Know Thyself - E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This past year has been amazing, beautiful, growth-filled, also challenges and pretty weird and wild. I'm sure full spectrum for many of you. This episode is actually going to be different. It's going to be a compilation. Snippets from this whole past year's worth of conversation, 15 selected best moments, hard to choose because there were so many great ones. But if you haven't seen some of the episodes from this past year, Today's episode will be a good touchpoint, a little portal into that whole conversation with that guest that I think you might find interesting as well as maybe reminders from previously loved episodes from 2024. One tool that I also want to share with you guys is that I'm going to link down in the description my year of end review journal prompts for 2024 reflections and 2025. These questions can help guide you into extracting the lessons from this past year.

Starting point is 00:00:57 and then also get really intentional with the change that you wish to see both internally and outside of yourself in the world and 2025. So the link for that will be down in the description alongside a five to 10 minute questionnaire for those who feel called to check out and give feedback for us here at Know Theyself. We're expanding a lot this next year. And yeah, I just want to stay connected with you guys. And so any feedback, constructive criticism, things that you've loved that we've been doing to do more of, We'd love to hear and get that feedback from you. That's it for me. I hope you enjoy these 20, 24, 15 selected moments for the podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:36 So let's start with a very simple understanding. Your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. So the present personality who's listening to this podcast has created the present personal reality called their life, not their mother, not their ex. You know, they're responsible for creating their life. And if they think the same way, they act the same way, and they feel the same way, they're the same personality. And of course, they'll have the same personal reality. And I think most people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality.

Starting point is 00:02:13 And it doesn't work. We literally have to become someone else. So then if the majority of our thoughts are the same thoughts based on memories we have of experiences in our life, the moment we start remembering our problems we're thinking in the past, right? So those memories have a feeling or an emotion associated with them. So the moment you think about your problems and you feel unhappy, not only is your brain in the past, now the body's in the past. So it's that thought and that feeling.

Starting point is 00:02:43 It's the image or memory and the emotion. It's the stimulus and response that's immediately conditioning the body to memorize that emotion. Now the body is literally living in the past because it's so objective. it doesn't know the difference between a real-life experience that's creating that emotion and the emotion that person is fabricating by thought alone. So to the body, it's in the past experience 24 hours a day. Okay. So now the body physiologically is now in the past.

Starting point is 00:03:14 So then the hormones of stress create the emotions of anger and aggression and frustration and in patience and competition and hatefulness. and fear, anxiety, worry, insecurity, envy, jealousy, guilt, unworthiness, shame, suffering. Those are all derived from the hormones of stress. Turns out when that response switches on, when we perceive a threat or a danger in our outer world, the response from whatever condition in the outer world gives the body an arousal. And so then if you keep doing that, you keep giving the body a rush of energy, the body becomes dependent on its external world to feel something.

Starting point is 00:04:02 So the arousal from your co-worker, from your ex, from traffic, from the news, something in your outer environment is producing that kind of addictive rush of energy. Then people begin to use the problems and conditions in their life to reaffirm their addiction to that emotion. They need the bad job, they need the bad relationship, and they become addicted to the life that they don't even like. And so an addiction is something you think you can't stop or an addiction is something you know that is not good for you

Starting point is 00:04:37 and you do it anyway. So people are unconscious to the fact that the arousal from the stress hormones is knocking their brain and body out of homeostasis. It's knocking it out of balance the majority of the time. So we can actually think about our problems and create the same physiological response as if we were being chased by a predator. So what was once very adaptive becomes very maladaptive. So you turn on that response, you can't turn it off. Now you're headed for disease because stress is when the body's knocked out of balance,

Starting point is 00:05:11 and there's no opportunity for the body return back to balance in order. That imbalance becomes the new balance, and that's when we head for some type of disease or imbalance in our bodies. So then those emotions that we feel tend to drive our behaviors and we behave as if we're in the past. And if those emotions are just really chemical records from past experiences, then we probably more than likely remember the past instead of remember the future. So 95% of who we are becomes, you know, an automatic set of programs in our personality. So if we really teach a person how to think differently, how to actually, how to actually, differently and how to feel differently. Give them new information, have them learn that information, have them teach that information back to somebody so it's wired in their brain, have them understand

Starting point is 00:05:59 exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it so the hell gets easier, remind themselves enough time to install the circuitry so that they have neurons and circuits in place to make a different choice to do a different thing, create a different experience and feel a different emotion. If you change your personality, would your biology change? The answer is 100% absolutely Yes. And we can do it in seven days. Now, a person with a dissociative disorder or multiple personality disorder had traumas in their life, most of them, from childhood. And the way they coped with the constant abuse was that they would just dissociate from this world and go to another world. And they would live in that world and create a different character than the character

Starting point is 00:06:39 that's being abused or molested or whatever. And so each one of those different personalities, just like creating a new personal reality, it takes seven days. They've been doing that for so long that the myriad of personalities of thinking differently, behaving differently, and feeling differently, produces immediate biological changes where the person is allergic to peanuts in one in one personality and not in the other. So in a sense, that speaks to human potential, because that's exactly what we're doing.

Starting point is 00:07:14 When we see people heal from chronic health conditions, I asked them, where is the disease? Where did the disease go? And 100% of the time, they say, it's in the old person. It's in the old, I'm no longer that person. I'm somebody else. So of course the disease would exist in a different person. I have a different physiology.

Starting point is 00:07:36 So teaching a person, after years of years of thinking, acting, and feeling the same way, running those programs, teaching a person how to become so conscious of their unconscious thoughts, so aware of the defaulting habits and behaviors, and to notice when they start feeling different emotions that you've got to catch yourself from going unconscious and returning back to that person for them to unlearn and relearn to break the habit of being themselves and reinvent a new self. So now if you take the, let's say, the average American, what is the ultimate red pill that would change their perception? If they take that red pill that they wake up to the

Starting point is 00:08:19 illusion of how they've been living, what would that red pill be? Well, right now, the easiest one is just falling in love. And science has recognized why, let's give a reason as to why we play programs, okay? Let's start off very simple, basic fact. The human brain is a computer. It's not like a computer. It's actually a far better computer than humans have ever created. But it is a computer and still has the same functions and basic operation procedures to it. The old days, when we would buy a computer, you'd go home and you'd push start and it boots up, and then I say, okay, let's do something. You go, oh, no, I can't do anything.

Starting point is 00:08:55 I go, well, you've got a brand new computer. The point is, no, first you have to put programs in the computer, and then you can access the computer via the keyboard, which is the creative part of the computer. The brain of a human has two parts to it. We say the mind, everybody is the mind, like there's one mind. I go, well, that's the problem right away. There are two minds. They're interdependent, and they have totally different functions.

Starting point is 00:09:23 The latest evolution of the mind is right behind your forehead. It's called the conscious mind. It's the prefrontal cortex, part of the brain lobe right back here. That's the seed of consciousness. That's the seed of your spirituality, in fact. And I say, 90% of the brain, back here is called the subconscious mind. I go, okay, so what's the difference? The conscious mind is creative. The subconscious mind is programs, just habits, hard drive, okay? Now the issue about this is

Starting point is 00:09:55 that with a conscious mind, we can be creative and do everything we want. But the conscious mind does two things, and one of them is look out your eyes like the windshield of a vehicle, and with wishes and desires, the conscious mind will take us on the road to where we want to go. But the conscious mind can think. I guess what's the problem? I go, well, thinking is not looking out. Thinking is looking in. So the moment you start thinking, your conscious mind's not paying attention to the world outside here. I go, yeah, well, what if you're driving the car and you start thinking? I go, almost everybody does it anyway. I go, that's kind of interesting because at some point you get so caught up in your head thinking, and then you look out the windshield and realize you haven't paid

Starting point is 00:10:40 attention to the road for the last number of minutes, but hey, you're still on the road. Everything seems to be running okay. And I go, no problem, because the subconscious is autopilot. In other words, when the conscious mind is busy, the subconscious programs take over. You know how to drive a car. It's a program. Things that you know how to do, walk, talk, drive the car, do your job. These become habits. Habits are no thinking. habits or just push the button, play the program. So the idea about that is, well, that's really cool because that makes our life a lot easier than trying to focus on everything in the world when you can just push the button. You can walk without thinking about walking, okay?

Starting point is 00:11:21 So there's a great benefit to the subconscious. Well, the problem that comes up with the subconscious is if you're thinking, you're not looking out the window, you're not paying attention to what's going on, and the subconscious steps in and takes over, and I go, well, what's the point? I go, well, we don't see our subconscious programs. We don't see them because they're playing while we're thinking. And I go, well, what's the problem? I go, well, 60% or more of the programs are disempowering, self-sabotaging, or limiting beliefs. So I go, well, what does that mean? I go, the moment you start thinking, you start playing a program, but if you have a dysfunctional program, do you see it?

Starting point is 00:12:06 I go, no, because it's automatic. The problem is everybody else sees it, and they're going to respond to your program. They're not responding to your conscious mind. They're responding to the habits you acquired. So the problem about that is we're unaware, and here's the number, 95% of the day is the average amount of thinking a person is involved with,

Starting point is 00:12:30 which then translates simply to 95% of the day. running your life with programs that you don't even see. But it becomes problematic because when things aren't working, the tendency of an individual is, well, I have great wishes to be happy, successful, loving, and to have all these things. And if it's not working, there's a tendency then to consider yourself the victim.

Starting point is 00:12:55 And then blame everything around you as why your life's not running right. And the fact was, no, you were the one that was running a program, they were just responding. So it takes us, it says, wait, we are responsible for the life we are living. And the issue about that is, well, what are your programs? Because they're running your life. I go, ah, you don't know what your basic programs are. I go, why?

Starting point is 00:13:20 Because the programming of the subconscious started, well, three months before you were born. And it's continuous for seven years. Your brain, in that seven-year period, is running. at a lower vibration when you put wires on a person's head, EEG, the vibration is called theta, which is just below consciousness. Consciousness is a higher vibe, alpha, and then even higher beta and gamma, you're running at theta. And I go, well, theta is imagination. I go, yeah, that's what characterizes kids. They live in the real world, the imaginary world the same time. I always talk about, oh, that great tea party, you pour nothing into the cup, you drink nothing, and that was the best tea

Starting point is 00:14:01 you ever had in your life or a child riding on a broom because in the child's mind theta is imagination the broom is a horse I mean to the kid it's really is so if the mother says give me the broom the child's like not understanding what she's talking about because it's no longer a broom in that state of a child it's now really a horse in their imagination the problem theta is hypnosis and I go oh so you're in a state of hypnosis for almost seven years. I go, why? Well, the answer is simple. And it goes, how many rules does it take to be a member of a family? How many rules does it take to be a member of a community? Thousands. I said, well, how are you going to teach an infant? They can't read a book. They can't sit in a classroom. So nature took care of it. Nature said, first seven years, hypnosis, download,

Starting point is 00:14:55 observe those around you, your mother, your father, your siblings, your community. In an observing, them, you're actually downloading behavior, but other people's behavior. So it becomes interesting, it's because we get the foundation of the rules by observing others. Now, problem is if the people you're observing are not living in harmony, but then by definition, you've downloaded disharmony as well. And so all of a sudden it says, well, these are the programs. I go, yeah, 95% of the day, that's where your life is coming from. Do you know that you know these programs. So I asked people, tell me what program you got before you were born. Well, obviously, I don't know. Well, wait, wait, you were programmed a whole year from zero to one.

Starting point is 00:15:41 What programs did you get? No, no, from one to two, another whole year. I don't know those programs. They go, the biggest problem is most of the fundamental programs that operate our lives were downloaded before we were conscious, and we have no awareness of what those programs are. But, But we're running them 95% of the day. So I stand back and go, wait a minute. Your life is a printout of your programs. So the idea is this. All you have to do is right now is just look at your life and go,

Starting point is 00:16:15 the things you like that come into your life, well, they come in because you have programs to acknowledge those things. But this is the one. The things that you desire and you want, but you struggle, you work hard. You put a lot of effort into it. I'm sweating over it. I'm going to make this happen. I'm working really hard to make it happen.

Starting point is 00:16:32 I go, why are working so hard? And the answer is, inevitably, that destination you're seeking, that destination is not supported by your program. And then you're trying to override the program. Very, very difficult to do. And so basically it says, well, wait, we are programmed. I go, yep, that's the foundation of the matrix. All of us are programmed.

