Andrew Hewson: Peace and love everyone. I’m here with David “Davidya” Buckland. He is the author of Our Natural Potential, someone that I highly admire and appreciate, and we’re going to chat today about various topics, stages of enlightenment, healing, what that looks like in the context of daily life. So I thank you for taking the time to speak with me again, David.
Davidya Buckland: Namaste. I’m more than happy to chat.
A: Yeah, so perhaps we’ll just start with a moment of silence and just allowing the radiance and the brilliance of this presence to really come to the foreground, sort of set the stage for our discussion.
[Pause]
A: All right, so perhaps you can start off by sharing a little bit about the the layers of Divinity. I know this is something that you’ve been you’ve been working on as a current project and I’d love to hear some more about it.
D: Sure. I think the most important first point to make about this though, is that what we’re talking about is something that can be directly experienced.
We’re not talking about belief or about concepts. I mean, there’s some concepts in there that’s… if you’re going to use words, there has to be concepts behind them to have meaning and so on. But this isn’t about sort of a prescription of understanding that’s required. I mean it’s good to have some background behind it, but we’re talking mainly about direct experience, levels of reality that we can come to know.
And so we’re talking about the progression of how that can unfold and the importance, and that’s where the importance of spiritual techniques comes in, in this context, is to help connect with Source, give us that inner connection with our universality, to heal, resolve what is unresolved for us emotionally, mentally, however that shows up for us, and then to refine perception. And what that means is is the culturing of the layers between that inner source and the surface so that they become more conscious and not so much in shadow, so that they can be directly experienced and they become part of our routine life.
So yeah, layers of Divinity.
Potentially, the world around us, there’s a context we could say that it’s all Divinity from one level. And so you have pure abstraction, which, where there’s dynamics that become conscious and interplay and giving rise to creation, the universe, and what we perceive around us in these various layers. Big simplification.
Now, and there’s also another context in which there’s free will. And in that context humans have the ability to make choices and we can choose to go with you know, where life is pointing us or we can decide to go against that or turn it a little bit or adjust it and and there’s there’s layers closer to the surface where laws of action and other kind of natural laws are in play and they’re always seeking balance. So when we act in a way that’s against wholeness and growth, then there’s some kind of correction required to bring it back again.
And so on that level there are these natural laws which we can we could say are divinely inspired, but they’re the laws of the functioning of that arena. And if we’re identified with our body-mind as who we are, then we’re going to be swept around by that. And if we’re not aware of our deeper nature and having that connection with the Divine, then there’s a tendency to make poorer choices and not have the context to make those good choices, not have the big picture.
And so by the spiritual practices I mentioned, by connecting to our Source within and culturing that in our awareness, then we come to gain a greater context. And then in time, that inner universal awareness can wake up to itself through us. And that’s broadly known as spiritual awakening or Self-Realization or Cosmic Consciousness. And the Self wakes up to itself through us.
So that’s an important distinction in there too. It’s not that the me, David, doesn’t wake up and become enlightened. We wake up From the person.
And there are some renunciate-oriented teachings that suggest that it’s the death of the me, the end of it. And there are certain aspects that do end it, but it’s more around the identification with the person, the body, you know, our functionality that ends. There’s still a person. You still need a person to function in the world. It’s just not the center anymore. It’s kind of, I sometimes use the analogy of it’s like, it’s like your thumb. It’s a piece of the functionality you need to, to function. But it’s not the center anymore. Yeah. Before that shift, it’s the center.
And what that platform does of, of that, that first shift of Self-Realization is it gives you that stable inner, absolute, unchanging peace, inner reality, and a stable platform, and that larger context I mentioned earlier. And so it gives you a platform on which refined perception can develop much more.
Now, some people do have refined perception prior to awakening.
A: Yes.
D: And that. But you know when the mind is still attached to its experiences then it tends to be pulled back and forth and around and and then the refined perception gets pulled back and forth and around with us. It can be some people experience it actually as a burden or a problem.
A: Yes the refined perception in that case is being filtered through that identified ego.
D: Yes, yes exactly. And so there’s a desire to control it in some way or to keep it in some way and those kinds of things as well.
And again, the interpretation and it’s like, it’s my perception and I am doing this and those kinds of things.
A: Yeah, the sense of specialness can arise in that as well.
D: Yes, yes. There’s a lot of challenges with that.
But in the post awakening, you know, there’s still quite commonly a fair bit of unpacking that takes place after that before it’s fully established.
You know, there’s the shift itself, which just takes a moment. But then there’s a whole series of unpacking, because you’re now in this kind of infinite space.
A: Yes.
D: So all that stuff that’s unresolved has an opportunity to rush forward and be seen.
A: Yes, so that identification with the person was holding down a lot of material. And then when that identification is transcended, it’s not that there’s no longer the capacity to function as you were saying, and the persona, that interface that allows for human experience to unfold. There’s still the sense of being, you know, that unique expression on a certain level, but it’s not your your fundamental nature.
D: Right. If you stub your toe you’re still going to go ‘ouch’ you know and it’s not the bookcase over there that’s going to go ‘ouch’. It’s still you, know, there’s still that functionality there, it’s just in a much larger context then.
And so when you have that platform then as I mentioned, the refinement can develop a lot more. It tends, in the West, we have a culture that really emphasizes the mind and intellect, the approach of science, and that is actually quite good for certain kinds of things. It does, it can help in that fine discrimination in terms of the progress of consciousness and it does help support that process.
So in the West you tend to see less of the refinement and more of the, you get a drier, flatter kind of Self-Realization, and then perhaps a Unity shift later on where consciousness is recognized not just in here, looking out, but being behind the world itself. It’s like the world is a movie screen, playing out on a movie screen, and you may recognize that you’re the screen as well. So it’s kind of, you’re both sides of the seer-seeing dynamic.
And so there can be quite a bit of progress in consciousness. It tends to be easier with some of the techniques as well, tend to culture that.
But other techniques help with the refinement side more. And that helps, that allows this other process. It’s kind of like this, like a masculine and feminine aspect.
So you have consciousness is like the masculine or Shiva side, the detached observer, the dynamic in consciousness, whereas the feminine is the expression, the objects of the world, and it’s also in the process, the process of experience between that subject and object.
The process of experience is the really interesting part. It’s the most subtle, but it’s what’s actually doing the doing.
One of the features of Self-Realization is when we detach from our ego sense and the ego’s claims of the “I did this” and “this is mine” and so on, then there’s this sense of non-doing. Actions, the person still continues to act and do things as usual in its life, but we we no longer experience ourselves as being the doer. It’s just being done.
