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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people. We’ve done over 660 of them. Now, if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com. And look under the past interviews menu. That’s the best way to do it because they’re well organized there. Or you can just cruise around on the YouTube channel. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it, and we’d like to help support it, there are Pay Pal buttons on the site. And there’s a page which explains some alternatives to PayPal. And if you feel like it, subscribe to the channel, we’re approaching 100,000 subscribers now it’d be fun to hit that mark for what it’s worth. My guest today is Jessica Nathanson. Just I first became aware of Jessica, a few months ago when our mutual friend Tim freak brought her to my attention and sent me a link to a couple of conversations he had had with her about Neo Advaita. And the effect that that indulgence and that had had on her life. That’s what we’re going to talk about today, mostly, Jessica, is originally from Connecticut, where I’m from, we actually used to ski at the same ski area. But I did that before she was born. broke my collarbone there one time. And she now lives in Tel Aviv. No, you want to explain why or whatever. But it’s not so relevant to our conversation. But you can if you want.
Jessica Eve: No, I’m just fell in love with it a long time ago. But I guess I could also mention that the word Israel does mean one who struggles with God. So there may be some additional meaning there.
Rick Archer: Interesting. Yeah. That’s a whole conversation. Why would one struggle with God? Or can one be one with God and the struggle? Anyway. So I listened to all the videos on your YouTube channel, in addition to your conversations with Tim. And one thing that I one place that I thought might be good to start, I heard you mentioned in one of your interviews with somebody that as a young girl, you used to slip into a state of unboundedness, or some kind of expansive awareness or something and you didn’t know what it was, and it scared you and you called it what the great terrible or something like
Jessica Eve: that, oh, it was the bad thought, the bad
Rick Archer: thought, right. And, but that’s I find that interesting, because a lot of the people I interview who have later blossomed, spiritually had something going on when they were kids, and then usually they’d lost it. And then, you know, did whatever they did for a decade or so, you know, going through the teenage years, and then it started to open up again. And I guess the reason I consider that significant is that this is perhaps the point we’ll cover in our conversation that I think there’s a great range, or vast expanse of spiritual development, you know, he could think of a spectrum or something. And I don’t know if anyone’s ever reached the end of it. And I think when we come into this life, we pick up on whatever level of evolution we had achieved in the previous one, it’s my, my particular orientation, and we carry on from there. So you know, it would stand to reason that sometimes that people who have profound experiences as a kid might have come in with some spiritual background under their belts, you know, and then they they start experiencing things related to that and then gain an interest and then spirituality a little bit later. Anyway, for what it’s worth. That’s one thought that came to mind. So do you want to talk any more about that? bad thought? Whatever you just called it?
Jessica Eve: Yeah, you jumped right into the deep end. I’m actually surprised that that that’s what you’re starting with, because I always wonder if I should, if I should go there or not. Oh, it’s like to
Rick Archer: jump into the deep end. Yeah. There’s water.
Jessica Eve: I don’t know if there is no, it’s probably bottomless but yeah, so that was pretty bizarre. I would say like around the age of seven. I started having these I’m just sudden panic attacks because it was really based on this. Just this opening of infinity, but it was a lot of it was conceptual, it was like, oh my god like the endlessness of what after, you know, after death, this non existence is infinite. But it also came with a D realization, because somehow it’s funny because that’s, that’s relates to, to my process now was that in that grand context of, of infinity, what’s here now became almost so unreal, like how can this be real it’s such a tiny blip and everything became somehow not real or less real. And it was also came with this sense of just the utter absurdity of existence, just how can anything be, but that would lead to panic attacks, and depersonalization derealization. But it certainly wasn’t experienced this spiritual. It wasn’t something I enjoyed. And it became something that I actually developed as somewhat of a OCD, a mental OCD around trying to stave off the thought of that that kind of felt like it was always trying to creep in. So it is really fascinating to consider how that relates to what ended up unfolding later. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I used to have those, something like that when I was a kid too. But it was usually when I had a high fever, if I got the measles or something. And I would sit in bed, and I would have this experience of great vastness and great tidiness. And it was almost like both at once, you know, and it’s funny because there’s a line in the Upanishad, that that goes that Brahman is greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest. But that was kind of the experience, and also sometimes great heaviness and great lightness, and I just sit there and contemplate the experience in my fever state. But I found that kind of interesting. But I think we all have access to vastness or unboundedness. And, you know, that’s, in a way, what people are looking for when they pursue a spiritual path. However, friend who is undergoing a very beautiful awakening these days, and it’s been really scary for her for a while, not so much anymore. She’s getting through it. But, you know, she would, if you were driving, and she looked at the sky, she would just zoom out into vastness. And she was afraid she wasn’t going to be able to drive and she was afraid she wasn’t gonna be able to take care of her son and things like that. And I just kept reassuring her and talking her through it and doing okay, now, but a lot of people report a fear of this experience, because there’s a dissolution of the sense of individuation sense of self. And there’s a dark side to that and a light side to that. And I think we’re gonna get into that during our conversation.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, we definitely are. And just one thing about that was I might have lost my train of thought. Now one of the things about it was that the that sense of dissolution didn’t really come until the kind of The Awakening journey, it was more, I would say it was more D realization than anything of everyone else.
Rick Archer: What do you mean, do you realization of everyone else?
Jessica Eve: So deep rather than me not existing? It was more like, I’m here, but everyone else doesn’t have a reality. Which is interesting, because that will definitely come up, come up later.
Rick Archer: And that was something that the seven year old Jessica was contemplating.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, I was I was running down the hallway panicking, and my parents were like, What the fuck is going on?
Rick Archer: They said that to you. Now. They didn’t say they were thinking it.
Jessica Eve: Then they called it the bad thought, like, probably should have sent me to psychotherapy. I didn’t want to go but the other thing that I think is funny is that I was reading when I kind of went into the spiritual emergency I was reading about depersonalization because I was experiencing that again and one person had said, you know, on the one hand depersonalization is is awful, but on the on the other side, like Way to go, you know, you, you, you’re already you already made it, you know, yeah, but as
Rick Archer: with a lot of things, there’s, you know, there’s a paradox and we’ll get into that a lot and in our discussion, there are things which are perfectly lovely, but which become misinterpreted or over emphasized or emphasized to the exclusion of everything else and and then it becomes a nightmare. So I think one of our overall themes today will be to talk about the comprehensiveness of genuine spiritual awakening, the inclusiveness of all levels of reality, all paradoxical, you know, considerations?
Jessica Eve: That is very well said,
Rick Archer: yeah. Thank you. Okay, so then that was when you were seven. And obviously, you know, you went through your teenage years, you skied at powder ridge and did this and did that. And then so when did you actually get interested in spirituality?
Jessica Eve: In my 20s was when it when it began, and I think it began like it does for a lot of people with that kind of disillusionment with there being some, something that we can kind of acquire some perfect set of circumstances that will, you know, promise us that lasting, lasting fulfillment and satisfaction and really just kind of waking up to the hungry ghost syndrome that was very strong in me. And, you know, then you kind of seats started to see it everywhere. But, um, I was
Rick Archer: trying to syndrome meaning like, go ahead, you explain it. Yeah,
Jessica Eve: the, you know, the, the grasping for things and getting them but never being full, you know, can get as much as as much as you can, but it’s never enough. And so that was, you know, became very apparent to me, and that it was strong in me. But also have this goes pretty well, along with the what we were talking about in my childhood is that I’ve been lucky enough to inherit something called Pure OCD. And not just that, but it’s called existential, pure OCD, of course, you know, clinical things are annoying, but it is a pretty bizarre niche thing where the mental rumination is that you have or intrusive thoughts about the nature of reality, and kind of death and existence. And sort of developing other habits of thought to counteract those habits of thought. So you can kind of imagined kind of the madness in my brain that could occur. And I wanted to share a I mean, it’s not funny, but an interesting story of how things began. It began in the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, and I’m kind of looking at the sea of self help books. And it’s kind of this strange hooded figure comes over a guy in a hoodie, and just hands me the book, The Untethered Soul by Michael singer and says, this will change your life. And it absolutely did for better, for better and for worse. So that was kind of the Yeah, a starting initiatory moment.
Rick Archer: Ah, interesting. And so how did it change your life? If that if you feel like that’s relevant right now?
Jessica Eve: I do. Yeah. I mean, it leads to, you know, the ordeal that I’ve been through, that leads me to where I’m at now, but essentially led me into, you know, an ego death path and the path of, let’s say, divine suicide. That, of course, as you said, before, it’s this paradox, double edged sword that kind of freed me what freed me ended up also trapping me in another way. But that was really the the beginning of discovering, you know, that revelation that many of us have, when we realize that, that so much of our sub suffering comes from the stories in our head and the voices in our head, in the itself, a self made prison. But it also began sort of the planting of the seeds of, you know, you’re not, you’re not really real, that you know, who you think you are, is a fiction, and that realizing that is sort of the the key to deliberation. And, and this idea between a real self and a false self had begun to take form.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Which again, everything you say is like, Okay, that’s good. And yet, I can see how that could be bad if it’s spun the wrong way. Did you start some kind of actual practice of meditation or something? Or were you mainly just reading books about these things?
Jessica Eve: Well, I don’t think I started meditation until after the next book, which was the power of now which is what really kind of started creating this huge shift because it it was really more of that kind of, you know, the ego, you know, that, that what I am is sort of this false ego and that the ego is responsible for all my suffering, that transcendence and liberation comes from, you know, let’s say what he considered to be transcending the ego which is more kind of like getting rid of it to some extent, but it what what that book did was it really opened me up to space the space between things and starting to become more acutely aware of space and spaciousness. And then I started, I think around that time, I probably started meditating, but it was never really intense meditation, it was just kind of dipping, dipping my toes into it, I would say, Okay.
