E171 - 18 Insights to Awaken Your Mind, Heal Your Heart, and Remember Your Soul (Compilation)

In this special compilation episode, we explore the deeper dimensions of human consciousness. Featuring insights from Deepak Chopra, Tim Ferriss, Sadghuru, Dr. Lisa Miller, and others, this episode is a journey inward — from sensing what cannot be seen, to feeling what we’ve long avoided, to awakening to what we truly are beyond all stories. Through wisdom, science, and lived experience, we discover that the next evolution of humanity isn’t about becoming more — it’s about remembering the awareness that’s already here. 20% off Pique Life Tea: https://www.piquelife.com/knowthyself Get 15% off Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off! Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:12 Dr. Tara Swart - Beyond the 5 Senses: 34 Hidden Abilities 09:36 Dr. K - Reality of Intuition and Cultivating It 13:12 Deepak Chopra - Awakening to Your True Nature 15:13 Dr. Iain McGilchrist - Paying Attention To Access The Realm Beyond 21:25 Ad - Pique Life 23:05 Dr. Sue Morter - Transcending and Integrating the 5 Senses 26:13 Zach Bush - Remembering Our Innate Intelligence 30:08 Dr. Lisa Miller - Becoming a Spiritual Parent 39:29 Michael Beckwith - Divine Intelligence + The Power of Being Alone 41:55 Ad - BiOptimizers 43:17 Dr. Sue Morter - Healing the Emotional Body (And Feeling it Fully) 48:10 Tim Ferriss - Shutting Down Sensitivity Because of Trauma 56:03 Rainn Wilson - Purpose of Pain and Suffering on Our Path 1:02:04 Dr. K - The Difference Between Safety and Comfort 1:04:37 John Vervaeke - Self-Deception, Cultivating Wisdom and Find Meaning 1:17:05 Pete Holmes - Balancing Being Spiritual and Being Human 1:19:24 Dr. John Demartini - Setbacks Are Not in the Way… They’re ON the Way 1:24:24 Yung Pueblo - Learning to Love Better: From Arguments to Allowing 1:29:10 Joe Hudson - Best Way to Gain Emotional Awareness 1:32:00 Peter Crone - Freedom is Available Here and Now 1:38:44 Sadhguru - Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously ___________ Watch the Full Episodes Dr. Tara Swart: https://youtu.be/exAAKSeHP9E Dr. K: https://youtu.be/zj40FT631P4 Deepak Chopra: https://youtu.be/ZhIQ5bzv-0w Dr. Iain McGilchrist: https://youtu.be/LZ5C11mlTH4 Dr. Sue Morter: https://youtu.be/p0TWCSEPl3A Zach Bush: https://youtu.be/3q0He3UOwVI Dr. Lisa Miller: https://youtu.be/HTppdV4Mnt4 Michael Beckwith: https://youtu.be/r3wrUmE1L3w Tim Ferriss: https://youtu.be/NxmUCGuapNw Rainn Wilson: https://youtu.be/t_LvB6W4NmE John Vervaeke: https://youtu.be/NOwnb6CkFlQ Pete Holmes: https://youtu.be/PSPMP7DPEqM Dr. John Demartini: https://youtu.be/dVR01alAe8o Yung Pueblo: https://youtu.be/bwom9Y6ybcg Joe Hudson: https://youtu.be/dhlupWyTNYM Peter Crone: https://youtu.be/VCi93m9lloM Sadhguru: https://youtu.be/FMoXXb-wKE8 Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You can like walk into a room and immediately notice there's tension in the air. That's an intuition. If I ask you to explain why you believe that, you wouldn't be able to tell me, but it will be true.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  You actually have this innate intelligence that knows exactly what you need. There's something to that.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  The brain is actually filtering down the capability of the mind and consciousness so that we can exist in this material plane.

• 0:25Speaker 03

  Let go of every concept, every perception that you'll ever be able to know reality intellectually. Let go of that idea.

• 0:36Speaker 04

  You start to see these really beautiful things that are far more spectacular than the sum of its parts.

• 0:42Speaker 05

  Instead of being heaven and earth, it's like heaven, earth. It's like there's only one thing happening here, and it's good, and it's you.

• 0:50Speaker 06

  You know, there's this intelligence of love just flowing through us if we allow it to take place, you know?

• 0:57Speaker 07

  There is a far more profound force of life guiding us that brings

• 1:02Speaker 07

  an adventure that is so beyond our imagination.

• 1:11André Duqum?

  To start off, how many human senses do we have?

• 1:15Speaker 02

  What a leading question. So I think most people know of five. And then there is this phrase, the sixth sense. And sometimes people think that's intuition. But interestingly, a lot of people actually think it's balance. So I saw a scientific journal paper that said, humans may have up to 22 to 33 senses. And that started me doing a full literature review. And I've ended up creating a table of 34 senses. Now, some of them are non-conscious, things like the pH of your blood. But it still speaks to the fact that we have so many more senses than most people realize. And if we're not even conscious of them, then we're not actively tapping into them.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Something I think is also quite interesting is some of the senses that animals have that we don't have, like echolocation or just superior sense of smell in dogs and cats. And dogs and cats can actually even smell impending death. So in care homes, they often go and sit by people who are about to die. And this actually makes sense scientifically because when you're dying, cells die off in a certain order and that releases a certain smell and dogs and cats are sensitive to that. There was a famous nurse who actually smelt her husband's Parkinson's disease years before he was diagnosed. And that has been used to create a chemical swab test to help diagnose Parkinson's disease earlier. So

• 2:43Speaker 02

  basically, some humans have, you know, a superior sense of certain senses. Some animals have senses that we don't have. I just think it opens up a very interesting, you know, sort of curiosity about what more we're capable of.

• 2:59André Duqum?

  Yeah, it also really invites the inquiry around what are the potential latent faculties? You know, what's potentially lying dormant within our DNA in a culture and society that's we're so prevalently like disconnected from our body and our, the sensitivity of our senses? Just, it's interesting to see what could still be there yet to discover. Now, when you say up to 34, could you like walk us through maybe what a few of those might be? Because it seems like we got five senses at first glance.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So some of the other ones are balance, which I mentioned is equilibriocception. The fact that you can close your eyes and touch your nose without having vision relies on something called proprioception, which is how you know where your joints and limbs are in space when you can't see them. There are obviously

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Appetite and waist senses, stomach fullness, bladder fullness. The thirty four can be separated into introceptive and extroceptive. So ones where the stimulus comes from outside and ones where it's things going on inside the body, which you're less usually conscious of. I think one that's really important, really interesting is chronosception, which is the passing of time. And there's a subjective element to this, and the ancient Greeks knew this because they have two different words, chronos and kyros. And one's the objective passing of time, like the twenty four hour clock and the light dark circle. And one is your sense of, oh, it feels like, you know, like we just saw each other yesterday kind of thing.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Or, you know, I may feel like that, you may say, it feels like it was years ago. So that's the subjective part.

• 4:43André Duqum?

  It's fascinating because it's been said in so many different ways that perception is reality, right? And the way that our senses perceive reality becomes reality to us in so many ways. And you spoke to, you know, bats with echolocation, dolphins with sonar, and all the different ways in which different species and different animals have the capacity and cultivated the ability to navigate their own reality.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:11André Duqum?

  It also makes me think of, I believe David Eagleman's work doing, being able to train humans to detect true north. And so, yeah, so I believe I was talking with Annika Harris on this podcast about some of that research. And they were able to significantly statistically show how they, by wearing this belt, training for a while, after a few weeks, we as humans could like detect where true north is with just our body, which is fascinating. So it's like, just, it's interesting to see what is yet to be discovered in that realm.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Exactly, because I was just about to say, another sense that we don't have, but maybe I'm wrong, is magneto-reception, which is how migrating birds know where to, you know, how to navigate these long distances. So, yeah, who knows?

• 5:56André Duqum?

  And then we have all of these a bit more hard to empirically verify subjective experiences within our consciousness of like synesthesia, where a lot of artists or creatives have this phenomenon. So what is synesthesia? And then we can maybe explore a bit more of these interesting, kind of slightly esoteric ones.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, you've actually just reminded me that I wrote about synesthesia in the book. And that's when two different senses kind of become confused or overlapping. So like you can taste music or you can smell color. So it's all, it's just a really strange combination. So again, the fact that that can happen in some human brains just leaves it very open to what else can change.

• 6:43André Duqum?

  Take me down the deepest part of the rabbit hole. Like where, what do you really think is possible within human consciousness? And I'm not going to ask you to verify or validate it with science because I understand that a lot largely it can't be. But yeah, is there anything that you think is, that you'd like to share at the depths of that?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think these abilities which we call the clairs. So clear audience, clear sentience, clear cognizance and clairvoyance. And most people would have heard of clairvoyance. And that's either being able to see the future or see something that's happening like in a geographically very remote location that you shouldn't be able to know about. Clear audience is, is hearing things. And so knowing, you know, having an intuitive sense about something because you hear it. And that's possibly what's going on when I say I experience thoughts in my head that I don't think are my own. I'm not hearing a voice outside of my head like people do in schizophrenia. But I asked somebody else who says he's clear audiient.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  And he said, I experienced it like a, a voice inside my head. And clear cognizance is just a deep sense of knowing. And probably what I'm kind of getting at when I say trust your instincts. And clear sentience is a feeling of knowing in your physical body. So I think that these four clairs that I've mentioned are potentially things that humans are currently capable of, but don't know if they are or how to use. And, you know, Dr. Bruce Grayson, who studies near death experiences, he said something really interesting, which was that. Potentially, the brain is actually filtering down the capability of the mind and consciousness so that we can exist in this material plane.

• 8:29André Duqum?

  Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception also is famous for speaking of the brain as a reduction valve. The sheer amount of stimulus and information that is around us would be completely overwhelming if it wasn't for the narrow aperture. It's like looking through life through a straw. Like, that's our experience of life relative to the amount of information that's surrounding us. So it makes sense. And I think we're living at a time, especially in the next few years, like where these studies, these research unleash AGI into the picture what's going to be possible and discovering what it means to be human fundamentally. Because it, just the perception shift,

• 9:13André Duqum?

  when it opens the door up for people a little bit, that life is so much more mystical than we perceive. It allows us to look at life with a sense of awe and wonder again, you know? And not even just wishful thinking or hopeful thinking, but that, no, like, this life, like, there's a vast intelligence that we are a part of and can tap into. That is a much more exciting place to live life from. From the materialist view, you could say, when you say you're making a decision from intuition, it's based off of pattern recognition that's subperceptual, perhaps. But there is an alternative, kind of deeper, energetic, slightly more woo explanation of intuition in third eye, or third eye and Agna Chakra cultivation.

• 9:58André Duqum?

  And so how do you think about the cultivation of intuition and its ability to direct our life in a beneficial path?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Beautiful question. So I don't think it's either or. So I think there are neuroscience mechanisms of intuition. I think this is a failure of language. So I'd say there's two types of intuition. There's the neuroscience intuition and there's the spiritual intuition. I don't think they're qualitatively the same. I think they're quite different. So if we look at our brain, our brain processes a ton of information and then floats things to our conscious awareness in a illogical form. So you can like walk into a room and immediately notice there's tension in the air. That's an intuition. If I ask you to explain why you believe that, you wouldn't be able to tell me, but it will be true. That's because the second you walk into a room, there's all kinds of auditory processing,

• 10:48Speaker 00

  visual processing, there's all kinds of like, you know, patterns in your, in your brain that trigger. So that's one kind of intuition. There's another kind of intuition, what I think we call intuition, that is transcendental knowledge. That's what I would call it. So intuition, fine, comes from the brain, but transcendental knowledge, which is frequently what people call intuition. And the reason they say that is knowledge that you have that you have no business of having. That's how I would define it. So one is like, what are all the patterns that your brain has learned that is triggering? That is giving you an idea of what is going on? And even qualitatively, it feels quite different. So I would call intuition that is transcendental and knowing. So like, if you go, and people know this, right?

• 11:30Speaker 00

  So like, you will sometimes know something is like, true. It's not an intuition. It's like, is this your gut? So sometimes I'll have patients, you know, I, I once had a patient who came in and said, you know, like, I, I have this like, really bad feeling that something is gonna happen. And then I was like, I, I, so we do a lot of spiritual work too. And so I asked her, I was like, okay, so like, is something bad gonna happen to your kids? Like, do you know something is gonna bad? Because if you know something bad is gonna happen, then we have to go down a different route. But is this like, do you know this is gonna happen? Or you're like worried? And she's like, oh no, it's not gonna happen. I'm worried. And even the way she sort of says it, she's like, oh no, it's like not a like a, it's not like a premonition of the future. And so then, then we did the psychiatry instead of the spirituality, but.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  And so there's a huge qualitative difference between the gut and transcendental knowledge. And this is also where a lot of people confuse the two because they've heard of transcendental knowledge, they experience it, they're experiencing good gut intuition, and then they think that those two are the same. And your gut can be right, but I would call the transcendental knowledge, I call it a knowing.

• 12:35André Duqum?

  How does one cultivate that in their life?

• 12:38Speaker 00

  So I think Agnichukka practice is at the top of the list. I think they've helped him become a way better psychiatrist because sometimes when a patient walks in, like I just have a sense of what's going on with them. Is that my training or is that the spiritual practice? I personally believe it's the spiritual practice because even though I trained at Harvard, so did the other 50 psychiatrists I know who trained there, but they're not able to do what I'm able to do. And I sometimes meet people on the spiritual path who can do that. I think it's qualitatively different. So third eye practices, Thrahtika is really good. That's a great place to start.

• 13:12Speaker 09

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• 13:40André Duqum?

  Since we were young, we have been put into these conceptual boxes of understanding the world, right? And even to ourself of strongly identifying with our form, with our thoughts, our emotions, and our body. What do you see as the most direct path to awakening to who you are beyond that?

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Let go of every concept and every perception as a window to reality. Every concept, every perception, let go of that idea that you'll ever be able to know reality intellectually, or through any methodology, or through any religion, or through any map. Let go of that idea, number one. Number two.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Embrace presence. See, when you embrace presence, I'm not talking with the present moment. Presence is bringing awareness to whatever is. Now, because awareness is infinite, no form, right? Infinite, then the finite experience is actually dependent on the infinite. So the infinite is present in every finite experience. Once you realize that, then God is not difficult to find. God is impossible to avoid. There's nowhere that you, no experience that is possible without the infinite in the background.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  No experience. Everything you see, the perception is made possible because the infinite, incomprehensible, borderless, fundamental, irreducible, spaceless, timeless, unimaginable is present in that consciousness. So then God is not difficult to find, impossible to avoid.

• 15:38André Duqum?

  I love that.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  That's intoxication.

• 15:40André Duqum?

  Yeah. Have you ever gone people watching? Have you ever just sat somewhere and watched people go about their life? Quite a lot, yes, yes. I'm curious because in the deeper studying of the contemplative practices, you have the ability to train your faculty of attention and the kind of quality of attention you pay. Many different practices, one could be staring at a candle and being able to, which seems like an impossible task at first, maintain 20 seconds of concentration, let alone 10 seconds, without distracted thought. And it can be a cultivated practice to where the penetrative nature of your attention

• 16:22André Duqum?

  and awareness can glean you insights about that to which you're paying attention to. And that can be taken from a candle flame to all of life around us, especially other people. And it's fascinating, to the degree in which we pay attention, what comes to mind? What comes into our awareness when we pay attention in a certain way? Where you might just see people walking about. In their daily life, in their hustle bustle and struggles, to the deeper things that you can attend to and pay attention, become aware of within their experience, their emotional landscape, things that you become much more sensitive and receptive to, that you just weren't previously aware of. And I find that fascinating because

• 17:06André Duqum?

  in many ways, I've seen attention as our spiritual currency, if you will. Like, that's why we pay it. We pay attention. And it's what we do with our life in any given moment. And so I just find it so important to focus on this a bit more because attention is an area of life and an aspect of being human that is the faculty in which we engage with and derive meaning through life. And I'm just curious if anything comes to mind as, yeah, how you pay attention changes what you become aware of and therefore can also change how you interact with

• 17:50André Duqum?

  and steward life around you in a sense.

• 17:54Speaker 10

  It is a sense in which attention, well, I say it is a moral act because it has moral consequences in how much or what you see in a person. And it's been compared to love by two French philosophers, Simone Weil and Louis Lavelle, that attention is the pure attention that you pay to another, is the kind of love that you give that person. And in it, that other person can become more revealed. They can become more themselves.

• 18:39Speaker 10

  And I think there are people also who have practiced very much what you describe, which, alas, I haven't over a long period, and who are therefore able to see things in people very clearly, what is going on for a certain person very well. It's a kind of psychic phenomenon, I suppose, and I don't claim to have it. But I do know people who can exercise it. And see their way into the nature of of things. This was, in a way, what the poet Wordsworth did. He was much mocked for paying attention to very simple, ordinary things, to a small tree,

• 19:23Speaker 10

  not the big ones, or a lump of rock in the middle of mountains. But focusing on these things for a while, as well as, of course, all all the rest of it, and seeing into them. You see, one of the things I think is that we may feel that it's important to get to know a realm that is conceived of as beyond the one we inhabit. And that may well be real, I believe it is real. But I think the mistake is to think that we would get to find it by turning our backs on the realm that we find ourselves in. Instead, I think one sees deeply through the realm that one is in.

• 20:05Speaker 10

  So we don't find the infinite by turning our backs on the finite, but by looking more deeply into the finite. And and we

• 20:18Speaker 10

  we, in other words, treat the world as having what I call translucency. And it's not quite the same as transparency, at least not in the way I use it. So transparency would just be that I was able to see through a landscape or see through you and see something else beyond. But very importantly, I also see you and the landscape as well as what is beyond. And it's rather like looking at a painting, and your eye can stop on the surface of the painting, or it can go through the painting, not in such a way that you don't see the painting. In fact, you see the painting more rarely than ever, but you are there by granted access

• 21:03Speaker 10

  to something that, in one sense, lies through and beyond that painting. Does that make any sense?

• 21:09André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of how, why is there a felt experience that music and poetry seem to get us at what something truly is in its essence, other than prose or typical language, right? Yes. And it also just, yeah, it makes me think of the ability to pay attention and become aware of the context in which something arises. Hmm. What makes this room useful is really the empty space in between all the things, right? Yeah. And so it's like the awareness of the nuances, the space for the silence in between the notes of a song that make it what it is. Yes. Hey, guys.

• 21:54André Duqum?

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• 23:22André Duqum?

  Go to peaklife.com/knowtheyself to grab yours now. That's peaklife.com/knowtheyself. Thank you, Peak, for sponsoring the show. Back to the show. I suppose when you think about how enchanting our five sensory experiences that plugs us into this reality, which is incredible and amazing and so helpful, but it also can be very illusory if we don't also turn the gaze inwards. What do you think about that kind of dichotomy?

