The Costume Most Of Us Will Never Take Off

Hi everyone Zubin it’s Wednesday October 1st another day, another month.Halloweeny my least favorite holiday because of childhood trauma around shitty costumes that might you know, my 2 physician parents who are working working working when I was young.

You know, it’s not like my mom had time to sell us custom costumes or spend a bunch of money on nice stuff.We would go to the grocery store.And my mom will get one of those boxed costumes with the plastic mask and the little rubber elastic on the back.And it’d just be like Darth Vader, this crappy little.

And it came with, like, a crappy little vinyl Cape.And I’d walk around and everyone in elementary school make fun of me.And I was like, enough of trauma, OK, Screw Halloween.It’s for losers.Hi, Emma.It’s not that you’re a loser.Loser.Emma.Sophia, Kathy, Rebecca, come on down.

We’re talking existential truth today because it’s Wednesday in the middle of a work day, at least for those of us in the US and a Yeah, let’s see.Chrissy says, oh, you’ve mastered the lighting.

Perfect.Yeah, I I got missus dog in here and we tweaked around with it on the weekend because she’s a radiologist, so she has a good eye.So she’s like, ah, this makes you look fat.This makes you look old.This makes you look too much like yourself.How about this?And I was like, perfect.

I’m just kidding.She didn’t say any of those things, but I did.Does.This light make me look fat.Hi JoJo.JoJo loves Halloween.I’m glad someone loves Halloween that isn’t me because I can’t do it.Hi Lori.Welcome.So what’s going on with you guys?

Like it’s, it’s quite a thing, this whole process of, of, of dissolving identities and false beliefs and everything we think is true can be seen actually on investigation to be a total fabrication of the mind, a total story, which is there’s nothing wrong with stories.

We’re talking about Halloween.We play act, we pretend.We put on a costume, we go out and hide behind a mask, pretend we’re something we’re not.And that’s in fact the entirety of our standard human operating system.

We go out, we pretend to be a doctor, we pretend to be a nurse, we pretend to be an accountant, we pretend to be unemployed, we pretend to be a trauma victim.We pretend to be whatever it is.That’s what the character is play acting at.The great difficulty of the human condition is we forget that it’s a play.

We forget that it’s Halloween.We think this is actually who we are, and we take that identity to be the center of everything, the center of all experiences.That identity is having a life, is having experiences, having the search for truth and enlightenment and awakening and God and all those things.

And that’s just part of the play.So when that starts to unravel, and sometimes it seems like there’s investigation that unravels it, like you’re looking for what’s looking or you’re looking for who you are in this moment because there’s nowhere else you could find it and it seemingly can’t be found.

And then things just start to go off the Cliff.And with that comes all the conditioning you’ve had over a life starts showing itself because you can’t repress it anymore, because the character that was repressing it in thought starts to get tenuous.And then it becomes interesting because things you cared about, you no longer care about.

Things you don’t care about suddenly become interesting, but not in the way they did before all this started happening.They can’t really feel real beyond an experience, so it can be a little disorienting.And then the whole time that’s emptying out, everyone out there in the Matrix is projecting onto you their own story of what you’re supposed to be or what they thought you were or what you should be because that’s how society works, right?

So then you have that discomfort of letting go of those identities.So I was with a friend the other day and she was talking about, you know, giving up her job of 20 odd years.And after all this awakening stuff kind of unraveled her identity, her people pleasing, all kinds of different things that were baked into her equation due to a lifetime of conditioning, trauma, DNA, all those things that, you know, the Hindus used to call karma.

I mean, it’s just causes and conditions in the dream.And it is really hard because it feels like a kind of deep loss, a kind of grief, a kind of death, and you go through all the emotions.So I don’t know if people out there are going through any of this.It may be that you’re in the entry part of this.

It may be that you’ve already gone through it.It may be that you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, which is beautiful too.So you’re still living the character story in the Halloween dream, right?So that that’s all fine.Wherever you are is wherever you apparently are.There’s no reason you need to be other than where you are.

That’s the other thing is like, I can’t recommend this to anyone.I also can’t ever want what I was before, which was a completely mind identified character.It’s very strange, Laurie says.I’m kind of tired of my role in this play.

I want to audition for a new role.Yeah, When that starts to happen, you realize any role is possible.And then you know what’s then starts to happen, Laurie, even one step further, if we’re going to get really existential, there is a realization that there was never a you in the way that you think and never a you in control of any of this, which means who’s the actor in this play?

If we’re playing a character, who is it that’s playing it?And then you start to look even more and you realize, no, there’s no actor, there’s no character, there’s only the play.And you can call that life.It’s just all this stuff appearing.No one was ever in control.

And then it’s just this free fall of just radical nounness showing up as whatever it shows up as.And that is perfect.That is exactly how it should be, including the arising sensation that this sucks, I don’t like this, I don’t want this, I don’t want to be here.

That’s all part of that.And it’s, and it’s seen to be part of that.So there’s one less bit that seems to resist what actually is.And I don’t know, maybe Jesus might have called that the peace that passeth all understanding, the natural equanimity that arises when everything is as it is.

And there’s a realization by no one that it couldn’t be otherwise.And it’s felt as a kind of radical love or perfection.There’s a reason that the great religions in their mystical roots speak in this way of unconditional love, forgiveness, God as everything, right, Because this can actually be experienced.

It can be realized in that way.Lori says I’m not there.I’m just hoping you’re right.I want to let go of it all and just find acceptance.So that’s a, that’s an Admiral desire.

Admirable, admirable, Not an Admiral desire.That would be some sort of military maneuver.It’s an admirable desire.But who is it, Lori that wants that?So that’s still the identity, that’s still the ego, that’s still the mind that’s moving and saying I want acceptance, I want release, I want equanimity for me.