Rick Archer: And as you began these explorations, initially, did you feel like they were improving your life making you happier, making you more productive?
Jessica Eve: Absolutely not more productive. But definitely, for you know, free, like, it’s that first kind of taste of what we think is is liberation from the, what had felt like, the prison of mind. And you know, we all have, we all have, you know, some overthrow overthinking patterns. But, you know, I think that the more that somebody feels like their mind is a prison, the more cathartic, that sudden kind of awakening, beyond thought itself is, and so for me, it was just, like, cataclysmic. When I actually had that first kind of, I mean, what people say, and I would have said, is like my awakening, which was kind of that that big ego drop of, I’ve disappeared, and everything else is still here. And I’ve kind of disappeared and become everything. And that just kind of collapsing of perceiver. And perceived. And, I mean, that was kind of that big moment of where you, you know, you kind of throw your head back laughter of Oh, my God, I thought I thought that I was real, you know, I’ve always always always been this. I’ve never really Jessica never really ever existed, you know, and she doesn’t. And just the kind of catharsis of that, being at this moment being, you know, a positive thing and total, total, transformative, liberating feeling.
Rick Archer: So you did you shift into that, and it was abiding, like, you know, just walked around all day, with that realization, whether or not you thought about it, that was the way you perceive life?
Jessica Eve: No, absolutely not. It was more of intermittent. And I would say that, beginning to meditate and having meditation be leading to the ego dissolution, and, you know, kind of dissolving into the silence and the spaciousness kind of more kind of reconfirmed, like, the cognitive understanding of that, but definitely was leading to episodes of this kind of the absence of me. So it would be, you know, I think in some people refer to that. I know, like people like Locke, Kelly talked about many small glimpses, many times, there were a lot of glimpses, but there were also longer experiences of that, that were kind of accumulated,
Rick Archer: the glimpses tend to be triggered just by the intellectual contemplation of these ideas. Or was it more like, meditation? triggered them?
Jessica Eve: It’s hard to say it because it definitely was, you know, when walking around, it wasn’t just, you know, the, the inner disillusion was different than the not uriens of walking around, and then suddenly being like this 360 kind of walking hole. Hole, not W H. But H. O le. Yeah, that’s feels important to clarify. I don’t remember exactly how it would happen. I think it probably was a combination of, of mental prompts. And more of a intuitive, like, feeling my way to that. But I, it’s hard for me to remember now.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, I mean, I’m sure that everyone listening to this has sat around and had philosophical conversations with friends, you know, possibly aided by a little marijuana or something more strong, or something. Yeah. And, but it’s interesting how just putting your attention on this stuff and dwelling on it can shift your awareness to a great extent. I mean, it’s, it’s a good way of enhancing any high even if you’re not taking anything. And I experienced it, when I do one of these interviews, I just feel high as a kite by the end of it. And when I used to teach meditation, I’d give a lecture and I just feel, you know, tremendous by the end of it just because of just up, you know, just focusing deeply on this topic. And I think that is a hint as to why Ghana yoga is said to be a path that ultimately it’s the intellectual discernment between the finest, you know, impulses of creation and the absolute that slides one into final realization. Can I ask? Yeah, go ahead.
Jessica Eve: I was just wondering because you said, and I’m not going to pronounce it right,
Rick Archer: the Jani yogo.
Jessica Eve: Is that I, I had to understand that that is self inquiry or,
Rick Archer: yeah, self inquiry is definitely an aspect of it. And it’s really sort of the main feature of Advaita Vedanta, which is, but most will say this now, traditional Vedantists doesn’t just say, Oh, you’re already bad, or you don’t exist, or, I mean, it says that kind of stuff. But part of the emphasis, if you consider it as a serious, serious path and devote your life to it, is you have to go through all kinds of preparation, before you’re considered qualified to actually use intellectual inquiry alone as your path. There could be karma yoga, and bhakti, yoga and meditation, and all kinds of things. And I sent you a quote from Nisargadatta a good chance to read it here. He said, You seem to want instant insight, forgetting that insight is always preceded by a long preparation. The fruit falls suddenly, but the ripening takes time. So that was from Nisargadatta. Maharaj.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, yeah. eautiful one. And I, it’s funny, because, you know, so long ago, and so many things have happened since then, internally, that it’s hard to remember the details. But, you know, self inquiry, and Ramana Maharshi is self inquiry was definitely a part of this was that direct realization and sort of that, you know, I think of that is like the big guns, which makes sense, because that was a higher teaching. That wasn’t, you didn’t just give that out to anyone. And there was there was some discrimination around. It wasn’t indiscriminate, let’s say. And that’s one of my biggest concerns about the appropriations of that in the West, because it eliminates all of that. And there’s no, there’s no consideration for for who you’re giving this to, and what their state is, and level of, you know, preparedness, if you would say, because I don’t think that they really consider that a necessity. I mean, it, let’s say in Neo Advaita, right,
Rick Archer: Jesus said, Don’t pour new wine into old wineskins. In other words, the the vehicle through which this realization has to happen, needs to be made, you know, made the new needs to be purified, strengthened, pure, you know, I guess those are two good words, before this kind of knowledge can really be lived in any clear and sustaining way.
Jessica Eve: Well, one of the interesting things about what you’re saying and for one, I won’t go into it now, but I do have some what’s the word? The word that the the concept of purity and purification is something that I’ve come to have some inner conflict with, but what I was gonna say was, on one hand, the, those safeguards are in place to help make sure that it would be more of an abiding thing. But I feel that it was also probably part of it was their understanding that you needed to help develop ego before trying to collapse that ego. And the thing that’s happening now, which is so kind of obvious at this point, is that people that are are really drawn to this are a lot of these people don’t have that, you know, they’re they don’t have a fully developed ego. I think it doesn’t even develop until your late 20s. That don’t have that. And I’ll actually suffer from a lot of the a lot of what comes with that, you know, not having a healthy sense of individuation. I’ll pause there for now.
Rick Archer: That’s good. Who was it that said, you have to be somebody before you can be nobody? Remember that?
Jessica Eve: Jeff Foster?
Rick Archer: I just wasn’t Jeff or was it Ken Wilber I know somebody. But you make a good point, which is that it takes a lot of strength to sustain the the experience of unbounded awareness. And if the mind body system is full of some scars, full of deep impressions, is really not a fit vehicle for sustaining that experience. And if the experience dawns prematurely, it can cause serious problems.
Jessica Eve: Right. That’s kind of what I would emphasis for myself. Is that what you said at the end? Is that aside from it, not, you know, leading to being able to like abide in it, for example, that it’s a question of whether this is actually going to serve you or not you If it’s going to exacerbate, you know, exacerbate your current suffering and create new forms of it for people where you know what they need is, I mean, you could argue about that. But in my perspective, what people, many people need, for example, is not more boundlessness, or dissolution of boundaries, they need to actually learn to have stronger boundaries that are, you know, healthy, right. And I know that I didn’t really have that. And so many of us these days with, you know, everything we’re understanding about relational trauma, and how, you know, a lot of people don’t develop that sense of individuation, and have a lot of trouble with boundaries and enmeshment. I think now we’re really seeing how how important that is. Yeah. So what happened to
Rick Archer: you, then? You got into all this stuff? Earlier on, I said, Did it improve your life? Or somebody said that you said no, definitely did improve my life? How did it even initially, it sounds like in the early stages, it had a deleterious influence on your life in some respect.
Jessica Eve: I don’t think I said I didn’t improve it, I think you would ask if it made me more productive.
Rick Archer: That’s what I said. Yeah.
Jessica Eve: So I don’t think it made more productive, but we could. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So is that because the world seemed meaningless, and you didn’t feel like it was worth trying to do anything or something?
Jessica Eve: Well, it, I mean, kind of the kind of a crux of it was that we’re, you know, need to let go of that productivity, you know, we need to let go of aspirations and goals and an even desire. So naturally, you know, there’s first kind of that, and I will be comfortable calling it an indoctrination in the beginning that, you know, conceptually feeling, like, ashamed of those drives, or being taught that those drives are only will only lead to suffering. That in the beginning, it wasn’t, it wasn’t so demotivating. But it’s something that led me later down probably a couple years later that led to this just like, you know, that I really did lose a great, a great portion of desire and motivation, because I, you know, I got into those places where it’s like, you know, there is no doer, and there’s nothing to say, there’s nothing left to do. And people think of that is like, Oh, how wonderful but it’s, you know, again, it has its dark side, when you feel like, you know, this radical contentment with the moment but, you know, there that does dry up the motivation to, you know, go out and listen to music, or, you know, spend time with people. It was kind of this thing where it’s like, we always hear about the bench, you know, the, all of the bench, that yeah, there’s always a bench that someone sat on for a long time. And I did end up having sort of this, it was kind of funny to me, where I was sitting on a bench in a park and it was like, I could just sit on this bench forever, and just be a witness of the passing show. And this kind of non participant, like in awe, that’s not someone said, a non participatory all, which I really liked. So I guess that’s my, my long answer to the question.
