[Music] hey fell G and tear those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist so we like to do these episodes in little sequences we like to kind of keep a flow going episode to episode and uh the last episode Daniel and I had a chance to record together was really about my breakup with Christianity breaking up is hard to do but the episode ended up being a little bit more about really going through periods of what you might call psychos spiritual transition and coming out and really thinking about what you learn from that and the reasons that you enter into that and and like what those experiences are like so I you know Daniel had written it with the idea I started in with the idea of like oh let me just talk about this one issue but like a lot of things happen this way you realize yeah learn more as you're talking or I was learning more when I was putting my notes together and I was like no this is really about just going through some window of change you know like yeah I think we the term Windows of transition last time yeah yeah I think that's it right it's funny I went to a party over the weekend that was really interesting so you know little Carl Young synchronicity working in our favor as it often does but it was a friend who threw a party and it was like a small group of people Chicago's been really snowy and cold so maybe it was going to be a small group anyways maybe two people didn't show up but for the most part his intention of we wanted to be there showed up and um and then at some point he wanted to sit down and have everybody talk about some point of transition in their life and I went get the [...] out of town I wasn't fully prepared for it but we had just done the episode so I was prepared and then it turned out that people were wearing clothes that they thought represented like different times in their life so I was like this is amazing and I heard some stories of people's own sort of periods of Transitions and overcoming obstacles which is going to be our themes of the show for today obstacles to be overcome and so I thought I have at least one I can share that's like a mindblower I'll share it when we get to the appropriate spot but I thought well that's a nice spiritual flow to just do an episode about that and then have in a weird in a very weird i' never been at a party where anyone did something like that they just had everybody around in a group and they just said okay we're going to go one by one and we're going to tell some period in our life where we transitioned and I thought this is super interesting and people went one by one around the group you know like a there's like a circle and people were talking and I thought this is kind of amazing and I you know it was really imposed upon the Party by this friend who said I'm going to like take it to this place I thought that's fascinating so anyways yeah it was very cool um so we're gonna talk about a thing that clicked in my mind when I was trying to share my own tale which is this thing from dosm called the nine obstacles and I realized I think when I was we were recording that episode I realized kind of going into the episode like yeah I was realizing these obstacles and trying to figure out ways of overcoming them for myself in that period of my life right seemed like a cool thing to just kind of present the DST idea of this but before we do it uh we had also promised people that Daniel would share his own story but when uh you know when we talked about Mike Daniel you were more like hey I feel like I already did this so yeah I thought I thought I'd throw the mic out to you just for a second or two you know just on that point right yeah and I don't know if we if I think it might have been during the recording but if not we' talked about it afterwards but I think we more talked about it off camera so I don't know if people yeah I feel like on the episode uh not enough Jesus's that was where I laid that out pretty pretty clearly pretty succinctly I'm actually you know I I mean I love all the episodes that we do really but there's some that are I maybe maybe nearer and dearer to you know our heart and you know in terms of like our ability to successfully express ourself you know it with you know being concise and clear right and giving and giving it enough it's difficult to put feelings into words you know especially deeper parts of our life and and I was you know actually very proud of myself for how I brought that up and it kind of came up a little bit naturally and um the way in which I was able to communicate it so for me I didn't feel any more need to adjudicate that so uh for those who haven't listened um the episode not enough Jesus's is uh is is where you could find is where you could find that but it's a good episode overall not just because you know I I gave that story but it's a is an interesting one yeah I think it was very much like a spontaneous kind of thing for you the way you like do things and the way it sounded to me and it was one of those ones where I like I I was like uh I appreciated the conversation in the sense like yeah I think the exact same kind of a thing you know it was more like the way you thought about that spiritual figure just transformed for you right yeah and uh you know Tantra a lot of times especially Buddhist Tantra is about transforming right so you trans the feeling and I think we're going maybe try to use that RI of transformation here the video of this thing might look kind of funny it's never happened before but I muted and I tried to take a sip quick sip of water and it went down the wrong pipe ah so you're talking about this and I'm like but like muted so anyways weird video if you're only doing audio you would have no idea you would even know that but the video is like me going but Daniel's giving this beautiful explanation I'm like hacking up a lung in the background yeah uh all right so so my my own little Tale on this brought this idea of these nine obstructions or nine obstacles I should say yeah because you know again those those seem to be things I was realizing and recognizing just to give a little context for those things they're kind of a Dos tool they get referenced kind of in the DS world we have someone in our Chinese medical field Jeffrey Wen and he's just kind of drop them into lectures just spontaneously at times because he's a DS priest as well as a TCM person so they sometimes just pop up at times when daas start hanging around and you know again I was listening to Jeffrey W talk at one time and he just started rattling them off and I was like those are those nine obstructions you know and he was just kind of sharing them spontaneously and nine obstructions and just for clarity purposes nine obstructions in in front probably say obstacles it's translated that way in English but anyway it doesn't matter nine obstacles in front of what um blocking people towards in this DS book blocking people towards sort of spiritual Improvement realization psychos Spiritual Development obstacles to that there was in that book but probably you could frame it even bigger like things that'll hold you back in life probably okay okay um only because it it came up on the episode with uh Dr Rory hiltbrand which is the couple episodes previous to this one when you were when you were on Meditation Retreat he said something I'm not sure if you've listened to it and if the audience has you know it was there was a really nice moment towards the end of the episode where we were talking about self-development because he's a doist and you know he's in this lineage and everything else and he said for him that the idea of like self-development has developed more into an act of devotion that's what his change has been and you know we're always talking about Enlightenment and and development of of various aspects of our selves or our beingness uh and I just really like that shift in perspective you know because it is uh maybe highlighting more the manifestation of divinity and our interaction with it as the and our work then meditatively or compassionately or you know however you want to call that via our practice or via our ourselves or our own Liv lives is an act of honoring that Divinity within all of us so it becomes an act of devotion so you mentioned that I just wanted to bring that up because I thought that was like yeah I came right out of the retreat right until the full part of my semester so yeah plan on listening to that would probably be during this week or something so I haven't ful up with that but um so he was saying like it's a devotion almost to sort of your own inner da or something like that partially a self-devotion thing yeah yeah I had like some ideas in there probably like with I was putting you know my version of the notes together for this I had some ideas of talking about that kind of thing yeah yeah they probably pop up here too like and we'll see how it all like comes together yeah you know you might have more to say about obviously from what you know he says but yeah all right cool um on the Jeffrey Yen thing and him just dropping this into lectures about Chinese mess and we're gonna be talking a little bit about like stages of the path kind of stuff here too this kind of idea of LM and you can see see people once people internalize something it'll just naturally kind of like pop out so it might be the case that as we go through these nine obstacles if they kind of like stick with you then they'll just start to be part of like who you are kind of and that's an interesting stage of things too right yeah um all right so we thought it would be a cool idea just to share these things you get to all Ponder them we'll give our own sense of each of these individually always welcome to other people's opinions too if you want to share later on as uh Daniel