Kind of like the way our heartbeat, our breath works normally, it just kind of happens.
And we’ve kind of realized that actually that’s what’s been happening all along with most other stuff as well. It’s just that the ego is claiming it is, that I did that, this is mine and so on. But now we’re seeing that actually, no, it’s just part of the play of nature in many ways.
And so what can happen then is we can stop look and think, “So if I’m not doing the doing, what is doing the doing?” And that can help lead into the refinement and the exploration of the mechanics of the world and what’s happening around us.
A: Yeah, so maybe just to drop this into something that can, even this conversation right now is a manifestation of this level of intelligence. It’s a flow of intelligence experiencing within conscious awareness.
D: Yes. Yes. It’s a… I find that I’m much better able to talk about this stuff if I just get out of the way. If the person tries to organize it and lay it out, then yeah, I don’t do as well.
A: Yes. Yes.
D: It’s kind of like a flow, just stepping into the flow, where you get out of the me and just allow what wants to be said to speak.
A: Yes.
D: And I kind of can sit back and be surprised at what happens, comes out of the mouth sometimes. The person didn’t even necessarily know that.
A: Beautiful.
D: And people talk about it as consciousness speaking. And we’re not talking about channeling or anything like that, by the way.
A: Oh, no, no.
D: This is going from much deeper places where it’s because we become in that first shift, we become that, that universal Self. And that opens the door for that to act through you and speak through you. And as you let go of the more and more of that sense of person and doership.
So there’s a, the refinement, There’s kind of like two aspects of that
that really help with refinement. One of them is known as “sattva”, which is a quality. And the other one is kind of more of a quantity and a thing, “soma”.
Now, “sattva” is one of what’s known as the three gunas. “Sattva” refers to purity or clarity. Most commonly you hear people talking about “sattva” in terms of you know, sattvic food, for example, that oranges are sattvic food or something like that. But I mean, that, that has its value on that level. Having a relatively clean, healthy body is, is useful.
But obsessing over your diet and so on for spiritual progress doesn’t really help a lot because that’s not on the level of which awakening happens.
The refinement, what we want to be refining is bringing Sattva into the,
into those middle layers, and that involves healing the unhealed emotional baggage and resolving some of the stories and the concepts we have in the mind and just being able to trust nature.
And the subtler levels are primarily Sattvic, but as you get forward,
’cause the opposite of Sattva is known as tamas, which essentially means inertia. And you need some value of inertia for there to be form, as we know from physics.
So again, it’s a question of balance. And we’ve been in a time where Tamas, or inertia became more dominant. And so consciousness was more clouded and now Sattva is rising. So there’s more clarity in that. And again, some spiritual practices can help culture that inner clarity.
And so, and we’re not just talking about clarity, like again, in the body or whatever, or in consciousness, but all those layers in between. ‘Cause we can be quite clear on one level and like, you know, people can have very clear understanding of consciousness itself. Your understanding of consciousness becoming and that, and yet be completely blocked up in their heart. So there isn’t going to be a lot of refined emotions and the flow of love and so on like that. It’s hard, it’s encrusted.
A: So when we speak about the feminine aspect in the context of refinement, as you’re mentioning, this healing, attentive allowing of whatever’s surfacing on the level of unresolved material is vital.
D: Yes, vital.
A: And would you agree?
D: Right, because most of us carry, we basically, the way we adapted to being human in the current time was to protect the heart by building essentially a black crust around it to defend it from energy and because we’re, most of this is unconscious, it’s just the way we habitually respond, responded and the energetic modeling we got from those around us who had done the same thing. So it’s kind of like passed on. So instead of learning ways to heal and release our emotions, we mostly learned how to suppress them and protect ourselves, to defend. So there’s kind of a process of shifting our energetic habits and the way we approach things.
I remember taking a workshop at one point and they demonstrated the difference between how when someone approaches us in an agitated state, how we respond to that, how much a difference it makes to both us and them and the dynamic between that. If you’re in defence, when someone approaches you who’s upset or angry or whatever, then it it reflects the energy back and amplifies it. And so it tends to cause them to become more angry rather than being resolved and to do more dumping and so on. And then we get more defensive and so on.
Whereas if we can learn to be okay and transparent, then that energy just passes right through us energetically, and dissipates. And it takes the wind out of the sails of the person who’s upset and it just, and it’s, and it’s over.
And it’s really fascinating to, when we kind of did these exercises to practice this and it was surprising how effective it was. And just that, those little simple things like that, there’s just, and when you can experience it, then you can recognize the, you’ve had the experience and then you can start to learn to bring that habit up.
And of course we’ll have places where we’re more sensitive and reactive and places where we’re less so and so we can be more open and start to culture that in those areas.
A: Sure, and oftentimes in these situations where we do see that level of reactivity arising or perhaps there is something appearing to surface in the experience where we’re being called out or a soft spot, a tender spot is being poked, I feel that we’re showing ourself, the Self is showing itself, something. There’s something always to be learned in that context.
Perhaps there is something that was present that we were not aware of. There was a blind spot or something that just hadn’t been seen fully. Through the intelligence within the field of experiencing, that can be brought up to the surface so that it can be seen.
That doesn’t mean that we have to fully act it out or become it or anything like that. But just for it to arise on a, on a subtle level and and to be with it in that way.
D: Right, yeah, it isn’t about acting out our dramas because that just can reinforce them. It’s about just being conscious of them and allowing them to be there. Because so much of that inner baggage is just simply experiences that have not completed. There’s some value that you know there was a traumatic experience or a difficult experience of some kind.
We dealt with part of it, but we weren’t comfortable with all of it at that moment. And then we didn’t come back to it because we didn’t understand how to do that kind of work. And so we’ve been carrying it with us all this time.
And, um, and that, kind of creates this, you know, backlog. And even though we tend to suppress that and keep it hidden, it still leaks out and it’s kind of acts like a filter on our experience and how we interpret the world, and it tends to leak out in different ways. And we can see it by what we’re triggered by in our daily experience. And we learn instead to not be so reactive, but instead look, okay, why am I being triggered? What’s behind that? What’s the charge that’s there? And then we learn to feel that. And we can have these moments where just a brief, intense emotion washes over us and that experience is complete and it’s done.
