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.
(00:36): And welcome back. Hopefully you got rid of all your unwanted pets last week, and now you're free and you're looking at your dis ease and you're ready to take things to the next level. I wanna tell you about Lee. Now. Lee is a remarkable person. He's six foot 10 and was born. And shortly thereafter, his father and his mother split up. He never knew his father. When he finally found his biological father found out who he was, that he died before Lee was able to, to meet him. And so he never actually got to encounter his father and some of the counselors and therapists and people he went to over the years said he was fathered by the pornography that his mom had introduced him to, or by the other transient men that went in the house, his mom introduced him to pornography and treated him poorly, abused him for a period of time would manipulate him into getting his inheritance just so that he could, she could use that for other things and so on and so forth.
(01:33): So he lived for the first 16 years of his life in a very, very like rough set of circumstances, where he was treated very, very poorly by all measures and his faith in, in God and in Christ were the things that kind of sustained him for that period of time. And then he managed to get out and he was taken in by a Christian family and they raised him. And to this day, you know, they're, they're still in contact like their, their family. And so he, he moved on in his life and his early experiences really made him want to be. And I've mentioned to him before somebody who helped other people out, so they didn't experience this. So he served in several Christian ministries, worked as a camp coordinator, was on, worked for a national organization and spoke around the country for them talking about child abuse and trauma and the effects of those things.
(02:25): And the consensus over all of those years was that you can't get rid of it. That it is literally impossible that you'll be living with it forever. And then of course, he comes to a retreat and within four days that was gone, like it had completely turned around and he went back home bewildered, like not knowing what to do with his life, cuz he'd spent all these years training, certifying like all these different certificate and trainings and helping other people, talking them through all of this narrative around their story and how that's, who you are. And that that's what identifies you. And, and you make sense of your story and you process your story and all of these other things. And all of a sudden everything that he had learned no longer fit, what he had experienced. This is a beautiful place to be in.
(03:05): Remember, we've talked about this before, when you don't know what's going at on going on. That means you're in a new place. He knew what was going on for so many years, which means he, which means that he was running in circles. And if you think about your life every time that you, oh no, I get it. That means that you've been there before. You're not experiencing anything new, you're running in circles. That's no different than a relapse, a lap. And then you've relapsed it again and so on and so forth. It's just that maybe most of us are relapsing on ideas and thoughts and, and the same kind of experience. And instead of letting it blossom into something new, he was, he had dived head first into really everything we were teaching. And after that turnaround, he dove in even more. And he was having experiences of joy and bliss.
(03:51): He's in his fifties and it's the happiest year of his life. He told us, well, recently he went to clean out his garage. Now he'd moved into his place. I think it was like nine years ago or something like that. And the previous movers had just grabbed all the boxes and stuck 'em there. It might be less than nine years, but it had been a while, like years we're talking years. So he has a garage full of all of this stuff. How many of you've had this experience you've moved or your parents finally kicked you out and they said, take all your stuff. So you have these boxes of memorabilia of things you've collected of all this stuff. And he finally gets the gumption to go in and go, you know what? I got a bunch of stuff in the garage. It's time to go through it.
(04:26): And so many people do this. They go through their old stuff, you know, looking at it, processing it, making sure, you know, they don't need it or it's not important. And so on. Nevermind the fact that he hasn't needed it for years. And if he had spent five years without looking at those boxes, he wouldn't have given a second thought to anything inside of it. I want you to take note of that when we move to a new home, what's the first thing we do to make it feel like home. That's right. We go grab all of our old stuff from our past and we go and move it into a new place so that we feel like it's home. Can you see how people do that with their struggles and their problems and their identity and their personality issues and their relationships and whatnot.