always talks about the the end of every episode but um it's based on the way I found them was from this dos text called the Chung Chand da chur I uh this gets translated by IA Wang which is the translation I have into English yeah as the teachings of The Da so the da in this is like the da of Daoism the source of everything in doist thought transm transmitted by these two characters Chung and Li and uh I imagine we'll probably do something on the the whole text at some point because we haven't done a ton of dosm yeah so I thought we won't maybe do the whole thing because there's a lot of stuff in there yeah it's been a CP one part yeah it's been a couple years since I've read that so I don't mind going circling back you know yeah it's a it's an interesting one um it's really deep it's really deep there's a lot of stuff potentially to talk about yeah so maybe we'll come back to it but um just for like the little bit of context about it it's a dialogue between two of these characters that are sort of the dowst a Immortals so there are two of the eight and um presumably they lived hundred years hundreds of years apart but they're Immortals so they swung this conversation and uh they're just talking Daoism as daoists do in these books um it's uh kind of a chemical dos book and then towards the end of it they're having a discussion of like what they call obstacles and monsters so I know we'll do these 10 monsters at some point too uh I guess I'll see what you think Daniel you know but they're really about those are a little bit more about things that happen specifically during meditation where the obstacles are more things like that happen like in the course of sort of your life or something that will hold you back so um well I know I think we should and and just before you go I think reason reason being is that like for me when when people want to make life change which I'm fortunate enough to help people do this in in my practice that it is much getting through your own process is much like a meditation in that you are going to have to face your own inner whatevers you know and that those would be the same as if you were sitting in a meditation and because the fact that people's attention spans are are even less than they were you know even 15 years ago or 10 years ago that meditating now is probably in my opinion more important than it than it's ever been to kind of counteract the sort of Tik Tock and you know shorts age of of social media and mentioning potential obstacles for people can highlight some of their own inner psyche kind of unconscious archetypes however you want to call it right these deep layers of blockages along the way towards transformation even if it's not inside of a on a on a meditation pillow but somebody wants to make a change in their career I make significant change that requires effort over a longer period of time that those things I think stand in the way even if someone is not you know meditating on a regular basis but it's still a meditative process yeah I don't mind doing it I'll pop something together about these 10 monsters that's no big it's not a big deal for my side you know if you feel like interested in it you know once we do this one that's cool with me and it's again it's a lot of stuff that like kind of pops into your head when you sit and you start self-reflecting where your mind kind of runs off and they call those monsters for this obstacles are a little bit like for people making life change they're like right on point though you know they're really like okay this is the stuff that you're probably going to face um I got kind of a particular backstory with them um back in the day pre pandemic I was running these classes on uh kind of CH traditional Chinese medicine and alchemical treatments for Spiritual Development that was something that you and I really bonded over right that was yeah those those things many things but yes yeah and uh we both shared this similar like passion for this you know I think it was a lot of times the combined thing of like you're being passionate about this encouraged me to go out and do a lot of this stuff too to become you know more uh more uh uh forward in in trying to share some of this stuff uh because we shared the passion for it um but it was like kind of a weird thing it was hard to to give people ways of trying to think about how people are progressing how do you know that someone's progressing how do you start to look at people progressing and I wanted to use the Buddhist stuff the Buddhist tantric stuff but the you know the stages of the path in Buddhism already kind of assumed that you're in this certain head space it doesn't start until you're already thinking okay there's reincarnation I need to work on my life not just for now but for future lives that's the start of the Buddhist right right and it wasn't very useful to talk that way because most Americans aren't thinking that way correct well yeah most wasn't handy yeah yeah that's not in the Lexicon of uh popular conversation no so it was like well this isn't going to work so I thought well maybe these non obstructions were a way of trying to like get OA Clin being able to look at people to go okay they're rehandling these obstacles these Li in their own lives in different ways that's showing their progress you know what I mean actually that's kind of a like a a way of starting to think about that how do know if people are really changing well they're handling these things differently before you move on even there was a popular song called YOLO right that was some of our episodes called YOLO right I mean but we were making fun of that but like that's the conversation you know what I'm saying like that's that's the conversation that that's far more popular you know oh do you only live once oh that's right I mean that's literally reincarnation thing yeah I can imagine Bobby T going you only live infinity infinity times Robert Thurman yeah you only live Infinity Yoli yeah um so I that was sort of like the idea at the time yeah well we did our yellow episodes that that's right those are old reincarnation episodes that werey yeah newer newer audiences we did yeah we did those YOLO uh episodes like a really long time that was some that was like a long long while you want to lap your ass up we have like a dear friend of mine on uh Justin ke who's a a faculty at one of the local sort of colleges in Chicago and uh the conversation got a little feisty it was one of the few really feisty conversations marginally feisty that didn't like what I was saying for sure well you know that it made for an entertaining discussion yeah it was entertaining it was a little bit like because he's he's more of like a you only live once kind of a guy he's not he's definitely a materialist more a materialist yeah that was done in October of 20 yeah oh wow that long ago okay yeah um I the whole staging thing is kind of interesting it does pop up here and there I just want to acknowledge that sometimes we're doing that you know and you might wonder like you know what's the point of that or what's happening with that but I think because you know we're clinicians Daniel I think you sort of need something to kind of like start saying okay where are people changing how do I start seeing people changing yeah yeah it it's important but if you don't have a familiarity with it you know it's it's okay I mean we all know like it's I I feel like it's like somebody who's losing weight slowly over time you'll see them change you know they're changing um but if you are interested in in looking at somebody's development and having a frame of reference you know as as in like you're you're not you're not just looking for some change in general you're looking for kind of like a specific change as somebody's moving along their path then having a frame of reference probably is helpful especially for somebody who is taking this as part of their life perspective yeah and I think like it's the idea that you I I love these old sources for doing it you don't want to take them too literal because then it could be kind like kind of clunky like what you're talking about I think right you attach to them too much that isn't really healthy but you go through and you okay there's some there's something I can kind of learn from looking at these things either about myself or others and there's a lot of there's a lot of little tricks like this like these nine obstacles or whatever where they try to like frame things in concrete ways to give you tools yeah take a step back and evaluate where you're at self-reflect it also occurs to me that like I wanted to just mention that they're kind of a tough love in the sense that like everyone's going to have some issues going on in their life around this you know what I mean so you know as you listen to these things for all of us you're be like okay yeah that's a that's a point that's something where I got something going on there right um but when I first thought about talking about them I thought well this will sound kind of negative or something but I think that the the attitude that makes sense to talk about in what we're doing is that you can kind of really change your attitude and relationship with them sure you can kind of transform them and I see it as like kind of like again a part of a Buddhist Tantra as we say that's like one of our main home bases in this whole thing MH and you want to transform things so and what really hit me is again as we often like have had conversations you know we're not nuns or monks or something we're gonna be living lives that are going to be more like lay people's lives it's not like we're going to get away from these things by like running off in the mountains and living in a cave or something like that you know and so we're going to need to