Scott Kiloby 2nd Interview

Summary

Scott Kiloby discusses how nondual insight can affect addiction, relationships, and other everyday struggles without instantly erasing human conditioning. He explains an inquiry process for recognizing and releasing beliefs of inadequacy by examining thoughts, sensations, emotions, and the sense of self.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can spiritual realization improve relationships and everyday life?
• How can I work with feelings of inadequacy, rejection, or unworthiness?
• Why do painful emotions and relationship conflicts keep returning after an awakening experience?
• How can spiritual practice avoid becoming another form of seeking or self-improvement?

Key takeaways

• Nondual realization can reduce addiction and relationship reactivity, but it does not erase all conditioning.
• Relationship conflicts can reveal hidden beliefs about being inadequate, unlovable, or not enough.
• Inquiry examines thoughts, images, sensations, and emotions to see whether they are truly a deficient self.
• Painful feelings often soften when they are allowed to be felt without resistance or identification.
• Awakening experiences do not guarantee complete freedom from personal patterns.
• Practice becomes natural when inquiry is used as present exploration rather than a route to a future goal.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Scott Kiloby. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Thanks, Rick.

Rick: Scott and I did an interview about a year and a half ago, in December of 2010, and those listening to this may wish to listen to that one also, either before or after you listen to this one. I also met Scott out at the Science of Non-Duality Conference in California. He’s one of these people that you sort of feel like he’s a buddy, like you’ve known him for a long time. I see a lot of people making comments like that, that they appreciate your kind of down-to-earthness and approachability, and so on, and I appreciate that too.

Scott is a recovering attorney. He was a professional attorney, but these days he’s devoting his full attention to his teaching, which is multifaceted and, I would say, very practical and down-to-earth. A lot of times in non-dual circles there’s not a lot of attention or importance given to practical considerations, like relationships and financial problems and all the various real-world situations that people live. Those things are often dismissed as illusory or not worthy of our attention because there’s no one to have such problems. Therefore, why should we dwell on the problems, and so on?

But you seem to have managed to nicely integrate the whole spectrum of the non-dual with the actual living of life.

Scott: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t plan it that way. I think it just came out of necessity, really. Part of it being my own path, having come from addiction—a lot of addiction—just sort of having a kind of a first recognition of non-dual reality didn’t necessarily stomp out all of the little demons within me. And also, it didn’t stomp out—not that the point is to stomp things out—but I also saw little things in relationships, not only in my own relationships, but with other people and teachers, frankly, who would have quiet moments with me about how they were getting stuck here and there.

And so I thought, “What? There’s no rule against talking about this other stuff. That’s the thing. Nothing outlaws it, so why not?”

Yeah, I don’t know if anybody has ever had a sort of non-dual realization that instantly and miraculously wipes out all their conditioning and all their quirks and idiosyncrasies and potential hang-ups, and so on. It just doesn’t work that way.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t know if anybody has ever had a sort of non-dual realization that instantly and miraculously wipes out all their conditioning and all their quirks and idiosyncrasies and potential hang-ups, and so on. It just doesn’t work that way.

Scott: No, I mean, I’ve not met that person yet.

Rick: Yeah, and even people in my experience who have had much more than a glimpse of the non-dual—a really solidly established and profound non-dual realization, 24/7—in talking to some of those people, in fact, in my interviews, even they say, “Hey, I’m still working through stuff. I’m a human being. I can still make mistakes. I have my hang-ups, and even my non-dual realization seems to be getting deeper and more profound as I go along. No telling where it’s going, but, you know, life is a mystery.”

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the same thing I found doing so many interviews with other teachers: There’s the teaching of the message that’s put out there, which is one thing, but then how is it moving moment by moment in one’s life? That’s the other thing.

Sometimes that’s shared and sometimes it’s not, and it’s always nice to have those moments where someone will just put it all on the table for you and say, “This is what really has happened, what’s going on.” Then I think it opens up a deeper discussion, or for me, it’s a deeper discussion about just how deep this can go and what this is all about.

Rick: That’s fascinating. Let’s talk about that today. That fascinates me too. I guess that raises a question: Is there any practical significance to non-dual realization? Does the rubber meet the road in terms of your relationships and your business acumen or whatever, or is it just something that is intrinsically fulfilling—self-realization without actually impacting your relative life? I’ve heard people argue both perspectives.

Scott: I mean, I have to stick to my own experience, obviously. Just in terms of, since I mentioned addiction, it had a huge impact. But again, there were little eddies that would hang around for a while. Just by seeing through that identification—the stickiness of thought and feeling, and how those get sort of hooked together, or thought and sensation, which were making the cravings for things—just seeing through that had, I guess you could say, a benefit.

If we answer every question like that, to say there’s no self-benefit, then it’s a non-starter. So I would just say, yeah, we can speak openly: There is a benefit that I’ve seen. If you look at the appearance of my life, you would see that I’m not swallowing ten painkillers at a time. So that’s a benefit to the body here.

There is a benefit that I’ve seen.

Rick: So were you still in the throes of addiction when you had a non-dual realization, and that kind of helped kick you out of the addictive behavior?

Scott: I was in the throes of seeking. I was clean at that time from my main drug, but there was still addiction in all these different areas. And so seeking enlightenment was its own kind of addiction, the way that I was seeking it back then.

Yeah, and so this message was the only thing that really helped me on that deeper level—helped me, meaning less identification with thought and feeling, more allowing that to come through fluidly, and not getting hung up on that so much. That’s where all the addiction came from, and that’s where all the relationship stickiness was, I noticed.

Yeah, and so this message was the only thing that really helped me on that deeper level—helped me, meaning less identification with thought and feeling, more allowing that to come through fluidly, and not getting hung up on that so much. That’s where all the addiction came from, and that’s where all the relationship stickiness was, I noticed.

But I didn’t always have the tools to use, so the teaching, if you will, has just been several years of working with people one-on-one, and then seeing what works and what doesn’t work, and finding something that works. It’s like, well, just stick with that.

Rick: So let’s talk about that a little bit. What have you found that works, and let’s define what we mean by “works.”

Scott: I guess it depends on whether we’re talking about relationship or addiction, although you could say that they’re very similar in a certain way.

Rick: They can be.

Scott: What I found for myself was, since we’re talking about relationship today—at least I think we are—again, people were contacting me, and when we really got honest, what they were really saying, if you listen to them, they were saying, “I’m seeking.” But if you ask them more about that, it gets down to a view of self. That’s something to do with, “I’m not good enough,” or “I’m not there yet,” or “I’m unheard, unacknowledged, imperfect, inadequate.”

So it’s that self-sense that they’re trying to reach outside of themselves to fix and make better or make whole. What I found that works was just to go directly to the root and to say, “Well, who is it that you take yourself to be in this relationship?”

So if it’s your relationship with your boss, your relationship with your wife, the focus is always on the other person, usually. It’s like, “She’s not doing this,” or “When he says that,” or “He shouldn’t be doing that.” The focus is there, and so I got people just to stop that focus long enough and to see: You’re not looking at it objectively.