(05:10): There's this fresh new paint on the wall. There's a new environment. And that wears off relatively quickly. And then what they're left with is a new container for the same stuff. It's just like clothing in Hebrew that we talked about a couple weeks ago, it's a treacherous act. In some ways we think, oh no, I'm gonna start fresh. It's not starting fresh at all. It's just putting what's there into a new container. If I have a pile of poop and I put it into a different shaped pile container, I'll just have a different shaped container, a poop, that's it, it hasn't changed the fact that there's poo there. So Lee goes to his, his garage and, and he's probably listening to this today and please know Lee, I love your guts. So he goes to his garage and he just messaged me cuz at a certain point in time, he starts to have some like memories come up.
(05:56): He found a letter that he'd written to his mom when he was eight saying, I try to do all these things for everybody else. And they still don't like me. Can I please come home already? At eight years old, there was this pattern of trying to please people and trying to do things for them so that they would like him. He found hundreds of books that he had been reading all, all around trauma and addiction and all the things that he had dealt with in his life. He found papers and coursework and binders full of things and pictures and, and all kinds of stuff that were all things that had happened in the past. And now they're just sitting there in the garage and as he's doing it, all this stuff comes up and he sent me a message. And I, and I got back on with him and I was like, look, you do realize, I want you to realize one thing.
(06:39): It is totally okay for you to go into your garage and recognize, wow, there's a bunch of old stuff here and I'm gonna go through it. Cuz I just want to go through this. And I wanna see if there's anything there that I want to keep. I said, but you do need to recognize that you haven't needed any of that stuff for years. And all of a sudden, just because you walked into the garage and opened the lid, all of a sudden you wonder, oh no, should I keep this? When not a single bit of it has made your life, the happy life that it is today. You also have all the permission you need to simply not look in any of those boxes and just Chuck 'em and throw 'em out. You can go sell all the old DVDs. You, you can try and sell the CDs.
(07:20): You can try and sell the books off. You can do whatever you want. You can try and make money off of your past history and all of your past events. Like so many of us do, you can do that or you can move on and not one of them is right or wrong. You can do any of those actions, but I want you to note something, you're having a mental turmoil because you went in and dug into your old story. This is where you and I, my listener get to really make a break. I want to tell you something that no therapist generally speaking is gonna agree with. And that is your story. Doesn't matter. It's not real. The only use for it is one entertainment or two. If it gives us some leverage in helping you in the present moment, that needs to be understood.
(08:07): There are too many people out there that want you to narrate your story. A bajillion times. We do have people tell us what's going on because they think they need to tell us their story. If we had a really, really willing person, I just have, 'em start doing some physical stuff and start really building blocks, doing the building blocks in the way that I've designed it. And the way that I've figured out really works. But the problem is if we start people on that, they're they come to me with their story almost immediately, Hey, I really need to work on this. This is something that's going on and I really need to do this. They haven't let it go. They moved into a new program, but they brought their old self with them and it's a concern and it's a valid concern. And so we have them dive into that kind of briefly in the beginning to just help them get it off their chest.
(08:47): Let everybody know, Hey, look, these are all the boxes I got in the garage. And then we're like, cool. Let's take 'em to the dump and let's go start like L let's go start building a cool life. Cuz you could spend all of your energy on a Saturday diving through your old history or you could go out on a hike or you could go experience something new. There is no requirement that anything that has ever happened to you is anything you ever have to think about. Again, I hope that comes us as a really freeing concept. A really freeing idea because it's a very, it's a reality. The truth is this. There is no such thing as the past, your story doesn't exist. It is a present moment recreation cuz that's what memory is. It's a present moment reenactment in your brain about who you are.
(09:38): And ironically is changing all the time based on your current set of experiences as we've been talking about recently, which means that it's not accurate one and two, it's only a reaction to how you are feeling in response to what's around you in your environment. If, instead of like, if he hadn't opened bins and looked at the old letter and instead he opened his fridge and saw his favorite meal in a Tupperware, what would his, his reaction have been totally different? Would he have had thoughts about, oh my gosh, my story, oh my gosh, this is who I was not at all his environment and the things he chooses to dive into create an instantaneous learned or response in his body. And then from that response, his mind goes, I've been here before I remember this story. Remember back when we used to tell this story, like with tears on our faces, let's tell it with a different voice, but let's keep telling this story.
