The Dark Night Of The Soul - With Abdi Assadi (Episode 1)

This is the first of a series of conversations with Abdi Assadi. Abdi Assadi, M.S., L.Ac., is a licensed acupuncturist, spiritual counselor, and healer who focuses on guiding his patients to utilize their experiences of disease and psychological stress as gateways to spiritual serenity.

In this first episode, we talk about the dark night of the soul, that particularly harrowing time in everyone's life where there seems to be no way out and we are filled with a sense of hopelessness. In those moments our faith in what we believe on a spiritual level can falter, but it can also be the beginning of a new way of living one's spirituality. We will talk about the dark night of the soul I experienced a decade ago, how I coped with it, how we are used to living our spirituality, what our beliefs are based on, how psychology and spirituality are intertwined in those moments, the role of our childhood ego and adolescent ego, control, false beliefs, and much more.

(Contains explicit language)

Transcript

So,

Me and you have known each other for quite some time.

And this podcast came about by me and you discussing the dark night of the soul that you went through,

Which was very intense.

And as two guys who've been on a spiritual path for a long time,

We kept hitting on similar notes about what happens when this dark night of the soul comes.

And in your beautiful words,

The adolescent ego rebels against the divine.

So,

If you would like,

I'd love for you to share your process of what happened and,

You know,

The intense energies that you had to endure.

Yeah,

Well,

I'd been a counselor,

A teacher.

I'd be guiding large meditations and channeling and doing all sorts of work.

And I was in a point of my work and my life where my connection to my guide,

To what I perceived as the spiritual realm around me,

Was very strong.

And I was really sharing it with people and working with it.

And it's funny because it was around early 2012.

And I was channeling all this stuff about,

You know,

The famous,

What was it,

You know,

December 2012 when the Mayan calendar,

You know,

Everything blew up,

Or the meteorite.

But,

You know,

Through channelings and meditations,

Thing came out that,

You know,

Prepare because there's going to be an energetic shift and it's going to be intense.

And if we're not ready to let go,

You know,

It's really going to hit us hard.

And you know,

I never thought that would involve me in first person,

Obviously.

I was the one the message was for.

So when that hit,

You know,

It was at the end of an intense relationship.

And I realized,

You know,

Just later how much undiagnosed depression and anxiety I had had.

And that was the moment where it all came back.

And all of a sudden,

I found myself in huge desperation and pain and sense of profound loss and hopelessness.

And there was nothing from the other side coming through.

You know,

I would pray,

I would meditate.

I would try to re-evoke that connection that I once had,

But it wasn't there.

So the desperation grew only wider.

And those years,

Because it was initially weeks,

Then it became months,

And then it became,

You know,

Two straight years of that,

You know,

Night,

Dark night,

That I came to a point where I was,

You know what,

Fuck you.

You know,

I've worked for you all these years.

And whoever you are,

You're nowhere to be heard,

Seen or found,

From my perspective at least.

So you know what,

This is the moment I felt I needed you most.

And you weren't there.

So it was like,

That's it.

That's it.

Whatever that's it is,

Because there was so much behind the that's it.

But it was like,

You know what,

I'm not your friend anymore.

I'm not your ally anymore.

And what happened in those times was that I really turned to human beings rather than spirituality,

Which was something I tended to avoid because I didn't really trust relationships.

I didn't really trust humans.

My spirituality was my safe haven where I could,

You know,

Be safe in that space and not have to deal that much with humans.

But that was the space where I actually rediscovered relationships with human beings.

And what helped me out of my dark night of the soul was exactly that relationship with human beings,

The closest friends I had,

And my father,

My mother not being there anymore,

You know,

Just standing by my side,

Helping me through.

You helped me a lot at that time.

So it was really people who helped me make the shift,

Helped me get out of where I was and get back on my feet.

Beautiful.

And,

You know,

It's been 12 years,

I remember when you're going through the throes of it and,

You know,

You're in Milano,

I'm in New York,

But we were connecting by phone and video.

The terror was intense.

I mean,

The level of anxiety,

You know,

People really don't appreciate the level of anxiety and panic that we all have that we shoved down,

All the addictions that we do,

Food and drugs and sex and busyness,

Really,

But it really broke through where you couldn't repress it and suppress it.

But,

You know,

It was you were dying on a daily basis.

It was literally the death terrors coming up over you and it was over and over.

I mean,

The horrendous aspect of it,

I mean,

It breaks my heart even to now thinking of you and thinking of all the people that I have had the privilege of sitting next to who go through this.

It's no joke how intense it is.

And I think that me and you always talk about,

You know,

You as a healer,

Me as a healer,

Both of us,

We have a,

You know,

Solid decades under our belts.

Of this desperation is literally the human condition until it's faced.

You know,

It's people can be struggling about money or a heartbreak or job or be on top of the world,

Quote unquote,

In an egoistic way.

This is sort of simmering underneath there,

Right?

There's really this fear constantly of what do we do?

You know,

What do we do?

Let me move.

Let me move.

Let me move.

So it has to get hammered into us.

No one goes to this willingly,

In my experience.

Maybe a Ramana Maharshi,

You know,

The one person we can read about at 16 as an awakening and then,

You know,

Blows this up.

For the rest of us,

It's a process and it's just piece by piece by piece.

And you know,

You said when we're preparing for this,

You know,

You said some really profound things and one of the things that I love that you said,

It's really the adolescent ego having to be forfeited to have a real experience.

And you know,

The divine,

Whatever word we want to use for it,

It's really the parental projection of whatever we have in here.

It's that thing,

You know,

And when things are going well,

It's really great that he loves me.

Mommy loves me.

Whatever the story is.

And then when it doesn't go well,

It's a big middle finger to the divine.

And my experience with a lot of people,

A lot of the new agey stuff,

It's literally just covering that simmering anxiety,

Rage.

Things aren't going well.

And you know,

We want to will ourselves through it.

We want to will ourselves through it.

If I say enough mantras,

If I meditate enough hours,

If I,

You know,

And this is again,

The delineation between psychology and spirituality of there is a part of this that has to really be addressed through psychology,

Not just spirituality,

Or they have to be at least intermarried.

