Interrogating a Guy Who’s Solved Existence — Transcript

A deep conversation exploring awakening, existence, and living the truth through inquiry and experience.

Key Takeaways

Awakening is accessible through deep, direct inquiry and leads to living the truth.
The sense of a separate self dissolves in awakened experience, revealing an interconnected flux.
Life and death are inseparable aspects of an ongoing energetic field beyond human-imposed concepts.
Language is insufficient to fully describe awakening; experiential understanding is key.
True transformation involves embracing all aspects of self, including shadow and trauma work.

Summary

The video features an interview with Brian Krehbiel, who discusses his awakened experience and understanding of existence.
He emphasizes the importance of waking up to the truth and living authentically as the best opportunity humans have.
Brian describes his experience of dissolving the sense of a separate self and perceiving existence as an endless flux.
He explains that suffering and unsatisfactoriness arise from a mistaken sense of separation and identity.
The discussion touches on the nature of life, death, and energy from both experiential and scientific perspectives.
Brian stresses that awakening does not require belief but direct knowing through deep inquiry.
He highlights the limitations of language in conveying awakened experience and prefers guiding others to direct experience.
The video also addresses common spiritual misconceptions, such as the idea that enlightenment can be achieved without shadow work.
Brian relates awakening to the concept of resurrection as symbolic of transformation and realization.
He encourages viewers to explore their own experience to find answers rather than relying on external teachings.

Chapters

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Uh, what turns you off? Turns you off in general. What turns me off? Yeah. Yeah. Um, smugness. Yeah. Like I always ask people, uh, I go, "What do you know for sure, right?" And it silences them because of course [music] the answer is nothing.

Speaker A

He's a sharp dude. Yeah. You know, like that. That's such a clever entry for anybody is like, what do you really know? What is there to do here? Like what makes for a good [music] life or what should we be striving for? Waking up. You're here to see the truth. You're given the opportunity to

Speaker A

see the truth, to live the truth. Everyone, every human being has that opportunity. I don't walk around telling people that, but if I'm going to, if you're going to interview me about it, I'm going to say that that's your opportunity. It's the best, it's the best

Speaker A

opportunity you have by far. If you're inclined that way. If you're not inclined that way, it's fine. But if you were inclined that way, don't settle for anything less than that. It's clearly the most natural truth. And no, no one whom this occurs to doesn't immediately

Speaker A

know [music] that it's true, that it's just how it is. How could it not be fascinating, folks?

Speaker A

He's had, among thousands of others, he's had this awakened experience where he, I don't know. We're going to ask him how to put it. I don't quite know how to put it. I actually did two residencies. So, I did a residency in family medicine. Okay. Then I did an anesthesiology residency

Speaker A

to figure out. It's solved. So, I guess that's more the contract. To be honest, that feels like I won the cosmic lottery. Okay. You know, but I don't walk around saying that to people and I don't want to make it sound like I have something you don't because that's not skillful. What I'm

Speaker A

interested in is helping people wake up. So, someone watching this who cares about me? You care about you. You want to end your own suffering or you want to see the truth. You want to live the truth. So, let's talk about how to do that. And it doesn't take a long time to wake up. It

Speaker A

doesn't take a whole bunch of free time. It takes one really, really deep inquiry in this moment.

Speaker A

So, is it like euphoric or just like— Yeah, a lot of times it's euphoric. Calm. I mean, it's calm.

Speaker A

Okay. Yeah, calm, almost calm is probably the most consistent word for it, I would say. But again, it changes all the time. So, everything's always in flux. But the non-resistance to the flux itself, the non-resistance to that fluctuation that's always here, um, becomes kind of euphoric,

Speaker A

ecstatic even. Okay. Yeah. Before I was 24, before that event happened, when I was 24 years old, it was I felt like I was stuck inside of my head and I was there was like thoughts and there was

Speaker A

an eye in there and it was always trying to figure itself out. It was always trying to figure out what to do, how to be better, how to be okay. It felt shame. Um, it felt defended.

Speaker A

It felt separate. And it was always trying to navigate what it perceived to be the external world and other people and so forth. It was very uncomfortable for me. Uh, after that, that was seen to be nothing but just a like a collection of thoughts. It, um, even though it felt like very

Speaker A

solid and it felt totally central to experience and it felt like a place I was stuck, that just completely opened up and there was no inside and outside in that way. There was no place that I was stuck. In fact, even the word I changed dramatically such that there was no central point

Speaker A

to reference back to that I would call I anymore. It was just like everything. It was kind of like saturated into all experience. So, all of the sounds and sensations and all of the aspects of consciousness, everything that you might consider to be the wider experience or the wider universe

Speaker A

was all experienced seeing itself now instead of me being a central character trying to experience it. Just to use an analogy, it's like an ice cube floating in the water and it just dissolved into the water. Okay, that whole central character thing was just gone and the whole environment

Speaker A

was experiencing itself and it still is. That didn't change. Just being what it is.

Speaker A

It's an endless, um, beginningless flux. Um, that's what's happening all the time. What is this place? You know, we're all here. Mhm. Having some unexplainable experience. Mhm. What, what is this? Well, the beauty of that question, that's actually a very good question. The question, what

Speaker A

is this? It may sound very basic to some people. It may sound simplistic or almost nonsensical, but it's actually a really good question because it's a very basic, simple, direct, uh, honest, vulnerable question. What is this? What is this experience I've been having? You know,

Speaker A

and for some people that experience is suffering. Um, it feels awkward or to use a Buddhist term, it feels like dukkha, which is unsatisfactoriness. So many people experience life as a kind of or through a kind of lens of, uh, impostor syndrome like I'm going through the motions. I'm doing

Speaker A

the things. I'm having relationships. I'm having, you know, I'm working on career. I'm doing all the things, health, but something underneath all of it just feels unsatisfying. I just would give you the information that you can get it answered for yourself. That's the beauty of this. That's the

Speaker A

beauty of what I point to. I can show you how, but I'm not going to tell you the answer. I can show you how you can arrive at it yourself in a very thorough, uh, instinctually clear, lived way is that

Speaker A

I mean it's just impossible to put words to so it's not really worth— it's a good, that's a good way of saying it, there's no good, there's nothing really to say about it well until there's a shift

Speaker A

in your own experience at the deepest level and I would say at the identity level. Words will always be unsatisfying. They'll just be unsatisfying. I could say all kinds of things about it,

Speaker A

but I'm, I'm, I'm sort of reading a menu to you and I'd rather just stick the food in your mouth or show you where the fork is and show you where the food is. Right? That's what I'm

Speaker A

that's what I do. Or I can, I can, I can use a, um, a pretty interesting, uh, clip I saw recently of Carl Jung and someone said to him, um, "When you were growing up, did you believe in God?" And he said,

Speaker A

"Oh, yes, yes, definitely believe in God growing up." And they said, "Do you believe in God now?" And he said, "Now," he said, "believe." It's hard to say. I know. I don't have to believe. I know.

