Hale Dwoskin On The Sedona Method: Tapping Into Your Self-Radiant Awareness

 

Hale Dwoskin is the New York Times best-selling author of “The Sedona Method” and the founder of Sedona Training Associates. This organization teaches courses based on the emotional releasing techniques inspired by his mentor, Lester Levenson. In this episode, he joins Adam Markel to share the key to achieving happiness. Our true nature is only achieved through self-radiant awareness that illuminates our experiences. Tune in to learn how to access your inner light and become your true self while loving life.

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Hale Dwoskin On The Sedona Method: Tapping Into Your Self-Radiant Awareness

I’m feeling incredibly lucky and blessed to be sitting here with all of you. Randi and I are taking a little time to ourselves living on this little East Coast island. We are normally in Southern California and now shivering ourselves silly on the East. I feel incredibly lucky to have the variety and diversity in my life. It has contributed so much to my sense of joy. I feel joyful now, even though it rained all day. It was sliding sideways at one point. The sun is out, and that variety in terms of even just the weather. I forgot how much I crave living in such a glorious environment as Southern California.

I maybe found myself a little deeper in that groove of every day at 60 and sunny. It feels good. What else feels good to me is that I have got somebody that I’m going introduce all of you to. Some of you already know this gentleman or know his work because he has been around not so much a length of time. I don’t want to say that. I got my own age issues, but it is the depth and the breadth of this body of work that I first came in contact with when I was pivoting out of practicing law and wanting to help people navigate their own transitions and pivots in life.

Often, it is that what gets in the way, or at least creates resistance when we want to make a change or are being called to a change, is this holding on and hanging on to the past, other people’s thoughts about us and expectations, as well as our own thoughts about what has happened, old hurts, anger, and a whole host of things. When I first got introduced to this gentleman, it was about how it is that I was able to let go of certain things. Is there a process or a way to let go of stuff, so you are not constantly walking around with a knapsack full of these heavy things that get in the way of us being able to do the things we want to do in our lives?

I will read a bit of this gentleman’s bio because he deserves to have this full bio shared with you. I feel incredibly blessed for this moment and looking forward to sharing it all with you. The gentleman’s name is Hale Dwoskin. He is a New York Times Best-selling Author of The Sedona Method and is featured in the movie named Letting Go. He is the Founder of Sedona Training Associates, an organization that teaches courses based on emotional releasing techniques inspired by his mentor, Lester Levenson.

He is one of the 24 featured teachers of the book and the movie phenomenon, The Secret, as well as a founding member of the Transformational Leadership Council for decades. He has regularly been teaching The Sedona Method to individuals and corporations throughout the United States and the UK. He has been teaching, leading, coaching, training, and advanced retreats since the early 1990s.

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It is such a pleasure to have you with us, Hale. Thanks so much for being here.

It is my pleasure. It is fun to be here.

The bio is filled with many lifetimes of work helping people. I’m going to ask you a question that is not in the bio. What is one thing you would love for people to know about you as we get started?

Even though I have been working on myself for decades and have experienced very profound peace, joy, love, and all the things that we all want, what I am is the same thing that you are. At your core, there is this self-radiant awareness that is your true nature. We often ignore, walk away, and get involved in our stories, dramas, or the things that are holding us back. At our core, there is no difference at all between what you are and what I am. We are all that pure limitless awareness. That is not our living experience all the time. However, when you are aware of anything, that is that same awareness shining through.

It is no different than that boundless awareness that we all are. You can’t have an experience without awareness. That same awareness gives us the ability to have this conversation to see, hear, feel, experience, and have an incredibly full, joyous, and rich life. The thing I want you to know about me is I may have been puttered with this for decades and studying it. It is something that is as intimate to you as it is to me.

Before we got started, you were sharing with me that The Sedona Method and the ripple effect have been around, and the procession of that body of work has been significant. A lot of things have grown out of it. I had asked if you were aware of someone that had written another book called The Presence Process. I’m curious because so much has grown out of The Sedona Method. What did The Sedona Method grow out of?

The Sedona Method grew out of two things. The main thing it grew out of is my mentor, Lester Levenson, back in 1952, was sent home to die from a second coronary. The doctor said, “You are about to die.” He was successful and had all the trappings of success. He was living in New York City. He lives in a penthouse in Central Park South. He has several successful businesses and he was popular. It looked like he should be happy, but he was a physical and emotional basket case. The second coronary was the icing on the cake. It was the last straw. As he was trained as a physicist and an engineer, he decided to go back to the way of within himself.

