How can we awaken to life as a continuous flow state? What is no-self & the Unborn? Can suffering be a fierce grace that wakes you up to the natural flow of redemptive love? Trigger Warning: we go DEEP on this one ๐Ÿ˜‚

Get Dr. Angelo DiLullo’s book on awakening, Awake: It’s Your Turn, here. Check out Angelo’s YouTube channel with excellent pointer videos here. Sign up for Angelo’s email list for future meditation retreats and updates here. And watch ALL of our videos on awakening with my fellow Dr. D here. Full transcript in the “transcript” tab below.

Topics covered: flow states in awakening, the Unborn and no-self, improv comedy and flow, why this pointing can destabilize some people, the singularity of non-dual experience, the hero’s spiritual journey, suffering and fierce grace, surrendered intention and bodhisattvas, authenticity and letting go of belief, emotion work, redemptive love, and of course COVID and glory holes ๐Ÿ˜‚

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– [Zubin] Angelo.

– [Angelo] Zubin.

– [Zubin] How are you?

– [Angelo] I’m doing well. How are you doing?

– I am well, as well. Your book, just so we get the pleasantries out of the way. “Awake: It’s Your Turn.” We’re talking about anything. We’re pointing to realization, awakening, this present moment.

– Mm.

– [Zubin] Unfiltered reality. We’ve been doing it now for… So, this is our sixth one we’re recording.

– Mm hm.

– So we’re in a bit of a flow.

– Yeah.

– [Zubin] We have no plan for this episode, so.

– [Angelo] No plan. It just comes out of spontaneity. Just like reality comes out of spontaneity all the time. Whether we know it or not.

– [Zubin] The reason I like live shows a lot is that it opens like a portal into nothing.

– Hm.

– I disappear and sometimes I’ll watch it back and be like, what did I even say during this? And occasionally it actually is transcendent.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] Other times it’s just blather, but-

– [Angelo] Flow state.

– [Zubin] It’s a flow state.

– Mm hm.

– Yeah. What is that? What is that authentic flow state?

– [Angelo] Well, I wanna hear you talk about it. Did you always have that with this live transmission? Or was it something that came recently?

– [Zubin] So when I started making videos, it was always pre-taped video.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And every time I would do it, it felt inauthentic. So it felt like a contrivance or a veneer or something not fully true to what it was I was trying to do. And I would watch it back and go, “Yeah, that’s not me really.” Then when Facebook started allowing live video or I would do a live show, like a talk, the contrast was instant. You just go, “Oh, no, that’s actually me talking.”

– Hm.

– Like, wow.

– [Angelo] Hm.

– [Zubin] And you feel in the real time, the audience, it’s a synchrony. And it happens through like, I can look at a lens and feel the presence of a live audience.

– Hm.

– [Zubin] It’s very intangible, but it opens that flow in a way that you can’t, it’s really hard to get just like talking to a wall or something.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] Yeah, so that’s my experience.

– [Angelo] It seems like it would make you want to do that more. After you started to have that access, did you do it pretty frequently or?

– [Zubin] So, it was one of those things where I almost wondered whether I was addicted to this feeling of flow, because it was so seductive that, and even now, like I have all this gear, right? All I have to do to go live to potentially thousands of people is click a few buttons, type up a description, take a quick thumbnail and go.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And so, there are times in the day when I’m just, I feel like it’s a pull. Like, I don’t even know what I’m gonna talk about. Just go live and see what happens. I do it for my Supporters a lot.

– Mm hm.

– And it’s always, I always come away going, “What just happened? That was just, I wasn’t even there.”

– [Angelo] You know what I’m picking up? Maybe it’s like extreme sports, people who say they do like rock climbing without ropes and that sort of thing. I’ve read that they say they have to have so much focus that their mind calms way down. It’s like they’re extremely present in the senses because they can’t afford to kinda get distracted or start mind wandering because every move they make could be the last.

– [Zubin] Fatal. You saw, what was the documentary about the guy who free climbed El Capitan in-

– [Angelo] I didn’t see it.

– [Zubin] “Free,” it’s called “Free…” I forget it now.

– [Angelo] It might be called “Free Climb.”

– [Zubin] It was something like that. It was “Free,” “Free Willy” or something.

– [Angelo] Mm hm, well, I was thinking of “The Alpinist,” not to be confused with… There is a recent one that came out on Netflix called “The Alpinist.”

– [Zubin] “The Alpinist,” it’s just sounded dirty-

– Alpinist?

– When you said it. I dunno what it is.

– Alpinist, yeah.

– Alpinist, yeah, yeah.

– Yeah.

– [Zubin] Oh, I haven’t seen that one. Yeah, this one was called “Free whatever.” But you got the sense that this kid enters, it’s like a absolute presence. And when it’s not right, he knows it.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] So the first time he attempted it, he got up a fair way and he was like, this isn’t it.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] ‘Cause his life’s on the line.

– Mm hm.

– And so he had to back out of that spot.

– Wow.

– [Zubin] You may not get to do it again that year. Like the conditions have to be just right and so on. But he knew, he was like, “This is not it.”

– [Angelo] Hm, so what is a flow state?

– [Zubin] Hm. For me, it’s an absence… It’s an absence of any pre-planning discursive thought. So, I’m not thinking about anything in that moment. Things are just happening.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And they’re happening in a way that it has a tone to it, of this is right.

– [Angelo] Yeah, it’s like tuned with synchronicity to the environment.

– Yes.

– Right?

– Yes.

– There’s no gap.

– Nothing.

– Has a feeling of closeness, no gap, spontaneity. And it has a simplicity to it.

– [Zubin] It’s so simple that you think you’re getting away with something.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] Like when I do a live show and then people watch it, I’m always just like, “I got away with murder ’cause I had no plan and I was just talking.”

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And yeah, it’s that simple.

– [Angelo] Hm, that’s awesome.

– [Zubin] Is that how you… ‘Cause I notice when I watch your videos, you don’t plan any of them. They’re coming from nowhere.

– [Angelo] That’s exactly what it’s like. There’s not even, there’s no self-reflection at all. So it’s very hard to talk about. There are sort of stages to the dropping away of self or distancing and so forth. And one of them it’s almost like you drop away and there’s just the environment-

– Hm.

– You could say. That would be, I would say more like a flow state. Then there’s another layer that drops away where the whole environment drops away.

– [Zubin] Wait, what? So how does?

