Podcast once again. With me today is The Secrets of Life and the Mind Revealed, it is the free online course that I have listed on my website at LifeBeyondForm.com and I've decided that since we don't have a guest speaker today, I'm going to begin to convert these written lessons into audio. So, take advantage of the opportunity, you guys get to hear something different, something new hopefully, something helpful and I get to finally convert these from text to an audio file. So, it's a win-win for all of us.

However, I would strongly recommend that you take a look at the written version of this course, and I will leave a link for how you can access that in the description of the episode. 

www.LifeBeyondForm.com/courses/29002-free-course

I will admit that I've tried to do this before and it is very difficult for me to read this and to maintain a certain tone that I like, with a certain kind of feeling and I make mistakes here and there, and so it is a lot harder than hopefully I'm going to make it see him for you guys, after all the editing that I'm going to do, and the takes that I'm going to do and the cuts and all kinds of stuff. So, hopefully it'll be seamless for you guys. It is a lot of fun for me to do this, but I do give a lot of credit to people that do this for a living and are professionals at this because, oh my gosh, it is much harder than I ever thought it would be to just read something out loud into a recorder mic. 

So, hopefully you'll enjoy it. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain the tone that doesn't put you to sleep. I realize and I've heard from a lot of my friends and people that have worked with me that my voice is very soothing and it's very easy to, to go into nice states of relaxation. Hopefully you will stay alert (I begin laughing) and I won’t put you to sleep as I read my online course to you guys. So, um, so, here we go.

On the cover page of this course and again the course’s title is The Secrets of Life and the Mind Revealed, the subtitle is A Nine–Lesson Roadmap to Understand and Transform Life. So, on the cover page of the course is really just a little, very short, kind of summary and it says: 

Discover the elements that make our experience possible, recognize common misunderstandings and learn how the mind actually works. These nine lessons are designed to provide a foundational understanding of life so that we can participate more fully in the creation of our lives, to help all of us live more effortlessly and with more compassion for ourselves and others. In addition to sharing a description of the mechanism that creates our experience of life, the course also exposes how our mind works.

By recognizing the elements working behind-the-scenes of life and understanding how our mind works, it makes it a lot easier to navigate around common misunderstandings that often cause us more distress and it allows us to influence the direction of our life towards more joy, clarity, compassion, well-being and love.

This is a condensed program, filled with a lot of content. Give yourself time and space in between and throughout each lesson to reflect and allow the information to settle. After reading it all the way through, or listening to it in this case, you may want to go back to reflect on individual sentences and paragraphs, one at a time.

So the image on this cover page is of a purple butterfly that’s standing over — it's kind of a bluish-purple butterfly that standing over purple flowers in the foreground and in the background there is some grass, it has some browns, greens and some other purple flowers in the background. Very beautiful image and the edge of the butterfly's wing also has a little damaged element to it, which I also thought was really fitting because, you know, all of us have all of our bits and bobs, and our issues, and our challenges, and our difficulties that we’re kind of living with and struggling with, and we're perfect in our imperfection. And it is such a beautiful butterfly and it's a beautiful image and I just really loved it as the cover image. 

So that's the end of the cover page and so going into the Introduction, We Are All Designed for Success, that section is really kind of talking about — it's really kind of going over the overview of what the course is going to be like, and I start with a quote by Henry David Thoreau: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” And again, that's from Henry David Thoreau, and that's really what this program is about.

Because what I'm looking to do with this program is to help people to deepen their understanding of life, to create — to help them establish a stronger, more solid foundation of how the mechanism of life works and how their mind works. So that they can have a much easier way of navigating through life, working in alignment with the system. Working with the mechanism of life and almost leveraging the mechanism of life to their benefit. So that's really what this course is about and this quote for me was a perfect introduction to this course and also to this section. So, let me read it again, hopefully I’ll read it a little bit better “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” By Henry David Thoreau

Understanding How Life Actually Works, is the heading of the first section and only section in this part of the course. So let's begin.

In order to understand what it means to be human, it is very helpful to know how our minds work and to know a little about the system that makes it possible for us to experience life. It is with this understanding of ourselves and of the system of life that we are able to learn the nuances of what we can do to thrive across all aspects of our lives; and this is not an exaggeration. 

What I am going to be sharing with you in this program are the foundational building blocks at the source of every experience we have. This means that as you develop your understanding of how things work, it will impact your internal and external experiences and span across your personal and professional life, with everything in between. 

By the end of this program you will have a fundamental understanding of how we are all actually designed for success. You will see how the system is designed in our favor when we don't innocently misunderstand and interfere. In fact, you will begin to appreciate that we actually help ourselves more by doing less, instead of trying to do more, which is exactly opposite of the way we have been taught to succeed in life. 