Of course, there’s some bigger stuff that takes a little bit more work, but a lot of it, a lot of it is just these little, just bits and pieces of unresolved experiences. And then some of them can be from our early childhood where we, we, you know, at the time we didn’t know how to deal with that stuff, but now as adults, it wouldn’t be a problem, but you know, it’s kind of a boogeyman under the bed thing. So we were kind of afraid of it because we were when we were young. And but now as adults, it’s, it’s actually quite a bit, you know, we’re more afraid of the fear than fear itself.
A: Yeah.
D: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a process though. It takes time. And we have to learn some patience with ourselves and acceptance where we tend to be so hard on ourselves.
A: Yes, irrespective of the stage, irrespective of our recognition of reality, it’s not a matter of stuff not coming up, but how we are with the stuff that will inevitably come up on some level.
D: Yes.
A: Yeah.
D: It’s beautiful. Yeah, and it’s just, you know, we’ve been at it for, you know, a long time and lifetimes, depending on how you want to look at it. So it can take some time to work this stuff through. And it’s interesting too, because some people, quite a few people who are on a spiritual path, came into this life basically choosing to carry a significant load, because they wanted to kind of make as much progress as possible. And so, you know, some of us have lots of work to be done, but we also have the potential to have the support for that to be handled and to work through that.
I mean some of the stuff is really actually very simple, just not something that we’re normally taught, and it’s surprising how simple some of it is.
A: Yes, yes it is, and also what I’ve found along the lines of what you were speaking about within the sphere of sattva. In my own case, and in other cases I’m aware of, there’s no real context for understanding various Vedic terminology and things like that, but things are still unfolding. So perhaps there isn’t the languaging immediately available, or it’s a different type of languaging. But whatever the case may be,as these layers of unresolved material are intelligently processed and healed and resolved and attentively allowed, then that level of, that level of clarity, as you were saying, continues to shine forth.
And with that, we will see a greater level of, you know, I wouldn’t say cognitive capacity, but a clearer recognition of what’s taking place within the intelligence of the self.
D: Yeah, one of the interesting things to note is that consciousness itself is lit. There’s a light and it’s down at a very subtle level, but it shines out through the layers onto the surface.
And as we clear those shadows, then more and more of the light can get through and there’s more clarity. Of course, I’m talking visual terms here.
A: Yeah.
D: I’m a visual person and I tend to use visual words. But that’s not a barrier. Just there shouldn’t be an expectation that you’re going to see things necessarily. That’s just one mode or one style.
Some people are more somatic and they’re more bodily, you know, the sensations and intuitive kinds of, of knowing and some people are more auditory, sound and vibration on that level. In fact, sound is actually the more subtle of the three.
Sight is actually the most coarse. However, it has an association with mind and so people who are visual can sometimes have an easier time finding words.
A: Yes, I’ve noticed that as well.
D: I mean, of course, there’s all kinds of variations, but just keeping in mind that if we describe these different layers, and I use visual words I’m not referring to, that’s not the only way you’re going to experience it.
A: Yeah, so that doesn’t mean that if things are unfolding and that’s not taking place that something’s wrong.
D: Yeah, I know people in very advanced stages who get almost very little visual stuff. [How] they get understanding and knowledge?
D: Yeah, just a very profound insight.
A: Beautiful.
D: Yeah. So it’s a process.
So the other part is Soma, and that’s something that with a lot of crazy baggage around it. I’ve seen academic texts, you know, this thick, that are researching how Soma was a magic mushroom. You know, that’s something they describe in the old texts and so on.
In the Rig Veda, it’s a very ancient book composed of ten sub-books or mandalas and one of the mandalas is almost entirely devoted to the topic of Soma. But what’s been missed is that Soma is actually a subtle…
Well, we can go even more subtle there, Soma is essentially a… I’m not sure “divine mind” is the right way to put it, but it’s essentially this level of Divinity that is just essentially like an ocean of milk, it’s called in the text. It’s just like pure white light.
And there’s this whole story about the devas and the demons all getting together and churning the ocean to produce Soma. But in actual fact, the ocean itself is Soma. It’s raw Soma, it’s not Soma in a way that they can use directly. It’s too abstract, I guess you could say.
A: And when you say “they” you’re speaking about laws of nature.
D: Yeah, the Devas, the light beings, the gods, or however you want to frame that. We can get into that in a moment.
So essentially humans have this unique, well not unique, but we have a capacity to be what the Ninth Mandala refers to as the filter. So essentially when we transcend, we go into Samadhi in meditation and so on, and that becomes ongoing after we wake up.
The ocean that we’re essentially immersed in, the soma comes down and through the brain and is filtered and drips in the back of the throat. And we get a sweet taste sometimes when we’re coming in and out of samadhi, Turiya is another word for it.
And we taste that and swallow it, goes down into the digestion, and then it’s distributed out throughout the body. And that, it’s basically the nectar of the gods, they describe it, and it essentially feeds the laws of nature and allows them to perform better, to do better.
It’s kind of like, protein drinks, not a good example, but,
(laughing)
it’s like a, you know, Powerade for the devas… There’s not a good word for it that comes to mind.
A: On this subject, if someone doesn’t have any context for what you’re describing and the way that you’re going through it, this can still be taking place, and it’s also not solely limited to Samadhi. For those that are already in a certain stage, this could be taking place on a regular basis.
D: Right, right, after you wake up. But also there’s a thing, when you change states of consciousness on a routine basis, when you go from waking to sleep, for example, or sleeping to dream, each time you change states of consciousness, you actually drop into the transcendent momentarily.
Most people aren’t conscious of that, simply because it’s kind of foggy down there, and meditation can kind of make that more clear. And so there is these brief touching in unconsciously and that also can bring a little soma in as well. And the clearer we get the more it’s there. And we might not be conscious of this particularly, even secondarily, just you know occasionally we get a sweet taste in the back of the mouth or something and we notice, our nature support is getting better. But by that I mean that our actions and intentions are, that they are much easier to complete and we get results much better and things, you know, opportunities show up that didn’t tend to show up so much before. And so essentially there’s all these… okay, I guess we do need to…
I can touch on this. So there’s two modes. I talked about the masculine and feminine before, but there’s also what’s known as the personal and impersonal. The path of the mind and intellect is the impersonal, where we see the world as functioning from laws of nature and principles and processes and so on like that. The intellectual approach.
The other side is, the more feminine side is the personal, the heart-based approach, where those same laws of nature can be perceived
as personified. So, and gravity maybe is a bad example, the wind. The wind is kind of a function of nature that, you know, moves things around and it has various relationships with tides and so on and the spinning world. But you can also experience the wind as beings that are creating the wind.
