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157. Messages From Beyond: Are We Experiencing A Spiritual And Conscious Awakening? · Radically Genuine

• Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:01.356) Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. According to a recent Gallup poll, 81 % of Americans believe in God and 85 % of Americans participate in some kind of spiritual practice with the most common being prayer. This similarity across religions, traditions and practices is a belief in a higher power or transcendent reality. Many people who engage in spiritual practices believe in the existence of a divine being, universal consciousness, or some form of ultimate reality beyond the physical world. More than six in 10 survey respondents said they pray daily, while 39 % say they practice meditation. Millennials and members of Generation Z are more likely than older adults to engage in meditation or other Eastern forms of mindfulness-based practices. Across various religions, traditions often emphasize personal direct experiences with the divine. And this includes all different types of practices that include prayer and meditation. Estimates range around 40 % of Americans claim to have had a profound religious experience that changed their life direction. Under our noses, something remarkable appears to be happening. People everywhere are quote unquote, waking up. It's not a phenomenon reserved for the esoteric or the spiritually inclined. It's a journey being experienced by millions from all walks of life. In the United States alone, a staggering 13 million individuals, which is about 3 to 4 percent of the population, identified currently being in the throes of a profound spiritual awakening. And it's not just limited in the states. It appears to be a global phenomenon. I myself fit in that category, as if there is an expansion of consciousness that is occurring. The definition of a spiritual awakening is the moment you become consciously aware that you are part of something greater than yourself and from this awareness you develop the desire to live in alignment with this energy. Many refer to this energy as God, love, the universe, source, source consciousness. For me the experience was so profound it extends beyond my previous understandings that were taught to me by my Catholic faith. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:26.132) Some people find a stronger connection to their religious beliefs after such an event, while others begin to question them. Prior to my spiritual experiences, I would have clearly described myself as a skeptic. So I understand the fear and distrust that accompanies the idea that people have direct communication with the divine or spirit realm. Even in my field, saying that to the wrong person can be interpreted as being mentally ill, potentially manic. But it's important for us to have a little bit of a greater understanding of history. Albert Einstein, for example, often spoke of a cosmic religious feeling that inspired his work. He famously said, I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details. Nikola Tesla, the inventor, claimed to receive some of his ideas through visions. Kerry Mullis, the Nobel Prize winning biochemist who invented polymerase chain reaction, described having a vision of the technique while driving late at night. Jack Ndrakka, as a teenager, developed a potential method for early pancreatic cancer detection. He claimed the idea came to him during a high school biology class while he was zoning out and daydreaming. Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, reportedly woke up one night with the idea that led to this life-saving treatment for diabetes. And Paul McCartney stated that the melody for the Beatles song, Yesterday, allegedly came to him in a dream. Our limitations in language across the globe and our distinct religious and cultural differences make it more difficult for us to communicate this phenomenon accurately. While some people who are religious may report to a feeling that's guided by the Holy Spirit, angels, guides, or even a deceased loved one, there are people who are not religious and report an idea of an intuition. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:33.46) or in knowing. The conclusions I have come to is that we all have the ability to directly connect to God, source, the divine, universal consciousness, whatever term you want to use. I understand the skepticism some may display if they have yet to have a spiritual awakening or do not identify as one who engages in spiritual or religious practices. There is no judgment or desire to push anyone to believe anything different. but today is about a radically genuine conversation and I encourage everyone to come with an open mind. I was provided a direct message on how to quiet my mind in order to listen directly to the messages provided me. Although as a Catholic, I've always believed that prayer is a direct communication with God. The idea that specific messages can be provided to me was never directly acknowledged and in combination with our current culture could even be viewed as a psychiatric disorder. There remains challenges I have with Catholic doctrine, biblical inconsistencies, and the differences in which the Bible is interpreted, but this is my own journey. Yet when I've cultivated the skill of quieting my mind, I've been able to allow and trust these messages to be shared with clients in my sessions. They've guided my writings, and they've also influenced my willingness to have conversations like they're one we're going to have today. I have read books that have claimed to be channeled. This includes Conversations with God, series by Neil Donald Walsh, and a series of channel texts by Paul Selig. I've been reading A Course in Miracles for over two years now. I admit that some of the wisdom gleaned from these works has been instrumental in advancing my faith and has even been provided to me at exactly the right time to help a person in my life. The more intentional I become about asking for wisdom or an answer to a question, the more clear the message is delivered. In fact, I had been praying for wisdom and answers to specific questions when a member of today's guest team reached out to me. I asked to read his book prior to agreeing to having him on today's podcast. I can say some of the exact questions I asked were included in the book and I had a hard time putting it down. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (07:00.504) His name is David Strickle. He believes all humans possess but rarely access source consciousness. He now refers to this as the stream. In 2017, he launched the stream of David podcast that has over a million downloads. The stream is a channeled wisdom that he feels called to share. He co-authored the book, The Tie of Practice, which provides core principles and tools based on universal laws that were channeled directly through him. I look forward to discussing these laws, these principles and tools in greater detail, and even to engage in critical dialogue around religion, the mental health industry, the purpose of life, many of the philosophical questions that plagued humans throughout history and continue to plague us. David Strickland, I want to welcome you to the radically genuine podcast. Davi Strickel (07:53.579) Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (07:56.194) Well, first, I'm curious to know more about you as a person, if you're willing. Clearly, I know that you must deal with a degree of skepticism and I'm kind of curious to know about your own background and your awakening to these channeling abilities. Davi Strickel (08:15.115) Certainly. I always start with, I had the great gift of having a very disconnected parents in my early childhood. my parents, my father left when I was six. My parents got divorced right after that. my mother fought for custody due to sort of get back at her ex-husband who cheated on her and left her for another woman and then decided she'd want to be a mother anymore from that point forward. And so I really wasn't parented. My father went on and had another child with his new wife. That kind of became his family. My mother moved us away back to our hometown and I was really left to my own devices and that could have gone in a lot of directions as I'm sure you're aware. but I really just clung to that inner voice that I believe we're all born with. We all have this inner voice and this sort of inner knowing and we do see it in young children. And I believe that society works it out of us. And I refer to all of that as the matrix, you know, the family teachings, the religion. The things you're picking up on the playground and you just start working that inner knowing and start shifting your beliefs to align with those who are around you and as a reaction to what you've experienced. So I had this, this definite inner knowing that carried me through childhood and I became more aware of it in my teen years. things got very difficult with my mother. she was definitely mentally ill. I'm not qualified to diagnose which mental illness, but she definitely had some things going on. Deep depression for sure. She pretty much wanted to lock herself in her bedroom and be left alone for the rest of her life after my father left. And this, the, teen years became more tumultuous for me because I was, you know, staying out all night, partying, having a lot of fun. I wasn't doing well in school. my mother at one point just was so done with me. She suggested that I commit suicide. You should just kill yourself. You're a useless human being. You know, you're not going to amount to anything. You should just kill yourself. And that was a big turning point for me. Because that was when that inner knowing really stepped up and this clarity came and I was probably between 12 and 14 when this type of talk started happening. And this inner knowing made it very clear to me that this was her mindset and her mental illness, if you will. And it had nothing to with me and that I was worthy that I was capable that I wasn't what they were telling me I was. wasn't what the school was telling me I was because I was a straight F student for a while. Davi Strickel (10:38.805) You have a dyslexic kid and know, Louisiana public schools in the 1970s with no parental guidance. And the interesting thing is my father was an educator his entire career and just didn't care about my schooling at all. I just wasn't convenient for him. So I was really just left alone, but that inner knowing step forward when my mother really started pouring on the, hate you. I wish you were never born. Why don't you kill yourself rhetoric. And that really stepped me up. And then I got into my teen years and I was a fairly, popular, well-rounded, you know, teenage kid, even though my mother was minimum wage and we lived in a very poor household. I learned that I could create, I could manifest if you will, people love that term, but I knew what law of attraction was way before I ever heard that term. I remember describing it to my older brother in 1982 when I was 14, that if we believe something, actually starts happening. And I really want to figure this out. And so in my teen years, I looked like one of the rich kids in town. And so I sort of went down this path of, wow, money is everything. If I manifest money and if I'm a rich person, I'm going to be happy. Like the other kids in my town, they get to do all the things that I'm going to do. So I really kind of went in that direction for many, many years, but I understood a lot of things that other people just didn't seem to get. I didn't know what that was about. So I would go see psychics. it took a lot of years and a lot of, you know, dabbling and a few books here and there, nothing really seemed to click for me. I finally saw a psychic named Hazel Burley in Casa de Florida. It's a little village for a