Kind: captions Language: en [Music] hey fellow G and tears those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist So Daniel and I are back to doing the gin and Tona R Daniel kind of sportting the gear uh we were doing some episodes on Pleasure we're trying to do this series on sexuality and pleasure that we're starting and we had a question from a listener so we kind of talked about it last time yeah uh it's kind of for it is or you might say auspicious if you want to be a little Tibetan about it that we're talking about this because Daniel and I just got back from a retreat Over The Border North in Canada oh yeah hey working on stuff yeah yeah yeah and uh that was a good time and so we're feeling saucy and spicy in many ways there you go Saucy and Saucy a little bit spicy yes announced Bri uh starting the recording that he was feeling especially spicy spiced up so it should be an action-packed episode of Jin and Tantra spice we'll talk a little bit about um some pleasure things and I I think it what to my mind is kind of the continuation of like what I what hit me in in terms of the question from The Listener that we had which was like well what's this whole deal with pleasure right and uh and then also we'll give Daniel a chance to uh air uh his inner spiciness yeah on the things that are feeling that way which might be more serious I guess but but necessary all right so you know what hit me in this Daniel I was I wanted to like we talked about the pleasure stuff last time and it was more uh you know kind of talking about the chakras and pleasure through the chakras and some of the more even like technical aspects of things right and I thought the other part that hit me with this I wrote some notes on it after we had talked about the listener's question some weeks ago um was just to talk about the use of pleasure over all in kind of maybe a big picture way so I was listening to L who's one of the really great Tibetan uh a tantric teachers right and he's popped up here and there in the in the time we've been doing these episodes yeah this really great book called introduction of the Tantra and he has a great book on what know Daniel and I were working on what we were working on in terms of like the inner fire building up the inner heat within the body and using that as a source of pleasure so I was like I was listening to this stuff he talks about this idea the tantric personality which I really like that idea I really like it for the idea of our podcast too yeah you know uh and it's something I thought a lot you know so the point he makes is it's a specific idea of someone who really wants to and is kind of I suppose able and inclined to use pleasure as like the spiritual path right and that's kind of the idea of like more of the tantric personality and it hit me that on the one hand this is partially an etal thing kind of the desire and then you know learning how to do this in different ways right which can be the kind of things we were talking about last episode you know how do you work with your own energies and how do you learn how to use those to produce pleasure but also just you know orienting your self psychologically in that way right which can be a shift in how you think about your life which means maybe it's something have to do with like the external aspects of life too that you set up your life to be a more kind of pleasure filled kind of a place you know but yes but we are not talking about uh like external means such as you know repeated use of alcohol drugs you know like there's not like even people even even sexual pleasure right right there's you know so this kind of pleasure is not of course it's part of you know having pleasure in life we're not we're not shaming those things by any stretch or the imagination uh but we are not necessarily talking about pleasure in the kind of like dopamin ideology of chasing some external mediator for the experience of pleasure within ourselves because the relationship that gets developed in that way is one of Eternal need one of Eternal attachment maybe is a probably more Buddhist way of putting it and it's like a a dog chasing its tail it just doesn't never really cease so while you may receive some temporary pleasure from you know whatever having a glass of wine smoking a joint uh reverse cowgirl whatever you're into you know um ultimately the the the path to Freedom if that's the goal uh and if the vehicle's pleasure is one that does not require external mediators in order to experience said pleasure so that you can you know work your way towards a more Freer State we can say yeah you know I was like uh I had different thoughts in this and I kind of knew we'd end up bouncing around between different things because you know we we throw it out there and we each kind of come up with our own takes on stuff and to me I had like a thought maybe we'll get back to it maybe in a little bit but I had the thought there's kind of potentially like empty Pleasures or something right yeah Pleasures that don't really pay off in some way right and uh maybe I'll like from my side maybe I'll shelf that one and double back to it or something but I agree with you right it's not just that right yeah yeah the other thing that hit me about this and I again was interested in talking with you about this because we're going to have our own takes on this but to me okay so layi continues with this conversation right I'll just maybe do it from his point of view a little bit so he continues on with this and he says well you know a lot of these kinds of spiritual paths will involve more like renunciation you might say right things where you sort of like you uh you sacrifice you renounce and so the point that he's making if you have the tantric personality and you're inclined this way that's not the kind of path you're going to follow which I guess from what you're saying kind of like find some kind of middle way I guess right yeah some kind of middle way between like okay we're not doing the empty Pleasures maybe we'll get more about that kind of stuff later at least the parts that I kind of feel about that and then also we're not going to do like just the renunciation part where we're going to be in this kind of head space of like sacrifice and you know uh that giving things up and renouncing and these kinds of things right and I was I guess it depends on how we think about this you know our culture and our world or something I don't I'm this was an interesting one for me because I don't know exactly what you think about this but I when I was like kind of throwing these notes again together thinking about y yesi I thought well you know certainly there can be those attitudes in Buddhism too and then like other spiritual traditions where you kind of do these renunciation things and you don't you purposely choose to like push away from the pleasures right as you know part of your personal growth development spirituality and so on um but then I was also thinking about like our particular culture at least my feeling about it which is it's kind of like a TR of Christian culture which involves a lot of like sacrifice and when I talk with people it's a lot of sacrifice and sort of a lot of like what you might called Duty ethics or something not duty duty that's exactly what I'm thinking Duty as in poop poop duty duty ethics we know each other so well because I knew you were going to say that yeah yeah and that's why you chose that word well I chose it because of Emanuel Kant too don't go there Daniel Emanuel Kant don't go there but you could have said responsibility Eric you chose Duty chose K uh okay so in any case I was thinking of n as far as our philosophers and he has like a really interesting point about this whole thing if you get into a culture that is all about Duty sacrifice right eventually people burn out on it you can't do it forever yeah you know eventually it fries you out and then his his set of concerns about this was ultimately you get more and more bitter and maybe that even leads to more and more grievance right in people because they sacrifice they have grievance they feel bitter setting you up Daniel sounds like you're describing some relationships in life my friend I mean this is a