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 to the Alive and Free podcast. Today, we're going on a, I get to tell you about the new math, right? My son came home from school the other day and he was really struggling with some of his math homework. It was a yellow paper print out, you know, you can do these problems at home, just like we did it at school. And his job, it was an exponential equation. So, he had to figure out what equation he had to write that would make a line on a graph that would account for all of the data points on the table and then he had to fill in the table. And he was having a really rough time with it. And so, I was like, okay, cool. He's like, dad, can you help me with this? So, I move over there and I start looking at it and I start doing some basic algebra to try and figure out what I'm solving for. Aolve for X solve for Y and what's going on. And as I'm doing that, I'm running into massive issues where it doesn't even make sense. Cause I'll get the answer and then I'll go back and, and plug the answer in for another point on the table and it doesn't work. So, I'll get an answer for that one. And I'll go back and unplug that answer for the first point on the table and it doesn't work and I'm getting frustrated and he's got to go. So, I'm like, just leave it here. I want to look at it. [01:40.3]
So, I start looking up and Googling all of these, like of, you know, okay, how do we, what is the equation for differential stuff? I go through some math tutorials on it. Yes, my friends, I went above and beyond on just attempting to really grasp this because it bugs me sometimes when I can understand something that's going on. So admittedly, this wasn't for my son, this was for my own benefit. You heard my confession here. Okay. So, I'm there and I'm looking around and I'm figuring all of this stuff out. I'm going through tutorials on exponential equations and determining, you know, the equation for them and all this stuff. And then I go back and I try and do it again and it's not working. I skipped to another problem and I get one, the second problem I get and I'm like, it's close. But the answer is like off. And you wouldn't round, it's off by a decimal point or something, but you wouldn't round to the answer that they're giving. And so, I'm like, this one feels like the right answer because it jives here. But then over here, it doesn't work and here, and all this other stuff. And so, then I go to the next one and we have another, we have another scenario the same. [02:43.3]
And so, I'm like frustrated. And at the very end, I'm like, look, this is how you would solve it. In this one, there are two answers, blah blah. In this one, this is the answer and I think they just got this one wrong and dah, dah, dah. And so, I showed him what was going on. And he's like, okay. And I like, just show your work, bring it to your teacher. And then at the end of it, it was like, which question is the hardest, was the hardest one for you to figure out and why? I think that's a good question at the end of a homework, but by the time I was done with that, I'm like, what? Because it was a trick question is a question that doesn't have a real answer. It's a question that doesn't work out, according to anything that works in normal mathematics. I was a little frustrated. I was, let me put it this way. I wasn't frustrated. I was creating frustration inside of myself in response to this because that's what I trained myself to do. Because I wanted to feel better about the fact that it didn't work out. [03:32.7]
Anyway, my son takes the paper to school, he comes home the next day. And he's like, Hey dad, I did that, I showed the paper to the teacher and we talked about it in class. And it turns out there was a big typo on it. And this table needed to have this number there and this table needed to have this number there. And so, it was just a typo and that was all, that was that, that was all that happened. And I was like, Uhhh, you know, for a second. And then I was vindicated and I was like, see, I knew it was wrong. And then I started really thinking about this from a deeper perspective. Cause this, my brain just does this almost automatically a lot of times. [04:11.6]
The problem was the question. The way the question was, the way the question was set up, it sent us on a wild goose chase that had no real answer. The problem was the question. Now I had some other things and I want to come back to the question things, but I had some other things that I just want to note here really quickly. One, this is the type of thing we're spending, we're having our kids spend time on in school. I was like, this was part of my frustration. I'm like, look, I'm sending my kid to school so that he can learn things that will enable him to function well in the world. And he's spending a bunch of time on types of mathematics that likely he will never use. I don't know how many times I've used mathematics in my life outside of math classes. I mean like exponents. So, he's using things that he's never going to use. And he's missing an education on where his emotions come from, where his thoughts come from. Well, how those promote different things, what life is all about and all that other. He's not getting any education like that. That's supposed to come, supposedly from the parents who are ill-equipped cause they never got that education. And so on down the line, fortunately, I had to figure some things out. So, he is getting an education that way we may, and that's why I don't have any problem with him coming. [05:26.2]
