My name is Will and unlike moulderin Scully, both want to be So we've
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Warts and all. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Skeptic
Metaphysician. I think I just blew Karen's ear drums out to get ready because
it's coming. Good morning, Karen. How are you doing today? What
I'm doing? Great? Wonderful. Well, I'm glad to hear that,
Karen. Today's topic is one that you and I have discussed privately a lot
in the past couple of weeks, but now we get to bring it to
the audience. So the question at hand is have you meditated today? You
know, I try to meditate and it stresses me out, and I think
that's crazy. But yeah, let me get this, let me get this
straight. The practice it's meant to relax and calm your mind, actually stresses
you out, it does Huh. I'm very bad at it, and I'm
thinking the whole time about other stuff I need to do and the fact that
I'm not doing it and that stresses me out. Well, I think our
next guest is just the person that you need to talk to, because Ryan
is a meditation practitioner that he's got over a decade of experience in a variety
of Buddhist and non dual traditions. In his early twenties, he traveled throughout
Southeast Asia and China seeking spiritual knowledge, so you know he is got legit
stuff coming now. He's participated in over thirty meditation retreats and has been an
instructor since twenty twelve, and he's delivered lectures on meditation and spirituality in the
US, in Nepal and Thailand, and is the host of a podcast called
After Awakening. I am thrilled to welcome to the show, Ryan Burton.
Ryan, thank you for coming on, Well, thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here and looking forward to unpacking meditation and everything it's about.
So yeah, I think you've got your work cut out for you here,
but looking forward to where it takes us. So I guess I need
to call out the elephant in the room, right, what is Karen doing
wrong? Nice absolutely a great place to start. So meditation, there's thousands
of different techniques and so many different approaches to it. So we can turn
on an app or look at our phone, and there's so many different ways
to meditate. There's body scanning, there's observing the breath, there's using a
mantra, there's visualization. Every specific kind of meditation will have different side effects
and different characteristics for that specific practice. The effect may be a little different
depending on the person and depending on the specific technique, but generally speaking,
the aim of meditation is to facilitate greater, more expansive and the depth of
your own awareness. Whether that leads to stillness. Many meditation practices are aimed
at stillness. Other meditation practices are aimed at a kind of non ordinary insight
into the nature of mind, into the nature of the body, and into
the nature of experience. So when you pick up a meditation practice, you
have the instructions, and sometimes the instructions are, in my opinion, a
little they can kind of put you on the wrong foot because you end up
starting with a very major expectation. So let's say you go to a yoga
studio and you learn meditation, and the meditation instructor says, or the yoga
instructor says, Okay, now we're not gonna think about anything. Okay,
you're you're just you're gonna stop all thinking with this mantra. The likelihood of
anyone being able to do that their first time meditating or even their fiftieth time
meditating is just drastically low, not gonna happen, right, So to have
that, it's like telling someone not to think about a red truck. Exactly,
the first thing you do is think of a red truck. I've been
meditating for twelve years, and as soon as you said think about a red
truck, I started thinking about a red truck. So it's yes, the
power exactly, this is this is the nature of the mind here, right,
So meditation is not not All meditations are aimed at stopping thought. If
thought disappears, if thought vanishes in the process of meditation, in the process
of your awareness becoming less distracted and more prominent in the forefront of your consciousness,
and you're experience, if thoughts end up on the periphery and they disappear
as a result of that. That's a much more natural and easier approach to
meditation than if I tell you to stop thinking. I put a goal before
you, and suddenly the whole session you're trying to make something impossible happen.
So you get a meditation technique like observe your breath and you're told to stop
thinking. You're told to use a lot of effort to stay with the meditation
object. This is these are all this is all recipe for just tension.
Yes, this is my recipe. These are all the ingredients for a headache,
right, especially for people that have Type A personalities and they really follow
the instructions and they're like, well, he said, I'm not supposed to
think about it, So on that kind of line about the thoughts, you
know, if you're not just in theory, if you're not supposed to have
a thought, and then there you're focusing on your breath, and so I'll
kind of get to focusing on my breath and I'm like, but then I'm
thinking my breath. That's a thought? Am I doing this right? So
is that a thought when you're thinking about your breath or does that not count
as a thought. Well, if you're thinking about your breath. That is
proliferation of thought. You're judging the breath. Oh, Am I breathing correctly?
Am I breathing too deep? Am I breathing too shallow? In meditation,
we're feeling and noticing things as they are. That's where the real relaxation
and the real opening comes from. You're not actually trying to change anything about
your experience. There are meditations that are geared at that, but in the
way that I was trained, you really let the breath be as it is.
You let the meditation object be as it is. You let your thoughts
and your body completely be as it is, because the whole point is to
get out of the way, to get the ego out of the way,
to get the sense of self out of the way, because that is what
is obstructing the unfolding of stillness and the process of meditation in of itself.