And an example I sometimes use is, you know, I went on a plane trip one time and we passed through a very windy area and it was kind of, we got a roller coaster kind of ride where the plane would go like this and then kind of lift and woof [down] again and stuff. So I tuned into the wind devas in the area and they basically said that we’re just doing our job. And so then I went up the ladder because a lot of those laws of nature are in hierarchies. And so I went up the ladder in the hierarchy and talked to the manager, so to speak, and he said, Oh yeah, no problem. And he moved them off to another place and our plane smoothed out.
A friend of mine gives the example sometimes of, he had a massive flock of birds decided to take up residence in his backyard and they were crapping on everything basically and so he did the same kind of thing and the birds moved into a nearby forest.
A: Beautiful. Now on this point, so when we speak about the personal and the impersonal, even in the context of there being a more personified recognition within the Self, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there has to be a visual specific perception of a given being.
So the way that that first showed up here, there was very much that personified relational value of love in reference to trees and various things like this, or different aspects of nature and experience, but it was absent of a definite perception, visual perception of the form of a being.
D: Yeah, and it’s like, it’s kind of one of the ways you might find it is there’s a sense of the tree, ’cause the tree has life and they actually have a value of senses as well, not how we relate to them. And they don’t have, like, for example, they don’t have sight sense organs, so they can’t focus the way we can, but there’s still a subtle, because there’s consciousness, there’s still a subtle sense of sight.
So for example, if you sit at the base of a tree for 10 minutes or so, they can become aware of you. If you just ride by on your bicycle at 30,
they’d barely notice ’cause there’s not enough of that, unless you have a really strong presence.
So there’s the presence of the tree itself, but there can be, you can notice this other separate sense of presence or intelligence or qualities that are associated with the tree, but they’re not the tree itself.
A: Yes, like governing intelligence, yeah?
D: Yes, yes. And so there’ll be there, like for example, there’ll be a group of flowers and they’ll have a flower deva that’s specific to those kind of flowers. There’ll be one there somewhere. So there’ll be a bunch of flowers with one. And what surprised me was that even man-made objects like cars and couches and things have laws of nature associated with them and that. They tend to be quite a bit sleepier as there’s more Tamas there I guess, inertia because they’re to deal with material objects as opposed to life forms. But yeah it’s there in just about everything.
And some of the more surface sorts of beings I found have a bit of attitude about people because we’re, from their perspective, disrespectful. We don’t treat nature in a respectful kind of way and you know many traditional approaches and faiths will, for example, if they’re going to take a tree, they’ll do a ceremony and prayer and thank you to the tree and rather than just kind of bulldozing the whole thing, there’s more respect and so on in there, whereas we’ve kind of lost that perception and so we’ve lost that thing. And so there’s kind of, some of them have a bit of attitude and can cause a bit of trouble sometimes.
And then there’s much more subtle. Yeah, I was kind of backwards a bit myself. I started seeing visually, but because of some experiences I had when I was young, I was quite reticent. I started experiencing visually forms of what we call gods or whatever, quite advanced forms. And I was really circumspect.
This was, it wasn’t comfortable for me. I don’t know what this stuff, you know, was it my imagination? What is this weird thing going on? And, then over time, you know, I opened up a little bit more and then some knowledge was able to be communicated. And then, you know, I kind of became more accepting and understood the principles and the point. And, but, you know, I had sort of more, there was more shadow in more surface levels and so it took me a little more time to clean that out and then it became more conscious. So it’s been a bit backwards in certain ways.
A: I’ll just remind everyone that we’re not talking about any sort of separate otherness in this sphere. It’s all the same Self that is experiencing itself thusly.
D: There’s also one factor that’s really important in this side of it. Some spiritual traditions recommend you stay away from all that kind of stuff. And that’s partly because of what I would call personalization. And that’s because when you experience things from the personal, some beings have the ability to present themselves as they wish.
A: Yes.
D: Because essentially they’re functioning on what we would consider a dream level of experience.
A: Yes.
D: So they can, they have a dream bodies we could say, and so they can create whatever body they want. Some are a little more identified and so their bodies are more fixed and stuff. And so you see beings presenting themselves as being some divine being, but they’re not.
One of the places where that’s trickiest around is channeling, for example, in the old sense of the word, where the channeler essentially opens themselves up to a subtle being to take over, where they’re giving up their body-mind integration or have a being work through them.
Only astral level, more gross type beings would ever do that.
A: Yes.
D: But Divine beings would never take over someone like that. Cause it’s contrary to their spiritual development. Cause mind body integration is an important part of the, of, the progress. And so, uh, stepping away from that.
A: Sure. There’s various, uh,
D: yeah. But anyway, so it’s, you have to be what we, what people tend to become aware at first is more broadly what we call the astral type beings. And it’s very much like humans, on a human level. Many of them are humans between lifetimes. And there’s some that are, lots that are good and fine, you know, what people would call guides and things. But there’s also, you know, some less desirable characters in there, and troublemakers and people who have stepped off their path and don’t want to do the work that 1needs to be done or whatever.
So they’re kind of just bored and wanting to cause trouble. So it’s important when you start to have subtle experiences not to take any of it too seriously. There’s not only their ability to show up, but there’s also what we contribute to it.
A good example is this idea of angels having wings. Most of Christian paintings always show angels as having wings, but divine beings are functioning on a level where they’re essentially clouds of light with intelligence. They can take a form in order to communicate with us, and if we have an expectation that angels are supposed to have wings and then odds are they’ll present themselves that way. But you know, an astral being that has ability to control their appearance can take that appearance as well.
So you can’t… it’s not about appearances. So one of the rules, one of those things I use for that kind of standard I use for that kind of stuff is how do they feel, and what are they offering? Are they offering secret special knowledge or some kind of control thing going on, or is it more they’re just offering more neutral… I don’t want to get into this, spend a whole bunch of time on this, but just to be…
because people tend to experience the astral stuff first before they’re experiencing the divine and because it’s really cool and they can be really fancy in that they may overestimate the importance of what they’re experiencing and the importance of the beings involved and they can fall prey to being manipulated. I did a little of that myself.
A: Yes and then I’ll make one more point in reference to this topic is that also there can be, there can be a stable shift and perhaps not a lot of refined perception or things are still unfolding. And so there’s not a definite sense of, you know, relating with subtle forms or anything like that.
