Speaker A
Welcome to Journals of Self-Discovery. Hello, and welcome to Journals of Spiritual Discovery. My guest this month is Eswar Segobin.
Eswar Segobind shares his rapid spiritual awakening journey, meditation insights, and overcoming addiction in this deep interview.
Key Takeaways
- Spiritual awakening can arise unexpectedly through life challenges and openness to meditation.
- The sense of self is often a collection of conditioned roles and thoughts rather than an absolute identity.
- Direct experience and present-moment awareness are crucial to realizing true nature beyond concepts.
- Integrating diverse spiritual teachings can aid the path but personal experience remains paramount.
- Healing from addiction and ego dissolution can be deeply intertwined with spiritual discovery.
What the video covers
- Eswar Segobind began his spiritual search in early 2017 during drug and alcohol treatment.
- Meditation introduced him to silence and openness, catalyzing his awakening.
- He explored multiple identities and personalities shaped by societal roles and realized they were just thoughts.
- Self-inquiry inspired by Ramana Maharshi led him to question the nature of self beyond concepts.
- A powerful meditation experience triggered a profound awakening marked by bodily sensations and timeless presence.
- He integrated teachings from Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, and Buddhist perspectives while navigating cultural and linguistic challenges.
- Ayahuasca helped him confront deep-seated issues but also caused confusion.
- The 12-step program and meditation helped dissolve ego and false identities.
- He emphasizes the importance of present-moment awareness and the futility of searching for self externally.
- His awakening transformed his relationships and daily experience, fostering a natural state of being.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Guest Overview
- 04:34Introduction to Meditation in Treatment
- 07:21Powerful Meditation Experience and Awakening
- 10:43Ayahuasca and Clearing Deep-Seated Issues
- 14:16Realization of Self as Thought and Concept
- 18:26Understanding Reality and Identity
- 25:20Insights on Suffering and Perception
- 28:24Present Moment Awareness and Spiritual Integration
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
If I gave out awards, he would definitely get one for fastest path to awakening. I think that you'll find his story is remarkable both for his insight into what's holding people back and his candor about his own path.
Speaker A
But before we get started, I do want to mention the amazing and possibly once-in-a-lifetime lineup of speakers at the upcoming TAT Foundation meeting.
Speaker A
That meeting is going to be April 5th through the 7th. And we have the three Pauls on that list. We've got Paul Hedderman coming in from the West Coast, Paul Rezendes, and Paul Constant.
Speaker A
We also have Norio Kushi, who is featured in the book Awake at the Wheel, and we're even going to have a rare appearance by Bart Marshall.
Speaker A
I think this event might possibly sell out. So to register, you want to go to tatfoundation.org, click the About button, and then Current Events. Again, that's tatfoundation.org, click the About button and Current Events.
Speaker A
Well, thanks for listening, and let's get started with the interview. Well, to get started, I just wanted to thank you, Eswar, for agreeing to this interview. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker A
No problem. Whatever helps. Great. So, I really don't know you at all. I watched a couple of YouTube clips that are up, and your name was mentioned to me actually third hand, I guess you would say. A
Speaker A
friend of a friend mentioned you to me, but I found your contact info online and just shot an email to you, and you responded right away, which was awesome to see.
Speaker A
So, what I would like to do is just kind of get a sense of a bit of your history or your story, let's say, because usually audiences are interested in that sort of thing.
Speaker A
I'm curious if, looking back on your life, you see a point where you would say that your spiritual search began.
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All of this came about from, I guess, around 2017. Sorry, the beginning of 2017 I had went into treatment for drugs and alcohol.
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I went into a treatment facility for drinking, and it's kind of weird. I mean, life prior to that was kind of chaotic, kind of like in a constant stream, and I don't know. Life of an addict is kind
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of chaotic in itself, but there was an incident that occurred that prompted me to go into treatment. And when I went in there, I don't know.
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The break from how I normally am with work and business and, you know, running all these jobs. I mean, I was working sometimes 70, 80 hours a week. I got a break from all of that. The phone got shut
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off. I was in there for 21 days, I believe. And the break from everything that I thought I needed to be in, you know, being a successful person, successful businessman, a father, a son, whatever it was, everything just kind of
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stopped for a second. That was the first time I was like, oh, like who or what am I outside of all of these conditions or all these things that I thought I needed to do.
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And in the treatment, I got introduced to meditation. And I just kind of took off with that. There was a silence that came with it
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and an openness to everything. And after the treatment process, I went and I stayed at a recovery house to continue on. And I got involved in AA, and I know they don't like to talk about AA 12 steps and stuff on
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public radio and all or whatever it is. But that was just part of it.
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When I went through the 12 steps, I was going through that with complete openness.
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And I had went into step four, which kind of deflates ego.
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But I took it a little further than that because at the time I had like four or five different names that I went by. So, like with my group of friends, I was known as Carlos.
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With my parents, I was known as Ishwar. When I was out drinking hanging out with my buddies, I was, you know, they called me Los.
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And each one of those names had their particular personalities, and each one of the personalities had their set of guidelines that they kind of acted by.
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You know, one was a wild party type, one was a professional business person, the other one was like a son student kind of thing.
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And one was a father. And I started looking at those things like, what really are those?
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And everything came to, well, they're all just kind of things that I impose on myself or, you know, conditions, if you could say that.
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But a dad is supposed to be this way by society's standpoint. That's what makes a father.
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What makes a good son is this way, you know, how he behaves with his mother and family and all of that stuff.
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And then I started seeing through each personality as just being a, they were just thoughts.
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They were just thoughts about a particular way of being. And then I was like, well, if all of those go away, what's really here? What's really, well, I mean, like who or what am I?
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And I got into, I read some of Ramana Maharshi's stuff, self-inquiry.
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That kind of went to a point where the answer just, the question couldn't be answered.
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And then from there, I started doing, there was a particular meditation that I was doing.
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It's called a hun- it was 112 steps of Shiva. They were all methods, 112 different methods that they give you that would make you realize instantaneously.
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And there was one particular step that I was doing. It was number five, and it was a particular meditation. It was a little involved.
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And I was sitting in my truck. I was doing a meditation for about an hour.
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And then it felt like a bolt of lightning just shot up from the earth through the bottom of my feet up through the top of my head.