Speaker A

I need, I don't need to believe. I know. So, it's something like that. What happens when we die? Um, nothing actually changes. We really misunderstand what death is. We impute the idea

Speaker A

of life and death onto natural energetics that are always in flux. So you could say everything is energy. Everything you see is energy. Everything you feel is energy. This is all energy. And

Speaker A

I don't mean that necessarily in a spiritual woo way. I mean it in like terms of physics.

Speaker A

Everything is energy. Or you could say it's forces or most accurately you could say it's fields, right? Quantum field theory says essentially everything is field. It's just interacting fields. That aligns with my experience very, very seamlessly actually. And from that standpoint,

Speaker A

the idea of birth and the idea of death and the idea of life and, um, destruction, reproduction, all these ideas really are imputed by the human onto experience. Experience is the human's interface with energy. But the energetic field, let's say, it's always in flux. It has

Speaker A

no beginning, end, it has no, um, demarcations in phases or stages. Those are all sort of human, um, conventions. So one way of saying this would be death and life are an inseparable union. And I

Speaker A

can point that out in the immediate experience in the immediate experience of appearance. Uh,

Speaker A

these appearances, these colors and forms and apparent forms, shapes and sounds and sensations,

Speaker A

which is the kaleidoscope of our experience right now, which the mind adds a whole bunch on t

Speaker A

Thoughts can be thoughts can appear just like anything can appear, but they're not very interesting and don't define much and they don't even fully form most of the time and they're a lot of time there aren't thoughts. So it's more like the textures of the senses that we would well

Speaker A

we call them the senses because it's almost like we're looking through sense portals. Mhm. But when the realization occurs there's no portals just those appearances that we call the senses like again sounds and sensation and forms and colors and all. They kind of just dance and experience

Speaker A

themselves. Okay. That's the experience. Yeah. And there's there's no one apart from it anymore. So no internal monologue. No. Yeah. Yeah. Was there was there before? Oh yeah. There's probably like multiple tracks running simultaneously. But there's some report like 40% of people don't

Speaker A

report having an internal monologue. Yeah. There's a couple categories. I think some people are so identified with the thoughts they don't realize that that's what that is. Right. So they they're they they will almost always identify that there there's thinking of some kind, there's belief,

Speaker A

but they don't hear it as such. So they're not able to like differentiate themsel from a thought.

Speaker A

Mhm. But for instance, if somebody is sitting in a room and stands up to walk into another room, they know what's on the other side of the door. If they didn't know what's on the other side of the door,

Speaker A

that that would mean no having no thoughts at all. Yeah. That So if you had no thoughts at all, you're you're awake. You have to be. Okay. Yeah. If you're conscious, right? Yeah. Yeah. And this shift, it didn't affect your ability to move through the world. I mean, you went to medical

Speaker A

school after. Yeah. It makes it easier actually in some sense that there there's another sense that it's a Yeah, I guess it's a it's a couple things. One is it makes it easier because your mind isn't clouded with a bunch of like random thoughts that don't do anything like doubt thoughts and

Speaker A

mind wandering about time and past and future. When that stuff isn't there and the mind is calm, presence just really starts to shine forth. you have more attention and energy available essentially is what I find. Yeah. The other side of it though is things that require a lot

Speaker A

of mental processing even though it doesn't require thought it requires a lot of mental activity. Um like memorization specifically or doing like long reading it you can do it or I was able to do it but it there's such a deep part of me that's like it'd be so easy not to do this

Speaker A

right now. I could just relax because when when there wasn't relaxation before, it was almost like I could use that leverage to make myself do things that were uncomfortable. But things like cognitive things that require a lot of cognitive processing that are somewhat uncomfortable,

Speaker A

now it's like, oh, I could just stop and feel deeply peaceful not doing anything at all. I have some rapid fire like statements here. Sure. Just to kind of get your quick reaction to. These are things that I've heard said. Earth is a school for our soul and we reincarnate until

Speaker A

we learn [music] our lessons. I mean, I don't know about that. That doesn't resonate with me necessarily. [music] It's a bit newagy. You need to raise your vibration to manifest [music] your desires. Nah, I vibe. Doesn't do anything for you. Your thoughts create your reality.

Speaker A

Well, they don't create reality, but they create your reality until you wake up from them. So, in the sense that like I was saying before, we have this experience of being in a world where I know what everything is. I know who I am, I know what that is, I know who you are. And it's this

Speaker A

kind of world of judgment and fractionation. From that standpoint, we are creating that world out of thought without realizing it, without realizing that the cost of doing that. When we wake up from that, we realize, oh, reality is not that. That was my version of reality seen through the the

Speaker A

veil of thought. Actual reality, you don't create this with thought. It's it's it's it's almost like flipped completely on its head. It's a cosmic joke, right? Like you can't create any of this.

Speaker A

this is here. It's already happening. And to some degree, that's why there's a challenge with people who have like a very strong sense of control at first waking up because they they don't want to see that they actually don't have that control that they think they do through thought. Yeah. But

Speaker A

the strange thing is thoughts aren't controlling anything anyway. They're just dissociating. Okay. In more complex ways. But when you wake up to what is, you see, of course, you're not in control of this this appearance. By the time you register, it's already in the past. It's already

Speaker A

Yeah. Right. Do you like the analogy of like a on a ship, a kid with the fake steering wheel, you know, standing there thinking he's maybe not thinking, but like imagining he's in control of the ship. I have a friend who's a Zen Buddhist, and he says, uh, you know, you think you're in the

Speaker A

driver's seat, and then when all is said and done, you realize you weren't in the driver's seat, you were in the trunk. Why is there something instead of nothing? Oh well, in in in the most direct experience, the experience of something and some and the experience of nothing are completely

Speaker A

interpenetrated. So there can't be something without nothing and there can't be nothing without something. And yet both can simultaneously exist in relation to one another. Okay. And and that's that's experience at a very deeply felt um place or in a very deeply felt place. It's

Speaker A

it's not conceptual. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So would you say just the concept of nothing proves there couldn't be like true nothing. Mhm. You know, are you well beyond even thinking about things? That's a that way. That's a good way of putting it. Even to say that there's obviously something. Well,

Speaker A

there's obviously appearance. Mhm. Right. But if we want to be really precise and we're getting like into the deep end of the pool right away, but if we want to be precise, what do you actually experience right now? What do you experience? You experience sound. You experience like voice. But

Speaker A

even without those labels, there's still sound and there's ambient sound and you experience forms and colors and shapes, shades, lines, and so forth. But even to label those requires thought, but if you actually look out and see what's really there, you don't see things necessarily. You impute

Speaker A

thingness onto what's being seen. So this is again deeper stage realization stuff, but at some point it becomes obvious. And even after awakening and after a lot of sort of shadow work people end up doing after awakening and deepening of their insights, people are almost universally surprised

Speaker A

when that final um illusion of form drops away. I mean in very real time they will just suddenly be like whoa there is literally nothing here. But that nothing isn't as you said earlier it's not a conceptual nothing. It's not something called nothing. It's not like a black space like

Speaker A

your mind. imagines it. It's so different than that. It's it's it's in a sense it's like a rich um it's it's a deeply uh um saturated experience of no thingness, no object, no because to have an object you have to have a subject and that subject object relationship also kind of falls apart here.

