 Michael Taft, welcome to Simulation. Thanks Atlas, happy to be here. Super excited for this episode, talking about deconstructing yourself, something that I can say through my experiences at the cornerstone of realization. And I feel like it would be good to perhaps start with you on what I've been sort of calling like an identity vortex of sorts. Do you see identity and name and all of our likes and dislikes, our cravings and our versions? Do you see that all playing into the mind and playing into the mind making a lot of noise and then when it's difficult to then quiet the mind, that's what then makes it difficult to realize what one's true nature is. So do you sort of see like an identity vortex like that that has a lot of noise, it has a lot of name, it has a lot of sort of following the Buddha's dependent origination? Yes, I mean, that's it. If you, it's funny you're using the vortex image, if you go, there's a video of me talking at the Science and Unduality Conference from about 2012 where I have a slide of a vortex and show how, for example, verbal type thinking and visual thinking and various emotions and cravings and body sensations and so on, all kind of swirl together into this vortex that kind of pulls attention in. And, you know, this is of course an idea that has a kind of magnetic pull that keeps drawing us in, drawing us in and drawing us away from our let's say true nature, of course, is pretty standard understanding, right? And I think it's very accurate. Yeah, because it is really a confluence or amalgamation of sorts of, yeah, of identity and of sensation and of just a lack of awareness and a, just a overlooking of consciousness and overlooking of like the power to know, overlooking something that's so, yeah, like indescribably here and that is, yeah, it's just so overlooked and it's, yeah, it's a vortex of all that stuff, identity, sensation. And so then when you walk people through sort of deconstructing themselves, where do you usually see the majority of people like liberating themselves with seeing that freeze? Yeah, so it's no surprise that people overlook the awareness component because the awareness component in a way to use a really clunky metaphor is like the light in a room, right? You've got this big empty room, there's, and there's bright lights in it. And what everyone is paying attention to is all the stuff that comes and goes in the room, the different furniture and the different people and the different animals, pets and so on that come and go from the room and the clothes they're wearing and all that. And because that's the changing part, that really captures our attention. And because it's been so long since we noticed any time when that, or to put it another way, the room is never blank unless we're asleep in deep sleep and most of us don't notice that. And so it's become such a given, it's just become such a normal background. It's like the fish and the water problem. So it's very hard to remember to notice. It's just like pages of the book. Whether you're doing a Kindle book or a physical book, when was the last time you actually looked at the page itself, the like the paper, the white paper between the letters? Probably a long time because you've just come to assume that page is there and forget that it's actually the fundamental and completely necessary substrate for the letters to exist. And so even though it's incredibly important you couldn't have a book without it, in one way it's the most important part. It's very easy to overlook, it's very easy to forget. And instead pay attention to just the letters and the words or to leave the metaphor, pay attention to just our thoughts, just our emotions, just the stuff that's coming and going in our sight and vision or sight and hearing in our body and so on, really get focused on that. And forget what's focusing, what is that fundamental experience itself, the fundamental fact of experience. Experience with no clutter at all or even experience with clutter but noticing the awareness. That's very, very important and yet super easy. I never, super easy to not notice. I never think less of someone for the fact that they don't notice that. What are most people involved in instead of that? Well, everything, right? They're involved in Pokemon Go, they're involved in their career, they're involved in what they're worried about, they're involved in politics, they're involved in knitting and crochet or something, who knows? There's so much to be involved in and we've, as a society, we've mastered the art of entertainment and involvement and keeping attention, stimulated with fun stuff, like new, colorful, bright things in the room all the time. And so, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's fabulous. Except, it's not helping us notice this fundamental thing and without noticing the fundamental thing, awareness itself, we kind of miss the most important thing about our lives. And so, in other words, you can kind of distract yourself to death. You can distract yourself till you can. And never notice what's really going on. And it's worth noticing what's really going on and honestly, to do it at least to a reasonable degree is just not that hard. It's just not that hard. Teachers have known for thousands of years that you can take just some person off the street, an average person off the street, and with a little pointing out instruction, at least get them to notice regular old awareness itself, at least for a moment. Yeah. At least for a moment. And that's pretty shocking. Like it just, with someone who knows what they're doing, they can point to this