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It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]
Bob: All right, welcome back. Today we're going to talk about passion. Passion is a word that is being tossed around the world right now in personal development spheres as something that you need in life. But I want you to like, think about this word based on what it actually means. The word passion literally means suffering as in the passion of the Christ. The last week, where he was like flogged and crucified and bled from every port passion, passion, like the word that is related to it, meaning patient as in the patients in a hospital, those who are suffering and ill and ill at ease and diseased and in disorder and disarray. Patients like one who has patience is one who is willing to suffer through everybody else's stuff. This is not a virtue. And I mean, the fact that why do you have to suffer it? Do you think God suffers us? Or is he fine and he's just working to give us a better experience of life. [01:26.2]
Is he upset or is that just something we've projected onto him? Because that's how we've lived our life. We are so used to suffering that we feel like it's a basic fact of the universe. And we projected on to plants and animals and we projected onto God and we projected onto other humans. We projected everywhere. When in fact it might not actually be the case at all, that anything else is really experiencing suffering at some basic level beyond physical pain, which may or may not be the case. There was a while ago Sadhguru who is somebody I've studied yoga with and learn from and a guru in many ways, Guru meaning dispeller of darkness, right? There was a point where he was, he was on his motorcycle, crossing criss crossing India. I may have told this story on the podcast before, but he was crisscrossing India and he was stopped. And this car hit his motorcycle from behind and the jagged edge of the motorcycle pedal cut into his calf muscle and like tore off a lot of the muscle tendon, what-not from the bone. And so, he started bleeding and he looks down and he realizes that I'm not going to be able to survive. I'm going to bleed out if I don't get to a place quick. So, he finds a local pharmacy, pharmaceutical dispensary. There's no like it's a tiny little town, so there's no hospital in town. And he goes in and he's telling them, look, you need to stitch up my stuff, like you're the most medical person I can find. The guy's like, look, I'm a pharmacist. I'm not a not a doctor. You need to go to a hospital. He's like, ah, it's too far away. I'm going to bleed out and pass out. I'm not going to make it. [02:56.9]
After some arguing Sadhguru wins because there's a puddle of blood growing on the floor. So, for some time this pharmaceutical person is stitching up Sadh guru’s leg and he's sweating and he's having a hard time with it, but he's doing the best he can. The best that he knows how, and they're chatting the whole time. And then afterwards, the pharmaceutical dispenser guy, pharmacist looks at him and he goes, well, it wasn't that painful. And so, I'd go to, looks at him and he says, yes, it was excruciatingly painful. He says, but you weren't struggling at all, like why you weren't, you were breathing normal and everything else. Why was it that like, how could you do that? Sadhguru looks at him. He says, yeah, it was excruciating painful, but that doesn't mean I had to suffer it. [03:37.6]
You see pain and suffering are two separate things. Suffering is in the mind, it's your relationship to what's going on. And there's too many people that are out there believing that suffering is a virtue, that if you struggle with something or you're upset about something, that it means that you care, but that you don't care if you don't get upset. If you're upset that something happens to somebody else Oh, it means that like, you're really passionate about it, but it actually prevents you from functioning at a top level, because any level of suffering, any little bit level of worry, any level of stress inside of you just produces a situation inside the body that is not that helpful. It's not that healthy. And it makes it so that you function worse. When you worry about someone, cool, your organs are now being stressed and you're still trying to function at optimal level. Is that ideal? [04:28.2]
If we poison you a little bit and then send you out into the world to go to work, you think you want to do that? No, but we do it to ourselves all the time. In fact, I did it the other day. I'm currently I'm really interested in, I liked studying languages from time to time. So, I've been studying Hebrew and Sanskrit, ironically. Different alphabets, I don't know. It makes me feel cool. Maybe it's like, I'm learning Elvish from the Lord of the Rings, whatever it is. And so, I'm studying these and often I do them at night and sometimes I want to stretch at night too so that my body can so I can sleep a little better. So, I'm stretching at night and sometimes I get into a stretching position that is not that comfortable. I was stretching with my left leg, kind of in a lunge in my right hip, was being pulled to know end. And I'm looking down there at the homework book while I'm trying to do the homework while stretching in this stretch for three to five minutes and I'm sitting there and like, it's, it's painful. And I was breathing heavy and I was clearly suffering it. And all the thoughts are running through my head like, Oh, this is hard. How much longer, how long that's all psychological, that's me suffering it, that's not the actual physical experience. [05:30.7]