We don’t look objectively. That’s one of the things that I’ve seen. We don’t see things objectively, which is kind of a nice thing to know, because if you operate on the idea that you do see things objectively, then you’ll think that every one of our judgments and everything about other people are just sort of spot-on, like a bird’s-eye view.

Instead, I got people to just turn around and sort of take the finger from there to here, and so make the self a blind spot. The way that that self is showing up in a particular relationship is like a blind spot. By pointing the finger back, you give a name to the kind of self you think exists in that relationship—not just the self, which is general, but, “Oh, yeah, I’m the loser,” or “Oh, yeah, well, I’ve always felt inadequate,” or “I feel small,” or “I’m jealous, so he makes me feel like I’m not good enough.”

When you put that on it and give it a flavor like that, then you ask people very directly to find that—to find the self that’s not good enough. I started taking people through this inquiry where I would just sort of relentlessly go back to that question, but also guide them through it, because it’s such a… If you do those kinds of inquiries on your own, sometimes it can just meander in so many different directions.

Inquiry into the “I’m Not Good Enough” Story

So I learned a way of just sort of focusing and saying, “Okay, so just look at the words ‘I’m not good enough.’ Imagine them written on the wall in front of you with graffiti or something, and just look at those words. Listen to your body. Let your body tell you what you really think. So, are those words themselves the person who’s not good enough?”

If people would say, “No, those are just words,” well, then that could just relax, and then we’d go looking for the self that’s not good enough. But when I found that people would say yes, it was almost like a rule. What they were saying was, “My body is saying yes. My body feels contracted or afraid,” or they would give a description.

Then I would take them into the body and get them to look at unconscious pictures in the body. For example, contraction would just have a picture of the chest; you’d see a picture of the chest. They’ve never been asked that question: “Is that picture of the chest, if you close your eyes and look at that, a person who’s not good enough?”

Eventually people see, “No, that’s not it.” Then they get down to the raw feeling, that wounded feeling that they’re feeling. When they sit with that and let it just be as it is, they find that it’s actually okay. Their mind has been running from that all their life.

Eventually people see, “No, that’s not it.” Then they get down to the raw feeling, that wounded feeling that they’re feeling. When they sit with that and let it just be as it is, they find that it’s actually okay. Their mind has been running from that all their life.

But if they sit with that, and then I just say, “Is that energy, just the energy without words and pictures, the person who’s not good enough?” If they see it’s not the person who’s not good enough, it’s just sort of—they can just be with it. Then it just sort of works itself out.

But then I found that in the body there are all sorts of things that come up. There might be a feeling there, and then a picture of their mother comes up, or a word that says, “But I really am a loser.” Those words will come up.

That’s what I call the Velcro effect. Any time thoughts feel stuck to emotions or sensations, thoughts or pictures, I would just pull those thoughts up, and I would say, “Well, look at that: ‘I really am a loser.’ Put that on the wall. Are those words the person who’s not good enough?”

I would say, “Scan the body again.” So I just went through this, really letting the person guide me until we got to this place where they couldn’t find the person who’s not good enough.

And that itself is amazing. If you believed all your life that you’re not just a self, but this other thing—that I’m a self who’s not good enough—then I would have them look back at the person in the relationship, and I’d say, “How does that person look now?”

They’re like, “Fine, actually.” I see that’s just an image too, but there’s no trigger for me now. So, just working with people several times with that, I found that it would uproot really deep stuff that we’ve been carrying around ever since Mom and Dad.

Rick: Yeah, it’s very interesting. I read a good portion of your book, Living Relationship, and it’s full of these transcripts, really, of sessions you’ve done with people where you’re going through the kind of process you just described. And it’s really remarkable to see how many “aha” experiences people have while going through a process like that. It’s like there are these ingrained assumptions, habituated assumptions, that they’ve been living with for years, and you’re able, just by turning their attention 180 degrees, to break through those, at least momentarily. And it’s a real kind of revelation for some people.

Scott: Yeah, I think it was. First of all, I did the inquiries with myself before I ever did them with anybody else, because my sort of underlying story was, “I’m unlovable.” That’s the story. I didn’t even know that I had that story.

Rick: Oh, everybody loves you, Scott. Don’t worry about it.

Scott: Yeah, but that’s the point. Even if people seem like they love you, you can still feel like you’re unlovable. So I did it on that for a long time, and I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe the depth of freedom from this core story.” And so then I felt comfortable taking it with other people.

Just to give credit, I started with this “Unfindability” with Greg Goode, and I combined a version of it from Madhyamaka Buddhism. This is not that; it’s a sort of modification of it. So, just so people don’t think I’m doing the same inquiries in that style.

Rick: Yeah. How permanent are these insights that the people you work with seem to have? Do they go right back and forget about it and get caught up in the same old habits? Or is there a significant shift that seems to stick?

🕊️ Past lives and spiritual development

Scott: You know, it depends. I’ve found that that story, that deficiency story, is pretty strong. It’s been going on since—you know, some people say before you were born, in your past life or whatever—or at least since Mom or Dad had that look or that yell, or the classmates said something to you, or whatever it is. So it’s a really strong story, and it tends to come out in relationship. That’s what I’ve found.

So one could be clear and then walk into the next room and buy back into the pattern. But what I’ve found is, I’ve trained probably 35 people to be facilitators of this. Those people hit these inquiries really hard for a while. There was a period of time when they just hit this inquiry, and they’re all experiencing tremendous freedom in relationship.

Rick: What do you mean, they hit it really hard? Do you mean they really practiced it diligently or intensively?

Scott: Yeah. The way that we talk about the inquiry is like it’s something that you take with you, so that you start treating relationship differently. It’s not something to avoid. It’s not. All the painful feelings that are coming up—a lot of times people will just disregard them or something, but that actually becomes the way in which you open to freedom.

And so people who take this on will normally start to say, at some point, that they find relationship is itself its own awakening. So it depends. Some people I’ve met with have done it one time and found freedom, and then they go back into the pattern. They just don’t pick it up again.

Rick: It’s like anything else. I mean, you can learn to meditate and have a profound experience with it, but if you don’t do it regularly, you’re not going to have that sort of long-term physiological transformation that needs to take place for any kind of significant progress or change to be made.

Scott: Yeah. I mean, practice has somewhat become a dirty word in certain circles, but what I found is, like you said, the depth of it goes all the way into your body. It goes all the way down to your—if you stay with it.

And what I found with the inquiries, as with most good practices, is that it becomes part of your system and it doesn’t feel like practice after a while. It feels like something very natural. You’re looking into the nature of who you think you are as it gets triggered in relationship. So it’s something—it’s almost like your system starts doing it automatically, just as you start seeing.

It’s really based on the mirror of relationships. So you start seeing that mirror that’s happening, like Krishnamurti said, and then the inquiry, because you’ve already taken it in, is already seeing through the thing that’s being projected out in the self. So, yeah, in the beginning it starts as a practice, and one has to actually, I guess you could say, make themselves do it. But after a while it becomes much more natural. It becomes just part of your experience.

