Speaker 1: In the past itself. It's not good or bad, it's both.
Speaker 1: It's a foundation from which we can do great things,
Speaker 1: and it can be a limit which pulls us back.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tim Freak,
Speaker 1: a pioneering philosopher who's best selling books, inspirational talks, and
Speaker 1: life changing retreats have touched the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Tim is the author
Speaker 1: of thirty five books translated into more than fifteen languages,
Speaker 1: including The Jesus Mysteries, which was a top six Amazon
Speaker 1: bestseller and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. His newest
Speaker 1: book is Soul Story Evolution and the Purpose of Life. Hi, friends,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of other ways to feed your good
Speaker 1: wolf in addition to just listening to this show. One
Speaker 1: is that you can support us on Patreon and that
Speaker 1: will allow you to get additional bonus content as well
Speaker 1: as a mini episode for me each month. You can
Speaker 1: do that by going to one you Feed dot net
Speaker 1: Slash Support. And the other thing that you can do
Speaker 1: is join our Facebook group where we have discussions about
Speaker 1: the episodes and other ways that people feed their good
Speaker 1: wolf and deal with challenges in life. And that is
Speaker 1: it one you Feed dot net Slash Facebook. And here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Tim Freak. Hi, Tim, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: So de line to be on the show. Thanks for
Speaker 1: dividing me. It's a pleasure to have you on. Your
Speaker 1: latest book is called Soul Story Evolution and the Purpose
Speaker 1: of Life. And we will get into all that here shortly,
Speaker 1: but let's start like we normally do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: others a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks
Speaker 1: of at it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. It's such a great little story,
Speaker 1: isn't it, And so simple like all the great stories.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about it before I came on
Speaker 1: the show that it's kind of resonant also for me
Speaker 1: because one of the meanings of my rather unusual surname
Speaker 1: Freak spelled f r e k E is it's one
Speaker 1: of the names of Odin's wolf, So I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a wolf clan person myself. What strikes me is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely experienced those two wolves. And I'm
Speaker 1: guessing why the story works so well, is so does everybody.
Speaker 1: The thing that I find myself asking is what are they?
Speaker 1: What are those two voices? And if I can understand
Speaker 1: what those two voices are, that probably is the secret
Speaker 1: to how to live with them and how to choose
Speaker 1: wisely who I feel. And so I think that one
Speaker 1: of the things in that I'm working with that's in
Speaker 1: my book sold story you just mentioned is the powerful
Speaker 1: idea of evolution, And I think an understanding of evolution
Speaker 1: can really help us understand us to two parts of us.
Speaker 1: The traditional view is that there's a bad side and
Speaker 1: a good side. You know, we have a God and
Speaker 1: a devil that war inside of us. Or in spirituality,
Speaker 1: you get a lot the idea that we've got a
Speaker 1: real self, and then there is other ego self, which
Speaker 1: is the enemy. And I'm not any longer convinced by
Speaker 1: any of that. It feels to me that what we've
Speaker 1: really got is an evolutionary process in which we're always
Speaker 1: coming from somewhere less conscious. We're coming from the lesser
Speaker 1: into the greater, into the more emergence. So what we
Speaker 1: have within us are things from the past, both our
Speaker 1: own individual past, from our collective societal past, and from
Speaker 1: our animal past, our biological past. And those voices can
Speaker 1: be pulling us backwards, and then we have this evolutionary
Speaker 1: current pushing us forward to realize possibilities, and that I
Speaker 1: think is the voice which encourages us to grow into
Speaker 1: love and courage and see new possibilities. And what we
Speaker 1: have is an inherent tension which arises from the very
Speaker 1: evolutionary process that or everything is in because it's in
Speaker 1: the nature of life. Yeah, I like that approach to
Speaker 1: We talked recently with Robert Wright, who wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Buddhism Is True. He's an evolutionary psychologist, very similar
Speaker 1: perspective in that you know, our evolutionary wiring, at least
Speaker 1: in the biological sense, is pulling us towards these fight
Speaker 1: versus flight, very basic survival tendencies. What I find fascinating
Speaker 1: is you're taking the idea of evolution and you're you're
Speaker 1: going from a let's think of ourselves in the physical
Speaker 1: evolution perspective, which is what most of us know, but
Speaker 1: you also believe that there's a deeper level of evolution
Speaker 1: happening within us. And what what is that? Well for
Speaker 1: modern science which has created this great story for for us.
Speaker 1: It started with the idea of Darwin's and Wallace's idea
Speaker 1: year of biological evolution, which an incredible idea. All life
Speaker 1: has come from one source, All this huge variety comes
Speaker 1: from one simple cell. One an idea. And then a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago physicists said, no, it's more than that.
Speaker 1: The whole universe has evolved from the moment zero the
Speaker 1: big band. So now we have this incredible story about
Speaker 1: the evolution of the whole universe. Ten billion years of
Speaker 1: physical evolution, three billion years of biological evolution. What I
Speaker 1: want to do is suggest that having looked back and
Speaker 1: gone there's a period before biology of evolution, we need
Speaker 1: to realize that there's a period after biology, and that's
Speaker 1: the evolution of the psyche. And no one could dispute
Speaker 1: that because the psyche is the latest thing to arrive.
Speaker 1: This experiencing, the experience you and I are having right
Speaker 1: now of disembodied thought, images, imagination, that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: new thing which has emerged in this evolutionary process. Now,
Speaker 1: for mainstream science, that's just a funny byproduct of the body.