– [Angelo] There’s just no environment. So it becomes literally impossible to talk about. And now, that’s always the case. That’s always the case. It’s the most obvious thing. It’s more obvious than the sun. It’s more obvious than looking right at the sun. That’s how obvious that is. There’s no word for it. There’s no way to talk about it. There’s terms for it, cessation, or you could call it the unborn, or there’s these like spiritual terms. But even those, they’re just words. So, that’s always there. That’s always here. It’s always here for you, too. It’s always here for everyone, but there’s no one it’s here for because the everyone, the sense of being a someone, a person, an entity standing apart from reality is what actually filters the ability to experience it. So the sense of being an experiencer actually prevents you from experiencing it. It’s very paradoxical. So that’s always there. That doesn’t come and go. It doesn’t even matter if this body dies away, it won’t come and go. It’s the most obvious thing. So, it’s the most obvious thing, and it’s also as obvious as every thing in front of your face. It’s obvious in the solidity and what’s not there that appears to be solidity. So it’s everything you hear and everything you don’t hear. Everything you see and everything you don’t see. Everything you taste and everything you don’t taste. And they’re overlapped on to one another, those paradoxical experiences. So, it’s just a sort of matrix of paradox. Not in time, not in space. That’s always happening. That’s realization. And then, also, there’s an ability to… Come forward from that, as that, never not being that, as a sense of a self, a sense of a person, a sense of an environment. And it’s almost like an outcropping of that unbound, unmanifest reality and that… And it sort of stands out and expresses itself momentarily and then it disappears into nothingness. And it’s happening all the time. That’s what’s happening for everyone. Why I know that I don’t… I can’t tell you why I know that, I don’t know where these words come from, but it’s very obvious. Yeah, and so, there’s a flexibility to it. There’s a fluidity to the expression of it. So it’s very easy to experience all levels of, you could say identity. It’s easy to experience the identity the way the thoughts see it; as separation, as a distinct entity, but it doesn’t mean it’s real. It’s an appearance. And then, even the physical, the physicality that is non-dual, and non-separated, non-sectioned, not bound by space, not bound by distance, there’s no in front of or behind, the physical manifestation of this, even that it seen to be an appearance. And that can also just come forth as it’s doing right now as what seems like this environment. So when you’re in a flow state, what’s happening probably for most people is the egoic mind is calming down a lot. The thoughts are just calming so much that the sense of being separate from the environment is sort of dissolved out. So, it’s sort of moving as an environment and it feels very natural. Like it feels natural alive, but underlying that there’s another layer that is not even manifest. It’s not even anything. But it’s not nothing. It’s not in the category of everything and nothing.

– [Zubin] Even as you point to it, it’s there.

– [Angelo] Mm hm, yeah, yep. And this is very direct pointing. I don’t do this all the time. As you know, I always consider the audience, how it’s gonna affect people, ’cause this can be really destabilizing for some people. And for other people they’re like, “Whoa, that’s really, really cool. And I totally get it.” And it can also just depend on the momentary conditions. The same person can hear it one time and it’s blissful or something, and then they can hear it again and it’s like really triggering. So, I’m careful how-

– Dysphoric.

– [Angelo] Dysphoric, yeah. And either way is fine.

– [Zubin] Mm hm.

– [Angelo] It doesn’t mean anything went wrong, so I’m careful when and how I talk this directly just because I, again, I can’t disconnect myself from the relative, how that affects people hearing it, so.

– Yeah.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And again…

– [Angelo] And you asked me, by the way, to talk this directly.

– Yes.

– [Angelo] And I’m always like, “Are you sure you want me to?”

– [Zubin] Yeah, I mean, I can-

– [Angelo] I would do this at a retreat.

– [Zubin] And so, that’s exactly what I was just gonna mention is we’ve been talking now together for a couple days straight about lots of different things on different levels of relative and absolute and so on. And it feels energetically to me like we’re on day four of retreat. So everything is kind of has a palpable presence and energy to it. And when you point that directly, I’m in that emptiness with you and the world is manifesting from it.

– Yeah.

– It feels like that.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] When I’m in flow state, when I do a show, the closest I get is I am the environment. And that in itself can be disorienting-

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] Because we’re so conditioned to feel like we need thought to control how we project ourselves to the world. And if we let that sense of control drop, we’re vulnerable.

– Mm hm.

– We’re helpless in a way. And I’ve felt that on camera.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] When I allow that to happen, I’m like very quickly, my mind comes back and says, “Dude, there’s a lot of people watching,” but then if you read the comments, they’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening now, but you’re in some kind of state.”

– Mm hm.

– Like people pick it up.

– [Angelo] Mm hm. You know, we were talking about improv before.

– [Zubin] Yeah.

– [Angelo] When improv works well, that’s what it’s like, it’s a flow state. So the people who are doing it are so focused on the building of the storyline with the other players or the external environment that they’re creating out of nothing that they’re not internal. And you can tell it, you can feel it. And sometimes the funniest stuff’ll happen. Just like hilarious, hilarious stuff. And you’ll ask ’em afterwards or you’ll comment, “Wow, that was awesome. You’re so good at that.” And they’ll be like, “I don’t know. When it’s happening, I don’t know what I’m saying.” And you’re like, “Really?” And they’re like, “No, I really don’t know.” And I know that too, because I’ve been in that with improv before as well. I’m not great at it, but I’ve been there where it’s like, it takes on a life of its own. It’s like the environment starts doing the improv and that’s the enjoyment of doing improv actually is you give yourself to it that way.

– [Zubin] Yeah.

– [Angelo] And it does create a sort of flow state, like a sort of group flow state.

– [Zubin] And that may be why improv is so scary for a lot of people. Like the first time I did it really, I mean, I do it kind of as part of what I do. If I ever am doing anything, it’s kind of making stuff up and I’m in a flow state when I do it, but the formal practice of that, like here’s a premise, here’s it, go, was at your retreat and I was absolutely terrified. And I think part of it was that sense of control. Like there’s a piece of like, no, no, no, but now I have to somehow craft this improv. Like, I’m gonna have to think about what I’m gonna say. And the truth is that’s not it.

– Yeah.

– It just drops. And you’re there because you’re so present.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And there’s not even really that sense of you. Things just seem to happen. And every time we’ve done one of these episodes in the last couple days, afterwards we’re like, “What did we really just talk about?” Yeah, I know.

– [Zubin] Don’t even know what we just said.

– Yeah.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] But you can feel it. You can feel it.

– You feel, yeah.

– [Angelo] Oh yeah, that’s gonna hit.

– [Zubin] You feel it, yeah.

– [Angelo] Yeah, I wanna point out, I love these conversations because this stuff just comes up organically, but I’ll point out a distinction for anyone watching this that we’ve sort of come up with in this conversation that is, can be helpful. It’s actually a subtle distinction, but it’s experientially very different. And that is between the sort of expansive state of consciousness or the sort of flow state where the whole environment seems to be acting, and paradoxically, logically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but what’s just beyond that, the sort of next stage of clarity, let’s say, of realization, is when there’s no environment. That what seems like the external environment is actually created by the mind and you usually enter this next sort of stage through that expansive stage, but this isn’t expansive, it’s intimate. It’s like almost like the whole of reality collapses down into this one, singular moment; one sensation, one word, one sound, one movement. And there’s not an expansive world out there. It’s everything right here. And it feels more real in a very natural way than anything could, yeah?

– [Zubin] Yeah, that’s-

– [Angelo] Isn’t that crazy? That’s very clear non-dual. When non-duality is very, very clear, it’s not an expansive world. It’s drops right down into a sort of like a singularity.

– Hm.