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And it came back down and just hit me in my brain, and my whole body just started shaking.
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And I was staying at the recovery house at the time. So I got out of the truck. I went inside.
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And what I thought was about five minutes, the guys in the house said almost an hour had passed. 45 minutes to an hour had passed where I just was standing in the room looking
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at a wall. I didn't have any thoughts of future, past, not even the present in itself.
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It was just like the first time of just being and not being anything.
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So that was the initial awakening, so to speak. Then I kind of went on, and I was reading some Eckhart Tolle stuff.
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Then another insight came, which was laughable. What I call it kind of like the cosmic joke, where you realize when you get up and go look for yourself, how are you going to find it if you're getting up and going and looking?
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And I just kind of realized that, you know, here and now is where I am. And I just kind of bust out laughing, and that just kind of opened up the present moment. But there was still a lingering question as to what
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I really, like, what is here? What's experiencing? And the search went on. I listened to a few people. Alan Watts, not to say that people should go and listen to them. They were just
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I found it interesting that my background, I'm Indian Hindu, but I don't speak the language. And a lot of the stuff that they were talking about was in Sanskrit or in Hindi, and some things get lost in translation. So,
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I started looking at people who spoke English who I could understand. And, you know, I learned a few things, and then I got introduced to a couple of Buddhist ways of looking.
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And I had tried ayahuasca, but that added more to the confusion because it amplifies your senses, and it can make you feel trapped within your body.
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But it's good in a way if you have deep-seated issues, things that you really want to address and you don't know what the root causes are. That's what it did for me, and I kind of cleared
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out a lot of stuff, and that coupled with the 12 steps cleared out a lot of sense of self, sense of identity, what I thought I needed to be, ego, my conceptions of the world, all of
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No one was was guiding me directly to say, "Well, what is I? Who Who am I? What's all this stuff? What's all this really about?" Um and one day I was just laying down in bed and uh I just dropped everything. I dropped all
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all the ideas that I that I had about the stuff. And I wasn't searching for long, maybe about 8 9 months. So, I didn't get into you know, some people are in it for like 20 years and read all
Speaker A
these texts and all these books and the more they read the more they get lost.
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Um the more concepts come up and I dropped away everything. I started with something very simple.
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There was something inside me that was kind of guiding me. And I The only thing I can say that I I can consider me is what I remember.
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So, I started going back and back. So, I started remembering myself at now in like here and now, so to speak.
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Then in my mid-20s, then in as a teenager, then maybe about 10 or 11, and then I got back to a memory when I was about 5 years old, and that's the furthest I could remember.
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So, I said of if I was 5 already when I had this memory, and it was It was a strange kind of It was a strange I'm I grew up in the Caribbean Islands, so they the discipline is a little bit
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different, so they do beat you. So, they were asking me to spell the word fruit, and I couldn't I couldn't spell it. And every time I couldn't spell or I misspelled it, I got hit.
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And it was the first time I identified with body-mind. So, and it was the first memory I could remember, and I was like, well, if this is 5 years old and this memory is at 5, and this is the furthest I could
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remember myself to be a self or a body or mind, what was that before?
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What was there before? And that's when everything just dropped. There was there wasn't even And it can't be spoken in the way where I wasn't there. There was only experience. There wasn't experience experiencing something. There wasn't a me that was experiencing anything and it
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sounds contradictory, but it isn't. There was only experience. And then it came What came after that was a sense of self. Then this sense of me, this I.
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The sense of existence. And then the entire manifestation came afterwards. So at the core of what I had considered myself to be was empty, nothing.
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There wasn't anything there. No concepts, no ideas. Uh It's It was just a thought.
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And that was it. That's all That's all that was there. The The sense of me was only It was only a thought. It was only an idea.
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And it wasn't uh It wasn't real. And when I say it wasn't real, it wasn't as it appeared to be. Like how we take our day-to-day activity as, you know, something so concrete and real and we're grounded in it that we are the ones
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that's experiencing what's really happening. But really and truly, it's the running commentary that's saying what's happening after an experience.
Speaker A
And it was like Huh. And then from there everything just kind of dropped away. There was uh no real uh searching anymore, no stresses in life. No worrying about money, family, safety, any of that stuff. Like nothing to that degree, I guess.
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The things that people worry about every day doesn't really It doesn't bother. There's nothing there for it to bother.
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And um that's how it's kind of been from that point on, but it the insight that's uh not the no self insight, it was something that needed to mature in a sense too.
Speaker A
Because with that experience uh so to speak, when it says there is nothing and then there's a sense of self then, you know, the sense of identity and then this entire manifestation, it can make it seem as though
Speaker A
that sense of identity is the one that's creating the manifestation, but it isn't. The all all the stuff here is uh real in a sense that it's occurring the way that it's occurring, which is our interpretation of it, that's
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what's not real. That's what's in what they call an illusion. It The illusion doesn't mean uh it isn't real in that sense, it just means it's not the way that it appears.
Speaker A
And um once that started to mature out it was just I don't know. I I think I don't know if that's what they call freedom, but it's free freedom from the self from the thought of being free.
Speaker A
Um it's just interesting. Thoughts just kind of come and go. They don't hold on and cling to anything. They don't try to label anything. There's just there's just a fullness to all that is, all that's here.
Speaker A
Um and I think part of it is we get caught in the idea of what this is supposed to look like based on somebody else's experience that we overlook what's in front of us everyday.
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We think it's something grand. Really, it's an of your very self. Your very sense of being something. Your very sense of being You don't have to identify and be anything. That's the thing that isn't isn't real.
Speaker A
So, that's kind of how I um came into it. Nothing really changes. You You You don't really You know, it's not like a I don't see it like a life-changing event where things in your life will change, but
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it's just a way that you um kind of interact with the things that are going on. You You just know.
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And there's a subtlety in this as well. Um cuz people go on the ultimate reality and you know, divine reality and all of that stuff. Um This whole experience or whatever you want to call it.
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If reality can't be known. Not by something that comes after. Period. The only thing that's required is for you to know the nature of yourself and your own being for what you are.
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That's all you can know. Everything else is just concepts. There is the whole of reality, so to speak that you know, from what we're taught, we take We can look at a forest and then say that thing is a tree, label it,
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identify with it, and we forget the whole background. And say, "Oh, look, it's a tree." But it's a concept that we put on something and then we teach that to everyone.