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Well, it is, it's this both and, right? It's like, when we start to recognize what you're describing, and we want to, I know for me, 25 years ago, when I first started meditating and coming into another realm, and then these exalted experiences started happening, multidimensional, you know, transcendental experiences that were occurring, I immediately wanted to just meditate all the time. I just like, let this world go. Let me drop into this beautiful space that I was discovering, and the realms that it had to offer. And huge openings were happening that were blowing my circuits that my five senses were used to operating on. So I had no choice. I couldn't use them for a while.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  There were times that I couldn't get out of bed because the vibration was so intense and so blissful and so beautiful. I didn't want to get out of bed. But when I did have to go back to the clinic and be, you know, working with patients and managing life in those terms, I had to be very selective in how I, you know, went about doing that in ways that were comforting to the system that was trying to adapt to this. What I came to know was that, you know, the embodiment of what I was experiencing in these transcendental states was only made possible when I would engage in the outer world to its most refined capacity.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  I could sit and meditate and enjoy all sorts of realms. And when it comes time to get out into the world, you know, it's, we have to infuse that light or that energy into the circuits that we're used to running on with our five senses. And as a byproduct, those five senses get upleveled, and we become enhanced in a totally different way. And When someone is able to blend both sets of circuits into one, we start to move as the bridge between the worlds, recognizing that there's really only one world here. We just were leaving half of it out, more than half of it out, but a portion of it out

• 26:02Speaker 05

  as we were trained to operate on our five senses because our parents and their parents and their parents were doing the same. So the idea of two worlds becoming one is simply awakening to the fact that we were limiting and marginalizing the greater part of who we are. So by bringing them together, it is, instead of being heaven and earth, it's like heaven-earth. It's like there's only one thing happening here, and it's good, and it's you, and it's unfolding. And so let's embrace the wholeness of our being and let that be true and watch what happens in our lives. So they change dramatically.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  When you get, you know, ten birds in a flock, they line up in a V, and they do a two-dimensional structure, but it's always structured. And that one in front peels off and joins the back, and they move up. And so they're sharing the leadership in a very simple geometry. But you put 10,000 birds together, they're now not just doing a multi-dimensional shape. That thing is in motion. And so murmuration is that extraordinary phenomenon where 10,000 will start to express sacred geometries at the scales of a kilometer of stacked birds in motion. And they create these super-complex structures of sacred geometry in swirling motion. And so they'll create double helices.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  They'll create, you know, icosahedrons and all of this in motion. And so that intelligence is something that was called quorum sensing at the biologic level. And so when you get enough diversity or enough inputs into a single space, You start to see these really beautiful things that are far more spectacular than the sum of its parts. And it's such a good example of the stacking geometries of entropy. You know, entropy is the movement towards order from chaos. And so it's this true synergy where there's one plus one equals four, not two, you know? And this is where I think we have fundamentally broken our contribution, you know, moving

• 28:05Speaker 04

  from contributor back to consumer in our human systems as we break that pot, those interrelationships of tens of thousands, and we turn it into a nuclear family. And now you're a husband, you're a wife, and there's your children, there's your white picket fence. Everything inside this fence is yours, everything outside of it is not yours. And so now you've isolated yourself from the 99.999% of nature, that is the Mother Earth, that was intending to be your mother in the first place. And in that concept of ownership, as a solution to scarcity, we create more scarcity. And so the murmuration of a bird is showing us if we would just let go of the belief that we're not protected and that nature's against us and we need to consume so that

• 28:45Speaker 04

  there's enough, letting go of that and increasing the number of connections, we return perhaps at the local level to a village motto. But we're starting to have the technologies at our fingertips that are going to remind us of what it feels like to be wholly connected to the whole organism of humanity. And so cell phones and, you know, the tech world, Zoom, whatever it is, is, is leading us back to this possibility that there's more beauty with more connection. And right now we're relying on very low vibration technology, 5G networks, compared to what happens in a human cell is like we haven't even reached kindergarten. The technology inside of a human body is so far beyond our comprehension.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  And so when we all have, you know, this moment of amazement, when a man comes along and says, "I've filled a steel tube with solid rocket fuel and I lit it on fire and it shot up into the air and then it fell back on earth." And everybody's like, "Oh, my God, that's so genius. That's, we should put billions of dollars into that project." Meanwhile, there's a woman that is undernourished in the squad of villages of Philippines, who creates a silent space inside of her called a womb. She surrenders that to the divine. She blinds herself to the very process that's going to unfold within her and with progesterone, so that her immune system itself can't even see what's about to unfold, fully surrendering that to creator.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  And this creative force takes a single human cell and turns it into 70 trillion human cells that self-organize into a body of a child that nine months later somehow emerges from her body, quantum entangled with a identity that has been here since the beginning of time. And there's no headlines. It's unbelievable. Like, what the heck are we doing? We have failed to appreciate the miracle of life, and for that, we have so desecrated that life.

• 30:37Speaker 09

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 31:06Speaker 07

  Learning to take synchronicity as real information, learning that mystical experiences are the most profound, valid form of knowing, allowed us to find our child on the other side of the earth. My husband and I, for five years, wanted to become parents. And being a scientist, I went to the best in vitro doctors in the whole country. And this chase through what I call achieving awareness tactics, strategy, research, was not leading us to becoming parents. Not becoming a parent was profoundly depressing. But in our suffering, in the depth of the existential probe brought by suffering, what

• 31:47Speaker 07

  I've come to see actually as a developmental depression, I started to notice glimmers of love, glimmers of guidance, coming through.

• 31:58Speaker 07

  People I'd never met before on the bus. This one fellow sat down next to me on the bus and said, "Hey, lady," quite unusual, man. "You look like just that type of lady that would go all around the world, adopting kids." Big smile, and then he got off at the next stop. That gentleman had boarded and exited the bus for one stop. And he was a fully able man. Who rides a bus for one stop?

• 32:25Speaker 07

  The day after, perhaps the most excruciating synchronicities are not always what we want to hear. Synchronicities are not always a friend of the ego. A synchronicity doesn't say you get what you want. It announces where you're going.

• 32:44Speaker 07

  Perhaps the most painful synchronicity was when I came home after in vitro from the team who had invented in vitro. And there, as I walked towards our front door on the front step, was a little smudge. I looked closely. It was a dead duck embryo. So clearly, I'm coming from an in vitro, and there's a dead duck embryo on my doorstep. What else could that mean? Far too improbable as to have happened by chance. And my heart sank. And I knew this in vitro would not hold, and I was not, this time, going to be a mother. Very depressing. And so I went right from the front step to my office, fell asleep on the couch and took a nap. Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  I heard tapping at my door, a sound I'd never heard before. I go up to the glass door, open it up. And there's the mama duck, who's brought me a worm.

• 33:42Speaker 07

  She lost her baby, and she knew I lost mine. Two little dead embryos. What does that mean? That all of life is part of the synchronistic symphony? This trail angel that day was mama duck. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it said, "You are loved, you are not alone, and you're on the path." Synchronicities continued lining our journey. The guy on the bus, the duck, many. In my heart, something was softening. And I sensed that parenthood was not necessarily a child who looked like me or had our personality, but that parenthood was something far more profound. That spiritual parenting was about profound love and commitment. That there was a child out there for us,

• 34:27Speaker 07

  was the message coming through. My husband and I traveled to a woman, a clergy person's daughter, who had united 800 children with their parents. And she leaned forward and she said, "What do you want in a child?" And I said, "Oh, well, I don't care if it's a boy or a girl. I certainly don't care what race or ethnicity the child is. Just a child who can love." And my husband leaned forward and said, "Yeah, all that, but kind of a girl." And this journey, the more the synchronicities directed us, the more we got the picture that there was a child out there for us. And not as we'd planned, not as a quick and easy conception, even though we were healthy

• 35:11Speaker 07

  and even though there was no medical reason we were not conceiving, but there was a child out there for us. I started having mystical experiences. One night, I sat up in bed. Time and space opened up. And a very profound presence, not scary, but quite profound and loving. And the voice said, "If you were pregnant now, would you adopt?" And I said, "Truthfully, in my heart, you don't lie to a presence like this." No, no, I wouldn't. And there was not a sense of judgment. There was not a sense of punishment, but simply that this, for now, is as it is. And time and space closed back up.

• 35:53Speaker 07

  We continued on our journey, more synchronicities, more guidance. And the presence came back a second time. The presence returned. Exact same experience. I sat up in bed in the middle of the night. Time and space opened up. And a very sacred, very serious and profound presence came and said, "If you were pregnant now, would you adopt?" And I knew in my heart, I said, "I'm getting closer." I was aware that there was some form of ego death, some sort of muting of this radical control and achieving awareness, that I was moving out of an illusion of control. But I'm not there yet, no. Again, not judgmental. It is as it is. Time and space closed.

• 36:34Speaker 07

  And each time I look over and my sweet husband's out cold, totally asleep. So then, received from my big cousin Jane a call, "I have some dear friends in the Lakota community, and they have allowed me to invite you to a healing ceremony. I know you're looking for your child. I think you should come to the healing ceremony." It felt so aligned and so true. So I canceled all my meetings at Columbia and my class, hopped on a plane and flew out to South Dakota to participate with much gratitude in the Lakota healing ceremony. In the Anepi that night, each woman was invited to share why she had come.

• 37:17Speaker 07

  Big Jane, it was most welcome, spoke for me. She said, "This is my cousin, and she has come looking for her child. I'm wondering if we could help her." And for the first time, I felt I was in the right place. After five years of in vitro offices, medical offices, I knew I was in the right place. The women in the Anepi looked me in the eye. They understood. And I said, mm, yes, we can help you. The medicine man's wife then led us through ceremony and we sent the prayer. That night, after five years, a call came to my machine back home in New York. We have found the Miller's child.

• 38:01Speaker 07

  From the other side of the world, our son was found. The same night, clearly, far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. It was a form of sacred healing. It was a form of deep consciousness, moving to find our boy.

• 38:16Speaker 11

  So beautiful.

• 38:17Speaker 07

  Our beautiful boy. Now, if I had ignored the synchronicity, he'd still be in an orphanage. Actually, right now, he would have been adopted into the army, where hundreds of thousands of boys have been killed. We said yes to the synchronicities. Thank you, God. Thank you, Source, guiding Source of all life. What appeared as a synchronicity was showing us direction to our child. We must say yes to this guidance, and we must know it is real. Ah, the presence came back a third time. I got home, a video came. There he was, our spiritual child. I fell in love. I felt a soaring euphoric love. The second I saw this little boy on video with his radiance, he seemed to glow.

• 39:02Speaker 07

  And that night that I'd seen him in video, I went to bed and woke up to the presence. The presence said, if you were pregnant now, would you adopt? And I said, absolutely, resolutely. This is our spiritual son. That very night, we conceived his spiritual twin, who was my husband's kind of a girl.

• 39:38André Duqum?

  You can't write it better than that.

• 39:40Speaker 07

  Because it's written by source, by God.