So this whole thing about trying to make the mind stop with effort and trying
to control the meditation, that trying in of itself, that very movement in
the mind of effort and trying is what stimulates and causes turbulence in the waters
of the mind. If you just pull volition out and completely surrender. You'll
find that a natural stillness begins to emerge, and these waters in the mind
gradually begin to calm. It's like if you were to imagine a glass bottle,
a width of water and some sediment, dirt, sand at the bottom,
and you shake up the water. You shake it up. Now there's
sediment, there's sand all throughout the bottle. You can't see clearly at all
through the bottle of water. So when you meditate, essentially you just using
the bottle down and you're leaving it there, and in time the sediment settles
to the bottom and the water is very clear, you can see right through
it. It's like that in meditation and in life generally. Oftentimes there's too
much. There's just too much going on. There's too much going on in
the mind, there's too much going on in life. There's too much going
on in our body and our emotions. There's just so much happening all the
time. So the mind is very it's full of distractions, and it's not
can't see things so clearly, can't see itself so clearly. When you meditate,
you set that bottle down, things settle suddenly, the answers to your
problems can arise. Suddenly a angle on a situation becomes very apparent, even
though it had been that way the whole time, because now the mind has
become clear, the mind has come to calm, the mind able to see
things as they are. That's a great way of putting it. And the
thing that really strikes me the most about all that is that, Karen,
it's not your fault to someone else's. I'm just thinking, I want to
teach it that says, don't shake the bottle. Well, no, it
is astounding what meditation will do it. Most people know that I do meditate
every morning and it really sets my day in a perfect manner. And people
know that if I don't meditate, they know it. Everyone knows it.
But how long does it take to get to that point? Because you know,
I try and it gets stressed out and I'm like, well, this
is taking time away from stuff that I have to get done because I have
a lot on my plate these days, you know, So how long does
it take? I mean, I guess everyone's different, and that's not something
you can answer specifically, but in general kind of time frame can I look
at that I have to it could be immediate. It depends. Yes.
So the idea when you said how long does it take? When you ask
the question how long does it take, you're immediately in time, You're immediately
in time, and you immediately have an expectation and you have a goal.
Right, But if you could release that goal, if you could release the
expectation, and if you could release time, really release yourself and give yourself
permission to completely be as you are, period, you'd be surprised how fast
awareness and stillness can really dn because it's the inherent nature of the This is
the thing about meditation. We may feel and are under the impression that we're
adding something onto the mind, like we're doing the meditation, and then stillness
it's like a it's like an accessory that gets added onto our brain or something
that's not actually not what's happening. What's happening is that you're you're settling down,
you're letting go, and this natural stillness, this natural awareness that is
a more fundamental aspect of consciousness begins to emerge and is recognized you're not actually
getting something, it's a deeper part of what you are begins to come to
the forefront. Begins to surface. And the reason that that has not surfaced
yet, or the reason that it has not been experienced yet, is because
the sense of self and the attachment to thinking and experience is in the way.
So, like Will was saying, if he doesn't meditate, it's it's
ugly. And my question is, and I see it, I mean I
have seen it. It is true. But how does spending ten minutes not
thinking or you know, how does that help you? Like? What does
that? How does that benefit you? Because after that ten minutes, you
know, you get all jumbled back up again? So how does that?
What is it that makes such a profound impact on him? How often do
you give your self permission to not do anything? Me? Zero? Never?
And how often do you give yourself permission to be with yourself and just
be as you are? Yeah, I have a kid, so that's really
tough, you know, between work and school and family, and I kind
of tend to go to the wayside. So considering that quite busy, you
have a lot of things to take care of all the time, is it
possible, Is it possible that ten minutes alone with yourself, no pressure to
do anything, no pressure to get anywhere, no urge to have to become
anything for ten minutes might have some benefit, yes, I mean ideally yes,
But that's where I say, that's kind of where I get stressed,
because you know, sometimes there is so much to do, and I feel
like if I take those ten minutes, then I'm just going to be up
later or you having to work faster or something to get that stuff. And
I know ten minutes doesn't seem like that much, but you should see what
I can do in ten minutes. Well, look at it this way.
