Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 314: Damien Echols

Episode Date: November 24, 2018

Damien Echols, author, producer and one of the West Memphis Three, joins the DTFH! Duncan & Damien talk magical training, theory, history and Damien's new book, High Magick! Check out Damien's site... at [DamienEchols.com](https://damienechols.com/). This episode is brought to you by Casper (Visit [casper.com/familyhour](http://casper.com/familyhour) & use code: **FAMILYHOUR** for $50 off select mattresses).

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 One of the most peculiar species in the latin world is the Padeus Protectorus, which lives on top of its children like a koala. Let's go with you in case something happens to your car. Mom, I'm going to be fine. But this instinct about protectors is being extinguished, because State Farm is there 24 hours a day and you need it. So finally the parents are letting their children go to nature. Send us photos!
Starting point is 00:00:25 Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Greetings to you, oh beautiful friends. It is I, Dee Trussell, and you are listening to the Douga Trussell Family Hour Podcast. First of all, I just want to give a big thank you to the National Thanksgiving Association for awarding me for the third year in a row the most delightful Thanksgiving award. I did it again, I don't even try to do it, but yeah, this was yet another incredibly magical Thanksgiving. I started off four days ago where the various animals that we ate yesterday competed to get the good fortune of being in our stomachs on that wonderful day.
Starting point is 00:01:13 As it turned out, the goose from Miami Beach and the turkey from North Carolina, one unfortunately the pig from Arkansas, he just didn't make it in the singing contest and so we had to send him home. But my God, what a delicious Thanksgiving feast we had. We were covered in a variety of birds that kept flying down, not to eat food from the table, but to land on our shoulders and sing to us. But the peak of the experience was when we pulled out Uncle Jank's skull. We ran it through my cousin's astral nativitator and of course I recorded it
Starting point is 00:01:56 and we were able to hear Uncle Jank's who is still unfortunately in the part of the afterlife known as the Comma Dottu, the desire realm also known as the Hell of Hungry Ghost. See, he just kept trying to scratch that itch inside of him by getting more and more stuff and I guess he's still doing that even after he dropped his body. Take a listen to Uncle Jank's. We stuffed ourselves on that Miami Beach goose who not only won the singing competition, the positive affirmation competition, but also won our new category that we're doing, which is the DJ competition.
Starting point is 00:02:56 So any animals out there listening who are thinking about entering for next year, don't forget to work on those turntable skills. Here's a small sample of what the goose from Miami Beach laid down. To all the sweet animals that didn't win this year's Thanksgiving competition over at the Trussell House, better luck next year. Keep practicing. That's the key. You can't expect to be good right away and we're going to cut to 17 essential tips for learning how to get eaten at Thanksgiving right after a quick word from our sponsors. If you're not a druid, why are you sleeping on an old pile of twigs and bird skulls?
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Starting point is 00:06:14 It's way better than being stuck in the strange maze of a mattress warehouse where a potentially very grumpy person, grumpy, because he has to, or she has to spend 10 hours surrounded by beds but isn't allowed to sleep, hypnotizes you into buying some kind of supremely expensive this or that. Don't go through that mess. You can use Casper and you can be sure of your purchase with Casper. It's 100 night risk-free sleep on it trial. That means it's simple returns.
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Starting point is 00:07:41 I've slept on Casper for years. My friends sometimes call me, they're like, do you really mean it? Yeah, they're great. I don't like going out to shops and I especially don't want to go to a shop to buy a freaking mattress. I'd rather be looking at modular synths, sound systems. I don't know, fish tanks for that matter.
Starting point is 00:07:59 Calendar stores I would rather go to. I would rather go to a napkin store than shop for a mattress. It just gives you this weird aching feeling. We spend one third of our lives sleeping and the other two thirds of our lives imagining that we're not in a dream. Make the one third of your life a little more comfortable and less covered with weird yellow stains
Starting point is 00:08:23 to remind you of that strange sweaty night where you were grunting away desperately trying to find some pleasure in the thighs of a lover who left you taking all of your things and moving to Tahiti and never contacting you again. Much thanks to Casper.com for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Dear loves, did you know that we have a shop located at DuncanTrestle.com
Starting point is 00:08:53 with lots of amazing bits of swag, T-shirts, posters, things you might have never seen before. They're all located at DuncanTrestle.com in the shop. If you're somebody who's been listening to the DTFH for a while and have hissed in horror upon realizing that suddenly there are commercials in the middle of the conversation, I get it. It can throw off the rhythm of the conversation.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Some of you are driving and you like to skip over the commercials, which by the way, I only advertise stuff that I actually have used or like on this podcast. It's amazing to me that these lunatics are actually letting me pretty much say whatever I want in most of the ad reads. So I like them. Sorry if that makes me a little oinking pig.
Starting point is 00:09:43 But these are the people who are really supporting the DTFH. So I don't feel like they're evil. And yet I understand why you might just want to experience a pristine commercial free episode from time to time. So go over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and sign up. It's $5 a month and you will get commercial free ads. No more of having to experience the liquification of your precious materialism free inner ears
Starting point is 00:10:20 as they are putrified and obliterated by the cruelty of the consumerist angle of the DTFH. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. It's a great way for you to support the DTFH if you don't want to support it by listening to the commercials. Also, another way to support this podcast is just to subscribe and leave a little comment over in iTunes. But the best way to support it, just listen.
Starting point is 00:10:53 And I am very thankful to all of you who continue to do that because thanks to you, I get to enjoy conversations like the one you're about to listen to. I've known about Damien Eccles for a long time. I watched Paradise Lost. I know a little bit about the West Memphis Three. And I'm sure you've heard of this group of people that got accused of something they didn't do.
Starting point is 00:11:18 And this meant death row and solitary confinement and a lot of horrible things for today's guest, Damien Eccles. There's a lot of interviews out there with him and with the West Memphis Three about the terrible string of events that happened that caused them to go through so much trouble. And there's a great, I think there's a few documentaries out about it at this point that you could watch.
Starting point is 00:11:43 I made the decision during this interview to not really ask questions about that because I am more interested in his new book, High Magic, which is a really fantastic, very simple yet pretty profound explanation of what magic is, what hermeticism is, and also some great angles on meditation and Buddhism. I wanted to talk about that and we only had an hour or so to have the conversation.
Starting point is 00:12:14 So if you're here for West Memphis Three stuff, I'm afraid you're just gonna get magic instead. Today's guest is really blew my mind and it's really exciting and also quite transformative to be in the presence of people who have a disciplined practice and to experience the amazing energy field that surrounds folks like Damien. All the links you need to find Damien
Starting point is 00:12:45 will be located at DuncanTrustle.com. Now everybody, please open your third eyes, expand the great rainbow bridge that connects you to all sentient beings in this universe and all universes and blast today's guest with as much love as you possibly can. Welcome to the Duncan Trustle Family Hour podcast, Damien Eccles. Let's get started. It's the Duncan Trustle Family Hour podcast.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Have you read Reza Aslan's book, Zellet yet? I haven't. So it's a really great take on Jesus in it. It talks about how if you're looking for like a historical account of Jesus, mostly a lot of what you're going to get is people referring to Jesus the Magi or Jesus who is working some kind of magic all over the place. And so yeah, that's the concept is he was some kind of... Have you seen like the very earliest depictions of Christ?
