SAMIA:Yeah.

SAMIA:I have lots of questions. My first question is... yeah... my first question is you just said something that for a lot of people might sound very mysterious… You're talking about who you really are... Who are you really? What did you discover about who you really are beyond your thoughts and your busy mind?

OMAR:You know, like most of my life I believe that I am the body. And I am happy because I bought a new phone or I'm happy because I've got a new job, I'm happy because I have this amazing, you know, girl in my life, or I have this and that. And so when I came across this understanding, it just became obvious to me that everything I see around me is created and generated within me. And those feelings I'm experiencing it's coming from me, it's emanating from deep inside of me. And so when I think that I love the sea and I go to the beach for example, and I think... and I feel good... and then I project my thinking... and then think, "Oh it's because of the beach!"... It's like, you know... I take with me this snow globe and I shake it, I shake it, shake it, shake it, and we have all these little snows all over the snow globe. And when I go to this place I think I'll feel good in, for example the beach... I just put the snow globe, and you know, this little snow settled down and the natural state of the snow globe is clarity, is peace, is love. And so when my busy mind and thinking, my thoughts stop, you know, settle down, clarity emerges to the surface, joy emerges to the surface, peace and all those beautiful things I was looking for outside of me. And so who we truly are really is that innate health, is that innate peace, is that space that cannot be put into words, but we... the only way actually to feel it is to experience it. And don't take my word for it but, you know, just experience it for yourself. And see, like, if you really feel the way you feel because of what you see in front of you… where is that feeling coming from? Is it really coming from outside of me, or my thinking about what's outside?

SAMIA:Yeah, that's an excellent point. And I love the analogy that you made because if you think that it's the beach that makes you happy, and definitely going to the beach I feel happy, but there have also been times when I've been to the beach and felt very unhappy. And no long... no matter how long I stayed on the beach I still, you know, on certain occasions, wasn't able to start feeling happy. And so like for me it's those kinds of experiences that made me realise that it's not the beach that makes me happy. Because I can be at the beach and be happy, but I can also be at the beach and not be happy. And it's the same with anything else outside of me. If I think there's a person who makes me happy, well... most of the time for example, if, say, when I'm with my mother or my sister, they're two of the people I love the most in the world... most of the time when I'm with them, I'm feeling very happy. But there are times when I'm with my mom and my sister and I'm not feeling happy. So it's... what you're talking about. I agree with you, I absolutely agree with you. So tell me more about what is the true source of peace? How do we cultivate peace?

OMAR:Well, this might surprise you and the people watching this, because it's not a place to get to... Peace is already here. What comes in between is our thinking. We can't really get to peace, we can't think our way to a peaceful mind, you know. It's more of... you know, doing nothing about it… Not in a way like, "Oh my God, I will be doing nothing”. Like, what's... well, that's impossible. But you know what? When we are doing nothing about our thinking, or our... about our busy mind, and just let this cloud pass by... because it's really passing by... It's not fixed, you know. Thoughts are ephemeral, they always pass by; it's like the cloud in the sky. You know when we see the illusion of our thinking moment to moment, from moment to moment, we come back to that place of peace automatically because it's our birth right, it's our birth right. Like, no baby is born depressed. Or no baby was born hating, you know, black people or white people, or... This is all conditioning and learning. And the more we look beyond our conditioning, the more we look beyond our finite minds, the intellect... we are on a fertile land because that's the... where the beauty or the juice is... when I'm aligned with this source that, you know, we call Allah in our religion. And some people call it infinite intelligence, some people call it God, some people call it divine mind... All different names but it's the same truth, same source. You might get, you know, different words to say it, but it's all pointing in the same direction. And the more we actually... the less we engage with our thinking, you know, like superstitious thinking, we come back to that peaceful feeling, we really do. The thing is, that thought is the elusive obvious. Like, we are all the time in our thinking, we have a psychological experience of life, but we are also like a fish in water. If I go to a fish and say to the fish, like, “look you're in water”. Fish will go like, “What are you talking about, what's water?” Like, we are always in our thinking... that we miss that we are having a thought-generated experience of life. So when we come back to that, you know, place within us... not inside our body but, you know, spirit, or whatever we want to call it... that meditative space we get to like for people who meditate, we are aligned with source, we are aligned with truth, we are like... all the scratches from the past, traumas, everything gets, you know, cleared out...

SAMIA:Yeah.

OMAR:...and we see the picture clearly and we come back to peace.

SAMIA:That sounds so beautiful and wonderful. So then, why do we have a mind? It gives us so much trouble it seems, and... what should we do with it? Like, should I just give up on my mind? What... how do I relate to my mind then?

OMAR:Well, you know, our mind is for me like a phone or a laptop without internet...