pretty common Dynamic for people in general yeah yeah for sure that's true so I mean I thought about this a lot because I know it's some I think at some point you know when I was doing my early parts of my little medical career yeah I was pushing myself a lot I was treating a lot of patience you know you want to do good deeds and I also had the part of myself that was like wow I was sometimes treating people six to seven days a week and you know really pushing stuff um and then there was and I felt good about doing that I didn't feel bad about doing those things but I also had the thought of like there's some little part in me the little catholic part in me or something you know that keeps wanting me to push myself you know and uh I think maybe we all have those little Parts on oursel but I did kind of start to identify it as like nah this is like I'm doing good deeds I feel good about a lot of what I'm doing but I am kind of doing something from the set of like responsibility and I'm being kind of maybe self-sacrificing or something like that oh Jordan Peterson would love that idea so that's perfect put Jordan Peterson in the notes Daniel that's right he's on my page yeah uh so anyways I think that's worthwhile thinking about it because I again I don't know how you think about this culture I think about it as kind of like a judeo-christian culture at root right um since we're like naming Fancy Pants philosophers I would maybe talk about John Paul sart here who basically says you know at a certain point people weren't Christian anymore but the culture never really changed yeah underneath it's still that same kind of cultural wiring and it and a lot of that stuff has to do with sacrifice and and in a way that I think you know these philosophers like n especially famously for this and that Carl Yung one of our other favorite psychologists kind of built on N with this you know you can't keep sacrificing all the time you're going to get bitter that's the problem of the Jordan Peterson thing which we'll get to I guess right uh you want me to set you up for your text of the week here uh is now the place to put it whatever you want go for it up to you man yeah fine does fit because it's a culture right it's a culture question it's a g Christian culture question so yeah um I don't know feel good to you do it all right let me set Daniel up for this since we're talking about religious culture Daniel sent me this amazing text during the week to which I wrote back wow well said and I totally hear what you're saying so I'll let you do you obviously I'll throw the mic over to you yeah yeah I'm curious to hear what you have to say about it but it was a great little bit of texting well so tell them what I sent well you should tell them oh okay I can look it up if you want me to you want me to do the it's all good uh so okay cool I just randomly and it was yesterday I said organized religion was the very first Corporation yeah yeah yeah and and so I have these feelings for a reason and I want to and they they fit here because this is what we're talking about so and I just you know we like to give definitions I know people know what a corporation is but just so we can understand a corporation is a legal entity creat by individual stockholders shareholders for the purpose of creating profit um and so I wanted to have this as our our kind of like working definition in order so it's a conglomeration of people put together to make something in order to extract something out of it right yeah and why I you know we're coming off of retreat and so Eric and I and so we're in a slightly different head space and we'll just you know we'll keep it we're going to keep it uh 100% I I have a I have a slightly different um understanding after we have been back about a number of different things you know so so we came back on Tuesday November 5th day uh the election day here in the United States for our International listeners listeners although I feel like United States politics is almost International but you know it just that's how it is we sort of run things I guess for better worse often worse and um so it's it's a very Stark difference being you know up on retreat in Canada literally in a different country and then coming back to the US to kind of this like you know tumult that has been building now for the last several years really um and then getting back in the clinic and having you know various reactions of different patients and practitioners I'm not going to try and um you know say much about that part but what the most common thing that I got from people was like I don't know what to do now right I don't I don't know what to do now so you know some people more frustrated than others for various reasons looking for understanding but then at some point you get to the next stage of like okay well what happens what happens now and I the two questions were what happens now and why are we here so why are we here I can't say exactly I can't say exactly we're not like um I'm not super I mean I'm pretty well versed politically but I don't understand all the Dynamics I don't think anybody understands all the Dynamics so I'm not going to say what from a particular purpose but the one piece that kept coming up for me was this idea of the Savior and you know Bill Maher touched on this probably five years ago when he was sort of joking about Marvel movies always pushing the idea of the one superhero that can save the whole thing right yeah I remember that bit yeah that was a smart one right and so I'm just thinking about this now and like about you know how disappointed some people are with the results um and like why are we here and the only thing that comes back to me that is like a a kind of like like a s a simple definition is that people are looking for someone to save them right now of course everybody's got different grievances some people want this changed lower taxes whatever who cares but from a from a meta perspective and for our for our work here right I said that my personal work and Eric I think yours is the same way was the same on November 4th as it is on November 6th yeah why is that the case we have oriented Our Lives to be an aspect of what we feel important to share and therefore we feel it's so important that we're going to continue to learn more and more about it in order that we can share it more deep ly more effectively all right in a broader a broader perspective okay so my work hasn't changed Eric's work hasn't changed so when people ask this question as to what do we do now well the next question is what's important to you what is important to you and does that help improve other people's lives if the answer is yes then your work is the same as it was before as it is after as it will be next week of course it'll grow and develop but that work does not change improving people's lives and in in your own in the process this is the same thing so this is question number one right what do you what is that part but it takes me back to my point having those kinds of conversations with people are not so easy because they the the ground has not really been set for many folks because fortunately or unfortunately the sort of judeo-christian uh how do we want to call it cage has been implemented upon society and and no offense or offended if you want to be I don't really care um are not wisdom Traditions now studying the cabala and some of the deeper more spiritual aspects yes yeah for sure shout out to those those right and some you know maybe Jesuits or you know Christian Mystics will do Christians yeah so they'll do they do that those are wisdom Traditions but but generally religion as a whole especially the modern religions because they are not old despite what they say they're not old they're not old at all in the comparison of of human history shamanic practices that's the original at at least as much as we know as much as anthropology tells us are the is the original form of spiritual practice which is no mediation not between you and nothing else it's just you go on the inside but structure was placed upon this right particularly you know new age structure the you know again judeo-christian kind of you know ideologies now placed upon society and so