So I'm just gonna jump right in. And if somebody wants to follow up on this, I can dial this in on my phone. We can talk about some of this stuff. So from my good friend Jim. I'm sure you've talked about this before but I haven't listened to all the previous Q and A's yeah, there's there's almost three years of them now. So the worry is curious what you would say Now my question is How has your nighttime Dream Yoga practice affected your daytime life? How is it affecting it now? What is your daytime dream practice like? Okay, well, Jan has been it's been nothing sort of nothing short of monumental for me it's why I'm so passionate about these not just Dream Yoga, but the other. Four, nocturnal meditations, liminal, dreaming lucid dreaming, sleep yoga, Hatha Yoga, but Dream Yoga is the central one especially for Tibetan practitioners. And it has affected absolutely everything. I can't. I try to do my best to summarize some of the impacts. I mean, I have had I've been fortunate enough to have dreams like you know, they sometimes call these these Theo fantech dreams that are that are just like life changing, right? Hyper lucid theory of anti dream where that dream is more real than this. That's a game changer. You just need one of these and it really just changes everything like, like a near death experience because you actually experience a dimension that actually seems more real than this. You wake up from that this seems like the foggy dream. And so maybe just starting right there that has been colossal because what has happened with me, Jan is that as I some of you listening probably heard me say this previously. If you're very cautious with how you use the word reify to make to make real to solidify as one reifies clarify stabilizes the dream. By immediate implication you de reify this and that's why Dream Yoga is intimately connected with a diurnal daytime practice of illusory form, which is your second part. So as my dream my type my nighttime dreams, you became more real, more stable, more clear, even though this, this becomes more like a dream. And I think that's actually could be an intimation of what it means to wake up in the spiritual sense, where you see the utter quantumness nature of all states of consciousness and in fact, parenthetically along those lines, I know you're you're a very deep student of the Tibetan tradition. Khenpo Rinpoche said, right, based on the commentary that he wrote on Milarepa teaching, not seeing day and dream is deferring. This is as meditation as they can be. Well, what that really means according to capital, Rinpoche, is that until you can meditate in your dreams as much as you can. With the clarity, stability and whatnot that you have during the day your meditation is considered incomplete. So that has been colossal for me. Just last night, I had a battery of lucid dreams. It was so cool every time I have these it never gets old. They're just like, they're pretty, pretty amazing. So dreams, you know, prodromal dreams, predictive dreams, but cognitive dreams, I've had dreams, again, that have impacted my life profoundly. And I don't live in an alternate universe. So I can't say what would have happened had I not acted on some of the kind of warnings I got for my dreams. But I've had a very, very impactful precognitive dreams that were brought to full complete fruition. In fact, this last year has been a non trivial health issue. But it was completely predicted by one of the most impactful dreams of the last decade for me that I had two years ago. In fact, I'm in California, same same place I was two years ago. This dream two years ago, completely predicted everything that happened in the last year. And that allowed me when it started to click. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what my dream was predicting. So therefore I could I could negotiate and look back at their dream which I did it titled and really studied. I could look back on that dream and it really helped me with what I went through this last year. I again, there's so much to say here tonight. I guess perhaps the most important thing is that by engaging in these dream yoga practices, natural meditations, it opens this bidirectionality that the insights from these two previously disparate states of excuse me, they're split states of consciousness, the waking state and the dreaming state which were previously separate. You don't have kind of hacked into the dream state. Your previous restricted state of consciousness and open playful language was kind of interstate commerce. This is probably the most important thing where now because I have such allegiance to the nocturnal mind. I respect my dreams as much as I do, by waking reality. And in fact, this is one distinction between Eastern and Western philosophy. Western philosophy drawl derives his views of mind and reality almost exclusively from the waking state. Eastern traditions derive their views of mine and reality from all three states. In fact, four if you include the fourth straight Tria, waking dreaming deep dreamless sleep, so it's a much more integrative holistic, comprehensive way of looking at mind. In reality, there's no longer so wake wake centric, sights centric, photo centric, but that bidirectionality is probably the biggest thing here. Jen, where insights now flow back and forth so I have insights into my practices during the day. They pop up ping up into my night time experience, they bring about more lucidity at night. And then the insights I have at night don't just stay under the blanket of darkness. They ping back in they come back into my daily experience and they continue to inform transform everything I do on this waking world. So I see the world is much less real, more like a dream. That doesn't mean I don't take things seriously. That's the dismissive end of dreams. But taking things seriously does not follow that you have to take them literally that's a mistake. And I think arguably, the Buddha was the ultimate lucid dreamer. And I think this is an intimation to what it means to wake up to realize the fluidity, the emptiness, the flexibility of mind and reality altogether. And so, last thing on this because I can run on this for the whole hour is the drain Marina has probably not probably has definitely given me greater insights into emptiness. So arguably the central teaching in all Buddhism and near obj says this right, the nighttime classroom was an easier classroom for emptiness than the daytime arena. And that's what all the stages of Dream Yoga are about progressive stages of meditation on emptiness. And so that's probably the biggest thing. More and more insight stabilities interesting word we talked about emptiness, but more insight into the nature of emptiness, the bidirectionality, replacing a previously vicious circle of non lucidity with a virtuous circle of lucidity where this interstate traffic flows back and forth. So you know, I could I could riff on this for the whole session, but in short, this is the stuff that has profoundly affected me and continues to affect me and that's why I'm so jazzed on this stuff. Okay. I hope that helps. Great question.