Speaker 1: But for spirituality, which has studied the nature of the
Speaker 1: psyche or the soul in great depth, it's a whole
Speaker 1: realm of existence. It's a realm of the soul. It's
Speaker 1: where you can you can visit it now, is Shaman's
Speaker 1: journey in it. Psychedelic schill take you into it, meditation
Speaker 1: will take you into It's a whole, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a realm of reality. Now that the the traditional spiritual
Speaker 1: idea is that that's always existed and we've fallen from it,
Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of problems with that idea. It's
Speaker 1: a very negative idea really, So what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do is go what happened if we see that as
Speaker 1: having evolved, so that we've had a period of physical
Speaker 1: evolution and biological evolution and then this evolution of the
Speaker 1: psyche or soul, but not just as a funny by product,
Speaker 1: but as a as a whole level of reality which
Speaker 1: has emerged in this last phase. And in that way
Speaker 1: there's the potential to night some deep spiritual insights that
Speaker 1: have been around for ever with modern science, because it's
Speaker 1: all one evolutionary journey, right, And you refer to this
Speaker 1: as emergent spirituality and taking it all away to the end,
Speaker 1: and you and I were joking before we started, there's
Speaker 1: no way. We're going to cover everything in this book
Speaker 1: in our thirty or forty minute conversation, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: be picking pieces here and there. But if we take
Speaker 1: it all away to the end, you've flipped that idea
Speaker 1: that God created the universe and everything has sort of
Speaker 1: come out of that, and and you flipped that all
Speaker 1: the way to we have evolved to the point that
Speaker 1: we have created God. Yes, or the whole universe is
Speaker 1: creating God through us. So again the traditional idea and
Speaker 1: spirituality is one of the four. So God is there
Speaker 1: at the beginning of time, it's all perfect, and then
Speaker 1: God dreams a dream and he gets lost into it,
Speaker 1: or there's a full and there's something that's gone wrong
Speaker 1: and we need to get back to the way it was.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of problems with that. Firstly, it's an
Speaker 1: they're very negative story about life. It costs life in
Speaker 1: a very negative way that I don't feel myself. I
Speaker 1: feel very positive about life. Also, this God is troublesome,
Speaker 1: which is why so many people have abandoned him a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, And and the basic problems are twofold.
Speaker 1: There's the traditional problem of evil, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's this great God, this being of love, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of time, why is there so much suffering?
Speaker 1: Why is it so terrible? It's very hard to get
Speaker 1: over that. And then there's a new problem which has
Speaker 1: come more recently, which is what I call the problem
Speaker 1: of absurdity, which is, you know, we now know there
Speaker 1: was a hundred and twenty five million years of dinosaurs. Well,
Speaker 1: what kind of sane god does that? What kind of
Speaker 1: sane God is? This guy is crazy and mean. So
Speaker 1: if you put God at the beginning, he's not this
Speaker 1: being of love which people relate to him and which
Speaker 1: I've experienced since I as a kid. So the insight
Speaker 1: which I want to share is maybe God isn't at
Speaker 1: the beginning. Maybe God is where we're go going towards.
Speaker 1: And the reason I say that is because what you
Speaker 1: can see with the evolutionary journey is that the deepest
Speaker 1: things in life arrived last. You know, it didn't start
Speaker 1: with soul, it didn't start with meaning, it didn't start
Speaker 1: with love, It started with hydrogen, and then over a
Speaker 1: thirteen eight billion years it turned into us having this conversation.
Speaker 1: So the deepest aspects of life don't come at the beginning,
Speaker 1: they come at the end. And the deepest aspect of all,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, is the arising of a conscious
Speaker 1: oneness which we experienced as a being of love, which
Speaker 1: is a communion of souls, if you like, where we
Speaker 1: can come together, and something greater than us is arising,
Speaker 1: And you could call that God. It's an old fashioned word.
Speaker 1: You may want to avoid it, but you could give
Speaker 1: that word to the experience which so many of us have,
Speaker 1: that there is something greater than us which we can
Speaker 1: relate to. Yeah, there were a couple of things in
Speaker 1: the book that spoke to me very strongly, at least
Speaker 1: as far as my own personal philosophy, such as it
Speaker 1: is right. And one of those is that we as
Speaker 1: people seem to be evolving towards better things. And this
Speaker 1: is a controversial point because people can very easily point
Speaker 1: to all of the awful things that are out in
Speaker 1: the world and that are happening. But you mentioned and
Speaker 1: there's some other people who have this perspective, Stephen Pinker
Speaker 1: being a very prominent one, And you say this, and
Speaker 1: this puts into words better than I have before. We
Speaker 1: should feel encouraged by the fact that so many of
Speaker 1: us now feel appalled by acts of brutality that have
Speaker 1: been commonplace throughout history. And that's what strikes me as Yes,
Speaker 1: awful and brutal things still happen, but more and more
Speaker 1: of us thinking of him as awful and brutal versus
Speaker 1: the absolute norm, and that just sort of shows me
Speaker 1: that on some level, even if it's just cultural, we
Speaker 1: are growing towards a place of greater kindness and inclusion
Speaker 1: than we have been in the past. And that's halting because,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned in and the book talks a lot about,
Speaker 1: we have this whole history behind us that we occasionally
Speaker 1: are sort of battling both the poll towards what has
Speaker 1: been as well as the push forward. And then the
Speaker 1: second piece that you talk about, and I'll let you
Speaker 1: kind of talk about both these, is that you mentioned
Speaker 1: that creativity is sort of the heart or the main
Speaker 1: spirit of the universe. And that's been one of those
Speaker 1: things that has always seemed to me to be so
Speaker 1: true that life just wants to do more, and I've
Speaker 1: always wrestled with I've studied Buddhism for a long long time,
Speaker 1: and this show to a certain extent, has been a
Speaker 1: way to work with the tension between I recognize this
Speaker 1: innate desire for more out of the world and out
Speaker 1: of nature, and yet the Buddhist philosophy in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways is saying, well, you should want less, and
Speaker 1: there's been a tension there that I've wrestled with. And
Speaker 1: so when you when you talk about that, and when
Speaker 1: I've heard people talk about you know, spirituality and it's
Speaker 1: fundamental nature being a creative process that's always resonated very strongly.
