[Music] hey PG and teers those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist so we are doing all of these nine things that can [...] up your life episodes as part of our little book project as well the g&t soon to be coming soon maybe that's optimistic soonish soonish yes uh to becoming book and sometimes what will happen is one or the other of us will have a little bit of an inspiration to talk about something you know we've been working through especially obstacle number five the mischievous mind as Daniel so aptly called it and um so we did a lot of stuff on that and what what what'll happen though is one or the other of us will have an idea of like well maybe we should do this thing for the podcast today Daniel have an idea or I'll have an idea in this case I like just it hit me like we hadn't really talked about obstacles to what what are these obstacles to really and in terms of the book project when Daniel texted me back he was like yeah that's defines like the book project uh in a way that I thought felt meaningful to you Daniel right to kind of Define what you thought the meanings were right and maybe almost like this is the start of a book or something right to address that first um and so that's what we'll try to talk about and maybe as much as we can and how we see it while giving some credit to the dsts too especially with the the idea of like I suppose in a certain sense modernizing it to how we see it or something and I felt that's been like really important in this whole project to me I know how do you feel about that Daniel yeah yeah no modernizing is is uh the only I mean that's that's all that we can do I don't know I mean how we couldn't Antiquated any further you know I mean like when when you're Yak is stubborn and won't walk with you up the hill to get water you know um yes is analogous to when you are trying to make ghee that's right yes exactly yes yes and the churn is stuck that's right when the wax in your candle dims and you cannot write anymore as the light has gone down for the day you know it's like not exactly so you know so modernizing it of course right as we've said numerous times like uh teachings antique teachers modern contemporary teachers contemporary be in the now for sure has to that's where we are I want to talk about the source text with that a little bit just to kind of say how it's talked about there and then maybe the idea that this is again something we've been we were just alluding to that you know parts of this you'll have to let go but anyway here's what they say in the source text real quick ter you know at least how the text frames itself so I I like talking with you know Chinese medical students about this because like I almost do it like in the first class of the first very first semester people are on campus it's one of those things I say within the first hour sure which is this idea of what are the goals of let's say Chinese medicine Dost versions of Chinese medicine and they talk about this idea of Health longevity and immortality y two of those seem easy one seems hard you know so the health thing they're going to tie it into what they're going to call the lower path um and again this is a the work the the the source text we're working with here for our nine things that can [...] up your life is an old doist book especially what they call a chemical dosm which is is basically how you use the energies of the body to transform a person so part of that when you can do that is you improve the person's health right and the basic part of the path the early parts of the path that they kind of describe in this book is like really working on your health and it has to do with like how the different organs in the body communicate with one another and the energies associated with those organs kind of tap into one another and you can improve the basic health of the person so then that that really like the way I've always talked about that is that means you're more healthy in the immediate and then the second one is more like a longevity thing can you be healthier for longer periods of time right like can you be like one of those old older Asian ladies in the park who are doing their things to the K-pop you know that actually happens in the park near me well the older ladies are there with their kop Kpop playing and it's these you know older Chinese ladies and they're like kind of squatting down on one leg doing all this [...] and they're like in their 70 they got their twerking videos up on Tik Tok well they they got it moving you know that's for sure yeah but they're doing their thing and it's like pretty impressive because it's these old ladies you know like what you kind imagine in the parks in China and things like that so that's kind of like your Health and Longevity things and then the immortality one which gets to be the controversial Point yeah I thought the path thing was pretty interesting though because we haven't talked about that in a long time but the whole idea of ground path and result right way these old books talk that way what's the ground well in this case the ground is your being your body your mind your spirit right energies the path is what you're putting the development through right and then what we're really talking to is like what's the results right like what are the kind of things that we be working towards right but framed in a way that hopefully works for modern people too so I I went to the source text Daniel the immortality thing is a tricky one and as I kind of wrote in the notes for myself I think it's the kind of thing that again you sort of have to let go of because it's really hard for me to imagine that any 21st century person who's just being introduced to this doesn't come from some Dost background could get too much into the way this is going to be described it just isn't going to speak to us but I don't think that means that the text aren't important or what their teaching doesn't work otherwise we wouldn't be doing this podcast right right right or we wouldn't be doing Chinese medicine in the way that we are or whatever whatever part of this you want to look at so it's kind of like using classical teachings while kind of having one's own take right yeah and as you were saying it earlier it's kind of what has to be sorry my voice is being funky it has to be the case right yeah but anyways in the source heex just to say it to give it its due props right is that it sort of talks about these five types of immortality then it talks about the ghost immortality where in terms of like yin and yang the person is like all Yin and they're kind of Trapped in a ghost world so that doesn't sound good and the T The Source text says it's bad so no surprise there and then it talks about kind of a human immortality which is just sort of long it and you know being able to live a long healthy human life kind of like the health longevity thing but then it flips the script and it goes to like an Earthly immortality which almost starts to sound like Methuselah kind of biblical stuff where you live this incredibly long superly long LIF time or something like that right which again I don't know what we think about that as modern people I mean I've talked to people who identify as daas who want to do that right we had on Keith Brewer in his episode and I think some part of him like is attracted to that idea can you go through and can you live these you know more uh drawn out longer lives or something like that but I don't know how you know accessible that is to 21st century people if we're really going to Vibe with that or not I would think probably no and I don't know what it totally means in the source text either if your expectation should go in that you're going to live for some extendedly long period of time I don't know that wouldn't attract me would that attract you I don't know no but I it is an interesting thought so not to not to go too deep off on a tangent but we'll just talk about time because you know I love to talk about time oh yeah you're into it now I've been loving time you know