Exploring Spiritual Awakening: Insights from Michael Lydon and Alan Chapman

Peter: 00:00:05

Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only. Now join Ryan and Peter for another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.

Ryan: 00:00:23

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast. I'm Ryan.

Peter: 00:00:30

And I'm Peter.

Ryan: 00:00:30

And we are going to talk today about a interesting and interesting conversation that we watched between Michael Lyden and Lydon. Right, that. Yeah, I think it's Lydon, Michael Lydon and Alan Chapman. And let's see. So Michael Lydon hosts this conversation.

He's a spiritual teacher and his guest was an author, Alan Chapman. And they talked about themes of spiritual awakening, mystical practices, and the intersection of ancient wisdom in the modern experience.

And in particular, Magia.

Peter: 00:01:18

So specifically, Alan Chapman is a teacher of Western magic. What? Well, okay, so I don't want to. It's basically what people would think of when we say the occult.

It's like he teaches from Alistair Crowley, like he studied Aleister Crowley and who is kind of the mage of Western magic from the 18th, 19th century. 19th to 20th century. Somewhere in there, the age of spiritualism. But.

So Chapman says that he recognizes in Crowley's work or in the arc of his life, an enlightening enlightenment process that Crowley himself didn't recognize. And so that's the basis of. Well, basically that's the basis of most of Chapman's work. It seems like he started pursuing.

He has a big background in lots of spiritual traditions, Buddhism and others, but came into contact with Crowley's work and started studying it and then started having experiences from doing magical practices. And he recognized them as being. He recognized magic as a tool of enlightenment. So that's why he's in this perfectly okay group.

Now, I'm reluctant to say pok in.

Ryan: 00:03:20

This conversation with Michael Ayden.

Peter: 00:03:24

So, yeah, so I, I do have a question about. So Perfectly Clear. Okay. Is a members only group and we're sharing content like we're discussing members only content.

So I'm kind of, I don't know, maybe we should, like, before we publish, we should investigate that.

Ryan: 00:03:46

It's fair.

Peter: 00:03:49

I mean, it's not like it's a closed group. It's. Well, I mean, it's meant for anybody who has either taken the course or has been awakening.

So if you've taken the course and you have not transitioned, you're still.

If you've, if you've taken some of Jeffrey Martin's one or more of Geoffrey Martin's courses, including the free ones or the finders course and its derivatives. Even if you haven't transitioned, they'll. You can be. Admit you. So anyway, just to put that disclaimer.

Ryan: 00:04:33

Yeah, I will do investigation. We're not sharing the conversation, we're just sharing some.

Peter: 00:04:41

Right. Tidbits our response and his work. Yeah.

Ryan: 00:04:45

All in all, that generally falls into a fair use scenario.

Peter: 00:04:50

Right. So. So Chapman has written a bunch of books on magic as a tool for enlightenment.

Basically teaches magic as a spiritual teacher as opposed to as an occult teacher, which is interesting. And, and he does. I mean, this, I think this is the problem is that some of the most interesting stuff is from the questions.

So we can talk about it, but I don't know if we can publish it. So we were saying just before we came on, there's a question of someone asked a question because he was under psychic attack.

I mean, this is someone who obviously is. Works himself in the context of magic, which is not a context that I have at all. But he was bringing the question to Chapman.

I'm currently under psychic attack. What do I do?

And Chapman was very skeptical and said, well, I mean, the first thing you have to do is decide whether you're delusional or not, because it's easy to be delusional about these kinds of things. Things. And, and he wasn't being flippant or, or dismissive. It's just this is part of working with magic is you have to, as with most.

As with any spiritual practice is you have to understand whether you're deluding yourself. Which is why at a certain point it's critical to actually have a teacher of some kind.

But so in the end, I think the questioners said, well, the person who's doing it told me they're doing it, so I know that I'm not delusional. Yeah. They said they're launching psychic attacks against me. It's like, well, I don't know. That's just an interesting scenario to me.

Like, what the heck are you doing? Like, what, what? I don't know. I mean, how do you travel in circles where people use the.

The kind of the discipline that you're mutually engaged in negative. To harm you. Yeah. But as we know, I mean, as anyone knows from our culture, that's the way magic is seen.

Ryan: 00:07:31

Sure. Yeah.