this cage is inherent in the part of the problems that we are existing not to mention the wars and all the other stuff we don't need to go that's not what I'm I'm talking about that but I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the kind of psychoemotional conditioning that these Traditions Place upon people as a whole and that they pervade Society so when it comes to time to ask questions about what do we do of course we can always get good advice from people who we trust and so on and so forth but when I'm looking to plant seeds of of you know perspective shifts or whatnot those seeds are very hard to plant because the ground is not fertile because they haven't been introduced to these things and these are you know most of the people who I'm dealing with are educated people that you know bachelors's Masters like they're they're well they're well not well to do per se but they're more educated so they essentially should have be should have been exposed to more things but as I kind of extrapolate that and then put it on society again looking from my own perspective in this case I see the same thing somebody looking to be rescued right and then when that rescuer doesn't swoop down and fix the issue then the question is where do I go how do I what do I do with this and I think well is there not a system of of observation that has been uh handed to you by an elder or your culture or your philosophy and or maybe at the end of it some kind of religious wisdom tradition that would help you to be able to deal with this again not saying that you can't have allies spiritual friends that you can't go to during times of of tough moments right but generally speaking where is it that these things should be where do you learn them you're not going to learn them in school if you didn't learn them from your parents you're definitely not going to get them from the culture the last place is going to be religion and religion definitely is not teaching it's not teaching these things and so I'm looking at okay well what can I blame on I can't blame the parents if they never learned it how are they going to hand off something they never learned I you know schools are already it's already difficult enough to just get a a curriculum teaching Civics and basic kind of you know constitutional stuff that people should know just being basic citizens fine so I'm going to throw that out because you know especially in public school Eric you and I both went to public school like I'm happy to just you know have all my teeth um you know make it out alive yeah and it ain't gonna be it ain't gonna be from the culture because this all the the goal here is to buy and sell that's it you buy you sell and you're on either side of that coin all the time so [...] that dualistic ideology for you know the exchange of money and then the the movement of taxes back up and whatever fees and all that [...] and so what's left what's left is is the religious traditions in order to kind of instill some sense of morality ethics boundaries so on and so forth um but they're not doing it and they haven't been doing it because it is not designed for that or at least the way in which that is practiced is not designed for that so I at this moment and I want my mind changed at some point because I feel like it's probably not a great place to stand on I just see detriment that's what I see I see detriment and a way to control people a way to extract profit in the form of attention and donation for their own for their own propagation moving forward I see that ideology being imprinted upon parents that imprinted upon their children that imprinted upon their children's children yes I can give I can give you know uh I could say respect to the communal aspect to the uh Heritage aspect of like people's traditions and their religion being being put together in one but I'm sorry I don't think God comes in a box you know and I I just don't I just don't I don't think it's helpful I don't think I really don't think it's helpful and it it it's becoming you know at least to me at this particular point after we've spent some time really away from society diving into like non-dualistic states to come back into this thing and be like man there's there's just boxes on top of stuff everywhere there's just cages and conditioning all over this place and I I don't you know it's overwhelming a little bit to try and just change somebody's perspective who actually wants their perspective changed let alone other people who don't even realize that their perspective based on what they were handed is detrimental to their lives and to the lives of the society that they have been living in it's it's kind of mind-blowing to me so I am putting my thumbs [Laughter] down I'll I'll put a couple down there too it be like the old like movie review shows yeah on this particular and the last thing that I'll say about it before you know I I hear your response is that like I think it's it's not good because it sets people up for failure in terms of looking for a singular entity in order to come help you and specifically that's like Christian Catholicism because Juda Judaism doesn't have that and Islam doesn't have that either um so that I'm looking at in terms of that one but in terms of the other one it it creates this kind of like um hierarchical view of God at the top of the corporate ladder and then all of the people who were and I will call them minions because you know you're work quote unquote working for God okay well he exists whether you work or not sorry uh you matter not at all like you're basically an accountant with the funny robon you know what I mean like let's cut your hair and take a shower my friend is you know like go do some real work you know what I'm saying and like and that kind of that relationship with the Divine always puts the the the parish at the bottom of the [...] ladder you know at the bottom of the ladder so that you then have to go and and sit with somebody or or look at somebody who's been preaching or practicing or I don't know what whatever you want to call it at the top and I just don't I think that that structure is disempowering you know one of my things I like I think it's disempowering for people and it leaves them lost person P personally you know and faith is important but it it is it is not going to help you be self reflective it definitely not going to do that so uh double thumbs down Jin and Tantra poop uh or Duty sorry yeah doing your duty so do you feel you mean does that do you I mean I know you feel me but like that I like uh like uh on a very personal level I could almost feel like a little tear welling up here that wants to like creep down my cheek because this is like the like you don't always talk this way exactly with this tone there's this little something going on that's different yeah and I I feel closer to you than I've ever felt my brother wonderful I I feel like our hearts as close as they've ever been and our hearts will be as one is that Caribbean Queen that's Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean that's right oh oh Daniel well yeah I do feel I feel like uh yeah we've we've melded you know we've done some kind of mind meld yep our hearts will be this one yeah so okay um God there's so much in that I guess pulling it all together to me like becoming like a tantric personality was like getting out of this yeah right that it had to have something to do with like transcending this stuff and I think maybe we talked a couple episodes ago and like yeah they sometimes in the even in the Buddhist tonric World they use this word renunciation which never vibed with me you know Transcendence I got you know so I said okay Transcendence is the word right and uh I guess there's like multiple levels on an individual level if you're down at the bottom of some massive hierarchy right whether it's a corporate hierarchy in the actual like usually we use it in the business sense or your framing of like the religious hierarchy as being kind of corporate too right yeah and the top CEO is the big boss in the sky in this way of framing things right and you're somewhere down at the bottom like a peon or a minion or something like that that's just not a happy place to