Speaker A

And so the sense of being a me apart from a whole world out there and other beings, other people, other mi that relationship itself is seen through. So it it stops functioning as I'm here, everything else is out there. Uh and what actually goes away with that is surprising. the the sense

Speaker A

of isolation really starts to dissolve with that because what is seen when that perceptual filter falls is that the sense of isolation, the sense of um always trying to move towards something else or find something or find the right person or find the right experience that has that relational

Speaker A

feel that always makes you feel separate. When that stops happening, it's like all of a sudden, oh, this sense of separation itself is actually an illusion. The sense of isolation is a thought actually. So when that drops away, there's a sense of immersion that's continuous. That sense of

Speaker A

immersion which is not technically something immersed into something else because that's dualistic. It's actually the immersion is primary. It's a it's a primary immersive experience. When that becomes your ongoing experience, it get becomes much easier to start seeing through

Speaker A

things in this in that sense. seeing through form itself. Yeah. So these things kind of fall like dominoes. They're sometimes called fedters, like in Buddhism, feder meaning a an like essentially an attachment or assumption that [snorts] turns out not to be true if you look closely enough

Speaker A

at it. So as as sci-fi as this might sound or as psychedelic as what I'm talking about might sound, this actually occurs. People will have these dominoes fall and these illusions disappear and you can actually live that way. Is there a god? Oh, another question that I that I I almost

Speaker A

always answer this question the same way because um I would never want to cheat anybody out of the experience of figuring it out for themselves. Okay, part of the problem is what you mean by God, what I mean by God, what anyone means when they say God is going to vary quite a bit really. Um

Speaker A

but God is a thought, God is an idea. Um God is an image in the mind of a certain person, maybe a masculine or feminine, depending on what religion you're coming from. those aspects of God, I can tell you right right away those are thoughts. But is there are those thoughts pointing to

Speaker A

something? That's the real question. And I would never cheat anybody out of finding the answer to that question. But again, these are imputing human qualities or human ideas onto another human idea of God. But but the again the question is does that point to something real? Is it like

Speaker A

archetypal? And that's what's interesting, right? Just like what we're talking about awakening or this possibility of transformation at the deepest level of our identity. Is that something I'm just talking about just a bunch of words, thoughts, ideas? Or is it archetypal in that it's actually

Speaker A

pointing to a possibility? And it turns out it's pointing to something very real because it happens for people and it happens to people frequently. [music] Suffering is necessary for the growth of the soul. Suff suffering is mostly necessary to wake up. And so if we want to call that the growth

Speaker A

of the soul, I would agree. Okay. Karma follows us between lives. I would say that's accurate. Yeah, it does seem accurate. Although when we think [music] in terms of a person moving from one lifetime to another in the in the usual way the mind would put it together. I [music] don't think

Speaker A

that's accurate. But there does seem to be karmic threads. And those karmic threads do affect you as you're perceive yourself right now. [music] Okay. Yeah. So why do and strangely the the karmic um glue is actually your self-perception that is the karma glue that's what makes that

Speaker A

karma stick sticky okay that cause and karma is just causality why would a feeling of suffering exist or like be allowed to exist that's kind of a common thing people ask yeah well the suffering um issue for me I can tell you like personally I grew up uh and spent the first 24 years of my

Speaker A

life with a good amount of suffering. But it was the type of suffering I'm talking about is this unsatisfactoriness, a sense that something's off, something's wrong. Uh when I was going through it, it felt horrible, felt miserable, like as you would imagine it would, right? From the standpoint

Speaker A

of thought, of course, that like who wants to feel like something's wrong with me all the time?

Speaker A

However, what it did was it turned my attention inward and it allowed me to inquire in the ways we're talking about into the nature of my own identity or the nature of truth, let's say.

Speaker A

But it was a very real and direct inquiry and it was fueled by that sense of unsatisfactoriness.

Speaker A

So even though it felt very uncomfortable, it led me into a process and what happened through that process and after that process led me to let's say where I'm at right now. And from this perspective, I see that was the best thing that ever happened to me. So, it's a really a matter of perspective.

Speaker A

From the standpoint of being identified with thought and and feeling small and separate and apart from everything, from that standpoint, it's horrible experientially. from the standpoint of realizing none of that was true and to put it bluntly because I don't have a good way to

Speaker A

talk about it in words but to realize like you are already everything that everything is just complete aliveness inseparable there aren't parts to it and it's always immediately here and it's uncaused and it's brilliant and deeply rich to realize that and to see it from

Speaker A

that standpoint that little nuclear bomb mom of dissatisfaction inside that little seeming small self wasn't the best thing that ever happened to it. Why do I feel like me constantly? I never feel like a a tree or a fence or or another person, you know, because of self-consciousness. Yeah,

Speaker A

self-consciousness is a is only a thought, but it's a tenacious thought. Okay. And you can break that spell. Okay. You'll be surprised when all of a sudden the feeling of you and the feeling of that tree, neither one feels more like you anymore. Okay, that that's that that's what

Speaker A

happens in non-dual realization. Okay, time is a prison. Yeah, I mean anybody, no matter what circumstances you you are in outwardly, you could be in very unfortunate circumstances, you could be in fortunate circumstances, but I think anyone who looks closely enough will agree that the the

Speaker A

feeling of being stuck in time is is fundamentally uncomfortable. Mhm. Like does it ever feel good to think, "Oh, I have so many things to do today and I only have so much time to do it." And you know,

Speaker A

like just having one thought like that and believing it is kind of confining. Makes things feel tight. It makes things feel like you don't have enough. Comes from a place of like lack. Whereas when you just let that mind relax and open up to what is in this moment,

Speaker A

it's brilliant. It's rich. Yeah. It's settled, but it's also responsive. Settled meaning it's uh relaxed. It's calm, but it's also responsive. It's not hesitating either. Reality doesn't hesitate. It just moves on its own valition spontaneously. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's one

Speaker A

thing to understand that and it can be freeing to understand it. That's a good pointer. But to live it is freedom. To live that constant flux without attaching to any part of the flux and having no separate sense that I'm like at the mercy of the whole thing. It's just like being it being that

Speaker A

flux without any particular destination or any particular source. It's always here right now. So, so then time falls away totally. The distinction I will make uh in terms of time for anyone listening is the word immortal means like in a span of time forever. But the world word eternal means

Speaker A

not subject to time at all. It's like outside of time. Means time essentially doesn't exist.

Speaker A

This experience is eternal. It's every time and no time at all. It's time. It's literally timeless. And that may again sound, I don't know, like far-fetched, but anyone watching this has had that experience for moments, at least brief moments. Often it comes in moments of

Speaker A

um strangely it can be moments of like sort of overwhelming joy like say the birth of of your child, seeing your child for the first time or holding a child or something like that.

