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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha, the gas pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually Awakening people. We’ve done over 660 Something of them. Now, if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com. And look under the past interviews menu. And you’ll see something new under the past interviews menu. We have as a person developed this whole thing just in the past week and sent it to me and said, Look, what I’ve done. And what it is, is a thing where you can type in any word or phrase, and you will immediately see a list of all the interviews in which that word or phrase was mentioned. And then if you click on any item in that list, the will immediately see that video in the window up above. And if you click play on that video, it starts playing at the point where that word or phrase was mentioned. So it’s a really cool search thing. And it’s based upon the YouTube captions. And there are still about a third of the interviews or so that don’t have captions yet. So we’re in the process of creating captions for all those as well. In fact, if you’d like to help with that project, there’s information on that page. In any case, this whole program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it, and would like to help support it, there’s a Pay Pal button on every page of the website and there’s a page explaining alternatives to PayPal, also encourage you to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Looks like we’re going to hit 100,000 subscribers this year, which has no ultimate significance, but it’s kind of a cool my milestone. So thanks for joining us. And thanks to today’s guest, who is Matt Garrett. Matt is a young fellow living in the UK. I discovered him through his interview with Angelo de Lulo, whom I interviewed a few months ago. And I’ve spent the last week listening to various YouTube videos that Matt has made and have enjoyed his burgeoning wisdom. So I have a brief bio here that Matt sent me, I’ll just read that and then we’ll get started. Growing up a burning desire to seek truth to cold after years of searching, the need to see reality overtook the need to avoid suffering. Through the marriage of inquiry and surrender, realization unfolded in ways that could never have been imagined by my former self. After seeing through the illusion of separation, there is now a keen interest in exploring the mystery of reality and the human form. The stage of integrating this non dual understanding into daily life is ongoing and beautiful. And something I returned to daily, not just to help myself, but to look for ways to alleviate suffering for anyone who is interested. It has been seen to be a never ending clarification, deepening with each insight into reality, a reality that favors authenticity, honesty and devotion. All else will be burned to a beautiful pile of ash.
Matt Garrett: So it sounds dramatic when you read it out. Yeah,
Rick Archer: but if nothing else, you’re a good writer.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, that’s fine. It’s fine, because it’s so ordinary, but it’s so weird. When you want to write it down. It’s like, yeah, it’s both extraordinary ordinary at the same time for anyone.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s very true. And I often discuss that I have a friend who’s going through a really beautiful unfolding, and she often finds herself just weeping uncontrollably with the overwhelming love and beauty she’s experiencing and everything. And yet at the same time, he or she also uses the word ordinary. I mean, go ahead, go ahead what you’re saying.
Matt Garrett: Just just like she said, it’s like the most ordinary but I think it’s familiar is a word because it was so like you always knew, I think that’s what it ordinariness why everyone says that. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: Some people use the phrase, the natural state. You know, it’s perfectly natural. And yet I think that if if the average person who is deeply mired in suffering, were to pop into it instantly their jaw would drop to the floor, you know, there would be There’s amazement, and yet at the same time, once you acclimate, and you’ve said things here about integrating and so once you acclimate is the most natural thing in the world, you don’t walk around, you know, weeping or sit in the corner drooling or, you know, it’s just kind of natural.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, it’s as if is prior to everything, isn’t it? It’s, it’s what there without the doing without the thought is there in the thoughts as well as is even to say, like you said, there is just prior to everything. It’s, it’s not as if it’s waiting to be seen. It’s, it’s, it’s once everything kind of just stops for a moment. It’s just so it’s just clear. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Other phrases that are sometimes used are the simplest form of awareness, or the state of least excitation of consciousness, you know, everything else is a is an agitation. But that natural state is just the most settled natural state. Closing the blinds when that’s okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So, so you, you’re only like 23 years old, but yet you wrote this thing as if you’ve been on this long journey. Yeah, hold, were you when you first got interested in this stuff?
Matt Garrett: Yeah. So that’s one thing I think is, like, there’s been a lot of suffering. And it’s weird. I know. It’s weird to, like, look younger, and stuff like that. But I think maybe it just hit me earlier. Like very early. I remember just intense, I look back on it, you can call it suffering. And with almost a kind of sense of humor to it. And maybe a sense of that, that was nothing I needed to do it. But in the moment it was excruciating. It was. With the burning desire to know truth, there was this need to get away from this suffering this feeling that this wasn’t real, this wasn’t normal, this is it, everyone else seemed normal. And there was something that needed to be seen, and even to this day, wants to be clarified. This, it just, I just couldn’t live with myself, or the idea of myself that I thought I was, and I knew there was a way out. But then I realized this was going to be a way through, if that makes sense. And all my ways out basically dead ended, which was just infuriating, this sense of suffering, the sense of isolation. And it was really through and I hold my hands up, it’s through teachers and things I’ve just, I haven’t done this. I mean, ultimately, see, there’s no one. There’s no real teachers, no guru there. They’re just showing what’s really within but coming across inquiry, you know, just normalizing this unfolding that was happening, gave me so much courage to keep going with it that I just, you know, you just start to be so grateful that you came across these things, and you realize even gratefulness doesn’t make sense. But yeah, just burning, burning suffering was was the fuel for this? One as well, really,
Rick Archer: you said in this thing that you’ve sent the need to see reality overtook the need to avoid suffering, which implies that to see reality you had to confront suffering head on. Yeah, that’s a sort of face it not try to stifle it or blot it out.
Matt Garrett: Yeah. In fact, I’d like you said that I’d go even further to the only way, the only keys to the freedom was in the heart of this suffering was with at the core of each of these resistances these emotions, if you want to call it on a relative level, the things we were running from most, I realized, it wasn’t that I had to overcome these things. I had to just examine them for what they were, and really truth to be seen, rather than achieved by getting over and, you know, especially starting out with emotional work, I realized. And I’ve seen in your interviews that it’s amazing when people talk about emotion, because I can relate so much to the only way I’ve ever gotten through emotion was to completely surrender to it, go to the heart of it and dive into it. And it’s just like surrender and inquiry just have the most magical things when when paired. Really. And it kind of finds you in a way and yeah, diving into it was something that really came about, I think,
Rick Archer: yeah, it’s interesting, because the average person would look at you or would have looked at you several years ago, when you started going through this and said, you know, what’s this kid got to suffer about? he’s healthy, he’s well fed, you know, he’s living in a warm house or whatever. But obviously, you’re talking about a completely internal thing. Where the, really the alienation from your true nature was causing suffering. Would it be fair to say that?
Matt Garrett: Yeah, you’ve you’ve I think you really hit the nail on the head where you kind of dead end, everything that I mean, on one hand, you can say I think a lot of people especially in the UK, America, like we’ve got the survival down to a tee, we’ve got food, we’ve got a shelter, I couldn’t be more grateful for a happy childhood even to an extent But it’s almost as if that added to this, this inner fury, this inner, everything that ended it couldn’t be money that was going to provide happiness, it couldn’t be relationships, it couldn’t be all these things I was out of luck, I was out of anything so. And then even spirituality became the last thing, because spiritual Enlightenment was this thing I can now chase that was, you know, beyond the physical and I could kind of turn my nose up everyone else and say that they don’t really get it, I get it, I want Enlightenment. And I got to the end of that as well. And that is, that is the most horrible discovery to know that even the inner work was just another money or relationship or thing. And to an extent, I wouldn’t say that’s even bad. I think you have to chase spirituality, you have to chase Enlightenment to really find that that really is Enlightenment. But it’s not what we think it’s completely radically different. It’s just trying to send him here even on so yeah, it just that ended everything, including spirituality. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And, you know, I mean, you know, that I don’t know, in the UK, but when we were kids in the US, we sometimes play this game, where you’re trying to guess something, and the person would say, you’re getting warmer, or you’re getting colder, you know, as you moved closer and closer to what, what it was they were You were supposed to guess. And, you know, I would say that spirituality even in the sense that you put it just now you’re getting warmer, you know, it’s not like drug, drug use or going to parties all night or anything like that you’re on the right track. But obviously, there are degrees of maturity and the approach to spirituality. Yeah, it’s a,
Matt Garrett: it’s like slightly upside down pyramid, I would say with all these things you can choose from, and you try and get closer and closer to truth. And it’s almost as if spirituality is getting to the root slightly more. But then even then, if you open up spirituality, you’ve got all these things, which nothing wrong with them, like mindfulness really helps breathwork astral objects, all these things. But if you want to get even close to the core of that, like, what is the root of suffering? Like? What What am I not looking at? What am I avoiding, and what can be inquired into or serenity, and it’s always a root, there’s always the root, the self, the Miss identities, identification with a separate self, the belief in separation, just this simple belief, triggers all of these branches of suffering that we can trim all day long with obvious symptoms and plasters and or band aids, whatever we call it in America, but like many people get, is completely sick of just healing this self. But then you turn around and try and find the one you’re trying to heal. And you’re like, you can’t find it. So so that can be healing, but is a person that’s healed? Is there a self as even progressing? Is there as solid entity that’s even making any kind of progress? And this is what, in a way, it’s a paradox, would you say there’s nothing to do and, you know, spirituality is a waste of time or something some people say, but really, if you if you’re honest, there’s an effortless effort that you can look in the right places. The fuel behind this, and this is what a lot of people don’t understand, like, okay, there’s no self, but can you see that there’s no self? And does that drop away? And is that seen with clarity and luminosity? I think it’s what most people get stuck with is you can see for yourself a glimpse. But then all the mind it identifications hits you like a train again, and it’s all there, these conditionings and all this stuff.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’m glad you use the word paradox. I’ve used that word so many times on the show that somebody wants sent me a t shirt that had the word paradox on it. There’s so many things that are paradoxical in this field. And there were like a dozen things in the statement you just made that that are paradoxical or something is, it’s this but it’s not this. It’s also that you know, and we can dig into some of them.
Matt Garrett: Just really quickly, because you said the other day, you talked about a pendulum a lot between I think it was a video with Adi Shanti or someone but it was so true with the pension on one hand, sometimes when we break out of mind we’re so involved in this no self that is no self becomes or this non separation becomes so amazing. But then the other shoe drops in it comes back to humanity, the human form and relative level we want to integrate you know what the emotions are? Well, these things are and people either get stuck sometimes up here because it’s such an amazing experience. But that’s what it is and experience. And then it comes back Well, we are still in humans. There’s a form here there’s a speaking between the new and it comes back this way like you said, and then eventually it kind of goes back because goes good. And then you can you know kind of walk this delicate line of seeing through cells, but not disregarding your humanity. I think the dance is it’s it’s it’s that that kind of skill of getting in the middle.
