Jim Dreaver Transcript

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Jim Dreaver Interview

Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. This is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people. For more information or to help support our efforts, please visit us at www.batgap.com. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is Jim Dreaver. Jim is a native of New Zealand. He’s a writer and teacher in the non dual lineage which says that’s the spiritual and material are one. And what is real is right here now, his own inner journey took 20 years, and then he finally awoke to the freedom that is his true nature, or one’s true nature. His mission now is to guide others to the same realization but in a much shorter time. He currently teaches at Esalen Institute, near Big Sur and in Los Angeles, New Zealand and Australia. So welcome, Jim. Thank you, Rick. So how’s it going in terms of helping people realize in a much shorter time

Jim Dreaver: it’s happening? It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, it took me 20 years, as I say, and I feel that I’ve had one person wake up within nine months session. So it’s my, I’ve always fine tune the teaching functioning, my approach and so I get become better and better and it’s obvious, right? We’re just here now there’s only now it’s real. It’s very long, the spiritual teacher seven rivet very long.

Rick Archer: Well, I interviewed Bernie prior a few weeks ago, and he was a student of Barry Leung. Yeah, otherwise, I didn’t have much exposure to Barry.

Jim Dreaver: But yeah, like the power of now that I’ve told you, it’s now was all it is.

Rick Archer: So when you say somebody woke up, or when you say you woke up? What do you actually mean by that? Not that it’s a new concept. Anybody who’s listening but it’s kind of good to get each person’s definition of it because the definitions seem to vary a bit.

Jim Dreaver: Right? So I my whip, so I had with me was I was my last year in chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa, at this health crisis, and I thought I was gonna die for so that died during the night I couldn’t breathe and I turned out to be extreme anxiety is at the start of my spiritual journey. And I was introduced the teachings of Jai Krishna Murthy, and Zen and yoga. And I had an Enlightenment experience in 2019 77. In Santa Rosa, sleeping next to my first wife and I woke up and I noticed the sharper sunlight coming to the chicken, the Venetian blinds, and all of a sudden my gaze was transfixed by this just notice dancing in the sunlight. And every I heard a morning death cry outside and every thought in my mind just fell away. And I experienced total peace and oneness with life as I never had an experience like that it never been done any drugs at a time. And we’re just a pure experience of like, everything I was seeking was here right now I realized that you’d done some meditating by that time, I’d been doing to meditate for two years. And then i i and then gradually I kind of expensive faded, I reverted somewhat back to my normal ego, uptight self, really believing I was this me and but suddenly, it changed permanently, is that the whole room function of my consciousness, seeing the reality behind reality that I somehow knew I was that reality. So that began a journey of 18 years for next 18 years. I even though other than normal life, is going skiing and being a chiropractor and going into Theater in San Francisco and partying and so on. Behind the law with this quest for Enlightenment for freedom.

Rick Archer: And what forms did that quest take? Did you continue meditating? Did you visit teachers? What did you do?

Jim Dreaver: I could continue meditating. I came and saw Krishna Murthy speak here in Ohio in 1977. I have a number of other teachers like data who was not a very well known teacher from India, but then I met John Kline in 1984. And he was the one who guided me to FEMA took a number of years 11 more years before I woke up When I woke up, so this is what brings me to the subject of awakening. So I was lying in bed 120 years ago, this spring actually, I woke up in Northern California, and I was lying in bed. I woke feeling somewhat depressed. And my son with a liberal at the time, it’s not that I got divorced when he was six. I was paying child support, and my son was staying with his mother down in Sebastopol, and I was living in a little cottage on a hilltop near Sebastopol. I woke up feeling depressed, you know, difficult financial circumstances and probably that was a cause of oppression. I was about to get out of bed and go meditate because I knew how to clear that repressed energy. In this particular morning, I lay there in bed and I said to myself, How come is still happening to me? How can I still you need repressed? How come I’m not free yet because I was pretty free already. And then I remember something John Klein said you’re not the person you think you are. Find out who you really are, you’ll be free. So I close my eyes. And we deeply into the interior of my own being with the question. Okay, Jim, you saved, repressed, who is this me who’s depressed. I looked everywhere inside myself. I the thoughtform I feel depressed, I am depressed, I couldn’t find it was it’s a thought form that comes and goes. But I is awareness consciousness was right here. And somehow when that had that realization happened, I did oppression dissolve, and I felt fine went about my day. And the same thing happened the next morning, and the next morning, three mornings in a row with work feeling depressed. And after that third morning, it was all over, I realized, oh my god, this i that I’ve been identified with this and me that I’ve been taking myself to B ever since about age two, was just a fiction in my mind that created all the feelings and emotions of the contractions, the anxiety of guilt, all just washed away.

Rick Archer: So you say you realize that, that has a bit of an intellectual or conceptual connotation. But was there more significantly, an experiential shift at that point

Jim Dreaver: it was experienced was just a feeling of great ease and flow and harmony. That was the experience.

Rick Archer: So there was kind of, in a way, both an experiential and an intellectual component to the to the package.

Jim Dreaver: Right, exactly. The intellectual was, oh my god, I’m not my story. I have a story that I want my story. Experiential was this feeling of great. I called ease flow and harmony. That’s when you when you’re awake, that’s the basic experience, you’re always at ease. You always know now you’re always harmonious with what is and it’s stuck. It’s stuck. It’s, it’s never shifted for what he is now. The formula phenomenal call residues because we still have an ego. We still haven’t I thought residues of oligo patterns can arise from time to time. And you know, they remember, the first residue I had had came up six months later on I again, experience, I got caught up my circumstances and kind of begin being concerned worried about my finances. And I thought actually, I was losing my awakening. I hung out in a state of uncertainty for about four hours, and then suddenly it’s just dissolved shifted, was back in the flow again, back in the state of ease harmony and flow.

Rick Archer: So over the last 20 years, I’m sure that life has thrown plenty of things at you, including several strokes, which you’ll talk about. But regardless of what has come your way, that ease harmony and flow has persisted and predominated.

Jim Dreaver: That’s, that’s the abiding experience, right? And that’s how I say when somebody wakes up to their true nature, you realize, well, I am always in the state of ease harmony and flow. And yes, Sue’s expressions, shit happens, you know, things happen. And so to rock. And there’s residues, John Kline was the one who told me about residues. And I know John plant himself experienced residues of old stuff, even when he was I sort of six months before he died here in Santa Barbara. And he was, he was very he was couldn’t do much he needed round the clock care and in for dignified, sophisticated European man, I’m sure was, you know, somewhat disturbing to as well being, but what choice did he have? But when I sat with him the light of consciousness, the clear light of consciousness shone through his eyes as brightly as ever.

Rick Archer: I think you’d probably agree that everybody has residues. Yes. Traditionally, it’s pretty well discussed and understood that, you know, we have residues. And in fact, in some cases, I think those residues can be quite substantial in some people and, you know, I mean, there are people who appear to have undergone some kind of awakening, such as Adi Da, but who had some pretty outrageous residues that they kept indulging in for the rest of their lives. That’s a little bit of a puzzlement to me.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, I don’t know, I knew of it very well. I’ve read his book that he listening, and had a friend who was a doctor who delivered a couple of his children actually. And, yeah, he was a paradox and of the social bond interview hadn’t.

Rick Archer: I’ve interviewed sadly, yeah. And Linda? Yeah. I remember

Jim Dreaver: him when he was about to leave the organization about to leave it does site after being with him for 20 years. It does threaten with lifetimes and how much karma if he had ever left?

Rick Archer: Yeah. But it’s, I don’t want to get a sidetrack. But it is kind of interesting to ponder. And if we really want to understand what this whole Enlightenment awakening thing is all about, then these things come up, and you kind of have to come to terms with them, you know, I mean, teachers behaving badly, and so on. And it’s not going to be certainly the focus of this interview. But if we, you know, we really want to understand what Enlightenment is, then a lot of people are thrown by these occurrences when they are impacted by them personally, or read about them, or somewhat, they think, you know, I’ve seen people just give up on the whole spiritual quest, or just get very disillusioned or, you know, get very confused and on. And so I think it’s important to kind of probe such things and try to come to some sort of understanding and the residue idea helps in my, in my book he can have, and also, you know, Ken Wilber his idea of lines of development and stages of development and so on that, you know, one awakening does not Enlightenment make necessarily, there could be many stages of awakening, and there could be some in which there are still some fairly an undeveloped lines of development, along with some fairly well developed lines. And so anyway, I don’t want to go on too long. But what do you think about all that?