So what I’m pointing out here is the radical dissolution of the one who wants that.And honestly, from here that seems to be the only true way that equanimity can arise in any stable way, because the one who wants it has to be seen through as another appearance, as another radically self knowing, ephemeral impermanent appearance in the.

Play.And all there is is the play.And no one’s playing, no one’s acting.There’s just the play.So.It’s the reason that this seems so obscure, this seems like what I’m saying is so confusing, is because you can’t talk about it.

You can’t use words because words create.They need a subject and an object of me and an other, something that does an action on something else.And this is nothing like that.Reality is nothing like that.The deepest truth, the existential truth of this moment is just exactly what it is.

And you cannot say a word that will capture it.You can only say words that might point to this, where you could never leave this radical present nounness and see, the words are just kind of fumbly, Kurt says.

Very interesting theories.It’s rather rough when you’re pushed into another role.It’s just improv.Yeah.So there’s a lot here, Kurt.Like theory is one thing, theory is what mine does.So I could tell you theories about reality all day and they’d all be nonsense because anything you can think about this is wrong.

If it’s a thought, it’s another appearance and it’s ephemeral and it’s wrong.It’s just maybe relatively right in a story, like in a tale we’re telling in a Halloween costume, but it’s not right in an absolute sense.So what is that’s beyond theories.And so then it’s seen kind of for what it is.

Then the roles that apparently are are pushed on to us are seen as more story, like, OK, so what’s pushing on to us?More appearance.So there’s a radical freedom in that.At that point, you can choose to fully inhabit the role.You can choose to be pushed into it.You can choose to believe or not believe anything you want, but you do it with this.

What’s interesting is you do it without a you without a center that’s actually doing it.And that’s known at some deep indescribable level by no one.So then the whole dance becomes this absolutely 0 stakes but incredibly beautiful drama or comedy or romance or whatever it is that is arising.

Let’s.See, I’m going to try to scroll back and see some comments here, Anastasia, who’s a supporter, says.All the world is a stage and all the men and women are merely players.They have their exits and their entrances.And one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being 7 ages.

This famous speech found in Act 2 scene something and I can’t read Roman numerals very well. 677 uses a metaphor of life being a play where people are actors playing different roles that they go through the seven stages of their lives.Key elements of the quote.

All the world’s a stage.This is Shakespeare we’re talking about, compares the world to a theatrical stage where life in unfolds all the men and women merely players.Humans are compared to actors playing their parts, and they have their exits and their entrances.Life and death are seen as a person’s departure from the stage, and one man in his time plays many parts.

A person experiences different roles throughout their life, so Shakespeare understood.The dance of this, that birth and death are also a story, their entrance and exit onto the stage by the great actor.

But the great actor.Can’t be found.So we have words for this.We have words like God, we have words like the everything, the present, all that other stuff.But in reality, just look and you’ll see there’s nothing but nowness, lovingness, beingness here.

And that is what all this is made of.And it’s dancing in a totally mysterious way.So there isn’t an actor, there isn’t something aware of the play.The play is self aware.Its mere existence is the knowing of it.It’s very, very strange.

So I’m pointing today from right here.And this kind of pointing can be a little disorienting, ununderstandable, confusing, until it’s realized, then it’s obvious.

It’s like seeing an illusion.You couldn’t see something hidden in a in a piece of art or something and then you can’t Unsee it.So the attunement is just look, just keep looking.Listen to the words, don’t take them too seriously, and just feel into what they might be pointing, what direction they might be pointing.

All the world is indeed a stage.What did Rush say?And we are merely players, performers and portrayers, each another’s audience outside the gilded cage.Oh man, living in the limelight, The universal dream.

OK, Rush fans, let’s see, what else do we got here?I’m looking for some comments.I had an awesome breakthrough, says Chrissy the other day.

Where I realized my thought is.Responsible for my suffering anxiety and I feel really free when I remember to think that thought lol.Right.So OK, suffering is a thought resisting what is.

That’s another way to say it.It’s one thought now because there can only be a thought at a time here.So your entire history, everything you think you are is one thought right here showing up as Chrissy.Everything you think the future is, is one thought showing up as the future.

And it can be multi layered textured appearance, but it feels so real.So what happens is we spend most of our time in this labyrinth of.Thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought, thought.And when that is seen as just another appearance, like any visual field stuff, any sound, any sensation in the body, taste, smell, thought is another sense.

It’s another sense gate when that’s seen.And here’s the really crazy part.Everything you think is terrible.Like, you know, you get that feeling like this is terrible.This is so unpleasant.Oh my God, I’m so scared.Or I, I wish I hadn’t done that.

That usually is a constellation that happens very rapidly in my experience.There’s a thought that tells a story.There’s a sensation in the body that has a certain flavor.Maybe it’s an emotion, maybe it’s a physical sensation.And honestly, there’s not a big distinction between those because all these things feel very physical.

They feel real and that is is turned by thought into a story of I’m not comfortable.Now you can see it.You can see it as just textures, the texture of discomfort, the texture of thought saying this is no good.

And when that scene, just as it is, you realize there’s no one seeing it.These are just textures arising mysteriously and they all pass.They all arise and pass before they’re even formed.Nisargadatta, this Indian sage, said this really beautifully said, that which has a beginning and has an end has no middle.

So anything that has a beginning and an end has no middle.It’s hollow.It’s just a radiant appearance.So all those textures that we’re talking about that make up the feeling of our reality are these ephemeral dances, plays of textures.

And they feel so real.So the thought that says, oh, gosh, I’m worried about this thing in the future, that’s anxiety.We call that anxiety.It comes with a sensation here, maybe, maybe here, maybe behind the eyes.And we tell this instant story coming from conditioning, from our parents, from society, from our own traumas.

