WEBVTT

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It was just like, huh, this is oneness.

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And I remember it feeling so peculiar

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because I would look at my body and like,

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well, I clearly have a body.

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I feel it, it's still here,

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but I know that it's not me anymore.

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Like it was transparent,

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it was see-through all of a sudden.

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And I was the consciousness that was infinite.

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Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.

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My name is Rick Archer.

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Buddha at the Gas Pump, as you may know, is a long-running series of conversations with

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spiritually awakening people.

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I've done well over 700 of them now.

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If this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P,

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And you'll see them all listed there in various ways.

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This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers.

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So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons

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on every page of the website.

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My guest today is Eli Recht.

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Eli was born and raised in San Diego, California, and currently resides in Carlsbad, California.

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licensed psychotherapist, EMDR clinician. What is that, EMDR? EMDR is an evidence-based trauma

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therapeutic modality for processing traumatic experiences or PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress

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Disorder. And as a psychotherapist, you're an LMFT, which means licensed marriage and family

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therapist, right? Yes. And you're also a spiritual counselor, editor, and teacher of self-realization.

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One thing that's neat about your spiritual counseling is that you don't take personal

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income from it, not that I think there's anything wrong with doing that, but you donate all the

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income from that to a local animal shelter out there, which is nice. Animal shelters are

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dear to our hearts here, and then you just make your living as a therapist. So in a way it's nice

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that you're able to separate the two. So in 2020 you experienced a falling away of ego identity and

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awakening to the true nature of reality, and we're going to discuss the whole story leading up to

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that. And as a result you've dedicated your life to service, to helping alleviate suffering, cultivate

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connection, and guide people through the often confusing journey of life. And you invite others

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others to recognize our shared, unconditioned essence.

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And your specialty is blending contemporary psychological knowledge with timeless spiritual

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wisdom and advocating for the integration of these two disciplines.

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And that is an area that fascinates me, as it does you, obviously, and so we'll talk

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about that quite a bit during this interview.

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But before we really get rolling with that, it might be good to do the usual chronological

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accounting of your life, you know, what led up to, you know, where you are now.

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Absolutely, that sounds great. I'm really looking forward to the conversation and let me just start

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by saying thank you so much, Rick, and to you, Irene, as well for your invitation and for your

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generosity and for the service that you provide for the world in raising the consciousness on

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the planet. I've been a big fan of BatGap for many years. I've seen many

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interviews and so it's pretty trippy in the best way possible, you know, to say

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the least, that I'm actually a guest on your channel today. And I also want to

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say hi to everybody tuning in. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I'm sure I will.

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I also just wanted to start by saying that I really admire what BATGAP stands for, the

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mission statement, and I also have always loved the name that you chose, Buddha at the

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Gas Pump, because I think it just hits the nail on the head.

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It really encapsulates the extraordinary and the ordinary all in one.

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Well, thank you.

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I actually didn't think up the name, a friend of mine did, but I was asking friends for suggestions

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and when he suggested that, everybody said, "Yeah, that's it."

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The reason I like it, and I think you just kind of said that, is one of my motivations

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for starting this show is I was in a little satsang here in town for a number of years.

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We'd meet every Wednesday night for a few hours, and there were people in the satsang

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who had had spiritual awakenings, but when they told their friends, they would sometimes

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get a negative reaction, like because the friends had an assumption about what spiritual awakening

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is supposed to be and they didn't think an ordinary Joe like, you know, like they're

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in for as well. That's what I teach all the time. I knew people that have been meditating.

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Right. And so I thought, okay, it would be good to like showcase these people and let their friends

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see that ordinary people like them are having spiritual awakenings and that being the case,

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they might also be liable or eligible to have one.

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- Absolutely, and that's what I stand for as well.

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It's what I teach all the time.

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- I knew people that had been meditating for decades

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and they thought, "Oh, well, I like meditation,

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"but I'm never gonna get enlightened in this lifetime,

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"so I'm just gonna cruise along till I die."

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- Right, right, I was the same.

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So maybe should we start my spiritual journey?

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We'll back up in time. - Yes, yes, please.

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- Like you said, I was born and raised in San Diego.

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I'd say my spiritual journey really starts, my primary spiritual vehicle you could say

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for the first 15 years of life is Judaism.

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I was raised Jewish in a multicultural, very supportive family.

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It was a great community to grow up in.

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You know, I really like the values that Judaism espouses, like family and community, and there's

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one particular principle called "Tikkun Olam."

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a Hebrew word which translates into repairing the world. It's essentially equivalent to

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selfless service or seva. And so I grew up with that upbringing and of course yummy food.

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And I was bar mitzvahed at 13. So I did the whole thing and I was very into it and I found

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a lot of meaning from it. Fast forward until middle school. So I'm about 15, I think eighth

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grade or entering high school in my world history class, we started reading Siddhartha by Herman

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Hess.

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- Nice, wow.

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- And that was, I know, a little--

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- That was my first spiritual book, but I didn't get it from school.

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- Really?

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Interesting.

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- I was 17 by that time, but we never were given anything like that in school.

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This was the 1960s.

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- Sure, that definitely makes sense.

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Yeah, looking back, I'm actually surprised that we read that in my private Jewish school,

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- Wow. - So I read Siddhartha,

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and that was the first time that I was introduced to the concept of enlightenment,

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and I became familiar with meditation, just in a loose sense. And my teacher saw that I took

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an interest in what we were reading. I was asking a ton of questions and just really, really inspired.

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So she gifted me after class one day, this beautiful Dao De Jing, which it was like one

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one of my most prized possessions for a long time and it's sitting right behind

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me on my bookshelf and I was blown away and I took it home that day I read it

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from cover to cover and Lao Tzu just really impressed me and granted I didn't

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understand what I was reading at the time but I sensed that there was

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something deeper going on in life it just gave me that sense of okay there's

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something else going on here beyond our five senses. It intrigued me. But that's

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really where it was left. It kind of fell into the background and it wasn't

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anything more than just an introduction to Eastern thought. In high school my

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friends and I also would go visit on Sundays the Deer Park Monastery in

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Escondido, California, which is Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery. And we would spend

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Sundays there we do a Dharma talk, a meditation, we'd have a really nice free

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meal and then afterwards we'd hike up to the top of the hill to see the large

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Buddha statue and that was really fun but it wasn't anything more than just a

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great way to spend a Sunday. It was fun and I would meditate from time to time

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just to reduce mental stress and that was that. Fast forward I'm approaching 18 I'm

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graduating high school, entering college. I went to college in Emory University in

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Atlanta and I remember feeling like the mind was the pinnacle of human reality.

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It was the ultimate. That I can control whatever I want with my mind. My emotions

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are no match for me. I can conquer my emotions and I sort of became atheist in

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a way. There was this sort of arrogance or rigidity that formed in me just because I

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had a strong mind I guess and I thought that that was the ultimate experience of

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being human and I remember just being very insensitive to people when they

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would ask me things like how do I do this or how do I understand and I would look

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at them point-blank and just say well just do it like what's wrong. Now looking

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back it's like so awful that I said that but at the time I was just feeling like

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I was so sure of myself I was so confident and I realized now that it was

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a false confidence and when I was conquering my emotions what I was really

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doing was just suppressing them and storing them in the subconscious mind in

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the body and so at that time as I was entering college I was diagnosed with

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ulcerative colitis, which for those of you who don't know, it's a disease of

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inflammation of the intestine and that can be pretty painful. And I didn't see

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the connection at the time. Obviously, ulcerative colitis is a biological

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medical issue. There's a genetic component to it, so I certainly had a

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predisposition to it. But looking back, I think that my arrogance and my rigidity

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in my atheism was part of the constriction of my energy body that ended up leading

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to this ulcerative colitis diagnosis. And so I'll get more into that, but I

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realized ultimately that at the core of the disease it was a psychological issue.

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And you were studying psychology in college? And I was studying psychology,

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yeah. So if we fast forward a couple years, I'm overconfident and nothing can

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derail you like a bad relationship. So I got into a relationship, we fell in love,

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you know, I thought I was gonna marry her and we were gonna have kids and

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everything, life was great. But long story short, it crashed and burned and all

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these feelings came up that I didn't know what to do with and I couldn't

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contain them anymore. The mind wasn't strong enough to conquer these feelings.

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so I fell into a depression. I had some really bad anxiety. I graduated college

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and had to almost go back to the drawing board. I had to revisit my identity and

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who I was because I had lost myself in the relationship. And so I moved to New

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York. I lived with my high school friends in an apartment in Brooklyn and it was a

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great time. We played music, we formed a band, I was a singer in the band and we

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recorded and toured around the area and all that jazz. It was really fun and I

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was working at a music brain research lab called the Institute for Music and

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Neurologic Function up in the Bronx and they have two wings to the Institute. One

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side they do music therapy and the other side they do research on the brain to

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study the impacts, the healing effects of music on the brain. So I was immersed in

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this sort of musical world, doing research and living my best life. You

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know, from the outside looking in, nothing was wrong. Everything was ideal, everything

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was perfect, and yet I was still very depressed and anxious.

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And you still had the ulcerative colitis, I presume. And I still had that, yes. I mean, I

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was put on medications pretty quickly, these heavy-duty meds, and it went into

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remission right away so I didn't even give it another thought. But looking back, I realized

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that it was part of the mental adjustments that I was making. And I'll get more into

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the colitis because it plays a larger role in my story. Because I was depressed, even

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though my external life was perfect for all intents and purposes.

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Did you know you were depressed or in retrospect now you realize you were depressed?

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I think a little bit of both. I was definitely aware, especially aware of the anxiety, because

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my anxiety was very acute. My suffering was pretty bad. It was rough. So I started to

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research happiness and like, is happiness even possible? Can you reach a permanent state

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of happiness? And of course I rediscovered enlightenment. And at the same time, I was

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recording and performing and this musical immersion when I was singing or

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performing or recording I would find myself kind of going into higher states

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of consciousness because I was just in flow. There was just a dissolving of

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boundaries and I was like floating or it just felt very peaceful and quiet and

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and no resistance, just very open and expansive.

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And so it kind of brought me back to my Tao Te Ching days

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when I was thinking, you know, there's something more here, and I'd like to explore it.

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So these things sort of converged at the same time,

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and that's when three people in the same month

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told me to read The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

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And I remember looking at it and being like,

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is so massive, I am not about to read that.

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Like, I'm reading little books, like The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, if you're familiar with

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that one.

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I just heard that book about that today.

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Oh, maybe because I saw it on your website or something.

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Oh, sure, yeah.

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It's one of the books I recommended.

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So I wasn't about to read Yogananda, but then, because of my anxiety, I came down with sciatica,

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which is, it was just incredibly painful.

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Usually old people get that.

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I know, go figure.

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So I had this just terrible pain down my left leg.

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I was bedridden for a couple weeks.

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I couldn't work anymore.

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I couldn't really move.

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And I didn't know what was going on.

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So of course, my roommate had a copy of the autobiography.

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And I said, well, I have no excuse now.

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I got to read it.

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So I started reading it.

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And right away, it just blew my mind.

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If you've read it, there's some miraculous stories in there.

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Oh, yeah.

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I've read it a few times.

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But somehow, even though I was reading things

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that were so far off what I considered to be reality.

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I just somehow knew that Yogananda was telling the truth.

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I implicitly trusted him for some reason.

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And here was someone who was self-realized.

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And he said, follow these lessons,

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do these meditation techniques, and you'll get there.

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And you will be able to achieve this perfect happiness

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or perfect peace that everyone is really longing for.

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So I never looked back. I signed up for the lessons right away.

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It took about a year. That's the lessons program.

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The Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons Program requires

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about a year before you can get initiated into Kriya Yoga,

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which is their highest formal technique. I think now they've changed

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the time between starting to getting

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initiated. I think it's shorter now, but at the time it was a year.

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So I basically signed up for the lessons.

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I was super dedicated.

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I meditated day and night.

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I never missed a session.

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I would push through whatever resistance

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or discomfort I was having or restlessness.

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And it was great.

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And as I was doing that,

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the sciatica was actually being cleared away.

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I felt like I was being healed.

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I think it was due to the reduction in stress

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just the opening up of the mind again to other possibilities.

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So I was very proud.

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And the depression and anxiety and colitis?

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It started to lift. There were no problems with the colitis at this time.

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And I was just super dedicated.

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I was going to do everything that I possibly could

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to achieve or arrive at self-realization.

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And after a year, I was initiated into Kriya Yoga formally,

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and I took Yogananda to be my guru

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and dedicated my spiritual evolution to the path.

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And the Kriya, it's a very powerful technique.

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At first, it was really, really good.

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I had a lot of bliss and a lot of expansive moments,

00:18:20.780 --> 00:18:29.780
But over time, because it's designed to slowly raise the kundalini in sort of gradual, incremental steps,

00:18:29.780 --> 00:18:41.480
and it's designed to pull in, it's like pratyahara, it's designed to pull in the external energies into the spine and brain.

00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:45.480
And that process, your spine and brain become like a magnet,

00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:49.920
and it pulls in the karmic impressions

00:18:49.920 --> 00:18:55.640
or subconscious samskaras impressions into the spine.

00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:58.080
So that was happening.

00:18:58.080 --> 00:19:01.920
But then I started having a lot of problems

00:19:01.920 --> 00:19:04.140
with the Kriya technique.

00:19:04.140 --> 00:19:09.960
I was having a lot of pain, splitting headaches, dizziness,

00:19:09.960 --> 00:19:18.800
nausea. I couldn't function after practicing Kriya and I had a flare-up of ulcerative colitis.

00:19:18.800 --> 00:19:23.320
So the symptoms returned and the medication stopped working.

00:19:23.320 --> 00:19:29.360
Did the practice involve concentration? Do you feel you were straining?

00:19:29.360 --> 00:19:32.040
Looking back, yes. I was.

00:19:32.040 --> 00:19:33.880
That would account for the headaches and stuff.

00:19:33.880 --> 00:19:34.880
Sure.

00:19:34.880 --> 00:19:36.640
- Unless we're gonna come back to it,

00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:40.000
I just wanted to ask about this pulling the impressions

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:42.080
into the spine, I think that's the way to put it.

00:19:42.080 --> 00:19:42.920
- Yeah, yeah.

00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:44.000
- Or the karma or something.

00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.840
What was the subjective visceral experience of that

00:19:47.840 --> 00:19:50.960
that enables you to describe it that way?

00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:53.480
- Yeah, it feels like a magnet.

00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:57.120
It feels like the technique is you're breathing

00:19:57.120 --> 00:20:00.400
in a very particular way and carrying energy

00:20:00.400 --> 00:20:02.200
up and down the spine.

00:20:02.200 --> 00:20:10.280
And by doing that, you're turning the breath into energy and the spine starts to magnetize.

00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:17.040
So it becomes like a magnet that collects all this subconscious energy to be processed,

00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:18.040
to be roasted.

00:20:18.040 --> 00:20:19.040
- Where was it before it got into the spine?

00:20:19.040 --> 00:20:20.040
- Well, it's in the subconscious body.

00:20:20.040 --> 00:20:21.040
- Your aura or in a...

00:20:21.040 --> 00:20:22.040
- I guess so, yeah.

00:20:22.040 --> 00:20:24.200
- A bubble body someplace?

00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:26.120
- Like in the tissues or...

00:20:26.120 --> 00:20:27.240
It's in the energy body.

00:20:27.240 --> 00:20:28.920
It's in the subtle body.

00:20:28.920 --> 00:20:29.920
And so the visceral feeling of that...

00:20:29.920 --> 00:20:31.480
- It's kind of cooked in the spine

00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:32.320
when it gets pulled in.

00:20:32.320 --> 00:20:33.160
- Yes.

00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:33.980
- Right.

00:20:33.980 --> 00:20:34.820
- Yogananda would say,

00:20:34.820 --> 00:20:36.200
Kriya Yoga roasts the seeds of karma.

00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:37.040
- There you go.

00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:39.640
- So there was a little bit of like burning and fire

00:20:39.640 --> 00:20:41.280
and things like that, that would happen.

00:20:41.280 --> 00:20:46.000
But the visceral feeling of it was really like a drawing

00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:50.600
in just intense concentration in the center.

00:20:50.600 --> 00:20:51.880
And just, you would,

00:20:51.880 --> 00:20:55.200
I would feel things starting to collect inward.

00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:56.880
I don't know how else to describe that.

00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:57.720
- That's good enough.

00:20:57.720 --> 00:20:59.120
And it was uncomfortable.

00:20:59.120 --> 00:21:01.320
And it was uncomfortable, yeah.

00:21:01.320 --> 00:21:06.920
So I got counseled, of course, by people in SRF, out of SRF,

00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:09.080
and nothing seemed to help.

00:21:09.080 --> 00:21:10.240
Was that a common experience?

00:21:10.240 --> 00:21:12.560
Did other people report that kind of thing?

00:21:12.560 --> 00:21:13.920
Rarely.

00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:16.240
I mean, it wasn't totally unheard of,

00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:21.320
but it was very uncommon, I think, to my knowledge.

00:21:21.320 --> 00:21:23.960
So I kind of had to let it go.

00:21:23.960 --> 00:21:26.440
I had to let go of the Kriya technique

00:21:26.440 --> 00:21:29.360
because it was just causing too many problems

00:21:29.360 --> 00:21:30.560
and I couldn't function anymore.

00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:32.080
And it had caused a flare up.

00:21:32.080 --> 00:21:37.080
I don't know if it caused it, but it came concurrently.

00:21:37.080 --> 00:21:40.120
So that was a really hard time for me

00:21:40.120 --> 00:21:43.240
because not only was I,

00:21:43.240 --> 00:21:45.520
I got really sick because of the flare up.

00:21:45.520 --> 00:21:47.880
So I had to stay at home.

00:21:47.880 --> 00:21:49.360
I was isolating myself.

00:21:49.360 --> 00:21:50.760
I wasn't socializing.

00:21:50.760 --> 00:21:53.900
I felt like I was useless 'cause I couldn't work anymore.

00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:58.320
By this point, I'm living in Encinitas.

00:21:58.320 --> 00:22:00.840
I had left New York, I'd left the band,

00:22:00.840 --> 00:22:02.920
because I wanted a different lifestyle

00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:04.600
and something just more peaceful,

00:22:04.600 --> 00:22:06.960
and San Diego is kind of my nature,

00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:11.240
so the chill, surf, cool waves vibe.

00:22:11.240 --> 00:22:14.320
So it was a really hard time for me,

00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:19.320
because Yogananda says that this Kriya Yoga is the key.

00:22:19.320 --> 00:22:21.400
It's the airplane route to God,

00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:23.120
and so if I can't do this technique,

00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:24.860
then there's no hope for me.

00:22:24.860 --> 00:22:29.280
And I was also not working, so I felt like I had just no purpose

00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:31.000
and I was just wasting away.

00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:34.320
So I was pretty dejected and devastated.

00:22:34.320 --> 00:22:37.800
And I felt like I'm sure many people do.

00:22:37.800 --> 00:22:41.200
I felt like I was a bad devotee, and I was disloyal,

00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:43.720
and all these things that come with not

00:22:43.720 --> 00:22:47.840
being able to accomplish what your teacher or your guru

00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:50.280
tells you is important.

00:22:50.280 --> 00:22:54.000
So I had to let it go and I focused on my healing journey.

00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:59.000
So I started Ayurveda, which is an Indian dietary system

00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:05.040
that is tailor-made for your personal physical constitution

00:23:05.040 --> 00:23:05.880
and that was helpful.

00:23:05.880 --> 00:23:09.160
I saw this wonderful doctor in Long Beach, Dr. J.

00:23:09.160 --> 00:23:10.000
And I started doing--

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:12.480
- The Chill Preceptor's down in your area too.

00:23:12.480 --> 00:23:13.520
- Yeah, it used to be.

00:23:13.520 --> 00:23:15.720
I think it's not there anymore.

00:23:15.720 --> 00:23:16.560
Maybe it is.

00:23:16.560 --> 00:23:19.280
I started doing energy healing.

00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:23.480
I was trained in energy healing, and I did everything under the sun, you name it.

00:23:23.480 --> 00:23:27.780
Because if I couldn't focus on self-realization, then I'm gonna focus on my healing.

00:23:27.780 --> 00:23:31.580
Because it felt like that was a block standing in the way,

00:23:31.580 --> 00:23:35.380
even though it's not, and I'll get into that too.

00:23:35.380 --> 00:23:38.680
So I started healing, I started getting better,

00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:44.480
and then my doctor, who was helping me through the colitis,

00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:52.000
was explaining to me that oftentimes there's a large psychological component to the disease.

