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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is David Alsobrook. I’ll just read a little bio of David here. David was born again in 1969. And I’m gonna want to ask you what that means, at age 15. Two years later, he began traveling full time at the age of 17. in full time ministry across the US and abroad preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. His ministry has taken him to more than 2000 congregations of many different denominations and non denominations. He is preached in 48 states and all over the lower provinces of Canada. In his 20s, he began writing books which have found their way into no fewer than 50 nations and have been translated into many languages. Excuse me. David has written co written or ghost written about four dozen titles. He is not a high school graduate. Neither was I, by the way, although I got a GED, and only briefly attended college as a non degree student, his ordination as Orthodox, Anglican, but his ministry is trans denominational in scope. Despite his lack of formal education, he has taught the Word of God in numerous Bible schools and Bible colleges. 1000s of people have received life changing experiences with God through His ministry, including numerous miracles, of all kinds. He has been he has been miraculously healed of Epstein Barr Virus, a heart problem and failing eyesight, although he does have a bit of a cold at the moment, right. All confirmed by later medical tests, the greatest miracle he has ever received since his new birth, however, was a miracle of sudden radical transformation in 2008. This miracle brought fullness of life, freedom from mental anxieties of all sorts, and deep, profound peace. And probably that transformation that happened in 2008 is the reason I’m interviewing you today. Because if it hadn’t happened, you probably wouldn’t have been interested in Buddha at the Gas Pump. And I and I probably wouldn’t have found quite found an angle, which kind of justified my, my interviewing you. So we want to hear your whole story. And you know, what led up to that transformation, and, you know, the nature of the transformation itself, and what impact it’s had on your life ever since, and all sorts of things like that. And there are also some anomalies, I would have to say, I mean, you know, I have just, I don’t think that having a spiritual awakening necessarily means, you know, if you took 1000 People who had had the kind of spiritual awakening you’ve had, they might have all sorts of different religious and political and moral opinions. Yes. Which, which might actually differ from one another. And, and you have some from what I see on your website and have seen on some of your videos, you have some rather typical conservative moral opinions, which kind of are, you know, consistent with conservative Christianity? Yes. But at the same time, and I’m cool with that. At the same time, you have, you know, had this very profound awakening, which which enriches and every, every moment of your life, so
David Alsobrook: It is, it is an anatomy an anomaly.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so we’ll get into that. But why don’t we start by just having people get to know you a little bit better, you know, give us a bit more of your background, whatever you consider is irrelevant. And we have plenty of time to go into the details of it. And I’m sure you’ll want to go into quite some detail about this. So called transformation experience, what happened in 2008?
David Alsobrook: Well, let me see, I was raised in a minister’s home, Christian home, and believe the Bible was the Word of God just raised up in that and read and studied the Bible, in church, Sunday school, all of that, and but when I was 15, I committed my life to Christ, as we say in Christian terminology, and received the new birth or the born again, experience that Jesus talked about in John’s Gospel. And during that time, I became an avid Bible reader. Student,
Rick Archer: hang on just a second if you don’t mind. I don’t actually know What the born again, experience is, and when I’ve heard about that experience, I have either thought that perhaps it had to do with just some emotional frenzy that you see people getting whipped into it, and in some kind of Christian gatherings, or perhaps actually some sort of non dual awakening of the kind that you had in 2008. But you distinguish that born again, experience Oh, so what is? And do all Christians sort of agree? If you say not, if you say born again, are they really all talking the same language? Or could that refer to a whole lot of different things?
David Alsobrook: No, it’s basically referring to the same thing when you hear Christians referred to being born again, or born from above, born and new. It’s the receiving of divine life into your spirit. Traditional Christians, teach and believe that man’s spirit is dead, and to God because of sin, born in original depravity, and then also disobedience to the revealed word of God in the scriptures, and that an individual must be born again to receive this life from above, this spiritual quickening inside, but it’s, it is not the transformation experience. There was nearly 40 years between my born again experience which was the genuine, what Christians believe and teach, and then receiving this soul transformation. Born Again happens in the deepest part, this spirit in the Christian view, the Holy Spirit, births your spirit. And then transformation happens in the soul realm. So there’s the distinguishing between spirit and soul.
Rick Archer: Okay, would it be germane right now to try to parse that out what the difference is between spirit and soul? Are we getting too picky right now?
David Alsobrook: We’re probably getting a little too picky for our audience.
Rick Archer: Well, let’s, let’s let’s get into that later on. Okay.
David Alsobrook: Okay.
Rick Archer: And but now, you know, there are Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, who have profound awakenings and experiences, are those born again, experiences and just don’t use that terminology? Or would would you insist that that’s a completely different animal, and only Christians say, explicitly Christian people have, quote, unquote, born again, experiences?
David Alsobrook: Well, Rick, as I’ve been looking at everything, the last few years, I have come to see that many people experience probably the same thing. We all use different terms.
Rick Archer: Okay. Yes. Because on your website, it still says something about in your youth, how you, you know, indulged in false religions before committing your life to Jesus Christ, and that false religions is a bit of a red flag. Yeah, I’m sure
David Alsobrook: it is. Yeah. But I don’t know if I would say it just that way now. Okay. I’m evolving. Yeah, it’s a process.
Rick Archer: I mean, whenever somebody tries to proselytize me, and I say, hey, study astronomy, you know, I mean, the Kepler telescope now tells us that there are probably 40 billion earth like planets in our galaxy alone. And then there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe. And for all we know, there might be countless universes.
David Alsobrook: Yes, it might be continuing. It might be Yeah, new universes constantly being made.
Rick Archer: So here we are on this weensy. BNC speck of dust? Yes. And who are we to say that we’ve got a total monopoly on truth or spirituality or anything else?
David Alsobrook: In fact, I’ve enjoyed so much reading, you know, from different ones like Hafeez. Lately, he’s new heartthrob, and it was a Sufi? Yes. I love that Sufi, and really, it speaks so much to my heart and so similar. And in Judaism, we see so many things in classical Judaism that a vibrant spiritual life. Yeah. Ramana Maharshi. There you go. Yeah, the awakening the self abidance the self is teaching there. I love it. I resonate with these guys.
Rick Archer: Well, I hope you don’t put yourself out of business by saying this. I mean, you don’t
David Alsobrook: know why, you know, I? I’m an anomaly. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, I honor you for you know, I mean, it takes a certain amount of courage really, because I mean, your your profession is to be a Christian teacher, and you must have a certain congregation or a certain listenership or whatever, who resonates with what you have to say. And I met
David Alsobrook: many congregations, many churches, I’ve never been localized minister, I’ve always traveled and spoken in churches.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And but you know what you’re saying now is G, all these different expressions of evolution. Yeah. And that’s not that’s not traditional Christian teaching at least. Oh, No, at least the way it has come down. I mean, maybe some of the early Gnostics felt that way or something, but
David Alsobrook: I guess I could be labeled agnostic. Now, I was reading a book on Gnosticism. The other day, I ordered this book and thought, Hey, that sounds like me, but I’m not so concerned about about that there doesn’t seem to be a me all that much anymore. Yeah, just sort of something I read and resonate with or don’t resonate with. And it can be written by a Christian or Muslim and think well, that’s good. It’s left field.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay, beautiful. So let’s get back to your story that kind of I think will enable most of my listeners to breathe a sigh of relief because you know what I’m talking about. I mean, there’s, there’s just they’re fundamentalist in every religion. And I think it’s, it has a lot more to do with human mentality than
David Alsobrook: a fundamentalist and haven’t been for quite a while. Yeah. Rom Das is one of my favorite teachers now. Experiments in truth I love is
Rick Archer: great. Yeah. And there’s a certain kind of chest beating my way as the best way mentality that Yeah. Personally, I think it’s symptomatic of a kind of an insecurity, you know, there
David Alsobrook: is a deep, unhealed pain inside there. And you have to be right. It’s all ego. I have to be right, my way is right. And we need people to agree with us to affirm in our own heart that yes, I am on the right path. And of course, after transformation happens, all of that just dissolves in 2008, and an instantaneous miracle. Just everything in me of that way. Just just crumbled and dissolved. Yeah, it’s gone.
Rick Archer: So we get into that no, or do you want to I’ve kind of thrown you off the course of your unfoldment of your story, but we can go back to
David Alsobrook: if you feel like they’re more whatever, whatever you would like to talk about, we’ll
Rick Archer: just follow along. But you know, you were starting to tell your life and you’re young, and you’re traveling, and you’re teaching and all that stuff, and I
David Alsobrook: don’t have much in her misery. Yeah, unless I was functioning in my gifting, you know, preaching and teaching in front of people than laying hands on people praying for people and seeing miracles, which I could not deny. They truly happen. Miracles are real. And not only I’ve experienced them, I have seen them 1000s of times.
