The Handbook for Accidental Awakening

Joe: For most people, it's just like a belt over the side of the head. What in the, is happening to me right now? When your ego disintegrates, or your identity disintegrates, there's a fear that comes with that, like what I know to be me is going to die on some level.

Brett: What are some of the things that might happen?

Joe: There's an undeniable shift that happens. You can't see the world the same way anymore. Everything that you experience before awakening, you experience after awakening. It's just that the background has changed on some level. Awakening is not some conclusion. It is just a part of the journey.

Brett: In our last episode, we talked about all these awakening experiences that can happen in this work.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: We haven't talked about what it's like when it happens or what to do about it. Or the effect it has in people's lives in a deep way. So I really wanna get into that.

Joe: Good. Good. I want to as well. I think we've had enough people going through it. It'd be nice to be able to point them to a podcast.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And give them a little bit.

Brett: Call this the Handbook for the Accidental AOA Awakening.

Joe: Exactly. Great title. The Handbook for the Accidental AOA Awakening. I love it. All right. Cool. Let's do it.

Brett: Awesome. So you're walking through the grocery store, you have no idea what you want anymore, or you had this recognition that for a while things have been a little bit different, and you just didn't notice it, or what else? What are ways that this shows up?

Joe: Oh, wow.

Brett: How might somebody recognize that this is something that's happening for them, or may be?

Joe: Yeah, in the majority of cases, there's an undeniable shift that happens. It's, you know, where just you can't see the world the same way anymore. And for some people that feels really good. And for some people that feels really bad. Which isn't really, it doesn't actually feel any differently. It's just whether there's resistance or not resistance in the system to it.

But for most people, there's a shock to the system when an awakening happens, not in all cases. Some cases they call, like, I think Fog Walker is one of the descriptions I've heard of this. Where somebody who's been working at it for a long time, been spending a lot of time, has integrated a lot of the minor experiences before the big shift happens.

They seem to sometimes just kind of look back and wait, the voice in my head, that negative self-talk is just like dissipated. What's going on? Or something like, it's the kind of, they hardly notice that it's happened and so, or they like have to reflect on the fact that there was a shift and that was very much my experience.

It's pretty rare for that to happen. For most people, it's just like a belt over the side of the head and all of a sudden, you know, it can feel very depersonalized. It can feel very like, you know, instead of breathing, you're feeling like you're being breathed, that you're walking through the landscape, but it also can feel like the landscape's walking through you. Like you're moving through the landscape, as the landscape is moving through you. Your visual feel can change again, flatten become more surreal.

And so there's these like sudden shifts. The two forms of sudden shifts that are distinct is there's one where it's like, oh, this is like cool. This is what I've been waiting for, this is what I've been working towards. It's like I've achieved this thing. And the other one is, what in the is happening to me right now? And how do I get this to stop? And this isn't normal and what's happening? And this can happen to people whether it's through our work or just through life circumstances, it's natural. And if there's nobody around them to tell them, Hey, this is normal and here's some things that you can do to integrate it, it can be very unsettling for them.

And so that, there's another piece to it too, which is like none of this is particularly personal. Like somehow or another, when we go through it, we think, oh, this is the better way, or this is the way I want to go through it. It's just none of that's personal. It just happens to be background. It's the same way that some people can sit in one of our five-minute exercises and they can have this awakening and 20 other people can sit through it and not have it.

It's like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that they had done before or some way that the ocean had eroded away the cliff for an extended period of time, whether that is like depression or whether that was years of meditation or whether that was years of playing with thoughts, so you could see through each of the thoughts. Or whether it was years of moving through all their trauma so that they can see what's beneath all their trauma, so they can see their identity that is not formed by the trauma.

All those things are steps, and so the way that it pops for each person, how quickly it pops, what makes it pop is like, none of that's personal. The only thing that is consistent is have you been, has the erosion of self happened over an extended period of time? What, through one of, I think at some point I realized like collecting all the means that I knew to erode self from meditation to view to,

Brett: having kids,

Joe: having kids.

