Episode 54 - Peter Rengel: Learning To Live In Love

Transcript

Announcer: This program is intended for mature audiences only.

Chip August: Welcome to Sex, Love and Intimacy. I am your host, Chip August. Today on the show we are going to be talking about living life in love. We are talking with one of my dearest friends, a man I know for 20 years, a man who has been my teacher and my co-worker, Peter Rengel.

Peter Rengel is a pretty extraordinary guy. When I first met him, he was leading a heart meditation to a group of volunteers for a love, intimacy and sexuality workshop. This is a man who really knows about heart and relationship and sort of that connection between soul and love.

Peter has been a facilitator with the Human Awareness Institute for, I think, 19 years now, a long time. He is the author of two terrific books, a book of aphorisms called "Seeds of Light, Inspirations From My Higher Self", and then he has also got an amazing book called "Living Life in Love: Integrating Western Psychology and Eastern Spirituality" which is just this wonderful transformational tool that people use.

He is the creator of a workshop called Spiritual Awakening that he has led worldwide. He leads classes in the art of being. With his wife, he has a couple's class called Becoming Better Friends and Lovers. I actually once attended a class where he had video, he and his wife in bed having conversations and talking more about intimate conversation than I think anything I learned up until then.

Peter has a Masters in psychology and sees clients at his home in Menlo Park. He is also a dad and my friend.

Peter Rengel: Satori, there are different names for different kinds of spiritual experiences that go beyond the normal realm that most human beings experience, that go into the mystery of life, that go into what makes up the life force itself and what is behind the veil of what I would call the illusion of this planet.

Satori experience, it has something to do with no ego. It has something to do with the "I" disappearing and other connections that are the mystery of life itself, the miracles of life that occur in that realm. They are sometimes hard to explain because I am trying to use my mind and my words to explain experiences that don't occur in the realm of the mind or words.

That's the only thing I am about at some level, Chip. You know that really is the bottom line of what my reality, what my deepest intention is, is to be right here right now every moment in time. Over the years I have had different periods of time of being better at that and not so good at that. At the moment I am kind of in a period where I am coming back into a deep recognition of that priority again. It is a very responsible way to be in a good way. That's the only thing that I have control over is myself, where I am in myself.

Love is in the moment. It is not in the past. It is not in the future. It is not in complaining. It is not in Donna doing something different. Unconditional love is unconditional. As that happens and you stay present with one another, often some very mystical kinds of things happen. Faces melt; sometimes different people's faces appear. Sometimes, evil appears. Sometimes, angelic things appear. Sometimes, nothing happens in that realm, but it again opens to a different kind of experience between two people that doesn't have to do with words, that doesn't have to do with the physical body. It has to do with touching souls through the eyes.

Chip August: Listen, let us start with a little bit with your history because you have quite a fascinating story here. You started out sort of a suburban kid in the Midwest and somehow wound up in India. First, tell me that whole journey. I think this is right; you were like a wealthy suburban kid in the Midwest and you somehow went to India.

Peter Rengel: I actually went to Northwestern north of Chicago and fell in love with a woman from Los Altos out in California and moved out here with her. We were together for a couple of years and broke up. Then in was about 1973, something like that, '74, I was walking by Muktananda's Ashram in Oakland, California, and just got drawn in the door. I had no idea what an Ashram was. Something happened in my heart. Something started occurring inside me in which it was the most profound experience of love I had ever felt.

Within in a week I had actually sold everything and was living in the Ashram and was transported into a very incredible state of consciousness for about two weeks in which there was no ego involved, no ego in there and no "I". What was left was service, and it was a very beautiful state to be in.

The tests to kind of get my ego back, I passed a few of them, and then at one point I flunked the test and went to an incredible, dismal place of "if I can't be in that state on this planet what am I doing here" and kind of been spending the last 35 years cleaning out room by room to get back to that state again, I think.

Chip August: Now, Muktananda, many people might not be familiar with him. Who was, is, was Muktananda?

Peter Rengel: He was a teacher from India in a lineage that had been passed down by his teacher named Nityananda, and he has now passed his lineage on since he has left his body. It's one of many, many teachers from India.

Chip August: So, you are studying at this Ashram. You found this intense love, this place of no ego, no "you". Then your ego comes back; knocks on the door and says, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. You haven't lost me yet." You came back out of Ashram, right?

Peter Rengel: Right.

Chip August: Into life?

Peter Rengel: Right.

Chip August: What does an Ashram prepare you to do? What do you come back doing?

