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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Fred Davis. I began hearing about Fred A little while back, I started getting all these raving li enthusiastic emails about him. From various people. I might even read a couple of excerpts, as well go have this guy on I guess. Fred studied and practiced Eastern wisdom for 25 years prior to 2006. When his seeking ended in his true awakening commenced, he is the creator and editor of awakening clarity now, and the founder of The Living method of awakening. He is also the author of the book of undoing direct pointing to non dual awareness, beyond recovery, non duality and the 12 steps and awaking awakening clarity, a spiritual sampler. The Living method of awakening is an extraordinarily successful process of direct pointing that encourages immediate recognition of our shared true nature. Hundreds of people on five continents have found the door to freedom using the living method. His work has appeared on Advaita vision, non dual non duality, living, meeting truth one, the magazine, and it also shows up frequently in non dual highlights. But so far not the Oprah show. He is happily married. He is happily married, deeply loves animals, and lives as a chiefly ignored urban hermit in Columbia, South Carolina. Deep in the bible belt
Fred Davis: buckle,
Rick Archer: Yeah right. So so Fred, I really enjoyed getting to know you over the course last week or so I’ve listened to most of your YouTube videos. I said, Listen, I know they’re very good. And I kind of like, it’s like my interviewer. My inner interviewer kind of like just sort of listens along, you know, and, and is always asking questions or sort of thinking, is that right on? Or is that a little off or whatever, you know, not not that my sort of perspective on it would be the final word by any means. But just, you know, to the best of my lights, I kind of like, take all this stuff in and try to, you know, put it into context. Yeah. But I must say that, you know, I’ve agreed, again, not that my agreement is any sort of final arbiter of truth. But I find myself agreeing with almost everything you say. It just it resonates with me. And who knows next year I might disagree with at all but
Fred Davis: yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it might even be tomorrow.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: we certainly don’t want to come. But so far, so good. I might disagree with everything tomorrow. Sometimes I read something that’s not particularly clear for it.
Rick Archer: And let me just for kicks, read a couple little bits from things people sent me here. Here’s one woman named Georgette. You probably know who she is. She says he’s a friend who has been the most effective teacher in my 30 years of spiritual seeking. And she goes on quite a bit, but she just said I had a I did a direct pointing session with Fred and died into the deep end, or is it the beginning? Prior to the session in my life seemed contained in a bubble that bounced back and forth from being awake in and as the dream to being asleep in the dream, not about life at all, a lot of joy, amazement and okayness. But just enough suffering to lay a reasonable restriction over pretty much everything. Since the session, the apparent containment has dissolved into wide open, welcoming, I didn’t wake up, I simply recognize the infinite affluence of what has always been freely available. Now I know that we’re no no what all the teachers on your show had been pointing to. It’s me and not something else. It’s such a relief to see that this thought generated, nonperson was looking for what it couldn’t possibly find an enlightened self. Thus, the ongoing search for 30 years. There’s one more sense there’s a conspicuous and boundless capacity to see the world without distinguishing a fish from a cantaloupe. And yet there’s a precious honouring of both as individual appearances. Being human has become most delicious. So that was nice. And then it was a terrible writer. Yeah, she’s good. And then there’s another one from somebody who was like, I don’t know. I think I’ve got one of those. I think I’m one of those get wet gradually, people you talk about in some ways, I see things differently. In some ways. I don’t did it happen after I talked to Fred? Maybe it might happen before just gradually over time, and Fred’s sped up sped up the process, he did have a way of stopping my mind from going places. And so she’s a little bit more ambivalent. And
Fred Davis: let’s get some of that in here.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: We don’t want to pass me off as the master magician.
Rick Archer: So anyway, well, plenty of time to talk about all this and, and you have quite a story I’m quite a quite a speckled past. I mean, yeah, everything from jail to whatnot. But um, yeah, the drunken stuff and so why don’t we start with that because people always like to hear the personal story as well as the teaching, you know.
Fred Davis: So well, it would be interesting I can, I can kind of combine some of that by telling you that I first woke, I mean that I first got the idea to get involved in this. Whatever this is. In 1982, and I woke up in a woke up in what I love to turn an insane asylum.
Rick Archer: Even you woke up in the spiritual sense, no, no, no, no, no, but you woke up me. Oh, you woke up from the sleeping state into the waking state in an insane asylum?
Fred Davis: No, no, what I mean is, is that I first got an interest in this 30 years ago. I did like, I feel like seven years, eight years ago,
Rick Archer: So you sort of bottomed out? In other words, okay,
Fred Davis: Yeah. But in 1982, I got the first bug, I was in an insane asylum. And all of a sudden, and I was, I remember, because I was, I was drawing something with crayons, they wouldn’t give us anything particularly sharp. And all of a sudden, the thought popped in my mind, you should study Zen. And this was like the most incongruous thought imaginable for someone in my condition as as I stood, because that was an I was only inside. I mean, I was in an insane asylum on the outside, I was homeless, and I was a drunk and a ne’er do well. And like, just the idea that I was going to become some kind of a Zen master was just totally absurd to everybody, but me. And for me, it was like, perfect sense. Okay. And because I could look around and see that I couldn’t do any, you know, that. If I if I started studying Zen, I couldn’t possibly do any worse. yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, of course, there’s a trapdoor to every bottom and there was a trapdoor to that one too. But this is where it started. So
Rick Archer: I had kind of a similar thing, I was pretty much bottomed out, dropped out of high school and arrested a couple times and, you know, sitting there on some drugs and picked up a Zen book and thought, Whoa, these guys really know what they’re talking about, you know, I gotta get serious here.
Fred Davis: That’s it’s just the slightest little thing that enters, you know, because we never will from from my teaching staff point of view, from my point of view. We don’t ever make a decision to become seekers. I mean, it just happens, you know,
Rick Archer: God’s grace or something.
Fred Davis: Yeah. It’s like, we’re mugged. Get it back. Okay. Of course, now, as I view it, is that I was a spiritual Seeker for years prior to that, and my, and my chief avenue was drugs and alcohol and women. And
Rick Archer: yeah, you know, I mean, just I would say that all 7 billion of us are spiritual seekers,
Fred Davis: Yeah, that’s right.
Rick Archer: everybody’s on the path.
Fred Davis: Yeah, everybody’s, everybody’s on the path. Some of us are some of our paths a little bit more skillful than others. But I had to have an awful lot of suffering. Before I could come around. And so I began to study, I began to study Zen, and actually, I started studying with Tibetans. But they wouldn’t let me I mean right off I could find out it wasn’t going to work because they weren’t gonna let me be the Dalai Lama. If they were not going to let me be the king. I mean, you know, that I just wasn’t very interested. So but they did teach me how to meditate. And they were very kind. I mean, they were they did everything right. And just, this was just not a ripe apple at the time. And then, so I dropped back into a spiritual circle I was more comfortable with which was me. And I studied I was, I was I’ve come from the school of bookstore Buddhism. That’s my lineage. And I was I was a bookstore Buddhist for many years after that. And then off and on, because that’s the good thing. I had no commitment, so I wasn’t required to do anything if I didn’t feel like it. And so when I moved out to Portland, Oregon, in the middle of a midlife crisis, and while I was there, I started a little bit whenever I spent a little bit of time at the Zen Center there. And but once again, they were not going to just let me lead the thing and clearly they needed some leadership because I knew just how things should go and they did not. So I could just stay there very long either just one a joiner. And so just to wrap it up a little bit, or Accelerated let’s put it that way. So I’ll just accelerate now to the fact that I tried those things. They didn’t they didn’t work for me. So I went back to the old reliable I went back to drinking. You know, there’s, I mean, there’s Enlightenment there on a regular basis is just that it you know, it’s only good for as long as the high lasts.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Very loosely defined Enlightenment. Yeah.
Fred Davis: Exactly. Very loose. Yeah, like such as I’m not a potato. That’s the kind of Enlightenment I was getting. So, but the funny thing is, is that while I was in Portland, is that is that I did. That’s when I actually got my first glimpse, even though I was drunk, I wasn’t drunk at the time. But I was living a drunkard’s life. But I was still at the simultaneously living this total drunkard’s life, I was sitting a lot, I would sit well, you know, sitting a couple hours a day, at least
Rick Archer: in meditation?
Fred Davis: In meditation, and Zen in my basement. So sit in a cupboard religiously sitting. I mean, I don’t know how that happened. And then while I was doing that, I discovered self inquiry and the way that I discovered it,
Rick Archer: Why do you call that a drunkards life?
Fred Davis: Well, I mean, I was drinking, I was drunk from if I wasn’t at work, I was pretty, I was either drunk or getting ready to get drunk.
Rick Archer: So you were, you were meditating couple hours a day, but you’re also still drinking a lot.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I would sit in the mornings before I went to work. And because I wasn’t drunk, as soon as I got home
Rick Archer: You would drink.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I mean, I’d have a couple of drinks. And then I would, but then I would sit
Rick Archer: after having had a couple of drinks.
Fred Davis: Yeah, right. Exactly. I still had some I still had some control. Addiction at that point. Later on, and I had no addiction. I mean, no control whatsoever. So anyway, I started doing the sitting and everything, and I hit upon this thing. I was working on a Zen Koan, myself being the Zen master, of course, we know what they say about lawyers that the lawyer that has that’s representing himself has a fool for a client. Like that, as far as being a teacher was that I was pretty good teacher, but I had a fool for a student. And so as, but I ran across something that said, I was working on on, show me your, your original face, your face to face before your parents were born. And I was going over that, and over that, of course, I was trying to make sense of it. And but what happened I never did, and I never woke up from that. But what happened was that somewhere along the way, I ran into a phrase that said, that this is the same thing as asking who am I? And man, that was simple. And, and I did that the same way that I drank or did anything else or gambled or did anything else? We just did it compulsively. And I mean, just I didn’t know how to do it. I just want to cross one sentence, it said, ask yourself, Who am I? So I went about my day, saying, Who am I?, I guess 1000s of times, certainly hundreds of times, which was, you know, because it was like, who’s walking across the room? Who’s vacuuming? I mean, just over and over again.
Rick Archer: I don’t know if you saw my Michael James interview. But he he he made the point that it’s like picking up a book and sitting there with the book in your lap saying what’s in this book, what’s in this book? What’s in this book? You know, it’s might be smarter to actually open the book.
Fred Davis: But I’m always big, you know, I was always big on that kind of just just knock your head against the wall. I did get a glimpse at that time. And, and it was authentic. I knew at the time it was authentic. I mean, it just knew Oh, this is it. Wow. But the problem is, is that I had no structure. I had no I was insane, I was a drunk. And so right behind that came ego. And ego just stuck to that, right. Just Oh, I mean, it wasn’t when it wasn’t minutes, you know, we talked about, oh, ego rebuilt over a period of time, my period of time was like you could have counted with your second. And it was like, oh, now I’m really special. Now. I’m one of the wise of the world which is, which is a line I stole from the trilogy about Gandalf, because now is right up there with Gandalf any right for 12 more years. Just as that went away, didn’t do anything except for drive me crazy. For 12 years I then continued to drink and change and then in 2000 it came to me because after having
Rick Archer: Let me ask you a question when you when you were drunk, yeah, I mean, did Did you actually find that that condition was preferable to being sober? Was there something actually more fulfilling about it than or even preferable to your meditative state? So, I mean, I’ve gotten drunk a few times in my life as a teenager, and did drugs for a while. But you know, at a certain point, the the kind of when the spirituality started to wake up, it’s like, those states couldn’t improve upon my normal state. They were they were inferior to it. And so the taste for them completely disappeared.
Fred Davis: That’s because you had you had you had you were in a moderated state. I mean, in other words, you weren’t drinking all the time?
Rick Archer: No.
Fred Davis: And so, for me, my regular life was absolutely awful. This time when I was up when I got in Portland, I mean, I had already I had had been a very successful guy, I had, you know, I owned a couple of businesses and stuff, and I’m pretty well set. But my lawyer and my accountant, said, You know, you’re gonna be fine. Just don’t screw this up. You can’t miss. That’s a tall order for a drunk whose job is to screw things up. And so
Rick Archer: so so in other words, alcohol was a relief from the way you felt most of the time. And so you took solace in that?
