All right, well, Aaron, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me, brother. You're the you're my first student who's ever interviewed me.
This is exciting. Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, I remember spirituality is my number one passion. There's a part of my audience that
doesn't really know what it entails. In fact, whenever they ask me about my goals and my
aspirations, I have a hard time saying stuff because my goals are invisible and intangible.
So to set some context for the episode, because you introduce yourself, give context to
your light to spiritual the spiritual path and one spirituality.
spirituality. I'm still asking myself, man.
So I do YouTube content initially of very much spirituality based content. I just really the way
I see spirituality is like metaphysics and ontology. Metaphysics is like the study of
that dimension of reality that's just behind the physical we might say, like the causal level of
the the energetics that make things happen, the archetypes, the laws of the universe,
that'd be like what's metaphysical, right. And then in addition to that ontology, which is
essentially like the study of being or what it is to be and to exist and the study of the self and
what that means. Those two things to me summarize the way I see spirituality, because you can't
spiritually ascend without a healthy balance of both. And we normally call that like the masculine
and feminine wisdom and love. You can't just gain wisdom all day and knowledge all day until you
have to finally integrate it into your being which is love the embodiment of a spiritual virtue.
So that's what I like to teach about these days in as many different ways as I can.
But the way I started out was as a pastor's kid, and even Christianity. And I very much was a
devout Christian and a plus Christian you might even say. Jesus was my homeboy. And I wanted to
be like Jesus in every way. I was so inspired by the person of Jesus. And that's what actually
led me out of my religion by about 23 was that I just kept running into this feeling that like,
I don't know the Jesus you guys preach here. I don't know this like jealous, wrathful,
vengeful Jesus who's coming back one day to kill and all this nonsense. I only see a Jesus of
infinite compassion and unconditional love who said to turn the other cheek and forgive 70 times
seven and on and on and on about really just how almost counter opposite Jesus's actual message was
than like fundamentalist religion teaches it as. And so, I understood that split at about 18,
but it took me another five years to admit it to myself that I wasn't really a Christian anymore.
And then finally leave my Christian life, which is what I had to do at 23. I'd just gotten married
as well like that year and kind of blew up my life and moved. I quit the church I was working
at full time as a worship pastor and then moved back to Oklahoma to just kind of seek the divine
in whatever way, whatever that meant for me at the time. And so, that's where I went through kind of
the dark night of the soul journey and got into Eastern teachings, Buddhism, Hinduism, and those
really to enlighten me to the truth of Jesus's message that he was actually also an enlightened
master like the Buddha and Krishna and all these famous avatars from the East. Christ was just an
avatar from the West in that world. And that I resonated a lot with that because I always knew
that Jesus was the truth, just that energy you feel from Christ, Christ consciousness.
It's like an energy of righteousness, holiness, love, forgiveness, endless mercy. That's the
energy of Christ, right? And we all acknowledge that as kind of the highest virtue. And I
acknowledged that as a Christian kid, but I didn't really know that's what I was acknowledging. It's
myself, all the holy and divine aspects of myself that I cannot possibly imagine I'm one with.
That's what we project onto someone like Jesus and then we worship Jesus for being God and being
holy and all of that. Really, we are that. We are holy and divine. And so, I woke up to that through
the Eastern teachings and started making YouTube videos and didn't have any anticipation of
having a big YouTube channel or something. I just wanted to make videos. That was kind of my
passionate outlet. I'd been very much into videography since I was a kid. I was making
videos all the time and like little lame editing programs back in those days, you know, on the
computer. So, I always loved making videos as an artistic expression. And that was my art, was
spirituality and metaphysics and ontology. And to my surprise, the videos eventually started to do
really well. And only then did I think, oh, maybe I could do this full-time. And so, here we are.
And how I came across Aaron was I was going through my own dark night of the soul and I
didn't even know what that meant. Perfect timing.
And I went on Reddit, on the internet searching for answers as I usually do. And on Reddit thread,
I saw, hey, Aaron Apte is a very genuine guy. Go look his stuff up. And I did.
Reddit, huh? Reddit, yeah.
Interesting. Some Reddit user recommended you to me.
Thank you, random Reddit user, whoever you are.
And then I watched Mind Science 12, the new first love, the new self-love.
That's a good video to start with.
And that video changed everything for me. And that's what spirituality, I think, entails.
We don't get into it in a vacuum. We get into it because it tangibly changed our lives, the inside
out. And what you did, forgive everything you've ever done because you didn't know better at the
time. It felt like the weight of the sky was off my shoulders. And I just...
Yeah.
...fall, right? And it's because you shined your light, your light house, that I was inspired to
shine my own soil. This is why I'm very passionate about this.
Beautiful, man. Thank you for sharing that. I've had that moment myself, for sure. Forgiveness.
Yes. And so I want to touch on... So when you spiritually awaken, it's a high, it's euphoric,
right? And then you start to learn everything. You start binging all the youthful balls,
all the youthful balls, books, etc. And there's a frequent happening, it's spiritual, there's that
you get that high and then everything kind of dims, and then you get stuck. In fact, you learn
about all the spiritual concepts, you see your catalysts, and they seem to arise again and again
and again. And there's a certain point where your suffering transforms. It's not before you never
knew spirituality, but this is a little different, in some ways more intense. And I want to take
us back to what you said about polarity, because I think that's a super important concept for anyone
who's in that cyclical phase to get. Could you lay out the polarity of... The rule of polarity
in the journey, in their functions and their structure?
You know, I think this might actually be the first time I've been asked a question about polarity.
Like people will come up in a conversation, but polarity itself as the metaphysics of polarity
is something that I'm super interested in. And I see everything through the lens of polarity,
but it's not something that I'm questioned about much in interviews, so it's fun to be able to go
into this. So the polarity, the basis of polarity is that polarity is the proof that there's only
one being. Let's start there. Because if there's only one being, like you could hypothesize, so
what if there were just one being in the universe, and it's an infinite eternal being, but it's one,
there's only one of it, then how would that being ever know itself, understand it exists,
know what it is in any way? Well, it would have to create something other than itself to look against or measure against.
And so there's where you get the polarity is that the law of polarity says a thing can only be known because it's opposite exists, or a thing can only be known by its opposite.
So it's like, use the buffet analogy, it's like you're at a buffet. And if you ask yourself, what foods do I like?
Well, there's only one way to find out, which is to go taste the food, but you're going to taste food that you like and some food you don't like.
But either food you taste, you still learn what you like, right? Taste of food that is pleasurable to your mouth, you say, oh, I like this.
And then if you try something that's gross or unpalatable to your mouth, you say, oh, I don't like this.
But you also just learn more about what you do like at the same time. So there is the cause and effect are one.
And that's that's the basics of polarity. Did you have a question on that? No. OK.
So from there, the whole universe is built from polarity.
So I sometimes we'll just call it the polarized universe, because it helps us to remember that you've seen those pictures of like a positive and a negative magnet.
And the electrical fields that are going out and meeting in the middle, it's the it's almost like that's what the is.