Peter Rengel: Basically, at first, I was very depressed. I was actually suicidal and then went to a different teacher down in Los Angeles named Brugh Joy, who opened up doors for me into the heart that felt more grounded in some way, more real than spiritual realms I had been in and was more applicable to human interaction. The place in Muktananda was more in other worldly places, so I spent some time with Brugh and then got attracted to another guru in India and ended up going over there and learning a lot about sexuality and spirituality there and zest for life and participating fully in life.

That was a journey that lasted about five years and then in 1985 came back into the Western culture. Within a month I met the woman who is now my wife of 22 years named Donna.

Chip August: And you have a child. I just wanted to mention that.

Peter Rengel: Yes.

Chip August: Let's talk about that meeting of spirituality and sexuality because I think to a lot of the people listening that is a question. Sometimes, that is an experience. Often, it is a quest, but they don't really know how to make that quest.

Can you say more about how does one intersect? There is sexuality, and there is spirituality. How does that happen?

Peter Rengel: Well, one thing I have learned, Chip, from leading the high workshops that you and I lead together is how many different purposes sex has. At first, I just thought it was about creating relationship and creating intimate connection. It was for a loving sense and life together with someone. I found out as being a student in the room of love what it is to have so many different purposes for sex.

One of the purposes that I see has nothing to do with the genitals. It has to do with a spiritual merger, a tender kind of connection that doesn't need orgasm and goes in some way to a different place than orgasm. It has just been profound to see and experience, take experiences that other people have brought to the room of love to the high workshops and the different teachers that we have had there to see that the different experiences that are available to us when we become vulnerable and when we allow ourselves to get out of the linear mind into other realms of our being.

Chip August: So, linear minds is sort of the logic and getting through the business of the day and figuring out how to drive on freeways and stuff. How does one live a life in this world and get out of their linear mind?

Peter Rengel: I think different people find different ways. For myself, meditation has been a key to that, consciously breathing and opening my heart. My wife has become what I would call my emotional teacher. When I was in India in a different kind of satori experiences, they were cosmic and they were beyond this world. I got to see behind the veil of what goes on in this planet, and at the same time I had bypassed part of my humanness.

Part of that connection has to do with emotional vulnerability that opens up a different kind of love than the cosmic kind of love. There is a reward that goes on in terms of what happens between my wife and I or my son and I or you and I, for that matter, Chip, just in terms of how that tenderness can open up the feeling of the meaning of life to me. The meaning of life doesn't have to be about something outside of myself. It has to do with the quality of life that goes on in a moment by moment reality.

When I meditate, when I am tender with my wife or my friends or my son, different areas of my being open up to me to enrich me, to have me feel the life force itself, to see the life in the trees and the plants and just live in a different place rather than the logical mind.

Chip August: Now, you used the word "satori". What does that mean?

Peter Rengel: Satori, there are different names for different kinds of spiritual experiences that go beyond the normal realm that most human beings experience, that go into the mystery of life, that go into kind of what makes up the life force itself and what is behind the veil of what I would call the illusion of this planet.

So, a satori experience has something to do with no ego. It has something to do with the "I" disappearing and other connections that are the mystery of life itself, the miracles of life occur in that realm. They are sometimes hard to explain because I am trying to use my mind and my words to explain experiences that don't occur in the realm of the mind or words.

Chip August: When we talk about it, it is really funny. When we talk about all this, you sound like really a spiritual teacher but sort of not very earthy, and yet I know you live; you have a home here. You have a kid. You drive carpools. You and I can joke and talk, so it is pretty interesting. It is hard to talk about this, isn't it?

Peter Rengel: It is, you know, and also as I talk about it, it brings back cellular memories of things. I am getting chills in my body, and it is really sweet because I don't really visit those areas that often with other people. I find them in meditation in the morning sometimes, and it is very sweet to have that but it's not something that I talk a lot about to other people, except in the context of teaching when I do that.

Chip August: Right, when people are specifically asking for this as a teacher.

My experience of you is a big part of what you teach, both at high and in your own work. It has something to do with that we as human beings, we develop this really loud, negative mind, and it really gets in the way of experiencing the very joy and beauty that we are trying to experience. And it seems like you teach ways to turn that off. Is that kind of right?

Peter Rengel: You know, there are so many different paradigms of what this reality is. There is one that has been very, very useful to me. So, how I have it, how I see me and many human beings that I think everybody is this way but you don't have to believe it. We are pure love. That is who we are at the deepest level. We are innocent. We are just love, and we are kind of bumping along going through life.

