The Democratization of Enlightenment w/ Biet Simkin | AMP #396

BIET: I created a wheel to describe what enlightenment actually looks like. And my idea is that enlightenment is a state that is always churning. Once you reach enlightenment, which you do have to reach enlightenment to have the churning begin—

AUBREY: You have to taste it.

BIET: Yeah. But once you taste it, you FYI, can't go back. So, for anyone who's listening who's tasted it, and your life has gotten worse since then, that's because once you taste it, time starts. It's almost like the clock doesn't start running until you taste enlightenment. Once you taste enlightenment, the duty unfolds.

AUBREY: Biet Simkin is an author, a musician, and one of the most renowned meditation teachers in the world, teaching people like Russell Brand, for example. And this conversation is just beautiful. She's had a wild and incredibly interesting life and we get to share a lot of insights. And she guides me through one of her practices, which was incredibly powerful on this podcast. This is one not to miss with Biet Simkin. Biet, it's a pleasure to have you here.

BIET: You too, Aubrey. Thanks for having me.

AUBREY: Absolutely. I noticed one thing when I was reading the introduction to your book is that our family has a similar history and that we fled Mother Russia. My family fled Mother Russia because they were Jewish. And that was a little rough for a little while out there with the different things that were going on out there in Russia. And your family fled for a slightly different reason. Although I suppose that it could be Jewish.

BIET: Oh no. They fled for being Jewish.

AUBREY: But mystical Jewish. Mine was straight up normal Hanukkah, Passover, Seder Jewish, and the Pogroms were coming, in general. Your family was a far more mystical, Siberian shaman, plant medicine Jew.

BIET: Yeah.

AUBREY: My family didn't touch any of that. But it's really interesting, actually, that we share that common ancestor.

BIET: Very much, very interesting. Because I feel like that stuff matters. I don't think of Judaism just as a religion at all. I think of it in the same way that someone is black, someone is Jewish. It's part of your nationality.

AUBREY: One of the few that's both a religion and a race. And I think it's important to disambiguate both of them, but also, they're often connected. For sure. Tell us a little bit of that story because your upbringing actually wove in a lot of these mystical experiences that your father had. And the reasons why he went that route, it's a an interesting story that actually unpacks where you are now in a pretty interesting way.

BIET: Yeah, sure. My dad was an atheist, Marxist, a jazz musician doctor living in communist Russia. And he was pretty miserable. He smoked like a pack of cigarettes a day. He was a lively, brilliant, funny guy. But he was miserable on some level that maybe many people are when they have no spiritual spark going on. There was no meaning to his life. He didn't get what was going on here. Anyway, he got tuberculosis, and he was going to die. He was like, holy shit, I'm going to die. And this student of his was like, I can take you to this secret person who will heal you, but it's a secret. And you got to help me with my dissertation if I do this. And my dad was like, I'll do anything.

AUBREY: That's also very Jewish. Save your life—

BIET: Match my offer. Totally. He was like, I'll do anything, which is also very Jewish. And then he went to the woods and cured himself of tuberculosis using Ayurveda, the Torah, and hatha yoga, and Gurdjievian Fourth Way mysticism, which is really the school of wisdom that I come from, which is what he taught. And then he turned to my mom and said, do you want to bang and create a freedom child and then get the fuck out of this country? And she was like--

AUBREY: Let's go.

BIET: She said yes, and here I am. I am freedom child. And they immigrated here in '79. I was born a month later. And then my life was obviously riddled with tragedy. I remember this doctor... We were part of this Russian Jewish community growing up. We summered with this bungalow colony and all this stuff in Catskills. And I just remember this doctor that my dad was friends... My dad was always friends with doctors because he was a medical doctor in Russia, so everyone who fled, he was friends with. Doctors, dentists, whatever, that whole genre of people. And so, this doctor was like, your dad was handed a really bad hand. Because things just got really, really hard at around, when I turned six is when things got hard. And then it was just us after that.

AUBREY: I think because of these challenges that happened in your childhood, you had a wild youth, I guess you could say. And I noticed the parallels in looking at the introduction of your book, "Don't Just Sit There," with you talking about the myth of "Forrest Gump," the parable of "Forrest Gump," which I never saw it that way. And I don't really like the movie "Forrest Gump." But now that I read your introduction, I was like, what a great story.

BIET: Thanks.

AUBREY: And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. But you've also had your own mythic hero's journey, moving out of your contact with your spiritual essence and everything that you've known and then finding your way back, having gained all of the wisdom of your journey along the way. I don't know if those two stories weave together in any way in your mind or whether you'd like to tell them separately. But I'd love to have you share both of those, the myth of Forrest and myth of Biet as well.

BIET: The myth of Forrest, it can be applied to pretty much any real film. That's a thing that I use, like a diorama that I use to create the mythology of if a character is truly free in a film. When you watch a film like I was recently watching "Annie," the musical with my daughter, she's four. And Annie is not a person. If you really watch "Annie," Annie is the soul. Think about it. I don't know if you've ever seen "Annie," but Annie is, she's an orphan. She has no parents. The soul has no parents. Or someone's missing. The dad's missing them, someone's always missing. Or they're an orphan like Harry Potter. And in Annie's case, she's perfect. She's always optimistic even though she's a poor orphan living in an orphanage, surrounded by poverty with no hope of ever finding her parents. And then somehow by way of this endless optimism, and belief, and faith, she finds Daddy Warbucks and wins him over and becomes his daughter. And at the end of the movie, Daddy Warbucks and Annie are dancing together. And I forget exactly how the song goes—

AUBREY: I also never knew that Daddy Warbucks was a character from "Annie," but I've heard people say, Daddy Warbucks over here.

BIET: Yeah. He's basically if Bloomberg was a character. He's like Bloomberg. Except if Bloomberg was like a—

AUBREY: Great name, by the way. Daddy Warbucks. That's a stroke of brilliance, whoever came up with that.

BIET: Good writing for sure. Oh, yeah. The song is like, together again, together forever. And it's all about how they found each other, Annie and Daddy Warbucks. And so, to me, Daddy Warbucks is an angry, lost, rich, confused businessman who doesn't know how to really remember who he truly is. And Annie is this perfect, optimistic, ever-loving soul. And that's our journey. Our journey is to match those two parts of ourselves. I am both Daddy Warbucks and Annie. I think my whole life and my journey, looking for enlightenment, I thought, one day I'll be like Annie. I'm going to be perfect, and always optimistic, and always kind, and always see the bright side of life, always singing. And it never happened. And finally, I was like, maybe enlightenment isn't this fucking thing. Maybe it's the marriage of this gross, angry, broken, dying man or woman part of me and this effervescent soul that I am. And that marriage has been my journey. That's the story of Forrest Gump, is this romance between the machine, which is what it's called in Fourth Way, which is the human body, the mind, and the mortality part of us, mixed with that soul part of us. That's that. And then in terms of my childhood, everyone died. And I grew up in the tenements of Queens. No money. What we did have though, was a grand piano and an endless book supply. And I think there's something to be said—

AUBREY: There's real wealth in that.

BIET: Like when I was nine, my dad was like, here's the entire collection of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. You're nine, you seem like you're ready for this. And I read all of it. And I read Erich Fromm, and I studied Carlos Castaneda when I was like 11. Who does that? But we had no money, and we had no resources. But we always had caviar and vodka, books, and a grand piano.

AUBREY: Just to touch back on using Forrest in the same way that you talked about Annie, there's this unlimited optimism and belief in oneself that actually isn't even belief in oneself. I think a lot of times we think of belief as like, you set your intention, you grit your teeth, you work hard, and you keep that vision in mind. It's a very masculine, sports-oriented, business-oriented idea. And for Forrest, he just does it because he doesn't believe he can. And it's almost in this Inspector Gadget way, where he's not bumbling into it. But also, he's just not restricted by the limitations of what our mind and what the social constructs and contracts that we have would say. And it allows him to accomplish unbelievable things. It also puts him in places where synchronicity is happening in an astronomical way, an unbelievable, magical way. And of course, when we are tapped into our soul, these synchronicities happen just like that, and we're able to actually move through life in this really remarkable way. And seeing that whole film in that regard, it was like, this is the story of how the soul works, when you let the universe weave your life and your unique, Forrest was a unique being. But also, the universe, because his soul was open, the universe was able to make contact and weave his life in these interesting ways. And he didn't have any part of him that said, no.

BIET: No.

AUBREY: It's unattainable. It's aspirational, I would say, for most of us. But it's really cool to now have that aspiration of, can you step into Forrest consciousness? Can you step into Annie consciousness? And make that choice. Make that one of the things that you can do. I think that's what was missing for me in my feel from Forrest Gump. It was too easy for him. And that's what I felt. Everything was easy. He had the cheat code. I want to see someone have to fight for it and struggle for it. But I didn't see it from a mythopoetic standpoint. Oh, no, no. This is telling us a lesson about the soul and about how actually... Not that the entirety of his life was easy, because there was a lot of other people who didn't choose the soul around him that made his life more difficult, and war, and a variety of different things. But nonetheless, what he did was easy for him. And I think that's also another important lesson. If you're really writing with your soul, it can be easy, even in the midst of war, and pain, and heartache, and your love dying, and all of this. It's beautiful. I appreciate you unpacking that.

BIET: Oh, thank you. I think one thing I'll add too because it's just so beautiful, as I'm hearing you talk about it, is how painful it was on some level. Yes, it was easy for him, but he has a mental disability and he's unattractive to the woman that he loves. And it's heartbreaking. And I do think there's something about the word disadvantage when I think about the soul. I think about, to choose the soul sets you at a seeming disadvantage. It's like a seeming disadvantage. And that's the trick of it. To choose your soul as your guideposts in life is going to seem like a disadvantage. Most people aren't really going to take that route. It tells, I guess, like a veneer. You're not going to get the girl, you're not going to get the kid, you're not going to get the house, you're not going to get the money. Because the soul is smoke and mirrors. But then if you go the business route, you're going to get that shit. Yeah, I'm going to get it. It's like the lie seems much easier.