Rick: It seems to me that the people who feel that practice is a dirty word are usually those who feel that they’re referring to practices which seem to reinforce the sense of doership or individuality, or which, I don’t know, keep one in perpetual seeking mode or something like that.

But if you look at just about anything in life—learning to play the violin or ski or do anything—and we all have fingers, I mean, I could be a concert pianist, theoretically, but if I don’t practice, then I don’t rewire the physiology in such a way that that becomes a natural thing for me.

And I don’t know if you agree, but I think the same is true not only with relationship stuff, which we’re talking about here, but even with realization. There’s a physiological rewiring that has to take place. If you hooked Ramana Maharshi up to an EEG machine, you might see very different brain waves than with the average person. And that just doesn’t turn on a dime; it doesn’t happen instantaneously. It may for some people, but I think if it doesn’t, then it may be that practices of some sort are of value.

Scott: Yeah, and so one of the things that the facilitators who have trained each other to do is, the first thing is just to look into the seeker, or look into the one who feels like they have to do inquiry. Let that be the first self that you find.

And as they see they can’t find that, there’s more of a relaxation in their presence, which is always-already-here presence. And then from there, you’re doing an exploration. So it’s not so much like, “I’m doing the inquiries to get to point B.” You’re actually seeing through that self that wants to go from A to B, that’s doing all the seeking and feeling inadequate and not good enough yet and all that stuff.

But yeah, it’s definitely a practice in the sense that, like you said, there’s a possibility of a really deep, deep recognition. It is physiological, but it goes all the way down to the pelvis and lower; it’s all the way through. And if you notice, in relationship is where the stuff from the gut and the stomach often comes up. And so that’s energy there that gets released through the inquiries, or any good practice, really.

It’s so that your body actually feels more and more transparent, which is where you start to feel love and peace and all that stuff that people want for the stability of their lives. I think it’s down here.

The Pitfalls of Non-Seeking

The whole thing about non-seeking, I have a lot of compassion about that because I’m such an intense seeker. I really am. I think there are two dangers in it. One is that mind tells itself that all is. So it just sort of says, “Well, it sort of relabels present experience and says it’s all oneness, it’s all…” But meanwhile, there’s suffering going on below the surface, which the person is either honest about or not.

The whole thing about non-seeking, I have a lot of compassion about that because I’m such an intense seeker. I really am. I think there are two dangers in it. One is that mind tells itself that all is. So it just sort of says, “Well, it sort of relabels present experience and says it’s all oneness, it’s all…” But meanwhile, there’s suffering going on below the surface, which the person is either honest about or not.

And the second thing is, one can have an awakening experience that is very free and that feels very much like freedom. And yet, even that can be a bit of a cover-up job, because one even takes the identity, “I’m now awakened.” And then if you ask the people around them what’s really going on, they’re going to say, “Well, not so much, really. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely a clarity there, but the relationship is rather sticky, actually, in a lot of ways.”

So that’s what I mean. It’s like that whole topic of just being honest about what’s really going on. It starts this discussion.

Relationship is itself its own awakening.

Rick: There’s a lot of good points in what you just said. Your reference to the gut kind of reminded me of Adyashanti, who talks about head, heart, and gut levels of realization. And it sounded like you were saying that working out this deep relationship stuff and habitual hang-ups around relationships can clear away a lot of the garbage in the gut, so to speak, so as to maybe facilitate more of a gut-level realization of non-duality.

And then the second point you made about people having a realization and then kind of assuming that it’s ultimate, or that they’re realized or something like that, and perhaps that seeking is over and there’s nothing more to do, can in itself be a pitfall.

And Adyashanti talks about that too, as a matter of fact. He talks about how even a taste of realization can be so gratifying that it can convey the feeling or the conviction that this is it, this is the whole enchilada, whereas there’s actually much more to be realized.

Scott: Yeah, I mean, there are different schools about that. I think through the years I’ve just gotten to the point where I want to be authentic to what interests me and not do it based on what other people say or what it’s supposed to be.

Because for a while I think I sort of fell into an absolutistic phase, and I felt like it was a shell that I had to come out of in order just to be true to my own experience. So, being true to this is what feels right. Let’s talk about this; this is what feels right.

So, yeah, I mean, definitely that can happen. You know, we’re in this life, so why not take a look at some things? Yeah, because this is what we say about the inquiries: when you no longer use them as a tool to get to somewhere later in your story, you use them as a present exploration from that already-awake—just the experience of already awake, or at least the recognition of awareness—you can do the exploration from that place.

And the more that we sort of say that to people, the more it starts to sink in, that they’re always doing this exploration presently. And that helps with the seeking. It helps them not seek in the future, but at the same time it helps them go deeper into the exploration of this form of separation.

Rick: It’s an interesting thing. It’s kind of paradoxical, because what you’re saying is that one can have relaxed the desperate seeking mentality, so there’s not a kind of striving for something that is so far away from me, and yet at the same time appreciate that there’s so much more depth and richness yet to be discovered. Those two seem contradictory, but they actually can fit together quite nicely.

Scott: Yeah, they do fit together quite nicely, absolutely. And one thing, just changing the language in the Living Relationship stuff, we just say that the one who’s seeking is the sense of a deficient self.

That’s the thing I kept getting in the sessions with people. They were saying, “I’m seeking awakening,” but if you pull that away, I’m like, “Why? What is it about you?” And then they would get it: “Well, I mean, frankly, ever since my dad said something, I’ve just felt inadequate.” Well, let’s just talk about that. Maybe that sense of inadequacy is why you’re chasing enlightenment to begin with as a future thing. That changes the discussion and focuses on that.

Rick: That’s an interesting point. I never quite thought of it that way. In my own case, I was a mega-desperate seeker for decades, a long time, just like, “Ugh!” And from external appearances, I still appear to be, because I meditate a couple of hours a day, I talk to people a couple of hours a week doing this thing, and I’m always reading books and whatnot.

But that whole sense of being a desperate seeker has completely dissolved. I’m quite content, even though I’m still going through the motions of discovery and deepening and so on. But I can definitely relate to what you said about the sense of inadequacy and feeling of weakness and lack. It was very organic; it wasn’t just a mental concept. There was definitely something in my mentality and my wiring that was, I don’t know if neurotic is the right word, but just something that needed healing, that needed resolution. And I think that resolution has come slowly over the years, and there’s probably more to be resolved.

Scott: Yeah, same with me. The desperate seeking is over, but the exploration is ongoing.

Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. So, I have your book here in front of me on my iPad, which keeps putting itself to sleep. But there are all kinds of interesting titles to your chapters. I wonder if any of these titles could be a springboard into a discussion of a particular facet of the book. I don’t know if you have your table of contents in front of you, but if you want, I’ll read some of the titles of the chapters.

Scott: Sure, sounds good.

Rick: Okay, so let’s just kind of go through each one, and if you feel like not saying much about a particular one, just say a sentence or two and go on to the next. But others you might want to really go into. So, for instance, the first chapter is “The Unfindable Self.”

