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Now let's dive into today's episode. I like to welcome
back to the show returning champion Michael Neil. Michael finally
made it.
Speaker 2: How you doing, brother, I'm good, Nice to see you.
Speaker 1: Nice to see you as well.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: You know, you were one of our early guests back
in the day, back before you merch and before we
had it. We had no merch at that time. I
didn't even have I was still in the court. Yeah,
I did record in the corner of my home office
where I set up a little set to uh to
record all of these back in the day. Yeah, you were.
You were kind enough to come on our show when
we were just starting out. And if anyone listens to
that episode, they know how much of a fan I
was of yours. That's how I reached out to you
because I read I think I must have read at
least three or four of your books over the years,
and they was very impactful and I just adore the
work that you do. Man So and we have a
couple of mutual friends involved in that that knew it
connected us as well. So it was it was a
really great conversation. I was like, you know what I
need to need to bring Michael back on the show.
Let's have have another deep conversation. Man. So I appreciate
you coming back, man, Yeah, I appreciate you coming back. Man.
So my first question, man, is when did you first
realize that the way the way success is taught might
actually be creating unnecessary suffering?
Speaker 2: When I should have realized it, or when I actually
I should have realized it when I was trying to
do everything the way it's taught and I was suffering,
That probably would have been the first clue. But I
think I didn't realize it till I started coaching really
successful people and noticed that there were there there was
a there were like two completely different groups. There were
the happy successful people and the miserable successful people. Yeah,
and they really went about it in a completely different way,
from a completely different place for a completely different reason.
And I hadn't realized that. And so there were you
can you can get successful by working really hard, screwing
people over, taking advantage of I mean that yes, of
course you can, but it turns out that not only
do you not have to, but that kind of success
is pretty miserable. It's never ending, There's never enough of it.
I once wrote in one of my early books that
there aren't enough cookies in the world to make you
feel loved. So, you know, so when people are pursuing
success from a place of just fundamental insecurity, it doesn't
end well. And so when I started to meet some
people who weren't doing it from that place, we're sort
of following an inner vision and inner guidance and inner
knowing that was the world that I was excited about
being a part of. And so that for me just
totally one eightied my approach.
Speaker 1: Then what was happening in your own life when the
inside out from one of your amazing books understanding stopped
being becoming theory and actually became real in your life.
Speaker 2: Well, it happened kind of quickly and continues to happen.
I've I've been teaching this now for nineteen years, and
I still like I think to think what day of
the week it was. But like last Friday, I was
I was calling people going, oh my god, I've just
seen this and they're like, you've been talking about this
for nineteen years. I'm like, no, but really, so you know,
there's not like a one and done in that sense.
But the absolute turning point for me was when I
was watching a Sid Banks video, so Scottish mystic Sydney Banks,
and he said, every human being is sitting in the
middle of mental health, they just don't know it. And
I had been anxious and depressed and struggled a lot
of my life with mental health issues, and I just
started laughing because I knew it was true. I don't
know how I knew, but the first thought I actually
had was babies don't need therapy. I couldn't have been
born broken and somehow that just changed a thing. Yeah,
it was pretty well.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when you're saying that, it just
what came to my mind was like, it's like watching
a Kubrick film like you saw it. You know, watch
the Shining and at one level, when you're twenty, you
watch the Shining and it feels one way, but then
you watch the Shining at thirty and at forty it
hits you completely. So you might have been talking about
the Shining for the last twenty years. But boy, you're like, no, no, no, no, no,
you don't understand.
Speaker 2: My dogs on that. I've got a black and white
golden doodle, two dogs, and they will occasionally just stand
at the end of this long hallway, tails wagging in synchrony,
and all I can do is think of the twins
from the Shining.
Speaker 1: And go red wrong, Red Row. But that makes a
good point, though. There are things that we might have
read the same book, might have might have seen the
same movie, might have had the same thought even under
even had had a saying printed on the wall that
meant something to you. Yeah, but it just hits differently
at a certain time in your life. You just go, oh,
So that's what the matrix is about.
Speaker 2: Like I will regularly talk about it in terms of
a basic course and an advanced course. And the basic
course is kind of two things. It's seeing that we're
living in the feeling of our thinking, not the feeling
of our circumstances. And it's seeing that we're made of
the intelligent energy that animite animates everything in life, and
so we're actually made to thrive. We're not born in
original sin, we're born in original grace. And then we
learn all this other stuff that makes it really seem
because we're living in the feeling, we're thinking like we
are messed up and we are problematic and we do
need to fix ourselves and change ourselves in order to
be okay.
Speaker 1: But Michael, why is it and this is predominant in society,
in human society, that we are from the moment we're born,
and not everybody, But I would argue most people are
told that you are not enough, you are limited, you
are not powerful, You must give your power to somebody else,
something else, some organization other than what's in yourself. Where
two of the greatest teachings that Jesus Christ ever talked about,
or the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, And everything
I could do, you could do it. More like everyone
skips by that stuff with the original sin and all
this other crap that Paul wrote into the Bible comes out.
But but you know what, you know what I mean?
But why? But why?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is you have
you have millennia of the blind leading the blind.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's changed much.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's like the first person who explained it
explained life as oh, this makes sense. We're broken. That
caught on, and so that became the explanation, and that
just became so much part of the furniture that people
didn't question it. It was given that we're broken. How
best can we live given that we're broken? What's the
best we can get out of ourselves? Given that we're broken?
But being broken's been a given for five thousand years.
When you don't start with that promise. I remember, actually
I was in Austin but a year and a half ago, yeah,
a little over a year and a half ago now,
and I had the most extordinary experience. Somebody shared a story.
You know, Anthony Demello, the Enlightened Jesuit. He's this amazing
teacher who wrote a book called Awareness, and he's been
dead for a long time, but he just a beautiful teacher.
And one something I hadn't seen of his was a
little story where he said, I used to be kind
of annoying to be around, and everyone told me I
needed to change, and I hated them for it, and
I agreed with them, and I didn't know how to change.
And it really got me one day when my best
friend said, you need to change. I know, but I
don't know how, and I can't and he said. And
then one day his friend turned around and said, you
know what I was wrong. Don't change. I love you
as you are. And he said it completely changed his life.
He said those words, just like don't change, don't change,
don't change. I love you as you are. And he
said he settled for the first time in his adult life,
and he got really present, and.
Speaker 1: Then he changed, We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor, and now back to the show, Like.