AUBREY: And there's some truth to that. You won't get the girl or get the guy unless the girl or the guy is attracted to your soul. And this is such an important thing that I try to impress upon people. What lure are you trying to use? What's your lure? Because you'll catch a fish depending on the lure that you're using. But if you're using money as a lure, you're going to get a fish that wants to eat money. Or if you're using beauty, you're going to catch a fish which is attracted to... If you're using your true, authentic self, your unique self, your soul, then you're going to catch someone, male or female, that is attracted to your soul. I don't think people understand that. They're like, I just want to get the fish. What fish? Which one? Do you want the soul-attracted fish? Because that's the one that's going to make you happy. Because then you're allowed to just share your radical authenticity. And the more of it you share, the more of it they're going to love. They're like gobble, gobble, gobble. Give me more soul. That's the lesson. And for Forrest, what was his partner's name?

BIET: Jenny.

AUBREY: Jenny. Of course, Jenny.

BIET: Good impersonation.

AUBREY: Jenny wasn't interested in the soul quite yet, until she was actually faced with that moment that comes for all of us at some point in our life, and sometimes earlier than others, where death comes close. And that's another Castaneda teaching. Use death is your ally and ask death, has it touched me yet? Different way in which Castaneda talks about it. But there's so many histories, from the Stoic histories to the Bushido Codes, everything. We understand that death can actually change things and get you in touch with something more. And that's, of course, what happens. Finally, Jenny in contact with death, is able to choose the soul.

BIET: Amen.

AUBREY: Amen.

BIET: Thanks for reading the chapter.

AUBREY: I'm really grateful that I did. Because Forrest's consciousness is something that will be in my own lexicon of understanding. In your own life, you've then in some ways, made that journey where you were chasing fame, popularity, physical pleasure. And I think one of the beautiful parts of what I understand from what you teach is, it's not a turning away from all of those things. It's an include and transcend model. No, no, all that's cool. But let's include and transcend it, layering in a level of mindfulness that overrides and witness perspective, that overrides your daily life, whatever that daily life might be.

BIET: Oh, for sure. Also, it's not up to like up to us. Some people are called to monkhood. They're called to give up their belongings and turn away from possessions and desires. And I just never had that calling. And I'm interested, I'm fascinated by monkhood. I think it's delicious when I step into an ashram, and I can spend some time there. But at the end of the day, today, I wouldn't run screaming out of an ashram like I did when I was a full blown alcoholic. But I still don't feel like it's my home. My home is this world. And it's dirty, this world. It's fucked up. And people are messy in it. I love that. To me, bringing those worlds together. And I think you're doing that as well. You're bringing the worlds together. That's what, not just turns me on, but that's what I was told was what I was here to do.

AUBREY: Explain to me what Gurdjieff's role was in unpacking this because I'm rather unfamiliar with his work. And you credit him obviously, with this Fourth Way teaching which is very much about that, as far as I understand it.

BIET: Yes. He was a seeker. He went down to India, he studied with the Sufis. And then he brought the wisdom that he gathered back up to Russia. And then created a cult in the woods. I don't know exactly where, but in Russia, in the beginning of the last century. And there, they practiced all these very difficult techniques, some of which were movingly centered. It included dancing, very difficult dancing.

AUBREY: Like Whirling Dervishes or?

BIET: No, it was different. Gurdjievian dances are, to be honest, way harder. From the stuff I've studied, it's almost impossible to do. And then there was the other centers, all the work that I teach and the work that I've been studying my whole life incorporates sitting in contemplative meditation that involves communication, which is very different. I learned to meditate in a way that forced me to actually speak while I meditated. When I first started doing that on a regular basis, it was really hard for me. And one of the rules of Fourth Way teachings, if you actually work inside of a school system learning it, is you're not allowed to speak unless that's happening for you. A lot of time is spent sitting there in silence because you're like, I can't do the thing that's being asked of me. And then after a period of time, it comes to you, how to do it. I can see, I can use my moving center, and my intellectual center, and my instinctive center, and my higher intellectual center. I can move these centers and then I can speak while I'm in a state of presence.

AUBREY: Is this like a running inner monologue? What are you speaking?

BIET: No, you're speaking like in a group. For instance, it would start—

AUBREY: Like a conversation?

BIET: Yeah. If you came to me and I was doing one of my meetings, a traditional Fourth Way meeting, let's say there was 7 or 12 of us sitting in a circle. People who were there would be asked to not speak unless they were in a state of presence. So, you pause before you speak. It's not dissimilar from the Quaker traditions. In Quaker churches, I don't know if you've ever been to a Quaker.

AUBREY: No. Surprisingly, I haven't been to a Quaker church.

BIET: Super beautiful. Super beautiful. People are allowed to speak when they feel taken by the energy of God, to speak. And so oftentimes in Quaker churches, there's nothing said. It's just a candlelit room with people sitting in silence. It's different with Gurdjievian work, at least the way that I taught it through my father's lineage. And then later, after my father passed away, I found another teacher who also passed away, and similarly, was a crazy, drunken, sexaholic like my father, which I guess was the only kind of man I was willing to learn from at that time. But he was touched and enlightened similarly to my father. You can be enlightened, FYI, and be super flawed, apparently. But for me, the journey was like, how can I actually do this in a way that has integrity and not sleep with my students, and not drink a bunch of vodka? I'm just going to play with that and see what comes out on the other side. So, we'd sit in a circle. And people do share, but it's about opening your heart center. You speak from your heart, rather than speaking from your head. Or being like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been to Texas. You've been to Texas? Oh, me too. Totally. People usually speak on automatic. They're not actually pausing enough to dig what the universe or God, or whatever you want to call it, would say through them. They're just saying what they would say. Which is super boring.

AUBREY: I get it. This may be the worst idea for a podcast of all time, but I want to try it. I don't know how we would set it up. And I apologize to anybody if this creates the most boring 10 minutes of podcasting of all time. It's very possible that that could be the case. I just want to see if we can get a taste of what that might be like.

BIET: Okay. Let me teach you what I would do if we were in the meeting. I founded a breath work system. I don't know if you're familiar with that part of my teachings.

AUBREY: Not your breath work. Very familiar with breath work, though?

BIET: No, of course. I meant my system. Let's start by doing the breath and then we'll move into a Sufi eye gazing, which is also part of the guided by Biet process, which is what I would do inside of a circle, which means like left eye gazing. I'm sure you've done it before. We'll start with the breath. And then we'll move into the gazing. And then we'll go from there. If you feel called to say something at that point, just make sure that you're speaking from a place of complete presence or don't say anything at all. Cool. And we can make the topic because it's good to have a topic or a focus. Enlightenment. Cool.

AUBREY: Yep.

BIET: The breath goes like this. You might want to back up a little bit from your seat. We're not doing the full version, which is on the floor.

AUBREY: You still have to keep the microphone a little bit closer to you.

BIET: That's fine. I've done this in every arena at this point. We're not doing the floor version, which is more intense. And we can do that either later or at another time. But this version gets you high, but it won't get you as high to the point where you may fall over, or faint, blackout. For anyone listening, this breathwork that I guide has the tendency to make people fear death, feel like they're going to die, worry that I'm about to abduct them into a cult. There are many, many feelings that may occur, and very quickly. If you're at home trying this, make sure there's soft things around you. Make sure that you're not driving and trying this breath work. You could blackout and crash. Just to be safe giving that. Hands are going to come up like this and you're going to inhale through the mouth. And then you're going to exhale through the mouth like this. And you really want to suck in a lot of air when you go in and blow out when you come out. We'll do three of those. On the fourth one, just watch me and then we'll do it together. Fourth one is, inhale all the way up, hold the breath, puff the belly out like you're pregnant. In my case, I actually am pregnant.

AUBREY: Cheating.

BIET: No. And then elongate the chin to look at the ceiling above you. It'll look like this. Hold the breath, belly out, chin up. Hold the breath, hold the breath, hold the breath. And then we'll hit the chest lightly on the heart center, releasing the air as you hit the chest. Make sense? Cool. The first three are just in and out deeply. And the fourth thing I'll say is just relax your body. This isn't a physical, this isn't hatha yoga. This is an astral body effort. It's going to make you high not by... You just want to jello your body the whole time. Let's do a couple rounds of those. Just relaxing. And you can keep your eyes open. It'll help you to maintain stability. And begin. Inhale one. Release. Inhale two. Release. I'm holding on to the table, so I don't fall. Inhale three. And release. And then four, hold at the top. Belly out, chin up. Hold the breath. And then hit the chest. Release. And then just come to look at me in between left eye. This is mine. Notice how you're remembering yourself. Let's do another round. Setting an intention before we begin. Hands together in prayer. Is asking the universe, God, whatever the hell you want to call that thing, to be with us today. To enter into this room, into our hearts, into our bodies, and to open up a new opportunity with this breath work and this union of you and I coming together, and everyone who's joining us today. Begin. Inhale one. Release deeply. Inhale two. Release. Three, relax more. Release. And the fourth one, hold at the top. Hold the breath, belly out, chin up. And hit the chest, release. Again, coming back to my left eye.

AUBREY: Light is everywhere but hidden in plain sight.

BIET: Hildegard von Bingen.

AUBREY: A light wants to be seen.

BIET: Desperately.

AUBREY: It's everywhere and in everything. It's painful that I don't see it sometimes.

BIET: Isn't that a beautiful pain though.

AUBREY: Yeah.

BIET: I wouldn't choose any other planet today. And I've lived on the ones where there is no pain. I choose this place.

AUBREY: Me too. When you notice the light, it gets stronger. Or you get more perceptive. Both.

BIET: Everything changes. Your face, the walls, the air between us.

AUBREY: Everything always changes. And some things always stay the same.

BIET: Sometimes there's no words just because the beauty is so intense. And this is why this work is so yummy because it silences us, makes us feel like we actually remember so much there's nothing to say. But if we're lucky, we can bring that opulent flower back to the planet with us. And if we're really committed, we'll come here often enough so we have something to bring. One who does not come here has nothing to bring.

AUBREY: I want to spend more time in the heart garden picking and smelling flowers of life.

BIET: Do you ever read "The Celestine Prophecy?"

AUBREY: I haven't.

