[Music] hey felly and tears those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist So Daniel and I are doing nine things that will [...] up your life or could [...] up your life or and might [...] up your life work in progress in the title it should be nine things that could [...] up your life right yeah okay uh are we going will [...] up your life seems too harsh yeah yeah yeah yeah uh possibilities so we're working on this thing they're the dowst nine obstructions and we've been spending some time hovering around number five and there's lots of ways you could take that one as we've been talking about Daniel in these couple episodes but I know for you know my slant on it was something like really thinking about what happens when the mind starts sort of torturing itself or something right yeah and I'll read it Eric just just real quick because I always like you know just because it's been a couple we've done a couple other other episodes in between the last one and this one so it says uh in your youth you were unwilling to cultivate and in old age you continue to injure your spirit even when you lose your vitality and become ill your mischievous mind still refuses to wake up or you were born into a hardship and were doomed to suffer all of your life being plagued by self-inflicted suffering and crushed by adult livelihood this is the fifth obstacle so the weird thing about it when you really read them all relative to one another the first one talks about like insecurity and this one kind of overlaps with that and one of the later ones talks about you keep procrastinating and you never get around to really developing yourself that's like number nine I think so that's kind of a funny one in that it has a lot that it covers but I mean I think the part that we were trying to really dwell on was this idea of the mischievous mind as I think as you were calling it right yes yeah the mischievous mind yeah that was yeah that was a few episodes ago but yeah that was like the beginning of this the beginning of how talk yeah how the talk about this yes and you know so for I mean I when I whenever with with this one in particular I really have tried to take the attitude of um we want to have this to be an honest an honest podcast right where we talk in an honest way about what it really means to try to use these things within the practicalities of a real life right not a theoretical thing but like a real thing and this I mean I think I'll look at the the past year and a half for me give or take was one of those years and a half where you're like wow a lot of stuff happened it was very intense very intense relationship with one particular person and you know really thought okay this is a soulmy person and you know put a lot of my heart in the things it's one of those years you look back and you'll remember you know what I mean there probably years like we all have that are like that you look back and say oh that was an important year 2018 important year for me you know yeah and say that was a year that mattered so this was a year that really mattered lots of ups and downs in there the various types right sure some of it's more like a thing that will that could [...] up your life number three interpersonal relationships but you know like intense right and I wrode a lot of emotional waves and in doing this one I thought okay when I really think about you know the mind that gets mischievous what it means when you're riding a lot of emotional waves and going through maybe things that are Intense or difficult I I decided okay this is this is what I wanted to emphasize in this one right to make it as personal as we possibly could to really talk about our experiences trying to use these things right and so it's been a point of like real exploration and it also got me looking back thinking okay what have I done at other points in my life like 2018 was very serious you know like some of these years where it was really serious how did I handle these things and that I think led to something you wanted to do for a long time anyways was really talking about like different kinds of meditative techniques to work with the mind in this way right yeah so all right it end up being kind of like that right and so we wanted to talk a little bit about this thing called ecstatic cabala as an ecstasy in cabala um and really with the idea of like working on also the idea of meditating on letters and you reminded me Daniel we had done things on sound right we had done the Mantra sound things so this is more the visualization of the letters right it's kind of a meditative technique and again for me reflecting back on it you know times when I've gone through you know again emotional ups and downs or something how I was handling my mind it was like this was a kind of a maor major player in parts of my life too Eric if you would um just cabala because we have never really done like uh too much we we talk about cabala a little bit we have in the past but for you know newer listeners or you know as a refresher for those who you know don't have everything memorized uh if you want to give just a a quick rundown of that and I also think it would be nice to highlight the spiritual side of Judaism in particular at this current time so I think to go through all I mean it's a fair question to go through all a cabala would it's like well deal right so I think the purpose of what we're doing here we can say it's the mystical aspect of cabala of of Judaism right sure it's the mystical aspect of Jewish culture the main person we're going to talk about is kind of an interesting person within this is gonna be this guy named Abraham abolafia who deserves his own episode from us too at some point too because he's a a spiritually intense unusual human and uh so you know cabal is a big subject matter but I suppose for this it would be like the mystical aspect of Judaism the same way Sufism might be like the mystical aspect of Islam or something right yeah and it has like like any of those things that like like Buddhism itself what is Buddhism well it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people sure so it has lots of different things within it right um we're going to look at one part of it but you know what hit me about that Daniel is like we've been doing doing this thing now for what going on what are we three or four years how long we've been doing this four years in July wow we still haven't talked about a lot of stuff yeah and I was putting us together like we still haven't done our full cabala which I promise we'll do yeah at some point right and really dive into the deep parts of the different branches of cabala it's something I I'm looking forward to ultimately doing too sure but so strange we've been talking for four years and we I realized we still haven't scratched the surface yeah of the stuff that we can legit talk about because our interests are diverse enough and our experiences intense enough to share these things so kind of trippy but maybe for now it's the mystical aspect of Judaism right yeah maybe we'll leave it hanging like that and we'll so in that sense it's kind of like similar to like again Sufism mystical aspect of Islam okay there's a lot you could say beyond that obviously but it like at least cludes you into somewhat what we're talking about right we'll talk about a particular aspect of cabalistic meditation today I mean that was the idea I had in my mind you have anything else you want to say about cabala in particular I'll throw it back to you okay we'll leave it like that for now yeah was just one idea that you you mentioned before about the the one of the philosophies of like the soul as a broken mirror well they talk about this idea this is like what uh lanic cabala goes back to this guy uh this very important I shouldn't say this guy this towering spiritual figure not just a dude some bro yeah he's a bro you know uh uh and so he Isaac lria is one of the most important cists and I think for him it'll be worthwhile and I think spiritually inspiring for us both when we really take his idea of the world apart but I was really affected by you know him too uh and he has this idea that when the world when the when the universe emanated out from its Pure Source and so in that way of thinking God isn't really even a dude either or a guy God is sort of like a Pure Source in some way it reminds of like the do in Chinese culture or something but then what happens is is that the the create the creative aspect of things kind of shatters and it all kinds of spreads around so it's sort of like these Sparks of the Divine are all spread everywhere and the job of us as