Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Now slowly open your eyes.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Tuned in.
Should do that at the start of every podcast.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: That'd be a nice way to open.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Awesome.
Well, thank you for that, Ishtar.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Thank you. You're welcome.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I don't even feel like talking anymore.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Yeah, fuck it.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Just sit on here and just hang out. Stare at the wall.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Silence is another form of language.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that.
Would you say meditation in that way is a sort of skill you have to learn the technique?
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I think of it as more of a natural capacity that we can, you know, apply techniques to sort of landing in more fully, kind of like how we get to be retrained, how to breathe frequently, and just a few tweaks can. And then some practice with them can greatly expand lung capacity. Or if we're applying it to singing, singing capacity, learning how to use your whole diaphragm to produce sound is something that's natural to us, that we're not necessarily taught. So in that way.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: The type of meditations that I've done, though, a little bit different. I mean, I started out with ones that would seem more like that's a skill, you know, because they were hard. Involved a lot of asceticism inside the practices and around them in terms of, like, not a lot of sleep, sometimes cold showers, not a lot of food, but not like low food mixed with high exertion, you know, and. And also lots of forcing and straining of the mind.
And. And when I kind of ran into meditation techniques which were sort of built on different premises, mainly that you don't have to whip the monkey mind into shape, you know, then. Then they were more. More like getting used to functioning in an easier way, you know, as opposed to you're trying to strain and control, to reach, and then, you know, attempt to hold on to mystical states or, or whatever. That. That could be exhausting.
And. Yeah, I guess it's kind of a skill, though. Like. Like, in some ways, more people have more difficulty, you know, being easeful than they do saying, like, I'm really going to go hard, you know.
You know, and do this thing. And I'm always reminded, like, I used to when I briefly lived in Hong Kong. In the mornings, I was really close to a park, and if I walked over there, I could watch people doing qigong in the mornings, and you could tell of different age cohorts, you know, and I. Almost, to a person, I would. I would find that the.
The 80 year old, you know, my estimation, of course, I wasn't asking people their age, but the, the 80 year old cohort seemed to be just, I'd get a contact high by being around their, their practice and I'd go, whoa.
I really, I'm really feeling that from, from over here. And, and you know, I've always thought, you know, meditations not so different than getting better and better at qigong by just sort of learning how to ease into it.
If you have a good technique, I think it's helpful to have a good technique.
So for me, at least for my disposition, mantras are very helpful because it's like somebody tell me, just be in the present moment, what do I do with that?
Or even Krishnamurti's famous advice, you want to know my secret? I don't mind what happens and say like, yeah, I mean I would love to get myself into that situation, but I, you know, I, I don't know how to do that. So having some kind of vehicle for focus that, that for me seemed to do more than breath. Like, like, I don't know why. Now I can do a breath breathing meditations and they're delightful and blissful. But when I was first starting with all the stress and tensions in my nervous system, it was if they weren't, they just weren't quite cutting through. When I, when I did mantras, and I don't think this is universal, by the way. I think everyone's built a little bit different. But when I did mantras, it was like, oh, that's an icebreaker.
I felt something like really pulling me in a delightful way into deeper stratas that would usually take a whole lot more effort for me to get to. And it's just like a hot knife through butter.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. It's not universal. Some practices resonate that others just have, you know, no resonation toward.
But I don't think, and this is a, I'm touching upon a video that you made about pool and the guy said the meditation is pool.
I don't think it's like that. I don't think like anything can be your meditation. Like there is a certain flavor to how you incorporate these practices and what practices you're using that will be more powerful just based upon physiologically what you're doing, you know, what you're doing at a somatic level that pool or anything that you might call your own meditation doesn't touch upon.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Right, right, exactly that.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just because you call something a meditation doesn't mean it's going to be a meditation. There is tried and true techniques that are, you know, at work Just simply work.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: I, I tend to agree and I, and I usually would get that response or I would usually, you know, usually when I run over, run into those sorts of, usually dudes, I'd have to say, you know, older, older dudes who are like the husbands of somebody learning the meditations. Like, well, husband wouldn't come because pools is meditation. You're playing pool, not swimming. And, and it's usually because it's like some imagine somebody who's only have been eating carob all their life and, but just been told it's chocolate. But I've never tasted chocolate. I mean that, that's, that's what's going on.
So you know, it's, it's, it's very difficult to know about chocolate without having some exposure to it. And so. Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Now what would you say is the commonality of the practices of meditation that work though, even though some may work better for others, you know, we resonate with some practices that others don't.
What would you say is the commonality of the stuff that works as opposed to playing pool or going fishing? Something like that.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Wow.
You know, I don't have a great video. I, I think I don't have a great, I don't actually have a great answer in the back pocket for that because I actually think that's some of the like more universally effective or perennial effective techniques have little to do with each other, you know. You know, actually I, I find that. Yeah, actually I do. I mean, I mean, okay, one thing I could say, like maybe between simply following the breath, which again not my cup of tea, not as a beginner, but say with following the breath and using that as your vehicle and mantras is that, I guess they do have a vehicle. I mean they do have something to recurrently in some manner, you know, put your attention on and sort of perhaps in some ways break the pattern of, you know, being aware of everything else that perhaps could be the bridge between, you know, between those two and thinking about and similar with like some, some of the, I mean I won't share them so much, but some of the Kriya practice, you know, various Kriya practices that have been differently packaged by the organizations is, you know, some of them are using mantra, some of them are using breath and breath holds where you're going up the chakra system and you know, coming down and you know, doing this sort of thing. And you know, I, I suppose it would be having some kind of, as we'd say like transcendental meditation or ascension world A vehicle to put the attention up. But the thing is, like, that's between the different vehicles. I find them to be so different, you know, in their feel and their tonality. That's why it's hard for me to protect them.