Rick Archer: Is that kind of interesting that when you put yourself in the role of a teacher, a switch goes on, and you actually become something greater than what you ordinarily are. Yeah.
David Alsobrook: When the Inner Inner flow begins, of course, it isn’t. It isn’t a little self, here it is, you know, this self. Yeah, the flowing of the life, the divine, the divine mind.
Rick Archer: And you’re serving as a sort of instrument and as an instrument, something much greater is happening then ordinarily happens when you’re just David also, Brooke, you know, making breakfast,
David Alsobrook: or watching you watching you on your programs, which I’ve so loved. Sometimes I see that happen in you. There’s there’s Rick and then suddenly, there’s that voice that I know.
Rick Archer: It does happen voice. Yeah, I used to teach meditation for many years also. And that would happen, you’d get up in front of a few 100 people and start talking and boy, you know, something would wake up and you that just wasn’t ordinary. Yes.
David Alsobrook: I love it when that happens. Yeah, it’s, it’s so and you can recognize it in any one. In any realm of functioning when that happens.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think I mean, just to diverge and just take this conversation wherever it may go. It even happens in in, you know, rock musicians and stuff. Mick Jagger gets up on the stage in front of 10,000 people and there’s a certain something that begins to shine through him that I’m sure he doesn’t have every moment of his life. Okay, back to the story. Okay. So
David Alsobrook: well, even though I was very devout, Christian, studious, in the Scriptures, the old New Testament scriptures, that Christian bible and knew them so well. Not only English, but Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic. Quite a bit you learn those languages. I have studied them I’m not to speak them I’m not conversant but to read it see it and understand what he’s saying are pointing to fairly well over the years. Yeah, very, very studious. But it didn’t it didn’t. There was only temporary relief of pain. I was I was born with pain it seemed like and, and the it would be temporarily a squashed or relieved during times of prayer, and becoming still praying in the Holy Spirit Christian experience. Bringing the Holy Spirit, which I noticed that Francis Bennett on your program a few months ago, he referred to that also. And the edaphic edification I would send to my spirit with a sort of take over rise above and, and submerge the pain that I felt the the struggle, the misery, the inner misery, the conflict. But it would only be temporary. In any case, it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be permanent, it wouldn’t be a permanent relief. And I went through in 2005, went through a devastating life experience. And I began to realize, I don’t really know any thing all of these years, for what only temporary relief of pain, and I had seen real miracles, I could not doubt I had received real miracles in my body, that that medicine had doctors had verified, I knew there was reality, to my faith to my spiritual life, but it was so fragmentary. It was so much a smaller part of of who I was. In fact, I didn’t even know who I was, for a long time, I was so wrapped up in my functioning, that my role identity as a preacher, teacher, you know, I am a preacher so that if I am a human who preaches I am a preacher, I was so caught up in that, that when I wasn’t doing those things, my sense of value, my significance, would also be diminished. And so in 2005, I began truly doing what Jesus said in Matthew six, Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. These are the things I was looking for. So I began to seek first the kingdom of God and to study what is the kingdom of God me. Here’s another place where I may, quote heretic because most Christians, we the kingdom of God is yet future that is going to come visibly. When Jesus said, The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be perceived. Low, here it is or low, there it is, is it furlough or, look, the kingdom of God is within you. And that had never become real to me. But for the next three years, I just put everything aside, and made that knowing God, my preeminent purpose in life, seeking God as I understood him, playing the teachings of Jesus, which to me, had been excluded from most Christian lives. And it’s amazing Rick, speaking as a Christian, how far away from the teachings of Christ the church is today, how far we’ve gone. And historically, also, from what I know of church history, that the atrocities committed in the name of Christ, the crusades, and everything else?
Rick Archer: Oh, yes. The Spanish Inquisition, oh, all sorts of terrible things. Well, you know, I mean, when administrative mentalities get a hold of spiritual teacher,
David Alsobrook: when the ego and the mind and there gets a form established of a church that we have to propagate, and keep going, gets going along with in all kinds of terrible atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ, he’s been blamed for so much.
Rick Archer: Sure. And, you know, Christianity is not exclusively guilty of this. I mean, all look at what happens with Islam. I mean, I’m sure this well, Rumi that you were just mentioning was a trophy, which is a branch of Islam and, and Hafiz very spiritual guys. But look at some of the crazy stuff that’s
David Alsobrook: most of his poems are lost to us today, because of Muslim clerics banning his writings, Book burnings, and so on.
Rick Archer: And a great deal of Christian teaching, I believe is last are
David Alsobrook: the exact same thing. Yes.
Rick Archer: Yeah. In fact, I was reading something rather about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how they were probably hidden away on purpose because the Gnostics were being persecuted by the, by the sort of more fundamentalist types and wanted to sort of preserve those teachings and finally found in 1946, or something, and opened up a whole new chapter. But you were just saying that, okay, you’ve been a Christian for decades, and, you know, professional one, so to speak, you know, traveling around and teaching and preaching that, but then you entered this phase where for several years, how you, you took a fresh approach, and it’s not completely clear to me the distinction between what you had been doing and then what you began to do during those several years.
David Alsobrook: I know it’s so hard to find words. Still find hard to find words. Let me just say in the application of Christianity, and in the practice of Christianity, we tend to completely get away from the Sermon on the Mount, which is the greatest teaching that Jesus ever gave? is teaching on turning the other cheek is teaching on seeking the Lord place. All of these things we have strayed from in modern Christianity today.
Rick Archer: Is that the way where he said, Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth and all those beautiful things. Yeah,
David Alsobrook: it’s three chapters. Matthew’s Gospel, chapters five, six, and seven. And he was so simple. Christians have made everything so complicated with Christ, man, it’s so sweet.
Rick Archer: What do you think about the new pope? Oh,
David Alsobrook: I like Francis. And he’s so genuinely. And the humility that I sense in the man.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I love that. Everybody sees that. It’s a kind of, it’s a hopeful sign.
David Alsobrook: unassuming, ego lis. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful, great
Rick Archer: guy. Okay, so then, I guess what you’re saying is you entered a phase where I went,
David Alsobrook: I left Christianity to go back to Christ.
Rick Archer: Right. He stopped chewing on the, on the rind of the orange and began getting inner juice.
David Alsobrook: Yes, the, and not only reading, you know, Matthew’s Gospel, which is so clear there. But the Gospel of Thomas, which traditionally has been rejected by the Church, which was one of the fights it’s called gnostic, right? But but it was the the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Matthew, where they two accepted gospels, the first 70 years of the church history. And Jesus is so clear in there, which which Luke later quoted, after Thomas had written it was Thomas wrote his gospel within 20 years of the crucifixion.
Rick Archer: And then this stuff got edited out at the Council of Nicaea, or some such thing,
David Alsobrook: oh, yeah, church, we could go back to the various councils, been with very heavy minds that decided, Oh, we got it, you can’t go along with that. Because it doesn’t help advance our purpose, our program, right and establishing the church, we’ve got to make people feel that the physical church on the earth is, is central to the message of Christ. Whereas, you know, like, well, I could just go way off here. But in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said that you can chop a piece of wood and lo, I am there. He was teaching that he that he is everywhere the Christ spirit is everywhere,
Rick Archer: right. And then, of course, they put in this little proviso that everything in this book is true, and you can’t change anything.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, that’s right. All of it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And then a lot of people still buy into that.
David Alsobrook: There’s so many contradictions, even and mistranslations. When you study like the Greek New Testament, you find so many myths, translations into our English versions, and, and then there’s a war within Christendom with Christendom, which is done Christianity. There is a ongoing feud, you know, which version is the right version, King James at 1611, which no one really has the King James, of 16 elevens gone through like 30 revisions over the centuries. And so what people think is the original King James that they read isn’t even though original greens, King James. Christian Christendom again, it’s full of all these contradictions. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, I just get back to astronomy 40 billion earth like planets, you know, and, and certainly, obviously, the universe can’t be 66,000 years old. And and as I wouldn’t even go so. Well, I would definitely go so far as to say that there are many paths to God. And Jesus isn’t the only way at least not Jesus, the man if he is then he’s on a very busy tour to 40 billion planets.