human beings is to unearth those Sparks and put them back together again and make the reconnect the shattered Sparks of things I think that affected me pretty deeply to be honest that idea we were going to be talking about this but yeah I think about that quite a bit probably yeah that you know we're kind of hunters for the Sparks and when you find the Sparks you're trying to piece them back together I think that's sometimes the way I talk the way I do because I still have that idea floating around my head when something important happens I try to recognize it because I'll go like oh that's a spark yeah whether that's with a person or an idea or a new opportunity within you know maybe your profession of healing or something like that's a spark I have to connect those things I do think that way do you think that way too intuitively Daniel or no I mean I had that idea floating through my head for sure I think of I don't know I mean I when I think of like undifferentiated states of being there is a sense of like continuity right and I know those two words are synonyms but I what I mean when I say it is that like and you know for those who are listening you're not going to see my hands but I'm going to like move things back together like you're playing a river like you're watching a river but you're playing it in reverse so you're moving back through the streams of differentiation to find a place of unity so in that sense it's very similar I guess you could say to like recapitulation recapitulating uh a puzzle back together yeah I feel like that's kind of what Isaac lurry is talking about in part when we break it apart we can look at it even you know more depth with it but almost like there's this emanation out of formlessness into form and it's kind of in this perfected state but to make reality what it is it has to break and so okay it seems chaotic it seems shattered but like the goal of us now is to go through and like rebuild that stuff and as we do it we develop more and more of our own Divine Powers so that's a little bit where like the Buddhist Tantra picks up kind of sure as we learn how to put the Sparks together we're developing more and more of our divine Powers right yeah and that the way they talk about about the like the force of resistance the Satan you know is interesting there too because it's something that holds things apart yeah but we have to develop the perseverance the Courage the will to like overcome that you know I I'll talk about it later on because I'll talk about the cabalistic rabbi I first learned this from I do have it in the notes up the road so sure turn back to him but he would say something like you know if you're just playing a basketball game against nobody you're not going to get any better right it's true you know you just do a layup every time you can score forever but the way that reality was created was to put you playing against the Bulls you know not the Bulls of today not the Bulls of today barely make the playoffs Bulls no they're out not not those Bulls got in the playoff game close and these and for for our for our International listeners these are the uh below 500 just below average Chicago Bulls basketball team not uh of the now yes currently I think one of their players got second place in the most improved player of the year World Year award second that's right yes second just out of the playoffs yeah so the Chicago Bulls as opposed to like the Michael Jordan Bulls yeah right you're gonna play against MJ you're probably gonna get better right so he would kind of use that metaphor that imagery you know if you're playing against the old school Lakers or you're playing against the you know the Golden State or something these great basketball teams or whatever right you know that's how you're going to get better yeah so you know that's the that's kind of the structure of creation to go through and work against resistance to work against difficulties and that's how you become more and more powerful yourself right I think it's a I think it's a I think it's a cool idea I was very impressed when he started laying this out I was like okay yeah I know you don't know if it's true or not okay but like as a spiritual tool sure deep you know and it you certainly matches my experience what it means like to do Zen before that in my life right right yeah right right so anyways the plan would be like we'll do a deep dive into all of this that probably take us weeks and weeks and weeks but you know it'll be I mean it's it's just amazing to think we have so much [...] that we haven't covered it's unbelievable we never really did anything good about dosm no not really we haven't even done that much Chinese medicine we haven't done any Chinese medicine I mean really we haven't done any Chinese the most Chinese medicine was what was the episode we had Rory on uh Rory Hilt brand I think I called it oh yeah yeah yeah the frontier of mystery which is a great episode people should go check it on it and he'll be back again so we could just leave Chinese medicine up to Rory and and you know no we gotta do ours can't just dump it all on him than you we need our You Know Field experts you know he's our he's our Chinese medicine person on call we have anthropologists Daniel we're the Chinese medical people on call no we're just subject matter experts on on other things for the purpose of the show okay I'll roll with it um so anyways like you know so for me I think this is we're a little bit bouncing around the different meditative techniques but it's sort of what United it for me was like oh yeah I've really used these things in times of trouble or crisis or something right yeah you know so I think the goal was to share things that we've used in these special moments in our lives or something that's why I try to approach it so yeah um and I also was kind of like and I wrote you about it ear today we were kind of like finalizing how we're going to handle this episode for today I was like I want us talk about this estatic cabala because I was interested in this whole idea of bliss and so I thought maybe before I even talk about the letters maybe we kick around a little bit about Bliss again just because I've been looking at this for myself and I keep thinking yeah this is the real this is the real curing point right this Bliss thing is so important yeah and it's been like again in the very recent now I'm talking like in the last few weeks I've been going okay what's the real thing that solves this stuff and I'm like no it's really this Bliss you know and that's sort of my empirical feeling about this and so I was you know I was typing up a little bit my ideas of what I wanted to talk about today and I I was thinking what are the some of the main themes that we're always trying to get across here each have our own things we care about right I was like this is a really important one for me this idea that it's the Bliss that has to be Curative that the Bliss is kind of the true antidote on some coupled with wisdom of course and other good spiritual qualities compassion love and so on but you sort of really need the Bliss I and I I kind of went a little deeper into it than maybe I have thought about it before but even if you were to realize everything was interconnected that still wouldn't solve suffering you could be interconnected with a bunch of crappy stuff you'd still suffer right even if you realize formlessness or something or emptiness you could still be suffering then only the I think the well not only but the only counter argument I have to that would be that like if you realized and and lived interconnected interconnectivity you lived it that there would not be the longing for things wouldn't would change you know that you would feel other people's things and therefore you your behavior would change you know what I'm saying and so the the the suffering of L less and separation and inability to have compassion or sympath sympathize with others would be would be gone right that would be eliminated because you would inherently know that this person was you know having a bad day or whatever so do you feel like again you know uh uh open-minded about this right and just curious what we both think yeah when I was really thinking about the dooka problem the problem of suffering today as I was like thinking about these notes I was like yeah I guess it has to be this way but maybe you feel like No like is the interconnectivity thing you think enough well I mean it's not all of them but yeah it's okay okay but it's it's an important part because all right so if I if I think of I mean it's part of truth right it is true that that's