The One You Feed - Scott Kiloby on Awareness and Non-Duality

Episode Date: November 14, 2017

Scott Kiloby is a non-dual teacher who wants to help you and others experience awareness and no self in this lifetime. He helps people recover from addiction and has published a powerful book, the contents of which he discusses In this interview. Specifically, he describes portals to recognizing awareness that you can try immediately. It's a different way of approaching a transformational way of life and you won't want to miss it.Scott Kiloby is a noted author and international speaker on the subject of freedom through non-dual recognition (authentic spiritual awakening as it is taught in the East).He is the author of seven books and has traveled the world extensively giving lectures, workshops and intensives on spiritual awakening and the healing of addiction, anxiety, depression and trauma.Scott is the co-founder of the Kiloby Center for Recovery in Palm Springs California, the first addiction, anxiety, depression, and trauma Intensive Outpatient Program to focus primarily on mindfulness. Scott is also the co-owner of the Natural Rest House, a detox and residential center in La Quinta, California.His books include  Living Realization: A simple, plain English guide to non-duality, Natural Rest for Addiction: A Radical Approach to Recovery Through Mindfulness and Awareness and The Unfindable Inquiry: One Simple Tool to Overcome Feelings of Unworthiness and Find Inner Peace In This Interview, Scott Kiloby and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHis book, Living Realization: A simple, plain English guide to non-dualityThe definition of non-dualityNon-dual awakeningThat the ego is a suffering mechanismThe false selfThe possibility of waking up from a separate self mentalityHow we are not our thoughts, we are the thinker of our thoughtsThe necessity of experiencing awarenessPortals to recognizing awarenessLet all appearances be as they areThe power of not resisting what is happeningSuffering = Pain + ResistanceSeeing that all appearances are inseparableLife as a seamless reality & the thoughts that break things upThe fact that seeking has resistance in itSelf-inquiryThe persistence of trauma, shame, addiction and the core storyPlease Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're going to try to change your thought structures, you're actually working against a very powerful force. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Scott Killaby, a noted author and international speaker on the subject of freedom through non-dual recognition. He is the author of many books and has traveled the world extensively giving lectures, workshops, and incentives on spiritual awakening in the healing of addiction, anxiety, depression, and trauma.

Scott is a California Registered Addiction Specialist, Interventionist, and trauma. Scott is a California registered addiction specialist, interventionist, and case manager. He is the co-founder for the Killaby Center for Recovery in Palm Springs, California, the first addiction, anxiety, depression, and trauma incentive outpatient program to focus primarily on mindfulness. Scott is also the co-owner of The Natural Rest House, a detox and residential center in La Quinta, California, as well as the COO of My Life Recovery Centers, which offers the naltrexone implant, which is a groundbreaking medication that greatly reduces or eliminates cravings for opiates and alcohol for long periods of time. In this interview, Eric and Scott discuss many topics, including his book,

Living Realization, a simple, plain English guide to non-duality. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to oneufeed.net support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 episodes that are in the archive will remain free and that the show is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support us is if you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode, go to oneufeed.net and find the episode that we're talking about.

There will be links to all of the author's books, and if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small amount. Also, you can go to oneufeed.net slash book, and I have a reading list there, oneufeed.net slash shop, and you can a reading list there. Oneyoufeed.net slash shop, and you can buy t-shirts, mugs, and other things. And finally, oneyoufeed.net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support

in feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening. and awakening is, and we'll probably talk about how it also applies to addiction, because that's something else that you spend a lot of time on. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So the work that I'm doing, when you say it's about non-duality

or awakening, that's true. And also I have an Akilobi Center for Recovery, which is a treatment center. And I guess no matter where or how I do this work, I begin to see, or I've really seen throughout the years, that a lot of times we're feeding our egos so this is just part of life but we're feeding that part of us that feels incomplete and deficient perhaps even scared traumatized addicted so we don't know any better and we think that by feeding it somehow maybe we'll find healing or we'll find freedom but if you really look closely into your life you don't really find it that way and what you do is you just find sort of more ego. So I don't know if my work fits squarely in the context of the parable, because it's really about non-duality sort of seeing beyond the good and the

bad. However, I will say that the more we feed this ego part of ourselves with its trauma and its deficiency stories and its addictions, the more suffering there this ego part of ourselves with its trauma and its deficiency stories and its addictions, the more suffering there is. So I would say, don't feed that one. So in terms of what you feed, just don't feed that one. And then my work is about sort of really gently dismantling that false sense of self so that it goes from being a hungry wolf, as you say, to being no longer the master of your life, the runner of the show, essentially. Yeah, the parable is relatively dual, right? So let's define non-duality for the listeners. When you say non-dual awakening, what are you referring to?

