Latest / Tracking Wisdom / Bridging Comfort and Contentment in Spiritual Practice
Transcript
- 0:05Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution.
- 0:13They are for informational and entertainment purposes only.
- 0:16Now join Ryan and Peter for another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
- 0:23Welcome back, everybody.
- 0:24We're here continuing our discussion that started with a discussion between Michael Lyden and Alan Chapman and has spawned off on some tangents with non doing over the break.
- 0:38I was talking with Peter and I had a question, and he suggested I bring it up on Mike.
- 0:43So going back to the discussion before break, which I had mentioned that beyond just the project and the podcast, I've been invested.
- 0:53Invested personal time in investigating and consuming this kind of content.
- 1:00So there's some sort of intellectual satisfaction or interest that comes from engaging with this content.
- 1:08And my question was, what do I think I'm gonna get or.
- 1:13Or what?
- 1:14What am I looking for if I'm already content?
- 1:17I think that was what was.
- 1:18Right.
- 1:19Yeah, I think that's what you said.
- 1:20Yeah.
- 1:20You content.
- 1:21You're already content.
- 1:22So.
- 1:23And so I think Chapman actually pointed to that in his talk as to the horizon.
- 1:29Right.
- 1:30The spiritual horizon that.
- 1:32No matter.
- 1:32And you just mentioned, like, the.
- 1:34The experience that you have, your current awakening experience is always your most profound.
- 1:41And what Chapman says is that, you know, the infinite is always calling beyond the horizon of your current experience.
- 1:52And so that's what it says.
- 1:55So it's.
- 1:56It's interesting because you're expressing it as kind of like, oh, it's your conditioning that's making you look, or it's your intellect that's making you look.
- 2:05And in the context of Chapman's talk, I would interpret it as, no, it's your conditioning that's making you content with what's familiar.
- 2:16And it's your awakening that's calling you to explore.
- 2:21But I mean, it's not literally.
- 2:25I don't think that's literally true.
- 2:26But I'm just saying, in the context of the way he was mapping things.
- 2:30Out, I want to address why I express it the way I do.
- 2:36And then in so doing, it raised a question to me also in what he brought up, which was the reason that I frame it in that sense is because the sense and the calling, the.
- 2:53The pull towards the divine that I recognize is actually to stay put, to do the thing that I was expressing.
- 3:02And that in the quote unquote, seeking or, you know, the.
- 3:06The more intellectual path, I don't feel that pull.
- 3:10Mm.
- 3:11So that's why I kind of frame it that way.
- 3:13Sure.
- 3:13But is that just because I'm Delusional or is it, you know, the conditioning telling me that that's where I'm being pulled.
- 3:22Where maybe there is something else.
- 3:25I don't know.
- 3:26I mean this is.
- 3:27Yeah, I mean this is where it gets annoying to be like, oh, okay, well am I listening to my inner voice or am I listening to my conditioning.
- 3:34Right.
- 3:35Kind of thing.
- 3:35Right.
- 3:36It's like, oh, well, is like I said, is your contentment conditioning.
- 3:40I mean, I doubt it.
- 3:42There's a difference between contentment and comfort.
- 3:44Right.
- 3:45And if you.
- 3:47And you know what contentment is?
- 3:48I mean, that's different from difference.
- 3:51Like this makes me come because, you know.
- 3:53Yeah, because you're not avoiding the uncomfortable.
- 3:56Right.
- 3:57I find comfort.
- 3:59I mean I obviously have another experiential situation in my current experience that is comfort.
- 4:06But it goes against the grain of what I am feeling aligned to.
- 4:11I'm talking about work, right.
- 4:15Like I have a comfort there.
- 4:16There's something recognizable and familiar.
- 4:20Familiar about that.
- 4:22But there's a running against the grain that underlies that whole thing versus this other experience I'm talking about where it seems to me to be the most truest and aligned part of what my nature is calling to do.
- 4:41So that's why I would express it that way.
- 4:44I have this conflicting interaction between my ego and my true self.
- 4:55What I was saying before this, this messaging that the sense that you need to go further and, and if it.
- 5:02And that this thing is calling you.
- 5:03But what if it's not?
- 5:05Right?
- 5:06Well, I'm not saying it.
- 5:07What I'm experiencing is the end all.
- 5:09Be all of it.
