TOPIC: KARMA: A VEDIC PERSPECTIVE GUEST: Dr.Cindy Lindsay explores the relationship between a persons actions and their effect on this as well as future existences.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Dr. Cindy, I am super excited to have you talking about this topic. I've wanted to talk about this for so long. So what an honor it is for me to have you to talk about this.
cindy lindsay:
Well, it's a huge honor to be with you, Dr. Salina. So thank you.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
You're welcome. And so let's get right into it. What is karma?
cindy lindsay:
Well, karma is an energy field that's layered on the soul. That energy field is created by all the actions and reactions across multiple lifetimes. It carries a kind of energy of the emotional content, of the drivers of those actions, of the experience of those actions, and it's carried on the soul across the lifetime so that when we enter this lifetime, we already have a backlog of something that's already affecting on us. And you can sort of see that in babies sometimes. You know, you're two babies from the same family or only a year apart who have completely different personalities. Part of that is their soul nature, but part of that is this karmic energy that they carry on the soul. So every action, every reaction that happens in any lifetime, including this one, creates an energy that then interacts with the world to draw to us the experiences that we have in the lifetime.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, that's amazing. Now you're talking a lot about soul. Why don't we define soul so that we're all on the same path, a
cindy lindsay:
Right, because
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
page.
cindy lindsay:
a lot of people don't even believe in soul. They have no idea they have a soul. I, of course, do strongly believe in soul. And
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I did too. Yeah, I did too.
cindy lindsay:
to me,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, so.
cindy lindsay:
it is that life-force energy, that driver of who we are. They say that if you weigh someone just before they die and right after they've died, they weigh like 3 quarters of an ounce less. It's that 3 quarters of an ounce which animates who we are, which is the energy of everything inside of us. It is. pure light and vibration. It has no particular form. It's just an energy of the divine in us. It is a peace of God that is us.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, I like how you put it. Soul is a piece of us,
cindy lindsay:
Yes,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
a piece of God,
cindy lindsay:
God,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
that
cindy lindsay:
a
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
is
cindy lindsay:
piece of God
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
a piece
cindy lindsay:
that is
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
of God
cindy lindsay:
us. It is that
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
that defines
cindy lindsay:
universal God
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
us.
cindy lindsay:
energy that
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
is us.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow. That's beautifully said. So if what you're saying is soul drives your life, so what is the purpose of karma if soul drives your life?
cindy lindsay:
Well, ideally soul drives your life. Ideally, you are animated from that place that is the God in you. You are animated from the goddess in you. You are animated from your higher desires for love and caring and connection and nurturing. But what happens is all of these experiences from previous lifetimes glom onto that to be able to give you lessons of how to move forward in those feelings. How can you, can you still be a loving person when somebody acts negative towards you, for example? Can you still be a loving person when a huge, horrible event happens in your life? Can you still find that soul in you when negativities come? And that's really the purpose of karma is to bring the possibilities for us to meet and still be able to find that beauty of our own soul energy within. and still be that beauty of our soul energy with them.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Now, I want to ask you this, are there certain traditions that focus on this kind of perspective?
cindy lindsay:
Yes, it's primarily in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. So those are the major ones, and they all do believe in reincarnation as well.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And so we don't have to believe in reincarnation to believe in karma, or do we?
cindy lindsay:
No, you don't. You're right. You don't have to believe in reincarnation. Oh, they do. And they see it as something that passes across lifetimes, and they're thinking of things that are coming from ten lifetimes past. But the same energy formula about how the world works, the energy field on you interacts with the energy field of the world to bring you your lessons. The things that you think, the actions that you take, the feelings that you have create your reality, and that reality plays back on you. That's a very common understanding across many metaphysical disciplines. It's in the law of attraction. It's in quantum physics applied to spirituality. It's in vibrational physics applied to spirituality. It's in the even in the biology of emotion people starting from Candice Pertt up forward more to Bruce Lipton who takes it from our emotions create a a chemical experience in our body which changes our body, but it also creates a different energy in us which creates our reality. And of course, then cognitive behavioral psychology has the same concept running. It's a well-known idea about the nature of energy of all things, like in physics, please, everything is energy. Even your thoughts and emotions are energy. Everything in form is energy. And how that energy drives our system.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, that is a beautiful description that you just gave us. So you are a reincarnationist, correct?
cindy lindsay:
I do believe in reincarnation. And when I work with clients, it's very clear to me that some of the things that happen to them that come out of the blue in their life are clearly something that was a pattern from way far back, from a previous lifetime, that's playing on them now. They just happen to hit that timing in their life when that thing played. I also find that there's a lot of relief for people when you can clear it back. to that previous lifetime, that it makes a difference in how they are able to cope with the situation they're facing and how they feel about it.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. And I also believe in reincarnation and I completely validate what you're saying because that is my experience with clients as well. And actually I can also, and I'm sure you can validate this too, is that in dreams, sometimes people have dreams of previous lives. And that's, I mean, as therapists and psychologists, I can't see how we can't be a reincarnationist when we have all these bizarre things happening with our clients that defy our realities, correct?