Well, it is not a greatly, it's not a really precise term, and I don't really use it very often. I do because the audience knows what the word means, but I'll give you as best I can, is that we live in a world of duality, of a sense of separation, a sense of opposites, right, wrong, good, bad, And also just really a feeling of separation. I'm separate from you. You're separate from me. And in that feeling of separation, there is suffering because that's where the ego sort of resides in that sense of separation. So non-duality is about essentially seeing through the ego, seeing that it's an illusory thing.

It's not really who we are. illusory thing. It's not really who we are. And as we see that, the sense of separation, not only within ourselves, but the separation that we see in all of life is seen through. So that when you look out at life, you feel a sense of oneness and a sense of non-separation or divisionless in life. And in that lies the possibility of really ending suffering. own thing that is distinct from everything else, that regardless of the approaches that we take in life, we're going to be kind of, the analogy I might use is, we're going to be trimming off the leaves of the problem versus kind of going after the root of the problem itself. Is that a safe way to say it? That's a very safe way to say it. I've actually said that in one of my books. When you go after the um when you go after

the root you go after the very sense of a separate identity itself the the stuff that manifests out of that are all the branches or the leaves as you say and if you stay sort of trying to work with the branches or beautify the tree or improve the tree you're only going to go so in my view you're only going to go so so deep into view, you're only going to go so deep into this real possibility of happiness and freedom and peace, because the ego is really a suffering mechanism. And so if I could just say one other thing, so that people don't believe what I'm saying, just listen to your mind throughout the course of one day. That's all you have to do is just listen to what it says. I mean, there may be some positive stuff in there, but what the mind tends to do is it tends to see through that, is to see through that

sense of separation, that sense of the false self, there is really a very profound peace on the other side of that, that the ego cannot know. So everything you just said, I think listeners of the show will resonate with and they'll say, yep, you know what? I do recognize that my thought patterns are part of my problem. I do recognize that I'm kind of trapped in this brain. But where most people go with this is to the idea of what I need to do is I just need to become healthier in the way my brain works. I need to understand my thought patterns better, all that. But you're going to kind of a step beyond that, which is saying this you that you believe in isn't there in the way that you think it is, or that's not all that's there might be a

different way of saying that. So you're kind of going to step beyond where even people who have identified like the way I think my negative thought patterns, my habitual compulsions, all that are a problem. Still, they're mostly going, well, let me work on that versus believing that I'm not here at all. That's a good question. So in an ideal world, we could simply rearrange our thoughts, make them more positive. And you know, by all means, if someone can do that and truly do that and somehow be truly happy and at peace, like truly happy and at peace, then by all means do that. But having worked with so many people through the years,

a lot of people just cannot do that. And I think that the reason for that has to do with there's a basic sense of identity at the seat of our experience, which is what I call the deficiency story. It's a core story of feeling of not being good enough, not being loved, not accepted, imperfect, something like that, unsafe. And because it's like the linchpin that holds our personality together. So if you're going to try to change your thought structures, you're actually working against a very powerful force. You're working against a mind that really on some level

is designed to suffer. You know, I was never able to do it just from my own experience. I was never able to simply just rearrange my thoughts because this deep core story was really running the show. And that's what I've seen with a lot of people. But, you know, this is not the kind of thing you can make into a religion. And you can't say to people, don't try to change your thoughts or don't try to do this or that because everybody will just do what they'll do. But everybody should know that there's this possibility of waking up out of this mind-made sense of self. Like, that's what

spiritual awakening has been for thousands of years, and people just need to know in case that's the route they want to take. So what we're talking about here is really what the mystics of all the spiritual traditions have talked about, which is that, you know, Buddhists might call it no-self or non-self, but it's this recognition that we are not who we think we are. And what I think is interesting about that is, and you talk a little bit about this, is on one level, it seems incredibly obvious that yes, here I am, right? I am right here. So are we saying that I'm not right here? What are you saying that I am if I'm not the me that I'm used to thinking of myself in a conventional way as?