This series of lessons will offer a high-level overview of how the system works to create our experiences moment by moment, behind the scenes. The intention is to help you develop an understanding that will allow you to recognize and connect with your own innate psychological and spiritual well-being, your inner wisdom, and lead you to have your own insights about the universal nature of how our minds work.

I will be sharing some aspects of this understanding that have had the biggest impact on my own life — things that continue to help me forgive myself and others more easily and that quiet the noise inside my head, which was often filled with self-judgement and/or criticism. This understanding has allowed me to live with more peace of mind in spite of whatever life throws my way, and I would love for you to have the same experience. 

My intention is not for you to follow the same path as me or to try to recreate my insights. It is more of an invitation for your own wisdom to respond in kind, revealing new thoughts to you that will make a difference in your life as well. As I share this information with you, it's likely you have heard something similar in the past, but I invite you to listen for something new. Be open to the possibility that there is something to learn beyond the words and beyond your old thoughts. 

So, let’s get started...

And that’s the end of the section. I want to finish my description of this section by describing the image that I chose to accompany this introduction. It's a purple butterfly that is standing over a green leaf. The butterfly has some orange specs and a white outline on its wings. The background has been artificially manipulated to blur out the details of the background, but it's been done fairly well and it gives the foreground of the butterfly and the leaf a lot of prominence. I don't really have a big story or metaphor as to why this image appeal to me for the section. I could talk about how the manipulation of the background, to make it look more beautiful, is similar to creating a foundation after-the-fact. But that would be kind of stretching it, to be honest with you. (chucking) It's just, I really like the image. It's beautiful, even though I know that it's been manipulated. And, um, so there you have it.

The next section in the course is actually Lesson 01, so this is where the course actually begins, if you will. Even though there's a lot of information already in the cover page and in the introduction, this is where you really start to get into the meat of the conversation. And in this first lesson The Innocent Outside-in Misunderstanding of Life, I begin with an image of a butterfly that is colored to look like a leaf or to blend into bark on a tree. It is incredibly beautiful and also stunning to think about how intricate the design is so that it can be camouflaged into reality, so that it seems to be part of something that it isn't. And this is really what the section is about, is an understanding of how life is designed to, to misdirect our attention, to deceive us into thinking that life works a certain way, when in fact it actually doesn't. And the clearer that we are in recognizing that distinction, the easier it is for us to navigate through life with more ease, with more grace, with more clarity, to allow ourselves not to get so caught up in the content of our experience, and to be able to flow with the the direction of life more easily. To flow with the rhythm of Life more easily and I'll go over all of that as we go on. So, I apologize for continuing on with my babble, I'm good at babbling. So, getting back to the course. 

The opening quote in this section is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it reads “There are as many pillows of Illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.” Again from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I love this quote for this section because it's really talking about how there are as many Illusions out there as there are flakes in a snowstorm and that we're going from one dream into another. We wake up into a dream from our dream-state and we go into a dream from our waking state, which is also a dream. So, beautiful quote, I really love it and hopefully it will make a little more sense as I go through the content of the section. 

So, the first section of this lesson is entitled Your Experience of the World Is Designed to Deceive You, And, so let's begin: 

The best place to begin this journey is to go into a description of what I believe many, if not all, mystics have been sharing throughout the ages: that our experience of life is an illusion. Since my childhood, I have heard about the illusory nature of life but never really fully appreciated what that meant or its impact on me until the last few years. What I have come to understand, and continue to learn about, is that we are supposed to believe our experience of life works a certain way when in fact its inner workings are quite different from how it appears. 

Recognizing this disparity can be very helpful when we find ourselves innocently caught up in the illusion and struggling against the flow of how the system actually works. Gaining an understanding of the structure and characteristics of the system not only makes it easier for us to live our lives but also to have richer, fuller and more meaningful experiences. 

The distinction between an earth-centered solar system and the sun-centered model is a good analogy that can be made for our innocent psychological misunderstanding. 

And I included a little note here to say that the barycenter is the true center of the solar system but that the sun is a close approximation, and I had a friend of mine who was helping me proofread tell me that I didn't need to include that in. But I wanted to make sure I included in because being precise with this information has been very helpful for me I don't need to be so specific and so detail-oriented that it becomes a job or an issue but I have recognized that the more clear I am in my understanding of what is genuinely true, and what is an illusion or what is an approximation, makes it really really helpful. So, I wanted to emphasize that in my note. So, continuing on with the paragraph: 

For thousands of years people believed the Earth was the center of our universe (geocentric) because that is how it looks and feels. Around 200 B.C., Aristarchus proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun (heliocentric), and people wouldn’t accept it because common sense didn’t support it. 

