Know Thyself - E135 - Yung Pueblo: Reflections on Awakening & Becoming a Presence of Love

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

This week we dive deep into the transformative insights of writer Yung Pueblo, exploring his journey towards becoming a presence of love. He shares his experience of sitting through a 45-day Vipassana silent retreat, shedding light on how such profound stillness can deepen our wisdom and awareness. He discusses the importance of embracing impermanence and the practices necessary for honing the power of the mind while erasing conditioned responses.Reflecting on his personal evolution from darkness to brightness, Yung Pueblo reveals how he began sharing his poetry on Instagram, igniting a movement of self-love and healing. He opens up about the power of relationships to serve as a container for growth and transformation. He explores why love alone isn't sufficient for sustaining relationships, highlighting the value of solitude and the skills needed for cultivating long-term connections. Through discussions about the miracle of life, the significance of listening to our intuition, and staying grounded in spirituality, this episode is a heartfelt invitation to awaken and embody love in all aspects of life.Energy & focus without the jitters? Try MUDWTR & Get Up to 43% off + a free frother:https://mudwtr.com/knowthyselfAndré's Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro1:59 Writing as Yung Pueblo3:33 Becoming a Presence of Love5:11 Sitting a 45 Day Vipassana (Silent Retreat) 8:03 Deepening Our Sense of Wisdom & Awareness16:36 Embracing Impermanence 19:48 Honing the Power of the Mind & Erasing Conditioning29:07 His Life: Going From Darkness to Brightness34:05 Starting His Instagram & Poetry35:31 Ad: Mudwtr - Energy & Focus Without the Jitters37:03 Facing off With the Ego40:11 Relationships as a Container for Growth45:35 The Qualities of Enlightened States48:52 Learning to Love Better: From Arguments to Allowing59:08 Why Love Isn’t Enough to Make a Relationship Work 1:01:44 The Value of Solitude1:06:20 Skills for Cultivating Long Term Relationships 1:14:54 This Life is a Miracle1:18:17 Listening to Intuition1:22:58 Staying Grounded with Spirituality 1:27:43 The Power of Meditation1:32:18 Mystical Experiences 1:38:52 Conclusion ___________Diego Perez is a meditator and #1 New York Times bestselling author who is widely known by his pen name, Yung Pueblo. Online he has an audience of over 4 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. He has sold over 1.5 million books worldwide that have been translated into over 25 languages. Diego is a general partner at Wisdom Ventures and a founder of Ready Platform, a dating and relationship support app. Diego’s new book, How to Love Better, will be released in March 2025.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yung_pueblo/?hl=enBooks: https://yungpueblo.com___________Know ThyselfInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/Website: https://www.knowthyself.oneClips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKgListen to all episodes on Audio: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927André DuqumInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/

There's something very different and powerful about the wisdom that comes from your own direct experience. It's not easy to be open to deleting your conditioning. You can talk to your therapist, you can talk to your teachers, you can read stuff online, but ultimately it's up to you to bring it into action to make it real in your life. Vapasana, it's a path of purification that leads to the end of suffering. When you observe the body with this crisp clarity, what you get is this truth that's pervasive throughout the universe, this truth of impermanence. It's awareness.

It's a sharpened awareness. The mind can become like a canon. Like it becomes so much stronger. I went into meditating because I needed to save myself. But in the act of saving myself, immediately I noticed that my relationships were very surface level and that I could do something about it. When you cultivate your emotional skill set

so that you can have more peace in your mind, it immediately helps support you in your relationship. Through meditating has really helped me see that this life, it's a giant miracle. Diego Perez. Hey, how's it going? Thanks for coming, man. I'm so happy to be here.

I've been looking forward to this day for a while now, so I'm glad we get to connect. Me too, man. It's been really cool to see your content online. I feel like we always have these parisocial relationships with people's content, their message. Yeah. And you hope that they live up in person to the energy that you see online. and pleasantly reassured. That was the case.

Likewise, yeah. I wasn't trying to put any expectations, but I knew that, like, just from what you were giving off, that it was going to be good to be friends. And it was funny because, like, it's fun to be on the podcast, but I was like, I think we should be friends.

Yeah, 100%. So your pen name, Young Pueblo, which a lot of people know you under, that means young people, right? What was the kind of, set up for that in terms of how you feel like where we are, where humanity is. Yeah, the name, you know, it's funny when I got on Instagram back in 2012, when I opened my account, that was the name that like immediately came to mind. It was young, young Pueblo.

It didn't really take meaning until I started meditating and I started realizing how immature I was. And I'm like, wow, I have a lot of growing to do. But then I've always been a big fan of history and have been just, you know, read a lot of history books and have, notice how humanity as a whole is incredibly young. Like we just, you know, we don't know the basic fundamentals of what we try to teach children. And I'm talking collectively, right, as humanity as a whole. Like, we don't do, you know, we don't know how to clean up after ourselves. We don't know how to stop hitting each other. We don't know how to tell the truth. We don't know how to properly care for each other. So whatever we try to teach, you know, four-year-olds, three-year-olds,

like collectively as a humanity, we haven't mastered these. important things. Yeah. So you've been writing so much, sharing so much content, writing a lot of books, your fifth one's coming out now, how to love better, which was amazing. Thank you. It's such an important reflection where we find ourselves on the macro scale of humanity, but our own individual lives, learning how to love better. And for me, I feel like I've really devoted trying my best to become a presence of love in life and redefining. And redefining like what does that mean for me? And I'm curious when I say that,

becoming a presence of love, what comes to mind for you? It's awareness. It's a sharpened awareness. You're aware of your own emotional range and you're also, because you're so tapped into yourself and you can see the movements of your mind,

that helps you immediately develop a sense of compassion. And as you see others around you, also moving through their emotional range, it helps you have empathy and compassion for them. And yeah, it's interesting because that's like one of my goals too. It's like to try to, and I use a different terminology. I'm just trying to move through the world gently where I felt like when I was younger growing up, like I grew up in a lot of poverty and that made me create a very like hard outer layer. And I felt like when I was younger, I was moving through the world rather roughly

because I was, you know, in survival mode trying to figure out how to get to the next week. But now, I feel like I'm just trying to move through gently. And part of moving through the world gently is just being like a vehicle of love and trying to deliver as much kindness and compassion as I move through. There's innumerable paths and ways in which life reflects back to us

and then the practices that we take up on the journey and just living life has its way of refining us to deeper levels of awareness or pain that will lead us to make that choice to deepen our awareness. I know you have deep familiarity with both, and we were just chatting beforehand how Daman Vapasana has been a big part of both of our journeys. And you recently came back from a 45-day silent retreat.

How long ago? That was the beginning of 2024, so in January to February. Yeah, that was the second 45-day course that I did. And it was awesome. For people that aren't familiar with Vipassan is, I'd love for you to share just what that consists of. Because quite frankly, sitting, for better or worse, you know, you're essentially alone for 45 days meditating on average 7 to 10 hours a day. And that sounds pretty intense. Yeah.

In the longer courses, you're sitting a lot. You're sitting like 11 hours a day. And there's no interaction. the teacher during the 45-day course only checks you two times during the 45 days. And it's, you know, they're literally like four-minute-long conversations, just asking, how are you doing? How's it going? And in Vipasana, it's a path of purification that leads to the end of suffering. And it's really driven by observing reality as it is, where you're not trying to project onto

reality, you're not trying to manipulate it. You're just rawly observing through the frame. framework of the body. And when you observe the body with this crisp clarity, what you get is this truth that's pervasive throughout the universe, this truth of impermanence. And it's really interesting, like, you know, after going to the longer courses, it's become so sharply clear that embracing impermanence is a direct opposite of attachment. And we cling, we cling. And whenever we cling and we're attached to whatever it is that we want, you know, wanting things to exist in a very particular way, we suffer. And what Vapasana does is it essentially trains the mind to

embrace impermanence. And that helps in every facet of life. So what's really unique about Vaphasana and its path is really a scientific approach to the awakening and purification process of our spiritual journey. And an aspect, which is, you could say largely, it's helping us cultivate is Panya, which is wisdom, right? And I love how they sort of break it down into the three different types of wisdom. You know, there's the wisdom acquired through external means where you hear somebody or maybe an Instagram quote. Yeah.

That could lead to the second type, which is like an intellectual understanding. Mm-hmm. And then the third would be the experiential knowing, right? Where it's the wisdom that actually lives in you as you through you. and as somebody who's been such a advocate and leader and teacher and shareer of thoughts throughout the past decade online, especially, I'm curious what you think about the difference between those levels of knowing and wisdom and how it's important to deepen our sense of wisdom.

