What Happens After Awakening? Angelo DiLullo on Non-Duality & No-Self

Angelo, it's a pleasure to see you. It really is a privilege to have you on. How are you?

I'm doing well, man. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm I'm happy to meet you and looking forward to whatever comes up in this conversation.

Yeah. And I've been uh looking forward to speaking to you for a long time. And I don't know why I didn't reach out before, but I'm I'm really glad we could arrange this at fairly short notice. Uh I've upped my t-shirt game especially.

Oh, I love it.

My wife My wife gets me these and I thought if it's fitting for any podcast, it's fitting for Angelo because in your videos there's always loads of complimentary comments and then invariably someone's like, I'm just here for the t-shirts.

Right? Yeah, that's a supportive partner you got there. That's that's awesome.

Yeah, we got a few of these. And I've brought my copy of Three Pillars of Zen, which I know was a a really important book for you. And I I'm pretty sure I bought this basically cuz I heard you talking about it. So that's a little homage to you too.

Um and and why don't we start there, Angelo?

A little bit about about your story. I know obviously you've shared it before, but

I haven't spoken to you about it before.

Sure.

You've spoken about Oh, yeah. You dive in. Well, if let me let me just ask you one thing. you've spoken about, you know, some neurosis, some anxiety, depression that seemingly in your view, from what I've read, you know, surpassed the reasons for it to be there, which led to a quest. Anyway, I'll shut up now.

That's a perfect way of saying it. Actually, uh, you know, we're we're in a world uh um flooded with anxiety, depression, angst, uh self-doubt, and you know, it's pretty ubiquitous among humans. I think many people would agree, maybe not everybody, but whatever my version of it was was beyond the typical, at least that's how it felt. Uh, I felt for most of my life growing up, uh, as if something was just wrong wrong with me, wrong with the world, but usually it felt like it was wrong with me. Um, in fact, the feeling of the feeling of something being wrong with me was more of a feeling tone than than a collection of thoughts or beliefs. It really felt like who I was. It felt like who I was was this problem to be solved. Who I was was this guy who could not figure it out. Couldn't figure out why why I was suffering so much. Couldn't figure out why others didn't look like they were. I wasn't sure if they were. I was reasonably confident they weren't suffering like I was. But many people seem to just get along fine and do well and look happy, look relaxed, look spontaneous. I didn't have any of that. I didn't feel spontaneous. I didn't feel self- assured. I didn't feel uh like I trusted life just being alive and could move through life with joy and and whatever. I felt stuck in my head. I felt in in this like internal pressure cooker of thoughts, self-doubt, wondering what's wrong with me, trying to solve the problem, trying to solve the problem through thought, finding that that just made the problem feel worse actually. Um and that was like an endless loop in my mind. It was it was something about thoughts. Uh I should say that again it was so ubiquitous in my experience that in a way I didn't even notice it as such. I was just so identified with it. I was so imshed in all of this that I didn't even imagine really that there could be a way out of this strangely and yet I was still trying to solve some problem of me in the relative world somehow. So that's kind of where I found myself probably beyond late childhood. Even early childhood, I there were some memories of of this starting to cloud in on me, thoughts and like this feeling of self-doubt, maybe shame, but it was intermittent, I think, in early childhood. Later childhood, it became much more common. Early teens, it was solid. And by the time I was in my early 20s, it was just numbness and and kind of an internal misery.

So, I know that sounds like a depressing way to start the story, but I promise you, it has a good ending. Uh, so maybe some people can relate to this. Uh I will also equate it to a Buddhist term or Buddhist idea um which is suffering. Buddh the translation of duca which would be suffering. A different translation which is probably more accurate as an unsatisfactoriness. Now what's interesting of course is that I at those ages in my teens and early 20s I was interested in martial arts. I was interested in eastern thought. What I didn't realize is I was really seeking some kind of catalyst to actually look deeper into what was going on. And I had learned about Buddhism. learned about um you know the four noble truths. The first one is life is suffering, but it never registered that oh that's that's what I'm going through. I didn't I didn't get that. I thought it was some philosophical idea of suffering or something. I didn't realize they mean no the way I actually feel about me and how life is just really uncomfortable. That's actually what they were talking about. I had no clue. That did not register at all. Um, now I know it's 100% true. But uh so so yeah I was in that space and then uh you know I had had some interest in like I said eastern thought and I actually learned to meditate when I was about 19 and from the time I was 19 to 24 uh so about a 5-year period I meditated pretty consistently a couple times a day I did find something in meditation I found it to be calming I found it to be a kind of oasis in this this uh ocean of sort of suffering you know a misery angst whatever. Um, and uh, there were a couple of times that somehow through meditation, through the insight of meditation or through the experience, there was an opening that felt wider. It felt like, whoa, wait a minute, this is beyond me somehow. This is a lot of what people talk about with psychedelic experiences and so forth. I definitely had a couple of those and they seemed to somehow stem out of meditation, but then they would just close back down. They were experiential. They would last maybe a couple days max, but there was something there. Uh and and so I I enjoyed meditation, but I will say it didn't really spill over into the rest of my life. I didn't maybe to some degree it calmed me, but it didn't address the real problem of suffering that I just described. So, um that's that's sort of a background in in spiritual practice, let's say, or eastern practices. I I knew a little bit about Buddhism. I had read about it, learned about it. I'd heard about enlightenment, but none of that stuff registered as anything other than some ancient philosophy that may make you feel better. Hopefully didn't really work for me. Something like that. And then of course something happened, right? So what often happens before these kinds of shifts I'm going to describe is not always but often some kind of disruption, some kind of major unexpected event or turn of events or a rugpull or a breakup or sometimes a tragedy. And that's what happened to me. I uh had grown up rather lonely. I I felt very emotionally isolated. This had to do a lot with my anxiety, with the suffering, with just familial patterns I had inherited. But, um, yeah, I hadn't really connected with with, uh, someone romantically very well, except for very short, messy moments that didn't really work out, but I I I finally did. I was I was dating somebody for a short time, and it was kind of a messy situation, too. But it was the first time I really deeply, I think, physically and emotionally connected with somebody. And it didn't last too long and it was tumultuous on both sides. And it also blew up pretty quick. But the blowup of that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me or at least one of the best things that ever happened to me because it was devastating and at the same time something inside that devastation was like, "Yes, finally." And I and I thought I I actually overtly thought how strange that is that I'm enjoying my own misery right now. What is it about this? And it dawned on me that I had been holding out the one thing I've been holding out for that could finally solve this problem that I'm talking about, you know, as as suffering would be a relationship, a a romantic partner, the perfect girl or whatever. And as soon as I had it, I realized, oh, it's not that that isn't going to solve this problem. It's going to do something, but it isn't going to solve this problem. Right? Soon as I realized that, it set me on, excuse me, it set me on this course. Um, and I'll just call it self-exloration, but it was I want to just for anyone listening to this, I want to be really clear about what this was and what it wasn't. It wasn't a philosophical self-exloration. It wasn't, oh, what does it mean to be me? What does it mean to be a self? Let me read some philosophers about that. Wasn't that it was like a turning inward? It was really like, wait a minute, who who's living this life? Like, wait, what is this? Why why am I suffering? Why? Why are these expectations being dashed leading me to this paradoxical experience of release and joy and excitement and a a sense of awe and almost like a journey opening up at the same time I'm feeling tragedy like what what is really going on here? So I became deeply curious about the nature of me or of identity. Not in a thought-based way, not in a memory based way or conceptual way about facts about myself and not in a philosophical way, in a direct way. Simply I was like, wait a minute, who's here? Who am I? Who's suffering? You know what, whatever. But I I'm just saying that to give anyone listening a sense of that turning inward. And now I know it's possible for anyone and I I lead people to it, but for me it required a rugpull and it worked great. And part of that was I was in this funny sort of nebulous space. Um, it lasted a couple weeks maybe. I don't remember the exact time frame because this was many years ago. But the the nebulous space was something like I would suddenly feel intense suffering like I had before. In fact maybe worse and feel the the disappointment of the breakup. But then suddenly I would just be in a completely different space that that felt almost beyond me like almost not me. Um, and yet it felt really familiar. It felt really interesting. It felt there was this kind of wonder to it. And for the first time in my life, I I think I really felt like I'm not running this show. Like something way beyond me is happening here. And I liked it. I Some people get into that place and it's scary for them and I understand that. But for me, because the suffering had been so ubiquitous, it was it was a relief to feel that okay, there's there's things moving here that are just beyond me. And I have failed in my attempt to make myself feel better clearly in every way. So I'm okay with it. Let's just see what happens. So I was in this kind of wonder space, right? Maybe if you talk about the hero's journey, you could talk about it's when you you finally set off and you you leave home behind. I was leaving home behind. Home meaning just the ways I I think I know myself, the ways I think about myself, the ways I'm habituated to thinking about my life. I was starting to leave that behind, you know, intermittently. And and and where where does that go? Well, for me it went into this deep place, this like intuitive place that I things get paradoxical here in language, but I knew it and I didn't know it. I didn't know it in the way thoughts could know something, but I did know it in the way that it was actually more intuitively real than thoughts. And that was obvious. Um, so, so that was starting to happen. There was something just already evolving because of this situation. And then a couple of things I did. One is I picked up a book that I had had on a bookshelf from years ago. Um, I think it was called Three Golden Pearls or something like that. It was some kind of maybe a dowist book. I don't even remember. It was a very short book. But I opened it up. I remember reading nothing in there except for one line. And this one line stuck out to me so powerfully. And there's nothing magical about it. Anyone hearing this probably isn't going to have this experience, but for me it was the right thing at the right time. It was catalytic. And the line was um non-attachment isn't non-feing. It's not attaching to what you feel. Why that hit me the way it did at that moment, I have no idea, but I felt what it meant. I could feel something shifting inside. I I noticed that interacting with certain catalytic experiences, one was the breakup, now there's this line in a book, they were actually starting to affect something inside me, almost like a a switch was flipped on some machinery that was ancient I hadn't had access to and now it's moving. It felt like that, like things were literally shifting in me. And I thought it was fascinating that like why would one line do that? But I also intuitively knew what the line meant suddenly and I hadn't before. So that that was the first thing I remember as far as like opening a book and getting some kind of catalyst out of it. But then the second one I remember was far more profound and that was when I opened the book called the three pillars of Zen, the one you just uh displayed there. Uh and I don't remember if I read the whole thing. I I probably read several chapters but there were two specific chapters that that worked that mattered and I can describe them briefly. One is called I think it's called interviews with a Zen master or something like that. And what it is, it's a chapter of um a dialogue between a Zen master uh his name was Yastani Roshi in the 60s, 50s and 60s I think early 60s maybe and students who would come into this dokousan room and doan is just a term in Zen that means a private encounter between Zen student and Zen teacher and so during let's say a meditation retreat multiple students would come in sit before the teacher one at a time and then leave and come and go and come and go and it's a private session because of some something to do with coons and coons have a sort of demonstration that you don't want to do in front of everyone because it spoils it for others. So there's there's something about it that makes it private because of that. But the private nature of it isn't the key. The key is the interaction is special in that the interaction is there for a sole purpose of helping the student access their true nature. Break through that barrier of suffering. break through that barrier of the illusory sense of who you think you are and that you are this suffering being that needs to constantly figure out your suffering there there's a way to break through that and that's what they were doing and so it's a it's a different kind of communication it's an intuitive back and forth it's a an instinctual interaction between student and teacher which doesn't just involve words it could involve sounds motions movements things like that uh so in this chapter I was watching or reading uh one after another person go in there feeling what I would have been feeling my whole life. The I could feel their suffering because they described, you know, they described what's going on for them and I could show I could see how the Zen master was showing them how to find their way to the root of that suffering through their own identity essentially or through a Um, but more importantly than noticing what's happening in the book, I could actually feel the coralate in myself. I actually was feeling what he was doing and I was picking it up. I was intuitively like taking it on board. Um, and that was very fascinating. I I had never been in an interaction with anyone like that. I had no idea that Buddhism could have that in it. I didn't equate that with Buddhism. To me, this is what he was doing wasn't teaching about Buddhism. He wasn't using doctrine. He was pointing directly to people's internal experience. He was pointing to their mind. He's pointing past their thoughts. It was it was much more psychological maybe than it was spiritual or or religious uh in that interaction and I was totally fascinated but again I felt it. Uh then I found the chapter called enlightenment accounts. And what I used to think enlightenment was before this was some almost like an idealized state, something mystical, something that happens maybe to saints. Maybe maybe a couple monks if they've meditated for 70 years may may achieve this whatever this enlightenment thing is. But mostly it just sounded like this this thing that happened to people 2,000 years ago. But I would have never registered that I could experience what they're talking about when they talk about enlightenment. Um, but this chapter called enlightenment accounts uh was a collection of I want to say nine or more uh pieces of writing by people who had gone through this shift they're talking about. They didn't call it enlightenment. They called it kensho. Uh and these people who had gone through the shift wrote about it in their own language. They use some Zen terminology, but it this would be relatable to anyone reading it. It's simple personal language and vulnerable very obviously uh both men and women. Some of them were monks and some of them were what would be called lay people which means you just went to a Zen retreat and and you go back to your your home and your wife and your children and your husband and whatever. Uh so it was a mixture of both monastic and just householders so to speak. So it was relatable. Like there's nothing in there that that was unrelatable to me because what these people talked about was the suffering that came before the the work they did to investigate the nature of their identity or the nature of a which is a placeholder for identity. Um, and then they described going through something that I had never heard of anyone talking about going through but but it was so clear what they were talking about to me that it it kind of started happening for me. I mean I I was again it was catalytic in that I could feel an internal shifting happening. Uh and excuse me the the accounts were notably marked by a kind of release that happened a a transformation that happened that was beyond anything I had heard of. No one talked about it. It was kind of like the moment in my life where when I thought, I'm 24 years old. Why in the heck has no one ever told me about this? How is it that everyone I've ever met doesn't even know this? I It was It was really mindboggling. But then again, I didn't care. I just knew I'm going there. And I was so desperate at that point and also so moved by this mysterious um unfolding that I I not just thought but I I actually knew I I thought if I die trying to do this then I die. I don't care. I'm going to figure it out. This is where I'm going. Everything else faded into the background. It's almost like everything else in my life became kind of gray. It just grayed out and this was the focus. It was like oh this is it 100% I know this. Also, there was this familiarity with it that was similar to what I had described in some experiences before, but more so this felt ancient to me. This felt like territory I've been in before. This felt beyond this physical life. Um, it didn't give me any sort of context that I could describe to you as far as past lives or the structure of the afterlife or pre-life or that's not what I mean. I just mean that the intuitive depth of this was something I did not know was possible and it it felt and rightly so after this the shift I'll talk about became very obvious but it felt like this connected to things that are really beyond this physical life like I don't know how that mean if it's another dimension if it's past lives but it was obvious that this was vastly vastly bigger than me and there was something really beautiful about that something sublime about that um that I'm a willing participant in this that maybe only my willingness does anything. Everything else is out of my control here. And it was such a beautiful moment of recognition that I know where I'm going for the first time in my life for sure 100%. Before that, I never knew where I was going even when I knew where I was going. And I was functional. I had jobs. I could I was a manager some at a restaurant. Like I could function, but I never knew where I was going. I was always lost. And this is the first time I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm not lost anymore. I know exactly where I'm going because I could feel it. And that that moment of recognition and I'll say um I don't know if it's a true decision because it did it didn't feel like a decision. It felt like the only possibility left and it also felt like it had to happen and I felt like it was going to happen and it felt timeless. Felt like past and future were starting to come come apart at this point. Um what I did was I just applied what I was reading in that book to my own experience to my own practice. I I took that Zen master's uh direction and applied it to myself, which was actually really easy. Um so yeah, that's that's what I did. And as soon as I really dove into that book, I think over a few days maybe, um then it started happening. This shift started happening. Uh and do you do you have any questions or anything before I go into all this?