Rick Archer: There maybe that’s where the Zen masters used to whack people with a stick you know someone say I am not the body. Okay? Why? Because that
Matt Garrett: that’s the thing. But when you’re doing you can’t really do that. So
Rick Archer: there’s a woman named Jessica Nathanson whom I’m going to interview next week. And she has a website called the glorious both and. And I first became aware of her because of a series of conversations she had with Tim freak. If you know, Tim, and I think he lives up in Glastonbury has been on BatGap a few times. But her whole thing was she had this awakening. And then she dove into what we might call Neo Advaita. And she she feels like it really dehumanized her and be disassociated her and she just felt so it was in a bad place, you know. And so she’s kind of on a campaign to promote integration and balance and living the paradox fully.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, it’s there’s, there’s so many traps. It’s funny, because I feel like the deeper you go, the traps become almost more subtle, but deeper. So like, razor’s edge, yeah, when you come back to the humanity thing, then you can almost take on this. I am a human, a heroic trauma healer, and there’s so much trauma to be healed. But if you get stuck in just doing that, and not and almost take on the self, again, because the self wants to be this hero that is doing this for like humanity or doing it for themselves to be loved all the time. And I don’t know, I think I think even there, the self can operate in a way that’s trying to progress with this stuff. So in the middle, it’s like, on one hand, there’s no solidity to me. There’s no kind of person here, but at the same time that is conditioned by is a momentum of behaving in a way that’s not aligned with that seeing of no self. So it’s like so she I really liked that website title. Looking after,
Rick Archer: yeah, there’s a on the upcoming interviews page, there’s a link to her website. One of my favorite quotes was from the old Buddhist sage promise and Baba, he was said to have said, although my awareness is as vast as the sky, my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour. So in other words, you know, vast awareness, and yet minute precise attentiveness to the human value to the, to the relative value to the act to the behavior and so on.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, that’s it. It’s, I think, Jeff Foster said, you can honor the wave without turning your back to the ocean, like, you know, you have to forget your made of water. This is there is a skill, there’s an art to it. It’s like a diet, it really is a dance. It’s, it’s, if you make it to science, it’s all intellectual. It’s all inquiry. It’s all this but there has to be a surrender. At some point, there has to be a complete letting go of the raft. And that’s the scariest thing, this void that appears, or that was always there, but we’re always running from, you know,
Rick Archer: yeah. Did you ever see Jeff’s cartoon the Advaita trap on YouTube? No, I didn’t. But it’s cute. Look it up. It’s basically these cartoon characters. And it’s based upon an experience Jeff had with his mother, where they were walking in some park and his mother said, Oh, look at the beautiful tree. And Jeff goes into this thing. Jeff, the cartoon characters goes into the thing. There is no beauty there are no trees.
Matt Garrett: Dad says something about the same with dad. Yeah, it’s true. And there’s no there’s no warmth to it. There’s no warmth to the teaching. It kind of seems a bit off. It seems a bit. There’s definitely it’s definitely so be like a whack on the head for just getting out of seeking. But it’s like, there’s no one there’s. Yeah, it’s strange. But but at the same time to see why. But what has to be done is to just notice who wants you know, liberation? More? Because it’s just another identity on that side? Yeah,
Rick Archer: I suppose how we, we might be able to summarize what we’ve been talking about for the last few minutes, is that and spiritual development, if we want to call it that, there’s many things we could call it is a multi, multi dimensional undertaking. You can’t sort of isolate yourself and one dimension of it to the exclusion of the others that there has to be this holistic, well rounded, balanced development. Would you agree with that terminology?
Matt Garrett: Yeah. I think it’s down to like a spiritual maturity. I remember starting out and I was looking for a practice a truth, a thing I could do enough of in order to achieve this plateau of Enlightenment, this final ground of bliss and happiness, and everyone’s gonna like me, I have the best job in the world and I’m going to be so spirit purchase. The books that I sell are gonna go. Best Seller. I’m going to be the next Eckhart Tolle we’ve all had it okay. Actually, you have to mature enough to see that you have to die really like like you have to see this as a death in some ways I think because I was under the impression that I could achieve achieve achieve or see for yourself become so enlightened I remember walking through the forest and blissed out I was blessed that I had no sense of the body was almost seemed to be completely empty of any solidity It was as if I wasn’t even really there. Like I remember as a tennis you know, Jock a bit the tennis ball. Yeah, sure. Because he’s described it best, which is strange that he was playing tennis. And at one moment, he just felt he who he was this this this person just, it just wasn’t there. It was vacant. But But life was. But the aliveness was still there, life was still going. I remember thinking this was it, and but something deep down into the sea new. And there’s always been, it’s always been the case, whenever something’s come about, it doesn’t hang around for long these realizations, because if you’ve got true authenticity, true honesty, you know that there’s something more to look at, there’s something that’s well, who’s experiencing this bliss, who’s, who’s the who’s the self that isn’t enlightened, who’s the self is the spins, and on the realization that you’re everything, or the realization that you’re nothing this there’s always still a slight experiencer of that kind of progressive through that and then the caustic a very dark time, where Yeah, broken out of mind identification, everything that I thought I was, I saw through that then all the momentum of the previous conditionings the karmic or the conditions just came flooding back because they wanted to be looked at, you know, it was a case of no stone be left unturned, that was come back, it came back with more force, it came back with more rage, anger, all these things, they had to be looked at now there was nothing that could hide it was like reality was forcing me to look at every single way that I was not being honest with myself image, you know, who I thought I was, you know, this constant, we’re always bartering with life trying to trade off with life, China, if I do this enough, I’ll be more happy this thing. And I had to really dive into this process of, of all, my almost took a tenant and into no self rather than all self. And then the will when the wealth starts dissolving, it’s game over. Because no matter how much you tried to get back, this will have I can do enough inquiry to meditate I can. It’s like surrender just floods your body. Like I was never to credit for any of this. And then it’s like, in whatever you do now is not your will. It’s God’s will. There’s no you. And this is going somewhere that you can’t guide. And then you have, you have no option but to like, let go of the reins, because if you if you hold on to those reins, again, you will get the strongest burn in your hand you’ve ever had. Because you know you’re not in control. It’s like you’re fighting your own illusion. And then eventually, the lights are turned on so much, you see so much that you can’t kid yourself anymore. You can’t keep yourself asleep. You have to face every single trauma that was there every single relationship issue, or this feelings of not being lovable or not being good enough or anger or just then it’s brutal, but it’s the most worthwhile thing that unfolds, I think,
Rick Archer: yeah, maybe somebody who’s listening right now could do us a favor and find that Nisargadatta quote, where he says something like, you know, when I see myself as everything, then such and such, but then when I see myself as nothing then such and such in between these two, my life flows, you know that quote?
Matt Garrett: Yeah, I think it’s like with a love and then Western. And then
Rick Archer: yeah. Let’s see, somebody could find that and send it into the question form that that’d be handy. Anyway. Okay, so a couple of questions came in. Let me just ask those. And, okay, this is a question from someone named RJ Maharaj. and Canada. In the bio, that I read it states that you were seeking, seeking to find the truth and see through the illusion of separation. Can you speak on what that looked like? For your close personal personal relationships, including family?
Matt Garrett: Yeah, so that could be split up into the seeking on one hand, and then the same through separation on the other? I’m not sure how it really the seeking relates to find it if I think what, what I get from that is the seeking. I think what there is was time as well as just a relative wealth is seeking I think it takes you out of kind of I remember being honest, disinterested in these personal relationships been used. To be, of course, family is always there on a relative level. But there was this need to see through relationship at the same time, almost a retreat from relationship, a retreat from jobs, money, doing a degree sports, all these things, there was a retreat from that. So the seeking could go inward. Because all of these people that I had relationships with, or the career path or that sport or these things, there was still a self that was doing that. And I’m not someone that thinks you have to be in a cave the whole time and in this, but I do really think that a period of time of retreat in oneself, is so beneficial, because you can just let the noise just simmer for a bit, let the silence sort of grow. And in that silence is what really you’re needing to look at. in isolation, sometimes just just looking for this. And I keep using this because it’s like a, you’re no longer invested in. I remember just being completely disinterested, because I knew those dead ends will be staying. I’m not saying the dead end to family. But people sometimes even I’ve seen it, they hope to get a family and then they get the family and there’s love, there’s all these things, but there’s still this agitation, this need to find truth, you know, not in a material good. And these things in this stillness looking for that self. And that seeking really went inwards. With us a radical, radical inquiry. This had to be known that there was that I was a delivery driver for about a year. Was it three or four years ago now three, I can’t remember. But I would take the inquiry home. It wasn’t because I was forcing it generally so interested that I couldn’t find myself. Anywhere. I couldn’t find this person that was seeking I couldn’t find Matt I couldn’t find when delivery driving out and about in the senses in the experience of self when talking to people when delivering food when using the physical body, I could feel sensations, but like, where did I end? Where did the sensations start? Where when I was talking to someone, when they were looking at when I was looking at their eyes, was I looking at them? Or where are they located in the body. So so the inquiry became so interwoven, everything became like that message, whatever came through, I think that there was no distraction. So this could be done not just on the cushion, like I said, in the retreat, but then you started taking it into the world of this inquiry, this, you know, seeing the emptiness of objects, like I remember the when emptiness came into my life, in the form of the insight of emptiness, you can see that there really was no objects, not just the emptiness itself, not just the emptiness of subject, but the emptiness of what I perceive. I remember doing it on my mom, at one point, I was like, Well, this sounds really horrible. But if I was to, like, really say, where is my mom, if I was to, like, take off the arms is she and they tell her that or you’re just, I was just beheading her. I had, I was trying to find where she was, or anyone like, and then that’s what Okay, she’s behind the eyes. But then I was thinking like, with myself, well, if I’m behind the eyes, let’s go to the exact particle where I am. Like, let’s really find this particle, this subject, this self that I keep referring to all day that I’m trying to protect, trying to make enlightened. And all I could find was empty sensations. There’s just more sensations kind of like a brain where the brains seem to be an event that I could be aware of prior to that. So I kind of run we’re talking about but but yeah, it was, it was inquiry into into into self foremost and not finding the self. I think it opens up this opportunity, for lack of a better word to deepen the no self aspect of that the dying into nothingness, you know, and anyway, we’ll talk about entities objects, but yeah, just rob OB if anyone’s interested. I just wanted to get anyone into Robert via sadly he passed away. But
Rick Archer: what’s that name?
Matt Garrett: Rob bugbear on that. So Rob, RGB and then B U R B E A. He was a Buddhist, brilliant teacher down in Devon. I believe he has videos on YouTube. He didn’t he was like Ramana Maharshi in a way. But he didn’t want anyone to actually didn’t want video. There’s loads of audio tapes. So if you just type in Google, he is brilliant for emptiness. He’s got a book called seeing that freeze. If anyone’s interested I would. He opened up to the world of emptiness. And he had this thing where he said, and this is what clicked enters me as one day I sat in my chair and I was deep into contemplating what he meant. Because if I don’t understand something, you have to kind of sit with it and a silence without without an agenda to know you just have. I remember sitting with it. He said, We have objects, right. So let’s say you have a mug like this. We see this mug is a solid object. But he took it he took a chair and he said he started burning the chair in this metaphor, and he said when does the chair become not a chair into the pot? elevations you see how at one point is solid. And then if you look at it later, it’s just Rubble on the floor ashes. So we have this kind of opens up this fragility of what we say is an object, you know. So I realized I could start doing this to everything, every object like a car, for example, we say that’s a Mercedes, that’s a object and started doing that. That’s a BMW. But if you take the logo off the BMW slowly start taking parts off. At what point does it not become a BMW car anymore when it’s completely unrecognizable, or something? So I can see the fragility of this world of perception of subject objects. And this was more just seeing the entity seeing objects before it was turned into inquiry of the subject of these objects. So yeah, that was a big shifting point, I think, yeah, that’s
Rick Archer: great. I mean, people have been doing this for 1000s of years, you can read the Mandukya Upanishad, or the Astra Vak are Gita and books like that. And this is the way they talk, you know that. I mean, they go so far as to say, the universe never manifested in the first place. It’s just a mistake of the intellect to perceive that it has, and things like that. And modern physics, I mean, physics will tell you that if you boil everything down to a microscopic enough level, there’s no physicality to be found. It’s just probabilities, and energies, all that all that stuff. So, you know, I’ve always been fascinated with the juxtaposition of spirituality and modern science, particularly physics, and a lot of people are interested in that. Because, you know, through these modern tools, we’re finding that these Ancient Wisdom Teachings are true. They just had a different way of going about it. One thing you said, I want to ask you about, I also heard about this, you alluded to it in the last few minutes, but I also listened to it in some of your audio or your YouTube videos. You know, how we were talking earlier about integration and balance and holistic development and all that, there are some of the things you’ve said, which, to my mind leaned a little heavily on, sort of the not having ambition, or initiative or motivation and stuff like that. And I think that those things can be balanced with detachment. And with surrender. Like at the time, you were interviewed by Angelo, you were working at a clothing store, and you were like, either on the door or on the cash register. And I thought, Well, this guy has so many, so many. Good, he’s a smart guy, so much potential, he can do more than that with his life. So if you were to be satisfied with that as your life I don’t know, I kind of see spiritual development as a full blossoming, blossoming of our potentialities, and I think that a lot of the great scientists and composers and writers and people like that were actually highly evolved people. And they had unlocked certain potentials that they expressed through their art or their science. And I don’t think there’s any reason why an enlightened person couldn’t also be a great musician or scientist or, or something like that. He doesn’t just have to work in a in a dumb job.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, before I go into the striving, so striving is probably one of the best traits you can have for spiritual awakening. I think if you’re striving inwards, if you’re striving to be open, vulnerable, curious and reality, you’ve got everything you need to get in our way,
Rick Archer: what you were doing. I mean, you weren’t just sort of home. I guess I’ll just drive this delivery truck. I mean, you were you know, yeah. The whole time.