Speaker A

But ironically it can also come in moments of uh tragedy. So losing a loved one and then feeling that frustration and you know your mind wants to make it other than it is but at some point it has to stop because it is how it is and there's a there's a relinquishing there. There's a release

Speaker A

there and there's a timelessness that comes with that. So it can come at any time so to speak timelessness or the breakthrough to timelessness can can come at any moment in life. But when it comes it's universally recognized as peaceful as a kind of freedom kind of release from that bondage

Speaker A

of thought. The bondage of thought of like who I am and where I'm going and what I have to do and the consequence of it. the consequences of it, how much responsibility I have, and all this. Like, it's so unnecessary. All that thought, Earth is a prison planet,

Speaker A

and we're [music] being prayed upon by archons who keep tricking us into reincarnating. I have no comment. No comment. But should people be fearful of that? No. No. No. That's just, you know, to the degree that you are feel fearful of any thought. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Thoughts. But it

Speaker A

shows you like right we can imagine all kinds of things in thoughts and then react to the thoughts and fear and push and pull on thoughts. What I'm talking about is waking up from all of that.

Speaker A

Waking up from that whole world of imagining this, imagining the problems, imagining the solutions, whether they're fantastical like that or they're mundane like the normal things we think about on a day-to-day basis, they're all different versions of the same thing. You can wake

Speaker A

up from all of that. Speaking of eternal life, one of my questions here is, is Jesus important?

Speaker A

Well, he talks about eternal life. Depends who you ask, right? Um I I consider to to me Jesus is again like an archetype. So I there are archetypes from different cultures, different religions. I consider archetypes awake beings or someone like Jesus an awake being. He existed in a

Speaker A

a time and place that was very unique to him and to Judaism and and all of it and has obviously tremendous historical value and importance and it shaped the last 2,000 years of of civilization, Western civilization actually in a lot of ways all of civilization. uh but the features of his life,

Speaker A

the features of what he said and what he pointed to uh were not that different than say things like Buddha pointed to or la or uh other awakened beings. So that's that's how I see it. Okay.

Speaker A

But it but it's of course clothed in the religion of the time. It's clothed in the language. It's clothed in storytelling and parables and all. So yeah. Do you think a lot of that's like just like redefining things like heaven and hell and and sin and um eternal life even you know because we

Speaker A

all if you grow up religious you have kind of the traditional conceptions of all those but those can be talking about a lot of the similar things to the awakened experience. Oh totally. Yeah. So to me like the symb symbolism of Christ is powerful from my own experience from this standpoint. Uh

Speaker A

many Christians wouldn't agree or maybe have never even heard this way of speaking about it, but res the resurrection to me is that is awakening. The resurrection is realization. That's that is every day of the week for me symbolic of the possibility of transformation at the deepest

Speaker A

level and resurrection from your own ashes. That's what that's what it symbolizes to me. So that's that's the crux of his his existence. Yeah. Yeah. And and I also like that what he talked about was very much, you know, from the Buddhist standpoint be like meta, which is compassion. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker A

That's service and compassion. Yeah. Yeah. So it really depends which motifs of his life you emphasize in in a way or what religion you kind of build around it. But I don't think he needed I don't think he would have even thought a religion needed to be built up around him based on this the

Speaker A

par the stories in in the gospels and so forth. Yeah. But so would you say it's like hell being a state of mind that is farthest or farther from being able to have this realization? Yeah, I mean pretty much. So sin would be like actions that put you that take you farther from being in

Speaker A

a place where you can enter into this realization. You know how would you say that? Sure. Sin to me is something like um knowingly going unconscious in in a given moment. I I don't feel uh I don't feel any moralistic aspect to that or moralistic tone to that. Um to me sin is not a moralistic

Speaker A

thing and it I think it actually translates to missing the mark something like that. So it's missing the mark of well what is it missing the mark of? It's missing the mark to me of your own spiritual u potential which is right now which is your ability to go deeper right now to see more

Speaker A

clearly right now to align with truth more fully right now to let go of your own delusion more right now that's the mark so in one sense we're all sinners yeah if you want to put it in some

Speaker A

some Christian terms because we can't be on the mark 100% of the time but we can make an effort And so to me, yeah, missing the mark is probably more significantly missing the mark like almost purposely going unconscious, you know, or distracting, dissociating, all these things. But

Speaker A

ultimately, even that is innocent. Uh we have the opportunity at every single moment to sort of retrain our our aim and point that arrow more toward the mark. Yeah. Yeah. And is there consequence to that? Or like why if everything's now and fine then like why? I don't know. I have

Speaker A

more questions along this line. Sure. But like if you can tell what I'm getting at just like why do those things that align you with the realization if if there's no reason to or like Yeah. Well, I'll make a distinction between sort of relative and absolute, right? absolute from the absolute

Speaker A

aspect everything really is fine. There's a deep okayness. This this comes with this first shift, this first awakening. There's a very very deep okayness that comes online that is unshakable and everything really is okay and and you feel it in your marrow. It's a it's a it's a very

Speaker A

um it's grace is what it is, but it's a it's a very deeply felt experience. Uh that's that's the absolute aspect. In the relative aspect, you don't lose the ability to discern something that's harmful to you versus something that is helpful to you in some way. Uh, but the relative

Speaker A

world is relative, right? Have you ever heard the the phrase to the lobsters in the kitchen, the sinking of the Titanic was a miracle. Okay, so it was horrible for the people, right? But the lobsters were free suddenly or whatever. So that that's just a pointing to the to the relative

Speaker A

world, right? And in the relative world, there are competing agendas all over the place. Yeah. So, we do our best to navigate that. Now, what I find is that without that absolute aspect, without that that orientation to truth in the relative world, what happens, I think, is we get more and more

Speaker A

unconscious. We have much more chance of harming ourselves and others. When we're unconscious, when we're thought identified, when we're living in that internal world of separation and me and me, me me, right? It's a self-centered way of experiencing. Uh once that self-centered spell

Speaker A

has broken and continues to integrate into the realization that is um that appears uh that selfishness starts to dissolve and we start to orient toward a kind of greater good um more toward a balance of that absolute realization, that absolute aspect and the relative aspect.

Speaker A

And with that balancing, we see that we stop being as harmful to ourselves and others. Mhm. But put in the right conditions and fear is the right condition, groups of people can act very very unconsciously and violently in in various ways. So the cost of mind identification is very real.

Speaker A

Yeah. Mhm. So as someone who's awakened, you know, people have had this experience, are they beyond ever entering back into that unconsciousness? The I would say after a first shift, there's certainly a lot of unconsciousness still going on. But what happens strangely, it's a it's a kind of poetic

Speaker A

justice in a way. What happens is because you're much more conscious when you do harmful things.

