Are you itching to take a trip without breaking the bank?
Head to Expedia, the one-stop travel site where you can find and book flights, hotels, rental cars, cruises, vacation packages, and activities, and get great deals on all of them.
When you bundle your flight and hotel on Expedia, you not only make travel planning easier, you can also save on your trip with everything in one place.
Setting up price alerts ahead of time really saves me time and money, and I'll never travel without it.
Book your next trip with Expedia today. From last-minute getaways to late-season weddings, Macy's has everything you need to end the summer in style.
Shop brands like Vince Camuto, Sun & Stone, and Donna Karan.
Explore must-haves like linen looks, match sets, maxi dresses, and crafted handbags.
Step into Steve Madden's sandals, stock up on SPF like the Shiseido Clear Sunscreen Stick, and soak up those final beach days with the Lacoste towel.
Staying in? Upgrade your staycation with homemade smoothies from a Ninja Blender.
Shop now at Macy's.com or in-store. Hey there, podcast listeners.
I have exciting news. We're launching a brand new podcast in addition to Super Soul Conversations.
It's called Oprah's Masterclass. The Masterclass podcast allows you to hear the greatest life lessons from some of the most respected and renowned actors, musicians, public figures, and athletes in their own words.
Listen as Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Ellen DeGeneres, Shaquille O'Neal, Reba McEntire, Dwayne Johnson, and Jane Fonda, just to name a few, share what they've learned about life and their own insights into their personal stories and challenges.
I believe that there's something to be learned from every experience, and everyone can use their life as a class.
Oprah's Masterclass podcast is available now on Apple Podcasts.
Subscribe now and listen free. Go to applepodcast.com slash Oprah's Masterclass.
I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
Best-selling author and spiritual teacher Adyashanti has been sharing his wisdom with the world for nearly 20 years.
Born in 1962 in Cupertino, California, Adyashanti was actually born Stephen Gray.
As a teenager, he explored a variety of spiritual traditions but felt called to study Zen Buddhism.
Devoting himself with the focus and vigor of an athlete, Adya hoped this immersion would spark an awakening.
And it did. Years later, he felt his consciousness shift, but he no longer identified with a specific faith.
He says he came to realize his spirituality could not be labeled.
In 1997, he decided to change his name to Adyashanti to reflect his newfound path.
It means primordial peace in Sanskrit. He is the author of eight books, including Resurrecting Jesus and Falling into Grace, a title I just love.
In it, he describes grace as an aha moment that occurs when we are completely open, open-hearted and open-minded, when we can sense the presence of something bigger than ourselves.
So many people have told me I had to meet you.
It had to happen. It's been coming for a long time.
So I'm thrilled to have you here. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm really happy to be here with you.
I have to say, when I saw the title of your book, Falling Into Grace, my whole heart just gave a big sigh because that's really how I wish to live my life.
I like to just surrender and fall into it.
So how do we open ourselves up to it? That's what falling into grace is all about.
Can you teach us how to do it? Please, Adia, can you teach us how to fall into grace?
I think we can, we can all, you can prepare the soil.
You can make yourself ready. I think one of the most important things is, is that we know we can't make those moments happen.
We cannot. That's really important. I think that's, that we can't make those, those kind of moments happen.
But it's a lot of it, it's kind of an availability, it seems to me.
How open are you? How open are you? And also, I think it has to do with the depth of your longing.
You know, every human being that I've ever met has longing in them.
They long for something. There's the pull of the heart that keeps reminding us, you know, that there's something more to life often than we just see on the surface of things.
I wonder sometimes... when I'm stopped in a car and I'm watching people just sort of, you know, going through, you know, crossing the intersection or across or throngs of people in New York City or throngs of people on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
And I'll just see them sometimes. And sometimes it's like people are just literally in search of, like they're downtown shopping, but nobody really needs to be shopping.
You can see that everybody's just sort of looking for what?
I'm not quite sure, but I sense that sometimes in a crowd of people that everybody's looking for.
Yeah. And that's what... What are we looking for?
You know, I think it all ties down to our identity, what we really, really are.
Because if we don't know that, what we're doing is we're always living a life where we're chasing to fulfill a sense of self, which feels underneath it, inauthentic.
That's just rampant in our society, isn't it?
I don't like myself. I have bad self-esteem.
Or you're basing yourself on everything that everybody else is.
That's why it feels like sometimes when you're watching people in crowds, they're just kind of everybody sort of moving in that direction because everybody says we do this.