• 39:43André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 07

  And it was the path to becoming parents of spiritual twins. And it was also the path of shedding illusions of radical control that we somehow get pregnant or make life. Just because you run an in vitro and put all the pieces together doesn't mean that we humans have made life. The breath of life is divine. It's a gift. We can't force it. And the edges, therefore, of life and death are where we realize that we do not have radical control. Materialism is a very incomplete vision of the world. And there's a far more, there is a far more profound force of life guiding us that brings an adventure that is so beyond our imagination.

• 40:27Speaker 06

  I know we're surrounded by divine intelligence, not divine intellect, but divine intelligence. And it uses the intellect, uses the physical body, uses the mind to weave through whatever's going on to reveal a healing, a destiny, a slam dunk, a poem. I was reading about a doctor who had to do a very intricate surgery on an infant's heart. And he said he prayed. The procedure took hours, but he said for him was like five minutes. And they were patting him down with that sweat. But he said he felt something on his hand guiding him. And he was able to do this surgery.

• 41:10Speaker 06

  So whether it's that or a slam dunk, you know, there's this intelligence of love just flowing through us if we allow it to take place, you know?

• 41:19André Duqum?

  It feels like a real litmus test and yardstick for seeing where our own growth is in life and our own development is how we feel with ourself when we're alone.

• 41:28Speaker 06

  Oh, I love this.

• 41:31André Duqum?

  Man, even in podcasting, it's easy to come on here and put on a show for an hour or two. You know, it's easy for us to go to work, maybe even and put on a face, you know, of different things. We cannot lie to ourselves for extended periods of times, you know, it's going to show up in distorted energy in so many different ways. So what comes to mind when you think about that?

• 41:52Speaker 06

  I have said over the period of time that if you're not in love with yourself when you're by yourself, you're going to be hell with other people because you're going to become an emotional stalker. You're going to try to make that other person make you happy. So you have to learn how to be alone, not lonely, but you have to learn how to be alone and actually love this person and actually self-reflect even on the areas that you don't like, to actually look at them square in the face, embrace it and be willing for that energy to change. So you have to like yourself with you by yourself or you're not going to like yourself in a relationship because you'll manipulate

• 42:33Speaker 06

  that relationship in some kind of way to make yourself feel better. But at the end of the day, if you don't like yourself when you're by yourself, it's going to be a problem in the world. So that's inner work. So it's a wise thing to spend a period of time by yourself. I love my alone time. I love it.

• 42:55André Duqum?

  A quick share. Did you know that there is one phase of sleep that almost everyone fails to get enough of? And this one phase of sleep is responsible for most of your body's daily rejuvenation. I'm talking about deep sleep. Not getting enough of it adversely affects cravings, metabolism, willpower, premature aging, and more. A big reason we don't get enough deep sleep is because over 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium. Magnesium increases GABA, which encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep. When I first tried supplementing with magnesium, I noticed immediately, like within one night, how deep and uninterrupted my sleep was, and I've been supplementing with it ever since. But not all magnesium is created equally. I personally have been using and loving and

• 43:40André Duqum?

  Recommending the one from Bioptimizers. Unlike other supplements that might be giving you one to two forms of magnesium, magnesium breakthrough contains all seven forms of magnesium, designed to help you calm your mind, help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed. Since I first tried it, I keep gifting it to friends and family because I know how much of a difference it can make. If you'd like to try them out, for an exclusive offer, go to bioptimizers.com/knowthyself and use promo code knowthyself to save 15% at checkout. Link in description as always. I hope you enjoy. Sleep deeply and back to the show. There is that saying, "Our job is not to feel good, but to get good at feeling." And I'm just curious how you think about the emotional body and emotions

• 44:25André Duqum?

  and how they lead to physiological dysfunction? And how there's parts of us that are just yearning to be felt fully? Because I've had many friends who have had psoriasis or a rash or some sort of persistent thing happening with their body. And they did an emotional release session or they fully felt something and then instantly, within overnight or a couple of days, it completely goes away, which just seems like a miracle, but it's just how things function. And so, any other thoughts of how emotions tie into that process?

• 45:00Speaker 05

  Absolutely. This feeling code is about allowing people to move from emotional states to feeling states. Think of it like we're designed to be in this feeling state. We're supposed to be present with self constantly, all of it. We were supposed to be raised in a culture that was doing that and the indigenous peoples were much more inclined to this. And we've just been carried away for many reasons outside of that system, of that flow. And so what happens when we're not using that bandwidth of energies that is the emotional body? When we're not using it the way that it was meant to be used,

• 45:44Speaker 05

  which is the feeling body? If we're not using it as a feeling body and sensing and perceiving all parts of self and embracing them and noticing when we start to withdraw, when we're, you know, just a toddler, that we're in environments that teach us to not withdraw, but to just open your heart and lean right back into that and keep going. If we're not taught to do that, we shut down the system. We sort of regulate it down into a lower vibrational expression of itself. And so this feeling body in a lower vibrational expression of itself comes out as emotion. It's like a default system. So that if I'm not paying attention to the felt sense of truth as it's moving through me, and I shut it down,

• 46:28Speaker 05

  I'm going to have an emotional reaction. And if I gather enough of those emotional reactions, I'll eventually have an emotional outburst or breakdown. And in the midst of the emotional outburst or breakdown, I have a possibility of dropping back into that deep sense of feeling that will actually be the healer. And so by default, we end up having these emotional breakdowns or what have you that bring us into our heart, buckle us over, send us, you know, to the bed or to, you know, to something, to seeking some sort of reprieve. And by design, it's going to default and open us back up into our feeling self. We're just going to lay there and feel sorry for ourselves. Even if we're feeling sorry for ourselves,

• 47:13Speaker 05

  or at least we're feeling, instead of constantly shoving it under and, you know, just in a modality of survivorship, moving past it and sweeping it under the rug. So what we're doing is saying,

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Let's feel more. So when we learn to do that consciously and intentionally, there is an experience of deep joy. It's not that you don't have emotion, for goodness sakes. It's there. We're made of bliss. We're meant to be experiencing joy, right? And if we release those layers and drop into the true self, it's the healer, and it's joyful, and it is Ananda. It's this true essence. And in that healing state, skin issues, digestive issues, sinus issues, headaches, that's what it was for me, they disappear because we're dropping into the true self

• 48:11Speaker 05

  and allowing for that full expression to continue to do its thing out through the layers of all of our, all of the layers of our being, right out to the surface of our physiology. And so I think that feeling is one of the most potent things. It is the most potent thing, I would say, that we can do on a physical level to open the floodgates for this continuum, this quantum flow that is trying to happen through us as it is through everything, as it is through the trees and through the fauna and flora on our beautiful planet. It's happening without interference.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  So it can be also that for us, our own unpacking of emotions that have been shoved down by misinterpretation of what we were supposed to be doing in those early years we arrived.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Around COVID, I put out the most difficult podcast I've ever put out about childhood sexual abuse that I endured from age two to four. Sounds like weekly basis or so by this son of a babysitter. Not great. So very common. That doesn't lessen the impact. Incredibly common for both girls and boys.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  And just a quick sidebar on that, when I put out the episode, which was a conversation between my friend and Debbie Millman, amazing graphic designer, has this fantastic podcast that started way before mine. So she's an OG in Design Matters. She was terribly abused as a kid. And her approach to healing herself was very different from mine. And I asked her if she'd be open to a conversation. And I said, look upfront, I'm not sure I'm ever going to publish this. My parents don't know, family doesn't know, none of my friends know. I mean, it was, it was very difficult for me to decide to publish it. I'm glad I did.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  But when it came out, I got texts or voice memos or voicemails from, I would say, a quarter to a third of my closest male friends, who were either on the verge of crying or crying, telling me the story they'd never told before to anyone, which was them having had a very similar experience. It is so common. And in any case, the reason I bring that up is that I think in response to that, being sensitive is just a liability, right?

• 50:52Speaker 01

  I don't know if, there's this, there's this guiding phrase that I think is helpful. Whether it's true or not is another question. But when you're, say, prepping or at a university and they're prepping people for a psychedelic experience, they say, nothing inside you wants to hurt you. So like trusting in that is a basic maxim. And then depending on the school of thought and the facilitator about this sort of inner healer guidance, right? The idea that you don't need to reach out to external experts all the time, that you actually have this innate intelligence that knows exactly what you need. There's something to that.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  But the reason I bring it up is that my two-year-old self knew that hypersensitivity, given what was happening, was just effectively like psyche suicide on some level. So that got cauterized. And the sensitivity, any type of emotional engagement with the world was just viewed as weakness. I later justified that as it being this irrational distraction from like the hyper-efficient human mind that is the pinnacle of all evolution. And we can just run things based on this sort of hyper-rationalist framework. And there's something to be said for that.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  You can do a lot with that tool, but if it's your only tool, there's collateral damage. And a lot of that collateral damage is in relationships. Because human relationships are not rational, which is why I find like efficient market theory and the idea that like all the stock, you know, people in the stock market behave rationally according to self-interest. I'm like, have you seen humans anywhere? What gives you any basis for that? But let me come back from the stock market and using that example and say that I was not able to bring those emotions back online. And it was not even a, an agenda item. That's not what I was after, right?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  But after a number of deep psychedelic experiences in 2012, 2013, I remember I was on a flight and I was watching a documentary called Pressure Cooker, which is an outstanding documentary. Quite emotional, but I just started bawling on the plane. And I don't, I don't think at that point I had cried in 20 years. And I was just like, what the fuck is happening here? You know, I had a shaved head as I do now. I probably looked even more like a skinhead because my neck was a lot bigger. And I'm like, are people gonna freak out? I was just like, oh my God, what's happening? And I just noticed all of these sensitivities coming back online. And I had mixed feelings about it at the time. I was just like, oh, like, what is this? This is very uncomfortable.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  And I don't, I don't know what's happening underneath all this. Is this good? Is this bad? Am I about to have a fucking mental breakdown? I don't know. Ultimately, that sensitivity, like, superpowers are always, and I'm not saying it's a superpower, but I, I do notice things and feel things that other people don't. And I think that's part of what makes me pretty good at language learning.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  So there are upsides to it, but the, the reason I ultimately decided to double and triple down on that is to learn how to work with that hypersensitivity. And also recognizing, and this is true with any type of really intensive therapy, it doesn't have to involve psychedelics, doesn't have to involve any drugs, but a lot of folks are worried they're gonna lose their edge. It's true of people considering meditation, too. Right? Am I gonna lose my edge? Am I gonna have no motivation? These, these things that I'm good at, that form a lot of my identity, am I just suddenly