00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:58.800
She was a holistic doctor. She was great at balancing of East and West philosophies. And

00:23:58.800 --> 00:24:03.960
she encouraged me to get into therapy so that I could talk through my issues and work through

00:24:03.960 --> 00:24:12.280
what was stuck. And so then I started my therapy journey and I saw this great therapist in

00:24:12.280 --> 00:24:20.040
Encinitas named Matt Jarvinen and he taught me all about defense mechanisms and emotions and how we suppress our feelings

00:24:20.040 --> 00:24:28.600
And how to allow our feelings to release and work through them and at the same time I was introduced to Michael Singer's teachings

00:24:28.600 --> 00:24:37.120
Witnessing consciousness became a really big deal for me that sort of became my technique does Michael Singer talk about that a lot

00:24:37.800 --> 00:24:41.260
He does yeah is the guy wrote the untethered soul

00:24:41.260 --> 00:24:47.380
He wrote the untethered soul and the surrender experiment and he has some great talks and videos as well

00:24:47.380 --> 00:24:50.900
What does he say about witnessing consciousness that was germane to you?

00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:55.320
So he says basically that you don't really need to meditate

00:24:55.320 --> 00:24:59.980
Technically you don't need to formally meditate in order to awaken

00:24:59.980 --> 00:25:04.260
That you just have to get in touch with the witness who is

00:25:04.740 --> 00:25:08.740
or the witness that is the experiencer of all things.

00:25:08.740 --> 00:25:12.740
And so he says, you know, you have to sit back and get back

00:25:12.740 --> 00:25:16.740
far enough into what he calls the seat of self,

00:25:16.740 --> 00:25:20.740
and just relax and release. You just be aware of whatever

00:25:20.740 --> 00:25:24.740
disturbance is coming up in your body, and you relax,

00:25:24.740 --> 00:25:28.740
and you release. And you would do this like in a meditative

00:25:28.740 --> 00:25:32.740
practice, or you would do it all day long? I started doing it in a

00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:36.980
meditative practice where I was sitting down but as I got better at it I was

00:25:36.980 --> 00:25:43.500
able to do it all day long. I was able to do it at any point during the day even

00:25:43.500 --> 00:25:47.540
during a conversation or something. And that didn't divide your mind at all?

00:25:47.540 --> 00:25:52.380
Being engaged in the conversation and all I'm witnessing at the same time? It did

00:25:52.380 --> 00:25:57.180
divide my mind but I was fully dedicated to self-realization and I wasn't gonna

00:25:57.180 --> 00:26:01.220
let anything get in the way of that so if a conversation suffered for it

00:26:01.220 --> 00:26:02.660
that was fine with me.

00:26:02.660 --> 00:26:03.940
- Yeah, or--

00:26:03.940 --> 00:26:04.780
- And that gave me a--

00:26:04.780 --> 00:26:06.220
- One thing like that you wanna be--

00:26:06.220 --> 00:26:07.260
- Yeah.

00:26:07.260 --> 00:26:08.260
- A little careful.

00:26:08.260 --> 00:26:09.540
- Of course, of course.

00:26:09.540 --> 00:26:12.060
Thankfully, nothing bad happened.

00:26:12.060 --> 00:26:13.100
In conjunction with that,

00:26:13.100 --> 00:26:16.460
I was also seeing a great intuitive guide

00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:18.180
here in Encinitas named Laura Sorg,

00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:21.020
and she was helping me personally

00:26:21.020 --> 00:26:23.980
to kind of clarify the witnessing consciousness

00:26:23.980 --> 00:26:25.900
and the releasing and the clearing.

00:26:25.900 --> 00:26:29.500
She calls it the clearing work, the emotional work.

00:26:29.500 --> 00:26:31.900
So I got really deep into that.

00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:34.300
And that gave me a lot of hope again.

00:26:34.300 --> 00:26:38.620
Because I was able to meditate again.

00:26:38.620 --> 00:26:42.660
I felt like I can really make it this time, rather than--

00:26:42.660 --> 00:26:45.020
Did you go back to doing Kriya, or your meditation

00:26:45.020 --> 00:26:47.860
was the singer thing?

00:26:47.860 --> 00:26:50.740
It became relax and release, and wisdom and consciousness.

00:26:50.740 --> 00:26:53.780
I did not go back to Kriya, although I tried many times

00:26:53.780 --> 00:26:54.660
to go back to Kriya.

00:26:54.660 --> 00:26:57.060
But it would always have the same effect.

00:26:57.060 --> 00:27:01.740
So it sounds like Trio, you said in retrospect that you were straining, whereas the Relax

00:27:01.740 --> 00:27:07.900
and Release sounds like a much more surrendered, effortless, natural kind of thing.

00:27:07.900 --> 00:27:08.900
Yes.

00:27:08.900 --> 00:27:14.820
And what I realized later was that I didn't need any more willpower or straining.

00:27:14.820 --> 00:27:16.980
I already had enough of that.

00:27:16.980 --> 00:27:25.020
The next leg of my journey was really about surrender, to let go and allow and relax.

00:27:25.020 --> 00:27:31.280
That's the whole foundation of the TM technique is absolutely no effort and the mind has a

00:27:31.280 --> 00:27:35.860
natural tendency to seek a field of greater happiness and you can utilize that tendency

00:27:35.860 --> 00:27:40.700
to enable it to just settle down and encounter greater charm as it settles down.

00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:41.700
Beautiful.

00:27:41.700 --> 00:27:44.020
I never practiced TM.

00:27:44.020 --> 00:27:45.780
I have some friends who did.

00:27:45.780 --> 00:27:48.220
I believe there's a mantra involved too, right?

00:27:48.220 --> 00:27:49.220
Yes, there is.

00:27:49.220 --> 00:27:50.700
But you don't concentrate.

00:27:50.700 --> 00:27:51.700
Okay.

00:27:51.700 --> 00:27:58.340
So I started getting better because I started working through these emotional and psychological

00:27:58.340 --> 00:28:01.140
blocks you could say.

00:28:01.140 --> 00:28:08.820
And I was also put on some heavy duty medications, again, another layer of medications.

00:28:08.820 --> 00:28:13.500
And I went to grad school to become a therapist, to become a counselor.

00:28:13.500 --> 00:28:18.180
I went to Pacifica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara.

00:28:18.180 --> 00:28:24.540
They teach in the lineage of Carl Jung and depth psychology and Joseph Campbell and Marian

00:28:24.540 --> 00:28:27.300
Woodman and all those wonderful people.

00:28:27.300 --> 00:28:31.380
And sometimes in my classes, I would just as a side note, when we were studying, I would

00:28:31.380 --> 00:28:35.700
think to myself, like, I feel like I'm reading a Vedic text or something, you know, it was

00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:39.940
so aligned Jung's writings.

00:28:39.940 --> 00:28:42.540
And then I graduated in 2020.

00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:44.980
And that was when COVID hit.

00:28:44.980 --> 00:28:46.580
Maybe I'll stop here if you have any questions.

00:28:46.580 --> 00:28:51.300
I was just wondering, you're taking these heavy duty medications on top of some other medications.

00:28:51.300 --> 00:28:53.900
Didn't you notice some negative side effects from those?

00:28:53.900 --> 00:28:54.900
I did.

00:28:54.900 --> 00:28:55.900
I did.

00:28:55.900 --> 00:28:56.900
It was rough.

00:28:56.900 --> 00:28:58.620
Kind of dull you out or something?

00:28:58.620 --> 00:29:00.620
Yeah, I think it did.

00:29:00.620 --> 00:29:04.860
You know what the medications were doing, they're called immunosuppressants.

00:29:04.860 --> 00:29:09.860
So they're really suppressing the energy of the immune system.

00:29:09.860 --> 00:29:14.260
The idea is that it's like your own body is destroying itself.

00:29:14.260 --> 00:29:15.260
The immune system is acting.

00:29:15.260 --> 00:29:16.260
It's going after itself, yeah.

00:29:16.260 --> 00:29:19.260
Yeah, it's going after itself. It's attacking itself.

00:29:19.260 --> 00:29:20.760
Autoimmune disease.

00:29:20.760 --> 00:29:26.660
Yes. So, the meds suppressed that energy that was doing that.

00:29:26.660 --> 00:29:30.260
Does that make you more susceptible to getting sick from other things such as COVID?

00:29:30.260 --> 00:29:35.960
It does. It does. Thankfully, I didn't get anything serious.

00:29:35.960 --> 00:29:39.460
Okay, so this begins the awakening.

00:29:39.460 --> 00:29:43.460
COVID hit, I just graduated, everything goes on lockdown.

00:29:43.460 --> 00:29:52.780
it's March 2020 and I received this very strong intuition that said, "Use this time

00:29:52.780 --> 00:29:59.020
to go inside as deeply as you possibly can and start coming off of your

00:29:59.020 --> 00:30:05.940
medications." And that was scary. I mean, I had been listening to my intuition up

00:30:05.940 --> 00:30:10.380
to this point, so I had a good relationship with it. I trusted it, but

00:30:10.380 --> 00:30:14.700
But man, coming off of these medications was a huge risk

00:30:14.700 --> 00:30:18.860
because if I didn't do it right or if it somehow went awry,

00:30:18.860 --> 00:30:21.840
I was in serious trouble.

00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:23.540
- Are they like benzodiazepines,

00:30:23.540 --> 00:30:25.880
where you could actually go into convulsions and die

00:30:25.880 --> 00:30:26.940
if it came off too fast?

00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:28.480
- No, it wasn't anything like that,

00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:32.140
but if I came off of it, let's say I had a flare-up,

00:30:32.140 --> 00:30:33.840
if I wasn't able to contain it,

00:30:33.840 --> 00:30:36.380
I would potentially have to get surgery

00:30:36.380 --> 00:30:39.540
and remove my organ from my body

00:30:39.540 --> 00:30:43.360
be put on some other heavy-duty meds, something even worse, because there were

00:30:43.360 --> 00:30:49.360
stages of intensity for medications and I was about up the second tier. I could

00:30:49.360 --> 00:30:54.280
have gone one more level and then it would have been surgery, removal. Needless

00:30:54.280 --> 00:31:00.120
to say I was very scared and I did do this with the guidance of my doctor. She

00:31:00.120 --> 00:31:04.840
was aware of what was going on. She gave me a bunch of tips. So, warning, don't try

00:31:04.840 --> 00:31:09.420
this at home unless you have doctor approval, I think is the most responsible

00:31:09.420 --> 00:31:15.220
thing and if you really feel like it's the right thing. So this is when I had a

00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:19.960
very powerful Kundalini activation because the meds were suppressing all

00:31:19.960 --> 00:31:25.420
this energy. As I started coming off the meds all this energy started flowing

00:31:25.420 --> 00:31:32.940
upwards. It was just an immense amount of heat. You know I would just be sweating

00:31:32.940 --> 00:31:37.620
for days almost like I was gonna spontaneously combust at any moment. It

00:31:37.620 --> 00:31:39.280
It was just immense.

00:31:39.280 --> 00:31:43.060
There was some fear that this could be a flare-up

00:31:43.060 --> 00:31:47.000
or something, but I guess my intuition knew

00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:50.560
that I had done enough witnessing consciousness

00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:54.720
and enough therapy to be able to weather the kundalini.

00:31:54.720 --> 00:31:57.660
What happened was, as the energy came up,

00:31:57.660 --> 00:32:00.000
I was able to just let it go.

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.720
It didn't get stuck like it used to get stuck,

00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:05.320
'cause I had opened my consciousness enough.

00:32:05.320 --> 00:32:09.000
So the Kundalini activated a few symptoms of that.

00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:11.400
I mean, there was some bliss,

00:32:11.400 --> 00:32:13.800
some moments of bliss involved,

00:32:13.800 --> 00:32:15.800
also a lot of pain and tension

00:32:15.800 --> 00:32:18.520
and everything else going on at the same time.

00:32:18.520 --> 00:32:21.800
I felt like I was burning the pain body,

00:32:21.800 --> 00:32:23.800
as Eckhart Tolle talks about,

00:32:23.800 --> 00:32:26.400
burning the karmic impressions of the subtle body.

00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:28.820
And it reminded me of Rumi's quote

00:32:28.820 --> 00:32:31.280
when he says, "I want burning."

00:32:31.280 --> 00:32:33.480
So I was really excited on one hand

00:32:33.480 --> 00:32:35.160
that the Kundalini was happening

00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:38.240
because this is the gateway to awakening.

00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:41.880
This is what a lot of spiritual seekers are looking for.

00:32:41.880 --> 00:32:43.640
And that was very exciting.

00:32:43.640 --> 00:32:47.560
I was also having what I call universal downloads.

00:32:47.560 --> 00:32:51.960
So I would just get these massive downloads of information

00:32:51.960 --> 00:32:55.560
of how things work, like the mechanics

00:32:55.560 --> 00:33:00.440
of how the universe works, like what is karma and free will.

00:33:00.440 --> 00:33:04.120
And, you know, how does the unity then emerge

00:33:04.120 --> 00:33:09.000
into the multiplicity and evolution and all that stuff.

00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:11.200
My memory was terrible.

00:33:11.200 --> 00:33:13.520
I felt very unstable.

00:33:13.520 --> 00:33:15.400
My brain was mushy.

00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:17.760
I needed a lot of grounding.

00:33:17.760 --> 00:33:19.960
I did a lot of yoga.

00:33:19.960 --> 00:33:23.040
I remember a couple times I was just so overheated

00:33:23.040 --> 00:33:25.840
that I threw myself into a freezing cold pool

00:33:25.840 --> 00:33:27.880
just to cool down.

00:33:27.880 --> 00:33:31.120
I was having these very quick visions.

00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:32.760
- It's a good thing you had a background

00:33:32.760 --> 00:33:34.360
of spiritual training,

00:33:34.360 --> 00:33:36.720
'cause otherwise you might've thought you were going crazy.

00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:38.400
Or that there was something seriously wrong

00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:41.140
and you had a fever or something with all this heat.

00:33:41.140 --> 00:33:42.880
- Yeah, well, I'm gonna get to that,

00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:44.820
'cause I did think I was going crazy.

00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:46.480
So I started having these visions

00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:48.400
that were too quick to catch.

00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:50.560
I couldn't really understand what was going on.

00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:53.200
Later, I realized that they were just impressions,

00:33:53.200 --> 00:33:55.360
visual impressions that were being released.

00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:56.560
- Flushed out, yeah.

00:33:56.560 --> 00:33:58.840
- Yeah, passing through the field of consciousness

00:33:58.840 --> 00:34:00.680
and being flushed out.

00:34:00.680 --> 00:34:06.680
And then, this is around June 2020, I heard a voice.

00:34:06.680 --> 00:34:10.440
And it said, you will be awakening soon.

00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.240
And so I'm sitting there, half of me is like, yay, this is amazing.

00:34:14.240 --> 00:34:15.660
This is what I've been waiting for.

00:34:15.660 --> 00:34:19.760
And the other half of me is like, uh, who's saying this?

00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:21.400
Yeah, I was kind of--

00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:24.280
And like, why should I believe you?

00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:26.760
And am I going crazy?

00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:30.440
And I know the word crazy isn't PC anymore today.

00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:32.080
but that's how I felt.

00:34:32.080 --> 00:34:33.440
I felt like I was going crazy.

00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:34.400
And I had just--

00:34:34.400 --> 00:34:37.120
for my training in grad school, I was actually

00:34:37.120 --> 00:34:39.320
working at a crisis center.

00:34:39.320 --> 00:34:40.960
And I was working with people who

00:34:40.960 --> 00:34:44.320
were diagnosed with psychosis and schizophrenia.

00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:46.560
So I knew what it was about.

00:34:46.560 --> 00:34:48.560
And then I was thinking, well, maybe I'm

00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:51.440
having late-onset schizophrenia, you know?

00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:52.800
Like, this could be.

00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:55.480
So I was scared.

00:34:55.480 --> 00:34:57.760
I didn't know, but I was also excited.

00:34:57.760 --> 00:35:02.760
And, you know, I kind of just reasoned through it by saying,

00:35:02.760 --> 00:35:04.640
listen, this voice is telling me

00:35:04.640 --> 00:35:07.120
that I'm gonna awaken and soon.

00:35:07.120 --> 00:35:12.120
So either it happens and then I can trust it or it doesn't.

00:35:12.120 --> 00:35:14.920
And then I will know that it was my imagination

00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:17.080
and I'll go check myself into a psych ward.

00:35:17.080 --> 00:35:19.760
That's kind of how it transpired.

00:35:19.760 --> 00:35:21.280
But the other thing I want to say about that

00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:25.780
is that the voice, it also felt like it was my voice.

00:35:25.780 --> 00:35:28.460
It wasn't some other sounding voice.

00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:32.700
It sounded and felt like me, just on a higher level.

00:35:32.700 --> 00:35:34.220
- Like your higher self talking to you.

00:35:34.220 --> 00:35:35.540
- Yeah, exactly.

00:35:35.540 --> 00:35:38.100
So what I kind of realized or reasoned through

00:35:38.100 --> 00:35:40.680
was that this is probably my higher self

00:35:40.680 --> 00:35:43.140
that's telling me these things.

00:35:43.140 --> 00:35:47.100
So at this time, I had this really good friend,

00:35:47.100 --> 00:35:48.420
Francis LaRocque.

00:35:48.420 --> 00:35:49.820
He's here in Encinitas.

00:35:49.820 --> 00:35:52.520
He's a fantastic healer of all sorts.

00:35:52.520 --> 00:35:56.980
And he was a pivotal aspect of my healing journey.

00:35:56.980 --> 00:35:59.920
He was helping me through all sorts of different aspects.

00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:03.360
He was an ex-monk in self-realization fellowship.

00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:06.960
So we were speaking the same language and he helped me a ton.

00:36:06.960 --> 00:36:11.840
And so during COVID, we would call each other and check in to see how we were doing.

00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:18.320
And so he called me one day and he caught me in one of those states of distress.

00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:20.960
And I poured my heart out to him.

00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:24.880
And I was like, "Francis, I don't know what's going on.

00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:27.280
This voice is telling me I'm gonna awaken.

00:36:27.280 --> 00:36:28.520
I don't know what to do.

00:36:28.520 --> 00:36:30.320
I think I'm having Kundalini stuff,

00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:33.520
but I also feel like I might be going crazy.

00:36:33.520 --> 00:36:34.880
Can you help me?"

00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:37.600
He goes, "Well, I have a friend.

00:36:37.600 --> 00:36:39.480
His name's Philip Weber,

00:36:39.480 --> 00:36:42.600
and he previously had an awakening.

00:36:42.600 --> 00:36:44.720
So maybe I can connect the two of you

00:36:44.720 --> 00:36:46.440
and he can help you out."

00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:47.680
So, okay, great.

00:36:47.680 --> 00:36:49.600
I felt like this was the divine hand

00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:51.360
bringing me what I needed.

00:36:51.360 --> 00:36:53.560
And I reached out to Phil,

00:36:53.560 --> 00:36:56.680
who I know you interviewed about six months ago

00:36:56.680 --> 00:36:59.320
in June, I think, of 2024.

00:36:59.320 --> 00:37:00.720
- Yeah, and we've been having talks

00:37:00.720 --> 00:37:02.280
about once a month since then.

00:37:02.280 --> 00:37:03.480
- Yeah, yeah.

00:37:03.480 --> 00:37:05.200
Great interview, by the way.

00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:06.020
- Thanks.

00:37:06.020 --> 00:37:09.600
- So I wrote to him these extensive emails.

00:37:09.600 --> 00:37:12.400
And that was our primary form of correspondence at first,

00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:15.280
was just these massive emails back and forth.

00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:17.720
So I shared with him everything that was going on.

00:37:17.720 --> 00:37:22.500
I wanted to give him the most informed understanding of what was going on so he could make a clear

00:37:22.500 --> 00:37:26.980
decision and granted I wasn't just pouring my heart out to some stranger.

00:37:26.980 --> 00:37:33.000
This was a close friend of Francis and Phil was also part of SRF and so we had a shared

00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:36.860
background and I'd heard about him peripherally in other ways.

00:37:36.860 --> 00:37:42.120
He had served at the Hidden Valley Ashram that I used to go to and was friends with

00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:45.220
Brother Ishtananda who was the head monk at Hidden Valley.

00:37:45.220 --> 00:37:49.020
So there was a mutual connection and I trusted him.

00:37:49.020 --> 00:37:50.060
So I sent him all this stuff.