- 5:10Right, Exactly.
- 5:11But why.
- 5:12What am I, what am I missing?
- 5:14Well, well that's, that's what I was suggesting before.
- 5:16Is that so.
- 5:18First of all, you know, we keep on coming back to the observation that you're content being.
- 5:25You're content just sinking in.
- 5:26Yeah, right.
- 5:27Just air quotes.
- 5:28Just you're content just being happy, poor.
- 5:33It's rough.
- 5:36And you know that I think contentment and, and given that you know the difference between comfort and contentment, that contentment is trustworthy.
- 5:52Right.
- 5:53That doesn't mean that I'm going back to my earlier.
- 5:57I guess it was last session, session before last proposition that your life until now and is an extended period of not doing right.
- 6:10It doesn't mean that you should move beyond non doing.
- 6:14You, you may move beyond not doing in the future.
- 6:17It doesn't matter.
- 6:18There's no like you should or you.
- 6:20It may happen or may not happen.
- 6:22But you know, if that's your path and that's your path.
- 6:24I mean, that's the thing.
- 6:28It's a way station in the path of awakening as we go through periods of non doing.
- 6:34And so if that's where you are, that's where you are.
- 6:37Right.
- 6:37And yours apparently is just huge.
- 6:44And, and so I think that that's, to me that makes sense.
- 6:48Right.
- 6:49And then equally, as you say, you know, there's some conditioning that's saying, oh, you should be exploring more.
- 6:57And what I was going to say, I don't think I said this earlier is that, you know, when I had my first air quotes, first awakening.
- 7:05So I was in the 45 day course, I got assessed for fundamental well being and my mentor said, oh, you're, you know, you're, you're location one.
- 7:17Then I started feeling like I should have more spiritual doing for quite some time after that, after I got out of the course.
- 7:26And you know, we kept on getting content because Jeffrey just keeps on sending content after you get in that.
- 7:30And then we did, I think the explorers course.
- 7:33And, and I started feeling like, oh, I should be doing this stuff, which is absolutely conditioning.
- 7:38Like, oh, he's offering me this I should be doing, or he's saying I should be.
- 7:42He says explicitly, you should be doing this.
- 7:44It's like, oh, I should be doing it.
- 7:46You know, and then it ended up like, I mean, I finally realized, like, oh no, I shouldn't, it's not that I should be doing it.
- 7:56I could do it.
- 7:57I'm comfortable not doing it.
- 7:59Like, it's making me uncomfortable thinking that I should do it when I'm not doing it.
- 8:04Like I'm recognizing I'm not doing it.
- 8:07Okay, well that's what you're doing, you know, so it's easy to have conditioning.
- 8:12I mean, it's common.
- 8:14I mean it's, it's cultural for us to have the condition.
- 8:18Like, oh, I heard about something, therefore I should be doing it.
- 8:23Right.
- 8:23So yeah, so it's a, it's like zeitgeist as opposed to personal conditioning.
- 8:28Right.
- 8:28It's not your.
- 8:29I, I wouldn't think it's your personal conditioning that you think you should be doing this stuff.
- 8:33I don't, I don't feel like I should be doing it.
- 8:36It's that I feel like that's the message coming out of the content.
- 8:41Absolutely should be doing.
- 8:42Absolutely.
- 8:43And I know that it does.
- 8:45It, it doesn't have to be that it's not that you can't do it or that you shouldn't do it.
- 8:50So unfortunately, the Awakening.
- 8:53Oh, what is it called?
- 8:55The transformative space.
- 8:56Right.
- 8:57I think that's what Jeffrey calls it.
- 8:58This.
- 8:59The transformative technology space.
- 9:02Which apparently what he means by that is like awakening content.
- 9:08I think.
- 9:09Right.
- 9:09It's like all this, this stuff that unfortunately for us, it exists in the context of a capitalist structure.
- 9:18I mean, where do we get our content?
- 9:20YouTube, which is like, what's the word I want to use?
- 9:26Kind of the.
- 9:27An archetype of capitalism.
- 9:30Clickbait.
- 9:31And so unfortunately for us, there is literally heavy marketing around these ideas now.
- 9:38I mean, I'm not saying that Chapman was marketing.
- 9:41He's trying not.
- 9:42He was trying.
- 9:42He was like really trying not to.