Scott: Yeah, so the Unfindable inquiry is the basis for all the inquiries. There are three inquiries in the book: the Unfindable, the Boomerang, and the Panorama. So, the Unfindable is just the basic inquiry that’s the basis of all three inquiries.

That’s where I actually look to someone and say, “Can you find the person who’s unlovable?” And I take them through the words, pictures, feelings, and sensations. So, really, you could do that on any object. You could do it with people around the fear of death, fear of nonexistence, and a lot of that: the one who’s going to die, the one who’s suffering, the one who has cancer.

Using the Unfindable Inquiry on Deficiency Stories

And all the deficiency stories, like “I’m imperfect,” “I’m inadequate,” “I’m unheard,” “I’m unacknowledged,” “I’m a loser,” “I’m the weird person”—everybody has those core stories. So, you could use the Unfindable on any of that, and you could also use it on someone else.

You could try to—the whole thing about the lack of objectivity is that if I sit and talk about my friend and think that I’m actually talking about my friend the way he really is, I’m missing the fact that there are words and pictures here that have to do with conditioning my memory of that experience with him. So, my memory of my experience with my friend is imprinted here with particular words, interpretations, and pictures, which come from a certain angle, as well as feelings and sensations.

So, if it was a painful experience, I might look at my friend and talk about him, and there might be pain in my body. I might be thinking I see him the way that he really is, when I’m actually feeling my own pain. And so, that’s what keeps long-term resentments going: we think that we’re looking objectively when we’re not aware of the pain that’s coming up with the words and pictures.

So, you could do the Unfindable on someone else. You could try to find that person. You could say, “Well, he’s an asshole. Are those words the person?” And then, “Yeah, those words are the person because I can feel it right here, so it must be true.”

Then, just relaxing and letting the feeling be there in the space—is that feeling your friend? And so, it helps to sort of undo the resentment or whatever it is. But basically, the Unfindable can be done on anything: a person, place, event, even enlightenment, things like that.

Rick: It’s funny. I have this little political mailing list that I forward stuff to, things that I find of interest, and there are a couple of people on the list who are at the extreme ends of the political spectrum, conservative and liberal. I’ll send something out about Obama, for instance, and I’ll get feedback from both ends about the very same article. They have completely polar-opposite perspectives on the same guy. It’s funny, and there’s such conviction sometimes when people do this sort of thing—such adamant certainty about the truth of one’s personal perspective.

Scott: Right, and in avoidance of being absolutistic, I wouldn’t say, “Well, I have no view,” because I will most likely go vote in November and I’ll have a view. But the way that this work can help with that is that if you and I have a disagreement about who Obama is, we can both do the Unfindable on it and find out that we can’t find Obama as something separate from our thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

That frees up the need to be right, and then we can still go vote. That’s the paradox of it all.

That frees up the need to be right, and then we can still go vote.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, they talk these days about how much polarity there is in the political world, and in the United States in particular, the two sides can’t talk to each other. They can’t accomplish anything in Congress and so on, because there is this sort of adamant certainty of the rightness of one’s perspective, particularly on one side, in my opinion.

But if that could be kind of relaxed a bit, and one could see that reality is much more multifaceted than one’s own view, even on that level it could make the gears mesh more smoothly.

Scott: Well, when you talked about the practical benefit of all this, that’s one right there. If we live in a system where the system is divided into Democrats and Republicans, and they both think they’re right, they both think that they see reality the way it is, obviously it would be some benefit to deconstruct that so that they open up to the different facets.

I mean, if you’re into worldly things at all, some people say, “Just forget it all, it’s all…” But to me, that’s where a lot of the juice is: to see the possibility here.

Rick: There’s a line from Dylan. He says, “You’re right from your side and I’m right from mine.”

Scott: Yeah. Artists and musicians seem to say all these lines that are so great. I sat there when I was listening to that song.

Rick: Yeah, I forget which song that was. So, anyway, this thing about the Unfindable self: what you’re saying is that when one concretizes a conception of what one is, or what somebody else is, and if they actually look deeply enough to try to locate that thing they’re so sure of as a concrete little entity, they’re not going to find it.

Scott: They’re not going to find it, right—not if they do it right. They’re not going to find it. And what they will find, if they go deep enough, is some pain that they were maybe trying to avoid and trying to stay sort of in their viewpoint about.

Because that’s what really fuels the political debates. It’s not really just the viewpoints; it’s how passionate or how angry I am, and that comes from pain. That’s just human pain. That’s why you see people getting so excited on TV when they’re debating each other, or out in the streets. It’s not because they just think they have the right viewpoints; it’s because they feel it.

So, we don’t usually get into the body like that and try to find the self in it, but when you do, a lot of it is based on the fact that I’m in pain. And when you let that pain be as it is, it does clear things away.

Rick: The vision comes to mind of people at a town hall meeting screaming, “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare.”

Scott: Right, right. That’s perfect for this kind of thing.

Rick: Which, for the non-Americans, is a government program, by the way. Okay, great. So, let’s move along here. We talked about the Unfindable a little bit. We have the deficient self in relationship, and we also have the Boomerang and Panorama inquiry. Can those all be lumped together in this whole Unfindable kind of topic?

Scott: Yeah.

Rick: Do you want to elaborate a bit on some of those?

Scott: Sure. The deficient self is just the word that I’m using to explain that core part of one’s story that, at the very basis, says there’s something wrong with me.

Some people are more conscious of it than others. Some people are very conscious of it; they can hear the thoughts all the time. Others aren’t so conscious of it, but it comes out in relationships. So, they don’t know why they keep getting tripped up with their wife. They don’t know exactly why, but they know they do, and they think it’s entirely her fault, that kind of thing.

So, the deficient self would just be, again, an ongoing story, or more than one story, from childhood on that basically says, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m unloved,” “I’m unlovable,” “I’m imperfect,” “I’m weak,” or “I’m powerless.”

And most of the time, we don’t ever talk about this with each other. So, we don’t say, “Hey, Rick, how are you doing? How’s your deficiency story?”

Rick: Oh, I suck. I’m weak. I’m powerless.

Scott: But we talk about other things that are far removed from us.

Rick: How are you? Are you miserable too?

Scott: Right. I’m like God, actually.

Rick: You know what comes to mind as you said that just now is the old paradox thing again. If you go deep enough, of course, you discover that, as you’re saying in your practice here, there is no deficient self that can be identified. And in fact, you realize that you’re something much bigger than this small, weak thing you thought you were.

And if you really take that to its limits, that bigger thing is the intelligence that governs the universe, the vast cosmic awareness—that’s what you are.

But as reflectors of that, as individual expressions of that, there can be all sorts of weaknesses, inadequacies, and imperfections, and ways in which that is not really very clearly reflected. So, it’s not entirely true to say that there isn’t deficiency and weakness and so on. It’s just that that’s not essentially what you are.

Scott: Yeah, that’s the way I’m saying it. Because I’ll never, as far as I know, be a world-class pianist. So, if I’m sitting next to somebody who’s a great piano player, relatively speaking, I’m definitely deficient in that way.