Like there's just so infinite amount of them, but I think I came up with like at least 26 or 27 of them. And so many modalities will do it too.

Brett: Various paths of life experience.

Joe: Yes.

Brett: In general.

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. So none of it's personal and so that's a really important thing to see both from the person who's going through it and the person who's with somebody going through it is like, this is not a personal thing.

It's as personal as you have a flower bed, and like some flowers bloom at different times. Even the same species, different species, different colors, same species, different colors, different times of blooming, different size of flowers. Again, it's not personal, it's just the way that it works. It's not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, but it's always flowers.

Brett: Yeah. So what are the, some of the things that might happen first? Like in, in each of these cases?

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: In someone's life like what's, how might somebody notice somebody who's, let's say the fog walker or really ominous term, that's kind of fun.

Joe: It's like, yeah. You're just walking out of the fog and realize where you are. Yeah.

Brett: So how might somebody first recognize this?

Joe: Yeah. So the, I mean, the cool kind of cool thing for them, it's not really so important that you recognize it. That's kind of a cool piece to that particular way of going because the change is there.

So it's not, you know, recognizing it or not recognizing it is not so important. But if you wanna recognize what's happening, you'll notice that the repetitious negative self-talk, usually, especially if it's a head awakening, has gone down substantially. You know, the editor, you're constantly your voice editing your own life, commenting on your own life, that goes down very much. There's a far less war with yourself than, you know, there's not a lot of like self-fighting that happens. Even for me, there was a big experience, I just dismissed it 'cause it was like one of many big experiences that I had had meditating.

Brett: So let's go to the other side of the spectrum then for the people with the holy shit, what the fuck is going on?

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: What are some of the ways that that can show up in, differently across different people?

Joe: Yeah. So yeah, so for those folks, you know, it's, if you are, have more awareness in different areas of your, of your system.

So if somebody has what I call like more energetic awareness, they, and the Reikian term would fall more on the hysteric side or more on the rigid side. Those are like different size of the same coin.

Brett: Can you unpack that a little bit?

Joe: Yeah. So rigid, oftentimes rigid people are like constantly trying to contain all their emotions and they, you literally, they have this, a very rigid body and there's a very proper way to do things and very composed.

Brett: Literally a lot of like muscular rigidity to hold back the emotion.

Joe: Yeah. And what they're doing is they're holding back a lot of emotion, typically because their natural state is more like they feel everything the way I think somebody who has that state, like Tara is more in that kind of a state or has it more of that disposition, not a state. She'll say, it's like you kind of feel the universe, like you feel a lot. Emotions are more accessible to you, you're more sensitive, empathetically sensitive to other people. You know, there's just like a you just can feel the, I don't like the term, but like the energy of the room. Like you can feel the energy of somebody else. You'll get lost in other people's energy. You'll get lost in your own energy more. And for those people who have that disposition, there's gonna be a whole bunch of bodily sensations that come with it that are gonna be very disruptive. They're gonna feel oftentimes like, oh, I don't what is going on like this washing over my head. It feels like I'm getting thrown under water. I can't sleep. I'm like shaking in the night. There's a lot of stuff like that that can happen for those folks, and then that can become very scary. The more that that happens, the more that they resist, the more that they resist and they get scared, the harder the integration is.

And so for those people, it's, and now then that fear will get very will kind of act a little bit like, um, panic attacks or something like that. And then that puts them in a cycle that that's really important for them to realize, oh, this is normal. There's no problem with what's happening.

And that fear component, I think for all three of these groups, it has to happen at some time. There is a place where when you're, when your ego disintegrates or your identity disintegrates, there's a fear that comes with that. Like, what I know to be me is going to die on some level. You can call it death, you can call it transformation, whatever, but it's you're gonna cease to exist as you know yourself.

And so there is this fear that happens and it happens for everybody. And some people like me, I confronted it three years before during some of those big experience like, oh my gosh, this could be the moment. And then, oh, is this excitement? Is this fear? No, this is like, I know I don't want this to happen.