Starting point is 00:16:56 We're running these programs 95% of the time. We do not see these programs. only see the consequence of these programs. So if you don't mind, I'll use an example that I've been using since 1980 because there's not a better one yet, and that is you have a friend and you know your friend's behavior, and you happen to know your friend's parent. And then one day you see your friend has the same behavior as their parent, which gets you oh, hey, Bill, you're just like your dad.

Starting point is 00:17:24 Back away from Bill, because I know exactly what Bill's going to say, and you know it if you've ever said it and Bill's going to say, how can you compare me to my dad? I'm nothing like my dad. But everybody else sees up Bill's like his dad. Who's the one that doesn't see it? Bill, I go, why not? Because when he's playing the programs he downloaded from his dad, he's the one that doesn't see it. Everybody else sees it. So all of a sudden it says, your life is not being controlled by your wishes and desires while you're running the program. And you run the program, 95% of the day because that's the amount of time you're thinking. So are you creating the life you want? I go, not necessarily at all. As a matter of fact, you're creating the life you've been programmed to create.

Starting point is 00:18:08 1991, scientists made the discovery that shocked the medical community for sure and the scientific community in general. What they found was a neural network inside the human heart. They found about 40,000 specialized cells. They're called sensory neurites. They're like neurons, brain, but they're not in the brain. They're in the heart. They think independently of the human brain. They feel independently of the human brain. They sense. They remember independently of the human brain. So right there, I've just said a big piece of information that affects all of us. And here's why. We all have had trauma in our lives, every one of us. But our trauma is perceived different. through the filters of our life experience.

Starting point is 00:19:00 So your trauma might have devastated you when you were three years old, and then you tell me about it, and I'll say, huh, what's a big deal? You know, or my trauma at, my father left our home when I was 10. And it traumatized me because it said something about safety in the world and not feeling safe.

Starting point is 00:19:21 And I still deal with that. I'm still healing that. And I might say it to you, and you would say, say, what's the big deal? My dad left and, hey, you know, a piece of cake. The point is our trauma is individualized. It's personalized. It's unique. But every one of us has it. When we have trauma, it's registered in multiple places. And if you attempt to heal that trauma only through thinking and talking about it, from the mind, it can help. And I think it's a good thing to do. But many people say, wow, I've done that and I feel incomplete. Now we know why.

Starting point is 00:19:56 because the talking or the therapies may not have addressed the thinking and the memory independent in the heart. The heart has a very different language. It doesn't always work with the words. So this is one of the amazing things that we're finding out about the human heart. When I was in school back in the 1950s and 60s, it's a mindblower to me to say that. But when I was in the 50s and 60s, I was taught but the heart is the master organ in the body, number one,

Starting point is 00:20:33 and that it's a pump. And we all know it pumps really well, but you can build a machine to do that. Here's what the new discoveries are showing now, is that the heart, the brain's important. I'm sorry, that I say heart, the brain's the master organ in the body. The brain is the master organ.

Starting point is 00:20:51 That's what we were taught. But the brain receives the instructions that tell it what to do from the heart. The heart sends those instructions based on the way we feel about the world around us, and those perceptions are all through the filters of our experience. So all of a sudden, the heart becomes front and center

Starting point is 00:21:10 because we now know the heart is telling the brain how to regulate the body, number one. Number two, the heart, this neural network, is key in what we call heart intelligence. The last episode of this podcast, we talked about how memory, information, our divinity, our imagination, our creativity, our innovation, our intuition, are all information in the field that we tune to rather than that information actually residing in these cells, in these neurons. You know, scientists have they've looked at the neurons and saying, where's the memory? Where's the memory? Well, the memory is not in the neurons. The neurons are the antenna.

Starting point is 00:21:56 They are soft antenna, a biological antenna that is in resonance. They tune based upon our feelings and our demands when we say, I'm going to learn Spanish. That's a demand to the body to build the antenna, to tune to the place in the field where Spanish as a language lives. We're millions of other people tune in as well. So all of a sudden the heart takes on a whole new significance in the scientific world. It parallels our most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions. We've always said that the heart is the seat of the soul, is my brother Gary Zuccoff, a brother book called that, my spiritual brother, Gary,

Starting point is 00:22:44 that the heart is the seat of the soul. The heart is probably one of the least understood organs in this respect. And one of the biggest mysteries is that on a particular day in the womb of our mother, in one moment in time, there's a clump of cells that are there. And in the next instant, something happens. And the first heartbeat begins. And scientists do not know what triggers that first heartbeat. There are theories.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Talk about ion potentials across cell walls and things like that. If you ask our indigenous ancestors when I was with the monks and the nuns in Tibet, when I'm with my Native American friends, I'm with my Ketua friends or my Amara friends and Lake Te de Kaka in Peru,

Starting point is 00:23:39 my Yucatan friends, the shamans in the Yucatan and the Maya traditions, you all say the same thing. The first beat of the heart is the moment that our soul comes into our bodies. our soul is part of, but it's separate from. It's a part of us that is ageless, timeless, it is the divine that is in that field. It's when the resonance between the cells and the heart and that neural network come into phase,

Starting point is 00:24:10 if you want to think of it that way, with this part of the field. So the ability to self-regulate our own biology is a stunning, a stunning ability. We're trying to build AI and smart computer systems that can diagnose and repair and heal themselves. And we can't do that with software right now. But if you think of us as an engineered biology, we have the programs, the soft program. We are literally a soft technology. So we're not a hard technology of silicon chips and wires. and, you know, software running through printed circuits.

Starting point is 00:24:57 We're neurons. We're more than that. We are neurons. We're cell membranes. We are ion potentials moving across cell walls with the ability to self-regulate ourselves. We are so good at it that we take it for granted. And that is a stunning capability,

Starting point is 00:25:14 and it is where our highest levels of mastery come from. Now the next level of this is once we embrace the neural network in the heart, now you say, okay, we've got two neural networks. We have a neural network in the brain we all know about. Now we have one in the heart. One of the highest forms of mastery and one of the deepest places for our healing, we're the only form of life that we know of today with the ability to do what I'm going to describe. we can harmonize the neural network in the brain and the neural network in the heart two separate organs

Starting point is 00:25:55 become one powerful potent system in what is called heart brain coherence and the ability to do it it's very very simple there's an organization here in northern california well there in northern California, the Institute of Heart Math. They are a pioneering research organization and the power of the human heart in unconventional ways beyond just being a pump. I've known them almost since their inception. I'm not their employee.

Starting point is 00:26:27 I've worked with them. We tour together. We fundraise together. We do webinars together. They're dear, dear brothers and sisters, and they're really good people. And they've given me permission as an independent researcher to share and talk about their work.

Starting point is 00:26:40 So I just want to acknowledge that. They've developed three very, very simple steps that allow us to harmonize the heart and the brain very easily based on the ancient and the indigenous traditions. It's a shift in focus, a shift in breath, and a shift in feeling. A shift in focus from the world out there into the heart. Number one, number two, slower breathing.

Starting point is 00:27:06 And when we slow our breathing, and there is a little bit of science to this. When we exhale for a period of time longer than we inhale, we trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. It's the relaxation response. So it doesn't make a difference what the times are. It's just that the release needs to be longer. The inhale.

Starting point is 00:27:30 So if you're inhaling for a count of four and then you release for a count of six, something that simple. step number two. And then step number three is while the focus is in the heart, while we're breathing slower from our heart, to focus a feeling. And this is something no other form of life can do. We're invited to have a feeling because we choose to have the feeling rather than relying on the world around us to give us a reason for the feeling. Now, you think about that. Most people, if you say, okay, a positive feeling. So let's say the feeling,

Starting point is 00:28:10 is a feeling of gratitude. Many people will say, well, I'm waiting for something to be grateful for. We're the only form of life that can initiate that. It takes practice, but we can initiate it at will on demand. When we change the way we feel, we're actually shifting the chemistry in our bodies, many, many ways. Over 1,300 positive biochemical responses in the body from shifting from, from, our mind into our heart, number one, breathing slower, number two, and feeling a positive feeling such as gratitude that works pretty much for everyone. Once we accomplish that coherence,

Starting point is 00:28:54 that can be an end unto itself, or it can be the launch pad for deeper states of spiritual awakening and development and healing in health, physiological healing in health. Just from three minutes of that process. The immune system is strengthened, and scientific evidence shows this, the SIGA, first level immune response in the lining of the mouth, is strengthened more than many antibiotics can do. This is what the researchers found. We awaken the longevity enzymes. We trigger the healing of the telomeres. There's an enzyme called telomerase that is awakened from this process. we actually relieve stress, Andre, on a molecular level. So many people are stressed in ways they don't even know.

Starting point is 00:29:50 So we all know about emotional stress, bad relationship, traffic on the 405 freeway, you know, we know about that. When we eat foods that are cooked in oils that have been exposed to high heat, for example, that is a stress to the body. And the body has to work to compensate for that. We drink water. that has impurities of the wrong pH. Our body has to work to compensate for that,

Starting point is 00:30:15 pollutants in the air. We're exposed to this stuff all the time. So those are levels of stress we may not even be aware of. And this coherence actually relieves that stress. It heals all the way down to the molecular level.

Starting point is 00:30:30 And what the research is shown is three minutes, a minimum of three minutes will increase the DHEA levels over 100%, which is the precursor to every other hormone in the body, male and female, both. Increase that DHEA without taking any supplements

Starting point is 00:30:47 or changing a diet or anything. And you decrease the cortisol levels, the stress hormones by about 23% after only three minutes. And those effects will last up to six hours if, you know, barring some black swan event that comes into your life, the effects will linger for up to six hours. after only three minutes of doing this.

Starting point is 00:31:11 This is how powerful we are. So the implications of the ability to self-regulate our own biology, they run deep in terms of divinity. Those are the ability to heal our own bodies. That is a godlike ability that the ancients talked about in the literature. We have it at our fingertips. We've been conditioned away from it.

Starting point is 00:31:33 It led to feel helpless and powerless, that we need intervention. And sometimes we do, and we have technology, that. Now, I'm happy that that technology is there when it reaches that point. The point is to honor the gift of this body, this temple, as we talked about in the last podcast, to the point where you don't need that kind of intervention because you are maintaining through the ability to self-regulate all of these things. So this has really put science into a place. There's a beautiful

Starting point is 00:32:08 place where science and spirituality come together, even though a lot of scientists don't like it. And a lot of spirituality or people that follow spirituality, they don't like it either. They like to think that the spirituality somehow supersedes the science. And the scientists like to think that they're more modern. But here's what happens when we drop those judgments and we allow the two great ways of knowing, the science of 300 years, and the spirituality of 5,000 years, those are two forms of knowledge. When we allow that knowledge to honor and serve us,

Starting point is 00:32:48 we then create a wisdom that's greater than any piece of knowledge can be. And I think this is what gives us the evolutionary edge right now that many of our ancestors didn't have. They didn't have the science. so that we can successfully navigate and triumph and transcend the challenges that we see in our lives now that other generations haven't had. We now have this at our fingertips, the ability to self-regulate our biology through the changes. How do you discern, I suppose, what materials would say you could boil down to biochemical kind of reactions? when you're using the word spiritual,

Starting point is 00:33:33 do you ever refer to metaphysical non-material realities? Because I know so much of your work has been bringing forth what feel-like metaphysical experiences into understandable brain chemistry and kind of bridging the gap between the two. Oh, that's such a magnificent point. So we certainly can track the neural correlates in our brains of transcendent relationship.

Starting point is 00:33:59 We can certainly point on the MRI machine and say, okay, whether I live in China, the U.S. or Brazil, the same neural corollets run when I am in a deep transcendent connection to the force of life. There's one force of life and there's one human portal. That does not mean that all of spirituality can be boiled down to the brain. I am by no means a biological reductionist. That merely means body, mind, and soul in the monoist view of the human. your soul, we are mind, we are body, there is at once a neurotrace as there is a phenomenal logical experience, as I would say there is ontologically in the structure of being the stuff of consciousness or spirit, all at once, all at once. Now, in the awakened brain in my book, I spend the first two-thirds pointing out our natural spiritual nature, the capacity through which we can perceive and receive transcendent awareness. But the final third, is this dedicated to this very exciting emerging science done by generally extremely rigorous scientists on the foundational nature of consciousness running in us, through us, and among us.