That's a lovely question. Yeah, Sita Meipanya, Chitamea Panya, Bavina mea Panya. You know, it's interesting. I think we can be really inspired by children. other, hearing each other's wisdom, and hearing about each other's experiences. And that can inform the mind. It can encourage you to behave in certain ways and better ways. And then there's also, you know, the information that you can like sort of spin around in your own mind and understand intellectually. But there's something very different and powerful about the wisdom that comes

from your own direct experience. When you have these moments of either by being aware of what's happening internally or by moving through life and you're directly experiencing what you were doing wrong and the shift into doing it a little more skillfully and how that just will bring you this deeper insight that can be quite life-changing. And I think that's why a lot of these, you know, whether there's different forms of Apasana, but a lot of them are based in direct experience. And that's why they become such transformative tools for us, because when you're in moving through that direct experience, it's like the reality of life and the reality of how to move about more skillfully just hits you so much harder than it can if you were reading a book. And I say this often to the audience, like, you can talk to your therapist, you can talk to your teachers, you can, you know, read stuff online, but ultimately it's up to you to bring it into action. to make it real in your life.

Yeah. Yeah, very much so breaking the barrier between our conscious and subconscious mind. Exactly, yeah. Because you speak and write so much about healing and the journey of awakening. And it is that process of bringing was once unconscious,

these patterns and habits of our mind that control us without our full conscious awareness, to actually experiencing and seeing and facing off with the difficulties and pain of whatever is undelt with that don't even necessarily have to have, have stories attached to them, right? No, no, I think it's,

so that's an interesting point where it hit me a few years ago as I was meditating how it's really valuable to understand your emotional history, what you've gone through and whatnot, but your healing is not really happening through intellectualizing. It's happening through your ability to just feel and be okay with what you're feeling, not making it worse, not suppressing it,

you're just feeling it. And I think there's a lot of power in just realizing that, it's good to be informed, but, you know, just swimming in the memories is not necessarily going to make it better. It's actually coming back into the contact with the body. And I think that's one of the things that's so powerful about Vipasana is, like, and the Buddhist teaching in general, is that he figured out that anything that arises on the mind simultaneously arises with sensations. And we're not reacting to the thoughts, the memories, you know, all these things you're reacting to how that makes you feel. You know, you either like it, crave it, or you don't like it, and you have aversion towards it.

And that's what creates all that difficult conditioning that makes the mind really cloudy. I'd love to hear you break down in your words the process of becoming aware of those more subtle sensations. For people that don't know Vipasinao, where you first start with the observation of your breath and then you're moving into the deeper awareness of the vibrations within your body, if you could share a little bit about that and then we can dive deeper into it. Yeah, sure. It's really interesting. So you, you know, when you go to your 10-day courses, you'll start the first three and a half days with just being aware of the breath. And being aware of the natural breath, it's very difficult. It's not easy. You know, the mind just loves to jump around.

But when you keep putting effort, a very calm effort towards it and bringing yourself back to it, it makes the mind so calm and so sharp. And what ends up happening is that the mind, you know, the ability to be aware becomes magnified and strength. And I tell people, like, when you're going to these courses, it's like taking yourself to the mental gym. Like you're specifically developing awareness, then developing non-reaction, and you're developing compassion.

And once you develop that awareness, you then take that new strength, the strength that you've developed. You turn it into the body, and your body can feel so clear. in a way where you can always feel your body. You can feel when pain's happening or when something pleasurable is happening,

but you can feel your body to a new level of crispness where it feels like, you know, there are times for me personally where my body just feels like a rushing river of atoms where it's just so clearly like, even in this moment, I can feel my hand and it looks, you know, solid,

but it doesn't feel solid. It feels like it's just changing vibrations. It's so fascinated because I think when it comes to wanting to grow in our life, a lot of people are familiar with physical change and seeing somebody go to the gym and get shredded and they have six-pack abs or something. You can see the physicalness of it and the externalization of growth. But why mental health is largely also such a big epidemic is because it's invisible. We can't see into the aspects of each other's minds outside of the actions that come out. and stem from them. But it's much more difficult to have a reference point for what it can feel like to be

a liberated being where you're not so closely identified with this voice in our head that runs our life that won't leave us the heck alone. And it really is an amazing challenge for anybody who's listening who hasn't already, just try to observe your breath continuously without broken attention for every inhale and exhale and see how long you can last, you know, because it is shockingly difficult. Our mind just, the habit of the mind just jumps right back in. Yeah, it is really difficult. Even trying to do it for one minute is like a massive challenge.

It sounds so easy, but it's, it's very challenging. And it's nice when you have those longer meditation courses, like the 45-day courses, you spend 15 days just practicing on a pana, being aware of the breath. And over that time period, like, you know, the mind, can become like a canon. Like it becomes so much stronger. And then when you then turn and point that attention for the last 30 days of Apasana, it's like the truth of the universe just hits you so clearly. It's like, wow. Like the, you know, this, it feels like I, but it's just composition. It's just something that's flowing together, mental and physical phenomena moving at incredibly rapid speeds.

And you can feel the way all these different aspects of, you know, your, what you think of as your internal reality are just fluctuating and changing it. Incredibly rapid speeds. But I think what you're pointing to is like, it's important to realize that the magic of paying attention to your mental health and trying to do something about it,

like to make your mind less turbulent, the results of that are in changed behavior. Like when you see the change behavior, like, you know, the way you see the change after going to the gym is like you're building their six-pack abs and your muscles. But then it's like, wait, I know that. I'm missing patients, let me intentionally cultivate patience, and then you see that your patience

is growing over time, or your ability to listen, or your ability to pull yourself outside of your own perspective and see the perspective of another. Those are things that are incredibly powerful and just as worthy as muscles. Yeah. Yeah, it's the experiential knowing that we were speaking to before when you feel yourself as a being of flowing continuous vibrations and not this solid eye, this solid locus of thoughts and emotions, kind of somewhere crouched around here that's like, you know, kind of in a survival energy towards the external world. It takes it from knowledge to truly wisdom because you're living that experience. And, you know, I'd like to get your perspective on impermanence because it's such an important thing for us to, one, understand

intellectually and then also deepen our experience of because life has this illusion of continuity. Like, for example, a lot of these lights that are around us are actually flickering maybe hundreds of times per second, but because it's so fast, so rapid, we're not aware to the degree that it's actually not a full continuous light source. And similarly, within our experience of life, we have this experience of being a solid self moving through, solid space and time. And as you deepen from Anapana to Phapasana, you're starting to really experience that illusuriness.

Yeah, you get a really clear, like, you know, it just sort of jumps you into, like, what's true. It's just like, here's the shock of reality. Like, you're not this still static thing. You're actually just composed. Like, it's a composition of all of these forces coming together. And I think it's really, like, I'm so grateful.

Like, I think that's been one of my biggest points of gratitude is understanding that my identity isn't static. And being able to feel the dynamism of it, to be able to feel like, you know, my body has a rushing river of atoms and really clearly feel that, you know, which one of these atoms is me? Like, where is the focal point of my existence?

if everything is arising and passing away at such incredibly rapid speeds, and you understand that, oh, it's actually okay. It actually is rather helpful to understand that you simultaneously exist and you don't exist. And being able to live with these two truths, like Lady Sayyatta said, you know, if you say you exist, that's true. If you say you don't exist, that's also true. Neither of them are lies. And this is something that you get, you know, because you, especially when you go to these preposterate retreats, you're being exposed to the ultimate reality.

Like at the conventional level, you and I are having a conversation at the ultimate level, what's happening? Right? It's just atoms. It's just like subatomic particles moving at really rapid speeds. And we just happen to be like near each other.

And I think knowing that has just given me so much liberty and like allowing my preferences to evolve. Like allowing the past be the past and like moving into the present with just openness and not being attached to the observer, right? Like even with Vipassana, like, you know, some people say just, you know, be the observer,

but even the observer melts away. It goes back to what you said in the beginning of deciding to live more gently. Like when you experience the impermanence of something, that there will be a first and last time that we do anything in life. Yeah. It changes radically how we approach

all of our relationships, our career, our family, and how we engage with them, because as much as I love, you know, this conversation and meeting you, who knows what's going to happen to either of us the next moment, you know? And that invites actually an immense presence and that brings so much more aliveness to life. On the path of deepening our awareness,

I found especially through, you know, studying through dama and viphasana learning how there's three types of actions that we can have you know from the physical which we're all obvious you know are obvious to us to the vocal to our mental which is the most subtle and they put the most importance on because they're closest to the source of which where our impulses arise i found that there's so much more importance on our mental my mental volition like i found that as a direct path to like the doorway, the gateway into my subconscious and unconscious, but also like where so much transformation comes.

And so what is mental volition and how you would explain it? Yeah, I think, you know, the intention that you're moving and using, like the way that you're, what's giving energy to your actions, right? There's so much, so much of life seems external. But what is the energy behind your actions? and that energy, that mental volition, you know, creates conditioning. It's a different way of thinking about karma. It's like the internal component of karma where, like, your actions will literally shape

your subconscious and they will return results at some point too. But I think understanding that this conditioning is like, it's being built all the time from the moment that you're born all throughout your life. I think sometimes in Western psychology, people think of the subconscious as something that's formed during childhood. But I think from this domic perspective, the subconscious is, you know, it's aggregating things throughout the entirety of your life.