Other folks. It happens after the fact, like the awakening happens. They're like, uh, no, you know, and where like, I mean, the classic example of this is I was on the phone with somebody just the other day and like most of the time people who are interested in awakening will call me up and, or in a coaching session, they'll be like, I have this experience from time to time, how do I get it to persist? A person who's gone through this experience, like is more in the hysteric and, and more in the this just happened outta the blue. This literally happened the, the other day and I couldn't help but like laugh out loud. They're like, how do I get this to stop persisting? It's so persistent. Exactly.

And I did exactly what you did. Just laughed. But there's like a, typically they want it to go away. Zen will call this like zen sickness. There's this experience of like, life isn't personal anymore. And so what's going on with me, there'll be a questioning of like, whether like their brain is not working or if there's like some sort of sanity issue going on? Or how can I trust this? For those folks they need like a lot of ground, a lot of holding.

Brett: What does that mean exactly?

Joe: Literally physically being held is really good. Like having, if you have a, like a wife, lover or something, husband like, can you just hold them?

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: That's what those folks need. They need a lot of holding, a lot of ground, a lot of attention into the bottom of their feet is gonna be very helpful in their transition on a physical level. On a mental level, it's really important for them to realize like, oh, this is normal, this happens. I can point to 500 other people that it's happened to. And it's a known thing. Maybe not by everybody. It's a known thing. And so for mentally, it's really important for them to know, and one of the cleanest ways for them to note is like, oh, just notice you're still operating, like this happened to a friend of mine and this friend it happened to them, like on stage, like as it was like coming in. It was, they're on stage and it and it, and they were like, I don't know how I'm gonna live with this. I'm like, well, what happened? What happened to you on stage? Well, I finished the show. Did anybody know? No. Nobody noticed. Okay, so apparently you can live your life.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: So that there is, that noticing that is important to realize, oh, you're still operable, you're still feeding yourself, you're still able to make your way in the world, and the job is to just notice, oh, it still works. Like the whole, the system holds still works. The only thing that's shifting isn't your capacity to do things. The thing that's shifting. Is maybe your desire to do things, but definitely your who's doing the thing.

Brett: Mm-hmm.

Joe: The identity is the thing that's shifting.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And so the fear is just really about the self-definition. It's not about like your safety, but we, when we get scared, that's immediately what we do. We're like, okay, we're, we can't be safe. So how is this not safe? That fear can be extreme. It can be close to panic attacks. It can be, oh my gosh. And part of it is excitement. You know, without the breath. It's a fear that it's like, oh wow, I'm like, there's so much relief here. Which is why almost everybody who's gone through it and integrates it kind of wishes for that moment back, right? They're, oh, I, I want that experience back, even though it was scary as hell when they were doing it. That's like a very like super common and it doesn't ever last as long as you go it thinks. You know, I was talking to Tara about this the other day and somebody was going through it and she said, it's always the same. You don't want it to happen and never lasts as long as you think and then you want it back, you know? I'm just talking about the initial experience and that's generally because of the fear, it's because of the resistance to the thing, and so super important if you can during this process is to enjoy the sensations. Like get out of your brain about what it means for the future of you, and just notice that there's like a lot of freedom happening in your body. There's a lot of opening that's happening in your body. How do you enjoy that? How do you lean back and like deeply enjoy that experience will be really good for the integration process as well.

The ones that I noticed that are most hardcore is that they were, they found it through depression. So there's, there's a number of people, Eckhart Tolle being one of the more famous, Byron Katie being another, where they were in a deep depressive state.

Brett: Bucky Fuller.

Joe: Yeah. They were in a deep depressive state and they saw this through themselves, saw through the self, through the depression, and then they were relieved. And for those people, the integration can take an extended period of time. Like Eckhart Tolle was park bench, for a couple. Just couldn't really operate in society for a while. I don't know exactly Buckminster Fuller's story, but I noticed that, that those, that the radical transitions from super depressed to this recognition seems to be the most hard to integrate experiences. They still get integrated, but they're the hardest to integrate.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: Um, the other ones that are, are the ones that there's nobody there to tell you, Hey, you can integrate this experience, and somebody labels it as a problem, as like a disease or some version of that.

