Episode 2: Faith Beyond Belief

✨ Episode 2: “Faith Beyond Belief”

In this vulnerable and poetic episode, host Jacob confronts the pressure and overthinking that followed the launch of Episode 1. He reflects on the fine line between belief and faith—revealing why they are not the same—and champions an “eyes-wide-open” kind of faith built on trust instead of certainty.

Jacob also speaks candidly about hitting a wall of burnout and experiencing moments of despair, even fleeting thoughts of not existing. Through these struggles, he discovers a path to inner peace by letting go of control and finding stillness amid life’s chaos.

Drawing on mystical insights and Taoist wisdom, he explores the paradox of opposites coexisting in our journey. He illustrates how fear can sit alongside faith, and how moments of confusion can lead to greater clarity—echoing the yin-yang harmony of life’s highs and lows.

The episode’s tone is sincere and inviting, making deep spiritual reflections accessible to open-minded seekers, skeptics, and anyone looking for meaning beyond rigid beliefs. It's a heartfelt exploration of presence, trust, and the beauty of embracing the unknown.

⚠️ Content warning: brief reference to suicidal ideation.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
All right.
Episode two, y'all, of theStanding Nowhere podcast.
I'm your host, Jacob Buehler.

(00:24):
I'm happy to be back with you.
I'm still learning how to dothis.
Like I said in episode one, Idon't know what I'm doing.
Man, I don't know what I'mdoing.
After the first episodelaunched, I was so excited.
I've been procrastinating doingthis for, gosh, forever.
And it's crazy when it finallyhappened.

(00:44):
You know, it was just like on awhim.
It was spontaneous.
I had been wanting to release itforever, but I just kept getting
so choked up with overthinking.
And I'm still struggling withthat, to be honest with you
guys.
I have overthink brain.
Most people listening canprobably relate to that.
It's a matter of stayinggrounded because after it came

(01:05):
out, I felt great.
Then the next day, I was like,now what?
I'm still here.
I'm still the same me.
Now what?
Well, I got to come up withsomething for episode two,
obviously.
That's what I've been doing thelast week.
I want to release episodes on aweekly basis.

(01:26):
I'm aiming no longer than twoweeks for you guys, but I am
aiming somewhere between twoweeks and ideally one week.
However, I don't want to releasecontent just to release content.
I don't want to be one of thoseshills that's like, you know,
like and share this with yourfriends, but please do.
And I want to be real.

(01:49):
Gosh darn it.
I want to talk about things thatyou guys...
want to hear and things that Iwant to share.
The reason I'm doing thispodcast, like I said in episode
one, I reached a point in mylife where the idea of not
existing was more appealing thanexisting.
And that's a sad state of mindto be in.

(02:09):
I'm sure some of you listeningcan relate.
Life is tough.
It can be tough.
And when we have a paradigmshift inside, it can change
everything.
And that's what happened withme.
And I just want to share it.
Honestly, if I can get oneperson to reach out to me and
say, wow, you really helped me.
I would feel complete.
I could stop recording and endthe podcast right then and

(02:31):
there, just one person.
So please, somebody message meso I can stop doing this.
No, I want to help as manypeople as possible, of course.
So what happened with me, for meto go to a place where I was
kind of daydreaming a little bitabout a car taking me out to
relieve my stress to the pointwhere I'm still under just as
much stress, if not more now,and yet I have a space inside of

(02:54):
me and more happiness and joy,elation, and I want to share it
with people, and I'm findingtime to carve out time to do a
podcast about it and share itwith people.
What happened?
How does somebody get to that?
And I was raised in a standardChristian household, pretty
vanilla mainstream understandingof Christianity.

(03:18):
And it got me through a lot ofthings in life.
But at a certain point, myunderstanding and my conceptual
understanding of what I thoughtwas God, it was not doing it for
me.
And there's a lot of peoplenowadays who are leaving the
faith.
Church attendance seems to bedown, and I'm not poking fun at

(03:39):
Christians or Christianity.
I wanted to dive into theconcept of this episode because
I spent the week, this lastweek, thinking about what I was
going to talk about, and I endedup originally thinking I was
going to talk aboutdecision-making.
How do we make decisions?
Where do decisions come from?
That started leading into freewill, and then the concept of

(04:01):
grace, and And I liked it, but Istarted making an outline that
was like almost three pages.
And I'm like, there's no way Ican read on this.
I did a little practicerecording and it sounded so
scripted and robotic.
And yet I still have the nerve,the nervousness and the
heebie-jeebies inside of meright now.
I've actually...
Truth be told, I startedrecording this episode a little

(04:23):
while ago and I didn't like it,so I started over and that's
what this is.
So I'm being bare with you guys.
I'm nervous about this.
I'm worried about saying thewrong thing or offending
somebody.
But at the same time, I want toshare a perspective with you
that I find incrediblyrefreshing and that you might as
well.
I am not here to sell youanything or convert you to

(04:44):
anything or...
anything like that, honestly.
I just want to share myperspective because it's brought
me a lot of joy in my life.
It's a perspective shared bymany, many people in the world,
especially in the East.
It does not nullify at all whatperspective you may have right
now.
If anything, it may strengthenit.

(05:05):
But this is really...
going to get to the heart andmeat and potatoes of this
episode because we all haveconcepts about the origins of
the universe, of ourselves, ofour lives, and those concepts
can feel real.
Like I mentioned in the firstepisode, there's the word clap

(05:28):
and then there's the And they'retwo completely different things.
The word clap is a vibrationthrough the air that your ears
hear and then your braindeciphers and it points to
something in reality.
Words, symbols, letters, thingslike that.
These are concepts that we takefor real and we confuse the

(05:52):
forest for the trees.
We confuse the menu for thedinner.
I have a lot of Christianfriends who love the smell of
their own Bible and the look ofit, and look how many highlights
I've got in mine, and earmarkedcorners I've got in mine.
It's almost like, I guess it isidolatry in a way.

(06:15):
You're idolizing Scripture.
And I'm going to be talkingabout all the various traditions
on this podcast, not justChristianity, not just Judaism,
but also Islam, and especiallythe mystics like the Sufis, the
Christian mystics, Hinduism,Advaita Vedanta, Taoism.

(06:38):
I'm more interested in thecommon themes that they all
share because one of the reasonsthat people in our time today
throw the baby out with thebathwater is because they look
at it from a simple, I'mpainting with a broad brush
here, I'm not trying to say thisis what you think or what people
think, but generally speaking,and I hope you guys can agree

(06:59):
with me, there are some peopleturned off by the notion of
spirituality or religion oranything of that nature
non-material, essentially, orwhat we classify as material,
because there's so many of them,and they all say what we think
as different things, which oneis right, which one is wrong, or

(07:19):
it's just a coping mechanism todeal with the facts of life,
that everything is, if youfollow the nihilist concept of
the universe, that everything israndom and stupid and dumb, and
that your life here is for aflash, and then you're gone
forever.
Even though you came out of thatvoid, you know, we're afraid to

(07:40):
go back to it.
And we're going to talk aboutthat.
We're going to talk about that.
Let's talk about that.
Because I mentioned in the firstepisode, I got feedback from
friends and family that when Imentioned...
I think it was towards the end,I said, if you believe that God
is a man with a beard and achair in the sky, this podcast
is for you.

