WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.400
And it is wild. It is not tame. We're not a pristine French garden.

00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:11.000
We are a wild forest.

00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:20.800
Yes, exactly. When you turn over a log, that life proliferating in that dark, wet space,

00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:28.100
you know, that's what we are. And cultivating the ability to enjoy the wildness,

00:00:28.100 --> 00:00:31.100
you know, makes the whole thing much more fun.

00:00:31.100 --> 00:00:42.940
Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer.

00:00:42.940 --> 00:00:48.100
Buddha at the Gas Pump, if you have never seen it before, is an ongoing series of

00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:51.100
conversations with spiritually awakening people.

00:00:51.100 --> 00:00:56.940
I've done about 725 of them now and if you would like to watch previous ones,

00:00:56.940 --> 00:01:01.940
go to batgap.com and you'll see them organized in various ways and you'll also see a link

00:01:01.940 --> 00:01:08.580
to an audio podcast thing where you can subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or any of those things.

00:01:08.580 --> 00:01:13.540
This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers,

00:01:13.540 --> 00:01:17.060
so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons

00:01:17.060 --> 00:01:21.100
on every page of the site and a page that explains alternatives to PayPal.

00:01:21.100 --> 00:01:27.620
My guest today is Lisa Carrillo, and I'm going to have her introduce herself rather than me

00:01:27.620 --> 00:01:30.140
read a little canned bio.

00:01:30.140 --> 00:01:33.280
So Lisa, tell us about yourself for starters.

00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:34.420
Thank you so much, Rick.

00:01:34.420 --> 00:01:36.660
It's really great to be here.

00:01:36.660 --> 00:01:42.540
I actually had a chemical engineering degree and was working in engineering and product

00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:43.540
management.

00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:48.780
But spirituality was always, since I was a child, the most important thing to me.

00:01:48.780 --> 00:01:52.300
And there came a point when somebody told me enlightenment is real.

00:01:52.300 --> 00:01:59.720
And I had no idea what that meant, but to me it meant something very intimate and alive

00:01:59.720 --> 00:02:00.720
with the infinite.

00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:01.720
And I wanted it.

00:02:01.720 --> 00:02:03.720
It rang a bell.

00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:04.720
Yes.

00:02:04.720 --> 00:02:09.580
So I started listening to many teachers, some of whom you've interviewed.

00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:17.580
At a silent retreat in 2009, my thoughts of an individual person just completely dropped

00:02:17.580 --> 00:02:18.580
away.

00:02:18.580 --> 00:02:24.540
the mechanism in my mind that had created the sense that I was choosing, I was making things

00:02:24.540 --> 00:02:30.980
happen and it was a lot of machinations my mind had to go through to create that individual

00:02:30.980 --> 00:02:31.980
identity.

00:02:31.980 --> 00:02:39.340
Once that was done, it stayed gone for three weeks or so, I could just see so clearly this

00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:45.160
singleness that is erupting as everything and then those thoughts came back but they

00:02:45.160 --> 00:02:50.360
no longer seemed real, instead they just seemed like a curiosity to explore.

00:02:50.360 --> 00:02:56.680
And so in that process, I started being able to understand even better what we do to make

00:02:56.680 --> 00:03:05.240
ourselves suffer, what we do to make ourselves feel independent, separate, and I end up having

00:03:05.240 --> 00:03:09.920
all these tools for helping them unravel and put them down in one book.

00:03:09.920 --> 00:03:16.740
And then as I saw people play with them, I noticed that there's a lot of really fundamental

00:03:16.740 --> 00:03:22.020
ideas that we have to also let go of if we want to be able to really fully experience

00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:24.380
this that we already are.

00:03:24.380 --> 00:03:29.420
And so my second book was driven by helping really tease out some of those fundamental

00:03:29.420 --> 00:03:32.160
things that aren't even true.

00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:41.340
Now it's just this ongoing joy, lightness of being, moving in the flow, and finding conditionings

00:03:41.340 --> 00:03:44.740
and still get to be with God and dropped away.

00:03:44.740 --> 00:03:49.120
You not only have a chemical engineering degree, you have like about five lifetimes worth of

00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:50.200
education.

00:03:50.200 --> 00:03:53.920
You've got an MBA and all these other degrees and various other things.

00:03:53.920 --> 00:03:58.920
I don't know how you found the time and were able to sustain the student loan debt to do

00:03:58.920 --> 00:04:01.640
all that, but it was impressive.

00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:07.400
has come easily and some of my employers helped pay for it and so then my fields I worked

00:04:07.400 --> 00:04:09.720
in made enough money where I could pay for it.

00:04:09.720 --> 00:04:10.720
Good.

00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:16.200
I read all of your second book and most of your first book and I seem to recall that even

00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:22.580
as a young child, like three years old and all, you had certain insights that perhaps

00:04:22.580 --> 00:04:28.520
were precursors of the fact that you ended up on a rather spiritual path.

00:04:28.520 --> 00:04:30.360
You want to tell us about those a little bit?

00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:39.280
Yes, sure. I remember the moment that an identity formed, that it solidified. My parents had

00:04:39.280 --> 00:04:43.640
brought me next door to say goodbye to some friends who were moving away. I wanted to

00:04:43.640 --> 00:04:51.680
go play in the back room. They said no, and they said we didn't have time. And after however

00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:58.560
many minutes, I decided, oh, there was enough time, and they weren't looking out for me.

00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:03.800
And so in that moment, I started developing strategies to look out for myself.

00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:12.440
Then it was less than a year later, we also had moved, and at night, some big pressure

00:05:12.440 --> 00:05:16.760
would come on me, and I'd feel like I was about to suffocate.

00:05:16.760 --> 00:05:21.080
I would close my eyes and hope that I would live through it.

00:05:21.080 --> 00:05:24.160
And then it would go away, and I'd forget about it.

00:05:24.160 --> 00:05:27.120
And then it would happen again at night.

00:05:27.120 --> 00:05:31.900
And one time I decided I've got to open my eyes and see what this thing is.

00:05:31.900 --> 00:05:34.300
When I opened my eyes, I saw it was invisible.

00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:36.920
And then I knew no adult could help me.

00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:42.560
So I started thinking, okay, I have to handle this by myself.

00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:46.520
And what I realized is I wasn't stronger than this thing.

00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:50.760
But I questioned, was I actually being hurt?

00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:54.040
And I noticed every time I survived.

00:05:54.040 --> 00:05:56.920
So I thought maybe I'll always live through it.

00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:03.420
So the next time I just let the pressure come and waited and noticed I was still getting

00:06:03.420 --> 00:06:08.540
enough air and then it went away and shortly after that it stopped coming.

00:06:08.540 --> 00:06:15.540
And one other time I picked up a picture of Jesus and the children and I looked at the

00:06:15.540 --> 00:06:20.760
picture and I knew that it was describing this place I remembered being.

00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:25.400
I thought to myself, it doesn't quite look like that, but I know they're getting that.

00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:29.360
And I brought it to my mom and said, "How can I get here?"

00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:32.580
And she said something about church or something.

00:06:32.580 --> 00:06:35.040
And I thought, "Oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about."

00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:37.520
Because I knew it was a real place.

00:06:37.520 --> 00:06:41.920
It wasn't something you had to do all this other stuff to get there.

00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:43.400
So what was this pressure?

00:06:43.400 --> 00:06:45.560
I have no idea what it actually was.

00:06:45.560 --> 00:06:46.820
What did it feel like?

00:06:46.820 --> 00:06:48.400
It felt like I was going to suffocate.

00:06:48.400 --> 00:06:52.200
It felt like something very heavy on top of me.

00:06:52.200 --> 00:06:56.800
I don't remember feeling particularly hot, but I wasn't cold either.

00:06:56.800 --> 00:06:58.800
It was more on the warm side.

00:06:58.800 --> 00:07:03.520
But it felt like something all over my whole body on top of me.

00:07:03.520 --> 00:07:09.440
Could it have been the presence of being pushing up into your awareness or am I misinterpreting

00:07:09.440 --> 00:07:10.680
that?

00:07:10.680 --> 00:07:11.960
I have wondered.

00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:17.320
Could it be something like that or could it be it was my astral body finally deciding

00:07:17.320 --> 00:07:19.600
to take full residence in my body?

00:07:19.600 --> 00:07:20.600
I don't know.

00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:27.320
time. I can say that it felt threatening at first, then once I stopped being afraid

00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:32.080
of it, it did no longer felt threatening. They say that when kids are really young

00:07:32.080 --> 00:07:35.680
they really aren't in their body yet, they're just out there and then

00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:40.320
there's this coming down to earth so to speak and getting more and more embodied

00:07:40.320 --> 00:07:44.920
and maybe that's what the terrible twos are all about. We're like really pissed

00:07:44.920 --> 00:07:48.280
that we're getting so localized. Who knows?

00:07:48.280 --> 00:07:54.840
Who knows? The thing I can say is it feels like a gift. Now that I have had that experience,

00:07:54.840 --> 00:08:00.680
there's a certain amount of fear I could never have after that because I just know what is

00:08:00.680 --> 00:08:05.880
right now is what you have. You can't be afraid of what isn't fear.

00:08:05.880 --> 00:08:11.240
And what was the second thing you said? There was the pressure and then your parents. Picture

00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:16.120
of Jesus, are you suggesting that you were perhaps having some kind of past life memory

00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:17.880
or what are you suggesting there?

00:08:17.880 --> 00:08:18.880
Yeah.

00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:22.200
In between lives. So you're not saying that you were one of those children that hung out

00:08:22.200 --> 00:08:27.020
with Jesus, you're just saying it was reminiscent of some kind of higher realm that you could

00:08:27.020 --> 00:08:28.560
still vaguely remember.

00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:29.960
Yes, exactly.

00:08:29.960 --> 00:08:30.960
Okay.

00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:36.040
Exactly. I love Michael Newton's books. It has definitely brought back memories for me.

00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:43.760
One thing about that, even the soul is still not as real as what we are.

00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:48.280
So it feels to me like there's these levels of awareness.

00:08:48.280 --> 00:08:53.920
The physical realm is the least real, the most transient, the most like a play.

00:08:53.920 --> 00:09:02.080
But even the spirit realm, the soul realm, is still somewhat of a projection and what

00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:04.920
we are, that's the absolute.

00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:12.040
So while certainly I feel the strong draw to the soul realm, the what we are doesn't require

00:09:12.040 --> 00:09:13.040
any of that.

00:09:13.040 --> 00:09:15.400
It's here and what we are.

00:09:15.400 --> 00:09:19.480
Do you know about the pancha-kosha model in Vedanta?

00:09:19.480 --> 00:09:20.480
No.

00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:23.680
Pancha means five and kosha means sheath.

00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:26.480
And so the five, I'll go through it very quickly.

00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:31.680
So the grossest one is called the anamaya-kosha and anamaya means food and it's the physical

00:09:31.680 --> 00:09:33.680
body which is made of food.

00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:39.160
And then subtler, it was prana-maya-kosha, breath. Subtler than that, mano-maya-kosha,

00:09:39.160 --> 00:09:46.000
mind. Subtler than that, vijnana-maya-kosha, intellect. And subtler than that, ananda-maya-kosha,

00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:50.680
which ananda means bliss. But you'll note that in every one of those koshas or sheaths,

00:09:50.680 --> 00:09:55.160
and you can think of Russian dolls perhaps, we have the word maya, which means that it's

00:09:55.160 --> 00:10:01.360
not ultimately real. And so beyond all that is Atman. But the subtle body, which is made

00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:08.260
up of the four subtler sheaths, discounting the grossest one, the physical body, the subtle

00:10:08.260 --> 00:10:14.300
body, is that which continues after the gross body dies and that which has the kinds of experiences

00:10:14.300 --> 00:10:20.400
you alluded to, some kind of subtle realm that you occupied in some previous state.

00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:25.480
So like what you just said, you just said all these subtle levels are cool, but ultimately

00:10:25.480 --> 00:10:28.760
I know there's something more fundamental than that.

00:10:28.760 --> 00:10:31.000
And that's what this model is meant to describe.

00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:32.000
Yeah, exactly.

00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.600
And there's nothing we have to do to be that.

00:10:36.600 --> 00:10:39.800
It's what we've always been and we can't get out of it.

00:10:39.800 --> 00:10:44.920
But is there something we might want to do or could do to realize we are that?

00:10:44.920 --> 00:10:47.800
Because there's a difference between realizing and being.

00:10:47.800 --> 00:10:49.280
Yes, exactly.

00:10:49.280 --> 00:10:54.440
And that realization does nothing for the absolute.

00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:57.640
purely for our own enjoyment.

00:10:57.640 --> 00:11:00.440
It's no achievement.

00:11:00.440 --> 00:11:04.140
It's something that just helps us enjoy ourselves more.

00:11:04.140 --> 00:11:07.040
An asteroid could hit the earth and we'll all be blown to bits.

00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:09.140
It won't affect the absolute one way or the other.

00:11:09.140 --> 00:11:09.940
It couldn't care.

00:11:09.940 --> 00:11:12.440
It doesn't have feelings or anything.

00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:15.940
But it might make a difference to us.

00:11:15.940 --> 00:11:17.540
It was a bad day for the dinosaurs.

00:11:17.540 --> 00:11:18.840
It could be a bad day for us.

00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:19.240
Yeah.

00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:29.600
And ultimately, for me the discovery is that because that is what I really am, there is

00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:31.240
not a bad day.

00:11:31.240 --> 00:11:38.760
Because each thing that gets challenged is either taking away something I didn't need

00:11:38.760 --> 00:11:44.920
or showing me something that I thought was important to me, turns out it's not.

00:11:44.920 --> 00:11:45.920
Yeah.

00:11:45.920 --> 00:11:50.000
And when I hear statements like that, and I agree with it, my life pretty much flows in

00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:55.240
the same way, but I think, would that perspective hold up if I were being tortured to death?

00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:57.320
Take it to some horrible extreme?

00:11:57.320 --> 00:12:01.280
Or would the intensity of that experience overshadow that realization?

00:12:01.280 --> 00:12:04.520
Yes, this is a common question.

00:12:04.520 --> 00:12:08.480
And for me, I actually can say it was confidence.

00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:15.040
Because I was in the hospital, and there were three days that felt like my body was being

00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:20.880
ripped apart. I'd been given less than 50% chance of living, my body is not doing

00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:26.000
well, I could only take a certain amount of medication, and part of the treatment

00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:34.560
was extremely painful. And I just remember there was no awfulizing possible. It was

00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:42.640
just pure pain now, and then pure pain now. It was just pure physical pain, but

00:12:42.640 --> 00:12:52.640
There really wasn't suffering. It was just a very present moment. And what was amazing is there was strength that was sufficient for each moment.

00:12:52.640 --> 00:13:07.640
Like somehow the surviving, the strength just kept showing up. And I really feel like there's an inner strength we don't know until there's a time when we actually get to experience how much it really is.

00:13:07.640 --> 00:13:12.920
Yeah, and if you think of some of the horrific things people have been through, concentration

00:13:12.920 --> 00:13:19.080
camps and the situation in Gaza and whatnot, and many other situations, you wonder there

00:13:19.080 --> 00:13:22.960
but for the grace of God go I, but you can't help but think how would I hold up under such

00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:24.040
a circumstance?

00:13:24.040 --> 00:13:29.360
Would I have the resources to somehow manage?

00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:34.040
And I don't know, if you interviewed everybody who survived Auschwitz, I wonder what kind

00:13:34.040 --> 00:13:38.280
of answers you would get?

00:13:38.280 --> 00:13:44.800
We can try to project and try to figure out the different categories of suffering, but

00:13:44.800 --> 00:13:50.800
for me, I keep it mostly personal and I go back to everything that looked negative in

00:13:50.800 --> 00:13:52.280
my life.

00:13:52.280 --> 00:14:00.360
And really, it's been a very deliberate practice of checking every single one until I decided

00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:01.960
I wouldn't trade it.

00:14:01.960 --> 00:14:08.320
has been more good that came out of it. And part of it did require a shift in values.

00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:14.720
If my value was going to be, I don't know, as recognized or as expressed in my creativity

00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:21.320
or as whatever, then maybe I wouldn't have come to that conclusion. But for me, the thing

00:14:21.320 --> 00:14:27.660
more important than anything is knowing what's true. More important than anything. And every

00:14:27.660 --> 00:14:32.180
single one helped me get to the point where I knew more and more of what's true. And I

00:14:32.180 --> 00:14:34.660
wouldn't trade that. I would not trade that.

