[Music] thanks for tuning in to Jin and Tantra spirituality with a Twist as you can see the flex on the on the video um yeah today we have Daniel driving the ship again Daniel drives the ship quite a bit because I have a license to drive which is great uh it is illegal however in every state so uh we flyed in the sky and uh today we have with us one familiar face to me but a new face to everybody else a contributor to our uh Jin and Tantra project here one Jonathan DNE oh that's right if that name sounds familiar it's because he is my brother and so if this conversation seems familiar it's because I've known him his whole life not my whole life his whole life so I've been free for a couple years but uh John thanks for thanks for coming on man I'm uh I'm excited to be here I feel like this is been maybe a conversation in the works for a long long time now so it's really cool to to be with you and be contributing and um hopefully sharing some value today hopefully sharing some insight value um to your to your your your viewers and listeners and audience and I'm just kind of excited to be here and have a chat with you yeah well we're glad to have you uh and speaking of listeners and audience and viewers uh make sure to like comment subscribe uh or forget liking and commenting just subscribe whether you're on YouTube or uh Spotify or apple or wherever you are hit that thing it's free to you I know you hear it all the time from from different people all over wherever you listen and it's because it's important it moves us up in the algorithm it gets us seen by different people and then we can have on different guests and um you know increase our reach and get different opinions from different folks we do get um information you know questions comments things like this from our audience so uh yeah go ahead hit that hit that subscribe button so I wanted to bring uh John on as a regular contributor because uh he and I'll let him speak for himself but he has been going through you know sort of a metamorphosis in his own life which I have been able to be uh a part of and he has uh a a brilliant mind if I could say and has come up with some kind of very practical um ways in which we can work on our relationship with ourselves and so if that kind of thing is for you uh stick around if that kind of thing is not for you then uh by all means scroll away so without any further Ado John's going to give a little bit of a background to himself uh and kind of how he got here and then we'll get into more of his uh very clear and and I could say even logical way uh ways really system of working with yourself and and and and I could say specifically through difficult times is is is kind of how I pull what you're uh what you have put together so I'm excited to get into that I'm excited to share this with people and uh yeah take it away yeah so this so how I've arrived here has been to your point a real a real journey I mean I've spent a lot of time a lot of time in what I think we would call you know the physical human realm of corporate world and the Daily Grind and the grind that so many of us go through and that inherently C has caused you know some reflection especially especially in the last couple years as I approached 40 just thinking about you know what is what is life what is purpose what is meaning um and so yeah I think I came to a real inflection point in my life where there was just a a lot of a lot of introspection um I think as my brother and somebody somebody I grew up with I think this uh this imagery will probably probably resonate for you it's a Memory that I share that we share um we used to go we used to go out to uh a Mexican restaurant with my dad pretty often um and at the end of that at the end we would always ask our dad for some pennies so that we can go throw them in the wishing well yeah um of course you remember you remember this and I think that imagery is really important because I think we spend a lot of our time living our lives that way we throw pennies or rocks into a well hoping and wishing and the energy of that Ripple that we throw that we throw the coin into is a energy that we hope comes and impacts us so I want the job I throw a rock in or coin in I want the I want the house I want the family and we're constantly Outsourcing our happiness and forgetting about ourselves forgetting about who we are what's important to us and so really over the last few years I've really started to shift energetically in thinking about becoming the rock or becoming the coin myself and as I become that then I can Ripple out and make impact on others and so it's just a shift in mindset um and I love that imagery I love the imagery of coming back to oneself because when we are whole then we can really help others and allow our energy to have influence on their lives rather than it's interesting um in in the Tibetan tradition they they call uh they'll call those things like throwing throwing wishes or throwing desires throwing wants something like this and they'll often do it at night before you go to bed when you're practicing a dream yoga if you don't have it's it's it's not easy to practice it's super subtle you have to have these images in your mind before you go to sleep and then when you sleep you're supposed to see it and then when you see it then you wake up in your dream and now you can exist in his dream okay fine but there is another way of doing it where you sort of like you're talking about throwing a penny into a wishing well and you just have the the thought in your dream in your mind before you go to bed I would like to arise in my dream tonight and so like you're saying you're sort of I like this term like you're Outsourcing your happiness um and that kind of that it gets started in that way and additionally putting a wish you know incanting right this is incantation this is a a shamanic practice right or we could say like you know it's it's witchcraft if you will because what do you do we do it all the time in this culture and and I and I'm I don't mean to tangent but I just think it's very fascinating because it's it's igniting things for me so what do we do every year at for our birthday we make a wish um other other Traditions have things around new years's right where you make a wish we have these things called intentions what are they they're wishes right so and then essentially what is you know thoughts and prayers I know it's it's that the you know I don't want to say it but many people use for um tragedies