But there can be subtle influence on some level that could potentially be distracting or mischievous, like you were saying, not directly recognizable as coming from a particular form, but still present on a subtle level. So it’s something to be aware of and have discernment in reference to. And I I think what you said about the feeling tone of it and everything like that is extremely valuable.
D: Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s really important to also to clear up our emotional stuff. So we can recognize when, ’cause the darker beings, for example, they live on energy. And so they want certain flavors of energy.
A: Yeah. (laughs)
D: So if they like anger, then they’ll, try and culture anger and they’ll poke us in a way that makes us angry. And like, trigger our unresolved anger and that, whereas when we start resolving that stuff, then we’re not gonna be triggered that way. And then they basically move on.
A: Yes, yeah, beautiful. That’s another amazing point is that to the degree that there is healing and resolution is to the degree that we’re going to be free from a lot of the potential mishaps that could arise within that sphere, or at least have a greater capacity to discern when some of that activity is present.
D: Yeah, I mean, I can, exactly, one of my own examples, when I first started experiencing some of this stuff, there was a few beings that I met who were more than happy to answer any questions I had.
But what was revealed over time was they actually didn’t have any knowledge. They were just kind of, they didn’t know they were just kind of, just say something.
A: Just making stuff up.
D: Yeah, essentially, I mean, had some a little bit of background or something but so you know they didn’t… but it pretty quickly became apparent… but I also caught myself becoming dependent, leaning on them.
Yes. And when I realized that was I was starting to make routine decisions based on their feedback, I mean this all this happened pretty quickly but I realized, okay this is a mistake, you know, put this aside, ignore it, don’t give it any attention and it faded out because I didn’t. So then, you know, a little while later, along comes these divine beings and I thought, oh this again.
You know, why I was kind of circumspect about it and then, you know, over time it became clear that they were distinct.
A: Yeah, beautiful. I’m really glad you shared that about the dependency and that sort of unhealthy dynamic that can present itself because I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that elsewhere as well.
D: Yeah, it’s codependency essentially and that’s the same with spiritual teachers, I mean you have to be so careful about getting caught up in..
Yeah, because it’s… you know teachers might be awake, but you know, if they still have some, you know, emotional shadows and so on like that, and they haven’t dealt with and… They can and if they’re not clear enough they can act that out with their students.
I’ve had good friends who kind of went sideways.
A: Sure, let’s talk about that for a sec if you don’t mind, just with the, in the context of teachers. I was, you know, being fairly new into the whole spiritual sphere in the context of this lifetime, you know.
The way that I was introduced to the spiritual path had to do with, you know, daily inventory work, looking at unresolved areas, facing those things, resolving those things, healing those things. And so I was sort of surprised when I, you know, started looking into different conferences like the Science and Nonduality Conference or different groups and different things that were going on, that there was a lot of, you know, seemingly or apparently advanced levels or recognitions or cases of awakening where that was totally absent and there had been no real investigation into unresolved past material, no real healing, no real level of accountability, transparency, those kinds of things.
So it seems that what a true teacher represents is not only the status of an actual grounded shift and a recognition of one’s reality, but also that level of transparency and accountability and clarity like you were speaking about before in reference to sattva and the healing of all of that unresolved material.
D: Yes, and self-honesty and honesty with students, you know, when they’re going through stuff that they’re open about it.
It’s tricky. I mean, everybody has their blind spots. Every teacher I’ve known has their blind spots, and that’s just the nature of being human,
really.
By the time we clean it all up, you know, we’re done. So it’s tricky stuff. But if we’re open, like one of the things that sprung out of some of
the people who are regulars at SAND is the Association for Spiritual Integrity, basically, to try and set ethical guidelines, because most spiritual teachers in the West are independent.
They may be associated with a tradition or may not be, but they tend to be quite independent. And there’s a lack of peer support. And so you end up with, can end up with a scenario where you’re above the students. And so you don’t have any, anybody calling you on your stuff and anybody giving you feedback on your shadows and things.
And I’ve found that very valuable. I mean, I have a few friends who are more than happy to point out when I’m being stupid about something.
(laughs)
A: Yes, exactly.
D: Going to a certain place where I tend to go sometimes. And so it’s good, it’s like, ah right, I’m doing it again. And you know, those old things. And it’s very, very healthy. ‘Cause otherwise you can get caught up in your stuff and there can be very valid experiences of feeling very complete and that you have, you’re connected with all knowledge and whatever you need to know, we’ll know. And like we talked earlier about, when you speak, it speaks through you and all that. You know, and you can let that go to your head.
I mean, there is a cosmic value of the ego as well, which was part of the process is letting that one go too. But some teachers get really caught in that. And sure, I mean, that there’s teachers who say that they’re some form of God or whatever like that, but I’ve experienced that myself, but I don’t go around saying, “Oh yeah, I’m this.”
(laughing)
‘Cause it’s like, if you actually understand God, that the Divine is so much more than just a specific form of God. I mean, the chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita, is a classic example, where Prince Arjuna asked Krishna to show him his true form. He was there in a human form.
But asked him to show his true form and Krishna says, “Oh, I don’t know.” But he said, “No, no, I want to see.” And so he shows him and basically Arjuna is completely overwhelmed. Because he’s basically everything and everywhere all at once. And there’s a zillion forms and appearances, both divine and destructive.
A: Of course, even as you were saying even these types of recognitions are to be surrendered. Yeah, you have to be like go up so similar…
D: Every stage of the way, everything you gain has to be, has to be surrendered
A: Yeah
D: for each stage the previous stage has to be surrendered…
A: Has to be surrendered and in the context of what you were saying about peer support that the level of accountability is so important to have, to have those that are committed to truth around you, not committed to to your image and so that they’re and they know. And there’s a there’s an agreement that truth comes first.
You know that all this other, whatever is unfolding on the level of a teaching and I’m speaking more in the case here but whatever is unfolding on a level of a teaching is secondary to truth and when that is in place It’s a, it’s an expression of grace. Yeah.
D: Yes, I quite agree.
It’s so, and that’s one of the dangers, Because sometimes there can be this sense of there being no person here and there’s certainly renunciate teachings that support that but when you, when you become convinced, that’s not the right word there, but when you buy into that narrative and you sustain it in spite of everything, the hazard of that notion is that you can get caught into ideas that you’re perfect, because there’s no person here, it’s only …
A: And that means that what everyone else is, all of the activity within the field of experiencing is basically just nonsense because they all think that they’re people and so there could be, yeah it could be a very tricky situation and I think I’ve witnessed that in certain cases for sure.