time time always blows my mind um because it doesn't exist whoa okay it's a construct no but construct there was somebody who was uh a patient of mine who was I don't know talking about their schedule or whatnot and uh I had mentioned a story that I had heard that someone and I think he was it was a Buddhist teacher of some type whether he was Zen Buddhist or whatever he was but he told the student hey don't leave that that stone this rock on top of some other rock or something right just on your desk he said don't don't leave a stone like that and um the student was like why not he's like oh eventually it's going to crush the thing underneath and the guy was like yeah like a thousand years and he goes oh he thinks completely different about time than I do he goes in that moment yeah yeah he's like and I was just like blown away and so I was thinking about this with my and talking about this with my patient just to try to get them to you know change their perspective on their schedule so they can come in you know and relax when they're getting you know their their their acupuncture treatment and it's an interesting thought when you say like if someone had planned on living for 120 years let's just say that was their roughly expected lifesty life expectancy are you know I think our I think if you were to pull most Americans they might say like 80 I I don't know I don't I don't know what people would say but I don't less I I wouldn't guess it would less than 80 but I don't think most people think they'd live till 90 you know what I'm saying so we'll just I'm just GNA throw this number out there right without any evidence and so you sort of live your life in that in that you know trajectory right when really that means half your life would be over at 40 so that's really when you should have your you know quote unquote over the hill party uh so you're 39 and then you're over the hill that's how that that's how that goes you know yeah and if you knew an end date would you act differently right this is the the preciousness of human existence the certainty of death type talk that we've had before many times but if your time frame was different if you had this ingrained in you that your time here was longer than 80 by like you know half of that right that you might do things you might do things differently now you're going to have to work longer and you know whatever all those case whatever the case is is but I I just think it would change your mentality on things so I I I think it is a kind of a an interesting way to free up how you might do things on a daily basis or or at least your time frames would change and what you might be into would would be a little bit different as opposed to like burning the candle on both ends because you're going to be gone soon anyways you know what I'm saying you know it's interesting way to think about that um I do think that that whole I me goes to what a little bit we were talking about off mic I think that whole idea of preciousness of human life certainty of the finality of human life such a like a it's the lead right of the stages of the path when Lama sakaba does it and probably all those Himalayan Buddhist teachers do it that I'm sure yeah so it like does become something you get to think about right and how much time do I have to accomplish the things that I feel like I really need to do the ones that I really need to do yeah right just you know reminded me of one other little anecdote which is a little off again but I'll you know the minute you talked about like the The Rock On Top of the Rock there was a thing with with tanoi RI who was ri's kind of interesting phrase It's like a teacher of Zen Masters so a zen master is a roshi R Roi is someone who teaches Zen Masters pretty high level dude and I got kind of interesting in that I was studying in a Zen place where they had a couple of those rois who had been sort of In The Stream of the people you know so my personal teacher was hosaka roshi but he was like under these RI who were teaching him you know he's a very impressive person anyway I think it was T Roi and like one of the students was down in Hawaii where the main Monastery was and they were doing some project on the monastery and then ton RI said something like stop torturing that piece of rope because the person was like [...] around with the Rope wasn't doing it in a very thoughtful way the Rope was getting all jerked around and he was G like stop torturing that rope and it's an inanimate object you would think well what's he talking about torturing the Rope but you could see that they were kind of valuing every single aspect of the world or something right M was sort of there and you wouldn't torture the Rope either you know you wouldn't torture the fridge you would torture your car you know because you're just you're showing disrespect for the world and you're going to burn that thing out you're going to have to replace it and you know what I mean right it's kind of like another interesting little slant you the time slant is there right but also sometimes the way they think about inanimate objects is different don't torture the world stop torturing that rock right right why are you torturing that rock stop it you know yeah which raises the raises your sense of Consciousness to a different level right and all of a sudden you're thinking like well I don't want to torture my cell phone or whatever don't torture those things right maybe the cell phone deserves it maybe the cell phone deserves to get a little torture but yeah okay anyways it's very cool so yeah the time thing is interesting it it does it creates that little bit of something right yeah that makes you think deeper about what you're doing yeah all right so that's the Earth M uh the Earth one uh then the next thing they talk about Daniel is the spirit immortality and that sounds like a lot more kind of Buddhist like to me where they talk about the sh the spirit of the person the soul of the person or the you know the Shen of the person in Chinese mascal speak you know that separates from the body or transforms away from the body and becomes it sort of its own thing so that has more of like kind of that Enlightenment kind of feeling to it or something like that right um so that's the spirit immortality but then they do another funny thing after that which is really doist or at least you know dosm is like anything else Christianity or any of these other things it's big it has lots of different beliefs within it right but certainly one of the ideas then becomes this Celestial immortality where they kind of say this is the the highest thing for a source text like this and it's like almost like envisioning that there's I guess in English you'd say an afterlife or something but there's something Beyond this life right that these Spirit of mortals can enter into and it's almost has this feeling of like this giant hierarchy of all these different levels of spiritual accomplishment and then people can go like walk through this entire hierarchy it's almost like you'd be working yourself up some like huge bureaucracy or something like that it has a little of that vibe to it and it's a funny part of talking about in Chinese culture because it's there for sure for whatever reason certain parts of dosm have this idea of this big hierarchy but you know we were talking about Kabal last week sometimes cabala talks that way too right there's this huge hierarchy and you can kind of climb your way up this hierarchy or something and go to like higher and higher levels within this Celestial immortality but you know it's there in DM I wanted to acknowledge it because it's in the text but again I wanted to also talk about like it's hard to get into that too much as a 21st century person you know right I agree and I definitely had friends who were thought of themselves as doas but like they were kind of they were didn't like this part m so I had a good friend of mine back from grad school uh Robert Wilson uh one of my good friends from school we always had the nickname for each other Bobo