E197 - 9 Great Thinkers on the Inner Work That Frees You

Join our online community ↓ https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com This is a compilation episode, and it draws from some of the most honest and clarifying moments across recent conversations on the show. Nine different voices, each approaching the same territory from a different angle: what it means to stop being ruled by the outside world, to understand the patterns we inherited, and to come back to something more real inside ourselves. What We Dive Into: ​ Thoughts arise whether you choose them or not. The shift is learning to observe them rather than be pulled by them.​ The nervous system learns what safety feels like early, and it keeps returning to that baseline even when it no longer serves.​ Your body, your beliefs, your identity, all of it was accumulated over time. Setting it aside, even briefly, creates the space to touch something underneath that is more stable. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself Use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% at checkout https://www.basedbodyworks.com Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for 20% off + free toiletry bag! ___________ 00:00 Intro 02:12 Shi Heng Yi: Master Yourself, Not the World 11:10 Dr. Sue Morter: The Hidden Truth Behind Your Triggers 19:04 Emily McDonald: Living from Feeling States, Not Outcomes 24:58 Joe Hudson: This is Your Sign To Be More Vulnerable 31:53 Sadhguru: How To Make True Impact 48:20 Henry Shukman: Tasting Awakening for Yourself 1:00:29 Nicole LePera: Your Childhood Beliefs Might Be Holding You Back 1:13:19 Lucy Hale: Remember To Accept Your Own Timeline 1:17:23 Wim Hof: It's Time for Love ___________ MORE FROM OUR SPEAKERS ✨Shi Heng Yi: https://youtu.be/Yg_vu7MelmU ✨Dr. Sue Morter: https://youtu.be/NAdU39m1Oxo ✨Emily McDonald: https://youtu.be/BS80CB3fgS8 ✨Joe Hudson: https://youtu.be/vF4R9uDje0E ✨Sadhguru: https://youtu.be/FMoXXb-wKE8 ✨Henry Shukman: https://youtu.be/ZMk3ztb66mc ✨Nicole LePera: https://youtu.be/BlpyzG5vV_o ✨Lucy Hale: https://youtu.be/MkNjs5vbG9M ✨Wim Hof: https://youtu.be/yjKoAXOFNqw MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ✨https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com 🎙️Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l 🎧Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ 🎬TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum 👥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ 🌐https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ MORE FROM ANDRÉ ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum 💼Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast 📚Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

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

• 0:00André Duqum?

  What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is a little bit different. I've pulled together some of the most rewatched, most resonant moments from the last couple dozen episodes into one continuous conversation. First, you'll hear from Shi Hengyi on mastering yourself before the world, Dr. Sue Mortar on the hidden truth behind your triggers,

• 0:21Speaker 01

  I could be present with anything and not be triggered.

• 0:23André Duqum?

  Emily McDonald on living from feeling states rather than chasing outcomes, Joe Hudson on the single question that dissolves your judgment of others, Sadhguru on the simple practice of quieting a racing mind.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Most important discipline that you have to bring into your life is...

• 0:41André Duqum?

  Henry Schuchman on tasting awakening for yourself, Dr. Nicole LePera on the childhood patterns that are shaping your relationships, Lucy Hale on accepting your own timeline, and Wim Hof on why it's time for your soul to play. Before we dive in, I have an exciting announcement. I am so elated to share that we have just launched the Know Thyself Collective. Over the past few years, this humble podcast has grown into a global community of people asking the deepest questions about life, consciousness, healing, and what it means to be human. And for a while now, I have felt like there's this deeper call to dive deeper with you all beyond the episodes, beyond the comment section,

• 1:24André Duqum?

  somewhere where we can actually meet on the other side of it. So here's what it is. Here's what's inside. Live monthly calls with guest teachers, where we can study together, learn practices, take questions in real time, a beautifully designed episode companion every single week for these podcast episodes with key ideas, journal prompts, and a full transcript. And last, but certainly not least, the real reason I'm creating this is to cultivate the community itself. Curated discussions, early access to the in-person retreats and events we're planning. And so if any of this calls to you, head to the link in the description or knowthyselfcollective.com to watch the full video and join us on the inside. I'll see you there. Enjoy the episode.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Conceptually, I understood very, very early. There is no way in trying to change the ideas of my parents.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  There is no way in even trying to invest my energy and trying to figure out what people in my surrounding are expecting from me or having ideas, what am I supposed to do with my life?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  In that field of stress management, I also realized very, very quickly people getting stressed by the phone calls they receive, people getting stressed by the emails they receive. And so I just felt like all the time...

• 2:54Speaker 03

  So I wake up in the morning, have a very great day.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Then I just look at that phone. I just open like my laptop, read something, and suddenly my life quality, my great day, is gone.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  And I just felt like...

• 3:15Speaker 03

  That just doesn't make sense. This is not the way of how I imagine to live my life, being so dependent upon what type of impulses

• 3:31Speaker 03

  I am exposed to. Like meaning, whatever is happening there on the outside, I don't want to be so much influenced that all these things can take away my well-being eventually. And so that means, very clearly, I cannot rely my own well-being, the way of how I feel, based on what is happening on the outside.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  First of all, I can't fix it.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  So, very rationally thinking, there was only one solution.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  It has something to do about me. I need to somehow find the key to regulate myself, to be able and learn to cope with everything that this world is throwing at me. Don't need to look for a master, a teacher outside of you. You have the key. It's literally like we all have our own master sitting inside of us. He just needs to be cultivated. We just need to nourish him. Give him the proper thoughts, give him the proper energy, give him the proper training, then that master comes out.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yes. And that means taking your life in your own hands again. Stop relying too much on the outside. This is your life. That's why you need to be responsible for it. That is the whole idea behind it.

• 5:05André Duqum?

  It feels like so much of the path is this progression from unconsciousness to consciousness, from compulsivity and reactiveness to responding to choice. And if we're to have any shot at, so to speak, unlocking the master within us,

• 5:27André Duqum?

  there is this saying or phrase about Qi follows Yi that I would love for you to speak to because it seems like right now we're giving our energy, our life, our attention to so many things externally and not giving self the opportunity it has to be examined, to inquire about it and to grow awareness in it. And so what does that mean?

• 5:53Speaker 03

  So in the field of martial arts, especially when it comes to the field of so-called, nowadays so-called internal martial arts, which means you are having different methods, you have different practices that are aiming in cultivating something very, I would call it refined about yourself. So refined that sometimes we call it even you're at the level of Qi, so sensing the bioelectricity of your body.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  And this bioelectricity, or the energies of the body, it is said, Chi follows Yi. Yi, in that, in that sense, meaning attention or intention. Attention, intention, meaning thought. Energy follows your thoughts. Now, just keep that in mind, and we make a little jump into some Buddhist teachings that also has a very nice line up. It says, "Watch your thoughts, because they will become your words. Watch your words, because they will become your action. Watch your actions, because they will become your behavior.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Watch your behavior, because they will become your habits. Watch your habits, because it will become your character. Watch the character, because it will become your destiny." Putting now, that long chain of what I just said, together with the idea of energy follows intention, there is some similarity. If something in this world you want to create, creation needs energy. So ultimately, where does this energy come from? It comes ultimately from thought. So now, we have to ask ourselves, first of all,

• 7:52Speaker 03

  are you at all times aware of what are you thinking?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  This is number one. This is where in all the traditional ancient teachings, you have the practices that are aiming in finding a space or being in a space where you can literally see your own thoughts. And that means it's already one step ahead of what is happening nowadays in the world. What is happening is, you think, and that's why, what you are thinking, you think that's you. So you think you are your thoughts. A thought is popping up, "Ah, so that's what I'm supposed to do", blindly following the thought.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Now, the problem with this is...

