The path to liberation with Miles Neale (Part 1 & 2)
The path to liberation is filled with a lot of stages and experiences. As we strive for liberation and go through the stages of the path to true freedom, we practice mindfulness in various contexts. In this new podcast episode, Miles Neales shares with us how to liberate ourselves. We learn about terms like McMindfulness which addresses the cherry-picking behavior of people in regard to teaching.
Show Notes Links:
Learn more at:
https://www.GradualPath.com
Full Podcast Transcription:
The path to liberation with Miles Neale (Part 1 & 2)
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Miles Neale Part 1
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[00:00:00] Host: Hello, you wonderful being out there. I really appreciate you being here with me and engaging. This is the today dream podcast, where we cultivate the practice of presence together by having conversations and tuning into and sharing wisdom, feeling into the space that arises among two beings and kind of seeing where that leads us in terms of allowing us to deepen our own participation in the emergent collective world story.
[00:00:43] That's continually unfolding in every moment. So what does it look like to practice presence and what does it feel like to deeply sink into the moment?
[00:00:58] Why would we even do such a thing? These are the kinds of questions that I explore into with today's guest Miles Neale of whom about miles a little bit in a moment. But first of all, I wanted to extend out my heartfelt gratitude to a couple of beautiful humans that have decided to reach out and get in touch with me.
[00:01:20] So Ivana T the young Yogi on Instagram, McKee, Shaw, and JB, I really appreciate your recent messages. And I just wanted to say, thank you. I appreciate you reaching out. And, um, just kind of, I feel blessed that you're getting something out of the show and, um, that it's kind of touched you in a, in a space, um, so much so that you've decided to reach out.
[00:01:46] If anyone else out there feels like getting in touch. I would love to hear from you if you're enjoying the show, if you've got recommendations, if there's something that you would like to see. Um, please get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you. I'm hoping to build more and more of a community and offer more to you guys in terms of helping you on this path that we're on together.
[00:02:09] Um, as I'm learning and growing, uh, I want to contribute as much of that. Um, um, as much of that to you as I can. So, uh, let's get into it. So I'll tell you a little bit about miles real quickly before we kind of move on with the conversation. So Dr. Miles Neale is a contemplative psychotherapist based in New York, and he's one of the leading voices of the current generation of Buddhist teachers models coined the term McMindfulness to address the problem we have in society of cherry picking teachings from ancient, mostly threatened wisdom, cultures, and mass marketing them as consumers goods.
[00:02:51] Sorry. Um, I'll tell you a little bit more about my mother's book actually, before we move on. So he's, he's booked gradual awakening provides a practical training manual of 30 ancient contemplative insights and meditative practices drawn from the Tibetan Buddhist path. He makes it accessible for the Western mind while at the same time, staying true to ancient teachings and practices.
[00:03:17] He's also got another book which I want to share with you as well. And this is one that really, really resonated with me and his other book is advances in contemplative psychotherapy, accelerating, healing, and transformation. So he co-wrote this book and co-edited it with Joseph Louis. So, and Emily J Wharf.
[00:03:40] So, uh, let's get into this conversation with miles. Um, but again, thank you for being here in this present moment in your body, you know, with me and with miles and with everyone else listening, we're here and we're all together beyond space and time. I think beyond hope. Um, I'm quite confident that this one will really help you on your process of self healing, transformation and participation in everything that's going on.
[00:04:07] So, uh, what I tend to do before the episodes is just kind of take a breath with the guests and invite everyone listening to do the same, just because of all the kind of stuff that we just went through with the technical side of things. It's nice to kind of. I guess, um, give people an opportunity to pause as, as well as ourselves, before we kind of drop into the space.
[00:04:30] Would that be something we could do together now? Sure.
[00:04:34] Guest: All right.
[00:04:38] Host: So there's an invitation they've run out there to take care of slow inhalation in through the nose, pausing at the crescendo, seeing any subtleties of your experience before just this gracefully releasing on the way out. And we'll do this one. So it's fine.
[00:06:47] Guest: Uh, you mix excavation whenever that may
[00:06:52] Host: be for free to can we synchronize the sharpening of your eyes
[00:06:59] Guest: allowing more and more lighting? That's where you come into this? I haven't together.
[00:07:23] We had it
[00:07:24] Host: began. We had a big game.
[00:07:29] I've got, um, I guess the theme for me that was arising, um, through going on the journey of kind of exploring your work miles. Um, there's so many places that I want to explore. Um, but I guess the question of how do we become an effective spiritual being in the world,
[00:07:55] Guest: um,
[00:07:57] Host: comes up and, um, yeah, I, I kind of, I'm not sure if anything pops up in your heart or mind space when hearing that question, maybe even what effective means would be an interesting place to explore.
[00:08:13] But, um, yeah, I'm just kind of just wanted to say or feeling too, if anything arose, um, as I kind of post that,
[00:08:24] Guest: um, Context is always important because I think spirituality has changed over time, over the course of history. Some, some aspect of it is universal. And then some aspect of, of this question is relative.
[00:08:41] And so, you know,
[00:08:45] the great existential questions or the archetypal questions are the same. And then there is our responsibility to make it practical and applicable to the context. And in that case, it may be very personal to you. Your answer may be very personal to, it may be situational. Um, and so, you know, part of my work right now is looking at the astrology of the, of the current context of our lives and placing spirituality within that context.
[00:09:17] And what was required is some challenge to the status quo, spiritual. Uh, there are, for example, there is a archetype in the astrology that we are currently in, where it is moving away from hierarchy and towards decentralization. So what it might have meant to be a spiritual being 2000 years ago might have included a lot of deference and devotion finding one's place within a hierarchy, placing once feet to oneself, self at the feet of a master, for example, and aiming towards transcendence or an escape of the world.
[00:10:03] And that's just not where we are right now. We are no longer in that place, at least on those two specific points. Now it is understanding that we are each our own devotion to our own intuition is what is necessary right now in this kind of archetype of decentralization. Each of us has to be a master of our own world.
[00:10:24] We can ill afford to outsource our power to hierarchies, particularly the kinds of hierarchies around the, uh, around the planet right now that are misguiding us. Everybody is responsible. Now there is a sense of a, an upsurge of the need for people to reclaim their power. Uh, so what does it mean to be an effective spiritual practitioners in, in regards to what I'm saying here, in terms of the context of the astrology of the paradigm shift that we are amidst, it means that we, we can no longer wait for others to do for us what we have to do for ourselves.
[00:11:15] And on the second point, the point about transcendence, if you look at all axial age, Philosophies, what one of the hallmarks about them was all of these great masters talking about another world, whether it be heaven or escape, some sort of escape from the world of suffering. But again, the archetype that we're heading into now is about integration or non-duality, which means that some SAR and Nirvana are one, which means there is no other place, but here, which means that the true spiritual pursuit is about full integration in our own bodies and full integration on this planet in this world.
[00:12:04] So we can't, we can't escape the world. We're not, we're not going to escape. The effects of are the consequences of our actions. There is no ivory tower. There is no escape portal. There is no other world than this. And so, so our collective wellbeing as human beings, as custodians of the planet has members of the creatures of this planet.
[00:12:34] We have, this is the realm in which our spirituality expresses ourselves. So in terms of effectiveness,
[00:12:43] being a good Stewart,
[00:12:48] being a responsible agent or player or coach co-create, or is now part of the spiritual lexicon is now part of the spiritual pursuit and anything, anything other than this is a shirking of responsibility and in a way it's sort of a child's game.
[00:13:11] Hm. So those are at least two, two comments to get started with, uh, throw it back at you. Whereas where does the, where do you fall in the, in the conversation and particularly with this question, like what, what relevance does it have for you personally in your life?
[00:13:29] Host: Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of working through that and I guess it's a continual exploration and something I'm, I'm coming back into kind of wondering and questioning.
[00:13:41] Um, you know, at the moment I'm, I'm looking into
[00:13:48] Guest: really,
[00:13:50] Host: really deeply questioning, you know, what I'm doing here and what. How in what way I want I can serve. And I'm almost trying to feel into that process at this, at this moment. And it's it's yeah, it's run me through a range of kind of experiences and emotions and, um, a bit of a whirlwind to be honest.
[00:14:15] And I'm just kind of in the middle of that process. So I definitely don't have a definitive answer by any means, but, um, I did read the first chapter of a book that you kind of co-edited and co-wrote advances in contemplative psychotherapy, uh, accelerating, healing and transformation. And it seemed like in a really beautiful way you laid out almost, um, I dunno, like you pretty much laid out what is in and in a chapter, in a few pages.
[00:14:52] And I was kind of blown away by that. And, um, a thought that arises for me was how, um, you know, probably everyone listening to this, um, and kind of everyone that comes across the kind of, um, Buddhism in, within itself has w could probably fit into, um, could probably find themselves at, you know, somewhere within, um, that path.
[00:15:22] And it, and I guess something that was coming up as a possible offering for me might be to explore, um, that path. So people could maybe find, um, find where they may sit within that, or at least begin to, um, I dunno, SI SI kind of what they could. Um, maybe it could open something up for people I'm not sure.
[00:15:50] Um, but I, I definitely don't want to be pushing anything on to anyone at the same time, so I'm kind of cognizant of that, but I just found it quite, um, it beautifully tied into what you just expressed and, um, yeah, it was quite opening for me. And I've definitely got some specific questions around certain elements of what you wrote, um, that I guess I'm still really, um, interested in from a personal level, but I thought maybe as a sharing, we could explore that, um, chapter, if you're open to it, unless you felt like going in a different direction and, um, yeah.
[00:16:28] Seeing if people could, um, tie tie in that sharing with what you've just shared, um, in regards to the context.
[00:16:38] Guest: Yeah, so that's, um, I'd love to share. And you know, that book is a rare book advances and could double as psychotherapy was written 2017, it's for professional, largely professional audience, and largely putting forth a, essentially creating a foundation to establish Buddhist psychotherapy as a viable coherent map of mind and technique for clinical application.