We have positive and negative on opposite ends. And then in their container, they create the whole universe.
Everything is a creation of the opposite, the two opposite pairs.
And I call them positive, negative, but really, they don't have a name. Right.
And I call them positive and negative again, just for the metaphysics of that.
In that positive means expansive or radiating and negative means absorbing inward moving magnetic.
And that's just kind of basic chemistry. Right.
So because everything is built out of two opposite polarized forces, then to be spiritually balanced in the universe requires us to be equally balanced between the two opposite forces.
And what that looks like, you know, at first glance of hearing me say that the mind may say, oh, so we have to be just as evil as we are good.
That makes a lot of sense. How are you going to do that?
It's like, no, I'm not saying that. But that's actually kind of the point is that you can only be one or the other.
You can't be equally both polarities.
You have to choose one because then you can know yourself. Right.
The knows itself by the contrast of the negative and the negative knows itself by the contrast it has with the positive.
If there were no opposite, you would not have a name for yourself.
You wouldn't call yourself the negative polarity or the positive polarity. Right.
So they're in relationship, mutual relationship.
So to be in balance is to basically transcend one of those polarities and then you can be in a positive.
So you can transcend one of those polarities and choose willingly the other one.
And to transcend the negative polarity is not by making it an enemy to push outside of yourself.
It's actually to bring it into yourself and love it as part of yourself.
So we call that our shadow side or ego.
It kind of represents all the unconscious parts of it.
We act out of our unconscious. We are reactive. We are insecure. We are bitter. We are bored.
We are all the qualities of ego that we typically think about.
And so we transcend those parts of us by acknowledging that they are valid because they offer us opposite perspective of our nature so that we can know ourselves.
Meaning you actually should thank guilt and shame because now they've given you the ability to truly know what love is.
Love has so much meaning once you've experienced its opposite.
And that's kind of what you said, right, Ken Furtive.
When I was going through my dark night of the soul, I heard your message, forgive yourself of everything you've ever done because you didn't know any better at the time.
So no one's really guilty.
And then when you forgave, you felt this euphoria because you connected to the truth of love, which is forgiveness, oneness.
And it's inherently blissful to realize your true nature.
But you can't know the bliss of your true nature without the suffering of the opposite nature.
So that's the gift that ego consciousness is to us is that we literally could not ascend without experiencing the contrast.
Just like a tree literally can't grow above the ground without a root system that goes equally deep in the soil.
So in that way, you can actually love the negative in that sense.
You don't want to be the negative, but the negative in a sense is part of you because it's showing you who you are.
So you accept the negative path as one with you.
Whereas metaphysically speaking, on the negative polarity, we call these service to self beings, right?
Those who've chosen the negative path and consciousness, they don't do that with the positive path.
They don't say, oh, the positive polarity is one with us.
They say the positive polarity is an illusion.
It's foolishness. It's not real. It's a delusion.
Only the negative path is the valid path, the path of self-service, the path of power over others.
And so that's the metaphysics of consciousness that not one of us would deny that, right?
Not one of us would deny that the world definitely seems to be populated with only two kinds of people, good or evil people.
And everyone's on a spectrum somewhere between good and evil.
Some people are more good than they are evil.
But there's no denying that those are the only two choices.
You can be good or you can be evil, but you can't be both.
And when we start to choose which polarity we want, we actually spiritually ascend.
So this is why to overcome ego and transcend spiritually to what people call enlightenment requires you to overcome your selfish nature, right?
You have to overcome your own biases and personal desires and the grudges and grievances you hold against people.
You have to forgive all of that because that represents the false nature.
And that's how you polarize to the positive.
So we are in this amazing time on our planet, I think, where the catalysts on our planet are forcing everyone to choose their polarity very quickly.
Because what we might call evil, in a relative sense, seems to be rising on this planet.
Really, it's being revealed. It's always been at the level of power it's at now.
But it's being revealed because we're becoming aware of it.
And we're like, oh, that's a problem. Like that kind of corruption on our planet.
People with that kind of agenda for our planet, that's a problem.
We need to do something about this quickly.
That's what a lot of millions, hundreds of millions of people at this moment in time are feeling that strongly.
And that's kind of, to me, like the siren call of the universe that our planet is graduating, right?
2012, that shift that happened. Our planet's graduating into the next level of consciousness.
So everyone's kind of being forced to choose which polarity they want so that they can graduate.
And the beautiful part about that, as we've seen in the last three or so years, is that there really is this like great massive awakening happening right now.
So how can we say that the corruption itself is actually evil if it's actually accomplishing so much good?
We just have to see that these two things exist in relationship. The relationship of polarity, right?
Yes. Yes. I used to be quite selfish when health journey, I would learn to deal with math.
Me too.
Yeah, right. And there was a certain point where I realized, oh, big pharma, big ag, etc. are after the people.
And that's a health for others. So it was only for, it was only because I realized people were corrupt that I even came to care for others.
Yeah. That's an example of what you can talk.
Absolutely, man. They've given so many of us a new purpose in life to do good and to live righteously, right?
I mean, how can you say that's all bad?
100%. And so if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably chosen the positive.
And, you know, if you've been on the journey for a while, you kind of sometimes things can get hazy.
You can completely forget what the goal is. And through polarity, it becomes very straightforward.
Yes.
You choose your polarity. And so there's two ways we can polarize positively.
It's through knowing, being aware and feeling.
So the choice service to self and service to others, it branches down into two more, you know, roads.
Those hold the key to the kingdom. Could you lay out what it's gross purification and subtle purification, right?
Both of those are simple.
Yeah, that's a great perception, man, that every speaking metaphysically, every level of creation that polarity makes also creates a new polarity in that level and then a new polarity in the next level, because everything's polarized.
Everything exists in the relationship of polarity. So, yes, when what's that?
That's something cool. You break a magnet in half, it becomes a new north and south pole.
That's right. Yeah, exactly. It's a perfect example.
Everything becomes a new polarity at every level. So you have to see the polarity at every level to be aware of it and and have the right relationship to it.
So this is what I call the two aspects of us. We are polarized beings because we are masculine and feminine.
We all have a masculine nature and a feminine nature. As you said, a thinking, contemplating nature and a feeling, energetic nature, masculine, feminine.
So one is mental, one is emotional. And that means that two levels there that need to be healed, the mental level and the emotional level.
So familiar with shadow work terminology, which forgive me if you're not.
But when we talk about shadow work, we're talking about the feminine healing of going into those locked traumas,
the feelings that you have from those traumas and allowing yourself to feel that fear, that terror, that guilt,
without resisting it, but trying to actually sort of welcome it in and accept it and forgive that part of you and say, hey, it's OK to hurt from that and all of that.
And that is you releasing that negative energy out of the body.
So when you suppress something, you've kind of closed off the release valve of your emotions, your emotional body.
And when you are open to something, feeling it, you open the release valve of your emotional body.
So that's like feminine healing in a polarity sense. But the masculine healing is on the mental level.