Uh I mean there have been a few a few pop up. One that's just come up now would be um so the process had already started as it were and then this book was an accelerator. That's one question. And then the other question that's popped up as well when you talk about inside you notice this this shift happening this process sort of starting to kick in. Do you mean like literally inside your body or do you mean inside in a different way?

Um, it at this stage of things I don't really mean inside the body. That's a really good question. It was more like inside what I had always overlooked as the core of my experience of being and I'd overlooked it because I was using thoughts to project my attention outward from it. That's the best way I can say it right now. So what I might say is inside of your experience of being in the most simple possible way it can be experienced which most people don't actually experience on an ongoing basis. They may get tastes of it but most people don't actually experience it. And I know this from working with many many many many people now who have gone through this and I've led them through it.

Yeah.

Uh yeah.

Yeah. So could you just maybe say that again and and even try and simplify a little bit because

that being what you mentioned there and people not being in touch with I do think it's interesting because some people who I'm sure you're aware of talked about oh rest in being >> like it's this sort of simple thing right and then it can be leave people like

right I mean I mean I'm doing that because I am but like where it's it's and and it can almost be dismissive you know it's the easiest thing in the world But as you seem to just highlight, it's not.

No, it's not necessar not at first there. So I should say as as the book I wrote, there's a paradox. There's a chapter on paradoxes. It's early in the book and I explained that there's a lot of paradox here. So understand some of this is going to start sounding paradoxical. But that's okay because I'm not talking about logic here. I'm talking about being I'm talking about identity. So um I will do my best. um what I was taking to be life before this shift started happening and happened what I was taking to be life what I was taking to be real and actually what I was taking to be me was just a collection of thoughts now whoever's listening to this there's going to be a various reaction to that some people will will realize well yeah of course other people will think oh I don't even that doesn't happen to me I don't I don't even have thoughts some people are so identified with their thoughts they don't even know that they're having thoughts all day long, right? And like that's defining what you think is real and what you think is not real and who you think you are. But it was it became very obvious to me that it was actually this this wall of thoughts or this sequence of thoughts that just kept coming that was opaque or opac opacifying, let's say. I don't know if that's a word, but it was making my experience opaque in a way. It it was actually very one-dimensional. It was very tight small uh feeling experientially like my feeling of me was tight and small even though it felt like I could think of myself in a lot of ways. I could think um about I could remember all these different memories. I could think about all these things I could want and choice choices around my values and but all of that happening seems so spacious and so just like there's so much variety to that. There's not. It's a very tight space in which that's happening actually. And this isn't just for me. This is for everyone. That's why I say this because there is a way through this. I realized that it was almost like I could see through that veil of thought suddenly and and and see through some see through it in a way that felt again intuitively clear. It felt somehow ancient, but it also felt vast. It felt vast vast beyond the that that little world of thought that I had been suffering in and living in for so long. Um, I didn't give it a name at that point by the way. I wasn't saying oh this is being or this is consciousness. It was just there. So even to say looking inward is could be deceptive. This was like looking somewhere else than thought. Finally, that's what I was really doing. Looking anywhere else than thought. Um, and so to answer the question really robustly and fully, I would probably provide a technique of some kind or something like a guided guided inquiry. But there are very specific ways of doing this. Um, now to answer your question about common lexicon around spirituality, I 100% agree with you. In fact, that's why I started talking about this. It's why I wrote a book is I could see how much confusion there is out there. People can use terms however they want, of course. But, excuse me, got a frog in my throat today. But um but terms like being consciousness are used very frequently um by in my opinion many people who still live in the world of thought like they really live in that world of concepts and thought and it's maybe a prettier thought or a more excuse me spacious thought. Hope your editor can cut that stuff out.