00:37:50.060 --> 00:37:51.980
I said, this was going on.

00:37:51.980 --> 00:37:56.260
And I was having like chakra things happening too.

00:37:56.260 --> 00:37:59.320
And Phil wrote back, thankfully, this

00:37:59.320 --> 00:38:02.220
does seem to be a genuine awakening.

00:38:02.220 --> 00:38:07.340
So just trust the process and let it happen.

00:38:07.340 --> 00:38:11.340
He also gave me a book called The Leap by Steve Taylor,

00:38:11.340 --> 00:38:14.380
which I also have back here on my bookshelf.

00:38:14.380 --> 00:38:17.460
And that book also talks about different ways of awakening,

00:38:17.460 --> 00:38:21.340
and it goes into the difference between a genuine awakening

00:38:21.340 --> 00:38:25.580
and psychosis, and the importance of still

00:38:25.580 --> 00:38:29.180
doing our psychological work before awakening

00:38:29.180 --> 00:38:31.260
and after awakening, that that's really important.

00:38:31.260 --> 00:38:33.700
And we can talk more about that, too.

00:38:33.700 --> 00:38:35.980
And I've interviewed Steve just as a parenthetical--

00:38:35.980 --> 00:38:37.180
Oh, yeah, yeah, I knew that.

00:38:37.180 --> 00:38:38.660
--for people who want to watch it.

00:38:38.660 --> 00:38:39.540
He's a great guy.

00:38:39.540 --> 00:38:41.740
We kind of stayed in touch over the years.

00:38:41.740 --> 00:38:43.420
I have a lot of respect for him.

00:38:43.420 --> 00:38:45.100
- Yeah, I have a lot of respect too.

00:38:45.100 --> 00:38:47.420
And thank you, Steve, for all your help.

00:38:47.420 --> 00:38:51.180
So at this time, I started feeling

00:38:51.180 --> 00:38:53.820
what I called the nothingness.

00:38:53.820 --> 00:38:58.820
It felt like I was being erased from the inside out,

00:38:58.820 --> 00:39:03.320
like Ellie was just little by little being dissolved.

00:39:03.320 --> 00:39:08.780
And I remember saying to Phil, I haven't had Samadhi,

00:39:08.780 --> 00:39:12.340
I haven't seen the spiritual eye,

00:39:12.340 --> 00:39:18.100
star and the colors and I'm not hearing the sounds of the chakras and all this stuff.

00:39:18.100 --> 00:39:20.180
Are those things that they talk about in SRF?

00:39:20.180 --> 00:39:22.580
That you're supposed to have all that stuff?

00:39:22.580 --> 00:39:27.940
Well, it's debatable. I mean, he says that these are parts of the journey to awakening.

00:39:27.940 --> 00:39:32.660
Yeah, you may encounter it. Whether you have to have it or not, I guess, is up for debate,

00:39:32.660 --> 00:39:38.100
but I didn't have any of it. So I was saying, "Phil, I haven't had the samadhi. Like,

00:39:38.100 --> 00:39:42.180
I can't possibly be awakening." He's just like, "None of that's necessary. Don't worry about it.

00:39:42.180 --> 00:39:52.260
Just relax, just trust the process. So one day I heard the voice again, this was in August now,

00:39:52.260 --> 00:39:57.620
and I heard the voice say to me, "Awakening is imminent, any day now."

00:39:57.620 --> 00:39:58.340
- Wow.

00:39:58.340 --> 00:40:04.340
- And it also said, "You will be a spiritual teacher." And that came with a lot of bliss.

00:40:04.340 --> 00:40:09.620
- Makes you wonder about, you know, guardian angels or, you know, something like that, you know?

00:40:09.620 --> 00:40:12.620
- Yeah, yeah, even after awakening,

00:40:12.620 --> 00:40:15.620
you don't, all your questions aren't answered.

00:40:15.620 --> 00:40:16.460
- Right.

00:40:16.460 --> 00:40:19.060
- But you become okay with that.

00:40:19.060 --> 00:40:22.980
So anyways, that night, after I heard the voice,

00:40:22.980 --> 00:40:28.420
I remember just feeling like this was my last day on Earth

00:40:28.420 --> 00:40:29.740
as an ego.

00:40:29.740 --> 00:40:32.760
And I didn't know at this point if I was gonna die

00:40:32.760 --> 00:40:37.060
physically or if I was just gonna die psychologically,

00:40:37.060 --> 00:40:41.220
but it felt like there was a death approaching.

00:40:41.220 --> 00:40:42.660
I remember just going through my day.

00:40:42.660 --> 00:40:46.340
There was this subtle, very sweet feeling of joy

00:40:46.340 --> 00:40:48.260
permeating everything.

00:40:48.260 --> 00:40:52.980
I was just savoring every moment because I knew somehow

00:40:52.980 --> 00:40:57.700
that this was my last day on Earth being an ego.

00:40:57.700 --> 00:40:59.220
And there was also a lot of grief

00:40:59.220 --> 00:41:04.380
because I was letting go of some big attachments at the time.

00:41:04.380 --> 00:41:06.580
It sounds like you were just really ready to pop

00:41:06.580 --> 00:41:08.460
and there was no two ways about it.

00:41:08.460 --> 00:41:09.420
It's interesting.

00:41:09.420 --> 00:41:10.260
- Yeah, I think so.

00:41:10.260 --> 00:41:11.900
- It's like this was destined

00:41:11.900 --> 00:41:14.620
or this was like you were totally ready.

00:41:14.620 --> 00:41:17.180
It would have happened regardless of what you did.

00:41:17.180 --> 00:41:18.380
- I guess so.

00:41:18.380 --> 00:41:19.220
I guess so.

00:41:19.220 --> 00:41:22.380
I mean, I was determined.

00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:24.560
It was the pole star of my life.

00:41:24.560 --> 00:41:26.140
It was the driving force of my life.

00:41:26.140 --> 00:41:28.560
Like nothing else compared to self-realization.

00:41:28.560 --> 00:41:29.980
So I really--

00:41:29.980 --> 00:41:33.140
- Which reminds me of what many spiritual teachers have said

00:41:33.140 --> 00:41:39.700
which is that the most significant indicator of awakening is the intensity of your desire

00:41:39.700 --> 00:41:40.700
for it.

00:41:40.700 --> 00:41:41.700
I think that's true.

00:41:41.700 --> 00:41:47.620
I remember watching an interview, you were being interviewed by Yvonne Kaysen, I believe

00:41:47.620 --> 00:41:49.180
is how you pronounce her name.

00:41:49.180 --> 00:41:50.180
Oh, right.

00:41:50.180 --> 00:41:51.180
Yeah.

00:41:51.180 --> 00:41:54.140
Recently, and she asked you that question, like, what is something that after all your

00:41:54.140 --> 00:41:57.420
interviews that you've experienced, like, what is something you've taken away?

00:41:57.420 --> 00:42:04.580
And I remember you saying that, like, the perseverance, that utter dedication to the goal seems to

00:42:04.580 --> 00:42:07.540
be the common denominator among most of these.

00:42:07.540 --> 00:42:08.540
Yeah.

00:42:08.540 --> 00:42:11.300
And then one might ask, well, which is the cart and which is the horse?

00:42:11.300 --> 00:42:15.940
Do you have this vehement intensity because you're on the brink of awakening?

00:42:15.940 --> 00:42:18.760
Or do you get awakened because you have it?

00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:24.300
Or is it ridiculous to sort of try to establish a linear relationship between those two things?

00:42:24.300 --> 00:42:25.900
Yeah, it's a good question.

00:42:25.900 --> 00:42:29.700
That's a good question and I think it's probably a little bit of both.

00:42:29.700 --> 00:42:31.700
Ultimately, it's all one.

00:42:31.700 --> 00:42:34.300
It's really one process that's emerging.

00:42:34.300 --> 00:42:38.440
So you know, it's spirit that's guiding the process itself.

00:42:38.440 --> 00:42:40.460
So it is one thing.

00:42:40.460 --> 00:42:42.580
Which aspect of it comes first?

00:42:42.580 --> 00:42:43.580
I don't know.

00:42:43.580 --> 00:42:44.580
It's a good question.

00:42:44.580 --> 00:42:50.580
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali talks about yogis of mild, medium, or intense desire for

00:42:50.580 --> 00:42:55.100
enlightenment and then he talks about the vehemently intense ones are the ones that

00:42:55.100 --> 00:43:01.020
get it the most quickly. That was me for sure. On the other hand I've seen vehemently intense

00:43:01.020 --> 00:43:08.120
people literally go crazy and have to be institutionalized because they just push too hard. Yes and that

00:43:08.120 --> 00:43:14.620
almost was me. We'll talk more about this crazy versus spiritual conundrum as we go

00:43:14.620 --> 00:43:21.320
along. Sure. So okay I remember now this sequence of events. So there's this sort of last day

00:43:21.320 --> 00:43:28.500
on earth and I remember going to bed and the next thing I knew there was just pure death.

00:43:28.500 --> 00:43:33.900
I didn't wake up. It's really hard to describe what this feeling was, but the only way I

00:43:33.900 --> 00:43:40.680
can describe it is to just call it death. It was death itself. My entire field of consciousness

00:43:40.680 --> 00:43:47.840
was just permeated with this utter horrific experience. But thankfully there was no I

00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:53.560
there. There was only this death, so there wasn't suffering because I wasn't there.

00:43:53.560 --> 00:43:58.360
And I don't know how long I was there in that state or how long that state lasted,

00:43:58.360 --> 00:44:05.120
but I started to come back. This sort of little I came back and emerged out of this death and then I

00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:14.880
kind of popped out of it. And I was different after that. There was no more fear. I was sort

00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:21.520
in this fearless state. I could just tell the difference. You're not always aware that there's

00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:26.960
fear, but I could tell that there was just no fear. And it wasn't in anything I was doing,

00:44:26.960 --> 00:44:34.080
it was just the internal experience of the absence of fear. And so I was very open. And

00:44:34.080 --> 00:44:38.340
I went to bed that night and I had the intuition to do some kriyas, which was very surprising

00:44:38.340 --> 00:44:45.780
to me, I ended up doing like the three perfect kriyas of my life because I was so open and

00:44:45.780 --> 00:44:47.400
so surrendered.

00:44:47.400 --> 00:44:51.940
So when you do a kriya, it means you go through a certain sequence of steps that are in the

00:44:51.940 --> 00:44:52.940
practice.

00:44:52.940 --> 00:44:53.940
Yes.

00:44:53.940 --> 00:44:56.140
How long does it take to do a kriya usually?

00:44:56.140 --> 00:45:01.220
I think one kriya takes about somewhere like 15 to 30 seconds.

00:45:01.220 --> 00:45:02.820
Oh, they're really fast.

00:45:02.820 --> 00:45:04.940
Yeah, like up and down.

00:45:04.940 --> 00:45:05.940
I think...

00:45:05.940 --> 00:45:06.940
You scan your chakras or something.

00:45:06.940 --> 00:45:07.940
Yeah.

00:45:07.940 --> 00:45:11.940
I think there's a right way to do it and then there are other kind of variations

00:45:11.940 --> 00:45:17.220
so the timing might differ. I just remember these kriyas being just so

00:45:17.220 --> 00:45:22.700
beautiful and perfect and feeling like wow I finally did it and there was no

00:45:22.700 --> 00:45:27.380
pain and there was just this beautiful feeling of surrender and acceptance and

00:45:27.380 --> 00:45:32.940
then I went to bed and as I was laying down in my bed I remember feeling that

00:45:32.940 --> 00:45:38.020
nothingness, but this time it wasn't inside of me, it was above my head. And in

00:45:38.020 --> 00:45:44.780
an instant I had this realization, I am that. I am that nothingness. It

00:45:44.780 --> 00:45:52.540
immediately just washed into my body and literally like a bubble popping, it felt

00:45:52.540 --> 00:45:59.740
like the separation fell away. It was as if there was this psychological layer

00:45:59.740 --> 00:46:07.220
all around my physical form that just completely melted away and there was no

00:46:07.220 --> 00:46:12.460
more separation. Whereas before there was sort of me and then a barrier, a boundary

00:46:12.460 --> 00:46:18.640
and then not me. That immediately fell away with that realization and there was

00:46:18.640 --> 00:46:23.280
just this unity. And it didn't come with you know angels coming down from heaven

00:46:23.280 --> 00:46:28.680
with trumpets and like I thought it would. It wasn't rainbows and leprechauns

00:46:28.680 --> 00:46:35.640
or whatever, it wasn't even blissful. It was just like, "Huh, this is oneness." I

00:46:35.640 --> 00:46:42.000
remember it feeling so peculiar because I would look at my body and like, "Well, I

00:46:42.000 --> 00:46:47.320
clearly have a body. I feel it. It's still here, but I know that it's not me

00:46:47.320 --> 00:46:53.240
anymore." Like it was transparent. It was see-through all of a sudden, and I was

00:46:53.240 --> 00:46:58.640
the consciousness that was infinite and just went out without any boundaries

00:46:58.640 --> 00:47:03.380
from the center of my heart out and then I just went to sleep. It was like any

00:47:03.380 --> 00:47:08.240
ordinary experience was still there but there was this added layer in the

00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:14.760
morning of love. Some people talk about that. Yeah I'm not sure. I woke up the

00:47:14.760 --> 00:47:19.920
next day August 15th I remember the day because this is sort of the big moment

00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:25.380
for me. I woke up the next day and I knew I was awake. There was just this knowing

00:47:25.380 --> 00:47:32.140
and everything was love. So the unity was still there but there was this added

00:47:32.140 --> 00:47:38.580
layer in the morning of love that was just permeating everything and I had the

00:47:38.580 --> 00:47:42.380
realization that everything is love, that I am love, that is literally what I am

00:47:42.380 --> 00:47:47.700
made of, that is my substance, my essence and that is the substance and the essence

00:47:47.700 --> 00:47:55.500
of everything else in the universe. And it was beautiful, needless to say. With it, immediately,

00:47:55.500 --> 00:48:01.020
there was this strong impulse to serve right away. Like that moment, as soon as the love

00:48:01.020 --> 00:48:07.040
came, there was just this strong impulse to serve. And I knew that part of my dharma was

00:48:07.040 --> 00:48:17.660
to help people to awaken, and it was to help clear up a lot of misconceptions about self-realization,

00:48:17.660 --> 00:48:24.060
I had a ton of false ideas about self-realization.

00:48:24.060 --> 00:48:30.000
And then there was this awakening and it was like, "Oh my gosh, I was so wrong about this."

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:32.740
And I considered myself a pretty intelligent guy.

00:48:32.740 --> 00:48:34.580
I got good grades in school.

00:48:34.580 --> 00:48:38.660
I read a bunch of books and I thought I really understood what it was going to be like and

00:48:38.660 --> 00:48:42.540
it was just so different than what I thought it was going to be.

00:48:42.540 --> 00:48:48.120
know enlightenment or self-realization it has this sort of exotic mystical quality

00:48:48.120 --> 00:48:52.380
like it's out there and it's far away and it's in the future and then I just

00:48:52.380 --> 00:48:57.780
there was this realization like no it's right here it's right now there's

00:48:57.780 --> 00:49:02.460
nothing else to it it's so simple. Did you ever read Suzanne Siegel's book

00:49:02.460 --> 00:49:08.940
Collision with the Infinite? I did, I did. Great book. That was a classic example of someone having an

00:49:08.940 --> 00:49:13.940
awakening and having it be very unlike what her preconception was.

00:49:13.940 --> 00:49:14.940
Yeah, exactly.

00:49:14.940 --> 00:49:19.180
And so she was like totally freaked out because even though she'd been actually studying this

00:49:19.180 --> 00:49:25.220
stuff for years, she didn't recognize it because her understanding was dissimilar to the reality

00:49:25.220 --> 00:49:26.700
of the thing.

00:49:26.700 --> 00:49:28.480
Right, exactly.

00:49:28.480 --> 00:49:33.240
So that's how it was for me and I just remember feeling like I need to clear up these misconceptions

00:49:33.240 --> 00:49:34.240
for people.

00:49:34.240 --> 00:49:38.000
Whatever I can do so that it's more accessible.

00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:42.320
And the other thing I want to say about service is that I think this is a common experience

00:49:42.320 --> 00:49:47.920
for those who awaken and experience unity that there's a strong impulse to serve.

00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:54.200
Not everyone, some people stay more in the background, act as frequency holders.

00:49:54.200 --> 00:49:59.760
I think Bonnie Greenwell said that it's the modern impulse is to serve, is to go back

00:49:59.760 --> 00:50:02.520
out in the world and serve.

00:50:02.520 --> 00:50:03.520
And that's also-

00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:04.520
I think it's kind of a human impulse.

00:50:04.520 --> 00:50:08.360
you see a good movie or you go to a good restaurant, you want to tell your friends about it because

00:50:08.360 --> 00:50:14.280
it's something you really enjoy. Sure. And thankfully I had Phil and he was warning me

00:50:14.280 --> 00:50:18.760
a little bit about this sort of evangelical fervor that can come after an awakening.

00:50:18.760 --> 00:50:26.920
Yeah, you want to be careful that you don't push it too much, even if it's the most amazing thing

00:50:26.920 --> 00:50:32.760
in the world because people have their ideas and their beliefs and not everyone wants their

00:50:32.760 --> 00:50:38.680
worldview to be shaken up. The other thing about service is that I feel that it's an

00:50:38.680 --> 00:50:44.920
important part of the post-awakening embodiment process. So like Bernadette Roberts talks about

00:50:44.920 --> 00:50:51.640
this in her writings where she says that you know you go so far in you can't go further in anymore,

00:50:51.640 --> 00:50:57.080
you reach the center and then the movement is no longer an inward movement it becomes an outward

00:50:57.080 --> 00:51:04.280
movement. It's an embodiment where the center expands outward and it includes everything.

00:51:04.280 --> 00:51:11.960
I think service plays a major role in that embodiment. So not only is it a natural impulse,

00:51:11.960 --> 00:51:17.400
like you said, a natural human impulse, it's also a natural impulse that arises after awakening.

00:51:17.400 --> 00:51:23.480
And it's also an important aspect to the integration and acclimation of the

00:51:23.480 --> 00:51:28.280
awakening experience that is to follow. I guess one way I like to think of it is

00:51:28.280 --> 00:51:33.400
that when you recognize or experience your true

00:51:33.400 --> 00:51:36.440
identity, which is not merely individual, which

00:51:36.440 --> 00:51:40.280
you've just been saying, and so what is it? Well, it's a oneness

00:51:40.280 --> 00:51:43.480
with the intelligence that governs the universe.

00:51:43.480 --> 00:51:47.160
And what does that intelligence want to do? It wants everyone and everything to

00:51:47.160 --> 00:51:50.760
evolve. And so here we have a recruit who has

00:51:50.760 --> 00:51:55.840
actually realized his essential oneness with that intelligence, so you become an instrument

00:51:55.840 --> 00:51:56.840
of the divine.

00:51:56.840 --> 00:52:01.520
That's exactly right. Yes, and everything you encounter from that point forward, you

00:52:01.520 --> 00:52:08.520
realize is yourself. So you are interacting with yourself in various forms. And what else

00:52:08.520 --> 00:52:13.440
can you do but love yourself? Right? So you're going to do everything that you can for those

00:52:13.440 --> 00:52:15.400
who are suffering or...

00:52:15.400 --> 00:52:19.920
Love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, I think when Jesus said that, he was implying that

00:52:19.920 --> 00:52:21.280
He is yourself.

00:52:21.280 --> 00:52:22.120
Absolutely.

00:52:22.120 --> 00:52:24.720
Or St. Francis, it is in giving that we receive.

00:52:24.720 --> 00:52:26.040
That's maybe another way to--

00:52:26.040 --> 00:52:27.440
All those things.

00:52:27.440 --> 00:52:31.480
So that was a powerful day for me.

00:52:31.480 --> 00:52:36.480
But it only lasted a day, because the next day,

00:52:36.480 --> 00:52:38.920
I was in ego again.

00:52:38.920 --> 00:52:41.560
I knew that there was this death that occurred.

00:52:41.560 --> 00:52:45.360
Like this major chunk of ego had been scooped out and thrown

00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:46.120
away.

00:52:46.120 --> 00:52:49.160
But there was still stuff left.

00:52:49.160 --> 00:52:55.000
There was still karma and impressions that needed to be released and worked through.

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:57.640
And it doesn't all happen at once.

00:52:57.640 --> 00:53:03.560
That was another misconception I had, that you just sort of pop into awakening and then it's done.