Rick Archer: That’s good. I was fortunate in a way because I had a teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which people know, who always emphasized, be having motivations, having goals, having aspirations, go and get a college degree, you know, get a good job, and do this, do that. And don’t just sit and meditate all the time. And His attitude was that, that one could live 200% of life Wow, well, 100% inner spiritual and 100% outer material, and that there was no conflict between the two. But I think what a lot of these more contemporary Advaita teachers have been doing is taking teachings or perspectives that might be appropriate for a recluse, and advocating them universally to people to audiences who are 99 point something percent not reclusive by nature. And, you know, it just definitely takes the wind out of your sails. And, like you say, you lose motivation, I guess,
Jessica Eve: that’s really well said and something that, you know, I am so aware of now, in understanding how how dangerous this stuff can be, is that it isn’t, it’s really not compatible with the lives that most people are living when they are getting involved with things like Neo Advaita. And, you know, we’re going most of us are going through, you know, immense suffering. So, so we reach for this and the promise that, you know, we’re, we’re being given here But, of course it one of the things that I thought that I would want to touch on is the way that somebody who’s not a wreck lose somebody who’s a householder, the effect that this has on other people in the house, if you will, the effect that that has on people around you. And of course, you know, when you’re in a monastery, or you become a wandering cynic, you don’t need to worry about that. But one of the things that, that I’ve become really aware of, more recently is how these renunciant paths are householders in the West, really deeply harms families. And I don’t think that’s something that it’s sort of like one of like, an unpopular kind of truth that people don’t talk about very much. As, you know, I’ve met to two parents who share that, you know, they’re sort of ego deaths and detachment path, made them no longer really able to feel, you know, empathy for their children in their the suffering they were going through and to not be emotionally available for them will not be available, not not be there, of course, and just how, how tragic that was, and the impact that had on their children. And one of them actually coming to a point where he was saying that I can, I can’t continue to be a dad, and not be and not be Richard, if you know what I mean, that he could either pursue this dissolution path or be a dad that he couldn’t do one or the other. And it actually brought him to the point of wanting to kill himself.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so that’s sad. And I don’t think it’s like you said to me in an email earlier, I think you said I think some of these traditional teachers, like Ramana, would roll in their graves if they heard, you know, what’s being they would some of these examples, and it really, you know, I guess the reason we have to use the term Neo Advaita, is that we don’t want to give Advaita a bad name for the whole tradition associated with it. I mean, there, there are verses in the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, which talk about the uninvolved nature of the self, and how, in a certain state one has the sense that I do not act at all. But then there are also verses advocating dynamic action and taking responsibility and things like that, in fact, there’s a great language, which says, yoga is skill in action, this is going to make you more effective now. Right. So
Jessica Eve: yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And I was reading a book, and this is not Advaita. But I was reading a book the other day that was saying, he was like, Jesus didn’t just sit there, you know,
Rick Archer: slept around the Middle East for a few years. Luckily,
Jessica Eve: he did. So yeah, that is a huge, a huge, a huge thing. And I just wanted to add that with Advaita in like the traditional, Eastern liberation paths in their context, like whether I no longer align with that notion of what leads to the end of suffering, but or what is, you know, ultimately true, but I don’t have anything. It doesn’t feel dangerous to me that it exists there. And that, you know, people could, you know, study this or look it up or go to India to find it, but the fact that it’s now permeating self help books, I mean, you have Neo Advaita on Oprah’s bedside table. So, yeah. Which is a, that becomes concerning.
Rick Archer: Yeah. All right. Well, we’re gonna keep hashing this out. So, you know, we haven’t quite gotten to this yet. But you’ve, you’ve intimated to me that, you know, your life really took a dark turn. And, you know, he became a lot more dysfunctional than he have yet told us. So he might as well just, you know, tell the whole sordid tale. We can talk about how you got out of it.
Jessica Eve: All right, I will, I will definitely try to abbreviate it. And if I start rambling, please cut in or
Rick Archer: you’re doing fine. You’re speaking very efficiently.
Jessica Eve: So far I have. But once it gets into the rest of it, one of the things that I realized that people realize like once you and I know that you, you know do a lot of have a lot of awareness about spiritual emergency is just that, you know, you kind of lose or struggle to have a coherent, cohesive narrative of even what what the hell has happened. So for me, it’s taken many years to actually sort of piece together and make sense of to be able to even tell people because, you know, it gets to this point where like, you know, you’re going in and out of self, you know, self dissolution There’s almost like these two different experiences happening kind of side by side, but Right, so it starts out with what I think of as a honeymoon phase that people go through, and at least in Neo Advaita, and it’s the stage that I call blissful nihilism. Because what’s happening is there’s this great relief and realizing, you know, we’re having the having the sense that, you know, everything’s a story and nothing, nothing really matters. And nothing is really real, that suddenly like, Oh, my God, I don’t, I don’t have to care about the things that I care about, because they’re not actually real, they’re not actually significant. And that’s a huge burden lifted. And it feels like with such clarity, you know, that you know, what, the things that that caused me the most suffering aren’t, aren’t real. So it’s, it’s that dramatic, almost, it became for me, like, it felt like my secret superpower was that I could, and I think a lot of people describe it that way. Like, you know, I could be in painful situations, I could be there but not there. And I could, you know, again, like expand out my awareness into this sort of infinite open awareness. And everything within that is just minute miniaturized. You know, the way that like, you’re in an airplane and you look down and everything’s like, little tiny Lego pieces, that’s really what would happen to things that were once. So such grave things of such grave importance, like you’re just laughing at how Oh, my God, like, how did I think that that mattered? It’s really not even real. Yeah. Right. So that’s, that’s that kind of stage and I want to be like, very balanced and saying that there, I was helped in a lot of ways in some ways that are still here today. For example, you know, I became much, much more able to be alone for longer periods of time and not feel like I need a relationship or I need to be around others. So it became this kind of almost like radical, sort of, I guess for a while that felt like this radical contentment and the undoing of a lot of unhealthy relationship habits and clinging and you know, codependent type of stuff. But I will say I was also in psychotherapy at the time. It was a non dual and influence therapists. So So yeah, so this is kind of where it’s, it’s the liberation phase that feels like positive liberation and and unburdening. And I really identified with so Jeff Foster, for example, was one of the first people that I really kind of that really transformed things and someone who, to this day, I still very much love, but really related to him because he was openly you know, struggled with depression. And his his realization that he shared with people was that depression is caused by needing to uphold a somebody, you know, needing to be a person, not not that you’re, you know, acting as an inauthentic person, but that you are being thinking that you’re a person. So there was this a really big kind of awakening with that, you know, I think he calls it like dropping the burden of being somebody and become nobody, which now thinking about that is just like, Oh my God, but at that time, it was just, you know, that was such such poetic wisdom. And they also identified a lot with the narrative of divine suicide, which was something that I think I first picked up on through Eckhart Tolle because he, I don’t think he’s the one who said it, but I think he repurposed some version of the quote of die before you die to realize there’s no such thing as death. And there’s a there’s a complexity to this that I think is important to bring awareness to because a lot of people are now kind of realizing that a lot of people who come to these self ego dissolution paths are people who kind of grew up with perhaps a sense that you know, they were the ones to blame for things or sort of a harshness towards self and also a martyr, a martyr syndrome. And it’s, it’s fascinating to me in my own psychology to realize how having grown up being influenced by a parent who had a martyr complex, you know, where the extent to which you’ll sacrifice your self or others, is what you derive sort of your your worth from, there’s a nobility to it. And I’m not, you know, demonizing that because it has its benefits also, but it really spoke to me as very poetic in terms of, you know, one of the things that, that I wrestled with my whole life was this intense fear of death and like acute, you know, mortality terror, that just kind of followed me, and always made me feel very concerned with how I would exit life, you know, wanting to secure a way to know that I won’t age in terror and dread, and face death in that in that state. And so, the die before you die thing, it made sense. And then I experienced it, I experienced through that ego dissolution experience, the dissolution of the fear of death, because if there is no one that fears death, there is no longer a fear of death. And of course, also with that experience, and also like cognitive belief that, who you really are, is what was never born and never dies. So, you know, if you dissolve into that, and basically re identify with that, then there’s a piece that kind of comes with that, I, I did want to bring in another piece to that, just because I know that some of these things are patterns that I’ve discovered in talking to a lot of people who were involved in new Advaita, that there’s some things that are common. So some things that I want to bring awareness to say like, this isn’t just, you know, me, it’s a, it’s a common theme for a lot of people is, you know, kind of being being a person that, let’s say family trauma dies with. So for example, a way to kind of make yourself like the ultimate sacrifice is like, I’m willing to be the one who like, you know, falls on their own sword to be the end to the traumatic lineage and the ancestral ancestral traumas that were never processed, and very much were passed into me, that it felt like this is this is what’s gonna do that. It’s not for me to do it through, like some psychological processing of stuff, but through making this ultimate sacrifice to, you know, hope die in this poetic, you know, symbolic suicide way. And so that became a big motivation for me there as well.