Every time you have a very strong reaction to whatever it is that you're feeling, it's adding more imprints, you know, what Gwangajee calls Sankara, it's like it's adding more and more imprints to the mind. And all of those imprints will affect your perception. Like it just makes your perception super cloudy, very pass-oriented,

rather defensive and impulsive. So it's hard to live life where you're like walking around with this like thick layer of, you know, basically having all of those past mental volitions just flooding your view so that you can't see reality clearly. And it's interesting the process of a papasana makes, you know, it literally helps you stop creating more of this conditioning. And by stopping, creating that conditioning, by just being non-reactive and being aware, all the old stuff melts away.

And that's why after I did my first course, when I came out of it, I didn't understand the technique, didn't know what was going on, barely made it through the first course, but I was like, my mind feels lighter. And now looking back on it, it's like, oh, you know,

even the small moments where I was able to meditate correctly had a huge impact where, like, huge chunks of conditioning burned away and helped me see a little bit more clearly, help my mind be a little bit calmer. And then I just, you know, So that first course was July of 2012, and then the second course was in September of 2012, because I was like, I got to go back.

Like, I need to find out how this works. Similar time frame when I sat my first 10 day, and then six months later, went and served my first one. And, man, looking back, you really are able to connect the dots how, for me, and I'm sure for you, like, that was such a big pivotal point of transformation. and you can see the change in how, you know, even if it puts you two degrees in a different direction in life, over the course of a decade,

you're in a completely different zip code, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's really powerful. Like, you know, it's funny because sometimes people will go to courses and they may do one in their lifetime, but it, like, will really, it's a big impact that it has, and it helps delete conditioning. And I've noticed that, like, I went through a while where I wasn't meditating daily and I was, you know, I think I did like four courses and one course of

service before I started meditating daily. But even with those courses, like my mind was radically different, like even though I didn't bring the practice back to, you know, doing it daily. And then once I did pick it up date and started meditating daily, that just like took the growth to a whole other level. But it's surprising how, you know, those moments of being aware. And it goes back, you know those lines in the Dama Pada where it's like, you know, you can do tons of different, like, you know, beautiful, positive things, but the most powerful thing you can do is like being aware for like a minute. And it's really true. Like you spend a few moments just being aware and being a quantumist and like your life can just really change for the better. Yeah, I think somewhere in the

Damapata, I believe the Buddha's reference as saying one minute of pure proper awareness is worth more than a full lifetime of unawareness. Yeah. And that's quite a statement. Yeah. But it points to what you're speaking to about the color tinted glasses that often we're living life through. In many ways, it's not actually an intimate experience with life. It's just conditioning, reacting to other conditioning that we're presented with in life. Yeah.

You're like, that's something that a lot of people have difficulty with is that your perception and your reaction, they're happening inside of you. And your perception is very past oriented. It's very oriented towards whatever. it is that happened before and you're just kind of moving through life and whenever you see something that is similar to what's happened before already the impulsiveness comes up the reaction comes up of like how do I defend myself in this situation this reminds me of this person who hurt me in the past and immediately the past comes roaring up and it just repeats itself over and over and over again until

you put your foot down and you break the recreation of the past so that you can finally arrive into the present moment with choices and that's something that I'm really also grateful to for because, you know, the impulsiveness was so fast in the past that it made me feel like I didn't have a choice. Like it was just like, oh, that's the real me, you know, this anger, this sadness, this anxiety. But no, it's just the past trying to recreate survival mode and having that sort of spaciousness of mind to be able to see, oh, there's my old reaction, there's the past trying to recreate itself. But, you know, I'm going to, I don't want to do that. I actually want to live intentionally and choose something new.

I found the understanding of like how our mind works, you know, on the path to knowing ourselves, if we want to actually know who we are and what life is, then it is delineating the path, the difference between what is us and what isn't us. And on that journey, like you said, it's really important to be mindful of what impressions we're accumulating because the conscious mind can always accept or reject.

this I don't like this, but the subconscious mind is always recording. It only works through addition and multiplication. And so that's why, especially I think since I first got introduced to this path and various other meditative contemplative practices, the importance of guarding what you are impressed upon you from the music you listen to, to the movies you watch, the people you hang around, all of it is without your full awareness. And even the things that you're not aware of because our awareness can only be a on can only perceive consciously like a certain amount of bits of information. Yeah.

Our subconscious, our body is picking up so much. Like a sponge. It's a sponge. I was literally just telling this to a friend. I'm like, whether you like it or not, your mind is a sponge. And it is just swallowing everything. And it's affecting like just the way you think, the way you show up in life. And you have to be really intentional about, you know, we were talking before we started

recording like one of the reasons my wife and I moved to the woods was we wanted to be around there's a bunch of other you know there's a lot of meditation traditions that have sort of you know had important moments in western massachusetts like joseph goldsine and jack cornfield and Sharon salisberg they started a center in western mass the first the first goankajee center outside of india was in western mass too and there's a bunch of different mom monasteries, you know, and a lot of monks, there's just been a lot of different traditions that have, and people who are teachers who just had a lot of like awakening moments there in Western Mass. So my wife and I were like, oh, let's go hang out with our like fellow meditator friends.

We've been meditating for like 20, 30, 40, 50 years and just like be around them, you know, learn from them. And I think it's been really nice because being around them and being around people who are actively cultivating their self-awareness, like actively cultivating their equanimity or non-reaction, and are trying to live through meta, trying to live, like, with this loving kindness towards all beings. It's really nice.

Like, how can, you know, that's such a gift to give yourself. So it's been, I think that's been sort of reinforcing this positive conditioning for the two of us. Yeah. And in the chorus, a big teaching is the four types of people that, you know, those that are going from darkness to darkness. Yeah. Those that are going from darkness to brightness,

those that are going from brightness to darkness, and those that are going from brightness to brightness. And I think it's an important framework because it helps us reflect on which direction our life is going, if we're accumulating more unconscious impressions that are building towards a life of reaction or if we're going towards more awareness. Yeah.

So I'm just curious if you'd like to reflect, on a moment in your personal life where you went from darkness to darkness to darkness to brightness to now hopefully brightness to brightness because I think, yeah, I just bring some humanity into this as I know your journey in life has been

a quite a wild journey, very full spectrum. Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest sort of darkness to darkness moment was really like the first half of my life. So I was born in Wayakil, Ecuador and South America. And when I was four years old, my parents realized that there was no real

sort of economic future for us there. And they wanted to, they thought it was better to take the risk of moving to the United States and seeing, you know, what would happen. And when you move to the United States, it's like rolling the dice. You just, you just don't know what you're going to get. And I was fortunate that my parents are very hard workers, but my dad worked at a supermarket, my mom worked cleaning houses. So we were stuck in a very serious poverty trap. And as I was growing up, it was just a constant challenge, like literally a constant struggle where my parents were always trying to figure out

how to pay the rent. They were always, you know, trying to figure out how to fill the fridge. And I would see that struggle. You know, they would fight about it. They would try to figure it out each month for like, you know, more than a decade. And things didn't really improve until my brother and I started getting older

and we were able to get jobs, teenagers, and just like take that load off of my parents. But all of that created, like I mentioned earlier, a really kind of rough outer layer of me where I like wasn't trying to like intentionally hurt people, but I was just like rough with my words and I was moving around in a very sort of defensive format. And as I got older and when I went to college,

I didn't realize how big of an imprint all of that had on my subconscious where I was so full of this scarcity mindset, so full of sadness, so full of anxiety, and I had no way to process it. You know, this is very like pre-wellness. So, you know, therapy wasn't as accessible as it is now. You know, I didn't know of anybody meditating. So when I got to college, I started picking up really bad habits where I was really actively trying to run away. for my emotions as fast as possible. And I was using drugs and alcohol as a medium for that where I was parting constantly, doing a lot of drugs, and just like pushing my body to the edge. And it, you know, that was just like a long darkness, a darkness moment.

And it led to a rock bottom moment where I almost lost my life because I just did too many drugs one night. And my heart was like literally breaking, like it felt like it was exploding. and I talked to a doctor later and she said that from what I was describing to her that I had like a mild heart attack. And this was when I was 24, 23, 24 years old. And in that moment, I was like realizing that if I continued in this path, I was going to die. Like my body was just going to give out on me.

And I thought about my parents and how much they sacrifice and how hard they work, you know, to give me a chance to make a life that's different. from theirs. And it kind of woke me up to just realizing that I need to do the opposite of what got me to that point. So to me, it was like, it all felt very intuitive where if I was doing drugs, if I was doing drugs, I need to stop doing drugs. If I'm lying to myself about how I don't feel good, I need to admit to myself the truth. If I'm running away from my emotions, like instead of rolling up another joint, just spend time feeling the anxiety, feeling the sadness. And That was like the slow walk from darkness to light and just like trying to like, you know,

be intentional about how am I crafting my life. And then about a year later from that rock bottom moment is when I did my first 10-day course. And that kind of just really picked up all the growth. Yeah. Amazing, man. And at what point I'm curious did sharing your insights and your growth and when did that come into the picture? That was in, so after the third 10-day course that I did, I started feeling that the changes that I was going through were significant. Like I, I wasn't enlightened.

I wasn't like fully healed or fully wise or anything like that. But I knew that I was on this growth journey. And I felt like I was learning a lot and my intuition was really clear. It was like just start writing. Like start writing. And even though you have a lot of growing to do, just start reflecting. And at the time, I was really inspired by the first generation Instagram poets, like R.M. Drake and Rupi Kauer, in 2014, they were, like, getting bigger on Instagram. And I was like, oh, let me start writing little essays. So I would write, like, little essays on the caption.

