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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done over 515 of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. This program, this whole project is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to support it, even in a very modest way, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. And there’s also a donations page which explains some alternatives to PayPal. My guest today is Noah Elkrief. No is an explorer of what is happening in his own experience. This started on the level of mind and gradually open to exploring what’s going on in his body, then his soul. This journey has led him to meet, feel heal and let go of a tremendous amount of pain. Through this journey, a lot of wisdom and honesty has revealed itself. No one now shares himself and his insights with others. His website is what is your website? Live in the moment.org? Yeah, correct. Correct. Now, you’ve been making videos for years, right? I mean, how when did you first start putting up YouTube videos,
Noah Elkrief: I made videos from 2012 to 2014. They stopped for five years and started up again a couple months ago.
Rick Archer: Okay, and we’re gonna get into why you stopped and started. And you your videos were very popular. You had what? 119,000 subscribers or something? Which
Noah Elkrief: is right now I have like over 200,000 subscribers. Wow.
Rick Archer: So like four times as many as I have. What am I doing? Actually give advice on your emotions stuff. And probably kazillion views. How many views have you had altogether?
Noah Elkrief: I have no idea. Yeah, I don’t know.
Rick Archer: Is that like your profession making…
Noah Elkrief: something like 18 million views.
Rick Archer: That’s pretty good. Does that how you support yourself through this? Or? Well, I
Noah Elkrief: was doing one on one counseling for many years? Uh huh. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Alrighty. So we’re going to get into what prompted you to start making these videos and why you stopped for a number of years and so on. But let’s before let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to it’s always interesting to to find out. People who are sort of spiritual seekers and or finders or whatever you want to call them very often have inklings of that. Even in childhood. They’re sort of things which, if you’d look back, you if and notice them, that you would have kind of guessed this person might eventually get very interested in spiritual development. So is it like that for you? Was there something when you were even quite young that began to percolate in your experience?
Noah Elkrief: Well, I didn’t get a chance to have that because I was raised following an Indian guru. So which one? I don’t want to say the name I
Rick Archer: prefer not to, okay. Your parents were into this guru. My father was
Noah Elkrief: really into this guru, okay. And so I was raised, going to an ashram chanting, meditating, doing selfless service and things along those lines. And most holidays, most vacations growing up, so I was very into it.
Rick Archer: I was I was in the US or some other kinds. Yeah,
Noah Elkrief: we sent New York. My father bought a house right next to the ashram. So we could go anytime we wanted.
Rick Archer: But I got the guru.
Noah Elkrief: You got it? Yeah. Yeah. So. So I was very into it. You know, I was really giving myself to it, chanting, meditating, and all that stuff. And I thought that I really wanted the truth more than anything else. Like, I want it to be enlightened from the time I was five or six years old. And, you know, it was what I was going to do. I was going to be the next guru, like all of that. But in the process of my healing, I discovered I really just wanted my father’s love and I kind of thought that was the way that I was going to get it. So I diluted myself accidentally. Yeah.
Rick Archer: But nonetheless, that’s some would consider that to be a pretty wholesome way to spend one’s childhood you know, immersed in all that spiritual stuff. Do you see that now? Or do you think it was? So
Noah Elkrief: there’s, there’s two sides to it. So the beauty of it is, you know, it was really, it was really wonderful being around people were so kind and who were looking at themselves and meditating. It was really amazing to be part of these chanting experiences to be meditating. I mean, it helped me so much growing up meditating, I mean, my mind was always functioning really well. I was happy, I was joyous in many ways. So I was very aware of the positive impact my whole life of being there. But in the process of going through my body, I discovered there was also a lot of drawbacks from being raised following a guru who tells you what the truth is, you know, and tells you where you should go and, and many, many other things I could, I could talk for hours about what happens when you follow a guru?
Rick Archer: Well, we have a couple of hours. So are you implying that, you know, following gurus is a in, in general, not a good idea, or just maybe certain certain, certain situations or for certain people or what? Yeah,
Noah Elkrief: I’d rather be very explicit about it. So So following anyone is very, very useful at some stage along the way, right? That you have no, you have no access to your own soul. And you don’t have access to the wisdom that’s already inside of you. So you need to look outside. And that’s really beautiful when somebody in front of you resonates with you. And when they say something, it hits you in and gives you some movement in a direction that you feel is good for you. But at some point along the way, you realize that when you’re looking outside for the truth, you are simultaneously energetically putting yourself as smaller, and not trusting yourself, when you trust someone else above you. It ultimately gets in the way of you finding yourself. But that doesn’t mean don’t follow a guru. It doesn’t mean don’t follow anyone, it just means at some point, it’s it’s, you may discover that it’s not going to get you where you want to go.
Rick Archer: Well, that that grew his famous catchphrase was God dwells within you, as you so
Noah Elkrief: often very, very tricky. You know, the words are often very correct and very beautiful. But the energy is something very, very different.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. And there’s a certain kind of group mentality that develops around gurus, and people are all sort of, they begin to dress the same way and talk the same way, even the same, even similar voice inflections and things like that, and believe the same things, and there’s peer pressure to be this way or that way. And, you know, there’s then there’s competition for who can get closer to the guru and who is the most spiritual and yada, yada, yada?
Noah Elkrief: Yes, all that and more. Right? Yeah. Right. So I’m very familiar with that, from that guru, and from going to many others over over the course of my life.
Rick Archer: When you look back at all that though, do you feel like oh, that wish I’d had a different traveler? Do you feel like alright, well, yeah, I derived a certain amount of benefit from that for which I’m grateful. And then I moved on and explored anything, so it had its value.
Noah Elkrief: Well, the way I look at things is I know I say this. So I chose this. Right? So in my past lives, I had many experiences where I took advantage, where no, I went back and forth between victim and perpetrator in different ways. And I needed to be, I needed to follow a guru from the time I was born in this life and literally asked for it in order to bring up some things that I wanted to heal, so I can live more for myself. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And, you know, I mean, nothing in the relative is perfect, right? And, I mean, when I think of my upbringing, you know, alcoholic father and mother with mental problems, and, you know, just really kind of confused kid. I wasn’t minded growing up with a guru, I think it would have been better for me than what I had to go through. Of course, we all go through what we have to go through. But yeah, I wouldn’t knock it. It’s like a curse. You know, some, some gurus are actually abusive in certain ways and sexually in other ways, even to young children. So it’s, we have to be careful to sort of not paint with too broad a brush, you know, I mean, to realize that there are differences and distinctions and then in any category or classification of people.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, for me, it’s just about there’s no rule it’s all about energetically whether the person see the thing I’ve been on both sides, right? So when I put out my book, when I put up my YouTube videos, I said very, very clearly, don’t trust me. Don’t believe me, don’t follow me that’s in the introduction to my book. It’s said many times in my videos, but underneath it energetically, I’m saying, I know better than you. Follow me, listen to me, trust me, right. And this is a big journey that I’ve had to go on from discovering my, my, my unconscious, my shadow power games, my shadow ego, my shadow arrogance. And so when, when I speak from that place, and somebody is listening, I’m unconsciously putting them down, I’m reinforcing their smallness, their non trust in themselves, their idea that they are worse than me. And so you can’t say like, don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to anyone, don’t follow anyone. It’s just, if you resonate with me, while I’m coming from that place, there’s a reason we’re always a perfect match. And if you don’t resonate with me, then we’re also perfectly non matched. Right? So I don’t have anything against teachers, I have something against following, which is an energy of putting somebody else’s truth above your own. Yeah,
Rick Archer: no, I like that. I mean, obviously, teachers are valuable. We go through school, we learned mathematics and all the other things we learned from teachers, and if we went in with the attitude, like, I’m not gonna listen to anything, this teacher says, He’s full of crap, you know, I’m just gonna do my own thing, then we’re probably not going to learn very much from him. But if the teacher were heavy handed and authoritarian, and you know, shut up, and just accept what I say, and don’t ask questions, or some such thing, then that wouldn’t be a healthy dynamic.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, or, or even if they’re nice, right? So I grew up in a institution or schooling where the teachers were nice, but I just was told they know the answers. Right? So unconsciously, I didn’t trust myself, that you know, even two plus two equals four, or whatever the case may be, or the Earth is round, or all these things. That’s not my truth. I didn’t discover it for myself. So even if what they’re saying is true, if I didn’t discover it for myself, is just a belief, which means it’s putting me in my head and taking me out of what my, my own discovery and genuine honesty is.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a great quote from the Buddha. If I had a couple minutes, I have to interrupt. I could look it up, but I think I can remember it. But basically, he said, you know, don’t believe anything anybody says, just because they say it, even if I’m the one who said it, you know, investigate it with your own understanding your your own judgment, your own insight, you know, just basically don’t take anything on authority, which is not to say, don’t listen to me, like I don’t have anything useful to say, but just weigh everything I say, in light of your own judgement, your own insight. Yeah, your own discrimination or
Noah Elkrief: your own your own resonance. Yeah. Right. Like if something hits you beautiful that your truth, you’ve discovered it, it hit something in you. And if it doesn’t hit, what’s the point?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think it’s a good way to be. And maybe, at a certain level of immaturity, we’re more inclined to just sort of accept something, everything that someone says hook, line and sinker. But, you know, we kind of grow and after a while, we begin to use our discernment and our discrimination more.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I did it over and over, and over and over again than I thought I learned and I was doing it in a more subtle way than I thought I learned and I was doing in a more subtle way. So it’s, um, it’s a big journey to be able to trust yourself more than anything else. And
Rick Archer: actually subtler and subtler is that is the way that learning often takes place, especially spiritual learning it we kind of like peel the onion layer by layer by layer.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, every time I think something is gone. It’s not.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And what some people do is they throw the baby out with the bathwater. They say, you know, all teachers are crap. You know, we don’t need any gurus, or, you know, they make these absolutist judgments. And I think it’s more that’s an easy cop out. I think it’s, it’s more nuanced than that. And you have to sort of learn how to ride a bicycle, you know, you have to sort of learn how to balance and not go too far this way or too far that way.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah. And for me, it’s it’s sort of like everything that exists exists, because we asked for it. There’s a reason for it. So even if I were to tell someone, you know, don’t follow that specific person. It doesn’t mean I would never tell someone that because let’s say, Yep, let’s say I have an experience with someone and I clearly clearly see where they’re coming from is from their wounds, and they’re using other people to try to make themselves feel safer. And then somebody asked me, should I go to them? I’m not going to tell them not to go. Right. I’m not going to tell them at all. If it resonates with you go this I might tell them what I see. If I feel they’re really asking for it. But I won’t even offer that unless I feel they’re pulling it out of me. And I will not tell them not to go. Because if that’s what resonates, that’s what they need.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, I’m in that position myself, because I do all these interviews. And very often people watch them and they get interested in the in this or that person, they start going to their courses and stuff. And I’ve had to take some interviews down because I start hearing some rather unfortunate or unpleasant, you know, knew what’s going on in these places. And, and my feeling is I don’t want to it’s like a recommendation or referral. And I get, you know, don’t want to refer people to someone who they might not realize it’s going to hurt them in some way. If they go there.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, it’s completely different in that position. I understand. Yeah. Yeah, I would also deeply consider taking something down if I felt felt when you feel.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a responsibility. Yeah. So you know, a lot of us as kids, we reach a certain age and we we start rebelling against everything. It’s kind of a natural teenager thing. So did you do you reach a certain point at which you’d be able to look around there and the ashram thing, you know, to heck with this?