Okay, from David. All right, I'm gonna fire through these, David, because there's a lot of them here. So I'm going to read them all and I'll I'll pick as many as I can. What is your opinion of the usefulness of the currently offered program with Roberto veal, can never bear hug pronounce his name Villoldo? And Bob Thurman and shamanic and Buddha's teachings on death called the deathless elixir of immortality. I saw that I'm on his email list read it looks like a great program. Is this the best way to learn and I'll read these and then I'll come back to him because there's so many is this the best way to learn about the connections between the two traditions? What other options do you suggest? What is your impression about our two? What is your understanding of the shamanic teachings on death? What is similar to version Rihanna? What is different? How useful is it to understand them? Have you ever used ayahuasca and or psilocybin how okay you forgot to ask me who do you think I expect to win the Super Bowl? So tongue in cheek my friend did warm hug, but you forgot to ask me. Hey, you know, somebody asked me this is no kidding. Like 12 years ago, I can't remember when, in a public setting. Somebody asked me about the Super Bowl. I actually made just totally off the cuff score prediction. And it turned out to be 100% accurate. They predicted the score of the of the Super Bowl Game Three hours later. Total luck was like Well, that's kind of cool. Okay, so a couple things here, my friend. I don't know when I'll be able to personally but I do know him through my connection with Bob and the conference that I did last year with him. I think he's coming on again this year. I'm very impressed with him. If I can't say my mom taught me this, and I still maintain it. If I can't say something nice about somebody. I basically tried to shut up and say nothing, because who am I? I'm like, who am I? To say anything about anybody? I mean, even if I had a negative opinion, I wouldn't share it. Everything I know about about Alberto is beautiful. His talk last year I was really taken by it. He's coming back. He's doing another talk. I'll have a chance to relate to him on that platform, because I'm in that conference as well. That's the one that Alyssa has posted by the way in the chat. So Alberto seems like a beautiful human being and the Bob is working with him. Bob does not suffer fools, right? And so there's that's all I need. If I was working with him. That's my seal of approval. Oh Allah definitely. The usefulness of attending that program. I can't tell you but I bet if they're involved with it, it's gonna be really good. Because Bob is just like the guys near genius. Right? So I think it's gonna be awesome. I love the way they wrote that up the wording on that really caught my eye. And I mean, I may I may attend to it myself. But again, I can't guarantee anything is this the best way to learn about the connections between the traditions that I have no idea. What other options do you suggest? Well read more about shaman has shamanistic traditions that which there are 10s of 1000s Right. So Alberto represents one shamanism is a multi Vaillant term that encompasses 10s of 1000s of different shamanic traditions. So can we say that they're all the same? There's no way. Oh, socialpilot different shamans relate to their shamanic journeys through their state and structural levels of development. And so even when you're talking about shamanic phenomena, I mean, good luck with that, right? There's 10s of 1000s of these you might want to read the book by oh, maybe if Barry or somebody here can pull it up. I think it's called civilized shamans. And the author just escaped me a wonderful scholar. But I'm pretty sure that's the title of it so Alyssa are very see if he can pull that up at the pre show is called similar shamans. Really interesting scholarly exposition on the shamanic nature of both mostly Tibetan Buddhism, but I think also Buddhism, they're intimately inextricably connected. What other options do you suggest? I don't know. I'm not a shaman, right? I would probably suggest reading Oh, it's what's his name? Samuels. You guys I find it so lifetime. It's I would recommend reading that book. What is my impression of Alberto? I don't know what I heard. I was really impressed. What is your understanding of shamanic teachings on death? What I heard from him last year was beautiful, but he's a one voice in the chorus of 10s of 1000s. So I don't know. This is great. This is what Daffy John talked about is divine ignorance. It's like my favorite response. There's something quite liberating that just saying, I don't know. It's like ah, it's like it makes me just makes me relax like, I don't know. So again, it depends on on the on the shamanic tradition what I heard from Alberta last year. I thought it was really spot on. Similar to Bowser Jana. Yes. In some respects different Yes. In some respects. So again, these are really really big questions have a US iOS can psilocybin Yeah. Again, this is these are massively big questions. I'm a huge fan of entheogens psychedelics. I've completely changed my tune as agents. I've explored them, but I don't think this is the venue to really go into that. I think they absolutely, positively have a place again, I've completely changed my tune on this. I think if you relate to them skillfully, properly with the right set and setting motivation I don't think it's facile to say you can look at him as a as a wrathful form of liberation and therefore under the Tibetan tantric rubric, I think you can actually do that. But in terms of like, that sort of thing, I don't think this is the appropriate setting for that discussion. Okay, if you want to come out and really anybody that I'm addressing the question to you want to come on and have a little bit more back and forth happy to entertain it good questions, my friend. Okay, from Arlene. Thank you. Yeah, nice words. Appreciate those nice words. I wonder if you can offer some advice on integrating the two wings of bodhichitta specifically, how can the practice of Tong Lin be integrated with the illusory form practices? Okay, so this is a little bit more specific, kind of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist thing, which is cool. bodhichitta awakened heart mind. So I think when you if you're there, what there. I'm not sure if you taught there's two ways are you talking about aspiring and entering bodhichitta? Are you talking about absolute and relative bodhichitta? So it depends on which two wings you're talking about. There's actually four wings, right? That's why bodhichitta fly so well. doesn't just have two wings. It has four wings, right? So let's just say you're talking about relative and absolute. How can the practice of Tang Lin specifically how can the practice of Tang land and be integrated with the illusory form practices? Well, that's an interesting question actually. So Thailand, the practice of sending and taking remember there are four stages to it. The first stage is absolute bodhichitta, you flash emptiness, stages. 234 is relative bodhichitta. So when you're talking about absolute bodhichitta, absolute bodhichitta completely ties into illusory form practice but then our Lean which type of illusory form practice are you talking about? Are you talking about impure pure or perfectly pure? So there's a lot of things here like a which types of tunings are you talking about which types of illusory form practice are you talking about? But I'm gonna just my intuition is accurate. The first phase of Tang Lin the absolute bodhichitta phase, you flashed open to something else, that's absolute bodhichitta. That's totally connected to illusory form, because emptiness is what actually brings about the entire journey from impure to pure to perfectly pure illusory form. So they're deeply deeply connected, but unless I can centrifuge gel with more specificity, which one of the illusory form practices you're referring to, or lean? Which of the two are the four wings of bodhichitta you're referring to? I'm taking a couple of guesses. And if you're here and want to come on and suss this out with me, I'm happy to run with it. But otherwise, I'm just taking some guesses because I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Okay, from Emily. Hi, Andrew. Last week you said when we die we don't dissolve into oneness but numbness. Reminds me of a really, really bad joke. Is this okay? Can I can I share this really bad joke? have to think about whether it's appropriate. I think it's appropriate guys. You guys know I'm a goofball. And I didn't make it. Somebody told me this. So the joke is the following. Do monks have any fun? If you heard this joke? Do monks have any fun? None. All right, deadpan. Right that's that's Stephen Colbert. Throwing out a joke where it just goes like, like, what? Very profound actually think about that joke. Okay. Last week, you said that when we die we don't dissolve into oneness but into nothingness? Well, the reason I said that, yeah, can you please elaborate I always pictured my energy dissolving into the clear light. I'll no longer be me, but I'll be part of the boundless emptiness. Okay.
Well, you're you're being dissolved into the ineffable. Emilie, even none. There's nothing nothing can describe what you're going to dissolve into with complete authority. The map is never the experience, the territory, but the reason I went after the oneness thing is because of the near enemies that are associated with all the various forms of monotheism. And this is actually a subtle near enemy of even non duality, non duality for a lot of people tends to assume a monistic oneness, then that really because non duality is the non affirming negation, none that non duality doesn't affirm anything. But people tend to think that it's some kind of oneness and yes, provisionally, I get this unity thing. But it's not oneness and it's not numbness it's ineffable is reality, and you can't put reality into words the closest you can get Emily to understanding this doctrinal Lee is through the luminous part of dharma. teachings. And probably for a Westerner, the single best book on this is my dear friend Francesca green mantle's masterpiece, luminous emptiness, understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. If you want to learn about what you're going to dissolve into read that book. Phase one is you dissolve into emptiness not nothingness but no thingness but flipside of that immediately that's phase one is phase two, which is, is that's the phase one is the not nothing Phase. Phase two, which is subdivided into four phases is the everything phase. So you dissolve into nothing, but that means you dissolve into everything. And then take what that what you will because that's trying to articulate the ineffable. You can't put this into