somehow figure out how to transform these things and I guess for me then I saw it as well this is part of Buddhist Tantra for me how do I take these things and transform them from being things that are obstacles into fuel for the fire right which is kind of a contri attitude to have towards things right you take the thing that would be the obstacle and you flip it on its head and you make it into the thing that becomes the source of improvement or fuel or passion or inspiration or whatever it is right whatever that particularly is in your life but you're like flipping it around so I think that's the attitude I wanted to take into this which makes sense you know not as a negative thing but like hey let's look at these things and figure out how you can kind of start to flip them and transform them to use them in ways that are uh yeah again fuel for the fire yeah um and I I think it's fascinating for me because I'm and for myself at least coming out my last Meditation Retreat I was thinking about this a lot like you know part of my the way I look at my own life is I'm trying to build up kind of a a tantric Lam RM for like the now or something right to learn from the old school stuff but like kind of also internalize it in a way that it's useful for me but also maybe has usefulness for other folks that we can share or at least a relevance for now right and that's and L LM you're saying like stages of the path yeah we talked about a little bit earlier stages of yeah yeah yeah just some some terms you know yeah yeah yeah no we had just like said it earlier in the episode too but yeah so this L roomm stages of the path idea right um so anyways it's kind of cool the DS thing is talking about really directly it's going to give us like a little list we can all kind of think about it for ourselves so maybe re reframe it for the modern world and I have to say I did do that when I was looking at it I was looking at this old DS book but I was also like okay let's frame this in the ways that will make sense for now right obv like what you were talking about like there's no dos dealing with like social media back at the time of Chong and L you know so but they're Immortal maybe they're now around now hanging around dealing with it now who's this yeah all right I know anything you want to do is like Preamble for this from your side no we're good let's do it go good okay so obstacle number one you as we do the countdown um so in the in the DS text they talk about being hampered by the needs for food and clothing but if you look at it it's kind of like excessive concerns for one's own security yeah where the security concerns become like so overwhelming that they kind of pull you off of your trajectory and it's been like again it was it's been the conversation that we talked about last week and at other times too I definitely talked about this when I was trying to share my own experience with this but with what I was going through during my uh Christianity breakup period that window transition but I definitely sort of feel like it's something having to to look at how you deal with fear or something because obviously this is a very sort of fundamental point to fear and maybe that people will potentially do a lot of mistaken things it seems to me driven by these kinds of fears where maybe your professional life you do these things that you wouldn't otherwise do but just because you're afraid you know and as we talked about so many times there's reasons that to be afraid it's kind of a scary culture yeah yeah but it's it's not well at least from my understanding it's not fear for the sake of fear it's fear for the sake of security it's like a second chakra type situation where it's you know you're worried about the bottom of the of society that not you're not supported in that way this is kind of like uh you know awareness of the finite nature of one's resources in this life you know but your obsession with falling through the bottom of that keeps you essentially trapped because you're not allowing yourself to expand that's like yung's kind of like the procrastin and B thing he was talking about in these episodes where he gets kind of locked into this thing but so you you're making it you like feel like I don't always think the chakras in that way second chakra and wiow in that way and like the I I kind of think of them more in a Buddhist tantro and they don't talk about them exactly in that way so you're making distinction between like different kinds of fears associate with the different kinds of chakras yeah yeah so the you know first chakras is like uh Health you know uh Vitality things like this and and the second chakra is shelter food you know what I'm saying like you're sort of yeah you're stacking them and then the third one would be and we won't go any further than that unless it comes up the third one would be like the ability to um generate income or generate resources based on your efforts in order to fund the first two so in order to get make money to have food so that you can feed yourself and your family and make maintain your home and so you can procreate and do all those kinds of things you know and what's interesting is that like the second chakra also in the way that the you know the VC the yogis kind of talk about it from uh the Indian perspective and not only is it dealing with like one's kind of home home and security and things like this it's also the begin it's also dealing with sexuality but it also is the beginning also playfulness but it's also the beginnings of creativity so you talk about that in previous episodes too yeah they'll point to like the caveman drawings in their in the in their little caves as like the beginning expressions of of this which I think is is is kind of a you know a nice thing to to put in here because if you are overly concerned with you know work or whatever the case is in order like making money won't even call it work let's just call it generating money uh and you're stressed out about that your ability to create is going to be hampered at least that's what I've noticed in my own professional experience yeah and patience and things too right yeah so my like my sense of this is is that there's just this basic fear around security that gets Amplified sometimes culturally certainly in American culture Oh you mean border security no I'm not going there okay I I have I live in Chicago I have zero concerns for that when I talk with friends and they care about that [...] I'm like you're not living in like you're not you're not in Texas what are you talking about okay whatever that's a different whatever but um what the hell you you know like hey friends who worry about that in Chicago I'm like dude we're fine you know totally fine there's no one flowing over from Iowa into like Chicago the [...] you never know I'll I'll take that risk because I don't have this I overcame this obstacle get out of here Wisconsin nights yeah um so I mean I felt like the thing about that can happen is that you can get boxed into sort of like a a way of framing your life and kind of making your decisions that get like more narrowed down in their possibilities because you're just frightened and I felt like in people's professional lives and then in people's relationships they do this right it becomes a real big factor of like okay behind the scenes a lot of it has to come from this place of like fear and insecurity yeah and until you face these things my thing last week when we were talking about this was I felt like okay I'm gonna I'm not going to go to grad school I'm not going to do any of the things that might have been the continuation of a certain kind of path towards security right I'm gonna purposely like not do it so they felt like I'm gonna confront this thing and you know make myself a little afraid and like try to get over this now right yeah yeah definitely I felt it and I thought about like a little bit I was thinking about you during the week and in the um podcast a lot of times you shared these sort of shamanic concepts of like the family thing around this yeah right so I was talking with my son about it you know these nine obstacles it came up we were in the cafe yesterday and we were shooting the breeze about this but I started talking about kind of our family lineage around this so my dad when he was young his father died his grandmother died and his sister died like in this real short tra atic window right a window of transition but not in a good sense just like a lot of familial trauma and you know his mom was all of a sudden a single mom in Chicago you know back in like the late 30s early 40s oh wow so you know really tough and um and so you know she was working at night they grew up in like my my dad's family grew up in public housing in Chicago right and you know my dad was really afraid there's no doubt like he was affected by this very deeply and he walked around with this deep sense of fear and there was like a real Paradox in it because he would be working in Corporate America sucks he would we'd go out sometimes you know when he would come home from work he'd take me out to dinner with him right and we go to there was a place in like where I was it was called Jack Gibbon's Garden they had Lobster so that was always cool so I would be cracking the Lobster open you know my dad was financially secure for sure I mean he was like kind of an amazing success story but that fear was always kind of there on the one hand he would say my life is is 98% [...] and he would be a little like he'd have a couple of drambo and he'd be talking kind of honest and I always enjoyed these conversations I think we maybe mentioned this at other times you know he'd be a little softed up and he started explaining this but at the same time he was definitely like go into Corporate America