Yeah. It's hard for me to put them in the same.
You know, it's a very broad category that.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: I know what you're saying.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I would say the commonality amongst them all is, as you stated, taking a hold of one's attention. And then it's like, well, what do you do with the attention? Like, once you have that viewpoint, do you do energetics? Do you do some sort of somatics around it?
Do you do nothing? Do you just follow the breath? But I would say that it's all just coming in and bringing one's attention to oneself. And then, yeah, you can do the kriya stuff. You can do yoga poses or whatever works for you. Would you agree with that?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: I mean, it depends on what you mean self. Like, I'm not being a pedantic about that at all here, you know, being an annoying Neo Advaita Internet bro, you know, anything like that. But in practical terms, it's like, say, I mean, I used to, like, maybe I didn't know I was doing fire casino meditations when I'm just, you know, attending to a flame or something.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: I'm not.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: I'm not quite sure how efficient that is in getting one to the experience, let's say the capital S. Self, you know, that self or samadhi or, you know, the doorway into that place, that most subtle strata of awareness.
I think some of those practices might get you there by you're on this flame so much that you just kind of trip and stumble back into it with that attention. Whereas here I'm a bit of a mantra chauvinist and I'll be out with that. Is that as I do think mantras in even other languages besides Sanskrit. So there. I'm not a Sanskrit chauvinist, but I think they're cloaked in something of the subtle, which is more so than, say, the breath and more so than, say, fire.
I think that there's something charming and somehow inherently more connected to something of the source than other things. And in other words, I don't think they work because they're simply in an arbitrary sense where, you know, I could use Coca Cola as a mantra, as one of the students of Sailor Bob Adamson once suggested. I do say, like, just think Coca Cola might to me, and I'm not, you know, I didn't do that for a year. So I can't really say if you know, you have the same or different effect. But I just do think there are certain things that maybe are universally more charming than others because they, that's actually a big claim, you know, of now. Now when I do the breath like a breathing practice, it it just a simple breath following practice, it absolutely takes me into deep subtle stratas of consciousness. It does go to samadhi but it just because there's not so much crap and junk in my head compared to when I was 18 or 17 or 16 and, and trying to do the same.
So I, I, you know that that's why I don't necessarily teach a lot of like breathing techniques as fundamental beginner techniques in my work as a meditation teacher because I, I kind of want to, you know, move things along more quickly.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: I see. So, so would you say that there are, okay, let me think how to phrase, there's different practices that are more useful at different parts of our path. There's almost like levels, right. And if you're at a certain level and you're doing a practice that doesn't correlate with where you're at, it's not going to be as useful.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: I do think that's the case but of course I haven't mapped those out and I think when I do encounter them it's a little bit ad hoc in per person that I, that I meet and we might be talking about, you know, you know, what they've been up to and we realize, you know, maybe don't do it that way. Maybe maybe do that, maybe do this one that you know, you tried when you were 17 was, was ho hum back then. But now they do it after, after so long and it's in, it's revelatory.
I've seen that with people doing meta practices for instance, which I think, and I think some of it is there's a lot of variation from person to person. So like you know, one person might say be at the beginning of their path and, and they might do a, you know, a Thai forest meta practice and it just changes their life.
Another person, it might be crap for them for a long time, then they do it, then it has to change their life eight years after or eight years further down the road that other person. So you know, I think, I think it's a lot of complexity and a
[00:13:21] Speaker B: lot of nuance, A lot of nuance,
[00:13:22] Speaker A: a lot of different, you know, from one person. But in general I do Think there's some, like, sometimes I think that with some books, and here's a hot take for the Course in Miracles readers out there. I actually think certain books are better served to be read when certain realizations have been had. Otherwise, I think they're misinterpreted. Like, for instance, I think the Course in Miracles should be read by people who actually have persistent samadhi.
And I think it makes a lot more sense and proper sense, even in its own. At that point, I think, you know, like, using that as a starter book, I think is. Is.
Can. Can, you know, sort of be a mistake in some ways. So there's a hot take because there's a lot of people who do that. You know, it's an advanced text, I think so. And I think it, you know, it, like, Like, Like a text like Vasishta's Yoga is another one that I think, like, don't mess around with that. You know, when, when you're, when you're. Your head's full of squirrels, still get to that one. When the squirrels have rested into presence, and then it's going to blow the doors open of the next stage.
Both of those texts, I think, are designed to give people the experience of unity consciousness, which is built on the foundation of having persistent samadhi with the eyes open for some time.
But I think the Vasisha's Yoga, they could give you little gold nuggets, of course, because these things are not always sequential. It's like they're all geared.
