(Please note I have not formatted all the transcription - just those I have used)
Intro Moment: I want to distinguish between discomfort and pain discomfort is a necessary element of growth pain is not pain is what happens when you're being prodded into that expansion prodded into that growth and you don't go with it and what's interesting is that by doing so right by pulling the parts of you that you detest closer and including them as part of you so that you fully understand them they now perceive a connection with you and so those parts of you can't hurt you anymore and then that means the expression out into the world is one that's going to be beneficial to you instead of detrimental to you.
Kristina: Hello dear friends this is Kristina Mand-Lakhiani co-founder of Mindvalley and welcome to my honest conversations and i have a very interesting guest today uh and i have to tell you honestly this is the first time i'm meeting and talking to uh to someone who is very interesting as a human being as a teacher as an author but i do not know that person personally yet so i'll get a chance to get acquainted so my guest today is teal swan she's an international speaker and author hello teal.
hello
Kristina: thanks uh thanks for joining me. And you know normally i ask um from from uh from a few steps behind i would normally ask how did you end up talking about what you're talking about um uh i guess uh i i guess today i want to uh ask you know why why pain because uh you know i've been in personal growth transformation for 17 years now and mostly when people think about personal growth about transformation uh the first thing that they think about is you know roast tinted glasses look at the bright side make it happen do it you know i could do it you could do it it's a little unusual to talk about uh you know the back side of it the dark side of it how did uh how did you come up with this topic um i mean what compelled you to to start researching this topic in particular.
[2.07]Teal: There's no reason to focus on self-improvement unless you're in some sort of unwanted state which means pain. Nobody goes towards "hmm I want something to change" if they feel good where they are. So pain is what compels people into the spiritual practice and self-help regardless of whether they admit to it or not. I would rather go to the root of anything, that's my personality. In general people who know me already know exactly what i mean by that. Yeah i like to drive to the root and the root is suffering. The root is "i don't like this about my life i want a better relationship" which means they're in pain in a relationship. I have a very different way of looking at pain and it's definitely not suppress, deny, disown it. I can tell you that.
Kristina: i guess um my question is uh you know - do we have to wait for the suffering to actually want to change something? Is it a necessary prerequisite? Does it mean that people who have it comfortable don't evolve through their life?
[3.08] Teal: I want to distinguish between discomfort and pain; discomfort is a necessary element of growth, pain is not. Pain is what happens when you're being prodded into that expansion, prodded into that growth and you don't go with it. So it means that you're in resistance somehow to that expansion for you personally and that is preventable.
Kristina: so the people who come to learn with you uh learn to work with pain. What's the end point? Is it um i don't know is it getting rid of it (pain)? Is it being comfortable with that?
[3.43] Teal: I don't think of having an end point. What it is is that I want to give people let's call it the personal empowerment to be able to work with their own discomfort, and with the parts of themselves that may be in resistance. So that no matter what phase they're in life they can keep in alignment with that expanded place. So it's more that when people come to me they're making peace with this process of pain leading to desire, and knowing that that's never a cycle that is going to end and they make peace with that. Then it's the better it gets the better it gets.
It's basically the opposite of the way that that most buddhists approach spiritual practice this particular part of it because most spiritual practitioners are interested In getting out of the cycle of desire. They have pinned desire as the thing that causes suffering but it really is not and it you can't actually get rid of desire. If you're physically incarnated it's impossible, even the desire to get rid of desire is a desire.
So what's causing people pain is their belief that they can't get what they want. It's whatever resistance exists to the wanting and if they work with their own resistance and dissolve it then it's "i feel a little discomfort, which means i want this thing, which means i'm taking care of any resistance in the way of getting this thing, and then i would line up with it, which causes me to want more, which causes me to notice that there may be elements that are resisting that, otherwise i would have it, so i release the resistance, and now i have it". So you're constantly treating life like this expansion that you're on board with, not that you're trying to get out of life somehow. If that makes sense?
Kristina: yes so uh desire is uh a natural part of physical existence and you can't get rid of that and that's the main premise of working with pain.
Teal: yes.
Kristina: so do you have to make friends with pain? What's the deal then? Because if we can't get rid of desires, and desire is the root cause of pain so what happens?
Teal: I don't believe desire is the root cause of pain. The root cause of pain is that you can't have what you're wanting, pain is whatever resistance exists that prevents you from getting to what you were wanting.
Kristina: So do you have to learn to get what you want?