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Forgoing that we took something from a whole and then we labeled it as this thing and then teach it to everybody else that it's a thing. When really and truly it's something you can't describe.
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Like you can look at the color green. That's the label, but you're you experience that first before the mind comes and labels it.
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And without the labeling, I mean, there's a wonder when you you perceive or look at things now and it it it just has infinite dimensions to it. That in a spectacular way like that, there's just so much there when the mind isn't trying
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to compartmentalize all this stuff and trying to label it out and cat you know, catalog it.
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Just our normal way of thinking. And um man, it's just been been that way ever since.
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Now, you still uh I think somebody told me you were an electrician. So, I mean, you still have to categorize things, right? Or else you're going to kill yourself.
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Well, in in the sense of conventional reality, meaning uh all the things that were taught to us.
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Um just because everyone everyone else believes that this stuff is real and an entire structure was built on something that's false.
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Um but it still operates. It doesn't mean that it it'll just vanish and go and go away. You still operate within the conventions, but you know the nature of yourself and you know the nature of how this all came into being.
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You know how the separation was. You know how uh we we created all of these say a job particularly.
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As as an electrician, that's something that was taught to me. That's the only you know that it's something that was taught to you. You know it's conditions that are just playing out, so there is no real choice in the matter. There is
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no free will in it. Um it's kind of conditioned in that way and everything is conditions kind of playing itself out. You don't have any kind of involvement in it.
Speaker A
Yeah, so what what what you're saying then is you mentioned the word experience, and I I think you said something to the effect of everything is really just experience. There's not an experiencer.
Speaker A
So, when you are when you're on a job, all that's happening is uh how would you describe that? It's just like there's information flowing and and actions are happening.
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It's interesting with that stuff because with work um like everything just seems to happen on its own.
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Like like we are sense of self or identity is only found like found after an experience or found after something is completed. And then I would be like, "Oh, look at what got done." And then that's the end that's the end
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of it, but while it's going on, it's it's like it's just doing itself. And then there's no real effort that's being put forward to say that um like I have to get this done in this time frame. It has to be this way. It's like
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all those things are programmed in and it's you just allow it to just do its thing.
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And do you mentioned that there was um I don't know if you said that all all the stressors had fallen away, but a lot of them have. Do you still Do you still find thoughts coming up of oh I
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got to get this done because, you know, Friday is the deadline on this project.
Speaker A
No, I mean thoughts don't stop. It is Mhm. What you see is that you you could never stop any of it anyways. I mean thinking isn't isn't required for you to speak. Speaking just kind of happens.
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Um the thoughts don't really have anything to do with that. But thoughts come and they go, but there is no interaction with them.
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So, you could have the You could have a thought that says "Oh, I'm not going to get done with this." But, are you saying that you don't then have the follow-on thoughts of you know, people talk about the
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reaction to reaction to reaction? And how you get caught in spirals of worry or spirals of concern. Are you saying that that sort of thing is faded away?
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Yeah, that's all gone. There there is no There's definitely a knowing that nothing happens outside of the present moment, so to speak, right?
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So, there's no holding on to past and there is no projecting into the future. So, when those two things kind of move out of the equation, the only thing that's really going on is what's going on right now.
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And that coupled with the knowledge of it's not happening to anyone and there is no There isn't anything at the the core of all of this um of what I consider a self or being, then nothing is taken seriously.
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And if there's if there's If your experience is that there's nothing at core, then the question of uh well, what happens when you're when you die?
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How does that question strike you now? Nothing happens. What There was one One night I was laying in bed with my daughters and uh everything went still.
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And it felt like all the energies in my body coalesced in the center of my sternum.
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And um it just merged with everything that's here. The There's just a a flow of energy that's here and it just kind of all all the responsibilities that I ever felt in life that I needed to do, everything
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just vanished. And with that, um the sense of even me being here went away.
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And I think uh I don't know what it is with physical death, but what we are isn't physically anything.
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It's just a thought and the thought is empty in nature. Doesn't have any real substance. It's It's uh you know, we are just an interpretation of what's going on right now.
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Coupled with this running commentary that makes it seem as though we have importance and we have choice.
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Like the The fact of the matter is when the only way choice kind of comes into play is after an event occurs, then after the event you can say it could have happened a different way.
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And most people ignore the fact that however it just happened, that's how it happened.
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You know, we ignore we ignore how much how much is going on here even if you were to say that you were a a physical body to even keep you here.
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So, at what point do you I mean, that's a pretty big ego to say that you know, I'm here and doing all this stuff and you know, if this you can say if the sun wasn't here producing sunlight,
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you wouldn't be able to perceive or see and it wouldn't nourish the plants that are here that's producing oxygen for you to breathe or the food for you to eat or all the forces that are required for it
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to keep this planet spinning in the velocity that it's spinning in. You know, there's so much that's going on that we ignore.
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And the more we ignore, the more we we feel ourselves separate. We feel ourselves um like we have control. When we start to see everything else that's involved around us just for us to be here in this very
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instant and you can't help but kind of give awe and you know, be in awe to all of it.
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What you said reminded me of uh something I heard in Landmark a couple years ago. They said uh well, all that all that has happened is what happened.
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That's it. Simple as that. What happened is what happened. And everything that falls on that is just a story.
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Right. But I I found uh I found that telling oneself that is in a sense though just another story.
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It's like sometimes people tell themselves uh little sayings like that and they're trying to build a counter story that says, "Okay, everything is everything is okay. All my reactions aren't true." And that to me somehow that seems it it doesn't last or it's a flimsy
Speaker A
story. It doesn't hold up in day-to-day life. Does that Do you have any reaction to that?
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Well there's a lot of folks that have a intellectual understanding of it and through it the intellectual understanding they can imagine what the experience would be like and then react based on that imagination of what it would be like. Um
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until the experience occurs or one experiences that for oneself. Um it's just mere intellectual understanding.
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Um Everything that anyone can say is just a story. Even all words are made up to describe experiences. Everything is a pointer. It's not to be taken literally.
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It's just a way of pointing you to go and experience it for yourself so you can see.