Noah Elkrief: Like, I didn’t have it with the ashram Exactly. Like I was. So all in, on the ashram my whole life. But, but in school, when I turned 10, I started getting suspended and detentions and drinking and smoking. And just, I don’t know, just being a wild animal. Basically, I was really having a good time, at the expense of everyone trying to tell me what to do. And I’m really glad I did that. You know, it was really, it was really, really good for me. I loved it. I loved rebelling. It was quite fun. Yeah. So So I went through that, but, but ultimately, I discovered when I was 16, that it was harming me, you know, the weed and alcohol through meditation hit me in a meditation experience what it was doing to me. And and so when I turned 18, I said, I’m never going to drink and smoke again. Because I couldn’t stop when when all your friends are doing it. It was like, there’s no chance. So so when I turned 18, all that kind of went behind me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that was the age in which I had the same realization just I stopped doing all that stuff. And I actually dropped all my friends. And you know, I thought, because they weren’t going to stop. And so I thought, Okay, I’m not gonna hang around them anymore. I’m gonna meditate and see what happens. I’ll get new friends. And I did you know, two months with the spent Yeah, spent a few months alone walking the dog in the morning. And eventually, new friends came to it.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, similar. Yeah, same thing.
Rick Archer: So did you What helped me out here in terms of the timeline? And what you feel is significant? Yeah, this whole ashram thing, and you know, just keep telling the story, and I’ll have questions and but
Noah Elkrief: I can tell you a story. So so when I was 1213, that’s when I had my first like, awakening experience where I could see all of a sudden that my thoughts aren’t true that everything coming up wasn’t me wasn’t real wasn’t true. You know, and having that stereotypical, like, laughing like, oh my god, it’s so obvious what’s
Rick Archer: happening was that drug induced, I just happened to you
Noah Elkrief: know, I was, I was at a chant, you know, when I was 13. And then they started happening a bunch. And fast forward, I was, you know, meditating every day. And, and when I was 22, after college, I went to the ashram for three months in silence, mostly, just meditating a lot. And I started, you know, I was having these bliss experiences, you know, all day, you know, many times a day, and I was thought that it was just about having this all the time, right bliss all the time, like, this joy and, and seeing clearly and whenever, all the time. And I gave everything I had to it, like I gave everything I had. And, you know, I wasn’t listening to music. I wasn’t watching TV. I was just chanting, meditating, like, all the time. No friends, like I was just, this is what I want. The metal Yeah. And I kept cutting things out. And at this point in my life, I was really disciplined my whole life. I was disciplined. It was like, anything I say, I’m going to do, I’m going to do it, particularly about, you know, spiritual practices. And at one point when I was 22, or 23, at this point, one of the books that I read told me that masturbation, if you let go of your semen, you’re letting go of like the Kundalini energy that that makes you awakened. So I was like, Okay, I’m not gonna masturbate. And so, so I gave my all to it, and I really try everything I could. And after a few weeks, I just like, had a breakdown. I just, I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t stop masturbating. And so in this breakdown, it was my first breakdown of my life like I never even cried other than happy cries before that. And in this breakdown, I broke open like something in the head that I didn’t fail. Like, at first I felt I failed when I broke that I couldn’t do it. But then I realized I was trying to control mind with mind. And this is what I was taught my whole life. And so in that moment, it hit me. I’m not interested in this guru that she actually doesn’t offer what I’m looking for. And so
Rick Archer: that the guru successor at that point,
Noah Elkrief: I was still with, I was with that same guru my whole life, right? Yeah. And she
Rick Archer: was up to the people that just name these groups, because anybody
Noah Elkrief: can figure it out. Right? You can, you can name
Rick Archer: so the original guy was Muktananda. And then guru meI was his successor. So that’s who we’re referring to here.
Noah Elkrief: So I, I realized in that moment, it’s not for me. So I was really, really lucky that I love masturbating at that time. Because if I didn’t, I don’t know, I would have been stuck, maybe forever, or something else would have come up. But that broke the, like, the the like, curse over me or the spell? And, and then I was like, Okay, what do I do now? And I’ve been following her my whole life. You know, this is like, deep, deep brainwashing and indoctrination, right? Like when you’re born into it and giving it every day.
Rick Archer: Or maybe you never met Muktananda because he died pretty long.
Noah Elkrief: Before I was born, okay, there we
Rick Archer: go. Yeah, I was in South Fallsburg at a TM place next door to them back when he was still alive and walking down the street and stuff. Anyway, keep going. I interrupted you.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, so for me, that’s a very, very significant moment. And, and after that, I went to another teacher, Ganga Ji, you surely know, I’ve interviewed and, and I would just watch YouTube videos all the time. And, and she just would tell me Stop, don’t do anything. So I stopped, like all my spiritual practices, like all trying all efforting all, like, I didn’t try to figure out anything, because I saw I couldn’t do it from that, that breakdown that I had. And after about five months, I went to a week retreat with her. And in one moment, bang, like just the vast majority of my mind disappeared and didn’t come back. And, and then everything changed after that. So that’s kind of that’s what led to the initial book writing and you do videos. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: So how did it feel to stop doing all practices after having done them most of your life,
Noah Elkrief: just felt right, it was very easy, you know, it was very, very easy, because I just, when you give 100% toward something, and it doesn’t work, you have two possible conclusions, I’m screwed up, or what they’re telling me to do is screw it up. And somehow I was even lucky enough or arrogant enough to just it just hit like it hits. So clearly, that doesn’t work. And so when she told me stop, I felt so relaxed. Like, I didn’t even try to understand anything. She said, You know, I would watch for two or three hours a night, and I didn’t listen, actually, I didn’t even listen to what she said it was just, I would be there. And maybe once an hour, I would have this little moment where something hit me. Like, I would just feel a little Alright, or whatever. And I didn’t even try to figure out what it was what it was doing nothing. Because that was just done with that game. And that did it that did the work like dislike, when you get those hits the hips do the work, you don’t have to do anything. And and I was just really lucky that it that it that it was so clear for me.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I would conjecture. I don’t know for sure. But that, you know, all that spiritual practice you did actually did have an effect. And that that effect, you know, contributed to this thing. You you underwent five months after stopping the practices. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Noah Elkrief: For sure. It was incredibly helpful in many ways towards that. I don’t I don’t argue with that at all. For sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And so Okay, so let’s zero in a little bit more on this thing you just said about there was this moment on a retreat with Gangaji, where all the sudden poof most of your thoughts went away, but maybe, let’s describe that experience a bit more in the significance of it.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, sure. So I was just walking in a field and like a corn field or wheat field. I don’t know what kind of field it was. And, and I had been, I’d always say this for many months, maybe even years, I wanted to give myself 100%. Like, I had this idea that, that I could wake up or discover who I am or become enlightened or whatever it was, in a moment, if I was just willing to give up everything, and I wasn’t willing, and I wanted to be willing, so bad, I would go to sleep at night, sometimes I would just think about girls, or think about traveling or something. And I wanted so desperately to stop, but I couldn’t do it, no matter how much I traveled, no matter how many girls I went out with, like, I just couldn’t stop thinking about them. And I knew it wasn’t gonna make me happy. I saw it so clearly, but I just kept thinking about it. And, and for some reason, and in that wheat field, I was just walking around. And then all of a sudden, this just popped into my head, there might not be another moment to be willing to give up everything. Like as if I could die today or tomorrow. I don’t know why it came up, but just popped up. And as soon as it popped up, it was like, boom. And, and I was like, Whoa, this is life. This is reality, I had no idea. And, and it was really, really different than all my other experiences of, of bliss, or awakening or whatever. Because those ones were either like, you’re in this bliss, where, where this, like a live juiciness, like takes you all over. And it’s kind of overwhelming joy. And the awakening ones were more like taking a step back. And you could see your mind really clearly was still doing its thing, but you’re kind of laughing at and it doesn’t have any power. Whereas this was just everything disappeared. Like just everything left, there wasn’t anything to be aware of. That was moving. And, and I just just just chilled, enjoyed myself. And then and then. And then later, a thought popped in like, Shit, I’m not gonna be able to function, I’m not going to work, I’m not going to do anything. And I believed it. And it took me over. And then I went to Ganga Ji in the next Satsang session. I went up to her. And I was like, I lost everything. And she was like, except this one. And it was like, and then and then. And then it. Yeah, that was that. I could tell a little bit more than I want to share. So the next five or six months, new identities kept trying to be formed, like it was it was, then I was like, Oh, I’m an enlightened guy. And then it was like, Oh, I’m a happy guy. Oh, well, I’m this guy. And like new ones kept trying to sophisticatedly subtly sneakily like form and create something. And sometimes I would catch it in an instant, sometimes I would catch it weeks later, maybe some of them I never caught it all. And, and it was a very, very interesting journey to, to let go, or to watch something already having to have watched a big part of me be gone. Like I went into work. And, you know, I’m doing Excel, and I’m a consultant. And all of a sudden, I’m just peaceful, but I’m not getting the same highs that I used to. Because I just don’t care. It turned out, I didn’t like solving problems. I’d like telling myself, I’m really so amazing every time I solve a problem. So it was just everything shifted. And many of the things that I like doing, I thought I love dancing, but I was just dancing just to show people how good of a dancer I am, like, everything I was doing was just trying to get some like ego high out of it. So I would mostly just lie there and silence in all of my free time, or connect with the trees or something for many months, until some other sort of four started kicking in.