because he D dated as Korean lady and apparently that's a term of endearment in Korean so we call each other Bobo and uh so he's my bobo and um and so you know he was very like he liked DSM but he was very uncomfortable with this I remember we had conversations about it and he was like I don't want to be in some huge Dost hierarchy down at the bottom you know being very kind of nervous and uncomfortable and I said yeah not into that either and we had kind of interesting conversation because at some point he said well you're a sorcerer and I was like what do you mean by that he said you want to go back to the source of things you're a sorcerer and I was like okay I mean I could take that you know uh and he said he said he didn't want to do that either but I kind of have that vibe in me I want to go back more to the source of things I didn't want to sit around in some giant spiritual hierarchy Bureau Ry thing or something like that does that speak to you too s go back to the source I'm more interested in that well I think you know because of my shamanic practice the the term sorcerer is a different has a different connotation you know I mean he used it in a very particular way so I was like okay that's cool right yeah yeah one one who one who seeks Source yeah I think when I hear sorcerer I think uh of one who conjures you know I know technically that would be a conjurer but like generally when I think of sorcerer I think of wizard you know uh yeah yeah yeahuh mean I like ritual magic I actually do like ritual iMagic right right but I mean he was more like it was I mean he's he was he's a very clever guy I want to mention his name because he has a practice up in the upper peninsula in Michigan so if you happen to be around in that area you can like look him up and you know he's an interesting character to meet you know if you're in that part of the world and you Happ to be listening want to give him a little shout out but he would he had interesting takes so I was like I was like okay that's an interesting way to think about that you know where he didn't want that anyways there it is so I think that's a perfect example of something where I'm like okay that's cool to study on some level I find it interesting it's a whole chapter in The Source text but I'm like like H you know I don't think that's the goal for us now what we're obviously trying to achieve through these things you know right though I think there are dowas who still talk this way you know yeah it's interesting I was having we're using these techniques for a different reason right yeah I was having a conversation with somebody uh maybe like week before last and you know we were talking a little bit like political ideology and he was saying well he goes I think at the Bare Bones uh on the on the right side of the aisle there is a very clear hierarchy structure top down and on the left side of the aisle it's a com everybody is equal like there is no equality like there is no hierarchy it's just everybody's just there there's just stuff for everyone you know like that's how it should be and I it took me a second and then I was like you know what I do think so I do think so um and there's something to be said about either one but I feel like many people at least maybe politically who are politically motivated towards the left in this way which are probably you know not The Stereotype but probably going to be a lot of folks who are practicing these kinds of things are going to have that more you know communal idea it's more kind of egalitarian Garian approach and in comparison to something that has a hierarchy especially that feels you know potentially Rel Religulous you know religiousness in in ba in based or there's a bureaucracy or there's a corporate business feel to it right because that has a very clear structure that seems to be the opposite of a Dost sense right that that that is that is the you know the Dao is like the undifferentiated that this is clearly differentiated and delineated another dword from like Daniel you know nice alliteration right yeah yeah yeah so like that just seems antithetical to what the the the perceived teachings would be and I can't say that for everyone but I could say from the friends of mine who have dabbled in DST thought as in they'll read you know they they'll mention you know yinyang and they'll say I want to live by the da I'm going to live through the you know like they'll have some books and they'll you know what I'm saying they're not I don't know how deep they're diving into the philosophy but I think this you know the kind of superficial layers of understanding is good enough you know is good enough it provides them with the philosophy provides them with something to kind of think about uh and I know I'm doing that argument where you use one or two people one or two examples and then extrapolate but for the sake of this conversation I'm not always prepared for everything so like if you're you saying I'm putting up a straw man and you're listening to this yes because that's how conversations work so let me argue against myself before anybody else does you know no it's okay you're just doing case studies right yeah yeah so which I think it's gonna be important part of this conversation for me too yeah yeah so that that's that's kind of what I that's kind of how I think about it and why that would be the case you know I think that's an interesting way like the way my bobo Robert Wilson talked about like going to a source I think a lot of people that feels intuitively comfortable yeah let go to a ground being let let me go to the source the thing that's either Transcendent or beyond all of these hierarchies or something yeah but I mean there's no I wanted to be honest about it because there certainly is this in a lot of these spiritual Traditions like in some of the cabala there's this Mera stuff where you climb up through the Jacob's Ladder of all the different Heavenly Realms or something and people people are interested in that right big dis mystical Traditions are like that and there's like mystical dos things which are kind of fascinating on some level but it's a little bit of a similar Vibe imagine that there's these layer upon layer of like mystical realities Beyond this one and you can kind of climb them up like I guess kind of like a Jacob's Ladder thing again or like a big tree of life or being they climb up that Vibes you know like with people historically so you know we' done our historical shout out right yeah and we talked about it though I don't think that like my goal in doing Dost things would be that you know but it is a part of the tradition right and I agree I think I know people who are really serious dsts who you know don't think about it that way but it's a big chunk of dosm that's like that so you know just to acknowledge it and it's definitely in the source text too you know I guess that's you know it hit me when you know I was thinking about this one that even when we're quoting from the individual obstacles and I I I get it for you it's important like to quote them before we do it right you you want to do that and I want I decid to do the same thing here yeah but at the same time I I I definitely feel like we have free license as 21st century folks to go and say okay well this is how I'm going to frame this yeah in a way that's relevant for us now right yeah and then we kind of bridge our two gaps that I think we want to do in this thing where we okay we're using things that have a lot of root to them they have a lot of power to them you know they've been refined and uh and uh they're wonderful right but you also can go through and like okay let's address these as people now yeah Tantra that's it spirituality with a Twist all right so if that's the case then um you know then you're into the situation of what to keep what to let go of and then what are these things obstacles to I had a kind of a deep conversation with someone close to my heart a little bit recently about these kinds of things and so I was thinking okay so what what what is this