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, folks, welcome back to the Alive and Free podcast. Today, we get a start with Tai Lung. Yes, you're that's right. I'm a Kung Fu Panda nerd. I really liked that movie. It's not that I watch it that much, but I've probably watched it more than my kids because I grew up in martial arts, you know this about me, right? Remember Tai Lung, remember in that first movie of Kung Fu Panda where Tai Lung was stuck in prison and he had been, he was down on the bottom of this massive dungeon with all of these different guards and all this other stuff. And he was bent down over and he had pins stuck in him and he had his arms polled to each side, right. [01:13.4]
So, something was pinned down. His arms were both pulled down to each side with rocks tied onto him. And so, he was stuck in this place where he couldn't move and he was immobilized by all of these other like acupuncture pins and stuck in his back, right. As a result of him being tied down his, he was not able to move, right. Ironically, if you don't know Chinese, and I'm not sure if this was intentional on the part of the writers, Tai Lung means the great dragon. And he was trying to be the Gregg and dragon warrior. Wasn't. It's also ironic in English. I don't know if they thought about this either, but he was tied and his lungs were, he wasn't able to breathe so that when he was finally set free, he took in a nice deep breath. So, in many ways it's a really a apropos name. [01:59.9]
So, he was tied down. Because he was tied down and stuck to something, he wasn't able to move. If he hadn't been tied down, which is what happened afterwards, because his tail was free because that was free, he was able to move. And in moving, he was able to release all the other things and in, so doing then he'd finally got himself free from the prison. We don't need to cover the rest of it. I hope that wasn't a spoiler for all of you, people who haven't seen Kung Fu Panda yet. It's definitely a good move in my book, really enjoyable, but as possibly, just because I like the whole martial arts thing. [02:33.0]
Here's what I want you to get. What tied down is where most of us are, what we're trying to do is, we're trying to change our lives, but we're so busy trying to change them while we're still tied down to something, which means we have very limited mobility. And that's why it feels like you have to move the entire planet for anything to change and that's why it feels then like it's impossible for anything to change. It's not because things can't change it's because we're tied down. [03:01.7]
Now, what do I mean by tied down? What are we tied down to? When you were born, you came out as a bundle of flesh, a squishy bundle of flesh with some bones in it and blood vessels and nerves and stuff. And you and, and of yourself didn't really have a fixed identity. You were a little bit of experience happening. You didn't even have much memory. There was genetic memory and evolutionary memory and all the other bits that are holding your body in shape and knows what to do with mother's milk and stuff. But consciously you didn't really have much memory. You hadn't been through much. There wasn't much to remember. So, there wasn't this identity that you had built up over time of, oh, I'm the guy that did this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. You are a clean slate. And you weren't even that identified with your body. Things were happening and you were in the middle of it. The difference between you and another person, you're just getting visions in your head like what's a person you don't even know. There's no concepts in your head. [03:57.6]
So, you come out of the womb and you're just having experiences. And over time you hear a noise and that noise sounds like your name, Bob. I know your name's not Bob, but like, let's pretend right. Bob, Bob, and every time you hear that sound, oh, something happens and you have another experience where someone's squishing the cheek or, or the bum or something like that. Or you see a big looming shape in front of you with eyeballs, googling at you and, and making noises. And so, when you hear that sound, you start to associate it with, oh, something's going to happen. And then over time you started to hear the sound and you're like, oh, something's going to happen to me. And then finally you get to grade school and they go, Bob, and you go, that's me. It's not you. You're not Bob. If you didn't know this, it's a sound in the air. Your name is not who you are, but we forget that. We get so fixated on it, that for the rest of our life, we're busy trying to protect our good name as if it's our life. Someone says something bad about Bob and automatic, we have to rise to the defense. Someone says something good about Bob and we have this amazing emotional reaction. [05:06.4]
It's not you, they're talking about, they're making noises in the air and they're talking about ideas in their own heads that just happened to be somewhat overlaid on top of you. That's it. And you also develop some sense of identity to your body so that you will want to protect that. And then over time, your family, your family name, your ethnicity, your nationality, the, the city you grew up in the neighborhood, you grew up in, your elementary school, your middle school, your high school, your college, your college mascot, your favorite team, your hobbies, your career, your choice of studies. You know what cool tricks you can do, who you date, all these things become you, your religion, all of it. And so, then when any one of those gets threatened in any way, shape or form, to the extent that it feels like you, to that extent it will jerk your chain. [05:57.9]