Matt Garrett: I think that’s why I keep my private life quite separate. Because the what I’m doing in my actual job, which isn’t click clothing store, it’s, it’s funny. I love the clothing store job because there’s so much interaction, there’s so much ways that someone can pull you out into your shadow and express this. I mean, working the clothing show in Oxford Street, you’re going to be at your wit’s end on rage at times. On Black Friday. I remember just thinking this is the best, but it was become enlightened. Get a job at Urban Outfitters on Oxford Street and work Black Friday weekend. And it’s like ramped up but you said Go spend a week with your family. It’s the same way right? So so the clothing shop was a practicality for me to move to London in the midst of a pandemic. Yeah, it was it was rent through the roof. And my actual job is in documentary filmmaking and making adverts for commercial work. You had that job now? Yeah. And as you said that every single when when you can go into create it, I like to keep it separate this whole thing this but I could talk about anything that I think might help people that are also insecure. ated world, everything I’ve ever made now, the freedom you get an art without having to take take credit for it, without having to feel like you’re doing it, you’re the doer of it. Also not being bound by limitation in what can be created. I think the only reason that I’ve managed to carve a career in my filmmaking is because I, because of this unfolding. And now I realize I’ve never made anything, it’s just happened through me just like this podcast for you happened through yours beautiful podcast, and you’ve just opened the channel for this, whatever your being is. And sometimes it feels like, Oh, this is difficult, I don’t want to give up my credit for this. But in giving up the credit for the artwork, and giving up the doership, it just flows, it flows, and it flows and people hone in on it, the best music I’ve ever seen. But Djokovic, when he’s playing tennis, he doesn’t feel like he’s there. This is why he’s so good. Yeah. You look at David Bowie, or Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson said, I know there’s a lot of controversy with him. But But Jasmine said, I mean, let’s say let’s be honest, he’s one of the most influential people in music most popular with his with his music. And he said, at one point, something along the lines of it was just him dancing in the moon, and he disappeared, or, again, like took advantage of this, this no self is creeping into the people at the top of art world, or music or these things that it’s like they’re tapping into non duality, and expressing it through them points using them to express and people around the world can suddenly deepen and knows that, and that’s why they’re so successful. I feel.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And somebody like Joker, vich. I mean, if you have a serve coming at you at 130 miles an hour, and the whole game, you can’t actually it, you have to be on autopilot. And of course, you have to have a lot of training, and you have to have the right physiology and everything. But the greatest athletes often speak of this kind of experience, where they’re just in this deep, you know, kind of witnessing state, and then things are just happening automatically.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, I think times yourself go on, because you even if you weren’t International, and you didn’t have experiences, you’re not really there any way the weights or the trends are being done. And there’s there’s no room for any kind of thinking, Oh, it 180 miles this way, I need to know your race, if it’s something like darts, where you’re kind of in your head, and you’re in your thinking and you think, oh pool or snooker or whatever, it’s it’s so different. But you started to touch on striving, which I think is really good. And, and I think the same thing, where if someone is taking this message as Oh, there’s nothing really to do this is all play, I can just go and drink a beer. That’s a version to me. But that’s avoidance to me, because one thing that Angelou taught me, and I think Angelo is one of my most powerful teachers in his ability to point without giving you candy for the mind. And he said, he said one of the better. He commented on something the other day, he said, The best practice really for awakening is a life well lived. Life, you live your life well and thoroughly. First of all, your life kind of gives way, there’s no the yugas way and but what what he means by this, I think is that if you if you lean into life, you get get everything out the shadows, face everything with honesty and brutal, brutal authenticity, you will wake up, because the aversion kind of seeps away, and like you said, the need to wake up kind of overtakes the need to be comfortable and need to, because let’s be honest, people look at people who are younger than me, but we’ve had lifetimes of suffering, I think we’re just sick of it. And for people who are into this path, and they just want to go the full way. Now. They want to wake up now. And the sad thing is, I see so many people into this stuff, but they get sidetracked into like, I’m not saying anything bad, but like certain practices that want the self and keep ahold of itself. And they don’t just want to sit in an empty quiet room and face a blank wall and just let all the suffering come up, and all the pain come up. And just to surrender to that, because that is the best practice as well. It’s just, it’s just silence basically, I think. Yeah,
Rick Archer: so the couple of points here that I want to unpack more with you when one is the striving point. And another is the doership point and a question came in on the doership point from Charlie Melk mclk. In war Parker, Wisconsin. This is the age old question is this freewill exist? And if so, what is its role in awakening? I’ve never heard a good explanation of the relationship between free will and determinism or at least one I could learn from and apply to my own spiritual development.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, so let’s keep this as non intellectual as we can, but still attack it in a way that hopefully sheds light because the first thing I’d say is once we we think about things, what we try and do with with thought re means avoidance of what’s here. And right now, anything that’s here I know exactly. Especially free. Well, we can investigate anything. Let’s get out of philosophy debates, not this person, but philosophy debates about freewill determinism. The only way we are going to ever look into this is right here right now, in this moment, in experience in its sensations in the, you know, we have to go prior to thought, because if we try and figure out thought with thought, we’re just a dog chasing his tail. So these things like free will, I would say, investigate. First of all, on a relative level, there has to be able to hold people accountable for bumping into your car or killing a dog, you know, there’s going to be free. Well, I’m not saying that that but in my experience, when I investigated free will, I can never find this, well, this person will that I supposedly have. And I would say, Can you even find where you first made a decision? Can you find not only can you find the one that’s making the decision, but can you find these decisions, because if you even look into the science aspects, this is still an investigation of now, you know, the whole experiment where the thoughts were firing the neurons like 10 seconds before it even filed. And so this kind of inquiry can lead you to a place of total exertion, where it really does feel like if you trace everything back to the Big Bang, it’s almost as if everything is just kind of the conditions are here for something to happen, even lead to come on to this call with you, your neurons fire to watch Angelo’s spin something and you wanted Angela Angela made a video once. This is all God’s will. This is that I can’t find this separate self that’s doing this, I can’t find all of this. So and that’s there’s so much freedom in that if you don’t take it in a way of attachment or aversion because people take this and then they’ll go and sit on the sofa and say there’s no free will I can doing what I want. But that’s then resisting that insight and not facing what that truly means, which is no no you have no free will over your suffering. And when you give up free will and suffering. It has for Rennes show itself flourish still and be processed or or seen for.
Rick Archer: I think it’s another one of those multi-dimensional paradox things. I like take the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, there are verses such as you have control over action alone, never over it’s fruits, you know, live not for the fruits of action or attach yourself to inaction. So they’re these verses where Lord Krishna is saying to Arjuna, do something, here’s what I want you to do take initiative. And then there are other verses where it says, like, you know, you are not the doer, and the enlightened person realizes I do not act at all, and everything is, you know, the will of God or whatever that that’s carrying it on. So why would why would he state two completely contradictory things in one in one book, and I think the reason is that, you know, knowledge is different in different states of consciousness at different levels of consciousness, different levels of spiritual maturity, and you have to be, you can’t appropriate the truth of one level, to a level that you’re not, you, you yourself are not living. So you have to, if you experience yourself as having volition, then you have to exercise it wisely. If you experience if it’s your experience, that everything is really the will of God, then no problem, it’ll you will carry on automatically. And, you know, when people do this kind of misappropriation, they get themselves into trouble. There was recently a teacher who was embroiled in a scandal where he was, you know, sleeping with a lot of young women who were coming to him that students and in spite of the fact that he was married, and so on, and in when, when that was discovered, he started coming out with all these excuses, like, Oh, I am not the doer, or it’s just God doing it. It’s the will of God, all this stuff. So, you know, it’s just kind of a BS, misapplication of a beautiful teaching. And so I think, you know, the whole freewill determinism thing. Maybe ultimately, there’s absolutely no free will. But if we experience ourselves as having it, then don’t use an intellectual concept of there being no free will as a kind of a tool in your daily life. Just be who you are, where you are, and be genuine. Otherwise it can cause confusion and getting into trouble.
Matt Garrett: Ya know, you’ve hit the nail on the head because if, if someone’s gonna be brutally honest, if someone ever says to me that my myself my sense of self was falling away completely is never returned. That to me, there needs to be a fragrance of self because if someone’s to call your name and you don’t turn around, then that is that’s dropped away, you know? Exactly. This is the expectation people have. They’re like, Enlightenment, you know, you’re blissed out, you know? If you just see through the reality of that yogo you don’t lose the ability to speak, the ability to turn it even when I’m driving my car and I hit someone or not I have ever
Rick Archer: lost yours Your delivery driver job
Matt Garrett: to get into a clothing. But like you say, let’s say I was to delivery someone and I would I dropped all their shopping or I on purpose or whatever bags to hit them. In this moment, you have to admit on the relative level to the character. Yeah, I screwed up. It wasn’t you? It was. But this is the dimensional thing. How am I? How dimensional? How deep do we want to go into this how prior to we want to go into this, beyond all of this, because if you were to take it out, you can look at even the two of you arguing and you’re beyond the two arguments, the will of this person will have that person. So it’s like, but in the moment, I don’t think it’s the best thing to be in that state of absolutist no self because if your child had just fallen over or, you know, an old lady needed help, if I went into no self absolute is I need to go into my character as the human to be able to help help her across the road in my form. They we just swing the pendulum all day. Yeah, till we walk that line. And there was something you said I really want to touch on because it was good. Yeah, this whole? Well, I think if you’re if you’re premature to some of these teaching, especially emptiness especially well, you take it but mine takes it as Oh, I can use this to make myself more comfortable, happy I can, I can now say it’s fine to play video games all day, or be horrible to my mom, or dad, because there’s no free world. Like Jefferson said, with the beauty of the tree, that there’s no beauty. There’s no truth. But this is this is just not true. Or not close to close to truth. I say it was close to the truth is when you’ve really exhausted the well even desire that I remember someone said the other day, they said, quite fun. I hope this is all fine talking to me because I have the desire to go meet a prostitute. And I didn’t I didn’t I’ve never say what to do. I just said in another case, though, when desire is there, the posture is not a good example. But if there’s a desire that you need to not suppress it, feel it, inquire into the one that’s doing it the one because when we suppress the desires, we just have another form of resistance, another form of shame, guilt, all these things. And this doesn’t help at all. But with the world back to the world. If you go to the edge of the world, and you and you see that you hit the ceiling, I love when Adyashanti said, you really do hit the ceiling of what you can do, because at certain point inquiry even loses its ability to see through things, even emotional work, you say you’re out on a raft to see I was saying, eventually all these things have gotten you absolutely love the ocean. But the truth is at the Boston, you have to let go the raft and like sink, without practice without your own well without any kind of knowledge or way through I feel. And that can be taken on different levels. But it only really flowers sometimes when it’s needed. But all these practices and things are so powerful, I feel it just sometimes need to be let go. And that includes the well.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Two thoughts on what you just said one about the desires. We don’t just act on any desire that happens to pop into our heads, I don’t care what state you’re in, there’s a value to discernment, you know, discrimination. And there’s value you might be tempted to, let’s say you’re working in the clothing store, and some customer was being impatient and gnarly with you, you know, you might have an impulse to say something to tell them off. But you know, you can check that desire, you’re not going to cause irreparable frustration harm to yourself or anything. It’s just, there’s the wisdom to being able to hold one’s tongue or to check one’s impulses if they’re inappropriate. The second thing is about the pendulum thing. It’s not it’s never all or nothing, you know, a pendulum gives the impression like it’s gonna it’s way over here, but it’s not going to be over here. What I’m I’m kind of suggesting that it’s more like a zoom lens on a camera. And you’re a camera guy where, you know, you might focus in on a particular thing, but you also still see the background like right my my image right now it’s focused on me, but you can still see the background and maybe you zoom to the background and I become blurry. But in any case, our our focus, there’s always going to if we’re really developed in this way there might there’s always going to be the sort of no self silence, non doing dimension. And there’s going to be the kind of divine everything is perfect just as it is dimension. And there’s going to be the oh we have problems here. This child just fell down or is it altered? run in front of a car or something like that dimension. And you don’t ever focus exclusively on one to the exclusion of the others that it’s just more of a matter of the zoom lens going to where what’s appropriate at that time.
