#79 The Art of The Mystical Experience with Miles Neale, Psy.D.

Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Hello and thanks for listening to the contest of a podcast.
I'm Tatiana. In this episode, psychotherapist
and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism,Miles Neil joins me to chat
about his new book, Return with Elixir. 4 Maps for the soul's
pilgrimage through death and rebirth.
A step by step guide to reclaiming the soul.
I loved this book from the moment I laid eyes on it.

(00:28):
It is a manual for spiritual rebirth, revealing how to
reframe life's challenges and transitions as opportunities for
inner growth. His book integrates Tibetan
Buddhism with psychology, traumahealing, neuroscience and
mythology, along with profound personal experience.
If you love the esoteric aspectsof spirituality, then this is

(00:48):
the episode for you. Some of the points we discuss
are how the elixir of immortal life is the secret of both
Eastern and Western esoteric traditions and what exactly
return with elixir means. We explore the themes of the
collective unconscious, archetypes, the hero's journey,
and the search for wholeness. Miles also shares the four maps

(01:09):
for spiritual rebirth based on Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung,
Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, andthe procession of the equinoxes.
We also discuss union esotericism and we talk about
how the symbolism of the deity Vajra Yogini is an archetype.
She is also on the cover of his book.
We talk about so much more. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

(01:31):
Please write a review and share the episode and follow me on
Instagram at The Conscious Diva.Thank you so much for listening.
So great to meet you. And you as well.
Thank you Tadjan for having me. No, you're welcome.
You know, I, I have to say I really enjoyed reading the book.
It's awesome. Oh, you have you really.

(01:52):
You've dug into that. That's a very good, thorough,
thorough excavation of the elixir there.
I read every single book I'm sent.
I was ATV producer for a long time, so I read every book that
I'm sent. I was really interested when
first GAIL had sent me your stuff, but so had Manzanita over

(02:12):
at Inner Traditions. And I love the cover of the Vajo
Yo Guinea. She's a goddess that that I've
sometimes work with. And I actually bought a little
mini one of her in Kathmandu a few years ago.
And I her she travels with me. I have her not here in this
setup, but with me, you know, here in Sydney.
So I was immediately drawn to the cover and just thought, OK,

(02:37):
this is gonna be a really awesome book.
Don't judge a book by a cover, but go ahead.
If it's a budger yogini, go right ahead.
But not many people put this on the cover.
Oh, no, no. Well, she's the great archetype
of the great mother. That's that's the energy of the
new age that we're coming into. So, you know, we all need a

(02:57):
little more budgerigini. Plus she's fierce, you know,
she's able to really transmute all the desirous energies that
we have been to come accustomed to and addicted to.
So I think she's the right archetype for the moment.
Yeah, totally. So, well, let's just start there
because you've got, I mean, yourbook covers so many things and I
literally made so many notes. And obviously you can see from

(03:19):
just all the posters inside thisbook, there's just so many
things to to discuss. But archetypes obviously is one
of the themes of your book. So let's just start there, you
know? Why are these important?
Why are archetypes appointment? OK, Well, I mean, basically for
400 years, maybe it's a little less, slightly less.
We, our culture has been, has adopted the scientific

(03:41):
reductionistic materialistic paradigm.
And that's been great for so many reasons.
It's allowed us to really createincredible medicine and
technology and mathematics and humanism.
On the other hand, it's it has ashadow and the shadow is that
our ability to connect with the numinous is been atrophied.

(04:01):
And in a way we've reached a tipping point where we've become
symptomatic of this lost soul, basically our lost connection
with spirit. We have a massive mental health
crisis, which is part of this, but we also have an ecological
crisis, which is an external manifestation of our disembodied
and disconnected way of being. And of course, we're also at

(04:24):
tipping points in a number of different areas.
I called it, you know, in the book, I called out a number of
different areas where this is sort of simpler, symptomatic of,
of, of being disconnected. So why archetypes?
Well, archetypes and the same could be said for why mythology,
you know, because that's a question I get very often is
what why do we have to care about mythology?

(04:45):
But why do we care about archetypes is because it's
really the language of the forgotten or disconnected part
of our being. It's the way that the
unconscious speaks and it's the way that we can re realign or
become resensitized to, you know, our inner natures.

(05:06):
It's like dreams are another example of this.
The language of dreams is not linear.
It's not logical and it's not, it's not literal.
But if you, if you can switch your mindset to start to see
symbols as representations that have a deeper kind of encoded
meaning and you become fluent indeciphering them, suddenly

(05:26):
what's inside of you is teachingyou something.
You just have to speak the language.
And so whether it's cosmologies that have archetypal energies,
whether it's mythologies that have archetypal stories, whether
it's dreams that have an archetypal codes, symbols,
whether it's prophecy, which youhave to take not literally, but
you have to take in terms of, ofmeaning making kind of

(05:49):
technology. All of these are new ways, new
inroads to sacred wisdom, really.
And I think that's what, And So what I mean, OK, but now we're
kind of lost, you know, now I'llgive you one example, not to,
not to go on a, a rant here, butone example in, in the pandemic,

(06:11):
we saw a real breakdown in science, our over reliance on
science. And, and how did that manifest?
One way that it manifested is that we had these two fractured
divergent groups that were each saying, you know, the vax was
working and the vax was not working.
And we have groups of people saying that you had you had to
mask up and and other groups saying that the mask was

(06:32):
contraindicated and both were using studies and scientific
research to back up their various claims.
And so who do you believe anymore if you've outsourced
your power to science? And so that breakdown in science
really is a harbinger to beckon us to consider that there must
be other ways of knowing reality, not just the ones that

(06:55):
look through a microscope, but the ones that use the third eye
of intuition and the ones that see the language or read the
language of archetypes. I'm going to have you now
explain a little bit about what you do because you said a lot.
There was a lot there in that, in that first opening, the
response. And I also just want to mention
the name of the book, Return with Elixir, 4 maps for the

(07:16):
souls, Pilgrimage through death and rebirth.
There's so much here you talk about.
We just said the archetypes. You know, Joseph Campbell, you
meant you begin with the hero's journey in the book.
And that theme really continues throughout, giving different
examples. And there's a section in your
book where you mention for some people entering this path of

(07:38):
whether it's the heroes that journey into oneself, they can
either be a spiritual seeker, which may happen, you know, just
in your life, Or for most people, it's some sort of
catalystic event where it's really jolting them into this,
you know, catastrophe where theyhave to look at themselves.
Whatever it is, it could be, youknow, some kind of loss, right?
Usually it's some kind of loss that's shaking you up and it's

(07:58):
forcing you into this moment. And it's something that I
actually recently talking to my my husband about because we're
I've left my husband and I'm like, this is your journey.
This is your journey. Like you, you're on your your
hero's journey now like you needto it's.
A very, it's a very, it's a verygood parting message.
Well, I'm also coming into basiccompassion, not just like
running away and like whatever, but it's like.

