Latest / The Spirit Nomad: Spiritual Awakening + Life Purpose / The Fastest Way To Enlightenment

Transcript

The Fastest Way To Enlightenment · The Spirit Nomad: Spiritual Awakening + Life Purpose

• 0:00
  I'm Julia and you're listening to the spread Nomad podcast.
• 0:04
  They showed that help spiritual Seekers step into their purpose
• 0:07
  and freedom. You can find the video version
• 0:10
  of this podcast and many more on the spur of the moment YouTube
• 0:13
  channel. Now, let's get into the I sewed.
• 0:19
  Do you want to become enlightened in this lifetime
• 0:22
  then you're in luck? Because today, I'm interviewing
• 0:24
  at the frequent Oprah guests and bestselling author.
• 0:27
  Jonathan Robinson, who has made a career to interview spiritual
• 0:33
  teachers and find out the truth on how to become enlightened.
• 0:38
  He's interviewed people like Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama
• 0:42
  Deepak Chopra and many more, he is practiced over 50, spiritual
• 0:47
  methods, and philosophies In his latest book The Enlightenment
• 0:51
  project he shares his findings. Now, let's hop on the call and
• 0:55
  talk to you Nathan about the secrets to becoming enlightened.
• 0:59
  All right. How, you know, then how are you?
• 1:02
  I'm good. I'm looking forward to this.
• 1:04
  Yeah, it's a huge honor to have you here.
• 1:07
  When I heard about your book, The Enlightenment project, I
• 1:10
  just had to have you on as a guest for me, Enlightenment is
• 1:14
  my biggest priority in my life because I was with so many other
• 1:20
  things, like carrier getting a group, a big group of friends.
• 1:24
  Like, all these things are temporary.
• 1:26
  Like, we won't take that with us after we die.
• 1:30
  So super excited to hear more about your book and your
• 1:34
  journey. So, yeah, let's dive into the
• 1:38
  questions. Okay, I'm ready.
• 1:42
  So, what was your inspiration for writing this book?
• 1:45
  Well, two things, one is, you know, I started on my quotient
• 1:49
  Men project pretty early because I was in a very dysfunctional
• 1:52
  family and kind of had a became suicidally depressed around age
• 1:57
  12. So I started to, you know, read
• 2:00
  self-help books, and stuff like that, eventually started
• 2:04
  meditating. By the time I was 13, but I've
• 2:07
  kind of made a career and a hobby of interviewing spiritual
• 2:11
  teachers. Everybody from the late Mother
• 2:13
  Teresa to Deepak Chopra Dalai Lama to ramdas to Wayne Dyer,
• 2:18
  too. You know, if you've heard of
• 2:19
  them, I probably interviewed them and I wanted to find out
• 2:24
  what were kind of like the greatest hits of ideas and
• 2:27
  methods that really led to Enlightenment.
• 2:30
  And so having interviewed, 100 teachers I put all their best
• 2:36
  stuff in one book because I'm lazy.
• 2:38
  I wanted it all in one book and you know in the 90s I got on
• 2:42
  Oprah a lot. So my books became pretty
• 2:44
  popular so I'm trying to popularize what I think are the
• 2:49
  Yes. And best things actually lead to
• 2:52
  deep inner peace, and Enlightenment and and also the
• 2:56
  best stories. You know what, it's like to
• 2:57
  hanging out with the Dalai Lama, or Mother Teresa, all these
• 3:00
  people. Which was, of course, a
• 3:02
  tremendous amount of fun amazing.
• 3:05
  Can I just ask you what was it? Like meeting the Dalai Lama and
• 3:09
  Mother Teresa? Well, you know, all of these
• 3:12
  people tend to be very kind. Dalai Lama was almost like a
• 3:17
  five-year-old Child In terms. Of his his enthusiasm and
• 3:21
  excitement has a great sense of humor.
• 3:24
  Mother Teresa you know was was you can feel the energy of a
• 3:30
  saint you know. Somebody who is so deep into the
• 3:33
  presence of God and it brought tears to my eyes.
• 3:37
  I have a hard time doing the interview actually.
• 3:39
  It was pretty amazing, amazing. It's interesting.
• 3:44
  What you said about the Dalai Lama having a shy like energy
• 3:47
  because I feel like Like many children or many adults have a
• 3:52
  lot to learn from children. I think we all do like being in
• 3:57
  the present. The the Wonder for Life.