cindy lindsay:
Exactly. I mean, I had one client whose young daughter was only, as soon as she had crayons, started drawing structures that looked like the pyramids in South America, the Mayan pyramids in South America. And then when she was old enough to talk, they asked her, what are those? She says, they're the pyramids, or she didn't use pyramid, they're the towers, they're the towers, she said. And they said, where are these towers? And she said, I don't know, I don't know. And they gave a map of the world and they said, this is this place and that is that place and she pointed to South America. Now how does that happen if there isn't some past life connection that she was with those Mayan temples?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
No, absolutely. And I mean, I'm just getting shivers in my whole body from that story because that just says it all. That is exactly my experience, you know, the same. It is unbelievable. And it's not talked about enough in psychology. And I think this is a travesty because we are the ones working on the psyche in a way that we've never had to, because before... you know, the psychiatrists used to work on that. Now they're mostly doing medication management. And so the psychologists are now working on this, but I'm not seeing enough of this dimension in our psychological platform.
cindy lindsay:
I
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And
cindy lindsay:
totally agree.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
it's a real shame.
cindy lindsay:
Yeah, because there is such depth to it and such
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
power in shifting it, you know.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's, you know, I see that as our jobs, yours in mind to shift people, to put them on the lanes that are more connected with their soul journey,
cindy lindsay:
Exactly.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
right?
cindy lindsay:
And imagine you've had something sitting on you, you know, some energetic of something sitting on you for multiple lifetimes. How hard is that to break in this lifetime?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I can relate because I'm going through something like that, but I'm not going to talk
cindy lindsay:
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
about it. It's a downer.
cindy lindsay:
Okay. Let's keep it up, baby.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So can you give me some examples of karma? Like, you know,
cindy lindsay:
Yeah, okay. So karma, I mean, that kind of more, you know, normal vernacular, we might say that karma is, karma is what goes around, comes around kind of thing. You are an energy field. It's creating an interaction with the energy field of the world, which is, which is almost mirroring back to you, who you are and what's happening to you. So okay, for example, let's do a positive one or negative one. In the positive example, there's a young man. He's always drawn to doing charities, always drawn to working with the homeless. He has a big heart. He's a nice guy. And he's
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I like
cindy lindsay:
walking.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
this guy.
cindy lindsay:
Yeah, I like this guy. Let's all have this guy. OK. And he's walking down the street one day. And he sees the homeless person there. Everybody else is making a big circle around, because the guy stinks, and he's kind of sitting in a puddle. And so he just goes up to him. And he says, listen, I know where there are some shelters. Can I help you get there? Can I help you get some food? Tell me your story. He just spends time with them and helps them to get to a shelter and then goes on with his day. And he comes back maybe the next couple of days just to make sure the guy still is eating and still has a bed and so on. But he doesn't really think anything about it. It's who he is. It's what he does. And that's the story. That's the result of good karma in past lifetimes, that he has that desire to be of help, that desire to be of charity, that automatic, that's the way he wants to respond there as opposed to trying to stay as far away as possible from this stinky person who's on the street. So a couple of months later, he loses his job due to downsizing and okay, he's just sitting there. He has given quite a bit to charities. He really has a couple of months' worth of savings to keep, make him get through. things are being downsized everywhere, it's not looking good. He's walking into a coffee shop one day and strikes up a conversation with a guy about his charitable works that he's doing. And the fellow on the spot offers him a great job that would be doing that kind of service to community and that pays better than the job he was in before.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow.
cindy lindsay:
Now, that's a good goes around comes around. You
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah,
cindy lindsay:
know?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
definitely.
cindy lindsay:
You enter the world from that place, which was really a soul place for this guy.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah!
cindy lindsay:
If you enter the world from that place, the world responds to you from that place. Okay, on the other hand,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Okay.
cindy lindsay:
not to make this a sexist thing, we got the nice guy and the evil girl, but okay, let's just say we've got a young woman who's in college and her roommate is stunningly gorgeous and popular and... Everybody loves her and thinks she's wonderful. And this girl can't take it. She's jealous. She's angry. She wants to take this girl down. Now, that also is those feelings, those reactions, those energies that probably come either from childhood or from a previous lifetime. Because another person might say, oh, my god, I've got a beautiful room. And I'm just going to hang with her, and I'll be in all the circles. But no, that's not her version of reality. She's got something else driving her. and she's totally jealous and angry. So she starts spreading malicious rumors about her roommate until she takes her down. Okay, so then what happens? Well, a couple years later, guess what? She ends up being the topic of a vicious rumor that takes her down. So we do have to watch our actions because that puts an energy out into the world that eventually reflects back to us in some way.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. There's this one that's coming to my mind is Bernie Madoff.
cindy lindsay:
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Was a mastermind of a Ponzi scheme, you know, I don't know 2010 or something like that. And he frauded almost $65 billion. He rules
cindy lindsay:
Oh my gosh, the karma.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
life savings. He eventually went to jail. for 150 years. And tell me if I'm right or not, I don't know. Carmichaeli, one of his sons committed suicide and the other died of cancer.
cindy lindsay:
Well, that says to me, not only did he get his payback in going to jail, but he got it in many other ways, ruining people's lives, ruined the lives of the people he loved most. And you might think, okay, well, is that also the children's karma? It might be. You don't know. But clearly, dad's karma played on them there. No question. Yeah,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah,
cindy lindsay:
that's...