Rick Archer: The name of your website is the glorious both and and I think that’s a great name. And I was thinking that as you’re talking, because a lot of the things that Neo Advaita people say are true, but they’re not the only truth. So for instance, I mean, you know, one could say, of course, you’re a person, you’re just not only a person, like, of course, you’re a wave, you’re just not only a wave, but you’re not just the ocean without waves either. So there’s the both end. And the true Vedanta, true advisor handles this nicely. It talks about the ultimate level, which is impersonal, and abstract, and absolute, and all that. And then it talks about the transactional level, the Mahavakya, where, you know, they’re things you need to do and be concerned about even like pay your taxes and do your job and raise your family and all that stuff. And there’s no it’s not, there’s not any conflict between these it’s, and I just say it again, I think that true spiritual evolution is a matter of expanding one’s range of influence one’s range of experience, to incorporate the full range of reality from on manifest to manifest and everything in between all the subtler levels and so on. It’s not a matter of somehow getting on to the unmanifest level and then just saying to heck with all the manifest stuff. Yeah, maybe it is if you’re going to you know, live in a cave in the Himalayas or something, but none of us hardly anybody. Nobody listening to this as doing that you own a computer you must be a person in the world
Jessica Eve: Wi Fi there but I had also a lot of people get to that point like my friend with the family where it’s like I don’t I don’t think I can live in modern society anymore like going to need to go live you know, in the woods or you know, on a, you know, secluded island. But oh, what you were saying about the both and was exactly right that, that I feel as well that true Like spiritual awareness or consciousness expansion is opening to paradox, as well as the transcendent include. So that was one of the things that that I discovered was a mistake was this idea that transcendence has something to do with getting rid of what you’re transcending. Whereas transcendence means that transcending and then including that, so that, you know, the ego, for example, is not non existent, but it’s not all of what you are, it’s a part of a greater hole that you now know that you are in that’s a, you know, that makes all the difference to be honest.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I often read reference the gate because there’s so many great teachings in it and I’ve read it a million times. But there’s there’s a part in the beginning where Jr says, I don’t want to fight this battle. I’m just gonna sit down, I’d rather live on alms than do this. And Krishna says, you know, whence has come this paltry faint heartedness at this untimely our, our, you know, stand up, you know, fight, do your thing. And then there’s another verse later on where it’s, you know, Arjuna is trying to help resolve I mean, Krishna is trying to resolve our Judas dilemma, which is, how can he fight these respected elders and people? And Krishna says, Well, okay, first deal without the three gunas that means transcend go to the absolute. And then three verses later, he says, Okay, now established in being perform act. And so the whole emphasis was that the transcendent experience augments effectiveness. inactivity doesn’t enable you to hide from it, it’s a, it’s like going to the bank to get some money and then going to the market and being more effective in the market because you now have money.
Jessica Eve: That’s a good metaphor.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But it enhanses life, it should anyway, if it’s done properly, it should.
Jessica Eve: And that that was has been very much my experience of eventually, you know, the coming down the mountain, which was the real, the real Hill for me, was taking the transcendent with you, you know, that taking that view and incorporating it into life in the valley. Or further, which, for me, was realizing that the Transcendent is is the, this material world right here, but I feel like I should, I should jump ahead a bit in my story to get to get to the to get to the scary stuff. Oh, boy. Can you handle it? I don’t know. I couldn’t handle it. So. Yeah, so slowly, over time, what starts to happen is that, you know, having these like an I will say that coming with people like Rupert spyera, the transparency, I think is a book was like the transparency of things that I had read and really started experiencing that and just seeing through everything, you know, that it got to this point where like, all all content was transparent, and then it would sort of lose its significance and meaning and really, like, I feel like, it’s significant is that it started to happen, even with music, like, I’m a music lover, and suddenly, I’m listening to music. And I’m like, music is just, you know, it’s a transparent thing. That’s not really having inherent reality. And that happened as well, with with language, we’ve gotten to this point where it’s like, you know, language is this transparent construct. And it got to a point at some point where I really struggled to even have conversations with people, that having conversations became tedious and exhausting. And part of that, I think, came because of, you know, this sense that language is, you know, transparent, in a way, because it’s a construct that it’s, you know, not really real,
Rick Archer: all of which is true on some level. But it’s not true. On another level, there. Yeah,
Jessica Eve: it is. These things are not music, but language is a construct, but it’s a real construct, but we don’t have to go into the philosophical part of it. But so it starts to, you know, I’m, I’m having this like, newfound ability to be alone and loving my solitude, but it starts to erode my ability to be with people. And so it starts to become really apparent in relationship and in interactions where, you know, I’m starting to really have this sense of you know, this character of Jessica is like this former illusion that’s no longer real. And so it’s like, there’s just this the character of me that I no longer really am and so, you start to and a lot of people talk about this is like, you start to lose like let’s say In the conversations, it’s like you, you’ve seen through kind of the habits and like the the quirks and the things that you laugh about and talk about as just sort of like conditioning, and got kind of to this point where it’s like I trying to remember like how I would have acted? Or how does, how would Jessica, like respond to that? Or how would she carry herself because that wasn’t really who I was anymore. And that becomes something that’s obviously very disconnecting and disturbing. But it’s nonetheless that’s that’s what happened. And fast forward in terms of relationships in the in the biggest thing that I had lost through Neo Advaita. And I think the biggest tragedy of it was that it made it kind of robbed me of being able to really be in relationships, especially intimate relationships, because I got to this point where it’s like, how am I going to hold up a consistent sense of personhood enough to actually, you know, have this in order to have that I thou relationship that was really shocking, you know, to realize that I had possibly like irreparably damaged my ability to be in relationships. And that was very, very frightening.
Rick Archer: One thing I just want to interject here about is, give me a moment to think also, is somehow as you’re telling that whole story, I was thinking of like watching little girls having a tea party and feeding T to their dolls, or little boys driving trucks around the sandbox or something. And, you know, adults look at that, and they think, Well, isn’t that cute? It’s, you know, it’s, it’s children having fun, they don’t say to the kids, you know, you’re not really serving teaching the dolls. And those aren’t really trucks and stuff like that. They, they recognize the validity or significance of what the kids are doing, in the context of their level of maturity and their level of, you know, understanding. So yeah, I mean, I think as you evolve spiritually, a lot of the things that we see going on in the world seem like child’s play, or like silly dramas that people are taking far too seriously. But you have to sort of acknowledge the level of experience that people are at, and understand that for them, it’s natural for them to see things that way and behave that way.
Jessica Eve: Yeah. Well said, Okay. And that’s, that’s where the spiritual ego comes in. That’s the big pitfall that most people go through where it’s you know, whether or not you admit to yourself that you’re having a spiritual ego, it’s like the sense that, like, I know the truth, and others don’t. And there’s this sort of, almost like a condescension, and even a disdain towards humanity that’s, you know, asleep in the matrix.
Rick Archer: Well, that’s the dark side of it, you see, because there is some validity to recognizing the absurdity of the way people sometimes behave and talk. But at the same time, you know, that it doesn’t help you or them to consider yourself to be better than them just because you see it that way. You know, there but for the grace of God, go i and maybe you were that way not long ago. So you know, and obviously, if you are puffing up your ego, because you think you’re better than them, then Pride goeth before a fall. You’ll you’ll, you’ll have to get unbuffed at some Yeah.
Jessica Eve: Yeah. And so everything, everything seems petty now, right? Like you said, everything’s, everything’s drama. And it’s like, well, yeah, I mean, life involves dramatic things, and it involves challenges. But what I wanted to say was, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the show Westworld, or if you’ve seen
Rick Archer: it, but I haven’t seen it. What’s the movie? So free guy? Didn’t see that one
Jessica Eve: either? No, yeah, that’s not worth it. But Westworld is amazing. And I felt like it’s really almost this like allegory for for awakening, but it’s so it’s based on this idea that there are these AI constructed robots who are you know, look completely human. But they’re all on a script, like every day, they wake up and it’s Groundhog Day, it’s a script, so they don’t have consciousness and then some of them start to pop in have consciousness and recognize that it was all a script and that everyone else is scripted. So you’re, it’s like, you know, there’s also a real kind of, like, loneliness that would come with believing that about reality and seeing other people as literally as you know, these, you know, pre programmed almost like robotic characters, and that’s something that I can say, started to turn where it’s like, you know, that line between mystic and psychotic I wear this kind of extreme D realization of people and even seeing people as you know, some sort of robot you know, that’s that scripted can become a that’s where you get into some dark waters. Which is kind of what what happened for me. But I do want to fast forward to something that I think is a good a good part of the story, the story come. So yeah, so I started to eventually experience like an intense depersonalization of the negative kind and I’m really fascinated by when does this spiritual depersonalization shift into the other kind of depersonalization. And I was also shocked that it took that long on this path for it to shift into the, into this kind of depersonalization, but was just totally like in like a dissociative, like few even at a certain point not not completely. But what I did was I decided to go to a Jeff foster retreat. So it was Jeff Foster and Matt Licata to people who I love. And I don’t know what I was thinking would happen there. But what happened is not what I was thinking, it was called The Great defriending. And when I got there, Jeff’s entire outlook had had radically changed and he wasn’t teaching the self effacement he was now teaching that that was wrong. And that what we really needed was self compassion, and befriending you know, these inner children and these parts of us that, you know, what he had even taught himself, what he realized was me Advaita, and I was, I was just, I was so angry, I was so angry with him, because he was the one, he was one of the ones that that really ushered me into that absence of self that became, you know, a really a reality for me. And now here, he’s saying, you know, that was wrong, and we actually should have been befriending ourselves and learning self compassion. And then Neo Advaita just completely splintered and obliterated, and realize that it was, saw it for what it was, and what like a grave mistake I had made. And, you know, if I had learned self compassion, instead, would I still have wanted that path was one question. Saying that? No, this is me saying, No, we’re saying that, okay, my internal experience, then, was that, but what what happens from there is that, I’m realizing the extent to which, like a death in me had occurred, which felt more like a, like a soul loss. And the theme of this retreat was, was grief, and so people are grieving, like the death of their son, or, you know, their loss of health. And I’m having this inner experience of like, grieving the loss of myself. And it was just, you know, shocking. And it was, that that moment where it’s almost like, kind of like losing your religion, you know, where you don’t want to, on one hand, you don’t want to admit that you were wronged. And, you know, feeling embarrassed about it, but you don’t want to, you also don’t want to fully face the reality that, you know, you don’t want to face that reality, but you also are afraid to, you know, to lose it, because that’s your resource, you know, that, that you had you
