Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 541: Lisa Romero

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Lisa Romero, author and incredible, mystical anthroposophical meditation educator, joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Lisa, find her written work, and join the classes she offers at InnerWorkPath.com! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Apollo Neuroscience - Try Apollo's new wearable to improve your sleep, focus, calm, and to reduce stress! Visit ApolloNeuro.com/Duncan for $40 Off your first order! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

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If you hear too many birds behind me, too many fountains. If you hear too many waves crashing, perhaps you even hear the sound of a whale singing far beneath the Hawaiian sea, technically the Pacific Ocean. I'm in Hawaii. This is my last couple of days of vacation, but I wanted to check in with you and say, hi, we'll be back next week with the normal, incredibly complex, beautiful, nuanced, subtle, powerful, sonically invigorating intros to the DTFH. For now, I'm just here to say aloha.

I love you, and I'm really excited for you to listen to this conversation I had with the incredible Lisa Romero. I met Lisa during an episode of a podcast with my friend Connor Habib and was so taken with how mystical she is and brilliant she is that I asked her to come on the DTFH. And she did. And what you're about to listen to is a conversation we had about the astral realm, that liminal space that some of us go to in our dreams. Some people go to it on high doses of psychedelics, and some people intentionally

travel there using various means such as yoga or astral projection. We talked about this place and how it can actually be a little bit of a sand trap, a place you can get stuck in when you start taking up whatever discipline, mystical, spiritual practice you're drawn to. And we talked about what lies beyond this place. If you enjoyed this conversation with Lisa Romero, I would invite you to check out her website at innerworkpath.com. You can check out one of her awesome books such as A Bridge to Spirit,

Understanding Conscious Self-Development and Consciousness Altering Substances. You'll hear us talk a little bit about that during this conversation. Or the Inner Work Path. There's lots there at innerworkpath.com. You can also take a course with Lisa, hang out with Lisa during private sessions, all of this stuff you can find at innerworkpath.com. Now everybody, welcome to the DTFH, Lisa Romero. Lisa, welcome to the DTFH.

How are you doing? Very well. Thanks for having me here. I'm so glad you're here. You know, I was thinking how, someone like you, how do we even dive in? Let's just go right to the deep end. I've got a question for you. I realize that doesn't, if it does get answered, it's never answered in a concise way.

And it's one of these things that you hear all the time in the spiritual world. So my question for you, what is waking up? What does that mean? Everyone's always talking about waking up. What does that even mean? If you had to define waking up from the spiritual perspective, how would you define that? Yeah, that's, it's a great question because you could, in one way, ask that question several times on the path of awakening.

So first, the first awakening that you might understand, or we may all understand, is the sense that this reality, as we know it, the sense perceptible world. And that's not all there is. So that might be the first awakening for someone. Okay. But then there are also other awakenings where you experience yourself within other realms of consciousness. And that may be another kind of awakening.

And then there is what might archetypically be called the sort of awakening of the higher eye, the sort of wiser consciousness in yourself that you know is not your everyday personal particular self. So it's possible that this idea of waking up isn't answerable in one, for everyone, at the same point in the, on the path. And I think that's a really significant point for where we are as a collective today, because we can't just give one answer in the fact that we're all at different points or places or even different perspectives on the journey.

So what is waking up for you, what is waking up for me? And that's, I think, important to ask today, because it's not the same for everyone, even though we might have this kind of collective idea of enlightenment, for instance, the idea of awakening to the true nature of your eternal being. But that's not how it is for everyone today. And that old, older path of the illumination or the enlightenment of, in the Eastern traditions, that once it occurred, that was it, as it's very different today. We're in a certain way, we could call the new mysteries, and these new mysteries mean

that we're all working individually on the awakening that allows that allows each one of us to take our next step. New mysteries. Yeah, you know, it's, it, it's interesting to think about sort of the times before certain systems appeared in the world, you know, that before Buddhism, there was, you know, Hinduism, and there were all, you know, obviously all of the, like, thriving religions that, you know, were aware of, and probably zillions that we will never, ever know about, that were sort of the spinning rainbow wheel, like on your computer, as the mind of so many people is trying to process what it means to exist as a human.

