Know Thyself - E160 - Aaron Abke: 3 Hidden Beliefs That Keep You Miserable (and How to Break Free)

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

What if the very beliefs you’ve carried your whole life are the source of your suffering? In this episode, Aaron Abke returns to share insights on the ego, breaking down its three core beliefs that keep us trapped in cycles of fear, lack, and control. He explains how our misunderstanding of the ego causes unnecessary suffering—and how, when seen clearly, the ego can actually be an ally on the path of awakening.Aaron guides us through the process of moving from compulsivity to consciousness, releasing the illusion of lack, and embracing a deeper abundance that is not dependent on external circumstances.Momentous Creatine - Use Code KNOWTHYSELF for Up to 35% Offhttps://www.livemomentous.comTry Pique Life tea and save 20% for life & get a free frother:https://www.piquelife.com/KnowThyselfAndrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list___________0:00 Intro1:35 What Ego is & How It’s Misunderstood5:12 How Aaron Woke Up To His Ego10:01 Why Ego is Actually Essential & Useful in Moderation16:44 Spiritual Bypassing & Misconceptions of Nonduality26:33 Balancing Individuation with Integration33:59 Reality of Oneness & Inter-Being38:09 The 3 Beliefs of the Ego that Keep us Trapped44:23 Ad: Momentous Creatine45:29 Overcoming Lack and Embracing Abundance Mindset1:05:16 Ad: Pique Life1:06:30 Practical Steps to Transcending Lack in Real Time1:25:50 The Opportunity Hidden in Challenges1:35:52 Processing Intense Negative Emotions1:42:04 Go From Compulsivity to Consciousness1:46:26 Summary of 3 Steps to Emotional Freedom1:49:41 Outcome Happiness: How to Find Inner Joy that Doesn’t Go Away1:54:15 Releasing Control & Surrendering to Life2:09:49 Growing Through Romantic Relationships 2:17:13 Finding Our Unique Purpose2:25:00 Conclusion ___________Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/aaronabke/New Book: https://a.co/d/8F82w5thttps://www.youtube.com/@AaronAbkehttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

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Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. There is no disguise more clever or more dangerous than the spiritual ego. So then what is ego? It's all the ideas you have about who you are that you're identified with that limits you ultimately. But that definition only took me so far because at a certain point, I'm like, yeah, I know there's a voice in my head, but it knows all my secrets. It kicks my ass all day.

Like, it's way smarter than me. There's got to be something more I can understand about this voice in my head. And that's when the understanding of the three beliefs started coming into the picture. These are extremely simple concepts. If you can get a good handle on those three ideas, then you can start to really experience what it means to go beyond the belief in separation. And it just begins with this whole practice or philosophy

is really designed just to take the guesswork out of it all. Because how many of us have spent so much time doing trauma work and shadow work, trying to get to the root of our trauma, we're kind of always chasing the end of the shadow sometimes. And so yes, it takes practice, but don't look for it as an outcome. Can you be 1% better today at being in loving relationship than you were yesterday?

Aaron Abke, welcome back for the three-peat. Thanks for having me back, man. It's always a pleasure. The honor is mine. Let's talk about the ego, shall we? I think it's a good idea. I think, you know, it's been the great joy of doing this podcast is getting to cover a variety of topics and yet none more fundamental than this perception

and sense of eye of how we navigate the world, I think, is really practical and useful for people. And so before we get too deep into the weeds, how do you define what ego is? Yeah, it's a tough one, right? One of the things I deal with in my book, The Three Beliefs of Ego, is a lot of the misconceptions, I think, about what ego is, especially in this space. You'll often hear definitions like, the ego is your sense of self or things like that. So I give my little clarifications on that, such as I think it's more accurate to say the ego is not your sense of self. self, the ego is your false sense of self or your pseudo sense of self.

It's all the ideas you have about who you are that you're identified with that limits you ultimately. And so the spiritual path is about overcoming the me without losing the eye, right? You can get rid of the me in a sense, but you can never get rid of the eye because the eye is pure consciousness. And that's what underlies the ego. And so in a way, I think when you take upon yourself the journey of transcending the me, the little self, the underlying eye just continues to shine brighter and shines through

the ego. And so, like, I'm always going to look and move and act like Aaron Abke. And so if you, if you call my sort of personality, my ego, then yeah, you can't get rid of your ego. But that's where I give a slightly different definition in the book, which is that I don't see any of that as the ego. Everybody has their own unique divine expression. Like, you are, you. You are. You. unique aspect of source and the way you express and everything, the sound of your voice, everything is an expression of the creator. So that can't be what ego is. So then what is ego? And the definition I give, the shortest one is that the ego is just the mental activity of identifying with form. So it's not a noun, but a verb. And so in that sense,

it isn't something you can get rid of because you can't get rid of a verb, right? A verb is something. It's activity. It's something you either can engage with or disengage with. And that's really the battle that we're facing when it comes to the ego is not getting rid of it or any of that, but being able to discern it when it arises and choosing what aspects of ego to not engage with that are no longer serving us. So the ego is the mental activity of identifying. I also give the definition that it is sort of our mind's resistance against reality, the mind's war against reality, which is also an activity. And then it is basically our belief in being the doer or being in control as a separate self. I have to go through life and make my own way and find my own truth and all of this.

And so those, I think it's not possible to actually define ego in one succinct definition. So I give those three definitions in the book for that reason. Yeah. Many of us conflate. with being egotistical, like in the kind of overt narcissistic fashion where you see this grandiose narcissism. But there are so many other ways. And the way you're describing it in a more kind of pragmatic fundamental essence is like the mental activity of identifying.

And so what are some of the other ways that are maybe less obvious or less detectable that ego shows up? Because someone would say, oh, I'm not, I don't have much of an ego, says the ego, compared to somebody who's like. like so verbios and just in your face and loud and like that's what we think is egotistical. But there are all these subtle ways in which ego navigates and we'll get into them. But I'd be curious to hear you pick on that before we dive into the three beliefs of the ego and go from there. Yeah.

Well, I'm definitely still learning some of them myself, right? In real time, everything I've written about the ego is because it's kicked my ass. You know, for the last 10 years that I've been on this kind of path since my big spiritual awakening happened, that began to reveal to me what ego really is. It began with the understanding, which we talked about on our first podcast, two years ago, that the ego is this voice in my head that's always talking to me. It's like this constant self-narration. And I was, you know, the story is I was listening to Eckhart Tolle, sort of making fun of things the ego thinks. And I was laughing at them and I sort of realized, oh, yeah, like he is nailing it. That's exactly.

what my ego says to me in so few words. And once I understood the ego is this constant self-narrating voice, you know, as you start to learn things yourself, you start to see them in other people and you pick up those traces everywhere. And I started to realize, not only am I stuck in this predicament with this mostly unhelpful and even sometimes damaging or dangerous voice in my head, but everybody is suffering from that. And you start to sort of see a world teeming with people that are like just helplessly talking to themselves in their mind all day with this constant stream of self-narration. And they can't

even really connect to anything deeper than that of what they are. And so this is part of the, you know, unavoidable unfolding of spiritual awakening, I think, is you have to go through that dark night of the soul. And I've been through a couple of them, to be honest with you, but you have to go through that dark night of the soul where you start to come to terms with the world you live in, right, in the reality of the world, the human race and where we are as a collective. And you sort of feel like, or at least I felt like I'm, I incarnated on a planet, like an insane asylum planet. Like everyone's kind of in a straight jacket, just walking around talking to themselves. And it's a little bit dramatic, but like, that's really how it felt to me. And you, for a while,

you almost lose the ability to connect with people because all you can see is their, you know, ego because that's where you're at and you're just looking at you're watching your ego all day. And then eventually after some years of kind of moving through that difficulty, especially through a course of miracles, by the way, was a huge key for me of like being able to finally see past that ego filter everyone has and really connect to their divine essence. That started to come to fruition years later. And I'm very thankful now to say that that's mostly where I live. but I would be lying if I said that I don't sometimes have periods of my life where I go back to just being hyper aware of everyone's ego and people speaking from lack and victimhood and justifying their integrity issues, all the stuff, right?

And that can be a little overwhelming for people. So part of waking up to your ego is waking up to the collective ego. And that can be very helpful for seeing your own ego when you start to recognize the patterns in other people. it works both ways, right? Not only can you see other people's patterns once you know yours, but sometimes it works in reverse, right? And you start to see how other people act

and behave and bypass and do all these things. And you go, oh, you know what? If I'm honest, like, I do that too. But I couldn't really see it until I saw it in my friend or whoever. So yeah, the ego is incredibly subtle. And I think if you're on a spiritual path, you have to be even more careful about how you engage with your,

ego because there is no disguise more clever or more dangerous than the spiritual ego. We'll get into that. You know, I think we've both navigated that internally and witnessed it externally. And, you know, you first go into this perception of what ego is and seeing it in self and others and then you develop this ego of no ego. Or it's like, it's just another way in which the slipperiness of the ego manifests itself. And so we'll go through those process. process of development there. But I think it's really important, too, and you highlight also in your

new book, which we haven't mentioned yet, the three beliefs of Eco, a sufferer's guide to freedom. Congrats, bro. Yeah, thank you, man. Yeah, I'm stoked for you. It's great. It was a great book. I devoured it in the past 24 hours. You did. I'm shocked. But it's really helpful to see how this is not a bug, but a feature of reality. That ego serves a necessary purpose for the evolution and training of different faculties within us. And so how do you view, what is the source perspective of what ego is? That way we don't demonize it, but we see that it has a practical utility for growing in life. Yeah.

Another great question, because there's a couple layers I could come at this from, I think, but the idea I come at the book from is that the ego is the evolutionary driver. on planet Earth, for the human race, at least. Meaning if we didn't have the ego, we wouldn't even have a concept of growth or spirituality at all. And so it's absolutely a necessary part of humanity's spiritual development. In a sense, and if I can reference the densities model for a second, I know maybe not everyone's familiar with it, but human beings, we live in the third density, which correlates to the third

chakra. And as you know, the solar plexus is usually considered kind of the ego. chakra, it's the energy center where the ego finally comes online in full. And so humanity is trying to make this great leap or transition from living from only the solar plexus or ego consciousness to the next energy center of the heart and to finally live from heart-based consciousness. And so the ego is sort of like the great obstacle that the creator put in front of all of us to say, if you want to get out of this level of the game and get to the next one, This is what you got to overcome.

And so in a way, the ego, really not even in a way, but like directly, the ego is our greatest teacher. It teaches us everything we need to know about ourselves. Once we understand what it is and how to truly engage with it properly and going back to what you just said a moment ago, like that is why on the spiritual path, it is really important to have a correct philosophical understanding, I think, of what is this thing we call ego. Because speaking from personal experience, if you misunderstand what it is, then you can only engage with it improperly, right? Which is going to lead to some serious consequences, spiritual bypassing being not the least of them.

And so those of us like yourself who are who I consider someone else who's like well trodden down the spiritual path, right? You've probably learned this yourself. When you look back at your former self, you can sort of be grateful that you had a ego because you were so out of alignment, you know, you were so betraying yourself in so many ways and all kinds of problems, but the ego is kind of the ignorance of those blind spots. And so you just didn't know how out of alignment you were. And one of the things that happens as we ascend spiritually and more and more make that transition from third to fourth energy center is that we gain an increasing sensitivity,

right, to what is true and what is right and what is loving. and it hurts more and more to be out of alignment with that truth. And so your own integrity issues and whatever else it is, blind spots, limitations, they start to bother you more in a way as you grow spiritually, which becomes the impetus to transcend them, to where you get to the point where you're like, I will do anything to transcend this behavior pattern that's just been kicking my ass for the last few years.

And, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, you weren't even aware of that behavior pattern. And so it's not like I wasn't suffering tremendously back then. Of course I was. And it's not like I would want to go back there and redo this entire, you know, process again. But it does give me the perspective that I have now of, wow, the ego also serves as a kind of like metaphysical cushion between the soul and the sort of like devastating onslaught of karma in the universe. Like, when you're really aware of the connection of everything and the consequences of violating universal law, like, it follows you more.

It wears on you more. Like, you're not capable of living out of alignment anymore, as I'm sure you know. And so you have to get really disciplined with the way you live and think and the things you give energy to, like you can't watch violent movies anymore. So many things change inside of you as your ego dies because the ego is kind of your buffer between the real, brutal consequences of those things that you just didn't see before, right? And if you had been aware of the severe consequences

of these out-of-alignment moves you were making in your life, you definitely wouldn't have made them, but you just couldn't see it at the time. So there's kind of a push and a pole to the process of transcending ego in that way. The Madamy Holmes bike for brain health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum.

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Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Yeah, by getting to see the contrast that ego or just simply put, separation provides, it gives just immense context for what this life is and how could one see who they are, experience who they are without having the contrast of who they're not. If there wasn't distance between us right now, if there wasn't this perception of Aaron and a body over there on that chair, I couldn't speak to you in the same way that if we were just had the awareness all the time of us just being one, one thing. And so I would love for you to speak

from your perspective, this whole illusion of separation and this veil of forgetting as you spoke to and how it helps us go on the journey of doing what we need to do and processing the karma we need to to then go on the journey of remembering again. Yeah, the first chapter in the book is titled The Return to Unity. And that return that I'm talking about, about is of course a return in awareness because the truth of non-duality is it there's never been to things here there's never been separation it's always been untrue but it's a mental projection of the ego that we think and believe and we take it to be real that we're separate and I think this is to your last question of like what's the cosmic purpose of all this a big part of it is that the

source creator god whatever you want to call it wants to know all of itself right and it can't do differentiating. And so I think the real game of the universe that God is sort of playing is can I go completely into duality and separation and then slowly evolve back to the full awareness and knowledge of myself so that I can be in that full non-dual recognition of oneness, but while still in the 3D and duality. I think like God doesn't necessarily want to just merge back with itself and proof the universe goes away, right? It's more like, no, I'm trying to reach this level of self-remembering and then really enjoy the universe from that perspective. So that's the return to unity to me. It's that although we say, like, all is one, you and I are one, Andre,

I don't try to go live your life. You don't put the spoon in my mouth when you eat food, right? Like, it's good that we still have a sense of differentiation. There's nothing wrong with that. And that's another concept, I think, that really goes awry in the spiritual community is that duality is bad and it's to be negated or whatever. Like, there's some truth to that, but what it really means to me, or the clarification, I guess, is that duality is part of what God's doing. So it's not to be dismissed as an illusion or something. It's to be understood. So, for example, when you hear the classic, you know, Advaita teachings or non-duality teachings that all is, illusion, Andre, you're an illusion, I'm an illusion.