(10:29): Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I've overcome this one. Yeah. Yeah. I know, man, that was so hard so long ago and so on and so forth is not needed at all. And recognize that that story wouldn't have come to mind if he hadn't chose to go in and look through his stuff. Now, Marie condo, who is the lady that does all the tidying up stuff. And I highly recommend her book, the life changing magic of tidying up. I went through that a long time ago and lots of profound things happened for me. I may have talked about him on this podcast in the past, but it was a really great way of processing things. But even she, when she was there were books, she didn't wanna get rid of. She was like, oh no, but I really want, I like, I like parts of it. So she started photocopying and that took too long.
(11:08): So she tried well she's first started handwriting all the, her favorite parts that took too long. So then she started with photocopies and then that was taken a long time. So she kept the photocopies. And then a couple years when she realized she'd never looked at 'em, she finally gave herself permission to let 'em go. She thought she needed it. And that was the only reason she kept it. And too many people are like, oh, but what if, but what if, what if I lose all the wisdom I gained, you can't lose all the wisdom you've gained. You can't lose it at all. But what you can do is make yourself miserable by carrying around the acid luggage of the past. Instead if you put it down, you can live a joyful life, engaging with what's in front of you. Now most of Western society and a lot of cultures, it doesn't really matter which culture you go in.
(11:53): They have a sort of a timeline view of human existence, right? And if you were to draw a timeline of human existence and your life in the middle of human existence, there is the past, it's this big long line. And then there's a dot representing the present. And then there's the future, which is another infinite line off into the distance somewhere. And people represent the present with this tiny little dot. And then the past is this huge area of the graph. And the present is this other huge area. I mean the future is this other huge area of the graph. If you or someone you know, is looking to drop the FBO 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 the freedom specialist.com/feel better now 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.
(12:53): Now think about that for a second. If I'm telling you, you need to be present, but your concept of the present is it's a tiny spec. It's actually just the point where the future becomes the past. That's all that the present is how easy is it for you gonna be to be present your entire concept of what is real? And what is present is that there is this big thing called the pass and there's this big thing called the future. And if I'm not paying attention to them, I'm irresponsible. Guess what the most irresponsible person on the planet is the person that is not paying attention to what they're doing in this moment. And if you're thinking about the past, you are not here. And if you are thinking about the future, you're not here now. I'm not saying planning and stuff like that. That can also be a present moment things.
(13:34): So I'm not saying that there are uses for them. They are useful. They have helped with survival. They have helped with building technologies and comforts. But how much of your day do you actually need to spend planning, worrying, mulling things over how much of your day do you actually need to spend reliving old memories? And how much of your day do you miss? Because you're caught between this idea that there is a past and there is a future. If you go to Stonehenge today, people will say, oh, that's a Relic of the past. No, it's not. It's a setup of stones that is existing in this present undying moment. It's right here right now. It's the only time it ever exists. There will never be a tomorrow. There will never be a yesterday. There will only ever be this, this one moment. Not even a today, today you think 24 hours.
(14:20): No, no. This one moment is the only thing that exists. What there is right now. That's all that there is. And it can't be any other way than it is right now. So if you're busy arguing with life, we'll talk about that later. Guess what? You're on the losing side all the time. What's now is here. Now get over it. The point of this is that if you have a concept that the past is real and the future is real, then you're gonna be controlled by them. Now we glorify the past. If the past made you who you are, then you weren't, you, when you were born, you just barely became you now because the past 10 seconds also was who you are. That means you're a different person than you were 10 seconds ago. And so you haven't existed before now. Did you see how that falls into some serious problems, but we glorify ancient cultures and we talk about learning from the past that I'm not saying none of any of that's that's the observation of human behavior.