But it goes to identity. That self that feels like it’s intrinsically deficient is the Unfindable thing. Relatively speaking, you might be better than me, or I might be better than you, just in terms of comparison. But I think that’s really not where people suffer.

They suffer with the sense of, “This is what I am. Because of this, I intrinsically am deficient. That’s who I am as a person.” And that’s what gets uprooted in the inquiry.

Rick: And it may seem a little metaphysical or intellectual, but look deeply enough, and you are the world-class piano player. You are the great baseball player. You are the murderer who just got sent to jail. You know, all of those things. My wife just said, “Geez, who are you interviewing?” I’m interviewing every man.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. That’s the beauty of it. That’s what you start to see in the inquiry. It’s all a mirror. It’s all a reflection of that. So, yeah, that’s beautiful.

Perfectionism and ambition

Rick: Okay. So, now we’re getting to parts of the book here which I hadn’t read yet. And obviously, most of the people listening haven’t read any of these parts. So, you have a chapter called “Perfectionism.” What’s that about?

Scott: It’s just meeting with people, again in private session, who were constantly trying to change and improve all the circumstances in their life and continuously unable to make everything right. It was a lifetime of trying to improve and change everything, and it just seemed like it was a pattern going on. And I said, “Okay, this is how the Boomerang works with the deficiency.” So whatever it is you’re pointing outward, if you’re trying to change somebody, you just turn the finger towards you and say, “What is that person or circumstance mirroring back about you?”

A lot of people don’t ask that question very directly. But once you ask the question, the perfectionist starts telling me, “Well, actually, I’ve been perfect.” That’s what’s at the heart of this: I’ve always felt like I’m inadequate. And so, let’s see if we can find that self. Let’s see if we can find the self that’s inadequate. Then we take them through the process.

With the perfectionist, all the focus I get with everybody is usually outward. I’m trying to change everything. So we say, “Instead of focusing out on this person or thing you’re trying to change, what is that person or thing mirroring back about who you are?” And at first, there’s often lots of deflection, like, “Well, I don’t know,” or “I’m not brave,” or “If she would just change. I’ve been trying to…” It’s like an addiction going outward.

So we just say, “Okay, but give it a name.” And then they would say, “I’m perfect, so I’m inadequate.” If I could not feel inadequate anymore, I probably wouldn’t have as much problem with everybody and everything else. I wouldn’t be trying to perfect everything, because people see that the reason we’re trying to perfect everything out here is so it mirrors back that I’m okay. I’m actually okay, finally.

Rick: When you said that, what came to mind was a parent who, let’s say, wants their kid to become a doctor, and they’re really adamant: “My kid has to become a doctor.” The kid wants to become an artist; that’s his talent, that’s his passion, but the parents are pushing him to go to medical school. Why is that? Is it really out of concern for the kid, or is it to fulfill some deficiency that they feel in themselves?

Scott: Yeah, exactly. Or stage moms, you know, the push, push, push, because they didn’t quite go as far in dance as they wanted to when they were ten years old or whatever it is.

So once we get people to point back and give a name to whatever’s doing all the perfecting, and they say, “I’m an inadequate self,” we take them through it. Let’s see if you can find that inadequate self. We look at the words and the pictures one by one. Eventually, we get into the body, where a lot of that fuel is, and that’s where people tend not to want to go at first because it feels uncomfortable down there. It feels painful when I really sit with this.

As they sit with it, we ask the question, “Is that feeling the inadequate self? How about that sensation?” Then they can’t find it, and suddenly the conditioning that’s trying to change everything around you relaxes. When you can’t find the inadequate, imperfect self, all of a sudden you don’t see anything really wrong outside yourself. That’s something that’s really nice for someone who’s been operating on the need to change and perfect everything all the time.

Rick: Okay, so we’ve been going through your book, and the next chapter we get to is a chapter about ambition. What’s that all about?

Scott: These are basically just… there’s nothing particularly special about the chapter titles. They’re just movements that we see in our life, and they’re things that I see in private sessions a lot. People will contact me because they haven’t quite completed what they personally want in the world, and so they’re driven toward that.

With the Boomerang, the Boomerang is just a way of taking any object out there—person, place, or thing. Even something like future success, which would be one way to look at ambition. So you’re looking at an object called your future success. What does that mirror back to you? What self is here in that relationship to future success? Because all the focus is on the future, trying to get somewhere.

If you just say, “Well, what is that?”—just trying to get somewhere—give it a name. People might say, “Well, whatever they say: I’m not quite good enough yet. As myself, I’m not complete. There’s something missing.”

Then we try to find the self that’s not complete, or whatever it is that’s driving that. When they can’t find it, a lot of the personal ambition starts to fall away. Personal ambition is ambition derived from that sense of lack, that’s trying to get somewhere personally.

And then, of course, life goes on. Creating goes on. What you’re interested in goes on. But there’s real suffering around ambition when you look at it. When people can move in the world and move toward what they want to do—actually, really follow their heart—but not have that come from the sense of “I’m someone who, at the very core, lacks something,” then it feels different.

Rick: Nice. So, like you were saying earlier, seeking—spiritual seeking—can be driven by a sense of personal lack or deficiency. I guess what you’re saying is that that same syndrome can manifest as political ambition, business ambition, or any sort of ambition: “My kid has to be the greatest football player,” or whatever. All of it is trying to compensate for a sense of deficiency that one hasn’t clearly looked at.

Scott: Yeah, it could be any of those. It could even be spiritual ambition. Teachers deal with people, because the whole conditioning comes back up. Before you know it, something’s running the show. People have shared that with me. I’ve experienced that early on, not so much now because of these inquiries. But, yeah, it could be any kind of ambition.

I think it scares people because they think, “If I don’t have this ambition, I’ll have no purpose in life.” And really, when you pare it down and see through it, when you try to find the self that lacks, whatever that is, and you more and more see through it, no matter where it shows up, what I find is that people actually start moving in a way that’s more in line with what they really want, with what they authentically want in their life.

It feels right, it feels better, and they’re not as attached to the outcome of that. Their whole identity is not wrapped up in where this is all going, whatever it is.

Rick: Interesting. There’s a line in the Gita which says, “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. Live not for the fruits of action, nor attach yourself to inaction.” And so it’s just what you’re saying.

I also believe what you’re saying here is that a person who is freed from this sort of deficiency-based ambition is by no means passive or apathetic. They may be dynamically engaged in accomplishing things, but it’s not based on a personal emptiness. It’s based more on a kind of attunement with one’s dharma, to use that phrase.

Scott: Yeah. Just to give you an example, for those people who don’t know about me, my first love beyond spiritual talk is really music. That’s what I love. I love creating music.

Rick: Are you a guitarist?

Scott: I play keyboard, guitar, bass, and sing. When I was younger, it very much became a part of my identity that I had to become successful as a musician in order to be somebody. So the desire to create, the really authentic desire, that creative impulse, got wrapped up into “Scott’s not good enough.”

Somehow, I got so enmeshed that I actually stopped enjoying creating. So doing these inquiries and just working through this kind of stuff means I’ve actually created probably three times more music now than ever.

