Potency & Experiences W/ Tim Bui: Awakening Catalysts Series

Tim Bui and I, in this Jan 14, 2024 recording, talk: potency, awakening experiences and processes, removal, identity, ego, embodiment, depression, emotions, wounds, transmutation, visions, clarity, spiritual practices, teachers, Vajrayāna Buddhism, retreats, healing, Mexico, self, not-self, existence, Buddha nature, nothingness, interconnectedness, weak(ening) goal barriers, doing, non-doing

Transcript

Holness,

Welcome,

Welcome,

Welcome.

Josh Dippel from Integrating Presence today here with Tim.

Bui,

Tim,

What's going on today?

Josh,

Thank you for having me in your space,

On your show.

What's going on today?

Well,

It's been a really good day,

I would say,

So thanks for asking.

I just,

I was sharing with you on direct message that on the 11th,

I had a awakening experience,

So that's still very new.

I feel like a baby in a lot of ways now,

So yeah,

We can dig into that or many other things.

Yes,

I definitely want to get right into that,

But before we do,

Who is Tim Bui and what does he do?

Oh yeah,

Let's get into that.

So the best way I can answer this right now,

What do I do,

I guess,

Is a proverbial question people are always interested in,

Is I do coaching.

It's particularly flow state coaching,

So it's just like how do we increase somebody's potency of who they are based on their characteristics,

Based on their nature,

Based on these aspects of themselves that they've been experiencing their whole life,

And a lot of times,

People,

When they're raised,

They don't get good mirroring,

So they don't understand and fully and wholly accept their strengths and their weaknesses and all these things,

And weakness is not in a bad way,

But it's to embrace them,

Because they're also,

When you embrace them,

Become your power,

Your strength,

Because you walk with it,

And it's different.

Nobody can target that and take anything away from you because you've already embraced it,

So there's that whole fundamental aspect of just wholly embracing yourself,

And I think when that happens,

A natural flow with how we interact with the world around us and ourselves starts to come to form,

And there's less sort of friction in life,

And then beyond that,

It's just like how do we increase the potency in the things that you're doing in your life,

Whether that's business,

Whether that's the relationships that you're in and things like that,

And so I use neurolinguistic programming techniques and many other different meditative type of techniques,

Breath work and things like that,

To really go deep,

And sometimes we will remove a lot of,

A lot of stuff is removing,

Removing beliefs,

Removing things that you think that you should do because of the feedback that you got,

Or maybe healing wounds and things like that,

Because I think,

Personally,

That the only thing that really drives us before we awaken is our wounds,

And so unless,

Yeah,

That's pretty much it,

So I'll leave it at that.

I would tend to agree that,

You know,

In traditional Buddhist language,

I came through the Dukkha door,

You know,

With our,

Wounds is a really good way to put it,

Too,

That it was this kind of catalyst for awakening,

This drive,

This momentum,

This impetus to seek something out because it was in such a bad state and not knowing how to mend wounds and things like that,

It's very well put,

So yeah,

And it's a very American question,

Too,

Right,

Like what do you do,

You know?

Yeah,

People,

Americans get right into that right away,

And in other parts of the world,

It's not that important or whatever,

But so let's just jump in.

I love this notion of potency you talk about,

Too,

Because,

Oh,

I don't know why,

But it just really resonates with me,

Potency because there's so much watered-downness.

I don't know,

That's not a word.

You know what I mean?

It really is,

So we're just flooded by information as well,

So tuning into our potency,

I think,

Is really cool,

So if you wanna pick up on that,

And then you can just hop right in to your recent awakening experience.

I'd like to hear about it.

Yeah,

Of course,

I'd love to share it,

So with potency,

It comes from this idea that,

So there's two types of meditation in general,

I think like when we talk about the meta of all meditation,

It's either you're on this side and you have this single point of focus and there's a subject and object and you're subjectively objectifying everything and it's just like very intensely focused,

And then you have this other aspect where it's the opposite,

Where it's just you become wide open like the sky,

Able to hold everything,

And in this one,

The experience and how I relate that to potency is if you drop some food coloring into a glass of water,

Eventually that glass of water will turn red.