Jim Dreaver: Well, I’m working on a new book, and I have a chapter called healing the wounds of the past. Because this is exactly what you’re referring to, like many Indian gurus, for example, came here. And then they never had extraordinary energy, extraordinary awakenings and Resona. Charisma, yeah, ability to transmit the energy and awaken others, but then they had all this dark stuff going on, you know, sexual stuff, power stuff, money stuff. And because of their unresolved childhood wounding issue, I think, so we have to explore that we have and this is one of the ways I work privately with people. I, I, you have to have healed your past completely. You have to be at peace with every person in your past. Otherwise, your past will come back to bite you in the ass.

Rick Archer: Yeah. I think in the case of the Indian gurus, it’s sometimes a cultural thing to where they might have been raised in an ashram situation and not exposed all kinds of stuff that they they’re suddenly confronted with, when they come come to the west and, you know, have all kinds of issues around that stuff that they didn’t know about. But um, so the question from what you just said, is, the does healing your is healing your past? To what extent is Healing Your past a prerequisite to awakening? And to what extent can it be handled after awakening?

Jim Dreaver: It’s both both. For example, I’m in your relationship with my sweetie. Sweetheart, Tanya. I’ve been married twice divorced twice, and Tanya is younger than me. And we’ve been together now for almost three years and I had a certain degree of Mother wounding that it wasn’t even aware of. The mother wounding the father wounding happens when you don’t have a clear memory of being loved or nurtured by your mother or father when you’re young. And so here I am, 68 years old now. 6868 years old.

Rick Archer: You look pretty good for six years. Now. Thank you better than I do. I’m always 65 Based on the video.

Jim Dreaver: So anyway, so that I had become aware of this mother wounding and how it comes up, you know, how it manifests. So I’ve been looking at that more and more and getting free of that issue. So I’ve been I’ve been awake for like 20 years now. So awakening just means you you no longer suffer personally. And, but you can create suffering other people if you’ve had these unconscious past happens still. So the work of refinement of attunement, refining one’s awakening is an ongoing process.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I think so lifelong. So, have you done that refinement and attunement and so on? completely on your own or in? Have you ever like actually engaged in some sort of therapy or, you know, sat with some other teacher counselor of some sort in order to facilitate it since awakening?

Jim Dreaver: No, I haven’t. Personally, I just got it on my own. See, the issue just has to be faced, you know, Shankara, was supposed to have said, realization consists of seeing the truth, and not in the least of 10 Millions of Act. So it doesn’t matter whether you meditate, or you become a yogi or purified or fast. None of that will awaken you only through seeing the truth, do you awaken? And seeing that you’re not as I noticed me, you had an eye, you have a me, that’s awakening. And then seeing that you, oh, I have my past, I have this, I have a tendency to lust after other women, which is one of the things about Mother wounding, and people are always looking for the one, they’re the perfect one out there. And even when they’ve got the perfect one, they’re still looking for the one that tends to grow. You just have to see that in yourself. Oh, I see that. In a very seeing a little bit, you get a little bit freer when you see some place of true clarity and presence, when you don’t see your own behavior from a place of true clarity and presence. That is freeing.

Rick Archer: Incidentally, Shankar also said that, Yana Yoga is not necessarily for everyone that sort of final insight into one’s true nature. And that Karma Yoga save things like that might be prescribed or conducive to the purification that would bring one to a state of readiness or worthiness, or ability to engage in the kind of discrimination that might be needed for that final step. So I’m sorry, I kind of lost the train of thought what you just said towards the end there. Well, you know, what, what started, you

Jim Dreaver: know, I had this insight 30 years ago, will be there’ll be another train along the station any moment. Okay, good. Yeah, because it’s not about the words, right? It’s always about the presence that we share with each other.

Rick Archer: Okay, so we’re talking about residues, and we’re talking about working out this stuff that there might be still plenty to work out even after after realization after awakening. And you said, it’s been a sort of for you, it’s been sort of a kind of a process that you’ve been able to do on your own. And okay, now I’m remembering the question I want to ask, which is that after awakening, and where that ease and friction lessness, that you mentioned earlier, has come to be the norm? Have you found that there’s a sort of an acceleration of the working out of stuff that, that it comes up more readily and is resolved more readily than it might have been when you were more ego bound?

Jim Dreaver: Yes, I think so. And, you know, particularly, I live a normal life and relationships, you know, with Tanya and my sweetie, as they’re very much a heart oriented person. She’s a beautiful, open hearted loving person. And about your true Vak. A lover of God. And so relationships, as you know, from your own marriage, that’s the best place to work a lot of this stuff out. Yeah. Yeah. So I get to get, I get to meet myself every day. And she has a beautiful six year old daughter, Bailey, roomy mountain. And so I get to my I have a 30 year old son by my second marriage, so I get to be a stepfather to Bailey and notice my issues around that. My, my tendency to want to be by myself or not participate. So comes up.

Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s that saying, you know, the world is your guru. And I think an underlying principle to that is that if you know if everything really is orchestrated by some cosmic intelligence that permeates everything and abides everywhere, then the things that happen to us are not arbitrary and capricious, you know, they’re actually perfectly designed to bring about whatever it is we need to learn.

Jim Dreaver: And we That’s exactly right. Yeah. It’s all perfect life is the true teacher relationship as a true teacher.

Rick Archer: Okay, so you had this awakening 20 years ago, and it was sounds like it was a Real watershed event for you. You know, it was life after that day, whatever day on the calendar that might have been, has been different than it always had been before. Before that day. Was there any period even before this kind of final awakening where you kind of word got it? I lost it. I got it. I lost it kind of.

Jim Dreaver: Absolutely. I several times. I I thought that was Enlightenment. Yeah, I remember when going to a John Klein event, a workshop at Mount Madonna Sandra’s open California and I was strolling down to the afternoon dialogue from my cabinet staying and I had this epiphany I suddenly my I thought jumped out in front of me, I saw my iPhone, I realized I wasn’t that I. And I felt such I felt tears, tears of joy of seeing that one or not, as I thought that I saw identify with my whole life. I’m endless, pure awareness. And like she was joking about it. And he said to me, is actually recorded in one of his books, transmission, the flame, he said, you have in a certain way, understood that you’re not a person. Live in this understanding, and you’ll be a happy man. And I thought, the next few days, I thought, Wow, I’m here now. I thought, Well, I’m here now is the proof that I wasn’t here. Yeah. Because then it some more suffering happened. I realized I wasn’t finding like basketball, but I was free.

Rick Archer: Yeah. What do you say to these people who, you know, you see them often in chat rooms online and stuff. I don’t know if you frequent the chat rooms. But you know, they’ll they’ll take take an explanation of the kind of thing you just said that you’re not a person, and you’re already free. And you’re already enlightened. And there are no stages of development or levels of development. And you don’t really need to do anything and just kind of realize that and they go on and on like that. I keep getting the flavor, that it’s largely a sort of conceptual intellectual thing. They’ve read too many books. And and they haven’t necessarily imbibed the experience that they’re they’ve learned to describe with some degree of eloquence.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, I agree. It’s it’s kind of a visor, pure advisor, pure visor. It’s almost like a vitae police as

Rick Archer: they’re actually told that. I mean, that the that term was actually used, you know, please pass the salt. Who wants the salt? Kind of thing?

Jim Dreaver: Anyway, so this brings me a point. So like my teachings, as I said, continuously evolve. In this new book, I’m working on the premise. Now, if the most powerful realization we can have is, well, I’m not my mind. I have a mind, but I’m not my mind. I mean, that’s one version of the most powerful realization we can have. When she said that you’re not your mind, you have a mind, but you’re not your mind, then you’re free, then you’re you’re abiding in the is harmony and flow of the awareness or consciousness. That is your true nature. And of course, awareness and consciousness are just pointers. What we fundamentally are.

Rick Archer: Yeah, by the same token, by the same token, would you say I have an ego but I’m not my ego?