important feature of your own experience for most people, not for everyone, but for an average person off the street, they can show you how to notice that in two minutes or three minutes. At least for a second. And I think that's kind of amazing. It's not that hard. What's hard is, of course, then sustaining that noticing of awareness and of course, going from regular old awareness where everything's reified to awake awareness where nothing's reified, right? So there's a lot going on in there, but in another way, it's just not that hard to begin. It's just nothing in our society, nothing at all in the regular part of society. Anyway, supports you noticing that. Everything supports you. Not distressing. Yeah, that's so cool. So then would you say that these, like very child-like analogies, like helping someone realize that they've been sort of paying a lot of attention to the words on the page and then to sort of recognize the paper that the words are written on and then to collapse the duality between those two? And would you say that that, and like maybe the fish in the ocean analogy and these, would you say that that's one of the easiest sort of ways when you serve others that are seeking and trying to understand what their true nature is, you kind of give them these very fundamental kind of child-like analogies and you found that to be useful? I definitely have. Yeah, the analogies are useful. It's helping to point to what we're trying to point at, right? So the analogies are useful, being pointed to the thing is useful. I find that most people, including me, especially me, need to hear this stuff over and over and over and over and over because it's not about the content of, like the intellectual content. It doesn't really help very much. That's all analogies are so great. It's about hearing it over and over and over enough times to start actually noticing it in your experience and then more importantly, stabilizing that notice. Yes, cool. So then you would say that generally the shift that you're serving people with is to notice that the thoughts and the appearances are like the words on the page and then to sort of recognize the paper and then to stabilize in the paper and then collapse the duality that that's typically the way that you're addressing this. That's typically the way, but there's a million ways that's kind of an overview. There's a million tactical detailed ways to fulfill that for folks. And I would also say it's really important to remember that in the long run, all the material, all the thoughts and emotions and external world and all the things that are going on in awareness are just as important, just as non-dual, just as fabulously interesting, but simply we need to get them out of the way long enough or calm them down long enough so that we can see the awareness, right? We wanna show you some pretty blank pages so you can remember what it's like to look at a page. But once that gets kind of stable, then allowing thought and allowing feeling and allowing the world to come back in, that's the real non-duality, right? That's what it means, that the words and the page actually aren't separate. We just, most people have to go through this process of kind of getting into pretty blank pages to just to notice it and stabilize it, yeah. And in terms of all the different, like tactful approaches to this, like have you noticed a powerful pattern where there's a specific way that works most of the time for people? No, and this is for a very important reason and the important reason is that everybody is really different. And if there was one right way, you know, all the techniques that we use for this have been around for thousands of years, you know, if there was one way that was so much better than the others, it would have taken over a millennium ago. And all the other ones would just be forgotten because no one wants to spend extra time or effort learning this, right? Everyone wants to do this as quickly as possible, but it turns out that, and you know, I've been teaching for a long time and I've taught a lot of people and it's like one on one, not in big groups. And what do you notice when you work with people one on one? Man, their minds are really different. And so that said, even though there's not one right way, you know, there are a few standard, let's say a palette of five or six kind of general directions that really help. But I don't think there's one big panacea, you know, or one big solution. Just change sides. At least I can see you now. Yeah, yeah, and I think the internet connection is a bit more stable also. Yeah, you were talking about how the, there's not just a single pointing that's most efficient or there's not a single, there's not really a single pattern per se that is most successful at getting people to deconstruct themselves, but you do find there's like some sort of a power law though of like the most common things that people sort of let go of or dissolve on their path. Yeah, it's not about the power law part. It's about that there's, you know, instead of being one right way, there's several ways, you know? And we know these, right? Again, like I say, most of these techniques are thousands of years old. So for some people, we do an elaborate deconstruction of these sensory streams, you know? Like, okay, notice that your thoughts are dissolving all the time and not stable. And if we wanna, you know, get Buddhist, we can say they're impermanent and empty. Now notice that your emotions are the same way. Now notice that your body sensations are the same way and we just walk them through that deconstruction of these