David Alsobrook: The Christ
Rick Archer: the Christ, the inner essence. Yeah,
David Alsobrook: yes.
Rick Archer: That’s the only way.
David Alsobrook: I am. Right. Got it. Okay, so back to your story. Oh, anyhow, from 2005 to 2008, I had gotten involved in 12 Step programs to help me recover from emotional hurts and abuse and I found them very helpful. And I was practicing, you know, all of the steps, you know, learning to do those steps and apply them to my life. And one day, I heard heard someone in a 12 step gathering shared about just getting out alone. And so I’d begun doing that. It helped my mind from all of its busyness and and incessant work and I would just go outside and there was a nature preserver there is one by five miles from where I live. I would go out and and just sit, you know, by the lake on a bench and it was mostly devoid of human traffic. King during the day there wasn’t Many people, and I would just enjoy nature and practice what Jesus said once again in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, to look at the fowl of the air to look at the flower. And I began to send such a resonance coming with it, to me a stillness in my mind, when I would look at something in nature and say, Aha, yes, I could, I could sense the life underneath it the life enveloping. And one day while I was out in the nature preserve, I was walking and I was headed toward the the little Lakeside bench that I was going to sit on normally sit there. And about 100 feet in front of it, as I was on this path, there was this large flat rock and it came to me very strong sit on that rock. And, and I obeyed and just sat down, and it was kind of uncomfortable. And as I kind of squiggled, my mind suddenly became still. And it was as though I didn’t, I will, although it was very alert, Rick, and very aware. It was like I wasn’t even there. And it was just like, the me that I always thought I was this David with all my problems and unmet needs and all of my failures in life and all of these different pain, unresolved conflict, things from childhood, every, it’s like all of that just crumbled in front of me just like a, like a statue of me just crumbling and blowing away. And I could see the brilliant light that it was in the grasp around me, the leaves of the trees and the tree in front of me, it was like this beautiful light just filtered. And I knew that light was like the very light of God.
Rick Archer: So you’re not talking just about reflected sunlight, but you’re talking about a set of illumination or something from if
David Alsobrook: it was it was brighter than the sunlight. It did not hurt the eyes. But it was very visible. And it was the perfect outline of each leaf. There was also an outline of light around it.
Rick Archer: And wondered if that’s what the burning bush was all about. Have you ever thought do you think?
David Alsobrook: I don’t know? I don’t know if that’s what Moses saw or not. But I know that’s what I saw. Yeah. And, and I lost all sense of time or sense of me. Olson sense of everything. But there was a deep reality that not only that I was experiencing, it was much deeper. It was a reality that I was that I always had been that I am that I always have this deep reality. Oh, such reality piece. Lie. And when I finally got up, the sun had moved far and afternoon sky. And when I went there it was in the morning. And I’ve never been to say ever since that day.
Rick Archer: Yeah, cuz you’re referring to it in the past tense, but obviously it’s not yes tense, is it?
David Alsobrook: No, no. Right here right now. And so in the 12 step groups, I was listening. And when I was share, I began to share this sort of thing and a lady, that young lady brought up to me after a meeting, she said, I think you might enjoy this book. And it was called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And so I took him began to read. Yes, this wow. I was so glad to see that someone had elucidated and verbalize what I had experienced with him.
Rick Archer: Yeah, his experience was kind of like yours, too, in a way because he wasn’t really expecting this or anything. It just kind of dawned on him one day.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, he was been in a lot of misery. Now, he hadn’t been on the spiritual path or seeking he was, I believe he was 29 years old when his awakening takes. And here I was, you know, in my 50s. And, and already been through lots of failure, repeated failures repeated over and over, just get to the place of despairing of like, just when will it stop? I just want it to be over.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And leading up to this transformation experience you had actually, I mean, not only had you dedicated your life to spirituality in various forms over decades, but you had also established a practice of hours of deep prayer every morning. Yes, that’s true. So in a way you I mean, you were engaged in a meditative practice.
David Alsobrook: Yes, for 40 over 40 years.
Rick Archer: Seriously, too. I mean,
David Alsobrook: seriously?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. So to some people, I don’t know. Since I’m a meditator myself, you know, I have a little bit of a bone to pick with people who say that practice is irrelevant and isn’t going to have any kind of an influence.
David Alsobrook: And I intensified all of that during 2005 following I mean, no, no television. Just every waking moment, I was crying, I was so desperate for God. And then the answer the way it happened, I never would have thought of that. I could imagine that totally unexpected, like, you know, how could you plan or thinkers, something like that? What’s the significance of a flat rock and you know, what it was, but it was just thought, I believe it was just choosing to obey that inner voice. Yeah. And let go of that ego, because the self, the voice of self ego was so prevalent in my life. And as it is, in many people I know, in their spiritual life has taken over the role in that also, but as disguised itself where they they can’t see it. They don’t know it’s, it’s he goes, Jesus said, Father, forgive them
Rick Archer: for what they do. Right. So obviously, you were an intense seeker. Really? Yes. And which also, points yeah, kind of pertains to this, this anti seeker bias that you see here in some spiritual circles.
David Alsobrook: Yeah. I’ve noticed that. Yeah. Different places to since but I, I, you know, whatever works for people. I certainly would encourage that. Absolutely. I don’t think just you know, getting a bud Bud Light sitting in front of the TV is going to introduce Trump.
Rick Archer: Yeah. seek and you shall find knock on the doors to the opening. Yeah. In fact that there are a lot of saints and teachers who say that, you know, the most influential thing in terms of realizing God is the desire to do so. Yeah, that that does whatever specifically you may do. It’s the desire itself, which has the greatest effect.
David Alsobrook: Yes. Yeah, I heard someone say I think it was Teresa of Avila, who’s also become a sweetheart to me. I love the Christian mystics. And Jhana the cross and some of their writings, I believe she said God seeks to be sought. He longs to be long before he desires to be desired.
Rick Archer: Nice, marshy Mahesh Yogi once gave a lecture like that where he said that God is like an artist and very few people appreciate the artists work. And he’s producing all these wonderful works, but hardly anyone appreciates it. And if some guy starts to really appreciate it, the artists will kind of like you know, perk up they’ll say, oh, there’s someone who really appreciates more and he’ll come to the appreciator you know, the appreciate won’t have to come to him. He’ll come knock at the door and say, Hey, I understand you really get it?
David Alsobrook: Yeah, and it can be so simple is observing God’s presence in nature. You know, the creators life is in what he created appreciating beauty that is all around us everywhere, I believe pleases Him.
Rick Archer: But of course, we have to have the capacity to appreciate you know, those those who have eyes to see let them see pearls before swine and all that.
David Alsobrook: Oh, yeah. So you know, a lot of the Christian terminology. I noticed this
Rick Archer: miraculously somehow. I mean, I you know, my mother would drag me kicking and screaming to church on Sundays and pretty much ruin my day. But you know, after I you know, my two I hated church. I want to be out playing baseball or something. Yeah. But you know, after I kind of got into spirituality as a teenager, then then I began to understand what it was talking about and eventually read the bible cover to cover and even though even even the Book of Mormon I read cover to cover which As Mark Twain said chloroform and print but I did
David Alsobrook: I did that for fun. It was it was entertaining some of it
Rick Archer: Yeah. So when you got up that up off that rock, it was anything more to say about the experience itself right then and there on the rock that is worth noting before we move on?
David Alsobrook: Well, yes, I would say that as I got up and began to walk away. I knew I knew that. How can I put this? I knew that not I had found it. I knew I was it. And that it was It wasn’t an answer for me the me that had been seeking that me had disappeared. So it was totally different from what I envisioned it would be
Rick Archer: do you feel right now that there’s no me
David Alsobrook: I’m aware I’m aware of the me yes, I’m aware of this me and I had about five years of just pure bliss. Just every day and night no problem. Dreaming stop my my mind had been so active dreaming, many of them are, you know, painful type dreams or anxiety kind of dreams, panic dreams. And all of that stopped sleep became so sweet and everything, just the very moment in which I was living. I think this is why the young lady introduced me to the power of now because I was I would share this and in our group, I’d say just just this very moment is just so rich and there was just so peaceful. It’s deeper than they Aha, I was having some aha moments before this transformation occurred. But afterwards it’s like Ah ha ha like I’m realizing but I am
Rick Archer: so what happened after five years did it did you integrate it more? Oh, you physically felt
David Alsobrook: I took a physical fall in my garage and landed to complete flip the light the light wouldn’t turn on. I’m running down the 17 steps or whatever it is, and and I thought I knew it well enough and lived here over a dozen years. 15 years whatever. Running down the stairs and took a miss Mr. Step and did a complete flip and landed on my right shoulder. Right on the pavement that Congressi met pavement is just laid there just man It hurts so bad. Pain, like I never knew it’d be one year next month. Physical pain, agony I thought I knew what pain was. But and there is a difference between pain and suffering because although I had great pain for about six months, I didn’t suffer because there was no little story attached to it. There was no me. I mean, I was aware of this pain did not enjoy this pain. But I found that by being present with it in but I after a little while, I did allow murmuring to arise. And it was the reemergence of ego ego that I thought was dissolved. Here it comes.