If you don't get really specific about what you really mean when you say that, then that concept just becomes the greatest weapon in the spiritual ego's arsenal, right? And it's just going to turn that concept into a knife and just start stabbing you with it. And it's going to use that concept to spiritually bypass everything that comes up for you. That emotion, that's an illusion, Andre, don't focus on that emotion. That trauma, it never really happened. It's an illusion. and people become these kind of non-dual automatons or something where they, it's like you've

undergone a spiritual frontal lobotomy and you're so dissociated from reality because you're like, no, it's all an illusion, it's all just duality, I'm just awareness. And it saddens me when I see so many people reaching for that level of consciousness, if you want to call it, because it isn't, in my opinion, now it isn't a fully integrated understanding of non-duality. and all of this is from speaking from my own experience, of course. So I think the real purpose of oneness is to take it into duality. Manyness.

Yeah, and to live from that recognition to where, yeah, I still, all the same things still happen. I still have a physical body. I still have a job and make money and all the things. But I do it from this new recognition that all is one. And so what that recognition does is it sort of safeguards you. against all of the tricks and the plans and beliefs of the ego that are constantly trying to seduce you to come back into the belief in separateness again, which is where all suffering lives. So in a way, the ego is, as the course in miracle says, the ego is the belief in separation,

such that if you could somehow eradicate your belief in separation, there would be no ego either. But as I discovered, that's a very challenging thing to do because it's almost like, how does one even do that? How do you get rid of your belief in separate? What is the belief in separation? It's so fundamental to what we are as humans to believe we're separate. How could you possibly get rid of that? And that's when the understanding of, well, separateness really means these three things.

You know, it's lack, attachment, and control. This is how the belief in separation acts itself out through the human. And so once you know that, you can back engineer it and say, okay, I actually just need to deal with these three sort of negative core beliefs that I'm lacking, that I'm not enough, I'm missing something, my happiness depends on outcomes in the world, I've got to go find my happiness out there, and then third, I'm the doer, I'm in control, I make life happen, I'm in the driver's seat, so to speak. If you can get a good handle on those three ideas and start to watch how they trickle through

your entire life and influence all your decision making, then you can start to really experience what it means to go beyond the belief in separation and to actually perceive oneness, sort of as a course in miracles says that you can, that you can actually perceive the Christ nature in someone else as I'm sitting across from you. Like, I am experiencing you as a divine being hiding out in a mortal body. And that's not as difficult of a realization to come to, or I guess a sort of philosophical insight to come to as people think it is. But that's another one of the things spiritual ego does so well,

is it puts all these things we're talking about up on this mountaintop and says these concepts are almost impossible to realize and integrate. Only the greatest sages of history have done it. And it tries to make them really complex understandings that are kind of unreachable for me in this life. Maybe some other sage can do it, but I don't think I can do it. And it immediately disqualifies you from any of these things, from realizing oneness and all of this. And so another thing I try to do in the book is show like, no, these are extremely simple concepts.

And in fact, they're so simple that that's why they're difficult to integrate sometimes because we expect them to be so high and lofty and esoteric. But really, it's just like kind of the most baseline simple recognitions you could ever have. Like, oh yeah, like nothing in the universe is disconnected. It's all truly connected. And if you're looking for some mind exploding realization as the, spiritual ego tries to paint it out to be, then yeah, you'll, you'll miss it and you'll think you can't integrate it. But that's why I love so many of the teachings of Jesus, because Jesus

put these things very cleverly in his parables. He said, the kingdom of heaven is like a little bit of leaven that a woman mixes through 60 pounds of dough, is what he says. The 60 pounds of dough is like an insane amount of dough and just a little pinch of leaven. But he says, but after enough time, the leaven works its way through the entire dough. You're like, okay, so it starts out as the smallest, simplest, simplest thing, and it gradually grows from there to encompass everything surrounding. So really, I just need to start meditating and contemplating on the truth of oneness and just allow it to naturally and gradually permeate its way through my life and my experience

because it will prove itself to you over and over, the more you give your heart to it. So something else I talk about in that chapter is don't look for some unbelievable insight that shifts everything. You may get it. Don't get me wrong. It happens to people. And you may get little flashes of seeing the truth of oneness, right? But the spiritual ego is that activity in our mind that's trying to get us to attach, right, and to cling. And so it's going to make an idol out of everything it can.

And it'll say, you know, you've got to have another one of those big aha-mole. to get this. And so you're always chasing the dragon. And in reality, it's just like the daily re-qualifying of your beliefs, slowly and gradually. I think that's really, along with the emotional guidance system, the art of re-qualifying thoughts is those are the two biggest kind of practices or teachings that are given in the book, is that re-qualifying is something that happens day by day, moment by moment. It's like a new kind of relationship you take with the ego's beliefs. that as often as I can, as often as I notice one of these beliefs, and we'll talk about how you can notice them in a second maybe,

but as often as I notice these beliefs running me and running my mind, I'm going to take an opportunity to re-qualify that belief. So each moment I do that, I'm taking a little bit of energy out of that old belief. I'm separate, I'm lacking, I'm a separate self, and I'm investing that energy into a higher understanding that I want to feed, right? So the analogy I give is like, if you're walking through a corn maze and you've always walked this way, then you've got this really well-worn path laid down for you. It's no resistance, right?

You just walk right through it. Easy. But if I want to walk on a new path, I've got to forge that path through the cornfield. So I'm going to have to push down those stalks for a while. And that's going to be hard and uncomfortable. but that's the way we form new neural pathways in the brain is that we've got to start giving our attention and our energy to the new pathway.

And if you can't see why the ego's beliefs are false and untrue, then you'll always believe in them and continue giving them your energy. So the way that I teach how to re-qualify each one of these three beliefs, part of it is having the philosophical understanding of why these beliefs are provably not true. Not something you have to take my words at, right, but something you can actually investigate in your own life, in your own experience, that, yes, lack, attachment, and control,

all three of them are definite illusions that do not add happiness to my life in any way. And, like, once you can come to that conclusion as I did, after my awakening happened, then the integration and the requalifying really happens by itself, because once you've got motivation and you believe something, those are really the two ingredients you need. you know, for real transcendence.

By the time we're in our 20s, though, these habits of mind that you're speaking to, the trod and path and the corn maze that is just so easy because it's been so habituated in our system. I'm excited to dive deeper into the requalifying as we start to carve a new way. But part, like we spoke to earlier,

part of the purpose of this whole game of life and the purpose that ego serves is to go on the journey of requalifying and seeing what is true by contrast of what is not true. And that often gets revealed by the degree of suffering that we experience coming straight from the scarcity and attachment and control that we have

that is directly attached to the ego. And I'm curious before we started diving into the emotional guidance system and re-qualifying a bit more, Young has his kind of process of individuation, which is the natural development of any ego that it needs to go through. By the time you become an early adult,

if you don't have these parts of your psyche integrated, then they'll rule your life unbeknownst to you. And so I'm curious what you think about the falsehood of the ego, which doesn't actually exist coupled with the necessity of integrating it healthy before we can, not necessarily before, but as we integrate it, we can then see the illusory nature of it and then transcend it. I love this question. This is actually the first time anyone's asked me a question involving Jung,

like Jungian psychology, and I'm a big fan of Jung. And yes, I agree to your point. The individuation process is not only inevitable, but very necessary. And so we're not saying, like I have a daughter now, right, who is turning a year old next month. And I'm already watching her ego begin to individuate and start to come online. And I'm totally cool with it. I'm like, this is how it must be.

There's no possible way she could not have this happen. I wouldn't want it not to happen. And so I think that's why these teachings are so helpful is because they're not meant to be some kind of like ego destroying practices or whatever. Like you go through individuation and then destroy it all with these practices. It's more like a deeper level of integration into your soul, a deeper level of understanding what the ego is in that going back to our, you know, conversation on non-duality a second ago, I'm not, I'm certainly not saying and I certainly don't believe, like, I'm not this body, this person, which is a very non-duality thing that people say, I'm not the person, I'm not the body. And that understanding, although I understand what people mean when they say that, to me, it's like not the highest expression of truth, I think. I think a higher expression of truth is,

I am this body and this person. I'm just not only this body in this person, right? But of course, this body and this person is part of what I am. It's part of my soul's expression. And that's a more loving relationship to have with ego and to bring it in closer rather than saying, well, you were always false and not true, so I'm getting rid of you. It's integration of our fragmentation. Part of the individuation process is learning through trial and error of the ego and all the suffering it creates and all the problems it walks you into, as you know. And so you've got to suffer enough to get to the point where you say, how do I stop suffering

like this? at some point in everyone's life, they're going to get to that place, that breaking point, where they say, I can't suffer like this anymore. I need to do something about this. And very few people, very few of those people will say, I think it's my ego and I think I need to learn how to integrate my ego. Most people will use some vice, right, to deal with their suffering. They'll get addicted to something or whatever.

So with that being said, once we begin the process of understanding our ego, bringing it closer, using our emotions to identify the beliefs that the ego is using and all of these things. I almost want to say it's like individuation 2.0 or something. It's like the next level of first we have to individuate as a physical, personal self, and then once we've had a sufficient level of that, wherever that threshold is, the next process of individuation as a soul and a divine being in the physical form also has to happen, meaning you have to accept, you are a divine eternal being, who is temporarily living in a finite body, you know, that has an ego and a mind and all that stuff, and how can you be in both

at the same time rather than always trying to, it's like one over the other or something like that. Like, I've been down that road, and I'm sure you have too. And although it's benefited me tremendously and I've learned a lot, part of what I've learned is that's not why we're here. We don't come to the human experience to dismiss it as. an illusion and become enlightened and go sit on a mountaintop. Maybe some people do, but I think most people want to live a life worth remembering

and find a purpose and a reason for existing and go beyond their small self and transcend their limitations. And we all want to have that kind of life review at the end of our incarnation where we can look back at our life and say, wow, what an amazing lifetime I lived. I fully met the human experience. I extracted all the juice out of it. I made the best of it. I was of service to the world.

I gave value to others. That's a life truly worth living. And at our deepest essence, we all want that. We all have a unique purpose to express. And so you could say that that purpose has to come through the ego in a way, right? So yeah, we don't want to get rid of the ego or marginalize it. We want to see it for its true purpose. And sort of like a really good sports coach or whatever will put their athletes through

the ringer, man. Like my football coach would just torture us in practice, running sprints and all this stuff. But it's because they know it's making you better. It's like the ego is kind of like that. It's like a really harsh coach that knows how to get the best out of you. And it's going to put you through the grindstone. But you will look back at all of it and be grateful. So in that way, I think it's all about understanding relationship, which is something else I get into in the book, that everything in the universe is just relationship.

You're in relationship to everything. even the chair you sit on, even the cup you drink water from, the air you breathe, the person you're talking to, your own thoughts, everything exists in relationship. And so the real question is, what kind of relationship do you want to have with your ego? I think it's a really helpful thing just for us to focus on because we all want to hear, and it's tantalizing also to the human mind to have the big existential answers and like the deep philosophical solutions to life's problems and non-duality being in that cap being a very alluring sort of framework for understanding life and yet the waking up and growing up hats need to and yeah it's an

inevitability they must evolve simultaneously in our life and so the individuation process and the doing the shadow work so we don't bypass these things is is really important alongside inside recontextualizing our sense of eye and self and ego in a bigger field of awareness, waking up to the true sense of self that encapsulates the relative sense of self. And I think on that journey, then it becomes a lot easier for people to integrate because the truth is both are very useful, and the reality is a lot of people throughout humanity need to do continual deeper individuation work. And if they don't integrate that process into their life

and just jump straight into this non-dual understanding, you know, that's where we see a lot of... Very problematic. Yeah. So I'm glad we touched on that here at the start just because it's important to remind people. Okay. So what I mentioned with recontextualizing the ego

in a bigger field of awareness, I think is a really important, is it really important thought because as you spoke to, everything in this life is relational, right? And so when you understand the sense of my body and my mind that I previously have ingrained in me as a belief that it is who I am, I am moving through this world as a locus of kind of consciousness that is making decisions and this kind of tyrannical thoughts that run my life up here in my head somewhere, and then you start to actually have the experience,

which is actually what moves the needle in terms of real spiritual growth, not an idea of oh, I'm not the ego. It's like, oh, I can actually taste it. I can experience separation from my own thoughts and emotion. Then you see these mechanisms in a bigger context and relationship to a larger field of awareness. And that's where like the real growth in terms of our experience of life, I feel like really changes.