[00:17:06] So it didn't get a lot of process and didn't get a lot of eyes on it. So thank you first and foremost for actually reading it and for describing the chapter in the way that you did as a, a good distalization. I, I really do appreciate it. That's a wonderful compliment to be able to synthesize Buddhism in such a way that you can capture it in just a few pages.
[00:17:29] So if it, if anything of this conversation sparks interest and people find their way to that chapter, uh, that. I have a court. I have much gratitude for that. Now, one of the aims of that chapter in specific and where it falls in the, in the, in the book is to basically, I think it's called the Buddhist origins origins of mindfulness.
[00:17:53] Now, what, what I'm, what, what I have done in most of my career is to make sure that mainstream interest in meditation give some respect to the tradition out of which meditation comes from, particularly the Buddhist kind of meditation that took off in the two thousands mindfulness meditation, which got a lot of press got a lot of people practicing and has a lot of good clinical evidence for its effectiveness.
[00:18:16] And my attempt in that chapter is to very clearly as clearly coherently as I can present a rationale why it's important to understand the actual context and origins out of which mindfulness meditation has taken off in the West. And what might be missing. And, you know, this is something that I have been known.
[00:18:37] I've coined a term called McMindfulness, which, which is a sort of huberous stick imperialistic, colonial offshoot of our Western mentality to extract the dazzling elements of the east and to discard the rest, rendering them and judging them as superficial or superfluous or, you know, superstitious let's say, and to just take technologies, to take from yoga, the Asana, for example, or take out of Buddhism, the meditative components and to, and to in a way say, well, you know, we're scientifically minded people.
[00:19:19] And the rest of that stuff we can do without that is that is a sort of largely pervasive perhaps unconscious, uh, endeavor. It's sort of like. Our culture primes or prizes scientific reductionism. We don't need the rest of the Hocus Pocus. We don't need reincarnation. We don't need put us philosophy. We don't need any rituals.
[00:19:44] We don't need any deities. We don't need any prayers. None of that is relevant to us. What's relevant to us is to practice a technique of closing our eyes, counting our breaths, calming down, putting an EEG monitor on the brain, watching the blood pressure, decrease, watching the respiration decrease. And over the course of eight or 10 weeks, seeing how depression decreases in anxiety decreases.
[00:20:06] Then we, we have a sign of a kind of conviction or confidence that something is happening. And what my attempt is to draw attention to is that that kind of pervasive reductionism has a shadow. In other words, our, our, our cultural assumptions based in scientism, based in the dog. The rigid dogma of scientism, the hubris of scientism, not scientific methodologies, but scientism as a new religion, that only believes in the five senses that has discarded any connection to the realm of spirit and econ.
[00:20:50] Any connection to the non quantifiable that itself has, has become a very dangerous set of principles and assumptions that is in part related to the demise of our civilization. In other words, if we look at things like the ecological destruction, the economic divide, the geopolitical instability, these things are all not, uh, unrelated, and they have a central origin and human blindness.
[00:21:21] The way that we don't see the world clearly, and we don't see each other, clearly we don't see our interdependence. We don't see the significance of the causes of our actions. Over the long haul. We are destroying ourselves as a result of the same kind of blindness that underpins our wish to go to other countries, strip them of their Juul as their crown jewels and claim them for our own.
[00:21:50] And while it's true, it's true that so many millions of people benefited from mindfulness as a result of this simplification or reductionism extraction. It's also true that there is actually so much more to benefit and gain. If we can understand the context out of which mindfulness comes from. In other words, we've actually shortchanged ourselves.
[00:22:17] The things that we left behind. Actually have so much inherent value. If we could only adjust our attitudes slightly to see their significance in context. And so one of the things I like to say is that we have mindfulness in its original context is for liberation human liberation, whereas mindfulness in his smote secular context, its most narrow and ref, um, you know, ex ex extracted or a centralized context is stress reduction.
[00:22:51] And so the chapter lays out a rationale to understand the loss of this extraction process and to gain an appreciation for what it is that mindfulness is trying to do in its original context until then lay out very simply the other pillars there that are involved in the Buddhist tradition. And if it's just, if it comes down to a language.
[00:23:19] Uh, my colleagues who wrote that book, we are attempting to find a language that allows people access to the whole tradition so that they see that it's not something to be skeptical or cynical of, but that actually, it makes perfect sense. Buddhism has always been rational, scientific. It has been critical.
[00:23:44] Uh, it primes itself on a T as a tradition of education, not of, of metaphysical, speculation and belief. And so there's, there's really no need to be so suspicious. And, and to practice this kind of, um, division, this false division or extraction, actually, it's just, if there was the right language, we could invite people into a process of understanding and appreciating all that there is to gain from the full tradition.
[00:24:15] And so what are these other things. And I'll stop there. I'll just earmark it there. That the three pillars that I'm talking about in this chapter are the, are the two sister, uh, disciplines that come together with the mindfulness or meditative tradition, one being the tradition of wisdom or insight, and the other tradition of, of ethics or virtue.
[00:24:40] These are th these are considered three pillars that are essential to the heart of Buddhism. I'm going to leave it right there to see where you, where you land. If you have any further questions or comment. Uh,
[00:24:53] Host: not really. I kind of, I love that way kind of beginning towards the end of the chapter. And, and you've, you've, you've kind of highlighted a beautiful.
[00:25:01] Or you've created like a bit of a primer for this exploration. I guess I'm wondering I had was if I could maybe read one of the final paragraphs of the chapter, that really kind of took me aback and then, and then I'd maybe throw it back in your court to continue if that's okay. Yeah, please. Okay. So this, this really blew my mind.
[00:25:21] Just, just the way you capture this in where we're talking about within a few pages, but this was the still within like a paragraph. And I was kind of like, wow, like, I can't believe someone's sharing this in words. And, and like, I just got really pulled in, um, when I read this. So, uh, I'll share it now. So it's in some, the ways in which we human beings think speak and act in relation to immediate circumstances appears to have specific enduring consequences on perceptions and subjective experience.
[00:25:58] In successive moments, as well as subtle impacts on other individuals development now and into the future, the thrust of comma theory alerts us to the incredible primacy of mind, specifically the power of intentional actions in determining our future existence. This can inspire both a deep sense of responsibility for our actions, as well as a sense of empowered agency for our evolution.
[00:26:29] Cultivating and greater appreciation for ethical and evolutionary agency need not require blind faith in either religious dogmas or in materialism. As the Buddha reminded his students. It is up to each of us to critically evaluate how mind influences behavior and experience over time and to develop a coherent narrative that accounts for this process, knowing that all explanations, Amelie, conventional descriptions of reality when karma theory is understood as just one possible explanation for psychological causation and permitted to inform mindfulness meditation practice, it allows the meditator to guide the microscope of stabilized attention, evoking insight, and behavior change of habitually, unconscious micro cycles of self-defeating reaction that perpetuate the stress.
[00:27:28] By intentionally intervening to disrupt our cycles. We can steer the future developmental course of consciousness. I mean, that's it just kind of, it it's, it's, it's almost like a reminder of our capability in a way and, and potentiality. Um, yeah, it just brings life into that space in such a beautiful way.
[00:27:59] Um, yeah, it just, yeah. Again, wanted to thank you for writing, writing all of that. Um, yeah,
[00:28:07] Guest: so
[00:28:10] Host: I was thinking possibly, you know, where you go through the chapter, I'm not sure if that's really what you want to do here, but, um, that was an idea. Um, and, but there are so many other curiosities I have about your life in general, but while we're on this track, um, yeah, what kind of feels right.
[00:28:27] From
[00:28:28] this
[00:28:28] Guest: point. Well, okay. So let's like link that to the opening remark about context and what I said about each of us becoming more empowered, we can afford to outsource our power and that ties in to karma theory. And it ties into what the heart of Buddhism is really suggesting to us is that mind is incredibly powerful.
[00:28:50] Mind is you can say mind is God. And each of us are either a slave to the unconscious habitual nature of mind, or we assume authorship and kingship or queenship of our own consciousness. And we steer the mothership of our own consciousness and now consciousnesses merge into a collective field and imagine what kind of collective field we could create with as many consciousnesses taking responsibility and ownership of their own.
[00:29:25] And not allowing the latent, fragmented, traumatized aspects of, of consciousness to dictate the terms of the collective field. So it's really, it is can, it can be really just very simple. We are all incredibly capable, so capable that we could almost say without hubris, that we have God-like capability that mind and our thoughts, which by the way, in current science, it's not even clear to current science that there is such thing as consciousness.
[00:30:10] It doesn't really have a clear definition. It isn't really given. It's do we know all about the biology? We know all about the. The mind is this kind of separate thing. It's a morphous it's non quantifiable. It's basically been reduced to the brain, but from a Buddhist perspective, to want some 2,500 years of psychology, the mind is the single most empowered, powerful resource on the planet because it is both capable of complete destruction and complete liberation that you can't say that about many things we could bring the planet to the brink of self-imposed destruction because of mind, greed, delusion, prejudice, aggression, and all the latent tendencies of mine or personally, and collectively the mind could be purified and its capability, its altruistic capability and its insight capacity could be optimal.
[00:31:17] And that would have both an impact individually, and that would have an impact collectively that would both have an impact temporarily or in the immediate moment. And that would have a long-term impact on evolution. And so really the context is a reminder for each of us. There's no need to look around for authority.
[00:31:39] These for saviors, for diabetes there's own there. Just look at your own mind, just look, look at your own mind and take responsibility for your own mind. Then the other thing that's being said here is the, the short sighted or short-term horizon of mind to almost like in a Newtonian way for it to interact with billiard balls.
[00:32:07] One to the next in the moment also has to begin to be become more quantum. We have to see. That there's always an infinite horizon of possibilities that there's always more than meets the eye, that it isn't just a linear one-to-one. And then suddenly our thoughts and our actions just somehow disappear that there is actually a S a coherent science to understand and appreciate and become attuned to the fact that mind and energy and intentionality and words have incredibly long-term repercussions in both directions.