- 9:44Like, he's like, yeah, I'm not trying to get people to sign up.
- 9:46Like, I don't want to.
- 9:48But the context in which we learn about these things really is that.
- 9:53And in fact, did I tell you about my friend writing a book about that?
- 9:59So said she's writing a book.
- 10:03Well, she intends to write a book and this is another project for us or another.
- 10:07Another space about the cost of awakening and the marketing and the, the fact that that.
- 10:15And.
- 10:15And she lives in Aspen, Colorado and has for like 40 years.
- 10:21And she's like, you know, I live in the billionaires playground.
- 10:25And like literally Jeff Bezos had a birthday party there.
- 10:29She was saying like, Jeff Bezos was here last week.
- 10:31And you can't not know that if you live here.
- 10:34It's like, you know, you know that it's like.
- 10:38And.
- 10:39And so he know she was commenting on the industry of awakening.
- 10:46And.
- 10:46And because she's been.
- 10:48Been working through different methodologies for over 40 years, she's like.
- 10:54And paid for retreats and course, as long as she wants to write a book about the kind of this industry, the cost of awakening.
- 11:04And so I invited her, I said, when you're ready.
- 11:07I think it would be a really great match for our podcast.
- 11:11You know, but she's, I think with her book where I am with my book, which is like I want a book.
- 11:21And I said, I said, oh, actually I have two friends who just finished books so you know, we could.
- 11:29And oh, I sent her to your substack, actually.
- 11:31Oh, really?
- 11:32I sent you side.
- 11:32And I said, oh, unfortunately I realized he focuses on creative writing.
- 11:36Right.
- 11:36But you know, there might be useful content.
- 11:40It's like, oh yeah, maybe I should read your.
- 11:42I read a couple by the way.
- 11:45And I've.
- 11:45I've been pressuring my daughter to connect.
- 11:48Yeah.
- 11:49Because she's.
- 11:50I know she likes to write.
- 11:51Well, she's looking for pro.
- 11:53So we talked earlier about her college application process and she's specifically looking for a creative writing program.
- 12:01Oh, cool.
- 12:02So I keep on telling.
- 12:03It's like, well, you know, I know someone who wrote a novel or is about to finish a novel.
- 12:08About to finish.
- 12:09About to finish.
- 12:10And a novelette.
- 12:11But I, but I recommended your, your substack because I did read a couple articles.
- 12:15I'm like, oh, this is really cool stuff about the process of writing.
- 12:18So thank you, but I appreciate the.
- 12:20Of course she's going to ignore it.
- 12:22You know, because I told her that's all right.
- 12:27No, I'm hoping that at some point, at least down the road sometime she'll talk to someone who's actually been doing some serious writing.
- 12:36Yeah.
- 12:37You were talking about industry and my thought or comment was that the material is written on or created on a premise of something missing.
- 12:48Right.
- 12:49People who feel fulfilled are not generally looking for more material.
- 12:55Right.
- 12:55And yet sort of I am.
- 12:57And I guess that's where like maybe there's an disconnect in, in the delivery of the content that I'm not necessarily.
- 13:06I don't know.
- 13:07I'd say it's a mix.
- 13:09Yeah.
- 13:09I mean that's, that's the thing with PoK is that as we've talked about before, it's.
- 13:14Sometimes we don't feel comfortable with that community.
- 13:18And for me it does bring up feelings of spiritual doing.
- 13:25Like, oh, I should be doing more.
- 13:26I mean, because it's a very active community and people get together and they do a lot.
- 13:31I mean, they sit through these two hour, three hour sessions.
- 13:35They might do a few week.
- 13:37I don't know, I mean I.
- 13:39But I think it's just context because when I call, like I said, you know, someone mentioned non.
- 13:45Like they just found themselves non doing and I'm like, oh, we should talk.
- 13:48And we had a two hour conversation.
- 13:50And generally when I have conversations now, they're more often an hour than they are 15 minutes.
- 13:55Right.
- 13:56Because basically this doesn't sound the right way.
- 14:01I'm going to say people who are worth talking to.
- 14:04It's not that people are worth talking to.
- 14:06It's not whether someone's worth talking to.
- 14:09It's a thing that's worth discussing or a topic that's worth having conversation about.
- 14:15For me, I don't know, just when I connect with someone, it's like it just goes for two hours.