Fred Davis: I did. I took a lot of solace in and you know, and you get to this sounds funny, but it’s like heroin addicts and alcoholics have something very, very much in common, which is that you can reach what we call it what? What heroin addicts called the nod, which is where you’re just like, in the world, but not of the world. But
Rick Archer: yeah,
Fred Davis: and it’s, and that’s a very peaceful place. And that’s about the only piece I knew at the time. Because it wasn’t that my life was that terrible. That my thoughts were that terrible. My thoughts were telling me.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Kind of tormenting you.
Fred Davis: Yeah. Because I had been a successful guy had lost all that, due to my alcoholism, and, and just natural ignorance. And so I lost all that. And now the next thing you knew, I mean, I’m looking for jobs for eight bucks an hour.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: That’s a wake up call.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Gotta work an hour just to buy a six pack.
Fred Davis: Yeah. Right, exactly. That’s exactly it. And, you know, I’d hit such a low that that was just unbearable for me. What I didn’t know was that it would be wouldn’t be long before I look back at all that with it with fond reminiscence you of like, for the vacation my life was just a few months ago, because I ended up drinking myself out of all of that, too. I drank myself out of the sorry, the, I just drank myself out of everything. My health, my dignity, my credit, my car, my home, my wife, my whole family back here, I drank my way out of absolutely everything. And so. And I ended up homeless again, and I love to tell the story, but don’t let me miss it on your show, which is that, you know, is that anybody can end up homeless, there’s no shame in that. I mean, you can get sick and lose a job, you can have medical bills, whatever. Anybody end up homeless. And, and you know what today’s world you could end up homeless twice, even perhaps, but I’ve been homeless nine times. And that’s not that’s not bad luck. That’s actually incredible skill.
Rick Archer: And homeless means, like sleeping on park benches and stuff like that. Because there aren’t necessarily shelters, you can always go.
Fred Davis: Well, you know, you don’t always want to go to a shelter. They won’t let you drink in there. You see? And that’s one of the drawbacks. And plus you’re in there with all these losers. And I personally was still a winner.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Like Charlie
Fred Davis: screwed up their lives
Rick Archer: like Charlie Sheen. Yeah,
Fred Davis: yeah, that’s it. That’s right. People are screwing up, but I’m in good shape. So I ended up homeless again, after all that. And this is a couple of years, probably three or four years after the Big glimpse, and all of that. And so and I wish I never got out of my head. It just drove me crazy. But I can never get out of my head that something had happened I got where I didn’t want real clear on what it was. I knew I would have been part of God or something, but I couldn’t quite get my arms around it. And so I ended up homeless in the park. And I realized at some point, you know what? You think you may have a drinking problem. I’ve been an IA off and on for 15 years. But it just dawned on me that I was back in homelessness, flashed back at 16 years before I had been in the desert of dare Arizona in just such a situation where I was fixing to die. And I thought, Man, this thing looks like a habit. And because that’s it, I just had great skill and given my stuff up, I mean, I overcame every advantage of it i. And so I got sober in 2002 1000 came back to South Carolina and I looked around and, you know, there is actually you’re gonna, if you don’t, you don’t get sober now you’re gonna go back to the park, because I’ve managed to get out of the park, I was very, very good at getting myself out of the ditch, that drunkenness landed me in. And as a result of that, I thought it was very clever, I had never recognized that the skill to have was to not go in the ditch. That’s the ability to get yourself out of the ditch over and over again, is it’s kind of a dubious ability. So when I got sober, I threw myself into the 12 step community for very, very seriously and did nothing else because I knew that Zen would screw me up, I just knew it that I would get I would get smart Zen and be able to spot what was wrong all day. Sorry about that I the and and that I would you know that I would just screw it up that I would get wrong. And so I put all of that in the background for I decided for a yeast. That man about the time that your birthday came up here came was in books and back into bookstores, Buddhism, the difference was that no, I wasn’t wrong. So now there was actually the opportunity to pursue this thing. And oh, my God, I really began to pursue my true nature matcher nature began to pursue my true nature and looking forward to self and but I didn’t have enough work the steps and it just wasn’t quite enough have been quite low enough for me. I had been because I started begin becoming quite egoic again now because I was the a guy who had all the answers. didn’t have all the answers does Suzanne and all of that. But I had my eye and all that stuff, I had all that figured out. So the what happened was that is that I went out and did all of my amends, all of my aim is and I actually did that in the first I did that in the first six months or so my sobriety, meaning apologizing to people that you had messed with. That’s right, which I have, which was a hell of a lot, you know, list because I just been a rascal and a ne’er do well, since, you know, since while I started drinking them when I was 12. And that’s probably around the time that that the matches what happened was at around 12, the insanity broke out. And I had the simultaneously temporary cure for it, which was alcohol. So at any rate I wouldn’t have made all my amends. And you know, there’s nothing in the book that says that, just because we’ve made amends that we that other people have to accept them. Right. And so I had some I had some wounds that I went rip the band aid off off because I’m you know, hell, I’m on fire with this thing. Hey, I’m trying to get sober let’s orange screen with you. But you know, a long time ago, Bob. So I had a couple of people who were not actually happy for me in my new sobriety. And so they press charges, and I ended up ended up going to Well, I lived in hell for two and a half years waiting for my my hearing to come up and wonderful lawyer. And but I kept trying during that time to wake up really I mean, just religiously. I was a joke bumped into Eckhart Tolle, and
Rick Archer: Winning
Fred Davis: I listened to him and you’re gonna have to hear this correctly. Just know that what I’m telling you. So I listened to Eckhart for 1214 16 hours a day. for probably six months, I was in the book business as an AS and I just went out and I bought everything that I could get on that car. And I was working, working all the time, seven days a week. I was I was traveling going everywhere to find books that I could sell online for $1 more than I paid for. So in the car, I hit a chord because my mind was driving me crazy. So I had to have somebody else’s mind inside my head. I couldn’t live with mine. So I took that cards and put it in my head. I listened to him in the in the car, and then I listened to him. Upstairs appear when I lay on my little office. I listened to every CD that you could Eckhart Tolle. When I first started listening him you couldn’t advise look in my channel. I mean, he was nobody, but people were coming. Somebody’s saying and
Rick Archer: You must have listened to a lot of stuff many times over. Okay, he didn’t.
Fred Davis: So yeah, I had about 100 hours
Rick Archer: to the point of practically memorizing it.
Fred Davis: I did I had about 120 hours or so of him or 110, 120 hours of his recorded stuff, which is the same actually what I had was I had about two hours of Eckhart recorded about 52 different ways.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Because he says the same thing.
Fred Davis: But I didn’t care, you know, repetition is the mother of clarity.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: I just wanted his soothing little baritone in the background. It was the one thing I could stand. And so so when upstairs I had one of these things playing and downstairs in this is a 750 square foot apartment. And downstairs. I had the power now playing on my little Bose radio. As as if I was awake. So I mean, in other words, I’m talking about if I’m physically awake if I was not sleeping, I was listening to Eckhart first thing in the morning. Because the Fred movie would start up it’d be God, I can’t listen to that. So up here, I was listening to one thing on Eckhart downstairs, I was listening to another and in the car and you had another and I was driving along. So rue. Two and a half years, my, my, my trial came up, I had reached a point of relative surrender, thanks to Eckhart. You know what, just what you were talking about with that? Look, what’s in this book? What’s in this book?
Rick Archer: Yeah, Right?
Fred Davis: Just before my trial, I was absolutely just absolutely climbing the walls.
Rick Archer: What crime were you on trial for by the way?
Fred Davis: Oh man it’s just just just awful stuff from a long time ago, and it’s not particularly relevant. So we’ll not go there. Okay, we’ll not go there.
Rick Archer: You can’t embarrass you. Can I?
Fred Davis: Right? Yeah,
Rick Archer: I want to see a blush.
Fred Davis: I don’t think I’ll blush for this. But it doesn’t mean I’m gonna brag about it.
Rick Archer: All right. We’ve all got some things.
Fred Davis: Mystery. So at any rate. I went to right before or right for went to jail, right? My trial, I’m sitting there thinking I’m gonna go to prison or something like this. And so and I was just like, just going nuts. And I was looking at power now. And I thought, Wow, I wonder what it would be like if I actually did some of this stuff in this book.
Rick Archer: You mean after a gazillion hours of listening,
Fred Davis: yes. What if I actually did some of that stuff. Make a difference. Because I was just using them like valium.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And so there was a part in there about surrender about it’s just accept it, surrender, whatever. And I sat down and started doing that and it changed my life. I mean, I got free for like, 24 hours, the first time in two and a half years.
Rick Archer: How do you do surrender?
Fred Davis: Well, I don’t know how you do surrender. But in the way in that book, what they actually do, they just you just move toward it. In other words, I had all this tremendous fear that those that everything had been, I had been keeping at bay for two and a half years.
Rick Archer: So you just kind of relaxed and went. Yeah,
Fred Davis: just let it take me over. Alright, first time I had a break for 24 hours. The next morning, it was back to an A instead of saying, Well, that didn’t work. I knew that I had been free for 24 hours. So that was great. I wanted to see if I could get another 24 hours. And I was outside watering my lawn. And I sat down on a bench I had a park bench out there, which was always the big job
Rick Archer: Just so you feel at home.
Fred Davis: Yeah, exactly. So I sat down on that bench and relaxed into that again. And I had my eyes closed. And I was listening in to doing that state of just alertness. And all of a sudden I heard a noise and I looked up in a flower pot right in front of me that have the double flower pot. been standing there for weeks behind my rose bushes. And it just it was just sitting in front and it collapsed over to the left just like this spontaneously collapsing. I was like, I wonder what that could be from and I felt like it was must be from some kind of release. But you’re not I was really excited about that. But I closed my eyes because I hadn’t been finished. And when I close my eyes, I’m doing this and there was another flower pot on the other side of the road. And it collapsed inward the other way. So they hit each other like this
Rick Archer: interesting. They’re completely unconnected to each other and all they just
Fred Davis: connected and they’ve been smoked in in there for weeks.
Rick Archer: Wow. It kind of reminds me of Carlos Castaneda stuff where certain things would happen in the environment. And Don Juan would say that’s an omen, you know,
Fred Davis: and I knew it was okay. Just so you know, it’s been what, almost eight years or seven and a half years since then. And I’ve never had that fear combat.
Rick Archer: Interesting.
Fred Davis: You’ve been away that day right there. I still want to wake
Rick Archer: up also, just to say I’ve also been in long metal teaching courses were people doing like really intense medicine and things would happen, like glasses would explode and door, you know, glass doors would crumble, and all sorts of strange things in the environment would happen.
Fred Davis: Sure, because it just one thing going on. And
Rick Archer: yeah,
Fred Davis: just something and you know, you can’t adjust one part and not have it affect the rest. So in some of it, you know, they’re set up in one little situation and doing great with nice glass. Been there for years. Yeah, there’s a radical shift. I mean, whether it’s me or a singer, imperfect bitch, but I am interesting. Yeah. So I bring it up, just because I love that story. And I’ve got just like you, I got a zillion spiritual experiences. But that one ties in because it was the beginning of my actually going back and doing stuff because I, when I was in Portland, I was doing stuff I was practicing, I was sitting, I was inquiring, I was, you know, doing whatever I could under self direction. And when I was back here, I had just been using been using spirituality as a value. And it doesn’t mean that I had picked up a lot of wonderful context. I had I it was very beneficial. And it gave me a lot of it gave me a you know, but it gave me a lot of egoic a really great the Go extends, which was that I am getting enlightened, and, and you’re not. And you should, you know, and and therefore I’m better than you are. But if you want to come beam out there, we’ll sit at my feet or something I’ll share with you what I’ve got, even though it’s not much I didn’t know it was much. So about what I got in so what I got from my wickedness was I got six months of weekends in jail. And I got in and probation. And it was just awful. I mean, you know, it was this was I’ve been sober nail for five and a half, six years, six and a half years. And I just made my way back to a point of relative comfort in the world. And you know, and then bam, this had knocked me back in the ditch, which I was comfortable with being in a ditch. So
Rick Archer: that’s kind of cool that you just had to go on weekends, though.
Fred Davis: Yeah, well, yeah. Well, the simple thing is that years before I won, like, I mean, I’d already changed my whole life for six and a half years. And the judge said, Well, you’re doing a lot of good in the community. And we don’t want to we don’t want to stop that. So go to jail on the weekends and come back run your life in between. And but it was tough, because I was already working all the time.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And now I was, I was the busiest guy I knew working seven days a week and now I got to truncate that in five days a week. And I mean, it got so I was so busy and getting almost no sleep. Really, I used to tell my wife that’s God. If I can just get I’ll be okay if I can just get to jail.