– But again, these words are really not helpful because it’s not a singularity at one point in space, ’cause there’s not space. Space collapses down into just a knowing of radical intimacy or interconnectedness. These words are very, really wonky here, but you damn well know it when it’s touched into.

– [Zubin] When I watch my mind and I’m talking to you now, it wants to ask you questions like, “Well, what do you mean by space and time?” And there’s a knowing that’s clear as day that that’s useless.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] Like that’s the mind doing what the mind does. And I can ask you all these intellectual questions about what you’re pointing at, or I can feel exactly what you’re pointing at.

– Mm hm.

– Which is beyond that. You can’t conceptualize it in that way.

– [Angelo] Yeah and what you’re saying is really important, not just for the context of we’re doing an interview or recording a show, but someone who is actually dropping into this kind of intimacy notice the mind does have that tendency. It’ll actually try to stand back a little bit and take notes. It’ll say, “Oh, what is this like? How do I get back to this? How am I gonna tell my friends about it? How am I gonna go tell my spiritual friends about this thing that happened?” That’s what your mind will be doing.

– Yeah.

– And it’s totally fine. That’s not where we’re pointing. Notice that that is causing the expansiveness, that’s causing the standing apartness, that’s causing the perceptual distance to make this into a perception or make it into an experience and just see what’s there when that stops. That’s what we’re talking about.

– [Zubin] There’s nothing to say.

– [Angelo] Nothing to say.

– [Zubin] I could see my mind saying, “You better say something, you’re recording a show.”

– Right?

– Isn’t that interesting?

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] So, I’ll say something. Why is this destabilizing for some people?

– [Angelo] Interestingly, this isn’t so much.

– [Zubin] Hm.

– [Angelo] Once you’ve gotten to this place of sort of radical intimacy, it’s very warm. It’s not the expansive mind blowing Samadhi state, it’s not a mystical state, it’s super, super familiar.

– [Zubin] Hm.

– [Angelo] It’s familiar from even before this body was born. It’s that kind of familiarity, yeah?

– Hm.

– Right, so from there, it’s actually not destabilizing for anyone ’cause everyone knows this. It’s the journey to get here that can be destabilizing because you have to let go of lot of what you think you are-

– Hm.

– To find out, and not to find out, but to remember what really is. And this is what really is. So, it’s sort of the journey that’s uncomfortable. You know, the hero journey; you start at the home, you gotta leave your house. You gotta leave the comfort of your home. You gotta go out there and whatever you do, slay the dragons and all that, you know, whatever your hero journey is. But ultimately it’s not about slaying dragons or taking a journey, it’s about seeing, feeling, and experiencing things that you would rather not see, feel or experience. It’s about doing some work, being a little uncomfortable, being a lot uncomfortable at times.

– A lot uncomfortable, yeah.

– Yeah, at times. It’s about getting outta your comfort zone. It’s about a lot of things. It’s about inquiry. It’s about surrendering to truth. It’s about a lot of things, but that’s the journey. That’s the part that’s uncomfortable. And if you’re comfortable in your house and your feet are up by the fire and you don’t know there’s a journey to take out there. In fact, you don’t know there’s an out there ’cause your home is your mental world. And then someone ties up their monster truck to a chain onto the side of your house and pulls the wall off your house. And then you kind of fall out the side of your house and you see what’s out there suddenly and you didn’t know that was gonna happen. That’s destabilizing, right? And that’s what can happen when you point in a very direct way and someone doesn’t really expect it. They don’t know what they’re gonna experience when you do it. They’re like, “Oh, this is dumb. I don’t understand this.” And they’re like, “Wait, whoa, whoa, what just happened?” And they feel something drop out, drop away, identity starts to shift. That’s really, it can be kind of scary and stuff, but ultimately it’s just an experience. Destabilization, fear, all that, it’s experiential, it’ll go away. And then you have a choice, you know? You can run back into your house or you can get out there and see what’s going on, you know?

– [Zubin] And there isn’t a wrong choice. It’s just, what is, whatever you choose. Depends on, yeah.

– [Angelo] And there really isn’t a wrong choice. I have no personal judgment about it because it’s a lot about timing and you know, I always think it’s interesting, like my book, some of the reviews occasionally will get comments and you’re gonna get comments on these videos that are like, “This is total mumbo-jumbo. This makes no sense.”

– Yeah.

– “It’s nonsense.”

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] And I don’t take any offense at all. What I hear is, it just doesn’t make sense to you right now. But what I don’t know and what you actually don’t know, it might make sense to you in six months. You never know, you never know what’ll happen in your life. And sometimes it’s a seed that got planted and your mind just went, “Nah, that’s silly, nonsense,” whatever. And all of a sudden, it just clicks into place months or years later. So you really don’t know, no one really knows. And you can be the most skeptical, cynical person in the world. I was when I was younger. You can still wake up for sure. And so, sometimes you just gotta hear it the right way at the right time or get through the fear barriers or conditions just have to line up. And unfortunately, sometimes it happens through tragedy. I mean, a lot of people who I come in contact with have gone through really, really heavy stuff; losing loved ones, very, very serious life threatening medical issues, childhood traumas, these types of things tend to… They don’t necessarily put you on the path of this process, but they make it very appealing if you come across it. ‘Cause it’s like, well, why not?

– [Zubin] Yeah.

– [Angelo] My life has been nothing but pain or largely painful, why wouldn’t I dig in and see if there’s a place of less suffering? So, yeah, a lot of times it’s tragedy that kind of pushes you over the edge. It happens through fierce grace, let’s say.

– [Zubin] That fierce grace, you see that so often that the things you think are actually very bad from the standpoint of any rational human’s mind are actually a kind of grace because suffering itself is a grace. And you’ve talked about this, that allows you to feel that friction of wait, is there something underlying this? How can this be that this is the innate human state of friction and suffering and resistance and so much pain? That actually prompts the diving under it to see what’s really going on.

– [Angelo] Mm hm. And you have far more power than you realize.

– [Zubin] How so?

– [Angelo] I don’t mean power to manifest and make your life the way you want it and all that. What I mean is when you take up an investigation of truth and you’re willing to let go of your own preconceptions that turn out to be false, and you’re willing to be uncomfortable, it’s powerful. It’s a very, very powerful orientation. More powerful than actually anyone would realize. You’re just coming into contact with forces that are beyond you. And it will be at times sublime. If that’s what you’re interested in, you’re in the right place.

– Dude.

– If you’re not, go do something else.

– [Zubin] And that’s cool.

– [Angelo] Go read “The Secret.”

– [Zubin] Go read “The Secret.”

– [Angelo] Sorry, I don’t mean to bag on The Secret.

– [Zubin] No, no, my old producer, Tom Hinueber, used to use secret as a verb. He’s like, “I’m gonna go secret me some money.” Like, I can just manifest it.

– [Angelo] Yeah, well we secreted of us some good Japanese food last night?

– [Zubin] We sure did.

– [Angelo] That was good.