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
yeah, well,
cindy lindsay:
You can't
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
the
cindy lindsay:
do, you can't ruin huge numbers of people's lives and not have the things that you love and the people you love their lives and ruined.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I mean, then there's this other story. I mean, this was, do you remember the trial of the century? O.J. Simpson
cindy lindsay:
Yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
was on trial for killing his wife, Nicole, and Ron Goldman. And, you know, he was acquitted for that. But I guess multiple years later, he was, in 2007, he was charged with robbery. and he went into jail for nine years because of that.
cindy lindsay:
Wow. Okay, that
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah,
cindy lindsay:
to me.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
so he didn't get caught the first time, but you
cindy lindsay:
Yeah,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
know.
cindy lindsay:
and since he's acquitted, we can't say he did
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
You
cindy lindsay:
it
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
killed.
cindy lindsay:
or that he even attempted to do it. But on the other hand, robbery, I mean, this man was a millionaire, wasn't he? I would assume he was.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, he was a millionaire. Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
So, wow, that's, I think, a story about karmic drivers, the energy that's in the karmic field. We have our desires, our needs, our angers, our pains. are in that karmic field and they drive our behavior. For a man who's wealthy to steal, there's some energetic driving that, some sense of need, some sense of don't have, some sense of I deserve or whatever. I'm not sure what it is, but there's some energetic karmic driver there that's pushing that action because it doesn't make sense in the life otherwise.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, to have someone of that level to come in with a gun. It
cindy lindsay:
Oh,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
means
cindy lindsay:
armed robbery. Oh
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
armed
cindy lindsay:
my goodness.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
robbery. Yeah, yeah, armed robbery. Yeah. So it was, it was bizarre and I've always wanted so thank you for, for looking at that and how that, you know, how that changed the lives of his family and his children.
cindy lindsay:
Oh yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And his children have changed names and you know, that, you know, how do you function when your father you know, well, most of Americans, and this is just my perspective, think that he did kill Ron and Nicole. We don't know what he was acquitted. But, you know, this is just kind of like almost tempting fate.
cindy lindsay:
Right. I mean, it's you can get away, you know, that's that's sort of an interesting thing. I'm not to say that he got away with it because we don't know, allegedly, you know, like, but you can get away with things in this life you think you're getting away with. And guess what? Ultimately, you're not. That that is how it works. That is how the energy works. You everything you do has some energetic vibrational reaction on you.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah. You touched upon previous karmas and how, you know, how they connect to, or how karmas connect to previous lives. Is there anything more that you want to add to that?
cindy lindsay:
Well, I think we can start to recognize that there's a potentially a past life karma happening when a pattern that is persist throughout the lifetime starts fairly early, like at birth or in the first years of life. We oftentimes believe in my tradition that you come into a family that will kind of play your karmas on you. So it's... So your karmic nature comes forward fairly early in terms of your personality, even though you know you're just an infant, but also the things that happen to you and play throughout your lifetime then. So you were abused as a child and now everybody you meet is an abuser. You end up marrying abusers, your friends are being abusers. Why is that? What's happening there? It has an energy field to that repeated pattern, especially if it's starting early in life that we oftentimes think, okay. could be past life current.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So you can actually look at it from beginning of a child's life. You can, you know, I mean, your lens, because you are in this tradition, you would see it ahead of, you know, a lot of people who aren't in this tradition, is what you're saying, is that you have the perspectives and the tools within you to see it as where I would have, I would struggle and have a more difficult time. at seeing that.
cindy lindsay:
Well, and we can always just pin it back to the childhood. I mean, that would be the psychological version of this. And certainly, OK, they had a bad childhood, or they had an abusive childhood. Now they seek out abusers or whatever. You can definitely pin it back that far. But when it's happening at birth or something, like somebody at birth gets abandoned by the mother, or somebody at birth ends up in an incubator for six months and was never touched during that period of time other than by the nurses. You know, that infant didn't do anything to create that. You know, what is the situation that created that? That's when I start to guess past life karma.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I really like that point. I never looked at it from that perspective. So thank you. Thank you for that. How does karma manifest in this life? How do we make karma in this
cindy lindsay:
We
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
life?
cindy lindsay:
are making karma every second. You and I are making karma in this very moment, which is why I'm being
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Is this
cindy lindsay:
very
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
karma?
cindy lindsay:
careful
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Are we making
cindy lindsay:
about how
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
karma
cindy lindsay:
I talk about
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
right
cindy lindsay:
urgent
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
here?
cindy lindsay:
symptoms. But
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Ugh.
cindy lindsay:
every thought, every emotion, every action, every reaction has an energy to it. Like I said, physics tells us everything is energy. It indeed is. And every single one of those things has an energy to it. And that energy is layering on us. And it is creating our interaction with the world. It is not only creating the way we perceive things, which is a psychological mode of that. It does create how we perceive things, but it is literally creating how the world responds to us as well. So we are constantly manifesting karma, good and bad. And
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Well.
cindy lindsay:
really it's about the balancing game here, you know, where nobody's gonna be 100% perfect, right?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
So, but we want to try to get on balance those positive karmas or to be able to meet the negative karmas in a way that we switch it to the positive.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Right, no, absolutely. I want to ask you this very specific question. There's a lot of really good people. When bad things happen to good people, I mean, there's many books written on that from many different spiritual teachers. Why do bad things happen to good people?