• 4:00
  Yeah. And then we have our spiritual
• 4:02
  awakening or life crisis and they realize, oh my gosh, I'm
• 4:04
  completely abandoned my inner child, right?
• 4:07
  And then we have to head the learn and do what she can.
• 4:12
  You call it D program ourselves from our deconditioned?
• 4:16
  Yeah, the condition, you know? So So I put in the book some of
• 4:21
  the best ways to decondition yourself and some of them are
• 4:25
  really ingenious, you know, a lot of the best methods, I
• 4:28
  discovered our methods, I've only been invented in the last
• 4:31
  10 years. You know, most of us don't have
• 4:34
  computers more than 10 years old, but we're a lot of people
• 4:38
  are using methods that are like 2,000 years old and the world
• 4:41
  has changed. So I find that, you know, a lot
• 4:44
  of people think gain becoming enlightened takes, you know, a
• 4:47
  hundred lifetimes or Or 50 years of practice and the research
• 4:51
  shows that that's not true. If you have the right idea and
• 4:54
  the right method, it can happen in a year.
• 4:59
  So that was really interesting to me.
• 5:01
  I didn't expect that and when I tried some of these methods,
• 5:04
  I've been a spiritual Seeker since I was age 12 and I'd say
• 5:08
  more happened to me in the last year than the last 50.
• 5:11
  Wow, amazing. So that leads me into the next
• 5:14
  question. What would you say like
• 5:16
  Enlightenment is like How do enlightened folks experience the
• 5:21
  world differently than other people?
• 5:23
  Well, the simplest definition is that it's a change in your
• 5:26
  identity, your normally, we identify with our ego
• 5:29
  personality, I'm Jonathan, you're Julia, but in line people
• 5:33
  experience the world either, they don't have a separate sense
• 5:37
  of self, or they don't think of it as important.
• 5:40
  And instead, their identity is that they are a soul or they are
• 5:45
  awareness, or they are a presence of Of that just got
• 5:49
  here and that's a very different experience of life.
• 5:54
  So it's really living your life. Without the normal ego filters
• 6:00
  that we have that create all kinds of problems in our life.
• 6:04
  Interesting. Wow.
• 6:07
  I remember in the book you said sometimes that can actually be a
• 6:10
  bad thing or you become less self-aware.
• 6:12
  Can you tell us about that? Well, there's different types of
• 6:15
  Enlightenment. I described four different types
• 6:18
  in the book. And some of them, you know, you
• 6:20
  kind of lose touch with being able to function really well in
• 6:24
  the world. And you see this with some
• 6:26
  gurus, you know, they don't they don't have that much connection
• 6:30
  to the world. So, you know, in Western
• 6:32
  culture, we have to make sure that we can one hand be more.
• 6:37
  Enlightened find inner peace and love.
• 6:39
  On the other hand, we can remember our ZIP code or
• 6:41
  remember where we live, you know.
• 6:43
  So sometimes people have to then, spend some time getting
• 6:48
  grounded. Integrating their Enlightenment
• 6:51
  into daily life. I talk about some ways of doing
• 6:53
  that, you know, how to handle money in a spiritual way.
• 6:57
  How to handle relationships in a highly enlightened way and
• 7:01
  that's not well understood by a lot of people.
• 7:04
  Hmm. Yes.
• 7:05
  And it's lots of limiting beliefs about money as well.
• 7:07
  Yeah, right. So, do you think that anyone can
• 7:14
  become enlightened? Well, almost anyone?
• 7:16
  I mean, it's like the same thing.
• 7:17
  Can anyone become? I'm rich.
• 7:19
  Well, if you understand the principles of how to be rich and
• 7:22
  you do the right methods and you know, get help, probably most
• 7:27
  people can become rich and I think the same is true with
• 7:30
  Enlightenment. You know, I was a depressed
• 7:32
  suicidal kid. So, you know, if I can, I don't
• 7:36
  think myself as highly enlightened, but I'm like, on
• 7:39
  the lower edges of it, but even, that's really great.
• 7:43
  You know, I have a really wonderful experience of Life
• 7:46
  most of the time and I think Almost everybody can raise their
• 7:50
  Consciousness enough that they can be filled with gratitude, be
• 7:55
  filled with more love and more joy.