about like how would we frame this and part of this I thought of his being like what are alternatives and we're not going to talk about immortality in this dsty way from this book no that's not going to speak to us but what are these obstacles and what are these things supposed to be dealing with and I thought some of it was psychological and how you might frame it so I thought to me what are these obstacles to and one of the first things I wanted to like kind of touch on with it was obstacles to like authenticity okay to really feeling like you're being sort of the truest version of who you are these are obstacles to that in potentiality you know uh and for me I always saw the Zen and dos parts of my experience certainly those whole chunks of my life for those are my main practices is being my my wrestling with the question of like authenticity right how do I come become a true version of who I am now when I talk to people who identify dsts as dsts I know some of them talk that way like uh you know our Anthropologist uh on retainer Ryan K Davenport talks this way like for him it's an authenticity question right and when he and I talk kind of deep that's it always kind of boils down to that idea like for him dosm has like how do I become the authentic version of who I am expressing myself in an authentic way and I'm like yeah that's true so for me that was a lot of say the Carl Rogers psychology who talks about authenticity right one of our favorite Carl's and um you know Zen and dawa stuff and I see that as also probably like classical dosm in a way right the idea like how do you express the true your true inner nature of who you are to show you know your your true inner doubt something like that does that work for you so it's interesting I'm I'm watching my mind and and you know maybe we all do this but I know I do this for sure I sort of take things as they're coming you know and then I look to see if and what they pull up and pull out and what they what they NAB along the way and what they reject along the way and so that process of uh you know an enigmatic merrygoround full of magnets oh literation again my friend yeah yeah um a magnetic marar round full of magnets yeah yeah enigmatic Mar enigmatic Mar magas I guess I could say maybe a lot of ss yeah enig magnetic Maro round you're already finding your literary voice we haven't even started writing yeah um but what comes to me is so the the the Tibetan the Tibetan word for yogan or Yogi is is Nour yeah right now Nour and Nour um is it has a definition to it right one who uh establishes and maintains the authentic state of mind or the authentic state of being and so and I I use this regularly in my yoga class you know we do physical ASA but we also do pranayama and I do a ton of like balancing on on you know your hands or your feet because it really helps to reign in your attention very intensely um because you're just people's balance is so bad that this is a difficult thing to do for them but it really helps and and moves people to a deeper State and whatnot but I mentioned that again so NJ the Tibetan word for yogan one who establishes and maintains the authentic state of being and these obstacles that we have been discussing if to what you were saying they are obstacles to your authentic state of being to your authentic state of mind and they will you know they they as in the people who wrote whoever these teachings are you know reference the mind is like a clear blue sky with you know and if there are clouds they pass through but they are not blocking the sun permanently they're just in the way and they continue to go and so your inner State of Mind your authentic state of being is one of expansiveness one of peacefulness and one of your own making right and I'm sure it's more it's more than this but I don't want to speak with negation I like to keep things positive when talking about positive State you know open States like this so I'll leave it at this and to me that seems that seems to fit right that seems to be appropriate for for what you're saying I had kind of like one of our g&t epiphanies and doing these episodes and I can't say exactly when it happened but we we talked through these things and sometimes when you're prepping this stuff or you're talking through it there's ele aspects of this or elements of this that hit you in the way that hadn't really hit you before and so for me like the way you're describing there is kind of like a Buddha nature thing right you're describing the deepest parts of the Mind Right which could beared to a you know a full open blue formless sky right uh that's very like what they call Z chenny or or mahamudra sounding Great Seal sounding or you know those kinds of things right where you kind of try to tap into this deep part of who you are I kind of go to the what we've been talking about a lot lately the idea of like formlessness and Bliss those are sort of like the way I would talk about that core idea so I I was like okay that's cool and I knew we were going to be talking about that from the moment we started this podcast right but there's another part of it too which it's kind of big in the Zen ands thing and then in the Carl Rogers thing I'm alluding to psychologically you know him being influenced by Chinese culture which is like the spontaneous spontaneity and authenticity in your activities of your life okay right those two pieces have been very interesting for me and seeing how those two connect with one another especially for us living as lay people right we're not in the mountains or something like that right right we're going to be interacting with the complicated world full of these obstacles right and so that creates a kind of interesting authenticity problem there which I think is very deep in like a real genuine problem you know where people's lives lose that feeling of authenticity like I think it's a real deep problem you know obviously Carl Rogers is one of my kind of psychologists I really admire saw this as a deep psychological problem that's probably why I love him so much right he put his finger on that part too and so I you know I see both sides of that I I get what you're saying and I also I guess I see the other side of it too you know can you act authentically in your life in a moment by moment way can you be authentic and can your also life reflect like um um a vision of like who you really are that your outer Life Starts to say okay this is a represented representation of who I am really or does your life Veer off in some other ways where you're like oh God this isn't right this is artificial this isn't real something's wrong with this a lot of people's lives I think potentially do that and it's dangerous well it's like you're if you know we spend our time scheduled for obvious practical reasons you know what I'm saying uh yeah but then so the what's the opposite to that would be to spend your time doing whatever it is that you wanted to do as opposed to doing things that you needed to do and you're you do things because you have to do them right now but what if you were able to do things when you felt like doing it you know spontaneous you know what I'm saying and so for me that that seems to be that you talk about the other side of the coin that seems to be the yin and the Yang of like having responsibilities having a schedule is you you do things that you have to and you and you have to do them at this particular time and if you remove those constraints or you work through them or you at least bring balance at some point in your life that you free to act as you want when you want to do so now obviously I'm not talking about like you know pounding a a fifth of Jack Daniels and driving a you know school bus into the lake you know what I'm saying like you know but like dancing right singing um taking a trip going to see a concert like driving by a friend's house and just ringing the doorbell not even bothering to call or text like I'm just I'm in the neighborhood I want to hang out you know or going somewhere by yourself for the sake of going