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, wheelchair straight from the trenches what we've 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.
(0:35) All right, folks, you shall, you shall not have to deal with the book club any longer after today. This is the last adventure of the book, and it's a short one entitled killing the Buddha. And since Jeff is trained in Muay Thai, we've decided to hire him for the job. It comes like I thought of this from an old Buddhist saying and phrase that one master used to tell his students that if you meet the Buddha on the road, you should kill him. And I've seen it written and other texts and other people referring to this very, very, this very same idea, the idea that like, even the authorities that you look to, which we touched on a little bit last time, but even the authorities that you look to, in the end, they are an obstacle on your way to real freedom, that as long as there is an authority that you hold above you, then you're not using your own eyes and ears that you're kind of relying on somebody else's answers, which may, in the end turn out to be a stage prop that they inherited from somebody else who wasn't all that perceptive. So even the authorities that you revere, which is why I challenge people all the time, to like, just question it. Even if we end up with different answers, Jeff, and I have different answers about things. Lee and I have different answers about things, Jasmine, and I have different answers about things. But even if you end up with different answers, in the end, like your life is your life. And I've been thinking about this recently. The question arose in me like, what if the life that I am and the life that other people are is like, the skills and gifts and abilities and stuff that will arise in my life or things that this world has never seen, and may never see again, I don't want to miss that. Because I'm too busy trying to be what everybody else says I should be. Like, whether you think of yourself as God's creation, or just a unique happening in this tremendous universe. Or I wish I could explain the kind of glorious feeling that I have about what life is it isn't a materialist science view at all. But it just I don't have what I don't have words for it. Like there's how do you describe something without this and uh, that you know, and but whatever it is, that's there, like if that has produced this, and what if this is a one and a let one, one and the kind of thing, too many of us are busy trying to be something else, instead of the thing that we are. And in so doing, we're judging ourselves, we're creating negative experiences. And we're just missing an opportunity. So people driving down the road, it's just a bunch of seedlings, all looking for the right soil in which to grow? And can you give yourself that soil? And can you set aside all the people that are trying to plant you in with the potatoes when you're a carrot, saying, I don't care at all for this soil? I am different. And that's the case. So this idea of killing the Buddha is rather radical. I don't know of any other religion that advocates that they wouldn't say in like Hinduism, you should kill Shiva, if he shows up. They wouldn't say in Islam, that if if Mohammed the prophet or if Allah showed up that you should attack him with spears, even if those are rather warring religions. In some some ways, even Christianity and Judaism, like, they wouldn't say that. And yet in Buddhism, they had this beautiful phrase to highlight the fact that, in the end, your experience your deepest experience of life, if you can get it to be unmediated by another person's ideas, there is tremendous freedom and beauty in that. So that's kind of where the name of the chapter came from.
(4:13) I kind of, in my own way, understood it to be like, like we have these people that we idealize. And we put a lot of hope into, and we rely on them rather than our own experiences, and then a few that we should kill those realities that we make up because they're not helpful. Because like, as long as we're believing that they have the answer, we're believing that we don't, and we're not we're not going to, we're not going to get the answers from them. We're going to learn from our experience. So sort of kill that ideology, so that we can have the experience and find the truth that we need. Yeah. Like sometimes what I'll have people do is I'll just have them think about like when was when, think about the time that you've you felt the most love in your life? If I have people go there, and I say, now just pay attention to what you actually felt, where did that love arise in you? Where did the feeling of being loved come from? Where did it waft through the air? And all of a sudden smack you in the face? Oh, and then you're like, Oh, I feel loved now, was it like a molecule? Or was there like, even if it was a look from somebody else? Where did the feeling of love of being loved arise? Invariably, people start to talk about, like, Well, how did you know you felt loved and they talk about like a palpitation in the chest or which, you know, if that were happening, when they were walking down stairs, they might interpret as a heart attack, maybe all of you having heart attacks, just remember, you're being loved. Sorry, that don't take that as medical advice. But like, it always arises from the inside. And the unfortunate thing about the United States is that it's its premise is that everybody. There's a lot of unfortunate things about the United States. And there's a lot of incredible things about the United States. So I'm not saying that, that is defined by this. But, you know, the pursuit of happiness is defined as the right for everybody else, that we have this inalienable right to pursue happiness as if it's something that we could actually hunt and kill, instead of something that naturally arises when your your interaction with life is something that's harmonious, and then happiness comes. And so as a culture, we pursue happiness, and we pursue it in outside, we pursued an approval, that's what I did with these authorities, you know, am I the top dog? Am I the top number one in the class? Am I their best case study? Am I this, that or the other and I still feel that tug from time to time, when I was in church meetings, if, if the church leader would walk in, I would feel my body react, like, Okay, I gotta make sure that he sees that I'm being righteous, you know, because that was where like, if I got his approval, then I could give myself approval, and I could feel approval. And I didn't realize how ridiculous that whole. I thought that that was the right way to act, was to chase down the like, check all the boxes and get the approval from the outside. And then I would know that I was worthy, but it never worked over time. And so a lot of people don't realize I remember one time with Alexei, who is a deep, he's an orthodox, Russian Orthodox. And he said, like, no go to confession. And the priest, he just witness like my confession is to God like it was an unmediated experience. And his sense of worthiness was like, the priest is just there, the father is just there to witness it. And with him, it was like, no, he's just there to witness that I am really connecting and confessing to God and giving away all the burden to the higher power. And that's not it's not an experience I had. So I had to figure that out on my own differently, which was that happiness and joy and all this stuff come from a source somehow deep inside? And it's not, it's not, I don't feel like it's me creating it. Does that make sense? Like, I feel like it happens. And that there are things that I can do that allow it to happen more frequently.