And so you also, in addition to letting yourself feel the painful feelings without resisting them,
you also have to change your incorrect thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
Otherwise, those wrong ideas about yourself will continually lead you back to traumas that trap energy all over again.
So whether we just do one or the other, we still have an imbalance. We still have only 50 percent of the equation.
And so the masculine, as you said, is know yourself, have correct self-knowledge.
I am one with the source. I am not lacking, but I am all abundant. I am the creator of my reality.
All of these empowering aspects of yourself, the more you see them, the more you embody them.
And then you transcend those catalysts that caused you to have the traumas.
So meaning you can't be traumatized anymore by those experiences because you've integrated that part of you and overcome it.
And it's sort of like it happens emotionally, just like it happens when we learn a lesson in life.
That happens to all of us. Who would ever deny that life has not taught them so many lessons?
And that's all we're saying with the emotional side of things, too.
It's like there's just a thing to be recognized here. It's neither good nor bad.
It has no indictment on who you are. Like to feel guilt, to feel shame, to feel insecure.
None of that is an indictment on you. It's not really who you are. It's just a feeling attached to a thought.
So when life teaches us a lesson, we just say thank you and we learn the lesson.
That's the same attitude we should have when an uncomfortable feeling arises, right?
Our energy body is trying to detox some negative energy that's been trapped from past experiences.
So isn't that what we want? Don't we want to lighten our load a bit? Don't we want to free up our energy a little bit?
I think we all want that. And so to do that, you just have to not resist what you feel.
But on a mental level, that means judge, right?
The mind judges what we feel as conceptually being wrong or invalid in some way.
And so we have to not resist or judge simultaneously.
So the not resist part would be like when you step into a cold shower and everything in you has that kind of trauma,
fight flight response where you want to jump out of the shower.
And instead of doing that, you take some deep breaths to get into your body and allow the intensity of the fight,
flight thing to just play its course. And if you've done cold plunges or cold showers, you know how this works.
It takes about it happens in levels.
But let's say 10 seconds is when that absolute panic mode finally starts to settle down a little bit.
And then it's like 30 seconds until you actually feel some stability in your mind and calmness.
And then by a minute, you're like totally numb and there's no pain at all.
That's just an amplified version of any negative emotion that arises in us arises like that,
meaning it has a big, huge curve when it first hits, but it drops off pretty quickly.
So you don't have to sit with a negative emotion for too long before you're going to feel it wane.
But most people just don't know that because they've never really sat with an uncomfortable feeling for more than 30 seconds.
Right. It's like almost instantly when we feel uncomfortable.
It's like Netflix. What can I do? Bypass, avoid, suppress, suppress. Yeah.
And as long as we learn that that's the worst possible thing to do, then even just knowing that will create more awareness for us.
And when we do have uncomfortable feelings, we'll be slower and slower to react with resistance.
And we'll start taking those deep breaths a little bit more and we'll start to just kind of allow the emotion more and more.
And eventually it becomes so natural to us to just not resist what we feel, but just let it hit you like a strong wave would hit you or something.
Then you actually realize you have this infinite capacity to sit with feelings and not be harmed by them.
You always notice nothing about me has changed. I had a dark night of the soul this weekend, but nevertheless, here I am untouched by it.
So I cannot be fundamentally harmed by anything. You can only learn that as an integrated state of self-knowledge by healing yourself.
Right. By actually experiencing your own godhood through the process of healing.
And so that's healing. Masculine healing is the not judging, forgiving your unloving thoughts about yourself.
But only when those two are joined, do we have the ability to transcend this level of consciousness.
We were talking about levels a second ago, right? We transcend this level of consciousness and go to the next one by harmonizing those polarities within us.
By balancing wisdom and love, self-knowledge with self-love.
That's the ticket out essentially of this consciousness.
The Buddha called the Wheel of Samsara and the illusion of Maya and Hinduism.
We keep reincarnating here until we learn to know ourself truly and love ourself truly.
And the good news that the law of one brings, as you know, Ken Furt, is that thank goodness we don't have to do 100%.
Like we don't have to be 100% perfectly integrated as a spiritual being.
We just have to be at least 51% spiritually integrated.
And that feels like a much more reachable goal for most people.
Yeah, thank God for 51%.
That should be a t-shirt.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
So when I think about a seeker who's been struggling for a long time,
By Aaron, I've tried shadow work. I've tried to believe affirmations.
I've tried all that and it has worked.
I'm still suffering.
But what the answer has been to me recently was when you were joining the group.
They, Ra says, love, love, light.
They work together. They're inseparable.
And I would be your recent video.
I realized this with your Beauty and the Beast video plus personal experience.
And while I'm back is I've tried shadow work for the past two years.
And it's been a struggle because it seems to keep coming back, coming back, etc.
At a certain point, I realized it's impossible to love your emotions genuinely
while believing that you are being victimized by them at the same time.
And your Beauty and the Beast video was the answer to that.
Because what you did was correct the perception of the emotion.
And so they work together.
And so when I see them as the innocent diamonds, the gems that they are,
it was effortless to love them.
Could you unpack shadow work 2.0 in light of both polarities?
Yeah. Well, you can see there based on what you just kind of laid out that loving something is also right seeing of that thing.
Meaning because everything is divine and everything is playing a divine role in the universe,
that means everything is inherently lovable because the universe works as a perfect system.
So if we have a perfect system, whether you can imagine it as a computer, if that's easier for you,
if you had the perfect computer, would you judge any part of that computer,
whether it didn't make sense to you off first glance or you didn't think it looked that,
you know, aesthetic to the eye or something, you would never look into the hardware of a perfect computer and like critique it.
You're like, well, clearly it works perfectly.
So it is the perfect design in its own way.
I'm the judger. Right.
When we see the universe correctly like that, we can and do naturally love everything because we're seeing the deeper metaphysical dimension of that thing.
And that's true of the negative polarity.
Like negative polarity, meaning we use the word evil as a convenient word usage.
We don't mean it literally.
Evil as a construct is to imply that there's a second power in the universe.
So when I say evil doesn't exist, that's what I mean.
There isn't a second power, the evil that opposes good or God, and they fight against each other.
There's just one being and just one power.
But what we call evil is the absence of or ignorance of the truth.
So those who are evil doers, as we might say, are actually blind, spiritually blind people, we could say.
They can't see the truth.
They don't understand the metaphysical truth of the universe.
They don't understand the nature of reality.
Got it all wrong and all twisted up in their mind.
And so, of course, their behaviors reflect a distorted view of reality.
Separateness, lack, fear, victimhood.
These are all twisted distortions of what reality actually is, which is pure perfection,
pure empowerment, oneness, unity, relationship.
So when we are talking about how to actually love evil or evil people, this is where we should go.
We should overlook the forms of how it's appearing and how it's functioning in the universe,
because we know ultimately the universe is perfect.
We already live in a perfect universe.
And so everything's playing its perfect part and there is a divine plan happening.
And we can't see that plan.
So who are we to judge it?