D: Whereas I’ve maintained, you know, you need a person to function in the world. I mean, you know, to me because I did have a sense of ego death when I first woke up. Not everybody does experience it that way but and here it was but after a short time I realized what had actually died was not the ego itself but the identification with the ego. And I mean by ‘ego’ I mean the ahamkara, the I sense. And there is a need to function and recognize that, you know, this is the body-mind and not this table over here. It’s a distinct object and you know if you confuse the two then it’s really hard to function in the world. And so–
A: That is spontaneous, that level of, you know, discrimination or whatever is taking place within the sphere of activity. It doesn’t have to be a conscious decisioning from someone. It’s, you know, it’s a pure flow of intelligence.
D: Right, right. And there is also the sense, you know, that there is a stage in Unity where you look at the table and you recognize you are that as well. But you are that on the level of consciousness. Not on the surface level. Surface level, it’s like a tree.
A: You don’t go and put your hand in…
D: Yeah, yeah. So on the surface level, it’s like all the leaves on the tree, but we’re all the same trunk. It’s kind of like that.
A: Yeah, beautiful. And just to, let’s go a little deeper into this because I think it’s so important within the sphere of personhood, in the sense of personhood. As things are unfolding in these stages, the sense of there being a separate individual as a substantial entity does disappear. It’s no longer there as, you know, in the sense of there being a separate individual person.
But the personal value, the persona that, which is operative in the world is still present. So as you were saying, I was graced with, through the entire unfoldment, I was working at a restaurant, working at a gym and membership sales, had these regular jobs the whole way through, working at a warehouse and in pure Divinity.
And when pure Divinity was in a stage of integration and unification and everything like, which it still is, of course, for as long as there’s a body.
D: I think so, yeah.
A: But it’s such a beautiful, it’s something that is extremely valuable in the context of surfacing and, you know, that which is unresolved being reflected back and the capacity to allow that light of love to really shine into the experience in a much fuller and richer way.
D: Yes, yes. And just recognizing it’s there. I mean, because, you know, I’m very aware of, you know, there are some gifts that have come with this process. Some of them still surprise me. I mean, we talked about, you know, talking through earlier, for example, but I’m also aware of, you know, like the blind spots and the stuff that I’m aware is still here. I mean, if it was, I focus on my blind spot, it wouldn’t be a blind spot anymore.
But, but, but I know that there’s things that are, they’re here playing out, you know, and, and there’s so many layers to it too, is that it’s because it’s, because it’s, as you go deeper into the process, it becomes more and more collective. And so, you know, there’s this process right now, for example, where I’m finishing this PhD process. And it’s been this kind of like meme in my life since I can remember. And it became really clear recently that there’s this ancestral stuff that I wasn’t conscious of before that was pushing behind that. And then more recently, again, I’ve become conscious that there’s this stuff from the spiritual tradition that I’ve been in for several lifetimes. It’s also pushing in that. And it’s just, it’s quite wild because it’s just, it’s not just my own stuff that I’m working out, but I’m kind of working, I’ve come, become this vehicle for working out this set of things collectively that are a bunch of different threads. And I’m sure it’s not all even clear, but there’s just this force behind it. It’s just like, it’s just surprising, just kind of like organizing everything and it’s all happening really fast. And this is after, you know, spending some years trying to figure out how to pull it off. And it all just goes click, click, click click, when the time comes. But there’s a whole series of dynamics in behind that stuff. And it was a lot of it was unresolved business and not just personal, but it was kind of like this collective unresolved thing that’s somehow resolving through this. And of course I don’t see a big enough perspective to see all the details of that, but it’s quite clear there’s some major things being worked out. And there’s a lot of, in religious and spiritual traditions, even, well, even actually a lot of things, in justice and education and stuff, there’s a lot of symbolic kinds of things that are done.
And there’s a lot of power behind that in terms of completion and resolving that I didn’t recognize before. I’ve certainly seen that in some of the Vedic performances and like the Guru Puja that’s used in teaching meditation.
I’ve seen the power in those but I’m seeing a whole nother level with this process that how it’s, kind of, like this. Well, I guess if you think about it, there’s, on the level of kind of a causal, going into the intellect level, down at the subtle level there’s these memes or idea forms that are there, that are kind of like the perfect form. And you know if you can kind of embody that through, then it can kind of, some of that, more of that can express through your life. I don’t know if that’s what’s going on here but it’s a, but yeah other, on a subtle level, there’s kind of the idea forms, so maybe that’s what it’s playing to.
A: Beautiful. Beautiful.
D: Yeah, life is such an adventure.
A: It is, yeah, and that’s how it, that’s how it becomes when, when we’re free of that, that sense of limitation and struggle and feeling so, so constricted, you know.
D: Yeah, there’s a, There’s a word they also call in Sanskrit is asmita, which is kind of like the ‘my’ sense.
There’s the I sense, there’s also this my sense. Where you look at young children and they first start to differentiate themselves from their mother, and then, ’cause they don’t really see a difference at first. And then by the time they get to be about two years old, they start to get a my sense, and it’s not just I, but there’s my, my body, my toy, my books. You kind of get this terrible two kind of things as the emotional body starts becoming more online. And yeah, so that’s kind of when it kicks in and that’s one of the things that does fade off with an awakening.
A: Yes, and that also, we can kind of tie that into the layers of divinity that we started out with. And we really, you know, explored a lot, which is so beautiful. And seeing, you know, that all of this perceptual creation, all of this presentation is the image of Divinity, Yeah? And recognizing the divine nature of all it is, allows this, in a certain sense, you could have the perspective that it belongs to Divinity even though it doesn’t in that way. So there’s a deep level of appreciation that can be present within the sphere of activity.
D: Yes, and there is this, the importance of being conscious, because when it’s not conscious, when Divinity is not conscious for us, then it’s,
I mean, it can be seen in certain ways.
A lot of famous scientists like Einstein and Newton and Galileo and stuff,
believed in an impersonal God, and they just saw this fundamental order in the world. Like, if you look at just basic physical laws, like the second law of thermodynamics, essentially says that if you leave a system to itself, it breaks down into dust. It just inherently falls apart and inertia takes over and entropy and it dissolves.
So in order for something to be maintained, there has to be a constant input of order. And for that system not just to be maintained, to grow and evolve, even more order. So there’s this powerful intelligence behind everything. And if you look closely, it’s so obvious. I mean, there’s certainly what, you know, seeing the golden spiral and so on and all through nature and these really artful, you know, some of those simple formulas that describe these beautiful patterns in nature, very simple ratios and things.