the case right yes yes and so truth right yeah and so I'm I'm going to use I'll lean on my experience with like psychedelic Retreats out of the country you know where they're legal and um for people who don't have meditative practice which unfortunately is more people than do and from my experience people who have deep Awakening experiences via psychedelics which I think from to talking with deeper meditative teachers don't necessarily find their experiences to be stable right those people they're not a stabilized experience they're a flash if you will however it can be a very deep and longlasting Flash actually and you give yourself that opportunity that you might not normally receive otherwise and for many people there's a lot of life lessons there's a lot of deep healing but a lot of it is like understanding the interconnectivity and that we're all from the same source and there is um joy and gratitude almost in almost across the board when people get to that place there's fear of the immenseness of it all but then also like holy [...] what was I tripping about what was I worried you know what I'm saying like this kind of thing and and that smile on your face I've seen it many times and and I think that inner I mean I can't say for sure because we don't know people's experiences even if they try and describe it but I feel like that's that in connectiv spark that they see you know that they're just like boom you know even if they don't understand egolessness or timelessness or whatever that particular piece is one that like helps you feel infinitely and intimately connected with everything else and that spreads you out in all different kinds of ways and transcends your own limitations yeah I think it's interesting I wonder if from the way I like think about this whether or not those moments of like realizing interconnectivity take you away from some of the more uh gross level limitations of yeah you know being like okay I'm just this dude sitting here in this place in time right so you transcend that and as you transcend that you tap into parts of yourself that are closer to Source you might say just right and then doing that you feel more the Bliss of feeling not only interconnected with everything but you feel that Bliss of being close to Source or something right so I wonder if like I would think of it like that because we're all gonna have our own ways of framing it all legit right sure D llama say something really funny about it like some people will go in through the Bliss door and some people will go in through the wisdom door yeah so for some people Bliss becomes the lead and so for some people wisdom becomes a bleed maybe I'm more the Bliss type person or something I don't know I wish yeah but in any case you know like I was just thinking like as I was thinking about what what's been the ctive thing for me as I've been riding the waves within the last few weeks even I was like you know this seems to be the thing that you I can always return back to then I did start thinking about the suffering problem because the thing in Buddhism in the end or I would hope in like really any spirituality is you have to overcome suffering right and it has to be overcome otherwise I don't know what this is about do you agree with that kind of in general yes I think that has to be the case you know and that I think for all of us as people who are trying to improve ourselves and maybe trying to work on ourselves in this spiritual way yeah think that you have to use that as sort of the goal ultimately or something right and that's the thing you could use for your feedback mechanism I'm am I able to get out of this suffering do I know how to do that or something yeah yeah right and then almost how we could you could almost like self test yourself or something like that you know not in a harsh way obviously you know not like oh I failed didn't work not in that sense I'm a loser again F you know not like that but you know it's something you can use to feedback yourself for something sure anyways I have like a I don't know see how this Stacks up to like your experience around this or something so you know when I when I look at when I was putting these notes together I was thinking about myself and I had some conversations with people in the week about this too you know I started off in Zen and dosm and there's certainly a bunch of bliss in that and I did feel like I learned a lot about interdependence which what got me thinking about this whole idea like you know doing a Zen Retreat you feel interdependent with people for sure you can tell oh that dude's knees hurt over there and this guy has this thing going on and this one you know you can just feel that it's very tactile and real you know and people come out afterwards and they're like wow that dude was really having a hard time and everyone's like yep that guy was feeling that everybody knows it's kind of astonishing right yeah when you first start really realizing it can be on that level of like particularity or something right right really is interconnected right and so you know you learn about I learned about that I learned about the nature of the body the mind you know all kinds of stuff you know that were very important experiences for me at the time but there was also this Buddha nature thing that became really strong and the the Bliss of feeling the root of your own being or something right that Buddha nature idea was really Blissful right and people talked about that they said you're going to hit this place in yourself that's going to be so happy and Blissful and joyous and does feel interconnected I think it's true what you're saying you know yeah from my own personal experience of that too um but you know it had that thing where you you feel okay I can feel Buddha nature inside me I think Buddha nature is everything that you feel interconnected right so you had I had experiences like that and they were really strong and then the thing that's said afterwards is sometimes it's hard to carry that out into your life okay that's yeah but anyway so I had that and then when I moved on from doing the Zen and you know we have to revisit why these things happen there were reasons why I felt like I had to move on but I moved on to studing with my my TCM Mentor master and Chiang and da teacher Master Shang Wong and I was thinking about him during the week a lot because what he would say was he would say happiness is kind of the key and I had never had anyone tell it to me in that words in those words before but part of his meditation technique was to go and ask what's standing between myself and happiness in this moment and I was like that's interesting I I never I had never heard it framed that way before in the previous things I had studied up to that point and I I got to realize that was a pretty powerful part of what he was asking his students to do right and he was working under the idea that's a very Chinese medical idea like we said we never talk about Chinese medicine now we will for a second you know that uh part of the emotions of the fire phase in the Heart That Emotion is Joy if it's bad it could be Mania you know something pathological but there's an idea of like healthy Joy is like an antidote like the way I'm trying to talk about this Bliss thing right so I was like yeah I guess this is the the joy he's looking for that joy of the heart you know and kind of the clarity that comes along with that and so you know he would have other parts of his meditations especially connecting to how he saw the source energy the universe which he called truei jeni but you know this part about happiness was really important I was like okay so I started thinking about that and uh and then I realized well sort of like in a momentto moment way you could ask that question of yourself am I happy in this moment does my Shen and my spirit feel good in this moment if not what can I do about that I'll make some kind of effort in that direction right and I'll relax and kind of continue on and I'll you know just pose that question to myself throughout the day so was something he wanted you to do is you would say off the question to Daniel right it wasn't you know right it was something that you were gonna carry out in your life and I thought well that's cool and I also felt like that was helpful to go to carry that kind of happiness and Bliss like actually out into life you know not that the Z people weren't asking you to do that but he was doing in very particular way and in some ways it was also like in your life overall like if I am I happy in my life overall if not maybe I should rethink what those parts of my life