[5.58] Teal:yeah you have to learn to get what you want but also yes part of that is having a totally different approach to pain. Pain is no longer the enemy, pain becomes your body's natural indication that there's a very powerful personal truth that you have been ignoring. You know a personal truth that indicates there's some form of personal truth that you have not aligned with yet. So it's like pain is your ultimate personal indicator of your personal truth. So I have people often create this acronym right, where you just write pain downwards and it's "pay attention integrate now". It implies there is some form of separation:- separation from what i'm wanting, separation from self, separation from a state of health, separation from another person, all forms of pain actually boil down to separation.
Kristina: so do you have your own system or method or technique to deal like something causes you pain? What do you do next?
[7.04] Teal:actually no i've got several techniques, it doesn't work for me to just have one process that i put all people through. I'd rather meet people where they are and help them close that, let's call it a gap between where they are and what they're wanting, closing the gap between what's causing them pain and what that pain is indicating that they're powerfully desiring. All right i think of my job as helping the unique individual with that, and the video series that i'm doing you know i can't work with people one-on-one which makes this much easier for me because one person would need something totally different than another person.
I'm sort of dropping all these tools out there so that somebody who may be suffering with some certain issue goes aha that's the thing for me.
Let's say you've got somebody who's got bulimia, and i'm saying this is a coping mechanism. This is what you're trying to do with this coping mechanism, this is what you got to do if you want to you know let go of this coping mechanism. And they can do that but that wouldn't work for anybody who doesn't have bulimia. So that's why it's hard to narrow down like one process that i use because it's so different.
I'll give you another example which is good. In the self-help field a lot of people get into this because they've been told their whole life that something's wrong With them. So it's almost like i gotta fix myself so i can get what i want. I have to fix myself so i can have a relationship and feel good, but deep down there's this incredible pain that they can't just be okay for who they are and how they are. So self-help becomes something that actually feeds the cycle of self-rejection. If somebody like that sits in front of me i may be the first person to look at them and be like stop practicing spiritual stuff, stop doing self-help, go sit on a beach somewhere.
Whereas that's the totally opposite thing i would tell somebody who you know is in pain. That's not a dynamic that they have going, they really need to figure out why they keep having failed relationships.
Kristina: yeah i see so no one size fits all. Obviously with pain every pain is unique. Can i ask a little uh unfair question? How would you rate yourself on the i don't rate on a scale but generally do you find yourself a happy person?
Teal: no i'm too smart.
Kristina: that's interesting can you explain?
Teal: i could control the way i felt based off of what i was paying attention to and i will have resistance within me i know how to work without resistance so
I would be somebody who's considered to be on the happier end of the scale however once you awaken to the degree that you actually recognize all things in existence as a part of yourself that means everyone is a part of you right so an individual awakening vanishes that quickly because if everything is you and there's somebody who's on the street corner who is
Digging in a trash can you're not awake are you so the it's almost like the accumulative pain becomes a part of your pain and i'll be honest with you when it comes to the human race it is very hard to focus on the human race and remain happy it's a very unhappy species so what do you do do you just stay conscious of that and are comfortable with that pain of the human beings or do you
Uh you know draw a line somewhere and then say okay this is this is too far from me i don't want to think about that there's no such thing as too far for me what i do by having the human race as a part of me or the people's part of me is i what i do for a living i will you know i feel better when i'm helping people align with better feeling so like nothing makes me happier you'll never
See me in a better mood than when i'm doing a workshop when i can have 20 people up on stage in a row and each one exits the stage closer to what they're wanting closer to a state of oh i feel liberated from this tension or i'm no longer in this internal war with myself or now i know how to speak to my wife or something like that but uh the problems which at least in
The west seem for example far away i just came i just moved from asia and uh they were a little bit more in my face than here in europe uh how much do you as a conscious awake human being have to bother about that not within the framework of you know it's a lot of people uh like to help people who are close to us
You know like our family members our friends or our clients but uh do we have to bother about let's say the things that happen um thousands of kilometers away from us i don't think it's a have to you see i i don't i don't want to force people into this space it's not even the right way to go about it like i'm not here today it's your job to alleviate suffering from the world that's my personal goal
If i get people to a space where they experience oneness that's a natural inclination to not be okay with the fact that somebody's starving to death even if they're on the opposite side of the globe and technically we're not stepping over them on the sidewalk every day it bothers me immensely but so many of the societal issues that are creating this level of suffering we're seeing even in
Third world countries is systemic [Music] which is why you know i've chosen to go the route that i've chosen to go like there's a place for people who who do changes within society right a place for people who do um system changes or programs for homeless or who put water in a third world country and that's very powerful work however