Starting point is 00:14:12 Like the very first wands, they always depicted him holding a magic wand. Like there are even depictions of him bringing Lazarus out of the tomb by tapping the tomb with a wand. Wow. That is so fascinating, man. This stuff has always been of great interest to me. And also somehow for me these days at least, though I've had experiences with it, working experiences, like it works.
Starting point is 00:14:44 Yes. I mean, I think you're living proof of this. Exactly. And these days though, just out of a general realization of the fact that before I can know what I want, I need to know more who I am. I'm doing the first part of what you recommend in your book. And I thought maybe that would be a good starting off point for us is if you could, if you don't mind, I was wondering if you could...
Starting point is 00:15:12 And maybe it's a little long. I don't know, but I just thought this was such a beautiful, simple description of meditation. And I really appreciated the fact that you put this as the very first thing if you're going to start doing magic. And I would love to hear you read it. You got such a nice voice. Of course.
Starting point is 00:15:30 Just a little explanation even before we start. The reason that meditation is so important in magic is because mostly what you're doing is directing energy towards something. There's this phrase now, energy flows where attention goes. It basically means whatever you fasten your attention on is where you're directing this energy that there's a name for in every culture in the world, but ours. Like the Chinese call it chi, the Japanese call it ki, the Hebrews call it ruach, the Indians call it prana.
Starting point is 00:15:59 Whatever we fasten our attention on, that's the direction that our energy is going to flow in. So when you're doing magic, you want to keep your mind as single-pointedly focused on whatever you're trying to accomplish as possible. So that's what meditation does. It trains your mind so it's not constantly scattered and going into all different directions and dispersing the energy that you're trying to build up. Gotcha.
Starting point is 00:16:21 Good. Okay, let me see. I'm sorry I wrote all over your beautiful book. It's perfect. That's what it's for. Or should I start out right there? Yes, sir. If you don't mind right there.
Starting point is 00:16:33 Most people aren't aware of just how much they're missing from life. They're distracted by so much stimulation, trapped in loops of internal dialogue, relieving past events and feeling anxious about what's going to happen tomorrow. And it's so easy to carry on like this until the grave, never actually experiencing the richness of life of the present moment. Meditation changes all of this. It enables you to pay attention to the present moment and train your mind to do what you want it to do.
Starting point is 00:17:03 Meditation enhances your natural ability to be alert and aware. Try biking down Fifth Avenue absentmindedly. You can't do it. Well, not for very long. Riding a bicycle in that situation requires incredible awareness. And if you're not present for every single second of that ride, you'll end up beneath a city bus before you know it. Additionally, a bicycle will actually drift in whatever direction your attention is focused.
Starting point is 00:17:29 Remember the chapter on the power of attention? And if you've ever learned to drive a motorcycle, you know how important this principle is. If you look at the tree you're about to hit, instead of the path you need to take to avoid that tree, you'll hit the tree every time. It's the same reason why they train race car drivers to never look at the wall. The drivers learn to focus their attention on the track and all of the action going on around them. So this is why meditation is important.
Starting point is 00:17:57 If you're not aware of precisely where your attention is, it's kind of hard to change that focus. Biking in New York is a demonstration of the primary principles of magic in real time. Meditation empowers you to notice where your attention is going and to steer it accordingly. In magic, we steer it toward what we desire instead of on that which we fear. That is great. Thank you. Wow, man, this is so good.
Starting point is 00:18:23 You know, you run into books on magic. I mean, Crowley, wow, but Jesus, he sure comes across as somber sometimes. Yes, he does. And it takes forever to sort of crack open what he's even saying. You know, you've got to learn so much other stuff before you can even begin to understand what the hell he's actually talking about a lot of times because so much of it is written in a kind of code. Yes.
Starting point is 00:18:47 Yeah, that's right. And which is great. And I understand that I think that his reasoning behind that was more than just how funny it is to do that, but also knowing that there's certain layers to this where if people jump ahead too far, you can really blow your face off with this stuff, so to speak, right? Well, yeah. And the reason for that is because, you know, when you're talking about eastern traditions, eastern paths, you know, like Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, things like that,
Starting point is 00:19:12 most of these practices are set up to lead you to this state of what they call enlightenment, awakening, what in magic we call crossing the abyss. Eastern traditions are focused on doing that over a period of several lifetimes. Magic is like pouring jet fuel on that process. It aims to accomplish it in one lifetime. So what you're trying to do is cram several lifetimes of spiritual and energetic experiences into one, and that can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Oh, that's right.
Starting point is 00:19:44 Yeah. And is that Tantra? That reminds me of Tantra. Yes. Tantra actually plays a huge role in certain aspects or certain traditions of magic like the OTO, you know, which Crowley was the head of whenever he died. So have you, I noticed that you have been ordained in Rinzai Zen? Rinzai Zen Buddhism, yes.
Starting point is 00:20:06 It was the tradition that trained the samurai in ancient Japan. When I was in prison, I had a Zen master that would come back and forth from Japan to the prison. And, you know, I set Zazen meditation for years. And, you know, honestly, I did not get as much out of years of eastern practices as I did months of ceremonial magic. And I think part of that, it's, you know, the same goal, the same, they're both aiming at the same thing, western mysticism and eastern mysticism. But whenever we, especially someone coming from my background, you know, just poor white trash from Arkansas
Starting point is 00:20:42 who has no connection to, you know, any eastern tradition at all, I had to learn that stuff from scratch. Yeah. So it was like learning an entire different language. Whereas magic deals with western iconography, symbolism, things that, you know, we've grown up having shoved into our psyche from the second we came into this world. So I think part of us, some really deep internal part, responds to it a lot quicker than it does the eastern traditions. Oh, right.
Starting point is 00:21:10 I've heard different versions of what you're saying. That's cool. Right. Like, you know, for example, like, let's take Ganesh, you know, like, or maybe Hanuman, for example, you know, the monkey god. It's like, this is a very powerful symbol. But how many of us have had any real experience with monkeys in the wild? Exactly. You know, but when they were writing about it, this was because this is a symbol.
Starting point is 00:21:32 They were grabbing something. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. We didn't have many monkeys in Arkansas. Too bad. I love them. They are annoying though.
Starting point is 00:21:42 They are. When India, it's like, my God, I got chased off a roof by monkeys. They're really nefarious. I've heard about people having their phones stolen, cameras stolen. They'll run up and snatch stuff right out of your hands and carry it up in the trees with them. They know if you're a tourist or if you live in India, they could tell the difference right away. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:02 And if they, if you're afraid of them, man, they will, they have, then they're, they have a sense of humor. They think it's funny. Like, they're not just fucking with you for some kind of like survival thing. They're watching each other. Fuck with you. Anyway, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Right now, if you head over to Duncan.Robinhood.com, that's Duncan.Robinhood.com. You will get a free stock like Apple, Ford or Sprint to help build your portfolio.
Starting point is 00:22:34 Robinhood. It's an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options and cryptos. All commission free. I gave it a shot. It is very easy to sign up for. There are no commission fees or costs. Some brokers charge $10 for every trade. And what I like about it is that they have their own collections.