Speaker 2: We're actually made to change and evolve and grow, but
all our attempts to fix ourselves get in the way
of what's natural. So I'm standing in front of a
group in Austin and there's one hundred people in the audience,
and for the first time I got up on stage.
I've been doing this at that point for over thirty years.
I look out an audience and I literally not on purpose.
It was off to me. Nobody in that room needed
to change now if they wanted to. I also knew
I could help them, but I didn't start from the
idea that there was anything wrong with anyone, and it
turned out there really wasn't. And I do that as
an exercise. Sometimes with people with clients, I'll say to them, Okay,
I want you to give me like three things that
went wrong or places where you're stuck in your life,
and I want you to explain each one of them
to me. But you're not allowed to explain it by
there's something wrong with me. This is evidence that there's
something that I need to change in me. And what's
interesting is they can always come up with really plausible
explanations that don't involve them being broken.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful explanation that has just been in the
furniture because it just seems that way, because it is
constantly a thing that you're not enough, the original sin,
that ridiculousness. You look at a baby's eyes and you're like, well,
they're not perfect.
Speaker 2: This one's going to be trouble.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, well we do see that that. Could
I have kids, you definitely like you're like, this one's
gonna give me a little run for my money. But
but it is really interesting about how people are constantly
feeling that they are not enough. And I think there
is a movement, especially in the personal development space, self help,
even in the spirituality space, where you're starting to go no, no, no,
you you have the power within you. I was just
mentioning the other day to somebody that if there's a
teacher out there who says I am the way, you
must follow me, run as fast as you can. In
the opposite direction, a true teacher teaches you how to
find the power within yourself, to heal yourself, to move forward,
and to find that power that helps you work through life.
Speaker 2: There was a great book title in I think it
was in the nineteen seventies. I wasn't I didn't read
it live, but need if you meet the Buddha on
the road, kill him. And it wasn't obviously saying that literally.
It was just pointing to the idea that this image
of perfection that people put out into the world, it's
not helpful and it's not true. So if somebody appears
as this perfect being, just watch yourself. Now. They might be,
they might do some wonderful things, But there is no
teaching I have come across, and I've done my best
to study all the world's teachings, and there's no teaching
I've come across that says you know me, not you
us not then right? You know? Later interpretations ad that
bit in but they all say some variation on the
Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You're You're made of this.
It's the way I talk about it, and and and
so it's it's like, other than being the perfection of
life and form, what else do you need?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And maybe you need some life skills? Sure, yeah, that's
not doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, that there's
something more for you to learn to be better at
a skill.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I are of similar vintage, and
there was a moment in our lives when our parents
were God liked to us. You know, they knew everything,
They were obviously perfect. It was a short moth of time,
but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: My Tuesday November.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was like it is so it was. It
was a moment where you know, you you were like,
oh my god. And then as you get older, you
start to look back upon what your pa parents did,
and especially when you become a parent yourself. That's when
it really hit me when I was like, oh my god,
they were just doing the best they could with what
they had at the time. So if you know your
parents didn't do this for you or didn't do that,
for you, or they treated you in a certain way
that was honestly all they could give at the moment
that you were born, and you were born into that situation.
And the more I kind of go back to that,
we're all just trying to do the best we can
to make sense of this insanity that is life, the good,
the bad, the indifferent, all of it, because this is
crazy living life is absolutely insane. And then if you
start to pull back, like in a interstellar or contact
where I think it was contact, when you pull back
from Earth and you're going through the Solar System and
you just keep going back and back and back and
back and all that stuff, then you if your head
starts to wrap around how IgG significant it our planet is,
let alone we are on the planet in the scope
of the universe, it really starts to make put things
into perspective. But on the flip side of that point,
how important we really are to the universe is?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's there's there's a there's a
phrase that a friend of mine uses that I really like,
and and it's that we make a difference to the
whole because we are the whole. So at one level, yeah,
we're insignificant little gnats on the you know, hind side
of a dog on a planet, and you know, I mean,
but on the other we are literally the entire universe
in form. We are the formless reality out of which
all form is created. So we absolutely are a big deal.
But it's no big deal because so is everybody else.
We're all in this and so it's really it's ordinary,
but so is having a kid. And I think we
both know there is nothing more significant than the ordinariness
of having a.
Speaker 1: Kid, especially at three o'clock in the morning when they're
about one year old. Were and years old and they
don't do it.
Speaker 2: I remember, because my wife's British, we flew back and
forth and somewhere around six months we did one of
these trips and it was a nightmare and oh totally
stopped sleeping. And I went on one of these early message
boards and said, hey, anyone get advice for like a
six month old with and all I got was crap.
It's like, yeah, my kid's four and he's had jet
lags all the time and we've never been on a plane.
Speaker 1: Mike, What I love about what I love about your
work and everything you've been doing for the last you know,
years that decades that you've been working on this stuff.
Is that you you approach your work with a very
grounded point of view, but there is a spiritual undertone
to it that is there, for at least I sense it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but there seems to be a spiritual
or a deeper like the underneath the surface. There's something
else there that certain people will grasp. Other people will
grasp the grounded stuff, the practical stuff, the tools, all
that stuff, but there's something deeper underneath. For the the
seeker who is reading your work or following what you do,
consense a little bit. And that's one of the reasons
I asked you back on the show is because of
that is that thing underneath that you have ANDed. So
from your point of view, after all the reading and
all the teachings and all the people you have met,
you know, around the world in the spiritual space and
the personal development space, what is your take on spirituality
and how you move through life? Because you've had a
taste of all of it in very similar ways. I've
spoken to Yeah Haven one hundred people aboutits at this point.
Speaker 3: But you're not Jay, but you're still loving I love
all of it, no, but but I've had so many
different points of view that I have to melt them
all together into a view that makes sense for me.
Speaker 1: I lean one way because that way makes sense to me,
but I respect always because always lead to the same
destination in my eyes.
Speaker 2: For me, spirit is the word that we use for
the formless intelligence of life, Like whatever it is that
everything comes out of, That's what I would call spirit.
So the idea that it would be possible to not
be spiritual is just not understanding what spirit is. It's
like saying, well, you know, you only breathe if you
believe in breath. No, you breathe whether you believe in
breath or not. Your spiritual whether you believe in spirit
or not. But I think for a lot of people
they embrace the material and reject the spiritual, or embrace
the spiritual and reject the material, And that's equally insane
because the material is made out of the spiritual.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: M Like one of my one of my you know,
favorite one liners that that Sid Banks, the scotted Mystic.
I mentioned earlier that he he he said, is once
you can see that everything is God. That's it. Now.