(15:12): That's great. But how much of our vindication of where we came from and stuff is keeping us stuck in the same cycles that the ancestors lived in, in the same loops, in the same problems, in the same depressions, in the same anxieties, all because we continue on our Saturdays, the opportunities we have to go live fully. We continue to go into our little tiny hole that we made of a garage and pull these boxes off the shelf and then run through them and go, you know, remember when this, oh my gosh, Wasnt I so cute? No. And the day, the now the only moment that really exists is just running away. The sun is moving in the sky and it's setting. And we are in our little boxes, looking through other boxes, detaching our minds from what is happening and recreating other memories that are inherently false and creating little experiences for ourself.
(16:08): Not bad if you're doing that consciously in my book, if you want to do that, that's perfect. That's go great. There's nothing wrong with it. But if it's compulsive, if that's just the way life is being lived, cuz that's the way you've trained. There is a way out that is not the only way to live. When I first started sitting on the roof many years ago, watching the sunset, I, I mean I would watch the sun and the moon and watch them through their phases. And over the course of months, I would see the sun traverse from one part of the horizon to another. And then back again and watch this or space and note the rotation of the planet and just be sitting there amidst this vast, huge thing that made me realize just how unspecial and insignificant I am in the most beautiful way.
(16:51): If I died, not that many, any people are gonna be upset and a few might cry for a little bit here and there, but they'd get over it and maybe they'd think about it again and get over it. But they're not that gonna be that many people that are all that upset. I'm not that important. If I die, the sun keeps going, the earth keeps moving. Other people will try and figure things out the way that I have and pick up what I've done and move on with it. It's it's not like it's gonna be that big a deal. So I was sitting there feeling so insignificant and grateful too, because it removes so much responsibility from my shoulders of having to be this glorified separate from nature, human being that is more special than anyone else because I have a mission and a purpose and all these other things to recognize how fragile and tiny lay, if I am, how insignificant in the span of the cosmos, where our solar system is a tiny spec inside of a tiny spec of a galaxy.
(17:43): And in the tiny spec of our solar system, earth itself is a bit, a little bit of a dot. And in that dot there's a continent called north America in, in that continent, a little area called Utah and in there a little tiny dot of a town where I live and in that town, a tiny spec called a house. And in that house, a little human breathing thing that I, we happened to have named Bob. I'm not that big, but when I get to feeling like, oh no, I'm more important than the world. I have to change the world. That's when the heaviness comes on. That's when I go, things need to be different. And all of that suffering starts to arise. So I was sitting there finding such freedom from suffering and then I would look down and I would see these people come home from work because I'm on the roof.
(18:30): It, it made everything smaller. I was looking down on roofs and houses. And so they drive in their little box car. That's protecting 'em from the outside world into their box parking space. They'd get outta their box bar and walk into their box house and sit on the couch and turn on their box television and then pull out their box phone, and then go start clicking on little boxes called apps to where they could go in and like check little boxes of the like and dislike and type inside of little boxes and boxed in a boxed in life. That's how people were living. So separate from the life throbbing inside their own chest. Most of the time, not recognizing how exuberant and experienced just a single breath can be, how glorious a heartbeat can be, how much just simply sitting and being a piece of life can radically alter how you feel oblivious to all that because they're so boxed in by all of their concepts and by all the past and by all the future that they're planning for by all their worries and concerns and hopes and anticipations and everything else that they're missing.
(19:34): The only thing that is real, which is life. If that's happening to you in a small way or a big way, and this is as much an invitation to myself as it is to anybody that's listening. I want you to recognize that you have all the permission in the world to go digging through those boxes anymore. It's not needed. It's not required. You don't need a narrative therapy. You don't need to sit there and talk about things it's helpful. Sometimes I'll tell you that the past is useful for entertainment or for leverage, but you don't need it in order to finally be free at all. And I give you permiss. She not to have to go digging through those boxes anymore and not to have to store them and stuff them and keep them down and ignore your, ignore it and distract yourself from it.
