E207 - Jim George: Stillness Expert: “How To Not Miss Your Life”

Jim George is a stillness coach, former animator, and one of the first guests ever to appear on this podcast. He has spent nearly 50 years developing what he calls practical spirituality, a way of working with the mind that requires no doctrine, no dogma, and no special belief system. What it does require is the willingness to get quiet enough to see what is actually there. In this conversation, we return to the most essential territory: the cost of mental noise, the nature of the ego, and what it genuinely means to be present for your own life. What We Dive Into: 1. The noise in the mind is not neutral. Every moment spent in a self-generated narrative about the past or future is a moment you were not actually there. At the end of a life of that, Jim says, there is a strange vacuum. 2. The drive for status was not a character flaw. It was, quite literally, a matter of life and death for our ancestors. Understanding that gives you room to stop being run by it. When you see the mechanism clearly, competition can begin to evolve into something closer to cooperation, which Jim argues is the actual path forward for the species. 3. Gratitude is not a feeling you perform. It is focused attention on what already is, and it shifts your neurochemistry from dopamine-driven wanting toward something more stable. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself Try LMNT & get a free sample pack ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:40 The Cost of Normalizing Internal Noise 06:07 What the Noise Is Made Of: Limbic Survival and Chatter 12:11 The Contrast Between Noise and Stillness 14:52 Status as an Evolutionary Artifact 24:16 Normalization and the Tiger in the Mind 29:18 Pure Stillness vs. Stillishness 32:37 The Ego Narrative and the Illusion of Separation 40:14 Everything We Want Is an End to Seeking 45:36 Simplicity, Dopamine, and the Holotropic Universe 49:27 What Happens When Subject and Object Dissolve 57:32 Stillness as Practice, Not Destination 59:24 Self-Love vs. Realizing Self as Love 1:02:08 How to Actually Do It: The Long, Short, and Micro Form 1:08:38 The Gifts of Headlessness: Harding's List 1:13:47 Physics, the Quantum Field, and the Non-Physical 1:25:15 How Far the Self Can Expand 1:37:08 Values Work: What's Actually Driving Your Behavior 1:47:18 Finding Your Me-Shaped Hole in the Universe 1:59:43 The Universe Conspires When You Commit 2:08:31 Closing Message: Quiet Down and Bring It ___________ ✨MORE FROM JIM GEORGE ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimgeorgeofficial/↳Contact: https://getstill.com/ 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you really need a narration? That chatter becomes normalized. The cost, in a nutshell, you're not there. At the end of a life of that, there's a kind of strange vacuum. I missed it. Most of the noise originates from the limbic effort to survive, and we'll go into that. But much of what we're responding to is no longer out there. It's in the mind. The cost of not letting this stuff quiet down is immense, which leads to our stillness practice. Shut up and just watch what happens.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Otherwise, this idiot, this Jim, is going to get in the way.

• 0:46André Duqum?

  I often say, when you get quiet, what needs to be heard grows loud.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  When it's revealed what's actually important to you, it's shocking, horrifying, disappointing. You've been deceiving yourself. As reductionist as that sound, it's actually very liberating. The noise stops, and you begin to perceive what's actually there. It's just here.

• 1:09André Duqum?

  What are you really doing with your body, your mind, your breath?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  So you just relax the body, breathe, and more importantly.

• 1:22André Duqum?

  Hey, guys. Andre from the future here. I think you're going to absolutely love this podcast with Tim George. I am not in the studio right now, and that's because I forgot to record this. So I'm putting it in now. I just wanted to say that we have an amazing retreat upcoming next month, September 11th through the 13th in Los Angeles. Three days in nature, six workshops, live music, shared meals, all the in-between magic moments. I'm really excited to be with you. It's going to be 70 of us. And if you want to learn more information, just head to the link in the description or on screen, and I hope to see you there. I'm so excited. This is the first of many. Enjoy the episode with Tim George. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know thyself Podcast.

• 2:06André Duqum?

  Our guest today is an ex-animator and stillness coach. Descriptions, I feel, often reduce people down into a set of words. But I've known this man as somebody who emanates stillness, love, compassion, and after a life filled with inquiry, wisdom. Jim George, thank you for being here.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Andre, thank you. I absolutely love what you're doing, from top to bottom and bottom up. I genuinely do. It's an honor to be here.

• 2:39André Duqum?

  Thank you. It's truly an honor to have you. We just wrapped up a community call with the Know thyself Collective before this.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47André Duqum?

  And you gathered us all through a meditation, and it was a beautiful conversation within everybody. We'll leave a link if people want to get a snippet of that in the description.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  What a great group.

• 2:59André Duqum?

  It's cool to see and connect with everyone, you know?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  It is.

• 3:02André Duqum?

  Instead of these cameras in the room, you know? It's like it makes it more real. So I love getting to share that space.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:08André Duqum?

  To set the framework, you know, you were one of the first podcast guests I ever had on the show way back when, almost four years ago now?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:15André Duqum?

  Yeah, back in Venice?

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:18André Duqum?

  And this podcast and this format has opened my eyes up to so much. I try to return back to what's most essential, what I'm most curious about, and what I feel like will serve people the most in their life.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:31André Duqum?

  I love the way that you describe practical spirituality, and I thought that we could start with just asking, what is the cost of normalizing a level of internal noise in our life? What does that cost us when we are preoccupied with the mental dramas and the noise, and that becomes just the way we live?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  First of all, thank you for asking that question. It's an incredibly important question. The cost, in a nutshell, you're not there. You aren't in each present moment. And if we can look at a lifetime, especially a life well-lived, as a series of present moments, if you're not present for any of those moments, let alone most of them, you look back on it and realize there's a kind of strange vacuum. I was in the past or the future, which is a construct in my own mind,

• 4:36Speaker 00

  and I missed what was right here. And I wish I could just bottle what it feels like to be in this room with you right now with undivided attention. There is no, what are we doing afterwards? What happened before? It's just here. At the end of a life of that, you've literally wrung it dry, and it's like lying down at the end of a very, very fulfilling day and going to sleep. It's like death is like the most incredible gift.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Instead of spending a lifetime sort of aversively referring to your own death, if at all. And so the cost of not being present, not letting this stuff quiet down, is immense. And it impacts your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, and your spiritual health. But having said that, it's important to have the experience of not being present in order to fully appreciate what it is to be present. So we don't want to beat ourselves up and say, I'm not doing this perfectly. You are.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  You're doing it perfectly. Just keep going.

• 6:08André Duqum?

  So if living present through your life allows you to arrive at your deathbed with a sense of completion?

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:15André Duqum?

  Not living your life present would then therefore mean you might live up until the point when you're about to die and feel a sense of remorse or regret?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:24André Duqum?

  For not having been there truly to witness to your life?

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:30André Duqum?

  What is that noise made up of?

• 6:37Speaker 00

  I'd like to suggest, remember, everything that I'll say here is just a suggestion. I don't, I don't know.

• 6:42André Duqum?

  And words will fail us.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  I don't know anything. But I'd like to suggest that our neurology has evolved to protect our bodies. It's not the other way around. And when I say evolved, I'm talking about physical evolution now, not anything beyond the physical domain. And what our imperative is, try, based on what you've experienced in the past, to predict the future. So you see that that task is fundamentally impossible to do,

• 7:26Speaker 00

  yet our neurology is dutifully saying, I'll do the best I can. So most of the noise either originates, stems from, or is some kind of extension of the limbic effort to survive. So we have what we call valence and salience to experience. The valence is either positively valenced or negatively valenced. It's either something we want more of, we like it, or negative, we don't, we want to avoid. Salience, the degree to which we're experiencing that, the intensity of it.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  And there becomes a kind of ongoing chatter in the same form, sensory-based information that we use to perceive the world. So it's very easy to confuse this sort of ongoing chatter with the act of perceiving what's there as best we can. We'll go into that. And that chatter becomes normalized. If you think about it, do you really need a narration? Do you really need to say to yourself, gosh, this is nice, sitting with Andre?

• 8:56Speaker 00

  It's fun watching how he sits comfortably in the chair. It's like, I can see that. I don't need to be chatting. So all of that is directly related to the limbic system, which is by definition, by design, the most urgent system in the body. It has to be. It's also the fastest. Our intellectual side, the conscious mind, slowest by definition. It's processing more information. So in a contest between the two, who do you think's going to win? So stillness is this marvelous way of being able to intercede

• 9:38Speaker 00

  without trying to chase a racehorse on a walker. Because our limbic system is operating in milliseconds, thousandths of a second. This conscious mind is operating at 500 milliseconds. So you're going to trigger into this habitual behavior way before you catch it. But if you're in the practice of quieting things down, it just keeps happening, keeps happening, keeps happening. Triggers kind of get halfway up and then go right back down again. So the benefit, as opposed to the cost of this noise,

• 10:22Speaker 00

  is the noise stops, and you begin to perceive what's actually there, which I would like to suggest can be and is often a psychedelic experience, actually being here.

• 10:38André Duqum?

  Why do you say psychedelic?

• 10:41Speaker 00

  The definition of expansion of the psyche, you know, expanding the scope of context. It is what they refer to when they talk about child mind, beginner's mind. Children, infants, are tripping. They have no priors to compare to, which is how we learn. We're always comparing. So they're basically tripping. They're sticking their feet in their mouth. They're tasting the air. It's, when you get back to that, life is just a completely different experience.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  So the cost of not doing that, living in a pre-programmed set of symbols that are easier to manipulate than reality, but they're not real. They're maps on the territory. And the benefit to letting that stop by just quieting things down, never mind where you can go, just the benefit impacts your physical health, your mental health, emotional health. Just reboot the system, that's all. And you can leave it at that. You don't have to explore any further than that.

• 12:03André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  And we're good to go.

• 12:06André Duqum?

  So let's keep tripping, shall we?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Please.

• 12:09André Duqum?

  What, the way that you kind of describe the functions of desire and our own imperative tied to our evolutionary limbic design.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:22André Duqum?

  I heard you say once that status is an artifact of a behavioral strategy that was adopted by a species that was going extinct.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:34André Duqum?

  And so if we don't want to live our life just like a brutish animal that is trying to survive moment to moment, and yet, and we instead want to live in like the childlike state.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:46André Duqum?