Jim Dreaver: Exactly. We I haven’t. So I haven’t I thought. So. I have a section on my new book lesson called noticing which is active in you. So is it the ego i The reactive ego, I like my I don’t like this happening at all? Or is it the awakened i The functionalised. And when we’re awakened, free, we speak always from our functional, awakened I, I muster the doctor, I must get my car change service, gas, but at the gas pump, right? Which is why you came up with this beautiful name.

Rick Archer: Yeah. There’s a there’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin is pounding nails into the coffee table with a hammer, you know? And his mother comes in and says, Calvin, what are you doing? He looks at are like perplexes says it’s a trick question. And I thought of that when I was reading your book, because, you know, I mean, if if you’re probably nails in the coffee table, you don’t feel it. But if you accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer, you feel it. So there’s a different there’s an eye sense, which, you know, which functions and, you know, Jesus would have felt it and Shankara would have felt it and Ramana Maharshi would have felt that there’s, there’s still some distinction in terms of our experience between this localized biological entity and the tree, the, you know, the coffee table or whatever.

Jim Dreaver: You know, that’s one of the main things I look for actually, when I when I do Satsang workshops, or private sessions. I’m looking for where people I still identify with how They use their iPhone, are they? Does that suggest identification with their eye? Or are they free? And usually, it’s some kind of identification, a deeper identification, which I’m not even aware of. And that’s where a teacher can play a role or guy can play a role helping people become aware of otherwise, I see him identify with this.

Rick Archer: Would you say that there are degrees or levels of identification, like you could be kind of cruising along with a sense of not really being very identified, but then something can come up, which, you know, really triggers your identification and shows you that you’re really not as free as you might have thought you were?

Jim Dreaver: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. That’s true in relationships. And I remember, sometimes I can identify myself residual identification with the need the eye, the ego pattern. I remember, most recent one, what happened when I was feeling of being controlled? And, you know, I started myself, dammit, you know, a mean control. And then I suddenly what I saw it from my wholeness my global perspective, I said, Wow, that’s an old pattern. I’ve been running away from control all my life, and I ran away from home physically. And I was 14. Sort of, yeah, but there you go. And so that ego pattern can still arise from time to time. So So I help people see that within what I help people see what they’re not seeing themselves, that’s the function of a die.

Rick Archer: So do you think that if we have all these residual things, attachments, or impressions or whatever they are, and that they come up from time to time under certain circumstances, and we kind of work through them and move on, and then we’re perhaps a little bit more free than we had been, because something has been cleared out. They think that if that’s the case that even in someone like yourself who has been awake for 20 years, there could still be a lot of stuff that’s buried there, a lot of residual stuff. And if it somehow, theoretically, were to all just be cleared out, all of a sudden, you would experience a much more profound degree of freedom, then Then you’re even experiencing right now.

Jim Dreaver: Well, I’m open to that. But I have a pretty inwardly vigilant person. And I’m not a double Sagittarian Sagittarius is the truth seeker of the zodiac. So I’m really attuned to truth, and even though and so, but I’m just here now. There’s only here now. And so I’m always open to a bigger realization, but that hasn’t happened. Well, I’ll

Rick Archer: ask you a question about that in a second. But perhaps you could quote that Nisargadatta quote, where he was in his 70s. And someone brought up the point about him kind of reacting to certain things or something. And you know, the quote I’m talking about

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, exactly. Well, he said in the book, I am that somebody else’s data? Do you have experience, fear? And occasion and I thought it was really honest. In his answer, he said, occasionally old reaction, mental emotional, happens in the mind. There is one scene and discarded after one so has a personality. So one is still subject to the personality behaviors. And actually, I read that before I woke up, like 30 years ago, and that liberated me at some level to ministry because I was such a perfectionistic. person. And I thought you Lightman has to be perfect. There was no, you know, once you’re there, you’re once you’re awake, then you felt no more fear at all. Now, speaking of fear, so it gave me permission to relax at a deeper level. That’s what they did about a quote to give me. And then I, I’ll talk about the strokes now, because that was the first time I actually experienced physical fear. When I had the series of strokes over five months, beginning of 19 2003, September 2003, I was working as a chiropractor. And to backtrack a little bit, I’ve always resisted being a chiropractor. I wasn’t like, wasn’t my thing I wasn’t passionate about I was a good chiropractor. And I enjoyed working with people. I something resisted, I wanted to be a teacher. Once I woke up and 9095 all resistance melted. So it wasn’t my passion, but I was going to resist it. That’s the thing when you wake up, or resistance in new goes to whatever happened, whatever, right? So that’s another way of looking at what awakening is. Resistance is futile. Yeah, exactly.

Rick Archer: Star Trek or something.

Jim Dreaver: So anyway, so. So eight years went by, I was doing Satsang instance of basketball and you know, doing a few private sessions and working my chiropractic practice, and I had the strokes and the after the set Extra adequate practice. And I remember thinking, you know, well, thank God I’m now without a practice. But I don’t have a third stroke which was really intense and devastating and put me in the hospital for six days, and no one was lying to me on my Gurney in the ER, when I went out the hospital after the first stroke, they the visit physician came by and said, You need to sign this waiver. He was going to do an was an intervening radiologist, he was going to do an angiogram with rejected fluid on my thermal artery and government of the brain. And he looked at my brain on a TV and let’s see what if there’s a block there, a blockage, and he would, if he could, he would insert a stent to open up the blockage. But of course, kill you, right, exactly was a 25% chance of either having a major stroke even worse, or being fatal. And I remember just this fear coming over me, like I could die, and then I relax and breathe and sign on the dotted line turns out that the, the blocked arteries are too deep, so I didn’t do a stent anyway. And I remember after six days in the hospital for intensive care I came, was driven home to my then girlfriend’s place in Santa Rosa. And, you know, I, I couldn’t move the right side of my face. Have you raised my right arm? I walked with a limp. I lost 20 pounds. I couldn’t think clearly I couldn’t speak properly.

Rick Archer: This is all post awakening, post stroke post, but it’s also a post awakening.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, right. Right. I just floated the whole thing, you know, I have a small moment of fear. And then I realized well, and I and I just wax and signed the waiver. That African back to my girlfriend’s house, I couldn’t think clearly. But as a lying in bed in her place, and suddenly, that’s just my thoughts gradually settled and clearer. And I have a single, discrete thought, thank God, I’m free. I’m gonna free because I knew myself as consciousness once you know yourself as consciousness as, as this here now, you realize that what you fundamentally are, was never born and never dies. That frees you from the fear of death.

Rick Archer: Yeah. And I want to emphasize that that’s not just an intellectual concept. That’s your experience

Jim Dreaver: is that’s my experience. Yes. Because, you know,

Rick Archer: we can all read books that give us those concepts and read nd ebooks and so on and so forth. But, you know, you’re you’re living from a place where, you know, primarily you are that which never dies.

Jim Dreaver: You that’s your embodied experience. Yeah. And you just face you face your actual death as, as it happens, what will happen one day, with the same way you face life, you just wait there, you know, yeah, present with what is.

Rick Archer: I think one nice way of explaining it, and understanding is that, you know, we could think of dimensions, you know, and there’s, there’s that dimension which never dies, and which is perpetual and silent and stable, and, you know, rock like, and then there are these more manifest dimensions, which die and change. And but, you know, if our experience incorporates the full range, then there’s a kind of a safety and security established in that dimension, which is, you know, indestructible.

Jim Dreaver: Yes. So, your whole

Rick Archer: story, by the way, reminds me of the garden yugas Celemony, you know, when Christ knew what was going to happen to him, and this, apparently, this wave of fear and you know, came up, it’s like, Yeah, can you let this cup pass from me? And then he kind of relaxed and said, All right, like, we’ll be done.

Jim Dreaver: Exactly. And then so they, they had a sort of, thank God, I’m free. And then I A few minutes later, I had another thought, Well, I’m free, but do I want to live? Do I want to live and I realized then that if I wanted to live, I could use my mind before the intention to heal myself. That’s the power of intention. I realized when I was only 57 of time, my book industry being alive wasn’t yet finished. I wanted to enjoy teaching. Yeah, hell yeah. I want to live. So I formed this clear intention. Yes, I want to live. And that’s using the mind to form a clear intention. And then I like visualized every day, my brain, my blood vessels, opening up my brain, the blood flowing through healing the things that need to be healed. I began walking again and went back to the gym again, and here I am today.