The only reason that there are people starving on another side of the planet when we have more than enough resources to have that not be the case for the human race is because we experience separation it's because the human experiences the world through a narcissistic viewpoint it's me versus you it's us and them so i would rather focus on this viewpoint and by the way the the place that that viewpoint
Is perpetuated is in the more industrialized countries so if i'm focusing on the tendency for narcissistic thinking in an industrialized country i'm actually addressing the root of the problem more directly than installing a water pipe it's just it's not as visible so where does the separation come from you say it's more common in industrialized countries where
We learn it or how does it happen yeah we learn it human beings have success and narcissism linked it's all about me mine so does that mean that we shouldn't strive for success oh hell no uh-huh no no we just have to see that an integral part of success involves others uh-huh we can't wait we gotta end the zero-sum game that's what human beings are doing right now this is
What i'm actually here to to end is the zero-sum game which is i win and you lose and this is the basic strategy which unevolved organisms go through in order to achieve excellence but it's ultimately damning especially you depend upon the very people you're screwing how do you imagine the perfect world then i've never thought about the perfect world [Laughter]
Okay a perfectly content human being a perfectly content human being is somebody who who has all of their needs met for all of their needs to be met they have to recognize the singular needs for the species that they're a part of for example a human being does not see itself as a herd species is a cultural species we see a deer that way we see a dog that way we don't see ourselves that way
So we don't understand how dysfunctional our attachment to independence is for example attachment to independence yes it's profoundly unhealthy and is very different than autonomy which all um physically manifested beings desire right but back to this whole thing you would not walk over to a dog or to deer and have a conversation about
How dysfunctional that deer or dog is based on the fact that it's so dependent on its group we're more likely to advocate for the fact that you know this is not healthy to have a deer locked up by itself and a pen is not healthy yeah big species it's a herd species and human beings are that way that's not possible for a human be happy in a state of isolation so in in this world that would be more
Healthy for humans there would be it would be more tribal to be honest but absent of shadow tribe and what i mean by shadow tribe is is that human beings make being a member of the tribe dependent upon shadowy things like what happens if you're a part of a group and you don't agree that women are subordinate but that group believes women are subordinate right
[Music] that's going to cause pain so what do you do when your belonging is dependent upon having to adopt a belief that's going to hurt people that's called shadow belonging or shadow tribe if we end the zero sum game right so that everybody has to we have to consider everybody's best interest and find that third option of that third element
Where your needs are met and my needs are met that start to evolve into tribes based off of compatibility we start to you know evolve into tribes where we have to constantly question the reasons that we're doing things so you've got an inalignment community type of a dynamic going with a human but absence of those elements that cause pain within the social group
So sorry i was just saying that's one of the primary elements to human happiness if you're running a picture of this world i should write a book on this one oh so what do you do because i i know i have quite a lot of uh followers in um let's say in india and uh in russia i do not know if they can follow me in english i do have them in russian and these are the societies where um a lot of our ideas may be our western
Ideas of of justice of what is right uh a little different uh even even the place of a woman uh i have uh perfectly beautiful friends from perfectly functional families where they still believe that their job is to take care of you know of the male folk of the of the family on a routine basis so what do you do if you do find yourself part of that kind of community
And you love the community but your personal values are rebelling against their group values you've got to work with that you've got to let the people around you understand that if they put that stop there and they won't be open to new ideas that they're just including the truth of you so they can't really be that close in the first place i work with a lot of indians for this
Very reason but but one thing i want to stop you on as you said they come from perfectly functional families that's actually not possible today this is another thing that people love to resist that i that i teach about dysfunctional family dynamics account for like 99.9 of human families today so when a psychologist looks and at somebody and calls it a dysfunctional family
It's really dysfunctional oh really dysfunctional but even the process of socialization and the healthiest of families is dysfunctional today you can't raise a child in dysfunctional society to cope in a dysfunctional society and call that functional so i mean with the human race start to look at itself as if we actually none of us are actually quite healthy
Like you mean physically or psychologically i see them as all interlinked psychologically emotionally and that becomes physically if you knew if you knew if most humans knew what it actually felt like even physically to be perfectly in alignment it would shock them i just we're human beings today are operating at about 20 of capacity
And we don't but we don't know it because we become acclimatized you see that's the problem with the average adult they don't remember how painful the process of socialization was they don't remember how much they were educated to go against the stream of their own consciousness against their own desires against the way they feel against everything and by the time we're adults we are acclimatized to a level of
Resistance that is so unhealthy i have no words but we call it functional well i guess uh part of the idea of functioning in the society is to actually uh compromise on certain things about yourself so that you are acceptable by the society so i guess it's it's quite natural that we grow up in this way you know i want to go back to one interesting thought that you shared and