words you can only experience it. I've always pictured my energy dissolving into the clear light. Yeah, we do that because it's not the only way we can think we think in terms of images and pictures and things. We think think, but you can't picture this. Yes, dissolving into the clear light. That's a pretty, pretty accurate way of imagining what it's like but basically clear light. In my book dreams of light is the entire book is about clear light. This is this is a way to talk about luminosity and emptiness. Clear as empty luminosity of light. So you dissolve into luminosity emptiness. I'll no longer be me totally true. You disappear. But part of the boundless emptiness. Yes, you can say that but if you're only really really really careful, it's like, I like Bernardo Castro's analogy on this. Right now. We're dissociative alters in mind at large. And we're like whirlpools, I really liked this image. And at the end when we die, death is the end of the dissociation. It's the end of your localized contracted cocoon mind where the Whirlpool relaxes, opens dissolves back into mind because stream of consciousness the stream of mind, so yes, you disappear. Well, I mean, you could disappear right now you don't even exist right now. It's just a reality brings that out. It's powerful relief at the moment of death. You become part of the boundless emptiness. You're already part of the balance emptiness. So you don't have to wait till you die to experience that. Same with a clear light. This is the clear light. You don't have to wait till you die to experience the clear light. This is the clear light. It's just a word basically, we reify the light part. That's what we call matter. We forget the emptiness part. That's what creates samsara. So you are in the clear light right now you just don't recognize it. When you enter the the kind of baseline Ground Zero clear light that's just basically one of the display is returned to Ground Zero to nothing. But this is the clear light so that's why you don't have to wait till you die to experiences. So Emily's a really great question. And I don't mean to be too glib and, and clever and smart aleck II with my answers. But this stuff is really difficult. It's ineffable. It's super profound, trying to use a dualistic medium to talk about non duality. It just doesn't work. But if you really want to grok this study that Zen Teachings, study luminous emptiness, read that book five times. Then go into the meditations, do the practices and then you'll discover this for yourself. Okay. All right. So here's the I this is I have a little bit of a bit of a challenge. With some of these questions. Some of them come in, they're so long, that literally for me to read them would take five minutes. And so I just, it's difficult, because I don't have time to do that. And so some of these if I don't address your question is just because it's, it's too long. So I apologize for that. I hope you understand. If you want me to, the best way to answer a question, you know, again, is come on live, just for the purposes of sickness. keep it as brief as you can. But when I literally have I have one question. That's two page literally two pages long. 1000 words, I can't read it. It's just too much. I'm so sorry. But if you want to ask it and you're coming out live and you're Why didn't you answer my question is because I want you to bullet point it. be succinct and come at it with something very direct. I apologize. I just don't have the time for it. Sorry about that. Okay, primary and during the pandemic. I had extensive liminal dreaming experiences that actually turned into a novel. I mean, how cool is that? That prompted me to investigate Dream Yoga. Nice. I've been a turban practitioner for 20 years. Really nice. At age 75, I decided Dream Yoga practice made sense. Good for you. I think it makes sense to in August I took your course. Try psycho one. Okay, thank you for that. Read both my books. Thank you for that as well. It's very kind of you and having some success with lucid dreaming moving through the stages and on occasion flying awesome. And even meditating in my dreams that's even more awesome. However far away my lucid dreams are still filled with my novel characters. That's great. Everybody's welcome at this banquet, right I mean, that's beautiful. I'm doing my best to cultivate ways to control my dream content to limited success Am I being impatient? Okay, well, let me stop here. I'm gonna say a couple of things before I continue. The really cool thing here and I'm sorry, Miriam. Is that just like dreams themselves, just like mind itself. There's so many different ways to work with your dream content. And by the way, when you're doing that, what are you working with? What are dreams made of? Right? They're made of your mind. conscious or unconscious dreams are made of mind. And so there's so many different ways to work with mind as it expresses itself in a dream, lucid or non lucid. One way is to basically in a very powerful way, witnessing lucid dreaming pet lucidity is to have a lucid dream. I had one like this last night, where the dream experience just continues to unfold as it would in a non lucid dream. But you're completely aware of the fact that you're lucid. You just don't do anything. You sit there and you witness the whole thing. Like being in a movie. That's fantastic. That therefore allows the dream characters to come up. You don't interfere with them. The unconscious mind doesn't thing. You're just witnessing it with full lucidity. That's fantastic. Now, if you want to use that for creativity purposes, go for it great Sita dreams, I mean Sita novel, see the series, go for it. If however you want to engage in more like transformative practices of Dream Yoga, because again, Dream Yoga. Once you actually start to engage it outside of the lucidity, witnessing stance, then you have eight stages it leaves of the transformative tantric aspects where you're changing the content of the dream. That's Tantra. And then you have the last two loves eight nine bleed into each other. That's the Haji Jana, that's the self liberating aspect. And so therefore, if you want to work, it really depends on what you want to do with your dreams. If you want to cultivate more control over your dreams, then, you know, basically what are you controlling? You're controlling your mind. Does that mean controlling the content? Yes, in some instances, you can. That's the contract transformative stage two through eight but also controlling the dream really in large respects. Another option would be controlling your relationship. You don't have to change the content. Change your relationship. That's another way to control your relationship. But if you want to do the classic Dream Yoga stages, then yes, then there's more the kind of I'm going to transform this into that I'm going to do this to that I'm going to work with that. That's fantastic. So the great thing is to realize all of the potentials realize they all have a bandwidth of applicability. They all have a bandwidth, the fruition and benefit and then basically just see what works for you. If you're finding it be really fruitful, really enjoyable. And you're, you know, writing novels, I mean, that's beautiful, right? If you want to do more classic traditional Dream Yoga, that's really up to you. Then just engage in the classic stages two through eight. Work with with transforming dream content in that regard. That's another option. And by simply being a patient, I can't say that you have to decide that. Should I simply go with these wonderfully creative appearances, experiences that appear so easily and allow the deeper levels of insight to arise on their own? I would say yes, I would. I would kind of play with that because it seems to be what's happening now. And just celebrate, enjoy that that's really wonderful. Eventually, because everything's impermanent, that may kind of taper off and transition and then you can engage other band with some dream practice, right? So there's so many different things you can do. I certainly feel the benefits of the illusory for practice in the waking state and hope to continue progressing toward the Bardo, asleep yoga. Good for you. Any suggestions for influencing my dream content? Okay, specifically, yes, meditate work with generation stage meditations.
Change the contents of your mind now through practices that allow you to work with not only establishing relationship to the contents, but changing the contents themselves. That's what generation stage practices are all about. So if you're interested in that, and that particular that if that language works for you. The generation stays yoga is also called yet on practice deity yoga. That's where you want to go. And in many ways, they I really think that those practices come to their fruition, both in nocturnal nighttime Dream Yoga, and also Bardo yoga. That's what those practices because what do they do those practices purify birth, and what that means it purifies the birth of the contents of your mind. So that's how it works toward literal ontological birth in the Bardo yoga is but it also relates to changing working with the birthing. This is a great line. Let me see if I can remember this. This is a line from Shakespeare. Midsummer Night's Dream, I think, as imagination bodies for the forms of things unknown. The poet's pen turns them into shapes and gives to airy nothing. A local habitation and a name. I mean, is that like the most beautiful thing? Right, Amanda? Correct. My adults speak oxonian or Shakespearean English but maybe that's just amazing thing is imagination bodies for its giving birth. Shakespeare is talking about generations vision meditation, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown. The poet's pen. This is not the poet's pen. That was the yoga Yogi's can the yogi's mind, turn themselves into shapes that's the voluntary rebirthing and gifts to airy, nothing emptiness, a local habitation and a name of spacetime coordinate. I mean, what am I Shakespeare was something like mahasiddha, right? This is the most amazing line. This is like unbelievable. He's talking about generations that is yoga here. So anyway, great question. If you're really into this area in generation stage yoga is is where you want to go. Shakespeare. Okay, a couple more and then we'll go we'll go live, so to speak. Okay, from Deborah. Oh, here's a clinical one. Here we go. I've heard that mandibular advancement devices are contraindicated in periodontal disease. Whoa, now there's a face plant into the earth. That's like fantastic. Here we are talking about the Dharmakaya you know, here we are. We're doing a faceplant into periodontal disease and mandibular advancement devices. That's what I love about these gigs. You know, I mean, we can talk about anything here. So yes, I I have