SAMIA:Ahh. <

OMAR:...you know, so my mind is really useful. Like, we are... I'm really grateful to have my mind. But I can't get access to many things or connect with many people if I don't have internet. So if I get stuck with my laptop, I would be able just to use what I have in that laptop. And that's, you know, the information I've learned and everything I know already. But when we connect to WiFi we have access to unlimited data. And that's how I see it.

SAMIA:That's cool, that's cool! So you're saying the mind has a function and we should be grateful for the function that it serves, and also understand that it can’t do everything. And so when there's other things we want to do that our mind cannot do, we should connect to these other parts of us... like the WiFi... connect the laptop to the WiFi. So then we can access more and learn more. That's really cool! I like that.

OMAR:I also want to add that, you know, like, with those apps, I can't fix something that seems challenging or problematic to me. Like even Einstein knew this. Like, he mentioned that we can't solve a problem that was created on the same level of thinking. And that's too... that's like a... that's a vicious circle because we're going one circle. And we can't get out of that situation unless we have a fresh new thought. And so what I mean by doing nothing about our thinking, it's not like not fixing the problem. Because when we let go, when we don't grab into that cloud as it’s passing by, when we, you know, let it go, we have more space for fresh new thought that's gonna bring, you know, solutions to our problems, to what seems like a problem to us. Because in actual fact, I'll just say it, there is no problem outside of us. It's always a thinking problem. We project both... you know, thinking into what we see... It seems like it's a problem. And the moment we see that, like, "Oh my God, like, I'm just feeling my thinking about that problem", I leave space for new thoughts that will bring a new feeling of peace and to solve that problem.

SAMIA:If I might challenge what you just said... It’s like, okay, well... but there's such a thing as reality. If there's an earthquake, and the earthquake, you know, makes my house roof collapse, that's a real thing that just happened. Or you know, if I'm hungry and my stomach's growling, but I have no food in the fridge or any food in my house, and I have no money to go buy more food... that's like a real problem that's existing. So what are you talking about when you say there is no problem outside of me, outside of my thinking?

OMAR:That's a really good question actually. And I have one of my colleagues, Mahima. She's from Nepal and when she went there, there was an earthquake. She knows about this understanding that we share with people. And she had an insight in the middle of earthquake. She woke up to the fact that "Oh my God, like it's happening, but I am present. So I could help people around me, I could, you know, save myself. And when I saved myself I helped people around me". You know what we see as a problem is not problem for others. And like the thing that, you know, like you said, about like you know, someone who doesn't have money to fix their problem... If I get stuck in that thinking, and I did, I... like I had some days where I didn't have a penny to... like in London I've experienced these days where I just lost my job, have my exams in a week, and I have to pay my rent, and I don't have money, what should I do? Like this is a real problem. But you know, like three or four days after like, you know, just thinking and suffering that thought and trying to figure it all out, this lady called me up that I used to work for and she called me in a really crucial time where I really needed, you know, to pay rent. And she called me and she said, like, "Omar, can you come and work for, you know, these three days? We have this festival and we need, you know, more staff". And this was like the perfect time for this to happen because like the money that I got from those three days is the exact money I needed to pay my bills, pay my rent, and just be focused on my exams. And so when I look back at it, like when this happened to me, again, I just know that like... I just put myself in... I'm just more comfortable with the unknown, you know. I don't know, but I'm okay there and I'm safe, because I'm always being taken care of. We are always being taken care of, you know. And that's why like, we, we are still surviving and human beings exist. We are always being taken care of by the source that we call God. It's just that sometimes, you know, when our thinking comes in between us and source, we are like stressed, we feel all this, you know, horrible feeling. And we can't see a way out of that, and that is a problem. But once I... you know... I let go, or just have a walk in a park and really get present, detach myself from, you know, the illusion, detach myself for a second from my thinking... something will happen, something will occur to us that might solve the problem.

SAMIA:If I might challenge you again... so let's say in the story that you shared... Thankfully somebody called you and gave you a job that allowed you to pay the bills and so forth... but there are people who just starve to death and no help comes and they just starve to death, you know. You know, let's say somebody who is attacked and they're scared and they're afraid for their life, and then they actually get killed, they actually get murdered, maybe even tortured horribly before they get killed and murdered... and no one comes to save them and help them and they, and they perish, they die in that pain and suffering... What's going on there?