go into Corporate America and they kept trying to push me into it and I was there was this weird thing where I was like I'm not going to do that you just told me for years how much this sucks gonna do it but there was this trauma around this right and each and like each of my parents in their own way had it and then you start thinking from what you were saying that this kind of probably goes back Generations then even right my grandmother probably had it my dad's mom had it too you know they were terrified of you know being able to just hold on you know and yeah that whole shamanic idea that you share with people about like this is kind of there underlying in that stream of ancestry right my guess Eric is that that is in almost every lineage when was that not the case when was food scarcity not not the norm when was you know physical security not the norm even living in you know smaller Aggregates of communities there was Waring between communities and things like this you know kingdoms and whatever so uh yeah wherever you are if you had resources it was inevitable that somebody was going to try to come get them yeah I mean it's certainly like you can think of it in that kind of like anthropological way right we can ask our um our Anthropologist Paul that's right we got two of them that's right yeah um I mean it's interesting whether that like I'm always kind of curious about the Christopher Ryan version of this whether it's always like this story of like people wanting to bash each other over the header of their resources or whether you get to like older things and people lived in their own bands and they it wasn't worth them to try to like [...] around with one another yeah I don't know know in some of those situations be like well we got our own resources and yeah there was a kind of a weird one it wasn't something I was thinking about talking about but in Christopher Ryan's book he's the guy who wrote sex of dawn civilized to death and uh stuff that pops up in our episodes occasionally though maybe worthwhile doing something specifically on them at some point right it's very interesting and they had the thing where they were trying to get the people when they came from Europe to uh South America they were trying to get these people to work harder and to like adopt like European like work ethic things and these Amazonian people were like [...] it why should I do that I can eat this stuff off the tree my life is really easy I'm not gonna do any of this [...] you're talking about because my life is simple and they didn't seem like they were that worried you know they were just more like you know my life is what it is I sleep and I need to eat I get some stuff from nature I hang out I do what I'm doing so I mean it was sort of interesting because he sometimes he tries to debunk a little bit that idea of like everything was always like a clash to the death between bands of like you know uh primordial tribes or something you know what I mean like really like he's saying like when you look at the reports of a lot of the Europeans trying to get these Amazonian folks to do stuff they're like are you crazy why should I work my ass off I I don't have to I work three hours a day I don't need to do what you're doing to survive my life is good so anyways yeah I don't know it's interesting um but was kind of interesting to share because I don't know it's interesting whether it was always like that I don't know from the anthropological sociological point of view we get some opinions um but from the family point of view I know I was thinking with my son too in the sense that in the sense that I I got into the University of Chicago which was kind of a big deal for me I wasn't like I was sick when I was a teenager my grades weren't that spectacular then you know and so I'm working my way in and at the time I was going to school you know college is so overwhelmingly expensive now it's ridiculous right and so many people are buried under all of this debt which is another reason to be afraid right buried dead certainly in America right and um but at the time that I got in it wasn't that much money you know to go to University of Chicago cost you like 10 to 15K a year it was nothing you you get your whole degree and I had like I only needed to go for like another year and a half or something it wasn't much money at all you know and my dad had like a sixf figure income at the time you know so I would pay for some he would pay for some it was simple but my parents were so afraid about money I remember this conversation I was just sharing with my son yesterday where my mom came up I was doing some calculus something mathematical [...] I was studying you know and I'd gone to a junior college and I was going to transfer over and my mom came up and she was like we can't afford to do it and I looked at her like what are you talking about and she was like you can't go we don't have the money and we had this long conversation and then she started crying and they just were terrified about money you know and I just remembered that incident and I was like yeah they really carried this deep fear well they they live point of like it wasn't a rational fear we could definitely swing it I could live through were you know they live through the depression though my par my my grandparents did not my parents well your parents did not when were your parents born age they were coming of age in the 1950s and 60s okay so they weren't like you know they weren't living for the worst of Economic Times now maybe they were traumatized through their parents sure when were they born when were when was your my dad's born in 1937 my mom in 1940 so through their parents maybe maybe it's an ancestral feeling right yeah you're talking about but I mean it didn't make any sense and I was like sharing with my son you know just going like yeah there's something in that but I think maybe that's part of the reason maybe it's I wasn't thinking about this even though I was writing these notes but maybe that's a motivation for a lot of us too just like niit these things now well that's you took the out of my head that's it we're was somebody I've read in a quote somewhere like Enlightenment is is less about becoming and more about forgetting you know forgetting things that we were that we have inherited you know what I'm saying yeah yeah yeah I mean it definitely speaks to your shamanic point of view you know when I really stopped back and looked at I thought yeah these people were financially traumatized I mean I think isn't that that that's almost in that's almost inherent even in the word Freedom right is that like you become free of you become free to choose yeah yeah yeah breaking this you know you can you know depending on how you look at things like does edues does education or experience or teachings does that give you new insight or does that break you from previous Insight or maybe both along the lines but I think you know for me that's why I always mention it it's it's for me it's it's a little bit of both it's letting go of whatever was previous and and changing the way that you see things for moving forward you know well certainly as they're doing a DS thing lot of times the DS will like frame things as like a forgetting for sure right like jettisoning stuff off right as much as learning anything new right so I know for me in the end with this obstacle like when I really kind of like tried to do like a little Deep dive in myself about it I was like well the only way I can really think about this is something to share you know from my own experience with this I think you just have to like face these fears at some point right look at them and like for me it was it was like a tantric theater thing in the sense it's like okay I'm G to let myself fall through the botb a little bit and feel how that feels scary you know I'll let myself slide through what we talked about last time was when you're sliding through the bottom you're also like in a certain sense emerging out of the whole thing right right and it's a way like breaking out the top at the same time part of it and so yeah Eric part of it too is that like there is the idea of the bottom is also slightly skewed because of this because of the I could say societal drives for desire that you should have X Y and Z and that then changes what your sort of requirements are for your own life which add on to what you need to produce I was talking with a A friend of mine actually Christian who was on the podcast oh yeah yeah yeah yeah we do this men's group we're doing one again in in uh in March and we were talking about like taxes because he his first year in business for himself um he was working for somebody previously so it's his first year and for those who are not who don't own a small business you know this is you know maybe a little bit TMI but it's okay if you do for those our acupuncturist folks who are entrepreneurs which is a good you know portion of us or people who are entrepreneurs in general you got to take care of your own taxes and whatever and and I was like well don't worry you'll have a bunch of things that you can write off on your taxes you know I said but the sad part is that when you realize that you have a bunch of things to write off on your taxes that you actually have to spend a lot of money to run a business and to pay for the things that you need you have to pay for probably half of what you bring in goes towards paying your rent and your mortgage and your bills and this way you know what I'm saying but then you think about it you're like damn half of my efforts just go to keep the lights on you know as a as a euphemism for all this so it just goes to show the amount of effort that is required just to to to do this you know just to have quote unquote security and how much of