00:14:34.660 --> 00:14:40.660
Yeah, if you see the universe as ultimately benign, if we could zoom out far enough, and

00:14:40.660 --> 00:14:48.980
as being this big evolution machine that helps everyone progress as best they can, then from

00:14:48.980 --> 00:14:55.140
that perspective you really can't dismiss anything as just capricious or arbitrary or

00:14:55.140 --> 00:15:00.940
Some people use these kinds of examples to dismiss the possibility that there could be

00:15:00.940 --> 00:15:05.380
anything resembling God or however we want to define God because how could God allow

00:15:05.380 --> 00:15:06.380
such things?

00:15:06.380 --> 00:15:14.060
If we think of God as this all-pervading intelligence which has this evolutionary force, imperative,

00:15:14.060 --> 00:15:18.680
that guides the universe or governs the universe to evolve more and all the souls within it

00:15:18.680 --> 00:15:26.000
to do, then as difficult as it may seem, from that perspective, you have to accept that everything

00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:28.400
that happens is in the interest of evolution.

00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:29.400
Right.

00:15:29.400 --> 00:15:32.760
And if anybody wants to send in questions, objecting, that's fine with us.

00:15:32.760 --> 00:15:36.280
It feels like we are it.

00:15:36.280 --> 00:15:37.880
We aren't separate from that.

00:15:37.880 --> 00:15:47.480
And in fact, it is love driving us out to an experience of separation to bring back these

00:15:47.480 --> 00:15:48.480
experiences.

00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:52.280
It is love that motivates this.

00:15:52.280 --> 00:15:58.480
But as a concept, I don't know that it's at all helpful, but what seems to be much more

00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:03.680
helpful is really getting to know this that we are.

00:16:03.680 --> 00:16:06.480
And I know you have intimate experiences too.

00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:16.560
As we feel this infinite, we feel its benevolence, we feel its creativity, we feel its harmony.

00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:23.440
just the opening and relaxation that happens, a letting go, a willingness to savor, just

00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:31.120
this sweetness that starts to purvey life and my gosh, what more could you ask for?

00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:32.120
You may know that T.S.

00:16:32.120 --> 00:16:35.680
Eliot line about coming back to the place from which we started and knowing it for the

00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:36.680
first time.

00:16:36.680 --> 00:16:41.120
But what would you say is the purpose of the whole rigamarole, this whole going out as you

00:16:41.120 --> 00:16:47.520
said and then bringing things back and pure intelligence losing itself as it were apparently

00:16:47.520 --> 00:16:53.840
supposedly and then rediscovering itself. What do you think is the purpose of that game?

00:16:53.840 --> 00:17:02.120
When I sit in that point of the absolute and the manifestation and just feel right in that

00:17:02.120 --> 00:17:11.960
vortex there, fulcrum. What I feel is something like a precursor to joy. That is the rush

00:17:11.960 --> 00:17:19.440
of joy expressing itself. It's right before joy and then as joy erupts it decides and

00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:25.320
how do I express this joy and it comes into manifestation.

00:17:25.320 --> 00:17:30.120
Good answer. A teacher of mine who was very influential in my life used to say that the

00:17:30.120 --> 00:17:34.120
purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness, which is what you just said.

00:17:34.120 --> 00:17:36.120
That's perfect.

00:17:36.120 --> 00:17:38.120
Yeah.

00:17:38.120 --> 00:17:49.120
You said initially you were on some retreat or course and there was a shift where you lost your sense of personal identity and then it reassembled a few weeks later.

00:17:49.120 --> 00:17:57.120
I often ponder this question because a lot of people bring it up and perhaps you could define what you mean by personal identity.

00:17:57.120 --> 00:18:03.400
Because I imagine during those three weeks when you were in that phase, if someone had

00:18:03.400 --> 00:18:08.680
said "Hey Lisa" you would have turned your head or if you had stubbed your toe there would

00:18:08.680 --> 00:18:13.880
have been pain that some guy in New Zealand wouldn't have felt.

00:18:13.880 --> 00:18:16.200
It was felt there in the Lisa body.

00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:20.760
Which suggests some kind of personal identity even though at the same time you felt like

00:18:20.760 --> 00:18:21.760
it had been lost.

00:18:21.760 --> 00:18:23.400
So what do you say to that?

00:18:23.400 --> 00:18:32.720
The main thing that was so absent was any construct required to make it feel like there's a local

00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:34.400
choice being made.

00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:40.920
I could see how in every moment my mind was projecting oodles of possibilities of what

00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:46.640
the mind-body might do and then when the choice came through, which was coming from somewhere

00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:53.360
much deeper, then all those other options would fall away and the one that actually happened

00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:58.000
would crystallize and then it would feel like I had chosen it because I had pre-thought

00:18:58.000 --> 00:18:59.000
it.

00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:02.200
Instead of I had pre-thought every other thing too.

00:19:02.200 --> 00:19:04.080
I just was forgetting that.

00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:09.440
All there is just this one harmonious movement like a giant choreographer.

00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:13.320
That's all there ever is so there never can be a mistake.

00:19:13.320 --> 00:19:19.360
And this harmonious movement just erupts in through each mind body.

00:19:19.360 --> 00:19:24.440
It's like when you're trying to make a decision and you don't know what to do, you can't make

00:19:24.440 --> 00:19:26.240
yourself make a decision.

00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:31.640
I would, and I guess can still do this, feel into, okay, what if I did that?

00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:32.840
What if I did that?

00:19:32.840 --> 00:19:37.800
And just feel which one feels like there's an avenue inside for it.

00:19:37.800 --> 00:19:44.440
Because what's going to happen is where the avenue is coming out of the absolute.

00:19:44.440 --> 00:19:50.880
So that's the biggest way where I would say there's not a personal beam here.

00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:52.920
So it almost sounds like there is and there isn't.

00:19:52.920 --> 00:19:56.280
So there's your mind, which does mind things, like, "What about this?

00:19:56.280 --> 00:19:57.400
What about that?"

00:19:57.400 --> 00:19:59.460
And individual mind having thoughts.

00:19:59.460 --> 00:20:05.160
But then when it comes right down to it, when push comes to shove, the action tends to be

00:20:05.160 --> 00:20:10.720
a spontaneous expression of some intuitive thing that is beyond all that mind chatter.

00:20:10.720 --> 00:20:12.160
Sounds like that's what you're saying.

00:20:12.160 --> 00:20:13.760
Yeah, exactly.

00:20:13.760 --> 00:20:17.980
I would say the mind is almost like another sense organ.

00:20:17.980 --> 00:20:25.960
It senses ideas and organizes the ideas, but it can't really make anything happen.

00:20:25.960 --> 00:20:28.440
It's like the tongue tastes food.

00:20:28.440 --> 00:20:35.560
it tastes something bad it'll spit it out just automatically. But it can't make another

00:20:35.560 --> 00:20:42.200
flavor come into its experience. The mind can't create anything. It can just receive.

00:20:42.200 --> 00:20:47.920
Yeah, it doesn't feel like the mind is anything more than an organizer.

00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:53.120
The other day I re-watched a little video that I love about three minutes long by Carl

00:20:53.120 --> 00:20:57.540
Sagan called Pale Blue Dot. I don't know if you've ever watched that, but it's a picture

00:20:57.540 --> 00:21:02.220
of the Earth taken from somewhere out around the rings of Saturn and you can see this little

00:21:02.220 --> 00:21:08.340
pale blue dot. And Carl Sagan, who is a famous astronomer, goes into this explanation of

00:21:08.340 --> 00:21:14.740
"it's on this little dot that all these wars have been fought over little tiny bits

00:21:14.740 --> 00:21:19.120
of the dot and people have considered themselves to be so important because they are the ruler

00:21:19.120 --> 00:21:24.600
of that little tiny bit of the dot." And it all seems so absurd from that perspective.

00:21:24.600 --> 00:21:27.680
The mind can only comprehend so much, a human mind, right?

00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:30.200
It's very limited in its comprehension.

00:21:30.200 --> 00:21:34.160
We have little snippets of this information and that experience and that learning and

00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:35.160
so on.

00:21:35.160 --> 00:21:40.740
But it sounds like you're saying is that when the action actually arises, it's arising from

00:21:40.740 --> 00:21:45.640
something that is not constrained by mental limitations.

00:21:45.640 --> 00:21:50.840
We could think of there being a kind of a field of all knowledge that underlies everything

00:21:50.840 --> 00:21:54.520
and that can somehow motivate individual life.

00:21:54.520 --> 00:21:58.080
There's a saying, I think I told you this on the phone the other day, that Brahman is

00:21:58.080 --> 00:21:59.800
the charioteer.

00:21:59.800 --> 00:22:06.200
So that there's that vast vastness that can actually guide the reins of our life, despite

00:22:06.200 --> 00:22:09.560
what our individual mind might conjure up.

00:22:09.560 --> 00:22:13.040
Which is always guiding the reins of our life.

00:22:13.040 --> 00:22:20.480
For me it feels like this perfect harmonious web that is spontaneously intelligent.

00:22:20.480 --> 00:22:26.480
things shift, it doesn't have to pre-plan. It just brings all the shifts into the

00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:32.000
next perfect moment. One thing that seems helpful in being able to feel this is

00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:39.160
what part of us can sense space or resonates with space. We don't have any

00:22:39.160 --> 00:22:47.080
sense organ that can feel space but most of us can actually be in space, be in

00:22:47.080 --> 00:22:50.840
silence and there's something that resonates with it.

00:22:50.840 --> 00:22:55.120
Different people have different capacities for being in silence. Of course everyone has

00:22:55.120 --> 00:23:02.120
silence at their core, but people have varying degrees of mental chatter going on and in

00:23:02.120 --> 00:23:07.800
some it's such a cacophony that the silence is pretty much obliterated. And so they're

00:23:07.800 --> 00:23:13.960
just bounced around by the cacophony and often make very unwise decisions. And many spiritual

00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:21.440
teachings advise to somehow quieten the chatter so it doesn't obscure the

00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:25.920
silence so much and then we can attune ourselves better to that silence and it

00:23:25.920 --> 00:23:33.320
can be in the driver's seat more. Yes? Yeah, the meditation that I have as my home

00:23:33.320 --> 00:23:40.600
ground meditation is feeling the aliveness erupting here. So just where's

00:23:40.600 --> 00:23:45.680
that core beingness and then it doesn't so much require having to silence the

00:23:45.680 --> 00:23:50.000
brain because the brain does what the brain does but it's directing attention

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.920
towards something that is really interesting it really has its own life

00:23:54.920 --> 00:24:02.560
it is this very vibrant necessary essential aspect of what we are. And when

00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:07.240
you do that what how would you describe it again? Feeling where the aliveness is

00:24:07.240 --> 00:24:11.120
emerging into this being.

00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:16.040
And so when you actually practice that, I presume it's a practice that you might also teach,

00:24:16.040 --> 00:24:19.280
you just close your eyes and let your mind settle down?

00:24:19.280 --> 00:24:21.680
Or you explain it, what is it exactly that you do?

00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:30.600
So close my eyes and just feel there's something that says "I am," and then there's a knowing

00:24:30.600 --> 00:24:37.480
of being and then where is that point of eruption that the being is sprouting from?

00:24:37.480 --> 00:24:41.720
It's that root of aliveness.

00:24:41.720 --> 00:24:43.720
Where being sprouts from.

00:24:43.720 --> 00:24:49.480
Is that immediately obvious or does it sometimes take 10-15 minutes to settle down to the point

00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:53.600
where you cognize that level of sprouting?

00:24:53.600 --> 00:24:55.320
For me it's pretty obvious.

00:24:55.320 --> 00:24:56.320
But I think...

00:24:56.320 --> 00:24:58.440
You've been doing it for a long time.

00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:01.600
I think it can take several minutes.

00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:06.080
It's just some people, all you notice is breath and heartbeat.

00:25:06.080 --> 00:25:11.380
But then you feel that they're generated out of something and you just keep going a little

00:25:11.380 --> 00:25:17.040
more core, a little deeper into the gut and it's just this sense.

00:25:17.040 --> 00:25:27.040
Oh yeah, being is before emotions and thoughts and sensations and before being is this root

00:25:27.040 --> 00:25:34.880
of aliveness. Yeah, and I imagine you find it to be a charming experience, enjoyable, right?

00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:40.800
Yeah, definitely enjoyable. And do you feel like your attention follows the charm? In other words,

00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:44.320
there's two ways of keeping a dog at the door, right? One would be to chain it up, and another

00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:48.720
is to put some nice food there, and the dog, "Oh, I'll stay there." There's some kind of charm that

00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:55.440
leads your attention inward, would you say? Absolutely. I really am not a fan of any method

00:25:55.440 --> 00:25:58.480
of control for spiritual practice.

00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:00.960
I mean, ego is control, right?

00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:02.600
Yeah, I agree.

00:26:02.600 --> 00:26:04.560
That's always been my orientation.

00:26:04.560 --> 00:26:08.760
I presume, aside from the fact that you have a normal job and stuff, you do some spiritual

00:26:08.760 --> 00:26:09.760
teaching, right?

00:26:09.760 --> 00:26:13.140
You work with some people and all, and you teach them this.

00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:16.360
Not that there's a whole lot to teach, it's a natural thing, right?

00:26:16.360 --> 00:26:20.400
And the people pretty much take to it like ducks to water, or do some people say, "I

00:26:20.400 --> 00:26:23.400
don't get it, I can't settle down, I'm having a problem."

00:26:23.400 --> 00:26:32.520
no place to get to. So in that case, then I just look at life. I feel like life is an

00:26:32.520 --> 00:26:38.880
endless workshop, always offering me exactly what I need as the doorway in. And whatever

00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:45.680
it is in my life where I'm trying to wrestle control is exactly the place where if I let

00:26:45.680 --> 00:26:52.660
go, I'll discover this natural harmony already there. So I just ask people, what is it that

00:26:52.660 --> 00:26:57.660
you are chasing in life or what is it that you're struggling with in life and what's

00:26:57.660 --> 00:27:05.020
the identity that holds you to doing that. So it could be I have to be responsible or

00:27:05.020 --> 00:27:10.980
I can't be bored or my time is my own or I need to be understood or respected. Whatever

00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:17.460
it is, there's a need that is driving that. If we just look and question, is that need

00:27:17.460 --> 00:27:23.420
true. And that's what the whole first book is. All these different ways of getting to

00:27:23.420 --> 00:27:30.880
the point of realizing it's not. In fact, I share in that first book this dream I had

00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:38.100
where I arrived to this place, you could go on a tour, it was paradise. And when you go

00:27:38.100 --> 00:27:45.340
out anywhere in this place, everything is constantly shifting to give you the best experience.

00:27:45.340 --> 00:27:50.260
So for example, I went to a restaurant and they shut down the restaurant and moved me

00:27:50.260 --> 00:27:51.260
to a different restaurant.

00:27:51.260 --> 00:27:53.540
In your dream or in real life?

00:27:53.540 --> 00:27:54.540
In my dream.

00:27:54.540 --> 00:27:56.060
Okay, yeah.

00:27:56.060 --> 00:28:02.820
And it was because this other restaurant had food that I would like even better.

00:28:02.820 --> 00:28:06.860
And then I went into a store that was something like a drugstore, a dime store kind of thing,

00:28:06.860 --> 00:28:10.300
and then it changed into a floating carpet ride.

00:28:10.300 --> 00:28:11.500
Oh, nice.

00:28:11.500 --> 00:28:12.500
Yeah.

00:28:12.500 --> 00:28:15.480
So I was like, wow, this place is terrific.

00:28:15.480 --> 00:28:16.860
And you could stay if you wanted.

00:28:16.860 --> 00:28:19.900
You could change residence and live there forever for free.

00:28:19.900 --> 00:28:21.700
I was all about that.

00:28:21.700 --> 00:28:24.420
And so I went back at the very center was the hotel.

00:28:24.420 --> 00:28:26.540
And I was like getting my stuff and leaving.

00:28:26.540 --> 00:28:29.980
And most people were not.

00:28:29.980 --> 00:28:35.500
And in fact, in the hotel, they tried not to follow the rules of the place and tried

00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:37.180
to give you only what you asked for.

00:28:37.180 --> 00:28:40.940
So if you ordered something at a restaurant, they actually tried to make sure that's what

00:28:40.940 --> 00:28:45.540
you end up getting. And everybody else was like treating paradise like just a fun thing

00:28:45.540 --> 00:28:51.900
to taste, that they didn't like the constant uncertainty of it. So they were going home,

00:28:51.900 --> 00:28:58.900
and I was just shocked. But that's what our life is. We are in paradise, but if we are

00:28:58.900 --> 00:29:04.780
trying to find certainty by what we think our preferences are, then it's not going to

00:29:04.780 --> 00:29:05.780
feel like paradise.