- 14:21It just does.
- 14:22Or five if you're me.
- 14:24I mean, because we just don't do small talk.
- 14:26Right.
- 14:27I mean, in like the way we're experiencing things right now, there's.
- 14:31There's not a lot of small talk.
- 14:33Although I am getting better at small talk.
- 14:35Am I?
- 14:36No, I'm not.
- 14:38Because I was thinking about the conversation.
- 14:40Did I tell you that I offered meditation services?
- 14:45No, I think you had been.
- 14:47Is this around the world where you're working out?
- 14:50Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 14:51So there's.
- 14:51You talked about.
- 14:52I'm a fitness center and I had approached the owner a few weeks ago, so it must have been since we did last.
- 14:59And I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna take the plunge and suggest to her and that, you know, ask if she was interested or suggested if she was interested in having some kind of meditation services or event that I
- 15:13could do that because I'm just finishing my certification.
- 15:16And I said, you know, I, I said, what?
- 15:19Whatever works for your clientele, whether it's for free or for fee or, you know, whatever, however you would want to do it, it's something I'd be interested in.
- 15:30And it was a surprisingly long conversation.
- 15:32Like, we just chatted.
- 15:33I chattered, I mentioned Reiki.
- 15:36She mentioned the podcast.
- 15:37Oh, really?
- 15:38Yes, she said, she said, oh, I heard you have a podcast.
- 15:40You.
- 15:41I have you.
- 15:41I have your podcast on my list.
- 15:43I was like, oh, have you listened to.
- 15:44She goes, well, I'm.
- 15:45I'm finishing an audiobook.
- 15:47But Sophie, Sophie told me it's really good.
- 15:49Who is this?
- 15:50My trainer is Sophie and the owner is Sarah.
- 15:54And so, yeah, so anyway, thank you.
- 15:57For doing the marketing for me.
- 16:01Yeah, so, yeah, so it's interesting.
- 16:03So it's not.
- 16:04It's maybe more shining the light.
- 16:07Yeah.
- 16:07And like talking about what I'm actually interested in rather than making small talk and finding that people are interested in.
- 16:15But it's selective.
- 16:16Like, I don't talk to everybody and there's some people I've started conversations with.
- 16:20I'm just like.
- 16:24I was just going to say what.
- 16:26I feel like the crux of what my sentiment is, is around non doing, which is, I mean, I'm coming at from it, from the other perspective, which is I feel like people are saying do.
- 16:39And I feel like maybe I'm, I'm equating the term practice with doing.
- 16:45And when I hear a necessity and, and you had said you wanted to talk about spiritual non doing.
- 16:51And maybe.
- 16:53Well, that's just what I was saying before about when I was finishing the 45 day program and I kept on getting materials.
- 17:02But I think that, you know, unless you are, unless you're reclusive.
- 17:08You're gonna feel the cultural conditioning of, oh, look, there's all this new stuff.
- 17:15Yeah.
- 17:16And.
- 17:16And there's that condition of like, oh, new.
- 17:19You know, speaking of which, I was gonna.
- 17:22I was gonna talk about my new car, but I don't know if I should do that.
- 17:27No, because I.
- 17:28I got a new car.
- 17:29Okay.
- 17:30And my previous car, I got a base model because it's like, oh, that's the one with the best mileage.
- 17:37The base.
- 17:38The hybrid.
- 17:39The base model has the best mileage.
- 17:41And the upper trim levels, the battery, I don't know, whatever.
- 17:48Okay.
- 17:48Like, they.
- 17:49They sacrifice battery space.
- 17:50It's.
- 17:51The battery's not as good.
- 17:52So the upper trim levels tend to have less mileage.
- 17:55Okay.
- 17:56And so it's time to get a new car.
- 17:59I said, you know what?
- 18:01I'm retired.
- 18:02I can afford it.
- 18:03I'm.
- 18:03I'm like, I'm going to get a top trim level for a change.
- 18:06Like, I'm just.
- 18:07I'm just getting the top trim level.
- 18:08I'm not going to, you know, think about it.
- 18:11And.
- 18:12And so I did.
- 18:14And it comes with alloy.
- 18:17Like the thin, alloy tires.
- 18:19I mean, the alloy big alloy wheels with the thin tires.
