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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Mandy solc. Hello Mandy. I interviewed Maddie about two years ago, and two years ago, February. And for one thing, there was a technical problem and her side of the video didn’t come through. So have still shots and Mandy whole time this this time, we’re gonna have an animated Mandy real thing. And she bought a cup few weeks ago, Mandy sent me an email, which kind of really caught my attention. It’s a little long, but if you don’t mind, I’ll read it. She said, since during that interview, I had a complete change of position which caused me to reverse a lot of the things I was saying at the time, I really want to have a chance to put that right. Because of many awakenings I had I really believed liberation had happened. And it turned out not to be the case. In fact, sometimes and in my case, awakenings can hinder any chance of liberation, because you actually stopped looking and think you are liberated when you aren’t, and then start talking about it too early. At this point in reading email, I didn’t know whether to say how will your nananana I told you so because I’ve been harping on this point for the last three years of these interviews. But let me continue the egoic statement, there’s nothing you can do was what I was saying at the time, because it seemed to be my experience. But then I got deeply into self inquiry and spent hundreds of hours over months and months in inquiry meditation between two to three hours a day. My passion for freedom was like a laser beam of white fire until there was a solid breakthrough, I realized that this is the surefire way of getting to the root of the unchangeable. From this place, there is no oscillating, nothing to wear off. But by saying that there’s nothing you can do, it keeps the listener imprisoned, it suggests that there can be the spiritual haves and have nots. But how could that ever be a part of love where no one and nothing is excluded, and it is everything, I’m holding my hand up and admitting that I was a typical non duality teacher who was coming out with some egoic and misguided statements. But I have had a complete 360 degree turn around. Gosh, I even used to criticize the use of self inquiry, which is the only way I began to find real freedom. I’m delighted to say that it has been a it is a great response. I’ve had loads of emails from people who have genuinely who are genuinely relieved to hear that a non duality, quote, teacher has changed from saying there’s nothing you can do to Yes, there is something you can do. And best of all, many have started self inquiring, which is all I wanted to do just gently suggest that they start giving us a go if they have a true desire for knowing themselves. Anyway, should you be happy to give me another interview, then that’d be wonderful. Help me spread the word and assist in perhaps opening the bars of the cages of those who are imprisoned into believing there’s nothing they can do. Unless Grace happens to drop in their laps, just by chance. I see so many unhappy, depressed people who are lost after going to some non duality meetings. And I’ve gotten many emails telling me this, they are made to believe that self inquiry stirs up the mind and amplifies the personality. When all the time it is really the very opposite. So then they have nothing to do but live in a kind of waiting consciousness, you know what I mean? So that was great, Mandy, really nice summary. You could have set yourself wide rather than the reading email, but I thought I’d kind of just get it out there. And we can discuss this for the next couple of hours if you’d like.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, yeah. Well, I am, you know, people have written to me, in the past sort of saying, oh, you know, but if I don’t have the big car accident or fall off the cliff, or, you know, the big awakening, does that mean I’m never going to be you know, free? You know, and I always said that, no, you don’t have to have those things to happen. It can just happen. But that there was nothing else to say after that, because you see these awakenings. I mean, the thing about awakening is they wake you up, that’s the Sure. But that doesn’t mean that you stay in that state as as we know. That that can be the real confusion, you see because it can last a while and it can mimic freedom. It can mimic limit liberation. You know, the one where just briefly where you know, I did have this motorbike accident And, and, and it looked to everybody else like I was there that I was sort of going up and up and up. And suddenly I could see through the buildings and see through the people. And you know, realize that nothing was solid, nothing was real as I’d taken it to be. So of course, you know, when I came out of that, and I’ve completely unharmed after this accident, but that stayed a long time with me, because you can’t forget something like that. However, the abiding in that it could because this is strange thing, just because you know it because you’ve seen it, it doesn’t mean that you are immune from the trap of the mind that’s going round and round and round. So that’s why awakening isn’t the same as liberation, it just wakes you up. That simply that what you thought and took to be so real, isn’t real, it has never been real, that that seeing is isn’t enough. And then, you know, I had quite a few more of these awakenings. And I’d started going to lots of non duality talks and sessions. And it all confirmed everything. And so this did seem to me my experience, because it happened to me. You know, I thought, Oh, that’s it now. But the sense of joy, that one is supposed to feel in liberation wasn’t there. And also, there was quite a lot of egotism, you know, when I look back at it now, and I wouldn’t know this, if I hadn’t started looking through self inquiry there you take yourself to be what you think you are at the time. So the egotism was that I felt that, oh, I know it all. Now, as I’ve seen it all, that there’s nothing else to know. So, so you stop there. And then, you know, and I started talking about it, you see, and, you know, did interviews and meetings and stuff. And you know, I believe completely what I was saying. But it just came to a sort of a deadness in it. Yes, that’s right. Yeah. And a lot of people talk about this, as you know, who’ve gone to lots of non duality teachers as sort of this what there’s something feels like it’s still missing, because the joy isn’t there. There’s quite a lot of ego there. Because you, you you stopped looking and maybe you go to a non duality meeting, and you sit at the back because you think I don’t need to be at the front, you know, because I know. You’re not You’re not aware that you think like that. But actually, no, you are thinking like that. And then and then after a few years, a sort of like a kind of a just a dullness set in a depression and the aliveness of freedom. Well, I wasn’t free. That’s, that’s the thing you see took a lot of unraveling to see it. And then I think I just watched one Mooji video, which somebody sort of said, Oh, have you seen this? And even at the time, they said it to me, there was a rising of ego there was oh, you know, a guru with a funny name.
Mandi Solk: No, you know, I thought, well, I’ll watch it. And I just couldn’t dispute the absolute perfect sense. It resonated all the way through me. And then I just there was his complete otter. true humility second, because I didn’t realize that I just didn’t know anything and that had the arrogance to stop looking. This is the thing that was writing to you bow that a lot of non duality teachers, they even misunderstand it. The point of it, as so did I because I used to knock it I’m embarrassed to say, Well, I’m not embarrassed to say because it’s part of what happened, but I was embarrassed when I I was embarrassed when I saw it now I’m not
Rick Archer: Yeah, we’re all bozos on this bus.
Mandi Solk: Yeah
Mandi Solk: yeah, so So what you know you could be a bozo every mobile was Oh, yeah. So anyway, recently, you know, I was watching. Anyway, famous non duality teacher, and it was sort of like openly knocking and really almost making a fool of a picture of Ramana my partially that happened to be in that room. And I just it is just kind of the idea. And the reason that he had for knocking, the whole self inquiry thing was to say that, you know, well, who’s looking who’s doing the looking, you know, as if in doing the looking, you know, like I said, In the letter, it amplifies sense of personality, but it’s not the personality because there is no personality. So how could that be doing the looking, you know, it’s this spark of divine fire, that get gets brighten, and it wants, it only lives to see itself.
Rick Archer: Like, I always say, you know, those who knock spiritual practice, because they say it amplifies the sense of a practice, or should also stop eating, because it amplifies the sense of an eater, you know, they really kind of be honest about it. And, you know, an effective spiritual practice, and there are many, but one such as you’ve been engaged in recently, you know, from the outside or just from conceptually, one might think, Oh, it’s just going to reinforce the sense of a doer. But if it’s really effective, it does quite the opposite.
Mandi Solk: I think, I think until you look, you you don’t know, you don’t see yet. First of all, you’ve got to see that through all the layers that you put on yourself that you didn’t even know you had, like the leaving, you’re liberated when you’re not liberated, you know, and you’ve got to get to a place of fearlessness, so that you can really be honest, because, really, like, if I’m being honest with you about, you know, I have thought that I was liberated, and that hadn’t been the case. But I would have know that if I hadn’t looked. So first of all, it’s like in talking to you, or anybody that sees this, I am I am talking to myself, you know, it’s just seeing it for what it is and seeing through the incredible subtlety and the traps of the ego. That’s what the looking does. I mean, of course, there are lots and lots of different practices. And over you know, my apparent lifetime, I’ve done lots of practices. Now I’ve been a Christian scientists, I’ve been a Buddhist, I’ve been to three different types of Buddhists, they’re even trying to be a good stick, you know, like Japanese Buddhism, the Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, very nice, I’m not looking any of it, it’s all great. You know, that’s what I was in. And then I was in, I can’t remember the other few different schools of Buddhism, I was in another school of Buddhism. And then and then that one, actually, that was forgotten. I was training to be a teacher.
Rick Archer: Very effective one, it just kind of wiped out your memory, you know?