  How does one go about doing that? And having that reference point of stillness?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Yes. First, let me elaborate on what you said because you did such a beautiful job of consolidating that very dense idea.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Our genetic forebears were beautifully designed to move through the canopy of the trees. Big, long, extended forearms, beautifully levered and muscled to move effortlessly through the canopy. Trees begin to recede because of climate change. They start dropping out of the trees because the imperative to find food, find water, they find themselves not particularly suited to be on the ground. So they're not very big, they're not very fast, they're not very strong.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  And as individuals, they're snacks for larger, more powerful, faster predator. And if they hadn't made a very important decision, we would in fact be extinct. We were down to like 10,000 individuals. That's not even enough for a healthy gene pool. Around the time that Bering Strait was walkable,

• 14:19Speaker 00

  the decision was to work together, to cooperate.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  And that species cooperated to such a degree that it took them from the lower third of the food chain all the way up to the apex species on Earth. But it came at a cost. Your position in any group became a matter of life and death. Because if the group decided you weren't worth having in the group, they'd throw you out. That was in essence a death sentence, usually within a couple of weeks.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  So, believe me, that's deeply encoded in our brain stems. So status has become very, very important. We could go on and on about status. I'm going to be careful not to open that can of worms. But so much of what we're doing that is status related. Remember, it's not status symbols. Those symbols represent status. It's an extrinsic force. What does the group want me to be? Can I be more of that in order to get higher status? So what gives you status at the most happening club in LA

• 15:47Speaker 00

  drops your status on that road to the ashram in India. But there is every bit as much status at that ashram. It's just different values driving it. So as we begin to decode this and realize, wow, so this status thing is related to my survival. Of course it's important to me. I'm not pretending it's not. But if I can understand that evolution hasn't stopped,

• 16:23Speaker 00

  it's still going on, we can create what's called an epigenetic phenomenon by letting this crude, as you beautifully put it, survival-based drive, which is competition, evolve into cooperation.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Cooperation, in the end, will change the course of our trajectory as a species. If you don't want to just survive, but thrive, you have to take a different path than this very zero-sum game attitude.

• 17:05André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  We also have to stop the phenomenon, left brain phenomenon, of objectifying everyone and everything. It's what the left brain does. We don't catch it frequently. When you relate to people as an object with you as the subject, you are trying to manipulate the same area of the brain that causes the hand to do this. You are trying to manipulate, control to your own ends, other people, other things, the environment. It's a resource to be exploited. You lose your intrinsic sense of connection.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Stillness just intercedes, quiets things down. It's not a doctrine, it's not a dogma. It allows you to perceive directly. Oh, there's something much deeper going on here. People find this all the time in deep nature, a sense of awe.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  You think about a sense of awe, like I'm just dumbstruck. What does that mean? This just shuts up. I'm, and that's in essence what stillness is without the baseball bat to the face. You're just quieting it down. Does that make any sense?

• 18:33André Duqum?

  Absolutely.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:34André Duqum?

  The, it can be shocking as you start to excavate and discover all of these memetic forces, the survival adaptations, behavioral compensations, all of these things we carry within us because we are hardwired to survive.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:51André Duqum?

  That is one component on an individual level that contributes to so much of the internal not drama and identification with thoughts and emotions and noise we carry through. Now, to zoom in on the individual level, why is it that we don't notice the fog that we are in, the noise that we are in?

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Do you remember the now famous joke in David Foster Wallace's graduation speech? I'm going to butcher it, but in essence,

• 19:28Speaker 00

  two fish are swimming. Another fish, older fish, swimming the other way. The older fish sees the younger fish. He says, hi, boys, how's the water? Keep swimming. They look around and the one fish says to the other, what's water? So what makes that intriguing? What is so typically David Foster Wallace about that? It's so deep and yet so right there for you to see.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Consciousness itself is like water to fish. We have the capacity, but we really have to dig to get to a meta-position. Because consciousness is the vehicle by which we are aware of anything. And so you'll notice how quickly language just falls apart and fails when we get close to that sublime region of what actually is rather than our representations of it.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  So as we get in there, we begin to realize, wow, this has habituated, this behavior of just parping on in our heads. It's not usually, it's not until things get so bad that we have to change something, that we change, which is in itself a beautiful thing, even though it feels terrible. I can't stand this anymore. I've got to do something. I don't know what that is. That opens a door in its own way. That realization, that hitting bottom, is a moment of stillness.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  If you think in terms of oscillation and a momentary cessation of all this noise, okay, I'm out. I'm not trying to do anything anymore. I give up. There's this moment of surrender. Then we start conjuring if we're not careful. I'm suggesting that the practice of stillness, quieting the mind, relaxing the body, disconnecting that loop of tension in the body, telling the brain something's wrong, the brain then scanning for all its experiences that are similar to this tension pattern,

• 22:17Speaker 00

  creating more thoughts that create more tension, you see that loop. When that stops, I'm suggesting we don't have to do anything. Just, with respect, shut up and just watch what happens. It's not dogmatic at all. It's self-evident, self-effulgent, as they say.

• 22:42André Duqum?

  For anyone who's tuning into this conversation right now, I'm sure we all, in moments of our days and our lives, have, we are hypervigilant to degrees we are unaware of, right? So this is the noise we're speaking to, the mental drama, the survival-based fear that we have.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:02André Duqum?

  And at a very basic level, the voice in our head that we've become identified with as a source of truth.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:11André Duqum?

  Yeah. Now, anyone who wants to live a life well-lived, where they can end up at their deathbed and say, I was present and witness to my life,

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:21André Duqum?

  surely has to go on a journey of just examining this phenomenon that's playing out.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:27André Duqum?

  Now, you in your meditation sometimes have done this thing where like the noisy generator comes on in the background. Maybe we can put it in this episode, you know, it starts to, and maybe people have had this experience where they hear a fridge or an AC unit running, humming at that cycle. And then that moment when you snap and it stops.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 23:47André Duqum?

  And that contrast of experience gives you insight into how noisy and dysregulated you were prior.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:55André Duqum?

  Now, I want to speak about that difference. And then what becomes available and what, we use the term of spirituality, and I want to make it very practical and very easy to connect with for everybody listening right now.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:10André Duqum?

  So that contrast of experience between noise and stillness.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:15André Duqum?

  Let's dig into that a little bit.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Good. So let's consider the phenomenon of normalization. We have evolved in such a way. And if you think about this in a kind of non-pejorative way, just look at this brilliant strategy that's kept us alive in the face of some potentially terrifying counter-biological circumstances. It's remarkable. So please don't hear me saying we shouldn't honor and respect these evolutionary tendencies.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  In the end, though, I'm suggesting that our environment has changed faster than our capacity, our evolution, our ability to change to keep up with it. So we're still responding to stimuli as if we're back on the Serengeti plane. Though stimuli have changed so fast and so radically that much of what we're responding to is no longer out there, it's in here, they're representations. We get back to status.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  And status has a very important context in today's world because of social media. I'd like to suggest that the specter of losing status in an abstraction, which is what social media is, is enough to cause people to commit suicide. That's very serious. I don't want to in the least, sort of minimize that. It's very important.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  But understand, it's taking place in the mind. The tiger that we're running from is in the mind. And we're not even sure whether it's real or not because it's so passive, it's so changing. This happens for a while, gets normalized. And as soon as it gets normalized, it's passe and the next new thing comes along. So how do you orient yourself? You're constantly scrambling. You used a beautiful clinical term, hypervigilant. We're scanning for the next new thing

• 27:07Speaker 00

  in an effort to be what? If we just stop there, why? Am I scanning for the next new thing to wear? The next way to pose? The next sort of fake life to post so that people think I'm what? Try if you can to remember the origin of the word "brand." It was a symbol burned into the rear end of a cow to delineate belonging to someone who is either going to eat you or sell you to someone else who's going to eat you.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  So we have to be careful with this, am I a brand? Authentic living is the best way to demonstrate what you are. And it's getting harder and harder for people who've normalized this other thing to feel that that's even possible anymore. I see it all the time. People are losing their capacity to do this. They're developing a fear of this. They want an intermediary, media, between them and the other person or the experience. And they've normalized that.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  It takes courage to identify a normalized situation and do something about it if it's pathological. If it's not, I've normalized stillness. It is not normal because the average person doesn't do it. But I've intentionally normalized it. I've gotten still four or five times since we've begun talking. Otherwise, this idiot, this Jim, is going to get in the way. We won't be able to answer your question. Or we'll get off on some weird tangent because it'll make Jim look good. I'm glad Jim's down the road right now. I'm tired of him.

• 29:20André Duqum?

  So as we get still, what happens to our sense of self?

• 29:24Speaker 00

  I love that. So let me draw a distinction between what I call stillness, pure stillness, and what I call stillishness, which is great. But pure stillness, as I'm going to define it, is a state of awareness with no perception of past, not even a split second ago, and no perception of future, not even a split second from now. And in one glorious stroke, that leaves us with now.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Now is a very strange, wondrous phenomenon because we have normalized abstracting ourselves into a symbolic representation of something. Does that make sense? I want to be careful not to go too quickly.

• 30:29André Duqum?

  Crystal clear.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  The abstraction of ourselves, the abstraction of what's happening, is something we can manipulate. There are symbols in our brain. So we have just normalized living in that abstraction. We don't realize it.

• 30:49André Duqum?

  The idea of ourself.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Yes, and we've flipped it at an unconscious level and are projecting that abstraction out on reality.

• 30:59André Duqum?

  And defending it.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Yes, defending it for our lives. What I'm suggesting is when you stop defending it, it'll fall away and who you are will come back. So we're in this strange past/future representation. The minute you represent anything, you're in the past. So it's such a counterintuitive thing to just stop that. Stay here, stay here, stay here. I want to say, oh, Andre was did it. No, no. The word, the small mouth noise, Andre, is meaningless to me right now.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  And you are really good at this. You can really feel this, can't you? So right now, there is no history of Andre. There is no, and Andre's probably going to say, I wonder if he thinks I'm... It's just Andre and Jim. Without those names, without those words, it's not separate. There isn't a subject-object relationship. There's this deep, whole, complete, subjective experience.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  You don't want to have that while you're driving down the 405. So we're navigating from state to state.

• 32:35André Duqum?

  Right.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Very important to remember, we don't just stay parked in that.