Peter: 00:07:31

Right. It is primarily known as black magic. And then people have to defend it, saying, no, no, no, there's white magic and.

Ryan: 00:07:40

Right.

Peter: 00:07:40

You know, I mean, the whole Christian, Western, Christian, even Judaic, I would guess orientation is, you know, the institutions are all saying, oh, this is all bad stuff. It's all forbidden tools of the devil, whatever. Right. I will say that. Well, we'll get. When we get to the angel practice.

I have something to say about that. But, yeah.

So going, I guess, going to the beginning, Chapman says that Crowley got into a lot of trouble for himself because he was doing these powerful practices and he actually got on an awakening path, but didn't know it. And now I don't think he says that Crowley went through Dark Night of the Soul. I don't think he said.

Ryan: 00:08:52

He didn't say that specifically.

Peter: 00:08:53

That's not my impression. Like, oh, and then he got stuck in Dark Night of the Soul, and that's why he had trouble.

Which is normally what you expect to hear is a story of someone who had trouble with an awakening process. So I think it's interesting that Chapman doesn't say that. So I'm kind of curious to look at some of his books and find out.

Ryan: 00:09:19

Yeah, they. He didn't seem to expound much on what he spoke about kind of generically. Like, he's known and he didn't help himself. Yeah, he's.

He's kind of known as being unsavory. Yes. And that, you know, whether or not he was or wasn't, he didn't, like, help himself in that regard.

Peter: 00:09:42

Right.

Ryan: 00:09:43

But I don't. They didn't give any context on what exactly he's known for air quotes or anything like that.

Peter: 00:09:49

Yeah. So I think. Yeah. And that's something that we can probably wiki.

Ryan: 00:09:55

Probably.

Peter: 00:09:57

But yeah, so he.

He said that he's innocent of most of the charges that are generally made against him because I guess his reputation is, oh, here's an example of a bad guy. He's like an evil magician kind of thing. But they. Chapman says he's.

He's innocent of most of the charges, but he's morally responsible because he brought it on himself. Right. Which is. Yeah. It's kind of vague, but I think. What was the overall comment you wanted to make about this. This video?

I thought you'd said there was like.

Ryan: 00:10:47

A. I do, but I want to touch it last. I feel like it's way off track.

Peter: 00:10:52

Oh, okay.

Ryan: 00:10:52

This spawned an observation for me, but it's really not very relevant to the conversation.

Peter: 00:10:59

So one thing I thought was really interesting in how I experienced this conversation was that although I didn't. I wasn't familiar with the context. I recognized most of what Alan Chapman and Michael said. Michael Lydon.

I recognized most of What Michael said and Alan said, like, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Which is weird because it seemed like. Well, there weren't that many questioners, but I did.

I just think it's interesting to be in a place now where I recognize, where I can listen to people have this conversation. And I felt like. I think I wrote my journal. I felt like I was participating in the conversation.

I think I was hearing some people talk saying, oh, that's interesting. Oh, I wonder what that's about.

Ryan: 00:12:10

Right. I think one. Perhaps this is part of why.

And one of the things that I found resonant in the discussion was Alan's talk of the teaching behind the tradition.

Peter: 00:12:30

The tradition behind traditions. Yes. And which I translated as the perennial philosophy.

Ryan: 00:12:35

Yeah.

And so in many ways, that's exactly what we've been kind of talking about for the past few years is this assertion or assumption, expectation that there is an underlying. An underlying teaching that is present through all the various sects and. And branches of wisdom and spirituality and philosophy. So I liked that.

I thought that was a really interesting take. And that he seemed to touch on at least how I heard it. Maybe I'm mistaken was something along the line of, like, each hint.

Use the word institution, I don't think. But like, tradition, like, starts off essentially on this.

Peter: 00:13:27

Exactly.

Ryan: 00:13:27

And every time, at some point loses that kind of connection to the original teaching. Which, again, is something we've. It's a soapbox I've been on.

Peter: 00:13:38

Right, right. Well, no, I was going to say he actually clearly states the thesis that you introduced at the beginning.

Ryan: 00:13:45

Yeah.

Peter: 00:13:45

Which is that all teachings are true. Once a teaching becomes an institution, then it becomes. It loses track. I mean, it loses focus because.

And he doesn't say this, but as we've said in the past, then the institution becomes focused on being an institution. And you have to be very diligent in understanding or looking for the truth in the institution. And you have to have a very good teacher.

