Speaker 1: Even when we have a question. Almost every question comes
Speaker 1: out of a worldview, so it comes out of our answers.
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 m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Adya Shanti, author of The Way of Liberation, Resurrecting Jesus,
Speaker 1: Falling into Grace, and the End of Your World. He's
Speaker 1: an American born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening
Speaker 1: of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop,
Speaker 1: inquire and recognize what is true in liberating at the
Speaker 1: core of all existence. Based in California, Adya Shanty teach
Speaker 1: us throughout the US and in Canada, Europe and Australia.
Speaker 1: This interview was recorded live at Adya Shanty's Open Gate Soana,
Speaker 1: located in the Bay Area. If you value the content
Speaker 1: we put out each week, then we need your help.
Speaker 1: As the show has grown, so have our expenses and
Speaker 1: time commitment. Go to one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: Support and make a monthly donation. Our goal is to
Speaker 1: get to five of our listeners supporting the show. Please
Speaker 1: be part of the five percent that make a contribution
Speaker 1: and allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas.
Speaker 1: We really need your help to make the show sustainable
Speaker 1: and long lasting. Again, that's one you Feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Support. Thank you in advance for your help. And
Speaker 1: here's the interview with audio. Shanti Hi Audia, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you Rex. Nice to be here with you.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be sitting here with you. We
Speaker 1: are in your studio in San Jose and it is
Speaker 1: a treat for us as always to be able to
Speaker 1: do an in person interview. So thanks for helping us
Speaker 1: to arrange it. I'm glad we could pull it off together.
Speaker 1: We'll get into a lot of your teachings here in
Speaker 1: a bit, but let's start the show like we normally do,
Speaker 1: with the parable of the two wolves. There's a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. First of all, it
Speaker 1: points to something very universal about all of us. In
Speaker 1: a certain sense. I always think of a human being
Speaker 1: as we're all sort of walking paradoxes. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think part of the journey is to go from a
Speaker 1: walking contradiction to a walking paradox, you know, And that
Speaker 1: story kind of highlights both of those if these two
Speaker 1: forces within us, which I often thought of as like
Speaker 1: the light force of the dark force, and I'm not
Speaker 1: even meaning in some like demonic sense necessarily, but just
Speaker 1: your ordinary garden variety. You know, you can get triggered easy,
Speaker 1: your buttons get pushed, you, you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: We all have these forces within our lives, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is important that we've become conscious of
Speaker 1: what's driving us. You know, where we're being driven from,
Speaker 1: where we were being moved from. And I think we
Speaker 1: also have this amazing physical biological organism because I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when we look at these kind of things, it
Speaker 1: gets kind of abstract or you don't know, how do
Speaker 1: I deal with that? How do I make a better choice?
Speaker 1: Because really a lot of it comes down to making better,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, loving, wise choices. And I think our bodies
Speaker 1: actually tell us really clearly that when we're not seeing
Speaker 1: something clearly, when it's not really an alignment with reality,
Speaker 1: whether we're lost in some story or some interpretation or
Speaker 1: some belief system, if it's not an accord with what's
Speaker 1: happening in that moment, will feel that as tension anxiety.
Speaker 1: And that's the way that we're literally biologically hooked up
Speaker 1: to the way the world tells us. We're not seeing
Speaker 1: things really clearly, because to me, that's the underlying issue,
Speaker 1: even beyond trying to give attention to the better the
Speaker 1: angels of our nature, is to kind of almost get
Speaker 1: underneath that paradigm at the same time that we're making
Speaker 1: wise and loving choices, but to get to where they're
Speaker 1: really coming from, you know. Um, and our body helps us.
Speaker 1: Right when we're in a clear, open, loving space, our
Speaker 1: bodies feel clear, lacking of tension, we feel certain ways
Speaker 1: so often I think our bodies are best aid in
Speaker 1: navigating this inner territory of our consciousness. We had a
Speaker 1: guest on I can't remember who it was at this
Speaker 1: point whose main thought was just watch for tension, you know,
Speaker 1: watching notice for tension in your body as an indicator
Speaker 1: to what you're saying that there's something else going on
Speaker 1: there and with the tension will always be some sort
Speaker 1: of story or belief or inaccurate judgment. If the story
Speaker 1: is more or less in alignment with what is, and
Speaker 1: we're kind of alignment it does, we feel open and
Speaker 1: easy and and available, and whenever we don't, we can
Speaker 1: bet we're we're actually talking to ourselves in some way
Speaker 1: at some level that's putting us at odds against ourselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, we can even do this with the two
Speaker 1: sides of our nature, the lighter side and the darker
Speaker 1: sides of our nature. You don't eliminate the darkness without
Speaker 1: eliminating the light part. It's like two sides of one coin.
Speaker 1: I'm a spiritual teacher, so spiritual seekers come to see me,
Speaker 1: and one of the first things I have to try
Speaker 1: to help orient them around is this isn't the light
Speaker 1: winning out over the dark. That's a good way to
Speaker 1: lead a very you know, conflicted life. It's really about,
Speaker 1: first of all, being a big enough space to start
Speaker 1: to recognize these forces within us and being willing to
Speaker 1: recognize them. I think that's something we'll get to a
Speaker 1: little bit later in the interview. Is I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that. What's the role of emotion and everyday,
Speaker 1: day to day life, you know, in an awakened state.
Speaker 1: But let's start with with the awakened state. More than
Speaker 1: a lot of people we've had on the show, your
Speaker 1: teaching this focus on this idea of awakening or liberation
Speaker 1: or realizing the nature of our being. You say that
Speaker 1: the question of being is everything. Nothing could be more
Speaker 1: important or consequential, nothing where the stakes run so high.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about this question of being and awakening.
Speaker 1: What does that mean to you? First of all, not
Speaker 1: all awakening is the same. So that's I think really
Speaker 1: important to make that there's there are different kinds of awakening.
Speaker 1: Of course, awakening is starting to be used for almost everything.
Speaker 1: You know, I awoke into my whatever. You know that
Speaker 1: I don't have to eat a piece of pie today.