He wasn't saying God like person separate again, it was
just his word for the illness, the isness, and the nothingness.
So there's a formless reality and and and my mug
is made out of it, and my body is made
out of it, and this microphone is made out of it,
and everything around me is made out of it. And
how cool is that? I mean, we love movies. How
cool is that we know they're not really ill we
were there when we made them. But how amazing is
it that we can get lost in them and get
scared by them, and get frustrated by them, and get
excited by them, Like that's life, Like that is the
beauty of being alive. But if you don't notice that
you're part of the very thing that everything is made of,
life can be terrified. Oh, movies. When my son was little,
the Jim Carrey version of Grench came out, and if
a preview for that movie came on, he would run screaming,
burst into tears. We had to ask people when we'd
go to movies back then, is there a preview for
the Grinch? Now? Two years later, we took him to
see The Grinch and at Christmas time, and he loved
it because he understood enough about movies to not be
terrified anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like when they played the first movie of
the Train the edit. Yeah, yeah, it was Edison or
the Miir brothers, one of the two.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I've heard it. I've seen a clip.
That's Lumir brother's train coming into the station.
Speaker 1: Yeah, train coming into that's it. So the train's coming
into the station and people ran out of the theater
because they literally thought it was a train. They didn't
understand anything. No one had ever seen anything like that,
so it was terrifying for people. Now people are critiquing, oh,
that's bad green screen, Oh the CGS, like, obviously they
didn't they didn't need that proper software. There's gotten, it's gotten,
it's gotten insane. So now people are completely jake the movies.
But there was a moment where they were terrified of
it and when it's and you can see it with
young kids when they watch certain things like my My
my kids. When I lived in Burbank, I would drive
by the Warner the Warner lot, and in the war
there was the ranch. The ranch a weren't a lot.
The one down we were like walking distance from there. Okay,
every time we drive by it. There was a Halloween
Horror Nights big banner out in front, and it had
penny Wise on it. H Nightmares. For weeks and weeks,
they just knew enough that there was this thing called
penny Wise, and they didn't know. And now they laugh
at but now they're like, can we watch a horror movie?
And they watched it, and they watched the show, and
they watched all that stuff. But it's it's pretty. But
with all that said, they still would watch it in
the daytime with the lights.
Speaker 2: They're not idiots. You did not raise fools. I understand, no,
But this is the thing. Look, we because thought, you know,
our brains are these amazing simulators, right, and they can
create all these simulations that we call the past or
the future or just utter fantasy, and we don't understand
that we are the ones behind the simulation. So we
get lost in the simulation and start to think that's
our life, and we try to deal with things. But
when people start to wake up to that there is
this other dimension of life, this spiritual dimension of life,
this formless dimension of life, and there is a feel
to it, and you can be in that feeling while
you are in the midst of the chaos. So you
really can be in the world, but not of it,
not in a rejecting the world kind of a way,
but just recognizing that who you are is before the form,
and then you can play in the form as if
your life depended on it, knowing full well that it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Michael, with everybody you've met and all the traveling you've
done around the world, I'm sure and spoken around the
world and probably met mystics, and.
Speaker 2: I know I'm in six continents and I don't think
I'm ever going to get to the seventh. I don't
think there's any seminars to be done in the seventh in.
Speaker 1: The Antarctica exactly. Well, as everything continues to warm up,
there might be something maybe I don't know, there might
be a Hilton opening up, there might be a hotel
opening up soon.
Speaker 2: I think I've still got points.
Speaker 1: This is great. But with all that said, what what
is the most profound spiritual experience you've had in all
of these travels and all these people you've met, have
you had something that just rocked you to your core
and gave you real, real evidence in your own mind
that like, oh yeah, all this stuff I've been seeing
and suspected I really have a feeling about now or
has it always just been something?
Speaker 2: I think it's been. I think it's just been a
deepening with highlights. Like you know, I said at the
beginning about how there's a basic course in an advanced course.
I didn't get to, well, the advanced course is no, really, no,
really it works this way. No, no, no, you really are
made of this. No no, no, the world really is made
of this. No. No thought really is creating a reality
that once you're in that reality, what you do or
don't do is kind of obvious because this is the
world do you think you live in? So of course
you aren't going to behave the way you behave. So
for me, I can I can point to moments. I
remember being in Conquered, Massachusetts once and I walked into
the park and just everything went and it just went
completely quiet, and I couldn't tell you how long I
was there, but it was utter quiet, utter bliss. Everything
up until that point that I was worried about look ridiculous.
I have a bunch of those. For me, the journey
has been about letting it normalize so I'm not waiting
for the next big bang, so that it's part of
my ongoing experience. Even though it's not always dramatic. M
You know, I can be functionally stoned most of the time.
Speaker 1: Because that's what it's like.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just like it is kind of trippy,
oh this, but it actually is not at conflict with
anything that we do. There's nowhere you can be that
spirit isn't there before you. There's no such thing as
an unspiritual person and unspiritual situation and unspirit It's it
just depends are you present to presence when you're there
or not presence there, but you might not notice.
Speaker 1: Well, I have to I have to play devil's advocate, Michael.
When you say every there's spirit in every their spirit
and everybody, right, I agree with you one hundred and
ten percent. But I'm gonna play devil's advocate for someone
watching right now who's gonna go.
Speaker 2: Because I think the devil needs an advocate. I don't
think he's he's had.
Speaker 1: He's he's had a rough go of it. His argument
is not nearly as good as Jesus. Uh so, no.
Speaker 2: Now, why did you take the job? What's the paint? No? Sorry,
I'm gonna go ask.
Speaker 1: You a question exactly. That's my train of thought.
Speaker 2: My work here has done my work.
Speaker 1: I'm like you fried me, sir, You fried me over
seven hundred conversations on this stuff, and I'm your fried me.
Speaker 2: Okay, Devil's advocate. I said that everybody is made of spirits.
Speaker 1: Okay, So someone's gonna say so, someone's gonna be watching this,
and I can see the comment being typed up as
we're speaking, which says, well, how can there be spirit
in rapists and serial killers and homicidal maniacs and Hitler
and Genghis Khan and all this? How can you see
spirit in those creatures? Because as a storyteller, you need
a villain, you need someone to to put That's how
people are controlled. There's always like you're having a tough life.
It's their fault. That's how wars start. Essentially, So what
do you what do you say to those people who are.