And so, I wasn't able to concentrate on the homework because I was busy suffering the stretch. And I chose to do that one. It wasn't like it happened accidentally. Like a lot of our suffering happens accidentally and I couldn't function very well. But as soon as I got out of the stretch and like you used my leg out for a little bit, then all of a sudden, I could function much better and I could focus and concentrate on the homework that I was doing so that I could figure out the symbols I was reading and, and move ahead with my studies. This happened because I was suffering. Suffering itself is not a virtue. It is not what the human system is designed to do and yet we have learned by sad example. One, it happens, yes. That it happens is fine. But two, we have learned by sad example that it's something that people actually appreciate. Think about it just for a second. We go to the movie theater, right? And recently I've been going through all these masterclasses, you know, the ones with the celebrities that are teaching their craft and like Dan Brown, thriller writer, James Patterson, Aaron Sorkin, talking about screenwriting. And they're talking about all of the great scripts that, we go to a movie and if it's a drama, there has to be conflict. Or nobody wants to watch the movie. [06:46.3]
If there's no character development, no, this person is bad and they must become better. Nothing challenging them, nothing getting in their way. Nobody wants to just go a movie about a guy who waters his lawn every day and really loves his life. Where there's no conflict where he experiences no suffering where he's fine. Those characters when they enter into movies, they're like cameo pictures of people who the rest of the people don't understand. There are people who like seem to understand everything, they get everything. They're not struggling at all and nobody understands them. So, they're not the main character of the film. And when they're made into main characters, we turn it into struggle and suffering and pain and whatnot because that's something we understand. It's something we're used to and we get a massive payoff for it. Think about the payoffs you get for suffering. You get their pay off of relief from suffering. You get the payoff of pity from other people who are there to comfort you in your suffering. You get comfort in your suffering. And all of these things reinforce inside the human system. [07:44.2]
The idea that suffering is good for us, then it's okay that it's positive that no pain, no gain and all that other good stuff. But is it really, is it really, if you're just looking chemically it ain't. In fact, Matthew Walker, who studies sleep, he made this statement in his master class around, he said, basically, waking life has low level brain damage. And to that, I would say maybe the way that we are living it, it's low-level brain damage. But what if the way that other people are living it, it isn't. What if there is a way to live it that it's not low-level brain damage. And that's why we need so much sleep is because we're doing low level brain damage because of the amount of suffering we're creating in our system on a given day, whether that's physiological, psychological, emotional, or anything else of that sort. [08:33.4]
So here we are, we're sitting here looking at all of this and we go, and we're suffering clinically is not helpful for us and yet we still are addicted to it. We pay money for it. We pay money to go to a movie theater where we can be taken to heights of horror and scared and to like adrenaline rushes and to tears and sadness and despair and all this other stuff so that we can come out on the other side, having had a great experience. We go there and at the end of it, there's resolution to it. And so, it feels good to us to have gone through suffering. And we hear phrases like it's better to go through suffering and afflictions because then we'll know good from evil and we can appreciate the good better, because we know the bad. And while it is true that if you want one good thing, the opposite of it will definitely enhance your, your experience of it. [09:23.9]
Knowing the bad will help you appreciate the thing as good. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's the best way to live a human life. Think about comedy for instance. Comedy is basically someone gets up on stage and complains for a while. Yes, there are some things where it's like funny and that's a surprise and we didn't expect it, but ultimately a lot of comedy is built around complaints around critiquing and complaining about the way things are in a way that allows us to laugh at ourselves and whatnot. And so, we get, we get payoffs of laughter for doing dumb stuff with our life and action you know, when we're watching sports and whatnot, there's the risk of someone dying and there's that conflict of, Oh, no, I don't want them to die and that they're going to die. And all that risk then produces this experience inside of us and it's an adrenaline rush and it's great. And in terms of an experience, we love it. And it's not necessarily the best way to run a human life all around. It doesn't mean it's bad when it's done by choice, AKA me stretching and doing homework. That's my choice. It's an, a choice of an experience, but it's the problem is when we have something that we're suffering for needlessly, when we have something that we're suffering for, because of accident because of training, because we've just learned that that's the way we get to run our life. That's where we run into trouble. [10:40.9]
So, I'm going to read a poem to you that I wrote a little while ago. To talk that where I was thinking about all the little forms of entertainment I had compulsively been seeking after, in order to feel better for my life, right. Because I had been suffering so much as a habit, thinking of myself as not good enough or thinking of myself as, as not wanted or whatever, that I would go to these other things in order to feel better, right. And these compulsive behaviors, “addictions,” these things that I had chased down in order to have a better feeling of life were all because of the suffering I had created in my life, in the first place. Where if I were truly ecstatically, blissful, just being as I am right now, there would be nothing to do. People are like, well, you know, like in inside of addictions, I asked them like, if you were one of, if you were happy right now, would you be having this issue? And the answer is no, they wouldn't be running to try and fix a problem. They wouldn't even be seeing things as problem. They wouldn't be like, Oh, what's the purpose of my life. And what's my passion and my potential. And you know, what is the meaning of my life? And what's the point? What is my mission here on the planet? Nobody would be thinking of those things if they weren't suffering in some way and finding missions and finding passions and finding purpose are the antidotes that we've created for the suffering that we've created in the first place. [11:58.8]