Matt Garrett: You I think I’ve never used the pendulum again now because this is such a good this this thing that you talked about because like you say when when you when you what all this is really is a stepping back a widening of the lens. And when you when you’re what I like about that is when you’re in the humanity thing, it does feel like a getting closer, it does feel like a leaning in. Sometimes when it’s emotional work, I’ll just say just lean into it just until there’s no you’re in it, you’re we’re almost going in in in in it almost like a tantric approach to that. And the going back and back and back and back. I’d also say as well, as you say, it’s less like that way or this way, or even zooms in zooms out, there’s almost a case of you can stay in the silence even even in the noise of becoming, or taking the form of human, you start to never forget the silence. Yeah,
Rick Archer: you have no choice after a while. Exactly. Yeah,
Matt Garrett: exactly. So someone sat there, and they were really mind identifies. It’s almost as if it takes more effort to be in silence. And eventually, being the silence you see is your natural is your state anyway. And it takes more effort to suffer more effort to have to think in to create these illusions and kid yourself again, that there’s anything wrong with that the separation is has any reality to it. Yeah. In fact,
Rick Archer: I think it was Angelo, when I was listening to your interview with Angelo, he was saying that for him. The more hair the more crazy the situation. And I think he’s an he’s an emergency room doctor, isn’t he? The more crazy the situation, the more he notices the silence because the contrast is greater something.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, I remember who said that. And it gave the same thing of, oh, this can be done anywhere, this can be seen anywhere. And there’s times where I was in the silence. And when my mind isn’t mine was the most noisy at that point. So it’s that same thing again. And it just shows people if Andrew can do it, it would the stress of his job, I have nothing to say about anything in my life, that can never unless I was suddenly amputated with everything. And I was this and I had no prospects. And he has the most stuff on his plate up until that point. In terms of professional jobs, I think, you know, having something like that and to be able to still do that has given I know other people who are doctors, and they’ve read and seen Android stuff and had so much courage to do their stuff. Because before it was just an excuse. They didn’t have time. We didn’t have a thing. And even delivery driving. I wouldn’t pretend before this, you know, we’re not doing it 10 hours a day. Like there’s no time to sit and meditate. Okay, I take the meditation to the delivery drop van driving, I take it to the conversations, I take it to go into the toilet, where do I end? Where does the toilets start this kind of this kind of stuff, you know, that will only take us back to striving because I remember one of the things I wanted to really talk about today was that this can be done by anyone. And yes, relative world, there are going to be problems where you’ve got, you’ve got to do a job, or maybe your degree is taking over. But eventually if you’re really wanting this and more than you want something in the land of careers or money and you don’t have to cut them down. But you can incorporate this and orient towards this until this is your priority and you don’t forget anything else. You just orient towards this whilst doing these things or, and you can go the full way anyone can.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a principle we might call the highest first. In other words, you don’t eliminate all other things, but you prioritize. And so you know, this is your first priority. And then, as Jesus said, you know, Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else should be added unto thee. So you don’t lose everything else you actually gain more if, if this inner development or whatever we want to call it is your highest priority. Yeah,
Matt Garrett: yeah. I so resonate with that. I think what what came to me just saying there as well, is the realization of the amount of suffering it took to try and put happiness in these other things like careers. And these days, it doesn’t mean trust me. Post awakening, I’ve been even more involved in filmmaking, because there’s no agenda to use it for happiness, because there’s no agenda opens up with complete freedom to create and do stuff and still make a living out of it. And when there’s no agenda, because you look, I talked to another guy that days a musician and before that awakening, he was making music in order to say his name as well. Yi Han Ji Han, I think his name was I just want to put his name out there cuz he’s such a lovely guy. He was making music before and it’s almost like an agenda. You had to make something in order post awakening, you see that there’s nothing in that substance wise, that’s going to bring happiness. There’s no fulfillment there. And suddenly you’re free in the realm of music to create with no need to If there’s money involved, of course, it becomes tricky. But it just opens up this freedom to create without sustaining the no some hope that this is going to fill me up. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And I don’t know how we wanted to find happiness, but I wouldn’t say that it brings no happiness, but it’s more like icing on the cake, you know, I’m sure that this fellow derives fulfillment than by creating his music and it’s a joy to him. He’d rather be doing that than just sitting staring at a wall or something. But he probably would also be content just staring at a wall. But you know, but so it’s like a value. It’s an add on, you know, you, you get to have the fulfillment and do something that is a joy and perhaps is a benefit to other people.
Matt Garrett: It goes from exactly that from this will finally have this will find the wholeness, this thing to this thing is just a celebration of the wholeness, relationship and remember thinking at one point, because relationships, especially intimate relationships, was such a hotbed of resistances, and suffering, and there’s so much validation and security and woven into this, there’s so much there to be deepened with self, because that’s why I think the self operates so much as well. What are we talking about then?
Rick Archer: added on fulfillment in addition to baseline fulfillment?
Matt Garrett: Exactly. And you can sense when someone just energy wise wants something from you in the room or something, or some kind of validation, even relationship because they’re thinking this person will fulfill me will fill me up well, will add to this whole list to me. But then if you’ve ever sat with someone, I don’t know, if you have why they just feel really content in themselves that they don’t really want anything from me. But oh, yeah. So what’s the difference from these two people, I say this person feels the fullness feels complete. And the laughter is the things you share a celebration of that owners, as anyone else usually is looking as with an agenda to either manipulate you to get them to like you or to attach to them, or it’s just slight perspective change that happens, not through force, but through a seeing that there is no, there’s no separation that cannot be met anything to attend to lose. Miss.
Rick Archer: You know that phrase from the 23rd Psalm, my cup runneth over. I’m not a big Bible expert or anything, but my grandmother used to read that to me when I was a kid. And I think that often because it’s like when my cup runneth over, when you’re when you are full within yourself, then you naturally overflow. And if you’re not, then you can’t really overflow in the sense of the kind of person you just referred to the who is content with themselves and you feel the the overflow come in when you’re in their presence. So I think that the more deeply awake one is, the more one’s personality blossoms, it’s not like you become more of a bland, emotionless person but you become more vibrant more alive more you know, and and the more it benefits others I just one more thought before I lose it which is you know that saying man is made in the image of God when you were talking about the value of the sort of the fullness rising and waves and the joy of creating this and doing that you know, maybe that’s if we’re made in the image of God maybe our that thing you described is a reflection of what God himself is doing. Because you know, you can imagine prior to the manifestation of the universe there’s just sort of a god and resting pose as it were, you know, just flat one this and then I am one may become many it rises up in waves and there’s a value added there’s some joy in the whole show, you know, the whole creation that is more than just the unmanifest value by itself.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, you move from you move from wholeness you when you’re talking about I remember something that someone said to me it’s like what how is it different What is it different and when you’re when you’re not moving from this as if God’s moving through is if you’re if you’re putting in this effort consciously to take credit for your actions and this doership and this this thing is energy and all the energy that sucks out of all the blame and guilt and effort striving this thing is you’re missing out on the truth reality of it really is just God’s Will moving through Yeah, through and and the beauty majority is holding about there. It’s almost as if beauty and joy is synonymous with with the sin. Because it’s what’s what’s the difference as well. Let’s investigate as well. How can people sense it? I think it’s the word is resistance as well. Because when you’re resisting, you’re basically saying you’re going against the universe. You’re saying, God is you don’t trust God to trust the universe in this moment, because you’d be saying, No, I know best here. I shouldn’t have this feeling. I shouldn’t have this. Thought I shouldn’t have that. You’re going to get billions of years of evolution to get to this state? Well, this is the map naivety, I had, or most humans have to say this moment is wrong. Is is basically saying, you know, best over God. But then once you really let God show and I don’t like using the word God, let’s call universe because it puts people off. I’ve thought, well, let’s just
Rick Archer: define it quickly. We, let’s call it God, if we’re going to use that word, just the sort of all pervading intelligence, which is running the show from the subatomic to the galactic levels.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, exactly. And I am going to keep using the word universe now just because, but but that’s perfect description. But when you’re going into the universe, it’s, it’s so there’s so much suffering in that because when you go with the universe, there’s no use anymore to do it. There’s just this aliveness, it’s like, the weather patterns, they just come together. And you know, this, this body is temporary, but what it sees through my eyes and see through your eyes is exactly the same. And it’s beyond all that, you know, we’re just playing a game at this point. I’m just so when someone says, you know, I look at you now. And I see myself beyond your form and my form that that that that is the activities view. And you can fall into that there’s beauty of it. And what the piece, I think comes is this lack of this seen through doership, because when you see through doership, you realize there’s not a single thing, there’s no space for anything to be out of place. If there’s no, there’s no gaps where things could or that could have slightly gone wrong there. I shouldn’t, every single thing that’s ever happened in my life, showed me aspects of reality, I wasn’t looking at all these wrong things or suffering things, all these things. And when you can really see that now anything that comes to mind in the future is now more an opportunity to deepen. There’s something I’m not quite looking at here. And there’s nothing wrong. The university is just about time that right? You said something earlier, though, you said, you know, some people shouldn’t be opened up to illustrate where their body minds couldn’t handle it. But the universe will just give you a little pieces until you know Ramana Maharshi, he had been his his apple was ripe to drop whenever he worked. But then he was in a state of he was having rats eat away or something. Yeah, it
Rick Archer: was legs were being knocked on and by insects and and then he got out of that pit. And he went up on the mountain and sat in the cave for many years before he was whatever he needed to be to come and it started interacting with people.
Matt Garrett: Exactly. So who are we to say that this is not right. Even in your life, my life, the universe is literally giving us pieces that are just right for us to open and widen our, our view of who we are, who what reality is, what’s what’s true. And if I was to give, you know, someone’s come across a teaching that would blow their world open, they might just implode. I don’t know, if someone’s so mind identification. The University is the most intelligent is intelligence, it knows what it’s doing.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s great. The way I one analogy I use these days, which seems to fit for my life is that it’s as if we’re in this play. And there is a script to the play, there’s a there’s a script writer who wrote the play, but we also have the permission to improvise. And so we’re kind of going along and things happen. Okay, that’s part of the script, but I think I’ll improvise this way you know, and maybe that’s just the halfway kind of developmental state because maybe if I were cosmic enough, it would be just, you know, I totally go with the flow and everything is fine, but that’s that’s my orientation that there’s this kind of like I’ve said this many times before, but it’s like the nursery rhyme Row row row your boat where mainly the stream is carrying the boat along but you are you still have a paddle and you can row and but you’re rowing gently down the stream so there’s just little minor adjustments you make as you go along to maybe avoid this rock or whatever.
Matt Garrett: It’s like the preferences can still be there but there’s just specifically emptiness with these preferences the seeing that there’s no one there deciding there’s there’s no credit for best for that because to be honest, if you were to drop the whole notion of preference and you wouldn’t have to choose what to eat you would wear suit the character the character is still about it’s it just it just even even those preferences are completely not your doing. No, no, but
Rick Archer: there may still be the perception that they are you go to a restaurant, let’s say and you look at the menu and you ponder it for a while and you think okay, well you know, this one looks like it might be good I think I’ll try that. And you know, so maybe that’s just automatic and you didn’t have any choice in the matter but if you if you perceive that you do don’t beat yourself up over it, it’s just natural.