I know a lot of offices now are saying that they're requiring you to take
a ten minute break every couple of hours because they found that when you do
take that minute to take a break, it actually makes you more productive,
not less productive, because it clarifies you. So I know in the office
myself, I do try to take a break every couple of hours or have
my team take a break every couple of hours, because they get more done
because you're thinking more clearly, because you have been able to reset your system
rather than work work work work work, and then your mind starts getting to
the point where you're not as productive, you're not as creative. So I
would assume it's along the same lines. And the reason why it works for
me is because I can start the day in a place where I am living
in. I don't want to say peace or serenity, because life is not
that, but at least it gets me to the point where I start from
that place. And then it also allows me to look at or approach life
from a perspective of gratitude and appreciation, which then makes me more patient and
more understanding of not just my failings or my stresses, but other people's as
well, If that makes sense. So I guess for me, it's kind
of the challenge is getting to the point where I can take that break,
because like even as a kid, high school, college, I will stay
up until four or five in the morning finishing a report, as opposed to
I'm going to go to bed at ten and then I'll just get up earlier
because what if I can't finish, you know what if something happens, so
I will push through. So I think that's my weird self mantra, push
through, you know, get it done. So for me to take that
break, like you're saying, you know the employees will take a break and
then come back clearer. If I was to take that break, I would
be the whole time thinking about what am I going to be able to do
to get thing done? So I just I guess I just don't know how
to do that. That's what I need help with, well, among other
things. Yeah, I think it's a shift in mindset. I mean,
it's only going to happen when you shift your mindset where you give yourself permission,
knowing that if you do give yourself that permission, it's going to be
better, You're going to do more, You're gonna be able to accomplish more.
Rather than seeing if I do this, I'm not gonna be able to
get everything finished. Well, maybe it's time to think the opposite, you
know. I see it like this. A lot of people say, I
don't have time to editate. If you value your life and your mind and
your heart, make time. So you do have a million things to do
every day, that's a given. But this is a commitment to yourself.
This is a commitment to your own mind, to your own heart, and
to the deepest aspect of your life, which for many of us is spirituality.
Is our spirituality. To honor that and to sit down with that and
to dedicate ten minutes to that every day. It's like soul times. It's
just you alone with the universe, with whatever, with yourself and surrendering the
commitment is more important than the initial results. The actual sitting down to say
yes, I'm doing this for me. That's more important than whatever it is
that comes up in the meditation, because you know, as high achievers,
as even as mothers, there's so much that we have to do, and
there's so much that so much of us that we have to give to other
people. But this is really a gift to yourself, and how often do
you give yourself that? So, yeah, all great, great points.
So we're right around the fifteen minute mark or so in this interview, and
we've been talking a lot about meditations and how to do it and how not
to do it and all that kind of stuff. I do at some point
want to move into more esoteric topics that bring the meditation right where meditation can
take someone within the metaphysical world, because we have a lot to talk about
in that sense. But I do have to ask I know that personally,
I know of several different meditation techniques. Right. There's a silver mind control,
which is meant to be more about controlling your own mind. There is
the stuff that you see on calm on the calm app in the headspace where
it is just silent, focus on the breath, that kind of thing.
Then you have guided meditation, like a safe place that you guide yourself along
with music to feel yourself visualize yourself in a very safe, comfortable place.
And I've also heard of what is that transcendental meditation where you actually take a
sound right, a mantra, and you just repeat that over and over and
over again. You focus on that the whole time you're meditating. So what
is when I introduce to you as as someone who was very well burst in
Buddhist meditation, I'm curious because when you think of Buddhist meditation or Buddhist monks,
you think about the chance right, oh, that kind of stuff.
So is that what Buddhist meditation is or is it something that we're not yet
conscious of for talking about depends on the school of Buddhism. Other three main
schools Tarravada which is predominantly Southeast Asian Buddhism, Mahayana which is China, Korea,
Japan, and Vadriyana Buddhism, which is Tibet Buddhism. So these three
main schools of Buddhism gestated in different periods and history and in different regions,
and so they practice meditation and approach the path and enlightenment a bit differently.
So in my tradition, Taravada, that's the oldest remaining tradition of Buddhism,
they do make a use of mantra, but not in the same way that,
for example, the Tibet tradition does. So. Within my tradition,
meditation is divided into two which is one is called samatat, which means calmness
or tranquility. All those practices, there's many objects for those practices. Breathing
is one of them, Visualizing your body as a skeleton as another. Using
a visualized light within the body is another. The aim of all those practices
is stillness, purification of mind through stillness, and eventually some very deep states
of meditation called samadi or jana in our tradition. The other side of the
practice is with a purified mind, with a refined consciousness. Awareness in the
mind is able to see reality in a way that is not normally accessible to
ordinary consciousness. Like, all right, now we're getting into it. Yeah,
exactly. So what's an example of that, right, So in the
Buddhist Canada, there's a word called the rupa kalapa, which means a form
particle. So there's a way to meditate so deeply to an extent that the
literal particles that make up form, that make up feeling, that make up
mental phenomenon, memories, those particles, those fundamental basises are accessible directly to
the mind. So normally, right now, I sit down, I look
at a thought, or a thought arises, my awareness shines on it,
and you see an image, a vague image in the mind's eye. So
imagine that you were able to see what that image is actually made out of
at a very deep, fundamental level. And this isn't like imaginary stuff.