be no right and certainly when we get to the other ideas in the tant is like Divine the feeling of yourself is an important you know your your Divinity in even of yourself that's a tantric attitude right I take myself as being a Divine force a divine presence right you're not going to feel that if you're down on the very bottom wrung of the whole thing and everybody's standing on top of you or something like that and so when you wrote me that text I was like wow that's good I had never thought about it in those words but it has the same structure you know this hierarchical structure where you know whether it's like uh some religious figure or some Elon Musk type person or Jeff Bezos whoever like some persons up on the top and before you would say that would be the all the nobility and the king and they're the ones transmitting down the truths from above or something like that that's just not a it's not g it's not inducing of happiness it just isn't and it's very hard to run a tantric lifestyle out of that out of that space right because to do a tantric lifestyle you need to come out from a space where you're going to be able to like have pleasure and enjoyment and you feel like if you're constantly within this either situation being put down and you lose your sense of you know your own uniqueness specialness and Divinity right or you're constantly Haggard right trying to meet the needs and responsibilities that in a lot of ways I mean this is nich's point too are kind of being imposed upon you right yeah the rules the structures you use the word cage multiple times right you know that feeling being kind of imposed upon you um uh you're going to feel like your joy is getting suffocated and crushed and then for the purpose of like think what we're trying to do here that's that's it's anti- Tantra yeah right that's like the opposite you have to get into like more of an internal head space where I'm going to see myself completely differently and then also design my life on the outside where I can optimize my possibilities for the joy of spiritual growth and pleasure as a contributing factor to that I mean that's the whole I don't know we all have our you know we have we both have our multiple reasons for doing this but certainly I think for both of us that's a reason to do this yes to try to make this point to say hey we gota pop out folks yeah you know and then we can build lives that will be more spiritually fulfilling spiritually Rich you know we can learn how to use our pleasurable experiences of our life to grow spiritually and we'll just flip this script right yes get out of this I think that's the that's the pitch I think the Savior thing is interesting too because I think n would make that point as well right you're waiting for some figure to come along and be the external source which is disempowering and L yes talks about that you can't go you have to become the Divine Source right you're the empowering design Force Divine force it doesn't mean you can't have other people who will help you like you said multiple times right yeah yeah we can tap into the you know other people who are helpful in our lives and even the inner Divinity of all of us around each other right we all have it so we can tap it into it into it within each other but if we're like constantly having to like look up to something that's you know like a big hierarchy above us which when you compare it to a corporation we you know we sort of know a corporation doesn't have like great intentions right and so this is like to raise dubious thoughts about the intentions this whole structure too right is it really supposed to be that freeing why am I standing in the bottom of this whole thing with everyone else kind of like balancing on top of me or something yeah yeah I think in the in the in not you talking about in the Christian world but I think even when you get into the Jewish world or aspects of the Muslim world and you might have more opinions on the Muslim world than I would have but you're still kind usually appealing to figures of authority yeah always yeah above you right it's always the figure of authority of above you and there usually transmitting some kind of code that ultimately goes back to some designed Source I don't believe in those things anymore I don't think these things come from these sources I mean maybe I was raised that way as a Catholic kid or something but I feel like I don't know how you feel about this this point in your life but I've jet jettison those ideas I don't think about those things as coming from some Divine station trickling down to me like some kind of horrible trickle down economics right raining down on my head what was Bob Thurman line all the champagne is drunk above and then like people take a leak and it trickles down on you yeah something like that that's the trickle down yeah so I mean there's a societal thing right I don't know what we do about that but there's also like the individual response where you can go and say hey I'm gonna like even in the face of this I think the tantric attitude would be something like even in the face of this I'm still going to build a joyful Blissful meaningful spiritual life even in the face of this which I think is what you were saying too mhm November 4th to November 6th there was a day in between but my underlying goals didn't change at all right the meaning of my life continued right because it wasn't hinging upon these things it was the meaning was coming from a different space and I think being also very meta you know um we have you know people who listen to us and and we we we we never fully know who you know hears every episode or does everything uh I just want to make a to some you know as as half of a Duo who create content you know that would be considered in the spiritual space for sure spiritual kind of psychological space that there is a uh there has been over the last I could say probably you know seven or eight years a slow movement of people who are interested in spirituality slightly moving over to like conspiratorial spaces and then going even all the way over to more like right leaning conservative kind of spaces so we'll we'll never turn this into um a political podcast because that is just not what we care to do there's [...] plenty of this out in the world um but there's not a ton of people in this space who keep it on this they keep it they they they keep it within what they're trying to do we're going to pull things into our space in order to alchemize them for our our personal spiritual growth and for the edification of the our patients friends and then and then listeners not the other way around I'm not going to you know leave reality as it is and then try and you know imprint some kind of spiritual teachings on top of it because I don't believe I believe that you know as you know embodi of divinity that the kind of Infinite Space of emptiness that exists with inside of me you know the infinite the Infinite Space of of if you want to call it like love it can alchemize all poisons regardless so I am going to intentionally and I think we are going to intentionally pull things into us I am never going to leave and you know change up what we do and and there's not as many folks who remain this way because some people are chasing dollars or whatever um we you know we will never talk to an Advertiser or anything else like this you know we don't ask for donations we just do this so I just wanted to make that point you know as you know we we continue just we were talking about the like Russell Brand ification of things or something maybe on the retreat a little bit interesting to watch how he went if you're if you don't if you're not in this space you might even know any of this stuff but you know he's the comedian right from England and he started doing things that were like spiritual stuff and then eventually he veered and veered and veered and now it's like unrecognizable yeah totally you know so sometimes it's hard to even you know when you were you made that point before that sort of like this kind of like weird slippery slope or gateway drug thing or something that spirituality is the gateway to uh strangeness you brought that up before and I I've definitely