Matt Garrett: But yeah, I think I think the one thing I do want people to really know I think I remember just thinking so anyone out there to know that this can this can be done if you orient towards it if you if you want to go far away, or if you want to see through through self If I can just give a bit of context, because I feel like I remember listening to Andrew realizing how dedicated he was how. And that even that’s a paradox because because the dedication that he removes, but if you sit with this inquiry and, and really hold space, I think is the right word, because you’re holding space for this surrender to unfold. If you try to do this, you try to surrender it, it’s almost, there’s still an agenda woven into this, there’s still a need to get somewhere else to progress into this. But if you you know, every night, if you have every morning in the day, if you have a keen interest to go the full way, and you orient towards this, everything that you think you’re running from with these things, you just sit with it. And instead of trying to practice out of it, you go to the root of why it’s even there, the fuel behind the self in the middle of Allah, it drops out, the bottom of self drops out. And the suffering, then it struggles to grow back without the fuel, the fuel of separation, the fuel of belief, the fuel of resistance. This is the thing I really wanted to hammer home, because I remember sat there not thinking this was true. I thought this was for the Eckhart tolle’s of the world, the Ramana Maharshi is there, even the Adyashanti but that came because Adi Shanti. And he was one of the first guys he seemed like a normal, really normal guy. And he took the sport to the edge, it took cycling so far to the edge and this, pursue the striker you said, touched on the striving you need you need to exhaust seeking into the ground to finally say, I don’t know what I’m doing, God or universe, show me reveal it. And it reveals as soon as you start looking for that, that’s
Rick Archer: kind of what happened to audit to I mean, he, he also he just holds has this competitive spirit. So when he got into then he was like, Alright, I’m going to do this to the max. And, you know, he would go on these long retreats and just, you know, meditate like crazy and everything. And he finally reached a point where he he, he thought he was gonna snap. And he left in the middle of a retreat and went home and had this whole meditation hut and his parents backyard. And he just went in there. He said, I give up, you know, that’s it. And boom, then he had his big awakening.
Matt Garrett: Yeah. How true is that? How turiya is like any insight that ever really come about, in my experience anyway, it’s sometimes I’m just staring out to see or if I’m just just sat, because Because in that moment, I think the groundwork could be put in the inquiry, the exhaustion, but then it kind of just flowers when you’re least expecting it because that’s when the well kind of tax break for a second. That’s when the agenda the pursuit kind of bottoms out for a bit.
Rick Archer: But as you might tell, you probably would that he don’t think he wouldn’t have had that awakening if he hadn’t done all that striving. Yeah.
Matt Garrett: So I think that I think a lot of people exhaust themselves and in exhaustion, they finally stop and not a stop, like physicality stop but they stop. Beyond the physicality, they just, they just give up looking for something. And they just allow the universe to show them they hold space for something to unfold. Because they the resistance and when whenever you’re seeking you’re resisting now you’re saying there’s something here that needs to change. When you give up seeking you’re almost giving fertile ground for like the flower to bloom, whatever you want to call it poetically. But there’s, there’s, there’s a stopping that takes place. And in a stop and you see the silence that was always there, you see just unfolds. And you wonder why you were ever so caught up in a lose thoughts. You never you never looked at the silence between thoughts. And yeah, there’s always there is this
Rick Archer: whole thing of giving up seeking it’s kind of a popular phrase these days. Papaji once said to a group of people sitting with him give up the search and there have conferences about the end of seeking and websites about it and everything. And I don’t know my orientation to it and feel free to disagree or comment on it is that it’s a there’s a phase, obviously, where you you’re just not feeling much fulfillment and so there’s a kind of a desperation, man, I gotta get this I gotta realize this and, but then there’s a time when the fulfillment really has matured quite a bit and there’s, there’s a Sanskrit word Santosh, which means contentment. So there’s a contentment, quality that grows, but you don’t necessarily, you know, rest on your laurels at that point. There is still this enthusiasm and motivation and curiosity and realization that there’s so much more to deepen and to know and to integrate and so on. But it’s done more on the basis of fulfillment quality rather than a desperate emptiness quality
Matt Garrett: versus the taboo I think that you’ve talked on where seeking can end and I found the seeking end, and now I call it clarifying where I call it because in a way there was so in post awakening, I’d say the intensity of suffering if want to call it suffering, maybe less otherwise, sufferings that there’s less there No personal suffering but suffering. It made me face everything and even at the seeking is stopped. I think it’s because the seeking had stopped. I now could numb myself with thinking my way out. I had to face all philon. And like you said, enthusiasm. Yeah, all the positive stuff. But there’s a clarifying which of death, which is like a post awakening where there’s a big taboo where, you know, I mean, even mean for these videos that I posted to kind of gain traction, I think eventually I will just stop at some point and just and just rest and do the video stuff. But so it’s just taken away from the fact that I didn’t want this to really come about but it’s all God’s dwell wherever you want to call it. But wasn’t like the post awakening this the seeking is stopped by said, but that doesn’t mean really that this has deepened to its fullest depths. Because I think I think not many people have gone to people not many beings have have have allowed the personal world the death the there’s, there’s ladies it’s you did an interview with Ida shanties. It’s Suzanne Murray.
Rick Archer: Susanna Murray. Yeah, yeah, we’re seeing Adyashanti. And I had this conversation.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, I love that, because they touched on something that I couldn’t really see much online, which was this, this the no self, the real, the real sense of even the center, the the one that’s experiencing this, like people can stop seeking because they see everything. But now let even net clearance or bliss, let the experience of Enlightenment really die into nothingness. Because Because some people still take credit for even the inquiry up until that and that shows that there’s still residual well there. So it’s almost like this, it’s like this big grand thing, and you go on YouTube and you sell your insights, then everything comes crashing back. Because you now need to, you need to embody this realization. You need to breathe it, live it. You know how you converse with people how you like these hooks, let’s put our hands up. People that unless you all your conditioning falls away, I think I was quite lucky still on that. Things hit me with an event with a such an event afterwards, because I thought I was in the clear, I broken up the mind identification. It’s almost, I work on the level of mind. And this hadn’t caught up, this was still operating on the old system. And it needed to be and it’s this is the first thing you can’t go around, you have to go through it each time. So the animals come running at you and you just get trampled. And the only way you can do it is really face whatever is running at you and see what they’re trying to tell you. Because every every single trauma that comes up every single bit of suffering that comes up to me, I think it’s because stress was something that I wasn’t looking at in reality either my self image, maybe you’re someone else denying, maybe I didn’t feel good enough that I tried to be a better filmmaker in order to put up with that validation in how I looked maybe all of these things you have to let die in. Like you said, the seeking stops. But I feel like the clarifying is very brutal. I think you can do if you want to go the full way reality is looking at you like this. And you have to face each of your resistances each of your things until there’s no stone left unturned. And then that to me is the start of embodiment because it’s not that you’re now blissed out unhappy you just you lose the ability to resist which doesn’t mean doesn’t truth doesn’t care about happiness. This is aliveness this is how this is the realization you know this is the end of chasing happiness is the start of seeing truth through this integration and even integration loses its turn because it implies and never was integrated. It’s just like you say these depths of awakening and I think I the only people that really resonate even at this stage me were because I don’t do much looking online, but definitely Adyashanti definitely Angelou, Suzanne Murray. Those are people I really recommend to others if they feel this urge his resignation to go beyond the wakening. Like, I think I just got a video called Beyond awakening or something but the one that I really like is one that it’s called he’s on his website for anyone it’s called Beyond the person and only watch it if you’re resonating with it, because it can really take you to places maybe you don’t want to go but I think everyone’s going that way anyway.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Check out Harry alto sometime you ever watch any my interviews with Harry?
Matt Garrett: What’s it? How do you spell his son? Ah,
Rick Archer: well, firstly, his first name is spelled differently. It’s h a r i because he’s finished an alto a LT Oh. And you’ll find that there’s a index on the past interviews menu of BatGap where you can just pop that name and he’ll come up anyway. Different takes than most people on on all this stuff. I won’t elaborate all that you just check it out. So a few more questions have come in here. Let’s see. Here’s one from somebody in your neighborhood. Darren Emerson in Jersey, UK. As part of your awakening, have you lost contact with friends and family only because they no longer get you or you get them? If so, how have you reconcile that with yourself? Personally, I found this a source of sadness. So I’m interested in your view.
Matt Garrett: So yeah, that’s, it’s a beautiful question, because it’s so honest. Because what I hope people resonate, well, I don’t, I don’t, I hope people gain something from this. Basically, if I can get context, because there’s so much alienation. We feel so alone, sometimes in this part, which is funny, because we’re all looking for this oneness. I say, deep down, I never got, I was never getting someone they would never get me. Because as long as we’re in identification, and it seems like people are getting richer, I think I look at people in some time, they used to be an envy that people seem to be able to play this characters, these things. But I think when I realized that there was no fulfillment, in that there’s no, there is to extend. But when it’s that celebration of wholeness that we talked, but I see more and more that I was never really celebrating this wholeness, I was always I was never been goth. And I felt so alienated in this, in this in this place. And so to answer your question, first of all, that on awakening, I find is a lot more ordinary than people think. I think, people people have seen a huge shift in the way they speak to me the way I am with them. Because I think there’s the difference, and just the energy shift, and these things, all these things are just words. But the ordinariness of awakening, I think, takes over. You see, there isn’t, there wasn’t much, the only difference is that I can’t, it’s almost too painful to play a certain character to fit a thing. So this authenticity can come through and the relationships you do form, I find that just through people that resonate people that you don’t feel the need to be friends with people in order to get somewhere new, and to validate them. And your friendships have a celebration of wholeness that there, it’s really hard to describe even the family stuff, you almost give up hope that these two separate entities will become the perfect relationship or these things, you just see through all of that. And there’s a freedom in that. And then the expression of joy through setup through this stuff. But to take it back a step and give context for this, there is this big a nation that people really don’t get you because when you’re not living your truth, when when you’re very mind identifying, in fact, I think it’s easier to live in the world, it’s easier to overlook reality overlook the truth that you’re everything and play the role, really, when we seem to play it, and people do play it well. And it can be almost not too much suffering and that people go their whole lives playing these characters. And that can feel alienated because something in you has this calling to go deeper. And everyone asks you to not be going deeper. And I remember that’s what for me if this whole thing was so isolating was that I was seeking something I knew there’s a burning desire, but they seem content with there’s nothing wrong by those. There’s no higher or lower beings. It’s just what resonates and what comes together for the body minds. But they just weren’t into the same stuff. And it was really difficult for me to accept that people could just be somewhat content would their body mind not suffer too much the extensive thing and eventually overtook me, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need these people to understand me or do these things. And what seemed to happen as soon as I stopped looking for that, and people, I’ve met so many people that are into non drowsy and you’re just authentic people that aren’t spirituality, but they’re so true to themselves are true and and people from before that. We speak and there’s no need to further silence and we’ve been we just we enjoy each other’s presence if we do talk about art or film or something that cuts through the human condition and can help people with this thing. And I think that’s the difference it makes you start to lose your interest in, in relationships, which aren’t resonating deeply with what you’ve seen in this inward journey.