It's just like actual or deep insight into the nature of reality. So Buddhist
meditation is divided to those two I'd say those two groups. One is for
the purification and the powering up find to very very deep levels of awareness,
and the other is actually directing that awareness to understand and see reality at a
more fundamental level. And based on that insight, based on that seeing,
there are certain wisdoms, certain key understandings about what we are that begin to
those understandings can be liberating, freeing. So yeah, now we're getting into
the nitty of it. Right. So we've talked to a lot of people
and a lot of different things, a lot of different modalities, and they're
all kind of saying the same thing. What I'm hearing you say is that
there is a version of Buddhist meditation that unlocks the mysteries of reality of our
existence. How can I say this? How do you know? Right?
How how is it? It could could be? And I asked this question
almost every time, Right, could it just be your mind being its creative
self? Right? Our minds are incredibly unbelievably creative, so you hear.
And it's more in hindu than it is in Hinduism. It is in Buddhism.
But things like yogis who are able to levitate, for example, or
who are do all these different miracles simply because of how deeply they can meditate
and really control every molecule in their bodies. I've never experienced it. I've
never seen it. I've never heard of anyone who has. I've read books
about it and I'm incredibly intrigued about them. But so, first, have
you experienced anything miraculous like that? And two, if you have or haven't,
when you're when you're meditating and looking into the qualities of existence, how
do you know it's not just your mind being creative and coming up with different
ideas. So in meditation, and at least in the way that I approach
spiritual practice, it's much more like a practice and an actual scientific approach in
the sense that you have to experience a thing repeated times. So it's not
like you're sitting down in meditation then you have a vision about something and you
automatically believe it to be true. We're not working with fleeting images and visions
in the mind and saying that these are indicators of what reality is about.
But here's an example of what may convince you that your body is indeed made
of sub atomic particles, these bright subatomic particles that are reappearing and disappearing very
quickly. Let's say you're meditation, you've done a retreat for a while forty
days, thirty days, and you're scanning through the body. You're feeling the
body in sections, and suddenly as clear as day as clear as this moment,
looking at me, having this conversation, your consciousness shifts, and your
entire body starts vibrating, rapidly, extremely vibrations everywhere, the whole room starts
vibrating, and what normally was felt as your forehead, or what normally was
felt as a particular part of your body is felt as an oscillating wave of
sensations and particles, and those waves and sensations are directly perceivable lights all over
the place. It's one thing when this is happening as a mental image.
It's one thing if you're having a vision about something. It's another thing when
literally the actual perception of your reality fundamentally shifts. It's the same thing as
having and out of body experience. And that's something that we could get into.
When you've had twenty or forty out of body experiences and you've experienced a
vibrational state and the separation of the non physical body from the physical body,
what that process entails to me at this point, it doesn't matter the texts
say about those things. It doesn't matter if a spiritual teacher comes and tells
me that that's demonic work or that's a wayward path, or that's just happening
in your imagination. It's your imagination. Couldn't possibly create something of that that
level of magnitude to literally riveting and shaking your entire perception to its core.
It's it's so radical that I couldn't attribute it to a visionary thought or something
that is happening in the imagination. But that doesn't make me come to the
conclusion that every single thing that happens in meditation is one hundred percent real or
one hundred percent accurate. Just because a vision or an experience comes up doesn't
mean that that's indicative or a justification for some view that you have about about
reality. You have to see things, or in my opinion, I take
the experience as it is. I don't even try to interpret a lot of
the experiences that I have because my interpretation can be very faulty. That's the
conceptual mind at that point, adding reasons and atting information to specific experience,
and I think that inferences are very very different than direct experience itself. Now,
a lot of those things that you're talking about, we've heard people talk
about when they take certain plant medicines, for example, like DMT or all
the pot right, all these different things that they experienced, different versions of
reality, and it could or maybe could not be just chemicals firing in someone's
brain or something like that. But you're talking about things that would be amazing
to experience without having to take any kind of drug to make that happen.
So how does someone go about meditating that deeply that you start feeling your forehead
undulate? Because I really want to feel that, Like, I really want
to feel those vibrations badly, and I really want to ask her project really
badly. We had someone on the show talking about her initial experiences and when
it first started, it was just as you said, massive vibrations but going
up and down her spine. That's how it started. And then it ended
up being that she was getting ready to leave her body, and she did
that several times, and you mentioned going on your body thirty to forty times.
I would like to do it once. We need to take a quick
break, but we'll be right back with more amazing conversation on the skeptic metaphysicians,
how could we possibly find a way to get us to have our foreheads
become undulating, like to become part of the mysteries because I really really want
to experience that. I really want to feel something strange and unexpected and unexplainable.