Speaker 1: I had a dietary awakening or something. But in in
Speaker 1: a in a really deep sense, awakening is at the
Speaker 1: very least it's a fundamental shift of identity. And basically
Speaker 1: it's the shift of identity out of image, memory ideas,
Speaker 1: the way we talk to ourselves. I'm good, I'm bad,
Speaker 1: all those evaluations, All of that lives in our mind right,
Speaker 1: it's all conceptual and image. Past futures are our images, um,
Speaker 1: And that's really what awakening. We wake up out of
Speaker 1: that we realize that that actually, while it may be there,
Speaker 1: it may even still be functioning, that our sense of
Speaker 1: what we are when we've had this shift is no
Speaker 1: longer exclusively found within that sort of conceptual matrix, and
Speaker 1: that's that's the fundamental sort of nature of awakening. What
Speaker 1: we awaken two is is a whole other matter. It
Speaker 1: can be sort of pure awareness, it can be the
Speaker 1: unity of all things. There can be different things we
Speaker 1: waken too, when we wake up out of the mental construct,
Speaker 1: really is what it is. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you talk about is you say, the primary task of
Speaker 1: any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions,
Speaker 1: but to question your answers. Yeah. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: we all walk around with a whole host of answers
Speaker 1: that often we don't even know that we have. When
Speaker 1: somebody asked me a question, when a student asked me
Speaker 1: a question, what I'm listening for is what's the set
Speaker 1: of beliefs, in opinions? What's the worldview that they're operating from?
Speaker 1: And that worldview is literally constructed out of a whole
Speaker 1: series of answers. We often call them beliefs, opinions, things
Speaker 1: like that. So these are answers, right, Our answers are
Speaker 1: actually often what are causing us most of the suffering.
Speaker 1: I know, you shouldn't have done that. So we have
Speaker 1: a belief we have the world should be this way,
Speaker 1: but it's not. You know, you should be this way,
Speaker 1: but you're not. I should be different that I am,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. They start out as answers, right, I know.
Speaker 1: I know who I am, I know who you are.
Speaker 1: I know the way the world world should be. And
Speaker 1: when I say to question your answers, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Even when we have a question, almost every question comes
Speaker 1: out of a worldview. So it comes out of our answers, right,
Speaker 1: comes out of our belief system. You talk about needing
Speaker 1: to be willing to let go of those things. Even
Speaker 1: if I feel willing, those things are still kind of there. Right.
Speaker 1: I might be like, Okay, I'm willing to believe that's
Speaker 1: not true, and at the same time, there's a big
Speaker 1: part of my brain going that's absolutely true, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: now I'm willing to believe that's not true. Oh, it's true.
Speaker 1: And so how do you work through that process? Because
Speaker 1: it seems like what you're talking about is on a
Speaker 1: slightly different level than what the conscious chattering mind is. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think we've all had the experience of you know,
Speaker 1: I want to change. I'm willing to change even more
Speaker 1: than willing, I actually want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: live according to that belief pattern or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and then you feel like you can't change. It doesn't
Speaker 1: happen or it changes. It's for a very short period
Speaker 1: of time. So the first of all, when I say willing,
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm really trying to get at
Speaker 1: is we can say we want to let go of something,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to let go of it with one hand,
Speaker 1: and subconsciously we're desperately holding onto it with the other hands.
Speaker 1: The reason we do that is because the beliefs and
Speaker 1: opinions and ideas that we have, that is what we
Speaker 1: construct our separate self out of. Right, That's how we
Speaker 1: do it. Right. So if we want to get to
Speaker 1: know each other, usually in the conventional world, we ask
Speaker 1: each other, you know, what are you doing, what's your background,
Speaker 1: what's your work, are you married? Are you you know,
Speaker 1: we're searching for all this information, and then we want
Speaker 1: to also see what people believe. So we're searching, often
Speaker 1: without asking direct questions, you know what your political affiliation,
Speaker 1: what what your spiritual way of being? And so we're
Speaker 1: when we're doing that, it's a natural thing to do,
Speaker 1: but we're kind of boxing categorizing. Yes, So a willingness
Speaker 1: is really am I really willing to look not only
Speaker 1: at my beliefs really deeply or whatever seems to be
Speaker 1: causing me trouble? But am I also willing to see
Speaker 1: that One of the reasons I find it so hard
Speaker 1: to let go of those things is because I'm literally
Speaker 1: letting go of what gives me my sense of myself.
Speaker 1: And even if it's contracted, and even if it's difficult,
Speaker 1: at least it's known, you know what I mean? Are
Speaker 1: you willing to go through this doorway where you actually
Speaker 1: don't know anymore, where you realize it's all being constructed
Speaker 1: on the spot through image, idea, belief, and the associated
Speaker 1: feelings and emotions that that creates. Am I really willing
Speaker 1: to call that into question? And not? Actually no, because
Speaker 1: I won't know who I am if I actually call
Speaker 1: the whole thing into question for a period of time,
Speaker 1: however long that last. You've written a bunch of different books,
Speaker 1: and one of the books that I looked at was
Speaker 1: is it a way of liberation? I think? And it's
Speaker 1: really you really sort of boiled down a lot of
Speaker 1: your teachings into a fairly practical structure, which I found
Speaker 1: very helpful to sort of organize a lot of what
Speaker 1: you've thought about. And so I thought we might use
Speaker 1: that as a way to work through some of this conversation,
Speaker 1: because I think it really does sum up a lot
Speaker 1: of what I've read, and a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: and and and videos of yours that I've watched. And
Speaker 1: you talk about there being five foundations of spirituality, so
Speaker 1: let's just maybe talk briefly about those and and see
Speaker 1: where that takes us. The first one is to clarify
Speaker 1: your aspiration. It's interesting when I came up with that
Speaker 1: first one when I first wrote the book, and I
Speaker 1: did a sort of internet course on it, and I
Speaker 1: learned something because you know, I was I was going
Speaker 1: through those first five foundations in one evening, and what
Speaker 1: kept happening weeks after that as a week's when on
Speaker 1: I kept getting emails and people calling me saying, I'm
Speaker 1: still on the first foundation. You know, what is my aspiration?
Speaker 1: Which is a way of saying, what's my intention? What
Speaker 1: do I want? The reason this came to me many
Speaker 1: many years ago, when I was teaching the retreats, people
Speaker 1: would come to me and I literally have dozens of
Speaker 1: people over a few years that I would start asking people, so,
Speaker 1: why you here? You know, you came to this week
Speaker 1: long retreat? What brings you here? What do you want?
Speaker 1: What's your what's your intention? And they usually will tell
Speaker 1: me something that really sounds like they got from somebody else, Right,
Speaker 1: I I want to be enlightened? Right, well, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? What does that mean? Or I want to
Speaker 1: be awakened? Why do you want to be awakened? So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get it underneath. And what I found
Speaker 1: out I always talked with people who have been doing
Speaker 1: serious spiritual practice, sometimes for twenty or thirty years, and
Speaker 1: they didn't actually know why they were doing it when
Speaker 1: they really looked at it. They they had in their
Speaker 1: minds things that they were told and promised, but when
Speaker 1: it really came down to what am I really really
Speaker 1: here for? I was very surprised by how often people
Speaker 1: didn't actually really know, which is interesting because almost any
Speaker 1: other aspect of our lives we would know at least
Speaker 1: to some degree, and we need to know, like if
Speaker 1: you go to work, you know what am I doing today?