have known some people who maybe have gotten weird over you know these trumpi years totally yeah yeah but um uh yeah but there when you go into the public sphere there are people who've taken that weird Journey where you're like what happened yeah you know a couple years ago this dude was talking about certainly something else something that was much more of a spiritual content and some of its dollars chasing and some of it's whatever happens to people it's really odd yeah you know yeah so I gu so okay so on the Llama yday front this has to be done differently there has to be a way in which yeah if you identify this as the situation and this is my home base of how I identify this you know uh there's an element where you have like each of us as individuals we have to kind of make this stand in a way of saying okay I'm going to have my life and I'm going to make it joyful Blissful spiritually meaningful and I'm going to do this right and that might mean taking a step back from some of the things that I don't know maybe old beliefs that I had or ways that I was raised or ways that people talk on the culture in which I'm in but I got to do this right and that's I think quintessential the Tantra right and then there's the critique I guess the two last things I thought about with this was you know the doctor I studied with from China and I bring this up occasionally on the podcast to these four years he was shocked at like how not happy people were that just stunned him when he got here you know he started seeing patients and you know people in Chicago and people in the what we call the Chicagoland area around Chicago the suburb surrounding and he was like damn these people just aren't happy enough you know and he decided there was sort of a quintessential lack of Joy but to be a tantric personality you have to be able to find that Joy inside yourself and then also work as best you can under the circumstances that you're presented with to build an external life structure that supports that Joy right so then you can kind of like start to fulfill this through yeah so yeah um the other name that came up that also came up in my mind with this too was the Jord the Jordan Peterson aspect of this which again is this is like the anti- Jordan Peterson is the only point I wanted to make right the Jordan Peterson thing and if you don't know him if you're not in these spaces he's like a Canadian psychologist who got first thing is a kind of like a self-help person I guess you'd say right and then eventually it's kind of like a right-wing propaganda figure now he is yeah but he started off as like somebody who you know didn't want to do the pronoun thing and didn't want to yeah be told you know that he can't say this or they say that in a Canadian University so he was sort of lauded as like a free speech Warrior and then then he got you know notoriety through this and then his uh fake intellectualizing and and wearing of uh I guess Tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows makes you seem um I don't know contemplative even if you're just slow on the uptake because of your uh addiction to certain pills over the years you know what I'm saying also had some addiction problems he's he's he's walked a complicated path our Jordan that's right he's a character character but the like he's a popular figure and it's it really is a little bit part of like what you might call the Bro ification of things right yeah totally definitely appeals to a certain bro culture and that's going to be a big issue if we get to the political parts of it over the upcoming years like what's happening to this bro culture you know because it's yeah something off right yeah and then every once in a while I feel like you we're trying to be a little bit of an antidote to that bro culture too yeah I think about that yeah you know you don't have to be a bro you don't have to turn into kind of a dick to have a good life or correct to get laid or make your way in the world or whatever like that's just you don't have to do that yeah I mean I think the the the pitch the pitch is to use you know to use pleasure to use positive means to change yourself yeah and and then yeah as that as that occurs then you can reflect back upon the society that is not preaching that that is in fact always like I I love this you know Robert Thurman said at any point you could drive anywhere throughout this country rural City or otherwise if you do it in the evening and you drive by people's homes you will see the the bright lights of the television bouncing off of the people's faces and a lot of the time if you're not wa you know this is probably previous but there's commercials you know and commercials are on for at least a third of the time of the show that you're watching assuming you're watching broadcast tell you know network television obviously Hulu and you know whatever Netflix is different but this is generally what he was referencing advertisements are always a meditation on desire always so he's desires right the kind we were talking about earlier the ones that don't go anywhere ones that are telling you you need this in order to be complete you need this you need this thing um and it's such a deep it's such a deep point because he's like people always say oh I don't have time to meditate or I don't know how to meditate or I can't meditate he's like you're meditating on things you don't need all the time yeah all the time and this is leaving you in a in an empty State it's leaving you in a state of constantly need wanting something or feeling like you need something and what are is anybody happy when their when their hands are empty when if they feel like it but they should be full you're in a place of longing consistently so there's a bit of you know sadness or some kind of desire that's just leaving you leaving you empty regularly and for me the the pursuit of pleasure again positive ones leaves you full you don't need you don't you're not in need you're not in want you're in you're you're in whole you're holistic you know that's just you feel full I don't know how else to say it you know there's a funny little synchronistic thing happening in all this episode in our conversations because our hearts are beating as one right but I was I was going through and uh I share I was sharing some quotes from L yes with people right during the week and there was one where he said you they use this word pra or like Hungry Ghost feelings you know and Tibetan Buddhist culture and buddist culture overall it's not just Tibetan they talk about being in this psychological State and they sometimes even talk about using the imagery of beings who kind of represent this you know this Hungry Ghost imagery which is you know you feel desperate and you feel longing and you feel empty right and so you can get into like the psychological space of what they call the praa the Hungry Ghost that's always like can never get fed enough and you always feel empty and longing and longing and that it's designed to create that feeling right so I mean again the tantric attitude in this is like I got you got to jettison these things total like weird tangent but we like weird tangents on the podcast I watch Fight Club for the first time with my son he's 12 oh you watched fight club with him we watched Fight Club and it was like pushing the boundaries a little bit age-wise but I thought okay he's a mature kid and he's watched a lot of [...] so we were doing kind of great old movies you know we watch The Usual Suspects you know and I love the ones with the twists you know ending with a Twist though he' kind of like he already had a idea that it was going to be oh [...] what's the name of the villain in that thing [...] I can't remember the name of The Usual Suspects guy it'll hit me later yeah but anyways um oh it's so weird I can't remember it that's one of those names that's really obvious that doesn't hit you but anyways we're watching that one I wanted another fight another thing with a Twist so it's Fight Club and his reaction to it was really interesting because you know he was looking at me and you know the whole if you remember the beginning of the movie before it goes super dark right as it goes along it's dark the