I want uh to ask you what you feel about that so you said that um we are so uh craving independence uh but actually it's autonomy so i want you maybe to talk about that a little more because um i i was talking a while back when coronavirus uh paralyzed the whole world and i was talking to one futurologist from russia and he expressed an interesting idea is that
That we as human species have we don't even realize how dependent we are on this civilization that we have built for ourselves because okay the virus was uh the way it was but imagine if we lose internet or electricity and and we don't even know how to feed ourselves like i was trying to grow cucumbers on the balcony which didn't work very well so don't you think that independence
In general for a contemporary human being is an illusion and can you explain a little bit the difference between independence and autonomy because i think it's a very important point independence is a myth not just for the modern human or a human full stop regardless of what point in history we're looking at maybe even more so before we are able to believe in the myth even more so because
We've created a society a society where that dependence is more hidden see like if i go to the grocery store for example and i buy something i can tell myself the story that i was independent in that moment but actually i just depended on the truck driver who brought the food here the farmer who grew that food whoever produced the seeds that farmer used
It's just i mean if you really track the train of all the people who our lives depend on it's quite terrifying i feel like most people love independence because they hate powerlessness we hate powerlessness also because we have a lot of trauma around our interpersonal relationships we've experienced being dependent on somebody making us powerless and then the other person doesn't have our best interests
In mind and so the second word dependent we lose happiness because they're going to make a decision for me they could make a change that ruins my life so it's all about you know us taking our power back by getting into i can do this for me and it's not dependent on you it's just it's a complete illusion but autonomy is different than independence and that it's a sense of
Self if you have a physical incarnation that you call by one name then you have personal preferences personal needs personal purpose you have all these elements of self right and it's very healthy to develop that as healthy as it is to be able to let go of it interesting yeah so autonomy i define autonomy as as a sense of separate self
A sense of separate self yes and there's a there's an upside and downside to that because i i have a feeling that you actually said uh something the opposite of to separate self earlier that you know your happiness cannot depend just on you it's it's your part of of that wider like if the person is is lying on the ground and you're stepping over that person it's it's still part of you right yes so how
Does it i'll tell you a scenario with that when somebody gains enough awareness their self grows so your selfhood now contains others not entertains them in a way where now i know the truth for you and you don't get to tell me anything because i do narcissistic right it's that it's that when i expand wide enough to contain the world now you're a part within me
So is so is your enemy so is your sister so is your mother so is your um you could be inanimate objects even your couch your table everything right so your sense of self does this thing and i don't know if you you'd be it'd be funny because we're having this conversation i did this video that was called oneness is not the absolute truth of the universe right oh no i haven't seen that that sounds fun
You'll like it because what i'm essentially saying is that oneness is the ultimate ego oh it's the ego that exists it is when all things within a unified field are one [Music] self ego is one so what we are calling we can't even use a word for this though see i use a word and i make something a singularity so the truth of this universe is beyond
This but one step in front of that is when all things in this unified field are treated as a single point with no other system to relate to this is one one right it's the ultimate ego it's it's um it's fun uh ironic maybe in some way you know i wanted to ask because this is an interesting topic and i want to probe a little bit here and
There so one thing which i want to ask is um you know for me it's sometimes hard to to try to be conscious about oneness because it's easy to do to people that you love like it's easy to imagine that you know your your dear loved people like your children or your parents or your spouse or your lover whatever that they're part of you especially the people that you admire let's say even
Celebrities but we all have that those those people somewhere out there that make us feel uncomfortable uh for me for example i have to admit i have hard times with homeless people um i've heard some people saying they have hard times with uh i don't know with with people who are sick who are dying with people who are different political views and whatnot so how how do you
Actually uh i don't know try to realize that you're still one with those that are so disturbing to you that you have hard times even looking in their eyes you stop telling yourself that you have to feel good towards that ah there's this idea that to include something as a part of you means you have to have a positive opinion towards that thing that's not even how a person
Can feel about their own parts the way that you get there is through understanding so the first thing that i have people do is to get rid of the idea of loving something get rid of the idea of approving of something and think about understanding something instead if it's me and that's a reality i have to understand this part of myself if all i'm doing is this i'm not really understanding that part of myself mm-hmm i really love this idea because
Uh a few months ago maybe half a year ago i suddenly realized that our fascination with love is a little bit of a dangerous path because uh no first of all psychologically it's a little bit hard if you don't really truly love someone to convince yourself that you love that person it's actually a sure path probably to some psychological disorders and traumas