psychics. And she told me I was a channel and I kind of knew what channeling meant. People would say I'm channeling Aretha Franklin or I'm channeling, you know, something like that. I knew what that meant, but I didn't really know what it meant from a spiritual standpoint. And it sounded very odd to me. And I didn't want any part of it because I had built this corporate career. had this sort of mainstream successful guy persona going on, even though internally the part that I kept hidden was the spiritual aspect. had long ago stepped away from Christianity with that. was raised in and I called myself an atheist for a moment, but I always knew there was something more. was an intelligence that was flowing that I didn't believe was specific to me necessarily. There was a clarity that was available. Davi Strickel (12:57.153) There was certainly a protective energy. A lot of people called us angelic energy. had times in my life where I probably should have been killed doing some of the things that I did. And I felt protected. Something divinely intervened and kept me okay in these moments, including that moment with my mother that I described. So all of that, I was just exploring that really for 20 years throughout my twenties and thirties until I met Hazel and she said, you're a channel and there is someone that I want to introduce you to. through their work called Abraham Hicks. And she showed me this binder and it looked, it had like a dove on it and it was all purple and gold and the teachings of Abraham. And I remember looking at that thinking, okay, that sounds like the Bible. I've studied that already been there, done that. I'm not going back to Christianity and I don't want any part of this channeling stuff. I just want to have a deeper understanding of what's going on. But everything that that psychic told me that day was dead on true. So many things came true later that she even made predictions for me in my life. So I kept going back to it. Like, what is this channeling thing? Well, a few years later, I met with Abraham again in a very magical way. It's too long to go into, but it was a very magical situation where somebody told me that I was teaching law of attraction. Had I ever heard of Abraham? I sounded a lot like that. and it was in a business, situation. And I, you know, said, I didn't really know what that was about. And she really turned me on to Abraham. And I went home the first night. With the original teachings of Abraham Hicks, and I just consumed it I stayed up all night listening to the original 1988 recordings of Jerry and Esther Hicks and a recorder where she was channeling Abraham and it was like yes. Yes. Yes This is what I've been getting all these years. This makes so much sense and I really turned into an Abraham junkie for a while What happened with me? However was that I felt like I? Love these teachings this makes a lot of sense But there seems to be a missing component, at least for me, that isn't offered here. And I was noticing that there was a lot of frustration in the teachings, even though people kind of replaced, know, religion with Abraham and made it sort of a religion almost that there was a lot of questions. How do I do this? How do I do this? How do I get this? I'm still frustrated. How do I get this thing that I want to have? And it was very, it seemed to go, it slanted very materialistic as well. And I was already at a point in my life where I had manifested a lot of material things, a lot of Davi Strickel (15:21.043) money and success and a lot of nice things. And I realized, okay, this isn't doing the job. This isn't erasing my childhood, you know, I don't like to use the word trauma a whole lot, but all of that stuff that happened with my parents, it isn't erasing, you know, these feelings I've had about myself, you know, the money isn't doing what it's supposed to do. So I started meditating and pretty early on into my meditation practice, I had what I now know was a Kundalini awakening. And this was, gosh, I mean, just I would say weeks into meditation, sitting quietly breathing, and then suddenly having this energy eruption at the base of my spine. That was, it was for lack of a better term, it was orgasmic. It lit me up. was electrifying and I had no idea what it was. I wasn't a spiritual seeker that was out reading tons of spiritual books and things like that. I was pretty much into Abraham. I read a little Wayne Dyer. I really identified with that and I didn't know what all this was, but after that point, I have since then, and this was in 2010, been electrified. This electrification still zaps through me and I get sort of guidance. Yes and no physically. And I came to understand just in going deep into the center, knowing that these ideas and thoughts and all this clarity drops in kind of like what's happening with Esther Hicks, but it's not magically coming out of my mouth the way that it did with her. And she has a whole story that she tells about that. So I literally decided to teach myself to channel. So I didn't have a miraculous, something took over me and started speaking through me experience at all. I spent time months, if not years, really first learning to write it automatic writing, and then learning to speak it. And was very disciplined about this. I'm very type a I'm very much, if I decide I'm going to do something, I'm solution oriented and I'm going to figure out how to do it. I figured out how to channel and I started channeling on my podcast in 2017. So that's where the channeling started. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (17:19.138) Fascinating. It's probably important for me to tell you a little bit about my story. Is I had a chance encounter with a very unassuming woman who was a medium. And I went into the experience extremely skeptical. In fact, I gave her nothing. Out of fear that if I gave her any information that that would be enough for her to glean enough to give me kind of these general thoughts or to kind of hook me in. And it was an experience that changed my life because it started with a number of meetings with her where she was communicating to me about first what started from my deceased father who was apologizing for specific events that occurred in our lives that only he and I would know. And actually transitioned to her sharing with me information to help specific clients I was working with at that time. In fact, giving me their names, which obviously woke me up to the fact that there is a spiritual realm that is real, that is beyond us and working with us. And it started a process for me because one of the main messages that I received was, Roger, they're trying to talk to you. They're trying to help you. They're knocking on the door. You're not listening. which started a process for me to practice on quieting my mind and trusting that inner knowing. So you refer a lot in that explanation, just about that inner truth or that inner knowing that you connected with since you were young. I'm hoping maybe to clarify a little bit for my audience that you can kind of describe what that experience might be like for you. Davi Strickel (19:04.109) I am a student again, kind of going back to the Abraham teaching the vibration vibrational scale is what they call it. call it a spiral, is very important to understand high vibration, low vibration, what's going on within us when we're up, what's going on when we're down. It's very easy to understand because our emotions are expressed in these vibrations. So when we feel good, when we feel light, when we feel confident, we're up our spiral, we're in high vibration. And when we start to come down and vibration, we're going to feel a little less comfortable, a little more anxious all the way down to depression and despair. So there's this, the spiral that we all operate on. And I learned thanks to those teachings that when I'm up and this information is flowing, and then I started really taking note too, that, I never have this information flow when I'm angry, when I'm judging something, when I'm feeling bad about myself, that stuff doesn't show up. It shows up when I'm on a drive and I'm looking around. used to have to commute. lived in Seattle, Washington, and I had to drive up to Vancouver a couple of times a month. And it's a beautiful drive most of the year. And when I would be on that drive and I love my car. And so I was just really in a high vibe state. I'm in this great car and there's beautiful trees and it's, there's no traffic and I, living in the city, it was so nice just to get out and drive. All this stuff would just, just, just pour in. when I take a shower to this day, Amazing energy, you know, amazing stuff just comes in. So I call that low thought activities to this day. So it's kind of a form of meditation. You're quieting your mind enough to pay attention to what you're doing. And when you do that, you get into that source allowing state that we all have. And there is amazing clarity offered there. I think maybe one of the differences with me is I spent a whole lot of time there as a kid. I lived in a fantasy world. I had a whole fantasy life that I created that was so different than my actual childhood. And I would go park myself in that world. I actually had my very religious aunt telling me that that was wrong and awful and sinful and I shouldn't do that. I needed to be in reality. And I remember thinking, well, this is the best thing for me right now is to disassociate and be over there. And when I'm over there, I can really understand the world. So I don't do the fantasy world thing anymore. Not really not like I did when I was a kid, but I know how now just to be in a state of high appreciation of all things. And when I'm there, Davi Strickel (21:24.371) I really understand humanity. understand the purpose of life. understand vibrational flow. I understand all these things. I'm also very curious. So I'm always questioning why is it so hard to manifest some things in our lives when it's so easy for all of us to manifest certain things. We all have the things that we're good at and we all have the things that really frustrate us. And that was the piece I started working on with the law of attraction teachings because so many people took that And said, yes, I want more money and I want more things and I want more joy and I want the love of my life and I want a better body. How do I get there? And, you know, they were using as a tool to manifest things that they wanted. And for a lot of us, that just became a gateway drug, if you will, into spirituality. And then once you really get into, as you have said, an awakening, you realize all the stuff doesn't really matter so much. It's fine. But if you're needing stuff to bring joy, I found that it never really authentically brings joy if you don't clean up all the things that are holding you away from joy to begin with. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (22:24.074) Let's go to some basics here because I think maybe there are people who are listening right now who don't understand all the language that we're using or some of the lingo. So let's just start with understanding human beings as energetic. And what do you mean by vibrational experiences and expressions? Davi Strickel (22:40.577) Sure. That's those are good questions because we spiritual folk talk about vibration and it sounds kind of crazy. I will say that, you know, in all of my skepticism, I understand how weird it all sounds when you first start listening to it. A vibration, what is this vibration thing? But we all use the term vibe. Isn't that interesting that, know, if I meet somebody and he had, they had a weird vibe or we really vibed and got along. We use that. live on the west coast. I live in California. So, you know, we use vibe all the time, but as soon as you say vibration, Whoa, what is that? You know, what is this vibration thing? So it's just energy where we're all, we're all energetic, energetic beings. You know, we all have an energy going through us. It's our personality. It's our, you know, our anger, our fear, our joy. It's all that stuff is energy. This is just a physical vehicle that our energetic self is utilizing to experience earth. So when we talk about vibration, it's what energy field are you operating in? And that's why I like the spiral so much because everybody can relate to the fact that some days they feel good. They wake up. They're on top of their game. Everything works out well. Everyone's friendly. They're kind of moving through their day, just enjoy and appreciation while other days are something other than that, all the way down to waking up in pure terror and fear and anxiety and you know, everything in between. So we have this range of motion and we're never static. We're always moving through this range. Certainly some people are more dramatic in their, their vibrational fluctuation than others, as you well know. But we all move through this thing that I call vibrational flow. And what creates vibrational flow is that our world is polarized. And again, I always like to give some evidence. I like to simplify as much as possible. Obviously the world is polarized. Look at the election that's happening in United States right now. We couldn't possibly have two more opposite candidates. And where are we now in the polls? 50-50. How is that? How are we always split almost exactly 50 50 where everything that we seem to encounter is just decided by a hair politics is just a good example because we, we manage that or watch that so closely. Also the financial market is a very interesting thing because we, again, we measure and pay attention and watching the up and down of the stock market. And really I, I like to use these things as evidence that we're operating in this vibrational flow. Davi Strickel (25:01.269) That a you see how polarized we are and that we're always being tugged between this positive and negative pole, if you will. And that this tug of war that we're all experiencing is what's creating this experience that we have in our lives because our focus, our energy is what's manifesting our reality. Everything you hear people talk about. want to learn how to manifest. Well, we're all manifesting everything that we're experiencing all the time. And if it's hard to wrap your mind around, okay, so you're telling me that I manifested my illness and I manifested my abuser. Don't start there. That's not where we, need you to start with all of that stuff. You will end up there at some point because that clarity will be very healing when you get there, but don't start at the roughest parts of your life or the worst parts of humanity. In your opinion, just start with your day to day. Okay. I know what I'm in a good mood. Things just work better when I'm in a good mood at work. things are just flowing. And then all of a sudden, if I'm in a bad mood, I can't figure out how to open the attachment. This doesn't work. That doesn't work. And I'm in this negative field. So start experimenting in your own life with where you are vibrationally during the day. Am I in a positive field where I'm up? I'm happy. I'm feeling good. And things just seem to work. People are friendlier to me. I'm treated better. Or am I in a negative field? And not only do we have a positive negative spiral throughout the day, that does fluctuate throughout the day. We also have a general version of that. That is our lives. So if you're generally higher on this vibrational spiral, your life is generally going better. If you're generally lower, it's not. And we all have examples and it's easier to see it in others than ourselves. So think about a family member, a close friend, a coworker. You probably have one or two that are living a good life. Things generally work out. Nothing is perfect, but things generally work out. Okay. And they work out things come out on top where somebody else is living a hot mess all the time, always in turmoil, always broke, always alone, always sad. And it's just a general vibration that person is experiencing. And it's very easy in our society teaches this, that it's not us. It's all everyone else and what they're doing to us, but really it's not. It's how we're reacting to what we're experiencing because I have found that everybody's life can be a pile of crap sometimes and Davi Strickel (27:21.203) If you really focus on that, you're going to get more of that. And a lot of the work that I do is teaching people just to make little incremental shifts instead of trying to win the lottery or meet your soulmate. You know, I think that things, those ideas sell seminars and books and, and, know, fill up programs. But I think that you're really setting people up for failure. If you're thinking that you're going to manifest some monumental shift and What I do in the difference between the Thai practice and what most other people are teaching out there that I'm aware of is that we learn to love the practice, the practice of getting just a little better day by day, the practice of even spinning out and having everything kind of fall apart and picking ourselves back up and realizing that, wow, that falling apart situation, whatever it was, whether it's romance, finance, health, coming through that experience really levels us up. It makes us a more sophisticated, wiser version of ourselves. So as we move through this vibrational flow, learning to not judge the lower vibrational portions actually allows us to manage it a lot more efficiently and move through a lower vibrational period of our day or our lives and actually be made better in the having of that experience. And what happens is when you start practicing this, your general vibration goes up. So life just starts getting better and better and better. Now I am way deeper into this than a lot of your listeners may care to go or be at this point, but it's just a daily practice of allowing yourself to experience life differently without needing anything external to change for you. Because we all spend a lot of our lives thinking, gosh, as soon as I have a better job, more money, a better body, a better partner, my life's going to be so much better. And I spent enough years chasing that stuff and having it never show up. until I really learned to quiet my mind, to meditate, to not expect external things to make me happy. Because as I said, even though I understood law of attraction very early, I thought money and material things were going to fix it and they didn't fix anything. It just created a whole new set of problems and prettier surroundings until I learned to really work on that inner peace stuff and that early childhood stuff, which goes back to a lot of what, you know, Freud and psychology is all about is really you got, you have to go back and heal all of that stuff. Davi Strickel (29:41.513) And until you do, it's going to haunt you for the rest of your life. And it's going to impact all of your decisions and all of your experiences. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:50.232) All right, some questions here and I want to make sure that I'm hearing you correctly. So when we're talking about vibrational states and there's a polarity that exists, one of the things you're referring to is the energy of emotion. So emotion, energy and motion actually. On one end of the spectrum, there's the ability to cultivate a passion, a love, a joy, and this would be identified as a higher vibrational state for creation. And on the opposite end of the spectrum would be despair and anxiety and shame and all those negative emotions that all of us can certainly identify with based on events in our lives. Now, what trips people up is the understanding that we are creators of our experience, that we are active creators in this experience, because we're at a time in society and culture where we're in some of the greatest brainwashing and mind fucks in history when it comes to our emotional states. by saying that it's external to you even, that it's genetic, that you have no control over it, that you have to go see a doctor and take a pill for it. Extremely disempowering. That's why I know like almost its origins in itself are going to lead people down a road where they're not going to be able to overcome those challenges that are in their path. And this is what I love about your work and we'll get into this, is that there's a different perspective of what those challenges are than maybe how they want to be Davi Strickel (30:54.635) Yeah, very disempowering, right? Very disempowering. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:18.333) communicated in modern Western society and culture. There's a tendency to become really entrenched into a victim mindset, right? Davi Strickel (31:27.049) Well, we're taught that right? We're taught it's not your fault. you poor thing. That person was a monster that you were so taken advantage of. And I know it's soothing to hear that, but you're, taking your power. And I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but you know, this is just a collective thought. Your power is being taken from you when you're told that you had nothing to do with it, that it's not your fault. And the whole concept of fault and blame is, very foreign to me at this point. Why even worry about fault and blame? It's more of. How did I create that? And I want to claim some ownership of it because I know I have the power to change it. Even things that happened in the past. had these things like the, the experience with my mother that I shared. I definitely was hurt by that, even though it made me push back and sort of overcome, but I spent a lot of time hurt by that. And when I got through the pain process and got into the appreciation of who she was and what she did and how she raised me, And by appreciation, always mean deep understanding because you know, when we understand something very deeply, we're not fearing and judging it the way that we probably were before we understood it. There's so much misunderstanding and a lot of, you said, misinformation, intentional misunderstanding, and a lot of this polarized, you know, this person is all evil and we see that that's getting more acute in our society, but that's also a sign of our mass awakening. We can get into that later if you want, but the, The labeling of something is all good or all bad while everything is energetic. Everything is nuanced. That is really a sign of us sort of breaking that old matrix and it really fighting for life. That hyper polarity that if you're on this side, you're right and they're all wrong and you shouldn't even know them. They shouldn't even exist. That is just a sign that we are, we are really deconstructing that matrix, but it wants to stick around and it's sort of getting louder and louder. And as we notice it more though, we get exhausted in that energy and think, gosh, I'm just tired of hating the other side, whatever the other side is. Maybe I'm just going to let up and take care of myself now and not listen to the people that are telling me that everything that's happening in my life is someone else's fault. Maybe it's healthier to take ownership of all of it, even if I don't know how, especially the early childhood stuff, you know, how, how at age six, how do you manifest your father leaving and your mother, you know, disconnecting? How do you, how is that your fault? Well, it wasn't about fault. Davi Strickel (33:49.729) But we definitely come to this life to have an energetic experience that isn't necessarily to be all positive. You know, our, our life's challenges are what really propel us forward and make us wiser versions of ourselves. And whether you believe this is the only lifetime and this is it, or you believe that you're an eternal being of sources as I believe it's really the same thing because the wiser people that, you know, go into older age that it just seemed wiser. Notice how