That this is real and that it’s mine, it’s my anxiety, my fear, and all of that is a construction.It can be seen through in this moment.There’s no other.Place it’s seen through, it’s not seen in the future, it’s not seen in the past.It’s only now that any of this can be realized.

So sometimes it’s just like, drop it.And you can’t do that because the mind is not designed to drop anything.The mind is designed to keep going until it exhausts itself.So maybe let it exhaust itself, and then the dropping happens and everything’s just as it is.And that’s sometimes what we call awakening, that realization that there never was that center the way we thought there, that that this was all a story.

It’s Neo unplugging from the Matrix and realizing his whole life was a dream.Induced by phenomena.Just so happened they were computers inducing the phenomena in this stream.We don’t know what’s inducing it.Let’s.

Scroll down.AJ says yes.The feeling of dread is an artificial construct.Been noticing dread lately.Let’s talk about dread.This is beautiful.So OK, let’s say you watch the news.Or you get.A notification in e-mail from something that induces a sense of dread.

Dread is near and dear to my heart as a kind of enneagram 6 like fear based personality.That’s that’s due to genetics, it’s due to conditioning.It’s like a pattern, like a weather pattern, like I’m a hurricane type B, whatever, right?

And you can do tests online to kind of see, do you fit these patterns?You’re not going to be perfect, but they’re fun kind of guideposts.So for someone like that, when I get an e-mail that says, you know, you’ve failed to pay your this or that, suddenly there’s this immediate sense of doom, dread, like, Oh my God, the world is ending.

And not everybody gets that, right?So I have my own set of conditioning and traumas that make that the sense that arises.So when I was young, there were times where I really did not feel safe, like I felt the world was collapsing around me.So now they’re that fear is encoded in the body.

So when there’s a minor thing like, you know, whatever it is, the bank is like, oh, you know, you with over withdrew an account.I’m just making something up.There’s a feeling of like the bottom of the universe dropping out and you free falling into, into death, into annihilation.

Like it’s, it’s that intense.And that comes from that particular flavor of traumas and conditioning and genetics and tendencies and whatever it is so but, but it feels real.It feels like everything there is true and it feels like it’s my dread.

So what happens when you look at it as just another radiant appearance, another texture and there isn’t anyone looking at it.It, it’s just the texture, physical, the physical sense of dread, like dread.And then the story about dread, Oh my God, we’re going to get this huge fine and we’re going to get in trouble and you know, whatever it spirals into catastrophizing and all the cognitive distortions.

I would argue that every single thought is a cognitive distortion because it can’t reflect truth.It’s just another story.It’s another appearance like dread.We call it dread.All it is, is this particular energy pattern that we’ve been conditioned to feel is associated with these things that are not good.

So we judge it, we resist it, we label it, we make distance from it.And what did the Buddha say?Like desire and aversion, right?That those are the roots of suffering.We want this, we don’t want that, and that’s it.So what happens?And this is where again, my boy Long Champas, old Tibetan dude.

Basically said it right.He said well since everything is but an apparition, just an appearance has a beginning and an end, and therefore no middle.So dread is an appearance and long Champa would say since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, meaning it’s nothing more or nothing less than what it is as an appearance.

Just like when you see an image projected on a screen, if you stop losing yourself in the movie, you see it for exactly what it is.Dancing light that looks like it does looks like Tom Cruise looks like Anne Hathaway, right?

So an apparition perfect in being exactly what it is.That apparition.Then he goes on to say having nothing to do with good or bad acceptance or rejection.

And what he’s saying is there’s nothing in that apparition that says give me that or send that away.I don’t like it.It has nothing to do with that.It’s just what it is.And then he goes on to say, and I’ll.I’ll recap here since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection.

Then here’s the punchline, the cosmic joke, he says one may well burst out in laughter, and that’s the laughter of realization, the laughter of freedom, the laughter of seeing the play as the play free from desire and aversion, although the textures of desire and aversion, grasping and pushing away can.

Appear perfect in being what they are, but an apparition with no beginning, no end.And I mean a beginning and an end, and therefore no middle.Empty except as appearance.Beautiful, radiant, perfectly accepted.

Because they’re there.It couldn’t be otherwise.Michigan says.Catastrophic thinking has been my MO since I’m seven years old.Me too.Me too.Me too.And it still arises.

So for me, like today I got an e-mail from my payroll company that does my payroll.And it was like this that the other thing.And immediately I was walking by by a lake having a beautiful time.

And I decided to open my phone because I wanted to make sure my daughter wasn’t texting because she needed some things.And I saw my e-mail there and I said, oh, and I looked at it and immediately I read it and I knew I was like, oh, no.And it’s like the mind immediately spun out a catastrophe, like, wait, if I can’t do payroll, then how will I do this?

And who will file the 941 payroll tax form?And what it’s, it’s total chaos.And I saw my mind doing it.And I was like, oh, look at that.The dance Zubin Zubining, like Zubin’s mind has always been, look for danger.

Try to stay safe, watch out for your loved ones and your family.So there’s kind of a loyalty component and fuck everyone else, right?That’s how it’s how he’s wired from his conditioning.So that all played out, but it didn’t.

It was never really believed.It kind of just happened.It was seen by no one and then it just went, that was it.Now I’ll tell you that is not what would have happened to Zubin before.

Before I would have ruminated, there would have been rumination on that trying to solve the problems in the path.And some of the problem solving did arise.It was like, oh, I’ll just do this and this and this and I can’t do it now.So there’s no point thinking about it.And I’d say that’s a years in the making that much clarity and it’s still not perfect.