What I see, how it is set up and how it is supposed to be here is that there is what I call like an entity. a force called a negative mind that actually invades our innocent, that comes into our bodies, that comes into our minds with its negativity. What it is doing is trying to get us to believe that we are it, and as we become it and as we believe the thoughts that it feeds to us it actually gives it life energy. It gives it juice. It gives it its life force.

It is very important for it that it gets us into this illusion of the negativity, and it is the life and death of experience for it. The meaning of it is life and death for it so for us to be free of it we have to go to the level of life and death for our love. That is what is at stake here. When I look at that and see that, then it really helps me to use the deeper intention and the deeper use of my will to be in relationship to the negative mind.

You know, I spent years in India meditating, trying to stop my mind. I had moments of doubt, but then I realized it. Why battle it; why fight it; why not just let it go on and me sit in a different place inside myself that is fascinated with it, that isn't identified with it, that's watching it.

I call that the compassionate witness, you know, and as the "I" inside me becomes identified with the witness then I get entertained by the negative mind and I see its cleverness and I see how devious it is and I see how it fools me and I get sucked back into believing it for a while. And then I become aware again, and I step outside of it.

At first, I thought, like, this is a process I am going to get over, and then I realized that's just what is going on here. I have a deep appreciation for the negative mind, for how it can fool me and how it can make me believe it. It is just a beautiful process to be in. It is a dance to be in. It is not to be gotten over or gotten beyond. It is just a lifelong process. As long as I am in a human body the negative mind and I will be in a deep relationship with one another.

Chip August: As our friend, Stan Dailey, used to say very, perverse, delicious.

Peter Rengel: Yes.

Chip August: We need to take a break. Thank you very much. We are going to come back. I want to keep going on this, but I want to take a short break and give a chance for our sponsors to support us.

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Chip August: Welcome back. You are listening to Sex, Love and Intimacy. I am your host, Chip August. I was talking to Peter Rengel, and we have been talking about the mind and the way that the mind can get in the way of the heart and the beauty of human beings and that we are born loved. I want to stay on this whole thought. I think at one point that is what you said, that we are born loved. What does that mean?

Peter Rengel: Well, if you notice a new born baby it is actually their innocence and the purity of their love that has the parents' heart respond and want to take care of them, that we all come onto this planet in a sense of purity, in a sense of innocence, in a sense of just being in the present tense and open.

What happens and again this is how it is meant to be, as we grow up, as we get into our three, four, five-year-old we begin to lose the sense of that. Even more so as we get into the seven, eight, nine-year-old you begin to become more identified with the mind. At some point as you get into your adulthood you begin to realize that there may be something that I am missing out on here.

Love is a vibration. It is like a musical note that is struck in the universe. A lot of times the negative mind takes us out of harmony with that, takes us out of tune with that. Human beings are the one creature on this planet that has to make an effort to get back into harmony with that love. The rest of this planet is humming along in harmony with it, and we are the ones that need to find a way back into that harmony, to kind of focus more on relationship which is more what this is about.

I will never forget the moment I really got that I am 100 percent responsible for whether I am in love with my wife or not, whether our house is humming in love or not. When I realized that it was quite, quite shocking in some way. I couldn't blame Donna for when things are not happening in this house, when there is upset and when we are out of harmony. I had to keep looking inside myself.

What I realized is that the truth is Donna is actually more sensitive to me being in love than I am to her being in love. It even makes me more responsible. If I am in harmony and I am in love and I go to her and she is upset or out of harmony, it is much easier for her to use me to help herself get back in love because she is closer to it in some way. I am more stubborn. I am a man. I am further away. When she comes to me with that I am not as responsive as she is.

That even makes me every more responsible for it, and so there is a way that I get to look at when this house is not humming, when there is any kind of upset going on here. What is going on inside me? Where am I out of harmony with that musical note of love and find my way back? Boy, when I do the house comes back into harmony.

Harmony may be Donna crying in my arms, or harmony may be Kavi, my son, throwing a temper tantrum and then coming back into harmony. It is not necessarily what we might think of as harmony as being, but I am in harmony with whatever is going on here. I have no need for it to be any different than it is, and then everything falls into place.

Chip August: That is a very radical thing you just said. I want to stay with this for a minute because I think most of us - we have an argument with our partner or we have a disagreement or upset with our spouse, and we go right into trying to assign blame. You shouldn't have called me an idiot. You should have done - a lot of shoulding, often, that we have to assign blame, and then the person that's at fault needs to apologize or needs to make amend.