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Instead of holding on to the words as being the experience. So, you're talking about the the counter to some sort of intellectual understanding is is what? Some sort of whole body visceral experience or what do you what are you pointing towards? What has to
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happen? It's the dropping away of all conceptions. The the very thing that identifies as a body identity itself. Even every conception of you when a lot of people say your teacher say that I mean you have to die, that's what
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they mean. The idea and the concepts that you create around the center that's an I.
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All of it has to go. And it's not a very popular thing because a lot of people want to feel important. They want purpose. They think life has meaning.
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Um and they're of value. And that's not the case. They're they're all just Everything is just conceptions.
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When you do away with all the conceptions then there is no you there. There's only experience.
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And it's not I don't think it's mythical or magical. It's in our everyday experience. We just don't pay attention to it.
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You know, something as simple as washing your hands. When somebody's washing their hands, you know, they internalize a lot of stuff and you can externalize thoughts in a sense by doing it intentionally. You feel all the sensations as you're washing your
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hand, you know, uh, the soap and all of that stuff. The whatever it is, hot, cold, however you want to label it.
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You can do that without labeling anything. Just be in the experience and then when you're done, say, "This is washing hands." That's moving something that's internalized to your external experience, so to speak.
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And you're just you're just in experience in itself. Now, when I use the term I, I is just a reference reference point and a means to convey uh, an idea or a concept.
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It's not taken to mean that it's a it's a me of substance. It's a something of importance.
Speaker A
I I want to take a step back for a second just to clarify something. Uh, uh, the the time frame that we're talking about from when you when you went into, uh, the recovery program and and you had, uh,
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this this final realization, if you will of you know, there's nothing here. Are we talking about a matter of months? It sounded like it.
Speaker A
Yeah, it was I went in 2017. I would say it was within a year.
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Uh, it wasn't the first kind of awakening, the first two kind of awakenings with the energy kind of thing that occurred.
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Maybe like I say, I left the recovery house I left treatment in the end of January and I went straight into the recovery house.
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I'm sorry, in Feb- February 20th 10th, I left the the treatment facility and I went to recovery house. I left the recovery house in August.
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And the first two type of awakening happened in within that time frame. So, a couple of months. After that, I tried, uh, ayahuasca a couple of times and it was a couple of insights came in from that and one of it is if you will really want
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to get to the core of the truth, you have to deconstruct every thoughts and ideas and concept you ever had of anything.
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And it goes all the way back. So, once those insights kind of came, I went with that.
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And um you can go into that stuff and get caught and lost in the light show which a lot of people do or they have bad experiences with it. Um I set my intentions and my goal was to
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find out what the truth of all of this is. And with that I kind of bypassed the light show and got to the core of uh being and ideas and concepts and all of that stuff and started to break those
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things down. Started seeing that all those were things that were taught to me. They weren't anything that I ever conceived of of my own.
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And and the interesting thing about no self is there isn't a particular way to get to that. You know, however someone come you you can't sit and meditate with the idea of I'm going to drop away all concepts because
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I'm going to see no self. It doesn't work that way. I it just one it was just kind of spontaneous. I was just laying in bed and I was like, all right, what is all this about?
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And I just went back and back and back and then what was there before that? And you know, just to kind of see what would happen and then it was clear clear as day clearer than day.
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So, that was a that sounds like that was in a way that was an intellectual process that you were engaged in but then something else happened. It wasn't like a a logical conclusion, was it? It was something Right. It It
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That's what they had. Intellect takes you about so far, but intellect can't can't go there.
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Yeah. Because it's what's prior to even the identification of a you, a person, a personality, an identity.
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Uh and then from there all It gets kind of tied up in the language with uh nirvana. I think that's part of the part of the experience with it because from there was a cessation of all suffering cuz you I realized that
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all suffering happens in between the ears. Granted, there are physical sufferings and by no means do I speak on anyone who who is uh suffering anything that they're going through in life. If they don't know, they'll take it to be real
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and it would be real for them. But for me, um I realized that even with the physical stuff that occurs, holding on to pain, like you walk around, stump your toe, and then you're telling this one and the
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next one all how it hurt. You did this, you did that. It just kind of prolongs the story and then the the imagined pain is way worse than when it actually happened. And really, if you kind of sit with the experience
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of it, it goes away rather quickly. Yeah. I had all kinds of aches and pains throughout my body that I I used to hold on to all the time and a lot of that stuff just went away.
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And there's no value given to it. There's no importance given to it. It's just kind of interesting how everything played out.
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You haven't had a a whole lot of time to Mhm. interact with with other people, I guess, and you know, in terms of giving suggestions to them and that sort of thing.
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But what What have you seen so far? What would you say today about general suggestions that you would make to people or or general problems that you see?
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Fear. Everyone is afraid of something. And their their fear is usually rooted in what other people think of them.
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And most of the stuff that they do in life is based on either pleasing somebody else or the way that they would be perceived by somebody else.
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And a lot of their suffering occurs in between their own ears. And most people only suffer their thoughts.
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But feelings and emotions um I think one of the things people don't really deal with is that their their own feelings and emotions. They think that the outside world is to blame for it or somebody did them something so wrong.
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Um and they kind of pass the buck. But when you start to look deep within yourself and understand your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and you see that it's the same it's the same principles that everybody um goes by, and you can relate to them a
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lot better. Because you know what it is to be angry, you know what it is to be hurt.
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Nobody can make you feel those things. You're the ones that take take a particular circumstance or situation and and feel those feelings and feel those thoughts about those feelings.
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And it's all based in thought. This is the the thought might arise, then a memory comes, and then the bodily sensation comes and this I says that this is happening to me, this thought of it.
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And everything is centered around that that thought. It's claiming ownership of all the experience.
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People get involved in therapy, for example, for years trying to deal with the very things that you're talking about. Fear or emotions or uh you know, reactions that they have in certain situations. They They will spend years working on that. Do you have uh
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Do you have any suggestions or is that just Is that their path? That's what they have to do?
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And uh you know, I'm try I'm trying to get some understanding of how you were able to in such a short period of time um see through those fears in yourself.
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Well, they're all There's a tree and all those are branches. Uh people that work on you know, fear or work on this or work on that, they're all They're only cutting off the branches. You got to uproot the whole damn tree.
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You got to uproot you. The thing that says that it's feeling all of this stuff. What is that?