So how would you say in your experience,

Where was that?

What was that delineation?

Well,

First of all,

I think that element of,

Yeah,

As we were preparing for this,

I realized that,

You know,

Basically our child ego is always there.

The part that's stomping its feet,

That's making demands,

That's freaking out all the time,

That's impatient,

That's restless,

That's the child needing to be soothed.

And we don't really become adults.

We get into that adolescent ego that gives us the illusion of control,

Of having figured it out.

You know,

If I do this,

Then this will happen.

It's that attempt to have an antidote to the terror of not having the slightest control over our lives.

So I think that the time where that shifted was when everything was taken away from me,

Quote unquote.

I had nothing left.

I had nothing left because I had to give up my work,

I had to refer all my clients,

I had to give up my house,

I wasn't able to live by myself,

I had to give up everything because I wasn't autonomous anymore.

And I remember distinctly that moment where I was sitting in front of my father's fireplace where I stayed for a number of months in the countryside that I said,

You know what?

My house has crumbled down.

I want to dig out the,

What do you call them,

The fondamenta in Italian.

It's the foundation.

The foundation.

I want to dig that out because I feel I've built on something that's not solid.

And that obviously made it even more terrifying because I had nothing.

I decided intentionally not to cling to false beliefs because if it wasn't true,

If it wasn't really true,

You know,

It's not a matter of faith because faith is not true.

It's something that we choose to believe in.

It's not concrete.

And we might be being of lights,

We might be sparks of the divine,

But fuck that.

When we're fully in our human being,

We don't feel that.

We need a hug.

We need someone in front of us to touch,

To feel because it's not the same thing as going into meditation and feeling cosmic love.

I really needed that.

My child,

My inner child really needed that.

So the moment I decided to give up anything that wasn't concrete,

You know,

The concrete to build the foundations with was anything that wasn't like that.

I wanted to give up.

I surrendered.

You know,

I said,

No,

I don't want to cling on to that anymore.

And I feel that was the moment.

Well,

I love what you're saying,

Right?

Me and you always talk about this.

Beliefs are so dangerous.

My experience of being around the suffering and people,

You know,

Young men dying of AIDS in their 20s and,

You know,

Belief,

It's so,

You have to know.

And knowledge comes through hard work,

Which is really suffering.

Belief you can,

You can believe all kinds of things.

And again,

This is the sandcastle that we build over and over with belief systems.

They're really band-aids on these festering wounds.

The festering wound has to be tended to,

Which is what you were forced to do.

Really interesting sitting with you now.

I mean,

I have so much love for you and you really are my brother.

There's such a sense of you living in the question.

If I could put the energy,

As you're talking,

I'm sitting and feeling you thousands of kilometers away and it's like,

What is it?

I'm like,

Oh,

This is like,

I've always known this guy,

But there's a softness in you.

And in that softness is such a strength,

Right?

A tree has a different kind of strength than a piece of board.

The wood that's been cut and chopped and dried,

It's very strong.

At some point it will break.

Every tree has a different kind of strength.

And my experience of you in this moment is you went from the trauma of a child,

Of having to dry the tree of your life,

Replanting it and become a displiable tree.

And there's just a softness in that.

And there's an energy where it's not this absolute,

You know when we're in the absolute,

I know everything,

I know,

That rigid is terror.

There's a real vulnerability,

Which is actually strength,

But initially it feels like weakness.

And it's so wild,

You know,

Just seeing you and feeling you in this state,

Which if we told the old Ian of 12,

13 years ago,

Hey,

He would jump out the window if he met this guy.

How are you living like this?

What do you mean living in a question?

What do you mean you've given up spirituality?

But we know we're divine children.

Everything is God.

It's like,

Yes,

And there's the humanity of it.

You said something really beautiful.

We talked about this.

You said something,

You said,

Are you here to transcend your humanity through spirituality or is spirituality a way into fully experience your humanity?

Are you here to transcend your humanity through spirituality or is spirituality a way into fully experiencing your humanity?

Most people are in the first till suffering brings them into the latter.

Do you want to just put this into also the framework of Kubler-Ross's five stages of what happens?

Just describe that.

What is that?

Yeah.

Five stages of grieving,

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The five stages of grief.

And what I don't think we realize is that we're constantly in one of these states.

The main tool of spirituality that we use it for,

I mean,

We get close to spirituality when we're suffering.

So spirituality is a tool to get out of suffering,

You know?

And after a while,

After,

You know,

Meditation might be good,

There might be think or just time passing,

The suffering might decrease and it's like,

Oh,

Okay.

So this is my anchor.

This is my lifesaver.

And we use spirituality,

You know,

The spiritual bypass you talk so much about is like using spirituality to get out of the suffering,

To get out of our human being,

Of being human.

And so in a way,

It's always that I'm,

You know,

Either I'm angry,

Like the five stages of grief,

Or I'm desperate,

Or I'm in denial,

Or I'm scared shitless,

Or I'm bargaining,

You know,

I'll pray more,

I'll meditate more.

So you know,

You know,

We got a deal.

And it's always that thing.

And it's then there's the depression when you realize none of this works.

And that's,

You know,

That's a dark moment.

That's a dark moment we all go through.

And even acceptance isn't bliss.

Acceptance is,

You know,

Okay,

You're pummeled into it.

You get pummeled into acceptance.

You get pummeled into surrender,

Like you say,

And repeat so many times.

That's the part that's really not sexy and spirituality doesn't want to stretch it as it is.

And I love what you say.

It really is that spirituality is the invitation.

But the denial in our culture is huge.

The anger is really huge.

Right?

The bargaining is really huge.

We're always doing that piece,

You know,

And then the depression is huge.

But those are the first four stages and a lot of us just get stuck there because we don't realize the acceptance is the next piece.

Interesting to this thing,

You know,

The invitation to be human.

It's wild how what's happening culturally now,

People don't really realize this whole transhumanism that's being offered.

And what is transhumanism,

Right?