Mandi Solk: Oh, you know, for pashmina and TM for many years. So, I did quite quite a lot, by no means all the 1000s. But I did quite a lot enough to be able to say, well, I can only say of this perspective that I never found anything as cutthroat as direct inquiry, because you are literally looking back at source at the substratum of your being and seeing, seeing what it is, or who is the seer. And who is the seer of that. It’s going back and back and back. And it takes no prisoners, everything is seen everything comes to light, that can’t be any further lying to yourself. And that’s why to me, Well, it’s, it’s, it’s just Well, great. You know, and since that, and it cuts through to seeing, I mean, I did spend a lot and lots of hours at it. You know, I think that you have to read it. And I know lots of people say it, maybe some people say the opposite. But all I can say is that unless you’ve got to want it so much, and how you know that you want it that much just because the world falls away. It really does. In that, you know, you’re not interested in that. Well, the next moment, really, I was gonna say things in life, like looking forward to events or anything, he just not even bothered, because the only moment you know is this moment and then and then when I talk like this, I know it comes back to how people talk when they’re non duality teachers but the truth is the truth no matter what, who says it, but it’s how you sort of get to see that truth that we really, you know, tackling I think here Well,
Rick Archer: I’ve several comments on all this. You know, before we started recording you were asking me, you know, how do I keep talking to all these people who are basically saying the same thing, but I don’t quite see them as all saying the same thing. I I feel like each one has a different flavour and some are quite radically different than others. But my attitude, which is why I’m comfortable doing this is that you know, as I don’t know if this is what he meant by it, but Jesus said, In my Father’s house, there are many mansions. There, there’s so many different. You know, it’s like everybody in the world is on a spiritual path as far, as far as I’m concerned, all 7 billion of us. And each one is unique. And it’s natural for different people to sort of go along different lines. And, of course, they’re going to be in groups and similarities and so on. And so I started, I find the variety interesting. That’s one, that’s one thing. Another thing is with regard to your self inquiry thing, I wouldn’t present that necessarily as a universal practice, because I don’t think everyone is quite ready for it. I think that, and traditionally, this is the understanding to both Shanker and Rama said that, you know, you might need to do various other things before getting to the point at which self inquiry became effective. So it’s just like, you know, school or, or sports or anything else, you might need to go through certain stages before getting to a certain level of proficiency at which such and such, you know, becomes possible for you. Go ahead, you’re gonna respond to that? Well,
Mandi Solk: I was just gonna say, I couldn’t agree more, because I did.
Rick Archer: Yeah, look at all the things you did that, yeah. And it’s not like you were just fooling around yet. All those things had their influence and their value. You know,
Mandi Solk: I was completely engaged with them all, you know,
Rick Archer: one thing led to the next. Yeah, absolutely.
Mandi Solk: I mean, you know, there’s all this talk about whether people should be prepared or not, because for some people, we all know that we know that, that some people, not that many, but for some people, the identification with the self has just fallen away in one single thing, and it can and off, it has been people that have had no spiritual background
Rick Archer: that they are aware of.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, well, that they’re aware
Rick Archer: of why you could have a whole lot of spiritual, you know, irons in the fire that are finally bearing fruit.
Mandi Solk: You see, you’re absolutely right there. Because let’s take the well, the guy that I know the guy that I met, who, who I talked about on the last that you know, the guy that was a Docker, I was saying, I’ve met a guy that I listen to that. Yes, yes. So and he was, you know, he, he drunk a lot on everything. And he said that he was on the spiritual path before that, like you were saying, what we term a spiritual path and what is also to the University of life, you know, I mean, like you say, every atom, everything in life is a spiritual path. It’s just that we keep making this delineation between what is spiritual, and what isn’t spiritual. I mean, God doesn’t even have the word spiritual, probably, I mean, I don’t even know what it is anymore. But I mean, his, he had an amazing presence, this guy, and, and a wonderful way of communicating with people. So he has something that he probably didn’t realize he had. Or it didn’t go on a spiritual lead journey. But yes, like we say, you know, God, which is the eternal mystery, yes, that which we are, but it’s so unknown, that we don’t know all the trillions of ways that there are. So that’s why we can’t say, you know, this is the best way and it’s the only way you’re all I was kneeling is that for me, it was like a laser beam of Fire of, of wanting to rid myself of whatever I perceive yourself to be. And and inquiry was was like a red hot poker, just sort of stirring it all up burning bit by bit, every everything that I believed it was a Monday, you know, like, something would come up that I thought I’d be surprised that lots of things that tend to give an example cost when you want when there isn’t when
Rick Archer: Well, I mean, let me respond to that. Maybe you’ll think of something. When I listen to your conscious TV interview, you know, I I kind of put myself in the in the shoes of various listeners, and I thought, you know, some people gonna think, yeah, well, obviously this lady doesn’t have to work. She gets to just sort of sit around all day and self inquire, you know, I’m busy. I’ve got three kids, I’ve got a job, you know, and does that mean I’m inferior or something i And also, I don’t feel like I have this burning fire of desire. Sure, I’d like it but I’ve got a lot on my plate and and I’m sort of distracted. So you know. I guess my point is that you got to meet people where they are and and And what what is feasible or effective for one person isn’t necessarily going to be for another. And but that’s not really it’s not a really, we’re not doing quality comparisons. It’s just we’re, as I say, We’re all in the path. And you really can’t say that somebody who’s all caught up in, you know, responsibilities and concerns is less spiritual than somebody who has been dedicating their their full attention to self inquiry or something, you just don’t know. That person could be lightyears ahead of you, for all you know. But yeah. And hoping and hoping about the fiery desire that that too, can be stoked. I mean, maybe somebody just got a little spark and they don’t have the fiery desire, it’s not going to suddenly become a conflagration. It’s something that can be cultured, you know, you put on a little bit bigger twig and move the bigger twig and then some sticks and then some this and next thing, you know, you do have a big fire going, but one thing does lead to the next. And so if a person feels like, I’m just a chump, you know, I’m so I, you know, I’m so interested in material things, and I’m not ready to be like Mandy, who doesn’t care about anything else. But this, don’t worry about it, you know, just do what you can do do, what do you feel motivated to do? And you’re not going to necessarily end up losing all your possessions and being disinterested in renouncing your children, or I think that that’s not necessary in order for self realization to occur.
Mandi Solk: I think, well, those things were never necessary, you know, to drop those, those things. It’s, it’s more like when you when you feel your toes burning near the fire, it’s more like your opinions, your judgments, your memories, and, and, and how you perceive your friendships. And those things just start to those things start to burn up. But, you know, I completely do agree with you again, you know, it’s like, what’s that mean? Is that the fire thing, that’s just been my experience, you know, it’s just been this experience here. But what you know, because because people Skype me, and email me, and they do, you know, meetings and stuff, I see people who they’re there, the point is, they’re there. Now, they, some of them might not have very much attention and, and sort of find it boring or difficult or whatever. But, you know, I think that the fact that there are some things get in, if they walk out, that’s, that’s fine, you know, and it can be stoked, because, well, when I started in all my sort of search, if you like, I wasn’t prepared to spend hours at it at all. But somehow, you know, I mean, it took years like, but I got to the place where where it did became completely all important. You know, so my life, my life changed accordingly. Like, I don’t have children, I love children, by the way, but I just never actually wanted to have children. And so that makes life easier for me as well, people with children, they’ve got an awful lot to do, but their love and the spirit of who they are, and, and that flame comes from their love, you know, love, it’s love, really, you that you don’t have to be sitting for hours. But I suppose if you, you get to a place when you’re so sick of the identity of what you are, you know, to me what you think you are, it just becomes totally all encompassing. But it does grow for people, because it becomes absolutely addictive. And putting a twig on the fire in another twig is exactly right. If people just find that just keep coming back to it. I mean, there’s no time constraints on it, it could there can be awakening to a big chunk of it, and then everything’s dormant for years, maybe and then another chunk happens, you know, but it definitely does grow. But one of the things that I suppose all my attention is turned to now is actually teaching self inquiry as, as precisely as you can, if you can teach it, because there’s a lot of people talk about self inquiry and give lectures and stuff, but nobody’s actually sort of was very few people is actually saying in concrete ways. What do you do so, so that’s what I’m interested. And so when, for instance, when I have when I do a meeting now, rather than there be a lot of talk,
Mandi Solk: we just, I just even just explained that we’re just going to have a bit of silence and all I want you to do is just in that silence, see what comes up right now just see what comes out. Are you bored you thinking of the next thing or how long is this Gonna go and just see what comes. You know, we do that for a while. And then and then we start looking at it just to teach them self inquiry, because what happens is with self inquiry, and the so many people talk about it every everybody that talks about it to me is wonderful. I love what they all say. But as you can get very confused about which questions to ask yourself, you know, should I be asking? Should I be saying, I am I am, of course, that’s, you know, not it because we don’t want to be saying I am. That’s like a mantra, it’s not, it’s just the sense, it’s just the sense of that, which gets up in the morning, the sense of, you know, the heart beating, it’s just pure consciousness, pure existence, and getting a sense of that and letting that grow. And then if a question comes up, if a thought comes up, and one teacher sort of said, Say to yourself to whom it’s just thought arising, that’s great, if that’s what comes up at that moment, that’s the, that’s the thought to, that’s the thing to go with for a second or two and let everything come back to silence. Basically, if everything doesn’t come back to silence, it just means that you’ve got on a string of thoughts again, so it’s quite simple, really, because there’s just one easy way to see that. Not progress is being made that you’ve but you’re on the right lines, if you come back to silence each time. And so I don’t care if it’s a practice or not, it is a practice, you know, this is it has, you know, do this, and, and you’ll come back to silence. I mean, silence is the whole thing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s everything you could possibly want, if people ask questions, but if they just gave themselves some ciphered, you know, the questions should be answered, You are your own teacher, you are the best teacher, you know, all those answers come from you keeping quiet.
Rick Archer: Yeah, which I seldom do. But no, actually. And when you say that, when you describe that, maybe we could dwell on it a little bit more to reassure people, the average person, almost everyone, you and I probably as well, when we sit and close our eyes, let’s say to do a practice, such as self inquiry, there are going to be thoughts, you know, you’re going to find yourself, you know, wandering off on various ideas and thoughts, and, you know, both silly and practical and whatever, the mind just has that tendency. And then when you recognize that that has happened, you just come back to the silence, right? Is that what you would say?