(08:00):
And I said, if you're a nihilistthat thinks the universe is
random billiard balls or energybumping into each other and that
it's all pointless, a tale toldby an idiot full of sound and
fury signifying nothing, toquote Shakespeare, I think that
was Macbeth, whatever yourconcept is, that's fine, because
I want to talk to you.
Because I'm not an apologist forany particular belief and that's

(08:26):
what I want this episode to beabout, in fact, is the title of
this podcast.
The title is Standing Nowhere.
standing nowhere.
That's a metaphor for concepts,because if you're standing on a
concept, it's got you by theballs.
And that concept is going todrag you through the mud, and
you're going to have to lookthrough everything through that

(08:48):
concept.
Have you ever heard apologeticsin various faiths try to explain
things?
I've heard people say theweirdest things.
There was like a a water bubblearound the world, and then God
popped it, and that's why wedon't live 900 years anymore.
I've heard just all kinds ofthings, even the most prevalent

(09:10):
concept of atonement, that wewere all born sinners, we don't
deserve love, we don't deserveGod.
But, oh, thankfully, somebodycame to reconcile, if you will.
When people hear that in 2025,they're like, look, I didn't ask
to be born.
I didn't choose to be born.

(09:31):
I didn't decide to be born.
That was part of the decisionsepisode that I was going to
mention.
We don't make a lot of thedecisions we think we do.
In fact, we make none of them,but that's another story.
Well, I'll talk about that inthis episode.
But To say to someone, if youbelieve this, you'll get X.

(09:52):
If you believe the same thing Ido, then you will go to a place
of eternal bliss and joy foreverand ever and ever.
But you've got to make thatdecision in the short lifespan
you have.
What's the average lifespan?
72 years for somebody in theU.S.?

UNKNOWN (00:00):
?

SPEAKER_00 (10:08):
So in 72 years, you've got to decide, do I
believe in this or not?
And if I do, I get eternity.
So maybe the first millionyears, I'll play volleyball.
The next million years, I'll gosnowboarding.
The next billion years, I'll,you know, the concept itself is
a little weird, right?
It's really not biblical.

(10:28):
If you look in the Bible, youdon't really see much speaking,
you know, much on the topic ofheaven or hell.
And I'm going to do a wholeepisode on heaven and hell.
And that's another thing.
If I'm supposed to decide tobelieve in something, can I
really say that I did it in anunbiased manner with a gun to my
head saying, believe this orelse you're going to go down

(10:50):
there to this bad place of fireand burn forever?
Or modern apologists will say,well...
It's not quite literally fire.
It's more like annihilation orseparation.
There's all kinds of apologistsabout everything.
And it's all because we holdthese concepts and we cling to
them.
We stand on them and say, thisis right.

(11:11):
And let me explain why, becauseI know it sounds crazy, but
da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
And then people are like, youknow what?
I'm sorry, but no.
I don't believe.
And this podcast is not justabout Christianity.
I don't know if you guys haveever seen Prometheus.
In the beginning, there arethese two scientists, and it's a

(11:36):
Ridley Scott film.
It's a prequel to the Alienfranchise.
Some love it, some hate it.
I personally absolutely lovedit.
I thought it was a fantasticfilm.
There's a lot of simplemistakes.
It is a horror movie.
Very intense.
But in the beginning...
these two scientists are likestudying various cultures
throughout the millenniaseparated by thousands of miles

(11:59):
and thousands of years and theyall seem to have this same exact
star pattern and the samedrawing in a cave of like a
large being pointing to the starpattern and it's the same star
pattern.
So they use that star patternand they found the constellation
in the stars and they go on aspaceship adventure to see what
it is.
Are these our creators?

(12:20):
And I bring that up as areference to this podcast
because that's kind of what I'vedone the last three years.
I want to call myself like ahalf-baked scholar kind of.
I've got no formal education,but they say self-education is
the best education becauseyou're doing it out of genuine
interest.
And again, I found myself in thelowest point of my life where
the idea of not wanting to existseemed more appealing than

(12:44):
existing.
Again, I wasn't suicidal.
I have three wonderful childrenand a wife, and I didn't want to
leave this world, but thethought popped in my head,
That's what sparked this wholejourney.
When you reach your lowestpoint, there's nowhere else to
go but up.
When you've sunk to the bottomof the pool, you can use that
bottom as a as a springboard topush off of it.
And a lot of this information, Idon't know how it even came to

(13:06):
me.
Maybe I just became receptive toit.
I don't know.
Or maybe it was just fate orlucky coincidence or chance.
I don't know.
But I started just, like I saidin the first episode, I was kind
of like lit on fire withinspiration, like somebody
doused me in gasoline and Ican't get enough of it.
But again, we have to balancelearning these things which are

(13:30):
knowledge with wisdom and actingand embodying them.
So to go back to that referencewith the Prometheus cave and the
scientists, I've been learningabout all the various spiritual
traditions throughout history.
Taoism, you know, by Lao Tzu,the I Ching, Hinduism, Buddhism,

(13:53):
and the various traditionsthere, like the Theravada, the
Mahayana, the Vajrayana, and inChristianity, like Judaism,
which branched off eventuallyinto Christianity and Islam, and
the various mystic versions ofit.
Like in Judaism, you have theKabbalah.
In Christian mysticism, you havegreat thinkers like Meister

(14:15):
Eckhart St.
John of the Cross, Teresa ofAvila, or more recent times like
Thomas Merton, wonderfulthinkers that are not talked
about or even people are awareof in the public eye outside of
the mainstream thinkers.
And in Islam, they have thewonderful Sufi tradition and

(14:36):
poets like Rumi.
I mean, just wonderful stuffthat I had never, ever heard of.
I had never been aware of.
And Learning about all this, Istarted to notice there was
common threads and they weren'tjust similar.
They were saying the exact samething in different language.

(14:57):
These were people from differenttime periods that spoke
different languages likeSanskrit or Pali or Hindi and I
apologize if I'm...
I'm mispronouncing some ofthese, you know, but the Arabic
languages or, you know, inEnglish thinkers, you know.
So that was the motivation forme to start the podcast, you

(15:19):
know, the transformation insideof me, embodying these practices
because spirituality nowadayshas kind of been reduced to like
a weekly car wash where you goto a place for a week, you feel
better about yourself.
Like I went, it's over, let'sget back to life.
It's almost like this thingthat...
is something you don't want todo, but you know it's good for

(15:41):
you type thing instead ofsomething that you're excited
about and on fire about.
And it doesn't mean that youhave to like change your life or
drastically alter things or dropthings or become a monk or an
ascetic.
It's something that will changeyou just where you are.

(16:02):
Because the title of thispodcast, Standing Nowhere, is
metaphorical.
It is referring to standing on aconcept.
So I'm saying with the titleStanding Nowhere, don't stand on
any concept.
Don't lean on any concept.
I don't know what I'm going tocall this episode, but
essentially the idea behind itis that you don't want to lean

(16:29):
on a fixed idea.
of what we call this mystery oflife.
There are definitely things thatpoint to it.
Like when I say clap, that wordpoints to, like we talked about
in episode one.
But clap is not in the same waythat the Bible is the menu and

(16:50):
the dinner is the spiritualfruits that you experience in
day-to-day life.
For example, Jesus, when theyasked him, how will they know we
are your disciples?
Some of you listening may knowthe answer.
He said, they will know you aremy disciples by the love that
you have for one another.
He didn't say they'll knowyou're my disciple by the bumper

(17:10):
sticker you have.
How many times do you see Jesusbumper stickers?
Like you need Jesus.
Do you follow Jesus thisclosely?
It's like an identity.
There's that movie with, I thinkit's Lindsay Lohan.
It's called Saved or Faith.
I forget the name of it, butit's like these younger girls
who all identify as Christianand they're trying to be holier

(17:32):
than thou.
We're all familiar with thatconcept, holier than thou.
And that's when these spiritualtruths or knowledge become
concepts that we lean on, thatwe identify with.
I'm a Christian, and everyonethat doesn't believe what I
believe is on the out group,because the in group creates the
out group.
So we have this situation wherechurch attendance is on the

(17:54):
decline.
And Jesus, if you want to quotehim again from the Bible, said,
you will know the quality of thetree by the fruit it produces.
I'm paraphrasing, but he said,look at the results.
What is the result of what youare doing or believing?
Well, we can see that it's onthe decline.
And I don't say that to point atthe modern interpretations of

(18:20):
what Jesus said in a negativeway at all.
In fact, Everything that I'velearned over these last three
years has strengthened my faith.
But there's a difference betweenfaith and belief.
And this is where a lot of timesthe baby gets thrown out with
the bathwater, if I can use thatreference again.
Because when you tell peoplethat God is a man and Jesus is

(18:49):
his only son, And you, well, youdon't deserve his love, but
luckily you're going to get it.
You're, to quote Paul, adopted.
We are children of God byadoption.
It has this exclusive tone toit, whereas I believe...