And my other son's coming and helping out at the retreats because they're getting a better education about life there than anything they're learning in school. Nothing I learned in elementary school or high school is really stuck with me. Yeah, they, some of them were foundations for other skills. We can't take that away, but there's really nothing there in terms of content. And so, I was frustrated there. That what we're having our kids chase down the questions, we're having them answer are questions that are ultimately irrelevant to the experience of life that they could be having. It's low-grade clerical busywork. And maybe one day we'll figure out more about education and what might be beneficial for it, but that's the end of that rant. Okay, back to the question thing. [06:10.7]
The problem was in the question. The way, the question on that math paper was worded was such that it was impossible to answer or that the answer is that you could come up with would all contradict each other. Now I want you to think about human history and I want you to think about the questions that are most important in your life. There are questions that have plagued human life for a very, very long time, a very, very long time. Who am I? What is my place in the universe? Where did all this stuff come from? There are questions about what is real and isn't real where suffering comes from. And there are questions about all these things and the way those questions are worded. And the way those questions are put together often leads to a place where a person ends up confused, frustrated, stuck, alone, feeling dumb or worthless or like nothing makes sense anymore or any number of other things. And it's not because there isn't an answer. It's not because there it's not the answer isn't staring you in the face. It's because the question is off. [07:25.2]
Now consider this often, one of the ways that Jesus in the Bible taught people was through questions. Even in the Old Testament, God shows up in the garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve have partaken in the fruit, they're busy hiding. God's like, Hey Adam, where are you? Do you think God didn't know? Or perhaps it was because of the question that was allowing Adam a space to finally see for himself, that it was the question, where are you. That where Adam could be like, oh wow, I'm literally hiding from the one who made me. All right, let me come out and talk to him. But if the question hadn't been asked realization wouldn't have dawned, right? Make sense? [08:18.5]
Now, Jesus, there was one point the disciples they're like, oh man, we don't have any money. We don't have any bread. How are we going to do this? Jesus looks at him and he goes, okay. When we fed the 5,000, how many loaves and fishes were there? They give him an answer. He's like, and when there were the 4,000, how many again were there? And they give him an answer. And then he looks at him and he says, how is it that you do not yet understand one of the greatest, most profound skills that you can ever learn in life is how to form a question that will actually lead to a better experience of life and they will actually lead you to an answer. So, a lot of times in business circles, you'll hear people say like not oh. Why can't I afford this? Or why didn't anything work out for me to change the question to how can I afford this? How can I make this work out for me? If you just change the question, then all of a sudden, your brain is going to go to work answering that question. [09:17.6]
When my kids come to me and they're like, dad, why can't I go play? I go, you don't want to ask that question because then you're just asking me to give you more reasons why you can't. Do you really want me to give you more reasons why you can't play? What if, Hey, Dad, I'd really like to go to play with my friends. What can I do so that, that can happen? I might still have to say, look, just given everything that's going on today, it's not going to happen today, but we can make sure that that happens tomorrow. It's going to be a very different answer than, Dad how come I can't go play? Because that one comes off like a complaint and like a victim. You can phrase any question in your life about what's going on with you to make yourself feel like a victim. Why doesn't this work? Why isn't this? Why isn't that? How come this? And you can make any question in your life, lead you in that direction to the point where you are stuck, right where you're at and you are welcome. You are allowed to ask questions that way. I'm not going to stop you from doing it. You are welcome to continue to ask questions about why things aren't fair and what's going on and why this doesn't work and that doesn't work and how come that guy got it. The kids do this all the time, right? [10:24.4]