Mandi Solk: Yes. The thing to come back to is the eye, even if at first sense of I, well, we are talking about the sense of AI, right, but at first, you’ll probably find yourself thinking the word AI, you know, and, and there’s, there’s nothing wrong, you see the thing about self inquiry, in a way, you can’t do anything wrong, because when you start off, it does take effort. It’s like working a muscle that’s not been worked at all. So I mean, this, and this is what I did, and and, you know, I’m sure Ramana Maharshi would say, you know, that’s wrong, but the but he would understand because so I was doing that thing where I’d be going, I and I am and then and then eventually you realize that what you see when you come back to it, even if it’s just the thought I because the eye has no content, it brings you to a state of, of quiet, because I content, nothing, me is different, you know, or a thought is something that pulls you along, like a magnet. But when we come back to it, even if at first it’s the thought I you come back to a quiet place. And eventually, because, you know, whoever’s talking to you about it, whether it’s Mooji or anybody or me will will hopefully gently remind you that it’s we’re talking about the sense of I so that sense is it’s the heart beating the breathing going on that the beat you’re not beating your own heart, the hearts beating by itself, your breathing is happening by itself. You’re not doing it. You might think you’re doing it but you’re not doing because who it Who are you who is who are you to be doing that. So there’s no such thing as a you. So we come back to that sense or Ramana Maharshi would say this, it’s sort of like 3d existence. The sense of existence, and that kind of blossoms into consciousness, which eventually becomes bliss. Those three, the not really states, I don’t like to say that’s how you describe it. So we come back to that sense of I, what we don’t want to be doing. Is this going? I, I know that I am I am because then we’ve got it going like a mantra.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, if you look at a rose, you don’t have to say, read, read. It’s like, you know, just it’s in a sense, it’s read, you know, and you don’t have to doesn’t have to be the the Faridi. You see the red. And you know, coming back to us, the sense of I sense of self says the present, it doesn’t have to be any verbiage about it. It’s just everyone has that felt sense. Just Just recognize that.
Mandi Solk: That’s it. Come back to me and say things like I am, I am I am. And
Rick Archer: just keeping the mind busy. Yeah, it’s like trying to enjoy the rose, a Rose, Rose, Rose.
Rick Archer: Still, relax, enjoy the rose.
Mandi Solk: That’s it. And, you know, that’s the thing that I found about mantras. You see, I have to be careful, because I don’t want to be, I don’t want to look like I’m knocking anything. But I have found my experience that meditations that use mantras. They’re not, you’re not looking, you’re just using a mantra, you see. So there might be an expansion of of silence, but we’re not just talking here about coming back to silence. Because self inquiry, you know, it takes off more and more layers of the onion. Well, the the, the onion layers aren’t going to come off by just being nice and comfortably silent. But that’s what starts to happen. First of all, we’ve got to get to know silence, we’ve got to feel comfortable with with silence, that’s what self inquiry starts to do. And then and then thoughts come all sorts of thoughts. Even good thoughts. We don’t, we don’t even want those. We don’t want to get drawn by any of these thoughts. Just like a train going past. You know, everybody uses this train thing. My one is, if you imagine little rust trucks, I don’t know if you have them in the light, like, they carry coal, you know, and they’re like, Rusty, etc. And I always say that a thought it’s like a poster, you know what the thought is, at first, like, let’s say, Oh, they treat their treating me just like I was at school. So that the poster is, I’m being treated like I was at school. Now, if you get in the truck, with all the rest of it, there’s loads more thoughts, like how everybody treated you and exactly who was treating you like that, and the way that you were treated, and suddenly, you’re back there in the pit of despair, covered in the coldest. So when you see the beginning of the thought, like, like, as if it was a poster on the side of a bus or something, you just let it go by then the next poster comes, you know, like, Oh, I wonder if I said the right thing to Susie, you know, alright, so that’s what that poster says, Do we really want to get in a truck with that one? Because then we’d go into Oh, oh, I shouldn’t have said that. But then on the other hand, she shouldn’t have said that to me. And if she ever said that to me, then I wouldn’t have said that to her. Suddenly, we covered in that cold. So when this is a great way to start when we see these thoughts, as well as the question, to whom do these thoughts arise, which I’ll come back to. And just another thing is that the minute we can get very good at this very quickly, this the minute we see the name of a thought, imagine it like a poster on the side of the bus, then we just drop it like a hot potato and do not get in bed with that thought. Don’t get in the train trip with the thought. Let it go by
Rick Archer: treat all thoughts as if they’re in Japanese.
Mandi Solk: Or interviewing me you come out with a really good one. I’m gonna write it all down. Okay.
Rick Archer: Okay, well, here’s a few thoughts based upon what you just said. First of all, you’re talking to a guy who’s been meditating with a mantra for 45 years. And I know I know. But, you know, the your conception of it, even though I know you did TM for a number of years, is I think, and you may be right, I mean, maybe mantra meditation is preliminary or juvenile or something compared to self inquiry? I don’t know. But my own experience is that it results in the mind settling to a state of quietude and self awareness amplifies to the extent that the mind quietens in other words Like, I don’t know, the surface of a pond, if it’s if the waters are choppy, the sun doesn’t reflect very well. But when the water gets really smooth, then the sun reflects perfectly. So it’s sort of a natural consequence of the mind becoming silent and yet alert, that self awareness is less and less shrouded by mental activity and eventually is perfectly clear. And through repeated exposure to that experience of that, just as perhaps you might say, repeated exposure, with the experience of self inquiry, it kind of gets stabilized, and, you know, perhaps this physiological change taking place. And in any case, one finds that it’s not lost in the midst of activity anymore. So you can be riding a bus or you know, doing something dynamic. And yet that that sort of silence self awareness, which was once only accessible and eyes, closed, meditative states is perpetual.
Mandi Solk: I think if it’s perpetual, that’s great. But you see, first of all, I can’t compare anything like to say there’s so many different ways to see what you are, and that that’s great. Really, I don’t have that feeling. That’s another thing that thankfully, had dropped away with that arrogance, really, of, you know,
Rick Archer: whatever works, you know, whatever works is whatever
Mandi Solk: work. The only thing that I would say, is that, what I noticed about quite a lot of the meditators that that I knew, and it were and it was present in me is that, that getting to a point where you’re not sort of living in the mind, that was sort of happening during meditation that I didn’t see it a lot in people in their everyday lives. So I met an awful lot of crabby meditators. And I know somebody who’s been doing it for 50 years, he’s not like you, not at all, but he’s completely up tight and never stops talking. And I think, you know, what’s this been doing for him? So, so I’m afraid I came away from it, because I saw a lot of people that, yeah, they were meditating, but I didn’t see them sort of living in a space where I see more from people that have been doing self inquiry, is that that it? Because they’re, they’re looking, and there’s a lot of questioning, there’s some something, you know, look, looking right at what they are, and then taking off another layer and taking off another layer. Yeah. So direct, you see, is that that affects who you are deeply, in your normal minute to minute day to day life, so that it’s not just while you’re meditating? It just seems to have quick, quicker results. You know, and I don’t know if that’s true, because I say, you can’t say that, because everybody’s experience is different of it, you know? Well, a
Rick Archer: very well may, you know, and I wouldn’t dispute that. And in fact, I mean, I live in a town where there’s 3000, or more people meditating, and many, as long as I have been, and I see a lot of people like the one you just described a lot of people who are just really crazy still and really hung up and, you know, dishonest or argumentative, or, you know, fanatical one way or the other, and just all sorts of crazy things. And I can see myself as having been that way many, many times and during long periods of my life and so on. For me, somehow it crept in at a certain point, that I began to question assumptions and to not take anything as absolute truth, and to just have a much more kind of broad minded perspective. And I’m not exactly sure how that happened. But in fact, I got booted out of the TM movement, because I was thinking that way, and I was just much too independent in my thinking. So you know, I kind of resonate with what you say about kind of self examination and the peeling away of layers of the onion. I think a person can get kind of stuck in a rut, with any, any practice and maybe many practices, let’s not say any, and get habituated to something that they think is liberating them. And whereas in fact, they they really need to shake things up and, you know, break out of a habit that they’re not even aware has gotten ingrained.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, yeah. I think so. Because he said, I suppose what I find about this is that it’s always fresh because you know, when a thought Well, thoughts, what happens is after a while, you know, solid inquiries that presence takes over and there’s like a switchover. So instead of there being a dominance of thought, and just the little specks of presence, and there’s it this present seems to be the thing all the abiding thing all the time and thoughts are there, that the more like little fishes just having a little nibble that they’re like vibration? That yes, a more like vibration. So you feel the vibration, rather than the words because it’s in that sense, seeing that there’s sort of this there seems so quickly that they kind of obliterate you know, they disappear, dissolve in that in that. Seeing really. So I mean, I think why I love sharing this and, and doing this now is because I do see really pretty quick results really with people that somehow it does act like a knife, even if somebody only has 10 minutes, you know, in the morning, 10 minutes leaving, I mean, when I say that they’ve got to have a fire burning, I do think that’s, that’s true, he can’t get past that, really that that, that that about the fanning of the fire, what I’m saying is, even if they just start with 10 minutes in the morning, or attendance in the evening, if they can get to the place, after a few minutes, where there’s a bit of even a bit of stillness there that is so addictive, as you know, it’s addictive, and you start to want more and more of it. And that’s how the fire gets fanned. Really, but but I would say you’ve got awake you we said before that last interview, you know, be still and wait on God. Because if you’re still enough, just even if you just give it five or six minutes, with with real sort of just just waiting really expectancy, we’re not talking about waiting for enlightenment, or having a delay, we’re not talking about that it’s just you give it a few minutes is all I’m saying. And then And then something starts to happen.