Rick Archer: Kind of reminds me of My Cousin Vinnie you know, if you’ve seen that movie. I mean, he was like, You ever see that movie? My cousin Vinnie. Oh, it’s fantastic. You gotta watch it, Joe Pesci. But I won’t go into the details. But the only the only place he ever got any rest was when he finally got put in prison and he slept like a baby.
Fred Davis: That’s it. identical to that? I mean, it was just like, I mean, it would just be in the hole, I would go in there and I would relax. But the
Rick Archer: check out that movie later,
Fred Davis: I’ll do I’ll definitely check it out. But that only lasted for about six weeks, that part of it. Because what happened was that my life was had become so awful. It looked like my prospects were very dim. My current experience was just awful, under this very strict probation and go into the jail, and I just wanted to die. And so and so right after I went to probation are coming back and I told Betsy, my then girlfriend now wife, that who must be a very patient woman, by the way, oh my God, just just just absolutely wonderful. I met her in recovery. Instead of listening to the recovery people, I was passing girls nights and the actual I just pass them around. But I love to keep up the threat that I might pass them. So be nice to me, but she’s wonderful. So and I told her you know, look, I just can’t I can’t live like this. This is so this is my mind, because my circumstances actually not greatly different now, except for the fact that I’m a teacher, whatever that means the but what happened was I just really wanted to Donna asked her now my wife’s business partner had shot himself in 2002 killed himself. And I was I had to, I helped her clean up the detritus of that kind of event. And I couldn’t do that to her again. But I wanted to die. I mean, I literally wanted to die. So I asked her if she would give me your blessing. And this was not a cry for help. But really, it was not. I just didn’t want to surprise her with the suicide. She asked me to please continue, give it a shot. So what happened, Rick was that about six weeks in and I mean, I read so for about six weeks now, I had been wanting to die. But I noticed that I that I wanted to die that didn’t, I couldn’t, I felt like I could not live. But now also felt like I could not die. So you kind of lose interest in the fridge story. That’s the glue for all that. And about six weeks in, I was sitting in my living room reading the book. And the the author asked a question. And Ramesh Velasco, and he asked a question or whatever. And when he did something in my brain, I mean, I felt something in my head, not in my brain. But in my head. Something about the size of a BB, I could feel it very distinct very distinctly turned 180 degrees in my head, just just felt completely physical. Turned 190 degrees in my head. And I could, and I could feel it locked. I could almost it was almost like I could hear it locked. I couldn’t. But there was it locked so distinctly that was like I could hear it. And the instant that it did, you know, my head exploded. And I had one of those, you know, fairy tale awakenings that I’m just so sorry, in a way that I had, because it’s what I have to report. But why not? So let me jump in really quickly and say that those are not necessary. The reason that though, that we read about those things in books is because they are unusual. But as you know, there’s none of that’s required, it may have made may or may not happen.
Rick Archer: Usually people who have been on a spiritual path for decades have had incidents, you know, episodes like that. But but the vast majority of the time is is fairly normal and no fireworks going on.
Fred Davis: Because it’s actually just a spiritual experience that’s accompany awakened, awake.
Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah.
Fred Davis: It’s the difference between the vehicle and the package. And what we tend to put our eyes on is the vehicle and forget about the package.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think that experience with your head is significant, actually, because I think there is a physiological component to all this. But we don’t have to go into all that right now. But there’s there are things that do change in the brain. And in the subtle body, you know, with the chakras and all that stuff. There’s all kinds of stuff going on.
Fred Davis: Just one thing going on,
Rick Archer: yeah,
Fred Davis: one part of that is affecting others.
Rick Archer: That’s right.
Fred Davis: So, of course, when I woke up, I mean, you know, you always think you’ve got the whole thing. I mean, that’s what I thought.
Rick Archer: So that was the episode, which you would characterize as “I woke up”.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I mean, it was instantly seen Oh, because the way I tell him when I’m talking to clients is that, you know, I was Fred Davis, I was sitting in Fred Davis’s living room, and Fred Davis and chair reading Fred Davis’s book, trying to wake Fred Davis up and determined to do so in an awakening occurred and I went, “Ha, look at that! I’m not Fred Davis after all”. Because Fred Davis had been waiting to, had expected to wake up to the truth of God. And what happened was that the truth of God woke up to the fiction of red tape. And so many, many things collapse. And what I noticed was, I still had these problems. Because I’ve been really hoping I was gonna be the exception, regardless of what I read. I knew if I woke up, that that really actually would solve all my problems. And I noticed that it didn’t, but I did notice that the problems were free is.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: Which gave me some breathing room.
Rick Archer: Right.
Fred Davis: I mean, it just saved my life. I mean, that just in that save this, you know, it just certainly took me out of that intense suffering. Oh, took me out of all suffering there for a little while. But enough ego built back up in, you know, fairly quick order. I mean, I was never the same after that of you can’t unsee something like that. But there was still, you know, a lot of there was still a lot of and I had to do some research looking at this a lot of stuff. But that was the that was the real deal breaker, that was for me. And it was very, very clear. And it lasted for several days in real clarity, and then several weeks in moderate clarity. And then you know, what the hell happened to that? You know, where did my enlightenment go?
Rick Archer: Well, you integrated it.
Fred Davis: Yeah. So when I did immediately because what my experience at jail completely changed. All of a sudden I became, you know, makes it sound like I was, I was shining a ray or something like that. And they could see it. And so it was all there. And it’s not like that’s what I’ve been hoping. I’d been hoping when I woke up that there would be a little billboard up here that would say, this guy’s awake. Because then you guys would start treating me the way I thought you should have been treating me all along. But what happened was, I started to take an interest in my jailers and started talking to him. And in very short order, when I got to the gate, they would say, get to the gate, and I would talk to the gate, the guard at the gate, because I had to check myself – talk about surrender. Check yourself in 23 weekends in a row to a to a jail. And I would talk to the guy at the gate about my garden, about I had great big elephant ears, and we were talking about those and this and that and the other. And it finally got to were able to show up, and he would say, hey, you know where you’re going, don’t you? And that’s it. Yeah. And so I would just walk across the yard by myself. And once I approached the jail, you could see the woman who would book me every week, because they booked rebooked you every week, you can see her start in a way that, you know, Mr. Davis, Mr. Davis is here. And, and I got in and I would go in and the same guy that frisked me, like, you know, you know, in a not very friendly manner. The first time that I’ve got there.
Rick Archer: He now works for the TSA by the way.
Fred Davis: It turned out that he had a little eBay business. And so I started talking to him about his business. And we would talk from me as soon as I got there, I would sit down and Hey, Mr. Davis, would you like a sandwich or something? And because I didn’t want to turn anything down. I want him to feel good about bringing me stuff when I was hungry.
Rick Archer: Now it’s starting to sound like the Shawshank Redemption where Tim, what’s his name was doing the bookkeeping. And
Fred Davis: That’s right, it became much like that, in a bizarre sort of way. So that guy became an advocate his confidant, and he might keep me there in the entrance hall. If nobody else showed up for an hour, we will be talking about, you know, his eBay thing and how he could tweak that because I was a bookseller been one for years. And so we went around and the went to the next station was the booking station. And there was that woman that she just loved me. And she knew that I was working with people in recovery and speaking out at the treatment center, and all that kind of stuff. And so she had, you know, no lack of drug addicts and alcoholics in her wider circle. And so she would, she would talk to me about all that and just Just love me. And I would go from there. And then when you got through processing there, you had to go to the nurse, because I went out and did work to cut my time in half. And you had to make sure you were physically able. And it turned out that the nurse was a closet lesbian. And she had to tell me about that. And she had a Louie bag, this came her deep confidant, and she I would go in and she would tell me lesbian jokes, and they will talk about her business. And I would stay in the nurses that I mean people outside standing in line trying to get in, I’d be in there for an hour. And I mean, it was all I could do to get to my cell. when I got to my cell, the guys, I mean, I’m just telling you the absolute God’s truth and I’ll tell you how I did it. But I mean they were bringing me slippers and and my books you could make people weekenders were trashed there. Because we got out five days and you couldn’t get canteen you couldn’t have you couldn’t have possessions. You couldn’t have any of that unless you read it, which I did. So I had a I was a good seller, I mailed myself books to through one of the other inmates and stuff. You know, do I better be careful, come arrest me again. But I’ll denied if they do. So it completely changed my jail experience. And when I was out and I was in a lot of physical pain, I had sciatica. And the guards that had been so tough at first and I just hated them so much and they were man they started. When I changed, they did but I trained first. And when I changed they began to let me ride in the trucks to give them my legs some relief. It was just terrible pain. And then when I left there, I’ll just give you that idea. I mean, the
Rick Archer: Interesting little point here though, I mean, you want to change the world? Change yourself.
Fred Davis: That’s it. That’s it. That’s it, you know, the Buddhist, the Buddha went after himself first. And that’s
Rick Archer: which is not to say we shouldn’t go out and help the world in various ways. But you know, it begins here.
Fred Davis: It begins here. Somebody has to somebody has to start first.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: You know, I have a lot of friends and nuns who
Rick Archer: want to save drowning people you better learn to swim.
Fred Davis: Yes, that’s exactly. I mean, it really does start at home. And see that just was one of those things that I go Oh, yeah. Like I got that nets. Got any more spiritual truth and that because anybody can figure that out. And that’s just the kind of guy I was I just stepped all over wonderful, tremendous spiritual truths for years looking for spiritual truths, because that one is down. You get that one that one. You heard that? Thanks. Oh. That’s so in any read it changed my daily experience when I got out. But when awakening thing, I mean, I really thought when I woke up at first time I woke up, I thought, well, I don’t think anybody’s ever been here before. Maybe Buddha. Right? But I’m not sure. And but yes, so there’s surely been not been anybody but Buddha Eckhart, and I’m third in line. But I got over the head with some time. But it did, you know, I began to develop what little humility I have today. And, and from their own this, from from the moment I woke up, really, because my situation was so dire. I wasn’t like so many people, I have clients. And I mean, I don’t know what the hell they want to wake up for. I mean, they got a great story going, you know, they got, they got a wife, they got kids, they still got their job, they’re in great shape. But they’re driven by a spiritual pole man just wasn’t that that pure man was just him suffering so much. But I gotta get at it. I gotta get out of this. I got to find. So I was using my spirituality as a way to pole vault my way out of my wife situation.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think some of us need a lot of suffering, too, as a goat, you know, but not everybody needs that.
Fred Davis: No, not everybody does, which amazes me, because I would have never done it. You know, alcoholism was the worst thing in my life, until it became the best thing. Because if it hadn’t been for alcoholism, this wouldn’t happen. And I’d still be the same tweet I would have ever I would have always been, I just had to, I had to go through tremendous suffering. But you know, if you put even a piece of coal under enough pressure long enough, you’ll come up with something pretty. Yeah. And, and that’s what, and that’s basically what happened to me was I was just put under, of course, it was like I was put under this unit put itself into so much under so much pressure, by just being a nerdy well, and as grew up for so long.
Rick Archer: You know there’s another principle here, which may seem esoteric, and not everybody believes this works this way. But I think, you know, sometimes, certain people come into this life, and they just have, they kind of sign up for working off a load karma, you know, and others maybe, maybe don’t have such a load to work off. And so, you know, we, you know, said the Lords of Karma, if there are such things, all right, give it to me lay it all on, I want to get this over with you. So I can take it, you know, so then we just go through hell and high water for a certain period of time until we worked through that load, and then suddenly, a ray of sunshine.
Fred Davis: That’s right. And so that’s exactly I mean, so obviously, I come from quite a black. And, you know, you mentioned this, and let me just make one point, when you’d mentioned the karma is that is that it doesn’t, we don’t need reincarnation, we have DNA. And we can DNA proves that. I mean, I can track this body all the way back to Africa 1000s of years ago. So whether we can say reincarnation, because I don’t think reincarnation of the personality, which is a one shot deal. But it’s clearly there’s something that moves, because you can trace this thing back. So there’s something that moves so that when we when we just look at it that way that the concept of Karma becomes a really much more of a much more of an acceptable
Rick Archer: Yeah. And I don’t have a problem with the other way of looking at it either. I mean, you know, neither a soul reincarnating and going through various learning experiences over the course of time, you know, whatever.