And in that place, that question is literally reinforcing your helplessness. Or you could start to learn to phrase questions differently. Let's look at the field of addiction. What is an addiction? Do you see the problem right there? The question assumes that there is a thing called addiction. Automatically, we've already sidestepped it and we're like, what is an addiction? So now the brain is going okay, cool. There is such a thing as an addiction and this guy's probably got it. So, what is it? And now I have to define a thing that is a Phantom idea that somehow exists in a person that has never been witnessed on the planet. Just the formulation of the question has created problems. Now there are other questions. How do we treat addiction, right? And how long does it last? All of the questions are ill formed because they are based on something that was not observed in human life. They're looking at reality and they're saying, oh, I see this thing. That person has an addiction. I can see it. They think they can see that this person has an addiction. And as a result, they're busy thinking about a concept in their brain and they're not in touch with reality. [11:36.3]
What's a better question to ask about how, how do we treat an addiction? What's a better question to ask than that? How long does it last? How about we ask this question? What's going on with this person That's making them feel like, or that's, that's generating this like they got to go to this behavior in order to solve it right now? What's happening with me right now that's making this happen? What led up to this? These are better questions because they force you to see reality and the truth will set you free. What's really there, when you finally see what's there. It's obvious what the answer is. [12:14.5]
Imagine yourself, going down into your basement and the kids have been down there and it's an utter mess, but the lights are off and you've got to get from one end to the other end of the basement and there's really no light. How are you going to walk across that? You can't see what's there. So, the questions you're going to be asking with your body are if you're reaching for the light switch and it, and it doesn't work for some reason, the power's off, you're going to be asking questions with your hands. What's here? Where's the couch? You're going to be thinking, but the questions you're going to be asking are along those lines, I need to gather information so that I know how not to step on the Legos or the tax or the BB guns or the glass thing or whatever else has been left or the, you know, the, the dirty dishes that have been left on the basement floor. You're looking for information and your hands and feet naturally do that. [13:03.4]
Now when the lights go on and you can see what's clearly there, it's not like you have to sit there and think really hard about how to get from one point to the other point in the basement. It's because you can see you naturally walk that way, according to your capability. If you don't know how to walk, then you'll crawl, but you'll naturally go that direction and the most effective way, just because you can see what is there. Your questions that you ask yourself need to be questions that allow you to see what is there. [13:31.1]
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. [14:00.1]
Here's another question. Are you mad or are you experiencing a chemical state in your body? That is, that feels nasty and that you don't like. Which one is easier and helps lead you to an answer? Can you see the distinction? If I just say I'm mad, am I mad? Yes, I'm mad. Well then all you've done is defined yourself as madness. By the way, if you were madness, then when madness went away, you would cease to exist. So clearly you, the being that is experiencing it is not madness. So, saying I am mad is a ridiculous thing to say, because it literally makes you stuck there permanently forever in that space. And it feels horrible. If you say, wow, I'm experiencing something, some madness, some something going on in my system. And it's happening here, here, and here and here. Wow. And that's all that's happening. Cool. Well then if I don't want to experience that, I know where to work and what to work on. We teach this in depth, in our choose your own emotion adventure, which is part of our larger freedom formula process as well. We teach this in depth, one method, many methods of how to identify and pinpoint what is going on by asking yourself the best questions possible, questions that will lead you from being a victim to what's happening in your life. To being able to play and dance with everything that life is giving you. [15:26.6]
Dancing is a beautiful experience because it accepts everything that's there and dances around, it plays with it. The minute you're not dancing is when you're like pushing each other around and stuff and dancing becomes hard when you're saying no, don't do it this way, do that way. No, don't do this. Don't do that. And it's a negative experience in most, most cases, cause people don't like it. They want things to happen their way. You're no longer dancing with life. Dancing with life requires that you accept it and see it for what it is. And that's going to require training yourself to ask better questions. Now you may recall in the past, we've told you about what if, as a question. What if this isn't an addiction at all? What if this is literally just a way that I've learned to survive some stresses that I just haven't figured out how to stop causing yet? And what if those stresses aren't actually hard to get rid of? What if I just haven't been able to see clearly yet? And if I learn how to look and see, what's really there and learn some basic skillsets for shifting that, then I won't even have to deal with stress in my life. [16:22.5]