and see if I can change something right you no so what hit me in the past week flashing forward to more like the Buddhist Tantra that we're talking about a lot now is some of our home base for these things I started saying to myself what stands between me and Bliss in any moment so I kind of like realized I'm building on Master Wong's meditation and you know sometimes we do that it's interest I thought it was an interesting thing to share because you learn different things along the way from different people but then you start to put them together right your mind starts to synthesize them and you own them and you're they're your own then right so I felt like okay yeah I'm really going to ask myself this question what's standing between me and Bliss in any moment and then minut I started doing that I realized like oh this is very Curative you know this is really Curative I can reinvest myself into this Bliss experience of the moment which maybe in my emotional ups and downs of you know this window of time I lost the thread of a little bit I had other important threads I was trying to work on it wasn't like I didn't think things were important but I started realizing no I I really I have to reinus myself into that that meditative experience and it brought me back to what we were talking about I think last time we talked a couple of weeks ago which is this idea of the the yidam the the meditation deities I can I can feel Bliss and I can be Tara I can feel Bliss and I can be you know one of the great you know uh Buddhist fig FES right some are pretty Saucy so I could be that too right I can feel almost like sexual Bliss in the moment or something right just meditatively in my own mind or for me I like to work on these things a lot they call body mandelas where you see the Mandela inside your own body and like I realized oh there's a lot of bliss in obviously doing that and I just have to keep reminding myself of that and like that was like the the healing thing for me I started thinking okay well that's true in a moment by- moment way it's also where I can ask myself tough questions about my life what my life is standing between me in Bliss sure if something is standing between me and Bliss I better rethink that so I thought I would share all that and get your reactions to it because that's been my experience of like working with my own mind in the last few weeks right and we've all had our own things going on but I was like I thought well that's interesting to share maybe with people and kind of just throw out there for other people to think about you know yeah I think um there was I you know we get weird stuff on our Instagram Facebook social media feeds for advertising uhhuh and uh I got something called manf Flow Yoga and on yeah and on the the advertisement it said in Big Red Letters no spirituality right which I was like okay that's interesting so I looked at some of the comments because I'm like this is g to be an interesting thing and of course there's all sorts of you know comments back and forth um but I think the biggest part I was like wait a minute you cannot remove spirituality from anything you don't necessarily have to look at the eyes you don't have to look through the eyes of spirituality to see it in everything but you cannot remove it from anything it it's just a matter of do you want to see it this way or not and so you know while we're going through and and giving different techniques for people to work with their mind which has been something that I've wanted to do you know you know we talked about this in the very beginning you know going over meditative techniques is that it is not um an escape in a sense it's Curative you are using techniques that have been around for thousands of years I don't know at at a minimum a couple thousand they have survived so they're worth it to tell someone else right and that person practiced it and they felt it worthwhile to continue to tell another person to improve someone's own internal environment even as the external environment continues to grow more chaotic and you know we don't often get into like the outside world too too much on this podcast I mean once in a while we'll throw out some terms and threaten to do uh a A neocon or uh you know a kind of you know podcast which we'll probably never do to be to honest we have to do neoliberalism and you at some point maybe maybe we'll do one you know a real eye opener right yeah but there's just there's there's a ton of division I was talking with the client earlier and I felt like I said I feel like this is almost like the summer of 2020 like just post George Floyd and and pandemic lockdowns where people were just it was fever pitched you know in between what's going on in in you know the European nations and in the Middle East and then here back you know back here all these protests happening and election season like there's all this kind of like turmoil all always you know going on it's particularly fever pitch and it's not even that warm yet and things always tend to get more intense as the Yang rises in the summer you know and so using these techniques whichever one you know you you catch your fancy on it's not a matter of obliterating the world it's a matter of centering yourself in the midst of the chaos and and I I just wanted to to say that because I don't think you can remove spirituality from from anything number one even the chaos that's going on and it's it it's important for people to find their way through things because if not then you are inevitably going to get washed over and you will not have a sense of direction or or a very strong sense of self in the meantime I don't mean self like you know your ego is going to survive but you know selfism like your own principles and ideas that you find to have value are going to be tested as they should because as Eric mentioned earlier if you play basketball against a really you know shitty team you're not going to improve well fortunately or unfortunately we're playing against like uh the Dream Team at this point right now yeah the Olympic team with Michael Jordan and MJ and Patrick ying and Carl Malone and yeah all Great American basketball players back in the day yeah and so we are you know at least what I believe presenting things that are that don't cost you anything except for your time and effort and if you do them you will be rewarded maybe not instantaneously but you absolutely will be rewarded you know I I've always liked to fancy myself an intelligent person I was you know you know quote unquote gifted programs growing up I skipped grades I always did well but I can say that like the longer that I put in time during meditation the more I can feel my own mind's ability to work and also simultaneously be flexible to learn and apply what I've learned to momentary situations in the moment with people I can reach back slowly find what I need and Pull It forth in the moment and I don't credit that to like latent raw intelligence I credit that to to meditation to be totally honest you know what I'm saying and so the things that we are sharing here are you know maybe for some people a little bit like pie in the sky high esque but they're really not these are real things that can change you for real yeah I mean I definitely had the goal of like being able to work with my own mind my own emotions in the moment like I wanted to be able to do that yeah yeah and part of that wasn't just like okay I'll do this mindfulness thing for 10 minutes a day and then you know maybe I'll be a little bit happier it was more like okay I want want to be able to work with myself what do you think of that impulse I mean this is wasn't the theme of the episode or something but now that you brought it up it's so striking what I mean you're going to have your own reaction I'm actually curious what you're going to say about it like what do you think of that impulse of like no spirituality like where do you think that totally comes from that people think it's just like new age [...] or something they it's just marketing it's it's marketing okay you know I'm saying done to appeal to a certain audience what it's done to appeal to Western audiences specifically okay just the physicality of the yoga without like not the problem is that like if if you are over 30 you probably are familiar with like diamond Dallas pagee who was a wrestler from the WWF back in the day who did this very thing with yoga like some years ago you know and already had a huge following as he was a wrestler and his body was all broken down from steroids and getting body slammed and doing the same thing you know and he healed himself with