Rick Archer: That’s great. Incidentally, the fellow who does all the video post production for this show, Ralph Preston had a fairly serious stroke some years ago and was, it was predicted that he really wouldn’t be able to walk I could do all kinds of things ever again. And he applied himself to rehabilitation with great dedication. And now he, you know, hikes on the beach. It rides his bicycle, and he works with other people helping to rehabilitate them. So I just want to do a shout out to Ralph and appreciation for him. And yeah, what he’s gone through.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah. Stroke is the third leading cause of death after heart attack in Kansas. So it’s pretty serious stuff. So anyway, that’s the story of my strokes. And of course, I have a story about my strokes. And as as time goes on, it’s been like, Gosh, 10 years or more, Tintin? Yes. More. Yeah.

Rick Archer: So this whole thing of story. I mean, we haven’t talked about that too much. But there’s a lot in your book, and you’re teaching about you are not your story. And other teachers teach that way to talk that way. So let’s talk about that a little bit about, you know, what one story actually is, and why it’s important to realize that you’re not your story, and, and so on. Yeah, good. And your story begin your life. I mean, that’s the title of your book here. Yeah. So it’s important to talk about?

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, it’s a. So we all have a story. We’re storytelling people. And we all have a story, may we all have many stories, and the older we get, the more stories we have, right? But the thing to notice is that our stories come and go, they shift and they change. And we forgotten many stories when from when we were younger. So the realization is that realizing that Well, I have a story, but not my story. Because it comes and goes, and this is what I teach people. This is the main thing I teach, you got to be inwardly vigilant and watch how your thoughts and stories and beliefs and everything comes and goes. And as you watch them come and go, you ask yourself as to what is always here. And you of course, as awareness are always here, US presence is consciousness is beingness are always here. So Enlightenment or awakening is about discovering what is always here.

Rick Archer: Yeah. So in your book, you offer some examples of stories. I am not worthy, I feel guilty, I feel ashamed. I was an abandoned child, abused, Wounded Child, nobody would want to be with me, life is tough, unfair, this shouldn’t be happening. The only way you can get ahead is by ripping people off. You can’t trust anyone. I don’t manage money well, and so on and so forth. So they’re all these sorts of stories that are kind of based on people’s experience, you know, yeah. But what you’re saying is experience can be deceptive. And well go ahead, you respond.

Jim Dreaver: Well, maybe you were a lost and abandoned child when you were young, but you’re not being lost and abandoned now, like, so you come back to here now. And I remember, I was teaching this on, you know, you mentioned so I’m actually not teaching there currently. But I taught there for this work for eight years. Now when excellent workshop woman came in, and she was in the mid 40s. And she was very overweight, and she killed herself. Because she was killing herself against man through weight to that a father had molested her and abused her sexually when she was very young. And she had never forgiven her father. She carried the memory of her father’s molestation. As she shared a story, and I remember telling, listening to him, she’s saying to me in the groups, how can you? How can you say my story is not real? It really happened? I said, Yes, it was real thing. That’s not real. Now, no one’s molesting you right now. And this moment, and she kind of got it. She she realized that and she’d been by the end of the workshop, she had said, she began to forgive her father already. So it was a that’s how people become free. They realize the story is real once but it’s not real. Now what what is what’s happening now as well as real now. But there

Rick Archer: are things that are happening now to people that are pretty intense. I mean, they might be going bankrupt and losing their home and not knowing, you know, afraid they’re gonna be sleeping on the sidewalk or something. Right. So those things are happening. There are things happening in the moment, not just things that happened years ago.

Jim Dreaver: Right so so that’s kind of a situation I would tell let’s take a person who is sleeping on the sidewalk so this leads us to the understanding that the seeing the law, oh, we have all the stories about reality. Like I’m sleeping on the sidewalk now and the homeless.

Rick Archer: I’m just waiting to buy the new iPhone

Jim Dreaver: good to good for that maybe somebody’s story, but maybe somebody is on the street and then they don’t have a roof over their head and back then the money to buy an iPhone, right? So I would counsel them in this way. So yes, you homeless. But right now, do you know you You know, the storyteller? Do you know the I the meat, you know, because the storyteller the eye, the me the ego self, which is behind all the stories. When you look into that, this is me that you take yourself to be, you discovered that this is the storyteller is no more real than the stories it tells. It’s the biggest story of all this either me the storyteller, when you see that, wow, I am the storyteller that I’ve taken myself to be all these years, that’s has difficult circumstances is on the streets. When you see that that’s not real, because it comes and goes, and you’re not anything that comes and goes. When I say, a pause the break, is suddenly you discover yourself in this place of just pure awareness, pure beingness.

Rick Archer: Now, you had an advantage in a way, and I’ve had an advantage in terms of spiritual practice going on for decades, that makes it a lot, in my opinion, makes it a lot easier to see this stuff. But if you get a roomful of people, and they’ve never really had a background like that, and you just start saying these things to them, isn’t there a tendency to become somewhat manipulative of one’s experience and just sort of start playing mental games with yourself trying to see this and trying to have that perspective without really having undergone the kind of transformation that might make it easy to see that stuff quite spontaneously and naturally without having to, you know, work at it?

Jim Dreaver: What do you think? Well, I?

Rick Archer: In other words, well, if you’re having trouble with that question,

Jim Dreaver: I’m having trouble with that. Okay. Go ahead. I don’t have trouble with any questions. Well, what I want to say to you is that, as I say, my new book, The teachings in the words, transmission is in the silence. So it’s not about thinking about any of this stuff. It’s about Yes. I also sometimes say we shift from silence to story, from story to silence. And the more grounded we are in the silences, actual nature, the presence the beingness, our true nature right here, right now, the more we see, God, this is says so he wouldn’t say what he’s talking about, like I have a story, but not my story. People begin to see that of themselves, begin to glimpse that maybe they only get a small glimpse, but they begin to have a glimpse.

Rick Archer: Yeah. So to take an extreme example, if we were to walk into a psychiatric hospitals and give a talk to a roomful of psychotics just to take an extreme example, and say, you know, you’re not your story, and blah, blah, blah, they’re just when it would be like Christ said, you know, throwing the seeds onto rocky ground or something, they wouldn’t be the receptivity to really know what you were talking about. So. So what you’re saying is that if one could culture the ground of silence, then then such instructions, as you might give in a seminar become more fruitful? So how do you culture the ground of silence? Well, how does one

Jim Dreaver: the more present, the guide or teacher is more established in true presence and beingness? The more the more effect? Yeah, like, I’m a, I’m a Vietnam that you didn’t read about me. Right. So you’re from your book and your Yeah. And so I’m doing some work with vets now. Ya know, veterans and Iraq veterans and Afghanistan and even Vietnam veterans. And so that was actually trained to be supremely present, right? I mean, that’s the main thing about being a combat worry, you have to be extremely present on the lookout for the enemy. So this gift of extreme presence, supreme presence, they’ve already had that. So it’s translated into, into civilian life. So it’s about being supremely present. Breathe, breathe into you’ve dealt with the belly, unlucky knees, the sense of being here now. And then from this place of being supremely present, then we begin to look at these things.

Rick Archer: Trouble with veterans is that they tend to be you know, if they have PTSD, they tend to be locked into the fight or flight response, you know, what, long since long past the time when it was appropriate, it’s become habitual, and that’s what stress does with people. So you know, you’re saying that you can get them to sort of decondition from the fight or flight response, I think and by Well, what you were just saying, breathing on locking your knees you see you’re teaching a sort of a little bit of a meditative practice where they can kind of chill a bit and and settle into a more Silent state.

Jim Dreaver: Right, exactly I, you know, I used to teach this work called somatic technique, and to chiropractors professional chiropractic seminars for many years, 10 years to teaching chiropractors I learned from Thomas Hannegan. But Thomas Hanna, he was taught at Esalen. And he told the somatic work. And so this works, but really much about being in the body, being in the body in a relaxed, harmonious way, being very aware of your body moving, you know, being surprised still have a yoga practice I do. And so this technique of breathing down into your belly, and locking your knees, relaxing your shoulders, wiggling your jaw loose, becoming very present, here. Now, that’s a simple meditation or somatic practice, which brings people in mortal the presence and then they are more available to hear whatever I want to say next. Okay.