I don't have an emitter so no.

Oh maybe you're gonna No. Um so so yeah uh the opening itself was the teaching the opening through the veil of thoughts was what was remarkable to me. Um again, it's it's one of those things I can't explain to you. I can just show you how to access it. Right? And I mean, you probably already have, but for anyone listening, um, this is why I use things like self inquiry and I show you what it isn't and what it is. Being is not a concept. It is no concept. Uh, consciousness, if I could talk about it in terms of unbound consciousness or something, it is not a concept. There are concepts called consciousness, sure, and million of them, but that's not what I'm talking about. If I really want to get the taste across to people, I often say it's the core of what you are right now listening to this looking through those eyes. It's the most familiar place in yourself that it's very easy to overlook with thoughts, strangely, but it's more of a hypn hypnosis with thoughts. And yet that place is still there, always there. um it's always accessible but it's easy to overlook because of the momentum of thought. So if we can slow the thoughts down or we can find gaps in thoughts or we can directly inquire to the nature of what it is that's not contingent upon thoughts then what happens is a kind of gap opens up and this whole process I could call inward looking or looking inward or turning my attention inward. It's really being cur curious about who you are or what you are or what is conscious right now. Not not what is consciousness theoretically, but I mean going there, going to what is conscious and staying there long enough until a shift occurs. And it turns out it does. It can and it does. Then you'll know exactly what is meant by being by people who know. There are people who know, too. There are people who have had this experience. That's not an experience. It's a shift in the way they take themselves to be who when they say being they actually mean it. They they they have direct access to it. Um, so so again, there's a mixture out there of the ways people use these terms. There's a mixture of how much insight they actually have of direct experience. But at this point I'm talking about direct experience only. And it's the direct experience of the nature of you being merely alive. Not even alive, merely aware.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. you've got um a video called the awareness trap and so um you said just a moment ago is a shift it I think you use the word experience some people talk about it it's the most mundane familiar experience we have never leaves us so there seems to be a bit of a difference in what you're saying in that if I'm hearing right

Yes, that's true. But there's also a shift that takes place. It's a different quality.

Mhm. Yeah. I mean, so here's the deal. Um, I can say it's the most mundane, simple, natural experience. It's always here. And a number of people listening are going to hear that in their thoughts and they're going to incorporate it into their thoughts and their beliefs and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I have that." So in that interpretation, yeah, everyone already has it. It's already there. you know, um, but what I'm actually saying is it's not something you can even have. It's what you are. It's so

close. Um, but I will say that there is probably something distracting you from it very frequently, if not all the time. And that something which I'm just going to call the the dividing mind for the moment or the dividing nature of thought. that something is so good at co-opting all concepts and even co-opting experiences and turning them into concepts that for a while you may only hear this as a conceptual description even though what I'm talking about is not conceptual it's actually non-conceptual necessarily so it's really a matter of shifting beyond thought so we can talk about in terms of what's already there sure being is of course the being is already there it's it's here it's not even it's it's not even contingent upon here or not here. It's it's that clear. And yet again, most people aren't experiencing it on on an ongoing basis. So then we can talk about in terms of what you have to break through, which is the binding of thought and identity, which is strong. It's a strong binding. So I do talk about this in terms of a shift or an awakening. There are people out there who don't do that. They say like you don't even need to think about it in those terms. That's fine. That's not how I talk about it because I would have done anything to have that kind of clarity when I was younger. But because it's so hidden behind concepts even in spirituality, it's so hidden in the problem itself of mind identification that it was never accessible to me for 24 years. That's tragic. So I'm making it accessible. But I will point people past their thoughts because ultimately that's where you have to go. So it is you can think of it in terms of what's already there. But I also put it in terms of what is filtering it out constantly. What's distracting you and hypnotizing you in your own mind constantly to the degree that you're not actually feeling that release that you that that it vast fluid fluidity the oceanic nature of being. It's a very real thing. It's a very real experience. And after I had that shift, it was day and night. The it was incomparable the way I lived before I was 24 and after that shift. incomparable and so how can I not talk about that but I I also wouldn't tell tell someone to just say oh well yeah it's just being I understand that I know how that is kind of like consciousness or like Buddhism or like advita or whatever like concepts right it's easy to just incorporate anything into concepts I'm talking about something that the concept points to not the concept itself and that's really really important

yeah so um I've tended to find awareness a more useful for where I'm word than being because you know in I was and still am quite thinky >> va dosha iovedically speaking and um you know I I was stuck in my head trying to think my way out of thinking revving it up revving up revving it up and then someone introduced me there's you know there's the thinking mind the the intellect and then there's you know something that observes that and that was this huge sort of shift or or recognition and then and then that sort of evolved. I was like hang on a sec whatever it is that's aware of my thoughts is also aware of sounds and also aware of sensations and so it's not like in here. It's it's kind of everywhere and nowhere and you can't separate it from anything that is experienced right now. So So that that has been a real shift for me in terms of that's always accessible, but that doesn't mean that I don't still get sucked into my head and transfixed by thought and oh what if this happens and I've messed this up and blah blah blah judgments and whatever. So I wonder

what am I missing?

Okay, great question. So when you say when you use the term awareness,

yeah,

when I'm talking to you, if I don't care what term you use, you can say being, you could say awareness, you could say source, you some people say God, you can use whatever term you want. I'm looking at you seeing if you actually are experiencing what that's pointing to. And you are. I can tell you are. I mean, unless you're really good at fooling people, and I don't know why you would want to. I know you I intuitively get that you know what I'm talking about and so we're actually talking about the same thing as far as that first shift. Um, it doesn't have a name as you I mean if if awareness resonates great if mind with a capital M resonates great. That's what like some Buddhist schools would call it. If conscious unbound consciousness works for you that's great. Um, I it doesn't have a name of course even say it's being Zou Chen Buddhism would call it uh knowingness or like rigpa. So there are a lot of ways to term this but again, it the term doesn't matter. What it's pointing to matters and did that shift actually occur and for you it did. It looks like to me clearly.

Yeah.

Um, so you referenced the video the awareness trap.

Um, that video is specific to a deeper insight a deep deeper stage of realization. So then the next question comes up, people will ask, does realization have stages? And I would say absolutely it does. It just does. Um, they don't feel the same for everyone. When you're going through those shifts, and it can be a series of shifts or it can be one big shift and then few years later another big shift. It happens all different ways. When you're going through those, you're often not clear on the mechanics of what's happening because you're just so blown open. Like it's just another layer of identity just disappearing. And it's it's really wild. So you're often not even geared toward reflecting on your experience verbally. You're just feeling it. You're you are the experience, right? So it's often not until retrospect that you see like, oh yeah, there were certain insights along the line that were pretty key actually. And so what I find that there are key insights along this line and these are not knowledge based insights. These are only experiential insights like a shift. Um, and the first one is just the first one. It's maybe the most important one because it's the one that wakes you up from the the total slumber to this whoa. Like you said, this is always available. I'll say it's this. I'll say it's consciousness. I'll say it's awareness. But doesn't matter. It's always available. And what I used to take myself to be as this collection of beliefs and ideas feels a lot less true. It may feel untrue or it just may feel a lot less true or it more may feel intermittently true, which is more common after awakening, right? Um, so then we talk about deeper realization and and going through the processes of shadow work and and that. I don't know if you want to fast forward or you want me to talk about my awakening or whatever.

Yeah. No, let's let's talk about yours and and so um and shadow work. Absolutely. I'm I'm really interested in in that because I do think that that's something I really appreciate about, you know, the way you speak about it is is sort of integrating both sides is, you know, yes, there's a sort of there's still nervous system work and, you know, baggage and traumas and fears and sadness, etc., right? Whereas I think a lot of people um in the spiritual sphere

seem to be trying to circumn that, right? and just you know and and which is actually the longer I spent like I I I get quite irritated and cross almost about that you know because I think it's dishonest

or or perhaps more perhaps more honest than dishonest it's um sort of blindness I think that's what it is