Starting point is 00:22:56 So if you're interested in investing in, let's say, social media, they've got curated categories to choose from. Given my shot. Hey, Duncan. Tell us a little bit about the Western symbols that people can connect to. You know, magic, ceremonial magic, what we call high magic originated in ancient Mesopotamia somewhere around 3500 BC. So it is uniquely Western. You know, that's not entirely the West. It's more the Middle East because it originated in a part of the world that would now be, you know, present day Iraq in a city called Napur.
Starting point is 00:23:35 What happened, the way we got it in Europe was whenever the Knights Templar were sent over there to escort pilgrims back and forth from the Holy Land to make sure they're not attacked by bandits, things like that. The Knights Templar come in contact with this current. And when I say current, what I'm talking about, you know how in certain Buddhist traditions, like say Tibetan Buddhism, they talk about, what's the word, they use empowerment or transmission? Yes. You know, it's like a current of energy that has passed along from master to student. Ceremonial magic is the exact same thing. The Knights Templar started receiving this current whenever they were over there. That's how it makes its way back to Europe.
Starting point is 00:24:13 It makes it, from Europe, it makes its way to the United States eventually through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was the order that Crowley was a member of before he, you know, went off to the OTO. You had McGregor Mathers, Dion Fortune, the poet W.B. Yates. All of these people were members of the Golden Dawn. That's how this current makes its way to the U.S. I forgot what the hell we were talking about. We're talking about the transmission, what's also known as the Disciplic Succession. Yes. People think, here's the thing that is so important that I want people to understand about magic whenever I talk about it a lot of times.
Starting point is 00:24:47 When we're talking about something being an oral tradition, we sort of live under this misunderstanding that that means it's just a bunch of stories told, handed on. That's not what this means. What an oral tradition is, it means the way this current of energy is passed from one person to another is through the voice. You know, our voice is sound waves. We're creating sound waves which carry information. That's why, you know, in the Bible, I always tell people the Bible is the greatest book of magic ever written. Once you know how to read it, you know, the whole thing in the very first chapter of the Bible they're talking about in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. That's because this is an oral tradition.
Starting point is 00:25:27 There are basically two ways that magic is passed on. Does that make sense? There's two ways that magic is passed on. One is through like a lodge or order setting, you know, like the Golden Dawn. That's more like a curriculum type thing, like a school. You know, everybody's learning the same thing at the same rate. The other way is like master to student, master to student, and that allows for things that are a little more profound just because you're not learning the same thing as everyone else. If it's someone who knows what they're doing, they can judge, you know, where you're at mentally, where you're at emotionally, where you're at spiritually and figure out what it is that you need to sort of set off these bombs in your head that cause epiphanies and realizations and things like that.
Starting point is 00:26:14 So that goes all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Maybe further back. Well, I think the whole of our species has forgotten because I don't know if you've been following this Greenland ice sheet meteor impact thing we just found. Someone I've had on the podcast a few times, Graham Hancock. Fingerprints of the gods. That's right. Right. I know who that is. And he's, you know, just he's just a brilliant human.
Starting point is 00:26:43 But basically, the idea is that there was some kind of very advanced civilization on the planet that got wiped out because a meteor smashed into the ice where there were ice caps at the end of this lesser dreedrius period, which caused the sea levels to instantly overnight rise by like four feet causing massive floods that wiped it. And that's the flood story. Yeah, but there were like some people who survived from the civilization and they went out into the world and tried to like spread this energy. Yes. Right. Which is the oral tradition as you're calling it, which we really kind of blows my mind. I want to talk a little bit about the what you just said there because it's it seems like what you're saying is that words themselves or the energy behind. Is it the is it the words that have the energy or is it the energy coming out of the person saying the word combination of both?
Starting point is 00:27:40 For example, you can only pass the current if you've received the current. Like you could say the exact same words that a person who's holding the current would say. And if you're not holding the current, it's not going to transmit. You have to be holding the current and have the right words. It's a combination of both. And you know, that's why we have things the energy behind it. That's where things like mantras come from. Right.
Starting point is 00:28:05 You know, even if it's just on things of that nature, it is very specific vibrations. Everything is energy. You know, we're starting to learn from science now. It's just catching up to us. We think that what we experience out here is real. You know, we think this table is solid. We think our bodies are solid. Yes.
Starting point is 00:28:23 We think these bottles are solid. Almost nothing is actually solid. We know now from science that something like 0.001% of everything that we perceive actually has solid mass to it. Over 99% of what we perceive of reality is empty space. You know, now we know that there's protons, neutrons, electrons, waves, particles, but they're just like these tiny little dots moving in infinite empty space. Yeah. We don't know what over 99% of the universe is made of because our senses do not allow us to perceive it.
Starting point is 00:29:00 We can't even perceive the entire light spectrum. So all of this, this empty space is energy. Almost everything that exists is pure energy. The two things that I use whenever I'm teaching people magic that I rely on the most. Number one is the Bible. And number two, as strange as it may sound, is that movie The Matrix. Okay. What I always bring up is that scene where Neo goes to see the Oracle and the little bald kid is in the room bending spoons.
Starting point is 00:29:26 And Neo says, how do you do that? And the kid says, don't try to bend the spoon because that's impossible. Just know that there is no spoon. That's the key to causing some sort of manifestation in the physical world using magic. There's two reasons to do magic. One is for manifesting something and that can be anything from a parking spot to the career you want, to the relationship you want to be in, whatever it is, all about creating something. The other reason for doing magic is what I call spiritual sustenance,
Starting point is 00:29:55 where you are deliberately invoking energy and intelligences that you then absorb into your energy system, into your aura to make you grow, make you change, trigger epiphanies, realizations, shifts in consciousness, things of that nature, that allows you to, some of this sounds crazy, but what it does is allows you to see that current of energy. Everybody has human teachers in the beginning. People that teach us magic, people that teach us meditation, whatever it is. But the point of what those teachers are trying to accomplish is to get your consciousness to a state where you start receiving what I refer to as downloads directly from divinity.
Starting point is 00:30:38 When that happens, then magic itself, God itself, the divine architect of the universe, whatever you want to call it, starts to become your teacher. Most magical lodges and orders have a grade system. And part of this grade system, this is not anywhere even remotely near the beginning. This is like after you've been doing this stuff for years. You reach the grade where it says from this point on, the magician will look at every single thing that they encounter, come in contact with, and experience as a direct dealing of God with your soul.
Starting point is 00:31:12 From that point, that means there are no coincidence. If you are seeing something, if you are smelling something, if you are tasting something, it is God speaking directly to you. And the more you acknowledge that, pay attention to that, the more it starts happening in dramatic and really profound ways. So everything that exists is energy. That's why our voices, that's why our words are so important. That goes back once again to the Bible and the Book of Genesis whenever Adam is naming everything. He's given all these different animals names.
Starting point is 00:31:45 There is power in our speech. We have the ability to shape reality with nothing but our vocal cords. I always tell people, don't focus on what you don't want, focus on what you want. Most people spend their lives complaining about things they don't like. They constantly talk about what's wrong with the world. So you're adding power to it. You're giving it chi, you're feeding it. We're supposed to focus on what it is that we're wanting to move towards instead of away from.
Starting point is 00:32:18 So if someone asks you, just for example, you don't have to lie when something is bad. If you have a cold and someone says, are you sick? That doesn't mean say no. It means say, I'm getting better minute by minute. Oh, that's great. My wife, I wish you were here. She would love that. Thank you for the correction.