All these different. I think advanced stratas of consciousness are indeed.
We could walk into them right now, and many people do, but they just don't necessarily hold because it's difficult to stay in them if there's also a lot of tension in the nervous system that hasn't been worked out.
And so often that's where some people have these wonderful kind of like visitations into these other gears of their nervous system for a day or for a few days, and then they have to get kicked out of paradise to work the nervous system a little bit more.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Well said.
Now, what would you say is the end goal of meditation? Why do we do all these practices?
Depending upon whatever level you're at, Is there a commonality in goal? Is it that persistent samadhi that you spoke of?
[00:15:52] Speaker A: I mean, I absolutely think so. I think there's. There's multiple, probably multiple ways of expressing the end goal of all of that. But. But certainly if persistent samadhi is not. Not happening one's life, persistent samadhi or samadhi at all is a. Is a monumental thing to. To then go on to experience. Because it is a night and day shift in many ways. Even if it's, you know, come too subtly and one doesn't, you know, notice the passage of night to day.
It's a profound difference. And then, you know, beyond that is. There's stuff beyond that. There's. There. There's a sense of unity with all things, which isn't necessarily, you know, present and having some kind of a persistent samadhi experience.
There's heart opening, heart healing, body opening. The way that Adyashanti puts it is actually kind of very similar to the way that Transcendental Meditation, which is more or less the framework I was taught in, puts it, in which there are these kind of progressive openings of head, heart and gut. And it's kind of a metaphor, so people should not be saying, what's wrong with my gut? You know, it's like, not necessarily a literalist thing, but, you know, it's poetical. And I think it's pretty good poetical because that, you know, say that gut. That gut opening is something that. Well, it's guttural, it's visceral. The head opening is. Is much easier to grasp because it's kind of like, you know, wow, I. I could imagine what my head would be like if it wasn't filled with fighting squirrels, you know, like. Like, because most people have had those moments of. Of clarity, like, peak experiences. They're like, wow, what if I just had a bit more peak experience happening? You know, that's easy to imagine.
You know, for some of us, the heart opening can be easier to imagine. Like. Like some of us have had these wonderful celestial experiences or these unit of experiences where love has blown the doors open, even if it was like an infatuated love that wasn't meant to persist. And we'd have our senses transform for those, you know, brief periods where the grass is greener and the sky is bluer and. And, you know, that gutter one's a little bit trickier for. For most people because it's. It's like sometimes the last times we experience that kind of existential relaxation, if we were lucky, was when we were babies and kids. And it's like this profound kind of like, ugh.
You know, of.
If I was being like a vulgarian, I would say a better way of saying was head, heart and ass.
You know, is like, the stick gets removed. You know, that was. That was, you know, that. That's corked us up since we were really little when we were like this. You know, I can't. You know, I can't trust life. I can't trust these people. You know, it's like a deep pre. Verbal tensing, guts fight. It's less vulgar than. Than how I put it. But, you know, that's maybe another way to. To get it is. Is to say, like it's. There was somewhere way down there, we're squeezing and we're unconscious to it.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: And that's. Yeah. That squeeze doesn't usually go.
You know, even with many, many samadhi dives, it tends to take a little bit of seasoning, even on a fast path that people might be on.
Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, I like to say all roads lead to the heart. Maybe that's an overcoming.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: I know that's actually. That's a wonderful.
That's absolutely wonderful.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I know you stated that maybe we all know what it's like to love or be loved, but I thought I did until I had some rather intense experiences of heart opening in.
You can't put it into words.
It's not like the love you had in high school with your girlfriend.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: No.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Maybe. I mean, maybe it touches upon it, but, yeah, you truly open your heart.
Sounds corny, I know, but when you truly open your heart to everyone, the human race and especially yourself, it's almost painful. It's almost so intense it hurts. Because I think that's what you feel at the same time, you feel the pain, and that's how you love. Like there's no other way. Like, pain and love go together, suffering and love go together. And that's how you love because you sense the suffering. You know what I'm getting at?
[00:20:08] Speaker A: I'm actually getting that.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what this whole path is about, man. And, you know, I like to put things simply, so I apologize if that's an oversimplification, but I really think that's why we do all the practices while we get the junk out of our body, you know, why we release the stuff in our gut, in our mind. We get all that stuff out, all the conditioning out so that we can return to the heart, which is. Yeah. Just have to be centered between the mind and the gut, you know, it's not.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Yeah. This is. This is where. This is where Shakti and Shiva go to live.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Is in the. The deep, the deep cave of the heart.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: The cave of the heart.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Man.
If it's not about that, then I don't know.
I don't know what it's all about.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
My oversimplified answer is it tends to be bliss, which some people take umbrage with, but is, I think is actually getting at what, what you're talking about there. Just with, with a different, different word.
And, and yeah, just full, full spectrum, full spectrum presence.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Full spectrum.
Yeah, full spectrum. Yeah. That means like full spectrum.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah.
I think, yeah. Going from half ass living to whole ass living, you know, in that sense.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
Now would you say that looks like on a surface level some form of servitude.
Right. Living out of the heart is being the servant.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Oh, that kind of servitude. I was thinking, where are you going with this, Gary?
I mean, God. Yeah, in a sense. Yes.