sensory streams. So, you know, there's a lot of traditions that use that because that works for a lot of people, but it's not the only way, right? Another way is inquiry, right? We can start asking questions that when you really try to find the answers to those questions, not in your mind, not conceptually, but looking directly, looking directly, looking directly, it starts to either some of them deconstruct or some of the other ones just point to the awareness directly in a questioning way. So inquiry works really well. Of course, sometimes the initial pointing to a way can happen from drug experiences or altered states brought about even by injury and stuff, but you can, that clears the decks enough. There's also just the shamata route, which, you know, won't necessarily take you all the way, but the kind of just stilling and calming, stilling and calming the thoughts in the mind till, again, so there's fewer emotions and fewer thoughts, so metaphorically fewer words on the page and so it's just easier to see the page. And so those are four, I think four major ways of doing it. And then there's just the, you know, kind of like direct pointing right now, see it as the only technique, right? And that one is always touted as the purest and the quickest and all that, but actually might be philosophically pure or something, but I don't know what the real numbers are, but I bet only one in 100,000 people gets anywhere using that. Of course, the ones who do get there very fast and that's great, so it's not useless. And it is good for like doing the trick where you can show a naive subject off the street, show them their own awareness in just a couple minutes, right, so it does have that sort of glimpse quality. I could go on with a few more, but you get the idea there's different routes in some people dissolve the mind through just love, right? So some kind of devotion or love and it kind of dissolves the mind and then if they can just notice that behind the object of devotion or within the object of devotion, there's this field of awareness, right? Then that, that's another way. You know, in my term, all of those in sort of the most, in the broadest sense are deconstructing the self, but when I came up with that title for a blog 10 years ago, I was talking about the elaborate, the fascinist style deconstruction of the sensory streams method, but over time I've seen how really all those methods, you could call deconstructing the self. And if I was to be a little more inclusive, I'd say deconstructing self and world because it's also external side and sound and stuff that needs to be seen as empty. Very cool. Yeah, so deconstructing self and world, cool. And then, so you found that, because I do feel like this is probably the most, at least one of the most simple also is just recognizing that the amount of words that are showing up on the page, like as thoughts and sensations and triggering your identity and your likes and dislikes and all of that. That quieting down the amount of words that are appearing and becoming aware of like the arising and passing of the words enables one to sort of realize and then stabilize a lot more quickly. Yeah, that does really help. And yet for some people, other ways work better. And also, again, remembering that the words and likes and dislikes and all that aren't actually in the way, they just appear to be in the way. And so, because they're on the page too, right? So in the long run, we don't wanna make it somehow that those are the enemy or we gotta get rid of them. It's just a temporary expedient way to see the page more clearly. But yeah, it is, of course, very helpful. Cool, yeah. And then so that really resonates with then. So you would say like with stabilization, then comes the collapsing of the duality and sort of not for everybody, but the sort of the bodhisattva essence ends up sort of streaming through that there's nothing better to do with my time than at least try and serve those that are seeking to understand what their nature is. Yeah, part of it is honestly that there's a couple things. One, it's not about me or my time anymore because you don't even think that way as much. That's still thought and feeling an identity type motivation, right? It's good motivation, but over time, it doesn't quite come up like that. It's more like, it's gonna sound really grandiose and cosmic, but I don't mean it that way, but it tends to sound that way. You know, just sort of like the world itself is doing it. You know, taking those bodhisattva actions, but if we're gonna do it in terms of like personal thought and feeling, you know, the maybe one of the worst phases of my own practice is the phase where I decide I'm gonna be all compassionate and really help people and so on because I mean, it's better than the opposite. It's better than not helping people for sure. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's better than being a dick, but it's also filled with, you know, in the background anyway, there's a kind of condescension and arrogance. And I'm the one who is being the bodhisattva. That can be there a little bit. If identity isn't fully dissolved, if thoughts and feelings, if you're still coming from thoughts and feelings instead of from a like awareness itself. But I will say that even on that level, the motivation that I find arising with myself and others most commonly is just it's just so hard to watch people be in so much pain when you know that their thoughts and feelings are the cause of all that pain, right? It's like, oh man, you're really suffering. And if you just saw so much of that suffering would be gone and, you know, if you just saw this one thing, you know, but it turns out that that motivation, hey, I'd love to show you this thing, that comes up in teaching and that's great. Before the bodhisattva walking around on the street, you know, telling your friend like, your friend, like just imagine your friend comes to you and they're like, I have a terrible stomach ache. I might have to go to the hospital and get my stomach pumped. And my partner is really needs my help moving right now. And so I'm really upset because my stomach is sick and I need to help my partner like that kind of thing. And even though like it might come up like, hey, I wish you could just see awareness itself right now cause you'd see how empty all those thoughts and feelings are saying that is not helpful. I guarantee you they will hate you. And so even though the urge is to just be like, I wish you could see that gets translated into, hey, I'll take you to the hospital or, hey, I'll help your partner move or whatever. You know, it's just translated into a different kind of action except when we're teaching and then that's people who are coming to hear that thing directly. I have found if you, you know, if you try to kind of put it on people like, hey, if you only knew this one, you know, it's horrible. It's actually kind of awful. So you have the bodhisattva thing that the helping others starts to arise naturally. You just can't help it, but it takes a little while to get how to do it effectively. I still don't do it very effectively. Yeah. But the mood is like, you know, if you, most people like, let's say you found a little kitten and the kitten was like dirty and scraped up and bleeding and starving. And like there was patches on its skin and it was severely suffering. Let's say it's also cold and it's meowing at you, you know, mewing, begging for help. You know, it's not like this big vow is required. Anybody who's not a sociopath or deeply allergic to cats or whatever would help that little kitten. They would warm it up and clean up its wounds and clean up its fur and get some food and hug it. It's just in us. And so that's, it just starts to be, oh, you're suffering, how can I help? Oh, man, how can I help? It's just natural. And the grandiosity of the vow, I feel like sometimes really gets in the way. Of the sweet, just basic kindness that's there. So if you were to sort of break down then the, like the individual's room, like we used this analogy earlier, the room or the page that, like you would say that the most common things that are appearing and disappearing in the room or on the page, you would say that those are related to the sense of self, the sense of world, and to sort of investigate what the sense of self actually is to investigate what the room without appearances and disappearances actually is or what the substrate that enables the object or the thoughts to appear and disappear, you would say that that style of inquiry into like the fundamental substrate is one of the top though, ways. Sure, of course. I mean, that's supported by all the tradition and it's supported by practice. You know, do you need to dissolve the substrate and break into substrate consciousness completely before you can notice your own awareness? Fuck no. I can take a person off the street and show them at least regular awareness, right? It's, and maybe if they're a little bit talented even get a little deeper than that. And people who have definitely not dissolved the substrate consciousness in some kind of deep cessation can still experience awake awareness. It's hard, you know, but doing the passion of style deconstruction absolutely can experience and can stabilize it. And so, however, it is true that if you want to deeply stabilize it in a profoundly unshakable way then you have penetrating deeply, we're using all these technical terms now, into substrate consciousness is probably the best. But how you get there, again, if you've already been noticing awake awareness and that's already stabilizing and you're good at the pashna, it might not be just old shamatha that gets you there. So yeah, lots of people, you know, have you talked to Henry Shukman, right? You know, he's, he just got to substrate consciousness sitting on the beach when he was 19, no drugs, no meditation didn't give any, you know, didn't give a rat's ass about meditation to sit on the beach, penetrates the substrate. So it's not necessarily the case that everyone must do it in that way. It's, there's lots of different methods and also like I keep saying, that's sort of the most efficacious over time in terms of deep, deep, deep, deep stabilization. But yeah. So, and now if we were to investigate into how, how, or like what is mostly in the way of the individual penetrating substrate consciousness, let's say, or the individual recognizing the room or the page or the ocean. Those are different things, but okay. Okay, cool. So you take like substrate consciousness to be different than a room and page and ocean and then why? Well, what I'm saying is that, as I just said, you can recognize awake awareness without penetrating it. So putting those things. Oh, okay. You mean glimpsing, is that right then? Yeah, and even stabilizing glimpsing, you know. So I'm just saying, you know, putting those all together as one formula is a little too much. Okay, okay. So you would say that like glimpsing and then stabilizing and then substrate consciousness, sort of some sort of an order like that. That's not the normal order, but what I'm saying is that order is possible, yeah. And for a lot of people, it's easier because just