What if what everybody told me about stress is totally baloney and bogus. What if life itself isn't stressful at all? Because as far as we can tell from observation, stress is created inside the human body. It doesn't float across on the molecules of the air. And so, it soaks into the pores and therefore have a person experienced stress. Jobs aren't stressful. What if they're not stressful at all? What if it's how I think about my job, making myself unhappy, as we talked about in the last episode that is creating the stress. Can you see and even feel how those questions open up a possibility of movement and cease to make you a victim? Can you see how shifting to better questions is one key element of finally working your way to freedom from anything that you are struggling with, including the nature of life and existence. [17:16.4]
Now, another area where we use really good questions is helping people identify core issues that they've been and thought patterns that they've been stuck in for a long time, whether they were aware of them or not, we're using good questions. And a way that we help them shift their perception so that they can get out of that is one way to do that is through questions. Now we obviously do that with the body processes as well, doing emotional releases and physical movement and deep tissue release. And we do it in a lot of different ways, but one way of helping the body release all of these past traumas and issues and driving forces that lead to coping behaviors is through really well-formed questions that we take people through. And we teach them how to ask themselves so that they don't need to be a victim in the future and they don't need to constantly be going to somebody to fix them because life is not that hard. Life isn't hard at all. Go back to like I think it’s the third episode, where it was like the nature of life or something. What is life? It was a long time ago that we talked about that one, right. [18:17.2]
So, we teach better, better questions. Let's go back in history now. We've talked about Jesus. We've talked about God using questions. We've talked about you and I using questions. We've talked about business owners using questions. We've talked about parents and children using questions. Here's the questions I use for my kids a lot that works really well at the time being when they're like, oh, this is hard. I just asked them, okay, what do you want to do? They get hurt. All right, what do you want to do? I'm just asking them so that they finally figure out that they don't need answers from me. I want them to learn it early on. This is not something I wait till a teenager. This is like one of my five-year-old my four-year-old, my three-year-old, when he was three, like I'm asking these questions. [18:54.3]
Now let's move over to another source of questions, which would be like the nature of life and stuff. We can go back into the Buddhist time. Now at his time, the same debate about life and its nature was around. It had a different name at the time. I think they called them the eternalists versus the materialists. But basically, there were the people that say matter is only exists is the only thing that exists in consciousness is just a result of matter. You can see that that's like scientific materialism, that's a very, very common thought process today. You can see also the people that are the eternalists that say, well, yes, but there must be something that exists here, that is having these experiences because we can see that matter is changing and all that other stuff. And it comes and goes, but there's like, I'm still here so, there must be something underneath it. And so they positioned the idea that there is a soul and that consciousness comes from the soul and all of those other things. Now I want you to note that each position leads to problems. If we say matter only exists by your own experience, you know that that's not true. Because a thought is both a material experience, but it's also something more than that, isn't it? Experience really is happening. So even by your own observation, you can say that matter, there's more to life than just matter. So, the question, well, what if matter is all there is, it leads into a big dead end and a big problem. [20:20.9]
Now the other one says, well, what if there's any eternal one? Well, that leads to a never-ending series of questions, which is like, well, where did that eternal one come from? And now we have to create a come up with a creator. And where did that create or come from? And now we run into another long series of infinite questions that go back and back and back like chicken and egg scenario and all of these other types of things, because they've positioned this. And what they don't realize is that both of these arguments came from the need to explain experience. They're having experiences and they made the assumption that I need an explanation for it. [20:58.5]