00:29:05.780 --> 00:29:10.700
Yeah, I forget who said it, but some famous person said, "Certainty is the hobgoblin

00:29:10.700 --> 00:29:13.900
of little minds."

00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:14.900
I think it was certainty.

00:29:14.900 --> 00:29:15.900
Yeah.

00:29:15.900 --> 00:29:21.100
And Osho said something about, "It's a love affair with the unknown," is what we actually

00:29:21.100 --> 00:29:22.100
are.

00:29:22.100 --> 00:29:25.180
And that applies also to awakening.

00:29:25.180 --> 00:29:32.480
People have an idea sometimes that awakening is going to be suddenly in this safe place

00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:39.520
of permanent peace and wow there is this amazing underlying peace and I guess

00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:46.440
it's safety but it's nothing like that static idea. There's no permanent

00:29:46.440 --> 00:29:53.600
anything. It's constant impermanence and it's this welcoming of the impermanence

00:29:53.600 --> 00:30:00.440
of welcoming of dynamism that constant now that is always different rather than

00:30:00.440 --> 00:30:06.600
a stabilized box of any sort. Yeah, I forget what spiritual teacher said it, but

00:30:06.600 --> 00:30:10.640
somebody said that you're in free fall forever, but don't worry because there's

00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:16.920
no bottom, you're not gonna go splat. Yes, yes, yeah. And it is what has gotten us

00:30:16.920 --> 00:30:21.520
this far. Originally I would have thought it was all my efforting that got me this

00:30:21.520 --> 00:30:25.520
far and now I'm turning over to something else and how can I trust that?

00:30:25.520 --> 00:30:30.760
But that's it turns out my effort. He never did anything but put labels on everything

00:30:30.760 --> 00:30:33.580
If there's anything good in my life right now

00:30:33.580 --> 00:30:40.620
I owe it to this that we are and if I think I've got something pretty good then there we go

00:30:40.620 --> 00:30:45.260
It's gonna continue being pretty good. Let's talk about efforting a little bit

00:30:45.260 --> 00:30:51.560
Let's say you're a college student and you need to study for exams and that's gonna take some effort

00:30:51.560 --> 00:30:55.000
and you need to apply yourself throughout the semester and so on to get good enough

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:58.200
grades to stay in college, to go on to graduate school or whatever you want to do.

00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:02.300
You can't just spend your time going out to parties and bars, or you can,

00:31:02.300 --> 00:31:03.760
but you're going to flunk out.

00:31:03.760 --> 00:31:08.740
Maybe you could contrast for us the notion of just following your whims

00:31:08.740 --> 00:31:14.040
wherever they may lead or disciplining yourself a little bit and making the choices.

00:31:14.040 --> 00:31:16.940
Even though you feel like going to the party, I have an exam tomorrow.

00:31:16.940 --> 00:31:18.040
I don't want to be hung over.

00:31:18.040 --> 00:31:21.100
I better study and making actual decisions.

00:31:21.400 --> 00:31:25.400
that perhaps make your life turn out a little bit more successfully?

00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:33.720
I love this question. I went back to school in 2015 and I was very curious,

00:31:33.720 --> 00:31:40.920
how is this going to work? I realized right away I couldn't even be certain I was going to graduate.

00:31:40.920 --> 00:31:49.320
There's just not a knowing of that. But there also is not an attachment to my life looking

00:31:49.320 --> 00:31:55.440
any particular way. As it arose that, "Oh, it turns out this test is going to require

00:31:55.440 --> 00:32:02.280
more intense time than I thought," there was also the motivation that arrived. Now,

00:32:02.280 --> 00:32:10.200
I don't own that motivation. I don't own any interest. I don't own any desire to

00:32:10.200 --> 00:32:17.840
participate or improve or give. None of that is local. But I just checked, "Okay, I

00:32:17.840 --> 00:32:23.600
I did poorly on a test and lo and behold, the motivation to cut back on my social life and

00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:26.920
spend more time studying just showed up.

00:32:26.920 --> 00:32:29.140
There's the motivation and there's the interest.

00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:30.140
Seems like we're going forward.

00:32:30.140 --> 00:32:35.120
And so I just kept doing that until I graduated.

00:32:35.120 --> 00:32:36.320
The same thing with taxes.

00:32:36.320 --> 00:32:41.840
I was like, okay, what if I truly don't even pretend I'm good at effort?

00:32:41.840 --> 00:32:44.640
Let's just see what happens with my taxes.

00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:49.240
And lo and behold, there was this thought, "Okay, taxes are going to be happening."

00:32:49.240 --> 00:32:55.020
And after a few weeks, there was, "And here's some time, and here's the things to do."

00:32:55.020 --> 00:32:57.320
And there was no resistance.

00:32:57.320 --> 00:33:03.360
Once there's no resistance, there's no preference that things have to look a certain way, then

00:33:03.360 --> 00:33:08.200
when something comes up that needs to be done, there's just willingness.

00:33:08.200 --> 00:33:11.680
And taxes always get done well in advance.

00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:16.720
quotes come to mind. One is "humility is the quality of not insisting that things happen

00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:23.320
any particular way." That's one quote. And another is "turn your desires into preferences."

00:33:23.320 --> 00:33:28.160
I hope people get the drift of those. Desires can sometimes be very adamant and rigid and

00:33:28.160 --> 00:33:32.860
insistent. "Gotta have this!" But it's more like, you can think of Jesus in the

00:33:32.860 --> 00:33:37.320
Garden of Gethsemane, "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me." And then, "After

00:33:37.320 --> 00:33:43.920
all that they will be done. And there's a difference between desire implies individual insistence

00:33:43.920 --> 00:33:49.500
and concretization, if that's the right word to say, where you just got to be this way,

00:33:49.500 --> 00:33:54.660
my way or the highway, whereas preferences, okay, this would be nice, but let's see what

00:33:54.660 --> 00:33:59.800
the nature has in store for me. And you want to comment on that?

00:33:59.800 --> 00:34:05.920
Absolutely. That my whole second book, or a lot of my second book is devoted to that. There's

00:34:05.920 --> 00:34:10.480
so many subtle things we think are absolutely true. I need to be treated

00:34:10.480 --> 00:34:17.200
with respect by my boss. No, it turns out. And so it turns out I just started

00:34:17.200 --> 00:34:23.200
teasing with him and it became this real playful relationship and lo and behold

00:34:23.200 --> 00:34:28.520
because he wasn't respectful it turned into this new avenue or somebody needs

00:34:28.520 --> 00:34:31.800
to show up for me like they said they would. They need to keep their

00:34:31.800 --> 00:34:38.840
commitments? No, they don't. I learn a whole new way of resilience within myself or whatever

00:34:38.840 --> 00:34:44.980
it turns out to be. No. Turns out sometimes it's time to move on, time to say no. And

00:34:44.980 --> 00:34:49.220
then when I watch later, I see things, benefits they have because they're not spending time

00:34:49.220 --> 00:34:54.840
with me. I mean, there's, I can't be angry with my husband. No, it turns out. I was angry

00:34:54.840 --> 00:34:59.740
with my husband, then I went and apologized and he was so loving, so forgiving. It was

00:34:59.740 --> 00:35:03.500
this reminder of how much I'm loved.

00:35:03.500 --> 00:35:06.820
And if I hadn't done that little tantrum,

00:35:06.820 --> 00:35:10.780
I wouldn't have seen that his love is that big.

00:35:10.780 --> 00:35:15.140
So being the receiver of whatever it is,

00:35:15.140 --> 00:35:17.340
now it's my time to be forgiven,

00:35:17.340 --> 00:35:19.740
or now it's my time to be helped,

00:35:19.740 --> 00:35:23.420
or now it's my time to be weak, whatever it is,

00:35:23.420 --> 00:35:26.140
all these things we think are the bad things to be,

00:35:26.140 --> 00:35:32.820
the receiver of somebody else's anger and frustration are always just opportunities to see this

00:35:32.820 --> 00:35:42.060
amazing dance play out in a new way that brings us love in a new avenue. So there's no absolute

00:35:42.060 --> 00:35:47.780
rule. There's no reason to hold any preference. We can just stay in discovery.

00:35:47.780 --> 00:35:53.700
I would agree with the word absolute, but I would question the word preference. I prefer

00:35:53.700 --> 00:35:56.940
if it's zero degrees out to have a warm coat on.

00:35:56.940 --> 00:35:59.140
That example just came to mind.

00:35:59.140 --> 00:36:04.200
Or I prefer if I am really hungry to have some food available.

00:36:04.200 --> 00:36:07.140
If I don't have a warm coat or I don't have the food or whatever,

00:36:07.140 --> 00:36:10.900
then my insistence that I have some isn't going to help me.

00:36:10.900 --> 00:36:17.240
I think it's natural to have desires and preferences and motivations and initiatives and so on.

00:36:17.240 --> 00:36:21.300
There's nothing wrong with that. That provides impetus to our life, don't you think?

00:36:21.300 --> 00:36:26.300
It's just about being adamant about those things that gets us into trouble.

00:36:26.300 --> 00:36:27.420
Thank you for clarifying that.

00:36:27.420 --> 00:36:30.900
I meant there's no need to hold on to those preferences.

00:36:30.900 --> 00:36:35.700
If life's showing up in a different way, then we might as well explore that.

00:36:35.700 --> 00:36:41.700
But yes, it's funny, so many people will say something along the lines of, "Then why is

00:36:41.700 --> 00:36:43.380
this terrible thing happening?"

00:36:43.380 --> 00:36:46.260
And they're somebody who's helping that.

00:36:46.260 --> 00:36:53.100
And obviously the universe is making that thing improve because it's made you interested and

00:36:53.100 --> 00:36:55.500
motivated to do something about it.

00:36:55.500 --> 00:37:00.420
So somehow we'll try to put ourselves outside while I'm fixing it because the universe did

00:37:00.420 --> 00:37:01.420
it.

00:37:01.420 --> 00:37:04.040
But we are the universe fixing it.

00:37:04.040 --> 00:37:05.400
We are the hands.

00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:06.980
We are the heart.

00:37:06.980 --> 00:37:11.940
So there's no position outside to evaluate from.

00:37:11.940 --> 00:37:19.500
Yeah, I think that what this gets down to is the degree to which one is attuned to cosmic

00:37:19.500 --> 00:37:21.500
intelligence or whatever you want to call it.

00:37:21.500 --> 00:37:28.020
So choose your synonym, the subtle all-pervading intelligence that governs the universe or

00:37:28.020 --> 00:37:29.140
not.

00:37:29.140 --> 00:37:34.620
And if one is not, if one is isolated in very individual boundaries, then there is a tendency

00:37:34.620 --> 00:37:40.540
to hammer against the way things roll and try to insist that they go this way or that

00:37:40.540 --> 00:37:46.260
when the universe might have other ideas, but if your orientation is perhaps more with the

00:37:46.260 --> 00:37:50.820
unboundedness than with the individuality, although you have both, the individuality

00:37:50.820 --> 00:37:57.020
is more of a willing participant in the plans of the universality.

00:37:57.020 --> 00:38:04.780
Yes, and this is always a difficult conversation because even that is not absolute.

00:38:04.780 --> 00:38:06.620
And the words are inadequate, but yeah.

00:38:06.620 --> 00:38:11.980
If our experience right now is that we have to be adamant like we just can't be any other

00:38:11.980 --> 00:38:17.500
way, then that is what the universe wants to experience through us and adamants go at

00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:18.500
it.

00:38:18.500 --> 00:38:20.180
And there may be situations which call for that.

00:38:20.180 --> 00:38:28.620
And adamants, it will eventually run its course and generally, a fluidity starts to arrive,

00:38:28.620 --> 00:38:30.020
but exactly.

00:38:30.020 --> 00:38:34.300
There's no thing that isn't right for a reason at some point.

00:38:34.300 --> 00:38:38.540
Yeah, I've seen videos of somebody trying to kidnap a child who's walking home from school

00:38:38.540 --> 00:38:42.060
and somebody intervenes and says, "No, you are not going to do that!"

00:38:42.060 --> 00:38:46.020
They are adamant and they make the situation stop and bravo for them.

00:38:46.020 --> 00:38:48.620
It's not a situation that calls for, you know...

00:38:48.620 --> 00:38:49.620
Exactly.

00:38:49.620 --> 00:38:51.500
This, that we are, is not passive.

00:38:51.500 --> 00:38:53.000
It's so dynamic.

00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:54.540
We are so alive.

00:38:54.540 --> 00:39:00.140
In fact, I would say it's more dynamic than what our egoic idea is because there's no

00:39:00.140 --> 00:39:04.940
more second guessing and there's no more what if they don't like it or what if it doesn't

00:39:04.940 --> 00:39:09.740
succeed, none of that. There's just a willingness to just move forward and move forward.

00:39:09.740 --> 00:39:15.500
Yeah, there's a Gita verse which keeps coming to mind so I might as well just say it and let you

00:39:15.500 --> 00:39:21.740
comment on it and we can discuss it. It says, "You have control over action alone, never over

00:39:21.740 --> 00:39:28.460
its fruits." The way I relate to that is if something has already happened or if it's happening now,

00:39:29.340 --> 00:39:34.620
that's the fruits of some previous action and I have no control over it. I can't say this

00:39:34.620 --> 00:39:38.300
shouldn't have happened, my father shouldn't have done that or whatever. It's cut and

00:39:38.300 --> 00:39:43.660
stolen already. You can't change that. But right now, I feel like I have some volition,

00:39:43.660 --> 00:39:50.060
some wiggle room, and that will have an impact on tomorrow's fruits and the next year's fruits

00:39:50.060 --> 00:39:55.660
and so on. Do you concur with that or would you see it differently? I would say, I'm just

00:39:55.660 --> 00:39:58.220
Lightly tuning the language, that's it.

00:39:58.220 --> 00:40:02.380
That what I am is a constant participation.

00:40:02.380 --> 00:40:02.860
Right.

00:40:02.860 --> 00:40:05.100
Of course I'm going to participate.

00:40:05.100 --> 00:40:06.620
This is what I am.

00:40:06.620 --> 00:40:09.100
This is everything else is what I am.

00:40:09.100 --> 00:40:12.060
And of course, there's going to be constant participation.

00:40:12.060 --> 00:40:19.500
There's no need to be passive and resigned or accepting in a way that's not engaged.

00:40:19.500 --> 00:40:22.140
It's just a natural engagement.

00:40:22.140 --> 00:40:23.100
Do you have any children?

00:40:23.100 --> 00:40:25.340
No, I don't actually.

00:40:25.340 --> 00:40:29.100
Alright, so let's say you had a little child, it might have been 20 years ago, but you had

00:40:29.100 --> 00:40:34.180
a child, and the kid was like Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and Calvin's

00:40:34.180 --> 00:40:38.860
favorite breakfast cereal was chocolate frosted sugar bombs, and he at least used to like

00:40:38.860 --> 00:40:43.200
to dump a lot of sugar on top of it in addition to the sugar that was already in it.

00:40:43.200 --> 00:40:47.160
And so then naturally Calvin would have a huge sugar rush and then crash later on.

00:40:47.160 --> 00:40:53.020
If you're a mother and your kid wanted chocolate frosted sugar bombs every morning for breakfast

00:40:53.020 --> 00:40:58.380
donuts for dinner, I imagine you would put your foot down, you would be decisive, you

00:40:58.380 --> 00:41:02.500
would be disciplining to some extent, kindly, wouldn't you say?

00:41:02.500 --> 00:41:09.020
I'd want to help the child cultivate a taste for what actually made them feel good.

00:41:09.020 --> 00:41:14.580
Any time that we're suffering, we've abandoned what makes us feel good.

00:41:14.580 --> 00:41:19.980
We've attached to an idea, and that idea is very painful.

00:41:19.980 --> 00:41:25.320
And it feels like letting go of that idea is going to be more painful.

00:41:25.320 --> 00:41:29.380
What if I just let these people not understand me?

00:41:29.380 --> 00:41:34.760
What if I just let these people think I'm a bad person or whatever it is?

00:41:34.760 --> 00:41:36.440
What if I just let that happen?

00:41:36.440 --> 00:41:37.440
That's going to be even worse.

00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:43.240
I'm going to sit here, think about how they mistreated me or I'm going to sit here and

00:41:43.240 --> 00:41:47.040
think about all the mistakes I made so I won't make them in the future.

00:41:47.040 --> 00:41:49.000
I've definitely done that one.