Rick Archer: You allowed it because do you have a choice again,
David Alsobrook: I don’t know. I think I got tired of the, of all of the pain. And so whatever happened back in about July, I finally lost it and became angry with God. And so I did well and then begins to suffer. So I went from five years, I guess five years to the to the month of no suffering, no pain, and my word life all through that five years when I say still had many, many challenges and problems, but didn’t seem like a problem that is like okay, there’s that thing I need to take care of. But it’s like out here, but in last July then I’ll get back in here. It’s not that I let it it just that as I gave into that whatever it was, I guess it could be like Adam and Eve in the Garden partaking because I had to enjoy and it was so real. And if I never if I even reverted all the way back to the old David which did not happen from this past July for a few months until the miracle healing occurred to my shoulder and October toward the end of October 2013 instantaneously miracle happened was instantly healed chiropractor was just laughing when he started to work on me. And I didn’t say anything to him I Sunway with me and not a word to him. And he started feeling he said a lot. What’s going on you and so another miracle there’s like four or five major physical miracles. Yeah,
Rick Archer: so you’re saying that you know in a way and correct me if I’m wrong he kind of regressed a little bit are back slow
David Alsobrook: back slid these old Christian turnouts I back slid Yeah. murmuring, complaining, yeah. Didn’t you just but you know, people that knew me that were around me were amazed at how like I could be an incredible physical pain and not complain,
Rick Archer: because they weren’t suffering. I was suffering. Do you think Christ suffered on the cross?
David Alsobrook: Oh, yes, I do. We took on it and that agony then he let the why question in that. Adam and Eve led into it which led to them protecting the forbidden
Rick Archer: fruit. So thinking back slid a little bit?
David Alsobrook: Well, he experienced the why he experienced the potential, oh, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So he experienced the why question that invariably has led multitudes of minutes away from God. But I don’t think he did he realigned himself. Nevertheless, what not what I will hear and father into your hands. I commit myself
Rick Archer: theory was that that was on the cross he said that not in the Garden of Gethsemane
David Alsobrook: Well, I believe that he reiterated what he had prayed in the garden. I
Rick Archer: see I see. Yes. Yeah, cuz I know in the in the garden he started
David Alsobrook: like Why would you lie? And that was the the temptation there in the Garden of Gethsemane to not go through and drink the cup that Abba had given him to drink.
Rick Archer: Sometimes one
David Alsobrook: I did back in, back in last July. I truly did. I said, I can’t take this anymore. I’d rather be dead. I’m just hurting all the time. Day Night. Fancy. I couldn’t sleep. You go months without sleep. Oh, yeah. In my mind was just until finally, it broke. But up to that time, it wasn’t like I was trying to persevere in Doer there was no that old. I gotta wait this out type of thing. But it was this like, suddenly? Yeah, I did. Completely.
Rick Archer: Do you believe in the law of karma?
David Alsobrook: I think so. I think I was born with it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think we all are, if we buy into that. So, you know, maybe there was some karma
David Alsobrook: or sowing and reaping in the Christian term. But same as karma.
Rick Archer: Same idea. So maybe there was just some karmic payoff with the shoulder thing, you know?
David Alsobrook: Yeah, there may have been and then may have been producing more karma last July for a while.
Rick Archer: In fact, there’s a saying with regard to awakening, or impending awakening, which is, you know, when the when the postman knows you’re gonna move he tries to deliver all your mail so and people often say that, you know, they’ll have sometimes they’ll have some awakening, and then all hell break loose afterwards, you know, just really a lot of stuff. A lot of you know what hitting the fan presumably because they, you know, well, to quote, Scripture again, you can’t put new wine into old wineskins and, and since there’s some new wine flowing in the wine skin needs upgrading.
David Alsobrook: Yeah. You know, you can look at my all my life before that was karma and the playing out of karma, the Wheel of Karma, it was both experienced in karmic. It they experienced, you know, the pain, the result of suffering, and then producing more by continuing the wrong choice. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I’d say if any of our Christian listeners or other listeners have any trouble with this karma idea. I mean, it’s just, you know, the idea that God is omnipresent, and every little particle particle of creation is, is saturated with intelligence and the entire universe is being orchestrated in a way that’s far beyond the capacity of human intellect. It’s
David Alsobrook: bigger block a dozen scriptures right now that teach what the Easterners called karma.
Rick Archer: Yeah, once you rattle off a few just for fun,
David Alsobrook: know that God will bring every secret thought into judgment. whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap, either so as to the to the flesh of the flesh, read corruption. So misery, suffering, and I can, there’s just so many throughout the Psalms everywhere that the psalm is experienced. Yes. So we see it. I suppose that all world religions teach karma in one different vernacular or another.
Rick Archer: They do I’ve seen, I’ve seen collections of quotes, you know, they’re like, almost mirror images from one religion to the other.
David Alsobrook: Even secular society.
Rick Archer: So after you had this miraculous healing of your shoulder, and the pain went away, which you know, skeptics might say was not miraculous is just something that was ready to happen or whatever, but after it happened, did you? Did you find yourself back in that same sort of blissful presence? Actually, before
David Alsobrook: it before the before the miracle happened? Back in July, the great misery, the suffering and I thought, wow, it’s been so long, but I do remember this. This kind of intense, like dread, oh, I just can’t you know, and then memories of the past compiling onward, there had been none of that for we’re talking half a decade of just sweetness, stillness, and effortless stillness. And yes, of course, I was praying and worshiping and meditating, whatever you would say, but it was effortless, you know, for those five years,
Rick Archer: and then the flip in the garage.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, they’re brought back and sold karma that I or you know, old pain body or old unresolved issues there. Oh, okay. So that that was good to experience and then to know the way out so it wasn’t a it was a relapse, but it wasn’t down way down here. It was like, you know, Hear?
Rick Archer: Yeah. And, you know, if we, if we feel that all as well and wisely put, then it wasn’t capricious or arbitrary or meaningless or anything else it, it had its value in everything, the ongoing story of David and his best interests, you know, his his ultimate, ultimate liberation. Yes. And now that the pain is gone, and you back to normal, more or less, yes. Is there some kind of deeper dimension or quality to life than there was prior to the accident?
David Alsobrook: No, it’s like, saying sweet nothingness. Always is. It’s like nothing to attain to nothing to strive for, just to enjoy just just to be, you know, be this wonderful state of being.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But you know, I have this sort of notion that I always bring up that there’s continuing evolution, there’s continue Oh, yeah. It’s continuing growth cert. There is Yeah. And it’s, it’s kind of fascinating to consider what and
David Alsobrook: there’s no regret, I’m on my career. There’s no regret for anything that’s ever happened in life. All. There’s, there’s no regret. Everything is as it was that happened. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Rick Archer: And yeah, everything happens for a reason. And that’s kind of a cliche, but we don’t mean a reason that human intellect can necessarily define and write out in a paragraph, but in the big cosmic scheme of things. Yeah. Yeah. Everything.
David Alsobrook: I never feel that I’m communicating. But yeah, I’m just trying to words, I don’t have the vocabulary, linguistic skill to express. When I when I teach now, I always just hope they can get it by osmosis. I kept the spirit
Rick Archer: when you, you know, had the ritual awakening in 2008? You were probably involved in full time ministry, as you always have been.
David Alsobrook: Actually in 2005. When my wife left me, yeah, that was such a devastation to me never experienced expected that it was just, I took time off from traveling. I say, voluntarily. I did some I spoke some. Yeah. I guess you would say yes, I was in full time ministry.
Rick Archer: And were you did you have to find a sort of a new audience after you had this awakening? Because your usual clientele so to speak? couldn’t relate to it? Or did they rise to the challenge and appreciate the new perspective you brought?
David Alsobrook: Well, yeah, yes. And yes. Yes. There were many that didn’t want to hear this. And there were many that did. Yeah. So but it’s not not anything I’ve tried to do.