whole way but he's basically like he's overwhelmed by like all the emptiness inside of him right that's what's happening to the Edward Norton character and he's constantly talking about like I'll buy this from Mia I'll I'll get the special table with the yin-yang symbol on it that's one of the bits in the thing you know and I'll get this this little piece of property and this other thing and it'll fulfill me in some way you know and at some point all that there's all of this bitterness of feeling that you you've been lied to that the things you've been told are going to make you happy don't make you happy and the bitterness builds and builds and maybe we even talked about the N Stuff a little bit with my sonican remember we had like these little intellectual conversations but you know the bitterness of that character and like if you haven't seen fight club yet I won't totally give away the ending but the movie came out 25 years ago but okay spoiler alert spoiler but anyways if you watch the bitterness of the characters as they grow they're so it's almost like n- likee thing you're like in this culture and you're bitter and you're bitter and you're bitter and it grows uglier and uglier and uglier as the movie along and we were talking afterwards it's kind of prophetic because it is kind of true of our era now it's gotten more and more bitter right people feel more and more grieved and more and more bitter and more and more angry and more and more empty and it comes out in uglier and uglier ways right and so it had the feeling of being prophetic almost right for like where things were going to go because it's a lot of it's male characters right and they feel empty and angry and the Bro part of this thing that is unfulfilled and the bitterness that comes out of that right I I I know when the last time you saw that thing I hadn't watched it in years yeah I mean it's been a little while but I've seen it a couple times so I I you know well in my brain it was trippy at the end because he just went like you know it has a shocker ending and he like took the blanket and threw it over his head and he what is happening uh it's a powerful movie if you haven't seen it I won't ruin the ending and yeah but it does kind of tap into these ideas The Emptiness of things that leads to this bitterness and then it comes out in these toxic [...] ways right where the antidote is at least for the what we're trying to present on the podcast like ours is the tantric one right step back reframe what's happening for us right and like uh you know find that tantric space inside yourself and look at things from that point of view of like okay I'm going to find pleasure Within Myself not the empty ones but the real ones right I'm going to learn how to use my own energies my own Spirit my own psyche my own mind to generate pleasure internally and I'll figure out ways of sharing that with others that are spiritually meaningful that will help me and them and now you're on a Buddhist tantric path or a spiritual path for sure right so a little a little nugget for our Five Element AKA Chinese medicine practitioners not that you practice Five Element and if you don't know what that means because you're not in that space then don't worry about it because you know it's a niche thing but anyways um we can call it dowst view right in the dowst view of things bitterness is associated with the fire element obviously because if you cook something too long it turns bitter but the fire element is primarily associated with the heart and the uh I guess psycho emotional aspect is associated with the heart which I guess we could say is the opposite of bitterness is the flavor but the actual psycho emotional aspect is joy and so if I just use joy and pleasure as a synonym of each other then those two things kind of sit on on the opposite ends of this thing and that like the bitterness from uh continual unfulfilled desires is the antidote to that would be Joy yeah yeah yeah yeah I had thought about it in that exactly that language I think that's cool you know a lot of times the bitterness if you look like medically right for the people who are medical people you know they'll use like bitter ingredients to kind of calm the heart down when it's too hyper and too excited MH right but you know if your life is bitter then you're already getting overly calmed down by your life right it's killing your natural fire of your heart you might say right the fire energy of your heart are getting like drained away by this bitterness and you lose the joy right that's a that's a nice way of thinking about that all right so maybe like a couple different things to say about this but maybe I'll transition to the empty Pleasures if we were talking about them at least the way I felt about them you know so to me like you thought about the listener's question you know and we've been kind of talking about all kinds of stuff around this as we've been doing this episode but when I thought about the question from that listener I was like yeah well you know we did this whole long thing about the different kinds of tantric things and the sexuality things and the technical stuff last time but I was just like if we take a big picture back I think it's what you were talking about earlier and we've hit a couple of times you don't want the pleasures to be the vacuous ones you want them to be the real ones right and then it takes like a little bit of this go this goes along with the the talents of the heart and the fire too to be able to distinguish things right I have to develop an eye that will distinguish the true rewarding Pleasures from the empty ones right and start to look at that in my life and figure out the difference between those things some of this will go back to one of the common to my mind one of the common tantric things which is like you want to be Transcendent so you want to transcend the mundane ideas of things the mundane conceptions of things the mundane appearances of the world around you and find the extraordinary in that right the Transcendent and extraordinary part so I that like creates something of a guide to this right if something is within the world of like the mundane or couple episodes we even had words like shallow being used right or Petty you know if you're within those ranges then you want to get out of those right you know and you want to get away from the more empty shallow pleasures of things right and one of the ways I think they tried to do that in the tantric world is to kind of orientate your personality towards the Transcendent you know the the beyond the mundane parts of things I think that's one way of thinking about it does that work for you Daniel or what do you yeah yeah yeah uh does that do you feel like it works for you in your life because I do think that way I try to yeah yeah I try to I think for me personally maybe because I'm a Capricorn or you know who knows I have oriented my S toward towards finding pleasure through doing things that have meaning for me and it might not necessarily be like quote unquote pleasureful in terms of a sense of like bubbling up of joyous energy as if you know like orgasmic in a sense um but again because I find so much satisfaction and contentment in being able to have these kinds of discussions with people kind of over and over again uh day after day that that that is that is pleasureful for me in that sense because I believe this to be uh one of the best things that you could possibly discuss in life which is how to live a better life which is why we do this podcast right right yeah so I mean we're in the same head space two hearts beating is one I was saying like the the I think the eye to the pleasure of this is the ones that like push you forward you know part of this will be the things that probably I think you're talking about when I hear that I hear meaning right yes and the existentially meaningful things are the beautiful ones right when we were on Retreat we were talking about having uh samit on again right suit Kumar which who was our very first guest that we ever had on this thing and we were talking about the really great existential uh psychologists Victor Franco and the idea of meaning right and so I think there's a joy in