Fred Davis: I don’t know, I don’t know what it is, but I know there’s something that’s enough that for me to once I found that there was something that I didn’t I had something to go with I had something I could you know, there was something that was crying to be freed
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: It was gonna be freed with whether this thing liked it or not. You say this current vehicle who cares, right? It’s just it’s a passing thing. Anyway, I got some stuff I need to get clear off. And man it did. So I continued to still to teach for several years in recovery with people I was began to teach non duality in using recovery terms, so that it was more acceptable, but the more awake I got, and other people have a talent, we know some of them you and I do. But other people have a talent for being able to be awake and alert and be able to take that to recovery terminology and, and do great things with it.
Rick Archer: Sure, like Scott, for instance,
Fred Davis: Like Scott Kiloby, the and so I However, the more awake that I got, the less I began to be heard. And I had been a real fount of wisdom. You know, yeah, I was one of those guys, you chase down to get their opinion on something, you know, which was always I used to always say, you know, boy, you gotta be pretty sick, and I’m gonna be the doctor. And but the good news is you qualify. And Abby’s came up before the end of it, though, I think that everyone just thought I had lost my mind. Because I lost the ability to translate. And so on the day that I began my first website, which was awakening clarity. In July of 2011, that’s when I left, that’s what I left recovery officially. The because I said, I can’t do this, you know, I had sponsees I had let go out of sponsor, I had to dismiss, you know, my great friend of mine. But then, and I guess he still is, but we just don’t talk. But I had, there came a point where I could only be one pointed. Whereas for me, it’s not everybody, just for me, I had to declare my allegiance, almost, like I’m doing that thing, or I’m doing this thing. And I decided to do or, I decided, so it turned out that I did this thing. And so I started that blog, and that changed everything. And I’d already had people around me waking up for almost a year. But I mean, people this was this was an extraordinary part. Because for a long time, I wanted to be a teacher. And then I went to see Adyashanti. And I thought, you know, I don’t I don’t think so I think I’d rather be a bookseller than a teacher. And I came back, and within about a month, people around me started waking up.
Rick Archer: Would this be a good time to try to define what waking up means? Or do you want to keep on with your story right now we’ll get into that?
Fred Davis: We can drop the story anytime you want.
Rick Archer: I want to keep on unraveling it. Or maybe we’ve actually gotten to the end of it more or less than, but um, you know, we throw around terms like this waking up. And so it’s really important to define our terms.
Fred Davis: It is important important. So what am I? And what I’m going to do here is you know, always, always reserve the right to change my mind. And the whatever I say today is only good for today. Tomorrow, I may question it or, or discernment. But
Rick Archer: good way to be in my opinion.
Fred Davis: Yeah, might as well. So at any rate, the would the way that I see awakening now is I’ve got a couple of terms that I want to float, one would be awakening, and the other would be liberation, which I have in the past used interchangeably. But see now that that that is just a limited understanding of that moment, or wasn’t really thought for a while or I wasn’t being thoughtful about the language. And I’m really big on precise language very, very big on that. That’s one of the reasons what I do works as well as it does. Awakening is when we first is what happened to me in my living room. Awakening is when we first come to know our true nature. It’s when it’s when the humanness the the character that’s coming that’s being played by this humanness is seen through it doesn’t mean we got to get rid of it or dislike it or anything like that doesn’t mean it’s bad. We just see through it. Again, what we do is that the and when I say we, of course what I’m talking about is the fact that y’all it’s excuse the shorthand all you non-dualists but God wakes up to the truth itself. And and so it’s not actually there’s no there’s no personal thing going on. Just God wakes up and sees itself and it’s but it’s still seeing itself in some regard through this, you know, and but but all of this does seem to be hollow and all that and that’s that’s the initial experience and that may last, in my experience in Portland was seconds and it changed my life. didn’t fix me.
Rick Archer: So the other way of saying seen through would it be to say that you no longer are kind of exclusively gripped by the notion that, you know, this is what you are, there’s sort of a glimpse into, we could say a deeper reality, which is that you know, you are, you are something much more kind of fundamental or vast or un, you’le no longer exclusively overshadowed.
Fred Davis: Yes exclusively is a
Rick Archer: or entirely overshadowed
Fred Davis: exclusively is a good word in the sense that, is that, because what I found out now, because, is that I’m still is that, just simply not limited to this.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: I’m the whole thing. So I still
Rick Archer: You’re still Fred, if somebody says, hey, Fred, you turn your head,
Fred Davis: I always tell people,
Rick Archer: Hey, how you doing?
Fred Davis: Ramana Maharshi would have done the same?
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And it would just the amount of matter.
Rick Archer: But but you’re not only Fred.
Fred Davis: Yeah, right. That’s it. Because you know, what mind does, I love to use this in Jnana, I do use it in, in teaching a lot. It’s the it’s the best teacher on the planet. And it’s never said a word. Which might, there may be something in that force. But what a mind wants to know, is when we, because I was spread data sitting in my chair woke up and oh, my God, I’m not Fred Davis, and moved 180 degrees in the circle. And this was wonderful, so freeing to be the vastness and and look and see, oh, I see, well, there’s a Fred Davis story. And there’s a lot of suffering in that. But that’s not me. And out of the out of the die, that was a great place for me to live for a while, because you’ll notice that all I did was moved from being Fred to be not Fred. I didn’t actually lose identity, I just transferred it. I transferred it from this to the vastness, which was because now I could see very clearly, that I’m the vastness. But the problem is, is that after a period of time is that suffering began again, it was just coming from a little higher level. And, and so when I, what I came to realize since is that the mind wants to either or. Am I this or that, or this or that. But truth never works like that spiritual truth never worked on it all it means it’s the whole thing. There’s just one thing going on, which means I gotta be both.
Rick Archer: Yep.
Fred Davis: I gotta be both. And that took some time. You know, because the this thing was going on. There’s no time. There’s no space. I get it. I get it, I promise you. But this lives in space and time. And so this is that on this level on the relative level, it does take time. And, and and for me, it took work. I know it did for you, too. And
Rick Archer: I’m still a work in progress.
Fred Davis: Yeah, me too. You know, I love the what you
Rick Archer: Very much so.
Fred Davis: what you said earlier, when you say it up as somebody threw away? It’s like asking what they’re educated. And I love that.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: I’m at a grammar school. Now.
Rick Archer: I thought of another metaphor. When I was listening to you this past week. It’s like, you know, somebody who’s just past bootcamp, can call himself a soldier.
Fred Davis: That’s right.
Rick Archer: But so can the four star general, you know, but there’s a vast difference between the four star general and private in terms of their knowledge, their authority, their power, their all kinds of things, you know, and so fine if we want to say awake is we want to define it as having glimpsed your true nature.
Fred Davis: That’s it.
Rick Archer: great, yeah, but still, there’s this vast range.
Fred Davis: Right. So there is because the opening never ends. That’s the key. See, I thought, I just came from a talk myself or somebody, you know, I picked it up in books, or whatever my idea was, as, as it is, for many people. Now, I can promise you that because I thought that every day is that Enlightenment is is a one shot deal. They read something famous, like, like Eckhart Tolle story or something anymore. I just came out of nowhere, and boom, and I was just like this talking on the stage to you now. And as bullshit. I mean, he had to go sit in park for a long time and get oriented to this thing.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And I bet you if I ever get a chance to interview record, one of the main things I’d want to talk to him about would be, you know, how is it unfolding for you even now? I mean, yeah, I mean, I bet I bet you that today, there’s some greater richness or something than there was a year ago. And I’m talking, if I were talking to Eckhart and a year from now, even more,
Fred Davis: yeah,
Rick Archer: I think that’s interesting. I think it’s good to know that or acknowldege that.
Fred Davis: I agree with you completely. And so that Greg Goode, you know, we’re talking he was one that really helped me with that more than a great deal. I mean, let me just let me say their names right quick so that I get them out there and say thank you on air, which is my teachers really were Scott Kiloby. Greg Goode and Rupert Spira. And all three of them. Were once out. See, I had to first I had Of course, I lower myself to accepting a teacher. And I didn’t actually do that or until I had been awake for like three and a half years or something. But all of them were very helpful in helping me see that this thing opens forever. What I used to do with Greg, what a generous, beautiful man, I used to, because the he and I never talked to Greg in person, I’ve never talked to him on Skype, we’ve only email but we’ve emailed hundreds of times.
Rick Archer: Wow
Fred Davis: And what I used to do with Greg, was, I would just come up with my very high seed, and I would send that Greg, and he would just tear it apart. Just destroy it. And then a couple of weeks later, I’d you know, I’d know something new down. And so because that was unfolding was continuing to happen. So I would put all that back now. I think this is it.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And he would destroy it. And and I bet I kept doing that and doing that. And what the funny thing is, is that is that I began to make more and more sense, if you will, is that it began, I began to get clearer and clearer, because he helped me see what wasn’t true.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Now, you know, some of the non doulas don’t like this kind of talk, because it implies it implies that there are levels and gradations. And all that sounds so dual. But, you know, I would suggest that if that’s their gripe, then their non duality is probably largely conceptual. Because if you’re really tuned into the experiential quality of it, you just find that there’s this continual unfolding, you know,
Fred Davis: conceptual non duality is not a door to freedom. It’s a straitjacket because I wore it for some time. And it’s, and that’s when we’ve got that thing on. It’s like, well, wait a minute. I shouldn’t be feeling this. Because you have because one person wouldn’t be feeling this,
Rick Archer: right. And this, if there’s only only one thing, how could there be this?
Fred Davis: Your wife has died, but she was never here. So don’t worry.
Rick Archer: I mean, you know, the way you can spot the people who sort of are oriented that way, as they tend to be a bit strident and fundamentalist in their, in their approach, you know,
Fred Davis: I get emails from them.
Rick Archer: in chat groups and stuff, yeah, right emails. Advaita police, you know,
Fred Davis: You know, once in a while, I’ll get an email. Remember, one that just opened up, the first one was you are full of shit.
Rick Archer: But of course, there’s only you know, one thing and so you know what that shit really is?
Fred Davis: You don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do.
Rick Archer: So, just the Fred of 10 years ago, coming back to haunt you.
Fred Davis: That’s exactly. Yeah. And and, you know, once in a while I get those because I’m very adamant about the fact that there is stuff you can do. And like, once again, I’ll say one thing one day, and I say one thing, I’m the other, and it doesn’t make any difference I’m always talking about right now. And I’m always talking to whoever I’m talking to, and nobody else.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well you know another puzzling thing, or not puzzling. But another paradoxical thing about it is that even though there is stuff you can do, there’s there is nothing you can do. And nobody’s doing anything. I mean, you know, my general experience is that there’s nobody here and nothing’s actually happening. But I’m here, but I’m here. And it’s happening. Very same time.
Fred Davis: Yeah. Because it’s because here we are, again, and people listening to this who have not yet had the we had a non dual experience, if you will, what’s happening is the man is going well wait just a minute. I mean, is it like this? Or is it like this? It’s like this, like, what you just spit it out with these gases won’t tell me? Because once again, we’re back in the minds territory, which is the either or, if we can describe something with a yin yang, we are talking about the drawing. This is that is the this is the fundamental. This is the basic the basis of the drain, which is the either or, which is the two polar opposites. So is it this way or this way? It’s both. It’s both. There’s no one here. There’s nothing to do. And try this.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: yeah.
Rick Archer: You know, what I find really helpful is just a layman’s understanding of physics. And I’m going to interview a couple of physicists next month, because the physicists will tell you, you know, even the there’s a hand here and it says flesh, and then there’s molecules and then there’s, and then there’s atoms on the atom level, there are no molecules, and then there’s some atomic particles. And on that level, there are no atoms, and then you go even deeper, and there’s none of that even exists or has manifested. And the whole range is simultaneously true, just sort of each reality on its own level.
Fred Davis: And that’s identical, of course, to what I’m talking about with because what’s happening is that we’re even worse than not having had seen not having seen the non dual state is to have seen it, and then it goes away and now I know. Now I know because I remember that there’s just one thing, I’ve seen it very clearly. And so none of this stuff counts. Because that we’ve what we’ve done, if we’ve had a glimpse there, we’ve seen, it’s what you’re saying is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. So what happens when we wake when we have that awakening is initial awakening, which is, which as opposed to liberation, which is what we’re moving toward, if you will, so when we have that awakening, it is seen from the non dual state, no one here, nothing to do, everything’s fine as it is, because there’s not really anything happening anyway. So there’s this but and but we notice that on the relative view, there is stuff going on, there is somebody here there is a doer, whatever. And the mind again, is which is which is which is which is it’s both so that so we’re we’ve got a foot in each world. That’s what I would describe this as a foot in each world. And we’re, so we’re living that simultaneously. But the man is always looking for the one way to be. And it doesn’t really work like that.