- 18:22And it's like more susceptible road damage.
- 18:26And if you do rec wheel, they're like, yeah, it's like.
- 18:30And so.
- 18:31And I'm realizing, like, oh.
- 18:33And then.
- 18:34And then it's got all these sensors, like the bumper.
- 18:38Each bumper has, like four sensors on.
- 18:39So basically now it's not a bumper.
- 18:41Right.
- 18:42Because if you bump it now, you've just created how many hundred dollars of damage to the camera or whatever.
- 18:48And so I'm feeling very protective of the car, which I never have before.
- 18:53Like, I've had new cars before, but I just been like, yeah, whatever.
- 18:56It's a car.
- 18:56Right.
- 18:57So I.
- 18:58I've had a couple.
- 19:00Over the weekend, we drove up to Salem, and I was really uncomfortable.
- 19:05Really?
- 19:05Because bad drivers.
- 19:08Yeah.
- 19:08It's, like, uptight about my car.
- 19:11I'm like, okay, I got to let go of the.
- 19:14Like, this is too much.
- 19:16Like, I don't.
- 19:17That's.
- 19:18I.
- 19:18I hadn't realized that choosing to get high trim would be.
- 19:23Choosing to.
- 19:25Would.
- 19:25Would be upgrading my level of concern.
- 19:28Right about.
- 19:29For the.
- 19:30For the possession.
- 19:31Exactly.
- 19:32You know?
- 19:32And so I'm like, huh.
- 19:33So it's a.
- 19:34It's a lesson.
- 19:35It is a lesson.
- 19:36That's interesting.
- 19:36It's like, oh, I don't like this.
- 19:38You know, like, oh.
- 19:41So anyway, that was just an observation.
- 19:43But Going back to Chapman, I wanted to swing back to Chapman's practice because I had an interesting.
- 19:50So what was your experience of.
- 19:52Of the angel practice when you tried it?
- 19:55I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but I would say that it felt aligned with some.
- 20:01With a practice I would typically.
- 20:03Or if I were to do a practice, that that would be something I'd be inclined to do.
- 20:07So I had two distinctly different reactions the first time I did it.
- 20:12So.
- 20:13And I have to say, I didn't, like, formally sit down and, you know, the way he.
- 20:19The way he let it, I just did it afterwards.
- 20:22You kind of tried it on for size.
- 20:24And my first time, I had a lot of resistance to it, which was.
- 20:31I'm like, oh, my God.
- 20:32I still got so much Western cultural, Christian indoctrination around doing an invocation.
- 20:39And it was like, oh, this is, you know, I mean, it's pretty benign.
- 20:42My holy garden in angel.
- 20:44It's hard to see how that could.
- 20:46You're not even invoking.
- 20:47You're just consenting.
- 20:48I know.
- 20:48You're allowing.
- 20:49I know, I know, I know.
- 20:51But I definitely had that experience of discomfort of.
- 20:54Of childhood religious anxiety, which I.
- 20:58I was never religiously anxious as a child, but anxiety from my religious childhood.
- 21:04And then when I did it at night, more.
- 21:08More seriously, I've been doing it in bed, I found myself.
- 21:12Well, I guess because he said, you can use a name.
- 21:15Well, what he said was, if you've met the angel, you could use a name.
- 21:19And so I was.
- 21:20So I was conflating the practice with the green Tara practice.
- 21:23Okay.
- 21:24Because it just feels very much the same.
- 21:26Although the green tar practice is more formalized.
- 21:30There are more specific.
- 21:32Well, there are specific steps, and there's a specific standard image, basically, which is, you know, that this figure has specific limb positions and hand positions and objects associated that you visualize with it.
- 21:48So it's not the same in that sense, because the angel practice is just pure.
- 21:53Purely a verbal practice.
- 21:55You don't version.
- 21:56You don't visualize anything.
- 21:57You wait for the something to show up.
- 22:01So I don't know if it's worth me doing because I seem to be conflating those two, but I did feel like it was helpful.
- 22:11I don't know if it's just because it returned me to the Green Tower practice, but I wasn't actively doing green tar practice.
- 22:18I was just.
- 22:19I did kind of how I had Tara in mind while I was doing the recitation.
- 22:24I was just trying to relax and.
- 22:25And Recite.