(08:20):
But it's empowering. It's like, yes, I love you and
this could be this could be thiscould set you off on a way that
yes, could actually allow this crisis to unfold in such a way,
way that we would look back and say it actually helped me grow.
Absolutely, 100%. So I'd love you just expand,
share with listeners who may notnecessarily be familiar with

(08:41):
Joseph Campbell. The hero's journey.
We see it in so many things. It's not just like Odysseus.
It's not, I mean, and that's obviously a great one.
A lot of today, my daughter's been studying The Odyssey at
school recently, and there's a big film that's coming out, you
know, with a lot of aliases in it, you know?
Yes, well, Joseph Campbell was aremarkable figure.

(09:02):
I remember watching Villosa Campbell when I was a boy in
school and he had a series called the 5-6 Part Series with
Bill Moyers. The Power of myth was an
unbelievable revelation in high school for me.
He was a man that spent five years in sort of a Hermitage

(09:22):
digesting and metabolizing all of the world's great spiritual
traditions and was one of the first map makers to really sort
of catch the convergence of these archetypal themes, these
potent archetypal themes, and really was instrumental in
getting us out of our dogmatic silos about religion.
This religion is better than theothers.
He was really instrumental in finding the universal

(09:45):
commonality. And, you know, my book tries to
do that too. I, I try to bring, you know,
bring a bridge between various traditions from cosmology and
archetypal psychology and mythology and Tibetan Buddhism.
Campbell is that's really in thespirit of Campbell.
He and he designed or devised what's called the Mono myth.

(10:06):
It's like the, it's like from the Lord of the Rings, the one
ring to rule them all. It's like the one myth that
underlies them all really is what it is.
Most of these myths, whether they come from the Greek
tradition or the Egyptian tradition or the Tibetan Indian
tradition or Mesoamerica. I've booked a certain we could
call them milestones in a trajectory which is cyclic in
nature, which is that's a very important aspect of the

(10:29):
mythology is that you don't justdo your live your mythology or
the hero. Let's start with the hero.
The external hero doesn't just live their mythology and just
want once. It's a perpetual process.
As you know, as a spiritual inclined coach or facilitator,
you may have someone come into your office who's at a crisis
point and you may help them get to another milestone in which

(10:50):
they're really front confrontingthe origins of that crisis
point. It may be childhood abuse, it
may be something ancestral, it may be something cultural, but
there's a sort of confrontation with the psyche in in some way.
But before that, I mean, you as the facilitator are the mentor,
the archetype of the someone whowalks side by side, someone who
walks behind somebody who leads,somebody who guides or

(11:13):
initiates. And so these sort of themes
appear across cultural myths. They they are sort of part and
parcel of what the journey is all about.
You need a mentor, you get initiated, you find yourself
into a horrible ordeal. But within the ordeal, 11 of
Campbell's great quotes, which Ilove tremendously is, you know,

(11:33):
the the treasure that you seek is in The Cave that you fear to
enter. And so this is this is a
remarkable pithy well that I think our culture really needs
to listen to because I mean, youoccupy a, a position in the
Wellness space as I do. And what we see around us are
bio hacks to get to optimal health.

(11:55):
We're trying to perfect not onlythe circumstance, but also our
ability to, to ascend and to become Uber well and to become
Uber fit and to and to and to smash it and to really just go
get it and to have optimal length, a length of lifespan and
incredible, you know, agility or, or, or, or acumen

(12:17):
physically. But what we forget is that these
myths tell us that trial is actually what helps develop us.
The crisis is a cocoon for transformation, you know,
fragmentation. In the fragmentation, there's
something that is afforded to usthat we actually need for the

(12:38):
onward journey. And so after the ordeal, one
usually finds a treasure that they wouldn't ordinarily find in
any other way or in under any other conditions than under
hardship. And then even then, when you
finally claim your treasure, which is usually celebrated at
the end of a movie with all the credits, it's like you made it.

(12:59):
It's not over then either. There is, of course, the return
back to make the personal meaningful for the collective.
So we each have something to share.
And that's what the title of thebook is, really.
It's Joseph Campbell's final stage of the return with the
elixir are sharing of our boon. Which I really love.

(13:19):
Had a few people ask me, have seen some friends when I'm
pulling this book out. You know, what's that look about
and say? What's about your journey?
It's about your personal journey, your inward journey to
yourself, reclaiming who you areand figuring that out so you can
come back out and share those gifts with others, the boons, as
you say, and help guide them back to the truth of who they
are. Which often is a a sentiment

(13:42):
that I think people who may not or they may be on the beginning
of their journey or not at all, sometimes have trouble with
understanding what this means. I.
Couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely.
Isn't it, It's, it's, it's we have an impoverished self
mentality where we don't even believe we have anything to
offer. But we don't, you know, we
don't, we don't, we don't see ourselves in the, in the frame

(14:05):
of light that we have anything to contribute.
Expand on that then with we, because you have you just shared
what the elixir means, but you've also got these wonderful
maps that you have and as you say in your book, they're
syncretic. So they're blends of of other
philosophies, but they are the guidelines that you use to teach
your own clients. Yeah, I mean, maps are really in

(14:30):
a way they're important and in away where they have to be
discarded. There's this tension between
maps. I mean 1, you know, don't
mistake the the map for the actual terrain.
But on the other hand, a map we all could you.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a nice, cogent way of
understanding the material, especially when you have a
diagram, which I have some beautiful diagrams in my book.

(14:50):
And I think for beginners or novices or even people who want
to refresh her, it's nice to seethat there are milestones and
predictable steps and stages. I mean, we use stages, stage
models in all kinds of things from, you know, Maslow's stages
of psychological devil development and etcetera.
Campbell's stages are important to sort of know because for at

(15:11):
any one moment you could find yourself in a, in a, in a
situation and you're so close inyour own life that you lose
sight of the forest. You're so close to the trees,
you lose sight for the forest. And it's refreshing to know
like, this is not the end. This is you'll, you won't be
stuck there forever. There are certain things that

(15:32):
you can do and, and, and that are important in any particular
stages. And so, you know, it's, it's,
it's refreshing to have a digestible map so that you can
Orient yourself in the world. On the other hand, and I love
these dichotomies because I think everything is always more
complex. The map is map is only a, a, a

(15:52):
pointer to the terrain and, and you, you still have to walk it
and you still have to get lost. I have a lot of people say, you
know, can this help me, you know, not get lost, you know, is
that what the map is for? And, and my, my answer is if
you're, if you're afraid of getting lost, you haven't
understood the real meaning of, of the hero's journey.
Because no matter how well guided you are by an expert, no