• 8:49Speaker 03

  That you have no power. What type of thought is popping up?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  It is an everlasting experiment in trying to trying to figure out what is going to be the next thought that is going to pop up now in 10 seconds. You can't predict what type of thought is coming up.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  And therefore, in the ancient teachings, there is one, let's call it one method, which is says like this: Number one, distance yourself from the idea that you are your thoughts. This is where it comes from: You are not your thoughts. Even if right now, for many people, it might be a concept, I'm not talking about concept, but you can still use it. You are not your thoughts. In the moment, you are able to tap into this reality.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Then you can let thoughts come, and at the same time, you can see thoughts go. That means you are at the space that at all times is just unmoving. Now, thoughts, energy, creation, this taking it back also meaning on whichever thought you are getting hooked on,

• 10:15Speaker 03

  this is what you create.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  And this is why to be aware and conscious, whether you are willingly by your own, how I say?

• 10:32Speaker 03

  If you're consciously choosing a thought, or if you are by habit being hooked by a thought, is a big difference. And this is how it then ultimately translates into, why is it that some people, let's say, get things done in a proper way? And other people, let's say, try and try and try, but somehow seem to get lost.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  It's exactly because you cannot trust all thoughts that come every day into your mind, because it's not your choice.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 11:39Speaker 05

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• 11:54Speaker 01

  When we have a reaction to something, when we get triggered by something, when we find ourselves resisting or withdrawing, it's actually the perfect signage on the road to point you in the direction of embracing the parts of you that get pocketed off in those moments when your internal environment isn't matching your external environment. For instance, we show up, we're these loving beings. You know, you look into the eyes of an infant and that glow is just right there. There's an emanation and a beauty that's just pouring off of them. And then little by little, as we, you know, begin to engage and infuse ourselves into

• 12:34Speaker 01

  this world, we start to layer on top of that perceptive concepts and ways of using our faculties that conceal us. But that internal presence is still there. It's always going to be there. It's what we're made of. And so, the truth is still there, and our job is to discover it. So, when we're out here operating in this, you know, in this survival-based reality, we get triggered, we get upset, we get reactive, and if in that moment, we recognize...

• 13:15Speaker 01

  I'm having a reaction here. You know, I'm a little triggered. I can feel my heart beating. I can feel the tension. I feel my spine bow up a little bit. You know, I'm a little bit more lucid in ways that could serve me if I knew what to do with that energy in that moment. It's a beautiful sign. In this moment, instead of asking, "Why do you do that?" Because every time you do it, it upsets me. Or, "So what's wrong with you?" Like, "What do I have to do to get you to stop doing that?" Or, "What's wrong with me that I'm reacting to this? So what's wrong? What do I have to do differently?" Just ask a better question. And that is, where in my system could I build circuitry to be able to tap into aspects of my deep consciousness that's been pocketed away and pull it up and out?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Because if I could pull up and out all of the parts of my wholeness, I could be present with anything and not be triggered, not be reactive. I could see it for what it is and embrace and maybe even keep my wherewithal enough to offer up a solution or to offer up another way of looking at things instead of getting emotional and reactive, et cetera. And so what is hidden inside of me wants out in a moment of being triggered. And so if I ask the question, "Where in my system could I open a door to allow that to contribute to my engagement at this time, my interactions at this time?", the system will automatically offer up an answer because that's how we're built.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  You ask the question, the question is answered instantly. But if we're overriding it with our, you know, shutting it down by the idea that "You shouldn't do that because it upsets me" or "That should never have happened 20 years ago or 50 years ago in my life." And so I'm now harboring this anger or this frustration based upon what has happened in my story. Now, what happens is, we say, "For just a moment, I'm going to get underneath that whole story layer of me and free up this energy again." Because that anger can become passion. So we can recycle those energies and use them to our advantage. Once we learn how to do that.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And so it starts by being present with something. But it doesn't stop there. Let's go into that reaction. Because it's an energy that you don't know what to do with. That's why we call it a trigger. It spirals us into, you know, a loss of consciousness. We get reactive and we're living in that reactivity. But what if in that moment, you could take that energy and use it to collaborate and to build up a state of consciousness within this system that allows us to transform, not just transcend the primitive brain, not skip over it, but to transform its function and its role in our lives. Because when we do that,

• 16:09Speaker 01

  it gives us the power to stay the course. And it gives us the strength to allow for yet another moment of circuit building and another moment of circuit building until we break free through that primitive brain function that has us stopped and cycling and recycling. And we open up into higher brain centers where we can be in a state of illumination and clarity. And we can see that these things that have been happening since we got here were actually trying to show us how to disassemble the patterns of our ancestors and reassemble them in a state of relevance and consciousness

• 16:51Speaker 01

  that is fluid with a loving flow through our systems and intention for us to grow and evolve and flourish, which is what we're really here to do, to experience the magnificence of ourselves and of life and possibility, instead of just live to fight another day, kind of thing. And so when you describe, hey, if I can just come in here and stay present with something, some feeling that I'm feeling and not be afraid of that feeling, not be afraid of that energy. If I can just, you know... Be with it. I start to master my fear of it.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  If I can just, you know, allow it, I can start to own domain over the full keyboard of my existence. I can animate all of it and not be afraid of any of it. And when I do that, I start to become more and more of the truth of who I am. I become more masterful at life. I'm able to be present with more and more of life's circumstances because I have familiarity. There's resonance, there's coherence. My autonomic nervous system is automatically going to recognize, oh, I've felt this feeling before. I don't have to be afraid of it. Or, oh, I've been present with this kind of feeling. I've had to come present with this kind of a feeling before.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  And because of that, I know that I can generate that presence no matter what my circumstances are. And even if there's not a threatening circumstance, I can go to that vibration and cultivate it on my own, anytime I choose. And so, we have the spaciousness to just invite it and to realize, I can be with this sensation, and it's not going to take me out. It's not going to kill me. It's just an energy. And I can breathe with this particular vibration. And when I do, I come to know a version of myself that I would never have, may never have known if the set of circumstances that elicited it hadn't occurred and stirred it. That what we have to realize

• 19:03Speaker 01

  is that we come into this dimension so that those frequencies that we're unfamiliar with will get stirred, so that we can awaken to them consciously, so that we can experience our wholeness regardless of our external circumstances. It turns into functional clarity in a moment where something at work isn't going well, and you can, you know, you can stay present instead of being reactive. And so, the issues, here's another part of my short answer here. The issues that bother us are showing us exactly what is needed now. To have more of our wholeness animated in our lives. And they're nothing more than that. They aren't trying to take us out of the game.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  They're trying to put us in a bigger game all the while.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 20:20André Duqum?