right those are essentially our wishes you know so even though this culture is a quote unquote scientifically proven culture we still end up using a lot of these kind of divination practices and I like the sort of parallels with that in terms of your own kind of your own happiness your own um desires you sort of cast off and say okay well I hope that I can do this so I'm I'm interested to see where you know where you take this yeah and I pull a lot of I pull a lot of inspiration from from a lot of different a lot of different places but heavily you know Wayne Dyer from Alan Watts um and and Alan talks about you know when we are not whole and happy in our own world then even when we even when we achieve what it is that we're looking to achieve um that we'll never we'll never be happy once we even achieve it at all so correct I don't think there's anything wrong with having goals I don't think right there's anything wrong with having wishes but until you have until you're in the present with yourself and content with your own world it's really it's impossible in fact to have to find joy and meaning um if you're so detached and dissociated from your own self so um yeah I mean I think I'll share I'll share a bit about my story and and so how how I came to this point um you know I think for years myself I I spent a lot of time moving and moving how SE seeking so moving moving physically uh you know relocating to different places looking for new roles looking for new Lifestyles looking for new career paths looking for the next the next thing so of course we you know we grew up together in Chicago we had our own Journeys along the pathway as I'm sure you've shared with your audience before um but I I left Chicago to California I came back to Chicago went back to California San Francisco specifically went to Sacramento went up to Seattle um I'm now down in Charleston and along that path and it was always this quest for you know throwing the throwing the penny of you know well if I go here then I can have this I can have this job title I can make this money I can you seek this thing um that I'm looking for for happiness and never really never really finding that Within Myself so always Outsourcing just always Outsourcing and uh as you'll find wherever you go there you are right so you're always going to inevitably come up against yourself so along that path I was really blessed like I found a lot of I found what I think was success you know I found career growth I had had a this great career trajectory um you know growing every couple of years grew into a a junior executive level role um which I was so proud of and along every step of that path it would be like I have this achievement but there's still like this void there's still this emptiness within it um and so throughout the throughout the years there was always this overarching dream of like having a home you know we grew up we grew up moving around a lot we didn't really have we didn't really have a a home necessarily we we rented in apartments and um there was just never this never this stability that we felt and that was kind of the always the the big dream and you know finding myself here in Charleston now I finally put myself in this financial position to buy a home and uh and as I did and that happened in and as I did there was this emptiness that came with it it was like okay well now what you know now I've realized this this dream and it felt like Crossing this Finish Line it was like 10 years in the making of saving and working hard and all the things only to find this real like emptiness within it you know you think oh once I get there once I achieve this this this dream that I have that everything's going to be perfect everything's going to be be great and um as I suggested wherever you go there you are and that's kind of where I found myself was in this place of now what now there's still this this emptiness within me so um this is this is kind of well this is very specifically again talked about in in Buddhism that all desires are empty of intrinsic nature right everything essentially is empty of intrinsic nature this is referred to as emptiness or maybe we could better say interconnectivity but what you're talking about is a relative sense of emptiness as in there is no thing behind the thing so as you want something you work for it and that's good you know it moves you it motivates you you you have a purpose so on and so forth a quote unquote purpose but then when you achieve that thing there is no thing behind the thing so yes you work so hard for the house but the idea of the house that resided in your mind had a larger place in your life than the actual physical thing of the house had in your life and once you get the thing it usually inverts so oh my God if I could just get this thing or whatever this car this J whatever then then if this then that and that is out you know I I'm kind of calling it this now algorithmic thinking because that's how you program algorithms if this happens then these things happen and that's how you build decision trees right and you stack all those together then you can have something that you know appears to be intelligent Ian I mean it is sort of making decisions but it's not actively deciding for itself you know uh I'm sure AI people would uh you know disagree but you know whatever it's my podcast suck it um you know and so there's this uh deep kind of acceptance that when you reach the the end point that there will be a carrot there will be something there for you that you have been searching for you know for quite some time or that you have been wanting that's probably better put wanting and then you get it and it yeah it's great for a minute and then the reality sets in and I'm going to use a quote from my my yoga teacher Andre everything that you own eventually owns you and so yes you have this you know lovely place that you can call your own um and you know now you're paying the mortgage and the tax and the HOAs and the electric and the roof and the and that and then now you're working so first you were working to get it now you're working to maintain it you're just working you're dancing around this thing over and over and over again and this is not common to you this is common to everybody you know Common to everybody around everything cars all the material things you know and don't get me wrong material things are nice and we should enjoy them because if we're going to work so much we should at least like the thing that