And then that becomes really challenging because to some degree, this experience is, is what you make out of it. Just like any experience, right? Two people are going down the rollercoaster and one person's like this is great. One person says, this is horrible. They're gonna have very different experiences on the rollercoaster.

Brett: One's got their arms in the air, the other one's got their like gripping.

Joe: Same thing with awakening. If somebody is resisting it, it's gonna be a very different experience for them. And so that's a really important thing whenever I'm working with somebody who's had this experience is to normalize it as much as possible.

Brett: Yeah. Okay. So now the initial thing has happened.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: There's this shift.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And then what next? What happens in like the following month or year?

Joe: Yeah. So again, different for different people. One of the seemingly common tracks, especially for people who are more in the head awakening side, they seem to start to identify with it, especially those who like worked for it. And so they're like, oh, I'm awakened. I'm the awakened person now. I'm different than other people because I'm awake. I am like maybe even a little bit better than or more advanced or subtly, but there's some identification with it.

And Adyashanti talks about this. He said, there's this time where you can identify with the oneness, the awareness, and you can dissociate from the world at large and always find your happy place, spacious awareness, I think is what he called it, but I'll call it your happy place. And you can always do that. You can identify that as that. But at some point, the way he describes it, he is like at some point you just, you're gonna get like, yeah, I understand that I'm not this person, I'm not this identity, but I'm gonna just get into that old suit and I'm gonna go live. I'm gonna go interact with life.

Brett: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Because you need an identity to interact with life. Right? So you just see through it. You're just like, this isn't real, but I'm gonna like be in this identity, and I'm gonna go, you know, oh fine, I'll play the role of the teacher. Fine, i'll play the role of the CEO. Fine, I'll play the role of the store clerk. I'm happy to do it because this allows me to have the full experience of living.

And so for some of those people that last 10 years of identifying as the awakened person and for some people it lasts two minutes. And I don't know for sure about this, but I seem to notice that the people who have more trauma relieved recognize sooner that this isn't an end state, that awakening is not some conclusion. It is just a part of the journey. And the people who have been solely focused on awakening or hit the, they hit the trip wire somehow, and it happens because of depression or whatever it is, or because of the way that they've been looking at physics for a decade, but their trauma isn't resolved, those people seem to be more in the place of i'm just gonna go into that spacious awareness to avoid my trauma.

Brett: Right. There's more to run from.

Joe: There's more to run from.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And they don't have the tools on how to integrate the trauma. There's an integration that happens to a year where, and this happens a lot with the heart awakening, where it is just really nice.

It's just like, oh, I love the world and the world loves me, and I'm like hanging out. And it's like a little Disney with like snow white and birds on their fingertips. And like, it's like this really lovely thing and there's just so much love and then for whatever reason that seems to come abruptly to an end for almost everybody I know who's gone through that, where they're in that for like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 months and then all of a sudden real life kind of kicks in.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: And it's a slightly different version 'cause they're not going to the spaciousness for an escape. They're just, I'm just like, I'm just so happy to be in love and like, this is great. And then some part, some unlearned lesson comes in, and it's like, yeah, we still have to learn that. We still have to learn boundaries.

We still have to learn whatever it is, expressing our wants. We still have to see through some level of our shame. And so that kind of screeches to halt, but they're still just like far more loving than they ever were before, but the kind of the glow of it.

Brett: Yeah,

Joe: It seems to change. And so that seems to happen and that doesn't seem to be so much based on trauma. That seems to be more based on whether the heart is the first part to awaken if it's like, if that goes first, seems to be, but again, I don't have enough data to really be able to say conclusively what's happening there. So that's, that's another piece that I see.

Brett: Yeah. So that was again, we did head, heart.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And now I'm curious about, gut or nervous system.

Joe: Yeah. This, this is probably the most rare to see that go first. Uh, you know, if you have a lot of energetic sensitivity, like I said then there's gonna be a lot more like feeling of being able to feel a room, energetic sensitivity, feeling the, like it feels like you feel the universe all the time.