it you know just for shits and giggles as the as the kids are saying nowadays you know I don't think they are yeah they're probably not you know so sorry Jen Z yeah sorry that is not what you were saying um but that seems to me the that that seems to me to be the balance and I and I will say man like I don't know a lot of people who are spontaneous actually you're talking about like a very like like hey like let's have the spontaneity of the life of the my day right you're talking about even on that level right yeah I'm talking about I'm like super it's interesting like you know I talked with my daughter about this and even the sleep schedules are artificial absolutely the work ual are artificial artificial who said we need to do five days a week where did that come from somebody was talking to me about this the other day and I was like wait whoa whoa wait hold on they're like oh because I find I find hustle culture in in in our culture to be so fake you know so so fake and we always dunk on on Jordan Peterson and we'll continue to dunk on his ass you know until uh we never do a podcast about him because he's not worth an hour of my time see like getting like posterized like the old things where Michael would be jamming over some from like the bucks or something like that like Jordan Peterson could be that like Michael Jordan just dunking yeah yeah you know but he's you know def definitely a champion of of martyrdom and you know work yourself into the bone for another generation right and this kind of like hustle culture to me is a it's a sort of a sickness because if you do the math at least in my mind you do the math and you look at the ratios of work to what you receive from that effort from that Merit it's so lopsided it's crazy it's so lopsided it's crazy and I just you know I feel like some of these things are obstacles to you being who you are when you want to be that and everyone's got responsibilities I understand I understand but I don't know that many people that are spontaneous at all ever well that's why I think we were going to do the episode at some point which we probably do have to do neoliberalism and you like how did this happen right yes like what happened here you know but I I know in Christopher Ryan's book civilized to death I was talking with my daughter about this I was yeah the sleep schedule is artificial it's artificial it's just based around the work day corre someone decided you have to have a work day and now you have to live your life like this but there's nothing to say that the system wants to do that nothing to say that that's natural in any way but you convince people in a weird way that you have to sleep in these schedules and work in these schedules and there's nothing intrinsic to them you ask people they would say oh yeah I know Chinese medicine people who would probably say oh yeah that's just how it's supposed to be no no it's not and it's interesting because they were again in the Christopher Ryan book civilized to death he's an entertaining writer right you know you could say whether he's totally accurate Anthropologist I don't know but I find what he says interesting and he was talking about you know when the the Europeans showed up in the Amazon and they're like you gotta live on this schedule and the people looked at them like what are you talking about I have to live on this schedule I don't need to have a schedule when I'm hungry I eat when I'm tired I sleep when I Feel Like Making Love I make love when I want to go like get some food I get the food what are you talking about you know and there wasn't like it's artificial it's not real it's not real it's not real it's not real you know but people can feel tortured even with that and they use the word fake and that's it's funny because I've been talking about that we sometimes get weirdly sympatico before we do these things so I was talking about one of my dear dear friends from my very first day of grad school Jenny Jen passion and I was using that word fake over and over and over again I kept using that word fake it's fake which is of course the opposite of authentic correct it's inauthentic so which I mean there's lots of ways you can frame it and I like like I get totally what you're saying can I be spontaneously joyful in the moment in my day or do I not have the ability to let myself do that right that's interesting right even in that immediate thing can I go and just see a friend because I feel the need to see that friend right you know or can I like say oh you I'm going to play some music today [...] it I'll play some music I feel musical let me play it that's thing for you Daniel because you're you're a champion of spontaneity well literally literally right now my my my drum circle friends are are playing at the beach you know so it's uh oh you're stuck doing this sorry man no it's all good you know it's another kind of spontaneity yeah no but totally being you know that's why artist art is you know whatever kind of art you want helps people tap into that layer of spontaneity that layer of creativity that layer of like I'll call it egolessness you know because you're just going to try you're going to just I'm going to just try it like you know whatever however however it comes out it comes out maybe it's good maybe whatever but at least I'll have learned I learned through doing you know so I I mean I think I had two sides that's I had multiple sides of this so I had like the immediate like in the moment we kind of emphasize different parts of it you emphasize like okay in the course of my day can I be spontaneous in the activities that I choose yeah said the thing like if I have to teach or I have to interact with a patient or I have to like whatever am I spontaneously myself in the moment of interacting with that person fa because if I can be authentic I can put them in the position of being more authentic you know what I'm saying I'm real that tends to pull more out from other people and then now they can be real too yes yeah that bothers me I I don't like this fake [...] yeah I think it has to be real like in the moment in that way and then in the other part of this I was thinking also of like boy you don't really like your career you really don't like your relationship you don't really like then the life is really going in authentic in that sense too and so I think there's like a thought and that that gets you into the obstacles because a lot of the obstacles are like hey man you're the way you're handling your security and family part of your life that ain't working the way you're handing your professional part of your life that ain't working the way you're handing your relational part of your life that ain't working and those things are inauthentic and then the natural thing that will come out of that and this again is per Carl Rogers you know with these obstacles is you'll start to get psychologically [...] up yeah yeah you'll feel that inauthenticity and you'll grind against yourself or the way he likes to talk about it your concept of who you are won't match who you really are and now you're in a Dost [...] Chinese finger trap right yeah you know like you're really in a lot of trouble then if you get into that space you know and it'll create the anxiety and depression and all these problems right and so anyway so I that I saw the obstacles as like being like against that kind of thing you need have that authenticity and again in my conversation with Jenny I was like God a lot of this stuff just it's looks fake and it's going to be damaging for people not in a not in a judgy way but in like again like we talked about a little bit in some of these episodes more recently in a diagnostic way like this is a problem right right okay so I thought about it that way you seem like you're down with that right so these are obstacles to that I also thought about our other favorite Carl Carl Jung right and his idea of individuation can you become like a free person in your own individual identity on the one hand free from the external artificial things you know the