we're we're getting for sure so I'm not on it but I'm also saying like it's not the end all you know it really isn't the end all because then we begin to identify with the things that we have forgetting the fact that those things are not us those things are external things and like you said it earlier if you Outsource your happiness then things have to make you happy and I want to underline I know this will probably come up when we do the the editing in the video when we make a little clip of this make I want to try and underline things make you happy why do you have to be made Happy Well it's because intrinsically for the uh most people we're not and so therefore things have to make you happy so you search for happiness externally right like you said throwing the penny in the wishing well or throwing the stone into the universe hoping that something happens from a a ripple like a boomerang when it comes back and gets you and now the Ripple hits you and you're made happy but what happens before you were made happy you weren't it's inherent in the language that we use you know what I'm saying so there's a big difference between uh establishing a relationship with yourself that you feel contented by and and and there there's a place of peace and acceptance and happiness that is in there versus a a place of malc contentedness that requires external sources of mediation in order to facilitate your happiness and well-being isn't that fascinating like you live you live in a beautiful community and I'm blessed to live in a in a beautiful Community too where there's some affluence and you know folks work so hard to get to where they're going and then it's like you sort of have this expectation of like oh I've I've gotten here here I've arrived and it's like and you have to work exponentially harder to keep it all together um you know oh I finally got the uh the the the BMW I finally got the Mercedes and okay now I gotta pay for that every day you know now I gotta this up right and now I finally got that that home half million dollar million dollar $2 million home okay well now you gotta keep that going you know um paying that mortgage and like I think I think sometimes we forget about the efforting that goes into that like it's a it's a real efforting that happens you know and and I pull from you know I pull from from DST influence just just like yourself um you know and talking about just thinking about riding the energy letting letting things flow as they should that you know the streams flow into the ocean and you know giving up and surrendering and stopping the effting I think is is has been a big theme in my life now um is just kind of letting letting those things go letting the efforting go and just being okay with all of the things you know the ups and the downs and not trying to force everything the way that I want it um so I think that's a really interesting point that you make um yeah I think um I think as I finally achieved this goal for myself like I was saying I there was this void though there was this void within it and um it took a great pain in fact to to then get to this sort of growth this P place of growth um it was almost it was almost like having to chop off your hand to realize how grateful you are to have a hand um is sort of how my life unraveled a bit um you know I made some decisions and choices in my life that some might argue are you know weren't necessarily the right decisions that caused some own some of my own challenges in my own world um but had to give up all the things that I had worked hard for had to give up my home I had to give up the lifestyle that I had built um you know I was I I got laid off from my from my job in a um in a Workforce reduction like there was all these things that happened in this very short amount of time and it really forced me to be introspective and reflect uh a bit more reflective and thinking about what is this like what am I actually doing here and um and that was it you know we you and I talked about this you know you the imagery that you you conjured up was it's like being in the well um you know and you and I talked about that quite a bit that you spend this time in the well and um but within there you know when you're down deep in that well like there are gems and Nuggets to be found you know there is there is truth and gold so like yeah you're in this deep dark place but there's also things to be found there um and that was the case for me I think the imagery that came for me um and ultimately led me to where you know why I'm here today with you the imagery was more like being in a desert for me um it felt like being in this desert and I can remember some months ago feeling like I I am happy to do the the walking to get out of this desert but I just need guidance like I just need to know do I need to go north south east west like I just need some guidance on which direction to go um and I felt very stuck in that space and then ultimately like one day I decided I'm just gonna sit here just gonna sit um both in the in the literal sense um as much as the meditative sense you know I really found found meditation and found found this inward this inward sense of self um where I started to then really deep dig deep within and basically through a series of synchronicities um you know I began writing I began looking for beauty and everything I began you know getting up early and going to the beach for sunrises and long walks um looking at people differently and entering conversations differently finding love and beauty and everything and um it led me to this space like I remember very distinctly the moment that I found what I found um I would sit in a coffee shop every Sunday morning and I would write um I would journal and I would write and out of out of absolutely nowhere I received this inspiration um and it's called steps is it's an acronym um and it's it was my practical my practical guide on how do I get back to myself and what is important to me and how do I begin to build my own life back up um from where I had from where I had uh been so steps the Acron in um they no real order except for the last one so the first four buckets sort of lead to bucket number five um and so it is social filling my social bucket that is spending time with loved ones family members um friends um romantic Partners but having things on my social calendar um that are both not just of not just of filling time but also of value really finding time to enjoy others and listen and learn