worked with this a fair amount when I was in clinical practice. Deborah, it depends on the extent of the periodontal disease, right. If you have your if you have refractive refractory periodontal disease, then yes, you can't use the mandibular advancement devices. That's true. So everything here depends on the extent of the periodontal disease if you have incipient Class One, two, the mandibular devices are fantastic. And they're I mean, I mean, think about these things, right? If you know what they're these are big, full upper, lower MOQ. Guys, they take they cover all your teeth. So you're having a low distribution across your entire dentition and therefore only if you have really advanced like flapping in the wind, Periodontal disease. It's not going to affect it. But I'm not going to go against your danessa Especially your your periodontist, if you have that periodontal disease consult not with your GP but also with a periodontist. So you don't get these kinds of drifting things, but generally, that's pretty rare. Some of the bigger issues sometimes they're TMJ related. And again, this is really difficult. It's also inappropriate for me to make these types of medical dental recommendations in a setting. I think you get the idea. I'll be asking my personal debt is about to soon that's the most important thing to do. Very appreciate your thoughts and opinions. Yeah, again, without the data without the probing gas without X rays. I'm just shooting from the hip, advanced periodontal disease true, incipient early stage, not an issue. But again, I have your data says otherwise. I'm not going to contradict that. In a recent q&a, you mentioned you or here's a total shift. You mentioned you're aware of at least 20 I'd say at this point more like 40 Western spiritual teachers who are not a stably establishing realization, I say that with a great deal of caution, again, of course, because who am I? Who am I to look across the room and say, Oh, that spiritual teacher was I mean, there's just no way I don't know that. But I can tell sometimes by there be failure, right? I mean, again, I won't name names, but le G some of the things they do, and there's no way there's no way you can be read stably realized and do these sorts of things. So I think it's fairly easy to infer they're not stably realized. Without naming names I definitely won't do that. Could you be so kind as to comment yes or no as to whether I include our free John ammonia again, I'm really hesitate hesitant to do any of this sort of thing. I really refrain against because who am I? People look at me and will cast their dispersion. So what's the Christian thing you know, he lives on the glass houses shouldn't throw stones or something. I'm not gonna throw stones at anybody. Duffy, John Oliver Nanda, I mean like, this guy was a massive influence on my life. 3540 years ago, I read everything and his his output is enormous, right? The nio listening the dawn horse testament easy death. I mean, the guy I was prolific he was a huge influence on my good friend Ken Wilber. I think in his early years, everything he said made complete utter sense to me. I was deeply impacted by his work. Later stuff, you know, just didn't speak to me so much. But does that mean whatever it not means that maybe I wasn't relating him that much. So I'm very cautious. To say anything about anybody along these lines. But the early stuff, I read every one of his books, he had a really big influence on me. I think I'll leave it at that. Okay, last one, and then we'll go live. Ooh, big one. You know, let me open this up, cuz this is a big one, long one. Then I'll come back to this. If we have a little pause because this this one, this one question alone will take 20 minutes. So anyway, sorry. Fire away, Elaine, and then I'll look in the chat column as well.
Hi, Andrew. Hey, well, first I signed up for your June retreat in Colorado.
What would be your oil please? is so beautiful. You will not be disappointed. Oh,
I'm so excited. It will be my first retreat ever. So well. Cool.
You're gonna love it. Yeah,
I'm excited. I wanted to chat with you a little bit about this a dreamlike thing. I had a big slap of impermanence a couple of weeks ago when my otherwise seemingly healthy brother collapsed. And transitions less than 24 hours later. Oh my god. Wow. Yeah, having a shock. And so while we're going through this even today, but especially at the hospital, you know, we're there and we're all saying the same so unreal. It's like a dream. And of course, I had to think of you and the practice of going around saying, you know, this is a dream. But in this case, instead, you know, I had to tell myself, well, this isn't a dream. So I'm just wondering what you have to say about that. In some ways. You know, in a situation like that with the practice. And then I had one other practical question for you.
Okay, so Well, first of all, I'm so sorry. I really, so I mean, those are like, Oh my gosh, I mean, it's like a Yeah, what can I say?
Yeah, it's it's the first time I've lost anybody like that. And it was really like you talk about a lesson and impermanence. Wow.
Yeah. And again, you know, it's difficult because I think you'll understand where I'm coming from, sometimes. With experiences of such emotional impact, that it can seem almost patronizing and glib, to start to insert, even retrofit spiritual teachings and instruction because it can seem like just dismissive of the the just the harsh nature was happening. And so
I don't think that or I wouldn't have asked, okay, well,
thank you. I was just gonna say with that in mind, I mean, these are among the most powerful and I think that's where you're at now, if we relate to them properly. These are among the most impactful potentially transformative teaching experiences will ever experience. Right. And because they're unfortunately, they're just so real, right? And so what did the Buddha allegedly say? Of all the footprints, the footprint of the elephant is the deepest and most supreme of all contemplations, the contemplations on impermanence and death are the deepest and most supreme. Down one, right use death as an advisor. There's just so many exhortations throughout all the wisdom traditions, to basically look at reality in the face, realize the truth of impermanence and use that to basically restructure one's life. Here's another really beautiful one from Milarepa right. So this is a great one. From his one of his songs in horror of death. I took to the mountains contemplating again and again, on the uncertainty in the hour of death, I captured the fortress of the deathless on in the nature of mind. Thus all fear is over and done with this amazing statement. And so without being patronizing and glib and spin doctoring it. If we relate to these things properly, they're a cold splash of reality and to our face. They can restructure our priorities and help us look at things in a much more authentic way and therefore to live more authentically. So with that said, what I find here that's very interesting is that when reality is actually pointed out, this is so interesting. There's actually a particular ceremony and wisdom traditions in Tibetan Buddhism was called pointing out transmission, connecting someone to Shakti pot in the Hindu schools, where where are the shaker Huang Empowerments, where, through a number of different manners, rituals or methodologies, the nature of mind, reality is actually pointed out. And it's a seminal experience in any practitioners life because for the first time in an individual's life, they're literally pointed out the nature of their own mind. And it's it's when it's actually registered. It's can be a life before and after experience. You never Yeah, it will the same way again. And so the reason I mentioned this is the fact that you use the terms that the experience felt very dreamlike kind of groundless. That is because reality as was pointed out, in sometimes one way, or the many decades that I've experienced this myself and with others, people often come out of these very powerful transformative, potentially transformative pointing out and they'll often ask they will spread whispery toilet to each other say, Did you get it? I don't know. Did you get it? Maybe that I get it? Well, one one way to know that you got it is the world appears illusory the world appears like a dream. And so the reason this is helpful is when you have these pointing out transmissions happens spontaneously. They don't have to happen ritualistically they're actually happening all the time. And so the fact that you have this kind of groundless experience around something that's so real, that's a pointing out transmission, you actually had a spontaneous experience it was called perfectly pure illusory. form, where you actually because of the intensity of the experience, you were your reality was pointed out and one way that's registered is like this man, this is like a groundless dream. And so, again, if we relate to that properly, we realize again, without being patronizing, that these things can be powerful blessings and you've heard this people get cancer they have whatever some major upheaval, some Bardo, these are all Bardo experiences. If you relate to those things properly, they can shape shift your entire life. Yeah, pause there for a second to see if that's of any benefit before you ask your second question.
Oh, it is it's um and you know, talk about I mean, I thought a lot about your teachings and the groundlessness. I mean, wow. You know, really, you really feel like the ground is pulled out from you.
You're in freefall. I mean, yeah. It only it only becomes disquieting experience is reference to Central Headquarters. If you actually just hang out in that open space without reference. It's actually exhilarating. You become what's called the dakini of sky dancer. But usually what happens is because ego is not familiar with that much space, it contracts and ultimate self defense. That contraction is what creates a fundamentally liberating open experience into panic and fear. And so I mean, you know, famously, Trump or mache said, right, the bad news is you're falling through space without a parachute. The good news is, there is no ground. So on one level if you learn how to fly, that's what doctors in bikinis do. You know, it takes a little bit of practice, it's not easy because we're also situated to ground and that's what ego is, ego is the archetype of ground. So I can simply say that honor treasure that treasure the memory of course, and in a very personal a human way. That then you know, whenever reality is pointed out like that, and we use these teachable moments, they can be lifesavers, it could be your brother's last gift to you. A gift of reality that you can then use to realign your life. What's important what am I doing what really matters?