Rick Archer: And do you just do that in your workshops? Or do you advocate that people kind of make a habit of it?

Jim Dreaver: Yeah. Well, I I teach people how to do this when I’m doing workshops or private sessions. Yeah. Because he becoming more aware of yourself. People are so distracted these days, right? They’re so caught up in Facebook, Twitter, they’re always on this smartphones. I didn’t have a smartphone at this point. I

Rick Archer: mean, either have a dumb phone. I just bought my first cell phone about a month ago and haven’t used it yet.

Jim Dreaver: I’ve had I have had a cell phone for years, but it’s a flip phone. I sweetie. Yeah. Tanya has a because of iPhone. She’s on it all the time.

Rick Archer: Yeah, anyway. I mean, that’s it’s almost a parody. You see cartoons like that all the time where people are walking down the street staring at their phones. And you see, you know, things on the news where people are running into lampposts, or stepping into traffic or whatever, because so there’s definitely a lot coming at us in this culture. And what’s your I think what you’re saying is that, you know, we’re so habitually COVID habituated to sensory stimulation, that we never give ourselves a break, never give us a moment. Silence,

Jim Dreaver: right. So it’s a sub kind of one, one person among many, like you, all the people you interview on your show here, will do the same thing with like, waking up to our true nature, is the solution to suffering are the solution to individual suffering, and it’s the solution for global suffering.

Rick Archer: Yeah, we could talk about that a bit. And I don’t know if we’ve exhaustively covered all the points we brought up yet, but maybe we’re not supposed to do that. And this is a sort of a potpourri that we’re or, you know, smorgasbord that we’re having here. And people can get more into your work later on. But I like your emphasis on that, that individual awakening is kind of the unit of world betterment.

Jim Dreaver: Right? I mean, look at my history. I mean, I was a normal kid in New Zealand, ran away from home, my parents were married. But divorce wasn’t common. My parents didn’t like each other. But I stayed together for the kids didn’t know anything about spiritually, although so always inclined in that direction and eating healthy foods, like at a young age, because that was really kind of WeChat and wechat was the thing that I ate when I was in my teens, you and I have

Rick Archer: a lot in common. I used to eat wheat, German drink tiger’s milk and stuff.

Jim Dreaver: And, but in the soul brought us to this place here. Now we’re like, we’re right here now. And this is. And so awakening brings you to here now, it brings you back to what is fundamentally true, always true, in this present moment, in this, and you realize that when you when you’re here now, free of your story, because you you realize you have a sort of you know your story, you’re free of the ice story, the storyteller, and you’re free, then you’re awake, and you realize, Wow, this, this is feels that’s the best. This is the greatest realization Whoa, to realize this. And so you want to share it with people, in some people, you know, share this with their neighbors or friends or family. Others, like us are more interested in taking the message out there into the world.

Rick Archer: Yeah. And perhaps you could elaborate on. I mean, to my understanding, individual awakening is, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron is conducive to world transformation, not merely because awaken people might tend to share it overtly, you know, through giving talks or writing books and so, but just because of what they are, even if they just live a normal life and keep it a secret that they’ve had an awakening, they’re going to radiate an influence and if enough people were radiating such an influence, we’d see a very different world.

Jim Dreaver: Right. I remember Maharishi, your original teacher talked about, you know, 1% of the world waking up and yeah, yeah,

Rick Archer: even the square root of 1%. He got down to a certain point, he realized 1% wasn’t happening. But I think actually it is happening these days. I mean, there, there seems to be some sort of epidemic taking place. As evidenced by the show and all the people I have to interview and all the people like yourself, and it’s, you know, in the 1950s, you wouldn’t have seen anything like this. There was Yogananda you know, and there were there were a couple of things, but it really wasn’t much in the in the world in the national collective consciousness, right?

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, I know, a man actually a friend of mine, who’s was in the Yogananda organization for years, and eventually left this solution because it promised Self Realization, but he wasn’t self realized.

Rick Archer: The person your friend wasn’t, yeah, right. Yeah.

Jim Dreaver: What’s the organization for many years, and then he met me. And we, we began having non dual discussions, dialogues and had an awakening. And now he’s off and running. And teaching.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, that, you know, I think people come into this life at different stages of development. And I know people who have been self realized since childhood, and I know others who’ve been meditating for 45 years and aren’t self realized. So it kinda, you know, we all have a different road to hoe. But, I mean, getting back to one of the points that you brought up in, in my introduction to your book, your attempt, you think that 20 years is too long of time to spend, before that, it really can be shortened down to nine months, three years, something along those lines

Jim Dreaver: Exactly. Within definitely within, you know, some, some people mind months, others, you’re a surrogate, when you really focus on on this work, when you really want to wake up and after having an urgency is in a drive to awaken. And so that’s got to be there. I think some people wake up spontaneously, like Eckhart Tolle, Byron, Katie didn’t even see that happen. So what I live in this world is anything can happen.

Rick Archer: Yeah, of course, in their case, they had sort of bottomed out, you know, I mean, they’re Byron, Katie was in a halfway house and, and, or some kind of rehabilitation house and totally was on the verge of suicide. And, you know, they’d somehow bout bottomed out and bounced up. But as you say, it can happen so many different ways.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, that’s an endless variety of endless variety of ways it can happen,

Rick Archer: yeah. But what is it you we got a new job? What is it you do to cut 20 years down to nine months or two years? Or, you know, how are you able to, you know, cut short, what for most people is a decade’s long process.

Jim Dreaver: By the degree of presence, I bring to the My Work by the degree of focus on what is essential, what must be seen, essentially, you must see that you’d like the story, and how I, so I take real life example. So working with an individual, I ask them with a suffering, whether or not yet free. I keep bringing back to like I said, and they get free, that they no longer an issue for them in that area. So you’re not free now you’re not free now. And again, where are you not free, were you not free until suddenly, they realized at some point that

Rick Archer: dig right to the core of it,

Jim Dreaver: right to the underlying coordinates usually dates back in most cases to early childhood trauma is still identifying with this I this knee that was abandoned, neglected, abused, didn’t feel wanted. And, and when they see that, the more they see that with clearly and I have little practices like self forgiveness, and being with a person like you’re, you’re afraid of your father, your father, your mother, being with them, even though they’re long dead now being coming, inviting into your meditation, looking into their eyes and being with a few that comes up and until you can see their eyes with compassion and kindness. You see that? Well, they’re suffering because they were abused as a young child, that and so I help them see all that.

Rick Archer: So you’re with John Klein for about 11 years. But by your current standards, 11 years would be a failure in terms in terms of you know, you’re hoping to wake people up a lot quicker than that. So you’re, you’re saying that perhaps you’re doing something that It’s, I’m sure you don’t want to compare yourself in that way with John Klein, but in a way you’re doing something that’s gets right to the core of it more quickly than whatever he was doing.

Jim Dreaver: Right? He was, he was always teaching the direct path, right? The direct path is like, right here right now. Yeah. And so, you know, each student of his, as his teaching now has found their own way of doing that. Present that teaching, my teaching is really helping people see that they’re not sure they have a story with another story. They’re always always this aware, conscious person who is present right now. And I bring them to a lot of silence in my dialogues with people. A lot of connection, just pure connection or being to being level even on Skype, with a lot of silence. I mean, one person I worked with recently, he talked about his, his longtime meditator, you maybe know him vote, you know, his name, tm 30 is dying the 60s, and never quite felt free and never realized true freedom. And he was, he was, he had many moments of freedom. And he knew his true nature, he had many experiences of his true natures as ease and bliss and harmony. But there was a chronic kind of constant ball of unhappiness in the stomach, he described it, which was sometimes more intense than others. Well, so it is explore his story. Turns out his relationship with his sister had a problem with his sister, he didn’t like that a conflict. And so we went more deeply into that. And as he went more deeply into that, and it became more forgiving and more, seeing, clearly, wow, I do have this issue with my sister, just having seen it as freeing, seeing as freeing. And the more more deeply, you look at something that area where you’re stuck that you have a problem with, the more you’re Freer of it, and the more you relax, the more that you feel more present. And, and then eventually, he realized he totally forgot his sister, in a longer had an issue with that ball. And the happiness was basically gone.

