foreign [Laughter] class just came sliding down the bar and you have to grab it otherwise it's going to crash off the end right yeah um okay so we're we're kind of wrapping up this whole relationship series we've been working on I wrote the notes for this over the weekend and kind of uh a little bit of inspiration I'll try to explain a little bit about it we're gonna call like maybe the relationship denim episodes and that we had the culmination and now we're kind of like going into the the stretch run of the plot I had an episode I had a an email from a listener who kind of said hey congrats on these episodes uh and for her she was talking about the culmination being episode being the one not the last one but the one before but the whole idea that we were heading to this culmination point and she was like Hey great culmination on the whole thing uh and for me it was these last two ones you know especially the last one we did which was sort of the very personal part of my story with this so since we've done these culmination episodes we kind of now like the the end of the plot right the denim I have to say Daniel has a funny experience with this too because we were kind of talking about my my Trio of Buddhist goddess advisors oh yes and I got you I got unanimity among them they they became unanimous in a funny way because obviously I realized okay I'm talking about this stuff I'm being honest and I had one reluctant Buddhist goddess there's always one reluctant Buddhist goddess it's really you know well I had to I had to give a little I had to give it a try I had to give it the old Buddhist try but she flipped on me a little bit she was like okay fine uh to my way of feeling her and the reason why it was pretty interesting it was partially because she was like okay you're doing a good job these things probably should be said so she thought we're doing a good job okay that's good we could Pat ourselves on the fact that the top Focus goddesses agree with us but it really had to do with like to my mind not just presenting a criticism of other things but trying to present something more of like a positive worldview right and maybe a positive worldview that you know leaves space for people who have like alternative ways of thinking and that was positive rather than just going around and just like being critical of stuff you know what I mean and I thought okay that's cool and that's honestly the vibe I got from her so I said okay good you know that is kind of the intention right and that's my intention of trying to do this last one here as kind of the culmination on it um because I sort of felt like yeah let's try to get a positive vision of things you know rather than just ragging on other stuff you know and being critical of other things I know what do you think I think it's true right but I think positive Vision right yeah I think that's a that's a nice way of you know we're always talking about trashing the culture or whatever but really it is about I mean in order to to make room for something else you you have to kind of sometimes get rid of other things so in this way we're kind of clearing the field as to the aspects that we don't like and then providing things that we would feel would be a good replacement so yeah yeah you know I think I think that's a good that's a good way although I don't know that I mean I haven't really heard this from our listeners in particular that say oh you guys bash this or you guys bash that exclusively we try not to and I think that's the reason why she was okay with it yeah that she was more like okay you're presenting a positive view but we're you know but look we call balls and Strikes right as best as we can and I'm always trying to be you know anthropologic in my view of how does even if something is you know as we talked about you know a couple episodes ago even if something was negative or seeming to be negative like well it's it's it's endured so if it's here what are the positives that are coming out of it even if it seems to be mainly restrictive like it's here I mean why is it still here the fact that people are reframing in ways that might be more positive for them now from places that were more you know we can't even say exclusiveness in the way we've been doing it because we've been presenting that just as a different orientation yeah things that might be more specifically claimed is like you might claim there's more being negative yeah especially for women so but anyways I think the idea was like to try to present kind of a spiritual a spiritual vision and the questions now seem to be spiritual ones so I thought well let's go through and maybe take a peek at this see what the underlying maybe spiritual worldview that might inform this and in doing this I thought I'd share a story as we tried to do so this is a story going back I can't remember how much we talked about this afterwards but it was back in 2018-ish like you know pre-pandemic back in this window of time and I did a longer Buddhist Mantra Retreat of one of the practices which is really one of my main ones who does tantrics practice and it's pretty Saucy practice because I like Saucy things in my meditations and they came out of this practice after doing all my mantras so you know if you haven't done one of these things ever probably most people haven't but you know you can it's interesting to do them and you do hundreds of thousands of these mantras so I did this thing and I felt this incredible surge of sort of like sexual feelings that came up at that time like really strong and my advisor for this is our beloved llama Glenn Mullen right Glenn H Mullen and I talked with him about this and he was like yeah okay this can happen and he also said something like well sometimes when people have these experiences post Retreat or something it means that people are going to appear in your life that are important right important people for relationship purposes or important people in terms of Love or sexuality or whatever it is and I suppose that really was kind of true so that was my experience But as time went on I realized something kind of deep about myself which really came out of these episodes in the past probably weeks too which I kind of knew but it's good to clarify these things in words so I realized like well the deepest desire of my shed if I really look at it wasn't having to do with like sexuality I had to do with something else what it really had to do with was uh I realized that what my Shen really wanted and what really what it really wants is to find the people it loves and just to deeply deeply love them that's what it realized even more so than anything having to do with sex or anything like that like that was what it really was Desiring and in a certain sense it was you know kind of I'm gonna say it for my own Spirit but okay but you know it was sort of Desiring to like kind of go through the world and find the people that it really feels deep connection with and uh and again to love and really kind of in a way like whatever that ends up even meaning whether that's always sexual or not as we talked about before it doesn't have to be right um but that's kind of what it wants now some of that's with friendships like what we have but some of it's with you know uh I'm a CIS heterosexual male so someone says with the women in my life that I know but like it doesn't always have to be a sexual thing it can be just a very strong emotional intellectual connection like I realize that this is what I really want as much as anything and I thought that was a kind of a good way to start I think there's a theory of we do you know the five Aggregates we've done episodes on this before and one of them has to do with like maybe what you might say is the deeper undercurrence of someone's life whether they really run through them real quick just mention you can go form the physical form of a person their kind of emotions and feelings they're patterns of thought three four is the one I'm trying to get to which is this sort of what they sometimes call compositional factors or something like that but the