– [Zubin] So, actually to follow up on that. We did secret some good. I also secreted some good Japanese food in the morning. There was a saying in “The Three Pillars of Zen,” the book that you referenced as one of reading the stories of people who woke up, the real personal stories of people that gave you the window that this is something that can happen. In that book also was I think Philip Kapleau Roshi, who wrote the book, was telling his own story. And he said, “I talked to a friend and he said, Look, I’m desperately trying to get kensho and wake up and this and that.” And the guy goes, “Listen, man, when you’re on this path, when you’re earnest, bodhisattvas, meaning people who’ve kind of dedicated themselves to helping other people wake up for simplistic sakes, they pop up everywhere, all around you. And I can tell you this is absolute truth. If you are really interested in this, if this like, what we’re talking about resonates with you on some instinctual level or other level, and you say, “This is what I want to explore,” you will find help. And you won’t even know where it’s coming from.

– [Angelo] It’ll surprise you. We were talking about this last night with your life, right? Let’s talk about your life, but they are already there. The sign posts are there, the bodhisattvas are already in your life. And once you start to orient, you start to actually look back and realize like, wait a minute, you know? Like we were talking about, even your wife has been a guidepost for you.

– [Zubin] She’s the key bodhisattva.

– [Angelo] The people you’ve met all these, and they’re right there. And they don’t even need to tell you about it. They just, you know, life is so funny this way, right? Events, situations, often the ones you think are the worst thing that ever happened to you, ends up being the best teacher. People you’re close to, the challenging person at work. Like really when you orient to truth and you’re willing to be open to the lessons that can come from anywhere, you’ll be very surprised where they come from, and who’s coming to your aid and what’s coming to your aid.

– [Zubin] And I wanna actually clarify this for me, because what you’re saying, what you’re pointing to, is not, oh, just reframe your thinking to the positive. Like take the same cognition that you’re using to think about everything and just reframe it as positive. Like that tragedy was actually an opportunity. That’s not really what you’re saying, I think-

– [Angelo] Yeah, I’m not saying that.

– [Zubin] I think what you’re saying is, and tell me if I’m wrong or elaborate on this, what you’re saying is trust life 100% to do what it does.

– Mm hm.

– Because your illusion that you’re an agent of your life and all of this is not what you think. And by truly trusting life, surrendering to it, those people and events in your life that you were like, you had these stories about, it turns out that’s not what was happening.

– Mm hm.

– It’s this. And everything that’s happening is happening.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And that’s it. And it’s perfect as it is. And when you orient to truth to that, then the bodhisattvas are seen for what they are.

– Mm hm.

– They’re there waking you up.

– Absolutely.

– Life is waking you up.

– [Angelo] Yeah, when you attune to truth, to life in the way we’re talking about, it’s really in a simple statement it’s saying, I’ve come to the realization that I am not… I’ll put it in my friend, Paul Hederman’s terminology, “I’m not management material.” And when I try to control my life and I try to control things, I suffer. I can convince myself I’m in control until something shows me I’m not. That’s why tragedy often does this, ’cause tragedy is the ultimate smack in the face to say, “you really weren’t in control.” It’s not mean, it’s just true.

– Hm.

– Yeah. It’s actually giving the reins over to life and saying, “okay, I trust you. Show me. I’m willing to learn, I’m willing to see, I’m willing to open, I’m willing to let go. Show me what’s real. That’s all I want is what’s real. All I want is to know, feel and live what’s actually real.”

– [Zubin] Mm.

– [Angelo] These are powerful intentions if you make that kind of intention, a surrendered intention, again, you will see. It’s not like life comes to your aid. Life has always been there for your aid. It’s always been there to wake you up.

– Hm.

– But you’ve been fighting it.

– [Zubin] And that fighting, that’s beautiful, by the way. That fighting, when you talk about surrendered intention, like show me truth. Do you really mean it?

– Hm.

– [Zubin] Like what part of you is resisting that? What part of you is afraid? What part of that is afraid of the loss of control? And it often is a big part.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] It’s a big part of the mind that does that. So you may think you’ve surrendered to truth, but in reality, you’ve surrendered to truth as far as if I can get to an unbound consciousness state where my identity is now unlimited awareness, that’s pretty cool.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] I think I’ll surrender that far. And any further surrender, that’s too much surrender.

– [Angelo] Mm hm, yeah, once you’ve gotten to that point, the risk of trying to fight the system, trying to fight the progress of what’s happening, it goes up.

– Ah.

– [Angelo] Like it’s much more painful.

– [Zubin] Yeah.

– [Angelo] The farther goes, the less you wanna fight this.

– The resistance is-

– Yeah.

– [Zubin] Not just futile.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] It generates pain, suffering.

– [Angelo] It really does. For you and even others-

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] Around you will see it, they’ll notice it. It stands out. So, the other thing I wanted to point out though is, you mentioned that it’s not just a one time thing and that’s true. It’s like authenticity. Authenticity is not something you just decide one day I’m gonna be authentic and then from then on you’re completely 100% authentic. That’ll almost never happen. It could happen, but it’s unlikely. What mostly happens is you become a little more authentic and then you realize like, oh my God, I’m so inauthentic in so many other ways. And you’re like, I have to be emotionally authentic now. And then you go in there. And then I have to be energetically authentic about what’s real and what’s not real, and what I believe and what I don’t believe. And I’m gonna disappoint people by being honest, like that kind of authenticity? Yes, that kind of… And it just goes deeper and deeper and deeper until you come to this place of this amazing equanimity. But you’ve gotta go through that process.

– [Zubin] Ah.

– [Angelo] You gotta just keep digging, keep digging.

– [Zubin] Onion layers.

– [Angelo] Onion layers, and this is like that. This kind of orientation to truth. It’s at first, you’ll say, oh yeah, I wanna orient. Of course I want truth. And then you’ll start to realize like, oh my gosh, what I think truth is, is a bunch of beliefs that make me feel better. So when I let go of those beliefs, am I gonna feel worse?

– Hm.

– Well, I might, but I don’t know. So now I’m facing the unknown by letting go of beliefs, but now I know that’s what truth is. Truth is not in a bunch of beliefs. It’s not in a bunch of thoughts. It’s something deeper. It’s more of an instinct. So when I start to follow that thread of my instinct down into the depths, what am I gonna find? I don’t know what I’m gonna find, and that becomes viscerally scary at times.

– [Zubin] Yeah, yeah.

– [Angelo] And at other times it’s totally exhilarating and-

– It’s a release.

– Like a wild. Yeah, it’s a release. It’s the call of the wild in a way, right?

– Mm hm.

– When you start to go through the actual body, not the mind, but the body, identification with the body, that’s when you get these wild heart openings and you feel the suffering of the world. And yeah, so that’s a different layer of truth that you’re starting to orient toward. And it just keeps going.

– [Zubin] I’ve touched into some of those effects and I’m there. If you just stopped there, you could easily say that was the most remarkable experience that I’ve had. And that’s just, again, it’s deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and it shows you. But sometimes you can bypass all those layers and see . And then come running back, right?

– Oh, yeah.