(19:13):
that Jesus, when he came, wastrying to say that we are all
sharing in this divine nature,an inclusive message.
That's the good news.
That's what gospel means.
So people that hold thisnihilist theory that everything
is meaningless and random,they're leaning on a concept as
well.
That's not reality.
That's a concept that you havein your mind about the way

(19:34):
things are, that things arerandom, and that we somehow
magically popped out of thatrandomness, and here we are.
However, that is not the faultof any individual or the result
of science, I believe theChristian quote-unquote church

(19:56):
throughout the millennia and thecenturies is most responsible
for this.
Because look at the dark historyof the church that really
grabbed these concepts and ranwith them and solidified them
and made them law.
I mean, these are people thatwould tie you to a stake and
burn you alive in front ofpeople for your own good, in the

(20:19):
attitude of, you know, this ishard for us to watch.
It's going to hurt us more thanit hurts you.
It's for your own good.
And I'm not saying churchesobviously think that way now,
obviously.
Last I checked, I haven't seenany burnings, but there are
people who do things, crazythings, extreme things, in the
name of these concepts that theyhold.

UNKNOWN (20:42):
And

SPEAKER_00 (20:42):
So standing nowhere, how do we let go of concepts?
Because you'll always see thistheme of letting go.
Let go.
Be still.
Stop striving across all thetraditions.
In the tradition of Taoism,which comes from the Chinese, it

(21:03):
is emphasizes Lao Tzu.
He is the one that wrote a bookcalled the Tao Te Ching, which
roughly translates as the bookof the way.
The Tao means the way, the waythings are like the water
course.
If you watch water, flow down amountain, it has a flow to it, a
path, a path of leastresistance.

(21:25):
And they have this conceptcalled wu-wei, which is not
forcing, not striving.
And that's the same concept inChristianity or in Judaism,
where it says, be still and knowthat I'm God.
Be still was a translation inthe 1600s from the King James
Version, but that is equallyunderstood in modern language

(21:46):
today as cease striving, to letgo.
The concept is always to let go.
And even if you ask, even withthe mainstream version of
Christianity as they understandit conceptually today, the
emphasis is always resting intosalvation.
Jesus says, my burden is light,my yoke is easy.

(22:07):
You don't have to do anything toto earn it.
You can't do anything.
Part of the reason I wanted todo this second episode on
decisions is to get you to lookat the choices that you make in
your life and not look at themin a review aspect, but to look

(22:28):
closely at the mechanicalprocess of making a choice.
For example, some of the thingsI've said there will be
responses that you have in yourbrain automatically that pop up
that you didn't choose.
They just appeared.
And neuroscience, the more theystudy the brain, they find that

(22:49):
decisions start happening beforewe actually make the choice in
the mind and that what we thinkof as our choice is really a
story that the brain tells us asto why we chose it and to relate
to that choice.
To quote The Matrix, if yourecall in the second Matrix
film, if you guys have seen theMatrix trilogy, there's a

(23:11):
character in that trilogy calledthe Oracle, and she knows
everything, everything possible,down to the smallest detail,
what you're going to do next,what you're going to think, what
you're going to say.
So she offers Neo, the maincharacter, the protagonist,
played by Keanu Reeves, sheoffers him some candy.
And he says, do you know if I'malready going to take it?

(23:32):
And she says...
Well, I wouldn't be much of anoracle if I didn't.
And then he says, well, then howcan I make a choice?
And she says, and this is thekey and the takeaway, You didn't
come here to make the choice,Neo.
You've already made it.
You're here to understand whyyou've made it.
And that describes perfectlywhat's happening in your mind

(23:55):
when you think you're making achoice.
And I know this is knocking atthe door of free will.
And we're going to get to that.
Because the concept of free willis an important one.
If you're a fatalist, youbelieve everything is
predetermined and that you haveno free will.
However, Let's put a pin in thatfor now, because we're going to
come back to that.
I'm not suggesting there isfatalism at all, actually.

(24:20):
So back to the idea of beliefversus faith, okay?
Now, beliefs are more like theclinging or attachment to an
idea that you have aboutsomething.
So if you if you deep downbelieve in your mind that the
universe is random and you're aproduct of that randomness,

(24:40):
that's a belief.
For example, let's shake thatconcept up a little bit.
Let's loosen that soil.
For you to say that theuniverse, or believe that the
universe is dumb and random, Andreally believe that because
there's people listening to meright now that might think that.
Whether you think you're aChristian or not, that could be

(25:01):
in the back of your mind.
There could be that fear or thatcould be a prominent belief.
You might identify as somebodywho believes that and that you
say, I'm okay with it.
That's just reality.
I'm facing reality.
I'm not afraid to admit it.
And all these people thatbelieve in God or in afterlife,
they're not ready to face that,but I am.
And you can hear the hubris backin the 2000 thousands.

(25:24):
There was a lot of snarky peopleonline, oh, you believe in God,
you know, and it was verydisrespectful to everyone, you
know, in both ways.
Christians were equallyoppressive to people online that
didn't believe in God.
But I don't want to getsidetracked with that.
But the point is, let's say youhave the concept in your mind of
nihilism, that everything israndom, and you came out of that

(25:49):
randomness.
Now, let's look at that.
For that belief to hold weightin your mind, you have to
believe that you are indeedseparate from the universe, that
there's the universe and there'syou.
You're intelligent, the universeis dumb, and somehow you came
out of it.

(26:11):
But if you look at that closely,that doesn't make any sense
whatsoever because you are arethe universe.
You are.
Your body is the material world.
Your mind is the universeexpressing itself in the form
that is you.

(26:32):
So all the thoughts and feelingsthat you have are as natural as
the sun shining on a floweropening its petals, as a bee
collecting honey, or as randomasteroids in space.
From your limited perspective,when you look out at the
universe, it might look randombecause you are so small in this
form.

(26:53):
At least you think you aresmall.
But let's look at another thing.
Let's look at an ocean.
When an ocean has waves thatcome to the shore, do you look
at the wave and say that wave isthe wave and the ocean is the
ocean and they're two separatethings?
Of course not.

(27:13):
You look at the wave and you saythe ocean is waving.
That's what the ocean does.
But in that same way, you areare what the universe is doing.
You are the universe waving.
You are the universe looking atitself.
And that is as scientific andobjective as you can possibly

(27:34):
be.
Unless you wanna tell me thatyou're not material matter and
the universe is material matterand you're separate from it, you
can make that case.
But right now, we're looking atreality.
You are made of material.
You feel.
You feel love, you feel hate,you feel...
joy and elation, you feelsadness, and all of those

(27:55):
feelings are as valid asanything else in this world.
Hurricanes, rocks, ants, thesun.
When the Big Bang happened, yourpotentiality was already there.
So what can we learn about theuniverse?
So we look at it always in onedirection.
The Big Bang exploded, it's abunch of randomness, and out of

(28:18):
the randomness, out of infinite,not infinite, but out of immense
possibility, you came out of it.
But see, right there, we'reseparating it again.
We're saying, I am me, and Icame out of it.
But in the same way, to invokeAlan Watts here, he points out
an apple tree produces apples.