That's good. That's, that's all. Very helpful. Thank you. The other question was, while we were going through this and after he was actually debated, and none of us in the family are religious, and it was so awkward. I just know that we missed a golden opportunity I felt to like, help him and because we just sort of stood around waiting for him to take his last breath. And I guess I'm wondering, is there a, you know, a phrase I mean, when I spoke with him one on one, I said things that I thought would be helpful, but as far as like if this happens again, and there's a group, I mean, is there a phrase or mantra, a little chance, something that, you know, could be of assistance to the one transitioning,
for sure, absolutely. So, for the purposes of time, I might recommend and sorry for the shameless self promotion but my book preparing to die has sections on what to do before, during and after death for yourself and others. Okay, spiritual and practical perspective. And so, in that book, I talk about all the many things you can do for yourself and for others when they're making that transition. And how long ago did he transition?
January, January 10.
So not that long ago, so he's still reporting that day period. So there's still a lot you could do for him.
Okay, you can do actually, I actually just got your book. So you're looking there
and the other I mean, there's so many wonderful things. You know, it's just not in my book. To go to nips beautiful book peaceful death, joyful rebirth has a ton in there. I mean, that's a little bit more hardcore Tibetan Buddhist. But yeah, there's you can recite mantras for them. You can recite aspiration, prayer prayers for them, you can dedicate merit to them. There is a on that you can do and even even after, you know, the longer they go, it's a little bit harder to make an immediate reach. But that doesn't make even years after the fact your work ineffectual makes it a little bit less effective. Just because time and space relatively does kind of make these a little bit more difficult to to actually implement. But there's a lot you could do. I don't know what your practitioner practitioner history is. If you're, if you recite mantras, you can virtually recite any mantra like Oh, Mani Padme home, the mantra of compassion. You can do that now is like whenever you think of him, recite that mantra, and then at the end of every day, dedicate your merit to him. There's just so much because remember, you know, the world is not made of matter, right? Mind heart, spirit and so we can really help people on one level. According to Bardo teachings, there's a provisional statute of limitations when the mind becomes cast reified into a new form. But on one level, that statute of limitations doesn't apply it at more foundational absolute levels. So there's there's a great deal that one can do in references can be of some benefit to you.
All right. Thank you. Yeah, I will. I will look at your book today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you very much, Andrea,
I appreciate your comments. really best to you. Thank you. Hey, David. Unmute yourself my friend and far away
we still can't hear you. You're still muted. David, you're still muted. You have to unmute yourself. You're you're still muted. You stay but I can't hear you my friend. You're still muted. You can write up I'll put you at the top of the list if you want to write your question in but I can't hear you. In my vise screen, you have a big red X over the mic which means you're not you're muted. You're muted.
David while you're figuring that out, continue to play with it. I'm gonna go to Arlene. You can always write it in my friend. I'll put you at the top of the list. We'll come back to you. Okay, happy to entertain you but I can't hear you. Okay, thanks for that. Hi, Arlene.
Alisa, are you there? You're not You're not blocking out in some way. Are you doing Alyssa Are you there? Because I can't hear Arlene either. One of us has something to do with my connection
about Amanda, I just want to see if I can get anybody at this point. Amanda, can you can I tell you real quick. I mean, this hotel room. I mean, can you hear me? Yeah, who is this Amanda? No, this is Alyssa. Sorry.
I don't know. Let me unmute and it wouldn't give me them. The option to unmute anybody. So let me try again. David. should work now. I don't know what happened there.
That's okay. Pick up. Okay. Oh, there we go. Hi, David. Now I'm here. Yeah, I've sort of you're not really there. But yes, you're sort of there
well, that can lead to a big conversation just that some vulgar kya Okay, well, anyway, so my word like to go a little bit further up my questions, okay. Has to do with the fact that there are so many cultures and so many people that have so many different views about reality, and that the and a lot of people will say well, that's my truth and that's what it makes it real. Sure. And, and they also say that all these traditions have their own reality. And for them, it is it is it is true, it's real as anything else. And wisdom traditions would be maybe a special category because he spent a lot of time on this
thorough special category. That's another question, but yes, maybe?
Well, exactly. I think we're on the right track here. So the question is kind of how to work with this. I'm connected a lot right now to someone who is more of this generic approach and wants to have their own personal perspective rather than adopting something else? Sure. And so they're waiting for angels and beings from Vega and all sorts of things to come along. The same
from from Vegas.
Yeah, you know, it was press he's going to parachute in with a mandola parachute Exactly. Been around it's gonna it's gonna flash from the Mandalay into the wheel of life, you know, you make it landing separately or not, but what Bumi is here on when it gets to land, okay. It's some of this stuff seems almost at random, though. And so it's a question of relating to it. What, what can one learn without being dismissive of this, so especially being submissive to the point that one no longer has an open enough mind to recognize these differences because, you know, we all reify things and we might think we understand what the Bartok title says, but that's just our interpretation to have experienced it in some ways. So the question is like, how to go about relating with with all this multitude of ideas about working with ancestors and so many different things that can be really helpful, but what do they have in the way of absolute truth?
Yeah, they're really great questions, my friends. So there's a couple of things that come to mind. This is a this is a very rich arena. This is one reason I'm such a huge fan of integral theory and integral approaches. In fact, not this week or the week after I'm interviewing John Gray, who is an integral as I know him, he wrote this really quite okay book called integral recovery. And that book not only is an interesting in terms of recovery, substance abuse recovery, but it's also really nice book, because it is a very succinct summation of the integral approach. And so you'll see where this comes into play and how this can really help. What makes this whole thing so rich, so elegant and also so bloody messy and frustrating, is because we have all these different levels, lines, structures, states of consciousness that are actually taking place and so let me just say a couple things along these, for instance, if you just take structures of consciousness itself, and its relationship to states of consciousness, so now you have two fundamental vectors, they're really they're absolutely mandatory for understanding this. And so by this, what I mean is, if you take just very briefly because it's a really rich topic, you take something like spiral dynamics, the work of Clare graves and Carl Beck and others, were based on the work of literally hundreds of very sophisticated cross cultural psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, structuralist, you cannot argue the data. There is a hierarchy and just because there's a hierarchy doesn't mean it's a dominator hierarchy. They're not hierarchies in and of themselves are not fundamentally problematic. Sidebar, the differences between a nested I mean, actualization versus the dominator hierarchy. So that's one issue. But the reason this becomes so bloody important is because you can have you can have an authentic experience of the Dharmakaya whatever, whatever you want to call the absolute and then depending on your structural level of development, you you will then let's go from you know, there's at least 10 degrees and then there are colors, you know, beige, red, orange, green, blue, turquoise, teal, ultraviolet, the colors are nice because they don't have all the implications of the names archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, that that people bring all their projections on to and so basically what this means is, let's just take the Jesus principle, you can have a green Jesus, you can have a blue Jesus, these are all developmental structures. So you have a particular experience of something and because of your indoctrination, or whatever you're inculturation again, 95% think about this 95% of what you do. This is the science man this is not like made up is dictated by these unconscious processes. And that includes all these unconscious structures and so people don't even know when they're fighting and killing for their red version of Jesus, that that's just their interpretation of a particular experience downloaded through this lens, which is an archetypal blind spot. So this is an amazing set of teachings where were all these different people and you see this even within Islam she is Sunni, I mean even within the same tradition they're frickin killing each other, because they have slightly different variations of the same fundamental phenomenal experience. So So with that said, the way to really bring some humility openness tolerance to this is study the fundamental Aqua structure. Learn about states of consciousness, learn about structures of consciousness, then learns about lines of development. All the different like, Gardner's work all the different lines, spiritual, musical lines of cognitive life, you have at least 11 different lines. of evolution along all these stages. And they run along somewhat parallel tracks, they're not all like dovetailing into each other and then on top, but then you've got the types. Then you've got things like Enneagram structures and all these all these different typologies involved. So you start to bring in all these factors that may seem like Oh, my God, this is complex. Well, it's complex, because the human condition is complex, and therefore people are coming at it from all these different lenses. And so I think this stuff is really important and helpful, because it brings about a tremendous sense of humility and openness and tolerance and understanding. So that's number one. Then secondly, depending on how deep this person wants to go, then you have to go into the whole notion of truth, relativism, and the whole postmodern thing. You know, what, is there such a thing as absolute truth? So you're talking about a set of questions, David that are really big and therefore again, I would, to whatever extent this person has receptivity, I would direct him to some integral approaches to looking at reality. Because it's a real eye opener and you start to realize you open your eyes to these you open your mind to these you go oh my gosh, I had no idea I was so blind to these vectors within myself, let alone my understanding of others based on these principles. So I'll pause there to see if there's a hitting your sweet spot, but this is a big one.