cindy lindsay:
Well, I mean, the short answer is karma. But
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I'm sorry.
cindy lindsay:
let's say, let's give a little example. Let's say that you're a beautiful person. You've been loving to all your friends and your family. You care about the world. You're a nice person. You're smart and fun and all sorts of things. And then one day you're at a car wreck and lose the use of your legs. You know, what? Why? There's no explanation for that in the life whatsoever. But there might be a karmic explanation from a previous lifetime, for example. Those things that come out of the blue. You're a good person. You did not create this. You did not. This is not something you just said or did reflecting back on you like our previous examples. This is something that just out of the blue, you don't deserve it, you know, in terms of how you behaved in this lifetime. So I mean... Why? Why that? You
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah,
cindy lindsay:
know?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I want to tell you, I did not, you didn't, you don't know this, but that exactly happened to one of my clients. That exactly happened.
cindy lindsay:
Oh my goodness.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And he has now left the planet. After, you know, being in a wheelchair for a long time. Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
Well,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Well, you did not know this, but
cindy lindsay:
no,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I,
cindy lindsay:
I didn't know that. But it's interesting I chose
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
you
cindy lindsay:
that example out of my brain here in this
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
know,
cindy lindsay:
moment. Because
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
This really...
cindy lindsay:
if we look at it as karma, what's the advantage of looking at that as karma? If we look at it and we can say, well, if somebody can say, well, OK, maybe this is a payment for something that happened a previous lifetime, or maybe this was just part of that energy field and I was going to meet it sooner or later. then there's a kind of detachment that you can get with it. I mean, it's very hard to be detached from not having the use of your legs. But you can get a kind of detachment that says, I'm not this, my life has an over, this is an aspect of who I am. If I can meet this from the greatest grace I possibly can, things do get better. That is the nature of karma. That if we, these are action and reaction cycles that we're in, just like day and night, light and dark, good and evil. They are their reaction cycles that if we meet them with the highest grace we can, they increase, they become higher, we become higher. Our souls are enriched and we actually live a more full and complete life from facing these negativities. And that's the point of them really.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, no, absolutely. But in the Vedic tradition you talk about the matrix. I really want to dig deeper in this and I want you to extrapolate what the matrix is in the Vedic perspective.
cindy lindsay:
Well, I call it the matrix sometimes to help people understand what it is. The Vedic understanding of it is calls it the illusion.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Okay.
cindy lindsay:
But to me, it's it we understand it in modern terms because we've seen either this movie, The Matrix, or we've seen sci fi things where people are all hooked in and they they're in some virtual reality and that they think is absolutely real. And usually in these sci-fi movies, they're being held by some evil force, you know, who wants them, you know, just trapped in some virtual reality that they think is 100% real. But the truth is we live in a virtual reality that we think is 100% real. We are souls here on a journey in a body. We are one with everything. We are one with God. That soul is not separate from God. That's why the soul is a piece of God in you. It is not separate from God. We are not separate from one another. We are not separate from the plants and animals. Everything is one in reality. But we come into this belief in separation. Adi Shankaracharya, who's a very ancient saint in the Hindu traditions, defined illusion as the belief in separation.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Really?
cindy lindsay:
Yes, it's a state of consciousness that thinks that we are separate from one another, separate from God, separate from the plants and animals, separate from everything, and that creates this initial illusion in which we live. So it's not created by some evil force out there that's got us lying in tanks with our heads wired up to see this virtual reality. We are the creators of our own virtual reality. And that perception that we hold, that concept, that belief in separation leads to all sorts of other beliefs. We start attaching to the illusion that we believe. We start believing we are our thoughts and our actions. We start believing we are the way somebody treated us. We start believing we are these. And so we start playing that illusion even more deeply on ourselves. We get further and further away from the soul nature, which is one with everything and one with God, and more and more connected into events and people and things inside this illusion.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, wow. That's, so we are in the matrix.
cindy lindsay:
We are in the
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So
cindy lindsay:
Matrix.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
we are in the matrix right now, we are in the matrix. So we can, our positive thoughts create negative, our positive thoughts create positive actions and our negative thoughts create negative actions. Would you agree with that?
cindy lindsay:
Absolutely, and our negative emotions create negative actions and negative thoughts. It's all an interactive game there. The positive emotions, positive thoughts, create positive actions. And that's really important for us because we've talked once before on negative thinking, I think. And so,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yes, we did.
cindy lindsay:
you know...