Imagine you're walking down, along a fence and all of a sudden, you just grab onto the fence. Now that fence is attached to you. And so now you can only go to the length of your arm. You can't go much further. And now anybody jerks that fence, and it's going to rattle your cage. It's going to rattle your arm. As soon as you let go of the fence, they can jerk the fence all they want. They can even knock it over. Your fine. And I want you to consider that all the things you think that you are, are really just fences, that you've grabbed onto one with your foot. One with your hand, one with your teeth. One was your left nostril. One, you tied your hair to. One you like strapped on with a belt and attached a different way. One, you hooked in with an ankle, one’s tucked under your knee, ones in your armpit. And now you're holding, adding onto all of these different things. Is it any wonder why it feels like you can't move? And is it any wonder why, when anybody pokes any one of those things to affect your whole person. You are stuck because you're tied down. [06:51.3]
In other words, you started life as an individual. One thing that was not divided, you were just this moment, this experience. And then over time you got divided and spread out over all of the world. And so, there's bits of you everywhere. And then all of a sudden, one day you wake up and you say, I want to change my life. And you try to move, and you can't because there's bits of you everywhere. And it's important to recognize that the first thing that you have to do is gather yourself and go from a divided person, a dividual, to an individual, to an undivided person. What does that mean? You have to see through all the lies you told yourself about who you are and what you really are. And you have to stop, identifying with things that you're not. Shall we start at the beginning? Maybe we can help you with it a little bit. [07:47.3]
We've already talked about your name. You've had probably multiple names or nicknames throughout your life. First name, middle name, last name. Those are just sounds, that are emanating from a throat somewhere and shaped by a wiggling tongue in the air. They mean absolutely nothing. In another language, people might not even recognize them. In this language because we have this conspiracy, that English is a thing, then we all like, oh yeah, I know the meeting, but each of us makes up our own meaning anyway, we don't really have the same meaning all the time. And to you, it's just a sound that you have attached meaning to, and you attach yourself to. As a result, as a result, every time that sound gets moved around, your mom calls your whole name, then suddenly it jerks you around to, and it jerks your emotions around and whatnot. And the first thing you have to do is recognize that that sound is not you and that when someone's talking bad about that sound or that name, whether it's written or in audio form, what they're talking about is their own ideas about that. They don't see you. They have no clue who you are. You probably don't even have a clue who you are. So how could anybody else really know? [09:00.6]
They've interacted with you a handful of times, if it's your family still, they have no sense of how the world is inside your head. Believe me, when my wife and I have discussions and frequently, even after 17 years, because we're coming up on 17 years. Frequently, after 17 years still, I stare at her. Like, I don't even understand how you operate or how you think, I don't get it. I don't know what's there. Because I'm only catching a glimpse of what's inside her. And the moment you're like, no, I understand this person that you make an up a story about them. That's not actually them. You haven't seen the whole of who they are, what they're capable of. You haven't seen that in yourself. So, when someone's arguing about you or calling you names or making fun of you or saying nasty things about you, they're only talking about what they've seen and what they feel. They're not even talking about you. [09:54.0]
Your body, your body is an accumulation of food. It started out as one single cell and gathered raw materials from inside your mother. And it collected them into a point where you could have a body. The source of that is inside of you. It's your mom didn't make you otherwise, if she did the second you left, the making would have stopped and you'd be done. The making is coming from inside you and you happen to have been using your mom's body and those resources, and that environment, which she provided for you in order to make that. You have always been the one gathering from your environment and using it to make raw materials for your life so that you could make yourself into what you are. And all of the cells in your body, every seven- or eight-years turnover. So, if you're over seven years old, you're not even the person that your mom birthed, your body is not the same body. None of the cells are the same. Your skin is new every month. I think your liver is like every 18 months or something like that. Right? All of the cells in it get replaced very, very frequently. [10:59.0]
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. [11:27.8]