• 7:57
  And and that the technology quote methods for doing that are
• 8:03
  really now well-established and almost nobody knows those
• 8:07
  methods or knows those ideas because they're really new, you
• 8:11
  know, it's kind of like we've been we use science to do a lot
• 8:15
  of great stuff in the world, but only in the last 20 years, have
• 8:18
  we studied in? Enlightenment to find out how
• 8:21
  it's triggered, what it's like, and how you can get there
• 8:27
  without a million lifetimes? Yes, and one thing I love about
• 8:31
  your book is, how many exercises you have like practical
• 8:34
  exercises? Because it's like feel very,
• 8:36
  woo. Like in life, it's violent
• 8:38
  Enlightenment. Some people may be skeptical is
• 8:39
  like what do we do? Like sit in a cave and meditate
• 8:43
  for 20 years like now. There's like practical exercises
• 8:47
  you can do. Yeah, you know, luck.
• 8:48
  I'm a very lazy person. So, any method that takes longer
• 8:52
  in about five minutes, I usually don't do.
• 8:54
  So, I especially like the methods that take five minutes
• 8:58
  unless and some of my favorite methods, take like, five
• 9:01
  seconds. Let me give you a story like one
• 9:04
  of them, you know, I realize that Allah a light and teachers
• 9:09
  were talking about the importance of gratitude.
• 9:11
  So I got very interested in gratitude, but, you know, I'm
• 9:14
  too lazy to do a gratitude journal or all the things you're
• 9:17
  supposed to do. So, a friend, Mine came back
• 9:19
  from India and he looked like he was totally lit up and I said
• 9:23
  what happened in India and he said, my Guru gave me.
• 9:26
  This magical mantra for feeling gratitude, like all the time and
• 9:31
  I said really well. What's that Mantra?
• 9:33
  He said, well you have to go India and get it directly from
• 9:36
  the guru. So I always want the best
• 9:38
  method. So I go to India.
• 9:40
  Have you ever been to India? Yeah, I love it.
• 9:43
  Yeah. But you know hard to get there
• 9:45
  and once you're there you got to take a rickshaw in boiling Heat.
• 9:49
  And the traffic gosh. So you know and then I had to
• 9:54
  wait in line for I think seven hours to talk to the guru.
• 9:58
  I finally, get a chance to talk to him.
• 9:59
  And I said, I'd like your mantra for feeling overwhelming
• 10:02
  gratitude and Indian acts and he says yes, my mom chose the most
• 10:06
  powerful on Earth. He leans in to whisper to my ear
• 10:10
  and he says whenever possible, repeat these words the Mantra
• 10:13
  give you other words. Thank you, I look at him.
• 10:19
  I go, that's it. I traveled 18,000 miles to get.
• 10:23
  They get that's it and he goes. No that's it.
• 10:26
  Is the Mantra you have been using that makes you feel like
• 10:28
  you never have enough. My Mantra is.
• 10:30
  Thank, you're not. That's it.
• 10:31
  That's it will take her nowhere. So I looked at him like oh well
• 10:34
  thanks for nothing and he looks at me said, that's not the
• 10:37
  Mantra. You must say it from your heart.
• 10:39
  So when you eat good food, say thank you to God or the
• 10:42
  universe. Or when you see your child, say,
• 10:45
  thank you or your Thank you all for clean water.
• 10:48
  Thank you. And soon you will be filled with
• 10:51
  gratitude and it's true that if you spend five seconds in your
• 10:54
  heart and thank the universe for all the gifts were given.
• 10:58
  I mean people are listening to this useful information podcast
• 11:03
  for free. I mean, that's pretty great.
• 11:05
  Thank you for that. So you know when you do simple
• 11:10
  things like that over and over again, you can tap into A whole
• 11:16
  new way of experiencing the world, rather than what our
• 11:19
  minds normally do, which is a constant complaining.
• 11:21
  That's beautiful, such a funny story.
• 11:26
  So next question, what is one, piece of advice that you think
• 11:30
  would be helpful to any spiritual Seeker?
• 11:32
  Who wants to achieve enlightenment?
• 11:35
  Well, there's a lot in the enlightenment project book, but
• 11:39
  one I would say is have what I call experimental attitude.
• 11:43
  You know, try different things, for different lengths of time
• 11:46
  and see what works for you. Don't take anybody's Dogma for
• 11:49
  granted, you know, really through your lived experience.
• 11:52
  Try this meditation try that meditation, try this book, tried
• 11:57
  this person for a short period of time to see if it seems to
• 12:01
  resonate with you. And by doing that you'll find
• 12:04
  the things that actually Work for you.