Yeah. And that, you know, in that way of being open to what presence wants to do and you know, in Christian terms. Yeah. Which, which I often use being. Being open to the Holy Spirit, you know, right there. And being, being willing. Willing to follow the. I like another antiquated term, the golden thread, you know, that, that, that's, that's kind of pulling us along. Absolutely.
You know, then that's, that's, that's where ultimately surrender is a thing. I, I don't think, to me, surrender isn't so much about obedience to a temporal authority figure, but, but, or even obedience in a sense, in that same sense to, you know, a big guy in the sky. But it, but it's certainly about, you know, will I follow this, Will I follow this subtle, this subtle muse that, that I've started to become aware of and. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: A subtle muse. I like that a lot.
Yeah, man.
And it's surrender willingly. So it's not surrender out of fear because we're afraid of what's going to
[00:23:00] Speaker A: happen, because that's capitulation. Yeah. There's a big difference between surrender, real surrender and all of that. And unfortunately, that's one of those words that I think has been most polluted by blind leading the blind or by bad actors in the spiritual space is, is surrender. And I'm very thankful that, you know, in my little ashram, the tradition that I was coming up in, it was, it was actually made very clear like, don't get hung up on this word when you're reading the yoga sutras.
Don't, don't even, don't even try to do it. You know, this is something that, that, that is, is trying to kind of, you know, actually bloom more at the end of your path. You Know, and it's not. And it's. And it's, you know, that teachers, I had, to their great credit, were like, you know, you're not. You're not. You're not surrendering to me, you know, or to. To this. To this flesh body you see here. Don't be fooled by appearances when you surrender. You know, the. The. The real teacher T, or the real capital G Guru is. Is the.
Is the sort of that universal spirit.
Sadhguru. There you go. Yeah.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: And not Sadhguru, the sat.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Not Jaggi, but Satan. Yeah.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Amen.
Yeah.
I'm just curious. What was your lineage?
Where were you.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Weird lineage. Absolutely. Weird lineage. Like, so it's called.
And, you know, honestly, like, it could get a bit. A bit culty. Not necessarily my particular sandbox, but some of the bigger sandboxes.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: You know, I had complaints with mine. And, you know what. What happened in some of those other sandboxes was much worse. But it's a meditation practice called the Ishaya's Ascension, and that's spelled I S H A Y a s with a apostrophe after the S. Very straight.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: I think you talked about that. Yeah. In our first one. Sounds familiar.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I came to it about five years after their founding teacher died. He died quite young. He died in 97.
I think he was 48 or 49.
And they had only been like, a popular movement at that time for about three or four years, actually. They were quite popular in the mid-90s. They had a big teaching center in North Carolina and satellite centers all around the world. And they were getting more and more students and expanding. And then when he died, that took a little bit of time, but the rails started falling off and they started having internecine conflicts, and they splintered into all sorts of sub organizations.
And so I found my way to one of those, really, probably the smallest one, as it turned out, by amounts of people who were there and perhaps least popular.
So I found my way to one of those that was on the Oregon coast.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Is it associated with tradition at all? Like traditional advaita, the Dharma?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: I mean, it's. It's sort of a. A branching, to be charitable. It's a. It's a. It's a branching from Transcendental Meditation. Okay. And so because the main. The main teacher, the main founder, you know, had been involved with that as a teacher for about 20 years before going off on his own and doing the Ascension practice. And so, you know, tm. And. And then thus, Ascension was It's a yogic practice. So that Samkhya philosophy. And it's a yogic practice, you know, practice, but. But with an understanding that the end, the end state that we're sort of driving towards is. Can be expressed real neat and tidily in, in the languages of Advaita Vedanta.
So, you know, that, that's, that's kind of, you know, if I'm talking about the philosophical underpinnings, you know, those, those are the two that are there. But it's certain. It's certainly rooted in practical practice, you know, and not, not, not any type of people are saying, like just doing a. Practice. Going. Going to distract you.
That's not, that's not vodka.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Sit on the couch. You know, you can't do nothing. You know, Definitely. I always make them Southern. I don't know why. So the Southern listeners, I do apologize.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: I'm.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: I, I was born again. I was born a real Yankee. And yeah, you know, it's. Yeah, yeah. Thankfully.
Yeah. Don't blame Gary for having me on, you know, don't be pissed at him. Pissed at me.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: I'm the badass bigotry man.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Clearly, clearly the Civil War has not been fully litigated in my head, so. So let's meet at a reenactment someday. You know, blanks and, and we'll, we'll have a go.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: You know, I've been to one of those one time. Very interesting.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Oh, I love them. I used to go like twice, three times a year as a kid, and I had, I've been to Gettysburg. Not in a reenactment at Gettysburg, but, but a tour. I love. My God, what a haunted place.
Yeah, I found weird energy to be.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Another haunted place. Antietam. So anybody, any of the listeners haven't been out to Gettysburg or Antietam? Get yourself there, whether you're, you're, you're blue, gray or other, you know, hopefully, maybe other because, you know, we're 160 years downstream.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah, but, but the. Yeah. God, where were we before the Civil War was happening? Oh, in Vita. Right. And always making my strawman invite to teachers Southern. Right?