Rick Archer: Because don’t be looking for some big dramatic breakthrough.
Mandi Solk: Just yeah, definitely. Just be easy about it. That’s it. And, and not worrying at all, as you know, any meditation, whether thoughts come up or not that great if they do because you know it, it becomes the thoughts that come up. I mean, in self inquiry, as soon as you notice it, it is sort of there’s many different ways of dealing it you know, you can sort of flick it off like a mosquito, or look at it. If it’s something that’s biting at you like some something that’s happened with somebody, then it needs looking at what I always say is just Okay, give look at the situation for one second, don’t give yourself more than one second, just feel the vibration of where it is in your body. Well, where’s it biting you in your neck, you know, your throat and your heart in your head. And just get right into it not into the words, but just really feel it. So allow yourself to feel it so much that you’re vibrating with the whole body shaking with it. And then just sit with it sit with it. And even if it’s a sort of really ugly thought thing, just sit with it. And because in a few seconds, it just dissolves. And unless you’ve done it, you don’t you don’t see it, but it always works. You know, it just does work. Just just have to give it a few seconds. And then we come back to that sense of I am just that sense of it all I and there’s a stillness because once again, you know the eye has no content, it knows nothing of that argument you’ve had with with cells, it doesn’t store anything, there’s no judgments there. When we get near to to the edge, it’s like when you’ve been doing this a while the can be a burning sense. You can even be getting very hot when you’re when you’re doing the contemplation. And as a fear can come up and it’s a fear of losing all those things that you think you are, which we said at the beginning things like your memories or thoughts or worse and it will get you at your weakest point see them. It’s like all these thoughts or mind really knows where to get you by the jugular. So I’ll give you an example. One of my greatest fears was going what’s the word? Premature senile dementia? Yes. Because when I was a young girl, I had an absolutely favorite uncle. Yes, Uncle Max and he was an it was quite young. And and he was Handsome, and he was very funny. And he was always totally lovely to me, an incredibly intelligent guy. So we had some great conversations, I loved them. And I used to see him from time to time. Anyway, one day, and my parents had a party and and he sat there in the corner. And it was sat on his own, you know, he just looks a bit strange. And I went to speak to him, and he and he looked right through me. And, and it suddenly felt very frightening, I think. And I didn’t, I must have been about eight or nine. So I went to my mom. And she explained that he had this state called premature senile dementia, and he was like, only like 38. And it was shocking, really, to see it and took a lot of explaining and, and then, and then as I got older, this became a real fear for me that this could happen that you could lose your mind, you see. And I got you know, how when you scatter something, you watch everything there is to watch on it. So documentaries, any movies anybody made about somebody who bond senile or anything? Oh, you know, I was there. As if, as if by watching it, I think all you know, I better watch it. So it won’t happen to me, you know, the kind of way that we do these things. Anyway, one of the sort of kind of awakening things was that one, one night, I suddenly was aware that I just didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything. And I thought, and I thought, Oh, my goodness. Now, what is the test that the doctor would give you? If you don’t know something? Oh, yes, the first thing they’d say is, do you know what country you’re in? Do you know what year it is? Do you know who well in our country the Prime Minister is.
Mandi Solk: And so I was racking my brain, I thought, right, the Prime Minister, the prime, what’s the name of the prime minister, and for an hour or two? I couldn’t remember it, my mind was absolutely blank. And I got terrified, because I thought I was going senile, you see? And, and eventually, I remembered it. And I was so happy that I remembered it. But then, later on, I was horrified that I was horrified. Because I realized this is one of my opportunities. I thought, you know, I could have jumped then it was about this is about losing everything, you know, but it doesn’t mean that you lose your ability to facilitate your life. You know, it’s not about that it’s not about dementia. It’s a different kind of, sort of not knowing it. And so when you get near the fire, what you know what I mean by the fire, the fire of burning you up, your identity of things can happen. So something will get picked on. So that wasn’t the thing that got picked on for me. And other people have other things that get picked on it, it suddenly it comes up, you don’t realize it until afterwards. Our that’s what it was. It was like Jesus on the mountaintop being tempted or, you know, that’s what it was. And I didn’t see it for what it was. So then what happens later on, maybe something else will happen. Another fear will come up. And then, and then you see, oh, God, that was another time. That’s what it was. And eventually, what happens is, your fears sort of dry up. And there’s a real realization that nothing can really frighten you, actually, you know, and so, it doesn’t have to be a big, falling down a black hole, like some people have experience and it’s absolutely terrifying. And then you realize, it really can be a gradual thing. If I knock something,
Rick Archer: you’re not your microphone up to your foreheads down there, there you go. Actually keep it down their neck. That’s better.
Mandi Solk: Yeah. Good.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we heard it all, but it just got a little hollow. Well, that’s a lot to think about there. There’s a lot of good stuff you said, you know, you kind of started out by talking about the fact that presence can get the upper hand over thoughts, you know, that for the most part for most people thoughts have the upper hand and you know, their perceptions and their opinions and their attitudes and everything else. That’s how they define themselves, you know, but turning that around and presence is pretty much in the background overshadowed but there can come a time to kind of practice you’re talking about where presidents gets the upper hand and that that becomes predominant than thoughts as you say like little fishes. And I say very much that way there’s like this seesaw or ratio kind of thing. Where you know, for the most part people are very much overshadowed gripped, and then you know, presidents can begin to shift the balance and eventually become predominant and there are you know, as you said earlier awakenings stages in that in that process, it’s not necessarily a smooth transition, there can be little jumps and milestones and whatnot or, and some of those milestones, as we started out saying in this conversation can be mistaken for the final destination. You know, there’s some awakening takes place and you think that’s it, I’m done. But in my opinion, nobody’s done ever is this is just an opinion, I may be wrong. But in fact, I was reading St. Teresa of Avila, I read a quote by her the other day, she said, the feeling remains that God is on the journey to, you know, so not only are not waiting, are we not done, but God is not done. There’s everything. The whole universe is a big evolution machine. And no matter how far along you are on the whole scale of evolution, whatever that scale may be, you ain’t reached the end of it, because there is no end.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, because really, that more than knowing what you are, the biggest thing is knowing what you are not. So knowing, you know, knowing that you aren’t your thoughts, you aren’t your opinions, you aren’t your judgment, you you your essential you isn’t any of that. And that has, it gets more and more subtle and more and more refined. And he knew I wouldn’t trust anybody. I don’t I don’t think there’s anybody alive on the earth. Anybody been on the earth? That will ever say that? They said, what happens is certainly, I suppose what you know, from doing it, what’s the benefit? Yes, we’ve what you could see say is that there’s definitely an expansion of this presence, so that there’s more abiding in it, there’s what and that whatever is taking place is okay, so there’s not like panic and reaction around it anymore. It’s just what’s taking place. And there’s, there’s that idea of looking forward to something something good, like, you know, some celebration or because that, that goes, you know, and, and that’s a lovely thing. It’s an alive thing, not a dead thing, because there’s nothing better than this moment now. So these things happen. But what goes on happening is that you can’t possibly know what’s going to happen next. So you can’t possibly No, you know, how that thing’s going to affect you. Really, I mean, it’s not that because there’s not a sense of a you or, you know, there’s no sense of a me in in the way that it used to be when there was a sense of, you know, very strong sense of it, well, you kind of can be pretty sure that most things will just be absorbed in it, and you’ll deal with it the way it is what I mean, it’s like for instance, and the other week, I was actually just going to give them do a meeting, and a car cut right across in front of me on one of the busiest roundabouts we’ve got here. And honestly, I was a hair’s breadth away from from physical death. And, you know, and the man was sort of very arrogant and frightening in the way that he was driving as he progressed down the road, you know, and frightening everybody on the freeway, kind of how and anyway, the moment that it happened, and what else theory just you that came up for a second. But I think what you mean is where before that would sort of hang on for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours and go bumper bumper bumper and be sunlight vibration, it’s just dropped, like a man with his coat on fire. It’s just dropped. And then there’s nothing less even though I have to continue driving down the road with him on the side. And it was just dropped. And I was explaining this in the meeting, because it was the meeting, you know, that I nearly died and didn’t get to. And the lady at the back so sweet. And she said, and she she said I’m a Christian. And you know, what we would sort of say is that if somebody does something like that to us, we would immediately try and switch it to sending him a blessing. And as I said, that’s really lovely. That’s not quite what I’m talking about. Because in in the seeing of what you are, which is not a seat, it’s not Oh, I am seeing what I am obviously it’s just I am in the seeing. There’s there’s such a seeing that when people live in their minds, that’s how it is you don’t think to yourself, that’s because he’s living in his mind. There’s just that’s one thing there is a knowing of that people if they’re not seeing this they are living in their mind and they Got to be there. First. I mean, it’s like, you are sitting in something much bigger than you it’s like, it’s like you’re sitting as a passenger, in not as a passenger, sorry, as the driver, and you’re in the front seat. And you’re always in first trying to lunge forward. And you’ve never, ever looked behind. You never seen that this huge, big, the cars massive behind you, you know, and you will never the driver, and there’s no place to go anyway. And you’re not going anywhere. And so that is a settling into it. And there’s such a compassion that we don’t need to put effort into thinking, Oh, I’ll send this man a blessing. It’s just blessed by our lack of reacting to it by our, by our harmlessness. He is blessed, because there’s an open space for him. And he’s been the way that is exactly the way it is.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And sending him a blessing might also work for that woman. I mean, because if she’s not functioning in the mode that you’re describing, then that might be really the best thing for her to diffuse the anger that she felt, you know, when she got cut off.