sitting there bored out of your mind trying to do shamata, that's like monk stuff, right? That's retreat stuff. It takes a long, long, long time. Whereas if you can be pointed to awake awareness first, get some glimpsing and maybe even through vipassana and stuff, some good stabilization, then doing the shamata will be quite a bit easier because you've already cut through so much of the material. But you know, you're saying, what gets in the way? Everything gets in the way at least, you know. Everything that's not just awareness is something that people can get attached to and get focused on and just think is solid and real and so it becomes absorbing, right? And so we have to start to be able to notice our own grabbing on that moment when the mind grabs onto an object and then the tension of that grab. So, you know, like the Vedana and the contact and the Vedana and the Trishna, like that whole move. If you can learn to recognize that, that's generally applicable. So then it doesn't matter if it's what's coming up. And the other thing is that we can learn to, which is slightly different, but related but slightly different. Some people are just really good at seeing or noticing, realizing emptiness in a general way. And so you start to be able to apply that to more and more things. What usually gets hard, even if under really laboratory conditions of stillness and stability, even if you're good there at awake awareness, non-duality, real stability, what gets hard is that then you go out and get in a fight with your girlfriend and all of that's out the window because the thoughts and feelings are so good. You've grabbed onto it, right? I love that. And it actually speaks so beautifully to the integration phase because nobody gives a shit if you're on a mountaintop. Right. We just don't, but we do care if you can take what you've investigated in your deconstruction and then apply it in mainstream reality. So then when you are with your family, with your friends, for you to be relaxed away from fixation and grasping, people are gonna really turn and look and be like, how is that person so calm? How is that person so loving and so compassionate? And so that's like your basic mainstream sort of way of like phrasing it because it really does boil down to like love and compassion, relaxation, non-fixation, non-grasping. And yeah, and I do really, you said earlier that like if we were to call, let's say, recognizing true nature as a substrate consciousness or the one or infinity or emptiness and then collapse the duality to recognize that even the world is the absolute or God or Brahman or whatever. And the individual lost in their ego and separation is also still God and the absolute Brahman, et cetera. That the main inhibitors from the turn inward, let's say in deconstructing yourself. So like what is, I think this is probably what is most relatable, I think for people like looking back at my journey and if I was to be able to share with myself at a younger age, like what would be the main things, I would say that the words that pop up on the page that are associated with a sense of self. So it's sort of like identity and separation. So like the conditioning of separation being probably like the biggest one. And then when sensation, so it's like not being aware and awake to sensation because then when the sensation arises that it creates a trigger cascade rather than dissolving into emptiness before you know you're fixating and grasping again with your preferences. So would you say that if you were to say like two main things, let's say that are blocking the recognition of true nature? Would you say it's identity and sensation or what would you say is there? It's believing the dream, that's it. That's what's blocking. You know, there's a reason they call noticing this awakening. They call it awakening. And that's a really, really important term. Remember, the Buddha didn't call himself enlightened. He called himself awake. That's what Buddha means, Buddha means awake. He said, I'm awake. What is he awake to? He's awake from the dream of self and world and awake to the fact that this is all occurring within and of awake awareness, right? It's the awareness itself is what we're awake to. And so the biggest blocker is just believing the dream. Yeah. And as soon as you become lucid in the dream of your life, that's awakeness, right? Now you're in awake awareness. And so there's, and it's, you know of course this is a kind of a metaphor but it's a really, really good metaphor. That feeling you have when just, you know you're in a dream, let's say I had kind of an uncomfortable emotionally, not that fun dream, not really a nightmare but just, you know, not such a great dream. And then you become lucid in the dream and you realize, oh, that's just a dream. That's awakening. All the person you are in that dream, the other people in that dream, all the situation in that dream, it's not that it's not there because you're having a whole experience of it. It would be ridiculous to say it's not there but in another way, it's not there in the way you thought it was. It's really, really different. So to me, that's the important point. Wake up to the fact of the dream. That's awakening, right? And then, and so that's the biggest blocker is we stay asleep. And so another way to conceptualize how to kind of lift ourselves out of this to wake ourselves up. You know, I've given all these different methods and another way to talk about it or to conceptualize it is that we're raising our energy, you know? Like literally the embodied part of this, raising the energy to like overclock our