I don't I don't think anyone I don't think anyone that I can think of is that that sort of speaks that way is doing it on purpose I I actually consider it kind of a stage of realization there's a stage of realization that feels like there are no stages to realiz ization. Strangely, there's a a stage where you you just kind of really let go conventionally of of your past in a way, but that can be misinterpreted too like no trauma is going to come up. That's not true because in this present where everything happens, it will come up. And so, you can start by trying to bypass it through certain spiritual concepts or a concept mixed with your own insight and stuff like that, it gets it gets slippery here. It gets tricky. And that's why I I'm fascinated with the nuances of realization and especially deeper realization. So, um, so yeah, we can talk about all the shadow work stuff, but as far as the awakening for me, this is what happened. Um, like I said, I was reading the book. I the chapters on on Kencho Awakening, and I got the flavor of it. I knew that's where I was going. I was like, "Kill me. I don't care. Let's just do this. I want to do this." Um, and so the way it worked for me specifically was there was another line in a book, maybe I think it might have been the same book actually. There was a there's a line in there that really stuck with me and it said thoughts are the disease of the human mind and I thought wow I mean this was back in 1997 when I read that is a kind of a different world back then like you know um as far as like people's understanding of meditation awareness clarity around um altering consciousness psychedelics were still really taboo like it's just a different world and it's I think it'd be much more socially acceptable in a way to talk about thoughts in this way now, but back then I it seemed like there was there was less understanding of that thoughts really are massively distorting and and they can really be a prison, you know. Um, I don't know. Anyway, that line really struck out to me. I I never heard anything like that. So, what I did with this process um was again, a lot of it just felt like it was already happening and I was just giving myself to it. But but I noticed even if I give myself to this process, even if I give myself to that sense of of awe and mystery that opened up, something was actually blocking. Something was holding back. So I had to find out what that was. Okay, I'm I'm reer adding terminology to this that I wasn't thinking at the time. I was just exploring. But what I noticed was, yeah, it was thoughts. It was the fact that I was actually binding to thoughts. So, I could actually slow my mind down one thought at a time and notice one thought. I could see, oh, there's a thought right now that says I'm confused. There's a thought right now that says I'm sitting in a room. Whatever the thought is, I would notice the thought and by really focusing in on the thought itself, my mind was slowing down somehow and the thoughts were slowing down and then it was almost like there was a gap between thoughts, I was starting to feel like, oh, I whatever catalytic opening had happened before automatically. I can actually reopen it now through this kind of curiosity around thoughts. So the thoughts were getting different. They felt different. They felt less sticky. But what I really noticed was there is a stickiness to thoughts there. And the stickiness what I found was the stickiness is an avoidance of fear because when I really stopped grabbing on to thoughts and I really re stayed in that space of thoughtlessness which I realized I could for 5 seconds 10 seconds 20 seconds then the fear came like a very direct physical experience of fear. And I wasn't used to feeling intense fear like I didn't live in a fearful environment growing up. I didn't put myself in, you know, situations where I I was felt threatened. I it just wasn't a common emotion and it was super intense. Um, at the same time, because of the work I had just done with investigating the nature of thoughts and realizing I'm not those thoughts, I could actually see that even though the thoughts get scarier when my body's feeling the fear, they're the same. I can let go of them in the same way. So, I feel this intense fear and the thoughts are like, I'm going to die. I'm going to go insane. If I keep going any further, I'm going insane. And it was kind of laughable at that point, like I'm not going anywhere. I'm just sitting here. My mind is has been hijacking my attention my whole damn life with these fearful thoughts, with these doubtful thoughts, and they're noting true. Like, it was just it was such a revelation. I was like, "Oh my god." Then it became fun to just stay and stay in the fear until the fear even subsided. It was just a physical experience. the fear. Oh yeah, it totally subsided. Then there was this

it was fun. You you found that fun because you know

after a bit I did

right. So it it took a time of sitting with it and and staying there.

Yeah. It became fun when I realized that I don't have to believe a single thought. When I realized that my whole life I had had this this ego, what call it an ego had a gun to my head and it's like you have to pay attention to me. You better

Pay attention to me. You better think about this. You better. That's kind of what I was starting to realize, like it was my rebellious nature coming through. I was like, "What the hell? I've been kidnapped by this thought system my whole life and I didn't even know it. It was literally holding me captive because all I wanted to do is sit still and not entertain one more thought."

And just that simple act, which is totally innocent, totally safe, I knew it was, was triggering my mind to say the most scary things. But I knew they weren't true because I, by that time, could see one thought is any thought. I was starting to see they're just thoughts. Scary thought, simple thought, mundane thought. They're literally nothing but thoughts. And they don't say a damn thing about what I am. I still didn't know what I was exactly, but I knew I wasn't that.

So then I just stayed in that quietude that was, that was there after the, the sort of fear barrier. I talked to people about a fear barrier. Not everyone has it, but it, it tends to come up sooner or later in, in this process. So, yeah, it was just this calm after that and I could stay in this, this sort of, maybe I'll just use the word liminal space, but it was very peaceful. It was very neutral. Um, and there was a bit of curiosity there, but I noticed now there was a subtler layer of thoughts. It was more subtle, but they were still there. And I was identifying with them, maybe in a less sticky way, but I was still identifying.

And it was a simple category of thoughts like, "I'm here. I'm sitting here. I'm aware. I'm awake. I'm not awake. This is enlightenment. This isn't enlightenment." Just these very simple, like monitoring thoughts that didn't feel intense. They didn't feel tied to emotion. But I also noticed, "Oh, those are also kind of defining an experience right now. What if I forgo those thoughts?"

And somewhere in doing all of that, um, something happened that I, that I really can't put words to. It's, it's just, it's truly impossible to put words to, but I promise anyone listening that they can go through this. If, if any part of you wants to, you can do it. But the, I'll, I'll just use, um, an analogy. It's something like the bottom dropped out of what felt like it used to be bound into thoughts and used to take, I used to take myself to be something someone suffering. Someone who needed to figure life out, figure myself out. All the struggle, the doubt, all of that fell away. It just, like, literally like it fell through the floor.

And what was left was the clarity was still there, but it was, it was like, it was like a, a joyful innocent clarity that was extended beyond this body, this life, this mind. It was everywhere. And it was laughable that I had suffered. And yet I knew I had, because it just disappeared. Literally just disappeared, like, like a light switch.

"That quickly."

"That quickly."

"Gone. In that moment, it was gone."

"Oh yeah."

"Just so one second it was there and another it was just gone."

"Gone. Yeah."

And, and it, you know, there's, there's more to this and I can unpack it even more and there, there are other shifts. But in that moment, the suffering was gone and this orientation to, I'll just call it pure consciousness now. You may call it awareness, but this orientation to pure consciousness. Um, I wasn't calling it anything, by the way. There wasn't even a thought. It was just this clear experience of knowingness that could know anything as an object, but it didn't know anything as an object because it just knew itself as a seamless oceanic subject and it was infinite and it was obvious and it was self-confirmatory. It was, I could confirm it without thoughts. That's one of the sort of litmus tests for awakening is that what happens, what, what people wake up to, they can confirm it without thought. You don't need a thought to confirm it. That's, that's the key, right? It's you never needed a thought. You never needed a single thought. You're not going anywhere. You don't come or go. The thoughts come and go. You know, you're not, you're neither suffering nor ending your suffering. The thoughts are doing that. You're neither good nor bad. Your thoughts are doing all that, right?

Um, and so it was very clear that this was the fundamental underlying oceanic experience of being me without even thinking about it. That had always been there. And I, and I, what's strange is I remembered it from being like a baby or a toddler. Like I remembered it. It's almost like static, a little bit, but it's blissful. It's enjoyable. Um, and what I thought was, when that shift happened, it was obvious. The, everything I thought I was fell away. The, the idea that I was anything to do with thoughts about myself was gone by then.

Um, but the weight drop, the heaviness drop was so, that was the most important part for me. It was energetic. It was so deep. And I might say, like, I'll use an analogy to talk about this because I can tell you this. Even though I knew I was suffering before, even though I knew my thoughts were miserable and I, I was kind of miserable in this life, I had no idea how much weight that actually was. I didn't even know the degree to how much weight I was carrying and I, until it was gone. And, and that, that's everything when it comes to this for me.

"Yeah."

"Um, analogy I use is like."

"Sure."

The analogy I'll use is like if you've been walking your whole life and you have a backpack on and every couple days someone throws a stone in there, a little stone, another little stone, you aren't going to notice, but at some point you're like dragging yourself along, you know, like it's heavy and but if you don't notice the backpack, that's where you're at until all of a sudden someone just cuts the straps. That's what it's like. Another analogy, it's a little stranger, but I think it's not bad, is if you ever read about there are some animals out there, um, that can get, or even insects, different animals, they can get, um, uh, co-opted by a parasite. There are certain parasites that can get in and actually get into their nervous system and they can actually change their behavior and make that animal go eat resources that that feed the parasite and things like that. Like these things can happen, right? They can actually take your nervous system over. That's what had, and, and that animal doesn't know. It doesn't know it's wasting its own resources to feed this hungry monster, right? This parasite. It's just doing what it's doing. But at some level, it's, it's ill, right? For sure. It's not moving naturally. It's heavy. It's got a burden of something feeding off it. That's what it was like. It was like that just was pulled out of my head. Like that parasite was gone suddenly. And, and whoa.

I also realized, like, I looked around. I thought, "I'm not sure I know anybody that knows this." I was reasonably sure no one had woken up like that. Um, which is fine. It didn't make me feel special, but it was, it was noticeable as I could see there's a difference between this, this and living in that world of thought and communicating it through the world of thought to other people. It's like waking up to a completely different reality, but also in some sense a more true reality and a, a more familiar, settled, peaceful reality. So that was the first shift. Uh, and I thought, "Man, I can close my eyes and access this anytime. I'll do this the rest of my life. It's like, yeah, I'll go to work. I'll come home and I'll sit and come right back here because it's right here all the time anyway." Uh, and it was that, it was that much. It was a massive relief for me. So, that was the first.

"Okay, let, let me just ask a question about that, Angelo, then. So, you described that analogy of the pebbles and stuff. So, um, I've got quite a busy nervous system. You, I know I've got a lot of stuff in here, right? And it comes up and you know when I did Ayahuasca for six months, after, man, there was all sorts of stuff coming up like it was crazy. Um, but there's still a lot in there. I've got a sensitive nervous system. I can feel that now. Two things. One, I remember the first time I did DMT, and I don't say that lightly or, you know, I don't think I've mentioned that on here before. I've mentioned Ayahuasca, but the first thing I noticed, I had no expectation. And I had no idea what it was. Nothing. Right? First thing I noticed was, boom, my body disappeared. Right? So I went from heavy to light. I mean, like, what? Like there's nothing here. And that was this, this, um, felt sense. It was like, whoa. And then obviously everything else was kind of crazy. So that kind of took over. But that, that memory of that body going. So the way you've described it, it sounds almost like having a shower and washing all that stuff out in an instant, or is that a bit naive?"

"Yeah. No, that's good."

"Yeah. So that, that happened to you and it stayed that way?"