Rick Archer: I think one thing to note is that there are so many different flavors of awakening. And you know, almost every awakening is a shift. You know, it’s not necessarily the ultimate final thing if there is an ultimate final thing. It’s a shift and there and many of these shifts can feel kind of ultimate and final when they happen but then turns out there’s other ones and obviously and we’re not just talking about a standard set that everybody goes through because everybody’s different so each person goes through their own flavors and their own variations according to their own. You know, conditioning and makeup. Of course, of course there are similarities across all people but I think it’s good to just have that understanding because otherwise people tend to sort of look for some finality okay, this is yeah, You know, I’m having what the Buddha had or what? So and so had, or whatever. Yeah. But if he just kind of had this attitude, like, all right, we’re all on different roads and there’s all these mile markers and we keep passing mile markers and you know, the road keeps going and and we’ll see what we’ll see what lies ahead. It makes you more sort of accepting and open and easygoing about the whole process.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, it does. But at the same time, what’s interesting is that it always feels final like every time it’s still like I have to admit like it’s it’s funny even because it’s it’s a joke, the insanity of it, but, but I have ships are letting go of things all the time. And every time I think that’s it, you know, done. You know, it never again, because what I was aware of left, you know, it each of these finality moments or big shift moments, you lost everything you were aware of, like I lost all of the unworthiness, sevens aware of I lost all the thoughts I was aware of. But then sure enough, you access a deeper sensitivity that makes you aware of something more deep or more subtle, you weren’t previously aware of, you know, it feels like everything’s gone. Because you’re just getting everything you were aware of was is gone, in a sense, right? You’re
Rick Archer: just getting a respite. But there’s going to be another one. It’s sort of like, you know, if you eat if you want more, if you really pick out at Thanksgiving, let’s say, and you just eat way more than you should eat. You feel like, Oh, God, I’ll never want to eat again, this is full forever. But of course, obviously, later on, you get hungry again.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, like that. Next day, you poop. And you think that’s it? I emptied my system completely. But then there’s another one.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So I don’t know, it’s helpful to discuss this, I think because it helps if we have a realistic understanding of the way the path works, and because otherwise, you get hung up looking for these final moments or expect assuming that something is the final moment, and then assuming that you’re done, and you don’t need to, you know, nothing else is possible and all that stuff. And I don’t know, in my own experience, and in all the hundreds of people I’ve spoken with, I’ve never seen an example of that being true.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, and done. It is a dangerous idea. Because then you start listening, you know, like, like, for me, and particularly in my relationship, but definitely with everybody in my life. They’re my mirrors, right? They’re showing me what I haven’t seen within myself. And if I think that, that I’m done, or if I’m whatever, is not gonna go well in my life, right? It’s, it’s, it’s so important to realize you don’t know what you don’t know, when you can’t see what you can’t see. And, and everything happening in my life is helping me to see what I don’t see.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Now, there’s certain people that take exception to this line of talk. And you know, they say, Well, you know, all you have to do is realize that you’re already enlightened. And that, you know, this alone is what you’re seeing this is it, and stop all this progressive nonsense about stages and degrees of realization. And all, it’s all just what it is. And just realize that and you’re done. There, there goes the downward again, I mean, what would you say to such a person?
Noah Elkrief: I would say, That’s okay for him. But if, what if, if they asked me, What is your perspective or whatever, then I would share. First of all, the idea of progressing in certain stages is still attached to, to an ego or an idea of you, right? That’s, that is trying to get better. So there are stages where you are coming closer and closer to living from your natural self. But that doesn’t mean you are progressing or you are getting better. So So from my perspective, it’s one thing to know who you are. Right? To see who you are. And it’s another thing for every cell in your body to live and breathe it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And yeah, we might be able to say that there’s a see if you agree with us that we might be able to say that there’s a dimension, which doesn’t change or get better, it is what it is. But then there’s the whole range of relative dimensions, which by their very nature continue to change and possibly improve or maybe not, maybe go the other direction and deteriorate. Like if you play a sport or a musical instrument or something like that. There’s no end to how much you can get better. Possibly, if you work yeah, yeah.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I would say it’s more like so you have to understand good and bad exists in this in this in this realm in this level, right improvement and and getting worse or whatever. But it’s about whether you attach that to me or not. Ah, yeah, right. Or if you put a value judgment on good and bad, right, so if I have if I score 50 points again, If I score two points a game is scoring 50 better in terms of more worthy and lovable, it’s better in terms of just the rules that we’ve defined as part of the game of basketball. But it doesn’t mean that it’s more worthy or lovable. So within the context of emotions, which is what the round that I normally live in, breathe in, is that do you have? Is your fear more intense or less intense? Do you have fear in more situations or less situations, that’s real that exists, we have to acknowledge that. But whether you have more or less fear doesn’t have anything to do with your worth, or lovability, or anything like that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’ll give you an example. From my experience, I for the past couple years, I’ve been playing a sport called pickleball, like six or seven hours a week. And well I’m what is, it’s kind of like tennis only better. Played on a smaller court with a paddle. It’s like a ping pong paddle bit larger, and a ball that’s like a wiffle ball. Anyway, when I’m playing it, I do my best to play each point that as best I can to win each point. And to win each game, you know, I just give it my all. And then as soon as either each point or each game is ended, it’s like, Alright, that was fun. We all tap our paddles together and go on to the next one. And it’s like, when I go home that day, oh, that was great fun. I don’t even remember how many games I wonder lost or anything else. But throughout the whole process, there is a sort of a level of my life that is just fine and is not added to or subtracted from by what’s happening in the pickleball game is just, you know, pickleball game is icing on the cake. It’s just an entertainment. It’s a healthy, healthy thing to do. And you know, so just a little example, I suppose that might illustrate the point.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, you’re following your pull in doing the action and the action itself isn’t about. It’s not about the result. It’s about the doing itself.
Rick Archer: Yeah. It’s actually a quote from the Gita here. They say you have control over action alone, never over it’s fruits. Live not for the fruits of action, nor attach yourself to inaction. Beautiful. Yeah. Alrighty, so I’m speaking of levels, and you know, feeling like you’re finished when you go through some transition. And all, I’ve listened to a video of yours, where you go through explain many, many stages that you went through progressive, the deeper, more fundamental stages of unfoldment, which I thought was really quite interesting. So maybe we can talk about that for a while.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, that works. So where were we? Well, yeah, so I was sort of ahead. I was living for five years, let’s say, after I lost my thoughts, I was living for five years in progressively kind of more non existent sense. Like just I rarely had emotions. And when they did show up, I could instantly see it was created by a thought in my mind. And as soon as I saw the thought I could instantly see like 10 different ways that it wasn’t actually true or real,
Rick Archer: you make a lot of videos like that, about that topic. Exactly. That
Noah Elkrief: was that was my bread and butter before. So I would instantly see it’s not true, my emotion would dissolve and I would come back to my normal sort of playful, peaceful free relaxed state. And, and I was also getting involved in non duality at the time where I just kind of was more and more disappearing, you could say, and, and I liked it, I was I felt more and more connected to everything around me.
Rick Archer: We tune in with the with any particular another reality teachers or we just I was I was
Noah Elkrief: first I was with the audio Shanti for a couple years and then Rupert Spira and, and so I just Shanti was really supportive when I was when I was coming into a new way of being directly after I lost my thoughts. As soon as I lost my thoughts, I didn’t have any pull to listen to Gangaji anymore. And Adi Shanti showed up and for a couple of years, it was was really supportive and me living life from a different place. And then something I found Rupert Spira and something hit like, whoa, you know, and I just really love this. This more and more. I was no longer seeing like, I was no longer me seeing the umbrella. It was just there seeing happening and they came together or it wasn’t hearing something it was just the hearing was happening and there was this beautiful connecting and merging. And, and I went on that path for a while. And I really liked that. And then as I mentioned in the video, I was working with a little girl, and in one moment she told me I hate myself and when she She said that something hit my chest is hard. And when I left her, I noticed I was pushing that sensation down. And when I looked in my head to see what was going on, I couldn’t find a thought. And this was the first time I felt the feeling in my body, but I couldn’t find the thought creating it. So out of desperation, I just said, Okay, do what you got to do. And I just broke open and cried a beautiful, beautiful, deep cry. And in this cry, I loved it more than maybe anything else I’ve ever felt.
Rick Archer: So these things that you had somehow either because of a certain stage of your development, or because of your focus on non dual teachings that you had somehow become disembodied, or, you know, maybe in some spiritual bypassing or something.
Noah Elkrief: Well, I could say my whole life was one big spiritual bypass. Up to that point, but but spiritual bypass is is one word for it. I would call it more disassociation. Yeah, right. So so I was my whole life I was taught, told, right directed you are not your body. What happens to a child, when they’re told from the time they’re born, you’re not your body. Plus, I had a lot of traumas in my early childhood physical traumas, where I disassociated, I couldn’t handle them. So I left my body went to my head, and I never felt again. And so naturally, when someone’s scared to feel their emotions, they’re pulled in two things that are like meditation and non duality, because they tell you, you don’t have to feel anything. Or if you do have to feel you’re so far away from it, that you don’t actually have to feel the intensity of it. So it was a perfect match me and nonduality me and meditation. Yeah. So in this moment that I felt when I broke open to this cried in my heart, it was the most juicy, joyous and beautiful, touching connected experience I ever had in my life. And I was like, What the fuck? Like, you know, I, I’ve been trying to get away from emotions throughout my whole life, whether it’s through all the meditation, or the teachers are my looking down my mind to see what thoughts are creating my emotions. I could sense in that moment, it was all coming from a very deep underlying fear of feeling. So in that moment, and in the coming hours and days, I was like, not enough. I’m done with this game. I want to feel every possible thing. I want to feel everything that everyone told me I shouldn’t feel everything that I’ve told me is a negative emotion is painful. And, and I freakin went for it hard. And perhaps way to wait.
Rick Archer: Natural Born extremist. Right?
Noah Elkrief: And that’s, that’s how I lived my life. Yeah, so I just went for it. I was literally looking for every bit of emotional pain I could find. And even if I had a little feeling, I was like, let’s make this bigger. Like, like, let’s see where this, like, how we can go deeper into it. Like, how do I feel it full on. And because I was so disassociated, because I spent so many years avoiding emotions, it was really hard to even find them and feel them really hard. And I spent years on my own because I didn’t know anyone who was doing this. Like trying to feel emotion and pain at the time. And, and I spent years until finally, after two or three years, something broke open in me. And it was progressively like very small, like, slowly but surely feeling more and more emotion. But then in one moment, about three years ago, I broke open, like, so unbelievably deeply, I was screwed after that, like, like, then shit hit the fan. And it was like, now you can’t get away from it, you’re just gonna have to feel absolutely everything. And I can pause there if you have any questions otherwise?
Rick Archer: Well, just a little comment, which is that there seems to be progress. Remember how God used to talk about or maybe still does the progression from Head to Heart to gut, it seems like you’re going through this progression and what you’re describing, you’re all in your head, you know, and you’re intellectualizing away your emotions. And then then this had this experience with a little girl and next thing you know, you’re in, you’re in your heart, and you’re really diving into it, and you’re processing all this stuff. And then that broke through. And I’m sure there’s going to be more in this story, but it seems like you’re following that trajectory.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I would say I mean, I don’t know what his journey is. I can’t I can’t comment on it. But But one way of viewing it is like the chakra system right like that all your centers, like I’ve had to do a lot of work on my throat, my chest, my solar plexus, my God my balls, right there’s just and I’m not doing it any particular order, it seems. It’s just whatever feeling shows up in a given moment. I try to be as honest with myself as possible about it, explore it feeling and let’s see what happens. And so it’s kind of this zigzag all over the place thing that works out as things opening up to different centers of experience different sense centers of viewing and truth. And, and yeah, like that. So,
Rick Archer: yeah, I don’t think they’re necessarily strictly sequential. Yeah. But I will say might be an overall sequential pneus, if that’s a word, but
Noah Elkrief: but different people pulling in different orders some people exactly the auto mob, right, you know, everyone has different one centers that are naturally more open than others.