Rick Archer: I was just just spent the last few days with Amma the hugging saint and someone asked her a question about how do you reconcile detachment and compassion, because it seems like they’re kind of counter they’re kind of paradoxically opposed. And she said, if you’re really detached to the fullest extent that can be, then you’re also infinitely compassionate, because you see, everything is God. And so you know, you have just sort of infinite love and appreciation for every little particle of creation. And she kind of used examples of like, if your finger accidentally pokes your eye or something, you don’t punish your finger, you, you know, it’s part of you. And so everything is part of you, when that kind of realization has dawned and there can’t possibly be any kind of coldness or, you know, that kind of, you know,
Fred Davis: there is this, like, Mother Teresa used to talk about the fact that, you know, I’m not I’m not actually helping all these people I’m helping Jesus. Yeah, exactly. Everything she saw. That’s, that’s what she saw. And,
Rick Archer: and not just the belief, and I mean, that’s, it’s a living experience.
Fred Davis: I can, one of the people through kind of little tests when we’re done with a session, and one of the things that I asked him is, I’ll say, so have you ever. So have you ever heard anyone say that they woke up and everywhere they look, they saw the face of God? And they’ll say, yep, oh, here it is. I don’t know what I was, when I used to read that. It was like, well, that’s really going to be cool. I guess it’s gonna be like a million little masks or TV monitors or Hey Fred, I’m God from up here. It’s infinitely simpler.
Rick Archer: Nice. So I’ve been I’ve been throwing in a little bit too many questions, maybe and throwing you off your game in terms of
Fred Davis: No, you’re doing great.
Rick Archer: Okay, well, so where should we go from here? You were kind of on there.
Fred Davis: You want to track up my life?
Rick Archer: Yeah, let’s keep tracking
Fred Davis: as a background thing for us to jump on as the bus moves.
Rick Archer: Sure.
Fred Davis: The So in 2011, I started awakening clarity. And I didn’t I mean, the funny thing is, is I say I started awakening clarity, awakening clarity started itself in July of 2011. And the way that that happened was that I sat down at this desk, to the one that monitors on a sat down at this desk, and to, to do some work on my book business, my online book business it was at nine o’clock at night. And that was what I came in the room to do as far as I knew. And I sat down and I guess something else grabbed my attention. And I stood up seven hours later. I don’t even know if I’d gone to the bathroom. Seven hours later, and I had a blog. And I didn’t know any I wasn’t. I didn’t know have any idea about a blog, I had no idea how to run one, I didn’t know how to set one up. Nothing. I found that everything that I needed to know to get started on that one night. And and when I did that, I had no idea what I had done. You know, because up until now, I had sort of been, you know, the awake guy in his living room. Because I had woken up a few people that had never want to say I woke up people. Let me just be very clear on. That’s shorthand for the fact that I helped some people come to recognition of their own true nature, but I didn’t need to wake them up. I can’t wake anybody up. It’s not something that I can do to somebody. I can just help somebody that already wants to wake up very much. I can help them wake up. So that’s what I mean when I say I want somebody you’re a catalyst the Amok
Rick Archer: Got it. You know what a catalyst does a chemical reaction, it sort of just facilitates the reaction without
Fred Davis: Facilitates the reaction.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: That’s right. If I’ve got 51% cooperation, I’m a pretty damn effective catalyst. I don’t have that that person doesn’t want to wake up more than they want to stay asleep. I ain’t gonna be able to do nothin’. And that happens once in a while. Not all. So the I had been I mean, I’d spoke guys, there were a couple of guys in recovery with me, and I’m talking about these are not non dual folks. I mean, these are like Christian folks, right? I mean, who were just not can’t be both, but I’m just saying that they were traditional Christians, one of them was really, actually they’re both fairly dyed in the wool, but one of them was not active. And one of them was, but they had never heard the word non duality. And while we were talking, and I started doing this,
Rick Archer: Unless they happen to read I and My Father are one.
Fred Davis: Yeah. Right, right, right, right.
Rick Archer: Then they’ve heard it.
Fred Davis: Yeah. But so the I Am that I Am or any of that stuff, right. But they had not knowingly come across these teachings. And I took them through a little bits of inquiry, the first guy was a total surprise. I knew what I was doing. But I had no idea he would actually wake up. I was just actually, I was taking him through some inquiry. But I was just playing with him more than anything else, sitting in my living room, and this guy’s weighed about 350. It certainly was better than 365 or so I don’t know, huge guy, in my little tiny living room. And he woke up, like, like with an exploding mountain. I mean, it was just so and I went and there was some egoic pleasure. And then let me just tell you, I mean, there just was it was like, a lot of egoic pleasure in it at that time. Wow, wow, it could screw him and his awakening, look what I did, right. And it stayed that way, for a little while I was I was taken aback. Because I’ve been a fraud all my life, you know, just been an alcoholic, you can’t live an alcoholic life and not be a fraud, because you got a secret life, you’re covering up. So I’ve been a fraud all my life, and I had an I and as a spiritual when I woke up, and even I questioned my waking up, you know, at times and everything. And but then when I became okay, this is, you know, this is where you’ll da didda dah didda dah. But I still had not actually thought given any thought to the fact that I was going to wake anybody else thought I figured I could give him pointers. And I never dawned on me that anybody else would wake up due to this catalyst. And this guy clearly did. And then about two months later, I had another guy in the front yard. And this time I didn’t deliberately, I knew what I was trying to do. And he woke up. And just standing there in the front yard. Yeah, we’re standing in front yard talking. And we, and then we moved to chairs, I remember now but we moved to chairs. But we talked for a long time he would accompany me as as a recovery sponsor. And but the next thing I knew he woke up, I mean, very clearly, very, and he just really clear. But it in neither case. Both of them have been changed forever. But actually, neither one of them got fixed. Neither one of them stayed sober forever. That is not, there’s no, there’s no happy ending to all of that stuff. But do you think it’s been helpful too. But I still had not recognized what I was doing. When I started awakening clarity. I didn’t know what I was doing. Okay. It when people started waking up, it was the first time I took myself seriously. In the sense of guy, you know, you could be teacher material. I mean, because it’s funny, it was most of the fantasies I had about being a spiritual teacher occurred prior to waking up. And even though there was some egoic pleasure in helping other people and look what I can do, there was still there was still I was there was an open error beginning to pay attention to the fact that something real might be taking place here even though I was a fraud. And and it became I became willing, this is huge, sounds insignificant, but for me, it was huge. I became willing to be called out as a fraud. In other words, I think it was willing to just openly live this and you could think what you wanted to which I never, I mean, your opinion had always been very important to me. It was more important that you think I’m awake that for me to be awake. Right? And suddenly, I began to recognize something’s really going on here. And I’m as one of awakening clarity I started that and I started writing about it. And some of that early stuff is pretty good. Not always as clear, perhaps as I am today, not as and I’m not today, as clear as I will be a week from now or a year from now. But it was pretty good stuff. But didn’t have a big audience. And so then I went out and started getting other teachers to contribute stuff. And I grew an audience. And I stepped into the background and just did introductions for about 18 months or so. But my introductions became more and more and more involved. I began to get to know the community in 2012, because I’ve been working with them, the good folks at nonduality pressed, we came to an agreement for me to write beyond recovery. And once again, see the game keeps changing, keeps changing, there are these points of acceleration. And when I wrote beyond recovery, it was the first time that I noticed, oh, my God, there’s a pattern here. You’re you’re doing the set, you’re doing a little bit different way. But you’re basically doing the same thing. Every time somebody wakes up or whatever you’re doing. And I thought began to write those points down in that book, because I used that baseline book around the 12 steps of recovery. So I had 12 steps. And within that I gave kept giving descriptions of what it was that I’ve been doing. Some of them clearer than others. But it when I recognized I had a pattern, I said, Hell, you’ve got something to say now. Because I had always wondered what the spiritual teachers say, when you call them that, you know, that the and I had worked with Scott. But Scott youth inquire, and I haven’t inquire, you know, so that’s the way that we thought we didn’t just pal around, he took me through. Scott does stuff, you know, the end. And just like I’ll do, and suddenly, I had something to share, which I thought might transfer. And I started talking to people on the phone people that were writing me because of awakening clarity, because I was you know, set myself up as a as a, you know, the big, the big teacher guy. And but I was beginning to get a hint of just a little humility with it. Not much, but a little. And so I started talking to responding right in a fair amount of email, and started with a couple of people that have really pushed me on things, said you weren’t talking on the phone for free. I want to see if this thing would transfer. And we did. And right from the start I had about a 50%. And I know that we’re not you know that this is all very anti mom duel. But I got to just tell you, I got to report what I got to report. And I had about a 50% success rate with people that I talked to on the phone. In other words, about half of the people who had never had an initial awakening before, when they talked to me they started to wake up.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t seem natural. To me, it just seems like as long as we throw in the word initial, I’m cool with it. You know, if we if we say they talk to you, and they’re and they’re all a sudden, the most enlightened being on the planet,
Fred Davis: They’re elbowing Adyashanti off the stage.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: you know,
Rick Archer: but you give them a kick in the pants, there’s some kind of glimpse, there’s some kind of, you know, recognition that they hadn’t had before. And it sounds like you’ve got a formula for that.
Fred Davis: But it’s in the funny thing is, is that was so that’s true. And I’ll go into that. So I began with a had about 50% Like that. And then it began to as I began to get skillful as began to do it. But now I’m really doing it. And then I got to where I was doing it more often. And then, at one point, I was doing it seven days a week, I was doing a couple of these things a day, seven days a week it was but it was just it was crippling the unit. I like to kill myself. But I was so taken with it. I just couldn’t believe it was possible. And the funny thing is, is that my is that people began to have I mean, not everybody went right back to sleep. by a longshot. A lot of people began to it’s not like they woke up into clarity, but they woke up into but they certainly woke up into their true nature and then just didn’t really know and became and became okay with the fact that there was misidentification within that. Okay, so I mean, as it was, it had nothing to do with the size of the explosion on there. And I’ve had people that just did what I did. Oh, and I have a guy in Switzerland now who’s one of the most awake people I know and when When he woke up he went You’re kidding. And I mean, and he, as far as I believe he had been doing TM for 30 years. And all of that. So he has he had a lot of context,
Rick Archer: I might know him.
Fred Davis: Hey, you might. the so is there’s a lot of the had a lot of contexts in Compton, those the only people who think that context doesn’t matter are the people who don’t have any. Because context does matter. It’s not that it’s, it’s, it’s not absolutely critical that it’s happening. But I like to liken it to snow, that when snow falls, it doesn’t need a tree, they just fall right on the ground. But when it does fall on a tree with a tree of context, if you will, man, it’s got so many little things that it can fall on, you got a whole different thing, when there’s a tree for that awakened snow to fall apart.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And people who have a lot of contacts, very often this has been the little thing. You know, because like, I everybody’s hardcase, that talks to me, I’m not famous, and they don’t say, you know, I’m not like it. It’s not like, Well, I tried Byron Katie didn’t weren’t Let me try Fred Davis. You know, I’m way down the line. And so they are right ready, they found out the only thing that they were missing is the only thing that counts.
Rick Archer: Yeah. If I understand your use of the word context, it’s sort of like, if a person has correct me if I’m wrong, but if a person has been a seeker like your friend in Switzerland, or you know, or even well advanced on the path, like I have a whole thing here that Mandy Solk, sent me. And you, she’s somebody I’ve interviewed twice. And but in any case, they’ve they’ve sort of been marinating in this for some time, you know, then they’re, I guess we could say they’re ripe.
Fred Davis: Yeah,
Rick Archer: they’re in a, they’re in a state where it’s not going to take a sledgehammer to sort of get them to shift. And whereas if somebody is just, you know, basically spend all their time at NASCAR races and drinking beer, and they’re just, you know, haven’t even given a thought to this, then they’re gonna be a tough, tougher nut to crack.