Rick Archer: Because now I mean, if if you’re gonna go around saying that all these other religions are valid, and that Rumi and Hafiz were cool, guys. And, you know, Jesus may not be the only way and I kind of put your words and I put words in your mouth on that one.
David Alsobrook: Have you heard my dad be hurt by CDC news?
Rick Archer: I listened to I listened to the two CDs you sent me.
David Alsobrook: Okay, so here’s what I say.
Rick Archer: I also listen to some stuff on on YouTube, that is fine.
David Alsobrook: Okay.
Rick Archer: But anyway, you’re gonna get all this stuff is probably a fairly small percentage of the Christian world was comfortable with these notions, they’re really outside the box.
David Alsobrook: Well, actually, even before them years before, I’ve always been on the quote on the fringe, so to speak, you know, believing in physical healing and actually praying for the sick and see healings happen. Is kind of fringe Christianity.
Rick Archer: Kinda. I mean, you hear about it all the time, you know, in terms of Bible Belt Christianity.
David Alsobrook: Oh, no, I mean, like a lot of your Bible thumping Baptist and have nothing to do with the healing meeting. Okay. Yeah. So really, I was kind of on the extreme. I guess I’m a little more extreme, but things like that. Don’t bother me. Good. Just, you know, like you said, every, every, every plant my father has planted, you know, will receive and will grow.
Rick Archer: So, so yeah, I did start to put words in your mouth when I said this, you know, maybe you don’t feel like Jesus is the only way. You know, when when I hear that statement, I again, think in terms of pure Being or pure spirit, or Oh, yes, that’s that’s the door through it. Tamas must enter. But um, but Jesus, the man who lived 2000 years ago, you know, I have a bit of a hard time. You know, I think that there probably have been many people millions billions throughout the universe who have awakened to their true nature without ever having heard of Jesus of Nazareth.
David Alsobrook: Well, I don’t know I would suppose so. Because Gautama Siddhartha awakened experience that tremendous awakening 500 years before the time of Jesus, and we can look at Lao Tzu in in China, we know that he had the realization. Yeah, yeah. Okay, and yet the Christ is eternal, right? no beginning and no end. And there are scriptures that actually say that, for example, St. John one, verse five, that he was that true light speaking of the man, Jesus was that true light, which lightens every man who comes into the world. And so the Christ has always been missed. Scripture teaches this, although traditional Christians don’t understand. Yeah, so I feel like become more scriptural.
Rick Archer: I do too. I mean, you know, more
David Alsobrook: of the teach more of the true teaching, or what the Bible really teaches what Jesus Christ actually taught, for example, in modern day Christianity, there’s a teaching of total depravity, and that people prior to being born again, and professing faith in Jesus, are completely dead in sin is is contradicted by Jesus Himself. And the Sermon on the Mount. He looked out at his congregation, so called congregation none of them were Christian. They were all in Judaism. And they said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the merciful. He didn’t say bless, it will be the merciful, bless it will be the pure at heart after you’ve been born again. He said, bless his heart. Right. So in other words, his audience, many of them right then were in the kingdom, were pure in heart, were merciful, where he said, he said that you may be shown to be seen as as obvious children. So he called him children of God. Blessed are the peacemakers. He said, These are the children of God. So he saw it, he saw it as a present reality during His earthly ministry. I don’t know any Christian group of teachers what he said right there. Yeah. So once again, I’m a heretic for actually teaching what Jesus? I don’t mind.
Rick Archer: Well, fortunately, burning at the stake isn’t legal these days. That wouldn’t be a problem either. Wouldn’t it might be worse than the shoulder?
David Alsobrook: I don’t know. But it’d be over quicker. Yes, true. Who knows? The mind, you know, can speculate.
Rick Archer: So it’s interesting to take some of these quotes that are so often bandied about and, you know, give the kind of spin to them that you’re giving now, you know, more sort of mystical I would say experientially based interpretation. You know, for instance, Christ is the only begotten Son of God, what does that mean?
David Alsobrook: Well, actually uniquely begotten is what it says, In the Greek there, okay? Uniquely, and then it goes right on, like Peter says, that you also have been begotten again, with a living hope, by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. So we’re called to begotten James says, He also be got us that we might be the first fruits of his creatures. So we also have been
Rick Archer: begotten. So we’re all uniquely begotten.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, Luke, chapter three says, it gives the genealogy going back to Adam. And if you go read that it says, which was the son of so and so which was the son of this guy, and he was the son of that guy, and then it says, that in us was the son of Adam, which was the Son of God. So Adam was called the Son of God right there in the New Testament.
Rick Archer: Okay, so and I’m sure there are a lot of daughters to just generic, generic term. Yeah. Yeah. And so, how do you interpret this one I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but my mate. We’ve kind of touched on that but
David Alsobrook: yeah, I am. I am right. Yeah, the eternal Christ speaking. In that human form, I am once again. I mean, Jesus, no one even knows what he looked like. What you know, his if we came to the physical man, Jesus, it would be impossible. But he who was speaking out of him
Rick Archer: and And then also Jesus also say something about all these miracles. He did all these great things that he did use you also should do these things and even greater. Yes,
David Alsobrook: yes. And he said he didn’t do them. Right. He said, he said the works that I do John 14. I don’t do them, but Abba, the father, Aramaic, ABA, ABA, who dwells in me, he does the miracles. Yeah, he and he said, This is why he was accused of blasphemy, because He made Himself one with God. He said, they said, for good work, we don’t kill you. But because you bless him saying you are the Son of God, you know, because he said, I in the Father are one. You know, such statements were such heresy for his day. As what I what I say now is heresy for my day.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, again, good thing crucifixion legal. But we’ve progressed as a society.
David Alsobrook: Society has become more humane. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Isn’t that your experience? Actually, you know what you just said about the miracles that the cities that Christ performed, where it wasn’t him doing it was God doing them? When you had your transformation, that isn’t that now your experience that you are really not the doer. It’s not you doing stuff. It’s some prep that presents the divine intelligence, whatever is running the show of this whole universe. That’s the doer.
David Alsobrook: And that’s what’s so beautiful. You know, once the ego can be pushed aside, at least or to the side, or like Paul said, I’m beside myself to be beside self, so that the little self can be over here. But but the real eyes over here, there is a little self over here, talking and all that I am right here was St. Paul’s experience. In fact, he expressed that same realization of transformation author is writing. It is no longer I who live but the Christ who lives in me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I was I was reading that in your book. And incidentally, that that experience is very well articulated in great detail in certain, you know, Vedic and Vedantic literature. There’s this saying and the Upanishad. Two birds sit on the selfsame tree, one eats the fruit and the other does not. And it goes on very beautifully, but, but the idea being that the, the pure itself, pure being pure essence, whatever you want to call it, is, you know, and the Gita is full of verses like this to about how, you know, he, he takes him to be the actor is like a thief, he doesn’t really he doesn’t properly recognize that which acts and that which is non active. And but it goes on and on about how you know, there is
David Alsobrook: that is so beautiful, you know, I have the kita. And I’ve been reading through it Arjuna and Krishna, and that battle that they were going to undergo, I can relate so much to that. And in so many things and scriptures. Christian scriptures relate also to that. So there’s so many parallels and a lot of these different writings. You Penner sheds, I’ve only read bits of I remember something I can recall, like, not that which seeds, not the eye that sees but that by which the ICS that is Brahman, yes. And not the things that men on earth adore. Yeah, that spoke to me.
Rick Archer: There’s also a whole section, which is very repetitive, but it sort of ticks off all these things is not for the sake of the wealth that the wealth is dear, but for the sake of the self, that the wealth is there. It’s not for the sake of the wife that the wife is there, but for the sake of the self, that the wife is there. And so the implication is being that all fulfillment ultimately resides in pure Being and all these other kind of relative things, which, which we, from which we appear to derive fulfillment are just like little reflections of that. It’s kind of kind of like the way the light be the light of the moon is really just a reflection of the light of this. Yeah, the moon isn’t generating any light.
David Alsobrook: Exactly. And that’s in the Song of Solomon to that same thought.
Rick Archer: What does it say it?
David Alsobrook: Let me see. It speaks of the moon, the glory of the moon, reflecting the light of the sun. Beautiful, that is like does not come from within itself, but it reflects Yeah, same reflective light. Yes, same one. And, you know, also in the Dao De Jing that I’ve become acquainted with the last few years. I’ve enjoyed reading it and so much that you see in the DAO really is very similar to Jesus teaching I’m taking the lower seat, you know, being the valley instead of the mountain. So unlike water flows down to the lowest place, there’s a dowel. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read.