  Coming from that place of regulation, not only is it I find more of an effective way to actually get what you want, it's also just how you would want to live your life. If you're always in this sympathetic state of fight and flight or freeze, it's just not an enjoyable way to be existing.

• 20:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's actually, that reminded me of the other thing that you had asked, which you had mentioned, we don't really want the things that we want. We actually want the feeling that we believe the things that we want are going to bring us. And this is something that I live by. And I also, all of my students that I coach, and this actually happened to me maybe a couple of weeks ago when I was in Dallas for Easter. I was sitting there doing my thing, where I was stressed that the goal wasn't happening fast enough. I was like, why isn't it happening on my timeline? And it made me stressed and anxious, because that's what it does. And then I was doing my morning pages as I do. I had gone and did my workout, and I was sitting on a park bench next to a tree, just journaling my morning pages. And I was like, OK. Well, if, like, this thing that I want,

• 21:23Speaker 06

  this goal that I have, what is the feeling that I believe that this goal is going to bring me? Because that's like, what I'm really after is the feeling. And I identified that feeling as, you know, I want to feel like I'm growing. I want to feel like I'm expanding. I want to feel confident. And I want to feel successful. Like, that's how I want to feel. And I was like, OK. And I have a sort of process for this. Because, yes, I mean, living in the feeling state of your desires or living... In the feeling state that you desire is really what it is. It absolutely makes your life more enjoyable. And that's the whole point. Because if life were about the destination and be called death. So we're supposed to be enjoying the process. But also, I've found that it absolutely brings more reasons to feel that way.

• 22:07Speaker 06

  And so I was like, OK, and I have kind of a two part process for this. Like, the first step is, OK, what do you want? I was very clear on that. And then the second step was like, OK, what are the feelings that I actually believe that things that I want are going to bring me? And I wrote down those feelings.

• 22:23André Duqum?

  What were some of those?

• 22:24Speaker 06

  That's what I just mentioned. So like, feeling like I'm growing.

• 22:27André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 06

  To me, like, I have like some top wants, needs, values in life. And one of them is joy, right, that I mentioned. And the other one is feeling like growth. Like, to me, like, feeling like I'm growing is a huge kind of value that I have in any way, shape or form. Not just, you know, in a like, in a physical sense, but also in like a spiritual sense or a mental or, you know, whatever, physical sense. And so, yeah, I wanted to feel like I was growing in some way, you know, like bettering myself, bettering my life, the world, whatever, making an impact. I wanted to feel like, how is this thing that, how's the goal going to make me feel? It's going to make me feel more successful. It's going to make me feel more confident in myself. And it's going to make me feel like I'm growing, like I'm, like I'm on the right path.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  And I was like, well, OK, I've identified that. OK, the last step here is a kind of a two parter. So part, step three is a two part. The first part is, what are all the reasons you already have to feel that way? And most of the time, we have so many reasons to feel that way right now. And I literally just went on this list of all the reasons why I already had to feel like I'm growing. Like, I'm like, Em, you're going on Know Thyself podcast in like two weeks. Like, what do you mean? You are growing. Like, what do you mean? You're going, doing these new opportunities. You're, you're starting a YouTube channel, like you're doing YouTube. You just finished writing a book. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you have all these reasons to feel like you are growing and to feel confident.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  And just, literally, I had a, someone that I coached once who printed out her resume and put it on her bathroom mirror to do this, to activate confidence. To activate the feelings that she desired. And so there's no right or wrong way to do this. But go on, I just went on a tangent list of all the reasons I already had to feel that way. Right? And, and then, you know, that's kind of the first part. And that's literally all I did that day, a couple of weeks ago. But there is a second part to this, which, you know, some people will be like, well, I don't have any reasons to feel that way right now. And the second, and that's why where the second part of step three comes in where it's like, okay, well, what are some things that you can do right now that you have complete control over that will bring you that feeling?

• 24:32Speaker 06

  And so for me, completing a workout brings me that feeling. Meditating, like doing a meditation brings me that feeling. It always tunes me back into myself and reminds me of like the spirit, angel, dolphin, alien that I am. And it always, you know, it always reminds me of that. And then I'm always just like, oh, yeah, like, this is fine. And so this different thing, right? So like, I have a repertoire of things that I know bring me those feelings that I'm after. And maybe that they might not come straight off top of your head. Maybe sitting with that question will, you know, eventually bring up things. But literally within two hours, I get a call from someone on my team who's like, this amazing opportunity just came in like, and it was something that I had been kind of just super in a detached way. Like, oh, that's on its way.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Just like every once in a while, I'm like, oh, that's on its way. It's coming. I don't know when, but it's coming. And I just trusted it fully. And I just would honestly say it as a joke. Like, I wasn't even really like trying to manifest it. I would just say it as a joke. And literally I get a call right after doing this exercise of activating the feeling states of my desires. And maybe that wasn't the specific goal, right? That I was sitting there being like, why isn't this happening? But it wasn't the specific goal that I had in my head. But it was something that made me feel all of those feelings that I was after. And I feel like that's another really great example of, and it just proves like we don't necessarily want the things we want. Like, we really do just want things to make us feel the way that we want to feel.

• 25:59Speaker 06

  And so being open to that, like being open to alternate paths, alternate opportunities, different ways that something can help you feel that way. And immediately after that happened, I was just like, wow, I just did that activity and it already came.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 26:44Speaker 07

  The number one thing, though, that helped me was just the act of vulnerability over and over and over and over again. And by vulnerability, I mean saying the thing that's true for you despite the consequences.

• 26:57Speaker 07

  Saying like, "Oh, I'm a little scared there." Or "I don't want that." Or "I love you." Or whatever the truth is that's a little bit scary. That's the trick. And it's very relational because the... Hate to call it this, but the avoidance that can come with that level of peace. What you're avoiding is the pain of relationships earlier in your life. And so, being able to be vulnerable and open yourself up to that pain again is the healing process. And so, it is...

• 27:39Speaker 07

  It's getting deeply vulnerable. And that's the biggest trick.

• 27:43André Duqum?

  Yeah, which vulnerability and authenticity, they've both gotten good PR agents.

• 27:48Speaker 07

  Recently.

• 27:48André Duqum?

  Right.

• 27:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:50André Duqum?

  Yeah, recently.

• 27:50Speaker 07

  Horrible in the 50s. They weren't doing good. They've turned their brand around. Yeah.

• 27:55André Duqum?

  Which is interesting because there's the appearance of vulnerability and then there's the thing that actually feels vulnerable.

• 28:01Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 28:01André Duqum?

  Right.

• 28:02Speaker 07

  Oh, correct. Yeah. That's... I mean, that's... So, for instance, I just talked about my dad being an alcoholic. That was vulnerable for some point in my life. That is not at all vulnerable, right? Right? And so, vulnerability... Sometimes part of vulnerability is like saying something vulnerable that nobody's gonna think is vulnerable. You know? Or... But yeah, it is... It has to make you pucker. That's how you know it's vulnerable. Because you go, "Ooh." Right? Because one, there's a form of fear that's like, "Oh, I'm stepping into a bigger room. I'm being asked to take up a bigger space."