00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:55.680
All of those things are attached to a particular idea that actually is making it worse.

00:41:55.680 --> 00:42:03.440
We layer suffering upon suffering and there's a lightness when we realize we're already

00:42:03.440 --> 00:42:05.720
whole, already complete.

00:42:05.720 --> 00:42:12.320
We don't have to be anything else and everything we need is actually within this being within

00:42:12.320 --> 00:42:13.320
us.

00:42:13.320 --> 00:42:16.400
It's so light.

00:42:16.400 --> 00:42:23.000
to me is the hallmark that, okay, when you're light, okay, now the truth is starting to

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:24.760
filter through more and more.

00:42:24.760 --> 00:42:31.160
Yeah, I want to respond to that, but first I'm chuckling at another Calvin and Hobbes.

00:42:31.160 --> 00:42:35.660
There was a scene where Calvin is pounding nails into the coffee table and his mother

00:42:35.660 --> 00:42:38.480
comes in and says, "Calvin, what are you doing?"

00:42:38.480 --> 00:42:41.440
And Calvin looks up at her and says, "Is this a trick question?"

00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:48.440
That's the obvious way he's doing it.

00:42:48.440 --> 00:42:54.440
Yes, that's exactly it. All day long, it's just that simple.

00:42:54.440 --> 00:42:58.440
All anybody's ever doing is pounding meals into the coffee table.

00:42:58.440 --> 00:43:01.440
That's all they're ever doing. And we're making it mean,

00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:06.440
they like me, they don't like me. I'm going to get money, I'm not going to get money.

00:43:06.440 --> 00:43:09.440
My house is going to fall apart, my house isn't going to fall apart.

00:43:09.440 --> 00:43:17.040
Yeah, alright. What would you say if, let's say you went to Los Angeles and decided to

00:43:17.040 --> 00:43:21.800
counsel the people whose homes have burned down, who are living in shelters if they're

00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:30.000
lucky enough to find one. What would you say to such people that would actually connect

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:35.360
to them if possible, and that wouldn't seem like a lot of spiritual bypassing?

00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:38.820
acknowledging this sense of loss, obviously,

00:43:38.820 --> 00:43:41.080
they're feeling this sense of loss,

00:43:41.080 --> 00:43:43.340
and then most of them,

00:43:43.340 --> 00:43:46.080
once you actually hear enough of the loss,

00:43:46.080 --> 00:43:50.280
on their own, people can only talk about loss so much,

00:43:50.280 --> 00:43:54.640
on their own, they'll mention, but at least I'm alive.

00:43:54.640 --> 00:43:55.960
- Yeah. - At least

00:43:55.960 --> 00:43:57.760
I've still got my dog.

00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:00.500
It's this natural thing we've got.

00:44:00.500 --> 00:44:01.960
- Yeah. - And so,

00:44:01.960 --> 00:44:05.280
nurturing that, wow, that's true.

00:44:05.280 --> 00:44:10.160
That's really true. I've been wanting to move out of LA for a while. I think now it's time.

00:44:10.160 --> 00:44:10.660
You have?

00:44:10.660 --> 00:44:11.160
All of a sudden...

00:44:11.160 --> 00:44:11.660
Oh, they have.

00:44:11.660 --> 00:44:18.160
No, that will often happen. They actually were planning to do what they're about to have to do anyways.

00:44:18.160 --> 00:44:22.160
Yeah. Of course, they weren't all planning to move out, but yeah.

00:44:22.160 --> 00:44:29.160
I use examples like that because these spiritual principles that we discuss sound fine.

00:44:29.160 --> 00:44:36.680
They sound lovely, but they have to meet the nitty-gritty of life and be interpretable

00:44:36.680 --> 00:44:42.520
in the most dire circumstances if they are really solid, if they're really valid, I think.

00:44:42.520 --> 00:44:47.000
And even though you and I aren't experiencing the most dire of circumstances, it's worth

00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:53.000
conjecturing as to how they might be useful or apply in such circumstances.

00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:56.920
At least that's what I go through in my thought experiments.

00:44:56.920 --> 00:45:02.640
Yeah, in the middle of the catastrophe, there's a lot of just, OK, what do we have to do next?

00:45:02.640 --> 00:45:03.920
What do we have to do next?

00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:06.320
How are we going to get our dinner tonight?

00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:07.240
That kind of thing.

00:45:07.240 --> 00:45:13.560
And it's a little bit later when you can look back and then there's the choice point.

00:45:13.560 --> 00:45:22.560
Am I going to re-traumatize myself by adding on all this, oh, I was so bad, I should have done this.

00:45:22.560 --> 00:45:26.120
Or now this is going to happen and I'm never going to get that.

00:45:26.120 --> 00:45:32.600
We awfulize and just gently noticing, helping people notice,

00:45:32.600 --> 00:45:36.520
well, I'm actually making myself feel worse.

00:45:36.520 --> 00:45:41.120
I'm rehearsing all the mistakes I made that led to this or all the future

00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:45.920
things that won't happen now, but really that's not the truth.

00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:47.900
We don't know what's the future.

00:45:47.900 --> 00:45:50.160
For me, it just keeps turning out.

00:45:50.160 --> 00:45:52.020
Good things always come.

00:45:52.460 --> 00:45:56.380
And all those things I thought were mistakes were essential.

00:45:56.380 --> 00:46:02.700
The interpretation just adds so much pain and just helping people step back for the interpretation,

00:46:02.700 --> 00:46:11.740
notice the good that is being provided, and really being focused on like when I was being crushed,

00:46:11.740 --> 00:46:17.740
am I okay right now? What's the next thing I've got to do? Is there support around me to help that

00:46:17.740 --> 00:46:27.740
Yeah, if anybody's listening to this wants to send in questions that are good cases in point about the things we're talking about, feel free to do so.

00:46:27.740 --> 00:46:35.740
I was just thinking about a webinar that I participated in yesterday and there was a woman who had worked a lot for the Kamala Harris campaign.

00:46:35.740 --> 00:46:40.740
And she said she's been in a state of deep depression ever since the election.

00:46:40.740 --> 00:46:44.740
And I chimed in with the story of the Chinese farmer, that one?

00:46:44.740 --> 00:46:45.740
Yeah.

00:46:45.740 --> 00:46:46.240
Yeah.

00:46:46.240 --> 00:46:46.740
Yeah.

00:46:46.740 --> 00:46:50.080
Who keeps just saying, we'll see every time something happens that either

00:46:50.080 --> 00:46:52.120
seems catastrophic or wonderful.

00:46:52.120 --> 00:46:53.120
He just says, we'll see.

00:46:53.120 --> 00:46:55.500
I think things go in cycles.

00:46:55.500 --> 00:46:57.180
Nature goes in cycles.

00:46:57.180 --> 00:47:02.240
Naturally, the whole universe goes in cycles and it's inevitable.

00:47:02.240 --> 00:47:04.560
Winter, let's say, isn't a bad thing.

00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:09.120
If we didn't have winters, we wouldn't have summers, at least in temperate climates.

00:47:09.120 --> 00:47:12.280
You need those cycles of rest and activity.

00:47:12.740 --> 00:47:16.340
I don't know, that's just how I come to terms with things like that.

00:47:16.340 --> 00:47:22.440
It's not the end of my world if my particular political candidate doesn't win or something

00:47:22.440 --> 00:47:25.660
because I feel like, all right, then I guess we've got to go through this for a while and

00:47:25.660 --> 00:47:27.400
then we'll learn something.

00:47:27.400 --> 00:47:35.060
It might appear that damage is done, but somehow that's how humanity progresses through.

00:47:35.060 --> 00:47:37.580
Fits and starts, war is in peace.

00:47:37.580 --> 00:47:41.900
We don't know if something's going to turn out for good or for not good.

00:47:41.900 --> 00:47:46.740
If we could just look at how everything has happened up till now, it's going to turn out

00:47:46.740 --> 00:47:47.740
for good.

00:47:47.740 --> 00:47:50.580
But that's okay, we don't have to know even that.

00:47:50.580 --> 00:48:01.180
But it's very easy to get obsessed with these projections and really, humans are so good.

00:48:01.180 --> 00:48:06.380
When I walk down the street, if I fall, there's four people who will help me up.

00:48:06.380 --> 00:48:06.880
Yeah.

00:48:06.880 --> 00:48:15.260
I mean, the amount of people who are wanting to stand for someone else or want to help

00:48:15.260 --> 00:48:20.860
out the people who are hurting or chronically ill or diseased or whatever it is, the number

00:48:20.860 --> 00:48:25.740
of people stepping forward to help them and this spiritual awakening that's happening,

00:48:25.740 --> 00:48:33.100
I just feel so much goodness bursting through humanity because I'm focusing on the people

00:48:33.100 --> 00:48:35.100
I meet every day.

00:48:35.100 --> 00:48:40.460
I work in a hospital, I meet all kinds of people. It's a trauma hospital where people get flown

00:48:40.460 --> 00:48:48.660
in. There's a goodness that is just erupting in all of humans and when I'm focusing on

00:48:48.660 --> 00:48:53.940
this person I'm interacting with and this person, I just feel like we are in such a

00:48:53.940 --> 00:48:55.340
positive time.

00:48:55.340 --> 00:49:01.220
Yeah, you must be a wonderful person to encounter in a hospital when you're in dire straits.

00:49:01.220 --> 00:49:04.900
You're just so cheerful and uplifting. You must have a very nice effect on people, aside

00:49:04.900 --> 00:49:07.940
from what your job requires you to do for them.

00:49:07.940 --> 00:49:12.540
Yeah, it really is nice to be a calm presence.

00:49:12.540 --> 00:49:15.980
Some people that's all they can receive is just the calm presence.

00:49:15.980 --> 00:49:24.020
Some people are open to seeing opportunities for where they can feel more hopeful or where

00:49:24.020 --> 00:49:26.820
they can have a new perspective on themselves.

00:49:26.820 --> 00:49:32.780
As a travel hospital, there's this guy, he was telling me he had this weird tractor situation

00:49:32.780 --> 00:49:37.380
where he ended up underneath the tractor and there wasn't any good reason for that to have

00:49:37.380 --> 00:49:38.380
happened.

00:49:38.380 --> 00:49:42.280
And then he told me actually blah blah blah he went through five other weird accidents

00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:44.500
that happened to him.

00:49:44.500 --> 00:49:48.600
At first he was getting down about it, what is happening, something's out for him and

00:49:48.600 --> 00:49:53.980
then I just said to him, wow it's a miracle you're alive, somebody really wants you to

00:49:53.980 --> 00:49:55.700
be alive.

00:49:55.700 --> 00:50:01.540
So there's so many different ways you can just stop and see, am I using my thoughts to make

00:50:01.540 --> 00:50:07.220
this worse or to make it better? Yeah, I would say somebody really wants you to stop getting

00:50:07.220 --> 00:50:13.780
run over by tractors. Wise up buddy, what are you doing? Yeah, we said Michael Newton. Michael

00:50:13.780 --> 00:50:18.260
Newton, yeah. Yes, there are souls. Journey of Souls and Life Between Lives, I think that's

00:50:18.260 --> 00:50:23.700
what the names of his books were. Destiny of Souls. Destiny of Souls. There are some souls

00:50:23.700 --> 00:50:31.140
who specifically choose very challenging lifetimes because they want to get something positive out of

00:50:31.140 --> 00:50:35.860
them. They want to learn a wisdom about suffering. I can remember a lifetime

00:50:35.860 --> 00:50:42.840
when I had four kids. It was like a tenement period of time and I could not

00:50:42.840 --> 00:50:47.100
provide well enough for them and they all died from disease and starvation, low

00:50:47.100 --> 00:50:52.860
nutrition. And I came into this life with this guilt that I was gonna end up

00:50:52.860 --> 00:50:57.900
causing somebody to die. I was a man in that life. And when I finally went to

00:50:57.900 --> 00:51:04.980
that place of the guilt and realizing I was so guilty about these four kids, I just paused

00:51:04.980 --> 00:51:10.880
and went and asked their souls, "I messed up. I wasn't there for you. Are you okay?"

00:51:10.880 --> 00:51:16.320
And every single one of them said to me, "We didn't want a long life in that life. It was

00:51:16.320 --> 00:51:23.840
perfect." And there's just this lightness that came over me like, "Oh, what if I didn't

00:51:23.840 --> 00:51:29.280
mess up at all. When you hit truth, that's what happens. It's, "Oh, it's even better

00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:32.880
than I thought it could be." I was hoping they'd say something like, "I forgive you.

00:51:32.880 --> 00:51:38.360
You did a good job." It's, "No!" They said, "No, that's exactly what we wanted." That's

00:51:38.360 --> 00:51:44.080
the lightness. When you hit truth, that's the lightness that's available in any situation.

00:51:44.080 --> 00:51:49.800
Yeah, there's a story like that at the beginning of the Mahabharata where these celestial beings

00:51:49.800 --> 00:51:54.040
are cursed to live a human life. Whoever is cursing them says, "Okay, it'll be a real

00:51:54.040 --> 00:51:57.440
short one. You're the main guy who made the mistake. You have to live a full life. The

00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:01.200
rest died right after they were born and the other guy had to live a long life." From the

00:52:01.200 --> 00:52:05.880
human perspective, it might seem like a tragedy. And I'm not being glib here. I'm not suggesting

00:52:05.880 --> 00:52:09.760
that it's okay for babies to be blown up with bombs or whatever, all the horrible things

00:52:09.760 --> 00:52:14.320
that happen. Anything we can do to prevent such things from happening, we should do.

00:52:14.320 --> 00:52:20.520
nobody dies ultimately. If we live a short life is it a mistake or do we have a

00:52:20.520 --> 00:52:25.360
contract that designates that this will be a short life and then we fulfilled

00:52:25.360 --> 00:52:30.560
our contract. It's just gift after gift. The mind lots of times needs these

00:52:30.560 --> 00:52:36.800
concepts to relax. So the concept that wow I'm a healer soul over many lifetimes

00:52:36.800 --> 00:52:41.980
and I wanted to have this horrible body for this lifetime to help me develop my

00:52:41.980 --> 00:52:45.900
capacities or I wanted to have this mental illness to help me develop my

00:52:45.900 --> 00:52:52.660
capacity, it helps our mind relax. Yeah. And then fundamentally more and more the

00:52:52.660 --> 00:52:56.740
mind just knows, okay maybe there's good here that I don't know. And so then the

00:52:56.740 --> 00:53:02.940
mind starts to just automatically relax because fundamentally we're more in

00:53:02.940 --> 00:53:09.100
touch with this goodness that is so deep that is what we are. We play with the

00:53:09.100 --> 00:53:14.860
mind to help it get these other perspectives that aren't also true. There's no true

00:53:14.860 --> 00:53:21.540
theology or dogma. There just means to help the mind relax so that eventually we can get

00:53:21.540 --> 00:53:28.220
more and more grounded in this infinite benevolence, this pure love that we are, this pure joy

00:53:28.220 --> 00:53:29.220
that we are.

00:53:29.220 --> 00:53:32.900
Do you have many experiences like that where you remember past lives?

00:53:32.900 --> 00:53:37.620
Yes, I remember one that was almost pure suffering.

00:53:37.620 --> 00:53:41.100
I was some kind of a slave in this place.

00:53:41.100 --> 00:53:45.960
They were using humans in a place where it wasn't good for humans.

00:53:45.960 --> 00:53:49.780
Like it was way too hot because they were doing something with very hot fire,

00:53:49.780 --> 00:53:52.180
but they needed a human body.

00:53:52.180 --> 00:53:54.180
So they just worked until they died.

00:53:54.180 --> 00:53:55.540
Nobody lived past 30.

00:53:55.540 --> 00:53:58.500
It developed this sense of strength in me.

00:53:58.500 --> 00:54:01.500
It developed a sense that, okay, I'm unharmable.

00:54:01.500 --> 00:54:02.700
Look what I survived.

00:54:02.780 --> 00:54:04.940
That lifetime was so invaluable.

00:54:04.940 --> 00:54:12.360
I had another one where I was coming out west, somewhere out in the Redwoods,

00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:17.220
the Northern California or Oregon, Washington kind of area, and I had my

00:54:17.220 --> 00:54:22.260
young bride, I was bringing her, I was so excited, we had all this potential.

00:54:22.260 --> 00:54:25.740
I had worked hard to have some money to establish this and she died.

00:54:25.740 --> 00:54:27.380
None of my dreams have.

00:54:27.380 --> 00:54:32.480
And I felt so lonely and I became a very contributing person in my community.