idea that it's kind of when it's talked about in the Tibetan Book of the Dead maybe the idea of like what are the underlying deep impulses that the person has like if you really want to be a mother that's a deep impulse right I think we use some like archetypes in this in this one I suppose you could yeah we could talk about it that way yeah I know I felt it really strongly not the retreat over this past break but the one before I really felt like I understood this and it's associated with um you know each one is associated with a kind of a one of the elements so forms with the Earth element feeling is with the water element fire is the court of intellectual conceptual categories and then what they call wind or Prana or energy that's this one maybe the deeper drives and um you know when they talk about like the end of a person's life you know as the Things Fall Away this is the part of like these were my deeper goals in this life you know I mean and uh I think that's an interesting way to frame that because I thought I'm like okay this is like probably the deeper goal as much as anything I came out in a certain sense thinking well maybe this has to do with sexuality and I did have those feelings but in the end what I really went deeper in myself when I kind of looked at it and you know the experiences they had like no that's not exactly what I want what I want is this connection and bond you know Eric what's that so that's the that's the five I did I did I did the one for wind the last one they have is just Consciousness and space or kind of like space and consciousness this is even pre-urge or pre-archetype yeah I guess they'll go and they'll say when they do the Consciousness again I'm talking about a certain style of doing this but when they do the Consciousness thing they say that this is all the fundamental templates of the mind so this might be archetypal because we're going to talk about young this might be where the archetypes lie okay you know but they have a list we haven't done it it probably is something we should do at some point but they have the fundamental Yin Minds the fundamental Yang minds and the fundamental sort of like before yin and yang even separate Minds there's like three years of this [...] yeah there's 80 of them so I don't think we talked about them you know I mean not in deep not but we have talked about it before yeah the idea of it yeah so I don't know it was like sort of like so I wanted to pose this again since we're talking about what an underlying spiritual vision might be for each of us for ourselves this is kind of a deep thing for me and I clarified it even in the last few weeks talking with people about these episodes and so I was like I think it's kind of an interesting spiritual question like what is the deepest drives like this for you know anyone who's listening to this or for you and me when you really go and try to figure out what this is now we've talked about this before I think you've said things like creativity you mentioned other things before but for me I sort of found like okay yeah this is something that really drives me this is a throwback to an episode we did really early on I think they were called like what are your three oh we did that back in the day yeah like way way uh as we're talking I'm gonna look I'll look for it you know um well if you're looking like yeah if you're looking I can tell the story of the monk in the house which I don't know if we did yeah so this we we put this episode out on July 4th uh sorry July 14th of 2020 uh called uh what are your three rescripting your life and talking about Tantra being uh inclusive of our beliefs and moving past dogmatic views uh find your your Trinity what are the three aspects of your life that have the most meaning to you uh and then how do we make how do we how do how do we live them you know in such a way that we feel as if these have at they're aspirational for us question of how do you even discover them like I got I got an email from a listener about this too like how do you discover these things it's a good question she didn't talk about that exactly but and so I guess I'm sharing like an experience of my discovering this because I really thought it was one thing and then when I went deeper I realized oh no it's another thing which is fine you know you learn something about yourself that's what I really want and when I looked back it like was relatively transparent for me I had all these feelings that were sort of the the sexual feelings that came out of the retreat but it was really more rooted in something different and I guess what I would think of as being something deeper as far as these deep house these deep uh drives there is like an anecdote about this which I guess I can share which I don't know whoever did Daniel so there's this one about like this Monk and um his uh teacher right and this monk is like meditating meditating he's not getting enlightened not getting enlightened eventually his teacher's like okay we're gonna go on the pilgrimage so they're going in the pilgrimage they're traveling they say well we're gonna go take a long walk that's right yeah yeah we got off a short pier but okay we're gonna take a long walk so they're walking they're going their pilgrimage through woods and Hills and Dales and eventually up a mountain and the Monk Is you know following the teacher going like what are we doing like where is this going and they finally get to uh like in the mountain setting like kind of like a nice kind of lake and a like a clearing maybe a field in the a field up in the you know the mountains where that can sometimes be that way by the lake or something there's a little something like that up there and there's a house there and the teacher goes uh okay here we are the monk is like well what's the point of this and he says here there's a house for you you've been dying for a house your whole life there's your house now get enlightened already and the monk goes bang and all of a sudden he has this experience then right and the kind of the point of the story is something like okay you can have these deeper longings and sometimes they're there inside you until you sort of realize what they are and come to terms with them they could be almost like something that you haven't come to terms with yet and they kind of maybe even hold you back or something like that but it's good to know these things that was I guess the first question I wanted to pose to people who might be listening to this to kind of maybe think about that question if you had to really boil it down what are the things that you really want to do and I guess this is something that I know that I really want to do as much as anything in the world I want to make these connections and it does expand out to like the other people I love like you Daniel or my son or you know other members of my family and so on right that's what I want to do so um another big thing do you have anything you want to say about that how do you think about that like when you think about I don't know if you have to have an answer but when you think about what you really really want what kind of comes to mind with that for you so I you know I've definitely I've thought about this kind of like saying what's the house in the Hills or something like that right yeah no and so I I actually I wrote this down in my notes but I want to do an episode on that like tips or tools for finding your inspiration you know because I think we're talking about it now and maybe you know the answer to that question is always life is always the answer to that but like I think there's probably something we could maybe come up for people with people to just start that conversation but we'll we'll shout that for now I got that written down um because ultimately I'd also I'd like to even talk about it in general but I I think I mean outside of of getting the most joy out of helping people you know and changing their lives changing their minds really you know like that kind of bodhisattvic motivation I thought that kind of thing too obviously yeah like that's