So which cell is you, which part of your body is you? And if your body is, if it's the shape of who you are, that's you. Oh, cool. But you've always been, you've been different shapes over time. So which shape is you? If the height of who you are is you, well, then you've been different heights over time. Which height is you? Are you more of you now than you? Weren't you when you were a baby, because there's more of, or were you less of you back then? If I cut off your arm, will you be less of who you are? Or will you simply have one arm missing. Your body is not who you are. When people start talking to you about your body, if you believe your body is who you are, that's where the emotions come from. Body shame, body guilt, gross stuff, around sexuality, that a lot of people deal with. On top of that, if they're dealing with dwarfism or giantism, if their body size is like is just large even if they're not dealing with giantism, or if they're they're overweight for whatever reason, or if they inherited some genes that just put them in a different category for some reason, if they're aging genes or what all of that is just a body, it's not you. [12:37.1]
It happens to be the car that you're driving and you got so attached to the car. And so, in love with its features, even the ones that you hate, you love to hate them, right. That you forgot that you're the driver and not the car. And that the features of the car mean nothing about the driver. We like to think they are in the west. Someone drives a nice car; we'd like to think that they're a cool person and whatnot. Someone runs a successful business; we like to think that they are an amazing person. Someone is a preacher in a church, we like to think that they've got it all together. Someone's married, someone has X job. Someone has this many children, you know, someone has a lifestyle business that they love and they're taking pictures by their Lamborghini or by the pool or something. We make all kinds of assumptions about the car, about the person based on the car. But that's not who you are. You can be yourself. You can own possessions, but you can't be possessions. [13:30.5]
Whatever you've accumulated and grabbed onto and pulled into your life, that's an accumulation. If we said, if you started saying, talking like you wear your shirt and you wear your pants and you wear your cup and you wear your backpack and then if someone touched your backpack, they touched you. We would think you were a crazy person, but that's what you're doing with your body. You're also doing this with your philosophies, your beliefs, your ideologies, all of your habits, all of your hobbies, all of it. Bit by bit as you've gone. Oh, this is me. I know who I am. And as a result, you've tied yourself down more and more to the point where you can't move. Is it any wonder why people have midlife crises? Is it any wonder why people feel stuck? They feel stuck because they stuck themselves to a bunch of different things that are all going in different directions. And then they wonder why they can't make a decision. And they're afraid of missing out because they believe that who they are is stuck to all those things, going, all those different places. As a result, life starts to cave in on them. And it feels like it's tearing. It feels like death if they have to let go of something and it feels like a negative thing, because they forgot that who they are, has nothing to do with what they're experiencing. [14:36.4]
If you drive through traffic to work, and then you turn a corner to avoid the traffic and you go through a construction zone, are you the traffic? Are you the construction zone? No. Would we say there's anything wrong with you or right with you because you happen to driven through traffic and a construction zone? No, they don't mean anything about you. Neither does your car. Neither does your name. Neither does your life experience or your circumstances. You’re the being, having them, they aren't you. And the minute you can see through that and that there is a space in your mind between who you are and what you're experiencing, who you are and what you built, what you own and what you possess, who you are and your body who you are and what you think. The moment, there's a little bit of a space, a whole new sense of freedom shows up, because you've collected all the bits and pieces of yourself that you scattered all over the planet. And you finally brought them together so that you could be one being capable of moving when you're ready to move, capable of changing your life at the drop of a hat. Because now you're a whole person. [15:44.1]
Ironically, in the scriptures, the word perfect is used at the end of the sermon on the Mount, Jesus goes be therefore perfect. And a lot of people are like saying, this is an injunction. I would submit to you that the word perfect literally means what the word-perfect means, which means thoroughly done whole and complete instead of a divided self. So many times, throughout scriptures throughout the New Testament, Jesus is talking about not dividing your attention, right? Not wavering, not serving two masters, but being all together in one place and going with all your heart, all your mind, all your mind, all your strength, all of it together. You can't do that if half of your mind is stuck in your body and the other half is stuck in your job and all of that other stuff. You can't do that. And so, in the journey to freedom, the first thing to do is to let go of all the things that you think you are so you can finally discover the glorious experience of what you really are. [16:38.4]