And that suffering wasn't born with us necessarily, though there can be some raw material of it, genetically in the code, so to speak. But we weren't born making that into suffering. Suffering has to be manufactured by us on a daily basis. If we stop manufacturing, the ingredients might be there inside the system. But if we stop manufacturing, it, it won't show up. Our bodies and minds are designed to be just happy and blissful on their own to the extent that we stop manufacturing suffering. Some of us have mastered that, we’re really good. I was definitely a black belt at it. [12:30.7]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [12:58.0]
So, as I thought about all of the little antidotes that I had created in my life for the suffering that I had been manufacturing on a pretty consistent basis, I wrote this poem here, it's called ‘Entertained.’ Years full of tear jerkers, horror films, dramadies tragedies, romances, action flicks, comedies, pages, and millions of fictions and pros telling histories, fantasies, poems, composed thousands of days lived in sorrow and fright, gossiping laughing, seeking the light. Sat in the church house, believing I'm broken, so Jesus could save me from all that's been spoken. Finding affliction, wherever I turned with bankruptcy, hatred, and bridges to burn or craving adventures and learning new skills while looking for gurus and love and cheap thrills. These are the heroin hits in the vein that have dazzled my life with both beauty and pain, all of them forms of cheap entertainment, expressions of life, not its source. I thought they were real, my what a ride at has been. [14:00.8]
So that was me looking back at all the things I had done and sought after and chased in order to solve the suffering that was at the basis of my existence and finding a passion and having a job that I love, these were part of the things that were there. And none of those actually solved the original suffering, I want you to know that. None of them actually changed the basis of what my life was built on, the quality of it, the flavor. What they did was add other ingredients to it and as those other ingredients were off, the main flavor of suffering came back to the surface again. And that my friends, that's the thing to listen to. That's the thing to pay attention to and to create space in your life for it to shift and grow and dissipate on its own. Now, how do you do that? [14:49.9]
What was it, last week we talked about Eugen Herrigel, right? That there is an intelligence on the inside that isn't built for suffering in the first place it's built for other things and the suffering is what we've layered on top of it. And so certain things, certain processes or circumstances, or things can occur in a person's life that helped them get over it. Here's an example. Last, last time we talked about breathing techniques and yoga and Eugen Herrigel, and Zen in the art of archery and stuff. And that's one method, it's a practice. And what's nice about practices like meditation or yoga or prayer or things like this is that they're predictable. You can do them day in and day out. They're consistently do stuff, but sometimes life itself is the greatest remover of suffering. And sometimes it does it by increasing the suffering briefly. [15:34.7]
So, there was a man in a marketplace out in India, Sadhguru was out there again, and he was walking through this. It was just a vegetable vendor. He was walking through this market and he sees this man and its his gloriously, brilliant radiant being, you know, just this happy like you would get from an infant, you know, this glorious sense that there's just joy inside of this person. And he walks up to him because he doesn't see many people like this. And he's like, what are you doing here? As in, what are you doing? Selling, selling vegetables in a market when you are a being like this. And the man looks at him and he's like, I'm selling my vegetables. So, they start talking and he says, you know, how did you get like this? And so, the man tells him his story that a while back a few years previous, he had fallen ill and had been close to death for like months at a time, like some six months I think, or something like that. [16:28.6]
And he had fallen ill and gotten so close to death that a lot of his processes and things in the way that he thought about life just naturally started to shift inside of him. And he literally was resigned to the fact that he was going to die, that there was no chance he was going to get out of it. And then somehow things turned around inside of his body. Some other intelligence made it so that he was able to come back inside and he was so grateful for his life. And he looked back and he realized all that had been burned away in his life because of his illness. And because of that, he was just so happy. So now people came to his vegetable shop and all he did was he give him the vegetables and then he would, it's secretly in his heart, wished them a long illness because he wished them the same kind of joy in their life that he was experiencing in his, just because of what the illness had brought him. Now, was that a practice that he had done? No, he had gotten ill, but in, so doing it had rearranged his assessment of what was most valuable to him in life and what was important that his suffering had vanished. Did that make him a more powerful vegetable vendor? No. Did it make him a less powerful vegetable vendor? No. Like maybe he would have made more money if he had been suffering. We don't know. But the quality of his life had changed because the suffering had gone away. [17:42.6]