the biggest that's the biggest motivator right and there's a kind of a joy in that too right there's a huge joy in it you know and then and then on top of that or or next to that I think some of this is like getting clear and then asserting your will you know into life and I will say anytime I've tried to do that it hasn't gone well so I don't know what I'm saying yeah I know I don't I don't do it so I it's not that I'm willy-nilly and I'm just like whatever oh I should pay some bills once in a while oh I guess I'll eat maybe who knows I'll lay here food will fall in my mouth no I'm not I'm not that you're not a passive person no no I'm very active and I'm and I'm and I'm setting up events and I'm running Retreats and I'm doing okay all these things but in terms of like a larger life thing I I haven't gone that deep because I no I don't know you know there's an inner reluctance to go like okay this is what I really want because those things may not happen or something too right yeah I'm sure yeah I mean fear of failure and fear of success are two sides of the same coin or maybe even like if I'm honest with myself and I look at this with you all my own things that I'm doing here like sometimes [...] just is like eh it doesn't quite work out but the point I wanted to make in the end was something like I just feel like and we can talk about this the episode goes forward but I just feel like okay at least you've made your statement sure no you said okay this is what I actually believe which I suppose you know I wrote this thing over the weekend we live in Chicago so the local Chicago football team the Chicago Bears are getting their asses kicked every single way I started writing before they started and I kind of put it on the background just and it's like a little and I kind of turned it off but it was one of these things where I was like okay I want to say and this has been the big thing for me for these like let's say like three episodes this big maybe the culminations like okay at least I want to present the vision that I feel like I've come up for myself and maybe that makes people feel like okay you know I don't got this dude's Vision he has his own Vision but everybody has their own Vision to be a thing of like talking about like just talking about what it means to try to create something like that yeah that experience okay so another big factor to me goes back to like my teen years this is like we talked about this I think in our original TMI episodes talking about flashbacks yeah but somewhere around the age so we had this episode called too much information where Daniel and I talked about ourselves yeah that's right we did that was it suppose that we would do every other [...] time yeah other than that but in any case um I was around I think it really hit around 13 years old which would be like eighth grade for me and I had this realization I just looked around at the adults around me I was like oh my God they're really unhappy um and it like struck me really deeply and I think I had conversations with adults and they were just like didn't know what to say because when you eventually say to them well I'm looking around and the adults are really unhappy and uh this makes me extremely nervous for my own prospects and they were like I think you know people could see I was upset but no one knew it wasn't when I finally talked with some people about it I remember talking with the school teacher about this I talk about in the TMI episode but she was like huh like she didn't expect it as the quest the thing that was bothering me it was a little bit more existential and she probably didn't have an answer yep I would have said there were trouble at home and there was or other things I think she would have an answer you know I mean I gave an answer that was like a lot bigger because that was the thing that was really bothering me it wasn't just that yeah the people I saw were unhappy I could you know I could get beyond my own family you know and see other people but it just was sort of a general impression I was thinking about George Saunders or the writer who grew up on the same street as me and I probably feel like I probably owe him an email or something like that I'd like to talk with him but he described it as like lives of either quiet desperation or manic happy drinking and one of the letters he wrote me and it just seemed like okay these adults aren't happy so this is a serious problem you know and it struck me as like the the the the the bigness of it hit me you know something happened I was like oh this is a serious problem because I can't go through life like being an unhappy person no I can't there has to be some other vision different so so that was the feeling of it um I have in the notes here a little bit about my son my son did something really funny in the past week and he might be a little upset that I'm going to share this moment do it anyways because he didn't want to do math he hates math like he really hates it and it put him into this despair so we're at the cafe and he was just um so upset that he had to do this math and he started asking these really deep questions like well wait a minute why do people have to do things they don't like in life what's the point of that you know and how often do adults spend time and do people in life span doing things that they don't like all the time so they're gonna be unhappy and that's wrong and he was really upset about it you know what I mean and he was really existentially kind of profound it would be like we were at the cafe but it would have been like we were like in Paris and he had like a beret and like smoking like French cigarettes like some kind of like Albert Camus you know drinking his absent or something he was like really like and it was funny because it was so true and he was really [...] clever because he turned the [...] around him he said were you always talking about like you can't do what society says but like look at this you know they making me do math because society says I have to do math what about that I was like I don't know what to say back but I had to say like yeah you're gonna spend the time doing things you don't want to do you know everyone has to do that but he was asking the question you know and it was inspired by his hatred of math which we worked on over the weekend he was fine with it but anyways it was sort of a profound period in uh my young life and the problem was he's not wrong and I wasn't wrong unfortunately because I don't know we have listeners who listen in other places besides America but America is like an unhappy place like it legitimately is I was talking to someone who was reading this book about happiness in different cultures around the world and um I still have the intention of doing like little book reviews so if I do read it I'll do the little book review for rgnt audience I got other ones to do first but and uh there's some statistic about Americans rankings of happiness and America apparently often comes in like number 50 in the world but there's like seven million countries so 50 is pretty good that's not so good okay I know like the top it ever comes in is 20. you know like so it does pretty bad and the number of countries that are doing better is really uh shocking so I was like okay and you know I don't want to dwell on this as much because we're presenting a positive Vision but there's also part of it just like there's lots of antidepressant use I got the statistics recently from Justin key our lawyer friend and my personal friend and you know a friend of the show and the United States is number one in the use of antidepressants now and we have a substance abuse problem and we have sub-harm and we have you know even suicide so if it's it was it's serious you know and I don't know somehow this clicked in my 13 year old mind so okay that's the harsh part of it you know like you're saying sometimes you have to acknowledge the things that are the harsh Parts but what I can say is and that guy I'm interested in your experience of this too Daniel obviously but for me it created this