Fred Davis: That’s wrong. They aren’t. And the other thing is that sometimes with what I do with this, I mean, I sometimes talk to people like Mandy who’ve had, you know, who are awake. I mean, you know, they In other words, they’ve had that initial awakening long ago. They know truth, they talk about the truth of what they’re, what happens is, is that what we don’t want to is that we understand very, very clearly what we’re not. And we don’t yet understand what it is that we are, we’ve moved, we’ve done what I call the 180. We’ve moved over here and not to do not Fred, and we understand the the we understand the absolute position beautifully.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Here was something Mandy said she said it was the clearest way of directly pointing to the I am of my source that I’ve ever experienced. I think he’s an amazing teacher. There’s an ego stroke for you. I already felt that I was pretty well awakened and clear about who I am not and somehow clear about who I am. But since his session, I have huge clarity about who I am. We are of course, what we who we are, of course, it’s infinite, limitless and beyond understanding on one level, but Fred’s approach really does blow the doors open wide and clearly illuminates the unlimited expansiveness of I. And it is very instant.
Fred Davis: Yes. It’s no I remember, I had a woman in Washington, DC. I’ve never done this before, since I can remember. But I had a woman in Washington DC, and we were talking or whatever. And you could and she was you can see that she was still like, if I gonna get it, I’m not gonna get it this time around. I looked at it. And I said, don’t worry, you’re going to wake up in about 20 minutes. 20 minutes later, bam. Just an idle. Words just come out sometimes that terrify me. I had I had a one on one time. And not a youngster myself. I had a woman in England as a client one day, and she had been she was not great health, and she was quite old. And she had been depressed and everything else. And actually, her children bought her a session with me or children or grandchildren, I forget. So and during that, she had a lot of fear. And I was helping her work through that. She’s and I can’t, I can’t just I can’t go any further. I just can’t I just God is just too much. It’s and I’m just scared to death in my heart, my heart and it’s like, you know, no, and the words just came out, man. I was terrified. And it said, Well, I’ll tell you what, instead of resisting that fear, why don’t you just let it take you over and why don’t we just see if you have a heart attack and die or not.
Rick Archer: Out of the mouths of babes, huh?
Fred Davis: Oh man, and I’m sitting here going, oh my god, can I can they trace this? Can they get me?
Rick Archer: Yeah, the NSA was the was the thing that the tapes everything they got you?
Fred Davis: Yeah, right? Oh yeah, sure, right, right.
Rick Archer: Gotcha in some vault in Utah now saying that.
Fred Davis: I need to get on the phone with my lawyer. And what happened was instead was that she could see she just had such drive this and such courage because she just let that happen. And you could just see her she was just shaking like this. And then she began to shake a little less, shake a little less. And about two or three minutes. And to do with that she opened her eyes, she said, Well, I guess I can’t hide there anymore. And two minutes later, she came through and she began, she recognized. And when I say awakening, another way to put that is that is that she simply recognized her true nature. You know, I have people that come here to visit me at my home. And every time I open the door for somebody that’s on the porch, I just think, you know, well, that must be Ted. I mean, he he’s already awake. What’s he doing here? And why would he come see me? And then and then there’s, you know, practicality tricks and take the money in the credit let him in.
Rick Archer: And so just to rehash it, when you say someone awakened to their true nature, like this lady, what do you what exactly are you saying? What did they experience?
Fred Davis: Well, it does experience is going to vary, but 7 billion ways. Because that awakening is coming through 7 billion different units.
Rick Archer: But we all have the same, we all have the same true nature,
Fred Davis: we all have the same true nature, but it’s still coming through this. And even when I describe this to you, you’re going to hear it one way, because it’s coming through first, it has to find its way through my conditioning, which has still got some here, there’s this units got conditioning, it’s gonna go to work its way through that units conditioning, and then I hear it through, but I hear it over there. But I hear through Rick. So this what what we essentially experienced is the just the recognition, because I’m already awake. And this all of my attention has always been on, on this on the solid things, you know, game I like to play, which is I put up is I have people put their hand down. And I’ll say, Okay, now moving in real close and close your eyes. So open your eyes and tell me what’s the first thing that you tell me the first thing you notice? They go my hand? How about all that space in between? Did you notice that you didn’t notice that. So it’s these, it’s noticing that I’m this, that I’m this that? That it’s understandable I’m looking for oneness. But I’m already is what the units looking for oneness. But it’s already an ones it can’t, it can’t. It can’t find one there’s so long as it looks. So the recognition that I am already always awake that and that’s what we discovered is that I’m the one thing because of one thing going on and it and we do that in the process that I use in living method is that as I take them very most of that is actually deconstruction is to take them through. Absolutely, clearly working particularly on the body, for them to understand what it is that they’re not. And I have them tell me before we go into what you are, so you have you’re very clear on what you’re not as that right? And I say yes, I say okay, well then here comes the fun part. I’m gonna help you find out what you are. But until we see through what we’re not because we think we limited to this little unit here. Oh, God, because then we’re smitten with them. I mean, I love mine. I love to dress it up in flies, I thought about what else it was gonna wear on BatGap today, get its hair, right all, you know, and it’s but but when once we it’s the discovery that, that this is just another object in the room. In other words, the camera of our lives, starts here and moves there. And look at those people, I can see very clear. It’s just what they say it’s a dream. And all those people are there out there. They’re dreaming about it, however, and the one thing that is outside the circle of one is, and I’m not in my dream. This unit is not in that dream. But the unit is in the dream. It’s just another object. It’s not even a special object. It’s just another object. It’s not a unspecial object, but it’s just you know, there’s no difference really, I mean, there’s no fundamental difference between me and my dog, or me and this.
Rick Archer: Yeah, of course, you know, you’d be more inclined to throw that cup into a fire than put your hand in a fire there’s, there’s a certain association with this object
Fred Davis: Yeah, yes, notice that that’s the truth from the absolute view, but from the relative view, there is a guy here, and I’m here, and I’m gonna put my hand into fire. The you know, the funny thing is, is that is that when I was drinking, you know, you would discover that the stovetop ism stovetops will burn your hand. And that’s end. But then what we do is we end up in when we’re that crazy, we say, well, Damn, that was terrible. I wonder if the back one will do it. The back, I wonder if the back burner will do it.
Rick Archer: Oh,
Fred Davis: put your hand on the back burner. Oh, my God. Well, those two really burn. Let me try the other two. And
Rick Archer: So in other words, you’re speaking a little metaphorically here, right? I mean, in other words, you do such stupid stuff while you’re drinking, that you keep doing it and looking for solutions where you’re not going to find any.
Fred Davis: And we also do that seeking,
Rick Archer: right
Fred Davis: Because I went from having a drinking problem to having a thinking. And what I find is that the is that because getting sober is kind of like Enlightenment light. It’s such an incredible shift. And there and the parallels, that’s the reason so many of us got here through recovery. Is that we because the parallels are just incredible. But here is just, there’s just a little bit different perspective.
Rick Archer: Yeah. What always amazes me when I talk to someone who has done a lot of drinking, and then they’ve had a spiritual awakening, it’s just how kind of resilient the human nervous system is. I mean, the fact that you can put it through all that, and then still have enough brain cells to come up with a kind of, yeah, it’s amazing.
Fred Davis: The brain cells can still be available. And when I say Is it is it is a God and St. Peter, were having a discussion. And God looked over and said, You know, I think I can even make that work. Yeah. Oh, yeah, let’s see you try. And like, there’s no way you can even make this into a spiritual teacher, if they want, I could probably make a goat into a spiritual teacher. I’m only was only one level up from a goat when they did it to me.
Rick Archer: That’s pretty good.
Fred Davis: So you know, even even the rustiest of tools, even the poorest of tools, can meet with with enough willingness. See, and that’s what I’m trying to talk about. But see my willingness. I don’t get any credit for my willingness. Because my willingness came from simply just not being able to handle that suffering.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I was kind of run out of options or something.
Fred Davis: It’s what happens with what I call the vise of suffering, Rick. And because I knew for 20-25 years that I was alcoholic, I could watch his it took everything away. It took away my first wife and my second wife, it took away the rest of my family, it took away everything that was ever any good my credit, my cars, my job, my businesses, everything. So I knew I could drink successfully for 20 years, at least I knew I could not drink successfully. What I hadn’t noticed was the other side of that pattern. So that’s just off the only point I got was I cannot break successful exam I just can’t, I just can’t. The 20 years I live in quit drinking tomorrow, I’m gonna quit and I’m gonna start drinking less I’m gonna drink liquor instead. And I’m drinking beer instead of liquor wine instead of Beer break, I’m only gonna drink on Tuesdays a random Tuesday is gonna be the, you know, where I’m gonna break everyday but Tuesdays. Well what happened was, so I knew I couldn’t drink successfully, what I hadn’t yet noticed was that I couldn’t quite quit trying. In other words, that’s the this is the vital part of the pattern. And in this in the sea is exactly the same thing happened. When, when I woke up, as happened to me, when I got sober went out when I got sober when there was a recognition. I cannot drink successfully, and oh my god, I can’t quit trying. So me I can’t quit drinking, and I can’t fix it. I’m completely screwed. And then under that understanding of that, I’m completely screwed. Then I became willing to lower myself to listen to somebody else. Yeah, right. I was just fresh out of it a third time of my life. And there’s only been two times the second time was that morning. When when I when I woke up, which was because see, I lost all interest in the story. I didn’t want to live and I noticed that couldn’t die. So I can’t write the same exact place. I can’t live and I can’t die. I’m completely screwed. And as soon as I was, and I recognized that I’m just wrong.
Rick Archer: So I was like, oh, man, river I can’t stand living but fraid of dying.
Fred Davis: Yeah, that’s it. I was, but I was looking forward to die. I didn’t get there, because I just I’m staying alive with Betsy. I was I was awake. But Betsy, I love Betsy more than I hated living.
Rick Archer: Well you know, taking it back a step, I would say that there’s the whole universe is one big evolution machine. And there’s a sort of a evolutionary imperative inherent in everything from the tiniest amoeba to the, you know, most sophisticated human nervous system. And we’re, there’s just, there’s something that drives us, you know, there’s, there’s a seeking the desire for more and more, which might manifest itself as more toys, more money more more, you know, this more relationships, but which eventually, you know, since those things don’t fulfill, has to be, has to take the direction of, you know, self recognition, self recognition, or spiritual awakening. You know, just a little
Fred Davis: I think of it as like this is that, in my case, because, you know, I get some flack once in a while, because it’s a self promoting unit, I’ve stuck with it, and just what it does, and you know, but the reason that we’re talking is the fact that is that I started talking some time back. In other words, if I had just sat in my living room still being the white guy, in my living room, that might be very pleasant, but it wouldn’t have been a lot of people who are awfully glad I did not. So that there’s a, there’s a fine line between little self promotion and big self promotion, and you kind of got to walk both lines. But one way that I look at this actually, is that it looks like a drive forward. And it’s not really it’s, it’s a pull forward, it’s being pulled. But the you the way that that pull happens, appears to be drive. Because I’m I’m teaching because I have no choice. I quit trying to teach as late as earlier this winter, it was just like, I got tired of it. It was just killing me. I was working too many hours, I wasn’t making much money. And it was just like, and I mean, I didn’t have no life at all. And it was like, Anna, I don’t think I want to do this. And I’ve tried. So I’ve deleted all my videos and took down the thing from my website. And I thought I was gonna, you know, I’m out of this because I figured I wrote a book. And I’m done. I did my contribution. Now I’m going back to Fred’s life, I’m gonna garden and sell books. And that went really great for about three weeks. And then it started making me miserable. And I realized I had no choice. And then bam, back to that vices suffering. I can’t, I don’t want to do this. And I noticed I can’t not. And when I saw that, this time, I just abandoned myself completely to this. And I will tell you, just a quick little interlude, which is that at that moment of that vise that I’m talking about, which occurred last winter, the winter of of 2013 Was that my book business died. When I left teaching my book business plunged because I didn’t really needed to make a living or anything. My book business died, suddenly, suddenly began, I just lost, a lot can tell wasn’t hardly clear at all. Because I was pulling away. I didn’t see it that I didn’t initially see it that way. But at any rate, and when I when I finally got to that vices suffering, I said, Okay, I mean, and I think I said this out loud, which I think is, is just acceptable sometimes for human beings, to say a little prayer, and it doesn’t matter who you pray into, or how you doing or whatever, just do it. And so on this day, I humbled myself enough to open my mouth and, and say, the sentence out loud, which was okay, I got a real good idea of what the real clear picture of what I’m not supposed to be doing. I need you to tell me what I am supposed to be. Because I’m not smart enough to figure that part out. That evening, I began the book of undoing and that changed everything.