• 32:39André Duqum?

  The goal isn't just to live in this metacognitive awareness, but the adaptability between the two.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  That would be missing the point of the gift of being a human being. But we've forgotten our way down into this very limited human existence. And I'm suggesting that the egoic narrative that is crucial for that experience begins with I, me, me, me, the center of the universe. I am separate and apart from, not a part of, apart from, everyone and everything else. That's that subject-object thing. That's just the first sentence in a lifelong evolving narrative

• 33:27Speaker 00

  built on a fundamental untruth. But we have to do that in order to be human. Okay, periodically, wouldn't it be nice to be able to just up periscope and just... Oh, okay. This is a great thrill ride, but I'm really not dying. I'm on a roller coaster. Oh, okay. But if I know I'm on a roller coaster, it's not as thrilling. So forget again, drop down. But I like to think of it as a golden cord with a red velvet handle hanging just inside your periphery. I don't even know what it's for, but I pull it.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm up here again. Practicing stillness is making sure that cord stays there. There is no circumstance that will not be better if you are still. I've been doing this for almost 50 years. I've asked everyone, can you think of any experience where you're better off tense, closed off in the past and future?

• 34:40André Duqum?

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• 35:25André Duqum?

  It tastes delicious and it's actually doing your body favors. If you want to try it out, go to im8health.com/knowthayself and use code knowthayself for an additional 10% off welcome kit and five free sachets. That's im8health.com/knowthayself. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show.

• 35:45André Duqum?

  It's a really great question, I think, for us all to contemplate because I think oftentimes our nervous system is in this sympathetic state where we're under the presumption that being intense, being intense, tension within, is ideal for coming conflict.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:03André Duqum?

  And a great example of this, it was like, I was 18 back in Michigan. My friends and I were walking down the crosswalk on a street. My friend got hit by a car.

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 36:15André Duqum?

  And almost everyone just kind of like lost their mind. And it was totally not useful to what the moment needed.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:22André Duqum?

  I'm thankful, for whatever reason, I was able to take action into what was the necessary course of actions that were needed in the moment.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:30André Duqum?

  And if that wasn't there, who knows what would have happened, you know? And so I think it's a really refreshing reminder that stillness will improve every single aspect of life and interpersonal dynamics.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:43André Duqum?

  How much of suffering do you think in interpersonal relationships specifically are because we are living and relating to abstractions of each other?

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Your questions are stunning. They literally are. Suffering is one of the most important things to pay attention to. It is the only thing that drove Siddhartha Gautama. I would suggest, and I'll, first, let's borrow a page out of his book. So life itself, as he says, is suffering, though the translation's inaccurate. It's unsatisfactoriness. But what an ugly Anglicized term. At one end of that unsatisfactoriness is what we call suffering.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  So unsatisfactory, what does that even mean? If you just let that percolate, you will understand the dopamine cycle intrinsically, knowing nothing about neurochemistry. I'm trying to get something and I can't be satisfied because the minute I get it, the dopamine dries up and now it's on to another thing that I don't have but want. So I'm constantly on this rat wheel. I think in this culture, there are people who believe that's just life and I just haven't found the right thing.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  But after how many decades of just running this wheel? Stop it. There's got to be something off with this. Even neurochemically, you start getting into serotonin rather than dopamine. It's, this is terribly truncated, but it's more about what I have and appreciate than what I don't have and want. We need both.

• 38:48André Duqum?

  Dopamine versus serotonin.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we're way out of balance on the dopamine side. Gratitude transforms your neurochemistry, transforms your life. And all gratitude and appreciation really is focused attention on what is. I'm just hyper-aware of what? This gift? It's strangely non-possessive. It's strangely not objectifying. I'm just grateful and it boils down to for a state that I'm in. If people could understand, it's not about the thing. It's about what the thing gives you.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  And ultimately, it's giving you a state. And your state of awareness is more important than anything else in your world, bar none, because your state of awareness is how you know anything about your world. It's a filter on what's happening.

• 39:54André Duqum?

  So would you say that...

• 39:57André Duqum?

  What we say and declare that we want from any given experience, or relationship, or work, is because the thing, the feeling state we actually want behind it, we want a pleasant, pleasurable experience. That's fundamentally why we think we want anything.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:16André Duqum?

  Would you agree with that?

• 40:17Speaker 00

  I would put it, and do with clients, the only reason anyone does anything is to try, this is key, because they don't always succeed, try to feel better than you do right now. If you feel as good as you think you can feel, you're not going to do anything. If you're trying to feel better, that is your motivation to do anything. So you're right, we call that pleasure, but ironically, we get into Freud's definition, and I'm not real big on what's left of Freud's stuff, but there is something so elegant

• 40:59Speaker 00

  about his definition of pleasure. Tension reduction. It's a two-word definition that just perfectly says it, which leads to our stillness practice. Reduce the tension in your body and watch what happens. I've never met anyone who's reducing the tension. I don't mean fighting it and thinking about all this stuff and building more tension. I mean, just reducing tension and says, oh, this is a terrible feeling. I don't like this at all. I've never met anyone who does that. It's just, ah, wow.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  So tension is this signal to the brain, something is wrong, and it's a beautiful signal. Pay attention. But as we start letting that go, we realize, all you have to do is get quiet enough to examine, why do I want anything? What is it? Let's play a game with that, because we do, in my work, we do a lot of work with what I call values. Anything that anyone finds important enough to spend their time, their energy, their resources, their money, their life, to have. Okay, there are a lot of qualifiers on that, but let's leave it at that.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Pick something. Try not to be too aware. Pick anything that you want. Anything.

• 42:39André Duqum?

  Food.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Food, good. Why do you want food? What will food allow you to have, feel?

• 42:50André Duqum?

  Pleasure, pleasantness.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Pleasantness, pleasantness. Notice, it's a state. What does feeling pleasant give you? See, what we're doing, we're inducing, we're going up to a more macro level. What does feeling pleasant give you? What does it allow you to have or feel?

• 43:14André Duqum?

  A lack of desire.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Isn't that interesting? Let's, let's put that in the positive, a lack of desire, okay? You have just realized that what you're seeking is an end to seeking. And yet, we're on this rat wheel, thinking seeking is all that in a bag of chips. I just want to stop seeking. When I get what I think I want, momentarily, there's this lack of seeking. Ah, such pleasure. But we've normalized this to the point where we skip right over what we're looking for and jump right into the next thing we're seeking. Stillness slows things down

• 44:01Speaker 00

  so you can perceive them without necessarily cognating them. There's no rationale, there's no, well, yeah, I remember this from sociology, you know, 501. Hmm, there it is, right in front of you. I stop seeking and I experience this pleasure. I'm suddenly here, not there, going after what it is I want but don't have.

• 44:38André Duqum?

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• 45:23André Duqum?

  they will give you a full refund with no questions asked. You don't even have to send it back. That's how confident they are that you will love it. DrinkLMNT.com/KNOWTHESELF. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show.

• 45:39André Duqum?

  There is this internal belief and orientation that we often carry through life that to have an improved experience of life, I must acquire more things.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:52André Duqum?

  Relationships, experiences, the house, the car.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:56André Duqum?

  And why the definition of stillness and of examining what we truly want is so beautiful? Because it lets us stop trying.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 46:09André Duqum?

  It's exhausting.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Good call, yes.

• 46:10André Duqum?

  It's exhausting to always be under the notion that your ideal life is outside of you.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:16André Duqum?

  And it's freeing to say then, okay, if what I'm actually desiring and seeking is a lack of seeking.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  End of that, yes.

• 46:26André Duqum?

  And then, perhaps what I want is not more stuff, but to let go.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Isn't that strange and counterintuitive? And so true that the only sane response is what you just did? Laughter. Laughter, that's just like, whoa. That's so elegant. It shivers the hemispheres as they're trying to grasp something that this can't be. It's almost like it can't be that simple, yet it is. So absolutely, when you quiet things down, you begin to find echoes in this sort of wisdom tradition of any culture.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Simplicity. What do we mean by that? I like to define simplicity as the elimination of the unessential. So what's essential? I gotta have food. How much?

• 47:37André Duqum?

  Just enough.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  So the dopaminergic answer to how much is enough is always more. Well, the serotoninergic response to how much is enough is, I think I'm good. End of seeking. Ah, good. So you see, we're not saying you shouldn't seek. The question is, have we taken it way out of balance? Which leads us to the holotropic nature of the universe. Seeking wholeness and balance, always. We get too far out of balance,

• 48:19Speaker 00

  it will pull us back toward balance. So given enough time, given enough resources, whatever we're doing leads to this balance point. And in this dopaminergic world, the balance point is equated somehow with the middle of the road with dead pigeons and white lines. And no, balance. Balance is a strangely dynamic process. If you watch a good ballet or a good football game, anything, you'll see dynamic balance. Someone in perfect flow,

• 49:03Speaker 00

  centrifugal force, centripetal force, gravitational force, in perfect balance, in motion. If you froze it, they'd drop and fall, but it's not frozen. If we don't let go and find that balance point, we keep ginning our way out of balance, trust me, the universe will bring you back.

• 49:30André Duqum?

  This yin and yang, this teeter totter between order and chaos that we find ourselves in is is something I want to explore a bit more. When you look at the Gnostic origins of the various religions, even the Abrahamic ones, it boils down to an individual having a profound, perhaps prophetic experience of life.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:57André Duqum?

  So much so that we remember their names thousands of years later.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:01André Duqum?

  And yet, when you look past the way that kings and empires have changed texts and controlled narratives throughout time.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 50:09André Duqum?

  You get back to the conception, inception, and the genesis of these individuals' experience. You begin to see a similarity across the board from people of all walks of life and different places on the planet that bring into question what actually is spirituality.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 50:31André Duqum?

  Right? What is it that is essential within us that we are adding so many names to and languages for, which is fun and is what we do on this podcast, and they always are going to be limiting and describing. But do you feel then that, because you use the word holotropic, right?

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:49André Duqum?

  Coming into wholeness.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:51André Duqum?

  And we throw-

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Incline toward, turning toward.

• 50:55André Duqum?

  Yeah. So do you believe that as we experience a diffused and more grand and vast sense of self?

• 51:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:04André Duqum?

  That when we taste that, not only can we see that more readily in others, but that's actually what we would use as a term "God," that when we see that and witness that in others, is that, do you think that's what we are fundamentally referring to?