Speaker A

Let's say you do something harmful to another person. It may not be overtly harmful, but it's harmful in some way. You feel it as if you just did it to yourself. Okay? All of a sudden, it feels different. You start to really register like, "Oh, wow. That's what it feels like to

Speaker A

harm." Uh, and so it it sort of widens your view. It widens your scope of experience. Widens your sample size of what you're taking in. in regard to your own behavior. Yeah. And as that happens, you become more sensitive and more aware of how you're affecting everything around you. So the

Speaker A

the rebalancing isn't because you're patting yourself on the back going, "Oh, I'm a I'm a enlightened person now." It's because you have no choice because your body doesn't like pain. You must become childlike in order to enter [music] the kingdom of heaven. I totally agree. Again,

Speaker A

wonder. You know what is the entry point? Wonder, right? It's like uh I think I think the story behind that was Christ was talking to some people and a child was trying to come through the crowd like trying to peek in and the some of the elders were like kind of pushing the child back like no

Speaker A

no get out of here. We're talking to Jesus and he said no no let the child through. He said you're never going to enter the kingdom of heaven until you become like this child. that that's one story, but there there are a few times I think he mentioned that and including in the Thomas Gospel.

Speaker A

And that's very poignant and very accurate. And what it points to to me is innocence and wonder, right? Because an adult says, "Oh, well, of course I know there's a history and I know all this stuff about brain function and I know about, you know, whatever we think we know about." But that p that

Speaker A

adult has been so hypnotized through the lens of thoughts that they've never stopped or they haven't for many many years stopped to see what happens if I back out of that lens because I'm only using thoughts to know all that but the child might go huh these things are happening these

Speaker A

thoughts where are these thoughts coming from what is this you know who am I right the child has more like spaciousness in their experience of consciousness more ability to become curious in a different way um so yeah that kind of childlike is it allows you to kind of step backward and and

Speaker A

register your more primary experience. And I think that's hugely valuable. Does that kind of going along with like if you develop an identity that's tied to things um that's kind of the opposite of childlike where things you become sure of become your identity and it makes you less able to

Speaker A

question those or strip things away. Oh to return to a the state of just pure wonder which seems like should be constant. I mean, I I'm not in it much, but like just with a small step back again,

Speaker A

like just the wonder of of everything. So, yeah. Think of how when things really solidify in your mind about, oh, I know how this is. I'm sure I know how this is. I know how this person is. I

Speaker A

know how he is. I know how she is. Then we start judging before we even actually know anything about someone. We we pre presuppose things about groups of people, about the way everything is.

Speaker A

It becomes so solid, but it also becomes very heavy, right? It feels it feels so cumbersome and un unwieldy to have that and it becomes kind of arrogant at something. Yeah. So what that statement is pointing to is going all the way back in the other direction admitting that you actually

Speaker A

don't know. [music] Do all bodies have souls? H [snorts] how would you filter respond to that?

Speaker A

you know there there's a very interesting historical distinction um and it's it's kind of the fundamental distinction actually between Hinduism and Buddhism and it has a historical origin and in Buddhism the the distinguishing feature is something called anata which means

Speaker A

essentially no self or no soul whereas in Hinduism um the atman which is the personal soul with realization is seen to be the Brahman which is like the universal soul So there's there's an interesting distinction in the doctrine. Uh and I understand both sides of it actually.

Speaker A

I can see how both interpretations make sense. Um but I would probably lean more toward the theata side of things in that um nothing there's nothing continuous in my experience anymore at all. Okay.

Speaker A

Yeah. And that might sound strange like, well, Angelo, don't you just move through the day and move through your life and have continuity. I can speak in those terms and I can even recognize thoughts that seem to make that look that way. But in the direct experience, which is before thought,

Speaker A

it doesn't look like that at all. It actually looks like appearances appearing out of nowhere, like almost like a ca like a camera flashing. That's how reality is experienced. Okay. So from that standpoint there's nothing moving from moment to moment there's no there couldn't be a soul in

Speaker A

in the way in the way we think about a soul now right now there can be karmic residue too though there there is cause and effect strangely even though this is not happening in time causality seems to exist there there is conditions and conditions do affect um appearances that's

Speaker A

the best way I can explain that but it's not in time it's not temporal right is anything sacred Everything's sacred. Everything. Mhm. I guess I'm not sure how I would define that, but you know, that's that's kind of like is there a god in a way that question, but yeah. Well, yeah,

Speaker A

it's it's again words it's important in this whole entire conversation to understand that words are only as good as what they point to, right? So, if I say there's a skull sitting right there, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but I'm pointing to something that you and I would probably agree

Speaker A

that's a skull. But if I say consciousness where your attention goes and where my attention goes may be completely different. Yeah. It may not be but so when we talk we use words like um sacred we could be meaning so such different things. Right. Yeah. And and we could interpret

Speaker A

the same thing. We could be experiencing the same thing and interpret with totally different words.

Speaker A

But you may feel as sacredness. I may feel as energy for instance. Yeah. Just another symbolic layer. Exactly. What are animals? Are we different from animals? Are we special? It's a common question, you know, people would have. Yeah, it's interesting. I I don't feel like we're

Speaker A

special or like a higher state of consciousness. We do have a that we have something extra and that is self-consciousness that only certain animals have. But I think it turns into arrogance pretty quickly when we think that makes us better or special or more important or anything.

Speaker A

I actually see animals as very awake in a sense. Um, they're not knowingly awake because they're not knowingly self-aware, right? But they they have a they move very na they move in a very very simple and natural way that resonates with my own energetic experience, which is funny

Speaker A

because I never saw that before I woke up. I would never been aware of it, but now it's obvious. So there's something really a sense of harmony with the animals through their conscious um presence in the world and the way they move through the world. Echarolei said, "I've met many

Speaker A

Zen masters and they're all cats." Okay. Yeah. Because they're not thinking. I mean, is that way way to put it? Exactly. They're very aware, but they're not thinking. They're not conceptualizing.

Speaker A

They're present. Yeah. They're not somewhere else in their mind. They're not wandering off into past and future and wondering if they're a good dog or a bad dog or Yeah. I was listening to Paul Hterman a couple weeks ago and something stood out. He's like, "A golden retriever isn't thinking about

Speaker A

playing fetch next week or worrying about whether you know whe excited." Is science important? Yeah, but I'm not for this, not for awakening necessarily. All relative. I mean, yeah, I think so. I think it's I I preferred clear thinking in the relative world. um precision and you know um

Speaker A

not fooling yourself and so forth. [clears throat] One thing I I want to make a distinction about is I think some people will associate awakening or spirituality or whatever with a kind of woowoo mentality where kind of believe anything and there's not really discernment and relative

Speaker A

thought. I don't associate those two at all. Uh to me actually this process, this process of inquiry of looking inward and seeing what your direct experience of yourself is right now is kind of like the ultimate empiricism. Mhm. Because a thought is when you see that a thought is really

Speaker A

just something that comes and goes, but it's not the it's not you, then the the ultimate empirical act is to actually look at what you are. Then the only thing left to do is really become curious about what you actually are in this moment. Yeah. So to me that's like the ultimate empir empirical

Speaker A

act and science is of course empiricism. So to me the the act of self inquiry or the inquiry into the nature of truth in very real time if you're precise with it is actually pretty scientific in a sense. Yeah absolutely. On the other hand and this is an important one. Okay. understanding like