Rick Archer: gone to the retreat thinking you were gonna get more Neo Advaita. And that’s why
Jessica Eve: that’s what I tried to piece together is what did I expect what’s gonna happen, but that’s not what I expected. And what this overwhelming unleashing of grief and all these flooding of emotions that clearly, you know, I had, I had repressed in to some extent, and this collective experience of relationship and grieving together with people, there was a woman in the corner who was was Neo Advaita. And I just felt so sad for her because everybody was communing, and like, you know, making friends and she’s sitting in the corner just so detached and like just kind of watching and you know, couldn’t be a part of it. And what happens next, one thing
Rick Archer: I was thinking as you’re talking was, hope you’re not beating yourself up over having gone through this phase and like telling yourself you wasted so many years or whatever, because we all go through different phases and we actually learn from them. And if you hadn’t gone through this, you wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing now, which I think is probably going to help a lot of people or is already helping a lot of people.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, I mean, I I went through a very long period of just like immense grief, because I felt that I was irreparably kind of reminds me of what I was gonna go to next was the It’s like, profound dilemma of do I want to go? Like, you know, in the ways that you would talk about it in Neo Advaita? It’s like, do you go back to sleep? Do you really weaken yourself to be a person again? And of course, that’s a failure. And I remember like googling all this stuff. And it’s like, can you is there like a point of no return that you go through with, like, ego dissolution, where you can’t ever like, feel like a person again. And you read out there that people are saying, Yeah, you are past that point. And all you can do is go forward into a more like, permanent sort of depth or whatever they’re referring to us. And that, that’s also you know, there’s a thing in new Advaita that’s kind of like only the biggest spiritual warriors will go through with the the final death. But what the dilemma was, for me was really, do I want to go back into the matrix, which is what it felt like to kind of have my humanity back, or do I continue on on this, this other thing. And so, see if I can,
Rick Archer: somehow reminded of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and you know, the hero goes through all this stuff, but then he ends up coming back. And he, you know, he has something that he wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t done the journey. So in a way, you, you, maybe you do come back into the matrix, but you come back into the matrix with a very different orientation able to serve in the matrix be of value to people.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, and I think that’s what’s happening. But the thing with the hero’s journey was, that’s laughable. That was laughable, in my new invite today’s because, you know, the hero of the stories, frickin myth, you know, in. So anyways, what happens from there is, you know, the part that became like, really, the spiritual emergency was where it was kind of, like, kind of feeling like realizing that you. And this is only dark, but it’s the truth, it’s like feeling like you become a ghost that like, you know, there’s this thing that’s, that’s, that’s dead, but not gone, if you will. And that becomes a pretty like, harrowing kind of thing that’s going on. And also, just still the D realization. And what I wanted to say, because I want to get to the like the return path was, simultaneously I had been trying to find out if there was a both and in non duality, if there’s a non dual path that can support like human flourishing. And that’s when I found Tim. And Tim was still in his phase of kind of moving away from that. And I don’t know if you’ve read any of his books, but he has a book called lucid living, where he’s saying something very different from you. Advaita, which Neo Advaitins Like, it’s all a dream, you know, get the hell out of there, where Tim is like, well, it’s a dream, and you’re a dream character, but enjoy this dream. It’s, it’s amazing, you know, like, throw yourself into it. And I was just so taken by that. And I tried to do that. And one of the, one of the pitfalls that I fell into a lot that I don’t think people acknowledge very much is solipsism. And the fact that that experiencing your life, like a lucid dream can actually be, you know, empowering and opening these opportunities, but the feeling is that like, your, the world is in you. So like, you’re, you’re the dreamer of the dream and the dream character. And so that was liberating, but also led to this other form of, you know, another pitfall of of the sense that, you know, okay, but now, everything is not really real. Still, it’s still a dream. So, but this is sort of leading me towards how do I, how can I felt like, you know, this reification like I said, it’s like, do I go back into a matrix like, I already know that this is not real. But I’m kind of becoming like desperate for a way to believe in reality again, and to feel like there’s a solidity to being a person into the world. So I was looking for a new paradigm that maybe perhaps could convince me of, of, you know, a reality where it’s not all just an illusion or a dream, and things are really real. So that’s where people like Tim, were starting to be, like, so profoundly important for me because him and a few other people were working kind of shifting away from that sort of Neolithic view to to one that actually affirms reality in a, in a new paradigm. And I don’t know if I should go into that at all, but I just kind of wanted to share that that’s been an important part of the process of, let’s say, coming down the mountain and re entering life. With there being a new sense of, you know, of reality to it, whether or not it’s, you know, in a relative way. But for a lot of people, there’s the challenge and coming out of new Advaita. And now, like, what do I move to now, you know, how can I, how can I continue on? So that was sort of what was happening next was these new sort of paradigms of reality that I was trying to explore.
Rick Archer: Did you ever look at the 10 ox herding pictures? I have I’ve been shown that, yeah. So in the end, the guy comes happily riding into town on the ox, you know, and coming into the store his wisdom on the people or something like that.
Jessica Eve: Very, very, very profound.
Rick Archer: And, you know, I think just about every spiritual teacher worth his or her salt, has shown great compassion and concern and has not just sat there dryly. I mean, I’m talking about the great ones, throughout history, have not just sat there dryly telling everybody that they don’t exist. You know, they’re, they’re concerned, they want to alleviate people’s suffering there, they heal the sick and, you know, all kinds of stuff if they can do and some of the modern ones. I mean, I’m not just her organization, just I’m not sure exactly how they pulled this off. But they just built the, or associated with the building of the largest private hospital in India. And she’s just over there in New Delhi 2600 beds, speciality hospital and outside New Delhi. So, I mean, and there’s a list as long as your arm of all the humanitarian things she does. And yet, you know, she’s she understands the ultimate on manifest quality or level of life perfectly well, but it’s again, it’s just it’s not only that, it’s, it’s all the different strata of creation, and the whole idea of the Mahavakya In Vedanta, the transactional level of reality, it’s acknowledged that that is not the ultimate reality. Ultimately, it’s not true, but it’s given its proper recognition. And, you know, one has to take, even if there is something ultimately illusory about the world, one behaves in the world, as if there isn’t and, and, you know, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, you know,
Jessica Eve: yeah, and I will say that, I don’t, I don’t personally see truth that way anymore. But I wanted to go, I lost my thought again. Nope, totally lost.
Rick Archer: Hope. Yeah. Oh, I remember now go ahead, go for it.
Jessica Eve: It was the this other shocking realization was like, this whole path of like, selflessness was entirely self serving. You know, it’s like, this was my private inner experience of, you know, my liberation. That didn’t affect anyone else in a positive way. And then it was sort of like, what is the point of this? And why is this being so like, devices, so seen as such, like the ultimate, you know, what is awakening if it’s just for itself, and like, like you said, realizing that a lot of these people in these like self appointed awakened people a are not awakened, but be, they’re not showing empathy. They’re not showing a whole lot of compassion. And, in that sense, keep going blank.
Rick Archer: I’ll help you out here. I was at the science and non duality conference one time I attended it every year for about a decade. And David Loy, Buddhist teacher got up in the mic, and David’s very concerned about environmental stuff, and climate change and everything. There was a teacher sitting up on stage and David’s, and he was being rather Neo Advaita ish. The way he was presenting himself, and David said, you know, what about climate change? And he elaborated a bit more, but the teacher basically said, The world is like a speck of dust doesn’t really matter what happens to it. And if you think about that, yeah, we’re talking about, you know, the death and the miserable death and suffering of millions, if not billions, of people. That is real enough for me. And, you know, I mean, again, no great spiritual teacher has ever are ignored suffering. They’ve done their darndest to help alleviate it in whatever way they can, even if it means I mean, not only in some kind of spiritual philosophical sense by helping people get enlightened, but by feeding them and building hospitals and, you know, whatever can be done to alleviate suffering on any level, they, they never no teacher I would respect has ever just, you know, brushed it off as illusory. Yeah, so let them eat cake, you know,
Jessica Eve: right. And that that’s the other thing that really kind of hit me was that this Neo Advaita path and of this liberation, it had nothing to do with, of course, being a better human because, you know, well that people you’re not the notion of better like the, you know, the teaching is always this is not about becoming better. This is not for a person who wants to be a better dad or a better partner, you know, whenever and if you want that you can leave now from the snaplet Satsang. Right. But that when it hit me that like, shouldn’t awakening or people that that we revere, as awakened, shouldn’t they show some, some increase in ethical behavior in moral moral, moral character, but that’s all laughable in Neo Advaita. And laughable from the way that I saw it, then. So it was really hard for me to, like, re embrace that. And like you said, about, you know, the political things and the things that are, you know, challenging the world the most right now, just really seeming so insignificant. And I just had thought to myself, you know, what they’re, they really seem to be suggesting is just kind of like the extinction of humanity. So, yeah, it was that was really disturbing. And,
Rick Archer: again, it’s such a dry, like, nihilistic is a good word, take or spin on spirituality, spirituality should be expressing my own opinion here, but spirituality should be a blossoming of every facet of human being being, you know, the heart, the intellect, the senses, you know, all these things should be should flourish as a result of spiritual awakening, just the way all aspects of a tree would flourish, if if the root were properly watered, you
Jessica Eve: know? Yes, very true. And that’s where, you know, you realize how it’s not holistic, and, you know, if it’s, if what it’s, if the way it’s benefiting, you is actually harming you psychologically. You know, it’s, there’s a problem there, if there’s that, that gap. And also the the piece about integration with Neo Advaita is that there is no integration because there is no ego to integrate anything into. And that becomes highly disturbing. So you know,
Rick Archer: oh, okay, a few questions came in, I could start asking some of them or maybe you have something else on your tongue that you want to say, All right. Let’s see what we got here. This is from Martine Stevens in Belgium. Amazing work you do. But I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, how do you get to these insights in the first place? It seems that so many people so many are longing for these first glimpses and never get there. Has an emergency coach like yourself? Do you have any useful tips?