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Again, this is such a beautiful question. I'd like to suggest, and forgive me if this steps on any toes, but as long as the human nervous system, let's call it our brain, is looking at everyone and everything as an object, and we, each individual, the subject, the center of the universe, mind you, nothing less, right? Number one, when the world revolves around you, it's a pretty small world.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Number two, how else do you suppose we're going to describe God? It's this other, and I'd like to suggest that human neurology is analogous in nature. That is, it learns by taking qualities and characteristics of something it thinks it understands and maps it onto things, events, people, that it doesn't know to understand more about it, but always knows something more about it. It doesn't know it.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  So we have this problem. God. I'm suggesting that as long as we maintain one of the primary delusions of being human, which is "I, me, me, center of the universe," okay, apart from, not apart of, everyone and everything else, that includes whatever you want to call God, so our gods become, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, I just, I'm trying to get clear, an anthropomorphic projection of an objectified

• 53:26Speaker 00

  subjective reality. How can it be anything but some weird human thing? So rather than pick that apart, let's just look at that and say, what would happen if we stopped ginning up something that isn't true, even for a split second? We get so quiet that the subject-object illusion just melts, just disintegrates into a massive

• 54:04Speaker 00

  wholeness, a subjective experience that has no limit, has no beginning, no end, no human limits of any kind. And we begin to understand, you're no longer talking, you're not at the scope of context that says, "God's out there. I have to placate God. What does God think I'm telling you? I wrote it down. Here it is. Believe this." Shut up. Get quiet enough, and whatever,

• 54:40Speaker 00

  that thing that the word "God," that no thing that the word "God" is attempting to fuzzily represent, will reveal itself to you. You will not be able to put it into words. If you can, it's not it, but it will be there. That's a promise. That's why I've devoted the rest of my life to this practice, because if I can experience that, any idiot can experience that. And it's yours. It's our birthright. But I don't think we would appreciate it if we hadn't forgotten our way down to not having it, if that makes any sense.

• 55:23Speaker 02

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• 55:52Speaker 03

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• 56:36Speaker 03

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• 56:53André Duqum?

  Yeah, and the natural the natural happening from that realization is just pure laughter.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  The only sane response.

• 57:04André Duqum?

  Yeah, the only sane response.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 57:06André Duqum?

  It's like we set up this, we, whatever, life, this illusion of separation for the experience of itself happens, and we need to forget ourself and have this amnesia so we can remember ourself.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:19André Duqum?

  And what a beautifully, intelligently designed dance. And that's, that evokes awe and wonder and gratitude. And what else?

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Notice if you can now, these presuppositions in that last sentence. Notice that we we almost can't talk about it without imposing these limits again. Intelligently designed. You get, I have a concept, an idea, then I make the thing-

• 57:51André Duqum?

  From the anthropocentric perspective.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:54André Duqum?

  Always.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Instead of just, as the Germans call it, "Ichte Kite," is-ness, just, oof. This thing that they're exploring in theoretical physics, this quantum field of infinite potential, but it isn't physical in any way. So we, of course, turn that into a, some sort of bipolar, "Well, there's the physical world, then there's this weird other thing." "Metaphysical? No, that's got some weird connotations. What do we call it? Pre-physical? Well, that's got some temporal situations there that are a problem." Can we just say

• 58:38Speaker 00

  it's not different? That there's an aspect of you that is whole and complete, and you're seeking to come home. And when you taste that, that little giggle, that little tickle, that little "oh," just before it just blinks out and there's just-

• 59:05Speaker 00

  While you're living this life, though, understand we're navigating from state to state. Because you can stay in these very meta, very esoteric states, missing the entire point. You become a nirvana junkie. If you can live this thing fully and remember that in workout terms, the rap, "Come back to stillness," then go ahead, get lost in it. Come back to stillness, get lost, come back. You'll begin to realize as this becomes a daily practice, you don't get so lost that it takes an hour or three days

• 59:50Speaker 00

  or a stillness retreat to get back. This sine wave oscillation between pure stillness and pure just, "I'm so lost in this thing. Oh my God, that last post is the end of the world." Right? "I got five comments that I'm not going to forget for the rest of my life." Go back again. I'm in a conversation with someone I love and I realize, "Wow, I'm incapable of loving right now and boom, now I'm, I am love." If love is a profound sense of wholeness and completeness, I'm right there.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  I'm literally laughing at this situation that was four seconds ago. And then we live our lives, we get off here, ooh, bang, bang, bang. Non-preferentially, I'm saying that oscillation is what a life well-lived is.

• 1:00:58André Duqum?

  And there is a commercialization of, and the wellness industry has become a trillion-dollar industry on this perspective of subject and object. You know, when we talk about self-love, right, and what that looks like? As opposed to realizing yourself as love.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Perfect. Will you do me a favor? Will you just repeat that so you can hear it? This is an example of what I'm talking about. That just came out of your mouth. You're going to want to write that down.

• 1:01:35André Duqum?

  Yeah, we don't need more self-love. We need to recognize self as love.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, we're done. I'm serious.

• 1:01:44André Duqum?

  That's a rep, folks.

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  That's brilliance coming through because your state is allowing it. The Andre that I've come to know and love recognizes what just happened. Some other Andre would say, "Yeah, aren't I? I've pretty well got this down. I'm all that." And you feel the contraction in your heart, in your gut, as you attempt to puff this little limited thing up. And you can't because it's all constrained in a straitjacket. You just let go. That's wisdom that will come out of your own mouth.

• 1:02:26André Duqum?

  And for us to experience more of that insight and revelation that we can, we talked a bit about this this morning. Maybe we can even put in a little clip talking about this concept of revelation. Revelation, "To reveal the gold mine that was right under your feet, but you were just too busy to notice it before. For something to be revealed, a removal of what was obstructing it must move away. Since revelation is an internal phenomenon, what is obstructing must be mental. Stillness is the means by which we create the necessary conditions

• 1:03:10André Duqum?

  for mental obstructions to fall away and revelation to occur. Salvation comes through revelation. Revelation comes through stillness. Your salvation depends on your stillness." Yeah, it goes back into this externalization of acquisition as opposed to living from an emptiness, like valuing emptiness and what that can create a wellspring of in your life. Now, the way that you speak about practical spirituality, because you talked about instead of chasing it off in retreats and advice and podcasts, "Here we are, I'm doing a retreat."

• 1:03:54André Duqum?

  You know, we do these things. But the powerful reminder is that every moment of the day, we have the opportunity to come back into that stillness. Now, to make this extremely actionable for people, what is it literally like in your internal experience when you recognize you're not still, you're lost in thought, emotion, and that reminder of coming back into stillness? And how can we as individuals find those opportunities in our day? And what are you really doing with your body, your mind, your breath?

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  If you have the capacity to just look at the video of me as you were saying what you were saying, you'll see exactly what that is. You, thank you very much, reminded me. Because as you're saying what you're beginning to say, my instinct, having practiced this tens of thousands of times, and remember by this I mean a long form of stillness that if practiced can become compressed into a shorter form

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  because neurology is very associative. You don't need all the words. You just relax the body, breathe, stop the story. How long does that take? It takes a long time if the goofball is talking about it and describing it, "No," and then take another breath and blah, blah, blah. You let that go. That's what I call the short form, which is partially what I just did. But then there's what I call the micro form, which is all of that, practiced and practiced and practiced, and then compressed into something that I want you to experience now

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  so that your listeners don't think I'm just talking. Feel the difference between this and this.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  Isn't that interesting? Now, it's not helping anybody. They're saying, "What the hell is he talking about?" But that whole process compressed into a simple, "Just do it," is the thing I'm practicing between 150 and 200 times a day, always.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

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• 1:07:15Speaker 03

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• 1:07:59Speaker 03

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• 1:08:15André Duqum?

  And what you're doing there is in essence, would you say exerting will to push aside almost or to release tension?

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  God, that's a great question. That's a beautiful question. I like to say it's the inverse or the converse. I am not, I'm setting an intention, but I am not exerting will. I am the opposite. I'm surrendering it. It's just going away. Everything's just going away. The effort is in maintaining this human construct. I'm surprised it doesn't fall apart more often in a kind of Truman Show way. I'm surprised it doesn't just fall apart. I think it does. I think it's when we have these moments where it's like, "Oh, that's a weird coincidence, you know? I'm thinking exactly what you're thinking."

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  Of course, you are me. So maintaining this thing is where the effort is. You just learn to let go. The beauty is it's also tied in with letting tension go, physical tension go. So all of it just goes, ah, let go of tension in the body. Breathe, let go.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  Then release the narrative. Make no effort to see, make no effort at all. I practice this every day. When I'm all finished, I'll walk down on the boardwalk in Venice, because it's one of the most chaotic places I can think to try and do this. So it's great practice. And I just walk, and I do that. I do a walking, what I call walking still point meditation. And I'm just gone. It is walking. Somehow, it doesn't fall over, but it's not...

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  It's just... And sometimes, you'll get these amazing responses. I had one just night before last, where I'm walking, and I'm in this space. In comes a person who, in normal awareness, would be a severely impaired homeless person. A relatively young guy. I don't see that anymore. I just don't see it.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  I look, this sort of noise-making thing just goes, "ink," and smiles. And it was not the smile of some inebriated, it was just like, "Hi." And I'm like, "Hi." And as he's going by, he turns and he goes, "Hi." And I'm thinking that, and it was like, yes. But it's not like, "Okay, stop and let's talk about what just happened." It happened. He felt that. He was lifted by that. I was lifted by that. It's like, who wins? Who benefits? Who benefits?

• 1:11:38Speaker 00

  All of us.

• 1:11:42André Duqum?

  There's this beautiful book on having no head by Harding.

• 1:11:46Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 1:11:48André Duqum?

  He has quite an articulate explanation of the byproducts of this realization, which I would love to just read the list out and see how they relate to your experience.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:12:01André Duqum?

  So these are like bonuses of the recognition of the true self.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:12:06André Duqum?

  An enlivening of the senses.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:11André Duqum?

  A complex of interrelated psychophysical changes, including: whole-body alertness in place of the heady intermittent sort, as if one were poised through and through to run through the race of one's life. A reduction of stress, particularly in the region of the eyes and mouth and neck, as if one were at last letting them go.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:37André Duqum?