"Yeah. And also, and this is another weird part of this. I also saw I had been doing it to myself. But, but the thing is, if, if you don't go through this shift, if you, if you don't get the direct insight, even to hear that you may believe it and it may register like, 'Yeah, I am doing this to myself. I'm beating myself up all the time,' right? Hearing that doesn't help. Like I can't just tell you that and you and say, 'Stop, stop wrestling with yourself. Stop, stop your internal struggle.' It doesn't work that way. And yet I realized in retrospect, 'Oh, that was the weight. The weight was all this like pushing and pulling on myself.' And, and, and actually using that whole pushing and pulling in thoughts to numb myself from from emotional. This is like deeper realization, but from the emotional experiences such that there was a buildup of of almost tension in the body too. So the mind was tension, the body was tension, and I was not only in complicity, I was like running the show of resistance to my own mind and then my own body and then everything in life, totally innocently. I don't, I, I didn't learn to do that. Um, it just started happening. And I think that's true of everyone, actually. I think some people are more sensitive to it, though. Other people are sometimes pretty settled in a mind-identified world, but, um, many people are not. It's very uncomfortable. So."

"Okay. Um, right. So, you, you went, I mean, that, I, I like what you said a bit earlier. Like, this is, this is the key thing from your point of view because I suppose this is where it is something that I would like because I do, as I said, like that the whole, 'Okay, it's all it, or it's not separate from it.' Um, and being able to let go of thought in the moment and just check at any moment. Yeah, it can't not be that, ever. Um, and it's always there and it's always on, you know, it's like the light switch is not even that, you know, like that's very obvious to me. But then, but as I said, like that shift to what you've just described of like that, it's, it's certainly more than it used to be. A lot more, but it's, there's still wrestling and tension and, and fear. You know, there's been some existential dread and, um, and stuff like that in, in me for sure. And so, yeah, selfishly, the question I want to ask is, right then, how do you get from there to there?"

"Well, here, I, I'm, I'm telling the story in sequence. So, in that moment, it was gone. I didn't, I didn't say it never came back. So the, the tension, the resistance, the repressed emotion."

"So what I usually say, and again, you, your shift was more subtle, and that's fine. Sometimes if there's a lot of pressure before the shift, a lot of buildup of tension and suffering and so forth, and there's more contrast to this before and after. But, um, it's an important shift. It's an insight that is, in a sense, irreversible, as you, as you just described beautifully. Um, however, it's just the beginning. It really is just the beginning. And so what typically happens, not always, is there's a kind of honeymoon period. Usually after a shift like that, people will have several weeks to a few months, sometimes a year, sometimes more, where they really are, they do feel like they're still in that space of just like no suffering at all. Pretty, pretty ongoing lightness, you know, occasional emotion come through, but just generally very fluid and, and open and peaceful. Uh, that's what I would call the honeymoon period. Now, after that, what starts to happen is the phase I would call like shadow work. You call it, you know, you can call it whatever you want, but it's, it's really like, okay, I think I made this analogy in my book, but I'll use it. What awakening does is it says, 'Hey, here's what true nature looks like. Here's what true nature feels like. Here's what true nature is. Your true nature. It's awareness or it's consciousness or it's being or whatever. But it's infinite. It's uncaused. It's always there. It's not contingent upon thoughts, right?' So reality is going, 'Hey, this is reality. How does that feel?' Feels good, doesn't it? And it's like, 'Hey, now let's go look at all the all of the reasons you've been filtering that out for 24 years.' And you're going to look at those reasons really closely now. And those are more like physical attachments to safety that you're getting down into, like fear of abandonment. Like the really deep stuff that I promise you everyone has. If traumatized or not, even if you grew up in the most loving family, you have a fear of abandonment. It's in there and many people will never access it. If you access it, you have a chance to to take that first shift and go far, far deeper. Um, and your shirt says non-dual or non-duality. And, uh, that's the shift I like to talk about, which is comes later on. Um, the awareness trap, specifically the video I made, is pointing to something that can happen here where someone kind of reifies that, that the insight of the first awakening in a semi-conceptual way that's still there, but they're also using the concept of it. And there's still a significant amount of avoidance going on and they're generally not willing to do the deep shadow work stuff and so it's kind of like, 'Oh, that's it. No, that's all there is. There's no more than this. This is it. This is it.' But, but many people who are honest, like you, and vulnerable, like, 'Wait a minute, why am I still feeling like super intense, maybe more than I was before? I'm feeling resistance at times. I'm feeling, you know, guilt like I've never felt periodically. It just comes, you know, randomly.' That's pretty typical shadow work. Uh, in my book, I said after this first awakening, you may feel, um, uh, in some sense even more unenlightened when you start feeling super intense emotions that you've been repressing. You're not. But it, it, it's okay. They're coming into consciousness now. You're not repressing them anymore. That's good. But it can be, it can feel like an overwhelm or an overload to the ego that's beaten up and battered by the awakening, but it's still kind of there. It's still trying to reify a self apart. Uh, you know, it's trying to numb itself out. And to that, this can feel like overwhelming. But to your, to your energetic body, to, to the energetics of it, it's, it's not overwhelming. You can actually handle it. And over time, you start to realize like, 'Oh yeah, I can feel profound shame. I can feel hopelessness. I can feel helplessness. I can feel all these. These are emotions. They're emotions.' You know, I can feel fear. I can feel grief. Um, I can feel anger. And so the repressed emotions start knocking at the door. You know, like the lost children start knocking at your door. And this is deeper shadow work, but you, you know, there are a lot of ways to address that. But the worst thing to do is close the door, you know. Um, and then what that does is it starts to address the more fundamental, um, restless energetics in the system that that led us to mind-identified in the first place and then kept us there. That, that whole thing, that whole apparatus of mind and thought was actually a reaction to this rather intense energetic that is felt directly being in this body.

"Being in this energetic field, let's call it, if you don't want to call it a body. Um, that's, it's, it's actually rather intense. And now you're face to face with it. And you're not trying to filter it, or you can't filter it anymore. So there is a, there's a process of, maybe I'll just call it reintegration. I don't love the word integration with this stuff. That, it's, it's more of like, um, ultimately what it is, dissolving resistance. And resistance is pretty ubiquitous in our system. So, uh, early on. So what you're doing is you're learning, you actually don't have to resist anything. And then the, the shadow work does calm down over time. You know, the emotions calm down and/or you just have such a seamless, non-judgmental relationship with emotion that they can just move through like weather patterns. Are not a problem at all. They don't break your clarity. Whereas before, when your mind identified, an emotion breaks clarity with, when you know, you start feeling an intense emotion. 'Where'd my clarity go?' All of a sudden you're in your head, right? But over time it's like, 'Oh yeah, there's this, this clarity is here regardless of what I'm feeling. It's not going anywhere.' So the clarity becomes more stabilized. The clarity, call it awareness, whatever. Um, and then I've mentioned it a couple times. I never fully answered the question. So the, the video, um, that I made called the awareness trap. Talking how to about how to get past this kind of sticking place people can get into when they're in kind of like deeper realization with awareness because you just want to remain that formless awareness. It's the ultimate escape in a way. It's the ultimate like, 'Ah, finally, I'm not feeling all that suffering.' It's like this, just time to turn the corner. You got to go back into it. When you go back into it, it's different. And then you can go through it. And then non-dual clear, non-dual realization can occur. Uh, and that is a whole different ballgame. And, um, it's, uh, kind of awesome. I mean."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I watched a video where you were speaking to a woman recently and the thing that stuck out with me, you asked her, you know, she was describing her experience and you asked her what had preceded it and there had been like eight months of, you know, challenging difficult stuff come up and I remember you said, 'Yeah, this is what a lot of people, you know, they want to have the good half without the tricky half, right?' And then so she had not been resisting and then she said all of a sudden like her perception of things was like, 'Oh, hang on a sec, how I perceive things has changed.' There isn't that same, from memory, um, depth of field and it just, yeah, that kind of, yeah."

"Yep, that's that non-dual realization. So, um, so I can, I can talk about it from my own experience, if that's so. What happened for me, it happened very quickly for me. It does happen for some people, but it's not super common where you'll have like these shifts in a row. And this did happen for me, though."

"The second, the night that I had that, that opening I described, that the profound peace, um, and it did feel like everything was made out of, everything's made out of consciousness. The whole world is consciousness because every, every way that I had thought about the world before was through thought. So all of a sudden it was all like this ubiquitous, open, spacious consciousness. Um, and the thing I overlooked about it was that it still felt very much like an experience I was having, like a seamless, infinite experience I was having. But I was so dissolved in the experience, I didn't realize that. That's the best way I can say this, but I'm going to contrast it to what came after. The next morning, actually, I woke up, took a shower, had to go to work, but I got up early so I could meditate. And I took a shower. I don't remember what was going on. And my mind was probably very quiet. I'm sure it was. And I sat down and dropped right into that, that blissfulness. I dropped right into that clarity, that oceanic nature of everything just being this, whatever this is, you know, call it consciousness, call it awareness. And then I dropped right in. And then all of a sudden something else happened that I, I could have never expected. It's not expectable. There's no way your mind could even begin to understand what this is like. But it's, it's like the, the, it's really like the physical form of reality itself disappeared. Physical form, like the room, like it's still this way. So the room I'm in, I'm using those terms conventionally, but my actual experience is not being in a room. My actual experience is not being having a body or having a self-structure that's apart from anything. That, the, it's formless. It's truly a formless reality. And not only is it like that, it's not an experience. I realized that the experience of form was an experience. This is experienceless. You need a, a person experiencing form to have the form. So you have this relationship between subject and object going on all the time. And that can actually stop. And there's no language to even describe what that's like because language is based on distance and time and me and you and the, the speaker and the receiver of language. The whole thing is based on that. It's impossible to talk about this. I can use poetic terminology. I can try to describe what went away, but it's rather a trip. I mean, it's."

"Sounds good."