desire to discover or invent a way of life I felt like I needed to do that and it rolled through like kind of the entirety of my I guess I would say my personality because even when I thought about being a parent I had this deep thought of like well if I can't discover a way to live a happy adult life what business do I have trying to be a parent because I'll have nothing to pass on right you know and the kids might not agree with me they can do whatever they want but at least you have to be able to present a vision sure of what it's like if you're just in some desperate survivalism mode like what kind of parenting is that like that just seemed all wrong to me does that make sense what I'm trying to say there too yeah you're not offering something so I saw it as like a really kind of deep problem this was my own experience of this I know how is it for you what do you think I mean if we're talking about you know existent you know early age existential ideas or existential anxieties if you will I could say that my very first lucid dream probably came when I was like maybe 18 19 something like this and um I was I dreamed it I was in in the house that I kind of was raised in my grandmother's house which is on like the I don't know in Chicago somewhere I don't remember the main streets off time anyways I'm walking through the house and um this being began following me through the house and I'm trying to run and the dream it's hard to run but he's phasing through the walls and was you know basically reach through the front door to grab me as I'm trying to run towards the street and pulled me through the door back into the house and as he stared at me um the the Flesh on his face was sort of phasing in and phasing out and he was wearing I will never forget it he was wearing a yellow raincoat with the yellow hat and the yellow boots like Curious George or like uh that kid who gets his arm chopped off and in it or something sure yeah yeah yeah yeah and but his face was like again the skeleton with just skin that was kind of there and then would fade away and scare there and then fade away and it was sort of scary except his eyes were like the Milky Way in each of his eyes and I just stared at them you know as like death or something yeah I mean it was kind of funny the whole Cosmos or something right you know and I and I said um immediately I recognized like a deep sense of divinity because there was so much I couldn't move I was frozen because of the power that was being had and I said um I just love life so much I don't what how do I I have so many questions I have I don't know what to say I just there's so many things I don't have enough time and uh he said keep asking questions all will be answered in due time and this was the first time that AI had that profound of a dream but that the dream made me aware of my awareness of the finite nature of our time here and then prior going into the military again because I just served a couple years before I before I started before I got deployed to Iraq I came was home and and I just had been aware that like okay I'm finished with high school a couple years last couple years of my life are like in memory now you know all these experiences training and all these different friendships and difficult moments and high moments and whatever you know um are gone and the the prospect of going to medical school and residency and fellowships and whatever else was like man I want to be so damn old by the time I'm done like I'll be tired I won't even be able to live like what the hell is the point of all that [...] you know so that was when I think I just I I need I want I don't know some the beginnings of my awareness of that started long before I did any meditation any Buddhist anything you know and no seeds are those were seeds for sure you know it's kind of like you know like even for me at like 13 like whatever I was thinking it was about Duca right like the problem of like suffering in life and how would you do about it and so on but I think that's true I think these seeds are there you know you can trace them back to yeah before you ever heard anything about any of this stuff right yeah yeah yep and those seeds then they grow and they influence you know maybe not always on a conscious level you know because I think we before we you know at least for me before your mind stabilizes when you have a meditative practice a daily meditative practice um things will come up and then go away Cycles will happen Cycles are coming kind of forget the things that you knew you're like I know this thing and then it yeah disappears on it just disappears but when yeah like there's a mental training to hold on to that somehow yeah yeah and that's that's it is when you have that training or you're working you're working at it we're always working at it it's there whatever you bring this you're bringing it with you're bringing your things with you you know every day refining refining refining refining and that and then those things start to the flowers become you know a little bit more crystalline a little bit more clear a little bit more open as you as you uh you know as your practice develops right the only thing that strikes me by it which is the next thing I had down here is I guess well transition as you're going to it but it's really the continuation of the same thing is when you had this being and you were looking into the eyes and the whole Cosmos was sort of there staring back at you and you had all these questions you know would hit me over the weekend as I was writing this was that I didn't I had this sense there was a meaning of things though like I didn't think that things were pointless somehow I I think if I would have thought it was pointless my response even at 13 would have been different yeah I felt like no I was really sure there was a point yeah in the meaning now you know why you feel that way it's kind of hard to say but I did feel that way I was very sure there was a purpose in life and then somehow it was discoverable like I just felt that that was true you know so I just wanted to say that to listeners too and you have as well but that's something worthwhile just thinking about what you think about this question and I know for me I really felt it like no then it means that you can go on those questions and what you're talking about because I thought there was possible answers right I'm remembering now and I was in undergrad I had an idea for a book and the idea for the book is this I would I wanted to interview like major people from different Industries religious leaders and whatever it's people who have of note and asked in the same question what is the purpose of life but actually that question is never answered because everyone's purpose for their own life is a little bit different and now as we're sitting here and talking about that I've resolved that issue for the previous book because now I'm I'm like it just I haven't thought about it but like you know if you ask that question to enough people you might get a nihilistic view at some point you know I mean it's a big question because we'll talk about World Views as we go forward at least what's happening in American culture it's interesting but if you but like to your point about you know these sort of existential thoughts the existential seeds uh you know will say uh pre-adulthood existential seeds of awareness right that is like uh I don't know it's I'm losing it it's weird for me because like in my whole life I never lost this sense I still think there's purpose and meaning and that it's discoverable yeah and I feel like I made discoveries along the way I'm like okay I feel like I discovered part of this you know whatever percentage of it you know who knows but like I really feel like that's true and it melts to the idea like that I also felt there was meaning in things meaning that like the different parts of life had their purposes and now we're talking about things like love and relationship and sexuality and so on so I thought like no there really is a purpose in this this is supposed to not just be like