– Yeah.

– Oh, for sure.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] Again, it’s not a linear process.

– [Zubin] Right.

– [Angelo] So, go easy on yourself, give yourself… The hero doesn’t go out and bravely slay dragon after dragon. The hero goes out and then runs back in the house, and then hides behind a rock, and then runs out and pokes the dragon, and runs back. And it’s just how this is. It’s a, willy-nilly, topsy-turvy, crazy up and down roller coaster ride at times. But again, that orientation is powerful because it’s giving the reins over to life. And life already knows what to do. Life knows exactly how to wake you up.

– Hm.

– Knows what to do.

– [Zubin] Yeah, it’s a kind of deep trust that’s very hard. It’s very hard for professionals like us, actually, ’cause we are conditioned to not trust that things are gonna work out.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] We’re conditioned to make things work out.

– Yeah, we don’t-

– It’s on you.

– [Angelo] In a sense, it’s like we don’t trust the body. Right?

– Right. It’s gonna break.

– It’s gonna have disease processes, yeah.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] And we gotta fix that. And in the relative sense, sure, we do what we do, and we try to help people and all that. And that’s great. But that without the other side, without knowing the other side intimately, and the other side is, that actually everything’s okay all the time. It is, it really is. And to know that intuitively, deeply and pervasively, throughout all experience, then the relative, the challenge of helping someone who’s hurt or helping someone who has a medical illness, and then the psychological stuff that comes in with the challenges of communicating the plan and all of this stuff, the psychosocial stuff, the systematic stuff, all of those challenges that come in, they’re also okay. And you can navigate ’em so much better when it doesn’t feel like really like you’re at stake.

– [Zubin] Uh huh.

– [Angelo] ‘Cause it always comes back. Ego’s a homing pigeon, it always comes back to itself. It’s always we think we’re worried about the world and other people and all this stuff, but ultimately when there’s a lot of worry and doubt and all that, it’s always about us.

– Yeah.

– It’s always about our own, what it means to me, my family, my money, my job.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] When it’s someone else’s job, you don’t care. What do you care about the guy in Detroit who just lost his job? You don’t.

– Yeah.

– Right?

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] Do you care about his family? Maybe a little bit, maybe in theory you do, but not like you care about your own kids.

– [Zubin] Right.

– [Angelo] ‘Cause they’re yours, right?

– [Zubin] Ah.

– [Angelo] So, when those layers of identity fall out, you see so much more clearly what’s right in front of your face and you trust it fully. You trust that even mistakes that happen are perfectly okay. Even challenges, resistance patterns, your own self-judgment, emotional repression, the things that you have to come in contact with. When you come in contact with them from a place of deeply knowing they’re already okay. Then things integrate so much easier.

– [Zubin] What you’re pointing at is very hard for the mind to accept because we’re so conditioned to that things are not okay.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And the mind’s job is to try to put you on a path to make them okay.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] The mind is like an okay maker.

– Mm hm.

– But what’s interesting is when you do actually experience equanimity in the purest sense, like this is all perfect.

– Mm hm, mm hm.

– Not just okay. It is absolutely pristinely perfect. It doesn’t matter if there was a nuclear, like a mushroom cloud in front of me expanding. In that realization, it’s visceral. That’s fine.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] It’s such a huge contrast to how the mind sees, puts filters on that okayness.

– [Angelo] Yeah, the language we’re talking now or at least the vibe of the way we’re speaking in this part of the talk is we’re sort of speaking the language of emotion.

– Hm.

– [Angelo] And when I’m speaking this way, it has a different feel. It’s almost like it has a different set of rules.

– [Zubin] Hm.

– [Angelo] If you try to apply the rules of logic and mind to emotion, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s very wonky.

– Hm.

– [Angelo] Emotion’s almost, in a sense it’s almost black and white and binary. There’s either acceptance or resistance. And when there’s resistance, it’s turmoil. And then the mind, then often you find yourself in the mind, and then the mind, oh, I feel in control. I know what’s going on. And we go into distractions, we go into addictions, we go into justification. Like, you know what I mean, right?

– Yeah.

– ‘Cause the mind solidifies to keep you out of that emotional turmoil.

– [Zubin] Yeah.

– [Angelo] But if you can drop down into the emotion body in the way we’re doing, and you can look and see, oh, it’s actually quite binary. There’s either resistance or there’s a deep, profound, vulnerable, open acceptance.

– Hm.

– When there’s that acceptance, you know equanimity like that .

– Yeah.

– The mind takes time. The mind does everything in time. It takes a long time. You know, you gotta work through things. The emotion body’s not so much like that. It responds to love. It responds to unconditional love.

– [Zubin] Ah.

– [Angelo] And it can flip on a dime.

– [Zubin] And that unconditional love is pure acceptance of whatever is arising in the emotion body.

– [Angelo] Yeah, pure unconditional love isn’t human, necessarily. It’s not about human. It doesn’t care about your agendas. Unconditional love radiates out of life itself.

– [Zubin] Mm hm.

– [Angelo] It radiates as life itself. That’s the kind of love I’m talking about. And it is, it’s a full, absolute, complete acceptance of the fact that we’re even here at all. The fact that we’re even experiencing anything at all is sort of miraculous. And you can live in continuity with the knowing of that miraculous movement of life all the time.

– [Zubin] Is that what Adyashanti refers to as redemptive love?

– Absolutely, mm hm.

– Yeah, yeah.

– [Angelo] Redemptive love is like the way he describes it, I would defer to him for sure, but the way he describes it is nice because from the standpoint of the person who doesn’t wanna suffer, from the standpoint of the ego, from the standpoint of the identified mind, it’s torture, right? It’s the worst thing you wanna do is be forced down into the place you don’t want to go.

– [Zubin] Hm.

– [Angelo] From the standpoint of realization, it’s the most gentle, unconditional love. ‘Cause it’s going, come here, you’ve just gotta come. This is where you have to go. I know you don’t wanna go there. I know you’ve built layers of identity to not come down into this, but it’s okay. It holds your hand and it says, “Let’s go. It’s okay, we can come.” And then when you’re there, when you get down in there, it’s like, oh my God, why have I been running from this? You know? Yeah, it hurts. And yeah, it’s sad. And yeah, there’s grief and loss, but I’m so connect to all of it. It’s all perfectly okay.

– [Zubin] It’s all perfectly okay.

– Yeah, of course it is.

– Exactly.

– [Angelo] It’s natural.

– [Zubin] And that’s a visceral sense of love.

– Mm hm.

– Like not romantic love.

– Right.

– Not that human kind of love. You cannot put it in human terms easily at all. I felt it very deeply on retreat, like this just radiance of okay, acceptance. Any sensation that arises, that’s perfect. It’s beautiful. Come here. Like let me hold you.

– [Angelo] Yeah, embodied love.

– [Zubin] Embodied love, right.

– [Angelo] And so it might sound like a woo-woo thing to talk about, but there’s a lot of people who talk about self-love.

– [Zubin] Right.

– [Angelo] I think it can be very confusing because I think you can try to do it at a very intellectual level.