[00:32:53] So like most people in Western scientific reductionistic, cultural Melia don't appreciate the power of their speech. They don't appreciate even the power of their thoughts. The only thing that we believe in is if I move a billiard block where I, I turn a knob on the, in a mechanistic way that we see cause and effect there.
[00:33:16] But we don't see for 15 minutes while you're meditating or while you're praying, or you're trying to generate positive energy that that's going to have any consequence whatsoever. And that's just a complete contradiction to the Buddhist science. Everything comes from energy, everything comes from vibration, everything comes from thought.
[00:33:42] And so this is like a call to not only claim our power, but also to understand our responsibility.
[00:33:54] Yeah,
[00:33:55] Host: yeah. Definitely feeling into what you're sharing here. Um, yeah. And I'm just kind of, I guess, some kind of, if, if people were to begin to, um, maybe look into this a bit further, I'm sure they could. Chase up this chapter and find these kind of, uh, links. But I'm curious if you might be open to sharing kind of, um, these, these 12 links that you mentioned in the chapter and, um, maybe seeing if, um, where we could go from that point.
[00:34:33] Cause, um, I CA yeah, I'm kind of wanting to maybe open things up a little bit more if people were a bit more curious, but weren't quite familiar with what they might be and maybe even it might be worth beginning with the four noble truths. I don't know. I'm just kind of feeling this as well, but everything you've shared, I can totally feel into what you're saying.
[00:34:53] And, um, I think, yeah, it feels like we've got a nice ground now.
[00:35:00] Guest: Yeah. So let's look at it like from a case point of view or from a real life point of view. And I can use maybe a little vignette that I often use.
[00:35:12] You know, just to make it relevant to people like, you know, most people are struggling, right? They have some level of discontent or regular relational dysfunction. Maybe they have some paranoia or some depression or some anxiety. We can just assume that that's growing actually on this planet right now that the level of apathy and the level of depression is becoming more pronounced.
[00:35:39] So how does this actually relevant to just the everyday person who's looking for some refuge looking for some sound. So mind is incredibly powerful is what we're saying. So you have somebody who let's use this case example all the time. A 19 girl, 19 year old girl comes and visits me many, many years ago, and she's often drink.
[00:36:09] And she's got a lot of anger and aggression, and she's got a lot of truancy in her university, which means she doesn't go to class. She acts out a lot. She self sabotages, occasionally she, um, self hinders herself. She may cut herself, her burn herself. And often, very often she gets into relationships with men where it's so clear that they take advantage of her for the night or for the week, and then discard her.
[00:36:36] And this is a reoccurrent experience for her. And so this is the entry point what's called in therapy, the presenting problem. And then what happens is there's a period of discovery where the therapist and the client go on a little bit of a hero journey into the unconscious to try to make sense using a mental model.
[00:36:57] Of how do we understand these symptoms? How do we make sense of these symptoms? So the very common starting point is, do you go back to childhood as far back, as you can remember, and you're looking for potent archetypes, family systems, important events, critical crises, traumatic situations, you're looking for things that have made an impression that might lead or, or make help you make sense in your assessment of how we got here.
[00:37:28] So the executive essential questions are, you know, who am I? How did I get here? And where am I going? So you do some of this exploration and it's clear that she has a dysfunctional mother. Who's an alcoholic, very, very critical, harsh, punitive, often chastised. Emotionally unavailable. And on the other side, she's got a very, very passive father that sort of, as a doormat, can't speak up.
[00:37:54] Can't challenge. The mom can't rescue the daughter. And so we start to see that there are these imprints significant inference that have impacted herself belief, and rather than go through the Buddha's 12 links of dependent origination, which is a, both a cosmology and a psychology for accounting for the arising of suffering.
[00:38:21] How it's also another way of understanding how suffering is generated. We can just make it very simple and just use four of the wigs there's perception. There is emotion. There is action, and there is consequence. Now let's look at perception. This girl was a result of her history. Has learned something about her own value.
[00:38:48] If you were to put it in a statement, what might you imagine? She says about, I am as a result of her traumatizing history.
[00:39:02] Host: I'm not enough.
[00:39:04] Guest: Sure. I'm not enough. Anything else? I mean, there's no one right answer. Right. So just, just riff on it a little
[00:39:13] Host: I'm unworthy.
[00:39:15] Guest: Yup. Um,
[00:39:19] Host: I'm confused about why this keeps happening to me.
[00:39:24] Guest: Um,
[00:39:26] Host: I'm helpless. I'm hopeless.
[00:39:30] Guest: Um, what might she have learned from a dad that didn't rescue her,
[00:39:40] Host: but she's not deserving of being rescued that she.
[00:39:45] Guest: Yeah,
[00:39:47] Host: she's just kind of she's, she's learnt that no one's coming, you know, way I'm alone.
[00:39:58] Guest: Okay. So let's imagine that, that crystallizes at a very young primitive stage in our development, as herself belief in her expectation of the world, we can call this a worldview.
[00:40:11] We can call it a view. It's a view of herself. And it's a view of the world. I'm unworthy. I'm unlovable the world, stainless the world doesn't care world doesn't care about me. And it goes latent and buried in the archeology of a human psyche. And it's very painful. So the psyche can actually hold on that.
[00:40:35] And it just goes subterranean. Now that the links of dependent origination work like dominoes. So. That perception also is followed by set of emotions. So use some emotional adjectives and give me some, give me a few adjectives to describe how that would make her feel. This litany of beliefs,
[00:40:57] Host: just all the closing emotions, I guess.
[00:41:00] Um, she would feel scared and, um, uh, depressed or sad, um, feel unsure and confused and, and feel a bit overwhelmed, I guess. Um, feel almost like she's constantly defeated. Um, and just really feeling like I'm just feeling into this and it's making me feel all these emotions it's right now, you know, like it's quite a heaviness to be in that space.
[00:41:34] Um, heaviness, and I think it gets heavier when there's, it doesn't seem like there's a way out.
[00:41:43] And yeah, mostly sadness comes through and, um, yeah, this, these feelings of, you know, how you feel when you're abandoned. Um, just, I just kind of picturing tears falling and, um, like a rain of tears, I guess, over the heart.
[00:42:04] Guest: Hmm. So you're an empath, so you can feel into that and that's good and it makes you human.
[00:42:10] And even though it's a little bit of a dark thing, we'll get through this and we'll get to the other side. Okay. Like you're setting this up so that we can see the benefit of taking on board a complete system. First, we have to get through the bad news, the challenge, the dark night, so that, you know, the reality is, is that rejection is incredibly painful.
[00:42:33] And the main, the main underlying emotion is. Um, when you use words like unworthy or undeserving or not good enough, you're talking about core shame. The sense of identity is deficient and what that feels like or with how that translates in an emotional plane is tremendous shame, which is unbearable and intolerable.
[00:42:58] And one of the ways in her personality that she manages core shame is with a lot of rage. There's a lot of anger at her mom. There's a lot of anger at her dad for both for different reasons, but this is it's easier to feel anger than it is to feel shame. And there may not be anywhere for that anger to go because who's listening.
[00:43:24] So then we go to the next link. First link is perception. Second link is emotion. Third one is behavior. So based on the little vignette that I cast, do you remember some of her behaviors. Uh, kinds of ways that she may be regulating or medicating or managing her rage and her shame.
[00:43:47] Host: Yeah. It just seems like the rage of Viagra, this kind of aggressiveness would come out in, in different aspects of her life.
[00:43:54] So I think you mentioned she was, um, you know, with different men, um, every, you know, weekend or, and, and was being kind of, um, thrown into these kinds of situations or feeling like she was, um, and I guess rage would seep out in all directions. I can't remember the specifics that you mentioned now, but I mean, it would come out, I guess, as aggression towards family members and friends, and could be lots of ways that the kind of rage would come out in, um, I'm just picturing this kind of self perpetuating spot.
[00:44:35] Oh, yeah.
[00:44:36] Guest: Well, that's, that's where we're going. Yeah. That's where we're going. So what we're going to do is we're going to try to paint a picture to see how it becomes what I call a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. So the beliefs of unworthiness. Trigger a sense of shame. Shame is too painful. Then comes the rage.
[00:44:51] Rage. Can't be directed, outward because no one's listening. So it gets directed inward. There we have behaviors. What kind of behaviors? Self-destructive behaviors, truancy, uh, medication she's also self-medicating through drinking binge drinking, overeating, numbing herself. You can't blame her. This is just the best way she's learned to cope with such intense emotions has no outlet.
[00:45:15] No, one's listening. No. One's sitting at the coffee table saying, tell me how you feel, sweetheart, what can we do differently? Instead, what she has is constant abandonment, no outlet. So the only way that that, that emotion can be expressed is as self-directed. So she's self sabotaging her career or education.
[00:45:33] Then she also has this chronic pattern of getting in an, into, into relations with the wrong men. So this then inspires the next link when she's drawing. And she gets in it and gets into things with the wrong men only to find the next morning that they have discarded her. This is the next link of consequentiality.
[00:45:58] She's sending a message to these men that she's available and that she wants to be taken advantage of. And then it happens. She's broadcasting an unconscious message. She's putting herself in a trajectory when she goes out that night, blitzed out of her mind and that evening, and that weekend of activity, doesn't just stop there.
[00:46:26] It has a residue, it has a biofeedback, it's both broadcasting a message to others about how she should be treated. And it's having a confirmation on her own. Self-belief. So let's do the other, what kind of messages it's sending other pizza, other people,
[00:46:49] which part? Sorry, her behaviors of her mad at her, her managing herself with alcohol and then her, um, her sleeping with other men that are really all, not that interested in having relationship.
[00:47:06] Host: I guess it's just, it's all of this is kind of bundling into it. It's kind of going back to where it began is what it seems.
[00:47:14] Guest: Yeah. So put words to it. So where does it go? It, how do people learn? How does she unconsciously in train people to treat her
[00:47:25] Host: the way that she is? The way that she was brought up being treated?