This is the one where I see that it happens where people have maybe harder times, sleeping harder times, taking care of themselves, shake a lot through the night. You know, they call it kundalini in a lot of places, and this is one where the ground is just so incredibly important. And if someone, if they're experiencing that without the head awakening, without the heart awakening, they're still believing their thoughts and they're still believing their emotions, this is where that, that just can become they need a lot of integration, a lot of time, and it's very destabilizing. If they have a little bit of the head and the heart online, then it's a lot easier for that to occur, like the integration is occurring. So that can happen. And that can take also a year easily for people to, and that go get some acupuncture, go get craniosacral, go find the people who are good at energy work and like, how do they help you with all that stuff.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: That I'm not, you know, that I don't fully grok and need to talk to somebody else for that one.

Brett: Yeah. Well, speaking of which, the what to do or what is, what is supportive of integration?

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: What is supportive of integration for each of these?

Joe: Yeah, so pretty much everything that we've named is the stuff.

So it is, if you're in one of the ones where you're still believing your thoughts, like, oh my gosh, I might be going crazy, or, oh my gosh, this isn't safe, or whatever. Those are just thoughts. You're just having them. If you still believe them, then it's great to really start dissecting, taking apart your thoughts, seeing through your thoughts, seeing through the sense of eye makes the rest of the journey much, much easier. That's an important part. Getting ground is a really important part. Being in your body, being present, whether that's nature or massage or walking on with bare feet, putting your attention in your feet, doing slow yoga. Anything that's a very sensually, deeply sensual experience is gonna be incredibly helpful.

In any form of these awakenings, head, heart, the nervous system does shift with it. Because again, these are all the same thing. They're just a way to describe the evolution of them or the, or the different facets of it. But it's still the same flower that's opening. And so anybody who you can find, a great acupuncturist or somebody like that who can, who understands that system, that's gonna be really, really useful.

The other thing is to know that it, like everything, it just goes away. This also evolves. This also changes. This is not the end of anything. This is just a part of the journey. And that's also, I think, a really critical understanding for people and that it's not, this isn't the end, whether it's a good end or a bad end, this is not the end.

Brett: Yeah. So a lot of what I'm hearing is just the stance that you have towards the experience has possibly the biggest effect our experience. The head being in view, with a heart and the gut, making sure you're not believing or noticing if you're believing thoughts or stories about what's happening.

Joe: Yes.

Brett: And just letting it be what it is.

Joe: Yeah. And getting any kind of support you can have from anybody who's gone through it. Any kind of support you can have for people who haven't gone through it.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: Being around people who don't need you to be different, who aren't, oh my God, I'm concerned about you.

Brett: Or trying to diagnose you.

Joe: Or trying to diagnose you. That is super useful.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: To have people around you who can be with your experience can also welcome your experience.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: Very important.

Brett: So as this integrates over time what changes occur in people's lives in a lasting way? Like what's sort of the, the after the chop would carry water way that this carries forward?

Joe: Yeah. So let's talk about the first thing that I think is important is people get really scared. Like, oh my God. Like, I don't have any idea. When it happens, they're like, I don't know, like, is my whole life gonna fall apart? Can I stay married? Will I be able to keep my job? The answer is, you have no idea. But the other answer is I've never seen anybody have a worse life afterwards, and I've seen people be CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and I have seen people give up what they're doing and, and start an orphanage in Tanzania. And I have seen people who were store clerks before and store clerks after. I've seen folks who were venture capitalists before and venture capitalists after, and then become teachers. It's just, you know, it's not really a predictable thing. But what I notice is that in general, their lives improve because their capacity to handle, distortion or friction in their life becomes less.

And so they're constantly noticing where the friction is and doing something to prevent it. Like it's harder to be not in alignment with yourself, and so their world becomes more and more in alignment with who they are. But it doesn't mean that you're gonna like pop out and become a teacher and doesn't mean you're gonna pop out and be a great business person. Like it's just, it just means that your life is gonna continue and you're gonna have less and less friction as it evolves.