you know some Rando part of your life but this is part of a bigger sense of like what things mean and how they work so I really had this feeling yeah it's a very particular feeling it's like no yeah things have a meaning and the meanings are discoverable and even the little different like subplots of life or the little sub pump the sub purposes of Life they're part of a bigger meaning too they fit into a bigger sort of collage of meaning everyone say or they're part of like uh like you know they're here for reasons right right yeah there's something you know which again is like I'll throw it out to listeners you can see what you think for yourself but I definitely had this sense and I still do you know deep inside even when things turn out shitty and kind of semi-lame I still feel this way you know um now I don't know Daniel for you but for me I felt like in part it came from what I would almost say would be like the ground of being I thought there was some ground or source of of things you know and parte felt this way and so this sense of meaning was like came from like I know God or Dao or the The Source or the ground of being or whatever was that and I also decided that something like this ultimately kind of existed whether your personified as God or whether you think of it as unpersonified as like a Dao or just a source or a ground of being if you're being more Buddhist but I felt like no it was it exists it's Blissful and benevolent and so the different features that are there in life I guess emanating out of this Source if that makes any sense was going to have meaning too like I thought there was a way in which things wouldn't be meaningless because it's coming out of this source and these things are there for a reason does it make sense what I'm trying to describe there too yeah yeah so I felt this way I was just like yeah this seems very clear to me now I don't expect other people to feel the same way but you know since we're just sharing right to hopefully get wheels turning for other folks too I definitely felt this you know and probably still do right so I felt like there were purposes from that and I also felt like it probably came from like Enlightenment too the idea that like all the different parts of life were all building towards an Enlightenment uh you know llama Glenn are going to H Mullen uh beloved llama Glenn says something like you know what Buddha should understand all parts of life and how they all lead and contribute to enlightenment whether that's like sexuality or work or love or parenting or whatever it is those are all features that are part of what's building to Enlightenment if you can kind of tap into the the power of the seeds within them that will give you the chance to do this so you know I was thinking about this so I know I had this thing we talked about in previous episodes I wanted to go to Japan I thought I would go to Japan teach English and then I would like find some Zen people and study Zen I had that idea going on in my head but even when it didn't work out it was okay because I thought well I would have could maybe I would have gone and become a Zen monk or something like that I realized no I want to figure out what it means to live in this world going through the experiences of this world having relationships having love sexuality all these things you probably wouldn't have as much as if you were a monk or something like that I'd be like no this is fine because I want to know what these things are because I believe that it was like a purpose in them and they had meaning and you know they meant something you know and they all fit somehow into the story of how people can become Enlightenment become enlightened I thought they like had a purpose and a meaning and so that extended everything I mean even to something like Parenthood which I happen to resist like a real [...] I had no interest in that but you know uh it had a meaning you know in the minute my daughter popped out and then my son I was like nope this is this is obviously all part of a story of learning how to like uh become enlightened all these things have meaning I just felt that way and how is that for you I mean obviously you feel something similar I guess right I mean this is to me we've been talking we've been saying this for a hot minute right like eventually you have to take your life as the guru yeah yeah that's true you know and so all of all of the you know not to be reductionistic but that's what's in my head like you're saying all these things I'm like yep that's right that's yeah that's eventually you have to do that and everybody's teach you know I think people have a kinship with a teacher because they feel like that teacher in particular gets them yeah yeah that's right they have a vision of things that resonate with you with you like so it doesn't in that sense matter even like how great the teacher is it could be the badass teacher in the world but if it doesn't resonate with you it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you want to know that your teacher gets it you know or you feel like they have they got it they got a grip on reality they have things to share yeah yeah yeah and they have a vision and a go you know whatever and they have a practice or you believe in whatever they're doing right yeah whatever this quote unquote teacher spiritual teacher or you know I use my own personal experience as you can see here piano teacher you know that they're good at what they're doing right uh but that they but they get you you know and they see your strengths they see your weaknesses and they can you know they could take you on a pilgrimage and say Here's the damn house right and and in this way your Our Lives are the best at that because even though we live parallel to each other we're you know you're an acupuncturist I'm an acupuncturist you teach I do some teaching you have some patience I have some patience you have some Partners I have some Partners okay fine right we got all these different things and yet our experiences are so vastly different I mean just you know people who are listening to this if you sleep next to somebody or you know you have a partner or you have a kid or something at the house you could be right next to somebody literally even touching them your dreams will be totally different almost every night completely different one person's having a nightmare the other person's like well I'm having a good time this is amazing you know what I'm saying like it's just so vastly different but it's so unique to our own experience and and you know really allowing yourself to and this is easy to be said when things are going well but taking your life as like the thing that's teaching you over and over and over again every day every day and all the experiences that come up and then when you can take that and go yes even if there's resistance right I don't want kids I don't want oh [...] I'm having one now okay you know and then what I wanted to have on my I I like uh I went okay I'm gonna do this and I went in with like okay I'm gonna do it yeah and then it came and you're like oh I don't even know what this would be like without that now but the thing that's so funny to me is I really look at this that there was an underlying Faith there was a real sense of like there's some purpose in this [...] this is not just some Rando nothing random series of events without I didn't feel that way at all I felt like no there's real meaning and all these things have a secret meeting to them that somehow discoverable or creatable or something I really felt like that was the case which is and then like in terms of teachers I wanted people who presented the vision that I could resonate with this is partly why I'm hesitant to assert my own will in the in a grander life larger thing because I'm like well you know and then you get what you right be careful what you wish for you just might get it and then this sort of it sort of removes that the mystery of what it is and there are just certain points at least for myself when I know that I am not depressed you know I am not to