[00:47:28] Guest: Yeah. Without any respect or consideration? Yeah. Right. To be discarded. Hmm.
[00:47:39] To be, to be discarded, to be disrespected and to be rejected.
[00:47:49] Now I'm not saying that she's conscious of this. What I'm saying is that the momentum of mind is carrying her in this trajection because of prior imprinting.
[00:48:02] And then rightfully so. You've seen how the lull, the loop comes full circle to have a reinforcement, which is the way that she perceives these men, leave her. She sees it, she doesn't see her own involvement in it. She sees herself as a victim of it, but it still has an implication on her own. Self-belief when they, when she constantly finds a man that abuses her and leaves her, what is it?
[00:48:30] What is she saying? She's saying all the things that she learned in childhood, which is what. Just so rightfully it's a complete reinforcement contingency. Now the Buddha used this idea that there is a wagon wheel, and if you put a wagon wheel and trace it in the S in a circle in wet mud, and you go around once and you go around twice and this heavy wagon wheel goes around a third time, something happens each time with each repetition in the mud, it becomes more ingrained and it becomes harder to escape the trajectory.
[00:49:17] And this is what Samsara is. This is what the Buddhist notion of some sort of ensnare mint in one's own self perpetuating, unconscious creation of a nightmare.
[00:49:35] She doesn't realize she's doing it. She doesn't see herself as complicitly involved. She sees herself as a haphazard victim of it, but that, that she's bound like a wagon wheel in a negative rut. And this is what the Buddha was talking about in terms of some sorrows, not a place, some Saraj as a state of mind of being bound and everybody listening right now has some Sora.
[00:50:06] I'm not going to say they're in some, sorry, I'm going to say we have some sorrow. We experience some sorrow. As long as consciousness is in its default setting. It's asleep. It's being driven. It's being driven by past impulses. It's being driven by a world view, which fire certain emotions. Which are connected to certain behavioral actions, which become concomitant reactions that other people have with us, which then becomes self-fulfilling prophecies or reinforcement contingencies on our original belief systems.
[00:50:46] This is, this is what the Buddha described as Samsara and to which he suggested this three pronged approach for the alleviation. How do you break the chains of some SAR? Well, you need mindfulness or you need meditation, stable mind, then you need to change your worldview. You have to clear the doors of perception and how do you do that?
[00:51:13] You do that through virtuous action. So what this young girl had 19 ends up doing in therapy is taking responsibility for her. The first and most important thing is that she feels safe. Of course, there are all these pre-conditions to therapy. It doesn't matter what kind of therapy you have to have a sense of safety.
[00:51:37] You have to have a sense of a rapport. You have to have some trust that you're not alone. These are like the lever that makes therapy actually possible without them there's no, there's no, there's no going forward into treatment. So, you know, we had to get to, we had to get there. We had to survive a few of her late comings to therapy, sometimes her own self destructive tendencies that wound up in therapy.
[00:52:01] She was angry at me. She didn't want to come to therapy. She didn't want to, she didn't show up. She was doing all herself behavior defeating behaviors. But when we finally got around to a sense of consistency in that I was available and I was interested in her and I was listening to her and I wasn't afraid of her.
[00:52:17] And I wasn't afraid of her anger. It wasn't afraid of her emotions. And I wasn't, I was able to tolerate and actually hear her, her plight and her difficulty without batting an eyelash or judging her gaslighting, her condemning her or, or bailing on her. Then we've established the connection that then enables us to turn awareness around on itself so that she can claim responsibility for how this happens.
[00:52:45] Mindfulness meditation is awareness. It is about creating awareness. You and I meditated before we started this chat and I can see that you're just tracking what I'm saying and you're using attention to track it. And you're processing in the meanwhile all of your own feelings and your own prop, possibly your own responses.
[00:53:05] This is really important to slow down the apparatus. It's like life is moving at such a fast pace and the past is informing the present and moving into the future at such a fast pace. Without some attention, we can't slow. The frame-by-frame down. What we're looking for is a gap. We need a gap in the links between the links.
[00:53:33] We need a gap between the links to break the cycle. It's sometimes very, very difficult to go, right. For the, for the worldview, because it's, it's like. The human soul, I call them soul contracts or worldviews beliefs. The very, very subtle on they're very, very ancient. And they're in a very, very deep repository in the brain.
[00:53:57] Emotions are much easier to deal with their parent if and the Buddha encouraged us to find the gap of opportunity between, uh, emotions and actions. So imagine that wagon wheel coming around again, it's it goes past worldview. Suddenly shame is triggered, then comes the rage and we're coming around the mountain and it's so easy to fall into self-defeating behavior.
[00:54:28] But if we have enough presence and we can hold that rage for a couple of minutes, and this is where having an ally is really important because she might not on her own. That part of her being that's able to tolerate these emotions is still very primitive. And so the therapist then extends their nervous system.
[00:54:54] So that there's a sense of both people containing this emotion. It's almost like a mother or a parent lending her the nervous system so that she can survive the tumbled and the upheaval of her own emotion and just resist the temptation to go down the railway track into action. So now we have the gap established between emotion and action.
[00:55:22] This is where karma theory is so important because karma theory suggests that what we do matters, it comes around what goes around, comes around, what goes around, comes around, what goes around, comes around. So, but if you have the gap, which is made possible by awareness, and then you have an alternative.
[00:55:42] You are going to put that wagon wheel in a different direction. Even if it's one degree, I love that analogy with a ship. If it starts out in the depths of the ocean and it just changes its orientation one degree where it ends up 10 hours or 10 or 10 days from there is a huge, huge distance. That's a beautiful metaphor for karma theory.
[00:56:06] So this happens in alcoholics and nomina anonymous. There is a substitution of action when you feel the urge to drink, because you're feeling angry or ashamed or sad, you substitute the action. You have to have presence before you have to have enough emotional tolerance, but then you substitute the action and they say, go, go to a meeting or call your sponsor.
[00:56:30] Talk about your feelings before you go and find that person that's going to disrespect you again over the. Try to find some other ability, you know, other outlets for those emotions. So we got her into an, uh, a 12 step program called Alanon, which is wonderful idea for anyone who comes from a dysfunctional family relationship, where you might not be the addict yourself, but you were surrounded by crazy erratic, unavailable people that gaslit you and made you feel like you were the burden and that you were the problem.
[00:57:08] This is something very common. The thing about 12 step is it's very available and it's free. You can go in any, you know, most modern cities. You can find a group where you can go and talk about how you're feeling with people who know exactly what you're talking about. And aren't going to shame you and outgoing.
[00:57:25] Aren't going to reject you and aren't going to Gaslight you. They're going to go. I have that experience all the time. And if we sit here for the next hour and we share this, it will dissipate and you won't have to go drinking tonight. You won't have to go report. The dysfunctionality of your childhood.
[00:57:44] Host: I guess one thing that arises for me as you're sharing this smiles is something you mentioned at the beginning of our chat around, um, where we were, where we are on a collective level, as opposed to maybe how it was back in the day.
[00:57:58] Um, and then now kind of looking at what you mentioned about that extra, um, nervous system to kind of assist in that process. You know, they, they seem to be kind of in, in one way kind of at odds with each other, because if it's like, you know, um, you're doing everything, you're stepping into doing everything for yourself in a way.
[00:58:20] And I don't want to kind of twist what you're saying, but, um, in a collective sense, that's kind of where we're heading. Um, it's not like the olden days where, um, although I think maybe it's still possible. Um, it's just, there's a lot more, I guess, barriers to entry yourself. In my perspective, um, the idea of kind of going in and spending time in a monastery or going and having some kind of a guru or that kind of a thing, um, which could also be a psychotherapist.
[00:58:49] But, um, you know, I'm not going to go too much further in that path, but I'm just kind of wondering how that sits with this idea, because it does seem like, you know, help is definitely needed at times. Um, and, and having, having that kind of shared, um, as you put it, um, nervous system, um, helps to kind of, you know, pre purify our own one at the times where, where it is quite difficult, uh, at those little kind of opportunities, um, for us to choose whether we want to go around the merry-go-round again or not.
[00:59:24] Guest: Yeah, that's called co-regulation by the way. Co-regulation is when you share your nervous system, so that tube to work better than. Um, and yes, I think that this is, you know, I'm a therapist that pretty much exclusively works with people in the spiritual world who have plenty of experience meditating and doing breath work and doing all the high caliber techniques.
[00:59:51] Um, but, but behind closed doors are very ashamed that they're still depressed and still anxious and have a lot of trauma. And because I I'm positioned in two worlds with a leg in spirituality and a leg in, in basically in trauma and psychology, I can bring a point of view on both on both, um, on the division or the fracture between people's psyche.
[01:00:17] This is, this is what's called in our world, spiritual bypassing, where people want transcendence and are using spiritual practices to escape trauma, to sidestep the wounds of childhood to side. Addictions. My work is to bring them together, to see how they're complimentary. And yes, there is a sort of belief that, of the archetype of the lone spiritual warrior that is like in a loin cloth, in the meditation cave and him Aaliyah's or the Ashtangi yoga, who's on the yoga mat in a, in my sor sort of solitarily going for enlightenment by themselves.
[01:01:02] But one thing that we definitely know from trauma research is that trauma is relational. So I spent a lot of time with the vignette because it's now an easy point for our reference. The wounds that she sustained were based on relational abandonment and relational abuse and, and chastising and lack of availability and lack of presence.
[01:01:28] So there's no way to imagine that she could heal from a relational wound on her own. It doesn't make sense. And I've seen people spend 5, 10, 15, even 20 years trying to heal relational wounds in a solid, with a solitary method. And it's never going to work. What, what ends up having an, uh, what's ends up having inevitably is that meditation and yoga and breath work are used as escape avenues, not to feel the fragmented wounds of the past and to sort of anesthetize and to attend to, and to achieve some sort of bliss realm, or some sort of openness or some sort of passive spaciousness.
[01:02:19] Um, but it's only more denial.