I might have to learn it well enough that I can slip things in subtly.
Exactly. You know, here's the thing with that as well. This is another reason why this stuff has helped me to know because skillful means is not meeting people where you're at skillful means is meeting people where they're at. So if you come in there with your thing, that's not going to help. The best thing you can do is really listen to them, respond to where they're at, and then maybe slowly work their way in. I mean, listen to overnight, okay, stop. I can't remember where I read it. He had a very interesting riff on this, in terms of how he is an idealist, works with heavy duty materialists to even approach a truth based on their completely redefined solidified viewpoints, right. So this is the definition of real skillful means. Epi, what it means but a lot of it means shutting up listening, opening, connecting to them where they're at. And then based on that, you can maybe find some ways to slide in and insert some teaching. So it's a really massively big complex issue, but that's what comes to mind.
Is really big also in just in terms of day to day life, like, one has an idea of our world is something to just use, as opposed to something that's this conscious living.
That's pure that's purely the vessel orange level. So if you go to spiral dynamics, that's everything first here. And down where the world just becomes a natural resource and only until you hear Do you start to relate to the world so a developmental structures can really help you along that right people just have vastly different ways of looking at the world. Culture Wars are born from this physical wars are born from this. Climate wars and everything is based on our inability to have these kinds of understandings. So something like that, my friend.
Well, I think that's that's a good start. But I also find him in my own self that I can have an experience in which everything makes sense while you're within the experience. And then later on, you start thinking oh, so that the context of that makes sense within it. What is it makes sense outside of it?
That's right. And that's that's post modernism. You know, Foucault, Derrida, the whole post structuralist things, but people there's some pretty sharp people that have thought about this for a really long time, and you can learn a lot about these sorts of things. So I point you in those directions.
That's the names you mentioned again and again. Are your some of your core teachers, aren't they? Well, they
help you know, I mean, they just make there's a lot of explanatory power to these maps right, you know, I mean, they're basically we're in prison. And these maps are really powerful if you want to make a prison break. So that's why they're worth studying. They really help us understand all these dark forces that are causing blindness within ourselves and others and so this person who wants to strike out on their own way, I mean, that's fine. Sure. Who are we to contest that but what you know, again, why reinvent the wheel, right? I mean, there's, you can do that, but you're cutting through a lot of underbrush, that's already been hacked through by other evolutionary pioneers. So anyway, I'll let it go at that because it's just such a big topic.
That's why I crushed Tibetan Buddhist approach more than others. Because
it's just one I would trust it but I wouldn't again, this is just me. I wouldn't put all your eggs in that basket. This is just me totally me. incredible skill set incredible skillful means but but they have their own blind spots. Everybody has their blind spots. That's why That's why you see this stuff that happens. So anyway, I don't know I let it go over there. Okay, but thanks. Thanks so much. Okay. Hi, Charlie.
Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can. Hi. Okay. Hi, Andrew. So very good to meet you. I'll be at virtually thank you so much for all your rich, wonderful teachings. So you read my question earlier, and I just wanted to elaborate because you understand that we were unclear by what I meant meant when I refer to the two wings of bodhichitta is simply meant compassion and emptiness. And so I wonder if you can offer guidance on how to integrate Totland practice with the recognition that nothing including beings do not exist as they appear?
Yeah, exactly. So again, just to phrase it and that's my thought. So the the wisdom part is the emptiness part, you know, the Compassionate part is the luminous part. So that's why again, why you have those four phases of tonglen practice right? So the first phase short brief is to remind you of the illusory nature, whatever arises that you're going to take whatever happens seriously, but you're not going to take it that literally, because otherwise what happens is when you step into stages, steps 234 You can go non lucid to those and then that results in burnout that results in all kinds of unskillful ways to relating with the phenomenon arising. So in really I'm not sure what what more I can say about that, you know, I think we the reconciliate we can lose ourselves is very interesting. If we don't relate to compassion properly, it can transform to all these total gradations of idiot compassion. And so there's therefore that's why common lens starts with the absolute bodhichitta. And so you're always reminded that for instance, when you're doing Tong land at very practical level, you're not doing it the universe is doing it. So the step one is saying that when I'm reading this stuff, you know, I'm not in the universe is breathing it in. When I'm breathing it out to benefit others. I'm not breathing it out, the universe is breathing it out. So the first step basically jogs our memory puts it in perspective and says, Hey, wait a second. I know absolute framework, the emptiness thing has to be brought into play because otherwise that compassionate thing can become unskillful. And so something like that early, does that help a little bit?
So I think so. So for example, when you practice total and you begin with the absolute view,
if you're doing it right, that's phase one, you just flash openness. Yep.
And then I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the four phases if you could just review them. So phase one is
phase one is you've you fake it because you don't know this. Basically, you open band through the hands of the cosmos as a way to decentralize. It's a way to work with wisdom, emptiness. And then the second phase is you start more abstractly like the air conditioner thing you breathe in the dark you breathe out the light, phase two is become very specific situation person, animal, whatever. We that in, then send out light. fourth phase is now you extend that not only to all beings on this planet, but throughout the entire universe. So everyone is what increased. Decentralization which itself reinstates the emptiness thing, each one becomes more open, bigger and more expansive. But you have to have you have to have all four otherwise it's not Pong land and people often skip over the first phase, rush to the kind of compassionate end and then and then that can become a bit problematic. So the first phase even though it's brief, provides the groundless ground for the remaining three it's actually quite important. Super important. Okay. Yes. Pema children. I mean, she's the queen on this right. She loves she talks so much about this, I think and start where you are somewhere. I mean, obviously, he writes about this all over the place, so check out okay.
Thank you so much.
Welcome. Hey, Amanda. Hi, I, how did you like how did you like my rendering of Shakespeare was that okay,
I know. I'm gonna check it out. I didn't where it came from.