Over a very short period of time, he went from a physical and emotional basket case into a state of unbroken awareness and pure peace that he lived in another 42 years after the doctor said, “You got weeks.” He started trying to share this with other people. He used the Bible at one point to try to share the teachings from the East, but it started to formulate into a system in the early ’70s. I met Lester in 1976 at a seminar that I organized for a man named Leonard Orr called Theta Seminar, and I was one of the organizers for his one-year seminar in New York City. Lester came in as a guest. I didn’t even notice him because one of the things about Lester is he was completely unassuming.

There is this radiant self-awareness that is your true nature. Share on X

If you talk to him and pay attention, you can feel the amazing breadth and depth of the piece he was exuding. He didn’t ever try to draw attention to himself. Fortunately, I went out to lunch with him, the other organizer, and Leonard. As we sat there at lunch, he didn’t talk that much, but I could feel where he was coming from. I thought to myself, “If I could have a little bit of what this guy has got, I want it.” To make a long story short, I was on what used to be a two-weekend seminar the very next weekend. He didn’t teach it because he didn’t want to be in front of the room. It was teaching the basics of The Sedona Method.

Before the seminar was even over, in addition to noticing immediate and profound changes within myself, I had this deep intuitive knowingness that, “This is why I’m here. I’m supposed to help this guy and share this work.” I was 22, and now I am getting old, yet I’m still going strong. In the early ’90s, Lester knew he was getting ready to leave the body. He passed all his copyrights to me and said, “I want you to continue this work. I’m giving you this mantle.” At first, I fought it. I didn’t want the responsibility. I said, “Okay.” He also said to me, “You will continue to evolve this work and find a way to make this even better.”

The other thing that The Sedona Method has come out of is since the early ’90s, The Sedona Method has gotten broader and broader. It included more ways of helping us let go of that, which is holding us back and recognizing that truth of who we are and the awareness that I referenced in the beginning. That is its origin story.

It is interesting that you said origin story because there are always so many wonderful little synchronicities. This will mean nothing to you, but as part of some of the work that we do in the world, which is to train people to deliver talks on a TED stage to be speakers, we talk about starting with your origin story. That is part of the structure. For you to call it that, that is what it feels like. It is the first domino. What were you planning? I’m curious at that moment at 22.

At 22, I didn’t have any big plans. They caught me at a perfect time. I had already been a spiritual seeker since a teenager. I had studied Eastern and Western teachings and done things like EST, actualisms, theta seminars, and rebirthing. Whenever I did anything, I did it in full tilt. I was being trained as a rebirther when I made the pivot into The Sedona Method. When I was involved in EST, which is now called Landmark, I was on the trainer tracks. When I did something, I went for it.

 

I have all the boroughs covered. My mother is from the Bronx. My brother lives in Manhattan except for Staten Island. I always get the fuzzy and the stick with me. My wife and I lived in New Jersey for a bunch of years. I remember we used to travel through that island borough to get to our house in Jersey. You grew up in New York. Do you know why you were leaning into that work? I think it is curious. If we go to that origin story, my dad was a civil servant. He worked for the city of New York. My mom did odd jobs. We lived in an apartment. They didn’t have a lot of money, but service and being of service were important. My dad was writing at night. He was a creative writer and did this other work during the day.

I got to hear a lot about things, not just philosophy, but the science of living. The person I heard about early on was Albert Ellis. You must know Dr. Ellis’ work. That was more of a psychology side. The seeds in me were planted early on that there were less talked about ways of approaching life that you didn’t necessarily get access to by watching TV, the common conversations that went on, or that you were things that we were taught in school. What are the seeds of your fascination, even this deep commitment that you said you went dove right in? Do you have a sense of why that was?

It is hard to say. The truth is, in my experience, anytime we think we know why things are happening, it is usually way beyond what we think. I have seen that over and over again in my life. It could have started when I was three. I had a brother who was born severely with brain damage. He was severely mentally retarded. How I coped with that is I wanted to help my mother. I got pushed out of the spotlight, so I wanted to be visibly helping. That wanting to help was with me my whole life before I got into spirituality. I thought I was going to be a doctor. There was this deep wanting to help.