Now that something similar happened to me, I don't know if I'm of the same quality as that guy or not because I have never met him, but some years ago, you know, I've lived my whole life doing martial arts and, and other types of physical sports and was really into it a lot. And I built a lot of my identity on being able to do those things. And a few years ago, I had snapped a ligament in my left knee while playing basketball. I never, I don't know if it actually snapped if it just tore a little bit or whatnot, but my knee is definitely more wobbly than it used to be, I remember feeling as a kid. So, I'm assuming one of the ligaments snapped and I couldn't move my leg and I was on the ground. I was doing all the healing work. I knew how to do with it and everything else. But I was in, I was in abject tears the next day. I mean, absolutely just broken. I was like, man, I'll never be able to walk again. I'll never be able to do any of these other things again. And it just showed me very, very clearly how I identified I had become with my body and how much I had built who I was and my persona and my worth on whether or not I can do flying kicks and whether or not I could do all of these other different things that I had learned over the years. [18:49.9]
And it was a tremendous blow to me to suddenly not be able to walk and to recognize when I heard that pop, that it was more than just, Oh, I had strained my knee a little bit and to recognize that some very real bit of reality had changed for me. Now, could I go get a surgery on it? Could I go do some other things? Sure, I could, but it doesn't bother me. It's not painful at all. You know, I definitely learned some things to do to help eliminate that. And it's not a big deal and I still teach martial arts and do these other things. I'm just more aware of certain parts of my system. Could I go change it? Yes. But at the same time, what I'm really grateful for is that that experience ripped from me without my knowing how to do it, some part of my identification with what I was physically capable of in my body and that freed me of the need to have to be this Paragon of physical perfection in order for my life to be meaningful. The same thing can happen with money. It can happen with, with loved ones and breakups and relationships. It can happen with death, with death, death of people. It can happen with nutrition. It can happen with illness. It can happen with all kinds of different things in life where what you've identified with your passion, the thing that you suffer for suddenly gets ripped from you. And you're left staring at the fact that that's not who you were in the first place. That perhaps, maybe just maybe your life is meaningful by virtue of its bare very existence. [20:15.4]
And that there is no requirement for you to go be passionate about something in order for you to live a fulfilling life. And that there is no requirement for any of that. What's really going on and the reason you're seeking for a passion in the first place is because you've taught yourself to suffer, that the way you look at yourself, the way you've seen yourself in your life are by themselves, creating inside you, something that needs fixing. And so, you're looking for antidotes, antidotes in scripture, antidotes in passions antidotes in entrepreneurship, antidotes in physical activities, antidotes in food, antidotes in relationships, antidotes in all sorts of different ways, because the basic quality of your life is one that has been overlaid by a certain amount of suffering that through no fault of your own, necessarily you learned how to create because you were modeled it on everybody else around you. If you look around the world, how many people suffer a lot, tons. So, it just seems like that's the way life goes, but it's not actually required. And if you're not suffering, and if you're not like upset about things and stuff, it doesn't make you less human. It just means you suffer less. [21:17.7]
And it might, just might mean that you can function better at the things that you care most about. And it might, just might give you more fulfilling relationships and a healthier body. And it might, just might give you the environment on the inside that allows who you really are to blossom in ways that you never ever imagined. And that all starts with examining all the ways that you and I have created suffering for ourselves. And if you want help dismantling that, looking at that, obviously, you know, we're around, you can sign up for a phone call. You can join into one of our simple courses. You just go to thefreedomspecialist.com/getstarted, and you can look and see some of the retreats and other things that we have, but you can also do this just by looking at your own life and starting to recognize and take ownership for the fact that you're searching for something, because you don't feel okay on the inside. And that not feeling okay on the inside is what you're carrying into everything you search for, which is why you keep searching for new things and that you can stop not being okay on the inside and still go out and do things in life that you don't have to suffer in order to enjoy your life. That suffering is just an add on and while it's cute and while we do get a lot of payoff for it, and while there's a lot of entertainment in it, it isn't required. [22:32.3]
So, I hereby give you permission to stop needing a passion, to stop suffering and to go live your life happily, to graduate from conflict and drama, and to step into a new life that is filled with perhaps an unimaginable amount of happiness and joy that grows in ways that aren't boring and that are constantly new and surprising, but that you'll never discover until you let go of the suffer. [22:58.3]
And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [23:16.5]
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