And so when you think of that and when you say that all life is relational, just any other last thoughts you have there on the importance of understanding ego's context and relationship to the bigger field of awareness that is our time. true self. Yeah, such a great question. And there's a lot I could say on it. So since we haven't dove into the beliefs yet, I'll just leave it at this. Knowing that all things exist in relationship was also a pivotal understanding for me on my journey of liberating myself from my own self-created suffering was really like, I mean, it truly became like an interesting thing to think about at all times for a long time of like, wow, everything is just relationship. That's all there is

in the universe, his relationship, and that became my way of understanding what oneness really means. Again, oneness can be a very misunderstood concept like ego. And if you don't clarify what it really means, people can get lost and what they think it means, and they're trying to integrate a wrong understanding of oneness. So for example, oneness doesn't mean that there's no uniqueness or individuation or differentiation between us. By no means, right? The source clearly loves diversity and uniqueness.

And every one of us is a unique expression. There's nobody like you or myself. So oneness doesn't mean we're all the same in some weird way. Oneness just means everything exists in relationship. Everything is connected to everything else. And everything is just unique expressions of the one being. But you're supposed to be a unique expression. So to integrate oneness,

This doesn't mean you lose your personality and just become a, you know, a sage or something. You can actually develop more of your personality as you awaken because you see all of the aspects of yourself that you used to judge, not like, be insecure about, that your ego would hide, right? And now that you really know yourself on a deeper level, you're falling more in love with yourself and accepting yourself more. And so you let those parts of you out of the shadows now. And you're not afraid to have those parts of you be seen.

anymore. So that's one of the big, I think, keys for the whole relationship picture is, if everything exists in a relationship, then we should ask the next fundamental question of what is a true relationship metaphysically? Like, what are the metaphysics of that word? What does it mean to be in relationship with something? And the sixth chapter of the book is about this topic called giving and receiving, that a relationship is a equal reciprocity of giving and receiving and that giving and receiving are states of being, not actions or verbs. They are states of being we have to cultivate. So what does it mean to live from a state of giving, for example?

And what does it mean to live from a state of receiving? And I talk about the implications of that as it pertains to the three beliefs. Super stoked to dive deeper into this. As we've stated, the ego is inherently beliefs that believe. that it's separate from everything. And so if there is that belief of separation, how could there not be scarcity attached to that belief of separation? Because there is me and there's the whole world out there

and I need to go out there and be an acquisition of things and the sense of lack. And so can you walk us through the first belief and how you kind of set the framework for why lack is inherently tied to the ego and its first belief? Yeah, I think the first important thing to know about the three beliefs is that they all flow down stream of each other.

They're all connected. One that gets the other. Yes. So they're kind of one belief, which is separation. But they play out through the lower three energy centers. So we have the belief in lack, which really originates at the root. And then once you have the next energy center online, the orange ray, the sacral, those two chakras together culminate in the belief in attachment or external happiness.

Go out there and get things, which is kind of the thing. which is kind of the animal kingdom type of consciousness. And then when the third energy centers online, all three chakras combine to create the belief in personal doership or control, that I'm like a wave in the ocean who's waving all by myself. You know, I'm not being waved by the ocean. I'm an isolated wave, right? So the way that I guess the best way I could probably answer your question is to talk

through how I understood these beliefs because after that awakening experience, we talked about a moment ago, I was really keen on this idea of, okay, the ego is that voice in my head. And so I'm going to just watch that voice in my head. And I heard Eckhart say, the ego is the voice in your head. And like, that makes sense. But that definition only took me so far because at a certain point, I'm like, yeah, I know there's a voice in my head, but it knows all my secrets. It kicks my ass all day. Like, it's way smarter than me. It knows me better than I know myself. It knows exactly how to get my attention when it wants it. Like, there's There's got to be something more I can understand about this voice in my head.

And that's when the understanding of the three beliefs started coming into the picture. Because I think when you ask good questions to the universe, the universe likes to give you good answers. And so when I started to ask the question, what is the nature of my suffering? What do I really suffer from? And what feelings do I suffer from? After some time of investigating that, it became very clear. It's really just these three root emotions, sadness, anger, and fear. And every other emotion I could possibly find or describe, I realized I could put it into one

of these three buckets. So with sadness, there's depression, there's hopelessness, there's loneliness, there's shame and guilt, but they're all just different flavors of sadness. And then anger, there's irritation, jealousy, rage, frustration, all different forms of anger. Fear is panic, anxiety, stress, worry, all different forms of fear. So that was very helpful to boil all my suffering down to these three kind of buckets. Once I was square on that idea, I started asking,

okay, then why do I feel sad when certain things happen rather than angry or afraid? Why do I get afraid sometimes instead of sad? There's got to be a reason, right? Because those three emotions, they feel qualitatively different, don't they? sadness is kind of deep aching feeling. Anger's like a hot burning, stabbing kind of thing, and fear is like a freezing, you know, constricting kind of emotion. So once I was square on that, the next question was,

what causes each emotion? And very soon the understanding came through that it's a belief. Each emotion arises on behalf of a unique belief. And so I started to ask, well, then what is the belief that causes each one of these three things? and the first one that I understood almost right away was the belief in lack. I'm not enough. I'm incomplete.

And if we could give voice to that belief, it would say that. It would say, I'm incomplete. There's something about me that's missing. I don't know what it is, but I'm not complete. So if we look for evidence of this thing called lack in the universe, we find that it's not there. We can't ever point to lack or identify it in some objective way. no one can report what lack looks like, what its color is, what it weighs. And so I realized, yeah, it's a complete mental illusion.

There's no such thing as lack. There's just a story in my mind of, you know, I want this thing and this thing I want isn't here right now, therefore I am lacking. And so we have to have a deeper, I think, metaphysical understanding of how the universe works. And if there is just infinite abundance, you know, we know the universe is infinite. that means there's infinite abundance. There's infinite room for everybody here.

There's no lack. But then why do some people experience unbelievable amounts of abundance and other people unbelievable amounts of lack? It has to come down to their mind and beliefs, right, at some level. And so when I started to see that my ego is not just a voice in my head, but it is actually a deep, like pervasive belief system, a thought system, right? I started to realize, oh, every single problem I have in my life, I can trace back to one of these three beliefs. Comes from lack or an attachment or trying to take control over my life.

And I literally couldn't find a problem I'd ever experienced that didn't trace back to one of those three beliefs. And then I realized, oh, all of humanity is in this position. You know, these three beliefs absolutely dominate human consciousness and are the cause of all human suffering. So I think it's very important that we start learning these beliefs and the average person can get familiar with them. And that's a bit of a tricky task because they are somewhat philosophical, right? The nature of lack and abundance, you can't just like walk up to somebody on the street and teach them about the metaphysical nature of abundance necessarily. And so we have to take baby steps. But the first step is definitely recognizing the belief itself.

And thankfully, we've been given this infallible, perfect inner compass, right, that unfailingly alerts us every single time one of those beliefs is operating, our emotional guidance system alerts us to it. Hey guys, a quick share about creatine. I'm not sure how many of you know about or consistently take creatine, but I have genuinely noticed the effects it has had on supporting my training, workout, building muscle, and also my mind supplementing with it the past year. It's not just for Jimbrose, like a lot of people think, if you don't know, creatine, which is comprised of three amino acids, is not just for muscle. It's essential daily fuel for your brain, your body,

and your long-term health. Momentus is the gold standard in creatine because they source crepeer creatine, which is the purest, most effective creatine monohydrate available, single-sourced from Germany and not cut with any fillers or junk. Their new lemon flavor single-served travel packs are amazing. They make it easy to stay consistent. You just mix it with water and it tastes amazing. If you're curious about trying them out, you can head to live momentous.com and use code Know Thyself for up to 35% off your first order. That's Know Thyself at LiveMomenus.com. Link in description, as always, I hope you like it. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show. So before we dive into that, because I think a lot of people will, when hearing this belief of

lack, maybe look in their external reality or point to people that are lacking in poverty or famine around the world and perceive it as lack. But I think it's important to double down. And I would love to get your thoughts on further iterating this, how the lack you're referring to is a perception upon reality. And there are billionaires right now in the world who live like beggars. Yeah. They live in a state of lack. There is one billion is not enough. 10 billion is not enough. there's a bigger yacht that you've got to get compared to somebody else out there. And contrary, there are a lot of people who don't have a lot physically, but are extremely rich spiritually.

They live in a state of abundance where you would look at them and they don't have much. They sleep on, there's a one-bedroom household with four kids or something, you know, and there's so much joy in the face of the children. And so I think it's important to kind of separate just the physical, external circumstances of lack or abundance from the internal feeling and perception of that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's what you're getting at, I think, is the conversation of form versus essence. And this is the key philosophy that helps us to understand what re-qualifying is. So what the mind is focused on is the form, the object, the thing, money, fame, fortune, women, men, whatever.

and we feel we're lacking because we take the form to be the essence. But really, as I think we talked about before on our first episode too, like, the form isn't actually what's making you happy. A form can't actually deliver anything to anybody. It's all based on your ideas and beliefs about it. So to one person, you know, getting a nice Mustang GT would be like this incredible upgrade, right, to an 18-year-old kid or something. Well, I've got like a real hot rod now.

He's just like flying high confidence through the roof, right? But then his 30-year-old self is going to look back at that car and be like, what a deadbeat car that was back then. You know, I got my Lambo now. And so it's all about your belief and your perspective. So you have to ask the question, what is the essence of why you want that thing? And the essence is always some kind of feeling, right? A feeling of love, a feeling of acceptance, of hope, of strength, empowerment, courage, purpose.

There's something there of why you're chasing it because, look, if for whatever reason, when you stepped inside your Lambo or if you even touched the hood of your car, it just made you depressed. Like, I don't care how nice the car is, you're going to sell it, right? Because it's not giving you the essence of what you want. And this is very common, right? People buy nice shiny objects, cars, houses, jewelry, whatever. And within a matter of days or weeks, usually, it's kind of already worn off. And they're used to it. and their ego is already cracking the whip to go chase the next outcome at once.

False summit after false summit. Yeah, totally. Chasing the dragon. And it's never enough, never enough. Grass is always greener. And so the ego is like designed to do this to us, to keep us on this hamster wheel. And the sort of three spokes that turn that wheel are these three beliefs. It is the ego's ingenious mechanism of keeping you enslaved to your identifying with form, right? as we talked about, if the ego is the belief or the identification with form,

how does it keep us always identifying as a form through lack, attachment, and control? It's got to keep you on this rat race, right? You're always chasing, chasing, chasing. For its own survival, to sustain its own existence. Bingo. It's the ego's existence. It really wants to preserve. And as I often say, like, you can play the rat race if you want to.

File me. Like many people are doing that. go read the celebrity tabloids, and you'll see lots of people that are winning the rat race, famous, rich, in the limelight. So, yeah, you can sort of win the rat race, but you're still a rat. You're still bound to that tormenting thought system that, like you said, even when you're a billionaire, it's not going to leave you alone. It's always not enough.

And as Jim Carrey says, I wish everybody could just go through this so they'd be done with it and stop thinking that getting the next outcome is going to make me happy. It's not. It's going to feed your ego and your belief in it even more and strengthen it even more. So at some point we have to have a kind of philosophical turnaround and say, okay, maybe what I'm really looking for is not these forms, the person, the money, the whatever, but it's a deeper essence, a feeling of love or fulfillment or purpose. And so the real requalification for the belief in lack is to know that only what I do not give can ever be lacking. and the giving, of course, is the essence, not the form. Forms come along with essences, so we don't need to worry about them so much,

but the essence is what I'm not giving. If I feel I'm lacking love in my life, then I know for sure I'm not giving love. Because, I mean, do you know anybody that goes around feeding the poor and visiting children in the hospital or whatever and feels like they're lacking love? Because I don't. The people that give the most love to me are the happiest, most loving people. and that's one of the amazing principles of unity consciousness is that you get to enjoy and keep

whatever you're constantly giving away. You know, the only way to keep it is paradoxically to always be giving it. And that's where the ego gets us because the ego identifies giving as losing. And it will always paint, you know, giving as losing in some way and discourage you from doing it. And that is the key that unlocks everything

is when you learn to live from a state of giving, Like, I'm not here for myself anymore. I'm not going to live this life just to make me happy and my ego happy. I want to be of service. So who can I help? Who can I bless? Who can I serve? And when that truly becomes like a way of being for you, to me, that's when you get

into the state of giving and receiving. And then you are plugged in to the universal power supply, where all abundance is going on forever. It's all about relationship, right? If the universe is infinite and abundant and I want that abundance, I, I I got to go be in a relationship to the universe. And so you could almost see believing in lack, attachments, control, separateness. These are ways we cut off our relationship with the universe

and therefore cut off ourselves from the infinite supply of the universe. So like the universe wants to give us whatever we desire, but it can only give it to us in truth, right? We have to be in a true relationship with the universe. And so you can't fight against and resist life and be in a loving relationship. relationship with life at the same time. I think it's so important to just highlight there, and it's so liberating to see how the more

that you give something, the more that it increases within yourself. And it just shatters the illusion that the essence of what we seek is always somewhere outside of us, that we always need to find and source from outside of us. And it's a persistent and consistent delusion that is often hard to break. through. But, you know, that's why so many people who are affluent are celebrities and they talk and Jim Carrey shares his experience, oftentimes we need to go through it to a relative degree or self to actually see it. But I have, I know you have been throughout, surrounded with many people over the years where this is a truth of reality that happens across the board and you don't need to

go through that experience to understand. can learn through other people's experience. Yeah. And so I love how much you reiterate in the book and your teachings as well, how only what I do not give can ever be lacking. It's the key. Yeah. It's the key, man.

It's the most life-changing truth, I think, probably of any of them. And just like there's a unique way to requalify the belief in lack, I give a unique way to requalify attachment and control as well. dabble in that if you want, but the essence, it all begins with lack, right? Because here's the way the ego's logic works. If I am separate, then I must be lacking, because I'm clearly lacking my source if I'm separate from my source. So like nobody thinks these things consciously. Nobody walks around thinking, I'm incomplete, or my happiness depends on outcomes, or I'm the doer of actions. Those aren't conscious thoughts to anybody. And so the ego,

hides its beliefs, which are subconscious in thoughts. It crafts infinite varieties of thoughts out of those three beliefs. So although nobody really knows consciously that they believe these things, their thoughts are giving it away all day long. And so the belief in lack never presents itself as I am lacking or I'm incomplete. That'd be too obvious, right? Ego is very clever. It knows how to disguise its philosophy from you, to keep tricking you.