00:53:03.560 --> 00:53:05.840
You're free. It's a one and done.

00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:08.480
You know, there's no other work left.

00:53:08.480 --> 00:53:12.440
You escape from humanity. You got no responsibilities and that's it.

00:53:12.440 --> 00:53:14.600
But that was not the case.

00:53:14.600 --> 00:53:18.520
there was a sort of karmic runoff that began on that day.

00:53:18.520 --> 00:53:20.600
I think in Sanskrit it's called leishavidya,

00:53:20.600 --> 00:53:23.000
like the faint traces of ego

00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:27.160
that have to continue unfolding post-awakening.

00:53:27.160 --> 00:53:28.080
- Yeah.

00:53:28.080 --> 00:53:32.120
- And so this began a whole year

00:53:32.120 --> 00:53:36.560
of what Adyashanti calls the I got it, I lost it phase.

00:53:36.560 --> 00:53:40.560
So I was in the I got it, I lost it phase for an entire year.

00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:43.240
That was in some ways the best year of my life

00:53:43.240 --> 00:53:45.880
and in other ways the worst year of my life.

00:53:45.880 --> 00:53:47.360
And I'll explain.

00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:48.900
I mean, the I got it, I lost it,

00:53:48.900 --> 00:53:51.560
is sort of like, okay, you get this realization,

00:53:51.560 --> 00:53:53.040
and then you lose it again.

00:53:53.040 --> 00:53:55.960
Because the ego, it's sort of like the ego

00:53:55.960 --> 00:53:59.040
is mortally wounded, and then it falls into the background,

00:53:59.040 --> 00:54:02.640
and the awareness and the peace comes into the foreground.

00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:04.180
But then the ego's still there,

00:54:04.180 --> 00:54:06.480
and it needs to reassert itself,

00:54:06.480 --> 00:54:10.920
so that it's part of the purification process

00:54:10.920 --> 00:54:12.760
that there's a sort of expansion,

00:54:12.760 --> 00:54:15.640
and then a contraction and it just keeps going like that.

00:54:15.640 --> 00:54:16.840
I didn't know it at the time,

00:54:16.840 --> 00:54:19.140
but I see the I got it, I lost it phase

00:54:19.140 --> 00:54:22.720
as a purification that was happening.

00:54:22.720 --> 00:54:24.040
- On your contracted days,

00:54:24.040 --> 00:54:26.760
was it like kind of miserable because you were gripped?

00:54:26.760 --> 00:54:28.200
- Oh, horrible.

00:54:28.200 --> 00:54:29.400
- Couldn't wait to go to sleep that night

00:54:29.400 --> 00:54:30.760
so you could just be unconscious.

00:54:30.760 --> 00:54:32.000
- Oh my gosh, yeah.

00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:36.000
Just the worst, I didn't know how deep suffering could go

00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:40.160
until I experienced that year of my life.

00:54:41.080 --> 00:54:43.240
In the beginning, there was more suffering,

00:54:43.240 --> 00:54:45.140
and the peace was few and far between.

00:54:45.140 --> 00:54:48.960
So I'd have like a week of suffering, just pure,

00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:52.800
and then a day of peace, where I got it again.

00:54:52.800 --> 00:54:54.640
And then it would be a week of suffering,

00:54:54.640 --> 00:54:55.920
and then a day of peace.

00:54:55.920 --> 00:54:59.400
And then slowly over the course of the year, it flipped.

00:54:59.400 --> 00:55:01.320
So there would be like a week of peace,

00:55:01.320 --> 00:55:02.880
and then a day of suffering.

00:55:02.880 --> 00:55:05.640
And then it reversed for an entire year.

00:55:05.640 --> 00:55:08.880
And just a little side note here, in that year,

00:55:08.880 --> 00:55:12.360
I ended up editing Phil's first book, Grace Happens,

00:55:12.360 --> 00:55:13.920
which I forgot to mention,

00:55:13.920 --> 00:55:17.200
that was a big part of our introduction as well.

00:55:17.200 --> 00:55:20.640
So he wrote a book six months before I met him

00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:23.200
called Grace Happens, An Awakening of Consciousness,

00:55:23.200 --> 00:55:25.620
and he shared it with me when we first met.

00:55:25.620 --> 00:55:27.300
It was just a manuscript at the time,

00:55:27.300 --> 00:55:29.360
it hadn't been edited or published.

00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:33.400
So he gave it to me because he thought it could help me

00:55:33.400 --> 00:55:37.180
through the process, and it did, very much so.

00:55:37.180 --> 00:55:41.580
I think what, you read it and I know you really liked it.

00:55:41.580 --> 00:55:44.720
The book is unique in a way and I haven't encountered,

00:55:44.720 --> 00:55:47.340
I don't think anything like it because--

00:55:47.340 --> 00:55:48.980
- And you've read a lot of spiritual books.

00:55:48.980 --> 00:55:52.060
- I've read a lot of spiritual books, yes I have.

00:55:52.060 --> 00:55:53.980
So a lot of spiritual teachings,

00:55:53.980 --> 00:55:56.020
they help you get to an awakening,

00:55:56.020 --> 00:55:57.500
they show you how to get there

00:55:57.500 --> 00:56:00.580
and then they talk about what it's like as an ego

00:56:00.580 --> 00:56:02.900
and also after an awakening.

00:56:02.900 --> 00:56:06.020
But they don't explain, or very few,

00:56:06.020 --> 00:56:08.540
I think there's more coming out now.

00:56:08.540 --> 00:56:11.820
But at the time, I had no exposure to anything

00:56:11.820 --> 00:56:14.940
that explained the transition phase

00:56:14.940 --> 00:56:18.740
from ego identification to ego transcendence.

00:56:18.740 --> 00:56:22.420
Like I said, it's not just a one and done, poof,

00:56:22.420 --> 00:56:23.940
and then you're there.

00:56:23.940 --> 00:56:25.700
There's a period of time where you

00:56:25.700 --> 00:56:29.860
have to transition into this awakened state

00:56:29.860 --> 00:56:32.820
so that you can live it in an abiding way.

00:56:32.820 --> 00:56:34.460
Phil's book was really instrumental

00:56:34.460 --> 00:56:38.460
because it kind of outlined his personal journey

00:56:38.460 --> 00:56:41.100
through that process from a bird's eye view,

00:56:41.100 --> 00:56:43.260
but also through his journal entries and emails

00:56:43.260 --> 00:56:45.740
that he was writing during his time.

00:56:45.740 --> 00:56:48.780
So it really validated my experience

00:56:48.780 --> 00:56:53.020
and gave me the courage to move through the process.

00:56:53.020 --> 00:56:55.140
And so I bring that up because during this

00:56:55.140 --> 00:56:59.540
I got it, I lost it phase, I edited his first book,

00:56:59.540 --> 00:57:00.860
Grace Happens.

00:57:00.860 --> 00:57:03.100
And he ended up writing a second book

00:57:03.100 --> 00:57:08.780
called Reflections of Consciousness, Essays on the Journey of Awakening and the Nature of Reality,

00:57:08.780 --> 00:57:14.860
which is also fantastic. It's very different. It's 18 essays on different spiritual topics,

00:57:14.860 --> 00:57:20.780
and I edited that as well. And both of those books are now on Amazon. And side note, you can get an

00:57:20.780 --> 00:57:26.380
autographed copy through me or through Soulscape if you're in Encinitas. But anyways, so I edited

00:57:26.380 --> 00:57:31.420
his book during the Psychotic I Lost It phase. And that was a really interesting experience and

00:57:31.420 --> 00:57:37.300
one of the best times of my life because I was actually reading what I was going

00:57:37.300 --> 00:57:43.020
through at the time and it helped to ground me because I had to be so

00:57:43.020 --> 00:57:48.780
detail-oriented to edit a book. You know, you're really focused on every word and

00:57:48.780 --> 00:57:54.780
misspellings and the deeper meaning and the flow of information so I had to

00:57:54.780 --> 00:57:59.780
really step out of myself to do it and that was very healing and grounding for

00:57:59.780 --> 00:58:04.540
and integrating for me. And at this time, for those of you who've read Grace

00:58:04.540 --> 00:58:08.000
Happens, you know that Phil was struggling financially after his

00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:14.300
awakening, and here I was struggling spiritually. So we decided to move in

00:58:14.300 --> 00:58:18.340
together so that I could help him and he could help me, and we became a great team.

00:58:18.340 --> 00:58:22.580
And so we were living together at this time. During the I Got It, I Lost It. And

00:58:22.580 --> 00:58:29.580
then after a year, again August 2021, this day, which I call the Day of the

00:58:29.580 --> 00:58:36.060
yoking happened. I woke up that morning and my higher self was speaking to me again.

00:58:36.060 --> 00:58:41.340
And this time I knew to trust it because it told me the truth. It had been proven

00:58:41.340 --> 00:58:47.020
right so I knew it was trustworthy. And it said, "Today's the day. Watch the ego

00:58:47.020 --> 00:58:52.780
die." It said a few other things too. It also said, "From this day forward I will

00:58:52.780 --> 00:58:59.240
never leave you." And it also said, "Now you have permission to teach." And I trusted

00:58:59.240 --> 00:59:05.200
that. So I went about my day and I kind of forgot about it and then that night I

00:59:05.200 --> 00:59:12.080
was reading Meher Baba's discourses. Meher Baba was a huge influence on my

00:59:12.080 --> 00:59:17.560
post-awakening journey, especially in that year. I read God Speaks, which is

00:59:17.560 --> 00:59:22.280
outstanding for anyone who hasn't read it, and discourses. And I was reading this

00:59:22.280 --> 00:59:27.400
one passage where he talks about in order to get to self-realization, I'm of

00:59:27.400 --> 00:59:32.880
of course, misquoting him, but in order to get to self-realization, you have to absolutely

00:59:32.880 --> 00:59:36.520
surrender everything to the guru.

00:59:36.520 --> 00:59:43.480
And in that moment, I was overcome with this immense devotion to the guru.

00:59:43.480 --> 00:59:50.320
Whether the guru was my higher self or life itself or God or Yogananda or whoever I was

00:59:50.320 --> 00:59:53.660
connected to, I just poured.

00:59:53.660 --> 00:59:55.080
It was almost instinctual.

00:59:55.080 --> 00:59:56.160
I wasn't doing it.

00:59:56.160 --> 01:00:01.220
just happened, that there was just this outpouring of devotion and surrender to

01:00:01.220 --> 01:00:08.640
the Guru. In that moment, two things happened. Number one, I felt this

01:00:08.640 --> 01:00:16.720
tremendous yanking at the top of my head. It was so powerful and at the same time I

01:00:16.720 --> 01:00:24.680
heard very loudly the words "get to work." I mean, I can't make this stuff up. This

01:00:24.680 --> 01:00:31.800
This yanking was like my consciousness was pulled up and out of my body and with that

01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:33.880
came this horrible ego death.

01:00:33.880 --> 01:00:36.960
It was like another layer of ego death.

01:00:36.960 --> 01:00:41.800
And granted, I had been experiencing little ego deaths for this whole year, but this one

01:00:41.800 --> 01:00:44.740
was an especially large one.

01:00:44.740 --> 01:00:50.800
And I understood in that moment the meaning of yoga because the root word of yoga, I think

01:00:50.800 --> 01:00:53.480
in Sanskrit, it means to unify.

01:00:53.480 --> 01:00:54.320
- To yoke. - To yoke.

01:00:54.320 --> 01:00:55.560
- You, to yoke.

01:00:55.560 --> 01:00:57.980
- Yeah, to yoke.

01:00:57.980 --> 01:00:59.060
And that's what it felt like.

01:00:59.060 --> 01:01:02.260
It felt like my consciousness was being yoked

01:01:02.260 --> 01:01:05.200
to the universal consciousness

01:01:05.200 --> 01:01:07.860
so that I could never fall back down.

01:01:07.860 --> 01:01:09.260
And from that day forward,

01:01:09.260 --> 01:01:14.000
I never lost the oneness that remains to this day.

01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:17.840
And the get to work came with the energy

01:01:17.840 --> 01:01:19.380
to actually get to work.

01:01:19.380 --> 01:01:21.940
And that was the last day of the I got it, I lost it.

01:01:21.940 --> 01:01:25.540
there was a permanent unity that lasted.

01:01:25.540 --> 01:01:27.300
So it became abiding.

01:01:27.300 --> 01:01:31.820
And I knew that the get to work was two things.

01:01:31.820 --> 01:01:36.260
I was gonna go back and become a therapist

01:01:36.260 --> 01:01:40.300
'cause I had just graduated a year, a year and a half before,

01:01:40.300 --> 01:01:44.220
but I hadn't finished all the hours I needed for licensure.

01:01:44.220 --> 01:01:46.860
In California, you need to get 3,000 hours

01:01:46.860 --> 01:01:49.660
to become a therapist of supervised practice

01:01:49.660 --> 01:01:52.400
and client hours, client contact,

01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:54.460
and I'd only done half of that.

01:01:54.460 --> 01:01:56.240
And I, during the awakening, I was thinking,

01:01:56.240 --> 01:01:57.420
you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

01:01:57.420 --> 01:01:59.340
I might not become a therapist.

01:01:59.340 --> 01:02:01.500
It might not work, and I don't know.

01:02:01.500 --> 01:02:03.840
So this get to work came with this knowing of,

01:02:03.840 --> 01:02:05.720
oh, I'm gonna be a therapist again.

01:02:05.720 --> 01:02:08.260
It came with a lot of intuitive information.

01:02:08.260 --> 01:02:10.860
So I started looking for a job.

01:02:10.860 --> 01:02:14.580
I found this great place called Good Therapy San Diego,

01:02:14.580 --> 01:02:16.460
which I'm still at.

01:02:16.460 --> 01:02:18.180
It's been three years.

01:02:18.180 --> 01:02:22.140
And the timing of that was just really special.

01:02:22.140 --> 01:02:23.900
Once I started looking, I immediately

01:02:23.900 --> 01:02:27.220
saw the post online for a job offer.

01:02:27.220 --> 01:02:29.140
And I knew, oh, this is the one.

01:02:29.140 --> 01:02:30.320
I'm going to get it.

01:02:30.320 --> 01:02:33.740
And it became a beautiful career.

01:02:33.740 --> 01:02:36.820
Katie and Adam Brooks, they're married, and they're the owners,

01:02:36.820 --> 01:02:40.300
and they're doing some really great work for the community.

01:02:40.300 --> 01:02:43.060
I'm an office manager now and a clinical partner.

01:02:43.060 --> 01:02:45.940
And the office was like two miles from my house.

01:02:45.940 --> 01:02:49.020
So it just felt like perfect timing, perfect location,

01:02:49.020 --> 01:02:52.380
everything was just sorted out beautifully.

01:02:52.380 --> 01:02:55.980
And the other part of the get to work I knew was the teaching,

01:02:55.980 --> 01:02:58.860
that I was going to begin teaching about self-realization

01:02:58.860 --> 01:03:00.700
and helping others get there.

01:03:00.700 --> 01:03:02.820
I don't consider myself a guru.

01:03:02.820 --> 01:03:04.740
I don't even really feel like I have anything

01:03:04.740 --> 01:03:06.460
that others don't have.

01:03:06.460 --> 01:03:09.860
But my role as a teacher-- I'm not really a teacher,

01:03:09.860 --> 01:03:13.900
but my role as a teacher is to just draw out

01:03:13.900 --> 01:03:16.260
the wisdom that's already within people.

01:03:16.260 --> 01:03:18.980
- That's any teacher's role, really.

01:03:18.980 --> 01:03:20.620
- Yeah, exactly.

01:03:20.620 --> 01:03:21.940
- If the teacher gives the impression

01:03:21.940 --> 01:03:23.820
that he has something that you don't

01:03:23.820 --> 01:03:25.340
and you can only get it from him,

01:03:25.340 --> 01:03:27.220
then find a different teacher, probably.

01:03:27.220 --> 01:03:29.700
- Yes, amen to that.

01:03:29.700 --> 01:03:30.980
Let's see, what happened next?

01:03:30.980 --> 01:03:33.620
So I started working.

01:03:33.620 --> 01:03:37.460
I also started creating a website and I bought a house.

01:03:37.460 --> 01:03:42.140
So this is now 2022, I believe.

01:03:42.140 --> 01:03:44.460
I could be getting my dates wrong

01:03:44.460 --> 01:03:45.980
'cause my memory, to be honest,

01:03:45.980 --> 01:03:48.620
still isn't that great since the awakening.

01:03:48.620 --> 01:03:50.340
I used to have a great memory before.

01:03:50.340 --> 01:03:52.220
- A lot of awakened people say that.

01:03:52.220 --> 01:03:53.800
Maybe it's not deficient,

01:03:53.800 --> 01:03:56.340
maybe it just functions differently.

01:03:56.340 --> 01:03:59.540
Maybe it's not normal, but maybe it's preferable.

01:03:59.540 --> 01:04:02.220
- Yeah, I trust that it's okay.

01:04:02.220 --> 01:04:04.300
And maybe I'm just not needing to hold on

01:04:04.300 --> 01:04:05.580
to things that aren't necessary.

01:04:05.580 --> 01:04:07.660
I just keep whatever's necessary

01:04:07.660 --> 01:04:09.700
and I throw away whatever isn't.

01:04:09.700 --> 01:04:14.020
You know, I remember reading Issar Gadat's "I Am That"

01:04:14.020 --> 01:04:16.380
and he says, "I have no memory.

01:04:16.380 --> 01:04:17.580
I live only in the present."

01:04:17.580 --> 01:04:19.500
So that was helpful a little bit.

01:04:19.500 --> 01:04:22.060
I think he might've meant something slightly different.

01:04:22.060 --> 01:04:23.540
- One way of putting it is that,

01:04:23.540 --> 01:04:26.440
the average person might have like a hundred thoughts

01:04:26.440 --> 01:04:29.660
per minute or whatever time period.

01:04:29.660 --> 01:04:32.940
And an awakened person might have one or two thoughts,

01:04:32.940 --> 01:04:35.340
but he's not missing anything.

01:04:35.340 --> 01:04:39.660
And the 98% of the thoughts were unnecessary anyway.

01:04:39.660 --> 01:04:45.200
just static and since he only has two instead of a hundred, then all the energy that was

01:04:45.200 --> 01:04:50.420
dissipated by those 98 superfluous thoughts gets channeled into the two thoughts and they

01:04:50.420 --> 01:04:52.460
become much more powerful and efficacious.

01:04:52.460 --> 01:04:58.420
Sure, I like that. I like that. It reminds me of, I think Michael Singer says, "Just

01:04:58.420 --> 01:05:04.180
remember, thoughts are just thoughts and feelings are just feelings." We place so much meaning

01:05:04.180 --> 01:05:06.940
and attachment to the thoughts, but they're just thoughts.

01:05:06.940 --> 01:05:11.500
Yeah, and what reminded me of that is your talk of memory. And so I also include memory in this. I

01:05:11.500 --> 01:05:16.700
mean, think of how many people cogitate on what they went through in high school, or, you know,

01:05:16.700 --> 01:05:21.100
all kinds of memories that aren't really serving any purpose. It's endless.

01:05:21.100 --> 01:05:29.340
Yeah, so in this period, I started working again, I made a website, I bought a house,

01:05:29.340 --> 01:05:35.740
and Phil and I, I asked Phil to live with me. And my vision was to create a place where we could

01:05:35.740 --> 01:05:41.500
cultivate peace and so everybody who came over could feel that peace and get in

01:05:41.500 --> 01:05:45.540
touch with their inner nature, their true nature, and we've been doing that ever

01:05:45.540 --> 01:05:51.340
since and it's been really wonderful. We're creating a hive as Yogananda says

01:05:51.340 --> 01:05:56.220
full of the honey of God. Nice. So it's it's been a really beautiful experience

01:05:56.220 --> 01:06:03.780
but I started working and I got off to a rough start because I had all this

01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:09.780
training in therapy, I knew what I was doing. I'd worked with clients before, but I had never

01:06:09.780 --> 01:06:15.940
done it from the Awaken perspective. So it was a completely different experience. And I would sit

01:06:15.940 --> 01:06:23.620
down in sessions and just be so confused and lost because the mind would tell me to do something,

01:06:23.620 --> 01:06:29.060
and then something else would happen. There was this non-doership that was happening,

01:06:29.700 --> 01:06:31.700
that an intervention would just emerge.