Speaker 1: I'm so pleased you picked up on those things are
Speaker 1: because they're really important to me. And to address the
Speaker 1: last one first, I think what you're describing is the problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've written books on probably all the spiritual
Speaker 1: traditions of the world and have great respect for Buddhism
Speaker 1: and all of them. But you know, it was created
Speaker 1: by people who lived at a time when they thought
Speaker 1: the world was flat. Things have moved on a great
Speaker 1: deal since these traditions were created, so they're all in
Speaker 1: living in the past. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: characterizes them all just about is this negativity, the fall,
Speaker 1: and Buddhism doesn't want us to be in this world.
Speaker 1: It wants us to leave this behind. It wants us
Speaker 1: to withdraw and avoid suffering, which is a complete opposite
Speaker 1: of this evolutionary spirit which goes, no, actually, what we're
Speaker 1: in here. It's thirteen eight billion years which has led
Speaker 1: us from hydrogen to opera to us having this conversation,
Speaker 1: to internet, to all of the things we have, and
Speaker 1: if you if you take it to come up close,
Speaker 1: there's always problems, and God knows we face huge ones
Speaker 1: in the world right now. But if you take the
Speaker 1: broader look, things have got better and better. There's no
Speaker 1: doubt about that. There is much more kindness in the
Speaker 1: world now. We have laws against racism in many countries
Speaker 1: which would have been formed before racism was seen as
Speaker 1: a virtue. You know, the things you did was you
Speaker 1: pirated your neighbor's. Human beings lived like that for most
Speaker 1: of history. So there's no doubt in my mind that
Speaker 1: not in a straight line, but generally we move forward
Speaker 1: and our idea of evil develops. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the little insights I dropped into the book which fascinates
Speaker 1: me is is to think, you know, Adolf Hitler, who
Speaker 1: is the epitome of evil for us, for many of us,
Speaker 1: because of the awful things he did. If he lived
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago would probably be called Adolf the Great,
Speaker 1: like Alexander the Great or Jenger's Khan or these people
Speaker 1: that did awful things then, because what makes him so
Speaker 1: bad now is that we've moved on so far. We
Speaker 1: don't do that anymore. We don't from all conquering, bloody
Speaker 1: warriors who go out and impose themselves. We're looking for
Speaker 1: something new. Now we'll be evolved. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the things that really moved me with the war in
Speaker 1: Iraq was seeing millions of people come up out around
Speaker 1: the world saying, let's not do this now. He didn't
Speaker 1: stop it, but that's never happened in history before that
Speaker 1: people cared about other countries to that degree. So I
Speaker 1: see a huge evolutionary push and again the greater things
Speaker 1: arrived last. So people often say to me, why is
Speaker 1: there so little love in the world and justice and
Speaker 1: equality and all those great virtues. And my feeling is
Speaker 1: because they're only just arriving. They're they're new, and it's
Speaker 1: up to you and me to bring them in. They're
Speaker 1: the new thing. And our lives are not just realizing
Speaker 1: our individual potential, but it's collective potential. So that our
Speaker 1: job is to bring more love into the world. And
Speaker 1: the more we're conscious we become, the more we awaken,
Speaker 1: the more we can do those things. I agree completely,
Speaker 1: and I think it is not only a more hope
Speaker 1: full way to look at the world, it strikes me
Speaker 1: as a more factual and real way to look at
Speaker 1: the world. We just seem to be becoming better, kinder people,
Speaker 1: although it is worth saying perhaps in relationship to that,
Speaker 1: and of course, one of the things that happens is
Speaker 1: the more you care, the more you see the suffering. Yep.
Speaker 1: So as you awaken and your heart becomes tender, then
Speaker 1: suffering that you may have been able to ignore, suddenly
Speaker 1: you can't. And and and so the the inputus, the
Speaker 1: evolutionary impetus, you feel it stronger, I agree, and I
Speaker 1: think you know, certainly, it's not to minimize the considerable
Speaker 1: suffering that still occurs mass in the world, and for
Speaker 1: humans and for animals. I mean, that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: another category of of horrific nous. But again, the fact
Speaker 1: that more of us are choosing to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I actually care that that chicken suffers is you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat unprecedented across species compassion. Wow, that's a whole new level.