If you drop that red food coloring into the ocean,

It will just dilute itself and dissipate until it becomes nothing,

And in the process of meditation,

What you see is that your thoughts,

They sit on this thing and they become nothing,

And then the opposite side of that is like when you're not in meditation,

Well,

You have like this embodied experience of what's happening,

The experiences,

And it's actually happening in my experience the opposite way,

Like we're in a container and so there's food coloring,

And so it's like how about we remove all the impurities that prevent that food coloring from being completely red,

And so it's just a process of removal,

Like I said,

To create that potency because there's all these things,

If you wanna be red,

That prevent it from being red.

It's murky,

It's brown for some reason.

When you mix a bunch of food coloring,

It just turns brown,

Right?

Until you add so much in that it's just black,

So that's just the idea of potency,

And I think in a very metaphysical sense,

But we have very pragmatic techniques to get to the practicalities of things.

It reminds me of distilling,

Too,

When something is distilled,

Right?

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

In a roundabout way,

I guess,

But all right.

So,

Yeah,

It's good metaphor,

Good visual,

I like it.

Now,

What about this awakening thing that you were talking about?

So,

The best way I could describe it as this analogy came to me this morning is on Christmas Day,

You have a beautifully wrapped gift and somebody's put a bow on it,

And that bow is representative of the self.

It's beautiful,

There was effort put into it,

There's intricate details.

It's not just like a shoenot bow,

It's like a whole almost woven and weaven thing where it's this beautiful almost flower,

Right?

I think in a lot of ways itself is like that where we decorate it with how we would decorate our space.

You've got this nice little Asian wall divider thing,

These pictures,

Right?

So,

It's like you have this aspect of aesthetics and beauty,

Right?

And in my experience of awakening,

It was like,

It felt like metaphorically somebody just pulled on that ribbon and then the bow became no more.

And so,

That 3D bow,

It just had nothing to sit on.

And so,

It just became ribbon.

And then that ribbon,

If you just let it on the floor,

Just,

And then if you just didn't have a ground for it,

It would just continue to do this.

And so,

My experience of life now,

I would say is more like,

I don't know if you see those Instagram commercials or YouTube commercials of those mason pans or those nonstick pans and they've got the egg on it and it's flipping around and it's just barely on there.

I feel like my experience with rigidity or motions,

It kind of has that sort of nonstick feel or it's like,

I can feel it,

But it just doesn't stay on me.

It just kind of just,

It's just nonstick.

So,

That's my direct experience of life right now.

And it's still unfolding.

There's a lot happening.

It's only been,

Oh,

It's 11,

11.

It's only been a couple of days.

And so,

I'm really just getting used to it.

I could talk to you about the realization that I had.

I could talk to you about the process of it.

I could talk to you about the history of it,

Of my cultivation.

So,

There's lots of ways we could go about this,

But just to answer your question very directly,

I think that is my experience of the awakening in a very metaphorical way.

Oh,

Very cool.

Yes,

It reminds me of like water off a duck's back.

The Teflon thing is nice.

That's like,

Yeah,

It's there,

But it's not,

Experience isn't as sticky and effective,

Absolutely.

So,

Yeah,

What else would you talk about that as far as process or did it come in an experience?

Was it more gradual?

Was it a sudden thing?

I had my first transcendental experience when I was 12 or so.

And something in me was like,

Just curious about meditation.

I was very interested and I didn't know how to do it.

And then I found this Zazen meditation.

And it was just like,

Well,

You just breathe in and out through your nose and you count.

And I did that not for too long.

And I started noticing like this evenness between how much my breath went in and how much my breath went out.

And like,

It started to reduce as like the mental activity started to reduce.

And it came to this point where it was like,

Just a little bit in and a little bit out.

It wasn't like these full breaths.

It was just like a little bit.

And I just like,

And then eventually it just went to this point where it was equal,

Where like just a little bit was going out and just a little bit was going in.

And my mind became like still.

And I almost felt like I was not breathing from this point on.

I probably was.

And so I had this experience where I just totally,

You know,

Stepped outside of my 3D body,

My mind.

And I was just in this realm of blackness,

Like the void,

You know,

Just like nothingness.

Yet at the same time,

While there's nothingness,

I had all these thoughts of like,

You know,

Had these deep thoughts about life.

I was kind of depressed when I was 12,

As people tend to be when they're into meditation at such a young age.

And so I had all these thoughts about life and why I'm here.

And like,

As soon as I asked,

Like there was just like clarity about it.

It wasn't even like an answer.