"Yeah, it is. It's, it's really not, it's not in any category. It's not good or bad. It's, it's, but it's so natural. It's so obvious. It's profoundly, I'll say this. It is profoundly peaceful beyond even that first shift. Way beyond. When there's no shadow work to do. When there's shadow work to do. That same lack of boundaries, that same lack of form that makes it so that there's a seamless experience of, um, just textures appearing of sound and sensations and colors that are all interwoven and intermixed and don't exist in any time or space. That whole thing sounds so beautiful and it is beautiful. But when shadow material comes up in that, you have no boundary anymore. You can't push it away. You can't think your way out of it. You can't justify anything. You, you feel it so fully that that can be surprising too, how directly you feel things. But that, the good news about that is that's the only way you can really process it. And more importantly, that's the way you process resistance. And then the resistance starts to settle. And then over time, especially if you're willing to do good shadow work, more and more that crystal clarity, formless, non-dual nature of everything is just there all the time. And it's very peaceful. So that's the second shift that happened. There was even another one after that, but go on. We're on, you're on a roll. This is great. I'm loving it. Please carry on."

"You want, you want the last one?"

"Yeah. Go on."

"Um."

"The last one is even more subtle. Um, and I, I, I sometimes give a disclaimer when I talk about this because it can be unsettling to people, but all I can tell you is I promise for me it was not unsettling. And for anyone I've ever seen go through this shift, and I've seen a lot of people now, um, go through it, this, this big one. Um, for some people it's very, very unsettling for a short time. Like the most unsettling thing they've ever gone through for a really short time, like a few hours or a few days, if they really fight it, like a few weeks maybe. There's something about it that is such a massive loss of disillusionment that it's, you're actually grieving the loss of disillusionment. It's very strange, but for me it was awesome. I, I, I just kind of chuckled at it. Um, and so this is what it was. It was a, I feel like it was a couple weeks after that. It's been a long time, but it felt like a couple weeks later. The non-dual, the formless and boundless nature of everything was clear all the time. Um, and then all of a sudden something else actually left that I couldn't even have fathomed could leave. And it was the very fundamental fabric of being a self at all. The possibility to be a self in any way, in any form, a universal self, a conscious self, it just suddenly just disappeared. And it, and like everything else, I know, like everything else, it seems like that would be bad or something, but it was just obvious like, 'Oh yeah, it would be like a loss.' It's not a loss, though. It's, it's just a dispelling of an illusion. But it, it definitely, it definitely changed the quality of experience as well in that beyond that it was less of this infinite formlessness and more of momentary appearances that are both formless and empty and also very bright and and luminous and intimate, just appearing, appearing, appearing, going, coming and going. That's my reality. Um, very hard to talk about that, though."

"So, yeah, it's almost like reality itself starts to be staccato. It starts to fluctuate in and out, like it doesn't, like maybe there's nothing existing at all, ever was, ever could be, not even consciousness. So I don't want to freak people out because it's actually fine when it happens, but it's, uh, it's, it was a radical shift. And it was also, in some sense, it was very subtle. In some sense, it was very radical. But I remember very clearly thinking, like, most people don't want this because not that it's bad, and I mean, it's not, not, it's a bad thing, but most of what people are doing in the way they identify with who they are through thoughts, they're actually trying to avoid this. Most everyone, including spiritual people, I knew it. So there was that weird, like insight about it as well. It was more like an insight of the gravity of this, of like being careful how I talk about it and so forth. And, you know, I didn't mention it to anybody ever until like 15 years later when I started talking about this and wrote a book and stuff, then I started mentioning it. Um, so that, that was the final shift in terms of anything to do with any kind of personal identity."

"Okay. How can there be potentially nothing? I mean, like nothing as you've described it, and yet we're having a conversation."

"Mhm."

"Just, just trying to imagine, you know, people probably like, like, what?"

"You sure about that?"

"If you look closely enough at anything, you'll find there's nothing there. And this, this, this jives with physics. This. From what I understand, I'm not a physicist. I know some about physics. I do know some about it, but I don't know the math of it. But from what I understand, the quantum field theory is the most, um, well-supported physics theory of any kind. Meaning, there are still problems with the, the particle physics, right? There's still certain pro problems with like gravity particles. There's things that need to be worked out, but there's nothing contradictory in, in quantum field theory. Apparently, it, it actually looks about as accurate as anything can look as a, a model. And that jives with my experience. Quantum field theory essentially says the same thing. It says there are, there's an electron field. There aren't ever particles called electrons. There's expectations in a field."

"Right."

"And there's fields interacting with one another and those create somehow an appearance of something."

"Right. Okay."

"I feel like I live in that world. Okay."

"I feel like I live in that world where I can simultaneously see absolute nothingness. I am absolute nothingness. And at the same time, it's, it's easy and fun to play the game of being in these textures of the relative world that doesn't actually exist. It only relatively exists. It's just like a, it's like wearing a, it's like wearing a costume or something. I don't, I don't know. It's hard to explain it because again, language, this is so far beyond language. But I, but what I will say is it, it feels so real that real doesn't even work anymore. Like it's not, it's not even a description that matters. Like, um, it's so home. It's so, it's like it's so center everywhere. Everything feels so completely complete. Everything feels so completely alive. Even what we would conventionally consider not alive. And yet, it's all totally empty. It's all empty of substance. But the illusion was substance. We ne, we just, we just believed in substance. But you never actually find substance. Just like quantum field theory says you never really find substance if you look closely enough."

"Sure."

"You don't find anything."

"Okay. So I get that. I suppose the way you described it, it's a bit like a dream, right? That like a dream, there seems to be stuff there and then you wake up and oh, it, it was a dream, right?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. So."

"Yeah, actually, yeah, that's not a bad way to say it."

"Right. So, um, you know, you say there's nothing here, but at the same time, there, there's, oh god, this is fun. Uh, but at the same time, there's there's appearance of something."

"Yeah."

"Right. Okay."

"In the same way of a dream."

"Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it, right?"

"Right. Yeah. Okay. That I, that I can jive with more, more easily."

"Because I."

"There's no neg, there's no negation of the conventional that's necessary, actually."

"Yeah. Just, I tell you what, why? Because when you say nothing, I suppose, and, and I've just caught myself, what happened was."

"Nothing actually creates an image of."

"Sort of void and completely blackness that."

"Yeah, it's not that."

"No, right, okay."

"Yeah, it's nothing. Nothing you can make a mental model."

"It's an idea, actually, isn't it? Like, nothing is an idea."

"No thing. I, I might actually use the term no thing. It's a little better because when the, when the non-dual shift happens, specifically."

"I mean, I'm telling you, I've gone through this with people who have had all kinds of awakenings, they're super clear. And when this happens, they're like astounded. They've heard me talk about it a thousand times and they're like, 'What the? There's no wall there. There's nothing here.' They're just like, 'Whoa, what the hell?' And it's, it's a trip, like, you know, to realize that and to see it so clear, clearly. And it, it's, it's not reversible. So, it's more like no thing. And the no thing, it's, it's not a, it's not a description to give you a mental image. It's, it's an antidote for what we, for what we've been constructing through thought without realizing it. The things we've been constructing were constructed through thought. I'll say it that way. What you realize is all of the experience you have that makes you feel intuitively like there's a physical world and a physical body was all thought constructed. It was all mind constructed. And you can see what's beyond that. You can see it's not like that. It's, it's not nothing. It's not everything. It's like some superposition of both. Maybe there, language cannot talk about this. I promise you. But the real, but the realization can happen. The shift can happen. That's why I talk about it."

"So, you know, me endlessly trying to describe it. The only real reason I do it is for."

"Giving people a little taste of it, especially when they're close. Some people will get to the edge of this and they start sensing it. It starts happening like a little bit here and there. So there's some value to talking about it because it's like dialing them in a little bit. But I can never describe it to to anyone's satisfaction. It's impossible."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. And some people hear it and just go, 'That's not this guy's crazy. Like he's psychotic, probably, right?'"

"And I, I get it. Like I probably would have thought the same thing before it happened to me. Once it happens, you're like, 'Oh yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It does.' And it does make sense. Like it really does jive with like quantum field theory or superposition. Um, entangled particles, like all that. You can see dependent origination in Buddhism is is the Buddhist term for it. It's like everything is dependently polarizing, meaning nothing actually exists on its own, only in reference to other apparent appearances. And you see that as a subject-object experience that gets solidified into the mind as an actual world. That's where the illusion is, right? So you can step for that. Okay, well, I could keep chatting to you about this particular stuff, but I feel it, but I feel, uh, the heads could start popping. So, um, the one thing I will say is I spoke to Donald Hoffman about Nobel Prize, I think 2022, which is basically, as I understand it, the observer is the observed, and you can't separate the two. That sounds very much like what you're saying, or is what you're saying, right? Anyway, but let's get a bit more, um, practical, if that's all right, again. So."

"So you spoke about meditating way back when, um, and I know, you know, in your book, which I have, maybe it's upstairs in my bedroom, um, and you talk a lot about in your videos, self-inquiry. And so, and I spoke to Gary Weber, who's al, who just is the, you know, the absolute town crier of self-inquiry, just sit and do self-inquiry. And so, um, in terms of like a technique, as it were, because people like techniques, me included. Um, and so you, I play around with this, you know, I'll meditate, just follow my breath, settle things down a little bit, and then just start dropping in a question. One that seems to, uh, resonate with me is actually, 'When am I?' Because, you know, uh, 'Where am I?' increasingly, obviously, there's the classic one, 'When am I?' But, um, so you seem to be of the view, like, is that the, the technique that can move from, for example, where I'm at to what you've just described?"

"For, for non-dual specifically."

"Yeah. Or even any of the other ones you've spoken about where you judge to where you have described is possible."