(28:41):
in the same way a universeproduces people.
You can't separate the two.
Your potentiality was alwaysthere from the beginning.
So when you describe yourselfand your own feelings, you are
describing the universe.
So it is objectively incorrectto say that the universe is a

(29:01):
cold, unfeeling, random, stupidplace because you are none of
those things.
You are intelligent.
You have intelligence.
You have emotion and feeling.
There's something in philosophy,I think it's in philosophy,

(29:21):
called the...
the pathetic fallacy, which iswhere we sort of impose our
anthropomorphous,anthropological views onto
things.
Like when you see the moon andit makes you feel kind of warm,
like it's looking back at you,we say you're projecting human

(29:41):
feelings onto something that'snon-human.
Or when you look at, or whenyou, let's say you hear the wind
and it has a creepy soundlike...
And then you say, oh, it's justthe wind.
The pathetic fallacy says, well,you're projecting human feeling
onto something.

(30:02):
But the pathetic fallacy itselfis a fallacy because that
pathetic fallacy depends on theillusory separation of you from
the universe.
You are the universe looking atitself, right?
Do you see how we're already,like this, I hope for a lot of
people will loosen the soil alittle bit if you are firmly

(30:25):
entrenched in this random ideaof just pure randomness.
It's not.
On the flip side, it's notcompletely preordained either.
See, this is where we get intothe play of opposites and the
play of polarity.
See, if you think of Everythingin existence, your mind will

(30:49):
always take a knife and cut itin half because that's how the
brain and the mind view things,this from that.
So if I say up, you'll alwayshave that contrast of down.
We view everything fromcontrast, black and white, hard
and soft, long and short.
These are two abstractions thatare pointing to one thing.

(31:17):
For example, if you remove up,down will also disappear with
it.
You cannot have up without down.
You cannot have hard withoutsoft.
Now, if you're thinking toyourself, well, Jake, I can
visualize in my head hard orpicture it in my head hardness,

(31:40):
and then I can pretend to getrid of soft.
No, you can't.
Have you ever seen those braingames where they'll show you a
picture and it'll say, look atthese two shades of gray.
Actually, they're the sameshade.
And then you're kind of likelooking really hard at it.
I'll see if I can put a link inthe description below.
if you guys don't know what I'mtalking about.

(32:01):
But the brain, it sees thingsdifferently than they actually
are.
And if you guys know what I'mtalking about, there's plenty of
them where you can play trickswith the mind.
And it's really mind bendingbecause you're looking at these
two shades of gray right next toeach other and they look
completely different to youreyes and your mind.

(32:23):
But they'll kind of show thesecret behind it and they'll
show you a solid color gray nextto it.
They try to bend theperspective.
It's really hard to describe inwords.
You have to see it.
So I'll put the link in thedescription.
But it shows you is that whatthe mind is thinking it's seeing
is not reality.

(32:44):
So when I say up is contrastedfrom down, what I'm really
saying is up and down areactually the same thing.
They're two poles of the same...
They're two ends of the samepole.
So let's look at anotherexample, left and right.
Left seems different from right,but you can't know what left is

(33:05):
without its contrast right.
Some of the bigger things thatwill...
make you go, whoa, is theconcept of being alive and being
dead.
You see, you cannot know whataliveness is unless you have the
contrast of death, or morespecifically, being and

(33:28):
non-being.
If you read the Tao Te Ching,the Book of the Way from Lao
Tzu, And this book is not somedoctrinal book of wisdom.
It's a kitchen table wisdom.
It's very simple.
It's not meant to be a verytight thing.
It gets you to play with theideas that you've had in your

(33:49):
head.
It's like, hey, you've alwaysthought this, but look how silly
it is to think that.
So in that same vein, high andlow, as it says in that book,
create each other, being andnon-being create each other.
Really try to follow with me onthis.
If you cannot have being withoutnon-being and they are one and

(34:11):
the same, why are we so worriedabout death?
After all, where were you beforeyou were born?
And if you say I was nowhere,And then I'm suddenly somewhere.
Could you have been born if youhad not been nowhere first?

(34:32):
You can't be born unless youwere not alive yet.
You see what I'm saying?
It may be tough to reallydescribe this and really grasp
this, but if you really take amoment to dive into these
opposites and you'll see thatthey're not opposites, but
they're one and the same thing.

(34:53):
Another way to visualize it,Alan Watts gives a good example
of this when he says, picture astick.
Now, in your mind, you canabstract one end of a stick and
another end of the stick.
But reality is there is just thestick.
That's it.
There are no ends.
They're not two separate endsthat happen to meet in the
middle at the occasion of astick.

(35:14):
There is just the stick.
But the mind is able to abstractthese two apparently separate
things that are not separate atall.
Take this a step further.
The idea of yourself and what isnot yourself.
Self and other are both equallyillusory.
They are in fact one thing.

(35:36):
So what this means on afundamental level is that you
are not separate from everythingelse that is.
You can abstract an artificialoutline around your skin and say
everything inside my skin is meand everything outside my skin
is not me.
And eventually when I die, Iwill disappear and I will never

(35:57):
be again.
Complete fabrication of themind.
Completely.
And it's this fear that you willsuddenly not exist forever, that
non-existence will triumph overexistence.
or being that drives people todo the craziest things in the
world.
There's a quote from Oppenheimerwhere he says, it's perfectly

(36:19):
obvious that the whole world isgoing to hell.
And the only way that we mightprevent it from doing so is to
not try to prevent it from doingso.
Look at all the differentcountries in the world.
They're all terrified that theworld will end from nuclear war.
So they have something calledMAD, which is Mutually Assured
Destruction.
So essentially, if a countrygets nuclear weapons, you can't

(36:40):
mess with that country becausethey can end the world if they
want to by initiating a nuclearwar.
Everyone's so afraid of it.
Consider the concept of us andthem.
These gangsters, they drew linesin the sand and said, this is
our country, that's yourcountry, but you wouldn't know
what you meant by, say, Americaunless you knew what was not

(37:03):
America.
But your brain does thisinstantaneously and without you
noticing it.
That's why there's so manypeople trying to point out that
we're all one, that we sharethis world.
Michael Jackson, we are theworld.
And you ever notice too that theidea of a separate self, that
you are separate from everyoneelse, is naturally in our own

(37:26):
instinctual wisdom frowned upon.
When I say the word selfish, dopositive things come to mind?
What about selfless, no self?
Good things come to mind, right?
And you'll notice when you areselfish and you keep more for
yourself than you need fromothers, you don't feel good.

(37:52):
That material gain doesn't feelgood.
And what did Jesus say when thatrich man asked him, I want to be
as holy as possible, tell mewhat to do.
And he told the rich man, selleverything.
everything you own and give yourmoney to the poor.
And of course, he meant keepenough for yourself to survive.
Don't put yourself in adestitute situation, but get rid

(38:12):
of everything.
And what do you feel when youhelp someone?
You get a feeling of the mostimmense...
In Buddhism, they call it anotherworldly joy because it's
not from the material world.
When you help someone in need,you get...

(38:33):
a wonderful, joyous, beyondpleasure.
It's just pure joy by helpingsomeone else because you're not
separate from that person.
That's you.
To use more specific language,when Jesus was asked in the New
Testament, what is the greatestcommandment?
He said, love the Lord your Godwith all your heart, mind, soul,

(38:55):
and strength.
And of course, Lord meansYahweh, which in Yahweh, all
Hebrew names have meaning.
Yahweh means to be, to exist, Iam.
I want to dive into that too, bythe way.
But he said the secondcommandment, which is just like
it, is equally as important isto love thy neighbor as thyself.

(39:17):
He didn't say love your neighborlike you like yourself.
Notice the language here.
He says, love your neighbor asyourself.
Ah, interesting.
Interesting choice of words.
So look at somebody else withoutthe distinction of me and you
and just help them.
And you do it for the sake ofdoing it.