It was just like,

As soon as like,

It's just like that drop in the ocean where it's like,

It was just completely diluted.

And it was like,

The question was put to rest.

There was no need to answer that question.

And I just sat in this space for what felt like,

You know,

15 minutes.

And it was,

I remember that it was like four o'clock or so in the day.

And when I got up,

It was dark.

It was nighttime.

So it had been in this space for like three hours.

And I was completely mind blown.

And,

You know,

It was a very traumatic experience too,

Because I didn't have any language to describe it,

Anybody to talk to about it.

And it's a transcendental experience.

How do you go back to real life after that?

And so the reason why I bring this up is because I feel like from that point,

And today I'm 35,

I always like have my eyes like a little bit open,

You know,

Like I saw the other side of the veil,

But I didn't,

I wasn't fully there,

You know?

And there's this sort of friction about like,

Oh,

But I wanna get there.

And it's like this friction about like,

Oh,

I shouldn't be dealing with these tough emotions.

Like I've already experienced like these are just nothing or whatever.

And ultimately on the 11th,

What happened was I had been for about,

I committed,

You know,

I had some things in my life that would catalyze this,

But I committed to basically 10 days of just full immersion of just everything I'm doing is for the intention of depth,

Of processing my wounds,

Of dealing with like embodied energy.

I had like a lot of,

You know,

To keep this conversation very short,

Like repressed sexual energy,

Because of like shame,

Humiliation,

Guilt,

And,

You know,

Cultural conditionings,

I think as well.

And I think there was a lot of,

We'll say like generational trauma within me that was embodied within my body.

And I hadn't recognized that.

And every day,

The process of like just feeling into it.

And one funny thing I'll say is,

I,

For a lot of my life,

I've always been into sacrifice and transmutation.

So every move I'd make,

You know,

Whether it's starting a new business or leaving the city that I grew up in,

I would find the thing that was most valuable to me.

And I would just sell it,

Get rid of it,

So that I can open up that space.

And so in this,

I was realizing like,

I've been holding onto this for so long.

Let me transmute this.

And I was like,

Let me put it into this space of safety and groundedness and all this.

And then I came to the realization of like 10 minutes of doing this as the energy was releasing.

I was like,

When an ice cube melts,

It turns into water.

And then if you leave it long enough,

It turns into gas on its own.

Like nobody has to do anything.

It doesn't have to,

What I'm doing is I'm just putting layers on top of stuff,

Right?

And it's just like,

These layers are just capturing it again in another way,

In a different form of my body or whatever.

So I was like,

What I need to do is liberate this.

I need to liberate this to do whatever it wants to do,

Whatever it's meant to do,

Give it back because it doesn't belong to me and allow the laws of nature of the universe to just govern where it needs to go because it's not my job to tell it or do anything with it.

And then when does that happen?

Notice these waves of energy come through my body and it was like,

Just very powerful waves.

And I was like,

Oh,

What are we gonna do with this?

How long are we gonna be here for?

I was like,

I'm gonna commit to 30 minutes.

I don't care what happens in the space of this 30 minutes,

Let's just let this ride.

And so I was just like,

I mean,

These visions and seeing,

Like when I was bullied as a little kid,

So when I was like six or seven,

I had a surgery and because of the surgery,

I was in the hospital for a month and I think it took a lot of my vital energy.

So I became like throughout the years,

Like two years smaller than my peers.

You know,

Like when I was in eighth grade,

I looked like a sixth grader or something like that.

So I got bullied a lot,

But I didn't really talk to anybody about it.

I just made a decision,

I'm just gonna keep this inside.

And there's just all this repressed stuff that came up.

And so in my visions,

I was just re-experiencing these and reprocessing.

And I think that whole 10 day period was just about processing all these things that were in my body.

Cause I processed them in my mind already,

Like with the beliefs that were installed and things like that,

But there's like a somatic experience of this energy being somewhere.

And I just,

Through the meditation,

When I come to these points of depth and clarity,

I just can feel it like in my body experiences the self,

This filter,

How I experience things.

And I was just letting all that go.

And then I realized that when we talk about wounds,

The deepest wound that we have is the experience that we have a self.

So that is a wound because that activates everything else.

And once I noticed that,

I just saw that,

Wow,

Like that just undid the knot.

Like we have these neural networks of experience where it's like,

Oh,

I'm moving my arm and I feel this.