[01:02:26] Relational wounds need better relations to heal. She needs somebody to be available to her for her anger. She needed to get angry at me and see that I still held her with unconditional positive regard that I could tolerate her anger.
[01:02:48] Host: Let's see how to spice of love.
[01:02:51] Guest: You can call it love unconditional positive, whatever, whatever word you want to put there.
[01:02:55] Yes. That she, she could fire her anger with me and know that there wouldn't be retaliation, that it was acceptable, that these parts of herself were acceptable to me in order to make room for them to be acceptable to her. So as you could get closer to them to reclaim what their actual origins and meaning are,
[01:03:21] so relational wounds require relationships. It's like, if you get into a car accident and you break your ribs and your spine, and you were finally recovering, you tell yourself I'm never going to get into a car again. Is it a solution? Yeah, it's a solution. Is it a cure? No. No. If the horse throws you and you choose never to get on a horse again, you will avoid ever getting hurt again, but you don't actually heal the wound.
[01:03:56] So fractures that happen in relationships require better relationships to heal. It's never going to happen on a meditation cushion with your Mala, beads, breathing con you know, breathing nicely.
[01:04:12] Yeah. So she needed someone to hear her. She needed someone to accept her. She needed to know that I wasn't ever going to make a move on her. She needed to know like all these things to build trust. And we are mirrors for each. So she needed to see that I wasn't judging her, that I was holding her as a whole person, that I was interested just as much as her successes as I were in her failures.
[01:04:35] Just as much as her anger as her brokenness, as her victory and suddenly what that's doing, the more that she can step into the gap, she can allow the anger to come up or the shame to come up and tolerate it first with me and then eventually with, with herself because she's internalized the, the capacity.
[01:04:58] And then she has a set of alternative pathways by the same mechanism that we got into the stuff, whether the same mechanism, the karmic momentum that we got into the negative spin cycle, the same karmic momentum of the new optionality provides a different reverberation and a different consequence with others.
[01:05:19] Setting a boundary, for example, and saying, no, I won't tolerate this using your communication, finding better allies to lean on. They eventually mirror back to you, healthy respect and unconditional love. If they do that, if that's the mirror, what does it then do about the worldview, the original worldview,
[01:05:43] Host: sending a loving breeze of gratitude in your direction.
[01:05:47] Thank you so much for sharing space with us here and now. And if you want some more information about our guests, you can head over to todaydreamer.com and check it. Check out the episode section on the page. Um, also if you're someone that's interested in deepening your practice of presence, if you want to work together with someone to structure a spiritual practice, whether it's an existing.
[01:06:14] Or a new one. And if you're looking to build consistency is define your ambition and recalibrate your trajectory in a way that's more in line with wholeness and in a way that contributes and participates more fully in the emergent world story. And it's blossoming, then feel free to get in touch because I'm taking on a small handful of one-on-one clients, spiritual friends.
[01:06:41] Um, and I'd love to speak to you if you did enjoy this episode and you felt like you got something out of it, feel free to share it with your community. And if you feel like there's anyone in particular that could benefit from the space shed today, I would really appreciate it if you'd pass it onto them.
[01:06:58] And I'm sure they would too. And yeah, I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you again, my friend and
[01:07:07] be well.
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Miles Neale Part 2
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[00:00:00] Host: This is part two of the conversation that I had with miles Neil on the TheDream of podcast. Welcome to the show by the way, and thank you for your moment of presence here with me. Thank you for engaging with the episodes. If this is your first time here today, dreamer is all about helping you cultivate the practice of presence in your life so that you be so that you may be better equipped to more deeply participate in the unfolding emergence of the collective worlds.
[00:00:34] If you haven't heard part one, you don't know who miles is. I would definitely go back and click on that episode first, because most of this kind of stuff, although it will make sense. Um, it's I think you'll be better primed with the first episode. Um, so yeah, let's get into this second part of this opening and insightful conversation with Dr.
[00:00:56] Miles, Neil.
[00:01:01] Yeah. So, um, I'm kind of, I'm kind of in this space now of just feeling into almost like our conversation as an analogy of this story, and we're kind of in this neutral zone now, so we've gone through kind of the, the bigger picture at the beginning, but then we kind of got into the kind of thick of it.
[00:01:18] And now we're kind of starting to kind of, you know, um, I guess build the momentum and the other direct. So, what does that begin to look like and what happens to her, or, you know, um, anyone from this point, how do we kind of, you know, this seems to be what comes up for me is it's a progressive thing, um, which requires gentleness with oneself and also patience and understanding of where you've come.
[00:01:47] Um, rather than a focus on where you want to. And there's this sense of kind of, okay. Now things are kind of starting to build. There's a bit of momentum here and there's a purification of the, of the nervous system that's taking place through. Um, you know, these kind of positive reinforcements down the spiral is starting to kind of change direction, although yeah.
[00:02:09] I mean the biggest spiral. So, so yeah, what happens from this point? What, you know, um, how does this kind of progress.
[00:02:19] Guest: And I think that's important to really say, because we are now amidst a very sensationalized media propaganda spin on health and wellness industry that is promoting quick fixes instantaneous results, magnificent optimization than hacks. You name it and I'm not a fan. I'm actually an outspoken criticism critic of some of these things, which gets me a bad rap all over again, which I don't mind, but I, I just think our culture goes in the wrong direction.
[00:02:52] Well,
[00:02:53] Host: it's almost like spice slowing the acid tortoise and the hair. Isn't it like by slowing down, you're actually moving. Right. Um, and when, when you see, this is what seems to be from my perspective is when you, when you speed up. And you, you, you try to rush or, or you, you want these quick fixes it. I think it kind of stagnates us or even sends us the other direction sometimes.
[00:03:16] Guest: Yeah. I don't think it's effective. I think you get, you get, thank you. Get instantaneous results, but I don't think you get the long-term benefit. And I think it's a co complicit between marketers who are selling these products for personal gain and fame. And traumatized people who are hungry and, and yearning for relief that have fallen prey again to outsourcing their power.
[00:03:41] And they think that a six week course on breath work is going to actually, you know, change their life in six weeks. And what it does is it gets them really high and really stimulated and it gets their brain firing and also. But again, I don't think it deals with the underlying trauma. If we're in, if we're in the world of trauma healing, we have to look at it this way.
[00:04:07] Those relational wounds happened within the course of child development. Mostly child development is years in the making. So we're basically talking about therapy, being re parenting in real time. We're talking about critical years that have been missed or abused or neglected or shamed, physically wounded broken families, which took months and years off of people's lives in terms of the development or the progress, the natural progress of their psyche.
[00:04:50] And how could you expect. To unlearn and repair those in six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks or something like that.
[00:05:03] I don't think these, these bio-hacks and these, I don't think they do. I have no utility and no value. I'm not saying. Just as I'm not saying that mindfulness in a kind of secular environment has no benefit. I mean, I've, I've researched it and I've studied the research. I mean, I did a PhD and did all the lit review and it's clear that yes, you can take mindfulness.
[00:05:27] Of the Buddhist tradition. You don't have to subscribe to karma theory or consequentiality or worldview or any of the things that we're talking about. And in eight weeks you can get some sort of stress reduction, some sort of decrease in depression. Yes, that is all true.
[00:05:44] On the other hand, if we're talking about chronic wounding to the soul, What makes people tick, how they see themselves, something as core to the bone is how they see themselves and how they see the world. This takes time, just takes time to repair. This takes time to process. So we have to say that first and foremost, but yes, we are turning the corner.
[00:06:12] It's slow baby steps with lots of regressions in. Long stretches of time, and it's not being dependent on just the therapist alone, which has also a danger of therapy becomes you. You have to spread this thin. You takes a village. I'm recruiting from her in the course of this therapy. Once I get her buy-in and I have, she feels supported by me and she understands the philosophy.
[00:06:37] She understands the trajectory. She understands the mechanism. I'm also trying to help recruit. Healthier people for her to be around. She needs to go to that Alanon group. She needs to find actually a good, decent human being to be her boyfriend and be there present and all of those kinds of, because we're, we're always mirroring ourselves with other, other creatures, other humans, they all now become reinforcement contingency.
[00:07:09] They're all working on, helping her see that she's a valuable person that deserves of love and that people are willing to hold her in positive regard in the full spectrum of her emotional range. Imagine you start to have six, seven people like that. Imagine you start to live with people like that.
[00:07:25] That's what it means by raising a kid, it takes a village. That's what we're doing. So, I mean, and then at the end of the day, she sees herself. As an agent of change in her whole life. Now, this is really important. She understands that it's both a village and that she has her own inherent power. That she's the captain of the ship.
[00:07:51] She's the captain of hardship and it takes a village. It's a nice actually synergy, not contradiction. These, these binaries, you know, they often really required. These false binaries, like in the United States is this, the political landscape is filled with polarization. On the one side, you have conservative values.
[00:08:13] On the other side, you have progressive values and they're seen as opposition and there isn't respect, and there's now no longer, no tolerance or no threshold for tolerance for each other. But these binaries, you know, they're, they're really requires a synergy or a middle of. And people go, what are you talking about?
[00:08:32] They couldn't be they're miles apart. Well know aren't some conservative values are really actually essential to the, to preserving and maintaining a human life and the status quo so that it's not doesn't get offended, you know, for like, here's an example. I don't know if you have this on Australia, but there's this gun rights versus a gun ban.
[00:08:58] If you look at it, this idea of people who want guns and then people who want to ban them from a trauma informed point of view, and you look at it from the point of human beings to dis does desire, safety fundamentally in the root chakra, the people that are for guns. Can you now see it from the point of view of their wish or desire for.
[00:09:23] Hm. And then for the people who don't want guns, can you see it from the point of view of their wish or desire for safety? Definitely. Yeah. So it's like, can you look at that and start to see what's underneath all of these contentious debate? On the surface of the waves of the ocean at the very depths of it, we just want the same thing.
[00:09:51] We're just going about it in different ways, at least come to that conclusion, which is a very, we're not there at all. We're not there. We don't have that shared understanding anymore.