What am I? Or what are we? If one notices their thoughts throughout the course of the day, it's almost like, even though this is kind of a very rough way of saying it, it's almost like there's a screen in front of you that's producing or that's showing up as words and pictures. So there are images and words like data. It's like a data stream. So this data stream, we carry it around with us.

We see this data coming across our screen the whole time. But the question is, is that what is the where of that screen? What is aware of those thoughts? So we take ourselves to be that data, those words and pictures come across the screen we we often never question whether that's really us so as we start to question that self in other words literally questioning whether these thoughts are actually me in a very skillful way what you find is that there's something aware of the thoughts and that something is not itself a thought, it's the awareness that perceives.

And so when that's recognized within us, that there's this awareness or beingness that is not conceptual, that is alive, that is awake and aware of the present moment, when that recognizes itself, that awareness, that's essentially what we mean by spiritual awakening. itself, that awareness, that's essentially what we mean by spiritually. And so what we're saying is that if you look at your life and you sort of start to deconstruct, you know, what am I? If we look at, well, I'm on my thoughts, well, I don't think I'm my thoughts because I can notice them and I don't think I'm my body, that the one thing that has always been with us, the one thing that is always there no matter what, as you said, is this sense of I am, this being aware, this watching, you know, that people call different things,

but you're saying that's who we really are? Yeah, but it's not conceptual. So it's not like you stumble upon it as like an intellectual insight. This has to be truly experienced. Even to say in an intellectual way, I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my feelings, doesn't necessarily end the suffering or let the suffering die down. What really, really starts to end the suffering is when experientially, in your actual experience, you feel and know yourself as that which is awake and aware to the present moment, rather than yourself as these thoughts come and go. So, yeah, what you're saying is exactly right. I just want to say to your audience, it has to be experienced, has to be a direct experience of that for any of this makes sense. Otherwise, this will just simply be purely theoretical or food for thought. Right. And I would imagine a bunch of the listeners of this show have been exposed to this idea plenty of times. And to your point, if it's not experiential,

it doesn't really do a whole lot. So your book, Living Realization, you talk about there's a method. You say this is the main invitation in the book. And so I'm just going to read it and then maybe we can talk through those different parts of it. Because this is, you're saying, this is sort of a way towards experiencing this versus thinking about it and you say the main invitation this method is recognize awareness let all appearances be as they are and see that appearances are inseparable so let's talk through those let's talk through the first piece of it which is recognize awareness what does that mean or how does somebody go about doing that so there's some simple portals to that, which are like ways into it. And one is to simply in the midst of noticing that you're thinking, just noticing the current thought, literally just

turning attention towards it, whether it be in the form of a set of words that you're hearing, or a mental image. And the moment you turn towards towards it you're actually observing in that moment from awareness that's where the observing is coming from because every thought that you observe just simply fades away while observing it and as it fades away or a stream of thoughts fade away then you stop for a moment and you feel into this experience of being the perceiver instead of being the thought and so that's one way in is just to do that. And you have to kind of just really check it out for yourself. It's like a portal. And the more you do that, the more you sort of waking up out of being the thought into being the awareness.

There's several of them, but one is just taking deep breaths in to anchor you to the present moment. And as you're doing that, to really notice the breath coming in and out. And what it does is just stops the mind for a second. And in stopping the mind, you get a sense of the feeling or the sense of presence that's already here under the thought stream. And then another one is just taking short moments. So it's like just for a few seconds, like three, five seconds, just stop thinking and look around at the present moment without any labels and so these are little portals it doesn't mean that once you do it one time but you're going to simply wake up you're right maybe you're lucky maybe it'll happen but that's

not the usual path and it has happened very rarely like that but mostly what happens is it's just a process of doing it over and over until it's like it's a it's a regular practice so often that you're just you're in the process of waking up to awareness. It just sort of begins to dawn on you in a way. So those are portals. There are other ones, but that's the first part. So mindfulness is a term that is used a lot. We've certainly used it on the show.