sleepy brains a little bit so that there's enough energy there to see, to wake up instead of go back to sleep. Oh, let's watch another movie. We'll just go back into a dream within a dream within a dream and your brain settles into kind of this mushy soup. And so there's a physical way to go here where we, you know, energize enough, lift our energy so that there's enough wakefulness present to cut through, right? To wake up to become lucid in the dream of life. What's interesting there is like having done a tremendous amount of Kundalini yoga in various traditions and, you know, Pranayamas and all that. I really like all that stuff that embodied energetic awakening. What's funny is that can go horribly awry because you are still, if you don't have any training and you're still caught in neurotic obsessions like everything is still very reified and solid and real seeming. Instead of waking up from the dream, all that energy will just get co-opted by your neuroses and you'll just get more and more and more and more and more manic and involved in the dream. And so it's really important when we do the physical, energizing, uplifting thing that we use that wisely to cut through, right? And knowing the difference between cutting through and just getting more involved in the dream, cutting through is the same thing as waking up, right? We're waking up to the dream. So to me, that's the biggest block is like, we're asleep. Stop sleeping, wake up. There's lots of ways to stop sleeping. When, you know, I feel like your question in a way is saying, which part of the dream do people get caught on the most? Yeah, yeah. Which part of the dream do people get tied up in the most, yeah? Yeah. And the answer is people are different, they get caught up in different parts of the dream, but you're right, it's usually something about me and it's something about who I think I am in that dream and what it means about who I am and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and not the who I am being the dreamer itself, but the who I am being the contracted identity that have a separate individual. So- But I feel like this focusing on the content, like what content's more powerful or whatever, it's useful and it helps us to do vipassana or more likely vipassana and so on, but it's still pointing at the stuff, pointing at the content. And instead, let's point at the wakefulness, wake up, wake up from that content right now, right? Nice. That's important. Nice, okay. So when you're cutting through the clouds, the thoughts, the words, sensations, identities, you're recognizing awake awareness, you're recognizing the sun or the paper or the ocean or the room, and then you stabilize in that and then you naturally express yourself more and more in service to the rest of life awakening. So in a sense, I like how you prioritize believing the dream as the top way that we get distracted, fixated, yeah, that does resonate a lot. So believing the dream itself is at the top. And so to wake up from the dream is to recognize yourself as the very dreamer, which is one infinite formless intelligence. Yeah, although that's a whole bunch of ideas on top of it. And I would just say, yes, wake up, wake up from that dream. And furthermore, yes, there's the content and our identity and stuff, but if you really want a lot of help stabilizing your awake awareness, go do some therapy, do some attachment work, do some internal family systems. Get, if there's a couple big gnarly traumas going on or something, those are always gonna stop that stabilization. And so people usually put the sequence like wake up and then clean up and grow up and show up, but the cleaning up helps the waking up and the waking up helps the cleaning up. And so actually doing good psychological work, whether that's with a paid therapist in an office or whether it's with informed peers who you're working together with sort of on the same level, that kind of deep psychological work like IFS or EMDR, all that stuff really actually deeply helps the awakening process because it's eliminating the unconscious blockages. Yes, totally. And another thing that comes up really often is people start to wake up from the dream. So they're doing the thing, they're getting it and then they get scared. I see this literally every single day, not most days, every single day. Someone starts to really wake up and then they get scared. And why do they get scared? Because they feel like they're gonna be annihilated. They feel like they're gonna go away. They feel like nothing is gonna matter. They feel like there'll be a hole in the world or something. And where does that fear come from? It comes from believing your identity as the dream character. Oh my God, if I wake up from this dream, the dream character will lay. Well, not necessarily. You can be lucid in the dream, the character's still there, it didn't go away, but you don't believe you're really them anymore. But even if they did go away, the metaphor applies, like you'll be fine and actually better than fine. And what's so interesting is for people who are having that fear come up, all you really need to do is expose yourself. Expose that dream to awakening. Expose your neurotic self of thought and feeling. Suppose itself of thought and feeling. Expose that to some awake awareness again and again and again and again in hundreds and thousands of glimpses. Eventually it realizes, no matter how many times we do that, even though I get scared, no matter how many times we do that, I don't actually die. Nothing bad happens. And so eventually the fear calms down and you're fine, but this is a