• 54:51Speaker 01

  gonna lose my grasp on these and be lost at sea? Typically, that's not the case. Like, 99 times out of 100, pulling a rabbit out of a hat for a number, that's not the case. And the, the way that I look at it is as having a wardrobe. You've worn this jacket. It's a great jacket, but it's like, you know, cigar-smoking leisure jacket. It's like, well, do you really need to wear that to the beach? Do you really need to wear that to Christmas? Like, there's a time and a place for it. It's just not all the time. So you take that off, you put it in your wardrobe, right? Psychologically speaking, it's always there. So what I've learned is that I can work with the sensitivities, and they've been invaluable

• 55:32Speaker 01

  in trying to become more socially intelligent with just conflict resolution and de-escalation and intimate relationships, becoming a better friend. I mean, I feel like I've always been a very good friend, very loyal, but being a more empathic friend. Right? Because if you're, if you have armor up, you're keeping a lot out, but you're keeping a lot in as well. Right. There's a barrier. So for me, learning how to work with it, if I need to put blinders on and just be... A racehorse, I can do that. I go into the wardrobe, I take that jacket down and like throw it on and I'm good. Like I can go into that mode.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  So I think the fear of losing that often prevents people from exploring richer terrain that they can explore and expanded capacities that they can use for a richer life. And look, I don't have all the answers. I don't want to make it sound like I'm preaching off the mount. It's not that at all. I mean, I'm fumbling around. Everybody's making it up as they go. But that is, I would say, that embracing, that that sort of uncorking and then embracing of the sensitivity has been fundamental, not just to me feeling better in the world, but feeling intact as who I am, right?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Because I had disavowed that entire part of myself for so long.

• 57:04Speaker 09

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 57:32André Duqum?

  So much suffering that's happening too. God must encompass all of that as well. You know, I think of the purpose that pain and suffering play on the path of spiritual growth. And what are your thoughts on the purpose that that pain and suffering play on our own spiritual growth and evolution?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  That's such an important question.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Is I, I truly believe that's one of the top three most important questions that anyone working in this space can be asking.

• 58:03Speaker 12

  Because of a mental health epidemic, and especially with young people, there is a disconnect between pain and suffering and life and resilience. And when you have a deeper understanding of the purpose of suffering and misfortune and tests and difficulties, it can give you such a greater resilience to live a much more full, deep, vibrant life, especially for young people undergoing mental health issues. What is the purpose of our physical reality? Let's just suppose, put all your skepticism out the window, and let's just say that

• 58:48Speaker 12

  there is pure, beautiful, cosmic, source, understanding, light, beyond time and space, infinite, and that, we'll call it God, and this God wants what's absolutely best for us. Why does this God put 70, 80 billion of us into this physical universe, into these flesh suits for 70, 80, 90, 100 years? Why does this happen? You know, in a certain way, this must be the perfect soul-growing laboratory. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been created. Again, we're taking the supposition that there is this all-encompassing,

• 59:33Speaker 12

  beautiful, loving light that, and this is just the beginning of a journey of great continuation. So what is the purpose of our physical reality? It is to struggle and grow. We're here to struggle and grow. This is why oftentimes atheists say, "Well, I don't believe in God necessarily, but I can understand that we might be an avatar inside of a video game. This might have a meta, you know, construct element to it, and when we die, we wake up outside of this kind of 3D hologram reality." Because video games are kind of a great metaphor for...

• 1:00:18Speaker 12

  Being a human being on planet Earth. You struggle, you suffer, you have limited lives. You beat the beast monster and you overcome and you hop from ledge to ledge and you drive your car here without crashing or whatever to move forward. And this is what it is to be a human being. And there are some terrible tests out there that I wouldn't wish on anyone. God, one can only guess at God's infinite wisdom. It's one of the big kind of metaphysical and philosophical questions of all time. If there isn't all loving God, why is there so much suffering on the planet?

• 1:00:58Speaker 12

  But for the majority of us, again, our suffering and our tests and our difficulties are the things that we end up being the most grateful for. And that's because they've allowed us to mature and grow and grow wiser and grow closer to God and develop those spiritual qualities we talked about before, like kindness and generosity and joy and humility and honesty. That's what this 3D construct world is for. We've got a short, you know, there's a metaphor in the Baha'i faith.

• 1:01:39Speaker 12

  There's some mystical writing that it's like this physical world is like a banquet hall. And it's a sparrow flying through the banquet hall. And it flies through and it bumps against the windows and it eats some grapes and some pie. And it flies through and it flies on out. And that's, that's life, is a sparrow flying through a banquet hall. I just love that image for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's, that's, that's what we're doing here. That's the purpose of physical reality. And You know, the Buddha said, "Life is suffering." You can also translate it as, "There is suffering." We are in suffering, and guess what? There's a way out of suffering, from non-attachment.

• 1:02:24Speaker 12

  And we can be freed from so much of our own suffering. You talked about humanity being in its turbulent adolescence, which is very true. And humanity's gonna head to rehab. You know, we're gonna have to fall down hard and split our head open, and there's gonna be some suffering. And hopefully, we come out on the other side, you know, having some wisdom, some serenity, and some focus.

• 1:02:51André Duqum?

  Well said. I really like the understanding how suffering, in many ways, is like the price of admission for the illusion of separation.

• 1:03:00Speaker 12

  That's so well said.

• 1:03:01André Duqum?

  Like, separation is, of course, an essential... Like, without separation, we don't have the experience of otherness. So it's like, the infinite consciousness needs to descend into its many different differentiations to go on a data collection process and to experience itself, to become itself in so many ways. Then, part of that process is forgetting that is our true nature, and the bashing of our heads against the wall, and the pain, the suffering that is inevitable on the path to realizing who we are in our true nature. Is coming to a place of feeling safe within our own experience kind of the precursor to being able to perceive and heal and let go of these things?

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  I mean, if you work with someone besides me, sure. So like, I will make you unsafe. Right? Like, what am I doing with you?

• 1:03:49André Duqum?

  I don't feel threatened in any context.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  So, good, I'm glad. Right? So do some shadow work, and then we'll talk again. I don't feel threatened. I'm fucking with you, man. So, but I mean, I think that, honestly, my approach tends to be like, challenging, unsafe. You know, the most common... The best feedback that I get from my community is, "I feel personally attacked." So I think we actually live in a world where we like... I know this is gonna sound crazy, but like, we prioritize safety too much. So what is the, why would you want to be safe, Andre? Like in a situation, I'm not talking like, I'm gonna mug you, you know? But like, why is safety?

• 1:04:27André Duqum?

  I would say maybe if through the lens of comfort, then we don't have to face off with the fearful parts of ourselves, the things.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  But that's contrary to the work that we need to do.

• 1:04:35André Duqum?

  No, exactly. But that's why I use a language of comfort. I think there is you, whether or not you admit it, create a safe space even for confrontation to occur. And so maybe you don't agree so, but it seems like when you work with individuals, there is an inherent, hey, I'm with you along this process. And even if I'm confronting you with something, we're getting at truth here. And it's not me against you. It's us for looking at this neuroses together.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Beautifully said. So I rescind my earlier statement. I defer to your precision of language. Love the fact that you use the word comfort. So the reason, and I think you're 100% correct. So what I try to offer people is compassion. But I think the word safety.

• 1:05:22André Duqum?

  Sure.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Just like, I mean, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. Which is people conflate safety with comfort. So I remember when I was working at Harvard and stuff, I one day talked to the head of security at MIT. And then I was talking to him about safety on campus. And, you know, one thing that he told me really stuck with me, which was like, it's my job to make students safe, not make them feel safe. Those are two very different things.

• 1:05:49André Duqum?

  Huge distinction.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Huge, right? And so love the precision in your language that, yeah, when I heard the word safety, I thought about comfort, right? That's oftentimes people, when they, when they, when we talk about safety, we oftentimes mean comfort.

• 1:06:03André Duqum?

  What's important is that you are safe, not that you feel safe in a sense.

• 1:06:07Speaker 09

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:06:35Speaker 13

  If you take a look at, you know, sort of the Enlightenment, I mean, that period of European history, you know, the 17th and 18th century, that has so, has given us our fundamental grammar for how we think about ourselves in the world. It gave us a story about why people are religious. Well, people are religious because they're not clear thinkers, right? And people become atheists when they become, they're analytic and clear thinkers. Or they're religious because they're in, you know, very dire circumstances. And once they're sort of economically situated, that, you know, then they stop being religious. And, and when, I'm a scientist. Actually, look at the research, done by and large by atheists, by the way, showing that that's not why people are believers or not believers. That's not why.

• 1:07:19Speaker 13

  People are believers because they have lived with other people that they consider credible, trustworthy individuals that are wiser than themselves. And what we do with those people is we internalize their perspectives. You, you, and I, we reflect on ourselves because we have internalized how other people reflect on us. And we imitate them doing it. And that's how we get our ability to know ourselves. We get it by internalizing other people. So if your parents were particularly religious and you found them wise, you will be so. If they were atheistic and you found them credible, you, you will, you will be so. Now, why does that matter to the mean crisis? Well, you know, "How the West Really Lost God", by Ederstadt.

• 1:08:04Speaker 13

  If you look at countries that are by and large secularist, there's a high correlation between being secular and how much people live alone. They live by themselves, right? And when we live by ourselves, we lose that network. We lose that network that gives us a, a greater capacity for meta-perspectival awareness. And one last connection, and then I'll shut up again. I was privileged to take part in a paper, a published paper, high-impact journal, led by Eger Grossman, somebody I know. We got as many of the wisdom researchers, psychologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists,

• 1:08:44Speaker 13

  philosophers, in one place, either physically or virtually, we called ourselves the Wisdom Task Force. It sounds really exciting. And we actually turned out a consensus paper on what wisdom is. And one of the core features is perspectival metacognition, the ability to take multiple perspectives on a situation and reflect on yourself through alternative perspectives. So as we become alone, we've become lonely, we've lost wisdom, and we've lost that perspectival metacognition that's at the center of wisdom. All of that has contributed to the meaning crisis.