01:06:31.700 --> 01:06:33.700
So when you say the mind would tell you to do something,

01:06:33.700 --> 01:06:35.700
it would tell you to do something that your

01:06:35.700 --> 01:06:37.700
academic training had

01:06:37.700 --> 01:06:39.700
instilled in you to do.

01:06:39.700 --> 01:06:41.700
Yeah. But then your natural impulse was

01:06:41.700 --> 01:06:43.700
something different.

01:06:43.700 --> 01:06:45.700
Exactly, yeah. And the training is still useful.

01:06:45.700 --> 01:06:47.700
You still can draw on it

01:06:47.700 --> 01:06:49.700
and use it, but it was telling me

01:06:49.700 --> 01:06:51.700
you know, you have to follow this exact

01:06:51.700 --> 01:06:53.700
specific protocol. This is the way that it is.

01:06:53.700 --> 01:06:55.700
And then the non-doership would just happen

01:06:55.700 --> 01:06:57.700
and something else would come out.

01:06:57.700 --> 01:07:02.580
come out and then I would get really distressed. So, I'm like, "Oh no, I'm doing something wrong."

01:07:02.580 --> 01:07:08.100
And even though this awakening is abiding, I'm still not understanding how to live it,

01:07:08.100 --> 01:07:14.660
right? So, this was the embodiment process that began. So, I was having a lot of trouble

01:07:14.660 --> 01:07:23.300
with this sort of trusting in what was emerging. So, I ended up reaching out to a few different

01:07:23.300 --> 01:07:29.540
people who are on the cutting edge of psychology and spirituality, many of whom I know you have

01:07:29.540 --> 01:07:35.940
interviewed. So I reached out to James Finley, he had retired. I reached out to Bonnie Greenwell,

01:07:35.940 --> 01:07:44.980
she wrote me this beautiful email just before she passed. I really appreciated that. Of course,

01:07:44.980 --> 01:07:52.740
she couldn't help. I emailed Dorothy Hunt and she wrote me this really awesome email that's still

01:07:52.740 --> 01:07:57.660
very impactful for me today and I quoted it in one of my blogs on my website

01:07:57.660 --> 01:08:02.300
called my therapeutic orientation where I explain my style as a therapist and she

01:08:02.300 --> 01:08:06.460
put it beautifully she said these trainings and these techniques that we

01:08:06.460 --> 01:08:10.940
have are like arrows in our quiver in other words they're like tools in our

01:08:10.940 --> 01:08:17.860
toolbox what changes is now that we allow our true nature to emerge and

01:08:17.860 --> 01:08:23.860
choose which one we're going to use in any given moment. But that each moment is

01:08:23.860 --> 01:08:31.780
unique and each person is unique so you can't have a set way of how you're

01:08:31.780 --> 01:08:35.940
going to do things. You have to be able to be open and flow in the moment. So that

01:08:35.940 --> 01:08:40.740
was incredibly helpful for the embodiment process for me. But for somebody who has

01:08:40.740 --> 01:08:45.020
been trained in psychotherapy, flowing in the moment is going to be quite different

01:08:45.020 --> 01:08:47.220
than somebody who has no such training.

01:08:47.220 --> 01:08:49.260
The training is an important component.

01:08:49.260 --> 01:08:51.220
- The training is an important component, yes.

01:08:51.220 --> 01:08:53.220
The mind is still useful.

01:08:53.220 --> 01:08:54.940
It just becomes a tool.

01:08:54.940 --> 01:08:57.700
It becomes a servant rather than the master.

01:08:57.700 --> 01:08:59.700
But Dorothy was also retired,

01:08:59.700 --> 01:09:01.060
and so she couldn't help me,

01:09:01.060 --> 01:09:02.900
even though that email helped me.

01:09:02.900 --> 01:09:06.300
And I had read Suzanne Siegel's book.

01:09:06.300 --> 01:09:07.300
Is that how you say her name?

01:09:07.300 --> 01:09:08.540
- Yeah, I think so.

01:09:08.540 --> 01:09:09.700
- Collision with the Infinite,

01:09:09.700 --> 01:09:11.900
and it was edited by Steven Bodian.

01:09:11.900 --> 01:09:13.860
And at the same time, Phil was telling me,

01:09:13.860 --> 01:09:15.260
you should check out Stephen Bodian.

01:09:15.260 --> 01:09:16.980
He also does this stuff.

01:09:16.980 --> 01:09:18.940
So I had known a little bit about him

01:09:18.940 --> 01:09:22.460
and Dorothy recommended this book called The Sacred Mirror,

01:09:22.460 --> 01:09:25.500
which is all about non-dual psychotherapy,

01:09:25.500 --> 01:09:26.980
basically how to do psychotherapy

01:09:26.980 --> 01:09:28.740
from a non-dual perspective.

01:09:28.740 --> 01:09:30.700
- Is that Stephen's book?

01:09:30.700 --> 01:09:34.780
- I think John Prendergast is one of the editors

01:09:34.780 --> 01:09:37.220
and Sheila Crystal and someone else,

01:09:37.220 --> 01:09:39.580
Adyashanti does the introduction.

01:09:39.580 --> 01:09:42.560
So I had come in contact with Stephen's work.

01:09:42.560 --> 01:09:44.440
And so I decided to reach out to him,

01:09:44.440 --> 01:09:46.080
and thankfully he was available.

01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:48.960
And we didn't work very long together.

01:09:48.960 --> 01:09:52.120
We did a little bit of EMDR to kind of clear up

01:09:52.120 --> 01:09:53.920
some karmic runoff stuff that was--

01:09:53.920 --> 01:09:55.880
- Remind me of what EMDR means?

01:09:55.880 --> 01:09:57.640
- EMDR, it stands for

01:09:57.640 --> 01:10:00.460
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

01:10:00.460 --> 01:10:02.960
It's a mouthful that you don't need to know.

01:10:02.960 --> 01:10:07.360
But essentially, it's a highly evidence-based,

01:10:07.360 --> 01:10:12.360
internationally recognized technique for healing trauma.

01:10:12.360 --> 01:10:21.360
And so during this embodiment process there was some trauma that was starting to emerge that I hadn't been aware of pre-awakening.

01:10:21.360 --> 01:10:25.360
And so Steven helped me clear some of that up through EMDR.

01:10:25.360 --> 01:10:30.360
And that's what introduced me to EMDR and so now I'm trained in that because it was very helpful for me.

01:10:30.360 --> 01:10:36.360
But basically to sum up my work with Steven, which was super instrumental, and I know you interviewed him as well.

01:10:36.360 --> 01:10:37.360
A couple times.

01:10:37.360 --> 01:10:43.200
He basically just taught me to trust what was emerging. It wasn't that complicated

01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:46.200
easier said than done, but

01:10:46.200 --> 01:10:48.960
Once I really got that and I understood that

01:10:48.960 --> 01:10:58.040
Everything started to flow a lot easier and then things kind of sounds like your ego was just or your individuality was by habit

01:10:58.040 --> 01:11:03.760
Still trying to meddle in the situation and yeah, all you had to do is say get out of the way kid

01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:08.520
we got this, you know? Exactly. Yeah. It's like this is where you belong. You belong in

01:11:08.520 --> 01:11:12.320
the background. You're still useful, but you're not in charge here. There's a saying, "Brahman

01:11:12.320 --> 01:11:16.600
is the charioteer." So the eagle can sit in the back of the chariot, Brahman's got the

01:11:16.600 --> 01:11:22.280
reins. Exactly. That's the experience. So after that, everything started to flow very

01:11:22.280 --> 01:11:29.000
smoothly and I started to get my sea legs and understand how to live in the embodied

01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:36.000
State or live in the Awakened State in an embodied way and that's been the process ever since.

01:11:36.000 --> 01:11:37.760
I'm still on that journey.

01:11:37.760 --> 01:11:41.340
From what I understand, that journey never ends.

01:11:41.340 --> 01:11:48.860
Every moment is an experience in God's self-disclosure, you could say, or you're coming in contact

01:11:48.860 --> 01:11:50.420
with yourself in new ways.

01:11:50.420 --> 01:11:52.140
So there's always learning that's happening.

01:11:52.140 --> 01:11:57.820
There's always a deepening or an integration that's happening and that continues to this

01:11:57.820 --> 01:11:58.820
day.

01:11:58.820 --> 01:12:01.580
- Well, there's still a lot of things we can talk about here.

01:12:01.580 --> 01:12:03.780
So one thing comes to mind,

01:12:03.780 --> 01:12:06.220
have you ever read Peace Pilgrim's book?

01:12:06.220 --> 01:12:09.600
- I have not read her book, but I am familiar with her.

01:12:09.600 --> 01:12:11.380
- Yeah, you'd be able to read it in about an hour.

01:12:11.380 --> 01:12:13.540
It's this little book, but it's so cool.

01:12:13.540 --> 01:12:15.500
And the thing that reminded me of it was,

01:12:15.500 --> 01:12:17.300
well, for those who don't know who Peace Pilgrim was,

01:12:17.300 --> 01:12:21.220
she was this older woman who completely put herself

01:12:21.220 --> 01:12:23.300
in the lap of God, so to speak,

01:12:23.300 --> 01:12:25.900
and started just walking around the United States

01:12:25.900 --> 01:12:27.760
with nothing but the shirt on her back

01:12:27.760 --> 01:12:32.640
or a pair of sneakers and I love it. No money, no food, no nothing. She just threw herself on the

01:12:32.640 --> 01:12:38.160
mercy of the divine and was totally supported. And she had this shirt on that said Peace Pilgrim on

01:12:38.160 --> 01:12:43.360
the front and she'd walk around all kinds of places never endangered or, you know, well taken

01:12:43.360 --> 01:12:48.240
care of. But anyway, I was reminded of her because there's this graph that she puts in the book where

01:12:48.240 --> 01:12:53.520
she says that as long as you're kind of doing your evolutionary thing, you know, with individual

01:12:53.520 --> 01:12:59.200
effort is a gradual ascent, but once you kind of get out of the way, then it's like a hockey

01:12:59.200 --> 01:13:01.760
stick, it really, like climate change, it really takes off.

01:13:01.760 --> 01:13:02.760
Sure.

01:13:02.760 --> 01:13:03.760
Yeah.

01:13:03.760 --> 01:13:06.400
That's kind of, your story reminded me of that, because it seemed to accelerate after

01:13:06.400 --> 01:13:13.240
your awakening, and if you think about it, like, unbounded awareness is like a solvent,

01:13:13.240 --> 01:13:22.160
and any crud that you have in your makeup is not going to be able to persist or adhere

01:13:22.160 --> 01:13:26.400
exposure to that solvent, it's going to start dissolving. And it's going to be able to dissolve

01:13:26.400 --> 01:13:33.960
much more efficiently with a lot less disturbance than it could when you are isolated as an

01:13:33.960 --> 01:13:38.160
individual like throwing a little mud in a glass of water versus throwing the same amount

01:13:38.160 --> 01:13:39.800
of mud in an ocean.

01:13:39.800 --> 01:13:44.960
That's right. Another analogy that reminds me of what you're saying, it's like taking

01:13:44.960 --> 01:13:50.200
off on a rocket ship. When the rocket ship first leaves the surface of the earth, there's

01:13:50.200 --> 01:13:55.280
just this tremendous effort and force that's required to get lift off, but then

01:13:55.280 --> 01:14:00.880
as it leaves the atmosphere it just kind of coasts and then it goes off of the

01:14:00.880 --> 01:14:05.580
momentum that it built already and so that's what it feels like. Pre-awakening

01:14:05.580 --> 01:14:11.520
there's this egoic "I gotta do and I gotta push and I gotta be" and all these

01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:16.080
things and then post awakening it's just well everything just is the way it is

01:14:16.080 --> 01:14:20.080
and that's okay. It's actually perfect.

01:14:20.080 --> 01:14:24.080
We hear all these spiritual teachings about how you're not really the doer, right?

01:14:24.080 --> 01:14:28.080
And if you're trying to be the doer, it clashes with the reality of the

01:14:28.080 --> 01:14:32.080
situation, which is that you're not the doer.

01:14:32.080 --> 01:14:36.080
Exactly. You have to get out of the way in order for real, positive, impactful doing to happen.

01:14:36.080 --> 01:14:40.080
But on the other hand, these people who

01:14:40.080 --> 01:14:44.080
prematurely tell students to give up the search and accept things the way they are

01:14:44.080 --> 01:14:49.040
are and don't do spiritual practices and all that, I think are misguiding them.

01:14:49.040 --> 01:14:53.880
Because there's a time, as long as you perceive yourself to be a doer, then it takes a thorn

01:14:53.880 --> 01:14:54.880
to remove a thorn.

01:14:54.880 --> 01:14:55.880
Exactly.

01:14:55.880 --> 01:14:57.360
It might behoove you to do some doing.

01:14:57.360 --> 01:14:58.360
Yes.

01:14:58.360 --> 01:15:00.960
Every method, every technique has its time and its place, right?

01:15:00.960 --> 01:15:06.280
It has its value, but you have to know when to use it and how to use it.

01:15:06.280 --> 01:15:09.400
And you want to meet people where they're at.

01:15:09.400 --> 01:15:13.800
You don't want to give something to someone that isn't meeting them where they're at,

01:15:13.800 --> 01:15:16.840
it's probably not going to help and it might even harm.

01:15:16.840 --> 01:15:20.920
Yep. So that's why attunement is really important.

01:15:20.920 --> 01:15:25.400
Yes, I've used this saying before, some Indian saying that

01:15:25.400 --> 01:15:29.720
when the mangoes are ripe the branches bend down to the level of the people so

01:15:29.720 --> 01:15:32.760
they can just pick them. So yeah, a good teacher meets the

01:15:32.760 --> 01:15:36.600
student at whatever level they're at and gives them what's appropriate.

01:15:36.600 --> 01:15:41.000
Yeah, so that's what I do. I try. I'm not perfect of course,

01:15:41.000 --> 01:15:45.000
But I do my best. It's worked out so far.

01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:50.000
A little earlier you were talking about how you kind of felt like you were going crazy when you're going through all this intense stuff.

01:15:50.000 --> 01:15:58.000
And some people do go crazy. I mean, I've been on long courses where people have jumped off balconies and immolated themselves.

01:15:58.000 --> 01:16:07.000
So it's a delicate dance sometimes. I feel like I've gone through some rather crazy phases myself over the course of my decades of practice,

01:16:07.000 --> 01:16:11.440
especially on long courses, like a six-month course where you're meditating all the time.

01:16:11.440 --> 01:16:17.920
So maybe we could talk about that, how spiritual development or evolution is a restructuring

01:16:17.920 --> 01:16:24.160
of your whole makeup. And in the midst of that restructuring, you're not as stable and

01:16:24.160 --> 01:16:30.040
as integrated as you really need to be to function. And so how do we most artfully and

01:16:30.040 --> 01:16:38.760
safely navigate the journey and allow all this shuffling and restructuring to take place without

01:16:38.760 --> 01:16:42.120
ending up in a nut house or going off on some tangent?

01:16:42.120 --> 01:16:46.260
Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure I have the greatest answer for you. I mean,

01:16:46.260 --> 01:16:52.440
I think every situation is probably different, and you'd have to really understand the context

01:16:52.440 --> 01:16:59.260
and what's going on. But I think if you have a general understanding of how psychosis and

01:16:59.260 --> 01:17:05.620
awakening are similar and yet different, then you might be able to perceive where

01:17:05.620 --> 01:17:09.820
someone is at and you could help them. How are they similar and different?

01:17:09.820 --> 01:17:14.820
They're similar in the way that when you're experiencing both you have access

01:17:14.820 --> 01:17:20.020
to these subtler realms, the sort of collective consciousness you could say.

01:17:20.020 --> 01:17:24.700
Granted with psychosis I do think a lot of people are accessing the lower

01:17:24.700 --> 01:17:30.220
astral or lower vibrational worlds and that's why a lot of their delusions and

01:17:30.220 --> 01:17:36.700
hallucinations are dark and scary. But awakening you're experiencing those

01:17:36.700 --> 01:17:43.020
subtle realms as well. The difference is that with an awakening there's a much

01:17:43.020 --> 01:17:49.380
stronger psychological foundation. It isn't as porous. When there's psychosis

01:17:49.380 --> 01:17:56.180
it feels more porous. And Carl Jung talks about this a lot because he also had this sort of

01:17:56.180 --> 01:18:00.820
awakening and he thought he was going crazy and he started talking to his archetypes and

01:18:00.820 --> 01:18:07.580
collective unconscious and all this stuff. So he wrote a lot about this, but essentially,

01:18:07.580 --> 01:18:15.100
you know, with psychosis, the ego or the psychological framework isn't stable, it isn't strong. And

01:18:15.100 --> 01:18:22.180
so you don't necessarily want to be doing spiritual work unless you feel called to do that. You

01:18:22.180 --> 01:18:28.060
want to focus more on I think stabilizing and grounding yourself. Granted you could

01:18:28.060 --> 01:18:34.340
always do both maybe if you're careful. But awakening, you know, I'm not even totally

01:18:34.340 --> 01:18:40.580
sure what all the subtler differences are but there just seems to be a much stronger

01:18:40.580 --> 01:18:47.380
foundation psychologically. It's like you don't lose touch with your everyday reality even though

01:18:47.380 --> 01:18:53.540
you recognize that reality is not ultimate reality, right? The five senses and our world,

01:18:53.540 --> 01:18:59.940
it's an appearance in divine mind, it's an illusion and you know some people don't like

01:18:59.940 --> 01:19:06.020
that word illusion. It's relatively real but it's not ultimately or absolutely real. But awakening,

01:19:06.900 --> 01:19:13.300
you don't lose touch with that. You still want to function in the world. And so there is some level

01:19:13.300 --> 01:19:19.860
of ego that's necessary. You want to have a stable ego. But post-awakening, the ego is not this

01:19:19.860 --> 01:19:27.780
identity of me and mine and attachments and judgments and interpretations and divisions

01:19:27.780 --> 01:19:35.700
and you name it. It's more of just a thin interface. It's impersonal, but it still allows

01:19:35.700 --> 01:19:40.260
you to function in the world. So it's what allows me to talk to you today. You know, you still need

01:19:40.260 --> 01:19:45.700
a mind, you still need a body to be able to live. It's like a faculty along with your other

01:19:45.700 --> 01:19:52.100
faculties that enable you to function. Yeah, you still need these tools to navigate the world.

01:19:52.100 --> 01:19:55.380
And so I want to say more about the psychosis and enlightenment thing.

01:19:55.380 --> 01:20:02.020
Since you're on the topic of ego, some people talk about losing all sense of a personal self.

01:20:02.020 --> 01:20:06.420
And I've never been able to relate to that because if you whack them with their thumb with a hammer,

01:20:06.420 --> 01:20:10.900
there's this personal self that doesn't like that, tries to pull the thumb away.

01:20:10.900 --> 01:20:15.380
And they might say, well, that's just a bodily function or an instinctive thing.

01:20:15.380 --> 01:20:22.340
But pain is felt locally by somebody. It's not felt by some guy in China when you hit your thumb in

01:20:22.340 --> 01:20:28.260
San Diego with the hammer. Even though there might be some deeper transcendent awareness that is

01:20:28.900 --> 01:20:34.340
beyond the pain, there's still some individuation that experiences things normally.

01:20:34.340 --> 01:20:39.940
- Yes, there's still individuality, you don't lose that. One thing I would maybe adjust is that

01:20:39.940 --> 01:20:44.980
it's not like there's a somebody, but it's the consciousness. Consciousness is what's

01:20:44.980 --> 01:20:52.660
responding and reacting to pain. There just isn't this identification or attachment to the pain.

01:20:52.660 --> 01:20:54.660
There isn't a narrative.

01:20:54.660 --> 01:20:58.020
There's no belief system or story

01:20:58.020 --> 01:21:01.300
that's attached to the experience of pain.

01:21:01.300 --> 01:21:04.100
Maybe not a belief system, but like, you know,

01:21:04.100 --> 01:21:05.860
you and Phil live in the same house.

01:21:05.860 --> 01:21:07.380
And even though I'm in Iowa,

01:21:07.380 --> 01:21:09.220
we all have ultimately, fundamentally,

01:21:09.220 --> 01:21:10.740
the same consciousness.

01:21:10.740 --> 01:21:12.820
But if you burn your hand on the stove,

01:21:12.820 --> 01:21:14.260
you feel it.

01:21:14.260 --> 01:21:15.140
Phil doesn't feel it.

01:21:15.140 --> 01:21:16.020
I don't feel it.