When Karl Schwab says,

Hey,

We're going to take your brain,

Have it an algorithm in a computer and he can live on,

Literally the level of suffering is so much that we want to disembody so much to take ourselves and put ourselves in a machine because we don't want to have the human experience.

And we are step walking into this reality without accepting that actually there is another way.

Right?

So this again,

Where is the soul in that?

Where is the suchness of the moment?

That's a level of pain.

We're in.

Yeah.

When you see the craziness that's happening with the overlords,

Let's say this is not some political issue.

This is just a magnified version of everything you're talking about.

If we don't want to hold our humanity,

Then we destroy environment,

We destroy each other.

And ultimately it's so painful to be here that we want to transcend it.

But that's not transcendence.

That's just denial.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean,

It's very,

It's fascinating while horrifying to see the lengths human beings will go not to feel their pain and terror.

Beautiful.

There you go.

Now you said it.

This is the length.

And we've never had the technology at our fingertips to be this disconnected.

Right?

So even forget about putting your mind into your brain,

Into algorithm,

Even for an Ian,

Even all the social media that's available on his computer and all this stuff and the porn and all the things that people use,

It would have been very easy for you not to answer the call.

And in my experience of a clinician for four decades,

Boy,

Does the knock get louder.

And there is something happening now where we're like,

It's time.

So the thing that you were channeling,

That was truth,

You know,

Of,

There is an awakening going on.

Hey,

It's just,

We forget that.

Oh,

It's me and you too.

It's not just,

Damn it.

You poor idiots,

You know,

Prepare yourself.

That's amazing.

Totally.

Totally.

It's like,

Oh,

The populist.

But yeah,

The beautiful thing is that that is an invitation right now.

Right.

That's an invitation.

And really the gift that we give,

And I'm going to bring it back to the personal,

But you as a healer,

Right,

Someone who's served so many people so kindly and so generously,

And I know how generous you are with your time and your spirit and the ways you've helped me all these years.

You know,

You're an amazing auto engineer.

That's how we met.

And you would really,

You know,

Put all this energy and time and hours and hours to perfect this podcast.

I mean,

The level of love you put into these things was really like astounding.

You know,

That energy now is also coming back to you.

That energy has to come back to you.

The level of generosity of self and generosity of spirit,

That's also a part of it.

Now,

Taking it to a personal,

The reason me and you were sharing this is because we're both seeing it with our patients,

With our clients,

There is something happening here.

And the old ways aren't working.

This is sort of the addict at his end point.

Yes.

Now we can put on the goggles for $3,

500 and,

You know,

While we're having these experiences and like,

Again,

That's your path,

That's your path,

No judgment.

What we're saying is,

Here's also an invitation,

And we're also saying,

It's scary.

We're also saying,

There's really no option.

Either you answer it now or it gets,

Beats down your door like the SWAT team.

It's not an option not to answer.

You can always delay it.

But the delaying,

There's interest accrued that has to be paid back.

So first is the letter,

Then it's the phone call,

Then it's the police knocking on your door,

And then it's like your stuff's getting thrown on the street.

So does that make sense to you?

It does make sense.

And then,

Again,

We're not trying to terrify anybody.

But I would say that,

You know,

I hated it when it happened,

But that was a blessing in disguise.

You know,

It sounds cheesy,

But that's what it was.

And it doesn't always happen.

You know,

Sometimes we're so good and we're so attached to the status quo that we don't want to make it happen.

So in a way,

There has to be,

And oh,

Yeah,

I remember now.

It was,

Yeah,

It was incredible.

It was that summer.

It was the summer before I was watching the NBA playoffs.

And there was this coach whom I think is a spiritual teacher,

Other than being a coach,

Who's Greg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs.

And his team has always been so humble.

And during an interview,

When they were saying,

You know,

How did you achieve this?

And he said,

These men have gotten over themselves.

And when I heard that,

I was watching the game.

The game finished.

I was at the seaside and was just sitting alone in the night,

And I expressed this specific request.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

How did we get over myself?

I explicitly asked for that.

And then it literally hit the fan a few months later.

I did ask for that.

So this is the thing that's so profound.

First of all,

Even more profound,

Italian,

Watching NBA,

Just can't make this shit up.

Just flip this football fan.

Yeah.

But we'll put that aside for now.

Yeah.

You know,

This is so profound when you say you asked that.

Because I've been in that place myself.

It really is your spirit asking it.

The ego would never ask that.

The soul,

Whatever language,

The unconscious knows,

Right?

And the thing that I've learned to do,

Although people like me need to get pummeled because we're so strong,

It really needs to be difficult.

But it's amazing that you're having that memory.

I've had the same experience in India,

Being in a temple and burn away whatever doesn't serve me.

And literally had a nervous breakdown two months later.

You know,

It's good to say do it gently.

But also there is a part where we know,

Someone like me or you,

Where the ego never wants to be in that much pain.

But we know it has to get hit in the head with a two by four.

Because otherwise,

As you said earlier,

We can re-fortify the ego and fight.

So I always do this thing now when I work with people,

I'm like,

Yeah,

This is a good way.

Hey,

Burn away what doesn't serve me.

Yeah.

But I say that to people because having suffered,

But also not for your experience,

Having the observed it now and experience having been there 20 whatever years ago,

It really is no other way that it comes that way.

And to your point,

No,

We're not trying to scare people.

But I'm seeing a lot of people living in desperation under the guise of this is life.

And I get it.

You know,

You're taking care of your kids or your dog or your parents or trying to rub two cents together to pay your rent.

I appreciate all that.

I'm just saying this whole thing goes by really quickly.

And there is something afoot that is an invitation.

It doesn't have to be mine and your level of experience.

Me and you both are very traumatic childhoods and very,

Very traumatized.

But we're saying even if it's not that extreme,

It's an invitation.

And again,

The person is going to listen to this conversation is going to be someone on some level.

There's something that's going to resonate.

If it scares the hell out of you,

You're going to turn this up and not listen to it.

Far,

Far from frightening to me,

Again,

Would I want to see you go through this again on myself?

Not at all.

But the person that I see sitting in front of me is the person that I'm way happier for than the person of 15 years ago for both of us.