And then it manifests as Buddhism or it manifests as hermeticism or all the, all of the different lineages and paths. So it's, it's interesting for me to hear you say that that could be happening right now, that we're actually doing that collectively. Is that what you mean? Like we're all sort of processing even more that could lead to some kind of, I don't know, a new thing, a new path, a new religion. Is that what you mean? I wouldn't call it necessarily a new religion, because in a certain sense religion has this connotation of a sort of blind faith. And I think when the evolution of human consciousness, we're not really willing to do that in the same way anymore. And that's why I really think this

individual awakening is essential, because you need to know this is really true for you on some level. Now, of course, you know, that's not necessarily, that's easier said than done, because depends again, where you are on the path of your own unfolding, how easy it is to accept that. But in a certain way, we can see that everybody's trying to find a reality that is really true for them. And in a certain sense, you could say a meaning of life that is true for them. Right. Well, yes, I mean, or just a truth that's true for them, right? Like, just that alone, it seems like people discovering some kind of stable reality that isn't based on the like insane speed at which things are going right now, meaning that one thing seems true one day,

the next day. Oh, no, actually, they found out that's not true at all. And so it can create, I think, a lot of insecurity for people for just sort of plugging into some kind of, I could see how just finding a truth, if I think you could make a fairly good comparison between popular culture, addiction to popular culture, and the mode of perception it creates to like a frenetic sort of dream state, like a literal, you know, when you've, I don't know, had too much coffee, but you managed to fall asleep, and you have that crazy kind of dreaming. You know, it's like that is can be your waking life. If you were adhering too much or plugging in too much to the you know, consensus reality, default reality. Yeah, so I guess. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think

we would say people are restless because we are constantly stimulated by a restless world. Right. But you know, I think that's why a lot of people are turning towards practice, meditation and so forth, to find that center, which is at rest, that is at peace. And in a certain sense, it's becoming almost like a necessity to, to manage this world, which on one hand is an ethatising, because we forget who we are and why we're here. And on the other hand, creates an over-stimulation, which almost sound like contradictions to each other. But yeah, it is quite something to navigate the times that we're living in. It really is. You know, in the like desert religions, you get this, you know, God's pissed a lot of the time. And one of the things you want to piss God off

idolatry, you know, like worshiping false idols, and I literalism is annoying. But you know, it's like, at least in the old days, if you were going to worship some golden cow, theoretically, like you, you had the cow, there was a place you went with a golden cow. You knew it. Like there's no mystery about it. You're worshiping this thing, whatever. But these days, it would be easy to think you're not engaged in idolatry. It would be easy to think you're a modern person. You know, when you're bowing down in this bizarre modern temple to these like ideas that are not very alive and certainly not sustainable, you know, so that's to me. And yet simultaneously, while all this is going on, there is something else, something else happening, something to me that if you become

hyper addicted to this stuff, which I have, when you start making contact with it, it's astounding, even though it's maybe the most normal thing there is, it's astounding. That's why I asked you about waking up because I'm curious how dream I know you mentioned these phases of waking up. I'm just curious from your own experience, how dramatic can this wake up be? Like how, how much can we wake up from this strange, illusionary, confusing temple where we're all sort of bowing down to a kind of, I don't know, chameleon-like, ever-changing, hypnotic phantom? Yeah. Well, I mean, it is interesting that it's almost done found in what we do with our time and energy, what we call life in a way. And certainly that expression arises from a certain

awakening that can happen. And so, you know, these new mysteries, which really are connected to the heart, in a certain sense, you could say the heart is the new mystery temple. But as we work into that place in our own being, we have to ask ourselves, what is the questions of life that are most closely connected to you? Because that tells you something about the responses you'll get from the mystery itself. Wow. So, you know, the meaning of life really depends on the questions you hold most deeply about what is life for you. In a certain way, but to use a sort of slightly eastern expression, you could ask this question, a grain of wheat, does it ask the question, does the sun shine on me? Now, that is a question that someone might be asking today about the spiritual realities.

But then another stalk or another grain might say, well, what do I do with this solar energy? It's a totally different question because they don't ask, does the sun shine on me? They know the sun shines. They know the spiritual world exists. So, it's not a question of does the sun shine. It's more, what do I do with this? Someone else might ask, well, how do I best transform this energy that's given to me? Right. Or someone else may be asking, will I give my life for the growth of another? And it's a completely different question. But the question itself says something about the meaning that will be in your life because it's the question in your own heart. And this is one of the greatest difficulties we have is finding our questions. What really is your

question? And then how do you, first of all, live with your question? Not answer it. Just live with it. Because just being able to live with your question starts to awaken you to something about what's important in life. And then, you know, I wouldn't hurry to answer it because you've got to be able to also live the response. And the response is a really interesting thing, isn't it? Because the response tells us that, yeah, what will I be asked of, of myself, if I really find my own heart's question? And so these new mysteries have something really potent about them because in the past, you know, the awakening was for the chosen few. And some schools of thought still like to hold on to that old notion. But we now know that's really not the reality we're experiencing.