• 12:06
  Because what works for you might be very different than what
• 12:09
  works for your friend, your family, or somebody else, so,
• 12:13
  that's helpful. The other thing is, you know, I
• 12:17
  do, I do a podcast called awareness explorers and I
• 12:21
  interview spiritual leaders, and I always ask them, you know, for
• 12:25
  their best 10 minute, guided meditation or their best method
• 12:28
  that can be done in under two minutes.
• 12:31
  And I put five of them my the like the greatest hits of the
• 12:36
  greatest teachers you know and so people can get that for free
• 12:41
  on my website which is The Enlightenment project dotnet.
• 12:46
  And if they put in their email address, I send them a free
• 12:50
  ebook and an audio meditation and the first chapter the book
• 12:54
  for free. So I think having, you know,
• 12:58
  we're on a computer now, that's the best technology.
• 13:01
  We're not sending smoke signals anymore, we're not even phoning
• 13:05
  each other. So you always want the best
• 13:07
  technology in these five methods that I gathered from various
• 13:11
  teachers. I think can really help people
• 13:15
  have an experience of Awakening immediately.
• 13:18
  You know, it doesn't take years, they listen to the Tena audio
• 13:21
  and they should have a weight gaining at least a glimpse right
• 13:25
  away. So, you know, hopefully people
• 13:28
  will get that for free and they'll then be Inspired to
• 13:32
  pursue it. Awesome.
• 13:34
  I'll make sure to put in a link down so they can check it out.
• 13:38
  I like what you said about that, you were asking them for two
• 13:41
  minutes exercises because I just finished another amazing book
• 13:45
  called Atomic habits. You might have heard about the,
• 13:48
  huh? All right, yeah, I know that
• 13:49
  book, a best-seller and it says to keep your habits under two
• 13:53
  minutes and then if you can do them longer great.
• 13:56
  But that overcomes the mental hurdle of like this gift today.
• 14:01
  So So, if you can have a two-minute Enlightenment
• 14:03
  practice everyday evidentially, like, you'll make great
• 14:07
  progress, It's like exponential, the progress, you'll make it
• 14:10
  easy to do and if you get a result right away inspires you
• 14:14
  to keep on doing it. Yeah, awesome.
• 14:18
  So what are some common myths about Enlightenment or things?
• 14:21
  That would surprise people who are just learning about
• 14:25
  Enlightenment? Yeah.
• 14:27
  Actually, I have a chapter called 25 myths about it.
• 14:31
  It meant and one of the common myths is that first of all that
• 14:38
  it's extremely hard to become enlightened and very few people
• 14:42
  do actually, it's not that hard and a fair amount of people in
• 14:48
  the last five years are getting there because of the better
• 14:52
  methods and ideas. So that's one myth, another myth
• 14:56
  is that enlightened people live in continuous Bliss and have no
• 15:00
  problem. Eames that's not true.
• 15:04
  Enlighten people generally feel very deep sense of Peace but you
• 15:09
  know, they still have to deal with money issues and
• 15:11
  relationship issues and health issues.
• 15:13
  That doesn't turn you into a god.
• 15:15
  It just gets you in touch with the, the piece, the Kingdom of
• 15:19
  Heaven within whatever you want to call it.
• 15:21
  So, those are very common. Also, I think people think that
• 15:25
  enlightened people have I always morally perfect and that doesn't
• 15:35
  seem to be the case, either. A lot of gurus have had sex and
• 15:38
  money scandals, so you can still make mistakes even though you're
• 15:42
  in touch with deep Peace. So, I think those are three of
• 15:46
  the most common ones but going through that list or 25 myths,
• 15:50
  helps you get better sense of one, how you can become more
• 15:53
  awake and to that recognize when you have actually achieved that
• 15:59
  because some enlightened People thought, well I can't walk
• 16:03
  through a wall so I must not be enlightened so true.
• 16:08
  Yeah, we think you that you like levitating teleporting.
• 16:14
  No, not true or at least not true for most.