(16:15):
matter how clear the picture is,no matter how well articulated
the steps are, it's in getting lost that you find yourself.
And so it there is this interesting tension between the
map and the terrain. Yeah, no, it's, it's
interesting. And you know, even even with my
relationship with my husband, it's, you know, I'm, I'm guiding

(16:36):
him, I'm there for him. I'm showing.
I'm like, I'm here for you. But you need to, you do need to
lose yourself. And and that's why it feels the
way it feels for you right now, because you're lost in the
emotion of, of this whole experience.
And until you can figure out whythis is happening, why we've
arrived at where we're at, you're not going to move

(16:59):
forward. You know, it's not, it's just so
here, there's, there's differentthings.
I'll just share that as a, as a simple, simple in quotes
experience for my life. But in your book, you've got a
much bigger journey. You're sharing of how you ended
up where you are currently now in Bali and a lot of different
things that were going on. And it was COVID and you were in
the midst of writing this book, it sounded like, and then other
things were happening and, and you decided to, to relocate your

(17:21):
family across the world. That's not a that's not a, a
small move. And Indonesia, I mean, you know,
it's, it's kind of a random place, but not at the same time
for you. Yeah, Yeah.
Let me just backtrack because you, you said something about
your husband and and I think it's there was something very
important I think to to draw outof it, if you don't mind.

(17:42):
I think when you're saying you need to go on this journey,
there's, there's something aboutthose moments where we want to,
we want to come in and rescue somebody.
We, we, we want to give them medication.
We want to give them the tool, we want to give them the salve.
And that's because we're, we're,we're warm hearted creatures.

(18:04):
We, we don't, we don't like to see other people in pain or
suffering. But you, you said, you know,
paraphrasing, you said somethingabout like, you have to learn
something about yourself throughthis.
In other words, you have to go on a journey to discover how you
got here, why this happened. It's almost like when there's a
plane crash, they do a reverse engineering or they do a post

(18:26):
mortem to discover what happenedhere.
They don't just fix the plane. You know, they don't, they don't
just move it along. They they want there's something
important to discover about whatthe breakdown was about in order
to prevent it or in order to evolve it or in order to
optimize it in the end. And so I think what you're, what

(18:48):
guidance you're giving your husband is really it's it's
this, it's the wisdom of the agecoming through right now and
reminding us we have so many tools to ameliorate and to in a
way spiritually bypassed. But nothing can really replace
honest self reflection. Because there you have the

(19:09):
Buddha's famous medical model ofthe truth of suffering, the
truth of discovering the origin of suffering and in discovering
the origin of suffering, the truth of understanding that it
that there's a cure and they andthen the treatment plan follows
from there. So really this is not about

(19:30):
outsourcing our wisdom journey to other traditions,
technologies way. This is about us discovering
something in the inner space, and I think that's so important
in a technological age that we are rehumanizing this adventure.
And what it what it suggests about the human, human mind is

(19:52):
its ability that most of our suffering is self-imposed due to
some kind of blindness and that it could be reversed.
As a result of that, it can be reversed.
Most of what what ails us is ourfragmentation, which is about
human relations fragmenting and that can be reversed and healed.

(20:14):
So I just thought in that momentthere, I thought you're don't
minimize this thing that you're doing with your husband because
right in there you're, you're pointing exactly to what's
happening on a cultural level too, that your reminder to your
husband is a reminder from the book.
Also, look within, go deep and especially when it's painful,
there's something there that we need to, to look at.

(20:36):
In my book, at the beginning, I had panic attacks, right?
And as a psychologist, that's a bit weird.
And you know, the first line of defense in my, in my, in my
institution is to medicate that.Let that even that out.
Oh, and we can take care of thatinstantly.
Here's some Xanax. But for me, I had to understand

(20:58):
what are these panic attacks about?
And part of that process led to the fact that, you know, it's
not just me as an atomic individual.
It's me as a person in relation to this world that has become so
fast-paced and so confined. I was living in New York, and
New York life is like boxes within boxes within boxes.

(21:20):
I know I lived in New York City for for decades.
I know actually. And then I lived in Westchester
and I actually currently live inVermont.
That's actually where I live, ina forest in Vermont, which I
love. But you remember those days of
getting up in a very small. So I could talk to you.
You made it out of the Matrix. But we we both were there making

(21:44):
our coffee at 6:00 in the morning in a box only to jump on
a subway car box to make it intothe corporate cubicle box so
that we can then, you know, anesthetize at the ourselves at
the bar box and go back into thebed box.
And then also just be. So our mindset, the paradigm of

(22:04):
scientific reductionism or materialism is itself a kind
confining box. And so I was having panic
attacks because I couldn't bear that anymore that that world, I
had something, something dramatic had to be done.
So if I didn't, if I, if I anesthetize the symptom, I
wouldn't follow, I wouldn't havefollowed the, I wouldn't made

(22:27):
the journey into the rabbit hole.
So that's, that's what's called the gateway or the crossing the
threshold moment. If you follow these things, the
crisis, the breakup, the cancer diagnosis, the loss of income,
the market crash, or whatever itis that sends you into a spiral
or panic or destabilize you if you don't go deeper, you miss

(22:47):
the opportunity, but you'll onlypush it off for another crisis.
And most people are so in a state of fear from that,
whatever that personal experience has been, that
they're blinded by that emotion,that fear.
They can't see how this could potentially be of a benefit that
it's happening for them, not to them, right.

(23:09):
And so that one thing, you know,I think your book, you know, I
think it's not in the beginning when I started it, I thought,
you know, this is more advanced for people who maybe already got
had an understanding of, of a lot, especially the tantric, you
know, practices and, and things and the mythology and and so on.
But and the story of the Buddha and all of that.
But I think there's so many anyone can really learn from,

(23:34):
from you and from this book because as you said before, so
many people, we're living in this global crisis right now.
Materialism, you know, really, that's what we've all succumbed
to. Well put.
You had mentioned the word solvebefore, so maybe explain what
this is. You have a whole chapter on
solve coagula and how you break this down.

(23:55):
Oh, Solve coagula is wonderful. It was a wonderful revelation
for me. It it is a Latin phrase that
comes out of the alchemical tradition.
Who knows what the origin reallyis.
It goes back as far as Egypt andif depending on which way you
slice it, probably much further.But in terms of the Latin
rendition, Solvay, coagula is 2 words that we recognize as

(24:18):
cognate in English. Solvay is to solve, to resolve,
to to heal or to dissolve, to breakdown.
And the coagula is the coagulator to come together or
to regenerate. And so it is a mythological or
alchemical process of transmutation. 1 arc of it is

(24:41):
breaking something down and another one of them is the
rebirth or the the reconstitution.
And it's very interesting. It became the single loom upon
which all the threads that I wasweaving could rest because in a
way, everything that I was looking at was speaking it to,
to this fundamental process. In Campbell there is a, a

(25:06):
starting place, the what's called the ordinary world.
And there's a departure. And on the departure you have to
lose everything, the familiar, the comfort zone.
You have to leave home, you haveto leave all your, your loved
ones. You have to leave all your
habits and everything that makesyou, you.
And you have to eventually lose yourself.
But then there's the coming backafter a great journey.