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Yes. So no, like, never had that sort of disposition or much, much refractive kind of like. Well, you know, the, you know, you can't control when the fruit falls off the tree. You know, in other words, the whole enlightenment experience. But you can certainly do an awful lot to ripen the shit out of it.
Exactly. And so that's where those two things kind of come together in the deeper, broader transcendental meditation tradition. So, yeah, I guess I kind of consider myself especially now that I've befriended so many ex or current long time TM teachers, whatever I was raised up. And it makes it real easy for me to kind of vibe with people who were brought up in that and also people brought up in the other northern Shankaracharya lineages of, of Indian spiritual practice.
So, you know, anybody who's doing bija mantras, for instance, especially in. In an effortless way, it basically feels like home in that sense.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: So that, that would be like om.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah, it feels like Om. Om. Om is where the heart is. Yeah.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: I was just curious because I like to understand people's.
Their path in the tradition they follow.
Right. I like to know who was their Obi Wan. Sorry, who was their Qui Gon Jinn to their Obi Wan. I like to trace that because I believe that golden thread we spoke of. There's a certain magic that exists within the traditions.
Do you sense that at all?
[00:29:56] Speaker A: It can be, yeah. I mean, and it's a mixed sort of thing for me because actually I think I had one formal teacher. Like, formal as in, hey, will you be my teacher?
In the asside movement? But actually that kind of came as a twofer in a way, as a married couple.
And I still have a great deal of appreciation for them, but also it was time for me to go when I did.
And they're much better operators than a lot of the folks that I've learned about. Like, much better in terms of people, you know, maybe not being perfect or whatever the hell that is. They actually did, I think, a fine job overall, at least with me, you know, maybe, maybe like, it wouldn't matter if, like they were nice with me, but they're Ted Bundy with everybody else. That would be bad. Probably not doing anything like that.
But. But yeah, there's absolutely magic with both of them. I mean, and by magic, I mean it's as with like, like my first spiritual teacher. I didn't even know he's my spiritual teacher. He's just my friend.
And he was, he was a walking. But with all, all three of those characters in my life, there was this wonderful sense of, you know, resonance. And I remember there was a period I was trying to be a good student.
That. Which meant a good spiritual student was like, I got to come up with good questions like everybody else. I'm, I'm at that. I got to, I got to do better. And so I was like, oh, I got a good question. I'll write it down. So don't forget it.
And they're like, okay, I'm gonna go ask my question now. It's gonna be great. I'm gonna be doing, you know, checking the box. Then I'd open the. Knock on the door, come in, open the door, get in the space, and I completely forget my question or that I had it written down in my pocket, you know, to reference. And that's. The teaching happened. Yeah, this happened many times to the point was like, did you forget your question again? It's like, that's. I absolutely forgot my question again, you know, and I would go and try to think about. Think of it another time.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I believe the best teachers have the essence of teaching that goes beyond words, you know.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: It's just in their vibration, it's in their presence, and it's in their demeanor, their whole spirit. There's something that's there. And they may be using words for sure, but I think there's something that underlines the words that they may be using that is priceless.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: And. And absolutely. And then I'll also add that there's like a chemistry thing that gets involved as well. Like for some, you know.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: And maybe. Maybe there wasn't a chemist at Ramana's level. Maybe there wasn't a chemistry. Maybe it was a universal zappage that was going on. But it's. It's like some people will have this great, you know, person they consider a great teacher. They might bring their friend over and. And there's absolutely no chemistry in that. In that direction. They might say, oh, there's a nice person.
And. And so I. I kind of like that. There's, you know, the. That's, you know, thing. Things.
Things are revealed to the people who need them. Revealed to them or who are going to match in that direction.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: And.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Yeah, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, but might not be the same teacher.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's not. Not Might not necessarily be meant.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: And.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Which is actually probably good for a lot of the teachers of the world, I have to say. A lot of. A lot of the people, you know, serving as spiritual teachers, I think they. They need to have friends that they.
There's none of that subtext, you know, at all. There's none of that content at all. And they can just go, like, hang out and do stupid things with them, you know, as normal friends. And I think that would be.
That's very healthy for. For people in that role, because a lot of people get terribly isolated.
It's because they think, oh my, who am I going to talk to? I can't talk to anybody. Can't let my hair down at all. I have to uphold some, you know, some, some image.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: What would you say makes a good teacher,
[00:33:56] Speaker A: a spiritual teacher of the. The most important thing is that they don't. Well, they, they don't make it about them.
You know, they, they don't.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: We've seen plenty of that.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't own the. I mean, so to me, the most important thing is, is they don't own the projection and that they, they point the finger back resolutely back into the, into the student's own heart and to the student's own experience. And they, they don't, they don't allow much room for, for, you know, you know, that kind of dependency or attempts at it and the projection. And they're wise enough to, to know that.
To turn down the projections that would make them the infallible parent that the student never had and is wishing for in the guise of a spiritual teacher. So that, that to me is not, not buying into the hype, even if the hype might be deservedly real.
You know, perhaps especially then, you know, if you have people who are really, like, skillful, really full of presence and maybe also really brilliant, you know, like, like those, those people especially, you know, useful for them not, not to, not to buy into any of the hype. And so. Yeah, I think that's the most important thing.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah, very true. Yeah. We've seen plenty of examples in the 20th century of that.