• 1:09:27André Duqum?

  All right. So in the realization that this is what's happening, we observe the many different compensatory behaviors that arise, such as parasocial relationships, consumer identity, new age spirituality, without rigor. A lot of these things arise out of that space of individualism and not being connected to, like we were speaking to with community and so many different things. And so if you had to boil it down, which is probably unfair to try to make you do.

• 1:09:56Speaker 13

  I'll try.

• 1:09:57André Duqum?

  For the reason of why collectively this meaning crisis is happening, what would you say are the main contributors?

• 1:10:05Speaker 13

  So because our cognition, it's so intelligently adaptive by being really dynamically self-organizing and complex and multi-leveled. And that makes it so powerfully adaptive, right? And it orients us and it binds us to the world. It's also a profound engine of self-deception. We are profoundly capable, and I do a lot of work on irrationality and rationality. We are so prone, in ways of which we are, myself included, I'm saying we, to dynamics of self-deception, much of which we are ignorant.

• 1:10:40Speaker 13

  So, you know, one thing that people do, and this, this shows up in social media. People have probably heard of this, but that doesn't mean you're not being affected by it, because it largely affects you unconscious. Confirmation bias. You will tend to only look for evidence that confirms something you want to believe is true, and you will tend to not find salient. That means it attracts your attention and makes you interested. You will tend to discount or reduce the salience of things that might challenge your belief. And so, right, when you go on social media, where you have the pretense that you're interacting with independent other people who could challenge you, but in fact, you're selecting who and what you can hear from. So you're pretending that you're getting critical feedback and you're not.

• 1:11:24Speaker 13

  You can magnify the confirmation bias and engage in something sort of like confirmation porn, right? And so we are, and that's just one of many examples. We are beset by self-deception. So, and, and, and this is not largely a matter just of belief, like you were talking about earlier. It's how we taste things, it's how we perceive things, it's our state of consciousness, our traits of character. So we need practices. We can't just change our beliefs. We have to change our skills, our traits, our states, and our relationships. And so we need practices to do this. Now, there is no panacea practice. There's technical reasons for that.

• 1:12:05Speaker 13

  There's no one practice that can alleviate all of your problems of self-deception, because every practice has a bias built into it. So what you need are, you need, you need practices that complement each other, that work in opposite directions. So, for example, I went to the Tai Chi, they had a meditation practice. Meditation makes you stand back and look at how you're framing the world. Now, that's good, but if I always only do that, I'm in trouble. I also need to put my glasses back on and see if I can now see more deeply. Well, that's contemplation. So you need to be moving between a meditative practice and a contemplative practice. You need to complement a seated practice, like the meditation and the contemplation,

• 1:12:47Speaker 13

  with a moving practice, mindfulness practice, like Tai Chi Chuan. See, they all, they, they compensate.

• 1:12:55Speaker 13

  And correct and constrain each other. So you need a, it's like an ecology of organisms, right? You need an ecology of practices and you need role models. Remember what I said, you have to internalize other people. So you need an ecology of practices. You need a common unity, a community of role models. And you need an overarching story that orients you and helps you navigate and narrate. You need a mythology in the positive sense of the word. What used to do that for us was religion. Religion, religio, religion was about when it's working. And because religions can go wrong, just like everything else can go wrong. Politics can go wrong, the market can go wrong, right? Science and technology can go wrong, right?

• 1:13:40Speaker 13

  But we'll talk about when it's working. What religion is doing is it giving us a, right? It's giving us a tradition, a community, a mythos, and an ecology of practices for addressing self-deception and enhancing that connectedness that we, that religio that's at the core of meaning and life. It was a place for people to go to cultivate wisdom in a way that transferred back into, that was crafted over generations to transfer back into their lives in a regular and reliable way. Now, for a lot of historical reasons and a lot of moral reasons, and I'm not here to challenge those, and I'm not here proselytizing, right?

• 1:14:23Speaker 13

  We have, as you said, we've thrown out that Christian framework. But as you said, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. We've, we've taken away all of that functionality. So now, and wisdom is not optional. Wisdom is not optional. When we are confronted by challenges, when we're confronted by absurdity, alienation, anxiety, when we get confused between having and being, when we, when we idolize things inappropriately, when we're disconnected, when we feel our, like our world and our reality is beset by bullshit, uh, right? We have very little resources. So I'll ask my students, where do you go for information? They'll hold up their phone like cyborgs, right?

• 1:15:08Speaker 13

  I'll say, where do you go for knowledge? And they're a little bit jaundiced about this, right? Uh, the university, science, uh. And then I say, where do you go for wisdom?

• 1:15:19Speaker 13

  And there's an anxious silence. And they look at me like, tell me where I should go. And that's a dangerous position for somebody to be in, right? So we've, we lost all of that functionality. We tried to replace it. We've tried to replace it with various isms, pseudo-religious ideologies with nationalism and Nazism and Communism. And we drenched the world in blood because ideologies can't do it. Commercialism, celebrity worship, all of this, all the stuff we've been talking, we try to fill it and it doesn't have the function.

• 1:16:00André Duqum?

  Yeah, we've so largely, in modern society, traded nutrient-dense behavior with those vapid and poor substitutions.

• 1:16:08Speaker 13

  Oh, I love that phrasing. Wow.

• 1:16:10André Duqum?

  Love it. But yeah, you're speaking to like, you know, for example, porn instead of real intimate connection with another, so to speak, sitting around the campfire, real intimate personal connections with social media.

• 1:16:25Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 1:16:26André Duqum?

  The innumerable examples of, of, of this, right? And so in search of soul food, we have these poor substitutions. It's like we're lacking nutrient density, quite literally.

• 1:16:36Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37André Duqum?

  And we're malnourished.

• 1:16:38Speaker 13

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:16:39André Duqum?

  And so that's a really important thing that I want to continue to highlight.

• 1:16:42Speaker 13

  Yeah, I want to, this is a beautiful metaphor. Sorry, you really sparked something in me. Because one of the things that can happen is you can be malnourished without being hungry because you're eating a lot of junk food, right? So let me play with this for a second. One of the things is that people can often be beset by the meat crisis without realizing that they are because they're malnourished, but they're not currently in distress. And what they, what they don't realize is like when you're, when you're, when you have nutritional malnourishment.

• 1:17:11Speaker 13

  Right? Your physiological resilience, your ability to resist disease or to heal from trauma is radically reduced. Now, until the disease or trauma comes along, you don't notice it. But when it comes, you're in a disaster. It's the same thing for the meaning crisis. People are sort of drifting around, "I'm okay," right? Until something happens, and then they realize, and I see it at the university, like I said, there's no depth of resilience. And COVID showed that. When so many people were thrown back into a genuine challenge to their everyday routines, many people went like, they got into very dire... I predicted, one of the negative things, I predicted, sorry, this

• 1:17:54Speaker 13

  is one of these weird things where you're happy about something that you predicted because you're a scientist, but because you're a human being and you hate that it came true? I predicted a massive increase in conspirituality, which happened. I predicted a mental health tsunami that would happen. Those are the indications. Spirituality is a terrific symptom of the meaning crisis. COVID hit, there was no resiliency, and the meaning crisis then demonstrated.

• 1:18:21André Duqum?

  Conspirituality, conspiratorial, spiritual ideations.

• 1:18:24Speaker 13

  Yes. Yeah, so if you, if I was, I was privileged to watch a really good documentary where somebody went to QAnon meeting. And what's really interesting is, it's got exactly the, the, the, the structure of a Christian service. There's like, there's a sermon, there's singing, there's readings, there's social networking. It's not just a conspiracy theory, it's a shared worldview that gives people a orientation, a sense that they've cut through the bullshit to something that's real, they're connected to themselves, to other people, they're, they're, there's something that matters. It feeds the meaning crisis, and it feeds it with a pernicious narrative.

• 1:19:05Speaker 09

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:19:33André Duqum?

  I'm curious, as like on your human journey with the wife and kid, and how has like shadow work, how is healing human trauma coincided with the awareness of non-duality?

• 1:19:45Speaker 14

  It informs like my therapy, like I do parts work therapy and I'm actually in the process of doing some pretty heavy therapy and unpacking all of those things, trauma, feelings, the past, all that stuff. So that's part of it. I can spiritually bypass when is desired. Like sometimes it's not just nice. It's like the top of the mountain to go like, I have no parents. Jesus actually says that in the Bible. They found him and they're like, what are you doing? Your parents have been looking for you. And Jesus is like, these are my parents. And I'm like, that's hardcore. Can you imagine? Your parents are like, where the hell have you been? I'm like, I don't have parents. That is so badass.

• 1:20:31Speaker 14

  So I can do that and I do spend most of my time trying, doing that because I, I don't know, that's, that's what I'm feeling. But then I do spend a lot of time, obviously, playing the character of Pete. I notice that people are pretty good at forgiving other people, but I really work on forgiving myself. Like I can say like, Andre, if you got really mad at Chelsea, I'd be like, okay, yeah, Andre, he belongs and they're having their thing. And maybe I didn't like it, but like I can allow that. But then if I do something bad, like if I was rude to Chelsea, I'd be like, I'm such a piece of shit, you know? Like, no, we're all lawfully unfolding and we all have our baggage and we all have our mental illness or whatever you want to call it.

• 1:21:14Speaker 14

  We all have our blind spots. We all have our shadow. And like, when I'm doing my therapy, it's really powerful to stand as naked awareness and look sort of dispassionately at Pete. It helps me heal to be like, okay, sure, that's not who I really am. But I sure am losing a lot of sleep not being that guy I'm not. You know what I mean? Like, let's work on that. So I do. Work on myself a lot. And the thing my wife and I talk about probably the most is our feelings and why we're feeling them. So there's a lot of human experience.