Speaker 1: That's one of full And here's the rest of the
Speaker 1: interview with Tim Freak. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about a concept that runs throughout the book, and it's
Speaker 1: the concept of the time stream, which then goes into
Speaker 1: sort of a life stream and a soul stream. But
Speaker 1: let's let's start with what the time stream is and
Speaker 1: see how far we get. Okay, well, this is this
Speaker 1: is really helpful because it will lead us into some
Speaker 1: stuff around the wolves, which is where we started. Because
Speaker 1: it seems to me that time often gets dismissed as
Speaker 1: an illusion. But actually, when I study the nature of
Speaker 1: reality that's in front of me right now, what I
Speaker 1: see is time. I see a stream of experiences unfolding
Speaker 1: in time. So for me, time is fundamental to the
Speaker 1: nature of reality. And the universe really is not a thing.
Speaker 1: It's a process and processes are made of time. And
Speaker 1: what I do in the book, and I'll this is
Speaker 1: a big thought which I'll say quickly and people can
Speaker 1: perhaps contemplate it later, is I suggest we need a
Speaker 1: new metaphor for how we understand time, because we think
Speaker 1: of time as passing, like the past is just gone,
Speaker 1: whereas actually, I think that's not quite right. I think
Speaker 1: actually the past accumulates, and that there's more of the
Speaker 1: past now than there was when we started the show,
Speaker 1: and there's more passon now than there was when human
Speaker 1: beings first evolved or the Big Bang happened, and that
Speaker 1: everything that's happened in the past hasn't gone. It's implicit
Speaker 1: in the moment because if anything that has happened wasn't there,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be this moment. And so implicit is you
Speaker 1: invited me to do the show, us learning to speak
Speaker 1: the language. Everything ever there's ever been hasn't gone. So
Speaker 1: the past is accumulating and that and that what time
Speaker 1: is is the process of the past, which is the
Speaker 1: flow of the time stream, accumulating, meeting the possible, the
Speaker 1: potentiality for what could be. And everything is therefore made
Speaker 1: of the past. And then when I apply that to
Speaker 1: myself and I go, oh, look, so what's happening now
Speaker 1: is everything that tim has ever been is meeting everything
Speaker 1: that's Eric's has ever been. That's what's happening right now.
Speaker 1: That's who I am. That's what defines me as an individual.
Speaker 1: That past is both a foundation from for me to
Speaker 1: realize new potentials. I can realize the potential of this
Speaker 1: new sentence because I already know how to speak. It's
Speaker 1: in my past, couldn't do it otherwise. But the past
Speaker 1: also has a kind of weight to it. You refer
Speaker 1: to it earlier, what I call a pestivity like gravity,
Speaker 1: and that that keeps things solid, which is good, but
Speaker 1: it also limits us. It pulls us back. And I
Speaker 1: think we all experience that those pope times will become
Speaker 1: very awake and then back into old habits, familiar, anxious thoughts,
Speaker 1: just old ways of being. We get pulled back by
Speaker 1: the past. So we're living. We are the past meeting
Speaker 1: the possible, and we experienced the pestivity of the past
Speaker 1: pulling us back, and then the creativity that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: which is the possible that from this moment, every moment
Speaker 1: is the realization of something new that's never happened before.
Speaker 1: Every single moment includes everything that's happened before and is
Speaker 1: a new possibility being realized. And that means you and
Speaker 1: I are like that. So that the two voices we
Speaker 1: have inside of us, the ones that is pulling us
Speaker 1: back to just repeat, and the one which is urging
Speaker 1: us on to realize a deeper, new possibility, to bring
Speaker 1: something more emergent into the world. Yeah, you use the
Speaker 1: word transcend and include, which you know you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the book, and I think the first time I ever
Speaker 1: heard it was Ken Wilbur. It also makes me think
Speaker 1: in some of your other work you've used the word
Speaker 1: parallogical thinking. I believe it is. And you talk about
Speaker 1: parallogical thinking being the you know, instead of either or
Speaker 1: the and right, the yes, and and and so it
Speaker 1: seems to me that transcendent include is another way of
Speaker 1: the same thing. And it's basically saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: everything that came before set the stage for what's here.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's irrelevant. It certainly is important, and
Speaker 1: yet we're going to go beyond that, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to lose that at the same time. Brilliant, that's
Speaker 1: exactly it. That's exactly and and and you know, it's
Speaker 1: a great phrase, transcended including. I took it from Ken.
Speaker 1: From Ken's work and this paraological thinking, which is a
Speaker 1: foundation And for me, this this not just either all,
Speaker 1: but both and seeing things from opposite perspectives at once.