Now we wear that. And then life becomes a compensation for for not knowing who we are.
Because it is almost like a wound within us when we get disconnected from the truth of our being.
We do feel that. And then we're trying to fill it with love or approval or success or the million ways that we seek fulfillment from outside of ourselves.
And no matter how much fulfillment we get, There's that place inside that until we've realized the truth of our being, until we've realized we are a presence primarily and a person secondarily, we will feel estranged from our own being. and each other, because that's where we connect.
The presence that is functioning in this being called Oprah and the presence that's functioning through as me, it's really the same presence.
That's the connectedness. That's the presence that when you intuitively feel someone, it's like presence to presence, as an intimacy.
And I think human beings are starved for real intimacy.
I just had an aha there when you said that, presence to presence.
I just had an aha bing bing moment because that is what connection is.
We are connecting to the energy of each other.
And that's why people, when they hear something or see something or feel something, you're connecting to that.
It's like a vibrational frequency, that charge.
Presence is to presence, correct? Yes. That's what you're saying.
Absolutely. I just got that. Absolutely.
Yeah. That's what it is. And that's where all the life force is, isn't it?
Yeah. That's the intrigue. you know, of somebody, because there's something mysterious about that too.
Then we become not just, you know, the surface, we become, in a wonderful way, mysteries encountering each other.
You know, beyond what we know. Beyond the definition, beyond the labels, beyond the position, beyond the stuff that we are.
That's the spiritual connection, isn't it?
The spirit connection. Did y'all get that too?
I got that. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
In the beginning of falling into grace, it just struck me so, even though I know the principle of you're not your thoughts.
You are the thinker of the thoughts. You're the observer of the gap in between the mind.
I understand all that. But sometimes when I'm reminded, it just strikes me so beautifully.
You quote Krishnamurti when you say, when you teach a child that a bird is named Bird.
Listen to this, everybody. I thought this was so profound.
When you teach a child that a bird is named Bird, The child will never see the bird again.
It's a beautiful statement and a shocking statement.
Shocking. It really is. Eckhart Tolle and I talked about this too.
It was like to walk through the world without naming things, you know, which I do sometimes just in this yard.
Because when you say I have trees in the yard, you no longer see the majesty and magnificence and the wonder and the stillness and the mystery.
And what an amazing thing that is growing.
Yeah. Inside your yard. Inside your yard.
Something as simple as what we call a tree.
Yeah. I often say when I'm teaching, there'll be flowers like there are right here.
Yeah. And I'll say, there's no such thing as a flower.
These still exist whether we call them something or not.
As soon as we say flower, we think we know what they are and we go blind. to the mystery of them, to what they really are.
Because if you just look at them without saying what it is, you start to literally have a different experience of them.
Do you know? You could just go, oh, that's a flower.
That's a rose. That's a tulip. And you're living in your abstraction and then you're not having that intimate experience with life, which that's what we crave.
It seems to me an intimate experience with our own, with existence and everything and everybody in it.
So that's why children are such a wonder.
That's what the innocence is, is it not?
Yeah, that's what you notice in little children, right?
That's what adults look at a child and they feel it intuitively.
There's something there that they still have a grasp of.
And what they have is the wonder. They walk through the world with a sense of wonder.
They know they don't know. Adults, we think we know.
What we need to do is be reminded that we actually don't know.
Because we can call something a tree, that doesn't mean we know really what it is or we intimately experience it as this amazing, mysterious life form.
And what you're saying in falling into grace is that we do that over and over and over all day long about everything.
That's the dream we start to live in. The dream of our own ideas and concepts and beliefs and opinions and all that becomes our reality.
Literally, that becomes, that is my reality.
What I think is what's real and is what's true.
You say we've become trapped in a world of dreams, a world in which we live primarily in our minds.
Yeah. That's it. We're literally almost kind of sleepwalking.
I mean, what most people are doing when they're walking around, going about their daily life, is where they're really living is in their mind.
In their head. In their head. And that's an abstract place to live.
It's disconnected from actual life, from real experience of life and real experience of themselves. of what they really, really are.
And that's that kind of dream that's easy to kind of live in.
You may have heard about a serious but rare heart condition called ATTR cardiac amyloidosis, or ATTR-CM.
Because symptoms can look like other heart conditions, a diagnosis may take a long time.
But learning more about ATTR-CM and a treatment called Atrubi, also known as acaramidis, could be vital for you or a loved one.