A: And then even flower. [shows]
D: Yeah. Yeah.
A: Also, more simple.
D: Perhaps it’d be useful to just go over it, you know, in briefly.
A: Sure.
D: The layers of divinity. So we have, you know, the outermost layer, you could say, is what we would call the physical, where inertia is greatest, where there’s mass and solidity, apparent solidity of the world.
Next stage, less subtle, or more subtle rather, is the energy level, what we would experience subjectively as the emotional, our emotions, the more surface emotions. And it’s the level of what’s known as prana or chi, although prana has several layers, but that’s where we first deal with it.
And so we have our physical body, we have our nervous system and our circulatory system with the blood and our lymph system. The energy body has what’s known as nadis, energy channels, where the prana flows around
and the soma I was mentioning earlier ties into that too.
And then the next more subtle level is what we would call the experience of the mind or mental body. That’s essentially a level of fields where the qualities are being structured.
And then we have the next most subtle is known as the intellect, the intuition. It’s the level of sacred geometry where the subtle structuring takes place.
And then we have the causal or celestial level where we have the world’s first becoming, the fine vibrations that give rise to the world.
So you have these five vibrations, and then there are these subtle devata, they’re essentially light beings that are essentially just points of light. They don’t take forms, and they work in teams.
And they have this kind of, they create a space in consciousness. Consciousness is nested, and space is nested, and time is nested, and layers within layers. That’s a whole other topic.
But essentially they work in these teams in a kind of a sphere facing each other and they interact and they create these fine sutras, light, and then they modulate them with sound and vibrate the vibration.
And that gives structure and basic structure and qualities to form.
And then the mind level has the fields and then it’s energized on the emotional body level and then expressed into form on the physical level.
It depends, some things only come up as far as the mind and we experience them as thoughts or dreams, ideas, and some things come up further up and we experience those as emotions and so on.
And then a step more subtle than the causal level, that kind of where the vibration is, is the subtle space in consciousness. In universal consciousness, that, it’s not really a manifest space yet. It’s kind of more subtle than that. And it’s simply, this dynamic of awareness, aware of itself, and then it flows within itself. So there’s flows of consciousness, basically on that level. That’s the field of what I would call creation.
And within that are these subspaces that hold our universe, one of them is our universe. And there’s other universes with somewhat different laws of nature. And within that space of our universe is that fine vibration begins and the whole process I just talked about.
[jumping deeper]
And then part of that is, is it, is the level of consciousness itself, pure consciousness or atman, the Self. So it’s just consciousness alone on that level.
And then a step before that is what’s known as Brahman or beyond consciousness. And we could go into a whole talk on each of these. I do talk more about this on my blog, various articles, if you’re interested.
And then there’s finer values of Brahman in which you can become aware that there’s these kind of unmanifest qualities of alertness and liveliness and intelligence. And those are what give rise to consciousness.
Liveliness stirs alertness, it becomes conscious, and then stirs it some more and it starts to flow and then it curves back on itself and becomes self-aware. And then there’s intelligence in there, guiding that process and then allowing consciousness to recognize itself, which is what causes everything else to happen from that.
And then a step before that is pure Divinity. And it’s hard to talk about pure Divinity in any sensible words.
A: Okay, let’s just kind of go over what you just, what you just covered, which is a lot. So I feel that it’s important for everyone to know that it may be that you do not cognize all of the details that you just described, because that is relatively rare in the cases that I’ve seen.
And also I’ve shared some of my cognitions with you and emails and different things like that. And there’s, there’s the possibility for different perspectives of the same basic process.
D: Yeah. That’s our function. Is for each separate perspective of the same whole, because the whole knows itself in its totality, but, uh, to know itself and all the details, it needs separate perspectives and separate ways of seeing and so on. Slightly different combinations of laws of nature that show up as this person here in order to experience a certain way.
A: Beautiful, yeah. And pure Divinity, as you were saying, is hard to talk about. But at the same time, you can’t help but talk about it. The talking comes.
D: So those qualities, those qualities of alertness and liveliness, and that I mentioned, they turned out not to be qualities of Brahman, but of pure Divinity.
A: Okay.
D: It’s fundamental, these fundamental abilities that give birth.
A: That’s an important note too, that what seems to be the case in what you refer to as Brahman, what I refer to as supreme nothingness, the void sometimes, just depends on… what seems to be the case there is recognized not to actually have been the case when a more fundamental, when pure Divinity is realized.
And this can be, and this is the situation through all the shifts actually in a certain sense because.
D: And that’s actually a really important point. Someone in Self-Realization or in Unity Consciousness, the earlier stages of enlightenment, will experience consciousness as infinite and eternal and boundless.
A: Yes.
D: The idea that there’s something beyond consciousness is ridiculous.
A: Oh yeah, I’ve seen it made into a joke before, yeah.
D: And yet, you know, when you start to get to know consciousness on a global level, there can then be, sort of like, when you wake up to consciousness itself you start to wonder well what’s doing the doing? Well you know when you get to know consciousness globally there can be that subtle thing, okay where does this come from and there’s even in there there’s some subtle dualities like existence inherently brings with it non-existence and consciousness brings with it unconscious and, sort of, these still even subtle dualities and so then the interesting part is that consciousness has been looking in on itself all this time and when it knows itself fully it can turn and look behind and talk about the subject-object dynamic. It’s like this is happening locally but it’s also
happening on global level and when it looks beyond itself so to speak.
A: So essentially one recognizes the substrate of even the Self, the field of conscious awareness itself, that which is the source of the light of the field of conscious awareness. And then in the context of the way that you and in that traditional context you guys put it forth, you recognize the source of the source. I don’t contextualize it like that. I look at it a little bit differently, but we’re saying the same thing.
D: Yeah, there’s lots of little variations in this. And actually what I found really interesting is once you get into Brahman, the people that I know that have had that shift and further become more and more unique. It’s like their laws of nature are freed from the constraints even of consciousness and they start to become a law unto themselves in a certain kind of a way. It’s really quite interesting, you know, that they develop new approaches to their whole life and the kind of knowledge that comes out and their approach.
I mean, the vast majority…one thing to be clear here though, just someone who is awake isn’t necessarily a teacher. Teaching is a kind of a skill and a dharma. It’s not something that you become.
The vast majority of people I know who are awake, or even in very advanced stages, are not teachers. They’re just quietly going about their lives in whatever, you know, whatever way it’s called and they’re just quietly supporting people here and there and the way they’re called to support them.