We've had lots of people on. And so what we're kind of talking about here, though, is so mindfulness at its first level is noticing what's happening, right? I try and move away from the thought pattern to what's my actual experience? What am I seeing? What am I feeling? What's happening? And then this is, at least as I'm understanding it, is sort of the next step is to move away from the contents of awareness, which are those things, objects in awareness, to what is the thing that is noticing those various objects. Does that align with your teaching? It truly is. I mean, some people consider mindfulness and awareness essentially the same thing. Some people do make a distinction, and I don't think the distinction makes a lot of difference.

But the way that you just explained it is both mindfulness and awareness. So it's becoming aware of a thought in which you're identified with at first, and then by just gently observing it, the thought starts to unhook from awareness a little bit, and then you start to get a sense of being this presence rather than being the thought. Yeah, and the more that you do that in your life, the more that shift, that awakening starts to happen. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason

Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And here's the rest of the interview with Scott Killeby. The second part of your invitation is to let all appearances be as they are. So let's first talk about what are appearances? What do you mean? So appearance is really one way to say it's anything that appears, but it's really the book focuses on thoughts which are in the form of words and pictures that appear to awareness in the mind so sweet and then feelings and sensations so here's the thing about we humans is that when we have a thought or a feeling we

don't like on some level we're almost automatically resisting it trying to get it to go away trying to whatever and in that movement of trying to resist it or distract ourselves from it, we actually strengthen it. Because as they say, you know, whatever you resist persists. So letting everything be as it is, it's like a restful allowing of whatever you're witnessing. So if you see a thought arising, you simply notice the thought and you allow it exactly as it is as you're noticing it.

Or if a feeling comes in the body, you bring attention to that feeling really gently and just allow it to be as it is. But it also includes if the resistance does arise. So if you're having a feeling and you're also like, I don't want to feel this, is becoming aware of that movement of resistance and even allowing that to be as it is. aware of that movement of resistance and even allowing that to be as it is, really allowing everything to be as it is, whether you like a feeling or you don't like a feeling or it's uncomfortable or comfortable or whether you're resisting it or not, it's just to allow all those movements. And in the larger scheme, it simply means to allow everything to be as it is, which means all of life as appearing right now, including any negative feelings, thoughts, but also colors, shapes, sounds, just letting them, everything come and go freely to awareness. And in that coming

and going where everything is just coming and going freely to awareness, there's a kind of a deeper peace and surrender than you know that way. You can't know through the mind, but through thinking. Right. And even short of having a spiritual awakening, right? Well, let's say this moment of, of this tremendous waking up. My experience has been that every time I can stop resisting what's happening, my life is better, right? But that my, I think it's, we had Shinzen Young on the show, and I think he's got an equation that says something like, suffering equals pain times resistance, right? So whatever things are happening in my life, you know, I've got this natural pain, you know, my finger hurts, right? Multiply that by resistance and that's how much I'm suffering.

And I just find that to be so true. And I think this ties to addiction because you've mentioned you have a treatment center and addiction is kind of, at least for me, it was the ultimate in not letting things be. It was like, I so strongly can't bear whatever this experience is that I'm willing to pretty much destroy my life to make it go away. You know, it's like the extreme version. Yes, it is. It really is the extreme version. It certainly applies to everybody. This practice can help everybody. But those with addiction, addiction i mean i've lived a life of addiction too is like

usually when i'm using something it's like you say it's like i don't want to feel something it could be an old trauma coming up it could be an emotional wound it could be just i'm i'm just pissed off at somebody or something or i'm bored. So that, yes, you said it so well. Addiction is just the absolute resistance to what I'm actually feeling and thinking in a given moment. So if someone who's suffering from addiction takes up this practice of allowing things to be and then when they resist to allow the resistance, you can see naturally how that's going to have an impact, a great impact on the addiction. But it takes time because our systems are hardwired to want to resist. see naturally how that's going to have an impact a great impact on the addiction but just but it