And back then, you know, words and images, like memes weren't as popular. So I would, like, you know, go to the parks in the city and, like, New York City and everything and take, like, little pictures and, like, put a, you know, nice little. pictures of nature and write little essays about what I was, you know, reflecting on. And then I started taking the main idea of whatever I was writing about or a little poem and sharing them and, you know, black and white images. And then after that, things started picking up. So from 2014 to 2017 was when things really kind of got started for me in terms of like the Young Pueblo account. Hey, fam. I hope that this episode with Diego is bringing you value and a sense of ease in life. One thing that brings me joy in my life is my morning ritual. Having healthy habits in the morning that build a foundation for steady energy throughout the rest of the day to be our best

self is a major key. And for me, every day I start with shrooms. And not the psychedelic kind, but through a coffee alternative like the ones in mudwater, where their blend contains adaptogenic mushrooms like Lions May to support focus and Chaga and Rishi to support your immune system. For me, drinking something like cacao, which is in mud water, instead of coffee, is a big win. I rarely go without it in the morning. And if you don't know, mud water is 100% organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, sugar-free, and vegan. I absolutely love this company. My good buddy, Shane is the founder, and so I know how much intention they put into their creations and they invest in mental wellness as well. I'm stoked to be partnering with them for 2025.

If you want to give them a try, you can head to mudwater.com slash know that and grab a starter kit right now our community and know they self gets an exclusive deal which is up to 43% off your entire order plus a rechargeable frother which is free it comes in a little package like this with cool little sayings over it it's pretty affordable for the like quality of the product that it is again it's up to 43% off at M-U-D-W-T-R dot com slash know-thyself I hope you enjoy I'm curious was did you have any like egoic inflation in that period where um i think there's the genuine urge to share

insights that would be helpful to people did you have any ego stuff that came up on your process of gaining millions of followers yeah i think there that you know people think about the ego not just in the sense of like grandiosity as grandiosity but there's also like there's also ego in hating yourself not thinking that you're good and you're like inflating your ego in this like negative range. Yeah. There was a lot of that happening where it wasn't like, like, dude, I know I'm not the best writer. Like, I know I'm not like, you know, I like reflecting on things and sharing things that hopefully

help people build self-awareness. But I was really hard on myself back then. Like, I was, you know, thinking about quitting all the time, thinking about, and this is also like a period where, like, I didn't have a lot of support from friends. Like, I didn't have a lot of, you know, a lot of people were confused. They're like, why are you doing this? Like, why are you, you know, writing about, why don't you just get a job?

And because I had been working in the nonprofit world for a long time and I intentionally took a little pause and asked my wife if she could give me time to see if like writing could be a thing for us. And it was really fortunate as she did, but there was definitely ego inflation, definitely attachment to like, you know, seeing numbers grow and stuff like that. But I think in my mind, the path, like the DOMA path that we're on,

helped me see that if my ego is growing, my freedom is shrinking. So, like, I have to be really careful with that, because if my ego is growing, then I'm just going the other way. I'm going back into the dark. Yeah. Yeah, if you want to be free. Yeah, if I'm trying to be free, like, why would I? Yeah, I'm not going to mess this up.

And I think to a degree, it's inevitable, right? Like, I think it's part of the path of, like, we find our way, we find some insight, and then we lose our way a little bit. And it's just, like, that balance of awareness and integration. because we can have huge insights or awareness into certain aspects of life. And unless we put that into practice and make that the new normal for us and integrate,

then it can be tough. Yeah, and the ego's going to try to grab anything, right? It's super sticky. So it's going to try to grab whatever it can find and it can be something as simple as like, and I was thinking about this too, like whether I was in the writing world or not or like sharing stuff online,

like the ego's going to try to grow itself no matter what. So if I was still in the nonprofit world, it would have been like, why am I not a manager? Why am I not like, you know, just grabbing some other type of superiority complex. And I think being able to be aware of when the ego grabs something and then coming back to the truth of impermanence, that's like, oh, actually there's nothing really there. You know, you fooled yourself again. So it makes it easier to let go. Yeah. And again, the inevitability of life being a one giant mirror throughout all, it's a,

different faces back to us of our own gifts, our own inadequacies, our pain, the love that we can share, you know, and I'm looking forward to diving a little bit deeper into relationships, also, you know, a lot of the topics of exploration in your new book. I think of just first off, to start out, like, the mysteriousness of consciousness. Like, we have this human experience that is 100% self-contained, that just presents itself through the void of our face. Like, you know, I can't see you right now because I'm seeing through myself. Yeah, yeah. And that's amazing because the world presents itself to us.

And yet it creates difficulties because we're so close to our own shit. Like we're literally looking through it as it oftentimes. And that's, and so when I think of relationships and them as mirrors through not just romantic connections, but through all different types of relationships, relationships through. media, through friends and family, through the, you know, so many different aspects of it. It just makes me think about like how this realm is set up and how mirrors and relationships serve in a very important necessity in our awakening journey because otherwise there's so much stuff we can't see throughout unless we have a proper mirror of our internal self.

Yeah, I've been reflecting on the point of relationships, and it feels like relationships are this almost a small little fitness space where we can learn the higher truths of unconditional love. So it gives you an opportunity to practice moments of unconditional love. Through the experience of limitation. Yeah, through this confined moment where it's like, you know, both people come with past pain. Both people have egos. both people have needs and wants and delusions and ignorance. And it's just this, you know, massive little bubble between human beings.

And then we're trying to treat each other as best as possible, trying to learn how to care for each other. And it's interesting. I think of the, you know, beings who have reached ultimate points of evolution, like beings like the Buddha or Jesus or, you know, other human beings that have just taken that sort of, the development of where the human mind can go to the ultimate level. And they don't exist in a framework of ego.

They exist in a framework of compassion. So like this ego framework that we live in, it can, and you feel that as you cultivate yourself, more of it starts shifting towards compassion, where it becomes easier to do what you know, Krishna-Merti talks about where it's like, just observe. Like don't project, just watch, just see what's happening. And when we're in a relationship, it's like, let me try my best to practice that. And it's funny how we keep, my wife and I, we're like finding that the peace and harmony in our relationship is really coming from our ability to practice seeing each other without projecting, without trying to throw anything on to the situation and trying to just do our best to understand each other and like live what Tikna Han talks about where, you know, love is understanding. And we can't understand and judge something at the same time, right?

No, we have to listen. We have to listen. You know, it's interesting, I wanted to tell you this story. So one time I was fortunate to give food to a monk out in Western Mass. And I've met a lot of people who have meditated in a lot of different traditions. I don't know, a lot of really well-developed people, but only really, like, two that I really feel like have really seen beyond the universe. and this person that we were giving food to, he, so I went with my wife and our two friends.

And the four of us, you know, we gave him his meal and then we were just like hanging out for an hour. And we were talking about Dama, talking about all this stuff. And at the end of it, my friend Rodrigo was like, hey, man, like I was really trying to pinpoint like what was, going on in my mind, but I was realizing that my experience of him were just projections. Like, there was nothing there. Like, he wasn't even like a, you know, he was just so much flowing dama and compassion and

freedom that there was no sense of stealth. He had no sense of self for us to stick onto. And I was trying to put it into words myself. I was like, yeah, I was like, I was feeling the same thing too. Like I wasn't, like, there was nothing there for me to like grab onto, you know, there wasn't anything for me to project onto. So my experience of him was just like me trying to like narrow him down into a box of self when he was just like just utter freedom. And it was really, it was a really good experience to be around someone like that because then we see how much of

our interactions are just like what how much stuff can I throw on you. Yeah. And then on the flip side, how much through the cultivation of awareness our presence can be an active force of liberation for everyone we come into contact with. Exactly. Oh, it's a huge. learning moment, being around someone who's like really trying to do the total opposite besides harm you, just trying to like be nourishing, compassionate, absolutely selfless. It's like, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful gift. What do you think are the qualities of that state when you tap into it? Like you just mentioned a couple of compassion and understanding what other ones would you say are the most predominant? I think the appreciation of complexity. I think that's one

thing that is really hard for human beings. And Gwankajee talks about this where, you know, part of growing on the path to nabana to enlightenment is like being able to understand things from many different perspectives. Your perspective often feels like the biggest one and we're really stuck in it and attached to it. But being able to see things from different angles, I think also being able to just understand and appreciate impermanence at so many different levels where like that truth of impermanence, it opens the door to all the other, you know, the understanding of not self, the understanding of dissatisfaction. Like often people call it suffering and misery.

Those are like giant words. I think it's really, I really enjoy dissatisfaction. Because it's like that, that explanation of Dukha feels really relatable. Because like, yeah, life is suffering sometimes, but often it is very dissatisfying, even when you have everything. I really like the appreciation of complexity. Because I think it's so easy and so simple to reduce people to objects. and just a simple way of understanding them.