It's not an uncommon thing to have varying degrees of waking up to the truth of who we are and why we're here and in the ways that we do. And that extraordinary capacity that each of us actually have within us means that it's no longer for the chosen few, but it is really for the many. But are we willing to go that journey when it does not necessarily make life more comfortable or more easy or more full of the traditional gains that we've seen to be, well, that the world tells us it's what we should be aiming for. A deep thank you to Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH and for creating the most powerful web design technology out there. I've been using Squarespace for years. For my podcast, you want to see the power of Squarespace website. All you

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try them out for free. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan. You're going to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Again, it's Squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. Try it out. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. So what is your question, do you reckon? My question is, how could this possibly be real? I mean, my question would be I guess it's a little cynical, but a sense of, I think a lot of people, I don't know if a lot of you, I don't know, I almost speak for a lot of people, but for me, I love, since I'm a kid,

I've just been really interested in all kinds of spirituality, all forms, magic, Christianity, Buddhism, you name it. I've loved all of it and it still never gets old. I love reading it. But I think that I've, a lot of the time reading it, I've thought to myself, this is just a game people play before they die, kind of fun way to amuse yourself during your human incarnation, but I don't know how much of it's real. And then you get a little more interested. So you start, all right, well, I'll start practicing this meditation thing or whatever, and nothing happens because it doesn't happen fast like other things. But then maybe you brush shoulders with something and you realize, wait a minute, it's real. And it's astounding,

that's astounding. But then this is where I'm at, it's like, come on, you're tricking yourself here, friend. You didn't, there wasn't, that wasn't, even though you, and I don't mean real, like when you're tripping and you see whatever, though that can be real. I'm talking about more of a kind of long-term, you just sort of watch your life change for the better. You know what I mean? That thing where you're like, shit, what is going on here? Like, where is that? Could this possibly actually be progress? You know, where am I fooling? That would be my question. And then, you know, aspects of it, I don't even want to publicly talk about necessarily, but just things where you're like, come on, that is incredible, but come on. So I feel very,

it's not like me, but I feel quite reserved and like going, giving all the details about it. But I think you grok what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what you're saying is incredibly common, because those first encounters with what is real, and because of the nature of it, it throws up a kind of doubt. And it's interesting, because a lot of the time when I'm working with people on meditation and in the development, many things that they have as experiences, they don't recognize to be a part of the path, but are actually signposts of progress. So one of the things that often people encounter on the path of their own development is they realize in a way how little love lives in me. And that recognition

is actually so painful to bear, but it's actually because something in you is now able to perceive that there has been a change in your capacity. Now, it can be daunting to experience that, but it is also a sign that true meditation is taking place, because we see, for instance, how we love to overestimate ourselves and put others down and see ourselves as great and grand. And as you perceive all those things, it's really not easy, but that's actually a sign of having a different orientation in yourself. If you're unable to perceive all that, then perhaps you haven't yet started on those steps. So experiencing doubt, experiencing even it interestingly enough, experiencing a depth of fear that leads to a kind of atheism is also

a part of a spiritual experience. And yet, so because we're getting this idea that a spiritual experience will all be about bliss and wonder, we miss so many of the signposts that progress itself is taking place. Even, for instance, there's a point in your meditative life where you can feel like there's like six radio stations going off all at once, you're never going to have silence, all you've got is more thought than ever before. But actually, that happens when you first start to loosen into this slightly body, it's not body less, but not as body bound in your consciousness as you were. The first thing you experience in a way is the highways and byways of astral life. And it is noisy, very noisy. And most people think I'm getting nowhere. But actual fact,

there is movement. And it is most of the time, we're not attuned to understanding the various experiences that may occur. And absolutely doubt is one of them. But then you get to a point where you just, you do not ask the question, does the sun shine on me? You go, it's there. I know it's there. What's it? What's it? Well, the spiritual world are the other dimension of being and eternal consciousness. There are many ways of which you will perceive it. And that's the interesting thing. I mean, this isn't supposed to be real. You know, that's the thing, Lisa, you know, it's not supposed to be real. Like, if it's true, the, you know, you hear it again and again, and it's pleasant, the veil that separates this realm from the next. There is a lot going on that you're not seeing.

A lot going on that you're not seeing, which isn't the most pleasant thing, even though it's cool to read it in a book. You know, it's like, I don't want an invisible person living in my house. You know what I mean? The idea that there's some possibility that there are things about that are aware of you, that you're not aware of them, and that there, it seems to be maybe a little bit more purpose to things than you might have originally thought. I mean, there's a lot of comfort and chaos. I know that sounds nuts, but you know, if everything's just pointless, meaningless, cosmic, sentience, bubbling about before it dies, you know what I mean? Like, great. That's kind of great in its own dark way.