So we will disguise that belief in thoughts like, I'm just not pretty enough, or I'm just not smart enough for that, or I don't think I could succeed at that, all these lack-based thoughts. And so what's underlying all of them, what's the common thread, is the belief itself that you are lacking or could be lacking.

If you go down to the average person on the street and interviewed them and said, do you believe that you're incomplete, like most of them would probably say no, right? They'd be like, what? No, of course not. I have self-confidence or whatever. So that's how pervasive and sneaky the ego is.

It has everybody captured and almost nobody realizes it. So we have to ask the question, how do we start working our way out of this problem? And it just begins with awareness, of course, first of all. But the course and miracles also has an amazing teaching on this, similar to only what I have not given can ever be lacking. It also teaches something that really impacted, me as well, which is that salvation must be wherever sin is. Or in other words, the answer must be

wherever the problem is. Because a problem implies an answer, right? This is even true in mathematics. If there is a problem, there is an answer to the problem. But the course says, and actually, the answer is where the problem is, which makes sense through polarity. Everything is just a polarity. So if you go to the problem and you meet it close enough, it will reveal the solution to the problem. And so this is what we do with re-qualifying is we actually go to the belief, the feeling itself, and see it as the actual remedy for the problem. And this is where the emotional guidance system is so huge, is that everyone is demonizing, hating, and trying to get rid of these uncomfortable emotions. And yet they're actually holding the answers in their hands that

everyone's looking for. They're trying to tell you what the problem is. They are a negative emotions in this way are messengers from your inner world that are sort of coming up from your subconscious mind to report something important to you. So the analogy I use is like if a king has, you know, a messenger come from a far away country on a horse and, you know, he rides into the palace and jumps off his horse and sprints up to the king and, master, there's a huge army coming. Like, prepare the troops. The king's probably not going to be happy to hear that. But does he kill the messenger? No, that's where the phrase comes from, right?

Don't shoot the messenger. That's what we've been doing with our feelings, right? We shoot the messenger. We shoot the feeling as if it's the problem. And actually, the feeling is trying to tell you something important. Although it's not good news at the time, it's still important news. And so you can see how a king, who is very disappointed to hear this news, might also promote this guy to a higher status out of gratitude, right?

Like, thanks for warning me, man. So like, we should adopt that relationship to our emotions and realize my emotions are never coming to hurt or attack me. My emotions are me. But they're coming to warn me of something because obviously it has to feel bad to think incorrectly. If it felt good to think incorrectly, you would never know that you were believing wrongly about reality. You live a thousand lifetimes and you would never understand reality.

So thinking wrongly has to hurt. And that's what our emotions are doing is that they're kind of like the bumpers on a bowling lane or something. Psychologically, it's like when we're out of alignment in our thinking, we hit a buzzer. And it's there to be painful on purpose. Like if you and I were on a road trip and you look over and I fell asleep at the wheel and then we're like heading towards a cliff edge or something, like, you're not going to be like gentle and kind to me in that moment and like whisper and rub my back. like Aaron, wake up, buddy. We're heading towards a cliff. You're going to like, I would hope you would just slap me on the back of the head or something, right?

You would do something immediate and swift and painful to shock me awake. And I might wake up for a split second and be like, hey, asshole or whatever. And then I'll look at the problem in front of me and go, oh my God. And I'll slam on the brakes and be like, dude, thank you so much, Andre, for slapping me on the back of the head. There are times where that is necessary. And so whenever you feel a negative emotion, your inner being is the truth itself, right? You are the creator itself in this miniature avatar form. And so your inner being, your soul is aligned with eternal truth.

And so whenever you stray from that truth, your emotions are there to let you know. And so the key is for the emotional guidance system is that your emotions, you've often heard people say, right, well, you can't trust your emotions because they'll lead you astray. You've got to trust your thinking and discernment or whatever. And the truth is actually much prior to that, that by the time you feel a negative emotion, you've already gone astray somewhere and you're thinking. So it's too late to complain about the emotion.

You might as well just thank it and say, oh, please show me where I'm out of alignment right now. And that's the key is that your emotions speak to your self-perception. Everything at the end of the day, right, Andre, is self-perception. You're always looking out through this prism, through these eyes, through this mind, you can't get out of it. And so in a way, everything you experience is a new experience of yourself because you're the one who's thinking about it and feeling things about it and interacting with it.

So something else I say in the book is you only experience yourself. I had a meditative experience with this that I write about in the book of this kind of spiritual being appeared to me in a meditation one day. And I didn't see any physical form, but it was like a felt. experience and I knew I could feel the presence of some ascended master with me and it psychically sort of communicated to me ask me one question and I'll answer you and it's sort of like prompted me but you better make it a good question because I'm not going to answer two questions you know or if you have a clarification like you get one question and so I thought oh

wow what what should I ask you know there's so many options and it came down to the simple question that any good devotee asks a guru, which is who am I? And as soon as I uttered the question in my mind, it was almost like I was still saying it and the guru swept up to me like nose to nose. And again, it wasn't visual, but I felt that that's what it was doing. And it like locked eyeballs with me, so to speak. And it said, you are what you experience. And it disappeared.

And I was just left in this meditative state like, what a trippy experience. but it was undeniably real. So I just sat there and thought about it. And I thought about it for days. I'm like, I am what I experienced. And for a while I disagreed with him. Like, no, he was wrong, you know. And then I'm like, no, no, actually I see what he met,

which is what I just said. You always experience your own reference frame. No matter what's happening, you're experiencing it through the brain and the mind of Aaron Apki. So yeah, you always experience yourself. And so what is the best barometer for who I am in this moment?

it's what's my state of being like in this moment. How am I responding to the present moment? And so if I watch my state of being, I'm getting all the answers is kind of the key that was given. And so once I know I only experience myself, sadness is part of myself, anger is part of myself, fear is part of myself,

but what are they? They are warnings, directions, and messengers. And so that's where the understanding of the three beliefs came through is that if I learned to actually not repress or run away from these painful feelings, but run to them like a good king welcomes in the messenger who's bringing bad news.

If I welcome them in, they'll tell me their secrets. They'll point to me where the problem is. And if I know the problem is always in my self-perception, now I've really whittled down where to look for the problem, right? This was such a huge key for me, man, to realize your emotions do not speak to your circumstances in that whatever's happening, around you. Whatever emotions you're feeling, the emotion is not telling you to do anything.

And that's inarguable to me because emotions are non-conceptual, right? They are sensations. And so by definition, they aren't concepts. So they're not trying to tell you information of what to do or what not to do. They're reflecting something. So our emotions are reflections, not directions. And so what are they reflecting our self-perception? So the key is if I see myself, or think about myself, perceive myself in a way that God does not see me, then I feel a negative emotion. And then on the other hand, positive emotions serve the same function, but to the other polarity. So when I feel, think, perceive about myself like God sees me, then I feel a positive emotion. So if it feels good, it's true. If it feels bad, it's not true. It's kind of the

very simple way to boil it down. There's lots of nuances to that. Of course, course of how is it not true, but the how it's not true is your self-perception. If you're sad, it's because you think you're lacking something right now. Period. End of story. And that isn't fundamentally true. You aren't actually lacking anything. Anything you want or need is available to you at all times in the universe. How to get it is the only question, but the lack is, does not play part of the equation. So you see it always has to feel negative to believe you're lacking because it's always not true. And that also goes with the other two beliefs as well. So if we were to zoom in on an example of this where the emotional guidance system and requalifying is put into practice for an experience of lack, something happens, heartbreaking relationship ends, you lose your job, both within the first two beliefs of lack and attachment, how would somebody navigate this so they can put their ego in proper context and, yeah, use these, the awareness of the inner dialogue and the emotions.

as sensations that are carrying and reflecting back information to us and putting them in the right context. So what would be an example of how you would navigate that in real time? So you want to walk through the actual steps? Yeah. Okay, let's do it. Hey, y'all. I want to talk about tea for a second because tea is more than just a normal drink. It's a ritual for me. And after trying so many different brands, I find myself continually coming back to and drinking on the show, the ones from peak life, especially their puer tea. It's wild harvested, which means it comes from ancient tea trees, and it's fermented for gut health. That fermentation process loads it up with living probiotics and prebiotics, which is like

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which is this stuff right here, and it's risk-free with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Just head topeaklife.com slash know-thyself to get yours, or you can see all of our partner deals at know-liselfpodcast.com slash partners. Back to the show. So just for anyone who's not heard this teaching from me before, the basic premise is it's impossible to feel sadness without the belief that you are lacking something or have lost something.

So the death of a loved one, all the things you mentioned are different forms of lack. So lack and sadness go together. From there, if I'm lacking, that implies maybe I can fulfill that lack out in the world. I can go win pleasurable outcomes and fulfill this aching hole I feel in myself. and that's what creates attachments as we attach and cling and chase things. Why? Because we believe they're going to fulfill us.

And so I call that outcome happiness, that happiness comes from outside and outcomes. So what happens whenever an outcome or a desire or goal gets blocked? So we get angry, we get frustrated. So anger and attachment always go together. And then if I can fulfill my lack by winning outcomes in the world, I must be the one who's in control of life, right? I'm the one who does it all.

And the belief in control is what causes all emotions of fear. And the best way to see this is if you've ever had a panic attack or if you think about somebody who's had a panic attack, like what is the core fear happening there? It's always some kind of loss of control, right? I can't breathe or there's nowhere to go or something like that that causes this panic, this overwhelm. It's I'm not in control anymore. So whenever the ego concocks this belief.

that it has control, it feels really good to think you're in control, right? We call that pride and it feels good for a while, but it always comes with a consequence because at some point, and usually sooner rather than later, life is going to take that control from your ego and say, now how do you like it? And ego is going to flail and scream and go into that, you know, fight, flight, freeze mode. So even those three kind of animal instincts, flight, fight, and freeze are like the primordial roots of those three emotions, sadness, anger, and fear. Sadness is like the emotional flight response when we want to escape from our pain, but don't feel like we're just always running away from pain

is kind of how it feels, right? That's sadness. Anger is obviously fight and then fear is obviously freeze. So we have flight, fight, and freeze. So we see that these beliefs are incredibly ancient sensations that trace back billions of years into the animal kingdom and who know, who knows how far back, right? And they just have kept getting modulated over time as evolution or whatever has continued. Now in the human being who has not just the lower two chakras like animals do, but we human beings have all three of the lower chakras in activation from birth, and we're trying to win the fourth one during the incarnation. But every human being has the lower three. That's why we have a very sophisticated ego compared to like animals, for example. You could say that

a dog has a kind of ego or like a dog ego, but it's very, very minimal compared to a human ego. A dog can't fear the future and regret past mistakes and all kinds of stuff. So that's the basic premise of why these emotions signal these beliefs. So let's use a practical example of a breakup or like losing someone you were in love with. Whether they left you or cheated on you or just decided to break up with you, you're going to go through a period of sadness, right? because you feel like you lost love. And so that's always what it is. It's that this person, the form, right, as we said, is representing I am loved.

And so as long as this person's in my life, it represents I am loved. And when that person leaves my life, it represents I am lacking love. And so how many people, you know, go through or live in relationships for a long time, sometimes their whole life? because they've associated that person with I am loved. Even if we're fighting all the time and can barely get along, as long as they're in my life, I feel like I have at least some love.

And the thought of leaving them or them leaving me is scary because I know it would make me have to face my feelings that I'm lacking love. So these are all the subconscious reasons people stay in toxic relationships, right? So if I have gone through this experience, losing somebody I loved, and I'm really struggling with depression. So, Aaron, how would I re-qualify this according to these teachings? So the first thing is to know that your sadness is representing a wrong perception of yourself, that you're lacking love.

Can't be true, right? You are eternally loved and lovable from the creator forever. It's not up for grabs. So then once you know that you're really suffering from a lack belief, now what do you do about it? So this is where I go into re-qualifying. Now, re-qualifying to me is two essential steps, and they're both very essential. And I call them the positive use of denial, which is a phrase from a course in miracles, and then the affirmation of truth.

The reason these are both important is because, I mean, the whole concept of requalifying comes from the understanding that I'm the only creator of this mind. I'm the only one who can give anything meaning or revoke meaning from anything. I have created every problem in my mind. Or as the course says, I have given everything all the meaning it has for me. That's a little difficult for some people to swallow it first, but eventually if you sit with that idea,

you'll come to recognize, yeah, that's actually true. So once we know, no one else can step into my mind and re-qualify my beliefs for me. You know, maybe I have a best friend who's like kick-ass business person. He's like super empowered and confident. And he's always trying to help install his confidence in me. Like, come on, man, believe in yourself. Take risks.

You can do it. And I'm just playing small. And I can't. I'm lacking. Right. He can't step into my mind and re-qualify that belief. So how did he get it? Because he did it himself, right?

Through whatever means it was, self-help books, I don't know. But he forged his own confidence. he qualified it to get him to the point where he's living the life he lives. So everyone listening to this has already been qualifying and requalifying their thoughts from childhood. We're all doing this. We just don't know we're doing it. So the art of requalifying is just learning what this is and how to do it.