It is only that I realized I started having spiritual experiences at a very young age. I had no idea at that time. I had no spiritual conceptualization, but I remember watching a sunset when I was very young. I was at camp and disappeared into the sunset. There was no hail there. There was this incredibly beautiful scene and things like that happened occasionally. My wife and I thought nothing of it because it was what naturally happened. At the same time, I had all the psychological struggles that everyone has growing up, especially with the early trauma of having such a disturbing thing happen in your life. He was institutionalized and it changed our whole family. It was a tough thing but the way I coped with it was to look for ways to help.

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By happenstance, I read a book called Autobiography of a Yogi as a teenager. Many people have read that book, and it inspired them to go in this direction. I read that book and deeply resonated with it. I started exploring that whole field. At that time, it was very rich and open. This started in the late ’60s. Everybody in my age group was exploring these types of things. It wasn’t until I hit The Sedona Method that something stuck. I can’t say one particular moment. It was all a gestalt of things pulling me in this direction. My parents contributed too because they were very open-minded and quite liberal.

By the time I can remember, they had their early struggles, but they were starting to become successful. My mother was a teacher. My father was a lawyer and then a real estate broker. They had some modicum of success. Even with their success, they wanted everyone to succeed. It wasn’t about their success and us against the world. It was, “We have a responsibility to everybody. If everybody wins, we win. It is not just if we win.” I owe that to my parents as well.

I want to dig in because time is so precious. I want to talk specifically about the method. I want to set the context for it a little bit. It is not our intention to try to create a summary of the decades. I would like to think about if we go to the cause of causes. People are miserable. Start there. Why are people so miserable?

I could give you that in the short answer if you want. It is very simple. It has nothing to do with a pandemic, economy, family and life struggles, illness, or all the things we think cause our misery. Our misery comes from one thing. It is forgetting the truth of who we are and believing we are a limited person to the degree that we identify with our story of the will to that degree we suffer. There are too many examples in life to name people who have gone through similar experiences. One person comes out of the experience profoundly transformed for the better, and the other person is crushed by it and never recovers.

 

The difference is that the one person let go through the experience and discovered a little more of their own essence of inner truth, not their personal truth, but the same truth that we all share. The other person identified with the story and felt the victim of it, crushed by it, and then lived their whole life in compensation for it. We all have an opportunity when faced with anything to either let go and grow from it and use it to discover what is beyond the surface events, or we can identify more with the suffering. What happens once we start to identify with being limited and suffering is we become suffering collectors, “That was bad. I will add that to the stack.” The burden that we carry gets heavier and heavier.

Even when things go well, we make a lot of money, have a beautiful relationship, and our health is good, we can’t fully enjoy it because we are carrying this burden of all this past stuff that we think happened to us personally. Whereas it was an experience that the body and mind went through. Now it is a new experience. Every moment is new. In fact, the only moment we ever experienced is this one. When we live from that awareness, there is nothing for any of this to hold on to because we are not identifying as that limited person. We are identifying as the truth of who you are but it is also incredibly practical. You don’t lose your memories.

For instance, if you are trying to make a business choice, instead of having to depend on the things that worked in the past, you take that into consideration but then you look at what is here now and you make better business decisions. If there is an investment that you are trying to make, instead of operating out of fear or lust, you operate out of clear reason and intuitive knowingness. You make better decisions.

In relationships, if you are already happy and feel more content, you bring happiness to it instead of trying to get your partner to give it to you. In health, it goes up and down. That is the natural flow of life. When you don’t react to the health condition, you are more likely to find a solution, but you are also a lot less likely to suffer. You are cooperating with the body’s natural healing ability because you are not sticking your fingers in the gear. It makes a huge difference to approach life in that way.

Our misery comes from just one thing. It comes from forgetting the truth of who we are and believing we are a limited person. Share on X

I’m curious when it comes to why people, not so much why misery is so prevalent, but when there is a desire to move past that to be happier. I’m a huge believer in that word or concept. The quest for happiness is, what gets in the way of it? Is it the fact that people don’t know the process for letting go of the things that are creating that misery? Is it that they don’t perhaps understand the ROI that comes from it?