But if we are talking about some bizarre, I don't know, Hogwarts for whatever we are, some of evolutionary temple or some kind of place where there's like, not just teachers who, you know, are in bodies, but like teachers who talk to the teachers in bodies. What? And then, yeah, I know what you're saying. Then what? And then what do you do? What comes after that? Like, what? And then especially if you can't forget it, like at least if you're like high as a kite, and you, and you like catch some glimpse of a thing when you come down, you're like, those are really great mushrooms. But what do you do when it didn't happen because of the mushrooms, Lisa, you know, then what? Well, so in here, you know, while you're talking about the various

planes, the first plane, you could talk about that as the spiritual atmosphere of the earth is full of a lot of junk mail and full of a lot of thoughts and forms that actually belong much more to our human consciousness, our hopes and fears of wishes and desires. And in a certain way, it's the psychic realm. And most people working with meditation are not trying to hang out there. And you're not trying to, you know, there's a difference between national travel, for instance, then a continuation of consciousness. And so you're not really trying to work to take your particular personality that's formed to this incarnation and play around in that atmosphere. That is a path that some people take. But I'm not really sure for what reason,

maybe it's entertainment, but it is not the path that leads necessarily to real wisdom. It will give you personal and certainly experience, but it's a curiosity that I would be cautious of because of what exists in those realms. So meditative life usually tries to bring us above that atmosphere, above the junk mail and to the point where you could say you enter into a school in where you know, for instance, you have a trustworthy guidance and you know you have a trustworthy guidance because the benevolent nature of this connection you have to this consciousness that is developed. And so that's a very different process. Now, I know in the realm of magic and so forth, working on the astral plane could be advantageous around

certain creation of form and so forth. But that's not really the goal of the path of awakening. The path of awakening isn't about the astral plane, it's really to work into the realm where those beings that support the progress of humanity and support your individual progress and the collective progress are working from. And you know, in some schools of thought, maybe in esoteric Christianity, we take about that as the hierarchies, the spiritual angelic hierarchies. But you can, it's not really the name, but their way of being in relationship to our being that is the most important. So there is a difficulty and that is to get from where we are in this realm of sense perceptible consciousness where everything I touch and feel

seems to be the only reality. And to get to that plane of being where you absolutely know you are a spiritual being among spiritual beings, you have to cross this threshold. And this threshold is where a lot of people get caught up. And this threshold in an interesting way is being encountered by a lot more people in this world today than ever before. Again, that threshold would have in itself been entered into by the chosen few, now the many are going there. And if you don't go there prepared, consequences can be states of deep anxiety, states of depression, states of sensing that there's no ground under your feet. You're not certain of where you stand in what's true, what's not true. And that process of that threshold up

is getting stronger in the world. And so we really need to begin, I think, to have a language or an understanding for what these different planes of being are so that people can make sense of some of the experiences they're having, and also strangely not take them too personally. Because it's a part of the path, but we need to know how to get through that threshold, not hang out there. I want to wish it on my worst enemy that I know what the highways and byways of actual life are like, and it is really difficult to endure. But going through there, now that's different. Can I get some confirmation from you? I want to talk about getting through it because I hear you and I'm totally like, it's like, do we need, we already have enough problems

like dealing with the people in this world, like I don't need a whole new batch of people I have to deal with or whatever you want to call it. But I want to talk about a dream. It's like, so here's the dream, and I'm not going to earbeat you with a long dream, it wasn't that long, but it was, you know, sort of you imagine, you hear the astral plane, another thing you hear all the time waking up the astral plane, you hear this stuff a lot. In the dream, I have gone into the astral realm, some part of it, at least in the dream, there's cities, there's cities, buildings, people living in the buildings. I'm hanging out with these people living in a kind of bohemian apartment or something, but it's in the astral realm. They're doing some kind of drug.

They're amused by me. And one of them says, we do the same things here that you do there. Like, you know, seeming like what you think with it over here is different at all. We have countries, states, buildings, the whole like, this is just, you know, I think they liked it there better. They didn't see it as stuck or anything like that. I think they felt a little more free or less encumbered or something. But there was a sort of, they seemed like they thought they were hot shit. But not in a weird way, just kind of like when you meet really cool people, you know, that thing. And then I woke up. I remember that dream all the time. And I think, my God, is that it? Is that what it is? Is that what's going on over there? It's just like what's happening here.

No, no, that is that realm between the earth and the moon, we could say, you know, in a spatial sense. That's the astral plane. And, you know, you have to get beyond there. Beyond there is where the real schooling occurs. But unfortunately, or fortunately, because, you know, it's different people's destinies, people do get a little caught up there. Now, I was one of those people where I, you know, I had a very natural sensitivity that I was very clear that, you know, I'm over my own thinking. So why do I want to know what someone else is thinking in the sense of, you know, surely just increasing my story into knowing all about your story on that astral level is not what spiritual development is really about. But there are certainly scores of thought that like

to work in that realm. But it is a semblance. It isn't real. It's formulated out of the stuff that lives in us. That's why it looks so familiar. But will you understand the lawfulness of karma there? No. Will you understand that the depths of what the law of love is there? No. Will you understand all the real mysteries that totally transform your life there? No. What you understand there is lots of processes about the human soul and the forces that get involved with that. Certain group souls of animals also can be met there and certain elemental forms can be met there. And it is a very, very, very difficult place to navigate. But I certainly don't spend any time trying to hang out there. My senses and it's my understanding that we have to go through that