Speaker 1: So at this moment, it's not just the past. It's
Speaker 1: the past and the possible, and the past itself is
Speaker 1: not good or bad. It's both. It's a foundation from
Speaker 1: which we can do great things, and it can be
Speaker 1: a limit which pulls us back. So we always need
Speaker 1: to see these two sides. And you know, when you
Speaker 1: invited me to be on this show, one of the
Speaker 1: things which you mentioned was this, how do you How
Speaker 1: do I personally live with these two wolves which are
Speaker 1: in us all? And I thought, well, I think the
Speaker 1: key for me is paraological thinking, because when I developed that,
Speaker 1: it was a way of understanding spiritual awakening. Primarily, that's
Speaker 1: where it started, because that's what I do. Primarily, I
Speaker 1: teach people that how to have the experience of being
Speaker 1: what I call deeper wick, how they can have this
Speaker 1: experience of being one with the universe and this huge
Speaker 1: love which opens up from that space, and that's really
Speaker 1: something which transcends all separate and you go to somewhere
Speaker 1: beyond yourself. It's kind of you're connecting with that essence
Speaker 1: which I which you could call God. There's there's something
Speaker 1: greater which is your which is your own essential nature,
Speaker 1: but which is greater than your individuality, and you can
Speaker 1: awaken to that. And what struck me was how much
Speaker 1: of spirituality again was a very negative take on that,
Speaker 1: which was like, oh, your individuality is a mistake, get
Speaker 1: rid of it, your humanities in the way. And what
Speaker 1: I wanted to go was no, no, no, it's both
Speaker 1: of those. You can have your humanity and this deep
Speaker 1: divinity if you like, they exist together. It's not one
Speaker 1: or the other, it's it's both of those. And that,
Speaker 1: for me, is the way that ideal with this conflicts
Speaker 1: that arise between these different voices, that for me it
Speaker 1: feels like, look, I can if if the secret is
Speaker 1: not to deny one, but to have both. And so
Speaker 1: if I can find the deep place within me, the creative,
Speaker 1: the awake, then the other voice, which wants to pull
Speaker 1: me back, ceases to have the power. But it's still there.
Speaker 1: I haven't pushed it away, because if I push it away,
Speaker 1: it will come up and bite me from behind. I've
Speaker 1: allowed it, and therefore I can have both at once.
Speaker 1: And I've really noticed that at times are great trial
Speaker 1: and suffering. I think back to a few years ago
Speaker 1: sitting with my mum while she was dying of cancer,
Speaker 1: and how awful that was, and how I didn't want
Speaker 1: to avoid it. I didn't want to escape the suffering,
Speaker 1: like you know, like what does it might suggest. I
Speaker 1: didn't want that. I wanted to be suffering with her
Speaker 1: because it was my mom. But also if I had
Speaker 1: just been in the suffering, it would have destroyed me.
Speaker 1: And yet I could be in both. I could be
Speaker 1: in both. This place where it was, it was what
Speaker 1: it was, it was just it just is, and there
Speaker 1: was a complete freedom in that. And then there was
Speaker 1: Tim who was whose heart was breaking, and they were
Speaker 1: both there together. And that for me is how is
Speaker 1: is the way in which we can deal with these
Speaker 1: paradoxes that we have, these different places, we can experience
Speaker 1: life from a lot of stuff in what you just said,
Speaker 1: and I think we would both agree if we talked
Speaker 1: about it a little bit more, that the way we're
Speaker 1: discussing Buddhism is probably a little bit of a superficial understanding, right,
Speaker 1: And that's not exactly what Buddhism says, but it can
Speaker 1: be interpreted that way. You've actually got phrases in a
Speaker 1: few of your books, you know, some great zen phrases.
Speaker 1: I think the transcendent include ideas really interesting because on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's very positive, and it is, but it
Speaker 1: also indicates like the rest of that is still there.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a very humanizing idea, and
Speaker 1: it's one that we talked about on the show a lot,
Speaker 1: like we have this spiritual desire, we have these growth,
Speaker 1: and we have this human body, right, and so when
Speaker 1: I have a stomach ache, I'm just not at my best,
Speaker 1: and that's the transcendent include. In addition to being this
Speaker 1: spiritual being or this soul that's evolving, I'm in this
Speaker 1: animal body too, And I can hate that, right, and
Speaker 1: I can fight against it, as you said, try and escape,
Speaker 1: but ultimately I really can't. All my attempts at escape
Speaker 1: end up backfiring one way or the other. Right. But
Speaker 1: I think recognizing that we are both those things is
Speaker 1: so liberating, both in the sense of it gives me
Speaker 1: the possibility of things to grow to and it doesn't
Speaker 1: allow me or it doesn't make me feel like I'm
Speaker 1: an awful person or I'm a failure or I'm all
Speaker 1: these different things because I'm also human. And I think
Speaker 1: it's that older spiritual idea I've seen in places that
Speaker 1: you know, part of the challenge of being humans we're
Speaker 1: both God and an animal right in one body. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's just the reality, you know, the evolutionary idea
Speaker 1: which we've been focusing on, Like everything has two sides,
Speaker 1: that's the paraological insight. So the good side of the
Speaker 1: evolutionary picture is it is it goes look, we're moving
Speaker 1: towards this better future, that we're being pulled towards, realizing
Speaker 1: greater and more beautiful possibilities. The other side of it
Speaker 1: is that we have to live with all of the
Speaker 1: less evolutionary aspect all around us. So I have to
Speaker 1: live with physics. Physics developed a long time ago, but
Speaker 1: the fact is it's still here, so things still fall,
Speaker 1: and if I dropped something, it will break, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter how awake I am, if I drop it,
Speaker 1: it will still break. And I have to live in
Speaker 1: my body biologically developed quite a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: it has its needs, and it breaks down and it
Speaker 1: gets ill and there's viruses, and I have to live
Speaker 1: with that. I have to live with that less emergent
Speaker 1: level of evolution. And then in society, I would love
Speaker 1: to live in a world where we were all kind
Speaker 1: to each other, but it seems not everyone's quite ready
Speaker 1: for that, yet there's still a lot of other evolutionary
Speaker 1: currents around, and I have to live with that. I
Speaker 1: have to negotiate how to get along and in a
Speaker 1: world in which people are seeing something very different to
Speaker 1: what I see. And then in myself the same thing.
