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, it's time to take another Bible story apart. This one, I think, has been a challenging one for me personally, over the last little while as I've really explored it, because I feel like I'm in the position of the young rich man. Now, if you don't know the story it's told in two places in the New Testament where a young, rich man, he goes to Jesus and he asks him what he's supposed to do to an inherit eternal life, a big conversation in twos, which we will cover. And then he ends up going away sorrowful because he doesn't, he can't do it, right. And this one I felt like for a long time, I was like, oh yeah, well, you're supposed to follow him and whatnot. And I realized that maybe I am a lot more like the young rich man than I thought. [01:22.5]
So, there's two places that this happens in one in the book of Matthew, this comes across as something of a public encounter. Now in those days, if you haven't read the book, misreading scripture with Western eyes, I highly recommend it. If I haven't recommended it on here it really pulled the rug out from under me. And maybe I'll do a separate episode on it. In terms of what I thought was bedrock, Oh Yeah, this is the way that you look at the world. It, oh, never mind, it's just one way to look at the world. And there's an entirely different way of looking at things that I didn't grow up with, Oh my gosh. And one of the things they talked about was that in, in those cultures, when it's a public encounter with a rabbi or somebody like that, it's often a battle of honor. It's a contest, right? And whoever wins like the other side loses face and then their followers get a chance to go follow this guy and you're making points. [02:15.8]
So, Jesus ran around having public altercations all the time. He kept besting the Pharisees and the [inaudible] and the people who were questioning him. Because the question when dawn, in a public arena was understood to be a challenge wasn't understood to be, oh, I just found Jesus in the temple and I went to ask him a question when asked in public, it was often just a straight up challenge, even if it seemed like a gentleman's challenge. Like they were, oh, well, no, this is a legitimate question about the law master. Well, why are you asking it to him, in a public space where, you know, full will, what you know, and so on, which is why Jesus was like to so many times he would say what your teachers of Israel and you don't know these things, right. And he would throw it back in their face. So, some of the harsh comments he would make, or some of the things he would say were deliberately things that were undermining a public challenge. [03:02.9]
So, in Matthew, this young, rich man coming up to him could be seen that way. And it seems to come across in this sort of negative light, he says to Jesus, he comes up to him. He says, good master or good teacher. What is it that I have to do, to enter into eternal life? Jesus looks at him and immediately like cuts him down. He says, why are you calling me good? No, one's good. But God, right. And so immediately, there's this challenge, this switching of the seats. So, the young rich man is put in his place. Now he's defined as a young, rich leader or ruler. And in Matthew, particularly, he's like a rich, he was, he was definitely high up there. In Mark, you only get that he was a rich person at the end of the story. Matthew leads off with it, from what I remember. And so here you have this guy and Jesus immediately puts him in his place saying like, you're not even asking the right kind of question. And then he tells him, Hey, just keep the commandments. And by listing those commandments, he lists and loved your neighbor as yourself. So, in case he hasn't covered all of his bases, he covers that one. [04:04.6]
And the young man says I I've done all of these things since the time I was young. And so, then Jesus goes, okay, what, you know, he's like, well, what, what am I missing? And Jesus is like, okay, well then, you're missing one thing. Go and sell everything you have. Give it to the poor and then, and sell it to the, and give it, give the money away to the poor and then come follow me. And then at that point in time in the, in the exchange, the young man goes away sorrowful because he had many great possessions. So somewhere in the conversation, because of the way Jesus is encountering this conversation, the young man goes from being possibly an antagonist. He might have legitimately wanted to know, but he chose like the poorest place to do it. But he goes from being possibly an antagonist, hoping to just buffet and, and bolster up his own sense of self. See like, look, see, maybe he'll just say like, well then you don't lack anything. You're great. You know, yeah, you've been, you've been accomplishing everything. Somewhere in there, he goes from being a, possibly an antagonist who's looking to be built up inside of his own reputation inside of his own mind and being like, well, isn't it this, and haven't I done this. See, I've done all of these things, you know. To being completely the rug ripped out from under him where he says, okay, why don't you go sell everything you have and why don't you give that money to the poor people and then come follow me. [05:27.3]
And at that point in time, something changes in the young man. And he has some, because it says even in Matthew, that he goes away like sorrowful. So, he has some jarring experience with Jesus where his own attachment to his riches is called into question the disparity of his life situation with the life situation of the poor people around him and his unwillingness to do anything that isn't uncomfortable that is uncomfortable is thrown in his face and he goes away. Now that's quite an exchange, right. I like Mark's version a little bit differently. I tend to like the way the book of mark is written a little bit more than the book of Matthew, maybe because it's a little more dynamic. Maybe it's a little more dramatic. Maybe I'm just a little bit of a drama queen, whatever it is. But as he's writing the young man who you don't know is necessarily rich at the time, runs up to Jesus as Jesus is on his way somewhere. Falls down at his feet kind of, and is begging him master, like, don't leave. I want to know, like, what is it that I need to do to answer into an eternal life? I need to know. [06:35.1]