Rick Archer: That’s nice. So it’s it’s cool that, you know, you had this profound awakening transformation as you put it. And as a result of that, it’s it’s kind of transformed your whole philosophical outlook, it’s enabled you to, yeah, it’s enabled you to recognize the universality of truth. And
David Alsobrook: yes, that’s been a great discovery the last five or six years now I’ve enjoyed. I don’t I find when I read these these writings, they don’t really add anything to me, but I enjoy it. Yeah, I recognize that. Oh, yeah. Well, that’s nice. You know, nice to recognize it. I don’t need to read the scriptures. But I enjoy it doesn’t add anything to me to who I sense that I am. used to it did say is another big difference. So it’s like it is finished it would you said it is finished. I had to come on what happened to me, experientially, July 2008, it has finished, like it’s finished and done. And even the little regression last year was, although it was reimbursing back into that suffering was nothing like before. And it was easy to recover from so to speak.
Rick Archer: Your cup runneth over. Okay. The cup is full, you know, it can’t really hold anymore, but it still pours on man, and
David Alsobrook: I enjoy your program very much, Rick, I enjoy all the different people you’ve had on I can resonate with some of them real deeply, wonderfully. It’s good.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I really enjoyed doing it. And I really, it helps me a lot talking to all these different people. I feel like an amoeba you know, who just sort of you ever watch a microscopic movie of an amoeba? How it sort of reaches out and in some little bit of something and then incorporate it into it. And so it’s like, every week, I want to talk to a new person. I read their stuff and watch their videos and all it’s like, oh, yeah, that’s a new way of seeing it. I hadn’t thought about it. It kind of broadens and diversifies my perspective.
David Alsobrook: Yeah. Yeah, I can see where it does. And me also, I’ve learned a lot watching. I’ve watched probably 20 or 30 of your interviews, at least.
Rick Archer: So your book is really nice. I know you’ve written a lot of them, but I’ve been reading this one you can be free from yourself. And the way
David Alsobrook: the best one Yeah, only one other do I recommend now learning to love. It’s the only one I really think is good.
Rick Archer: And the way you’ve written it, it’s cool. I mean, we could we could talk for hours just taking each little subhead as as a springboard for you know, for conversation. But there’s some here there’s you place a lot of emphasis on stillness. Be still and know that I am God. And in one of your recordings I heard you give a nice interpretation of that with a different translation of the of the original Greek or something, then you’re here you want to tell us that?
David Alsobrook: Oh, yes, that would be Psalm 46 Verse 10. Okay, now let me see the amplified see striving, let go relax and know I am
Rick Archer: and it’s the very same verse that is are ordinarily translated as Be still and know that I am yeah. See
David Alsobrook: striving? Let go relax. And no, I am actually the word God is not there in the Hebrew
Rick Archer: just know that I am. Yeah and no,
David Alsobrook: I am. In other words, you have to like see striving let go of all this mental mind stuff. Before you can know I am you knowing I am your pure bliss and knowing
Rick Archer: and why would you say that is that when the mind is agitated and busy and in control, that it prevents knowing the I am why give us your spin on why that is?
David Alsobrook: I think it just I think it just is chatterbox too much inner noise. You know, this is why people are addicted to outer noise because when they when they have outer noise, it sort of silences the inner noise and they turn off noise. They can’t stand it. They can’t stand quiet. There’s a lot of that going on in our society today. People have to have outer noise, because outer quietness we reveals inner noise. inner noise is the torture, the turmoil that doormen they are always in. And so I think that’s why they have to have such noise all the time. So stillness can lead to a quietness, inner quietness, where there’s no inner voice inner dialogue, inner conversation, no past and future. This is why being being present now is so important. Because past always adds to noise. Future always adds to noise. The past always says, If only I had done if only if futures, what if this could happen? DACA. And so this is people live in all the time this, if only with all of its regret, and what if with all of its, it’s fewer fear? So you come right to right here right now? It’s nothing. No thing? Yes, I love it.
Rick Archer: This kind of sheds light on why solitary confinement is considered such a severe punishment. Yes, exactly. No, you’re just shut up by yourself with
David Alsobrook: your own with your thoughts alone with your thoughts and people going crazy. Yeah, they’ve gone stark raving mad in that confinement? Because, yeah, there’s such an inner voice inner dialogue. They’re attached to those stories of themselves from the past. They’re identified with them as roles that they’ve played. And things have never worked out the way they’d hoped they would. That’s the way life is. And so that they have all this regret and then pain as a result of that regret. Many people live with that people do all the time. If only I had known this, I shouldn’t have done that. All the shoulds people should themself with
Rick Archer: it. Although I think that you know, when there’s a lot of external impingement and external stimulation, it kind of keeps a lid on all that we’ve got bottled up inside. And when we no longer have that, then the Pandora’s box lid opens and stuff starts to come out.
David Alsobrook: All of that repression. Yeah, is now coming out and then it’s just an avalanche. A flood of pain for more people live with this. Yeah, so so nice to be free from that. I remember
Rick Archer: but you kind of have to go through it, don’t you? I mean, you kind of have to purge all that stuff. You have to start you have to take take the lid off Pandora’s box.
David Alsobrook: Oh, I did. 12 steps out and writing. I had 300 pages of step work written. typewritten single space so
Rick Archer: oops. So So I guess the cat just peed on the floor is a great big huge puddle here. We’ll just continue but I I guess the less I mean the teaching here is that you you know have to find ways or ought to find ways of you know, as you say, someone can go stark raving mad if they’re in solitary confinement but but the or it’s like a boiler if it gets too much pressure can explode. But you have to find ways of starting to let the steam out and and reducing the pressure. So in other words,
David Alsobrook: we’re coping mechanisms. That’s what we learned and all the self help teachings, you know, people find temporary leave or relief, and they’re good for that. You know, it’s helpful to people of course, it’s not the answer,
Rick Archer: not the ultimate answer. But what I’m suggesting is that maybe ways and means of starting to unravel that stuff can can be advisable and that’s why
David Alsobrook: I advise I recommend to us that group have enough for every every kind of human life problem. Not just alcoholism is love. People think oh, I don’t have a drinking problem. But well, no, we have 12 steps for everything now. Yeah. I love 12 steps because it helps you to to take an honest look, of course you know, most steppers, as they’re called, once a stepper, always a stepper. I quit stepping up into transformation for for a while. I kept going to meetings for a little while, and there was just nothing there. Yeah. And it had been so meaningful. And I knew it was changing me. There was nothing there. Like church services. They were just so meaningless after that. Very few of them that I really enjoy. Yeah, I haven’t been to church in over a year.
Rick Archer: Wow. But you still teach you still preach or get up?
David Alsobrook: Oh, yeah. When I go out and preach, that’s when I go to church.
Rick Archer: As long as you’re doing the talking. It’s okay.
David Alsobrook: Well, no, I felt like I mean, I’d love to go to a church where the There’s just so much acting, you know, play acting.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
David Alsobrook: Role acting?
Rick Archer: Well, I’ll tell a lot of
David Alsobrook: it sometimes and, and then soon, it’s like people become very uncomfortable in church, when when the Holy Spirit’s presence is there, and so they immediately quench that. And so I don’t enjoy that when the Holy Spirit’s presence is Queen’s degree.
Rick Archer: That’s kind of what I was alluding to is that, you know, you watch certain things on television, there’s so much Whoopty Doo and yelling and screaming and shouting and emotionalism and, and all this stuff, and it’s all noise and and so
David Alsobrook: on. We’ve had so much so, so much. Look at me. Yeah. So wonderful. You are. And yes, you are. But so is that one.
Rick Archer: So the Quakers had
David Alsobrook: was No, yeah, Quakers voted in the habit. Right. George Fox? Yeah. Lots of inner light, that inner light that he experienced that brilliant light. Once again. Yeah, I’ve recently read looked at his life, and he experienced the transformation. It’s really his word. Same exact thing.
Rick Archer: I heard you talking in some one of those recordings on the CD about PTSD, you know, which kind of relates to what we’re talking about here. I mean, these people come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And, and there’s, you know, there’s kids in inner cities growing up there who have severe PTSD and more, more servicemen or die by suicide these days, and
David Alsobrook: actually actly Yeah. But of course, PTSD, any trauma victim can have PTSD. It’s true. Yeah. And it’s a very real trauma, very real trauma, and I feel much compassion for people suffering from PTSD.