BIET: At the end of the book, they all disappear. And I have found that this work does that. Sometimes I'll be in a session with someone or with a group, and everyone will just disappear. You're disappearing right now.

AUBREY: Same. I feel my obligation as a podcaster starting to rise. And I think it was okay but I'm going to steer us out of this even though it would be lovely to stay for longer. But that's what I wanted. I wanted to taste it and feel it. And I did, so thank you.

BIET: Now you can testify that it's real.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Otherwise, it's just theory.

BIET: It gets you as high as psychedelics. It's like, I don't believe that.

AUBREY: Such a powerful practice. This is your adaptation of Gurdjieff's work?

BIET: Yeah.

AUBREY: And he innovated the breathing technique?

BIET: No. It's derived from Sufi and Indian traditions. And I worked with my father on it. And then I found another very, very special healer that did this breath with me after my father. My father when he died, he left me with people. He did not leave me alone. I was guided to the perfect people, invisible teachers who were here to help me bring this to the world.

AUBREY: It makes me realize how much is there and from all of these different lineages. That it's just under the surface. And you think you understand the surface of the lineage, but there's nothing at the surface but the artifice and the mirage. But really, at the depth is where the real substance is.

BIET: Tell me more. What do you mean?

AUBREY: If this comes from Sufism, how did Rumi have contact with God and the great beloved like that? How? Did he spin around? Maybe.

BIET: Maybe he did this.

AUBREY: Maybe he did this. But some mechanism. Ostensibly, all they drank was wine. As we're talking about, no psychedelic or psychotropic cocktails. They had some wine. But you it. It's pouring out of every word. So, either he was born a mystic and Hafiz, they were just born mystics. I don't believe that. There must have been a way and a practice, and a path that they took to actually get there. While we can reap the fruits by tapping into the consciousness of the work, what was underneath the surface? How did it actually produce such magnificent beings? And that's very interesting to me. Even in Judaism, you can understand Judaism as a religion. And Ari Shaffir did a great comedy special about Judaism the religion as we know it. And when I'm studying the deep wisdom of Solomon Kabbalah, and big difference, big difference. And same with I think all of these different traditions is there's a hidden underneath tradition, almost like the Mystery School version of everything. Same with Christianity and the Gnostic teachings.

BIET: Rosicrucian, Christian conception, all of it.

AUBREY: Exactly. There's levels. And can you see your way through the maze in a certain regard?

BIET: In the Fourth Way work that I teach, there's this idea that truth is like a Matryoshka doll. A real truth. There's all kinds of information in the world. Most of it is not a Matryoshka doll. Most information is just what you see is what you get? The difference between that and say, the Bible, or the Quran, or the Torah, or Rumi poetry, or the work of Marcus Aurelius, or Shakespeare, the difference between conscious work and regular work is that conscious work is like a Matryoshka doll. You know the Matryoshka dolls?

AUBREY: Sure.

BIET: The idea is that there's the big, plump Matryoshka doll on the front. If you look at the Bible, the Bible is like a bunch of words. It says some really literal things like, rain came down, all the children were murdered? There's facts, seemingly, in the Bible. If you look at it literally, one could read the Bible literally and just say, a bunch of firstborn children were killed.

AUBREY: Don't fuck in the ass. A variety of different—

BIET: Just very literal. And that's the chubby Matryoshka doll. But as you start to open them, real works of conscious art. That's the beautiful thing, fairy tales or something. Forrest Gump is something... It's a film about a mentally challenged guy growing up in the South who's kind of lucky. That's the big, fat Matryoshka doll of that movie. But if you start to use this work to see the underlying layers, you get to that tiny Matryoshka doll. And I would say the tiny Matryoshka doll is what we just did together. And I do believe that is what Rumi was doing. I do believe that's what Shakespeare was doing. I do believe that any conscious being was doing some form of this work. And I don't think you have to be Christian or Jewish, or any lineage to get it. You just have to be willing to open the Matryoshka doll and get to the core.

AUBREY: The people who are transmitting this work have their own work that they've done to actually be able to transmit it. And I think a lot of times you can get lost in, at least I can, I can get lost in, did they mean to have this multi layered truth behind it? Were they conscious of how wise they were being when you read this not as literal, not as the plump Matryoshka, but as you distill it down to the real underneath truth? But in a way, that truth speaks through the person even with their conscious participation or not. And so the art is actually speaking a truth, whether they're aware that it was speaking that truth or not. And I think that's also something that I've found makes it easier for me to say... Because otherwise, this is so genius. And they were really that genius, but they never talked about it literally. They just only wrote it in stories. But potentially, their genius was felt and known by their soul and transmitted in a way that they weren't even aware of it themselves. But it's still all there. And that's why it's a great story. That's why it's a great myth or a great movie.

BIET: I would guess, this is just my guess. I don't know. I feel like when that truth comes through me, I feel like I'm literally having sex with the universe. I believe that these people felt that feeling, that sex with the universe feeling. And I feel like, there's a feeling, it's like lightning. You feel like you're on fire when it's happening to you. And then there's this duty to... The work is also the duty of sharing it. People think, I'm going to go find enlightenment. And then what? How much goes into you making this podcast? The people, the finances, the rooms, the beautiful flowers, the emails, the spreadsheets, the financial documents, the expense, the accountants, the blah, blah, blah. And so, for you to actually have that lightning experience where you remember who you are, that's great. That's fucking daisies. Fucking the universe, I'll take that any day. But what they don't tell you is once you fuck the universe, then you're like Moses. You get signed up for shit. Now you got to come down the mountain. And I know you have a speech impediment, but you have to read the 10 commandments to everyone. What? It comes with a price. It comes with a duty. And I get to fuck the universe. I fuck my soul. I'm married to my soul today. I'm married to a man today and both of us are bilaterally married to that thing. We do it together. The idea that I would marry a person today and be like, you, you're responsible for my happiness, for this, that, it sounds nuts to me. Because I'm only married to this thing. But you can hang out with me, we can make babies, we can buy houses, and travel the world. But we're married to something else.

AUBREY: My wife and I have gone through two out of a three series of weddings. And so, we're reimagining. Because I found most wedding ceremonies, and honestly, no offense, but most weddings to be hollow in a lot of ways. And same with funerals. It's not just weddings. A lot of these different ceremonial occasions, we're in the outer layer of the doll here, but we desperately need to get into the inner layers. We need to find what's really there. And it's the same with most holidays as well. And I really want to reimagine to make these things meaningful. What's the real substance there? For the marriage, the first one was the legal marriage. And there's a lot of reasons to get the legal marriage; the names, the finances. So, we just did that with Elvis in Vegas. And we were with our friends. Elvis married us. It was a blast. Took like 30 minutes. And full elope and just had a blast with it. It was during the first part of COVID. Just went and did that. Second marriage. Now second marriage was really powerful. And it was at Burning Man this past year. This was us marrying our soul expression as embodied through this life. Our articulated soul expression, not the one taste true self where everything disappears. But us, our unique self, our highest articulation of ourself. And we married that version of ourself. Our playa names are actually a reference to us at our very best. Our own king and our own queen in this plane. And it was absolutely stunning. And I just let spirit move through me to officiate it. And my dear sister, Caitlyn, read this unbelievable poem that came through her that same morning. And then everybody just spoke from the heart in this very similar way. Not as ceremonial in the context of how we did it, but it was exactly that. You share as spirit moves through you. And we had our own sacraments that we moved around and had this whole experience. Incredibly powerful. And actually, called us to another level of commitment. It wasn't just the basic commitment. No, no. Our souls, our unique self is in union together now. But we still hadn't done a proper wedding where our families could come to it and whatever. And there's been a lot of resistance from me from doing this because that reminds me so much of the shallow wedding ceremony that I've seen all the time. And so, I've been really in contemplation and meditation about what this third wedding would be. And what I realized is, this third wedding is both of us marrying God and sharing in that greater union of our highest spiritual self. And it's both of us marrying God together.

BIET: Amen.

AUBREY: That's exactly what you were just describing. That's the way because then it turns us so that we're both facing a truly shared horizon. And in that shared horizon, it's what my teacher Dr. Rabbi Gafni, he talks about rolemate, soulmate, homemate. And the homemate is the final version, where actually soulmates are looking deeply into each other's eyes and say, show me everything, sweetheart. I love you no matter what. Here we are. And then homemate is where you grab each other by the hand, and you face a shared horizon together. And that's the third wedding. And now we're moving through all of the initiation.

BIET: Me and your rabbi sound like we have a lot in common.

AUBREY: No doubt. No doubt. No doubt. It's cool to hear you share that. I haven't really heard anybody else talk about it in that way. But that's certainly the path that I've been guided to.

BIET: Amen. That's the only kind of marriage that clearly works.

AUBREY: Yeah. And I think each level is include and transcend. The first one is the rolemate level. In the rolemate level, you're wife, I'm husband. We're combining our assets, but you'll have these general responsibilities. I'll have these general responsibilities. I'll do this for you. I'll cook, you'll clean. We'll figure this out. Whatever. And it's great and important. Because we have bodies, and we do things. The second one was that true soulmate. Show me everything and I love everything about you, no matter what. Don't hide a single thing because that's just denying me the privilege of being able to love that thing and to show you how lovable that thing is. It's that level. And now we're getting ready for that third level. And each one calls forth a different initiation.

BIET: Amen.

AUBREY: Amen. You're in this process yourself with your husband? I don't know too much about your family. Apologize about that. I could've potentially done more research. You're in a relationship of this flavor right now.

BIET: Yeah. Very much.

AUBREY: All right.

BIET: I think it's also beautiful. I fucked up. I spent my whole life finding soulmates, like you spoke about. And soulmates are, for anyone listening, like the worst kind of partner ever. If I see someone who's, today, I transform, I alchemize soulmates. If I meet someone who's a soulmate today, I ask myself, what else can we create together other than a really destructive sexual encounter? And so, I've gotten a lot of shit done. But back in the day, I just was really lost. I was lucky to have been taught that love is everything. And I didn't know that when you're looking for a partner, you should really see who are their parents? How much money do they make? Did they go to an Ivy League school? No one taught me that shit. My dad was like, If you love someone, you fuck them. And then you know. You will find the one.