Now, experience can happen without an explanation. Reality is here. You don't have to have an explanation for it in order to be happy or to live it. Otherwise, babies wouldn't be happy at all because they don't have an explanation for anything. They haven't developed that part of their brain yet to be able to explain stuff, but they seem to be content and have full wellbeing and are doing great. And so, they don't, you don't need to explain stuff. But the question is like, what is here? And that came from a fundamental flaw in reasoning, which was, they set it up like I need to have an answer. What is the answer? And Buddha and his own right Gautama Siddhartha is his name. Buddha is a, is a term that refers to someone who is Buddhi, is the word for intellect and dhdha is the word for like above where doo-do0 is the word for below, which is funny doo doo. But anyway, and then Buddhi is like the intellect itself. And so, Buddha is somebody who has gone above and beyond the intellect they've crossed it. They've transcended it. They've gone above and beyond. Doesn't mean that they've eradicated. It doesn't mean they don't have an intellect, but they're beyond the intellect. So, they called him a Buddha because he had gotten beyond this, to where he was no longer suffering his thoughts. We've talked about the nature of thought and how thought has brought on happiness and thought has brought love and excitement and all these things. And he's gone beyond the roller coaster of emotions. He's graduated from suffering because he transcended the intellect, right. And the intellect was the thing, trying to cut everything up and ask questions. [22:24.5]
So, he's sitting there in the middle of this experience seeking to try and figure out all of this stuff. He's like the old age and death and suffering and all this stuff happens to people. How do we get beyond this? He was literally worried, terrified. And he was an exceptional student and had gotten into all of these high, energetic states of deep meditativeness and saamdhis and all of this stuff. He was not a bad student. He had achieved all the things like in the West, we would say he was a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or somebody who had achieved all the great things, but still he was suffering. Still, there was pain still like in, in Elon Musk's case and some of these others are, why are they continuing to try and conquer space now as if the world is not enough, as if the billions aren't enough. And why the continuation? And we could say, well, it's because of all this other stuff, but they're out of touch with, with reality. The business world in general is out of touch with reality. They're wanting constant business growth, when nature itself is not in constant growth periods, it's especially in the Northern and Southern hemisphere, like way Northern climbs, where the seasons changed much more drastically. [23:33.0]
The earth doesn't even always do the same things, but because they're out of touch with the reality, they're constantly trying to grow and they're still suffering. If they don't do it, if they're not productive, if they're not coming up with another idea of all this other stuff, there's still pain in their life or a constant urge to do stuff. And that doesn't mean that they're necessarily unhappy people. I don't know them personally, but there's still that constant thing. Well, when you're beyond all of the suffering, there is just beautiful life. There is just consider the lilies, like we talked about last time, neither toiling nor spinning, and yet experiencing life greater than Solomon himself could have experienced because you go beyond the intellect. [24:09.6]
So, he did this for a long time and he, he became a Samanas now Samanas they didn't accept food for, I mean, they did accept food, but they wouldn't go beg for food. So, their way of doing it was like we wanted negate every, every impulse of the body. And so, if someone offers me food, I'll eat it, but I'm not going to go indulge the impulse of seeking food in order to survive. So, he would, but he was like diehard. So, he wouldn't even walk in the direction of food. Like the others they'd walk near a city or something, and hopefully someone would, would offer them something, but he wouldn't even do that. So, at one point he was crossing a river and we don't know necessarily how big the river was, but he got too weak. He was too weak from lack of food. And he couldn't shake it, and so, he, he couldn't shake that feeling. So, he stood there for a long time. Who knows how long, because when you're starving, you know, a minute can be forever. Like when you have to go to the bathroom, a minute is a long time. [25:00.0]