Rick Archer: And most people like to say it moves up and down. And all around, you know, as different things are needed to be dealt with
Noah Elkrief: doesn’t go in order. But I will say that my route has been the thing I was too scared to go to, I needed to open my heart before I could go to my route, because my route is where my power is, or one of the sources of like, this deep, primal power. And I was deeply afraid to go there until I felt I was connected enough to my heart, because when the root isn’t connected to the heart, then some not nice things happen sometimes. And so
Rick Archer: in other words, there could be power without compassion or something. Yeah, when
Noah Elkrief: the power is, and it’s not connected to the heart. And, and it’s not clean, like you haven’t done all the shadows yet. It’s a dangerous game. So I was like, there was something in me that always knew, like, stay with the heart. Stay with the heart. Stay with the heart, like before you go other places, because? Because I don’t want to do what I’ve done in past lives and everything.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And what some people are doing in current lives. That’s yeah, that’s very wise.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I was lucky in that way.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So we’ll just go ahead. Yeah, if you’re ready, go ahead.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, so about three years ago, I opened up two past lives and, and I had no idea what the hell I was doing, like no reference point at all. And just every day, just screaming, crying, and it’s not like
Rick Archer: you tried to, it’s not like, I think I’m getting into past lives. Now. It’s like, it just started happening right.
Noah Elkrief: Now. It was, so I was at a retreat with someone. And it was a silent retreat, so that there was no discussion of past lives or anything. And, and all of a sudden, I’m in my cabin. And bang, i My eyes are closed, I’m just chillin, and then all of a sudden, I’m in a war. And I’m seeing everything and I’m screaming and like, I mean, everything from my friends dying to me killing to my fear, like I’m, it’s so, so detailed. And the smell
Rick Archer: was no actually screaming in the cabin, and or was,
Noah Elkrief: after 2030 minutes, I was like, I need to record this. So I actually thought, I went on a recorder and I started speaking what I was seeing, I said to my parents afterwards, they were like that deeply disturbed. So Oh, yeah. So I, that happened just out of nowhere in a moment. And then
Rick Archer: you won’t get a bunch of those right? Different lines? Well,
Noah Elkrief: well, yeah, hundreds and hundreds of them. But what happened then the next day, I was doing what I always do, I was interacting with a retreat owner. And, and I noticed I was afraid while talking to him, like I was playing small. And so I do what I normally do, and I look like what’s going on here. And normally, I would see something from my childhood or, or teen years or whatever, where somebody did something, then he or something happened, and I didn’t process and I would undo and I would feel better. But this time, when I looked at it, all of a sudden, I watched myself stabbing somebody in the chest and a past life. And I was like, Whoa, and and when you watch yourself, kill someone, it’s like the most intensely shitty thing ever. Like it’s just so unbelievably horrible. And in the moment when you’re at war, or you’re in a violent interaction, you don’t have the space and freedom to feel your emotions. You’re so in the fight or flight that you can’t you have no choice but to bury that emotion and pretend it’s not there. So once I felt that I saw I didn’t I kept myself small when I was interacting with him, because I didn’t want a confrontation because I wanted to avoid the pain of having to hurt him. And so I undid that, and then I come back and all of a sudden I’m comfortable in the conversation and then it just went on and on like this and like everything. I just everything is all of a sudden taking me back to past lives instead of my childhood or, or whatever. Yeah, it’s interesting
Rick Archer: that you could go through that whole little process right in the middle of a conversation. Oh, I did I left. Oh, you went away and came back? Yeah, I left.
Noah Elkrief: It usually takes me. I mean, in that time, 510 minutes or something like that. Yeah, no, not in the middle of the conversation would be a disaster.
Rick Archer: Okay. Yeah. All right. That’s live stabbed the guy, okay. Okay, by the
Noah Elkrief: way with my life like I do with my partner or with friends because we process in front of each other because it’s okay. But and what a normal society thing? No, I wouldn’t do it. So
Rick Archer: if people are listening to this and have any questions about this whole past life thing or anything else, feel free to submit a question. But I mean, I take it in stride, it makes total sense to me. I find it interesting that your experiences of it have been so vivid and clear. I’ve you know, all my years of spiritual practice whatnot. I’ve heard a few little things but nothing like what you’re describing. So but again, we’re all wired differently. I had a I had a war thing where I was more like a dream where I was running along a beach at night. And there were bombers lumbering overhead, and you know, earner. And I was in a panic runnings for my life, in that I kind of woke up out of this sleep with this dream I had been having feeling a huge relief. And I thought, Wow, that must have been a past life. But that’s about the extent of the kinds of things I’ve had.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I mean, it’s not necessary for everyone, right? This is just happens to be nothing starts in this life. Alright, nothing starts here. And but you don’t have to find the root. So So for example, if I’m feeling fear, now, one way to do it, just let out what’s here. Now, maybe that gets rid of 100% of what that thing is, maybe I have to go to like, when I was two, when my mom yelled at me, and that does it. And that’s the route seemingly in this life. Or maybe I have to go to when I was in the womb, and that was actually her fear and not mine. And I have to give it back to her. Or maybe I have to go to a past life. But even if I go back to a past life hundreds of years ago, maybe it started 1000s of years ago, like you don’t have to go to the first one in order for it to be undone. But different. Different emotions require different solutions, you could say.
Rick Archer: So what is it that undoes it, let’s say you go back, and you had that experience of stabbing a guy, just the recognition or the re experiencing of that event, one of
Noah Elkrief: one of the simplest ways, and not the only way, one of the simplest ways is just to feel right. And that was the the initial journey that I was on, was just to feel what couldn’t be felt. So the reason why the emotion stay with us and carry as karma is because you couldn’t feel it, it was just too intense. The same if you think about a baby, right, or a child who gets scared or is yelled at, that’s way too intense of an emotion for them to feel so they disassociate, it stays in their body. But the same thing happens when we’re adults, when something is a really intense experience. So the thing is now is when we feel safe enough, within our experience here, and now, that’s when these deeply painful intense experiences can arise to be felt. Right? And so all I have to do is just to feel really, really intensely shitty. Right? Like, like just to feel intense pain, and sometimes it’s massively sharp. And sometimes it’s just massively big or massively heavy, or, or like you have to scream or whatever, it takes various forms. But one of the ways, the simplest thing to look at in one sense, is to just feel what you were too scared or incapable to feel
Rick Archer: when you’re feeling these things? Is it? Is there usually an event associated with it? Like, you know, past life type event? Or sometimes? Is it just a feeling without any rationale for it? Yeah,
Noah Elkrief: I think it took me a long time to let go of trying to find what created it. I got sort of like hooked on attached to addicted to finding what created it. So I thought that that was the way to bring it up. I also wanted to understand it, I thought I needed to, I was very, very attached to it. And the last year or so I don’t have to do that very often, when a feeling comes, I can just invite the fullness of the experience and feel it without seeing anything of what created it or why it happened in the first place. Sometimes I still do maybe 30% of the time it’s just I see it or I hear a sound like stop doing this to me or why or whatever and it’s just a voice and I don’t need to look at it or anything. I don’t care. You know, I just have to feel what I have to feel.
Rick Archer: We’re all these past life experiences, you know, negative or did you also experience some beautiful past life memories from you know, spiritual settings or Whatever.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, well, the vast, vast majority of them are horrible. Yes. Just
Rick Archer: just because you think those are the ones that create the deep impressions maybe?
Noah Elkrief: Exactly like I’m finding them through pain. So when I’m feeling pain now, or uncomfortable now and like, where did it come from? So the only ones that are nice is when something triggers it like a sound. So, you know, the other day I was, I was at a festival and someone was playing the drum. And all of a sudden, I’m in a, in a drum circle in a past life. And it’s like, it’s just such a deeply beautiful, like, sacred, amazing experience. Or so sometimes it’s music or nature, or a person, like my partner. A few weeks after maybe a month, month or two after I, this, this opened in the past lives, and I couldn’t talk about it with anyone, I didn’t know what I was doing. I, I see this girl across the room, I was living in Bali at the time. And something just said, like, go to her now. So I run across the room, like jump over a couch. And she goes, exactly. But then we settled and I was like, you know, how are you something? And, and I said, What do you do? And she said, I’m a past life therapist, they don’t. And I was like, Are you fucking kidding? And, and so we started spending time together. And the next day, when we went out on a date, I saw a life together where we, we were together like the whole life. And it was beautiful. So I instantly tapped into the love and safety and beauty of our connection from that life. And at that point, that was the first time that I had a nice experience. But it happens sometimes when I meet people. I I feel something beautiful a sibling experience or something that we had together. But it’s it’s not the majority by any means at all.
Rick Archer: Okay, is that the girl that you’re still with?
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, still with that? Great. Yeah,
Rick Archer: match made in heaven, so to speak. One thing I found, he said about 1015 minutes ago that I thought was interesting was he made some comment about something about how you had, you know, had a certain habit pattern that had gone across multiple lifetimes. And you didn’t want to commit the same habit in this lifetime. So you were holding back maybe it was the thing about stabbing the guy in the chest or something. So you’re holding back in a certain way. So it’s not to
Noah Elkrief: it that was about the heart and, and, and the power, right?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think that was it. So yeah, maybe you could say a few words about how we, how past lives might not only be a repository of stresses and impressions that need to be healed, but also that how we go about learning from life to life and carry whatever wisdom we’ve accrued in a particular life into subsequent lives.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, give me a second. Yeah, so So what I am what you are is a soul. Right? And, and maybe you
Rick Archer: can be all sorts of soldiers while you’re at it.
