Why do you not recognise yourself any more? Because your glass got filled by everybody except you.

You are born an empty glass. Then everybody starts pouring. Parents, school, the person who treated you badly at sixteen, the films, the adverts, the culture you visited once. By the time you look in it, you are drinking swamp water made of other people's choices, and it never quenched anything. When I hit the bottom, it was like somebody took the base out of the glass and emptied it. I still had food, care and health. I had no personality left at all. That turned out to be the good bit.

One thing to try: Name one thing in your glass that you never actually chose. Pour that one out.

In this episode

• (1:33) The ego forms and the pouring starts
• (2:38) Right down to the hair colour we look for
• (4:12) Trying to cram new things into a full glass
• (5:18) A glass full of everybody else's stuff
• (6:20) Somebody took the bottom out of mine
• (8:06) Swamp water never quenched anybody's thirst
• (9:17) You are the empty glass. Being nothing, you are everything

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.

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Hey, welcome to this week's podcast.

The podcast that gives you a little inner peace when you need it most and you have it least. I'm

Steven Webb, your host, and the podcast is called Stillness in the Storms. Now I want to talk about a

metaphor this week and a concept that I've been talking about quite a bit in the Inner Peace Academy that

I run. And throughout October, you can join the Inner Peace Academy Half Price to celebrate going over the

50,000 likes on Facebook. I know it isn't about the numbers, but it is about the numbers and it isn't,

if you know what I mean. It makes me makes my ego feel good. I still have an ego. We

all have an ego. There's nothing wrong with an ego. It's just how we use it and what we do

with it. So if you can share this podcast, if you can support it by giving it giving a review

or even just putting a comment, really, really appreciate that. But I want to talk about this

metaphor of, we often get asked that, is your glass half full or half empty? I want to change that

metaphor around a little bit and think of it as your life. When

you're very young, when you're born, you're an empty glass. That's

what you are. You're a blank canvas. Pure emptiness. Or some might say you're pure love. But you're pure you

You haven't got your thoughts and beliefs. You haven't got your personality yet. In effect, your ego.

That doesn't develop yet for a few months. You just want safety, warmth, food, nourishment.

But as you grow, especially when your ego starts to form, we start to fill this glass with what we

think cleanses our thirst. And as we fill this glass, we're choosing what goes into it. What we like we

put into it. But unfortunately the glass has no lid and it has no choice but to receive whatever's

given to us. So if we end up with Figure in our lives that are beating us. That also goes

into the glass. Or somebody that is forcing us to have a certain belief, that goes into the glass. Or

perhaps religion or a belief that a certain thing is right. You know, you may have a certain way of

looking at politics, your parents. And as we're growing up, they put that in the glass as well. And then

we have we form opinions on virtually everything. You know, whether it's the type of films we like. Type of

music we like. Any kind of entertainment. Even right down to in that glass it's whether we like certain hair

colour on the kind of partners we're seeking. We might date someone when we're 15, 16 years old

and they might treat us not very nice and therefore the rest of our lives we won't go with somebody

with the same colour hair as them because it gives us a trigger and a reaction whenever we come across

them again. So that's what this glass has been filled with. And it gets filled up with everybody else's opinion,

everybody else's thoughts. From our parents to our grandparents to our careers teachers to our friends, our

peers, our enemies or what we deem as enemies. Disney movies. Everything. Everything is filling this glass.

So we get to a stage where this glass is a full To say, the glass doesn't grow this This

is the other problem. Your glass can only hold so much. So you get to a point as a teenager,

you're happy with your glass. You filled it. You don't realise everybody else has filled it, but you think you

filled it. And then you start going through life. Because as a teenager, you know everything. I did. As a

teenager, my glass is full. I'm not interested in your opinion. I've got my opinion and I'm sticking to my

opinion and that's it.

As we start to go through life, we start to come across other people. We experience different things. We start

opening up. We develop more empathy and compassion we We experience more things in life. We might go on

holiday and experience a different culture. And then we're kind of wanting to put this in the glass, but we

don't really have much room.

We're trying to cram it in the glass. We're trying our best to fit it in here and fit it

in there. But it doesn't work. So we end up overwhelmed. We end up like... And we end up

wanting to be a bit more like the new things we're discovering. But

the glass is so full we don't even recognise who we are. So... It's the reason why so many great

teachers in the past suddenly realised in their mid-30s

that I don't recognise myself.