For me,

I'm older than you.

So for me,

What happened around the same age as you,

But the older,

It really,

There was a lot of pain.

Right?

There was this,

This rigidity of just gone through a life with everything,

Willpower.

There's just a flowing with it,

Right?

But there's also so much more joy,

Just the way you beautifully cried.

Like I remember before that all those years,

I know you had never seen you cry.

And then we were talking,

You were just this beautiful,

Soft energy.

And you're a badass.

You're a fierce soul.

You're,

You're,

You're a true man in the best sense of the word.

But the softness is what makes you that even more.

The kindness was there externally.

And I feel that of you,

That emotion that comes up,

That's such a kindness towards your little boy.

It's not shut the F up,

Which is what we all do,

But it's this softness when a little boy comes up and you know,

You hold them and I hold them with you.

And when we hold,

Right,

It's that energy to it.

There's a humanity in that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what would you say,

Go ahead,

Go ahead.

Yeah.

That's exactly what you kept repeating to me throughout the years.

When we talked,

You would keep reminding me,

Be gentle to yourself,

Be gentle.

Because something that people constantly come to session with is,

I want to resolve this.

People want to resolve themselves.

They don't want to embrace whatever is going on.

They want to get rid of it.

And we all do to a certain level,

You know,

Even now I have to remind myself when pain,

When discomfort comes along,

You know,

I don't embrace it immediately.

The first thing is like,

Okay,

What can I take?

Is there a pill for this?

But eventually,

You know,

It's really about embracing and that's the most important thing.

The child within ourselves,

Which is always there and needs to be soothed on a regular basis.

We need to soothe that child.

We need to embrace that.

We need to softly acknowledge the fact that there's a hurting part of ourselves and accept the fact that pain,

That terror is always there,

You know,

Is always latent and live with it rather than overcome.

Live without fear.

No,

Good luck with that.

You'll always be pushing it away.

As soon as it comes there,

You go into rigidity.

You go into no,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

I'm,

You know,

I'm a being of light,

You know,

It's that's that constant denial.

So it's a drug,

Right?

Thinking is a drug too.

So that kind of spiritual bypass is a drug.

It shifts,

Right?

It kicks in the dopamine that I'm God,

I'm God,

Which actually God is us.

We're not God if you use that language.

But I love what you're saying.

And we want to also make room even for that part of it.

That's part of the human experience.

We don't necessarily want to feel it,

But there's also an aspect of our culture now where everything is pushed away,

Like immediately where some discomfort,

There's a pill,

There's a thing,

Do this,

There's some practice,

Just sitting with it.

And this also brings me to this point that we have discussed.

There is a compass,

Even though it seems like we're really lost,

There is a compass in this.

And the compass is not what we think it is.

It's internal as opposed to external,

Right?

And it gets shown moment to moment.

The first time when you had the panic attack and you're paralyzed,

And then it gets worse and you have to move in with your father where you can't even take care of yourself.

But there is a compass there.

And that compass takes care of you.

There is a divinity there in that energy,

Which is the human part,

Which is very confusing to the mind.

Right?

I always used to talk about this back in the day when I would sit people,

When they would talk about the divine,

It would point up.

Everything is that monkey brain wanting to jump the hell out of the body and go up.

Right?

I don't want to leave.

Your experience was you had to do this,

Where literally you had no choice,

But as you said,

Lay in front of the fireplace.

There was no jumping out.

The body was like taking command of it.

And this suit is 2 million years old.

It has a wisdom in it,

Which brain is 200 years old,

Right?

So that's where it takes over.

I just remember something too.

I remember sending you some herbs to help with your anxiety.

And then through the crazy Italian post office,

Getting customs and all that nightmare we can return.

And I remember getting the lesson of like,

Of course,

You're my brother.

I want to like help somewhat with this feeling.

And then it was like,

Wow,

Even that's not a lot.

And you know,

I've been,

You know,

A family in Italy,

I'd be sending them herbs and it's one time,

It's one time.

And I got,

You know,

It was a whole thing.

Remember two times I tried to send it,

I was like,

Wow,

Now I need to listen and be like,

Okay,

He's helped.

And yeah,

We can put that in shit happens and Italian customs and stuff like that.

I've done that so many times,

Always went through this one time,

Like what the hell?

It was like,

Yeah,

This is like something was being burned off there,

Right?

It's really,

Really profound,

The level of suffering.

Yeah.

And that element of compass really resonates because I always make this analogy where we are used today to having as much control as we can.

So we love our apps for navigation,

You know,

The app is going to tell us how long it's going to take,

Where we are moment by moment and what the traffic is like and whatnot.

So control,

Beautiful.

But a compass just says that way,

You know,

That's it.

And it's terrifying because when it's night and it says that way,

You don't know where you are,

You don't know where you're going,

You don't know when you'll get where,

But that's the nature of the compass,

You know?

That's part of the terror that we have to live with.

And terror doesn't mean that we have to be in panic all the time.

Terror means it's that state of mind where our mind says,

We don't know where we are,

We don't know where we're going,

Are you sure you want to do that?

That's the terror.

And trusting,

You know,

Faith is trust to me,

Is saying,

Okay,

I trust my heart,

Which is my compass.

And if it says that way,

If it says in the darkest moment of my life to dig up the foundation and build a new one,

I just feel that's where I need to be and need to go.

And you know,

I trust it.

It feels horrible.

It feels terrifying.

I feel completely lost.

But you know,

That's the trust in your own compass.

And that faith that you're talking about beautifully,

It really is about experientially being proven that it's real.

It's not just the faith of the spirituality or the book,

It's direct experience,

Right?

You as an audio engineer,

You can have faith that you can take our work today and do your typical incredibly impeccable editing.

That faith is because of experience.

You've done that a gazillion times.

So now you know you're going to handle it.

Whatever happens,

You can handle it.

That faith also is very important to realize.

It denotes an experience.

It's not just faith.

I can have faith that I can edit this like Ian and it'll be a shit show because I don't have experience of it.

So that surrendering we're talking about,

That faith actually gets fed.

It becomes a direct experiential.