Rick Archer: Interesting. So there’s a sort of a psychotherapeutic quality to what you’re doing with people. And I guess, I mean, how did how long did it take you to suss out that this issue with his sister was was important that it didn’t come right up.

Jim Dreaver: It came kind of up in the first few sessions. And then, you know, took a few more sessions to he had a series of 10 sessions with me. And that in and I’ve done a lot of psychotherapy myself in the past, when I was before I woke up, I remember doing psychotherapy, we’re working with a psychotherapist on my relationship with my second wife and I actually had experience of working with a psychotherapist and it was to exploring was I wanted to divorce my second wife, which I ultimately did. And I remember and I said was John Klein and absorbing his teaching. And then suddenly, I found myself crying in the midst of of psychotherapy session, and the thought of leaving my wife and, and then I had this experience, I kind of shift back my awareness and I was able to observe myself crying, I as consciousness was able to observe Jim Reaver, the character crying, weeping. And that was a moment of epiphany. Because I realized, well, I’m not my story, then I’m not my tears. I am a consciousness, which the tears in the story appear and disappear. That was an illuminating moment. In my journey.

Rick Archer: Yeah, a little bit of a shift in topic. But um, you mentioned, you know, it’s been about 20 years since your awakening. And we’ve talked about residues and we’re working through residues as they come up. If you look back over the last 20 years, do you is there something much kind of more refined or more rich or complete in some way about your your natural state now than there was, let’s say, a week after your awakening has it? Has it continued to evolve in some way?

Jim Dreaver: Absolutely.

Rick Archer: Can you describe that

Jim Dreaver: and certainly as a deeper, more mature, richer, more clean, more clear, feel words that the words are right more right on? More embodiment I With a more embodiment,

Rick Archer: yeah. Would it be true to say that as far as your your innermost true nature is concerned, that can’t really change because it’s not changing in its nature. But the you just were use the word embodiment, but the embodiment of it, the living of it, the expression of it through your mind, body senses, intellect, words, all those things, that there’s plenty of room for continued improvement or refinement in those dimensions.

Jim Dreaver: And so a, right it is, it’s, it’s not a body, it’s expressed more cleanly more impeccably. Yeah. And so that will continue to refine and evolve, but the, the knowing of maximum nature, which is being my true nature. You know, once you know yourself as consciousness, that’s, you know, yourself as the universe. That’s the realization You are the universe expressing through mice by these eyes, just as everybody else’s universe expressing through their eyes. If everybody realized over the universe, expressing through their eyes, dealing with their heart, sensing with their body, listening with your ears, then we’ll have a world which would be truly universally harmonious, cooperative, working together to solve out the problems of living the challenges of living.

Rick Archer: Yeah, I hear people say that, that use that expression, I’m the universe, but it’s like, to my mind that the universe is a manifest thing. There’s planets and stars and galaxies and all that stuff. And so are you somehow saying that you are all those cosmic, you know, events and bodies expressing through this human body? Or do you really mean more like, universal awareness? Exactly, yeah, that that expresses through this body as it does as it manifests as the moon or as the sun or as expresses through the the antelope or whatever? Yeah,

Jim Dreaver: yeah. Thank you for that correction. I will bring that to my attention. Yes, I’m the universal awareness. Right. We are the universal awareness.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay. Consciousness. Yeah. And

Jim Dreaver: once you know yourself as the universe important part of my teaching is that once you once you realize your true nature, you realize you’re bigger than anything that can happen to you even your own death that’s how you can be at peace with it. Even the worst pain you’re bigger than that. You as universal awareness and infinite you right? The universe is infinite vast.

Rick Archer: Yeah. I think that’s important. I mean, that you read stories of people who’ve had nd ease near death experiences. And generally speaking after having had such an experience, they’re not morbid about it, but they kind of like look forward to death because they realize it’s not the end of the story. And it’s actually a beautiful thing. Not a scary thing. There’s the you know, this this essential nature of what a ham can’t be exterminated. So I mean, what a much nicer way to live than, than in a state of Ohio. I only got 10 years left and then I’m gonna utterly cease to exist.

Jim Dreaver: It’s a nice story. I agree. Yeah. But still a story, right? I mean, I write about subject death a minute, okay. Right about the subject getting into strobing in your life, too. But the you know, we’ve heard many stories of what happens as we die, right? Reincarnation, golden light, a tunnel where you meet your loved ones have passed over. And these are all nice stories, and you can choose whatever story you want to believe. But ultimately, when you truly free you let go the story. And you’re just here now. And you’ll you live here. Now. You’re always living in this moment here now.

Rick Archer: Yeah, so I agree that those are stories, they may be true stories. I mean, maybe that stuff does happen after you die and so on. But it’s not by virtue of believing in those stories that you’re going to get any real freedom from fear. It’s by actually experientially knowing yourself to be that which is beyond change. Right? Right. Exactly.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah. That’s the that’s the key. What doesn’t change they there’s a website used to be called Nevernight here.com. Oh, yeah. Richard Miller. Yeah, he was down. Last I heard he was in Thailand living with the younger much younger Taiwan. Yeah, anyway, so live are not here the scribes totally one Enlightenment is Enlightenment is awakening to never what has never not here which is awareness of consciousness we are everything else comes and goes. Everything else changes everything.

Rick Archer: The Gita says the the Unreal has no being the real never ceases to be beautiful. There is a tendency for people to say well There is, you know, I’ve heard you say in your, your book, or maybe in your talks, you know, you look within, you can’t actually find any little nugget of a personal identity that’s in there kind of like a puppeteer pulling strings. And there is there is a whole group actually, which leads people through a process where they, they kind of see that, and then they kind of proclaim the person to be liberated, because they’ve seen that they can’t find any personal entity inside. Personally, I think there’s a bit more to it than just, you know, going through an intellectual process. But there are there are also people who reject the notion of reincarnation and so on. Because they say that, for that to be a real phenomenon, there would have to be an entity, which would, you know, move from one body to the next. And yet all the ancient traditions say that most of them say that well, that’s actually what happens. So, yeah, I don’t personally, I don’t see an incompatibility between those different perspectives. I think it’s a matter of where you take your stand. But I’ve said enough, now, let’s let you respond. Yeah.

Jim Dreaver: So I personally think if I was to choose a story, reincarnation is that story. Because I’ve actually had two experiences of reincarnation, before I woke up past life kind of things. Yeah. Right. Very powerful, very real life lived through a nautical regression, that 40 years ago and experienced to past lives, which made things I was struggling with in this life. It made perfect sense. Yeah. So the fact is that, as a human beings we incarnate, right, I have either one child, and now I got a stepdaughter. And so when human to a male and female come together, make love and they have children have children, then that’s incarnation. Yeah. Now, there’s no, once you wake up, you realize there’s no personal incarnates. It’s just in physical incarnation, biological inclination, which is, goes on for, has gone on for, since the beginning of human history. So that continues, but you and so when this body dies, Jim river dies. You know, he’ll he’ll live on through my son, this energy of there was kind of me and was driven like, right, my son, bears some resemblance to me and his mother, and then he can zone unique patterns.

Rick Archer: There may be more to it than that, though. You know, like you were saying earlier on that, you know, you you have an ego, but you are not your ego, you know, you, you, you there’s a sort of a, an eye sense that you have. And you know, that in Sanskrit they call it the Jeeva, that there’s there’s some subtle entity, some subtle body that outlives the physical body and actually takes takes birth in a new one. Like you, you experienced past past lives when you were regressed. And so, I don’t think that’s incompatible with saying that, you know, that’s not ultimately what you are that Jeeva that reincarnates, you are ultimately, the universal awareness, as we were discussing a few minutes ago, it’s just a matter of sort of being a little bit more multi dimensional about it. And actually, the woman I interviewed last week, Aisha Salem, she’s most of her instruction, she says, and she really quite profound person has been from, you know, Tibetan Buddhist masters who died hundreds and even 1000s of years ago, who are somehow living on some level pulling, you know, intervening and guiding people on this plane of existence. So, you know, I don’t want to get too esoteric on us here. But I’m open to those kinds of possibilities. And there’s a tendency with some, some people to just brush them all away and say, Now, that’s all just sort of imagination.