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You know, look and observe and see. Uh one One thing that's really powerful, I think, in our society in general, especially with men, they don't address their own feelings and emotions, something that they they bury and they hide and tuck away. I
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I usually say invite them in. Invite them in as part of yourself. You know, say Say it out loud when you're sitting in meditation. If a particular thought comes up or fear comes up or emotion comes up, invite it in like the one thing you love
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most in life. Invite that feeling in as that person or that thing that you want to know and you want to understand what it is that it's trying to tell you.
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And it you know, there're different levels to it. You start from there and then you can deepen because most everyone just kind of uh react to feelings and emotions, angers and anger and sadness and uh fear Everything is based on like a fear
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of being alone with most people. Because at at the very core there's a separation that occurs and the thing that separates from a whole, which is what we consider ourselves to be, it always wants to get back to that.
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So, it always feels alone in this world. But, it never thinks to try and understand itself. It wants to understand everything else.
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Uh it it it can try to find happiness in somebody else that would behave a certain way to love it in a certain way.
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You know, it's to look at look at the thing that you're calling you. Look at that thing that's interacting with all the other stuff out there.
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Cuz it's taking all that information, interpreting it, and then you know, acting and reacting accordingly.
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Look at that thing, you know, break away from the cycle. Yeah, so you know, cycle might be uh Oh, I I go to my job every day and at the end of the day I'm uh I'm stressed and I'm worried about what
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the next day is going to bring, let's say. And then that evening I want to sit down and I want to meditate and I just get thoughts that come up over and over again of things that happened during the day or
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insults that I feel like people sent my way or ways that I ways that I failed doing my job that day and ways that I might fail tomorrow. I mean, you get what I'm saying. Like, we get barraged
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by all this stuff if we sit down and try to be quiet. Right. Well, it's it's past and then it's projecting into the future. So, it's it's like if If look at it right now here in this moment, this whatever it is
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that we were talking about right now, right this second, is there a problem? See, there's there's stillness and silence.
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It's to expand on that. You can ask yourself, "I wonder what my next thought's going to be?" And then there's stillness and silence.
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It's to expand on that stillness and silence. But, to get to to people's uh more root causes, if somebody's in a job that they don't like, what it is that is stopping them from leaving?
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It's usually in fear. Mhm. Fear of not being able to provide or not being able to do this or do that. Really and truly, it's fear in giving up the comforts that you think that you have right now. That might change because
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it's it's consistent. Now, why not just do what it is that would make you happy? Everyone is so caught up they're caught up in this job is giving me this, I can afford this, or it's, you know, I can do
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without. One of the things I learned in recovery, and especially in staying in recovery houses, is how little we truly need to live.
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I mean, I was sleeping sleeping on a bottom of a bunk bed with I had like three dresser drawers to put my stuff.
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And uh we shared one bathroom with 10 people. You know, in in one room that housed uh five total, including myself.
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And you have that little space, you learn how to you see it in an experiential way that you really don't need a whole lot to live.
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And you don't need a whole lot to be happy. But, you got to be happy within yourself. You can't expect anybody else to make you happy. And that I think is like the key to all of this. One thing
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that kind of helped helped me out, too, was when people who are seeking and they get to a certain point, I went to a website called uh Liberation Unleashed.
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Yeah. And they helped tremendously with seeing through the concepts and understanding how the sense of self is formed and how it comes into being, how it comes out from in of itself as just an idea.
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And again, like I said, no one can know anything about reality. No one can know anything that they can consider the ultimate truth or whatever they want to call it. They can only know who and what they are at the core of
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their being. That's it. And I think that is the most important thing for people to find out about themselves.
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Once that happens, it's like you just let go of everything and it's just you don't worry and stress about all these other things. Things still I mean life still goes on, you know.
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It all still plays out, but you just don't hang on to a whole lot of stuff.
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You're not as heavy. You're not sad and depressed or lonely or perfectly It's weird cuz it's not about being happy and it's not about not being happy. It's kind of a weird place to kind of be, so to speak. It's It's
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not about any of those things. You can't even call it neutral. It's just the way that you are.
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And it's the way you've always been. You're not talking about eternal bliss, Ashwar. You're losing the audience on this one, I think.
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Well, people have this conception of what eternal bliss is. And the conception is always based on what somebody else has told them about what eternal bliss is.
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And they have a way of describing it as you know, this grandeur type of experience.
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You know, imagine for a second that you you've been going through a process that you have taken to be so real.
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You know, that that you're so involved in it and then all of a sudden you realize that this entire thing is just it isn't it isn't real.
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Not that it's it's a joke, but it isn't it's it isn't real and that's something you've been taking so real your entire life, then you can just exhale and relax.
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What more bliss is there than that when you don't have to worry about nothing?
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And even if worry comes, it's it's grounded in there's nothing here. You know, there states of consciousness that you can get into with where it can seem extremely blissful where you're just blown away and all these crazy experiences are are going on, but you
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move from where you are into those experiences. This is prior to all of that.
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I I would say that probably half half the people that I talk with who are on a spiritual search, who are trying to find uh you know, they may phrase it as they're trying to find who they really are or
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they're trying to find uh what's at their core. However, they phrase it some are saying they're after enlightenment. Uh roughly half of those people feel stuck in some way. They feel like they're not getting anywhere.
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They're uh they're just doing the same old practices over and over again. They're everything just feels dry. There's no progress.
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What would you say to a person who came to you like that? Well, I typically like to sit down and talk with to somebody one-on-one cuz I can kind of get a feel for where they're at.
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Um being that I've went through certain things, but somebody who feels that they're stuck in a I don't know what practices they're following, but if they can give up the practice in itself and just listen to themself, you know, has anybody really ever asked
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themself what they truly want? You know, and start there. Go from Go from the way you're experiencing everything here and then start questioning your own ideas. Don't go learn about somebody else's idea of what this is and then question their
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idea of it. Uh that's I think that's what happens quite often. People go and they they read about somebody's enlightenment story or uh the way that they're experiencing this world and um they're trying to imagine that for themselves.
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And they're trying to uh replicate that experience within themself, but they're not paying attention to their own experience of what's going on right now.
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They completely They completely missed the missed the mark. If you get up and go look for yourself, how are you going to expect to find yourself?
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It's just a recognition, really, of where you are. But it's the All the ideas and concepts have to be given up.