00:54:32.520 --> 00:54:40.200
But I just thought of her my whole life and had this like deep melancholy while I was participating in life.

00:54:40.200 --> 00:54:51.800
And then as I came back to that, because I was tuning into that life and resolving it, I checked to see, was I ever really alone?

00:54:51.800 --> 00:54:54.680
I felt alone, but was I alone?

00:54:55.080 --> 00:55:03.400
And when I asked that part of me that question, no, like I had always held her memory as an

00:55:03.400 --> 00:55:08.600
inspiration for the rest of my life. I had all these people I interacted with. It was actually

00:55:08.600 --> 00:55:15.400
a very rich life. Even those few years with her, she was such a vibrant person. Those few years

00:55:15.400 --> 00:55:21.800
were a gift. They really propelled me through the rest of my life. So no, I had never been alone.

00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:31.360
How do you remember dreams in such detail? Do they just come to you spontaneously in visions, in meditation, in dreams or what?

00:55:31.360 --> 00:55:42.360
So I took a course with the IAC, the International Academy of Consciousness, to learn how to do astral travel and it's in the vibrational state is where I seem to have most access.

00:55:42.360 --> 00:55:48.200
So, what I'll have is I'll have a feeling in this life and it just doesn't seem quite in

00:55:48.200 --> 00:55:50.440
proportion to this situation.

00:55:50.440 --> 00:55:54.780
Like I can just feel there's another element present.

00:55:54.780 --> 00:56:00.600
So then I'll step back and go into the vibrational state, which is just that same state we're

00:56:00.600 --> 00:56:02.720
in when we're first waking up.

00:56:02.720 --> 00:56:05.000
Sometimes we'll even feel like we're buzzing.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:10.360
And so I'll just go into that and then check and see, okay, let's feel, where does this

00:56:10.360 --> 00:56:17.040
feeling come from? And as I sit there listening for where this feeling has come from, then

00:56:17.040 --> 00:56:21.800
the rest of the life comes forward, and then I kind of work with that.

00:56:21.800 --> 00:56:23.800
Quite vividly, it seems.

00:56:23.800 --> 00:56:29.720
Yes, oh yes. Especially the emotions. The emotions are the most vivid part of it.

00:56:29.720 --> 00:56:34.560
Some people say not to try to remember past lives because the past is always a lesser

00:56:34.560 --> 00:56:39.960
developed state, but it sounds to me that your remembering them has helped you to resolve

00:56:39.960 --> 00:56:46.120
things and learn things from them. Right. And it makes the weight in this life lighter because

00:56:46.120 --> 00:56:50.760
somehow some weight from back then is still being carried now. Yeah and you realize, oh,

00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:55.480
like you just said, okay, that's where this is coming from. So I can just understand it and not

00:56:55.480 --> 00:56:59.560
not worry about it too much. Right. And resolve it. Yeah, I need to be guilty or feel.

00:56:59.560 --> 00:57:07.080
Interesting. If people don't believe in past lives, what can we do? For me, it's a piece of

00:57:07.080 --> 00:57:11.000
the puzzle without which the whole puzzle would fall apart and a lot of things wouldn't make

00:57:11.000 --> 00:57:12.000
sense.

00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:16.200
So, I take it for granted, but if people don't believe in it, no problem, they don't need

00:57:16.200 --> 00:57:17.200
to.

00:57:17.200 --> 00:57:18.720
You don't have to believe in past lives.

00:57:18.720 --> 00:57:23.720
Some people believe that there is some kind of thing from our ancestors that we carry.

00:57:23.720 --> 00:57:26.040
Okay, maybe I'm resolving something from that.

00:57:26.040 --> 00:57:29.400
Or some people could say it's just something in your unconscious.

00:57:29.400 --> 00:57:30.600
Okay, great.

00:57:30.600 --> 00:57:33.320
I'm tapping into something in my unconscious that's getting resolved.

00:57:33.320 --> 00:57:35.320
It doesn't matter where it's coming from.

00:57:35.320 --> 00:57:41.040
always only a model. Because none of this is real, even the soul life isn't real.

00:57:41.040 --> 00:57:44.800
Perhaps a thousand lifetimes that we're all living, we're living them

00:57:44.800 --> 00:57:49.600
simultaneously and they just seem sequential. I would say the model

00:57:49.600 --> 00:57:53.640
I would use is it depends on what dimension you're at. In this dimension

00:57:53.640 --> 00:57:57.880
things happen sequentially. Then you can go to the next dimension and you can jump

00:57:57.880 --> 00:58:02.200
into the sequence wherever you want. You can go to the next dimension and

00:58:02.200 --> 00:58:07.880
And everything's happening simultaneously and everything possible is happening simultaneously.

00:58:07.880 --> 00:58:14.760
And you keep going. It just depends upon how much limitation you're holding as far as how much you can perceive.

00:58:14.760 --> 00:58:17.880
And all those things you just said might be simultaneously true.

00:58:17.880 --> 00:58:21.320
It's just that they're filtered differently in different dimensions.

00:58:21.320 --> 00:58:28.760
Just the way a tree is a tree, but a bird sees it one way, a frog sees it another way, and a person sees it another way, and so on.

00:58:28.760 --> 00:58:30.760
Exactly.

00:58:30.760 --> 00:58:34.920
I listened to your books mostly while driving or walking in the woods and I didn't take notes,

00:58:34.920 --> 00:58:40.920
although I have in front of me printouts of the tables of contents, are some key elements in

00:58:40.920 --> 00:58:46.680
your two books, or even that you didn't put in your books, that would be fun for us to discuss

00:58:46.680 --> 00:58:53.560
and helpful for people. Yeah, I think as we're learning to let go, I can't remember what I

00:58:53.560 --> 00:59:01.880
I call it in my book, it's this sense of basic goodness that enables the letting go to happen.

00:59:01.880 --> 00:59:08.080
Because I see it as two things, here's a side note. We've got the deepening that knows more

00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:13.200
and more what we are, and then we've got the unraveling that's dropping conditioning. It

00:59:13.200 --> 00:59:22.520
seems like both are important. But the unraveling will be easier done if we tap into the basic

00:59:22.520 --> 00:59:30.920
goodness. And some people come into this life with so little experience of love that there's

00:59:30.920 --> 00:59:39.520
so much constriction that letting go is their slow process. So how can we build up the sense

00:59:39.520 --> 00:59:47.640
of goodness so that the constriction can start to relax? And gratitude is one way, just checking

00:59:47.640 --> 00:59:52.440
to see what good thing has happened, what good thing has happened.

00:59:52.440 --> 01:00:00.200
It's setting positive intention, just because what we fill our minds with filters in everywhere,

01:00:00.200 --> 01:00:01.200
right?

01:00:01.200 --> 01:00:06.920
So if we're setting a positive intention for the day and then we see that some of it happens,

01:00:06.920 --> 01:00:10.200
it's oh wow, yes, there is some goodness here.

01:00:10.200 --> 01:00:17.320
So there's a lot of practices we can do to build that sense of, oh, there is a goodness

01:00:17.320 --> 01:00:22.800
here I can relax into. You may know some other ways that people can tap into this.

01:00:22.800 --> 01:00:28.760
Oh yeah, there is a holding, like every mistake I've made and yet look my life

01:00:28.760 --> 01:00:34.360
didn't go down the drain. Yeah, or what if it did seem to go down the drain? What if

01:00:34.360 --> 01:00:39.760
one ends up a drug addict or in prison or something like that? Again I'm using the

01:00:39.760 --> 01:00:46.360
dire example techniques or you test a assumption or a teaching against

01:00:46.360 --> 01:00:51.560
the darkest example you can think of and see if it holds up. Like there are a couple of

01:00:51.560 --> 01:00:55.720
kids in this town who murdered their Spanish teacher because she was giving them a failing

01:00:55.720 --> 01:01:00.480
grade and now they're in prison for 30 or 35 years. And I don't know, if you could talk

01:01:00.480 --> 01:01:05.600
to those kids, I don't know if it's fair to ask you this, but if you could talk to those

01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:08.320
kids, what would you say to them?

01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:15.800
I would love to talk to those kids. Because I 100% know that they wouldn't say their life

01:01:15.800 --> 01:01:23.640
is 100% misery. They wouldn't. They would probably say I really screwed up, but I learned something.

01:01:23.640 --> 01:01:27.460
And in fact, I watched the trial of one of the kids or parts of it, and he was saying,

01:01:27.460 --> 01:01:33.000
I hope I can make something good out of this. I hope I can be an example to other kids to

01:01:33.000 --> 01:01:38.520
not do such a thing. And perhaps I can learn something when I'm in prison and better myself

01:01:38.520 --> 01:01:42.720
in some way, that kind of thing. They could be going through school, they could be meeting

01:01:42.720 --> 01:01:47.080
other prisoners that they end up being a light for. You cannot try to be in

01:01:47.080 --> 01:01:52.680
somebody else's shoes. You have to ask them, "So has any good showed up?" And nine

01:01:52.680 --> 01:01:57.000
times out of ten people have already seen the good that has showed up. And if they

01:01:57.000 --> 01:02:01.720
aren't yet, there's no need yet for them to see it. They can allow their misery,

01:02:01.720 --> 01:02:06.000
that's okay, but probably it's not going to stay in misery because it just turns

01:02:06.000 --> 01:02:15.160
turns out, good shows up. And you have to ask them. But I am 100% sure that if I ask every

01:02:15.160 --> 01:02:20.800
prisoner 9 times out of 10 they would say that there has been some good that has shown up

01:02:20.800 --> 01:02:27.860
in prison. Yeah, maybe 9 times out of 10, maybe 8, I don't know. Because some people are pretty

01:02:27.860 --> 01:02:34.000
hardened and pretty psychotic and it might not be easy for them to see it. But again,

01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:40.080
Zooming out, I do think that ultimately everything is in the interest of evolution, whether you

01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:41.240
like it or not.

01:02:41.240 --> 01:02:46.120
You are on the evolution train and you can kick and scream, but you can't jump off the

01:02:46.120 --> 01:02:47.120
train.

01:02:47.120 --> 01:02:53.120
And again, that concept is just a way of relaxing the mind.

01:02:53.120 --> 01:02:56.720
The more enduring support is just tuning into what we are.

01:02:56.720 --> 01:02:59.920
It just turns out we are timeless.

01:02:59.920 --> 01:03:02.200
We are unharmable.

01:03:02.200 --> 01:03:07.580
that seemed to harm us was just harming our interpretations, our reputation, our image

01:03:07.580 --> 01:03:14.400
of ourselves. Nothing ever hurt our real self. In fact, it only made our real self shine

01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:22.980
out more clearly. So as we tap into this that is real, we discover that. And so the willingness

01:03:22.980 --> 01:03:31.140
to tap into this that is real, it's a gradual willingness. The more that we think we have

01:03:31.140 --> 01:03:37.780
to have our own time or be respected or whatever it is, the less the willingness

01:03:37.780 --> 01:03:42.540
will be there. Probably anybody who's listening to this has already a

01:03:42.540 --> 01:03:48.180
willingness and probably way more than that of knowing this that we are and it

01:03:48.180 --> 01:03:57.740
is wild. It is not tame. We're not a pristine French garden. We are a wild forest.

01:03:57.740 --> 01:04:07.420
jungle. Exactly. When you turn over a log, that life proliferating in that dark wet

01:04:07.420 --> 01:04:15.620
space, that's what we are. And cultivating the ability to enjoy the wildness makes

01:04:15.620 --> 01:04:22.420
the whole thing much more fun. Yeah. And I alluded to earlier that we can have

01:04:22.420 --> 01:04:27.020
these boxes, a box that looks like confusion or a box that looks like I'm

01:04:27.020 --> 01:04:32.220
getting what I want. But either one of them, the happiness of getting what I thought I

01:04:32.220 --> 01:04:39.620
wanted and the unhappiness of getting something different, they're still just a box. When

01:04:39.620 --> 01:04:45.460
we're tuned into what we are, it's a totally different experience. It's not that box of

01:04:45.460 --> 01:04:51.540
getting what I want. It's a discovery and a discovery. So anytime we're not getting

01:04:51.540 --> 01:04:57.820
what we want. It's just an invitation into the mystery, to live from mystery, live in

01:04:57.820 --> 01:05:03.020
discovery. That's where this life force is more obvious.

01:05:03.020 --> 01:05:08.200
Yeah, the Rolling Stones song, right? You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes

01:05:08.200 --> 01:05:10.460
you might find you get what you need.

01:05:10.460 --> 01:05:12.100
Exactly, exactly.

01:05:12.100 --> 01:05:17.060
Okay, what are some other little tidbits from your book? You have all kinds of chapters

01:05:17.060 --> 01:05:24.300
on relationships and the length of relationships and friendships and reliability and psychological

01:05:24.300 --> 01:05:28.140
health and all kinds of different things. So what are some other little things that you

01:05:28.140 --> 01:05:31.500
think might be nice for people to hear about?

01:05:31.500 --> 01:05:32.500
There's no should.

01:05:32.500 --> 01:05:36.060
There's no should. I thought you said no shit.

01:05:36.060 --> 01:05:45.660
No should. So my relationship is better if it lasts longer. Nope, that's not a should.

01:05:45.660 --> 01:05:49.260
My financial state will make me happier if I have more money.

01:05:49.260 --> 01:05:51.420
Nope, that's not a should.

01:05:51.420 --> 01:05:53.420
There's no should.

01:05:53.420 --> 01:05:55.220
There's nothing we have to do.

01:05:55.220 --> 01:05:59.260
My mental health means I'm more evolved.

01:05:59.260 --> 01:06:02.980
Really, there is no should.

01:06:02.980 --> 01:06:07.660
Everything that we think we have to live up to, we don't.

01:06:07.660 --> 01:06:11.420
We're already complete and we're discovering it.

01:06:11.420 --> 01:06:16.180
So here's an image that I got in a sort of vision.

01:06:16.180 --> 01:06:17.860
No image is 100% true.

01:06:17.860 --> 01:06:19.700
In fact, I'll tell two.

01:06:19.700 --> 01:06:23.980
Neither of them are 100% true, but they give a sense of this mystery.

01:06:23.980 --> 01:06:31.580
Here's the infinite, and from this glowing ball, it picks out a recipe of 30 different

01:06:31.580 --> 01:06:36.540
things, puts the conglomerate together, makes a soul, and throws it out and says, "I wonder

01:06:36.540 --> 01:06:39.620
what this recipe would be."

01:06:39.620 --> 01:06:40.620
You can't fail.

01:06:40.620 --> 01:06:44.100
All you're doing is showing, oh, this is what that recipe does.

01:06:44.100 --> 01:06:44.980
That's it.

01:06:44.980 --> 01:06:47.380
You can't fail, but be your own recipe.

01:06:47.380 --> 01:06:49.660
Just a cat can't be a bad cat.

01:06:49.660 --> 01:06:51.300
A cat is a cat.

01:06:51.300 --> 01:06:53.180
Whatever it's doing, it's being a cat.

01:06:53.180 --> 01:06:58.300
And then the other vision I had was on a Ferris wheel.

01:06:58.300 --> 01:07:01.500
When you're on earth, you're in the bottom of the Ferris wheel and in other

01:07:01.500 --> 01:07:02.980
realms, you're on the top of the Ferris wheel.

01:07:02.980 --> 01:07:06.540
The people on the top of the Ferris wheel always want to have more

01:07:06.540 --> 01:07:07.820
than a Ferris wheel experience.

01:07:07.820 --> 01:07:12.100
they'd like it to feel a little bit more like a roller coaster. So the job of the

01:07:12.100 --> 01:07:17.900
people on the bottom is to make a big ruckus. So the Ferris wheel will rock a

01:07:17.900 --> 01:07:20.980
little bit and then when you're on the top you get to feel like a roller

01:07:20.980 --> 01:07:26.220
coaster. It turned out that the most mature souls when they were on earth

01:07:26.220 --> 01:07:31.020
were making the biggest ruckus because the people on the top were getting the

01:07:31.020 --> 01:07:36.820
best ride. So we don't know who is the mature soul. We don't know whether we're

01:07:36.820 --> 01:07:43.260
We're living our purpose. We're always living our purpose. You can't do it wrong.

01:07:43.260 --> 01:07:50.220
So to translate that vision into a concrete example, Adolf Hitler made a big ruckus. And

01:07:50.220 --> 01:07:55.020
in fact, Byron Katie said in her book, Losing the Moon, that Hitler brought more people to

01:07:55.020 --> 01:07:59.220
God or might have brought more people to God than Jesus. And she ended up taking that book

01:07:59.220 --> 01:08:02.940
out of publication because it was causing so much of a ruckus.