yoga and helped many many people with yoga and so it's um you know it's Mo it's gets sold as Mobility it gets sold as healing you know help your help your flexibility help your golf game help your whatever it's just it's a means to connect people on a very Baseline level and so if they say yoga then you know people think chanting Lululemon pants uh you know who knows candles breathing Namaste kind of chicky or something right like yeah yeah kind of like yeah but it's popular enough that people know that it must have some value because it's not it's not decreasing in popularity it's only increasing you know yoga teacher trainings are increasing like Retreats everybody knows somebody who's done some yoga you know what I'm saying even their strange ant you know like you know and so this is a way to reach out to an audience that it's going to be made more accessible so by removing the quote unquote spirituality from yoga then they're going to present that to people but you cannot you you cannot you start to pay attention to your internal environment and you're breathing and the sensations that are generated when you stretch that working with discomfort like all of that is spiritual practice I'm sorry that's what that's that's what it is like you know yeah it's strange I mean it's another whole episode and we'll let it flow off of this but it's weird how I mean I know know what to say I mean that's just all I can't help but call it toxic on some level because there's this obsession with like the materialism right yes we just REM because when you take away the spiritual what you're leaving the material from an American person's point of view and if the word isn't said at all right that's sort of what you end up meaning right yeah it's just ain't good I don't know what to say about it yeah I know you don't love the analogy but if you're going to use the software and Hardware oh no I like the analogy I'm Co if you're gonna if you're gonna do that then just say okay uh this software on this laptop doesn't work so here's the laptop good luck just go in there amongst those circuits and find where the electrons aren't traveling right you'll fix that [...] no problem you fix it up yeah you're good yeah Windows doesn't work you know the keyboard works fine you know the Screen Works totally good but does everything inside of it no Jesus yeah yeah yeah all right so should should we do a little bit on the letters then do it yeah we got it okay so so yeah you brought this up I had like a little bit on the cabala and I just was saying that we haven't talked about this that much yet I thought I should tell a little bit about my own little backstory around this which was relevant to what I wanted to share her in terms of my own personal experience of trying to use this stuff and in the moment by- moment kind of way um so for me I had uh this cabalistic Rabbi and his wife his patients and then they were doing lecturing in Chicago and I went to his lectures and I had to say he was a great public speaker he was the guy who did the basketball analogy thing and all that and like you know we we had we you get the opportunities and what we're interested to hear people are really good public speak like llama Glenn is really good Robert Thurman is really good you know this guy was really good I was like it's someone who you know ultimately you know was a public speaker myself I was like okay yeah this this this this dude's good right now it was a sort of a Madonna cabala right it was a little bit pop you know and it had that layer to it but you know he was great as a speaker so I was impressed and then it also introduced me into this whole world of cabala and so even though there was a Madonna cabala part of it because Madonna was interested in cabala at one point and like it never really took off no spirituality will ever take off not really even Madonna couldn't make it happen but I mean I heard of cabala because of Madonna so yeah yeah me yeah but like she couldn't like she couldn't like fully make it work as a career move no no no no it was known at the time she had to go back to like pretending to be a strip tease artist and in the next set of videos like the ones of her doing cabala in the long flowing gown no no anyways it is what it is but underneath the the what I was getting to that cabala and this guy who was really a great lecturer was like a real deep cabalistic underpinning it was sort of myt introduction to astrology so that was cool that mattered in my life right because astrology has a particular role in cabala but it was also what we were talking about earlier like this Isaac Lura lanic cabala you know and these very deep philosophical things that kind of blew my mind open and and a lot of it had to do with the use of letters know so there were meditations on letters a lot which got which got me wanting to talk a little about the person with the static cabala um this Abraham abolafia just for a second just to put in some context because we like to be little teacherly so here it is right so he is one of these great cabalists from like the 1400s I think maybe at some point we'll do maybe a deeper dive into him because he's such a fascinating character um he was kind of one of those wandering Mystic types Daniel and I have a real sof spot for those kinds of people you too you have sof spot for those kinds of folks yeah I love I love the wandering Mystic and so he was wandering around he's kind like a shamza t breze type too with roomie just wandering around causing trouble I love those kinds of folks and so there's all these amazing anecdotes about in his backstory I'll just like mention him real quick just to say a little about who he was so apparently he went into the holy land and he was looking for this mystical River that is supposed to be only like secretly showing up at certain times where you can find the the Lost tribes of Israel or something like that so he was trying to do that and unfortunately the same way it is now it was just a war torn area so he realized like I can't go I can't go wandering around this area trying to find this mystical River so he had that like skel out but he was that kind of a character right he was willing to go through and walk he was born in Spain but he was willing to travel you know by foot into the Middle East try to find this River and so that's one of the anecdotes about him and one of the other ones is his meetings with the Pope so it's not obvious what he was going to do in meeting the pope but he decided he was going to meet the pope so he started walking to go meet the pope and he was telling people along the way I'm going to meet the pope you you know not thinking anything of that so the pope said a message back apparently like yeah yeah we understand you're coming to meet us and uh meet me the holy seal and uh I will go through and I have a nice pile of wood built for you and when you get here we're gonna burn you so you know keep coming so apparently he was I guess in biing whether he should come or not but I think he still went you know and uh the day he was supposed to get there to be able to meet this Pope the pope had a stroke and died so this our hero of the story abolafia Abraham abolafia kind of went like oh well I think my spiritual Vibes are good I'm getting clued into the truth of what I'm supposed to do so he went forward and he still tried to go through and meet the people in the Vatican they tossed him in prison oh they kept him there I guess for a while and as far as his notes on his own life he was there for 28 days and then was released or something so he's a fascinating character and eventually you know we were kind of talking a little bit about beforehand and before we started the podcast ultimately he was even cancelled by the other cabalist because he was to outside the box and like that's going to appeal to my heart as well he got cancelled and it's you know so he's amazing person but like I think some of the things that appealed to feel about him at least for our podcast is he's definitely an Eclectic person he's trying to pull together all these different things and I was doing a little backstory on his history preparing for the episode for today because I wanted to share something about him because we're going to talk about a little bit his stuff and uh I hadn't heard this quote exactly but he was very accepting of the idea that people from other Traditions had insights too so he was he was eclecticalchemy a fun read but there's like a chapter in here where he they talk about whether or not he was influenced by this group called The cathars Who was this group of gnostics so he was