It’s an ongoing process.Carol says mine is always a version want to avoid everything.Well, you know, desire and aversion are the same thing.Actually, Carol, like wanting to avoid everything is wanting safety.

So you’re desiring this and you’re so you’re avoiding that.They’re they’re just a loop.It’s just a snake eating its tail.Desire and aversion, but they are the root of suffering.When we believe our thoughts, we believe that there’s someone who suffers there.Peter says hey Doc, I think Doc needs to interact more with us.

Read more comments section.I’m not sure what I’ve been doing, Peter.That’s all I’ve been doing.Maybe you want more comments and less meet that I can understand.Sandy says hello from the other side of the Atlantic.

My mind is some something that we can.The mind is something that we can control.We can dictate what we want the brain to focus on.We can choose to make peace with our fear and comfort ourselves by soothing ourselves.That sounds really beautiful, Sandy boy.

My mind really loves that.Also, I can’t find anything here that can choose any of that.I can’t find any sense of control.I can’t find.I can find an appearance that I’ve chosen my thought or a sense that I’m in control of my mind.

But then when I look, I realize, no, I didn’t choose to be in control of my mind.I didn’t choose the sense that I’m in control of my where did that come from?Total darkness?Nowhere.In a sense, it’s the radical lack of control that finally absolutely annihilates the one who gave a shit about control.

And that’s the one that suffers, that generates the suffering.So, you know, we can, we can, we can prep.We, there’s so many practices where you can reframe your thoughts, cognitive behavioral therapy, all that.It’s all great.It’s all fine.It’ll make the dream more comfortable.

So that is beautiful.But we’re talking about existential truth today.We’re talking about the route today.And the route is total nonsense.There’s no control.There’s a sense that maybe, oh look, see, there’s even less negative thinking like like what I my wife and I noticed I told the story before and suddenly someone had mentioned how much negative self talk they have one of our family members and all the shame and shamey talk from trauma as a child and.

Both of us kind of felt into it and we were like, oh, we used to have that.Where did it go?Where did all that go?And I’ll, I can tell you, you can’t find it now.It doesn’t arise.So negative self talk in the way it used to with shame and identity doesn’t arise.

Does that mean that I controlled my mind and reframed my negative self talk into positive self talk or talk myself out of the negative self talk?You can do those things, but that doesn’t uproot the negative self talk.How did it go?How did it go?

Well this is just a story OK, but bear with me and I it’s probably not true, but this is how it feels it went as the identity started to go.The more we looked at what this is in this moment, we realized it’s really hard to believe in an illusion once you really see it.

And when you stop seeing the illusion, then when the thought that says you’re a piece of shit arises, it goes nowhere.It doesn’t stick.Who is this you that is a piece of shit?How can there be negative self talk when you can’t find a self that’s moving through space and time that isn’t a story?

So it loses its grip.It no longer has that energetic suck that pulls you into it and it goes.That’s very different than trying to control our mind, trying to push and pull on our mind.Because what’s doing that?The mind itself, It perpetuates the seeking.

Function of the mind, which is all the mind is, is a function.It’s a movement of thought.That’s a kind of a function in consciousness.And by the way, there’s also no consciousness, but that’s another conversation.Beautiful comment.Oh, Emma’s by the lake.Nice High Venus.

CJ says big question or question.Big Z.Do you have more positive self talk?No, I don’t.That’s a great question.In fact, oh, I really haven’t felt into this.

That is a really good question.Let me feel into this right now ’cause I all I do here at listen guys, I’m no teacher, I’m no guru.I play 1 on TV, but I don’t know what I’m talking about.All I know is my own experience.So I try here to share my experience, reflect on your experience through the lens of my own.

That’s all I can do.So sometimes I’m projecting onto you my own shit.So just be aware of that ’cause we all do that.I know very realized people who project their shit all over the place and it’s just how it is.Whatever realized means.So do I have more positive self talk?

OK, so when the negative self talk seemingly disappeared and I don’t know when that was.And by disappear I mean it, no?Longer has a hold.It may arise, but it’s just it’s gone.I think the same thing happened to the positive self talk.So there isn’t an inner cheerleader going.

You’re so great.You’re doing such a good job, Z, like you’re really helping people by making these videos.Like, you’re really good dad and good husband and yeah, you’re good friend to people and yeah, you fuck up once in a while, but you know, you’re a good guy, bro and.Then none of that ’cause there’s a realization that first of all, the Zubin is just a constellation of appearance.

Second, there’s no control, so how can there be ownership of being good or bad?Third, I don’t even know what good or bad means because that’s another texture, another flavor without any innate truth value.It’s just a flavor.That’s a good action.That’s a bad action, that’s a flavor.

I’m a vegan, I’m a meat eater.They’ll argue all day.The truth is both flavors, both appearances, so good and bad don’t seem to have a center.But then what happens?The actions that are taken.Others might say, well, they’re pretty good.Well, because it’s also hard to go out and knowing what suffering is, knowing what mind identification feels like.

Go out and hurt some apparent other because you know there is no other.There’s only what’s happening as one happening.So what are you hurting?What are you pushing and pulling on?It’s radical.Love is what it is.Lovingness or loveness?

These are just words that you know I make up.I think I heard someone say lovingness once in his Zen book.I like loveness, actually.It’s like made of loveness.It’s unconditional acceptance of what’s arising.So it’s very hard to hurt somebody or something, consciously or intentionally.

Joe says.You say you’re not a teacher, yet you still guide and teach so beautifully.There is guidance, but no guide.Oh, Joe, that’s.Beautiful.I hope that’s true, but also if it’s not, nothing I can do about it.But yeah, this is the thing to assume the role, the identity of a teacher is something others have projected on me too.