Speaker 1: There is part of me which is waking up and
Speaker 1: full of love and has growing wisdom. And then there's
Speaker 1: all my less evolved parts from my own past which
Speaker 1: grasp on and pull me back, and also from my
Speaker 1: soul in all sorts of ways. So the great thing is, yes,
Speaker 1: the evolutionary is very optimistic. It allows us to see
Speaker 1: the future opening like a flower before us, but it
Speaker 1: also makes we have to live with all these other
Speaker 1: levels which haven't gone anywhere. They're still with us. And
Speaker 1: that's why we need this wisdom and compassion to negotiate that.
Speaker 1: And that's part of why I love the concepts around
Speaker 1: that so much, is because it just strikes me as
Speaker 1: being realistic. It strikes me that a lot of the
Speaker 1: two fundamental narratives we often get, one is sort of
Speaker 1: the scientific objectivism of you know, the world is just
Speaker 1: a meaningless process that's being carried out by the laws
Speaker 1: of physics. And then on the other hand, there is
Speaker 1: the completely spiritual thing that it's all very lovely and
Speaker 1: great sounding, but it doesn't resemble my experience, yes exactly,
Speaker 1: and thinking of things in this sense. Actually I look
Speaker 1: at and I go, oh, yes, that feels and sounds
Speaker 1: true to me, And my experience has been as much
Speaker 1: as there's been points in my life where I would
Speaker 1: love to believe things because they would make me feel better,
Speaker 1: I just there's I just usually can't or not for
Speaker 1: very long, right, And so it's it's the idea of
Speaker 1: a spirituality that works that I think is so important.
Speaker 1: And for me, a spiritually that works has to have
Speaker 1: both that practical and realistic sense, but also an aspirational
Speaker 1: angle to it a better story. And you you talk
Speaker 1: about story throughout the book, and we won't we don't
Speaker 1: have time to get into all that, but you do
Speaker 1: talk a lot about how our evolution as spirit or
Speaker 1: souls or psyche. There's a very narrative component to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the basic inside. I mean what you just
Speaker 1: said that resonates so much with me, and I love
Speaker 1: the way you're saying it needs to be realistic and aspirational.
Speaker 1: There's the paraological insight, you're both there together. And so
Speaker 1: the great intention for me when writing the book on
Speaker 1: Developing the Philosophy was to explain my own experience, which
Speaker 1: is just like yours. So on the one hand, life
Speaker 1: is relentlessly causal. It's very cause and effect. It's quite brutal,
Speaker 1: and there's plenty which makes me think. The objective is
Speaker 1: scientists are onto something it works, and other times it's
Speaker 1: really magical and amazing things synchronicities, and is so full
Speaker 1: of meaning and luminous in its nature. How can they
Speaker 1: both be true? And what I see is that people
Speaker 1: polarize one way or the other. Like you said, they
Speaker 1: either go, oh, it's all just really high causality and
Speaker 1: the rest is just wishful thinking, and other people got
Speaker 1: it's all meant to be everything, Everything is every you know,
Speaker 1: or the other one is you're causing it all yourself,
Speaker 1: your your intentions, which all of which sounds very positive,
Speaker 1: but of course actually isn't horrd that you just created
Speaker 1: your own cancer. It means God has allowed the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: That's just renders some baby being abused right now, did
Speaker 1: something that as yet it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: brutal philosophy if you take it to its conclusions. What
Speaker 1: I love about this emergent spirituality is it goes, Look,
Speaker 1: all of these levels are happening at once, and they're
Speaker 1: all interacting with each other. Is happening right now, so
Speaker 1: that different things dominate at different points. So there's something
Speaker 1: which is cause and effect, there's something which is biological,
Speaker 1: and then there's the soul dimension which is full of
Speaker 1: meaning and sometimes magic that is also real. It's just
Speaker 1: not the only reality. All of these different levels are
Speaker 1: interacting all the time. Is happening right now, Right now,
Speaker 1: my soul, my psyche is intending to convey meaning to you.
Speaker 1: It's making my body, the biology move my mouth in
Speaker 1: certain ways, and that's moving atoms in the air and
Speaker 1: then through the technology around the world. So all of
Speaker 1: those levels are interacting all the time, and that I
Speaker 1: think can explain the great paradox or experience that it
Speaker 1: can be both quite brutal and cause and effect and
Speaker 1: totally magical and full of meaning. And we don't have
Speaker 1: to abandon either of these very real things. We can
Speaker 1: actually have an understanding big enough to embrace them both. Yep.
Speaker 1: And maybe in our post show conversation, we will go
Speaker 1: into I have a question for you about artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and robotics, which is an interesting concept, and then a
Speaker 1: couple of things I think that you know as we
Speaker 1: got deeper in the book, that I started to get
Speaker 1: a little bit lost on or that I felt like
Speaker 1: we were making a jump in logic. So maybe we'll
Speaker 1: get to that in the post show conversation. So listeners,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in that, become a Patreon supporter. And
Speaker 1: now back to the interview. What I want to talk
Speaker 1: about now briefly is the idea of deep Awake. You've
Speaker 1: written a book by that title. It's a big part
Speaker 1: of what you teach. So let's talk briefly about deep awake.