So i i discovered for myself another another virtue which is kindness because it's easier it's easy to be kind to uh to something you don't like or even disagree you can still be kind you don't have to love that person so i really love what you say uh that you don't have to be to feel good about uh that other nurse um you know to to actually experience
Oneness uh so thank you for listening i'm gonna tell you something i'm gonna tell you something really ironic the more you understand something the more your positive emotions towards that thing tend to grow it's like a person who doesn't understand sharks that there's a reason why oceanographers love sharks because they have the most understanding especially if they're shark experts right
Understand something the harder it is to have a resistant mentality towards that thing so so it's it's not but i don't want people to lock into the idea that the goal of understanding something is to try to get to a space where you feel positive towards something it's i'm just saying it's this interesting natural result of doing so do you ever feel um do you feel
Um feelings which in personal growth would be deemed inappropriate towards people let's say uh like and and do you allow yourself this oh yeah yes because i think we're sometimes very hard on ourselves like we can't admit that someone might be robbing us the wrong way or hurting us see i'm a lever of reality you can't do anything with
Reality you can't improve reality you can't create resolution without reality and so this is part of what makes most people uncomfortable about me like if i have somebody who's got a murderous rage in them i will have them come up and describe the type of thoughts they're having about killing someone because that's what's real about them um without this attitude of you really shouldn't be thinking that way no the
Reality is they're thinking that way it's all right so where does this come from let's see to understand it because they don't like it they don't want to stay there so let's create resolution but resolution cannot occur without reality so if we're attached that's the problem with you know humanity right now right one of them if we're attached to this idea that you can't have those thoughts then i'm going
To deny that i have them even though i have them yay now we're gonna get somewhere so where does this come from i think people generally don't know how to deal with their negative emotions because we usually get punished for feeling anything less than positive uh like if you're in a bad mood people society punishes you essentially not not not maybe directly but
Indirectly they they will shun you so where does that yes i know you can see my blood pressure rising my personal pet peeve this is my thing well systemically this starts in childhood is that there's no education for parenthood i realize that we all have these differing ideas but i mean i need you to get the ridiculousness of this
Imagine you're an extraterrestrial who steps down on the planet today you find out that a little physical human baby child becomes imprinted in the first eight years of their life and and there's no one teaching how to do that correctly you're just throwing this little being into somebody's hands and being like well i hope your parents did it right because they didn't i can tell you that
And so it's like parents are entering into the parenting not knowing what the hell to do at this thing like they hand you this little infant at the hospital they're like have fun figuring this out you know so a parent is gonna automatically default to dealing with their kid the same way that their parents did yeah so it's like if we want to deal
With it systemically it's about teaching parents how to manage their children's emotions and that's what makes it so that a person learns how to manage their own emotions self-regulation of emotions is a skill and this is part of the reason the justice system has to do away with the way that they're doing things because they're approaching an adult as if al adults have somehow learned that
They haven't it's a developmental issue so okay there's my blood pressure so it's about it's about teaching parents how to manage children's emotions and the way that i have to do that now working with adults is to do what should have been done when they were two years old let's validate the emotion let's feel how that emotion feels let's feel what it's telling us about
Ourselves how can we actually take proactive action so that that emotion feels a little better than it feels i mean it's so it's a very easy process which doesn't feel easy to start with because we're so trained to the opposite so we are trained to the opposite does that mean that we are afraid of being rejected if we do go that way oh we are afraid in general of the emotion thing thinking it can i don't know mess us up kill us
It's both so when like i'll take you through the process for a child an emotion is an all-consuming experience for a child but for a certain age they don't actually have the capacity to regulate they actually don't they lack it so if you're looking at a little kid who's throwing a fit they actually can't learn how to regulate they have to be regulated right so first they have that
Overwhelming emotion and when a parent reacts to that emotion that the child is having as if it is a big problem then they get even more afraid of it in themselves right and then on top of it when you add that those layers of you shouldn't be feeling this way now that kid's telling us so it has a self-narrative of something's wrong with me i'm feeling this way and i shouldn't be feeling this way something seriously
Wrong with me so this is the embedding of the shame as the as the core self-concept for a physical human begins so yeah i mean we're afraid of the way that the emotion feels afraid of the consequences of experiencing emotion and so we actually have created a society full of people who have triggers relative to their own emotions you feel an emotional state and it triggers this cascade of
Oh my god you know it's no different than than when you you know you take some of traumatic post-traumatic stress disorder who's been to the war and what you do with this person is you put them near a grenade they hear that sound right even if it's the firework and they're like because of the association so we've created a society full of people with a negative association to their own