And oh,

I'm doing martial arts and I feel this.

And oh,

I'm talking to somebody or making love and I feel these things.

But you're just activating different layers of the default mode network of your experience and your nervous system and what's going on with your heart rate and all these things.

They're just all interlinked.

And as soon as they're interlinked,

They go.

And then because there's such a pattern of them existing,

Then it's just like,

Oh,

This is what's happening.

And so you have the neural network and then you have your experience of the neural network.

And then this creates the self.

And then it's almost seamless.

But then when you meditate,

There's this little space in between and the more space you create,

Then it's like,

Oh,

This is a neural network.

And this is the happening that happens at the same time.

There's no longer like,

Oh,

This is me.

This is me.

I'm strutting around or this is me shopping at the grocery store,

Whatever.

So that was my experience of a short,

Very,

Very short version of the awakening.

It's beautiful.

And it goes back to what you said at the beginning about a lot of it is like discarding instead of adding on to it.

And then once we kind of get out of the way,

Like you're saying too,

These natural processes can just take their course a lot easier.

I feel like the water metaphor.

And yeah,

This whole notion of self,

I'm fascinated by it.

And I ask a lot of people that I interview and people that are really into spirituality about self.

And what you're saying,

That's been my experience.

I can see it more as like a series of interlinked processes that arise and fall due to causes and conditions.

That's one perception of seeing these things.

And in seeing the separation of how the body,

I'm not the body and not the feelings or the perception or the thoughts or the consciousness even that all these things can be sussed out and examined and they're not what we think they are.

They're not like locked into place.

And for me,

It's like when we form an identity around these things of this is who I am,

This is me and I'm made of this and this is the way it is.

And this is it.

It's a setup for disappointment and suffering a lot of times,

Stress,

Exactly.

But at the same time,

We can still be who we are,

Whatever that is,

And not have to be completely spaced out psychonauts all the time either,

Right?

But yeah,

It's a beautiful thing.

And so,

Yeah,

If you have more insights on that,

I also wanna ask you about,

You mentioned martial arts and I would be curious about hearing kind of if you have a formal meditation background too.

And then if you were just during these 10 days,

Did you just go into a solo retreat or how did you do it?

So I think I put enough on your plate there.

Yeah,

Three questions.

So first one,

Well,

We'll answer the third one first because it's a fast one.

I'm just by myself.

I just,

I had a,

I was in Mexico and I came back and I came back with this fierce fever and I had experienced like cold sweats I've never experienced before.

I experienced pins and needles sensations that grew like through all my limbs.

I thought I had autoimmune issue.

I had head pressure,

I was dizzy.

I didn't have my sense of balance.

I had this crazy itchiness all over my body,

But no rash,

No hives.

So once I healed from all that,

Like I was just going through like,

When you're in a fever,

Like all these things are burning off of you and I had like this lust and all these other like things that were just in there,

You know,

Like that I hadn't experienced.

And then I was like,

Oh,

This is pointing to some deeper things that I need to take care of.

So after that whole illness went away,

I was like,

Let me just commit to 10 days at home.

And so I basically ate,

Cause I didn't want to spend,

I love cooking,

But I didn't want to spend too much time doing anything else.

And I just wanted to be able to encapsulate like,

Oh,

I see the mailman.

Like this is part of this experience,

You know,

I'm immersing everything into it.

And what I saw was that if I could spend less time cooking and doing these mundane things and like kind of activating those,

Those traditional things.

So I just ate bread,

You know,

And olive butter with a little honey on it.

That was my thing.

I guess I was unintentionally vegetarian.

So yeah,

That answers that question.

Now with martial arts,

Since I was seven,

I've been training and I still train to this day.

So I do consider myself a martial arts master.

I've trained in many,

Many,

Many different types of martial arts from the East to the West.

And I'm very proficient.

I'm good with knives and weapons and guns and flipping people and you know,

All that stuff.

So I think that answers that question.

And then I think that there's a second half of that question was,

Do I have a form of practice?

I,

For about four years,

I studied with a Buddhist master as well.

And I was pretty much on the hook 24 seven.

So like anytime I received a message or anything or teaching,

It's always a teaching,

We call it a message,

But it's like,

Something is coming up and you know,

He's asking,

He's showing us something or whatever,

We have to respond right away.

And so there's that.

And then he's a Vajrayana practitioner.