– Hm.

– [Angelo] Or up here more. But when you feel what we’re talking about, that kind of self-love, it’s not like I love myself as Angelo and all the things I think I know about myself. That is not what I’m talking about.

– [Zubin] Not even close.

– [Angelo] It’s the love of being alive.

– Mm hm.

– And it doesn’t matter if I’m a dog, cat, bird, tree or human, I’m happy to be a human in this body, but it’s a visceral knowing of aliveness that is intimate, wonderful, and really, again, kind of miraculous that there’s anything at all.

– Mm hm.

– Look at the Big Bang. How did that happen, where’d that come from? Who the hell knows, right? We’re gonna put up the telescope you were telling me about and look at-

– [Zubin] The James Webb.

– [Angelo] Yeah, look at the what? Thousand years after the Big Bang and see what a galaxy looks like before it formed. I don’t know how that works-

– Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

– [Angelo] There’s so much miraculousness in existence period, right? When you think about that, when you think about that the whole universe is based on indeterminacy. If you were able to get a microscope down far enough to see, you’d see particles and antiparticles coming into being out of absolutely nothingness and disappearing back into nothingness. And everything is that, right? That’s miraculous, right? That’s freaking amazing. So you can actually feel that miraculous, ecstatic coming into being as a physical entity. And it’s a feeling. Again, it’s a feeling.

– It’s a feeling.

– [Angelo] It’s not something you talk about to yourself or to anyone else.

– Yes, yes.

– [Angelo] It’s a knowing and so, that is what self-love is because when that’s the case, you’re perfectly comfortable in your own skin. You can sit alone, no distractions, no phone, no one around validating anything for you. You don’t need someone to come and make you feel loved. You feel love radiating as the environment. And that’s wonderful. That’s in one very real sense, from the standpoint of the emotion body, from redemptive love, from the standpoint of the manifest world itself, that’s enlightenment. It’s just being completely okay as a human, just as you are, nothing needs to be fixed or changed. You have flaws. You have miraculous aspects of animated beingness that play out as a human, but nothing needs to be changed. Nothing needs to be fixed. It’s perfectly okay. And you fully embody it. You’re not like expanding out into nothingness or something to avoid or transcend anything.

– [Zubin] No, it’s right here.

– Yeah.

– Yeah. It’s absolutely intimate.

– Yeah.

– [Zubin] Yes. And so… Someone had a question that they wanted me to ask you, which was, and I think it’s very related to this, like post-awakening, like you’ve had in awakening, this shift in identity, and realization is deepening. How do you live that? How do you reintegrate into what was life before with this new view or new standpoint of realization? And I think, I’ll let you speak to that.

– Mm hm.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] I could answer that in a lot of different ways.

– Right.

– I could come at it from different angles and it’s gonna depend on who I’m talking to, when they ask the question, and specifically what’s going on with them. Right, if it’s a very specific issue, we may talk about that directly or something. But as a general question, it’s very hard to say, because it’s different for everyone-

– Right, right, right.

– To be honest. There are some general broad brushstrokes I make. Like I have a small chapter at the end of the book that talks about this.

– [Zubin] Right.

– [Angelo] A lot of it’s what not to do. Don’t fight the process.

– Right.

– [Angelo] Yeah, don’t get in your head and decide what you think you’re enlightened life is gonna look like now. Don’t do that. Don’t don’t go, oh, I had this thing. So I must be a spiritual teacher. I’m gonna go out and do that. I don’t recommend it. Like, you can do whatever you want, but I don’t recommend that. Or being, oh, I’m gonna be a great musician, and I’m gonna liberate everyone through music. Like, don’t believe you’re gonna do something like that. And then talk yourself into it. Just live your life naturally. If you’re inclined to play music, play music, that’s fine. But people really get tripped up with that because they add a layer of spirituality to their identity.

– The story of enlightened-

– And then they’re kind of both fighting something and they’re trying to propagate it at the same. It’s a cognitive dissonance that gets set up. So, don’t worry about enlightenment. You don’t need to decide what enlightenment’s gonna do for you. You don’t need to decide how this process is gonna play out in your life and then try to direct your life that way. That will confuse you. This process doesn’t care what you think your life is supposed to do. It’s going to propagate itself. Just live your life in the way that makes the most sense. Be normal, be a normal person, take care of what’s in front of you. Take care of your family, take care of your responsibilities. If you feel moved to continue training in some area, do it. Go to college, like all the things, it’s fine. You don’t need to radically change your life. So, but most importantly, don’t take on an identity as someone who woke up. It’s just gonna cause you trouble.

– [Zubin] People around you will reflect that back to you when you fall into some of those pitfalls, don’t you think?

– [Angelo] Oh, for sure.

– [Zubin] They’ll call, they’ll say, “Dude, you’re a bigger asshole since you had your awakening than you are prior.” Or you’re such a jerk-

– Right.

– [Zubin] About this stuff, you’re so condescending about it. Zen stink or whatever it is. And that’s important to feel those reflections.

– [Angelo] Oh, for sure.

– Yeah, yeah, yeah.

– Yeah. Believe people when they tell you things like that. So, that’s what not to do. Like don’t take the awakening and solidify it into your own identity. This may not make a lot of sense if you’re hearing it and you’re not going through it, but if you’re going through it, it will make sense.

– It will, yeah.

– You’ll be like, oh yeah, I’m totally doing that.

– Yeah.

– Just don’t worry about it. And there’s a layer of grief that goes along with that. You have let go of the hope that you had before awakening that you’re gonna have some big transformation that’s gonna finally make you happy all the time.

– Ah.

– [Angelo] You have to let go of that nonsense.

– [Zubin] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

– [Angelo] Awakening did happen, but it’s not the way you think about it, ’cause you can’t think about what awakening is. It’s not knowable in that way.

– [Zubin] Mm hm.

– [Angelo] It’s beyond the dimension of the human mind. Period.

– Mm hm.

– [Angelo] So, trust it, let it continue, don’t get in its way to the degree you can, but definitely don’t purposely and knowingly co-opt the whole thing and try to turn it into you and your identity, right? It’s just not a good idea.

– [Zubin] Hm.

– [Angelo] So that’s one caution I would give people. Be open to looking into things you may need to do that are at work in the emotion body. You may or may not, but things like therapy may be helpful, different things. If you really feel a lot of stickiness around emotion, because when you shave off a huge layer of identity and after awakening that’s what’s happened, a lot of repressed material is just there. It’s gonna be there for almost everyone. Well, everyone’s gonna have some. Some people have a lot more and it’s endlessly distracting and it’s very painful. It’s hard to navigate. It’s very disorienting. Be willing to continue to do the work, emotion work, inquiry into beliefs, et cetera, like as my book talks about. Work with people who know how to help you with that or through that, including it could be circling therapy, working with someone who’s really good about talking about post-awakening stuff. There are resources, there’s plenty of resources out there. So, be willing to do some work. And a lot of it’s gonna be less where you want to do it and more where you don’t wanna do it. Where you wanna do it is, oh no, I just wanna sit down and meditate myself into nothingness. I wanna meditate myself until my mind expands into the whole universe and I disappear, right? That’s what you’re gonna kinda want to do.