It is a little bit of both. One is if you are letting go or you are opening, there is the happiness that you are comes forth. The other piece is most of us are looking for happiness where it is not. We are looking for it outside of ourselves. Lester Levenson, my mentor, used to say, “Happiness is simply you being you, not your persona or the person you. You being that awareness or being this.” The reason why you get confused is the more we want it, the more it hurts, but when we finally get it, that wanting drops away. All the thoughts that come from it and the angst of not having it temporarily drop away.

We are experiencing more of our basic nature, that joy, peace, and love that is at our core. We go, “It came from having more money. I need to get more money. It doesn’t work or came from being with this person or from finally getting through this disease.” Am I saying don’t have loving relationships, get more money or be healthy? Of course not. When we think happiness comes from that, it is never enough and emerges deeply out from our core into our experience. It is fleeting.

The more you recognize that awareness or beingness is the root cause of all, the more you bring happiness to that, and the more vulnerable you feel, even when you are in the middle of a struggle. The struggles don’t stop. It continues. This body and mind have had a lifetime of things that were challenging, yet because of my perspective, letting go, and deepening experience of that core of who I am, the challenges created more space and the ability to take on more responsibility in a worldly way and live that happiness that I am and you are. This is not unique to me. This is what everyone experiences when they pay attention.

 

Is there a way to describe the method without doing a disservice? I want people to go out and get the book, The Sedona Method. Can we tee up a conversation? What is it?

I can talk about it but I can also give people at least one technique they can start using right away.

I want to ask you too. Do you use this method on a daily basis as it is so regularly ingrained into you?

It is more than that. Years ago, it went from a technique into a way of living. Things arise in consciousness, and then they dissolve. I rarely cling to them. If there is any clinging, I notice it. In the noticing, it dissolves. What is interesting is I continue to research myself and expand the work as I work with others. All the changes that have happened to The Sedona Method, the deepening over the time after Lester asked me to take this on are even with a method, I didn’t do it by rote.

There was a person or a group in front of me who needed something. Because there was so little hail, I got out of the way and things arose as a way to present this. I have been fascinated with how the human consciousness works. It is not divine. It is how the natural beingness that we are works and is. I’m constantly exploring it. Out of that comes more direct and easier ways to help people discover this.

You have an older bio, the one you read in the beginning. Rhonda Byrne, the woman who wrote The Secret and created the movie, The Secret, has a new book that came out in November 2020 called The Greatest Secret. Lester and I are a huge part of that. A lot of what is in The Greatest Secret didn’t come from me. Many other teachers discovered those same things and said that some of them may have come from us directly. A lot of how that book talks about how to end suffering and discover the truth of who you are is how I have been teaching for decades.

It all evolves together. Back to what The Sedona Method is, it is a very simple yet powerful set of tools that show you how to tap a natural ability that we all have. This natural ability is that we all can let go. We did it naturally as young children and have forgotten. When we rediscover it as an adult, we can’t lose it again. It was natural but automatic as children. We have processed.

If you’re letting go, if you’re opening, the happiness that you are comes forth. Share on X

We would meltdown. Kids have a total crap fit. We have four kids. Our kids did that but is that part of what we stop?

The meltdown is not it. It is what happens afterward. Kids have meltdowns, but did you ever notice a kid fall down and walk around to see if they need to be upset?

Yes, because as soon as they see the look on the parent’s face that says you are hurt, that is when they cry.

They know it is an opportunity of, “Daddy or Mommy is going to take care of me.” As soon as they get their kiss or the acknowledgment, they drop it. They don’t even try to drop it. It falls away because that’s what’s natural. Things don’t stick to you unless you cling to them. We start clinging very young at about age two through the terrible twos.

I’m sure you remember at about age two, they learned the word, “No,” but that was a side effect. What happened is they went from referring to their toys as Bob’s or Harry’s toy to my toy. They started identifying with that name that you gave them. From then on, for most of us, we continue to accumulate around that. We let go less and less, and I’m sure you saw that with your kids.

I’m sure you noticed that as your kids got older. They got better at being an adult but they also got worst at letting go. They started trying to model after us. Not just this is mine. These feelings, hurts, thoughts, and limitations are mine. We cling to it, believing it is true, yet it has never been true. They are things that pass through awareness, and they are done. The mind dwells on it and claims it as its own.

I don’t want to get into the technical on this, but are we calling that the ego?

 

We could call it an ego, but I don’t like that term because it is too misunderstood. A lot of people go to war with the ego or the mind. That is a mistake. A mind is a tool if we use it correctly. It is not a good master. Unfortunately, for most of us, we have made the mind the master. When you make the mind the master, you are being dragged behind the bus.