kind of things we were talking about that maybe are more imposed on you from the outside world can you free yourself from those and you know individuate yourself from those things and can you also individuate yourself from aspects of your own psyche like the mischievous mind stuff we've been talking about right where you can free yourself more internally and then you've individuated you know in that sense you're not compelled by the outside world to be something artificial and then you're not compiled by your inside World either you know your own psychological baggage or your own psychological complexities that kind of derail you from inside can you change that and then in yung's point of view then you'll really connect with the world in a deeper way then you'll connect with the archetypes that are not only inside of you but outside of you and your whole life will become richer that's individuation and I thought okay these are obstacles to individuation too does that make sense to you as well yes yeah because if you get like if your own internal mind is too mischievous it'll [...] you up from the inside if you get bunched up with too much family too much relationship too much work negative aspects of security then that'll dominate you from the outside and then you can't individuate right you know so okay those are obstacles to that we're on the same page yeah and and yeah and just so I can say that I said it because I'm I'm hearing it in my mind in my mind's ear which which is the third ear that's on the inside of your brain that hears your own voice talking um I like it the idea of the third ear I have to open my third ear they talk about the third eye but they you know they don't they don't talk about the third ear the third ear yeah you got that's the secret teaching exactly that's a very um on a the point of individuation we're not talking about individualization in that you develop such a strong sense of being an individual that you end up disconnected from influence or your community that's not that's not the kind of indivi that's not the individuation we're talking about I think you know individuation for me is a maturity of the self is is getting um getting at least in Associates Maybe a bachelor's and maybe at the end level a PhD in emotional intelligence ah and that then frees you from internal story including genetic to whatever degree you can be free of that as well as external story The societal familial you know relational Scholastic you know whatever all of those external pressures where roomie says to write your own myth exactly that thing yeah that you right that you're in charge of that that whatever hand is writing the story of the universe as it unfolds you have a you have an uh you know an eraser and your own pencil to be like nah not that part you know no we're not good no we're not doing that no he did not wear a pink shirt today he wore a pink boa you know yeah make statement right why stop at the shirt go for it yeah so it's like uh uh I I don't want to cut you off do you have more on that one no you're good that I just I want I just was I was hearing that and I wanted to just to make sure that because we're we're we're dancing around something that we're not going to get to today but that's okay it's like kind of fascinating because we had this conversation a few weeks ago and it was one of the weirder episodes to record because I had had a very painful conversation that afternoon earlier and then we just record Ed this [...] and sometimes you know we're in whatever headp space we're in yeah totally talked about like sometimes like if you're teaching you're a doctor we're doing what we're doing sometimes you're like okay okay I'm in some pain but I'm the show must go on but we had kind of an interesting one we were talking about the yidm and I realized how important this point that you're making here is to you the way I'm hearing it correct me if I'm wrong but I heard like I was talking about how you know we as individual beings have to take our responsibility if the universe op up opportunities we have to take them yeah right yeah and I think sometimes for for you and it was on point five of the nine things that can [...] up your life where it was important for you to say like I can't remember how you phrased it you said interesting you said like well that sounds a lot like an American or something like that you said and I was like oh Daniel's hearing this more like individualisms pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of stuff I think mean it that way yeah wasn't my intention but you're saying you know your reaction was kind of oh it could you know it could sound that way you know and I was like oh that's where Daniel's coming from with this and that's a very important point for you for you you're kind of bothered by like this hyper individualism of American society some level right where I'm like bothered by hyper conformism I see Americans as being essentially conformists you know but we have yeah it's both true it's not like one side is true and the other side isn't true well it's it's a level of misunderstanding that you are you are taught that you are that you are a unique individual and no one else you know no one else is like you and I am an American I am this thing I you know it's like me me me me and yet they're feeding the same story to everybody and everyone is doing it you know so that that that they're both so both both are happening at the same time but for me it's um the removal of this kind of like unique aspect of yourself I mean yes we are unique in in in a of course in our own ways but you're not an island unto yourself you know and for me that that is the problem you know and the hustle culture embodies that and your you know the more that I work the more that I get but it's still bound on self and like oh I got to take care of my family well as my teacher Andre said well why only your family why don't you take care of more than just your family but you know what I'm saying like do because you want to build community it's a deep part of your nature yeah and you have this feeling like well wait a minute people are going to atomize themselves into these little individual either them or just a very small group of people that they feel connected with right that might be just be like their little nuclear family or maybe a few extensions of family members outside of that and it all becomes very atomized in that way which is true yeah right that's true and that seems individualistic but I also see that like that's how the culture wired yes like that's not a that's not a a bug that's a feature right feature of it and I feel like it's conformist you know so and both of those things are true it's one of those funny statements where both sides are true we didn't have a chance to talk about it in the moment we were towards the end of the episode and I thought oh that's what Daniel's hearing and what I'm saying I I knew I wanted to come back to it whenever it came back up again because I was going oh yeah this is really important for Daniel this this feature of you know you wanting to build spiritual Community right this thing works against that because people will atomize right we we did um I did an episode a couple weeks ago with um Priscilla and just called the community it was just on S it was on S you know yeah um and they they I I read this like kind of long article I I think by uh Han and he talked about like if you take a rock and you throw it in the water it'll just s in a river it'll just sink to the bottom but if you put it on a boat you can carry lots of rocks actually you know and I and I love the idea of like a bunch of people together floating down the river you know and because I I I think that it lets it it's a very tangible firstperson reminder that you're not alone you know which which I I talk about on a regular basis because you know we see lots of people in um in the clinic we have various layers of of students and people who are coming into the clinic you know patients and students do have some