01:08:02.940 --> 01:08:10.620
We really don't know, like I said they're just models, but they're opening us up to letting

01:08:10.620 --> 01:08:12.940
go of our concepts and being in the mystery.

01:08:12.940 --> 01:08:19.580
That's the purpose here, is to be in the mystery and not be so certain that we know that so

01:08:19.580 --> 01:08:21.780
and so shouldn't be doing that.

01:08:21.780 --> 01:08:24.300
We don't know what Trump is supposed to be doing.

01:08:24.300 --> 01:08:28.220
Turns out he's doing what he is doing, what he naturally does.

01:08:28.220 --> 01:08:34.180
And I don't know, it's like, again, that doesn't mean passivity or not opposing the situation.

01:08:34.180 --> 01:08:40.500
Like Hitler was progressively taking over more and more of Europe and killing more and more

01:08:40.500 --> 01:08:41.660
people as he did.

01:08:41.660 --> 01:08:47.420
And Neville Chamberlain, who was some kind of diplomat in England, was saying, "I think

01:08:47.420 --> 01:08:48.500
we can appease Hitler.

01:08:48.500 --> 01:08:50.500
He said he won't do such and such."

01:08:50.500 --> 01:08:56.060
And all basically Chamberlain did was give Hitler more time to get ready to cause even

01:08:56.060 --> 01:08:57.140
more damage.

01:08:57.140 --> 01:09:02.260
And finally, Britain and eventually the US and the various allies said, "We got to stop

01:09:02.260 --> 01:09:03.260
this guy.

01:09:03.260 --> 01:09:05.920
We can't just be all philosophical about it.

01:09:05.920 --> 01:09:12.820
He needs to be clobbered militarily in order to be stopped or it's going to be even worse."

01:09:12.820 --> 01:09:13.820
It is.

01:09:13.820 --> 01:09:18.420
Infinite is the force stopping and the force initiating, and that's what our human brains

01:09:18.420 --> 01:09:19.660
go nuts over.

01:09:19.660 --> 01:09:22.660
We say the infinite has to be on one side.

01:09:22.660 --> 01:09:26.500
The infinite is on both sides.

01:09:26.500 --> 01:09:34.220
like hammering the nails, we want to say, "That is a war and that is bad.

01:09:34.220 --> 01:09:35.220
That's an adventure."

01:09:35.220 --> 01:09:36.220
Yeah.

01:09:36.220 --> 01:09:38.820
You know, it really is.

01:09:38.820 --> 01:09:41.780
And we can feel it in ourselves in little moments.

01:09:41.780 --> 01:09:47.260
Have you ever, when you were a kid, built a tower of blocks and hashed them to the ground?

01:09:47.260 --> 01:09:48.260
Sure.

01:09:48.260 --> 01:09:50.180
At St. Lucia's Exuberant!

01:09:50.180 --> 01:09:52.340
We have that within ourselves.

01:09:52.340 --> 01:09:59.200
The more I own all the parts of myself, the more I feel the friendliness of the universe.

01:09:59.200 --> 01:10:05.460
Because I recognize, "Oh yeah, I have that in myself, and yet I know that there's a fundamental

01:10:05.460 --> 01:10:07.140
goodness to me."

01:10:07.140 --> 01:10:10.220
So how did the fundamental goodness knock all the blocks down?

01:10:10.220 --> 01:10:16.180
And as I explore that in myself, when we try to explore things philosophically, the mind

01:10:16.180 --> 01:10:17.460
is just not adequate.

01:10:17.460 --> 01:10:22.900
But when we feel within ourselves, "Oh, that movement is within me and that movement is

01:10:22.900 --> 01:10:26.100
within me," somehow they coexist.

01:10:26.100 --> 01:10:31.380
In fact, they create this dynamic exchange that I wouldn't trade.

01:10:31.380 --> 01:10:34.180
Then we're starting to understand more and more of what we are.

01:10:34.180 --> 01:10:43.380
I feel like, for me, looking inward and feeling what I am demonstrates way more about the

01:10:43.380 --> 01:10:46.540
universe than any philosophy ever could.

01:10:46.540 --> 01:10:51.940
Yeah, when you think about it, if God is the ultimate reality, or let's call it God for

01:10:51.940 --> 01:10:59.300
the time being, just there's some all-encompassing, all-consuming ultimate reality that pervades

01:10:59.300 --> 01:11:04.180
and contains everything. Everything means everything. The dark and the light, the violent

01:11:04.180 --> 01:11:10.720
and the peaceful, the hot and the cold, the good and the bad, or whatever. If those polarities,

01:11:10.720 --> 01:11:15.220
we can say perhaps they don't ultimately have any reality either, but insofar as they

01:11:15.220 --> 01:11:21.620
exist relatively, the totality contains them all. So I guess the question is, is there

01:11:21.620 --> 01:11:28.500
a preference? Is this divine intelligence just as content with good as with evil as

01:11:28.500 --> 01:11:35.760
we understand it? Or is there a trajectory of the universe to move to greater and greater

01:11:35.760 --> 01:11:42.580
evolution, which would mean greater happiness for all beings, which seems to be what all

01:11:42.580 --> 01:11:48.980
great religious leaders espoused and tried to achieve. But are the bad guys, Attila the

01:11:48.980 --> 01:11:54.320
Hun and Adolf Hitler and all the rest, are they equally valid participants in the game

01:11:54.320 --> 01:11:59.860
of life as Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and all the... Oh, Krishna, he was advocating

01:11:59.860 --> 01:12:05.500
a war, but as all these sort of religious figures, these saintly figures. Obviously,

01:12:05.500 --> 01:12:11.860
they play a necessary role, but does the universe have a preference for the good guys to win

01:12:11.860 --> 01:12:14.660
over the bad guys in the final analysis.

01:12:14.660 --> 01:12:17.020
I can't philosophize on that.

01:12:17.020 --> 01:12:27.460
When I feel inside the expression of movement that we seem to be on seems to be moving towards

01:12:27.460 --> 01:12:33.100
less slavery, more freedom, more connection, more understanding.

01:12:33.100 --> 01:12:37.300
That seems to be the trajectory that this timeline is moving on.

01:12:37.300 --> 01:12:40.740
Are there other timelines doing another adventure?

01:12:40.740 --> 01:12:47.540
could be, but this timeline when I feel into what the game is we're playing here, that

01:12:47.540 --> 01:12:54.680
seems to be the ultimate moving motivation where the life force tends to be proliferating

01:12:54.680 --> 01:12:55.680
the most.

01:12:55.680 --> 01:13:00.860
And you actually alluded earlier to a mass awakening or a global awakening or whatever,

01:13:00.860 --> 01:13:05.420
which I also feel is happening or it seems to be happening from my perspective, and that

01:13:05.420 --> 01:13:10.240
actually gives me a lot of optimism, which some people don't have because they just watch

01:13:10.240 --> 01:13:14.240
the news and they don't realize that this other stuff is percolating up.

01:13:14.240 --> 01:13:15.240
But, yeah.

01:13:15.240 --> 01:13:23.480
Yeah, I actually had a vision because I asked, "Why are there so many negative powers, positions

01:13:23.480 --> 01:13:26.600
of authority in our world?"

01:13:26.600 --> 01:13:33.800
And I was shown this vision where I was in this other dimension and I had no wisdom.

01:13:33.800 --> 01:13:36.040
We all did everything right, but we had no wisdom.

01:13:36.040 --> 01:13:42.120
For example, this guy was stealing, a friend of mine was stealing from me, and I went and

01:13:42.120 --> 01:13:44.120
confronted him and said, "Why are you stealing from me?"

01:13:44.120 --> 01:13:48.840
And then I looked and he had taken all the shoes I never wore, and he probably didn't

01:13:48.840 --> 01:13:51.800
know, but he was going to be giving them to other people who could use them.

01:13:51.800 --> 01:13:54.600
So he was stealing, but it was all for good.

01:13:54.600 --> 01:13:58.000
But there was no wisdom in that place.

01:13:58.000 --> 01:14:01.520
There was perfect harmony, but there was no wisdom.

01:14:01.520 --> 01:14:05.560
Here we get to have the experience of wisdom.

01:14:05.560 --> 01:14:08.840
What place are you referring to where there's no wisdom?

01:14:08.840 --> 01:14:10.400
This is a vision that I had.

01:14:10.400 --> 01:14:12.480
Some other realm or something you say?

01:14:12.480 --> 01:14:13.480
Yes.

01:14:13.480 --> 01:14:15.280
And it was another realm I went to.

01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:20.520
For example, I was getting ready for work and then all of a sudden I found myself distracted

01:14:20.520 --> 01:14:23.400
and I end up going to work like three hours late.

01:14:23.400 --> 01:14:24.400
And I couldn't believe it.

01:14:24.400 --> 01:14:28.020
Like I had been getting ready for work and then all of a sudden I was going to work.

01:14:28.020 --> 01:14:33.600
And when I got to work, nobody was upset because they knew if she's not here, it's supposed

01:14:33.600 --> 01:14:34.880
to be that way.

01:14:34.880 --> 01:14:38.400
And lo and behold, I didn't have any patience for those first three hours.

01:14:38.400 --> 01:14:40.440
So here we go.

01:14:40.440 --> 01:14:44.520
So everybody knew there that everything happens right.

01:14:44.520 --> 01:14:46.000
They just didn't stop.

01:14:46.000 --> 01:14:49.880
As a result, they just knew everything was right, but they didn't have a sense of wisdom.

01:14:49.880 --> 01:14:54.260
We get to have something that feels like wisdom because it looks to us like there's alternatives

01:14:54.260 --> 01:14:58.560
and different possibilities and we can effort to make things happen.

01:14:58.560 --> 01:15:03.800
That gives us more of a sense of participation and we get to have the experience of wisdom.

01:15:03.800 --> 01:15:12.720
And then I was shown that we have, as a humanity, we've had a tendency to look to higher authorities

01:15:12.720 --> 01:15:14.720
instead of tune in.

01:15:14.720 --> 01:15:20.680
And by looking to higher authorities, we created a gap where some beings came in who are on

01:15:20.680 --> 01:15:26.200
a different timeline, a timeline of merging together through experiences of power.

01:15:26.200 --> 01:15:31.180
We're merging through experiences of love and connection, but they're merging on experience

01:15:31.180 --> 01:15:32.540
of power.

01:15:32.540 --> 01:15:36.180
And it's weird to have the people who are merging through power and the people who are

01:15:36.180 --> 01:15:39.580
merging through love in the same place.

01:15:39.580 --> 01:15:46.140
And what I have shown is the moment that we no longer looking outside for authority as

01:15:46.140 --> 01:15:51.620
a collective, we're tuning in to our inner authority, then there will be no space for

01:15:51.620 --> 01:15:54.420
them and it will separate.

01:15:54.420 --> 01:16:02.380
And so the people who are on the power timeline or beings or whatever will move on and we will

01:16:02.380 --> 01:16:07.340
be listening to our inner authority and it's going to fall off like an old scab. We don't

01:16:07.340 --> 01:16:13.700
have to fight to get them to go away. We don't. The moment that we're all tuned into our inner

01:16:13.700 --> 01:16:19.340
authority or nephibos or something, we reach that stage, then there will be no space. It

01:16:19.340 --> 01:16:23.500
will be like an old scab falling out. Just plop.

01:16:23.500 --> 01:16:27.820
That's very interesting. I find that fascinating because not only in this country but around

01:16:27.820 --> 01:16:34.940
the world, right-wing authoritarian governments are in the ascendant and fascist or totalitarian

01:16:34.940 --> 01:16:36.900
leaders are gaining prominence.

01:16:36.900 --> 01:16:42.140
There's even a resurgence of a sort of a Nazism in Germany, which is illegal but it's happening

01:16:42.140 --> 01:16:43.340
anyway.

01:16:43.340 --> 01:16:46.060
And one thinks, "Oh, this has to be stopped, this has to be opposed."

01:16:46.060 --> 01:16:54.660
But those movements gain their oxygen from people who adulate authoritarian figures, who

01:16:54.660 --> 01:17:02.460
abdicate their own authority and apply it to some external figure whom they follow as a

01:17:02.460 --> 01:17:08.860
cult leader. But if one could become more self-referral and take recourse to one's own

01:17:08.860 --> 01:17:14.740
authority, then those people would lose their support very concretely. People would just

01:17:14.740 --> 01:17:21.060
follow the beat of their own drummer. Is that the phrase? And wouldn't be giving these

01:17:21.060 --> 01:17:27.380
leaders the adulation that they crave, most of them being malignant narcissists anyway.

01:17:27.380 --> 01:17:33.860
I see ways that they are giving gifts and we can... I find everybody in the world giving

01:17:33.860 --> 01:17:41.420
me gifts. But yes, wherever there are authorities that appear to be out of control, we don't

01:17:41.420 --> 01:17:46.740
have to resist them. If it's a calling, somebody came into this life, they wanted to get to

01:17:46.740 --> 01:17:52.460
be a warrior. Fabulous. Go for it. If you don't want to be a warrior, you don't have to be

01:17:52.460 --> 01:17:58.780
a warrior. Just tuning into the inner wisdom is all it takes, and everything moves on to

01:17:58.780 --> 01:17:59.780
its next stage.

01:17:59.780 --> 01:18:02.860
Perhaps that's what Jesus meant when he said, "Resist not evil."

01:18:02.860 --> 01:18:09.980
Yeah. Yeah. Even people who are considered narcissists, I learned something from them.

01:18:09.980 --> 01:18:14.940
There's a certain, I want to say self-love, it's not really self-love, but an enjoyment

01:18:14.940 --> 01:18:22.420
of their self that we can all learn from. Why not just totally enjoy what I am? Doesn't

01:18:22.420 --> 01:18:28.940
have to be putting it on to other people, but just enjoy exactly my particular recipe. I

01:18:28.940 --> 01:18:30.820
can't see anybody that I would say is pure evil.

01:18:30.820 --> 01:18:35.620
I would agree. Nothing is pure anything in the relative field. Everything is a mixed

01:18:35.620 --> 01:18:38.460
bag with varying proportions.

01:18:38.460 --> 01:18:47.140
I feel this that we are is unharmed and this that we are is moving us in what we consider

01:18:47.140 --> 01:18:48.140
positive.

01:18:48.140 --> 01:18:55.540
I think it's probably the opposite that wherever a particular group is moving, they're going

01:18:55.540 --> 01:18:57.460
to feel like that's positive.

01:18:57.460 --> 01:19:02.860
So if we happen to be on some other timeline where it was going to totally dissolve into

01:19:02.860 --> 01:19:09.400
chaos, to us that would feel like positive because wherever we're being pulled to, whatever

01:19:09.400 --> 01:19:17.660
draws us at the deepest level, whatever's served by our deepest creativity and connection,

01:19:17.660 --> 01:19:21.840
that is what's going to feel positive and that is what we're all being moved towards

01:19:21.840 --> 01:19:27.080
is this birthing of life and love and more manifest connection.

01:19:27.080 --> 01:19:31.040
Yeah, and that reminds me of a thought that I was having while listening to your books,

01:19:31.040 --> 01:19:35.160
which is that people say, "Everybody does the best they can."

01:19:35.160 --> 01:19:37.240
And is that really true?

01:19:37.240 --> 01:19:40.760
And when I think about it, I think, yeah, it is actually.

01:19:40.760 --> 01:19:44.240
Even if they appear to be doing something really creepy,

01:19:44.240 --> 01:19:45.680
it's the best they can do,

01:19:45.680 --> 01:19:48.760
given their particular state of development

01:19:48.760 --> 01:19:52.040
and wisdom and evolution and so on.

01:19:52.040 --> 01:19:54.280
Does that relate to what you were just saying?

01:19:54.280 --> 01:19:58.240
- Yeah, that's actually, I have a saying better than that.

01:19:58.240 --> 01:20:00.400
Like, 'cause that includes a literal resignation.

01:20:00.400 --> 01:20:02.000
what's the best they can do.

01:20:02.000 --> 01:20:04.800
I'm saying, no, they're doing exactly

01:20:04.800 --> 01:20:06.740
what they're designed to do

01:20:06.740 --> 01:20:08.340
so that I can be confronted

01:20:08.340 --> 01:20:10.300
in the things that I need to let go of.

01:20:10.300 --> 01:20:12.600
They could be a very advanced soul

01:20:12.600 --> 01:20:16.680
that's doing that to bring grace to my life

01:20:16.680 --> 01:20:20.580
so I can let go of some way that I'm stuck,

01:20:20.580 --> 01:20:23.620
I've become ossified in some area.