real, if you wanna know a block, that's a genuine block, people get scared because they don't wanna disappear. And it's just like saying I didn't wanna wake up from the dream. You're gonna wake up and you're gonna be fine. Now that nobody dies from awakening. I agree with you. I agree with you a lot. It's actually happened to me several times in this last year is sort of going into some sort of like, in a sense, it was like a nervous system shock and like definitely a fear, definitely a scaredness, definitely a sort of a seeing through the character. And yeah, you can sort of sense the character not wanting to let go. And then you realize that there's only one of you and so there's no more duality between the character and the space that enables the character. And so then you, well, at least I have been, yeah, just associating myself more with what powers the character and powers life itself powers the universe rather than the individual perspective. And then, yeah, there's a lot of other things here. I like how you said that the shadow or unconscious is something to investigate. And in that process, you can sort of find things like your core lack beliefs of things like wanting to be seen or feeling unworthy or seeking validation. And when you sort of put the light of awareness on those things, you recognize, you sort of liberate yourself from those shadows and from those unconscious, which then enables you to be more free when a sensation arises. You can be more free rather than get triggered into seeking worthiness and validation from people. I've noticed that's been huge. And then I also really like how, yeah, and throughout all those glimpses, there's never a time when the character just disappears. The character never disappears. The character is the dream at the same time. And so I like how you say I'll wake up. I think that that's really good. I think that that's most direct, most clear. I think it doesn't have many. I do feel like I'm slowly becoming less and less conceptual. I'm becoming just more and more, just finding the most optimal ways to just point at this. And it really is true. Just those two words, wake up. Just wake up. And I think that that maybe makes people go like, what does that mean? Like waking up, wake up from what? And I love that, Michael. I love that. Yeah, wake up from what? That's a good question. It's a good inquiry question to look into. And how would you answer that to somebody that asks you that? I'd say, look, I don't answer that question because it's an inquiry question. I can't answer your inquiry question. All I can say is, yeah, look at that right now. Look, your own experience. What can you wake up from right now? Nice. Yeah, I like how you take their attention to right now, right now, look at what you could wake up from. That's so nice. For many people, they're just too involved in this as a concept. And it's like, just drop all that and look right now for other people, they're just really caught up in emotions. A lot of folks' emotions are so big and so intense and so compelling that whenever it starts to open up, instead they go to the emotion. And again, it's not that thoughts and emotions aren't it, but they're just, if we get involved with them, we start to take over, right? And so we want to look, I keep thinking about, and we want to look right now, I keep thinking about the famous Zen story, of the first Zen patriarch. So an Indian guy, a guy from North India, he goes to China and is the founder of Zen, right? Or Chan, and he's there teaching his first students to meditate. And one of his students comes to him and is like, Master, my mind is so upset. Can you help me? I can't meditate because my mind is just too upset. Can you help me? And Bodhidharma is the Zen master, the first Zen master is kind of a hard ass. Just a little bit of a hard ass. He tells the guy, he gives him an inquiry question, although he doesn't sound like one, but it is one, it's like a koan, right? He says, okay, I can help your mind, but first you have to bring it to me. So bring me your mind, and I will fix it so that you can meditate. So that's a koan, right? How do I bring him my mind? Where is my mind, right? But he doesn't say any of that. He just says, bring me your mind. And so the student goes off and it doesn't say whether it's a day later or 10 years later, but student comes back and says, Master, I'm sorry, I can't find my mind. And Bodhidharma gives the big Zen slap in the face. He says, see, I fixed it. And that's an example of like, just look, you've got this big problem, but look, you're trying to get liberated from that problem, but do you even know what it is? Go try to find it, right? It's really fascinating. Like if we, there's no part of our experience that doesn't lead back to, eventually lead back to awareness and even awake awareness, there's no part. You can look at your big toe long enough. It will lead you back to the ground of being, your true being or how we're gonna talk about it. And so in that way, reality is like a knitted sweater. You kind of just pull any piece of the yarn and just start pulling and pulling and pulling and the whole thing will just unravel as long as you really look, really look right now. So that's the longer answer to what would I say if they asked me what I mean by, look at what you're trying to get liberated from. Yeah. I love that point too, because it definitely accelerates the process to see that. Yeah, bring me the mind or bring me separation, bring me the ego, show it to me. And I think that that's really so good, so powerful. Right. As a direct inquiry question, it's