threshold. And it's very, very difficult to, when you see people that are kind of half caught there, there's really sometimes no difference between that individual and someone with a psychosis at times because it is so shattering to the psyche for some people. So yeah, look, if you've got a doorway there, my suggestion for anyone that has a doorway there is go beyond that. Once you have that real sense of what the spiritual world is in its higher form of love and truth and all that it really brings the human being as true sustenance, it strengthens you in a way where you can take hold of this life very differently. We're not trying to create a metaverse with our spiritual development. We're really trying to find those powers that really

are the evolution of the human being. Now, the difficult thing is that there is some human being, those powers and forces that connect to the evolution of the human being. Because the power of love is an extraordinary power. The difficulty is that there is some relationship to this realm that we're talking about as the astral world. It's sometimes called the elemental world. It has named differently in different schools, but there is certain experiences there that are illuminating, but it's not the goal for the evolution of the soul. For my definite in my experiences, you would not want to put anyone there unprepared. You should really try to go through to the place where you find the solidity and truth of your

spiritual life, and then it's much more manageable. It seemed a little grimy over there to me. It definitely didn't seem like I get it, but it seems like I could see how if you became obsessed with it. All my teachers say the same thing. They're like, don't waste your time. But I could see how if you became adept at going there, not randomly in a dream, but you could learn how to do it, which I know you can. And that became your obsession. I could see how you would become kind of like an outflow pipe for some really weird shit into this realm. You would be putting out all kinds of odd stuff that I could see could probably give you some power. It could probably give you a little bit of swagger or something because you have this entire new group of people

or elementals or whatever it is out there that you are now like you're in a bigger weird community. I could see how you get into that. But this other place, to me, that's some echo or maybe we're an echo of the astral realm. I don't know how or maybe we echo off each other. But to me, where it does get astounding, where it gets really interesting is what you're talking that post whatever that is. That's what I'm talking about. To me, that's wild. Because that thing through there, it makes you feel a little transparent or something here, less real or less condensed as you thought you were in a good way, not a bad way. Absolutely. In everyday life, in a way, this is a sleep compared to how awake your consciousness is in those other planes.

Yeah. And there's quite something really to perceive that. Thank you Express VPN for supporting the DTFH. When you use the bathroom, you always close the door behind you, right? You don't want some random weirdo staring at you, watching you, studying you. So why would you let people look in on you when you go online? Using the internet without Express VPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door. It's like taking a piss in an aquarium at the beach. Did you know that your internet service provider knows every single website you visit? What's worse, they can tell other people about this information. They sell this information to ad companies who look at your search history and are

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number one rated VPN by Mashable, The Verge and countless others. So if you're like me and believe your online activity is your business, secure yourself by visiting expressvpn.com slash Duncan today. Use my exclusive link, ex-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n dot com slash Duncan. And you can get an extra three months free. That's expressvpn.com slash Duncan. Thank you, Express VPN. When you, in everyday life in a way, this is a sleep compared to how awake your consciousness is in those other planes. And that's quite something really to perceive that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm interested when you were saying about love being inside of you. Or how is, is love even inside you anyway? I mean, isn't it more like some emanation or

something? I mean, is it like a sun? Are we talking about some kind of sun thing here? Or like, this sounds nuts. I'm sorry, everybody. You don't get to talk to people like this that often. So forgive me. The sun, obviously. Whoa. It's like, I love looking at like the solar observatories of the sun. And just like, that's what makes food grow here. That thing is crazy. It seems alive to me. You look at it, it seems like the movement of the plasma is sentient or something. It's got like a, it doesn't seem unintentional. I don't know what it's doing, but it seems up to something. I don't mean that. And I'm not, I don't mean up to something like an nefarious way, but like, you know, like when you're watching animals or when you're watching anything that's got sentience,

it's like, you might not know what the squirrel is up to, but it's doing something. So anyway, is this other, this post place outside of that astral realm? Is it a sun? Is it, is it, is it a love sun or something? That's a great, that's a great expression. But you know, the sun alchemically is the heart, right? And so when you're in the earthly plane, you know, you, you perceive your heart, this is your heart. But in the spiritual plane, the sun is your heart. But we all say my heart to the same sun. That's an extraordinary picture. So yes, it's, it, this is what's so profound. Is it in me outside of me? Well, there's becomes no division in those realms of being. And the sun is an extraordinary picture of that, because it has light, which is,