  A progressive lowering of one's center of gravity, as if losing one's head were finding one's heart and guts and feet, which are now rooted in the earth. A striking downward shift of one's breathing, as if it were a belly function. In fact, a general come-down, as if all the good things one had vainly strained after in the heights were awaiting one in the depths. And balancing this descent, a general uplift, including a sense of exaltation, as if one were perfectly straight-backed and as tall as the sky. An upsurge of creativity, rising energy and confidence, a new and childlike spontaneity and playfulness,

• 1:13:20André Duqum?

  and above all, a lightness, as if one were not so much gone with the wind as the wind itself. And finally, perhaps, a calming of fears, a marked reduction of greed and anger, a smoothing out of personal relations, more capacity for selfless love, more joy.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  Who is this guy? He's like my hero. That's precisely what I'm talking about. Beautifully put. But every one of those things, we actually got into earlier. This is not a byproduct of some weird technique. It is your birthright. This is everyone's birthright. It's what they are. If we can stop objectifying and realize that, then the journey changes from seeking something in a dopaminergic way. It's just kind of scraping the barnacles out of the way and realizing you're already there.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  I'm suggesting we're all still.

• 1:14:28André Duqum?

  Yeah. This conversation I had with Ian McGilchrist on the podcast.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  Love him. Love him.

• 1:14:34André Duqum?

  Yeah, so good. He was talking about... Yeah, right? He was in that chair, and we were chatting just about, you know, fearing not that machines are going to become more like humans, but that humans will become more like machines. And that, in the way that you described, the left hemispherical way of perceiving reality, which is a reduction of separate mechanistic parts that are complicated, as opposed to the right hemispheric, complex interconnected web, is the direct reason why so much of us are viewing life as like a simulator, my simulation. It's something that is happening to us, and we're suffering because of it.

• 1:15:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:15:16André Duqum?

  And the way that you're describing what comes as a byproduct of stillness is, feels like, much more in alignment with the right hemisphere and that creative energy. And the way that you describe this contrast between absolute stillness and absolute fullness.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:15:32André Duqum?

  The masculine and the feminine.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:15:35André Duqum?

  Yeah. That, it feels like it just maps on beautifully with that. And when we talked about, and use the word, "practical spirituality."

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:15:46André Duqum?

  What is your definition of spirituality? If you have it, here we go, back into the left hemisphere.

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:15:50André Duqum?

  But it is useful, because it's a word that's thrown around a lot. What do you literally mean, when you use that word?

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  So, most people have a kind of, if nothing more than just a sense of a non-physical, and if we need to climb into its origins and all that, but we can, I just don't want to burden the conversation. A non-physical or beyond physical, which is all metaphysical means, but it's just gotten a bad rap.

• 1:16:31Speaker 00

  And the world that can be perceived directly by our senses, weighed, measured, that which, starting with the Greeks, believed physicos, with a K, that is what's real, as they put it. As they began to do work with this, our theoretical physicists, these poor guys,

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  their job is to study only that which is real, only that which can be measured. And they were very, very careful, incredibly rigorous, using this scientific principle, using this peer review. If there's anything wrong with this theory, let her rip. Egos be damned. We're looking for what's true. The farther they dug into it, the more they realized that as you start going smaller and smaller and smaller,

• 1:17:50Speaker 00

  what appears to be, appears to be, is actually this strange world of, oh yeah, atoms. Okay, the atoms are sort of scattered. So the atoms are what's real. You can tap an atom if you could be small enough. Then they start exploring that. You get smaller and smaller. These atoms break down into protons, neutrons, electrons.

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  And they're just way far apart. There's just empty space in between. And I think it's helpful, even though some people find it specious. If you think about a typical proton in a hydrogen atom as an orange in the middle of the 50 yard line on a football stadium, the electron that is orbiting it, a pea on the rim of the stadium. Everything else, empty space. Ah, that's pretty mind bending, but I can pick up the orange and tap it. Then they start climbing down into the proton, into the electron,

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  and realize, wow, this thing's falling apart. It's fields of influence, dense, I don't even know what. So they start talking about these fields. They talk about the physical vacuum. What happens when you take all of the material, the matter, out of the universe? Apparently, there's something left that's so powerful that a cubic centimeter of it contains more energy, more potential energy than all of the physical matter in the known universe.

• 1:19:53Speaker 00

  So you start getting into this strange world of, okay, do we still want to make this abstract, arbitrary break between physical and non-physical? If you want to function as a human being in a body, yeah. Because the apparent reality that it's nothing but space isn't going to help you in your body if you run into a wall. You're not going through it. This is where the physicists have a tough time dealing with people who get a kind of foot in the door and then start talking about physics because it's all scope of context.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  It's all relative. So that quantum mechanics doesn't really jibe well with Newtonian Cartesian physics, doesn't jibe with astrophysics. They don't work together. They fall apart. They're looking for a unified field theory that covers all of them. I haven't found it yet. So the question is, how do you want to live? So we come back to, okay, let's navigate from state to state based on what we want to do. Right now, I want to talk with you. I'm enjoying doing this. You and I can,

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  we have, gone into expanded states where no words are necessary. Why wouldn't we do that all the time? Because there's something intrinsically delicious about putting a little distance in there and then batting these small mouse noises back and forth and going, ooh, ooh, yeah, that was nice. So let's stop beating ourselves up for not being there. There's no there there. We're navigating from state to state based on what we want. I want to be lost so I can be found. I don't want to already be there.

• 1:22:02Speaker 00

  The fastest way to stop learning is say, I know. If that makes any sense. I don't want to get too woo woo.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Real value shows up in reliability. You don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone All-Season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride, no matter the road. Season after season. Firestone All-Season tires. For durability you can count on, just like people count on you. Firestone, always dependable, since 1900.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Or take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering. With legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:23:43André Duqum?

  No, it doesn't. It's not woo woo. You know, I think it's quite fascinating that our apparent physical sensory reality, which is very enchanting, and as you use the term delicious to experience, makes it seem, it makes a hard case that it's all there is upon the apparent perception of it.

• 1:24:10Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:24:10André Duqum?

  And when you examine and you go into the quantum realm and the non-physical world like you do, just as anybody who's listening to this podcast right now are making use of these unseen forces that are transmitting the video and audio.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:24:26André Duqum?

  We start to peel back our concrete notion of matter as all there is.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:34André Duqum?

  And that, to me, like, just destabilizes this notion of the solidity of both a self and as what we perceive as all there is.

• 1:24:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:43André Duqum?

  Which opens up to this world, to the metaphysical, the non-physical, the spiritual. And when one explores that as the only way you could make intimate contact with it internally is by getting quiet.

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:24:58André Duqum?

  Not as an abstracted thought process.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:25:01André Duqum?

  Then you start to encounter some weird stuff.

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  And by weird, what does weird mean?

• 1:25:09André Duqum?

  Weird relatives to the Newtonian Cartesian.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  Relative, yes. Good for you.

• 1:25:13André Duqum?

  Yeah. And this intrinsically feels strange at times, because of how accustomed we are to reason and logic being the way to know.

• 1:25:27Speaker 00

  And it's okay.

• 1:25:28André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  But understand something. How many people do you know, including yourself, actually behave as if they believe the earth is round?

• 1:25:42André Duqum?

  No one behaves. You're just walking straight, look straight.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

  Go two blocks this way and two blocks... They don't say, curve over this way and then curve that way. And go this way because there's no such thing as left or right. There's no such thing as up and down. There's no such thing as north and south. You go five miles up, that all falls away. And we're on a wet rock hurtling around a virtually indistinguishable yellow dwarf star somewhere in some backwater galaxy. It's like, what good is that going to do me when I'm trying to figure out how to get a raise? Well, if I can be there and then say, does it help me

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  to expand the scope of context? Because problems are not solved, as Einstein said, at the scope of context, the level of the problem. So we explore, like we're doing today, very quickly, a lot of people will say, yeah, that's just too fuzzy. That doesn't help me. Good, come on back down. But as you get into your world of problems and drama and everything else, understand, you're way micro now. That's where problems exist. That's where the juju exists. The peace, the perspective, until you go all the way out to infinitely expanded,

• 1:27:14Speaker 00

  there's no drama. There's no problem. How many stories are built on that?

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  What are we looking for? Human neurology is looking for a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So tell me the story of something that has no beginning, middle, and end. Okay, if you want to know what's happening, that's great. But if you say to yourself, "Tell me the story of the universe," you're gonna get turtles, you're gonna get river gods, you're gonna get fish. Okay, but it's going to be a story. So you're getting into the real work. Do I really want to know? I want the truth. And to quote Aaron Sorkin in A Few Good Men, "You want the truth?

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  You can't handle the truth." Until you can, till you develop this ability to navigate scopes of context. That's what state change really is. Stillness, pure stillness, take it all the way out, reboot, and then with some kind of deep volition, say, "This is what I want to experience now. I'm gonna forget all that and go back to, 'This football game is life and death.'" How do you enjoy a football game? I don't enjoy football games, because it's like, I don't care. But the people walking down the street right next to me, it's like they're wearing the colors of their country.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  It's like, "How dare you." They're getting something from it. If we just stop looking at that in a pejorative way and look at that from this compassionate wholeness thing, it's like, yeah, good for you.

• 1:29:09André Duqum?

  So as one sits down, or whatever they're doing, and they start to get a bit still, what starts as a dense, subjective experience

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  Brilliant.

• 1:29:20André Duqum?

  of a boundary to body,

• 1:29:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:29:23André Duqum?

  a meat bag, a flesh suit, whatever you want to call it, the perception of self stops at the end of where my physical flesh and clothes meet, the air and ground around me. The scope of context can shift to, okay, the boundaries of my perception of self expand

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:43André Duqum?

  to perhaps this room.

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:47André Duqum?

  And then it can keep going.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:49André Duqum?

  How far does it keep going?

• 1:29:51Speaker 00

  How far is there? Infinity. I'm suggesting that there is a neurological correlate to that, what's called the phenomenal self-image in a region of the brain that maps your body. It's changing all the time. And that ironically, you're talking about it ends at the skin. Good race car drivers develop what they call a smart ass. They're literally extending their sense of self into the vehicle.