Starting point is 00:35:15 Where suddenly we can stop borrowing the 20th century, somewhat reductionist view of the brain as a maker of thoughts, right? Like a Ford Motor Factory, the brain somehow produces thoughts or toasters or something like that. instead to the brain being an antenna or a conduit of consciousness, that opens up the possibility that we are both emanations of consciousness, like raised from the sun. We are in relationship to consciousness, receiving, perceiving, contributing back.

Starting point is 00:35:52 There's a dialectic going on. That's very, very far to your point. from radical materialism or biological reductionism. It's important to point out that the best clinical science can say is that spirituality is not a belief. It is an inborn human seat of perception. We are born to perceive into the spiritual reality. And that's where clinical science stops.

Starting point is 00:36:17 And then we can pivot and say, how does the brain, what is our evidence, that the brain is connected beyond the brain in the box, beyond the atomistic limits of the skull. And there there's a cascade of magnificent research going on. May I share one of my favorite studies? Please, yeah. Perhaps my favorite study is really a foundational,

Starting point is 00:36:39 founding study of what we now call post-material psychology, post-material meaning a consciousness-based psychology. It was done by Asterhoff. Actorhoff invited a traditional indigenous healer to be in one MRI machine. the patient was down the hall and in some cases across the street and a second MRI machine. As a traditional healer started to do his or her work, a consistent pattern came up on the fMRI

Starting point is 00:37:11 machine, tracking blood flow. Within an instant, the same pattern came up on the MRI screen of the patient implying one thing, consciousness, in two places. the material footprint is what shows up on the MRI. How do I understand that? One thing, consciousness, healing consciousness, I would say spirit in two places. Well, there's several explanations, but one of them is that there's a send and receive

Starting point is 00:37:46 between the healer and the patient at a distance, that the brain is a form of an antenna or a conduit. But I think that it's very dangerous. for the new consciousness-based science to make the same mistake as the materialist science of the 20th century, which is really to claim radical anthropocentrism, that we're in the center sending consciousness back and forth. From where this consciousness come, well, no one really answers that, but it's kind of suggested that we make consciousness or we're the king and the queen. it seems to me that if we're really on a search, that we shouldn't feel nervous or somehow out of fashion

Starting point is 00:38:32 to step out of the outdated vogue of radical anthropocentrism. And let's build a science built around source, that there's a source of consciousness. I say, God, you use your word. Yeah. The most breathtaking finding that I've seen in 30 years as a scientist is this. when we look at people who through suffering difficulty have awakened.

Starting point is 00:38:59 So there's a lovely body of science that shows that very often struggle, suffering, depression, is the early phase of an awakening. Two sides of one door as you have so eloquently shared. Yes, that the yearning and the struggle and the existential emptiness actually reveals that our vessel and capacity has become more capacious and now feels like a half-empty vessel. We are on a quest.

Starting point is 00:39:28 So the yearning, the existential frustration doesn't mean we're off the path. It means we're on the path. A knock at the door, bang at the door for a more deepened connection with God, spirit, consciousness.

Starting point is 00:39:45 That is, I think, the majority of forms of human suffering. There are some, where there's a biological depression, there's a piece broken and we fix it with medication. But most of the time, and I'm not against medication, but medication alone is insufficient. Most of the time, there is an emergence that first presents itself.

Starting point is 00:40:05 The ignition is struggle. It's developmental depression. When we take this journey and we awaken, what we find is that we've cultivated a path, a spiritual response to suffering that is forever more there for us. we can always get back. If we invite people to come in this time, not to the MRI machine, but the EEG machine that captures energy given off the back of the head, how we're using the brain waves, what we find is that people to recover, people to move through despair through an awakening,

Starting point is 00:40:39 give off high amplitude alpha, specific wavelength. High amplitude alpha goes by another name in another field. it's Schumann's resonance, the constituent wavelength of nature from the earth's crust up one mile all the way around the earth, which means the spiritually engaged brain vibrates at the wavelength of all life, of nature, creation. So the kingdom, Eden was not long ago and far away. It's here now, and it is a choice to enter through our seat of being. And we readily then have available to the felt oneness is mirrored by the oneness of wavelength. That to me is the most beautiful finding in science.

Starting point is 00:41:27 So powerful. And there is a part in this book, The Awakened Brain, that I really love. So this was advice Howard Dermann that you quoted gave to someone who was struggling to make a decision and desperate for guidance. And Thurman wrote a letter, his handwritten response, said, you're like a little boy under the Christmas tree who has so many gifts he doesn't know which one to open first the main thing is you must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine which is within you when you hear it that will be your voice and that will be the voice of god and it feels like when you're in those moments of depression despair where you're speaking to awakening is the other side of the door and making space for silence

Starting point is 00:42:14 to discover that which is genuine within you to emerge is uh it's our primary task is to make space and see what's trying to emerge from within us. I would actually love to just jump straight to your kind of awakening experience that you had that really was the pivot, the shift from being a materialist scientist into exploring consciousness in a much more fundamental way.

Starting point is 00:42:39 So could you walk us through your experience at that moment? Yeah, I need to give you perhaps a little bit of background because I'm a physicist, and therefore I study how physical reality works and with a sense that that's all there is and that's really much pretty much what science today is telling us about the reality. And I had accepted that that must be true.

Starting point is 00:43:15 And I was also expecting that that, that if I did everything right, quote unquote, whatever that means, I should be happy. And that did not turn out that way. In fact, I did everything right, you know, according to the book. But I was not happy and I was pretending to be happy. And it was only because I realized that I was pretending to be happy.

Starting point is 00:43:42 And I have learned being an entrepreneur, I had learned to take responsibility for what happened in my life. that I put my foot down and said, no, I must understand why I'm not happy. In those days I was studying consciousness, but I was working on neural networks, I was studying books in neuroscience, and I wanted to understand how come they were conscious.

Starting point is 00:44:11 You know, the neuroscientists don't tell us how we're conscious. They explain, you know, they explain, you know, how we work by electrical signals and biochemical signals in the brain. And I didn't see how I could possibly get sensations and feelings, what philosophers call qualia, out of electrical signals.

Starting point is 00:44:36 And so I was really curious, being a scientist and being also a technologist, I wanted to understand how I could program a computer to be conscious. And the more I thought, the more impossible it was, because there is nothing in physics that tells you how to convert electrical signals

Starting point is 00:44:56 or bits in a computer into sensations and feelings. So the core was what are sensations and feelings, which is how we experience life. And so it was in this climate where I was unhappy, which is also a problem of consciousness, I wanted to understand what consciousness is. And it happened one night, 1990, was, Christmas holidays, I was skiing up in the Ceras, you know, Tahoe, with my family.

Starting point is 00:45:25 And one night, I wake up midnight, was thirsty, went to get a glass of water. Then I went back to bed, you know, just waiting to fall asleep again. And all of a sudden, out of my chest, this beam of energy, you know, white scintillating light is love. but is a love that it was 10,000 times, 50,000 times, who knows, stronger than anything that I've ever experienced, is coming from me. And my consciousness is in this rush of energy.

Starting point is 00:46:02 And is love, joy, and peace. Peace, I've never had felt that peace. I was always trying to get somewhere. I was never happy where I was. But this was, this is. This is me. That's home. This is me.

Starting point is 00:46:19 I am that. I am this instead of that. This that comes out of me. And then this energy, all of a sudden is everywhere. And this white scintillating light, my consciousness is in that light. And so now I am observing myself. So I'm the observer of myself. this energy, because this love was there,

Starting point is 00:46:48 this joy and this peace was there as well. And then a thought forms, wow, a thought. But I already got what the thought was trying to say. The thought was, oh, this stuff is what everything is made of. But these are symbols. What before that thought there was the understanding that the thought expressed. And then that was the end of it.

Starting point is 00:47:18 My body was vibrating. You know, like the cells of my body were, you know, were resonating with what was going on. So body, mind, emotions, and the connection with everything was all in this holistic experience. So I was, one, observing itself with my point of view, That's what I'm saying now, but at that time, I had exactly the sense without the words

Starting point is 00:47:49 to say what I just said. At that point, I wanted then to connect what I knew about physics into a theory that would connect the interiority and the exteriority. Physics only describes what you can measure in the space and time, but what you can feel, is that in space and time? cannot possibly be in space and time.

Starting point is 00:48:15 So where is it? And so that was the journey where I dedicated myself 100% and decided to, that's it, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life, unite physics and spirituality into a seamless hole where you can no longer tell

Starting point is 00:48:33 the boundaries between one and the other. I'm curious, do you think that there are levels of fundamental reality that are simply, inconceivable to the human mind and understanding. Like we wouldn't expect a monkey to understand quantum mechanics or entanglement or have even the baseline ingredients to be able to have any semblance of anything regarding quantum mechanics.

Starting point is 00:48:59 Are there things that you think that are simply beyond the capacity of the human mind to understand and deeper levels of reality? I do. I think that the human mind has... great capacities and fundamental limitations. And when spiritual traditions tell us to set aside the human mind now and then, spend time in meditation and put the human mind apart, of course, then when you try to reconceptualize what you experienced,

Starting point is 00:49:32 you can only reconceptualize it inside the human mind. That's the tool you've got. But in fact, you infinitely transcend the human mind. So you aren't the human mind. you when you talk to me through these avatars we're having to use the human mind

Starting point is 00:49:47 and therefore all of a sudden the bandwidth goes down to a straw a little tiny straw of information that goes back and forth but you and I are in fact the infinite intelligence looking at itself through this particular little straw

Starting point is 00:49:59 so yeah the human mind has this incredibly but you are not the human mind you transcend infinitely the human mind but as long you're in this avatar, you can only have a human mind appreciation of that transcendence. There seems to be various enlightened beings, masters of meditation, that have emotionally embraced it. What they would say is close to 100%, where they have literally no fear of the body

Starting point is 00:50:30 because they clearly have the perception that it is not them. Where if somebody comes up to you, God forbid, on the street, and puts a gun to your head, I'd be scared. Scared to death. It seems like in the metaphysical practices and the contemplative sciences, you can arrive at the place experientially, emotionally, where you truly perceive the source of that which you are, and therefore, that which you are not, does not have the grip over you. Which is interesting because it requires both the rigorous science and logic to be able to explore these things

Starting point is 00:51:02 and explain it with the limited capacity we have for language, with language. And then the contemplative practices that allow us to arrive there experientially, to become closer and intimate and become one with that which we truthfully are. I completely agree. And I think that there are spiritual masters who are there. Eckhart Tolla, for example, I suspect truly doesn't fear death. and and and so and I intellectually I think that well this is interesting thing to think about this way think about a video game in which you jump into the video game and you could be in the game

Starting point is 00:51:56 identified with the avatar that's me so if it's a shoot-em-up game and you think you are your avatar you're going to be scared to death and you're going to be really alert and and suppose that, I mean, I'm Navy SEALs or something like, I'm trying to get you ready. So I'm putting you in this game. So I want to somehow drug you so that when you get in the simulation, you think it's real. Because I want you to be scared to death. I want you to learn how to fight in that thing. So I'm going to make you identify it.

Starting point is 00:52:25 So here's a drug that makes you identified with your avatar in this VR game. And boy, you really, you. And then while slowly. let you disidentify from that avatar. And that's what I think is going on here, is we're in this, emotionally I'm still identified with the avatar,

Starting point is 00:52:46 but part of me is recognized, oh, Don, that's just an avatar, is not you. But the emotional part of me is still plugged into you are an avatar. The meditation process is slowly waking me up to the truth that an avatar is just an avatar, relax. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:05 Just relax. It's just your avatar. You are the infinite intelligence of which this whole simulation is a trivial little game that you, it's no effort for you, whatever. It's literally nothing. And all the wealth and all the possessions you could possibly have, you could be the richest man on earth. It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. It's just a little game in you. And you could make a billion other much better games than that. So that's, but see, mostly I'm still, it's very, very interesting, know that I am the infinite intelligence.

Starting point is 00:53:41 I've woken up a little bit, but not completely. So I'm still halfway between identifying with the avatar and halfway, disidentifying with the avatar. And I agree that there are spiritual masters who have completely disidentified. And I would love to disidentify because it's no fun to be afraid. Yeah. I find it so interesting how, I think largely, like, around the time of the Vienna Circle and the 19th, 20th century, there was kind of this big divorce between the simultaneous contemplative practices

Starting point is 00:54:15 and metaphysical practices alongside the scientific explorations. And like most people don't understand to the degree in which Newton himself had just as much exploration into alchemy than the sciences. And it makes sense that they're one and the same in the source. and then there's the experiential side, and then there's the logical side, there's the particle, there's the wave. There's two ways to come at something

Starting point is 00:54:41 from the top down, from the bottom up, you know, and the way that it's processed. If the possibility of consciousness being fundamental is real, it really does line up with a lot of Eastern wisdom traditions around the illusion of free will, the self, and that there is a more fundamental aspect of being that is the witness and awareness of any arising and passing away a phenomenon contents in our experience.