You just said something very different. You said, you know, if we are not in harmony it is because I am not in harmony, and I take responsibility for bringing myself and us back into harmony. Is that what you just said?

Peter Rengel: That is what I said.

Chip August: Does that mean I never get to be right any more, like I don't get to tell my partner, "But you promised to pick me up and you left me standing there?" What happens to that part?

Peter Rengel: I am not saying that that doesn't happen in me. I am not a perfect human being, but when I am standing on the corner waiting for her I have a choice as to whether to get upset about that or to look at the scenery that is going on the corner while I am standing there and be in the present tense and just know that whatever is going on for Donna that she is not there on time is whatever is going for Donna. I can either make myself upset about that, or I can stay in harmony with myself and love her when she comes here and hear whatever her reason is for being late.

Chip August: So, that is staying in the present tense. That is not a trivial thing. That is a big thing.

Peter Rengel: That is the only thing I am about at some level, Chip. That really is the bottom line of what my reality, what my deepest intention is, is to be here, right here, right now, every moment in time. Over the years I have had different periods of time of being better at that and not so good at that. At the moment I am kind of in a period where I am coming back into a deep recognition of that priority again. It is a very responsible way to be in a good way.

That is the only thing that I have control over is myself, where I am in myself. Love is in the moment. It is not in the past. It is not in the future. It is not in complaining. It is not in Donna doing something different. Unconditional love is unconditional, and if it is not unconditional then it is not love.

Chip August: But, aren't you setting yourself up for betrayal because my experience is all human beings betray each other at some time? I just believe betrayal is part of the human experience. It is usually unintentional, but you know, my partner does just do something that just completely has me no longer feel safe. In a way you are, basically, saying, "Well, I should just breathe and be in the present moment. So what if I feel betrayed? It is just my stuff." That just seems not so real. It seems like sometimes people do betray each other in ways that require some remedy.

Peter Rengel: For me, the word betrayal means that I had certain expectations and those expectations were not met. Now, that may be. I may have the feeling of betrayal, but what are expectations about? They are not about the present moment. They are about something other than that. They are about the future. You thought the future was going to look a certain way, and it doesn't look that way.

One of my teachers when I was in India, someone stood up and threw a knife at him to try and kill him. The knife landed on the stage. It missed him. The police came and hauled the guy away. The next day in the lecture someone said to him, "Have you forgiven the man for throwing the knife at you?" And he looked and said, "What is there to forgive? He was just doing what he was going. In order to forgive, you have to have had that he was doing something wrong. His intention was to kill me. He had a right to have that intention, and I have a right not to react to him trying to kill me."

Chip August: Wow. That is not trivial. That is a big thing.

Peter Rengel: Right. We are kind of out there right now, but that is when you are really going for it here, when you are really committed to being in love then that's the level the game is being played at.

Chip August: You say these things sometimes a little different than I would be saying them, but I think you and I actually have an agreement about this. It made me laugh one time. We were talking about driving, you and I. You said to me, "Well, I just picked the slowest lane because then I have more time to just be in the present moment. I just get behind somebody, and I drive and I don't have to think too much because I am in the right hand lane and whatever speed we are going we are going, and I can just be present." I thought, "Heh, I don't know if I can do that."

Peter Rengel: Actually, Chip, I teach an eight week class that is based on my second book, and we do different meditations each week. One week, that is the meditation to stay in the right hand lane of the freeway every moment that week no matter what. I can't tell you the beautiful things and the crazy things that people come back to report what happened to them.

Chip August: Well, again, it is that moment when Donna forgets to pick you up or whatever, and you just get to stand on the street corner and get, "Wow, I just got an extra 10 minutes to love the day and life is walking by, or I get 10 minutes to fume and fulminate and decide she doesn't love me." It is really my choice about what I want to do.

So, basically, I have to embrace that I am really choosing to live and love or not pretty much every moment. I can blame it on whoever I want to blame it on, but in the end I can either choose to live and love or not.

Peter Rengel: I would not say pretty much. I would say every. [laughs] Believe me, Chip, I flunk a lot. I am not saying that I do this, but it is my deepest intention when I flunk I just notice what it is that had me flunk. What my expectations were, what my pictures were that didn't get met, whatever it was, and then I true myself back to the next moment. It is not about me being perfect, and it is not about me being able to do this all the time. It is also about having slack for me being a human being and flunking the test.