So he taught a lot of things I was not prepared to learn,

You know,

Like,

Oh,

What do you do if you're looking to reincarnate after you die?

Like,

You know,

Just things like that.

Like,

How do you be a Bodhisattva?

Like,

I'm not even,

You know,

At that point,

I'm just this scum of the earth guy over here,

Just doing terrible things and just totally non-virtuous.

And so he really straightened me out.

Before that,

I was a heathen.

It was the worst of the worst.

Long story about that,

But we're not gonna talk about it or not in this space right now.

But he taught me how to meditate.

He taught me,

He gave me a really good analogy.

He just gave me logic,

Like this new neural network of karma,

Of virtue,

Of dharma,

And like to process and distill all this in this neural network to understand the way of being,

The way of being kind and why that makes sense,

How that makes sense.

So like installing this as like the first principle,

The foundation,

So that everything from that is just like the fruitioning of this logic,

Of this base,

Of like how it makes so much sense.

And like,

Nothing else makes sense to me now.

It doesn't make sense to be jealous.

It doesn't make sense to,

You know,

Like steal from people.

Like it just isn't like,

You know,

Like,

Because I took care of this root foundation that he gave me.

And so I had that.

And,

You know,

I had experiences with empowerments received from the Dalai Lama and various other Buddhist masters as well.

So,

You know,

There's this tantric aspect that I received during this time as well.

And I think I've had,

You saw I talked about Insight Timer.

I used Insight Timer since I was very young.

Maybe I was like 14 or something.

It was one of the,

I used it every day,

Listening to Tara Brach and all these other people that,

And learned Metta and Vipassana and body scanning.

I didn't learn the open-eyed Samatha type of meditation.

You know,

I did go to Zen retreats growing up as well.

I was lucky enough to be sent by my parents against my own will,

But I learned open-eyed meditations.

And I think that's why I was more practicing most recently in the last eight months and just on my own.

And,

Or I would listen to a guided meditation.

I believe there was one more that was caught in the middle of all that.

I don't remember exactly what the question was.

Ah,

I can't remember.

I guess we're going back to the beginning there with if there's any other insights on self,

Not self,

Things like that.

Yeah,

No,

You pretty much answered everything I threw out there.

I,

You know,

I want to share something with you,

A reflection that,

As you're describing the process of your understanding,

I see your understanding is like very embodied.

Like you've done a lot of the work to realize what you're saying.

And I see like this,

I see a knot.

And when you brought up something,

I don't know exactly particularly what it is at this moment because so much has passed between the time that you said it but I feel like once you resolve that,

Like I feel like you're going to be very close if not there as well,

Or if you're not already there,

I don't know.

But like,

There was a,

I felt like a minor,

Very subtle,

Almost point of contention or like conflict that in something that you said about the self-identity and like the experience of that,

How that creates suffering.

Like,

I feel like you're like,

Once that thing,

Whatever that is,

Is resolved,

I feel like you'll self may dissipate.

Well,

Yeah,

Whatever that is to begin with,

Right?

Yeah.

No,

The,

I appreciate the compliment there.

And- It's a reflection,

Yeah.

It's just,

I felt that from you.

Yeah,

Like I've had a daily practice since 2012,

So it's a big part of my routine in life and training and just the way I go about things too.

And yeah,

The embodiment is a lot easier in formal meditation,

Doing mindfulness of body,

Right?

It's still,

There's a long ways to go with,

I guess,

Carrying that down the street day to day.

But yeah,

I would say there's probably some realizations,

Especially when I look back at the beginning of my practice and even before it,

Of course,

Yeah.

That it's not all just hot air or parroting stuff from books.

Although I can do that too,

You know.

There's two things.

Like one thing when you say that is like,

I noticed that,

And within myself too,

Which is like,

Sometimes we may be a lot closer than we think,

But then there's the conditioning that like,

As soon as you grasp onto that,

Then it's like,

It can become like the identity too.

Like,

Oh,

I'm there,

Or I'm almost there.

And so like,

That could be something that we have to dance around or whatever.

And then also in that belief is like,

It may take like,

You know,

It's gonna take this long,

Or it's gonna take this long from now,

Or whatever that is,

And that could be a limitation.

And then also that,

I mean,

Like,

To distill all that down,

Like,

I'm gonna do it for however long it takes,

But if I'm close,

Then cool,

But it doesn't matter.