Brett: Yeah. I think that can be one of the things that's kind of a letdown of the experience is that beforehand you have this sense of, oh, the awakened diversion of me would be the great leader, the great parent, the great whatever, the great something. Whatever your former identity was kind of resting on.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Brett: And then you find out that that's not at all it, or it might be, but you're not in control of that.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And you can't predict it.

Joe: Yeah. There's a guy who said, show me an awaken person and let's put them in a seven hour car trip with two kids yelling in the back and see how awake they are.

And that's like the humanity continues. That's another thing is like, all the parts of humanity continue. The ups, the downs, the goods, the bads, the what we call positive emotions, what we call negative emotions, all those things just continue. We're continuing to evolve, which means we're continuing to have friction, all that stuff is there. And so that's another thing that happens over the long term. What also happens for quite a few people is they lose it and I don't know why, what creates some of them to lose it?

Brett: Meaning the awakening?

Joe: The awakening, or they think they've lost the awakening. This seems to happen more to people who got it all of a sudden, without like, out of the blue, it happened because maybe 'cause of a near-death experience.

Brett: Mm-hmm.

Joe: Or like a drug experience is that they have it, they lose it.

Brett: If it was particularly context dependent, especially.

Joe: Particularly, yeah. Yeah. And then they chase it for a while. Yeah. And then typically, and sometimes that chases two, three years and then they realize, oh, it's always been here. Which is such an interesting thing if you, if you haven't been through that or you haven't, if you don't haven't experienced awakening, it's very hard to understand why that would be. But I'll give my best shot of explaining it, which is some version of everything that you experienced before awakening, you experienced after awakening.

It's just that the background has changed on some level and on some level the what is experiencing it is different. And the, you know, a lot of meditation teachers or awakening teachers, non-dual teachers will say that the thing that is aware has always been there. So I could say to the audience right now, please get in touch with the part of yourself that's always been there from one years old till today.

No matter who said what, no matter how hurt you were, no matter how scared you were, it's always been there. It is the part of you that has been consistent through the whole thing. Identification, when your identification switches to that part of yourself, then that is awakening and that doesn't change. And so that's how they can say, oh, I lost it, but actually it never went anywhere.

Brett: And there's no exact spot where that part is.

Joe: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So that's another piece that I think is really for people who have been, you know, for a year or two. And then the other thing that's important is that it, it very much goes into the background and that might take decades, but it's like a kid who is walking. There's a lot of excitement with the fact that they're walking first. Oh my gosh, I'm walking. And then now we walk around all the time. We hardly notice we're walking. if we stop, we're like, oh, yep, it's in fact we're walking, but we don't even to think about walking. Awakening is very much like that.

You know, you don't want it gone. You're definitely like, okay, I don't want to go back to the way it was before this, but it's become so normalized. It's just happening all the time again. And so it's and especially from this viewpoint, especially from, 15 years afterwards or 20 years now, afterwards, there's a way you can really see how there was no difference like from before and after, because it's in the background again. But it's not entirely in the background. It's not in the background the same way. It's like the search is over but the existence is the same, almost.

Brett: Yeah. It was like a less bottlenecking going on with an identity.

Joe: Oh yeah. So much. Yeah. So those are all the glorious parts, right? That I like, I'm a little hesitant to talk about because then people start chasing it. But yeah, all those parts is like, decision making is easier. Like, you will take action to create more alignment in your life, more alignment in your life means that everything goes quicker, faster, better. Your relationships are better. You know, the war with yourself is far less. There's like all those really good things that come along with it. But then those become normalized.

And then, you know, if it's, like, if I'm at a shopping mall and there's mall music happening everywhere, one from the tennis shoe store and one from above my head, and then somebody plays like a note out of tune on a guitar. Eh, maybe I didn't even notice the guitar, but if all of a sudden I'm walking in the woods and it's totally silent and somebody plays a note out of tune on a guitar, I'm gonna, I'm gonna notice that. And that's kind of the way that it works, is that, yeah, there's a lot more spaciousness, but the thing that's out of tune becomes so much more pronounced.