"For you. I probably wouldn't talk about self-inquiry anymore because self-inquiry is really good for that first shift, for that first awakening. Um, well, I, I shouldn't say that because for Gary, he did take that, he used 'Where am I?' I think, a lot. Um, I think from what I understand, and he, he took that into all the way into like non-dual, like, you know, for him there was a, there was a value to it ongoing, and that may work, but I usually attribute self-inquiry to to getting to that first shift. Um, once you've already had that, you know, I let people do whatever they want. It's like, you know, whatever really feels intuitively valuable to you. But I think where and when am I would be much better where you're at because those are starting to investigate the nature of duality of time and space and non-duality very specifically is a very clear realization of there is no time or space. That's, that's what it is. But not conceptually or philosophically, but experientially. So looking at, well, 'When am I then?' 'Where am I?' Right? Um, however, you should also know often that can, that can reify a sense of 'I' which is unnecessary too. So, um, there are other ways to go about it. You can like really start to look into, as you mentioned, the sense of the observer and the observed. I would call that subject and object. You can really start looking into that specifically. Um, including doing shadow work. Let the shadow work be done when it comes up. But when you're feeling clear, calm, and curious, start doing this. Um, looking into the nature. So you are, this is, you could call this self-inquiry. What you're really doing though, is now you're looking at the spatial self. You're looking at the relational self. And am I, is there actually a subject here? Not an 'I', not a self in thoughts with memories, but is there actually something here physically pulling back from that world out in front of me when I look at you? And that, and that such that it makes it feel like that is an actual object over there. Where am I getting the perception that there's distance between this and that? Because if you notice the visual field, it doesn't show you that the visual field is flat in a sense, right? It's just a bunch of colors and shapes and forms. We're extrapolating a sense of me or subject and literally everything else. An array of objects. We call those people, we call those trees, but it feels like distance. So the question is, is there actually that distance there? Is that built into this sense of me as the center of it? That's what you're deconstructing now. So you can, you can directly observe like, 'Oh, if I, if I stay right in the visual field, there's just this kind of visual experience. Where does the sense of me come from?' And you might notice, 'Oh, I'm pulling. There's a sense of pulling back from it somehow. There's a sense that there's a me back here pushing that out there or holding it out there.' That's the kind of self-inquiry I would do here, which is more into the inquiry of the nature of the felt sense of a spatial self, the felt sense of a subject, subject being different in quality than objects. Objects are all relegated to the subject. The subject's always at the center. It's always the most important. None of this is true, by the way. Those are the assumptions that you're making without even thinking about it. These are non-conceptual thoughts. But you can actually get really curious about that mechanism. Just watch what happens with simple mundane objects. Sit there and stare at a lamp, stare at a wall and see where in this experience right now is arising a sense of relationality such as there's a me back here and a thing out there. And if you do that long enough and precisely enough and honestly enough with yourself, you'll suddenly have it collapse. That's part of non-duality, by the way. That's not the whole thing. That's just the first part of it."

"Okay."

"The subject-object. Yeah."

"I read an Adishanti post about self-inquiry where he spoke about the importance of it not being heady and bringing it into the body. Let's say when I do, um, 'When am I?' and, and it does, it is immediately obvious that like it's not in time, um, but it's, it still can feel a bit, I feel like there's a, it's a bit more up here than, for example, down here. And I know, know, probably both are incorrect, right? But I just, that stuck with me, what Aishanti said about bringing it into the, when you know the question, it feels at least is here."

"Yeah. It's hard for me to refer to another teacher's teachings because I, I'd have to know the context and, and it depends on the person. And what I recommend to people actually is a lot of times personal based on my interaction with them. So what I'm saying to you now may not be what I would say to others exactly, just FYI. Um, but I really love Adyashanti, actually. I think he's, he's probably my favorite teacher of any teacher I've ever seen or read or anything. Um, but I, I don't know from what you just described."

"I would say do what feels right to you. Do what feels natural."

"But I would, I think I would be a little more inclined in in that case if the sense of there's this subject up here, this 'I' that feels back here. I'd be inclined to like actually go to that. Look closely at it. What is that made of? Are you actually seeing some space three inches but behind your nose? No, of course not. Or 3 centimeters. You're not, clearly you're not. You're imagining it. But why? Like, is that just imagination or is there a sense there? Is there a sensation? Just keep looking at it and deconstructing it and it won't feel so much like a center at some point. That's one way of doing it. The other way, again, is that subject-object thing. That will change that. If, if that breaks for you, the sense of being a subject here or here or here will suddenly just not be there. You'll be like, 'Oh, oh, I see. The relationality was an illusion itself.' And it's like, I'm here and there at the same time. It's, it's a very intimate recognition. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So, but there are a million ways to do this. Attention to the body is great. I, I recommend it frequently. But just based on what you said specifically there, I might say to do it, do it that way where it's like, go right to it. See if it's actually there or what is actually there. So in your experience now, because I get this on a level, but I mean in terms of actual experience, sounds a funny saying, but like in your experience right now, you're as much you there as you are me here."

"Oh yeah. So, first of all, to answer the question, I have to be really precise. And when you say 'in your experience,' that's the first thing that sounds funny to me because I don't, there's no me to have an experience. I'm not saying that there's a me that doesn't have an experience. That's very different. I'm just saying there's no, I can't find anything like a me that's having any kind of experience. So, there's just kind of experience, let's say. But it's non-dualistic, meaning the sense of the sense of intimacy that probably, it's been so long I don't even remember really. But the sense of intimacy that was stuck in the body like, 'I'm here. This is me and everything else is out there.' That's like not here. So it's what I'm seeing and what is felt in the voice, all of it. The hands moving. It's all the same thing. It's just the same no thing, actually. But it's so intimate that it's, it's not absent. That's an important point, and you made it earlier. I'll make it to anyone listening. What I think, what, what gets interpreted, the world of mind identification and thought identification always feels like such a lack. It feels like such a seeking, such a lack, such an isolation that to say that there's nothing can make it sound like it's just going to get worse. Like you're going to lose even more or something, right? You already feel isolated. You already. It's not like that. It's, it's the reversal of isolation. I can't feel isolated. Like I am you. Like all I feel is love, you know, just pure love. Like it's, it's like a, just an total enjoyment of this, this experience that doesn't have sides, doesn't have agendas, doesn't have form. Um, it's not empty in the sense of a vacuum. It's experientially full. It's intimate. It's enjoyable in a way. It's, um, peaceful. It's stimulating. All that's here. So, and it's, it's probably much more clear, all of those descriptions of like stimulating and peaceful than than ever I could have had through the mind's lens because it's direct. So, I do want to say that that formlessness is not isolation at all. Formlessness is not a feeling of loss or lack. Not at all. It's the opposite."

"Cool. Um, that, that intimacy then, because where I'm at on the spiritual path, let's say the pathless path, um, is that walking the talk is really important because there are a lot of people in my opinion who talk about it but then don't back it up with actions. And for me, where, again, where I am, the insight is that, um, you know, there is only one. You know, I am you. Therefore, if I intentionally hurt you, I'm hurting myself. Right? And so living in accordance with that, and now that doesn't mean I don't get nary and you know, rude and whatever, but, but certainly from an intent point of view, that's very present with me. And that means things like taking responsibility for."

my actions and you know it's that way of being has enhanced my marriage so much, you know. And I'm very lucky. We both like try and live that messily. Um, but I see that, you know, a lot of people, it seems in the spiritual world, you know, like say the words and then do things that are contrary to that. But what you've just described, like as as love, I imagine it effortlessly flows from that. I mean, what, what's your take on integrity and and walking the talk, as it were, which from just a final comment from my point seems to take effort, and I wonder if from your point, it's effortless.

Yeah, really, that's a really good question. Um, the walking the talk thing, I, I will say this. It can be a little bit of a distorting to belief, distorting belief, because you may have preconceived notions about what it might look like to be enlightened. Like, what it might, like, you may be like, "Oh, well, by then I would, I don't know, be celibate," or by then I might, um, never make a mistake, or, uh, have to dress a certain way, act a certain way, maybe I'll be a teacher, I have to become a spiritual teacher. Like, we can have a lot of ideas around what that should look like and then use those as a litmus test, co-opted by our ego and our doubt to like, judge ourselves and and just distract ourselves. So, I, I want to be cautious with pointing out that this, what the whole thing I'm talking about here is not any kind of moral code. It's not an ethical, um, framework. It's a direct experience of the nature of reality. And it turns out that reality is pretty benevolent, is what I find. That I'm far better off than I ever would have been before. I'm far more aware of harming other people if I do it than I ever would have been before. I, I feel things so much more directly. My empathy is so much, so much stronger. I, I, I can't not feel it. It's like everything becomes so much more direct. And so you are almost compelled, you are compelled to take more responsibility. You can't help it. You're just hurting yourself if you hurt another person. It's not even a conceptual thing, like, "Oh, well, I know they're me, so I'm going to be nice to them." I literally feel if I hurt somebody, I feel the pain with them right now. I feel their pain even if I don't hurt them. So, it's, it is true and it does matter.

But I, I'll say this, the way the walk the walk thing works for me sometimes is, I'll see somebody either write or maybe even speak online in a certain way. And it's not until I'm physically around them that I can feel how clear they actually are. And it does have to do with how they walk the walk. It has to do with how they hold space. It has to do with how attached or unattached they are. It has to do with, are they open? It has to do with, are they available? It has to do with, are they compassionate? It has to do with all kinds of things. But I, I don't sit there and judge them by that list. I'm just saying I can, I've seen situations where someone may have clarity in writing or something like that, or knowledge of the doctrine, but I have no idea if they're awake or how awake they are. And then I meet them and I'm like, "Oh, okay. Well, there's definitely some major stuff going on there." Or vice versa. I might be like, pleasantly, you know, noticing, "Wow, this person is extremely present and they're not pushing or pulling on anyone around them," which is a big thing to say because we do it all the time. We use complicity, we use relationship, we use communication to keep each other asleep and keep ourselves asleep. And that's a very real thing. Um, so this will ultimately translate into compassion and it has to. Uh, but it's a little tricky to talk about because it can get co-opted very easily. People can have misunderstanding understandings about how it's going to look for them after they wake up. You, you may wake up and not have any inclination to teach anything, of course, and that's fine. Uh, or you may, um, you may wake up and live a life of solitude. And I know people who do, and they're very, very clear, amazing people, and anyone who comes in contact with them benefits from that. Um, but I also know people who live very busy lives and they're also very clear and very awake. And I know that people bumping into them are going to maybe not even know it, but they may have a very profound, um, release or insight just from the interactions with that person, and they may not attribute it to that person. It's not like you're magical, but there's, there's a value to presence. There's a value to being available to people you're in front of. There's a value to holding space without an agenda at all. Huge value. Um, and it looks like compassion, looks like love.