Rick Archer: Yeah, and it’s something that you can’t just take a week in Aruba, you know, to get rid of, because it has accumulated level
David Alsobrook: program can be very helpful to people with post traumatic stress disorder, or any kind of depression, people suffering from depression. It doesn’t even have to be geared to your particular thing. Just I when I was going to step meetings, I would go to all kinds of step meetings, overeaters and divorce, recovery, everything else went to some AAA meetings. I loved them all. I always didn’t matter what the Al Anon doesn’t matter. I went to all of these different ones, whatever. And I always was helped. Yes.
Rick Archer: Scott killaby is I don’t know if you’re aware, I’ve heard of him. Yeah, he’s doing something now with people who have been substance abusers using sort of non dual teachings to help them overcome that. I don’t know whether it’s a 12 step thing or what. And I also interviewed a guy named Tom Catan, who was a serious drug abuser who uses a sort of a spiritual 12. Set.
David Alsobrook: I believe I watched his interview.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Why?
David Alsobrook: Yes, I did.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Anyway, I brought up the PTSD thing, just because an even 12 Step. I mean, I’m sure it’s very profound and valuable. But it’s, it’s kind of a, it’s an active thing. It’s a lot of talking. So and, and I’m kind of interested in what you did, and what seemed to lead up to your transformation, which was a deep silence in the early morning, you know,
David Alsobrook: I think, a lot of lot of prayer, Christian type break, and then going into silence. It would just naturally happen. Yes. And not just during the morning, but 1012 hours a day. So. Yeah. Wow.
Rick Archer: So I think that there’s a efficacy to that, that you might not get from more active forms.
David Alsobrook: Oh, yes. Yeah, it they all have their place. Everything has its place. There’s no one thing. That’s all Yeah, right. Whatever you find help in doing do it until you don’t need to do it anymore.
Rick Archer: Well put. So let’s see these still no, we’ve talked to I just had to go through a few things. In your book. We’ve talked a little bit about observing the mind from outside the mind. This this kind of state state that develops in which, you know, there’s the surface level of your life with your mind, and you’re all you’re doing, but there’s some and in fact, you use the nice example, which I often use of running through an airport and trying to you know, where are you here you are in this hectic situation huffing and puffing running through the airport? Yes. And yeah, there’s this, you know, nothing’s happening. There’s this deep silence. Yeah. And then you get to your gate and you realize you’ve missed your connection, and instead of freaking
David Alsobrook: fine, everything’s fine.
Rick Archer: Okay, what next? You know what, and this this? There must be something in this. Early on in the interview, we were talking about the difference between, I think it was spirit and And so was it Or? Or? Yes, we were, I’m interested in some of the, what you might have to say about some of the distinctions between these sort of subtle words like spirit soul, and then God. Are there gradations? Or are we? Or is it all the same stuff down there, and we’re just using different different words to identify it?
David Alsobrook: Well, I know that even in Orthodox Christianity, there’s a lot of difference on what is the spirit from what is the soul, and what I’ve seen in Hinduism, that the soul, the soul is the same thing like what we call spirit. The innermost self, then most be in Judaism, the so like, like in classical Judaism, there’s only two soul and body. Whereas in Christianity, there’s spirits soul and body, but the spirit is housed within the soul, and what we say, but you know, this isn’t all that helpful to know, it can be helpful, I guess, your spirit would be the life, the deep life part of you, one with God, the life or the light part of you one with the light, or the M part of you one with the IBM C, soul would be the you part of you, your mind your will, your emotions, your personality, your likes, or dislikes, your propensities toward this or that it’s all part of soul, memories, feelings about his soul.
Rick Archer: Kind of sounds like in the Indian perspective, they have Jeeva, Atman. And Brahman, you know, and
David Alsobrook: they’re not well familiar with those I have heard of it are
Rick Archer: like Russian dolls, I mean, the Jeeva is the kernel of individuality which Indian prospective trans migrates from life to life in which carries with it, the whole packet of everything that makes you an individual person. You know, Atman is more of a pure spirit. But still, as I understand it, kind of individual reflection of the deeper thing, which is Brahman, which is the totality and just hold the wholeness of reality.
David Alsobrook: I guess, yeah, that’s good. Again, there’s another parallel.
Rick Archer: Here’s a subtitle in your book entitled, stillness becomes as natural as breathing. And I think that’s an important one, because it might sound to some people like this is something you have to keep practicing in order to live it, you know, you have to sort of be on your toes and make sure you’re not getting, you know, losing the stillness, and so on. But what you’re saying is that it just becomes second nature, it’s not something you have to do anything to live,
David Alsobrook: right, I’m in deep stillness now, right? Like you’re deep in are just there.
Rick Archer: And you would be if you were riding a motorcycle, or watching a movie, or driving
David Alsobrook: the car I have in the store. And in my mind, when it’s takes his focus upon something it can do so well, the deep resignation is going on deep in here. And then there is wareness, of deeper and deeper, and sometimes it’s very, very deep, very deep. And then other times more a little bit, like run off here in the distance, but it’s still there, like a gentle flowing brook that I’m hearing, although I’m not hearing a gentle flow. But it’s like, it would be like that hearing blowing outside my window.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Brooke is a good example. Sometimes I’ve used the example of a tone like let’s say there’s a tone playing. And, you know, if you want to, you can listen exclusively to the tone and just okay, Tom. But other times,
David Alsobrook: I learned I learned so much watching you broke. But
Rick Archer: you might be talking to people or doing doing something else. The tone is still there. Yeah. And if you want to, if you want to pay attention to it, you can but it’s there whether or not you do.
David Alsobrook: Good. Yes, very good. You’ve had more years than I’ve had in experiencing this. And I’ve learned how to describe it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, but that’s not to say that my experience is deeper or clearer than yours by any means. Yours don’t really matter.
David Alsobrook: That time is irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I started from a pretty muddled condition.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, I remember watching that on one of your interviews, I think drugs and
Rick Archer: all that stuff. Yeah. But you know, that’s, that was okay. So what I what I had to go through, sure. Um, so, again, about this sort of stillness that you don’t have to do anything to maintain. You’ve heard me ask this one to a lot of people. For instance, our friend Francis, report that when they sleep It’s not lost, it maintained. It’s sort of. And so
David Alsobrook: when you wake up is,
Rick Archer: yeah. And it’s been there all along.
David Alsobrook: It’s just me.
Rick Archer: So is that is that your experience? Also? And let’s say, Have you have you had any kind of
David Alsobrook: back end this past July, when, when that was the main thing I first noticed. After I had endured all those months of physical pain, I still had that deep stillness off at that time. And then in that July for that period of time that went back into suffering. One of the first things I noticed that when I did awaken, it was like torture torturous. And for many, of course, there was no deep sleep. Anyway, as long as that physical pain was in my body, I went nine months without a good night’s rest, only an hour here, two hours there. Because once I get into deep sleep, but I’d move and the shoulder and the collarbone is all jammed up. It was, it would wake in me. So it was constantly living in that kind of agony. Yeah. But yeah, started the healing in October of 2013, that instantly I was able to lift my shoulder, a man on the phone or call me on the phone as a healing gift in Christian circles, and I called him he’d been praying for me instantly, I mean, instantly, my arm went straight up, did things I couldn’t have done. And you know, the next day went to the chiropractor, he was so amazed. And he could tell instantly, when my expression of visits, healing is real miracles are real. That’s one thing I have to be so thankful for is all the physical miracles I’ve seen. But with that, with the restoration, and the ability to sleep physically, again, there was that getting that really deep.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I sometimes wonder about, you know, all right, I Ka’bah myself, and I get plenty of rest, and I meditate and that eat well, I take care of myself. And so there’s this nice sort of presence and smooth kind of continuum of awareness. And I wonder, though, you know, if I were subjected to some serious injury, or pain or deprivation or captured by the Russians and injected with weird drugs or something, yeah. What? how stable it would be, you know, I mean, you know, you’re suggesting that Christ himself lost it on on the cross. And He was obviously much more profoundly established. Yes. than just about anybody. Right. And I don’t know if you can answer that. But it’s just a curiosity.
David Alsobrook: Well, I know that for several months there, there was no, no difference in the interstate. There was aware of the physical, but it was like it was happening. Like over here beside me
Rick Archer: again, like it was somebody else almost. Oh,
David Alsobrook: yeah. Right. Although I knew it wasn’t. Once again, I find that I feel like I’m lying, or failing to describe constantly now because I just don’t have the words to describe what was going on.