• 28:41Speaker 07

  That could be I love you, that could be getting onstage and talking in front of 500 people. That could be taking a new role and there's like a, that's, and that tells you, oh, there's an act of vulnerability here. There's like that pucker that comes with it. And so, so that's, I think, one of the things that like lets you know you're being vulnerable is that, that, oh, my God, am I gonna, am I gonna say the thing?

• 29:07André Duqum?

  What are the smoke signals, so to speak, of emotional suppression? And how it, like, what are the key signs that whether or not we're aware of it, we are suppressing, you know, emotions to some degree in your experience?

• 29:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, so different emotions have different signals, but I can tell you, easy ones.

• 29:28Speaker 07

  Like, so for instance, if you're highly rational, if you're like one of those people like, I'm highly rational, I can say to you, you also think you're better than people who aren't, which means you think you're better than people. And if I can tell that, then I'm using my rationality to tell that you are emotionally suppressed as well. Meaning.

• 29:46André Duqum?

  Judgment, essentially.

• 29:47Speaker 07

  Basically, if you judge somebody, if every moment you're judging somebody, you are suppressing your emotions. You have to, like, you can just, if you judge somebody, you can just say, if I couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel? And there will be an emotion like right there waiting for you.

• 30:04André Duqum?

  If I couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel?

• 30:06Speaker 07

  If I just couldn't, not that I'm not supposed, not that I shouldn't, but if I just couldn't judge them, what would I have to feel?

• 30:11André Duqum?

  So if somebody finds themselves having the tendency to judge others, which slightly puts them above others, what would be an example of something they're avoiding feeling in that moment?

• 30:22Speaker 07

  I mean, the best way is to just do, find it for yourself, like, can you find anything that you judge anybody for?

• 30:31André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 07

  So give me something that you judge someone for, any, anything, small, big, doesn't matter.

• 30:36André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 30:39André Duqum?

  Virtue signaling.

• 30:41Speaker 07

  Great, that's a great one. That's an awesome one. Easy one to judge. So if you couldn't judge somebody for virtue signaling, what would you have to feel?

• 30:50André Duqum?

  What would I have to feel?

• 30:53Speaker 07

  You're just not capable of it. Not capable of judging them. Their virtue signaling and then you just couldn't.

• 30:59André Duqum?

  Probably shame.

• 31:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 31:04André Duqum?

  Yeah?

• 31:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, beautiful.

• 31:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's exactly. And that's, that's how it goes. So for instance, one of the things I used to judge people for was like just those inane conversations, you know, 20 minutes of like how fast you went to the grocery store or whatever, what you bought. And I recognized, I was like, oh, what would I have to feel? And it was just this deep grief. Because in my childhood, keeping it superficial was part of the way to avoid. And so I, there was like three weeks where I would just like seek out superficial conversations. And then I'd just be there, I'd be the weird guy there weeping while people are like talking about like what dress they bought at like Bloomingdale's or whatever. And because I was like, oh, there's the gold for me.

• 31:51Speaker 07

  That's like, I can, I can, if I can seek that out and then I can feel that emotion. And so that's exactly how I did it. Every time I found a judgment or I found something that I got triggered by, or I was like, okay, there's something there I couldn't feel. And then I would just reenact that over and over again until that trigger wasn't there in me anymore.

• 32:13Speaker 07

  So I would like go out and find virtue signaling and then like feel into that shame. Like I would like go to like a nice protest rally where everybody virtue signaling and I would just sit in it. That's what, those are the, some of the things that I.

• 32:24André Duqum?

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• 33:08André Duqum?

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• 33:39Speaker 02

  The most important discipline that you have to bring into your life is, do not imagine things and assert things that you don't know. In simple language, that is called a bloody lie. Your religions, your scriptures, your philosophies, your nonsense is all rooted in this bloody lie, talking about things which are not in your experience. Can you be a sincere enough human being? What I know, I know. What I do not know, I do not know. Once you see I do not know, it's the nature of human intelligence that you will want to know. The seeking to know, longing to know will arise within you.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  If this happens, wherever your life's experience is right now, if you take one more step, that's a fantastic thing. But you took ten steps in your mind. Hallucination. So how to become conscious? How not to become a victim of my own thought and my own emotion? First.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  There are many profound processes. But first thing is, see if I think what I am thinking is very smart, can I give it up? If I see this is stupid, then I’ll distance myself. If I think I’m very smart, I’m thinking my thoughts are very, very profound and smart thoughts, can I give it up? No way to give it up, isn’t it? So this is a first step you do, that whatever brilliant thought you have, your brilliance is only because there are some dumb people around you. Hello?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, no. Right now you say, you call your phone a smartphone. When do you call somebody smart? Only if they are smarter than you, isn’t it? Hello? Only if they are smarter than you, you call them smart. If you are smarter than them, you don’t say they are smart. Similarly, you’re calling a phone smart, that means... The phone is in dumb company. So whatever the smartest thought you have,

• 36:13Speaker 02

  doesn’t even account for a tiny miniscule of this cosmos, isn’t it? If you read all the libraries on the planet, still what you know is a miniscule in this cosmos. In this whole universe, this solar system itself is a speck. In that planet, Earth is a micro speck. In that California is a super micro speck. In that Los Angeles is a super, super micro speck. In that you are a big man. Lack of perspective, I’m saying. Once you lack such basic perspective, thoughts will run.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  So the simplest thing to do is this. If you sit here and just look at yourself, today before you go to bed, you sit down, spend 10 minutes and do this. What are all the things you have gathered?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Your home, you gathered it over a period of time. Your car, you gathered it. This body also you gathered over a period of time, right? Were you born like this, you guys? You were born like this? No. Slowly you gathered. So your body you gathered. Whatever the content of the mind you gathered. People around you, you gathered. Everything gathered. Everything that you have gathered, just keep it aside. Don't give it up, don't throw it out. Just keep it aside and go to bed. See if you can do that. It'll take some effort. But just do this. One day when you go to bed and wake up,

• 37:57Speaker 02

  you will wake up like a new being. Everything that you have gathered, you don't have to give it up. Just keep it aside for the night and sleep. But you're not even able to keep the phone aside. You have to sleep with it. Hello? Forget about your mind. So make an effort. Ten minutes you spend today. Gradually, the time can be reduced to two minutes. Two minutes in the night. Sit there, keep everything aside and sleep. Initially, it looks like a ridiculous exercise. One day, when you just manage to do that and sleep,

• 38:38Speaker 02

  morning you wake up, you're boom. Just do that. Simple. Because these thoughts are running like this, like mental diarrhea. Because you've eaten bad food. What you are not, you're believing you are. What you gather can be yours. Can it be you? Hello? Whatever you have gathered, I am not disputing it. It is yours. But is it you? So what about your body? What about the content of your mind? What about the people? What about the things that you gathered? You gathered them. It's yours.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  We will not take it away. But it can't be you, isn't it?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  If you know that much, thoughts will deflect. Right now, you believe yourself to be something other than what you are. Suppose I think I am this vessel. You know I am a nutcase. Yes or no? Tell me, it’s okay, yeah? So if you think you’re this vessel, are you not a nutcase? Hello? So when you’re a nutcase, your thoughts will run like that. Because things are loose. So what is you, what is not you? You don’t know what is you. At least what is not you, keep it aside.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  What is not you, just keep it aside. Just two, three minutes in the night before you go to bed. Keep it aside and slip off. Comfortable, isn’t it? You will see, thoughts will just fall away because only if you identify yourself with something that you’re not, these thoughts will run away while like this. Otherwise, they will not. They cannot, because there’s no fuel. We are not trying to apply brakes, because there are no brakes on your mind. Switch off the ignition and sit, it will stop. Little, little roll.