And we go wandering and we're looking for ourselves. We don't recognise the life we're living. You know, we love

our kids, but we're like, what happened? I blinked my eye and here I am. Here

I am 20 years later. I'm not living any of the things I thought I was going to live when

I was nine ten years old with all those ambitions in my life. So

we've ended up with a glass that's full of everybody else's stuff. And

that's why we don't recognise ourselves. But here's the thing, what do we do about it?

We have to realise that that's not us. We

have to realise realise that it's not us and we have to empty the glass. And this is the most

terrifying thing. And you hear about people waking up overnight. Eckhart Tolle was one. I would say I

had the same thing with A Dark Night of the Soul when I was 40. When I found myself single.

And it can happen at any point to anybody and it doesn't have to be a big thing in life.

You know, I broke my neck and ended up paralysed I didn't do it. I went bankrupt I didn't do

it. I was cheated on. That didn't do it. But someone finished with me and it just took away everything.

I'd wake up in the morning and I had, I felt like I had nothing the roof over my head.

Still have food. Still had my care. Still had my health. But none of that mattered. I'd lost everything.

And my it was like overnight someone had taken the bottom out of the glass and emptied it.

I was no personality at all. If someone come and said to me, well, explain to me as a person,

I'd go, I don't know what I am.

So I had that moment of, ah, now I can fill this glass with what I want to fill it

with. Unfortunately, not everybody gets that opportunity of what's called the dark night of the soul where the ego says,

I give up. You're on your own. Everything I've done for 40 years hasn't helped, so I'm out of

here for a few days to give you this opportunity to step in. So

if you haven't got that, you're gonna have to do it the hard way. You're gonna have to literally get

rid of the water bit by bit. And you do that by sitting down on the cushion You do that

by meditating. You do that by reading books. Recognising what you aren't, which is really fundamental.

Recognising that you're not all these thoughts and opinions and beliefs. Recognise who those thoughts are. Oh, that's

my dad's opinion. Oh, that's my uncle's opinion. Oh, that's my career's teacher at school opinion. That's theirs let Leave

those opinions to them. Don't take them with you. Don't do their heavy lifting for them. Do yours.

And then it comes down to when you do start doing this, you can then rebuild and fill that

glass with what truly gives you your nourishment. What truly clenches your thirst.

Because that swamp water in your glass that's made up by everybody else doesn't clench your thirst. That's why you're

unhappy. That's why you're miserable. That's why you find it really hard to find happiness. We're putting in

the odd little nice thing we enjoy, hoping that it's gonna to seep through to the rest of our lives.

It doesn't. It's temporary. The good night out. The new boyfriend. The new girlfriend. The new um

stereo the The new phone. The upgrades. They're all shoved into that swamp that makes us feel a little bit

better for a few hours. We're still in the swamp. So we got to drain that swamp completely, nearly. And

I come across a wonderful poem by Kula Rinpoche. And it goes like this. You live in an illusion

and the appearance of things. There is a reality, but you do not know this. When you understand

this, you will see that you are nothing.

Fundamentally, you're none of the things in the glass. You are the empty glass. And

being nothing, you are everything. You

can fill the glass with what you want. So

if you want to fill it with love and compassion and self-help books and the movies you want, do it

with what floats your boat, what clenches your thirst. So the thing is, if you fill that glass with what

you want, when you drink it, you feel fulfilled. You feel like as if that

thirst is nourished. If

somebody else gives you the meal of their choice, you're like, yeah, that was all right. But if you choose

the meal, if you choose the drink, the problem is we haven't chose the meal or the drink. We've chose

to allow other people to fill our glass for us. If this makes sense, let me know.

Now then you can support my work if you go to my website and go click on the top, Patreon,

and you can support me there. Just the price of a cup of coffee per month will help to support

my work helped me to release more guided meditations and podcast And it helps me

to produce more by maybe I can employ someone to do better editing. But I really appreciate you

listening. Share the hell out of it. I want the whole world to hear it. You know, my ego is

still alive and well. But fill your glass with what you choose to put into it. But first of all,

you've got to empty some of it out. And you do that by finding the gap in your thoughts. Finding

the gap in your opinions. Check

out my other podcast. Check out a podcast that... If I think too much, can I still meditate? Because that

will help you to create the gap. To enable you to do this. Take care guys. I do a new

podcast every Monday night. Yeah, check out my website for free meditations and I would love for you to become

a patron. Go to StevenWebb.com. Links are at the top. Have an amazing week. Namaste.