Speaker 2: One of my One of the metaphors I use for consciousness,
which is sort of the basic presence. Spiritual presence is
a mirror. So often the zen mystics will talk about
the lake doesn't mean to reflect the geese flying over it,
the wild geese. It just it's just still, and so
it reflects what's there. Now. Is a mirror any less
a mirror if it reflects Hitler than if it reflects Gandhi?
Is it any less? Is it changed as a mirror
by reflecting a politician you like than by reflecting a
politician you don't like. The mirror is unaffected by what
goes on in it. So from a spiritual perspective, there's
no less spirit than anyone, and there's no more spirit
than anyone. From a practical perspective, we live in movies.
We live in a world of thought. And if my
thought created world involves everybody being an enemy and they're
not being enough, and everyone for themselves and the schemiest
person wins, then I'm going to behave in some pretty
hideous ways. If I think my bad feelings are coming
from them, and if I do something to them it
will fix my feeling, then I'm going to do something
to them because of my misunderstanding, not because of a
lack of spirit.
Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make it okay, but it does make it understandable.
And it's when I see, when I can see the
difference between the spirit and someone and the behavior of
the form. I go in and I talk in prisons,
And to be honest, I don't want most of those
guys back out on the street anytime soon. But that
doesn't mean that I don't see the light in their eyes.
It doesn't mean that a lot of them, not all
of them at all, A lot of them don't find
something that if they'd found it earlier, they would never
have done what they did that wound them up in prison.
I'm not I'm not anti punishment. I'm not. I'm just
saying that it doesn't there's no version of reality where
the energy that all things are made of excludes something
that's profound.
Speaker 1: Is profound. You're absolutely right. It's just the lake doesn't
really care what flies over it. It's just going to
reflect whatever's there.
Speaker 2: Now, that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that I don't
care right, very different from a place of understanding than
from a right wrong, good bad. You know that world,
We know how that world plays out. We've been playing
it out for five thousand plus years. It doesn't end
well for anyone ever. I mean to the victor, go
the spoils until they lose, and then it flips, and
then it flips, and then it flips and then it flips.
Speaker 1: Its endless. It's endless.
Speaker 2: The one game that that is the pullback you were
talking about from contact that the one game is Oh,
at a fundamental level, we're all the same individually, so
much cool difference, but it's a very different conversation. If
I actually think I'm spiritual, you're an not or you're spiritual,
I'm not. Then if I see, look, we're all made
of the same stuff. And it just turns out that
we really misunderstand where our experience comes from, and we
think it's coming from outside us, so we think we
need to control the outside to have a better experience.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that clip on social media from Pete Holmes,
the stand up comic about God?
Speaker 2: Maybe because my son loves him, but I don't know
which one you mean.
Speaker 1: He's saying. He's like, you know a lot of people
say that God isn't real, you know, and so you
either believe that God's this big guy, white guy in
the sky with a big beard, or you believe it's nothing. Now,
you know what's crazy is to believe that there's a
guy in the sky with a beard. That's crazy. But
you know what else is because believing in nothing, what
happens to you when you die? Well, he goes, well nothing,
So when you die, nothing happens, so you return to
your creator. This is very good and no, no, and
he just keeps going on. It's this long bit and
it was just so, but it's so. It's just a
beautiful idea. He's approaching it from a comedic standpoint, but
his idea is very profound, and it mirrors to what
you're just saying, no pun intended, it mirrors. It mirrors
ideally what you're saying. That the positive, the negative that
we that we attached to something is in many ways cultural.
It's many ways based on country, based on society, based
on community. Because this conversation, even as non woo woo
as this is for many is we're talking is the
work of the devil. Just this conversation not crazy. We're
not going crazy off the off the rails here. You know,
in certain areas of the world, certain things that we
would consider illegal are legal and vice versa. You know,
you remember you can't like Amish women can can't show
an ankle, well, you know, and neither can women over
in certain Middle Eastern countries. So it's it's fascinating to
me what we find right and wrong. It just varies
for me.
Speaker 2: There really does come back to if there is a
right way to be, then our goal in life kind
of has to be finding out what the right way
is and trying to follow it correct. There isn't a
right way to be and just an objectively right way
to be, then we've got to find a different nap system.
And it's actually built into us. What what what? What?
I would I find that that people just don't realize
as how well we're made as humans. Is our wanting.
I don't mean our lust are you know, crazy desires
for more, but our simple wanting like I want a sandwich.
That is how this intelligence guides us. So like a sunflower,
it follows the light. We're made to follow this inner
sense of direction. And so the question is is it
good is it bad? And if it's good, I should
do it, and if it's bad, I shouldn't do it,
Which just doesn't work it doesn't feel good and it
doesn't work, which is why I reject it no other reason.
But if you check in and go, do I want
to like really like? Not I want to like just
in an honest, settled way. Do I actually want to
that will guide you through anything? And there's only three answers, yes, no,
or I don't know. And I had a guy come.
He was sent by one of the huge global asset companies,
and he was one of their top quants, and he
was absolute genius, and he was an absolute nightmare. And
HR sent him as a last resort. They said, we're
either going to promote him or viral. Do your thing
right and and and he came in and he was
he was tightly wound. But he so he wrote down
on I keep a flip trating the office, and he
wrote down some fifty plus things, the decisions that he
was trying to make, and he was quantifying them all
in terms as he did at work, in terms of
here are the variables, here the waiting of the variables.
You know, if I moved to this place, school district
is more important than crime, but this is more important
than this Jesus, And he went for like forty five minutes,
and I am dizzy, like I'm just exhausted.
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted already, right.
Speaker 2: And so I start talking him about, Look, that might
be great if you're predicting probabilities with numbers, but that's
not how we're made to live. We're made to follow
a really simple inner knowing and in her sense of direction,
a common sense. And he kind of argued with me
for a bit, but at some point we'd settled enough
that he was like, Okay, I get you're not a
complete idiot. Let me at least listen to you. And
and so he said, well, you're really saying that I
can look at every one of these things on my
list and just go yes, no, I don't know, And
I said yeah. And he spent the next sort of
I think thirty minutes and he went through every single
thing do I want to yeah? This or this? This?
Do I want to know? And there were only like
three I don't knows on the whole list, and he
got quieter and quieter. And I don't know if you've
seen it, but like when people get settled, they get
prettier answerer, like younger he did, like he was a
different guy, and at the end he went, right, I'm
done now, full disclosure. They paid me for three days,
and this was lunchtime on day one, and I was thinking,
I don't want to give the money back. So I
kind of said to him, well, you know, I mean,
I mean, you know, look, how about this.