This is something that Rhonda talks about in The Greatest Secret. One of our more advanced techniques is to notice your mind, thoughts, and the feelings you are experiencing at this moment and check, are you that or are you that who is aware of it? As soon as you know you are the awareness, something relaxes and opens inside because we live contracted around this belief that we are our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and ideas. We think that is who we are, but that is never who we are. Who we are is the awareness that gives that life. The more you recognize that and the more you see the world from that perspective, the clearer your mind gets, the better it is at solving any life situation, and the less you suffer.

You only suffer because you think you are all that stuff. Each time you check, which you can do and I recommend that. That is one of the things we do in our programs, but it is also one of the basic things Rhonda teaches in her book, The Greatest Secret. If you check and look at your direct experience, there is no belief required. Whatever you are experiencing now, you can simply check. Am I actually that or am I that, which is aware?

Each time you look, you start to feel what awareness feels like. Awareness is boundless, the source of happiness and love. That is who we are. This is something that the more you explore, the more your whole world transforms in every way. That is a small piece of The Sedona Method. We also teach very powerful tools for letting go of the parts of the mind that you get tripped up in.

I know this episode will be read for a long time. It could be a great distance further down the road that someone is reading this and thinking that the example I’m about to use is not relevant, but you can choose to replace what I’m about to say with anything that is going on in your life now that you feel suffering from. There are many people who have suffered great losses during the pandemic, whether that is the loss of a job, business, loved one, or any number of other things that are tough to deal with. Someone that is holding on to the weight of that experience that has been real. We are not saying in any way, shape, or form that this is ignoring reality. What are we saying to someone in that situation where they are hanging on to something right at this moment?

Things don’t stick unless you cling to them. Share on X

In addition to this question that I used, I recommend they use it. If you can see that you are the awareness, even though it hurts at the moment, you are more than that. Knowing you are more than that, the hurt starts to subside sometimes dramatically and quickly, but you can also look at it in another way. You can see that it is a thought, feeling, or experience you are having. It is not attached to you, and because of that, you can let go of the hurt. In letting go of the hurt, you can rebuild your life. For instance, if you lose someone, it is not an abandonment of the love that you feel for them. If you let go of the hurt, you will discover feel more of the love that hurt was covered over.

The more you let go of the emotion, the more you will feel like they are still here with you, at least in your heart. If you are out of work and struggling with that, your income is lower than it was or you have had to adapt to a way of working with the way the world is at the moment, you can be crushed by that. You might feel that way at the moment. If you can let go of even a little of the emotional reaction, what you will find is your mind is creative. Your mind knows. It is not the mind, the mind is more of a filter but the mind has access to infinite creativity. It is only when we are looking at the negative part of the situation that we fall into the hole with it.

If you sit back within yourself and start to let go even a little, you start to see creative solutions. You might find a different way of approaching a job search or a whole business that applies to whatever life is at this moment. In seeing that, you can start to find solutions. What generally happens when we have gone through something traumatic is we keep reliving it over and over again, which only creates more suffering. We are digging a hole and covering ourselves with the dirt. Instead, if you dig deep enough, you reach gold, water or, oil, but most of us are filling the hole. We are getting deeper and deeper into the hole. Eventually, we stopped seeing the light but the light that you are is what allows for everything.

Instead of digging a deeper hole, you can also start looking for the light that is already in, even in this contracted situation. When you are most contracted, there is still some light because you are aware of it. Awareness is the light that illuminates whatever you are experiencing. You can start with that awareness and use that as a way to dig out of the hole. I have worked with people with severe PTSD, had childhood abuse, and lost everything. By letting go of the anger, fear, frustration, the angst, and exploring that awareness, the combination of the two has transformed them amazingly. It works for any age.

 

I finished leading a facilitator training before. There was a young child struggling with Zoom. Being isolated at home, their introvertedness or shyness had gotten so exaggerated that they could not even look at the screen and ask questions. It was extreme. The person working with them is a Sedona Method facilitator and she helped this young child let go for about three minutes. She talked to the mother later that week or the next week.