Speaker 1: You're you're clarifying your intention for that day? Right, and
Speaker 1: you have to know, and you have to know what
Speaker 1: you're doing, you have to know why you're there, and
Speaker 1: all these things that are very natural to us. So
Speaker 1: I find that clarifying your intention and your aspiration in
Speaker 1: any area of life. It could be in relationships, it
Speaker 1: could be spirituality, it could be work, it could be anything.
Speaker 1: This is what provides our orientation. The backside of that
Speaker 1: is when we start to look at, what we start
Speaker 1: to discover is what our orientation actually is, because often
Speaker 1: our orientation that actually is is different than the one
Speaker 1: we'd like to think. One of your lines that comes
Speaker 1: to mind is that the ego is really interested in
Speaker 1: two things, survival and feeling better. Right, And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that a lot of the spiritual search falls
Speaker 1: under the very nebulous feeling better category. I want to
Speaker 1: feel better, and I realized maybe that shopping or drinking
Speaker 1: or all the various other things don't really work, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to give this thing a try. So that's
Speaker 1: a very egoic aspiration. But is that an aspiration to
Speaker 1: work from? I just I want to feel better. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I think of it as not sort
Speaker 1: of okay, maybe egoic, but it's also relevant. So every
Speaker 1: biological being that I've ever heard of, when you give
Speaker 1: them the choice, do you want to experience pain or pleasure,
Speaker 1: they'll go for pleasure. We're hooked up. It's not just
Speaker 1: ego a DNA structure of our bodies, right, It's part
Speaker 1: of what helps us survive. So first of all, you
Speaker 1: just make that okay, of course I want to feel better.
Speaker 1: Of course I want to have the richest, most meaningful
Speaker 1: experience that I can have. That's totally natural. Now we
Speaker 1: also have to see, then, if we don't address that
Speaker 1: drive in a wise way, how much trouble that's gotten
Speaker 1: any of us into. Right, that same drive can make us,
Speaker 1: you know, drink us X pack of beer, or put
Speaker 1: a needle in our arm or whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 1: jump off of high mountains with parachutes on our backs.
Speaker 1: You know, all the two for three on those. So
Speaker 1: it's really learning to work with that in a wise way.
Speaker 1: But at some point, even though wanting to feel better
Speaker 1: is natural to all of us, at some point I
Speaker 1: think we we do bump up against this limitation with it.
Speaker 1: It can only take us so far, you know, because
Speaker 1: when we start feeling better, we'll stop looking deeper. If
Speaker 1: that's what we want perfectly, okay, you know that's we're
Speaker 1: happy with that. Fine, But if we actually are have
Speaker 1: a deeper aspiration, going back to your earlier question or
Speaker 1: an intention, then it there's a point where it has
Speaker 1: to transform. It has to transform from only wanting to
Speaker 1: feel better too, okay, wanting to feel better, but also
Speaker 1: wanting to know. For me, it would be what's really
Speaker 1: true in any situation, whether it's spiritual, you know, the
Speaker 1: nature of our being, or any other kind of truth,
Speaker 1: because this is what can take us beyond how we feel,
Speaker 1: if we want that more than we want to feel better.
Speaker 1: Because some truths make us feel much better, some truths
Speaker 1: are kind of shocking and temporarily WHOA, I'm not so
Speaker 1: sure I was prepared to see that. It's like the
Speaker 1: sobering up processes exactly. It's not exactly a pleasant process.
Speaker 1: It's a great place to get to, but the process
Speaker 1: cannot feel good. That's right, that's a fantastic way to
Speaker 1: put it. Hey, Eric, ask everybody for money. All right,
Speaker 1: it's that time. I guess, all right, it's time to
Speaker 1: ask for your support. Yep to rattilely on the mic, stand.
Speaker 1: That's what your money goes to. One of the things
Speaker 1: that goes to is keeping Chris around here so that
Speaker 1: we get something that actually sounds good instead of what
Speaker 1: you'd get with me, which is me rattling the mic
Speaker 1: stand and fidgeting with papers and all that stuff. This
Speaker 1: week's interview with Audio Shanti is another example of how
Speaker 1: what you donate helps us out. We were able to
Speaker 1: go see him live and in person and interview him,
Speaker 1: and I think that reflects in the quality of the interview.
Speaker 1: So your support definitely helps with that. The amount you've
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Speaker 1: And here is the rest of the interview with Adya Shanti.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're gonna hit all five just due
Speaker 1: to time. So I'm gonna cherry pick a couple of these,
Speaker 1: but never abdicate your authority. That one. You can utilize
Speaker 1: it in different context. But I specifically wrote it again
Speaker 1: for sort of people coming into spirituality because it's one
Speaker 1: of these things that I noticed over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. Now, I started teaching on fifty four. Now,
Speaker 1: I started teaching at thirty three, which was pretty young.
Speaker 1: And when I was younger, you know, most of the
Speaker 1: people that were coming to see me were older than
Speaker 1: I was. Even though I'm not the kind of person
Speaker 1: almost just my makeup, you know, I don't like exercising
Speaker 1: power over people and all that kind of thing has
Speaker 1: never been my thing. But even for somebody like that,
Speaker 1: I would notice people coming to see me, and I
Speaker 1: can just see in the way they look in the vie,
Speaker 1: at the way they relate to me, that at some
Speaker 1: level it's like they're walking in the door and without
Speaker 1: even knowing it, they're almost like reaching inside, taking the
Speaker 1: best of themselves out of themselves and hanging it on me. Right,
Speaker 1: And so now I become their soul spiritual authority. And
Speaker 1: even as a teacher, I saw that doesn't work. That's
Speaker 1: a good way to go down a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of blind alleys. It ends up being sort of a
Speaker 1: paradox between in any area of life again, because we
Speaker 1: can broaden this way beyond spirituality almost any area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at certain times in our lives, you know, we are
Speaker 1: either sort of subordinate to an authority or were playing
Speaker 1: the role of authority. It could be just at work,
Speaker 1: it could be sort of you know, different areas. But
Speaker 1: if we abdicate too much of our authority, were actually
Speaker 1: abdicating or giving away something of ourselves that, as I
Speaker 1: see it, we should never actually be giving away that
Speaker 1: final authority of what we decided to do or not
Speaker 1: to do. Should never lie in somebody else's hands, spiritual
Speaker 1: teacher or otherwise. It's a very sort of dangerous dynamic
Speaker 1: to get into. And as you you mentioned, it's a
Speaker 1: fine line, right, because a lot of the spiritual practices
Speaker 1: or teachings are, like we said earlier, suspending our beliefs
Speaker 1: for a point of time or to a certain amount
Speaker 1: and following a path. And I agree with you, I
Speaker 1: think it's a very difficult place to find. I think
Speaker 1: the middle is difficult to find in motion nearly anything,
Speaker 1: which is why I'm always interested in it. But I
Speaker 1: think that's one where it's it's very difficult to find
Speaker 1: the right I mean I made the sobriety analogy earlier,
Speaker 1: but I would see that in recovery programs where people,
Speaker 1: you know, two years sober. I'd be like, well, do
Speaker 1: you want to do X, Y and Z, Like, I
Speaker 1: better check with my sponsor. I'm like, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be to me. The spirit of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, right, It is that advocation of responsibility. I
Speaker 1: think a wise authority will work in tandem with our
Speaker 1: own inner sense of authority. They won't completely take it over,
Speaker 1: and we won't completely give it up. But yet will
Speaker 1: remain open. This is actually, I think, a lot simpler
Speaker 1: than we often make it sound. We've all went through
Speaker 1: lots of school in our life. You go to school,
Speaker 1: you go to college or wherever you want to learn science,
Speaker 1: you go to the science teacher. You don't go to
Speaker 1: the science teacher and say, okay, now you're a scientist.