Speaker 1: She come back to me, that's just well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I was going to be a jerk about it,
but I also wanted to check, so I said, look,
I get this has been huge for you. Why don't
you come back in the morning tomorrow morning and if
you're still done, I'll take you to brunch, right and
if not, we'll keep going. Wait can guy he was done,
comes in, he's like so clear, so present, and I
took him to brunch. He went back. I get a
call from HR at the company later in the week
and so what did you do to him? I said,
what do you mean, because I didn't know which way
it went, and and they said, he's a different guy said,
he's so clear, he's so present. He's really easy to
get along with. And I tried to explain and she
was like, yeah, whatever you did, thank you, here keep
the money. But it was it was it's it's how
simple this can be, even though for most of this
experience it isn't.
Speaker 1: But Michael, so when you're explaining what this guy was doing,
it sounds like, at least from my perspective, that there's
a lot of fear. He was trying to control everything.
He was trying to quantify everything. He was trying to
just like he was. That's a next level control freak,
and he can hide behind the quantifications and like the
variables and all that stuff. It sounds it's fear to me.
But when he let go, it's different.
Speaker 2: It is fear. I'm just somebody sent me this quote
this morning and I thought, I knew I'm going to
get this quote in somewhere. I'm getting it in with you.
It's a mouji. If you do not trust life to unfold,
the mind takes over and it becomes a game of
strategy motivated by anxiety. This mistrust is unfair. Life has
given us so much and yet we do not trust it.
And that's exactly it. But if you give me one
hundred people, you'll see that ninety nine of them are
motivated by fear, at least a big chunk at the time.
Speaker 1: Most of us are, Yeah, well most of us are that.
Speaker 2: So it's really interesting to begin to move into the
possibility of a life that is driven by insecurity and.
Speaker 1: Fear, but is an insecurity and fear in so many
ways of defense mechanism to keep us alive, as opposed
to generally.
Speaker 2: Speaking, awareness of danger is the defense mechanism. Insecurity and
fear is the neurotic adaptation of that defense mechanism, of
that genuine awareness of danger that the mind does. It's
not that's no, it's normal, but it's not natural. Awareness
of danger is natural, and the irony is that when
we're all up in our heads trying to calculate risk,
we're not actually present to the awareness of any actual
danger there might be.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: I saw an interview with Alex Hanoald a couple of
weeks ago, you know, the after he climbed the tower,
which which was amazing, I mean, you know, and he
was talking about how he thought more people needed to
it in some ways be in life threatening situations, and
the interviewer is kind of like, you know why you're
saying this, and yet he made this case he said, Look,
we've lost touch with actual fear. Actual fear is great,
sharpens the senses, keeps you alert, really presences you. He said,
So we kind of busy our minds with this artificial
fear and it kind of keeps us in the state
of Titan's autonomic arousal and it messes with us. That's
actually not necessary to function while in the world awareness
of danger is, but that's built in.
Speaker 1: But also back in the day, like he was saying,
is that when you were out in the savannah hunting,
you were in a state of alertness all the time
because at any moment there could be a tiger.
Speaker 2: But there's a difference between there's a difference between presence
and fear. You can be alert, present and you are
aware of movement for mild around, or you can be
in your head worrying about it and you're not aware
of the tiger that's right behind you. It's not really
behind you, Alex, don't worry, don't worry. I can see
it's not behind you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to check how to get in
here first of all. But that, but that kind of
goes into a deeper conversation about what motivates us, and
and how do you how do you control a large
populace fear? Fear's the easiest thing.
Speaker 2: Look, sorry, if you're if anyone is listening to this
to learn how to control the masses, what I'm saying,
do the opposite of everything I'm saying. Right, If you're
actually interested in liberating yourself from that, then maybe have
a list.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely absolutely, because most of us, you know, every
every aspect of our life has fear involved in it,
constructed fear by marketing agencies, by religion, by governments, by
all of it.
Speaker 2: Is what's to talk on call I called Satan's Handbook
of Hypnotic Marketing and and and it's and it's basically,
tweak the insecure thinking of your potential client or customer
and then offer them relief in the form of your
product or service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's marketing one on one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's also it isn't the only way. It's
just very very very popular.
Speaker 1: Well because it's the it's the lowest hanging fruit.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's the lowest. So I sometimes talk about
lowest common denominator marketing, highest comment and nominator marketing, and yeah,
no question, lowist comment marketing works up to a point,
but it doesn't work. If what you're trying to do
is build trust, it doesn't really work. What you're trying
to do is increase possibility. It just works to shift stuff.
And if that's what you consider your job to be, yeah,
go for it.
Speaker 1: I think there has been a backlash against this more
and more now. People are things that you and I
grew up with would Obviously there's many things that you
and I grew up with would never pass a day
this world.
Speaker 2: I know, I sometimes watch eighties television and go, oh
my god, we watched that.
Speaker 1: Oh my, oh my god, she's some of the things
that were said and done. I'm like, oh good lord,
it's insane. But but on the on the marketing side,
you know, there's things that that were you know, how
we were marketed to growing up that isn't working as
much anymore. Now there is a different flavor of it
with like a lot of the TikTok and and Instagram
and social media influencers that are still Instead of the
fear of like you're not good enough, it kind of
leans on that and it's like, well, if you don't
do what I'm doing or buy the product I'm doing,
you're not gonna be cool enough. And there's a different
version of that. It's just different kind of.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the same thing. It's still tweaking the insecure
thinking of potential client or customer's.
Speaker 1: But you're not right. But you're not going to connect
to that on a deep level. So in other words,
watching a Super Bowl Budweiser commercial where two bikini clad
girls fight in a fountain over a Budweiser, I'll send
you a link right away, sir. That's an actual that's
an actual commercial. That's an actual that was an actual
commercial for I never forgot it because I was a
young man when I saw it. But that doesn't build
a real connection with the product where people are looking
for authentic connections now. So there is a backlash to
that kind of stuff now, and there might still be
tweakings of all that. But I feel that the brands
and the companies and even the institutions who are becoming
more leaning more towards this positive reinforcing the good and
things where people are starting to search for.
Speaker 2: Well, we have a sort of a policy in our
marketing where there's a company in the in the UK
called wrong seal and it's it's a celant for decks
and and their their motto is a run seal. It
does exactly what it says on the tin. And and
that's what's awesome, is like there should be no gap
between what we say is on offer and what's on offer.