- 22:26So I'll probably continue playing with it just because I think it would be cool to have, you know, a vision.
- 22:34Or something like that, which he did say takes time.
- 22:37I know, I know.
- 22:38So it's like.
- 22:38Well, I don't know how much.
- 22:40How much patience because, you know, like you, I.
- 22:43It's like I'm not really looking for something.
- 22:46You had mentioned something about suffering and creation not being.
- 22:53Oh, yeah.
- 22:54Creation.
- 22:54Oh, yeah.
- 22:55Let me.
- 22:55Yeah.
- 22:56So you use the phrase my place in creation.
- 22:59There's one phrase you used and then another one you used was participating in creation.
- 23:05And participating.
- 23:07Creation could mean two things like participating in the creation.
- 23:17Capital C, or participating in the process activity of creation.
- 23:25So I was just curious whether you meant one or the other specifically when you said participating in creation.
- 23:33So little C.
- 23:35You mean like writing a book?
- 23:37Yeah, playing guitar.
- 23:38Yeah, I equate them both to the same.
- 23:44The little C creations are my part in the big secretion.
- 23:48Yep.
- 23:51It's the.
- 23:53I think.
- 23:54I think Chapman also talked about the fractal.
- 23:57The.
- 23:58The holographic.
- 24:00The part contains the whole.
- 24:02Yeah.
- 24:02I think.
- 24:02Oh, remember the.
- 24:04The part contains a hole and the hole contains the part.
- 24:06That was interesting.
- 24:07Yes.
- 24:08I mean, that.
- 24:10That points similarly to the metaphor of the ocean and the wave.
- 24:15Yeah.
- 24:15Except he was much more explicit about it from the swimming pool and the.
- 24:20Yeah.
- 24:21What was it?
- 24:21It was the swimming pool.
- 24:22Yeah.
- 24:22So I wasn't sure.
- 24:23Oh, that was something that.
- 24:25Okay.
- 24:25So first of all, he said that what you find as you go along is that looking inward, you find the infinite, you find the great openness that contains everything.
- 24:45And then at the same time, it's all around you.
- 24:49Like looking inward, you find what's all around you.
- 24:51And that there's this.
- 24:53I want to call it a kind of a top of topological paradox.
- 24:57Right.
- 24:58Of like the inside being the outside kind of.
- 25:00Yeah.
- 25:00You know, it's a Klein bottle, I think, is a.
- 25:04It's a.
- 25:05It's a mathematical object that.
- 25:09Where the outside is in the inside.
- 25:11So that was one description he had.
- 25:14And then the other one.
- 25:16So that one I recognize.
- 25:18And.
- 25:19But the other one was he said if you throw the contents of your room, of your room into a swimming pool, it all gets wet and it all participates in the wetness, but it's still.
- 25:31Each item is still itself.
- 25:33And that was different from teachings on oneness that I'm familiar with.
- 25:40Right.
- 25:41Emptiness, oneness, whatever.
- 25:43Now you're gonna kind of relate.
- 25:45Well, aspects of true nature.
- 25:47Of true nature.
- 25:48Right.
- 25:48But he.
- 25:49He was very Clear that all the objects are still the objects.
- 25:55And the way I interpret that, I, I, I, I want to disagree with him in the absolute because it sounded like he's describing the absolute.
- 26:05And in the absolute, objects are no longer objects.
- 26:09Right.
- 26:09I mean, just like in Hoffman's ontology, icons don't exist.
- 26:14Right, right.
- 26:16So it seems to me, which is another thing he talked about, but it seemed to me that he was kind of moving back and forth between the condition, the unconditioned, and saying from conditioned reality all those things still
- 26:31exist.
- 26:31Right.
- 26:32Conditioned reality never stops being conditioned reality.
- 26:35You touch the unconditioned, and the unconditioned contains all the conditioned.
- 26:40And the condition still is conditioned.
- 26:43It's just that you can see that there are no separations.
- 26:46Right.
- 26:47And so it seemed, I mean, that's the way I would express it.
- 26:50And it seemed like he was expressing in a very different way.
- 26:53If I recall correctly, my interpretation of that analogy was, was specifically to recognize the individual experience.
- 27:05Still like that.
- 27:06The process of awakening doesn't negate your experience of being individual in the condition space.
- 27:14That's how I kind of interpreted what he was trying to say there.