It's not just a mental concept like belief system,

But that's also very powerful.

What I've seen with a lot of faith is unless one has a direct experience,

It's still a thought form.

It's not direct experience.

So interesting about this app thing you're talking about too.

So much of what's happening culturally now,

We,

Because we're so anxious,

Want to give our agency a way to these apps.

Like a guy like me who's literally traveled so many continents on a motorcycle reading a paper map.

You know,

Africa and Asia and,

You know,

America,

North America,

Mexico,

Literally using a paper map.

It's so wild when I see these apps that I have on my own phone sometimes,

I used to start using them.

I just,

You know,

Just backwards.

I live in a country,

Moved to a new house,

Like I don't know places.

Instead of trusting my intuition,

I would just,

Because of the anxiety,

I'm conscious to just put this app on.

I'm like,

What are you doing,

Dude?

Like it's amazing how easy it is to give away agency as opposed to like,

Hey,

Let's just experience.

You're not in a rush today.

Let's really explore this local country roads.

Let's use our intuition.

After 45 years of riding motorcycles,

Where is,

Where is North?

Where is South?

It's amazing how even in little ways we give agency over,

Right?

It's constant.

We do that emotionally.

We do that.

Even something as simple as some navigational app,

It's again about taking that and going inside because all day long,

Since information is the new commodities,

The new oil with our phones and with this,

We're constantly being seduced to give away agency internally,

Right?

Again,

What you went through would have been very easy to go into this world outside of yourself in the old days would be a book or the fireplace or a magazine.

Now it's like 10 million different ways.

And then these powers of commercial interest,

Like,

Come on,

Ian,

Come on,

Come on in here.

Come on.

This is a good road for you.

So that's a very powerful thing.

We have to learn how to hold our own company.

You were forced into it.

I was forced into it.

But even for those of us who are good with that,

This dark night of the soul has a requirement to meet this person.

And that person is amazing.

It's yourself.

But we've become such strangers to her or him that we don't actually connect with them.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense.

And I really,

Really like,

And it's counterintuitive,

What you just said about faith,

Which is a muscle that you can train.

Usually faith is like,

Always that leap of faith.

It's like,

I don't know,

I'm just going to jump.

Something might happen.

Something good might happen.

But faith,

Intuition,

Are muscles you can train.

You can practice being intuitive,

But not like,

Oh,

I feel that your kidney has something.

It's really about trusting with my own life,

With life choices,

With I'm going to trust myself with this.

And I'm not saying that practice makes perfect.

I'm saying that the more you practice,

The more you trust yourself with it.

And you start relying inwardly more than outwardly as apps or anything else.

I want to trust myself first.

But if I haven't practiced trusting myself enough,

Then I'm not really going to trust myself that much.

Yeah.

And that muscle you're describing is also learning to tolerate these feelings.

So the anxiety is brutal.

It's frightening.

And the more one can even take,

It doesn't have to be this intense thing,

Excuse me,

That me and you went through.

If we spend a couple of minutes a day of just grounding and feeling what it's because everyone has this profound anxiety right below the surface.

That actually then helps you tolerate bigger and bigger chunks when they come up and also allows you to transmute it by just being present to it.

There's nothing that needs to be done.

People think I've got to do something.

You just got to sit and feel.

We can meditate.

I treat people who meditate all day long,

Literally people back in the day would as a way of spiritual bypass.

Or we can just in the moment when we feel that thing,

I got to move,

I got to move.

Just there.

30 seconds.

Sit.

Boy,

This feels funny.

This feels,

Something's coming up.

That energy is so profound.

That practice is so profound.

It's not again,

I got to sit two hours a day.

Even these momentary breaks.

I feel I got to move,

Sit for a minute,

Feel,

Breathe,

Posture alignment,

And then move.

That gives us a tool that actually then comes in handy.

And it's again being present to the moment.

And as you said,

It sounds like a cliche.

We're never here.

Part of this terror that's here,

For me and you have these profound breakdowns.

Even with all the spiritual practice we did,

Spiritual practice was getting ready for it was a preparation,

But also it's something that has to be tonified and not as a way of going up or above by just sitting in it and with it.

And just what happened now,

You were talking,

The emotions come up,

You feel it,

You process it,

Back.

It's not that it stays in that heightened place.

So that imitation is also moment to moment.

So one thing I want to offer,

As I always talk about in all the talks that I do is as we're speaking right now,

Bring the energy down,

Whoever's listening to us.

Me and you did this before we started speaking.

You drop the breathing down,

You feel the feet,

The chin goes in,

Back of the neck elongates towards the ceiling.

So we're downward,

We're upward,

And then we expand into the room.

And then you're already there,

I'm already there,

Invitation to our listeners and viewers and then go from there.

Yeah.

And at the same time,

I always invite people to be human in that.

We all go through a lot of shit.

And many times,

You don't have to stay with it all the time.

It's okay.

But be aware of when you need to distract yourself,

When you need to anesthetize yourself.

Watch two episodes of your favorite series.

It's fine.

It's fine.

We don't want to be too hard on ourselves that I have to be present.

I have to be present.

Because that's another way,

To me,

More important than being present is being loving.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Just be with yourself.

Stay with yourself.

Even if a friend's in pain,

You can go to their place and watch a movie together.

You don't have to stay there,

Just stare each other in the eyes and what are you feeling?

How deep is it?

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's necessary to distract ourselves,

But be aware how much are you distracting yourselves?

What are you using to distract yourself?

Is there a healthier way you can distract yourself?

It's okay if you need to distract yourself.

If you don't want to stay with that too much,

It's fine.

But be aware.

Don't be running away from it because then you invest a ton of energy in something else.

That's a great point.

To me,

Being present is being loving.

So that's a great differentiation you're making.

For me,

Being present is being loving.

It's not this stare down.

And I love what you're saying too,

To be aware when we're distracting.

It's all about awareness.

But to me,

Those words are interchangeable.

Loving self,

Awareness,

Presence.

Loving happens.

Grace happens in the moment,

In my experience,

At least being aware of it.

But I love what you're saying too.