(8:13) Yeah, and things that I have done, that have gotten in the way of that to megaways, which I think for me, is what comes up with idea of killing the Buddha or the kind of like pedestal Ising authority or something is because so for so much of my life, I've had a lot of deep mistrust and judgment for myself, and my own ideas, as well as like, you know, grandiose visions of my own, you know, awesomeness to kind of like jumping back and forth. But like, as I've kind of learned some tools to just let a lot of that go and get out of my own way and kind of appreciate what's what's there and feel that then, I think felt less and less of a need to glom on to somebody else, or, like, put all my eggs in their basket, or yeah, I've had a lot of people, they've come to me believing that they had. And that's why I've spent so much time recently over the last year or more, trying to be very, very clear that I'm not the answer for everybody's life. Because in the beginning, I had a lot of people that were like, okay, Bob's doing it, then I got to do it. And I was like, You don't understand, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm still figuring life out as I go. I figured some things out. But that doesn't mean that the next turn is a place that you want to end up. So, you know, tread lightly, folks. And so like that idea has been something that I've had to because I've seen people glom on to me and like really go like, Oh, okay, now because he's doing this. I'm going to do this. There was a moment where when I got put into that position of authority, I was like, Oh, wow, it felt great. And then I realized, I don't like this. I don't want to responsible for their stuff. And it was a really you could ask Tucker at there was A moment where I was like, I hate being the guru. I don't want to be a guru. I don't want to be somebody who's like the dispenser of salvation one, because I have no idea how to do that. All I know how to do is show them. This worked for me. And this is what I've seen, this is as much as I know. And the burden on that side was so much that I was like, I gotta get rid of this as much as I can. It sucks.
(10:24) And we talked about this with coaching, like, as I've started to help out with coaching and all that all these feelings, were just like, What am I doing? I don't know how to help people. I'm not, you know, like, but then looking back at my own experience, again, seeing that Oh, actually, even though Bob and Lee and Tucker, you guys have been really helpful to me, like, some of the most profound experiences I've had with you guys is just from you asking me questions, and then me finding the answers within myself. And so yeah, it does, it does just seem like getting out of my own way. Getting out of the way. And maybe asking people questions are being asked questions is a lot more helpful. There's also this other thing that comes from it. I was just recently down in southern Utah and Amber came with we were presenting at a women's forum. So I was the main presenter. And I brought her because I felt like, look, it's a women's form, I think they'll benefit from the fact that there's a woman here and not a guy, there's there's a bridge that often needs to be crossed there where women realize, okay, well, it's not just that it only works for guys or something else like that. And so I brought her and in a certain point in the middle of the presentation, I would, after we'd taken him through some ridiculous exercises and done a lot of body things that are not like your difficult presentation. Then I had her kind of take the reins, and I just finished a breathing thing with him in the middle of his class. And she took the reins, and I was like, Just share your story. And the first time she tried, she was trying to share the right thing and trying to do what the authority me wanted her to do. And then when I like after that I just said, Look, just speak to your experience. And those next two times as much as I would love to say, oh, yeah, well, they came to me and they wanted like, whatnot. They wanted to hear my, like, they wanted me to answer their questions and whatnot after class. Like i Nobody came to me after class, they came to her because her experience was something that was she owned her experience. It was no longer that she needed say what I wanted her say she just owned her experience, and didn't have answers for anybody else. She only owned her experience. And in that moment, all of these other people started finding answers in their own heads. And they wanted to talk to her about her experience. And they came to her with questions, just to see how they could link it together. Because she wasn't offering an answer. She was just like, hey, this was my experience. And that alone is also useful. 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 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. I remember reading a long time ago in the Bible that one of the things that frustrated the Pharisees about Jesus was that he spoke as one who had authority and he didn't speak like scribes. So I was like scribes, how does scribe speak? Well, they write research papers or big ol honkin books called built where they have endless endnotes. They cite everybody and they rely for their authority on some outside structure. And as much as I've kept this book as much of a personal memoir as possible, I did that so that the people that are like, Oh, this is just some outlier, it's not medically proven. They could find relief and there being other authorities, and yet the most potent stories in there. If you ask me, maybe maybe it's not for everybody. But if you ask me the most potent stories in there are the ones where I'm just saying, This is what happened to me. And whenever I speak from that point, people don't question it. They look at it, and they they have to take it in as data because they can't question it. Whenever I speak from like, I'm pretending I understand what the authority say. There's somebody somewhere that always like challenges. It's usually Jeff. Actually, but it doesn't matter who it was. We did a retreat once for a corporation. Since the you know, this authority I'm fighting Yeah.