Brett: Mm-hmm.

Joe: So that's another piece that happens.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: But it's definitely, like I said, I don't know anybody who's gone through it and who has integrated it, who doesn't feel like, would wanna give it back or is not, doesn't feel like their, their life is happier and at the same time there is a real possibility that your life looks nothing like it did.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: When it happened.

Brett: So how about their lovers, spouse, loved ones, business partners. What about them? Are they stoked on this all the time?

Joe: Some of 'em, yeah. Usually the most common reaction is fear. What's going on? I think a lot of people will keep it quiet because they don't wanna tell their partners about it because of, it's a tender thing and they don't want it questioned typically. But I think that when they know about it, people get, they get nervous, they get scared, they want to diagnose, they want to be able to control it. And the thing about it is, and there's a good reason for it because if I am in a close relationship with you and your identity changes, it means my identity has to change a little bit.

Brett: Or a lot.

Joe: Or a lot, so our relationship was, I took care of you all the time, and all of a sudden you realize that you don't have any problems. That like the whole idea of a problem has disintegrated in your mind. That's just another thought that you can't believe and that your essence has never changed. And so what's the problem? And any attack that I give you is my projection onto you. It's not personal. Then what do you have to defend? But I'm used to being the person who's like slightly above you and taking care of you and making sure that you're okay and emotionally being responsible for you.

What the hell happens to me? Well, how am I useful? So I might even at that point try to get you to like be the problem. Okay. Well, I'm used to you being the problem, so, you know, maybe we should see a psychologist about this, or maybe we should what's the diagnosis? What's going on? Or they might be feeling the other person's fear, especially if the person who went through it is like, what the fuck is happening to me? Right?

Brett: Yeah. Or if they're going to the spaciousness about it and there's a bunch of fear in the body and they partner's really sensitive.

Joe: Exactly. Or the spaciousness can be like, Hey, why are you leaving me? Like, Hey, I'm right here. What are you doing? Like, get back, get back to me. So all of those possible things are, all those things are really possible. It can also, like I with Tara, 'cause I was a bit of a fog walker was, it was like no big deal. She was like, oh, whatever it is you're going through, blah, blah.

Brett: Just more doing nothing,

Joe: Exactly. More being boring. Exactly. So she had been with me on the journey for so long, she was just like, okay, another one.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: Which is the same way that I had treated it. So it can be very different. But if you're with somebody who's going through this, the important thing is to be with them.

It's gonna change really rapidly, especially at first. Don't pretend to know what's going on for the other person or that you have to deal with it. It's like, how can you be there with them in the experience? The same way that you would be with an infant who was crying, or the same way that you would be with somebody who was scared, like a 3-year-old who was scared.

Like, how do you be with them in that way? Like, uh, nothing needs to change. I'm right here. I know that everything's gonna shift, so let's just, it's not something I've experienced, but I've heard that it's quite common, so let's just hang out and I'll hold you. I'll love you through this experience. Everything's gonna change.

Brett: Which of course requires having that same stance towards your own fear and your own uncertainty and disappointment or sadness that comes up when this shift occurs in your life.

Joe: Exactly. It does require all that and it's a lot to ask from somebody who has no idea what's going on.

Brett: Yeah.

Joe: So I don't expect that a lot of people will do it or be able to do it, or even end up listening to this, but if you happen to be one of those lucky people, that is the stance that'll make the whole thing so much easier for you and for them. This isn't just like, and don't, it's not like how do you take care of them in it?

It's, this is how do you take care of yourself in it and if you can just be with somebody and witness that transformation happening, it is a incredibly privileged place to be and it also quickens your own experience of it. Just the way, like if you see greatness, right? If you see greatness, it can inspire you to that greatness. Like, if I have been playing golf my whole life with people who suck at golf, and then one day I meet somebody who's amazingly great at golf and I play a game with them, I know that there's something possible out there. I see how they approach it. My golf game is gonna improve just by playing one game with them and hearing a couple of their words.