be pushing on things I'm just supposed to chill out and wait and wait and oh there was the answer I just needed to wait you know I like this feeling of like again we this is what we don't disagree but I like this feeling of creating and discovering too let's say okay what is the underlying meaning of course part of the same experience so you know for me these episodes have been kind of an attempt ultimately present sort of a personal vision of a kind of Life which you know it's what I feel like I've been trying to create acknowledging that this may be very different for other people and then what we've been talking about in a certain sense you were all creating our own like stages at the path there's this lamrim thing yeah they've often thought you know I studied the llama with these Tibetan Buddhist teachers and I've internalized it and I can run through it in my mind every day but they started like editing it to put in my own stuff you know and part of it was things like okay what do I think love means how does that fit into my LOB room and Eric is my spiritual story just for for context purposes lamrim for people yeah we talked about kind of like they call it stages of the path yeah it's sort of like a listing of sort of the steps realizations that you go through you know a series of meditation and contemplations and things that but they're kind of built like a structure what kind of a they call a gradual path and you work on different things but it has all sort of I guess you'd say all the ideas of tantric Buddhism are in this thing so when you learn it at least on that level according to like tantric School of The Dalai Lama's for sure right llama Glenn who's studying that school you internalize this and it becomes part of you right yeah so you get taught it and you memorize all these ideas and you contemplate them and you meditate on them and so on and they built up kind of like a process of how a person progresses but the weird thing I realized was like yeah I need to put other things in this alarm room to make it personal and part of it was like well what do I think relationship means what do I think love means so I started like editing that I started editing in the locker room not just listening to white Galaxy Grandpa Jay said or llama Glenn or the Dalai Lama or whoever I was like okay I'm putting sub Clause this into this long room and it this is Eric's labrin which I think back we're all going to do something like this it's good to learn things in this structured way so you know but it was also like I want to do sort of my own version of this and especially obviously included for me because part of I realized deep in myself as I wanted to love and I want to understand what a relationship was and all that um that that had to be part of this right but we'll all do our own thing with this so um it's interesting thing to think about so hopefully this makes sense to people mean something right because that's sort of like how do you create this vision okay so my first point was and yeah I'm interesting for you I think we agree in this but I realized like Enlightenment was sort of the goal of life I decided like that's a thing right we talked about that in a few episodes I thought well this is what I'm going to do with this now I wanted to bring back Carl Jung in this a little bit because you know he was sort of a starting point for this episode and I kind of went over the weekend I was like what did he feel about these things too so maybe we'll have a little conversation with young as well and he was like yeah he seems to have come to the exact same conclusions he definitely thought okay there's this thing Enlightenment and he was trying to discover what that is too um and he seemed to have realized that I look back through you know the biographies of him and he talks about this being in India at one of the great stupas which are these sort of like Buddhist um statue statuettes right Temple things that like are supposed to like house the relics of a a Buddhist enlightened person or the Buddha yeah personally or something so this one in this place called Sanji I guess in India this is associated with the Buddhist King Ashoka going all the way back to the sensory BC so Jung is there and he has this realization about Buddhism and he obviously gets something about Enlightenment anyways you know doing the research Ron young for these episodes and other things around this he says in his Memoirs he starts my life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious that's his first line right so he wants to understand like his own inner world or something right the realization of all these things and of course he invents or discovers this Massive Internal world right A Massive Internal world that's as big as the external World an internal universe that's just as expansive as the external Universe right like looking into the eyes of the figure saying and you see the whole Cosmos there right um and he also talks about the mystery of like what he calls individuation can you like discover yourself the entirety of yourself as an individual and pull everything together and become individuated you know um so this is obviously his idea of enlightenment and again just to share a little bit of his words and then we can kick him around he obviously got that this was Buddhist like he understood like okay I'm having realizations of what Buddhism means and he describes this experience of Buddhism kind of hitting him for the first time in a way that was kind of beyond words and left them kind of in this state of like a little bit of bewilderment this exactly how to capture this and he got this at this sacred site so I thought a good episode for the future Daniel might be like sacred sites um maybe we should talk about that right yeah you experience of being in those places but anyways he was there at one of these sacred sites and he says this fascinating thing up Curious your reaction he said you know for him he said the life of Buddha stood for namely the realization of the self and the capital s that the self stands above all gods and really represents the mystery of the world and human existence you saw this as a little bit different and he's a very Western person he's very interested in Christianity and Gnostic Christianity alternative Christianity but he said it was a little bit different than his feeling of Jesus as a spiritual figure because he felt Jesus represented the self as well and he had deep respect for that way of representing the cell but he thought and this is I'm just quoting him he said the Buddha overcomes the world but out of insight Christ has not overcome the world out of insight in the standard interpretations but as an event or he is the victim of a certain kind of sacrificial act that brings rectification so he says it was a different experience at least for him you know being someone who grew up in a Christian household thinking about what Jesus meant and then all of a sudden being in the situation of really thinking okay he's gone through a lot in his life by the time he's doing this but thinking okay I'm thinking about but he's thinking about Buddhism in a different way now of course in the Gnostic Jesus has all kinds of insights and transcends the world through Insight but the I think he was talking about in the more standard cultural understanding of this so he was talking about Western culture in this way and he also talks about the fact that Christ was not completely a human being he's obviously a Divine figure right in the mystery of that so in a certain sense he's not as ascertainable to people because he isn't really young says this interesting thing he says he's not even really ascertainable to himself because he's partially Divine you know he isn't really ascertainable even to his own inner world isn't ascertainable to the human body but not some level um so his story is more of a story of divinity and fate who at the Buddha he says everything happened out of insight and so for him Julio represented that kind of quoting him then the enlightened mind the chance if I am a Buddhist