usually phrased as where is your mind? But in traditions like Mahmoudra, they go really overboard with it in a way I love. So like, what's the color of your mind? What's the shape of your mind? Is it round? Is it square? Where's your mind located? What's the texture of your mind? They ask a bunch of questions like that. And if you're coming from the intellect, you just can't get anywhere with it. That's a ridiculous question and it doesn't help at all. But if you look and you actually try and answer the question like if I say, Atlas, what's the shape of your mind? Is it round? Is it a cube? Is this beer? What is it? And you look for a feel without just thinking, I already know the answer. And you look, you can't find a mind to give a shape, right? And so they just go through a long series of inquiry questions just about that. It's very, very helpful. The thing that we're so concerned with all day is our mind, right? Like how do I feel? And by how do I feel, we mean, what are my thoughts and feelings like? That's our mind and the small M mind. And it's not that hard to notice that you can't even find the damn thing. It's not located anywhere. Do you also use the analogy of the space that enables the musical notes? I don't use that one, but sounds like a good metaphor to me or analogy to me. It makes sense. I've just never said that one. Yeah. And then when you talk about the, so do you also create a differentiation in self with the lower case S and the capital S? You know, that's like an Advaita thing to do. So I understand it. I don't usually talk that way because I'm mainly talking to Buddhists and they freak out if you use the word self. So, but I'm conversant. I can talk that way. Do you see another way to say this is do you see capital S self and no self or Advaita as the same thing? Yes. Yeah, I do too. As long as, you know, well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I could put some caveats in there, but yeah. Yeah, generally speaking for sure. Cool. What would be your caveats there? Well, simply did not go into each one of them. It depends on what you mean by each of those terms, but yeah, it kind of a general way, sure. Cool. Yeah, whenever I think of deconstructing yourself, I think of realization of no self, which then is realization of capital S self. That's sort of how I would say it. Sure, yep. You know, these are, there's lots of language we can use to describe the same thing for sure. Cool. Yeah, I've actually found that to be also helpful is to do things like share that. Perhaps the argument of no self versus self is actually pointing to the same thing and another good one is perhaps the duality of impermanence and permanence also collapses as well where you start by seeing the words that are all impermanent and then you recognize the permanent nature of the paper and then you collapse that duality as well. So it plays into many, I would say like Buddhist and Hindu ideologies that you can sort of begin collapsing or another way to say it is you can begin recognizing that the pointing is the same using different words. Yeah, I mean, I think that awakening and liberation is a human experience. Any human anywhere can have that experience. What they're going to call it and how they're going to conceptualize it and so on is going to totally depend on their culture and their language and their belief systems and all that. But I love the opinion that the experience is the same everywhere. So human experience. Yeah, and then I would say there's also different in a sense flavors of it also. So there's like different ways to like liberate yourself from the, as we've talked about throughout the show, there's just different flavors of liberation of realization and stabilization. So that plays into this whole thing with the different paths or the different traditions or the different ways to become one with true nature, that type of thing. But definitely at the endpoint is the top of the mountain, you could say. The endpoint is coming back down from the mountain realizing the non-duality of enlightenment and non-enlightenment. Exactly, yeah. So once you realize, you realize the top is the bottom. Yep. Cool. Yeah, I feel really good. I feel really complete. Do you feel complete? You feel good about the convo? Oh, sure. Absolutely. It's a real pleasure that you invite me to come on here and I can spout off and pretend I know it all. It's so nice. It is, it's really nice. Especially I've been following your work and I've also been becoming better friends with Frank Yang who highly recommends you and you guys have obviously become closer friends as well. And so we, I also talked to Frank about potentially us three getting on a show together. So maybe we do that in the next couple of months. So there's a lot of different fun ways to play on this. That sounds great, yes. Thanks for inviting me on. So cool, so awesome. And then thanks everyone for tuning in. Infinite love for you, thank you. We would love for you to check out the links in the bio below to deconstructing yourself also to Michael's YouTube channel. You can check that out as well. You can check out all this content on his website. Go and support him if you find what he shares to be really useful and enriching. And also like the video if it brought you value. Drop us a comment with your thoughts on the video. Subscribe if you haven't to the channel. Share the video with other people that you feel like this would help. And that's all, thanks everyone. We love you and we'll see you soon. I'll go ahead and I'll end the stream and we'll stay in the studio for a minute, okay Michael? Great.