Mandi Solk: But but we because she come to the meeting, she was asking about that very thing. So she listened to it. And the thing that she agreed with is that I used to go down that road you wrote because I used to want to be an angel. I used to watch Harvey with Jimmy Stewart, you know, I, I always wanted to be well, he’s not Harvey Elwood P L. Whoopee doubt, I think he was called LP something. The man James, James Stewart, I always wanted to be him. So lovely to everybody. Just so nice. You know, and, and then and then of course, every time I wasn’t nice, I would be rate myself. And it made me have a stronger sense of the self, this wanting to be a nice person, it makes you much more objectionable to yourself because you can never, you can never raise to your own standards, you set them too high. So let’s say somebody, you are that person who believes that you want to be a good person, and somebody cuts you up and you think, and you’re angry. Yes, for a second. And if it Oh, no, I must make this into a blessing. Well, later on in the day, maybe spill some milk at the wrong time or something happens. And you suddenly angry that you bless that person, because actually now you’re feeling angry towards them. And then you have to remember again, and you think, Oh, hang on? No, no, let me bless him again, blessing again, there’s so much in trying,
Rick Archer: I know what you mean, yeah.
Mandi Solk: We were talking about then.
Rick Archer: But it might still be better than trying to then then just let yourself be a schmuck. You know, I mean, it could have some sort of some sort of counterbalancing influence. But but you know, this, the things you were just describing, kind of play into the general theme we’ve been talking about in the last little bit, which is this thing of predominance of presence versus presence being, you know, over overwhelmed or overshadowed. And I think what you’re talking about is a kind of a style of functioning, that naturally arises from or that naturally occurs in a person for whom presence is quite predominant. You know, there’s a natural sort of an attachment, or natural spontaneity. And well, just to make it more graphic in the Indian tradition, they use this analogy of like drawing a line on stone, you know, with something scraping it into a stone, and then the line is very etched and it doesn’t go away, and then maybe a line on sand, you know, it’s easier to draw, and it goes away fairly quickly, or line on water, even easier to draw, and it goes away even faster, or just a line on air, you know, it’s like, totally effortless to draw, and just go on as soon as it’s drawn. So, you know, you can think of that compare that with various degrees of rigidity with which people function and summer, you know, if they’re very locked into the front seat of that giant car, you were talking about, you know, very locked into an individuality, there tends to be that kind of impressionable Ness so that when something happens, it creates a deep impression which they might dwell on for months or years or something, oh, that SOB cut me off in traffic. And every time I see a blue car, I think of that guy, you know, who was driving a blue car. Whereas to jump to the other extreme, which was your experience, the thing happens, and it’s pretty much you know, there’s an initial reaction, there is a line in the air that it’s drawn, but as soon as it’s drawn, it’s gone.
Mandi Solk: And also, you know, somebody wrote to me just earlier actually, about, you know, what, what happens when you get angry with this and angry with that, and I actually just sent some emails that this guy was very angry a lot of the time, you know, and I sort of, you know, I think I think the point about that is that you Stop minding about minding, it’s not just that you get to a state of you don’t mind so much, because you really do through inquiry I don’t, this is the thing I want to keep coming back to that. For me, you know, when for, for this being an inquiry being great because it’s so it’s, it’s for everybody everybody can do if they want to do it and have the same results, you know, to me, I mean it because, because it takes when it just takes a love of truth and honesty and a kind of humility to sort of want to scrape away that ego anyway. I mean, if you’re really loving your ego and egotistic, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t want to touch it with a bargepole, which is so so the more that you scrape away at it, the more you know, the more garbage goes and the lighter things become. So there is much more of a state of not minding stuff. But even if you did mind something, you wouldn’t mind that your mind did it. So and there’s enormous freedom in that rather than feeling like a bad person or a guilty person. Because that happened it to be, he becomes so able to be self forgiving, because there’s no self to forgive, it’s just, it’s just, it’s seen when thoughts have bought into for a second. And that’s what happens. You know, when you get angry or annoyed, you have a judgment, but there’s no judgment about it. Whereas when you try to be a good person, you always have a judgment about how well you’ve done. And, and all the suffering that happens is really because our divine nature, our true nature is benign. So when we start acting out of character, I mean, let’s say people who aren’t on a spiritual path at all, and they drink too much if you like, and, and they’re angry and violent, and what have you. And it just gets perpetuated because they think they’re not good enough. So, I mean, you know, somebody that I heard of went into a jail and talked to some of the guys there about this kind of thing. And just kept saying, you are good enough, you are good enough is not even good enough, but you are good, you’re totally good. And some of them couldn’t handle it at all. But one guy been the most violent in the prison, just came up to this teacher and sort of said, Am I Am I really anything you are you are. And some, sometimes we need a lot of reminding of that we need reminding of it the whole time, really. And that’s why Ramana Maharshi said, you have to be vigilant to your last breath. This is going back to some of us saying that. It’s never finished, you know, it’s but but it gets easier. But on the other hand, it wouldn’t get easier. If you had the lack of humility to think that it was finished. You see a lot of non duality teachers say things like, oh, it’s all over. It’s all over then for me it was all over. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I agree. I mean, whenever anybody says that to me, and I hear that too, I think, well, you’ll just wait and see, I want you I mean, I mean, I’ve had people send me emails saying I’m totally awake that couldn’t possibly. And in fact, I even in the number of interviews, I’ve asked towards the end of the interview, I think, you know, where, well, what do you think’s next? Where do you see it going from here? What’s on the horizon? You know, how do you how has your growth been forgotten? They say, and some people say, what growth? You know, how could it be anything more? And I think what that what happens with that is, there’s a sort of a fixation on the absolute which is seen to be non changing, and to the exclusion or to the neglect of the relative which is ever changing and ever improving, there’s no there’s no end to the extent to which refinement can take place in in the relative sphere. And you know, like our friends, Scott killaby, and Jeff Foster, and all they’ve all kind of come to this position too, whereas at one time, they were sort of fundamentalist non duelists. Now, they’re kind of like interested in relationships and you know, all sorts of relative considerations and how to bring non duality to the sphere of relative human concerns as a means of enhancing them. In fact, Scott and I and a bunch of other people are going to have a discussion in January about psychology and non duality and what the benefit for psychology may be from non dual realization.
Mandi Solk: I think it’s just, you know, welcoming everything embracing everything that’s in life. I mean, you see, because And yes, when you fix on the absolute, of course, the absolute non changing, and that’s what we’re coming back to. And we talk about silence, you know, you’re at you’re here. Sorry, I just Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, we talk about silence and you know that that’s the source of everything, the source of our action, the source of everything. And that’s, you know, beautiful. And then there’s the seer of of that and who’s looking at that. But, you know, there’s no deadness in that. It’s fully alive and absolute spontaneity all the time. I mean, it’s amazing. You just think you’re amazed at everything, all the time. And there was somebody that you had on here recently who said that and then and then there’s even another stage when you’re not amazed everything all the time? Well, actually, you know, know that I can’t because the absolute beauty of it is, is that there’s a sort of a staying awake, you know, I mean, liberation is about staying away. And liberation isn’t something that you see, you see, when we say we are free now, that’s a very that means that you are free. Now, everybody that is listening to this is free. Now you are not a seeker, you are because you when we look, we find we’re actually not a seeker, because your thoughts will never be through free, but are by their very nature, thoughts or thoughts, aren’t they? So how can thoughts be free, they are thoughts. And they all linked together, like glue bonding together. But underneath all that what you are is free now. So in that freedom,
Rick Archer: but the opera, the opera and phrases underneath all that. Because you know, for many people all that can be so overwhelming that it’s very hard to sense the freedom. So the trick is to lighten the load that’s overshadowing the inner freedom so that the inner freedom can shine forth.
Mandi Solk: Yes, it is. But sometimes it can be just a saying that, that, Oh, my God, I’ve always been free. Of course, I’m free. That which you know, is is free now, but in freedom, anything, everything is free to happen as well. So, you know, Jeff was, well, with Jeff, Jeff Foster, he’s a really good friend of mine, because his folks don’t live far from me. So when he comes to see them as well, you know, sometimes he’ll pop up, or when he stayed when we when I used to have non duality noted, stay in state a few weeks going and before he stayed, I, you know, rather sheepishly write him. And so today I’ve changed everything about the way that I used to see this. And he said, and he wrote by said, you know, I have a great, great discussion about it. And it’s, it’s, but it’s just coming back to the that, in the freedom it’s in that everything that happens is completely exactly what exactly perfect the way it is meant to be. So it is that Olson thing that you hear open and before Before enlightenment, but we’re not talking about enlightenment, we’ll get rid of the word enlightenment, liberation, even freedom, that is just that those words that are so loaded, aren’t they?
Rick Archer: They are but you know, they do actually signify something and we, we have to use words, but we want to make sure that we’re using them carefully. So that you’re not we’re not saying one thing that people hearing or assuming another, you know, wonder what we mean, when we use the terms.
Mandi Solk: I think I think what I’m trying to say is that if people see it as an N thing, that that there’s no end result,
Rick Archer: some static glorious carrot that I’m finally going to catch even though it’s continues to dangle in front of me how far I go.