Like, it's actually a sign of, it's a sign of intelligence to be able to be in the face of something complex where there's many different dynamics and to not reduce people down. Yeah, I've been noticing that when I started going deeper into meditation, that my thinking was very black and white was like, it's either this or that, you know, And over time, because of this developing appreciation for complexity, it's not like either this or either that. There's just so much gray area.

And being able to appreciate the gray and being able to like, you know, I love now when I'm interacting with someone who has different beliefs than I do, it doesn't create a combative energy inside of me. It's more an energy of curiosity. It's like, oh, like, tell me what? tell me more, tell me what you think. And that can only come from, you know, not falling into the black and white thinking. Do you think that our capacity to give love to others is limited to the degree we can give it to ourselves in many ways?

I think to a certain extent, I think it's tough. It's not so, there is obviously a very deep connection there, but I think there are times where you see parents who struggle to love themselves, and they do such an amazing job, just setting things up better for their children than what they had when they were growing up.

And I do think... Look at you appreciating the complexity. That was great, yeah. Yeah, I think it's... But I do feel like, even with that situation, if, you know, the parent is able to take time to love themselves even more, then they'll develop expansiveness

and they'll be able to, you know, have even more patience, more listening and all the things that we've been talking about for the child. Yeah. What sparked your desire to write a book about love when it's quite a, you know, filled industry? Oh, yeah, everybody said everything about love. Yeah, I love that.

I think it's, you know, that's one thing I tell writers all the time, people who want to get something out there and feel like their intuitions, pointing them in that direction. I'm like, listen, everything has been said. That shouldn't stop you because nothing has been, like, you have yet. to share your perspective on these topics. And if you feel like you have something to say, you have to go out there and say it because you actually don't know who you're going to help. You don't know who's going to come across your book. And it may profoundly change their lives. But for me, I went into writing How to Love Better because honestly, I was just shots.

Like I went into meditating and paying attention to my habits because I needed to save myself. I was like, you know, heading towards a train wreck. And, but in the act of saving myself and changing my life immediately, I noticed that my relationships were very surface level and that I could do something about it, that I can improve them, that as I deepen that connection with myself, I could, you know, like, just have more, like, appreciation for my wife, like, get to know her again. And like the same thing with my friends, with my mom and dad, like being able to deepen those connections. Really, it was directly tied to me being able to grow and build peace in my own mind.

Yeah. So I think that bridge, that bridge between personal growth and how that impacts the way you show up in your relationship and how you can learn how to love better, just feels important to talk about. Yeah. When you say that, it just brings to mind how often we drag our history. and who we think somebody is and how they should show up based off of who they've been in the past in every single moment.

And in that perspective, it's like we're not actually even engaging with somebody who, as they are in the moment, we're engaging with how we want them to be, how we expect them to be. And that, like, just sucks intimacy out of the equation. Yeah, because then you're like, what, I'm literally interacting with an illusion.

Like, I'm literally like taking all these projections, forming them, bringing them into this present moment. And then I'm not even like, not even talking to you. I'm probably talking to the person who hurt me seven years ago. That sucks. That's not a good way to live. Yeah. And it's why I'm so glad we started this whole conversation talking about the developing of awareness because to the degree that we do that is to the degree we can actually be present with somebody and not just our projections of them. Yeah. I think developing awareness just helps you honestly learn how to listen because you can,

it's so easy to get caught in the mode where let's say there's tension between us and you're speaking, I'm trying to listen to you, but already, instead of listening to you, I'm thinking about how am I going to retort? How am I going to sort of try to prove my point using the words that you're saying, as opposed to just taking a moment to fully appreciate where you're coming from, to just suspend my need for dominance, suspend my need for, you know, to just be right and just accept that you also have a very valid perspective. And then I should take the time to hear it, and then hopefully you'll give me that opportunity as well. Yeah, I love that section in your book when you reflect on arguments. It's because it's something

that I've thought of many times as well, where often we're under the presumption whenever arguments arise in particularly the romantic relationships, but also any conversation where we have differing opinions, we feel like it's me versus you, and we're trying to win instead of trying to understand. Yeah. And shifting that perspective instead of me versus you, it's us versus the problem. Yeah.

Yeah, it feels like it's a big, it logically makes sense, but it's so you have to untangle yourself from your emotions, from your reactions, to be able to even try to practice that because it's difficult. As soon as we get into an argument, you know, we're very much so driven

by our evolutionary need to survive. So when we get into an argument, We feel like we may be cast aside by the group. We may, you know, like we're under threat in some way. So immediately we feel like we're walking into a battle. But you have to remind yourself, like, who are you arguing with? Like, I'm arguing with the person I love. This is my best friends.

Like, this is my roommate. This is like the homiest of homies. Like the person I love the most, you know? So why am I acting like I'm under threat? And now let me try to shift my energy to try to do my best to see things. things from their perspective. And this is why, like, you know, in this book, I talk about a very specific form of compassion where you intentionally try to let go of your perspective for a moment and step

into the shoes of another person to see things from their view. And you find that when you do practice that and you're able to give that to each other, the tension evaporates. When I can really see the series of events from your point of view and then you can see mine where like, oh, that's why this happened. And I think that's only something that can happen when you really try to let go of winning. The guess we had on last week, Peter Crone, he has a saying that being right is the poor man's version of self-worth. Oh, man. That's a good one. Yeah.

And it really does feel like oftentimes, like we're not trying to get to the objective truth of truth of something. We're trying to just be right in our perspective. Yeah. And again, it's one of those things that's very difficult to catch. throws of unawareness by default, you're not aware to the function in the degree which this is happening, right? Yeah. But again, in the process of growing our awareness, we can see and like, just question, question it a little bit more, you know, and just create a little bit of a crack of awareness and inquisitiveness and curiosity when we, when we're faced, you know, with these difficult situations. Yeah, I think it's, it's really hard because the mind is so tricky. And

And I think when you're questioning, like, where is this coming from? You know, starts that the mind will literally jump through illogical hoops to be able to make it so that this tension that I'm feeling is your fault, even if you have nothing to do with it. And as my wife and I started, you know, we were together for a long time. We've been together for almost 17 years. The first six years of our relationship was before we started meditating. and that time period was highly chaotic. It felt like we were living in a hurricane. But when we started developing our individual self-awareness,

we started realizing that, actually I'm not mad at you. I just don't feel good. There's like heaviness moving through me. There's some tension moving through me. And what we accidentally started practicing, really out of the confine of the situation where when the pandemic began,

you know, we're living in our little, apartment in New York City. And we were, you know, starting to get into these arguments, but then realizing, oh, like, actually, we're not mad at each other at all. And what we started doing instead was taking a moment when we would wake up to just tell each other immediately how we feel. And, you know, because sometimes you wake up and you don't immediately feel good. You're just, like, I feel heavy or tired or, you know, I feel a little sick. And just having these little bits of information where like you yourself are naming how you're feeling and you're making yourself aware of it and you're making your partner aware of it. It is so helpful because I felt like

that decreased the amount of arguments we had probably by 80%. Because I knew, I was like, oh, like my girl just doesn't feel good today. Like let me see how I can step up for her, how I can support her and just like, you know, take things off her plate. And she, you know, she would also know, okay, I need to move gently through the day and vice versa. You know, whenever I would not feel good, I'm like, okay, well, let me be like gentle to myself and mindful of how I'm speaking and also mindful of the way my mind's moving because it's going to try to make this someone else's fault. And we can only communicate to the degree we're aware of what our needs are and what our values

are, right? So we have to actually know what we need in order to be able to communicate it with another, which is the process of, you know, communication, which we're speaking to, real communication, versus communication out of projections and tension. Yeah, right. Like self-awareness is really difficult without like honesty and accountability. Like, because you can pay attention to yourself but still try to make everything someone else's fault. But really, you know, being able to own the fact that like, oh, I just don't feel that good.

And it doesn't really have anything to do with you. But the mind, like emotions like to grow, you know, whether it's a positive or a negative one, it tries to just expand itself and feed itself. So the mind is always looking for more canon fodder, and it'll just take whatever tension you're feeling or whatever anger you're feeling and try to think of some old thing that happened a year ago. And my wife and I had this really funny moment

where it just, like, it hit us so hard the way the mind works, where I was working in the kitchen and she was in the living room, and we were separately on our laptops for like, I think maybe like two and a half, three hours. And she comes into the room laughing. And she was like, she was like, I spent the last like hour trying to think of a reason to figure out why I don't feel good is your fault. And I just kept going back in time, further back in time, further back in time, just trying to rehash.

And she like caught the mind as it's moving through this process. And she, and I was like, well, and I mean, she's laughing, right? She thought it was so funny, like, seeing that inside of herself. And I was, like, also being like, wow, like, I do the same thing. But also, I'm so grateful to you because you just saved us so many problems. Yeah. Man, I have a couple of people in my life who have been in a long-term relationship, like 20, 30, 40 years plus. And it's so different than the challenges that come up in, you know, the first five years of a relationship.