Starting point is 00:55:08 Yeah. That gives rise to a true sense of freedom. Yeah. And so as the show is the Know They Self podcast, we really like to explore how this is a, what is the most fundamental aspect in nature of ourselves, which feels as, you know, I have many experiences and I love to hear some of yours

Starting point is 00:55:26 where you experience and taste such a depth of stillness, whereas there is the absence of experience, but there is still consciousness floating and a void, it seems. Well, and what's interesting is if consciousness is fundamental, it actually makes sense that spending more time investigating that first person experience would give you, would enable you to have some insights or give you some direct understanding or knowledge in a way that our current way of understanding in the world through science has not been able to.

Starting point is 00:56:02 And I'm very interested in that crossover as well. Yeah. So when you say like sense of self, what are you referring to as most people kind of operate with that notion? And then we can kind of start to see the illusory nature of it and come back into what's more fundamental. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:17 I do always, when I talk about the illusion of self, I do like to start with what I'm not calling an illusion. Yeah. Because I think it's less confusing that way. In terms of a self, there are human beings. There are animals.

Starting point is 00:56:31 There are, you know, all of the things that we see in the world. And we can call them the things we call them. And that's very useful. There, you know, we can point to a wave and know exactly what we're talking about. And actually, a wave is a much better analogy for the experience of self than something like a chair or a rock. And that's because a wave is a phenomenon in nature that is ever changing. And it's very clear to us and we can see it. That doesn't stop us from labeling waves, waves.

Starting point is 00:56:58 We know a wave when we see it. And we can say a lot of things about how waves behave and what they do. And it's a clear phenomenon in nature. And the same is true of the human mind and the way the brain works is it is an ever-evolving, ever-changing series of phenomena. And so that obviously exists.

Starting point is 00:57:25 We can talk about it. We can talk about our biographical. selves and how we went from babies to our current states, you know, all these things are phenomena in nature that we can talk about. We can talk about decision making. Also, when I talk about free will being an illusion, there's an element of it being an illusion. But in terms of decision making in nature, that is absolutely a process that takes place and our brains are very good at executing that process. The illusion comes in the experience we all have, and myself included, You know, I have had the experience of dropping this illusion,

Starting point is 00:57:59 but most of the time I walk around with this sense that there's a solid self that's not changing. There's part of me that's not changing. It's the same me when I was two that I'm now and we talk about things that way. And you can see that it's an illusion when you start to investigate it a little more closely and think, okay, where is this unchanging solid self that's moving through time? and you realize that you think of it as kind of being inside your body somewhere. It's not the same as your brain. It's in your brain or maybe near your brain.

Starting point is 00:58:34 There's no real way to describe it because it's an inaccurate way of viewing things. But it's this very persistent intuition and sense of being an unchanging solid entity that moves through time. when in fact what the experience of self is, is a new experience in every moment. We're constantly changing. Who I was and my experience as a two-year-old are so different from the experiences I have now that you and I are our experiences right now probably more similar than mine were with my two-year-old self. and that there are a lot of processes in the brain that make us blind to these changes and to the fact that I'm not in my body, I'm not in my brain.

Starting point is 00:59:28 I, you know, and we even use the language, my brain, my body, as if I stand outside of those things. And so it creates this feeling that we are separate from the physical world somehow, that it's not that I am my brain and these experiences are arising. as a result of the physical structure that I am, but that there's some entity in there that takes ownership of my body and my brain and everything else. And this is where the illusion of free will comes in. It feels that this self can make decisions

Starting point is 01:00:03 that are somehow separate from the physical world and separate from the laws of cause and effect. When in actuality, our brains are these waves and the processes keep moving and there's no stopping. There's no stopping the river. It's an unfolding through time that consciousness likely is, in some sense, the canvas on which it all plays out rather than the thing driving it or the subject of it. I really love that analogy of the sense of self being like waves in the ocean because we can see that they're still connected and yet there's a more essential nature of ones being which would be like the ocean.

Starting point is 01:00:51 Yes. And we can see under FMRI machines through psychedelic use and advanced meditators, the reduction in activity in the default mode network, which goes hand in hand with this loss of an experience of a solid self. Yes. So any thoughts you want to share there as well. Yeah. So you're right. I mean, we're still at the infancy of our understanding of what's going on in the brain, but clearly many, many people throughout history have had the experience can train through meditation to have the experience or through psychedelics. It's a very common experience of this illusion of self dropping away and no longer experiencing it for a period of time. And as someone who has this experience regularly and knows many people who, who do, it in no way affects your conscious awareness. You are just as conscious as you were before.

Starting point is 01:01:42 And so this sense that our consciousness kind of is the self, is kind of the intuition that we come in with. It is clearly not the case. And so the thing that's interesting about correlating this with something that the brain is doing is one, we can see that the brain, in most circumstances, is kind of generating this experience of self, and it doesn't necessarily need to be generated. We can have a full experience of being human beings

Starting point is 01:02:12 and not have that experience generated. But also that when people have this experience, it's in extremely positive terms, for the most part. Feeling a sense of oneness, feeling a visceral sense of the interconnected nature of things, as we were talking about before. That even though there's not a visual representation of it, there's actually a way to be in the world where you feel intimately connected to the air and the

Starting point is 01:02:41 water and other human beings and sound waves and everything else that we're immersed in. I mean, there's almost an experience of feeling like a flexible web, you know, rather than being a self moving around inside something other. And the deeper examination of our fundamental longing for happiness, which you pick a person randomly off the street and you ask them, do they want to be happy? Everyone's going to say yes, right? And the I that wants to be happy, many of us have different perceptions on, but we tend to feel it is this kind of locused of thoughts and emotions localized in our head, and we have this identity, personality structure in which we engage the world with. And it's through the perception of that separate self, that happiness

Starting point is 01:03:33 is perceived to be gained through the possessions and gain of exterior material possessions and an arrangement of relationships, something happening a certain way outside of us. And you're inviting the perspective to realize the source of who you are, which is happiness. And I often think of this metaphor

Starting point is 01:03:53 of like a lighthouse, illuminating a beach. In many ways it has been said that what we are looking for is the place we are looking from. and a lighthouse that's illuminating is almost like looking for its own light, failing to recognize that it is the source of its own illumination. And so as we start to peel back the layers of our preconceived notions of self,

Starting point is 01:04:19 to see who we are more fundamentally, that field of awareness that we can tap into, I would love for you to reflect on that and start to guide us with the direct experience of that, because I think non-duality can be seen as a philosophically dense topic of exploration, but it's also very simple, and the immediacy of direct experience one can come into contact with it. So what say you? Yes, okay. So there's one physical space in the universe. There are not numerous physical spaces.

Starting point is 01:04:54 There's just one vast, boundless physical space in the universe. that seems to be contained within numerous buildings or within numerous rooms. And each of those rooms, like the room we're sitting in now, lends a quality to the space. The space seems to, as soon as the building is put up, the building seems to limit, put a boundary around a certain portion of space. And the space then seems to share the quality. of the building, large, small, dark, light, and so on.

Starting point is 01:05:34 The space never actually becomes limited. The space in this room is not actually limited by the four walls of this room. If we were to take a sample of the space inside the room and investigate it, and we were to take a sample of the vast space outside the room, they would be identical. Now, imagine that the space were aware. and if we ask the space in this room, describe yourself, it would look around and it would say,

Starting point is 01:06:08 I'm small, I'm dark, I'm cozy, I'm full of objects, and it's not describing itself. It's describing the walls within which it seems to be contained, but if we said to it, no, don't tell us about the walls and the objects and the people. tell us about yourself we want to know about the nature of yourself the space would so to speak look at itself

Starting point is 01:06:31 taste itself become aware of itself and if it were then to describe its quality it would never say I'm small, I'm dark I'm limited it would just say I am vast

Starting point is 01:06:43 I am without limits I am boundless the space hasn't become boundless as a result of doing this it was always that It just mistakenly identified itself with the four walls within which it seems to be contained and just one clear look at itself, liberated, not from its limitations,

Starting point is 01:07:05 that it was never limited in the first place, it liberated it from the belief that it was limited. So instead of this face now feeling, I am confined, I'm limited, I'm a fragment, I need something, I'm incomplete, and so on. space now feels I'm whole, I'm perfect, I'm complete, I need nothing. Okay, that's the analogy. So let's go back to our experience. Try to make contact with this in our experience.

Starting point is 01:07:37 Leave the analogy of this vast, boundless space. Go to the analogy of being. Consider one being whole without borders, unlimited, infinite, a single being like the single space. and now consider the single being and temporarily enclosed within the body mind and mixed

Starting point is 01:08:02 with the content of our experience by content of our experience I mean thoughts and feelings sensations on the inside and perceptions of the world on the outside so our sense of our self is a mixture of the fundamental being

Starting point is 01:08:20 or being aware awareness itself, plus the contents of experience. So I would suggest that our being is like the space. It's fundamentally unlimited. And this is easy to check in one's experience. We could perhaps go there later. It's easy to check in one's experience that one's being is without limits. It has no shape, no size, no gender, no color, no age.

Starting point is 01:08:51 and so on. But in each of us, our being, our essential self is mixed with our experience, with our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. So we don't experience ourselves as this complete, inherently peaceful, whole being. We experience ourselves as a being that is limited, temporary, finite, and therefore lacking, because we're a fragment, we feel incomplete. This mixture of infinite being plus the contents of experience makes for a finite being,

Starting point is 01:09:30 like the space in this room seems to be a finite space. So although infinite being is whole, it lacks nothing. So it's a common name for the absence of the sense of lack of happiness. It's complete. It seeks nothing. It needs nothing. It's in a state of equilibrium, sufficiency, plenitude.

Starting point is 01:09:57 But when our sense of our self, the fact of being or awareness itself, is mixed with the content of experience, mixed with our thoughts and feelings, it seems to acquire limits. I no longer feel that I am this inherently free, inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled. being or awareness. I feel that I am a temporary, finite self that is made partly of being or awareness and partly of the content of experience, the body and the mind. And so we feel we're a fragment. And as a fragment, we feel I'm missing something. So this sense of missing something

Starting point is 01:10:38 and the attendant longing to find something is the core feeling of the separate self that we seem to be. It's the one feeling that defines the apparently separate self, this feeling I am incomplete, I lack something. And therefore, in response to that feeling of lack, all separate selves, all apparently temporary finite selves, are motivated by one thing to be completed, to be whole again. Because in the memory, deep in the memory,

Starting point is 01:11:16 deep in the hearts of all, temporary finite selves, that there is this memory of our, of our essential nature, this memory of our eternity, this memory of our innate happiness. But it's been veiled. Our innate happiness has been veiled by the content of experience, and therefore everyone is longing. Now, to begin with in life, we try to relieve this longing through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. And what for many people, I suspect for many of your listeners, when most people, at least many people,

Starting point is 01:11:57 they've been failed often enough by the world. The world has failed to produce the happiness they seek often enough. They begin to suspect that happiness can't be fined in the conventional world. And then we start on a great spiritual search. we rebrand the search for happiness in the world, the search for enlightenment. But it's just the same thing. It's just a rebranding of the same longing for something. Only now what we're longing for is a little bit more refined.