And so, of course, it has to be these two steps. You have to positively deny the false belief and then affirm what is true in its place. So if I've given my belief in lack all this belief in meaning for years, at some point I've got to start revoking my belief in it. And now this is where it gets tricky with spiritual bypassing. Is you don't want to just make this some robotic technique that you think will work if you just do it. I deny all belief in lack. Like it isn't just a mantra you can repeat or something and get results. It has to be a real, again, a real philosophical insight that you contemplate and question the

nature of lack and always find it to be an unreality, right? And so you can, from that understanding of, no, this is, although it appears to be real, it isn't fundamentally true. There is no lack in God's universe. God is infinite abundance itself. God cannot lack. And therefore, neither can I. There's only one being here, right? So from that understanding, you can positively deny the false belief. And so the reason It's phrased like that is because whenever you do this step, it should feel positive. It should feel expansive and good. It shouldn't feel like you're fighting something. You can't fight an illusion.

So you shouldn't feel like you're fighting something. You can't punch a ghost in the face, right? It's just seeing what's really true. And so, you know, if you go through the affirmation of something like, I deny all belief in lack. And I affirm that only what I don't give can ever be lacking. That's like a really simple, quick example of requalifying. This is something you do in your mind on the go whenever you need to do it.

You just take a pause from the hustle and bustle of life. And I like to close my eyes sometimes and take a deep breath and just really get up close to this lack belief I have and look at it. What does my ego think I'm lacking? And this is one of the important steps in requalifying. Whether it's lack, attachment, or control, you have to have. to ask the fundamental question, what do I believe I'm lacking? What am I attached to? What am I trying to control? And let your emotional guidance system and your inner being show you the answer to that. And so if it's lack, it'll say, I'm lacking love because I just got dumped or whatever.

So then once you understand what it is, you think you're lacking the essence, not the form, then you re-qualify from that understanding. And so it should feel good to deny that you are not lacking love. But you just need to start giving it more. So it should always feel like a positive experience. And the caveat that comes with that is that sometimes you're feeling really down. Yeah, none of us can control when we're going through a really heavy emotional process in some form. And so sometimes my students will say like, well, Aaron, what about when I'm just absolutely overwhelmed with existential depression or something? It feels impossible to have a positive experience of anything.

So how can I do this requalifying? And what I'll say is, you don't necessarily need to feel some expansive emotion, although the more positive you feel, the more successful it's going to be, meaning the more positive the emotion that you feel in response to this, the more it's going to depolarize the negative. So that is true, but you don't need to have some explosive, blissful emotion to successfully re-qualify your beliefs. Even the slightest feeling of release or even the slightest lessening of the contraction constitutes a victory.

Because, by the way, using these terms negative and positive, it's important to qualify what we mean, right? Negative doesn't mean bad. Positive doesn't mean good. Negative and positive refer to their functions. So what is negative is contracting, inward moving, magnetic, absorbing, and so forth. and what is positive is radiating, expanding, outward moving. So we are all trying to become more positively polarized,

which is the giving and receiving state. But the ego is a negatively polarized thought system in your mind, and it can only function on that basis. So another one of the definitions I sort of correct at the beginning of the book is that, you know, you can't get rid of your ego, you just need to have a healthy relationship with it. You need to develop a healthy ego. and I get what people mean by that,

but metaphysically speaking, it's totally inaccurate. Your ego can't transition from one polarity to the other. It can't like become a good guy or something. It's here to play the role of the villain. And so you defeat the villain or you don't. The villain doesn't turn into a good guy. And I know we're using a little bit of obtuse language here,

but it's all metaphorical. But so negative just means contracted. Ego is always seeking to contract your energy because that's how it gets power over you. So when we re-qualify, even just a little release of that contraction, like I just feel a little bit less negative, is also a victory.

We have to let our emotions show us the truth because we're dealing with our subconscious mind, you know? All of this information is unavailable to our conscious thinking mind. So you can't go through this like a mental process and be like, do I think I did it? Yeah, I think I did it. It's not a good way of going about it.

You have to feel your way through it. And the whole practice of requalifying is really simple. It's just predicated on connecting to what's actually true in reality. Even if my mind doesn't fully believe it yet, a lot of times we're in a halfway space, a liminal space where like a lot of me still believes lack is real, but a deeper part of me knows it's not. Like, cool, meet yourself there. Just start there.

And as you daily moment by moment, keep requalifying your belief in lack. every time you feel sad that you can, that you can take advantage of, pause, go within, connect to what is it I think I'm lacking right now? Purpose, a future, hope, something like that. Okay, then let me start giving that. And the giving is the final step in the requalification. So it's like we don't want to just see what's true and deny what's not true. We then want to actually go a step further and act on what's true.

So it's not enough to just say, well, only what I don't give. never be lacking. That's the truth. It's like, yeah, it is, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to act on it now? Are you going to start giving that essence? And so that's the final step of requalifying is to actually act upon the truth because when it comes to how we talk to the universe, right, how we have relationship to source, we only have these three things. We have thoughts, we have feelings, and actions. And each one of those kind of carries a different carmic weight to it, so to speak. Thoughts being the subtlest,

carrying the smallest carmic consequences, feeling second, actions, third. The strongest carmic impact is what you do in reality. Because what you act upon how you live

reveals what you really believe at the end of the day. So the universe is waiting for you to act on what you believe and not just keep saying it to yourself. So that's important to know. So if I think I'm lacking love because I got broken up with,

then if I want to heal from this breakup, I should start making it a priority to be more loving to people and make other people feel loved in my presence. And it does something really powerful when you do this that I think it's very easy to not notice. But interacting with other people makes the strongest impact on your psyche, right? This is another kind of teaching from a course in miracles

is that heaven is entered two by two. The only way I can actually get to the kingdom of heaven is through the person right in front of me. So when I start treating my interactions with people as the most important thing in my life, when I really prioritize how do I show up in relationship to other people, that's the most powerful way of all to requalify your thoughts

because you're no longer just sitting in a vacuum by yourself in your room or something going through these mental processes, which is very good and you should do it. but the final culmination of it all is embodiment. And so if all of this requalifying doesn't lead you to actually live differently and show up better and more loving and all these things, then you're not doing it right. Like, it should have a noticeable impact in your daily life, the way you live and the way you show up with relationships. And so if I know that the best place to give what I feel I'm lacking is other people, then you naturally just start taking advantage of it. and you very generously and gratefully become a very loving person to others.

And you look to make every interaction with other people, like a sacred and holy interaction, almost like, you know, when you're with other people, the place you stand is holy ground. You know, you want to take the best opportunity you can to capitalize on that. And if I can see the person in front of me as not lacking, as not separate, and all of that, then that is the most powerful way,

to heal my mind of my belief in lack. Because this is one of the functions of the mind, is that whatever perceptions you hold about yourself are applied universally to everybody. So we call that judgment, meaning whatever standards you try to hold other people to, your mind will have to hold you to as well. And we normally don't see this, right?

When we judge other people for being stupid or lazy or whatever, it feels good. Yeah, ego loves to judge people because I'm better than them. I'm not lazy. But that's all your conscious mind, right? Your perceptions really come from your subconscious mind, of which you have no real interaction with.

And so then you start wondering why you get more insecure over time. You beat yourself up more. You feel more guilty. You feel more inadequate because you're judging everybody else like that. And so it's seeping into your subconscious mind and your ego is holding you to the same standard. So again, whatever you give is what you will receive. Jesus said that in Luke 637.

forgive and you will be forgiven judge and you will be judge condemn and you will be condemned for the measure you give will be the measure you get back word for word quote from yeshua he understood this principle right even two thousand years ago and so once we know this principle then it becomes very easy to requalify because we know it really does end or culminate in the way i show up in my life and so not only do i do the first part of requalifying which is the kind of interpersonal part of identifying what is my lack belief and let me flip the script on that and say, no, I'm not lacking that. I'm just not giving it. So then how do I start giving it? And you look to your relationships to start doing that. And even though maybe it's romantic love that you think you're lacking, there's only one type of love.

And so we shouldn't differentiate between types of love in this regard when we're re-qualifying. Love is love is love. so even if I lost a romantic partner or something, I can still be loving and kind to the elderly person at the grocery store. Just give the ultimate essence of what it is you want, and that's the core philosophy behind re-qualifying. And again, if you can see how you do this already,

but in the negative way, you're just feeding and acting and behaving according to these beliefs negatively, being petty, being jealous, being judgmental. Do you see how you're always qualifying that belief, the more you act on it? What you act upon, man, and time and space creates the greatest impact in your mind and in your world. And so you say, oh, yeah, I'm actually amazing at this practice already. Everyone listening to me is already a master requalifier, right?

You just don't know that you have this power and that you're always kind of wielding it. And so we're just learning what it is and how to wield it in the right way so that we can use it to our benefit rather than our detriment. Love how you walked us all through that, dude. It's also one of those things I feel like you can put into practice and it's a bit like a toddler on a tricycle and then you start taking off the wheels and it's something that you can get better with over time and become more natural where it feels clunky at first. Yeah. And I think in my own personal practice of, in my own ways, navigating, you know, difficulties

of emotion or perceptions of lack or fear or control or attachment, you know, it's shifted from the victim consciousness of life is happening to. to actually switching and viewing every challenging circumstance as an opportunity to declare to life, to the universe, that to what you're devoted to, to who you are becoming. And I think with that framework shifts and what it allows is all of these challenging moments that inevitably arise within our human experience throughout our life, there are all these little points in which we actually can refine who are becoming and release that, which is is not us and that is no longer serving us.

So in a previous experience of a past breakup, there is the opportunity for it to actually make you more sweet, kind, and loving through the thoughts and actions and feelings that stem from the other side of it, or to become bitter and allow it to redefine and shape how you see future relationships. You can qualify it either way. Yeah, yeah.

So just in summary then, you have a difficult experience or something arises where you're the first step is to qualify it in a sense where you're asking is it true and and what is this revealing about what i believe about life that there is in a lack of love that i'll never find another partner again you know etc etc yeah and then you're reinstating that the positive of that which is what is really true so how yeah if you were to summarize everything that you just said into those like steps i would love to hear you verbalize it again yeah it's important because Because what we're really saying here is this whole practice or philosophy is really designed just to take the guesswork out of it all.

Because how many of us have spent so much time doing trauma work and shadow work trying to get to the root of our trauma and we're just sort of always unable to or it feels very difficult to say, do I really know that that's the end route or is there something beneath that? you know, we're kind of always chasing the end of the shadow sometimes. And when we know that the end of all shadows is lack, attachment, or control, that's it. There is no fourth option. That takes a lot of the guess workout. And so not that it's not sometimes helpful to revisit childhood traumas and memories, but understand that these three beliefs come pre-installed in the human psyche. We have them from birth.

So we don't really learn them so much as they're brought out of us and reinforced by society. Because everybody else believes these things. Go make something of yourself, kid. Don't be a deadbeat loser because that'll be proof that you are lacking, right? This is just normal. So none of us can get out of this so we shouldn't feel bad that we have these beliefs. I think our souls come here to grapple with these beliefs and transcend them because transcending these three beliefs is how, again, we rise.

to the next phase of consciousness, the fourth density, which is the heart chakra density. It's like the necessary energetic weight room of, you know, you go to the gym to break down muscles then become stronger. It's like these are, this is the rule set

in which we grow and develop and evolve. Totally. Yeah, the rule set is a great way of saying it. So again, the steps in summary are always monitor your state of being. Your state of being never lies to you. Contrary to popular opinion, right? your emotions are going to lie to you. No, no, no. Flip that. Your emotions cannot lie to you.

They can only tell you the truth. And in a sense, we can even boil it down even simpler than the three beliefs. We can just say that there's contraction or expansion. That's it. Those are the only polarized options available in terms of feelings. A feeling can be contracting or expansive. And so you can even say, do I feel more contracted right now or more expanded right now. Expanded would mean happy, free, at peace, not stressing. And I think we would probably all agree that 99% of people live contracted 99% of the time, right? So once I know my state of being has all the information and data that I'm looking for for requalifying, then I'm just like always checking in with myself. I'm always monitoring my state of being.

And when I, because sometimes you don't notice it's contracted, but when you do notice it's contracted. Maybe it's at the end of your day, right? You've spent all day in this kind of, with this background stress, but you've been in go mode, right? So you're not really noticing the background of stress, but eventually it creeps up on you and it gets to the point where you're like, oh, I feel overwhelmed right now. And then you remember, oh, I should have been checking in with my state of being earlier in the day. I've been stressed all day. It doesn't matter when you catch it. Yes, it's better to catch it sooner than later, but catching it at all is a when you notice I'm in a contracted state of being,

which means one or more of the ego's three beliefs is dominating my mind right now. I'm living under this thought system. And in the book, I call it the thought system of separation. There's just those two thought systems, like we said, positive or negative. Positive is the thought system of unity, where all things are one, everything's in a relationship,

there's no lack, there's only abundance. That's the thought system we're trying to get to and live from. But the thought system we come from as an ego is the thought system of separateness, and it's predicated on lack attachment and control. Repeat. So once we notice, oh, I'm in the ego's thought system right now, then we go through the steps of, okay, what emotion am I feeling? And this is a good point for a clarification, is that we don't always just feel only one

negative emotion, right? A lot of times it's like a combination of negative feelings. And I think one thing that you can actually notice is that there's always a polarity in the experience. Like you cannot experience pain without there being bliss somewhere in that experience as well. And that's just my personal experience that if you allow yourself to feel the grief or sadness of something, there is something inherently pleasant about the acceptance of whatever you're experiencing is. Yes.

And so they come coupled in a way, which is something I encourage everyone to validate in their own experience and don't just take as philosophy. Yeah. You're totally right. And it's actually just, it's the analogy of a TV is on in the room. Like we're podcasting right now. Imagine there was a TV on over here with white noise static playing. It'd be really annoying at first. And we would kind of get used to it and again forget about it.