Speaker A

uh neurohysiology, understanding functional MRI studies about choice and consciousness and so forth. That can be deceptive if you want to wake up in that you you might think understanding that is going to wake you up. I don't see that happening. I've seen people wake

Speaker A

up all kinds of different ways, but they don't wake up through understanding brain function, understanding cognitive function from like a a scientific standpoint and so forth. So, so science is important, but it's like how do you use it? What do you use it for? Right? So, understanding,

Speaker A

gaining knowledge, gathering knowledge. Um, well, really it's not actually science, right? Knowledge is the result of science. Science is the act of investigating, right? Um, but yeah, just learning about say uh brain function, uh, consciousness and so forth. And also just learning about doctrine,

Speaker A

the historical doctrine in Buddhism and Hinduism, gathering information, gathering more and more and more knowledge is not actually what wakes people up. And that's very obvious to some people, but to other people that that sounds like heresy even like it's of course it is. Of course you just

Speaker A

read doctrine until you wake up. But that's not actually how this works. So I just want to be clear about that that understanding from a scientific perspective, understanding even from a doctrinal perspective aren't actually what leads to awakening, right? It's a much more personal

Speaker A

thing. It's just kind of all I mean do you like the map analogy like science is mapping what is or or what is perceived but it can't it's not effective. It it it's unable to step out of that because it's a result of being inside of that. Exactly. So, just on the the far reaches,

Speaker A

you know, it has kind of a ceiling. Um, I mean, it's interesting. I'm not saying it's useless study or knowledge or anything. It's it's all very Yeah. interesting. I think it's interesting, but it's not what woke me up and it's not what wakes people up. [music] I took Salvia and I experienced

Speaker A

being a tree for 100,000 years. What uh what do you think that is [music] in your perception? For sure. Yeah. Okay. Perception in the way I usually talk about it is a it's a deeper more fundamental layer of thought [music] more fundamental to the overlay that makes everything look

Speaker A

dimensional time and space and so forth. Okay. It's not so much a gross thought. It's a subtle thought. But it that's still just a distortion in perception. Okay. You know, would you say it's a thought or story? Yeah. What can you know about history right now? So any of these questions for

Speaker A

anyone listening like test it out yourself. Mhm. What can you know about history? Well, I know [clears throat] the, you know, Romans, you know, had this Roman Republic lasted 700 years and the Roman Empire lasted 650 whatever. Well, how do you know that right now? Mhm.

Speaker A

Thoughts. [clears throat] Someone taught you that, right? What do you know that's even more primary than a thought? That's that's right now, right? But history, all of it is thought. Your only access point to history is through thought. Yeah. I'm not discounting history in the relative sense,

Speaker A

but everything we talk about is experiential here. So, it's really a matter of like looking deeply into your experience right now and seeing what is a thought and what is not a thought. And when you see how much actually is thought and how all of those thoughts in some sense are just on

Speaker A

equal playing field, whether it's 2,000 years ago thought or whether it's a thought about what I'm going to do after this conversation or a thought about what I had for breakfast, [clears throat] seeing that those are like all just appearing right now. They're sort of equally true in in that

Speaker A

they are appearing right now. Yeah. And suddenly, oh well, what else is appearing? What what are they appearing in? What are those thoughts appearing in? There's only one place to look now.

Speaker A

And we're here. And this one place doesn't need a name. Doesn't need any particular um label. And it's not referencing anything in time. That's the key to seeing this. Every thought in some sense is referencing time. So a thought about 2,000 years ago is referencing time. A thought about

Speaker A

10 minutes ago is referencing time, but there's something here that's not referencing time. You could say it's what's aware of the thoughts perhaps, but again, it's not a thought that you want to use to confirm it. More curiosity to to saturate yourself into it. Yeah. Yeah. And with

Speaker A

with practice, by doing that, that's when this shift occurs. But how do you how do you find that transformation or how do you induce that transformation? Right? That's the question.

Speaker A

Wonder is a very good entry point because wonder is all around us and that can appear in all kinds of settings. It can appear in nature. It's very common for people like in nature, walking in nature and so forth. They they feel the wonder or expansiveness or something like that. Or we can

Speaker A

use a tool or we can use a practice like inquiry, self inquiry that is the idea is to lead you right into wonder essentially to lead you into the place where there's a kind of gap between thoughts.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. And wonder is the is the catalyst. When I ask you what do you really know? Well, you might think of thoughts about yourself like oh well I know I'm so and so person. I I have this

Speaker A

name and this age. But how do you really know that in this moment? Mhm. Well, there's a thought that tells you that. And then another thought says, "But I learned it a long time ago." It's like, "Well, that's another thought." But what do you really know right now? That's not thought,

Speaker A

right? Because let's say someone injected some false thought into your mind that said, "I'm a, you know, I'm the Queen of England or something, right? That's not accurate, but it is a thought." But the real question is, who or what is it that's aware of those thoughts in the first

Speaker A

place? And that's always right here. It's always right now. uh that that kind of inquiry leads you into again a sense of wonder but it also leads you beyond that hiccup of what do you really know based in thought. Mhm. Or maybe the question is is there something that's knowable without thought?

Speaker A

That that's how we enter that's how we enter this process almost always almost every time no matter how we do it the entry point is what is really knowable right now without using a thought to confirm it okay and that's available for that that way of inquiring is available to anybody

Speaker A

any age any anything yeah so with history would you say it's kind of like the outer space thing too are these things are these just extrapolations of what is now to make this environment make sense. Is that what how you would totally time and history are what the

Speaker A

mind requires to make this energetic field appear as something solid, something that makes sense, something that can be causally understood and that's it. It's just trying to make sense out of it. Yeah. Yeah. So kind of a traditional view is like well just the pure happen stance.

Speaker A

We're on a a miracle planet. The perfect distance from a star. But the other side of that is no all that exists because or like Yeah, I think that's really good what you're saying because yeah, what is h I mean I think your clarity on what is right here seems to be there. Okay.

Speaker A

Because you see that it's not that it's not that storyline. It's not that narrative. It's not that thinking about history and conceptualizing. So then does all that actually do anything?

Speaker A

Yeah. Is it necessary? Yeah. No, I mean, not really. Yeah. It's not certainly not necessary for this to be here, for this experience to be here. This primary experience of of livveness. Yeah. It's kind of fascinating when you see that. Yeah. I think I I can can

Speaker A

understand what can't be. Yeah. You know, in a way. So then maybe it's just a matter of furthering that into what what is then. Yeah. And just staying with what is long enough. Yeah.