Starting point is 01:12:27 And the objects or activities in which we seek it are a little bit more refined than the objects and activities that we used to seek it in the world. It's no longer substances and so it's meditation practices and teachers and teachings and traditions. and disciplines and so on. But they're all, in effect, activities of the mind that we engage in for us, one sole purpose, bringing to an end this longing, this existential longing that lives in each of our hearts. We now call it the longing for enlightenment, if we're in a religious tradition, we call it the longing for God, but it's all the longing for something,

Starting point is 01:13:07 something that's going to put an end to this unbearable longing. The dissolution of a separate self? Yes. So most, if not, all the, I would say, all the great spiritual and religious traditions in one way or another say that what we really seeking is not an object, however refined and noble that object may be, it's within ourselves. And for this reason, all the religious and spiritual traditions have elaborated numerous different pathways, basically to, to, to, come back to the recognition of the nature of our being. Because when we recognize the nature of our being, like the space in this room recognizing its essential nature, it recognizes that it is already free, it is already whole, it is already perfect, it is already complete. And it is that recognition

Starting point is 01:14:03 that brings to an end this unbearable longing. So that is why, in one way or another, All the religious, spiritual traditions say know thyself. It's only that self-knowledge that will put an end to this longing. For people that don't know, what is the meaning crisis? And can you share some stats and some context for just how bad it currently is on the planet right now? So when people talk about whether or not their lives are meaningful, they're using meaning as a metaphor. It's like the meaning of a sentence. sentences are meaningful

Starting point is 01:14:42 if I say it doesn't mean anything to you but if I say there's a cat on the mat that means something though what goes into that if we slowly unpacked a metaphor we can get a sense of what people are gesturing to with the metaphor

Starting point is 01:14:57 so think about how all the words cohere together they cohere together they make sense together and what they do is they connect you to the world with the possibility of truth it could be true that the cat is on the mat, and then you're connected to reality. So there's this coherence, there's connectedness, and the sentence signifies the world to you in a certain way.

Starting point is 01:15:19 It makes the world significant to you in a certain way. Now, if you look at all the work in, and I do, because in the psychology of meaning in life, not the meaning of life. The meaning of life is some metaphysical proposal. We're talking about a cognitive psychological phenomenon, the meaning in life. This is what people are talking about when they're say, even though my life has been filled with frustration and failure and betrayal and guilt and shame, I still want to keep going because my life is meaningful. And we can maybe talk a little bit later about it's not the same thing as subjective well-being or mastery of one's environment. So if you take a look at the four, there's four features of meaning in life.

Starting point is 01:16:07 One is coherence. What people mean is there's something like the structure of their experience that's like the coherence of a sentence. Well, what does that mean? Coherence is the opposite of absurdity. Absurdity is when you have two perspectives that are clashing so that one undermines the other. So here we are, you and I, we're in this little perspective. We're here on the, and we're doing all this stuff, and it's also meaningful. and then I get you to zoom out to the entire universe, the cosmic perspective.

Starting point is 01:16:41 And from that perspective, our little lives could seem insignificant, right? They could seem absurd. There's a clash. Now, before that gets too dark, realize that we have a way of dealing with potential absurdity between perspectives and reconciling it with an insight. So we already have a sense of humor. That's what humor is. Humor is when there's a clash between perspectives, and then you get an insight that reconciles it.

Starting point is 01:17:10 So just to hold that out so people don't amit. Because when I sometimes say that, that's kind of a dark thing to say. Okay, so you want that. The next is, right, when I said the cat is on the mat, it oriented you. It made you look in a particular direction, gave you a focus. So the next factor is called purpose, but the problem, I don't like that term, because our culture is all about purpose. and we think of purpose as some end goal state of something we have to have, some status, some power. I got to get to, got to fulfill my purpose.

Starting point is 01:17:40 The problem with that is if you, and I realized this in high school and I went around writing there is no purpose. Because I realized even then, before I saw any of this research, that doesn't work because if you never get it, your life was meaningless. And once you get it, once you got your thing, your purpose, then your life becomes meaningless. So don't think about purpose that way. think about it as orientation. You need a North Star, something that orientes you, helps you consistently focus, helps you navigate and track through reality

Starting point is 01:18:12 and narrate and keep track of how you're tracking through reality. It's an orientation that allows you to narrate and navigate. That's what you need. The next is significance, like the sentence. Things have to be significant, you have to have a lot of significance. Things have, you have to have things that seem very real, deep, not ephemeral, superficial to you. And then finally, and it turns out most importantly, is mattering.

Starting point is 01:18:41 Mattering matters the most. Mattering is the sense of being connected to something, I'm going to put in scare quotes, because it's another metaphor we have to unpack, something bigger than yourself. But this goes back to what I pointed out about Plato. We want to be connected to something that's really real. So these are the three questions to ask yourself to see if you have mattering. What do you want to exist even if you don't?

Starting point is 01:19:08 What do you want to exist even if you don't? That's right. Got it. How really real is it? It's not virtual, not ephemeral, not superficial. How much of it, how connected are you? How much do you matter to it and how much of a difference? does it make to you?

Starting point is 01:19:32 How significant? So mattering and significant or turning out to actually be two sides of the same connectedness. I use the ancient word religio for that sense of connectedness. So I'm basically asking you, do you have religio? Is it connected to something that's really real? And so much so that you care about it beyond your egocentric concerns. Those are the three questions. Now, a prototypical answer that people give.

Starting point is 01:20:00 and it's a right one is, well, my kids. And, you know, Elizabeth O'Field, like, these, their kids are sacred in that sense. Sacred is something you wouldn't exchange no matter how much money somebody was willing to give you for it, okay? So, well, do you want your kids to exist when you don't? Well, yeah, that's the whole project.

Starting point is 01:20:19 Of course I want them to exist when I, and I'm trying to make the world a better place for them. So when I'm not here, they will flourish, right? Are they really real? Well, if you aspire to being a good parent, they're way more important than you and they're really real. I mean, having a child is one of the best ways to turn the arrow of egocentrism out to something other than yourself. You come to this stark realization, wow, that being is more important than me.

Starting point is 01:20:45 And if I don't live that, that child will die. I don't remember having those moments and they're almost terrifying. And then do I matter to my kids? I long to matter to my kids. I long to make a difference in their life. And they're super significant to me. And so, right, kids are a typical answer of that. Now, here's one thing, and then I'll shut up so you can reply, right?

Starting point is 01:21:12 When you have a kid, all the measures of subjective well-being, that sort of I feel really good about myself, the thing that shows up in beer commercials, and I feel really good, I'm good, I'm happy, I'm good, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that goes away when you have a kid. You're sleep deprived. You're not eating. It's like being in a shipwreck. You're wet all the time for some reason, right? There's alarms going off.

Starting point is 01:21:37 That's the kid crying. The person you thought loved you most in the world, your partner, doesn't like you anymore. Right? And you're getting sick all the time. Why do people do it? The subjective well-being is collapsing. Their finances are going down. Kids are wickedly expensive.

Starting point is 01:21:53 So those are the two things we're supposed to be wealth and subjective well-being. They collapse. What goes up that more than compensates for the collapse in wealth and subjective well-being, meaning in life? And that's what's at risk in the meaning crisis. So many people on the planet are like bystanders to their life, and they basically live as a reaction to circumstances or situations. people, places, and events, to consciously, we're at the stage of our unfoldment where we must consciously participate our own unfolding. We have, you know, we're made in the image and likeness

Starting point is 01:22:34 of God. What that means to me, I mean, God is formless, it's a presence, it's a love, it's beauty, it's not like a man somewhere. But what that means to be made in the image and likeness, it means you have the capacity to think independent of circumstances. So you actually can pull your attention away from circumstances and have a new thought, an inspiration. So to consciously participate in your own unfolding means that you can actually participate in this evolutionary urge that's within you and set it free and become better versions of yourself. You don't have to wait for a circumstance to change or another person to change or you don't have to wait for a government to change. You can actually participate in your own unfolding. And that's where we are as a species

Starting point is 01:23:21 to participate at that level rather than to wait to see what's going to happen. It feels like more now than ever society pulls us into a slumber because we have so much more comfort and convenience than ever before, which is beautiful. Would you say that there's more things

Starting point is 01:23:38 you have to guard yourself now to be able to really be in the participation of paying attention to how your life wants to unfold in that way? It's a combination. One, there's a lot of distractions. You know, the world is full of distractions. and also I believe we're on the verge of more awakening that's happening now.

Starting point is 01:23:56 So on one level it's more difficult because of distractions, but on another level it's easier because you have more and more people that are articulating some way, shape, form or another, that you can participate in your own growth. I mean, you go back 30, 40 years ago, some of the things I was teaching was woo-woo. now it's science you know so

Starting point is 01:24:21 so because of that vibrational footprint of so many people participating meditation life visioning yoga chigong you know so many different things that that's creating a a vibrational footprint for more people to come into that frequency

Starting point is 01:24:37 so in one level it's difficult because of the crisis we're facing on another level it's easier because there's so many more people involved now how do you see the process then of us habituating into our smallness. If there's this infinite light within us that wants to express creatively

Starting point is 01:24:55 in service to the world, but we have these ideologies, dogmas' belief, that shrink us down into a mold that is conforming to society or if it's the economic machine that holds that light in, how do you see that happening

Starting point is 01:25:07 and how do we guard ourselves from that continuing to happen? I think when you look at the propaganda, you look at the media, which is like nefarious hypnotism, The whole media, and this is with all governments, pretty much, is to shrink people into being consumers, pretty much, and to fit into a mold that can be controlled.

Starting point is 01:25:27 So once you know it and you see it, you see it operating, that it has less power over you, but people unconsciously like to conform. They don't want to be outliers, you see. So they'll conform into kind of a group think about a particular thing. You know, nations will think alike, you know, to a degree and now we're in great polarization, which I think is kind of good

Starting point is 01:25:52 for the evolution of the species. So we have nefarious hypnotism that's trying to habituate us into those smaller versions of ourselves. But once an individual established as an intention, and their main intention, intention is to become, I want to grow,

Starting point is 01:26:10 I want to be a greater version of myself, I want to contribute to the planet. When an individual establishes that kind of intention, they become available to inspiration. They become available to guidance. They become available to wisdom from their soul that comes in in a language and in a way that they can understand and begin to act upon.

Starting point is 01:26:29 Now, interestingly enough, most people come through that door through a crisis of some kind. You know, many people come through it. Like inside, they'll have an aha moment of Satorium. Oh, my God, you know. But many people come through it because they're sick and tired of their life. You know, and then they've been,

Starting point is 01:26:47 become available. But you are correct. People become habituated to their limited self. Habits are good if in fact it's a habit for transformation. But just run-to-the-mill habits keep people small. Yeah. I remember one of the first impactful audios that I listened to was by Earl Nightingale, which is the strangest secret that talks about how the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity. And living in a society. where it's so easy to conform, and it's painful to stand out in many different ways. It's upon us more now than ever

Starting point is 01:27:23 to have an intention and vision for our life, and I really love how you speak to that intention deficit disorder. Absolutely. Well, that's where many people live. People will wake up in the morning and they really don't have an intention. You know, they're just going to react

Starting point is 01:27:40 to whatever's going on at the office, whatever's going on with traffic, whatever's going on. But without an intention, intention, you know, you're just kind of being buffeted around by the world. So most people, I don't like to use the word most, but in this case, there's so many people walking asleep that have an intention deficit disorder. And until a crisis happens, then they say, well, I should have had to be eight.

Starting point is 01:28:08 I should have been doing something else. But yeah, we want to establish an intentional life. You know, you want to wake up with intention. You want to be specific about your intention, whether it's the healing of your body, whether it's what gift you're going to give to the planet, how can I activate the gifts that are within me and share them? You have to have an intention above and beyond consumerism

Starting point is 01:28:29 and just buying stuff that's going to be in the landfill in 10, 20 years now. Anyway, the soul has such infinite capacities, and we want to set that free. and it's the only way to fly for bliss and joy and ecstasy actually. Yeah. It's kind of interesting to flip it on its head when so much of us, and I fall prey to this at times, to live in a future-based proposition thinking that when I get something,

Starting point is 01:28:58 or if I get something, then I'll be happy one day, you know, or there's going to be some sort of experience or sensation or feeling of joy that is going to be lasting once something happens. Right. And it's just so much so deep. opposite, right? So can you speak about flipping it on its head that if you can embody the energy and emotion and vibration and feel attuned to that, that is the pole, that is the magnet that is going to draw it to you? And that is the inner work. You're not going to be happy when.

Starting point is 01:29:27 You establish the joy and the happiness now is the frequency. You live in that. And then two things happen. That which you're holding for can manifest. But generally speaking, it's generally bigger than what you're holding in the field because it's beyond your present paradigm. So it's beyond the imaginal realm you're holding because there's more good that we can't even see because we can only see from the paradigm we're living in. So if I hold a state of gratitude and thanksgiving now, it's greed of happiness, grief of joy. Then outside where all the blessings are, all the good is outside of my paradigm, I get to be shocked

Starting point is 01:30:08 and surprised by the opportunities that show up for me. But you're right. So many people live, you know, when I get this, when I get that, I'll be happy. You're happy for a minute. You know, you get a new car, you're happy until the smell changes. You know what I'm saying? It's all counterfeit temporary happiness. But you can actually sit and actually strike the mystery court of memory or imagination

Starting point is 01:30:34 and feel a degree of happiness. a degree of joy, you can feel that frequency and then train yourself to hang in there you know while you're doing what you call to do in the world. And then that vibration will reveal itself as doors opening. It will reveal itself as blessings and gifts and things to that particular nature. It's all vibration, you see.