• 1:21:52André Duqum?

  I think that's so powerful because we often fall into the habit of judging and shaming emotions. We don't want to feel signals and judgments we don't want to have in our experience. But you're inviting the perspective that there's an intelligent hidden order. There's a design that is actually very useful and necessary for you to come back into your center and to what you really value. So we can perceive all of these challenging experiences in life actually with a lot of grace and gratitude.

• 1:22:18Speaker 15

  They're on the way, not in the way.

• 1:22:21André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:22Speaker 15

  I'd like to address this, just popped in my head. So I have the opportunity to speak to all different types of groups. And a lot of them are business entrepreneurs and leaders that have ambitions. And the word ambition means a condition of both sidedness, ambie, ambidextrous. If you can see both sides simultaneously, you actually expand the space and time horizons and accomplish the most because you're objective. But sometimes people with their amygdala create a fantasy. A fantasy is a positive without a negative. A nightmare is a negative without a positive. So our amygdala wants to avoid the nightmare and seek the fantasy. It wants to avoid the shame and seek the pride.

• 1:23:07Speaker 15

  So it's constantly trying to look for advantage over disadvantage, pleasure over pain. It's hedonic. So it's basically trying to set what it thinks is a goal that has more advantage and disadvantage, more positives, negatives, more pleasures and pains, more support than challenge. And by doing it, it creates a fantasy. Our intuition is designed to counterbalance that, to make us whole, to see things as they are, not as we're skewing. So our intuition brings up anxiety, fears, phobias to balance the philia. It balances it with a phobia and a nightmare and anxiety and doubt and uncertainty and feelings of self sabotage and all those things.

• 1:23:50Speaker 15

  All of those are important feedback systems to let us know that we're not pursuing a real objective. We're pursuing a fantasy.

• 1:24:00Speaker 15

  So we think it's a weakness, but it's not. It's a flawless response to guide us to set real objectives, not fantasies. Now, the ratios of goals can skew all the way from a fantasy, which is all positive, no negative, fantasy, illusion, mania, to an objective, which is a perfect balance of positive and negative. And there's a whole spectrum in between. The more fantasy it is, the more our nightmares come to wake us up. If it's up here, you get a little bit less anxiety. But once you get to the very top, there's at the very top, there's no anxiety.

• 1:24:41Speaker 15

  Because what strategic planning in the executive center of the brain is for? To mitigate the anxieties and to calm and dampen the fantasies. The executive center uses glutamate and GABA, the facilitator inhibitory transmitter, to neutralize whatever is stimulated and inhibited in our fantasy. So it's trying to calm it down. Our intuition is counterbalancing our gut impulse to seek and our gut instinct to avoid. So our intuition is a negative feedback. Those are positive feedbacks that dramatize and polarize. The intuition is a negative feedback to neutralize and bring things back into objectivity, where you see both sides.

• 1:25:25Speaker 15

  Imagine being in a relationship with somebody and you expected them to be positive, never negative, happy, never sad, you know, one-sided. They're never going to live up to that. But when you expect them to be a two-sided individual and to live according to their own highest values, you have a realistic expectation and can have a fulfilling relationship. But if not, you have a fantasy about who they're going to be. They're going to be more positive and negative and they're going to live in your values, not their own, and these are distortions. The same thing with goals, just like in relationships. We set goals that are not really goals and objectives. They're fantasies. And then we have anxieties. Anxieties and fears and phobias are not our enemy. People say, you need to get rid of that.

• 1:26:07Speaker 15

  No, they're there very precisely and deconstructed there to make sure that you're not going after delusions and fantasies to set real objectives. The executive center is designed to strategically plan, to transform fantasies into objectives, to maximize the potential and actualization of our potential so we can achieve. And that's what ambition really is, the ability to see both sides and have both sides in the pursuit. When you are able to embrace the pain and the pleasure equally in the pursuit of some purpose, you're not in your passions, you're in your mission. You're not in your sufferings, you're in your servings. And that's what liberates people from a lot of the frustrations in the so-called achievement

• 1:26:52Speaker 15

  world.

• 1:26:53Speaker 11

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

• 1:27:37Speaker 11

  in my own mind. Yeah, so I think that bridge, that bridge between personal growth and how that impacts the way you show up in your relationship and how you can learn how to love better just feels important to talk about.

• 1:27:51André Duqum?

  Yeah, when you say that, it just brings to mind how often we drag our history and who we think somebody is and how they should show up based off of who they've been in the past in every single moment. And in that perspective, it's like, we're not actually even engaging with somebody who, as they are in the moment, we're engaging with how we want them to be, how we expect them to be. And that, like, just sucks intimacy out of the equation.

• 1:28:14Speaker 11

  Yeah, because then you're like, what, I'm literally interacting with an illusion? Like, I'm literally like... Taking all these projections, forming them, bringing them into this present moment. And then I'm not even like, not even talking to you. I'm probably talking to the person who hurt me seven years ago. That sucks. That's not a good way to live. I think developing awareness just helps you honestly learn how to listen. Because you can, it's so easy to get caught in the mode where, let's say there's tension between us. And you're speaking, I'm trying to listen to you, but already instead of listening to you, I'm thinking about how am I gonna retort? How am I gonna sort of try to prove my point using the words that you're, that you're saying? As opposed to just taking a moment to fully appreciate where you're coming from.

• 1:28:58Speaker 11

  To just suspend my need for dominance. Suspend my need for, you know, to just be right. And just accept that you also have a very valid perspective. And then I should take the time to hear it. And then hopefully you'll give me that opportunity as well.

• 1:29:14André Duqum?

  Often we're under the presumption whenever arguments arise, and particularly the romantic relationships, but also any conversation where we have differing opinions. We feel like it's me versus you and we're trying to win instead of trying to understand.

• 1:29:29Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29André Duqum?

  And shifting that perspective, instead of me versus you, it's us versus the problem.

• 1:29:34Speaker 11

  Yeah. Yeah, it feels like it's a big, it logically makes sense, but it's so, you have to untangle yourself from your emotions, from your reactions, to be able to even try to practice that because it's, it's difficult. As soon as we get into an argument, you know, we're very much so driven by our evolutionary need to survive. So when we get into an argument, we feel like we may be cast aside by the group. We may, you know, like we're under threat in some way. So immediately we feel like we're walking into a battle. But you have to remind yourself, like, who are you arguing with? Like, I'm arguing with the person I love. This is my best friend. Like, this is my roommate. This is like the, the homiest of homies, like the person I love the most, you know, so.

• 1:30:20Speaker 11

  Why am I acting like I'm under threat? And now let me try to shift my energy to try to do my best to see things from their perspective. And this is why, like, you know, in this book, I talk about a very specific form of compassion, where you intentionally try to let go of your perspective for a moment and step into the shoes of another person to see things from their view. And you find that when you do practice that and you're able to give that to each other, the tension evaporates. When I can really see the series of events from your point of view, and then you can see mine, we're like, oh, that's why this happened. And I think that's, that's only something that can happen when you really try to let go of winning.

• 1:31:02Speaker 16

  Just question it a little bit more, you know, and then just create a little bit of a crack of awareness and, and inquisitiveness and curiosity when faced, you know, with these difficult situations.

• 1:31:14Speaker 11

  Yeah, I think it's, um, it's really hard because the mind is so tricky. And I think when you're questioning, like, where is this coming from? You know, it starts that the mind will literally jump through illogical hoops to be able to make it so that this tension that I'm feeling is your fault, even if you have nothing to do with it.

• 1:31:39Speaker 16

  Show me an awakened guy having a road trip with two young kids in the backseat, and I'll show you a human. So allowing yourself the intimacy, the like, the full intimacy of humanity, I think really is a great way to, to like, see the parts of yourself that are, that are emotionally not invited. You know, find yourself on the plane with somebody with some kid crying. But any, I think emotional intimacy in relationship is like a really great place for it. And delving into all the places that are uncomfortable there, just the same way you delved in through your meditation practice into all the uncomfortable parts of your consciousness. Do the same thing, but just do it in relationship is usually like, is a very effective way to go.

• 1:32:23Speaker 16

  And so that would include something like business, because business is a whole bunch of relationships. And there's this endless question is like, right, if I'm awakened, I should be able to live on top of a disco and be happy. But because I'm awakened, I'm not going to live on top of a disco. Like, I don't, I don't want it. Like, why would I invite that into my life? Occasionally, live on top of a disco.

• 1:32:48Speaker 16

  You know, go into the places where it's uncomfortable in humanity. Whether that's like living on top of a disco or going to a Dodgers game or,

• 1:32:59André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:59Speaker 16

  You know, there's a, there's a Tibetan teacher I was learning about and he would, you know, I think maybe he wasn't even maybe a Bhutan, but he would, you know, six months in caves, meditating away. And then he'd come to America with his students and they'd all go to like, soccer matches where all that like they'd all get in fights and they would like, you know, so like allow yourself that intimacy with your own humanity or with other people's humanity. And recognize that all of it is in you. There's just no way you can't have all of that in you.

• 1:33:31André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 16

  There's definitely like dear friends who really live in one and don't live in the other. And that's, that's okay with me. It seems to be okay with them. I just don't think it's, it's, it's just not as fulfilling.

• 1:33:45André Duqum?

  It's interesting because we might proclaim that I want to strive for enlightenment. Failing to recognize the I as the barrier into that state.

• 1:33:57Speaker 16

  Yeah. And, and, and the greatest thing about that I statement is that every way you look at it, it can disappear. You know, there was this Irish mystic, Wui Wui, I think he said, oh, you can try to crack your ego. You could try to destroy your ego. Go ahead and burn it with a thousand surrenders. The only problem is it never existed. That's like, wow, that's so there's freedom. And then there's also freedom in, okay, let go of your ego. There's also like, because it's illusionary in its nature, almost any way you look at it can show you some aspect of freedom. If you look at it.

• 1:34:29André Duqum?

  It's so amazing when you get beyond the story of yourself that have been passed on quite literally, possibly for many people, for generations and generations and generations.