If we know the universe is perfect, then we should assume that its plans and its actions are ultimately perfect.
And so the analogy is of the quilt blanket.
You look really up close to a quilt and it's just a bunch of colors weaved over each other.
There's no design there.
But then you zoom out, zoom out, zoom out.
And it's this beautiful design of a horse or something on the quilt.
That's like what the universe is, right?
We're just too close to it to see the full picture.
And so we judge and complain and resist.
So spiritual freedom is just to not be insane anymore and resist reality all the time.
It's to know that I am a part of the whole.
So I have a purpose here and everything else has a purpose here.
So I'm going to be me and I'm going to accept everything else as it is.
I'm going to stop fighting reality in my mind all the time.
And that is when we become sane.
At that point, true sanity, if it's anything, is that.
It's a right seeing of the universe.
Everything exists in relationship.
Everything is perfect.
These are unarguable metaphysical laws.
So we just we say we know them, but we don't really act according to them yet.
Right. We don't really behave as if we really believe them.
Sort of like a law that we don't really believe is being enforced.
Yeah, there may be laws about stuff we can't do, but if no one's enforcing it, there's no law.
That's how we tend to feel about metaphysical laws that we know.
Right. If there's just one being, then you're that being in one particular expression.
But you are just like a ray of sunlight is the sun.
You are the source. You are the universe.
When you break it down like that, almost nobody would argue with that.
But then it's like, well, how do I accept the implications of that?
I don't even know how I should live or act or be.
And the answer is paradoxically, be exactly what you already are, because you're already that perfect ray of sight.
Like the universe wanted to show up as Kenford in this life to express the Kenford part of itself.
So you're already the perfect being.
So that's why I give these truth affirmations in our 40 university curriculum and on our lectures
to repeat these truth affirmations and carry them with you as kind of mantras to constantly remind you and wake you up to the truth.
And so one of those mantras is I am a perfect being in heaven here and now.
I'm already a perfect being and I'm already in heaven.
It's not a future destination. It's already now at hand, just like Jesus said.
But people are unaware of it. So all I have to do is become aware of heaven to actually be in heaven.
And that is to constantly remember we are already walking in a perfect universe.
Let me never argue with reality. Let me never attack reality by disagreeing with what it's doing.
Let me just be in relationship with reality.
Whatever the moment appears to dictate to me, I want to be in relationship to the moment and respond accordingly.
So I want to be present and aware and grounded. That's how I have a loving relationship with life.
You see, all of these spiritual virtues are just natural byproducts of seeing reality clearly.
So that's why I stress so much in my teachings, as you've obviously noticed, that we have to see reality rightly as it actually is
and really let it get into us a bit. Let the implications of these laws of reality that we all acknowledge,
let it really sink in a bit and it'll start to shape the way you see and interact with the world around you.
Perfect. So let's first, let's defend with the masculine overarching concept.
Let's flip it because there's the seeker who only listens to, reads Maharshi, the non-dual, all the non-dual, non-dual, non-dual.
Yeah. Even the people who are probably in your Forty-U curriculum.
I used to be guilty of that myself. Yeah, no, I've noticed, Aaron, because in your teachings,
the progression of your YouTube channel has been amazing to watch.
Your very first video to now, it's a transformation and it inspires me, you know, in comfort being on camera and embodying being authentic, etc.
How do we really integrate these masculine teachings?
Because we get stuck when it gets stuck in our head and we don't use the heart, right?
So with a person who is struggling with mantras of inquiry, it seems to me that they need to dive into their direct experience,
which is basically the essence of the feminine.
Would you elucidate the masculine with the feminine's counterpart?
Yeah, another great point there that just like we've already kind of laid out that everything exists by its opposite
and that we only ascend spiritually by bringing in the shadow part of us and making it equally valid,
saying, thank you, Shadow, for teaching me my light side. I love you. Thank you.
You play a role in the universe. You're not a mistake. You're not separate.
That's what we're saying to that part of us.
If we go to a non-duality teaching a little too early, we can.
It will inevitably happen that the ego will use non-duality teachings to bypass what it has not felt yet and accepted yet.
So you'll hear a teaching like nothing is real. There's nobody here. Nothing really exists. It's all nothing.
You're like, thank goodness. So I don't have to go feel that shame from my sexual past, right?
It's like, no, you still do, though. But it's true. It's not real.
But you still have to feel it. And that's the paradox, right? We can know it's not real mentally.
And that doesn't really help us not want to avoid feeling it.
Because even though it's not real in that sense, it still feels real at the time and it still has very painful, unbearable consequences to it.
So that's because only feminine healing can actually heal that part of us that resists feelings.
The masculine can't do it. It's not its dimension. But likewise, the feminine can't stop believing wrong beliefs.
Only the masculine can do that. So you see, we need both of those things for spiritual healing.
So when you're asking about the embodiment aspect of non-duality teachings, I think that's a lesson that we probably only learn the right way by doing it wrong for long enough
that the consequences build up enough that we eventually learn the right way, which is to accept our painful feelings and not make them wrong anymore or not them unspiritual anymore.
If you're a non-duality student, right, there's a lot of spiritual gaslighting that happens for non-duality students, myself included, right, that you don't even really know you're doing it because it's such a high level concept.
Right. Oh, this this concept itself is so high level that surely it's safe and can't be used wrongly or something.
And that's just our own naivete. Any concept can be weaponized by the ego.
And it very much does so in this way we're describing. But eventually, like through life, you learn that that's not the way.
And so for me, my medicine was at a certain point, I started to realize I have to stop trying to deny my physical experience so much because it's not real.
It's passive bleeding, it's transient, it's an illusion of the mind.
That stuff isn't actually helping me because part of me is still in resistance to it.
And I need to go there to that what we usually call human part of ourselves.
We are and divine because both are divine.
But we have to go to that part of ourself and be in the feminine for a while and really meet life, be a part of life,
engage with life and let life teach us and show us what it really means to say that none of it's real.
So for me, it's like if you actually want to know on an experiential level that the world is an illusion,
you might want to just go out in the world for a while, you know, go drink, go party up, go do your thing, go seek pleasure in every form you can find it, do the worldly thing.
And you'll actually see, man, it's as if I accomplished a million pleasurable outcomes and nothing happened.
You know, like the same guy with all the same problems.
And actually, my problems are a lot worse now in ways I have way more attachments, I have way more ego and pride.
So you'll eventually be like the prodigal son that wakes up in the pig slop and says, why did I leave my father's house for this?
At least I could return to my father and beg for his forgiveness and he'll at least make me a servant in his house.
And being a servant would be way better than eating with the pigs.
That's that's the classic archetypal example in the hero's journey of the hero waking up to the truth and returning home again to itself.
And then from there, really, the hero's journey kind of begins, right?
So the spiritual path in that Joseph Campbell way is the hero's journey, but it's like an inward journey, right?
Conquering the inner self rather than the external self.
On the spiritual path, I feel like I'm in a movie sometimes where everyone is the protagonist and it's all coming to this epic climax, especially with the way Earth is these days.