hanging around with all kinds of folks you know apparently having all kinds of conversations uh and it's interesting so I thought that kind of talked to the spirit of our show too you know someone who open in that way um and then the other amazing part that we were talking about before we got on camera was you know he was like eradicated from this from history like gone and now you know there's multiple books written about his thing like later on I got a pile over here where there's multiple sitting here yeah you know they grabbed off the shelf and it's it's kind of amazing how the spiritual message will still get through but there's something to it you know it also makes you wonder a lot of people maybe just disappear who had so many things to say you know this guy made it through how many people don't make it through yeah so I don't know it's interesting it's fascinating but anyway I have a soft spot for these kinds of figures and I guess it comes from something that is I couldn't help typing this out in the notes because I was like I don't think anything good comes out of the normal just don't was talking with people about this in the past week and I'm just like no I don't think normal produces that great I got that inner Carl Young Vibe I think you have to do something you have to do something more which I guess I wanted to bring up because it's one of the other points I was thinking about I don't know what they are for you but for me the Bliss thing is a big point and I think this is a big Point obviously and you have your own points so anyways just hit me so um I know what do you think of him he's interesting right maybe we'll do something more about him later on yeah yeah I mean I don't know anything about him so yeah you got sof spot for these rebellious figures like I do of course yeah I mean they're the ones who you know write history in in a sense shake [...] up yeah I mean what I mean who remembers the random uh blacksmith from you know 1632 in in Scotland like it's interesting in the fact that they tried to make the guy disappear but he didn't you know that's interesting right so for me um uh true for both of us you know I just was jotting this stuff down I was like you know meditation is really a passion so I've always been open to the idea of doing meditation from different types I've been very open about that I never wanted to be a diletant I didn't want to do things like half asked I didn't like that but if something was important I would spend time trying to really learn it when I met this cabalistic Rabbi I was like okay I'm going to try right I'll really try to invest myself in this you know and I'll really try to do the practices they're talking about and I'll really study it and so you know I I really did that and you know my conclusion in the end was something like all these different meditation Traditions are kind of valid and they just have different things to teach right so I thought I throw it out to you too I assume you feel the same way you got anything you want to add on that not at the moment no okay okay I know it's just such a deep thing I realized like okay I I was able to study Zen I was was able to study DWIs things I was able to study with my teacher from China I was able to study with these kabalists and I started to realize okay this is the the way my life is kind of going and I'm totally learning different things from all these people yeah I mean my heart into I'm really investing in it right but yeah I've mentioned that I've mentioned that regularly like i' I've been blessed to have such fantastic teachers but I can say that you're probably going to feel like you have great teachers if you're a decent student yeah that's true too you know what I'm saying like there's something on the that are attracted to some teachers that make the teachers better if the student pushes them you know if they take what they say and they go okay I'm gonna believe you for now and then I'm going to try it or I'm going to study it or I'm going to do it or whatever and then I'm going to ask you some real questions you know and I'm going to see what you know and I'm going to see how you know it and then that makes those teachers better and there makes their learning their experience their practice more deep and it's because of the good students so I feel like that relationship you know is a you know yin and yang it's always sort of cycling around each other yeah symbiotic in that way right absolutely I had thought about it from that point of view I had thought like from the point of view of something we talked about maybe last time we recorded where I feel like we as people have to have the willingness to like have some passion and throw ourselves in yeah I think you have to be willing to do that right yeah to like act from that place and say okay I'm really going to throw myself into this thing and I I would say from myself and everything I did that with it paid me back you know that willingness to do that I got stuff out of it that had real value but it was that like okay I'm really gonna like I'm gonna go for it right so if I'm gonna study this cabala I'll try like for reals you know and I try to learn what I can get out of it yeah so then the specifics of like what he's doing here if we get to our our mystical twistic character of uh Abraham abolafia it's IR relevant to the sort of this particular season of the year too because it is Passover season it's pesak right so that was just happening in the week and uh so one of the things they talk about is this idea of the 72 names of God and it's a meditation on letters if you do it in the way abala was talking about it and it has a really interesting sort of backstory to it you know there's the three paragraphs that are about the splitting of the Red Sea in the Old Testament in the Torah and they're you know really interesting three paragraphs because each paragraph has like 72 letters exactly so when people looked back at that with the eye of how people were interpreting those text they said well that's not a coincidence no one would write three paragraphs in a row with exactly seven2 letters there there's something like there's a reason for that somehow there's something deeper embedded in that and this tradition arose that the letters from those three paragraphs could be combined to create these threel combinations and this is the thing that became the 72 names of God right these multiple three-letter combinations the 24 combinations that would eventually get you to the 72 letters and I guess I I pulled it out so I could read it just the he of it so I'll do it real quick because I it gives you a feeling of what they sound like in English I suppose right so it says and the angel of God who went before the camp of Israel moved and went behind them and then the pillar of cloud moved from before them and then went behind and and went behind them and it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel and cloud and darkness were there and yet it gave light in the night and one did not come near the other all that night and Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and God caused the sea to go back with a strong East windfall that night and it made the land it made sorry it made the sea into dry land and the waters were parted so there's the three paragraphs right the way they would be in English but I guess in the original text three paragraphs all 72 letters so they went through and they combined them in this way right now this isn't a a thing from our hero of the day abulafia this is the thing that like was all over sort of Jewish mysticism right and these other great Jewish mystical books like the Zohar and the bahir and things that we'll talk about maybe we talk about cabala more up the road but he like abolafia talks about them too so for so for me because I'm going through maybe this period of time and maybe because it's just this time of the year I'm going to do them in kind of a sequence so you can go through and kind of just find the sequence of the letters and then you can just kind of stare at them and imprint on them and then try to imagine them in your mind's eye for me when I was doing more of this seriously in in my when I was internalizing more of this cabalistic stuff I did memorize the alphabet and that alphabet is very unique in that it has these 22 letters and 12 of the letters are supposed to represent the astrological signs five of the letters are supposed to represent the plants in the solar system two are supposed to represent the Sun and the Moon and then you get this idea that there's like three other sort of source letters or something so