(20:21): Every time you see them on the shelves, it is entirely possible to take down every single one of those boxes to not have to dig through any of them, to not even know what's inside of them and to him, to the dump and get rid of him. That's what we do really profoundly in the retreat space. We work with the body in a very physical way, and we deal with all the non-verbal parts of what people struggle with. Things. They don't have words for memories. They don't even consciously recall cellular memories and nervous system habits. And we just put people through physiological experiences that are essentially like going to the dump and alleviating all of that, all that pain, all that stress, all the burden of carrying anything that you don't want to carry anymore. And it's a really profound experience. It's one that Lee felt, and literally we're talking five decades of carrying a feeling of being a person that nobody loves of being a person that didn't belong anywhere.
(21:19): Being a person that didn't fit in because of body shape and size, because that's how his mom made him feel. Because of so many other things that happened to him, but abuse and, and no father and all the things that he was craving and to have that vanish in four days, it's not unheard of. It's been happening through the millennia in all kinds of different ways, but in the west, in our culture, it's not heard of very often, if it is it's, it's dismissed as anecdotal evidence. Well, that's not real science. Let me give you a clue. As I have been over the last couple weeks, real science, the real scientists, the really good ones, the ones that I respect the most are the ones that fully admit how little they know science cannot prove anything. It never has been able to, it never will be able to, that's not how it's built.
(22:13): It can disprove things, but it can't prove anything. And they say that's not real science. Science is just another way of explaining things. It is real experience. And in the west, those experience sadly Aren happening mainstream anymore because we have such a stranglehold on the idea that everything that you've been struggling with your past is who you are, right? It determines your future, this disease, these diagnoses, that's who you are. That's gonna determine your life. I have a disc that's slightly out in my neck. And I went to a chiropractor and you know, his friend of the family. And I went to a chiropra factor and I, and he is looking at it and he's like, it's considered a permanent injury. And I looked at him and I was like, I'm not interested in people making prognostications that they're not qualified to make. There's not a, not even life is human.
(23:01): Life is permanent. So to say that the injury is permanent. That's stepping far too far. Nobody has the scope of understanding of life to be able to say that anything is permanent. And so he reiterated it like three times and I kept telling him, look, dude, you're not qualified to make that statement. Neither is anybody that told you that, but we're too reliant on authority figures because they have certificates and stuff and have looked into things and have read stuff. And most of them don't even know from their own experience. All they know is that they've read some things. And because of that, they're passing it on to people who are, unwitingly accepting everything they're saying, because they happen to have a certificate on the wall. It's not a permanent thing. Nothing is permanent there's possibility. And if it does last to your, the end of your life, okay, but that doesn't mean it's permanent just means you didn't find a way out of it yet.
(23:49): And some people don't wanna find a way out of it. They like the little unwanted pet. You know, they like the comfort of it. They miss it when it's gone. And they just, they found a way that works for them the way they wanna live their life. And they're not interested in trying to get rid of it or moving on. And that's okay too. But if you really ready to have the garage clean, there is a way you can go to the freedom specialist.com, schedule a call. If you want to come to one of our retreats, I would love to help you. I would love to share what it is that I've learned. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced on the planet. There are like almost sacred spaces for me because I get to see people drop things that they thought they, they didn't even realize they were carrying and they thought they would always have to carry. And it has changed so many lives. I've heard stories of people's families that have radically changed because the dad or the mom went home and shared what it is that they found at the retreat and started passing it on the kids. There's so much goodness there and it's complicated. It just takes working with the building blocks. And if you're willing to do that, the garage can be cleaned out without you ever having to dig through that sucker again.
(24:55): And that's it for today's alive and free podcast. If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your earbuds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcast 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.
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