Yeah. And I'm just curious what you think about the saying that love is. isn't enough and that you need to like learn how to communicate. And I'm curious what you think the other aspects are that we need to really cultivate as skills within building a long-term relationship. This is a great question too because I think we're like generationally in a very different moment. But I think for a lot of times love was enough and people just decided like, And because my wife and I, we had that same thing happen before we started meditating where

we felt this ethereal connection towards each other that was so magnetic and I couldn't get away from it even if I wanted to. And there were times where we would break up, take breaks, you know, be apart, but we would just like come back together. And it came to a point where I was like, all right, like, you know, I'd rather just be miserable with you. I just, I love you. And like we don't have the skill set to really like bring harmony to this, but it was like, we just really liked being next to each other. And we, you know, embrace that, but we were fortunate that we started finding meditating. And I think for a lot of, you know, like therapy is very new. Meditating is very new. Like, you know, it's been around for thousands of years,

but it's become more commonly adopted by the dominant culture. And I think that these skills that we're learning to like heal our generational trauma to like, you know, help change the way our habits manifests in daily life to be intentional about showing each other care. It's a very new thing. So it depends on what kind of relationship you want. And I think for a lot of us, like, I'm also entirely grateful that my wife and I did develop self-awareness, did develop some emotional maturity so that we can understand that for the two of us, yeah, love isn't enough. And then there's this other component that is learning how to care for each other. Like learning how to care for each other is a long-term real process that is separate from just feeling how important we are to each other.

Treating each other as best friends and roommates and all of the other things that, you know, partners are to each other. I think it can be like relationships can often default to the place where it, becomes a comfort zone out of coping not being able to be comfortable alone. And that can be a dangerous pitfall as well because we can only, I suppose, choose something to the degree in which we're free and we bring a sense of willingness to it instead of like it's our default and just our safety in our comfort zone, which is amazing. Not saying anyone was wrong for wanting some comfort or safety. but how do you feel like our capacity to be good alone is a barometer for how much we've healed?

I think it's really critical. I think if we're alone and we're still looking for distraction while alone, then we're running away from our emotions. There's some agitation there that we're not fully accepting. And I think there's this beauty that I find when my wife and I go away to like 30-day meditation courses are 45 days and we'll both be you know fully apart from each other fully alone you're like by yourself no one's talking to you no one's even making any eye contact with you you're just like you know your eyes are downcast and when we go away to these courses and spend all this time just

with ourselves cultivating ourselves deleting so much conditioning you know allowing this all this heavy conditioning to evaporate um it creates this dynamic where when we come back together we're like, it's like meeting a new person. You know, like in those 45 days, sometimes they feel like an eon long. Sometimes they feel like 10 days, 20 days, sometimes they go by fast. But during that time,

we both went to war against ignorance. And we, you know, we did our best to develop wisdom. And we come back and it's like this meeting moment. So in those 45 day courses, you have two days of meta at the very end where you start speaking and everyone starts like, normalizing themselves again. And every time I'm just like, we're both just like, oh my gosh, like, how are you? Like how, like, and we both in that moment are, we're rekindling our

connection with each other and simultaneously understanding that we ourselves as individuals have to get to know ourselves again because so much conditioning has been deleted in that period. So the shows that you want to watch on TV, the movies you want to watch, the music you want to listen to, all that's changed. And you notice, you're like, played your old favorite song, and you're like, whoa, that is way too tense for me. I can't even hear that. You know, the energy coming off of it's way too strong. Or like the TV show and it's like, no, that's like too much. That's not, it doesn't even fit who we are now. And even down to like our meals and what we want to eat. So it's, it's a fun period where because we spent so much time alone and we were okay

with being alone, it's like, I don't know, you get to meet the one you love again. It's nice. I want to read this quote that I saw in your book that I really loved. There is an intrinsic and undeniable connection between the relationship you have with your own emotions and how well you will be able to show up for the emotions of those you love. If you run from your own tension, you will lack the experience to show up for the tension of others. And I think it just really invites this perspective of what it means to hold space for others to the degree we can for ourselves.

Yeah. it's really, it's important to realize that because turning your attention inward and being able to really explore your own internal forests and being able to see your emotional history for what it is, the good and the bad, it's really challenging. Like it's really hard to be able to see like the bad things that happen to you and how much tension they've caused you. But in that process when you're really observing yourself, you're developing patience, you're developing compassion, you're accepting your imperfections. You're developing all these qualities towards yourself that don't just have to stay with you. They're qualities that you can bring into every other aspect of your life, either into

your relationships or into your work. So I think it's quite beautiful when people start realizing it. And I've found this like not just in myself, but, you know, people who do other modalities who, you know, do different forms of therapy, whatever, you know, there's so many modalities out there, but you really find that when you cultivate those, your emotional skill set so that you can have more peace in your mind, it immediately helps support you in your relationship because those skills don't just stay for you. You can share them with others. Have you found the skills you need to make it, let's say, year five through 10 in relationship are different than the first five? Yeah, I think later, as you know, the relationship, I mean, we've been together for so,

long and every year the amount of time changes so it's hard to like you know the exact time but we've been together for almost 17 probably 18 years this year and i think the skill set that we're developing now is not craving or expecting the relationship to always be at a high level of excitement you know that excitement comes and goes and i've even been realizing i was meditating like you know that excitement is just a a more delicious form of agitation and it's very, you know, being okay with like boring, calm days together, days that you'll have no memory of. And, but still being able to be present to enjoy the day to like move about with gratitude. Um, feels like a nice and worthy challenge. And I think, you know, being able to grow older

together, like, we met really young. We were, she was 18 and I was 19. And I was just telling this to a friend, but being able to look at each other's faces, like my life is, when I think about the memories of my life, I don't see my face. I see her face because my experience of life is seeing her in the life that's happening around her. Like I see my face way less that I see hers.

And it's so cool now as we've gotten older, seeing the little wrinkles, like, developing, seeing the two of us get older, together and it makes me excited for like, you know, for us to be like little old people. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Man, it really is cool to think about how long-term relationships were very much so being witnessed to each other's lives.

Yeah, I get to see the whole thing. It's so cool. Dude, I'm like, I hope things are good from her angle because she has to see my ugly muds all the time, you know? Yeah. Yeah, man. It's really funny. Yeah.

It's something that hit me like a few years ago. I'm like, damn, my whole experience of life is like her face. Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting. And I do think that each generation is faced with problems and challenges unique to that generation. And I think because of social media and the ability to compare yourself, you know, at the righty to any relationship or couple goals that are out there. What would you say to a generation that has this.

perfection orientation towards relationships and people and the grass is greener and yeah um you know i feel like that perspective robs this of the joy and beauty that comes from the longevity of something you have to be really really careful with the craving for marginal improvement where people will have a good relationship and they'll let go of that relationship for something that's maybe two percent better. That's not worth it. That's, you know, my friend Danielle, she mentions this all the time where it's not the relationship you get, it's the relationship you build. And I've totally have experienced that myself directly. And, you know, I think it's really, really hard when you are spoiled with choice. And we live in this society that's made, like literally everything is

designed to make your life easier. Every app, everything's trying to make some. something easier for you. And you're not going to like Uber and door dash your way out of this. Like if you're really caring about your personal growth and really caring about developing a good relationship, it takes work and it's slow. And you have to be okay with that. And I think when I first, you know, when my wife and I first got together as kids, like we, we felt this deep connection to each other. And it would feel like we would slip into an other world together. And it also felt like I was looking for her for eons.

Like it felt like I was like, we had lost each other and like found each other again. And when we started meditating, it like, especially after the first few longer courses, it hit us and it was like, oh, like this is why we're together. Like we've been doing this meditation path for a long time. It's been many lifetimes of us like meditating together, supporting each other. in growing in wisdom. And when I think of her, she's not only is like the love of my life, but she's like my comrade in wisdom. You know, she's just like, she's a weapon. Like, she really is so good at developing wisdom and has great capacity for it. Like it is not, it's not easy to be open to deleting your conditioning. It's not easy to be open to the raw

truths of the universe. Like, you know, you can take such deep steps into observing the universe where it literally feels like you are sitting at the very edge of existence, where existence is literally like coming apart at the seams. And you don't know what's on the other end, but she has this powerful ability to develop wisdom that I like really appreciate, you know, to be able to have that in my partner. It takes two big people to courageously love and love for my space of freedom where you're holding somebody not with a tight grip, but with a loose palm. And to know that whatever happens in the next week, month, year, that if you guys decided to part ways that the love that you share never goes anywhere,

and to continually choose each other, you know? And I think it's important to reflect on that. Like, it's a fundamental orientation to perceive a container of a relationship as a catalyst for your own soul's evolution and to be in service for that for the other person too. And I think when two individuals surrender to that, it is a completely different dynamic because both people are willing to change and they're willing to grow.

And that's difficult. And the growth of the container will be limited if one person's not that, if they're not there in their journey. Yeah. And I think a lot of what you're pointing to is coming to a place where you're not trying to have the framework of your mind be driven by attachments. And as opposed to attachments, you're trying to arrive into the relationships around commitments. And when I think about, you know, love is freedom.