(39:39):
There's another passage where hesays, Don't let your left hand
know what your right hand doeth.
Be spontaneous.
When you see someone in need,help them.
Go to patreon.com forward slashstanding nowhere and give me all
your money.
No, I'm just joking.
But seriously, if you do want tohelp me, please do because I
need help.

(40:00):
But he said that.
He said, be spontaneous.
Don't plan to help someone foryour own gain.
So where am I going with this?
Where am I going with this?
Oh my God.
Good Lord.
So if you have it in your mindthat the universe is this

(40:25):
foreign other place, you arealways going to be at odds with
it.
You are always going to look atlife as if it is pushing you
around.
Or in the reverse, you're theone fighting back and trying to
push it around.
And you don't realize that youare one in the same with your
environment.
In ecologists, they have thatword organism environment, I

(40:51):
think it is, organism hyphenenvironment.
They study, if you remember inschool, whenever you study an
organism, you always study itshabitat, right?
where it lives, because thehabitat shapes the organism just
as much as the organism shapesthe habitat or the environment.
And that's because we separatethe two in our mind.

(41:14):
See, if you go back to the bookof Genesis, a lot of people look
at Genesis and dismiss itbecause of how silly it seems,
because a lot of the newChristians today take it very
literal.
When In my opinion, Moses, hewas obviously raised in a royal
family.
He was raised as a prince.
He was from the Hebrewtradition, but raised with the

(41:36):
Egyptians.
He was a very educated man.
He was capable of beautifulpoetry and writing.
And it's very obvious thatGenesis was a poetic,
metaphorical book.
And when you look at thebeginning of creation, when he
talks about the creation story,he uses poetry and metaphor.
And this is just my opinion.
You don't have to reach out tome and say I'm wrong and it's

(41:58):
all literal, I respect you.
If you take it literal, that'sokay.
I'm just putting forth theperspective that perhaps it
wasn't.
Perhaps it was poetry.
And in the creation story, Adamor Adam, which is the word for
mankind in Hebrew, and Evebeing, I think, means the
dawning of, you know, when yousay like Christmas Eve, it's

(42:18):
like it's giving birth to.
So Eve and Adam is like the dawnof mankind, the birth of
mankind.
And the word Adam, in the firstthree books of Genesis was used
plurally as mankind.
And then in poetic fashion, Adamspecifically as a figure, Eve
specifically as a figure, andthey ate from the fruit of

(42:41):
knowledge.
Now, there are idioms throughouttime that mean certain things.
Like if you ever watch or if youmeet English people or watch
like British TV, you'll hearBob's your uncle.
Now, if I wrote, we know Bob'syour uncle, it kind of means
like, well, there it is, or Ithink that's what it means.

(43:01):
If you're British or from theUK, you can correct me on that.
But when you hear Bob's youruncle, it's like somebody is
telling you, make sure youchange your oil every 3,700
miles, and then Bob's youruncle, or something like that.
But now, if I wrote Bob's youruncle 2,000 years ago, and then
that idiom is lost to time, andthen we read it today, and we're
like, oh, Bob's your uncle.

(43:23):
Yes.
Bob is your uncle.
Of course he is.
Of course.
Well, it's the samemisunderstanding with the fruit
of knowledge of good and evil.
When we hear that today, wethink, oh, the fruit of
knowledge of good and bad, ofcourse.
But that is not at all what theancient Hebrews meant by that

(43:45):
phrase, the knowledge of goodand evil.
See, what that poetry symbolizeswhen Eve and Adam bit into that
apple is the point in which thehuman species, and again, this
is my perspective, take it orleave it, but what if he was
pointing at the idea throughpoetry of when mankind, their

(44:06):
brain developed to the pointwhere it could differentiate.
Just like I was telling you withthe contrast and the opposites,
that's the moment where humanscould say this is this and that
is that.
So the knowledge of good andevil, when it was written at
that time was an idiom thatmeans the knowledge of
everything.

(44:27):
The ability for human beings toessentially classify things, to
slice things into objects, likethe illusory idea that there is
a cause and effect.
If you really look at nature,there really is no cause and
effect.
There's just a flowing this tothat.
When you think of dominoes, If Ipush the first domino, you might

(44:51):
say, well, the cause was mepushing the first domino, which
then pushed the second domino,and all the way down the line.
But what about the cause thatstarted me to set up the
dominoes in the first place,right?
And then the cause that inspiredme to push it, and where did
that come from?
And you can keep going back andback and back, and you realize

(45:13):
it's just one thing happening.
Cause and effect are essentiallyillusory, we understand them in
the conceptual mind, but they'rereally part of one whole.
So look at the poetry inGenesis, the knowledge of good
and evil.
That's the moment when mankindbit into the apple and
poetically we became, our brainscognitively developed to the

(45:36):
point where we coulddifferentiate up from down, left
from right, black from white,good from bad, you know, things
like that.
Notice that in the poetry ofGenesis, the first thing that
Eve became aware of was herselfas a separate self.

(45:56):
And symbolically, this is whenMoses says that we were thrown
out of the Garden of Eden.
We lived in paradise, and thenwe were thrown out.
And the only thing that causedus to be thrown out from that
paradise is when the mind isable to differentiate This from
that.
See, if you look at Taoism,their symbol is the yin and the

(46:19):
yang.
The Chinese philosophy is thatyang is like the masculine or
visible aspect, and the yin isthe feminine or dark, the
mysterious.
Essentially, the yang would belike the known, and the yin
would be the unknown.
And you can't have the knownwithout the unknown.

(46:39):
You can't have knowing withoutunknowing.
The two create one another.
But in modern times, we are soinvested and so lost in what is
known, in the yang, in thedoing.
And that is why all spiritualtraditions say, whoa, whoa,
whoa, let go, let go, fall backinto the mystery.
Like we have that metaphor inmodern Christianity.

(47:02):
We say, Lord Jesus, take thewheel.
And it always comes back toself.
So Eve, she bites into the appleand she suddenly becomes aware
of herself and she suddenlyfeels naked and exposed.
And then And the first thing Godsays to her is, who told you you
were naked?
And the first thing Noah doesall those years later is tries
to get back to that mind spaceof no concept of self.

(47:26):
If you read the Bible, it sayshe made alcohol and he was
obviously trying to do that toforget himself.
That's what we always try to do.
We try to forget ourselves.
We say, don't be soself-conscious.
Don't be so selfish.
It always comes back to selfbecause this illusory dividing
line of self and not self is thesource of all unhappiness in the

(47:47):
entire world.
I mean, we have billionairesright now who can't get enough,
and everyone else is sufferingbecause of it.
I don't want to get political oreconomic here, but you can see
throughout all of history andall of nature, any time you
divide yourself, bad thingshappen.
But when we live communally,Good things happen.

(48:09):
When we think about the greatergood for something other than
yourself, we love sacrifice.
The whole center image ofChristianity is the death of the
self, Jesus on the cross.
And what do they say inBuddhism?
You see, Buddhism is what'scalled an apophatic religion.
religion or a negative theology.
So a picture, when you look at apicture and you have a film

(48:32):
negative, all the colors aresort of inverted.
So we think Buddhism isradically different from
Christianity, and it's not.
I mean, they have variousdifferent, I don't want to
offend Buddhists and Christiansat the same time here.
So just allow me to share myperspective.
This is just my perspective.
But in Buddhism, they wouldrather say, what reality is not,

(48:54):
not this, not that.
So Jesus will use language likeeternal life.
Siddhartha Gautama, the originalBuddha, he would say the
deathless realm, right?
Or the deathless state.
So it's like, it's saying thesame thing, but in a different
way.
Negative, not in a negativesense, but in a, well, let's

(49:15):
just be quiet and see what wefind here.
And it always comes back to theself.
Look at the beginning of theBible.
It's the creation of theseparate self or the idea of a
separate self by biting into theapple.
And what's the conclusion?
Jesus shows up and he says, denythyself.
That word deny also means to letgo of, to loosen the grip of.