Yeah, reality is way more epic and amazing than any movie could hope to be.
100%. And so with with these two polarities in mind, there's both you have to integrate.
But I feel like the number one block to that integration and from personal experience is guilt.
It's like every time I go back and meet my own catalysts again, guilt is the common denominator, whatever emotion it's stacked on.
And I want to touch on this, too. Not only is it guilt, there's a part of me that I know gets a payoff that wants it in a way.
And so if I had complete, autonomous free will, I would obviously choose to pause.
But some part of me is still choosing the negative.
You got it.
Well, could you unpack?
Like, it's our first, you know, pass to choose suffering is ludicrous.
But if you talk about actual me, what why is it that we choose guilt and suffering?
Well, many ways we could go about this one.
You know, since we've been really like on the vein of polarity, we can get through that lens, too, in that what the ego is, is like the negative polarity of consciousness embodied in your mind.
You know, the metaphysical principles of the negative polarity happening through your mind.
So there's no ego in that sense of an entity that's actually living in your skull and making you do bad things.
You know, the ancient world term for that was the devil.
And the angel is the light side of you. But the devil is the externalized ego, right?
It's the projection of our ego, this horned hoofed evil beast that only wants evil and selfishness and stuff.
So that's that ego represents in our mind because the ego is a product of the negative polarity aspect of planet Earth, meaning we said that everything has a polarized relationship.
So on the planet, the survival aspect of living in the wild is very much a negative polarity driven archetype on the planet in that it's always about surviving at any cost.
You know, kill anything in your path to survive. It's kill or be killed out here.
Every man for himself, every animal for themselves, like every animal and insect has that instinct.
But we don't see it as evil. We're just like, no, that's their level of consciousness.
They're in a much lower level of conscious expression than we are.
Like insects, animals can't talk like we can. They don't have language and complex societies, economies, governments.
Like the human being is a much more complex psychological animal than the rest of the animal kingdom.
It's clear. And that's because they're a lower density being, a second density, and we're a third density.
So there's all kinds of variables in consciousness that the animal kingdom has no access to.
That's why an animal can't stress about what's going to happen tomorrow.
You know, they're always just locked in the present moment. There's no real past or future for an animal or an insect.
So survival of the fittest takes place in that realm, which is driven by the negative polarity.
But then as we go to third and human being, for example, becomes self aware and understands that I exist as a separate, distinct entity,
that is the beginning of third density to have that realization.
And from there, consciousness slowly moves back into a positively polarized direction, which is what the fourth density represents.
That's through the transcending of the survival of the fittest thinking that drove us for so long in the animal kingdom and actually finding a higher level of being in the universe.
And of course, that way, as you know, Kenford is the being relationship with everything.
So it's like, hey, there's actually another way to survive in the wild.
That's not kill or be killed, but it's actually love everything and trust everything.
And from an animal kingdom perspective, it's crazy, of course.
Oh, yeah, just love and trust the tiger. Just go cuddle with the tiger.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying don't fear anything in the universe and you'll see its true function and just see it for what it is.
So you won't fear the tiger because you don't see you don't see physical death as an evil thing.
You don't see the tiger as evil. You just understand the tiger predator and it's looking for food.
It's impersonal. And so from there, you can actually understand the tiger's nature better.
And you'll stay at a very far distance from the tiger because you understand its nature.
But you still have an appreciation for it, right?
That's like that's like what love is in its most basic essence is seeing something as it truly is and accepting it as it truly is.
But from there, the more you see it as a reflection of the creator and like we use the computer analogy of every little part of that hardware has an important role to play.
And the way it all functions together in this amazing system of relationships is almost miraculous and magical.
That's what the universe is. And so the more you see the true function, something serves.
You have more gratitude for it. You have more wonder at it.
You know, like the way life uses some of your worst mistakes and experiences and somehow transforms them into this invaluable gift.
That's the nature of the universe. That's the real nature of life.
But we are just ascending in consciousness enough to even be able to realize that.
So from a spiritual perspective, the human being is like a newborn babe or something, you know, just open its eyes and it's moving around and it doesn't really understand almost anything about the reality that it's in.
But what it has going for it is innocence. And so innocence is that being in loving relationship to everything, honoring everything for the path that it plays without judgment or fear.
Again, you honor the tiger while staying far away from the tiger. That's balance, right?
That's love and that's harmony and that's balance. That if if if enlightenment means anything, really, it means reaching that state to the extent that it's embodied in you as just a natural way of being.
Doesn't even mean you don't necessarily feel charged emotions every now and then or something.
It just means no part of you resists what you feel inside. No part of you has any judgments about what you see outside.
Those are the two ingredients for enlightenment.
In the law of one, the past, there's a passage you often cite about something about simultaneously seeing or seeming desire, seeming distortions while realizing the perfect.
Here at the same time, and then it says realization of the one will take place.
And I think your teachings have evolved to reflect that because it used to be a lot of masculine looking at the truth, mind, but you incorporated a lot of loving relationship, heart centric, the disciplines of the personality, basically.
And I want to know about this.
I think the law of one provides a balanced, more all encompassing framework to the spiritual journey, whereas.
Ramana, Maharshi and Nizukadatta at their level will only not only, but will emphasize reality itself in a masculine sense.
The law of one provides you accept the self, no one thought except the self and then realize the creator.
Yeah, comment on the the contrast between the non dual path and then the path of one has has a state.
Well, you know, in the Hindu tradition, they say there's really just two yoga's or two yogic paths, which is the path of Niana yoga, which means wisdom or knowledge and the path of bhakti yoga, which is devotion.
And that would be the skill and feminine paths and any good sage would tell you that those two paths are really the same path, but they're just approaching.
They definitely lead to the same destination. Let's say that, but they're approaching that destination from two different, slightly different variations, feminine or masculine.
So you could say a mind approach or a heart approach.
So the mind approach, the masculine is to know the know the self. It's defeat all illusions with pure logic.
You can almost look at it that way. All illusions are a contradiction of reality in some way.
All illusions are a wrong understanding. And so logic and reason and rationale about the truth reality can defeat them if you can contemplate enough and see through the illusion.
So if you just spend enough time thinking about consciousness, the self illusions in your mind, like you will gain a lot of spiritual progress.
And so it's not that the non dual path, the masculine path is like not good or something. It's 50 percent of the equation.
Absolutely. So you need part of the equation, but you just also need in addition the feminine part of the equation, which is the heart approach.
And that's do you actually love God? You know, do you actually feel rapturous devotion to God in your heart?
Does the thought of God bring you joy and peace to your mind? Well, it should if you really believe all those things.
And that's when the heart really takes command.
And so. Metaphysically speaking, the heart is actually first and the mind comes second in the extension of our being.
It's let's say Sat Chit Ananda in Hinduism, which means awareness, being and love.
Awareness is the masculine being is the feminine.
And so like love represents your being, your nature, your felt sense of self.
We are love at the core. And so to feel love for self, for others, for God is the feminine path of spirituality.