Speaker 1: Now teach me how to bake the best you know,
Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookie in the world, and you know everything.
Speaker 1: You go them for a certain area of expertise, but
Speaker 1: you're not You're not giving them your whole life now. Granted,
Speaker 1: a spiritual teacher is not just dealing with a particular
Speaker 1: Arab expertise, like you know, science or biology or whatever.
Speaker 1: But still, at the end of the day, I think
Speaker 1: it's much more healthy and certainly more safe when it
Speaker 1: looked in. Our relationship is a little bit more like
Speaker 1: maybe not completely, but a little bit more like we
Speaker 1: would we've all had with our teachers. I'm going to
Speaker 1: them as authorities. They know more about it than I do,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to just do anything that that
Speaker 1: person says I should be doing. We keep that, I
Speaker 1: think within ourselves. That's sort of part of taking responsibility.
Speaker 1: To what you get with that responsibility is you don't
Speaker 1: get to blame anybody because you've never given it away completely,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've always retained your ultimate decision makings
Speaker 1: process within yourself, you know, especially as an as an adult.
Speaker 1: So you talk about three core practices. And I found
Speaker 1: this part very interesting because a lot of at least
Speaker 1: what I've studied and read over many years is meditation
Speaker 1: and meditation in a particular style, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how you sort of veer from that style.
Speaker 1: So let's start there. You've you've written a book called
Speaker 1: True Meditation, and you talk about this idea of true meditation.
Speaker 1: How is true meditation different than the meditation that most
Speaker 1: of us, if we've been reading these kind of books
Speaker 1: for a long time, are used to thinking of it.
Speaker 1: And that's a great question. First of all, sometimes people
Speaker 1: think when they hear their were true or read it
Speaker 1: that I mean better than I don't mean better than um.
Speaker 1: True is just since my teaching is oriented towards truth,
Speaker 1: that it's kind of a meditation that's oriented towards that.
Speaker 1: So to me, the foundation of meditation and it's deeper form,
Speaker 1: you could say, very very simple thing. Right, It is
Speaker 1: the art of allowing everything to be exactly as it is. Now,
Speaker 1: that's one of those things you listen to and you go, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds really simple, and then you said down in
Speaker 1: a room by yourself and you watch your mind is
Speaker 1: doing everything but allowing that moment to be as it is,
Speaker 1: or it's talking about it, it's imagining some other moment.
Speaker 1: If you are feeling something you think you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be feeling in meditation, right, you think you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be feeling peace, but just feeling fear or you're
Speaker 1: being feeling anger or whatever arises. It is simply to
Speaker 1: allow everything and everything means everything just to be the
Speaker 1: way it is. That's that's the art, and it's really
Speaker 1: art because you can't tell someone here's how exactly to
Speaker 1: do that, right, you can kind of get preliminary things,
Speaker 1: you know, like follow your breath helps you kind of
Speaker 1: get a preliminary stability instead of every time your mind wanders,
Speaker 1: just bring it back to the breath. But then beyond that,
Speaker 1: it's just a deeper letting go or letting be. And
Speaker 1: so if someone would ask me, no matter what they
Speaker 1: come up with, in meditation, is if they let it be,
Speaker 1: something really unexpected starts to happen to anything within ourselves
Speaker 1: that we totally allowed to be. If we totally allow
Speaker 1: it to be, it starts to transform and often sort
Speaker 1: of integrates into our body and mind and consciousness all
Speaker 1: by itself. It's a little bit different also in the
Speaker 1: respect that to me, I don't turn this into a technique,
Speaker 1: but meditation is there, and the way that I use
Speaker 1: it is to get us to have an experiential insight
Speaker 1: into the fundamental nature of our own being, of our consciousness.
Speaker 1: That's what it's really there for. So this kind of
Speaker 1: going into meditation with a curiosity, this is the hardest
Speaker 1: thing for me to give a I always tell groups
Speaker 1: of people when I say that the hardest part of
Speaker 1: meditation to convey is the absolute importance of bringing your
Speaker 1: intelligence along for the ride. So what will often happens
Speaker 1: when people meditated, they're just following the technique. I have
Speaker 1: a thought, and this is what I do with it.
Speaker 1: Whereas if we bring our intelligence with us, they're actually
Speaker 1: not only meditating, but we're actually in a process where
Speaker 1: we're learning from what we see. We're watching something in
Speaker 1: such a way that we learned something rather than being
Speaker 1: so dedicated to the technique. But that's the only thing
Speaker 1: we're doing. Years ago, I saw was a wonderful documentary
Speaker 1: of this guy who was one of the first people
Speaker 1: that deeply discovered the behavior patterns of wolf And so
Speaker 1: he set himself up on a ridgeline where a wolf
Speaker 1: pack had a den right down below, and this was
Speaker 1: probably five six hundred yards maybe more than that a way,
Speaker 1: and he literally watched them for a better part of
Speaker 1: a year, through different four months of the season, and
Speaker 1: he watched them, and then he came back and he
Speaker 1: wrote this amazing book about the behavior patterns of wolves.
Speaker 1: So he was obviously watching in a really intelligent way.