And then if somebody just took the TV away, we would be, we would notice how great it felt to just be in the silence. Like, wow, it's so quiet all of a sudden. Happens a lot. I feel like with the fridge in my house. Yeah. Some of these appliances. There's this low hum and then it turns off and you're like, oh. Like when the power goes out, you're like, whoa, there's actually like I live with like a little hum all the time.

Yeah. I saw notice it. And then it's like, oh. But that's what it is, right? That is what is happening when I release my resistance or my contraction. It's like I'm just remembering how great it feels to be what I am, like at peace and free. Which is something interesting that Young said, he said that pleasure is tension reduction. Oh, it's so great, isn't it?

So good. It's exactly what it is. Because if you take the framework that bliss and pleasure and positive experiences innate to our being, than just removing what's in the way, the contraction and tension just reveals what is, which is inherently a positive experience. Yeah. Well, on this note,

I don't know if you've ever read some of the Greek philosophers like Plotinus or Aristotle, but something they talked about that I really resonate with is probation theory, which is really it's non-duality, actually, but it's the idea that there's only what is real, and then the duality is the anti-real or what seems to be there,

but it isn't really there. So, for example, there is no such thing as cold. There's just a reduction of heat, right? Similar to your point on pain reduction. And so what is evil, what is bad, what is sinful, these are all privations. In other words, they are an absence rather than a presence. But the mind labels them as real and says there is real evil happening here. And so in that way, especially the third belief of ego, I'm in control, is actually the

invention of a second power. in the universe. And that's why it's the highest true blasphemy in a sense is to say, if you say I'm separate from the source, which is what all religion is predicated on, right? I am fundamentally, ontologically separate from God. Okay, then you must be like your own God, right? You have like some power of your own by which you exist? Like, what are you really saying? You're saying, I am a second power. So like the actual affirmation I give to requalify the third belief in the book is, Two powers do not exist. I am resting in one power.

Every time I try to act alone, I need to have this remembrance of, look at me trying to act alone in God's universe as if I could, or that I am a second power that can do so. You can only realize the delusion of this. You are connected to all of life at every moment, the forces of the cosmos, the laws of the universe, the influence of the people around you. Everything is like puppet strings pulling on you.

and you're just taking credit for all of it. That's my decision. I thought of that. I wanted to do that. It's like, who decides when they want to get hungry? Like, last time I checked, none of us are doing that. None of us are doing our heartbeat. I can't stop my heartbeat.

Like, I'm not in control in any real way. It's just like lack. It's like another delusion the ego creates. And because everyone else believes it, it just appears to be real. Yeah. The way you describe it too and the perception of evil being the absence of love or God. you know, as opposed to thinking that duality is the way that reality is. Yeah.

As opposed to a function and an appearance of reality, but of course it all being one thing. Okay, so I know that was a bit of a detour. I think we kind of got to the summary or maybe, do you want to finish up anything there? Yeah, that's right. So, you know, we got off track a little bit on the component of your state of being. So we'll go back to that. when you check in with yourself and you notice I'm in a contracted emotional state, then you go right to the belief that you think is causing it.

So sometimes it's not just sadness, right? Especially if it's like you've gone through a breakup. You're going to feel sad and angry and maybe afraid all the same time. There's going to be a mixture of all three. So we deal with each emotion by itself. So what I'll say is just choose the most surface level emotion right now that is most agitating to you. your state of being. And then we'll get to the second one and the third one. So that's the way we

approach multiple negative feelings at once. The other big thing here, I think, is this idea of balancing our emotional state. Because we are always in this polarity of contraction or expansion, when we've been in resistance to a belief or whatever it is, a thought and idea for a long time, it's built up a lot of, you know, carmic inertia in our mind. So a long held pervasive belief, like, I'm not lovable or something like that. Or she betrayed me.

It's something that makes you angry, let's say. If an emotion is really charged, as I said earlier, like sometimes my students will say, Aaron, I'm way too overwhelmed to do this, right? If that's the case, then I introduce a third step, which is spiritual bad. balancing from the law of one, a practice taught in the law of one. And it's, it's kind of frustrating because it's such a great practice, but Ra like barely touches on it in the law of one.

But even that little nugget he's given us, I've just like studied it and studied it and studied it and implemented it in my life. And I've gotten to this place where I feel like I really understand the essence of what Ra is teaching in that passage. And so what Ra says is that if you have an extremely charged negative emotion, before you do any psychoanalytic, you processing of it. You should just try to move the energy, right? So if it's anger, let's say, then you want to go preferably get somewhere alone so you can not worry about how you look or sound, right? And then just move the energy, right? Don't judge it at all. It's not wrong to be angry. It's not wrong to feel rage in my body. Just let it fly. And you can scream, cuss the person out,

like really let your ego have a moment to just do. dump the energy out because this is a very smart, like, metaphysical tactic against the ego is that ego only has the energy you've given it, right? And so all I can do is try to use your own energy against you and then get you to keep feeding it over and over. So when you make a safe space for yourself where you understand this is a negative belief operating, but I'm just going to move the energy. So you scream, you cause, you punch a pillow, whatever, and just like have a little bit of an energy dump for a second. And as you know, when you do that, there's a feeling of release that comes afterwards where you're kind of like, oh, yeah, it feels a little better now.

What sucks is to keep it bottled up, right? And I can't express this. I'm not allowed to. I shouldn't. I'll be judged. And then it really sucks to hold on to it. But letting emotions fly always feels good, whether you're crying, whether you're screaming, whether you're whatever. It at least feels good to move the energy. And then you've depolarized the intensity of the feeling to enough of an extent that you can then go into the process and say, okay, so what's the belief that's really at the heart of this? I have an attachment to something. So let's say you got in a fight with your partner, right?

And she or he said something that really offended you and made you angry, disrespected you, I don't know. And so you're so angry, you let the emotions fly, you scream, and then you go into the process. What's the attachment, right? What am I attached to? Because if I'm angry, I know immediately it's an attachment. I don't need to do any further processing.

Well, don't you think you probably have an attachment of that person should never talk to me like that? Or no one should ever disrespect me. This is often what people say when they get into fights, right? Nobody talks to me like that. Well, then you're going to get pretty pissed when someone does talk to you like that. Why have that attachment? Be free. Like, don't care how people talk to you.

Don't have expectations of how people should talk to you. I'm not saying take disrespect and be a dormant. I'm just saying don't let other people's actions trigger you out of your center, right? Why should I let my inner peace be dependent on how somebody else is acting? That's spiritual weakness, right? It's also, frankly, just called slavery. Like, you're giving other people dominion over your internal experience, which is another term for just slavery.

It's like somebody owns you in that moment. And we've seen examples of this how, of course, the external ownership of somebody's body and that typical slavery sense is horrible. But what could be worse than the internal ownership, you know, that we allow other people to reign over us? That's where the phrase comes from of like, I'm living rent-free in Andre's head or whatever. That's the idea. It's like, I own you, even though I don't own you. Yeah.

Don't let people live rent-free in your head. Don't do it. Make them pay at least something, right? Because it's very disempowering when you aren't in control of your reactions to life. When at a moment's notice, somebody can push your button and get a reaction out of you like you're a, pop-up doll or something. We all know that we want to have a level of self-sufficiency that we can be in any environment and not be moved by it.

And that is the definition of self-mastery is the ability to be in your chosen state of being at will regardless of the circumstance. And that's, of course, not an easy level of self-mastery to cultivate, but it begins with this practice, right? if I can't even re-qualify my own negative emotions when they arise, how am I ever going to not be triggered when he or she says that thing to me? And I feel like it begins in another way of explaining what you're sharing is creating just a bit

of space between the stimulus and response. And by creating that space and you having an experience come up and you kind of close your eyes, you take a deep breath, and you go inward and you start to examine it, you're creating space from what has been a habitual, compulsive reaction. in your life. And that's really the spectrum. I think we're moving here from compulsivity and reactivity to consciousness and to awareness. And it's not a linear path, you know, kind of be going ups and downs of it. At least that's my experience. But that is the journey. Yes. I'm glad you brought that up because that's another point in the book of like there's there's always this, that ego always has a

voice or an impulse or an urge or something before it gets you to act on it. So you're very right. like this practice of of requalifying is all about creating more, more space between those urges and those actions so that we can actually not keep acting on the wrong beliefs anymore, but we can re-qualify them and begin to act correctly and properly and give the things we want and all of that. And so, yeah, it's that tiny kind of instant between the impulse and your reaction to it that has all the opportunity for freedom in it. And so whether you can do that right now or not is fine.

you will earn the ability to be the space in those gaps, right? And to cultivate awareness of those impulses, but it has to start somewhere. And if you're listening to this podcast thinking, well, man, like these guys, I don't know what they're talking about, but I have no ability not to be triggered. Like, I'm easily taken off by people's disrespect.

Again, this is how the spiritual ego disqualifies you. This is what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. The spiritual ego will always find a way to disqualify you from spiritual achievement of any sort, and it does it very craftily by even using spiritual concepts to disqualify you from it. So I guess I just say that, because it's something that comes up a lot with my students of people disqualifying themselves from being able to do this. And ironically, you have to re-qualify that disqualification and understand, no, I am the

only creator of my reality. Who else can do this but me? If my ego seems to be very powerful, then I know for sure that I'm powerful. because it couldn't have any of that energy if I hadn't given it to it. I'm the power supply. I'm the creator. Ego can only feed off of me

kind of like a virus or something. So the magic is in in re-qualifying thought is that these thoughts, kind of like propaganda or something. We all saw this in COVID, for example, safe and effective, safe and effective. That would be like the thought, right,

that the ego thinks that it wants you to grab onto and believe in. So in a very real way, Like we're not actually re-qualifying our thoughts technically because the thought is whatever it is like you can't change it. It's eternally that thought. We are requalifying our belief in the thought. So it should be re-qualifying beliefs actually. But I just say re-qualifying thought because that's the way it shows up for us is I've got to notice my lack-based thoughts and realize there's a common thread weaving between all these thoughts, which is I am lacking.

And that's what the ego doesn't want you to see. Just like propagandists don't want you to see the underlying philosophy they're trying to sell you, which is trust us. Whatever we say, you do, right? That's safe and effective, safe and effective. If they just came out and said, you obey everything we say, got it, people would rebel and say, no. But if they say, hey, you want to take this, right? Because it's safe and effective.

And you go, oh, that sounds good. Yeah, yeah, safe and effective. And then it's got your belief. And so that's exactly what ego does to us. It's always selling us some sort of propaganda in the form of thoughts. And so if we just think we have to correct our thoughts all day, we're kind of lost in the weeds all day. The ego can generate infinite thoughts. If you correct this one, it'll generate a new one, right?

Just like it. You should go to the belief underlying the thought, the philosophy under the thought, and re-qualify that. Yeah, amazing, man. I'm glad we went through a bunch of different nuance and context for how this shows up because it's not as simple as just, you know, the three-step process for everybody all the time. But if I'm going to be kind of an annoying podcaster for a moment

and just ask you again to just summarize it in like three sentences or those steps, like what would that be just before we go into the last belief? Yeah. Check in with your emotional guided system, your state of being, identify the belief that's underlying that feeling, and requalify the belief.

And again, the requalifying is, you have to positively deny the old or false belief. So it's not enough to just affirm what's true, but not deny what's false, because you're still giving that thing energy. It's a very powerful act in your mind of taking your freedom and your power back to say, I don't believe that anymore.

And what's funny about this is like we talked about it isn't fighting, and it's not, but I've noticed this interesting thing that there is a period of time in your developmental process and anything where a little bit of fight can be good sometimes. Kind of like the breakup analogy, a woman who's in a relationship with a narcissistic abuser,

she has to go through this process, right? And eventually she has to get, like she justifies his narcissism for a while and she tells her friends, no, he means well, you just don't get it. And they all tell her, like, no, he's not good for you. You should leave him. And she doesn't listen until the suffering boils over and she gets angry. And then once she gets angry, that's the emotion that actually gives her the freedom to leave the relationship, right?

To break up with the guy. And so sometimes you can have a little bit of that behind your requalifying to break up with that belief. So if this belief and lack has been kicking my ass my whole life, I'm ready to be done with this. So I can have a little bit of ferocity behind what I'm saying. But as long as it feels positive is the idea. So we don't want to label too much, but like the experience should be positive in

some way, but sometimes it can feel kind of good to be like, I don't believe that shit anymore. And you're just divorcing yourself from it in that way. Eventually, you won't have to say that anymore because you'll reach the final stage of empowerment, which is, oh, it's just not true. And there's peace about it. But so positive use of denial, affirmation of truth. And it should go in that order. So recognize what state of being you're in.

What emotions are you feeling? Go to the belief underlying that emotion and then re-qualify it. positive use of denial, affirmation of truth. And again, there's a very unique philosophy given for each of the three beliefs that takes some contemplation for you to sit with it. A lot of them are counterintuitive to the average way humans think and even confrontational or something in a way. Like they will offend you a little bit.

They might provoke your ego to a lot of resistance, and that's to be expected. But these philosophies, you just got to keep sitting with them, contemplating them, and using them. as they show up in your daily life. And that's a better way to approach requalification. It shouldn't be this thing you use. Like, I want to get a quick immediate result.

Or I want to finish this thing once and for all. It's like you don't control any of that. You only control what's arising right now. Like, can I requalify this thought, this belief right now? And over time of doing that, you will sap the energy out of that belief system. I think it really helps to become not so outcome dependent and have these expectations around what this process will or will not give us, but rather be more of an explorer of consciousness and play with it and see how that shifts.

Because in my experience, the more you put these insights into practice, the more that like no reason happiness comes about. Most people don't need a reason to be pissed off and sad and frustrated about life. And we don't need a reason to be joyful and happy, you know. And I think the more that you examine this, the more that you actually don't need a reason or an eye. outcome for your own joy to be present. Yeah, and that's another controversial idea that might be, like, offensive to some people

at first of, of course, I need a reason to be happy. How could I be happy if things aren't going well in my life? But that's what we're talking about, I think, is a little deeper than that. It's a level deeper than that. And this is the second belief, which is outcome happiness. But the idea beneath it is that attachment is, is itself a contracted mental state, right? I'm zeroing in on something.