(14:37) And I was we're taking them through some physical drills and I'm trying to correlate this to their emotional state. And every time I would step out to where they felt like I was talking about the best way to fight I'm not a fighter, like I've never been in a fight in my life. I mean, I've sparred a bunch. But I've never actually been in a fight fight and I have the the chances are getting diminishingly small that that will never happen. And, and so like they're like, No, you can't do this. And you can't do that whenever there or when I would share something else about reverberations off of the sun and its electromagnetic field or something, whenever I wasn't certain of it, because it was my own experience, somebody in there would raise a question. And I don't know that they were even conscious of it happening. But somewhere in there, they could feel that the authority had left myself, the authority had left the person speaking. And so they felt easy at ease to challenge it. But whenever I just speak from my own experience, and every time I would just have to back up and be like, okay, cool. What do I know, actually, in this situation, then they'd all accept it. They'd be like, Oh, okay, that's the case. Cool. All right. That makes sense. And that's the same thing and everybody else's life, like I want, like, I wanted Amber to speak from experience. And I want Jeff to speak from your experience. Because if you're trying to speak from my experience, you're going to be like, I hope they buy this. And Lee, you and I've had conversations about this, where you're like, I don't know if I can really help people that much. And I've had to like steer you back toward your own skills, your own abilities, your own experiences, and be like, just start there. Just because you're willing, you weren't sure. Right.
(16:12) I was thinking about my experience with you, as you wrote this chapter. I mean, you were literally what a week from going to the Himalayas. Yeah. And I appreciate like, speak to your original intent for taking that trip. My, my original intent for taking the trip to the Himalayas was that there was just, I looked at Sadhguru. Like, okay, if this is a master, like on Earth, like Jesus, or somebody else, if he really is that, which I didn't know, at the time, I had backed off of that. And I was like, I don't know. But if he really is somebody who knows the depths, and the inner workings of how the human body is put together, and how to work the energy and can reach these enlightened states, so to speak, I don't want to miss a chance to do it. And then there was something about that Himalayan trek that like really called me and I was like, if that's a possibility there, and enlightenment is a possibility there, then I want to go, I really do. So it's interesting, because I feel like you already knew what was going to happen in the Himalayas, I had a hunch, I really, because you wrote about it. In this chapter in the chapter before, you were already there, to the point where it almost felt like the Himalayas was pointless, except that they didn't get a whole bunch of exactly what I'm saying, like, because you'd already killed the Buddha, because you'd already recognized Sadhguru as a tour guide, but I hadn't done it fully. And, and I that's as big a blind spot, as I can admit, you know, like, I hadn't really loved it. I had already been like, hi, disagree with this. And I had already been like, I don't know, and, you know, looked at some of the practices, and you and I had gone back and forth on that. And this, I really still deeply respect the guy for as, as a human being, you say it in the book, you say that in the book.