Speaker 1: He could have sat up there and watch the wolves
Speaker 1: for a year, but then said, okay, I'm just supposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, follow my breath and just and that's the
Speaker 1: only thing I'm supposed to do. He could have watched
Speaker 1: the wolf pack for a year and learned almost nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: of course I'll have people follow their breath initially too,
Speaker 1: but it's that no, we're watching what happens in your
Speaker 1: own consciousness. You're just not commenting, You're just not you know,
Speaker 1: furthering the storyline, but you're watching an essential way. You
Speaker 1: want to see how the whole thing works, right, You're
Speaker 1: not analyzing it, you're just watching it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: for me, and I've been meditating on and off for
Speaker 1: a long time, it changed for me when I did
Speaker 1: sort of a version of what you're describing, which was
Speaker 1: I kind of just utterly gave up on the result,
Speaker 1: Like because I am not someone who settles into meditation, well,
Speaker 1: following my breath is a recipe for me to just
Speaker 1: have my mind wander for an hour like it just
Speaker 1: and so as soon as I just let go of
Speaker 1: like that's okay, that's if that's what happens, it's what happens.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just gonna sit here and you know, do
Speaker 1: my best. And and that just being sort of more
Speaker 1: to what you talked about, like spirit or intention or sincerity,
Speaker 1: the whole thing sort of transformed for me into an
Speaker 1: experience that was different when I just let it, as
Speaker 1: you say, let it be exactly as it was because
Speaker 1: I was so certain something was supposed to be happening.
Speaker 1: That's a great example, Eric, of your own experience of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I had the same experience by
Speaker 1: the way to You know, when I was in my
Speaker 1: twenties and trying to really meditate in this very concentrated way,
Speaker 1: and I had an idea what was supposed to be happening,
Speaker 1: and and at some point the whole thing kind of imploded,
Speaker 1: and you know, I just had to find another another way.
Speaker 1: Do you think that time that you spent doing that
Speaker 1: helped lead towards awakening? Because I sometimes wonder what the
Speaker 1: way I meditate now is I kind of just watch
Speaker 1: I asked myself, what I've been able to do that
Speaker 1: from the beginning, or is it the fact that I
Speaker 1: sort of toil in the field, so to speak, for
Speaker 1: that time that now allows that to happen. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? I think most people are going
Speaker 1: to toil in the field no matter what you tell them.
Speaker 1: Remember what they're in spread. That's part of it, right.
Speaker 1: The part of it is, you know, my teacher used
Speaker 1: to say to me, when she would always say, you know,
Speaker 1: don't try to control your mind. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: how not to control my mind. I was left with
Speaker 1: the the absolute difficult task of trying not to try
Speaker 1: the eternal paradox, so that I was making effort not
Speaker 1: to make too much effort. But some of that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we just have to dance our dance out
Speaker 1: a little bit, and it does kind of set you
Speaker 1: up in a certain sense when you do kind of
Speaker 1: start to just let everything to be. It provides this
Speaker 1: nice contrast, you know, you know, the contrast between really
Speaker 1: rigidly trying to follow something and then oh, there's this
Speaker 1: total other way to do this. Could you theoretically go
Speaker 1: to the other way immediately? Theoretically, yeah, and some people can,
Speaker 1: but times toiling away for a while, Like anything else
Speaker 1: in life, you know, um, sometimes you've got to toil
Speaker 1: away at it before you ready to move on. Moving
Speaker 1: to listening to sound, that was there was a big
Speaker 1: transformer for me because I think get moved from trying
Speaker 1: to do something to simply paying attention. And then I
Speaker 1: think that opened me a little bit more to this
Speaker 1: concept of well, if I can do that for sound,
Speaker 1: let me just do that for everything. Yeah. In the
Speaker 1: fact that you sound a lot when we talk about meditation,
Speaker 1: I just said, just just rest and you're listening, not
Speaker 1: listening to this or that, Just just listen, and you
Speaker 1: also mean it more than just your ears. Yea. Our
Speaker 1: whole bodies are sensing instruments of existence. Right, Literally every
Speaker 1: inch of our skin is a sensory instrument. And part
Speaker 1: of what happens in meditation is the instrument gets much
Speaker 1: much more refined and subtle. Let's move on to another
Speaker 1: one of the practices. And I think this is the
Speaker 1: thing for me that sets you apart from most other teachings,
Speaker 1: at least that I've been exposed to. And I've been
Speaker 1: more exposed to Buddhist teachings and less so maybe to
Speaker 1: some of the more non dual teachings. But it's this
Speaker 1: idea of inquiry. I've certainly heard that well do self inquiry,
Speaker 1: but I've never been really shown how to do it.
Speaker 1: So can you talk about what it is and maybe
Speaker 1: what the gateway is or some basic things about how
Speaker 1: people could do this In the form of Buddhism that
Speaker 1: I was with with my teacher and Zen, a lot
Speaker 1: of it's based on questions. Spirituality is really about dealing
Speaker 1: with the existential issues of life. Right, Who am I?
Speaker 1: What am I? What is God? What is life? Where
Speaker 1: did I come from? Where am I going? The big
Speaker 1: issues is that's really the hallmark of spirituality. So how
Speaker 1: do I approach those right and think of a question
Speaker 1: that you might have, whatever the question might be, who
Speaker 1: am I? And as a way to actually utilize it,
Speaker 1: how do I work without other than just sitting around
Speaker 1: thinking of it? Is it's almost like you you introduce
Speaker 1: it into your consciousness, into your mind right in a
Speaker 1: very clear way, right, what is it actually in my
Speaker 1: experience right now that I really am, and you just
Speaker 1: drop it into your mind. The key is then drop
Speaker 1: it let it go, almost like if you were to
Speaker 1: place a pebble on the top of a lake. You
Speaker 1: just drop it and let it sink. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're ruminated about it, if you're thinking about it,
Speaker 1: it tends to keep you on the surface level of consciousness.
Speaker 1: So you drop it in and then at some point
Speaker 1: whenever the question comes back to your mind again, you're
Speaker 1: not making a formula where you're just repeating the question
Speaker 1: like a mantra. But when it comes back to your
Speaker 1: mind you can you can consciously repeat it again. But
Speaker 1: do it like you're dropping a pebble on the top
Speaker 1: of a leg. Just drop it in and then let
Speaker 1: it go, because that allows the question to go very
Speaker 1: deeply into your unconscious right, that's where the transformation, that's
Speaker 1: where revelation comes from. That's where it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So if we analyze it too much, it keeps us
Speaker 1: on the surface level of consciousness. If we drop it
Speaker 1: in it can have great depth. I mean writers deal
Speaker 1: with this, for instance, all the time they get to
Speaker 1: a point they don't know what to write anymore, writer,
Speaker 1: and where do they do? You know, they just have
Speaker 1: to sit right at that edge. They're sitting at there
Speaker 1: and they want to write the next word or the
Speaker 1: next sentence, but they can't yet find it, and they
Speaker 1: just have to sit at that edge. And often they
Speaker 1: have to let go of trying to figure it out,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden has probably we've all
Speaker 1: discovered you let go of trying to figure something out,
Speaker 1: and then oh, there it is. So that's requires at
Speaker 1: least a rudimentary level of faith to to just let
Speaker 1: let these questions go into us. The other way you
Speaker 1: seem to approach in Krein, I'm trying to find the
Speaker 1: quote here you say, as a guiding principle to progressively
Speaker 1: realize what is not absolutely true is of infinitely more
Speaker 1: value than speculating about what is and so what I've
Speaker 1: heard you do or seen you do an inquiry is
Speaker 1: sort of check out, Well, I'm not this, I'm not that,
Speaker 1: And so there is a intellectual piece to some degree. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: That's the nice thing about it is in an inquiry
Speaker 1: you don't have to leave your mind behind. It's not
Speaker 1: there's nothing anti intellectual about it, but you're you're joining
Speaker 1: the intellectual mind with the contemplative kind of spirit. So
Speaker 1: you're right when you ask a question, what we're really
Speaker 1: utilizing the question for is not so much simply to
Speaker 1: get an answer, but to dislodge all the other beliefs
Speaker 1: that we already have in there. So you just start
Speaker 1: to look at like, am I my thoughts? Well, my
Speaker 1: thoughts are always changing there here at the moment, and
Speaker 1: they're gone. One moment I have a nice thought about myself.