• 40:55André Duqum?

  There’s the religious promise of the afterlife and heaven and hell. And I’ve spoken to you in the past about the afterlife and past lives and your internal struggle when awakening to the visceral experience of recollection, recollection of past existences and wrestling with that in your logical, scientific mind. And so, what is the middle path here in terms of experiencing what the reality is of what comes after we die?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  See, the problem with these things is, if you tell somebody something which is not in their experience, very few people are sincere enough to see that maybe this is true, but not it true for me. Let me explore. Most people will start hallucinating. They will straight away go to heaven, talk to God, take a tour of the heaven, everything they will do within 10 minutes. Hello? The moment you tell them there is a upper deck, you think they will not go there? They will go away, run away, and imagine all kinds of things. So, let's see it this way.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  This is what I've been going at in so many different ways. You know you accumulated the body. It's just a piece of the planet, isn't it? Hello? Just a piece of the planet. What do you eat? Piece of the planet, sitting here, serving you well, as if it's part of you, or as if it's you. It is part of you, but in your experience, as if it's like you, isn't it? But you know, you have enough intelligence to understand, you have gathered this. So is this, you have gathered this. So if these two things are accumulations, everything else, you know the chair is not you, hello?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Let me see when you get up, okay? You know the other things. So if these two things are accumulated, there seems to be something more. You don't know. But there seems to be something more called myself. Maybe it's just an idea. Maybe it's just a bundle of thoughts and emotions. You don't know, but you know something beyond this blood and gore that you have, something more seems to be there here. Right now, you're looking at me. Hmm? Are your eyes looking at me?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  You're looking. Through the window of your eyes, you're looking at. If you close your eyes, you're not looking at me, but you're still there. Hmm? Window's closed, but you're still there, isn't it? So, there seems to be something more. Beyond this body, there seems to be something more. It's not an absolute experience right now, but you see, there seems to be something more. So, give it a chance. Let's see if we can make a little more out of that. Let's see if we can bring a little more of that into our experience. Right now, this hand is properly in your experience, isn't it? It's here.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  If it becomes like this, as real as this hand in your experience, this something more, which is looking at me through the window of your eyes, then you have no problem. You know what is you, what is not you. It's just that your time and energies have never been applied in that direction. Your time and energies is you want to conquer the world. But even suppose I make you, don't tell anybody, if I make you the king of this world, will you be fulfilled? No. You'll want the moon, isn't it? Hello?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  If I give you the moon, Mars, Musk is going there, how can you not take it before him? If I give you the whole solar system, you look at the rest of the galaxy. So, there is something within you, which is anyway not going to settle. We buy shopping for more and more. So, you shop what you need. No problem. But shopping for the sake of enhancement is not going to work. Because if you get this much, but the person next to you get that much, again, you'll feel the same thing. This happened just before I launched the Safe Soil Project.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  I came to United States and trying to drum up support with the media and various other things. I think I also came to you guys at that time. At that time, I am sitting somewhere and one morning, one young man is running around like his tail is on fire. I just look at him, the way he is moving around, and say, "Hey, what are you up to?" "No, Sadhguru, I want to make one billion dollars. I want to make one billion dollars." I said, "Only one billion? You come tomorrow morning, I will give you one billion dollars." "Really, Sadhguru? You will give me one billion dollars?" I said, "Yes, you come tomorrow morning, I will give you one billion dollars."

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Eight of his friends had come with him, they were quietly sitting there. I said, "See, these eight guys, I am going to give all of them ten billion dollars each tomorrow." "Why, why, Sadhguru? They get ten billion, I get only one billion?" "You idiot, just now you said your life's ambition is to get one billion dollars. The moment they get ten billion dollars, you are already having a problem. Neither you got, nor he got, but already there is a problem. Because they are getting ten billion, I am getting one billion. So I am saying, whatever you get, you will compare to something else and struggle. So these outside things, you gather to the extent it's necessary. Different people need different things. I will not set a standard for you.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  My standards may be only this much, maybe you need this much, all right? But by gathering this much or that much, it will not enhance your life. It will enhance and facilitate our activity a little bit. If you have the money, if you have the convenience, you can do certain things in the world, but it will not enhance this in any way. Enhancing this means you have to approach it, you have to turn inward. Right now, all your five sense organs are outward, yes? You can't roll your eyeballs inward and scan yourself. You can't hear what's happening here.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  You... you cannot smell what's happening in this body, otherwise you are finished, I am telling you.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yes or no? Somebody else you can smell. What's happening here you cannot smell? Aren't you glad? So all sense organs are outward bound. To turn inward takes a bit of an effort. That effort is missing in the world. That's what we're trying to bring about. For as a solution for life and death, the only thing is you turn inward, that you are able to pay attention to something that is beyond the accumulations of the body and the accumulations of the mind. If this one thing happens, the rest of it is just a play.

• 48:53André Duqum?

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• 49:36André Duqum?

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• 50:08Speaker 05

  The first thing, actually, I've got to say about realization is it's actually not contingent on practice, which is a pretty radical thing. You don't need to have practiced in order to have realization or awakening. You don't... Even you can practice a lot and not have realization slash awakening. It's a different order. Now, I wanna, I gonna just, let me, can I tell you a quick story, personal?

• 50:39André Duqum?

  Again, no.

• 50:41André Duqum?

  Yeah, let her rip.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  You know, when I was nineteen, before I'd done any practice at all, I had a moment of, of quite significant realization, awakening, that landed on me, and I had no idea what it was, except that it was the truth. It was the truth of my life. And I was, yeah, I was standing on a beach, watching the sun go down. And I was looking at the light on the water. And I noticed that it wasn't just one brightness, it was like pieces of brightness, scales of brightness on the water, moving over this totally black surface of the water.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Bright and black, and I couldn't, is it bright, is it dark? I couldn't, I was trying to figure it out. And all of a sudden,

• 51:35Speaker 05

  me and what I was looking at stopped being two things. There was only one world, one reality. And both the water and any sense of Henry were both that reality. So the distinction had gone. And actually, I dropped right in then to this

• 51:59Speaker 05

  unbounded, empty substance. There was no substance, that was what the universe was made of. And I knew to the bottom of my being, all through my bones, that I was made of the universe, and I was not separate from it, and never had been, and never could been, never could be, because we were one thing that was not really a thing. But it was absolute, absolutely one. And I sort of emerged from that, you know, realized I was a person standing on a beach again. And, and, and then I was just enveloped