I'm focusing my mind on a pursuit of a goal. And so I have to contract my mind to pursue the desire, the attachment. And so desire is not bad or wrong in any way. It's very divine. We're just supposed to be pointing it, or we should point our desire towards divine things. You know, realizing our purpose and our truth, our essence, and all of that.

It's beautiful to desire good, loving and godly things. But when the ego hijacks desire and points it towards objects and sense pleasures, that's where we get lost in the weeds and start suffering. And so in the same way that the kind of underlying philosophy of lack is giving, right? Giving is the remedy for lacking. In that same way, detachment is the remedy for attachment. It's like, duh, that's not a novel concept.

But it's important to understand what detachment is. detachment is not the losing of something you want, right? It's not the giving up of something you want. Detachment is the relaxing of a contracted mental state. And so the sort of phrase or idea given in the book for the second belief in outcome happiness is to repeat this outcome, like whatever it is you've identified you want, you're chasing, this outcome cannot give me anything I want. and you're sort of denouncing the attachment as being fruitless for you.

And the ego will resist and say, no, of course it has what I want. But the key you're looking at, the key insight is what I really want, right? What we all really want is to be happy right now, to be at peace right now. We don't actually want a future happiness. The only reason we keep chasing happiness in the future is because we don't think we can have it now. I can only get it when I get that outcome. So we chase, chase, chase, chase. We're on the hamster wheel.

But if we actually got serious about, what do I really, if I could just press a button and have whatever I want, we would all press the button that says a perfectly happy, harmonious state of being, right? That's what we all want. And if you got the car or the girl or the guy or the house and it made you depressed, you get rid of it. So it isn't really the attachment you want. It's the state of being you want.

So detachment is like this recognition. Oh yeah, I want to be happy now, not in the future. And I can't be happy now while I keep my mind in a contracted state, a tunnel vision focus on one desire I think I need. Peace of mind is the absence of striving, is the absence of attachment. And so I just want to be fully in acceptance at peace with this present moment. And so again, to requalify that, you've got to come to the realization I just described organically.

It can't just be a thing you repeat as if it has magical power. You really have to see this for yourself. No, this is actually true. I really do just want to be at peace right now. And so, yeah, I can actually see how if I keep chasing this girl or this money, I'm just going to be unhappy forever. And that seeing is the, ah, the release will come from that. And that's the positive emotion I describe,

is it should feel good when you requalify because you're moving closer to what's true and farther from what's false. And as we said, what's true always feels good. What's false always feels bad, existentially speaking. So that's the second belief, and we can give a philosophy for the third as well.

The third belief, I'm in control, the belief that I'm the one who makes things happen, right? Personal doership. Personal doership. What's the remedy for that? So with lack, it's giving. With attachment, it's detachment, and with control, we could say either trust or surrender, kind of synonyms, right?

But the philosophy is this. Whatever you're trying to control in your life is just an area of your life you're not trusting God at the end of the day. And so can you recognize that? And again, saying you're not in control doesn't mean don't do anything, sit on your couch and stare at the wall, right? It just means let life guide you, let life move you, let life decide what should happen. next rather than you rushing in to do what you want and rush to the outcome you want. I mean,

how often do we create our own suffering by trying to force life to give us what we want sooner or whatever? Life always has my best intention in mind. I can know that for a fact. And in the last 10 plus years where I've adopted this mentality as a daily practice of overcoming the belief and control, I go to this belief or this recognition. Life always has a happy outcome in mind. But I've got a lot of blind spots, distortions, flaws in the system that it needs to help me correct and get out of the way. So it often does that by putting me through challenges and whatnot.

But trials and challenges are not bad. They're good. They're leading me to growth and strength and all of this. But if I don't trust, I don't get any of it. So the moment you're trying to control something, you have stepped out of trust, which means you aren't in line anymore for the good outcome life wants to bring you, but you're just going to keep attracting more of the opposite. So trust, trust in God's source, universe, that's the remedy for the belief in control.

And one of the phrases I give is, I'm not in control. I am being lived. That's the requalification. So when you get to the positive use of denial part of it, you would say, I deny all belief that I'm separate or I'm in control or I'm the doer, however you want to do that. And then you say, and I affirm that I'm not in control. I am being lived. So it's like, I have all the power of life at my back. I'm always acting with life.

I never act apart from life. And that's a philosophy you've got to drill again and again when you start to stress, when you get into panic, when you get into panic, when you get into faith. fear. No, for sure you're not trusting God with something, right? And say, what am I trying to control right now? I'm trying to control Andre's perception of me. I want Andre to like me. And I'm not in control of that. I can just be lived, right? So these are the different ways that we can take real life examples of our lack, our attachment, our control, understand the belief at the heart of it, and then just go to the correct truth, the correct philosophy to requalify it, and again, the emotions tell you when you've done it correctly. That's maybe the best part of this

practice is you don't have to guess if you have successfully requalified a belief. You know for sure you have when you feel again, either just even a little bit of release means you did it correctly or a big positive emotion. Anywhere in between that represents a victory. And it's the daily moment to moment little wins you get where you have more awareness now of your thought activity in your emotional state. And now that you're no longer living with this relationship to your emotions, like they're enemies and I hate my sadness, I hate anger, but now you're like looking forward to the opportunity to talk to them and bring them closer.

You have a loving relationship with your negative emotions because what did we say it is? It's giving and receiving. My emotions are trying to give me an input of some sort. And so I have to receive that input and say, yes, sadness, what are you trying to tell me? and it'll say, you believe you're lacking love, right? And I receive that. Thank you, sadness. I appreciate that message.

I'm going to re-qualify it. This is true shadow work to me. It's like, this is how you really love your feelings because I think we can tell people to love their feelings, right? And that can be very helpful. But at the end of the day, if you still don't understand the true purpose of the emotion, that it really does have a very essential purpose

that you should be grateful for, then there will still be some lingering resistance to them. So at least for me personally, and so many of our students who've practiced this for years now, this is kind of the one feedback that comes up a lot is that this understanding really clicked for me in the ability to actually love my negative emotions, to actually not feel resistance to them because I no longer take it personally. I know that they're just here to tell me a perspective I need to see. Yeah, and I think in those moments where it feels really difficult to love our feelings,

like it feels like a big mountain to climb. I love the perspective Richard Rudd shared on this podcast of his kind of three-step process to first allow it, then accept it, and then you embrace it. So like allow, just allow the presence of these emotions and these feelings to just exist and coexist in your body and your mind.

And that already starts to diffuse a bit of the resistance that we carry with them. And then you can start to examine it and requalify it and accept it as a part of your emotional state in your experience. And then you can embrace it fully, which is where the big release of the energy comes from, you know?

Yeah. One other thing that I wanted to touch on as pertains to this last belief of control is you hinted at how often when people think of this, there's like a lack of control means a lack of action in your life. And, you know, it couldn't be further from the truth. I think there,

when you're talking about ontologically, like what it feels like to be in the state, of surrender, you can have a massive amount of action going on in your life. And I mean, if you look at my calendar the past month, people would probably laugh as to how much stuff was going on in certain days, you know? And it's been a great opportunity in this time of, you know, busyness to put this into practice where the Taoist saying that I repeat off's not on the show, because I think true things are great to repeat. Me too. Yeah.

is that the master does nothing yet leaves nothing undone. Yeah, I love that one. And it rings so true in my body because you can have an immense amount of action and yet the attachment and control of the outcome of the actions does not pervade in your experience of life. And to me, that's the best way to actually have the best outcome, you know, instead of having it be by your desire and your will constantly, which can only always be a recombination of past information.

Totally. You're allowing grace and a lot of space in that moment. So I just wanted to touch on that as we sort of explore the third belief of control. Yeah, it's a great one to end on because it is the most, I say this in the book, but it's the most difficult and confusing of the three beliefs to grasp and begin transcending because the belief in personal doership is literally behind every action you, commit. And so it's a very pervasive thought system to start seeing and overcoming, so to speak. But again, when we get to the metaphysics of it all, when we get to the underlying philosophy

and we establish ourselves there, everything above that or downstream of that kind of tends to take care of itself. So one of the ways we can get really square on this philosophy, I'm not the doer, is you can look back at your life and look at so many things that you wanted and got, that didn't end up satisfying you. Either they just wore off really quick and they weren't this kind of supernal fulfillment you thought they were going to be, or they actively led you to some kind of demise, right? Somebody you dated. They were smoking hot and you wanted him so bad. And you just overlooked all the red flags because you wanted that guy or girl. And then they just like ruined your life for six months and you took you a year to recover. You got to scan through your life like this and go,

Okay, so how many of the outcomes I've chased and acquired have led me to permanent happiness? Okay, none, because here I am suffering. And how many of them have actually led to, like, active pain and suffering, like, a lot of them? So once you come to grips with that, which is, it's a sobering recognition, right? It requires some humility from your ego to be able to acknowledge these things. But then you start to relax into this understanding more of like, yeah, I think I might actually prefer what life wants for me than what I want. Because look, I'm 36 or whatever. I've been trying to get what I want for 36 years and hasn't gone so well. So maybe I can trust in a greater power than

myself. That sounds kind of nice. And you will become attracted to that idea first before you believe it. And so belief is a kind of important prerequisite to true knowing, I think, is you've got to believe in a truth for a while before it proves itself to you. And the belief is that you. And the belief is like the gap between the not knowing and the knowing. So just believe it, right? If it feels good, if it resonates, keep believing in this idea that maybe God has a better plan in mind, then I should just surrender everything and see how that goes.

But that's the basis of this idea that I'm not the doer. It's not that I don't do actions. Actions are constantly happening through me. It's that I am not the sole or first initiator of any action I commit. And again, you can investigate this through your own body. We all believe we're the body, and people would laugh at you for denying that you're the body. And then you see, okay, so please explain this amazing thing you do, how you open and close your hand. I mean, you're moving billions of electrons and all this stuff.

How do you do that? And then you say, oh, I have no idea. Okay, and we can go through every single other bodily process, and even how I'm talking right now, I don't know how I'm doing it. So you can see, oh, that's actually true. I'm definitely not in control of my body. So if you're not in control, then what are you in? and what I like to say is, I'm not in control, I'm in cooperation. God gave every being free will.

We're supposed to express our free will, and you have the free will to choose what you want to be in relationship with or not in relationship with, right? Just because there's infinite abundance doesn't mean God should force us all to experience all the abundance. Like, you have the choice of what kind of abundance do you want? What kind of experiences do you want? Go out there and exercise your free will. but you can never exercise your free will in a vacuum. It is always connected to the hole in infinite ways we don't even notice usually. So when you know that, you say, okay, let me include the hole in mind with my actions.

Because that's how we really move, I think, from like the negative polarity to the positive polarity. The negative polarity is the part taking from the hole, stealing from the hole to benefit itself, right, at whatever cost. And the positive is the. opposite. It's the part serving the whole. So under this philosophy, we have giving and receiving is the thought system of unity. It's always about giving and receiving. How do you give? Giving is an attitude. It's an inner disposition of, I want to help, I want to serve, I want to bless. And how do

you receive from the universe? You accept whatever happens. You don't resist whatever arises. So if you're in those two states, you are in the positive polarity and you are plugged into the universe. All abundance, all guidance is there. But the ego, as we know, is the probation, as we said. It's the inversion of truth. And so what is the ego's version of relationship? Well, it has to be the opposite of giving and receiving. And so the philosophy I outlined for the ego's version of relationship in the book is taking and keeping. Taking and keeping is the opposite of giving and receiving. Ego doesn't want to give because giving is losing. And so it withholds, it keeps to itself and it tries to steal from other people.

So we're all living our life under that thought system of taking and keeping. And so again, when you can recognize the metaphysics of these things, you can start to say, am I in a taking and keeping mode right now or a giving and receiving mode right now? And for me, that's one of the easiest reframes because there's like no question. You always get an answer, right? Is my attitude or is my behavior predicated right now on taking and keeping? Am I withholding love? Am I trying to steal some love from somebody?

You always know how you feel in the present moment. That's why your emotions are so great. They never lie to you. Nobody has to wonder how they're feeling in the present moment. You always know. So your emotional guidance system becomes this infallible compass for you. So when it comes to the third belief, we use the fear emotion to signal the control. And so again, like you said, it isn't this, I'm going to just sit at home all day and not do anything.

It means I'm not going to assume I'm acting alone anymore. I'm going to take in everything all of life around me. I'm going to consider everybody and allow life to guide me through these experiences. So in, is it Taoism? They talk about Wu Wei. Yep, Wu Wei. Yeah, spontaneity. That's the Taoist idea of non-doership.

It's spontaneity. It's like, I'm not pre-planning anything I do. It's okay to have like practical plans. Like tomorrow I'll go to the store or whatever. But like in this moment, I'm not planning on what I'm going to say to you or what I'm going to what we're going to do. Like I'm letting life dictate those things. Yeah. It's always spontaneous in ways we don't always like perceive.