Starting point is 01:31:00 So it's not, you're not just attracting something to you. You're actually in resonance with it. And then that field of resonance allows for radiation to take place. You're radiant. And then there's emergence. So it goes attraction, resonance, radiation, emergence. The law of attraction is a linguistic convenience for resonance. And so if you hold the resonant tone, you start to radiate.

Starting point is 01:31:32 So you're not attracting. You're actually radiating the answer, vibration. And then after, then something emerges, you become a condition for the emergence of good, the same way that if you plant a seed in the ground and the conditions are right, the seed doesn't attract a rosebush, that rosebush emerges from the seed. So in the same way, we have infinite potential, infinite possibilities within us. And as the right condition happens, then the next level of us emerges from that. It's already here.

Starting point is 01:32:05 It's not out there. It's here. It's right here. It emerges from us. And people will say, oh, you attracted some good stuff. Yeah, but it was in here. It just became visible.

Starting point is 01:32:15 You see, it's me. Becoming more me. And then because I'm living in this dimension of time and space, it condenses itself and shows up. It's form. You see, slowed down vibration. It feels like there's so much power and the detachment from that preference

Starting point is 01:32:31 because I think the Western mind can really love to latch on to what we're talking about here as a tactic to get things. Instead of if I source and realize that I am the source of my own joy and happiness and kindness and grace and envive these virtues, then I've become successful in that way because it doesn't really matter, I guess, what the external circumstances are as much because you've anchored that within your own being. Yeah, it's just easy to view it as a tactic to get things. versus like, no, you got what you want, which is the feeling behind the thing in the first place. Right. And then the things will show up.

Starting point is 01:33:07 Right. But they may be better than what you even imagine. That's what I always. Or it'll be legitimate. Like there's legitimate needs, and there's just things that we want. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not, you know, it's not going to go to hell because you want things. You know, but you don't get cluttered with illegitimate needs.

Starting point is 01:33:27 It's not necessary, you know. Have the best of whatever you can get. But your happiness, as you said, is already here, you see. And this has been proven by many people who've been in dire situations. And they had an attitude of joy, even though they were in horrific situations. And then when they got out of that horrific situation, they realized they determined their own attitude. And then that carried them further in life. It feels like the desires or dreams that we have can only be a recombination of our past

Starting point is 01:34:01 memories. So like, you know, if I had a certain car, I want a really nice car, or if I had an experience of certain, you know, circumstances happen, it's always informing what our dreams possibly are. And I just really love the understanding of if you're going to live in the surprise and mystery of life and the beauty and joy of how it's going to unfold, then it has to unfold greater than you could imagine. Absolutely. You reenchance the imagination so it doesn't get in your way. But you, but the, the, the, the really great stuff is beyond your imagination. When I look at a lot of things I've had the privilege of being a part of for the last number of years, none of those things are on my vision board.

Starting point is 01:34:39 All the stuff, some of the great things I've had an opportunity, that great people have had an opportunity to work with. I didn't imagine that, but it came as an outpicturing of who I was and the gift I wanted to share and how I wanted to be in the world. I look back on it, I said, wow, that was really beautiful. That was fantastic. I didn't even know that existed. you know, I didn't even know I could hang out with the Dalai Lama or something, you know what I mean,

Starting point is 01:35:03 and we kick it and work with them three or four or five times, you know, or he calls me and say, I need you to be an aspen. Can you come today? Okay, sure. You know, I mean, that was never a part of, you know, a vision board, but it was a part of my life, you know. Yeah, it's some good stuff here. So the, you were saying something about the, being affected by your past experience, you know, You know, and we want to live in a place where we're catching ideas from the ideas fear, but it's also within us. So this is why I teach people to ask what is it that's trying to emerge through us in the vision process, just ask.

Starting point is 01:35:49 And then your spiritual faculty would get ignited, and the universe answers every question you ask. and you'll start to get parts of yourself that want to be set free. You'll hear it differently. You'll hear it with your awareness, you know, and you can trust it. You can trust your soul. Hardwired into me is this idea, this false idea, that my value and my deservedness to be loved,

Starting point is 01:36:26 is inextricably linked to my ability to produce or achieve, right? And I will be my own harshest critic. Like I have a drive to do better and do more and all of these things, but what's behind that? What is the wound that lives underneath that that's creating that propulsion? And I think it's a lack of self-acceptance and this false idol, which is that the opinions of strangers and the external validation, get mistaken for love,

Starting point is 01:37:00 and there's a sense of inherent unloavability for who I am just as a human being that is overcome only through achievement and accomplishment. And that delusion can be a powerful motor that can get you to achieve things in the world, but ultimately at some point, you realize like that that is separating you not only from other people, but from a compassionate relationship with yourself.

Starting point is 01:37:36 So I'm very active in trying to cultivate self-love, and it feels indulgent, it feels undeserved. It feels, you know, it's like the only way that you overcome that is through actions on behalf of yourself to honor that, right? So as uncomfortable as it is to say, like, I'm really proud of the fact that I have amazing relationships with my kids and that I've been in a loving marriage for, we've been together for coming up on like 24 years at this point. Like, I'm really proud of that. And it was a lot of work. But I deserve it because I worked hard for it.

Starting point is 01:38:14 And I am deserving of receiving their love as well. which I probably couldn't say out loud like not that long ago because it felt indulgent or unearned, you know. Yeah, and you sharing that it both feels like an acknowledgement and also a reminder to yourself.

Starting point is 01:38:36 Yeah, it's a practice. Because you have to overcome that default setting or that wiring through contrary action. Especially in a society and culture that often celebrates the most high achievers being fueled by that not enoughness that we were talking to.

Starting point is 01:38:53 And so it's like. And anything, and the self-love is, is, is an antagonist to that. Like, what would happen if I love myself and I muted that motor, then my whole life would collapse? So it's very threatening and confronting. Because it's our wounds that we,

Starting point is 01:39:14 that we misinterpret as superpower. and a distrust of the greater superpower that resides on the other side of overcoming those character defects or those wounds or those traumas. I feel like as you start to awaken to more of your true nature and you start to tap into the intelligence of your heart, you start to find regulation in your nervous system

Starting point is 01:39:41 at a baseline level, like you start to find more ease in your system. There is a whole different place in from which you're manifesting your reality. in terms of your career, success, your finances, your relationship, everything. And I would just love for you to speak to that, how the more we tap into the heart and as we go kind of up through these stages of stages of consciousness, essentially, the place in which we attract things, people, places, and opportunities radically changes. So it's funny, like when you go on a hike, right, Andre, at least imagine any of us going to

Starting point is 01:40:12 hike or a walk, you can only see what you can see, right? So at the bottom of the hike, you see the parking lot. lot or you see kind of like the little shrubs I'm thinking about in California where we live. And then as you start to go along the walk, the view changes, right? This is sort of like, I think about the awakening of the heart and the five heart stages. Your perceptions of life radically change. So it's like you're living in a different reality. And so because you're in a different reality, because you are different, you also start to change your life. So I'll give you a more concrete example. When I think about the periods, when I was in the dark heart, I think about how hard

Starting point is 01:40:52 life seemed and the only little lift I could get would be, you know, I used to drink quite heavily and had these partying times. I also think about the relationships that I was in. Because there was so much fear, I chose really nice, but really safe guys that loved me a lot more than I loved them because there was a fear of abandonment from my childhood. So I didn't want to be, you know, abandoned. So the fear predominated. So that's what I was creating in my life. And it was also just, you could just see there was limitations in my work and what I was creating. And then a lot of my life, to be honest, was in the propelled heart, you know, perfectionism, always needing to be number one in the class and always needing to get more and more in the planning and everything.

Starting point is 01:41:39 And then it's like there's so little piece at this stage for most of us, it's like these little ups and down, the dopamine rush. It's like, oh, look, how many people loved this post or this thing did really well, but then there's the big downs. We let the ups in, we let the downs in, like, oh, like this didn't do as well as I wanted, or, you know, this person didn't ask me out a second date on, you know, whatever Bumble or whatever dating app you're on. And so the relationships I chose in that stage were fitting into the plan, like my ex, right? We knew the same people. We went to the same event. It was like, all. also, you know, fun and fancy and just kind of fit in. But there wasn't that deep connection.

Starting point is 01:42:21 There was this still trying to fill. There wasn't that fulfillment, right? And so we see it in our lives play out. And so as we start to go into the steady heart and beyond, your life really does radically change in a way that you can't see yet from the earlier fields. Another thing I think maybe we might mention before we go into the other heart fields is the heart field. Can I show you here in the book? We still have the galley here. So this was one of the first ways I started to learn about the power of the heart. And, you know, for anyone's struggling, I start to realize.

Starting point is 01:43:02 Put it on screen. Yeah. There is, even right now when we're sitting, there's a tourist field coming out of the heart. and it's going beyond our skin where we think we end eight to ten feet and it's going out and around and it's a hundred times stronger than the brain. So it's really amazing about this heart awakening work. We talk about coherence. It means your personal field becomes more harmonious and strong. This literally means, Andre, from a scientific perspective, that you become more magnetic. So it means people start to come to you like, hey, you know, what are you up to? You're just,

Starting point is 01:43:39 I don't know. How can I help you? I want to be part of what you're doing. You know, just things naturally start to come. More coincidence, synchronicity. Synchronicities. I talk about, you know, when I was in a clear heart moment in the book, I talk about how I ran into Deepak Chopra on the street after he had reviewed one of my books, but I had never met him in person. And from that one meeting, we met for coffee.

Starting point is 01:43:58 We decided to write a book together, which later became a New York Times bestseller. These are things that the mind can't plan. Energy doesn't lie. So when you're in the dark heart and the propelled heart, and you're just feeling like you're hustling all the time and that you can't quite get to that success that you want, you're not meeting the right.

Starting point is 01:44:14 right partner, you really want a family, you really want love. You start to work on this incredible heart resonance, this intelligence inside of you. And then all of a sudden, things start to shift and change on the outside. And this has been my personal experience. This has been the experience of all the people I've been bringing this to. It's so amazing, Andre, because, again, the perception from the dark and the propelled heart is like, got to work harder, more, you know, self-help books, more motivational talks, like, just, more stuff versus, oh, there's this energy that I can start to work with inside of me. I love the Taoist saying, the master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone.

Starting point is 01:44:55 And it's one of my favorite texts. Yeah. And it's really arriving at that place as you start to race through these different stages. You do experience more coincidence, synchronicity, bumping into people on the street. And you go from the logical intellectual planning of your whole life to really allow yourself to be surprised by something greater than you could dream of. And that's a really beautiful place to be. Because your perceptions changes, your heart awakens, your thoughts change. And that also means incredible creativity and incredible, this creative power awakens, which leads you to inspired action. So it's not that you sit back

Starting point is 01:45:35 and you're like, oh, my heart's awakened, everything's going to come to me. What it does mean is that you start to do things in a very different way. You don't have to go about the same arduous uphill. The mind is very step by step. I have to do this. Then I'm going to be promoted to this stage. Or I have to go on 50 dates statistically before I meet my partner, whatever it is. The heart is nonlinear and dynamic. There is a force that comes through.

Starting point is 01:45:59 So the other thing, Andre, in our culture, in the Western world in general, there's this idea of like, you know, this is where a lot of the, you know, motivational thinking talks and programs comes from, which can be helpful for some people. But it's often like I have to awaken, you know, me. Like, you know, the movies like the diehard movies, it's like, I have the power. I woke up. Like, I can save the planet or like I can save the building. It's like me, my power. Whereas the awakening heart starts to realize more and more, the clear heart, that there's a power moving through me. Right?

Starting point is 01:46:36 The Tao is like allowing this force to move through you. So it's non-specific. and it's not personal. There's more ego in it. Like, oh, I'm so awakened. I'm so enlightened. Me, me, me. Versus we're all in this. This is moving through me. That heart field I showed you, it's like, oh, I'm tapping into a different energy field. So it's not like, oh, I'm the source of these miracles and synchronicities. It's that we're operating at a different frequency where things like that tend to happen for anyone who chooses to operate at that frequency. So we can all tap in. And that's what's really exciting about this work as well.