Starting point is 00:32:39 I fucking do the first thing you said out of pure superstition. So if I'm sick, I definitely did. No, I'm fine. Oh, shit, that's great. I'm getting better. This is passing. It's passing. Well, just that example, when people are sick, people not only speak about the negative all the time,
Starting point is 00:32:56 they also visualize it all the time. And they don't even realize they're visualizing it because they think, when you hear the word visualize, you think it's some profound thing that you're doing in a room full of candles and incense and wearing a robe or something. We visualize all the time. So most people will say, I hope I don't get the flu this year. The neighbors have it and every time they have it, I end up getting it. And it's twice that, well, whenever you're thinking about all that,
Starting point is 00:33:21 what you're doing is visualizing yourself being sick. So you're putting energy into it. You are manifesting something you don't want. That's what I mean about how everyone is doing magic all the time. They just don't realize it. The point of doing these practices is to harness that, to train that. So you're putting energy into creating the reality you want to experience instead of the reality that you're fearing because fear is a very real energy too.
Starting point is 00:33:48 Yes, it is. And this, to me, this is, I think, why most of this type of teaching that you are engaged in is usually starts with a warning, which is this is real and it can be very, very, very dangerous if you haven't done the work to help dissipate that fear. And this is one of the topics I wanted to see if you could address, which is, what can happen is that someone comes to this in a fear state. And because you're afraid, you're in a hurry. Usually, as I say, fear is cold anger.
Starting point is 00:34:30 So you're kind of in a hurry. You're angry, you're afraid, and you want some result. Rightfully so, man. As I was reading your book, and I'm in a terrible state right now studying Kagu Buddhism with a really wonderful teacher, and I think part of that practice is you get in a pretty awful judgmental phase where you're like, people must be careful and we must all have a practice and discipline, discipline, discipline.
Starting point is 00:35:00 And then fortunately with Kagu Buddhism, once you've gotten into that state, that's when you start being shown how absolutely ridiculous that state is too. I think a lot of that, what it comes from, people for some reason think when they think about spiritual practices, spirituality, they think that we're here to be one with God or with unity with all that exists, all this kind of stuff. And they think that's what the only thing we're supposed to be aiming for. If that were the only thing we were supposed to be doing,
Starting point is 00:35:31 we would have never been born because we were all that before we came here. We come here for a very specific purpose. In Buddhism, they call that purpose your dharma. In magic, we call it your will. This is what Crowley was talking about any time he wrote about your will. Your will is your dharma. So the universe is not going to waste energy creating, you know, cookie cutter, duplicate people.
Starting point is 00:35:54 Everybody is here for a specific reason, a specific purpose. Now your will may overlap with other peoples, it may have things in common with other peoples, but there is still something, there is a very specific, unique experience that you are here to have. Most people don't realize even what that experience is. That's what leads to unhappiness in life. You know, people who just have this vague sense of discontent or angst,
Starting point is 00:36:20 where they're just, you know, just like, I don't, I just know that this isn't what I want. That's right. When you discover what your will is, that disappears. So what Crowley's writing, what he was getting, what he was pointing to is that the entire reason you are here is to do whatever you want to call it. God, the divine mind, whatever put you here to do. That's what he meant when he said,
Starting point is 00:36:43 do as thou will shall be the whole of the law. It means if you do what you were put here to do, everything else is going to fall into place. But before you know what your will is a lot of times, you have to go through the awakening process. You know, what they call enlightenment in the east or crossing the abyss in the west. Well, whenever you go through this process, suddenly everything that is not you, everything that is ego,
Starting point is 00:37:05 starts to fall away and you start to see what you really truly are and what you really truly are not. Now, when that happens, it will cause profound changes in your life because 99% of what we do with our life is ego driven. And by ego, I don't mean, you know, people, whenever they hear that word, they think it means somebody that's full of themselves and that's not what it means. Ego is anything within your psyche, anything within your consciousness
Starting point is 00:37:32 that creates the illusion that you are separate from other people, from God, from the universe, from anything. Any sense of separation that you have is ego. Well, what happens whenever you transcend that, whenever that starts to disintegrate, whenever you start to see through the illusion of ego, you start to see what you're here for and your first clue to what you're here for, what your will is,
Starting point is 00:37:57 is what really makes you happy. What is it that when you do, you lose yourself in it? You get so immersed in it that you don't think about anything else. That's what your will is. Well, when you start to reach that point, you'll start to look around you and realize the mess you've made of your life. It could be something as profound like the example that I give is, I've seen people that say whenever they go through this process,
Starting point is 00:38:25 they realized they were born the wrong sex. Suddenly, I'm awake, I realize I don't want to be a man. I want to have the experience of being a woman. That's what I'm here for. Well, if you suppress that and you say, that would upend my entire life and you start pressing that down, then it's going to create psychic tension, force, and pressure that is going to then manifest in all sorts of ways
Starting point is 00:38:52 that's going to make you even more miserable in life. Yes, it could be anything from cancer to just all of your relationships to disintegrate, you lose your job, whatever it is, because you are basically fighting against God. Wow. Does that make sense? Yes. There you go.
Starting point is 00:39:10 Who trained you? A little bit of everyone. A lot of what I had to learn technique-wise when I was in prison was through trial and error. I would just have to figure out things. Here's the thing I always tell people about magic. People will say to me sometimes, well, I don't believe in magic.
Starting point is 00:39:27 I say, well, actually, what you mean is you've never done it because magic works whether you believe it or not. That's like saying, I don't believe in meditation. If you're doing it and you're not seeing a result, that means you're not doing something exactly right and you have to keep tweaking it because none of our psyches are exactly the same. The technique or the way I do a specific technique
Starting point is 00:39:51 may work amazingly well for me, but you may have to tweak it a little bit, change it a little bit, do something slightly different before it triggers something in you. I had to learn a lot of that. I also had teachers. Like I said, the Zen Master from Japan. I had a chaos magic teacher, a guy named Steven Mace,
Starting point is 00:40:10 for people who want to look that name up. You can find books that he's written out there. We corresponded when I was in prison. Also, since I've been out here, I've come in contact with people like we were saying about this current of energy being passed on. Yes. What happens, I don't have very many friends
Starting point is 00:40:28 just because magic is my life. I do this for hours and hours and hours a day. This is not something that I do as a hobby or something on the side. This is the focal point of my life. I can tell. Just like sitting Zazen is the focal point of a Zen pre-slide. Magic is what I am.
Starting point is 00:40:49 That's why I wasn't miserable a lot of times when I was in prison. It's because even in there, in a hellish situation, I was doing what I was put here to do, which was magic. That alleviates a lot of suffering. Right. But I also out here have a couple of friends that are as devoted and dedicated to this as I am. We don't get together very often
Starting point is 00:41:13 because we're all spending our time doing magic. But whenever we do meet two or three times a year, the fact that we have all accumulated so much of this energy around ourselves through what I call the process of trying to get spiritual sustenance through these rituals, that whenever we do come in contact with each other, it usually triggers massive leaps,
Starting point is 00:41:38 massive expansions in consciousness that would take us each longer on our own than whenever you come in contact with other people who are doing it. Right. Most people that are doing magic in groups, whether it's witches and covens or magicians and lodges and orders,
Starting point is 00:41:55 it's almost like they become glorified book clubs. I honestly think it's better if people practice on their own every single day. Number one, you don't get involved in drama. There's no politics, any of that. And then come together for specific reasons, specific occasions. When that happens, it's like atomic bombs go off.