similarities in a sense at least in my mind when in the role that I am sitting in because I'm always trying to educate right whether it be scholastically for one or trying to empower people with their own health so they don't feel like that they are just stuck in the position that they're in they could make some changes if they wanted to you know that would affect positively affect their their health outcome you know and part of that thing for me is always reminding people that like it's your journey but it's a shared one you know and that like that reminder is is is an important one at least from from my perspective you know but like my mom said many uh many moons ago when we had her on the podcast um for her and and for our culture it's not me it's we and and you know because I'm not surrounded by you know my countrymen uh mainly because my countrymen the numbers are decreasing uh daily uh hint hint hint wink wink uh it's [...] but anyways um that I find like we had an episode like how much do we want to talk about these things and it was really kind of Daniel's choice to be like okay I'll allude to when it's right to allude to right so that that's as far as I'm goingon to go um and so I build that around me you know and I and and because I have appreciated it when I have gone to you know new environments that were unfamiliar to me in a in a spiritual setting or in any kind of setting and there's always other people even if it's one or two people who have been very kind to me you know and have looked past whatever appearance that they see as this you know flawed being and have seen the the human inside and said hey let me um let me come help you you know let me make you feel at home and and I want to do that for other people as much as possible and I feel like if I could Stoke that fire of all the other fires that we enjoy stoking you know through wisdom and and the movement towards you know passion and Bliss and whatnot like this fire of igniting someone else's sense of like togetherness to me is it it can extend so easily Beyond any you know quote unquote spiritual teaching it's it's compassion and action in my mind yeah like I feel like in the Tibetan Buddhist world I had a lot of good experiences of this too where they're very good at like doing that see there's a cultural difference and you'll meet people and they'll go oh I I know you from some previous life they'll say that kind of [...] I remember the guy who was doing the Translating the first time I went out to the Daly Lamas Monastery I was there to do a practice is that like it's the main one that's like kind of the core one of my whole life you know I initially got first with like Lama Glenn but I wanted to do even like a more advanced version and L Glenn was like well start working on it now and then when the opportunity comes to get it go you know so the opportunity came to go up there and it was the first time it was in the monastery up there um and the gentleman who's doing the Translating this you know really very endearing Tibet man kept going like I know you we know each other you know and and so you already were like building those bonds you know in this way and and again in the context of kind of like a metaphysical realization too we're not just interconnected we're inter interconnected in so many ways right we're interconnected in the sense of like everything is interconnected physics entanglement everything is interconnected interconnected all the time right that's just part of the elements of reality right things are interconnected just by their nature universe is like one big hologram and everything is feeding back and everything else indas net the deepest level you can go on that maybe or maybe you can go deeper I don't know but in any case you got that part but then as individuals we're karmically interconnected too and you can meet people and go we're karmically interconnected right which is what basically you know that person was saying there I feel this connection with you he said it multiple times you know over the course of the you know our time trying to chatting and things like I know you already you know you know that level of metaphysical interconnection because interacted before right yeah I haven't always been Eric you haven't always been Daniel and other people haven't been you know we've met each other before you know that's why we Vibe right we have interconnectivity in that way you know and yeah even throughout the day Eric you're not always Eric you're Professor Baker go to those roles uhhuh yeah you know and and that and that but that's a shift in your identity I mean maybe on some level you're you but the way that other people are seeing you in that way you're not the same you know you're not the same person so we're you know I think about that real quick Daniel is like my goal in doing any of these things whether it's as a teacher or or you're gonna take the thought from me so go ahead continue oh [...] it go ahead no no no yeah that we try and weave that we try and weave the we try and weave the same thing all the way through boom you got it I was gonna try yeah that's where I was going yeah totally finish it man I didn't want to step on your thing yeah no no no that that we try and we even though I I am wearing a different hat literally although I don't I always wear the same hat when we record it's kind of like you know part of the uniform and you you the same way but we try you know we're wearing different hats but it's the same being who is wearing a different hat and I you know there's certain moments in your life where you just like take a a snapshot you know a Polaroid and you keep it in mind for for those who don't want know what a Polaroid is for our you know gen Z audience uh you know ages 19 and Below maybe you don't know what a polar art is but that was a a camera that you would take a picture with and would print the photo immediately from the camera I know amazing you know what's funny about that Janel is like that's retro cool now is it cool now okay cool like buy those cameras and they they print those things up my yeah like J so for younger Millennials who missed that fad it's like the Millennials who won't know yeah they're like wait what's a Polaroid is that a brand no um but I I stood in front of a mirrors as we all have you know probably hundreds of thousands of times but but anytime that I wore a different uniform specifically one with a hat I took a Polaroid in my mind and I kept it there and the first time that I did that I think was my like freshman year playing football in high school oh okay and the next time I did that was when you a little snapshot of yourself that you did yeah and I was inid then I was in the Army you know and I had my uniform on and I had you know whatever and then maybe one was on my you know like wedding day you know what I'm saying and there's been numerous times like this throughout where I'll just be like okay I did that thing in this lifetime you know and what I've what I've learned over the over the time is that like the person underneath is the same just the dressing changed you know and that something that like I don't know I'm I'm I'm becoming more proud of as time goes on actually yeah it's really kind of fascinating this whole thing like again it goes to the idea I guess of like interconnectivity from this other point of view I had like a kind of an interesting Email exchange with llama Glenn l h menen my dear spiritual teachers and friends and same for True For You Daniel yeah and I was trying to like this is more like a obstacle number three question in the way though that one keeps popping up in different ways but I was like talking to him about what I really wanted from like relations with people you know that kind of interconnectivity and you know we were talking about you know things around love and things around sex and things around those kinds of things but when I wrote him back I said you know that isn't really what I care about what I really care about is I care about like intellectual emotional and