And I'm not going to suggest even for a moment that I've tasted the depth of all that is inside of me, but what I have tasted is so incredible and it produces so much freedom and so much ability to make changes in life and to just let go of things so that they don't come back. When I let go of addiction to pornography, and I want you to get clear on this, how was it affecting my life? I would go binge for three or four or five days, then get clean for a week or two, then go binge for three days, then get clean for a month and then go binge for three or four days and then be cleaned for a day and then go back for another day and then go clean for two days and then give up and dive in for two weeks or three weeks, and then decided and resolve to do better and have a prayer and have a, an earnest, emotional experience that felt super spiritual, and then try all over again. And that pattern would go and go. Some people will say, well, porn is not an addiction. You're right. There actually are no diagnoses for addiction. We don't need to digress into that now. [17:33.9]
But I want you to note it didn't matter that for 18 years I had tried and failed to stop. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that I had been despairing that I had been suicidal, that I had felt like there was something wrong. It didn't matter when I was finally able to gather up all of myself as much as I could. And it wasn't even all of it at the time, but most, and make a, when I was finally able to do that and make a decision and turn a different direction, it literally took me a week before I had handled the core issues that were driving it before I had dumped all of the years of emotional baggage that were behind it. And before I was able to finally walk free and start training the skills to make that freedom, a constant unconscious habit that was just happening on autopilot. Literally a week, four days, it's possible, but only when you're not divided as an individual. When you can go with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength change can happen very, very fast. Maybe not instantaneously, but in my book, I would say yes, instantaneously, even as possible. Maybe I didn't have that level of faith, or I didn't have that level of capacity, but I know people who simply decided they're going to change and they changed from that moment forward. And I've done that in some things and not all things. So, I'm not even going to say that it's not even possible instantaneously, but it takes getting rid of having to defend who you are from all the things that you think you are. If you can just take a step back and recognize that everything in your life is just an experience, including your name, including your family and that who you are as something entirely different, the being that gets to experience those. And when you wake up to that fact, that being that gets to start influencing those and changing them and being the director in your own screenplay, instead of just somebody who's standing on stage, wondering why everything's happening without a clue, what the script is. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing, but it takes going from divided to individual. And that takes really looking at what you think you are and what you think defines you and seeing through the lie. [19:34.4]
What everybody else thinks defines you bologna, it doesn't count. They don't even know themselves. They don't get any right to define what you are. Sure, they may behave around you however they want, but who you are is not definable by them. They can't put a boundary on it, which is what definition is that, which comes from finiteness or boundaries. They can't define you. And you can stop defining yourself. Because when you say, I know who I am, you're saying no to the I saying it. I know, I know. You're saying no to yourself over and over and over again. When you know who you are, you're saying no to who you really are. So, take a second and undefine yourself and then undivided yourself so that you can finally be an individual and you finally have the capacity to move with all your heart, all your mind, all your mind, all your strength in one direction. [20:33.6]
But Bob, I'm just an introvert wrong. Sometimes you behave that way. That's been an interesting experience. You can continue to experience that. If you would like to go ahead, if you would like to change it, okay? That means you just learn a new skill, but that's not who you are, that's just something you've done. And you don't even do it all the time. But Bob, I just don't learn that way. Wrong! Maybe that's not the way you've habitually learned. Maybe not, it's not the way you have best learned, but that doesn't mean it's the way you can't learn. But Bob, I just am somebody who doesn't know how to work with money. Wrong! That has happened, but that does that mean that that will happen forever more. But Bob, no one will ever help me. That's an interesting self-fulfilling prophecy. Are you sure, you want to keep making that? But Bob, there's only one way out and I just don't have what it takes. Are you sure about that? You've explored every other facet of who you are. You know, all there is to know about who you are. And you're going to tell me that that's the case. That's interesting. That's an interesting experience you've had. Tell me about the one, having the experience. How do you know that? [21:37.9]
You're telling me that in the future of all possible futures that could happen on this planet of every possible scenario, that there's no possible scenario that it could work. Even Dr. Strange had one scenario where they won in Avengers, End game. Sorry. I had to bring that one in. I wasn't a huge fan of that movie, but whatever. Anyway, the point is, the reason you feel broken is because you broke yourself apart. The reason you feel stuck is because you grabbed onto ideas about yourself, instead of allowing who you are to finally blossom. You, let your circumstances define you. You put a boundary around who you are and you said no to yourself. It's time to say, YES. [22:14.5]
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. [22:33.4]
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