(25:28):
And when you come back, you integrate everything that you've
learned and you arrive back in the same place, but you've been
transformed. This is that great, that great
line. If you can never put your foot,
the same foot in the in the river twice, is this idea that
if you go on a, if you go on a concerted conscious journey of
transformation, you'll never return home the same, even
though your home may be the same, your relations may be the

(25:51):
same, you have transformed. So there's Salvia Coagula from
the Campbellian point of view. Jung also talked about it.
Jung, the psychiatrist who is, is, you know, very revealing of
his own personal journey of fragmentation.
He, he in meant for many years endured what could be conceived
of as a kind of lucid psychosis.He allowed himself to have a

(26:13):
kind of undoing, to come undone.In fact, I mean, the way he said
described in his journals is that, you know, by day he was
seeing his patients and and serving that serving as a
support for their own process. And by night he would allow
himself to, well have what he would call the confrontations

(26:33):
with the unconscious in which hebasically lost the line between
reality and unreality. And so and there you know his
book, the Great Red Book are hisjournal writings and his
discoveries and his and paintings of the journey into
the Netherlands, into the into, into, into, into, into the
unstable and the numinous well. I want to come back to the the

(26:58):
Union esotericism in a minute because there's so much on that.
And you're weaving him throughout your entire book as
well. But you with with Solve
Coagular. Was that your line where you say
it's the art of the mystical experience?
Yes, yeah. I mean, what, what whatever it
is. So Jung had a had a
fragmentation of the psyche and then he would come back to
reality. He he started off more of a

(27:19):
scientist aligned with Freud andhe departed from Freud and came
back a Mystic. And then I used Tibetan
Buddhism, which is 1 variant of esoteric spirituality.
You could use Sufism, you could use mystical Christianity, you
could use Zen, whatever, whatever.
You would, you know, Kabbalah, they're all essentially saying

(27:41):
the same thing. This identity that we are
fixated on undergoes a process of unraveling or dissolving.
And this is also very common in the psychedelic revolution
that's happening now where ordinary people with no
religious revelation have this experience of loss of identity

(28:03):
and loss of coherent reality. But it's, it's a healing
journey. Something, something breaks
down, but then something opens and those two things come
together. And that's very, very important.
The breakdown, the Solvay is a doorway for the re, the rebirth.
And they you can't have one without the other.

(28:25):
So don't. So don't try to avoid your
breakdown. I know we laugh at that, but but
it's true. And it's if you can give
yourself the permission to dive in, there's such a reward on the
other side of that, that in thatmoment when it seems like you're
drowning, there's no way you canreally understand how moving

(28:49):
forward in that space is going to to free you, you know, to
have a better life. You know, how is this going to
happen? But then as you go on that
journey, as you figure out and you swim to the other side or
you get out of whatever you're stuck in, you can eventually
look back and reflect and realize, wow, wow, so much has
happened. Holy shit, this is amazing.

(29:14):
Wow. You know, I'm going to tell
everyone about this. Come on this journey.
So I mean, it's pretty amazing with, with Jung, like how you,
how you describe the mandala andor he's describing it, I guess,
and this symbology of the self, the mandala as as the symbol for
the self. I, I've done myself, my practice

(29:34):
is in the Kas Nepali traditions and my, my teachers are 27th
generation Nepalese shaman. But, but I also practice Kashmir
Shivision for Kashmir Shivision for a very long time.
And so I'm familiar with the mandalas and the visualization
and you know, the deity work andso on.
But I had never, it's funny, I had never really sat and
thought, oh, the mandala is like, you know, a metaphor for

(29:55):
the self. So can you expand on that?
Sure. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated
first and foremost by your background.
I didn't realize you were a Shyvite devotee.
That's wonderful to hear. And you know, I'm always
interested in the dialogue. You know what, what, what
similarities, commonalities can we find between the Tibetan

(30:16):
Vajrayana and the Kashmir Shyvite isn't because I I do
think that there's a common origin somewhere, which I write
about in the book, interestinglyenough.
Maybe this will be interesting. I also write in the book about
the bore of adore Mandala. Yeah, I've been there.
I know that was amazing. And that photo you have in the
book, actually, I'm going to open it up because it's
phenomenal. That aerial one that you've got,

(30:36):
that's John Fields. Yeah, it's beautiful, isn't it?
That's wonderful. That's an amazing aerial image.
It almost looks like a painting.It almost looks fake.
It's so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amazing. Well, you know in Kashmiri
Shaibai when we had a so you know, I won't spoil the book too

(30:57):
much, but part of the archetypaljourney as it unfolds is that I
had a vision of putting 2 masters at the top of the
Borbidor Mandala, which is the largest mundal on the planet.
It's from the 9th century, the Solendra dynasty in Java.
And my teacher is a Vadriana, master of the Tibetan tantric
tradition. And, but in the vision, he

(31:17):
wasn't alone. He was, he was there in consort
or in dialogue with a local master of the, of the local
indigenous Shaiva tradition. And, and the story, you know, in
the towards the end of the chapters reveals this sort of
breadcrumb trail of the collective unconscious leading
us to the to the mandala and this joint ceremony, which is a

(31:41):
revival of a spiritual heritage that may have predated may have
gone back five centuries. There used to be a tradition of
Saiva Buddha where these two traditions were actually united
and practices one. And the Islamic invasions put
that to an end and time went on and then scientific

(32:04):
reductionistic paradigm came in and that tradition was lost.
And now there is just the edifices of these stone
monuments. But part of the part of the
motivation of led by this visionwas to lead a pilgrimage group
to the to the to the greatest mundal on the planet and reenact
this joint ceremony in a kind ofhomage to a revival of these

(32:27):
traditions. What did that involve?
The rituals, the ceremony of that?
Like how did that work? I'm really curious.
So I and I was curious. It's OK.
I mean, it allows me to plug a documentary, documentary series
that we shot that actually follows us through five days on

(32:49):
a sacred mountain in Java, MountLaou with these masters who just
met and they hatched the plans and how we would do it.
So the documentary series is free, it's on YouTube.
It's called the missing piece, the P/E A/C E.
It's also, I've also got AQR code direct link in the book

(33:09):
because I think these two things, it gives a wonderful
visual epic and it also invites in the viewer.
I mean, the whole point of Matthew Freidel's vision for the
movie was to invite you on a pilgrimage with us so that you
could participate in the ceremony of the ages at the top
of this mandala. So that's the missing piece on

(33:32):
on YouTube by Matthew Friedel. But when you asked me about the
image itself or the archetypal significance of the mandala is
slightly different in different traditions.
So the Buddhist would have wouldsay that the mandala is the
palace of the deity. OK, So what we're talking about
is a a regal Lord or lady at thecenter of a universe who is

(34:00):
guiding on the principles of wise justice and compassion.
And so you incubate yourself at the center of the Mandela.
You undergo this process of dissolving and re arising as a
deity. So the the way you that you
think you are dissolves or dies,and all your egocentric
inclinations dissolve with it and are transformed into

(34:21):
compassion. And then you reign supreme at
the center of your mandala, not as an unjust ruler, but as a
just ruler whose main purpose isto create the conditions that
would be necessary to ripen sentient beings.
OK, so that that's sort of the it's so beautiful.