[00:10:07] Host: Sort of bringing it back to this girl and kind of her own process as well. The contribution from the village. So her understanding of her own agency and the it's like the flexibility in life and how, um, you know, a lot more maybe possible than she may realize. And, and she's almost the, the key holder to that door.
[00:10:30] Um, and then also there's this. Um, really gentlemen, where, what comes through to me is this idea of, you know, the people you surround yourself as almost who you become and that shapes and informs and holds you in times of kind of struggle and also times of celebration. So just kind of blending these things together.
[00:10:53] She starts to feel more alive and she starts maybe for the first time, you know, in a very long time, probably longer than she could ever remember, begins to feel. You know, but that there's change in the air and that that's, she's not so stuck. And maybe all those emotions and expressions where you were kind of throwing out there earlier have been shifted.
[00:11:15] Um, what takes place from that point?
[00:11:19] Guest: A little bit about the budding of self-confidence and self acceptance, which is the new energy. It's the new source of openness. So the more that she an act. Puts into place the new trajectory. And it actually comes around to roost as a moment of validation or a moment of being held, or moment of being seen, or moment of being accepted.
[00:11:43] There is like a child that is getting the nutrients, like a flower. It's getting the sunlight, the soil and the water. It needs to grow. And it's reinforcing. It's very slow and it's very steady. And over time she grows his sense of self-worth self-acceptance and confidence. Now she's like a new person.
[00:12:05] This is called rebirth metaphorically. I mean, this case is a real case with a real woman that I worked with for several years, she came in very dysfunctional, borderline suicidal at 19, and I saw her all the way through graduation and into post. And she now is a social activist. She has a job. This is many years ago.
[00:12:30] So I, you know, by now I assume she has a family of her own, but she gained her own agency and she, she built from the ground up a new life worth living. And that is the message. That's a microcosm message of this karma theory and of this, um, the heart of Buddhist. Is that everything is open and love matters.
[00:12:59] Everything is open and love matters. Everything has opened means that the woman that came in at 19 was never truly who she was.
[00:13:15] If, if, if it were true that the woman that came in at 19 was who she was. There would be no point to trying to do the therapy.
[00:13:26] so everything is open to put us up. And how many people right now are listening and feeling helpless. The infinite horizon of possibilities have narrowed and closed for them. They actually are convinced who they are is who they are and the way the world is, is the way the world is. And there's no, no possibility of moving the dial at all in any direct.
[00:13:52] And possibly I can, I can tell you in my own life, I've been there many times. I have my own trauma history and my own history of demons and depression. And I have felt quite a few times that there was nothing. I was going to be able to do this. This was just my fate. And this was just who I was. And one of the, sorry.
[00:14:14] Well, we have in Christianity, this idea of you are born in. And I'm not saying that's the optimal interpretation of the, of the Christian message, but it's a popular one. It's a mainstream one. The alternative input ism is that your, your nature is open. Your nature is. Now, that's not saying you're an angel and it's not saying you're a demon.
[00:14:41] It's not saying your sin, that your center or your, your, your, uh, your, your, your, your wonderful, it's just saying that your nature is hoping you're pliable. Now we have the, the, the, we have a term in neuroscience that is akin to this, which is your brain is neuroplastic. We have a term called neuro-plasticity.
[00:15:05] Which means that the old belief that we had, that the brain was hardwired and fixed after a certain age and never would never could change again, was completely revolutionized in the last few decades so that we now know because of experience, we can shift the brain, change the brain, rewire the brain.
[00:15:24] Hold on. I came up with a term from the Buddhist tradition using this neuroscientific term of neuroplasticity. I call it soul plasticity. The 19 year old girl that came in naturally possesses sole plasticity. And that's what the Buddha was talking about. When you hear the term selflessness or not mine, Buddha was talking about selflessness.
[00:15:51] He was talking about soul plasticity saying consciousnesses, malleable. It's never fixed whoever it is that you think you are, whatever you think the world is, how intractable. How calcified, how rigid, how narrowly defined it feels it is always at its heart open. Then the second part of this statement, the world is open.
[00:16:15] Reality is open love. Heals love is what she needed and love is what she found and love is what creates the sense of flourishing.
[00:16:29] In eight steps, not in six weeks, but, but there is there's truth to it. There's truth to it. That is the condition for flourishing. The precondition for flourishing of, and the thing is, is it's once it's received, then it can be extended. And there is a karmic implication for the consequential malty. So whatever hero's journey you're on, that got you to this podcast, you're inspired to help people.
[00:17:02] You want to reach people with a good message. That's love. If there's ever any confusion about what you're doing. Podcasting, you can just reduce it down to your intentionality. I want to spend some time talking with other people. Bringing in good messages, broadcasting them across platforms so that they arrive at the right time to the right people who need to hear it.
[00:17:29] That is your interaction and your intention with love. And that is karma that's karma. In the moment, it may not feel great for you. Maybe you're tired after a day of podcasting. Maybe you didn't get enough likes or you didn't get enough comments or criticisms or whatever. That's, you know, every day, you know, mundane interactions, okay.
[00:17:53] We'll have to work through those. But on the broad spectrum of things that intentionality, they say comes back to roost in only one way, which is a sense of internal satisfaction. Yeah.
[00:18:08] Host: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that and sharing that, I guess, um, for me what I was kind of feeling into, like, even it's it's yeah.
[00:18:16] It's an interesting thing to play with this distillation of, of an ambition, which is quite clear for me, but then, you know, once I start moving it out through the elements into some kind of specifics, like for example, the podcast or. Whatever it might be writing a book or, um, you know, um, holding like spaces for people or like you do with the pilgrimages going out on adventures and sharing through experiences.
[00:18:48] Communally. Um, once that pot of, of the kind of process comes into being things, get a little bit like, um, it's never enough or something. There's something about the essence, the pure purity of that essence of that's always holds true. That's quite a beautiful thing to come back to. And I guess if that's kind of there, I'm just kind of thinking, um, emerging thoughts out loud, but maybe it doesn't matter so much or maybe it does.
[00:19:20] I don't know. Yeah, I dunno if you have anything to say about that, but something else is coming up, um, beside your, um, I think you've wrote it down as choiceless awareness or non-meditation, and I've got a curiosity around that, so I'm not sure if they'll liens, but just thought I'd
[00:19:40] Guest: put that out.
[00:19:44] Well, the, the first one I think is as good. I mean, the first point is. It's complex, right? We don't just have pure intentions. We have, we vacillate between our intentions intention. So maybe if your intention is like, I simply want to create the conditions for people's wellbeing. And I detached for many of the results.
[00:20:05] That's about as pure. That's about as pure as we can get. They talk about this in a lot in the Bhagavad Gita. It's like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna make my office. And I'm not going to be attached to the outcome, whether people like it, whether it lands well, the fruits of the action. Yeah. Unfortunately we at a micro-scale we vacillate between the most fearful parts of our being and the most honest and open, it's not like you're you're you haven't, you're not fully awake and you're not fully, um, coming from just one place.
[00:20:39] In any given moment, you could re retreat back into a place of scarcity and feel like, oh, well I'm not getting enough traction on my podcast, or I didn't like that comment. How dare they or whatever you can. And then, and then you can, and that. Has tumbled in your mind, it makes the work hard, right? Because you go to bed feeling like you're not validated, or people don't care about the work, and then you get fixated on that.
[00:21:03] And then it sends you into, I don't know you, and I don't know your history, but you know, you and you know, your history and you know, your loops. Yeah. So the work, the work is kind of secondary, whether you're a podcast or therapists, Pilgrimage guide counselor educator. It doesn't really matter. It's just, that's the field in which your soul is operating.
[00:21:28] And the work is calibrating yourself to be as present and as open and as loving and then watching the places and the times where you re regress into these old loops. And that's what your mind to bring it back to mindfulness. I mean, many people listening right now are going to know. How to sit down and follow their breath.
[00:21:50] And they're going to know that the next instruction on mindfulness and following the breath is when you get distracted, don't judge yourself, it's normal and natural. Just simply bring yourself back to the breath. And what I'm saying is that mechanism of recognition and choice is precisely what you apply.
[00:22:17] In the gap when your whole being wants to go binge drink and, and sleep with the wrong guys, if you bring recognition and then you have a choice, that's going to change your life. That's going to that's. That's what, that's what births a new law. So the simple thing on a meditation cushion of following the breath, when you get distracted, recognize you're distracted without any further complication, come back, make the choice to come back, gets applied to your own evolution.
[00:22:57] That's what I meant to come back to the article. That's the point I was really trying to make. That's the main point. That's what the Buddha was talking about. This thing called meditation. When you combine it with view and you combine it with a virtue. You create life, you create new life, not just for yourself, but for others, choiceless awareness.
[00:23:16] What do you know about choices? Awareness? Because it's very likely that choices, awareness means different things in different contexts. What, where are you coming from? What does it mean for you?
[00:23:26] Host: I'm not quite sure. And that's what kind of, I asked that. I feel like if I could try to feeling to an answer, but I kind of.
[00:23:33] The chapter and everything kind of felt like it rang true and made a lot of sense. And then I got really interested about that kind of phrase, and I really wanted to know what you meant by it, in that context. Um, so yeah, I might just throw it back to you if that's okay, because that's kind of, yeah, it just got real.
[00:23:54] It just felt like it just screaming is a screams at me. Like ask him about this. This is, there
[00:23:59] Guest: are wonderful, wonderful Buddhist traditions of cultivating them. And the mind is very well-known and its landscape is very well articulated
[00:24:13] Host: and there is a, can I throw something in? I think I've got something I just want to add, sorry.
[00:24:22] I'm not sure if this is what it is, but this is kind of something that came through to me just now. And I just felt like screaming out. Like I had to mention it. I just picturing the idea of being kind of naturally pushed by the wind and following that vibe or energy from an intuitive sense, like you're kind of called to where your need, where you need to be, um, by kind of things that arise.