Like you’re the guru, you’re the teacher, you’re the one who can save us from this folly of whatever.And how many people have taken on that identity over?The over the eons including currently all over YouTube and everything only to for people to find out there.

Humans and that all if you share your own experience, others may look at their own experience because that’s what the best teachers apparently point to is your own experience.So if you can if you can do that if I can do that, then that’s beautiful and and my thing is like Zubin loves to reflect and hear the sound of his own voice.

As one of the commenters said earlier, actually it’s like.Maybe read more of our comments and talk less.Actually, I’m starting to really let that settle in.Initially I was like, isn’t that what I’m doing?Maybe not enough.So thank you, Joe, Carrie says.

I recently had events coming up in my life that brought me back into some past trauma, largely felt in the body, and I’ve been using my thoughts to remind me that I’m not in the trauma.Now when living from the trauma response, I sure don’t show up accepting all that is exactly.

And this is where my friend Simon Brown in the UK, we’re going to do another show at some point.He’s so good about this.He’s like you, you can talk about non duality and the nature of this is all an appearance and there’s no thoughts shouldn’t be believed and you can talk about it till you’re blue in the face.But the body keeps the score.

When there’s trauma, the body feels that it is not feeling safe.It is not resourced to drop into that knowing it’s just not.It is going to contract, create a story, try to protect itself and that is innocent.

That’s an innocent movement of the body to keep itself safe when it was young.What you’re pointing out is you’re you’re now having this conversation with the body using thought, which is not a problem at all.You’re saying, OK, I get it.You try to keep me safe.I see the trauma now.

I am OK.I am.I can handle this.So you can relax like you’ve served the purpose and I see you there and I love you.I’m not trying to reject this part that’s contracted and resistant because it served its purpose to keep you safe when you were young when you couldn’t do other.

But now you can do other.You’re older, wiser or whatever.So you can have that conversation with the body.You can feel it fully.You can let it let.That hurt.Really be felt, really be inhabited.And man, this is the part of that shadow, that unseen part of you that it is so excruciating when it starts to happen because all the things you’ve been avoiding and thought and story and distraction, you now face full on.

And you realize they look like a demon.They feel like a monster.They feel inseparable from you, from your identity, because they are your identity.They’re the shell around your identity.They’re, they’re perpetuating a sense of self so they can feel really sticky and, and difficult.

But then when they’re really allowed, fully accepted from the peace that passes all understanding.And that means doing the work with trauma, maybe seeing a therapist, seeing somebody who specializes in trauma care and somatic experiencing different modalities that aren’t just sitting in meditation and going crazy.

Or trying to bypass into some spiritual bypass where you’re like, oh, it’s all emptiness, it’s all just a story.That’s not going to work.Try it.It won’t work, not for long anyways.It’s just going to perpetuate the churn in the body.

So that’s beautiful.Carrie, that you’re that you’re that that’s showing up for you now, Kavita says.I’ve been discovering courses in kundalini energy path.It’s so interesting, Z Doug, you should do it with me.Yeah, Kavita, I.

AM.Extremely sensitive to kundalini.So it’s been a extremely energetic.So what is kundalini?Kundalini for people who aren’t into the wonky terminology of the various traditions.

It’s a sense of energy or electricity or some kind of energetic movement that is felt in the body.Sometimes it can be felt.Outside of the body.And it, it often moves, it has a movement or a dynamic component.So it’s a kind of this energy thread of awakening, which is like everything is made of this vibrating energy.

And that can be experienced.It’s not a thought.It’s like, oh, whoa.And for me that started showing up after, I mean a long time ago and I didn’t know what.It was these little jolts anytime I would drop into just pure presence, awakeness, consciousness, what at that time I was identifying as consciousness itself, which was just another thought, but at the time it felt like a realization.

And when that would happen, I would.Feel this like.Oh, the body would just light up even more recently, you guys may have seen videos where I’m like, man, when I when I drop into just the void, it just lights the body up with energy.And, and since then, and my wife has this too, you know, we can move energy around in each other.

It’s just a sensation.It’s not some magic.And so the term that’s used classically as kundalini, it’s this kind of snake like energy and it doesn’t mean anything.We ascribe meaning to it.It’s just another phenomena.

But it can be quite disorienting, it can be quite seductive, it can be quite.A story generating device.And so people try to chase it or make something of it and there’s nothing wrong with that and you can enjoy it.It can also feel harmful.It can feel uncomfortable, it can feel destabilizing.

So what I found, my friend Angelo De Lulo talks about this quite a bit, is having some practice for energy is a good thing as this process unfolds.For me it’s yoga and my wife and I just kind of doing touch and that really like like.I’ve had, I’ve had experiences with that where I’m laying flat on a massage table.

She’s just doing some intuitive movement, touching the chest, moving it around.She’s feeling it too, right in her own body.And then what’ll happen is it’ll just like so much energy will come out the top of the head.

You’ll you’ll contract, you’ll start crying.Emotion is associated with it.Traumatic imagery might come up, you might growl, you might clench your fists.All kinds of archetypal energies come up.It’s all just conditioning.But to resist it is problematic to allow it to be what it.

Is well, that is again, the peace that passes all understanding.So allowing that with practices can be helpful.In my experience, yoga has been very helpful over the last year.Been doing yoga for about a year now and almost exactly a year and it is like a total game changer, which I was surprised because I always thought I was garbage.

I’m like yoga, I was going to hurt my back and all that.Never felt better.And there’s something about the just energetic grounding in the body that just, it puts you right there.You’re not doing it.To get anything, you’re not doing it to get, you know, if you get flexibility, strength, balance, you know, stamina, you get those things.