(34:42):
It's so beautiful. It's such a lovely philosophy.
I mean, it really is turning theheart inside out so that you're
you're not just on the on the throne ruling and getting your
egocentric Mets and needs met. Your your sole purpose.
You you derive optimal evolutionary purpose by creating
the conditions necessary for other living beings to awaken,

(35:04):
and that becomes the sole driverof meaning and purpose in your
life through countless lives. And that's all there is to it.
And and it's synonymous with theyogic tradition idea of Leela,
that what is what is the sublimeplay of reality.
Jung had a slightly different take, though no less beautiful
and exceptional, which was the the mandala is a Crucible for

(35:29):
the union of opposites. And so again, here we have the
part of our crisis right now is that we have not integrated the
shadow. And if you don't integrate the
shadow, then the shadow gets projected onto the world.
So for example, the incredible corruption and corruption, moral

(35:54):
bankruptcy of our leadership across the planet is a if you
want that to change, you can't just be a social justice warrior
banging your head against the wall and ranting and raving
about how change should should happen.
So from from a Jungian point of view and certainly from a
Buddhist point of view, that kind of outward facing protest

(36:17):
is only but half the solution. The other, the other half is
that if you, whatever you don't like out there, you have to take
responsibility for in here. And so Young's idea of the
mandala is that inside you have a lot of darkness or shadow

(36:38):
material. You have aggression, you have
egocentrism, you have deep, deepinsidious desires.
You have selfishness. You have all kinds of vices and
you have to bring those into thelight of awareness and you have
to conjoin them with love because they're basically
trauma. They're basically scarcity
trauma and fragment fragmentation trauma.

(37:02):
And so the only way for there tobe a harmonious world is there
for for us to have the sort of inner harmony.
First, we would make peace with our inner demons.
There's one tradition in TibetanBuddhism called the should
practice, which is feeding the demons, making that basically is
essentially going in and all thethings that you fear and that

(37:24):
you hate and that you long for. You make contact, you make
relations with them. And here, as you know, we
probably come to Bali many times.
The Balonese do this with their ceremony every day.
You know, they set out Chenang, which are these beautiful
parcels of flowers 4-5 times a day because they are, they're
not only beseeching the deities that they admire and and aspire

(37:48):
to be like the kind and benevolent ones, but they're
also feeding the demonic ones because at least it keeps them
in relations. They, they can keep them within
sight. They don't forget about them.
So if you forget about the demons inside of you, the demons
will control you. So the the mandala is a is a
place for relationality and for balance and for harmony.

(38:11):
And that is what the self is. It's a self that is transmuting
the toxicity inside of us. Not, not avoiding it, not not
painting over it, not pretendingit's not there, but putting it
into direct contact with the light of love and awareness.
That's a really beautifully put way of expanding explaining the

(38:32):
mandala because they're so complex and they're so when you
look at them and there's there'sso many, you know that
especially if I mean, you don't have illustrations in your book
of ones that directly relate to specific deities, like say Kali
as an example, or Durga, but youknow, with and they're more
geometric in nature versus the Tibetan Buddhist ones that have

(38:54):
images of deities around the. Entire iconography, yeah.
So there's so many and and that's, I think sometimes people
aren't maybe sure how to work with one.
You know, do I look at the imageor do I use a deity or do I use
both? And how do I especially people
who may not be working with a teacher or a skilled addict,

(39:17):
because we have the Internet nowthat anybody can kind of get
online and find an image of something and, you know, go, oh,
that looks cool and stick it on their wall and not actually
realize the power in it. You know that there's a lot of
that, but ultimately it brings us back to love.
You know, and you have this beautiful phrase in the book the
nectar of love, right, that you talk about this, this whole, all

(39:38):
of this, the elixir. I mean that that's bringing back
cultivating loving awareness within ourselves so that we can
we can be that that love and represent and then share that
activate that love others. I wish I I could hear more about
you and your story, your background.
I mean, you're just describing those beautiful geometric
patterns of the mandala from thefrom the Shyvite tradition.

(40:00):
And I thought, oh wow. We should have a cup of tea
sometime and go for a deeper conversation to do that.
When are you coming to Bali? My friend that you know the
other day that I'm interviewing you and he was like, we should
go to Bali. Bali.
I'm like, I don't have the time,but yes, I love that actually.

(40:24):
And I watched your videos and you have some really beautiful
things, but I really wanted to know about your your offerings
because you have some really beautiful offerings on your
website with the gradual path. What tell tell us about those.
What do you do? What happens on the gradual
path? The graduate, the gradual part,
the. Gradual part.

(40:45):
This is not a hack, right? Like this is a no.
It's the anti hack. It's the anti hack.
It's the slow, boring, unsensational, not well
marketed. You'll never find me out there
this, you know like it's buried under this and that you'll never
find it. Don't even go searching for it.
Not. True, it's on your website.

(41:10):
Some things, some, some things are best.
You know, I have one, one of my teachers and it's nice to talk
with somebody who has deep devotion.
And you, you study with a teacher and we're, we, we, we
are in positions of responsibility in the care for
others, but we ourselves are also apprentices to others.
I think that's beautiful. That's nice talking with you
about that. And I'd love to know about your

(41:31):
adventures with your teacher in Nepal.
And I just came back from an adventure to my teacher's
homeland, which is up in the Himalayas in the valley called
Sum. And you know, I, I realized
there that part of my five year journey writing the elixir was

(41:51):
my own process of dissolving andreinventing myself and
rebooting. And my adventure coming to Bali
is just one piece of that. But I used to be a very
industrious clinician, psychotherapist, psychologist
working in Manhattan. I used to see 30-40 people a
week. And you know, one of the

(42:14):
realizations I had in Bali when I left it all and I finally was
quiet, deafeningly quiet. And I wasn't industrious.
And there were no more phone calls and there were no more
patients. And I had lost more than half of
my income stream. And I would look in the mirror
and I found that my, I was unrecognizable to myself.

(42:35):
All my identity cues from reality had been dissolved,
literally. I mean, I was at the height of
my career in Manhattan. I had a position, a prestigious
position in an institute. I was publishing research.
I was seeing clients. I had a good enough reputation
that I didn't have to market to keep my business and my family
fed. And I gave it all up.