Jim Dreaver: Ya know, like, you know, we live in a world where the service multiplicity of dimensions and experiences and the more awakened free you are, the more you’re open to everything. Yeah, that’s, like ego for example. A little bit of a gingery for ego is in my son Adam graver. I mean, because they so the ego patterns, maybe that’s how it carries through.

Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. Well, the Christ said the sins of the fathers or visited upon the sons or some such thing, actually had experiences on long meditation courses of experiencing my parents within me so vividly. It’s like, the whole flavor of their personality was seen within my own makeup, you know, and it was kind of working through that. and dwelling on it now.

Jim Dreaver: Right, right. We’ve, my father was a great snooker player and loved to play poker. And my son is now a professional poker player, amongst other things. And so I was good at poker too. And a snooker when I was younger. And that I was looking for the thing that I wanted to do most I just was always had this quality of I just wanted to find the one thing that I could excel at and excel at that I could do many other good things well, but I wanted to find what Excel that this is what I’m doing now. Yeah. And that. So this question of, you know, gambling lineage is there to the family dharma? Yeah, exactly. I’m sure. My father’s father was probably the same, you know.

Rick Archer: Interesting. All right. So, your book, and your story begin your life. This one is sort of quickly breezed through the chapters. I read about half of it. Every week. It’s a new book, and I get as far as I can through each one. And I was really enjoying this one. So if we, if we read through it, let me just read the chapter titles and you interrupt me if you feel like there’s something in that chapter that we haven’t talked about yet, but you’d like to elaborate a little bit on. Okay, so, introduction, the practice of freedom, chapter one, be present with your experience. And you mentioned the practice of meditation. Chapter Two, notice a story. We’ve talked about that quite a bit. Chapter Three, see the truth chapter for questioning this me. Chapter Five, or what happened here? Oh, yeah, crushing this me. And in there, there’s the practice of self inquiry and the practice of freeing. Chapter Five awakening to freedom. Chapter Six, the power of love.

Jim Dreaver: Okay, okay, good. Let’s discuss a lot. So, yes. So, I have a saying, awareness without love, is drying, empty. Love without awareness is messy and emotional. Nice. When the two come together, we dance and freedom, joy and harmony. It’s beautiful. Did

Rick Archer: you read that? Yeah,

Jim Dreaver: I read that. Very nice. So it’s a and this is the dimension that Tanya my sweetheart supporter, my wife. She’s bought the love dimension i because I’ve always been kind of intellectual, detached, you know, kind of my psychological makeup was kind of standoffish. And she’s really bought this dimension, a whole dimension of love and beauty into my life, which is the most loving person I’ve ever met. And so it’s a it’s great. And so I’ve really opened up this dimension of love. And you know, love is what it’s all about and human relationships. It’s about love and kindness and generosity and compassion. And so, awareness. As I said, the more aware we are, the more present we are, the more our heart opens, the more they’re free of our story we are, the more our heart opens to love them. All those wonderful, warm and juicy things cut woven cuddly as I subscribe. I’ve never been directly a warm and cuddly person myself, but I got I love to cuddle and snuggle with Tanya.

Rick Archer: That’s great. I’ve been thinking about what I might talk about at the science and non duality conference in the fall. And you know, when you think of the title science and non duality, both of those have or could have a rather dry, heartless connotation. You know, you think of the scientists with the pens in the pocket protector and the glasses, you know, and even non dual there been a lot of non dual teachers, they’re kind of emotionless and flat. And in yet, the greatest sort of scientists like Einstein and Niels Bohr and others were these deep mystics, you know, who had really kind of a kind of almost a religious appreciation or a mystical appreciation of for the universe, and whatever intelligence is governing it, and that also the greatest leaders in the non dual field people like Ramana Shankara Nisargadatta, were great devotees as well as being sort of these brilliant clear intellects, you know, that wrote devotional poetry and sang devotional songs and, and all kinds of stuff. So there’s definitely that dimension and I’ve noticed that it kind of develops a little bit sequentially sometimes where people will be kind of in a stage which is sort of flat and non dual and but without a whole lot of heart. And then the heart thing will begin to dawn and I just want to read a brief thing here. Adi Shanti, and my friend Francis Bennett are going to be giving a talk up in San Rafael and towards the end of March, and from the excerpt from announcing that talk, they say this postmodern Western movement of non dual spirituality may be in the process of a kind of second wave expression, which may perhaps be more heart centered than the first. That is, they will consider the idea and Francis will consider together a more devotional and integrative based spirituality that’s more appreciative of embodied human values. And it’s more open to an orientation of service and social justice in a world in crisis. So I kind of see that trend happening in the so called non dual community where there’s a kind of a heartiness, that’s beginning to bubble up more and more.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, beautiful. That’s a beautiful attempt. That sounds like

Rick Archer: yeah, you probably go on either audit shanties or Francis’s websites, and you’ll see an announcement of the thing. It’s on March 26, or so up in Santa Rosa. And of course, if you’re watching our interview, two years from now, forget about it. This is 2015. But there’ll be other things. Alright, so what more would you like to say about love, I kind of cut you off and started talking a lot. But

Jim Dreaver: one of my favorite quotes is from Robert Ramakrishna, actually, the mind will get you into the court, courtyard of the Beloved. Only the heart will allow you to enter the bedroom.

Rick Archer: Nice. Well, that’s kind of kind of like what we’re saying here. Isn’t that? Yeah. Yeah, there’s an initial awakening that may have something to do with the mind. In fact, speaking of audio, again, He always spoke in terms of head heart gut in terms of state stages of awakening. Right. Nice.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah. So it’s a, that’s probably the emphasis of my new book, because it’s the energy of love that tongue is what my life and helped me awaken to. And but but my journey was, I had to become free in order to find how to open

Rick Archer: it think most people do, you know, I think if if there’s not that foundation of deep freedom, then then as as they say, it’s sort of like a small, trying to rise up in great waves of love is like a small pond trying to rise up, rise up in great waves, you can’t really do it, it just stirs up the mud at the bottom, you need to be an ocean for the, you know, for the tidal waves to really start to rise,

Jim Dreaver: right? So along those lines, I say now that once you’ve found freedom, what is it to do it to love and serve

Rick Archer: beautiful, which is another great point, I mean, to love and serve, you have the sense in your own life that you’ve more and more become like an instrument of the Divine. If we want to use that word that you’re you’re just sort of like, you know, you went through a preparatory stage, and then you reached a certain degree of realization. And now it’s like you’ve given your life over to some some greater purpose which through which, or on behalf of which you are kind of helping to raise world consciousness.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, in my own small way. I am. Yes, I definitely feel

Rick Archer: that. Yeah. I think a lot of people feel that who are sort of working in a spiritual capacity like yours that, that there. It’s not about them, obviously. And it’s there. They’re kind of serving as a conduit, or an instrument of some sort.

Jim Dreaver: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful.

Rick Archer: Nice. Okay, so in your in the love chapter, there are some practices for forgiveness and practices for eye gazing. And then chapter seven is creating a new story for your life. Anything in there? We want to