Speaker 1: And what I'm interested in is briefly your thoughts on
Speaker 1: what's the best way to get there for people. But
Speaker 1: most of what I do is very practical, is actually
Speaker 1: introducing people to a new state of consciousness. So I
Speaker 1: get a chance to travel around just back from Tokyo
Speaker 1: as it happens, going to America in October and doing
Speaker 1: stuff here where I run these deep awakenings, where I
Speaker 1: take people to this deeper wig state, and what I've
Speaker 1: seen astonish me. I wouldn't believe it was possible ten
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. Is that the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: can experience the deeper Wig state over the course of
Speaker 1: a couple of days because it's we're really ready for
Speaker 1: it right now. And what the deeper Wig state is
Speaker 1: is finding something deep within yourself, your own essential being,
Speaker 1: your deep being, which is one with everything. And that's
Speaker 1: because in my view, relating to what we said about evolution,
Speaker 1: is that evolution is arising from a primal potentiality, which
Speaker 1: is one and formness, and it's coming to know itself
Speaker 1: through this journey of evolution. And when we become spiritually awake,
Speaker 1: we wake up to the essence, which is this fundamental woneness.
Speaker 1: And that oneness feels like love, because love is how
Speaker 1: how one feels when you when you when you see
Speaker 1: through the separateness with someone or an activity, even or place,
Speaker 1: you feel that connection, that communion, and that's love. So
Speaker 1: it's an experience of oneness, this what I call big love,
Speaker 1: which is very powerful indeed, and a fundamental goodness because
Speaker 1: the universe is unfolding, we are all unfolding towards the
Speaker 1: good in an up and down sort of way, there's
Speaker 1: a movement towards the better. So what I do is
Speaker 1: I I introduce people to it. And the simplest way
Speaker 1: to do it, or the starting place, is actually to
Speaker 1: really just notice what we're in, because it's so easy
Speaker 1: to get so wrapped up in our everyday thoughts that
Speaker 1: we don't know is how profound and mysterious it is
Speaker 1: to be life. That we're having this experience right now
Speaker 1: of existing in this huge, infinite universe which nothing is
Speaker 1: what it seems. We're on this immense journey from birth
Speaker 1: to death. And if we can find that sense of
Speaker 1: deep mystery consciousness starts to change. You start to step
Speaker 1: out of your social conditioning, the limits of the numbness
Speaker 1: we call normal, and if you then can be shown
Speaker 1: how to focus on that, it can open up into
Speaker 1: this completely beautiful and life affirming state in which there's
Speaker 1: this love and appreciation of being. Yeah. I love that
Speaker 1: idea of deep awake, and I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: like what listeners in the show have heard lately. As
Speaker 1: I've talked about awakening, We've had Audie Shantian and Richard
Speaker 1: Roor and a lot of different people where we've talked
Speaker 1: about no self or not self, where we've talked about
Speaker 1: being awareness itself, and I think deep awake is a
Speaker 1: very similar idea. It's the it's recognizing the witness that's
Speaker 1: behind everything, or it's recognizing that we are not just
Speaker 1: our thoughts and we are not just our body that
Speaker 1: we are, we are bigger than that. I love the
Speaker 1: way that you talk about a way to get into
Speaker 1: it is to really try and appreciate the mystery of
Speaker 1: what's happening, because I do find that to be a
Speaker 1: useful way to change consciousness to some degree if we
Speaker 1: can do it. It's one thing to sit back and
Speaker 1: try and be awareness and observe what's going on around me,
Speaker 1: and there's used to that, and I've had good experience
Speaker 1: with it, but I also do think sort of sitting
Speaker 1: back and being like, what the hell is all this?
Speaker 1: I was petting my dog the other day and I'm
Speaker 1: reading your book, and I had that same sort of
Speaker 1: experience where I thought, let me just stop for a
Speaker 1: second and really think about, like, what is going on here?
Speaker 1: And it's when you do that it reality as we
Speaker 1: know it starts to drop away a little bit in
Speaker 1: a different perspective arises. So One more question for you
Speaker 1: on that is the fact that you're able to get
Speaker 1: people into that space, you know, more often than you
Speaker 1: certain would have thought. What are your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: idea of awakening or enlightenment right as a as a
Speaker 1: thing that happens. It's sort of a permanent condition versus
Speaker 1: something that we move in and out of. I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of curious. As somebody who's pursued these questions and
Speaker 1: written many books around mysticism, I'm kind of interested in
Speaker 1: your perspective on that. I've completely abandoned the idea of
Speaker 1: enlightenment that's some sort of permanent state that you're heading for,
Speaker 1: partly because that concept is part of this rather negative
Speaker 1: traditional spirituality of the fall. So enlightenment is when you've
Speaker 1: got rid of your separate self, you've transcended this world
Speaker 1: and you're now free and you never have to come back,
Speaker 1: all of which flies in the face of this evolutionary
Speaker 1: understanding we now have. So for me, there is just
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper states of consciousness that we can find.
Speaker 1: Consciousness is always moving in and out. We we literally
Speaker 1: go to sleep and go unconscious every day, so we
Speaker 1: move between wake and sleep. But in the waking state.