the whole alphabet has this mystical quality to it and uh you know we kind of knew today we weren't going to be able to talk about Sanskrit but Sanskrit has its own Vibe so these these spiritually powerful like languages sometimes have these spiritually powerful alphabets yeah which is weird because we don't think think about that in English I don't think I don't know if other people think about that when they're writing German or French anymore you know you know letters had power right and that's the reason they were made the way they were right yeah uh I was reading like this old book where they like it came up where the it's Fiction it's Robert Graves it's I Claudius it's kind of yeah writer where he's writing about Rome but they're talking about The Druids in England and the fact that they had this power and their language say there's power in the letters we just lost that feeling right yeah we just don't have it anymore so anyways the idea is that there's a power so the letters represent things the letters represent energies in nature the letters represent numbers the letters have all these different meanings in Hebrew right yeah decide you're interest in cabala it's one of the things you learn you start studying the letters right because they have this power and they can be meditated on so um you know so for this week I'll do that I'll do these 72 names of God and abulafia was really interesting he kind of said okay you can do them in this sequence and there are books you can get where they'll just be called like the 72 names of God and you can just kind of see the order so you felt inspired to try it you could try it right and just look at them and picture them for me I got more serious so I actually memorized the alphabet and I sort of tried to visualize them in a more serious way but it's an interesting way to try to meditate just to see the letters in your mind's eye so you look at them you imprint on them you close your eyes you see if you can hold them in front of your eyes right and then you do that for a little bit and you can move on to the next sequence abalia also had this thing where he would do kind of like they call them yogic movements they're not really the yoga but he would move his head like in certain ways up and down side to side back and forth um uh in sequence to sort of like kind of like in toning the letters too so he would visualize them and he would also do things where he would move his head in his neck around and he developed some technique where he thought that like I guess probably freed the the flow within the brain freed the flow within the neck to allow the spiritual power to be more easy to access or something like that right by activating so this very particular movements um there's a book from this very another one of our close to our heart kind of characters I'll hold it to the camera it's ecstatic cabala again kind of about Isaac lur it's from U rby David Cooper who passed away a few years ago he's another guy after our own heart because he was a Zen student he was a student of Sufism he was a student of cabala and eventually you know he kind of goes through some of these techniques from our abolafia 2 right and um he kind of shows the head movements in there too they have a lot to do with the the vowels that are associated with the letters or something so he'll do these things either on say something like this this 72 names of God sometimes he'll do them where you'll just visualize the tetraat the name of God from the from the Torah writer of the Old Testament where it's the yo the the B and the he you just visualize those things so there's a part of my life where I was really doing this very seriously and uh I would say that they were you know just extremely powerful experiences for me right and I was trying to explain to a friend of mine I got very impressed by how meditation Works um because I began to feel like I would you you would do these things and you definitely felt that there was some divine presence out there you know like you really felt it it was very clear and I remember trying to explain to one of my friends who's not into this kind of [...] at all I was just like you know it's an amazing thing to be able to to do this and then really feel the effect of the meditation I started to realizing oh these different meditations say these different things are trying to have you experience and if you kind of throw yourself into them you'll get the experience right I didn't go with any pre-ex expectations of what I was going to feel I wasn't thinking meditating on some Hebrew letters was going to mean that much but as I did them I was like yeah this feels really powerful you know and because it was powerful I began to use it again in some of my times of crisis when my dad was dying of cancer I did them you know and I was there with my dad and I was kind of holding his hand and we were doing hospice with him and it was towards the end of his life and he wasn't a religious or spiritual person exactly he was his own creative free spirited person in his own way but you know he wasn't that kind of person but I can say like you know holding his hand as he was like going through like the ending parts of his life it was super powerful you know and those experiences of like someone someone dying the the spirit separating from the body the Shen separating from the body and in Chinese medical speak is really powerful anyways right so I did it then and I did it in times of like interpersonal crisis where I felt like you know relational thing relationship things were painful so as I just wanted to share it is another one that I personally used like like I don't want just keep blabbing about this but you have you done anything like this does this ring a bell anything you've done in any of your experiences I mean you know using the letters in Sanskrit you know in the Buddhist tradition they they they do I don't know if it's exactly the same but they they'll do that and you bring your mind to settle on the the res not just the letter itself but the sound of the letter too right so you're not only it's not only a visualization but so you have the the sound of the letter the vibration that that letter has the feeling that that letter that that symbol has um and you know it's yeah I mean I'm thinking you know when they you talk about the 72 names of God I'm thinking about like in the Sufi tradition when they'll they'll yeah when they go to practice their you know their their their chanting practice they use the 99 names of God you know they and they sort of do this kind of chanting they call it zicker which means remembrance and um you they're using some of these kind of similar techniques so it's just it's interesting to be reminded and to illuminate different things from different cultures yet they're all using similar techniques to bring yourself to that you know to kind of like again like I said like working back on the spectrum of differentiation working back towards a more unified uh field a more unified experience from where they you know closer to the source if you will it was weird because like the guy who wrote the book on this abalia I'm pulled up to the camera again this Moshe Idol over here I looked at an interview with him and he was like going on like there's no such thing as a perennial philosophy like kind of bitching about the idea like there's this univers so pron of philosophy that underlies all the spiritual Traditions there's a whole thing where he's basically ragging on the whole idea and I couldn't help but like kind of laugh because like okay you know he's a scholar and he's talking from a scholarly point of view and that's probably true but when you look at it from a practitioner's point of view [...] yeah there's a universal feeling to a lot of this right absolutely I just don't like I was like okay scholary point of view that's cool you're a scholar that's not only that but like the human mind hasn't changed our our methods of interacting with the world have remain the same as this is the body so the methods to trap concentration via your senses your sense organs Right Touch smell sight sound but those have not changed so you can certainly meditate on a different color or letter or picture but you're still using your visual Channel you know that's just that's just what it is and we could change the sounds of the language and of the songs and of the prayers or the mantras or whatever you're still using vibration to affect your hearing Channel I mean you know so that people can say what they want I mean to me it's it's a science I mean the body out of all the things the science of the