But I also like, oh, I know how, like I can see how they got there so I can get there too. I think there's something really important, not just around awakening, but having contact with greatness. Somebody who's really exceptional at anything is a privilege that allows you to know that something's possible and then be able to shoot for it.

Brett: Yeah. I think that also really just points to the value of doing the work in community.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Because you get to see a number of people going through it from various distances.

Joe: That's right.

Brett: And at various stages and various ways of noticing it, ways of it showing up in their lives, ways of responding to it.

Joe: You can see it at groundbreakers often. You can see like one person pops and then it's like a couple other people see it and they're like, oh, I can go there.

Brett: Ricochets.

Joe: By the way, how was it for you? When you're in your experiences of this, like was it, I don't think we've ever talked about it?

Brett: Yeah, I definitely say it's like sort of I'm in the fog walker category.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And like now I can look back on a whole number of experiences as a kid or in my life that were like, oh yeah, this was touching it. This was cracking something open.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And I think a lot of it really happened around my brother getting cancer and passing. That was something like seeing him go through a not intentional, but very much awakening esque process.

Joe: Yes.

Brett: That, integrated into full disintegration.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: In a way that was very connected to me very obviously, very deeply touched me.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And kind of brought me along on it, on that journey, like something I couldn't have planned.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Something I wouldn't have asked for.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And something I can appreciate.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And I think that was made possible by a lot of the work that we've done together and a lot of the experience that I've had around death with many of my friends in the past.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: But I'd say as far as the kind of the nature of the experience, it's been little by little noticings. Oh, changes my visual field. Oh, that's what people have been talking about. It's like, it's like it's a nothing burger.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And it's also everything.

Joe: Everything.

Brett: Yeah. And I just repeated the exact same words that have been said thousands of times and I didn't understand when they were 10.

Joe: Exactly.

Brett: A handful of them.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And also some characteristics of the, definitely the fear. I think for me I did work through a lot of fear earlier in my life. I remember when I started base jumping, there were times I would just lay down on my couch days before I was planning on going and making a jump.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And a jump at that time would involve, driving to some TV tower in Cleveland in the middle of the night and climbing a thousand feet up a ladder at 2:00 AM and having some wind and climbing around through a bunch of cables and trying not to get my parachute snagged, which did happen one time and it was really scary. And so I, I'd have this just laying on the couch experience of by what I'm about to choose to do, I could be like, this body could be broken tomorrow forever, and I might be here to experience that, or I might not be.

Joe: Right.

Brett: And sitting with that, I think did a lot of the groundwork on maybe the gut level.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: So when the later work happened on the head level and the heart level, it didn't bring up as much massive fear moments, but there were a few of them there. There was a particular exercise that we experimented with in some of the early work, and I was pretty shocked that as an adrenaline junkie, bass jumper type, I could have an experience hanging out in a group of 12 people where we're just like playing around with something involving various roles I play.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: And within a matter of 10 minutes I could find myself screaming and clawing my way away from the group and being held. And then you walking in the room and walking up and just saying, what's behind your eyes right now? And then the world getting psychedelic without drugs. That was not expected, definitely some fear associated with that.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Yeah. And even then it was, about an hour of just spaciousness.

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Had dinner and then I don't even remember when it kind of just flipped back into normal?

Joe: Yeah.

Brett: Previous normal. And then it slowly over time started to happen more and more in more and more subtle ways.

Joe: Yeah. That's the other thing that I think is really important for folks to know about the experience is that when you get a taste of it and like the first time, so there's a lot of people who've had a taste and then they're like trying to get there.

But what I notice is when somebody has a taste of it, there's almost an inevitability of a persistent understanding of it because it's just like when you see the light at the end of the cave, you know which way to walk, and you're just gonna get to it eventually, right? Like, it's like that, that homing beacon has been turned on. You're gonna get there, you know, unless you pass suddenly. It just seems to be like that's the experience that I notice. Once people taste this, they're just like their life arranges to find it.