So you're the expert. How can someone go about doing that? Does
it take years and years and years and years and years of meditation or can
you just press a button to be done. I think when it comes to
meditation, particularly in Buddhism, the super normal powers are not the end goal,
right, Yeah, they could be side effects of the practice. If
you wanted to have experiences of a mystical and supernatural nature, you'd want to
explore out of body experiences, astral projection, lucid dreaming. That is really
the gateway for all of that, because in meditation, what you're doing is
really allowing the mind to come to stand still, allowing awareness to emerge.
There can be a fundamental shift in your perception that happens in meditation that's permanent
that I found you don't get from lucid dreaming and out of body experiences.
I think that's a good place to go. And out of body experiences is
those types of things you're interested in will happen. They may not necessarily happen
in meditation. What what happens in meditation is a radical awakening of consciousness,
a kind of moment to moment lived presence begins to permeate your life. And
there's quite a bit of freedom, actually, an immense amount of freedom that
comes from shifting from being a person in time, from identifying as a person
in time, from identifying as a physical body as this particular incarnation, to
being and existing at everything. That's a huge leap. That's what meditation,
That's what meditation leads to. It leads to an actual shift in perception and
a fundamental change in consciousness. Whereas out of body experiences and supernormal abilities,
mystical experiences, those are experiences that come and go, so they happen,
they happen in time. They lead to some incredible understandings, right because you
can encounter spirits, you can encounter departed relatives, you can encounter everything in
a or z of supernatural in the out of body study. But what I
have not found the out of body state able to do? What I have
not found psychedelics able to do. What I have not found anything else able
to do lead to a radical and permanent, ongoing lived awakening. Wait,
that's what meditation does so. If seeing auras and having profound abilities as a
part of that particular awakening for you, then that becomes your lived daily experience.
If it's not, it could be something else. For me, particularly,
I don't have the ability to see auras or desartubles, past lives or
will If I was hanging out with you in a room, I wouldn't see
your thoughts like floating around your head because that's not a part. That's not
a part of what the unfolding was for me, right. But if I
was in the out of body state, I could see things that I normally
could not in this physical state, in this physical body. But the real
freedom from meditation, in my understanding and in my unfolding, is that fundamental
shift. You touch, you become in touch this consciousness that is not bound
to experience, It is not bound to changes that happen in time, This
aspect of yourself that is totally beyond becoming. It becomes very, very apparent.
It begins to permeate the entirety of your life. That's very different than
what happened in OBEs for me, And don't get me wrong, OBEs are
absolutely incredible. They are ground shattering I mean, if you don't believe,
if you're a skeptic, for example, and you don't really know if or
you'll know at all, if there's life after death, or if it's possible
to separate bring the physical body. I recommend out of body experiences as the
way to prove that to yourself. Can't prove it to anyone else, right,
unless you're an expert at this, and you can do this in a
lab, but you can one hundred percent prove it to yourself when you've had
twenty out of body experiences and this unbelievable separational rate happens every single time,
and you get perceptions of things before they happen, or you dream of things
before they happen. You see conversations in the actual dimension before they actually happen
in real life. It doesn't matter what the priest says to me, It
doesn't matter what the scientist says to me. I've tasted the pudding, I've
gone to the buffet. Well, okay, you know, had the four
course meal. When it comes to these those specific things, there's a lot
of things that I don't know. I don't have the answers to the universe
at all. I don't have the secrets to life, but I can say
that the things I've experienced are the things that I've unfolded. I've repeatedly experienced
them. You know, it's not like it's one thing. If you dream
of something before it happens, like one time in your life, you kind
of write it off right. Oh, it's like I can't really explain that.
It doesn't really make any sense, and so I'm just going to push
it out of my consciousness and just pretend that that never really happened, because
if I kind of think about it too much, my whole reality is just
going to start crumpling. Because to see something before it hap parassable. But
when that happens ten times, fifteen times, you have an OBE twenty times.
It doesn't matter what anyone says at this point. So how hard is
it to get to the foot where you can have when you're just like,
oh, try this, but how I mean I would love to have Honestly,
Yeah, the the things that happened in meditation in the later years,
it takes much more patience and much more practice for that to happen than to
have an OBE. Having an OBE is not difficult at all. Well did
he just called me? I the later years, what is it I met?
I ever be like? For me, I wouldn't say that I had
any any And this is I don't want this to discourage anyone, because if
you have a good teacher, and if you if you're actually follow the instructions.
Yeah, no, no, no, he said, yes, I
heard that we have none. No rewinding and erasing that that never happened.