Atruby is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with ATTRCM to reduce death and hospitalization due to heart issues.
In a study, people taking Atruby saw an impact on their health-related quality of life and 50% fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues than people who didn't take Atruby, giving you more chances to do what you love with who you love.
Tell your doctor if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding, and about the medications you take.
The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain.
If you have ATTR-CM, talk to your cardiologist about Atruby or visit atruby.com.
That's A-T-T-R-U-B-Y dot com to learn more.
One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience.
So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.
You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to reach in one place.
Stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself.
Just go to linkedin.com slash plan. That's linkedin.com slash plan.
Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
So what do we find when we look underneath the veil of our thoughts?
Initially, what most people find, just behind all their thoughts and behind their momentary experiences.
When you open up to something behind your mind.
Yes. Not your thoughts, but what's just really behind that.
Yeah, what's looking at your thoughts. Because if we look and we simply look into what am I, before my thoughts, before my memories, before my ideas about myself, good and bad and indifferent.
What am I? What's before all that? And the first thing that people encounter is there's not a better version of me there.
There's like a gap. And it's totally quiet, absolutely silent, and our minds do not know what to do with that.
So they tend to run away. They go back into the mind.
And have to create some more ideas about it.
More ideas, right. Or more identities. Yes, and more ideas and identities.
And actually what we think of each other is really our ideas about each other instead of really embracing the fullness and the wholeness of what this miracle of life that each of us is allowed to behold in this form.
Yeah. We often talk about what it means to wake up, to live a more conscious life.
Sometimes that awakening happens slowly over time.
Sometimes it happens in a flash. Adya pursued his awakening furiously.
Beginning when he was 19, he began studying Zen Buddhism and even built a meditation hut in his parents' backyard.
For the next six years, he pushed himself to the limit, meditating for hours a day and praying for enlightenment until one day he experienced a shift.
I remember exactly where I was, Bishop, California, sitting on a bench at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere.
And this prayer just kind of came to me.
And I literally prayed, OK, God, universe, I am now willing to take anything you want to throw my way in order to awaken.
Anything. If I need a life of happiness and bliss and wealth, I'll take it.
If I need a miserable, absolutely destitute life of suffering, I'll take it.
I take all conditions off. I'm asking for whatever I need for my own awakening. quickly and immediately.
And as soon as I said it, I was terrified.
Because I just felt it, right? I just changed my agreement with the universe.
I said, this is what I want. I declared my intent.
That I want to awaken more than anything.
Than anything. At whatever cost. No matter what the cost is.
And I felt when I gave that kind of control away, I felt like... You were waiting on lightning.
Yeah, I got it. And you got it. I got it.
In the form of? The next five years were a wild ride.
I got some of the most difficult, trying experiences that I've ever had in my whole life.
I had difficult emotional experiences. There was a lot of things that happened in those five years.
But did you remember through all of it, oh, this is what I prayed for, this is what I asked for?
Yeah. At times I thought, hmm, was that very wise?
Yeah, yeah. Because believe me, sometimes my prayer is, Lord, don't teach me nothing new today.
And I can understand that too. Yes, Lord, don't need to learn anything else new this week.
Thank you. Yeah. And, but each of those moments that didn't look like what we would call spiritual, You know, when we're taken to our knees, it doesn't look pretty, does it?
No, it doesn't. It doesn't look great. We don't look spiritually evolved.
But when I look back years later, I look back now and I go, I wouldn't wish some of that stuff on my worst enemy, not that I have any, but I wouldn't have changed an instant because I see how all of it, the most difficult moments were as important to my spiritual unfolding and probably much more important than the best moments.
And is that true for all of us humans? I think so.
If you can awaken to it. Otherwise, the difficult moments just continue to be more difficult moments.
That's right. Well, we're not taught that difficulty can have a profound and meaningful transformative effect on us.
You know, we might be taught that in a way, someone might say that.
But what do I do? What do I do when I'm suffering?
What do I do when I really feel overwhelmed?
How do I work with the minutia of my experience so that it's transformative and not just another episode of suffering in a lifetime of suffering?
Yeah. What is the answer to that question?
What do I do with it? Oh, I think the first thing is you have to be really unconditionally open to it and take responsibility.
How have I gotten myself right here? That is the question, isn't it?
Am I willing to see how I got myself right here?
Choice by choice by choice by choice. Oh, that's a hard one, isn't it?