It inspires me to reread it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm following on from your response to David. I'm going to ask something about integrative you know, process and your experience with it. Your physical Tifft. Bruce Bruce? Stuff, of course, yeah. Right. Because I really think it's the way to do the combination of the developmental stage and then with the fruition on stage because what I'm coming up against a lot is that people okay, they can go into open awareness and it's not the other, but they're very unkeyed on looking at their fears, which come from the years nought to five, and they're very resistant, you know, and even in myself, I can see when I've got some stuff triggered, but I can kind of sit with it. But it's really important This isn't it. This this first five years. I mean, what's your experience on this? All good. I've been to school.
I mean, it's like it's like everything right? So, again, from age basically paraphrasing, yep, from age zero to age seven, were mostly on delta theta, wavelength state is is the dimension of wavelength activity that hypnotists put you in to bring about an insert, hypnotic inductions and so the implications are kind of staggering. Basically, from age zero to age seven, we're hypnotized. We're basically installed with all these programs from our families of origin and whatnot. But then these basically the entirety of our lives become printouts from those installations, just rehashing of those same programs. And that's why every therapist, every deep diver will basically take you back to childhood and there's very there's real reason for that because that's where all this crappy hardware was installed. So it's a big deal. And this is where one of the major shortcomings of the classic spiritual traditions is there. They don't have they don't work in this world. They don't know and no criticism, but they don't have the data collection methods or instrumentations. To collect this kind of information, and so therefore, it's massive, you know, so they'll, they'll, they'll tell you, okay, just meditate, Do this, do this and this. Fine. Yes. And then absolutely level, great. But sometimes you need just a different spectrum of tools to get in and unearth some of these, this kind of psychological stuff. And this is where I think there's massive blind spots in the spiritual traditions. They just have this kind of, dare we say arrogance, that it's an absolute cystic approach that our teachings can handle everything. Well of course, the minute you bring emptiness in theoretically emptiness can't handle everything. But practically, it just doesn't seem to work that way. And so that again, is why I like to get approaches because they bring in all these different skillful means to say, Whoa, I never really looked at some of this really deep developmental stuff. So it just you can just save you so much time and heartache if you just open your aperture taking these other methods use them to augment your own development because otherwise if you put all your eggs in any basket, those baskets gonna break, in my opinion.
Yeah, but even with a lot of work, I mean, Bruce says that in his 40 year marriage every day he experiences disturbance. I love that disturbance. That's such a nice way to put it with his wife sitting in front of him. I mean, you know, it's true that in spite of all the work, we still got these deep wounds somewhere.
Oh, yeah, we're all we all have these amazing traumas. I mean, look at the best selling book in New York Times bestseller for last five years is your Body Keeps the Score, right? Yeah, got all this? Yeah, you got you got all this stuff jammed in there. And so that's why I take a lot of courage. I take a lot of patience, humor, perseverance, to bring all this stuff into light of your awareness and most people don't don't have no interest in doing that. Because it's
when you're in a relationship, then you know that sometimes the other person can't can't do it can't do the work and road less traveled, isn't it? This is
they'd rather be asleep. They'd rather be non lucid, and that's definitely the road less traveled because people most people would just prefer to be asleep. It's an awfully it's no day at the beach, right?
So with you, you use Bruce Tift when you get something come up that like a blockage and then he can quickly you know, put his finger on it and clear it and then you can move on. Well, no,
I mean, Bruce is brilliant, but he's not for everybody. He's a dear friend of mine. I think his book is brilliant. But he's very visual family. And this is no criticism. That's a strange, he's very cutting very insightful. And sometimes that's too direct for people. But yeah, I think the basic premise of his book already free is spot on. And here's why I endorsed it so powerfully. It's great read.
Do you think really, even though someone like you who's done so much all this work, do you think you do function 95% from your subconscious because they
say, oh, man, I don't know. You know, me. I'm still a piece of crap, right? I'm still, I can't say maybe a little bit lighter, maybe a little bit less. I don't really know. But I think that's part of the integration integration. individuation process is bringing all this stuff into light of consciousness and frees you up. So what have I gone from 95 to 94%? I don't Yeah, yeah.
By just be able to take a breath or whatever. Yeah, the last thing that Sam Harris and freewill Do you think we have free wills now?
Depends on who to talk to. I used to subscribe to Sam's approach. I don't anymore because I think it's limited. I think it has a particular bandwidth of applicability. You know, on one level as long as there is a self sense there's no free will. It was very self sense is created by unconscious constructs and the unconscious I mean like when you're talking about through freewill whose will is free yours the ego there is no you right. So when you talk about ego relatively Yes, you have the ability veto power you have free won't. On an absolute level. I mean, my friend Chris Wallace talks about this wonderfully. He says on a relative level, you have no free will. And on the absolute level you bid quote, unquote U 's are nothing but free will. So on a relative list a relative level of No, there's no free will. We're basically and even that again this is such a big topic, but we're just buffeted around by these massive contents of the unconscious mind. I mean, you think you're you're making decisions and your life. No way your habits are deciding for you. You're those installation narrative loops from zero to seven are deciding for you. This is what decides the content of your dreams. This is what decides your choices in the Bardo. Your unconscious processes decide 95% of what you do, but you clear that up you liberate that stuff, then you you become actually the expression of freewill that is not yours anymore. See? So on that level, the freewill is there is the will of the cosmos itself is not your
but this is coming more towards wisdom. Is it more toward
wisdom? Absolutely. Hopefully, this is this topic has been debated contested by philosophers, scientists, scholars for hundreds, if not 1000s of years and I originally have subscribed to Sam's view. But the closer I looked at it, it was a little too materialistic for me, and I think there's some real holes in it. I mean, the guy's brilliant. But that book. I don't know. I think it's a little bit more refined than what he's referencing.
Okay, thank you. Thanks.
All right, maybe yeah, two more and then maybe we'll we'll be close to wrapping it up for today. Hey, permed out sharp Bucha fire away buddy.
Yes, sir. Quick comment and then a question. Last time I asked about when you when you said of the of the scanners we identify with form exclusively.
More more than more than the other ones and I did some analytic meditation on with all five standards and I came to the same conclusion that you have form is definitely one that I'm most fixated on. Probably the second would, would be thoughts. You know, the force is gone. The the one that I'm probably at least can separate myself from as the standoff sensation. You know, I can say that yeah, that's, that's not me. That's a sensation. But anyhow, so that's my comment. My question is, relates to, you know, the high priests of scientism, who had this fetish about materialism, and now they're trying to say that okay, well, there must be, you know, they're trying to flirt with this pan psychist idea of that there's some proto consciousness in subatomic particles and some sort of fragmentary sense and all that and just completely ridiculous. But of course, we, you've said that everything is light, or frozen light and all that. So then, how do we separate that idea from from this pan psychist. donors?