AUBREY: I love your dad.

BIET: My dad was amazing.

AUBREY: Your dad's going on my altar. That's how much I love the guy already.

BIET: He was buried as a Sadiq. Your rabbi will know. It's the highest.

AUBREY: Sadiq, spiritual master.

BIET: Yeah. He's the real.

AUBREY: I can tell. I'm into it.

BIET: He was transmitted. I would just go to parties and be like, oh, my God, I found my soulmate. So, I dated like half the models in New York. It was total insanity. And so, by the time I actually came to my spiritual awakening, which was like at 29. No, it wasn't like at 29, it was at 29. Which, for anyone who's into astrology, or whatever, Saturn returns to the exact point in the sky where it was when you were born. Even if you're not into astrology, Saturn returns.

AUBREY: It's a cycle.

BIET: Yeah, it's a cycle. So, I woke up. And within six months, I think, or immediately, I met my husband. And then within a year, we were together. And we've been together for 13 years. And I think the reason that we grow so much and last, I don't think necessarily that so long. It feels long to me, 13 years, to be with one human being. But I just think the reason we are so blossoming is because of this understanding we both have. A God of our own understanding. And we devote ourselves to that light and then we give to each other. If you think about it, it's like receiving and giving. We are receivers to give. If I'm always receiving from God and giving to my husband, and if my husband's always receiving from God and giving to me, that's a whole lot of giving to each other. There's not a lot of lack. But I'm not looking to have him do something for me? I know where my source is, he knows where his source is. And so, we're never deprived. I think of when people marry each other and don't realize that they need to marry whatever you want to call God. I'm not even religious, I just believe in my own version of that.

AUBREY: I think when you know God, it's hard to be religious.

BIET: It's really hard to be religious, like I'm going to show up on Sunday and follow the... Or Saturday or whatever. The receiving portion, that's the juicy thing, is being able to know where to get my shit. If I'm lost, if I'm confused, if I'm down, I know where to go.

AUBREY: And in a way, it's almost like your father's advice was... He potentially took it literally himself. But also, there's the Matryoshka doll effect of that advice, which is you fuck them. Fuck could mean with your body. But it could mean going deeper into the layers, fucking into their spirit. And then ultimately, fucking the light behind everything. All the way. And so, using your partner as a gateway to access the great beloved, to access source. But knowing that actually, it's transcending, including and transcending your partner. And then actually as you're fucking your partner, you're fucking God as your partner. That's what the deepest part of the Matryoshka is, is when you realize that, wow. Thank you for being this doorway for me to access the divine in a way that I can really feel it. Because sometimes the divine is, it's ephemeral by its very nature, and it's embodied in the plants, and our food, and our wine, and our lovers. And I think this is the way that it's easier for us to find the divine. Sometimes we can get unmediated access to the great one, divine, emanation and presence or some archangel representation, or archetype of it that comes to us in a variety of different ways. I've certainly had a lot of those experiences. But my favorite way to access it is to access it through the intimacy, or Eros that's created from the connection with people and experiences that happen in this in this world.

BIET: Same.

AUBREY: That's another big part of this whole philosophy, which is to find... It's almost in a way, find God in everything is kind of what you're saying. Your intro video on your website is like, I went from sex, drugs, and rock and roll to meditation. Actually, sex, drugs, and rock and roll is meditation. And it's collapsing the duality of this is holy and sacred and this is not inherently and saying, it depends. You could be sitting in a church pew, and it could be the most profane thing you've ever done because you're pretending to access God. And all you're doing is showing how good you are to your neighbors, which is the antithesis of divine. Or you could be in the middle of an orgiastic experience, but so filled with the fuck of life and God that actually you're in worship and prayer. That's absolutely the way I understand the world.

BIET: Same. And I think they aren't what they seem. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll are a real easy shortcut that lead to the destruction of one's life. In my case, they destroyed my life. The house burned down, the baby died. Lots of shit happened that showed me that that was not the way for me. Then of course, you get afraid. For anyone listening, you're saying that I can't have sex, and drugs, and rock and roll? No, you can have all that stuff. You got to surrender yourself first. You can't have it. You got to disappear. And then it can have its way through you. The whole point of us living is so that the universe can experience how great life is through us. If we're doing it our way, universe is not getting its fill. We got to do it its way. It's kind of a listening. It's like a radio. Turn it on. What do you want me to do?

AUBREY: You get out of the way to get in the way, actually. Dissolve all of the false constructs of our separate self-creation that we have. Which is gorgeous, whatever, it's beautiful. We all have our own separate self and our ego. There's no getting rid of it. Might as well love it. But we have to actually allow that to soften and dissolve and reconfigure. So, then stepping into the true self, which it knows itself is inextricable and interconnected with all things. And allows the God force, God light, whatever you want to call it, just to move through us. And then our separate self-reconfigures into what Rabbi Gafni calls our unique self, which is our uniqueness infused with our divine contact and connection. And then that's what allows us to step back into the world and experience life with God right there with us in every taste, and in every kiss, and in every sunset, and in every prayer, every chant. It's in everything if you're really there. And then being mindful of when you step back in the way as your separate self, lose connection with that source energy. And then that's where things get real squirrely like you're talking about. Because you're no longer being guided, you're no longer in the Forrest consciousness where things are just happening synchronistically for you. Actually, the source is going to be trying to actually destroy your path so that you stop it, so that you can get back into connection with source. Because that's what the divine wants. I think what came through in our little practice was that the light wants to be seen. And this is also something that I've been, in my study with Gafni, it's something that we've been exploring is that there's actually a desire of the divine to be recognized. And of course, it wants this infinite complexity of being known and recognized and having its way to experience life. And it doesn't mean it's judging us if they don't. But of course, it wants that. It wants us to step into our own divinity. And it wants us to see the light in all things. It actually has a sense of want. It wants it.

BIET: It has a real serious desire.

AUBREY: Right. And I think that's a big misconception of the divine. The divine is perfect. It has everything. It wants for nothing.

BIET: Has no desire.

AUBREY: No, desire is fabric of the very universe itself. It's Shekhinah. t's desire itself. It's Eros. That changes everything because you feel the delight of the divine as you and beyond you when you step into those moments. And also, you inherently, like me, I felt my own... It wasn't judgment. I wasn't beating myself up, like Aubrey, you idiot. You don't see the light in all things. No, it was just the sadness of, wow, how often I see the mundane when the sacred is right there underneath and I miss it. I miss it all the time. And that sadness is powerful. It's like a reminder of, it doesn't require a judgmental punishment God. Fuck, I want to see the light always because the light wants to be seen and I want to see it.

BIET: But it's also, just to bring back Fourth Way and what I have found, is that it's yummy today. It's yummy that I can see it all the time. I have developed quite a sense of humor about that. It used to be that I would feel sad. I also felt quite angry about it. I felt like it was unfair that I couldn't feel or see the light at all... I wanted my hydrogens to just be in ambrosiac states at all times. And I had very high standards. I think it was imbued into me. And I was reading all this literature that said that that was possible. And what I found was once I actually got that the totality of the human experience was that I was going to go out and in, sort of like a shooting star, out and in, out and in.

AUBREY: Or penetration.

BIET: Yeah, exactly.

AUBREY: The friction is actually the pleasure of it.

BIET: Yeah, and I stopped the hating and the sadness around the out. Instead, I observed the out and felt like, look at little Biet in doubt. Biet, she's so yummily and envy right now. Yummy. It's just funny to me. I love it because if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be human. And I think my expansion comes from that access and that pain. It is painful. One might even say it is painful when you exit the light. And once you're in this state of flow and enlightenment, which it seems you are, what happens for me anyway, or the way that I would describe it, is that you're... You're in and out of the states quite often. It's not like it used to be where it was like, who am I? How will I ever get back to the light? It doesn't feel so distant to me because the journey between those two states is no longer a journey. Because I have unified them within myself. To me, they are one. My enlightenment is the yummy marriage between that lost state and that found state. And so, because I have married them inside myself, I am no longer of the delusion that I have to travel anywhere to get back to the other half of the same thing. I'm just like, I'm in half of the whole thing. My enlightened state is that I'm half dumb, and half lost, and half blind, and half broken, and half dying, and half afraid. That's what makes me capable of experiencing my enlightenment. Why would I damn these things when they are the source of the yummy, oh my God, I remember everything. I'm running with my tits in the wind through the forest. I came to this planet, I'm living in my purpose. And oh my God. It's happening. That feeling. It wouldn't happen without the other half.

AUBREY: Leonard Cohen, in his song "Hallelujah," talks about the holy and broken hallelujahs. And that is the human condition, the holy and the broken. And then, can we see the beauty in all of it. This is exactly what you're talking about. And once we see the beauty in all of it, it collapses the distinction between beauty and ugly, in a way. Because then this is the in breath and the out breath of the respiration of our existence. And we chose this. We wanted it to be this way. I think Alan Watts does a brilliant job talking about this in his little lecture about dreaming. Imagine if you could dream anything you want. First, it's all pleasure all the time, only pleasure, only victory, only success. And then eventually, you get to a place that's exactly like this, where just barely with the best of yourself, you can step through and experience the magnificence. But the whole thing is the magnificence.

BIET: The whole thing.

AUBREY: The whole thing. And we would dream this exact dream if we could. And that's what I believe we've done. We've dreamed the ultimate dream for us to have this human experience both personally and also collectively. And that's why when people get so pessimistic and worried about the state of the world, they're not wrong, yes. And you're right. It's a pretty interesting time right now. And all of the suffering that everybody's pointing to, it's all very real. And there's no spiritual maxim, or truism, or whitewashing, or any kind of pollyannish words that actually make that suffering less real. It's very real, and very painful, full stop. Full stop. And this whole experience now gives us the opportunity to transform, not only individually, but collectively. And just barely, if we all bring our full heart and our full fuck, then potentially, we might make it through the other side into another era and into another level of consciousness. And that consciousness is just to appreciate the consciousness we already have, in many ways. But that is another octave. It's another octave of deep appreciation of everything.