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Negative thoughts. Yes. Yeah, that was show number two. Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
Yeah, negative thinking is part of a karmic cycle. And it recreates. It creates new energy that creates more negativity coming to you, which then creates more negative thinking, which creates more energy, which creates more negative things coming to you.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, and I it's really hard and I don't know if you have difficulty but I have difficulty shifting people who have all these negative thoughts and you know it's work to tell you know it's work it's real work to have them shift out of that like they just want to play that frame all the time.
cindy lindsay:
It's their total reality creation. And they're usually doing it for a reason. And I think you recognize this too in your clients. They're doing it because that makes them feel safe or because they get to blame other people there for or because they don't believe in themselves. They were always told they were not good enough. So they have that underlying wound. And the underlying wound could also have been a karmic issue for that matter. They have that underlying wound that causes them to always go to that negative place. But if you can step it back to the wounds, you do better. And if you can step it back to possibly the karmic energetic source, you can do even better in helping them let go. But eventually it's up to them.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, so how do we get out of this negative karmic cycle that we can create or we were born with? I mean, I think we can do both in this life. Don't you think?
cindy lindsay:
Well, we need to understand first of all our part in the play of karma is that we are an energy field. We are creating our thoughts, our actions, our reactions, our emotions create that energy field. We need to see ourselves, empower ourselves to realize that we are the creators of the matrix here. We have created this and we can recreate this and we can change this. So it requires that kind of understanding to begin with. And to me that's a very empowering understanding. We're not being held captive by other people's actions and behaviors towards us. We are in charge of how we experience the world and how the world experiences us and responds to us.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Correct. Yeah, absolutely.
cindy lindsay:
So that's a basic notion of karma, basically.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I can't agree with you more.
cindy lindsay:
And
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So
cindy lindsay:
to do, well, so to do that, oh, go ahead, do you mind?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Who's a pinocular?
cindy lindsay:
Oh, I was gonna say to do that, I was with my intro there. I got a little long-winded. To do that, what takes is a little separating off first. You know, you're having the thought, you're having the feeling, you're having the, you know, the response, reaction in you. You have to be able to create a kind of witness or observer to that. Because the more we get into the deep cycle of karma, the more we identify with that illusion, the more it becomes who we are. The Course in Miracles talked about it as every time you have a reaction, you are creating your identity on the basis of an illusion.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Really?
cindy lindsay:
Yeah, do we want to create our identity on the basis of illusions or do we want to create our identity on the basis of the soul? So here we are, we have to look at those reactions, look at those emotions, look at those thoughts, and be able to pull away from the I am angry, I am hurt, the I am of it all, to I feel angry, I'm experiencing some hurt in this moment, boy, this could be hurtful if I wanted to go there with this. We have to get at least that much separation in a witness point. to what's happening so that we're not taking it as our identity, but instead we're able to observe it as something that's occurring there in the moment that we can choose with respect to. That's sort of step one of the process, though.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So you can choose, so basically what you're saying is when you're conscious enough, you have the ability to choose the reality that you want.
cindy lindsay:
Right, well, yeah, you have to kind of work at it a little bit.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, I would think so because you can't flip it. I mean, some people who come in to do work are not that conscious.
cindy lindsay:
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I mean, they're not psychologically aware and it takes them some time to become psychologically aware so that they even, because it's like melded, it's like melded, all these things are melded. They haven't been able to separate any of them yet. So the work is to get them to separate that. so that they can step back. Otherwise, it's a mush, it's a melded form of, you
cindy lindsay:
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
know.
cindy lindsay:
And we call it having an observer, having a witness. But if you're identifying with all these things that have happened to you, everybody hates me, I'm no good, whatever the identity piece of that is, if your identity is coming from there, the I ams are coming from there, then you're not being the great I am that is within you. You are the big I am. You are God within. And you have to step away from these smaller, these I ams that you've created to be able to even stand in the state of you that is your soul energy.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, definitely. And that's the work and it's not easy work.
cindy lindsay:
It's not easy work. And yet, if you can get there, do you know Thich Nhat Hanh?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yes,
cindy lindsay:
He's
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
of course
cindy lindsay:
passed
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I
cindy lindsay:
away
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
love
cindy lindsay:
now, but
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
him.
cindy lindsay:
a Buddhist
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
monk.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yes, yes.
cindy lindsay:
I was watching him talk about this at one point in time on YouTube, and he was saying what he does with his emotions, like the negative emotions he doesn't want to create from, like anger or something. He gave the anger example. And he says he puts it off to the side of him. He acknowledges it all. I feel anger, not I am angry, but I feel angry. And sort of puts it off to the side of him and then he talks to it from his soul self. He says, oh, my sweet little anger. I know you think you're justified. I know the things that happened to you. And those weren't right. Those weren't fair. I agree. But I'm just going to stand here and love you and let you know you don't have to feel that. You can feel my love instead. And then he just loves that aspect of himself until it melts into being the love that he's standing in to do that little practice.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
That is a really extraordinary technique. I think I'm going to use that. You know, it's
cindy lindsay:
It's beautiful.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
not one that I've ever heard. So I thank you for bringing that up because I'm going to incorporate that into my practice right now.
cindy lindsay:
Okay,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Because
cindy lindsay:
good.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
it's really, yeah, it's, I think we, I could, you know, teach my clients to do that.
cindy lindsay:
And they're welcome to have, the anger's welcome to have a conversation back with them too, saying, yes, but I, la la la la la. And the answer always from the soul self is, I love you. I will love you no matter what. I love you even though this happened to you. And you can feel this love too. That's always the answer from the soul place, no matter what comes forward from the emotional stance.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah. How do you think we can get unstuck from karmic patterns that we were born with? that's
cindy lindsay:
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
sort of connected to this but not really. I mean it we can separate it emotionally but how can we get unstuck from karma that we were born with?
cindy lindsay:
I
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I
cindy lindsay:
think...