Well, they're pretty big differences. So again, when you're talking about pan psychism, first of all depends on what kind you know, most people when they talk about it, they're talking about what's called constitute a pan psychism. But then, when you run into that, then you have what's called the combination problem, right? How do you if you have these separate entities of proto consciousness as part of awareness, consciousness units, conscious agents, you know, the work of there's some really brilliant people working on this. Don Hoffman, by the way, will be bringing your mind for an interview this summer. Todd Hoffman Federico hygene his consciousness units. So constitute a pan psychism is the one that's usually referred to and then you write into this massive combination problem. So that doesn't really hold water. When you're working with with the world being made of likes, again, it's not physical life, the light of the mind and then you have what's called the D combination problem, which is okay if you have this kind of again quote unquote, unitary minor stick and again, those are in quotes. Light world made of light mind then how do you how do you have the D combination problem? How do you get separate agencies entities out of that? Well, this is Barnardos, fantastic work then you have the whole idea of dissociative alters dissociation is what creates the D combination, the illusion of the combination. So let me just has so much more it makes so much more sense to me than any version of Pan psychism I mean, Pan psychism overtly or covertly still assumes materialism and basically the idealists say and yet so you know, and I recommend if you're really into this, that massive trilogy irreducible mind beyond physicalism and consciousness I'm bound by 2000 pages. That goes through this in a in amazing sometimes almost excruciating detail. But it's worth a slog, because then you start to realize the the subtlety, the nuance, and how many people still have their particular pet theories that are close to analysis, kind of just fall apart. So nothing like that. But I mean, that's a big one. I mean, some of the really, really big but thank you. Yeah. Welcome. Nice to see you. Yes, sir. Okay, hey, Mary, Jerry, and then maybe we'll we'll call it after Jerry and then I'll address some of the ones in the chat column. And we'll be done for today. But go ahead and marry
me really. First I'd like to thank you for having it's just so nice to be part of a community. I have a question about in person meditations three days a week long or longer. What do you look for when you're looking for a what what would you think we should look for when we're looking for an in person? Retreat? And just general not not necessarily Dream Yoga? And then do you have any recommendations for Continental US for this kind of?
Absolutely. Where do you live?
Well, I live in Nevada. I'm asking for myself and also some friends who live on the east coast. And if anybody in the chat wants to share their personal experiences, that'd be appreciated.
Oh, yeah. There's so many there are really awesome. You know. In the East Coast, you've got the very Institute Jack.
Goldstein, what's his first name? Joseph Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg amazing. I'm just amazing. You've got wonder Well, I think in Massachusetts, you know, Allama Willa, and Liz Munson. I know them both amazing. Concert or retreat. Opportunities. Also men live in upstate New York. Amazing. Me and LA. Yeah, Bob Thurman, staying over the Bob screens and the people that work up they're all fantastic. So those are really really rich places. On the west coast, you know you got Spirit Rock in the Bay Area. Those are the ones that are that that are standard like slam dunk safe for me. There's so many others and so I'm a little bit hesitant like, like omission. I don't want to leave out others but those are the ones I'm personally connected to some extent with the know about and can say I mean really good stuff.
Okay, really what I wanted yeah, thanks so much. I appreciate you're welcome
so much. Okay, far away Jerry. Yeah, inside Garrison Institute, again, Garrison Institute is it's a place where they just bring in all these different types of people. It's great, but I can't speak with any authority about the different entities that they bring in the berry Institute inside there. They're the ones that really classically have wonderful, wonderful people there. Okay, Jerry far away, but All right, just a quick comment. You know, like, I love these sessions. And I don't know if other people can see it, but on my computer screen when you come on, that's like this real white that comes in from above your head and goes all the way down to your heart. So I'm just seeing ya, that's your pure perception. You know, I have this capacity like yeah, I won't go there. But yeah, whatever. Thank you, Jerry. And I appreciate that. Nice kind words. Thank you, my friend. Always nice to see you. So let me see there's a couple of things in the chat column and close it for today. Question on understanding ego generically speaking, could you compare my secular American basically green or higher developmental? Yeah, well, would you say to say a Tibetan or Buddhist small ego? Oh, geez, again, I can't say ego is ego right? Doesn't matter if it's Tibetan or whatever egos ego egos exclusive identification with form and then basically ego becomes slowly de reified as it goes up the spiral dynamics thing, even a green you have ego it's only a second tier, teal and above that you start to transition. Beyond ego itself. It's just less reified. So anything first here from beige, all the way up to green, there's still ego. And again, there's nothing wrong with ego. Ego is just a particular form of development. It's nothing wrong with it. Egos just get problematic when it becomes dominating and usurping other approaches. So it doesn't matter if it's Tibetan. No matter who you are, if you still have an ego, you're still first here. And that's still somewhat arrested for the development. So I'm not sure where else to go with that, John, but you know, again, we work with Clare graves, or spiral dynamics thing structuralism probably the best summary book on this in my opinion is Ken Wilber is integral spirituality. I think it's a masterpiece.
Okay, here we go.
In my humble experience plant medicine, right psychedelics break a lot of head centers spiritual methodology intelligence. I think that's true. Thank you. Your understanding is quite fast. I try. Channeling transmissions is also an under interesting language of communication, which is not self directed. Yeah, I guess I would agree with that. Yes, I think that's true. I agree. Yeah, Foucault, well, if you can handle him and Derrida not easy, the post structuralist they're not that simple
Yeah, so some of these are just comments which are nice. And yeah, here's so here's the question that I didn't get to. Oh, here's from Steph if death can be somewhat described as relaxing opening or seemingly individual Whirlpool into the undifferentiated unqualified hole. How is it the traces of karmic habits that are the basis of new life continue to hold together in this way that yeah, that's where it's a limitation of analogy. Exactly. If analogy is never the real thing. Otherwise, it wouldn't be an analogy, it would be the real thing. So in order to understand this stuff, the yogacharya teachings on the eight consciousnesses is where you want to go. That's the best most articulate map for what is it that continues to stream metaphor? doesn't really convey that that's why you need more than one analogy want more than one metaphor? So it's the limitation of that. Okay. Do I have any experience with plant psychedelics and lucid dreaming? Yeah, so let me share this story. This is actually one of the really cooler dreams I've had last couple of years. So this behind blew me away. So I was in a lucid dream. And in the lucid dream, my avatar, my dream persona in the dream took a psychedelic I don't I don't remember what it was. I was because I don't know psilocybin. But my dream avatar, I was in the dream and I said, Gee, I wonder what happened if I took a psychedelic so I conjured up a psychedelic in the dream I took it as a lucid dream avatar and guess what I started tripping. I mean, like Hello, talk about double placebo effect. So here I am. Generating my avatar, that's a mind construct, construct. I generate the psychedelic, whatever it was, I consume it and I start tripping in my dream. Like, how wild is that? Right? That was that was a really cool dream. Okay, yeah. Can I get boost if we had an agreement to come on and then he moved to California in San Luis Obispo, and we kind of lost touch a little bit. He said he was going to do it, but I haven't been able to tag him down. Do you really think we function from 95% of our unconscious? Absolutely, if not, more, I think more like 98 and the theory of the first snap five years Amanda seven, setting up for future behavior. You betcha. Yeah. Okay. So, unfortunately, I didn't get to Tim's question his great question. I'm sorry, my friend. I think it was temp. Just for the purposes of time. Tim had a really rich question about my three year retreat. And I always get a little nervous when I talk too much about me my stuff, but we're still going to dovetail it into It's just that when these questions get so big, so long, they're great. I think you understand the challenge that I'm working with, you know, I kind of want to get through some of these other ones, so I apologize for that. But it's still on the list. And maybe if Alyssa is really nice, she can remind me next week, and I can bump it up a little bit. So I hope you understand and we can be patient with me to some of these questions. They're really great, but they're they're big, they're long. And in order to maybe let other people slide in with their q&a. I'd have to let some of these at least slides so I apologize for that. But in the meantime, thank you everybody for joining us. I didn't get the name of the brother of I think it was names brother who passed but we can dedicate the merit. Remember, if you believe in this sort of thing, everything we do here is not just for us. We dedicate all America to the benefit of all sentient beings. If you want to unmute yourself and turn your camera on. We can do this sweet, geeky little love fest thing. Otherwise, I'm back around next week when I get back in town. We'll continue with our usual escapade of adventures and I appreciate everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Great conversation. Bye bye. Yeah, very much. Thank you. Thanks. So generous. Thank you. See you in the dreamscape.