Starting point is 01:47:13 We all at different points in our life and we surely know people that set out to become an actor and it's not working out or they're looking for this relationship and they're really striving and it's not working out and whatever the thing is we're trying to go after that we want, right?

Starting point is 01:47:29 And it's not working out. I want to reflect on that just a little bit more because it's tough when things aren't working out the way we want it. We want things to work out how we want them to. That's part of the problem. And the trust in the unknown and the uncertainty is a beautiful place to arrive to, often difficult to work our way through.

Starting point is 01:47:52 And I think in the face of that uncertainty, it can be tough to navigate. When is it time to double down? When is it time to let go in the process of going after what I want to go after? And I think the place we're coming from when we ask those questions and form that decision a lot. And when we're actually in a place of surrender and we've let go, our egoic comparative

Starting point is 01:48:15 of what we say we want from life, and then we're like, okay, but then there's still a part of us that kind of expects it. I feel like in the death of the expectation of what's going to come in, can something new be born out of that experience, right? But when we say we've surrendered and let go,

Starting point is 01:48:32 and then you're like, okay, but like now that I've surrendered, like where is that thing? See, it's like this fake. surrender and there's real surrender. Yeah. Right. Fake surrender is like, and we've all done this, right?

Starting point is 01:48:45 Let's just bust. I've done it. We've all done it. We all do it in some ways. But this can just bust yourself forever, right? Fake surrender is like when you say, okay, I know I need to let this relationship go as an example. I know I need to let this thing go and, you know, let it go so that it comes back to you.

Starting point is 01:49:02 So I'm going to let this go, but I really like so that they come back to me. So there still is this part of you that is attached to some version of an outcome that is still based on your identity. Whatever you manifest and create from your sense of ego identity will be limited because the ego is conditioned from past experience. So it doesn't see the totality of life. So fake surrender is when you say, okay, I'll surrender so in order that so that I can get the gold. so that XYZ happens. So there still is a kind of attachment or limited expectation in the surrender, fake surrender. Real surrender is different.

Starting point is 01:49:51 Real surrender is when you know that something needs to shift. You know that if you're honest, yes, it's terrifying, yes, it's scary, but I need to let this go. Like if I'm honest, if I put money concerns aside, if I put what people will say aside, if I put everything aside in my soul, yes, I need to let go. If you feel that, real surrender is the willingness to follow that impulse, to follow that directive without any future projection analysis of what might or want. may not happen when you surrender. Well, if I surrender, maybe this way. If I surrender, maybe it's like, I know I need to let go. This is the guidance I'm given.

Starting point is 01:50:42 And if I'm honest and don't BS myself, yes, let go. True and real surrender is the willingness to follow that without any projection into the future of any possibility. Because what I have found is whatever you project, into the future will likely be a projection of your ego mind. And that creates a certain limitation

Starting point is 01:51:12 on the flow of the infinite intelligence. And many of us, we are, because we can only see so much with the ego perception, and now we set our goals and then we get attached to the goals based on our limited ego perception.

Starting point is 01:51:31 I'm going to manifest this. It's going to be that. It's going to be that. If I surrender that. But many of us don't realize that we are trying to manifest peanuts. I really want this peanut, Andre. I want this peanut.

Starting point is 01:51:43 This peanut's amazing. I'm going to visualize this peanut. Give me this peanut. Open my pineal gland and see this peanut. It's going to be the peanut. But we don't realize it's still a freaking peanut. And maybe we're so attached to what we think should be and how we think things should be.

Starting point is 01:51:59 This little peanut, the peanut could be a relationship. The peanut could be a career. The peanut could be a business partner. The peanut could be, you know, the way you think your career is going to go. When life is actually trying to bless you with so much grace. Give you a peanut factory. A buffet, right? Of a peanut factory.

Starting point is 01:52:20 A buffet. But we're not open to the buffet because we're so attached to the freaking peanut. Because the peanut is all that we know and all that we believe. So look, I'm not saying it's not helpful to set a goal. Set the goal. All I'm saying is move from goal setting to soul setting. Have a shift, open to the deeper impulse, align with that deeper impulse, set the goal that feels most authentic. Go 100%. Go all in with the vision. Go all in. Surrender isn't just, well, I just sit back. lay on the beach, meditate all day, and it's just going to show up on my doorstep. That's not how it happens, right?

Starting point is 01:53:08 You go all in with what you feel is most true. This is what's most true. This is what lights me up. This is what sets me on fire. And it's not because my parents wanted or my friends wanted or the religion wanted. It's just this is what is my truth in my soul. Go all in on that.

Starting point is 01:53:27 But don't attack. to the outcome and don't attach to the pathway and don't attach to how you think it's going to manifest and how you think it's going to look because sometimes the goal that we have which is based on our current level of consciousness in a given moment the goal that we have is sometimes really the cosmic carrot that takes us on a journey the real purpose of a goal is not simply for the manifestation of the goal. The real purpose of a goal and the process of manifestation is not simply for the manifestation itself. The real purpose of a goal and manifestation is for the process and the journey that the pursuit of the goal takes you on. Who you're becoming in that bus. Who you're going to

Starting point is 01:54:17 be forced to evolve into, the lessons that you're going to be forced to learn, and who you're going to become in the process of the journey of that goal. That is the real purpose, the evolution purpose of the goal so you can say any real, real goal, any, I don't say good goal, but any real goal will take you on a journey and force you to evolve beyond your current level of consciousness. And any real goal that you are guided to do when you're following your soul most of the time, you will have no idea how the hell you're going to manifest it. because it will be beyond your current ego's capacity of manifestation. And so many times, here's what I've found, we ask ourselves this bigger question,

Starting point is 01:55:07 okay, what is life seeking to express through me? And then maybe we're giving the guidance. And many times the intuition that we're given, intuition, which is the unconditioned energy of our beingness that flows through us into conscious awareness, right? this intuitive energy, the energy of intelligence, often does not make sense to your conscious mind. It is like, what, do that, go here, go to Brazil, do that, launch a podcast, why, I'm not qualified, what? And so what happens is the mind, the ego kicks in and starts to, like, question, like, what do you mean?

Starting point is 01:55:49 And how is this going to happen? And when and how? And so the ego starts kicking in, trying to understand this. intuitive guidance with logic and that over an analysis to try to understand it, which is really a strategy to try to have some control, ends up blocking the true flow from happening fully. And so what I would really encourage is that when you feel this flow, when you feel this intuitive nudging, you don't have to know where you're going. You don't have to know anything. But if you simply say yes to the most authentic impulse and you take a step and you follow it

Starting point is 01:56:34 and then you go all in, as I've been saying, without attachment to the outcome, you will find that life will guide you and life will reveal to you exactly what you need for your highest soul's growth and evolution in the process of living life. As Young says, until you make the unconscious,

Starting point is 01:56:53 just conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Yes, yes, exactly. He says, until you meet the unconscious will meet you on the outside and the events of your life, until you meet it on the inside, and you will call it fate. It'll meet you on the outside of the events of your life and you will call it fate. In other words, you'll always think shit's happening to you instead of realizing you're actually generating this by being unconscious. And so that's when I say the pain teacher comes to wake you.

Starting point is 01:57:23 up, right? And that it's really important to examine where our neuroses are because those are the kind of the doorways into receiving what our behavioral compensations are because of the psychic stress that we haven't fully dealt with. That's the pain teacher. So the, you know, the pain teacher is really the soul saying you must take responsibility for what you're creating because ultimately you're God embodied and you have all that power in you. I mean, for a lot of people, that's hard to comprehend, but when you look at what we can create when we're really living to our potential, I mean, we have examples all around us, Mozart, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, all, you know, we all know when we're watching an actor or a musician that's in soul. We feel it. You know, because you cannot tell the difference between who the person is and who they're acting. you know when you see a great singer on stage for which i you know can give many names but some of the ones that come to me are people like ray charles or stevie wonder or carol king or you know i'm

Starting point is 01:58:38 showing you how old i am no um you know michael jackson i mean you know there's no question that that was a man who who expressed himself from his soul because it moves you so deeply because you're seeing the potential that lives in you, not realizing that is in you, you projected onto somebody else. And when you think of all the great geniuses, you know, like, look, we got airplanes from human beings having these ideas. We've got everything around us, Steve Jobs and the cell phone. I mean, whoever you want to attribute that, Tesla, I mean, the list is so long.

Starting point is 01:59:16 These are people that were in-sold. They were in their genius. And in my philosophy and in my experience, every single soul carries a piece of the grand puzzle that is important for helping us realize our potential and realize who and what we really are. And to the degree, you transcend those structure stages of consciousness and do not include them, you limit the likelihood of ever finding the genius within yourself and coming to know thyself because you are dropping aspects of perception that are absolutely necessary. necessary to perceive wholeness. And your genius is an expression of wholeness. It's an expression of the divine. It's expression of the entire cosmos. In fact, none of us could be here without the entire cosmos. When people tell me they're alone and they feel isolated, I'm like, you really need to spend some time asking yourself, what did it take to create you? And what does it take

Starting point is 02:00:14 to sustain you? You breathe 25,900 breaths a day. It came from outside of you. You drink water. You have to. It came from outside of you. And that water is all over the universe and it's probably been around for millions and millions of years. You're made of about a hundred trillion cells, depending on whose book you read, 50 to 100 trillion. And each one of them is made of 100 trillion atoms. And somehow it's all dancing. And those atoms have been around for billions of years. You eat food that comes from outside you without which you wouldn't exist. Every cell in your body based on science turns over every year. So the Andre sitting here is a complete. completely different Andre physically than he was a year ago. And you say, okay, where'd that come from? Well, it came from the periodic table, let's say. Where did that come from? Well, some of it came from the earth. Some of it came from the sun.

Starting point is 02:01:03 Most people believe that the earth came out of the sun. You said, where'd the elements there come from? Well, they came from other stars. Where does that end? It goes through the whole universe. So when you track back what you are as a physical body, it takes the entire universe to create every one of us, and we're constantly breathing each other,

Starting point is 02:01:22 We're breathing air. You know, there's scientific evaluations saying you probably have X number of molecules from the Buddha in you right now. And atoms, I mean, like we are all each other. And we're all, the whole, the whole thing is playing this beautiful game of individuality. Because each one of us is carrying a piece of the puzzle that is absolutely essential. and if we don't engage that process of cultivating our genius, then we walk around feeling empty all the time. We walk around feeling hungry.

Starting point is 02:01:58 We walk around feeling that we don't fit in or that we're unwanted or we're unneeded and we're not valued. And all of that is the pain teacher saying, hey, you're looking in the wrong place. Quit doing what everybody else wants you to do. Quit doing what you think you have to do for money because who cares about all your money if it's not filling you with love,

Starting point is 02:02:20 you're going to spend all that money trying to medicate the pain teacher. And so I think the pain teacher is the soul coming to say you're moving in the wrong direction. It's kind of like a GPS. If you're with the wrong person in relationship, the GPS starts buzzing.

Starting point is 02:02:36 You're going right when you should be going left. If you're doing what you're doing for money but it's not making you happy, the GPS says wrong direction. It's going to cause pain. If you're drinking more coffee or doing more drugs and you can integrate and use effectively, the GPS goes off and the soul says, hey, and one of the realities of being who and what we are as an expression of the divine, we have to take responsibility for what we create.