body and the ways in which we interact with it have been being in have been investigated for longer than anything else and it's yeah certain certain things have progressed certain things have stuck around you know like these practices yeah I feel like it's hard to like it's hard to say how exciting it is until you get into it but if you get it's it's [...] fascinating yes you could be sitting here doing this thing with your own mind your own body your own breath your own verbalization whatever it is you're doing right and then all this [...] [...] happens it's amazing and I don't know if that like gets anybody else hyped who might be listening to this but like it gets me [...] hyped all the time I mean it's amazing and they're different actually you know so I love using the Sanskrit letters too maybe we'll do more on that at some other time even you know but like I was like okay even this stuff here this abolafia stuff it feels different and I'll do it this week going through transition it's the window of time to do it I would do it this time of the year anyways you you know MH you know it's kind of a freedom time of the year in some ways right yeah so I feel the freedom energies and I'll do the practice you know and um uh and you know it's they'll they'll create something in you right that makes you hype yeah so just maybe before we take off there's one other way of using these things right um um so one of the other ways and it's a little bit more Madonna cabala but I've also done this too and I think it's cool which is you could link these letters of the 72 names of God they'll link them up to certain psychological issues so there's a book called the 72 names of God where they kind of just did it it's a little poppy you know but I you know I think there's something to it and they'll kind of go like okay here's the trio of letters that's relevant if you're having trouble with love and relationship that's where a certain amount of my trouble would be so I would do those three letters you know I remember doing that at certain times going along I'm trying to like deal with the emotional ups and downs of this for me and I would visualize it and I'd be like oh yeah this is Curative I can feel this this feels healing actually you know so like you know I'm always willing to like dip a toe in the water and see what things feel like right better what it is you know whether it's like you know like we're talking about like psychedelics or you know meditative practices or other weird [...] you could do Chinese medical things or whatever right you know it's good to tip Co in the water so I was like okay let me see let me see if this really seems to do do something and I was like yeah this seems healing so you know you can go and look at those kinds of things and they have ones that are built around specific issues rights with sexuality they have a trio of letters for that right or problems of guilt they have a trio of letters for that or problems of self-esteem or problems of generating passion for life or problems of overcoming fear or problems of like instilling deeper feelings of Freedom or you know whatever it is you know they have all these different possibilities you know where the different combinations of letters are kind of like things you can identify personally have you work on yourself yeah I think they're cool yeah I think they're cool you know that they do seem to do something to you you know so I just chose some random things out of the list of things they have to work on you know but again if you're curious you can look up 72 names of God it's Poppy it's Madonna cabala right but underneath that there's a deeper source that they're drawing up right the Supreme Source Eric yeah the the a s the endless Source right um uh but yeah I was like yeah I think there like really things here you know that uh I found to like have legits value right go through choose something you can go through and you can connect into the energy of that combination of things right so yeah my my own personal experience was yeah I found those to be powerful antidotes like in the moment as well so sometimes it would be sitting there going okay let me take some time out I'm going through this issue in my life let me sit I'll cont I'll contemplate these letters a little bit right and I did other cabalistic Med letter meditations too there's there's a whole [...] slew of them there's tons of them right and they're they're amazing right they're they are enlightening for sure but with these it was more personal right okay what's the issue I'm working on and like I found them to be helpful in that way that you can sit and concentrate them and I also found them to be helpful like once you got the thing going in your mind you could use it in that moment by moment way or I'm feeling fear now in the moment okay let me concentrate this now in the moment right I'm feeling this relationship pain like in the moment okay let me concentrate on this now like in the moment oh that feels different that feels healing that feels Curative right or whatever it is from those the things that might be bugging you you know I'm feeling uh I'm feeling low self-esteem now I'm feeling an unconfident now in the moment let me see if I can tap into this the moment right I think it's powerful right powerful idea you could do it with other things too I mean I've done it with mantras that we talked about in the moment let me Mantra right but uh you know this is another one that like during certain Windows of my life they were really important so you know when we knew we were going to do this episode I was like yeah I did this you know this one too was one of the ones I did when I was like okay let me tap into something that I need you know uh from the rich spiritual tradition that we all deserve to be inheritors of belongs to all of us you know and I thought okay these are powerful ones I wanted to share that one too in terms of something a little bit different something that can work in the very personal way yeah all right that's what I had on this I love it that's cool right yeah so yeah if you get interested you can reach out to us maybe you can say hey you got a couple of letters about this yeah we'll send you a photo yeah try or you can get the book or you can go out and buy the book but if you feel real cheap you're like nah I don't want to buy the book we got your back yeah we'll help you we'll help you you can give it a tumble and if you're like right back like that sucked that did nothing then we'll just ignore that email yeah no problem keep moving right to spam it seems really awesome we'll talk we'll talk a whole bunch of positive [...] about you yeah yeah but if not no nothing won't even mention it right into the trash no but seriously I've done it with other people I don't know if they ever really did seriously enough to be honest but I said hey you really got an issue in your life try this and do it for real it's like really try yeah I pass it on to people nice yeah uh it's different right it's it's a little different kind of a take yeah yeah yeah yeah all right cool awesome yeah all right brother well that was cool thanks for sharing yeah yeah interesting awesome and as always thank you for uh doing all the other things that we do you too Daniel oh well thanks so much uh and uh thanks to the audience seriously this this whole thing like thanks everybody and thanks to you Daniel and like vice versa I know like this [...] adds a lot what we've been doing has been really important totally yeah no same for me and you know we appreciate everybody uh tuning in listening reaching out to us sharing with uh your friends and family and enemies and all the other things you you know uh it's good to mention the enemies because it reminds you that uh not everyone loves you so we got some work to do um but you know uh please feel free to email us at Jin and Tantra gmail.com leave a you know like comment subscription in the uh in the YouTube it uh costs you nothing it helps us out you know deeply in the algorithm for sure to you know kind of help our mission to reach more people we are sponsored by our [...] selves so there's that you you know um we we uh so so that helps us out you know uh if you're on Instagram we we do have we're up there too uh the Jin and Tantra podcast so you know we're we're out there a little bit trying to you know spread the good word if you will the gospel but without the Dogma uh and that's definitely that's that's something that we we we both believe in so uh thank you so much for tuning in uh for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch youall on the next one peace h