Emotions and it's not just negative ones that's the most common one but it can happen even with positive emotions i mean people who are part of in families with overworked parents and i'm using that because it's like less dysfunctional how many people are overworked in today's world where you've got mom and dad both who have to have a full-time job oh and have fun with the
Kids after you get home and want to crash on the couch so with an overworked parent when a kid's jumping around and making a lot of noise and really excited your first reaction is oh my god would you just shut up and go in your room you've punished a positive emotion so so many of the people who come to me as adults are like having huge issues with happiness
Because they're programmed away from it they actually have a negative trigger around those positive emotional states well when it comes to happiness i think it's it's a very ironic emotion as well because on one side everybody says they want to be happy i i don't think many people would argue with that statement yet if you suggest that they learn how to be happy most people say i don't have
Time for this it's it's not serious enough so i wonder what's up with this happiness i i asked you that earlier and i know you said you too you're too smart to be happy which was a cool answer and it's actually i think research proves that it's true and people with high iq tends to be less happy but um what would you say like um i i do not know what's the situation right now in
Us um i know where in asia where i came from two weeks ago people were still pretty much self-isolating and it was a long period of three four months facing their own emotions on a daily basis and not having a chance to escape into everyday life routines do you have any experience right now when when the world has been already for
A few months going through interesting times and uh dealing with those interesting times on their own uh do you notice how how are people dealing with that are they are they doing okay you know managing their own emotions on them by themselves or or is there is is there something brewing which will show up later we have a mental health crisis on our hands in the
World right now and nobody is talking about it we're too busy writing articles about how many cases are popping up in what state right now you've got people that are committing suicide at an insane rate you've got people who are slipping into depression back into addictions this is like a pandemic that's the real pandemic the emotional uh the psychological
Uh reaction to what had happened yeah well because human i mean i don't know it depends what your your slant is on what's going on but let's make the most generous assumption for the fact that what we're dealing with is just a straightforward pandemic the human race has been put in a lose-lose because we're you know the measures that we're taking are destroying human lives as well
So it's like damned if you do down if you don't type a scenario you know so what can a person do uh in in this situation where they're i guess there are a lot of emotions for some people it's uncertainty or fear because i'm sure a lot of people have lost their like livelihoods of jobs so i know people have gone bankrupt uh on and fear for help for some people because we we hear quite a lot of information of how many
People are dying and and now that uh australia is back into quarantine you're like oh my god is it even ending what is there any suggestion you could give to people to actually deal with all of that uh onslaught of uh of uh pain which we are also apparently not learned how to deal with yes no matter what is happening in the world you can always choose what you put your energy towards
What you commit your energy to so what this whole situation or any negative situation should be showing you is what you're powerfully wanting so this is like what this is doing is like a pressure cooker that's making people have to become very aware of what they are and what they are wanting that's like a self-defining process and once you have figured that out it's about figuring out how to put energy
Into that we gotta stop as a species telling ourselves the story of you know can't can't can't can't because right now in the world today when we figure out what we powerfully want we're like well here are all the ways it can't happen that's not the way to create success the way to create success is to think about all right i got these 15 doors closed what's the one door that's open
Um and that like a lot of human innovation is going to come out of that based off of what we're experiencing right now you know how what are the ways to create safety this will be you know one person versus another person for one person their their um happiness or expansion during this time is to figure out what are new ways for humans to connect for another person it's a real exploration into just how
Much their own personal attachment is to safety or should be you know right now it's like a lot of people i'm seeing getting pinched into this place where they're having to ask what is our safety worth you know [Music] is it worth the loss of quality of life because so then you get into these types of philosophical questions with yourself which are quite important for a person
To ask because that can change the whole entire course of their life you know do you think people even will start talking about that because i think the whole discussion around the pandemic is a little constricted because there is one uh politically correct narrative and everybody is expected to talk this way but any questioning
As to you know what is the alternative cost or not alternative but the cost that we don't see like as i said uh i spent most of it until now in asia where there are a lot of people who have had day jobs and they've lost their livelihood and malaysia there are already uh segments of population which are starving right now and i'm sure there will be a lot of human
Uh life costs uh in the country countries maybe you know poorer countries uh and we won't even hear about that because they they don't have the same voice so how do do you feel that the humanity is going to open up to other conversation around what happened with this pandemic or are we going to still um you know look at it like horses with those things blind i think it depends on
How bad it gets and it depends on the person [Music] i i have you know a lot of people are embracing the traditional narratives that's going on here without realizing the media companies are business so somebody has to be benefiting from those stories being put out but if you step back from this i i've seen more and more people questioning it