Okay, yeah, some people have meditation, a lot of incredible unfolding and
changes happened in their first month. I didn't have what I would consider that
radical shift in perception until year seven, seven years or so of seven years
right at that point, thousands of hours of meditating for that before that,
actual fundamental perception of what I was changed. But for sure out of body
experiences, coming to a place of calm, coming to a place of undiscivving,
learning to surrender, all of that is accessible from the start, and
even awakening and what happened what I've described is accessible earlier. It just depends
on the person I'm saying. For me, I was very stubborn. I
was young, I was growing up. Took seven years to really come to
kind of surrendered flow that permeated all of life. Right, and for you
to say to seven years, we're not talking about ten minutes a day,
right. You've been to over thirty meditation retreats, So I'm assuming that you
these were extended periods of time where you were in stillness to get to where
you are now. True, But I'll make this one point. I think
there's something This is a theory. Okay, disclaim this is a theory.
So just like economic booms and bus stock market will rise, stock market will
crash, There'll be changes in levels of activity and economies all over the world.
And when there's a high period and extremely high period, there's always a
love that follows. So what I've observed and what I'm beginning to see,
is that for some reason, in this particular period of time that we're in,
a lot of people with less time on the cushion are having very profound
experiences and profound unfoldings in meditation. So that may just be attributed to the
energy and the collective consciousness at the time where we're at in this period.
But I'm meeting a lot of students and a lot of people are coming to
me that after just meditating for a few months are having just baffling unfoldings and
tending to be of the destabilizing nature. It seems that if it takes long
for this sort of radical shift in perception and awakening to happen, that you
have more You kind of have more to stand on. When everything starts to
collapse and you started singing into the universe and and all of that daily,
you have more to stand if that process took years. But if you've been
meditating for like a few months or a year and that happens, oh,
you're going to be begging to find someone that can help you, because it's
very It can be very destabilizing awakening. Radical shifts and perception can be extremely
destabilizinged destabilizing. The good thing about out of body experiences and lucid dreaming is
that a lot of that can be limited to what happened in the out of
body experience. Sure, some perceptions could bleed into your normal life, but
generally speaking, you're still going to be the same person. You're still going
to feel like you. The thing about radical, a very deep awakening is
that sense of you permanently changes, It actually begins to dissolve, and there
are things that there are some benefits, incredible benefits that come from that,
but it can also be incredibly difficult. So you start your process. I
started my process seven years ago or twelve years ago. I thought my name
was Ryan. I really believed in all the things that Ryan wanted. I
really believed in everything that Ryan was going to become. I had goals,
I had dreams, dreamsuit of those things. I went for them. I
had this vision of this guy becoming enlightened and teaching a lot of people and
all of that, and all of that was very real, right, It
was as solid as this book over here, so solid. All those thoughts
that, all those ideas, they're so real, they were so real to
me. And then something happened around the seventh year where this immaculate presence just
came crashing into life, into consciousness, and it radically. It was like
it changed my brain. I would go as far as to say that the
body felt different from the inside. My sense of self, my sense of
perception, who I thought I was changed forever, Like I could no longer
believe that I was just riot, I can no longer believe that I was
just a person person. I can no longer just see myself as this face,
as this body, as this life, because consciousness had become so expanded,
so expansive, so radically different, and it lasted for so long.
It wasn't just like an obe that happens for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes in
the morning morning. This radical shift, when it happened to me, lasted
ten days. I didn't have to The amount of sleep that I needed was
reduced. I barely needed to eat. I worked in lending, so I
was a loan officer, and I'm just staring at it, at the computer,
trying to do a load, trying to process an application, and it's
like my whole left brain is not working. I'm just seeing these like words
on the screen. I can't even function, and my body like, what
the hell is wrong with you? Man, what's wrong with you? And
I'm just like, you know, I'm exploding in this infinite love and like
my heart feels connected to him and I see that he's suffering so much and
I just love him. And it was like that for ten days. It's
ridiculous. You're like crying, and you're crying tears of joy and tears of
set is at the same time you're driving your car, you don't know where
your hand ends and where the wheel begins. Everyone around you, it's all
it's all this one movement that is not moving at the same time it demit
makes sense, but when it's actually happening, that's this. This is not
in my opinion, this is not as accessible as the ball treatmare through out
of body experiences. Maybe it is, but I haven't seen it yet,
and I haven't seen it through uh plant medicine either. So let me just
clarify you're you are. You were experiencing that without the use of external stimuli.
It just it was a natural You didn't you didn't take psychedelics. It
wasn't the result of anything that you did. It just happened. Is that
what you're saying. Okay, yes, So then people who want to have
a spiritual awakening, you're saying things that are counterintuitive to a lot of the
people that we've talked about. Right, everyone says the road to awakened spiritual
awakenings is through meditation. That the act of meditating is the portal that allows
you to do the outer body experiences or locid dreaming, or have that feeling
of interconnectedness with everything and every one. Now I'm hearing you say that all
that stuff is more accessible than an actual spiritual awakening through meditation, as someone
who's been literally his entire life trying to find a way to gain spiritual awakening.