– Yeah.

– But at this point, that’s not the point. At this point, that becomes kind of escapism. And what you really need to do and what will behoove you the most and what you will in the end be grateful you did is come down as Adyashanti talks about, come down and in. Start doing the emotion work.

– Hm.

– [Angelo] Start being real with yourself. However that happens, journaling, there’s so many ways to do it. But I see people who journal and they do really well. They’ll journal these long things and they really analyze their emotions and what’s actually motivating ’em and they’ll send it to me and they’ll be like, “wow, I don’t even need an answer. Just the fact that I wrote that out has been helpful.”

– [Zubin] That’s all, yeah.

– [Angelo] People that I see doing that actually do really well with this stuff.

– Ah.

– [Angelo] And they’re vulnerable and honest. They’re like, oh yeah, I can totally see my ego doing this. It’s my ego saying this, but my instinct says this, and I think that’s based on this emotion. And that kind of internal introspection is actually really valuable.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] So, those are some of the things that can be helpful. Don’t make it a big thing. So, one concern people have is in relationships. Like, oh, how do I tell my partner about this? How do I tell my family? Don’t make awakening and spirituality a big thing you need to wield in your life and talk to people about.

– Yeah.

– ‘Cause it’s not. You don’t need to make it a thing and then insist that your family accepts it or something. Why? A lot of times people ask me, “How do I talk ’em?” I’m like, “Why do you wanna talk about this?” And they’re like, “Huh?”

– Inquire into that.

– “I don’t really know why I don’t wanna. I had never thought of that.” Like people will actually say that. I never thought, why do I want to talk? And I’m like, well look into why you wanna talk about anything to anyone and you’ll see. Oh, okay, well I talk for rapport. I talk to feel heard and connected and all this.

– Validated.

– I’m like, yeah, this isn’t gonna help you feel heard. This is gonna make people think you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.

– Yeah.

– A lot of times.

– [Zubin] I mean, we’re doing it right now .

– [Angelo] Right, yeah. So, a lot of times I’ll say, don’t worry about it. It’s not a big secret, but just know that if you don’t even know the purpose of why you’re communicating something, maybe just don’t.

– [Zubin] Yeah .

– [Angelo] ‘Cause it often leads to problems, you know?

– Yeah.

– Now if you have a very, very connected, close relationship with someone.

– Right.

– And you’re already talking about this with them and they’re totally open to it.

– [Zubin] And they’re interested or open, yeah.

– That’s great, of course.

– Yeah, yeah.

– [Angelo] But if you already feel resistance patterns, if you’re like, my family’s not gonna like this, they’re not gonna hear this.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] That’s not their religion or something.

– Yeah.

– Don’t force it on ’em. Don’t make it a thing.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] It’s your own private journey. It’s your own intimate, personal journey into the truth of you. You don’t need to include other people around you. They don’t need to understand it for this to keep going. Does that help? Is that helpful?

– [Zubin] That’s probably the single most direct helpful thing that you can tell people. I think, because it’s my own experience as well. And I have to, I’ll add even another spin to it. Don’t feel, because you said this is a personal thing that you’re doing.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] You don’t have to share it with anybody. That’s not the point. The mind can spin that as you’re being selfish, like you’re trying to improve yourself, but you’re ignoring those around you. You’re not sharing or you are taking this time to go on retreat or you’re taking this time to meditate and you’re not helping these others. How do you talk to people about that?

– [Angelo] Yeah, so that’s like another layer, right? It’s the feeling that I should be able to help other people with this. And that’s a subtler version of the don’t become a guru kind of thing, right?

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] Because who says you’re supposed to help other people with this? Help yourself, keep going. Keep going until you don’t feel like you need to help anything or anyone because everything’s perfectly okay. Then you’ll be helping. But you won’t be trying.

– Then you’ll be helping. You’re right.

– It won’t matter. Just the way you move will affect people and it’ll be good. But if you try to do that intentionally, again, you’re getting all up in life’s business. Don’t do it.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] Let life do its work, right? So just remind yourself, oh, okay, I don’t have to fix. And also a lot of it’s projection. If you think you have to fix your partner, who is it you really want to fix? It’s you , right? So just keep waking up, that’s it. Keep waking up, keep digging in. Don’t put it on anyone else. Don’t project it onto anyone around you. Don’t try to become the local guru. I don’t recommend it. It’s a weird thing to say and I know people see this and go, “Well, you’re teaching this, aren’t you?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m actually not really.” I’m not teaching a damn thing. And I don’t really care to talk about this.

– It was 15-

– Versus anything else.

– [Zubin] 15 years after your awakening before you opened your mouth about it.

– [Angelo] Mm hm.

– [Zubin] And the truth is, oh man, in your book, that was actually a very powerful pointer for me specifically, because my DNA is to teach. Like, that’s my sort of archetype. I love to be the sage in front of the camera that helps people that way.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] But this case it’s been very tricky because I always introspect and go, this is now, now it’s about me.

– [Angelo] Mm hm, you can feel the moment the ego comes forward, right?

– Yes!

– [Angelo] When something comes forward and to just feel it, it suddenly just doesn’t feel authentic and you’re like, Whoa, what was that?

– Oh wait, what? What did I just say?

– But that’s awesome. That kind of sensitivity is what comes with awakening. You have an awakening and all of a sudden you’re so sensitive to things. And at first, it can make you feel, it can be really discouraging. Like, oh my God, I’m such a mess. But you’re just seeing it.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] You’re seeing the delusions that move through our human consciousness and stuff. So, but yeah, you start to get attuned to that. You’re like, oh, okay, now it’s that natural movement. Oh, now I’m putting my finger on the scale. Back off, relax, stop.

– Yeah, yeah.

– [Angelo] And everyone’s gonna do this to some degree. I notice it myself, like I’ll start writing the book and I’m like, okay, well, the book’s written. So, the logical thing is I should go get it published or something, and I might move in that direction and something’ll just feel like, no, this isn’t quite right right now. And I’ll just stop.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] I’m like, maybe I’ll never publish this book. I have no idea.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] I don’t care. And then, all of a sudden, some very organic thing’ll happen. Someone will ask me about something or… Really this book got written, interestingly, I wrote like one or two chapters, I sent it to a friend I’ve known for years. And he’s like, “Oh, that’s great, dude,” whatever. And then I didn’t write anything for months. And he message me like, “Dude, you gotta write the next chapter. I need it.” And I was like, “Oh God, thank you for reminding me. I would’ve not even.” Like, it just wasn’t even in my head. So then I start, I’m like, okay, I’ll start writing it. And then I’m like writing, I’m like, oh yeah, this is a little bit of a sludge to write. It’s a little hard to write this kinda stuff because it’s so detailed.

– Yeah, very precise.