Because even now,

Like,

I still have to do things.

I still have to meditate.

Now it's like,

I'm doing tantric more.

I have access to that now because I have this space that I can create for beings to come in,

Like,

On a whole different level.

So like,

That's a new fact.

It's not like,

I've done it after that,

You know?

So it's like,

We're gonna be,

I'm gonna be doing this forever.

I've probably done this for forever.

And that's just it.

So it's,

Yeah.

That's the one thing I thought came to me too,

Is when you were talking about how young your experiences were,

Then I was like,

Well,

I don't know if you've got to past life memories yet,

But to me,

It strikes me as you've already done this in past lives quite a bit,

But I have no idea,

You know?

It's not based on anything whatsoever.

But,

You know,

And then,

You know,

Who is this,

Who's trying to get rid of the self or,

You know,

Realize the not self nature?

You know,

It's this classic question too of like,

Well,

If there's not a self,

Who gets reborn?

That's a classic Buddhist question,

Right?

I'm not necessarily throwing that question to you,

But you're welcome to run with it if you want,

But.

Yeah,

We can definitely,

Like,

So I had this,

The day before my awakening,

I had a sitting with the source,

Right?

So the source is in my vocabulary,

It's everything and anything that could be,

And it's existed before beginningless time.

So the reason why it exists is because,

You know,

It's just an idea.

But the idea is that when everything is,

When something is everything,

It's also nothing,

Because if you point at everything,

You're also pointing at nothing at the same time,

Right?

Like there's no difference between everything and nothing.

It's like,

Let's talk about everything.

Okay,

Well,

We're also talking about nothing.

Like there's no thing that you can point at.

And so there is the emanation of all experience,

Of all vibrational frequency that's happening.

And I sat with that and I saw when I sat with source,

It was reflecting back at me this image of,

Yeah,

This is a dude,

This is a man.

And in that,

What I'm starting to see now is crazy as I've gone through this process of awakening,

But everything's a fractal.

Like I see,

Like people say that,

But I see it very clearly.

And I saw,

Looking back from source,

That I am a fractal of the greater collective behind me.

And when I say greater collective,

You know,

People say this thing or whatever,

I simplify it as just,

This is the meme of our timeline.

Like all the memes of our timeline,

That's the collective.

And it could be internet memes.

It could be cultural memes.

It could be just,

You know,

Just things that we recognize.

And we're like,

Ah,

That's a thing.

That's a expression.

You know,

In English,

We don't have many of those.

In French,

They have tons of those.

And you know,

There's certain languages like,

Ah,

That thing.

And as I sat with source,

I saw that.

And then I saw also that the,

Since everything is emanating from source,

It's like,

I just saw this vision of vibrations solidifying.

And when I think of that,

The representation of that is a crystal.

A crystal,

It resonates at a certain frequency.

And when you have something that's resonating at a certain frequency and then you have something going through it,

It will tune to that frequency,

But there's also other frequencies that are coming off of that.

So you have this interaction of energy and these interactions of energy create other energies.

And so I think it's just this downward process of things being created from other things.

And I think that's what we are,

Is we're this thing that's being created from this other thing,

Which is source.

And like through this limited filter of this body,

Of this defined self,

Because I can't be everything because then I would just be source,

Right?

So through that is,

Through the limited means of my existence is this creative expression of who I am and what I can be.

And I think that is a very unique and special thing.

Grass is not blue,

Grass is green.

And so we all have our nature,

Everything has this nature and it's just meant to be expressed.

And I think all these things that get in the way of that is the self and all those other ideas is us not being able to naturally express what we're here for,

What our gifts are,

Who we are,

What we are.

And I think the thing that awakens is that,

That is born,

Which is like,

I'm in this meat suit and I get to own this meat suit.

I'm not seven feet tall,

I'm not three feet tall.

Like I am me as I walk in this meat suit,

I have my biometrical or like my,

The way that I do things,

My energy and all these things.

And it's gonna attract the people and that's gonna attract the things that we do as people in my life and the joy that we experience,

All those things are just kind of a symbolic or a signature,

Like it's an energy signature and then that energy signature is matched with other energy signatures that are alike and then it creates whatever it's gonna create,

Just like how in the beginning I said all the energies interact in that same way,

It's just very fractal.

And then what awakens is in a very Buddhist context,

I think like Buddha nature.