Rick Archer: Yeah, when I first started meditating, when I was 18, I had to leave my friends because they were all doing drugs, and I just didn’t want to be around that scene anymore. And I, I left the band that I was playing in and I I just spent a few months walking the dog every morning, you know, and I got into a community college and started doing other things with my life. But of course I you know, gain new friends and that’s the way life always is. Most you know, we’re probably not in touch with most of the people that we were friends with in high school now because our lives have gone in different directions. But there’s an old Bengali saying, which is if, if no one comes on your call, go ahead alone. And so, you know, sometimes it’s necessary to just go ahead alone, and especially if the people who are you’re associating with, just don’t get what you’re doing, but like family, you know, you can always accommodate and be interested in the things that they’re interested in when you go to visit them. Like you know, I have a sister who is not interested in this kind of stuff at all. And when when she comes to visit we we play card games or you know, do fun stuff together. Which Yeah, and I don’t bring up politics because her politics and her husband’s politics are the extreme other end of the spectrum from mine. But we love each other and we enjoy you know, so that you don’t have to we don’t always have to wear our spirituality on our chest so to speak.
Matt Garrett: And like you say, people that do and take this non duality and put it because face it as some of us all do at the start, I think it’s further and then you go into your sisters or, and playing cards that that’s closer to truth because to push non duality on someone is basically also not trusting the universe. But that will come into their life at some and I remember with my mom I had the similar thing my religious but not to the extent of going live really within and seeing himself I remember at one point I think I did try it you know, we all come across it’s like mom look for your sense of self you don’t exist all these things and and the spiritual maturity is to see, you know, this isn’t this isn’t really aligned with what I think I don’t need to push it on people anymore because I’ve seen what I’ve seen. And if it resonates for them, and it goes on then that’s great. But right now all my mum needs is a hug, or my mum needs now is like a song to talk to date in their on their perspective of life, which is not less no more wrong men, which is this the end of right and wrong. They don’t need someone telling them there’s no self just like the lady that crossing the street. I like she gets hit by a bus. I’m not gonna say well, there’s no one there. She’s dead. You know, there’s definitely no one there now. There’s just a maturity and a flexibility to the way that reality moves. Reality doesn’t move that rigidly doesn’t stay in non duality it moves with, with something that can accommodate for everything. And that I think that’s what I’ve seen as well like, like we said, every system
Rick Archer: that we speak on the level of listener, there’s an old Indian saying that when the mangoes are ripe, the branches bend down, you know, so that people can just easily pick them. So you know the branches don’t stay up on high and say Nana, you can’t pick me.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, exactly. Okay,
Rick Archer: another question came in. This is from car Rudolph in Germany. As a tantric practitioner I have reached a very good level of being in peace, after awakening and extreme purification occurred. But it seems that there is no creativity and no feeling of purpose. Does this arise in the process of awakening at one time, I can’t get myself going for any activity like before awakening,
Matt Garrett: it’s definitely a case of Well, first of all, I found different body minds hooked up definitely differently in the creative aspect, but I think this seems less of a like all creativity, what can I set up a flatlining here and kind of purpose I think is the more the thing that can cause a bit more of a confusion because it’s as if everything that we were striving for, as I said, with a dead end, you get to the dead, and you realize nothing there. So then it’s like, there’s no man’s land. But then what if this isn’t it, it’s even spirituality, even Enlightenment is, then what his purpose to drop drips and drops away. And this no man’s land really, is what I would call the best teacher to be silence. Because silence because there’s so many gurus and teachers out there that can give you the techniques, the tantric approaches I just sent, this goes into all these things was so powerful for, you know, creating the conditions for awakening, even you mindfulness to extend the sign of the mind can can help but there’s a certain level where you do have to start to trust your intuition. Because again, we’re going to go into the realm of well, I need another practice or to get purpose or this or this, and really orient towards, firstly, the subtle sense of self is still there. Because if you don’t have purpose, who doesn’t have purpose? Where is this purposeless person? This is slight. This this entity we refer to it’s not all in the stock, because sometimes the purpose, the lack of purpose is that almost a reaction to losing what we had before kind of grief of this, in whatever once we were doing this creation work this or this thing, I think the majority of welcomes in, you learn to listen to the silence. First of all, you you bask in that silence, you let it show you because when you’re lacking purpose, what you’re really saying is I need something more I need to be working towards something to improve this state that I’m in. And so there’s something here in the now that needs to be looked at, not there. So you must have residual resistance, that subtle self, that’s what’s going on. This can really be seen in a bit of a delicate way. Slightly inquiry sometimes where is this self, you know, the realization that because purpose belongs to a character, if you’re identifying with separate self, you’re identified with a purpose. You’re identifying someone on a timeline, moving somewhere, so So I think I just want to point to the subtlety. have the latest stages of this no man’s land, sometimes, you know, emotional worm, you can still be there. But even the that can be like golf. And I think I really love just sitting in silence because then what will happen is the mango don’t need something in order to gain my purpose or get something but and then we got to do is get used to not knowing get used to that sweet spot of not needing an answer not needing to get somewhere in agenda and something unfolds in that unknown. I would I would recommend in that no man’s land.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I don’t really know the nature of his practice. But, I mean, I wonder what he’s doing with his time if he’s just sitting and watching television all day or something? Maybe Yeah, if you didn’t allow yourself to indulge in something meaningless, like that some purpose would arise, you know, can I What can I do that’s constructive here. Maybe I should go to school. Or maybe I should, you know, do this creative endeavor that I’ve always thought I wanted to do if I’d had time, there could be something. Because I think that I mean, there are people who are naturally inclined to be monks and reclusive, and like you say, sit in a cave. But most of us are not wired that way. And I think that there’s a, see what you have to say about this. But there’s, there’s a phrase that goes Brahman is the charioteer, meaning cosmic intelligence is driving your chariot. And there’s, there’s a transitionary phase that a lot of us go through where we’re used to being in the driver’s seat. And somehow rather, there’s got to be this shift where Brahman is the driver. And it can be a little awkward in the transition is like, one can lose a sense of purpose, one can go with the flow so much that one isn’t taking any initiative and is becoming wishy washy, and allowing oneself to be just driven around by by the winds. You know what I mean? Have you ever gone through anything like that?
Matt Garrett: Yes, it’s like that transition phase. Whereas before, it’s almost less suffering. In a case of I’ve got a purpose, you’re moving towards it. And you see so many people that are striving, you see, like the sportsman, usually, and then they reached the end of the career, and they have to give that up. And there’s the grief of losing losing this purpose this drive. And I think you sense them into that. And I would add, the most peace I’ve ever found is giving up purpose, giving up meaning not even having to somehow practice to then find this more aligned, higher purpose, but a whole different paradigm dimension of prior to purpose. Because I’ll go back to it again, the meaning belongs to the character, the character that doesn’t exist, that the character is moving along this Enlightenment history line of going up and up close to Enlightenment. And now my purpose is going to be there. So what I think the character doing in this moment reason is, he or she is in the transition phase of not having purpose because the ones that did before he dropped away, I feel because he sees through the separate self or the meaningless of that meaning, if that makes sense. And now it’s like grasping at something else to have purpose. But I find a piece is when I let go of even purpose, because like we say, it’s, it’s a subtle resistance that that happens, we have a subtle momentum of vertical pop up there, but we have a subtle momentum of needing something to in order to get towards but you can really orient towards it until you can now sit on a park bench. And you know, of course, career wise is all plays all creativity, it’s always things but I could happily stare at I have this whole we can stare out at the sea and or of not needing anything not. Purpose can be so heavy, it’s carry rounds purpose, even, I’m going to liberate all beings. That’s why I don’t really like my bio there, because at the end of it said to alleviate suffering for others, it sounds harsh. I don’t, I will put my videos out there. But if people need them, but I could delete my channel in a second I can delete everything is somewhat an income, I’ll go work in a coffee shop. The reason I think I get quite a lot of comments, which can sometimes be I mean, even sent me that email earlier today. So I’m really going through a video and I think is like a seven minute video and he gave quite a few paragraphs of what you disagree with. And that’s absolutely fine. But I think sometimes I feel I’ve hit the nail on the head in a way if someone’s really triggered by it because it means if someone’s feels really strongly by it, sometimes it means there’s something and I will always have my hand up if I’m wrong and I’ll look at it I think you know what was being said here, but sometimes and what more than not if someone’s really triggered it means that the message is quite direct and it’s pointing something they’ve done a look at so if I was to be really direct, I’d say go beyond purpose go beyond meaning. But if I was to you know if you Want to stop absolute depression? Like, look? No, there is something for you on each level, it is not wrong. It’s just this will help the person more if I tell them, you know, go back into the emotion, a feeling of purposes, can you feel that out fully, you can kind of compassionately work away. Or if you go all the way, you could just say there’s no truth. There’s no self or this thing, but there’s a, there’s a skill to that. But I really think the freedom in this is found just prior to meaning just prior to purpose beyond the character, I think,
Rick Archer: yeah, you mentioned park bench earlier in this in this response. And of course, that brings up Eckhart Tolle, who, after his awakening, pretty much sat on a park bench for a couple of years. You know, just, and then I think somebody started talking to him, and he started, you know, explaining things to this person. And then he found that this knowledge was kind of flowing through. And one thing led to the next and nice write, written all these books and traveled the world. And, of course, his purpose is spiritual teacher. And that’s not going to be everybody’s purpose. But I think maybe sometimes we do need a period of hiatus where we, you know, we just put it neutral for a while. And if we’ve been pushing ourselves in a certain way, okay, let’s relax and let everything settle down. And then, but eventually, some kind of momentum is likely to start up again. And maybe we will go off in a completely different direction than we were going in before. And it’s good that you give yourself this little period of rest. But it’s not going to last your whole life or it shouldn’t.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, yeah, it’s always if I can, maybe I’m interested to hear your view on this, that momentum can come back. But without purpose, I think I think the momentum can go in a way that it unfolds. And at any moment, you don’t know where it’s going to take even the purpose if it wanted, if the teacher wants to just stop and listen to the champion, well, that’s fine as well. It’s more that it doesn’t care about purpose, the truth now just moves in his own way. And for me to put purpose on something would be giving it an agenda or limiting it to my personal purpose, but I’ve seen so much freedom and allowing this just take whatever it wants, even if even if it kills me, this is this is the this parliament that that’s the extent need to go let it complete take away with no agenda.
Rick Archer: I think in in what you just said, you’re associating the word, word purpose with attachment a little bit, you know, like, I have this mission in life, and I’m attached to it, and I’ll be unhappy if I can’t do it. I think there can also be purpose without attachment, that, you know, one can be highly motivated and dynamic and doing a certain thing. But if for some reason that has to stop, then Okay. In fact, I wish I could find it, it would take me too long to find but I read this great quote from the Tao Te Ching this morning about just not being attached basically just if something is taken away, or you know, you’re no longer doing something, okay, that’s over on to the next thing, without any remorse or, or longing or regret or anything like that. Just basically living in the now you could say.
Matt Garrett: And what was funny is when we were talking about was, like you say the difference between attachment and purpose. I think I always think litmus tests are really good click a quick checking in when anything’s when you’re ever making a parent decision or these things and it’s always, you know, am I making this decision on the behalf of a separate self? Is this moving from a place of fear? And we’re moving with the whole here is this something moving through me and I remember, you know, in the post awakening phase, even to this day is constant clarifying and it’s like, for example, coming here this week, I obviously live in London and I got the opportunity to visit back home my family lived in Seattle, us sometimes I go to Santa Clarita to get away from life. You know these things and you think am I doing through fear or aversion but this week, for example, is so NASCAR city and it feels like this is just what was right. You know, some decisions they just did. There’s no fear, there’s no attachment that things just flow without an agenda to suit separate self. The litmus test is just a constant questioning and inquiring into Am I moving with truth? Am I moving with authenticity? And like you say, Let’s go meet in the middle, it could be a great purpose could be there just maybe the purpose of the universe just just just non personal purpose is what
Rick Archer: truth? Yeah. And they’ve been all kinds of saints and sages throughout history who have from the outside, appeared to have had tremendous purpose. They’ve driven their their, you know, accomplishing great things and overcoming great obstacles, like Mahatma Gandhi, for instance. I mean, he basically overthrew the British, and yet he had this sort of simplicity about him and innocence and surrender. or to the wisdom of God or if you want to call it that. So I guess we just what we’re doing here perhaps is dispelling the stereotype of an enlightened person as being just the you know, the guy on the mountaintop, you know, sitting in lotus, a person can be very involved in the world, and have all kinds of purposes and responsibilities and so on. And not only is that not incompatible with Enlightenment, or if I can use that word, but it’s actually enhanced by Enlightenment or awakened state it gives gives one greater resources for doing whatever purpose one is called to do.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, and the key word there is surrender, like you said, peace. And bring him back to to what might help people is if you get confused about what about what to do, where to go, just orient towards just either inquiry or surrender. Those two are the sharpest tools you have in your non personal box of spiritual toolbox ik inquiry, if you either question a belief, or you release resistance, either of those things will help. Especially especially, I mean, the belief really, they go, that goes to the roots, these beliefs that we hold, we carry around, I truly think if someone’s honest enough, and they they allow us to hold space for there’s enough that you’re, you’re in a constant state of surrender anyway, people say, you know, I can’t surrender. I can’t, every time you put your foot on the pavement, you’re giving faith that your foot, your legs, not gonna buckle, every time you step on a bus. You don’t know if this guy’s suicidal, he could crash. I don’t even know causing fear here, but I’m showing how much you trust life already. Just trust it in Witney. Trust, trust that that nothing needs to change and I think needs to be done in a way that’s by you. Anything needs to be done is something to be looked at or let go. That’s all. So I’m just bringing it back to this. This lady said you use the word surrender. This is marriage between inquiry where you can do something to stand away, you can’t do something. And in the middle of those is that magic place where the bottom bottoms out?