Chip August: What I think what I hear when you say that is I want to have as much unconditional love for me as I have for anyone else. In that moment when I am berating myself for how I failed, I can stop again and say, "Is that really choosing love?" Wow. Wow. And there is a life, I assume, that is filled with love in this past. So what if it is also filled with hurt and betrayal? All life is filled with hurt and betrayal. Your approach is I don't give anybody else power over whether I love or not.

Peter Rengel: Right. And if I feel hurt and betrayed, then I feel hurt and betrayed and have compassion for myself. I certainly feel lots of emotions and I feel my pain. I feel my sadness. I feel my loneliness. I feel my anger. That is all part of the human experience. That is not to be avoided or made wrong in any way. There is a beauty about all of those experiences.

I am here in a human body. I want to experience all there is to experience in this human body, and all of those emotions I just named are part of the human experience. There is bliss. There is love. There is great sex. There is all of that, too. And why avoid or think there is something wrong or think that I shouldn't be experiencing all of these other things because I am a human being in a body. I get to experience those, too.

Chip August: Right. You are not removing yourself from the earth plain. You are just learning to love being on earth. You are learning to just love all the time.

Peter Rengel: Right, and be a witness to all of those experiences and be in appreciation and compassion for Peter just as I am in compassion for other people. I am not those experiences, Chip. I am the watcher of those experiences.

Chip August: Wow. That is a powerful thought. We need to take another break. I am talking to Peter Rengel. You are listening to Sex, Love and Intimacy. I am Chip August.

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Chip August: Welcome back to Sex, Love and Intimacy. I am your host, Chip August. I am talking to Peter Rengel. We have been talking about living love, choosing love every minute of your life. It is really an extraordinary idea.

On the break, I started to think about - I know you and your wife, and I know ways that you are very similar and I know ways that you are very different. In a way, this philosophy that you are expressing doesn't actually require her participation, you know what I mean, because I think that's the first objection people are going to say, "Well, what if I do this and my partner doesn't?"

Peter Rengel: The truth is Donna and I are very different people, different spiritual beliefs, different ways we move through the world. She is a professional singer in addition to leading workshops. She has a whole life with her own band and goes out in that world. I actually prefer silence, so I am not into music the way she is. We overlap where we overlap, and we also have very independent lives. At the same time whether we are in love or not, moment by moment is up to me as we talked about earlier. I do not have to have her even in agreement about belief systems in order to love her.

Chip August: The moments when you notice that you are not in love, your first choice is to stop and look and see, "All right, how can I help me choose being in love again," not what does my partner have to do different and what agreement do we have to make.

Peter Rengel: Really, Chip, what I do is feel how painful it is to be out of love, and that very pain takes me back to love.

Chip August: I think that is a pain that most people run away from. I actually think that is an act of courage on your part. I think that most people would want to do is blame somebody else because it feels so frightening, so scary to be out of love.

I think, listeners, who are listening to us, what I really want you to get in a way I think of you, Peter, as sort of a heart warrior. It is not that you are at war with anyone else. It is the fearless commitment to feel what you feel and let it lead you back to loving yourself.

Peter Rengel: Yes, that is true.

Chip August: That is a wonderful, wonderful trait. I know you have upcoming workshops and upcoming events. I am sure some people listening to this would love to work with you. How could people find you, find about your events? How could they contact you?

Peter Rengel: Well, the easiest way is just email me. It is peterrengel, one word, peter r-e-n [as in Nancy] -g-e-l @comcast.net. Upcoming events, I am doing my meditation weekend which is a Friday night to Sunday evening event, locally, here in California, at Harbin Hot Springs north of San Francisco, July 18th through 20th. I am also doing one north of Boston the following weekend, July 25th. I am doing one in Detroit November 21st.

I am doing an eight week class in Marin County September 16th through November 4th that meets eight Tuesdays in a row.

The weekend involves very much my second book, "Live Life in Love". It involves what I call a heart meditation which is a particular form of meditation. I will talk a little bit more at the end about. Kind of the theory of that weekend is that it is really hard for the Western mind to just sit and meditate, that most of the time we sit down and just think and think and think.

The theory behind it is that there is some kind of energetic experience that happens, either a movement kind of thing or an exchange with another person that moves some energy inside you below your neck before you sit. What I am finding is that when we have some experience first and then sit and meditate that people are going to profound places in themselves during the meditation.

It is a very deep experience. The weekend is in silence. There is no talking except within certain context within the sessions themselves. People are feeling really loved in the experience. It is not a dry weekend. People cuddle. They hug with permission on breaks. It is just that words are not used. It can be for myself when I am in it, I go to places in meditation that I can't go by myself because we use the collective energy.