Rick Archer: Cool. I really, that’s a beautiful story. I really think that, you know, it’s an intelligent universe. And, you know, Jim Morrison said, you can’t petition the Lord with prayer, but in fact, you can. And, you know, maybe, I don’t know if it’s the Lord you’re petitioning, but you know, when when you have an earnest, ardent, you know, desire like that, whether you speak it out or, or in just a
Fred Davis: Don’t let the straitjacket of non duality stop you.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: like, you know, I can’t do that. Because, you know, I have people that we’ve heard that thing and they’ll say, Who were you praying into? Does it matter?
Rick Archer: Well, there are, you know, there’s a being with a capital B and beings with small b, I mean, the universe is teeming with life and much of it is too subtle for our perception. But I mean, you know, I don’t care if it sounds not, doesn’t sound non dual, but I mean, there are angels and devas and all kinds of solar impulses of intelligence governing this whole thing, and very much involved in our individual lives and concern for for the evolution of the planet and so on. And, you know, knowingly or unknowingly, we’re in league with them to one degree or another and cooperating or not cooperating or whatever. But if if one has a sincere intention, and can place oneself in a position of usefulness, it’s like, oh, boy, here’s another one for the team. And you’ll get 10 Is everything. Yeah, you’ll get support, you know,
Fred Davis: intention is everything that you know, even when I got sober years later, I could see I really worked the steps in a very poor a very quickly and very poorly. And I used to admit that in recovery, I said, but apparently my intention was clear, because I got sober, and I’m states and I’ve stayed sober, then quite a while now. So the mounts were 13 and a half years, something like that, you know, in recovery, we’re just like, Baby children, which is that how do you? Well, I’m two and a half, to two and a half, and then recovery. It’s how long have you been sober? 1333 and a half years. 52 and a quarter?
Rick Archer: And regarding this whole thing of, you know, what should I do? And you know, should I be teaching this and I think there are people who get up on a soapbox too soon, or people who get it who probably should be on a soapbox and aren’t. But I think as long as the way I see it, as long as one is honest and humble enough and realistic. And you’ll find your niche.
Fred Davis: If you just stay out there, and you’re willing to take the licks.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: Cause I did not have a I didn’t have a teacher when I woke up for several years. And every and I now know that absolutely everything that you can do wrong quote, in waking life
Rick Archer: You tried it out?
Fred Davis: Yeah, yeah, I’ve tried it out. I gave it you know, I suffered for it. And that’s how I learned. I learned I’m suffering was my point. It always has been, it’s getting a lot more less. So they’re now in a sense that I don’t have the threshold for suffering that I had when I was in the park. And now there’s just, you know, a little bit of a hint of something and oh,
Rick Archer: well, you get you get more fine tuned. I mean, you know, it’s like when you’re on the highway, you’re just making these real subtle corrections in the steering wheel. It’s kind of like gets more and more like that, where you just you don’t There’s a there’s a saying, How does it go? For the wise, only an indication is necessary.
Fred Davis: Yeah.
Rick Archer: So just a subtle indication, whereas some people really need to be smacked upside the head, you know, they’re not gonna take the subtle hints.
Fred Davis: That’s right. That’s what I needed. And fortunately, I don’t need so many licks anymore. But, but I still got quite a few, quite a few indications.
Rick Archer: Now, you know, it just seemed to, from what I hear from what you’re saying, you seem to have a knack for facilitating an initial awakening.
Fred Davis: Yeah.
Rick Archer: But then I’ve heard you talk on your YouTube videos about oscillation. And all I mean, do you have sort of ways of helping people to stabilize a bit,
Fred Davis: I do the, what you know, you can take because I’ve worked with people. And we’re also working, besides helping people with an initial awakening, is that I help a lot of people who’ve had an initial awakening, and they’re now in isolation, or they, you know, they had an awakening three years ago, and it was great. And I want to be just like that again, or whatever. But I can’t seem to be able to do it. They come in what I do know that there are certainly there’s things that I that I do that are not unique to me. In other words, I didn’t invent this. I didn’t invent any of this. I mean, this whole thing just arrived here, I promise. But, but as far as practices, I mean, I’m, I’m a fan of meditation. I meditate on a regular basis myself, I don’t do it every day. But I do it when I do it. And, and I like the results that I get from it. I don’t meditate to get a result directly. But I still still notice that there one occurs. Sometimes I do meditate to get to directly get a result. Lately, I’ve been meditating again. Because the two and a half years, I had been on a path being pulled so fast that it looked like I was driving. Yeah, and the unit is exhausted. Sure. I’m like, I’m kind of done in a way as far as all of that part. And so I’ve been meditating again, to get this mind quieted down and slowed down so that it says that I’m moving so that I’m I’m just aware of myself. more acutely all the time.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, you can always fine tune the instrument. And, you know, I mean, as, as we know, I mean, Ramana Maharshi, spent decades in some sort of meditation after his initial awakening, doing whatever he was doing, but there was a purpose to it. The Buddha spent, you know, after his Enlightenment, spent the rest of his life he meditates a couple of hours a day or something. So so we’re told, and it so it has an effect on you’d like to call it the unit, you know, it’s like carbon carbon unit from the first Star Trek movie, but it has an influence. And that influence I, I think is and this research to back it up is conducive to refinement and stabilization, integration and all that stuff. Yeah.
Fred Davis: I mean, and I’m also a big, I’m a big fan before and after awakening, like, of non dual inquiry. But the difference is, is that we still do inquiry all the time, but I don’t ever do it. I don’t do it consciously anymore. Spontaneous, but a spontaneous inquiry. And one of those is just the fundamental inquiry of the willingness to question whatever is going on in my mind. Yeah. Is that true? I mean, because all I had to do to move back into a place of suffering is believe the fall, man, it doesn’t make any difference, whether it’s a big thought or a little thought, a significant thought or an insignificant thought, if I’m believing that that thought is true, there’s got to be somebody there to believe that. And I want to always be willing to question Is that true? Is it really true? Do you know that?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I can tell you, I’ve been a bit of a Byron Katie fan at some point.
Fred Davis: I love Byron Katie. She’s wonderful. I think that her work is very, very good for clearing people up. I’ve had a lot of her students who have come to me just who needed still needed that last bit. Right, you know, the and so but they had wonderful context, and often very often recommend her work. That’s another thing. Sure, Byron Katie’s work for five years in my house and some of some of my, my own stuff to win, actually, I think at the end, I prefers and, but it was for questioning what I call beliefs, opinions and positions, pops, pops, because we’re actually everything’s always okay. And then suddenly, here comes a belief and opinion or position, we get bumped in. And it’s a beautiful day, I go out of the mailbox, I’ve got a bill there from the IRS. And there’s like those idiots. I mean, what are they thinking? $5,000? Oh, you know, I get bombed. And I think that I think that my belief, opinion or position is true. And yeah, I can believe that. As long as I want to suffer as long as I’m willing to suffer for it. You know, is that true? No, but I’m willing to suffer for
Rick Archer: It polarizes you, it locks you into a sort of a little boxes you into a corner.
Fred Davis: I mean, because what I talk about is that, that that, that, I mean, doubt is our friend in this thing. That’s our best friend, the first two thirds or three quarters of an awakening session is spent raising doubt. That’s all it is just raising doubt. So are you sure that that’s how this works? Is that you know, so I know you believe that? Have you actually looked into there. And now in because what I talk about what I do is that it’s not, it’s not talking tail. It’s showing tail. Because talking tail certainly works. I’m a product of it. But it doesn’t work as often as, as show until when I can actually take you and show you have you experience your true nature. Right now, it was self promoting. We lost on that.
Rick Archer: So you’re back to the true nature thing. So you find that it’s sort of like pretty much 24/7 reality for you. This just sort of cruises along and you know, you’re going through your day and all but there’s this sort of vastness of silence or whatever. Yeah. And even during sleep, or does it kind of get blotted out during sleep?
Fred Davis: No, I still a man and other people that have other reports, but but I don’t sleep is the same way for me as it as it always was waking up. I mean, come in the morning is a little different than
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: but the sleep part is the same.
Rick Archer: I’m pretty much that way too. Although there have been times when there’s been sort of glimpses of inner awareness during sleep, but so you know, some friends of mine say it’s like, just bright as a light, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, throughout the night, there’s never any diminution of, of inner awareness, despite the depth of sleep. But one thing maybe you do notice is that when you wake up from sleep, there’s a kind of a sense of bliss or, or like the awareness has been there, or maybe somebody wakes you up in the night. Hey, Fred, you’re snoring and you realize, Hey, I was snoring. I was awake. You ever have anything like that? Yeah,
Fred Davis: there’s a. The other thing is that when I used to be that when I woke up in the middle of the night, it was like, and now it’s like, oh, I can really, I mean, I don’t really my wife and I wake up frequently in the night Like, and will, will kiss or do whatever, because it’s just that will we tell each other we love you, you know that because it’s just, I mean, it’s great. Whether I’m asleep or not asleep is great.
Rick Archer: And so the clarity is there from the moment of waking up you’re saying
Fred Davis: there’s no shift there really at all. Because that being is always there and always knows it’s there. It’s there when I’m, so don’t get me wrong when I talk about when I’m sleeping. I’m talking about this.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: their sleeps then, because I don’t ever sleep. But this sleeps
Rick Archer: right
Fred Davis: when this sleeps, there’s no, it doesn’t have any memories of deep, deep sleep or anything like that. But I don’t ever go anywhere. I don’t I don’t sleep. I’m, you know, with, like the cab companies but we don’t sleep you know?
Rick Archer: So is that kind of a conscious recognition throughout the night? Or is it more just sort of a more of an intuitive knowing? Yeah,
Fred Davis: It’s just intuitive have been because they’re in there upon that instant
Rick Archer: of awakening? Yeah.
Fred Davis: It’s just like, it’s just right there. And it’s, I mean, honestly, it’s gotten to where now that I’ve started meditating, again, it’s slowing this thing down again. Once again, I’m getting back to the fact that it’s getting very difficult to get out of bed in the morning, so I can’t come up with really good reasons. Yeah. And there is a there’s a, I mean, a physical bliss.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: Is Yes. Right. Yeah. Energy. That is just when it’s just God almighty? I mean, can it get any better than this? I mean, yeah it will, tomorrow.
Rick Archer: yeah. I was I thought of that when I was listening to some of your youtubes. Because I think maybe at one point, you were saying like you don’t, there isn’t necessarily going to be bliss and as or, you know, great happiness accompanying this. And I think my response was, yeah, not necessarily, but at a certain point, there probably will be as this develops,
Fred Davis: But it’s not necessarily through the unit that you’ll be having may still be having a difficult time, but it’s just not taken very seriously.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But somehow, even through the unit, bliss becomes more and more of a characteristic. Remember, Anandamayi Ma that great Indian saying that her name actually means bliss, permeated mother. Oh, and, you know, and there does come a time,
Fred Davis: I still have some things to look forward to, which is fine with me.
Rick Archer: oh, there’s always something to look forward to. Yeah,
Fred Davis: it’s this point.
Rick Archer: There’s a saying in the Vedas
Fred Davis: There is an undercurrent that what you’re talking about there, I think there is an undercurrent of all is well, I mean, just that never leaves and it doesn’t make any difference. What this is involved. That’s,
Rick Archer: yeah,
Fred Davis: here. But it’s, but it’s, it’s subtle. You know,
Rick Archer: I know what you mean. Yeah. It’s very good. It’s called Santosh contentment. And it become becomes a sort of a foundational quality or so to speak. But but this thing about bliss, I mean, there’s a saying contact with Brahman is infinite joy. And I mentioned it because sometimes people want to dumb down Enlightenment and, you know, kind of sell it short, in my opinion as being Oh, just this sort of, you know, flat, emotionless
Fred Davis: Oh, yeah.
Rick Archer: Dispassionate kind of thing. But I fully fully believe it can become extremely rich and saturated with you know, Joy,
Fred Davis: I think that when you’re when I really think what they’re describing there when they’re talking about that flat, dry place, are you, generally speaking, what I discovered is that that’s what people who have discovered what they’re not, but not yet people who have not yet discovered what they all right, we’re halfway there halfway home, and it can be in a lot of bliss and halfway home, and you got to go there and stay there and enjoy it while you do. But it’s just just know that it’s not the end.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And it’s often not only experienced as the end is often taught to be the end. And we hear a great deal about that. And welcome to my straightjacket.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And
Rick Archer: It always rubs me the wrong way when I hear that and so I’m kind of on a little bit of a mission to just sort of popularized the notion that there, there is a kind of a vast range of potential development and
Fred Davis: Same mission.