meaning yeah you know that's a different kind of Joy so I think to The Listener I was thinking okay that's another way of thinking about Joy right those things that are Transcendent those things that have meaning you know uh that's you know different than the kind of joy we were talking about last episode you know which was more like the orgasmic Blissful feelings it's doesn't have to be that but it's the richness of the meaningful experience which is another place in which you can find pleasure being used as the path right being used as your spiritual path but in this case the stuff that's meaningful enriching and then I was thinking also those things that like can push you forward right those things that are like going to kind of make you go backwards ultimately you have to conclude to yourself okay even if they're mundanely pleasurable in the moment or something you know they're not so good for me yeah right they're not so good for me and again I think it's something about developing kind of an for that if that makes sense to you Daniel you start developing a little bit like okay well this is fine but it's not really moving me forward right it can happen in really kind of all aspects of life really interestingly like you could have a relationship you're like it's okay but it's not really moving me forward or even you know things that could be just generally like you have sexual experiences you're like well that was okay but it wasn't like it's not moving me forward you know if that makes sense so even the things that you normally think of could be pleasurable things sometimes will take on that quality to them you know yeah and if I can you know because we're kind of getting a little bit towards the end here you know if I could even just double back for a moment at least in those scenarios you are being I don't want to say critical but observant of the influences that these practices have or experiences have in your life but in in the religious sense that is that is frowned upon oh okay interesting so like give me a little more on that let me understand what you're saying more there so okay you get in a relationship and um eventually you look at it and you're like oh wait a minute I actually I don't like to drink five or six days a week and um I don't like to eat as much fried food as this person does and actually I prefer to go for walks as opposed to watching television you know what I'm saying and so you see that this it's detrimental for your life you know what I'm saying yeah yeah yeah however in in Many religious contexts if you were to say you know I actually don't believe this particular story and I don't like how we only help people who believe the same things that we believe and I actually want to hear how other people think about stuff it's it's interesting to compare and contrast those thoughts will get you shame because you express them how dare you how could you this is not how this is supposed to be or to you know your faith whatever um and so that that that's that's just this like deep dichotomy you know that those that that tradition is not affording for people and uh it it just yeah it's not doing it and so the the kind of again again we're going to just go back we're going to funnel back so Loop and then funnel back in the means of finding satisfaction through joy and pleasure is a way to not is a is a way to help yourself I believe have confidence in what it is that you are doing so that you can take and make difficult steps and or decisions um not not that they're going to be less difficult it's just that you have solid grounding within yourself you know that you're not you're not it's not necessary for you to be fulfilled by it by an external Source especially especially one of significance if you find yourself to be a you know a theistic minded person this is really interesting I mean I'm again I'm being meta in the sense of talking about our conversations with one another of these years that we've been recording and sharing and all that there's a different vibe yeah there's a different vibe I've been um there's a there's a song by a rapper named two chains and it's uh it's a quite an old song at this point but the song is I'm different and for I remember you talking about that one right so uh yeah I can say after our after our Retreat and spending some time again just talking about like ultimate truth conventional truth external appearances is reality how we see it and versus reality as the the collection of energetics that is moving on behind the scenes um I don't really leave that space anymore or at least I have it for the last week moments I have but I'm generally in that kind of space and so I believe that to I believe that this kind of understanding at least for me but again they talk about it all the time and in in in the midst of these teachings is this kind of look view of the world is important for people to be able to kind of touch at least for a moment and the fact that I get to be there for a longer period And I look back and I'm like damn the further that I stand back from this thing the more that I see like oh man people are just kind of very stuck in this Newtonian physics type ideology where reality is just composed of like these big large blocks that Bang into each other and you go well what are you going to do that's just all we can do I guess like no no no that's not all we can do actually and I am am find I'm trying to like for the purpose of this episode and for the purpose of these few episodes that we're doing now and we'll you know continue to do until we kind of get through the rest of this at not not imprinting any kind of particular philosophy or particular kind of ideology or ISM of any kind I'm just saying do it with pleasure whatever you're doing do it with pleasure and if there is not pleasure there to had then do it later or or find something else because I realized people got responsibilities and they can't you know like whatever you got family to support and you're not going to just be like sorry kids I don't like this [...] job so uh y'all ain't GNA eat for the next six months while I figure my [...] out no I get it I get it right but on the other hand try not to constantly be in a place where you're always wanting and you're never fulfilled because then you are as you said you're going to like that that kind of sacrifice is going to burn you out make you bitter and then make you resent the entire thing and I you know I don't want to see that for people because it's very hard to come back from that when you're an adult that was not trained how to be reflective right or be creative or be playful as you grew up yeah I think it's like something about learning how to reframe these things in ways that are tantric MH you know and that doesn't just mean like sex stuff that means like a totally different way of seeing the world like even the way you're talking about conventional truth you start questioning things more you start reframing how you think about things I I had it in the notes here too like you rethink I'm going handle sexuality different in my life I'll handle relationship I'll handle love differently I'll handle work differently I'll have I'll handle parenting differently if you have kids you know I'll it's not just going to be the n things that going to that can [...] up my life I'm going to fix that going back to our things that we talked about before right you know like getting like like bogged down in a certain way of seeing things that they have to be more radically reframed you know and to me I would think that would be you know I think what we're trying to say then you develop a tantric personality call back to the very beginning there we go right you know and I mean one last thing before we get out and we're not doing a lot of politics but it's the one episode we've done since past the election and it's going to be weird going forward because there is a part of the country that wants to go back to some kind of old school much more conservative judeo-christian yeah in the in the what we're looking at the negative parts of that right yeah the the parts that are boxy we can have positive parts of that we're not trying to be haters on it no but the parts that are