Jessica Eve: That’s a great question. Actually, something I wanted to say was that I feel like why it came so easily for me is because I had this predisposition to depersonalization already. But I don’t know I’m not sure that that’s really the question that I personally would be focused on helping people with, it would probably be more about the other things that we can cultivate in life, rather than trying to bring about like a radical shift things like self compassion and kindness and, you know, healing healing wounds. But it is a good question. I’m not sure if I have a great answer at the moment. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I’m longing for glimpses. I don’t know, I think if a person finds an effective spiritual practice and sticks to it, and as well as living a well rounded life, as well, as you know, cultivating compassion and friendliness and ethics and all these things, glimpses will come along when they come along. And in terms of like, flashy experiences, some people are just wired to have flashy experiences. It doesn’t mean they’re more spiritually evolved than people who aren’t having them. I went through a phase where I was a little envious of people who are having these great, flashy experiences, but it’s Ramana would tell you if you read Ramana that that which comes and goes is not ultimately real. So flashy experiences come and go. Enlightenment is not like a permanent LSD trip or something.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, no, that’s very true actually thought of something in response to this, which is that I am not interested in helping people have these ego death experiences. But what I am interested in is how things like radical self compassion, sorry, radical compassion opens your heart to a sense of interconnection so that it becomes this awakening to, you know, being parts of a greater whole, where there’s this kind of non non dual aspect in which, you know, we’re, we’re both separate, but also one, and it becomes very much about shared humanity. But
Rick Archer: there’s a Tibetan quote, which I’ll pop in here, which is that, um, don’t mistake understanding for realization. Don’t mistake realization for liberation. So I think a lot of these people in the Neo Advaita world have, you know, gone to their songs and read their books and all that stuff and have just cultured this the hypnotize or brainwashed themselves with this understanding, which they are mistaking for realization. It’s not realization. Yeah. This whole no self business and everything. That’s not what it’s about. No. Okay. Here’s another question. This is a question about Sri Aurobindo, whom you mentioned on your website. In some article, he just wants to know what what when you became aware of his teachings, and what impact did it have on you?
Jessica Eve: Wow, that’s such an amazing question.
Rick Archer: This is David in Hamilton, Ontario. Amazing question.
Jessica Eve: I became aware of him in the last few years. And what he’s actually helped me do is to flip around the, the so he talks about the notion or the differences between spiritual reductionism where you reduce, you know, all form to emptiness, as contrast, compared to like, material reductionism, where, you know, you deny the spirit in favor of material. So what he, what he talks about is like this revolt of spirit against matter, and so he really opened up for me, and he’s, I think he has a bit of an evolutionary perspective on non duality. But the thing that I’m reading about him now, he’s, he’s pretty, like dense, I find I have to read him in little chunks. But he talks about the problem of spiritual perfectionism, and how we’re sort of projecting our own ideals of perfection onto onto God. But I would say I recommend him very, very much. And so he’s really helped me to get a new sense of reality and significance to it. And also to see some of the follies of these either or paths.
Rick Archer: Good. This is a question from this is an interesting question from Lucas clinic. Why is there so much consistency between what Neo Advaita teachers experience? If there is nothing to their ontology? Why is this no self experience realized by so many?
Jessica Eve: I also really liked that question. That is one I don’t know, what was the question for, for you or for you? Okay.
Rick Archer: I might chime in. But you go ahead. Yeah,
Jessica Eve: I might need a little help with that. But I know a lot of people say, you know, if if emptiness is not the ultimate truth, or if the self doesn’t exist, then why did all the sages it’s like because the sages said, so it has to be the ultimate truth. And I think that people, I think that people throughout history have been having an experience. I think that what does happen though, is that people interpret it in different ways. And so I think we’re having an experience that’s shared. But that, like, as, as time progresses, and, you know, we evolve and have new understandings, I think that we’re, we’re starting to see that the assumption that, you know, that there is no cell for the assumption that reality doesn’t exist, is an interpretation of, of that experience. So that’s been a pretty a pretty big thing for me. So I think people are having the same experience that is being interpreted in different different ways. Yeah,
Rick Archer: of course, all the Neo Advaita teachers are, they’re all singing in the same choir so that they echo and reinforce each other. But um, you know, there’s traditionally there’s been kind of two orientations to the ultimate truth. One is, you could call Shinya vada, which is emptiness teaching, and the other is poor Nevada, which is fullness. And they’re really arguing I think, are you know, referring to the same thing and just look Getting at it from different angles. It’s empty in the sense that it doesn’t contain concrete things. But it’s full in the sense that it contains the potentiality, for all things which manifest from it. So I kind of prefer to look at it that way personally. And I also think that and maybe the, you know, the teaching that you align yourself with, is going to influence the quality of your Realization. And if you, if you align with the emptiness thing, there will be a sort of more dispassionate or Neil aesthetic or orientation. Whereas if you align with the fullness thing, there might be more of a, an orientation where you utilize the fullness that you gain, to throw yourself into life, as I said, think you said earlier, and, you know, my I always reference that book and the 23rd Psalm, my cup runneth over, when the cup is full, it starts to run over and maybe provide nourishment for other people. Yeah, and it was that was a bit of a rambling answer. But
Jessica Eve: one thing I did want to follow this up with is that I just remembered something else that feels true, is the idea of being told what to conclude from the experience that you’re being guided into. So Advaita is telling you, you don’t exist, and this is how you’re going to realize it. So once you have that experience, you’re already told what how what you’re supposed to believe from that. So it just confirms that story. So what what I’ve wondered is, if I hadn’t, if I hadn’t already been told that that’s what it meant? Would I have drawn the same conclusion? Or would I have just concluded that there’s a there’s a spaciousness that you can expand that makes your mind quiet? And is opening you up to a greater reality? You know, it’s, there’s something
Rick Archer: called a really good point. Yeah, I mean, if it’s a really good point, and actually, if, without proper understanding, the experience of awakening can actually be a source of confusion and fear. I mean, look at Suzanne Siegel’s book called collision with the infinite, you’ve probably read that, right. And I can think of many other examples, or even this friend of mine that I referenced earlier, who’s going through this beautiful awakening she, she’s gone through a lot of fear. And, you know, at one point, she was sitting there gripping the coffee table, because she felt like she was just going to zoom out into vastness and not come back. But then, you know, once she got through the fear phase, she realizes that, you know, she can be the vastness and also be Kim, her name happens to be Kim, who happens, who was a mother and who, you know, has a job and likes to do this. And so, but you know, if, with the wrong understanding, or with without some degree of guidance that like in Suzanne’s cases and Seagull she went on for a decade, in a state of great fear, because she was misinterpreting what the shift she had undergone. And it wasn’t until she got together with Sean Klein that he kind of put things into place. And then she began to enjoy whether that’s
Jessica Eve: right, right. Something that I guess I’ll say, I don’t know if this is like the ending note. But um,
Rick Archer: no, no, we got another half hour.
Jessica Eve: Oh, okay. So what would I have come to feel and wondered if I had been taught within a framework that you’re going to have this ego dissolution experience, but that’s not the final stage. That’s the stage to, you know, see conditioning for what it is and to see the ways that you’ve been, you know, conditioned to believe in these limitations about you that are not actually there. But not sorry, they’re not actually really came from like, you know, beliefs people instilled in you. But that it’s a process of rebirth. It’s not, you know, die and be dead before you’re dead. Like why the hell would you even live? Well, there’s the whole dying to live but so if we were to reframe it, for those who you know, relate to this as important or are safer, that perhaps that that that paradigm for people who do want to have this transcended or consciousness expansion that you don’t teach Ego Death is a final stage you teach it with course there should be some type of preparation. The same with psychedelics, I would say, you know, it’s like there’s some steps sorry, some preparation. And then I’m not sure exactly how one would induce the the dissolution experience, but that telling people that after this is what’s most important is how you then how that then transforms you being able to self author, a person, that sense of self that feels more authentic. But that also, as you were saying isn’t, you’re going to know that to be a part of what you are rather than the whole of what you are. And with that, you’re going to be able to actualize your potential for good in the world. And so I think, if that had been framed that way, to me, I think things would have changed been dramatically different and probably would have avoided the, you know, the devastation that I went through. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I mean, the word death has a negative connotation, obviously, I hate that. Yeah. And I mean, the wave, when it when it sort of settles down into the ocean, temporarily, does it die? Or does it sort of gain the possibility of even greater momentum to become a bigger wave, I would like to suggest that, and obviously, a shallow pond can only rise up in ripples, it can’t rise up into big waves, but an ocean can rise up into huge waves. And, you know, without even stirring up any mud at the bottom, so I think that, you know, gaining or attaining one’s ocean hood, is it’s not a death, it’s, it’s just a sort of realization of the larger aspect of one’s nature, you could say, but then the, the individual aspect of one’s nature, the wave aspect, can actually be much more than it could then it can, without, without that sort of grounding in the ocean.
Jessica Eve: Exactly. And that’s what I’ve come to experience is that your tap into the greater that you also are an expression of so it’s like this, that sense of being the ocean, almost as a wave. What also the the aspect of that, that I found is, you know, in Neo Advaita, it’s like, you know, you’re not the wave your the depth of the ocean and become that and don’t be a wave. But what I
Rick Archer: what I said ocean without waves.