- 27:19That.
- 27:19No, no, I agree.
- 27:21No, I, I agree.
- 27:22I just remembered something else that he said.
- 27:24I mean, that's essentially all I have to say.
- 27:26Well, so he said something about people who decide to purge first person pronouns from their language.
- 27:34Do you remember that?
- 27:36Like you no longer talk about.
- 27:37I, I thought he had talked about people experiencing oneness and whatever.
- 27:46It just, it just raised that idea.
- 27:48Oh, oh, okay.
- 27:49Ontology.
- 27:50So tell me about your phrase, your place in creation.
- 27:53The character I play in the dance of life, the stage in the play in which conventional reality is what we frame it.
- 28:02Right.
- 28:02Yeah.
- 28:03Is placed.
- 28:04And, and the character and position that I play in this current iteration and scene of that creation.
- 28:13So is that implying a dictate or should an intent like I'm intended to.
- 28:20There is an intention for me to follow because I thought it might have that connotation.
- 28:27It had that connotation for me.
- 28:28So it does, but less so like a should that there's an alignment with my higher self in a way to navigate this time and space in a way that aligns with whatever my higher.
- 28:48Self is, it's purpose.
- 28:51Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 28:52Because that's something that came up for me recently.
- 28:55I don't know if I talked about last time was purpose because in, in a, in a private session, I was describing this flow of doing that was not, it was not doing, doing.
- 29:06Right, right, right.
- 29:07It was just like, this is what I'm doing right now.
- 29:09It's just like I am introducing myself to people.
- 29:14I am, you know, talking to someone about making meditation available.
- 29:21There was a little intellectual thing of should, but it really didn't feel like having the conversation.
- 29:30Didn't feel like, oh, I should be having this conversation.
- 29:33It's like just totally, I'm having this conversation.
- 29:36I'm completely present.
- 29:37Did that feel aligned with purpose?
- 29:39Very, very much.
- 29:41And.
- 29:41And that's so.
- 29:42To me, see, that's moving out of non doing, but not in a.
- 29:48Not in a conventional way.
- 29:50Maybe it is non doing.
- 29:52Maybe that is non doing.
- 29:53Still say non doing.
- 29:54Yeah, but see, now I'm struggling with the fact that I feel purpose, but I'm not doing.
- 30:04There's the problem, I guess.
- 30:06Right?
- 30:06Yeah.
- 30:07And.
- 30:07And, and so.
- 30:09So, well, so for instance, the meditation program that I'm supposed to write, I should write.
- 30:16I haven't been.
- 30:17And then there's some conflict there.
- 30:18Okay.
- 30:19So I shouldn't get on your ass about that.
- 30:21Yeah, well, we might talk about accountability.
- 30:25I'm just kidding.
- 30:26No, actually.
- 30:27Well, I'll tell you about it.
- 30:28But so the.
- 30:29The last notes I had, which are actually the first notes I had on Chapman, were creation, integration, and relationship, which I guess I can't really speak to.
- 30:41I thought they were interesting elements of his talk because he did talk about integration.
- 30:47I can't remember what he said about it.
- 30:51He talked about magic as being creation, which my sense is that was more in alignment with what you talk about as participating in creation by performing creative acts.
- 31:10And then he also talked about relationship.
- 31:12These seemed like key concepts to me out of his talk.
- 31:15And relationship is, for me, like a really big marker of awakening experience.
- 31:25Yeah.
- 31:25I mean, I would say in the past year, my relationship to relationship has completely changed.
- 31:30Right.
- 31:30All right, so I think I've run dry on Chapman, and I would really like to talk about the threads model.
- 31:38Yeah.
- 31:39So thank you for listening to this extended discussion on Michael Lydon and Alan Chapman.
- 31:45I will link Alan Chapman's information below.
- 31:48And next discussion, we will be talking about a new model on.
- 31:53Or an alternative model, I suppose, of.
- 31:57How would you call it?
- 31:58Location or places.
- 32:00It's a new model of the awakening process.
- 32:04Yeah.
- 32:04And it's called the Thruster.
- 32:06A map.
- 32:06Yes.
- 32:07So tune in to that episode to learn more.
- 32:11See ya.
- 32:11Bye.
- 32:17Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast.
- 32:21Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
- 32:23Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
- 32:27And visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content.