• 1:34:38Speaker 16

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39André Duqum?

  And you discover the unique creative pulse that lives within you. That is like that one of the eight billion, you know, faces on the diamond. And then it's beautiful because you then get to be in a true representation of your unique perspective in life and however that shows up, you know, and, and if you're an artist, that means that Your music is going to be not recreatable because it's it's it's unique to what wants to come through you.

• 1:35:04Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 1:35:04André Duqum?

  You described this energy when you work with people in your mastermind and they feel physiologically lighter.

• 1:35:10Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10André Duqum?

  It reminded me of the section of this book I read. I don't know if you've heard On Having No Head by Harding.

• 1:35:16Speaker 17

  No.

• 1:35:16André Duqum?

  But it's great. It's a it's a book on non-duality, pretty thin. He describes in the recognition of one's true nature, some things that cascade and I just want to kind of riff off. List these off and see how it resonates.

• 1:35:29Speaker 17

  Okay.

• 1:35:30André Duqum?

  So a complex of interrelated psychophysical changes, including whole body alertness in place of the heady intermittent sort. A reduction of stress, particularly in the region of the eyes and mouth and neck, as if one were at last letting them go. 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.

• 1:35:55Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55André Duqum?

  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.

• 1:36:07Speaker 17

  Yeah.

• 1:36:08André Duqum?

  And balancing this descent, a general uplift, including a sense of exaltation and upsurge of creativity. A new childlike spontaneity and playfulness, above all, a lightness, 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.

• 1:36:28Speaker 17

  Amen.

• 1:36:29André Duqum?

  So these are like the fruits of the recognition.

• 1:36:32Speaker 17

  And it's it's so beautiful. And that's why I say life is revelatory, right? Those qualities that get listed there very articulately, they're there. So someone might hear that list that you just, you know, read and they're like, I want that. Well, now you're fucked.

• 1:36:48Speaker 17

  The wanting of that, yeah. The I that you think you are that doesn't have that is the suffering, is the barrier to those qualities that already exist. Like I tell people, freedom is there. Like I really, really just connected with someone recently on Instagram. And she's in this like really beautiful transition in her life, wanting to find more stability financially. And so the way she said it is like, you know, I'm really finding my divinity, my goddess nature. And I'm wanting to create abundance, which all sounds beautiful, right? And I said, if I could just, you know, help you with language, you can't create abundance. What that shows me is that you're reinforcing the fact that you're what you're dealing with, which is what she shared, is she doesn't have it. So it's like, oh, I don't have it, holding on to the scarcity, but I'm going to create it.

• 1:37:33Speaker 17

  That's the work. That's the exhaustion. No, abundance is. So it reveals itself in the absence of the idea of me as somebody who doesn't deserve it, doesn't know how to get it, has never had it. Money doesn't grow on trees. Like whatever people have as a form of programming, which is the obstacle to the richness of all of these qualities and characteristics that are already there. One of the things that I really loved that I discovered in my work that I see is ever-present. First of all, the breathing thing is one of the things that I will always say when I'm working with someone and say, that was a nice breath. They're like, oh, I just felt my whole system soften, right? So you've come out of this excitory sort of fight or flight state where you're like vigilante to like, oh, there's nothing to worry about.

• 1:38:16Speaker 17

  So immediately the physiology starts to mirror that. The absence of ease is dis-ease, right? So dis-ease eventually cascades into the physiology. This is why I'll always tell people it's a bold statement. You cannot be healthy, no matter what you buy, hyperbarics, cryogenic chambers, red lights, all the peptides in the fucking world, unless you free your mind. You have to do that first if you want to access vitality. Because you're always then perpetuating a state of dis-ease where everywhere you go. You are in a prison. And if you're in a prison, you can't access what it means to be radiant. You're in a world of survival. And if you're in survival, then you have to be in a mild to severe state of tension, fight or flight. You're not going to digest food properly. You can't have the radiance that is available in connection with people because you're too busy trying to survive or not upset people,

• 1:39:02Speaker 17

  not get into trouble, all of the mechanisms that we talked about, right? So, but that list is so beautiful because. That's what happens in the absence of you. You know, and this is where it's become so, it's so hard to articulate in language, right? The paradox of like, okay, well, the you that you're looking for is in the absence of the you that you think you are, you know, and it gets kind of complex, right? But it's really not, because when you start to see the illusion of how you've delineated yourself as some form of limitation in any arena, your worth, you know, your capacity to love or be loved, your value, your safety, whatever it is, when all of that's gone, all of these qualities emerge because they've always been there. So for this girl, she really appreciated this woman singing, she was like, oh my God, I never looked at it like that.

• 1:39:47Speaker 17

  You're right, if I'm trying to create abundance, I'm saying, one, I don't have it. So then my form of resistance to life right now is creating suffering. I'm creating time, right? Because this means something I have to do. That's the whole world of manifestation is incumbent upon me to do something to get what I want, which creates time, which creates stress. I'm not where I want to be. That creates urgency versus no, it's all there.

• 1:40:12Speaker 17

  And in the absence of me, it becomes revealed effortlessly. So I tell people, there's always somewhere to get to until you realize there isn't. And they're both appropriate, right? Because as long as you think there's somewhere to get to, that's where you're currently at. And so you can't force not getting somewhere because that would be the ego still trying to do it, you know, to look good in terms of like being spiritual or whatever. It's like, oh, no, no, kumbaya, and I fucking meditate and I'm vegan raw or whatever. You know, that could be the ego's way of just like trying to still garner love that that person never felt as a child. It's still an addiction to some sort of constraint. So the compassion is to let everyone be exactly where they're at right now. As I said before, like not knowing your path is your path right now.

• 1:40:56Speaker 17

  But there's a, there's a suffering that comes with like, no, but I should, or what's my purpose, or what's my Dharma? I don't know, where are you at just right now? And can you be sufficiently big enough as a being to allow your current form of human iteration to be where it's at?

• 1:41:14Speaker 18

  You are so funny.

• 1:41:17Speaker 19

  I haven't been very funny today.

• 1:41:18Speaker 18

  You've been so funny. I laughed so unexce... I've had so much fun back here. And I was hoping that you could speak to your relationship with humor and how important it is to you. And what have you witnessed? People's relationship to seriousness and humor and how integral it is to your life? And have you always had like a good sense of humor?

• 1:41:40Speaker 19

  See suppose I said my grandmother is serious. What would you think?

• 1:41:48Speaker 19

  She's on the way out. Yes or no? Hello? If I say my grandmother is very serious. What would you think? You think, oh, she's on the way out. Something wrong with her. If you're serious, what should I think?

• 1:42:08Speaker 19

  Same problem. You're on the way out of life. Hello?

• 1:42:14Speaker 19

  You're... The first question he asked. You're serious because you have no perspective as to what a tiny speck you are. It's the magnanimity of creation. For this tiny speck,

• 1:42:34Speaker 19

  we have an individual experience. Hello?

• 1:42:40Speaker 19

  See, we think an amoeba is microscopic. What nonsense is that? Is it really life and this and that? But you're worse than an amoeba in the cosmic scale, isn't it?

• 1:42:53Speaker 19

  You're even more microscopic than an amoeba in your scale. What an amoeba is in the cosmic scale, you're worse than that or much, much, much smaller than that. So for this tiny creature in this universe, there's an individual experience. What a blessing. But don't take it very seriously.

• 1:43:15Speaker 19

  Because it's just playing like that. It'll go poop.

• 1:43:20Speaker 19

  You're like a pop-up on the planet. You pop up and you'll pop out. You know, on your computer screen or your phone screen these days, pop-ups come and pop out.

• 1:43:30Speaker 19

  This is just a pop-up. Don't take it too seriously. Before you and me, countless number of people have walked this damn planet. Where are they? All topsoil, huh?

• 1:43:44Speaker 19

  This happened, let me tell you. This is a serious thing, okay?

• 1:43:49Speaker 19

  Doubt it. You're not, you missed a lot.

• 1:43:55Speaker 19

  Shankar and Pillai and his wife were driving. They were married for over twenty-five years. Crashed the car and they died, he died. So he went to heaven. The wife was injured after two weeks, she died. And she came, and she also went to heaven. She came there and she screamed at him, Shanku. He said, "What? The vow was only till death do us apart. What the hell are you doing here with me?"

• 1:44:30Speaker 19

  Hello? The vow is only till death do us apart, isn't it? But after death also they follow you.

• 1:44:39Speaker 19

  Because you're that bloody serious about everything.

• 1:44:45Speaker 19

  No, you and me can get blown away. This moment, if both of us vanish from this planet, nothing will happen, everything will go fine. Actually, it may go better without us. Hello? Yes or no?

• 1:45:03Speaker 19

  No, no, no, without me what will happen? Nothing, things will go on.

• 1:45:09Speaker 19

  Something they will do, people, before you came, people were living, right? Hello, before you were born, people were living? If you die also, people will live. If you simply vanish, people will still live.

• 1:45:23Speaker 19

  A plane load of people just vanished some time ago, you know? Nobody knows where they went. Some people cried, but they're living, isn't it? All of us forgotten, we're living initially, every... All of us were excited, what happened? What could have happened to this two-hundred-plus people? How many times have you thought of them in the last ten days? No. That's how it is. Even for you and me, it's the same thing. They'll cry for three days and they'll be okay.

• 1:45:54Speaker 19

  So, don't take yourself so seriously. This is... this will only happen to you if you have absolute passion for every life around you, but total dispassion towards yourself. Then you will live a balanced life. But right now, people have total passion towards themselves, dispassion towards others. This is dangerous. That's a crooked world. It's all about me. I don't care what happens to that one. This is different. Absolute passion towards every life, dispassion towards this one. Then you will live with ease, without any trouble.

• 1:46:39Speaker 19

  Whatever happens, if you live, you'll live well. If you die, you'll die well. Important. Because there's only two things you can do. Yes, to live and to die. What else can you do? You think you're doing many things. No, you're only doing this. You're living, and you'll be dying one day. Doing both of them gracefully and wonderfully is important.