It really is. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you get to do what you want. You sleep with whoever you want. Like a lot of people get scared about that when they hear that in the context of relationships. It's more so love is freedom in a sense where I support you and evolving in whatever direction is best for you. And it's like I have no control and no say over what your preferences are, you know, what your interests, how they may evolve over time. And, and I think that we, we had to learn that over time because we both find that the center point of our lives is a development of wisdom. Everything else is sort of like, comes secondary to that. And I'm so grateful that I'm able to be in such a nourishing relationship. But there's, I'm also like, really, really,

it feels like I won the lottery because I see other friends who are you know they move from one good relationship to another good relationship and I think always you know putting so much of what you want out of life to be the aspects of relationship it's very challenging because I think it would be so time consuming and so like um you know I'm just grateful that I have that fulfillment with my wife and of course there's like you know there's there's there's there's so many different attractive people and all these things and things that you can sort of have your craving attach itself to. But it's like, oh no, we're happy with the two of us and let's, let's like use this container of relationship as a way to help propel the both of us forward on

this path of wisdom. Yeah. Yeah, it's like deepening intimacy and growth through the depth of one connection versus meandering and exploring for different unique novelty and different connections. and, you know, it's, I mean. Chasing excitement, like, I feel like that's a hard way to live. You know, it's so fleeting. It's like, it's nothing. You don't have your roots and anything. Anything you want to share on the overlap between our own personal awakening journey,

which we's opened up with and becoming that presence of love for other relationships, not even just romantically, but, like, you know, our life is filled with relationships. Yeah, totally. they're everywhere, every person who crosses your path, and then the long-standing relationship with you and yourself, I think when, you know, letting myself become more aware through meditating has really helped me see that this life is like,

it's a giant miracle. It's such so miraculous that whenever I'm encountering someone, I do my best to, you know, to pay attention, to just be there and not like fly into my phone and to do my best to see where this interaction is going and why it's happening and what's like the sort of the karmic situation around it and to also just like practice that as much selflessness and presence as I can because yeah sometimes you're very tired and you can only do so much and other times you know you're you're at full strength and you can really give you know a high level of presence but I feel like every moment

moment is more special than we think. And things don't really happen accidentally. It feels like the more and the longer I meditate, the more I see that the universe is like, is a series of forces. It's not like a being. It's like there are forces that are moving and affecting each other and coming together and really rapid connections.

And that this sort of magnificent law cause and effect is just like really impacting so many different aspects of reality in very quick ways. So if I'm having a moment, you know, I bought a coffee before I came here and I made sure to leave a tip and to genuinely wish the person a really good day. And like these little things and it's like, oh, it feels good. It feels like the right thing to do. Yeah, it feels like the more we grow our awareness, the more we perceive the opportunities and the bountiful opportunities we have in our life to be even just a small agent of benevolence and change for the people that we come in contact with. And you start to pick up on things and there's a refinement of your intuition.

I think I was having a conversation. Maybe it was like, I don't know, a year ago, I was on a hike with a friend. He's owner, founder of this really big company, but is like, was facing some good amount of difficulty in his life and like finding resistance. And I could see and just like, you know, could see the nature of his mind is so brilliant, move so fast. And I asked him, do you ever consider how your inability or lack of willingness to slow down is affecting your ability to speed up? And, you know, it was a big, it was a big like moment for him, you know, because I think so many of us perceive things that we want, whether it's through comparison or maybe they're just genuine things we feel are for us.

And yet we want them in that door dash uber mentality, right? And we don't want to put in the work. And so I feel like so many things become revealed to us in the process of slowing down and being able to pay attention to how life works. And a big one of that is refining our capacity to listen to that inner voice and that intuition. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about intuition and the, listening to it. Yeah, intuition feels like,

I love that you connected it to slowing down because it feels it's so important to be able to slow down and not just get caught up in the rapidness of life. I think to me, intuition feels like it leads towards your deepest aspirations

and the karmic goodness that's waiting for you. You know, like it's sort of, it's going to ask you to step outside your comfort zone. It's going to ask you to like really challenge, like intuition is not just like a simple like left right, you know, which direction I should go in, but it's more so like

asking you to move into the next chapters. So I feel, to me, intuition feels like a calm, ebbing flow, like the way, you know, waves hit the ocean shore and it points you in a particular direction, but it's not like, it's not like, oh, I want ice cream tonight. You know, that's just like a random rambling of craving. So it keeps pointing. I think what I've truly tried to strive for most in my life is the ability to see clearly and experience life as it is. And you can't do that when you're a state of survival, you know? And I look at the biggest decisions I've made in my life when I look back and connect the dots that have led me to the most impact and growth. They were those subtle voices that I listened to, you know, that were like the wave on the beach shore, you know.

But thankfully, and they can show up as screams when you don't listen to them for so long, but the refinement of our ability to listen to our inner voice, there is this freedom and realizing that we're not in control of our life. No one is. And there are forces within us that we can pay attention to where life's intelligence, I feel like, is moving us in a direction. And the more that we listen and surrender to that voice, I feel strongly that the more our life is going to play out in a way that is of most benefit to most people and ourselves.

What do you think about surrendering to that voice and intelligence? That's really interesting. I feel like it's not, I love that positioning, and I think I come from it in an understanding that it's like, one, it feels like a feeling and not a voice. I think the voices of the mind are very tricky and very, very, they, you know, often are the sounds that reactions make and they can seem rather wise. But it's like you have to kind of lean on your values a little bit and see, like, is this right action?

Is this, you know, beneficial to me and to others? And checking in with yourself in that way. I also don't, like, you know, in terms of like intelligence too, like, I feel like the more that I've studied the universe, the more mechanistic seems. and mechanistic in the sense where it's like a moving set of forces where like the universe is happening and you and I are here together because of motion because there's like this motion that's happening in the universe and when things move and coalesce it creates greater complexity

and I even had this moment where I was meditating and I was like did life ever really even begin or did things just become more complex and then this like idea of I started manifesting because when I observe myself and feel what composes this body, there's nothing there. There's really nothing there. But what is there, what does give sort of direction is this long force of actions that came before this moment,

this long force of karmic flow that is manifesting and fruiting over time. So it's been interesting. And I think honestly rather freeing, like, I believe we live in a universe of many beings, right? There's just like so many invisible beings out there. But pointing towards one intelligence, I don't know. Maybe a collective one. But I think that's also impermanent.

Yeah, I think there's something inherently intelligent about the design from the Fibonacci and golden spiral sequences that go, that are prevalent throughout all of nature's design to, you know, the ratios of our body and how it's comprised. I'm curious what you think, as you, because I know, especially in Vapasana and the practice of, like, observing life as it is and not through our own projections and belief, we're both in sort of a spiritual space, you know, and I get offers every day from people that want to channel intergalactic councils and angels and, you know, all sorts of things. Yeah. Oh, man. I love that. You know, like, I get all, and it's great. Like, you know, I don't want to deny, I don't deny or accept anything upon, you know, it being presented.

But I do feel like there can be, especially in these spaces, people are quick to believe things. Not just in the conspiratorial rabbit holes, you know, but about what life is and what's out there. And I think there's something freeing about just admitting that we don't know what's outside of our direct experience. I love that. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think, like, my thing is, like, right, treat people with respect. Like, I don't know. I can't prove that they're wrong.

I also can't prove that they're right. So, like, I don't know. So let me just suspend disbelieve. But at the same time, like, I'm really careful with archetypes. I'm really careful with, like, putting more labels on top of myself. Like, I respect astrology, but I don't adhere to it. I don't, like, you know, so I respect the different mod. There's so many different modalities.

of like numbers and designs and blah, blah, there's all these things. But I don't want to know. I don't care. Like, I'm just going to move with, like, right action. I'm going to move in a manner where, you know, if I plant good actions in this present moment, then the future ones will be pretty good. You know, there will still be challenges, but I don't need to know what's going to happen in the future.

I just need to move intentionally with each step that's given to me. And, like, I've had people reach out to me all the time. they're like, you know, this famous person's astrologer wants to get a hold of you or this like, this person like, you know, if they knew when your birthday was and blah, blah, they could tell you X, Y, and Z, I'm like, no, dude, I don't care. Don't give them my information. Like, I don't want to hear about that. Like, if I focused on developing awareness, equanimity, and compassion, I'm going to be all right. And I think that's enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is that balance, right? Because it comes back to like living where I am open to the spontaneous synchronicity and coincidence

that presents itself and you know if somebody wants to you know send me a message and I happen to read it about my how my Libra is in north my North note is in Libra or whatever like ultimately I'm in a similar position with you and like if anything is genuinely providing value and insight to where you're living better with greater awareness and compassion and it comes in whatever form, then great. Yeah. And it's no disrespect, too. It's like, these are art forms.

Like, I, so much respect. But how much do I need? How much information do I need? Or is it really that I need more information or do I need to just be okay with what is? Because I found that like the past two years, the biggest lesson that I've learned in life and in meditating is to just accept. Like this word, it's a different way of saying, just.

observe, but just accepting what it is because this attachment is so insidious to try to mold things and shape things. Even when you're meditating, you're sitting there, and there's a slight inclination towards pleasantry. So slight. Even ever so, like going to Gigi in the long meditation courses, he warns you. He's like, you've got to be so careful because even though you think you're being a quantumist, there's such a slight undercurrent of craving for what's pleasant as opposed to just accepting what is. And you find that in what sensations are you paying attention to and which ones are you accidentally ignoring.