that idea of security is necessary for actual security versus what you think you need you know what I'm saying yeah like the difference between like being take a step back and be able to say okay where are these fears concerns that I have to take care of because that's the thing I need to do just to make my life progress psychos spiritually or otherwise and how much of this is like stuff I'm carrying because there are fears that are excessive that are limiting me what I think is possible or something right yeah for me uh you know I had health problems when I was younger and I started doing this Zen and the Zen thing was very much sort of again we talked about different times like kind of Samurai based and it was very much a confrontation with fear and then the samurai takeen it it was like well I could get killed at any time so I'm facing fear like all the time that was kind of imbued into the school it was like we're gonna help you deal with fear and I think framed in that way they thought the two major obstacles were fear that will like hold you back from becoming who you are and then they said anger you know that those two things are maybe even entwined you know in our Chinese medicine the fear and the anger are kind of related an interesting way because the the fear kind of can feed the anger or something like that right the anger will make you act out in ways where you do something stupid and but the fear will hold you back right and for me going through that I was like yeah I'm really gonna have to deal with fear and uh and it was like okay this is my time to confront this for reals and I think I sort of realized that even before I was specifically studying in that school I realized like okay I'm GNA have to do this now other I'm never going to get free of this because the whole the whole thing is so fear generating that kind of purpose right yeah not like a it's not a bug it's a feature we're not going to give you insurance so you're afraid for your health and your livelihood you're going to have to walk around afraid you know that's part of just in the culture so I felt like okay you gota like you gotta face that and then from the tietan buddhis side I just wanted to mention I wanted to mention the Zen practice for that and I thought there's a thing in tibetan uh uh meditative culture they call CH which is this idea of like cutting the fear and it's like specifically like go and like deal with fear you have to deal with fear like it's a strong thing it comes actually from a female yogini machik LR and uh in my little meditation room in the house I sort of have a Tonka with her on it I bought it when the I went to see the doy Lama in Washington DC it's kind of a beautiful little Tonka of her and what's the Tonka Eric the Tonka is like a Tibetan spiritual painting there we go so it shows like the iconography iconography of what like uh you know the Buddhist Deeds or it could be just like an individual practitioner like her you know I feel like a special bond with machik glabrum because when I first got the introduction to her practices with you know llama Glenn Glenn H Mullen you know one of our beloved teachers um I felt like a real Bond you know so I've always felt a soft spot for this and she really talks about dealing with fear and the practice in like a traditional context would be you'd go to places that were scary at night like you might be doing your meditation like in a graveyard in the middle of night to go and confront the fear or you know go to a place that's kind of scary and confront the fear of it so you get over this you know and um it's interesting in the practice too it's it's sort of one of the things they ask you to visualize is like your own spirit leaving your body and then like chopping the body up and like breaking that connection of even that Primal Fear about your own body or something right it's an interesting practice because they recommended for people who are doctors too because they say the more you do it you psychos spiritually develop the idea to go into place where people are sick and you're less vulnerable and stuff so it's a really cool thing that speaks to anybody um reach out for sure we can give you some ideas where you can get more about that but she's a great just a great yogini in the Tibetan tradition and it's like really direct for fear and I think I I needed it in the sense that I had a lot of these fears you know and uh I was talking with Ryan Davenport about this about this again our Anthropologist person uh on retainer on call for no money but uh the idea that uh he's going to come on the he's going to come on and talk about this because we were both sick when we were young and I don't want to ruin his story he'll tell it but he was really ill and when he decided he wanted to be an anthropologist people were like you can't leave the country you'll never be able to leave the country your your health is too vulnerable you can't do it and it was very we've had pretty powerful conversations about this where he was like okay [...] it I'm going and like like he uh he was at this par party over the weekend and he wore the shirt he wore that he bought in Bolivia because he was like I'm going to the mountains and if I have to face my fear if I get sick you know now I'll save the rest of the story for him to tell but I like it was very powerful and I was like okay I resonate with what you're saying it's some point you have to face fear right you know otherwise you're going to live with a like a I was thinking the cabala of this too you know the cabala kind of talks about this idea if you Buckle under to fear you're going to feel a certain shame inside of yourself yeah it's a deep kind of weird shame there's a certain rationality of being afraid of things but if you Buckle to it you know then you like you have this weird feeling of feeling kind of ashamed in front of yourself or something so anyways I know it's a deep subject matter it's the one I I wanted to kind of go through some of the spiritual Tools around it because it's it's such an core one you know I this Primal Fear right yeah I feel like if you if in the moments of Fe you know in the moments of deep fear if you know most people are going to survive them you know uh but that if you don't rise up to where you think you can then there's a shame that you didn't do it in the moment that you'll kind of know better now but I find that fear is freezing you know like that's this like the nervous system response to fear is like fight flight or freeze this is I mean this is physiologic this is not even like a spiritual idea this happen when you're talking about that because you're interested in the five phases with this and that's the water phase right yes it's cold it freezes you and fear freezes you so you know like you're were talking about before in the water phase it's winter time it's fear you freeze right yeah and so there's this physiological response that that that brings that about and if you know after this the moment has passed you can look back and probably with regret I guess is what the is what I'm saying is that you look back and there's the shame that you should have known better or if it comes again you'll do this next time but in between those two times s it doesn't happen it doesn't happen super often so you walk around with this feeling like [...] I should have did better and then unfortunately the next time it happens the same thing happens because there's not a whole lot that you can um that you can do and I think one of the things for me because you know I relate this really deeply to a couple a couple medicine experiences because I find that to be the times at which I face this headon you know which is why it's difficult for me to go and I'm just being honest now like you like the aasa aspect of this yeah yeah yeah yeah even so anything that's anything that can turn off your defense mechanism so if you take enough you even if you take enough marijuana people have anxiety what's anxiety anxiety is fear you know amongst other things it's it's based around fear you're trying to like not get in the deep water so you're tiptoeing on the surface if you just keep yourself busy enough it's going to pass except it doesn't you know and for me what I have found and I want to hear what you think because this is like even important for for myself as we're getting ready to go um lead our Retreat to Mexico and I think this episode will probably be on while we're down there is that like that fear in my from my experience um comes often from a lack of deep faith and so when you're talking about like you know doing the meditation where you're seeing yourself above your body and then like leaving it you know chopping it up and going yeah that is not who you are you know that's who you are now but that is not actually who you are I don't know that people believe that and you know we've been having these episodes about Christianity and whatnot but that like the ability of this of of of people to take in and take on metaphysical stories or pop you know they can hear stories about metaphysical Powers gives them faith that there is something like we we've talked about in the episode before beyond the obvious that there is a divine presence and that gives them that Faith to transcend the fear What Fear the fear of death the fear of obliteration do you know what I'm saying and so that like in the in the in the Mini version in the micro hologram you know fear in these deep ways is the fear of that ultimately and this comes from you know my teacher Andre who will say like people who are experiencing um difficult time doing yoga poses or something like that yes Their Fear of injuring themselves in a yoga class is a legitimate one sure you could break your nose or H your wrist but really what are you scared