Yeah, false teachers.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: I mean, one that comes to mind for me is Osho because he had a lot of great things to say. Yes, I actually resonate a lot with his words. But I think the power got to him or the power got to the followers, and they saw something in him that they didn't necessarily see in themselves and they offloaded that to Osho and the whole cult revolved around him. And, you know, so the story goes,
[00:35:42] Speaker A: once he started dressing like a Vulcan ambassador from Star Trek 3 or 4, you know, know the game, it's done. It's. It's email. Come on. You know. Anyways, yeah, I think Osho. Osho would count as what Georg Feuerstein was terming bench realizers, you know, in a sense, not as, perhaps not as egregiously as some. But if some of the stuff about the sex were true, you know, and like forcing people to have it in front of him, you know, that I didn't mind his other stuff so much. You know, it's like, okay, as long as you're not the one.
Okay, fine. It's your assistant Sheila who's doing the guns and the E Coli and trying to kill people.
I don't know if I quite believe that he's just off reservation doing laughing gas and ketamine all the time or whatever though he may have been.
But yeah, I think he could.
Another hot take because there'd be a lot of people disagree.
But I do have a lot of love for him. I love his writing. But I think he would have been better off for himself if he were a brilliant, charismatic and conscious university professor and if he was a great writer and he wasn't attempting to sort of be a messiah of a small city.
In a sense. I think that might have been, you know, better in some ways.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Power, power, man. With great power comes great responsibility. A wise man once said.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Right, exactly. So one of his modern people who was at one point walking in his footsteps was actually Jaggivasadev Sadhguru who plagiarized. Are we going to get soon from you saying this? Yeah, the young Indian fellow.
No, no, we go to discovery, we'll find it. Because this young Indian fellow put it all together. It's like page for page Osho book, Sadhguru early book. And it wasn't just like inspired by. I'm like, oh my God, that is without attribution.
And so one thing where I think Osho does joggy is that someone else pointed this out is that Osho was willing to piss on all societies, including his own and made a lot of enemies in that way. And, and, and Jagi decided to be an. A paragon of traditionalist Hinduism.
And, and I think that was a pragmatic choice. But I respect Osho, the original who is plagiarized for, you know, just going, going pissing everybody off. Yeah, you know. Yeah, right.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: So yeah, I respect that. That's the ultimate teaching that I get from Osho is the rebellious attitude. He might have took it a little too far. But I resonate with the rebel, like whoever is a teacher but also a rebel at the same time, AKA Jesus.
I resonate with a lot because that's what you have to sort of challenge is the popular paradigm in order to, in order to reach some level of understanding. You have to challenge the popular paradigm within yourself. And then maybe it outwardly reflects in some sort of cult like manner, who knows? But I think we all resonate or have to resonate with the rebel a little bit. Right. The warrior spirit. So I respect that in Osho, even though he might have took it a little too far, it's respectable that he just. He challenged everything.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah, he might have been. He might have been tilting at a few windmills in his life. Whereas, you know, Ramana Maharshi, you know, like, I'm going to Tiruvannama, I'm gonna get realized. I'm gonna sit in that basement and then in these caves, and then they're gonna coax me down, you know, into the ashram that they built for him in the 20s and sort of stay there for the rest of life. I mean, that might not outwardly look like much of a rebel or a revolution, but some ways it's quite, you know, that is what. What's feeding the, you know. Revolution.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
And it might be even more of a powerful revolution than it would be to actually poison the water supply or whatever Sheila was up to.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Oh, the salad bar was. It was in the. In the. Dos E. Coli or something in. In the salad bar of the dolls. And then they wanted to kill the. The. The federal attorney.
So, like, whoa. Okay.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: I don't think that's the way.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Maybe. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Yeah, I don't think so at all.
Yeah.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, all in all, it is the rebellious spirit, and I don't think it reflects outwardly like that. I don't think it's like a rebellion in 1776 or the French Revolution. It is a revolution, but it's a revolution of consciousness that we.
That we, you know, that we invoke in some way within ourselves.
I mean, it seems revolutionary, but it's not. We're actually just coming back to our natural state. That's the irony. That's the thing. But from how we were born and the world that we were born into, it is revolutionary. We are the rebel.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Have. Have you ever. Have you ever watched and, you know, been out and about and.
And seen a child, like, expressing something very. Some. Some just deep, innocent joy. And then some adult figure around them gets very uncomfortable and. And reacts very quickly and sort of. Yeah. Stomps down on that expression.
I've. When I went out as a meditation teacher in the beginning, I. And I was going to be teaching people and. And going around and meeting lots of new people. I sort of had in my mind this expectation that what people repressed the most would be something along the lines of fear, anger, sexual feelings, things like that.
And very quickly I found out that what people seem to repress with the most vigor were joy and love.
And that produced a whole lot more fear than sort of like a big pot of repressed anger starting to.
And grief even started to open up inside that love is.
And so yeah, that, you know, if you're talking about the revolution and a very quiet one of even beyond love, I've seen how uncomfortable people can become when one person is, is absolutely sitting in presence.