And so like,

There's different schools of Buddhism or whatever,

But like Vajrayana is a school that talks about Buddha nature and like there's not just the Shakyamuni Buddha,

The Buddha of this time,

But there's infinite Buddhas.

And actually we're already Buddha and we just don't realize it.

And then it's like,

Oh,

What does that even mean?

It means that like inside of us is this Buddha nature,

This quality,

Basically I've been talking about qualities in nature,

Right?

And it's like,

It's already there,

But it's just covered by all this stuff.

And it's like,

Even right now,

I don't,

Can't say that I'm a Buddha,

But as I sit and I do these practices,

These tantra practices,

Like maybe I sit with Buddha and I take in his nature and we turn that into something that becomes a part of my nature,

Right?

And the more I do that,

The more I become the Tim Buddha or whatever,

Right?

So what awakens is that,

That true nature.

That true nature is always wanting to be revealed because I kind of look,

There's another great analogy.

I'm firing all these analogies at you right now.

What does it mean to be a self?

It's almost like you have this experience of like there's a bubble around you or like a condom around you.

And like naturally,

If you have a condom around you or a bubble around you,

You want the full and raw experience.

Like whether that's an ineffable thing,

Like so subconscious that you don't even realize it or not,

Like you want pure joy.

You want pure sadness.

You want the pure experience of the thing itself.

And a lot of times,

Like you have an experience and like,

Oh,

This reminds me of this other time.

Or like,

Oh man,

I can't wait for like the next thing or all these other things that are happening.

Like you can't experience the pure thing,

But like the pursuit of happiness is basically the pure thing.

Like it's not happiness.

It's not like the car.

It's not the job.

It's not the wife.

It's not all those things.

It's just the pure experience.

That is the pursuit of happiness.

And so like that is innate within us.

Like we want that.

We're born with that.

And then we lose that.

And then that's the rest of the journey is how do you get back there?

So I think that's what's awakening is the pure experience.

I like the analogy is great,

You know?

And I think so.

We're even talking about different layers here,

Like a really strong ego layer.

And then once that gets thinned out,

Then there's just maybe more of an existential experience of what this self still is after we've kind of discarded all we can.

And it's such a fascinating topic,

You know?

And because we can't just get arrested or something and say,

Okay,

Josh,

There's no Josh.

What are you talking about?

There is no Josh.

There's no,

You know,

That's not gonna fly,

Right?

We still have to remember like our social security number,

Whatever,

And put on our pants when we need to,

You know,

These things like that.

Yeah.

Well,

Cool.

That's such a funny idea.

There's no Josh.

Josh,

There's no Josh.

I don't think that would go over too well,

But.

Probably not.

Well,

It's been cool and a fun conversation here and very helpful metaphors and imagery here to understand a lot of this stuff.

And what would you like to leave us with the audience here with?

I think it's something that came up in our conversation is like,

We're closer than we think to what it is that we want.

And I think oftentimes at the outset of a goal,

If we feel like it's far,

It's gonna be a long road,

Whether it is going to be or not.

I think preparing for a long road is great.

And,

But if we spend too much time preparing,

We may miss the window of opportunity or experiencing what that is.

And I think about like a backpacking trip or,

You know,

The conditions are only good for so long and there's gonna be rainy or whatever.

So you can only spend so much time preparing for a super long trip or a sailing trip across the world or whatever that is.

And so I think understanding that like the barrier around us or separating us from our goals is probably a lot thinner than we think.

And it doesn't mean that,

You know,

Tomorrow it's gonna happen and we have that expectation or anything,

But just be open to experiencing what that might be on the other side of that,

Because it's probably like right under your nose because I think there's a difference between like non-doing and doing.

And in the non-doing space,

It's like you're already doing like what's natural for you.

You don't have to try to do anything.

You don't have to try to break through.

You're already doing it.

So just allow that to just do its thing and you'll already be there.

It's just inevitable because you already wanna do it.

It's not like,

You know,

You have to do it.

You're forcing yourself to do it.

And you wake up every morning,

Your legs hurt.

And you're just like,

It's just this miserable experience.

Just enjoy it because you already have this drive naturally within you to do it.

And don't do things that you don't wanna do and then they'll get you out of that.

So that's the message.

Well,

Badass advice,

Tim.

And thanks again for joining and may all beings everywhere realize awakening.

Be free.