• 52:45Speaker 05

  by this sense of all of this, this whole life, this whole world. All of us, it's it's a dream, a most beautiful, sublime dream. And it's all made of love, like an immemorial love just enveloped everything. And and, you know, it was, it was, I knew it was real. And and I was so blown away by it that I felt I had fulfilled my life. That whatever the whatever the purpose of this life had been, which, to be honest, I'd never thought about really before.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  I'd never really thought, what's my purpose? I'd just been following what I was told, studying and sports, gymnastics, I did whatever, you know. But in this moment, suddenly, it just was like a wave of love just enveloped me. After, right after that experience, you know. And and it was like, I've had a purpose in this life. It was to realize exactly what I've just realized. And actually, years later, I I heard Yogananda

• 54:06Speaker 05

  saying in an old documentary, you know,

• 54:10Speaker 05

  this life is a movie, it's a motion picture. And the purpose of life is to turn around and see the projector. And I, when I heard that, I thought, oh, my gosh, that's so beautifully put. That's exactly how I felt when I was nineteen and this thing happened. But, you know, what I really want to say is really important here in my, for me, is that

• 54:36Speaker 05

  actually, my life didn't end then. I could have died happily that night, knowing my life was fulfilled, but it didn't. And a few weeks later, I went back home. I'd been far away from home when this happened. I went back home and it was when I went home that actually I got overwhelmed by the unacknowledged trauma of my childhood, which I had put a lot of effort into suppressing. I'd evolved these adaptive personalities, sub-personalities, parts, so that I could deal with the with the very difficult aspects of my childhood, traumatic, complex childhood

• 55:18Speaker 05

  trauma that I grew up with. But I'd managed to kind of avoid feeling it because it was too much through my childhood with adapt adaptations. When I went home at nineteen after this experience, all those adaptive strategies had been ripped away. I was wide open, which was very beautiful. I was so open and full of love and very aware of suffering in the streets when around me, I was in South America at the time, and so on. As soon as I got home, literally almost walked through the

• 55:56Speaker 05

  door of my father's house, actually an hour later, I was just overwhelmed by these terrible memories and emotions in my body of my childhood that I had not been able to feel as a kid, had avoided, suppressed, buried. But the awakening opened me so I could feel them. But at that time, I had no resources and I didn't want to feel them. I thought it was a catastrophe that I could be feeling these terrible things. And I thought I'd

• 56:35Speaker 05

  lost that marvelous awakening and I went into despair. And I think this is, I really feel this is a crucial part of this whole process that we humans can go through of awakening. It's also healing. It's always, I think, going to be both awakening and healing. Because for me, I was a very reluctant sort of client, patient, needer of healing. I didn't want to know about it, even then at nineteen. And it took me, well, several Years, three years, four years of being really unhappy, drinking, you know, university and kind of

• 57:20Speaker 05

  dragging myself through life, gradually finding a little more joy with music. Actually, I was a musician and writing again and, you know, but then I found meditation and almost as soon as I started meditating, I realized, man, I'm unhappy, you know, and I started therapy and I started dealing with all the trauma in my childhood. And, you know, it's been a kind of twin journey of awakening and healing, how to live more consistently and get actually even more deeply into whatever that was that I opened up to. But also be dealing with this suffering, troubled, traumatized human being.

• 58:04Speaker 05

  And I, I think the mercy of this path is that it doesn't leave either behind.

• 58:10André Duqum?

  A lot of us are under the presumption that these two things are fused.

• 58:15André Duqum?

  That like the spiritual or contemplative work will solve the parts work, the healing work, the growing up. And I think they're intrinsically linked, very complementary, but not the same. And, you know, it's, it's something we talk about quite a bit because I think it's really important to have a holistic understanding of what awakening means, right? And under just the meditative contemplative lens, we can wake up beyond the idea of being identified with our thoughts and emotions. We can have these more formless, John estate experiences.

• 58:53André Duqum?

  And it doesn't fix the, it can some, some ways it can make it even

• 59:00André Duqum?

  harder to take seriously these like characterological stuff.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:03André Duqum?

  I think it makes it easier to work with because we're less reactive to them. In your case, it made space for that to come to the surface, right?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 59:11André Duqum?

  But any other thoughts you have there on the importance between the two and how they're both essential, but they don't necessarily solve one another?

• 59:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's really important to state like you, because I think, um, you know, in a therapeutic context,

• 59:31Speaker 05

  I've never been in a therapeutic context that really deeply understood awakening. And, but they did. Didn't really know that they didn't really understand it. And I've also been in meditative contemplative contexts that didn't really understand trauma and thought that they were the fix for everything. So I love this, there's in early Chinese Buddhism from the sixth century, there's a document that talks about the path of practice as a cart track. Not a path, you know, we talk about like, often talk about like spiritual path, it's the path up the mountain or something.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  But this, this idea, the cart track says, no, it's not a path. It's a track, meaning there are two wheel tracks. And it says, the first wheel track is the foundations of mindfulness. And by that, it means this early Buddhist training, you gradually develop your mindfulness and it expands, it gets deeper and deeper, you get into jhanas, maybe you get realization, but it's a gradual cultivation of the human mind, body, heart system. The second wheel track, running parallel to it all along, just like a cart track, is awakening.

• 1:00:53Speaker 05

  So rather than it being a journey to the mountain, up the mountain, awakening is alongside all the way, which I think is accurate. It's also because it's always here. And it also, it's not affected by, in a certain way, it's not affected by the practice, the gradual cultivation and development that we, we probably all need to do to some degree, which is a beautiful thing as well. But what happens is that the more we're working on the gradual developmental side, the more open we become to maybe having glimpses of the awakening side. The more we might glimpse the awakening side, the more space there is to work with the gradual,

• 1:01:39Speaker 05

  I call it healing side. And, and somehow, I think this is a really helpful metaphor. It's not.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  A single journey to the destination. In a certain way, all the old traditions are right. The destination's here all along. But to actually glimpse it and integrate it, we probably need to do all this gradual work, basically on ourselves and on our relationships and on our trauma, on our history, on our collective trauma, on our ancestral trauma, let alone, of course, our personal trauma.

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• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Society, in a lot of ways, does celebrate childhood adaptations, right? A lot of times, drive, right, is seen and celebrated as motivation, as an individual who's seeking to achieve and then who does achieve. And, right, I make a case that, or I am of the belief that a lot of times the continuous action or seeking comes from a childhood where love was conditional, where we learned that we had to go and do and acquire certain things or present ourselves in certain ways to maintain the connection and the belonging that we needed. I think society also, in some ways... Celebrates other behaviors as well, right?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  The behaviors of being shut down and easygoing to some extent for some of us, right? Are celebrated as opposed to on the other side, sometimes moments where we're being passionate and explosive, right? Those two also can be celebrated. So I think that there's a lot of aspects of society where certain parts or identities or habits are seen and looked at, you know, in a more positive light when really they're grounded, again, in our best attempt to maintain secure connections because in childhood, we need to be connected to the world around us. It's the only way that we can care or be cared for. So by being attuned to what's happening around us, including society's messaging and those

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  of us that kind of continue on that path do, I think it's celebrated in some ways.

• 1:04:29André Duqum?