takes time because our systems are hardwired to want to resist and so you have to it's almost like learning to relate or becoming it's not really learning in the way the mind learns but through experience you come to relate differently to the arisings in your life the thoughts emotions and sensations yeah so the first two steps so far are pretty straightforward, right? Recognize awareness and then let everything be as it is. I think that even intellectually, you can look at that and practice that and life gets better. It's really this last step to me that is what goes into the non-dual or into the spiritual awakening. And it's really the step for me that's beyond conception in a way. And it's that see that all appearances are inseparable. So this is the experience of the

oneness or the unity. So the first two you can do and still be very clearly feel like a separate being. So what is this last step that appearances are inseparable? Because is that where the sense of myself as I understand myself to be falls away? Yeah, certainly the main sense of the separate object is the self. So as you inquire into the self and you start to see that it's not what you thought it was, it's merely a collection of ideas, words, pictures, then it starts to be seen through and you're actually looking from awareness and then you can see the sense of the separate self is just not there and that that's after a deep practice of this but then so the other thing is though is to see the inseparability everywhere

so even when you're looking at a thought from awareness the thought starts to seem inseparable from the awareness of the awareness there's no dividing line between the awareness and the thought that appears it's this sort of just it's like the thought is immediately appearing seamlessly to awareness or the sound of my voice right now if you listen from awareness not from thinking it's appearing immediately to your awareness it's like there's not separation between the sound of my voice and the hearing of the voice. It's so just immediately there. And everything is like that.

Colors, the more that you rest as awareness and look, it's like the whole moment is appearing inseparably to that which is perceiving it right now. It's so immediate. deeper is that when you go deeper into this experience of awakening the conceptual structure of life itself in your mind begins to quiet and you start to see life in the moment as sort of just a seamless reality because it's the thoughts that divide things up so if i say you know that's a cup this is a cabinet that's a toothbrush in the very using of the thought to label something i've labeled it in a way that makes it feel separate from everything around it and from me but as the mind starts to quiet as you recognize this awareness and the conceptual structure is just sort of broken down and quieter then you look around and there's a sense that it's all almost like it's all just one thing appearing in different expressions, you know, and there's

a seamlessness to life. Like there's just, like you can't, it's actually a felt thing. You can't feel life as being separate anymore once the mind kind of quiets. And this is the experiential part that has to be experienced for it to have any real meaning. And that experience happens, my understanding, it's not something you can make happen, right? But the path, such as there is one, is through this resting in awareness and then just letting things be as they are. And, you know, listeners of the show might be like, well, all of a sudden, we've had like three guests that were talking about this. Like, why? Why is Eric putting me through all this? And and the reason is, and I haven't

really shared it till now. And I went on a seven day retreat with another teacher who was a guest on the show, Adi Ashanti. And I, I had one of these experiences, it lasted about five hours or so. But it was, you know, there aren't really words for it. It was that kind of what you said that, like, it was very clear in those moments that everything was one thing that things weren't inseparable, wasn't that like, things look differently. It was just a deep knowing. And so that's kind of why I am, you know, spending a little bit more time on this topic in our episodes and guests recently, because it's just something I'm very, after having that experience, I am even more interested than I may have previously been in it,

because now I'm like, oh, okay, well, that is real. Like that's, that actually can happen. And, you know, I'm having to watch for all the seeking, the recurrence of that experience and, you know, the chasing of it and all of that. But it certainly opened my eyes to like, oh, I have now an experience that what is everything that these people are talking about actually is, at least in my case, was true. Yeah. true. Yeah. And not only is it a true realization that can happen, but once you have had a taste of that, you can't not be drawn to it because it's so powerfully different. I don't know the words, but it's so very different than the ego state. Even though you're right, things look the same. And since, you know, there's a brown and there's a blue and all that, but it's experientially a very different way of relating to life, you know, and we're talking about the end of suffering, you know? And so, when you were in that state

for five hours, I'm assuming there wasn't a lot of suffering. No, I mean, my overwhelming reaction was, thank God that's over. Like, it was just this, the deepest relief of like, it goes beyond words, but that was one of them was just this deep relief that like, okay, like that is over that idea of Eric, as I thought he was, or this thing that I need to prop up. And, and yeah, I mean, and so it, it continues to some degree afterwards, but it's much more now back into being a knowledge, a thought-based thing than experiential at the current time. Right. So you kind of have what they sometimes call a glimpse or a peak experience, but it changes you forever because it's not like you can forget that and just say, well,