There's a very different situation than one who confronts him in a public space and is offering a challenge. This is portrayed as a young man who really, truly wants to know. He goes there, and this one, this is the one that I imagined a lot like me. I grew up and I had done everything that I, I had put a hundred percent of everything that I knew how to do inside of my attempts at faith, right. And in my family, I mean, my military father, you know, you obey the rules a hundred percent to the letter or it's court martial . And so that's kind of the environment, not that he was like a stickler or anything like that or abusive in any way, but you gotta obey the rules. And you know, in the religious environment we were in, it was like, no, you gotta hundred percent. Growing up in the Mormon faith, the Mormons incidentally have, I think one of the reasons why there's so much perfectionism in it, and I've mentioned this, I think in the episode on perfectionism is just because their view of heaven is that there is like various degrees of heaven. And it's, you know, they, they borrow from the New Testaments, some ideas about this, as well as their own theology and, and that, and top level of the celestial kingdom, there are like levels and the top tier of that top tier is, is where you wanna be. And everything else is like sub that. [07:47.4]
And so, if you wanna become like God, or you wanna really get to the highest level in heaven, you gotta be the top of the top. And so, I grew up in this sort of honor roll mentality, meaning it's a hundred percent or is 99% even an option. Of course, I had that mentality with schoolwork too, so, it went well beyond the other, other stuff. And so, I had grown up doing everything, throwing everything I knew at religion to the best of my ability. And even though I was still kind of stuck in pornography, compulsive pornography, viewing in binge mode from time to time and sometimes long stretches without it, and sometimes off and on. And I was lying about that and there was lies. And I was, I did shoplift as a teenager. I had a, I had problems for sure. To the best of my ability, I tried to live up to it for reasons like I wanted my parents to be happy with me, I, I truly did wanna believe the thing I had had some really emotion or spiritual experiences with a few things. And so, there was a lot of reasons in it, and I'd thrown everything at it. And still I was at a place in my life where the promises that were offered were not being delivered to me. [08:53.8]
And so, I felt like this young, rich man in some ways or how I interpreted it and I don't actually know how he was, so, this is all I've got. And so, I felt like here's a guy who's going up to Jesus who's like, I've done everything I know and still, I don't feel like I'm getting what I want out of it. Like I'm getting what I really truly desire out of this life or the happiness that's there. But I see something in you, teacher. Something in you seems to bring that alive, you seem to have it. So, what do I have to do to gain this thing that you're calling eternal life? Now, remember that at least in the book of John, Jesus, isn't defining eternal life as something that happens after you die. It's the, to know God and him, right. And that's in John 17, right? And so at least in that case, and I mean, even in, even in Luke, he said, the kingdom of ha the kingdom of heaven isn't like some city that you're gonna be finding somewhere it's, it's among you. It's it's within you, right? The kingdom of heaven is within, it's not somewhere out there that you're gonna like, see it descend from heaven at all. [09:59.2]
So, a lot of the discourse in there are that this thing is happening inside you and that eternal life is a life outside of a sense of time. Time is created in the different minds of different creatures in different ways. And so outside of a tense, a sense of time in the ever present now. Incidentally, the word in Hebrew for Eter eternity is simply that, which is beyond what I can see, right? So, it doesn't necessarily have a time aspect to it. It can, but doesn't and eternity is a time outside of time, right. So, what do I need to do to have this kind of unseen life, meaning that, which is beyond your view, the, you have. Jesus looks at him and he gives like, we're on our way and he's like, look, you just obey the commandments, you know. Honor your father and your mother, you know. All of this stuff, keep the seventh day, holy, you know. Worship God love your neighbors, yourself, all this stuff. And then I imagine this young man pleading and saying, but I've done all of that. And I'm still here, what's next? [10:58.4]
Now in mark, you get the statement that Jesus looks at him a second time, possibly as if, to like really size up the guy and recognize that this is no casual question, that this question is tearing the man apart on the inside, he really desperately wants to know. And so, Jesus says, okay, cool. He loves him more and shows passion on him and he gives him the answer. There's only one thing that you're missing. Go sell all of your belongings, give them to the poor give the money to the poor and then just come follow me and we'll take care of it. I will take care of it. And the young man goes away sorrowful because he had great possessions. [11:36.4]