Starting point is 02:03:02 God's got nobody to blame. And so neither do we. And so the paradox of it all is that we have this built-in guidance system. And unfortunately, unfortunately, a lot of religious teachings knock your awareness of that system out. And so you get caught in shame and guilt and sin and all this stuff and not realize that a lot of what you're feeling

Starting point is 02:03:27 is just the heart saying you're going in the wrong direction. And so ultimately, I think back to your first question is we're all here to create together as a family, as a human family, and we're here to create beauty, good, truth, And we're here to give the genius of ourselves to each other because every time I pass my genius on to you or your genius on to me, we each carry a little bit more genius. And when I get to experience Andre's genius or Zach Bush's genius or Ken Wilbur's genius or Houston Smith's genius or an amazing chemist genius or, you know, Bruce Lipton's genius of epigenetic,

Starting point is 02:04:16 every time all of a sudden I see more and more and I see more of myself and I feel more amazed by all these people and more connected to them and I see the genius of the animal kingdom and the genius of the birds and and all of a sudden I progressively go oh my god this is a freaking miracle this is this is absolutely mind-bogglingly beautiful and stunning but to the degree that we transcend without including, we cannot see the genius in ourselves and we can't see the genius in each other. And so we keep creating more and more of what we don't want, which ultimately just leads to, you know, as Rumi says, the function of a broken heart is to let your love pour out. So the question is, how broken do we have to get to get the love to pour out when legitimate

Starting point is 02:05:07 spiritual teachings is a path to making love every day and to the degree that you live a life like obviously you love what you're doing your whole environment is saturated with this is me and this is who I am and this is why I'm here I mean it's it's pouring through the walls right if I put you in someone else's studio and said now do your thing you would feel like you're wearing the wrong underwear the wrong shoes you like I can't this is not a reflection of my being, right? Your environment is the physical manifestation of your mind. I am sitting inside of your mind. And it's beautiful. And that's what we give to each other. This balance between talent and work ethic, what's the balance between the two and finding success in your creative expression?

Starting point is 02:06:00 I'm a great believer that work is everything, you know, particularly for a writer because your writer has a long career, you know. You can be, you know, you can be. 70 years old, 80 years old, still working, you know. And, you know, I've said this before, that like for 30 years, well, now people tell me that I have talent. But for 30 years, they told me I was a bum, you know, and I was a bum, because I hadn't learned how to do it. You know, I didn't have the confidence.

Starting point is 02:06:32 I hadn't found a voice or anything like that. So work, I think, is, you have to have, obviously, you have to have to have, obviously, you have to have some talent. But work is 90% of it, I think. You can get better. That's the good news, you know. No matter how bad a first draft is, the ninth draft can be really good. Or no matter how bad you were when you're 26, when you're 46, you can be really good. You know, when you look back at what you wrote at 26 years, this is dog shit, you know. But I'm not doing that anymore. I've learned and I can do better. So the good news for anybody that's struggling, I think,

Starting point is 02:07:11 is that work does pay off. You can get better. You can learn more. You can improve. Yeah. To me, it feels very sad of, you know, there's that one quote of like the richest place on earth is the graveyard. All the people's die dreams, you know,

Starting point is 02:07:29 that weren't expressed that go there. And I want to speak a little bit more to resistance with the capital R and its manifestations because part of that creative expression unlocking and, you know, being surprised by yourself, one of the struggles I find, you know, personally sometimes and often, you know, with a lot of people in the creative process is because we live in a world of infinite distractions, procrastination is very easy. And so I just love for you to share as, you know, how to overcome procrastination as, you know, resistance to just putting your butt in the seat in writing or whatever people's creative

Starting point is 02:08:06 expressions are because I don't know how many people listening to the show right now are writers, but we all use our creative energy in some capacity, right? Well, you know, the whole subject matter of the war of art, my book The War of Art, is about what I call resistance with a capital R, which is that voice in our head that tells us, you know, we're not good enough, our idea isn't good enough, we're too old, too young, we're too fat, we're too thin, and we went through school, blah, blah, blah. And the other aspect of that is procrastination, the susceptibility to distraction going down rabbit holes and, you know, click bait and stuff like that.

Starting point is 02:08:46 And other things like perfectionism, where we'll spend all day working on one paragraph instead of moving forward. And there's a million ways that our ego will sabotage us, you know. And to me, job one of any creative person is to acknowledge that that is, you know, there is an enemy. And the enemy is you. You know, the enemy is me. It's in us. It's there.

Starting point is 02:09:17 The minute we wake up in the morning, it's a dragon we have to slay every morning before we even sit down to work. Work is, that's easy compared with, like in the War of Art, it says something like, there's a secret that real writers know that want to be writers. know and the secret is this it's the writing is not the hard part what's hard is sitting down to write and I believe that completely if you and what we all have to do in our own way and everybody does it differently is find some way to slay this dragon every morning to be able to work obviously if you can't work you can't do anything but um the first step to that in my opinion is recognizing that there is this negative force. You know, you sit down at the blank page

Starting point is 02:10:03 and it radiates off that blank page, right? You know, let's go to the beach, you know, let's smoke a joint, let's whatever, right? Something that the resistance is always trying to stop us from doing our work. So if we can believe that, accept it, feel it inside us, then we can overcome it. We can dismiss it and just say, well, bullshit, I'm just going to sit down and do my work. And to me, it's like jumping into a cold pool.

Starting point is 02:10:31 It's hard when you're standing on the edge. But once you're in the water, in other words, once you start writing or dancing or doing whatever it is you're going to do, then, you know, that fear goes away. And fear is a huge part of it too, Andre, right? It's like fear of success, fear of failure, fear of destitution, fear of embarrassing yourself, fear of looking like an idiot. And somehow we all have to get past that. You know, that I don't give a shit, I'm going to do it anyway.

Starting point is 02:11:00 The pain, when the pain of not doing the work becomes worse than the pain of doing the work, then we'll actually sit down and do it. But the good news is once we start to do it, immediately, everything is okay. What really separates creatives that are able to find success, which you can define in any which way, you know, for you. But if you want to make a career out of it and be able to sustain yourself through your art, I feel like the difference between creatives that make it there and don't is that devotion to the whatever it takes mentality and like working through all those feelings of self-doubt. And I just have seen with my artist friends who like maybe take a break of not having made music for a little bit. They're doing their own thing.

Starting point is 02:11:44 And then they come back and like, do I still got it? You know, like all these things that. And so looking back on those times where you've had those emotions, I guess what wisdom, any other thoughts you have when those stuff, when that stuff comes. up now of, yeah, imposter syndrome and all these things? I would say, honestly, just do everything else besides whatever it is that you're, like, tripping about. So for me, it was, am I taking care of my body? You know, let's start there.

Starting point is 02:12:09 Like, what are you eating? What time are you waking up? What routines do you have? Is it going to be yoga today? Is it going to be kickboxing? Like, put something on your schedule, wake up every single day with some kind of purpose to do something healthy for your body. Food, workout, stretching, meditation, whatever it is.

Starting point is 02:12:25 do something for your body every single day. And once I started to get a routine back going with that, it was like, oh, duh, how could I forget that, like, I do better when I feel better? It's just such a simple concept. But, yeah, if you focus on every single thing else, then whatever you're worried about starts to figure itself out. So it started with making sure my body was good. And then once I, like, had those check-ins, then it was, all right, now when it comes to writing, like, don't put the pressure on it being, like, a song all the time. Like, what are your, like, what are you? thoughts today. How do you feel today? What are you grateful for? What are your goals? Where do you want to be in the next however many years? Like get back to writing just in general, like being in a

Starting point is 02:13:05 creative writing class. Like give yourself a prompt. Do something that isn't just like I need to make a song because I need to turn in this album. Leave that over there. Come back to later. So taking care of my body for sure. I'm giving myself writing exercises for sure. And just being in student mode overall, just helped me like get rid of whatever that stress was during that time. So if I needed to find a masterclass, a documentary, um, uh, somebody else's album,

Starting point is 02:13:34 a music video was just like get back into being a fan because you've been in the field for so long that it seems like you forgot what it's like to like find something new that has nothing to do with you and to just appreciate it and feel excited about that. So, um, those are like a couple of things for sure. And I'm still in family right now. Like the last three years, I feel like my curiosity just as far as other people has like gone back up, which was really what got me going in the first place.

Starting point is 02:14:01 Like I remember doing my own thing and then discovering some of my favorite artists. Like I remember Frank Ocean in the beginning. I remember the weekend in the begin and Jene Aiko and James Fontleroy. And it was like all of these things that just excited me so much that I ran to work on my things. It was like, ooh, that gives me such a good feeling. to give that feeling to somebody else. So being back in fan mode, the last few years has been, like, the upside to, like, everything that I've been doing creatively.

Starting point is 02:14:30 Like, I've just been going to concerts. And, what was it, day before yesterday? I went to a Clero concert. And I didn't hit anybody on the management side. I don't want to bother anybody. I bought me a ticket on ticket master. I put a scarf over my head, shades on my face, hat down low. I stood in a GA line outside, scamp my ticket to get in, and I just enjoyed the show by myself,

Starting point is 02:14:52 myself there and just enjoy myself in the crowd and watch the show from beginning to end. And like moments like those just remind me of how I felt in the very beginning. It was like, don't you ever like lose that feeling or let that feeling get away from me because there's nothing more pure than just like being in a space that's safe and everybody's like feeling the same thing and the music is beautiful and it's about someone else but you can relate to it. And yeah, like I need that, you know, in order to feel inspired. and I think I forgot it for a bit,

Starting point is 02:15:23 but I'm back at the place where it's just like, no, I need to be out here. And I need to be outside, but not in that type of way. Like, I want to go outside and, like, do something that just makes me feel good. How have you come to change what you see, like how you value yourself as a human being and also in relation to self-worth

Starting point is 02:15:40 when the externalities of success, you know, fluctuate with your career when you have a number one and then, you know, there's downtime or like, How do you see yourself as a, how do you value yourself and like how do you come into relation with self-worth? Well, I definitely keep a daily practice. That is something that, you know, I would advise to all the men out there and young men, you know, keep a daily practice, you know, that allows you to tap in into the mental,

Starting point is 02:16:09 the physical, and the spiritual, you know, I do that with working out every day or dancing and moving my body. Or, you know, I'll do some breath work. I think having a schedule has allowed me to stay grounded. And then also maturing, maturing has really helped me understand that going slow is going fast, you know, and being able to really be present in all of the moments because, you know, I was just telling my boy this. When I got nominated for a Grammy, you know, it didn't even mean. anything to me. You know, that's how much, you know, I was not present, you know, and I didn't like that. I didn't like that. I wanted to, even though it was a nomination and, you know, it wasn't that I won one, but it just was that like, I had so much on my mind at the time that I wasn't even able to be present. I didn't like that. You know what I mean? So life has definitely showed me the importance of, you know, taking time for yourself, you know, enjoying your own.

Starting point is 02:17:18 company showing up and giving people you know what it is that you want within yourself the importance of that in the workplace and everywhere you go you know even the grocery store you know I mean just living in a way that's purposeful those ups and downs has gave me a great sense of value and I understand even with you know my music and all of the art that I share and make myself available to that even in that, you know, I have purpose. And it's not just about, you know, now we won't number ones. Don't get me wrong. You know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 02:18:03 But this season that I'm in in my, you know, entertainment experience, I've arrived to the point to where, you know, now fans are coming up to me. And people that have appreciated my music are telling me how my. music has helped them, you know, through certain situations. And, you know, if I'm going to do anything, then it's like, that's the effect that I want. You know, that could be one person. It could be 100,000 people to arrive to that point to where it's like, okay, yeah, the work is working. You know, I'm doing exactly what I need to do. Being able to look at that, being able to appreciate those down moments, as we would call them down. Maybe we should call them plateau. You know, I'm saying, because people think that it's an up and down thing, but it's really a, it's a rising thing.

Starting point is 02:18:56 You know what I mean? And we just arrived to different plateaus. You know, maybe sometimes we have to go back, you know, to realize and recognize some lessons we may have, like, you know, forgot. Because that's definitely what the Millennium Tour was for me, you know, sidebar. You know, when I went on the Millennium Tour and I speak about that in the book as well, you know, it wasn't something that I wanted to do. But the universe prop this opportunity for me to be able to go back and remember. And that's what life is. And I'm realizing that more and more.

Starting point is 02:19:31 A lot of the things that we are already innately in contact with, we've always been in contact with. You know, we just had to remember. You know what I mean? So life is a grand remembrance. And I'm so, you know, happy to be in this position because, I remember people would be like, why is he so happy? You know, why, you know, why, you know, why is he dancing all of the time? You know what I mean?

Starting point is 02:19:56 And I just realized now, like, yo, joy was just inside of me, you know, and it had to, it had to move around. It had to let loose, you know, I had to find out things. It had to go through, you know, being disappointed. It had to go through being, feeling, you know, betrayed and, you know, you know, You know, that's what my journey was, you know what I'm saying? And I'm happy to be able to go through this experience because, you know, without that experience, there's really, there's no information. There's no testimony, as they say.

Starting point is 02:20:33 There's no realizations. You know, you don't come to nothing. You've got to go through some things. And life is just powerful like that. And that's why it's important for platforms like, you know, yourself, to know thyself, to get to know. who you are so you know who you want to be.

Know Thyself - E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)

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