Speaker 1: We can be awake or we can be deep awake,
Speaker 1: and that the deeper wake state isn't like a permanent
Speaker 1: fixture or a limit. It feels in my experience as
Speaker 1: something which can unfold in new ways. We each experience
Speaker 1: it slightly differently. I suspect which is part of the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of us being individuals. So for me, I've
Speaker 1: changed my understanding from when I was younger. I no
Speaker 1: longer aspire to be enlightened and get free. I now
Speaker 1: inspire to be a lover of aspire to be a
Speaker 1: lover of life and to be engaged, but from an
Speaker 1: awake or more awake, wiser place. And what marks out
Speaker 1: what I do around awakening, which is different to what
Speaker 1: others sometimes do, is that I passionately feel that the
Speaker 1: way to wake up is not to get rid of
Speaker 1: or question or destroy the individual self. In fact, the opposite.
Speaker 1: There's been no mistake, our individuality was an error. It's
Speaker 1: the whole point. By becoming individual, we become more conscious,
Speaker 1: not less, so we wake up to oneness through the individual.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things which makes
Speaker 1: people very ready to wake up at my events, because
Speaker 1: I don't try. They don't have to get rid of
Speaker 1: something they can't get rid of. They can just see
Speaker 1: that there's the individual, and then through that you can
Speaker 1: wake up to something which is transpersonal, something which is bigger,
Speaker 1: not instead, but as well. And that becomes much easier
Speaker 1: to do because the other actually is totally unrealistic. It's
Speaker 1: never going to happen because consciousness only arises with individuality.
Speaker 1: It's an emergent quality of the universe which has happened
Speaker 1: through individual sentient beings, and and that's where it comes from.
Speaker 1: I would say I'm a relative newcomer, maybe too deep
Speaker 1: awake experiences, but I've had a couple over the last year,
Speaker 1: you know, one pretty profound one when I was on
Speaker 1: a long retreat. And yet some of what you're saying
Speaker 1: rings very true. In the part it rings true to
Speaker 1: me is this idea of awareness that I always get
Speaker 1: hung up on when folks will say that awareness is
Speaker 1: this non localized thing, which I understand in a sense,
Speaker 1: and you talk about that in the book also that
Speaker 1: I can move my awareness here, I can move it there,
Speaker 1: I can move it over there, but it is a
Speaker 1: localized to the sense that it's within my you know
Speaker 1: more or less my range, right I am not seeing
Speaker 1: you know what's in the other rooms of your house
Speaker 1: right now? I think what we need to see is
Speaker 1: that there's that consciousness has evolved. So the most basic
Speaker 1: form of consciousness that we experience is sensation, and that's
Speaker 1: rooted in the body. Like you said, I can see
Speaker 1: where my eyes are looking. I can't see anywhere else.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how much I want to. My senses
Speaker 1: are rooted in a place, fixed in the body. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how many spiritual teachers tell me it's
Speaker 1: not individual. It damn well is because I can see
Speaker 1: from these eyes and nobody else's, and that's as separate
Speaker 1: as you can get. Then we consciousness has arisen on
Speaker 1: another level, which is the psyche or soul imagination, and
Speaker 1: there it's non local in the sense that I can
Speaker 1: move it can go wherever my attention goes. I can
Speaker 1: take my attention inside my house now I'm in my office.
Speaker 1: I can go in my house. I can remember when
Speaker 1: I was in Tokyo. I can move it around anywhere
Speaker 1: I want, anywhere in the world, but in my imagination too,
Speaker 1: and go to things that don't exist. I can create
Speaker 1: new things. Also, there's great fluidity, and then there's somewhere
Speaker 1: deeper still, which is what is it that's conscious? What
Speaker 1: is that's that profound deep eye, that subjectivity and the
Speaker 1: great insight of all the mystical traditions. Which is which
Speaker 1: is as true now as when they first came across
Speaker 1: it hundreds and hundreds of years ago, is that our
Speaker 1: essential nature has no form, because it's what's conscious of
Speaker 1: all form, and therefore it's totally nonlocal. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that when you become aware of it, that that
Speaker 1: profound formless wonderus that you're experiencing everything. It's rather that
Speaker 1: Tim experiences that he is an expression of this found
Speaker 1: formless wonders. It doesn't mean he knows what it's like
Speaker 1: to be Eric. That's the whole point. That oneness is
Speaker 1: experiencing being Tim through Tim, and experiencing being Eric through Eric.
Speaker 1: Then when we meet, if we're just in normal consciousness,
Speaker 1: we just see Tim and Eric, we just see bodies,
Speaker 1: maybe we see souls. If we look really deeply, though,
Speaker 1: then I can see, Oh, the whole universe is looking
Speaker 1: back at me through Eric. I'm the whole universe looking
Speaker 1: out through Tim I'm that formless wondness of being looking
Speaker 1: out through Tim, and there's that formless ononess of being
Speaker 1: my own deep self looking back at me. And that's
Speaker 1: when you enter these very deep states. And and like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, really Eric, what's happened? If you've just
Speaker 1: seen what was already happening from a deeper place, that's
Speaker 1: a great way to lay it out. Well, Tim, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show. We could
Speaker 1: spend all afternoon or evening for you since you're in
Speaker 1: the UK talking about these ideas. You've got so many
Speaker 1: books and I've read a couple of them. They've both
Speaker 1: been great. So we'll have links in the show notes
Speaker 1: to your work where people can get it. And just
Speaker 1: thank you again for coming on. I've really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: conversation me too. It's been a great pleasure. Okay, take
Speaker 1: care bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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