Like, only the best teachers of the institution will be able to help you see the truth. And most of the teachers are teaching dogma. They're teaching the party line. They're teaching the institution. And even.

I mean, so this is me being real cynical, but I think even people, probably even mostly people who are professionally trained Right. In seminaries and whatnot, don't get it. Yeah, they. Because they're trained by the institution to teach the institution.

It's like, oh, so we were talking about, you know, trauma therapy, training and that, you know, in one particular school, and that's. I would expect it's true of any good program that in order to learn the technique, you heal yourself using the technique on your own trauma.

And I think that that's not something that's done by most institutions that. What's the word? I don't want to say ordain, but that turn out teachers in any. And I mean when I say teachers leaders.

Right, that, that, that I guess I have to say ordain leaders. Right. Or designate or certify. Right. That kind of thing. They, you know, they are dean Ordain leaders of the institution.

Ryan: 00:16:01

Right.

Peter: 00:16:01

They don't ordain skilled practitioners of the practices that. Yeah, I, I don't know. I mean that's, that's a very cynical take, but I think it's a fairly safe one.

Ryan: 00:16:15

It is, but I mean you think of, let's take a more secular example. You talk about like a doctor or something.

You could have a top doctor from an Ivy League school who is top of their class and you could have somebody who turned out of a medical school at the bottom of their class. And by and large forward facing to the public. Nobody's the wiser.

And obviously there's gonna be different levels of skill that are involved with different practitioners. And just because you passed doesn't mean you're. Just because you pass the driving test doesn't mean you're a good driver.

Peter: 00:16:53

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, so Chapman does comment a lot on that. Not in terms of the Western church or Christianity or anything like that, just in general.

And I think, I mean, any points to. What we've talked about before was enlightened beings who are bad actors, you know, people who actually are awakened but don't.

Haven't addressed their conditioning.

And so they, they are awakened and they can teach awakening, but they can also do really bad things and abuse students and kitten scandals in that, that whole story that we're so familiar with.

So, so yeah, so I think that's why, I think that's why I recommended this to you because it's a very different, like least clearly talking about the same issues that we've always talked about. And yet he's talking about it from the perspective of, of being a magician. Like what? A magician.

Obviously not in the entertainment sense, but a practitioner of magic or as he calls it, magia.

Ryan: 00:18:30

Right. It was also presented as Western religion, Western esoterica.

Peter: 00:18:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So interesting. But I think again, it's going outside of kind of our mutually familiar or Our collective. Collective between the two of us.

Knowledge of different religions, like Buddhism, Christianity, maybe a little Judaism, to something which is quite alien to both of us. Yeah.

Ryan: 00:19:09

I'd never heard of this really at all.

I mean, I guess if somebody had said, did you know that there's a thing called magic or, you know, I might have nominally been familiar that something like that existed, like Wicca, you know, I don't know anything.

Peter: 00:19:27

Exactly. Same. Same here. I was aware of Aleister Crowley as a historical figure.

And I mean, basically, I probably know him from fantasy fiction, like Cthulhu, like Lovecraft. I think Lovecraft probably referred to Crowley in some of his. His stories or any.

Any, you know, fantasy fiction that names, you know, like historical.

Ryan: 00:20:02

Sure.

Peter: 00:20:02

Magic texts.

Ryan: 00:20:03

Right.

Peter: 00:20:04

You know, so you.

Ryan: 00:20:07

You had mentioned the angel practice. What. What was your. I mean, I had. I had a. You say. You go first.

Peter: 00:20:18

Okay. So. So I think it's at the beginning of the question period. Right. That he introduces a practice like. Because people are saying, well, what.

Ryan: 00:20:28

This was about midway through, I think.

Peter: 00:20:31

Okay. He paused for some questions and then. Yeah. And then they went.

But basically, I think people were saying, so what do you, like, what's an example of a practice? Like, how. How is this done? And. And he essentially led a meditation for five minutes. He was very short.

But he said, you know, you close your eyes and you just recite this phrase.

Ryan: 00:20:59

I remember, if you want me to.

Peter: 00:21:01

Yeah. I consent. I consent to the presence and action of my holy guardian angel.

Ryan: 00:21:10

Yes.

Peter: 00:21:10

Okay. And so that's the key phrase. And he recites it as the leader. And he says, you can recite it yourself if you like. And he says.