they're also at peace with everything they've experienced or they're working on becoming at peace with everything. They're not fighting it. They're not battling it. They're not judging it anymore. They've sort of made peace with that stuff. So I made peace with my mother understanding that this was a very unhappy woman. I don't know what her upbringing was exactly. She got married at a time when that was what you're supposed to do, you know, in the early 1960s and she didn't really want to be married or have children. She wanted to travel the world. She wanted to be single, but she just didn't have the means to do that at that time, or she didn't believe she did. And her life was very sad. And she was a product of that. And I just happened to be her child, but had she not been that way, had my father not really exited my life when I was six, I wouldn't have turned into the person that I am today. Flaws and all. I wouldn't have gone this deep into that inner knowing and figured all this stuff out. And then I got to a point in my life to where I wanted to shed that, cool corporate high earning guy image and just teach it to other people. No matter what that looked like. I ha I started the podcast. I was in a very high paying corporate job reporting directly to a fortune 500 CEO flying on the private jet, you know, all that fun stuff. And I hated it. I got to, I really could not do that type of work anymore. I needed to, to just somehow share this with the world. And I started the podcast while I was still in that job. people thought it was a nuts. I was, know, you got this great high paying job. Why are you doing a kooky spiritual podcast? I didn't care anymore. Shortly after that, I just quit the job. No clue what I was going to do, how I was going to support myself. I didn't have a trust fund. I wasn't a great investor. I blew all my money on all the pretty stuff and it has worked out for six years. It has worked out. I started teaching, what we now call the tire practice. I didn't even call it that at first. You know, we just developed into that. Davi Strickel (36:02.625) And in teaching this for five years to other people all over the world, because I had the podcast, as you said earlier, you know, when you have a podcast, you get to reach these people all over the world. And we create this global community of like-minded individuals. And that's one of the reasons we're breaking the matrix because we have the technology to communicate today that we did not have not long ago. You know, there used to be gatekeepers to information publishers and, you know, network television and things like that. Even the news networks. We're very much gatekeepers. Now an average guy can start a podcast and start speaking to people and finding other people that want to hear what they have to say and. And start building something from there. And we're, we're able to do that now without the gatekeeper. I'm able to write and publish a book without a publisher telling me, no, your, book has to be conversations with Jesus, which we know happens. So, you know, I feel very fortunate to be alive at a time where I have this inner knowing. And I've developed a way to share it that hopefully simplifies it. That is my, my goal in all of this is to take all of that, you know, deep knowledge and simplify it as much as possible. Because what I've come to understand is that in this duality, this polarized world that we live in, the duality for us is that we are one part source consciousness, eternal energy, God, whatever you want to call that. And one part human consciousness or ego. And we're doing this dance between these two all the time. So I like and being up the spiral to allowing more source and I liken down the spiral to just being more entrenched in ego, which is overshadowing source. And I do believe that there's some of that present all the way through that source never forsakes us that we're just sort of overshadowing more down our spiral. We're more wrapped up in our ego. That's why there's more fear and judgment and all of those components. And then when we go up ego is still there, but we're allowing more source. And when we're allowing more source, Things are just going better. We feel better. We're happier. We're wiser. We're not needing external things to change as much, but notice that humanity is largely running on ego these days. Very much so. The collective consciousness of humanity is a big ball of ego, consciousness of comparison of this is what you're supposed to be. This is how you're supposed to look. You need to be crushing life. You need to, you know, this is the type of income you're supposed to have and the type of partner you're supposed to be with. And we don't have those things. We often judge ourselves for not having them. Davi Strickel (38:23.659) But I know people that have those things and I've had a lot of those things in my life and found firsthand that they don't really bring true joy. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (38:33.304) I want to be able to go back and ask, you said so much, so there's a lot to take from what you just communicated, but there's some words that you're using that I really feel like there's going to be some confusion around. And we've thrown some of those out there like manifestation and law of attraction, and you can get onto any social media profile right now and you can see these gurus who are kind of promoting similar concepts. And that's going to lead to some skepticism because it's been really popular in certain circles, but tends to be really misunderstood and really misapplied, leaving people to kind of dismiss this as woo-woo nonsense. But so I want to step back here and talk about, did a great job of explaining us being energetic beings and vibrational flow. And listen, folks, you know, look into quantum physics and understand a lot of what's even being able to be measured scientifically. When we say that we're creators of our own experience and our own reality, There's a lot of quantum law and quantum physics that are able to kind of verify that from interesting laws in physics. But we also can go back philosophically from the Stoics or even biblically where Jesus talks about very, very similar concepts. So some of this stuff is not new and it's certainly not out there, but the law of attraction leads people to fall into this self-blame. And when... Davi Strickel (39:47.093) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (40:00.517) And also to get stuck into the materialism as you spoke about before. Let's try to better understand the law of attraction and what you mean by manifestation. Davi Strickel (40:09.481) Yeah, I use it. I go on a lot of podcasts that all they talk about are these terms. So I get really used to using them because it does buzz with a lot of people. But I understand if it doesn't. In fact, my social circle is not into this stuff at all. So when I'm trying to talk about these things, I'm having to, to shift a little bit and say, you know, law of attraction. In fact, my last podcast episode was titled, I don't believe in law of attraction. My co author of my book said said that on a podcast, she said, I really don't believe in law of attraction. And we got into it. And I, I agreed that it's, it's sort of a, you know, it's, it's a buzzword. It's a popular term, but it's, we're not really attracting. We're, we're really creating with our consciousness. And the way I say is think about this, everything, if you look around you, know, you're in your studio, I'm in my, I'm renting a house right now. So this is a guest bedroom. That's a quasi studio. Every single thing in this space was a thought before it was a thing. someone, you know, Steve jobs figured out this computer or somebody figured out this, this microphone, somebody dreamt of a better version of, or the first version of everything that we can look at. So what was the thought first? And then that thought inspired some action. And then that action created something, not every single thought necessarily creates, but a thought believed in practice does create. And we see that in our lives. So a really good way to experiment. And I will tell all of you that What I love about the tie of practice and what I really do appreciate of where we've kept our teachings is we never say, the stream says this. So you must believe it. There's no gospel being taught here and there's no divine entity looking to be obeyed or worshiped in any way. There's no rules in any of our teachings. It's here's a nugget of information. Go apply this in your life and see how it works. So as far as the vibrational flow, I do think we kind of covered your emotions and how one day you're up the next day you're down. I always say if you're, something isn't working in a moment, step away, go outside, find some things to appreciate, do a little bit of breath work, just be in a higher state of appreciation and then come back to it and notice that you're more likely to solve whatever it is that was really troubling you when you were so frustrated in it. That's showing your self conscious creation and a little nugget right there that anybody can do in a day. Another thing is think about your belief system. Think about what is we all have things in our lives that we would like to have that we don't. Davi Strickel (42:31.231) And we all have things flowing into our lives that other people would love to have. they don't. So think about your belief system and compare that to your reality. I believe that I make friends easily. I'm very, you know, I'm very active in my church community and everybody's friendly there and we socialize and I always have lots of friends. I know there's lots of people in my life that will be there for me. And it's always been, well, that's a belief. So you have this belief in your belief is showing up for you. But, and I'm just giving this as an example, this isn't about me specifically, but maybe you believe that money is difficult and money's hard to get. You have to really work hard. You have to be born into money. There's generational wealth. The billionaires are hoarding all the money and cost of living is rising and my, my wages aren't catching up to that. And that's just so wrong. You know, this inequality that we have of income and this disparate wage disparity is just so wrong. And I'm really online talking about that and reading about that. And I agree that we've got to do something about that. And it's just wrong. And I noticed that, you know, my income is just stagnant. If I get a 2 % raise, I'm lucky, but yet, you know, groceries are $300 a week now. Well, if that's your belief, that's also going to be a reality. And a lot of people get trapped in that because again, politicians, money is a big hot button for everybody. You really can't avoid it because it does tie to everything that we do. I have a few people in my life that are just so whimsical about money and it just flows. I'm still not completely like that. Yeah. I still, you know, I I'm running a business here. I'm self-employed and You know, there's vibrational flow and cash flow in the business and things like that. And I noticed that when I started getting worried about it, the tap runs dry. And then if I realized, wait, I teach abundance. need to not be worried about this. I need to get back into my mindset. Boom. It starts flowing again. It's kind of, it's fun for me. I geek out on playing with this stuff at this point, but my partner just, he has a belief system. and it's a really specific one. But his belief system is, that there's always money there, but he's far more thrifty than I am. I am a spin thrift. I like I'll spend money like crazy because I know all moral always show up. It doesn't matter. I don't use it to soothe anything anymore, but if there's something I want, I'm going to buy it. And he's not like that, but he always has capital. He always has money because he just believes that