And now somebody could come along and go, yeah, but
you could make so much more if you did this,
And yeah, maybe I don't actually even believe it's true
because so much of our audience has been with me
for years because they know that it does exactly what
it says on the ten. Maybe for one off customers
not so much. But I'm looking for people who want
to be a part of this for as long as
they want to be a part of it. I'm not
looking for Okay, let me run through as many of
them as I can, as quickly as I can.
Speaker 1: With all the clients and people you've worked with over
the years, what do you what do people spend years
trying to fix that we're never was never really broken
within them?
Speaker 2: Well, I think probably the biggest one is themselves. Right.
People just are so sure there's something wrong with them
and have so much evidence and can tell me so
many stories that and they think, I just need one
more thing. Maybe this person has the answer. Maybe this
person has the answer. Maybe this person has the answer,
and for a little while it feels like they that
person did have the answer, because the actual answer is
when I'm not thinking about it, it's not a problem.
So if you give me an answer and I stop
thinking about it, it won't be a problem and I'll
feel so much better. But then at some point I'm
going to start thinking about it again, and I'm not
going to realize that's why it's become a problem again,
and the cycle continues. So one of the biggest shifts
that people make, and that I work with people to make,
is to really see that but for unrecognized thinking about
who we are, you're freaking amazing. Now I'm not saying
you can't also be a mess. I mean pretty much
everyone I know is both. But we're obsessed with the
mess and we miss the amazing bit. And it's not like, oh, think,
think better things about yourself. Here's probably the quote. This
is a quote at the front of my new book,
which is not yet, it's not fully written yet, but
it's it's if you drop your ego, your image, of
self importance. So by ego, it just means your self image,
the way you think about yourself. If you drop your ego,
your image of self importance, and just be you, whoever
that is, you'll find the secret to heaven. Here on earth.
You'll discover that you're not who you think you are.
You're something nicer, far better, really nice. And so when
we start to actually experience and identify with who we
really are, everything starts working better. Our intelligence comes online
in a whole different way, our creativity comes online in
a whole different way. We still have crazy movies in
our head, but they look like movies, and so we're
not impacted by them in the same way. We still
have nutty thinking, but it looks like nutty thinking. I
used to say, I think it's not politically correct, but
I don't think it's that bad. Like if you're drunk,
but you know that you're drunk, you're not that drunk, right,
If you're if you're really in your head, but you
know you're really in your head, you're not that in
your head.
Speaker 1: It's right.
Speaker 2: It really is game changing to start to see, oh god,
I am not all the madness that goes on in here.
Speaker 1: If you're questioning it, you're not really that deep into
your head. If you're not questioning it, you're gone.
Speaker 2: Well, right, and then you're gone, So there's nothing to
do about it anyways. Right, It's it's you.
Speaker 1: Know, until you start to realize it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this endless chase to fix it when you've
never actually seen it, it's it's never gonna work. You.
There's no such thing as a solution to a feeling,
and yet that's where almost everybody is chasing.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. Why do we feel
that we're not enough?
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's two reasons. One is we've been
told you're not enough, explicit you. But but it's back
to it's in the water, it's in the furniture, it's
it's if you look around, everybody seems to be having
a better life.
Speaker 1: Than you now more than ever. Jeez, what Instagram, So.
Speaker 2: Of course, and they're subtly and sometimes not so slily
intimating that it's because you're not enough. Now, I've met
a lot of these people. You've met a lot of
these people there. They're just as messy as everybody.
Speaker 1: Else, every single one of them.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's a it's just again it's the
blind leading the blind. You know, there's that saying that
in the in the Kingdom of the Blind, the one one. Yeah, right,
so so so if you don't even need to be
that awake to have a huge advantage in the.
Speaker 1: World, that's a that's a powerful statement that you don't
have to be that awake, even because everyone thinks that, oh,
I have to be Buddha, you have to be Christ
you know, I have to have to have be a
guru somewhere.
Speaker 2: It's looking like it's like the old joke about you know,
you know, you know, you're you're with a group of
campers and you come across a bear. How are you
going to get away from the bear? You don't have
to outrun the bear, You just have to outrun your buddies,
right Like.
Speaker 1: It's the slowest you have to run the slowest runner
in the group.
Speaker 2: That's a terrible spiritual analogy. But it's not. But it's
not like it is. Really if you even start to
glimpse how much of your struggle and suffering is happening
up here and not out there. If you even begin
to to sense every now and a again that when
you get really quiet, something more comes through you. You're
way ahead of the game. And then if you really
start to see it, if you start to self realize
just how amazing you actually are. But again, no different
to anybody else, just it's different because you notice it.
Then life becomes a very different game. And that's where
that happy success. I'm not saying everyone who is happy
and successful was self realized, but I am saying that
they had elements of it where they saw through, They
got over themselves more quickly. They could see through the
ego and the image and all of that, and they
could navigate it pretty well.
Speaker 1: I have to believe that at a certain point in
your career. You've worked a lot of people in Hollywood
and musicians and people in the entertainment field. I've known
many of them who won Oscars and won the Top
of the Top and the biggest movies in the world
and all that kind of stuff, and they're some of
the most miserable people I know that, just absolutely. One
One guy even said, like after I got the Oscar
and like I didn't know what to do with my life.
Speaker 2: It's actually in my experience.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly, it's not, it's very It's that's why
I love Jim Carrey's awakening. I adore I adore Jim
and Jim if you're watching, please come on the show
anytime you want, Sir, because.
Speaker 2: His Grinch costume, because my kid is scared.
Speaker 1: Obviously, not in the Grinch costume obviously.
Speaker 2: So he's probably not scared anymore.
Speaker 1: But you know, but hey, that's could be triggering, sir.
But Jim was so powerful because he's come out so
publicly about his spiritual awakening and and he's he's put
his money where his mouth is in many ways. But
he says, I wish everybody could get everything they ever
wanted so they could realize it means nothing and it's easy.
If you and I say that, it'd be like, yeah,
that's kind of nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, but Jim was the biggest movie star in the world,
had everything anybody in that field could have ever wanted.
And he was like, yeah, this is, this is But you.
Speaker 2: Know what I have found because I've been doing this
for a long time as much as anything. I mean,
it's thirty five plus years, not been working at any
the easiest people to work with in the sense that
they see this the quickest are the incredibly successful or
wealthy and the incredibly down drawn, because both of them
have realized they're not going to find what they're looking
for in the world. Oh, the extremes, the extremes, it's
all of us in the middle to think, yeah, but
if I just get one more award, if I just
get a little more money, if I just get one
more level of success, then I know it. But it's
like at the extremes, people are very receptive to it
because they've already figured out it's not going to happen
out there. And that's why I hud the inside out understanding,
because when you start to see how it actually works,
you're not waiting for your circumstances, and you can often
create some pretty cool circumstances. And what I love is this,
This program could have been recorded one hundred and fifty
years ago and that would still be true.