BIET: Yeah. So much is born out of that suffering, just like on a macro, micro. In your own life, you've had suffering, I've had suffering. That suffering is useful to us. And so, in that same way, the world is experiencing mass suffering. Also, I always like to remind people, it has been experiencing mass suffering since the beginning of time. And people are always like, look at what's happening right now these days.

AUBREY: You don't have to go back too far to find slavery and to find a rampant... Sure. There's more work to be done with racism, and with women's rights, and with gay rights, and lots more work, and religious freedom, lots more work. Not saying that we're done. However, let's rewind the clock a little bit and see how much fucking worse it was. Witches getting burned. Quote, witches getting burned. People like the person who helped your father, basically. They would get burned alive—

BIET: Had to hide.

AUBREY: A couple hundred years ago. The Pogroms would come around, just slaughter families. The Holocaust. The unbelievable nature. It's not that genocide isn't still happening. And I don't want to say that everything's all better now. But yes, generally, if you rewind the clock, it was brutal. Brutal. People are talking about the tyranny of this potential government now. Try the church in the 1400s. You want to talk about fucking tyranny? It's a whole other level. I think the Earth is round and goes around the sun. Death. That's another fucking level of censorship and another level of tyranny, where it's not that you get deplatformed and then get to complain about it on your way to Whole Foods. No, it's fucking death. That's censorship. You know what I mean? The perspective I think is important. And I appreciate you bringing that up. Your book has 44 different laws? I'd love to get your thoughts on what you think are, either from feedback from your readers or from things that you find yourself working with. Just a couple of these that you think would be really valuable to share with the audience. And of course, I recommend people get the book and read all 44 laws, "Don't Just Sit There," and try to understand this whole map that you've created which is beautiful. But if you’re going to give people a taste.

BIET: It's the easiest book too, so you can read it like—

AUBREY: it's intimate.

BIET: But it's easy. I'm not here to confuse people. I'm, I'm literally teaching Gurdjievian wisdom, which, for anyone who's pursued that, good luck. You can't read Gurdjieff books. They're basically unreadable. You can read Ouspenskii, he was a student of his. And you can read my favorite, which is Maurice Nicoll. He's one of Gurdjieff's students. But if you want something that's going to explain Fourth Way to you today, in a language you understand from someone who has shopped at Barney's, you want my book. It's basically giving you Fourth Way wisdom from a much, much easier plane. That's not to say that the work won't require some effort on your part once you do it. But the way that I translated is very easy. One thing I'd love to share that's one of my favorite pieces of the laws is something that I have come to, which is enlightenment. I have created a different form of enlightenment, or a different perspective. We've talked about it a lot inside this episode, so I think it'd be a good thing to share. The idea is enlightenment... I don't know about you, but for me, it was always taught to me as, you study, and you work, and you blah, and then finally, you hit a crystallization of the state. The state we were in together earlier. You hit a crystallization. And then you're just in that state perpetually. And not only are you in that state perpetually, but everyone knows it. And everyone wants to be around you, and around your cock, and around your tits, or whatever gender you are. And they just want to make altars in your favor and golden statues to commemorate the crystallization that has happened that you, this totally flawed human have now transcended all your flaws, desires, needs, and setbacks, to now feel no feelings whatsoever ever. But to only feel a state of ambrosiac enlightenment forever. That's what I was sold. I don't know about you. And even my teachers, you named many of them, Alan Watts and Castaneda, no one really said, by the way, this isn't 24 hours a day. That wasn't the messaging. And so, for me, I want to bring to the world a different messaging around enlightenment, so people can just fucking relax a little more. Because I don't think this level of, I will get there, this masculine thing you were talking about earlier. I will win the enlightenment game. And again, what do you get? What do you get when you win the enlightenment? You get to come down the holy mountain and have everyone worship you. And whatever. Be on the cover of "New York Times" or whatever as the most enlightened person. I created a wheel to describe what enlightenment actually looks like. And my idea is that enlightenment is a state that is always churning. Once you reach enlightenment, which you do kind of have to reach enlightenment to have the churning begin.

AUBREY: You have to taste it.

BIET: But once you taste it, you FYI, can't go back. So, for anyone who's listening who's tasted it, and your life has gotten worse since then, that's because once you taste it, time starts. It's almost like the clock doesn't start running until you taste enlightenment. Once you taste enlightenment, the duty unfolds. And the task has been set before you. And if you're not listening to that, if you're not rolling with the other parts of the wheel, you're going to feel pain. And it's going to feel like pain, it's going to feel like uncomfortable, it's going to feel discomfort. And then maybe there's going to be shocks; car accidents, deaths, fires, you name it. I went through all of them. Most of them anyway. Imagine a clock. 12 o'clock. 12 o'clock is enlightenment. That's that moment where the world is filled with light, you're Hildegard von Bingen, you remember the meaning of it all. And that's the enlightened state. Then we move to 3 o'clock. 3 o'clock is creative flow. It's where you are tasked to create. This could be a business, a podcast, it could be a book, it could be a tarot deck, it could be a new business style, something you're doing in the world, it could be a marriage, a relationship, whatever, creative flow. And that requires some action. While that action may be creative and it may feel very expressive, it's still action. You're not just sitting in a room vibrating from an orgasmic enlightened state. You're doing some shit.

AUBREY: And by the way, I've been in those states where I'm vibrating in an orgasmic state. My path has been the plant medicine path. That can warp you into these states, especially if you do it in the right way and you really understand your consciousness. Then you can actually use these tools in a good way. And ultimately, if you're in there for 5, 10, 15 minutes, you're like, God, I miss being normally human again. This is too much. This is too much. I'm not built to hold this all the time. I'm so happy. Thank you. Mad gratitude. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And get the hell out of here.

BIET: And then also, once you're in creative flow, you got to tap out of there. I do these mass meditations all over the world. I score them with my own music. When I'm writing a record, I literally feel like my hand is in a socket and I'm being electrocuted. I'm running out of the room to write down melodies, to write down lyrics. It's really intense. If I was perpetually writing records, I would be fucking exhausted. I'm not Bob Dylan. I need breaks in between. So, I put my hand in the socket... And creative flow, you want to get out of creative flow too. That's why the beauty of the enlightenment wheel which I've created is that it moves. You go from one place to another. And then also, each part I consider enlightenment today, whereas I used to be like, how will I ever get back to that feeling? Today, I'm like, they're all part of that feeling. It’s almost like inertia. The enlightenment is like a bomb going off or like a big bang. And then the life that comes out of that is what happens. So, the creative flow is next. 6 o'clock, you're going to love this one. It's accomplishment. It's all the stuff you don't want to do. Cold calls, spreadsheets, networking events, forums. Things that have nothing seemingly to do with enlightenment. How do you think that someone like Rumi got his shit published? He didn't just sit at home. There's that theory that we just sat at home feeling enlightened all the time and someone found us. And they found us and then they were like, you're the one. That's not going to happen. Wake up, people. No one's coming to your door. Doesn't matter how enlightened you're feeling. No one's coming. You have to do the entire thing yourself. And by the way, by yourself means with everyone around you. Together. But you have to leave the house and go meet with people to go do that. That's 6 o'clock. And then you get to 9 o'clock and 9 o'clock is humility. 9 o'clock is where you hit your face to the floor. Everything you try fails. You get rejection after rejection. You feel like all this work you did, and the enlightened feeling you had was for nothing. You're just a useless piece of crap. And you're going to die. What is the point of this whole thing? That feeling. And then you fall to the ground. You put your hands in prayer, if you're me, and you say, fuck, I can't do this without you. Please, please, help me. Please help me. And in that humility, that point of complete remembering that of yourself, you are nothing. That without God, you are nothing. You are bestowed upon with light and you remember yourself and you get back to the light. And so, the wheel begins again. And so, to me, I feel humility often. I don't know about you, but I get a nice dose all the time now. I used to think, humility, I'm going to avoid. But it says, Teresa of Avila, who is an awakened teacher, wrote that humiliation is the first castle that you have to enter to get into your soul. Humiliation. That's the first castle. To me, every time I'm humiliated, or I feel ashamed. Like I was ashamed the other day and I did my somatic practices around it. And at the other side of my 20 minutes of somatic practices around this big shame I felt around saying something to someone next to a van, I was guided to my next work, my artwork. I was downloaded a message. You have to paint these things, and they have to be this way, and this has to be involved. But the transmission is inside the humiliation, it's inside the humility. Today, I just don't see that as other.

AUBREY: It's such a beautiful map. And to understand it in that way. And I think these maps are really important. I've spent some time recently, and I'm still young on this path, even though my ancestry was Jewish. Ultimately, I didn't understand anything about Hebrew wisdom until this past year, till I met my teacher. And so, we've been looking at the Sephiroth, the Tree of Life, the Kabbalist Tree of Life. And again, my apologies to Kabbalist scholars who understand this a lot more than me. But I can't help but think how what I've been studying recently also provides this very interesting map as you understand it. And I'll do my best to explain a little bit of this map and how this map has helped me because it's a lot of the concepts we're talking about. That 3 o'clock energy that you're talking about, this creative flow, this passion is on the right-hand path of the Sephiroth. And the Sephiroth is Hokhmah. And Hokhmah is like you're almost touched by the divine, and you know that you have this energy that wants to pour out with Telos, with a direction, but you don't know exactly what that is. But you just know that you're ready to create. And then Binah, on the other side, which has a line that goes across in a balance. And those two are in balance on the left- and right-hand side. Binah is all the logistics. It's everything you've been talking about; the spreadsheets, what are you going to have the block and tackle, how are you going to actually translate this artistic expression into something that's actually manifest? That's the top-level relationship of the balance between the two. Step down, and there's Hesed, which is the overwhelming love and desire that cannot be contained. You cannot contain it. You're just filled with love and desire for life. You just want to fuck life open. And then there's Din on the other side. Boundary, discretion. Maybe we shouldn't actually fuck this person, or this. There's discretion, there's boundary. That's necessary. And both of those are actually the complementary Sephiroth that hold each other in balance. And then you go down one more and I believe it's Yesod and Hod. And Yesod is like you're in the triumph of your experience. This is the best night that I could ever have. This is the best creation. I did it. I did it. And then there's Hod, which is and now it's done. Thank you, thank you, thank you, but it's time to go to bed. It's time to put the book down. I've created what I can create. And it's time to start the path again. And then in the middle of that is Tiferet which represents, to me in my understanding, of course, there's many interpretations. And again, I don't want to ruffle any feathers for people who understand this potentially better than I do. But Tiferet is our inner king or inner queen, which is the harmony of all of these different opposing forces, that are not opposing, they're actually complementary. But it's the harmony that actually creates the beauty. And it's the beauty of our life and the beauty of our path. And it's all contained in our inner king or inner queen, I think is the best way to actually articulate it in a way that I feel it in my body and understand it. And then of course, above and below there's Keter which is the crown, which is our plugin, our direct plugin to source. And then there's Maikhut at the bottom, which is our brokenness. That's our holy hallelujah and our broken hallelujah. And of course, I missed a couple Sephiroth in there that I don't quite understand so much quite yet, but I'll get there eventually. But it's been a cool map to see how, when you actually dive in these maps, they're all pointing to the same thing in a different way. And that's I think, how you can really start to trust the path. That when you go deeper, Sufism, and Kabbalah, and Rosicrucianism, and Gnostic beliefs, and Mahayana Buddhism, they all have different maps that each have their own unique beauty, and value, and treasure that's contained in it. But they're all kinda saying the same thing in a lot of ways. It's really beautiful to encounter your map and your wheel. Then all of the ways that it applies to all of the other maps. Fuck, yeah. Makes total sense.