But that’s not the intent.The intent is.To be fully present in the body in these different.Poses.That’s it.And it’s quite beautiful.I like Travis Elliott.He’s a YouTube guy.My wife and I’ve been doing him his videos for quite some time.He’s a hoot, too.

You guys tell these dumb little Dharma stories, and he’s a total bro.And I love him.I love him to death.He’s just adorable.Oh, thank you, AJ.I’m glad.Yeah.Ruminations a big problem.

Jessica, I hear you many people, your opinion on Tai chi, Rebecca.So Tai chi is another energy practice.Beautiful.Absolutely.If it calls to you, don’t force anything.But if it calls to you 100%.Actually, Travis Elliott does this yoga Tai chi thing too, where he kind of combines the two.

I’ll tell you a funny story.So my wife and I were in Flushing, NY a couple months ago with the family.We were going to all the Chinatown restaurants.We went into Flushing Meadows, and then we went to the Queen’s Botanical Gardens.So people from New York will know what this is.We were walking through the Queen’s Botanical Gardens and there was a woman in full robes, Asian woman, middle-aged woman in full robes, doing some form of energy practice.

I don’t know if it was Tai Chi or Qigong or what.But she was doing it all alone in this Meadow.There was nobody else around.And my wife and I walked by and I could feel like the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.And I looked around and there was this woman doing this thing.And as I watched her, I could feel kundalini being induced in my own body.

Now, this is all a story, right?It doesn’t mean she was doing that, but something about the entire environment with that practitioner there induced these currents of energy seemingly in the body.And you know I’m not into woo woo, right?Experientially, that’s what I experienced.

So I found it fascinating.I was like, wow, that’s real.I almost went up and talked to her, but I knew I’d break her concentration and she would make eye contact with me in this really spooky way.And my wife and I were just like, damn, that’s a thing.So don’t underestimate.

The energy stuff.It is another thread of the awakening unfolding along with the sense that everything is love.That unity thread, everything is empty of substance and self.The emptiness thread and.Everything is just conditioning and psyche and unconscious and trauma.The psyche thread that Pierce Salguero talks about in one of her in three of our videos that we made together.

Jennifer Koran, who’s a supporter.Thank you for being a supporter of the show, keeps the lights on in yoga.We were doing a release pose and the entire class started crying.Oh, totally.Do I cry during yin yoga, which is the slow stretch yoga.I’ve cried during regular yoga.

It’s because so much is stored in the body.You know, the body keeps the score, right?So so much is stored there and when you.Really pay attention and and attend to that that that energy comes through and it’s beautiful.So where did all the negative self talk go?

How did that disappear, man?Maybe it was the yoga, maybe it was the energy practice, maybe it was the meditation, maybe it was awakening.Maybe it was doing some degree of internal family systems therapy.Maybe it was psychedelics.Maybe it was just spending time with very awake people who point in this way.

I have no fucking clue.It doesn’t matter.I can’t even believe causality is real apart from in the dream.So I can’t say go do this, go do that, go there.That’s the what David Carse will call the descriptive prescriptive fallacy.You’re describing something like, oh, I had this thing happen.

The sense of self, negative self talk went away and I did all these things.That’s a description.But then people take it as a prescription.Oh, go do yoga.Go do this and.You also will have your negative self talk disappear.That’s not how it works.It’s all kind of an epiphenomenon of the whole thing thing in life lifing.

And that’s what awakening really is.Is this whole process beyond anyone’s control and no one’s doing it.Just it’s orchestra self orchestrating in a way you could say God, whatever word you want to use, it’s all story, but it’s it’s doing it and you’re along for the ride.

The you that you think you are is just a appearance along for the ride.So I describe it.You guys may experience it, it may open your mind in a way, but I’m not telling you go out and do it and then you will have this result because that’s seemingly the descriptive prescriptive fallacy.

I’m not prescribing, I’m not saying it causes this.I’m saying this is what happened here.Leslie, your description of kundalini reminds me of a description in Russ Russell Paul in Jesus in the Lotus which was written in the 90s about his experience as a monk at this ashram, A Benedictine monastery.

Yes, Catholic in India.Father Griffith was his mentor.Russell Paul also wrote the Yoga of sound.See this is where all these traditions Venn diagram out right they they overlap.It’s really quite beautiful.So I love these kind of connections between mystical Christianity, these monastic traditions, Zen, Hinduism, Sufi and mystical Islam, Buddhism, mystical Judaism, like the Torah, and then all the standard practices in the religions are sort of outgrowths of those things.

It’s really quite.Fascinating.And but then what happens?The Matrix hijacks.It turns into an organized structure and imposes a kind of a control and expectation.Shame all the other shit that happens.And that’s fine too.Let’s see, Anastasia says that plus knowing you cannot change the past and you have to consciously understand you’re right here and right now.

Stressing about the past is useless.But your future depends on how you feel and think right now.Well, there’s nowhere else, so any future occurs now.Any past is only your memory now so that that.Realization at its deepest look, If nothing else, you’re right.

If nothing else happened, if you did nothing else and you just knew at a.At the deepest level of being that there’s only this here that just that is the end of all problems.It’s because you know, that’s the Eckhart Tolle like totally power of now it’s this right that he kind of popularized in popular speak and Oprah speak by the way, the Kundalini Leslie that you were talking about in Russell Paul Jesus in the Lotus.

So this idea of the Holy Spirit that can be.Also described as kundalini energy, this movement of love, this movement of spirit that moves you.The the the the the dynamic component of being of of nothing coming into being.

Feels like a flow of energy.It feels like a flow of love.It can feel like bliss or discomfort or whatever.Right now it feels like a little neck pain for me, but it’s that that dynamic explosion of every moment.Yeah.