And then you just wait, and then you repeat it, and you just see what arises for you. And the other part of it is, if you have already met your guardian angel, know its name, you can.

Instead of repeating the phrase, you can say the phrase once, and then at each subsequent time, you can just use the angel's name to intend the same phrase. And if you don't have an angel's name, you can just use a word that is meaningful. Meaningful. Is that what he said?

Yeah, so I thought that was very interesting. And then another thing that he said was that the angel that you're invoking is actually your own enlightened nature.

And so that I thought was very interesting because he talks about experiencing entities. And I think it was before this. Right. That he says that he had already written a book. I think he'd already written a book.

Crowley, he has a partner, and he had written a magic book, I think. I think that was the advanced Magic for Beginners that he wrote. One of his earlier books, he wrote with a partner.

And then he was on some retreat and this entity came to him, I think is the way he tells the story. And that the entity told him that he had to teach and he didn't want to. And then, and then I believe after that he got.

He then went to his partner and said, hey, we have to do some work. And then they did the practice together and they both spoke to the entity. Isn't that right?

Ryan: 00:23:44

Something along that line.

Peter: 00:23:45

Like they had a mutual experience of a being. That was my understanding.

Ryan: 00:23:49

Okay. I don't remember specifically the mutuality of it.

Peter: 00:23:52

Okay. Which I thought was significant.

But so this is the point that confuses me is that if the entity is your own enlightened self, then how can you mutually experience it? And I mean, I kind of hear myself saying that and say, well, that's a stupid question because we've kind of talked about this before.

Like, yeah, I mean, that is the nature of awakening experiences, is that you become aware that, oh, this isn't my experience.

This is the same experience that, you know, and especially if you do group work or dyad work, you see like this other person is experiencing what I'm experiencing and you recognize, like we're. We're seeing the same thing. So I guess that's what this is. It's just interesting that.

I mean, I guess if you're sufficiently oriented, like if you're both.

They both studied the same teacher and the same works of Crowley, then I guess that's going to be sufficient mutual conditioning that they have the same experience. Yeah, but so what I'm. I guess what I'm saying is I don't really believe in external entities. I don't know.

I'm kind of feeling paradoxical because I don't believe in external entities. And I also do believe in external entities. And I think we've touched on this before. Right. That kind of going to Hoffman's model.

I believe that we contact other conscious agents that aren't part of the normal space time interface that we under Hoffman's model have evolved into. And then it's weird.

Ryan: 00:26:00

Yeah.

Peter: 00:26:01

And they're supernatural because they are outside the space time interstate. They're not part of the normal interface that we're using our true nature to access other consciousness that's not. Hasn't involved.

Hasn't evolved with our interface. And so they're really strange and paradoxical and. But so I don't know. I guess what I'm.

I guess what I'm doing is I'm verbally shifting between kind of a conventional orientation of, oh, I don't believe in entities. They're just expressions of our own true nature. And a more absolute orientation of, oh, yeah, of course there are.

Of course there are other consciousnesses.

Ryan: 00:26:59

That's kind of the whole point, I find. So I. I guess this is where I should do more research because I don't know enough about the context of this teaching to understand.

Obviously, naming something incites the illusion of other. Right?

So you're invoking or finding the name of your guardian being, angel or whatever, and then to call it at the same time, basically like your higher self.

Peter: 00:27:46

So this is where I feel more comfortable with it, because where I feel comfortable with it is where it kind of intersects my Buddhist lessons. Buddhist. What I've learned from Buddhist teachings. Buddhist teachings. So I think I mentioned before Tibetan deity practices. So I did that.

I can't remember the name of the deity, but I went on a retreat which was about. All about doing this, this long recitation about this specific Tibetan deity. And.

And the teaching by those two teachers was this deity is an expression of yourself. So you're not invoking an outside entity. You're invoking a way of visualizing your own nature.

Ryan: 00:28:49

Right?

Peter: 00:28:50

And they're strange. I mean, you know, they might have forearms and many, many eyes or sign. They're these creepy deity images. And so.

And so, you know, there's obviously this ancient tradition of using visualizations and archetypes, images to represent or to access your inner nature. And I'm more familiar with the teacher Michael Lapsang Tempa on Inside Timer, who does a Green Tara practice. And I've done that a lot.