It's really hard, and it also has that other side, doesn't it?
Because if you want to blame other people, you want to say, well, if they hadn't have done that, or if they should have done that, or I was so busy, and I could...
Yes. But if we look at it this way, if somebody else was fully to blame for my current state, whatever that is, then that's it.
I'm done. I have no hope. Right. If they're the real blame, I can't go back and change anything that's ever happened.
Right. Right? If that's the reason, I'm stuck.
That's hopeless. But when we realize that may have certainly affected how I experience this moment, there's a link and there's usually things about it that we don't want to own up to.
And it's both difficult and it's also once you start, you start to realize it's very liberating because the keys to your happiness are no longer in somebody else's pocket from the past.
They're in yours. And that's empowering.
Well, I was going to say, and that's powerful.
That's right. Very powerful. And I'm talking about people I've seen do this that have horrendously difficult pasts, extraordinarily traumatic, traumatic, violent pasts that can really come to see How am I sustaining that trauma?
How am I traumatizing myself? How am I continuing it?
Not in the sense of being to blame for it, not that I'm to blame for it, but since the past isn't here now, how is it that I'm keeping it alive?
What's the dynamics? What's actually happening?
What is it about us that we think we have to continue to live from our history instead of stepping up and out of our history, which is what you were saying.
The true definition of awakening is when that happens to you, literally, it lifts up and out of you.
That's right. That's what I felt at the time.
One of the things, an insight that came to me was at the time, of course, as a human being, I have history, but as my essence, I realized I have no history.
Eternity knows no history. Eternity is the eternal present.
So when you or I become completely present... Oh, that's powerful.
Hold on a moment. Gotta just take that in.
Eternity knows no history. Really? No, because eternity is always right now.
Yeah, any of us can check that statement out.
When we're completely present with anything, all of a sudden, at that moment, for how long it lasts, there's no yesterday.
There's no ten years ago, there's not even a minute ago.
It's all gone. All it knows is this instant.
You talk about generational suffering, how pain can be passed down from generation to generation.
I found that really interesting. I think Eckhart in A New Earth calls it the pain body, that there is a generational thing.
Not thing, it's an energy. It's an energy.
It's an energy that you carry. Yes. You can see it in family systems, right?
You're family of origin. Anybody can kind of look at it if you really look closely and you go, you know, what is the underlying dynamic of my family?
What's the energy of it? What's the emotion of it that it seems to constellate around?
And you can feel it, can't you? You can just sense it.
You can find it in yourself. And often if you have grandparents, you can see, oh, my grandparents have some sort of similar energy that my parents do and that I do and probably going back for generations.
And you're talking about, it's not just the stories, you know, because we all tell ourselves the stories.
We have the stories that we pass down from generation.
This is what happened in our family. You're talking about a definite generation.
An energy. An energy. An energy. Yeah, an energy.
And usually it's a negative energy. Yeah.
Because the negative energies are the ones that are sticky.
That's why when you have a great day, it's sort of, you know, you have it as a memory, but it doesn't feel the same.
It feels clean and light. And it's like, you know, when you remember it, it's like a breeze.
You can't get a hold of it. When it's something, a really difficult traumatic moment, Boy, it's there, it's sticky, it sticks with you.
So negativity is an energy field. And it's heavy, and that's why it sticks.
And it's heavy. And it's heavy. It's weighted.
It's weighted. One of the things I do with people, that anybody can do this, is it's very powerful and it's very quick. is you get two chairs like we have.
You sit in one of the chairs, and you just think of whatever, say, kind of upset you are.
Could be, let's say, anger. And you just feel the anger, and you say, who's the first person that this reminds me of from my childhood?
And I've never had somebody that didn't get a face almost immediately.
And they'll get a face and they'll say, OK, sit with that for just a brief moment, minute, two minutes, knowing that that's the face, have their face on it.
You're not blaming it on the face, right?
You're just associating. That feeling. Getting the feeling.
And then have your intention that you just let that face and that energy stay on that seat and get up and sit down in the other chair.
And when you get up and sit down on the chair with the intention that you just leave that old energy behind, you'll sit down and you'll feel a completely different energy.
What you'll start to feel is your own, the presence that is yours, rather than the energy that you've inherited from parents, from friends, from different places.
You can literally do a five-minute exercise and you can You can literally step right out of the energy field and you'll feel every time, wow, this feels more like me.
This literally feels more like me. Or I know those of you around the world, you've had this moment where you feel that shift and it literally feels like a weight has been lifted.