01:21:16.020 --> 01:21:18.180
You know, there's some kind of localization

01:21:18.180 --> 01:21:19.620
that you need.

01:21:19.620 --> 01:21:21.620
Otherwise, you're not going to be able to feel it.

01:21:21.620 --> 01:21:28.260
You're still gonna feel it. Steve Taylor uses the words like a self-system to kind of describe the

01:21:28.260 --> 01:21:33.220
difference. Like there's an ego self-system which is more contracted and constricted,

01:21:33.220 --> 01:21:38.340
but then there's sort of this awakened self-system. So there's still a self-system,

01:21:38.340 --> 01:21:46.180
there's still some reference point that is having these experiences. It's just a lot subtler.

01:21:46.740 --> 01:21:50.180
Well, maybe it's the small ratio that you said before the faint remains

01:21:50.180 --> 01:21:56.680
It's not the whole that could be just solid center of things, but it's still there just very much attenuated

01:21:56.680 --> 01:21:59.540
Yes, that could be

01:21:59.540 --> 01:22:03.620
you may have seen the thing that I did with audie shanti and susanna marie about the

01:22:03.620 --> 01:22:09.220
Loss of personal self. I don't know we did that about six years ago or something or more. I didn't see that

01:22:09.220 --> 01:22:16.340
You might like that. Yeah. Anyway, i've always pondered this because various people do say that and it's not my experience

01:22:16.340 --> 01:22:20.840
but I'm thinking, "Oh, maybe there's something missing. I haven't gotten there yet."

01:22:20.840 --> 01:22:27.340
But other times I think, "No." It's like if you had a candle in a dark room, it would easily illuminate the room.

01:22:27.340 --> 01:22:32.340
But if you put the same candle in the sunlight, it's generating just as much heat,

01:22:32.340 --> 01:22:34.340
but you can't even tell if it's lit because the sun's so bright.

01:22:34.340 --> 01:22:36.340
Sure, sure. That's a good way to put it.

01:22:36.340 --> 01:22:40.340
Or the stars in the daytime. The stars are shining on us just as brightly as they do at night,

01:22:40.340 --> 01:22:42.340
but you can't see them because the sun is so bright.

01:22:42.340 --> 01:22:48.640
So like that, you know, pure awareness is there and there's still an ego, but it just seems almost lost in the

01:22:48.640 --> 01:22:51.300
vastness of the self

01:22:51.300 --> 01:22:53.340
Ramana Maharshi uses a great

01:22:53.340 --> 01:22:59.520
Analogy about the moon. He says that the ego pre awakening is like a full moon at night

01:22:59.520 --> 01:23:07.260
It's just massive and it sticks out but post awakening. It's like a sliver of the moon in broad daylight

01:23:07.260 --> 01:23:11.460
It's still there. Yeah, but it's been shaved away

01:23:11.980 --> 01:23:16.300
significantly and it's more in the background. It's not directing the flow

01:23:16.300 --> 01:23:21.340
of activity. It's more along for the ride, but you still need something in order to

01:23:21.340 --> 01:23:25.580
navigate and you experience pain, sure. It's just that there's no suffering

01:23:25.580 --> 01:23:31.340
because there's no attachments or expectations or needing things to be

01:23:31.340 --> 01:23:36.060
different than the way they are. There's just what is. That's good. I had never

01:23:36.060 --> 01:23:41.020
heard that analogy from him before. Oh really? Yeah, I'll use that one. Another

01:23:41.020 --> 01:23:42.780
- The other thing I wanna say about the ego

01:23:42.780 --> 01:23:45.980
is that there are some teachings or teachers

01:23:45.980 --> 01:23:48.260
who talk about annihilation of ego,

01:23:48.260 --> 01:23:50.040
that that's what happens.

01:23:50.040 --> 01:23:52.860
And that is true from a certain perspective

01:23:52.860 --> 01:23:56.780
because you are annihilating the identification with ego.

01:23:56.780 --> 01:24:00.120
So you no longer see yourself as an ego.

01:24:00.120 --> 01:24:03.980
But another way to say it would be that the ego

01:24:03.980 --> 01:24:07.020
is just reconstructed or reconfigured

01:24:07.020 --> 01:24:11.300
or it moves up to a higher way of functioning,

01:24:11.300 --> 01:24:14.260
like a more efficient functioning,

01:24:14.260 --> 01:24:17.900
it can still help to take in your experience

01:24:17.900 --> 01:24:20.540
and understand what's going on

01:24:20.540 --> 01:24:24.220
and reflect on the awakening experience and all that stuff.

01:24:24.220 --> 01:24:25.660
- Yeah, you know, there's verses in the Gita

01:24:25.660 --> 01:24:29.420
where the ego, which is in control,

01:24:29.420 --> 01:24:31.220
is compared with a thief

01:24:31.220 --> 01:24:33.660
who appropriates things that don't belong to him.

01:24:33.660 --> 01:24:40.240
So the ego, assuming that it is the doer of action, is considered a thief.

01:24:40.240 --> 01:24:45.220
What you're saying is in the awakened state, the ego has found its proper place in the

01:24:45.220 --> 01:24:50.360
hierarchy of the personality, and it's still an essential component of the personality,

01:24:50.360 --> 01:24:53.100
but it no longer has usurped authority.

01:24:53.100 --> 01:24:54.460
Exactly.

01:24:54.460 --> 01:25:02.360
Yogananda will say that there's like King Ego and King Soul, and King Soul is the rightful

01:25:02.360 --> 01:25:06.800
leader of the body and King Ego is, you know, the usurper.

01:25:06.800 --> 01:25:08.840
He's just the court jester, he's not the king.

01:25:08.840 --> 01:25:09.840
Yeah.

01:25:09.840 --> 01:25:11.600
All right, that's pretty good.

01:25:11.600 --> 01:25:15.480
One thing I was thinking about when you were comparing psychosis with enlightenment, or

01:25:15.480 --> 01:25:24.880
awakening, I prefer that word, takes place on the basis of the foundation of, you could

01:25:24.880 --> 01:25:33.100
say, a strengthening, a purification, a preparation of the mind-body system to the point where

01:25:33.100 --> 01:25:39.360
awakening is just natural and almost inevitable, as in your case, once one is fully prepared

01:25:39.360 --> 01:25:47.720
for it. Whereas psychosis, the system can be very weak, impure, discombobulated, incoherent,

01:25:47.720 --> 01:25:54.400
and there's a sort of a breaking open, but to what? You're not in a condition to incorporate

01:25:54.400 --> 01:25:57.600
unbounded awareness and function in a coherent way.

01:25:57.600 --> 01:26:00.000
Yeah, that's my understanding.

01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:06.480
And so I think for spiritual seekers, the important point is that the motto "safety first".

01:26:06.480 --> 01:26:10.560
You can destabilize yourself with disastrous consequences.

01:26:10.560 --> 01:26:11.520
You can.

01:26:11.520 --> 01:26:16.320
And it's important to proceed at a pace that is manageable for you,

01:26:16.320 --> 01:26:20.720
with proper guidance, with exercise, with good food, with good sleep,

01:26:20.720 --> 01:26:25.920
with not taking 500 micrograms of LSD every weekend.

01:26:25.920 --> 01:26:32.240
Yes, please, please, safety first. I'm not a big fan of forcing the

01:26:32.240 --> 01:26:38.800
kundalini or doing these really intense breathing or posturing

01:26:38.800 --> 01:26:43.840
things that can activate it because it can be very dangerous.

01:26:43.840 --> 01:26:47.760
For me, the kundalini did happen naturally, you could say, and it was

01:26:47.760 --> 01:26:51.060
already almost more than I could bear.

01:26:51.060 --> 01:26:54.240
So imagine if you're activating this powerful

01:26:54.240 --> 01:26:57.500
kundalini energy before you're ready for it.

01:26:57.500 --> 01:27:00.120
I've heard cases and I know some people

01:27:00.120 --> 01:27:03.840
who are going through that and it's just a terrible time.

01:27:03.840 --> 01:27:05.160
- I'm gonna start referring them to you

01:27:05.160 --> 01:27:08.080
because I get contacted by people who say,

01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:09.480
I had a kundalini awakening,

01:27:09.480 --> 01:27:11.200
now I'm living in my parents' basement,

01:27:11.200 --> 01:27:13.160
I can't work, I can't function.

01:27:13.160 --> 01:27:15.320
I'm miserable. - That might happen.

01:27:15.320 --> 01:27:19.940
Are you licensed to deal with people everywhere or just in California?

01:27:19.940 --> 01:27:22.160
So I'm licensed only in California.

01:27:22.160 --> 01:27:28.200
I do in person in Encinitas and also online throughout California virtually.

01:27:28.200 --> 01:27:34.560
But the teaching, if the goal is self-realization, then I can work internationally, virtually.

01:27:34.560 --> 01:27:35.560
And you do that already.

01:27:35.560 --> 01:27:36.560
We'll talk about that before we close.

01:27:36.560 --> 01:27:37.560
And I do that already.

01:27:37.560 --> 01:27:42.080
Yes, I do that already and I also do that in person in Carlsbad.

01:27:42.080 --> 01:27:43.800
Okay, good.

01:27:43.800 --> 01:27:49.480
So another thing I wanted to talk to you about is the correlation, or lack of it, between

01:27:49.480 --> 01:27:54.440
awakening-- we've sort of been talking about this-- between awakening and psychological

01:27:54.440 --> 01:27:59.480
health and integrity, and also ethics and morality.

01:27:59.480 --> 01:28:05.600
Because there are numerous examples of supposedly awakened teachers who don't seem to measure

01:28:05.600 --> 01:28:10.840
up by those measures or standards, and it confuses people.

01:28:10.840 --> 01:28:12.560
It confuses me.

01:28:12.560 --> 01:28:18.520
I would like to think that spiritual awakening is correlated with almost saintliness, you

01:28:18.520 --> 01:28:22.880
know, just a really pure way of living and dealing with people and not harming people

01:28:22.880 --> 01:28:25.060
and so on.

01:28:25.060 --> 01:28:31.240
And the way I rationalize when this doesn't happen, and there are numerous egregious cases,

01:28:31.240 --> 01:28:33.760
is that the person is just half-baked.

01:28:33.760 --> 01:28:35.640
It's not a full development.

01:28:35.640 --> 01:28:40.840
They haven't undergone all the necessary integration and purification that ideally they need to

01:28:40.840 --> 01:28:46.280
undergo and yet they may have assumed a teaching role and even become quite famous in that

01:28:46.280 --> 01:28:47.280
role.

01:28:47.280 --> 01:28:50.000
Yes, there's a lot I'd like to say about this.

01:28:50.000 --> 01:28:51.440
I agree with you.

01:28:51.440 --> 01:28:55.220
There is a blog post on my website where I do go into this a little bit.

01:28:55.220 --> 01:29:01.680
It's the Ego, especially the Ego Part 2, where I talk about, there's sort of two processes

01:29:01.680 --> 01:29:02.800
that go on.

01:29:02.800 --> 01:29:08.380
There's the process of self-realization, which is the evolution of consciousness and the realization

01:29:08.380 --> 01:29:10.120
of our true nature.

01:29:10.120 --> 01:29:17.680
And then there's self-actualization, which is more of this psychological achievement.

01:29:17.680 --> 01:29:22.080
But self-actualization, I would say, is on the level of ego.

01:29:22.080 --> 01:29:29.620
And so it's just basically achieving a well-adjusted level of ego and success and self-identity

01:29:29.620 --> 01:29:35.600
and it's, you know, there's a unified self-concept, but there's still a separate self there.

01:29:35.600 --> 01:29:39.440
Those are two separate processes, in my opinion.

01:29:39.440 --> 01:29:44.680
They have a lot of intersection and influence on one another, but they're really kind of

01:29:44.680 --> 01:29:50.200
distinct processes where self-realization is just realizing your true nature.

01:29:50.200 --> 01:29:53.480
It's waking up from the dream, right?

01:29:53.480 --> 01:29:58.400
And stepping out of the box or stepping off the wheel, you could say, in Buddhism.

01:29:58.400 --> 01:30:00.160
And that can happen at any point.

01:30:00.160 --> 01:30:04.200
You don't have to be self-actualized to have a realization.

01:30:04.200 --> 01:30:08.000
So you don't really have to be a well-adjusted ego.

01:30:08.000 --> 01:30:09.000
Does it help?

01:30:09.000 --> 01:30:10.000
Or know how to function?

01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:11.800
It certainly does help, yeah.

01:30:11.800 --> 01:30:12.800
But you don't have to be that.

01:30:12.800 --> 01:30:19.360
Yeah, I mean, does the likelihood of self-realization increase as the ego becomes more healthy?

01:30:19.360 --> 01:30:22.060
I think it approximates it.

01:30:22.060 --> 01:30:29.760
I'm not sure I would ever stake a claim and say that it absolutely helps.

01:30:29.760 --> 01:30:30.760
Because self-realization is just...

01:30:30.760 --> 01:30:33.480
We're kind of wondering about how tight the correlation is, you know?

01:30:33.480 --> 01:30:37.380
Obviously, it's not one-to-one, but there's some stretchiness.

01:30:37.380 --> 01:30:44.820
What I'll say is that it's more likely, I think, that you will have an awakening if you are

01:30:44.820 --> 01:30:51.340
self-actualized because it's sort of like the only thing left to do.

01:30:51.340 --> 01:30:53.980
But I wouldn't go so far as to say there's causation.

01:30:53.980 --> 01:30:59.140
Yeah, it might be good to throw in here too, that you say you might have an awakening,

01:30:59.140 --> 01:31:00.140
but so what?

01:31:00.140 --> 01:31:01.140
There are many awakenings.

01:31:01.140 --> 01:31:03.300
There are many degrees of awakening.

01:31:03.300 --> 01:31:08.220
I've heard Adya and others say that it's kind of seductive when you have an awakening to

01:31:08.220 --> 01:31:14.540
think that this is it and that there aren't any more, whereas in fact there are many more.

01:31:14.540 --> 01:31:18.700
Right. And if you have an awakening, which you can have at any time because it's stepping

01:31:18.700 --> 01:31:24.040
out of the box altogether, if you have an awakening and you don't have a well-adjusted

01:31:24.040 --> 01:31:31.940
ego to weather the storm and you're not familiar with social norms or things like that or psychological

01:31:31.940 --> 01:31:37.100
issues and trauma and abuse and things like that, then you might fall into that

01:31:37.100 --> 01:31:42.740
trap because you believe that everything is one and so it doesn't really matter.

01:31:42.740 --> 01:31:48.660
But I would agree with you that it's sort of an incomplete awakening. You want

01:31:48.660 --> 01:31:54.700
that stability as well and I would say that you know the wisdom aspect of

01:31:54.700 --> 01:31:59.300
self-realization would say everything is perfect, everything is one, but it's

01:31:59.300 --> 01:32:04.420
incomplete if it doesn't include the love aspect, the love has to be there as well.

01:32:04.420 --> 01:32:11.300
And that's where I think the psychology can really help because you want to know

01:32:11.300 --> 01:32:18.300
if you're hurting someone or not. So I think this is why. And that you care. Yeah.

01:32:18.300 --> 01:32:24.660
So I think this is why, this is my explanation for why I believe there are

01:32:24.660 --> 01:32:31.420
spiritual teachers and those who have achieved lofty states of consciousness, why they end

01:32:31.420 --> 01:32:35.700
up hurting people and doing these unsavory things.

01:32:35.700 --> 01:32:42.460
Granted, I do want to maybe give them a little benefit of the doubt by saying that you can't

01:32:42.460 --> 01:32:47.780
judge someone from today's standards who's lived in the past.

01:32:47.780 --> 01:32:53.780
You want to judge them by their standards in the past because things are still evolving.

01:32:53.780 --> 01:32:59.460
of human nature and psychology and trauma and what helps people and what hurts people and

01:32:59.460 --> 01:33:04.660
healing processes, these things are still evolving in our understanding on a day-to-day

01:33:04.660 --> 01:33:11.780
level. And so maybe there's some level of people not understanding that. So I wouldn't

01:33:11.780 --> 01:33:17.420
judge people way back when, based on our current standards, but I would say that the more recent

01:33:17.420 --> 01:33:22.220
you have awakened, I do think the more responsible you have to be.

01:33:22.220 --> 01:33:26.440
when I talk about this, I have in mind, you know, teachers who might have died now, but

01:33:26.440 --> 01:33:32.180
were alive in our lifetimes and kind of creating some problems. Although many people still

01:33:32.180 --> 01:33:35.900
adore them and feel like they've made huge differences in their lives, which I wouldn't

01:33:35.900 --> 01:33:36.900
deny.

01:33:36.900 --> 01:33:41.100
Absolutely. Yeah. There's still positive impacts that they have made.

01:33:41.100 --> 01:33:44.740
It goes on, I mean, which is why we have the Association for Spiritual Integrity.

01:33:44.740 --> 01:33:49.620
Yeah. And I'm a member of that too. And I love the honor code. And that's why I joined.

01:33:49.620 --> 01:33:56.080
a big part of my work. I find it very important. So being awake, in my opinion, does not preclude

01:33:56.080 --> 01:34:01.940
you from doing all these things, these hurtful things. It doesn't mean you just have a clean

01:34:01.940 --> 01:34:08.100
slate to do whatever you want. You have to be considerate and ethical and it's very important,

01:34:08.100 --> 01:34:13.660
especially if what we're wanting is for everybody to realize their true nature. You don't want

01:34:13.660 --> 01:34:16.260
these teachers to be a bad example.

01:34:16.260 --> 01:34:18.260
Yeah, it can be very disillusioning.

01:34:18.260 --> 01:34:23.260
You know, another thing is that if you step into the role of being a spiritual teacher,

01:34:23.260 --> 01:34:30.260
then it's not unlikely that you will have people feeling devoted to you, or just praising you, or adoring you,

01:34:30.260 --> 01:34:35.260
or putting you on a pedestal and thinking that you were super wise and all that.

01:34:35.260 --> 01:34:38.260
And you want to be mature enough so that doesn't go to your head,

01:34:38.260 --> 01:34:41.260
because pride goeth before a fall, as they say.

01:34:41.260 --> 01:34:43.260
Yes, it does. You still have to be careful.

01:34:43.260 --> 01:34:48.140
and after an awakening there's karmic runoff that can happen and the process of that looks

01:34:48.140 --> 01:34:54.380
differently for everybody but it could go on for years and so you want to stay vigilant,

01:34:54.380 --> 01:35:00.460
for lack of a better word, of some of these subconscious samskaras or impressions that

01:35:00.460 --> 01:35:04.260
haven't been worked through. You want to be careful that those don't crystallize or take

01:35:04.260 --> 01:35:05.980
effect without your awareness.

01:35:05.980 --> 01:35:11.180
Yeah, that's probably why in Zen, or so I've heard, I never studied Zen, they say that

01:35:11.180 --> 01:35:17.820
once a student has awakened, they have a 10-year waiting period before they start to teach.

01:35:17.820 --> 01:35:24.980
Yes. For me, it was about three years, and I still, you know, at times feel like I'm

01:35:24.980 --> 01:35:29.500
out of my depths, and that's okay. And I just acknowledge that there's a lot I don't know,

01:35:29.500 --> 01:35:35.540
and I'm upfront about that. But thankfully, I did have inner confirmation that I trust,

01:35:35.540 --> 01:35:40.600
And also, outer confirmation from Phil, who both encouraged me to teach.

01:35:40.600 --> 01:35:46.200
So I hope and I trust that I am at least a little bit prepared and ready, and that the

01:35:46.200 --> 01:35:50.120
universe won't send me someone that I can't assist in some way.

01:35:50.120 --> 01:35:52.240
And if they do, you can refer them to somebody else.

01:35:52.240 --> 01:35:54.760
And if they do, I will refer them to someone else.

01:35:54.760 --> 01:35:57.520
And I would be more than happy to say, "I can't help you.

01:35:57.520 --> 01:35:58.520
I'm sorry."

01:35:58.520 --> 01:36:03.640
Well, I think you have the important quality of humility, and it's a safety measure for

01:36:03.640 --> 01:36:07.640
anybody, but it protects you from getting bigger than your britches.

01:36:07.640 --> 01:36:11.640
Yes, exactly. And in my psychology field,

01:36:11.640 --> 01:36:15.640
you know, to get licensed you have to pass a big law and ethics exam.