spiritual connection I wrote him back with that yeah and I said if you really ask me the honest to God truth what I really want to be is I want to be in one of those bu Buddhist interconnectivity Pur land places where you're with the people you have the karmic interconnections with and you're all helping each other get enlightened that's what I really want like a Buddhist goddess land or something you know and you know that desire to have that kind of interconnectivity to recognize like oh These Are My People the same way you're talking about it right and the connections might be emotional they might be intellectual intellectual some could be physical some could be sexual but they don't have to be right but to be in that place where everyone is working for everyone's mutual and that's kind of my ideal you know so I run back like I want to be there's one of the Buddhist goddesses vaj yogini I want to be in vaj yin's pure land to which he replied nothing I was like I don't care you reply nothing that's fine he probably just got busy but you know I was like yeah that's really if you ask me deep down that's what I want that's what I want I want to share my spiritual world and spiritual space with other people who want to share it back so we can all equally resonate and Enlighten one together like that's a goal yeah me deep down what do I really really want why would I come here to this moral coil using the word moral coil phrase moral coil again because I like to use it someone called me on that recently said you use moral coil a lot yeah I like it I've literally never heard you say that once someone said I say it a lot all anyways little Shakespearean right oh this Mortal coil so um uh you know like when you talk about that like and you dig down to what you really want like at the core why would you be here because I want to do that you know and that's a kind of a level of interconnectivity that's really deep right yeah yeah that relies on like okay we're interconnected but you know we are all interconnected and sharing this common goal this common Endeavor right yeah that's what I really want I want that more than you almost anything really you know the song from the Spice Girls comes to mind so tell me what you want what you really really want you know I it's so perfect Danel you nailed it that's right Ginger sporty and I like no yeah going there no like the whole thing of like Posh right I'll get up and I'll do the Boogie with them was scary and uh scary Scary Spice I think pumpkin [Laughter] right I think the last one was baby Baby Baby Baby Spice Baby Spice yeah I I wouldn't know man have no idea I have like a like this is a bizarre thing but sitting in the downstairs bathroom and a little like magazine rack why it's there I have no idea why there's even the magazine rack by the toilet but it's sitting there and there's an old in case you not a toilet paper you could use paper from the magazine Spice Girl Should got used a long she got used a long time ago there's some old magazine that was bought for like uh kitsy reasons and it must be like you know whatever when they first came out it's sitting around still I think occasionally my son like opens it up like sitting on the can and looks at pictures of the Spice Girls sticks it back in the thing um no but I think that's you know I mean if you get to it that's yeah we talk about interconnectivity you know and S and these kinds of things that's what tell me what I want what I really really want I want the ziga ziga ziga ziga ziga zooms out I can't remember what the hell that [...] was supposed to go I think I yeah that wasn't close but all right so we got we got a boogie I guess the was there was there any more of the obstacles that there is one more well I have like some I have like some other stuff about what are alternatives here maybe we'll do one follow-up episode and we'll lap it into the next of the obstacles sure yeah okay okay sounds good this is a decent place to stop right yeah think can't go once you get to the Spice Girls there's really nothing else to say once you've gone this episode killer everything else is just downhill you know I don't know I don't know how to peek I don't know how how know how to get on top of them wait a minute what really funny is they could never even come up with one other song like never I mean listen if you ask the what are they called spice heads I don't know what the I don't know what their groupies are called you know spice heads is that them spices spices spice eaters wasn't there something else that was spice eaters something I'm gonna call them spice heads uh okay spice heads know what it is you know we we we know we know they keep it real you know and uh it's amazing you're it you're volunteering yourself to be part of that group yeah I'm in it I'm definitely in it for sure I'm spiced out as they say that's why I only drink SP on camera there's all the spice gear is over there sitting on the side spiced rum and pumpkin spice and all the everything nice so you got a leotard with a Union Jack on it that oh yeah you that totally yeah you want to spice out yeah yeah just sitting a little off camera there just to yeah I light up the spice and good good spicy um but uh yeah anyways Eric I think the idea maybe we'll build on it like maybe the Caper on it would just be like okay we're given alternative ways of thinking of what these things are obstacles to right yeah yeah correct yeah and I think that's important for the whole question right yeah and like we said at the beginning this is basically uh a public brainstorming for uh for our soon to be you know written books so thanks uh thanks for tuning in thanks for listening I mean we've been you know Eric and I have been been been chatting about this this stuff since uh you know I was in school uh and I started in 2011 and uh finished in 2015 so this has been a very very long running conversation you know uh to get to this point but uh but we're getting there and and I feel like we're you know maybe a couple months away from finishing something that has been a long kind of cycle and uh I'm I'm as as always man super grateful to be doing this with you brother it's it's it's legit this is this is you know I mean in addition to being able to to like get these things again from you but then interact with them in a way that is alive for me it's um you know and then share them with people it's you know the value is is very very high very very high so even if I'm not doing something else that I love doing I love doing I love doing this and um Shameless plug we love hearing from our audience so if you want to uh you know get a hold of us hit us up you know like I said as I say in every episode we are brought to you by our [...] selves you know so we are our own sponsors what's up we don't ask for nothing we do this uh from the love of doing it but you know eventually we'll write a book and we will sell that um so we can you know get ourselves on uh you know some maybe I know Good Morning America or even even good day Nigeria I'm down with that like whatever it is you know I'll take it yeah what up Cleveland we'll do that the morning show what's popping mobile I'm good you know like right yeah um so anyways but feel free you know feel free or feeling you know obliged to hit us up Jin and Tantra Jin and Tantra gmail.com uh leave a comment in the YouTube or you know drop us a a like you know subscribe hit the notification Bell get the drops when we drop them uh you know of course people who are listening to this audio wise uh you can leave I think a a like or you can leave a review on Apple podcast for sure possibly even Spotify I don't know I don't I don't get down with either one of those things so you know forgive me for my ignorance but we're also on Instagram at the the Jin and Tantra podcast so you can uh follow us there occasionally we uh post some things that we're doing there so uh you know you could we're we're we're reachable for sure uh anyways we'll catch you guys on the next one so for Eric this is Daniel be well good luck peace