So, he was there for a long time and he couldn't figure out what was going on until he finally realized that it was because he was the one trying to do it, that there was this I in there. This I in there that was trying to create the problem, that was trying to solve this problem. And when he realized that something in him clicked and he got enough strength to cross the river. And then he sat on down under the famous Bodhi tree and he sat there and meditated and until he could really look and see clearly what was going on, and he realized that his question was wrong. Who am I? What am I? How do I end the suffering of this person called me? The question had assumed that there was a thing called me. So, when he looked and looked and he looked and he saw everything that I could define myself at as has changed. So how could there possibly a thing called me that is the same thing, permanent thing throughout my whole life and yet has never been the same. How can a thing be what it is and still be different? It can't. [26:06.9]
So, he looked all the thoughts in his mind, those that accumulated and gone, they'd never been the same. All of the, his body cells, everything had shifted. And he had been in deep states of meditation, where he was able to perceive deeply on the inside of him, that everything that he could think of as himself wasn't there, when he really looked at it. It had come from somewhere, it had gone to someplace else, there was no clear division between him and anything else. There was no solid thing that he could point to called me. And something shifted in him. And he said this, he said, just like, when you walk out the door and you step on a snake, you freak out. But then when you look down and you see it was a rope, all of your fear and your worry disappear in the same way one day I realized that the thing I had been calling myself didn't exist. And then all of my worries and despairs disappeared instantly. Or from that point forward immediately, I think he said, who knows? He said it in a language other than English. So, it's translation. [27:09.1]
So, we're looking at it and he realized that the question was wrong. The question assumed, just like the question about addiction assumes addiction. The question about him and his life and his suffering assumed a thing called him, him, me, I, and he realized at that moment that I was just an attempt to explain reality, that reality didn't demand there be enough that he could live his whole life without ever thinking about itself. That in fact that self didn't exist when he wasn't thinking about it, that when he's in the middle of doing something and heavily focused, that there's no thought no experience of a self-there’s only the activity happening. And then when he steps back to think about a self and how good I did, then the experience of a self shows up, but even the experience of a self me and I is only there when he's thinking about it. So, in that place, all of a sudden, he realizes, holy cow, I've been asking the wrong question. What is this? Is possibly a better question. What's here? What is actually happening? A better question than what am I, and what does this mean about me and what is my purpose and what is my suffering? [28:18.1]
So, the eternalists and the materialists were busy, sitting there going like, who am I? Same thing. Where do I come from? And because they have this idea in mind, they were coming up with, well, I'm just from matter. And I've popped out from the earth. And consciousness is just that, oh, no, I am an eternal soul, and I came from somewhere else. And just that, and none of the observed experience supports all of that. Nobody's ever witnessed your soul. You've only had the experience of being you in this body. They're all sort of connected. And as a result, when he realized that and he realized that the question was off, all of his worry and suffering went away. So, I wanted to wrap this up and I know it's been a little bit of a longer one, but I want to wrap this up by just offering you the possibility that most of your suffering, almost all of it, if not, all of it is coming because you're asking possibly the wrong questions. [29:13.2]
If you would like to learn how to ask better questions, if you would like to learn how the questions that have been really profound for people, and to be taken through a process of training those and learning those, and you want to either just go through some simple processes on your own, or you want to jump in and be taught and trained by me and my team about some of the things that we've learned. I'm not saying that we have the answers. I'm not claiming to be Jesus or anything like that. But what we've found has freed people from addictions, from pain, from auto immune diseases, from depression, from anxiety, from OCD, from just misery in their life, from anxiety, from stress, from core root issues from past traumas, because I've spent now well over a decade looking to find the right questions that would free me of my own junk and my own misery. And we teach people how to ask these questions and we train them and how to find the answers and how to look for the right question to ask. And we show them how to do it with their body and how to do it with their mind and their emotions. And if you want to learn that we have a scheduled call, you can sign up for one of our programs, but whatever you do start asking the right questions. Start asking, maybe I should say, not the right questions, but better questions because the better your questions, the more free you will be. [30:37.0]
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. [30:55.0]
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