Mandi Solk: Absolutely. But when I’m certainly when I used to hear people say, Oh, it’s all over. That’s how it used to seem like that, you know, this. It was really a dead end. And people sort of saying, I don’t know how to talk to my partner anymore because that they don’t see things the way that I do. And every single conversation with anybody is absolutely Lush. You have that word. Yeah.
Rick Archer: It has two connotation. One is somebody who drinks too much and the other is very verdant, and abundant.
Mandi Solk: Luscious, gorgeous. To be about wind delay, you know, ever, you know, filt here. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Let’s play around with another little topic for a bit. You said a little while ago, there’s no such thing as AI. And I was reading the book of someone whom I’m going to interview in a few weeks and in that she was saying, there are no persons. And I understand what you’re saying what she’s saying. But I’d like to play devil’s advocate with it just for a little bit and see what you think. What I would say, is that on on. And you know, I use the word levels a lot. And some people say why do you say that? Because there are no levels. You know, it’s all just one wholeness. And that’s true also. But there’s always this paradoxical, yes. But you know, that you can do whenever you make any kind of statement. So there are there first, there is no mountain than there is the first there is a mountain and there is no mountain then there is there are there are no levels, yet there are levels, the physicist would tell you that, you know, ultimately, it’s all just the vacuum quantum field or something. But then there are all these, you know, more manifest levels, which again, you can take right back down to the manifest and say, well, they don’t really exist, they’re just virtual, they just appear to exist. I’m getting a little long winded here, but I’ll try to wrap it up. So when a person says there is no i, I can totally agree with that. Both, you know, intellectually and my own experience, but at the same time, there is an AI. And it may be, you know, ultimately not real, but it’s at least functional and necessary in order to live a life. And it seems as as kind of meaningless to me to make to stay with any absolute finality, that there is no is to say, there is no body. I mean, if you’re going to deny the existence of the subtler realms of, of manifestation, why not include the gross as well, and just say, there is no universe. So you know, what I’m getting at, it’s like, you have to really sort of play the game of, of spanning the whole strata of creation, even while acknowledging that the more manifest levels ultimately are not real. But in a relative sense, they are.
Mandi Solk: Well, you know, we’re having a human experience, there’s no doubt that we’re having a human experience. You know, we have senses and we can taste and smell and and we have preferences, you know. But those preferences, let’s just take that one from it. And a different from judgments. Because the mind will thoughts could always come in and make judgments about this is this is bad, the like, window wipers, good, bad, good, bad comparing everything. Whereas the preference is just a noticing that you like this flavor better than that, because flavor or even this person better than that person, not better than but just like, you prefer to be in that person’s company than that person’s company. Not that there’s any judgment in it.
Rick Archer: And like, let me give you an example to see if I understand what you’re saying. So look, we just had a lot of rain here for the first time in a long time. And that was great. I would rather have been colder and we’d have my snowstorm so I could go out skiing. But but so that would be my preference, but I wouldn’t say the rain is bad and snow is good, which would be a judgement.
Mandi Solk: Exactly. That’s exactly right. Yeah. So it’s it’s nice and light to be free of judgments. You know? I mean, my mother every time it rains, she’ll say, oh, it’s miserable. It’s miserable weather. Yeah, no. It’s raining. Anything else to say it’s raining. So that sense of I is just made so big with this with judgment really, you know, this is what this is what goes when we do self inquiry know that I’m somebody that doesn’t like the rain but but I like the wind or I don’t like the snow, but I like to, you know, to mean it
Rick Archer: was what is our reality?
Mandi Solk: So that sense of me as a person? So the whole point of inquiry is that every time that you think that you are a person you look at that to try and find where you are and it’s just that you can never find you there is a sense of you that there just isn’t there’s no concrete that there isn’t there’s and then you know, when when you are seeing that it’s like you you feel basically so loved and nurtured and looked after by well that which you are or you could call it presence or god it’s the presence of Love. So every time you you know, you putting your coat on or brushing your teeth or whatever you’re doing because there’s no sense of a doula
Rick Archer: well, who is this that’s feeling loved and safe and cared for nurtured?
Mandi Solk: Well, exactly. Well, well.
Rick Archer: Is there some kind of lover and some kind of love ease here? I mean, who is it that’s getting cared for if there’s no no, no, I know person.
Mandi Solk: Wow. Let’s sort of take brushing your teeth is always a good one, because we all do it. When, when brushing the teeth is happening, but there’s no sense of oh, I’m doing that I am, you know, somebody turned me on and my joints are all working and I’m doing it when there’s not that sense. There’s there’s just a sense of nurturing and love but not that anybody’s feeling it. It’s just felt it. That’s all there is. It’s That’s That’s why every little action, every little thing now matter how insignificant become it, that’s what the aliveness is you see, right? That’s what the aliveness is that, that everything that’s mundane, is no longer mundane. So it’s the ordinary, within the extraordinary. Do you know what I mean? That’s, that’s what it is.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no. But there’s still a sense of localization. To me. It’s like, when I’m brushing my teeth, I’m not brushing your teeth. You know, I’m brushing these Rick Archer teeth. And and there’s still a sense of, and maybe this will totally go away. But there’s a sense of, you know, I get the universal aspect thing. You know, and that’s, that’s quite predominant. But there’s, there’s still a sense of localization, which I find to be practical and necessary. And I don’t think I don’t know, but I don’t think that that ever completely goes away. In fact, in Sanskrit, there’s this term LeeSha video, which means faint remains of ignorance. And the understanding is that as long as you’re breathing, there’s gonna be a faint remains of ignorance, which gives one a sense of some sense of into individuation, however, however, slight, which is absolutely essential for functioning as a human being?
Mandi Solk: Well, that’s maybe what they say. Yeah, I just tried to put it in. You see, when we’re talking about these things, it’s it this is the this is where it gets difficult to sort of put it into words, because you’re quite right. I’m, I’m listening to what you’re saying. But my own experience, I suppose, which is sort of deepening. And I say, not not done just deepening is that that heavy sense of a person of a doer? is just, it’s thinner and thinner and thinner. I mean, it’s exactly
Rick Archer: what I’m saying. Faint remains of ignorance. No. Leisha? Yes, the fate remains. So but it’s never going to disappear entirely. If you intend to keep on living. It may be just a thin crust on a vast ocean, but there’s still there’s still gonna be some faint remains.
Mandi Solk: Because it’s thin. And no longer predominant it No, it’s not sort of noticed as much. That’s I have to sort of think about it. Yeah,
Rick Archer: it’s not running the show. No.
Mandi Solk: I mean, um, if you’ve got physical pain, if you have physical pain, I had some physical pain last night. Now, why was that?
Rick Archer: You mentioned last time I spoke with you that you might have to have a hip replacement surgery or something. Oh, yeah, that must have involved some pain.
Mandi Solk: And that’s painful that that was in April. But this was to do with anyway, or what caught? heartburn? You put it heartburn? Yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah. And that was really vicious last night. And then in but in the viciousness of it. It takes on a different kind of energy. So that it’s, it’s it’s caulk. It’s completely all encompassing, almost like a color and a vibration. But not like it’s belonging to a person. It’s, it’s there. And it’s bloody uncomfortable. Birth, it didn’t feel owned. Does that help? Yeah. Rather than before it
Rick Archer: really was happening. But there was a sense that the experience was not the same as if your dog had had been the one with the heartburn. There was a there was a sort of a, an, you know, and I wasn’t experiencing it. There was in other words in the sort of manifestation of life we call Mandy, that’s where heartburn experience was taking place. Yes, you know,
Mandi Solk: it didn’t feel it would have before felt like a personal pain. Like I owned it. It belonged to me. Now it doesn’t feel like it’s over there. Or if only it could. But in in, in the light of the seeing of of that, that’s all was going on. It it but it just doesn’t bother you quite the same race,
Rick Archer: because it’s not the totality of your experiences at once might have been It’s just sort of something that’s happening on the surface of a much deeper orientation, much deeper reality. There was a story about Shankara, the great teacher years ago, you know, a couple centuries ago, founded Advaita. He had a high fever, one time, and he was shaking with fever. And he was supposed to meet some important person who had come along way to see him or something. And somebody couldn’t meet in that condition. So he put the fever on a stool that was in the room and met with a person that the stool shook. And then, when the meeting was over, he took it back and he started shaking again. And his disciples said, Why don’t just leave it on the store? And he said, well, because you know, there is some individual karma here still, that has to be worked out, and I couldn’t shirk it. You know, I had to, I had to live through it.