Noah Elkrief: Okay. We all come from the same place, we are made of the same thing. And at some point, we were all birth, as a soul, we come from this, this infinite oneness where there is just one consciousness, one everything, and then our individual consciousness is born his birth. And from that birth, we each have long journeys, different lengths of time for different ones of us. And part of that journey is here on Earth. And and what happens as a soul for me, and I don’t want to talk about other souls, because we there may be different types who have different journeys and different intentions, but for me, I come here to create in the physical, so I can be other places I can be outside of Earth as a soul in a non physical, but ultimately I came down here to experience what’s possible in the denseness of energy that creates the physical so that’s the emotion that’s the beauty that’s the, the connecting with outside physical creating something physical, like there’s the five senses. I came here for this. But in order for me to experience that in its fullness, I have to undo let go of the pain that has been with me throughout a long, long time. And and it’s a beautiful, beautiful journey. And, and there are many themes, but the biggest theme for my history is the perpetrator victim theme. So it’s, it’s in this life is the first life, I have the opportunity to not be a perpetrator or victim, it’s the first time I have the chance to actually live from my heart, the I can only live from my heart if I feel safe, right, safety is the prerequisite to live from the heart. Because if I don’t feel safe, I have to go into fight or flight. Right. And then I’m either a perpetrator winning that or a victim losing that. And so I come in with this massively strong intention to for every cell of my body to be heart centered, heart based love, love being. And in order for me to do that, I want to undo all these themes and tendencies to be a perpetrator or victim. And I have both of them in equalness, I feel incredibly small and worthless piece of shit, the saying that I feel like the biggest, best, most powerful human being that you’ve ever met. And I’m simultaneously meeting both of them and saying, What do I need to do to let go of you? I’m not sure if that answers the question or does I have follow ups? But that’s a good part of it. Okay,
Rick Archer: yeah. So I presume that thing you said about you could be a being in some kind of otherworldly non earthly realm or something like that. You may not necessarily during this life, because you’re here, but you know, the lives and other,
Noah Elkrief: you know, other times before I came to Earth in between when I’m here, right, there are, we have a choice always, though, we chose to can come here for a reason.
Rick Archer: It’s probably true. All of us think, yeah.
Noah Elkrief: However, I can say that, that, for sure. From my experience, I literally watched myself Jews, and saw how I chose and everything. So you remember that? Yeah. And so I can say that my soul did that. I don’t want to speak for years. And I don’t know, I know why I came here. I don’t know why you did. I can only speak from my own experience.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, that’s good. Do you remember actually conversing with some council of advisors or some such thing be prepared in this light? Yeah. Can you tell him about that just for fun?
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I am. You know, I had this experience, maybe six months, eight months ago, something like that, where it just all of a sudden, I’m watching this screen. And it’s kind of like if you know, like an iPad or an iPhone, how sometimes if you if you zoom out, you can see like, multiple screens. And I could see like millions of screens all at once, somehow. And I’m seeing all the potential parents that I could have. And somehow, when I’m looking at them all at once, in no time at all. I know what their themes are. I know what their wounds are, what their, their beauty is, I know, everything without someone telling it to me, like I just see it and know it all at the same time. And then I chose my parents from this. And, and it was so it’s so beautiful to see yourself choose it. Because it’s like, any idea you have, why did that happen to me? Or they shouldn’t have done that. It’s just like, you know, you can’t, I chose it. And I have that all the time with isolated experiences. Right where I see once I see it clearly I can literally connect to when my soul asked for that experience. But to see it holistically of when I chose these parents and everything that I kind of mostly knew they would do. It’s it’s a deeply relaxing and empowering, you know, because I’m not a victim, I chose it.
Rick Archer: You may not want to answer this because you want to speak from your own experience. But do you feel like people who are born to drug addict parents or people who like in Bermuda or the Bahamas who just got hit by that hurricane and all their homes are destroyed? Do you feel like everybody chooses everything? Or what?
Noah Elkrief: Well, I can say that all the worst things I’ve ever gone through I chose right that I’ve done. Like I said before about perpetrator victim this is one of the big themes of being a human being. How many times how many people have I killed how many people have I raped how many people have I robbed and these past lives. So and equally I’ve had all The opposite happened to me. And it’s horrible, right? It’s so painful. It’s so shitty. And and to feel like a victim of it adds another layer of shittiness on top of it. And so a victim meaning
Rick Archer: Oh poor me, why did this happened to me the universe is meaningless and cruel and or if God exists gods like a not not a very nice guy, that kind of thing.
Noah Elkrief: Right? So so in this life, I don’t have the, the Intensely pain, I have some, but I don’t want to go into it. But let’s say just the generally not nice things like someone hits your car, or someone yells at you, or fires you or whatever, every time something happens or I get hurt or something physical happens every single time something happens to me that my automatic reaction is this is shitty or bad, or why did it happen to me? My instant response to that is, why did this happen? Why? And then I luckily like over time, as my sensitivity grew, I can literally see why. Right? And, and I see why I can undo it. So it doesn’t keep happening. Because if I don’t undo it, it’s going to keep happening. And it’s going to get worse every time or progressively over time, until I get the lesson. So my job or my intention is to get lessons as easily and quickly as painless as possible. So I listen very, very acutely, so that I can live easily.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I like this line of thinking, um, you know, it, may I, for me, it makes things make a lot more sense when you kind of see it this way. And it can be, yeah, it can be used in a rather heartless way. I mean, people can say, Oh, you have cancer? Well, you must deserve it, you know, but you see like
Noah Elkrief: that. So I would love to speak about that for a moment, because it’s something so so important. Is, is any time we only identify with one level of experience, we’re screwed. And that exists. And let’s say the primary two is like Soul level truth and emotional experience. So let’s say somebody is is, is fired or broken up with I want don’t want use a more intense example in this moment. Right, I can see exactly why it happened to them, I can see the wound they have, I can see why they asked for it, I can see everything about you can
Rick Archer: you actually characterize that about other people’s lives?
Noah Elkrief: It depends. But let’s just say that I can in a particular moment, sometimes they can, sometimes I can’t, it depends how they’re opening up to me and what I can sense in the moment. But let’s say that I can sense it in a given moment. Then if I only go there, right? Then I’m I’m, I’m like, I’m not a human being. I am completely absent from my heart. So when I’m hearing them, I’m like, I hear you, and I feel you and maybe I cry, maybe I’m there with them joining in on their emotional experience, because I understand it feels horrible. And it’s not nice. And I’m sorry that it happened to you. And at the same time I’m holding the truth of whenever you’re ready, we can look at why it happened to you. So it doesn’t again, and so you can move through this more powerfully and free. That’s good. So it’s really dangerous and surely, when people meet us from only one level of experience, so if they only, like everything happens for the best, or you ask for this, like, that’s true. And it’s also bullshit if you only go there. And at the same time, if you only meet from the heart, and you only meet from your emotional experience, but don’t understand the higher wisdom, then you’re going to get stuck in this victim and, and drama of the pain. So one of the like hard and important things is to be able to hold both of them at the same time that are seemingly paradoxical, but are also very, very, both true and connected and not paradoxical at all.
Rick Archer: I really like that. This this fall at the science and non duality conference, I’m going to give a talk on this very point, which is that you know that knowledge or experience are different at different levels of consciousness or different levels of reality. And if you lock into one, any one of them without to the exclusion of the others, it’s a lopsided view. So you have to sort of take this broad perspective that incorporates or encompasses all the different levels of reality even though they might be some they might appear paradoxically opposed to one another. But the larger wholeness can comfortably do that it can comfortably subsume or incorporate all the adversities that exist in creation.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, it’s, we’re human beings, right? Human beings. I’m a soul and I’m a human being and while I’m a human being, I want to feel you and hear you and see you and connect your heart and hold you and whatever else that gets pulled out of me. And at The same time, I know why it’s happening. And that’s beautiful. So this is happening for you. Because if I only go there, I don’t view you as a victim, right? I’m not going to view you as a victim, I will feel your pain with you and have compassion and connect with you in it. But you are never ever a victim.
Rick Archer: Yeah. A few questions came in which we should probably ask that here’s one that’s relevant to what we’ve been saying. And you’ve pretty much answered this. But maybe you want to just say a little bit more, this is Patricia harder. Not sure where she’s from is asking, every past life experience I have heard is about something negative or violent, shouldn’t past lives also be joyful. Sounds like our soul is doomed to total suffering. Yeah.
Noah Elkrief: How to respond to that, um, of course, in our past lives, there were many joyous moments, there was many beautiful moments of connection and play, and, and everything else that we have here. And now. And for me, I want to experience those now. I’m only going back in time, so that I can experience something beautiful. Now, I have no reason or intention to go to a past life, to experience the memory of joy, and feel some of it in my system. If I want to feel joy, I will open up to it right here right now with what’s going on in this moment. If it’s spontaneously something here now triggers that, okay, beautiful. And I don’t care. Right? And and here, and now, if something triggers pain, and I happen to see that it comes from a past life, okay, I will look at it also I don’t care. And and so in the past of human history, there also has been a lot of pain, and perhaps a very disproportionate amount when you talk about the level of sensitivity that I’m talking about. Right? And, and maybe I’ll say something about that for a moment. Until I was, I don’t know, five years ago, I thought I was happy my whole life. I thought I was just a joyous little kid all the time. And what happens is, as you lose more and more layers of suffering, you discovered deeper and deeper, more and more subtle layers of suffering. And so in what seems like the most amazing life in the world, the kid who smiles all the time gets the girls has friends is smart, all that it seems like he’s a happy person. But underneath there’s a tremendous amount of fear, pain and unworthiness. So when I go to past life, I’m not just seeing the surface of like two people playing together, I’m feeling what’s going on in that moment, to a degree that I wasn’t aware of at the time. Right. And that means maybe on the surface, it looked nice. But underneath it, I felt deeply, deeply afraid of my father, or the people around me, and I wasn’t safe. Right, but the future, from my perspective, from my experience, here and now and moving forward is more and more beautiful, because there’s more and more consciousness being brought to pain.
Rick Archer: Well, this is a good segue into the next question that came in from saguna. Mueller from Austria. She asks, you mentioned emotions, and recommendations for those experiencing physical pain. For years, I have been following the pathway of negation. I am not the body, but it turned out difficult to ignore physical sensations themselves. Lately, it has been dawning on me that what I’ve been wanting is oblivion and unreality. So I have become interested in actually knowing the physical pain, I’ve been trying to lovingly connect to it to and get to know it, what it wants, where and how it is experienced, etc. I’ve been weeping, curious, and everything else, but medical conditions seem to be getting worse and is ingestions.
Noah Elkrief: Hmm, yeah, I understand that experience very, very well. And that’s one of the traps of of non duality, is when you say you’re not your body, or just be aware of it, the physical body requires often a lot lot more than that, for it to heal. And, and sometimes when we just are aware of it, and watching it, we’re distancing from it, which is treating it unkindly. And so when something arises, like you said, a pain, the first step is you want to have compassion towards it. And sometimes it’s really, really difficult to have honest compassion towards what happens in our physical body. Because when we were young, throughout our whole life, we didn’t get much gentle compassion to our bodies, or gentle touch. So the first step is definitely that curiosity and compassion, and to drop into that deeper and deeper. But I would also say that the other way to go about it is to explore the emotional cause of it. And one way you can do that is by asking, asking the pain like what do you want to tell me? What do you want to say? Is there anything I can do for you? When did you start? So you can go there. You can also go to a body worker, maybe there’s an energetic block and You can help. Or you can look at books that talk about what emotions cause, what physical symptoms in your body. I know one called metaphysical anatomy, that sometimes I refer to when I can’t intuitively detect what’s causing what. But it’s really frustrating sometimes working with the body when you can’t figure out what’s causing this pain. And that happens to me too. Sometimes when there’s physical pain, I can just go bang, bang, bang, undo. And I’m like, yeah, and sometimes it takes years. And I still can’t find the source of it. And I’m really sorry, if you can’t, I know that’s really painful.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’ve known secure saguna for a number of years through email correspondence, and she’s really had some difficult physical conditions, and I really hope she can find a solution to those painful Now here’s a question that came in from Andrew McMillan in the UK. The does no a C himself having done spiritual work or meditation in his past lives? And if so, does he think that a certain amount of spiritual work in past lives is necessary or made advantageous to awaken in this lifetime?