(42:58):
And it was a several year periodof coming to The Dark Knight,
including a medical condition, including just not knowing who I
was or where I was going, including how am I going to feed
my family, including what the inner journey revealed was that
a lot of my ambition and my struggle for validation was

(43:20):
really about healing a very deepinsidious sense of insecurity
and fundamental inadequacy that actually I had created much of a
big edifice about being a reputed therapist because I felt
so insignificant underneath. And that, you know, when the
phone stopped or when the invitation stopped, I wasn't

(43:43):
getting any reinforcement. And, and what that afforded me
was I could just begin to integrate what I call integrate
my insignificance. And some people hear that and
instantly their initial reactionis that they want to come in and
sort of rescue me from my insignificance.
They want to say, Oh no, but youchanged my life and you helped
me so much. How can you say no?

(44:04):
I'm not saying that that part isn't true.
I did make an impact on people. I did offer a contribution.
But what I was resisting in the privacy of my own mind was a
deep seated sense that I had carried from childhood, that I
was invisible and insignificant.I had really nothing to offer

(44:26):
and actually I needed to spend some time with that part of me.
It was what they might call an exiled part of me, and no amount
of acrobatics or accolade would ever heal that part.
So I would say I'm in the midst of still healing that.
But at least that little part ofme, that little boy in me that

(44:46):
was craving my dad's attention or whatever it might be, has
been seen and is now part of theconversation.
And, and So what has that done is it has transmuted all that
impulsive, compulsive drive to succeed.
That's a lot of energy. That's a lot of energy.
And slowly, slowly, it has calmed down a little bit.

(45:09):
I can reallocate it now. I can actually stop a
transgenerational pattern because now I can actually see
my boys and spend more time withmy boys instead of becoming the
compulsive dad that I had who was chasing validation and the
next business deal and the next whatever.

(45:30):
Bali has been in both a crisis and a refresher rejuvenation.
My relationship with my wife hastransformed, my relationship
with my children is transformed,my relationship with myself is
transformed and the way I work has transformed.
So part of this is to answer your question, what do I do now?
I spend less time doing psychotherapy, although I still

(45:51):
have a few clients. But now I've replaced it with
pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is my new modality.
I think that pilgrimage is a kind of therapy.
I think it has always been a kind of therapy.
And you're smiling because I, I know you have stories of
pilgrimage. How could you not?
How did you find your shaman teacher?
And where do you have to go to tell me a story about

(46:12):
pilgrimage? So I went on a pilgrimage with
him in, in Nepal, but I mean, before I even got there, you
know, my journey was I grew up in five star hotels.
I totally had this experience that was incredibly superficial
and materialistically driven to be, you know, to from babyhood
throughout my life, to be born into a world that is literally

(46:34):
about show, preparing the environment for guests and
making sure it is as perfect as it can be at that five star
hotel level. And, and it really affected me
because I thought that that's how I had to appear outwardly in
the world. Like I thought I told, you know,
and, and a lot of it was also toimpress my dad and to, you know,

(46:58):
make sure I had like, you know, that I worked a good job and,
you know, it sounded fancy and it sounded cool And whatever,
all these things that ultimatelywhen we get on our path and
whatever jolts us in our life toshake us up and realize, snap us
out of it, you realize that doesn't matter anymore and it's
not important. There's other things that are
that are so much more important and we but we first need to sit

(47:20):
with ourselves and and heal and at the moment and part of these
practices that we're involved with what's really beautiful
from time to time in my practice, because there's a lot
of different deity, I'm going touse the word worship, but you
know, involvement, the right, the right one will always come

(47:41):
up here at the right moment. And so recently I had Bagala
Muki come and I was like, wow, okay, you know, we took silence.
You had said the word like silence, and I'm like, wow, like
this Devi of golden silence. But it's not just that, like
there's so much as you talk in your book, there's all these
esoteric meanings in in everything.

(48:02):
You know, she's doesn't just mean never speak again.
You know, there's like in that profound silence, we're able to
go and really connect to that Dharma.
What it have those profound experiences where you can have
these epiphanies, epiphanies where you're like, that's what I
meant to be doing. That's that's the truth.
Like that is my path, right. So when I actually went on a

(48:24):
physical pilgrimage with my teacher, physical like used my
legs, walked up a freaking mountain and kept me in the
temple like, you know, for threeweeks and and stayed with
mountain shamans and had all these incredible experiences
where we were doing rituals. That was I was ready for that.
I was ready for that because we were going really deep and I was

(48:44):
not living, staying in five starhotels.
We were in, you know what it's like, like we were literally in
mountain villages where there's maybe 10, you know, kind of
houses, structures in the countryside on the side of a
mountain. It's freezing cold, you know,
but and, and damp and wet. And the bathrooms are certainly
not anywhere near Western standards.
But it wasn't. It wasn't.

(49:04):
Or or five star, the furthest thing from 5 star.
My God. Polar opposite and it was
amazing because I was just like,I need to do this.
I need to be having this experience of understanding how
to let go like, and that and that these people here are
hosting us. This is their life.
And look how happy they are and they're so generous and they're

(49:26):
preparing food cabbages. That was all that was growing.
But you know, that's what they they could do anything with the
cabbage leaves. It was amazing.
They made a Curry, they made a soup, they made, you know,
whatever, you know, and, and rice and, and so it was really
and, and then of course, we're working with the Nagas in that
tradition. They, they work with the, the,
the soap and deities, the Nagas.And so we were doing a lot of

(49:47):
activations with the Nagas beingin nature in the mountain and,
and having them come, come forward and so on.
So that's, there you go. That's a that's a pilgrimage
story of mine. And I mean, but all of that to
say, it's pilgrimage. Could you ever compare it to
months of therapy in a seat, youknow, is there?

(50:09):
You know, like I'm not discounting and poo pooing
because I still do it and I still believe it.
And I stand by my career and I stand by my training.
But there's something really potent about the times that
we're living in that calls for stronger medicine.
And I found that being, I mean, it's not like they can't be

(50:29):
complimentary. I mean, you asked me about the
gradual path offerings. It is an ecosystem in which
individual psychotherapy, pilgrimage, online courses and
service projects are 4 pillars. Now, the pilgrimage is not
something that you can do regularly.
It's like, you know, once a year, once a lifetime maybe.