And you also will run into problems if you only focus on that and never integrate any masculine wisdom.
So, again, eventually you'll be in such need of the opposite path that the opposite path and you and be your savior and whichever side you are on will finally be integrated and harmonized with its opposite.
And then you have real spiritual synergy and you can actually happiness as a normal state of being and no ability to suffer anymore from what happens to you in life.
These are like absolutely available states of consciousness for everybody if they're willing to do the inner work that's required to access those states.
A shadow is proof of the light.
You got it.
Because there is that hell that is proof of that.
And so I want to give an example for we've talked a lot about polarity.
I want to keep talking about it.
Well, let's put put this an example.
And one thing I would love to see about is addiction.
It's the perfect catalyst to utilize both of these polarities because you go into it with direct experience and looking at it for what it is.
And so I always I've always wanted to ask across that particular approach.
And would you share how it worked out for you, how it may go away?
Yeah, it's a good question about where I came across that approach.
I'm not sure I can even say, but what for those of you who don't know what he's referring to is when we talk about addiction, like substance addiction,
I get a lot of questions about how do I overcome my addiction to cigarettes, smoking, drinking?
And the so it must certainly be from A Course in Miracles then because it has to do with guilt.
The guilt we feel for being an addict is the actual problem because the part of us that feels guilty is the part of us that needs the substance.
You know, that's the part of us that gives pleasure or whatever we are associating with the drug of our choice.
It fulfills that part of us that is feeling also feeling guilty.
So if we can't remove the guilt about that addiction, we can't access the part that is addicted.
And so I'll say, well, it actually worked for me.
For me, it was cannabis because when I came, so I had my kind of spiritual awakening experience happen.
2017 and long story short, two week kind of free sample of enlightenment.
And when I came out of that two weeks and when that state started to wear off and my ego came back,
I realized that I could reaccess that state if I smoked cannabis, meaning every time I got high,
I was back in that non-dual state of oneness and it felt so blissful and so perfect.
And then I would the high would wear off and I'd come back into ego again.
So I very quickly developed a huge addiction to cannabis and couldn't go a day with didn't want to go a day without it.
And then while, you know, seeking spiritually every day to get free and transcend ego,
it becomes really clear to me that an addiction is a sign of ego's influence in your mind.
And if you can transcend your addiction to something, you're going to get a lot of spiritual bang for your buck out of that.
So I knew, OK, I need to transcend this addiction to cannabis, but how do I even begin?
And so the cycle would repeat for a long time of like quitting for a few weeks and then going back to it again,
quitting for a few months and then going back to it again.
And it wasn't until I was like, you know what, why is it wrong to smoke cannabis every day?
Why is it wrong to get high every day? Why am I making it wrong?
It's just a choice and the whole universe is about choice.
We're here to create our reality. And so this is the way I clearly want to create my reality.
So like there must be a lesson here for me. It's going to show me something.
I don't know, but I want to get high every day. So I'm going to do it.
And then it was very quick that I didn't care to get high anymore.
The funniest thing happens when we take the guilt out of the equation,
it's like we remove the taboo and the novelty and all the reasons why it kept being so interesting to us.
And you're like, no, everything's just a choice and daily cannabis use obviously has consequences as well as benefits.
And eventually those consequences just got more noticeable to me.
I wasn't guilty for wanting to smoke cannabis.
I noticed the consequences more than the benefits.
I was like, oh, you know what, it's really messing with my sleep.
It's messing with my testosterone levels, thyroid levels.
There's a lot of cognitive things that can happen with too much cannabis use.
I actually don't want to smoke cannabis for a while.
And then I would just find myself going three to six months without even an urge to do it anymore.
And so then it's like to me, success is not just running away forever, vowing to never return.
That may be some people's path if they were an extreme addict, and that's no judgment on that.
But I think real actual freedom is the ability to do anything without guilt in a totally balanced and harmonious way.
And so it's like there's nothing wrong with having a cigar or something with your friends when they come over.
There's nothing wrong with smoking cannabis, especially to drop into a meditation.
There's so many uses for plant medicines.
It's just like once we're not using them as a pleasure device, once we're not using them as an avoidance mechanism,
then their interest wanes a lot more.
And then it just becomes, oh, yeah, if the moment dictates it, I'll allow that to happen.
But I don't really have a need to do this thing anymore.
And it's because you transcended that self that was actually the addict, which was the guilty party.
Now, the guilt and the addict are one. The guilt, the addiction is the guilt and vice versa.
That's not so easy to see when you have a especially like a physical addiction, smoking or something.
It's not easy to see it first. So I'll tell people you got to just do it for a while.
It's going to feel very counterintuitive to just like let myself smoke a cigarette with no guilt.
Like everyone in your life is telling you, you should feel bad about being a cigarette addict.
You're going to die young and abandon your children and all the stuff people say.
So you feel like it's virtuous to be guilty about smoking because I should not want to do it because I have a health problem now because of it.
It's like it's all true, sort of. But you can't actually transcend it if you're making it wrong.
And here we go back to polarity, right? If you make one polarity wrong, then you are stuck and you can't evolve past that level of consciousness until you see both as equally valid mirrors of one another.
So it's really when you say, thank you, addiction, for showing me the part of myself that's attached to things, attached to outcomes, that believes my happiness is outside of me in a drug, in an experience, in a man or a woman.
Thank you for showing me that I'd so abandoned myself in the world that I was addicted to drinking and smoking and sex and whatever it was.
And when you can just thank the addiction for being the contrast you need to see what real health and happiness looks like, then you actually will transcend the addiction.
I can guarantee you every time we level up spiritually, it will demonstrate itself in our behaviors in life, meaning at a certain state of spiritual intelligence.
Addiction is not possible anymore because it's not possible to ever become so out of balance in some way when you've already reached a certain state of balance within yourself, right?
I can experientially confirm everything Aaron's been talking about.
I've been addicted to pornography for 10 years, roughly, and who this one is was the weirdest fucking thing I've ever experienced in my life.
I bet.
Well, what about that taboo? What?
But I realized, like, yes, the part of me that wants to do that is the part that wants to escape the guilt.
You got it.
Like the laws of physics have their metaphysical counterparts.
If you create a force, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
If you make something wrong, you create an equal and opposite alertness.
And so you're just basically zooming out and looking at the paradox and do that counterintuitive approach.
You integrate that addict. You realize he's not wrong.
He was just seeking escape from his pain tenaciously.
To just move from your pain is such an innocent thing to do.
And it's lovable.
Yes, exactly right, man. You absolutely get it.
Seeing your innocence is the key to healing.
That even pornography addiction is just a part of you that wants to feel accepted, fulfilled, and you're just not giving yourself that.
So, of course, you have to seek it outside of you.
And that's that's kind of an irrevocable part of our nature is that our nature is to be sublimely happy and at peace at one person,
the perfect reality all around us.
We are perfect beings in a perfect universe, in a perfect reality.
To know that is happiness.