[00:24:51] So it's not like you're making the choice anymore. It's almost like you're just in the flow of. Um, that's what kind of came out, but I could be totally off.
[00:25:02] Guest: Um, um, well, will that, will that, with that definition, you can also say that the flow could take you, the flow could also take you into sleeping with those guys.
[00:25:12] Right. You know,
[00:25:13] Host: and I think if you're in harmony with it, I think it does the opposite of that. Cause that's, that's what rings the alarm bells and, and, and, and allows that little break in the chain to take place.
[00:25:25] Guest: So th this is, this is good. This is a good conversation. This is why it's important to define the term and where you're coming from, how it, how it lands.
[00:25:34] Um, so now you're talking about choiceless awareness being more like the flow when you're an in cumbered or impinged by your negative karmic, propensities, something like that. Yeah.
[00:25:52] Uh, not to say that it's wrong, or to, just to say that it's different where I was going to come from is more from the soul plasticity point of view. The choiceless awareness is that there is this fundamental, the psycho is making. And the distinction between, do you fundamentally live in sin or are you fundamentally open if fundamentally open?
[00:26:13] If your nature at its most base level is fundamentally. Is it a choice
[00:26:29] if your nature is already open and what, and when we mean your nature, we can say your consciousness, your awareness, your soul is already open. Its nature is open, then it's not really a choice. It's choiceless awareness, your, your native. Is already choiceless awareness. Everything else is habit.
[00:26:57] So this is like flipping or inversing the four noble truths. We don't have time to really go into it, but there's this idea that instead of coming from sin and going towards enlightenment, you flip it on its head and you say, you're basically already in mind, you're already choice. You're already awake.
[00:27:16] Your nature is already. Open your soul is already plastic. You don't have to do anything you don't have to do. You don't have to create those conditions. Those conditions, preexist, everything else is part of the friction created by habit. So the choices that we're making are the choices to allow those habits to run their course, and then to come back and rest in the original nature once resting in that original nature.
[00:27:47] You're resting and choiceless awareness. There's not choices it's already there. They, they, there are a lot of people that talk about this as you're already free is freedom of choice. You're already free. It's already your nature. It really changes the quality of everything. It's really optimistic. It's a wonderful.
[00:28:10] Empowering message to tell people you're already free. It doesn't deny that you, you can bang your head up against the rocks. We're doing that constantly, but which one would you prefer to come from? The message that you're a sinner and there's no way out unless you do these things or that you're already free.
[00:28:29] And every time you bumping a rock, you have a chance to come back to your freedom.
[00:28:39] Host: It's, it's definitely, um, a beautiful, beautiful thought to feel into, and I feel like there's, there's a real truth to that. Um, and I guess it is, it could be seen as a matter of perspective, but it does feel quite liberating that thought within itself. And, and just the idea of almost like. You know, at, at, at the core we were ready and in a way where we're here already.
[00:29:05] And there's a sense of like, just an unpeeling that takes place rather than having to get somewhere, having to achieve something.
[00:29:14] Guest: Yeah.
[00:29:16] Host: Yeah. And that also brings in the earlier point about this no rush, you know, because it, it, if you, if you look at it as kind of this. Peeling back. Um, I think for me anyways, it takes away that sense of rush that allows me to kind of, okay, well it's kind of happening already.
[00:29:42] Yes. Yeah. Naturally by, you know, the different medicines of life.
[00:29:52] Guest: Hmm.
[00:30:03] Host: I suppose we could kind of leave it at that miles if you wanted to. Um, yeah. I kind of had a couple of small kind of questions around.
[00:30:14] Guest: Um,
[00:30:16] Host: uh, just, I guess there were more personal things, but I'm not sure if you have time for that. I was just going to check in with you, how you were going with time. And a couple
[00:30:23] Guest: more questions is fine with me.
[00:30:25] Um, I'm in a very relaxed mood. Yeah.
[00:30:28] Host: Yeah. Well, yeah, kind of, I guess that'd be and where to
[00:30:32] Guest: be. I'm a knob. No rush. You don't seem
[00:30:35] Host: to be in any rush. Yeah. We're here. We've we've arrived. Um, I guess. Ah, I guess on a personal level, I've, I'm kind of, I'm in a space where I really, I really admire what you've, you know, you talk about walking into welds and having a foot in each one, and there's something I really admire about that.
[00:31:00] And I think for a lot of my life, I've probably been conditioned into this rush mode, you know, from school. I always kind of, um, I finished school, I think. Uh, I think I was, um, from memory a little bit younger than everyone else. And I finished school earlier and I had this idea of, you know, comparison coming up quite often.
[00:31:25] I think that might be kind of part of the source of a fraction of it, of where this comes from, but I've been really called to deepen my education recently. And I think that's, there's something about your work that really appeals to me because there's been this kind of. Not really knowing where to go from this point and feeling in some sense, really open, but in and trusting as well.
[00:31:48] So that happens. But then I also get the flip side of that, where it's like, just don't know what the next step is and I'm ready and I'm open and just take like, you know, screaming out, take me and use me as your will. I'm ready to serve, but it just don't have any, um, there's nothing. I mean, there's things that are naturally happening.
[00:32:07] But nothing. If I'm really feeling into the fall with them, they're going to happen anyways. And am, I might be one of the choices. So awareness thing came up. It seems like there is a friction point there for me, but, um, I've been really called to kind of deepen my studies with Buddhism and, um, you know, I'd love to just go into a monastery and spend some time.
[00:32:28] Um, you know, deepening my practice and actually deepening the practice side of things rather than the intellectual kind of, um, wisdom aspect. I'd rather actually, you know, get up at 5:00 AM every day and, and, and kind of have, have hold silence, get someone to hold my hand in that process would be beautiful.
[00:32:47] Although I realized beside your making your home, your monastery is still an active, you know, exploration. Um, and then the other side, or even just to go study something. University that I've always been interested in, like Buddhism, um, would be so refreshing because I've always studied things that I didn't really care about.
[00:33:07] So at school, I mean, um, but then the idea of university and all the writing and academic side of things really kind of makes me feel overwhelmed. Cause I'm not very good at that. Maybe that's why I admire it so much in your work. And then the other side of it is kind of the psychology aspect, which I'm also really fascinated in, especially you're in psychology for summer.
[00:33:27] Oh, you know, psychoanalysis, however it's put and wanting to kind of deep in studies in that area. But then again, that's like a five-year course and there's all these kind of, and I've got all these kinds of projects that, um, it's kind of like the spending the time to deep in education. Again, reminding myself that there's no rush is helpful here, but there's this idea of it kind of being, um, yeah, it's almost like, well, do I really need to do that to help now?
[00:33:55] Like the world is in need. People are in need now, you know, Yeah. Like how do I measure what I'm doing? And, and w what, w yeah, where do I actually point my intention and focus? Uh, it's it's, it's, it's just, this whole process is a little bit confusing for me. I thought maybe because you're actually in between those two worlds of, of psychoanalysis and bodies quite beautifully, actually, quite synchronistically.
[00:34:23] Maybe you might be someone to bring this up with, and maybe you had something to share that could, um, you know, um, I dunno.
[00:34:31] Guest: I dunno. Why Michael, can I ask how old you are?
[00:34:34] Host: 32 in April.
[00:34:36] Guest: So when was the last time, uh, you did a, a long course and committed to studying. When was the, was it, was it just uni? Was there any post.
[00:34:45] Host: No, I did like my journey's been into like advertising. So I did, um, uh, I went through like a TAFE after, after high school. And that was really short. I, I, I found a lot of shortcuts, so I only did my whole thing in, life's been finding shortcuts and now I'm unraveling the comic effect. So, um, this is actually quite relevant to what we're talking about, but, um, yeah, I did this at TAFE for, I found a really short kind of couple of year course, and then I did a six week school on creativity, um, which is worth more in the industry than three years at university.
[00:35:20] So I just did that. And then I got accepted and I did that. And then I just went straight into the industry and then kind of rose up really quick and realized that that wasn't, you know, that just felt really kind of wrong. Um, So that, that was kind of my journey, but that's been, yeah, I haven't even worked in the advertising industry for years for many years.
[00:35:40] And that was when, you know, early twenties or something when I completed all those courses and stuff.
[00:35:46] Guest: I only asked because I get, I get these questions really often actually. And I think it is a, could be a generational thing, but it's definitely a contextual thing where people are at a crossroads. We are amidst a transition.
[00:36:01] No wonder it's confusing. One of the confusions that often comes up is, is it worth it for me to take an academic route and commit to a long course of study and pay a lot of money for a bonafide profession? I mean, I'm not sure if that's exactly what you're asking, but it does come up in my experience with people coming to me saying I'd love to do something similar to what you're doing.
[00:36:26] I have I'm at a crossroads. I'm either transitioning from a career or I'm coming out of university. I'm thinking what the next step is there. There's this one route, which is a very traditional route to go back to graduate. School could be anywhere between three and five years could be anywhere in, at least in the United States, between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars of debt.
[00:36:47] And then on the other side, there is, you know, should I just go to a monastery? Should I just, you know, go this sort of personal route to some personal experience? And, and have some doubt about where I might end up and especially in terms of, can I make it applicable to a career? This is a very common conundrum, and I don't know if that's somewhere in the vicinity
[00:37:08] Host: for you.
[00:37:08] It's definitely in the vicinity. Yeah. And I've got also, I've got it. I've got a five and a half year old son. Who's really much, um, kind of filled my heart. And the last few years of just the, you know, relational space and. There's really something that I want to give time and attention to in that that's kind of a big priority.
[00:37:28] And that kind of stops me in a way from, from the kind of monastery or side of things, because it doesn't make sense to leave without him. Um, so there's that as well. So I don't know if that makes any difference.
[00:37:42] Guest: Definitely. 'cause all of these, all of these factors come into the equation. That's why it's a very customizable and very precise.
[00:37:50] Set of circumstances and considerations where you come from, what might be your demon or your blind spot that you're coming from? Like what drove you in the past? Why you ended up in advertising, how you realize it, wasn't fulfilling, how you migrated to podcasting all your network right now, the fact that you are.