Mandi Solk: Oh, I was just bothered with that. On the still. Yeah, like that story that the psychologist Gestalt used to teach that? Didn’t he put your stomachache or bad knee or bad back on it on a chair? And talk to it? He did? Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, another example. Actually, I hope you don’t mind because I gave this example. In that last interview, but it was just that I was telling you that I was driving along a very windy Highway at night. And because this is like that other story of the heartburn. And it was the car, which very little car had, and it was being blown from side to side, you know? And, and now, you see, it was noticed that this was terrifying. Now, I’m so sorry. It sounds very non duality sort of thing. But I, it it wasn’t that. Me. I personally, was yeah, it was as though there was terror all around. And if I could describe it, it was like being if I could draw it, it would look like I was sat in the middle of a whirlpool. But this whirlpool didn’t touch me, it was just around me. So that fear was solidly there, but wasn’t sort of touching me, like standing by a fire and not actually being but not being the fire, you know, being being with the terror, but not being terrified, being with the heartburn, but not having heartburn. So that you see that comes to a point when unfortunately, you can’t make any more sense than that. Really? Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, it makes sense. It makes sense to me just even as you said, it makes sense. And what I would come back to you with is, you know, a little bit of a new agey way of speaking, but that we’re multi dimensional beings. And ordinarily, people are locked into the superficial dimensions only. And those seem like the totality of what they are and what is happening to them. So there’s, I am terrified, because my whole sense of identity is caught up on sort of the surface level of life. But when you’ve kind of opened up to the full range of all the dimensions that your life spans, and, and you’ve come to pride dot predominantly orient yourself or be identified with the deeper level, the presence or whatever we want to call it, then as just as you described, there’s terror, but it’s not my terror. It’s not happening to me, because the me that you’re referring to here, so to speak, is firstly, not personal, and secondly, far beyond the realm at which, you know, terrors or heartburn or anything else could be experienced. It’s untouched by all that.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, I think I think it just wants to sort of really, I think it’s important this point of, that you’re addressing of being here, and, you know, living human experience. Because you see, people get very either worried about it, or, or jealous about the idea that somebody’s got something that they haven’t got, you know, and ego comes right into it. So that’s why it’s always a tricky one to talk about. Truth, it’s a bit of a minefield. All he all he can really say is what’s his what’s going on, you know, Mike, Mike, see my experience of having, you know, really spent hundreds and hundreds of hours and even now, I mean, I love it, you see, so I still do it, I probably always do it. You know, it’s like the body guarded the being it’s sort of like, you know, I mean, I think I do about three hours a day. Now, I’m not saying not to show off because, you know, I don’t need to do it, nor does anybody need to do it. Nobody needs to do it three hours a day. It’s just my pleasure. And like you said earlier, I haven’t got children. I haven’t got a busy life. You You know, um, so I can, you know, say exactly.
Rick Archer: I’m saying goes dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Exactly.
Mandi Solk: And so I just like, you know, basking in that question, you know, if something comes up, you know, it’s questioned a bit bit. Now it’s this, it’s got to the point where it’s just seen through, it doesn’t hardly need a question, do you see? Do you see that’s the way self inquiry works, it’s not Mandy salt being special, it’s the way that it works. If you haven’t got three hours a day to spend that, it doesn’t mean that it can’t work course it can, it can still work, it’s it’s that the underlying thing is starting is questioning what you think of as you. So this really strong sense of I being the doer of my life and being here. Really does. It does evaporate, it doesn’t feel like there is a person here, of course, you know, you can see one I can see one, but the feeling of being inside this. And, you know, really lessons and lessons and lessons you say, I know you’re talking about stages, and there’s all sorts of things different prophets say things about Well, first of all, you start in this stage, and then you start. Sometimes I think that’s right. And sometimes I think it’s not quite accurate, because nobody could really say, what the stage is for another person, you know, if they’re at the same, it’s like, are you at stage three? Should you be at Stage Three, you know,
Rick Archer: it’s like roadmaps, you know, and there are different roadmaps you can buy, and, and they may kind of, you know, resemble one another, and the roadmap or the map of North America that Columbus drew looks very different than the the map we see now. But there’s some resemblance and so on, but none of them actually do justice to what’s actually there. If you, you know, actually get in the car and go on the road, or better yet, walk and start seeing all the details. You can’t get that from a map. So all these things are just, you know, don’t take them too, too seriously. They’re just kind of suggestions of possibilities.
Mandi Solk: That’s right. Because, you know, you can tell by people’s questions, what that there are some there’s some similarities, there’s definitely quite a lot of similarities, you can tell by, you know, the kind of questions that people are asking of themselves and asking when they’re right to you. Because, of course, at first, you know, we don’t see all the traps that the mind or that thoughts can play, we don’t see them that can creep up on me from behind, I often say, imagine that you’re rich enough to employ a butler and you and you employ the butter to bring you the letters and the bills every day. And he comes with a silver tray and says, Hey, you are madam or sir. And there you are. There’s the butler, there’s all the things on the tray. But every so often, because that Butler, a doesn’t like very much. He’s a bit sneaky. And then he thinks you don’t pay him enough. So every so often, he’ll just creep up at you from behind, and suddenly just get the train, go turn it over. And all the thoughts, all the letters, they all they all, they all, you know, hey, what you doing what you’re doing, I didn’t employ you to do that. And he says get stopped or some
Rick Archer: time to get a new butler. But it’s time
Mandi Solk: to get new butler. And that’s what happens with the mind that, you know, if you try and control it, you know, you won’t get very far with trying to control it, because it’ll creep up behind and just drop more rubbish on you.
Rick Archer: But why did you bring up this idea based upon what we were talking about?
Mandi Solk: I have no idea. I know where we were okay, stages and traps of the mind. Let’s say that, that so so if the more that we understand about the tricks that the mind can play, the more that we sort of, can let it go and are ready for it the more be, it’s about the more awareness we have. Awareness means being aware so that instead of just looking in front of you, there’s an awareness of what’s to the side of you what’s above you what’s below you what’s behind you. This your state of awareness is what deepen that which you are aware of source that doesn’t chain, but the degree of your awareness that gets wider and bigger and whiter and lighter. Yeah, that’s what the growing is. And that’s why you can never say oh, it’s all over it. You said it’s all over. You know, I’d be very sorry for you because you know, that’s when people there’s a deadness and I stayed with enough of them. I mean, they’ve stayed with me for me to know that.
Rick Archer: And well, you can say that, but it’s not gonna last you that long. I mean, eventually you’re going to say well I was wrong. It wasn’t all over. Yeah, keep on trucking. But you know this thing about stages? Exactly. I mean, yeah. This whole thing about stages. Just I think the mistake people make is they try to fit themselves into somebody else’s roadmap. I remember the first time I took LSD back in the 60s, we sat around all night, reading this book by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who they were later became rom Das, trying to figure out what Bardo, we were in, you know, we’re reading about all these Bardot’s. Maybe we’re in this part of, you know, this, this happens in a more serious way with that, did you Oh, it’s based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it was some some levels of, you know, stage stages you go through or something. And, but I see that a lot, where people have a certain roadmap that they’ve gotten really used to, you know, maybe they’re, it’s their particular teachers roadmap of, you know, what the stages of development are going to be, and then they, they kind of their experience, doesn’t, as it grow as it matures, doesn’t match the their conception of that roadmap. And so they actually could have gone quite far through that roadmap, or even gone beyond it, and yet, feel that they’re not even starting out on it, yet. They haven’t even reached the first stage that they had been anticipating. So anyway, you know, what I’m trying to say? And that’s
Mandi Solk: depressing, because what if you think you’ve either skipped a stage? Or does that mean, you have to go back? Oh, my goodness. You know, if there was stages, you know, some people reach them at different times don’t they are
Rick Archer: very different orders and so on. So, I mean, if we can draw some grand conclusion from all this, it’s just that, you know, as we were saying earlier, at least, you and I seem to agree, maybe not everyone will, that this, that it’s an ongoing journey. And I don’t know if there’s any clear consensus about what the landmarks on that journey are going to be. But nonetheless, it’s, it’s a fascinating, we’re all kind of like, in a sense, we’re all like, you know, you might you might think, Geez, it really would have been fun to live back in the 1800s. And to have explored the western United States for the first time, you know, now it’s all kind of developed, and there’s highways. But in this journey that we’re talking about, it’s almost like we’re all explorers exploring it for the first time, because it’s in somebody else’s account of it is not going to satisfy anybody. And and so for us, it’s in every state every step of the way, is a fresh discovery. Oh, pardon? Yeah. Your audio, I can now you cut out there for a minute. Go ahead. If you if you were just saying something, please say it again.
Mandi Solk: I listen to what you say. I think that was what? What happens is that, I think the maturing of this is easy, basically, that the reason reason I think you can’t say it’s all over is what can be kind of all over. Is that. Certainly that identifying with a personality, thinking that you are your thoughts, and all that that can go. But you see, it’s it’s too simplistic to say that because that which has built you up to think that you are a you, there’s lots to it. And there’s many, many different shades of it. And it’s as well as the big things like your memories, all right, you’re not your memories, you’re not your thoughts, you’re not your judgments and everything. And then stuff comes up moment by moment. And you see you’re not that and that starts to be dissolved as there’s an ever growing presence. But however, that there’s, there’s more like you’re saying about refinement, there’s more subtle things that can can come in that you hadn’t seen before. There’s other things. I mean, this is the freshness of life. And this is why you can’t ever say that it’s completely, you know, all over and you wouldn’t want to either because that that that’s the lack of aliveness. So those that’s, I think that’s what we’re saying, you know, yeah.
Rick Archer: And I think if people could, just speaking hypothetically, Pete, these people who are saying it’s all over, if they could step into the shoes of, you know, acknowledging that there are sort of that there is a vast range of possibility yet to be explored if they could step into the shoes of someone who had, you know, traverse most of that a great deal of that range. They would be utterly flabbergasted at the the kind of the depth and richness and detail of the experience, they just hadn’t realized that there was such a possibility.