Rick Archer: yeah, and then let’s not sell ourselves short. You know, let’s not dumb this down. I mean, you know, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discouraging to think that perhaps you have a long row yet to hoe. It should be like exciting and encouraging.
Fred Davis: Because it’s always it’s always been always becoming this is great. Yeah, get any better than this. But oh wow, it did!
Rick Archer: It did, year
Fred Davis: that, that’s, that’s the whole thing. The idea, you know, the mission level was earlier and I know that I mentioned in one or two of my videos, and I know we’re not comfortable doing that. And you and I are not talking about level 12345, level five, you know, whatever, at least I’m not what I am talking about is the fact that there are, there’s certainly gradations in this in the idea that, that I am going to move from total ignorance of my true nature to 30 seconds later, elbowing Ramana and Adyashanti aside, I mean, it’s just insane. It’s the it’s the, this is what Greg Goode beat me on with was it is just it is the height of arrogance.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And even Adyashanti mentioning him has a famous quote that he’s just beginning. You know, he just feels like, I’m always just beginning.
Fred Davis: Yeah, yeah, what I see is that you take somebody like that, who’s been awake longer than I had and taught so much, just as I mean, you know, I did have a lot of respect for him, the and some other teachers as well. But what I noticed is that there’s just less Adi Shanti. there than there is Fred here, in the sense that there’s that continuous thinning of the conditioning. That, you know, that’s the what happens in 2010, when I began to talk when I began to talk, for the first time in years, because I’ve been trying to say this for years, and driven off every friend I had the nail, suddenly, when I started talking in 2010, people started waking up, they didn’t get what I was saying actually made sense. In is because that can in the content conditioning, and the clearing process is really simply the thinning of this, it’s where, because it takes some time that this occurs, and it takes some time for a whiteness to colonize the body. And, and that’s what that’s the process that you’re going to enter in and everybody else.
Rick Archer: But you know, ironically, even though as you say there’s a thinning of the conditioning, it’s it’s my observation that the more it thins, the more actually vibrant and charming and charismatic and whatnot, the personality becomes. So on the one hand, there’s less of the person but paradoxically, there’s more of the person
Fred Davis: because there’s more yes, there’s more of that, because there’s more light coming through.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: thinking about think about, like layers of paint on the glass, or does you know, what I just thought is that in every is that in every moment mean that awakening is like, awakening is like a piece of like a windowpane. And every moment we’re either wiping the glass or breathing on it. So, and this when, what we do after initial awakening, for some people that they got what they want, and that’s fine. Wherever they go with everything. That’s fine. I never hear from them again. Other people will come back, use me to help clear. And we have just always wiping the glass when we talk. We’re both wiping the glass, it affects me too. Yeah, I’m just got the great position. They pay me but it’s the but it’s, but it works both ways. There is certainly more clarity here than there was a year ago, before I did. However, many hundreds of these things I’ve done, you know?
Rick Archer: Well, that’s why I said like listening to your videos, because I said I resonate with this guy. I mean, because, you know, that’s my orientation that it’s kind of cool. Well, like you say you’re on your websites called awakening clarity. Right. So awakening doesn’t mean awakened clear. It doesn’t have a finality to it. It’s an on. Yeah.
Fred Davis: And let me say just one quick thing about websites because I have a brand new one is that you will find is the Google roots for awakening clarity are much stronger than they are for the new site, which is awakeningclaritynow.com. Gotta say it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, as an SEO professional, I should tell you, you just don’t want to go changing domain names too often.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I sure don’t. I’ve found that out. But either way, if I’m to be found, I’ll be found.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So you mentioned number of times that you know, you get paid for doing this. How much do you charge for a session and what is the session consist of?
Fred Davis: An awakening session lasts anywhere from like to say two hours, but I’ve gotten a notice that they usually run a little longer. But somewhere along in Atlanta, if we do it over Skype, it’s $250. If you do it at my house, it’s $300. Because I can go to sky, my pajamas and don’t have to vacuum.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You have to hire the maid to come in and do that.
Fred Davis: that’s right, that’s right. Yeah,
Rick Archer: and
clarity sessions are half that. So basically, it’s $125 an hour because clarity sessions often run long too. But so my hours are loose, my fees are not but my hours are loose.
Rick Archer: And do you still have any other job or this supports you now?
Fred Davis: No this is what I do. Well, I actually still have the residue of my book business, which is constantly unwed, you know, unwinding, I just donated a bunch of boxes day before yesterday as I unwind it, but it’s no longer my, my primary income. It’s just, it’s now just sort of a part time deal.
Rick Archer: Now I don’t I don’t want to open up a can of worms. But if you you know, there’s somebody who’s on welfare or some such thing, do you cut them with some kind of break? Or what?
Fred Davis: I don’t. You know, I don’t have a, I don’t have a sliding scale at all. And the there plenty of people who do and that’s who they need to talk to me just because I know they don’t need to talk to me. Because Because I charge what I charge.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: Because my website is free. And it’s been free for two and a half years. I mean, awakening clarity was only put a few 1000 hours into that.
Rick Archer: Sure
Fred Davis: you know how it goes. And that’s free. And my when I talk, I talk a currently at least do talks for free. I mean, they’re okay, there’s a donation basket, if you want to donate if you don’t, that’s fine. Because it’s whatever you want to pay, including zero.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: the my books, the ones that I control are cheap. And so something’s got to pay the bills.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, somebody might gripe about what how much it costs to go to a doctor. And you know, there are the $60 boxes of Kleenex at the hospital. But, you know, on the other hand, the doctor did have to go to medical school, and that costs a pretty penny and put in hours of studying. And even even now outside of his appointments, he better be spending time keeping up with his craft. And also,
Fred Davis: that’s right. What drives me what I mean, just just as a, as a, as a capitalist, non dualist. I mean, it’s just, I just watch the market. I mean, I used to, I started out $25. $25 a session, and I didn’t have many takers. And but I began to have enough and then I moved to 35. And then I moved to 50. I can only talk to so many people.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
Fred Davis: I can’t do two of these a day, seven days a week anymore. And I’ll do I like to do just a few a week. And because they are physically exhausting, because
Rick Archer: I wonder why that is. I should think you’d find them enlivening, and when I do these interviews I feel more energized than before I started,
Fred Davis: if the person wakes up, yeah, there’s an enlivening that comes. But my God, if they don’t, there’s a there’s, oh, there’s just because I don’t get that I don’t get the rush after the after we win the game. Actually, it does is because of what we do. It is no it’s it, I’m even if I’m enlivened immediately thereafter, which is usually the case, there’s a there’s a, there’s a yang To that yin, which will be which will be in an hour or two,
Rick Archer: okay,
Fred Davis: but there will be an end. The other thing is that my, there is apparently an intensity of some nature, which I don’t quite understand, but my throat is always on the edge of a sore throat. So it’s
Rick Archer: In life in general, or when you do these sessions, you mean
Fred Davis: well, it’ll stay that way. Now, because of the sessions, it will be there. I have what I call on camera days and off camera does do for four days a week on camera now. And during that entire time, I’ll be able to feel where I am in regard to a sore throat, whether I’m gonna lose my voice or not. And it got what happens is, particularly once in a while, if I get into a very difficult DPS, I had one this summer with a woman.
Rick Archer: What’s a DPS?
Fred Davis: I’m sorry, it’s an awakening session, a direct pointing session.
Rick Archer: Oh, okay.
Fred Davis: Yeah.
Rick Archer: Didn’t know the acronym.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I get it, I get it, right. So all of them all of these sessions of erecording sessions. Some of them are awakening sessions. Some of them are clarity sessions, but they’re all essentially direct pointing sessions. So if I get into a difficult one, or and the other thing is, if a lot of times it’ll be with someone who is if they’re not a native English speaker, it’s more difficult because I’ve tried to enunciate everything much more clearly. Make sure that they understand and that’s very taxing. And sometimes I’ll get with someone where they’re just not quite there at, you know, the oftentimes at the two hour mark, but, but but I can see that it’s there, that this is somebody who’s just on the cusp of waking up and just, I can’t I don’t know how to look at my watch and say, Well, you know, our two hours are up, you know, sorry. And so I will typically pursue that. Until I just know that there’s nothing there.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Fred Davis: And that I’ve been mistaken or we’ve all we’ve moved past
Rick Archer: Or you’ve done it. You’ve done all you can do But this time,
Fred Davis: Done all I can do at this time. And that’s and that’s actually always my job, it’s never my job to wake somebody up is only my job to present what I have, to the very best of my ability. And remarkably enough, when that happens, something else comes into play. And people wake up.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, I’m glad I brought that up. Because, you know, some people might say, 250 bucks, this guy’s a money grubber. But if you obviously you throw yourself into this, and you can only do so many a week, you’re not making some big fat six figure salary at it.
Fred Davis: People who will say that they have an advantage over me anyway, they know how much a spiritual teacher should make, I don’t know, don’t I mean, I don’t know, they also they know what I should teach, I don’t know, I just get on the GET ON AIR and teach what I teach, or I get on there, I write what I write. I don’t have the same.
Rick Archer: And it’s probably less than a psychiatrist charges. 125 bucks an hour. And you know, and this is arguably more valuable than many of those might be.
Fred Davis: I’ve worked with several psycho psychiatrists who might take issue with that. But I do notice they did come to me. So I don’t know, the so they’ve apparently and I do know that they’ve not only come to me, they’ve come back. If I had one occupation. That’s that is the head of the list of the people that I talked to. It’s mental health professionals, psychologists and psychiatrists, but more psychologists and psychiatrists, but a lot of a lot. Also just a lot of straight medical doctors, I would have never would have never dreamed. And I don’t know why that is before we I sure talk to a lot of them.
Rick Archer: interesting.
Fred Davis: Yeah,
Rick Archer: well, they can afford it.
Fred Davis: Well that’s one thing. Yeah. Because they can they can afford it. And they will afford it. Because if they got this on their mind, then I’m just the latest thing. I mean, I got it, you know, because I get I get emails that say I can’t believe this, but I gotta try it. You know? And then the and then they try it and and it’s like Are you for real? If that ever, if once that really gets figured out? That what I’m doing is really probably I’ll be booked from here to death?
Rick Archer: Well, you’re gonna experience the BatGap Bump, I can tell you that.
Fred Davis: Well, I’m looking forward to that. But I don’t believe I can have much more fun with it than I already have.
Rick Archer: Okay, great. Well, I’m sure you know, if I were to listen to all your YouTube videos again, I think oh, I wish we talked about that wish we talked about that. It was always something but
Fred Davis: yeah,
Rick Archer: this is probably a pretty good dose for people.
Fred Davis: Yeah, I would think so that maybe is maybe about as much as they have me as they can stand in one session. DPS has been about that a couple hours.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And so I’m gonna put up a page on BatGap that will have links to your website and anything else that you told me to link to your books and stuff like that. So so people will, you know, go to those who are listening, if you want to get in touch with Fred, go to batgap.com. And then from there, you can go to his website and link to his books and all that stuff. Yeah. And they’re also on BatGap, you will find a number of things, you’ll find a discussion group that I’ll set up for Fred’s interview, I set one up separate one for each person, and a donut donut button, a donate button. Yeah, we don’t buy donuts with the money. And we just became a 501 C three this past week or so after the notice, after a long application process. So that has tax implications for US citizens. There’s a place to sign up to be notified by email whenever a new interview is posted. So you can sign up for that if you like. And there’s a link to an audio podcast because almost as many people just listen to this as actually watch videos because they don’t want sit in front of their computers all that time. So feel free to sign up for that. iTunes podcast. So thanks. That was great Fred.
Fred Davis: I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. It’s a great pleasure and honor to meet you.
Rick Archer: Oh, you too. We feel like we’re kind of spiritual brothers or something. Here Yeah. Good. Well, we’ll meet in person one of these days. Maybe
Fred Davis: I can. Non duality probably next year.
Rick Archer: Oh, great. Well, I’ll be I’ll be there. Yeah. Let’s like get abducted by aliens or something. All right. Thanks. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. We’ll see you next week.