Speaker 1: An hour later, I might have a bad thought about myself.
Speaker 1: It's always changing, right, and yet there's the sense that
Speaker 1: something is noticing all this change. Good thought, bad thought,
Speaker 1: mediocre thought. Okay, I obviously can't be limited to those
Speaker 1: thoughts because they can disappear. I might even be able
Speaker 1: to meditate and get into a space temporarily where I
Speaker 1: have no thought at all, and yet whatever I am
Speaker 1: is still there, So I must not be my thoughts.
Speaker 1: Now that's just the beginning. But if someone took that seriously,
Speaker 1: I'm not my thoughts. Okay, Now what are you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden? You have no idea? Right? You literally
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not bad, I'm not good, I'm not right.
Speaker 1: I'm not wrong. Man, woman, someone's son, someone's mother, someone's daughter,
Speaker 1: you know, spiritual unspiritual material. All the defining characteristics are
Speaker 1: ways that our mind is talking to itself, and you
Speaker 1: are there, whether you're talking to yourself in any of
Speaker 1: those ways or all of that ceases, so it starts
Speaker 1: to show you I must essentially something about me isn't
Speaker 1: to be found in any construct that my mind could
Speaker 1: come up with. I mean, that's a game changer right there,
Speaker 1: to really get it on a deep level. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: And I think the challenges to know it versus or
Speaker 1: to understand it deeply versus intellectually knowing it. That's where
Speaker 1: we come back to not abdicating your authority, and is
Speaker 1: spending more time and inquiry one of the ways that
Speaker 1: that realization goes deeper. Well, that's what triggers it an
Speaker 1: unresolved deep question is often what triggers are awakening. So
Speaker 1: I've seen if all we do is inquire, it can
Speaker 1: get very heavy, right, It can easily get just very analytical.
Speaker 1: If all we do is meditate, we might get really
Speaker 1: good at it and get into nice states, but there
Speaker 1: may not be that that element that creates that almost
Speaker 1: like a spark, right, a spark of insight. I've found
Speaker 1: that when these two are combined mind, then they tend
Speaker 1: to be stronger than either one of them by themselves,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's why I say I often call
Speaker 1: it a contemplative inquiry, so that the inquiry is trying
Speaker 1: to see uproot the beliefs and identities that we currently have. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's not it's trying to uproot them, but it's
Speaker 1: allowing the deeper revelation of whatever our nature maybe to
Speaker 1: come all on its own. But there is a danger
Speaker 1: with it, of course, any time we utilize our mind,
Speaker 1: there's the danger we'll just start sit around thinking about
Speaker 1: it all day. And you use contemplation as a different
Speaker 1: practice also, So you've got meditation inquiry and you talk
Speaker 1: about contemplation. How is contemplation different than what we've talked
Speaker 1: about with meditation and inquiry. Contemplation is admittedly the least
Speaker 1: of the three in importance actually, but if I didn't
Speaker 1: see it as important, I wouldn't have put it there.
Speaker 1: But contemplation is when you, you you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're reading something or listening something and something really strikes you.
Speaker 1: You know, um, I mean, spirituality is full of the
Speaker 1: especially in Zen these very sort of striking phrases. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't a particularly striking one, but just to say
Speaker 1: right that who I am isn't to be defined by
Speaker 1: any thought, image, or idea if you just kind of
Speaker 1: contemplated it and you didn't really think about but you
Speaker 1: just contemplated the phrase and you just let it be
Speaker 1: with you. And you only do this with things that
Speaker 1: really capture you. You know, when you get captured by
Speaker 1: an idea or a question and it kind of seizes you,
Speaker 1: those are the things that are useful for contemplation. It's
Speaker 1: just a phrase that you hang out with and it again,
Speaker 1: whatever that word or phrase is, if you just kind
Speaker 1: of hang out with it, it also has a way
Speaker 1: of going deeper than just the conscious mind and evoking
Speaker 1: something different because This is what we're attempting to do here, right,
Speaker 1: We're evoking insight or revelation. It's what it's all about.
Speaker 1: These are three means of evoking insight. H I think
Speaker 1: it's your most recent book is about the Jesus story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really you describe it as a Jesus story is
Speaker 1: a map for awakening, and it's a whole book, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to cover it, but maybe share a
Speaker 1: little bit about what you find so compelling in the
Speaker 1: Jesus story that ties to everything else that we've been
Speaker 1: talking about. Well, the thing that to me one of
Speaker 1: the most compelling things about the Jesus stories here you
Speaker 1: have at least kind of more from an Eastern perspective.
Speaker 1: Here you have an enlightened guy and he goes through
Speaker 1: this life experience and almost none if it goes the
Speaker 1: way that one would think it should go, right, certainly
Speaker 1: as disciples like should not end on the cross in tortuous,
Speaker 1: agonizing death at a very young age. Right, there's already
Speaker 1: this sort of very mysterious component, unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: the Eastern view. And that's an over simplification of the
Speaker 1: Eastern view, of course, but that Jesus is very much
Speaker 1: a person of the world. In the world is no,
Speaker 1: he's no retiring. Buddha doesn't seem to struggle in the
Speaker 1: same way, at least in the stories we hear or
Speaker 1: depicted in the same way, predominantly interested in creating a
Speaker 1: monastic order, because most if you listen to all the
Speaker 1: all the scriptures, most of them are oh monks, right,
Speaker 1: He's talking to a whole group of monks. And so
Speaker 1: he taught to a bigger, wider spectrum of people than
Speaker 1: just a bunch of monks. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of his teaching was around that he didn't go and
Speaker 1: jump into the politics of the day. We could say,
Speaker 1: in fact, he was a very skilled maneuver of you
Speaker 1: had to be in the good graces of certain politicians
Speaker 1: so that they would kind of give you a place
Speaker 1: to stay and not give you trouble. And he was
Speaker 1: actually quite good and skillful at working his way through
Speaker 1: certain politics of the time, whereas Jesus was the opposite.