Mandi Solk: Yeah. And, and there was, there’s somebody who’s a very famous speaker, and, you know, a one of these says it’s all over. Now, I’ve spent time with this person. And there is the most absolutely undeniable light there. There’s no question about it, and a huge sense when with that person of really complete emptiness. But alongside of that, there’s something that doesn’t feel like love that there really is an and I remember being interested in that very deeply interested that how this can be going on at the same time, that seems to be this incredible, open emptiness, Bert, because somehow the still some arrogance mixed in it. So there is something there, although there also isn’t, it’s very hard, it’s not. So you get into territories here that’s just not black and white, there was something that was not of love, and something that felt a bit, if you like small minded and mean going on at the same time. And I just thought, well, that can only come from really closing up a portal, which, which happens if you think that everything’s all over in that set, because if that was really, really the case, what she’d be doing still walking this earth, you know, so this still, you know, it’s the freedom, the freedom is, what I was after, the freedom is what everybody can have, and the freedom, and I would say is what I feel that I have to a very good degree now compared to how it was because I’ve spent a lot of time looking. However, there’s no way that I could ever say, That’s it, it’s over. That’s it me finished? No way. And I’m so glad, because I wouldn’t to think that a few years ago, I wanted to note with all over, you know, but now it seems the opposite to a dad did it, you know, nothing? So? Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, you know, I mean, just what you were saying about that person, whom I think I know who you’re referring to, I think I’ve interviewed this person. But um, and you say you mentioned love, there seem to be a lack of love, just take that as a case in point. You know, inner freedom is established, okay, fine. But to what extent can love be developed? You know, to what extent can the heart be refined and expanded? Or take another example? To what extent can perception be refined? How, how subtly how richly can we appreciate through our senses, the creation, you know, that’s around us. And, you know, whether or not either of those developments takes place, the harder that are the perception, find the inner freedom can be there. But and once the, but once the inner freedom is established, I would suggest that the next frontier is this development of the, in the relative, you know, the development of, of the heart of perception of, oh, perhaps numerous faculties that are pretty much stunted and undeveloped in the average person that can actually begin to develop significantly on the basis of that freedom. Once, once it dawns.
Mandi Solk: I think there’s a deep, there’s never stops being a deepening of love. It’s the seeing of it, because it’s so expansive, there aren’t even words like even words like expansive as distinct, you know, it’s just too small. So So there’s an ever an ever deepening wonder of that love. And, and, and it keeps on kicking more barriers away and kicking more and barriers away and, and every day, there’s a bigger expansion of the, of the feeling of it, not by anybody, we don’t want to go into that. It’s just the feeling of it. It’s the it’s, it’s that it’s just that sense of it. And, and you can never come to the end of that. And I think in the end, that’s why really glad you brought that up, because that’s why it can’t ever be over because because there’s that love it just and it keeps taking you by surprise. I mean, even today now it’s just sitting what, just in looking at the garden, actually, there wasn’t no it wasn’t down to something like Oh, there was a lovely birdie in there. There was a lovely birdie in my garden, but it wasn’t about that it was just something else another kind of say something else just got opened again and opened again. And and I love that going on that that’s lovely. I don’t think there can be an end to that. You know, I’m sure of it. And you can feel it from people For who really are feeling it to mean there’s not a feeling along with it of something that’s, you know, arrogant or, or there’s no sense of arrogance with it, or how could the bits the the opposite of that. So that’s when where I was prized when I’ve met one or two of these people were, yes, there seems to be this light and this openness, but along with it, there’s something that’s not quite wholesome. It’s quite, quite quite put my finger on it. I don’t want to do that comparing. That’s why I don’t mention names, although,
Rick Archer: I wouldn’t want to mention names. Can Ken Wilber talks a lot about this kind of thing is American philosopher mentioned today.
Mandi Solk: As he just mentioned today, but I’m only joking.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah, his name, but I’m gonna I’m speaking in a complementary way about him, he talks about lines of development. And he says how, you know, there can be. And his idea isn’t unique with him, but he expresses it well. One can be very developed along certain lines, say development of consciousness or inner freedom, but really quite immature. And along other lines of development, and that, you know, true spirituality would probably mean, kind of a comprehensive development of all these lines, not just one to the exclusion of the others. And one other point I just want to throw in is, you know, a lot of times when he talks about spiritual stuff, and as we’ve been talking, it might almost seem a little hedonistic, it’s all about sort of what my subjective experiences, how much bliss I have, how much freedom I have, how much, you know, inner joy, and whatnot. But another dimension for growth, perhaps, that we could consider is of how much value am I to everyone else, you know, to the, to the, to the world to the environment? And what is the kind of the range of possibilities of the development of that? You know,
Mandi Solk: I think that’s absurd. More simply, though, because when, when there isn’t a sense of sort of a human knee in that way, there’s, there’s room for everybody else, you know, the space for everybody else, the space for people to be a complete, you know, so and so, like that man that was driving the car. And, and then people can feel that, from your reading. Mooji says, it’s like a sort of a fragrance of peace, that you give off this kind of a harmlessness, you can be sat with somebody, and you don’t know them, and they’re a stranger, and they feel it off you and the feel better for it. You know, what, they don’t know why, and then you’re not doing anything, you except that you’re not there. So there’s nothing, there’s no judgments going on is there, there’s nothing going on that you’re an open space for that person, that’s, that’s the value that there is in it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we could say that the divine sort of radiates through you to a profound extent and influences that person positively. Oprah Winfrey has this thing, which she says every morning, your her prayer is, use me, you know, I just as if the God’s saying just make me as effective and instrument as you can. And there’s that phrase from that prayer of St. Francis, make me an instrument of your peace, you know, and a lot of people who have kind of we would regard as saints are so highly spiritual people have that perspective, that they are just instruments of the Divine, and they just want to serve the divine or be as, as influential in a positive way as they possibly can be. They’d like that to be their function on Earth.
Mandi Solk: Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. And that thing, you know, use me even if you don’t feel that there’s a you there, it’s still something that you want to be used for the best purpose, you want to be an open channel, for the best purpose, you know, that everybody feels able to have that sense of openness themselves that this sense of freedom we’re talking about, is, it’s the whole point is it’s free. It’s available to everybody. And, you know, I hope I’ve made that clear, because that that use me was what I thought before this interview, you know, I just thought, yeah, I had that thought that Yeah, to be to be an open channel that
Rick Archer: will the less there is a you there, the more you can be used. Yeah. I mean, the more you’re, the more you’re kind of like, you know, trying to run the show, the less God can run the show.
Mandi Solk: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it’s good to get out your own way.
Rick Archer: And, alright, well, that’s delightful. I mean, you’re the kind of person I could just kind of keep doing this with all day and run out of things to talk about, although we were kind of going around the same points over and over, but it’s good because we, we sort of get it from different angles. I think each time we go around.
Mandi Solk: Oh, it’s been lovely to talk. Thank you so much.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And you know what, I bet you if we do another one in a few years, you’ll say You know, I
Rick Archer: ever thought I had it all figured out three years ago, when I talked to you. And now he’s like, I realize this. There’s so much more. I think the difference is I don’t feel I’ve got it figured out, right.
Mandi Solk: I did think that before. Yeah, I should. Yeah, I
Rick Archer: shouldn’t. But it’s not fair to say it that way. But I bet you if we do have another talk, I hope we will. You’ll say, Boy, it’s gotten a lot even more interesting, you know?
Mandi Solk: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly what we’re talking about wasn’t exactly, yeah. Most things that you say, Oh, yes. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And I think that’s something that everyone has to look forward to. It’s, you know, life is this fascinating adventure, and it just keeps unfolding for us all.
Mandi Solk: Yeah. Well, you know, because people, because I sort of offer Skype sessions you see one to one Skype sessions. And I think these sessions, Oh, just a little box. It says Scott killaby is online. Not funny. I forget when you’re on Skype that other people sort of pop up to you. And yeah, what was the say, oh, Skype conversations. It’s a lovely way of, of meeting this, isn’t it? You know, if you can’t get to see somebody, you can just do this. I mean, it feels very bonding, doesn’t it? So it’s a lovely thing.
Rick Archer: Does? Yeah. So like, I’ve got this big family all over the world now. Yeah, but
Mandi Solk: you do? Yeah. Fantastic. Parts of it.
Rick Archer: Oh, yes. Yeah. Like my, one of my British soul sisters. Ah, thank you. So I guess we’d better wrap it up. Um, I’ve been speaking with Mandy solc, who lives in northern part of the UK. And she mentioned she does Skype sessions. So if you’d like to get in touch with Mandy, I’ll be linking to her website, from batgap.com. And you can contact her through that. And we’ll say what your website is, I’ll be linking to it. But what is it? It’s Monday salt.com. That’s easy. Ma n di Sol k.com. And this interview has been one in an ongoing series, I do a new one each week. And if you’d like to listen to some of the previous ones, go to batgap.com. And you’ll see them all archived there. It’s available both as video and as an audio podcast. So there’s a link with each interview there to the I guess it’s called iTunes thing where you can subscribe to the podcast. There’s also a little discussion group that crops up around each interview, I noticed that last week’s interview has 270 Something comments now since just so they get kind of lively, they usually go off topic, but I can’t police it. So you know, I encourage people to try to stay relevant to the interview itself, but who knows, doesn’t matter. So go there for that. And what else there’s a Donate button there. I appreciate people clicking on it. And there’s little signup thing there. If you’d like to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted, just sign up, and you will be so good. So thanks, Mandy. Thank you. Great. I think next week is Cesar Terrell, I’ll be speaking to him in Mexico. I’ll be in Iowa. He’ll be in Mexico. I don’t know much about CZ yet. But a lot of people requested that I interview him and he seems like an interesting guy. So that’ll be next week. So thanks for listening or watching and we’ll see you then.