Jessica Eve: It’s it’s a pond. So the experience now that’s been so profound, like cathartic and helpful is, it’s like I imagine there’s these waves that go, you know, the waves are living thinking that they’re separate and isolated the way that we do. And then waking up to where we’re two expressions of this whole ocean, and the way that that brings you together in this incredible relationship. Have you know, we’re separate, but we’re also one, and not both? And that’s the glorious both. And by the way, that was Carl Jung who said that I did not make that.
Rick Archer: Nice. I didn’t know that. Yeah.
Jessica Eve: That’s true. So yeah, it becomes a lot more of that, like you’re saying, like, tap into the greater whole. And Ken Wilber has a great quote where he said, It’s plugging, plugging the ego in or plugging the self into something greater. It’s not, you know, a subtraction. Yeah. Yeah. Like what it feels like?
Rick Archer: Well, it’s good to keep coming back to this point again, and again, from different angles, because in my own experience, I mean, it takes repeated exposure to an idea for it to really go deep. You don’t just hear something once and say, Okay, got it done. You just keep contemplating it at deeper and deeper levels, and then it really becomes part of your your makeup. Yeah. Here’s a question from David specter in Maine. Jessica said she did some meditation, what kind of meditation, usual breathing awareness or something else like thought awareness, Buddhism, or Transcendental Meditation? How many minutes a day?
Jessica Eve: Definitely, it wasn’t daily. I think it was the combination of like, the mindfulness type of maybe Vipassana insight meditation, that you kind of step back as the awareness where you become aware of the contents of your mind. But the idea being that you’re not the thoughts, you’re the awareness, that’s aware. So that was one the other one of the things that actually I remember being sort of like a lightbulb moment was in a meditation and I don’t remember who it was or what kind of meditation it was, but it was really that notion of the gaps between things. And the asking of this question, you know, what, what is the space that thoughts arise from and go back into in that clip, something that like, that’s what you really are. So it was that and then, I don’t know, at a certain point, I don’t even know what I was doing. But it was just gold dropping into this dissolution. And at the most extreme, it was like, you know, the, I think there’s different words for help. people experienced that, but just this kind of even dissolution of your entire physicality. And I don’t, I don’t know how to tell people exactly how that happened. It just was something that happened. So, yeah, I don’t know if that helps. But now a very much a proponent of very like somatic embodied types of, of meditation. Like what I’m, well, I’m trying to think of people who I would suggest I don’t actually don’t really meditate much anymore, because it’s actually kind of triggering of the depersonalization. But there is a woman named Kristin Neff, who does self compassion meditations. And then you could even say, like body scans, I think are great. But you can also look up, just like embodied meditation, somatic meditations, I would suggest, but I don’t have particular people to recommend.
Rick Archer: Okay. And one of the questioners earlier alluded to a kind of a emergency spiritual emergency consultation thing that you do. What’s, what’s that about?
Jessica Eve: Well, A, that’s not exactly what I do. I am certified to facilitate peer support groups. So what I’m wanting to start offering certified do Oh, am I brachten? Oh, good. Um, I’ve interviewed Yes, yeah, I met you. So what I want to start offering is just that is a support, like a support community and also offer peer support groups for people that are have gone through this, especially Neo Advaita. And the thing that, that I really want to get across is just how widespread and severe the harm from new Advaita is, like, I know that it’s 1000s of people, and we’ve all gone through the same pitfalls and feel, you know, totally alone, and, you know, feel like so, so much has been damaged by it. The people realizing that other people have been through it is just such a big comfort and the support group aspect, like I, when I realized that spiritual emergency support groups existed, it was really a huge, a huge, huge part of my, like, moving on process. But so yeah, just to be that, so to join a support group, or people just just purely sharing and listening. But I don’t have that set up yet. But I would appreciate people who are interested messaging me through my website to let me know if that is something that interests you.
Rick Archer: Okay, good. Like I got, some guy got in touch with me recently and said he had done a real lot of intense meditation, and it really destabilized him. Now, he felt like he was on some permanent LSD trip or something, although he was able to type coherent messages to me. But I often hear from people who are sort of in need of help, because of some unexpected Kundalini awakening that they don’t know how to deal with and stuff. So is that in your wheelhouse, that kind of thing.
Jessica Eve: So funny that you asked with Kundalini, I’ve been collaborating with a woman, Kate West, and she runs a support community for Kundalini awakenings called when lightning strikes. So if you’re going through that type of emergency, please look that up. It’s an amazing platform. What was the first thing that you asked before the Kundalini
Rick Archer: TriCities? You know, a lot of intense, he did a lot of intense meditation, and it’s really destabilized and made him feel like he’s on a permanent acid trip or something.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, that’s what I actually had wanted to have a chance to mention is that in sort of discovering all these people who are starting to speak up about the dangers of Neo Advaita, there’s a lot of therapists that are actually starting to speak on YouTube, because they’re, they’re having clients come that are, you know, so confused and gone through all of this, you know, harm from Neo Advaita. And they’re starting to talk about why it’s, you know, why it’s so dangerous, and can you know, the different components of that. And so, one part of what I’ve been doing is reaching out to those people and seeing how, perhaps in some type of online community that we could collaborate, and then also, you know, have people have access to those to those specific types of therapists.
Rick Archer: Okay, here’s the question we should have answered in the beginning. And I think I might take a quick crack at this one and let you embellish, but I’m the woman Laura Peters in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What is Neo Advaita? I’m not familiar with it. And my quick answer would be that Advaita means not to it’s a Sanskrit word, and there’s a tradition in India that is represented by that term, called it Vita Vedanta, Vedanta Artha means and Vedanta means the end of the Veda. So not the non dual realization is considered to be the end of spiritual development or the pinnacle of it. And it’s an ancient tradition, and there’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of sophistication, a lot of safeguards and all kinds of good stuff. But Neo means new. And so Neo Advaita refers to contemporary people who are cherry picking bits from this tradition and setting themselves up as teachers without the necessary, perhaps without the necessary maturity of experience and understanding to teach people in a balanced, holistic way, and only do them good without causing them harm. That’d be my answer.
Jessica Eve: That’s well said. And I would just add to that, that, I think the general messages that you hear from you Advaita is things like there’s no doer. There is there’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to say there’s nobody who’s speaking these words, and I’m speaking them to no one to the apparent Rick in the apparent, Jessica, but it is really, you know, it’s that that the self doesn’t exist. Nothing’s really real. And therefore, you know, there’s nothing to do.
Rick Archer: It’s a very partial partial teaching, if you study genuine Advaita, you hear it differently?
Jessica Eve: Of course, yeah. I’m not sure if I should say this or not, but I think I’m going to, is that if you do want to understand and get a sense of what Neo Advaita is, you can Google something called the nothing conference. And that should really give you a crash course in what it is. And I’m not gonna say,
Rick Archer: I looked at that just before, I hadn’t heard of it, but you told me about it. And I looked at it just a little while before we started today. And I’ve interviewed half the people who participated in that conference. And they’re all over the map. I mean, if we were to create a spectrum of, you know, extreme to, you know, not so bad. They’re all over the map. And, you know, I know some of those people personally, and I wouldn’t even think of them as Neo Advaita. But they I guess they were invited to participate in the conference.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, my sense is that, and this is my personal opinion that somebody that would choose to speak on behalf of that conference that they that what they’ve described is that the nothing conference is there to spread the non duality message. The non duality message is not nothing. You know, that’s the other knee allistic version of it. And I feel like to put that out there as suggesting that is, is very misleading and unhealthy. But yeah,
Rick Archer: I wouldn’t have spoken at it. But if I had been invited and did speak, I would have given them a hard time and disrupted the conference. as well. Here’s a question from a jay Maharaj in Canada, loved your non duality talk with Tim freak. And a lot of what you spoke about resonated deeply. from your, from your perspective, how do we incorporate love in our lives from a non dual perspective, while embracing our humaneness
Jessica Eve: beautiful and interesting that interesting that there that there would be a way to experience love and not not embrace your humaneness. And I think that that’s kind of where like Neo Advaita it was very much about impersonal love, but there was an emphasis on you know, love and action or compassion or love relationships. So what I’ve actually felt is that the love that arises from this both and non duality, which is the sense that we’re, we’re, we’re both separate, and we’re one and we’re two expressions of the universe in the way I see it now evolved expressions of the universe. It brings in this, this the sense of just complete benevolence in the wishing well for others. And it’s like a heart it’s like a heartbreak is like breaking your heart open. But it really requires that sense of, of relationship to be there, where there’s a sense of intimacy and a shared common humanity. So my experience of non duality now is very much based on relationship. And I don’t always remember if it’s co dependent origination or interdependent origination in Buddhism, but it’s much more kind of that that, you know, every all polarities are a relationship, that one doesn’t arise without the other. And this intimacy, like I said, from being both separate and one that has that, that shared being in that shared humanity, and I found that the love that comes from me there is you know, walking down the street and sensing that shared suffering that we go through on this human journey, and feeling just immense compassion for that. And for myself as well, in that shared experience starts to kind of feel like a unconditional sort of, maybe not, you would say love but compassion, which has some elements of Lebanon.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you were saying a little earlier about how, you know, we’re, we’re one and we’re also individuals, you know, we’re on some level, you and I are, we’re one with everything is one, and yet you’re in Israel, and I’m here and I reach over there. And there’s, there’s so like, the ocean is one ocean. And there’s individual waves. And my friend Kim, whom I mentioned earlier, she’s been going through a phase where everything is seen as the self. It’s like the oneness with self. With a capitalist man, I mean, the one that’s level of life, walking down the street, everything is seen as the self. And she spends much of her day weeping, because the beauty is just so much and it keeps melting her heart. And you know, she’ll meet some person that is like in a wheelchair and has certain handicaps and everything else, and it’ll just evoke this, this weeping with when there is like more love than her heart can hold. And so her heart has to melt and expand even more in order to help hold it and it just keeps growing and growing and growing. So you contrast that with the dryness of Neo Advaita, you are not a person and I’m not a Briton, all that business where there seems to be very little heart involved,
Jessica Eve: radically different. And like you said, it is what I’ve experienced since then, with this new way, is just that it’s like, it’s like your heart is bursting with that compassion in that just profound sense of you know, just the mic, one of my friends and I talk about is like the ecstasy and agony of of living, and that we’re all we’re all doing that. And there is this huge, it’s huge heart awakening, as definitely what that is. But for me, it’s had to come from bringing back that I thou relationship that was lost in Neo Advaita where we can be one and I would say one as two. So it’s more of that kind of this sense of like a oneness of multiplicity that I didn’t coined that term. Someone else did. I don’t remember who.
Rick Archer: Probably who, Carl Jung
Jessica Eve: actually think it was Jason Schulman. But I’ve interviewed him, the person to look up. He’s wonderful.
Rick Archer: And Tim uses the phrase, you individual, you know, it’s kind of like that.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, I wasn’t, I didn’t know if I’ve wanted to, to bring in those terms. But yes, it is that sense of uni visuality, which I think is a great word. And also the term uni duality is really what I like to use. Because it is one and two, and can only be they can only arise together. And then that you need visuality where you’re saying, like you can walk around what I have experienced for a time where it’s like, I look out and see everyone as myself did turn into a bit of solipsism, and the sense that they’re all me, but they’re not them. And so now it’s that,
Rick Archer: that we’re they’re all me, but they are them.
Jessica Eve: Exactly, that you’re you and I need but I’m you and you’re me, you know, and actually something I should mention that is been a big a big part of this for me. And I think the most profound sense of oneness and interconnection is eye gazing. And Tim freak does that as a way to experience you individuality. And you also find I gazing events around there, but the sense of when you look into someone’s eyes, and you, you recognize that that you know you’re both kind of expressions of the same thing looking back at itself. And so you see that oneness in the other person’s eyes. But it’s one thing that you both are kind of looking at itself. And it’s I think that that’s actually a really good way it actually does bring a lot of people to a unique dual awakening rather than a non dual awakening.
Rick Archer: Nice. I’m reminded of the phrase individual love is concentrated universal love. I love that it’s almost like you know, when when I was a kid I used to sometimes get a magnifying glass and try to light something on fire with the insect. No, no, not inside like a leaf or something. I try to get something to burn. And let it’s just sort of you know, you’re concentrating the sunlight. So we’re like magnifying glasses in a way through which the universal love can focus even more precisely and manifestly Yeah,
Jessica Eve: that’s that’s a really good way to put it. And I will say, just because I think it can be so important for helpful for people is that Tim free does have an online community called the ICU, an international community of union vigils. But a lot of people are part of that, who have been trying to move away from things like Neo Advaita, where the relationship is lost, and experience it in this new way, in this unit duality, so if you, I think it can be very helpful. So great to look that up.
Rick Archer: One thing I was meaning to ask you earlier, and it’s a little out of context now, but I’d still like to ask you, is, you now because of what you’re doing, you’re getting feedback from people all over the world who have been through Neo Advaita, or maybe in some cases are still in it. And I don’t know, we don’t want to, I don’t want to call them horror stories. But what kind of since in case people might think that you’re an isolated case, what kind of things are people experiencing, and, and, and what is causing them to sort of wake up to the realization that maybe something is wrong with the picture,
Jessica Eve: that’s actually really important. And I’ve been actually compiling on my website, an archive of, of testimonials that people have shared, because I did want to say that what I’m sharing is not is not just unique to me, or some anomaly or something went wrong. That path is laden with pitfalls that I would almost say most people will fall into, and you can simply google, google Neo Advaita, in forums all across the internet, Reddit, Quora, and just in comments, feeds on YouTube videos. So many people are, you know, are talking about this, you know, like, they can’t be in relationships anymore. They can’t make themselves die. So they want to commit suicide. That, you know, it’s just ruin their lives. And it’s just completely confused them about what’s real and what’s not real. And I had actually, actually thought of maybe reading a quote from from one of these, but I’m not sure if I can find one. I did share the one about, about the dad,
Rick Archer: that people can go to your website and read more, but but read it. Go ahead and look that up.
Jessica Eve: Let me see. Oh, here we go. Okay. Yeah, this one. And so. So yeah, what feels really important is to make it make it really clear that this is a really widespread thing, and that it’s really severe, a lot of people are talking about it, leading to wanting to commit suicide. And part of what I want to do is really, you know, kind of a plea to the spiritual community to get this and to, you know, kind of come together to spread awareness and see if there’s anything we can do. But there’s people here saying, you know, the toxic nature of the teachings is taken me a lifetime to undo, created more suffering that basically ruined my life, convinced I had to die. And when I couldn’t, times, I felt like a physical death would put an end to the merry go round of madness became the source of most of my suffering in the end, apathy and disassociation, this person talking about how, you know, he realized that the people in the Neo Advaita community with him were just like wiped of personality, deadening of the mind, erasing my personality. This one’s really profound. And this was my experience, I was suffering trying not to suffer. And let’s see, life went from blooming to dull and meaningless, a lot of nihilism. But if you want to see more of that, and I, there’s so many of these coming out that I’m also encouraging anybody listening who might have an experience like that to, if you would like to add it to that, because it really does help people. If you want to send me a message with can be an anonymous, you know, testimonial that I can add there. So please feel free to
Rick Archer: to do that. Which they can do through your website.
Jessica Eve: Yeah, there’s a contact a contact form. And, yeah,
Rick Archer: I’ll be linking to your website, on on your page on that gap. Here’s a question that came in from Lakshmi in India. Sometimes I experienced an explosion of awareness, which becomes difficult to bear. I feel bored of being in this state of void stillness, and I constantly try to distract myself not knowing how to handle it. Like playing hide and seek. How do I get across this?
Jessica Eve: Yeah, the hide and seek is a lot of people talked about the hide and seek, but it sounds like you’re saying that you’re kind of Feel like lost in that oneness or void. And I experienced that, I think that it is a difficult thing, I think that you do need to kind of seek out like integration paths. And, you know, coming back into the body and things that will bring you more to that both. And there is that. But what I realized is that I had become so spacious, and I was working with someone and they said, Yeah, you became so spacious, but it’s about being spacious and contained that we need entertainment. And to be honest, that can often come with working with a with a therapist, and there are many therapists who are this specialize in these very things like spiritual emergence and crisis coaches. And, yeah,
Rick Archer: yeah, I mean, it’s good. I’d say Lakshmi’s experience is good. But obviously, it’s, you’re not finished Lakshmi and bound, you know, we need to live in boundaries, but we also can enjoy boundlessness. And the trick, the name of the game is to have boundless and boundaries at the same time. And then the boundaries are no longer a prison cell that no longer constricting, we have inner freedom, and all the you know, and great contentment as a result of that freedom. But we’re able to focus, focus sharply in whatever, you know, our life requires. And so, you know, don’t try to blot out the stillness, you say, you tried to distract yourself. Because it becomes boring, or something that’s just a phase. It’s, it’s the, it’s the source of great fulfillment. I mean, Brahman is referred to as Ananda you know, bliss. So we want to live it, but we want to live it in an integrated way. So that it is actually an asset, it enhances our ability to function within the boundaries of life. Yeah, and some kind of spiritual practice or, like Jessica said, some, some grounding, integrating stuff. And I mean, if you have kids, they’ll keep you busy. You know?
Jessica Eve: Yeah, I, I, I did, like some specific work that I was doing with a somatic therapist, I think can be very helpful to help to, to kind of like move between the boundless and the, you know, the physical and the formless. And like we said, to kind of be able to have both at the same time.
Rick Archer: Yeah, the glorious both end. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All righty. Well, we’ve pretty much covered it. I think, is there anything that I don’t know? 10 minutes after we hang up? You’re gonna think Oh, my God, I should have said this.
Jessica Eve: I don’t know yet.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we’ll call me back.
Jessica Eve: Gotta get back on. Is there anything? I don’t think so I feel like you were very helpful in like, bringing out some of the things that I was worried wouldn’t come out. So this feels complete to me. Thanks.
Rick Archer: Well, let’s stay in touch. I’d like to actually have some conversations within the coming week or so she feels like it, I can call you up on WhatsApp. And while I’m walking in the park, and we could unpack what we’ve talked about here today, and you know, a few other things we want to explore I think. So I’ll be in touch. And we’ll we’ll do that. Great. So yeah, so thanks for those who’ve been listening or watching as always really appreciate your participation. And if you like being on the live calls, and being able to ask questions, then on the upcoming interviews page on BatGap, you’ll see a little thing on the right hand column that you can click on to set a reminder for yourself in Gmail, or Outlook or whatever you use to remind you of when the live call is going to be because there are different times every week. And also check out the other menus on the site while you’re at it. Sign up for the email notification if you like. Or do that in YouTube. You know, if you sign up to be notified in YouTube, you want to subscribe but you also want to hit the little bell that pops up because then they really notify you of of everything when it comes up. All right. So thanks again. Thank you, Jessica.
Jessica Eve: For everyone who’s listening.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’m really glad that Tim brought you to my attention that we’ve gotten to know each other. You too. Yeah. All right. Bye, everybody.