Starting point is 00:42:14 Yes. So a lot of what I learned also, a lot of the changes in my consciousness and psyche comes from coming in contact with people who are, you know, bearers of this current of energy. Absolutely. And this is the two thoughts popped into my head. One description I've been given of this current of energy,
Starting point is 00:42:34 which I think is the most perfect description of it, is fresh baked bread. It's like fresh baked bread. It's alive. It's warm. Yes. It's wonderful. Yes.
Starting point is 00:42:48 That's one thing about it. It's because like if you're hearing this kind of stuff, you might project in your mind some concept of, here's what it must be. Here's what it must look like. Because your mind is going to do that with anything. It's going to try to imagine. I know what this is.
Starting point is 00:42:59 Which is, it's great kind of, but also one of the big fucking problems is because this entire time that you think you know what something is, you are looking for what your mind is telling you. Yes. And it might make you miss the reality of what it is, because you're so focused on your conceptual idea of what you're looking for.
Starting point is 00:43:17 Yeah. Yeah. And so then, and then the other thing I really love about your teaching here is that it has within it the necessity of a community of sorts, of a transmission, of a teacher. And that's something I've always railed against
Starting point is 00:43:33 or I used to rail against until I got lucky enough to have a real teacher because this thing that you're talking about, the passing on of a certain thing, you can't get it out of just a book. Exactly. Impossible. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:43:47 You can't get it out of a book at all. But I also tell people, there is a way to come in contact with it without another person. It is possible. It is hard. Yeah. The example that I usually use to describe it
Starting point is 00:44:04 is say, for example, you're trying to get into a club. Now, there's two ways you can get in, and there's a bouncer at the door. There's two ways you can get in. One is you know somebody who goes to that club on a regular basis, takes you up to the bouncer and says, hey, this guy's with me. He's cool.
Starting point is 00:44:17 The bouncer says, okay, come on through. Cool. That's what happens when you come in contact with people with this current who pass it on to you. Easier by far. The other way would be, you know, you go to this line. You go to this bouncer every day. You start chatting with him.
Starting point is 00:44:33 You know, weeks go by. You give him a cigarette when he needs a cigarette. Eventually he gets to the point where he says, you know what, you're all right. You can come in now. Yeah. If you work hard enough, if you take, if you actually put time, effort, energy,
Starting point is 00:44:50 and persistence into trying with your whole heart to move closer to divinity, divinity will then move closer to you. For every step you take, it will take 10 to meet you. Yeah. So, you know, for people who don't know anyone who's practicing magic, I always say, don't lose heart. Just practice.
Starting point is 00:45:07 That's the main thing. Just practice. You will eventually start to get those downloads, those, those realizations, those epiphanies, all of that sort of stuff. It can't, it is entirely possible without help. But having help does really facilitate the process. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:45:27 And maybe I love the description of the bouncer, by the way, the guardian. And then, but also the, if you're having this conversation with a bouncer, so to speak, more than likely the bouncer is going to introduce you to somebody else in line. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:45:44 That, you know, just like in my case, you know, it's like one day, you know, I didn't know these guys, you know, I had actually gotten disenchanted and sort of disillusioned with the magic community. You know, at one point I moved up to Massachusetts to Salem thinking, okay, you know, there's all these stores that sell like magic paraphernalia and all this.
Starting point is 00:46:04 So there must be like really hardcore practitioners there. So I want to go there and meet these people and learn from these people. I get there and there was fucking nothing. Yeah. You know, it was like a, kind of like a tourist town. Yeah. It was just for selling to tourists who wanted to take it
Starting point is 00:46:21 back home and say, you know, look, I got this bottle of herbs in Salem or whatever. I gave up. I was thinking that no one was really doing these practices anymore, that everybody was what I would call armchair magicians. Yes. You know, people who read the books or argued about it with
Starting point is 00:46:36 other people on Facebook or whatever, but wasn't actually, you know, doing what was going to lead to growth. It was then sort of giving up and letting go of that that I did actually start to come in contact with people who were doing it. And I realized, oh, this isn't dead at all. This is a very alive current that there are people out there working with and passing on.
Starting point is 00:46:59 Yeah. And they seem to want you to get out there and talk about it a little bit. I mean, that's the other side of it is there. It isn't as the, I think there's a kind of graceful quality to the teachers who understand that, man, if I go slamming somebody with this right now, it's not going to be good for them.
Starting point is 00:47:19 It's just going to confuse them. Yes. Or even worse, it's going to make them like turn their backs on something. Yep. This is why, you know, when you hear in free masonry, if you want to be a mason, ask a mason, you know, they put that out there.
Starting point is 00:47:35 Yes. You know, it's not like no one's recruiting necessarily for this. Exactly. And that's not a prideful, I don't think the decision behind that is prideful as much as compassionate. That, and it also weeds out those who want it. And it also sort of, you know, raises up those who are
Starting point is 00:47:53 actually doing it. Because if someone comes up to you and says, you know, hey, I want to be a mason. How do I go about this? Or hey, I want to be a magician. How do I go about this? That means they are seeing something in you that they say, that guy's got something going on that I want to get some of
Starting point is 00:48:08 in my life. Yeah. You know, maybe that guy's got some kind of inner peace, or that guy's pretty calm, or, you know, this is just a good person. So whatever it is you've got going on, I want to know what it is. I want to be part of this.
Starting point is 00:48:20 If, you know, Crowley, once again, he said, convert not, talk not over much, and let success be thy proof. Don't go out there and try to convince people that magic works. Let your life be an example. And once again, it's the same thing as in the Bible, whenever Christ is saying, if you buy a lamp and bring it home, you don't bring it home to put it under a basket or in a closet.
Starting point is 00:48:45 You bring it home to put it up high so that it will illuminate the room. What he's saying is that the more you use magic, the more magic will use you. Magic wants to spread in the world. Whatever you want to call it, God, the divine mind, it wants to bring more of his presence into the world. So the more you're working to bring it into your life and into
Starting point is 00:49:05 yourself, the more it will raise you up like that lamp so that other people see you and say, you know, what the hell's he got going on over there? It looks pretty cool. So you're saying there's nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to that sort of thing. Exactly. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:20 I know what you mean, but it's a funny thing, isn't it, where like, if you're having this experience or that experience, there's a sense that, holy shit, especially maybe in the beginning phases of it where you're like, oh, are you kidding me? Like it's not only is it real. Yes, you do. You want to go through the world in the beginning.
Starting point is 00:49:41 I think everybody has, whenever you start to see, oh my God, this actually works, you want to start running around telling people, you know, stop watching Jerry Springer and look at this. Yeah. You know, stop worrying about what celebrities are getting divorced today and look at this. I found something that you can use to change your life. But nobody really wants to see it.