BIET: Wow, that's very high compliment to my map if it's matching with the maps of... Because I got them from there anyway. I'm not reinventing any wheels. I just happen to have remembered the one thing that's going on here.

AUBREY: Yeah. And that's it. And I've done Ayahuasca quite a few times. And one of the interesting things about it is part of the ritual is the sharing ceremony, the sharemony as it's often called, after the ceremony. And it's so rare that anybody shares anything that isn't a full resonance, that the medicine has given them something that's in full resonance. And actually, when somebody shares something that isn't, what I've learned is it's important to actually not try to gaslight their experience or try to change it, but just to check in with them and see. Because there's dangers in the psychedelic medicine path too. Dangers of inflation. Dangers of instability that could be revealed in the psyche. 99% of the time, it's full resonance. Wow. What an amazing insight translated through your own unique vessel in a way that I could never articulate it, and a vision that I would never get. And so, thank you for that. And then if it's not, if you don't resonate with it, it's an interesting moment. And I've seen those times where something didn't resonate, some crack, some challenge, some shadow kind of got magnified in an interesting way. It's been interesting. And I think we can apply that to not just the Ayahuasca setting, but with our teachers too. And with any setting where we're deeply invested in interacting with somebody's work. When there's a point where there's a felt sense of dissonance, it's good to pay attention to that. Because I think we all have the truth that lives within us. And I'm sure there's great quotes about the truth that lives within us all. But I don't have any of those right now. But it's eternal truths. The truth lives within us.

BIET: You're making them.

AUBREY: Yeah, exactly. And when something appears that doesn't quite feel right, don't override that, and don't get lost in adulation of the being or the person. If it doesn't feel right, pay attention. Listen to that.

BIET: I'm in. Same as within yourself. We're all part of one thing.

AUBREY: Of course. What else from the laws if you just allow naturally, that to come through connecting to all of the people that are going to listen to this? Is there anything else that rises to the surface, something you'd like to share?

BIET: Since you're so into Kabbalah, one of the key laws of Fourth Way is the law of 7. And the law of 7 says that everything in the universe runs on octaves. Nothing can be born, or live, or be created without an octave. And an octave is eight, but the eighth is a return. It's Do Re Mi Fa So La Si Do. Do is the beginning and the end. In my book, one of the chapters is the law of 7. It uses the framework of success. So, for anyone who is looking for success in their life, just to know how success actually works, the law of 7 is inside of success, just as it is inside of anything that is born or created. But let's look at it from the framework of success. Do Re Mi is an idea. It's where you're inspired. I'm going to go write a screenplay. Or I'm going to go make a bakery shop or whatever. And most people never get past Do Re Mi in their life. It is a sad tragedy of life that De Re Mis die a sad death pretty quickly for most people because they don't have what it takes, which is what I would call universe or God. They don't have that force behind them. Do Re Mi actually can't be taken anywhere without that force. Do Re Mi is just inspiration. It's just an idea. Then you hit the first interval. It's just a pause. If you look at a musical scale, it's just a pause. But the first interval is in the work. It's difficulty. Minor difficulty. For instance, if Do Re Mi for you is I'm going to become a vegan. The first difficulty would be like, you're at a friend's party and they're serving these amazing burgers. And they look really good and they're bacon. And there's a bun and you were trying to do keto, and paleo, and vegan, and you're like, I'm going to do this. And then you were tempted by these burgers. And maybe you've been vegan or paleo or whatever for two weeks now. And now the burger has appeared and you're like, you know what, fuck it. That's it. In that first interval, whatever it is you started in Do Re Mi has the chance of being squashed. Now, if it's something bigger like a screenplay, let's say, you write the first few scenes and then you get busy. You have kids, you're bored, you want to watch porn, whatever people are doing with their lives. People just get distracted. And so, the work teaches that we need to have tools for that first interval, to get through the first interval. Then comes Fa So La. And Fa So La is called, I think it's ambrosia and station. I'm forgetting the exact verbiage that I use for this, but station and ambrosia basically. And it's where you get past the first interval and now, you're further along. Maybe you finish the screenplay and now you're sharing it with Susan Sarandon or whatever. That is Fa So La. And Fa So La is a beautiful state. And I use, in the book, the cupcake shop analogy. At this point, you've created a cupcake that's so unique that there's maybe a line around the block to get a cupcake. Maybe you've been written up in the local gazette. Then you reach the law of impossibility, which is called the second interval. Second interval says, just because you reached station and ambrosia doesn't mean you get to reach completion. Completion is only for the few. Can you make it? If you watch any film, they use this part, the 7 diorama to tell the story. Like the hockey team, they're losing, they're losing, they're losing. Finally, they win but it's not the end of the movie. Then the main player gets hit by a bus. Always. If you know the formula of films, you know that 3/4 of the way through, Jenny gets AIDS or whatever. So, there's this shock. And law of impossibility in our lives looks like, your house burns down, you get a chronic illness, you get diagnosed with you're going to die, someone you love dies, your family member, like a shock. And it prevents you. I can't go further. I know the cupcake shop is working but I can't go on. I can't take it to the next level. When that happens, you know that that's the sign that you need even more reserve, you need more tools, you need more practices so that you can get in touch with that alternate plane. From the work, Fourth Way work, the beginning of my book talks about the cross. And the idea is that the cross is this ancient symbol which was adopted by Christianity now. But before that, it was an ancient symbol that symbolizes work. And this work says that there's a horizontal plane and a vertical plane. And the horizontal plane is where you built the cupcake shop, where you got the investors to invest in the cupcakes, where you bought the eggs, blah, blah, blah. That's all on the horizontal. But on the vertical is the energy for that. It's the invisible light, the feeling that you really know how to make cupcakes and you want to share them with the world. And the desire too. One of the things I teach in the book, and this is at the end of the book, is this idea that in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," it says that time runs in all directions. If I really am the creator of a really special cupcake shop, it's not just me that wants these cupcakes. It's the millions of people who have now eaten these cupcakes in the future saying, can you please make me these cupcakes because in the future, I'm going to want to eat them. And oh, my God, Biet Simkin made these cupcakes in the past. Or like Shakespeare. He wrote these works of genius. Was it him? Or was it the millions of people that have since performed the work on stages, have had their lives changed, have taught college seminars on his work? I believe that the desire of those people flooded his pen and wrote the work for him. So, here we are in this law of impossibility. And to get through that, you're going to need that spiritual juice. And if you do, you get to Si Do. Si Do is completion. You see when you see someone in Si Do. It's Oprah. It's someone who's really living in embodiment of having gone through those walls and said, I know what to do here. I know how to surrender here. I know how to bow down and disappear here so that this whole thing can happen. The whole thing. And in the cupcake shop, since we're talking about the cupcake, it's not now. Your cupcake shop burns down, but instead, you rise up and you create a philanthropic mission, where your cupcakes are now 50% of the proceeds go to feeding the hungry wherever there's hungry people. That's different. Not only now is your cupcake the most famous cupcake in the world, but you're also a multimillionaire and you're helping starving children somewhere.

AUBREY: I never really thought about it. But the 7 is, absolutely, part of the musical scale. And it's not like we invented the musical scale.

BIET: Or the rainbow.

AUBREY: There's seven colors in the rainbow.

BIET: Mm-hmm.

AUBREY: All right. We didn't invent that. We didn't invent that. It's been there. It's part of the Dao. In the "Dao De Jing," it says the Dao is older than God. It's just part of the structure of cosmos. And there's a way that the Kabbalists would describe it as Shekhinah, which is kind of like the Dao but it's this force that's underneath everything, that's underpinning everything. And the fact that we have a seven-day week, you could think that as arbitrary. Fuck it. Somebody was like, seven days. Or there was a deeper listening and a knowing that actually, we're on this seven-day cycle of following this musical style. And then returning back to, potentially, another octave. Again, another micro-octave. Or potentially, regressing to a lower octave temporarily, flushing out... Any great symphony goes to the higher octaves and the lower octaves, and it creates, over time, this masterpiece of your life, of your story. It's really reified, made real for me, this idea of 7. And that's also really cool, in addition to another model of, almost simplified model of the hero's journey, in a way. Of how to understand the story and these intervals that you have.

BIET: It's beautiful. I love that math and music are the secret of the, they're the universe speaking. You can't break those. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie "Pi" by Darren Aronofsky. Do you remember that film?

AUBREY: "Life of Pi"?