(50:50):
It's like the big catalyst that is really so remarkable, so
fully transformative. There's nothing like it.
You're with your teacher, you'rewith, you're immersed in the
culture, you're immersed in the practices, you're immersed in
the lineage, you're immersed in the power spots of these places
that are 1000 or 2000 years old.And it's just as potent as a

(51:12):
psychedelic knock, you know, without all the, you know, all
the, well, even pilgrimage has its own shadow.
I mean, try to come back from pilgrimage and come back and
reintegrate into a society and, and into reality.
And then you get the question, how is your pilgrimage?
Well, well, that mean I have this series of questions to ask
you like the importance of integration, because I think

(51:34):
there's a lot of people that don't actually integrate.
They don't understand why that'sso important and necessary.
You know, like when I came back from that pilgrimage, my
husband, this was several years ago, had it in.
We had friends from Australia staying for four or five days
and I was just literally the 1st.
And I was like, this is the lastthing I want to do and to be

(51:57):
entertaining and coming back into this Western environment
and have to show up for friends or whatever.
Not that I didn't want to be around them, but it was.
I needed that time to sit and bewith the experiences and be with
my inner world and be alone and just be in that space to
continue to feel what I had justgone through, what had just been

(52:20):
communing with me, what I had been merging with.
You know, that was really, therewas a lot of inspiriting that
was happening versus, you know, being possessed, let's say.
And so those were deeply profound.
And it was such a struggle to have to come back.
But then I would also recognize,OK, I live in the West.

(52:41):
This is the struggle. The struggle is real.
Like that's I always say, I would say to my husband, it's
not a meme. It's not a meme.
The struggle is real. It's actually a fact.
Understand what it means. It's a fact.
We create the struggle. We live it and we just suck it
up and and then complain about it.
Yeah. Yeah.

(53:02):
Well, what you're describing is solving at Coagulum.
OK, on the one end, the departure to pilgrimage requires
a letting go and a surrender anda dying.
But then you don't just come back transformed.
You actually have hardship on the back end back in because
you're integrating slowly and you can't be the same person.

(53:23):
But it's your husband and it's none of them have changed and
they still see you the same way.And it's not their fault.
How could they know anything different?
And you've got to find a new wayto fit in.
And and that struggle is the reintegration.
It's the at Coagula and maybe, Imean, we are used to quick fixes
and we're used to quick processes, but maybe that takes

(53:46):
years. I mean, we don't we, we forget
that some of these practices andprocesses, they're they're,
they're meant to be lifelong andtheir timelines.
That's why I call it the gradualpath.
And even if that includes psychedelics, which is one of
the most potent, it's all the coagular processes, it's still
all the priming to get you really ready for sentence

(54:09):
setting and all the back end integration takes time.
And sometimes it's a lot longer than we expect and a lot harder
than we expect. The world is not ready to
receive us and our the paradigm is not necessarily ready to
receive us. Our husbands, our spouses, our
children and the institutions that we operate in aren't ready
to receive us. And so there's like this almost

(54:32):
like a, a re entry, like a, a satellite or spaceship re entry
process that is, you know, again, filled with challenges
that help us find the right language.
And how do I preserve my practice?
And how do I preserve my mindset?
How do I preserve my worldview and still find meaning in what I
do? And maybe I have to change what

(54:54):
I do. And I try a few things and it
falls flat and I try a few ways of.
And certainly you lose people onthis journey.
You do lose people, right? And in a way, that's part of the
purification. It's a snake shedding its skin.
It's like, yeah, this one reallyneeded me to be codependent with
them. And I've changed.
I'm not that way. I won't do that anymore.
And guess what? They they're out.

(55:14):
They're just out. Or maybe you're better with your
boundaries. And you say, I just, you know,
I'm giving you fair warning. I can't do these things anymore.
And then you're out, you know, so that's all the back end
transformation, whether you're doing a meditative process,
whether you're doing a pilgrimage, whether you're doing
a psychedelic, you know, journey.
This is what I talk about in thefinal part chapters of the book

(55:35):
about the reintegration process.It's not all that pretty.
It doesn't wrap itself up nicelylike a doc, like a like a Warner
Brothers, or like a Disney move.No, this is not a yoga retreat.
It's not like, oh, I'm going to go and I come back and I feel
relaxed. Plenty of those in Bali, I could
tell you. And that's OK.

(55:56):
That's OK. It's a different thing.
Yeah, it's OK. I mean, for for some people,
that is just the first step thatthey need just to even sense how
wound up and stressed they are and that there's another thing
that they could possibly doing with their time, precious
resources and what's called precious human life in the
Buddhist tradition. Then to go out and have a party

(56:17):
and to enjoy some of the luxury centers that you your early life
was about. Yeah, there's more.
There's more to life than comfort, and there's more to
life than having a good time. I loved how you mentioned the
serpent in the even Adams story as as the architect, the
trickster. Oh yeah, I thought that was so

(56:37):
great. And I have had several
conversations recently on all the podcast episodes.
I'm not mentioning the serpent as a trickster, but the whole
what you share here in terms of the tree of knowledge and the
tree of life and Eve and openingup to wisdom.
So I'd love for you to just tellthat story, this misinterpreted

(56:58):
story that we all have been. It's that's good.
You put it as a, it's a misinterpretation.
It's going to leave me up to a lot of criticism, but it we
could call it a a more esoteric.It's one version, the one that's
the one I've been told it's one version, and then there's
another version that is esotericfor sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an esoteric version of the

(57:18):
the Adam and Eve story where youknow, Eve is cast as the
misanthrope that you know, leadsto the descent of humankind,
opens the doorway to sin. She's the she, she, she is the
one that takes the apple and eats the apple first, right?
So the idea is that there's two trees in a garden.

(57:39):
People don't recognize that there's normally 2 trees.
One is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil 1 is
called tree of eternal life and the the apple is from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.
And in this perspective, this esoteric perspective, Eve is
actually the more sensitive one.She's the more empathic one.

(58:00):
She's the more intuitive one. She's Prajna, she's Fudger
yogini. She's the she's the goddess.
He's in touch with the earth, he's in touch with the animals,
he's in touch with the archetypal language and she's
she in the Garden of Eden. There is not the garden of
perfection. The Garden of Eden is the is the

(58:21):
garden of naivete. It's the garden of idealism,
elderhood, idealism, fantasy. And So what she does by true
eating the the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil is
that she begins to see that there's duality, there isn't
just idealism, there's harsh realities out there.

(58:43):
And, and what she does is she triggers a set of consequences
that gets both her and Adam expelled from the Garden of
Delusion or of Illusion, which is actually a good thing.
We would call that, in modern kind of parlance, a rude
awakening. See, she's responsible for

(59:03):
having a rude awakening in whichshe disobeys the authority
figure but wins or gains her ownindependence, her own life.
And so she's cast out into the world and she has to struggle.
And that's not a punishment, that's a purification.
From an esoteric point of view. She gets to undergo a
purification where she loses or sheds the the illusion of a

(59:27):
child and gets the harsh realityof an adult that has to navigate
a complex world of chaos. And every myth in a way speaks
to this, that that that is our encounter with reality.
We're all looking for the Shire.We're all looking for the safe
haven. We're all looking to stay
comfortable. We're all looking to stay small.

