Ep. 73 - with Andrew Holecek: Unlocking the Power of Lucid Dreaming to Transform Your Life

What if you could use your dreams to accelerate personal growth, heal past traumas, and unlock your full creative potential? In this episode, lucid dreaming expert Andrew Holecek reveals how meditating in the dream state is seven to nine times more powerful than in the waking state. Tune in to discover how you can start practicing lucid dreaming tonight, and prepare to have your mind blown by the cutting-edge neuroscience behind subconscious programming that may be holding you back!

Episode Summary:

In this mind-expanding episode of the Creative Genius Podcast, Kate Shepherd sits down with Andrew Holecek, renowned author and expert in lucid dreaming, meditation, and the intersection of neuroscience and spirituality. Together, they dive deep into how lucid dreaming can be a transformative practice, how ancient tantric teachings claim dream-state meditation is seven to nine times more effective than waking-state meditation, and the surprising ways our subconscious mind is programmed during childhood.

Andrew shares fascinating insights on the hidden power of our dreams, the science of personality development, and how we can break free from societal conditioning to cultivate more creativity and presence. Plus, Andrew offers listeners a simple yet powerful practice to start lucid dreaming tonight. Whether you're new to lucid dreaming or looking to deepen your spiritual practice, this episode is packed with actionable tools and wisdom to transform your waking life.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Andrew Holecek’s Books: I'm Mindful, Now What? & The Lucid Dreaming Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Your Dream Life – A comprehensive guide with exercises and tools to start your lucid dreaming journey.
• Lucid Dreaming Mantra: "Tonight, I'm going to have many dreams. Tonight, I'm going to remember my dreams. Tonight, I'm going to wake up in my dreams."
• Key Concepts from Tibetan Buddhism: Dream yoga, non-duality, and the transformative power of meditating in altered states of consciousness.
• