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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest guest this week is Jeff Stewart Dixon. Welcome, Jeff. Thanks, Rick. And Jeff wrote a book called 21 days a guide for spiritual beginners, which I read and enjoyed, very sort of down to earth entertaining story about his own spiritual Odyssey, intermixed with raising a son fishing and taking lots of naps. Sounds like a pretty good life to me.
J Stewart Dixon: Well, you know, it’s a book.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So I think you mentioned that you call it 21 days, because it represents 21 days in your life. Although, as I read it, I somehow got the impression that it spanned a larger timespan. So explain that or run us through what you’d like to say about it.
J Stewart Dixon: Sure. So essentially, 21 days is the 21 chapters, and each chapter is a day. And there was a period where, in my own awakening process that I pass through, for me was a very important doorway. And I knew that what had happened was important to the extent that I felt like I wanted to write about it. And so I immediately started keeping a journal. So I kept to after this one episode, I kept a journal for 21 days of everything that happened to me, what’s it like to get up in the morning and go to work, start your day, have a family socialize, as you said before fishing? Yes. And naps. And my son takes more naps than I do. I wasn’t just about me taking a nap.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But I got the impression that sometimes you use those in as an opportunity to, for you to take one, two, which I would
J Stewart Dixon: you’re the first person who said a lot of naps, I have to go look at that and see that. But so the 21 days are convey what the kind of the peak experience side of awakening is like, again, on a very just ordinary level. And so what I found is that the it was all too ordinary. And so I didn’t end up using every single one of those days that I kept a journal with, I actually went back into my own seeking history. And I selected seven what I thought were archetypal days, that that would be relatable for everyone. And other words, those were days that I went through in my own. In my own awakening seeking process that I thought were pretty important. And I drawing a big picture here, and it’s black and white. And there’s more subtlety to it, of course, but I thought, well, these are pretty important days, and people are gonna get involved with these manners are probably in one respect or another, they’re gonna bump into days just like this. So the 21 days are those. There are also a few days where I felt like I wanted to have a little story or an analogy. So I took I think it’s three or four days where I just wrote a little parable, spiritual parable, just to break the book up. And to make it more interesting and more palpable over the course of the 21 chapters in the days, I didn’t want to be the same thing day in a day out. Because frankly, as everyone knows, as we all know, there is in our lives, there’s a lot of repetition that goes on no matter what. So I’d wanted to get away from that in the book and have it be at least somewhat interesting. Okay. Does that answer that?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Now, I’d be interested in knowing, you know, how and when, and you went through that doorway. And, and what led up to it. I mean, when I read the book, I didn’t it didn’t chronicle a lot of detail about years of spiritual seeking, at least I gathered it. And the main thing I caught was a trip to California, which might not have been more than 48 hours in which you ran into Ganga G and Adi Da, and some mysterious couple whom I couldn’t identify. But um, you know, you didn’t sort of go through years ago, I sat on my Zen cushion. And did you know,
J Stewart Dixon: so some ocean right, so
Rick Archer: So let’s, let’s do a little bit of a chronology if we may. Yeah. Well,
J Stewart Dixon: I’m 43. And really, my spiritual search began when I was about 18. And in the first five years Let’s say I was interested much like all of us are in kind of the outward expression of or the more surface levels of spirituality out of body experiences, psychic phenomena, 2012, crystals, etc, etc. And with with I went to the Monroe Institute great place, it’s here in Virginia, they facilitate using Hemi sync out of body experiences. And those first five years were important, in that I needed to prove to myself that there was something to this to this thing called spirituality yet to this brown to religion, really, because I was when I was in college, I was just agnostic atheist, and had a, what I would call a pretty, you know, practical and logical head on my shoulders. And so I wasn’t just going to willy nilly, you know, tell me that’s, you know, I have someone telling me that my chakras can be balanced with crystals, because that’s the way it was, you know, I wanted proof and so Monroe Institute offered proof. And I had I did I, I follow their program, and I had about about experiences, like, Okay, well, this is real. After that is when I slowly gravitated towards more advisors and teachers, and my, my seeking shifted to seek it, it shifted away from having an experience to, to something that was bigger, more fulfilling, and answered. For me personally, what was when you know, what the, what I found was the real root of the reason I got above spirituality was my own existential depression.
Rick Archer: So when you say away from having experiences, you mean away from having a specific experience where you’re going out of your body, and then and then it’s over. And the next day you wake up and you have to write, you’re talking about some kind of deeper, more sustained realization that you decided was irrelevant? Yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: I mean, it wasn’t honestly it wasn’t even I want to say I never ever wanted Golden Buddha one with the universe, mountaintop Enlightenment, I wasn’t seeking that I just was unhappy. And and as I said before, the term that I always like to use is, as I was existentially depressed, and I wanted that to go away. Dammit. Was it?
Rick Archer: Was it a pretty persistent unhappiness? I mean, it absolutely. Cloud over your head most of the time?
J Stewart Dixon: Absolutely. What the funny thing about it, though, was that it unless I told you, you would never have known it, right. I know, in all those years, I you know, with the exception of family and close friends, I came off as pretty down to earth normal guy, you know, with no big hang ups or problems. But inside down deep. I felt that and, and back to my seeking history. This is the second five years, I bumped into Adi Da way of the heart and started reading his material and watching his videos. And I did sit with him in person a few times. And that really just changed my whole orientation towards spirituality, it actually softened me up, pulverized, pounded me, and really made me aware self aware of the mind of ego. All the machinations that make up the realm of Maya that were easily caught in,
Rick Archer: was it the sitting with him that did that or more, more just the reading of the books,
J Stewart Dixon: it was reading of the books, I there were a few occasions where I read his books and what crossed a threshold was like, Oh, shit, I can’t go back. Now, I now know this about myself. And there is no, you know, there’s no turning around at this point. So yeah, he his, there’s a there’s a there’s a level of seriousness, that one really needs to take on in order to, in my opinion, so to truly wake up. And eventually at one point or another. You’re you need to become aware of what it is that your own mind is up to. And that process of becoming aware of that is actually heartbreaking. It it really. For me, it was a moment of coming into the understanding that boy, this mechanism that’s going on up here just doesn’t really work. Like I thought it worked and is failing me all the time. And so that was heartbreaking when you first bumped into that and that’s part of the process of of the awakening process is is your heart wakes up you become more vulnerable. Due to your own limitations, and so
Rick Archer: yeah, right. I mean, to me the word disillusionment has a positive connotation, right? Because you want to get out of illusion. And so disillusionment, although it can be painful, is actually a step in the right direction more often than not
J Stewart Dixon: regression in the service of transcendence. That’s a great quote by an author named Michael Washburn. He’s a transpersonal psychologist. And that reading that was so beneficial for me because it acts and it’s why I liked the term. Well, I liked those terms. But I also like the term existential depression, because it takes that term takes it out of the realm of me being responsible for it, like I was, like, screwed up, or something I did, or something when, you know, family, different parents or life or you know, or circumstances, it was just a saying existential depression, for me just put it in the realm of nature of existence. And that’s just part of what’s happened in here and get over it, and you’re not responsible. And so these are the rules of the game and proceed from there. So that, knowing that helped me a lot.
Rick Archer: If you think about it, I mean, if you had been totally satisfied with the status quo, you might, we might see that as an actual lesser developed state than being depressed with the status quo and realizing that there’s got to be something more,
J Stewart Dixon: right or better. Yeah, I think all the great teachings take you through the dark night of the soul, or, or at least say, hey, go down this, you know, this way, there be dragons. And you have to go through that. There’s, I know that I wasn’t interested in popsicles and ice cream cones in candy and light infused angels, you know, I quickly understood that we had to go through that dark element of one soul to, to, to get through the side. So that’s what I did. And Adi Da introduced me to that. So back to the, again, my seeking history. Then I discovered great thing happened around the early 1990s, all sorts of awakening teachers started coming out of the woodwork. And so the last 10 If you could look at my total seeking history, which has been about 20 years, the last 10 years of that were involved in many, many sittings. And many, many circumstances of yes of me getting on airplanes and flying to California or inviting teachers to my homes. And once I realized that I could get for I think there’s even a chapter in my book where like for the low low price of you know, means oriental diner. When I went out to California, I was sitting with an awakened gentleman who was giving me his private time for nothing. And then the next day I go off and sit with Adi Da and and all the loopholes and things that I had to jump through and to get to sit with it. And here I could get it for free. You know, siddhi this his name was filter video. So anyway, Phil was like, I think I’m gonna choose that it’s a little easier. And I
Rick Archer: start doing an interview show you not only get to talk to people for a couple hours a week, but they send you a free books.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you know, you probably have heard that at this point. In the history of awakening United States. Rick, you probably have gathered some 10,000 books because you know, we’re coming out of the woodwork. So that’s what I did. And those teachers gone he and he’s all teachers I sat with and in necessarily shake their hand but you know, it was in close proximity, proximity to them. Ganga G. Ely Jackson bear. Prentice Lucille Andrew Koan, student of Ganges named Solon a Michael Regan or Judy Nick Ardell. I’m not going to keep going down the list. But yeah, I spent quite a number of years chasing those guys around Did you ever
Rick Archer: wonder whether you might be a bit of a dilettante jumping around from one to the other?
J Stewart Dixon: I was totally. Yeah, I was totally a whore. I had this little black book and I was like, Yeah. I didn’t care. Yeah. And that’s a little different about my seeking history as opposed to others is that it? I, I never wanted to join the Club. You know, I just couldn’t do even with Adi Da never I was I was a friend. They have this organizational setup, and that was kind of the least involvement you can have. I didn’t try that didn’t do any of that. I didn’t and I was not interested in the cult vibe. And so joining any club was not my cup of tea. Fortunately, most of these teachers, Gangaji and Saniel Bonder, whom I did not mention before. I also have had sat with him In a lot of did a lot of great programs with they weren’t they were asking you to join the Club.
Rick Archer: Yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: they were they were they weren’t, they weren’t it progressed from guru on throne to Hey man, you know, I’m taking this throne and I’m throwing it away and I’m going to sit down in the audience with you. And that was just awesome. So that’s what I did is is, is I took that invitation to heart, and I sat with all of them. And what I saw and got out of it was that they’re all in a sense, there’s that there’s this process, and I’ve whittled it down when I’m communicating to people about it, that you’re that you get, when you’re when you sit with teachers like that there’s the there’s, there’s three things that you’re trying to do. And that’s self, you’re trying to get a grip on self awareness, self acceptance, and then what I call transference, which is just sitting with the vibe of the teacher and picking up on it. So I didn’t, there were teachers I sat with, I just plain didn’t like, you know, I just did not like them. But I knew that I was still getting something good out of it was still good medicine. So I just did that and sat with as many teachers as I possibly could.
Rick Archer: The next Buddha is the Sangha. You’ve probably heard that one.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the truth of that is is happening. Would you like me to for people who are watching this, to explain specifically kind of what happened to my own awakening process? Yeah,
Rick Archer: I’m sure that’d be interesting. Let’s do it.
J Stewart Dixon: Okay. So which, which is kind of leads up to the those 21 days that I spoke of, in, in my own instance, it was in 2004. That I had my first awakening experience where it was, I was actually just was with my wife, we were swimming at some quarry out in West Virginia near my parents house. And I just started feeling very, very strange. And then within about an hour, I bloomed into a state that normally took me sitting with Satsang teachers about well, I should say, within a few minutes, I ballooned into this state that normally would take me half an hour to an hour sitting with Satsang teachers. And just
Rick Archer: interject a question here. Yeah. When you weren’t sitting with teachers, which obviously weren’t most of the time, did you have like a daily practice of any kind that you would do?
J Stewart Dixon: It? No, at I had been so that that the notion of doing something, or making any repetitive efforts ruined any of me doing any of that.
Rick Archer: Alright, so mainly just like live your life as a normal guy. And then when you got the chance, you sat with teachers? Exactly. And sitting with them shifted your awareness.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah. Sitting with them shifted my awareness. And yeah, I know Zen pillow, no. Meditating for three hours first thing in the morning, no yoga practice, no drugs, no prostrations to the guru, you know, none of that.
Rick Archer: So anyway, can you know that you’re out swimming in the quarry,
J Stewart Dixon: right. And so I’m gonna, I’m gonna condense what happened. And it led to the, to the, this this awakening occurring. And it was shocking. It was it was not, not what I had expected. Despite 15 years of seeking and 3200 volumes, books read and, you know, four weeks worth of video watched here, here it was, and just blew me away. It was. The way that I describe it is it was more of an animal awakening and a spiritual awakening, I returned to my body in a way that I never had before. And I guess I could point to the classical notion of non separation have no self. But that wasn’t, that was part of it. It wasn’t entirely it for me. But what it was for me was I wasn’t depressed anymore. I didn’t feel like shit anymore. So because I was like this, this whole body well being returned. And just I think that, yeah, it was just again, as I said before, it was just shocking to discover, oh, this is awake.
Rick Archer: I had awakening I would say,
J Stewart Dixon: an awakening. Exactly. So I want to so then what happened is that for about five or six years, I also lived in it out of that, for the first couple years after that I had I would be in it for let’s say, a month or two out of the year, and then the rest of the year I wouldn’t I would drop down back down to existential depression, I would drop back down to feeling pretty shitty again,
Rick Archer: even more. So perhaps by contrast with
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, because yeah, absolutely. It’s like, it’s like, you know, UFO comes down, ticks you off to the far corners of the galaxy. He says, you know, shows you their home planet, and it’s fantastic and great. You’re seeing all these wonderful things. And then in about five seconds that drop you back down on the street back at home.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And Hoboken. Yeah, it’s like, you don’t know what we got to it’s gone. Yeah. So. Okay. And so in other words, you had an awakening, but it wasn’t abiding. It was intermittent for five years, he said,
J Stewart Dixon: right. And then in?
Rick Archer: Oh, let me just ask one more question in here during those five years, as it was, when it was intermittent. Was it alternating, you know, the existential depression with the same quality of awakening? Or did the quality of the awakening seem to be growing or getting enhanced as you alternate back and forth between it and ordinary state
J Stewart Dixon: quality was the same. Whenever I would have an awakening episode, it would be the same. And it’s pretty consistent, really tilted to this day. I’ll detail a little bit about what I you know what awakening is for me today. As opposed to those those five years, a bit. So at the end of the in 2010. I was reading, I want to jump right to the end of my seeking for the last for the last five years, which was after my son Jeremy was born, he’s five years old. I just didn’t sit with teachers, I was just done with it. I was like, I’d gotten all that I could a plus I was in a circumstance having a small child and a mortgage and a job that I couldn’t go gallivanting across the country anymore. Any more. So I just stopped. And I did a few Skype interviews with awakened God teacher named Ted Strauss. And that was about it. Really? I interviewed
Rick Archer: him. Yeah, yeah, he’s a great guy.
J Stewart Dixon: And so then in 2010, I was reading a online article by a fellow named Steve Norquist, which apparently this article was pretty popular and made its way around the internet. And I read it and just damn it just, it just spoke to me at a time when I guess my fruit was ripe, and was ready to drop. And it bloomed me immediately into a heightened, awakened state. And what happened after that was that I felt like, wow, this was extraordinary. And I felt like something was different about it, but I wasn’t gonna believe it. You know, and so what, what I did was I started the journal and, and, and said to myself, Okay, let’s just see how this pans out. And so the lo and behold, the greatest gift, and the greatest thing that panned out of that was that the existential depression was gone. And it has not been, you know, for me, that’s what that was, the greatest
Rick Archer: part of it just hasn’t come back.
J Stewart Dixon: It just has not come back. Now. If I could describe, you know, in that moment in Stephen Marquesas article, it was about no self and the concept of Mississippi and it’d be good to touch upon this for readers because that’s often that confusing, a very confusing notion. It’s like what is no self it’s talked about quite a bit. And I didn’t really get it until I read his article. And for me, the article was very just poignant and ruthless, there’s no self in other words, there’s no small self, there’s no large self, there’s, there’s no consciousness, or special place or a special part of you that you’re separate from that you think is out there somewhere that you need to get to. In other words, there’s no large self out there. And there’s no small self it just collapsed the whole idea of self for me, um, so that you’re just what that does is it returns you back to here and now and to the moment and to your entire makeup without separation. There’s your body, there’s mind there’s your your energetic being, all of it, but there’s an in your here and there’s nothing else. It’s very cut and dry. So I didn’t really you know, I didn’t really understand that that still suddenly holding off for some grander notion of fairness or consciousness. To float out into me and give me something that these teachers I thought that they had. And it wasn’t that at all, it was just that I realized that the consciousness that I have that you have everybody has is the awakened consciousness. And that there’s no the the idea of a self, small or large, it’s just a fantasy made up by the mind. So that again, that was the thing that kind of did it for me. And then after that, no more existential depression. And the cherry on top is that, is there any way you can state I get to have these moments like mentioned in my book where I just call it magic, something? Where are these beautiful? Classically? What one could point to as a classical kind of Enlightenment moments, where there is no sense of another, there’s no sense of being disassociated from environment of people life. And I can feel it in my body. When this happens, like my posture gets better, I feel like I’m walking about two feet off the ground, my vision goes to the front of my eyeballs, my senses all get heightened a little bit, my heart basically opens up and expands. And it’s a peak experience. And it’s part of the awakenings process, but I’m I’m not in that state 100% of the time. And I think that you would be hard pressed to find any teacher, like the ones that you interview that would acknowledge that they’re in that heightened state 100% of the time, I think that that’s an energetic state, and we go back down to a normal level. And so most of the time, I’m in that normal level, 21 days, the book that I wrote is just happens to be about a good 75 80% of those days where I was in a heightened state and then 2020 or 20%, I should say, was I was just in a normal state. Am I making sense?
Rick Archer: Yeah, you are? In my experience, let me see if you agree with this, you know, my heightened state 10 years ago, let’s say is my normal state today, so it doesn’t seem heightened anymore. And today’s heightened state will probably be my normal state 10 years from now. I’m just saying 10 years as a case in point.
J Stewart Dixon: I like that idea. That’s yeah,
Rick Archer: it’s like, you know, we get used to stuff right. And, you know, we get and we we integrate, we acclimate, we embody whatever you want to call it. And the way I see it, there’s like this, if you imagine a line that’s going upwards, but it kind of fluctuates up and down as it goes upwards. That’s kind of the way it works. If you’re on the spiritual path, there’s this, you have your ups and downs, but there’s a general upward trend if we weren’t upward is appropriate, you know,
J Stewart Dixon: and I wanted to, I wanted to in this book, and also I wanted to mention my wet my, my blog, too, which really is about that my, is it? Okay, if I, if I Yeah,
Rick Archer: and of course, I’ll be linking to anything you want me to link to. Okay. But if you want to just mention, that’s fine.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, sure. Because it’s, it’s, it’s it’s important in the sense that, that I, that that people know that this is available out there that I’m not there. Still, there’s, I guess this is the point I’m making. I’ve a blog, it’s called Politically Incorrect Enlightenment. And there is still a little bit although we’ve we’ve, we’ve evolved in the way that awakening teachers present themselves to the world, they’re still, you know, as much as I love some of the larger teachers that we mentioned earlier, there’s still a little bit of a slick sheen, that’s still there. For instance, if you go sit with one of these individuals with three or 400 people, they’re still on a pedestal, they got a microphone in front of them, you’ve got beautiful flowers sitting next to them, and there’s a golden curtain behind them. So there’s a, there’s a little bit of a disconnect with, who you think that they are, and who they are for real. And I really wanted to make it a point in my book and in my blog, that, you know, my, that’s the subtitle of my blog is, if a schmuck like me can wake up so can you. Um, so I kind of wanted to bring the idea of awakening down into the very, very ordinary, and, and what that does, I think, and I’ve heard this from people who’ve visited my blog and have read my book, that it makes it by presenting it in such ordinary fashion, it makes it all the more attainable for them. It doesn’t seem like some huge, lofty, horrendous effort that they’re gonna have to make to get there. Because at the end of the day, I’m not Superman. You know, it’s like I’m not some, some enlightened guru, Yogi. character, I’m a guy who has a mortgage, I get frustrated at my dog, you know I’m capable get this I’m capable of not liking my neighbors, you know, I have all it’s like that’s the element that I paint is that the ego does not go away. I think that you do transcend the ego. In other words, ego is no longer in the in the pilot seat consciousness your true nature conscious awareness is in the pilot seat and he goes in the copilot seat. So I have, like, I have no problem with with ego. And I let it run wild and on attaining pi politically incorrect unlike my just let it run wild, I let it you know, be potty mouth then funny and try to paint a picture that’s a little more down to earth a little more lighthearted, a little more sarcastic, and not so not so God, you know, Lotus filled pictures on websites and Buddha’s and bore you know, just I’m so tired of, you know, got so tired of all that. So I wanted there to be. I wanted there to be just a real nitty gritty explanation of some dude who went through the process and woke up and no, I’m not sitting on cloud nine somewhere.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, that that whole, what you just said evokes a number of questions in me. One is, you know, if you’re speaking to 300 people, you kind of need a podium and a microphone, you know, you don’t have to wear robes. Right. Yeah, you know, unless you’re gonna shout. And, but, you know, a lot of these guys are very down to earth like Adyashanti, for instance, is people make a fuss about him. He’s a pretty normal guy. I brought him into my town to speak and we had lunch and stuff. And you know, he had a burger. And mostly we talked about movies, we movies and TV shows we liked and the fact that he likes to decorate a big Christmas tree at Christmas time. And you know, that kind of stuff. He likes to play poker and listen to Frank Sinatra records, like fishing, fishing with he probably would I don’t know, he likes. You know, what he does do is he takes a few weeks off every year and goes hiking in the Sierras and camping and stuff. And, you know, I used to work in a machine shop and be a bicycle racer. I mean, so you know, but you said, ego doesn’t go away. And what I think often happens is that because it doesn’t go away, the remnants of it, get aggrandized by all the attention. In the case of some spiritual teachers, they don’t manage to retain their ordinariness. And the whole thing gets really weird. And I might reference it dies a case.
J Stewart Dixon: Sure. Yeah. It does. Definitely a bit of a mystery. I mean, he comes from that from the era of the 70s, where there were the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s and the, you know, the Oh shows mukta Nanos. And that was the, that was the platform that they used. And he did he use that platform. And fortunately, it’s changed. You know?
Rick Archer: Yeah, for the most part, it has, they’re still examples of that.
J Stewart Dixon: It’s, I think that when I when I’m talking about like, the Satsang teachers today, you can’t help but that to happen. They have to be politically correct when they are talking to three or 400 people. Yeah, and they have to use a microphone. So the circumstances, set that up, essentially, that there’s a little bit of that shame that I spoke
Rick Archer: up. But if they allow people to be touching their feet and giving them flowers, and yeah, well, they don’t know. They don’t do that. No, they don’t. But some people do, you know, some,
J Stewart Dixon: I guess, is that still going on? I
Rick Archer: don’t know. It depends. I mean, it’s usually more of an Indian thing. Yeah. You know, Indian gurus.
J Stewart Dixon: You know, I think I think it’s all I, I sat with Adi di had, I had no, I was able to, like, I had no problem with that. That was his modus operandi. That’s fine. It wasn’t. It was, you know, that’s not going to be for everybody, you know, that not everybody is, is suited toward receiving this kind of teaching, you know, in a politically incorrect fashion from a potty mouth guy who likes to go fly fishing and drink tequila, you know, they need that they they want and people need that type of reverence and sacredness. And I’m all
Rick Archer: for that. Yeah. As you’re about to say, and I think devotion and reverence and all that can be a very valuable element in this path. I mean, I’d love to go and see Arma you know, the hugging a couple of times a year I have a picture of her behind me. And there’s a lot of that stuff going on around her and it’s I have a wonderful time and then I come home and I resume my normal life and interview ordinary people and so but you know, there are people who really thrive on that kind of scene and and fine, you know, maybe they won’t thrive on it. 20 years from now maybe they will feel like it was a certain stage in their lives, but if it if it does it for them now it’s all part more power to
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, we are we are at a here we are, you know, what is it? 2121 20 days, 20 days until December 21 2000, as well Oh, yeah, you know, and so I’ve written about that on my blog and in a funny fashion. But we’re, that’s what I think it represents more than anything is that we are now at a point where we don’t need the thrones and the Guru’s that it’s available to individuals, that that are like you and me, Rick, and a lot of the teachers that you have on BatGap that are just way down to earth. And that’s an awesome thing that’s happened. And that’s kind of like that’s the Age of Aquarius that we are entering into where this this teaching and awakening and information about it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on the internet, and through all sorts of teachers, etc. And if Yeah, if anything, I because I still know that there are people out there that are they still have a limited belief about Enlightenment or awakening, about its attainability. And about it being some lofty enterprise because they’re still, they’re still have their information about it is still stuck in the Autobiography of a Yogi Berra. And that’s, it’s good to speak to those people to to let them you know, to know that awakening, albeit not what you think it is, you know, but it is a great thing. And it is available to just normal people now. And even my own seeking history, which was 20 years. Unfortunately, you know, I think today, that if you are if you if you’re if you live in an area where there are a number of teachers, and you apply yourself and don’t have too much of a cluttered notion of what awakening or spirituality is about, I’m going out on a limb here. But I would say that from start to finish, he could do this whole thing and a couple of years. Concentrated, you know, but I do think it’s possible. And I think that what’s happening is that you’re starting to see and this is evidence from your website. A lot of indeed, there was the 90s where where Papaji flooded the market with a number of teachers that came over and now what we’re seeing is the market getting even more flooded. I was terrible you word to use for what’s happening but the our society is getting as the business person and me speaking sorry. Our society is is that now like I’m like the third or fourth generation of Papaji individuals. I learned from Ganga Ji and Pramanik Koan, and from our Juna are JUnit Yeah, and now it took me a while now I’m here and, and there’s lots of guys like me out there and gals out there, like me. And so that’s great. So now what’s gonna happen is it’s going to, you know, go even further. So,
Rick Archer: ya know, I like that. And I don’t think that it’s going to be watered down merely because they’re succeeding generations. Right. And I’d like to offer a proviso, which is that, well, first of all, one of the motivations that caused me to start this whole program is to illustrate just what you said, which is that awakening is a lot more common than people realize. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the kind of stuff Yogananda talked about, you know, flashy stuff, right? Because if people are fixated on on that, then they can spend a whole lifetime looking for something that’s never gonna happen anyway, right. And all sorts of people and all sorts of circumstances are having the kinds of awakenings that we’re alluding to here. So there’s that. On the other hand, I’d like to sort of play devil’s advocate and say that, you know, you said that, if you really focus on it, you could do it in two years. I think it’s an ongoing process. Personally, from my experience, in my observation, that anybody I talked to you, no matter how enlightened they may seem to be, is still still has plenty of ground to cover. And even though a lot of them realize it, a lot of them don’t realize it. Someone just got in touch with me recently, whom I interviewed a year or two ago. And at that point, she was like, you know, I’m done. There’s nothing to do and so on. And then she just got in touch again and say, Oh, I was so wrong. There’s so much more and I just had all these realizations afterwards. I have a friend. I’m talking a little bit much here but this will give you I have a friend who is in his mid 60s, lives a very ordinary life, you know, wife, couple of kids on works in a factory as a designer. And he was awakened in the sense that we’re talking about back when he was a child, basically, you know, 10 1215 years old. He’s been progressing ever since I took a walk with him recently. And he was describing the nature of his experience. He said, Well, you know, I mean, he’s just ordinary guy say, Well, I see millions of souls coming in and out of me all the time I see Gods and celestial beings as a routine part of my ordinary experience. I never lose awareness during sleep, there’s this pure inner light that just is it perpetuum. And you know, then we got back to talking about ordinary stuff. And, you know, we’ve gone skiing together, just done ordinary things. So, you know, I don’t want to somehow hang people up with looking for the flash again, after everybody’s gotten comfortable with the notion that it doesn’t have to be flashy. But I want to suggest that there’s no end to it. And if you reach what you feel is a platform of clear absolute realization or something, eventually, you’re going to be able to see details within that. And you’re going to realize that that sort of flat, non personal absolute is a lively field of all possibilities, and you’ll begin to explore those possibilities are
J Stewart Dixon: right, I know what you’re talking about. And I I guess I’m more of the nature of someone who’s arrived to a plane of well being that I’m okay with, and I was just exhausted from the hike up the mountain. Yeah. And rested here. That’s perfectly
Rick Archer: good. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: that’s, that’s really how I feel right now is that, you know, I’m happy just do any thing that has any, you know, that really is oriented toward seeking or development or growth or, or expanding this, how that being said, I mean, yeah, I know, from experience that sometimes there are subtleties to, to this process that just happened. And I have, I have felt those I have felt that the summer, right, had an episode around this memory, around the summer solstice, where I felt there’s a lot of influx of energy, that I really couldn’t attribute it to anything that I was doing. And I had to, like, seek outside sources. And I went to some psychics and some body energy work, and I was like, What is going on? And she’s like, oh, there’s a large amount of energy that is, you know, as I guess, earth based energy, or whatever that I was really feeling into. So that was new. For me. That was new. And I also don’t discount that there are subtleties. And I think once once you’ve come so far down the path, Rick, and you know, that you’re not you never you never get so closed minded to think that oh, this is it, you know, this that this is, you know, this is I’ve reached the finite, tippy top of the mountain, and it’s just not going to get any more happier or perfect than this. And I have arrived, you know, and I’m totally done. You know? No,
Rick Archer: I’m glad you say that, because I have actually, I have people email me saying just that, you know, I’m totally awakened. And there’s nothing more. And I always say, okay, wait and see. Yeah, you know, they might wait for a lifetime, they might wait for decades.
J Stewart Dixon: I say, go ahead.
Rick Archer: I’m sorry. No, you continue. I made the point.
J Stewart Dixon: It’s, you know, I will say that, you know, if you want to wake up well, then yeah, there is a point where you have to say, you know, god dammit, this is what I want. Yeah, no, and you put your foot down. And you say, this is not good enough. For me this this is, you know, whatever I’m feeling is not good enough. And I want I want this to resolve itself and you want results, you know, and you want to cross the threshold, you want to arrive to a point where you’re like, yes, you know, I had that for years with these teachers. I was like, why is it what is it that they have that I don’t have that allows them to sit there and give Satsang or say that they’re awake to write books, etc. And that was also a that was a very, you know, was a very good litmus test. And a point that I kept with me, as was that whole time as I wanted that I wanted to, like, you know, I wanted results. I wanted to feel like, you know, that. Again, not necessarily some grand super duper Enlightenment or anything, but I wanted to feel better, I wanted to feel okay, I wanted the existential depression to go away. So you do absolutely, you know, don’t don’t get to thinking that there’s some wimpy part of this, that you know, that you can just float along and this thing is gonna happen to there’s definitely an applied amount of energy and effort and longing that needs to be had during the awakening Enlightenment process, and you’ve got to like put that, you got to put that thing to the grindstone. You got to let it just chew you up. You know, it’s uncomfortable, but I did that, and this is there’s a This is a, something I’m fond of saying is that in order to transcend the ego, you have to have an ego big enough to think you can actually transcend it. And so, yeah, so I felt I felt that I was just like, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I had no problem with the, you know, the fact that this is what I wanted, and I’m gonna go for it dammit. And so that applied pressure in the, in the in the crucible of the awakening process was was important for
Rick Archer: me. Yeah, well, you know, Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras talks about Yogi’s with vehement intensity as being those who realize the quickest. But then on the other hand, when he when he outlines the characteristics of awakening, Santosh is one of them, which means contentment, you know, so at a certain point, contentment dawns, which in my experience, kind of dissolves that vehement intensity, you no longer beat yourself over the head or, or whatever, and you’re perfectly content with the way things are, that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be further growth, but it’s on the kind of foundation of, you know, no more existential depression.
J Stewart Dixon: Right? Yeah, I don’t have I mean, there’s, there’s two sides to that coin, I don’t have an intensity that manifests itself as, as me wanting to get something or seeking
Rick Archer: not anymore, but you used to, I mean, you were you’re traveling all over the place and reading all this stuff. Yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: absolutely. But once again, I wanted to cross that threshold, and I did. And so now all that really remains is there’s an intensity of life that comes with awakening, where, like, you’re, I think what happens is, is that you become more more vulnerable and volatile and intense with just your whole being. In other words, if I get if I get emotional or mad about something, damn, and I’m mad, you know, or if I’m, if I know that there’s no holding back, right, right. I’m not, I’m not denying the parts of my personality, or being or whatever. I’m just like, intense about it. Like, for instance, here’s a good one for people that I think we understand, you know, I have desires, I want to make money. You know, I want to manifest for my family and for my life, you know, everything that I possibly can, I’m not in denial of that. I don’t want to be poor, I don’t want to you know, I want a roof over my head. So I have those, there’s a certain intensity where I’m not in denial of any of those elements of life, either or I want all of those 111. You know, it’s like, you should not be wanting anything, you are free of all desire. And you’re not
Rick Archer: a recluse? Yeah, I believe if it were a reckless reckless wants food, and he wants a certain amount of shelter, and you know, they, they minimize their desires, but I don’t think it’s possible to live without him. You know, if you put a muzzle over his mouth, he’s gonna want air real bad pretty soon,
J Stewart Dixon: right? That’s damn true. So I mean, there’s that that’s a good, that’s a good one helped me. Here’s, here’s, this is another segue, which I think would be good. What helped me all those years with my intimate contact with awakened teachers, very important was that a, I’m picking up suddenly, in some unknown mysterious way on their transmission. And on their transference, as I called it earlier, very, very important to you. It’s like there’s a Napoleon Hill had a quote from some of the who wrote Think and Grow Rich, what was that in the 30s, or something about all these characters that he wrote about, and reformed included? They subscribe to that, if you want to, like be in that club, you need to hang out with people in that club. And, and, and you pick up on their subtleties on their, on their, the way that they hold themselves, the way that they, they’re there that they speak the way that they interact with, that’s that your like, your sub conscience, slowly over time picks up on that, yeah. And then, like, in my own case, what happens is it finally just clicks, it finally clicks for you that your body gets it. And so I have found that that interaction with teachers was very, very important. But what did it for me that was like, and this is part B of it was I got to meet them at the airport and take them to my home when I Soliday. And Michael Regan, and a couple of our June actually did a workshop with him, where they, you know, I got to see the nitty gritty about them, they weren’t perfect, I’m talking like cigarettes, you know, curse words, and, you know, all these imperfections. I was like, wow, you mean, you know, I don’t have to perfect myself in order to do this, you know, it’s like no, and, and so, getting in, in that contact with them, I was really able to see well, if they can do it. They’re just normal people, then I can do it too. So those two elements, that subtle transference and Hey, hang out with them over time. And with with that could be reading a book or Satsang, meditating or having a really deep, intimate conversation with them. That is what, what made the whole Alchemilla alchemical process of awakening occur. For me, I think that that’s what’s essentially happening, at least among the Advaita non dual Zen teachers, which seems to be primarily what you have on BatGap I think that’s the process that they’re involved in is is, is that mysterious process of transference where you’re with a teacher, because none of them are just are prescribing a 10 step program to get from point A to point B to do awakening, you know, there’s not a yoga path that you’re taking, or at some intense three hour meditation most their processes is about intimate, deep conversation, acceptance, self awareness, and then that magical process of just being with the teacher,
Rick Archer: yeah, I think that it’s definitely a practice or not a practice, it’s definitely a viable method of awakening is the proximity with the enlightened in fact, the ancient scriptures say that they count you know, the company, the enlightened or the so called as being, you know, one of the most important things you can do for for awakening. And I think that as you said, there is a sort of a subtle, actual mechanics to it going on, that probably involves the nervous system and the subtle aspects of the nervous system, and everything else is a kind of a transference or an attunement, or an entrainment or transmission or whatever you want to call it. And I see that on the other hand, there are, there are techniques and practices that one can do totally on one’s own, that can accomplish the same thing, if if the proximity of a teacher is not available. Even reading books, like you did, had a profound effect, you know, that can that can have an influence in their their meditation practices, one can do and, you know, all kinds of things. So there are many ways to pull a table across the room, or at least for you know, grab any one of his legs and all the other legs are going to come along. So that’s just my take on it that, you know, let’s not get fundamentalist and say it has to be this way. There’s a there’s a whole potpourri of things that
J Stewart Dixon: you’re there are and you are absolutely correct about there’s all sorts of modalities that you can undergo to facilitate, for instance, developing self awareness or developing bodily, physical health and attunement, which is, which is not separate from this problem. This course. The, it’s just that every, every individual has their you know, in moving that table, as you said, across the room, I was like, what, what can I do that I can just touch it, and it moves a whole bunch of feet, like slides across the ice, you know, and that’s what I want. It was what was that? And for me, that was, you know, Damn, that’s all I gotta do. You know, that was like it for me. But you are correct is there’s a lot of there are a lot of modalities that assist people in that process. That was my cup of tea. And it Yeah, did the trick for me.
Rick Archer: I think it does the trick for a lot of people. And you know, and on the ordinariness point, it’s funny, I was out at the science and non duality conference in California, about a month ago, and we sat down, I sat down at breakfast with my friend, Igor Kufa whom I’ve interviewed, and we sat down with this guy, and he said, Whoa, I said, I feel like I’m with a couple of movie stars as I come off it, man. It’s, uh, you know, everybody poops, everybody. Actually,
J Stewart Dixon: when I woke up, I actually
Rick Archer: converted into pure Soma. Right. I said, you know, it’s just because you’ve seen us on the internet and, you know, a lot of people have it doesn’t mean we’re like, special or something. Just get out. We’re just ordinary guys. So there is a kind of like, it’s a human tendency, I guess, for people to want to glamorize, you know, these characters, and we see it all the time with you know, Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan. And so much of the news cycle is made up of talking about these people who are really just ordinary folks that happen to have come to some you know, more mass publicity.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah. Which is again, why why like I think we’re seeing it time where there’s more teachers who aren’t doing that who are specifically like bringing a little more down to earth and a little bit more real but you can’t you can’t escape. It’s like I had somebody gripe about the fact that oh, well, just in general that my websites called politically incorrect, Enlightenment and then I had attained to something. Well, you’ve got to advertise. You’ve got to market yourself. You have to like get the word heard out. Yeah. And if that gets, you know, I will settle for a little sensationalist in there, I will settle for a little bit of, you know. I’m not sure exaggeration is the Terminator, but a little bit of flamboyance and where you get people’s attention, you know, a lot of times you have to, this was a, this was something that was said to me over this past summer, I thought was really true in order to, a lot of times you have to, to get people in the door, in order to give them what they need. You have to speak to them and give them what they want that first. And then and then once they’ve gotten that, then you can give them what they need. And I have found is there’s no way I could have done, you know, I like I like having a website called Politically Incorrect Enlightenment. I go around telling my friends and family that I’m enlightened hell no, you know, that word is just ridiculous in it, you know, in our days, but I gotta use it. You got to use that word.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you just need to qualify it a bit, you know, kind of divested of its superlative, static, you know, lofty connotations.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah. And there’s no, you know, I have another website that I’m doing that is I’m next year, I’m going to begin marketing and advertising for a consulting service, that’s I’m calling Enlightenment consulting services. So I have to use that I have to use that term, so that people will know what I’m talking about. And then Allah, as you said, then you kind of bring it down to, you know, you bring it back down to earth and tell people, okay, this is what this is what I’m talking about, I’m not talking about the Golden Buddha thing.
Rick Archer: Well, if you’re really gonna be helpful to people, then you have to put it, you have to bring it to them, you don’t need to dumb it down, but you need to bring it to the to the level of understand, you have to kind of make it understood that it’s something that’s attainable for them. It’s not like, you know, light years right on them. Yeah. Right. You know, this?
J Stewart Dixon: I mean, I think, go ahead. No, go
Rick Archer: ahead. I was gonna change the subject, you continue. Okay. Well, I
J Stewart Dixon: was just gonna say that, that that’s, that was the approach in my book to where I wanted. I didn’t use you know, I didn’t use any spiritual, religious, psychological vernacular in my book. Because I just, I just couldn’t do it. I just was like, I just had to think there’s enough books out there about Enlightenment, or awakening that point to those. So I did. And that word is not in book Enlightenment, or awakening, it’s not in the book. And I just simply describe it from an emotional body based point of view of what this thing is like. And I think that does If correct me if I’m wrong here. But I think that that does help people a lot, to hear it in a different language. And but I can’t market a book called 21 days as a guide for spiritual beginners without using the word awakening or Enlightenment, sure.
Rick Archer: I was gonna bring up the topic of ego a little bit more, because at one point, you were saying, you know, you read this book that had a profound influence on you, in which the guy really drove it home that there is no personal self. And on the other hand, you a little bit later, you’re saying, Well, yeah, but we all have an ego and I don’t maybe I don’t like my neighbors, or, or this or that. So how do you reconcile those two concepts? And let me throw another question in here. I mean, yeah, maybe this maybe this ego that we still have is not what you mean by self. But I mean, it’s a you know, God forbid, your son should get hit by a car or something like that. There would be a lot of anguish there. There wouldn’t be like, Oh, well, he didn’t have a self anyway. And neither do I. So it’s just all the unfolding of the cosmic, you know, play, you know, there’d be a personal crisis right there when they’re not despite the fact. So how do you reconcile that with the notion that there’s no self?
J Stewart Dixon: Right? Well, I mean, there’s a there’s a mysterious juxtaposition between the concept of no self and self, and how can you have to, and, and the way that I found it easy, personally easiest to reconcile is to take it out of the realm of when you say no self and self and ego, those are couching it in some nebulous terms, some verbal term. So, for me, let’s look at from a brain function. This is a great book by My Stroke of Insight, you know that book?
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah, the lady who had the stroke, Jill Bolte Taylor
J Stewart Dixon: Taylor, right? So she was great book. And so brain function. So essentially what we’re talking about. And this is black and white, and I’m a neurosurgeon, but I can if one asked me about awakening, no self and all that costs all those costs, there is a quality to this to awakening that I feel is is similar to the left brain and right brain where you could point to your creative right brain amorphous, General, open ended qualities of the right brain as no self. And then controlling, specific. Separating, identifying parts of the left brain are the sort of like the ego parts. And so before awakening, again, very black and white here, the left brain is more dominant. And the right brain has the policy is second in command. And kind of after awakening those two things sort of flip. So me personally, I’m not trying to reconcile that’s what ends with awakening, I’m not trying to reconcile what is no self what is ego? What is it’s like, you don’t give a shit. It kind of like all collapses. And you realize that there’s no separation between you there is because there is no self. You know, he’s just like, you stopped even trying to figure out what is the ego? And what is in there’s no denying any of it. It’s it’s a hard it is it is a, what’s the word? I want to use? That, you know, it’s, there’s a contradiction. It’s a mysterious contradiction. And there’s, you do kind of get as a paradox, there’s a damn or I was like, Yeah, this is a paradox. Like, how can I? How can I feel like one part of my nature is empty, and selfless? And is conscious awareness and has, you know, nothing is pure and clean? And whatever, you know, how can I feel that but at the same time, you know, there’s a part of me that is a stubborn, grumpy son of a bitch. You know, I don’t know, it is it is a bit of a paradox. And so I kind of like, I just throw the paradox out. And I said, Okay, left brain, right brain, here’s what’s happening, you know, and that was how I kind of, like, reconciled those two ideas to Does that answer the question
Rick Archer: very well, actually, and you know, I love the word paradox. I think juxtaposition is also a good word. And I don’t know if it really breaks down to left brain right ran I don’t know if that’s what’s going on in the physiology to account for this sense of there. Simultaneously, being a self and no self and who’s in control and all that it could be much more sophisticated than Oh, it is. Yeah, I’m neither of us are neurophysiologist. But, you know, here’s a good example that I like to use, let’s say I have this pen here, right. And it’s a pen, it’s plastic, and rubber and ink and stuff. But a physicist would tell us that on some level, there is no pen here. It’s all just sort of virtual fluctuations and probabilities and whatnot, there’s no physical thing. And that’s, that’s probably ultimately the more true reality of the situation. But practically speaking, we see a pen we use a pen, and the most enlightened person that ever lived is still going to see a pen and perhaps be able to use it. So from my perspective, these days, this whole awakening Enlightenment game boils down to, you know, expanding the range of one’s perspective, or having it be expanded or whatever, to incorporate the paradoxical juxta juxta positional realities, you know, so you can simultaneously say You know, there is a mountain and there is no mountain
J Stewart Dixon: I’m an I’m an advocate for the pen. I’m an advocate for the mountain I’m not I
Rick Archer: and they are an advocate for the fur there is a Jeff Dixon who wants to make money and raise his family son properly and I’ll but on this on another level and your experience, there isn’t a Jeff Dixon Right.
J Stewart Dixon: Right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I you know, I’d have to say, the practicalities of being in this world. Body and mind. That’s what I’m an advocate for However, my heart you know, who am I? You know, what is what is really going on? Yes, it’s bigger than that. Yeah. And it is it is dominant. Right. And this is what you what you work at when you get into the awakening business is how can you make that Dama and how can you make that be there all the time? So yes, there is a just there is a despite the Jeff Dixon and the ego and the struggles and all the rest of that, yeah, and heartbreak. If that happens to there is still a a I’m a tethered line, directly and concretely And absolutely, to some mysterious open space of consciousness of awakeness of no self. It’s just that I don’t in my own personal seat because I had that experience in my process, we can go into it. But yes, I will. I did have a, like I had a part of my awakening process, I did wake up to, to consciousness, there was a part where I the witness consciousness and witness awareness were that really solidified itself. But I found that that just wasn’t good enough. It’s like awakening to awareness and consciousness, this empty plane and feel that as the source just did not do it for me, I needed it to just like arrive, you know, great concept with what the waking down teaching was saying your vondre I needed it to go down, you know, what I meant by down as I needed it to be right here. And to ground itself right here. That’s really what I was going to what what I wanted to. So I found that when I did that, it kind of marries the whole ball of wax it marries consciousness with, with body with mind, ego, with no ego, self themself all of it. And then once all that is done, and you’ve arrived here, then you can take the whole kit and caboodle and just chuck it out the window. You know, you don’t have to, this is again, this is for me, you know, I mean, I’m, we’re all different. And for me, I was like I worked. I again, it was a long, hard struggle for me to get up the top of the mountain once I got there, and I’m here now. It’s like, I’m freaking breaking down thinking about it. You know, I wanted to fly fishing. Thank you.
Rick Archer: On the other hand, yeah, you’ve written a book, and you have a couple of websites, and you’re still quoting, you’re doing this interview, you’re still quite fascinated with the whole thing. You know? Yeah, absolutely.
J Stewart Dixon: There’s, you know, here’s, this is, so why am I doing it is what you know, it’s because there is there is still a, like, that’s a, that’s a good point you brought up and I’m denied at all, I mean, there is still for me, like this longing to interact with people and the world in a way that I can do. So 100, utilizing 100% of who I am, and I can be myself 100%. Um, you know, it gets tiring to be putting on your Clark Kent outfit all day long, it gets fucking tiring. It’s like, so, you know, you just don’t want to do that anymore. And so how do you not do that is by having doing things like this and writing a book. And so and it has helped I know, I was longing for that after awakening, to interact with people where I could just totally be myself, 100% and having adult conversations with people like you and I are having right now. That that, really, I guess that goes back to the part of like, the elements of post awakening, you know, what happens in the post awakening, and I have found that that’s definitely something for me is that is that I’m not satisfied, not having those types of conversations. And so all of this, in my website, in my book is a concerted effort towards interacting with the world on for what is me the most satisfying and gratifying level that I can I mean, that’s not I’m not, and I want to get to profession, and I’m Pooh poohing any other ways that in my life that I interact with people not I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just, there’s you, you know, I want to have the Quan Quan is, you know,
Rick Archer: oh, yeah, you know, so Well, you know, it’s like, did you use an example, which I don’t mean to be offensive to anyone, let’s say you are a kindergarten teacher, and you spend your whole day hanging out with five year olds, you’d want to get you want to go and hang out with some adults later on, you know, I’m not sort of comparing, quote, unquote, unenlightened people to five year olds, but you know, what I mean, it’s like there’s a, there’s a dimension to adult interaction. And in this example, what you’re just not going to get with five year olds. And by the same token, there, you can’t really talk about the kind of things you and I are talking about, with the average person on the street, as delightful as that person may be. So you want this they want this dimension, and it seems not normal enough to me,
J Stewart Dixon: and I want to you know, I mean, not everybody heads in this direction. But you know, having written a book and I have a blog, etc. And, again, I’ve alluded to it another website I’m doing which is Enlightenment consulting services. It’s like I want to make a living doing this. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t want to like exactly it’s like you want to like once you once you have that type of fulfilling interaction with people. You want to align as much of your life with it as you possibly can. Yeah. And you know,
Rick Archer: it’s gratifying it’s fulfilling, it’s it’s stimulating,
J Stewart Dixon: you are you are you are, you’re able to be and use all of your use of what you have strived to attain for so many years, you don’t want to, again, go back and hide in your Clarkin outfit, you know, so like I, you know, with, with, with, you know, this from interviewing all of your teachers, you know, they all have a, you know, they’re doing that same thing, they’re, you know, I wrote this book about, you know, I’m a blue collar worker, and I have this audio video services company that I that I operate on day to day basis. But, you know, I could easily let that go, and frankly, hope to, you know, hope to be able to I’m, you know, I’m comfortable being an author, I’m not comfortable being I don’t think it’s in the cards for me to be like any some Satsang teacher, you know, on that sort of scale that isn’t, particularly
Rick Archer: if you play the game of if I won the lottery, what would I be doing, you probably wouldn’t be crawling around under people’s living room tables, trying to hook up cables, you’d be doing this kind of stuff, and maybe fishing and, you know, but you know, it’s like, yeah, I
J Stewart Dixon: like I, I’m more of a, I have been doing some some teaching locally, my book signings here and there, and I have these little meetings, I have a meetup group, it’s like a meeting about awakening. So I’m very comfortable in small groups and one on ones. And that’s actually what I’d like to do. And if I could, you know, put up my promotion flags for this interview isn’t next year, I’m going to be marketing a service, that is a one on one service for individuals who have, or very career driven, high profile. That might be actors, or politicians or stockbrokers, that have an interest in spirituality, and have an interest in awakening or Enlightenment, but they don’t know what to do about it. And they’re in no position to really publicly do anything about it. And they can afford the services of having someone privately come to their place, and be instead of galavanting, across the country going to see the likes of Adi Shanti. And Ganga G and Argentina, have that person come to them over a period of six months. And so that’s, you know, that’s an adult interaction that I’m striving for is, is that element. And
Rick Archer: so, that sounds good. I had a thought earlier that I wanted to hash out with you, which is we were talking about the juxtaposition and the paradox and all that. And if you sort of think of the mass of humanity, you know, the vast majority of people, I suppose, are pretty locked into the perspective that the concrete world is what it appears to be and is, is real, you know, and then you know, but if you listen to Gallup polls and stuff, then a lot of people have had glimpses or glimmerings of something deeper, you know, there is a deeper reality. And people are fascinated with all this kind of stuff and their shows on TV, and you know, all kinds of things you can watch psychics and, and spiritual things. And, you know, so many, so many religions in the world where people have been sort of making a fuss about there being something that is beyond the obvious, you know, seeing reality, and then, you know, we have people like ourselves, who have spent decades kind of wanting to actually have an experience of that and have actually obtained it to whatever degree and so and the tables begin to turn where you said earlier, now, this is really the dominant thing, you know, that sort of what used to be something you didn’t even believe in, what went to something you glimpsed occasionally and then went to something that you actually are oriented from, you know, that has become the dominant reality and the concrete world is still there, but it’s only part of the picture now, not the not the whole thing. So I don’t know, I just found that interesting when we were talking about juxtaposition houses, this turning of the tables from, you know, it’s a complete 180 degree reversal in a way, the ordinary orientation to life.
J Stewart Dixon: And that’s, that’s what one wants, would presume. If you begin seeking awakening or get involved in spiritual you aren’t doing it not to change, right. You know, I mean, you know, making the change is, is You know, is what it’s all about and is the you know, if I could say that’s the difficult part of actually going through with it, you know, of actually putting, you’re stepping through the fire of, of going through with that process. Um, so it takes some Yeah, it takes some determination. But yeah, if I look back at my total history and yours as well, Rick, and everybody that is interviewed on BatGap, you, we all start from the same place, you know, and it’s, it is it is, and this is one of the things that I do not ever hold back on, you know, that it that, that I am not a person who is subtle or shy whatsoever about saying, you know, pardon my French fucking a Yeah, awakening is a good thing. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I changed. You know, it was well worth the effort. I am absolutely 100% it was a it was a damn good investment, and it has paid off in spades. You know, so I, you know, I think people need to hear that, you know, that. Yeah, it’s, it’s not, there’s, it’s not a, you know, it’s that kind of is like, you know, you want Yes, you want to, like tell people that there’s an ordinary quality to it, but you also want to give them hope, and let them know that because I mean, people come to this from such a wounded spot from such an isolated spot from such a, a, you know, separate from life spot that is painful. And once you once you kind of like get above the clouds, you tend to forget about that shit. You know, as a teacher, you tend to forget about how, you know, so it’s like, it’s important to tell those people who were really struggling who are, who are unhappy, who are, who are suffering, you know, that yeah, it’s, you know, it’s there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I had some lady this past summer, I went to gathering with some waking down people. And, and she like, at the end, she was she just really needed to hear that. And so I walked up to her. And I just just like, I just laid it out right there. It’s just like, yeah, it is well worth it. You know, there is a light and she just cried. You know, and just really needed to hear that. And so I hope I’m addressing what you talked about with the juxtaposition of I think you
Rick Archer: are and I think it’s a good point that you haven’t we haven’t quite dwelt on enough, perhaps, which is that this, you know, this realization businesses is really sumptuous. I mean, it’s really, it’s the, you know, use these analogies of light at the end of the tunnel and dangling carrots and whatnot. But when you actually do munch on the carrot, it’s delicious. Yeah. And, you know, and all this talk in the ancient texts of bliss, and so on, so that’s real. It’s, uh, you know, and I often think I mean, if I could have were saying earlier how you get used to it and acclimate. But I mean, if I could jump from where I was 40 years ago to where I was, right now, I’d probably be just lying on the floor drooling and ecstasy. But you know, I’m accustomed to that. But And conversely, if I were to jump back to where I was 40 years ago, it would probably kill me the agony of contrast.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, yeah. I feel the same way. Rick, it’s it. Yeah, there’s parts of it that you get used to but you know, there are other parts that you don’t get used to. There’s still there’s still for me, I, you know, in my meetings with people a meeting that I have here locally, or when I’m when I’m really seriously talking to somebody about spirituality. I tend to have I go into a peak experience. And today, what’s that?
Rick Archer: It heightens it? Yeah. Even when I do these interviews, I get high as a kite. Just sort of. Yeah, yeah.
J Stewart Dixon: I think a lot of people are prone to that. And that’s the that’s it goes back to the part of the magic of transference is you tend to like go into that space until finally, finally, finally have to do it enough times your body gets it. But you know, I still I still have that. Absolutely. I think probably most teachers do, where they go into that, you know, very, very heightened state of as I call them, my book magic something. That is Yeah, it feels great. It absolutely does. It’s a it’s a wonderful. It’s a wonderful experience to have. Was it gonna say about it? Yeah, it’s, I was asked you to describe it in three words or less, a couple days ago, and it was like, ridiculously relaxed.
Rick Archer: That’s nice. Yeah.
J Stewart Dixon: Um, what else? Yeah, I can’t really
Rick Archer: read a good one. But I like that ridiculously relaxed. There’s a sort of an ease that one settles into and, you know, whereas previously there, there’s a sort of a tightness and a constriction again, control element. There’s a there’s an ease and and a flow that yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: Adi Da is one of his famous metaphors was, you know, before awakening is just, you know, and then after awakening is this, you know, and yet, very true, very true. So,
Rick Archer: I took some notes when I was reading Your book, just a few things I thought we might touch on. One was one point use the phrase more please. And I don’t remember whether you used it in with a positive or negative connotation, but I would like I would like to suggest that that’s kind of the nature of life. And that’s what we were talking about just now really, there’s there is a more please kind of wiring built into us in which the mind naturally seeks field of greater happiness. It’s like you’re an audio guy, right? So if some teeny little $5 radio, we’re playing on one side of the room, and then this $10,000 stereo system started playing on the other, our attention would shift to the $10,000 stereos because it’s so much more fulfilling. So
J Stewart Dixon: more pleases good. Yeah, it’s a good thing we’re pleased is more please, there’s nothing wrong with more please. But there does come a point that you need to recognize more please, you need to recognize that the mind is ego mind is is is the it can compromise and suddenly take over the whole ship. And you need to put it in its place. You need to realize that’s what mind is up to more please. Adi doc called it seeking, you know, you’re always seeking you’re seeking and seeking meaning that you’re seeking happiness, but you’re never ever really finally attaining it yet. Sure. You go from one experience, you get one big car, one big house, one big moment, you know, that you’re looking forward to and it comes in it goes, they all come and go, and where’s the fulfillment? Um, so your mind is going more, please, More, please. Can I have more
Rick Archer: please look for love in all the wrong places? Yeah.
J Stewart Dixon: So but you realize that, that that’s just, that’s an unlimited condition of the mind. And it’s a tool and you work with it, I still got a more please mind. You know, I love I love getting a new, you know, why rod every year that’s, I don’t need another one. I just want one more, please. You know, I just wonder, you know, so there’s, there’s that element to it that you just accept and are okay with, when it’s compromise the total being a ship of your being. And that’s all you’re living for. It’s the only thing that you’ve got. And that’s a problem.
Rick Archer: Well, another way of putting it would be if if you’re more pleased tendency is limited to kind of the surface value of life for us to talk to operate within that, then it’s never going to be gratified, because you know, you can only get so much filament out of a new flyrod. But if if the very same tendency, this that we’re talking about, is allowed to sort of steer the course of your life to sort of in a vertical direction rather than just horizontal, then something interesting begins to happen. And I would suggest that the very same impulse that what makes you want to get a new fly rod, also made you want to sort of seek spiritual realization? Yeah, it’s just it got sort of directed in a more in a deeper way.
J Stewart Dixon: All right. I mean, it doesn’t take much. I mean, everybody knows that, you know, that the excitement of that new TV or thing is gonna wear off. Everybody knows that, you know, but we still do it.
Rick Archer: Not everybody does know it, you know, some people just desperately go for the bigger TV and the bigger car, the bigger right, the prettier wife and, you know, yeah,
J Stewart Dixon: yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, that not everybody does. The correct, that, you know, maybe on what I’m saying is like, on some unconscious level, you know, that everybody knows, yeah, you know, on some on one level, or if you really sat down with somebody, talk to him about it. Yeah, you know, you know, but we still all do. And I’m, you know, I’m the same way, it’s like, you know, my wife and I won’t have a bigger want to live in a bigger house next year. And so there’s that there’s that more pleased mind. And, and, you know, and I accept it, and I ain’t got no problem with it. Because I know that, you know, happiness from that house is, you know, it’s great. It’s a good thing. You know, I look forward to it, but ultimately, you know, I’m not, it’s that’s a condition, you know, and happiness needs to be unconditional. Yeah, so that’s, you know, another great. Go ahead.
Rick Archer: There’s nothing you talked about in the book identification being lost in the objects of perception. I believe. That was me. I was or did I use the word?
J Stewart Dixon: That doesn’t sound like no, nothing I would write I mean, I that bar pollutant, pansy. Maybe I wrote
Rick Archer: it down based upon something I read in your book, and you said something about being willing to extract yourself from the world. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And and, you know, my question when I when I read that was, Is it really a matter of willingness? Is it really matter of choice? can it just be done with a snap of a finger or what? You know, it seems to me that it’s probably going to be more of a process than just something you decide to do when you wake up one morning and you’re done by lunch?
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, I think what I was alluding to in that was that there is a there is a very, very, very scary element to this process, which the ego and the mind picks up on and that, essentially. Yeah. When I say extract, it’s kind of the man it is a tough speak. But it is the process of differentiating again, the more please mind, from the background conscious witness. Being that we all are some Yeah, yeah, that will be all. And so but really what what when I say by extracting, I mean it takes a lot the process of doing that while easily said the process of actually really this is what I found, in my own case, was really daunting. Took a lot of courage. There were I mean, there were parts of my seeking that just, I was rattled to my core, you know, like I was, I like I was fucking with the fabric of the universe and wasn’t a place that I had no right to be in Jesus Christ, what have I done? You know, like, I wasn’t talking about the death of just Jeff, I was talking about the total death existence of everything. You know, like, I was just like, I had gone into the back machine room of existence and hit the off switch. No, like, what the fuck I do that for, you know, and so, yeah, so that’s, that’s, that is an element that one needs to be prepared for that is you hear this a lot from you know, the end of your world, Om Shanti, you know, which is a book that he wrote that, you know, and Gong aji all any good teachers can tell you about that, you know, that you need to prepare to meet fear. It just like I’m talking about existential depression, there’s an element of existential fear as this gnarly black beast that lives in the mountains that you are going to run into, and it is going to scare the shit out of you. You know it to the point I’m talking about to the point where you won’t you’re like, you’re gonna question why you even got involved in spirituality, it’s that large of a fear. Now, again, maybe we all experienced how this fear hits us in conferences, and you can have it hit you with small amounts of time. And then over over the years, it’s not so bad. In my own case, it was it was like it was like me needing, you know, this black dragon in the mountain, fire breathing demon that was gonna drag my ass to hell. What it was like, for me, and and it was, you know, it took some courage for me to, you know, to consciously go into that. So if that answers your question about extracting, you know, extracting yourself from I think I said the quote, was extracting myself from the conditions of reality or of Myers oil. Yeah, yeah, I can’t really remember that.
Rick Archer: Well, it does answer it. And it brings up an interesting point, which is that, you know, I’ve often wondered about myself, because when people talk about this horrible fear, I think, Geez, you know, is this something I’m still going to encounter? Because I haven’t, and maybe, maybe I will, and I still waiting around the corner for me. But I think that, you know, the way I’ve approached it, having learned to meditate when I was a kid is and stuck with it is incremental thing that you mentioned, there’s there’s been a just sort of a gradual chipping away. So I haven’t experienced so many cataclysmic,
J Stewart Dixon: everyone, everyone’s different. Yeah, I mean, I wrote a in my book, there’s a little analogy, a little parable called water. If you remember it, where I, you know, essentially, it’s starts out with you are water, frozen cold, hard, ice. And then what happens in the awakening process is that you begin to melt, you go sit with teachers, it causes you to melt, and so chunks of ice start to come off. And that’s a very uncomfortable process, the melting process is a very uncomfortable process. For a lot of us. For others, it can be like, gradually, you know, maybe in your case, Rick, it’s just little drips, you know, over over the span of 20 or 30 years. In my own case, and, you know, I think a lot of people experience just a large chunk will fall off. Yeah, and that’s uncomfortable. You know, that, that, that gets to be uncomfortable, but it’s, there’s no telling, you know, what anyone’s process or path is going to be like, when that happens, we all melt in different ways. And you just have to allow the melting and also as a, you know, as a teacher, or someone who’s working with somebody to facilitate awakening, you have to acknowledge that they’re going to be different, you know, even but you do have to, like if you’re writing a book, or you do have a practice or a teacher that if you want to, you do have to kind of like you have to establish some sort of structure, some sort of guidelines that, you know, okay, here’s what I brought, here’s where I think it’ll probably like for you. More than likely, in other words, and I think that’s sort of what I’ve done with my book. And what I do on my blog, you know, it’s like, you know, I’m guessing this is how it was like for me Like, this is why I always like to think that like, I’m a pretty, I’m a pretty like average middle class white American guy, you know. And so I’m thinking that the I’m nobody extraordinary, I wasn’t born into a great spiritual family or wealthy family or famous family, I’m not from India at any, you know, the stars weren’t in my perfect alignment and isn’t normal dude. And so I got into these matters. And I’m thinking because of that foundation, that probably the course that I took, and the awakening that I’ve realized, is probably at like, you know, what I like to call is probably pretty blue collar awakening is grocery store Enlightenment. So, I think that a lot of facets of kind of what I went through are gonna, I’m assuming, again, because of my normal background, that I bet a lot of people are, would experience it, at least in some ways, in a way that I did. I, you know, who knows? For sure it’s true.
Rick Archer: I mean, you know, everybody’s unique, but there are definitely some similar patterns. And a lot of people’s patterns might, in fact, I know, having talked to a lot of people that a lot of them do match yours or resemble yours, anyway. Yeah. So one of the things for your book that maybe we just touch on, and that might might lead us to a conclusion, you use the example of the Chilean miners who are trapped in the mind, you know, and then they were freed. And I forget the exact context in which you used it. But when I read it, I thought, Okay, well, once you’ve been freed from the mind, then what? Maybe you expressed that thought, but I haven’t written down here and that what you want to riff on that a little bit what you meant to say with that example? Well, sure,
J Stewart Dixon: it it’s the so the, while I wrote when I was writing 21 days, which is the 21 days after I kind of kicked the little doubt off of my awakening seeking. One of the days was when when, when when when the Chileans miners were trapped, and we got them out. And so there was a you know, they got them all out, it was it was awesome. And so then for about a period of about a week, you know, they were famous. In other words, they had been freed from their captivity. And then they were, then I thought, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. These Porsche mugs after this, after their 15 minutes, you know, they, after they, after they were freed, and I thought that was a very apt kind of analogy towards awakening, except in this case, when you wake up, there’s nobody there to congratulate you, for the most part, there’s nobody there, you know, to hand you a diploma or to congratulate you, you aren’t getting up in front of 1000 people, and they’re saying, Oh, it’s so great that you were freed. You know, there’s this like, Now look, you know, no, again, we’re all different. And in my own case, I was like, I want I need my relief was would hide arrived to a level of relief and well being that, that it was kind of a funny circumstance, I realized that I that my circumstances, much like those miners were like, okay, so except even without the fanfare that they had that for a week or so, after they were freed. It’s like, so now you’re waking, it’s like, now what, you know. And so like the miners, I was, like, I was wondering what was what is what is the outcome of those miners, you know, what are they doing? And another way to look at it is, as I often look at it this way that it says if I’ve I’m playing a video game, like, like, like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and I love using this analogy, because Jed McKenna, you know, in his books, in one of his books, you know, played a tomb raider. It’s like, okay, so you’ve killed all the bad guys, you’ve gotten all the little golden, you know, Star cookies, and rewards and whatnot. And so but Iraq, but there’s a feeling that and this is how it is for me, it’s not like it’s for everybody. I feel like I’m still in the video game. You know, I’m still in the video game. And now what do I do, all the bad guys are killed. You know, I’ve been freed from the mind now what I do. And so I guess that’s what was about was I was kind of questioning that on that particular day. And I remember I was I was like, I walk there’s a there’s a yeah, there’s the quality though, like to have woken up, you know, just like, Well, damn, you know, what, what am I I’m still here, you know, what am I going to do with this? You know, and yeah, that’s, that’s part of the post awakening, a very big part of the post awakening process is like, so now I know, what am I going to do with my life and how to orient it towards this awakening, and what am I going to do with it and How do I want to it? There’s, there’s this for me, it’s like the subtle, necessarily actually, this is this how it manifests. For me, it’s like, this is quality, like, I just surmounted the biggest damn mountain I have ever surmounted. And, and, you know, if I can do that, you know, if I can do that, you know, then then then then I can, you know, I’m free, and I can do anything. So that’s kind of how it, you know, that’s how it kind of is for me. You know, it’s not
Rick Archer: I think that’s what that was. Yeah, I think that’s what I was alluding to earlier. When I, I don’t know if I use this phrase, but I kind of see awakening as a milestone, not a destination. And there’s always going to be it’s paradoxical. Again, to use that word, there’s always going to be a next horizon. And yet there isn’t. But there’s, there’s always, you know, there’s a certain finality to it, but at the same time, there’s always going to be some thing yet to discover something yet to do something yet to explore. And so if, if I’m right about that, then it might be helpful for people to realize that you don’t just rest on your laurels and sit around and have somebody drop grapes in your mouth. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a stage. And and, and yet, there’s plenty of room left for exploration, once that stage has been reached, and you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, I mean, the, it’s, in my case, it’s like a, like, I feel like I’m the milestones that I’m looking for are are materialistic or, kind of on a on a surface level. But I married to a married to an element of wanting to assist people. You know, there’s a i, that’s what I found was like, Okay, so now you’re in the video game, kill all the bad guys, and what’s are left to do? Well, you just help other players, you help other players who are lost in the video game, you show them what to do, how to do it, how to get to the end, after they win the game, and they are helping other players too. I think that’s maybe what happens. You know, it’s not
Rick Archer: what happens to a lot of people. And I think it’s natural, just like we were saying before the natural tendency of the mind, you know, of how you put it, wanting more and more. There’s a kind of a natural, you know, that phrase in the Bible, my cup runneth over. It’s like, at a certain point, the cup is full, you can stop worrying about filling the cup, but now it’s gonna start overflowing. And that takes the form of wanting to assist others.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, I mean, it’s so yeah, I, I’ve not arrived to that point. You know, I’m new. I’m early on in this. I’m just now beginning to figure out exactly what that is. Between website and book and, you know, consulting services to, to privately to individuals is like, you know, I can tell you that that’s, that’s kind of like what’s on the next horizon for me. And beyond that, I really don’t know, you know, which might be might be you know, maybe a good thing to expand on just a little bit. It’s like living in the moment and now you know, you hear a lot about that. And that’s that’s also can be a confusing element of this where the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and ROM das be here. Now, there’s a lot of extraordinary amounts of talk about being here now. And I think a lot and what I want to say is, I think a lot of it is hyped because my mind is totally capable, and often is fantasizes you know about what’s going to be like in the future it still does that. It’s it’s still like you know, I’m hoping to like have a you know, to move next year to go to a larger house and I hope next year to have a consulting service and I hope to
Rick Archer: plan all that right. You know, he’s gonna wake up one morning and find yourself in a larger house.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, so a lot of people think that being here now it’s just like you know, I’m just gonna after this interview, I’m just gonna walk upstairs and golden sit and sit in a chair and be here now and not do anything. But it doesn’t it isn’t really like that there is a Absolutely there’s a quality to you know, in the when you when you have more of the peak experience subtle sides of awakening when you go into those there’s absolutely your light here and now you’re like grounded and it’s and but then there’s been because the the activities of the more please mind receipt background