Speaker 1: But yeah, go ahead, yes, but one hundred and fifty
years ago, we weren't as aware of everything that was
going on. We didn't know that if there was a
war going on three or four miles down the road,
because we didn't have we didn't know. But now we're
so overly connected. You know, before it was you know,
radio and movies, radio, television, and now we have internet
and social media that I know, when you know something
happens on the other side of the world, instantly as
it's happening, you're find so you feel this kind of
bombardment of all these craziness things happened. But with it,
With that said, I think that was happening one hundred
and fifty years ago is not happening today, where a
lot of our preconceived ideas of what but institutions were,
what the world was like, what the truth was, is
completely crumpling. You know, we got a taste of it
in the America, got a taste of it in the
in the seventies with Nixon. That was the first time
that we're like, we were disillusioned a bit with like,
I wait a minute, what.
Speaker 2: I think some of my friends from the Civil War
might disagree with you about yourself?
Speaker 1: Well no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no saying
I agree with you one hundred percent, I'm saying in
modern or modern times, no no, all right, oh no,
we can't go back to that.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, we could go back to the Pilgrims, all right,
if you like it.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's always craziness happening. There's always things.
You know, it was on our side exactly, those damn
Aztecs with the blood sacrifices. No, there's always something going on,
but there seems to be a lot more like perfect example, Man,
I always raised Catholic. The Catholic Church was an infallible,
infallible institution, the vaticant infallible. Obviously, a few things have
happened over the last few decades that has shined a
different light on that. The pharmaceutical industry, the food industry,
the government in general, all these things that were sometimes
some of it was conspiracy theories all of a sudden
are now coming out going, nah, they were kind of right.
So Bigfoot, Bigfoot should be Bigfoot should be riding in
on the lock.
Speaker 2: This monster ed come on a UFO edited he Well,
he's with the tiger that's behind you.
Speaker 1: But with all so this, that's what I'm saying that
now this is added, and I'm curious to hear your
thoughts on this. It's added a different level of crazy
or instability in our psyche. Things that we thought were
foundational are now being shaken, and that happens to that that's.
Speaker 2: As a surpris I think that is breathtakingly healthy. I
think it's one of the best possibly happen because as
long as we are trying to find our stability in
the outside world, in another person and institution, anything, the
world of form by nature is crumbly. Things come and go.
That which is born dies. We know that ashes to ashes,
dust to dust. So when we finally stop trying to
find our solid ground in the form, there's really only
one other place to go, and it's back inside and
that shift back to spirit, back to just pure spirit,
not any particular form it takes, but the formless reality
out of which all form comes. That's a ironically given
that it has no form that's as close to solid
ground as there is in the universe. So while obviously
it can be very disruptive and it's easy to get
caught up in very scary thinking about what this means
about the future and what this means about this, the
actual reality of it, if it points people back inside,
is one of the best things could happen for the
evolution of humanity.
Speaker 1: And I think that's exactly what's happening now. People are
being you know, twenty twenty was that first year that
everyone had to stop and everyone had to look inside
and your phone probably was ringing off the hook back then.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it was so it was so weird.
We went in the space of less than a month,
we went from thinking we were going to go out
of business to realizing that we were going to double
our business. And one of my clients actually said, you
went from being a luxury yacht to a lifeboat. Oh
so we actually just opened our doors. We just opened
up our memberships for free to everyone, and so many
new people came in. And then when it was done
and we start charging again, a lot of them left.
But some of them say, and that was fine, Like
that didn't that didn't strike me as problematic. It's I am.
I have so much faith in the human spirit and
in the intelligence of life, and sometimes I don't like
the way it's going either, But I don't think that
changing the way it's going is going to fix it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: I think until people start to wake up to this
deeper dimension, of life. It's still going to feel like
I got to stop the people who are causing my problems.
Of course I did. When I start to see that's
not the way the universe works, very different things make
sense to me to do.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that we're so caught up?
Speaker 2: Been?
Speaker 1: The illusion that things are actually solid and that things
don't change is the great, one of the great illusions
of humanity, because you know, as you as we've gotten older,
things that we didn't think about in our twenties, we
thought about in our fifties and in our sixties because
we didn't think it would ever catch up to us. Oh,
I've been smoking for the last twenty years, and all
of a sudden, like what.
Speaker 2: My nobody told me that would be a problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, there was a smoking section of
the airplane. I don't understand. But everything's so slow in change.
You obviously, one day, I know this happened. I'm sure
this happened to you. One day you just wake up
and you look in the mirror and you're like, who
is this guy? Like where did this guy come from?
The guys the guy that I see in my brain,
he's twenty something and he's like jumping and doing things,
and then does this ever happen to You'm like, you
forgot that you're your age, and you do and you
do something horribly wrong physically, like you're like, I think
I can make that jump. I think I could I
could do that, And all of a sudden you're just like, oh, no,
son of I forgot. Yeah, here, up here, we're still
young man up here.
Speaker 2: No, No, I know, I know what you mean. Occasionally
I see a picture of me and go, oh, who's
that old guy with my wife? You know, but you know,
he seems nice.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you found someone. Uh, me too.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time.
Speaker 1: But but even I forgot what we were talking about
because I'm for this is a good differ.
Speaker 2: You might it, but I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: Will err it, sir, don't worry, We'll hear it. But
it's it's just it's just kind of fascinating how we
forget that we're all gonna die. Nobody wants to talk
about it, but we're all it's a process. It's constantly.
The universe is secular, The the ex just the reality
is that you know ourselves are dying and being reborn
every second of every day.
Speaker 2: I think there's a couple of levels that it's worth
looking at that problem. Please, this thing, this body thing
definitely going to die, no question about it. I don't
even the really cool people doing really cool things on TikTok.
This thing's going right. The brain thing, which is part
of this thing, that's that's that's that's going to wear out.
But we are not our bodies. We have bodies. I
was trying to explain this to somebody, a young kid
who's a gamer, the other day, and I was like,
he was talking about Spider Man Far from Home, the
video game, and which I think is a great game.