Somebody might say, “Well, you’re more ambitious than ever.” I’m like, “Well, you know what? No.” It actually feels different than that. Not that it wouldn’t be nice to get music out and play it, but it feels energetically different, what we’re talking about here, when you see through the deficiency self more and more.

Form is not a mistake, and it’s not a mistake that stuff is created.

Rick: That’s nice. That’s really good. It’s worth addressing, I think, because spirituality traditionally has sometimes had the connotation of passivity. You know, the yogis just sitting there doing nothing. In India, there’s a bit of a fear of it in some circles because of that tradition—yogis who just sit around and beg. People who want to be productive and dynamic and so on have tended to reject their own tradition, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

Accomplishment and achievement are very much compatible with full-fledged spirituality. It’s just a matter of everything being in the proper proportions.

Scott: Yeah, I think mainly it’s the seeking thing. All kinds of movements in the world get lumped into seeking, and many of them are. Many of them are coming from a sense of “I’m incomplete. I’m a person living in time. That’s who my real identity is.”

But then there comes a place where, more and more, you see the movement and creation and that stuff less and less comes from that. It comes from that impulse that you can’t describe.

That’s really, to me, one of the things about awakening that’s so beautiful and juicy. I thought, too, that I could just sit here all day. I mean, that’s perfectly fine and pleasant. Just do nothing. Go sit on my lawn in a lawn chair. There’s nothing wrong with that either, or just sort of be in formless absorption. I mean, all that’s there.

But at the same time, as we were saying, form is not a mistake, and it’s not a mistake that stuff is created. It’s not like, “Oh, that was a mistake. Let’s put that away.” What if it’s not really like that? What if the possibility is different—that when that sense of deficiency or separation gets seen through, and you’re willing to look at it as it comes up, you can then watch life unfold, whatever that means?

Of course, it may unfold by sitting in your yard. For some people, it’s like, “I’m not doing a damn thing.”

Rick: If that’s the way you’re wired. I mean, Ramana Maharshi, there’s no way he was going to go out and start a business. It was his tendency just to sit and be, and so on. But you and I, and most people, are naturally inclined—it’s our tendency—to be more engaged with the world.

Scott: And not to feel bad about that. That’s the whole deficiency thing. Not to feel bad about that. If one moves naturally in a certain way, whether it’s to continue playing the violin, planting gardens, or running a business, that’s the impulse.

If one is clear and open to look at any kinds of sneaky little stories that are coming in there, that are running the show, I think the world is an oyster, really.

Rick: The Gita again has all these verses about the importance of performing one’s own dharma, whatever it is. Dharma meaning that action which one is naturally inclined to perform, and in which it’s most evolutionary for one to perform. And there are cautions against trying to assimilate or perform the dharma of another.

Like you said earlier, authenticity, honesty, being who you are, doing what you do, and not trying to model yourself after somebody else.

Scott: Yeah, yeah, I think the word “authentic” is kind of an overused word. It’s really pointed for people. You know when you’re doing something that feels authentic. And you also know when you’re just looking at somebody else, or trying to follow somebody else, and it doesn’t feel right. It’s not really following what’s in your deepest heart.

Bullying, abuse, and overcompensation

Rick: Now your next two chapters, “Bullying” and “Abuse,” are kind of a hot topic these days. There’s a lot of awareness with Lady Gaga and Oprah and various people about bullying, you know, and movies about it and everything, and it’s on the news all the time. So is that the kind of bullying you’re talking about, or what?

Scott: Yeah, it could be school bullying, but also workplace bullying. It could be any kind of bullying, even spiritual bullying, like, “I’m going to beat you over the head with my concepts.”

Rick: “Jesus is the only way.” “Accept my God or I’ll send you to him.”

Scott: “Accept my bulletin of peace or there will be war.”

Rick: Right.

Scott: Yeah, so any kind of bullying, because the focus is usually outward when the bullying is going on. And when the person’s being bullied, there is often a sense of deficiency being created. “I must really not be good enough.” “I must be a loser.” But often the focus is on the bully, like what the bully’s doing.

Bullying, Separation, and the Deficiency Story

If both sides—and I know this is way outside the realm of possibility at this time—but if both sides actually say, “What is this? My bullying this person. What is it mirroring back about me?” “What’s at the deepest core of myself?” The deficiency. And then the one being bullied does the same thing. What we’ll find is a sense of separation there, and more specifically, there’s a sense of deficiency. That’s what’s causing it.

Rick: You know what? I wouldn’t say that it’s so far outside the realm of possibility, because it is, as I say, a hot topic. And I bet you, if you wanted to, you could go to the local high school and offer your services as a counselor and say, “Hey, I have this technique which I think could really help if you’ve got some kind of bullying situation going on.” Sit down with the bully and the person being bullied, and work through a little process and see if it helps the situation. I bet you could get some people to take you up on that.

Scott: I think we could. I was bullied as a kid, and when I watched that movie, Bullied, they were trying to tell the kids, “You need to go tell the counselor.” But a lot of times you tell the counselor, or you tell the parents, and it doesn’t deal with the pain, and it doesn’t actually sometimes deal with the bullying.

So it’s like, we could send people to therapy, and hopefully that does some good. But anything that’s going to help pierce through what’s actually going on there—and I think these inquiries could do that, among other things—why wouldn’t we try?

Rick: I think they could, and some of these 35 people you’ve trained, and others you may train, you might suggest to them that they approach some school authority and see if they’d like to have them help out.

Scott: Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.

Rick: Could be a neat thing. Okay, I hope this is interesting for people, the way we’re kind of just going linearly through the book. I’m finding it kind of interesting, but feel free to go off on tangents if you want to, too. So you have a chapter here about overcompensation.

Scott: Yeah, overcompensation is, if you look it up in the dictionary, using the mind as a way of avoiding pain. So what I train all the facilitators to do is just to watch how, like you and I are talking here, just in the discussion, but when we’re doing inquiry, it’s not really intellectual. But the mind will still sort of want to ride back on the intellectual train, or go back into lots of storytelling in the middle of the inquiry.

So overcompensating, the facilitators are trained to spot when that’s happening and to bring someone back to the core question, which is, are those words the deficient self? Or is that feeling the deficient self? And by keeping them on track, it just keeps the mind from distracting, so it doesn’t have to feel what’s here.

And that’s what I think a lot of some thinking is about. It’s a way of sort of creating a nightmare for yourself, and then not being with the pain that was created there, and just sort of going back into the nightmare.

So just by getting people into the body, I mean down all the way to the stomach, the chest, it keeps them from overcompensating, where they’re trying to talk about themselves, or talk about what’s right or true, instead of looking at who they take themselves to be in a certain situation.

Another form of overcompensating is something you and I talked about a little bit before: I understand when people say, “I’ve awakened,” or “Awakening has happened here.” But if you look at that, unless it’s just spoken as a way of communicating with each other, it’s really kind of a B.S. thing, because for this reason: Why does it matter?