And some people don’t have words for all this. They just…
A: Yes, that is also the case.
D: Yeah, they just live it and they’re happy that I can give it some words so they can use them once in a while when they need to and otherwise they don’t need them and they just live it and it’s fine.
A: Yeah, what you were saying about the unique, that unique quality shining forth in those higher stages, it’s, I often refer to a child, this childlike, childlike maturity in a certain sense, yeah, so there’s a freedom of flexibility and this greater wholeness, this greater allness is expressing freely through this point of experiencing in that way.
D: Yeah and it’s a progressive surrender of more and more. It’s like we gain more and more and then we surrender that and we surrender that and we surrender that.
A: Beautiful point that you made right there and earlier about each recognition of reality is given up for that which is beyond it.
D: Yeah.
A: And you can talk more about that in Unity where there’s, or what I refer to as Dynamic Subjectivity, there’s a tendency to become very enamored with the everythingness of what you recognize yourself to be.
And so approaching that nothingness in a supreme way can be a little, there’s a hesitancy in reference to that, yeah.
D: Yeah, I know several people who came to the doorway and then took a step back and was like, whoa, because the idea is that they’ve got this exalted unification with it. There’s such an intimacy with the world and everyone around them and it’s beautiful. And to give that up for nothing, it’s whoa.
A: Yeah, but it is well worth it.
D: Yeah, they call it the Great Awakening. Well, Brahman itself actually means the great. And in the old texts, they call it the Great Awakening it’s essentially the awakening from enlightenment into this new value. And at first, it can be, it can be like, you can become conscious of what you’ve lost more than what you’ve gained, because it’s a much subtler, much subtler than consciousness. And so orders of magnitude, more subtle. And so there can be this little time of settling in and then discovering what actually is there and then discovering that there’s these these quality-less qualities, I mean it’s really even hard to, you know, that like I mentioned before about alertness and liveliness and that, when they’re not manifest qualities they’re, not really qualities and yet there’s…
Like Brahman can’t be known by consciousness because it’s before consciousness. So Brahman knows itself. You discover Brahman by becoming it. And yet, because there’s that quality of alertness in there, it can be alert to itself. And then when you discover the alertness as a quality of Divinity, then you realize that it’s Divinity that allowed Brahman to know itself. And then Divinity can know Divinity.
A: There’s one other point that I’ll make while we’re on this subject. You know, certain incarnations I’ve recognized actually have a specific level of development sort of karmically operative. So you can see whole incarnations that have to do with a given shift and I don’t want to say the perfection of that level or the perfection of that shift, but let’s say that there’s incarnations that are focused more on masculine development and there’s also incarnations that are focused more on feminine development. And there are many cases…
D: And that might not be the gender, the same, the matching gender either.
A: No, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the body.
D: Yeah.
A: In the cont—well, it has a lot to do with the body, but not the sex of the body, you know what I mean? Yes, it doesn’t. Yeah, I’m speaking in terms of, you know, masculine, feminine aspects of subjectivity.
D: Yeah.
A: And so it’s a much broader context than it seems to be. And then you have those cases where it’s the balancing of those and the unification. There’s also many a significant portion, I would say, in the collective now where shifts have already occurred in different incarnations.
So it’s a revisitation and things have, you know, there’s already been some level of development. And so now we’re seeing a different wave where different aspects are being cultivated and cultured and so on and so forth.
D: Yeah, I’m certainly aware of people who had some of the process beforehand and then came into this life to finish the job, but they didn’t finish cleaning things up or whatever, or they didn’t finish a certain kind of development.
I personally haven’t met anybody who was in an advanced stage in a prior life and then picked up where they left off in this one. I do know a couple of people who, you know, they started witnessing when they were four, for example, and, you know, really they just kind of kicked the ball off really early.
A: No, it’s not that you would pick up where you left off. The process would still unfold in the same way, but it’s a little accelerated, you might say.
D: Yeah, there’s a thing my teacher would call the “need of the time.” And so that can be a person who is picked to handle whatever situation, kind of like what I talked about with the PhD earlier, only on a larger scale of some kind. And so that person is called to come forward and bring out a certain teaching or popularize something like that. And then they have this exemplary level of support and accomplish remarkable things. Those are the exceptions. But yes, there does seem to be some people who, I don’t know for sure, but it does seem to be that some people are here to be liberated in this lifetime, but it doesn’t seem to be that they’re going to move into further stages.
They don’t have the scenario. They’re basically working through their karma and that, and so they’re going to do their further development after this life on subtler levels. And then there’s people who seem to go just like, you open the tap and they just fly through the stages.
And almost too fast. ‘Cause I mean, one of the things about going through the process is you wanna be able to experience each stage, especially if you’re going to support anybody else in a teaching role or, you know, like I’m a writer. And, you know, you can’t really talk about it if you’re only in the stage for an hour or two days or something.
Very little memory impression of that. I’ve met a couple of people like that where, one person insisted they never had Self-Realization, they just stepped straight into Unity. But then when I talked about it with them carefully, they were in Self-Realization for about an hour and the process just kept moving and they didn’t stop. So they didn’t even recognize it, that stage is, you know, thought they could skip it.
On the other hand, I’ve also got someone who was convinced that they went straight into Unity and it turned out to be a deflected, what’s called a deflected rising of Kundalini. Kundalini went up a side channel and gave them lots of experiences and some gifts and things but it wasn’t actually a valid awakening and it wasn’t stable. They caused a lot of problems for others.
A: Wow. Yeah, there’s certainly a lot of variation. And it’s important to recognize that, that it’s gonna be different for everyone.
D: Yeah, most people won’t have those kind of issues.
(laughs)
A: Yeah, nothing to be too worried about there, I suppose.
D: Yeah, for most people, it’s just like the chop wood, carry water thing.
A: Simple.
D: Yeah, it just, what changes is nothing changes and yet everything changes. Kind of the world, the life itself kind of continues much the same, but how you’re experiencing it changes, where you’re experiencing it from and the context you put it in can change.
A: Exactly. Beautiful, beautiful. Well, I feel like we’ve certainly covered a lot of territory.
D: Yes, I went a few places I didn’t expect to go.
A: That’s how it is, isn’t it?
D: Yes, it is.
A: And I know we could continue to talk for hours, but we’ll stop there for today and I’ll look forward to our next chat where we’ll be able to cover some more of what was left uncovered.
D: Thank you, Andrew. It’s good to see you.
A: Thank you. Thank you, David. Good to see you too.
Bye.