(49:39):
If you read Paul in hisepistles, he says, I die to the
idea of myself daily, or I dieto self daily.
And it's no longer I who live,but Christ who lives in me.
And he uses all sorts oflanguage like that.
even in the knowing and theunknowing, when he says the
peace that surpasses allcomprehension.

(50:02):
That same word for comprehensionin Greek is also mind or
understanding.
So when you try to understandthings and do things of your own
will and accord, you're alwaysgoing to essentially fail.
And that's not to say that youshouldn't take action.
That's one of the bigmisconceptions of the various

(50:22):
spiritual traditions that youbecome a pacifist.
Not at all.
It's just that you're looseningyour hold of your separate sense
of self or ego.
You know, another thing thatyou'll notice with Jesus is he
always tried to project onenessand unity in his prayer over his

(50:43):
disciples.
pardon me, in his prayer overhis disciples in the Gospel of
John, you'll see language wherehe says, may they be completely
one in us.
As I am one with the Father andthe Father is one in me, I am in
the Father and the Father's inme, may they also be one in us.
So it was an inclusive language.

(51:04):
Other times, like when the Jewstook up stones to throw at Jesus
and kill him, he said, why doyou kill me?
Which good work from the Fatherdo you kill me for?
And they said, not for a goodwork, but for proclaiming to be
on the same level as him.
And then he replies, which isoften not taught in churches, he
said, is it not written in yourlaw that you are gods?
And that is originally writtenin the Greek as, is it not

(51:27):
written that you are Elohim,which would be better understood
as, Is it not written in yourlaw that you are also of the
nature of God?
Well, if it says that and thescripture cannot be annulled, he
goes on to say, why do you throwstones at me when I'm the one
who is sanctified, which meansset apart on a unique mission to

(51:48):
share this gospel, this goodnews with you that we're all
one, we're all part of the sameFather.
And that's why there'straditions like the Eucharist or
communion, where you are eatingthe flesh and the blood of
Jesus, and that becomes you.
And if you read the Gospel ofThomas, he says the same thing.
If you drink from my mouth, Iwill become you, and you will

(52:10):
become me.
In another part of the Gospel ofThomas, he says, when the
disciples asked him, how do weenter the kingdom?
He says, when the two becomeone.
Notice that theme of theseparateness, the two becoming
one.
He says, when the two becomeone, when the inside is, when
you make the inner like theouter, Like, for example, if you

(52:35):
were right in front of me rightnow or if I was in front of you,
I would be in your externalworld.
just the same as everything elsearound me is in your external
world.
So you would see me andeverything that's inside of me,
essentially, as one and the samewith the road that I'm, or the
ground that I'm standing on orthe building that I'm in.
And then you create this ideathat everything behind your eyes

(52:59):
is separate from that.
And yet, from my perspective,you're in the outside world, a
part of everything else.
You see, we're all part of thesame fabric or material Like
take another example.
If you go to a sporting eventand you look at the crowd when
they do a wave, you can see thewave travel around the stadium

(53:22):
or the arena that you're in.
And you can say, there's thewave.
And there it goes.
Oh, it's coming to me.
Now I stand up and then I sitdown and it goes around.
So there is the wave, but it'scomprised of a flowing of
everyone in the crowd.
In that same way, that's whatyou are.
That's what your body is.

(53:42):
Science has looked at matter anddiscovered that if you took out
all the empty space in yourbody, you would be less than the
size of a grain of sand.
So there is...
molecular motion that createsthe illusion of a solid object.
Just like if I took a torch andI twirled it around, it would

(54:05):
create the illusion of a circle.
So just like a wave passingthrough an audience or a wave in
an ocean, you are the dance andplay of form.
The Hindus have a wonderfulconceptual model of this, or
cosmology, they call it lila,the dance or play of form.
All of life is a play, it's adance, it's for fun.

(54:27):
If you go to the book ofProverbs, written by Solomon, he
speaks about the beginning ofcreation and he uses a metaphor
for lady wisdom and how it waswoven into the fabric of
reality.
And it says that lady wisdom wasdancing and playing with God's
creation.
That was later changed by thechurch.

(54:49):
That word play was changed torejoice.
But you can double check me onthat and look it up and you'll
see that the original word meantplay.
It's like Alan Watts alwaystalks about with music and
dance.
Music Music is not, it doesn'thave a purpose outside of
itself.
The purpose of the song isitself.

(55:10):
And just like the illusion of aflame, when you look at a flame,
you look at it like it's a solidthing.
There's the candle flame.
It's right there.
But in reality, you're lookingat gas that is oxidizing the
wick inside of the wax.
So all the flame is a stream, asteady flow of of the wick, you

(55:33):
know, oxidizing or vaporizing,being consumed by the flame.
In the same way, that's what youare.
Your form is an illusion, not inthe sense that it's not real,
but it's not static.
It's ever-flowing,ever-changing.
You know, in Christianity, weuse the phrasing, this too shall
pass.
Everything that arises willeventually fade away.

(55:55):
And they say the same thing inBuddhism.
The original Buddha said,everything that has the nature
to arise will pass away.
but not you.
You're not your form.
That's why in science andneuroscience, they call it the
great problem of consciousnessor the consciousness problem.

(56:18):
It's not a problem.
You are that which is outside ofmaterial, watching the material
process unfold.
But we're so scared.
We identify with this body.
But From your perspective, allthe things I'm saying right now
are probably generating thoughtsin your head, but you'll notice
that you are that still, silentobserver of your thoughts just

(56:39):
as much as you are my voice.
You don't know the next thingthat I'm gonna say that's gonna
come out of my mouth.
Yeah, I'm just joking.
You don't know the next thingthat I'm going to say or that
it's going to come out of mymouth, and you equally don't
know the next thing that's goingto come out of your head.
So you are observing your mindand thoughts just the same as
you're observing the sounds thatare coming from me to you right

(57:01):
now.
So what I'm saying is that thatobserver in all of us is really
the same observer.
And the language that Jesus usedat his time, 2,000 years ago,
was was to invoke the name ofGod.
I am, to be, to exist.
That being inside of you is thesame being in all of us.

(57:26):
It is not divisible.
It is one thing happening.
And I'm moving close to thefinish line here because we're
almost at an hour.
And I'm going to go into moredetail as to why.
Why would God blow himself upand forget himself and become
the many?
right?

(57:46):
Why would he do that?
Why would he, she, it?
Again, God doesn't have to be aman.
It's an idea.
Because again, if you want tolook at opposites, you can't
have male without female.
You can't have masculine withoutfeminine.
The two create each other.
Every man has a feminineprinciple inside of him.

(58:06):
I'm not afraid to admit I have alot more feminine principle in
me than masculine.
I was raised by my motherprimarily.
My dad was out of the picture at11.
I have a very sensitive side, avery feminine side.
And at the same time, you'll seewomen who have very strong
masculine sides.
I will admit to everyonelistening right now that my

(58:28):
wife, she has a much biggermasculine principle than me
inside.
I feel...
In many ways, I am manly and amasculine man, but I'm very
feminine on the inside.
And my wife, she is veryfeminine on the outside, but she
also has a masculine side toher.
She's going to kill me fortalking about her on the
podcast.

(58:51):
She's a man, baby.
But I just wanted to put theseout as concepts to kind of
loosen the soil of the conceptsthat we've already had for
hundreds of years that aredriving people away from looking
within.
When I say standing nowhere, andI don't want you to lean on a

(59:12):
concept, you can use theseconcepts to go beyond concepts.
In Buddhism, for example, theytalk about this directly when
they say spirituality andspiritual traditions should be
viewed as like a ferry boat.
Like you get on the boat and youuse it to cross the river to the
other side, what they callnibbana or nirvana.