Rick Archer: You know, well, it’s like we were saying earlier about how if one is only locked into the surface level of life and one’s whole fulfillment is dependent upon that, then it’s very, you know, vulnerable to the waves of change. I don’t know if we put it in those phrases. But, you know, with regard to this now thing, if, again, if one is locked into the surface level of experience, then there’s, there’s a lot of sort of neurotic, worrying about the future and lamenting about the past, and so on. But when the when the deeper dimension dawns, then one is in the now, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t, like you know, plan to get a bigger house or a better job or can’t think about the fun you had in high school, or you can you can play in the past and future, but there’s a sort of a noun as that becomes more predominant. So your whole, your whole fulfillment isn’t invested in the these these future past things. It’s primarily grounded in the now in presence.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah, it’s this that, I think I think a lot of people who, who are striving for awakening have this fantasy, that net, the being here now means that, that, that’s all you need, you know, whatever is in front of you immediately, is, is all that you need, and is totally fulfilling and is the end game. And that’s not true. You know, that’s just not true, you know, led to your, you know, Ramana Maharshi, or some Yogi on a mountaintop, you know, which we’re not, which I’m not, you know, no, you know, I’m not stupid, you know, I’m not going to, you know, I want good things, you know, I want intelligent things, I want intelligent interaction, I want wiser directions to go in, I want to make plans, you, you’re, you do not being here, it’s almost like, it’s like, people think that being here now is like some sort of lobotomy because you know, where you’re like, you know, you’re reduced to some, you know, juvenile version of yourself is totally satisfied with, you know, a complete label or whatever’s in front of him. Even if it’s just a pen. It’s just the most glorious, you know, unified universal pen in my whole entire life. Well, let me let me blow that notion out of the water, you know, and say, Fuck that, you know, man, I want a bigger fishing pole and a bigger house. Yeah. Because you’re not you know, you don’t get a lobotomy anything you become more intelligent, more look, you know, the opposite of that is someone like Osho, you know, 14 Rolls Royces or someone like Gandhi, Gandhi
Rick Archer: something, what’s that
J Stewart Dixon: he had a guy who had a refined sense of taste, you know, and that happens, Yeah, that happens. There’s a quality to awakening, that you’re no longer you know, what, you know, long, it’s like, you’re here, you’re now you live in this world. And you, you know, you don’t settle for bullshit. You know, you don’t, if something stinks, you’re gonna say it stinks, you’re not holding back, you’re not, you know, you’re not you have no, you know, pretense or agenda or fear about calling things like the way they are, in some sense, you, you know, you become more of an opinionated asshole than you were before awakening. And I, you know, take all of that with temperament. And, and, and as you know, and align that with, with being here mutually in the world with other beings, and have a sense of respect or regard for other people, and you can be those things, you can have that integrity in your life. And, and, and, and that not get in the way and get ridiculous to the point of 90 Rolls Royces. You can have it naturally and in a well rounded way. And I think that that’s, you know, that’s, that’s how I feel about my own case. And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with that element of awakening is wanting the finer things in life. It’s, it just cannot be confused with the finer things of life thinking that that’s going to be the fulfilling things in life. And I have lost my train of thought
Rick Archer: I’ll help you out. It’s just it’s the kind of thing we’ve been playing around with, which is that, you know, if you’re just caught up in the waves, then it really matters whether the waves are bigger, small, faster, slow, green, or red, whatever their whole fulfillment is invested in how things are going on the surface of life. And if you’re if you’ve kind of opened yourself up to use clunky words to the full range of the ocean, then then you know you’re the ocean and find if there’s big waves, little waves doesn’t matter a heck of a lot. So this whole Be Here Now thing and it’s,
J Stewart Dixon: yeah, it gets a little blown out of proportion.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think what should people should and it’s not a mood, you know, this be here, you can’t like move would make yourself into just being in the present and everything, its content because if that contentment isn’t really explored and unfolded, discovered, then you’re just going to be sort of passive and perhaps apathetic. So there really needs to be that deeper dimension. And then on the foundation of that, you know, you can be as dynamic and as goal oriented and and as you want to be. There’s no conflict, even though there’s some paradox in it.
J Stewart Dixon: Yeah. Yeah. I, while you were speaking there, I was
Rick Archer: got your train of thought
J Stewart Dixon: yet? No, yeah. No, I was thinking I just, I want I want to go because I think we’re getting close to the end here. And I really want to address or I really want to like acknowledge, for viewers who, you know, who come to BatGap? And are, you are suffering and are in pain. And that are kind of going a little further than the are, you know, or have arrived at a deeper place a deeper sort of dark night of the soul? Is because I remember the years that I was there. And, and, yeah, I just, I think that because I think that’s what this I think that’s what BatGap is for, is for those individuals, is, it’s what my book is for. It’s what, it’s what my websites, and you know, what, what kind of what, what happens to you, and when you do want to turn around teach this, is you want to talk to those, you want to talk to those people that were like you that were really really suffering. And so there’s I’m just trying to like, remember, you know, like, Hey, man, if I came to this website, it was listening to all these interviews. And and I was, I was feeling that, I know that I’m thinking, Well, that’s all great, you know, I’m really happy for you and your fly rods and blah, blah, blah, on your own awakening, and who gives a shit? You know? Yeah. But what can I do? You know, what, what, this this, this sucks? And, you know, what can I do right now, to end what I’m feeling here, this this suffering? And this, this this separation? And that is a good question. And that is that that is the heart of the matter. And I think what I want to say to those people, is that, that’s what you have to first and foremost is that you need to accept that is that don’t deny that, accept that that’s where you are and start from there. And that’s totally okay, that’s totally part of the process. And there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And what can you do is, is to, to read and to watch, and to be with as many teachers as you possibly can. And I know there’s a lot of people out there who might be in, geez, you know, four corners of the world who don’t have that opportunity, then you need to accept that that’s where you are, and orient your life orient as much as you possibly can, towards taking the steps that puts you closer, in in to proximity written words or video, or in my personal opinion, the best thing that you can do is to be with those people is to orient your life so that you can do that. So you can sit in it, you know, and have that exposure to those types of people who are awake. That’s the process. Yeah, and a big part of that process is coming to terms with that difficulty, and that uncomfortableness and that suffering that you’re having right now, and and accepting it and sinking into it, not denying it, but as Samuel bonder and his great organization says of waking down into it, and then doing that as much as you can with and in the company of other awakened teachers and it’s contagious. Yeah. Oh, aching is contagious. And so I just for me, it’s like that too. If I could like, look back at Jeff, like 10 years ago, that’s what I would say, is like, yeah, Damn, man, I feel your pain. It fucking sucks. You know, and I’m not, you know, I’m not denying it, you know, it sucks. And it gets tiring to hear from from, from awakened teachers how great it is, and blah, blah, blah, you just don’t care. You know, and I was with you, you know, I did not at that point, I didn’t care either. You know, it was it was all about this in this painting thatwas right here. So the path that I took, which is the only path that I can, you know, teach and recommend to others is one that worked for me. I think it works for a lot of the teachers here at Baca is to immerse yourself in this world as much as you can, what however limited that might be or as great as that might be. And you will find that if you allow and you accept, and you, you are able to be as honest as you possibly can, with every part of you that’s coming up during that interaction, you will find that you slowly begin to turn the tables on that element, which is the depressing elements, which are the separate elements are the ones that make you suffer. So I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s what I as somebody writes a book about this and has gone through the awakening process. That’s what I want to say to all those people. And I think that’s what your website is about to Rick is like really, going down to that parts, you know, acknowledging everybody who comes here, that wounded part and all of us that that’s, you know, that’s right, where, where it’s at go, right, that’s what our job is, is to take you right there to that edge against that, that pain, and that wound and hold you up against the fire, and to slowly heat up and you start melting. And you you find that there is a healing that takes place. And it is a disk rediscovery of well being. But our job is still like, hold your ass against that fire. And I think that, so that’s kind of like how I what I wanted to say at the end here, Rick, is that you’re doing a really good job with that with these with these video analysis videos that you have online. And I think every teacher that comes to you, is it really that’s what they’re, that’s the most important thing that they’re giving. And that’s what I want to give is that, you know, is the acknowledgement that that can be, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Rick Archer: And it’s not an oncoming train.
J Stewart Dixon: And it’s not an oncoming train.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Good. That’s beautiful. Nice wrap up. Sure. Okay, so let me just make a few concluding remarks. I’ve been talking with Jeff Dixon or Jeff Stewart Dixon to be more formal. And Jeff has written a book and has a couple of websites. And we’ll have another website. Pretty soon I’ll be linking to all of that, from batgap.com. So if you just happen to be listening to this in audio while you’re in the car, or something you don’t need to remember, don’t have a car accident trying to write down domain names, just go to batgap.com, you’ll see Jeff’s interview, and you can click on links to go to his websites and his book. You will also see there, all the other interviews I’ve done, and they’re all archived, and there’s a kind of an index on the right hand side of the page, it’s alphabetical all the people. And there’s a little link there that you can click on to sign up for an email notification every time a new interview gets put up. That’s pretty simple to do everyday people sign up. We’re also going to there’s a chat group that builds around each interview. And, you know, usually anywhere from one to 500 comments get made after each interview, in that particular chat area of that interview. There’s also a general comment section that has 1000s of comments that have accumulated over time. But we’re actually going to turn that into a forum. So it’s, you know, more topical and easier to navigate. So it’s not just this linear train of unrelated points, so that’ll be coming soon. There’s also a yahoo group called Buddha at the Gas Pump, which is quite lively and active. So if you look on the Yahoo groups for Buddha at the Gas Pump, you’ll find that and I have a link to it on my site. And finally, there is a donate button and I do appreciate people clicking that from time to time. There are some spiritual websites which sort of require payment for access. I never want to do that with this. I hope to always keep it free for everybody. And you just have enough people you know, out there watching and feeling inclined to donate that I can generate enough income to not only keep doing it, but as Jeff was saying earlier, eventually make this a full time gig and the
J Stewart Dixon: minimum I’m donation $1 million. That’s the minimum.
Rick Archer: Yeah. For that I’ll take a trip to Greece with you and we can hang out. Okay, so I think that about covers it. So thanks for listening or watching and we will see you next time.
J Stewart Dixon: Thanks, Rick.
Rick Archer: I should say that next time is going to be Anita Moorjani, I should never announce next time because a lot of times things change. But she is a very interesting woman who had a near death experience. He was like in a coma. Severe cancer about the checkout had a profound experience came back or cancer went away. So and she’s doing real well these days. It’s gonna be a fascinating discussion.
J Stewart Dixon: And it’s Justin Bieber after that, right,
Rick Archer: yeah, right. The Beebs. All right. Thanks, Jeff.
J Stewart Dixon: Sure, thanks Rick
Rick Archer: bye bye