There is another place in the weekend where you have an opportunity to come in front of the group and have all of the love of the group focused on you for you to have breakthroughs in whatever areas you are looking for breakthroughs in yourself. It is a very community oriented meditation weekend. That's that.

The nine week class is also based on my second book, and it has meditations that change every week. One of them, as we spoke earlier, is the driving in the right hand lane of the freeway. It is considered a form of meditation. There are different things that happen with that. Within the meeting each time there are different experiences that again bring us into the moment.

One of my favorite meditations is that you stand on a chair looking at a wall and you fall in love with the wall. That is the task. What it really has people see is that what is out here is not a variable. Where you are inside yourself is the variable. We have around in Marin County and northern California, we have lots of walls that have been well, well loved.

Chip August: I did the whole 365 day course in miracles years and years ago. One of the lessons, you get to look at the sofa and see love. It is an extraordinary piece of work. It is just an extraordinary thing to really get that you can either wait for love or you can actually just love. You can see love everywhere.

Say how people can get in touch with you one more time just in case they did not write it down the first time.

Peter Rengel: It is peterrengel, one word, peter r-e-n-g-e-l @comcast.net. I have a private practice here in Marin County that I either see people in person; I also have phone sessions all over the world so people call me from all over the world.

Chip August: If people wanted to get your book, do they get it through you or are there other places to get it?

Peter Rengel: They get it through me at this point.

Chip August: Perfect. And do you have copies of both "Living Life in Love" and "Seeds of Light" available?

Peter Rengel: Oh, yeah.

Chip August: Cool. That is what we wanted to know. I am just curious because I always love it. I like your book of aphorisms. I find for me the lesson books, not just yours anybody's, are really hard for me. But the aphorisms just get me, haiku, aphorisms. Would you be willing to read one or two from your book just to…?

Peter Rengel: Sure.

Chip August: That would be lovely.

Peter Rengel: Here is one called "How Are You?" How you are does not really matter. What matters is how you are in relationship to how you are. Again, how you are does not really matter. What matters is how you are in relationship to how you are.

Or here is another one, "Who Are You?" Just as the clouds are not the sky your thoughts are not you. You are the empty space in which your thoughts are floating. Again, just as the clouds are not the sky your thoughts are not you. You are the empty space in which your thoughts are floating. So, that is just a couple.

Chip August: Wow. Those are great. Those are terrific. I am glad I asked.

I always like to leave my listeners with an exercise they can do at home. Is there something you would suggest to them?

Peter Rengel: I can actually think of two different ones. One is by yourself, and one is with a partner. If you are a meditator and if you are not and you want to experiment with this, the heart meditation that I teach in the weekend.

What it involves is just closing your eyes and relaxing your jaw because a lot of times tension in the jaw keeps our energy up in our head. If you relax your jaw and breathe, on the in-breath breathe into your heart. The heart shocker in the center of your chest, and on the out-breath send the energy from your heart first up to the mind so that it gets soothed. The negative mind wants attention so you might as well give it the love that it wants. Then as it quiets down you can on the out-breath send the energy any place that there is tension in your body.

What people have found is just by that simple breathing into the heart and on the out-breath sending the energy where it needs to go they just end up incredibly relaxed and then, sometimes, other realms of being open to them. That is something on your own. You can do that for 10, 20 minutes if you would like.

Then, a thing with the partner, is an Eastern traditional meditation called Tratak, T-r-a-t-a-k. What that is, is sitting with across from one another and choosing one eye, it is usually the left eye of the person, your partner, and just looking right into the pupil of the eye and just allowing yourself to be present with that as the connection, pupil to pupil as you look into your partner's eyes.

As that happens and you stay present with one another, often some very mystical kinds of things start to happen. Faces melt. Sometimes, different people's faces appear. Sometimes, evil appears. Sometimes, angelic things appear. Sometimes, nothing happens in that realm, but again, it opens to a different kind of experience between two people that doesn't have to do with words, that doesn't have to do with the physical body. It has to do with touching souls through the eyes. Those are a couple of different possibilities.

Chip August: I think DaVinci once said he thought the eyes were windows to the soul.

You have been a great guest. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

Peter Rengel: Our pleasure, Chip.

Chip August: If you want to get in touch with me, listeners; if you have suggestions for future shows or comments about the shows, you can always send me email, [email protected].

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Thank you, listeners, for listening in. Thank you, Peter Rengel, for being here. This brings us to the end of another show, and I hope you will listen in again.

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