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
mean it's got to be I mean for some
cindy lindsay:
Yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
people it's not easy because some people have much higher levels of karmic intake
cindy lindsay:
they do.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
and some people have less and those with high levels of karma the process is much more difficult and they struggle with it for sometimes decades because
cindy lindsay:
Yeah,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
of
cindy lindsay:
high
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
the...
cindy lindsay:
levels
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
What?
cindy lindsay:
of
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
negative karma, yeah, absolutely. And it happens to them over and over again, and they're struggling, struggling. I think the first is become aware of the pattern itself. If you're not aware of the pattern, you can't address it. You're always responding from the karmic energetic. You're always responding from the karmic drivers, those feelings, those desires, those needs, those responses. You're always in that play, and it's just gonna keep rolling you down the hill. So you have to get some observation that you're in a play here, that you need to end the—you have to change that reaction. It is that reaction state of your emotion, your thought, and then your action. But it is that reaction state that is keeping you hooked in the karma. It's probably what you did last time, probably what you did two lifetimes ago, is probably the same way you acted before. mean to you and you felt vengeful and you took revenge, for example. Like our girl in the, you know, whatever, our girl who was just came with a jealousy response instead. You have to look at those responses and say, okay, do I, am I happy responding in my life in this way? Is that really serving me? You know, you have to get some perspective on that. causes you to want to shift.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm going to give you an example.
cindy lindsay:
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And I'm sure you've had this in your practice, because I have this in mind and, you know, out in the world and also women choosing emotionally unavailable men over and over and over. Dr. Connie Zweg, who I had on last time, talked about this as romancing the shadow,
cindy lindsay:
How I love
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
which
cindy lindsay:
that
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I really
cindy lindsay:
you
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
loved,
cindy lindsay:
love that
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
right?
cindy lindsay:
it is
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
And she wrote a book called Romancing the Shadow, which is, you know, all of us are people that do that. They're romancing that dark side because you know in art, my practice, your practice, and a million other practices in the world, this is happening with women and also men. Not only women, it's happening both sides of the fence. So, you know, that's karma. I mean,
cindy lindsay:
That shadow
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
that was
cindy lindsay:
piece
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
one.
cindy lindsay:
is karma,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
yeah. That shadow piece that they're always looking for that person, that person that doesn't want to love them to love them somehow. They're always constantly looking for that, to make that person love them somehow. The one that's not going to, the one that's not going to be there. And sometimes you pin it back to absent daddy, you know, or something like that in childhood. But, But the thing is that if it keeps repeating, you have to say, OK, why am I doing this? Is this making me happy? What am I being attracted to? What needs to happen there? You have to have that witnessing before you can
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
choose a different response to it.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Otherwise, you continue to play the pattern over and over for this lifetime, the next lifetime and how many other lifetimes until you
cindy lindsay:
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
wake up and change and make a change.
cindy lindsay:
And one way that I use with my clients here on that is to have them go out into nature where they can't be seen or heard. So they're in pure nature, not, you know, people running around with balls and kids right around them. Nobody can hear you or see you. And sit and talk to their soul. and say, listen, you've played this on me, what, 20 times in my life now? I'm not getting the point. I don't understand why you're playing this. I don't understand what you want from me to do differently. I understand the play hurts. I understand I don't want to do it again. I understand that each time I'm seeking love, I get that piece or whatever it is. You have this long conversation with the soul. You tell it your problem. You tell it how you. you don't understand it, you tell it what you do understand, you can cry to it, you talk to your soul saying, why can't you stop playing this on me? This is an energy layered on you. You're playing it on me. Please help me to find my way out of it. And then they sit in that conversation until they feel like they've, what happens is you get into this conversation and over time, you may have some emotional ups and downs during it. But over the arc of it, you start to feel a kind of strange inner peace starting. And that is the soul coming up to answer you. You start to feel this just like somehow it's going to be okay or somehow it's all right. Some people get even messages, well, then stop doing this, you know, and you go, oh, okay, I'll try stop doing that. You know? Some people, they... Whole nature around them starts to respond. It starts to rain suddenly, or a bird flies over and starts singing to them. There's amazing things that start to happen when they can get past their story that they're telling the soul and really say to soul, I love you, I want to be you, I want to live my life from you, I don't want to live my life in this way. When you really surrender that to the soul, the soul... does come up and come forward. It's evidenced oftentimes by the nature responding. You feel it as an inner peace. And I've had wonderful success with this with people. They oftentimes need to do it more than once. They need to go out multiple times just for the pieces that come up. Each time a peace that comes up that they don't understand or they don't feel like they can get past to talk to their soul about it until they get that experience of the arc of peace coming that way. feeling of peace or relief starting in them and then stay there until you, until you, soul says something to you or you feel it's done and okay, you're done for the day.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, I'm going to be sending all my clients into
cindy lindsay:
Oh, please
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
the wilderness.
cindy lindsay:
do. Please
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
No,
cindy lindsay:
do. They
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
seriously,
cindy lindsay:
have to believe
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
including
cindy lindsay:
in soul,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
me,
cindy lindsay:
unfortunately,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I'm going
cindy lindsay:
but...