Starting point is 00:50:01 And I think it's because we're all at different levels of consciousness. You have to wait for someone's consciousness to evolve to a vibratory rate that is going to be acceptable, you know, is going to be in a frame where they can accept this teaching. Even if they haven't reached that state of consciousness, even if you can convince them to sit down and look at these teachings, they're not going to get anything out of it.
Starting point is 00:50:25 Right. They're going to click because they're not in the right pearls. Exactly. That's exactly what that means. Yeah. And I mean, it's a kind of, there had to have been a nicer way to say it, but I get it, man.
Starting point is 00:50:38 The guy was going to get crucified. He probably wasn't feeling so great about him. Exactly. Oh, man. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think that the reason you ended up imprisoned is because this sounds so weird.
Starting point is 00:50:58 Good karma in the sense that we don't have, like, you know, in the type of Buddhism I'm studying, many of the great teachers, they had to go up into caves. Yes. I absolutely, this will sound crazy to people, but I absolutely do. I am thankful now for the time that I spent in prison. You know, even for some of the most horrible things that
Starting point is 00:51:22 happened to me, say, for example, you know, when I was beaten so bad that I was in a lot of physical pain, if I would have been out here, I could have just went to a doctor. I didn't have that option in there. I had to find ways to help me cope with not only the emotional and mental anguish that I was going through, but also the physical anguish, the physical pain. So that pushed me constantly to keep exploring what was
Starting point is 00:51:49 possible with these practices. The more results I experienced, the more it started to convince me that, well, I'll just say that by the time that I got out of prison, I didn't even feel like I was in prison anymore. My cell almost felt like a control tower where I could reach out and touch anything in the world. By the time I walked out, I was doing up to eight hours a
Starting point is 00:52:12 day of these practices. I look at people out here now who think that I had like a horrible life, and don't get me wrong, there were some pretty unpleasant aspects of it, whether it was beating or starvation or just living in fear sometimes that these people are going to kill you at any minute, whatever it is. Still, I think I had a better life than most of the millennials I see that are sort of flailing around out
Starting point is 00:52:40 there now, trying to figure out who they are and what they're going to do with them. I never had to experience any of that. I always knew what I was, I always knew what I was supposed to be doing, and I kind of embraced that. Wow. When you say control tower and reaching out, do you mean that you were doing some form of astral projection or
Starting point is 00:53:04 some kind of... That is part of magic. And I don't like that word actually, but I don't know another word to use, astral projection, just because it sounds so kind of flaky and new agey. The guy I'm working with, the guy's teaching me Buddhism right now, I brought up astral projection the other day, and he said almost the identical thing.
Starting point is 00:53:22 He's like, I don't know about that word. Yes, but here's the thing that people don't understand. In our society now, well, not just our society in the West, but also in the East, we've sort of arrived at this conclusion somehow, spirituality has become so watered down that we think enlightenment is the be all and the end all of spiritual practice. It's the finish line.
Starting point is 00:53:40 It's not. There are actually things that come after that. What we think of as enlightenment is the first step in a process. In magic, what they call in the East enlightenment, we call solar consciousness because the sun represents Christ, Christ being the son of God, all this sort of thing.
Starting point is 00:53:58 Solar consciousness means that you are completely and absolutely in the present moment, just like whenever you achieve enlightenment. After you develop solar consciousness, the next step in this process is developing what we call the solar body, which is very similar to in dog chin. You know, people think dog chin is Buddhism. It's actually, it actually predates the birth of the
Starting point is 00:54:20 Buddha by something like 6000 years. What happened is the native tradition of bond in Tibet was a magic practice. Well, whenever Buddhism started moving into Tibet, these two things integrated combined to perform Tibetan Buddhism, which is why Tibetan Buddhism looks so radically different from like Zen and it looks different from Vietnamese Buddhism and it looks different
Starting point is 00:54:42 from Korean Buddhism. That's because Tibetan Buddhism still has a incredibly strong magical presence. Yeah. Well, in dog chin, the end result of their practice, what they're aiming for is what they call building the rainbow body. Now, if you've ever looked up like monks, Lamas that have
Starting point is 00:55:00 completed this process, you'll see after a period of about seven days after they die, they don't move the body. Other Lamas, other monks come in and they continue the practices around the body, but at for seven days, the body will start to shrink until after about, you know, a week long period, you end up with something that looks almost like a small mummified form that they
Starting point is 00:55:21 say there's no putrification, there's no smell of decay, any of this sort of stuff. They then put that little mummy looking thing on a shrine and it stays there. It's like a holy relic. In magic, we're aiming for the same process. They say that if you reach the very, very end of what you're supposed to be doing here, the only thing that
Starting point is 00:55:43 will be left within seven days after your death is hair, fingernails and toenails. The reason those things are left is because they're not connected to your nervous system. Your nervous system is the key to a lot of these practices. That's why whenever they go to, you know, the tomb after they crucify Christ, they say there's no body
Starting point is 00:55:59 there. Well, that's because he was doing these practices. There wouldn't be a body there. Anytime you see in the Bible where it's talking about someone ascending to heaven, body and soul, that's what they're talking about. Now there aren't many. Like I said, this is not a practice that everyone
Starting point is 00:56:13 masters. The only people in the Bible that talks about doing it were Christ, Elijah, Enoch and in some accounts Mary Magdalene. So it's not like a thing that is like really easy to do. But part of this process, when you're building what we call the solar body, you are building a vehicle
Starting point is 00:56:36 to allow your consciousness to not disintegrate at the point of what we call the second death. You know, the first death is when the physical body dies. The second death is whenever your astral or etheric body begins to unravel. That's whenever your consciousness goes through this sort of cosmic washing machine.
Starting point is 00:56:55 Every aspect of personality is washed out of it. You're left with a kernel of pure energy which has been recycled into something else. If you develop the solar body, that doesn't happen. You put your consciousness into the solar body at the moment of death. You then become something similar to what in
Starting point is 00:57:15 Eastern traditions they would call a bodhisattva. Not entirely, not exactly the same. But your consciousness is then completely unbroken for eternity. You will never again go through the process of being born and not remembering who or what you are or anything else. From that point on, you can come into the physical
Starting point is 00:57:35 realm when, where and how you choose if you choose to do so. The point is to help other people complete this process. You know, Beethoven said that the point of being alive, the point of being human is to approach divinity as closely as you possibly can and then disseminate those rays out to mankind.
Starting point is 00:57:54 That's what we're doing with magic also. First, you want to develop the solar consciousness or go through the process of enlightenment. Then you build the solar body. Astral projection is a huge part of that process. If you can project your consciousness into other realms, into other objects, then you can project it into the solar body.
Starting point is 00:58:16 After you develop the solar body, you are then free to basically do whatever the hell you want to do. You can help other people accomplish the process. You can form your own universe. Whatever the hell it is you're wanting to do, that's the end of the solar body. Wow.
Starting point is 00:58:33 This is so cool, man. I'm so happy to be chatting with you because it's so nice because really what you're saying is the reason to do this is to help. It's not like, and this is what I love. It's because it's not like these beings, maybe bodhisattva is the right word for it. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:58:55 In magic, they usually call, and this is another word that sounds horrible, but they call them secret chiefs. Secret chiefs? Yeah. Yeah. And this is when we were talking earlier, you were saying that there is this possibility that you can actually make contact with someone who isn't in a body.