Every day because they understand that things aren't adding up and because of you know things like that people are doing the math nothing adds up because they're doing the math is to wait how much money is being lost right now and we may say money shouldn't matter compared to lives but money is lives actually in a society that's dependent upon finance
[Music] so even though that narrative is pulsing what's interesting about me interacting with a lot of people around the world regardless of their slant or persuasion is that i feel like a lot of people you know they're like ah you know it doesn't sit right with them the story i mean also so many mixed messages causes them to be like what's really going on you know
My conversations this this series of conversations is always a little uh more casual and i can end up talking about another thing but i want to go back to pain because i like this topic anyway so what do we do with pain after all i mean it's uh obviously it's it's part of life now there is even more pain around what do we do with it we seek to create the improvement
You use it to create what the opposite is right and what it's indicating your personal truth is so let's say that my personal truth is that i'm in pain when i look into that the personal truth that's underneath it is i'm alone then my focus is about how to get from a space of aloneness into a space of connection with people so the first place that i have people look isn't to just go create connection
It's what's in the way of my connection with people is it where i live if so that can be changed is it the way that i'm thinking i mean a lot of people who say i'm lonely have a lot of personality traits that keep them lonely to be honest so looking at the parts of yourself that feed into that pattern and changing your personal behavior there any of these steps you take brings you
Closer and closer to that state of connection and therefore the state of well-being and so it's like the better it gets the better it gets [Music] i know this question uh passed my mind when you're talking about oneness and i now that you've mentioned connection again um how do you feel um contemporary humans
Are dealing with the connection because uh on one side we uh we obviously have a lot of attention to our lives but um horribly uh-huh and what's our biggest um problem with that what what have we unlearned what maybe can we fix to to to make it work better our perception of separation shame and fear these are interesting can we go deeper into that perception of separation and
Fear yeah okay so the perception of separation this story starts way before physical life this is the most esoteric of the answers i'm going to give you if you think about the energy in the universe right if you take this concept that all is one the energy in this universe was a unified field until it thought the thought i the second it thought that thought there
Was nothing to be in relationship to was there because there's nothing but it so that was worth of loneliness within the consciousness of source what's interesting about that separation is you can't control it when you think i all of a sudden the fracture happens it's like a crack down the one it started the process of fragmentation so you've got a crack and a crack and a crack and crack and down here you've got
Different dimensions now you've got in this physical dimension you've got the table you've got me in my own body i've got this organ that organ so i want you to sort of picture having a pane of glass and shattering that glass and now there are these pieces everywhere but it's all source so it's all one right yet here's where it gets complicated right free will is an element of that
Original pane of glass that means if you crack the glass all of those pieces have free will and the capacity to create and all of those original qualities oh no now everybody has to be in alignment in order for there to be oneness again so the perception of separation is the first element to loneliness the lack of connection it's the perception that i am separate
From everything every other person the universe at large and and it's the fact that internally you are fragmented i mean we as a person this is one of the most important things if you want my honest truth that a person can do is to stop seeing themselves as a singularity and to start seeing themselves as an ecosystem so you've got all of these different
Parts we call them sides right let's just talk on the psychological level because that that concept of the self as an organism extends to the fact that you have different organ systems that extends to the fact that you are inhabited by all these bacteria upon which your life depends um on the psyche the level of the psyche right you've got all of these different sides which are like individual cells
Within you we just we just call it a side so like when you go and exercise i'm pretty sure you're in a different mood than when you're on a date with a guy right it's two distinct personality sets and so if you think about if you start to think about yourself as an ecosystem you start to see that your unhappiness is about the lack of connection of those parts inside you
You've got one part that shames you one part that doesn't even you know have a connection to the other part you've got one part that wants relationships one part that doesn't so loneliness is a in the lack of connection is primarily a byproduct of the space between the internal cells we've got to go to a place where we recognize that state of separation recognize it's actually in fact not the
Reality recognize we can't live in that state of separation and be okay and create integration within ourselves that's the separation element of lack of connection with the physical human the second element which is shame shame is one of the most poorly understood dynamics on the planet because we think that shame is an emotional reaction
It's actually a biological affective reaction much like the fight or flight mode so this is how it goes our entire existence depends upon other people if i take an infant and i put it on the sidewalk it is dead yeah what that means is that your entire biological system is wired for connection to be the primary need for you
As a human more than in water that's why when you have a breakup you're suddenly not hungry or thirsty anymore so our primary need being connection that is like the whole nervous system is wired for that and first and foremost wired for a connection with the primary caregivers so what happens here is when when a primary caregiver somebody upon whom your life depends and that's why you