• 1:30:33Speaker 00

  Their sense of self is in the suspension of that front right wheel. That's why they can do 250 miles an hour this close to the person next to them. And it's like, ooh, their body is there. I'm suggesting if they never got out of that race car, they'd think they were the race car. Same with the body. You keep doing this discipline that you're doing, and thank you for doing it, because it just makes it better for everybody. You step out of the car every once in a while, and you realize, wow, I'm not the car. Now I'm out of the car, I'm not the car, I am what?

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  Well, I'm the body. Step out of the vehicle. Step out of the vehicle, step out of the vehicle, step out of the... I stops doing anything else. I, it's just I-ing. There's no verb. And that's the universal subjective experience. And then it forgets its way into subject and object. That's what they call duality. And you know, everybody's done all the reading about that. I won't bore you with that.

• 1:31:55André Duqum?

  So then, does it track for you that an expanded scope of context is correlated with freedom and a limited scope of context is correlated with survival and suffering?

• 1:32:06Speaker 00

  Brilliant. The more you like, the less you suffer. I like this feeling of excruciating pain on my 15th rep. I love that feeling. Why? Because it signifies something other than something's wrong. It signifies everything's right. That's crazy. My legs hurt right now. I'm thrilled.

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  I could be thinking, oh my God. I know people who've had the, you know, turmoil illnesses, that same pain. I wonder if that means I'm gonna, I'm now suffering. Instead, I'm ecstatic. I'm thinking, great workout. Yes, same phenomenon, different state. And I'm asking, rather than some prescribed, "This is how you need to do it." Let that, let that individuate itself in you and begin to discover, the more stillness, the more options you have.

• 1:33:34Speaker 00

  The greater the scope of context, the more options. The more options, by definition, the more freedom. Freedom is restriction of options. If you have one option, do you have a choice? If you have two options, do you have a choice? I'd like to suggest you have a dilemma. If you have three or more options, do you have a choice? Yeah. Do you have free will? Whole other discussion, because that may not be what we're perceiving as freedom, choice. There may be too many things stacked up. And you've had some wonderful minds on your show

• 1:34:19Speaker 00

  that have explored that deeply. But the more we expand that scope of context, try to remember, it's not some technique. It's just scraping the stuff away so you can perceive it. It's right there for anyone to have.

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  Real value shows up in reliability you don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone All-Season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence-inspiring wet-weather traction and a quieter ride, no matter the road. Season after season. Firestone All-Season tires. For durability you can count on, just like people count on you. Firestone, always dependable, since 1900.

• 1:35:08Speaker 03

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Or take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering. With legendary resale value, built on a reputation for quality and reliability.

• 1:35:52Speaker 03

  So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today, to a great value tomorrow. A Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:36:12André Duqum?

  The immediate release of tension when one zooms out, just zoom out.

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19André Duqum?

  And even intellectually can be contemplating the microscopic speck we are in a vast sea of galaxies is very humbling. And I appreciate the reminder you gave earlier with the importance of the dance between the two, because it can easily slip into this bypassing

• 1:36:44Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:36:44André Duqum?

  and negation of the illusion we're here to play.

• 1:36:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:36:49André Duqum?

  Right?

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  Like you're in school. Take the curriculum. What's up? You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do my math homework. I'm gonna sit here and stare out the window. Okay.

• 1:37:00André Duqum?

  But, but being an astute student in that school of life would then mean as your scope of context opens, the choices available to you increase. And otherwise, they won't even occur to you.

• 1:37:13Speaker 00

  Right. Right. That's insightful right there. If it's not occurring to you, if it's not breaking through the threshold of consciousness in subconscious, okay, it's water to the fish. I missed it. What is that? I'm seeing stuff going by. What's it going by in? What are you talking about? Water. What's water? Okay, you're, you're, you're doing this. I'm outside the little fishbowl or the stream or the river, or the occasional fish that jumps out of the water

• 1:37:56Speaker 00

  and experiences something completely different, toxic, you know, gulping for whatever it is they're trying to do, but it's not the medium of water, back into the water. And that's all we're doing. Now, notice that we've taken stillness through its paces from a way of dealing with physiological anxiety and tension to intellectual impediments removed. Great. Into emotions regulated, not, not repressed or suppressed, regulated.

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  We're, we're, we're practicing volitional state control. I don't want to be in neutral all day. I am very excited right now talking with you. You can feel it. But you'll notice what happens because I just bring it right back again. Huh, okay. If I bring it right back again and say, what are you doing? Take it back up again. I go right back up again. You felt that throughout this interview. But it's not like I snorted too much cocaine. I can't control it. I'm thrilled to do this with you. I'm trying to titrate that state, as they say,

• 1:39:24Speaker 00

  so I don't get too out of gamut with the rest of the audience and just start sounding like I'm, I'm just prattling. I'm counting on you to keep bringing me back because we're really navigating fast.

• 1:39:46André Duqum?

  So as one is navigating that, that dynamic.

• 1:39:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51André Duqum?

  There's something so much more worthwhile about living a life where you even have the capacity to truly pay attention.

• 1:40:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:40:02André Duqum?

  And I've heard you speak to this. I sometimes refer to attention as our spiritual currency, which is why we pay it.

• 1:40:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:40:09André Duqum?

  In any given moment with our life.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:40:12André Duqum?

  And you said that the greatest gift and you can give anyone is your undivided attention.

• 1:40:17Speaker 00

  Undivided, yes.

• 1:40:17André Duqum?

  And I think we've explored quite a bit the cost of not doing so and the gift of creating that capacity and that the scope of context and awareness.

• 1:40:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:40:30André Duqum?

  Now, I'd like to explore a bit about what becomes available to you from that place. We spoke a bit about status earlier and how we are under this notion of what we think we want, which has been inculcated through society, through programming, parenthood, the school system.

• 1:40:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:40:47André Duqum?

  As you get quiet, I often say, what, when you get quiet, what needs to be heard grows loud. All sorts of things just bubble up to the surface.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:40:59André Duqum?

  Insights about your work, your life, yourself, your relationships, and what you deem as valuable and the behavior that's correlated to it can drastically change.

• 1:41:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:41:10André Duqum?

  Now, I want to examine that a bit more because we talked about status as this drive and this vigilance to fit in.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:19André Duqum?

  As opposed to the status relative to the universe, which is actually at one with it.

• 1:41:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:41:24André Duqum?

  And not opposed to it and then resistance to it.

• 1:41:26Speaker 00

  Yes. Isn't that ironic? We're trying to fit in by setting ourselves apart from so we can have more status. Isn't that almost sad?

• 1:41:46André Duqum?

  Heartbreaking.

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  We're, we're trying to, to get deep connection, which we already are. We're trying to get that by pushing other people away and being special ourselves. Do you see what an act of futility that is? But it's been normalized, so we just keep doing it more. And that's the definition of insanity. It's not working, but we keep doing it, expecting it to be different. So keep going because you're really on to something there.

• 1:42:25André Duqum?

  I love, I love that. I think the, what becomes available to you and what you deem valuable or worthwhile going after, obviously, like, like we talked about, can drastically change.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40André Duqum?

  And that's an important reminder because if we want to live a life that is not at odds with reality, that's worthwhile, that is in accordance with our true nature and what we actually have to give, the U-shaped puzzle piece for the universe.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:42:57André Duqum?

  So to speak.

• 1:42:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:59André Duqum?

  Then by getting quiet, we give space for all these things to come up.

• 1:43:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03André Duqum?

  Now, in your experience, as you've lived decades of your life exploring the stillness.

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10André Duqum?

  What sorts of things come up? Give me just like an overview of.

• 1:43:15Speaker 00

  So you talked about what is important and what is behaviorally, what's correlating those two. The, the secondary work that we do after establishing stillness in the practice is values. What is important to you? That's vastly different than what are your ideals. I'm suggesting that what is actually important to you in my work with groups of people, very frequently when it's revealed what's actually important to you,

• 1:43:59Speaker 00

  it's shocking, horrifying, disappointing. I had one poor, beautiful young girl at the end of our first values workshop where we elicited values. And it's not what your ideals are. It's what's driving your behavior. When she elicited her values with a partner and she looked at what those values are based on her behavior, I asked at the end of that first two-hour session, any questions so far? Because we're just getting started. And she raised her hand. She had tears coming out of her eye. I thought, oh, good. And she said, she said, I'm an asshole. And I said, no, you're not.

• 1:44:44Speaker 00

  Now you know where you are. Because if you don't know where you are, you'll never get where you, you want to go. You've been deceiving yourself because you value feeling good about yourself more than you value the truth. You just made a shift. Because nobody in this particular course is going to continue in this course if they value feeling good about themselves ahead of knowing what the score is in terms of their own values. So the correlation between values and behavior is causal and it's isomorphic.

• 1:45:26Speaker 00

  It's just one causes the other. The question is, have you examined your values? And do you understand the relativity of these values? Do you understand that they're operating almost entirely at an unconscious level? Do you understand these values are in a hierarchy from greater to lesser importance? Do you understand then that what you value is almost not important? What's important is how much do you value it? Because that answer is always relative to some other value or values in your hierarchy.

• 1:46:09Speaker 00

  Once you get that piece, you, you have this incredible behavior predicting tool. Because once you know the values that are driving behavior, you trace the behavior back to the values. You can predict future behavior in yourself and others, and you can make decisions. Because every decision is a values-based decision. The question is, are you aware of those values or not? Do you want to know?

• 1:46:40Speaker 00

  And values drive behavior. So as reductionist as that sounds, it's actually very liberating. But when we work with values, we take the idea of right, wrong, good and bad off the table. That I'm not advocating you don't know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. But if you don't take the idea of right and wrong and good and bad off the table, no one, I certainly won't be, honest enough to accurately assess my values or anyone else's because I'm too busy trying not to be wrong or trying to be bad. It doesn't matter.

• 1:47:23Speaker 00

  It's just what you value. So there's this strange ambivalence to any value when we get into it, which makes it so wonderful to say, wow, this has been very important to me. There's nothing wrong with that. Do I want to keep that value at that level in my hierarchy? Because it is leading to this behavior that 10 minutes ago was a mystery to me. Why do I keep getting into these relationships? This doesn't make sense. It makes perfect sense now. There's, there's just a deep seated undercurrent. And the reason again, for this subconscious mind,

• 1:48:06Speaker 00

  we can't keep track of everything in conscious ram. So we create habitual behaviors. We suppress or repress stuff we can't deal with. And it's just this repository of craziness. It's amazing to me that more people aren't just complete psychopaths. I mean, it's a miracle. So the good news is, man, everybody's doing much better than you would imagine if you realize what's happening. We're dealing with this tiny little sliver of reality that we can deal with. Statistically, it's irrelevant. It's a rounding error.