Starting point is 00:59:12 Exactly. Who can start teaching you. Exactly. Potentially. Regardless of where you may be. Exactly. Yeah. And this is actually one of the teachings in one of the
Starting point is 00:59:24 teachers in Tibetan Buddhism. I think his name was Tilopa. This is how he learned, was not from an embodied person, but from I think the Avalokita Shavara Buddha came to him directly and he got the transmission. Yes. So the spark can not just only be passed from human to human, but it can also be passed from.
Starting point is 00:59:49 I'll tell you two things. One is that's partially you ask who trained me, how did I learn all this? That's partially what started to happen to me after a certain point. When I got to where I was doing magic for like five hours a day, I experienced the disintegration of ego of what I thought I was.
Starting point is 01:00:11 The only way I can articulate it is I experienced myself as something like someone throwing a handful of sand into a tornado. Like I just come apart. It was terrifying. You know, when we think of going through this process that we call enlightenment, we think it's like all bliss and flowers.
Starting point is 01:00:28 It's not. You die. Everything you think you are comes apart. I was absolutely terrified. I was convinced I was going to die for a short period of time. What eventually happened was I realized, well, if I'm disintegrating, then who is it that's watching the
Starting point is 01:00:48 disintegration process? I can't be disintegrating if I'm watching the disintegration. Therefore, I'm not what I thought I was. I am this observer that's sort of in the background of what I thought I was. Once I realized that, once that clicked into place, suddenly everything was okay.
Starting point is 01:01:08 Then this is where you start to sound crazy to people sometimes. It's exactly like what you described with the guy who was saying he received these teachings from Avalokiteshvara. I started to download things that for me, these things pass through cultural lenses. That's what I mean about the things that are in
Starting point is 01:01:33 our psyche. For me, it's the Western stuff. What I started to perceive, the way that I recognized it was not as an Eastern deity, but as... It's hard to say this because it sounds so crazy, but as the deity that in ancient Mesopotamia, they called it Enlil. I had never heard this name before, didn't know
Starting point is 01:01:56 anything about it whatsoever. Whenever the process ended, the disintegration process, it was like suddenly, you know, you're in this storm, this horrible fucking storm that you don't know if you're going to survive, and suddenly it stops, and there's peace, and it's like the sunrise after you've gone through a week-long hurricane, and there's just this calm, and I saw...
Starting point is 01:02:22 When I say saw, I don't mean with my physical eyes, you perceive it somewhere internally. I saw spelled out, almost like a gentle wind moving across the sky, the letters E-N-L-I-L. A couple days go by before it even occurred to me that I'm like, okay, I don't know what the hell that is, but that's an interesting experience. It took a couple days before I even thought,
Starting point is 01:02:49 Google it! So I started looking it up to see what it is. One thing led to another, and the more that I learned, the more epiphanies and realizations I started to have. What I realized was, when you first start doing magic, you invoke angels, archangels. These are intelligences that underlie certain
Starting point is 01:03:12 energies, like it could be planetary energies, like Mercury, Jupiter, whatever. It could be elemental energies, earth, air, fire, water. It could be zadiical energies. Whatever it is, these are the intelligences that underlie these energies. You invoke those directly into your aura, into your energy sphere.
Starting point is 01:03:30 The reason you do that, what I always tell people magic, think of it as like a glass of water that you leave sitting until it gets, you know, stagnant and gross, like a fish ball that hasn't been changed in a long time. Take that glass to your kitchen, turn the faucet on, and just hold it under the faucet and let it overflow and overflow and overflow.
Starting point is 01:03:48 Eventually what happens is you're left with a clean glass of water again. That's what we're doing when we're doing magic. We're invoking these energies into ourselves over and over and over, flushing ourselves out. Right. Whenever I realized, whenever I had this realization, whenever I came into, you know,
Starting point is 01:04:08 brushing against this intelligence that the Mesopotamians called Enlil, once I started invoking that along with the angels, it increased the process a thousand fold. It was more powerful than anything that I'd ever come across in any book or that any human teacher had ever given me anything like that. That's what I mean about how in the
Starting point is 01:04:31 beginning we all have human teachers, but eventually the energy, the current of magic itself becomes your teacher. That's what started to happen, and for me, I perceived it in the form of this western deity that we call Enlil. Whoa, dude, that is so cool. I understand also your hesitation because
Starting point is 01:04:53 it's like very... Well, yeah, it makes you sound crazy, and that part of it is like, at some point I really do understand why lodges form because I think groups of people who are having these types of experiences for real because the problem is people who are authentically having a kind of hard drive
Starting point is 01:05:16 problem begin to have these experiences too, because not necessarily because they're going crazy, I think one way to put it might be, imagine if you couldn't control the blinds on your windows, and they were just flying open at random times, and you were having to deal with looking out at this crazy landscape. Similarly, I think people
Starting point is 01:05:38 live in these sort of enclosures that have these closed windows, they're sealed, and then when death happens, or disease, or catastrophe, or love, or psychedelics, the windows open up. Holy shit, look at that, I can't believe it. Shut the fucking window. Please shut the window. And this is actually, in the Bhagavad Gita,
Starting point is 01:06:03 the universal form, when Krishna reveals himself to Arjun, you see this incredible thing, and right after it, at some point Arjun says, can you go back to being my friend, please? Because it's like, I don't want to deal with that right now. I liked you with your normal forearmed version of you. And also think of, like in Eastern traditions,
Starting point is 01:06:29 we are not supportive of spiritual practice at all in the West. No. Not at all. Basically, the extent of most people's spiritual practices, if they have one at all, as they go to church once a week on Sunday, and even while they're sitting there, they're thinking about, I hope we get out of here in time before the game starts. That's right.
Starting point is 01:06:49 At least you tell somebody, oh, I came in contact with this intelligence that we call Avalokiteshvara, or Krishna, whatever it is. They're like, okay, cool. We got this story about this guy who did that. And there's this story about this guy who did that. And this guy, it's like, no big deal. It's just a thing that happens sometimes. Tell somebody
Starting point is 01:07:08 that in the West, and they're like, oh, you're delusional. You're crazy. We don't believe in that. Yeah. And it becomes, I think, at some point, I think it just becomes a little dull. Like, you don't want to spend two and a half hours explaining to your skeptical friend that there's the potential for these extra dimensional intelligences
Starting point is 01:07:32 that are really interested in helping this particular part of history. Well, and keep in mind also, when you are trying to convince someone, when you're having a two-hour conversation with them, what I always remember is the story of David and Goliath. The point of the story of David and Goliath is don't fight battles that there's not a reward for.
Starting point is 01:07:51 Whenever David steps up to fight Goliath, the first thing he says is, what do I get if I beat this guy? First thing he says, if they say, oh, well, you get to go and say, you beat the giant. He's going to say, fuck that, I'm going home. They tell him, you know, you're going to get gold. You're going to get to, you know, marry the king's daughter.