Speaker 1: He's confront of right. If he sees his injustice, he's
Speaker 1: going to confront it directly and energetically and very vigorously.
Speaker 1: So this is a different archetype of enlightenment. One of
Speaker 1: them is a very transcendent archetype, right of the aesthetic
Speaker 1: of the renunciate, and then the Jesus story you have
Speaker 1: almost its polar opposite, right, the enlightened person as almost
Speaker 1: like as as activist and not just a little you know, uh,
Speaker 1: overly nice activist. He could get upset, he could get angry,
Speaker 1: he could get afraid. But here's the thing, yeah, the same,
Speaker 1: the thing that throw things around. The most surprising thing
Speaker 1: about that story, though, to me, was that in almost
Speaker 1: every other spiritual story that I know of, especially the
Speaker 1: well the well known ones in spirituality, the enlightened guy
Speaker 1: or the enlightened woman right ends up to be the
Speaker 1: hero that they seem to go through life without ever
Speaker 1: encountering much, if any, of the suffering that most everybody
Speaker 1: else does. They're almost hovering above it in the stories
Speaker 1: that were getting once the story gets told. But as
Speaker 1: we all know, there's a great difference between a story
Speaker 1: in real life, whether we're ordinary person, whether we're enlightened.
Speaker 1: The enlightened person's life is going to be very different
Speaker 1: than the story. Okay, So I've just found that very
Speaker 1: very compelling that they kind of this Eastern and Western
Speaker 1: view kind of complement each other and make things whole.
Speaker 1: We touched on this earlier and I wanted to get
Speaker 1: back to it, and this leads this kind of right
Speaker 1: to it, which is and I know this is a
Speaker 1: question at you know, if somebody who has awakened is
Speaker 1: seeing the world in a different way and somebody who's not,
Speaker 1: it's different. But the thing that I'm always curious about
Speaker 1: is what is life like for awakened people? Because I
Speaker 1: think we have this sense we talked earlier about this
Speaker 1: idea if I want to feel better, right, And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, myself included, for a long
Speaker 1: time pursued spirituality and believed that somehow the day would
Speaker 1: come when I would transcend it all and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have no more problems. Everything's gonna be fine, right. And
Speaker 1: I think as I've gotten older, I've gone that's nonsense, right,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that's true. But what is it that
Speaker 1: happens because it's clearly you know you told your story
Speaker 1: about your stomach troubles. I mean, as a person who's awakened,
Speaker 1: you go through challenges in life, life is still there.
Speaker 1: How is it different though than people who are not
Speaker 1: in that state are. It's something I'm always very interested in.
Speaker 1: It minimizes the suffering component, right, It doesn't get you
Speaker 1: out of difficulty, So no thing I liked about the
Speaker 1: Jesus story doesn't get you out of difficulty, doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you get a You know that life starts treating you
Speaker 1: in a special, nice way. You know you're still living life.
Speaker 1: Everybody else is living and you know you life is
Speaker 1: the way life is it. It has all the elements
Speaker 1: of beauty and tragedy that anybody else's life would be.
Speaker 1: I think, at least on a superficial level, that it
Speaker 1: definitely minimizes suffering. You don't have this self that you
Speaker 1: have to constantly uphold to yourself much less anybody else.
Speaker 1: This thing doesn't have to be protected all the time,
Speaker 1: because often what we're protecting is our idea of ourselves
Speaker 1: and by suffering. I think we've made the distinction on
Speaker 1: the show. We certainly, I certainly didn't think it up,
Speaker 1: but between pain and suffering, right, pain being You're going
Speaker 1: to have pain and suffering, at least the way that
Speaker 1: we talk about it is everything you layer on top
Speaker 1: of that, all the stories that you layer on top
Speaker 1: of that is that primarily what we're talking to out. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get you out of pain, but it's going
Speaker 1: to minimize suffering tremendously. I mean there's other things that
Speaker 1: go along with that, but a sort of a subjective
Speaker 1: feelings sense that would be I think accurate on a
Speaker 1: perceptual sense. It's just seeing life more as a continuous whole,
Speaker 1: as sort of one whole thing that's that's moving, that
Speaker 1: you don't feel separate from. So what does that actually mean?
Speaker 1: You know, that feeling of being a human being, a
Speaker 1: little tiny human being in this immensity of life. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the ego perspective. And when I say ego,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that as a disparagement. It's just a
Speaker 1: particular way to experience the world. One of the difficulties
Speaker 1: of the ego one is is we imagine that that's
Speaker 1: the only way to perceive life, right, But when we're
Speaker 1: going through life from the ego perspective, we feel like
Speaker 1: we're one little person in this immensity of life and
Speaker 1: we're just negotiated the best we can. And some people
Speaker 1: seem be really good at it, and some people seem
Speaker 1: to be really terrible at it, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the perspectives that really kind of falls away, that you
Speaker 1: don't really feel sure there's still a human being moving
Speaker 1: through the world through this immensity, but it no longer
Speaker 1: feels life, doesn't feel other anymore. You describe awakening as this,
Speaker 1: it's sort of just it happens. It's this very spontaneous thing,
Speaker 1: and it's a moment. It's a it's a thing that occurs.
Speaker 1: Is there a graduality in this? Is there a you
Speaker 1: know what I don't have that, you know, I'll called
Speaker 1: the fireworks, right, I don't have the fireworks, but I'm
Speaker 1: moving my way towards this less and less attachment to
Speaker 1: the thoughts, to the beliefs that you know. Is there
Speaker 1: a graduality in this that is useful? Absolutely? I mean
Speaker 1: not every awakening is you know, a mind blastingly you know,
Speaker 1: explosive moment. It can kind of creep up on you.