Now, as I think about this, it reminded me a number of years ago of an encounter I had with a guru. Like, you know, I had been suicidal. I had so many different things. And I talked a little bit about this in some respect about my experiences with this fellow in way early on in the podcast. His name's Sadguru. He's got a YouTube channel; you can find him on there. And I first started running into his material when he was talking about parenting, and it was making a lot of sense to me. And I was like, wow, that actually makes sense. Like it's looking at things’ kind of clearly, and not in this convoluted. No, no, I need to be a good parent, bad parent. And I'm not living up to all of these expectations I have. And I don't even know what's right and wrong. And his voice was one that was offering some Clarion call. So, I, I read his book called Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy, cause that's what I was after, after my ex my visionary experience with Superman, that I may have recalled where I realized that's all I want. I superpower is out the window. The only one I want is to be able to be joyful. [12:41.0]
And he describes his enlightenment experience and there's some kind of hunger that is born in me. So, I go through his first program, I start doing some of the simple like practices and processes that happen. Now, along with a lot of the other things that I've been exploring. And then all of a sudden, like one day, this happiness bursts through me of a kind that I had never experienced before. And it wasn't because of something, I was just sitting there and all of a sudden, this happiness started to come out of me. And I was like, what is this thing? [13:11.6]
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 want 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. [13:40.4]
Another time it happened where I was feeling this tremendous connection to the whole planet and to a bee that had died. And I was in tear like it was, it was outside of the no normal range of anything that I was used to, and I didn't have an explanation for it. So, I continued to go and just practice in my own way off and on, like I wasn't always the most consistent student. And I finally arrived at a place where I was in a, this Ashram in Tennessee - Isha Institute of Inner Sciences. And I had gone there for an advanced meditation program, an advanced program. And I went and it wasn't meant he wasn't meant to be there. It was run, being run by teachers. But the very, very last day, he I turned around at the very end of it, we were just cleaning up some like flower pedals that had fall on the ground or something. And I turned around and there he is sitting. Now, what I experienced with him was this. [14:37.6]
I looked up there and I thought I had entered a cult because the lights were kind of down and they were doing their, their Guru Puja, which is basically ways of greeting a guru and it it's sort of like a prayer of Thanksgiving to every master or teacher who's ever been on the earth and left teachings to help guide people, right. But he's sitting there and they're doing this thing with some intents and stuff and he's on the days. And he looks like a wax statue. I mean, it felt to me like the time when I was a team teenager and had entered my friend's grandma's bedroom, when she had died overnight, it felt the exact same. There was this massive presence in the room, a feeling of life somehow not embodied. And then there was this body there that felt dead. And I was like, this is rather elaborate. Did, why do they have a wax statue of the guy? I mean, he's alive on the planet. This is kind like weird. Are we worshiping a wax statue? [15:35.1]
And then some people started saying some things in the crowd. There were only 30, 40 of us in the room. And he starts moving in a way that looked like animatronics. So, then I got started to get really freaked out. I'm like, oh my goodness, why do they have an animatronic statue of this fellow? This is creeping me out. And I had questions in my own mind. I was the only one who had been raised LDS in that room, Mormon in that room. Most of the people in the room were Indians or from other countries even. And they all had come from different kind of belief systems and stuff and weren't as bothered by things as by certain things, as I was necessarily. And in my mind, I'm looking up at this guy and I'm like, who is this guy what's going on? And then he starts interacting with a crowd. And I see, oh my gosh, this really is a living breathing thing. It's not a statue. It's not an animatronic thing. It's a really living, breathing, human being. And my brain could not compute this. [16:30.2]
Here, I am in a room with a guy who basically could go in and out of his body at will and leave his body inert as death. His stillness was just, it shattered me in ways that I didn't know how to comprehend because I was looking at a death sort of, and yet he was fully alive when he wanted to be. I've never, ever experienced any other human being like this ever on the planet. I've met with some heads of state, I've met with apostles of the Mormon faith. I've met with martial arts masters of a variety of different sorts. And some of them definitely have a certain presence about them, but this so far blew that outta the water that I didn't know what to make of it. And my brain was like, is this Jesus come again? Did I miss the memo? Is he supposed to be a little black man from India, brown man from India? How would I know if it was Jesus, come again? Is this the second coming? Is it something else? Have I been wrong my whole time? I was in utter confusion. [17:30.3]