Rick Archer: So I haven’t had a chance to finish your whole book. Just read the first couple of chapters. And you know what, it’s stillness, the joy of being deeply joined. But then you have so let me just quickly read the other titles and see if there’s anything you want to bounce off of, you know, what is the source of inner and outer conflict? Stop me if you want to comment on any of these what are you the process and crisis of metamorphosis? The cruel torment of the carnal mind? Body Soul connection? Yeah, I want to talk about that one for a bit
David Alsobrook: cruel torment of the carnal mind. Paul said that a carnal mind is not subject to God, the carnal mind is an enemy of God. And the carnal mind means the mindset on flesh coordinate from the Latin flesh, flesh, feasting mind. So this outward realm, this this, this part here in the world. Yeah, and so that it produces torment. It’s a torture. You think people live with such torture and torment that they do to themselves through their mind that if they were married to that mind, they would divorce it. Put up living with someone that said, You’re terrible. You just never do anything, right. You’re such a good fit. Why can’t you do the the things their mind that they love going on in their mind doing them day and night? They would never live with another wife or husband that did that to them, but yet very contented. Live with it. So yeah. So how do you stop it? While the tide was the stillness? Yeah,
Rick Archer: yeah. Well, let’s let’s kind of move toward a conclusion. By dwelling on that bit for for a moment. I mean, people listening to this interview And a lot of people who are listening to this interview have already some kind of spiritual practice or something they do. But there’s a lot of people who are just really shopping around and they listen to a lot of different things in the hopes of finding something that’s going to work for them. You know, so, do you have any actual prescription so to speak for, for somebody who’s looking for a means of, of getting established in stillness, you know? Like, like, the experience you had, or just progressing on the spiritual path? Practical, something people can take away that,
David Alsobrook: okay, practical. Yeah, I would say observe your mind. Become a kind of thing. Okay, become aware, when you’re being mind ruled. That would be a good practice, good place to start. Become aware when your mind is if only or what if in you. Beware, when you’re getting caught up in some role or function and think that you are, because that is not who you are. I think that would be good. Just a good practical advice to give someone, anyone?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I kind of think of a movie when you say that, like you’re watching a movie, and it’s getting really scary. And you, you know, you can remind yourself, hey, it’s only a movie, you know, you know, this monster isn’t really coming after me. So you can you can actually loosen up the grip of identification by just some a little bit of reflection of like, wait a minute, after all, you know, this is only my mind, this is only a thought, this is only an opinion, this is only an attitude, and so on. It’s not the ultimate reality.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, I think that’d be good. Look for moments of stillness, everyone has them. And suddenly, you know, they can be busy all day. And suddenly, they’re aware that they’re not racing inside. Well, become aware of that. Notice that, enjoy it.
Rick Archer: You know, reading as much as your book as I have and listening to your talk, you actually, it’s actually had an influence on my meditation practice. Oh, wonderful. It has I’ve there’s been a kind of a shift in a very, very subtle shift in emphasis to recognizing the stillness that’s already there. Yeah, as opposed to be focusing on the object of meditation, there’s just sort of it because it is already there. And just there’s kind of been a little bit of a shift in the balance in terms of just dwelling in that silence. That’s already there. It’s been, I appreciate it.
David Alsobrook: Thank you, Rick. And I’ve enjoyed your programs very much. Learn to profited much from you.
Rick Archer: One other thing before we go in terms of prescription, would you prescribe or recommend that people, you know, get into some kind of like you did several hours of prayer a day, sometimes 12 hours of prayer a day? And you know, you must have had your own way of praying, but is there something kind of a generic way that you can recommend us a practice that people can just do for a certain period of time? Even 20 minutes? Oh, sure.
David Alsobrook: Yeah, I think it’d be great if everyone prayed, it just talked to God, you know, there would be other that you sense that you are looking for, go ahead, speak, talk, sit, reflect, however you desire.
Rick Archer: But if you are that presence,
David Alsobrook: I know but you may not sense it. You know, most people don’t know that what they are.
Rick Archer: So for a start, you can sort of intentionally set up a dualistic situation in which you’re talking to something other than yourself.
David Alsobrook: You know, it wasn’t like until a year or two ago that I even understood or comprehended mentally dual versus non dual. And that was because of reading other writings. I finally Oh, and I see what they’re saying. Then I saw something that Jesus said once he said, Why do you call Me good? There is none good, but God, but But what the English translation is, there’s nothing good but the one God, but you go into the Aramaic there is none good, but the one in caps the one bit so he was really what we’d call a non dual.
Rick Archer: I think we could shorten that to say there is none but the one.
David Alsobrook: Yes, then but the one that’s what he said. Yeah. Because if it’s really
Rick Archer: one, if God is really omnipresent, then show me where he doesn’t show me anything. Show me anything. That’s not that.
David Alsobrook: But in other words, those were new terms that that helped me say, oh, yeah, now, that helps me understand a little bit didn’t add anything to me. Or to my enjoyment, but my sense of being but but yeah, it was a okay, it’s a better way to describe it, to understand but but people that are watching this Maybe some of them have never had this realization or awareness or suddenly. Um, so yeah, to pray, cry out to God as you understand it
Rick Archer: I think, you know, there’s no end. And there’s so many paths, so many paths that
David Alsobrook: you read scripture, you could practice meditate, you could, you could pray in tongues. You know, praying in tongues is something I’ve practiced for many, many years wonder, divine enablement, which most Christians completely dismiss as relegated to the first century of the church.
Rick Archer: I’ve seen that happen in yogic circles to where people are, I’ve heard that. Yeah, there’s like an Enlightenment of Kundalini and all kinds of stuff starts coming out of your mouth. Yeah. Okay. I’ve been through it myself. It’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah, so many paths. Great. All right. Well, this has been a stimulating conversation.
David Alsobrook: Thank you for having me on.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
David Alsobrook: I’ve enjoyed,
Rick Archer: you know, I always, after interviews, I always have this sort of postpartum depression in a way where I feel like, Oh, God, I should I should ask that, or, I didn’t go deep enough there, or I talk too much there. Or, you know, I didn’t kind of grasp the subtlety of the person adequately and all that stuff. So they’re actually in the Vedic literature, there’s usually they start with this whole apology in the beginning, where, you know, the writer says, I’m completely incapable of doing this, you know, so, pardon all my shortcomings. But but here goes, you know, once again,
David Alsobrook: you describe the way I felt. Yeah. I feel so inadequate, you know, to describe what has happened.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, I always feel that way myself. And I feel that I feel inadequate as an interviewer. I always sort of have this feeling like, you know, if I were, it seems silly, but I’m just being honest. If I were, if I were only more deep and clear and wise and so on, then I could really probe and do do justice to the person and, and so on. Anyway.
David Alsobrook: Well, but when this is over, it will there won’t be anything like that in me. Yeah. Good. Yeah. It just so sweet. I just since the sweetness. Yeah. Oh, so wonderful.
Rick Archer: Yeah. It’s just It’s okay. All right. Well, thanks, David. Thank you don’t hang up. I gotta make some concluding remarks here. So this has been a great conversation, I really appreciate it. And, you know, here, this is Buddha at the Gas Pump. And I’ve only had a few Buddhists on and I’ve only had a couple of Christians on so I really need to add to my collection, Buddhists and Christians and get a few Muslims in there, too. In fact, somebody emailed me the other day and said, Have you had any Muslims? I couldn’t think of any except maybe Louella Whelan, you’re right, because he’s a Sufi. That’s what I told the guy. So we’ll broaden that out. But in any case, I’ve been speaking with David L. Seabrook. And as always, I will be linking to his website from mine from his page on on Buddha at the Gas Pump, which is batgap.com. And there, you will also see a number of things, you’ll see a link to an audio podcast, you can subscribe to on iTunes, you will see a link to a forum section specifically about this interview. And it’s really like herding cats keeping people on topic in that forum section. But I would really appreciate if people can try to stay on topic. And if they feel like going off to Off topic and talking about something entirely different. There’s a place in the forum for that. So take it there. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. You’ll see that there. There’s a Donate button, which I appreciate people clicking if they feel the inspiration to do so. And it’s probably a few other things if you explore the menus, but that’s about it. So thanks for listening or watch and watching or watching and I’ve reshuffled the schedule a little bit, but next week is going to be Elizabeth tourists who is an evolutionary biologist and futurists and I think that’s going to be a very interesting conversation. One more morsel for the amoeba. So I’ll see you next week.