01:36:15.640 --> 01:36:19.640
It's a huge part of our training. It would also be cool

01:36:19.640 --> 01:36:23.640
if all spiritual teachers could undergo the kind of psychological journey

01:36:23.640 --> 01:36:27.640
you went through. Yeah, that would be nice. Wouldn't that be great? Maybe someday, maybe in the future

01:36:27.640 --> 01:36:31.640
as we keep evolving, that'll happen. It's a big part of my work and I

01:36:31.640 --> 01:36:33.680
I take it very seriously.

01:36:33.680 --> 01:36:35.320
- Talking about the future,

01:36:35.320 --> 01:36:37.980
spiritual awakening is really optimum mental health,

01:36:37.980 --> 01:36:39.640
I think you would agree.

01:36:39.640 --> 01:36:42.980
So the mental health profession ultimately, ideally,

01:36:42.980 --> 01:36:47.480
should be in the job of helping people spiritually awaken.

01:36:47.480 --> 01:36:50.200
And right now, perhaps only 1% of therapists

01:36:50.200 --> 01:36:53.440
are thinking that way, but maybe 50 years from now,

01:36:53.440 --> 01:36:55.820
that will be kind of like part of the package.

01:36:55.820 --> 01:36:58.400
So you will have all this rigorous training

01:36:58.400 --> 01:37:00.560
and ethical standards and everything

01:37:00.560 --> 01:37:02.520
in the spiritual teaching profession

01:37:02.520 --> 01:37:05.120
as you now have in the psychological profession.

01:37:05.120 --> 01:37:07.160
- You and me both, my friend.

01:37:07.160 --> 01:37:08.480
So that's part of what I do,

01:37:08.480 --> 01:37:10.920
is I like to blend the spiritual and the psychological,

01:37:10.920 --> 01:37:14.600
and I think that's the way forward here.

01:37:14.600 --> 01:37:16.680
I think most of the field of psychology

01:37:16.680 --> 01:37:20.340
is rooted on the ego level, of course.

01:37:20.340 --> 01:37:22.840
It's hard to see outside of that.

01:37:22.840 --> 01:37:24.360
It's very helpful, of course.

01:37:24.360 --> 01:37:26.880
It helped me, it helps a lot of people,

01:37:26.880 --> 01:37:30.200
but it's also incomplete without the spirituality,

01:37:30.200 --> 01:37:34.920
Because as long as you're identified as an ego, suffering is in play.

01:37:34.920 --> 01:37:39.640
Because, you know, there's resistance to reality, there's resistance to change,

01:37:39.640 --> 01:37:43.880
there's fear of the unknown, there's this feeling that you're a separate self.

01:37:43.880 --> 01:37:47.480
There's a lack of fulfillment that's always going to be gnawing at you.

01:37:47.480 --> 01:37:52.360
Yeah, there's these narratives and beliefs that we have, that we attach to.

01:37:52.360 --> 01:37:56.400
So as long as there's ego identification, there's going to be suffering.

01:37:56.400 --> 01:38:00.560
And of course, psychology is really focused on reducing suffering.

01:38:00.560 --> 01:38:08.400
So the way forward for psychology is really to start to bring the spiritual into it.

01:38:08.400 --> 01:38:11.320
I think it's not complete without that.

01:38:11.320 --> 01:38:14.880
I think that's the way forward for pretty much all aspects of society.

01:38:14.880 --> 01:38:20.600
Everything from ecology to the military to just about everything you can imagine.

01:38:20.600 --> 01:38:22.000
I couldn't agree more.

01:38:22.000 --> 01:38:27.160
spirituality has the potential to impact positively every aspect of our lives

01:38:27.160 --> 01:38:28.900
because it's the most fundamental thing

01:38:28.900 --> 01:38:33.200
you know so it must be fundamental to everything ultimately physics and uh...

01:38:33.200 --> 01:38:34.900
biology, everything

01:38:34.900 --> 01:38:38.420
exactly spirituality is really just reality

01:38:38.420 --> 01:38:41.240
that's what it comes down to when you awaken to your true nature you're

01:38:41.240 --> 01:38:43.420
awakening to reality

01:38:43.420 --> 01:38:48.660
science and psychology and ecology and all these things they're part of reality

01:38:48.660 --> 01:38:51.700
they're equally valuable, they have their time and their place.

01:38:51.700 --> 01:38:56.060
They're all like spokes on a wheel and spirituality is the hub.

01:38:56.060 --> 01:38:56.980
Sure.

01:38:56.980 --> 01:39:01.100
Which leads me to another point that you wrote an essay about in your blog

01:39:01.100 --> 01:39:04.380
about rising mental illness and what we can do about it.

01:39:04.380 --> 01:39:07.820
And I've been thinking about this lately. I've heard some various political

01:39:07.820 --> 01:39:10.100
commentators or others say that

01:39:10.100 --> 01:39:11.240
they feel like a

01:39:11.240 --> 01:39:13.100
large percentage of

01:39:13.100 --> 01:39:14.520
the population is

01:39:14.520 --> 01:39:15.420
psychotic

01:39:15.420 --> 01:39:18.620
in some way. Maybe we wouldn't agree with the

01:39:18.620 --> 01:39:23.500
strict definition of that word applied to 50% of society. But when you look at what

01:39:23.500 --> 01:39:28.880
has happened to certain societies in the past like Nazi Germany or China under

01:39:28.880 --> 01:39:33.700
Chairman Mao, everybody goes nuts. And the people who haven't gone nuts better keep

01:39:33.700 --> 01:39:38.420
their mouth shut or they'll be killed. Yeah I would call that like a kind of

01:39:38.420 --> 01:39:43.460
mass psychosis. Yeah. You know it's not psychosis in the formal diagnosis way but

01:39:43.460 --> 01:39:47.180
It's a sort of mass insanity.

01:39:47.180 --> 01:39:48.900
It is and it has happened many times.

01:39:48.900 --> 01:39:54.280
I was thinking about the war in Rwanda a few decades ago where people were calling each

01:39:54.280 --> 01:39:58.380
other cockroaches and hacking each other to death with machetes.

01:39:58.380 --> 01:40:03.060
People who had been neighbors, you know, who had actually had intermarried in little communities,

01:40:03.060 --> 01:40:05.660
the Hooties and the Tootsies or whatever they were called.

01:40:05.660 --> 01:40:11.580
I mean, people go nuts and it's happened over so many millennia and there's so many wars

01:40:11.580 --> 01:40:13.260
have been fought.

01:40:13.260 --> 01:40:14.540
What is your take on that?

01:40:14.540 --> 01:40:16.700
Well, I mean, it's really tragic.

01:40:16.700 --> 01:40:21.620
It's sad and it reveals that there's a sickness in our world.

01:40:21.620 --> 01:40:25.160
And I think that sickness is just lack of knowledge of our true nature.

01:40:25.160 --> 01:40:28.260
So I agree there is a rising mental illness.

01:40:28.260 --> 01:40:29.760
I do believe it's getting worse.

01:40:29.760 --> 01:40:36.780
I think it's partly due to the fallout from COVID, a number of other factors, the rapid

01:40:36.780 --> 01:40:42.760
pace of advancement of technology and change and social media.

01:40:42.760 --> 01:40:48.860
Social media for sure, especially among teens I've noticed, really big factors for mental

01:40:48.860 --> 01:40:49.860
illness.

01:40:49.860 --> 01:40:55.360
I think in a nutshell, the ultimate solution is to start to bring spirituality into the

01:40:55.360 --> 01:40:56.840
picture.

01:40:56.840 --> 01:41:00.000
You have to because it's not complete without it.

01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:04.240
You know, psychology is very practical, it's helpful, it's got a lot of wonderful tools

01:41:04.240 --> 01:41:09.860
that I use, and it brings focus and helps us navigate our day-to-day lives.

01:41:09.860 --> 01:41:15.840
But without the spirituality part, it's lacking meaning, it's lacking context, it's lacking

01:41:15.840 --> 01:41:22.220
this deeper understanding, and there's no ultimate fulfillment or inner peace if there

01:41:22.220 --> 01:41:24.900
isn't that deeper knowing of our nature.

01:41:24.900 --> 01:41:29.940
- So how does that become a common feature of society as opposed to a rarity?

01:41:29.940 --> 01:41:31.940
Maybe it's happening anyway.

01:41:31.940 --> 01:41:35.420
- Well, you know, it's definitely happening.

01:41:35.420 --> 01:41:39.280
First of all, you know, I'm thinking about Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" where

01:41:39.280 --> 01:41:43.580
he talks about, you know, enough people get to this level.

01:41:43.580 --> 01:41:45.500
It doesn't have to be more than 50%.

01:41:45.500 --> 01:41:51.100
It could be just any number where there's just a tipping point and then society starts

01:41:51.100 --> 01:41:52.100
to take hold.

01:41:52.100 --> 01:41:54.500
So I think it starts to take hold in society.

01:41:54.500 --> 01:42:01.060
I think, unfortunately, there may have to be a lot of suffering in order for people

01:42:01.060 --> 01:42:02.060
to get to this place.

01:42:02.060 --> 01:42:07.260
- I got an email from a friend this morning, he said, "When are we gonna learn?" And I said,

01:42:07.260 --> 01:42:12.060
"Well, you know, alcoholics have to bottom out very often before they'll seek help,

01:42:12.060 --> 01:42:18.220
and perhaps humanity is an alcoholic." - Yeah, that could be. You know, suffering,

01:42:18.220 --> 01:42:22.220
it's hard to talk about sometimes, especially if someone is in the throes of it, but

01:42:22.220 --> 01:42:30.380
it's a form of grace, and it's embedded into the fabric of our world and reality because it's

01:42:30.380 --> 01:42:35.820
part of the impetus to awaken. If there was no suffering, we wouldn't ever have a reason to

01:42:35.820 --> 01:42:40.460
evolve or seek our true nature. So I do think unfortunately there may have to be

01:42:40.460 --> 01:42:46.940
some suffering involved, but on the brighter side, it also can take shape this merging of

01:42:46.940 --> 01:42:52.380
spirituality or infusion of spirituality in all aspects of life. It starts with just people like

01:42:52.380 --> 01:42:57.500
you and me who are having these conversations and doing the work that we're doing and there are so

01:42:57.500 --> 01:43:02.200
So many people out there who are doing this work and they're, you know, helping the world

01:43:02.200 --> 01:43:03.200
move forward.

01:43:03.200 --> 01:43:04.200
Yeah.

01:43:04.200 --> 01:43:06.540
And I don't want to sound like a pessimist because I'm not.

01:43:06.540 --> 01:43:07.540
I'm an optimist.

01:43:07.540 --> 01:43:12.460
I think that we're eventually going to collectively get to a very nice place.

01:43:12.460 --> 01:43:18.180
But it would be nice if the trauma that we have to go through to get there were minimized.

01:43:18.180 --> 01:43:19.420
Yes.

01:43:19.420 --> 01:43:21.300
And we can accelerate that process.

01:43:21.300 --> 01:43:25.640
We don't just have to wait for things to just change through suffering.

01:43:25.640 --> 01:43:28.920
We can accelerate the process through being aware.

01:43:28.920 --> 01:43:35.320
You know, doing our work, or doing psychotherapy, or learning about spiritual topics, wrestling

01:43:35.320 --> 01:43:41.320
with our trauma and our past karmic impressions, opening up the subconscious and releasing

01:43:41.320 --> 01:43:43.380
it and processing everything.

01:43:43.380 --> 01:43:45.720
We can get there faster if we're aware.

01:43:45.720 --> 01:43:48.840
You know there's that saying, "Make hay while the sun shines."

01:43:48.840 --> 01:43:53.120
I think the sun is really shining right now in terms of the opportunities for spiritual

01:43:53.120 --> 01:43:54.120
advancement.

01:43:54.120 --> 01:43:55.120
That's for sure.

01:43:55.120 --> 01:43:58.120
And, you know, if you're interested, you'll find something.

01:43:58.120 --> 01:44:04.120
It used to be that a spiritual teacher's radius of influence was, you know, how far he could walk in his sandals,

01:44:04.120 --> 01:44:08.120
and how many years he lived. But these days it shoots all over the world.

01:44:08.120 --> 01:44:14.120
Right now there's 183 people on here, and I think some of them are in India and various other places.

01:44:14.120 --> 01:44:18.120
Hi everyone. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, the Internet.

01:44:18.120 --> 01:44:23.120
Like anything in this world, it can be used for good or for ill, so let's use it for good.

01:44:23.120 --> 01:44:28.760
Yeah, very true. I think some questions are coming in. Irene's about to send them over to me.

01:44:28.760 --> 01:44:31.800
What else would you like to say that we haven't thought about?

01:44:31.800 --> 01:44:38.160
At some point before we wrap up I can share a little bit about my teaching service and my...

01:44:38.160 --> 01:44:40.920
Why don't you do that right now, and then I'll have a couple questions for you.

01:44:40.920 --> 01:44:44.840
Okay, so my teaching service is really focused on

01:44:44.840 --> 01:44:47.000
self-realization.

01:44:47.000 --> 01:44:53.000
That's the goal. How that manifests in each session is different. I'd like to meet you where you're at.

01:44:53.000 --> 01:44:57.040
if you're coming to me for help and we just go with the flow and see where it

01:44:57.040 --> 01:45:01.840
goes. One of the skills I feel that I have is that after attuning with someone

01:45:01.840 --> 01:45:08.460
I can start to identify the blocks that are in the way of someone's realization.

01:45:08.460 --> 01:45:14.520
I consider that a gift. So over time we would just start to deepen together and

01:45:14.520 --> 01:45:21.160
I would just guide gently and point the way to your inner knowing so that your

01:45:21.160 --> 01:45:26.760
intuition can take over and do the rest. We focus on the Big S self of course and

01:45:26.760 --> 01:45:31.400
I work with people who are pre-awakening, who want to awaken, or also post

01:45:31.400 --> 01:45:36.480
awakening if you're needing some stability or needing some context for

01:45:36.480 --> 01:45:41.320
what's going on. Like you said in the beginning, I don't make any money from it.

01:45:41.320 --> 01:45:45.720
It's completely free of charge, the donation is optional, and all the money

01:45:45.720 --> 01:45:51.720
goes to the Rancho Coastal Humane Society, which is local here in Encinitas.

01:45:51.720 --> 01:45:56.400
And I visited the campus of the Humane Society and I saw it with my own eyes and they gave

01:45:56.400 --> 01:45:59.120
me a tour and it was beautiful and wonderful.

01:45:59.120 --> 01:46:03.240
They're doing a lot of great things for the community and more than just for the animals,

01:46:03.240 --> 01:46:08.320
it's also for humans in relation to animals.

01:46:08.320 --> 01:46:10.960
I know where the money is going and I vouch for it.

01:46:10.960 --> 01:46:16.960
I do work internationally or in person in Carlsbad and I work individually and with groups.

01:46:16.960 --> 01:46:17.960
Nice.

01:46:17.960 --> 01:46:19.960
So that's my spiel for the teaching.

01:46:19.960 --> 01:46:23.500
Yeah, that's kind of the way we do Bath Cap too.

01:46:23.500 --> 01:46:30.360
We obviously don't charge for it, but it relies on donations because I don't do anything else

01:46:30.360 --> 01:46:33.180
these days to make a living.

01:46:33.180 --> 01:46:37.000
Obviously a lot of the money goes to pay our salaries and all of our expenses.

01:46:37.000 --> 01:46:42.240
just paid a lot of money to get a new website designed. But we also donate to

01:46:42.240 --> 01:46:47.560
animal shelters and things like that. Beautiful. Irene has worked at an animal

01:46:47.560 --> 01:46:53.280
shelter and is very generous. Oh nice. Beautiful. Yeah I love animals. And like you said in

01:46:53.280 --> 01:46:58.160
the beginning, I don't judge or knock people who do charge for a spiritual

01:46:58.160 --> 01:47:02.800
service. I think that's perfectly valid. And if that's your way to make a living

01:47:02.800 --> 01:47:08.040
then that's perfect. I have the ability to not charge and it comes from my heart

01:47:08.040 --> 01:47:10.840
and that's just what feels right. That's what comes through for me.

01:47:10.840 --> 01:47:16.080
That's great. So on your website people can find details about your spiritual

01:47:16.080 --> 01:47:21.120
teaching activities. Yes, and everything is personal, you know, it's fine-tuned to

01:47:21.120 --> 01:47:25.320
the individual that I'm sitting with. But you do group stuff too. I also do

01:47:25.320 --> 01:47:28.960
groups, yeah. I just started a group that's been going really well and I'm

01:47:28.960 --> 01:47:33.100
open to other groups in person or virtually if that's something people are

01:47:33.100 --> 01:47:37.320
interested in and if there's enough demand. Okay so I'll be linking to your

01:47:37.320 --> 01:47:42.480
website from your page on BatGap. Cool sounds good. Okay so here's a few

01:47:42.480 --> 01:47:46.560
questions I think we might have three or four of them. First is from a guy named

01:47:46.560 --> 01:47:52.240
Abhishek Rai in San Jose. Do you think it is possible for science to create a pill

01:47:52.240 --> 01:47:56.200
which accelerates enlightenment? How can we accelerate enlightenment of all eight

01:47:56.200 --> 01:48:02.080
billion people on earth? That's a great question. If there is, I'd like to see it.

01:48:02.080 --> 01:48:09.000
I'm thinking of Shri M. If you've read his book, Apprentice to a Himalayan Yogi, I

01:48:09.000 --> 01:48:14.520
think it's called. Yeah. He talks about how his evolution or his realization was

01:48:14.520 --> 01:48:21.200
quickened by, I guess his guru gave him some sort of concoction or drink and it

01:48:21.200 --> 01:48:29.040
just forced him out of the separate self. So if that's true, I assume it's true, then maybe

01:48:29.040 --> 01:48:30.040
there is...

01:48:30.040 --> 01:48:31.040
>> Paul: What if that was Soma or something?

01:48:31.040 --> 01:48:35.480
>> Edith: Yeah, maybe there is some sort of pill that could happen in the future. I don't

01:48:35.480 --> 01:48:38.920
think our technology is there yet, but maybe I won't rule it out.

01:48:38.920 --> 01:48:43.520
>> Paul: Yeah. Some people think, and I tend to agree that although it has its dangers,

01:48:43.520 --> 01:48:49.060
the whole psychedelic phenomenon, which is really big these days, is a kick in the pants

01:48:49.060 --> 01:48:54.580
for large numbers of people who otherwise wouldn't get going with a spiritual practice and it

01:48:54.580 --> 01:49:00.340
might be for many people a preliminary thing and then they'll move on to some other practice

01:49:00.340 --> 01:49:02.500
at once they've gotten a glimpse of what's possible.

01:49:02.500 --> 01:49:07.620
Yes. Yeah, I would say you don't want to be reliant on it. It's ultimately, I don't think,

01:49:07.620 --> 01:49:12.100
going to get you there, but it can help facilitate the process for sure. And at the very least,

01:49:12.100 --> 01:49:17.220
it can awaken you to the fact that there's other things going on in this universe.

01:49:17.860 --> 01:49:20.180
- There's more to life than meets the eye.

01:49:20.180 --> 01:49:21.780
- Exactly, and if that's what you need

01:49:21.780 --> 01:49:23.460
to get started on your spiritual journey,

01:49:23.460 --> 01:49:25.780
then I'd say that's useful.

01:49:25.780 --> 01:49:27.540
- Yeah, and like you said,

01:49:27.540 --> 01:49:29.960
well, if science gets advanced enough to develop a pill,

01:49:29.960 --> 01:49:31.100
well, nature's pretty advanced

01:49:31.100 --> 01:49:33.260
and it's developed a bunch of stuff

01:49:33.260 --> 01:49:35.140
that has been around for a long time.

01:49:35.140 --> 01:49:36.540
- Good point, yeah.

01:49:36.540 --> 01:49:39.060
God already has it figured out.

01:49:39.060 --> 01:49:42.900
- Okay, same fellow, Abhishek from San Jose.

01:49:42.900 --> 01:49:44.720
What's your vision for humanity?

01:49:44.720 --> 01:49:47.020
If you have one.

01:49:47.020 --> 01:49:49.340
Well, I think this might be a ways away.

01:49:49.340 --> 01:49:51.860
It would be a miracle if I could see this in my lifetime.

01:49:51.860 --> 01:49:55.220
But my vision for humanity is for everybody to awaken,

01:49:55.220 --> 01:49:59.580
of course, and for suffering to be a distant dream.

01:49:59.580 --> 01:50:02.380
If everybody was awake and we were in touch

01:50:02.380 --> 01:50:07.020
with our true nature, then there would be peace on earth.