Of course sometimes people, you know, actually get magnetized and attracted and drawn to that.
Of course.
But my goodness, you know, that that's. And it's mainly because that, you know, either either love or being in, in presence because it, you can't, you can't hide anything.
You know, and if, and if you're around a. If you're around that enough, whether it's inside you or, or you're perceiving it in someone else, you know, eventually it certainly does bring everything, sort of brings everything hidden into, into light. And so yeah, it's, it's been. Been interesting to see of. I've been in meditation classes as a teacher in which, you know, clearly somebody was starting to, you know, experience their own love and even express that and they had to get the hell out of dodge.
They needed to leave the class because it was, it was all too much. It's all too much.
So I've always found that interesting since, since I started to experience it years ago.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what the revolution is. It's a return to that childlike awe and wonder in pure love.
We all have that child and that child got stomped on in one way or the other as we were children and then we repressed that. And I think the spiritual path in a practical psychological sense is bringing that back out. You know, working through those repressions and coming back as a child in some way. Childlike, very childlike, not childish. Childlike.
Yeah. Unless you become like children, then you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. A wise man once said.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah man,
[00:44:03] Speaker A: yeah, that was, that was one of my first interesting dreams upon joining this Ishaya kind of ashram that was on the Oregon coast.
It was I think two nights in a row and I turned lucid in both of them. But basically I found myself in a forest and just a few feet around a tree was almost a perfect representation of my six year old self, of how I looked when I was six year old. And that's what made me lucid in the dream because it was such a overt piece of symbolism that I was like, oh, okay, my Inner child.
And so, oh my God. I thought I have to, I've got to get in contact with the inner child. So I started chasing him.
I started chasing him around the forest. But the harder I chased, the more elusive he became. And he was like laughing from around birch trees. Ha. You know, and, and, and so like it was the second time I had the dream. The, the second night, it's early morning actually, I, I just sort of realized, oh, I, I guess I just have to stop, you know. And as soon as I stopped, I felt a little hand grab my hand in the dream space.
And, and it propelled me into just a profoundly deep experience of Samadhi. And then I, and then I woke up and it was like, like five in the morning or something. I was like the first, first one up and I just walked around of the inside of the house and then the outside of the house in a state of wonder.
You know, it stayed with me for maybe about an hour at that time and it's like, okay, yeah, yeah. The, the inner, the inner child and, and the access to Samadhi were at least in, in my case, in the case of my own unconscious, tantamount to each other.
Always, always trying, always just waiting for us.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Really, really. Just waiting for us.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: What do you think was that hand that reached out?
[00:46:01] Speaker A: I mean, it was my inner child's hand, but you know, it was in this.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Another hand reached out to the inner child's hand.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: Oh no, that was my hand. My, my hand in the dream was touched by the inner child.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Your older hand.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, gotcha.
I was going to say maybe it was the hand of God.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think they both are the hand of God in a way. But, but certainly the, you know, the inner child was a stand in for the higher self as well, you know, as, and, and the, the doorway to. The doorway to Samadhi.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Powerful stuff, man.
I feel that.
I mean, just think all of us here listening, what it's like to be around a very pure child of five or six year old that isn't throwing a tantrum.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: No. Yes.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Just to be around just the kid and they're just playing, playing.
I mean we were all kids at one point, so we can think about that. And it's so like, it seems like a different realm, right. It seems like a different dimension. Just when you were playing out with your friends in the neighborhood and there was no, there was nothing like I have to be here or why did I do this yesterday? Why did I say that it's just pure presence. Right. When you're just playing ball or something, man. Yeah, right, yeah. That's touching upon samadhi, I feel.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
I was lucky in that I didn't have a lot of thrown onto me as a child, as a young child, which, which I mean many of our lives, you know, it's, it's from the get go, right?
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: But I was lucky enough not to have that so much so. And I have good memories of it and that's looking back. That's exactly.
You know, I was unconscious of what the samadhi was. But I can look back on childhood and even the tantrums, you know, like that just were all kind of floating on this very close substratum of presence of the now. Like a lot of child was like a lilt, kind of a lilting oscillation right on top of.
On top of that presence.
And you know, that was also part of a, you know, a near death experience I had at age 13, which like I was always going through this life review process in that. And, and it was kind of a guided life review. So it wasn't just me seeing the tape run, but it's like I had this guide and some of the things that the guide showed in terms of like the highlights, you know, kind of like they're not what I was expecting as a 13 year old of what the highlights were and they're basically. I was remember being pointed to one particular moment in which I was out on the playground in third grade out on the blacktop and it was starting to rain and there was already some puddles in, in the, in the holes in the blacktop and I, I was brought to that moment. In that moment I was like completely entranced by the, the drops causing trickles, you know, in, in the, in sort of the clear little pool that had formed. And you know, it's just looking at that it has set my 9 year old self into some kind of, you know, deep mystical absorption, absorption state. I didn't know I was of course in an absorption state as a nine year old, but in the near death experience they were basically like more of this.
And there was another experience which was about a year before when I was in second grade. And we had these great big, really big tall windows, glorious windows.