• 1:48:50Speaker 00

  We're not picking up anything. We're trying to survive. We now realize I can do more than survive. So evolution takes a turn. Now are we going to just survive or are we going to try to thrive? This is where we are now. Do you think at any one of these evolutionary points in time, that some tyrannosaurs stood up and said, you know what? I, I think this big thing is, is going out of favor. I think I'm going to make myself small. No. We have that option though.

• 1:49:29André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Speaker 00

  We have the option to create what are called epigenetic factors. We do them volitionally. And there's a small but growing population out there that's taking the reins and doing just that. That's why I tend to work bottom up from the individual up. Because as that happens, you hit a certain inflection point. And you just feel it. You feel it everywhere. It's, it's magic.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Real value shows up in reliability. You don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone All Season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride, no matter the road. Season after season. Firestone All Season tires. For durability you can count on, just like people count on you. Firestone, always dependable, since 1900.

• 1:50:30Speaker 03

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• 1:51:15Speaker 03

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• 1:51:31André Duqum?

  The way you described as your scope of context expands and the boundaries of yourself start to dissolve and you get to recognize that in other people.

• 1:51:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:51:43André Duqum?

  The natural next step is typically one of service.

• 1:51:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:51:47André Duqum?

  And ethical implications don't need to be externally imposed because.

• 1:51:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. They're intrinsic.

• 1:51:54André Duqum?

  Right.

• 1:51:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:51:56André Duqum?

  And so what starts as a deconstruction of who you thought you were and the subconscious values that were driving your behavior unbeknownst to you. I think at some level, we're always aware of them.

• 1:52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09André Duqum?

  But it, it becomes then a discovery of what's most essential to you.

• 1:52:16Speaker 00

  Good for you.

• 1:52:17André Duqum?

  And values that correlate with that. I feel like intrinsically connected with contribution towards the evolution, maturation, blossoming of all life around you.

• 1:52:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:52:30André Duqum?

  Does that map? And for anyone who's listening right now that is on that journey of self-discovery, as we all are, and they start to, and they want to continue to make space for discovering what it is that I have the unique capacity to contribute towards the planet.

• 1:52:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:52:46André Duqum?

  What encouragement and insight would you, would you share with people to continue to reveal that, refine that, and then offer that?

• 1:52:55Speaker 00

  It's, it's a great question. It is one of the most courageous things that I can even imagine. To take stock of your own individuality, while at the same time, understanding your universality. This individuality has no owner's manual. There's no guidebook. It's one of a kind. The neurology that we're saddled with is analogous by nature. So it looks around and sees what it thinks it knows, and then starts mapping that onto what it doesn't know.

• 1:53:40Speaker 00

  So maybe I need to be a fireman if I want to be a service. Maybe I need to be a priest. Maybe I need to be a nurse. It's like, no, you don't. Stop that process. Quiet things down. Just feel more. Feel what it is that you're drawn to do. What do you love? What lights you up? I promise there's a correlation between that and why you're here. But be very careful with that. Because frequently it's tied into status. I do this and I get what I want from people.

• 1:54:20Speaker 00

  Instead of, I have tried for decades, dozens of times to stop drawing. Okay? I can't. Now, when I was making a living doing it, making a living doing it at one of the best places you could possibly work to make a living at it, almost ruined drawing for me forever. Because that's not what I am, that. I'm this thing over here.

• 1:54:54André Duqum?

  This is when you were at Disney.

• 1:54:55Speaker 00

  Sure. And all the studios and everything else. And I was just another one of a million people. Nothing special. So as you then let what it is that you've learned grinding like that, the grind wasn't the point. The learning was. Then you can leave that behind and understand everything. You have thought, felt, said and done is pointing to where you are, pointing to this. So there is nothing in my current life that I can remember doing, feeling, trying, that hasn't contributed to this.

• 1:55:40Speaker 00

  That's why I'm the luckiest guy on earth. I, I've got these little silly cards that I'm doing. They're just daily reminders. But if I come in under the radar with a silly little cute drawing or something and a little statement, but underneath it, there's what we're talking about. And someone can get that in, in a morning when it's like, oh God, how can I get through this? Oh, okay. Jim's version of this thing isn't, I want to be the most famous artist in the world. I want to be, you know, making cartoons for, who cares?

• 1:56:22Speaker 00

  This is my little corner of the universe. Everyone has that. Everyone. I've never met anyone who doesn't. And a lot of the work I do with clients is helping them find that.

• 1:56:37Speaker 00

  Epic story of that where a guy I met at the gym, of all places, it's like we're in the locker room and he goes, "What do you do?" And I told him, I said, "I help people get what they want." He goes, "Really?" He says, "Do you have a card?" And I said, "Well, yeah, sure." And we did that whole thing. And he shows up. He's a plumber. He's looking for a better job. He is an AA elder, lost everything because of alcohol, dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps. He's a proud Marine, lost it all.

• 1:57:22Speaker 00

  And by the way, I'm not breaching confidentiality. He said, "Go ahead and tell this story. People need to hear it." And he came in looking for a fix of that. And I kept asking him during our first session, "So what do you love? What lights you up?" He says, "I don't know. That's the problem." We talked for a while and I say, "So, so given that, what do you love? What would you do if you could do it anyways?" He said, "I don't know. I don't know." Finally, he's getting pissed. And the last fatal time, I said, "So, you know, what do you love?" And he goes, "Okay." And he spits this answer, "I want to live in the woods in Connecticut. That's what I love."

• 1:58:07Speaker 00

  And I go, "Bingo!" And he goes, "Bingo?" And I said, "Yeah, we're on our way." Cut to six months later, he's putting up his house in the land that he bought in Connecticut, happiest guy on earth. All the money he needs, the relationship he needs, everything, because he is doing something almost no one would want. It's his personal little John-shaped corner of the universe. He's a classic example, though. If I got in the way of that, I'd be trying to tell him, "Well, you know, you need to do that because you're a plumber.

• 1:58:52Speaker 00

  You need to, because you can take that." I've never met anyone who doesn't have that. They may not currently have the courage to go after it and the patience to keep doing something that's a little unpleasant so they can get a foundational, you know, structure under them, a financial whatever.

• 1:59:18André Duqum?

  What's so inspiring about that story as an analogy for everyone who's navigating, finding their, what they feel like is their purpose, their Dharma, is that, once you do find it, there's an effortless naturalist experience to it that in the Gita, they say, you know, you protect your Dharma, your Dharma protects you. And like you get what you need in that, in that way.

• 1:59:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:59:41André Duqum?

  Which is fascinating, right? Like, what is it about when we are in a living alignment with what we truly love, the universe provides abundance for? What is that?

• 1:59:51Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, again, listen to the wisdom that comes out in that question. Because you're grasping it and getting something that's deeper. There's something much bigger than this individual, and yet it's individuated. So this universe is literally saying to you all the time, when you, when you get a piece of it and go for it, "Are you sure?" And it's giving you every opportunity to bail out and go back to doing what you were doing before. It has infinite amount of time. If you say, "Yes, I'm sure",

• 2:00:32Speaker 00

  all of a sudden, it conspires to help you and weird stuff drops in your world. That's where the surrender piece comes in. And again, tension, tendere, grasping, holding. That same place in the, in the left brain is also what's trying to grasp ideas, trying to grasp concepts, same thing. Your buddy Ian McGilchrist, God love him, he has researched that down to the nanoparticle. My piece is just, how do we get there? That's the difference.

• 2:01:13Speaker 00

  Because I love what he's done. So there's something much bigger trying to help. In a way, take heart in the fact that it's not a goal, it's a process. And the process goes on forever. Don't try to be there. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not there. I'm, we're getting somewhere. If at the end of this podcast, we both sort of smugly sit back and say, "Well, we pretty much defined it, pretty much finished it. I think I'm just shoot myself because there's nothing more to..." No, it's this ongoing thing.

• 2:01:58Speaker 00

  That's why the name of your podcast is so important. All the way back to those early Greek roots. I mean, what does that even mean, to know thyself? It's not know about thyself. So yeah, you're tapping into this wholeness and understanding this wholeness isn't fooled by whatever state you're in. It isn't, it isn't delusional. It's holotropic. It's now. It's got holographic time, not linear time.

• 2:02:40Speaker 00

  It just is. And we can either fight it, and best of luck with that, and suffer, or we can let go, but in a very productive way, not a passive way. Now, I will admit, there are aspects of this that are very Western and specifically very American because of this notion of individuality. There are cultures that are all about the communists, the, we're not individuals. That's covered in this as well. But for most of the people we're talking to, there is this sense of me as an individual.

• 2:03:25Speaker 00

  Why am I doing what I'm doing? And I haven't found my great, keep, keep open. Stop looking in the same place, though, because you're probably looking over there and this thing is looming, glowing behind you. It's like, "Oh, that's what I'm supposed to be doing." And again, just a note, I don't like bringing it back to me, but the whole time I was in animation, my office was always filled with people talking like this. Even when I was directing, trying to get a project done, and here we sit,

• 2:04:08Speaker 00

  having conversations like this, have nothing to do with the film.

• 2:04:13André Duqum?

  Yeah. It's, it's fascinating to observe as you shut up and you quiet down and you get still, what naturally comes your way.

• 2:04:27Speaker 00

  Good for you.

• 2:04:28André Duqum?

  Externally and internally, you know, and that natural proclivity is like, is intelligent. It's, it's, it's there for a reason. And, you know, I, before starting this podcast, you know, these inquiries, this dialogos we're doing in the reflection, the logos is revealed and reflection and dialogue.

• 2:04:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:04:50André Duqum?

  It's something that I would do without getting paid, that it lights me up so much, that just gives me so much happiness and fulfillment. There's almost nothing else I'd rather be doing, you know, outside of maybe music or, you know, a couple of...