Speaker A

Okay. Death will be like taking off a VR headset. I like that. Like that one. Mhm. Okay. [music] But like Well, the the point is you can take the headset off before you physically die cuz there is no point of death or Yeah. Yeah. I mean, wouldn't you rather take the headset out being wide awake

Speaker A

and before before the body physically dies away? Yeah. [music] I mean, I would say so. Yeah. You said awakening is like the most important thing to do in this life. Why would this experience of being trapped in a self even exist? Or how would you filter that question? You know,

Speaker A

why if that's not the point to like live out this experience feeling like a limited fearful being, you know, then why awaken to get out of that or like why push out of that? H you know I like that

Speaker A

um Carl Jung had this way of saying conscious human consciousness is at is at an unstable stage of evolution. We are as humans right now at an unstable stage of evolution of consciousness and we need to take the next step in that evolution. That registers again that's

Speaker A

a map. You can put any map on this, but that that registers as pretty accurate. If you kind of look at how we've sort of come up through like we're talking about animals, they are conscious but not quite self-conscious. As soon as we take that self-conscious step, we have the ability to become

Speaker A

internal and dissociate and doubt ourselves and on and on and on think and ruminate. So that's kind of uncomfortable. It's for some some for some people it's very uncomfortable. So the next stage of consciousness is waking up from that. Yeah. And that loop can actually kind of turn back

Speaker A

around is one way of saying it. Okay. That loop of becoming self-conscious kind of turns back around and it's just like open consciousness. Yeah. What do you make of the near-death experiencers? What what is that from your perspective? You know, they kind of all describe a similar thing. A

Speaker A

more like an eternal soul that maybe passes through lifetimes or just more so is having a temporary human experience now and like returns home to a state of bliss and and peace. Yeah.

Speaker A

What they're describing to me sounds very much like what consciousness feels like to me. So the experience of unbound or infinite consciousness when it's not bound by the illusion of a separate self feels exactly like that feels like light. It is experienced as light. It feels vast, oceanic,

Speaker A

deeply peaceful. Uh feels like home. So when people describe those experiences often what I register is is the experience of consciousness. Okay? And it makes sense because you know when your other body faculties and your mental faculties are shutting down that may be the

Speaker A

last thing that goes before you know before you're completely unconscious is just this openness of consciousness without ego boundaries. So uh so that's what I think it is and the again the good news is you can experience that without a near-death experience. Okay. You can you can wake

Speaker A

up to that and that's what we're talking about. So like the forms they describe and the stories they tell is is it just another form of thought? I think they're archetypal I think they're archetypal forms of consciousness. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cuz you know that that arena feels very like

Speaker A

comforting and inspiring you know like cuz it's almost like I'm me still you know and I just go to a better place or whatever. And then this more, I don't know, more pure, more fundamental non-dual understanding feels like terrifying in a in a way compared to that because I guess it's just

Speaker A

even further from the concept of the self or like what Yeah. what you can concept what what you can be okay with without experiencing it, you know? Yeah. This this process of realization that we haven't really talked about as such necessarily, but it it does come in stages for sure. And what I

Speaker A

generally find is people are ready for the stages as they play out and they also make more sense to try to understand it from an identified thought process to like imagine what it's like when there's pure consciousness. You might be able to have a sense of that. But it's like well then when

Speaker A

even consciousness is seen to be just a just a a function of of appearance like that's a hard thing to imagine. It's not imaginable so much. It's only experience experiencable or experiential.

Speaker A

So what I generally say and generally find is that people are ready for these stages as they unfold. Although there can be fear of course it can come up but it comes and goes. It's it's okay.

Speaker A

Um there's a nice analogy with the archetype of the magician or the um the jester archetype same being the same one that the gateway emotion to the magician archetype is fear which is also curiosity which is also wonder. Um so if you're experiencing fear it means there's transformation like that's

Speaker A

the magician's energy is transformation. There's a lot of transformation in your life it's going to correlate to fear sometimes and that's okay. So um yeah there there are going to be stages and shifts that can bring fear that can bring wonder that can bring very very profound sense of sacredness and

Speaker A

and these experiences will also come and go to some degree. But when all is said and done what is left is a sense of deep peace, deep okayess, freedom. Um and that doubt and the the cognitive fears and those things they just kind of dissipate go away. Okay. Yeah. and presence is always bright

Speaker A

and alive right here. What do you make of the life review reports? A lot of the near-death experiencers report where you experience your life or major life events or more so minor life events you didn't think of from the perspective of the people you impacted positively or negatively

Speaker A

and all that. It's like you experience it from all angles. Yeah. Again, when you have access to unbound consciousness, you have access to a whole lot. And it was kind of like what we're talking about before when we talked about um causing harm. When when you start to see more universally and

Speaker A

you experience consciousness more universally, if you do something harmful to another, you feel it yourself. It's that's the other side of that is you you you're starting to experience consciousness in a more expanded way. So, you can start to see it from other perspectives, right?

Speaker A

from other people's perspective and so forth because you're not so contracted that little container of ego what would you say to someone who says I had a life review it was God showing me my life so I could learn my lessons you know that seems like a traditional sentiment is that

Speaker A

just a way a way of categorizing I would just ask them what they want to do with that you know I don't impose anything on anybody like I don't tell anybody that they should wake up or need to makeup or anything like that. But if somebody wants to talk in terms of these kinds

Speaker A

of archetypal features or near-death experiences or any of it and they're talking to me about it, I'm always curious and I'll probe a little bit into like where do you want to go with that? How deeply do you want to go into that experience? Okay. Or how deeply do you want to follow that

Speaker A

insight? Because all of these things are like uh breadcrumbs. Yeah, they're all breadcrumbs. all these experiences, near-death experiences, experiences of expanded consciousness, archetypal, you know, things, even visitors or all of it. It these are these are just archetypal features in

Speaker A

consciousness that that that can be breadcrumbs that point you back to your true nature. So, I'm always curious at that point, how motivated are you to really investigate and go deep, go down the rabbit hole? The DMT experience, it's a little different, it seems, than other psychedelics in

Speaker A

that it's kind of this almost same space everyone describes. I mean I saw a video recent you know Brian Johnson the biohacker kind of studying he's doing he's kind of using his life as an experiment longevity I have heard of him yeah so he did he did 5met recently and he was on a podcast

Speaker A

talking about it and it's just really striking the way I kind of use him as an example because he's kind of the scientific guy and did this for the first time you're in the depths of existence like It's just the most majestic experience achievable by a human by by intelligent life. I just can't

Speaker A

imagine anything more miraculous. You you basically experience raw consciousness and raw intelligence. It's this. So whatever when I say these words, take these words that I commit to you. Take that idea, multiply it by a thousand and then move out infinite depth, infinite width,

Speaker A

width and depth and then dimensions. This experience sounds similar in a lot of ways to just the awakened experience. But what is that in relation? You know, is that just like a temporary glimpse at something real or Yeah, I think that's exactly what it is. I I did five MOD

Speaker A

DMT because I was curious about it. Okay. Yeah. And it didn't change anything at all. Okay. Yeah, it's an intense experience, but it didn't change this. Everything he described is is is realization. That's the shift you've Yeah, you can you can live it. You and not just, you know, take

Speaker A

get it for 5 minutes at a time. I actually thought it was hilarious because when it when the drug experience just dissipated and it's gone, it was like gone in 10 minutes. For me, it was completely absolutely gone. Yeah. Um, it was funny because I I remembered so many people saying like it took

Speaker A

months and months to like integrate what happened or it like was really destabilizing and all this and I thought it was didn't change anything. Yeah. I I thought that was kind of funny. So, it was just a more intense experience during it. It was a it was energetically intense experience.