You know, the reason that it matters often is because that identity looks a lot better than my deficiency story. And that’s what overcompensation is. It’s a way of saying—it’s like when people you’ve met in your life, and you know that somewhere underneath there, there’s a sense of unworthiness, but what they do is try to tell you that they’re worthy.

In different ways they’re trying to tell you, and it’s just like a cover-up job, and you’re kind of like, “What’s really going on there?” And not that calling oneself awakened is always overcompensation, but once you get to the root of the reason, you find out what’s there underneath that, and you deal with any deficiency, I find that calling oneself awakened, or standing on that plateau, is less and less interesting.

Rick: So do you think this is pretty common? I mean, because there are a lot of people around these days proclaiming awakening, and many people I interview will tell the story of their awakening, and it seems genuine and sincere. But are you just saying it can be used—not a crutch, but a way of kind of ego aggrandizement or something? “Aren’t I cool? I’m the awakened guy.” That kind of thing?

Scott: Yeah, I think—not for everybody, absolutely not for everybody—but a lot of people go through that naturally, because it’s just the mind overcompensating for something. If you’ve always felt like you weren’t quite good enough all your life, and all of a sudden you have this awakening experience, that’s a good story.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Scott: And so, when I’m working with people, it’s just to help them be diligent in looking at what’s really going on under that. If you just pull the awakened identity aside, if you really hear with your experience what’s showing up, is there any kind of thing left over there from childhood? And if you deal with that, I find that people are less interested in that as some sort of inherent identity. I just feel like it’s not that interesting after a while. You know, that’s just my take on it.

Rick: Yeah. So, if I were to ask you point-blank, “Are you awakened?” what would you say?

Scott: Yes.

Rick: Okay.

Scott: No, I was just trying to play with you. I don’t even know what that means, frankly. I don’t know what it means. Definitely, stuff has fallen away from me—tremendous amounts of stuff—and if I were to compare, I’d be saying, “Yeah, this is really clear for me.”

At the same time, I’m very aware that life is an exploration, that in the next moment something could pop up, and that’s the juice. I have to look at that, and carrying around the identity “I’m awakened” is too much. It’s something more than what’s needed here, you know. And so, conventionally, I don’t even know how to answer the question, really.

Rick: That’s a good answer, actually. That’s pretty much the answer I would give, and people do ask me that sometimes. I just have to give this sort of wishy-washy, relative kind of answer, like, “Geez, you know, compare me to 40 years ago,” and yeah, big time. But compare me to 20 years from now, and I’m probably a total dullard.

There’s been huge transformation and awakening and whatnot, but it still seems to be a work in progress. There’s ever-greater clarification, and there is something here which never changes, but the clarity with which that can be appreciated, and the degree to which that can be embodied, seems to know no end.

Scott: Yeah, and there’s something here that never changes, you know, when you recognize that. It’s just always there, and it never changes. And so there’s not much more to say about it, actually. If it’s really recognized that it’s always there and it never changes, unless you’re pointing for somebody, it’s not something to sort of land on a whole lot. Instead, you kind of see, “Well, all this other stuff is changing, and that’s interesting, too.”

I don’t know, because how much can we talk about this that never changes?

Rick: It would get pretty boring.

Scott: Right.

Rick: “Hey, Scott, has it changed yet?” “Nope, still the same.” “Okay, how about now?”

Scott: Right, unless you’re pointing to somebody.

Rick: Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people haven’t even recognized that there is that thing that never changes, and so that could be a big “aha” for them, to recognize that. But then what?

Scott: Right, and most of the time when I’m doing a talk, I’m pointing to that which never changes, because people come in there looking for that, and it’s an important recognition. And then once they sort of recognize and stabilize more and more, then we get to talk about these other things, like what you and I are chatting about.

Rick: Yeah, I just remembered this cartoon I saw the other day. It was entitled “The Spiritual Family,” and there’s this husband and wife sitting there in lotus position meditating, and the two kids are sitting behind them meditating. The little boy kind of has his eyes open, and he says, “Are we there yet?”

Okie-dokie, so let’s see. We’ve talked about—I just want to interject to say that all this talk we’re doing about Scott’s book, and the various types of inquiry, the different flavors on the same theme, really, I just want to remind everybody that we’re presenting this, and Scott’s presenting it, in the context of it being a very useful tool for awakening, for spiritual realization.

I’ve actually heard, kind of secondhand, that you’ve gotten some flak from people for not being nondual enough, or kind of abandoning the nondual ship and getting into all this stuff. Someone even called you schizophrenic, I think. So has there been very much of that? Have you gotten a little rousing from people?

Scott: Just here and there, and to be expected in certain circles. But you know what? It’s like I say: If you really sit with this life, you start really wanting to do what feels right and true for you. You don’t try to please anybody. That’s not why you’re doing it. That would become deficiency anyway. “I want people to like me. I want to teach in a way that pleases everybody.” But instead, I just want to do what feels right and true for me and my own experience, and go with that.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s great. I think you’re doing a great service. And I think you’re actually probably facilitating the kind of nondual spiritual awakening that even a nondual fundamentalist would appreciate, because I think we can be handicapped by a lot of this stuff. And unless it’s dealt with, looked at, or explored properly, it can be a real sea anchor in terms of our progress.

Scott: Yeah, and also, make no mistake: The Unfindable is a nondual inquiry. It’s like, can you find the self you take yourself to be?

Rick: Yeah, right there. Yeah, good. Okay, so we don’t necessarily have to go through every chapter in the book piece by piece by piece, but we’re about halfway through, and you have some others here: Helping, Peacemaking, Abandonment, Control, Hiding, Seeking, Anxiety, Envy, Jealousy, The Middle Way, and Relationship. So, taking that from the top, would you like to dwell a bit on some of these?

Scott: I mean, they’re all basically just movements that we find in human life. I mean, all of those—Seeking, Peacemaking. Peacemaking can often come from a deficiency story.

Rick: Meaning everything has to be nicey-nicey, and you want to just kind of never rock the boat, but it tends to be repressive or kind of hide stuff that really ought to be looked at? Is that what you’re saying?

Scott: Yeah, like often, because if there’s a real peacemaking tendency, great, that’s actually helpful for the world for the most part. But if it’s coming from a sense of avoidance of conflict, because there’s real pain there that doesn’t want to come to the surface—so if somebody disagrees with me or there’s conflict around me, it’s like, “Oh, there’s that pain. I’ve got to put that pain down. Everybody, be okay. Be at peace here. Okay, now I don’t have to feel my pain.” That’s the kind of thing that shows up for some people.

But all of those chapters are really just different movements that we all know: Jealousy, Envy. We all know them in our lives, and they frankly do continue on for a lot of people, even after they have that recognition of what never changes. If you really call a spade a spade, so to speak, and people get honest, you find that these little things are there. So some will be interested in inquiring into that, and some wouldn’t, and I am interested.