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The mind will create anything that you ask it to. So, if you ask for bliss, it can create a very blissful type of state for you.
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But you move away from where you are to go to go into those states.
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This isn't This isn't a state that you go into, you move forward into. You fall into this, you fall back into it.
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When you give up all the ideas and concepts, this is what is always here.
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You got to get to that point first and then when when you give up all the ideas and concepts and then this is what's here, then you can truly look into, well, what is really here.
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And then ideas and concepts doesn't come anymore and you see everything as experience. There's no labeling of there's a me that's hearing something.
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There's only There's only sound. There's only hearing. Speaking. Cognition. Thoughts come and go. Tactile sensations. There isn't anything that's labeling any of them.
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They're not centered around this eye that's unifying all these experiences as it's happening to a particular being.
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It's a It's an interesting point that you raise because sometimes I think in doing these podcasts that there's the potential that every new podcast episode I put up whatever person is doing, well, now they're going to uh listen to that podcast and they're
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going to read all the books that that person mentioned and then you know, they're going to try the meditation that that person mentioned.
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So, whatever they were doing, they're cast it all aside and try something new. Uh but you're saying uh hey, no, that's not that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about pausing for a minute and seeing what's really going on, seeing
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you know, asking the questioner, what is it that you really want? What? Exploring what's here first.
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Now, there is validity in when people go and they exert themselves to a point where they just give up. And when they give up, they drop everything. They say to hell with it, eff it, everything and in that instant, it can happen, too.
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Um but that exertion is like, you know, it's a complete mental exertion or a complete physical exertion.
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Sometimes you have to get up and go look to realize that you can't be found anywhere else but where you've been sitting.
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But no one says that to folks. You You go and look, go and look, go and look, you'll find, you'll find, you'll find, you'll find.
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But you won't. If you sit down, like I said, sit down here right now and, you know, just notice that if you ask yourself, is there any problem right here right now?
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And there's just a silence to everything. Or ask yourself, is I wonder what my next thought's going to be? There's just a silence, and you can expand on that.
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It starts, you know, you notice it. That's how it kind of started for me, too.
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And it's like a razor's edge, but eventually the razor's edge edge just expands out.
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And it's just the way of, you know, everything is. But you have to realize that you're here and now in the present moment. And from here is where you can explore into the true nature of yourself.
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If you're not in the present moment and you're caught up in thoughts, the present moment isn't everything that there is, so to speak. I mean, there is reality, there is the entire existence in itself, even that's a concept. But,
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you, to know who you are, you have to stop and come in contact with you.
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Not all these ideas that you're chasing. And you come in contact with you, and you're present, and you're aware of your own bodily sensations, then you can pose the question, what's aware? What's saying it's aware?
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What's all of this stuff here now? And you're not going and looking for all these ideas that everybody else is talking about, all these grand experiences.
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Like I said, I'm not denying anybody's experience, but if you're moving away from where you are for that experience, and moving forward into an experience, then you move away from what you are and who you are.
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And you can get caught in that as well. You said the present moment is not everything there is. Can you expand on that a little?
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So, if there's anyone that's experiencing the present moment, They're not experiencing the present moment.
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They're experiencing past cuz it takes time to interpret that and then memory and thoughts to say that it's something that's that's experienced in time.
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Nobody can experience the present moment in itself. But, sitting still and being aware, when I say the present moment so to speak, is when all the thoughts and ideas when you give them a break and then whatever is
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here just kind of opens up. That is reality. You can look at all of that stuff but you just don't label any of it because there's no way to really describe it.
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The only thing that you can truly look at is the thing that's saying that it's looking at reality.
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I want to ask you a question about that knowing that we may fall into the the difficulties of language here.
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That said, uh are are you saying that Are you saying that the only the only thing that can see the present moment is this false idea of a of a looker or a watcher or observer?
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Is that what you're saying? Even What I'm saying is even the observer have to be given up.
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Mhm. And once that's given up, there's there's just experience. But, in our day-to-day experience, and I like to put this in a way where people can understand. If they're say that they're sitting down at the park and they're they're looking at the
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scenery itself. Well, that's reality. The interpretation of it through means of convention with language to try and describe what they're seeing, which is an experience.
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That's the the falsity. That's the lag. That's where you find yourself. You always find yourself after an experience or after a experience.
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Yeah. are you saying that that the that the Are you saying that the present moment is in a way it's it's always contaminated by the experiencer of it?
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That or is that as soon as we recognize the present moment we've fallen out of the present moment? Is that what you're getting at?
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Right, it's always passing. Yeah. It's not It's like this is the present moment and now it's past. This is the present moment, now it's past. This is but there's no experience of the present moment. The the thing that would even
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say that it's experiencing is always a uh it's a lag. It's it's it comes in an interpretation of what's happening.
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Like in your simple sense of perception um you only know you're seeing a tree because you recognize that there's a you separate from a tree.
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Yeah. Well, there you go. But you're found after the experience. You're found in separation.
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So everything is reversed in the way that we typically think because knowledge in itself is ignorance.
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Because to to say that you know anything well, it's ignorance. You're you're ignoring the reality and saying that you know you are the knowing in itself. The separation is the knowing of something that just can't be known. But it claims
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that it knows it. When it should be the other way around. It should know itself for what it is.
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Not the reality in itself because nothing can know reality. Nothing can say anything about reality.
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No concepts can be formed and if it's formed as a concept, it's just a means of pointing back to that experience of what's considered reality.
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Did you Did you ever find yourself in the in the position of observing what's going on inside of yourself and realizing that well, everything I see is isn't it isn't the fundamental thing, you know, it's all illusion or it's all like a painting.
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Everything I observe is not It's not It's not that. It's the other way around. It's the thing that's that's the looking, that's the illusion.
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Right. Right. But how do you How in the heck do you get the It's as if the self has to admit that it's not real and it sure as heck doesn't want to do that.
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Right. But the And the first thing that needs to happen is you got to accept yourself where you're at. You got to stop looking and seeking.
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And once you're established, well, here I am. Then you start to look at, well, what the hell is the here that the I that the am is and what is it all pointing to?
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You know, it's not that the world is the illusion in itself. It's the thing that's interpreting that, that's the the very thing that's the illusion.