Rick Archer: Yeah, it reminds you that alcoholics, thing, you know, that thing that grant grant me the wisdom to change the thing I can’t can change, except the things I can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference. If something, I’m sort of slaughtering it, there’s something along those lines.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, that’s us probably exactly the same thing. And, like, just non spiritual terms. Anyway, even that’s very spiritual.
Rick Archer: It’s a spiritual thing. A is a very spiritual organization. But, um, what are we saying here? Anyway? I guess we made that point. Okay, um, one thing you were just saying, that I found interesting is, I mean, it sounds like in your experience, self inquiry or discernment, or whatever you’re calling it is an ongoing process. It’s almost like second nature. Now there’s this, how would you put it, it’s not something you got over with and, you know, awakening happen. I don’t need to do that anymore. But it’s, it’s kind of the way you roll all the time.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, it transforms from I think this is the case and a lot of people, it’s like, it starts off quite clunky, especially in the Western world, we we open to Ramana Maharshi. Nord, his kind of distorted translated ways we try and work out what is the self inquiry? And there’s a lot of great points, even in the West for self inquiry, you asked, you know, who am I, the first time to ever look to this person that’s even trying to deal with these things get happier becoming lights, and all these things. And it’s very, it’s quite clunky. It’s quite intellectuals. Like, I’m not my name, I’m not my face. And what did my face look like before I was born? What, Where am I located in the body, you know, all these things are just kind of, we’re a very tight ball. And we’re kind of picking away the threads, which kind of unraveled the ball slightly. And I’d actually use less news, the metaphor of a wall. I like poking the bricks out of the wall, like, on, you know, my physicality. I can’t even locate myself in the body. So that’s kind of making all of the ego, a bit brittle. These are the kinds of top ones and you can do it for every label you’ve ever been given. I could change my name to Rick Archer. And suddenly and you could change the name to makaira and that shows the fragility of all these labels on us. I could shave my head I could people changing their gender, there’s so much fragility of leggings. So you go deeper and deeper to the core and then it’s like, kind of non physical the thoughts the subtle self you know, whenever you have a thought of the future of the party, remember, there’s a self in the middle I physically can’t have a thought without there being a character in the middle like a mat Garrett that were wrecked by that yours will be at the Ritz Carlton in the middle of doing a podcast and learn to self inquiry became so intense and I would say more radical is because constant inquiry that it went even deeper to the The just subject object just trying to find the subject. Even when I see the visual field, I see colors, okay? Does that imply a subject? I know colors. But does that imply there’s a color visual field hitting me a solid entity bear couldn’t find one hearing it was more transparent, there was no subject in this. So this just getting to the point where inquiry then this was still with an agenda that I was doing it with a hope of finding alignment and only find insights and this when I let go the agenda, but what inquiry transforms into is you’re you’re inquiring out interest you’re inquiring. Of course when sufferings there is sometimes the best time to inquire, because this is where you know, the self really goes and try and find yourself it’s really, really suffering and you just can’t find it. And it loosens and loosens to the point where you say the seeking is gone. But what what the momentum of the previous conditionings was, was this momentum of behaving like yourself, even though my intellect knew who I was, or what I knew I was, was beyond all of that. And this is where I think suffering can become really intense. Because you know, you’re not behaving in the right way. You can’t blame anyone you know, this is all your own doing to an extent. And that the inquiry basically became subtler and subtler as, you know, the ion sense it was the experiencer of these no self, things. And it just like I said, as endless anyone that says there’s an end, I am quite suspicious about because it’s as if they’ve achieved something, but to me, you can never clarify this enough. And with a balance of not becoming too personal well, and getting that revved up, you can always clarify that life becomes so mysterious, because the I know so much less now, I’ve unlearned thing I know very little. And it’s scary to me some at the start, because I was like, this was everything I needed to know, and I let go the knowledge, and that even now I’m speaking I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But it resonates something resonates beyond the language. And that’s where I think I get the best conversation peoples when I don’t know what I’m talking about is something moves through this, this knowing this, this knowledge, there’s been like, oh, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know, all of these things. And it’s very difficult sometimes talk about that was someone that’s into like, a particular thing they know a lot about can speak about, but this is the end of knowledge. And because I think you can move into this place of living in not knowing surrender. It’s like you, you then know the truth. Because you don’t The mind doesn’t need to take up all that silence with noise. So so that the inquiry, I say become just more subtle and subtle and without agenda. And that’s how it transforms.
Rick Archer: Yeah, this thing about, you know, you said about somebody who thinks that they’ve reached the end of it all, or something that was St. Teresa of Avila said, it appears that the Lord Himself is on the journey.
Matt Garrett: You’re coming up with some great quote, I need to look at all these up after
Rick Archer: Yeah. Did you? You know, you have this deep self inquiry thing going on? Did that just sort of happen spontaneously when you were younger? It just started happening. And then that led you to reading Ramana books and other things which gave more of a definition to it? Or did you start reading these books and get the idea to do the self inquiry, which is the curtain which is the horse?
Matt Garrett: Yes, this is kind of going on inside a personal story, which is, I think, can provide a lot of help with people for context, especially when we’re listening to others thinking, I resonate with that, and nothing I’m doing who’s wrong. So maybe I should have talked about this at the start. But it was just actually intense emotional work for a good period of time where like, I didn’t quite, I can’t not take things to the edge. Like with it with emotional work, it got to a point where it’s actually damaging the journey, because I became so attached to the emotion work,
Rick Archer: emotional work, meaning like you’re actually working with a therapist or just doing it on your own.
Matt Garrett: I had one practice, and that was to sit in a silent room, or whatever. Anyway, you were just quietly even sign off in, in my house because I needed that retreat. And just to allow whatever was in the body to be there without trying to change it. manipulator, even practice out of it, basically dive into it. And this is when I got I hate creating all this candy for the mind. But I’ve got Kundalini energy, which just bolted up through my spine and just seemed like this, this energy. And I had this like, all these crazy revelations, which now looking back was good that I never got sidetracked into them, because this is where people can set up camp. So with all of this emotional, what I realize now was it was almost a form of inquiry because these layers of emotion, were seen to be layers of identity, layers of contraction. They weren’t just emotional work and then inquiry I was doing a tantric approach first for day and night. I remember one time I racked up like 10 hours just sitting with it and at that point I knew
Rick Archer: so they’re sitting and letting whatever happens that you call that tongue trick work,
Matt Garrett: I’d call it Yeah, I think it’s time to write this thing I don’t read about. If you do, it was just one practice, just I think David Hawkins had had, it had a single technique of just get as close as you can to wherever it feels, this resistances and just a dive into it, let it stand, what I found was all these little residual like traumas that I pushed down even lifetimes ago, but especially in childhood, like they were coming up. And you know, it was it was an intense period of time, and then deep, deep lows, and then massive highs and all of this coming up. And one day I rode my bike in the news, deep down, I think what the grief that was coming with this technique wasn’t going to be the truth, I had to let go of the technique and the grief in that, because it is something about dying away, I knew I just started saying I in my head I was cycling about had a flat tire. So I was really going against the so there was that I was I was fed up I think that really added to the surrender, but I was going I there’s something about like as I remember Ramana Maharshi video, and I clicked off it because it probably made me try and look at something I needed to look at. And it was going deeper and deeper into the sense of I sat down under a cathedral and opened up this video Ramana Maharshi. And I knew every word he was saying, I know it wasn’t him saying it. It was like a translation of an English guy just reading out what he said was look for the self or investigate itself. And that is all. And I wrote home that day. And I think, as the mind does, he wants to watch videos. And I was I remember coming across purpose far that day, I remember coming across all these great teachers that were looking for the eye and I thought I’ve never looked around for and looked at the ones you’ve been doing emotional work. And that’s that sparked a good amount of time to just inquiry into the self. And I became so interested in so I was suffering a lot. But I think I had a slight a heart, I can go through this. I don’t have to go around it with emotional work or all this stuff. And I took that to the age of 87. That’s when we go back to how we just talked about with that even weaning off into integration.
Rick Archer: That’s very interesting. You are just, I mean, you revert to past lives a number of times today. And you know, I ascribe to that notion as well. I think we reincarnate. And you definitely seem to me like one of those people who been on a spiritual path for many lives. And when you came into this one just sort of kicked in again. You know, speaking of the Gita again Arjuna asked Krishna, well, you know, what happens if a person is on the path and he doesn’t make it and he dies? And does he not perish like a broken cloud? And then Krishna basically just said, Well, no, he hangs out and have him for a while then he comes back and picks it up where he left off.
Matt Garrett: That’s speaking to love people and isn’t there’s nothing really special. Obviously, we’re all the same stores is literally if you sent something but it doesn’t correlate with your memory of this body mind. I’ve usually associated that was something previous to the point that sent me like a resignation that certain resonates but even at an energetic movement, I think I’ve sometimes people everyone said it’s not just me, people I’ve talked about, sometimes you feel something, and the feeling is as if it’s like impersonal it doesn’t even belong to you. It’s like you’re feeling that part of humanity. Yeah. So for example, in the masculine the masculine we have definitely in in males, even the Western world we have certain we’ve all got our own little stories of why we suffer of course, personal defense, but with males for example, I think there’s a lot of suffering in generalization but in like, needing to be an alpha male at times we talk with all these things, that kind of aspect and like winning and not to generalize also have some which are, they can all relate to and we’re all feeling out something was quite impersonal at times, whether it’s the lifetime whether it’s just this part of the shadow work I’m not sure but I think it’s so it’s really say about you start to realize this suffering doesn’t even belong to me. It’s almost as if like, you’re having to go through it. For something that’s bigger, it’s not even yours, nevermind past lives where the body minds don’t match up. So the memories don’t make sense. But you just energetically feel like of course, the the Apple dropped in the tree for me younger, and now it’s just a radical honesty with oneself to really feel this through until it permeates all aspects of experience and you live life just oriented towards truth.