you know, esoterically recognized to be connected to wisdom. It has the warmth, which is love. And it also has this life, which, you know, gives life. So this, this strength, these three forces of wisdom, love and strength that we really know we're on the right path as they're growing in us. And they're, they're, they're, that's when I talk about those powers in us, because they're not really in us. They are just a part of our ability to can't be a conduit for that force that is actually accessible to all souls. And again, I'm going to say it's not for the chosen few. It really is not any longer. It is, we are now a point where if we choose to, we can unfold these capacities. The greatest difficulty

is getting through that threshold where many things rise through that abyss. And a lot of people hang out there thinking that's it, but actually that's really a semblance of something that is a distraction from what is the real heart of spiritual life. What a crazy thing that there's another son. That's crazy. And then you, it doesn't strike me as something that it seems quantifiable. Like it doesn't, it seems like at some point it may be part of what you're saying that this, I mean, what an amazing secret. There's another son. You know, there's probably a better name for it, but there's, if you think the sun's incredible, wait, wait, just wait, there's another one that no one can see that's informing everything in a

specific way. Yeah. Yeah, there's a beautiful, I think this comes out of the Bhagavad Gita, which says, more radiant than the sun, purer than the snow, finer than the ether is the self, spirit in my heart. I am this self, this self am I. Wow. And that is an extraordinary, meditative verse that can help us cross that threshold, because when you're holding those pictures in your consciousness, you're not up to the highways and biways of astral life. You're not trying to work out if someone's having an affair with someone else or how to influence somebody's and have power over them. All that crap that does not belong there is dissolved in those words that carry us across that astral plane

and have us resound with the truth of what spiritual life is. And that's the interesting thing, is that if you don't carry in your heart the echoes of the true spiritual world, then it isn't illuminated necessarily to you. It will just be empty. But if you carry in your heart what is true to it, then it resounds back. And that's what we experience. What is in your heart? What's your true question? What is truly in your heart? Because that's actually going to be what reflects back when you enter into the spiritual realms. And that's how this thing is getting through the astral plane. Crossing the threshold is difficult. We know obviously we have to encounter our own shadow, all the things in us that can't cross because they belong to

the constructs of our earthly existence. But what can cross is that which in the depths of your soul already resounds and sounds with the truth of spiritual life. Lisa, could it kill you? Could you theoretically just by some stroke of luck or something cross the like maybe it's not as difficult to cross the threshold. You've been to Burning Man. You've been to the raves. You're not tricked by the astral realm. You know what's going on here. It's the same thing. But no offense, burners or whatever. But I've never seen a more physical manifestation of the astral realm than Burning Man. But suddenly there's this sun, this place. Could it kill you? Could you meditate yourself to death? In other words, because you've found a way to encounter

this space and because the space seems just like that beautiful verse in the Gita, not different from you at all. Is it possible that your wife or husband or friend or cake could walk in and you're just sort of slumped over because you just left? Is that a danger? I'm not exaggerating the question. Is it possible that that could kill you? No, it can't kill you, no. But let me say more about that. One, is that part of you that you wakes up there was never born and never dies. It cannot kill you in itself. Yourself is eternal. But this part of you that is living in this existence is likely to end its life when it can learn no more. So could it be that you conclude all of your learning for a particular spiritual experience that you then leave the

body? It's unlikely that it's going to happen in that way. I know that there are masters that choose to leave this existence because you can. But most of the time what occurs is this relationship between being in the spiritual world, which you are every night, sleep is the little brother of death. And every night you go to sleep and you enter into the spiritual world. But you come back and you wake up and you might forget that and you may forget the depths of where you were, but you wake back up. Now usually in meditation, the very similar thing happens. You're in your meditation state and you come back as though and you wake right back up into yourself. So you don't ever have to fear that. I think that there's certain things that can happen on that

actual plane that can really disturb people, but not in the spiritual world. You know, we've got this picture of sleep is the little brother of death and humour is the little sister of love. And what's interesting about these two forces of sleep and humour is that they loosen us from ourselves a little bit. We don't have to kind of be so bound to ourselves and we do that with sleep every day. And you know, humour is one of the ways we do it through life. Being able to not be so serious about our personal, particular existence and find our ways to find this, really engage with life that we're meeting, but deepen our relationship to the spiritual world. A younger version of me would have for sure only wanted to hang out there. Like for sure. Like I

get it, it's sticky, but this, this, it's good to hear. I think that there's something really curious and relieving when you, when you realize what you're talking about. This, this, there's a part of you that really isn't quite here the way you think you are. I mean, you are here, no doubt about it. You're the, you're in Ireland. I'm here in Texas. We have bodies. We have to walk around eating all that, but that can become really quite heavy if you, if you think that's all, all that's going on. And so I think there's really something quite beautiful and poignant about this possibility in a human life that if you wanted to, you could through some practice actually sort of die and stay alive, even though being alive won't be quite as important, right?