Beautiful, JoJo.Yeah.Kabbalah is quite interesting, Karen.All kinds of interesting stuff.Let’s see.All right, we’ve run out of comments here.Let me take a look at where we are.

Yeah, Hit me up.What’s your experience currently?There’s something someone said that made me think of something I wanted to talk about.Lori says this is quite relaxing, comforting.I don’t know, something like that.So Lori, isn’t that odd because I’m talking about the fact that you have no control, that your entire life is a dream and a story.

And yet here it is showing up radiantly perfect, that it feels like a current of love, loveness in action that there’s only now.So why would your body and mine respond to that?

Maybe it’s not.Maybe there’s a deeper part of you that has always known this, that’s known this since childhood when it was obvious.And it’s just responding by relaxing.It was always relaxed.So that deep part, Laurie, is beyond all the trials and tribulations of the world.

It’s it’s of the world.It’s it’s in the world, but not of the world.You could say is our boy J Diddy said you haven’t tried any water fasts.Kavita fasting is another interesting practice that can some people really resonate with it.

I’ve used to do intermittent fasting, but not for spiritual purposes more for you know, trying to lose weight.And the funniest thing was all my life.I struggle with trying to keep in shape and lose weight and last 10 lbs last 10 lbs for how many decades of life?

And since January, 10 lbs went away.And I don’t know if it’s again, I could say, oh, well, we were doing yoga and I walk a bunch of miles a day and you know, I, I stopped eating when I’m full and all that.But why did that happen?I didn’t intend to do any of that.There’s just a natural attunement to what the body is doing.

So you, the you you thought you were, just relaxes and gets out of the way and the body just bodies.So then it attains whatever homeostasis it’s going to be at.Maybe you’re at baseline a little overweight.So what?Apparently, at baseline, I am the lightest I’ve been as an adult, which is so strange because I didn’t try.

I saw my PCP for the first time in four years yesterday because I was like, you know, I should probably go.And he was like, yeah, he looks like you lost 10 lbs since last time.Yeah.And like, I was like, yeah, I thought I had cancer because I didn’t intend.I didn’t intend to do it.I did my own little workout and it was negative.

And it’s been months now.It’s been like 9 months, 10 months.And I feel great.Labs look good.It’s like, what’s even going on?Well, just letting the body be the body, not pushing and pulling on it, no shoulds.I mean, they still arise.

Let’s not kid ourselves.The old pattern conditioning, addiction to food as a comfort, addiction to exercise as a control mechanism, all those things still arise.And when I say addiction, I use it lightly.It’s like we’re all addicted to thought.I don’t mean like a severe addiction, like an eating disorder or something, but just does it have to be severe to really affect everything in the energetics of the body?

No.Yeah, Laurie did a fast.That’s great.Five days.Yeah.Can be a real thing, real spiritual experience.Carrie says we control nothing but influence everything.Quote I recently saw from Brian class.

Any comments on these words?So we control nothing but influence everything the way I interpret.Something like the way I.Feel that in the body, in truth, in this moment is we are everything, so there’s no need to control because everything is us.

So how could it be other than us?How could it be other than what is perfect?So in a sense, as everything, we influence everything because we are everything and yet there’s nobody there.So that’s the beauty of words.Is there always a paradox when it comes to truth?

They’re always yes and yes and yes and yes and yes and like it’s all it.This is true and its opposite is true.We have absolute control over everything and we have no control ever and never did.

Both are true.How?Don’t use the mind.It’s never been right about anything except how to tie your laces and these simple actions.It’s not right about reality, and that’s the root of suffering.As we believe our mind, we extrapolate a tool, turn it into our master, and it’s a great servant and a terrible master.

The mind, Dennis, I’m just being aware of every experience and recognizing there is no experiencer, no self in it.There seems to be a growing effect and more glimpses of freedom.If I wasn’t so busy, I’d just be focused there all the time.

That’s beautiful.So I’ll give.I’m going to take Dennis’s pointing here and.Use a a kind of a Buddhist suta called the Bahia Suta to point at this.So this is the story here.This monks hanging out.

He hears the Buddha’s in town and he’s like bro, the Buddha’s in town.I want to find out.What the hell is up?Like how do I get enlightened now?This monk had already busted his ass.He’d done all the meditation, He’d seeked and seeked and seeked and seeked and seeked.He’d done yoga, he’d done fasts, he’d self flagellated, renunciate, all of it.

But he’s like, there’s something missing.I’m still not like I’m still not fully realized.I can tell because they’re suffering.So he goes up to the Buddha, finds him.Buddha’s out there begging for money with his homies.Bahia the monk says Bahia of the bark cloth.

He says, bro, how do I get woke like you and Buddha’s like I’m working here, I’m trying to get money, this is the wrong time.So he comes back.He says I’m asking again man, like I just want to, I want the suffering to end.

You have the answer.Help me out.And Buddha’s like, Nope, sorry, I got stuff to do.Turns out in these Buddhist scriptures, like the third time’s always the charm, like the power of 3.So he comes back the third time and Buddha’s like, oh, all right, come here.You’re serious because you 3 times.

So you’re, you must be serious, right?These old, these old fables, hand to mouth oral transmission.Who knows what Buddha actually did, but he have bark cloth sitting there.OK, what do I do?And and Buddha tells him, listen, it’s simple.This is how you practice.

And this is what Dennis is pointing at.In the scene.There’s merely the scene in the heard, merely what is heard in the sensed, merely the sensed and in the thought cognized, merely the thought.

And notice, Bahia, that there is no you in that.There’s just that you’re neither there nor here, nor in between, and that just that is the end of suffering.

And Bahia has total enlightenment right there.And an hour later he’s killed by a cow protecting her calf.And that’s the end of that.And that’s just how it is in the scene.