In those three minutes, the next time the child was able to ask questions, looking directly at the camera, the child then said to the teacher, “Can I make a presentation to you?” She made a presentation to the teacher. The child said, “Can I make this to the whole group?” All that was from a few minutes of letting go. That is an extreme example. No matter what you believe your limitations are, they are not more powerful than the awareness illuminating them.

What is embedded and what you are sharing too is that this is something that can happen at any moment, based on any prior circumstance or history. We have great power within us at any moment and that power transcends or transmutes anything that came before. You could have had the most miserable life. 2021 has been the most excruciating of experiences one after another. At this moment, if you were to choose to acknowledge what you have shared with us to let go and recognize a bit of the truth of your own being, it doesn’t mean those things didn’t happen.

At this moment, what you experience is something like peace, freedom, happiness, or joy. What else is there? The way we experience this present moment is all we have. Our whole lives are a collection of moments we have experienced and the only one we can hold onto at all is this one, even this one is gone now.

That is such a weird thing. We spend our whole life trying to hold onto things but it never works. Even this body that we tried so much to keep around as long as we can, we are going to fail with that. No one succeeds at that. I understand that, but that’s not bad news. If you live this moment fully, it is exquisite.

If you let go of the hurt, you'll discover you feel more of the love that that hurt was covering over. Share on X

I’m picking at your words now. Living this moment fully implies somehow that there is a way to do it. It is so glorious because it allows you to leave the past where it truly is. It is dead. There is no energy in the past.

There is no energy at all except that which we are funneling out of the present moment into trying to create this whole experience. It saps so much life from infinite awareness. We were tapping that instead of enjoying life, accomplishing things, feeling good, and helping others. We are creating this whole illusion around ourselves that we, for most of us, feel impenetrable. It is exhausting and makes us sick.

To hold on or protect, as you were saying, those things we cling to, all the crap we collect and call mine whether they are your personality, house, relationships, or any of these things is thoroughly exhausting to have to care for all. That is my way of leading into final questions which relate to this concept of resilience. It is so vital.

Maybe I’m a bit self-serving here in the sense that a lot of my own speaking to organizations is on that topic of developing. I want to know to what degree you attribute resilience to your ability to continue to look the way you look with the energy you’ve got. If people will watch this on YouTube, they’ll see this gentleman that looks mid-40s or something. It is shocking. You’ve done this for decades. You have the energy and the enthusiasm that you’ve got. I want to attribute that to resilience. I’m curious about what you think of it.

That is valid. This path that this body and mind has been on its whole life has not always been easy. There have been major challenges but what happened is I had the resilience to stay with it, even when things were the most challenging. In 1998 or 1999, I had led a retreat and had a mild earache. I went to a doctor, and he gave me eardrops. What he didn’t realize at that time is I had severe meningitis and encephalitis. Twenty-four hours away, I was rushed to the emergency room and got very close to death. While I was in the hospital, it was a profound learning experience because I realized at that moment I could die, but I also was at complete peace about it.

 

Lester had told me that is possible. You can be facing death itself and not be disturbed. Until it happened to me, I didn’t realize it was even possible. That may also be able to help others face things like that. I did whatever I needed to get better, but at the same time, instead of going, “I might die,” I went, “I might die. Let’s see what this means.” There was also tremendous pain, and it didn’t stop me. It encouraged me to keep going.

It is so interesting how many definitions there are for that word resilience. It didn’t stop you. It helped you move forward and to a great extent, our ability to utilize everything. I’m a great believer in no-waste theories. It is what’s wonderful about the universe. Everything is utilized. It is the alchemy of experiences that are difficult but ultimately help us to live and fully connect with others compassionately. Everything that is good in our human nature is even more greatly expressed when we are able to embrace those things that have happened. I would call that humility. It is the word I have always used for that. We crave definition. I’m hesitating with you here because words are vitally important, yet there is something arrogant for me about placing a term.

You have your wonderful mission, which is sharing the amazing things you have been sharing. This show is a vehicle to help you do that. Don’t apologize for that. It is wonderful. This show helps even one person discover their resilience, and that is all they get from it. There is no problem with you bringing that into this conversation.

Anything is fair game. I appreciate you saying that. I’m not suffering from a lack of ability to move through my insecurities toward other things. I want to expose the fact that regardless of what any of us have done or how that is viewed by others, we still all deal with the same stuff. That is what I’m putting out there. I have my moments where I question whether this is not some big ego trip with the books, speaking, and all that stuff. I’m being honest about it. Those are small moments. I let them go, and you helped me to release and let go of even that one little thing in my head where I’m going, “Who the crap are you?” put a label on something.