Yeah.

It's not that,

You know,

Both me and you have the Zen background,

You know,

Ah,

Sit down.

Not that.

It's actually way,

Way more chill.

And then also,

Just as you're saying,

Always just awareness as well as needed.

This is too much now.

I'm going to jump out the window.

I need to go watch this or I'm going to eat this.

Pay attention.

Yeah.

Pay attention.

Right?

It's just that awareness.

Like,

Wow,

This is intense.

This is what needs to happen.

But then also roll it back a second.

Wow.

This came up.

Is it internal?

Is it because I talked to this person?

That's probably not good for me.

Is it this job that's killing me?

Just these momentary connections.

And again,

We're just collecting data points too.

It's not just always this incredible willpower.

The willpower is your enemy.

This is about,

As you say beautifully,

Kindness,

Which is really coming from a different places.

And again,

It's a surrender piece.

And surrender,

It's a dirty word when you're going through this,

When you get pummeled into it.

Yes.

Surrender as kindness towards self.

But I love what you're saying,

A hundred percent,

Point well taken.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean,

I don't want to open that whole chapter,

But we all have that inner critic,

That superego that wants to,

You know,

Doesn't want to be kind with us or rather,

You know,

We have a very particular image of what the superego is or what the inner critic is,

But it's trying to,

You know,

Do what's good for us the hard way.

So it's like,

No,

You have to be present.

You know,

The superego will try to be tough any way it can.

So,

Right.

So it's really about being aware,

You know,

Even we can be hard on ourselves while asking ourselves to be present,

You know,

You're not present enough.

So it's really about having that compass of kindness,

Be kind.

If you want to push yourself,

Push gently,

But be kind and loving to yourself like you would with the person you love most on this planet.

Try doing that with yourself.

And I mean,

Your heart guides you well,

That's our compass.

The heart never steers us in the wrong quote unquote direction.

It never steers us against a wall.

It's always soft.

And it's really about learning to consult that voice,

To hear that voice,

Which doesn't scream.

It's really soft.

It's really gentle.

And it's never overpowering over the mind,

Screams it's set off all the time.

It definitely whispers.

It certainly whispers loudly.

It whispers in a screaming voice if you tune into it,

But it certainly is a whisper.

And your point,

Again,

Is really lovely.

You know,

One can never underestimate the level of self-hatred under the guise of,

I mean,

The planet could not be like this.

We wouldn't treat each other now.

We work on it and we work on it.

But the self-hatred piece is really huge.

And anything can be used at its service and at the end of the day,

That part of the ego you're speaking about is terrified.

It's terrified because it knows it's not real.

It knows it's a mask against deep insecurities,

Right?

And again,

It has to be very lovingly addressed and very lovingly approached.

So what you're saying is really big stuff here.

Let's talk about that inner compass.

So when this comes for some people,

Maybe like me and you,

For a lot of people gently comes up,

How would you,

We've talked about it,

But I just want to go into a little bit deeper.

What would you say about that compass,

That internal compass that guides us from the external voice,

The ego voice,

The trying to make it happen voice,

Clenched fist voice.

Talk about that.

But when you're on experience,

What was that?

The greatest tool that I acquired during my years of training at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing,

Which was my formal training,

And that's where I graduated from,

Was learning to distinguish between what I today,

I can't remember whether that's what we were taught,

But this is how I remember it,

Well,

How I apply it today.

There's mainly three voices that I can recognize that are constantly talking.

The mind,

The gut,

And the heart.

You know,

We tend to say that the heart and the instinct are the same thing,

But really the gut is the instinct,

Is that survival.

I would say it's the child in us.

It's the part that's compulsive,

That's reactive,

That strives to survive.

You die,

I live,

And whatnot.

And that's the gut that steers us in certain directions and says certain things and makes us want to do certain things.

And then there's the mind.

The mind,

I would say,

Is the superego,

The inner critic.

I work a lot today with these three voices,

The child,

The superego,

And the loving adult.

And the third one,

I would say,

Is the heart,

Which is the loving adult.

So they all talk at the same time.

They all have different agendas.

And when they have the same agenda,

They have different ways to go about it.

But it's really about learning to listen.

I feel that there are probably thousands of different kinds of meditation,

But if I have to say what the most useful meditation is,

Is to just sit and listen.

What's going on within myself?

Who's talking?

Because there's this constant series of voices expressing their idea of where we should be going all the time.

It's really constant.

And many times we give for granted that our mind,

Which is one that usually speaks the loudest unless we have some situation where it's our belly,

It's our gut saying,

No,

We have to do that.

That's the woman for me or that's the car I want.

And it's really,

Go get it.

But otherwise,

It's the mind that disguises itself as the wise and the rational and the part of yourself that you want to follow.

And it's really important to me in my experience,

And especially with clients,

I do that a lot.

It's really learning to,

Even while they're speaking,

You know,

Okay,

Who says that?

Which part of you is talking right now?

Because within a sentence,

There might be two voices,

You know,

Switching over.

It's who rides the van,

Basically.

Who's driving?

Who's driving your van right now?

Who's talking like that?

Who's saying I have to get over this?

And I keep going back to our conversations,

You know,

I was like,

You know,

And I still have these panic attacks and I'm still doing this.

And you would say,

Okay,

It's fine.

It's okay.

Soften up,

Soften up.

Be loving to that part because it was no,

I have to fix this.

We really want to fix this.

The mind wants to fix.

So in my experience,

This inner compass,

The one we want to listen to the most is our heart,

Is the adult loving parent within ourselves that guides us gently and lovingly.

But we really need to become aware and recognize the tone of voice,

Whatever they look like if we have to picture them,

What our gut and what our inner judge look like and talk like.

What a beautiful differentiation.

A lot of people,

So the gut,

A lot of people confuse these things and never go to the heart.

So I love what you're saying.

So,

You know,

We know this,

Right?

The gut is the original brain,

The neuropeptides and all the stuff that are in the brain are actually in the gut.

The gut was the original part.

I love what you're saying because the gut is that immediate survival part.

The heart is actually the long-term,

The big picture survival.

And to just get out of the head,

It's not enough,

Right?

So the gut thing is immediate survival,

Do this,

Do that.

The heart is really laying out the big picture.

That's really the big picture.

And that's the part.

So many of us have heartbreak because we don't even realize it's a voice,

Right?

So the first,

And I love what you just said,

The thing of breaking it down into those three distinct voices and just learning to differentiate them.

And you know,

The heart is not language.

It's a knowingness.

It's a feel.

These words are very tricky.

We know when it's the heart.

All I can say is that we know when it is,

Right?

And that,

Go ahead.

Were you going to say something?

No,

No,

I was just.

No,

No.

Yeah.

So the differentiation is really,

Really important.

And the fixing it part,

It's when you're suffering,

Boy,

You want to fix that thing.

And that actually just,

It's like opening a wound over and over.

It actually doesn't let it heal.

It's great to analyze.

There's a time for analysis.

There's a time for that.

And there's a time for just making room for that little child without berating it.

Yeah.

Because that's how the child hears a lot of these things,

Is being berated,

Right?

Being berated.

You know,

Either you deal with it as an adult by being someone like me who's hyper-alert and hyper-paying attention to everything,

Or the different,

The 180-degree different with his ADHD and not paying attention to anything and your mind going everywhere.

There's two sides of the same coin,

Is trauma of like not actually learning to pull it in the middle and just being present to it.

It's just way too much.

So you become super like this,

Or you are just way all over the place.

The heart is a different language to that.

The heart holds that.

The heart,

As you said,

Beautiful,

It's like,

Oh God,

Really?

Oh,

You have to be so attentive because it was,

Oh,

Or like,

Oh,

You can't,

You're so all over the place.

Oh my God.

It's that ah feeling.

And that love that we're looking for externally,

It's really there all the time.

It just takes some sitting with,

Some discovery,

Some being present with.

And again,

I love what you're saying.

It all comes back to the kindness.

How can we be kind with each other?

Yeah.

The part of that inner compass,

Right,

Which is very confusing to us,

Especially these days in the world,

I always want to say the West,

But that has become the world,

Is the stillness.

But the stillness,

Again,

Not in that kind of cool way,

But in the kind way that you really discovered yourself in your process,

Or I discovered more arduously than you,

Because I really,

I really had to get pummeled into it.

I didn't have anyone around me.

It was a very lonely experience for me,

Which is brutal.

I mean,

Again,

It is what it is,

But it's very,

It's horrendous not to have allies through that.

That part,

One doesn't have to wait for this explosion.

One can actually,

Again,

Sit with that.

And if things don't feel right,

Something is off.

I'm not against medication.

Sometimes the depression,

Anxiety is so profound,

Take medication.

But again,

As you said before beautifully,

Also just pay attention,

Where is this coming from?

Is it just chemical?

Is it this?

Is it that?

And how am I actually addressing it?

And yes,

There are great therapists.

They can be very helpful.

Psychologists have been very helpful in my own experience,

But it wasn't just that.

Spirituality can be very helpful.

It's not just that.

So it's an invitation to have a different kind of experience.

Poetry is really helpful,

And poetry has become,

I remember as a very science-based guy back in the day,

Even though I had this profound experience,

It's kind of,

Poetry seemed very strange to me in my teens.

And then when I started having these experiences,

I was like,

Wow,

There's a roadmap in poetry.

Because it's language,

But it's not just language,

It's feelings and guidance through this language.

It was this really profound thing.

So discovery of poetry was very profound for me.

And Manny talked about Wagoneer and his poem about this experience.

I actually want to read that,

If that's okay.

So David Wagoneer was a guy who was raised in the Midwest,

And then he moved to the Northwest in America.

And if you don't know America,

For your Italian viewers,

The Midwest is sort of agrarian,

Kind of flat,

Looks monotone.

And the Northwest,

He actually wrote this poem,

If I remember correctly,

When he actually had moved out there and was coming down the Western coast from Canada into the US.

And the Northwest is this incredible,

Lush forest,

It's really like nowhere else in the world,

It's very profound.

So when I read this poem,

I just want you to have that image.

He says,

Stand still.

The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.

Wherever you are is called here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

You must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes,

Listen,

It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it,

You may come back again,

Saying here.

No two trees are the same to raven.

No two branches are the same to wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You surely are lost.

Stand still.

The forest knows where you are.

You must let it find you.

Stand still.

The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost.

Wherever you are is called here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes,

Listen,

It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it,

You may come back again,

Saying here.

No two trees are the same to raven.

No two branches are the same to wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You surely are lost.

Stand still.

The forest knows where you are.

You must let it find you.

And that stillness is what you came to,

Is what I came to.

That stillness,

That's where grace comes in,

And that's a whole different door.

We don't need to open it,

But just to feel that,

You know,

Giving grace a chance.

When I was going through my process that you went through,

I was in so much pain,

And this wonderful friend of mine wrote this calligraphy for me,

And he said,

Give grace a chance on this big piece of paper,

And I had it,

And I remember just being in the same place of turmoil you were,

And crying,

And panic attacks,

And we keep looking at that.

It didn't make sense,

But it made sense.

Give grace a chance.

What the hell does that mean?

You know,

Give grace a chance,

And I kept saying,

And it became a koan.

I would sit with it.

Give grace a chance.

Give grace a chance.

That's what he's talking about here,

The stillness,

Right?

And just as a side note,

Nature is so powerful in this process.

Very interesting.

You were in a country,

Or I was in a country.

Not that everyone can do this,

But even if you're in a city,

You go to a park,

There's something about nature that connects us to this primordial connection,

Which is really us before the mind took the control and ran the whole thing.

There's something about that,

Too.

And again,

We do get found.

There is a wisdom in the madness of the process.

There's certainly nothing that an eagle can wrap its head around,

Certainly nothing it can control.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is there something you want to say to that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it really ties into what was one of my thoughts that came while I was taking notes for today's talk is what I would invite myself and anyone else to do is not superimpose what our idea of God or the divine is,

Because to me,

That's what faith is,

Allowing ourselves to surrender to whatever,

You know,

Surrender and allow the divine to carry us through whatever experience,

You know,

And it might be different for each one of us.

There's this saying,

I don't know if it's taken from the Bible,

But in Italian is,

Le vie del Signore sono infinite.

The ways of the Lord are infinite.

That's beautiful.

So it's really about not wanting to control the God experience,

The divine experience and saying,

Oh,

God is like that.

This is how God works.

This is how,

Oh,

This is the God speaking to me.

It's really about surrender,

Let go.

Allow yourself to surrender control and be carried,

Trust,

Because I think that really ties into the heart as well,

Because that's where I feel intuition is.

The compass,

The inner compass,

Intuition and whatnot,

It's all the same thing.

If you allow yourself to trust your heart and follow your heart,

You are being carried,

You're being accompanied,

You're on this river and you're safe.

You will float.

Such a great definition of grace,

What you just said.

That's a definition of grace,

Right?

And again,

It's like,

Yes,

Initially it's painful to get pummeled,

And then it's actually quite delicious,

Because,

Man,

It's a lot of work trying to act as if you know,

Or you have to drive this thing,

Right?

We're on this train and we just take our baggage and we'll put it in an overhead bin.

We don't need to carry it.

We don't need to run around,

Get an engineering degree,

How to engineer,

Run this train.

It's like,

Just show up.

You have to say,

Just show up.

It takes that whole process.

And all these archetypes and all these stories is about that,

The hero's journey,

Going to the underworld and coming around.

There's so much language around this.

None of it really helps you when you're in the midst of it.

And then again,

It's not that you come through it and then it's done,

As you said beautifully before.

It's a daily moment-to-moment practice,

Like here it is again.

And then it just gets weaker and gets more faint and gets softer.

But we don't then protect ourselves against life by armoring.

We show up to it.

We show up to it.

One becomes more cognizant of behaviors that cause pain and certain people,

And we start kind of self-correcting more gently.

It's more of a gentle thing.

Oh,

This doesn't feel good.

If I do this,

It's this,

Or if I'm watching three episodes of this,

Or something was going on.

Not as punish.

There's just a softness in it.

But there's also a flow.

You kind of have this sort of softness,

Right?

Again,

The heart piece of like,

Oh,

Oh.

Yeah.

And it gets lighter,

As you said.

It's a relief.

I work with many,

You know,

Throughout the years I've worked,

I've had many clients who are MDs,

Psychotherapists,

Neuropsychiatrists,

And spiritual teachers.

And,

You know,

It's a relief to let go of having to know,

You know,

Just allow whatever your patient or client is experiencing to experience their own,

You know,

Divinity,

You know.

Consider the possibility that divinity speaks to that person in a different way than yours,

And you don't know what it is.

So just help them understand how divinity is speaking to them,

Rather than telling them,

Oh,

This is how it speaks,

And this is how it works.

It's really,

It's,

And it's freeing,

You know.

You don't have to know everything.

You don't have to know everything.

You just need to sit with people and recognize when,

You know,

It's the intuition coming up and saying,

Yeah,

Yeah,

That's it.

Good.

And it's easy.

Being the witness.

Yeah.

So two points to that,

Right?

Those of us who really go into the head as a response to trauma,

So we want to know that is a response to trauma.

It's understanding,

But also we want to control,

Right?

So one of the things of being helpless as a child in whether perceived or abusive relationship with the people who are in charge of taking care of us,

We get into a control mode.

And one of the ways that people go into control is the head thing.

They want to read,

They want to understand,

And,

You know,

Can have a lot of useful tools.

As you said beautifully,

Then what ends up happening is you want to control things.

You're not present to the moments and,

You know,

The more,

You know,

If you're paying attention,

The less,

You know,

So the more you actually understand.

So this thing that you're saying is so profound and,

You know,

Years of teaching,

I would always point this out to my students,

You know,

What's the secret?

You know,

This,

I was like,

Be present.

It sounds so simple.

Everyone wants a witness.

If you're actually are a witness to someone's experience,

Magic happens.

That doesn't mean whatever clinical knowledge someone like yourself or myself has picked up,

They're very useful.

If I'm going into my head and not being present,

That's no use.

The most profound experience is that,

Right,

Is like I'm actually really being present in the moment.

Again,

We keep saying these words.

You really feel it when you're in the presence of someone who's doing that,

And you also know it when someone's not doing that,

Even if you might not use these languages.

The most profound people,

The most profound teacher,

The most profound doctor,

It's like you feel her.

It's like,

Oh,

She's here.

And it's not an anxious present.

It's not like,

Oh my God,

I got to fix this.

It's not like I'm just the next patient.

I got to,

You know,

Make my,

It's not that,

It's like the soft as you just,

As you're doing right now,

Right?

As we're both doing,

It's like this presence in front of someone,

But it's also not taking it on because that also is unhealed wounds,

Which is very important for healers,

And that actually makes the other person disempowered.

It doesn't give room for them.

The whole thing about the difference between caretaking and caregiving,

Caretaking,

Even though it might look the same on the very surface,

You're taking because you're not dealing with yourself.

But giving is what you said,

This real presence,

This real presence.

Do you feel we covered everything we wanted to talk about?

Yeah,

I would say so.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you for wanting to do this.

I'm really happy we did this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a long time coming.

So much love for you.

So much love for you.

Likewise.

Likewise.

Ciao,

Ciao,

Bello.

Yeah.

Take good care.

You too.

Ciao.

Bye.

Reviews

Without a search this came at the right time - listened to 8D sleep meditation & by chance found this excellent & highly needed chat - God Bless You Guys 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Una delle conversazioni più belle che ho ascoltato negli ultimi tempi. Sono riuscito a sentire la profondità dei vostri esseri, una profondità nata dalla sofferenza e dal conseguente abbandono alla vita per quello che È! Grazie per aver condiviso la vostra esperienza.

Delivered to me just as I needed and was ready to hear.🙏

Thank you for sharing your experience. It resonates with me. And your thoughts on spiritual bypassing and our inner compass. We just need to be present..
🙏🏼🌔🌱🌳