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
into the wilderness and I'm going to be talking to soul. Definitely. What an extraordinary technique that was, Cindy. I really just, it just touched me so deeply as you spoke about it. Really beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
cindy lindsay:
Oh, my
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
That
cindy lindsay:
pleasure.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
was amazing. I'd like to see the woods full with people trying to get connected to their soul, wouldn't you?
cindy lindsay:
Oh, absolutely. Because
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
The world
cindy lindsay:
most people
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
would be
cindy lindsay:
don't
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
better.
cindy lindsay:
even believe they have a soul, so I would love them to just believe they do. But then I would love them to get connected to it. Because when we do, that light inside of us is a joy. It's a bliss beyond measure, even in the most horrible moments of your life, of which we've all had some, right? If you can contact that energy in you, it's OK then. It's alright.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, no, absolutely. Now you talk about the inner child also, and as a way of working through karma. Can you talk to us about what that work is? I mean,
cindy lindsay:
Yeah.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I do a little bit of it, but you're the expert in that area.
cindy lindsay:
I love the inner child stuff because even for somebody who doesn't believe in past lives or karma, it's available as a tool for them. Once we figured out where this came from in their childhood, whatever the thing that they're experiencing is, came from in their childhood, the feeling that they're having or the responses that they're giving, where that got triggered in childhood, to go back to that child. Again, standing in the soul self, but I talked about it more with people who don't really think about soul or karma as standing in the perfect parent place or in your loving self and not being the emotions and feelings of the child, but standing again, it requires a separation, okay? But standing in the good parent self or the soul self, the loving self and turning to that child and just loving that child. It's a lot like the tic-not-ha and the thing, only we're doing it with an inner child now,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow,
cindy lindsay:
right?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
okay, that's a beautiful transition there. So the tic-nock-hun talking, going into the forest, and then the inner child work. So there's three very
cindy lindsay:
There are three wonderful
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
powerful
cindy lindsay:
ones.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
techniques that we can do with our clients to, or just by them listening here, they can get the information and move it forward.
cindy lindsay:
Do we have
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow,
cindy lindsay:
time for an example of that one?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
I do, please.
cindy lindsay:
OK, all right. So I know a woman who, as a child, had a very demanding, critical, angry father who pointed a lot of that at her as a kid. And she felt very angry and very hurt and was really very angry at him. And she would, and her father knew that. So she would come out and she'd be just furious. And he'd say, okay, you want to hit me? Go ahead and hit me. And she would try to hit him and he would just grab her hand and hold it. And then she would try to hit him with the other hand and now she has both hands held. Then she tries to kick him now she's got a foot and two, she's a big guy, foot and two hands held. She tries to kick him with the other hand, foot, all arms held. She's trying to hit him with his leg and he just, she just pushes her away. He's got her all held completely bound. and doesn't let her go until she gives up and weeping.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow. Wow.
cindy lindsay:
Well, you can imagine the kind of things she learned from that. I don't know what dad thought he was trying to teach there, but she learned all sorts of angry, you know, anger, but also helplessness and going inert and going deer in the headlights when things came at her. You know, she had a lot of.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, she was stopped with her ability to fight.
cindy lindsay:
She was stopped, yeah, absolutely.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
She could no longer fight for her life.
cindy lindsay:
Right.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
She was made, you know, forced into paralysis in some way.
cindy lindsay:
Exactly, exactly. So when we finally, you know, and she presented with all the things that couldn't, you know, where she would go, you know, into paralysis. And we finally got back to this moment in childhood. And so we loved that child, we did the inner child work with the just loving that little girl who had all of her anger for good reasons, and, you know, so on and so forth, and loving her and telling her you're strong, you're beautiful. you're wonderful, those kinds of things. When she could finally feel that and wasn't having as much of a childlike reaction to things, the next step we did was to go back to that situation, put her back in that situation in her mind. She's standing there with her little girl and her adult self facing dad. And dad says, you're angry at me, go ahead and hit me. And her task was to find the divine response in her. And what she came up with was, you know, Dad, I am angry at you for a lot of reasons, but I don't want to be the same angry that you are. I'm not going to hold that as me. That isn't who I am. I'm greater than that, and I'm greater than what you did to me.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
for sure. Absolutely.
cindy lindsay:
It was beautiful.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Thank
cindy lindsay:
I'm tearing
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
you.
cindy lindsay:
up now even as I think about it because after that she was free. She
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah,
cindy lindsay:
was free.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
yeah, absolutely. And there's this whole thing I want to talk about is forgiveness. Because forgiveness is a really big thing that I know, you know, I don't want to forgive, no forgiving, blah, blah, blah. Talk to me about forgiveness when these horrible karmic or abusive things happen. Talk
cindy lindsay:
Yeah,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
to me.
cindy lindsay:
well, both compassion and forgiveness are almost bridges from the wounded state of our karmic responses to a higher state of who we are. And the one I think who demonstrates this amazingly is the Dalai Lama. People have asked him, why do you forgive the Chinese for the genocide, the slaughter, the invasion that happened? And he says, yes. And one journalist went the next step and said, but isn't that letting them off the hook or something? How can you forgive them for that? And his answer was not all paraphrased here because I can't remember the exact answer, but his answer was something like, because forgiveness isn't letting somebody off the hook. It is not acknowledging that what they did was right. You still hold that what they did was wrong, and devastatingly so. But. You choose not to be devastated by it. You choose not to pull that into you as a pain or an anger. That forgiveness is giving yourself the freedom to go back to your true nature of compassion.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, wow, and that's not an easy task.