Noah Elkrief: Yes, I’ve seen many lives in spirituality. That’s the first answer. In in, as nuns as, as monk, as a mom as like a follower of gurus as which many, many different types and all of them have have, what I am in this life, and what I’m aware of, and what I see in this life, all is based on the foundations, I’m picking up where I left off from all of those experiences. So I come in with the sort of mental clarity or stillness of a monk in some sense. But I also come in with a lot of disassociation and detachment from my body, because the vast majority of my spirituality was, was not about emotions in the body. So is it required I can absolutely not say anything about what’s required or not. Because different people have different journeys. There are younger souls and older souls, there are different people, like their souls that are made differently. Sometimes I meet young people who, who, who didn’t do any spirituality, maybe they are surfer, or they, they’ve been a lot in nature, and they’re just so deeply being themselves. And like, how the hell did you do that? Maybe they had past lives where they they did it? Maybe they’re just a different type of soul that I’m not so I don’t know that well, I cannot say whether whether you need this or not, you know, but certainly whatever we have in past lives, contributes and we build off of that in this life, both the pain of what happened, and the beauty.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. He also Andrew also wondered what your opinion is of free will. I know, some teachers emphasize that we don’t have it, there isn’t a such thing as the impression that we do have free will is just sort of a an illusion. But what’s your take on it?
Noah Elkrief: Well, I used to have that perspective. So unbelievably, deeply, like I was 1,000,000% Sure, I make videos about it. I told my clients about it, you know, because I was my only realm of, of knowing and experience was my head. So I thought I was my mind. And then I see I’m not my mind. And mind has absolutely no free will. That’s very, very clear and obvious, because everything that comes in through the mind is built off of a program from the past. You know, so everything that goes through your mind is a program, it came from something in this life of past life, your parents, your ancestors, whatever. And so if the only voice you have in your head are the only voice you have access to his thoughts, then there’s absolutely no free will for you. But nobody only has access to that. It’s a question of how much access you have to your soul because as a soul, there is only freewill. Everything that you get is what you ask for. Understand, including the thoughts and programs that are in your head. So if you only know your mind and you’re you’re you seem to be like like going in circles and not knowing what you’re doing and creating your own suffering, but all of that is part of a larger game that your soul is playing that asked for this in order to move forward into more joy and love.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you know, some teachers emphasize that there is no ultimately no personal self and When I hear the word soul, I associate it with some deep level of our personal identity that there is a personal self, if we want to call it that, which, you know, actually is the thing that goes from life to life, the Hindus call it the Jeeva. And then it concludes from their conclusion that there is no personal self, that you couldn’t have free will because that implies a you to make choices. And you couldn’t also, you also couldn’t reincarnate, because that implies a you that could reincarnate. Tony Parsons argues that line of thinking, but in any case, what’s your spin on on that line of thinking?
Noah Elkrief: It’s just identifying with one level? That’s true. And it’s not true, right? Like, am I looking at a screen? Yes. And no. You know, like, it’s, I’m completely fine with somebody viewing it that way. But, but they’re simultaneously negating another way to view it. Another level of viewing? And did I for me, I chose to come here not to identify as nobody, because why the hell would I do that? Right. So so you can everyone has the right to choose? What level of identification that they choose to learn from? Even if you think you have no choice? No. And so that’s fine. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I really appreciate your both and way of looking at things. You know, you, I think it’s great that you’re able to sort of say, Yeah, I see that that’s true. But also this, you know, which is different than, than this other thing, which is true, and took having a
Noah Elkrief: serious girlfriend like that, you know, because when you’re in a serious relationship, where it’s deep, like, where, where you’re being asked within yourself and from the other, to commit to the depth of open love all the time, then whenever something comes up in the way you better look at it. And so, so much of my humility, or, or my, my being able to see multiple perspectives at the same time came from my partner being the exact opposite of me in every way.
Rick Archer: That’s great. Yeah. Good. Okay. So I’m at a momentary hiatus here in terms of questions coming to mind. But um, what are some things that you would like to talk about that we haven’t touched upon yet that are important to
Noah Elkrief: hold on a moment? Yeah, I think something that’s important to me is that there is no path. And there is no destination. Like that. It’s all about meeting this moment now and feeling what resonates. Right. So it’s like, I’m not trying to get somewhere. And, and I have no idea how to get where I’m at, I don’t know where I’m going. And I’m just as lost in a sense is everybody else in that, I only know what comes up now. Right. So if I’m here, now, maybe I feel the pull to eat this or go there or do that. Or maybe if some pain arises, I feel the pull to explore it and meet it. And so I don’t have like any, everyone should do this or do that. I my invitation always is just to try to meet this moment as honestly and as as genuinely as as possible. And one of the big parts within that is is our relationship to emotions, our relationship to pain. Because it’s easy to follow your poles to do something, it’s very hard to meet the pain that arises within us because it’s it’s much easier to escape in one form or another. And I understand that I still escaped sometimes. And we all need that. That’s why the tool of escape was given to us, but but emotions, like I feel a few like saying one thing about emotions. Emotions are so programmed into us as unlovable, bad to intense can’t handle it. Non accepted in society. And, and they’re beautiful, and they’re lovable, and they’re not signs of unworthiness, they’re not signs we’re not enlightened. They’re not signs of anything. They’re just part of experience. And and I just love to invite people to one, go there experienced them and to don’t just dive in, unless that’s what you feel. Sometimes there’s no need to feel them at all. Because they’re not yours. And you don’t have to, you can give them back to your ancestors, your parents to society, and you don’t need to feel it. So it’s this beautiful balance between like, Okay, I don’t want to run away from them. I don’t want to view them as like any signs of weakness or stupidity, but at the same time I’m not going to unnecessarily try to feel and dive into every emotion that comes my way. Because if I do, my life isn’t going to work and it’s going to be very unenjoyable, you can give back a lot, you can give back to where it came from, when emotion comes, we have to use our own discernment and our own intuition about what’s the wisest way to deal with this right now? And am I being honest, if I’m going this way? Or am I just trying to not feel
Rick Archer: that essentially, so here too, there’s a balance thing, we’ve talked about balance before, between, you know, just totally indulging in the emotion and trying to feel every little thing or, you know, completely disassociating yourself from emotion and trying to hang out in some transcendent state that emotion can’t touch. But you’re saying that there’s sort of a balance thing, and maybe some need to be felt more deeply, some could perhaps be, as you say, toss back to the ancestors. And there’s no sort of Pat formula for how every single one should be dealt with, you kind of have to discern or discriminate each time.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, and that’s a journey. Like, for me, I needed so deeply to feel everything for a while, right, because I was so scared of them. And I had so many associations that I’m stupid, weak, non masculine, not enlightened, not perfect, like so many ideas or too dangerous, right? Like if I had fear or anger as a child, I’ll be yelled at or hit or whatever, right? So there’s so many deep associations with why we want to avoid and run away from emotions. So in some way, you have to stop fearing emotions, in order to know that you’re telling the truth when you say, I don’t need to go into this one right now. Right, because as long as you have that deep, subtle, unconscious fear of emotions, you never really know if you’re avoiding emotions. Or you intuitively aren’t going there right now, because you choose to identify somewhere else. And, and I went very far and deep into pain, where I was just crying all day, every day, like, from the morning, I woke up to the moment I went to sleep, and sometimes couldn’t sleep at night screaming, crying, shaking, like, for a long time. And I thought I was doing the right thing. I was trying to be honest, I was trying to meet what columns I was trying to, like, not run away. And it took a lot for me to realize, wait a second, what? Like, you don’t need to do this actually. Yeah,
Rick Archer: essentially, that you had the choice to do it. I don’t think I could do that. If I wanted to.
Noah Elkrief: It took a long time to get to the place where I could do that. Okay. Long
Rick Archer: years. I mean, I kind of feel like I’m numb, you know, compared to you get kids when you were here, you say that? I think geez, I must really be shut down. I could never feel anything that much. You know,
Noah Elkrief: that’s the point is that the first three years, I was trying so hard to feel and I would feel something once every two weeks. And once a week, I was trying so hard. You’re just trying to focus and then maybe I could feel like, like once a day after three years, and it wasn’t even so intense at all, and then bang, the floodgates open and all of a sudden I’m feeling way, way too much. Yeah, way too much.
Rick Archer: There. Watch out for what you asked for. Right? Exactly.
Noah Elkrief: But eventually, I realized, I’m glad I went through that. But in the moment sometimes you’re like shit, I can’t handle this. And I just eat a Ben and Jerry’s every day like, like just a huge one. Because I have no other way out. Right? Sometimes it’s so intense like what that’s the only thing at my disposal. sex drugs or ice cream and I choose ice cream and cookies. Well, you didn’t get that. I didn’t and I was like, Look, I don’t get it. Give me the guys. Yeah,
Rick Archer: that’s Oh, don’t leave it entirely. There’s some really good ice cream out there. Yeah,
Noah Elkrief: I stick mostly with Ben and Jerry’s. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I have the stuff that’s based on coconut.
Noah Elkrief: Oh, yeah. Kenny kidneys as the ones that
Rick Archer: anyway still. Yeah, they make this a chi berry popsicle with chocolate cone is really awesome. Anyway. So you know, you have like, over 20 hours of YouTube videos up on your channel. And you’ve actually sort of outgrown most of them. You don’t? You made most of them at a stage which you’re no longer at. So I guess, did we talk about this in the beginning or maybe we talked about before we started the interview? You you leave them up there because you feel that they’re still relevant for people at a certain stage of their development or certain stages of their growth. But you would not necessarily be making those kinds of videos these days. Right? So yeah,
Noah Elkrief: I feel one is that whoever resonates with it, it’s perfect for Yeah, and it still resonates a lot. Oh,
Rick Archer: you’re not gonna watch them? Probably.