from others um so I began attending lots of different things just experiencing I wanted to experience new social environments that I had never been to so you know meditations and yoga classes and men's groups and thrusting myself into these spaces that would be uncomfortable for me and that was great like I met a lot of new people and experienced a lot of new things so at at the um so we just did an episode myself and Katie Peterson one of our other uh contributors on Grief or we're doing a a series on Grief and uh grief and relationships but we just finished the grief portion so if audience if you're interested in that then you can you know check that out but one of the things that we talked about uh because there's like the five five stages of grieving right uh denial and repression and acceptance and bargaining um anger and then the last one is kind of f you know they call the one it's not one of those five but it's an and it's an addendum it's called finding meaning and one of the pieces that I took away from the the the research around that episode was that you are not filling in the void that was created by loss and so what you're talking about all this change can be perceived as a loss right you said I lost my home I lost my job so there's this loss you have to go through that grieving process and one of the ways in which that we come out of it you work through grief is through finding meaning and one of the aspects of finding meaning is having uh strong social connections having strong per you know relationships and what relationships do is relationships fill the space around that void they don't it doesn't ever fully cover it there's always a little space in there where that void was and will be because it should be honored as a as a place that that was held by something right but that in one of the ways in which that you can work through that work with that is by interacting socially by having connection and so I wanted to just talk about that as this was born essentially out of a a grieving process actually yeah yeah well it's interesting too I think the you know Eastern philosophy and uh you know the DST perspective would suggest that it is the emptiness that is is that gives us meaning right it is not the window itself that is important it is the space within the window to see through yeah um it's not the vase itself that is of of importance it's the space within that we can and hold things um and so yeah I think it's you know just off on a tangent a little bit but it's I think it's it's relevant here that it's a shift a shift in mindset to thinking about voids and what would regularly be thought of as negativity as as maybe something more positive or essential um so that's so the first one is a social so steps SS okay so first one is social what's the next one so the next one is technical um it's investing in yourself from a professional or learning perspective um building building oneself so continuing to invest whether it's continued um continued professional development maybe that's maybe that's adding you know a certificate going back to graduate school um but it can also be something as simple as just getting better at what it is that you do you know learning it's that constant reinvestment in oneself um and getting better at getting better at what you do from a from a professional perspective um and I'll Circle back to the idea of professional because so many I think so many of us and I think maybe your audience will resonate with this is that well I'm not doing the things that I want that I love doing you know this is not exactly what I set out to do uh with my life I didn't want to sit in office space um and we'll we'll sort of dig into that a little bit but O say like you know a hobby a skill you know right right anything that requires uh development that you have to learn something an instrument or whatever yep the E is emotional um and that's dealing with one's own psychology um and I think of psychology as a biological process it's it's not such an abstract thing like it just what are what we're to do biologically so I spent a lot of time I spent a lot of time in therapy I ran from therapy for a while um and I found I actually came to really enjoy it it was great to just kind of hear my own thoughts and work through my own challenges and oh human beings love the sound of their own voice oh of course we do yeah here and and here we are aren't we oh believe oh yeah man you think I don't know come on man I I call I call it it's it's all good you know yeah but I think I think it's really important that we heal we heal our mind a bit you know that we spend time visiting our own our own traumas our challenges and sometimes what I found in therapy yes like it was nice to have a therapist and work with somebody who provided guidance and perspective but I also found that it was nice to just vocalize my own thoughts and hear them out loud and sometimes hear them out loud for yourself you're like yeah well this sounds ridiculous or um boy I can't believe I'm actually saying this this sounds foolish and so therefore like changes need to happen yeah um but I found that I found that working through therapy was was very um was very enriching to my life but there's lots of other things we can read books we can engage with with loved ones we can um Journal you know there's lots of different ways to think about impacting our emotional state of being um it's not just purely therapy there's lots different modality there you you're you're talking about things that have therapeutic value correct right things that have therapeutic value specifically on the emotional aspect right so you want to address you want to address uh that portion of it all right so that's the that's the emotional aspect yep uh the p is physical um dealing with one's physical well-being and and this is something you and I know know very well um for me Fitness I'm so thankful like I already had this as a backbone for me but for some people they don't and physical exercise changes it changes us fundamentally um in both how we feel dayto day just our energy levels um and our own health and well-being but it also changes us cognitively it changes our perspective um you know I get up every day and uh you know I train 6: a.m. um and I think about it I'm like I've already done the hardest I have to do today and the rest of the day therefore is just a little bit easier I've gotten up and it gives me that it just gives me that edge it gives me that mental that