cindy lindsay:
No, and the Dalai Lama himself says that it takes him, now he's a couple of heartbeats to get that switch inside of him when things happen. He still has a reaction, we're all human, even the Dalai Lama's a human being. And, but it takes him a couple of heartbeats to make that switch. Now if it took us a couple of weeks to make that switch, I'd be thrilled. We're not the Dalai Lama. Even if it takes us a couple of years, great, we did it. But to make that switch is... is exactly claiming your power and your true self back again. Forgiveness is reclaiming your own true self.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah, and yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And we, what, I mean, isn't that what we all want to be on our true soul path, our soul energy driving our life? And you and I both agree that soul is the driver of our lives, correct?
cindy lindsay:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
And my teacher Sri Kaleshwar gave a process. So, for example, if your mother abused you, you get a picture of your mother, and what you can see into her eyes, eye to eye, is a soul to soul connection. So you're looking into the eyes of your mother, and then, and you make that connect there, and maybe you're feeling angry and who knows what you're feeling when you're first making that connect to the picture. But then you put your head down to the floor. Now you're not surrendering to your mother here. You're not bowing down to your mother. You're bowing down to your own soul. You're surrendering this to God.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So hold on, I want to just get the form. You're sitting on the floor with the picture in front of you. And so you look into the eyes and then when you've done that for how long? Five
cindy lindsay:
Oh,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
minutes.
cindy lindsay:
just a couple of breaths full of looking into the eyes, you know, just
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Okay.
cindy lindsay:
a couple of those. And then you're just going to bow your head down. You can put down mom's picture. You're bowing your head down to the floor. If you can't bend that far, bow your head down to a table. But it's an act of surrender to God. It's an act of surrendering into your soul, into your soul energy. Bow down. You tell her whatever you need to say. I hated you, you did this to me, you did that to me. Whatever it is that you need to say, if you need to cry, you cry. If you need to scream, you scream. If you need to use expletives, use expletives. It's a spiritual process, but if you need to get it out, get it out. And that also has an arc where it peaks emotionally and then it sort of starts to release and go down. And once it starts to release and go down, then you try and get, before you can get your head up off that floor. or that table, you have to get to a place of compassion. This says something like, if the best you can do is, I think you must have been abused too as a kid, Mom, or you wouldn't have behaved this way, okay, great. If that's the best you can do that day, fine. That's fantastic. But you get to some place of compassion, some state where you're not holding this as your own pain anymore. that same notion as from the Dalai Lama. You've now stepped into the truth of who you are by holding a compassion there rather than holding a pain. So you do this and then you can, once you get to that place of compassion, you can take your head up and you do this every day for 41 days and you'll be amazed at what happens. You will be amazed at what happens. I mean, massively drug addicted, mentally ill mother abusing him, I mean, major. He was telling me after the first couple of times, he says, I was down there so long, my head got flat here. You know, like it took him a really, really long time, the first, you know, five, ten times. He said, but it got shorter and shorter and shorter. And by the end of it, he was feeling, he was so much lighter. You could see it. He was feeling lighter. His depression was lifting. And his mother, who was still alive, contacted him. And he was able to behave with her in a completely different way. And when he did, she behaved differently back.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, that's an incredible story. Thank you so much for sharing that. You have given us so many techniques to use. I am deeply, deeply grateful, but I have one final question for you.
cindy lindsay:
Okay.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
We all are continuously creating karmas. That's clear from our story today. What is your best advice? for all of us to handle living with this kind of mindset.
cindy lindsay:
I think it's stop believing that you are what you think, what you feel, what you do. You're not your job. You are not who your friends are. You are not how much money you make. Stop thinking you are these things of the illusion. Stop thinking you are even your own mind or your own thoughts or your own emotions. You are not. You are a soul. You are a being of light that is pure loving. God energy. That is the truth of you. Seek it out. Find it. Go quiet. Go into nature. Talk to it. Go quiet. Go into stillness or meditation and try to feel it. Find that place in you that is without any of these definitions, without even a witness. It is just is. And you will find that there is a bliss in you. beyond belief, and that is who you truly are. And when you take your actions from there, karma, you're winning it constantly. Karma is no longer a problem.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Wow, wow, you are so incredibly brilliant. Thank you for sharing all of this for, for me and for all the people that will be watching this. This is mind blowing. This could completely change the lives and the trajectory for millions and millions of people. I bless you, my dear. You are amazing. You are a goddess. Thank you so much for being on the show, honestly, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
cindy lindsay:
Thank you and thank all the divine ones as well.
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Okay, we're just gonna, we're just gonna not not turn anything off yet.
cindy lindsay:
Okay, good. Did we do it on time? Did we
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Oh,
cindy lindsay:
make our
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
hang
cindy lindsay:
timing?
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
on, I don't see the record thing here. Can you? It was roughly 55 minutes. Oh, so that that's perfect.
cindy lindsay:
Hey,
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
Yeah.
cindy lindsay:
we did it! Woohoo!
Dr Selina Matthews PhD:
So I'm not sure where it is. Here's 50. They've changed the screen. this one leave leave no that might leave you know I'll try the red button