I've seen money show up. A lot of money show up for him in bizarre ways. Davi Strickel (44:50.175) And I tell him, you're, so good at manifesting money. Well, I don't know. It's interesting because he's not positive about attracting money. He just has a core belief that he's always got a certain amount of capital at his disposal and that that's where he feels comfortable and he keeps himself there. And that it's a such a reflection of his beliefs. So if you believe that you're great in one area and you're deficient in another, then you're going to manifest that reality and it's showing up for you. Now what gets frustrating is when you go take the seminars and you go, you know, do all these things that people just like myself do. And you come in with the skepticism because you don't want to be taken advantage of. Nobody does, or, know, this sounds kooky to me. This person's channeling. What is this? Or, know, maybe this person's dressed in a way that is a little different than what I normally see. And, know, that's, that's a turnoff to me. We've have all these built in judgments. And when you're judging something and you're not, you're choosing not to give it power. Everything has the power that you give to it. If there's nothing else that your listeners take away from listening to me and investing their time and listening to me, everything has the power that you give to it. You know, people in your life that give power to Christianity and prayer, and it shows up for them because they give power to it. As much as that God energy or that source energy is a loving, powerful, creative energy, it's up to us to tune into it. And when we're up our spiral, we just do that more naturally. When we're trusting and believing, we do that more naturally. So that energy is flowing in a positive way in accordance to our beliefs. So the only way to really shift your reality is not to do. Mantras and go to seminars and retreats and take substances and have all these, you can do all those things. There's nothing wrong with any of that stuff, but understand that if you're not giving it power, it's not going to work for you. If you're going to the seminar and spending money, I always say you might as well drink the Kool-Aid or don't do it. And I say that about Taya and our teachings, you know, if it doesn't resonate with you, you're right to not do it, move on from it. There's no dogma in this. You're not going to burn in hell for not reading the Taya practice. You know, that just doesn't work that way. So, but for people who do choose to give it power and read it, and it really resonates as you said, it did with you because it's simplified and it really makes sense. Well, you're choosing to give it power. And as long as you choose to do that, it's going to work for you. Not because I'm magical and because the stream is anointing you and blessing you. Davi Strickel (47:12.095) because you are believing it. You're choosing your beliefs. And I will tell you the thing that will heal humanity once and for all, if we can get there is if we all come to realize that everyone operates in a belief system and there's no right or wrong belief system, if you're not harming anyone else and stop thinking that someone else's belief system is somehow going to impact you. It won't unless you allow it to. If you believe that candidate X or candidate Y being elected in this, election, that's a few days away that everyone's talking about all the time. If we may be past that by the time this gets out, but if you give that power, that will become true for you. But what I did, I noticed that no matter how the pendulum swung and the United States elections, and I'm sure this happens in every country, I realized that, Hey, I'm not going to give power to this. You know, the person I voted for and I do vote may not have won, but I'm in charge of my life. And I will tell you that some candidates have won that were actively campaigning against me as a person who I am. And I just decided that this candidate is not going to negatively impact my life. And I noticed that my life was really good during their presidency. It didn't impact me. So now I can vote. I can enjoy politics because I feel like I really don't have skin in the game. I can vote and have an opinion, but overall everyone's manifesting their own reality, meaning we're all creating our own reality through our mindset. had my, my candidate that I didn't vote for one, and I decided it was going to be the worst thing ever. Then I would have manifested or I would have consciously created a reality for myself where that would have been a bad time for me. We decide it's how we react to what we are experiencing and what we have experienced. And that's the work in Taya is going all the way back to where the foundation of our belief system was created, which is early childhood. And those first few painful moments of those things that we took on As I call them abundance blocks or limiting beliefs, you probably hear, you know, terms like this, those little, those little judgments and those little beliefs that we create that we're not good enough, that we're never going to be rich enough that our family isn't, you know, blessed, that we're not healthy, you know, that we're not worthy of love, whatever it is that we pick up and we carry that stuff and we just start building momentum with these beliefs. And then of course, the tricky part is that those relief, those beliefs do get reflected back to us. Davi Strickel (49:32.735) So when we believe that we're ugly, because you somebody called us ugly when we're three, four, five years old, and we just latch onto that. And then we go to kindergarten and everyone starts calling us ugly. We're like, see, we're ugly. This everyone's telling us that we're unattractive. Nobody likes us. Nobody wants to play with us. Nobody wants to talk to us. We're not realizing that that our belief is in the vibe that we are sending out is actually creating that. And You can change. can experiment with this by just doing some exercises of really feeling good about yourself and really combating your negative feelings and just experimenting with it in a day, moving your vibe. We all have the power to do this. I remember like little mundane things like just going to driving and going to the supermarket just used to drive me crazy until I realized that, a minute, I'm creating this experience in our lives really are the sum of just all these little experiences that we have all day long, little silly things like that. Why don't I make my drive a drive and joy safe and stress free commute? I'm going to find things to appreciate on the way. When I walk into the supermarket and I have to do my grocery shopping, I'm going to find things to appreciate. And what I noticed was the things that I wanted were there. They were in stock. People were friendly. I would interact in a friendly way. All of a sudden people are making eye contact and saying, hello. Well, what changed? I wasn't suddenly more attractive. I didn't turn into Brad Pitt, you know, all of a sudden and go to the supermarket. I just had a different vibe about me. I was exuding a different energy and the world around me was responding to it. So if you want to know how to get joyful, it's taking all these little things that we do all day, every day and making it a more joyous, more abundant experience. And then suddenly the whole life, your whole life starts to change because all these little things, again, it's not about going to a seminar to learn how to, to, crush business and make a billion dollars or win the lottery or any of those things. You know, you can do that stuff if you want. but it really is the little incremental day by day changes that really start to reflect and make a big difference. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (51:29.932) During that period of time when I was working with that medium and each time I would work with her, she would hold up a book and say, you know, I've been told that you need to read this book. There was a, received these very similar messages that changed my life. And they've been a belief system that I've adopted. And that belief system is that everything is happening for me, not to me. So that altered the way I look at every single challenge, disappointment or struggle, not as something that the universe is against me or I'm a failure, I'll never be able to have the life I want to live or to get frustrated around it. Instead, I view it as an opportunity even as maybe to grow or to learn something new or the outcome has been yet to be provided to me of what I'll glean from such a challenging experience. It seems to have protected me from those lower vibrational states of shame, anxiety, and despair, and I approach life in a new way. And I think that's an example of the power of beliefs and the creation of our own reality. I work with a lot of sexual trauma victims, as I was telling you before you came on here and started recording. And I'm able to see the differences that exist in the way that someone may respond to horrific events in their life. On one end, they might adopt a belief system that, you know, they're to blame for the situation, that they're somehow broken, and they're only going to attract, you know, horrible people into their lives. And basically, the purpose in their life is to protect themselves from harm and be vigilant. And that keeps them in a very low vibrational state, which almost seems to continue to create suffering, which I view as that manifestation. Davi Strickel (53:20.177) And like experiences in a lot of cases. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (53:23.16) Sometimes it's additional trauma. And then my problem and my concern with working from this perspective is then, you know, how they're going to internalize some of these messages. While on the other end, you'll see someone who as painful as something like that is, they were able to transform from it and even get closer to God or closer to get source or find love in their life or purpose or meaning, or even create something extraordinary from it. you know, for example, working with other trauma victims or starting a nonprofit. And in that nonprofit, serves, you know, it serves causes that are really, really important to them. In fact, they see the events themselves as something that was provided to them in order to create something more special and more beautiful. And that's like a higher perspective. And so when I opened up your book and I started to read about the power that lower vibrational states have in expansion, in universal expansion and creation. It kind of really reinforced my belief that everything is happening for us. And there are tools and mindsets and ways of approaching this life that can allow us to take even the most traumatic and challenging parts of our existence and allow that to move into a creation Davi Strickel (54:32.694) Mm-hmm. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (54:48.652) that is something that is out of love and that is out of a higher vibrational state. Davi Strickel (54:53.625) You brought up several good points. And one is the last thing I want anyone to do in hearing any of this is, go into the fault and blame, energy or that space because there's no healing power in that. It's not about fault or blame. And I'll do, I do a lot of tick tocks. I have a pretty good following on Tik TOK and I'll start talking about this stuff. And inevitably somebody's going to say, I didn't manifest my cancer or being abused as a child. And they're not really listening. They're angry and they're just responding. And I understand that. And I really don't, I don't try to draw them in because if I'm not there, they're not ready for me. They're not ready for me. And that's okay. Maybe they won't be, I'm not for everybody, but as far as that sort of thing goes, the it's just acceptance that like you said, it was happening for you, not to you. And that how it got created is not so important. And I tell everyone, if you can learn to put the cart before the horse, you know, we're told not to do that, but I think that that's, that's the matrix again, kind of limiting us. we in conscious creation, we're always doing that. Again, we wouldn't have any of these things. If somebody didn't put the cart before the horse, if Steve jobs didn't believe that this type of, you know, Mac could be created. We wouldn't have it. Right. He had a vision of it. So have a vision of being healed from the trauma, have a vision of, okay. I played some hand energetically, but who cares about that? This was something that I, that my soul wanted to experience because your soul is eternal and it helps very much in this practice to have this, this belief that we are energetic beings and that energy is eternal. Now scientists tell us that energy cannot be created or destroyed and the physical, human body, obviously when we die, It disintegrates, the energy that is powering it just seems to go away. And so I always have that question. I don't ever want to argue with an atheist because I think it's okay to be an atheist, but for someone who just says they don't believe because no one has proven it to them yet that there is anything beyond physical life that you live, you die, and that's it. And you're just gone when you die. That is a possibility. You know, anything beyond that at this point for all of us is just a belief, right? Davi Strickel (57:03.285) But just think about it just in a very logical way that we are these energized beings, you know, we, we, we develop in the womb and we develop a personality and preferences in the womb. And then we're born and we're screaming and we're, know, waking up and we're learning to be a human being and we're developing where, where does that energy come from? And when our physical vehicle dies, then where does it go? I do believe that we are eternal beings. And I do believe that eternal consciousness. is coming into physical and this is what the stream teaches what I channel teaches that this eternal energy can only expand through challenge that yes, that we are of the earth environment when we come here. since we're part of the earth environment, our physical vehicle is we very much love the earth environment. love flowers. We love trees. We love puppies. We love the ocean. We love the blue skies. And there's all these things that we love food, sex interaction with other people, joy. And there's all this stuff that sort of motivates us through this experience. But in order to get to the stuff that we want to experience, every single one of us has challenges. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't matter how beautiful and rich and you know, even, always say even Beyonce has challenges, you know, and when famous people have challenges, they're plastered all over the place. So we all get to hear about it. So we all have these challenges and that's one common thing that all of humanity has, no matter who you are, no matter how charmed your life seems to be. On the, know, the, the backside of that, I've had people that are fairly famous come through my program incognito, but they were suffering in challenges and great challenges and in things that I can't really share, but, things that nobody would want to experience. And yet I'm talking about people who, know, who they are and my gosh, their life is amazing. Amazing. I I wish I were them and they're coming to me. And I always like to say, I did have one person come through that was a billionaire. And their biggest problem in life was that they were billionaire. So we all think we want to have all these things, but yet there's a struggle. And I will tell you, their struggle was very real. There were tears, there's pain. You know, there was a very real struggle that was all created by having all this money. So we all have our version of suffering, even though it might look great on the outside. So the suffering experience really can expand our consciousness and just having the experience. So to start, Davi Strickel (59:26.367) the healing process. And this is where our teachings are a little different than psychology. As you know, I'm with a site, I live with a psychologist. you know, he talks a lot about mindfulness. So he's kind of be spiritually focused psychologist, but radical acceptance is kind of where psychology ends and where we pick up is radical appreciation. And I understand why psychology can't go there because there's a spiritual element to radical appreciation. where we're going to appreciate being abused as a child. We're going to appreciate having cancer. We're going to appreciate being cheated on. We're going to appreciate being screwed out of money in our business. Ultimately, you can appreciate anything. And again, appreciation is deep understanding where you're taking away the judgment and the fear, all of that energy that we give to things. So when you're abused as a child, you probably spend a lifetime giving energy to that situation and that abuser. like you said, you're keeping that alive in your existence somehow because that wrongness of it, that label of this shouldn't have happened. That should not be, that was so wrong that that happened to me. And it's understandable that we're in that space. And of course society supports that and society tells a victim, especially of sexual abuse, you know, there were a monster, they were terrible. It was awful. You're scarred for life now, but how are we helping them? How, how has someone helped by that? It's okay to go through that. But at the end of the day, I got tired of people pitying me because my mother was horrible and my mother disowned me for the last 25 years of her life. didn't speak to me. So, you know, you poor thing. everybody needs a mother. It's I'm like, no, no. You know, I've, I've been through that. It's okay. We're all good. She's good. I'm good. You know, I had, a lot of work to work through that. And then I didn't like the pity anymore. It just didn't feel comfortable to me. Like, wait a minute. My mother being the way she was, was exactly perfect for me because it allowed me to develop into the person I am today. It was, you I don't necessarily use the term soul contract. Now I'm really using a term. lot of your listeners are probably like, what the hell is that? But, you know, I don't think that we have this predetermined, set of things that we're going to experience that are, are, are painful. think we develop into a vibration. Or we project into a vibration that allows these unwanted things to happen. And we all do it on different levels. We all do it. Even people that are born into relative ease will manifest. Davi Strickel (01:01:45.169) a drug addiction or an illness or something at some point in their lives, it's really going to knock them on their ass. And the times that I've been knocked on my ass now are the very best times of my life. And it has happened even since I have done this program, you know, here I am teaching trust your abundance and my house burns down. And you may think, well, God, how was that abundant? Your house burns out. know exactly the energy that led up to the home burning down. I know exactly how much that leveled me up spiritually to move through that. very traumatic experience of, all of the things that happened around all of that. And I have deep appreciation for it. And now whatever happens next, I am prepared for because I'm not fearing it. I'm not fearing the next bad thing or the next trauma or the, I don't even like to use the word trauma for myself. You know, the next challenge that comes up because I know something's going to pop up. We all have it. And when I get there, I'm going to put the cart before the horse and say, gosh, I'm creating this pile of crap right now. How am I doing it? And the clarity will come in your appreciation of it. So instead of figuring out how I did it, why I did it, those things will really just take you down further. It's okay. What good came from that? What, if nothing else, two things, I survived it. We love to use the term survivor. And I think if you kind of take the victim out of that and just say, Hey, I survived that I managed to survive an abusive mother. physically and emotionally. I managed to survive being broke. I managed to survive being 300 pounds at one time. I managed to survive my part, my ex partner cheating on me and contracting HIV outside our relationship. I have really had those things happen to me and I moved through those experiences. I survived them. They didn't end me and having survived them. I now know what it's like to experience that. And as long as I'm taking the judgment out of it, I am a richer being. a more sophisticated wiser being because I now know what that's like. If nothing else, because when I meet somebody on the other end of zoom, who's on a coaching call and they've experienced some of these things, I can identify like, wow, I create all this crap in my life so that one day I could teach people and coach people and really identify with, what they're talking about. There's very few things somebody can tell me about that. I can't really deeply understand. And one of the interesting things is you talked about some severe traumas. Davi Strickel (01:04:06.017) I've had some severe traumas come through my program with sexual abuse, early childhood. And after that, for a while, I started getting parents whose children had been murdered or committed suicide and talk about the worst thing that, we can imagine happening. I don't have kids, but working with them through the program, I have now experienced in an empathic way, their pain, it just on a tiny level. And I, I know just a nugget of what that's like for them. And I can't imagine what it's like to live with that day after day. And the first person I worked with, she suffered in that for five years of being the murder victim's mother, wanting justice for her son. And I witnessed this person really transform their lives by going from that victim state to the at peace state and the appreciation, meaning deep understanding of how this could have happened and all of the players and all of that. And then when that happened, right when she did the work while she was in my program, the justice happened. Does she had been waiting five years for it. It's like she loosened up the energy enough to really get what she wanted in the first place was for his killer to come to justice. And it happened while she was in my program, which was again, I didn't do it. I gave her some tools, but she chose to give power to what I was teaching. And she did the work herself because she just couldn't suffer anymore after five years. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:05:32.93) So before we get into some of these tools, you did such a great job of talking about appreciation or gratitude practice, things I think that are extremely powerful. And even from a psychology standpoint, I see the field of psychology is really the study of human behavior or the study of human potential. And where I want to be most focused on and interested is how do people overcome challenges in their lives that can turn into horrible episodes that tend to repeat themselves, substance abuse, eating disorders. depression, fear, whatever that may be. Well, how does one overcome those? And when you start talking about some of these practices, know, believe it or not, even in my field, they're very empirically validated principles, like they've been studied. You know, there's a bit of a cognitive behavioral discussion that's going on here between you and I about the power of the mind and how it manifests into action and how we can stay stuck in patterns of behavior that either serve us or harm us really and become maladaptive coping mechanisms. But I wanted to check in because you did touch on a little bit about words like soul contract and the fact that we are eternal beings and we're here for soul expansion. Are you aware of any of the research that is on near-death experiences and looked into that at all? Davi Strickel (01:06:51.807) Yes, I I've had people, know, in, in dees in my program, I've been on podcasts about that and things like that. So some awareness for sure. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:07:00.62) Yeah, because I think what we can learn about that is fascinating because you tend to hear very similar stories. And that story is that, you know, when you do Passover, there's a life review that occurs and that you experience everything instantaneously. You live your life over again, because there's really no time or space, but you experience it from, you know, everyone around you that allows for this learning. And when, why would somebody want to return into the physical world? Because what they say is that the experience is on word, on earthly like, right? It's like, it's such a higher state of being no one would want to go into this density of form and feel Davi Strickel (01:07:40.555) Yeah, you hear people say all the time, this is my last lifetime or I hope it's my last lifetime. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:07:44.662) Right, right. But they choose to come back anyway, because of how meaningful it is. And it's almost as if they, there were lessons that they knew that they had to learn, or they had to go through some trials and tribulations, like they desired it, they wanted it. And that's where we kind of get stuck with, well, why would, you know, when you're in this physical body, why would, if there's an all loving God, why would there be war? Why would there be poverty and assault and all these negative things that would occur in this physical world? Would it make sense? Therefore, I dismiss God. But what we learned from these NDEs and from people who are really kind of spiritually grounded and have these higher vibrational states of being is that this is all of God. Like, God is is all. Yeah. Davi Strickel (01:08:36.897) It's appreciation of all things. Yeah. If you want to know, so I use the term source, but certainly God is interchangeable with that. just because a lot of times when you say God, think of a male figure that is judgmental and is going to send you to hell. And I do, that does not align with my beliefs at all. So I call it all source source energy. Source energy is the universe. It is the, it is a loving, protective, creative power of the universe. And yes, we do separate ourselves from that energy and physical. That's what the polarity is all about that I spoke of. But that separation is also a creation of source because source can only expand by separating from itself and creating some inspiration for new creation. Well, how do you get inspired to new creation? You have something that you want to fix or change or overcome or experience that you want to be different. So all of the negative things that happen in our world exist to inspire us toward new creation. And we're viewing it from our very limited very temporary human experience. we like to say that coming to earth and being a human is like taking a little weekend trip, not such a big deal. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. Sometimes they're everything in between. And when you are through with your weekend trip, you come back, you tend to latch on to the positive memories. You, maybe you learned a few things. You grew as a being maybe in that situation and you had an experience. Well, if that is your eternal state of being, then When you're in this eternal state and you're not physical, you are in pure positive energy and you want for nothing. And it seems glorious, but I can tell you it's like going to a five star resort where you lay by the pool and the weather is perfect and the water is perfect. And someone is bringing you everything that you want, you know, any food you want, any drink you want, and you're just laying there and you've got everything and it just seems wonderful. Well, a day or two of that is great. A month of that would drive you absolutely insane. Because you need to, know, you got to get out of the hotel. got to get a car and go have dinner somewhere. You want to go explore something else. You want to have a new experience. That's what that's the difference. The eternal state of being is the five-star resort where you're laying on your ass all day, having your, you know, being waited on being catered to you want for nothing. Everything's great, but we are too powerful for that. We are expressions of source that creative energy. We're not creating when we want for nothing. Well, how do we want for something? Davi Strickel (01:11:00.245) projecting into a physical environment that is not perfect. is absolutely polarized, acquiring this ego, this, this, you know, physical aspect that has desires and fears and all these emotions and absolutely obstacles to overcome. So when we take that eternal source perspective and sort of look back, I call this zooming out and, and look back at our human lives without judgment. understanding that, this little human life right now seems like everything to us, but our eternal state, it's nothing. It's a grain of sand in an ocean. It's a weekend trip. And if we come and we have bad experiences from the eternal perspective, it's no big deal. In fact, for most of us, once we have overcome the judgment of the bad things that happen, it's no big deal. Things that we suffer in one day, two days later, it seemed like nothing because our vibration has shifted. The things that we latch onto and say were traumatic and awful and terrible. And, my God, you don't understand. We all have some of those, but it's our perspective that continues to make them that way until we detune them. There's another new word for everybody. And I know you read that a lot in the book detune. I say detune and not eradicate because to expect to eradicate, being abused as a child or something that traumatic. Is you're setting yourself up for failure. You're not just going to flip a switch and decide, okay I'm just going to decide today that that's okay. You know, I was raped as a child and that's okay Well, no, of course you're not going to do that. You're going to do some work. You're going to detune You're going to soften the the judgment of it for yourself It's not about letting the in this extreme example that I just gave the perpetrator off the hook at all It's about letting yourself off the hook allowing yourself to not be in the victim space anymore allowing yourself just to be at peace with, this is something that I experienced. The world tells me it was terrible and awful and then I was a victim and I'll be scarred for life. But what if I'm not, what if I'm okay today? What if that hasn't happened again? Or what if I could have the power to not have things like that happen and have the power to really, when I reflect on that, not be triggered all the way down my spiral to just feeling this intense despair because it was such a horrible event. Davi Strickel (01:13:14.197) What if I just take on more of that eternal source perspective of, this is just a weekend trip. And this belief system is something that I've created for myself. What if I just shift my beliefs and what if I work on this over time so that little by little day by day, this just becomes more of who I am that I'm at peace with this. And I'm appreciating that I came here to have this collection of experiences. And maybe some of mine were really crappy and in the really crappy ones, if nothing else, I know what it's like. I know what it's like to have experienced. can empathize with someone else and be supportive without dragging them down into that victim space that, it's okay. We survived it. You know, we survived that we can't go back and change it, but we can change how we feel about it today. And what starts happening is because we're perceiving linear time. You've mentioned quantum quantum physics. And of course, when we go through the near death experience, we're sort of disconnecting from linear time into that quantum reality. where yeah, our most recent thing that we're still tied to is our life and the whole thing is showing up at once. my God, how did I just, I just became aware of my entire life in an instant because we were disconnecting from our physical reality and then we come back and we come back and we tell that story over and over again. So what if I take that eternal perspective that not only this lifetime, but all my lifetimes are out there and I become fully aware and my mind can, or my consciousness can handle that. at that level and that all of these things that I've encountered are okay. I was told in one of my psychic visits that I was a seer in multiple lifetimes. This is before I was told that I was a channel. I was told I was a seer and I was this very special individual who was a seer and that I was a seer who was a woman in ancient Egypt and I was thrown off a cliff for my abilities because they wanted to do away with me because I could see things and I have no recollection of that. To this day, I can't tell you that's absolutely true, but it explained why I have an irrational fear of ledges. To this day, I have this unrational fear of ledges. So I connected those dots in my mind and I realized, well, I was executed and it's no big deal now. So what if I just take on that perspective of things that have happened in this lifetime? You know, if that really happened and it kind of made sense to me that maybe that really happened because all my life I have this weird, if I'm in a, you know, tall building and there's a floor to ceiling window, I feel like I'm going to be sucked over the edge. Davi Strickel (01:15:41.119) It's irrational. I know it's not going to happen, but it freaks me out anyway. Where did that come from? This person didn't know that about me. That makes perfect sense. I love to connect these dots. So what if I just take that perspective and bring it into this lifetime that, okay, this bad thing happened and I can judge it differently. I can detune the judgment around it. I can detune. This should not be, shouldn't have happened. Do away with all of that and say, Hey, I survived it. And now I know what it's like. And then when you go there, you're moving up vibrationally on the topic and then you'll get additional clarity. this makes sense now. And now I see that I'm a stronger, wiser person and having the experience. And when we think of source as a nonjudgmental entity who is allowing us to come and have our experiences, I'm completely at peace with that. Now I don't think, there can't be a God because bad things happen to good people all the time. They do. They do. But obviously this brand of God that we've all been sold that God is going to judge us if we don't do these things that please him and don't behave in a way that pleases the church, you know, or whatever that is that we're not being punished for those things after life. You know, we create our own punishments in our lives and very often these punishments are our own creation and how we feel about ourselves in the world. And then we create that reality and that's great news because then we can change it. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:17:07.052) Yeah, so I'm reflecting on some of the things that you said, and they're very important mindsets or practices or tools and the wisdom that you just communicated. And so one of them is about the power of the now that does exist, right? Like our minds so easily can go back into the past and try to relive that and judge that experience. And it can create an emotional state of shame and guilt and all those low vibrational states. same, we can go kind of go in the future and create a reality in which we're rejected or harmed or shamed or whatever that may be. And that pulls us away from just being in the now. So you've mentioned, you know, the value of appreciation and gratitude and that mindset. And, you know, we're talking now about, you know, being fully, you know, in the present, in the now, which has its connections to mindfulness practices and other things. But there's a part of the practice that I want to make sure that we talk about. know we can't go through everything in the book and I'm going to encourage people to read it themselves, but this aspect of intention, intentionality and how critical that is. Davi Strickel (01:18:10.677) Yeah, there's four pillars to tie up. And one is source, which we've talked about what sources one is polarity. We've talked about the vibrational spiral and what that is. the, the fourth pillar, the third pillar there's gosh, there's source, there's polarity. there is also, just vibrational flow. And then there is intention. So the intention piece is very important because when you're systematically raising your vibration, you're meditating, you're appreciating things. You're starting to see things differently. Those first three pillars do that for you. Then it kind of becomes, what do you want to experience? Because we do have things that we want to experience. And I don't believe there's any wrong experience in life. Anything that you want, there's nothing wrong with wanting material things. I always just say, become joyful without that. And then notice how much easier that flows in once you know how to be joyful without it. But the intention part is I'm here to expand my consciousness and that's going to happen no matter what. We can sit on the sofa with a bag of chips and binge on TV for our entire life. And we're going to create an expansive experience somehow, probably through health issues of nothing else. So if we're going to expand no matter what, and we're getting the keys to the universe, you know, we're, waking up and we're becoming so wise collectively to all these things that what do we want to experience? How do we want to expand? That's why I love the practice because we're not running from negative things. Yes. I believe when you raise your vibration, you have fewer obstacles and you solve them more efficiently, but really geeking out on the solving of the obstacle that, okay, I manifested my house burning down. What's in this for me. And I'm not kidding. When the house burned down, I was sitting in my driveway, watching a house that I had just spent six months remodeling being torn apart by the fire department, having to rip off the ceiling and the roof to put the fire out. So the whole thing didn't burn down. And I did not think this is so bad. This is so terrible. Why me that never even entered my mind. I just sat there and thought, okay, this is what we're doing now. Alice is burning down. The dogs are in the car. My partner's mother is being whisked off to the ER and she died four days later. So it wasn't less, you know, fairy tale story. you know, this is what we're doing now. This is what we're experiencing. And you know, the year we're going coming up on two years now, and I'm just about to move back into the house. It's been quite a journey. Davi Strickel (01:20:33.003) But it didn't start with, this is terrible and awful. And it's so wrong. And you know, how could this be? And all of that stuff, I have done enough work now to where I'm able to meet something like that. And that really shocked me that because that was a big thing that happened in my life when I was pretty deep into my practice. And it really shocked me that I was able to just meet it in clarity. wouldn't say joy, but just such clarity that, okay, this is the, this is the phase that I'm moving into. This is what we're experiencing. And, watch my partner whose mother lived in a wing of our home with, you know, home health care. she died four days later as a result of the evacuation and she died on Christmas Eve. And the amazing thing to me was he is not terribly deep into this practice. Read the book. We talk about it all the time. He's not a geeking out on tie other way that I do. And that's completely fine with me. I'd rather he not actually, I get to, I get to clock out and not talk about this, you know, at home. But what I loved about, he had picked up enough of this mindset and through his own work, because he's a psychologist as well. he was happy that his mother died on Christmas Eve because he's a, that was a very special day for her. And now it's her special day that she crossed over again. He could have gone down the, my God, Christmas is ruined forever. What a horrible thing that his mother died alone in a nursing facility. my gosh. It's such a tragedy. And she wasn't there when she passed. He'd come home for the back to the hotel where we were staying for the night, went back and she was already gone. He chose not to go down that this is wrong. This is terrible. Should not, because he knew it wasn't good for him. And it was certainly wasn't going to change her experience. He chose the, special it was that she crossed over on a special day. I was amazed by that. I'm crying. Just talking about it. It's incredible. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:22:23.224) I have one final question for you. I've kept you a while. Davi Strickel (01:22:25.663) Now that I have tears. Yes. Let's wrap up. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:22:30.829) There are likely people listening now that may be religious, more specifically Christian. Of these teachings, are there similarities with the New Testament and Jesus' core messages? I think I have an idea of how, you know, the stream would, you know, communicate about, you know, organized religion and, you know, maybe some of the rules that have been developed over time. but are there, are there similarities, distinct differences when what would the stream say about organized religion? Davi Strickel (01:23:05.755) I will the stream would say that if you go back to the core teachings of Jesus, Jesus was channeling like we all channel. And Jesus was obviously a prolific channel and those teachings were taken and turned into other things. But the core teachings were faith and Taya is trust your abundance and abundance doesn't mean material abundance necessarily trust that you're going to be okay. Trust that you're going to experience a good life. Trust that you're going to be joyful. Even if you're not now. So trust, have come to understand in the streams teachings, the most important word in the English language is trust, trusting the universe, trusting your worthiness, that trust. That's what TIA stands for T Y a trust your abundance. So that aligns very much with faith, faith that the universe is abundant, faith in God, faith that you'll always be okay. Faith that even when you falter, you are going to be forgiven. That's that going back up your spiral. that that what no matter what you do, that you can always your vibe is always going to go back up. We've just changed the language a little bit and we've changed the language because you want to know specifically about religion that that that Christ message and there's been many others of course has been co-opted and turned into a religion and assigned a set of rules and we all know if you study a little bit of biblical history that all of those rules tend to support commerce. and the expansion of a specific religion or a specific mindset. I call all that the matrix and I don't demonize the matrix. I look at religion to this day and say, I think that does a lot of good things for a lot of people. Where we get a little sideways is where my religion is the right religion and I'm going to force you to believe the way that I believe to the point if you don't, I'm going to kill you because we know there's a lot of that history in Christianity. I'm going to also get very political because I'm with the laws to support my belief system. You know, that's where people get really turned off and every generation that we see is moving more and more, more away from organized religion because of that. I had the good fortune. I grew up in the first United Methodist church in Mendon, Louisiana in the seventies. My mother was not religious, but my grandmother was. She made us go to church every Sunday and it was fellowship. It was community. It was positive. It wasn't political. nobody was telling me I was going to burn in hell. Davi Strickel (01:25:27.389) It was a very positive, beautiful experience. I did that into my youth, youth group, teen years. And then when I started sort of, you know, coming to grasp with my homosexuality, I had to sort of really disconnect from that because it telling me who I was was wrong, even though it wasn't that preachy about it. My mother did find religion around that time. And she decided to become a Baptist, a Southern Baptist. And that was a whole different ball game. I was growing. It was right across the street. The two biggest buildings in town, first method is first Baptist. First Baptist though was a whole different thing. That was, you're going to burn in hell. You're all going to hell. You're going to, this is wrong and that is wrong and God's going to punish you. And, and I, that just turned me off so much. And I, didn't, I did not believe that, that there is a creative energy that's flowing through me that loves me. That's going to punish me for being what I obviously innately am, or have at least become in my human lifetime. I just didn't get that. And I hated myself for a while and I tried to pray the gay away and do all those things. And now I look back and think, gosh, you know, growing up in the south and a small town being gay was the best thing that ever happened to me because that led to me questioning everything. I don't necessarily just believe that I'm going to burn in hell because of this. don't necessarily just believe anything you're telling me because of this and what a gift that is to question. think everyone should question, but at the end of the day, understand that If you have a community and you have fellowship and you have teachings that you were giving power to that are helping you, how can that be bad? You know, the only time things get a little sideways is when we start needing everyone else to validate our beliefs and needing, you know, the government to validate our beliefs. you know, that's ego. That's not God. That's not Jesus. That's not source. You know, that, that fear that we're not going to get what we want. because the laws don't support it and we're not going to get what we want to experience in our lives because someone else is choosing to experience something different. That doesn't even logically make sense to me. And I haven't had that experience in my life. Everything has the power that you give to it. If you choose to give it power, then drink the Kool-Aid and give it power. But understand that it's your unique belief system and your unique experience that you're creating. These are all sets of tools, including what I teach is just a set of tools. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:27:41.484) Great. Thank you. Listen, this was an amazing conversation. Where can people find you, your work, how can they learn more about the Thai practice? Davi Strickel (01:27:51.329) we are the stream of David everywhere. the book is, and if you have video viewers, the tie up practices, the book, there is an audio book out now. so people that like listening to the podcast love the audio book. that's, that was a huge endeavor getting that done, but the audio book has been out for about a month is doing very well. So we have an audio book, a hardcover paperback Kindle version all on Amazon, the TYA practice, and then the website social media is all the stream of David. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:28:19.692) Great. David Strickle, I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Davi Strickel (01:28:26.209) Thanks for having me. do appreciate it.