Noah Elkrief: Exactly. You know, like, even when I met my my partner, and she’s a few months later She found out I made videos and she looked and she was like, I hate them. Like, they’re not like you at all, like, okay, so like, it was just, you know if somebody feels that they feel it and and I really distanced myself for a couple years from it, like, how could I make videos like that, and I was so naive. And eventually I saw why those are beautifully true on one level, and they’re really helpful. And eventually, I could have love for that and understand its usefulness and validity. So that’s not who I am now. But it’s, it’s still one piece that I understand, just like, if another teacher, like we spoke about has this perspective or that perspective, I understand that that’s true on one level, and, and so are my old videos. So I debated for a long time taking them down. And eventually I realized, that’s denying and not accepting a part of myself.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s good. I mean, with my whole collection of all these interviews, every one has a different flavor. And it’s funny, I’ll put up an interview, and I’ll get emails back from certain people saying I hated that one, that was one of your worst ones. And then another email from another person on the same interview saying, I love that one, that was one of the best ones. I know, I love that. I love that. So you got to realize, you know, different strokes for different folks. And, and everybody has something to contribute, we’re all flowers in the garden, and all the different flowers each have their own contribution to the overall colorfulness of it.
Noah Elkrief: And part of me was waiting, like, I kept writing books, I wrote a lot of books. And like, I just kept writing them, and then realizing, by the time I was done with it, or edit it, I didn’t agree with it. I’m like, shit, there’s another thing deleted,
Rick Archer: go run faster.
Noah Elkrief: And then I, you know, I kept wanting to make videos or do workshops, and I would come up with something that was so beautiful. And then two weeks later, it’s not true anymore, sometimes a few hours later. And so eventually, when I made these videos in July, these last five videos, I was like, Come on, just share what’s here now, like, it’s okay, it’s helpful for someone like you, if you’re waiting for this like endpoint where now you’re stable. This is your truth. And like, because I was scared that if I share something, and people look to it, and rely on it, and then I share the exact opposite a week later, they’re gonna be like, What the hell. So it’s sort of more, I’m just trying to present it as an invitation that you can try. And there will be other things that may be contradicted or say something completely different than next week. And I’m still trying to find my way with that, with finding some stability in myself that I can actually offer anything.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, you can you can find certain teachers, like even Ramadan, I think where you can see here certain things he said. And then you can find other things he said that contradict those things. It’s like I was reading the Ashtavakra Gita while back about a year ago. And right within the same little book, there are all these contradictory statements. And that’s it kind of like it relates to what we’ve been saying, which is that there’s that reality is multifaceted or multi dimensional. And paradoxically, apparently, opposite or oppose things. can both be true. They’re just different facets of the same thing. different sides of the same coin.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah. So let’s see what happens. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I wanted to comment in question on something you said about 510 minutes ago, you’re talking about somehow no path, no destination. And obviously, the path, destination metaphor, if we convert it to like a map metaphor, or something like that, it has its limitations in terms of the actual reality of our lives. But there does seem to be a stream if we want to use that word that our life flows in. And maybe we don’t know where the stream is ultimately going to end up. We don’t know if it’s ever going to merge with the ocean, if it is, or whatever. But there’s if we look back at our lives, we can see a trajectory, and we can see how we sort of move through different learning experiences and had different things that sort of led up to where we are now. And we can imagine it going, you know, somewhere in the future. We don’t know where. And I just wanted to comment on that. If that triggers something in you.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, well, the first thing that comes to me is everything is happening for you. You asked for it, it’s all happening for you. So it’s moving in a direction of you coming closer and closer to yourself, which is let’s say love or connectedness or freedom or peace or everything or whatever word you want to call it. And so the way that it looks, I have no idea and where it ends up I also don’t know but it’s going in a beautiful directions basically what I know from my own experience, and those around me, right but I on this journey you meet many, many or for me I meet many, many different types of healers and people who are embodying different types of states or experiences or aspects of being that I know nothing about. And so I don’t know, if there is some way that you could be where you’re embodying like every center open, or I have no idea. And, and I’m also not trying to be like them or like them, I have no reference point or model, I want to be like that. I don’t know, anyone who, who has something where I say, I want that. But every once in a while, like I was just at a dance festival, and I meet someone, and all of a sudden, I’m talking to him, and I feel afraid. And I’m like, What the hell’s happening here. And so I go off to myself, and I see he’s embodying something. And in some center around his stomach, I think, where he says so much force and power in a beautiful way. And I’ve never met someone with that energy. So I tap into that and open and let go of some blocks in the way so I can live that. And sort of life is constantly bringing us people or things to help open us up to more and more of what we want in this life. But we don’t know what that is, until the moment it shows up. Like, I didn’t know that that was possible that energetic reference point, I didn’t have it. So different things come along our journey, either, like a beautiful reference point, that helps us to remove the blocks to get there, or pain, which brings up something that removes the blocks, and we didn’t know what was on the other side of it.
Rick Archer: Hmm, that’s interesting. There’s an old Indian saying, which is that for the wise, only an indication is necessary. So in other words, if you’re open, if you’re sensitive, perhaps even just a subtle, subtle influence, or subtle hint will suffice to it’s all
Noah Elkrief: hints. It’s all like, it’s just the hinting game, it’s very fun. You know, you just like, like, what’s happening, you know, if, if, you know, I’ll stub my toe, and I’ll be like, what’s happening, it’s like, you’re scared to take the next step. Like, it will just come to me the words, and there’s so many metaphors and, and, and hints in it. And when we start getting them, it becomes everything as your teacher, like, I don’t have anyone to listen to, I don’t have anyone to, like, try to get something from life is constantly offering me the thing that I want next, through something working out or not. Or if I, if I contact someone, and they don’t reply, or they reply negatively, or whatever, all of this, even if it’s not pain, anytime something isn’t flowing, something is taking longer than expected or anything, it’s always telling us something. And and for me, I’m in love with that. That’s, that’s my hobby.
Rick Archer: Well, it’s cool that you see the universe as meaningful and as pregnant with wisdom and and, you know,
Noah Elkrief: it’s beyond brilliant, like the brilliance is is absolutely incredible when you tap into the brilliance, like sometimes, if I can’t get the answer within myself, I’ll go into nature, connect with a tree, and then the brilliance will come and I’m like, there is no way I could have connected that through my, my physical like, soul, whatever. The the earth, Mother Earth is so unbelievably brilliant, and how it’s all interconnected, like everything is you serving you, and it’s just, it’s just unbelievable. I love
Rick Archer: that. I mean, look at a housefly under a microscope, and you see this miracle, you know, the eyes and the wings, and everything about it is just this amazing structure, you know, that human ingenuity couldn’t develop, there’s no way that all the great scientists in the world could make a housefly out of the raw materials that comprise
Noah Elkrief: sophistication and magic of it is just, it’s just me
Rick Archer: life. And we kind of tend to take it for granted. You know, we, we sort of blunder through life, you know, for the most part, not realizing or appreciating the miracle that we’re actually swimming in areas, we don’t have access to it. Yeah, but I think we can actually gain greater and greater access to it, we can become more and more open to appreciating it.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, and for me, it’s, it’s not about appreciating, it’s more as I undo blocks, as I undo karma, as I undo emotions that aren’t mine, whatever, that’s when I just see it more and more automatically. You know, it’s just, the less blocks you have, the more sensitivity you have, and then it’s just there in your face. And sometimes I don’t want to see it, and I’m like, Shit, I have to
Rick Archer: that’s a kind of a form of appreciation. I mean, if you just, I can remember, like times when I was, you know, 50 years ago, and I would look out at the woods, for instance, and I was feeling numb and flat and depressed and empty. And it would just be this sort of bleak, ugly kind of scene. You know, now if I look at Woods, in a anytime it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful. It’s like it can be a rainy day, but there’s just this sort of richness or you know, to anything to everything.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah. And that’s a reflection of your relationship to your internal world. Yeah. And that’s beautiful that you get to experience that outward, whatever our relationship is to what’s going on inside. That’s how we see it outside.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Um, a question came in from Vijay in Charlotte, Virginia. Vijay s. Where does discipline fit in with your current lifestyle? Do you think it’s required for growth spiritually, for example, sitting down every day for 15 minutes to meditate or doing some other practice consistently?
Noah Elkrief: Hold on a moment. No discipline is is an interesting subject. And, and basically, I don’t know the answer, right? Like I, everyone has to stay so close to themselves on a subject like discipline, because I’ve seen what happens when people dishonestly drop discipline. And it doesn’t go well. Like, give us an example. Well, let’s say somebody as a discipline routine, I do this every day at this time, and that at that time, and, and it gives them a sense of safety and structure. And then they hear that discipline isn’t needed, just follow your intuition. If that’s not their truth, and they drop discipline, they can go, it can really go into a downward spiral, because it can take away the structures that gave them the illusion or sense of safety. And, and so I never recommend now, after understanding how this works for people, I never recommend dropping discipline. But at some point, maybe you feel maybe, that it doesn’t serve you anymore. And maybe it always serves, I don’t know, I don’t even want to say that, like, you’re going to get to some place where you don’t need discipline, maybe, maybe the ultimate place does have discipline. I don’t know, I don’t use discipline in my life. It’s not something that I resonate with, or relate to, but maybe I need more of it. I’m not sure. So I don’t want to even make it seem like I’m further along than I don’t need discipline. It’s, I used to have it. It turned out for me discipline was trying to discipline for me, I was coming up with an idea of what I should do, or is helpful from my mind. And then trying to impose that on my body. And that created an internal war or conflict. And, and I don’t like force, I don’t like to force anything to do anything within my system. But that being said, if the discipline is coming from your heart or soul, where it’s like conviction, maybe it’s then I because I so much associate discipline with mind. And mind being the dictator that I don’t like it really. But maybe if we talk about commitment, or, or Yeah, like this, I’m going to do it, but it’s coming from your soul. Like, I want this so bad. Like, I’m ready for this. I see what meditation does. And I’m going to do it because I want to and it comes from so deep. That it’s like that nothing can stand in the way there’s no fight. There’s no battle, nothing can stand in the way. And maybe you check in on it every day. Right? Like, is that still my truth, but to hold the truth from today and carry that into tomorrow and the next week? That’s not something I resonate with. But at the same time, if you find it helpful, and it works for you do it. You know, you always have to try what works for you. I can’t, it feels like the question is posed in a way like what do I recommend? I don’t recommend anything. Do what works for you. It’s not. Yeah, I can’t say it’s a good
Rick Archer: answer. I mean, different again, different things for different people. In my own case, you know, I was not a very disciplined person. When I learned to meditate, it was so beneficial. And I enjoyed it so much that I had no problem doing it regularly. So I’ve been doing it ever since. Somebody gave me a lecture on the value of using dental floss about 48 years ago, and I thought that made sense. So I started using dental floss and I’ve done it every day ever since you know? Yeah. So habits can be a good thing. They’re not necessarily binding or restricting if they’re if they’re beneficial.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, and sometimes, but
Rick Archer: plus I have OCD, I mean, says, yeah, so OCD can be your friend.