to reach the same fulfillment that same kind of perfection so he thought it kind of resonated differently he also said he still saw himself as a Westerner and he said for him the myth of the Holy Grail The Search for The Grail is the symbol of Enlightenment for Western people um but he also knew that in the way he was kind of reaching beyond what might be the standard confines of the Christian world in his life he was obviously having thoughts and ideas that were just different you know and we're being trans standard of that so I think that was all pretty interesting to me I wanted to kind of throw those quotes out you have any reactions you want to share to any of that yeah I mean tons really yeah so you mentioned what Jesus meant and what Buddha meant in in and I'm not nitpicking what you're saying I'm just you know it's kind of his it's his take it's not even anything to say one way or the other yeah someone's Story versus what they mean are two different things right and so where where somebody where this culture derives meaning from Christ's story is in his death right versus what this culture found meaning in Buddhist story was in his life so it's a totally different View it's a completely different View I mean there's Gnostic Jesus's who like their main thing is inside you could tell that story differently yeah he's really talking about a cultural story here right yeah yeah yeah and the way that we view things the way that the culture views things yeah simultaneously the bulk of Jesus's life is undocumented but I mean to be honest I don't want to be weird about it if there ever was a Jesus at all sure sure there was a person like this a spiritual Mythic figure from the very beginning it's very Trans on these views but this is out there as yeah yeah yeah no I spent a lot of time I spent a lot of time listening to people who are Scholars of this thing because it's kind of a fascinating question and the same and the same goes for Buddha Also may not have existed right yeah or may have been or may have been a number of different people composite people composite person so I think the idea the Buddha thing is there really is an idea that he's a Divine figure there is a difference there sure right yeah yeah um and so this is so this kind of thing then just changes the way that you look at the story right and shows at least in my mind shows the difference in how the cultures work you know and how they how they view who it is they're driving they're deriving inspiration from and why that matters at least in my mind is that when you're when you derive meaning off of someone's death versus someone's life it puts the onus on that particular part is under dying versus onus is on the transformation being alive and transformed but news flash if you believe that someone can transcend death they have also transcended life you know what I'm saying and therefore they are walking around as a as the world's greatest magician they just haven't done their trick yet you know it's just a matter of time before they pulled the donkey from their uh you know from their their jacket coat or something like that you know what I'm saying right and so usually it's a rabbit but okay yeah I mean I'm talking a real good yeah like a whole a whole elephant comes out there a whole Donkey like the whole ass everything comes out and so that to me is just a it's just a different way you know again different views put different emphasis on different things and then therefore the idea of being Divine versus man of being a person who could become enlightened one is a totally the the conversations are completely different right they're not yeah it's a different kind of story serving a different kind of point exactly and one and this is the the issue is that one is driven is one is driving you inwards and the other is not and that yes that's for it's important for me to get to like Gnostic Jesus I wanted them to be nice to Jesus I wanted it to be like Zen Jesus yeah and we haven't done it but that that exists like we could do the Gnostic Gospel and talk about I I wanted that to be the case yeah and so I guess in this case back to you know tying this into you know as we're you know getting towards wrapping up here just time wise um you asked earlier about like what were some views that I had about life you know this was my first view actually now that we're talking about it and I've had a chance to kind of think this this view I've had since I was six that Jesus as a half Divine being who is a man form was never uh never something I believed in and I've told the story on the podcast before I'm driving my family was very religious uh we're driving to church one day I'm about six maybe seven maybe five so say six and um my aunt you know we're sitting in a car that had like bench seats we have a bench in the front and a bench in the rear so you can get a lot more people in there and I'm sitting in the middle of the bench in the rear and you know my aunt said something along the lines of like and Daniel you know that Jesus is God right and I said no and I'm not kidding my uncle pulled the car over on the road it was like they both turned around and looked at me and my cousins and my brother they all stared at me the little baby in the mid in the bench seat in the middle turned around and looked at me I'm like I was like a record player they went in there like in the Ironically in the car we didn't realize it was there and they were like what and I'm like where'd you hear that I was like I didn't hear that anywhere that's just what I think you know and so that Vision I think of of that particular story which is part of my family's story and you know many family stories was the first kind of maybe seed prior to the other one that allowed me to know that like things can be thought of in different ways when they resonate from you very deeply you know I think that's what I like about the young thing because he's obviously talking about from a very sincere place here yeah yeah he's talking about okay this is how it seemed to him and he said something really interesting at the end which I maybe will be the last thing we talk about for a couple of minutes and then we'll finish this next time and we'll have our final denim because there's things to wrap up and we'll be done with this but he said that he was sort of afraid on some level in this experience because he talks about he says it interestingly he says he talks about wanting to save himself from ethics by taking refuge and morals where what he's getting to is this idea of like okay I'm just going to follow the ideas of the culture I'm just going to do this those are the morals you know and in that way I'm really kind of saving myself from the truer ethics by hiding myself behind the more limiting thing of cultural morals and he obviously was asking some question about this you know um and you know he's making a distinction between these two words in this very special way because this means something you know beyond the morals of One's Own society and culture which you know could be ethical but also a lot of times are just like the guidelines for socio-cultural Life they're more Thai than just the roles they're not necessarily really the other things you know I mean they're more just like sort of like how we do it here you know they're there they're there to kind of guide the socio-cultural roles per your anthropological thought process a lot of times as much as they are to be things of like deeper ethics that are coming from maybe a more profound place he's using the word ethics kind of in a big sense because he's saying well the ethic might be like to get enlightened or something to really go and do this other thing and he's obviously scared on some level because he can feel that he's going to have to come up which is probably a good way to end this episode he's got to come up with a different way of thinking what he thinks life means right different than the way he was raised which obviously is one of our main things but you could see him saying this back in his own way right this way of saying