I'm not going to look into that anymore. because that's really the beautiful thing about it is once we taste or dip into it, it's like there's a natural pull or impulse to kind of awaken into it because you really start to see just how much suffering is in the ego state after that, if you hadn't seen it before. And so that's a great thing. It'll keep pulling you into that. And if you have the right skillfulness you know you you will eventually abide in that yep i'm optimistic you know i mean but again i'm watching for because at the core of this and you stress this in the book over and over right is that this isn't about having a particular experience that this is about letting everything be as it is and so there there's that paradox of like,

okay, well, I want more of that. But the seeking stands right directly in the way of the realization, at least it seems to me. Yeah, you could say seeking is resistance because what it's saying, seeking forward movement instead of a relaxing and allowing of what's happening here now, it's a natural impulse to see that there's resistance built into it.

So part of the skillfulness, I think, for people is recognizing that the seeking energy is there and then resting as that awareness and starting to just allow all the seeking energy to just sort of wind itself down. Because what you found, I think, in that moment is you found presence you found this this this life here now and the seeking energy is telling a lie it's saying you're going to find this in the future right keep that's why it's here but you have to be skillful with it yeah and this question has been we've had guests on the show we've talked about this for a long time we had a guest on who studies chinese religions and and you know, the title of the book is trying not to try, right? And we've had, you know, Zen teachers on who are talking about the same thing, like, well,

if everything's perfect, the way it is, why do I need to meditate? And that's, you know, the other question that's at the heart of this show, for me has always been like, feels inborn to me, this desire to move forward, this growth, this, you know, ambition is the wrong word, but it can be considered, you know, ambition is maybe a perverse form of it, but that's there. So how do you have that? And at the exact same moment, let it, you know, be perfectly content and grateful with, with where you are. And I think it's just one of those paradoxes that we try and find our way through. Yeah. And I think that the first part of the path is to sort of see through the ego, because the ego is the thing that's pushing hard towards the future. But as you sort of see through

it, and then, you know, you can continue to allow it seeking to quiet down. There's also this other thing which takes over, which is that life has movement. But if the ego is no longer, if you're no longer living in that ego state, the movement is a different movement. It's a flow. And there can still be creating and running a business or doing a podcast or being an artist and even excelling in those things. So there is this becoming aspect to awakening even after you awaken. It's not just simply that we necessarily sit on a park bench or on a meditation mat and just I mean we can for a while but but there's a movement but I think in the before that is recognized before that present awareness is really recognized and there's a stability in it

then the ego is running the show and the ego is all about becoming and movement towards future and that's that's why the awakening eludes the ego is all about becoming and movement towards future and that's that's why the awakening eludes the ego because its main goal is to do that Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

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It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about the sense of I am, right? Because at least for me, for a long time, I mean, I've studied Buddhism for a long time. And I'll tell you that this idea of non-self or no-self was the part for me that I was least interested in for a long time, because I'd read all the other stuff and go, oh, that all makes sense. Like resistance and, you know, okay, not being so attached to my thoughts and clinging, and that all made sense. But I looked at this other part and I went, that makes no sense because I have such a clear experience of here I am. And I think that that's not, at least for me, what I've been learning is that that sense of here I am is absolutely real. I'm not trying to make that go away.

Is that your understanding? Is it not trying to say like, oh, I'm not here or nothing is here. There is something that is here. It's just that that something isn't what we think it is. Yeah, I think you don't want to go around saying I don't exist or there's nothing here. Especially if it's just an intellectual insight, because it's not going to take you very deep. But this is why I dismantle this whole stuff in the Living Realization book. I try to break it down just to

figure out what this i you know to show people what i mean by identity you gotta first see that yeah there's a sense of i am here you get that sense of here that can actually be a portal to the awakening but what happens on top of that as a layer again is this time-bound thought-based self so it's all the we're identified with thoughts of past and future, and they're actually appearing right before you, and you can see it. So the awareness is sort of fixated on those thoughts for a sense of self. So that's what the ego is, largely. I mean, it's emotion and sensation, too, that we're identified with.