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All of this is happening. How it's happening, no one knows. But the thing that that's always saying that, you know, it's happening this way or I'm making this choice or I'm doing this or, you know, I'm looking here or
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I'm hearing this. Uh, that's the very thing that that is the that's the illusion.
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It's got to be flipped. Was this looking ever frightening for you? Like did you ever you know, well, you mentioned fear is a big thing for people.
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I think when it got close to um, when I'd gotten into the the no self experience, or to speak. Like I said, when I When I say that, don't think that there's a me that went there and had an
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experience. But, when it got close to that, um there was this overwhelming fear of like It was It was completely unknown.
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When I was just kind of sitting there, what was going to happen? And there was like a disturbance within myself. Like, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know. You could die, you could get hurt. This could happen. Like, all this
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stuff was going off in my head. And then I was like, you know, one of the things I taught me was to always confront my fear. And if a fear is coming up, go towards it and not away from it. So, I
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went towards it. And then there was this this vibrational type energy that came and just swept me away.
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But, there was no like real consciousness there. I was like, "Well, that's not it either." They like If it's moving me, then there's something else that's going on.
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And I just kept going into the fear, into the fear, into the fear. And then And you know, the annihilation of self or the ideas of yourself, it can be scary because it doesn't want to know that it isn't real.
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Cuz once it's found out, and you know, you can't unsee it, so to speak.
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But, yeah, it can It can be It can be terrifying. There was a lot of Cuz a lot of these type things when they come up, a lot of fear came up uh through this journey, so to speak,
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because a lot of the things that was being experienced was never experienced before. There were questions that was never posed or asked before. Everything was just kind of accepted for the way that it was.
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I never questioned the nature of my own reality. And when I started questioning it and allowing the the answers to come without the ideas and concepts to see for see it for what it is. The very thing that was here didn't want to see
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that the uncomfortability, the fear that came up was was amazing. I remember the first time I was doing a meditation.
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I was meditating in front of a mirror in the recovery house and just looking at myself in the mirror and then I just vanished cuz my mind couldn't conceive of what I actually look like.
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And that scared the death out of me. And I was like, "But it intrigued me more to to get over that fear." And the only way I could get over the fear was to keep going back and looking and
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seeing. And I got this very real sensation that I am not this body and I'm not this mind.
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And then it was put like very clearly, "The jig's up. The game's over." You mentioned meeting with people one-on-one.
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Is that something that you're actively trying to do? Meet with people and be of help?
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Um yeah, I mean, the the only thing you can do once this this happens is uh you you turn around and you try to help people. When you get to the the center of your being and the core of your being
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and know that there isn't anything there, the only thing you could do is turn around and uh and show it to other folks that they don't have to suffer through these ideas and concepts that they have of themselves.
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So, that's that's all I try to It seems like it's something that I'm trying to do, but it it's not that way.
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It's just the natural way that things kind of play out. Anyone who have any questions or want to come and talk or have a phone conversation or correspond through email or whatever it is, if they have any questions, they can ask.
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I think when I did the YouTube video, I left my phone number up there, but the number has since changed. Um but yeah, that's why I put out the email there. Anyone can call.
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Ask any questions about anything, really. So, if a person wanted to get a hold of you, uh they should check the the YouTube?
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They could check the YouTube, or if you don't mind, you could put out my phone number on the podcast. That's fine, or my email on the podcast if anyone wants to contact or speak or say anything, or Sure. Yeah, yeah. I'd be glad to do
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that. I'll put it in the notes, the show notes. People can go check that out.
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Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad. There's no point in in holding on to it cuz it doesn't have any value for me.
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And um I don't charge anything for anybody. If anybody wants to have a conversation, none of that stuff matters to me.
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I go out and I I still work and do what I got to do, uh you know.
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I could care less about money or fame or any of that stuff. Really doesn't make a difference.
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As long as somebody can benefit from it and maybe can ease some of their own suffering, or maybe get insight into themselves, or where to look directly without all the the games that everybody else plays that I've seen
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so far. You mentioned you You mentioned you had a daughter. Have How is all of this played out with with your family relationships? Is that something that's gotten stronger, or I mean, are you hiding out in a cave most of the time?
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Um like I said, everything uh continues and goes on. There there are changes um with the way I interact with my kids. It's It's a It's a different way, man, when you don't have ideas and concepts of them as being
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yours. And like you have ownership over these kids. Not to say that responsibility will will go away with that, but you see them more as a whole, like part of this they see the liveliness in them.
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You experience them differently. Um this stuff with my wife, she after I kind of went through all of this stuff, um she she wanted to she had started looking and reading up some stuff and she wanted to go go through this path,
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too. So um I kind of showed her a few things to look at within herself and she had a few realizations for herself that she's not the body, she is she's not this mind and then she realized through like I said, there's stages to
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it. She realized that everything was all mind and then uh she's look looking through and seeing past some of this stuff, but it enhanced our relationship and the first thing that kind of changed was um I guess expectations
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for the other person to make the other person happy. And it was something um I might have been a little blunt about it early on in our relationship when when all this realization stuff came up and I told her
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it's like, you know, don't look to me to make you happy and it can seem odd in a way because it's not the convention for most people. I was like, look within yourself and find happiness within yourself and then we can
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understand each other better by understand our own feelings and emotions. And it can make for a more harmonious relationship, which it did.
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You know, there there no expectations that I place on her. There's none that she places on me.
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Like, you know, if there's things that needs to be done, we don't ask each other to do it. We we just get it done.
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You know, the You know, it's just it just plays beautifully, I think. From what what I've seen with it and I said the relationship with my kids are just it's different. It's different. When you look at them and you see them for this
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ball of life and it's like something you just can't describe man. You don't claim ownership to anything.
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They're they're just this beautiful kind of play that's playing out. And it's it's weird.
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And my oldest daughter, she's four and her name is Lila. Hm. And Lila Lila and is supposed to be the divine play.
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Yeah. Yeah, I was like you can't help but wonder sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Well, I just have uh I just had a couple more questions and uh then we can wrap it up. Uh I'm always curious. Uh I really enjoy film movies.
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I'm always curious if if my guests have any recommendations for film that they think touches upon these ideas.
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And if you do, awesome. If not, awesome. Honestly, everything that I see and I watch touches on all of this stuff once you realize it to the core.
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Um but as an aid to help you get there, I haven't really dabbled in many films.