But I think it's really, it's beautiful that we live in a world where there are so many different modalities that people can connect to because to me, like some of the ones we mentioned, they can definitely be growth paths. But I don't need that much information. I actually just need to accept. And it's great that there are just as many people there are paths, you know, and so many different ways up the mountain. And thank God we're not all on the same trail because it would be very crowded, but also we'd have the same view.

And it's cool to be able to have the different views. And we were just talking beforehand a little bit of some of the different paths. And they all have their unique value in different ways. And I find for sure the scientific approach with Vipasana and Damo is really important. and how applicable it is to our immediacy of experience. And the deepening of our awareness of whatever is happening, like the teaching is to be observed where there's an abnormality in the breath

and a biochemical sensation somewhere in the body that's attached to every sensation that's happening, right? And so the fundamental craving we have for a pleasant experience of life drives us to do so many things, and it goes so subtle, right? It gets deeper and deeper and more subtle in its refinement. Yeah, it's really powerful. I think there's like, there's so much to learn

and in the quiet moments of like the meditation cell. Because in Gwangas tradition, you know, when you practice in the longer courses, you get like a place where you can meditate that's almost like meditating in a little cave and it's just like a little closet. And you're, you know, sitting there and it's like totally dark

and you're there just meditating for hours and you are flying through the universe. You are flying through it and you can feel the way where, you know, like I'm not enlightened or anything like that, but I know where this path leads. Like I've seen enough of this path to be able to know what happens next and have gotten to points where like, you know, either so deeply concentrated or so, so immersed in impermanence that everything is like, you know, slowly coming apart. can see that everything is arising and passing away at such rapidity, but then it can get to a point where things really can slow down, really, really utterly slow down. And there is just this like level of tranquility where, you know, you can even feel the body itself just like slowly shutting down. And I think it's, you know, I have this gratitude to be able to see how not real I am.

and knowing that and knowing that really helps whenever the ego tries to grab when it's trying to grab more and trying to cling. Like I always think about, you know, my life as a writer. And I'm like, I don't know how many books I'm going to write, but at some point I'm just going to stop. You know, at some point, like, I don't want to keep saying the same things over and over. I want to make sure that each book has a point and, you know, some value that it's going to deliver.

But I know ultimately, like, I just want to sit. I want to meditate and I want to serve. And it feels like that's easier knowing that I'm not real, so I can just let it go someday. Yeah. Yeah. There is both, again, the paradox of experiencing the no self, right, and seeing how there is no solid Diego or Andre, right?

And yet there's still a unique perspective that life is, has through your eyes that comes out in the words you write and speak. And I think we clarify that. voice and perspective, the more that we move through that conditioning. And it's like, you're just getting a more clear representation on reality. And then it comes through based off your own history and like the way that you like to speak within the confines of the English language. And, you know, it's exciting to see. So much gets lost in language. It's really, really hard when you're like spending hours, you know, with your eyes closed and experiencing reality. And then you try to put words to

it and it just, it, almost like, it doesn't devalue it. That's too strong of a word, but it just, you get a glimpse, but not the totality of it. Yeah, the real transformation comes through experience, right? And I've had similar experiences where it's complete void of any thoughts or like, you know, because you'll meditate for hundreds of hours and maybe not yet have the experience where you're completely still, whether it's like zero, absolute zero. thoughts for a prolonged period of time. And there is something, it's very trippy. It's like you're, the complete dissolution of any experience and yet you come back to an experience of being somebody,

you know, after some amount of time. It's so freeing. And then you on the other hand can have those extremely blissful, explosive, you know, I'm a being of light experience where every particle in your body is humming at the frequency of love. And you're like, yeah, you're on one. I know. That's really cool. It's interesting because there's, that's one thing that's as you, you know, get more serious in a particular path and you spend more time on it, you see that there's a lot of different experiences that you can have. And it's interesting where some people sometimes fall into the trap of like thinking they're enlightened before they are where like, because there's tons of things that can happen. Like there are some experiences where like what you were just naming where the mind becomes so stupt. still not saying anything for hours. You know, it's just like utter raw awareness. But you're still in the universe. You're still in there.

And there are other moments where like all the senses shut down besides mind. And there's only darkness. And, you know, you're just experiencing reality, but you're not hearing anything. It's just like it's all gone. And like you can just go on and on so many different things. But it's a long and tricky path at times. but it just makes me think about how important humility is

and how important it is to not develop, like, spiritual arrogance because there are really powerful experiences. Like, some experiences I've had where I can barely, like, I don't even really talk about them because they sound what. They sound just like, you know, they, yeah, they sound different, like, to what, the way we commonly talk. But if I were, huh? Would you be open to share a little?

You're setting me up, right? Yeah, I set myself up too. My bad. Yeah, I think, like, there was this one experience that I had where I was just so profoundly concentrated, like, concentrated to, like, an degree of, honestly, just, like, perfection, where the mind was just, like, crisply aware, and, you know, you just take the onopana to the highest level.

And my wife and I call it strong concentration. We don't try to label it as like, you know, give it some special label, but we just like refer to it as like, you know, you're concentrated. There's sometimes when you're strongly concentrated. You could just concentrate it for hours. And, you know, when you're concentrated, you reach levels of PT and Succa, like levels of just this like pleasantness of mind and body that are extraordinary, that are almost celestial.

And there was a moment where I was just like, oh, this is what Mahabrama feels like. Like, this is like the realm where, like, you know, there's a lot of people believe that the universe was created by one being. And this one being, like, dwells in a particular realm. And when you get really concentrated, you connect to those Brahma realms. And you can feel like how just like this ultimate love and compassion. And I was in there for a little while. And for a few hours, and I was like, wow, this is like one of those experiences where if I didn't know better, I would come out of it and think, oh, I'm enlightened. But it's like, no, it was just, it was literally another impermanent experience.

And I'm so grateful to Gwangajia. I think in like maybe past lives, I would have tripped myself up. It had been like, oh, I did it. But it was, no, it was just like, it was cool, but it was also impermanent. Like, I still feel the mechanism of Dukkah still functioning in the mind. So that wasn't it. Yeah. Yeah.

Of suffering. The stories of other people's experiences can be a really interesting reference point of like these things are possible. And then once you go and experience and taste something, that like that is plants a seed of like true transformation. I feel like in somebody's life. Because we've heard so many, I mean, whoever's listening, I know I've heard a lot of wild mystical stories. So many. And it's great. They're great reading material, you know, and it's interesting.

One of my good friends, he's like the 70-year-old guy, he's so awesome. But he, like, he trained with Kouangichi really early on in, like, 71, 72. And at that time, there was also this teacher, you know, Menendraji? He was Sharon Salzberg's teacher. He came out of the Mahasie. tradition. And, but Menjiji told him once about some student that he had, some, some girl that was there that became a Sotipana, like the first level of enlightenment, according to the Theravada tradition. And this guy was like, well, I saw her, but then I realized, like, how does that help me? Like,

it doesn't help me at all. Like, okay, like, if she's enlightened, great. But, like, that's actually, like it's her experience, not mine, and there's no reason to like even be a magnet to her. She's not even a teacher. Like I've heard this from other teachers where the aspiration to teach, you know, some people can be enlightened and be terrible teachers,

be like really not good at passing forward the information that they themselves, they were able to witness the truth beyond minded matter, but they don't have that longstanding aspiration to develop this quality to teach and can't really pass it to you, can't really, you know, help you. Yeah, you can have an incredible experience,

and if you don't have the capacity for the communication of the inner realm, then it's tough to transmit that, you know? But then there are those teachers that have this way with words and this ability, you know, and it's so special. And sometimes those teachers will, like, postpone their enlightenment where they can, but because of certain aspirations,

their enlightenment is held off to a certain particular moment where it will be most useful. But even though they themselves have not taken the dip, they can take you all the way there and beyond. And it's really interesting seeing that karma unfold in different people where Gawangaji and Uba Kahn, Gwangi's teacher, from what I've heard of them, both of them were clear that they weren't enlightened. But especially Ubaqan Gwangi too, helped tons of people become a person. enlightened. And they just understood the paths so well because they've, you know, lifetimes of being teachers. And they'll be enlightened at some point, but who knows when. Well, thanks for sharing your relative degree of awareness and enlightenment with us on the podcast today. I mean, again, dude,

when we first connected, I was also similarly just excited to build a friendship and, you know, the, the Buddhist term is slipping in my mind. That's like a spiritual friend. friend. But, you know, I think it's really important to cultivate those, those connections and relationships that really help us, you know, reinforce our own path. And yeah, this community as well that's building and is interested in these kind of conversations, just so, so cool to feel. We'll link down below where people can find how to love better and check out Diego and Young Pueblo as his pen name throughout Instagram and social media platforms. Do you have any other last words before we head out? No, just utter gratitude. Thank you for the space to have this

beautiful conversation and it's nice to, you know, have a conversation like this so we can really dive deeper into these things. Yeah. Yeah. My greatest joy. Thank you so much, my friend. Everybody, thanks for tuning into this episode. Until next time, be well.