So, uh, every step along this way could be, could be said to be a new beginning. You know, the first shift is a new beginning, for sure. Non-duality is a new, new beginning. It's kind of like a permanent acid trip you can't get off of, in a way, but as a little bit of a joke there, but not totally. Um, and then the no-self shift is a whole other new way of re-experiencing reality. Um, totally different. Um, but what I often say is the, the shift of no-self, or in Zen Buddhism would be called anatta, that's really the beginning of the end of selfishness, greed, ignorance, and so forth. It doesn't stop right away. Um, but it's laden in our behaviors. Our behaviors are full of self-centered actions and and distortions and perception and habits from years and years of trauma. Like, that stuff can still be there, but it, it, it tends to start to really dissolve spontaneously over, over time after that last shift is what I find that really starts to write the ship and write the course in a way that's not just, you know, short-term lifespan of you. It goes, it's, it's karmic. It goes beyond it. It goes into causes and conditions that are just beyond the, the conventionally individual human unit. You still work as an anthe god. I'm not even going to say as a doctor. Um, and so the concerns of life, paying the bills, you know, so on and so forth, paying the bills, mainly, let's say that, just like, you know, if you lost your job, like,

Well, I can't, I can't even know that because I, I just can't imagine things like that. I mean, but I think I would adjust pretty well. I, I adjust, I seem, I find I adjust pretty well to anything because I kind of enjoy the texture and the surprises and the mystery of it all. Um, and like I said, some people have a more complex life. Like I'm, I'm, you know, I have a more complex life. I guess I am a full-time anesthesiologist. I, um, have a YouTube channel. I wrote a book. I do a lot of interactions with people, a lot of shadow work, group work. I, I do all kinds of stuff. Um, but it just feels fluid to me. And I, I could easily envision, I suppose, I don't imagine it this way, or I don't think about it really, but a life of just meditating. Like, I love meditating. I can meditate all day long, every day, easily. That's just not what I'm doing, you know? And even that, it's not even a choice. It's just what's happening. There are days I'll meditate all day, but it's not, not common these days.

Well, as in just shut your eyes and go straight there, or technique?

Oh, yeah. You can do it right now. I do, I do. I mean, I do sit and even in a few minutes, I mean, I can shut my eyes and it's clear, pure, formless, you know, pretty quick. It's like, right away. Yeah.

God is that way, but the, the mind itself, even trying to construct anything, is just gone, you know.

Yeah. So I can see, I should also mention, I can see how the, the mind constructs overlays that are practical so we can function in this empty world. But, uh, they're seen ex as exactly what they are as well. They're, they're, they're actually referring to nothing. That they're referring to nothing. That's the funny, that's the Hoffman stuff, right? Like, it's, he's so clear about the way he describes how this cognitive apparatus is set up to process the world in that way. It just turns out there's no world out there that it's processing, just energy.

Yeah. God, I could listen to you and I had a question and then I just started listening and it's just disappeared. Um, oh, yeah, that was it. So, again, when you're describing this, I'm like, I'm not going to lie, I'm like, goddamn, I want that. Right. I, you know, I've had psychedelic experiences and, you know, I, I've in the past chased that stuff and there's an element of, you know, desire and possibly grasping of like, "Give it to me," right? Um, and I know you've talked about, you know, because a lot of people say the search is pointless, right? "Don't, don't do anything." And, and I like the fact that you don't say that and, and you are very much more like that. That's ridiculous because in most cases, anyone who does say say that and who's got to a certain stage, you know, they've done work themselves anyway. But, you know, that sense of wanting or desire that I've just described, is that, you know, fuel in a good way or obstruction?

It's perfect. So, what it is, when I point, I'm, I'm pointing to something you already know. It's already in your experience. And anything that comes up, doesn't matter how the mind interprets it, that's the barrier. So, if it's a feeling of, let's say, jealousy, competitiveness, like, again, all these things have to come up for all of us. It could be anger, that why, why haven't, why, why hasn't it happened for me? And people, but the, the thing that happens a lot of times is people will feel that, but then they go into their narrative about it and they think it's about, then they get mad at the process or something. Like, "No, no, the process is working. Anything that comes up is your shadow. That's perfect shadow work." It's like, "Oh man, this is what it feels like to feel like I want something that I don't have, even though he's sitting there telling me it's already here." Isn't that weird? Well, let me just feel it. It's like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, it burns. It burns." You know, and you're like, "Oh, wait. I remember when I was a kid, like I had that feeling of FOMO around my older sister because she got to do things I didn't get to do." Like, that's shadow work, right? That's it. You just follow the trail. Follow those breadcrumbs straight down into it.

Yeah. This is perfect.

Okay. And that shadow work, uh, what would you say is the most effective way of doing that in your view? So, let me just add a little thing. I, I speak to people about this stuff, not what you're talking about. I speak about, you know, getting clear on the narrative that's going on in the head and then, and, and how that's invariably the mind making sense of, for example, a feeling inside and actually coming to that. And then when you do that, then you know, you open to that. Not only is that a chance to integrate it and, uh, and yeah, integrate it, but it's also often, I, I find, you know, there's some wisdom in there as well. Um, so, you know, that's a, what I do in my own life and b, what I try and help other people to do, which I, which is shadow work in, in some form. But, you know, how does that compare to some other ways that perhaps you help people, um, that you might see as more effective?

Sure. Yeah. Um, I have a time limit here in just a bit, but I,

Sorry, Angelo. Yes.

And I'm happy to talk again. We can talk again. Like, we could probably talk for hours, I'm sure. Um, but because then we can,

I can answer this question, but just, yeah, I should probably,

Okay, that's fine. Sorry, Angela. I should have checked. Sorry. Carry on.

Oh, no, no worries. Um, so the, I found a, we can talk, we could do a whole freaking episode on on shadow work for sure. It's, it's a fascinating area and it's beautiful in that there are more and more modalities out there. People are getting it now that, "Oh, I got to do this stuff, right?" So, there are a lot of things out there. There's different kinds of things. If you have a lot of trauma, a good trauma therapist is important, probably, um, as at least some, some baseline. The stuff you were talking about, inquiry around beliefs and how they interact with, um, uh, emotions, repressing emotions is often based on using beliefs to avoid them. So, like seeing those beliefs, deconstructing the beliefs, dropping into the emotions, all that stuff, great. And that's probably the bread and butter of all of this. That's what I do, a lot of, um, but the really hardcore shadow work stuff that I found that works well, probably the number one thing that works the best that I've seen, and I'm doing it now, I'm trained in it, and I'm, you know, doing it for a few years. Back, I saw this documentary called "The Work" from 2017. Um, it was about a circling group in New Folson prison in California. They started it in the '90s. And when they started, it was the most violent prison in the country, uh, super dangerous place. And they started this in the circling kind of group. Um, I, I hesitate to use the word circling because there's circling, it's a thing. It is a relational modality, but this, that's not exactly what they do. They do something like deep shadow work. They brought in a guy named James McCclary, um, all those years ago, and he trained these guys, and they all went through it themselves. And it, when I saw this documentary, I was like, "They're doing something I've never seen anybody do." Like, the depth of what they're able to get to and how quickly they seem to be getting to it. I wasn't sure because it was just a documentary. So, I went and did it. I invite, I have these guys come to one of my retreats, actually, and they put people through this process for a day. Um, and these guys are like, these were like the heads of prison gangs that that are the facilitators now. And they're incredible. They are the most like heart-based, emotionally healthy, intuitive people you'll ever see. And they can walk people down into their trauma so fast. It's amazing, actually. They're, they're like wizards or something. Anyway, but I've trained in it. I've trained with James McCclary. He's the executive producer of the documentary. If anyone hasn't seen it, it's my favorite documentary. Check it out. It's like nothing you've ever seen. So, that process there, I've seen transformations in people that I've never seen before in in in speed and efficiency in those circles, in the in the way we do this. Um, and I mean, people even after no-self realization, uh, all the way along the line, like the, the, the pain body, the, the demon inside you, whatever that is. I mean, it somehow can literally get cast out in this. I, it's just the weirdest thing, but it works. And, and James has developed this over decades and decades. He's the most potent facilitator of shadow work I've ever seen. He's a western psychologist. He also had trained with indigenous cultures in Africa, North, and South America over years to learn their rites of passage. He fused it all together. He's got a giant heart, and he's got tremendous amounts of experience, and whatever he's come up with works better than anything I've ever seen. So, we're incorporating more of that into what I do. I'm learning it. I do it. I facilitate it. I've gone through it. I, it's amazing. So, that's probably the most potent thing I've ever seen, to be honest.

Uh, well, I'm conscious that I've got to let you go. Thank you so much, Angelo. I know, you know, flattery's wasted on you, but still, it's been an absolute a joy. And the thing that struck me most really is when I have non-duality conversations, and I've had a lot, some high-profile ones, they tend to be quite philosophical and, you know, up here, whereas this has been much more experiential, and that's why I'm so appreciate you and your work and really love talking to you. So, thanks. And you've said you'll come on again, so I'm going to hold you to that. Um,

My pleasure. Yeah, it was a really, really great interview, uh, or conversation, and I'll come back anytime, man. It's, it's been fun.