01:20:23.620 --> 01:20:26.180
Everybody's doing exactly what they're supposed to do,

01:20:26.180 --> 01:20:27.640
what they're designed to do,

01:20:27.640 --> 01:20:30.160
what they are destined to do.

01:20:30.160 --> 01:20:34.160
this harmony, this fabric, it can't go wrong.

01:20:34.160 --> 01:20:36.400
Yeah, sounds good.

01:20:36.400 --> 01:20:37.440
And I agree with you.

01:20:37.440 --> 01:20:41.400
I can see your perspective and agree with it from part of me.

01:20:41.400 --> 01:20:44.960
But then when I think of Dylan Roof shooting up all the people in that church in

01:20:44.960 --> 01:20:48.440
Charleston, or the kid who went in and shot all the kids in the Sandy Hook

01:20:48.440 --> 01:20:52.520
elementary school, it's tough to say that's what they're supposed to do.

01:20:52.520 --> 01:20:55.360
But I can see the perspective from which you're saying that.

01:20:55.360 --> 01:20:57.960
There's levels of awareness, right?

01:20:57.960 --> 01:20:58.480
So yeah.

01:20:58.560 --> 01:21:00.680
There's a part of us that jumps in and says,

01:21:00.680 --> 01:21:03.000
"What can we do to make that not happen again?"

01:21:03.000 --> 01:21:04.560
And that's the goodness in us,

01:21:04.560 --> 01:21:07.200
that's the truth in us, of course.

01:21:07.200 --> 01:21:09.840
We are very dynamic because we are the infinite

01:21:09.840 --> 01:21:11.320
moving in constantly.

01:21:11.320 --> 01:21:14.440
So of course, there's gonna be this response,

01:21:14.440 --> 01:21:17.000
and that's the universe too.

01:21:17.000 --> 01:21:19.880
But at the same time, we don't have to regret

01:21:19.880 --> 01:21:23.460
what has already happened if we look at it

01:21:23.460 --> 01:21:26.880
from the highest or deepest, whatever you wanna say.

01:21:26.880 --> 01:21:31.380
Because at that point, we are unharmable.

01:21:31.380 --> 01:21:34.020
And that is not a philosophy.

01:21:34.020 --> 01:21:35.680
I have zero belief.

01:21:35.680 --> 01:21:37.660
Pretty much about anything.

01:21:37.660 --> 01:21:39.300
If I find a belief, I kill the belief.

01:21:39.300 --> 01:21:42.000
Basically, don't have any belief.

01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:45.400
It's just been a discovery that everything

01:21:45.400 --> 01:21:48.520
that looked like hurt in my life went for good.

01:21:48.520 --> 01:21:51.860
And I just test that with other people.

01:21:51.860 --> 01:21:53.980
That is the fundamental.

01:21:53.980 --> 01:21:55.680
And it can only be an experience.

01:21:55.680 --> 01:21:57.040
It cannot be a theory.

01:21:57.040 --> 01:21:59.800
It's a horrible theory because it gets misused.

01:21:59.800 --> 01:22:02.800
And no, you cannot have it as a theory.

01:22:02.800 --> 01:22:12.440
It has to be as a lived experience that is dynamic with all of the creativity that is also what we are.

01:22:12.440 --> 01:22:21.360
I just discovered that my wife, Irene, who is in the hospital, has been doing her job of fielding questions that have come in because she has a laptop up there.

01:22:21.360 --> 01:22:25.040
So she sent me a couple of questions which I'm going to ask you from people.

01:22:25.400 --> 01:22:28.360
This one is from Eamon Kelly in Dublin, Ireland.

01:22:28.360 --> 01:22:30.520
He said, "I would like to know what Lisa thinks

01:22:30.520 --> 01:22:34.280
about how this spiritual awareness applies to climate change."

01:22:34.280 --> 01:22:36.980
- I did ask specifically about that.

01:22:36.980 --> 01:22:41.600
And I was shown in a vision, two dead branches,

01:22:41.600 --> 01:22:44.840
and what we are, the energy of the universe,

01:22:44.840 --> 01:22:48.440
put them together and immediately turn them into a tree.

01:22:48.440 --> 01:22:51.040
What it looks like we've done to the earth

01:22:51.040 --> 01:22:53.880
is just our interpretation.

01:22:53.880 --> 01:22:58.440
But obviously there's a movement within us to be kinder to the earth.

01:22:58.440 --> 01:23:00.980
That is what we are called to do.

01:23:00.980 --> 01:23:05.940
That is what this dynamic universe is doing through us.

01:23:05.940 --> 01:23:08.900
And there's no need to be hopeless.

01:23:08.900 --> 01:23:10.940
No need to be hopeless.

01:23:10.940 --> 01:23:18.140
What we are has the possibility to flip everything in any moment that it becomes necessary.

01:23:18.140 --> 01:23:23.620
So there is the opportunity to just let the creativity and connection, the love of nature

01:23:23.620 --> 01:23:25.580
have more and more fruitful expression.

01:23:25.580 --> 01:23:31.000
We don't have to fight anything unless that's what's calling to be a warrior.

01:23:31.000 --> 01:23:31.540
Great.

01:23:31.540 --> 01:23:35.200
That there's no have to nothing that we have to fight.

01:23:35.200 --> 01:23:42.360
It, it is the right thing actually in going towards where we are supposed to go.

01:23:42.360 --> 01:23:43.280
Yeah.

01:23:43.280 --> 01:23:45.560
Different people have different roles to play.

01:23:45.560 --> 01:23:49.600
Trump is doing everything he can to stop wind and solar now and has

01:23:49.600 --> 01:23:51.760
withdrawn from the Paris climate accord.

01:23:52.320 --> 01:23:57.860
And there are people who have legal skills and various other types of authority who

01:23:57.860 --> 01:24:01.600
will hopefully counteract that because that's going to have severe consequences.

01:24:01.600 --> 01:24:03.300
But how much can I do?

01:24:03.300 --> 01:24:03.780
Or you?

01:24:03.780 --> 01:24:05.640
I am a chemical engineer.

01:24:05.640 --> 01:24:06.380
Right.

01:24:06.380 --> 01:24:11.240
I will just say that some of the things that have been done in that idea that we

01:24:11.240 --> 01:24:15.420
were helping the climate have not, they've actually made things worse.

01:24:15.420 --> 01:24:20.740
Whenever we're sticking our fingers in from that kind of a place, we're often

01:24:20.740 --> 01:24:26.500
not doing as well as we think. To trust that you even think you know so and so definitely

01:24:26.500 --> 01:24:31.820
has the solution, so and so definitely doesn't. I would even hold that lightly. Be in love

01:24:31.820 --> 01:24:41.340
with nature, do the best that you know, but any dogma about what's the best for the earth

01:24:41.340 --> 01:24:42.740
has to be held lightly.

01:24:42.740 --> 01:24:46.540
Certain solutions are mixed blessings because, for instance, making batteries for electric

01:24:46.540 --> 01:24:52.580
cars requires extracting precious metals and some African nations and other places are having

01:24:52.580 --> 01:24:59.580
their environment devastated by the mining and it's a lousy job to have mining this stuff

01:24:59.580 --> 01:25:01.600
on three dollars a day or whatever.

01:25:01.600 --> 01:25:06.860
So a lot of these things are, but maybe as we evolve, maybe we'll come up with more and

01:25:06.860 --> 01:25:09.980
more benign solutions that aren't so mixed.

01:25:09.980 --> 01:25:17.180
will find ways of creating energy sources that aren't deleterious in their manufacture to

01:25:17.180 --> 01:25:19.460
the environment that they're trying to help.

01:25:19.460 --> 01:25:24.740
Supposedly, if we had followed the models that were created in the 70s and then totally

01:25:24.740 --> 01:25:29.660
revamped in the 90s and revamped again in the early 2000s, we're living in an earth

01:25:29.660 --> 01:25:31.580
that shouldn't exist.

01:25:31.580 --> 01:25:32.580
It shouldn't look like this.

01:25:32.580 --> 01:25:35.300
It was supposed to look totally different.

01:25:35.300 --> 01:25:37.460
So I would not trust any of the models.

01:25:37.460 --> 01:25:40.020
I would trust just loving the earth.

01:25:40.020 --> 01:25:41.260
Yeah.

01:25:41.260 --> 01:25:42.060
Okay.

01:25:42.060 --> 01:25:43.760
I won't hammer on that one too much.

01:25:43.760 --> 01:25:49.440
Loving the earth, but also taking practical steps with this little

01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:54.420
harm as possible to ensure it's it's wellbeing and nature.

01:25:54.420 --> 01:25:56.300
Because that's our nature.

01:25:56.300 --> 01:25:56.780
Yeah.

01:25:56.780 --> 01:25:59.320
So we're called to, it doesn't have to be a should or a

01:25:59.320 --> 01:26:00.820
don't, it's what we are.

01:26:00.820 --> 01:26:02.140
It's doing the best we can.

01:26:02.140 --> 01:26:03.220
Yes.

01:26:03.220 --> 01:26:04.620
It's what we are.

01:26:04.620 --> 01:26:05.420
Yeah.

01:26:05.820 --> 01:26:10.380
But not drill baby drill because like there's no tomorrow in my opinion.

01:26:10.380 --> 01:26:15.600
Cause there is a tomorrow and the temperature is rising and the Thwaites

01:26:15.600 --> 01:26:20.360
glacier in Antarctica is losing its foothold on the continent and could go

01:26:20.360 --> 01:26:22.860
into the ocean and raise sea levels by 10 meters.

01:26:22.860 --> 01:26:27.160
That one's just a bunch of beliefs that there are people who have evidence

01:26:27.160 --> 01:26:29.900
to other types of interpretations.

01:26:29.900 --> 01:26:30.760
Yeah.

01:26:30.760 --> 01:26:35.000
Although there is such a as science as you're a scientist of sorts.

01:26:35.400 --> 01:26:41.800
And there is data and some of the data has very strong consensus.

01:26:41.800 --> 01:26:43.300
What's the plural of consensus?

01:26:43.300 --> 01:26:44.040
Consensi.

01:26:44.040 --> 01:26:45.200
Supporting it.

01:26:45.200 --> 01:26:52.200
And so the whole thing of everyone is entitled to their own opinion is all well

01:26:52.200 --> 01:26:55.920
and good, but we came up with the scientific method.

01:26:55.920 --> 01:26:57.240
I heard a great quote.

01:26:57.240 --> 01:26:58.000
I like this one.

01:26:58.000 --> 01:26:59.160
It's from Aldous Huxley.

01:26:59.160 --> 01:27:03.920
He said that the greatest contribution of the scientific revolution was the

01:27:03.920 --> 01:27:08.120
development of the scientific method itself and the concept of the working

01:27:08.120 --> 01:27:14.240
hypothesis because it got us away from believing things without any

01:27:14.240 --> 01:27:20.040
substantiation. If we're going to form a belief we have to be able to pony up and

01:27:20.040 --> 01:27:25.200
provide evidence supporting it and science works by virtue of consensus.

01:27:25.200 --> 01:27:31.440
That is a dogma that I see there are elements that are true and there's

01:27:31.440 --> 01:27:36.720
elements even in that that I couldn't say resonate with what we are.

01:27:36.720 --> 01:27:37.720
Like what?

01:27:37.720 --> 01:27:45.200
There was a time, the Taoists for example, they were able to map on the face different

01:27:45.200 --> 01:27:48.520
spots that correlated with areas in the body.

01:27:48.520 --> 01:27:53.120
Now modern medicine is discovering the same thing.

01:27:53.120 --> 01:27:58.400
They can do thermographic analysis of the face and lo and behold it's there.

01:27:58.400 --> 01:28:00.680
Now how did the Taoists find that?

01:28:00.680 --> 01:28:02.960
It was not by the scientific method.

01:28:02.960 --> 01:28:09.080
They found it because they were listening very intently, internally to their system

01:28:09.080 --> 01:28:14.240
and discovering the innate wisdom of their system and they discovered it.

01:28:14.240 --> 01:28:20.440
Now when you stop that kind of listening and you go to the scientific method is really

01:28:20.440 --> 01:28:28.100
good at finding generalities and it's terrible at finding the specifics of individual uniqueness.

01:28:28.100 --> 01:28:31.180
So then you have to, okay, let's use the scientific method differently.

01:28:31.180 --> 01:28:34.780
We're going to narrow down our populations and we're going to try to include more and

01:28:34.780 --> 01:28:38.820
more causes because if we just focus on 10, that's enough.

01:28:38.820 --> 01:28:41.660
It turns out we have to focus on 200.

01:28:41.660 --> 01:28:47.300
So the scientific method might eventually get us there, but the listening got us there

01:28:47.300 --> 01:28:48.300
already.

01:28:48.300 --> 01:28:52.500
I'm not against the scientific method, but I'm just saying it has some limitations.

01:28:52.500 --> 01:28:55.340
We're trying to hone it and get it to be better.

01:28:55.340 --> 01:29:01.500
But this inner listening got us there pretty fast, so I'm not going to discard that either.

01:29:01.500 --> 01:29:06.580
And some people really do have a way of listening to their body and their body will tell them,

01:29:06.580 --> 01:29:11.620
I need this substance, I don't need this substance, and later the scientific method will eventually

01:29:11.620 --> 01:29:12.620
prove it.

01:29:12.620 --> 01:29:18.300
But I'm not going to tell them no, because if they have learned to listen to their body,

01:29:18.300 --> 01:29:20.780
they got there faster than the scientific method.

01:29:20.780 --> 01:29:25.300
I can't tell them the scientific method says you need this substance in your body because

01:29:25.300 --> 01:29:30.660
maybe they don't and maybe the scientific method will validate that far into the future.

01:29:30.660 --> 01:29:32.900
Well I agree with everything you just said.

01:29:32.900 --> 01:29:36.940
As I said my wife is in the hospital right now and I was there the other day and this

01:29:36.940 --> 01:29:41.940
pharmacist Nazi came in and said I want to know everything you brought with you here.

01:29:41.940 --> 01:29:46.500
And so I said we have some vitamin C, we have some vitamin D, these few things.

01:29:46.500 --> 01:29:47.700
And she was just taking notes.

01:29:47.700 --> 01:29:48.640
I thought, oh, that's nice.

01:29:48.640 --> 01:29:50.880
She wants to know what Irene is taking.

01:29:50.880 --> 01:29:53.660
And she said, we're going to have to either lock all those up or you're

01:29:53.660 --> 01:29:56.860
going to have to take them home with you because we can't let you take

01:29:56.860 --> 01:29:59.000
anything that you have brought yourself.

01:29:59.000 --> 01:30:01.500
So after she left the room, we just hid the stuff.

01:30:01.500 --> 01:30:06.060
Obviously science gave us the atomic bomb.

01:30:06.060 --> 01:30:10.300
Science has given us all kinds of things that have destroyed the environment

01:30:10.300 --> 01:30:15.860
and petroleum refinement and many other things, but science was a necessary

01:30:15.860 --> 01:30:19.420
corrective to the Middle Ages in which you could be burned at the stake for

01:30:19.420 --> 01:30:23.660
suggesting that the stars might be other suns like our own and might even have

01:30:23.660 --> 01:30:27.340
planets around them. Someone was burned at the stake for suggesting that and all

01:30:27.340 --> 01:30:31.980
kinds of nutty ideas were propagated and enforced and so the whole idea of the

01:30:31.980 --> 01:30:38.100
working hypothesis where you really have to show a consensus of evidence for your

01:30:38.100 --> 01:30:44.740
hypotheses has been a pretty good system but as you say the whole thing of

01:30:44.740 --> 01:30:52.540
objective means of gaining knowledge has predominated because we have, for the most part, lost the

01:30:52.540 --> 01:31:00.140
subjective means of gaining knowledge, intuitive, inner vision kind of knowledge. And that's,

01:31:00.140 --> 01:31:05.380
I think, why science has been such a mixed blessing and has done so much harm. And the

01:31:05.380 --> 01:31:09.900
technologies that science has spawned, I think what we don't want to throw that out, but

01:31:09.900 --> 01:31:15.580
We need to counterbalance it with a commensurate degree of inner development.

01:31:15.580 --> 01:31:20.620
And so then the powerful tools of science will no longer be like guns in the hands of children.

01:31:20.620 --> 01:31:26.540
They'll be able to be used wisely in conjunction with inner wisdom.

01:31:26.540 --> 01:31:29.460
Yeah, and this was a lot of mind stuff.

01:31:29.460 --> 01:31:34.220
And I just want to bring it back to present moment.