OMAR:You know, like, I used to be scared of that... dying. But the more I deepened my understanding into who we truly are, what's this life all about... when we get glimpses of who we truly are... we are, you know, we are a soul in a body, you know. So when my body... this body is finite, it has an expiry date... But who I truly am. and who we truly are, doesn't die. When we get glimpses of that, you know, dying wouldn't be a thing. Like, if I die, just go back to who I truly am, you know. One of the physicists that is sharing this understanding, actually, he did a talk on TEDx… you can google him... Shadrick Mazaza, he's from South Africa. And there is this guy that stormed in his office, and he was with a patient, and put a gun to his head, and he was like, "Give me your money right now! Give me your money right now or I'll kill you!". And he went like, "You can't kill me, you can't kill me". You know he didn't really realise he said this until this, you know, happened. Like he didn't say it from his intellect, but he just had this deeper understanding that he is not just the body, you know... The body is a vehicle to, you know, to having this life, to operate in this beautiful world. But it has an expiry date and that's not a bad news, unless you think that's it, that's all there is. So when Shadrick Mazaza said this to the guy, he went like "Are you crazy? I told you to give me your money right now. I'll kill you, I'm not joking!". And once again, "You can't. You can't kill me". And so the guy was like, he was just crushed... crying... and he was like. "Please forgive me, I didn't mean to do this but my friend is in prison. I'm trying to, you know, gather some money for him to get him out of prison because he had to pay like fine or something"... And then he gave him the money and he went. Then his assistant came in and was like, "Are you okay?", "Yeah, I'm okay, yeah, just yeah... just bring the next patient". And then the next patient came like, "What just happened? Like, I heard you... like, heard this guy screaming". Because like in South Africa they have this, this kind of, you know, situation happening.. Like in the US, you know... I mean here in Morocco, we don't really use guns, so good, good for us. But we can't kill our soul, it's intact, you know. It's like, you know, when the... when it's raining, it... that/it doesn't damage the sky. That's how we truly are. And when we explore that for ourselves... So like, I'm not saying to take my words for it, just explore for yourself. If you really feel that thing outside of you... or it's just coming from a thought in a moment…? So we are creating our suffering... in another way, we are creating, we are painting the picture that we experience, it's coming inside out. And it seems to us like, you know... it seems just like the sun is rising, but the sun never rises. It's just the planet earth that turns in such a miraculous way around the solar system that it looks to us that the sun is rising, like it looks to us that our feelings are coming from, you know, the bus or the bills or this and that... I'm not saying that, you know... the bills are there, but they can't cause us to have a feeling. When we really understand this, we let go of, you know, our minds settle down... it's like when we play now with the dust for example in a river and there is dust everywhere... we play with it with our toes or our feet... and once we stop playing with that, the sand or dust go... dust... And then, you know, the natural state of the river is clarity. So we are the one creating our experience, and we say, “I didn't do that”... It's called the elusive obvious, because we don't really see it until we do it, and we forget. That's the human experience by the way... we forget who we truly are, get lost and then, “oh I am my thinking”... And this is my experience as well. I'm not saying that I am happy all the time, positive all the time. I'm just okay with whatever I'm experiencing, knowing that I am fine. And you know, when we know this... it is like hopeful for people. Like one of my clients recently told me... my friend texted me and she told me, you know, we went for dinner and I called you and you didn't pick up the phone. So we went, like why didn't you pick up the phone? And when she checked her phone, like, she didn't call her. And she told me, "I didn't feel upset, is that normal?" I told her, "That's completely normal. You know what's not normal, is to feel upset". We so normalised feeling upset about someone not reacting the way we expect them to react. I am expecting them to react, you know. If I don't take offence, I won't get offended... if I don't take offence, I won't get offended. We need to take offense to get offended. So when I told her this, she was like "Oh, okay"... like she really, like, got it. Like she got what I'm talking about, what I'm pointing her at. You know like when I share this with people, some people look at their finger, but some people really see what I'm talking about, what I'm pointing at. Like Bruce Lee, you know... he said in one of his movies, I don't remember exactly what he said... but like one of his students, like, he was like, "Look there”... and he's like, “don't look at my finger, look at the moon because there the beauty lies". And so it's the exact same thing, you know. When I share this with people it takes them by surprise because we are not used to hear this or to know this. And like we wish... like I wish that someone had told me about this before, because I would have just avoided a lot of suffering in my life. Like suffering that I wouldn't... like I didn't have to suffer... just because I didn't know that I was creating my own experience and suffering that.

SAMIA:Thank you so much for sharing everything that you have shared Brother Omar. And I want to keep talking, and I have to also start wrapping up for today. But I'm so happy that you are here and I hope you will come back and share more of your thoughts...and wisdom and insight with us. I would love that. Do you have any last thoughts that you want to share with us for now?

OMAR:Yeah, I would love to... like, if anyone hears this and have some questions, I would love to be able to answer any questions or any insights for the people who are listening to this. And yeah, I would love to thank you again for inviting me, and I really did enjoy this. And thanks for your questions. Like, I just enjoyed answering these questions.

SAMIA:Yay! I really enjoyed having you too. And we're going to add your contact information, your links in the show notes. So everyone listening, please get in touch with Brother Omar. I call him brother because he's my brother in faith… But yeah, please get in touch with him. I'll also include my links in case you want to get in touch with me. So yeah... I think that's it for us for now. And until we see each other again, I wish you lots and lots of peace and joy :)

OMAR:Thank you. :)