Need the connection turns against you in some way that's the perception i don't like this about you why are you always so negative we perceive that as a push away and that threatens the entire system so the biological effect of reaction is to create an internal triangulation whereby we turn against that part of ourselves to gain closeness with the person upon whom our life depends so shame is is a biological effective
Reaction internal triangulation mechanism to establish closeness with somebody upon who our survival depends and you can't get rid of shame so in a way you're rejecting a part of yourself so that you will be accepted by someone important to you yes so how so we do not reverse this process by trying to stop feeling shame we can't do that any more than we can get rid of
Our fight-or-flight mechanism [Music] we the way that we deal with shame is by recognizing when that has happened and instead of pushing that away that part of ourselves away we bring it closer and and this is why i'm saying that the self-help industry feeds shame to such an extreme degree because you walk in and you say i've got angry thoughts
Oh my god let's help you how to transcend your shame oh no you've just fed it my friend if you have these angry thoughts you have to powerfully pull them closer to you and what's interesting is that by doing so right by pulling the parts of you that you detest closer and including them as part of you so that you fully understand them they now perceive a connection with you
And so those parts of you can't hurt you anymore and then that means the expression out into the world is one that's going to be beneficial to you instead of detrimental to you so we tell ourselves as a species that if we if we accept the fact that we have murderous rage or if we accept the fact that you know we are pretty self-centered or really want fame or whatever it is you know we tell ourselves we're going to become
Some corrupt horrible person the truth is the exact opposite that trait transforms into its most high expression is what happens so a person who integrates the fact that they want fame may become this wildly entertaining person and you can't say oh my god the expression of wild entertainment is like oh my god no that's so shameful nobody's gonna say
That you know it's so interesting because we just had a discussion a few days ago uh with um with my friend and uh i was talking about uh my values and often when we have a value we glorify it in a way and i was saying that you know a lot of the uh the positive values they have the extreme i learned it from my own value because
One of my values is justice but i was also born in soviet union where justice was the basis of everything but it also led to a lot of uh inhumanity inhumane acts because what's justice for someone may be very cruel for others and then we were discussing my other values and then and then he said you know even kindness which i talked about you know it can be taken to the extreme
And uh backfires so what you just said is the other side of that coin which is very fascinating and i'll have to think about that about how your most shameful emotions almost the darkest expressions can actually when they're elevated to their highest self turn out to be positive well yeah um not i mean positive is of course a very very funny word but i mean
They may turn to be something uh of a power for you or something something uh you know something to cherish rather than to be ashamed of so so thanks for this uh interesting idea i have to digest it still though okay good so the third element of the lack of connection is fear to fear is yet again to create separation by pushing something away from yourself when you're afraid of
Something that's what you're doing so i want you to imagine that this circle you're standing in circle with a bunch of people if you start to fear those people you will choose one or two actions one or the other action either you will push them out of the circle therefore you're alone in the circle or you will take yourself out of the circle therefore you're alone outside the circle anytime you push something away from
Yourself you create that distance or that separation therefore lack of connection with that thing but the antidote to fear is understanding right but but this is why you know fear is actually the opposite of frequency from love because to love is to include as a part of oneself it's that simple to fear is to disinclude [Music]
So those are the three elements that create a lack of connection within the physical human uh it's it's been very interesting um and i i wish i could go deeper into certain topics but uh i'm also mindful that we were supposed to meet for just one hour and there was a little bit of delay in the very beginning but uh thank you so much for for giving so many
Interesting twists and spins to to the rather like maybe familiar things and topics but but thank you so much for that you know actually as you were talking i remembered one uh one friend of mine actually uh shared a very interesting thing that um nasa on the website of nasa they say that uh you know there are there is this matter in the universe uh
And five percent of that matter we can explain but the rest 95 or even more of the matter we don't know how to explain so scientists just call it dark matter so thank you for speaking up for the dark matter because apparently it's 95 of the universe yet we never shine the light on that and we have no idea what it is so yeah as you were speaking i certainly remember that
That interesting analogy and i just wanted to share it with you so thank you so much because there are not many people who who want to talk about that and um and have the courage to talk about that because that actually triggers so many uh things in people um that make them feel shameful or want to hide and and it's not an easy topic to talk about so thanks a lot for that um and thank you for finding time and
Traditionally although we don't have the live audience right now but i know that when we when we publish it there will be a lot of audience i want to ask you guys to leave a heart for my guest today for teal uh for for her wisdom for her generosity and uh for your love love for humankind thank you so much for that thanks for having me bye-bye
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