But life is spontaneous moment to moment. Right. It's like it's already always spontaneous. So you might as well get used to the idea and flow with life. So the surfing analogy is so great for the third belief. It's like you only control, you only try to control what you think you can control. if there's like a little wave of water coming at you, you'll probably brace yourself and like stand firm

so the wave can go through you and not knock you over. But if like you were standing on the beach man and there was like a 150 foot wave coming at you, you would accept death immediately. You would not try to stop the wave in any way. You would just, you know, you would have some kind of acceptance of your death in that moment because your mind is under no more delusion

that it can control. So you see like your mind's always doing that. It's trying to gauge how much it thinks it can control this moment. in its own favor. And you just have to keep showing your mind. No, you can never control it because you're never acting alone. And there's always a higher purpose in mind. And so it's like this attitude. It's this very prayerful attitude of, God, you know better than I. I don't know what's going to happen in the next moment. And I don't want to keep trying to know. I don't want to keep beating my head against this wall, trying to control everything. God, I will take what answers you supply today.

because I know that you have the perfect outcome in mind for me. That's what real trust is. And so trust is the ultimate remedy or re-qualification for the third belief. I think one of the most painfully obvious ways this shows up in our life is romantic relationships. No doubt. Because you have shared throughout many times how life is essentially a mirror and it's reflecting back to us where we're stuck in any given moment. Romantic relationships have the unique capacity.

to be a safe container, to very confrontingly reveal to us where we're stuck, where we are still operating from control, where we're attached, where we want the other person and we perceive lack of love and the dynamic. I'm just curious your thoughts there because it is the most potent mirror we can often have in life for many of us, and it has the unique capacity to reveal to us in a space where we can transmute these things. Yeah, romantic relationships are easily, I think, the biggest mirror that we have to see our underlying beliefs because a romantic partnership has this unique way of really scraping

down to the bottom of the barrel. And it'll pull up any little thing that's still like clinging on inside of you, a romantic relationship will bring it out because it brings out our lack, our attachments, and our need to control, like nothing else. Of course, a miracle calls this the special relationship. relationship famously. And it says the ego's always looking for a special relationship, a relationship that makes it feel more inflated, that it seems to satisfy its belief in lack.

It makes the ego feel good when this person loves me because look at this beautiful, successful person who loves me. I must be great. So it's always trying to take happiness and fulfillment from the other. And so as long as that special kind of relationship of being a, uh, and attached to somebody is going well, you don't notice it, but at some point it will begin to reveal the other side, the dark side of the moon, so to speak, and all of the resentments and things will start to come out. And as soon as that person stops making you feel special,

you'll notice ego wants to get rid of them and move on to the next person, find a new special person. And so I very much agree with the course's philosophy in this. And it's not just true of romantic relationships, but it's especially true of them. If you want to really take this practice to the next level, I would say start paying the most attention or bringing the most awareness to your romantic relationship, if you have one, because it is the strongest mirror reflecting back to you what you really believe about yourself. And if there is any lack, any inadequacy, any incompleteness in yourself, you will feel it in that relationship. You will feel it in that relationship. at some point. Your partner will do or not do or say or not say something that triggers the

belief I'm lacking. And so when you have that trigger, you've got this amazing opportunity to requalify. And what I'll say to this in conclusion is, I think a good piece of advice for anybody on the spiritual path, and especially if you want to adopt this kind of practice, is that it will, it tends to elicit very rapid results in spiritual growth pretty quickly because again you're just bringing so much awareness to these underlying beliefs and going right to the heart the source of the problem so you can get a lot of results pretty quick in your quality of consciousness but that also means you can outgrow people really quick and so something that tends to be a hot topic in 40 university where we teach and discuss these things is romantic relationships and how they trigger these

three beliefs so much. And so many of our students, like, end up having this, you know, experience happened where they say, I've completely outgrown, you know, the partnership that I'm in and I no longer resonate with this relationship. And so if somebody doesn't want to grow with you, you know, you've got to let them be on their path and everything. But you also should be ready that you might outgrow a lot of relationships in your life because if people are in your life to reinforce your lack and you're trying to, you're

trying to re-qualify your belief in lack, you're going to genuinely not want that person in your life anymore. And you have to know that that's okay. You don't have to be in relationship, like, in real life relationship to anybody. Because as long as you love people and you never put anyone out of your heart, you're in a loving relationship with them. You know, we're only meant to have true, intimate, close relationship with so many people in our life. And so I think the tricky thing is, man, when you're in that liminal space where you understand these philosophies and you're trying to implement them, but you're not fully embodied yet, you're getting triggered a lot. I would say, be very cautious not to like leave a misaligned relationship too early.

Because as you said, like, there's a lot of gold for you there. And I've done this in the past in relationships that I knew like this is not somebody I want to be in a long-term relationship with anymore, but they're triggering the shit out of me. And so I need to stay for a while and figure out what's at the bottom of this. And of course, I'm not talking about abuse or whatever, but if that person is bringing something out of you that you can't seem to overcome, then you might want to continually and mindfully allow yourself to be in that environment to see if you can't use it as a mirror to clean up your own quality of consciousness a bit. And sometimes, you know what, man, some people

say, I can't do it. It's too triggering. It just, it always brings the demons out of me or whatever. And in that case, I say, okay, then maybe you should move on, right? But the point is, at some point, you're going to have to learn that lesson, whether with this person or with the next person. And so if you know what the lesson is and you're with somebody that is constantly presenting you with that lesson, that might be life saying, hey, you're ready to learn this lesson and transcend this. Here's a golden opportunity. And I think if we're just too quick to run away from every problem that's out of alignment, we miss a lot of those opportunities. Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Beautiful, man. Yeah, this, it's,

It's such an important note, I think, as we start to wrap up here, these relationships serve as the biggest catalyst, I think, in our lives. And when we can approach life in general, but certainly romantic relationships, as they are the mirror for our own growth and showing up with the unity consciousness of giving and receiving, it has, we don't become bitter. so bitter in life. And we get to show up and stop expecting to extract love and joy from all of our surroundings. Rather, we become a presence of that. And we could just share it with somebody. And romantic partnership can transform into a divine union in that sense, where you guys are sharing

and supporting each other on your own individual paths while you're on a collective journey. And it's not two individuals extracting joy from one another so much. So yeah, that's a, it's an important thing to, I think, hone in on. And one of the last aspects of this is just the ego is persistent in needing to be righteous and special. And this shift in awareness and consciousness that we've been going through this whole conversation is inviting, and I think it's a good place to wrap up on, where we start at the beginning where there is this death of specialness, but there is this birth and realization of our own uniqueness. And I think as we start to go beneath the minds chatter and our egoic imperatives in life, we start to make space for what really wants to come through us as us

without so much attachment and fear, control, and lack attached to it. And it's in that so much energy is freed up. It's in that that we really discover and then can therefore share our uniqueness with the world. And so I'm curious just as, you know, closing thoughts here is just your your opinion and your thoughts on making space for this uniqueness as the death of the specialness of the ego kind of goes in its process, the awareness and birth of what we're really here to bring becomes online. Yeah. Well, you know, the last chapter in the book is titled Jesus and the Three Beliefs.

And I go into the 40 Days in the Wilderness Story in the Synoptic Gospels where Jesus faces these famous three temptations. and I'll never forget when it hit me that those three temptations are the three beliefs like perfectly, it's almost poetic. But it rocked me, man, because I'm like, wow, look, even the Bible is telling this idea that Jesus himself, you know,

it says Jesus was a man tempted in every way like you and I. Even he had to overcome these three beliefs. And so the devil says, you know, if you're really the son of God, then prove you're not lacking bread and food by turning these stones into bread. And Jesus requalifies it using scripture and then he takes him to a peak of the temple, I believe, or a mountaintop,

and he shows him the whole city and says, all of this can be yours if you worship me. And that's attachment, right? You can have all these amazing things if you serve me. It's like, that is always what the ego is offering us, isn't it? Like, if you will be my slave, I'll give you all your desires, right? And Jesus requalifies that. And then the third one is he takes him to the top of the temple and says,

if you're really the son of God, throw yourself down here and save your. yourself, prove that you can save yourself, which is prove that you're the doer, prove you're in control, right? Prove you have all these powers as the Son of God. And Jesus requalifies that. So the interesting thing about that in relationship to your question is that, to me, Christ is the divine idea of man in that I really do believe that Yeshua the Nazarene, and I talk about this on the Jesus Way podcast a lot, but I really believe Yeshua came to this planet or

incarnated to be a kind of avatar for humankind. that somebody needs to be a way shower at some point because humanity was living in such incredible bondage and suffering outsourcing all their power, like waiting for a Messiah, waiting for God to do something. And so somebody had to come and say, you have the power within you right now to save yourself, right? To be righteous.

You don't need to wait on God or a Messiah, and Jesus came to embody that archetype of what's possible. So in that way, like all of us, very much as the course would say, are the Christ in that it is our teleological destiny. It is the ultimate cause of what we are is this perfect divine idea of man. And so I do see the transcendence of ego, at least at this density level, as a kind of removing away the costumes, the disguises, the blockages that cover up the true Christ nature.

As we talked about at the beginning, like you have a unique divine expression and you have to find it and you have to express it. There's no other option. You are meant to be who you are. And so this transcendence of ego is a simultaneous revealing of the Christ's nature, the true self that you are. And so this is where we go back to the giving as proof of having idea that if I'm a superhero, like Superman, let's say, and I've got all these amazing powers, right? I can fly, jump over buildings, zap lasers out of my eyes, carry giant objects. I have all these powers. But I never, ever go fight crime. I never ever go put them to use. It's like, how would I ever know I'm Superman? I would be stuck as Clark Kent forever. So how does Clark Kent prove to himself,

I am Superman? He has to act as Superman. He has to give the powers of Superman. He has to fly. He has to save people. He has to zap lasers from his eyes. And then he knows, by giving out his own power and ability, he knows who he really is. We are like that, right? We have to give our divine aspects if we are to embody them. You have to give love if you want to embody love. You have to share peace with others if you're going to embody peace. You have to give wisdom, meaning apply wisdom, right, to be wise.

Giving is proof of having on the spiritual plane because as soon as I give any quality at all, I have immediately made myself the source of it. Where else is it coming from? It's coming from me. And so if I don't give it, I can never have it either. Just like if Superman never flies, he can never enjoy flying, right? Giving his proof of having because if you're the source of everything, then it's up to you.

God's not going to make you do anything. The universe isn't going to make you express who you are. You've got to do it. And of course, we all want to do that, but we have this thing called an ego that fools us into believing we're something we're not, that we're lacking, we're not enough, we can't do that. I can't give what I want. I'm lacking. And so it just keeps us playing small ball with ego. And at some point, the suffering becomes too great and we say, I want to overcome this ego and realize my true divine potential. And I think it's going to be these kinds of teachings

in some form or fashion, whether you go to Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism. All spiritual philosophies across time have taught these essential truths, right? I don't think I'm teaching anything really new here. I'm just packaging it in a unique way to myself, maybe. But these are the time-tested ideals that all the sages have written about is that you are the only source of love. And so if you want love, you've got to give love. Jesus taught this with the golden rule, like love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you wish they would do unto you.

And these ideas are everywhere, right? So hopefully the listeners of this podcast can just be encouraged to know. Like, this is a lifelong journey. It's not about arriving somewhere. As you said, it's not an outcome in mind. It's just every day, can I be 1% more free today than yesterday? I don't need to be enlightened all in one foul swoop today, but can I just be 1% more enlightened than yesterday?

And we talked about this on our first podcast, but my personal view of enlightenment of what that is is just the ability to be in loving relationship with everything. when you master the ability to be in relationship, right? You master giving and receiving such that it doesn't matter who shows up in my life. It doesn't matter what happens. I'm always in the state of giving and receiving, right? I always give my best to the moment.

Whatever that is I have to offer, I give my best, and I always receive the moment as it is. That's actually it to me. That is Enlightenment. Again, it's not this crazy, grandiose revelation of some sort. It's really a very simple thing of, I've just got a lot of, learn and master how to be in this true state of being at all times. And so, yes, it takes practice and contemplation and all these things. But don't look for it as an outcome, right? Can you get better at it today? Can you be one percent better today at being in loving relationship than you were

yesterday? Aaron, thank you so much, man. Preach. We're preaching, bro. I love it. Yeah, you are. He started out as a PK. Now this is your new church. It's in my DNA, man. You're sharing your your version of laser beams coming out of your eyes. That's it. That's your uniqueness. I love it. Dude, congrats on creating this book. It's great.

You know, I read a lot of books, and I think you can really tell that the place it's coming from in which what you're writing is a really beautiful place where you're speaking from truth. And so I highly recommend people to check it out. If you want to do so, you can find the link in description. And any other last words you have around this, man, I know it's no small endeavor, no small feat to write a book. And you've been on the journey with it. So congrats.

Yeah, thank you so much, man. And final words would just be a thank you to you for supporting the book, writing a beautiful endorsement for you. Oh, yeah. I wrote a little blurb. You did. Yeah. And for reading it and for discussing it with me, man.

Like, I'm just, I feel so grateful that life moved me in such a way that I had to learn these things from lots and lots of pain and suffering. So it truly is like the gift of my life to be able to do what I'm doing right now and just share these teachings with the world and write a book about them that hopefully can save other people a lot of the pain and suffering I had to go through to even learn about these principles. Hopefully people can read this book and just be inspired that this isn't impossible. Freedom is not impossible. That's why I titled it, a sufferer's guide to freedom.

It's like we all come to these truths as sufferers, right? help, I'm lost, I don't know what to do. And this book is kind of the field guide or something that I wish I had 10 years ago when I went through my awakening. And so I hope they can be a field guide to the reader and just give like simple, practical ways to meet these difficult human experiences we have in life. Thank you for creating that, dude. Appreciate you.

And it's always been fun to jam on this podcast with you. This is a third time. And our audience has just loved. the past too, and I have no doubt they'll eat this one up as well. Because our flow back and forth is just so fun, and I feel so, I feel so alive having these conversations with you, man. It's been a pleasure and it's always an honor to do the dance. Yeah, brother. Thank you, man. Likewise, man. Thank you again. Everybody, thanks for tuning in. As always, we'll catch you next week. Let us know in which ways

this podcast was uniquely powerful for you. And I'll catch you on the next one. Peace.