Like taking a backpack off you didn't know you had.
Yeah, like a weight has been lifted. Now, a very important thing if anybody does this exercise, I always say you have to bless the energy that you left behind.
Because everything is there to teach you something about yourself.
Everything you blame, you're stuck with.
Bless it, wish it well, wish it its own freedom, and it will be a very powerful way that it will not come back to you.
If you don't forgive it, if you don't bless it, if you don't wish it well, that energy will just be magnetically drawn back to you because it's looking for resolution.
All negative energy that we've inherited, it's there because it's looking for resolution.
That is so powerful. If you're an adult struggling with obesity, if you've struggled for years and years, you are not alone.
But Zepbound Terzepatide is changing what's possible when it comes to weight loss, along with diet and exercise.
Proven to help lose weight and keep it off, Zepbound is a prescription medicine for adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems.
Zepbound should be used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity.
Zepbound injection is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligrams per 0.5 milliliters in single-dose pen or single-dose vial.
Don't use with other terzepratide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines.
It is not known if Zepbound can be used in children.
Don't take Zetbound if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.
Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck.
Stop Zetbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.
Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.
Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, depression or suicidal thoughts before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.
If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be or taking birth control pills.
Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.
Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.
Discover the weight loss you could be bound for.
Ask your health care provider about ZepBound or call 1-800-545-5979.
Explore savings options regardless of insurance status at saveonzepbound.com.
Terms and conditions apply. You don't have to choose between dreams and responsibilities, between daily commitments and your goals for the future.
National University offers you plenty of ways to do both.
NU is a veteran-founded nonprofit institution that provides flexible online programs built around the lives, schedules, and ambitions of working adults.
Whether you're a spouse, parent, caregiver, employee, or all the above, their flexible online formats, four and eight-week courses, monthly start classes, and year-round enrollment help make a university education possible and achievable.
With more opportunities to customize your learning to your lifestyle and career goals, you have more options for fitting your student life into your home and work life.
Options that include over 150 different degrees, credentials, and certificates.
At NU, you'll be able to start your degree sooner, learn on your schedule, and finish faster.
So pick your path, go at your own pace, and enjoy personalized support all the way to graduation.
Learn more today at nu.edu. Adyashanti's book, Resurrecting Jesus, is a contemporary look at Jesus, the man, Adia sees him as an enlightened being, a revolutionary mystic, the ultimate example of an awakened life.
Since I was a kid, I was just taken with the story of Jesus, just the story of it.
I felt this sense of mysterious awe, almost like a transcendent, you know how kids can wonder, they wonder.
And so that has always been with me from a very, very young time.
When I started into my Zen practice, and I chose Zen because they talked directly about spiritual awakening and enlightenment.
That's why I chose that path, because they spoke about those two things very overtly.
It was like, this is what your spiritual life is about.
It's about waking up to the reality of existence.
And I thought, that's what I want. That's it.
When I pursued that path, after years of really intensive meditation and study, I felt something missing.
I felt like I wasn't finding something in the Zen tradition.
It was there, but I couldn't find it. And I kind of naturally just started to explore the Christian mystics.
I tell you, Oprah, when I... I had read probably in my 20s two or three hundred books of the Christian mystics.
But strangely enough, I'd never sat down and read all the way through the Gospels.
And all of a sudden, in my late 20s, I literally sat down and I read through the Gospels.
And the first thing I thought was, who is this?
Who is this guy? I've never heard about this guy, Jesus.
I've heard, you know, the church's view and the view that I got from my culture.
But I thought, this guy is really a revolutionary person.
He had some very pointed critiques of the religious power structure of his day, the political power structure of his day, people abusing authority.
Well, that's why he upset so many people.
Yeah. That's why he upset so many people.
Now, of course, we can also find Jesus like the Good Shepherd and, you know, the one who spoke the Sermon on the Mount and said some very, very beautiful things.
But I was really most taken. What took me aback was the revolutionary Jesus, how challenging he was.
What made him a revolutionary teacher? I think his willingness to speak out.
He didn't sit there in a cave like an Eastern sage.
He was out in the world and amongst the people, and often amongst the poorest of people, and he really wasn't afraid to point his finger at things that he saw were wrong and say, that's not right.
That kind of abuse of power, abuse of situation, abuse of position, that's a defilement of as he would say, of my Father, of God.
I got that. All right, so what's spirituality versus religion?