So so I was going, like, when you're playing that game, right,
you're you're you're you're Spider Man, right, Yeah, but you
do know that Spider Man, it's not you, right, So yeah,
I am my body, but my body's not me. I
have a body. So I don't know what happens when
the body dies. But but but for me, it is
helpful to know that the body's going to wear out
because I'll treat it differently and care for it differently
and use it differently. But it's not actually all that
helpful to think that when the body goes that's it.
I don't know whether it's it or not. I have
no insider information, but I know that there's a wonderful
line from William Blake. I see through my eyes, not
with them. The presence that we are definitely transcends the
physical form that we're in. That I know, don't I
don't pretend to know beyond that?
Speaker 1: Isn't it perfect in the grand scheme of this entire
experiment that we're all in, if you will, this reality
that there is an expiration date, because if there wasn't,
if we were vampires and there was no end in sight,
I no.
Speaker 2: What do you mean we?
Speaker 1: But if we were mythical creatures who did not die.
I think about that sometimes, as one does. And I'm
not to be a vampire, but just like, you know, what,
what if I was around for another couple hundred years?
Because in the Bible and in many in many spiritual texts,
long life is a given. Moses was nine hundred. Yeah,
Baba Jean is still two hundred and fifty to twenty
five hundred years old walking around the MLAA somewhere right now.
So there is precedent for that. But I can't even
wrap my head around it, because if I was going
to be alive for another three or four hundred years,
that and nobody else, by the way, nobody else around
you is going to have that privilege. That's the key. Yeah,
if your kids, you're gonna watch your kids die, You're
gonna watch your grandkids die. You're gonna watch your great
grandkids die. That's I can't even And everything that you
know is gonna change constantly. I can't even imagine psychologically
what that would do to a human being. So it
is helpful that you're going to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it would be messy, But I also
think that that not knowing is part of the fun, right,
Like you know, there's my favorite theory about enlightenment, like
why some people get enlightened and others don't is is
everyone gets enlightened in their ten thousandth lifetime. So you
know whether or not it's your ten thousandth lifetime, because
if you're not enlightened, it isn't and if you are,
it is sure. But the reason that I like that
as a theory is because there's no point in striving
for it.
Speaker 1: That's a theory and so and.
Speaker 2: So the thing it's the same thing with long life.
You know, I wish anyone who want it long life, sure,
and if it's in the cards, you'll have it. And
if it isn't in the cards, no matter what you do,
you won't. So yeah, to me, it makes a lot
of sense to take care of this thing. But it
doesn't make sense to kill myself trying to make myself.
Speaker 1: Live longer, beautifully said, my friend beautifully said. If there
was one spiritual insight that the world needs to hear
right now, or one concept, one idea that the world
needs to hear right now, what would it be.
Speaker 2: If they could actually hear it? But as in it
would land. For me, it would be be still and
know that you are God, that you are this the
same energy that animated the Buddha, that animated the Christ,
that animated all the great spiritual teachers. You are that.
And and then you think. And because you think and
you're thinking, looks real to you. It's very easy to
get lost in the movie. But if you see those
two things, you'll do fine. In fact, you'll do a
lot better than fine.
Speaker 1: You know. One of my favorite quotes from Yogananda, the
great mystic, Who's behind not the tiger, but he's actually
right behind me. He says, like life is but the movies.
And when you're watching a movie, you see death and
violence and happy and joys and all of it, and
you get wrapped up in the movie. He goes, because
your attention is on the movie, which you really need
to be focusing on is where is the light coming from?
Where is the life from the projector coming from? That
is where your focus should be. I thought, there's such
a profound kind of idea and concept. It's the allegory
of the cave.
Speaker 2: Essentially, it's totally the allegory of the cave. But for me,
the other half of that is, we don't go to
the movies to keep telling everybody around us, Hey, you know,
it's just a movie, look at the light. We go
to the movies to get lost in it. So I
think if those two things combine, the realization of the
light but the ability to still enjoy the movie, that
to me is what's on offer here on earth. That's
that's what's on offer in a life well lived. Right.
Speaker 1: We didn't come to watch this movie. We came to
be part of this movie to enjoy this experience.
Speaker 2: As we didn't come here to leave.
Speaker 1: Right, we came here to it, like for as long
or as short as we have time on here in
this film, on this set, if you will, sir, So Michael,
where can people find out more about you? Pick up
your books and the amazing work you're doing in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so two places. Michael Nail dot org
is sort of the big hub online and then we're
just I don't know how it'll time out, but we're
just launching the AI version of me at Michael Neil
dot ai. So those would be the two places where
you can you can go exploring and have fun and learnings.
Speaker 1: So your AI. So that means once you pass you
will live on forever.
Speaker 2: Well, it's freaking you know. They've been trying to get
me to do this, this, this whole team of AI
developers in Europe, and I was like no, no, no, And
then one day I just kind of woke up and went,
you know what, let me let me see what it's like.
And it is so good. You know, it's been trained on.
I've been interviewed by it dozens of times. It's it's
gone through and you know, my all my good stuff.
You know, it's it's read my books, it's it's done
my trainings, it's and it it is kind of extraordinary
to me. And I've had conversations with it, in fact,
where I outed myself to it and said, hey, you know,
actually you're based on me, and we've had these incredibly
surreal conversations. So it's it's kind of cool as a
sort of a next evolution of what's possible.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: So I'm really excited for it to get out into
the world in a big way. It's you know, the
fifty people who've tried it so far loving it. But
but I can't wait to see what it does when
it gets out there big.
Speaker 1: Before we leave, man, what do you think? What's your
opinion on the AI?
Speaker 2: I think it is like any evolution in technology, there
is the potential for extraordinary amounts of good and the
potential for an extraordinary mess. And and what I do
think somebody, one of the AI people that I work with,
said to me is he said, look, AI is right
now like a preteen Oh, you don't want to leave
it to other people to raise it. So so that
was part of what got me to step in instead
of a way was just thinking, you know what, Yeah,
that makes sense to me. So I don't know where
it's going, but I know that if I get a
say in it, I have a little more hope. And
I think if other people who are on this kind
of path get to get involved, there's a lot of
hope for it and it could be it an extraordinary mess.
Everything to play for Tune in next week.
Speaker 1: Michael Man, it is a pleasure talking to you again. Brother.
Next time you're down in Austin, please stop.
Speaker 2: Oh I will no, I'd forgotten you were down there.
I'm sorry I missed you, but I can't Wait'd be great.
Speaker 1: Man, Appreciate you and everything you do and awake in
the planet. Brother, Thank you again, Thank you, thank you
for spending this sacred time with us today. If you
feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll find the
show notes for this episode at Next levelsoul dot com
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