(59:33):
which is going back to what wesaid, letting go.
Samsara is this perpetualclinging and rebirth.
Every time you think ofsomething, you're essentially
reborn and identifying with thatthought.
And the space between thoughtsis nirvana or nibbana.
And many strive to attain whatthey consider enlightenment.

(59:56):
And that's a whole nother rabbithole that we can go down in
another episode.
But the idea of nirvana, whenyou cross that river, Nirvana in
Sanskrit means the exhale, theblowing out, the releasing of,
the blowing the flame of desireout.
Essentially, you can be right inthe middle through thick and
thin and be okay with either.

(01:00:17):
And that's like when I said atthe end of the first episode,
even if I have to work 50 or 60hours the rest of my life, I'll
be okay.
Because whatever is right infront of you, That's what you
can stand on.
That's real.
That's reality.
That's truth.
So let go.
If you want to take anythingfrom this episode, let go of the

(01:00:40):
rigid concept of nihilism, thateverything's meaningless.
It's not.
You are the universe, andeverything you're experiencing
is the universe, and it'swonderful.
And yes, there are valleys.
You can't have peaks withoutvalleys.
You can't have...
clarity, without a littledirtiness in the life, you know,
and it's unfortunate.

(01:01:01):
And that's going to be anotherepisode, too, talking about good
and evil and why is there evilin the world?
Why is what's happening inPalestine happening right now?
Why would, you know, I'll do awhole episode on how could,
quote unquote, God allow this,and we'll dive into that.
But at the end of the day, Iwant people when they hear this

(01:01:22):
podcast to not cling to aconcept.
If these ideas are are helpfulto you, wonderful.
Use them to go beyond.
Use them as exit ramps.
Like if you picture perpetualconceptual clinging as like a
NASCAR ring and you're stuck onit and you can't get off, use
these concepts as off ramps andcome to your breath.

(01:01:45):
Come to your senses, as theysay.
Get out of your mind and come toyour senses because when you
make an effort or a practice tobe with what is.
you will feel the deepest peace.
You will experience that peacethat surpasses understanding
because you're going beyondunderstanding.

(01:02:07):
And when you try to groundyourself in the present, like I
said in the first episode, yourmind will tug at you a little
bit.
And it's not that thinking is abad thing that should never
happen, but it's just that youneed to be aware of it because
that is what you are.
You are that eternal awarenessthat's always been here.
Jesus, his language for it wasthe I am.

(01:02:29):
Before Abraham was born, I am.
I am is the vine.
You are the branches.
Or like when he says, I am theway, the truth, and the life,
which is the major quoted versefrom Jesus, you know, he's
saying, and again, this is myperspective, he's saying the I
am, because he used several ofwhat we call I am statements.

(01:02:51):
I am, to be, to exist, to is theway, the truth, and the life.
Being right where you are,centered, will always guide you
correctly.
Always.
It'll create a space in you.
Go to the book of Proverbs.
It says, just be mindful ofevery step you're taking and let
God handle the rest.

(01:03:12):
Put it on, if you use theconceptuality in Christianity,
give it to God, you know?
And for those who may not likethe idea of a personified being,
that's okay.
You don't have to personifythem.
you know, in the Hebrew and theChristian tradition, they
personify God as a father.
And that's neither right orwrong.

(01:03:35):
Because to look at the universeas a cold place that is just
random, you know, or even if youdon't think it's random and
you'd rather not use the conceptof God, you can use whatever
word you want for it.
But there's nothing wronginherently with looking at the
universe as a father or a motheror a source.

(01:03:55):
Because again, that word fatherin Aramaic means source.
And if you think about it, youhad a father, he had a father,
and you can keep going back andback and back and back, and
eventually you'll get to the BigBang.
So it's a matter of just havinga reverence for reality, a
reverence for life.
This is your life.
This is you.

(01:04:16):
And you don't have to have thesecloudy concepts creating a
shadow on it that life sucks andthen you die and it's all
meaningless.
And part of that is being acommunity together.
So we're going to wrap up hereas we come to the finish line.
And I'm going to put this outthere for you guys that you come
back to this podcast, but notjust listening but participating

(01:04:40):
if you look in the description Iwill have a link there for you
to visit our discord and I wouldlove for you guys to join the
discord to interact with notjust me but each other share
your experiences share feedbackof what you feel about these
episodes if they stirredanything inside of you and you

(01:05:01):
know share your story if youwant I'll read your story out
you can email me at standingnowhere podcast at gmail.com.
If you want to share your storyand your journey being a seeker,
someone essentially looking intowhat this life is all about,
there's that old saying, knowthyself.

(01:05:22):
I think they use that quote inThe Matrix too, like, you're it.
The answer lies within.
I think I mentioned in the firstepisode, repent means to turn
back, to go within.
The story of the prodigal sonthat Jesus gave, he went out
into the world, into thematerial world, and found no
satisfaction there.

(01:05:42):
So he turned within.
The last thing that I'll say isI wanted to try something new.
This whole podcast is new.
But I wanted to do somethingwhere I just try it, where I do
a little segment.
So I'll just take four Fourminutes here before we close.
And I wanted to recommend analbum.
I consider it the most spiritualalbum I have ever heard.

(01:06:07):
And I grew up listening to a lotof Christian music.
There's not a lot of goodChristian music out there, but
this album is by AvengedSevenfold.
If you guys have ever heard ofthem, they are a metal band.
They're considered moreprogressive than your average
band because they do kind ofwhatever they want.
And they're all my age.
They're about early 40s.
And they had this sameintrospective journey that I've

(01:06:31):
been on in the last three yearsAnd coincidentally, they
released this album called Lifeis But a Dream.
And it came out in, I want tosay, 2023.
It was about two years ago,almost to the day.
It came out in July, I think thebeginning of July.
And it is wonderful.
It explores what it means to behuman.

(01:06:52):
And I think a lot of you wouldresonate with it.
Some of the songs are a littleheavier with electric guitar and
whatnot.
And if you're not into heavymusic, that's totally fine.
But the singer, he has a voicethat is just so wonderful.
And you can hear him pouring hisheart and soul into every lyric
and every word.
And the lyrics are justfantastic.

(01:07:14):
I recommend when you hear thisalbum that you don't put it on
in the background and just letit play.
I recommend sitting down andreading the lyrics as it goes.
You know, the first track iscalled Game Over.
And it's basically, it's like,It's saying game over to the
idea of myself.

(01:07:35):
And it has this wonderfulopening of these quick little
descriptors of everything we gothrough in life.
Like the first line says, open,blurry, nurture, loving.
And it's symbolic of like whenyou're first born and then
crawling, walking, and then allthe way through high school and
girls.
And he goes through the wordsreally quickly.

(01:07:56):
So if you're listening to thesong in the background, it's
hard to understand him.
But if you have the lyricspulled up, you can kind of
follow follow along.
And it kind of tells the storyof somebody who was excited in
life, and they peaked, and theykind of had this midlife crisis
where life doesn't satisfy themanymore like it used to when
they were younger.
And it starts to take on asomber note.

(01:08:17):
And there's a lyric...
Oh, man.
It makes me emotional justthinking of this lyric.
It's...
The lyrics says, People who killthemselves are not completely

(01:09:04):
incorrect in their idea thatsomething does need to die
inside of them.
But where they get confused isthat they think their body needs
to die.
But what they need to let go ofis their concept of themselves.
They're standing on a concept ofthemselves that isn't true.