• 2:05:03Speaker 00

  But tell me when, not if, tell me when that music starts rounding the corner and becomes part of what you're doing here and isn't some marginalized thing because it's music, it's over here. No, it'll start to be subsumed into this bigger thing. As this grows, so it will come in. And you'll feel that. It won't be like the music you've been making. The music that I make is nothing like what I used to do when I thought I wanted to be a musician. Nothing at all. In fact, I'm praying that it doesn't go back, not literally praying,

• 2:05:44Speaker 00

  that it is in service to something infinitely greater than ego. Because so much of what music was, was egoic and I didn't know it.

• 2:05:57André Duqum?

  It's so fun to explore and witness to these different forces and inspirations and loves coming together and fitting this

• 2:06:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:06:12André Duqum?

  one of one, unique

• 2:06:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:15André Duqum?

  contribution offering.

• 2:06:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:17André Duqum?

  You know, when in regards to music, for example, it's like, who knows what is mysterious, what shape it's going to take in terms of what I'm building now, how they'll come together. And yet, it's really cool to examine the sheer variance of careers out there and how there's, there are so many people that completely made up a job that doesn't exist.

• 2:06:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:39André Duqum?

  Because it's a confluence and like, it's a conciliation of the two things

• 2:06:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:45André Duqum?

  that is so unique to them.

• 2:06:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:06:47André Duqum?

  And, and so I just, I think it's inspiring for anybody who's listening right now to know that it's, it's a bottom up phenomenon, the way that you, the fact that you don't know is, is the point. And that's almost like a better clue that you're moving in the right direction.

• 2:07:01Speaker 00

  That's exactly right. Listen to that coming out of your mouth. I mean it. That's brilliant. And no time in history has it been more opportune to be on that path. That is, I am not looking for a job. Jobs are going to be increasingly hard to find. What I am looking for is the me-shaped hole in the universe that only I fit, not the round hole, not the square hole. I fit this perfectly. No one else fits it. You think you just fall into that? You, you have to work at that for a while, but you're also

• 2:07:45Speaker 00

  listening carefully for the help. This is the beauty. It isn't a passive, the term surrender in this context has been really misunderstood. It doesn't mean put your feet up on the couch and eat bonbons. It means do your best, but before you scramble, listen with your whole being and it will come. That's a promise. And again, I'm living proof, any idiot can do this if you just practice it. Practice it. I, I don't know how to put this more

• 2:08:27Speaker 00

  succinctly, but do you remember how many hours they say it takes to master something?

• 2:08:35André Duqum?

  Typically, they say 10,000, right?

• 2:08:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I could go through the numbers with you, but I'll just cut to the chase. As of roughly this month, I've got 100,000 hours in drawing alone, just drawing. Why? Because I hate it? Because I'm trying to get status? Because I'm, no, I can't help myself. I love it. I took cadavers apart in college to learn the anatomy. I mean, it's all of that weird thing. They didn't teach that in the school I went to. I had to go

• 2:09:18Speaker 00

  find it in another school. Well, that's motivation that comes intrinsically. You've done exactly the same thing, Andre, as you put it beautifully. I would do this if I wasn't being paid. That's your first criterion. Would I do this if I wasn't being paid at all? That's why you're good at this and getting better and better and better. And what is this? You're literally drawing wisdom, not just out of somebody's brain, but out

• 2:09:56Speaker 00

  of their being. And then you're priming them with triggers from other people that you've had this experience with and conversations that cannot be a repetition of anything, one of a kind in this moment, and you're recording them. And now watch as that starts to blossom into all kinds of secondary and tertiary effects of that. But the bottom line is you are at the fulcrum of that being yourself wholly and completely. That's why I'm so proud of you.

• 2:10:34André Duqum?

  Thank you.

• 2:10:35Speaker 00

  Because you could have dropped this. When we first started that podcast, I think we had this conversation. You're going to run up against some slamming doors. Just find the other one that's opening for you and just keep going. And you did.

• 2:10:52André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:53Speaker 00

  I can't tell you how proud I am of you.

• 2:10:55André Duqum?

  Thank you, man.

• 2:10:56Speaker 00

  And you're genuinely brilliant at this.

• 2:11:00André Duqum?

  Thank you. Thank you so much, man. I, I received that and I truly feel like it's not me in so many ways, too. You know, like it's almost like, it's kind of like that choiceless choice. It's just like nothing else would be as meaningful.

• 2:11:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:11:18André Duqum?

  And I truly want to be of service. And so I try to get out of my own way as much as I can and

• 2:11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:11:25André Duqum?

  and doing what I hope is what you described in helping draw out wisdom and creating that environment and space for it. But

• 2:11:33Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:11:36André Duqum?

  I mean, it goes without being said, without being able to have this where I get to, I get to do this by virtue of someone like yourself being here, you know, being present.

• 2:11:47Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:11:49André Duqum?

  It's, it's such a gift and it makes, it makes my life so, so fulfilling. And especially when I get to have these particularly deep

• 2:11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:11:58André Duqum?

  and meaningful conversations.

• 2:11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:11:59André Duqum?

  Where in the past, you know, over the past few years, of course, you have many different types of conversations.

• 2:12:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:12:04André Duqum?

  Sometimes I've, you know, had conversations because I thought either the audience would resonate with it or that it would do well.

• 2:12:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:12:12André Duqum?

  The more I'm like, putting that aside to return back to

• 2:12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12:17André Duqum?

  what actually means the most to me and what I'm most lit up by. And

• 2:12:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:12:21André Duqum?

  and I think that's felt, and hopefully in the, in the conversation. But yeah, Jim, I mean, I know I've told you a bunch, like you're, you're, who you are as a being is very beautiful.

• 2:12:32Speaker 00

  Oh, bless your heart.

• 2:12:33André Duqum?

  The way that you show up and the way that you hold with so much compassion for somebody's fullness and the way that you really call forward and give reminders to their brilliance.

• 2:12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:45André Duqum?

  It's, it's encouraging, you know, because this path can get lonely at times and

• 2:12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12:50André Duqum?

  and, and you're a massive support in so many different ways. And the impact that you have, not that we could or even would want to quantify, is endless, you know?

• 2:13:01Speaker 00

  Bless your heart.

• 2:13:02André Duqum?

  The ripple effects from who's impacted from you just connecting with me to the conversation of the people tuning into this and

• 2:13:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:08André Duqum?

  and how it affects their family and impacts their relationships.

• 2:13:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:13:12André Duqum?

  Is, is beautiful to think about. So thank you for living

• 2:13:16Speaker 00

  Bless your heart.

• 2:13:17André Duqum?

  and being in your service and

• 2:13:18Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:13:19André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Speaker 00

  Try to remember something about being a service, too. It's, it's like the flight attendant, you know, that nobody pays attention in the beginning of the flight. In case of sudden depressurization of the cabin, put your mask on first before your dependence. We tend to fall into this thing of if we're going to commit to being of service, then that means we shouldn't take care of ourselves anymore. Remember that we got to take care of ourselves in order to be of service. That can get out of hand if we're not authentic.

• 2:13:58Speaker 00

  Trust me, you're as authentic as they come. Don't forget what makes this work. It's what you want to do. It's what you love. As soon as that finger goes in the wind, yeah, I don't really want to do this, but if they want it. And I will invoke another podcaster who's in a completely different space, but in a way not. Who is one of the most successful podcasters in history right now? Think about it.

• 2:14:38André Duqum?

  Joe?

• 2:14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:14:39André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:39Speaker 00

  Why?

• 2:14:41André Duqum?

  His

• 2:14:42Speaker 00

  What is the single criterion

• 2:14:44André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:45Speaker 00

  for any podcast he does?

• 2:14:47André Duqum?

  Sincere fascination.

• 2:14:49Speaker 00

  I want to talk to this person.

• 2:14:50André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:51Speaker 00

  He didn't care who it is.

• 2:14:52André Duqum?

  Right.

• 2:14:53Speaker 00

  It's some screwball he met on the street last night. I don't care what your history he didn't care. It was a goof for him. Anything but a goof. It's what he loves. I'm telling you, you have those same qualities, not being Joe Rogan, but those same qualities. This is what you love and it just radiates out of your podcast. Keep going. Cause there's going to be times, there'll always be times. Are you sure the universe will say? Cause 2,500, you know, people said, well, I didn't like that one at all. Did you? If you did,

• 2:15:38Speaker 00

  put it up there.

• 2:15:39André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:40Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 2:15:40André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:41Speaker 00

  And bless you for being who you are and where you are and what you're doing. This has been a joy.

• 2:15:46André Duqum?

  Yeah, so good.

• 2:15:48Speaker 00

  It really has.

• 2:15:48André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:15:49André Duqum?

  Time flies by. It's been what, two hours now? It feels like two minutes.

• 2:15:53Speaker 00

  Oh my God. I'm glad I didn't look.

• 2:15:57André Duqum?

  Oh, man. It's, it's been fun swimming in these waters.

• 2:16:02Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you. And thank you.

• 2:16:04André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:05Speaker 00

  Thank you for being here and putting up with this nonsense. I mean it. Thank you.

• 2:16:10André Duqum?

  Do you have, if you had 60 seconds ish to share one final message with humanity, what, what feels alive for you?

• 2:16:19Speaker 00

  There's never been a better opportunity and it has never been more important for each and every one of us to quiet down enough, remember who we actually are and bring it with everything you got. Even if that means I'm, I'm not even sure what this is. That lack of, of sureness is going to resonate with other people who aren't so sure either. But I kept going anyway. And then the flip side of that, the fastest way to stop learning

• 2:17:01Speaker 00

  is say, I know. So keep that balance. I don't know. I'm wide open. I'd like to know. And not knowing frequently feels like falling. And we humans hate that. Don't be fooled. You're on a wet rock. You know, falling goes away the minute you just leave planet Earth. Well, that scope of context will bring you right home. That is not belonging to some huge club. That is being you, universally you. And there's an infinite number of ways

• 2:17:42Speaker 00

  for that to manifest. Trust me. Walk into a mini mart, the universe is becoming whole. Okay?

• 2:17:55André Duqum?

  So grateful for you, Jim.

• 2:17:56Speaker 00

  Right back at you.

• 2:17:58André Duqum?

  Thank you. And everybody who's tuned into this episode of the Know They Self Podcast, thank you for coming on this journey with us too. And until next time, be well.