Jim Dreaver: Yes, I want to talk about that. Because because we still have a story. And we still, as we get free and free, we get clearer and clearer, a mind actually becomes much quieter, because we’re not telling ourselves any stories anymore. Because we’ve seen through this i Who’s the storyteller. So a mind is actually about 80%, quieter. And I have long periods with no thoughts at all. I’m just here now present, aware. And then I’ll use my mind to if I want to communicate or create something. And so I wrote about the power of intention in my book, in my love the last chapter, the power of manifestation or intention using intention to this book or the new, this new book, okay. This book, the industry, the practice of manifestation. Yeah, yeah. So the, so the more we know in our mind, the more we can use our mind as a powerful tool, because that’s how I remember Eric Schiffman, a friend of mine from LA, who is well known in the yoga world is yoga teacher. He, he said to me once like 30 years ago, the mind is the ultimate toy. The mind is the ultimate toy. So when we, we can really use that toy of the mind to create with and bring into our lives what we want to need. So, for example, I use the power of attorney and to heal myself from my strokes, right when I had this realization that I don’t want to die or that I had no fear, but I do I want to live and yes, I want to live. I remember my son when he came to live with me in LA when I was living in LA about moved down to LA in 22,008 2011, he came and live with me it was he was a mess. It was directed to weed, when he, he would drink alcohol, you get drunk and violent, and I was the only one that could handle it because I was awake, and I love my son. So I gave him space. And eventually I realized that he needed to what he needed for me was to trust him, I need I need is a computer programmer, now professional poker player. And so I learned to do that I trusted him completely. And eventually, after you began, he got sober. Stuff is with use of weeds. Alcohol has been out two years sober, clean and sober. He did a complete 180 in his life. And I visualize that I use the power of intention, I visualize my son. Every morning, I would go and do exercises for my stroke recovery. And I visualize my son healthy, happy and successful. I did that for years, long before he moved in with me, because he was struggling before them. And then I dropped the visualization, I figured that the universe now knew what I wanted. And it was clear and I stopped visualizing. And then lo and behold, a year or two later, he gets clean and sober. I visualized the same thing. I wanted to meet my perfect partner, my ideal partner, beautiful on the inside people on the outside spiritual. And because I was single for years after the stroke, and so visualized, meeting her of the head, this visualization in mind from this intention, when I was doing my morning exercise at night, I would drop it. And then again, I finally dropped it off completely because I figured the universe knew what I wanted. And then a couple of years later, I was teaching a workshop here in Santa Barbara. In 2012, July 2012, I met her I met this beautiful, younger woman, Tanya, and we’ve been together now for almost three years. And how much younger is she? If you don’t mind me asking 25 years younger? Yeah, she says she’s 43, I’m 68 We have a beautiful relationship. However, there are challenges, but the love between us is so deep that ultimately love conquers all right? Love heals all wounds, Love heals all challenges.

Rick Archer: That’s nice. And this is a good point, I think because, you know, visualization and all is a popular thing. And people put little post it notes on the refrigerator, on they’re shaving mirror and so on. And there’s that movie, The Secret. And but what you’re saying, I think is a kind of a refinement of that idea, which would be good for people to understand, which is that it’s not enough to just have the desire or the intention or the wish, it’s important to, to entertain it from a much deeper level of awareness, you know, from a liberated realize state, it has much greater potency than if you just sort of entertained it from some agitated, bound, you know, fear based kind of condition. It’s kind of like, you can think of the well physical creation, the, the physical level of this book has a certain weight to it, I could drop it, or something, the chemical or molecular level has has more power late into it, I could burn it, and it would release a lot of energy, the atomic level could probably, you know, fuel the entire United States for a year if we could release all that energy. So suddenly levels are more powerful and, and what you’re suggesting is that, you know, having had this realization 20 years ago now, when you visualize something, it’s from a deeper level and it has much the arrow flies a lot further because you’ve pulled it back on the boat, you know. And also I think dropping is important because like you say, you know the universe got the ideas are rad already. I know you need a partner, got the message like he could drop it will take care of it.

Jim Dreaver: He said beautifully said I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s the essence of my chapter seven. Creating the story for life, you have more power, and more focus, you have more intention. Werner Earhart said back in the 70s you get what you intend. So the power of intention is extremely valuable and that’s how we know everything human made in the tiniest microchip to the biggest jumbo jet and everything between came was born the idea in someone’s mind and their attention. So this is how to use the power of intention clean and clear and focus in a very powerful way.

Rick Archer: And incidentally, the idea of dropping that the intention once you have entertained it is harkens back to the Yoga Sutras or Putana. He talks about the process of Sonoma, which is, you know, you have an intention, and then you just let it kind of fall back into Samadhi fall back into the self. And, you know, then the result comes forth. It’s not through doggedly sort of hammering away at the intention, but by entertaining it, and then just letting go, and then just kind of transcending on it

Jim Dreaver: beautifully. Here, we’ll say.

Rick Archer: Great. So we’ve gone through the chapters of this book, and now you’ve written a new one, or you’re in the process. Yes. Still still writing. So want to give us a sneak peek about that one?

Jim Dreaver: Well, it’s the working title is the most powerful realization of all, and it’s really about the see that the understanding that clears your mind, opens your heart and frees you from suffering. And to understand that you’re not your mind you have a mind that you’re not your mind.

Rick Archer: How does that differ than what you’ve been saying in this book,

Jim Dreaver: it’s just same thing, but just a deeper, clearer, more way, just a more compelling way. And maybe, maybe some people will be moved by, into story beginning of life more, but I’m a writer, I started as a writer, I, you know, that’s why I went to Vietnam. I wanted to be a novelist by like Ernest Hemingway, and it started out writing novels. And then I had this health crisis and which sitting on my spiritual path as I began writing books about Man’s Search for Meaning, which is, of course, my own search for meaning in life. So I’ve always been a writer. So what a writer does is write books.

Rick Archer: Good. And writers tend to evolve as they go along and get better at it and you know, go deeper into it, and so on. So that’s great.

Jim Dreaver: In particularly if they’re on the Path of Awakening. Yeah. Right. I mean, a lot of novelists like Ernest Hemingway, for example, weren’t on the Path of Awakening and he’s self destructed.

Rick Archer: Yeah. But those who were, you know, like the American transcendentalists and people like that there’s, there’s always a new horizon and a sort of a deeper level that you can touch upon.

Jim Dreaver: Right. And speaking of New Horizon, the more we awake, we are free we are about story. The more we live in the present here now. And the more we realize that every moment is new, every moment is No.

Rick Archer: Good. Okay. So on a practical note, what are the various ways in which people can engage with you, most of the people are going to be living far away from where you live. You mentioned Skype conversations. You traveled to Australia, New Zealand, you said in my introduction, if people are interested, but they happen to be living in Czechoslovakia or something like that, what should they do?

Jim Dreaver: They should email me for my website, and and then I’m going to be doing an online Satsang series starting shortly. So like a live streaming kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It may be already I’d like to do a video, but I not sure whether that will work better or not? I don’t know. But I’ll do an online Satsang probably once a week. And so people can get onto that. And I’d like that to be a worldwide thing. Of course it can be on the internet.

Rick Archer: Yeah. Great. So you’ll announce that on your website. I presume? I will. I will. Okay. And do you have a thing on your website where people can put in their email address to be notified of such Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Plus, there’s, there’s a quite a few hours of YouTube videos and audios and videos on your website that people can listen to. Yeah. And there’s your book, and I’ll be linking to that. And any other books you’ve written from your page on batgap.com? I suppose that pretty much covers it. Right? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, on your page on batgap.com. I’ll link it’s just Jim Jim driver.com, Dr. EA VR, right. But I’ll link to that in case, you know, somebody’s driving their car and they forget what it is go there and also link to the Amazon pages of Jim’s book. And anything else in particular that we should announce before we get to more general things and conclude.

Jim Dreaver: Yeah, that covers it. Yeah, that covers that. Rick, I just want to say you did a great job.

Rick Archer: Thank you. I love doing

Jim Dreaver: you’re doing a great job.

Rick Archer: I love doing it. Like you were saying you know you kind of do what you love and that’s what you’re best at. You know that the thing you love. I also do, do you know I have a day job but this is where I really kind of like all the cylinders start to fire.

Jim Dreaver: I can see you you’re shining now you’re, you’re radiating. Yeah, it

Rick Archer: really has that effect. I met I come out from these interviews and my wife says, Well, you look like you’ve been out jogging or something. Color in your face. It really kind of wakes you up, especially talking to somebody like you. So let me just make a few concluding remarks. This obviously is part of an ongoing series, this interview. They’re about 280 of now. And they’ll continue to be others. So if you’d like to be notified every time a new one is posted, go to batgap.com. And sign up for the email notification thing. You can also subscribe on YouTube and YouTube will notify you when a new video goes up. There’s an audio podcast of this so you can listen on your iPod or whatever. There’s a page there, which gives you the options for signing up for that. There’s a Donate button, which we rely upon people clicking in order to be able to do this and continue to expand it. There is what else is there? That’s about it. Explore the menus on BatGap, that the past interviews are archived in various ways. There’s an announcement for the future interviews and so on, but poke around. There’s not it’s not too complicated. You’ll get it. So, so thanks a lot, Jim. Really appreciate having had the opportunity to talk with you. Thank you, Rick. Yeah, next week is a I’m going to do an interview with a local friend of mine who has a very interesting story and the week after that is Hamid Ali or H Shama. Sushumna. Sure. Yeah. I’ll be interviewing him for the second time next week. I really enjoy talking to him. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Jim. And we’ll see you next time. Thank you.