Just when I think, yep, I mean I am so awakeman,
I am totally woke, I find nope, I'm one hundred percent rooted in
this three dimensional world that we're in, right, Because then I talk to
people like you that are saying what you're saying, and I just go,
wow, I don't even know what I'm talking about, Like I'm not awake
in any stretch of the imagination because I don't have these feelings of interconnectedness.
Every once in a while, I'll feel it, and it does come through
my inner search, in my inner discovery when I go within, and most
of the time when I'm going within is because I'm going into a very deep
meditation that allows me to do that, but it never sustains itself. So
for someone to say, hey, yeah, I went for ten days in
complete love and bliss with all mankind makes me feel really jealous, first of
all, But then my next question is how how is it. You need
to find someone who's like you can help someone can guide someone through the process
of achieving some sort of awakening, awakening, because I mean, there's no
question that the world needs to wake up, right. We've gone to find
a way for all of us to get to the point where we are spiritually
awakening in order for changes to happen. And I do think more and more
people are going through that. I think that's probably to your point. That's
why there's so many people who are going through OBEs and near death experiences and
coming back and teaching and having lucid dreams and all that kind of stuff and
seeing auras. But I've been searching since I was in my twenties, and
I'm a lot older than that now, and I've not been able to accomplish
any of it. So I guess I'm asking Ryan, how can I make
that happen. So, when it comes to meditation, a lot of it
is goal oriented. So the aim is to get into a deep meditation.
The aim is to get somewhere right, whether it's your happy A lot of
people teach it this way, getting to your happy place or getting to your
place a calm, and it's like this place in your imagination. Whatever the
goal is in meditation, that goal, that movement and direction towards a concept,
towards something that is supposed to happen in time, is taking awareness further
from itself. So that experience that happened to me, I want to break
parts of it down a little bit. I'll help you understand. I had
been meditating for a while up to that point already, and it was aligned
in this book by an Indian sage name Ramana Maharshi, and I was on
a plane coming back from China and I read that line and it said liberation
enlightenment is to know that you were never born. And I was like,
what't I even comprehend that. It just didn't make any sense. But when
I read those words, it was like this dead guru from one hundred years
ago just like reached through space and time and just changed something in my brain.
I started shaking after I read that sentence and sweating profusely, and then
it just disappeared. So I thought, Okay, maybe it's just some weird
occurrence. I don't know how to explain that. So I got off the
plane and when I was driving, that's when that immaculateness hit and all of
the bounds of what I perceived myself to be. Usually our consciousness, and
our awareness is really limited to the physical body. We feel that this is
us and everything else is not, but that that line is actually just a
boundary in perception. When that boundary vanishes, the automatic that the automatic result
is the experience of oneness or the experience of allness. So this is the
thing about meditation, about spiritual work. A lot of it reinforces. It
actually makes the sense of self more solid. You're pursuing something in time,
you want to get somewhere other than here, you want to become something,
and that's all. That's all great, that's all fine. But what it
can do is that it actually enhances, It reinforces the sense of self.
It reinforces the seeker that is on the path directed towards something. But this
allness is beyond time. So if all the meditation that you're doing is for
something to happen in time, but the true reality that I'm describing to you
is timeless, how how are these two things reconcilable? If you're if you're
trying to have a result, if you're trying to get to a place that
is that is that is naturally. This is not bonds, you know,
this is not like the street and we can just and we can just go
there. This is a deeper and more fundamental awareness. And the striving,
the pursuit, and all the little aspects of spirituality or a psychic powers,
whatever it is, all of these things they make the sense of self more
solid. And it's actually the sense of self that is the very it is
the final door, the you that you have known your whole life, the
you that you have built up, the you that you operate through every day,
that is the very thing that vanishes in genuine awakening. So if the
you is what vanishes, then all the spiritual practices that are coming from a
sense of enhancing that you end up having can end up having the reverse effect.