– [Angelo] I have to have one leg in both worlds at the same time as I’m doing it. And I would rather just meditate. So, I’m like, okay, I can see why there’s a bit of a resistance almost to writing it ’cause it’s a lot of work. And so, I’d write another chapter and then I’d get feedback. And then someone else would remind me. So, I actually wrote this with working with people in a very organic way because they would remind me ’cause otherwise it’d be very easy not to. It’d be very easy not to do anything and just relax and chill and live life as it plays out. But sometimes life just nudges you-

– [Zubin] Plays out like this.

– [Angelo] And so, I was talking, I don’t know, a while ago, maybe a year ago to my friend, Deborah Westmoreland, she has a really cool video where she was interviewed. Maybe we can put the link somewhere. It’s actually a really good video. Have I ever sent it to you?

– [Zubin] No, I haven’t seen it.

– [Angelo] So yeah, she had a big awakening and she wrote a book, I’m not sure if it’s published. But anyway, so I was talking to her and she said, “Yeah, probably it’s a bad sign if you wanna be a teacher of this stuff.”

– Ah.

– [Angelo] She said, “It’s probably better that you do it begrudgingly.” And I was like, that’s exactly what I… I feel like life almost pushed me into it a little bit, to be honest.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] It’s a weird thing to say, but like I did kind of go grudgingly. Like I’m not sure I really wanna do this, you know?

– Yeah.

– And I’m always hesitant and it’s strange because it doesn’t matter. Because you’re fine, everything’s fine. Everything’s perfectly fine. Nothing needs to change. Everything is already awake nature, right? So, who am I to say, “You need to wake up.”

– Yeah, yeah.

– And so I don’t say that because I don’t believe it.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] However, if someone genuinely wants to wake up and they’re moving in that way, I can’t hold it back either. I have to say, okay, well there is a way to do that if you want to, here it is. So that’s how this has all happened very organically for me. But yeah, if you’re like, it’s very easy for your ego to co-opt it and go, oh yeah, you can look at a teacher and go, oh, they get all the validation, people like ’em, they seem like they’re happy. That’s what I want to do. Don’t let that happen to you. Just give it some time. At some point you may teach, but you may not, too.

– [Zubin] Again, it gets back to trusting life and how it unfolds and the bodhisattvas popping up everywhere and it just happens.

– Mm hm.

– For me, it’s interesting because the minute I went down this kind of path, I instinctively wanted to teach even though I didn’t know what I was talking about. And that instinct to teach has progressively declined with every bit of realization that I get, to the point where I’m much closer to what you’re saying now, which is I don’t really wanna talk about this for myself. I love to have you on the show and talk about it because in a way, this is how I further realize, right? It’s a selfish act.

– Mm hm.

– [Zubin] But also I know the impact on people who are ready to hear it because we saw it at retreat. Oh, I read the book because I saw the show, and now I’m this and my whole life has changed. And it’s better and thank you, it’s been hard. The emotions have been hard and all of this. And then I feel like, okay, now I feel connected. Like this is what I’m supposed to do is to have you come here and teach me so that others can, I don’t know what it is.

– Hm.

– [Zubin] But this desire for me to go, “This is what presence feels like,” it’s evaporating by the second.

– [Angelo] Hm.

– [Zubin] And I don’t know why, but it feels much more correct to have evaporated.

– Mm hm. Because when you let go of those needs or beliefs or paradigms of self, you release yourself to right here. And right here is where everything happens. Isn’t that great. That’s how it just comes out of nowhere. Who knows? Am I the teacher, are you the teacher, is neither one? There’s no teaching. Who knows what’s happening, it’s just happening. Right, it’s always just happening. And that is what realization is. As realization deepens it’s like, no, this is just what’s happening right now. It gets very simple.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] So there’s not much to talk about. Even we’re talking about like deciding what to do. And even that’s like, nah, nah. When you really just get down to what’s happening right now and you just like, enjoy the flow of life, it’ll happen how it happens.

– Yeah.

– [Angelo] You might end up doing this. You might end up doing that. Who the hell knows? And who the hell cares?

– Who cares?

– [Angelo] It’s not my business what I do. That’s life’s business.

– [Zubin] It’s driven by, whoa! See, that was the universe.

– [Angelo] Yes, who could have known that was gonna happen?

– [Zubin] Nobody, except for the quantum physicist will say, “Well, according to hard determinism, Angelo, we could have predicted all the various spins in quantum states and we would’ve known that that would’ve happened.”

– [Angelo] Remember when I mentioned the big tamale this morning?

– Yes.

– [Angelo] It’s time to take out the tamale.

– [Zubin] Okay, unwrap this tamale.

– [Angelo] You probably didn’t expect, ’cause the flow of this conversation’s perfect, you probably didn’t expect I was gonna bring up in this talk, COVID.

– [Zubin] Oh God, why?

– [Angelo] And you probably really didn’t expect that I was gonna connect that thread to another thread of what we were talking about yesterday, which is? What was the code word?

– [Zubin] Surrender.

– [Angelo] And what is code word for?

– [Zubin] A glory hole.

– [Angelo] Right, now you might think why in the world would a doctor, two doctors talk about corn holes and… Oh, corn holes. Glory holes and COVID.

– Yes.

– [Angelo] But I can connect those two for you and I can connect ’em with public policy.

– [Zubin] Now I’m intrigued.

– In 2020.

– Yes.

– [Angelo] The New York Health Department put out an advisory for COVID. And in it, it suggested that people have sex through a barrier or wall to avoid transmitting COVID. They didn’t use the term… Now, it’s coming. They didn’t use the term glory hole. So then a Canadian Health Department, I’m trying to think, it might have been British Columbia. I think it might have been British Columbia, but I can look it up. They actually took it a step farther. They’re like those wussies down below that border, they should have said glory hole. So, they did say glory hole.

– In their Public Health-

– [Angelo] In their Public Health Advisory, they said, you can consider having sex through a wall or barrier. And then they should put in quotes, “glory hole,” to avoid transmission face-to-face with COVID. So I tied up all those loose ends. We talked about glory holes in a scientific, policy-based way.

– [Zubin] And public policy blessed way.

– [Angelo] Blessed way.

– [Zubin] I mean Trudeau blessed directly.

– [Angelo] So this video will end with… You would never would’ve guessed at the beginning that this video’s gonna have two physicians telling you there’s a public policy backing your use of glory holes for COVID, because of COVID. It’s the best thing that came of COVID.

– [Zubin] When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Angelo DiLullo, you did it .

– [Angelo] We did it, man. We did it together.

– [Zubin] I surrender. I have nothing to say. Dude, if any of this resonated. This, where is it? This, oh, I locked my focus. Nevermind. This, hopefully I’m in focus. Angelo, thank you. I’ll put links everywhere.

– Thank you.

– [Zubin] This was…

– [Angelo] Don’t forget to put links to the health departments.

– [Zubin] Of course, ’cause we wanna make sure we validate the glory hole-based barrier approach to non-COVID transmission in the age of Omicron. We did a thing.

– We did a thing.

– [Zubin] Science, and we’re out.

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