Oh, I think spirituality, it's right there in the name.
Spirituality is the direct investigation of spirit.
Spirit is something that doesn't, in and of itself, have to have a story around it.
It doesn't have to have a founder around it.
It's there with or without religion. Religion is given its vitality and its significance and its beauty by spirit.
But spirit is something that's in everything and everybody.
And to me, religion's number one purpose for existing is to help connect people to the radiance of spirit.
What is the soul? To me, the soul is our living presence.
Our living presence. Our shared living presence.
We all have that. That's where we connect.
That's where we're the same. Not only human beings, but plants, animals, the sky, the tree, anything we open up to fully, we will experience that sense of radiance, that presence.
To me, that's the soul. What's your definition of God?
Of God? Of God. The same. The same. The same.
All the presence is connected. One infinite presence.
Yeah. Yeah. One infinite, all-inclusive, all-embracing presence.
And so we're surrounded by God. By the presence of God.
All the time. Yeah. And each of us is an expression of that presence.
Yeah. We're a spark of eternity. And what's your definition of prayer? a reaching out, reaching out to something, God, the universe, something beyond what we feel ourselves to be in sort of a humble receptivity.
Do you have a personal prayer? I don't have a sort of a rote personal prayer, but boy, have I experienced the power of prayer in my life.
I tell people often, be really careful when you say what I call a true prayer.
And look, all prayers are authentic, you know.
But a true prayer to me is when we pray in such a way that we're not saying, this is what I want.
Please, God, give me what I want. A deeper prayer is when we open ourselves up and say, this is what I'm willing to give.
From the last chapter of falling into grace, you say, when we can begin to open enough to realize that there's grace in every situation, every person, no matter how easy or difficult we perceive them to be, our hearts will flower.
If we can let go for just a moment, if we can relax, fall into the center of now, we can encounter directly the freedom that we've all been seeking.
When we begin to surrender our demand that life change, that life alter itself to suit our ideas, then everything opens and we begin to awaken from this dream of separateness and struggle and realize that the grace we were always seeking is actually right there at the center of our own existence.
That goes back to surrender. surrendering to whatever is happening in the given moment, to consenting, saying yes to it.
If we say yes to it, then we have access to the center of that moment of existence.
If we say no to it or judge it or condemn it, it keeps us away from that.
It keeps us away. Any moment of just yes.
Let me give you a quick story by May. One of the first times I really experienced this, you know, experienced it rather than understood it intellectually was when I was in my mid-20s and I had this wonderful dog. and my dog died.
And I'd had grandparents die that I was very close to and other people die.
But when that dog died, I was devastated.
I would just sit in the middle of the living room floor and just burst out weeping and weeping and weeping.
And I understood to have grief about it, but at times it would be just uncontrollable tears.
A couple days after he died, we had a little eulogy, a little thing in the backyard where I buried his collar, and I had written this little page, and I started to read it.
And as I was reading it, the grief I could feel just started to well up.
And something in me just said, OK. In the middle of that moment, when I absolutely let go, right in the center of my heart, there was this little pinprick of light.
And I was still weeping. But over about three or four minutes, that little pinprick got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
And it just, and pretty soon it was like this huge sun.
That was a moment of eternity breaking through, revealing itself in the moment of that overwhelming grief.
I had a similar experience with my dog, Sophie, and the same thing happened.
And when it happened to me, that little prick that you call it a little prick of light, I felt it was the little, it was like the energy of Sophie's soul.
Yeah, I could cry right now. The energy of the soul saying to me, all is well and all will be well.
So similar, right? That's it. Yes. All is well.
That's the feeling of eternity. And all will be well.
And all will be well. And all is always well, even when it seems unbelievably unwell.
We're always held. in the divine presence.
In grace. In grace. Absolutely. Well, thanks for helping us get a glimpse of what it's like to fall into grace.
Thank you. You're so welcome. It's lovely to be here.
That was good. So fun with you. So fun. That was really good.
I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.
Thank you for listening. What does possibility mean to you?
Um, that's a hard question. Something that you can strive for.
That I'm able to do anything I set my mind to.
You're confident in yourself and you believe in yourself.
Stuff that you could achieve. I feel excited.
Anything is possible when you're more confident.
Shoes are a huge part of that. They are the most important part of my style.
You can, like, express yourself in the right shoes.
Anything is possible. DSW. Countless shoes at brag-worthy prices.
Imagine the possibilities.