BIET: No, no. It's older. It's a black and white film. I don't want to ruin it for you because you should totally see it. But it's a black and white film about this guy who has the secret of the universe, the math equation that is the secret of the universe, in his head. And so, all the Hasidic Jews are trying to come and get him because they want the secret from his head. And so, he's running from these Hasidic Jews through the movie in Brooklyn. It's funny, but also very, very moving. And the end of the film—

AUBREY: Getting chased by Hasidic Jews is not as scary as some other pursuers. The Hasidic Jews again.

BIET: They're kind of funny looking with their big hats and stuff. They're comical. it's kind of a funny film, but it's also beautiful. And the last scene is very, I won't ruin it for you, but something happens where he's like, I need to do something so they can leave me alone. And so, he does something so that he won't have this. But that the secret is a mathematical equation is what moved me about that film. Darren Aronofsky was like, I'm going to make this film that there is a mathematical equation that is the secret of the universe. The same thing with music. When I listen to certain music or when I write certain music, I feel like this is the secret of the universe. Or in cinema, where it's all coming together; visual, music, numbers, story, myth, all put together. It just feels so lucky.

AUBREY: Indeed. Indeed. I'm just taking a moment to just feel how many different times and things in this podcast, it's just opened and clarified different aspects of reality, which is obviously gorgeous. When I was doing some research on your meditation techniques, it seemed to me, this is slightly shifting gears a little bit, but it seemed to me that it was borrowing a bit from what I understand of Vipassana meditation, where it's focusing on breath and a point. Taking a point of focus. Is that typically the style? Now, obviously, we did it with eye gazing, which is its own genre and technique. There's so much more that's happening even though we are focusing left eye to left eye. So, there is that quality. It's a little bit different. It has a different flavor and fragrance. When you're just teaching meditation, the ideal being that you can get to 30 minutes a day, talk to us just technique. What have you found? Because I'm sure you've tried many different things. I've learned a mantra technique from Emily Fletcher, and it's been really powerful. Emily's amazing.

BIET: She's lovely.

AUBREY: And you've been able to work with her and got my own personal mantra word and did the whole ceremony and the whole thing. And it's very powerful. And again, that is focusing your attention on that one thing and nothing, which is the mantra, which you allow to come through you on its own time and in its own accord. But it's a different way that I have some experience with, which is focusing visually, in some ways on a point. Just talk to us about that technique and why you like it. And what you feel is really powerful about it.

BIET: I've studied TM, or whatever, the Vedic tradition as well. And I've also studied Vipassana. My work is neither of those. I would say that my work hinges on what is called divided attention, which is a Fourth Way tool. And the idea behind divided attention is to presence yourself to many different senses at one time. You would, for instance, follow your breath. And then you would also see the beauty of the room around you. And then you would also focus on a point, which if it's a person, very emotional to look into someone's eye, but you could do that. That's opening up your emotional center. Then you have another focus maybe on some music. Beautiful music. Ideally, conscious music. Listening to, for instance, the "Cello Suite" by Johann Sebastian Bach, is I find, very helpful.

AUBREY: "Slayer," not really the idea.

BIET: Can be good. That's an anger meditation I teach, which I do. And I have that in my upcoming course, anger meditation I teach. That's very helpful. But this one is just divided attention. And you can do it anywhere. You can do it if you're in a car. Your hands are on the wheel. Your breath is always one of the key components. Your body. Noticing the senses in your body. Noticing the temperature of the room. Noticing the surrounding beauty around you. And then trying to then float above yourself like a filmmaker and see yourself from above. Who are you? And what do you look like while you're doing all of these things? And if you can divide your attention effectively between all of the things at once, something very strange happens. Not always, but something can enter. It's a possibility that something will enter. Divided attention is a tool. Self-remembering is the ambrosiac state that occurs if you actually allow it to work.

AUBREY: I've heard this referred to as a five senses meditation, where you really try to expand, basically, the bits of information that come when you're actually fully conscious with everything that's happening. There's so much. If you look from a neurological perspective, and I've heard some people analyze this. If you actually pay attention to everything, your brain doesn't have room for additional thoughts and other things to come in. It's at its maximum processing capacity at the conscious level. The subconscious can process far more than the conscious mind can and that's why it drives so much of our action, I think. But in making everything radically conscious, it just actually crowds out the room for the way that our mind can wander and get distracted.

BIET: It's so true. And then you're adding the final bonus, which is the seeing oneself from above? Have you ever met someone who's trying to pretend like they're in a presence state at a party? And they're like, heeey.

AUBREY: Oh yeah. It's the worst.

BIET: What they're doing is they're doing fascinated attention. What they're fascinated with is you. But true self-remembering comes from seeing yourself. If you saw yourself going, heeey, you'd probably start laughing. The goal of self-remembering and the goal of divided attention is to see, what do I actually look like when I'm out in the world? What do I look like when I'm talking to my partner? What do I look like when I'm doing a business transaction? Do I look like what I think I look like? Or am I actually present? And when you presence yourself and do the divided attention, you can sometimes see. And if you're lucky, you can get a nice dose of what a loser you're being. And then you get that, and you can reel it back and bring in that Forrest energy, like you were talking about. You make a choice. But you can't make a choice if you don't see. I'm being kinda...

AUBREY: One of the things that actually came to me yesterday, interestingly enough, although no synchronicities, I suppose was... And I've felt this for a lot of my life because I had a... There was a time where I did more journaling than I do now. There was a time when I was more emotionally tumultuous. And I've had my own adventures in love, and romance, and unrequited love, and then polyamory, and then all kinds of different things. So, I was journaling a lot. Which is incredibly helpful when you're going through a lot. Journaling is unequivocally one of the best techniques that we can do. But what I recognize is there were certain times where I was writing I, and then certain times where I was writing you. You got to do this, you're going to blah, blah, blah. I'd write in second person in my own journal. What am I doing writing in second person in my own journal? Begging the question of who is the me that's telling me, other me, and giving me advice? And oftentimes, I think in the basic level, that is what Freud would call the super ego, which is the judging, critical, but sometimes encouraging coach. And I prefer to call that, rather than the judge, the coach. It's like the coach. Get in there. You got this. Or you're a fucking idiot. What is wrong with you? Either way, can take a dark tone. And coaches are like that too. Coaches are observing and judging. And we can actually move our identity complex, where we focus our identity to that super ego point, the coach. And we actually feel like we are the coach and we're talking to ourself. And it feels like that preconfigures the higher witness perspective that you're talking about, which has a sense of neutrality and also underlying universal love. It's the loving awareness that Ram Dass talks about. And actually, the coach preconfigures that in a way. It's just filled with the passions, and judgments, and everything that it's gotten from default reality. But in a way, that's preconfiguring what this witness is. I'm sharing this to help people recognize that we probably all talked to ourself in the second person all the time. And so, we are actually used to becoming the witness of ourself. But there's a higher articulation of that, where we're actually witnessing with non-judgmental universal love.

BIET: Amen. You said it, neutrality, is like the Sattvic state where we want to enter in. If you want to find enlightenment, you can't enter it through positive or negative. People think if I'm really positive, it's the law of attraction, I got to stay positive. Well, you need positivity, and you need negativity. But if you want to enter the state where you're actually remembering who you are, you need to enter through the Sattvic state, which is neither positive or negative, or both of them at the same time. I do a meditation where I look at one hand and I fill it with all the grace, and all the beauty, and all the perfect. And then the left hand, I fill it with all the ugly, and all the flaws, and all the things I'm ashamed of, and all that. And then I find the place in my center which holds both of those. What part of me is an embodiment of both of those. And that's who I like to go to. That's who I like to bring to parties. You know what I mean?

AUBREY: Totally. I think this idea of consistently trying to be sunshine, rainbows, and butterflies, it's exiling a truth about ourself, which is we got nasty, murky, swampy aspects. And if we're trying to just be one aspect of that, then we're actually teaching ourself self-judgment and also repression. That's the meta context for that. Judgment and repression has nothing to do with enlightenment or spirituality actually. It's actually the antithesis of it. Yes, it's great to be all of these things. But there has to be this almost non-dual appreciation for the entirety of yourself, which is the integration of the shadow. Doesn't mean that you have to act out on all of these things. But just to recognize all of these attributes and hold them without judgment. And then actually, when you do choose to be positive, and you do choose to be loving, and you do choose not to be angry, or whatever that is, it's a real choice because you recognized that it's there. It's not this, I'm just good.

BIET: I'm just good.

AUBREY: It's that no, I'm good and I'm bad. And I'm going to choose right now to express my goodness. And strength in my goodness. And that's a heroic move. And then you can start to feel good about making that heroic choice. But if it's not a choice, because all you are is butterflies and rainbows, are you really good? Or are you just operating on the momentum of what you've inherited and learned and what you've suppressed? And so, there's only real power and power in a good way, personal power, in actually holding the entirety of yourself. And like you said, both hands. And then finding yourself in the center. And then choosing which hand that you want to lend energy to.

BIET: And also, not being afraid to be that whole person. I used to feel like I was really bad, and I was going to get found out. But that's when I was trying to pretend like I wasn't this other part of me. And so, once I accepted that there was these other parts of me and they were not leaving, I'll just fucking take your fucking panties off and hang out. And I feel like that today. I feel like I'm at a party. When I'm at a party, I feel like I'm in my pajamas and I'm just chilling.

AUBREY: It seemed to me that it's almost necessary to actually feel your own badness in a way. And again, that's a loaded term because of the judgments already applied to it. Your darkness, whatever. But again, all these terms are load. It's difficult to talk about this without the polarity already being applied. That understood. It's important to actually feel that and allow yourself to feel that, rather than to suppress it. Because if you suppress it, it comes out in closet viciousness. What I've seen is somebody suppressing that they're fucking pissed off? End of a relationship. And I see this in spiritual communities. End of a relationship. Someone's fucking pissed, actually. And maybe justifiably so honestly. But they're like, he or she, they're on my altar and I'm just sending them love and sending them love. But meanwhile, there's a viciousness to the gossip and what they're actually saying about that person and spreading poison amongst the group about that person. But all they're saying is, without even realizing consciously. No, I just send him or her love and I wish them the best along their path. But their viciousness and anger hasn't actually been acknowledged and allowed to breathe. So, the viciousness comes out in spreading poisonous stories and opinions about that person. No, no, no, no. Because that anger is going somewhere. It's just going inward. Or it's turning internally, and then it's attacking yourself. But that has to live somewhere. And so, in that moment, this is a recent example, encouraging that person to find the fuck you. You don't even have to say it to the person, but just find it in yourself and find the anger. Fuck you. That was bullshit. I did not deserve to be treated that way. Fuck you. Go fuck yourself. And then from there. Good. Got that out of the way. Now, I can put you on the altar, sending you love-- You have to almost step into and allow your darkness, shadow, badness to live and breathe and exist. And then you can actually choose a different way.