Even Aristotle, a very influential philosopher and scientist during the same period, supported the geocentric model, stating conclusively that people would simply feel its consequences if the Earth were moving. Other observational "evidence" used to discredit the heliocentric idea included the fact that an object goes straight down when dropped, that birds and clouds would not stay in the sky if the Earth were moving, and that if the Earth were actually spinning, which it would need to be in a heliocentric model, objects would be flying off because of the centrifugal force. Ultimately, Aristarchus didn't have the necessary evidence to overcome the perceived notion that the Earth is stationary.

The next section is entitled:

The Believed Truth Didn’t Match Reality

Even though the earth-centered model continued being the accepted theory, it raised many mathematical and observational problems, like why the planets periodically appear to reverse their direction of travel and why their brightness changes. In fact, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) introduced adaptations to the geocentric model (in approximately 150 A.D.) in an attempt to address some of the inconsistencies. But his changes only partially reduced the severity of the discrepancies and didn't resolve them. Regardless, Ptolemy's theory continued being the predominant model until around 1500 A.D. when Nicolaus Copernicus published a comprehensive model that the planets of our solar system revolve around the Sun, based on his own observations and on the theories of other astronomers.

The reintroduced notion of a heliocentric model sparked a revolution a century later when Johannes Kepler identified the planetary orbits as elliptical, Galileo Galilei unequivocally proved the heliocentric model, and Isaac Newton discovered the physics explaining why the planets move the way (that) they do. All the previous irregularities simply went away when the Sun was at the center of our solar system and the planetary movements were understood. None of these discoveries were possible with the misunderstanding inherent in the observational belief that everything revolves around the Earth. 

Just like people innocently believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, because that is how it appears, our perceived experience leads us to believe our mind(s) works one way when it actually doesn't. But please don't take my word for it. Reflect on what I am sharing with you and discover this for yourself, in your own experience. 

Take a moment and begin by asking yourself the following questions: 

• What are you responding to when you have an emotional response?
• Where do you feel your experience is coming from? 

Most people would say it’s due to their circumstances, what is happening to them or because of someone else, and this is how it's supposed to feel but it’s not how it really happens. The system we live in is designed to deceive us into believing our experience of the world is outside-in, implying that what happens in the world of form causes our internal reaction. But this is the illusion; it isn’t how it actually works. 

For example, if someone were to touch your arm, you would say that what you experienced was the other person's touch. However, what's literally happening is that you are experiencing the interpretation of data collected by your senses. But the system is so quick and seamless that it makes us believe we are responding to the touch itself and not an interpretation of touch, which is then projected outwards.

The next section is titled: 

Our Actual Experience Is Always Inside-Out

Our experience of the world is 100% based on our interpretation of what happens to us, never on what is actually happening. This isn’t to say the outside world isn’t real or that what happens to us isn’t real, but that our experience of it can only ever be felt through our interpretation of it. Granted, what happens to us drives the need for an interpretation, but there are many variables that go into that interpretation, some of which will be covered (we will be covering) in future lessons.

It is never the situation itself that we experience but our interpretation of that situation. It's easy to forget and it's an innocent misunderstanding, but recognizing this distinction can result in very profound transformative changes. Instead of working against how things are, we begin to align with how the system actually works. Things just begin to make sense and take less effort — just like the Copernican Revolution that occurred when society changed its understanding of our solar system to recognize and accept the Sun as its center.

I am aware that the difference between being touched and the interpretation of feeling touch can seem (like) to be nothing more than semantics, but you might be surprised by the magic that occurs within our psychology when we begin to understand what is actually happening behind the scenes. Even the smallest level of understanding can make an enormous difference. 

The final section in this lesson: 

What’s Next

Before going further, I invite you to notice how common it is to have very different responses to the same situation at different times. More often than not, the trigger in question hasn’t changed; it’s still the same trigger. The difference is in our interpretation of it, which among other things is strongly influenced by the quality of our mood or state of mind. We will expand and build upon this idea in the coming sections and will also cover some of the implications of this inside-out understanding; the inherent benefits, if you will, of living life knowing the Earth is revolving around the Sun, even when it appears to be the other way around. 

I also want to invite you to join our Facebook community, The Spiritual Explorers. Feel free to introduce yourself to the group and let us know if this first lesson already started helping you see your experience of life differently. If you prefer, you can always send me an email or private message.

And I end the section by signing off with: 

Soar & Explore w. Love

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Closing text: Thank you for listening. Hopefully, you've heard something new that invites you to reflect, to go within, and deepen your own understanding of life, and of our universal experience. If you enjoyed this conversation, please follow the podcast series on your favorite listening app, and share this episode with others that you feel would enjoy it as well. Until next time, may we all soar with inspiration, explore with passion and live with love. ❤️❤️❤️

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