(59:49):
We're all looking to be spoon fed in our five star.
You know, I don't know what chain that you worked for, but
our five star luxury thing, you know, but Eve is the one that
initiates, you know, the processof losing 7 of losing.
Illusion of losing, delusion of going on the heart, the journey

(01:00:10):
of hardship, of embracing reality for its complexity, and
of initiating her own capacity to navigate reality.
And it's and it is a circular journey, right?
Because they get outcast out of Eden and they make their way
through great hardships which awaken them to reality, not to
deception. And then they return.

(01:00:32):
They get to return to finally taste the fruit of the other
tree. You know, they pass the
threshold guardians, the cherubim, and they get to taste
of the tree of eternal life. And God didn't want them to just
have the fruit of eternal life. He wanted them first actually to

(01:00:53):
know the difference between goodand evil so that they could make
a better choice. And that we have to understand
that that's one of the moral stories of this reinterpretation
is that you can't just masquerade as being
compassionate. You have to know that you have
evil within you and you have to contend with your own shadow and
your own darkness, your own ability to be a Hitler, your own

(01:01:15):
ability to, to kill someone, your own ability to, to commit
suicide, your own ability to navigate the, the dance between
the the abyss of existential annihilation.
You have to, you have to, you have to contend with that as a
human being. And only then, when you come,
like Jung did from the frontiersof those Neverlands, can you

(01:01:36):
reconcile what it means and appreciate what it means to be
good and what it means to be noble and what it means to be
pure. You don't get to be pure without
first wrestling with your impurity.
You don't just get to jump over and taste the tree of internal
life. You have to earn it and it's so
it's because of Eve's genius that we get to we actively get

(01:01:57):
the the noble reward of hardshipso that we can understand the
difference between good and evil, so that we can choose
morally choose to live a straight and narrow a life, a
noble life. Then then you can taste the
elixir. The final, the final bit of that
story is that each of us can taste this elixir where we're

(01:02:20):
where we finally realize we are not just one little bit of
reality. We are all the totality of
reality. We live forever.
Our soul is forever and that changes everything.
When you realize your soul is ever forever in a in a world of
infinite consequences, suddenly you become much more
responsible. It makes sense to be

(01:02:43):
responsible. So problem part of the problem
now with our current paradigm isthat we think that we eat,
drink, and be merry for tomorrowwe die.
Once we die, the chemistry and the Electro activity in the
brain and the heart cease. That's it.
We're we're done, we're over. And because we're we're in
nothing, essentially, we're nobody going nowhere and we're

(01:03:08):
worth nothing. We can destroy the planet in our
pursuit for temporary satisfaction, but all ancient
cultures before the advent of industrialized materialistic
paradigm realize we are forever.We are forever intertwined.
We are forever inhabiting forms as a consequences of our

(01:03:29):
actions. So it isn't just about temporary
eat, drink and be merry. It's about being responsible and
having a purpose. So all of that is baked into
this as exoteric rendering of a very universal story, very
common story. Thank you so much.
Awesome. You know, I was going to ask you

(01:03:49):
about obviously you've got deathand rebirth in the title.
We've talked so much about that,but the bardo, we did not
mention what the bardo is. I don't know if you that's
probably a long well, it is a long explanation.
That's not a quickie. And, and actually, the way you
just, you know, described the story of the garden of good and
evil, such a, a, a sweet spot toalmost conclude this

(01:04:12):
conversation, But I really, I really, I'd love for you to just
expand on the bardo if you don't, if you don't mind.
No, I'd love to. I mean it.
It's a good way to end because it really will.
I hope to draw your, your listeners into how to make it
applicable for them. Because currently as a
civilization, we're in bardo. So from the Tibetan point of

(01:04:34):
view, life is cyclic. There's death transforms into
bardo or between a liminal spaceand then there's rebirth.
And then from rebirth, old age, sickness, death, bardo, rebirth,
round and round and round. And from a civilizational point
of view, we have reached the tipping point and we're on the

(01:04:57):
cusp of multiple transitions from from the Vedic science
point of view, we have just transitioned past the Kali Yuga
March 21st, 2025, according to the research by Bibu des Mishra,
who's recalculated the Yuga cycles, which are on order of
25,000 years. So we are just crossing over a

(01:05:19):
several thousand year spans intoa new age.
It's called the Bronze Age to our para, but we are right on
the cusp. So we're in between, which is
why our civilization is breakingdown and institutions are
breaking down and things are no longer working.
And there's a lot of strife, andwe're basically coming out of a
dark age of egocentrism and materialism.

(01:05:42):
But the hopeful message for yourlisteners is that we're actually
on the upswing, what's called the ascension swing.
And So what we do in this bardo is really critical because we
are responsible. We are the first generations who
are laying the foundation for a civilization that is just in

(01:06:04):
formation. And so the more that we can
align with the inner sciences and do our purification and go
on pilgrimage and do the meditation and meet the shadow
and do the alchemy, the more we will discover, as both Adam and

(01:06:24):
Eve did, the difference between good and evil.
The more that we can self regulate and align and properly
conduct ourselves, the more we will create new institutions
just out of the rubble of the old that will actually be more
egalitarian. They will be more sustainable.
They will be more mindful. They will be more, you know,

(01:06:47):
better resourced. They will have much more
longevity because of this internal alignment and because
of this internal process. This is an absolutely critical
and pivotal time in civilization.
It is the dawn of a new age. Not only the Yuga system is
telling us that, but also the astrology between the Piscean
and the Aquarian Age. We are amidst that too.

(01:07:07):
Anyway, so that's all in the book.
I we're actually in the bardo ofthree massive cosmic cycles.
And so this is the time for our culture and our species and our
friends and our communities to get right with ourselves because
we're actually, we have a huge responsibility and actually it
will also deliver us a tremendous amount of purpose.

(01:07:32):
Now, this is the same time as like AI is coming in and doing
away with half our jobs. But don't be scared with that,
you know, don't be scared of that and don't don't let the
external forces of the collapse Dr. hijack your amygdala.
Keep going inside. Keep listening to your own
intuitive wisdom. Keep trying to align with better

(01:07:53):
energies. Keep sorting out yourself as
Jonah did in the belly of the whale.
Go for redemption and then come back out and try to make
whatever positive contribution you can make in your sphere of
influence. That's the basically the message
of the elixir I. Love that.
That is so great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you

(01:08:16):
for this great conversation. So OK all your websites.
If you just make it to gradualpath.com, you'll find my
book, my pilgrimages, the onlinecourses, my private therapy and
the service project, which is also a beautiful, this is what
I'm talking about. How do you engage?
You know, we are, we have projects that you help people
just express their compassion and their goodwill and to feel

(01:08:38):
that they're part of something bigger.
So there's service projects there too.
Perfect. Well, awesome.
This was amazing. I've really thank you.
Tadania. You so good.
Wonderful to connect. You too.
Thank you.

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