Speaker A

Okay. Yeah. It's like being plugged into a light socket. But a lot of things do that to me. Like my body has powerful like I I very sensitive to energetics and I already have powerful energetics moving through it. So it's just a physically energetically powerful experience. But the

Speaker A

openness, the wonder, the non what he's describing is non-duality. He's describing no boundaries, boundlessness. Okay. And that clarity is always here. So that's the beauty of realization is you don't have to take anything for it. But it is it is that radical in a sense. Yeah. So I mean is

Speaker A

this a shortcut or like you won't necessarily have a permanent shift from taking you're not going to have a permanent shift from that. just like a temporary glimpse and you can kind of reference it like okay I remember that was crazy. So things like that are probably good for breakthrough. So

Speaker A

like you never had any sort of breakthrough or you have a very materialist mind or very identified with thought um to get you know you may hear me pointing over and over and over like I have in this interview to unbound consciousness or to to what is previous to thought. But if your mind

Speaker A

never quite registers that that's like a that's like getting leverage on your mind, right? like a strong dose of mushrooms or 5 m DMT or whatever. That's all it's doing. It's just like pulling the veil back and just showing you what's there enough that you can start to register that. But

Speaker A

you're still going to have to do the work to wake up and okay clarify all that. And and and this is important. We haven't talked about this at all. Strangely, when you do this, when you I should be

Speaker A

clear with anyone watching this, when you open yourself up to this degree of consciousness, to this degree of presence, anything that's suppressed inside of you, anything that's repressed, it's going to come to the surface. So, traumas will surface doing this. This there's no

Speaker A

like, oh, I want to pick that enlightenment path that has no trauma work in it, that has no shadow work in it. That is not a thing. Some people believe that. Not a good idea. So I would be

Speaker A

I would be um uh incomplete in my messaging if I didn't tell you the truth about that. So taking substances like that, that's why when people do, you know, psychedelics or they have shifts or they have deep openings uh and awakening, the repressed material comes up. It's going to and you have to

Speaker A

work through it and that's okay. There's ways to do it, but you should just be aware of that.

Speaker A

So taking something like 5 MOD DMT if you've never had any opening at all that's why some people say you know they have very very difficult experiences for like six to nine months afterward because all this repressed material is like coming up now it feels like resistance patterns it feels like doubt

Speaker A

and all these whatever shame all the things that that were repressed be due to mind identification they've been released up into consciousness so just be aware of that that's always part of this deal as well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's worth it, but it's it's some work to go through that stuff.

Speaker A

Yeah. So, it just might be kind of premature if you're if you take something like that and you're not if you have a lot of trauma, I would be very careful with something like that. Okay.

Speaker A

If you have like really significant childhood trauma that you haven't that you haven't worked through or dealt with, that I'd be I'd be careful. Yeah. Okay. I I'll just say this. I've met many people in this space who have um done a lot of IASKA DMT 5 MO DMT have served it themselves and

Speaker A

even come to the end of what it could do for them and then they come and we then we work on deeper realizations so it it typically runs its course at some point I mean it can definitely give openings

Speaker A

it can help with some shadow work and it's going to do a lot right but at some point it does I think run its course as far as realization is concerned and then you kind of got to do it dead

Speaker A

sober Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. So, if I were to describe this experience in the most direct way I could I could can, it's something like a kaleidoscope, but if you think of a kaleidoscope, it's like all the colors and various little shapes and they kind of look in this like funky

Speaker A

array. But this whole thing is the kaleidoscope. And all of the pieces inside that kaleidoscopic kaleidoscopic image that you would see, every little seeming piece that seems separate from all the other pieces is actually not separate from it. They're just like um co-arising with one another

Speaker A

al together. So every single piece, every single appearance, every single color, every single sound is co-arising and co- um existing so to speak with everything else in it. There's a there's a there's a um analogy to this in Hinduism called the net of Indra or net of gems where every gem is reflecting

Speaker A

the light of every other gem in the whole entire array. So if you imagine this whole this whole environment doing that all the time that that experience of complete immersion interpenetration of all appearances um and a kind of felt sense of everythingness in this that's probably the

Speaker A

best way I could describe it. Another analogy I sometimes will use, I think I used it in my book, is uh if you imagine walking down a hallway and it's a dark hallway, but there are lights all the way down the hallway and the lights only turn on in the portion of the hallway you're in. Okay?

Speaker A

Right? So you're walking and the lights come on just as you step into that portion and as you walk past it, they go out behind you. So if you were to watch it from a third person perspective, you'd see a body walking down the hallway and the lights are only lit up where the person is

Speaker A

walking. Now imagine there's no body. There's just lights flashing and that makes the appearance of motion. It makes the appearance of somebody. It makes the appearance of something propagating.

Speaker A

That's kind of also how this is. It's just appearing out of nothing. Like appearances, colors, forms, sensations, sounds appearing out of absolutely nothing. And and they but together they can kind of form this this appearance of something happening right here like a local event,

Speaker A

a local experience like in the hallway. Okay. that that's also sort of how this is. But I it's very very difficult to get words that are even close to this experience. Yeah. Your friend or the person who described the 5met that's another really good way to describe it because

Speaker A

it is wide openness boundless. [music] There's no form or texture that is apart from any other form or texture. So everything is interpenetrated. Uh it is deeply peaceful, clear, spontaneous, endlessly fluxing, has a has a a feeling of innocence to it

Speaker A

[music] and a deep settleness like it doesn't have to do anything. Nothing has to happen.

Speaker A

Everything is complete here. Everything is completely um it's like all energy is fully exhausted here into this moment. Dogen has a way of describing that as total exertion. Like the universe is totally exerting itself to create this right

Speaker A

now. Okay. And there's nothing outside of it. Is everything going to be okay? Everything already is okay. Everything's okay. Yeah. All right. Yep. I don't always have the right answers. I don't always have the right pointing. Try what works for you, but be honest with [music] what works.

Speaker A

Be honest with yourself about what works, right? Because some things aren't going to work for you, and some things are really going to work or really register for you. So, trust [music] your instinct. Trust your own orientation to truth, but don't compromise. That's the key.

Topics:awakeningexistenceconsciousnessself inquirytruthspiritualitynondualityBrian Krehbielenlightenmentlife and death

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Brian Krehbiel mean by 'waking up'?

Waking up refers to realizing the truth of existence beyond the separate self, experiencing life as an interconnected, endless flux, and living authentically in that truth.

How does Brian describe the experience of awakening?

He describes it as a calm, euphoric state where the sense of a central self dissolves, and all experience is seen as an interconnected whole without inside or outside.

Does awakening require belief or faith according to the video?

No, awakening does not require belief. Brian emphasizes direct knowing through deep inquiry rather than belief, highlighting that awakening is an experiential realization.

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