01:50:07.020 --> 01:50:08.660
We would live with the knowing

01:50:08.660 --> 01:50:12.100
that everything we encounter is ourselves.

01:50:12.100 --> 01:50:16.700
And so we would provide love and respect and service

01:50:16.700 --> 01:50:19.820
and understanding for every aspect of creation,

01:50:19.820 --> 01:50:21.740
every aspect of the universe.

01:50:21.740 --> 01:50:25.320
So that's gonna change society on every level.

01:50:25.320 --> 01:50:27.840
I mean, there would be no wars, I don't think.

01:50:27.840 --> 01:50:30.280
You would still have disagreements,

01:50:30.280 --> 01:50:34.140
but it wouldn't be egoic, there wouldn't be violence.

01:50:34.140 --> 01:50:36.240
It would just be harmonious and peaceful.

01:50:36.240 --> 01:50:38.660
So I'd like to see that.

01:50:38.660 --> 01:50:39.580
- Yeah.

01:50:39.580 --> 01:50:41.900
- I hope that answers your question, Abhishek.

01:50:41.900 --> 01:50:44.300
- I think there would also be a generosity

01:50:44.300 --> 01:50:45.740
of spirit in humanity,

01:50:45.740 --> 01:50:49.100
such that there would be equitable distribution of resources.

01:50:49.100 --> 01:50:49.980
- Yes.

01:50:49.980 --> 01:50:55.340
- So that nobody would be going hungry or without shelter or any of those necessities.

01:50:55.340 --> 01:51:02.540
- 100%. Yes. And you would be able to serve others and give of your resources without fearing

01:51:02.540 --> 01:51:08.060
that you're in a one down position or fearing loss of any kind. You would trust that if you're

01:51:08.060 --> 01:51:13.340
gonna give, then it'll come back to you. So there would be a generosity of spirit,

01:51:13.340 --> 01:51:16.540
but there would be harmony. I mean, there'd still be individual differences,

01:51:16.540 --> 01:51:23.500
and you'd still appreciate the diversity of life and all that it has to offer, but

01:51:23.500 --> 01:51:27.900
there just wouldn't be conflict. There certainly wouldn't be suffering or wars or...

01:51:27.900 --> 01:51:33.900
Yeah. Okay. Next question is from Marie Cooney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

01:51:33.900 --> 01:51:38.060
And that's interesting because I have an old friend named Stan Cooney from Philadelphia,

01:51:38.060 --> 01:51:42.780
Pennsylvania that used to play in a band that I was in. I wonder if she's related.

01:51:42.780 --> 01:51:47.580
That'd be cool. Anyway, her question is, "Do you counsel people with chronic pain that's

01:51:47.580 --> 01:51:55.340
considered mind-body syndrome, such as TMS or PPD?" I do work with psychosomatic issues,

01:51:55.340 --> 01:51:59.580
especially because I have experience in my own life with that. I realized that my

01:51:59.580 --> 01:52:06.700
ulcerative colitis was psychosomatic, and I worked through that. And I'm completely off meds now.

01:52:07.500 --> 01:52:08.860
Another thing I forgot to mention.

01:52:08.860 --> 01:52:10.500
- And your colitis is gone?

01:52:10.500 --> 01:52:12.360
- Colitis is gone.

01:52:12.360 --> 01:52:13.560
Another thing I forgot to mention

01:52:13.560 --> 01:52:16.640
was that I do believe I received a divine healing.

01:52:16.640 --> 01:52:18.500
During the I got it, I lost it phase,

01:52:18.500 --> 01:52:20.900
I did have an intuition that said,

01:52:20.900 --> 01:52:22.900
you are now healed of colitis.

01:52:22.900 --> 01:52:25.140
I trust that and I haven't had any issues since.

01:52:25.140 --> 01:52:27.400
So I do work with psychosomatic issues

01:52:27.400 --> 01:52:29.500
and I understand the mind-body connection.

01:52:29.500 --> 01:52:34.400
I'm not familiar with TMS or PPD, what those stand for.

01:52:34.400 --> 01:52:37.300
- Irene, you know what TMS or PPD stand for?

01:52:37.300 --> 01:52:40.820
She doesn't know either. All right. But in any case, Marie could contact you.

01:52:40.820 --> 01:52:41.620
Yeah, absolutely.

01:52:41.620 --> 01:52:45.300
But can you work with a person in Philadelphia with this kind of stuff or would you?

01:52:45.300 --> 01:52:46.980
Not for psychotherapy, no.

01:52:46.980 --> 01:52:51.300
Right. But maybe just on a personal level, you could give her some tips or something as a spiritual teacher.

01:52:51.300 --> 01:52:57.460
Absolutely, yeah. Even if I can't work with you in California on a therapeutic level,

01:52:57.460 --> 01:53:01.060
we could always do teaching if you're interested in self-realization or at the very least,

01:53:01.060 --> 01:53:06.980
just reach out. I mean, I'm always just wanting to help. So if you have questions or whatever,

01:53:06.980 --> 01:53:09.420
don't hesitate to reach out.

01:53:09.420 --> 01:53:11.620
And Marie, if you're related to Stan Cooney, let me know.

01:53:11.620 --> 01:53:14.060
I'd love to be in touch with Stan.

01:53:14.060 --> 01:53:15.100
He was rhythm guitar.

01:53:15.100 --> 01:53:16.740
I was drums in a particular band.

01:53:16.740 --> 01:53:17.620
Nice.

01:53:17.620 --> 01:53:18.380
Well, I'm a singer.

01:53:18.380 --> 01:53:19.380
We can all form a band together.

01:53:19.380 --> 01:53:20.860
Hey, let's get the band together.

01:53:20.860 --> 01:53:21.360
Let's jam.

01:53:21.360 --> 01:53:23.020
Yeah, Blues Brothers.

01:53:23.020 --> 01:53:24.300
You ever see that movie?

01:53:24.300 --> 01:53:26.140
I did a long time ago, yeah.

01:53:26.140 --> 01:53:28.300
We're on a mission from God.

01:53:28.300 --> 01:53:29.740
That was a line from the movie.

01:53:29.740 --> 01:53:31.180
OK, next question.

01:53:31.180 --> 01:53:36.300
Ed D, D-E-E. This is a good grand finale questions here for you.

01:53:36.300 --> 01:53:37.820
Okay, I'm ready.

01:53:37.820 --> 01:53:39.660
What is the meaning of life?

01:53:39.660 --> 01:53:41.540
Is this all a dream?

01:53:41.540 --> 01:53:43.940
Why should I participate in it?

01:53:43.940 --> 01:53:45.420
Okay.

01:53:45.420 --> 01:53:46.620
Three big questions.

01:53:46.620 --> 01:53:48.780
We're going into the deep end here.

01:53:48.780 --> 01:53:50.180
What is the meaning of life?

01:53:50.180 --> 01:53:53.460
Well, it depends on who you ask

01:53:53.460 --> 01:53:55.700
and how you look at things

01:53:55.700 --> 01:53:59.660
or what perspective or what lens you're looking at things through.

01:53:59.660 --> 01:54:01.780
I would say, number one,

01:54:01.780 --> 01:54:07.260
And the meaning of life is whatever you define as your meaning of life.

01:54:07.260 --> 01:54:09.340
You get to choose.

01:54:09.340 --> 01:54:17.340
I would also say from the level of consciousness that the meaning of life is to realize the

01:54:17.340 --> 01:54:20.100
self, to realize our true nature.

01:54:20.100 --> 01:54:28.220
And there are a lot of spiritual masters who talk about how all of creation is really just

01:54:28.220 --> 01:54:33.860
consciousness evolving so that it can know itself. So that would be the purpose

01:54:33.860 --> 01:54:39.580
of life according to that level of understanding. And then the other thing I

01:54:39.580 --> 01:54:45.500
would say is that everything by virtue of its existence has meaning. It has

01:54:45.500 --> 01:54:51.340
inherent meaning. So we don't have to overlay meaning onto anything because

01:54:51.340 --> 01:54:58.860
every form, every being has its own inherent meaning already embedded in it

01:54:58.860 --> 01:55:05.500
just because it exists. It's all a dream, it's all an appearance, it's a dream of God,

01:55:05.500 --> 01:55:09.780
it's happening within the world, and if it didn't have an important role to play it

01:55:09.780 --> 01:55:15.140
wouldn't exist. Good. So is this all a dream? Yeah, thanks for reminding me about

01:55:15.140 --> 01:55:23.180
those other questions. Is this all a dream? Yes and no. Ultimately, yes. From the

01:55:23.180 --> 01:55:28.380
absolute perspective, this is all a dream. It's all an appearance. It's a dream of

01:55:28.380 --> 01:55:35.820
God. It's happening within divine mind. But also, no. It's real. This universe is

01:55:35.820 --> 01:55:42.500
happening. It's real. It follows some observable laws of physics. Maybe we

01:55:42.500 --> 01:55:47.340
don't understand all of them yet, especially on the quantum realm, but there's an order

01:55:47.340 --> 01:55:54.160
to things and, you know, so it's real in that sense and especially for those who haven't

01:55:54.160 --> 01:55:59.300
woken up from the dream, it's very real for them. So for those who haven't woken up from

01:55:59.300 --> 01:56:03.100
the dream, you want to honor that it's real. So both.

01:56:03.100 --> 01:56:06.340
Then his final question is, "Why should I participate in it?"

01:56:06.340 --> 01:56:11.460
Why should I participate? Well, you don't have to. Well, I don't know. I don't think... Actually,

01:56:11.460 --> 01:56:13.060
I changed that. I think...

01:56:13.060 --> 01:56:15.860
You're here. You're participating, like it or not.

01:56:15.860 --> 01:56:19.700
Exactly. You're participating no matter what.

01:56:19.700 --> 01:56:23.460
Even your non-participation is a form of participation.

01:56:23.460 --> 01:56:27.660
But why should you do it? Well, that's up to you.

01:56:27.660 --> 01:56:32.060
I'd say because there's tremendous potential, opportunity in it

01:56:32.060 --> 01:56:36.160
for great growth in evolution of your soul.

01:56:36.160 --> 01:56:40.460
And "may K. Willis unshines" again, to use that phrase.

01:56:40.460 --> 01:56:41.300
- Yeah, absolutely.

01:56:41.300 --> 01:56:44.380
- Tremendous potential for spiritual evolution

01:56:44.380 --> 01:56:45.660
in this day and age.

01:56:45.660 --> 01:56:49.420
- And I'd like to add to that also by saying,

01:56:49.420 --> 01:56:51.220
you're here and you're here for a reason.

01:56:51.220 --> 01:56:53.420
If you weren't supposed to participate

01:56:53.420 --> 01:56:55.940
or you didn't want to participate on some level,

01:56:55.940 --> 01:56:57.220
you wouldn't be here.

01:56:57.220 --> 01:57:00.980
So you're here, which means that on some level,

01:57:00.980 --> 01:57:03.060
you are wanting to participate.

01:57:03.060 --> 01:57:07.180
So I would say, get in touch with that level of your being

01:57:07.180 --> 01:57:09.100
and see what that level wants to do

01:57:09.100 --> 01:57:11.020
and how it wants to participate.

01:57:11.020 --> 01:57:13.660
And ultimately, yeah, you serve.

01:57:13.660 --> 01:57:15.220
You want to realize your full potential.

01:57:15.220 --> 01:57:17.380
You want to help others realize their full potential.

01:57:17.380 --> 01:57:21.500
I mean, that's my reason for participating.

01:57:21.500 --> 01:57:22.980
- And you can flip his question a little bit.

01:57:22.980 --> 01:57:25.000
I mean, you could infer from his question

01:57:25.000 --> 01:57:27.540
that he's saying, "What's in it for me?"

01:57:27.540 --> 01:57:31.180
But you could flip it to say, "What can I do for others?"

01:57:31.180 --> 01:57:32.020
- Sure.

01:57:32.020 --> 01:57:34.020
- Here I am, how can I help?

01:57:34.020 --> 01:57:34.860
- Yeah.

01:57:34.860 --> 01:57:37.100
- And then you really get some meaning out of it.

01:57:37.100 --> 01:57:37.940
Go ahead, what were you saying?

01:57:37.940 --> 01:57:39.700
- Absolutely, Neil Donald Walsh,

01:57:39.700 --> 01:57:41.620
who's the author of Conversations With God,

01:57:41.620 --> 01:57:42.740
another book I really love,

01:57:42.740 --> 01:57:45.080
he says that there is no why,

01:57:45.080 --> 01:57:49.460
so the why question is kind of a useless question

01:57:49.460 --> 01:57:51.980
and it's never gonna get answered anyways.

01:57:51.980 --> 01:57:54.100
The important question is what.

01:57:54.100 --> 01:57:58.540
What am I going to do with what I have with this moment?

01:57:58.540 --> 01:58:02.260
So, awaken and you will see the beauty of existence

01:58:02.260 --> 01:58:05.100
and then you'll wanna participate.

01:58:05.100 --> 01:58:07.660
- There was a spiritual teacher in India who said,

01:58:07.660 --> 01:58:11.260
He said to get a human life is very rare.

01:58:11.260 --> 01:58:15.000
There are so many different forms of life you can go through before getting the opportunity

01:58:15.000 --> 01:58:16.500
to be human.

01:58:16.500 --> 01:58:22.420
He said if you attain a human life but fail to reach God, then you have sold a diamond

01:58:22.420 --> 01:58:24.620
for the price of spinach.

01:58:24.620 --> 01:58:25.620
That's profound.

01:58:25.620 --> 01:58:31.180
Kind of reminiscent of Meher Baba too, who talks about all the stages of life that you

01:58:31.180 --> 01:58:33.300
go through before you get to be a human.

01:58:33.300 --> 01:58:35.420
Yeah, I agree.

01:58:35.420 --> 01:58:36.420
So thank you for those questions.

01:58:36.420 --> 01:58:38.260
Those were great questions.

01:58:38.260 --> 01:58:39.940
Thank you, Ed, and the others.

01:58:39.940 --> 01:58:41.140
And thank you, Ellie.

01:58:41.140 --> 01:58:42.540
It's been great talking to you.

01:58:42.540 --> 01:58:44.060
You're a very easy guy to interview.

01:58:44.060 --> 01:58:44.980
You just--

01:58:44.980 --> 01:58:45.540
Oh, thank you.

01:58:45.540 --> 01:58:47.460
You just roll along.

01:58:47.460 --> 01:58:48.060
Thank you.

01:58:48.060 --> 01:58:48.900
Yes.

01:58:48.900 --> 01:58:49.900
That's my style.

01:58:49.900 --> 01:58:50.700
I just flow.

01:58:50.700 --> 01:58:53.780
Even in the band, when I was in the band in New York,

01:58:53.780 --> 01:58:54.900
they used to call me Flow.

01:58:54.900 --> 01:58:56.020
That was my nickname.

01:58:56.020 --> 01:58:59.100
So just always been flowing.

01:58:59.100 --> 01:59:00.700
That's my style.

01:59:00.700 --> 01:59:03.700
A couple of things I'd like to say if we're going to wrap up.

01:59:03.700 --> 01:59:09.540
I just want to say thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my testimony.

01:59:09.540 --> 01:59:15.280
You know, I know there's some different views on whether it's appropriate to share spiritual

01:59:15.280 --> 01:59:17.260
experiences or not.

01:59:17.260 --> 01:59:22.260
And I understand why, you know, sometimes the ego can get involved and if we share then

01:59:22.260 --> 01:59:28.500
we get big headed or people idealize us or we idealize ourselves and devalue others or

01:59:28.500 --> 01:59:33.780
We get attached to certain experiences and we expect them to stay or we try to get them back.

01:59:33.780 --> 01:59:38.980
And so there's some danger to sharing, but I'm more of the opinion, especially as a therapist,

01:59:38.980 --> 01:59:43.380
I understand the value of talk therapy and the healing aspects that it can bring.

01:59:43.380 --> 01:59:50.260
So I'm of the opinion that it's really important to share. So I wanted to do that today. It felt

01:59:50.260 --> 01:59:56.740
important to share my story because hopefully it can give hope to people and inspiration and

01:59:56.740 --> 02:00:06.900
You know, it's one more testimony that awakening is real, that the end of suffering is a real

02:00:06.900 --> 02:00:15.740
possibility for someone. And hopefully by hearing my story you can also realize that nothing is

02:00:15.740 --> 02:00:23.660
standing in the way of self-realization except for ourselves, our own egos, our own attachments,

02:00:23.660 --> 02:00:32.060
our own limitations, our own self-created identifications and resistance and divisions,

02:00:32.060 --> 02:00:39.180
and the mental overlay that we place on reality, the narratives or the stories that we overlay

02:00:39.180 --> 02:00:47.100
onto existence. So hopefully by hearing my story you can see that medications were not an obstacle,

02:00:47.820 --> 02:00:50.940
Psychological problems were not an obstacle.

02:00:50.940 --> 02:00:53.740
Illness, physical illness was not an obstacle.

02:00:53.740 --> 02:00:58.540
It all seemed like an obstacle at one point but ultimately it wasn't.

02:00:58.540 --> 02:01:01.660
And even meditation technique wasn't an obstacle.

02:01:01.660 --> 02:01:05.580
If one meditation technique doesn't work for you, try another.

02:01:05.580 --> 02:01:10.380
Try not to be too attached, stay open to what the intuitive wisdom has to tell

02:01:10.380 --> 02:01:14.860
you from within and persevere. Like Rick said,

02:01:14.860 --> 02:01:20.060
That's the common denominator for most people I think who have awakened.

02:01:20.060 --> 02:01:24.300
So don't give up. It's the most important thing that you can do.

02:01:24.300 --> 02:01:29.660
It's the end of suffering. It means peace and joy and love in every moment

02:01:29.660 --> 02:01:35.900
and greater service to the world. So keep doing your work. It's worth every effort.

02:01:35.900 --> 02:01:40.300
And I'll end with a quote from Lahiri Mahasaya who said,

02:01:40.300 --> 02:01:45.500
"Banat Banat Banjai" which means "Striving, Striving, One Day Victory".

02:01:45.500 --> 02:01:52.380
That's kind of a goofy question. Some guy asked, "Could the band have been called Flo and Ellie?"

02:01:52.380 --> 02:01:59.820
Sure, why not? Why not? Yeah, and what you were just saying about no obstacles and stuff reminds

02:01:59.820 --> 02:02:05.580
me of a Gita verse which was that it says, "No effort is lost and no obstacle exists.

02:02:05.580 --> 02:02:09.020
even a little of this Dharma removes great fear.

02:02:09.020 --> 02:02:12.220
100% I know that verse.

02:02:12.220 --> 02:02:14.860
I didn't mean to have the last word after your brilliant little...

02:02:14.860 --> 02:02:15.980
Oh no, it's all good.

02:02:15.980 --> 02:02:16.780
Wrap up there, yeah.

02:02:16.780 --> 02:02:17.280
And...

02:02:17.280 --> 02:02:17.900
It's all good.

02:02:17.900 --> 02:02:18.540
Good.

02:02:18.540 --> 02:02:22.780
Alrighty, so thanks so much and we'll be in touch

02:02:22.780 --> 02:02:25.820
and maybe when Phil and I have our monthly conversations

02:02:25.820 --> 02:02:27.900
we can make it a threesome you can join in too.

02:02:27.900 --> 02:02:28.620
Sure.

02:02:28.620 --> 02:02:29.020
That'd be fun.

02:02:29.020 --> 02:02:32.460
Yeah, and I'd love for you guys to come out and visit as well.

02:02:32.460 --> 02:02:32.940
Yeah, I'd love to do that sometime.

02:02:32.940 --> 02:02:33.900
You're always welcome.

02:02:34.540 --> 02:02:39.020
Thank you so much, Rick and Irene, and thank you to everyone watching. I hope that was

02:02:39.020 --> 02:02:44.300
enjoyable and useful in some way. Great. And thanks to those who've been listening or watching.

02:02:44.300 --> 02:02:51.420
My next interview will be with Lisa Carillo. I've listened to a little bit of her first book so far,

02:02:51.420 --> 02:02:55.580
and I'm really enjoying what she has to say. It's about getting out of the way, as you've been

02:02:55.580 --> 02:03:01.660
saying, and all the blessings that are bestowed upon you when you let go and let God, as the

02:03:01.660 --> 02:03:06.260
the bumper sticker says. Yes, the grace is always there. It's just waiting for us to

02:03:06.260 --> 02:03:12.860
be open to it. Great. So, alright everybody. Thanks. Take care everyone.

02:03:12.860 --> 02:03:35.260
[Music]

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