Like that's, it's, it's not as, I don't mean it's a nihilistic way or, you know, drop way. What, I mean, it just becomes less like severe or something, you know, which is really quite wonderful, you know, if you're married especially. Yeah. But it's so, it's so imagine this, imagine how enriching a spiritual life is for you as an individual. And then imagine if those impulses that enrich your life would actually change, for instance, agriculture would actually change medicine, would actually have an effect on education. Imagine a world where spiritual impulses are helped to shape and take form to enrich the world in which we live in. And I think that's where we are really attempting to participate. Because if we

don't participate in the spiritual world, how would we bring those resources, those riches back into our, into our earthly life, even into our conversations or even into the way of which we, for instance, perceive an illness and want to bring a healing to that illness process. Everything changes when you have a new way of seeing and understanding. You know, as far as the earthly world is concerned, illness is wrong and you have to stop it. But it's not the whole picture. It's not the whole picture. Illness can be a way of progressing something in yourself that would be impossible to do so unless you had suffered and overcome that suffering. I mean, we know in itself the immune system is developed through the overcoming of things, not by being

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electricity for my penis. Thank you, Bluetooth. I just want to give, I want to read this quote from Rudolf Steiner, who's someone that I find extraordinary in the way he views his cosmology, or has bought the cosmology. He says, if life continues without the stimuli that comes from the spiritual world, industry can go on, banks can continue to exist, as well as universities where all the sciences are taught and other professions can be developed. But everything will lead to decadence and brutality and the fall of civilization. And that's a really interesting thing. What happens if we don't enliven this world with the impulses of the spirit that only can come through the human being?

So if you, you know, the richness that this journey has brought to my life, I cannot say anything other than the extraordinary blessing of it. Yes, the highways and byways of the astral world have been, were and live in nightmare. They were hell. But to get beyond that and to actually understand the realities of spiritual life and to come to a new place is such a gift. But what it also gives is this impulse to actually bring about the renewal of the world around us. To be connected to the spiritual world, where those guiding benevolent spiritual forces support humanity's evolution, and to see the richness that it does to the individual's life, but then to actually bring that in permeating your own existence and therefore rippling that

into the world around us, imagine the difference that would make. And I say that because there's so many forms that we understand spiritually that we go encounter in the earthly existence. So, for instance, in the spiritual world, one would say, as a spiritual being, the more you have, the more you give. So in the hierarchy of the angels, archangels, archi, and all of the great celestial hosts, the more you have, the more you give, we don't follow that lawfulness in the earthly life. In fact, there seems to be completely opposite lawfulness that we've constructed our social forms on and our monetary systems and corporations. And so as we touch into what's a true reality of the spiritual world, we could imagine

creating a really humane, true-filled, beauty-filled world around us because of that. So, in that sense, we become participators of the spirit in order to carry those revelations into the world around us. And that's only human beings can do that. The angels can give us those angels can give us those impotences, those guiding thoughts, but only we transform the earth. Okay. So, Lisa, I have a question that has popped into my mind during our conversation and that has popped into my mind before, which, you know, I think the way that you've been sort of describing this cosmology, the astral realm, the possibility of crossing the abyss to this source or whatever you might want to call it, second another sun, it presents

something that's slightly unnerving for me, which is, do you kick around the idea that in the same way some people want to go to the astral realm, hang out there, gain power, do all the magic stuff, the astral realm wants to come here, that there could actually be the potential for beings over there trying to influence this reality. You know, people don't like to use the term Satan, I understand why, or darkness, or evil, but I got creeped out because I started thinking, my God, is there some possibility that there are entities or forces in the astral realm that don't want people to cross the abyss, that want people to think that's all there is? Yeah. Well, yeah, that's absolutely a question we need to penetrate,

because it's not only a reality that's always been, it's a reality that is getting stronger. So it's always been known that there are adversaries that work on the astral plane, that have scorn in on the astral plane and work the power there, but what is changing? And it's important to understand that the astral plane, although we can talk about it as here, we have the sensory earthly life, and then between here and the true spiritual world, we have this astral world, which has a lot of familiarities to this earthly plane, but also is extraordinarily different to it as well, depending on which of the seven realms that you're entering into the astral. But at the same time, it's not actually out there somewhere.