Noah Elkrief: It gives you the sense of safety in some sense.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Actually preserving your teeth actually, in the case of dental. Yeah, somebody once said that, you know, it’s not that important. Just use it on the teeth that you want to keep
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, I feel also with that, it’s like with discipline, you can use it. And also you can use it as a question, which is why don’t I want to do it? Why do I need discipline? Right? Like, you play that game every week. Pickleball, you don’t need discipline because you just have the natural desire to do it every day or whatever. So the question for me is, if it’s not a natural desire, why do you want to do it? Who says, What do you think it will get? And is it possible that there’s another direction or another poll, which feels more genuine, and might actually be better for you?
Rick Archer: Maybe not say, I decided that it would be good for you to run five miles a day. And I started trying to do that, but my hip would start hurting and my knees start hurting, and I keep forcing myself to do it. Next thing I know, I’ve done damage to my body. So maybe that would not be a good application. Yeah.
Noah Elkrief: Or maybe every day you feel fear that you’re going to get hurt, but you don’t actually get hurt. And then you don’t want to do it because of the fear. So I would use that as an opportunity to say, Okay, I want to do it, but there’s something oppose some opposing force, which is the fear, and then I will use that as an opportunity to meet the fear so that it’s natural to want to go running instead of pushing myself to run to try to overpower the fear.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay, good. So I don’t know. Okay, maybe a concluding point on that whole discussion is that, yeah, certain disciplines can be beneficial and, but don’t force yourself to do something on naturally just because other people are doing it or because you think you should be doing it or something,
Noah Elkrief: you know, that’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay. But judge by see,
Rick Archer: it’s having a good effect or not? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, sometimes, you know, discipline can save a person’s life, let’s say they’re an alcoholic, it might take discipline not to go to the bar, and instead to go to a meeting, better use the discipline, you know, if you feel inclined to drink, call your call your subsidiary sponsor and get some coaching. And exactly. A follow up question from saguna. In Austria, she asked some, I’m having difficulties accepting a cause effect relationship between an illness and the underlying reason such as emotions choices in previous lives. What if there is no cause effect relationship could cause effect be arbitrary?
Noah Elkrief: I don’t want to tell you, or anyone that there is a cause and effect relationship. Maybe there is not maybe, I don’t know, you know, maybe it’s coming up not as an as an effect of anything. But it’s happening for you for some other thing. Like for me, I had back pain that prevented me from meditating. Now separate from, let’s say, the cause of it. For years, I couldn’t sit down to meditate. And it turned out that was supporting me, I hated it. I couldn’t sit to work, I couldn’t go to a movie, I couldn’t sit to poop. I couldn’t sit to eat, I couldn’t sit. And so but it was also stopping me from meditating, which helped me to stop disassociating to go deeper into my body and emotions. So if the idea of cause and effect doesn’t feel good to you don’t take it, maybe there’s not a cause. We don’t need to look that way. And maybe you can ask a different question. Why is it happening for me? What can I get from this? Take what resonates with you, I don’t want to tell you that there’s a cause. Just just, it’s about exploring your own experience. And maybe you want to just maybe not none of that resonates for you either. And that’s okay. And I’m really sorry that I don’t have a solution that that maybe helps at all.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s a good answer. You give good answers. I like I mean, you know, you and I agree on certain things reincarnation, soul, and you know, past lives and all this stuff. But a lot of people don’t believe that and wouldn’t agree and we’re not I don’t think we’re saying here that everybody should believe this stuff. It take it as a hypothesis, take it as an interesting possibility of the way the universe may work. And you know, explore it, if you feel like it or reject it. If you feel like it. We’re just you know, that’s that’s kind of somehow it worked for the two of us, and a lot of other people. But if it doesn’t work for you then find something which does. Yeah,
Noah Elkrief: that’s it. Yeah, I have no stake in the game, whether somebody believes that, because also, even if you believe something, that’s true, it won’t do any good. Right? Like, if I tell you, you have so much buried loneliness, or unworthiness, and you believe me, even if it’s true, that doesn’t do you any good, right? Like, things only have an impact if you feel it, if you know it, if you sense it. So to believe that our past lives does nothing. It doesn’t help anyone at all. I didn’t believe it when I discovered it. I didn’t. I thought it’s possible, whatever. But at that point, I was like, I don’t believe in anything. Nothing is real. So I thought even if there was a past life who gives a shit, it’s not real. It doesn’t matter. It’s not here now. So doesn’t matter.
Rick Archer: I like to take a scientific attitude toward it, which I think is what you’re saying which is that anything which anybody proposes which anywhere Vision has proposed or any philosophy or anything else, take it as a hypothesis, you know, don’t say no. Don’t say I totally believe it because this religion said no. Nor should you say, totally reject it, because I don’t believe in anything. But you know, alright, maybe, maybe not. Let’s you know, maybe I’ll investigate it, maybe I won’t bother to investigate it, because it doesn’t interest me. But everything is who, you know, we don’t really know everything there is to know in the universe. So let’s keep an open mind. And, you know, we can actually, perhaps, believe some things more than others, because they make more sense to us. But still, we don’t know for sure if they’re true or not.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah. And sometimes it feels good to believe in something. Because it like some part says it that feels good or whatever. And then believe it if you have to, you know, like, you know, it’s like, it’s it’s interesting beliefs, I hold the same perspective as you that it’s hypothesis until you trust with your own experience, you know, you until you discover with your own experience, and sometimes even me, something comes in, I just believe it unconsciously, and it feels good. And later, I discover it wasn’t true or it is true. And now it becomes my truth. So belief can be helpful. Sometimes also,
Rick Archer: it’s funny questions are coming in today that that somehow relate to the things we’re just talking about. Here’s one that came in from someone named Johnny, I don’t know where he lives. He said, you were saying, we choose which family circumstances we come into, and how it relates to past life lessons. If I choose to join a strict Jehovah’s Witness family that shuns me for the rest of my life for leaving the religion, what exactly would be the lesson there? And how could a person change that energy, so they don’t lose their family? Sounds like he’s speaking from personal experience. Yeah.
Noah Elkrief: And I’m sorry that you have to go through that. And I don’t, I just want to be really clear that I don’t mean to say that just because you might have chosen it, that it’s not painful, and really not nice. So I’m sorry that you had to go through it. And it sounds like it’s a theme of being outcasted. And abandoned. And probably in past lives, you were outcasted, because you didn’t follow the rules of the religion or, or what your society expected of you. And maybe that’s not true. Also, who knows. But the way to doesn’t really matter what the past like females, what matters is here and now. You check in with what you feel you feel abandoned, you feel hurt, you feel alone, you feel whatever it is, you feel those feelings hold the doorway for you to find your freedom and your truth. And so rather than focus on the physical, what they did to me, and how I can’t see my parents, or my family, which is really painful, I invite the attention to go closer to yourself and your own pain, and see what happens. Because in this life, in this time, maybe you have the safety and luxury to actually feel the pain. Whereas in past life, maybe when you were outcasted, you were immediately burned or gone into the forest. And you had to focus so much on your survival, that you didn’t have the luxury to feel your emotions. So once you feel that abandonment, that loneliness, that betrayal that I’m a horrible human being because they told me it. Once you start undoing that feeling them or giving them back, then you might see the situation differently. But I don’t want to tell you that you chose it. And I don’t want to tell you that it comes from a past life or whatever. I want to invite you to feel your emotions about it, and see what truth comes to you from that.
Rick Archer: Good. Ah, so you’re an interesting guy. No, I enjoyed talking to you. How old are you now? 34. Cool.
Noah Elkrief: It was nice speaking with you, too.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So what are you doing these days in terms of interacting with people? I don’t know if you’re still making videos, or do you still do one on one consultations? Or you know how to what if people found this interesting conversation? I’d like to follow up with you somehow. What are what are the opportunity?
Noah Elkrief: I don’t really have anything right now. I stopped doing one on one sessions about a year and a half ago, because I just felt that it wasn’t right for me anymore. And I’m not sure what’s coming next. So maybe eventually I do groups or maybe eventually I do something online or I don’t know. But in this moment, there’s not really an opportunity to to to get more from it other than to subscribe, subscribe to my YouTube channel, subscribe on my website to my blog. And eventually I will probably post something that gives you more of what you saw today. And I’m sorry, I’m not offering right now. That’s okay, but it’s just not my truth. Yeah,
Rick Archer: maybe you’ll become an Amway salesman or something you’ll start sending
Noah Elkrief: every once in a while, like maybe I just want to be a guy
Rick Archer: With the personally, I think I bet you have your one on one sessions, if you were to do them would be very useful for a lot of people just to be able to just talk with you for an hour and kind of work through stuff. Because you, you seem to be very insightful about things and offer, offer feedback in a way that’s, you know, both compassionate and honest.
Noah Elkrief: Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I know, I did them for seven years or something like that. And, and, and I don’t know, it just hit me a year and a half ago, there was some patterns that were being created by me spending so much time getting the same session. Yeah, I would like the pattern of people looking to me for answers, or the pattern of the dynamic being one sided or being used or whatever many things that I didn’t realize were there until I stopped doing it. And then I saw why, like, it just came to me stop. And I didn’t know why. And then over time, I’m realizing all these things. And maybe once they’re undone enough, I can go back into it, or maybe something else comes. But I don’t know.
Rick Archer: But I think you’ve learned that you can trust your intuition.
Noah Elkrief: Yeah, yes. I’ve learned that. Learn that. Yeah. Yeah, the long, it’s it’s so fascinating how it works. Because in the short term, it’s often painful. It’s often no fun or a mystery, or confusing or overwhelming, but, but after enough times, of following your intuition, when it’s painful, and your logic goes completely against it, and it works out well. The trust just builds and builds.
Rick Archer: Yeah, great. Well, I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you. It’s been fun. And I think probably people listening to this will enjoy it, too. So thanks for your time.
Noah Elkrief: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
Rick Archer: So I’ll be creating a web page on bat gap calm about this interview, as I always do, and it’ll have a link to your website and people can go there to so your YouTube channel link to both people who go there, as you said, subscribe. And for those listening or watching, you probably realize this is an ongoing series. Next week, I think I’ll be speaking with Cassandra Viet and was if I pronounce her name, right, who is the in some significant position at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. So it’ll be a more scientific conversation. And we have, you know, interviews usually scheduled several months in advance, or you can look on the upcoming interviews page to see what those are going to be. You can subscribe on the website to be notified every time a new interview is posted. And if you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you’ll also get a notice from YouTube when a new interview is posted. And I think you’ll also get a notice whenever I set up one of these live streaming things, which I usually do, you know, four or five days before the event, so you probably get some notification or reminder that one of those is going to happen. We live stream pretty much all the interviews unless they’re done in person. So check out the website and see what’s available there. And thanks for listening or watching and we’ll see you for the next one. Thanks Noah.
Noah Elkrief: Bye
Rick Archer: bye