And he teaches the same thing. You know, you're using your imagination to create an image of an entity, and that entity is actually an expression of your own true nature.

And the way he says it is that you can think of this entity as representing your teachers. Like, if you have teachers, this is the embodiment. This is the mental embodiment of your teachers.

And then he says, if you don't have a teacher, it's the embodiment of your own true nature. And in my personal experience, my teachers, my actual teachers are those who bring me to my own experience.

And so I can see that how your teacher really equates to your own inner nature, because that's all that a good teacher does.

Ryan: 00:30:41

Right?

Peter: 00:30:43

Basically, if a teacher says. If a teacher says you have to worship me or it's all about me. That's not a true teacher.

Now we get into the sticky part because of course, as we said, there are awakened beings who are teachers who do that. Yeah, but it's not wholesome. So it doesn't mean that they're not awakened. It just means that you're probably in trouble.

They might not be in trouble, but you're going to be in trouble because they're allowing their conditioning to, you know, create misbehavior. But. Yeah, so.

Ryan: 00:31:31

That makes sense to me. And I guess what I was saying was, I don't know specifically if that's the way that he was intending to teach it.

Peter: 00:31:46

You mean the, the angel practice, the.

Ryan: 00:31:50

The distinction or resolving the paradox of this is your true nature and there's this like, sense of other, other self ness to the being. But the way you express the, the Buddhist teaching around it is the way I would reconcile it within my own understanding.

Peter: 00:32:18

I, I think what we have to. Let me try this out. I think the paradox resolves because. Okay, so Hoffman has the ultimate one, right?

The, the super consciousness, the culmination or, or what unification of all, all infinite conscious agents. And that inherently each conscious agent, that is the nature of each concert agent. It's like, you know, each of us as a wave are actually the ocean.

Ryan: 00:33:01

Right?

Peter: 00:33:02

And this is where, you know, the metaphor breaks down again because we're not a part of the ocean. We are the ocean. And it's hard to. It's.

This is where, you know, as we say, the language breaks down because, you know, you say, you don't really want to say I am God, but if you can't say that, then you're not really getting it. But it doesn't mean I, the human, am God. It means I the true I is. There's only one true I. I mean, I am is. That's the. Yeah.

Ryan: 00:33:45

Yeah, absolutely.

Peter: 00:33:51

Yeah. But I mean, that's the tricky part. And I think that's the tricky part with all teachings and particularly with magic. I think magic seems to be.

Well, I don't know. I mean, like I said, I don't, I don't know anything about magic except for popular culture or maybe a little bit of less popular culture. Right.

But it's all external reference as opposed to from practice, inside the work.

Ryan: 00:34:21

Right.

Peter: 00:34:24

It has the reputation of being, let's say that it has the reputation of being very subject to abuse, very dangerous, very. I don't know, but I think that we've learned this all along.

In, in terms of talking about awakening experiences, there are hazards that you have to look out for. So if you're approaching any practice.

Ryan: 00:34:54

I.

Peter: 00:34:54

Mean, it's not even a question of whether you're approaching with the, with the intention of awakening, because you can have awakening without intending it. So if you come into contact with awakening, there can be risk because of the way the conventional self responds, because of the way the ego responds.

There can be traumatic experience from awakening.

Ryan: 00:35:21

Yeah.

Peter: 00:35:22

And so I think that's focused on our culture looking at magic or talking about magic or portraying magic focuses on that aspect. It's like, oh, well then you're going to get possessed by the devil or demons are going. You can't control the entities that are going to show up.

Those are the typical stories.

Ryan: 00:35:45

How much of the occult, how much of that is driven from Judeo Christian institutions?

Peter: 00:35:52

Well, of course, I mean, I think that's true. Is that. I think to me the big question is why. Oh, I know the Chapman calls it Western esoterica. That's why.

Because it's the local version of other practices, unorthodox, I guess, practice that gets attacked by the local institution. So the local Western institution is the Christian church and the local unorthodox practice is magic. And so the church has got it out for magic.

Ryan: 00:36:41

Yeah.

And I think they would have the same sort of message towards shamanism or yes, even Gnosticism if there were really a strong competitive community around that. I don't know how much. I know it was bigger in the beginning.

As far as I understand, narcissism has essentially fallen away and doesn't have very much following. But I don't know that for sure.