Like you probably know for yourself, you can go to, walk into a room where people have been arguing, even though they're not arguing anymore, you've got the atmosphere. You can go to a hospital and feel the atmosphere of a hospital or a particular place, or even like a university town has a very different atmosphere. So the astral isn't just out there. So what you're expressing is actually all around us. So, but what is quickening and what is changing, what is trying to really take hold in the heart of the materialistic mind is to really believe this astral plane to be the spiritual world and to kind of take hold in such a way that we don't go through to recognize the truth from the reality of who we are. So there are certainly adverse forces really working to

merge those two realms, physical astral, in such a way that it makes it harder for us to find that deepest spiritual connection. However, just as much as that's happening, there are huge supports from those higher spiritual realms for humanity right now. And it's always in a growing counterforce because that's the nature of freedom. You can't have dark forces that are darker than the light in the nature of freedom, because it just would not allow for the great unfolding of what's possible for the human being. So it's not, we shouldn't worry about it, we should understand it and know it. And my, you know, the astral for some people is an important place. For me, what's important there is that we ensure that there are light field spiritual pictures and not

just this idea that it is just like a physical plane, but mostly I would say you move through, really recognize who you are and why you're here and then working from the other direction into the astral plane, from the spiritual plane into the astral, rather than from the physical where you have to meet the lowest astral plane first, you have the most spiritual impact to do something significant for those that are seekers. But once you know the other side, it's not an issue, you're never going to, well you actually, I shouldn't say you never, great ones fall back and everyone can be tempted, particularly when it comes to power. But once you really know it, it's very different, but it's all of those that are seeking. And that's why I did write that book

around conscious inner development and consciousness altering substances, because many seekers are seeking to get to the spiritual plane, but where can a substance get you to? That's a really interesting question, how far can it take you on the astral plane? What then becomes interested in you? These are all questions that I think many people don't want to explore, but getting through the astral plane does require a certain amount of rigor in the sense of effort, effort of will to not just flow and just hope that something carries you. So you know, fortunately, fortunately we have a lot of support and at the same time, you could say that whatever we can do to participate, then the spiritual forces can take that forward. But if we do nothing in ourselves to engage with it,

then we have to make our way slowly and surely through that astral plane. And that's a very tricky thing to do, particularly because it's been occupied by so many forces now, and it's much more familiar to people. In fact, a lot of the struggles that we have today are coming because there is this reality that humanity has started to, that the line between, the boundary between the physical sense perceptual reality in the astral world is getting thinner, more permeable, and more people are having these experiences of the astral world, but not always consciously, not even subconsciously sometimes, sometimes it's completely unconsciously, but going into that realm and not actually understanding why you're having these experiences

increases things like anxiety, and we will see anxiety, depression, some very intensive processes increase unless people can wake up to the guiding light, really, that, you know, the love sun, as you called it, which is what I speak about a lot in that book, A Bridge to Spirit. And I'm not sure if you read the book or you just came to the same pictures through your own insight, and then I was like, wow, that's interesting, right there. Yeah. I feel like I could talk to you for a million hours and I plan to. I am really excited about having a session with you offline. And I think other people are going to want to connect with you too. Can you talk to people a little bit? Is that something available to folks who

might be interested in sort of going a little deeper with stuff privately with you? Yeah, absolutely. I give a number of webinars and seminars and courses on inner development, and you can find all of that on my website innerworkpath.com. And there you can see how to, if you want a private session, they're usually quite an involved process. It's not, it takes a while to get that, but you can, you know, you can always send in a, put it out there and we see what unfolds. And, but my books are also available. So if you go to the website, you'll find some links to places where I'm working all the time. I like to work with the festivals because they are an exoteric picture of deep esoteric wisdom. And breaking open those is what

I've been doing for years working with that. So anyone can join in those. And then I'll have particular themes. So at the beginning of 2023, I'll do a course on Western esoteric training because I think people are seeking, they don't necessarily get everything they need from the East. And there are some extraordinary pictures that really speak to how the transformation goes when you're schooled through the consciousness of the modern world. So innerworkpath.com is how you can contact me. And yeah, I believe, I'm not sure when, when is this going out? Do you know? This will be released. Whatever works for you. Tell, what works best for you, Lisa? Well, if it went out at the beginning of December, what I can do is put an offer to anyone that

comes through you to get a 50% reduction off by the esoteric course that's happening in January. Wow. And that will be really helpful for anyone that just wants to touch in. It's really inexpensive anyway, but it means that you can. Great, great. Wonderful. Yeah, yeah. I'll do that for all of your, all of your visitors. Yeah, there's a lot out there. It's sometimes it's interesting to listen in to what is it you need so you can take that next step on your path. And that's often what I do in the individual sessions is working with that turning point where someone's really ready to step up. Lisa, it has been a real pleasure. You've given us a lot to think about. Thank you so much. All the links you need to finally say are going to be at dugitrussel.com.

If you can't remember those. Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful time. And I hope I get to see you in person in Ireland at some point. That would be a dream. The elements here are really in harmony. So it would be wonderful to share that with you. That was Lisa Romero, everybody. Don't forget you can find her at innerworkpath.com. A tremendous thank you to our sponsors. Thank you all for listening. Aloha. I'll be back with regular sound equipment next week. I hope you have a really, really wonderful weekend wherever you may be. Hare Krishna. We are family. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JC Penney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting and plenty

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