(01:09:25):
There's a quote by Rumi called,I think where the Sufi mystic I
mentioned earlier, where hesays, when I let go of who I
think I am, I become what I canbe.
And when you live in the moment,you are free, you have infinite
potential.
But if moment to moment you'rethinking, I'm a loser, or I'm
this, I'm that, you limityourself, you put yourself in a

(01:09:47):
box.
So anyways, check the album out.
you know, if, if it's too heavyfor you, at least check out the
song cosmic.
It is the gem in the center ofthe album and it's a ballad.
And, um, There's a little bit ofa guitar solo, it's not too
heavy, shortly in the beginning,which very much resembles the

(01:10:09):
cosmic universe expanding.
The guitarists in this band,they're all virtuosos, but the
guitarist, he goes by the handleSinister Gates, he is
mind-blowing on the guitar, andhe creates this sweeping effect
that just sounds like if youwere to put the Big Bang into a
guitar solo, and the creation ofthe universe, and the dance of

(01:10:32):
this celebration that we callthe universe and life.
I mean, it's in that guitarsolo.
And immediately after thatguitar solo in this song,
Cosmic, it transitions into themost beautiful piano with the
most beautiful lyrics thatare...
either deliberately oraccidentally inspired by some of

(01:10:54):
the words of Jesus in the Gospelof Thomas.
There's a line where Jesus says,split a piece of wood, there I
am.
Lift up a rock, there I am.
Kind of emphasizing the onenessof everything.
Or how he says in the canonicalgospels, the kingdom of God is
within you.
And there's these lyrics thatjust start pouring out of the

(01:11:14):
lead singer's that are just sobeautiful.
And it's such a wonderful melodythat it'll just get stuck in
your head and you'll love thefact that it does.
And the song does this weirdthing where it reaches like this
culmination point and it almostsounds like there's just this
explosion of happiness andsadness rolled into one.

(01:11:44):
Because If you look at the playof opposites or the illusion of
opposites in our mind, you'llnotice that sadness and
happiness are polarities, andsadness isn't always a bad
thing.
It actually feels good if youlook at sadness.

(01:12:05):
We don't cry enough as asociety.
We're told to be tough, pickyourself up by your bootstraps.
If you've ever seen that movieInside Out, I love it because
that's the resolution of themovie.
The whole time they're trying tosuppress sadness, suppress,
suppress, suppress.
But sadness is nothing more thanthe other side of joy.
And when they wrote this song,it was like they wove into the

(01:12:29):
fabric of this melody, this partespecially in the song where it
just sounds like angels aresinging and...
it just encompasses all thetragedies and all the joys.
I don't want to tell you how toview this album.
This is just my take of it, butthat song in particular, Cosmic,
is just wonderful.
And then after that explosionand the angels sing, it's almost

(01:12:51):
like someone's singing tosomeone that they lost, and then
the person that is lost issinging back to the person.
It's It's like the song, itreaches a halfway point, and
then it starts singing all thesame lyrics over again, but in a
unique way.
It's really wonderful.
It deals with materialism.

(01:13:13):
There's a song called Mattel.
It's all about the plasticnessand materialism of life.
And We Love You, which is asarcastic...
When it says We Love You, it'ssarcastic.
It's like poking fun at theeconomic system that we're in
and how it's all about strivingand doing...

(01:13:33):
and ends on a set.
I could go on, but I would loveto give this album more time to
review, but I really recommendit.
And I would love for you guys torecommend to me some music
that's really touched you andmoved you because there's a lot
of beautiful stuff out there.
And music, just like life, musicis not for a purpose to get to

(01:13:55):
the end of the song.
The song itself is the purpose.
When you're lost in the music,that's the meaning of it.
And it's just like life.
When you are In the moment, eachmoment is unto itself its own
meaning.
So we're not doing all thethings we're doing in life to
get somewhere, to something.
It's where we're at now isexactly where we're supposed to

(01:14:16):
be.
And when we really get with thatand we get in sync with that,
new possibilities start to openup.
There's a spaciousness in you.
Suddenly you can dance and singeven on the low notes, even when
you've lost someone or whatevertragedy is striking, you know.
If you're waking up in themiddle of the night like I have

(01:14:38):
many times over this last threeyears, just stress to the max
about bills.
There's all kinds of downmoments we have in life, but you
can't have the ups without thedowns.
The two create each other.
So whenever there's a down inyour life, just rejoice because
you know there's going to be anup and up.
Conversely, when there's an up,brace yourself because there is

(01:15:01):
probably going to be a down.
Even these sound waves that arecoming at you right now, they go
up and down.
Everything is on and off.
Now you see me, now you don't.
So thank you for listening,guys.
This went way longer than Ithought.
But if I keep it around an hour,sometimes it'll be 45 minutes,
sometimes it'll be an hour 15.
And...
You know, that should be okay.

(01:15:22):
But give me feedback, please.
Leave a review.
Let me know if this moved you inany way or helped.
And, you know, I'm still findingmy voice.
This is my second episode.
I'll get more organized.
But I hope this maybe helpedsome of you, loosened up some of
the soil of solidified conceptsso that you can stand nowhere.

(01:15:43):
Nowhere is like two words,right?
Nowhere.
So be in the here and the now.
Stand right here, right now, andyou'll be standing nowhere.
There's a quote that says, it'sbetter to stand on the firm
ground of nothingness than thequicksand of somethingness.
So don't rely on rigid concepts.
Just trust.
That's the definition of, oh, togo back to the beginning, I

(01:16:04):
almost forgot Oh my goodness.
The difference between beliefand faith.
Belief, again, these rigidconcepts and doctrines that we
hold ourselves to, or even theidea of the nihilist universe
versus faith, which is where youtrust what is.
You trust.
You have an openness.
It's not blind faith.
It's eyes wide open faith.

(01:16:24):
What is right in front of meright now?
What can I see, smell, taste,touch here?
What thoughts are here?
Be with the now, because the nowis the only And everything
springs forth from the now.
So be with it.
Stand nowhere with me.
And please leave me feedback.
Go into the description box.

(01:16:45):
Click the link.
Join us in the Discord.
It's free.
And share your story.
I'd love to read your story outon the air.
I want to have differentsegments.
Not all these episodes are goingto be solo episodes.
I'm going to be doinginterviews.
I should be lining up aninterview with my sister soon,
and she's going to share herexperience with battling cancer

(01:17:06):
and um you know whatever you'regoing through in life i'd love
to hear it and i'd love for youto connect with me and build a
community together so that wayum you know this thing can grow
and um And thank you.
Thank you very much for tuningin.
Please share and, again, rateand leave a review.

(01:17:29):
And I'm probably forgettingsomething.
If you want to drop me a line,you can do it in Discord or
standingnowhere at Gmail.
And I know I'm forgettingsomething.
I should have had an outlinethat covers this and that, but I
love you guys.
Thank you so much for listening.
And if you'd like to support theshow, you can go to patreon.com
slash standingnowhere, I believeis the link, Or you can go into

(01:17:53):
Patreon and just search StandingNowhere.
The link will also be in thedescription.
So anyways, I've talked your earoff and I am very grateful for
you guys for listening today.
And blessings to you.
And I will see you on the nextepisode.
Oh, give me episode ideas too.
You know, topics, content thatyou'd like to hear, things
discussed and things like that.

(01:18:13):
So thank you and have awonderful, wonderful, very
present rest of your day.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:19):
This is for a smile.
Fade like dust on the dial ButI'm standing nowhere And I've
been for a while No heroes, noheadlines No promises made Just

(01:18:43):
a whisper that won't be afraidAnd then nowhere it feels like
home No flags to wave, no needto roam The silence speaks

(01:19:09):
louder than war ever could AndI've never felt so understood
Static is kind, it leaves mealone No orders to follow, no

(01:19:35):
king on the throne The sky'sturning amber, the clock's all
reset And I haven't stoppedwalking just yet Standing

(01:19:57):
nowhere, air wide and free Nochains, no name, no destiny The
road dissolves, the sky turnswhite I'm still here, nothing

(01:20:22):
changes