People start asking him questions. He's answering, I'm sitting there on the back row like not sure if I should run for the corners, but desperately wanting something because I had been disgruntled in my life. And I didn't, I had had incredible experiences over the four days in that meditative experience, like leading up to it, that opened me up to an experience of life that I didn't even know how to process. So much joy and perception and oneness and love had burst through my body that I was like, holy cow, what is this? And then here's the guy who's responsible for it. So, here's this living master in front of me. He's answering questions. And one lady then asks the question that I think is dumbest possible question. You could ask she's like, Guru, you know me, you know what I need to do? Just tell me what I should do. It's like the Vegas question. on the planet. I have since come to appreciate that kind of question. When you are encountering divinity or something greater than you, who in your mind knows all or knows more of what use are your questions? Just sit with them instead of asking for all the little petty things that you wanna ask for what would happen if you just let them actually go to town on the things that really mattered, that changed some of the nature of prayer for me for a period of time, for, for sure. And how I interact with teachers, ask questions differently. And there, you know, and sometimes not at all, because I go, I don't know what I don't know. [18:56.1]
So, she asked this question, he scans the room and his answer comes like this. He says, you know, there's a group of people that believe that when Jesus comes again, he'll come to Missouri. Now they all chuckle at this, they think it's funny. He's like, no, really, I'm the only one in the room that had had that upbringing. That's one tenant inside of the LDS faith or the Mormon faith, which is that when Jesus comes again, that's where he is gonna come. The new Jerusalem will be in Jackson County, Missouri. And I'm looking around the room go like, who else would know this? And who else would have the question in their head? Is this Jesus come again? And right then he looks out into the crowd, and he says, just so you know, I'm not that guy. Now I'm starting to shake in my boots. Cause here my mind is having a question and an answer is coming. I don't know how he knows his answer. I don't know if it's a wrote answer he’s given. I'd never heard it before, but in that context, it felt like he was talking straight into my brain because I didn't even have the courage to ask a question. [20:01.5]
And he proceeds to talk about how, when Jesus came to the planet, there weren't that many people that actually followed him. There were plenty that wanted to be healed by him that wanted to ride on the wake of his miracles. Plenty that wanted to benefit from his company. But when it came to followers, true disciples, people who had given up everything and followed him, there was only a handful and even one of them betrayed him. He said, if Jesus came now, all of you are in so much bond to everything. You have your student loans, you have your mortgages, you have everything else that you're bound for, the bank owns you. When something significant shows up in your life, you can't go because you have all these other, other obligations. If Jesus came now, you all would be standing in line at the bank, you wouldn't actually be following him. That question, that statement gave me some real pause because it's very true in my own life. Like if Jesus asked nowadays from what I've seen people to follow him, there would be a lot of people that would be willing to talk about him that would put him on the news would want to interview him. But when it comes to no ditch, everything drop your nets Peter let's go. How many people would do that would drop everything in their life and just swivel right on the, on the spot and follow him? [21:20.6]
I don't feel like many people would. Now, I could be wrong, but it just doesn't seem that way because we're too caught up in our lives and our plans and our future and everything else. And if something that significant happened, so many of us would be like the young rich man. So, he says this, and then he says, look, just follow me. And immediately my brain's like, I don't know how to follow you. It's not in the religion I grew up in. I don't know how to navigate the religion thing. I don't know how it's gonna happen with my family I can't just move through the AROM. I'll do my best. I gotta figure this out. And what I did end up doing was leaving there, going home and trying to find a way to work in keeping tabs with him while still clinging to everything that I was holding onto. [22:05.0]
I was so worried about losing everything in my life that when something that significant happened, I clung to the place I was at and then tried to also cling to what I had just experienced. So, there was a lot of turmoil for the next several years. Eventually I left the faith that I was, that I grew up in for other reasons that weren't pertaining to that one. There was a time where I stopped practicing all the stuff that I had learned except here and there just kind of sporadically keeping it up. I just followed his words. I didn't actually follow him. And haltingly, haltingly, I just kind of stepped one step at a time toward really giving myself all the way to the process of being like, okay, this feels like an answer to everything that I've been looking for. I'm gonna go for it. And so, I didn't follow [22:53.8]
What were the possessions I had? Well, I wasn't super rich. So it wasn't that I had a bunch of things that I needed to sell and give to the poor and go follow him. But I had my reputation, I had my philosophies, I had my beliefs, I had my intelligence. I had all the information and I had gathered; I had my skill sets. I had what other people thought of me in my community. I had my family and my children and, and where we lived, and I had future dreams and plans and old stuff. And all of those were my great possessions that I was unwilling to go sell it all and give it to the poor and follow. And it's, it's a matter of some remorse or regret for me where it was because it took me a while to come back around to ask myself this question, because I, I was having a hard time with faith and things like that cause I realized, look, if I really want to know the nature of life, faith, isn't gonna help me cuz that's a lot of beliefs about something. [23:55.1]