01:31:34.220 --> 01:31:39.260
There's an inner wisdom and I trust each person for their path.

01:31:39.260 --> 01:31:45.260
I don't want any outside authority, but as they are, they're doing exactly what they're

01:31:45.260 --> 01:31:47.060
supposed to do.

01:31:47.060 --> 01:31:53.900
And the idea that there's an outside authority who has figured it out, I feel like this is

01:31:53.900 --> 01:31:58.900
moving towards the end of that, but even if I'm wrong, I could be totally wrong, what

01:31:58.900 --> 01:32:01.180
we are is unharmable.

01:32:01.180 --> 01:32:05.700
And what we are is going to thrive through each of these stages.

01:32:05.700 --> 01:32:12.460
So there's not a need to figure it out. There's just going to be discovery and discovery.

01:32:12.460 --> 01:32:16.780
Yeah. Sure, what we are is unharmable. As the Gita puts it, "Know that to be indeed

01:32:16.780 --> 01:32:21.660
indestructible by which all this is pervaded. None can work the destruction of this immutable

01:32:21.660 --> 01:32:29.340
being." And that's fine for being. But individual beings have varying degrees of wisdom. And

01:32:29.340 --> 01:32:36.980
as Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching and other such traditional teachings say, the degree to which

01:32:36.980 --> 01:32:45.940
you need laws and societal controls like that is proportional to the degree to which people

01:32:45.940 --> 01:32:51.340
are in tune with the Tao or not. A society in which being in tune with the Tao or the

01:32:51.340 --> 01:32:57.060
norm wouldn't hardly need any laws or much government. Everything would just be hunky

01:32:57.060 --> 01:33:03.420
Dory spontaneously, but a society which is very much out of tune with that needs some laws

01:33:03.420 --> 01:33:07.700
because otherwise you have people who are way out of tune with the Tao doing whatever

01:33:07.700 --> 01:33:11.980
they please and creating problems for everyone.

01:33:11.980 --> 01:33:19.220
And then my book, A Non-Principled Life, every principle can be held lightly, even that one.

01:33:19.220 --> 01:33:23.740
Maybe it's going to be the opposite, that you don't wait for the entombment to show

01:33:23.740 --> 01:33:28.780
up and then release the laws, could end up that we release the laws and then that creates

01:33:28.780 --> 01:33:30.100
the tomb into flourish.

01:33:30.100 --> 01:33:35.500
I don't even know, I can't hold any particular concept as a definite.

01:33:35.500 --> 01:33:39.740
So we can get rid of all the speed limits and the stop lights and all that stuff and

01:33:39.740 --> 01:33:43.220
let people just work it out and drive however they want.

01:33:43.220 --> 01:33:46.540
It might happen that way, I really don't know how it's going to happen.

01:33:46.540 --> 01:33:52.260
I'm just saying that I'm not attached to it happening in one order or the other order.

01:33:52.260 --> 01:33:58.380
It feels like the life moving in us is orchestrating this dance that we're going through and it's

01:33:58.380 --> 01:34:02.700
the pendulum swinging and the letting go and the tightening in and letting go and tightening

01:34:02.700 --> 01:34:03.700
in.

01:34:03.700 --> 01:34:06.900
It feels like this dance is perfect, really.

01:34:06.900 --> 01:34:09.260
I'm not taking sides in that.

01:34:09.260 --> 01:34:11.220
Okay, next question.

01:34:11.220 --> 01:34:14.660
This is from Jamie Mac, somewhere in the US.

01:34:14.660 --> 01:34:21.020
I'm curious what your thoughts are about the role or selection of content in your life.

01:34:21.020 --> 01:34:26.380
put the word content in quotes. For example, are you able to watch our current political

01:34:26.380 --> 01:34:32.540
situation unfold without angst? And what are your thoughts about the impact TV, movies,

01:34:32.540 --> 01:34:38.460
news have on our lives? We might also throw social media in there.

01:34:38.460 --> 01:34:44.220
Yes, that's a great question. I am totally at peace with everything happening politically,

01:34:44.220 --> 01:34:50.700
everything. It just feels like what we are is not being harmed. Like I said, I know

01:34:50.700 --> 01:34:55.980
everything negative that's happened to me has brought forth an opportunity to

01:34:55.980 --> 01:35:00.340
discover, "Oh my gosh, I'm stronger than I knew. I'm more self-sufficient than I

01:35:00.340 --> 01:35:04.700
knew. I have more support than I knew. I'm more courageous than I knew." It doesn't

01:35:04.700 --> 01:35:10.220
matter what it was. I don't have any angst for anybody going through anything.

01:35:10.220 --> 01:35:15.220
That doesn't mean that I don't participate in the things that I think are helping.

01:35:15.220 --> 01:35:20.620
I have a lot of participation, but I don't have any angst about it.

01:35:20.620 --> 01:35:22.700
I don't have any resistance about it.

01:35:22.700 --> 01:35:24.860
It does feel like it's a dance.

01:35:24.860 --> 01:35:31.540
It's perfectly choreographed because I have explored every single one of those in myself

01:35:31.540 --> 01:35:35.140
and I'm not afraid of anything I see in myself.

01:35:35.140 --> 01:35:41.560
time that I become more selfish or any time that I become more manipulative, somehow the

01:35:41.560 --> 01:35:47.840
universe works even that out. Now, what amount of time do I give to that? That's something

01:35:47.840 --> 01:35:55.520
totally different. I try to get just a little bit of information so I can know approximately

01:35:55.520 --> 01:36:00.400
what's happening. No information comes that says what is happening. It always comes through

01:36:00.400 --> 01:36:05.840
an interpretation and a filter of story and a filter of what would be better. I don't

01:36:05.840 --> 01:36:11.920
spend a lot of time following updates and getting, because I don't know, to me it's

01:36:11.920 --> 01:36:19.800
the deepest moves, the ultimate trajectory, the day by day is okay. I don't see how that's

01:36:19.800 --> 01:36:25.480
furthering anything for me. I'm very busy and connected creatively every day with the

01:36:25.480 --> 01:36:31.800
people I'm with. So that to me just feels like where my energy is drawn. Other people could

01:36:31.800 --> 01:36:37.760
be totally different. Interestingly, a friend of mine who was testing the pH of her urine,

01:36:37.760 --> 01:36:44.760
who knows that everybody would validate that, but she was finding that the healthy things,

01:36:44.760 --> 01:36:49.600
eating more fruits and vegetables and blah blah blah, caused improvements. But what actually

01:36:49.600 --> 01:36:55.920
caused much greater improvement was not watching the scary movies that you pick to watch.

01:36:55.920 --> 01:36:57.920
Yeah, I agree with that.

01:36:57.920 --> 01:37:02.280
I really have let go of being concerned and stressed.

01:37:02.280 --> 01:37:07.400
So we have a leak in our house right now and a couple months ago my husband did something

01:37:07.400 --> 01:37:13.240
that resulted in this leak of this gummy fluid in our camper that can never be fully dried.

01:37:13.240 --> 01:37:18.000
And until there's a motivation to do anything about either one of those, I've decided I can

01:37:18.000 --> 01:37:23.840
live with leaks. I'm not going to stress. I can live with somebody not showing up at the

01:37:23.840 --> 01:37:28.560
time we said they were going to show up because I don't need the stress. I know there's an

01:37:28.560 --> 01:37:35.560
ultimate benevolence. So I don't find that news furthers that for me.

01:37:35.560 --> 01:37:40.760
You discussed urine and leaks in consecutive paragraphs. The thing about not watching scary

01:37:40.760 --> 01:37:44.880
movies, there is some biblical quote on this, but I forget what it is, but it's not only

01:37:44.880 --> 01:37:50.420
what we eat in terms of food but what we take into all of our senses that has a whole effect

01:37:50.420 --> 01:37:55.640
on our mind-body system. And you could eat the purest diet and probably you wouldn't

01:37:55.640 --> 01:38:00.640
find too many people who ate really pure diets but loved watching slasher movies all the time.

01:38:00.640 --> 01:38:05.440
Nonetheless, in principle, we can be very pure in one channel but if we're loading ourselves

01:38:05.440 --> 01:38:09.120
up with impurities in other channels it's going to counteract what we're doing with

01:38:09.120 --> 01:38:10.840
our pure diet or whatever.

01:38:10.840 --> 01:38:17.400
Yeah. Oh, one more thing about politics. I have good friends on both sides of the spectrum.

01:38:17.400 --> 01:38:24.120
All ends of the spectrum, actually. And I like to get emails from them and see what they're

01:38:24.120 --> 01:38:29.320
concerned about and what they see as positives from what they would like to see improved in

01:38:29.320 --> 01:38:36.520
the world. And I actually do see positives coming on every front. Really, I'm not upset

01:38:36.520 --> 01:38:41.160
by whoever takes position because I can see, "Oh, okay, sounds like this group might bring

01:38:41.160 --> 01:38:44.680
in this and I would like that. Oh, sounds like this group might bring in that, I would like

01:38:44.680 --> 01:38:47.240
that. Really, I'm without care."

01:38:47.240 --> 01:38:52.360
I like Bill Maher and Sam Harris and people like that who do something very similar. They

01:38:52.360 --> 01:38:57.480
just speak their mind and if it happens to be a right-wing thing, they'll say it. And

01:38:57.480 --> 01:39:01.760
even if they get a lot of flack and lose some viewers, if it's a left-wing thing, they'll

01:39:01.760 --> 01:39:05.300
say it and they just because nothing is perfect.

01:39:05.300 --> 01:39:09.600
Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.

01:39:09.600 --> 01:39:10.600
That's right.

01:39:10.600 --> 01:39:11.600
Yeah.

01:39:11.600 --> 01:39:12.600
Yeah.

01:39:12.600 --> 01:39:14.000
Do you vote?

01:39:14.000 --> 01:39:20.000
I vote if I think that it's going to be a positive difference making the vote.

01:39:20.000 --> 01:39:24.400
For the US, I would like to see a third party eventually.

01:39:24.400 --> 01:39:26.580
That seems like it might be helpful.

01:39:26.580 --> 01:39:31.780
So if I can do things that help that happen, that tends to be where I move.

01:39:31.780 --> 01:39:34.260
But you know, it can change.

01:39:34.260 --> 01:39:35.260
Yeah.

01:39:35.260 --> 01:39:38.980
Jill Stein gave us George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

01:39:38.980 --> 01:39:42.820
We won't go into this, but there are political systems in places like Australia, I forget

01:39:42.820 --> 01:39:47.380
what they call it, but they have some whole system that is much more sensible than just

01:39:47.380 --> 01:39:50.140
the either or choice that we have here.

01:39:50.140 --> 01:39:51.940
But again.

01:39:51.940 --> 01:39:54.140
Ranked choice voting or something it's called.

01:39:54.140 --> 01:39:56.140
Yeah, I've heard of other methods.

01:39:56.140 --> 01:40:01.140
But really, to me, politics feels like a very thin veneer.

01:40:01.140 --> 01:40:02.140
Yeah.

01:40:02.140 --> 01:40:06.140
It really feels like the biggest movement is what's not covered by the media.

01:40:06.140 --> 01:40:08.140
Oh, you're right. Of course.

01:40:08.140 --> 01:40:11.140
Yes. This movement of consciousness has so much momentum.

01:40:11.140 --> 01:40:15.140
It is a tidal wave that is irresistible.

01:40:15.140 --> 01:40:19.140
And all the other stuff is just splashes coming off of this wave.

01:40:19.140 --> 01:40:22.140
Yeah. Poly means many and ticks are blood-sucking insects.

01:40:22.140 --> 01:40:27.300
insects. And as Mark Twain put it, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for

01:40:27.300 --> 01:40:32.100
the same reason.

01:40:32.100 --> 01:40:37.060
And I love the politicians. They're not doing the role I would like, but they're holding

01:40:37.060 --> 01:40:42.900
a position where they get so much hate sent towards them, both sides. What a courageous

01:40:42.900 --> 01:40:43.900
position.

01:40:43.900 --> 01:40:45.540
It's a tough job, yeah.

01:40:45.540 --> 01:40:50.940
Yeah, I just try to be a loving force towards them. They've got waves of hate they're constantly

01:40:50.940 --> 01:40:51.940
dealing with.

01:40:51.940 --> 01:40:54.780
Yeah, you gotta have a bit of a thick skin.

01:40:54.780 --> 01:40:57.180
Is there anything you feel like you would like to say

01:40:57.180 --> 01:41:00.300
that we haven't said, or anything you wanna say in closing?

01:41:00.300 --> 01:41:05.460
The thing I just want to constantly marinate in

01:41:05.460 --> 01:41:10.420
is this that we are is unharmable and is benevolent.

01:41:10.420 --> 01:41:14.660
There's just only exuberance and delight

01:41:14.660 --> 01:41:16.400
to experience each thing.

01:41:16.400 --> 01:41:19.780
And if we're not experiencing that, that's fine.

01:41:19.780 --> 01:41:21.460
And that's our gift back.

01:41:21.460 --> 01:41:24.940
Our gift back is this is what sorrow tastes like.

01:41:24.940 --> 01:41:31.180
And when we're tired of giving that gift back, there's an avenue that we can tap back into

01:41:31.180 --> 01:41:33.060
the joy and the delight.

01:41:33.060 --> 01:41:37.580
So it doesn't matter which one we're doing, but if we want to give back the joy and the

01:41:37.580 --> 01:41:40.020
delight, it's available.

01:41:40.020 --> 01:41:43.660
And that's the processes I discuss in both my books.

01:41:43.660 --> 01:41:49.660
Just really letting go of the ideas we think about what we should be or what the world

01:41:49.660 --> 01:41:53.580
to be and noticing what we are.

01:41:53.580 --> 01:41:58.780
The richness that we are is so much bigger than what we're usually noticing.

01:41:58.780 --> 01:41:59.780
Great.

01:41:59.780 --> 01:42:01.780
Okay, I'll leave it at that.

01:42:01.780 --> 01:42:05.740
That's very profound and beautiful and I appreciate it.

01:42:05.740 --> 01:42:07.300
It's been nice spending time with you.

01:42:07.300 --> 01:42:08.820
Yeah, you too, Rick.

01:42:08.820 --> 01:42:09.820
Thank you so much.

01:42:09.820 --> 01:42:15.420
You've just been quite generous with your attention and your interest and your wisdom.

01:42:15.420 --> 01:42:16.420
Thank you.

01:42:16.420 --> 01:42:20.420
Yeah, and I hope people don't feel like I was giving you a hard time.

01:42:20.420 --> 01:42:23.220
Like I said to you before we even started recording,

01:42:23.220 --> 01:42:25.420
I like to make these like a conversation.

01:42:25.420 --> 01:42:27.920
And if you're having a conversation with somebody in your living room,

01:42:27.920 --> 01:42:30.720
you might say, "I don't agree with that," or "What do you think about this?"

01:42:30.720 --> 01:42:35.020
And you might get a little bit animated without being disrespectful

01:42:35.020 --> 01:42:37.120
or disapproving of your friend.

01:42:37.120 --> 01:42:43.220
Exactly. I feel completely honored and I love the opportunity to be able to challenge

01:42:43.220 --> 01:42:52.500
every single sacred cow. I think the more that we don't hold ideas and we just tune into

01:42:52.500 --> 01:42:58.900
what we are, the more we discover, at least for me, the more I discover that there's an

01:42:58.900 --> 01:43:02.180
unharmability and the blight and benevolence.

01:43:02.180 --> 01:43:08.580
Yeah. Challenge good. Yeah, I agree with challenging. Everything should be susceptible to challenge,

01:43:08.580 --> 01:43:12.420
But that doesn't mean that everything is equally valid or invalid.

01:43:12.420 --> 01:43:16.900
Things stand on their own merit or fall for lack of it.

01:43:16.900 --> 01:43:21.140
And you just have to be discerning and discriminating about many things,

01:43:21.140 --> 01:43:26.900
including spiritual teachers for that matter, who are not all equally meritorious or ethical.

01:43:26.900 --> 01:43:29.220
But I can only make that choice for myself.

01:43:29.220 --> 01:43:29.780
Exactly.

01:43:29.780 --> 01:43:36.260
Okay, so good. Thank you very much. And thanks for those who've been listening or watching.

01:43:36.820 --> 01:43:39.180
And we'll see you for the next one.

01:43:39.180 --> 01:43:40.540
Yeah, big hug.

01:43:40.540 --> 01:43:41.820
Big hugs to everybody.

01:43:41.820 --> 01:44:06.260
Thank you.

01:44:06.260 --> 01:44:09.300
[MUSIC PLAYING]