Starting point is 01:08:10 You're going to get all this. He says, okay, he steps up. He does battle with Goliath. Whenever you're trying to convince people of something, ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is this because there's something to actually be gained here? Or is this just because my ego wants me to convince this person that I'm not crazy, that I'm right
Starting point is 01:08:30 and that I had this experience? And if that happens, then what have you really gained from it? Nothing. Not a damn thing. God, the ego could be so embarrassing. It can. That moment when you realize you're really, you have zero interest in helping someone. And in fact, really, all you're trying to do, the way I've been
Starting point is 01:08:50 thinking about it lately is the image that keeps coming to my mind is how much it would suck to be kind of like floating in the ocean. And then like a lifeguard swims out there and tries to pull you back to shore because he thinks you're drowning. You're like, dude, I was just swimming, man. Like, I don't want some
Starting point is 01:09:08 muscular ass fucking dude, yanking me back to shore. Leave me alone. I'm doing fine out here. And sadly, I think I have been in the past been that lifeguard really let me help you. But you're not really like, let me help you're like, let me gain all the accolades from saving you from your. Well, I think it was Chogym
Starting point is 01:09:27 Trungpa called it spiritual materialism. He said it's like another trick by ego where you want to build another identity for ego as a spiritual person as helping someone. But if you think about it, when you know when you when most people are saying, you know, when it's ego saying, I want to help someone, what you're
Starting point is 01:09:45 saying is you cannot feel fulfilled unless someone else is lacking in some way, unless someone is beneath you in some way and they need your help to pull them up like you're this great high thing and you have to lift them up. So that kind of ego depends in some way on there always being need and lack
Starting point is 01:10:07 and what's the word when people don't have anything the opposite of prosperity, poverty. Yeah, it relies on people having a poverty mentality or a poverty type state of existence. Rescue fantasy. Yes, exactly. You're no different than that embarrassing old dude at the strip club
Starting point is 01:10:28 who goes down there every Wednesday to visit with Tanya because he wants to save her from her wretched life and she knows it and she's like, oh, save me, save me please because she's getting this kind of relationship can't happen if and it works on both sides, by the way, there's not just the
Starting point is 01:10:46 rescuer. There's people who are professional rescues. Yes, well, a lot of that comes from, you know, the fact that the bread and butter of ego is need. Ego always needs. If it doesn't need something, it will cease to exist. It has to need something all the time because it has a hole in it. Ego can
Starting point is 01:11:11 never be fulfilled. It can never be satisfied. So you always have to sort of be looking around for the next thing that you have to have the next thing you have to do. You can never exist in a state of contentment or ego will fall apart. And I think you also can have on the other end of the spectrum,
Starting point is 01:11:32 you can have people who do, here's what I always tell people, if you really want to help other people, sometimes that may not even look like you're doing anything. If you work on yourself, if you raise your vibratory rate high enough, if you collect enough divine energy, you are going to
Starting point is 01:11:51 change everything and everyone you come in contact with without even trying because you're going to lift their vibrational rate. So you could have somebody who is in a state where they do go to the strip club and they sit there and they affect everyone in there. There was even an old Zen story and I
Starting point is 01:12:09 can't remember which Zen master it was where the people from the town come to them and they're like, there's this brothel down there with all these prostitutes and they're just being sinful and wallowing in materialism and he heads off towards the brothel and they're like, what are you doing?
Starting point is 01:12:27 Why are you going to the prostitutes? And he says, somebody's got to save them. So he goes and hangs out at the brothel all day long. Yeah, you hear versions of this all the time. Like one of the, there's a Hare Krishna story about this where one of the devotees just was chanting
Starting point is 01:12:44 Hare Krishna, just the chanting of the mantra. This is really, I mean this is as all of my teachers, thank God, have taught me this because otherwise I would be a disastrous, disastrous missionary pig. But the teaching that they've given me is we work on ourselves so we can help the people closest to us. Yes. And
Starting point is 01:13:04 that's it. And that by helping, by the time you've gotten to the point where we're like, all right, I think I'm ready to help, you might notice that the people you were wanting to help have actually donated. Yeah, yeah. It creates ripples too. You know, you raise their, you raise your own energy rate, which raises
Starting point is 01:13:19 their energy rate, and then they raise the rates of the vibratory rates of everyone else that they come in contact with. You're creating ripples by just working on yourself. That's right. And also the other thing that can happen is the thing you wanted to help in them was in fact the projection of some broken
Starting point is 01:13:36 part of you. Yes. And so by working on that, you don't even see it in them anymore. Yes. That's, at least for me, sadly, that seems to be more often the case is the whole thing, whatever it was like, I'm gonna, this poor, this or that, it's just, it was some unbearable truth in your own heart that you didn't want
Starting point is 01:13:54 to take a look at. Well, that's the whole thing about attachment. You know, people have a really hard time. Even, you know, some of the Buddhist scriptures are really hard for people in the West to even understand exactly what they're reading. Like, you know, most people in the West have trouble figuring out or understanding
Starting point is 01:14:10 what is attachment. You know, what do you mean there's a difference in love and attachment? How do I know the two? How can I tell them apart? Well, it's exactly what you just described. What attachment is, is ego projecting onto other people so that you don't even see that person.
Starting point is 01:14:26 You don't even see the actuality of who or what the person is. You think, you see who you think they are. You see who you feel that they are. So, if you think you love that person, you don't actually love that person because you can't even see them. You don't see them as infinite consciousness. You see
Starting point is 01:14:42 them as whatever you're projecting on them. Yeah. Therefore, you can't even see the other person much less love them. You have to get through the attachment before you can experience true love and you can't get through the attachment until you start to see that it is like a projective quality
Starting point is 01:14:58 of ego. Wow, man. Holy shit. It is 205. This time went by so fast. I am so lucky. These great teachers. It's like I've created some kind of wonderful and forgive me. I don't mean this in any disrespect. A trap
Starting point is 01:15:14 for some great teachers. They come here and I get to get these wonderful teachings right in my face and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me and I mean this is fun. Like I said, this is my life. This is all I want to talk about. It's all I want to do. So, for me,
Starting point is 01:15:30 this, you know, it's like this brings me a tremendous amount of pleasure. Yeah, well, me too. Please, if you don't mind, if you could just tell listeners where they can find you. Are you teaching classes in New York? I do. Sometimes I also do
Starting point is 01:15:46 other places. I'm getting ready to do one. I'm going to be back here in California in, when's it? May? April. I'm going to be here in April at the Joshua Tree to do like a weekend retreat. It's going to be like two or three day a three day
Starting point is 01:16:02 retreat here in Joshua Tree in April, but I also do some in New York. They can find me just usually on all social media. I just go by my name just at Damien Eccles. Instagram is where I'm most active at just because it seems to have the less
Starting point is 01:16:18 negativity out of all the things. Or they can find me at DamienEccles.com D-A-M-I-N-E-C-H-O-L-S dot com. Great. Thank you so much. I'm going to have all the links to find you. It's been a real joy chatting with you. You too. Howdy, Krishna. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:16:34 Was that okay? That was the brilliant Damien Eccles. All the links you need to find Damien Eccles to be at dunkitrustle.com. Much thanks to our sponsors Casper and Robin Hood.
Starting point is 01:16:49 And much thanks to you for listening to the D-T-F-H. If you like us, subscribe. Give us a nice rating. Whatever you want to do, you don't have to do that. If you really like us, go to patreon.com. D-T-F-H and sign up. You're going to get
Starting point is 01:17:06 commercial free episodes of the show along with a lot of other stuff including access to our discord server. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Thank you for continuing to listen to my show. I love you and I'll see you real soon. Hare Krishna.
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