Rick: Yeah, it’s cool. I keep thinking of ways in which this could be applied as we speak, and I’m sure you’ve thought of them too. You could go into prisons, for instance, and if you really wanted to—I mean, there’s only one of you and you can only do so much—but people who are kind of trained in this procedure could go in and meet with opposing gang members in prisons, or go to Israel and meet with some Palestinians and some Israelis, or go to India and Pakistan. There are so many situations like this where these clashing groups, with a little bit of self-reflection, could defuse the whole situation. However, some of these people are so entrenched and so hardened in that tendency that there may not be a readiness or a willingness.

Scott: Yeah, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? It’s just like there’s sometimes not a readiness in the spiritual community, but there’s always a readiness outside of it, like in these other places, to look. I think that’s the best word: the readiness or the openness to look. Once you have that, it can unravel a lot of those conflicts and stuff, and in all kinds of scenarios, like employee and coworker relationships, employee and boss, husband and wife, mother and child, neighbor and neighbor, nation and nation. Yeah, so it’s available there in all of that. And that’s what’s so great about it: You can take the inquiries, and it’s adaptable to all those situations.

Rick: Yeah. But I sort of have a feeling that this could be more institutionalized and made more broadly available, and it’s the kind of thing one could talk about in a college or high school classroom. It could bring people who would otherwise never consider it to a point of readiness quite easily. You could probably sit down with a couple of volunteers who weren’t dwelling on nondual spiritual stuff by habit, and actually make quite a bit of progress with them if they were cooperative.

Scott: Yeah, I think so. I mean, sometimes the first night of my talk—and this is usually with people who are already interested in the subject, although there’s always some who aren’t—the talk that I do is more like just a basic discussion. I’m not doing an inquiry the first time. I’m just saying, “Hey, look, if you look back at your life, you’ve been seeking a lot, trying to fix and control things outside yourself, in conflict with this person, judging that person, criticizing, jealous, envy. All of that’s been going on, but have you ever stopped to ask, ‘What is all that I’m seeing mirroring back about me?’ And hasn’t there been this story all your life that there’s something not quite right about you? And maybe what if that’s what’s doing a lot of this outward pointing and seeking?

And if so, if you were to actually see through that, if that’s not really who you are, wouldn’t that actually change your life on this level, on this outward level?”

People normally could hear that, and they could say, “Well, that just makes sense, actually.” And then maybe be open to look at that point.

Rick: Maharishi always used to say, “The world is as we are,” and there was some Sanskrit phrase, but I forget what it was. Yeah, so I’m sort of running out of questions here, but I found this is kind of a refreshing discussion, I think. Because I think you’re doing something—I sometimes hear teachers such as Adyashanti or various teachers saying, “Well, you might want to do some therapy. It might be good for you.” But if a person hears that advice, they think, “Well, where do I turn? There’s all kinds of therapists. How do I find someone who’s going to really understand me or have the right kind of spiritual inclination to be able to relate to me?”

And this seems to be something which evolved out of your own kind of nondual realization, and which is tailor-made for somebody who has that inclination and realizes that there’s definitely some inner housekeeping to do.

Scott: Yeah, I think the inquiry, the way it’s built up, has the psychological component and the nondual aspects of it. Because you’re actually trying to find a self, so it’s a realization of myself. But it has a certain tag on it that’s very specific to you. It’s like the trunk of the tree. So if you feel like you’re someone who’s been powerless all your life, your tree is going to be made of all those branches.

So in therapy, we might deal with those branches one at a time, but here we’ll go straight to the root of it over and over again. And as we do, the branches begin over time to not kick your butt so much, or just fall away.

Rick: Very important point, and good analogy, one that I was kind of brought up with: If you want to really benefit a tree, you don’t just attend to the branches and leaves; you water the root, and then the whole tree will be nourished.

Scott: Right.

Rick: Yeah, great. So, anything more you’d like to say, Scott?

Scott: Other than just, I’m really busy these days, and we’ve got, again, about 35 people out there who are training. So, just to let people know, you can go to the livingrealization.org website to find them. You can also go to the Facebook page called Relationship and the Unfindable Self, and the facilitators are in there. Plus, if you look on the web and you just Google “Unfindable self” or “living realization,” you’ll see the various websites of these facilitators.

Rick: Why don’t you send me a link to all these places and I’ll put them on batgap.com when I put up your interview, and then people can go directly to them, and they can either get in touch with you or with one of your facilitators. Incidentally, I noticed that your rates are very reasonable. If you have a private consultation with people, it’s like $50 an hour or something, and that’s really cool. There are people whom I’ve interviewed who might be charging $200, $250 an hour or something, and that’s out of reach for many people. Obviously, you’re not in this for the money.

Scott: If I was in it for the money, I would have remained an attorney.

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Scott: But that’s another thing: We never turn anybody away due to finances. So if somebody can pay zero, that’s an important thing to let people know. We do that all the time. That should never be the reason that someone doesn’t reach out. It’s the way we look at it.

Rick: That’s great. That sort of bolsters your reputation as a very kind of no-nonsense, down-to-earth guy, which a lot of people appreciate. I went to this little retreat about a month ago with Sharon Landreth down in Missouri, and there was this fellow there who said, “Wow, I just saw this guy up in Boulder named Scott Kiloby. He was so real. It was like I was talking to a buddy or something.” And I said, “Oh yeah, Scott, I’m going to interview him again in about a month.” It’s wholesome. It’s a healthy way to be. There’s so much hoopla around spirituality sometimes.

Scott: Yeah, yeah. I do know. Well, thanks for having me. I always enjoy being here. You’re a great interviewer. I’ve been watching a lot of the stuff you do. It’s awesome.

Rick: Oh, great. Thanks. Let me make a few wrap-up points. So, obviously, I’ve been talking with Scott Kiloby, and I’ll be linking to his several websites and Facebook pages and stuff. If you’ve been watching this interview, I don’t have to repeat what we’ve just said, which is Scott’s available for consultations, and he’s devised a sort of an inquiry practice, which seems to be very helpful for many people. So if you’re feeling called to look into that, it’s easy to do so.

This interview is part of an ongoing series, which I do a new one each week. Next week, I’ll be speaking with Nirmala, who’s married to Gina Lake, whom I interviewed a couple of months ago. If you’d like to subscribe to the series so as to be notified whenever a new one is put up, you can either do that on YouTube—just subscribe to the channel—or go to www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. There you can sign up for an email newsletter. You’ll be notified whenever there’s a new one.

You can also subscribe to the podcast there. There’s a link, and they’ll automatically download onto iTunes, and you can put them on your iPod. There’s also a discussion group there, which is quite lively sometimes, that builds up around each interview. Within each interview, there’s a place to make comments and get into a discussion. So participate in that if you like.

There’s also a Yahoo discussion group, which is lesser known, but there’s a link to it from there, and many people carry on a conversation there. That’s about it. Oh, there’s also a “Donate” button. I definitely have expenses with all of this and spend a lot of time on it. So if you feel inclined to donate, click on the button. If you have any trouble with PayPal, just email me. Some people prefer to just send a check because they don’t like to do PayPal or whatever.

Thank you, Scott, and thank you to those who have been listening or watching. We’ll see you next week. [Music]