mental boost um but also the energetic boost that I need so um I think that can be very transformative is is dealing with one's physical well being um that's exercise that's nutrition um you know that's flexibility that's relaxation spending time um Daniel as you know like that's been a a theme for me that I need um in my life so maybe that I had the exercise component but I didn't always have the the rest and relaxation that I needed um so that's equally important too you know the Sleep the rest um those things are are very important and the last one is the last bucket here is kind of the big one I feel like having those first four really builds to the final s which is the spiritual um and sort of that's kind of at the at the top of this pyramid I feel like once we've really dealt with our our human experience we can then sort of transcend into this higher space this higher energy if you will uh of self self-actualization and start to think more expansively about purpose and who am I and what is it that I'm doing here and really fundamentally and philosophically examining and questioning the whole this whole thing that we are in um and I know that's where that's where you know this podcast and you um spend so much time in but I feel like until we really get this Foundation this foundational um position of dealing with our physical self it's hard to elevate into that space um so those are the those are the really the five steps of coming back to oneself and finding happiness and joy and love and this this has served me so well this this practical guide what I find is that I feel like if I just fill these buckets up enough um and if I just put some Focus into each one I feel very whole and very complete um and I feel like then I I then find the sense of satisfaction that I can be in the I can be in the present moment at any given time and feel like my happiest best self so that's what I'm working on that's what I'm here sharing today yeah this really um you know and as we kind of come to the the end of our our time here I really you know we be free here I I really feel like this be uh very appropriate for people working through uh a grieving stage that this would be the tail end of one's grieving stage so I know that there's this finding meaning portion you know on the on the you know five stages of grief and then there's a finding meaning but I feel like this is a practical aspect or a practical guide to working through grief you know like once once you have some you know you've you've done some bereavement that this can kind of take the next turn if you will be begin to focus yourself um back on yourself not as a means of ignoring uh the external situation but as a means of alchemizing you know alchemizing all of the kind of I don't know I don't know how you want to call it like very variables that are existing within within yourself the what ifs the wise the questions you know the house the all these questions and then moving them into a place of action or non-action in some in some of them you know but you are taking all of them and running them in through your kind of own filtration your own digestive process and coming out the other side with something that would yield you um possibility for a an integrated experience and integrating what you went through just previously and so in a sense it's honoring what happened by causing you to go through this process and then coming out the other side sort of a uh an upgraded version if you will of yourself taking into account what you learned in the short run from doing all of these things but then also pulling through that experience of of grief or griefs as the the thread that ties all of these things together and that can reside within you as an aspect of who you are now so that that thing that occurred is no longer the chunk that is missing from your leg but it is the skin that was removed from your glute to cover the burn that was on your chest and so you are you are a reintegrated a re synthetic re synthetized being H yeah I think I think that's a I think that's a a great summation um and I think I I I think my focus is really like I know often you know we have these deep conversations you and I and I know on on the podcast you have these these great depth of conversation around you know Buddhist philosophy and we go really deep on on on so many different things um but I think for me I I really felt I feel like that my space is to give somebody something something very accessible um something very tangible that is very easy to access doesn't require a whole lot of thought um and that folks can just pull from uh pretty readily so I think that has been that has been my calling um you know again this served me and I feel like my job now my my focus and purpose is to try to serve others um and bring a little bit of it's not a cure all fix all but I feel like if I can bring a little bit of light into folks lives um you know then I've I've done some I've done some real good you've had some value you bring some value yeah well uh it was great uh getting to break this down with you here today John we'll we'll you know as we record you know continuously now over the next you know however many months uh we'll we'll get further into the kind of like the technicals the Practical pieces of of each of these uh that's my Hope anyway and um yeah can provide that for folks so you know uh if anybody has any you know questions about any of this you know please feel free to hit us up at Jin and Tantra gmail.com uh as always you know subscribe to our work we definitely appreciate it share it you know it definitely helps us to grow and to reach more people which ultimately is the goal you know we are not monetized or you know anything else like this so this is just a passion project because we are passionate people and like to share things that have had you know value for us and then if they have value for others and that just you know multiplies the uh the the givingness that we believe that we have received from our own life experience you know so um thanks for coming on today John and uh we look forward to talking to you again thanks for thanks for having me I'm excited to be here again with you because I think I think our relationship will start to show it's I think you and I we do a lot of laughing and have a lot of fun so it'll start to rear its ugly head yes oh yeah for sure exactly awesome all right well for uh for Jonathan this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace