Brent Phillips On Healing, Consciousness And Transformation

Brett Phillips is self-proclaimed nerd who aspired to be a game developer. His journey took him to MIT, where he mastered internet programming during the 1990s boom, founding two startups. However, his grueling 100-hour workweeks triggered a health collapse at 27, yielding diagnoses of carpal tunnel syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome, and more. A doctor labeled him permanently disabled, predicting chronic pain and unemployment, worsened by a business partner’s betrayal and a personal breakup.

Brett explored alternative medicine for five years with little success. A failed surgery left his right arm paralyzed, deepening his despair until an energy healer used theta brain wave techniques and subconscious reprogramming to restore his arm’s function miraculously. Three generations of healing: 1st - positive thinking (e.g., law of attraction), 2nd - subconscious reprogramming (e.g., theta healing), 3rd - physical consciousness techniques focusing on clearing subconscious blocks

Transcript

Holness,

Welcome.

This is Josh of Interskilled,

And today I have Brett Michaels Phillips with me.

Brett,

What's going on today?

Oh,

You know,

Just another beautiful day in paradise.

I live in Las Vegas,

So we have two nice months a year of weather,

October and May.

So we're enjoying one of the nice months.

Here it's in rural Illinois,

And it's been unseasonably hot and dry around here,

From what I hear.

And wow,

Vegas,

Okay,

That's a big time place there.

So who is Brett Michael Phillips,

And what kind of work does he do?

Well,

You know,

It's funny that never in a million years did what I thought when I was young,

That I'd end up teaching energy healing and being a spiritual teacher.

Telling people to trust their intuition and surrender to the divine and all this kind of stuff,

I thought would have sounded really cheesy,

Because my background is I'm pretty much just a huge nerd.

I grew up loving things like Dungeons and Dragons and Star Trek and Star Wars,

Lord of the Rings.

And the one thing that I really enjoyed was computer games.

I loved the early video games when I was a kid.

So that was kind of my dream,

Was to be a video game developer.

And I ended up in college at MIT,

Which was amazing.

And it's gonna sound funny today,

Especially younger listeners,

But when I got to MIT,

I had never heard of the internet.

That was my first exposure to the internet.

And I fell in love and that became the focus of my studies.

I went on to grad school at MIT,

Collected more degrees.

And I ended up leaving in 1995 because the internet boom was hitting.

And I figured,

Heck,

I'm one of the most skilled people in the world at internet programming.

This is gonna be my gold rush.

So long story,

Very short,

I left MIT.

I started two startups,

One to make websites and one to make video games.

And really the websites was more of a,

Hey,

We gotta make money to live.

The video game was really the passion for me and my buddies.

And we went on to do some cool websites.

I did the website for Sony PlayStation.

I did the website for Nissan Motors.

I did the website for Disneyland.

And this is all back in the nineties,

Version ones.

And,

But the video game was really our passion.

But before we could,

Before that really got its feet on the ground,

I was working about a hundred hours a week because I was young,

I was ambitious.

I wanted to be successful with my video game company more than anything.

And I was willing to work any number of hours,

Make any sacrifice to make that happen.

And I destroyed my body,

I destroyed my health.

So we'll save all the details for a time we can talk over beers,

But I had a massive health crisis and I was first put on total disability in 1998 when I was just 27 years old.

And I'll never forget the day I got in after years of physical therapy.

I finally got to see the head doctor at the top physical therapy clinic in the West Coast,

Curling Job.

And I was so excited because I'd been in pain.

I'd had so much trouble with my arms and hands and I had carpal tunnel syndrome and thoracic outlet syndrome and bursitis and fasciitis and all these itises.

And I went in to see him and I remember he looked at my chart,

Looked back and forth,

Looked at me a couple of times and he just said,

Well,

I'm sorry,

Son,

There's nothing I or any doctor can do here.

You'll never be out of pain and you'll never be able to work again.

And I was like,

Are you kidding me?

Right?

And the last thing he asked me before I left his office was,

He said,

Son,

You got somewhere you can go to take care of you until you die?

And this was when I was 27 years old.

He recommended me for lifetime disability.

And that was a real punch in the gut.

And I remember I went to go see one of my business partners who was also my lifelong best friend.

And I figured he'd be all,

Hey,

Brent,

Hang in there,

We'll get through this together,

Right?

Instead,

As soon as I told him what the doctor told me,

He said,

Well,

If you can't work anymore,

You have no value here.

So I got fired from the two companies I had founded.

They stole my equity shares,

Forged documents,

Played a bunch of games,

And essentially kicked me out the door.

And I was left,

At 27 years old,

I was put on lifetime disability,

Told there was no chance of recovery,

That I'd never be able to work again.

I was living with my parents and I had also lost my lifelong best friend.

And the cherry on top of the sundae,

You may wonder,

Brent,

Why did your friend turn on you like this?

Well,

It turned out we were both seeing the same woman.

She had been double timing me behind my back with him.

And so he saw that as a convenient opportunity to get rid of me.

So that was pretty much close to rock bottom.

I was depressed,

I was drinking a lot,

I was using drugs,

I was suicidal.

As again,

You're told at that age,

Your life is over,

But what do you expect is gonna happen,

Right?

And I really thrashed around for a little while,

But I got very fortunate that after the doctors gave up on me,

I had a friend to turn me on to alternative medicine.

And so that was very exciting at first.

I thought,

Wow,

Maybe acupuncture or body work or herbs or cleanses or meditation or something can heal me.

And so long story short,

I spent the next five years living in my parents' extra room,

Spending all my disability money and running up a gigantic credit card debt exploring alternative medicine.

And I mean,

You name it,

I tried it,

Osteopaths and homeopaths and cleanses and magnets,

And I go on for hours about all the stuff I tried,

Right?

But five years later,

I wasn't getting any better,

I just kept getting worse.

And that led me to agree to have an experimental surgery.

And of course,

Had the surgery cured me of all my pain,

I would have gone to live happily ever after and I probably wouldn't be here today.

I'd probably be some tech guru,

Some kind of tech titan and a total jerk,

By the way.

Had I been successful,

I would have been a total jerk.

But so I went and had the surgery,

But instead of helping me,

I woke up from the surgery with my right arm was paralyzed.

I couldn't move my right arm at all.

And that's a big deal,

Especially when you're right-handed and a computer worker.

And so physically,

That was kind of my rock bottom.

I had gotten married to a different woman and when I had the problem with my arm,

She left me.

So that was yet another dark night of the soul.

But it has a happy ending because after about six months of living without one of my limbs,

Which is really difficult,

Just so you know,

Huge exercise in compassion.

I'll encourage everyone,

Tape your right arm behind your back for six months,

See how it goes.

You get a sense of what that was like.

And I went to see this crazy healer lady.

And it was funny because she was recommended to be by my Aunt Lauren.

It was her best friend.

And her name was Terry O'Connell.

And she had been very successful in finance,

Working with my aunt.

She was a Wharton School MBA,

Super smart,

Made a lot of money,

Had a great career.

And Terry had gotten sick from mold and it almost killed her.

And she found this method of energy healing involving theta brain waves and programming the subconscious that truly saved her life.

And the only reason I went to see Terry was my Aunt Lauren kept bugging me.

She called me about once every week or two,

Brent,

How you doing?

Have you gone to see Terry?

I go,

No,

Lauren,

It won't help me.

I've done Reiki healing and pranic healing and I've meditated and I've done all this stuff.

It doesn't work.

And so this went on for about six months.

And finally,

Lauren said,

Brent,

What's it gonna take?

I said,

How about you take me out to dinner?

And she goes,

Okay,

Brent,

I'll take you out to dinner.

And I'm like,

Can we go to Drago?

She's like,

All right,

Fancy Italian restaurant.

We'll go to Drago.

So I'm like,

Okay,

I'm in.

So she bribed me and I went to see Terry.

And she was very polite and I'd met her a couple of times before.

So I knew her informally.

And she talked to me about the power of the mind and how we all have the power to heal our bodies from the inside.

And talked to me about her experience with chronic mold and all the hell she'd been through.

And I remember she said,

Don't worry,

Brent,

We'll take care of your arm.

You'll be fine.

And I'm thinking,

You and what army,

Right?

I had had manipulations.

I had had a second surgery.

I'd been to physical therapy.

I'd been to acupuncturist and Chinese.

I'd done all this stuff and nothing was working.

So she showed me how this process of checking for subconscious blocks and clearing them.

And she asked me a lot of questions about my childhood and what had happened with my friend and all the money I'd lost and the pain I'd been in and my divorce and all this stuff.

And it was a very interesting conversation.

But the whole time I'm there thinking,

Hey lady,

I'm not here to talk about my feelings,

Right?

That's all well and good.

I'm here because I can't move my arm.

And this is a big problem in my life.

And so this went on for about an hour.

And at the end of our session,

She said,

Okay,

Brent,

We're gonna heal your arm now.

And I'm like,

Yeah,

Good luck,

Right?

And I remember she kind of went into a trance,

Went into some kind of deep meditation.

And honestly,

I didn't expect anything to happen because I'd done other kinds of healing before.

And it felt nice,

But didn't seem to change anything.

And I remember I'm looking out the window,

I'm thinking,

What do I wanna get for lunch on the way home?

What am I gonna watch on TV tonight,

Right?

And out of nowhere,

I felt this loud pop in my elbow.

It was sort of like the pops we get in our joints from aging,

But like times a hundred.

You know,

It was like,

Kaboom,

My whole body shook.

And I was like,

Wow.

And I remember Terry opened her eyes and she was like,

Okay,

Dear,

Let's try your arm again.

And I did.

And it was the most incredible thing.

It was a real miracle that somehow,

Just by talking to me for an hour and using some beta brainwave,

She was able to get my body to heal the paralyzed arm.

And I could move my arm again,

Just like the surgery had never happened.

And that was the day this very skeptical,

Rational,

Scientific engineer decided to open his mind and open his heart and become a healer.

Because I was like,

Hey,

There's something here,

Right?

I know there's something here because I just experienced it.

Well,

That's incredible,

Brent.

And just to give some validation,

Not on a huge mungus scale like this,

Is I'll just say a little bit.

I mean,

Just because,

You know,

Some people are thinking,

Oh,

This is incredible.

Maybe this is not real.

Maybe,

You know,

You're fabricating this.

But I know in my own experience,

I was doing yoga and I couldn't get one of my arms all the way up.

Very minor compared to what you've gone through.

And I,

You know,

I had some kind of,

And I've told this story a little bit before,

But I have some kind of,

You know,

Spiritual acumen.

I've been meditating and practicing and into a lot of stuff.

So I walk into this place and to a healer and he comes up to me before I even say anything to him.

And he says,

Oh,

You have resentment towards your father.

And that's why your shoulder is.

And I'm like,

Oh,

Okay,

Thank you.

Yeah.

But I didn't,

You know,

I didn't argue or say nothing.

Like,

So then I went home and I- Thank you,

Drive-through.

Yeah.

But I went home and I sat with this and the tears just came.

And I noticed how real that was.

And there was a huge release.

And after that,

My shoulder and I could reach my arms up over my head.

So the question I have here is,

Why do you think so much of this is hidden?

Meaning that the kind of the stress we go through,

You know,

How it's stored in the body and locked in the body and manifests in the body,

Recorded in the body.

How can we,

How can so many people miss this with when it comes to health,

Things like this?

The psychosomatic connection,

I guess,

Between stress and the body.

Yeah.

I think it really,

If we're gonna play some blame,

I blame Descartes.

That about 300 years ago,

He kind of said,

Okay,

We've got science and the rational and the measurable,

And it stays over on this side of the room.

Then we have religion and God and the spiritual and it stays on this side of the room and no one crosses the center.

And that was how the church and the religious powers reconciled with the Renaissance and the rise of science.

But that may have worked pretty well in the 1700s.

But what we're finding today is exactly the opposite.

You cannot separate the spiritual and the physical.

You cannot separate the emotional body from the physical body.

They are sort of like two sides of a coin.

And all of our highest level scientists today are all becoming spiritual,

Which is so interesting because that's a huge shift just in my lifetime.

It is really.

And I concur with that.

In the Buddhist circles that I move in a little bit,

He gets a bad rap for sure.

And yeah,

I think therefore I am is not what we wanna be doing in spiritual practice,

I don't think as much.

So I wanna get into,

So what was going on with her?

Did you then go and say,

Okay,

How did you do this?

Of course,

I'm guessing you did.

You tried to find her secret.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Well,

Then the first thing I said,

Well,

I think the first thing I said was,

Oh,

Crap.

Maybe it was a little more R-rated.

I was just so amazed.

The second thing I said was,

Terry,

I don't know what you just did,

But please teach me.

And I went 100% full bore into learning healing the same way I threw myself 100% full bore into MIT and later into my startups.

And it was kind of funny,

You'll laugh at this.

When I first started learning healing and intuition and meditation,

I figured how hard can this be?

I'll have it mastered in six months.

Because after all,

I had been a Ballad of Torn in my high school,

National Merit Scholar,

Perfect straight A's at MIT,

Honors,

Awards,

Comedy,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Right?

I'd been a superstar academically.

So I figured learning healing,

This is what fat ladies covered in crystals do.

This will be easy.

Well,

The good news is I did figure it out,

But it didn't take six months.

It was more like 10,

12 years,

But eventually I got it.

And it was funny that unlike a lot of healers or intuitives,

What I do is not just a natural gift.

And I've met a lot of amazing healers out there.

They're born with a gift and that's great.

Sort of like LeBron James was born with a body to play basketball.

Not everyone can be him.

Everything I have is learned.

And when I first started doing it,

I really struggled with the intuitive part,

Especially because I wanted to control it.

I wanted to make it happen,

Right?

I'm an engineer.

I write software.

And what I learned very quickly was I couldn't do that.

It doesn't work.

So this is what I did.

It was actually a good insight.

I said,

Okay,

This is not some great gift I'm going to get from God or anything like that.

So I'm going to learn this the same way I would have learned science.

I'm going to go study and reverse engineer the masters.

So that's what I ended up doing.

Starting with Terry O'Connell,

And then later Dr.

Carl Wolf and several of my other most important teachers,

I spent about 10 years studying the great healers and spiritual teachers and gurus.

My goal was to figure out what they were really doing in terms of the body and brain waves and chemistry and things that could be measured and understood.

And again,

It took me a lot longer than I expected,

But eventually I figured it out.

Well,

Incredible.

It reminds me of that old Zen story that somebody comes to his Zen master and says,

How long is it going to take me to get enlightened?

And he says,

Oh,

Maybe five or 10 years.

So you know this one.

If I work really hard,

How long will it take?

20,

Yep.

I know that same story from martial arts.

Student shows up at the dojo says,

How long does it take to get a black belt?

Five years.

What if I work really hard?

I go to every class,

10 years.

What if I work really,

Really hard and practice on my own and start my own dojo?

20 years.

And I love that story you share because that was exactly my struggle.

I wanted healing and meditation to act more like engineering where you can put a bunch of effort and force on it and be clever and work hard and make stuff happen.

And it's really,

It's not that at all.

It's more like hunting in a sense that you have to patiently wait for the opportunity to show up,

If that makes sense.

It does.

There's an old saying that enlightenment is by accident and meditation makes you accident prone,

Right?

Yes,

And that's very much what I found.

So I guess before we get into kind of what you can say about what you learned and what you can reveal or want to reveal is,

You know,

What can't you measure?

I'm sure you still run up against things that you can't measure.

And I guess just jump into,

Because one of the gripes,

I get this,

I love the analytical part of just really going deep into details and trying to solve issues and come up with solutions or try to figure things out with missing information or try to put together patterns that most people can't see.

I love doing that.

But the other side,

As you know,

It really rounds out the whole being when you go into things where that just doesn't apply anymore.

But like,

What are you still,

What kind of,

One of the gripes I have about science is that they want,

Everything's off the table,

Although this is changing,

If they can't measure it with some kind of machine,

You know what I mean?

So I'm not against it.

I'm just saying,

Okay,

Consciousness is also a valid tool for exploring reality and to find things out about reality.

But for the longest time,

If they don't have some kind of machine or way to quantify it,

Then they won't even touch it.

So talk about the kind of quantification you do use and what can't be quantified before we get into kind of the nuts and bolts of what you're mentioning.

I'd say consciousness is sort of the prime thing we work with.

What I do,

I call it consciousness technology,

That there is a technology to using our brains,

Our awareness.

And the challenge we run into is how do you measure that?

It would be great if I had a machine that I could stick on your forehead and it gave me a number,

Right?

Or a blood test.

That's what all the scientists want to see.

And more importantly,

That's what the people funding the science want to see,

Right?

As long as they want it,

It'll happen.

And what I found is something like consciousness,

There are ways we can indirectly measure it.

So it can be measured,

But it's sort of like,

Imagine trying to figure out how the universe formed.

Well,

We can't get in a time machine and go back to 14 billion years BC,

Can we?

At least I don't know how to do that.

So we can't directly observe or measure the early universe.

All we have to do is,

All we have that we can do is we can look around at what's left over from the early universe.

It's sort of like a crime scene technician.

Like on CSI,

They go in and by the way the blood splatters on the wall,

They can figure out this angle and where this person was and everything that happened like that.

So I would say with consciousness,

There's a couple of ways we can get closer to measuring it.

One of my foundational tools is the Hawkins Scale of Consciousness,

David Hawkins.

I think it's a good scale because it takes this abstracting of consciousness and puts numbers on it.

But again,

There's no machine you can stick on your head and give you a number.

So we can use muscle testing to check our beliefs about consciousness,

But that's not really the same,

Right?

It's like,

If you wanna know the meaning of the word,

What you wanna do is look in the dictionary,

Huh?

But what if you don't have a dictionary?

The best you can do is maybe ask a smart friend,

What do they think?

That's kind of what muscle testing does.

It gives us more insight,

But it's still not perfect.

So what I've come to is this,

That the way we measure your level of consciousness is actually pretty easy,

Is what is your comfort level in the face of uncertainty?

In other words,

How real is your faith?

That almost everyone in our culture lives entirely from the ego.

And I don't blame anyone for that.

You don't know any better,

Right?

It's like blaming me for speaking English.

It wasn't a choice I made consciously.

It's just when I was a kid,

My parents spoke English.

I heard English on the TV and the radio.

They spoke English at school.

All my friends spoke English.

So big surprise,

Brent speaks English.

That the ego loves to control and make sure.

So we all wanna have a bunch of money so we can make sure bad stuff doesn't happen.

We all wanna be with someone so we can make sure we're not alone.

We all wanna take care of our health so we make sure we don't get sick.

That is what drags us down,

Is that need to make sure.

So if you're looking for a way to measure someone's consciousness,

I think that is the most direct.

But it's subjective.

That's fascinating.

What comes to me is this teaching I've heard too,

That how are we when things don't go our way?

Yes.

That which is a really huge,

Important spiritual question.

And I don't- Enormous.

Yeah,

I don't really like this word spiritual,

But I don't know what else to say.

So I think it's a good metric.

Now,

As far as consciousness goes,

I wanna get your,

I guess,

Definition of consciousness.

And I don't know if you've heard of Abhidhamma.

Abhidhamma is this old kind of advanced psychology of the mind that's,

It's really granular.

And I would say covers so much of very minute detail.

And most people can really only access it theoretically in a scholarly level.

But I know some practitioners who are really drilled down in their own experience from knowing like almost to the level of mind moment to mind moment and discerning ultimate materiality,

Ultimate mentality.

And I'm just kind of blown away by the depth of their practice when it comes to this.

So I know people have lots of different definitions of what consciousness is,

What awareness is,

What mind is,

What mindfulness is,

Things like this.

I think that is- Sure.

We could talk about that,

But I do wanna go into kind of your healing thing,

Because I think that's what I'm interested in the most here because of the spectacular thing that happened and all the time you've put into learning and knowing about healing.

Yeah,

So the best definition I've heard is that consciousness is awareness that is aware that it's aware.

And I really like that.

Because we can look at a machine like a robot.

It has some level of awareness,

Doesn't it?

If we look at the Waymo,

The driverless taxis,

They have some way of looking around them and understanding what's around them and driving.

So- Some kind of intelligence.

Yeah,

Some kind of awareness at least.

But is a Waymo,

Is a driverless car,

Is it aware that it's aware?

I would say no.

If we look at say an earthworm or some lower animal,

Clearly they have awareness of their environment.

They seek food,

They seek mates,

All the things animals do.

But are they aware of their awareness?

Good question.

And I think it seems to be only the higher mammals that have consciousness.

That being said,

My understanding is the entire universe is all conscious and aware just in different ways.

So the trees in the forest have their own consciousness and language,

But they live at such a slower pace to us it looks like they just stand there and do nothing.

Similar to the stars.

We look up at the stars,

They seem to be the same,

Don't they?

They're changing,

They grow,

They die,

Right?

But over the course of billions of years.

So to a human on a planet with a 80-year lifespan doesn't look like the stars change much,

Does it?

But yes,

I think that the higher mammals,

Certainly humans,

We are aware that we're aware.

And the way I see it is that enlightenment and suffering are two sides of a coin.

That our capacity to suffer is what gives us the possibility of enlightenment.

So if you look at the teachings of Yogananda,

He said that a dog cannot become enlightened.

Why is that?

Well,

It simply lacks the highly developed brain and nervous system required to suffer to give meaning to what happens.

Because after all,

If your dog's chasing a stick at the park is he worried about his retirement?

Is he worried about what the prime rate's gonna be next week?

Is he worried about some bill in front of Congress?

No,

The dog has no choice but to be fully present in the moment.

It's very difficult for a dog to do otherwise.

But humans,

We have this ability to give meaning to events.

And that is the root of all of our suffering right there.

And if we're able to transcend that suffering,

We can actually end up with the best of both worlds.

That if we look at the teachings of the Buddha,

He was trying to lead us out of suffering.

And I believe we can get to an almost paradise because we humans seem to be the only creatures capable of creating technology and becoming enlightened.

So,

You know,

As much as I love the cats and dogs,

And the earthworms in the trees,

They're not gonna build a computer.

They're not gonna build a space telescope.

They're not gonna build the internet,

Are they?

They're not gonna light my home and put food on my plate.

So we humans have this ability by transcending our suffering to bring together both.

That if we look at the world,

We produce more than enough food for every man,

Woman,

And child on the planet.

We have enough habitable spots to live.

We have enough oxygen.

We have enough water.

We have enough of everything.

And yet we're still fighting each other in suffering.

Totally unnecessary.

You get right to my heart here with the suffering thing.

I would just make a few little nuances here.

Now,

The other stuff is kind of metaphysics,

And I love that stuff,

And we can go into that,

And there's all these various nuances and things,

But the real practicality,

The real practical sense of the matter is where the rubber meets the road in suffering or stress.

We could just say stress or unsatisfactoriness,

And this is what's really important in life,

I find,

Because if we have this,

We can't enjoy our lives,

Or what's the point of anything else,

Really?

And I would just say,

Instead of transcending it,

It's knowing it and the end of it.

I just wanna put a quick little nuance that the reason we can,

What did you say?

The reason we can is because we suffer.

The reason we can,

And I would just say,

Just let's not use that as a dark teaching because there's some people that would just use it as an excuse to say,

Okay,

Well,

I'm just trying to help you out by making you suffer more.

These are kind of the dark ones,

Excuses for to get away with their behavior,

And that's not legit.

I mean,

We have enough stress and suffering that's just gonna happen just being in this human meat sack,

So we don't,

So of course,

That's,

I just wanted to clear,

And then transcending,

Yeah,

I think there's a lot of times where it's helpful to transcend it,

But as long as it's not kind of bypassing it or really knowing everything we need to know about it in order to eventually come to a complete ending of it is the only kind of nuances I could add there.

The language you described is transcending it.

Yes,

We just use that as a different language,

Yeah.

There's a lot of people that,

Yeah,

They misunderstand the word.

They think transcending means quitting or avoiding.

No,

Not at all,

So when you transcend dating,

It means you have no fear of rejection.

That's another good- You have no attachment to big result.

That is another important point.

You're simply engaged in an action,

Trusting that it will go where it's supposed to go,

And so to say,

Oh,

I've been rejected so much,

I'm gonna quit,

That's not transcending.

That's being a small child and throwing a tantrum,

Or I've heard this from a lot of very spiritual people that go,

Oh,

I've transcended the money game.

I moved to a nunnery or something like that.

It's like,

Not really,

You avoided it,

And that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with avoiding.

It's just you're gonna have to come back to it at some point,

You know,

And when I was in my darkest times,

Especially in the 90s,

One of the reasons I didn't kill myself was I believed that I would just recreate all the same garbage in a different life,

And what's the point of that,

You know?

Exactly,

It's just not like,

If it was only that easy,

Right,

To get out of something like that,

I don't think it works that way.

It doesn't make sense,

You know?

We look at any other area of life or situation,

And we can move around or do this and that.

It's just like rearranging the furniture.

What's unresolved is still gonna be there until it's resolved,

Right?

Yeah,

As they say,

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Yes,

Absolutely,

A great metaphor there.

You think you're doing something,

Feels like you're being productive,

But ultimately,

Yeah.

Really good point.

You're not really changing anything.

So what can you say about the healing that you learned?

Like,

What was your process?

What did you do?

Did you just talk to them?

Did you study,

You know?

And then you have a specialized system of your own now,

And what can you say about it in this whole journey and process you did with the healing here?

Well,

The way I learned it was pretty simple,

That back in the old days,

We used to actually physically go to teachers and healers and intuitives.

And so for the first five years,

I was just hardcore Terry O'Connell doing everything.

I practice groups once a week,

All days,

Once a month.

I would do a private session with her every single week for almost two years.

Started doing trades almost every day,

Practicing on my own.

So it was,

You know,

I was kind of obsessed and I worked my butt off.

And what really rounded it out was when I met Karl Wolf,

That Karl introduced me to a whole nother level of consciousness that I didn't even know existed.

And one of the foundations of my work in awakening dynamics is,

Again,

I see this all as technology.

And I look at different kinds of self-improvement,

Meditation,

Energy healing,

As different consciousness technologies.

And what I learned was,

We can group them into roughly what I call three generations of technology.

Now the first generation is kind of the well-known law of attraction,

The secret,

Think and grow rich.

So positive thinking,

Masterminds,

Vision boards,

Right?

Gets people going in the right direction,

But it's not as simple as the secret makes it,

Is it?

That making millions of dollars is not as simple as watching a video and making a vision board.

I mean,

Maybe for some people.

Just like for some people,

How do you make a hundred million dollars?

You go buy a lottery ticket.

So there are some that are very lucky.

But for most of us,

The typical law of attraction,

Mastermind,

Vision board doesn't deliver a lot of results.

And I spent a lot of time on that stuff back in the 90s.

I was going to positive thinking weekends and this and that,

Trying to do all these things to change myself.

But what I realized was,

The first generation technologies are very limited because they're only working with the conscious mind.

That when we get into the second generation technologies that I learned from Terry O'Connell,

The big shift is we start to directly work with the subconscious.

So we learn how to read our subconscious beliefs.

We learn how to reprogram them.

We learn how to release traumas,

How to shift our expectations and working on the energy level.

And the second generation work,

There's dozens,

If not hundreds of popular modalities.

So things like Psych-K,

Theta Healing,

Emotion Code,

EFT,

Healing Codes,

All of them work on a very similar basis.

That we have a bunch of subconscious programs,

Because I think of it as software and bugs in the software is screwing up your life.

So we need to go in and debug the software.

And typically they'll use muscle testing or some other means of checking with body feedback to see what your beliefs are.

And then they have different processes to make the shift.

Some people use frequency machines,

Some people use sound,

Some people use electricity.

The way I learned to do it with Terry was straight mind to mind with the divine energy.

And so with the second generation,

We start to see results.

In particular,

We start to see medical miracles occur.

So we see people instantly healing from cancer or diabetes or migraines or whatever it may be.

But the success rate is still somewhat low.

I'd say for a good second generation practitioner,

Your success rate will be 10,

20,

Maybe 30%.

Meaning that someone comes to you when you work with them and they see some measurable big shift.

But it's not zero,

But it's also not 90 or 100%.

One of the challenges of the second generation is it's very head focused,

Very much using the mind and the ego.

And when I met Kara Wolf,

It was really an eye opener because I had been to,

I got certified in like 27 different modalities.

I had learned all these different processes and systems,

The well-known ones,

As well as a lot of others.

I learned matrix energetics and human software design,

All this cool stuff.

But it was all very head focused and none of it directly involved the body because most meditation is not very physical,

Is it?

Most traditional meditation,

It can be depending on what you're doing.

But the better known traditional meditations,

You're pretty much sitting stationary,

Maybe with your legs crossed or whatever it is.

The way I met Kara was kind of crazy.

I had another huge crisis,

Yet another dark night of the soul,

Where at the same time,

One,

I fell crazy in love with this woman and she just destroyed me,

Ripped out my heart and stomped all over it.

At the same time that I had gotten taken in by a criminal financial advisor,

Who not only did he steal all my money,

He also took out fraudulent loans in my name and left me over a million dollars in debt.

And long story short,

I had to go bankrupt.

It was the only way for me to survive.

And it was a very difficult time for me.

And I remember that,

True story,

It was back in 2008,

On Monday,

I declared bankruptcy.

And that was a really,

Really difficult time.

Especially being an American man,

A lot of my ego was tied up in my career and making money.

Understandable.

Not saying it's a good thing,

Just saying that's how it is.

And so I was,

And I was deep in a hole.

So I declared bankruptcy on Monday.

On Tuesday,

I had my first session with Carl Wolf,

The man who became my mentor.

And I remember he got referred to me by my life coach,

Brian.

That long story short,

I'd worked with Brian for like a year and a half.

I had done 120 hours with him.

That's a lot,

Right?

120 hours.

And I wasn't shifting.

And he said,

Brent,

We need to introduce you to the master.

So after a year and a half with me,

Brian said,

Sorry,

Brent,

I can't help you.

I'm gonna kick you up the food chain to Carl.

And I remember I went to meet Carl and it was a crazy thing because we were doing a healing session and he told me to meet him at the Rollerblade Station on Venice Beach.

I was like,

What?

You know,

I'd expected a home office or back room at an acupuncture studio or something,

Right?

I wanted my Buddha statue and my bead curtain.

Like where's all the new age fixings?

And he had me rent rollerblades and put them on.

And then he had me skate in circles around the parking lot for 20 minutes while they videotaped me.

And again,

I'm like,

What does this have to do with healing,

Right?

Don't you wanna ask me about my mother or something,

Right?

And after that,

We sat in his truck and we played the video and he just kind of criticized me.

And after about an hour of this,

He said,

Okay,

Brent,

You know,

We're done.

It's been great to meet you.

I hope you got a lot of value out of this.

And I went home,

I was pissed.

I felt ripped off because what Carl did with me didn't look at all like any kind of healing I'd ever done.

So I figured,

And I had paid him my last $500 for this.

That was my last $500 before bankruptcy.

And so I went home and I called Brian and I chewed his butt.

I'm like,

Dude,

What's wrong with you?

You know,

I went bankrupt.

I spent all this money to have some crazy old guy have me rollerblade in circles.

What the heck,

Man,

Right?

And I remember what Brian said was,

He said,

Brent,

I get it,

Carl's out there.

But he said,

Do me just one favor.

He said,

Give it three weeks.

And if nothing changes in your life in three weeks,

Let me know,

I'll try to make it right.

I was like,

All right,

I can do that.

That's reasonable,

Right?

So I remember pulling up my calendar,

Marking three weeks out,

Called Brian,

Chew his butt off,

Get my money back.

And what's crazy was it didn't take three weeks.

It didn't even take three days.

That by Thursday night,

I had seen a huge surge in my business like I'd never seen before.

And I had had an amazing presentation where I had made over $50,

000.

I had booked out my calendar for six weeks and sold out my next two classes.

And I remember I came home and called Brian.

I'm like,

Dude,

I'm so sorry.

You were right.

This Carl guy is magic.

And what I realized now was Carl had introduced me to what I now call the third generation.

The third generation of consciousness technology,

Which is a much more physical thing.

It's about physical movement,

How you inhabit your body,

How you feel your muscles and tendons and joints and bones.

And so it wasn't mental at all.

And it was a difficult shift.

But what it comes down to is,

If you wanna have a big life and have cool things happen,

There's two pieces you really need.

One is you need to clear your subconscious.

But that's kind of a given.

If you're full of subconscious garbage,

You're gonna have a heck of a time going very far in anything.

So we gotta clear the trauma,

Shift the old beliefs,

Let go of the resentments,

All that stuff.

But that on its own is not enough.

We also have to refill our bodies with consciousness.

That our modern world has squeezed a lot of the consciousness out of our bodies.

And we have become unfeeling and numb.

And we have to turn that on.

And to give just a very simple,

Quick example,

So people can relate to this,

What I would ask is,

For everyone watching and listening,

Can you move your hands and fingers pretty easily?

Of course you can.

Can I move just one of my fingers?

Of course I can.

Now I wanna see you do that with your toes.

And here's the thing.

Did you know we have the same anatomy in our hands and feet?

We have the same bones,

The same muscles,

The same tendons.

They're almost identical.

Which makes sense,

We evolved from four-legged ancestors.

So biologically,

There's no reason you can't move your toes the same way you move your fingers.

But we've mapped it out of our brain.

Most of us can only move our toes as a group.

We can no longer feel them or move them individually.

And that's just one example.

We could talk about the spine,

The hips,

The ankles.

It's true of all the joints and aspects of our body.

So Carl's work is much more physical to not only clear the subconscious,

But also to reconnect yourself to this field of life,

This flow of consciousness that comes from the divine through us into the world.

And if you can do both of those things,

Then we're talking 80,

90,

100% success rate.

I love how you put all this.

So much here,

But we're kind of running out of time.

And I will just say,

As far as the body,

Yes.

In my own experience,

My toes,

And I've heard this from other people,

That most of us can't really distinguish where our individual toes,

Maybe our big toe,

But where they're even at,

Like,

What do you call it,

Proprioceptually.

If I really relax and focus,

I can start to move individually but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of concentration for me to do that.

You talk about handshaking too.

Maybe you can say that,

But the big things I wanna know,

What he said to you really briefly,

If you wanna share,

They do say feedback from someone we really admire is worth more than a mountain of gold,

But it can also be very devastating.

And like you talked about devastation,

That can reveal deep truths within us if we let it.

That's not really a great silver lining,

But I mean,

Because devastation is,

Yeah,

The word says it all,

Right?

The big things,

Making the unconscious conscious and subconscious conscious,

I see that could be the most,

Because then there's no need to go into the subconscious and do all the program,

And when it's hidden,

If bringing that into the conscious,

Then you can deal with it with a conscious awareness.

And for me,

Beliefs aren't really necessary.

We're kind of trained to believe or disbelieve something,

But we don't have to do that.

We can treat things as information.

And if we're looking for truth,

Then belief is actually kind of an enemy of truth,

You know?

Because I don't need to believe something that I know is a true in my own experience,

Right?

Yeah,

I don't need to believe a bicycle because I've been on one and rode it,

Right?

So I think that's it.

If you wanna address those,

And then leave us with the final message.

And you nailed it,

That really the magic is in the feedback.

There's one more little piece I'll just mention,

Which is what we call beaming.

It's a very advanced meditation where you start to see all sorts of cool stuff.

You'll see auras and energy and past lives with your open eyes.

And what I realized was,

Carl was beaming me doing this meditative process as he gave me feedback.

That's where the magic is.

And absolutely,

It's about taking this dark unconscious part of us and bringing it out into the light of day.

And once you've done that,

There's no other work required.

All we need to do is be present to what's really happening,

And that's what the feedback does.

But there is the magic of the beaming that only took me 15 years to figure out.

But you shift the brain pattern and you give the feedback magic happens.

That a lot of what I say,

I wouldn't have believed 30 years ago.

So I don't expect anyone out there to believe anything I'm saying.

Just show up and have your own experience and then decide for yourself how real this is.

Well,

Brent,

It was a pleasure.

I appreciate you doing this and sharing your journey and what you've learned and your wisdom,

Your knowledge,

Your heart too.

So thank you so much.

And may all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free.

Bye now.