But if you don't know that, then you're going to seek it in outside of you in the world.
You're going to want that car, that fancy house, the wealth, the fame, the fortune.
And it's all innocent.
You know, everyone is desiring God, whether they know it or not.
And if a spiritual teacher's job is to just be to let people know that what they really want is God.
And all of us are and can and should be spiritual teachers in our world to that end, right?
To just be that light in everyone's life that constantly reminds them what you're searching for is within you.
This opens up a thread that I want to really.
So, of course, the miracles talks about guiltlessness, letting go of guilt, releasing the past.
But there's also a lesson where it says I choose a future different from my past.
And it seems to me that guilt, like past, future, there's this paradox, right?
You're completely innocent, you're all this for your past.
But you do have that free will for your future because the spiritual journey is choosing your polarity.
The soul is simultaneously the author of its own story and at the same time, innocent for all the karma.
It's unknowingly acute.
And so for the stuck spiritual seeker that we're speaking to in this episode,
I feel like enthusiastic bouts of spirituality coupled with this is too much negligence, etc.
I feel like there needs to be a clear choice made, a clear.
Dedicated on wavering tenacity and dedication, polarity that which you desire.
Yes.
I struggle with that, but I'm seeing like this tenacity is in me.
Do you know why?
Because I see the capacity of which my mind hangs on to attachments, outcomes, etc.
I'm like, man, I'm really tenacious about escaping the present moment.
That's good, man.
About thinking all these thoughts living in my mind.
I have it in me innately.
It just needs to be transmuted into the positive.
So could you speak on really that free will part being committed,
dedicated while keeping the guiltlessness in the equation?
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head when you said I can see how my ego is very tenacious for its outcomes and its desires.
So I must need to be as equally tenacious for divine truth and reality.
And that's true.
That's why I always say like the path to heaven is measured in desire, not distance.
How bad do you want it is the path to heaven.
You have to want to know reality as it is more than you want anything else in this life, right?
Material wise, worldly wise, anything external to yourself.
You have to want the knowledge of who I really am.
Worse than you want anything out there.
And then you actually get it.
That's the great part is you actually do realize who you are and you can live from that place and have peace and have all the time.
But it's not so easy to realize when you've got a really powerful, tenacious ego running the show all the time.
So you have to transcend that part of your nature by, as we've been saying, not rejecting it,
but bringing it in and seeing its purpose and its function and, OK, all my shadow aspects point me to my light aspects.
That's lovable. That's good.
And then you don't make the ego self a problem anymore.
And then it transforms into a kind of or one might even say a guru who points you to everything that's still false within you, every wrong belief, every lie, every doubt.
The ego will show you all those things because ego represents those.
It will all eventually come into the light to be seen by awareness and integrated and accepted and healed.
So, I mean, if we were to say that shadow work could happen on the masculine end, that's what we would call it.
I guess you could call it illusion work or something like that.
But it's like the masculine equivalent of what we do in the feminine by loving our feelings.
As we talked about, we actually love our wrong beliefs as well, because we see that in contrast, we know the truth about ourselves.
So, for example, I say the first belief of the ego is the black.
I am lacking. I am insufficient.
Well, that sucks to believe and it causes a lot of suffering.
But eventually you'll realize that badness and the grief you feel from being unworthy of love and insecure.
It's actually your emotional guidance system telling you that's not true about yourself.
That belief right there is false because it makes me feel bad and I'm your being.
And so I know what's true, right?
If you perceive yourself truly, you're going to feel good because I am the self.
So what good, what feels positive is what's true.
But it's not so simple to see what the truth is pointing to because ego wants us to think that our emotions are speaking to our circumstances around us or outside of us.
And they're never speaking to what's happening outside of us.
They're only ever speaking to how we're perceiving ourselves on the inside.
So if I believe that I am not good enough, I am lacking in some way, I'll feel sad in some way.
I'll feel depressed in some way.
And so that belief is actually pointing me to its opposite, which is you are complete.
You are whole. You are one with the source.
You are not lacking anything. You are all abundant.
And so by choosing to believe that instead, and it is a choice, like you said,
your free will has to see the truth and accept it.
And then it's about practicing that truth until its negative counterpart loses influence in your mind.
Because up to this point, it's had a ton of influence because all you've ever believed is that you're not lovable and not good enough.
So now you're trying this new way of being, which is no, only what I don't give can ever be lacking because I'm the source.
The love I want is inside of me.
Well, that's a very new way of being from ego consciousness.
So you better believe it's going to take some practice to get the hang of it.
But as you get the hang of it, you start to experience its benefits.
And you're like, wow, I do feel really freaking good when I believe that I am worthy of love.
And then you start to actually want to believe you're worthy more than you want to believe that you're unworthy.
You know, that victim me part of you that felt kind of good feeling like a victim no longer feels good.
You got something way better now.
The happiness of self-empowerment is so much better than the sort of like drug like dopamine hit of victim consciousness.
So always complain. And everything is always about other people being bad.
And I'm the good person. Everyone else is bad.
That has a kind of false pleasure to it, but it's not the real pleasure that's available.
And so I always kind of see the ego like, you know, those fish that you sometimes see in like crazy underwater documentaries
where they dangle a little like light in front of it in the darkness.
And when a creature comes to the light, it like swallows them.
Have you seen that fish? So the ego is kind of like that, right?
In that it sees like before the negative polarity existed yet, there was just positively polarized beings in a perfect universe.
And so we're all just happy in the light, happy in the light.
You know, everything's perfect, but we don't know that it's perfect.
We're so innocent, right?
Only once the negative polarity was created in the universe does now there is actually a good reason to seek the light.
Whereas before there was only the light, there's no other option.
But now when the darkness is introduced, our nature is light.
So we will always seek the light and light represents happiness, love, fulfillment, right?
So we can't not want the light. And that's the predicament we're in.
And so it's as if the ego sees all these little divine beings wanting light.
And so it creates a dark atmosphere and then shines one little light and says, come here, I got some light for you.
And then when the the to take the light that it wants, ego swallows them.
That would be like a drug addiction or something, any attachment to any outcome.
It's the it's the ego promising you what you think you want, which is to be happy.
It's saying, I got some happiness. It's right on the other end of this meth pipe or something.
And so people get into drugs because they believe the drug will give them some happiness, right?
They're at such a sad, broken place in their life that a drug seems like a kind of savior to them.
They're suffering so much they'd rather have a drug problem, but it be happy than to not have a drug problem and not be happy.
We want happiness more than anything. So everything is a drug in a way.
Any attachment, anything you can be attached to, even the approval of others is a kind of.
And that's the way the ego promises us some light.
But then as soon as we attain that light, that false pleasure, it wanes off immediately.
And we actually strengthen the ego, right, when we give into it.
So at some point we learn from this vicious cycle that every time I give in to the kind of pleasure ego wants me to have,
it always compounds my suffering even more.
And what actually alleviates my suffering is doing the exact opposite of the ego in the ego's thought system,
which is to love other people, to serve other people, to tell the truth, to do the right thing, to have integrity, to be kind, to live righteously.