Merely the scene in the herd, merely the herd in the sensed, merely the sensed in the cognized, merely the cognized.That’s it.Just the phenomena, nobody watching it, nobody aware of it, no consciousness, there is no you in there.

Just this.This makes no sense until it is experienced as everything, everythinging.And that just that is the end of suffering, the peace that passes all understanding.Let’s see.

Debbie says I don’t believe I’m in control of anything.I believe God is.I believe he gives us free will, but he is in control.Yeah, that’s beautiful.I don’t know.I’ve not found a controller, but you could say the whole thing is controlling itself, which you could call God.

I’m just speaking for myself.You, you have God, That’s that you believe is doing this.And that’s great for me, belief kind of falls away.So it’s more what do I experience?And you might experience God in this way.You might experience God as the entire manifestation doing you, not sexually doing you as like.

This is just.The dance and you’re being danced, and then there isn’t a you.There’s just the dance and then there isn’t a God.There’s just Godness.All of it is God, can you feel that that?

Oh, that is kundalini for me, just a straight out of the top of the head, Laurie says.So are thoughts just like a bird song?Yep, they’re tweets.Tweet Tweet.Tweet Tweet Tweet.

That’s what thoughts are.Just like, just like that.Just like that sound.There’s no difference between a thought and this.None.Yeah, Dennis, it’s a it’s a good story.The Bahia of the bark cloth story.

The Bahia Suta is what it’s called.You can read the act.There’s several translations.Some are better than others.It’s just a pointer, a way of pointing, Dennis says when you can’t find a me anywhere.I once called it being squeezed out by way squeezed out by the not self.

Oh, that’s interesting.When you can’t find a me anywhere, you’re squeezed out by the not self.

Oh, man, that’s great.I I just that’s like send you right there.I don’t want to overanalyze what you just said because I could say a lot, but there’s no need.Just let it point you where it’s going, which is nowhere, everywhere.

Beautiful, Dennis.OK, man, this is OK.I’m going to reflect for a moment that we’re here on a Wednesday, October 1st at like 1:20 Pacific Time in the middle of like work week.

There’s, you know, somewhere between 60 and 100 people here at any time.And we’re talking about things that are actually the deepest taboos in human society and consciousness, which is that we are not what we think we are, that this is not what we’re sold.

And you guys willingly come here and spend your time sharing your experience with each other like that is unbelievably beautiful.And I’m so filled with gratitude for you guys that you can Co create the space.

It’s really lovely.I feel it.Whatever it is.That’s right, Dennis, because there’s nothing left.That’s right.No thing, Lori.

By the way, Lori, your comments are beautiful.So, as are everyone’s.So why do I judge birdsong as enjoyable and thoughts as painful?That doesn’t make sense anymore.God, you’re good, Laurie.Why indeed?Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being exactly what it is, Birdsong thought, having nothing to do with good or bad.

Acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.How could I have done this all my life?Pushed and pulled on reality?Well, that was part of the reality that was showing up.So forgive that.Let that be part of the love of everything and what’s next and what’s next and what’s next and what’s now and what’s now beautiful.

Rebecca says you have no idea how this is helping me.All of you will be 65 in exactly 2 weeks.I see 65 coming.Beautiful, happy happy pre birthday.Karen says how is it different from acceptance?

So here’s the descriptive prescriptive fallacy.Again, this is how it’s the same and different.Acceptance is saying acceptance can be seen two ways. 1 is I don’t like that.

I do like that.There’s no reason I shouldn’t like both equally.I’m going to just reframe my thought and I’m going to accept both, and that’s fine.That’s a nice hack and it will get you a long way in the relative world, no doubt.

And then there’s the second type of acceptance, the peace that passeth all understanding, which is it is absolutely known by nothing that this couldn’t be any other than it is, and that there’s no difference between a dog shit and a beautiful flower.

They’re both radiant expressions of eternity showing up.Now this is just ways of speaking.And so when pushing and pulling does arise, even that is seen as the radiance of perfection.And everything is known at the deepest fundamental level to be OK beyond OK.

Everything is perfect, even the imperfection.And that is a different stratum of acceptance from the mind based acceptance that we try to control or force, which it’s all fine and it can be incredibly helpful when we’re suffering to do that.

So I’m not saying don’t.I’m saying we’re talking today about existential deepest truth, whatever that is.So that’s where I’m pointing.Beautiful.

OK, well how long have we gone here?It doesn’t say.Oh, an hour.That’s too long.All right, I think we’ll wrap it up.So couple quick things.Usually I saw stream this to Facebook.

I send it to the Facebook Awakening channel on Messenger so they get notified.Then what I often will do is turn it into a YouTube video, put it on YouTube on the replay, put it on my podcast, the Z Dog MD show, so people can listen to it on their commute or whatever.

People who like to listen and not look at my stinking mug.And that is how I like to do it now.And then I’ll have ChatGPT or Claude AI actually make a chapter list so that it’ll go by topics and it’ll summarize it in a blog post and I will edit it and make sure it’s correct and then put it up on my website.

So all of that is what I like to do these days because I can’t come up with stuff to talk about without you because there’s not it.We’re Co creating this moment together, like the whole moment’s creating itself.And I can’t just sit here and talk at a camera without you.So I appreciate you for the people who support the show for the 5 bucks a month on Facebook, YouTube, Locals, I’m deeply appreciative.

You can always join that group on any platform you like.Just go to zdogmd.com/supporters and you.I’ll do live shows just for supporters, but it’s also just being part of a group that’s like minded, which is really nice.

That’s it.Love you guys.Yeah.Thanks so much for for this.This is so helful for me too, really.And I’ll see you guys next time.