BIET: I agree.

AUBREY: You can also get stuck in your darkness/badness. Because the other thing about darkness/badness is there's a pleasure associated with darkness/badness. It feels good to be angry. Actually, in a way, it's painful in some ways, and caustic, and harmful. But you feel it. It's this rush. This rush of energy power that comes through in this. There's a pleasure in that. So, I think you can also get stuck just being like, I'm bad and I'm going to express my badness. And it's fuck you to this person, and fuck you to that person, and fuck the hater, fuck this. And you get all in this. But really, there's a deep sadness because you haven't... You're including it, good, step one, but you have to also transcend it and include the other aspect of you which can choose an even better way. And I'm expressing this externally like it's all my friend. Everybody always talks about, you know, my friend. But it's a personal journey too. Feeling my own badness, my own darkness. I remember, one time I was in my own badness/darkness recently, and I've got real comfy with that. Real comfy with that. And one of my other teachers, Dr. John Churchill, who's on this Mahayana Buddhist path, he talks about is form of enlightenment where the Buddhist would worship, and actually, not worship, but have images of these tankas, which is what he calls the demon in the Buddha me. It's yamantanka, the death fucker with his erect phallus and his demonic and angelic nature. And that's what everybody was trying to realize, their darkness and their goodness at that point where it was meeting. I was getting real comfy and cozy with my darkness and my badness. And then I expressed it privately. And I was like, I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to do that. And actually, it didn't feel good anymore. It's almost like I allowed myself to feel it and then go, oh, yeah. That didn't feel good anymore.

BIET: It's a razor's edge, though.

AUBREY: It is. This is the journey.

BIET: You can't go too far in any direction without leaving the premises.

AUBREY: That was a big realization moment that now, I'm on a different swing, where there was a swing where I had to go reclaim some of my exiled darkness. And now I reclaimed one step too far. And fortunately, it wasn't disastrous. It was a private, petty judgment that I expressed to a really good friend, and nobody will ever know. But I felt it in that moment. And he knows too. We're homies. We're not judging each other. But after I was done, I was like, damn, the fuck was that? I get it I get that there's that badness of me. But I don't want to be that. It's not my story. It's not my story. My story is a different story. Now I'm on an upswing of my goodness. The goodness. I know I'm bad but now watch my goodness go. Let's go team goodness. I'm fucking in it. And it feels more authentic than my goodness has ever been.

BIET: That's beautiful. That's how it should feel on the other side? I think that we get that. That's the reward when we're willing to go that direction. And you'll know when you need to go there again. Because it's like a cup, it gets full. You need to tend to it. It's a garden. It'll get full with resentment, and pride, and rage and you'll know when it's time to face it again. And when you face it, there will be a certain period of time... In the work that I teach, there's also grief meditation, which is just 30 seconds a day of grieving. I have a daughter who's four, I have another daughter in my belly right as we speak. But when I gave birth to Cash, my last kid, I felt this great sense of responsibility like I had kind of killed her. Because she's going to die one day. I'm hoping and I feel pretty certain that she's going to live a very long life. Let's say she lives till 90. But she's going to die. And I'm the reason that that's going to happen because I birthed her. I inherently murdered my child by giving them life. If it wasn't for me giving them life with God and my husband together, there would be no death. So, I'm responsible. When I do grieving meditations, which are 30 seconds long, I just meditate on the grief I have around her death, even though it's going to happen far beyond my own death. I won't be here for it. Makes me incredibly sad. Especially once you have a kid, which I think you're going to do sometime soon, you'll see it's the most excruciating love you'll ever feel. You feel so much love. It's so much worse than any love you've ever felt. Because you love them like you're nuts. They make you nuts with love. It's beautiful. it's shocking. With her, the thought of her ever having to go through anything, pain or death, is so painful to me. So, I do that. 30 seconds, I feel it. And then I imagine that a light being, I choose a conscious being like Jesus or Buddha to hold me in their arms and just let me have that grief. And then I caress myself and just let myself feel it and move on with the day. But there is a rabbi. I think it's Rabbi Nachman who said that he would do that. At 12 midnight, every night, he would give himself 10 minutes to just feel the despair of all of the world's pain. All things we talked about earlier. How horrible things are on the planet, and the famine, and the impoverished state of 70% of the world living on this planet, all the pain. And he would let himself feel it, grieve it for 10 minutes a day. And he was like, if I don't do that for 10 minutes a day, it builds up. And then it infects the rest of my life without my permission. So, I see grieving meditation and anger meditation as a way that I allow myself to be part of what's actually going on here. But because I have a space where that happens, and a way, and a form, and a function, and a modality for it, it doesn't get corrosive and in the middle of a Sunday, when I'm trying to enjoy my life with my family, all of a sudden, I'm in some deep melancholic state because they're all going to die one day.

AUBREY: Or a mild, sustained melancholy. A 5% melancholy.

BIET: Numbness.

AUBREY: Just a little bit. Exactly.

BIET: Where I'm like, I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I'm fine. I'm fucking fine. Because it's painful. I'm going to die, she's going to die. Fuck, man. They really set us up for some shit here. If you find your person, which we both have, fuck. What are we heading towards? Who's going to go first? Who's going to hold whose hand while they die? If we make it, the best-case scenario, we stay together forever. We love each other till the end. Then out.

AUBREY: It actually undermines the suffering when you know somebody is with you in it. This is compassion with etymology, with suffering. And this is Mother Mary energy as... And again, there's lots of biblical interpretations which innocuate Mother Mary energy. But as I've felt it, actually felt, it's the fiercest compassion and it comes through my sister Caitlyn in a really strong way when she enters a trance. We have a particularly potent relationship where it comes out frequently around me. And what I feel from that is I feel a compassion that's willing to feel all of my pain, all the pain that I've ever felt, and all the pain that I ever will feel, which is what you're talking about. And the fact that she's willing to feel that, and not only feel it, but exaggerate it almost. And say, you're going to feel this and I'm going to show you how not alone you are, how you're always with the capital M Mother, as expressed through me at this very moment. But don't get confused. It's not me, it's the capital M Mother and the Mother is willing to feel not only your pain, but to amplify your pain to show you that you're never alone. You're never in uncharted territory of your own suffering and your own pain. And then at that point, it's deeply moving, of course, but then you feel like, I'm not in this alone. Because being alone, lovato, as it says in the old text, lovato, being alone is one of the most painful things. But if someone's with you the whole way as you're already with your kids in their suffering, this is divine Mother. Mom's here. Mom's here, no matter what. And that's so powerful to have that embodied and to know, mom's here. And father energy is more like, it's going to be alright. You're going to be in another body. This is just the way it is. You'll be alright, son. You'll be alright. You'd be alright, my child. It's different than Mother energy as far as I understand. And of course, these feminine-masculine, mother-father has its own challenges and misconceptions. But to me, there's just a different fragrance to it where mother energy is like, no. No, my son, my daughter, I'll feel it with you. I'll feel everything. And then the father is the Telos. Don't worry. This will pass. This is only a stage. And this is helping. It's moving you out of it. Whereas mother's like, don't worry. I'm going to stay right here with you as long as you want. As long as you want to feel it, I'll feel it with you. And I think both are necessary. If we can encounter that at all in our life represented by a person, fucking great. Because then that models what we can actually access in the great beyond, in the actual full expression of that archetype, in the archangel expression of that archetype or the divine expression of it. And I think it's just beautiful that you're already modeling that for your children. And I know that you also have, as we all do... And I don't know, your husband. I'm sure he has plenty of both types of energy as well. But I also see the Telos and the father energy that moves through you as well. And it's going to be alright. I'll feel it with you and it's going to be alright. This is just one station on this long journey of the soul. And that's, in my mind, the best we can give our kids. And also, to remind our kids that, and again, I don't have kids, so I don't know. But what I feel is and what I would want is to just express, don't get confused. I'm your dad, but I'm not the father. The father is far bigger than me. And I participate in the father as best I can. And mom participates in the mother. And we actually both participate in mother and father in a certain way. But it's not us. Don't get all confused and twisted and worried about us. And when we fail in participating in father and mother and when you see me fall, you see my brokenness, don't project that brokenness onto the father. Don't project my brokenness as a mother onto the mother. Know that this is just my brokenness. This is Aubrey's brokenness, Vylana's brokenness. And you're going to have your own brokenness too. And if you really want to get the real thing, the full ride, know that we're just participating in it as best we can.

BIET: Amen.

AUBREY: Amen. This has been such a beautiful conversation and so beautiful just to be in your presence and be able to share this. Thank you so much for coming in person. I can't imagine trying to do what we did today on Skype or something.

BIET: No, I can't either.

AUBREY: It wouldn't have worked.

BIET: No, wouldn't have worked.

AUBREY: Where would you like to point people to if they're excited, or lured, interested, curious? We've obviously mentioned the book. Where else can people go?

BIET: The book is a good place. I have a website which has lots of information. I'll have a course coming out soon. And Instagram, which is good. It's @guidedbyBiet, which I'm sure we're going to align there when we share all this stuff, so, they'll already know about that. Of course, I also make music. So, if anyone's interested in using my music for these meditative practices, there's some records on all the channels; Spotify, Apple, blah, blah, blah.

AUBREY: Cool. Beautiful. Thank you so much. And so much love to everybody for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning into this video. Make sure you hit subscribe, follow me at AubreyMarcus, check out the Aubrey Marcus Podcast available everywhere, and leave a comment. Let me know if this video resonated or what else you would like to hear from me in the future. Thank you so much.