But then as I started to perceive things, I realized faith in the sense of direct focus, we talked about that on the episode around faith, that one is needed because at the place where I was at, as I looked, he was the only one that, that seemed to have the possibility of a totally different kind of life, a totally different experience of life than anything that I had ever seen before. One that was so much more powerful and so much more beautiful than anything that I had ever received from growing up in the way that I had grown up. And so, then the question came, all right, follow me, just follow me. And then I had to sit there and ask myself, would I, could I do that for real this time? Instead of just one piece at a time, just trying to collect bits of the teacher and not actually follow the teacher and let him do his, his job. And as I reflected on that, I realized, oh my goodness, I was just like the young rich man in the story of Jesus. When the injunction is to follow and you don't have to follow who I follow by any stretch of the imagination. But when the, in, when you see something significant, something that profound happens in your life and the invitation is there, Follow me. I've given my life. He said it many times that he's like late, his whole life is there. His entire life is dedicated to over opening up possibilities for people to experience this kind of stuff. He's given his life just like Jesus gave his life in his own way here he has given. And he's like, just follow me and we can take care of it. [25:29.6]
And it's a matter the way I look at that story as a question of compassion, looking at the person who really has tried as you have probably tried so many times to find happiness and joy and health and wellbeing to really follow, just follow and we can take care of the rest. The rest of it, I can take care of, just follow me. And that's something that takes a little bit of faith. So, a little bit ago I wrote a poem about this. You can insert your idea of Jesus in this or Mohamed or Moses or, or the Messiah or whoever it is that you follow, even the Buddha or a guru. But this poem seemed to sum up everything in my life history about where I was it's called Guru. And by the way, the word Guru just means a dis speller of darkness. Goes like this. [26:19.9]
Birthed in panic, raised in love,
Lost in stories, wonders tales,
Drenched in sweet oceans of doctrines, theories, philosophies, facts,
A boy taught to carry everyone's maps but his own.
Left strangely longing for a home he never left,
Cause his eyes had been vaseline blurry by a world of others thoughts.
The little brown man sat there in his thick death silence rudely, slashing off those cardio graphic blindfolds to leave the boy blinking blind in the gentle light of life.
All he said was follow me.
So haltingly I am. [27:02.5]
As I wrap this up, I know it's been a longer one, but I just wanna offer you an invitation. You have probably run into some things in life that have opened a possibility for you that have been an answer to prayer. The thing that you've been looking for, dazing, gazing for, maybe it came in an ad, maybe it came because of a certain event in your life. Maybe it came from a voice in, from in heaven. Maybe it came in some way, something that has opened up a door or a possibility to the life that you have asked. And it's probably scared the bibijis’ out of you. Because it required that you let go of what you're clinging to in order to go where you want to go. That's always gonna be required. It's not just letting go of the bad. You have to also let go of the good if you want the other thing. And that can be scary, at least it has been for me. And it's not like I'm really an ACE at make and making that leap. But I wanna offer you the suggestion, which is this. [27:57.2]
You only get one life as far as we know. This is it. And if something that's sign comes, it may not come a second time. Do you really wanna miss it? Because you're worried about your pocketbook, or you're worried about your reputation, or you're worried about your thoughts, or you're worried about all the things that have not produced the happiness you've been looking for. Do you really want to cling to the stuff that kept you stuck, where you're at? Because the other thing just seems a little bit outside the box. I invite you to really explore the idea of faith as unwavering focus even if the waves come, to keep your eyes on the prize, to get out of the boat and walking to whatever the Jesus is in your life, right. Whoever has said, follow me, whatever it is that has said, follow me, whatever that opportunity is could be a program, could be a person, could be a teaching follow because you know what life is like as it is right now. And you'll never know what that other thing is like, unless you go and only, you know what that is. [29:11.6]
And so, I invite you with everything that I know to go because that's what I'm doing. And sometimes it's spooky, but good news when you know how to handle your emotions and your core issues that pop up and all that other stuff you can keep going and it's not so a bad and it gets better along the way. But don't for a second, miss the opportunities that's in front of you, just because it's uncomfortable. If you've been praying for it, if it's the thing you've asked for in your life, don't bat an eye don't blink twice, just go. [29:47.3]
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. [30:05.4]
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