  It's so fascinating when, once you start to see this all around you, but primarily in yourself, like the motivating forces for ambition, even spirituality, which can be a big one for a lot of people. I know parts, it perhaps was for me as well, where the path of meditation or just the seeking of solace in any form can be driven from this place of dysregulation. And so could you set the framework for how that emotional home base is created in childhood?

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in childhood, again, when we are completely dependent, not only for our physical needs, but for our emotional needs, we're incredibly adaptive. We will change ourselves because we can't change the environment around us. And even locating emotional needs in childhood is a newer shift, even in the clinical psychology world, and that really came when we understood the development of our nervous system, the fact that a child cannot calm oneself down on its own. We need a safe adult to calm and to soothe or to down-regulate when a child is crying or upset or in a state of need. So then depending on the consistency or the inconsistency, so even just putting my

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  childhood on into this conversation, it wasn't necessarily a matter that I did have two parents who were physi- Present, what impacted me was the lack of emotional attunement. So without that, we will modify parts of ourself. We'll only show the parts that are accepted or aren't shamed or even yelled at. We will become again who we need to be to maintain the bonds that are closest to us or that are most important to us. And then, because our nervous system will always prefer the familiar, this is why we get so stuck in patterns, even if we know they're dysfunctional and they might be betraying us, or we might be neglecting ourselves,

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  or maybe hurting those around us, because our nervous system will prefer those predictable patterns, because it knows what comes next. Even if what comes next is something we want to avoid, it feels safer to us than the unknown. So that is for some of us why we continue to, no matter how much insider awareness we might have, right? We might know that we're in a safe relationship, yet we can't help those instinctual reactions that our body elicits. The moment that someone appears upset with us, or the moment that someone isn't as communicative with us as we would like them to be, right? We spiral into panic, because maybe our body remembers a time

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  where we didn't have secure connection, where distance met rejection or met abandonment. So we memorize to some extent the emotional climate and the reality, again, for most of us adults, because we were raised by humans who were raised by humans. And if we think back to past generations, many of our parents and our grandparents didn't have access to this information. Like, I just even acknowledge, this nervous system science is new information, and some of us didn't have access to resources, to financials. So for all of those reasons, more often than not, we didn't have the safety and the emotional attunement that we needed in childhood. So the home base that we keep returning to isn't a grounded, safe, secure one.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  And though, while that is the case, we can create that at any time. So through all of my work. I hope to empower. I like to explain why some things are the way they are at this current moment. But it's not to say that that's how they will always be. Because we now know that our body and our mind is incredible, capable of incredible change through neuroplasticity, through practicing small new choices each and every day. We can actually change that climate that we're trying to return to at all times.

• 1:08:21André Duqum?

  Yeah, I love that you're, in many ways, you're a harbinger of good news. Because it's like, it's not that something's wrong with you, that you're broken and now you're that way, but rather there are all these tools for you, for you to be able to connect to that place, regulate yourself and, and take control of your path in a sense that, and largely, we were living unconscious before. But why does somebody become avoidant versus anxious and so on?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  So if in childhood, if, if, if connection and compassion and safety were inconsistent, we didn't know when they would be available. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna really generalize this. The safest thing that we could do is become hyper-aware or hyper-vigilant to any shift or change that might indicate that that attention, that connection, that safety will move away. So we become hyper-vigilant and oftentimes, right, we end up pursuing, as we do or we see in a anxious attachment style, right? An avoidant attachment style might look like a childhood where we didn't have that attunement. So emotions were so big, the safest thing to do was to suppress them, to shove them

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  down or to disconnect from them. As I lived the majority of my life in a state of dissociation or a disconnected state where I lived in my mind. I was always thinking, analyzing, no surprise, I became a psychologist, of course, living on my spaceship, as I called it. So a lot of times, that disconnected feeling or that kind of way of being that we see in an avoidant, right, comes from an absence of connection. Because when I don't have someone to be safe with me in childhood, I'm left alone with my emotions. So sometimes the safest thing I can do, right, is to avoid them, to disconnect from them. And then we see that pattern play out when I'm relating to others, where I keep myself

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  far away from any connection that is possible, even if now, in adulthood, that connection is safe.

• 1:10:18André Duqum?

  So that's avoidant.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  So that would be avoidant is the absence of connection. And again, I'm simplifying in childhood. Looks like those distancing, those pulling away behaviors. It's the person who almost feels like they have a wall up. They're present and showing up for the relationship, but you don't really have a sense of kind of how they're thinking or what they're feeling and/or they move away, right? They leave a relationship before intimacy deepens or they hyper-focus on flaws in someone else to, you know, be the reason why this relationship won't work to prevent closeness entirely. Where if we want to say like the opposite, so to speak, the anxious, right, will be the person who's pursuing, hypervigilant, sensing any shift in tone, worried if you're upset with me or not, and trying to pursue to maintain that connection

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  because they are in contrast to the avoidant who never had the connection, right? An anxious attachment had parts of it in certain moments. So that's where we then become vigilant too, right? Any indication that the connection that might be available might leave.

• 1:11:19André Duqum?

  How much would you say, and it's probably really hard to give an accurate percentage, but like of people that are actually secure and then disorganized, right?

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  So disorganized to kind of wrap that one in there. That would be when the parent, right? This person who we need safety and security from, when they are the source of our abuse or our neglect. So then we have kind of mixed messaging, right? The person that I'm quite literally wired to connect to is also the person that's abusing me or that's neglectful of me. So that then is a bit of a, we could think about as a combination in a sense of the avoidant versus the anxious attachment, where it's kind of like, we desperately want closeness, but we're desperately afraid of it at the same time. And honestly, I think secure attachment is few and far between. I think there are fewer adults than you would see

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  in those other attachment styles that are securely attached. Again, because few of us in our lineages, right, had parents, grandparents that had these tools and skills themselves. But again, I want to be clear, secure attachment can be created through new, safe, secure relationships. And of course, through us changing and learning how to be safe and securely attached ourselves.

• 1:12:34André Duqum?

  Once you understand and you start to explore these different attachment styles, you can start to pinpoint how you typically relate to love and the way that we, especially how it shows up in romantic dynamics, I think it becomes pretty obvious what we're attracted to, the person who's emotionally unavailable, for example, and we see that pattern come up over and over again. You start to have some insight into this, then how do you build on top of attachment systems with your model?

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I think all change happens with the awareness that we continue to speak of, right, learning how to be present to ourselves and our lives, learning to understand what habits we are carrying into our relationships in particular, maybe what beliefs or identities are driving those habits, right? For a lot of us, we become the caretaker in an adult relationship because, again, there was safety in worrying about or appeasing other people in childhood. So, all change happens when we first see ourselves, right, from that grounded state of presence, not from a child who couldn't, right, zoom out and understand context and change, but from an adult who has that capacity.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  But to, again, acknowledge that oftentimes, we don't yet have the tools to do or shift our actions in the moment, right? So, the awareness that I'm speaking of means throughout consistent moments in our day, dropping into our body, determining how I feel in the physical sense. Of course, in addition to what I'm thinking and emotionally, right, what emotions I might be having in that moment, but it begins with presence, right? Because the more aware I am of what's happening behind the scenes, the more than I give myself the opportunity to change patterns or habits that aren't working for me. But, again, for a lot of us, we become locked and loaded, especially if these patterns are all we've known ourself to be,

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  if they're wrapped around identities, again, if our nervous system is dysregulated. A lot of times, right, in the moment where, instead of screaming or yelling or disconnecting, we want to do something different, we're not going to have that capacity unless we begin to reconnect with our body to begin with, to learn when our body is under stress and to learn then how to calm our body down. Because so much of change happens through the body, not just through insight alone.