okay you know um I don't want to it's because I think in a way he's saying it's safer somehow it would have been safer for you in the car to say oh yeah yeah oh yeah whatever you said and then the car wouldn't Screech to a halt and everyone wouldn't stare at you right it would have been a safer thing just to give the right answer right and maybe on some level you I don't know whether you knew it was the wrong answer or not if you party it did you know or maybe you weren't even aware of that yet that you would get that response I didn't know you're really young right yeah but uh you know he's he's a grown man in this case you know and he's saying yeah there's a there's a fright to this you know he's afraid of what that means if he really takes on that responsibility you know to invent his own way of looking at the world yeah you know and um I think it's something we can all kind of empathize with I mean we're going to continue on with this we'll wrap up all of this up next week we got a few more pages of this which are worthwhile doing because it we'll get to the idea of like okay what is a different model of looking at this and I'll kind of try to share my own with it but you know there's a certain fear in that right yeah yeah I think my you know and so maybe we'll do this at some point you know but like an episode on finding your inspiration you know but I think you know after just hearing hearing that and hearing his honesty I appreciate that yeah he but he is tapping into how he's feeling and when you were younger and you talked to your teacher and seeing the unhappiness in adults you were talking about how you're feeling now yeah right it was a it's a weird because it's a mix of like thoughts feelings underlying senses of like okay I want to go someplace different sure you know it's all those those Aggregates they're pushing in some other way right anyways right but I mean but there's definitely emotion and there's feeling behind it right yeah and feeling doesn't necessarily sincerity authenticity yeah feeling doesn't necessarily have to be emotional it could be tactile you know like inside it feels a certain way you know like an idea can feel a certain way yes yeah absolutely yeah like you're meaning in that sense okay yeah yeah exactly and so like when I'm you know I'm six years old and I say I don't believe that this person was God it's not because I heard that it's because I felt that I felt it inside you know however it had a kind of intuitive truth to you on some level yeah and I mean not not a yeah I mean it was a it was utter it was the probably one of the first real thoughts I had that were not taught to me you know yeah yeah it's kind of like young talks about these things and his Memoirs when people are really young and they have these kinds of thoughts he has the whole weird one we talked about where he sees the vision of the church that like you know is in his town in basil and he's a kid and he's walking past and you know he has this fear of like seeing the giant turd fall from the sky and land on the church we talked about his vision with this but you know this is maybe like an authentic thought he was questioning yeah in a way that had kind of a trickster quality a little bit a little bit of absurdity to it but in you know it's scary in this way like finding your own you know touching tapping into your Soul's desire if you will your Shen's desire for this lifetime I think I think it has to you have to feel it well I mean we could be honest as we're ending this episode like I did these episodes that have been very revealing lately and I went out of my way to be like particularly revealing and a lot of these things is I thought okay let me be revealing let me do this and there's like let me say what I really think in part let me reveal things that are very personal but it was like uh it's a little scary right but there's a part of it that has to go and yeah you do the same thing here too I'm not just saying just for me we do it but these are the ones that were particularly deep for me that we just did and I was like yeah it's a little scary to have to say okay I think something different it is that was my moment with my psychologist from the last episode okay I think something different right let's say it but that's what you did in the car right but that's natural for you that feeling is who you are I think that's right and so like you know again we talked about this in the beginning like finding your inspiration finding the a soul level connection you know tapping into the the Shen's kind of purpose here and we talked about that earlier and I think like in part amongst many other ways it has to be who you are you know and I and I think it's just allowing yourself to put voice to it you know and in this way we're putting voice to it by recording it live and not in person uh and non-edited so whatever [...] comes out that's what that's right this is really a goddamn thing you can do about it right right that's what it is but because neither wants to have the skills to edit [...] or the time you know by the time really but it's authentically who you are yeah yeah you know and I'm and I'm you know as we talk about you know things are important to us authenticity you know being one of them it's not just about keeping it real right or whatever it's about allowing whatever Matrix of beings that are you to express to be expressed in a way that feels like you don't have to double back and and correct or you can speak without shame you know and you could speak without hesitation because even if you're saying what you're saying doesn't fit it feels right as it's coming as as you're being receiving it and it's coming out that moment's really interesting for him right if we talk about young because he's in this moment where he's going okay I'm transcending the my my original part of my world you know I'm not going to be this completely Buddhist person but I'm doing something here I'm transcending my place where I came from and it's like partially probably like wow he talks about being almost a little bit wow Mine that'd be a strong enough word oh wow now he talks about feeling this kind of like like um bewilderment or something you know he's in kind of like a new a new set of Visions for him or something and then he's also like a little afraid right that part of it too so anyways you know I think those are good things to talk about all right good so this is probably our breaking spot here that seems like a good place to clip right yeah and then we'll do maybe my thought would be you know uh we'll continue on with a little bit of some of the vision of this and that'll be our denim wall complete all right denim wall the denim yeah sounds great thanks so much Daniel good conversation there was there was a crack there was a crackle to it I felt there was a kind of we can have energy in our conversations but I thought there was a lot energy in this one uh yeah especially so I think so yeah and uh thank you Eric and thank our listeners you know thank you very much thanks for tuning tuning in and and listening you know and uh being involved and you know feel free hit us up uh Jin and Tantra gmail.com you can leave a comment and a YouTube uh video because these are all up and available for your visual viewing pleasure um also feel free hit us up at uh Jin and Tantra on Instagram we we do that thing too you know uh like subscribe comment follow whatever I don't know do the things the social media people tell you to do we appreciate uh all the you know all the eyeballs and all the ear balls and all the eyes and I don't know all the things so you know feel free to share and everything else you guys know what it is we appreciate you you know that's that's basically it even though I can't see anybody I just see Eric and myself talking on the screen I know that people listen and uh as much as you guys appreciate what we do you know we appreciate you guys and uh we do love the feedback so you know keep it coming please for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you on the next one peace [Music]