They built schools like prisons now. But this was built like a gorgeous palace of learning that was because it was built in 1904 or something. Anyways, I was looking out this window and again it was a rainy day and I was daydreaming. And somehow my daydream just took me into, you know, everything.
And then again so, and, and so, yeah, the childhood.
I, I love being around.
Like it's happened a million times in which I'm just like, going about my day or met a restaurant.
A baby is seated in its high chair a few feet away.
I feel some attention on me, I think in maybe the Rupert Sheldrake way. Turn my head and there's this. She's kind of, you know, baby with a thousand foot stare, you know, kind of, you know, looking straight into my soul. And then I look back. You know, I try to give them a model different than the other adults. Like I, I, I try to project as, as deep of a presence to it as possible and, and you know, have, have, have an interaction just to say, like, hey, you know, you can come back to this. You know, not all the, you know, old ones are crazy.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: I try to do that too. I give them a wave or a smile, something like that. Even though they might not consciously remember that. I think that does something to their unconscious.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it does something to you too. It's a, you know, it's a reflection, back and forth thing.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: Sometimes I think they're, they're telepathically talking to me. I have not verified these, so, you know, but, but sometimes it's like that's a thought going in my head right now.
It gets better, kid.
You know, it gets. Hang in there, hang in there.
You know, you're going to be put through the paces.
You know, maybe start meditating when you're 16. Remember this word, meditation. You know, something like that, you know.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
Little Buddhas, I feel.
Mm, this is good.
It's good stuff. Yeah.
You feel like also in that essence of childlike wonder coming back into the child energy is a simplification of our life.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
I mean, in the sense that much of what we've, you know, built after childhood is, is a lot of, like, needless, needless thinking.
Yeah. You know, and, and unconditioning and, and stuff that's just kind of messed the joint up. So as you know, we make this journey, a lot of that stuff gets chucked out and, and, and things are much more streamlined. Absolutely.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: It's a great simplification. That's what I find.
In a practical sense. I think that's what the path is all about. It's just getting the junk out. What do I not need?
And then what, maybe can I incorporate to further Oneself into that childlike nature, into samadhi, into the presence, into.
Into the love, man.
And yeah, it's like you don't need much.
That's the thing. You don't need much. You don't need anything actually.
But the mind will tell stories. That's the thing. The mind will tell you stories like, I need him, I need her, I need this car.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Right, yeah, you know, absolutely. I was very lucky, like I think so in my path. The instruction I was given was really very similar to how Forrest Gump is taught to play ping pong in, in the film, which is basically just keep your eye on the ball. You know, he's like, okay, you know, I can do that.
You know, and essentially like just, you know, Ishtar, do your, do your close eyed meditation practice and just litter the rest of your day with these mantras and you know, we'll check on you in a couple days. You know, it's something like that. And keep your eye on the ball. Exactly. That's. And I, you know, a lot of the books I had read before, maybe some of them were from like 20th century 19th century Western magical traditions and other things and even some Buddhist books. Then it'd be like, you're gonna have to face the dweller on the threshold, you know, and some of them were like, you're gonna need to reprogram yourself, your unconscious mind.
And, you know, I engaged in some of those practices, but I found that like a lot of the healing and a lot of the rearranging just happened automatically without me having to get my little chimpanzee brain involved in the sorting process. It's like there was some deep capital I intelligence that was in there that knew what it needed to delete and knew what it wanted to augment.
And I was like, oh great. And even at some point what would highlight sort of which desires were maybe coming from like a deeper. And when I say deeper, so I like more pleasurable, like a deeper and ultimately more pleasurable space. And which threads were closer to the perfect middle C. Tuning of the golden thread would kind of happen with very little input from my brain.
So yeah,
[00:54:55] Speaker B: yeah, man, keep your eye on the ball.
I like that.
The truth is simple. That's the thing is if you resonate with this energy, the Holy Spirit, the ball.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: Anonymous. Then yeah, you don't have to think about this stuff too much. It's all comes naturally, it all unfolds naturally.
Right. There's not much in terms of the introspection that one has to do per Se. It all just simply unfolds how it's supposed to. But you got to keep your eye on the ball, man.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: Keep your eye on love.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
Amen.
Might be a good note to wrap this up at, to be honest with you.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. I'm getting quite hot, so that's that time of the afternoon. Stay hydrated. Honestly, I'm getting. I'm getting. I'm in a hot box now.
For those. For those listening on radio. I know this is not on radio, but whatever, audio only. You're missing out on my sweat.
Which is. Which is I shouldn't have worn a long sleeve shirt either today, but I'm in. I'm in hot rural Portugal with no ac.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:05] Speaker A: And the stone walls are only good for so long.
You know this. Oh, my God.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: I feel you, man. We gotta let you go and take a shower and cool off.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome shower.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: I think it was a good note to wrap up that, though, you know? Keep your eye on the ball. Keep it simple. That's what I like to say. Keep it simple and it'll all unfold how it needs to unfold.
[00:56:25] Speaker A: Kiss. Keep it simple. Samadhi?
[00:56:28] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot.
All right, well, thank you, Ishtar. I wish you all the best, man.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: Pleasure.
[00:56:34] Speaker B: Next time.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Pleasure to talk to you again.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: Peace and love, brother.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: Bye, y'.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: All.