Rick Archer: Interesting. I was a student of marshy Mahesh Yogi for many years and one time and he used to speak of all the accumulated stuff in our make in our nervous system and all as stress. That was the word English word he used I think the Sanskrit equivalent would be Samskaras but anyway someone asked him well what would happen if we managed to release a resolve all of our stress and it didn’t have any any more then any said? Then you start working on cosmic stress. And me thing I think that, you know, the the stresses of the world, the stresses of society become a washing machine for that, and the number of people I’ve interviewed have said that they feel like they can feel like they’re processing things that are that people are going through all over the world, they’re acting as a purificatory mechanism or something for stuff that’s in the collective consciousness. Yeah, I
Matt Garrett: mean, try sit with anyone post awakening, and try not to feel what they’re feeling it Yeah, you just feel it. And there’s, there’s no, I’m feeling or you’re feeling they’re just karmic. Energy that needs to be released, that there’s something in that that’s beautiful, because then you realize, I remember an insight quite late onwards. This isn’t even my story. This isn’t even my suffering my meaning me, this is like the universe, waking up to itself, just in my little corner of the universe, we go back to space and time, but it’s not even mine. It’s, it’s like the universe. Like to say, there’s something really resonating here about, you lose the permit, because it’s so juicy, isn’t it all our little stories of this is why I’m suffering. And we’ll have our own many, maybe unless you’ve seen a therapist, or someone else, not you, but if anyone’s not seen a therapist, and maybe we’ve never even talked about them before, but we will have them our little juicy stories that we like to cling to, and say why we suffer. But to resonate, now to orient towards truth is to really give these up as well, like, and that’s sometimes so hard, because it’s so nice and comfortable, and warm to feel why I’m suffering, why I can’t, you know, because of this, I can’t wake up because of that. And that’s what surrendered to an extent to I like you say, you bought them out to your, to your personal suffering. And now sometimes you just feel it, it’s just general heartbreak for humanity. You feel this grief, like, we’re all losing ourselves. And in losing ourselves, we’re gaining, we’re going back to source. But to get back to Otto to reveal sources, who we truly are requires a tremendous amount of surrender. And now this doesn’t even feel like this is my suffering. This is just, I’m feeling it on behalf of humanity here. And it’s crushing it like it’s difficult.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, that’s beautiful. We expand our territory of influence, we could say, I think it’s a natural human tendency to do that. And, and there certainly is a lot of suffering in the world that needs healing. And, you know, I mean, my, I’ve always had this orientation about spirituality, that in a way, it’s the hope of the world because without it, we’re never going to sort everything out just with surface level solutions, that there needs to be a change in consciousness really, for the world to be changed. And so I find great hope in the fact that people like yourself, and many other people around the world are just having these awakenings. And, you know, you don’t see it on the evening news. And if you didn’t realize that this whole dimension exists, it would be easy to become pessimistic. But I think that the fact that this whole network of people around the world is waking up, could very well be the thing that saves humanity.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, what are you talking about? Made me think of the word responsibility. And you can look at the word responsibility in your own personal journey of thing and also responsibility for why why are we why are we doing this? And of course, if we have to be really precise, it usually is fueled by suffering, no matter how, of course, there’s good people out there that will do it, in order to make you better for someone else. But I think the best way you can help others is to really work work on your own realization. Because when you’re, for example, for me to go into my realization, or Android to go and his realization, he didn’t try and help me. He went into his own realization, flowers realization, and through his realization, sparked something in mid or, you know, we don’t recall cause and effect, but it was his own. It’s when it’s when people wake up themselves that has this ripple effect. Yes, less about this, I’m going to go and help these people. Because once you do that personal agenda, personal wealth all comes back. And it just takes up the room of what reality was trying to do that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, look at some of these people that think, Okay, we’re gonna send missionaries to Africa and save these poor heathens, you know, and turn them on to Jesus or whatever. And yet those people themselves haven’t had any real, genuine spiritual awakening. So, you know, obviously,
Matt Garrett: it’s pretty true.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s pretty mature. That’s, that’s the word I was looking for. And, which is, there’s a flip side to everything. And there are people who think, you know, to help tell with you, I’m working on my own realization, so you can just go to hell and, you know, I’m not interested in you, you know, get out of my way that it can become a selfish thing. And I’ve seen that but, again, there’s always a balance.
Matt Garrett: Yeah. It’s a litmus test again, Am I acting from fear or maximum true love? And and there’s something you said that I really want to go into just now. Yeah, just then we talk about the missionaries. Yeah, it’s the thing of suffering. Because I think we project is kind of savior complex, sometimes we want to help these people. But sometimes it’s their suffering, which is going to wake them up for us to try and get away from our own thing, to go and help these people not to the extent that the athlete let’s say, it’s someone that’s just spiritually suffering, they’re, you know, they’re your friend or something. And sometimes we can take the savior complex, I need to help them. But in trying to just do it by forcing something on them, like, non duality, or this or that, I think, one, it’s an aversion from your own setting in your own and working in your own self. And if you really were to realize this deeply, it would flower that what they’re going through is exactly needed for them. I’ve only ever had insights to deep suffering. And there’s an extent to yes, you can help him on a practical level. But sometimes I’ve found to tell someone to just sit with it, I’m not going to help but sit with the silence and see what unfolds if you don’t get help, like you say, the balance of that on one hand, yeah, on one hand, we need people to take responsibility for their own awakening. And and I think that’s what I’ve seen on the brutal side of things. And this isn’t to do with the African on the relative level of helping this it’s to do with being careful how much suffering you try and take away from someone.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s that. I think that groups like Doctors Without Borders are people that go and help people build with solar powered wells and villages where the women have to walk 20 miles a day with a bucket on their head, and now they can get local water. Well, that kind of stuff is great. And there should be more of it. But I think a lot of times the motivation for going into sort of, quote unquote, save the heathens is very egocentric. I mean, there’s been so much violence and brutality, in the name of that throughout history, with all the colonization that happened around the world. And even now, I think a lot of times the tendency to want to get everyone to believe what you believe, is a symptom of your own doubt and insecurity, you know, and it somehow helps to, you know, reinforce one’s self confidence if you can get everybody else to buy into your particular trip. But, you know, there’s a case of actually really needing to look within and not going out and trying to impose your beliefs on others. Yeah, there’s
Matt Garrett: two words you said, reinforce, you said reinforce self confidence, but I would go, Dre said, reinforce self, if you’re going out with your projections, your need is something you’re just solidifying yourself as being as heroes saving someone, right? You’re running from the truth that you’re nothing like, cause to be able to help someone, you’re then creating this self image of a savior or, or someone that can do something as substance to you that you’re going out and doing this thing. And I would probably agree on the relative level of, you know, Africa, or people that are in poverty, there’s that but I’m talking purely on the spiritual level, or purely on the level of mind and suffering and psychological suffering. If I were to think about it, it would be if I could actually make myself believe illusion, even more and feel, I need to go and help the south of England wake up or London and start a meditation. And these are great things to do when done with the right purpose, motivation. But I can do that as an aversion to having to sit in silence, and sit with what I’m running from. Because as soon as I have, there’s always big plans to help London, or something I’m now back into, into mind back into getting away from from that. And I’ve seen just sitting in realization, I’ve reached people through my YouTube channel where I upload a video, and it goes whatever and very little effort on my part. But the most effort I put in, is just tackling that which needs to be seen in the deepest, darkest places on my mind. And it’s the worst thing I ever wanted to do to start with, then you start to realize, looking and illuminating these dark places your mind and seeing the self that appears in all these stories. It starts off being the most painful thing, but then you realize it’s the most relief because this is where all the suffering was tightly in a ball. And that’s expand or dissolve. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I mean, recently, the Pope went to Canada to apologize to the indigenous people because, you know, in the last 150 years or so, or whatever the time span was, the children are taken away from the parent from the families and put in these Catholic boarding schools, you know, and to have the, their native culture stripped away from them, you know, shave their heads to force them to speak English. You All kinds of stuff like that. And then they ended up getting sexually abused and physically abused, and a lot of them died. I mean, it’s it’s a complete disaster, where people who thought they were righteous, were just doing tremendous harm. And I guess this is a little bit apart from our general conversation, but I don’t know, for some reason it’s coming up. And you know, yeah, I think that one always has to make it one of the first priority to know the self to purify oneself before trying to help other people, if you go, if you want to be a lifeguard, learn how to swim before you start trying to save people from drowning.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, that’s the, that’s the best metaphor for it. And also good thing with the Pope is like, this increasing consciousness has allowed. So it’s like, there’s more awareness now to see what’s been happening happening. And it takes a tremendous amount of, you know, self honesty to go and apologize. And this is what it comes down to is honesty, not just with others, like there’s no more blame anymore for anyone else, when you really, this is what’s horrible really for, because it’s so nice to be able to blame certain people and, and even Geralt, you know, there’s a slight residual resistances. And these things, and you do have to be so honest, to take full responsibility for your own awakening that, yes, on a relative level, people can harm the body, these things with words, and there’s a lot of trauma out there, which, you know, it’s unfortunate for certain people, but to an extent, for the real psychological roots of suffering into our own doing, but it’s all around play, we’ve just lost track of who we really are in this big play. And, and this is what I’m just although interested in, all I’m interested in is that root of suffering, because people can take it out. And then, you know, we talked about with all these different spiritual stuff, there’s all these branches of spirituality with, you could spend all day but it will just grow back if the roots still there. And if you don’t take the root out, and even the roots needs to be taken up, there’s still this momentum of the root growing back. And you just need to die into that and make your your life’s orientation.
Rick Archer: Very good. That’s a good concluding point. And I know we’d better wrap it up because you have to leave in about five minutes for some place. So I looked at your website, and there is a simple website, not a lot on it. But you do have quite a bit on your YouTube channel. And I’ll link to both of those from your BatGap page. But on your website, you also have a little thing where a person can have a personal conversation with you or something. So I don’t know how much time you have for that kind of thing. But do you do many of those and you you want. If people want to get in touch they can do that?
Matt Garrett: Yes, I’m obviously my full time job in film. So that’s what I do. But whenever when anyone, when anyone is ever interested, I do get quite a lot of those submissions. I just set aside Fridays usually for them on Thursday, if people want to talk with me. Always open the chat and email as well. Just just in case you just want to speak. So if you want to question Yeah, Fridays, but my emails through my website. So if you need to chat,
Rick Archer: okay. Do you take a donation or a fee for that? Or what? Yeah. So
Matt Garrett: first, that session is completely free? Because I’d give up a day of working. You only have so much time, right? Yeah. So there’s a fee, but obviously, for refundable. But I’ve always found these conversations to be so on my end as well. I learned so much. So great. And you meet people. I’ve met so many people through it that I resonate with, and we keep in touch and absolutely love it. So yeah, Fridays I set aside for that. Great. All right,
Rick Archer: well, thanks so much, man. It’s really been great. Talking with you and getting to know you. And I hope we stay in touch and you know, see each other in the future, maybe even in person someplace. If I ever get over to the UK, I’ll definitely get in touch.
Matt Garrett: Yeah, that’s one thing. That’s one thing I was gonna say because I think at some point, we’ll come to America again, just because doc mentioned during the moment on consciousness, it’d be so cool to visit America is a hotbed for everyone I want to interview and stuff.
Rick Archer: I can help you get in touch with people. That’d be really helpful. Thank you. Very good. Okay, well, thanks a lot. And thanks to those who have been listening or watching and as I mentioned, next week, I’ll be interviewing Jessica Nathanson. She lives in Israel. Although she’s from my home state of Connecticut, we used to actually ski at the same ski area, although we never ran into each other, either literally or figuratively, figuratively, but um, I think it’s gonna be a really interesting interview. And I hope you stay tuned for that. If you’d like to be notified of future interviews there on the upcoming interviews page, there’s a little thing on the right hand column where you can click and put it into your calendar to be notified of the live ones. And then the permanent ones. We send a newsletter out, email out when I post each one. So if you’d like to get that and be notified, sign up for the email list. There’s a place on that gap to do that and Do subscribe to the YouTube channel if you’d like. And anyway, if you go to BatGap and explore the menus, you’ll find a bunch of different things that you might find interesting that I don’t have time to tell you about here. But just check out the website, look at the different menus. Alright, thanks. I’ll see you for the next one. Thanks, man. Cheers. Thank you. All right, have a good whatever you’re gonna do. Oh, well
Matt Garrett: enjoy the rest of your day. Make Reena speak to you.
Rick Archer: Yeah, good to speak to you. Take care. Bye
Matt Garrett: bye