Speaker 1: I've had bowl even right in there, right at the
Speaker 1: moment of their realization kind of see it as like
Speaker 1: I'll be darn really really, you know, and somebody else's
Speaker 1: like they can hardly function, you know, they're so their
Speaker 1: mind so blown out. And the nice thing is that
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, how powerful that experiential
Speaker 1: quality is. What I've seen means almost nothing, give a
Speaker 1: year or two later. And it's just as likely that
Speaker 1: the person that kind of had it occur like I'll
Speaker 1: be darn. That's a real surprise, and someone that had
Speaker 1: a mind blowing you know, it's often the person that
Speaker 1: has the I'll be darn two years later. Often it's
Speaker 1: more significant. We've brought sobriety up a few times. But
Speaker 1: you know, in the A A Origin story, right, Bill
Speaker 1: Wilson had one of those shining yes moments, right. And
Speaker 1: but in the A A book they in the back
Speaker 1: they put from William James from the Varieties of religious experience,
Speaker 1: they put that, yes, some people have that at but
Speaker 1: most of you will have I don't have the word right,
Speaker 1: but a um gradual, a gradual spiritual unfolding. Most people
Speaker 1: will have some a gradual spiritual unfolding. The again, we
Speaker 1: run into paradox because the suddenness of it, like I say,
Speaker 1: suddenness can be I'll be darn, or it can be
Speaker 1: you know, something much much much bigger than that. But
Speaker 1: there is this sort of fundamental shift that's that's not
Speaker 1: a progressive thing, it's anymore than it's a knowing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when you wake up in the morning, when you
Speaker 1: got you know, when you first open your eyes, right,
Speaker 1: either you're awake or you're asleep. Yeah, there's groggy in between.
Speaker 1: But even groggy is awake. You know, it's not asleep anymore,
Speaker 1: it's you're groggy. So there's there's a there's a very
Speaker 1: definite transition. The transition just doesn't always have to feel explosive.
Speaker 1: And after the transition, the results for some people, like
Speaker 1: I said, a couple of years later, it'll almost be
Speaker 1: like a dream that they almost have no connection to.
Speaker 1: Although I've never met anybody that had a real awakening
Speaker 1: that wouldn't even if they felt like a lot of it,
Speaker 1: that perspective faded, that it wasn't still viewed as one
Speaker 1: of the more fundamental moments of their life. But it
Speaker 1: can go it maybe not that office right or somebody.
Speaker 1: Usually it's it's somewhere in between. You know, it just
Speaker 1: sort of disappears more or less and somebody just living
Speaker 1: in a very abiding state of of clarity. Let's say,
Speaker 1: after that moment, the other of the people are somewhere
Speaker 1: in between. Even when you know that the self separate
Speaker 1: self as an illusion. It doesn't, it doesn't. It's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that that experience of separation isn't going to come back.
Speaker 1: In fact, for overwhelmingly most people over it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna come back, and that's that's going to be part
Speaker 1: of their actual nous, even after that big revelatory moment.
Speaker 1: So enlightenment is a term that means lots of different
Speaker 1: things to lots of different people. But we're sort of
Speaker 1: talking about that. You're you're describing that that's not the
Speaker 1: end of the game. In some senses, that's the beginning
Speaker 1: of a different game. Yes, it's the end of one game,
Speaker 1: and it's the beginning of another one. And if it's
Speaker 1: really true, then one of the greatest hallmarks of awakening
Speaker 1: is the sense of seeking. Seeking Anything the seeking and
Speaker 1: the seeker falls away, that's one of the greatest things.
Speaker 1: And that's an immense relief because we don't really understand
Speaker 1: how psychologically weighty that is until it's gone. Right, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean just because the seeking is gone, that
Speaker 1: all the truth revelations gone. There can still be a
Speaker 1: lot more to see and you can still engage in
Speaker 1: your whole spiritual life, which is actually nothing other than
Speaker 1: life itself. But you can still engage from that from
Speaker 1: a point where you're not seeking anything. It becomes more
Speaker 1: an exploration than a seeking seeking means I want to
Speaker 1: get from here to their exploration is more like I
Speaker 1: want to see what's going on around here. There's certainly
Speaker 1: a lot of exploration and do even after read awakening
Speaker 1: so controversial question that you don't have to answer, but
Speaker 1: too psychedelics play a role because they certainly cause what
Speaker 1: would be described as for a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening. It's brief, it's limited, it's induced, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be significant. Although I know, you know, I
Speaker 1: did psychedelics at a point in my life where I
Speaker 1: wasn't seeking truth. I was seeking a good time, right,
Speaker 1: and they had a powerful thing, But I don't think
Speaker 1: they influenced the rest of my life in a dramatic way. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and for some people they do. For some people, you know,
Speaker 1: hallucinogenics have been very powerful door openers show and I
Speaker 1: think one of the most beneficial things for people that
Speaker 1: I talked to because it wasn't the route sort of
Speaker 1: I went through, but but um not that I haven't
Speaker 1: had any psychedelics, I know what the experience is much
Speaker 1: younger in my life. Um, but I can. It's often
Speaker 1: a door opener all of a sudden they realize, my
Speaker 1: God perception is moldible. It's not this thing that's frozen
Speaker 1: solid like I thought it was. It's actually much more
Speaker 1: malleable than I ever imagined. And sure people can have
Speaker 1: spiritual awakenings when they're under the influence of a of
Speaker 1: a drug. You know, a lot of it disappears with
Speaker 1: the drug, and eventually the transition will need to be made.
Speaker 1: You know, less we just we're well, only feel like
Speaker 1: we're in an enlightening state when we're high, you know that,
Speaker 1: which leads to some bad consequences. I can attest to
Speaker 1: you keep chasing that. You know, yes, that's right, because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, even though we've been
Speaker 1: the way we've been talking, it might suggest there are
Speaker 1: experiential byproducts that happen. They can be happiness, joy, relief, whatever.
Speaker 1: But itself, it's not an experience. That's the difference, is it.
Speaker 1: Most everything else is a spiritual experience that has a
Speaker 1: definitive time of beginning, middle, and end, and even awakening.
Speaker 1: The experiential byproducts have a beginning, middle, and end. But
Speaker 1: what we waken two, that's the truth, and that truth
Speaker 1: is there regardless of how you feel. So ultimately, the
Speaker 1: awakening isn't about a state, even though it has these
Speaker 1: states that are sort of generally speaking associated with it, right,
Speaker 1: which gets back to that ego of I want to
Speaker 1: feel that right and what it means when I want
Speaker 1: to feel that, which means I want to feel as
Speaker 1: good as humanly possible, preferably all the time, no matter
Speaker 1: what exactly. Yes, and we're utilizing that in spirituality. But
Speaker 1: the differences you're just not being held captive to it.
Speaker 1: If you're held captive to it, then you're doing anything
Speaker 1: that gives you a temper or a bump in the
Speaker 1: way you feel, and that you know that ends up
Speaker 1: to be a like chasing your tail, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I think that's a great place
Speaker 1: to wrap up. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I've really
Speaker 1: enjoyed getting to read and know your work and listen
Speaker 1: to you, and I think this is a been a
Speaker 1: great episode. So thank you, Thank you, Eric. I've had
Speaker 1: to kick with you if what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you. Please consider making a donation to the
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