The awareness is the light that illuminates whatever you're experiencing. So, you can start with that awareness and use that as a way to dig out of the hole. Share on X

You have been doing this a lot longer than I have. I’m in the presence of somebody who has been an unknown mentor as you have been to so many other people. I remember hearing about The Sedona Method originally through some of Jim Britt’s work. I used to lead a three-day seminar and on Sunday morning, I would have people write about things that were painful. They would ask themselves some questions out loud to release and let go of those things. It was wonderful.

The things that I saw were breathtaking, the tears of relief, the releases, the people who would call their parents on the break, and people in their lives they had not spoken to in twenty years. It was the best. To whatever extent, you, Lester Levenson, and others who have been doing this work for so long have been doing it. I want to say thank you.

Thank you for continuing it and doing it yourself. I want to come back to one thing you said because it is important for everyone. The fact that you have moments of doubt and grow from them as opposed to it, we are in trouble if we don’t question ourselves. Part of the reason we get so lost in our mind is we never question what the mind is saying to us. The fact that you are questioning it means that you are open to seeing the truth. Even in our moments of doubt, our gifts to grow from are supporting us and moving forward. Thank you for being that transparent.

I want to end with a question for you, which is related to a TED Talk I was privileged enough to give a few years back, and it is something that is written on my sweatshirt that says, “I love my life.” The through-line of this TED Talk I gave a few years ago was this question. What would it be like if you chose to love your life? What if you chose to love your life no matter what? No matter what part is what folks do struggle with. I’m going to ask you that question. Do you love your life? If you do love your life, why?

No matter what you believe your limitations are, they're not more powerful than the awareness that's illuminating. Share on X

I love life. It rarely feels like my life, the life that is living through you and me and everyone reading this through the plants, the animals, the stars, all of it. In my experience, life is in love with itself. There is not a separate me and you doing it, but the aspiration to love your life is a fantastic way to work on or with yourself. The more you can love what is as it is, the more that love becomes a living part of your every moment. Loving life is a great place to start. It can be difficult in the beginning, especially if you have challenges in your life, but if you are persistent or resilient and continue to do your best to love what is as it is, you will start to find ways to get out of the problems you are struggling with.

If you resist, say no and curse life or do the things that we usually do. All that does is it makes it more difficult. You can even love that. If you fight with your mind when it is getting cranky, it likes that. It gets crankier. If you can even love your mind when it is trying to run interference, and as you do that, it gets more cooperative. It tries to find ways to help you as opposed to sabotage you. Loving life is a great direction, and it must have been a wonderful talk.

It has become a way of being for our company and us. It is a message ultimately that we are the most connected to. Someone said some years ago, “When you love your life, your life will love you back.” I believe that. The things you bless blesses you back and the things we curse do the same. A little warning with that too. Love what is as it is. Thank you for those words. I so appreciate that you made the time for the conversation. Our community will love this, no doubt.

For those of you that know someone that would benefit from reading this, please feel free to share it with them, leave comments and questions. You can do that at AdamMarkel.com/podcast. If you want to leave a comment on iTunes, etc., we are always answering those as well. I appreciate your feedback, as always. More than anything, I hope that you go about your way in the world, loving what is as it is. Hale Dwoskin, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

 

Important Links

• The Sedona Method
• Sedona Training Associates
• Transformational Leadership Council
• The Presence Process
• Autobiography of a Yogi
• The Secret
• The Greatest Secret
• iTunes – Becoming Change Proof Podcast

 

About Hale Dwoskin

Hale Dwoskin is the New York Times best-selling author of The Sedona Method, and is featured in the movie, Letting Go. He is the founder of Sedona Training Associates, an organization that teaches courses based on the emotional releasing techniques inspired by his mentor, Lester Levenson. Hale is an international speaker and featured faculty member at Esalen and the Omega Institute. He is also one of the 24 featured teachers of the book and movie phenomenon, The Secret, as well as a founding member of The Transformational Leadership Council.

For over three decades, he has regularly been teaching The Sedona Method to individuals and corporations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, and has been leading coach trainings and advanced retreats since the early 1990s. He is also the co-author with Lester Levenson of Happiness Is Free: And It’s Easier Than You Think! (a five-book series).