[00:38:07] You know, you're in early thirties and you have a son that you want to spend time with. And I mean, I guess like one of the things that I'm discovering about the way the world is turning is that I don't know if it's necessary anymore to go back to school and to take on debt. So much education is available at our disposal these days.
[00:38:30] It's really, I mean, it's incredible how much information is available, but it really required. A very discerning and mature person to be able to sort through it and apply it and put it into practice. And I know a lot of people now, young people who don't have degrees, I mean, it wasn't really an option when I was coming up, but now it is an option where people more and more people.
[00:38:56] Are not professionally trained or not. They haven't gotten a degrees, but they've done shorter certificate courses. And then they go and they do some coaching work or they work with people and they life have life experiences. And of course there's pros and cons to both of us. Okay. And I realize that, but I think I'm just looking the way that I'm looking at it now is through how we started the podcast conversation with the larger astrological paradigm shift people taking responsibility and not being so not outsourcing so much to the big organizations.
[00:39:33] This is actually the astrology archetype that we're swimming in. That's why we see this. There's a changing of the guard. The old school idea was that you, you had to defer to an educational process, and then you became the educational bastion with your fancy letters behind your name. But now we're moving towards more lateralized decentralized power, which means people have it within them to really explore different avenues of self-empowered.
[00:40:04] Now that's going to have a whole shadow and you can already see it. For example, in the, um, psychedelic world, there are a lot of people that go for three to five day psychedelic experiences and they come out feeling like they've seen something extremely powerful, which they have, but then they also have a touch of grandiosity and they sort of feel.
[00:40:31] There now some sort of guru or some sort of showman, which is a kind of self inflation and it, and it is, it is indicative that there hasn't been enough preparation on the, on the, on the entry. And there hasn't been enough integration, post integration. And all I'm saying is that leave those outliers assault.
[00:40:57] Many more people are going to wake up. And many as they wake up, many more people are going to be able to serve others and they may find different avenues for training and for mentorship. I actually, none of my education made much sense to me. I was a terrible student. I totally identified with what you said.
[00:41:17] Like I was horrible student I'm dyslexic. I can't spell right now. I can't do. My foundations are horrible. It's a, it's a miracle. I made it as far in academia as I did, but none of it really added up to me. The most essential part of my training was a 20 year apprenticeship or mentorship that I did with my teacher.
[00:41:41] That was the best education I ever had. It made me who I was not the hours and hours and hours of classwork, none of the academia, none of the. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for my three degrees, none of that. And I think that there is an opportunity in the sea change where we will have a kind of reverting back to old ways, old customs, more organic ways of learning decentralized, which means these kinds of big Harvard businesses there.
[00:42:20] This is the end. In the sense that they have inflated themselves so much, they're just capitalistic money-making machines. We've outsourced all our powers, put them on a pedestal. We don't, it's not even clear. We get that great education anymore from them. And at the very least we can all acknowledge that they producing like an assembly line.
[00:42:42] Very cool cookie cutter types of people. And I think that we are emitting. A see change and a possible revolution where learning can happen in so many new and novel ways. Then we can create micro-communities for learning. We could create online learning. We can create little certificates for people who are both busy and parenting.
[00:43:08] We can create more mentorship. I hope we will return back to a mentorship model because I think it's just the most invaluable way to learn. If you want to learn. To be a musician, go study with a violinist. If you want to be, you know, learn to be a craftsperson, go find the best goddamn craftsperson that you can find and sit with them and serve them tea and live with them and come visit with them every single day and do a kind of exchange course with them instead of shelling out $150,000 and becoming in debt for the rest of your life, which is a huge baggage on your soul.
[00:43:40] And it works both ways because the mentor, he or she. Derive so much pleasure in delivering what they have known to a new generation. And so I just think like first and foremost, we have to listen to our intuition. If your intuition is calling you to deepen your study, then you must deepen your study. And if your, if your intuition is already clear that you'd rather the practical over the theory.
[00:44:14] Then listen to your intuition. Then the only real question is, is how are you going to make that happen? Given your life circumstance, being a father, podcaster, paying your rent and
[00:44:24] Host: all the rest of it. That's kind of my question. That's, that's where I'm at. Yeah. It's and it seems like a light thing to be, you know, at that point where it's now I just need to figure out how, but it's actually, I dunno, it can be, it can be okay.
[00:44:39] You know, there's, there's an okayness to it. Um, like, uh, Uh, comfort being comfortable in that space, but, uh, eventually it gets a bit, um, you know, can't sit in that space too long. It seems, you know, I
[00:44:52] Guest: think little, um, I'm a big believer in the mythological aspect or dimension of life. I like to look at things from a mythological point of view, if you're a hero or you're a nascent hero on a journey and you're really receptive and you've got some clever.
[00:45:13] There will be signs they're coming.
[00:45:17] Host: Yeah. That's a great reminder.
[00:45:20] Guest: And you can do a lot of prey now. Most people look that's when I lose a lot of my audience, because again, I come a big believer in intentions and I'm a big believer in the, the ritual offering in your own mind with your own intention.
[00:45:41] Creating a vision and creating the inspiration and creating the intentionality and drawing from the quantum field. What it is that you need. If you need a teacher, pray and practice a virtue and commit for a teacher, if you want a course, pray and practice virtue. And of course we'll come. This is. This is karma put in scientific language, your intention and your action, your ethical action draw out of reality, different life circumstances and opportunities.
[00:46:21] So whatever it is that you want intentionality, and I'm not a subscriber to the secret. Cause I don't think it's all. I don't think it's all positive thinking. I also think you have to have virtuous action. Yeah. So your virtuous action is serving others by hours of podcasting and all the backend work that you're doing.
[00:46:44] So like, you're going to close this podcast out and you're going to have several hours of back end work to make something happen for your viewers and your audience, so that something might be delivered that would be meaningful and purposeful for their life. You have just banked that karma from your intentions and your actions.
[00:47:06] They call that merit. They call that merit. Yeah. Then in some sort of ceremony in your own mind, say with this merit, I dedicate this merit for the things that I want to bring into reality. It's interesting that I want to manifest. So it's okay to want a loving partner to arrive. It's okay. To want a meaningful career to arrive.
[00:47:30] It's okay. To want health to arrive. It's okay to want a teacher to arrive, but people don't, people don't really know how to bring those into being. And certainly things like the secret have misled people because they think it's. Just intention. No, you have to live a life of service. You have to make certain sacrifices.
[00:47:50] You have to good. Have to have good graft. You have to go to work. You have to make bread. You
[00:47:55] Host: have to serve. I think what you just highlighted there about it's. Okay. Um, feels really nice to hear actually, you know, about that feels really good to hear. It's okay. To want those things.
[00:48:08] Guest: Yeah. Cause remember at the beginning of the discussion, we said, we've entered into the non dual world.
[00:48:13] We're not trying to just be pious Jesus lovers that want to ascend into heaven. We're, we're embodied human beings. I want to live on this earth. And most of us are not are our family members and, and, and social creatures. We're not monastics. So it's okay to have. It's okay to be in your body. It's okay to have joy.
[00:48:33] It's okay to celebrate. It's okay. To want to have a good, meaningful life and work career in harmonious life with your children. These are okay in the non dual world. Just know how you get there and then rejoice, feel celebrate, have gratitude for these things. There's no distinction anymore between a home life and spiritual life.
[00:48:56] There's no distinction. You're podcasting. And your time with your kid is spiritual life. Yeah.
[00:49:04] Host: Yeah. It's just sometimes with the idea of kind of wanting these things or indulging, I sense in these kind of clashes, in a sense of, um, you know, whatever, they may be this
[00:49:19] Guest: way, if you're happy, Michael. Yeah. If you were happy.
[00:49:26] You're 10 X, more effective and more productive and more and spread a better message and are making a bigger impact. Yeah.
[00:49:34] Host: That's a good way to think about it. That really helps. That makes yeah, I get what you're saying though.
[00:49:40] Guest: So there's, I mean, my teacher geisha tendons, Oprah who actually lives in Australia, in Perth, he's a huge fan of enjoying.
[00:49:49] He always reminds me, cause I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. I'm a bit of a stick in the mud. Sometimes my wife kicks me all the time. He need to lighten up. He was presenting my ear all the time. Enjoy.
[00:50:04] Yeah, he says, enjoy, enjoy. If you're having a nice bowl of cereal or a nice bowl of porridge or whatever, there's a nice sunset. There's a good, you know, a little playing around with your little kid. Yeah, enjoy, enjoy, and then make offerings, offer it. And then you says that your joy becomes a gift and you're just making merit.
[00:50:31] You're just making merit. And merit is another way of saying energy. You're harnessing energy. So enjoyment is central to the harnessing of energy and energy is essential to the manifestation. So don't be afraid. Give yourself plenty of permission to enjoy. It's just, there's a difference between that model of enjoyment and the hedonistic one that both you and I shared when we were in, in college.
[00:50:54] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:50:56] Host: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Sending a loving breeze of gratitude in your direction. Thank you so much for sharing space with us here and now. And if you want some more information about our guests, you can head over to today, dream.com and check it, check out the episode section on the page.
[00:51:17] And also if you're someone that's interested in deepening your practice of presence, if you want to work together with someone to structure a spiritual practice, whether it's an existing. Or a new one. And if you're looking to build consistency is define your ambition and recalibrate your trajectory in a way that's more in line with wholeness and in a way that contributes and participates more fully in the emergent world story.
[00:51:48] And it's blossoming, then feel free to get in touch because I'm taking on a small handful of one-on-one clients, spiritual friends, um, and I'd love to speak. If you did enjoy this episode and you felt like you got something out of it, feel free to share it with your community. And if you feel like there's anyone in particular that could benefit from the space sheds today, I'd really appreciate if you'd pass it on to them.
[00:52:14] And I'm sure they would too. And yeah, I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you again, my friend and
[00:52:22] be well.