• 16:16
  I have met some gurus. I have interesting magical
• 16:19
  powers and but even that can be a problem because once you can
• 16:26
  manipulate things in the world are manifest, things out of thin
• 16:29
  air. Sai Baba could do that, I've had
• 16:31
  Guru's I know that could read minds do all kinds of crazy
• 16:35
  stuff and you know, that showed me that there's a lot of
• 16:38
  possibility, but a lot of times with those Powers comes great
• 16:43
  temptation as well. Yeah, I think in the Yogananda
• 16:47
  book autobiography of a yogi, he met someone who could turn,
• 16:53
  well, was he could turn anything from thin air, just turn it into
• 16:56
  material. Like, yeah, food gold anything
• 17:00
  and yeah. It's very tempting before we go.
• 17:03
  Can you share in another exercise that people can apply
• 17:07
  right away? I'll do two very brief methods.
• 17:11
  They just take about a minute. Imagine, and you can do this
• 17:16
  with eyes open or closed, but imagine that you could have a
• 17:20
  big eraser and you could erase your legs from the material
• 17:23
  world. Just imagine that.
• 17:25
  And then you erase your pelvic area, your stomach area, your
• 17:31
  Just area your shoulders. It's all erased.
• 17:36
  Now you're just a head now. Imagine erasing your head.
• 17:41
  If you erased your head, would you still exist?
• 17:45
  Well, your awareness would still be here because you try and turn
• 17:50
  off your awareness. See if you can do that, you
• 17:53
  can't. So, awareness is always in the
• 17:56
  background and as you listen to my voice, notice that you have
• 18:02
  Sensations, you have hearing, there's something that here's is
• 18:06
  something that feels, there's something that maybe sees the
• 18:10
  stuff, and there's something that listens to the sound of
• 18:16
  Someone talking to you in your head, those aren't your thoughts
• 18:19
  so much those are just thoughts going through an open field of
• 18:23
  awareness and you are that open field of awareness and as you
• 18:30
  tap into just being that witness, you start to feel more
• 18:35
  peaceful because awareness does not want anything.
• 18:39
  It's just there all the time in the background as you deepen
• 18:44
  into that awareness, you More peace, more joy and more love
• 18:49
  beautiful. Now, of course there's you know,
• 18:52
  20 different methods in the book if not more and some of them
• 18:57
  help you go down that rabbit hole until you feel like you are
• 19:01
  one with the entire universe which is, of course, A great
• 19:04
  experience at the DC. There was another exercise as
• 19:06
  well or the I kind of combined to.
• 19:08
  But, you know, one of my favorite exercises, that really
• 19:12
  puts me in my heart is as I have Two dogs, and I spend a bunch of
• 19:18
  time, telling them how much I love them and just petting them.
• 19:22
  And, you know, it's almost like doing darshan with a guru that
• 19:25
  you, you really have to find out what opens your heart and when
• 19:30
  you, you know, I used to just say, oh good dog and then go on
• 19:34
  but I realized that my dogs or a child or even a favorite tree or
• 19:40
  something, can be very useful for opening your heart and the
• 19:44
  more you can open your The closer you are to being who you
• 19:48
  probably want to be. That's beautiful.
• 19:51
  I love pets. Like, they just so full of
• 19:53
  unconditional love, and there's no agenda there.
• 19:56
  So, all, that's a great idea for anyone who has pets and my dogs
• 20:00
  like the to, they like to be worshipped.
• 20:09
  This was so insightful. Thank you so much, Jonathan.
• 20:12
  Is there anything? Any last piece of advice you
• 20:15
  want to give to the less, keep trying different stuff, find a
• 20:20
  book, a person, a course, a meditation, inspires, you, and
• 20:26
  just be consistent with it. And of course, you know, you'll
• 20:30
  have the link to the site where people can get a bunch of stuff
• 20:32
  for free. But I think that if people
• 20:37
  realize that it's closed, Than they might think, because
• 20:41
  awareness is always there. And as a learn to let go of ego
• 20:47
  obstacles, that piece is very possible and very close and when
• 20:53
  you find that piece, you're much better able to serve the world
• 20:56
  and serve the people you care about.
• 20:59
  Oh yes. I love it.
• 21:01
  So true, so definitely check out the link below to learn how to
• 21:07
  start your Enlightenment project.
• 21:11
  Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview.
• 21:15
  You know, my pleasure. All right, take care of
• 21:18
  everyone. Okay, let's continue the
• 21:22
  discussion in my telegram group with the spirit Nomad podcasts
• 21:25
  tribe. Link in the description.
• 21:27
  If you'd like to support the podcast, leave a review and
• 21:30
  share it with a friend. Thanks for listening and have a
• 21:33
  beautiful day.