That actually makes me feel good.
What else can teach you that but life, right?
What else could really teach you that other than life?
You have to go be the drug addict. You have to go be the abuser or the abused or whatever you were, because that was your contrast, right?
And so now just use your contrast to seek the light.
When he's talking about this, I can experientially recall my spiritual awakening.
I saw a video of Mind Science 12, the new self-love.
I had judged my whole life. I didn't know. And I had no counterpart.
I had judged people, you know, engaged in gossip, etc.
And that happened. My awakening happened.
And man, it was a tangible experience of judgment just collapsing.
I don't know how else to describe it, but in my experience, the notion of just cease to make sense, like saying two plus two is five.
It became like the same notion came up to you that judge people became kind of ludicrous.
And I realized I have people I have discussions with people about guilt a lot because I've experienced the guilt is the false pleasure, like you said.
Found is they're going to they usually say, aren't you isn't are you out to turn into a psychopath if you give up guilt?
And I tell them, oh, no, compassion is where it's at to be compassionate about everyone for everything.
That is the more all inclusive virtue. And you are anything but a psychopath.
You're extremely denied, actually.
And so that was what you were talking about. The real payoff lies in the positive.
And so I want to I want to wrap this up with telling you that leading up to this podcast has been a huge catalyst, obviously chasing your dreams,
putting stuff out on the Internet, talking to your beloved teacher of three years, stepping into this new self.
And I know that there are people listening to this are in a similar spot.
They're in their nine to five doing something that they don't love, but they know in their hearts there's something more.
I would like you to give these people a message.
If this universe is the hero's journey for everybody, could you give everyone in the context of Earth where it's at right now,
you know, the climax, could you call them forward to their new self?
I'll give it a shot. Well, so I would I would start with answering your question by going back to what you said about not rejecting any part of you.
But the question of will guilt make you into a psychopath if you don't accept your guilt and let yourself feel guilty,
will you just not become a psychopath?
And the answer is that psychopaths exist because they've felt so much guilt for so long that now they're just doing whatever they best can to avoid that guilt.
They're actually leaning into it to such an extent that they're becoming negatively polarized.
That's no differently than for me, for example, growing up as a Christian, I'm living proof that if you try to force and everybody knows somebody who's left,
you know, the Christianity these days, it's because if you try to force somebody to believe something for so long,
either they're going to become like I was for a long time, which is a good little church boy who's a hook line and sinker Christian,
because I'm being told this is the way I'm supposed to be for happiness.
And so I'm going to do it all the way. And it was only not till I was 18 to 23 did I start to question of,
is this really a path to happiness? Because like I've been crushing it my whole life and I'm super unhappy.
That was my wake up to there's a higher way. And so I kind of rejected my religion for a while.
Well, what happens to most pastors kids, unlike me, is that they rejected a lot sooner, a lot younger,
and they become what we would call hellions in the church where they become such rebels.
They just always want to fight against authority. There's like a what's not a misnomer, but a classic example
of a pastor's kid is a kid who's unruly, misbehaves, super disobedient, done drugs, like the worst problem child you can imagine.
That's who most pastors kids are, because they grow up with this in this pressure cooker of an environment
where their parents are like, you better behave and you better be perfect because we're the pastors.
And so you can't be caught misbehaving. And they're held to this ridiculously, unbelievably high standard.
And for a kid, it's way too much. And so they just they can't accept how bad they feel inside.
And so they just rebel against all of it. I'm going to do everything you don't want me to do.
I reject Jesus. I'm a drug addict now. And I just got pregnant.
You know, that's a lot of pastors kids. And so that's because when the same thing will happen, we do that to ourselves.
Meaning, if I don't accept at some point through compassion, I will suppress it so much that I only have the option to be a psychopath,
you know, to lean into the darkness and just let it consume you finally, because at least that's better than resisting it anymore.
That's a psychopath. So healing comes from accepting our guilt.
And yet don't mean, yeah, yeah, just keep on abusing people without feeling bad about it.
No, we're saying actually have compassion for the abuser in you.
Stop hating that part of you and judging it and calling it evil and just be like, I'm so sorry, sweetheart, that you can't stop abusing people.
I know it sucks. I'll be here with you as long as you want to abuse people.
You know, like give that part of yourself love. And there's the only what I don't give can ever be lacking.
You give what you are lacking, right? You give the love you wanted so bad and then you watch your behavior changes very quickly.
You actually the right thing more. As soon as we have compassion on ourself, we become much more compassionate as a human being.
So you're right. Compassion is the only possible answer to guilt.
Anything else amplifies it. And that is where I would tie that into your last question here about how can we most effectively meet this world we're living in?
We're living in such challenging times, polarizing times, because our planet is going through a very important shift in its evolutionary history.
And so you're going to see a lot of upheaval and turmoil. And so in any environment of insanity, the most helpful thing anyone can do is be sane, be whole, be loving now in this insane environment.
And I know that's not easier said than done, but practice it right. Use the world as a spiritual catalyst to practice, not griping and complaining about every next news headline about what the bankers are doing or whatever.
Just stop letting the world irritate you so much and just send it love and forgiveness and understand that things are dark right now because there's a lot of dark people suffering there.
And so God bless them. And I actually want to be a loving participant in this equation now.
That's how you save yourself and how you contribute to saving the world. If every one of us could have that attitude, what would our world look like tomorrow?
Self-evident, right? It'd be a pretty awesome world to live in with a bunch of open-hearted, loving people who forgive everyone.
We would have total peace, absolutely no conflict, and total unity and harmony in everything we do.
So yeah, we just have to start creating that planet for ourselves. And that begins with creating yourself as that person now.
And in chemistry, an anion is a negatively charged particle. And so you want the positive proton to balance the anion.
What do you mean in a life with a remote is we think that it's like adding an electron to a cation, thinking that that's going to balance it out and try looking into your own direct experience.
Has judgment ever brought you peace? Someone online, oh, man, the serenity.
Yeah. So what I'll add to this is if the world is a collective energy and you are a part of that energy, if that energy is one, your change changes the world.
We change the world one person at a time. And your revolution is our revolution.
And so this podcast, this conversation, I hope calls you forward into your highest self to base those fears, really integrate them, see the innocence of them, the lights.
And we really need this right now. The new earth comes through the universe, seeing our dedication to it, our choice for it.
And so, Aaron, if you have any last words before we wrap up, just thank you, man, for having me on your podcast.
And thanks for asking awesome questions and being willing to go super deep into this stuff with me.
It's been it's been a real pleasure, man. It's been this has been a keystone moment for me.
You know, experience proves your identity that you can I can have a podcast with, et cetera, if you are going to compare yourself.
Fill in the blank. Yeah.
Mm hmm. And so I hope this episode inspired the listener, if you're in this spot and get out there and be that light, that lighthouse for everybody else.
And so I thank you, Aaron, for being on.
And I will see you guys back next time on the Lighthouse Podcast. Cheers. Cheers.