that are that are negative that you have to say Okay this is not edifying to people you know you're part of some giant hierarchy we're under the control of some other external forces I'm not empowered you know I'm burdened I'm like boxed in you know I'm I feel oppressed that's not good let's just be honest right there's no reason to percent that it is right no matter what you want to call it yeah it's philosophically regressive and not like psychos spiritually edifying it's not going to push you forward right no from that space yes I don't know there's this it's ironic because I got a call from one of the people who I knew like where were recording who went kind of right so I got a call from one of those people on this little phone of mine while I were doing this episode he got me like uh to know this terrible name Matt Walsh which again if you don't know this name you don't want to know this name he's like a very like anti-trans right-wing Christian nationalist kind of person and I had had no interest in this but he was sending me some years ago some videos from this I'm like what the [...] am I getting this for like why are you sending this you know like I have no interest in this I have nothing against what this guy is railing against you know but he did say you know after the election results that came down in the United States because I was watching some stuff about this I think our guy Kyle kolinsky talked about it Daniel I don't know if you saw it he's one of our political commentators he was just like yeah we're going to try to run this regressive religious Playbook right that's going to be part of what you know there's people who want that in the United States right yeah and um okay we're not trying to be anti- anybody but we're trying to be Pro a different attitude towards life that's a good way of putting it yeah yeah you know let's let's work to like reframe Our Lives as like Lama yesha would say tantri personalities yeah right and then we can share that with our kids we can share that with other people we can develop Joy within ourselves we can learn how to use the pleasures in spiritually edifying ways the ones that are meaningful and and move us forward in our past you know we can be Blissful I I I've I've read in many in many books um that like we are God we right we are it and from the standpoint of interconnectivity of course that makes sense right and that interconnectivity is like everything is everything is interrelated nothing is nothing is separate everything comes nothing comes from you cannot have something from nothing inherently this is not a dichotomy even even no thing is still a thing because you're referencing a thing that is none right so it's a it's a right that sounds very Robert Thurman to me yes yes um yeah I lost mine I lost mine oh [...] man I'm sorry that's all good no no no we're so you saying no thing was a thing yeah no thing was a thing but we're we're just coming you know oh yeah you are trained to believe that like you are a a creation of God not it itself and so like a lot of non-dualistic teachings um especially like shiism and and some of these da stuff and the the modern stuff we'll say that you are God you are God itself you are God you you specifically you the person listening to this Eric you and me we are that and and I feel like that is closer to the truth than thinking I am separate from that being one day to be United but until then I am outside of of maybe not necessarily its sphere of influence but I am certainly not unified one with and to me that conditioning is really really sad it's really sad like that is that is I I don't know I don't know how else to say I'm not even angry about it just saddens me to a very deep place you know that someone would tell somebody that ever but then Not only would they tell somebody that that that would be part of the teachings of said being that you were no longer a part of I could never believe that and never I would never say that you know yeah as far as like uh but two hearts beating is one one of the themes of the episode yeah I do feel the sadness from you in that like even describing it like yeah know I can you know I can feel the emotion of it what you're explaining right it is sad it's tragic almost right yeah but again like I guess like from my side of the Lama yes you know he makes a big deal about that too you know like part of the we're going through different tantric stuff and it's kind of being woven into what we're doing but we'll do full episodes on these things as we go but you know if you do get contri empowerment one of the things you do is you imagine yourself as a Divine Force m am that Divine Force you know and he's kind of like you have to really believe it you know really believe it you know uh and don't be deluded by people who are telling you that you're you're not don't be deluded by people who are telling you that you're some thumbs down again crappy mediocre thing you know that's gonna be your main problem Dal Lama makes the same point too right that's the thing that will hold you one of the main things that will hold you back you'll sell yourself short you'll make yourself too small right and then you it's tragic if you have external forces that are trying to tell you that you're being small that you that you are small you are small you know that you are small right you're just small and like it's amazing how many forces do that you know you have like the like kind of the religious version of that you're small you have the societal version of that you have the scientific version you're small it's a big universe you're small and useless don't worry about it there's a lot of that kind of [...] that goes on and that you know it's kind of beautiful when you get the other at to like again the Llama yes TC personality more Vibe going no I'm not small [...] that [...] [...] that [...] I'm not small you know and he kind of gets to that point and he says something kind of really amazing about this too when you when you emanate yourself in that way you think you're being realistic but you're not necessarily right you think oh it's reality I'm being realistic and he says emanating yourself he uses phrases like that you're projecting yourself right you're projecting who you are yeah through your thoughts of who you are through your mind you're projecting this you're in a certain sense emanating yourself as this small being you know and that's going to cut you off from the parts of yourself that are bigger right and then the certainly I don't want to talk about all different Tas but certainly in the Buddhist Tas that's part of what they're trying to get you to get over you know stop doing that stop thinking yourself as small think of yourself as gargantuan right think of yourself as as big as the cosmos because there's a part of you that is that big right you know well we were we were spicy we spiced up man we were spicy all right to be continued man okay yeah for sure peace yeah I'm uh yeah there there there's a few of my friends who I hope listen to this and uh and if you do listen to this whether you're my friend or you're not my friend you're my friend it's all good we're cool you know uh hit us up at ginand Tantra gmail.com ginand Tantra gmail.com or uh YouTube comment like subscribe all that [...] you know what to do everybody tells you the same thing if you made it to the end of the video You're a badass that's all I could say because uh this right here is is uh is 100% real right this is this is we are we are we are literally attempting to help free ourselves and everybody who hears this so uh you know what is how how do you say the the Tibetan Book of the Dead Li Liberation upon hearing Liberation upon hearing in the in the between yeah that's right there you go well I could I'll callot Billy Ocean all of our hearts are beating as one fellow G and tears there we go that's right all of our hearts are beating as one that's right yeah so uh you know support our work just you know share that's all that we ask for really um and you know do your best to uh find pleasure in the places that you can and uh you know we'll be here sooner rather than later so for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace [Music]