So you can do meditation for thirty years, for forty years, maybe
even for forty lifetimes. But if the whole time you're using a very hard
handed consciousness or very a very approach with a lot of effort, all of
that does is strengthen the ego. It strengthens the sense of self when really
in that moment of genuine awakening, when the all is realized, there's no
sense of self there, Will is not going to be there. Ryan was
not there the whole the whole thing was for seven years, I was in
this pursuit and I wanted bliss, I wanted happiness, I wanted all this
I wanted. I wanted the expanded consciousness. I wanted the unconditional love I
wanted I wanted I wanted. And when that, when that presence just crashed
and shattered everything, there was no me pursuing bliss anymore. There was no
me pursuing happiness anymore. There was no me pursuing anything anymore because there was
no me anymore. Right So I'm hearing you say at the end of the
day, it all comes back to surrender. One percent, yes, one
thousand percent, all right. Not an easy thing to achieve, right,
It's surrendering ourselves. Surrendering our egos is of very, very, very difficult
thing to do. And I think that's where I'm going wrong, because though
I think I'm surrendering, I'm really not because I'm holding on to an end
result that I'm hoping to achieve. And That's where I'm going wrong. Ryan,
Thank you so much at least I know I'm not surrendering. I'm clear
and open about that. I got to fix that. Oh well, you
have given us in this last ten minutes so much to ponder that I need
to go and go cry myself in the corner somewhere because in all a lot
of sincerity, you're right now that I think about it, the more I
think about it, I'm not meditating for the right purposes. I am trying
to achieve something and for me right now, meditation, though it helps,
right to Karen's point the very beginning of the show, if I don't meditate,
people know it. So it helps me to at least calm myself and
go through life in a better mind space. But really, if I'm trying
to utilize meditation as a tool for assisting the awakening, then I need to
make it a lot less about Okay, I gotta meditate because it's what I
do every morning. It's more about release and surrender, and that's that's I
appreciate your reminder because it's something that in life you just forget about right in
the in the rigmarole of going through work and childcare and paying bills and all
that kind of stuff. You forget. We're a lot more than just these
three dimensional beings that are inhabiting this planet, where three body beings and the
spiritual side of us is something that we've got to help cultivate. I really
can't thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been super eye
opening and illuminating, and I hope that we remain in contact because you have
given us, in such a short amount of time, so much to think
about and so much to really remember that. I really appreciate it. You
gotta well, now, if someone wanted to reach out to you to continue
the conversation, what would be the best way someone could do that? Find
me on Instagram. So my Instagram handle is Ryan dot Jaburton, so you
can find me there, and you can check out my website as well,
Ryanjaburton dot com. Those are the best places to find me. Instagram for
sure, that's where I do most of my activity. I don't manage space
and time very well, that's obvious. So I'm fortunate that I get to
make a living as a medicad because doing what you do will or whatever,
I'd never make it. I just wouldn't work. So everything that I do
is just on Instagram. If you want to hear or read my posts,
you get look at my highlights and see the content that I've shared, and
it's related to all the things that we discussed here. So Instagram is really
the best place to find me, and I update my class schedules there and
you can you can find me there if you are interested in classes, both
of you as well. If you want to meditate together, I'd be more
than happy to do that with him as well. So do you think there's
hope for me? Oh? Absolute? This is the thing. Both of
you are very You're very mature people. Right, You've been, you've been,
You've been through you've been through life. You understand You're not like these
little spiritual young ins and they're like early and they're late teens that have all
these like crazy expectations about what this is about, what this this is supposed
to be, and what it's supposed to make them. You know, being
a more grounded person, the deeper your roots are in the real world,
the higher your branches could go in the spiritual dimension. In my opinion,
that also want to make sure we talk about or touch on really briefly,
your show after Awakening, right, it's something that I recommend anyone who's interested
in the topic to go ahead and subscribe to it because it sounds like really
great content that continues this conversation. So what what can someone expect if they
tune in? There are certain episodes that will make sense, and then there
may be certain episodes that if there's poll or sanscrit terminology, you're gonna be
like what what what? Like? What what did they just So you may
need to have like Google search bar open, or go check the transcript and
click the embedded link to understand what's specifically mentioned. But if you're willing to
do that, if you're willing to do a little bit of link clicking,
then the episodes will be very, very very fruitful. So absolutely, it's
definitely talking about awakening and post awakening. So the process of that fundamental shift,
the fundamental shift itself from ego to allness and everything that is entailed after
that, because there's a whole integration process and a lot that comes up after
the fact. So that's why it's called after awakening. Well, I just
literally subscribed as we're sitting here talking because I'm fascinated by all this and I
have no problem Google searching during the show, So thanks for bringing that up
and rest assured you will hear from us because I am coming for you to
teach me. I invite you will. I invite you come, come into
the DEMENSI where there are no goals and there is no time and no self
anymore. I invite you. How amazing would that be, Karen, to
live in the world that say Brian is talking about. Oh sounds wonderful.
Well, if you missed this, I will add links direct links in our
show notes for Ryan's Instagram and website and will remind you of his show in
that show notes, So if you have any questions or we want to reach
out to Ryan, you'll know exactly how to do it. Ran. I
can't thank you enough for coming on the show. You're welcome well, and
Karen, thank you for again helping me run the interview, because man,
I was so lost in my thoughts that your questions came in just a perfect
time and once you heard how screwed up I was. I mean, you
sound so much better. I felt much better. So yeah, I'm really
glad you were here, always happy to help. Thank you, Karen,
thank you, and thank you listener. For coming along on this journey of
discovery with us. We'd love to continue our conversation with you on Facebook or
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It will help throw the show and may just help someone else come to terms
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that is all the time we have for now, but thanks for joining
us again today. We'll see you on the next episode of The Skeptic Made
a position. Until then, take care