Peter: 00:37:13

Is that not. Did I not refer to it? Did that. Didn't Gnosticism come up in this talk?

Ryan: 00:37:23

I don't remember hearing that. I was listening to it at two times speed, so it's possible.

Peter: 00:37:30

Yeah. I'm trying to find the search command in.

Ryan: 00:37:35

It's at the bottom.

Peter: 00:37:38

Oh no, I'm in Google Docs. Oh, find. Okay. Find G N. Oops. Come on. It took that long to type S. No match. Gnosticism died. Gnos.

Oh well, who knows if that's the way the transcript is gonna spell it. That's YouTube transcription.

Ryan: 00:38:27

I mean this, this is my continued internal battle around messaging and my concerns with rigidity within institutional messaging about demonizing alternative philosophies and thoughts and approaches.

Peter: 00:38:54

It's a brand new iPad. This is like two months old.

Ryan: 00:38:58

What happens?

Peter: 00:38:59

Just it keeps on crashing. No, Every time I try to Type in this Google Document search. It crashes. Well, it doesn't crash, it just closes the app pretty much.

Well, it's the app crashing, right? It's not. Right.

Ryan: 00:39:14

It's not the iPad because it's not an Apple product.

Peter: 00:39:18

Yeah. Crazy. I, I type N literally. I'm trying to type N to spell gnostic phonetically. No, as soon as I hit the N key, it shuts the document. It closes it.

It's crazy.

Ryan: 00:39:36

Maybe it's telling us something there.

Peter: 00:39:37

Yeah, maybe there's an entity. Anyway, so, so you were saying.

Ryan: 00:39:48

Yeah, nothing that I haven't said before specifically, but the, the basic premonition premiere premise that was being presented here was that there was an authentic higher spirituality and the tradition behind tradition, which I greatly appreciated as far as a teaching and a way of approaching these teachings. His discussion about getting caught up in awakening.

So like you, you, you get there's the potential to get caught up in the seeking of awakening, but then there's still yet another hazard of getting caught up in being awakened. Or I don't know how you would phrase that, but that was an interesting description.

Peter: 00:40:44

Well, so, yeah, it's a, it's an assumption, I think, about choices. So Jeffrey Martens has taught.

I don't want to say he teaches still because apparently he's kind of moved on with a lot of stuff, but did I tell you that I heard he's. I found out he sold the whole finders thing. Like he's not associated with that.

Ryan: 00:41:21

I know there's been some.

Peter: 00:41:22

It's not that he's not associated with it, but he doesn't, I think he doesn't own it. He's still like on the website. Yeah, but I think it's. Which is apparently why it looks good now. Okay, I'm just guessing. I. Just guessing, but.

Because I complained.

Ryan: 00:41:39

Yes.

Peter: 00:41:40

Bitterly before about. But. So Jeffrey is very, very. I don't say agnostic. He's very open about. Is that, what's the word about being unattached to something?

Being very over open with something. It's not agnostic.

Ryan: 00:42:07

No.

Peter: 00:42:09

Like, like when you have two computers that aren't. Or, or that's software that's not attached to a platform, they call that agnostic.

Okay, well anyway, you know, he has, he has the locations and he says there's no best location. It's like you do what you want to do. If you want to stay in one location, that's what, that's your choice. That's what you do.

And if you want to explore and keep on you know, and so in that sense, it sounds like Chapman has the position that the. The correct way to experience awakening is to continue to explore.

And so he talks about getting stuck, getting trapped in bliss, and it's like, but, you know, because I had early on said, oh, I really want to get to location three, and like, that's where I would hang out, because that's the location that's like the most positively described. And one of the descriptions is everyone loves to hang out with someone who's location free, like, just great to be around.

It's like, oh, I would love to be like that right now. I no longer really feel that way. But it's not because I think it's a bad choice. And it sounds like Chapman is saying it's a bad choice.

Like, you shouldn't get stuck in bliss states. I mean, I think it's a question.

Ryan: 00:43:55

Of what's your intention?

Peter: 00:43:57

What's your intention? Right. I mean, if you're. If you're looking for relief of suffering, I don't understand why you could possibly.

How you could possibly go wrong being in bliss states.

Ryan: 00:44:05

Right.

Peter: 00:44:06

It's like you've done it. You've relieved your suffering. But I. But what he's saying is awakening is not an endpoint. And this is actually what the AI summarized too.