• 1:14:51André Duqum?

  Just to tie a bow on that, when you think about how often we are trying to get a need met the only way we know how, what are some of the most common patterns you see in your clinical practice as this shows up over and over again?

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  I think a really common way that we go to get our need met is we don't communicate it, we just enact it, right? We do the thing that we once learned to do, whether it's the most, I think, common pattern that I also identify with myself is where we are the people pleaser, the appeaser, right? Where we remove ourself from the equation, thinking that the way to meet our needs is by caring for or by appeasing or allowing someone else to be okay before we are okay for ourselves. So I think that is a really, really common one that I see very often, which is where we learn to focus externally and we continue then to focus externally on the world around

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  us, on other people, on what they might want or need, and we forget to factor ourselves into the equation.

• 1:15:52Speaker 04

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• 1:16:22André Duqum?

  I've really just thoroughly enjoyed getting to get more glimpses of insight into the different parts of your journey, and I think people are going to really resonate with it because you're being real. And I know it feels raw, I'm sure, at times, but again, and I mentioned earlier, like, I just commend you for showing up so courageously to, like, say what it is and not just what it wants to sound like, you know?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. And I, you know, I've also, I'm at this place in my life where I'm like, okay, I have talked about these things a lot, like, what else do I want to talk about?

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  And and I'm just so grateful to be able to be in this point in my life to have these conversations. And like, you never know what's going to affect someone. You never know. I always. That's why, like, when I come into these things and I was like, ask whatever you want. Like, we don't have to prepare because I know that the right words are going to come out of my mouth to affect the right people that need to hear it in that moment, whether that's five people or 5,000 people or whatever. I just believe that things always happen as they should, so.

• 1:17:27André Duqum?

  Is there anything else on your heart, could be about anything, that you feel called to share about? Or that we haven't talked to?

• 1:17:35Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm 36. I'm not married and I don't have kids. And I'm, I finally, you know, I've been greeted with a lot recently within my world of people being like, oh. And I just feel like there's a lot of women who probably need to hear that it's okay to not have that at this point in your life. Like, I have seen so many people in my life settle down, have kids, have the family, and that's beautiful and that's amazing. But, and I know that that's a part of my life soon. It isn't yet, but I think that, I don't know why I felt called to say that.

• 1:18:17Speaker 06

  I do believe that there's big lessons within being alone at this time in your life. There's nothing wrong with it. I think that if you are at a place in your life where you feel alone or you are single, I'm willing to bet you're being called towards something really, really amazing. So to like, enjoy the time with yourself and like, get, I feel like maybe the world is trying to tell you something. Does that make sense? Like?

• 1:18:44André Duqum?

  No, for sure.

• 1:18:45Speaker 06

  I feel like society tries to tell us to, that we need certain things in order to live a fulfilled life, but. Basically, just don't compare your journey to

• 1:18:55André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 06

  anyone else's.

• 1:18:56André Duqum?

  Just a note on that because I have a lot of women in my life also who are mid, late 30s, early 40s, who I know would be incredible mothers that want to be mothers. Not everyone wants to have kids. And the reality of the biological clock for a woman is different than a man's.

• 1:19:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13André Duqum?

  I'm just curious, any other thoughts on like how you navigate that kind of that dance, that yearning, and then also like not settling for something?

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  Oh, well, that's the thing is like, I'm so comfortable being alone. I love my life. I love the people in my life. I made a commitment to myself that whoever I end up with has got to be really excellent. You know, like, it doesn't mean you don't compromise with someone, but like, I want a true partner and someone who can like meet me where I'm at and have an understanding of what I've been through.

• 1:19:47Speaker 06

  But obviously, like, yeah, there is the biological conversations that are very valid. But I think it just goes back to, I just believe in, it'll make sense. I believe in the timing of my life and it'll, I'll, it'll, when, when it all happens, I'll be like, oh, I see why it had to happen that way. We put so much pressure on ourselves and on other people and

• 1:20:15Speaker 06

  and I don't know if there's really a way to avoid that, but I do, I have found it comforting to have conversations with women who found all of that later in their life. And, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to handle all of that at a different time in my life. No way. I would have completely, that would have, you know, I wasn't mentally, emotionally, spiritually able to nurture all of that then. So, um, yeah, I don't know why I felt called to say that, but.

• 1:20:50André Duqum?

  I think it's really important. I'm glad you did.

• 1:20:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52André Duqum?

  Because I think a lot of people can really resonate with that.

• 1:20:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  After so many pathways done, after so much science done, I've come to the conclusion that there is a wall of ignorance.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  A wall of opportunistic greed and money and power going on. We got so much technology, yet we are barbaric the way we are in the world. It's time for the love, it's time for the soul. And these simple tools I have found make people really able to get back to the factory settings of Mother Nature. That is to love each other and to hug each other instead of, oh, sorry.

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  I touched you. Hey, who did that, man? It's not about sex, it's about love, and that is fucking good. You know, I just wake up people and I say it's time for the soul. We have been playing in the shit show enough. Too much wars, too much, are we, man? Are we able to protect our children? We are children ourselves in the face of Mother Nature. Are we playful? Are we powerful? So powerful that we can play, that we don't feel fear. All that we are not takes beings of light.

• 1:22:25Speaker 04

  The new people, the new real investigators, and not these so-called scientists in the hierarchical system who are just sitting there following the industry, not humanity. So for that, the podcast is the new way to spread what is really going on and what is really benefiting to humanity. My core message therein for in this podcast to be spread is simple. Through these tools, cold and breeding.

• 1:23:03Speaker 04

  We are able to get back into the depths of ourself, into the autonomic nervous system and the autonomous processes in the brain. Autonomous means outside our will. And autonomy means that you are a person who is able to handle his emotions, his freedom, his energy, his body and mind. It's all there. And it's every day, it should be there unconditionally. But not in a society that demands us to be narrow-minded and serve this system like a brick in the wall. We are no bricks in the wall, guys. We are the whole house.

• 1:23:46Speaker 04

  And we should be able to go into any space of that house, because it's our temple and our being there makes it sacred. And that is our brain. We should be able to go into any space of our own brain, which is connected to the central nervous system and is connected everywhere. And it doesn't mean that you need to be everywhere in the house. No, you sit like we sit, relaxed in the living room. And when you are sleepy, you go to sleep nicely. Here's another room. Then you don't, you're no longer in the living room. And then in the kitchen to make some food. And then with the kids there. And there you play, make music.

• 1:24:31Speaker 04

  There you get with the dog. And don't go all the time in the house, because he's gonna shit in the house. So, you need to go out. This is why, I could be a billionaire already, but I am not a seller. I'm the living room.