of you're scared of dying you're scared that that injury is going to progress further and you're going to be bedridden and that's going to be the end of it for you you know what I'm saying all from this yoga class or whatever the case is but realistically your attachment to your physical being and having the Deep knowledge that that physical being has a a time limit on it is what you're is what you're afraid of but what are you afraid of you're not really afraid of losing that being you're afraid of losing the thing that that you think is is what makes you alive is what makes you you and of the fear of losing the sort of micro version of yourself that we're completely identified with do you know what I'm saying and because of the lack of faith that like that is not going to extend beyond just this lifetime is what you're afraid of and so those two things sit on Polar Opposites of the spectrum of experience for this but in reality they're they're they're inherently they're they're they're so close together you could just like you just have to like however it is let one thing go or accept that that's there um I don't know I wanted I want to hear what you think but that's been something that I've experienced you know yeah I know like I I get what you mean like I think in the Zen attitude towards it the way it was was like yeah ultimately it boils down to some kind of fear of your own mortality or something right it's in a chemical da stuff acupuncture treatments too where at some point or another you have to kind of face this thing right everyone has this and then of course you're also afraid of the mortality of the people around you or something right you're afraid of loss and sadness and grief um and I guess what you're saying which is you know like a you know the Deep idea is that if you really think that you're if you're really if you're in a cultural situation where you're raised really to think that your body is all that you are which is probably the dominant point of view underneath the surface you know there's a lot of people going to walk around feeling that way then the loss of your body is the loss of everything I guess right that's of your entire identity right and there is nothing beyond that um in our two lives and I don't know how much you want to go to this place or not when you and I have talked about this the way it's always seemed to me like I had a lot of illness and then you were in combat so we had our fear experiences right and uh you know how do you handle those going forward right those are deep primordial like my body is at risk right as um so I wonder how that totally played out out some of it's like confronting that stuff and I suppose when I look back at it from like my zen experience point of view was that I had sort of like Transcendent kind of meditative experiences for what they're worth right convinced me like oh there's something more than just this thing for me you know you can't prove that to somebody else right has to go through their own experience of that but I think that is was part of what happened for me you know you go through and you start having these experiences of more and more subtle parts of your own mind and maybe you hit things that you feel like wow this is probably something Way Beyond just my materiality or something there's something more to me than just this and then the confidence confidence of that grows or something and then you're able maybe to make a little bit more of that leap into that I also had like a kind of a mixed background like my parents were very scientific but my grandparents were very Christian so I got that kind of mixed thing and maybe there's a part of me that was a little bit more intellectually inclined as of the Christian experience I think there was something more to me that just my body but maybe the Zen thing made it even more deeply experiential and maybe that made it a little bit easier to handle some of those fears you really start thinking yeah there's something more to me which is funny because we were talking about earlier in the episode that's when you're in the Buddhist path then right when you start thinking oh there's more to me now and that's when it clicks in but until that moment I think you're right there a if I really identify with this is all of me and then this is really at risk of course you're going to feel afraid why why wouldn't you right and that that is such a profound just just understanding that right there that like that is the entrance into the stages of the path that's not the end yeah it's kind of the Gateway that's the beginning and then and then Eric just so just so we're here so that people who are rocking with us you know they can get that just the the the stages you know um yeah yeah yeah so they'll divide it's kind of a long thing but in you know in U certainly in a lot of uh Tibetan Buddhism they talk about a gradual path yeah we had a really interesting thing and that they did in like a a tonric empowerment recently it's by a really Charming Canadian 74 year old llama llama jampa another one another one yeah another Canadian Canadian llamas though llama Glenn Glenn h m is pretty feisty so he's the feisty Canadian this is more what you imagine a can even be Lama Jas like this right he's very interesting person he went to daram Salah he knew llama glenbeck and India back in the 70s right and uh but their personalities are really different he's much more like a very polite sincere sweet Canadian guy um but anyways he was saying that you know these are stages of like psychological development yeah being described you know and you change your mind about stuff so this big thing would be changing your mind saying oh I think there's more to me than just my material body so that's kind of like what they call the lower stages of the path of accumulation and you start thinking about yourself like okay there's more to me than just this and you start exploring whatever you think that means of course in Buddhism they think you're going to keep coming back again but and then there's a middle one too that has to do with like facing the suffering of Life what they sometimes call duok up third stage of it is where they really talk about becoming a d a being driven by compassion and love for other people too so you've understood these these other parts and that builds to this compassion feeling and you want to develop yourself to be the most powerful version of yourself in order to be able to help other people so you're working for yourself but you're also then working for others and then in the you know in the school of the Dal Lama then you enter into the tantric path for sure if you haven't already and then you start doing the Deep meditations of the tantric path to kind of like start to accelerate this process along I mean that's the theory of it like a nutshell or something no that's a that's a good nutshell yeah yeah allergic to nuts yeah just like uh like dump the shells dump the nuts take the idea it's funny because on my retreat I really it's so funny that you're this is coming up because in the retreat I was really making myself do this I was making myself making sure to review all of this in every session you know and there was a power to it I me they give the advice was I always following that advice no you do your best yeah you do what you can do so I made myself like really do it you know in every meditation session let me start off with this is the the beginning I'll review this whole thing in my mind and uh then I'll go into the meditation and I'll keep following it through like it's a kind of a building thing and I was like yeah though this is making a difference and then when I did The Retreat you know at the end of my own personal Retreat there was this initiation with this Canadian llama right again a great guy I guess he's one of the western people who's been Dal Lama told him to go teach I guess right yeah said teach so he's he's a unique person and he said oh you know this is a stage thing and it's gradual and these are steps of psychological realization as you go through and you build it up like a stage you know like ladders or something but you can build up all the the rungs maybe and I was like damn I was just trying to do that perfect I'm right in the heads space to listen what this guy was saying and it really hit anyways yeah um maybe the only thing last is we before we bounce out do you have something else you wanted to say about it Daniel I mean I don't know you have talk about your military service I don't know if you want to do it ever but you know that's a very unique thing Ryan's Davenport's health things by health things those are very unique experiences but people have other things that are analogous right oh yeah for sure I mean yeah there's all kinds of there's all kinds of places where fear gets in you know I think I won't bager the point just because we're kind of coming to the end I don't want to open it up too much but you know there's this sort of new age idea of this they call it a scarcity mindset oh you know because mindsets very that term is very popular uh right now in the coaching world uh mindset mindset and it's true I mean your mindset is extremely important that there's nothing wrong with this term in particular uh but they'll talk about people who are nervous to take risks as having a bit of a scarcity mindset meaning that they are you know they're they're focused on security or maybe we could say more focused on insecurity and that this uh is a limiting factor to their success that sort of puts the top on because they're unwilling to let themselves fall therefore they're unwilling to let themselves fail meaning you're also unwilling to let yourself succeed because you know no juice or no orange no squeeze or no whatever the term is to get