But it's simply seeing that, okay, yeah, those thoughts are appearing, but they're not who I am. What I am is what's looking at them. And there's still that sense of I am in that awareness. There's a sense of I am, but it's not I am this thought, or I am that story, or I am, you know, and that's where the conceptual part is where we really get hooked up in the ego part. So a question for you, because this is something that I read and I still have, like, there's this part of me that's like, I don't understand. And I think I read it in your book somewhere that this idea that this awareness, so okay, here I am, I'm aware, right? There's this awareness, but that it's not located anywhere. but that it's not located anywhere.

And it still seems to me, though, that there is a location in some way because I'm able to feel a pain inside my body that you're not able to experience. Or, you know, you are able to look out your window and see something with your awareness that I am not seeing. So is this something that can even be put into words that you can explain? It's really not it's more like a felt sense but one way i talk about the non-locatable awareness is that often people when they're first doing this practice i'll say to them can you imagine that awareness is located from behind you like the back of your head or your body and then it's emanating forward or radiating

forward so that's a good starting thing because then it's like okay yeah there's a location for it it's in the back of my body and mind and that can help them to then witness the thoughts and the feelings and see them coming and going and seeing that okay it's a temporary thought i'm not a temporary thought i'm not this temporary thought all that but then i have them go deeper and say now go back to that sense of that where you located awareness behind you and see if you can actually see the source of awareness. Where does it begin? And as they go deeper into that, they recognize, well, every time I think I found the source of awareness, like its location or something, what I actually have is another arising.

I'm experiencing a sensation. And that sensation is an awareness or i'm having an idea that i'm the witness and that idea is actually happening where it's not the source of awareness so it's like trying to find the source of awareness you can't find it and then there's a sense then as you can't find it that there's this ever-expanding sense or almost like boundaryless sense of of an awakening where it's like you can't there's no way your mind can even i mean your mind can try to think about it but in your direct experience you can't find a location or a beginning or an end to it and i think that's more of just

like a felt sense i think i could yeah the whole thing about what's in my awareness being different in your awareness i think this just confuses people, so I tend to stay away from it. I just, you know, I talk about it the way I just said. Yeah, and so a lot of non-dual teachers, yourself included, Adi Ashanti, lots of other folks, is this, part of the path is this idea of inquiry or self-inquiry. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like in the work that you do. There's lots of different forms of self-inquiry. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like in the work that you do. There's lots of different forms of self-inquiry. The inquiries that we have are called living inquiries, and the main one of that is called the unfindable inquiry. And it came from my time with Greg Good, a teacher of mine, who sort of taught me the unfindability of what's called

the Madhyamaka Buddhist, one of the Madhyamaka Buddhist school. So what I did is I translated that form of inquiry into sort of plain English. And it's actually in part of this book that you mentioned. Now, let me just give you a real quick explanation of it. So what you have to do first is you have to find a target. You have to find something that you're looking for. And usually people start with the self. But I tell them to name that self.

So they might say, well, I'm the one who's not good enough, or I'm the victim, or I'm the failing artist. So then I say, okay, that's your target. So if that's really who you are, you ought to be able to find that self, something where you actually land on something and you go, yes, that's it. So then I take them through a process of actually looking for it. So let's say an image comes up. They're looking for the failed artist. And an image comes up of a painting that got rejected by someone. I say, look at the painting in your mind's eye.

It's a picture of the painting. And I'll say, is that you, the failed artist? And the way I say it is don't intellectualize this if you feel anything in your body just say yes because it's the feeling or the sensations that are stuck to these thoughts that make the thoughts feel true and i can say more about that later so i have them answer from the body so i say okay you gave me a yes just let that picture of the painting be there a second just keep observing it observing it from awareness and then what happens is the picture starts to fade and as it does i have them come down and feel just that sensation or emotion that was there

previously connected to that thought and as they rest with it i say okay is this feeling from awareness is this feeling by itself the failed artist and then sometimes they'll say no because it's just a feeling it's not a failed artist it's a feeling but sometimes they'll say yes and when they say yes what they're really saying is as me if to me a facilitator is there's still some thoughts connected to that feeling so let's say i'll ask a question that gets them to find out what thoughts connected to it. So let's say, okay, in 12th grade, I got ridiculed by the art teacher. Okay, put up that image. And now let's just look at that. Is that image by itself,