Awakening is not an endpoint, and therefore you shouldn't look at it as an endpoint. Like, if. If you're. I think what he.

What he's pretty much saying is if you have the attitude that awakening is a destination, then you're missing the point.

Ryan: 00:44:42

Yes. I don't think he was saying it's wrong in any way, but I think that was what he was saying.

Peter: 00:44:49

So I think the way I would put it is that the nature of awakening is that it's an ongoing process with infinite potential until you reach the mathematically indefinable one. Right. I mean, it's. It's infinite. I mean, that's what Hoffman.

Hoffman's ontology describes or postulates, because you can't describe it because it's mathematically inaccessible.

Ryan: 00:45:22

Right.

Peter: 00:45:22

Due to whose theorem? Oh, well, an important mathematician whose name we can't remember, which.

Ryan: 00:45:32

I mean, now I'm gonna.

But that theorem, I think, aligns well with what Alan was saying in that moment, which was, number one, take any individual incarnate, and their current experience is like the. The most profound awakening that they've experienced. Right. So, like, you have, like, everybody's experiencing that profound profundity, you know?

Peter: 00:46:15

Right.

Ryan: 00:46:16

Regardless of how much awakening, I guess if you want to put a quantified term behind it.

Peter: 00:46:23

Right.

Ryan: 00:46:24

It doesn't matter because every time. And so there's that function and that the, The. The next part of that is that there's always something more beyond the horizon.

Peter: 00:46:41

Exactly. That's what I was going to say is that he kind of. He. He says the infinite.

He doesn't call it the infinite, but basically the infinite is always calling you beyond the horizon.

Ryan: 00:46:51

Yeah.

Peter: 00:46:53

And I think. But I don't know if that's. Let me think about it for a moment. I mean, I guess that's true.

I guess that, you know, if you are making the choice that I'm going to get into a bliss state and I'm going to stick. Stick there because I'm tired of suffering. What you're doing is you're following conditioning, which seems obvious.

I mean, when I say that, it's like, oh, yeah, that's absolutely what that is. So in that sense, you're not awakening. You're not. Yeah, I guess in a sense, you're. You're. You're not continuing your awakening.

Yeah, I mean, we keep on coming back to this idea that awakening is the process of. I was going to say walking away from your conditioning, but it's not that. Right. It's the process of integrating your conditioning.

And what do I mean by that? I think the. Everybody has conditioning. We can never, as human beings be free of conditioning.

Because the definition of a human being is a thing in space time, which is itself. That's like the ultimate conditioning. Well, it's the ultimate condition in our. As far as we can know. I don't know how to. It's hard to express space.

Time is the base of our concept of reality. And in that. So in that sense, it's the ultimate conditioning. Right. It's the conditioning that underlies all other conditions that we know so far.

Oh, that sucks. I just realized, like. Oh, so we could get out of space time, get out of the interface and find more conditioning.

Ryan: 00:49:23

Yeah.

Peter: 00:49:23

Oh, I just realized that. Why did I just realize that? That's so weird. I mean, I guess.

I guess that's just to say that every level of consciousness is a condition until you get to the prime.

Ryan: 00:49:41

Yeah.

Peter: 00:49:41

That's the only unconditioned state which is. Okay. It's so weird to walk through that because I talk about the unconditioned.

Ryan: 00:49:57

Right.

Peter: 00:49:58

I mean, that's the way I express it. It's when I touch that. So I guess that's a. That's a big question. Is when we have awakening experiences. Are we touching the prime.

Are we touching just above where we are?

Ryan: 00:50:22

Well, this may be a good time for me to jump off on my observation, unless you have anything more specific, because I feel like this is going to take us in a completely different.

Peter: 00:50:34

I need a momentary as well, but.

Ryan: 00:50:37

So I will link this. I can't link this. I can't link this. Well, hopefully that was useful to you guys.

I'm going to end this episode and we're going to pick up this conversation in the next episode because I think it's going to.

Peter: 00:50:54

Oh, okay.

Ryan: 00:50:55

I think it's going to digress into something different and I'd like to be able to compartmentalize these discussions a little bit. So.

Peter: 00:51:01

Okay.

Ryan: 00:51:02

Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.

Peter: 00:51:09

Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast. Join us next time as we continue the discussion.

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