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Um or even documentaries really. I mean, a lot of this stuff it if you want to to go and realize this stuff for yourself, uh I would just say leave everything behind. Don't go and look for it anywhere else and
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you know, there's there's just a very there's very few pointers that you that's just needed.
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That's it. And you you come in touch with something within yourself that will always guide you.
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You know, there are certain things that you can do with perception if you don't want to take information in from the external world and kind of see things for the for what they are that you can do as well. Like
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there's very few things like it I don't see it as being you know, it's it's pretty ordinary.
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It's here. It's just a recognition of it and there's not a lot to do to recognize it.
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And were you referring to meditation when you said that there are things that you can do regards to perception?
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Meditation is uh one particular one is is kind of key to for thoughts and it breaks the chain of thoughts.
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Um I know one is pretty simple. It's just you sitting every 10 10 minutes every day or something or twice a day just paying attention to thoughts themselves and just kind of notice how they rise up and fall away. And then if
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you're noticing them rising up and fall away, then they don't have anything to do with you. There's just that recognition of there of that.
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Mhm. And then once that cycle is is broken, you can be more grounded in in presence, so to speak.
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Where you find yourself and then there's recognition that you're here. You can't be anywhere else, you know.
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Acknowledge it your existence. And then when you acknowledge your existence, then you question the nature of your existence. You can't do it any other way else else you'll you'll you're just binding up in thought.
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I have to say I do find it remarkable that that insight of how all thought is just arising and falling away. Like you speak of that insight as if uh you know, I meditated a few times and then I got it. And you There's people
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who spend years doing that type of meditation and seeing over and over and over thought arising and falling away, yet it just doesn't it just don't seem to grasp or get at a gut level. It just doesn't hit them that
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oh, that's all that's happening. Everything is rising up and falling away. The The important thing to see with that is that it's rising up and falling away and it has nothing to do with you.
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You're still there looking at it. So, if they're coming and going and it really doesn't affect you in any kind of way, why are you paying attention to them?
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Or why are you giving them power or life? You can't change it that they come and go.
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That's their own nature to just come and go. And thoughts come and come from conventional reality because it's things that we know, things we were taught. It's thoughts always about something that we know or want to know or think that we can know.
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It's always based on convention and convention is a world that we look around. It's a slight overlay over what reality is considered.
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It It It takes it just a little bit of, I think, focused attention. It doesn't take a lot.
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Not in the I can say if people follow some of this stuff for 20, 30 years, they just build up a dis- incredible idea of what this is supposed to be.
Speaker A
And it's so simple that it's completely overlooked. Yeah, I I I I definitely think that there's truth to to what you're saying in that uh on the same hand, I I think for a lot of folks like you know, the phenomenon of when you
Speaker A
drive past an accident on the side of the road, right? Like people can't help but look and I think thought is a lot of times like that.
Speaker A
It's like fireworks going off. Like people just can't help but be sucked into the fireworks show.
Speaker A
All right. And it takes some effort to just you know, keep track and stay on course. An interesting thing that I I used to do when I was in uh I was staying at the recovery house and a lot of this stuff came from within
Speaker A
myself on how to do certain things. I used to go to a stream and just put my hand in the water and then I would not say that it's cold, that it's warm, or that's my hand in the water, and just
Speaker A
allow the experience to flow naturally. Without trying If labeling comes, you allow the label to come and go away, but it doesn't change the experience of what's happening. The labeling is just an inter It's trying to interpret.
Speaker A
The mental structure is trying to interpret what's going on. And if you can maintain awareness while that's occurring, then it's like, "Huh." You You just start to stay in stay in experience and then an interesting thing when we're driving around or walking
Speaker A
around, our focused attention is always on something we're trying to know. So, if you can unfocus your eyes, which is uh like trying to look in the back of your head or look through your peripheral, you'll notice your your your
Speaker A
mind will stop trying to decipher what's going on. And those were like two simple things that uh helped immensely earlier early on cuz it it the mind wasn't being bombarded with you know, I got to know this or what's
Speaker A
that over there? You know, the car is white. Oh, there's a car. And then it just it's a repetitive thought and then it goes into another one, another one, another one.
Speaker A
But, throughout the whole thing, you you always notice it. But, the important thing is just to come back to to your sense of self. Don't deny your own existence because it Like I said, there's levels to it. You know, you can
Speaker A
have the realizations and then stand on top of the mountain and preach from that point, but it won't help anyone get to see, you know, get up to the mountain to realize that there is no mountain top.
Speaker A
You kind of got to come down to their level and speak to them on where they're at.
Speaker A
And that's where I find it's it's most effective. Or else it can go over a lot of people's heads.
Speaker A
That's why I think though the one-on-one or just kind of sitting down and having a conversation with somebody you can kind of see and gauge where they're at and see what they need to look at.
Speaker A
Or what what they should what they should look at. Cuz everyone is different. They're on different levels and um they have different experiences, too.
Speaker A
But a lot of people try to deny that they're not real. You have to accept that. You have to accept yourself first and then go go look at it.
Speaker A
You can't just say that I I'm not real or there's no self or the self is an illusion.
Speaker A
You got to accept that first and then start to break it down. Accepting yourself brings you present.
Speaker A
Well, thank you, Ashwar. Thank you very much. No problem. And then like I said, you can put my phone number on there or uh my email address. It doesn't make a difference.
Speaker A
Okay. Yeah, great. I Yeah, I'll I'll put them both up and uh people can get in touch with you. I think that's awesome and I really appreciate your uh the spirit of you want to share with folks like that
Speaker A
and uh and not charging. That's something I very much can relate to cuz you know, it's a priceless thing. It was a gift and uh you're giving that back to folks.
Speaker A
Yeah, it was freely given to me, so um I I really feel a need or inclination to even if it can help somebody in any way, shape, or form to kind of alleviate where they're at and help them see past
Speaker A
and that's cool. If it don't, it don't. It's just it's just one of those things.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Well great. Uh yeah. We'll We'll call it uh I have more questions, but I'll I'll let those pass by. Maybe we could do a follow-up at some point in the future.
Topics:Eswar Segobindspiritual awakeningmeditationself-inquiry12 stepsaddiction recoveryRamana MaharshiEckhart Tolleayahuascapresent moment