(18:01) And even now, even after the Himalayas, like I still have this tremendous respect for his life and what he did. But he's just a dude. And I didn't see I couldn't see that fully. It's like, my body hadn't got the memo. My brain had gotten the memo, but my body hadn't gotten the memo. And so it was still like, Yeah, sure. He's just a dude. But he's gonna save us. Right? And so like, it was like, the Himalayan trip was the thing that pushed it out of my head into my body. It was like your adult version of St. Nicholas. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That whole experience. Yeah. Really. So you know, we are I mean, there's, there's a lot we could talk about. But I guess, like, at this point, we're a couple months out from the book having hit Yeah, it's in print, and people are reading it, and you're getting responses? What is it kind of? What are you hearing from the results of the book,
(18:50) I wish I could hear more, you know, I want to be on inside people's heads. To know, so. So people who have, I've had everything from I haven't had any negative responses at all, other than people don't want to buy a book if, if it's not going to save them. You know, they're like, I don't want to spend this much money on a book. It's like 20 bucks, and the Amazon or if you buy the online version, it's five bucks, but they're like, I don't want to spend this much money on a book, if it's not gonna save me so much money, and now you can spend it on your coffee, that'll probably save you. And so, like, I've had those types of responses, but the people who've actually read the book, I've had everything from people who are like, I didn't realize this, you know, I like it really made me kind of rethink, I knew that. They would say things like, I knew that trauma is stored in the body. But this helped me understand like, how to work with it or whatnot. So everything from just simple, like little aha moments to like the book coach who was in there, who basically her job was to just make sure I got formatted right because I refuse to take input from anybody. But she read it and she's like, If she reads like seven to 10 books a week, sometimes like she has two or three to five books a week or something like that, because she's got so many people that she's coaching through the processes. And she said that it is rare that a book comes across my desk, that radically changes how I see myself in my life. And this was one of those. And I've had other people who one guy in particular just recently who said, like he said, I thought about this a lot. And I really feel like this is the most important book I've read in my entire life. I've had past clients say, like, I went to this retreat, and that chapter, reiterated and reinforced some of the lessons that I didn't realize, and it helped me take it deeper in my own life. So everything from bringing back reminders to like, bringing opening up whole new ground that they didn't even realize was available to them. And so whether they were past clients, or people who haven't even worked with us at all, like there's been a really positive response. And my aim in writing it as much as you the book was twofold. It was meant to be like a sort of brochure for what we do, naturally. So that if anybody is really interested in having a tour guide, having somebody to take them through these kinds of experiences that you really can't reproduce on your own without help. And help them kind of out the other side and kind of give them enough encouragement and support. So they can take the reins and be their own guide, you know, that they could find us. But the second one, I just was in my head, and I was like, I don't want this to be a marketing book. I don't want people to pick it up knowing that there's a pitch at the end. And knowing that, that they're going to get all kinds of like, hyped up case studies and things like that, that that make them believe that their current life sucks. And they could be living better if they did it XYZ way. I wanted it to stand the test of time and really be a legacy. And, and so I wanted somebody to read the book and finish with this, like, wow, what if there really isn't anything wrong with me? And what if the only thing that is really in the way of me having a different experience of life is learning some skills. And maybe these guys can help me or maybe it's somewhere else. And they've given me the idea just based on the book, I really do want people to put it down going, what a ride. And I if they've really engaged with it, well, maybe maybe there's more to my life than I thought and maybe I can stop thinking of myself as broken.
(22:32) Well, behalf of the 1000s that will read this book and benefit from it. Just want to say thank you, thank you for all your blood, sweat and tears. This is the this is huge. That's gonna be huge. If Jasmine, were here, I'd say thank you to her as well. Because I know there's probably plenty of times where you've missed being with family. And yeah, well, thanks. It's been an honor even writing it and watching how it's coming together. Because I never know how these things come together. When I'm writing it, I was discovering it along the way. Which it forced me to be really clear on what is it that I actually know, so that I could speak from my own experience to not just sit there like touting what all the memes, say. And so, so those of you that haven't purchased the book, well, if you've been through this 10 week series, maybe you're like, yeah, that's enough. I don't need it anymore. Hopefully, there have been avenues and roads we've gone down, that have been fruitful for you things that we haven't been able to touch on that I wasn't able to touch on in the book or that didn't feel relevant to the main line of what I was trying to share. There's a lot more in there. It's not for nothing, that it took nine months to write of some pretty consistent effort. And a lot of time spent trying to make sure that it was something that everybody could access in some way shape or form. I've even had like, nine year olds, 10 year olds, 11 year olds read the book, not my own kids, even my son's friend, I was listening back to myself on audio. And he was having such a good time of it. He ordered the book for himself. And so it's even accessible to children, depending on if it's of interest to them. My son some of my sons just like the stories about me being a goober but then when it gets to the other stuff they're like yeah, I stopped reading not that I blame them. So go kill the Buddha guys. The real one has been dead for a while so he's not under any sort of threat and go really QUESTION GROUP question the authorities that are in the way of you owning your own experience, so that you can stand and author your life you can actually speak with authority like one who actually gets to make the choices so that your life start your life experience starts to happen the way that you would like it to instead of just being an accident. Because once you know how to like shift up the building blocks and hold the levers then then it just gets to be an adventure which is why every chapter in the book is called an adventure.
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