that you know what I'm saying yeah yeah uh and and so I don't love that term in general because it gets used a bit of as a as a used a bit as of a pejorative for people who are unwilling to take risks and sometimes it's used a negative way to get people to buy things perhaps that is outside of their uh current budget you know so the idea would be like if you really have confidence in yourself you'll spend this money on this thing or something yeah exactly but I think in a larger perspective it's talking about this particular thing right here and then if you have the idea that there is not enough then there isn't you know there there there isn't enough and your mindset around that is a one of fear right and so maybe they're not talking it in such like a psychological term it's you know kind of like pseudo psychology if you will um um but that the idea that the the fear is fueling your decisions is probably more aptly put so if people hear this kind of idea you can take that you can take any idea that that is out there that is popular and try to find some some nuggets that are within it and I think that at least discussing the the vast presence of fear in people's lives and that's in is influencing your decision to do or not do things is one that has to be um has to be addressed honestly actually actually yeah I think you really have to confront it some way or another right yeah I think like you were talking about episodes of like fright oh man I'm in this situation I could handle this better next time you know like sometimes in Chinese medicine we'll call those acute things those immediate things kind of fright I'm also interested in this kind of like grinding fear that maybe limits you know like maybe my dad going okay I got to go work in this job that I really don't want to be in because you know I got to do it and then your decision isn't just like an immediate thing it's like it's like something that's skewing your life in some direction right like a magnetizing to something in that way or uh you know sometimes in people's relationships too I don't really want to do this thing I've known people who've done this I've had these conversations it's like you know the person on in their moments of honesty they're like I'm doing this because I'm afraid you know this person's GNA be my security that'll keep me you know secure and we'll talk about this maybe as another obstacle that'll be mentioned later on yeah yeah but you know only last thing maybe before we totally bounce and my conversations with my son if you're if you're a parent this was interesting I told my son like how proud I am of him that he does these things that are scary so he goes to these chess tournaments and you could lose right uh or my daughter did a lot of like skating you know where you would go out and you'd be in a in front of a crowd of people and you could fall on your ass you know but she did those things and I always thought well this is really good because I couldn't always do that when I was a kid you know I couldn't go into those situations of where I you know I I wouldn't succeed that was kind of hard for me sometimes I know how you felt about those things it's funny Eric I was just talking about this with the patient of mine today she's she's a you know she's a composer she's a you know scholastically trained you know she's a professional pianist she has a piece that will be she composed that will be played at Carnegie Hall in like two months from now oh that's fantastic wow yeah no legitimate you know scores for movies and things like this but she has terrible stage fright terrible stage so we were talking a little bit about this today because she's going to be traveling out there and you know helping them put the pieces together and talking with the composer is super cool you know like I've never met that's fantastic yeah yeah yeah yeah and so and you know she's like I have terrible stage fights she's like I'm back there and so we talked about the fear actually and we talked about what it manifested for us and and for her it was the fear of people being disappointed that she didn't that she was worried about them worrying about her oh weird Okay so but that's her thing and so that's an Earth element anxiety about her anxiety is the thing that throws her or something yeah that like you know and I said and I said I feel like this might be a male and female dynamic because mine is different I'll say mine in a minute but I was like you're worried about wor you're worried about being about them being worried so you're worried about worry which means you're you're a worrier you know what I'm saying and that this pressure the the the the pressure that is this fear the fear that is that is creating this pressure is pushing you back into the place of discomfort of of worry so she's playing the piano and like she knows that people in the audience are afraid that she's gonna make a mistake and no no no that that they would that they would feel um not compassion for her but they would see that maybe she's nervous and they would feel I see empathetic for her and therefore they'd be like well they wouldn't be seeing her and I I I couldn't say any further than that but I can say that's really complicate yeah but it but it's it is it's in that way you know uh and so I thought that was a very deep thing but again that's fear-driven and and I said for me well my ability to deal with this kind of difficulty playing in front of people whatever instrument I'm playing or for whatever venue because I've definitely played by myself for like a belly dancer or i' played in some other smaller venues or what you know whatever that I just I don't want people to be mad at me because I was nervous and and made mistakes you know like like I paid this money to hear this man and he made mistakes that's get my money back you know what I'm saying like they're pissed off but what does that fear do for me it makes it pushes me towards this like the the place of anger or the place of resentment you know and so that's that's the response in in that way so I think I'm mentioning these because I think everyone's going to have a slightly different manifestation once gets in it it works its way through the the generating or the the controlling cycle on the five elements you know um but it is it is a it's a real thing that that should be dealt with and and to your point these are smaller obstacles these are moments of fright like you mentioned but they give you a glimpse into how you're going to react in a deeper place of fear even if it's a grinding kind of a thing or if it's a you know life change kind of a thing that will show you you know that will show you what's underlying for you that's that's what I felt for my son I was basically going okay when you're a kid to get up in front of that stage in front of the other people in the class that you might screw up you know in the school play or whatever that can be just as terrifying for you as a kid as the kind of stuff that you go through as an adult that emotion in that moment is just as real for that kid you know and in watching my son like a lot of times he'll just like roll up in the [...] like he'll just be like okay where do I have to go what do I got to do and he'll just do it and I'm like damn that's great and I was talking to him like that's a rehearsal for how you handle yeah almost what you were talking about that physiological feeling of fear in that moment right that can really throw you yeah so he did like uh he won like the speech contest for his grade or something he got the recording I'll see if he's okay with me putting it on Instagram or something it's pretty cool but he just got up and he was like okay [...] it I'm gonna do my thing he did it and I was like that's great and it comes from the chess thing for him too he wrot rolls up and he plays these adults and you know it could be damaging to Your Ego right you lose right and you feel bad about yourself but he he does it he keeps doing it you know he's got faith in his ability yeah I think it's that but even when he loses that's true you know but even when he loses I thought like okay like he's he's learned how to handle that emotion you know in the moment it's hard to do that right that In the Heat of the Moment thing you know if we take a meta approach though Eric his his chess life in that moment has been lost because he lost the game but he knows that's not he knows that's not his actual life but the in the moment it feels like devastating you know what I mean but but you get my analogy right yeah uh it's very similar right like for him his chess life is his life right but that's what I'm saying allow that allows him to practice The Reincarnation if you will you know he knows there'll be another one you know well you know that like thing where you really want to be good at something he wants to be good at this CH so badly yeah you know what I mean like if you good he'd like to be like Magnus Carlson like you know he loved to be that and the odds are not going to be in his favor on that you know and so like his identity is hanging you know like what you were talking about this is his identity right yeah and so he's throwing his identity out there like all the time to have it like potentially get treated like a pinata and get smacked around you know which could really damage your ego but he doesn't and I'm like bro that's one of the things I respect most about you I tell him that like I want more even more of what you got in me as an adult I want what you got even more so right I respect it real quick before we bounce Lama Glenn did this weird thing where he made me bring my guitar to a couple of the Retreats and he play I remember I like dude I want to [...] play and he like you got to he just like said he just assumed it like this