you, the actual failed artist? And again, if they feel something with it, it's a yes. And if they don't, it's a no. As you keep going through these various things that you think are you, you find out that none of them by themselves are you and that you can't find the failed artist. It's just not there, not in the way that you thought. And in that, there's a release from suffering because the suffering came from the belief, I'm a failed artist. And so inquiry in this case is just a very direct inquiry into what my experience is, and it's done in a pretty structured way. You know, I've heard of self-inquiry for years and had no idea what that even really meant until I, you know, started digging a little bit further into it and went, oh, okay.

It's a very structured inquiry. It's a very formal process of like, okay, do this and then this and then, and again, trying to be at the level underneath our basic conceptual thought. Right. It takes skill and practice. That's right. And every inquiry is different. The inquiry that I just did is different than a self-inquiry that you might see in a different tradition. This is a particular one in our work. Excellent. Well, Scott, I could probably talk about this for the next two hours, but we are near the end of the wrapping up. So I want to talk about one last thing, and then we will wrap it up, which is that you talk about that even post-awakening, that people can still have blockages of different sorts or other things to work through. So what's the relationship of, okay, I've seen

through that this ego and self isn't what I think it is, right? I'm not separate from everything around me. And yet there's still this deeper level or another level of maybe suffering is the wrong word, but of some sort of blockage or still clinging to things. Help me understand what that looks like and how you move through that piece. So when you're first having an awakening, you can only awake out of what's really conscious in your experience. There's some stuff that's sort of unconscious. And to demystify that word, I simply mean it's just something that you don't see. That's part of your identity, but you can't see it so one really good example

is like trauma if you experience emotional psychological trauma as a child um you may have buried that repressed that feeling or that story or those images somewhere in the cells of your body almost it feels like or in the some deeply buried emotion so when you awaken you have a sense that okay i've seen through this ego but yet you find yourself like in fight flight freeze mode under certain situations and it's a largely somatic experience and you have to sometimes then go down into the body and go deeper into the unconscious to really free yourself from that blockage and that's just one example but it's like what i found is that even with an awakening experience, some things are just very persistent.

And one thing is obviously, like I said, trauma, it's pretty persistent. Shame and addiction can also be pretty persistent if they're not worked with individually. And another one is just what I call the core story. So believe it or not, even once you have an awakening experience out of the general sense of the self there's a core strand of the ego which i call the deficiency story which will come up and rear its head until it's fully resolved and that's like that deep feeling of unbeing unlovable are not good enough or something everybody has that's a very persistent aspect of ego so some people have had an awakening where that just is obliterated completely. But over the years, I found that majority of people still have to look at this core

story a little bit longer after that initial awakening experience to truly free themselves. And I don't know why that is, except that it's just awakening doesn't necessarily eradicate all of the stars, help you see through all of it. Something about it just doesn't go that deep every time got it so there's different levels then potentially or continuing unfolding yeah there's a continuing unfolding the good news is that there's no end to the depth the depth of freedom but after you've awakened initially and the seeking energy is gone this is the key because there's a lot of people that will hear this and they'll start to seek it. Like, I want enlightenment now, right? So you got to kind of deal with the seeking energy and have that sort of initial awakening into awareness. And once you do,

and you abide in that, the seeking is going to die. But from that awareness, then you can really take a look at these deeper strands as they show up. At that point, it doesn't feel like you're really going anywhere. It doesn't feel like you have to get to a place, but you're still able to investigate or explore these things. That's a subtle nuance I just want to throw out there because some people will say, well, I have to be looking at this stuff for the rest of my life. But see, once you awaken to awareness, that doesn't matter.

Continuing to look at things doesn't matter anymore because you're not seeking anything. You're here in the moment, awake and aware. You're just sort of exploring things that you couldn't see in your consciousness before. Now they're showing up and you can see them. Got it. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. As I mentioned, the book that we mostly talked about was Living Realization. You've got several others, Natural Rest for Addiction, and we'll have links to your website and your homepage and all that stuff in the show notes. So thank you so much for

taking the time to come on. Yeah, my pleasure, Eric. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.