bastard's gonna make me play this [...] and like I can play I don't play as often in front of like crowds of people and I was like okay I understand what he's doing he knows I'm a little reluctant to do it and he's gonna make me do it and it went fine you know I mean it was a good experience I was like okay cool you know so he made me play in front of these people you know and our audience doesn't know but what we what we talked about before we started recording and who we talked about it with was about confronting fear we did do that we literally just did that with some we're not going to say who more about what unfortunately but they'll know they listen to the episode but you know it was interesting yeah and like afterwards you know we talked about Ryan Davenport he happened to be at that event and he came up and said oh wow you can really play and he was very complimentary about it and the guy who on the theosophical side he came up to me and he did something really interesting I was playing like a Japanese piece that's like relatively hard for it yeah I remember yeah yeah I remember and so uh uh I was playing this thing and you know you're going to make some mistakes and [...] like what you were talking about Daniel you know you're not going to play it perfect and the guy from the theosophical side he came up and saidwell you know listen you played that you played that great that was good you know and he said I could see when you would make a mistake you'd give a little a little Flinch you know and he's like no one [...] knows if you made a mistake or not don't worry about it that was my that was my exact point to my patient today I said everybody in the audience would love to be literally 50 % as good as you are they would kill for that they'd be like someone on that level for sure right you know like I would love to be half as good like I wish I was half as good as the worst NBA player the worst one you know what I'm saying I'll be as half as good as that the guy who's like the 12th guy off the bench for like you know like the the the Mavs or some you know semi crap team I know if the Mavs are good or not they're pretty good actually oh chose the wrong team yeah don't say the Kings either because they're they're very good how are the Knicks doing they were pretty [...] before they still [...] H they're kind of like middle of the road actually you know all right well whoever the [...] team is well the Bulls are they're kind kid anyways even if you're that you're that dude who walks off yeah you're you're one of the hund something best people in the world with this thing exact right right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's interesting so it was interesting that LL Glenn made me do that and they would do that in the Zen things too they'll make you do [...] that you're afraid of looking silly in front of other people yeah you know I remember I was going to one of the Zen Retreats and they were like made me do the serving of the food which means you have to carry out these big trays you have to sit on like on your knees on the hardwood floor and you have to go through and like Ladle all this food to all these different people and there's all these Japanese rituals of how you're supposed to do it I didn't know any of that [...] i' had been at the Retreats and they just sprung it on me okay great you're at the retreat now you got to do this thing you have no idea what the hell you're doing you know and I was like you bastards but the whole point was to like be in front of like 50 60 people where you could like clown eye yourself I love that juice man that's the good juice boy I tell you what I'll take that juice I put it in the box and I'll drink it so I was ladling it to the hosak carosi the Zen master and I like plopped some of the soup over the side oh you sicko how could you he did this badass Zen thing it was so cool he just took his finger and he just grabbed the noodle and he just like slid it up the side he like froze my brain on his finger like I literally couldn't move my mind like an inch he just like dang stuck me on his finger and he did this little I and stuck the stuff back in the bowl and then he looked at me and I was like oo Zen moment and then I had to go around the rest of the room you know and you know you're gonna [...] up you know but it's embarrassment right yeah you that's that's the ego Crusher right there man that's the ego Crushers right there it's good it's good though right it's good how you learn deal crush it baby learn how to deal with fear absolutely well this was F great so that's fun all right yeah so this is obstacle one of nine I think I was thinking the same thought but this is a deep one I don't think they're all be this long no whatever no they're not they're not all this long but this is a good one yeah I think this is almost like one of the ones that's at the core of all of it really you can handle some of your fears and the last things will become easier I think the last piece and we talked about this last time because I mentioned it before but it'll bring it up just one more time for folks you know the the sort of five Elemental approach to the body is that the body is has its own kind of spirit associated with it which is associated with the metal element which is in charge of like respiration and expiration and taking in and letting go and all this but it it's inherently related to the Soma it's inherently related to the physical body and it has an awareness to it that its time is limited and so any recollection of that finite clock of that finite experience right losing a loved one or not having enough right reminded of that and there is a there is a response to that and the response to that for most people is fear because it's Mo it's motivating in a sense that it will stop you from taking risks in order to preserve what is the status quo even if the status quo is not necessarily great it's understood and accepted you know so Stockholm syndrome is like the the worst of this kind of thing but it's still a thing you know and so for people to you know approach different situations that allow them to to be open vulnerable for embarrassment you know is really important is really important I think in shaking the Paradigm that like you are bound to failure if you try and you're not bound to failure if you try you're really you're really not in the moment that fear of embarrassment can be just as big as other fears and you're rehearsing yourself how do I handle this fear right system producing it in the moment right yeah you're talking about this thing called the poe yeah right and uh uh sometimes I talk about associated with the metal element a lot most of the time but it's also sometimes associated with like the kidney yeah right and uh your physical body you know and that fear you were talking about earlier Tel just the fear of my losing my physical body how terrifying that is right yeah I often joke that uh I can shorten up all of my treatments with my patients by telling them uh there's more to you than they think there is and it's all going to be okay yeah that might be it right that's it we're done you can pay on the way out bye you know like put one needle L and just say that that's it but you say it with conviction you know people believe it yeah yeah yeah so and one La one last piece little tidbit that I have floating in my brain from this is from like Junior College communications class the same part of the brain that stores uh fear or response to physical pain is the same part of the brain that is uh has fear for public speaking so someone's fear of public speaking is equivalent to the fear of them being beaten yeah yeah yeah which goes to show the depth you know of of our of our ego's ability to manifest itself you know yeah and the power of like rehearsing against those fears then right that's why I love that that juice I love it man because it's challenging it really is very challenging and for you know single people and I think this is you know at least I can only speak from a you know a straight man's you know Viewpoint um but you know talking to people who you find attractive that big opportunities to be embarrassed in that someone could you know roll their eyes could crush your whole sense of who you are crush your whole sense of who you are fortunately that never happened to me so I I don't know what that you talked about in previous episodes you developed a whole Persona about how to handle that which is I did yeah yeah I totally did I had to you have to face those fears you got to face those fears not everybody's GNA feel your style or whatever or you know um but it definitely makes you more it it gives you that faith it gives you that knowing that you're GNA you know be here to do it again another time yeah all right this is a great episode on this you know thanks for sharing no yeah thanks for thanks for bringing it up thanks for doing it and thanks to the DS who showed us the nine obstacles the first one of nine number one of nine there won't be Nine episodes on it but you know we this one was an important one yeah yeah yeah yeah well Eric as always my friend thank you so much for the uh for the conversation uh and to our audience thank you for listening thank you for watching thank you for engaging please feel free to uh obligated not free OB you're obligated to you know like comment subscribe if you're on the YouTube or whatever other platform that you're checking us out uh via video or audio or if you're on the Instagram hit us up Jin and Tantra podcast if you want uh email you have questions comments concerns uh any other word with the c I don't have any uh Jen and Tantra gmail.com for Eric this is Daniel we do appreciate everybody's input and love and we give it right back to you take care [Music] peace h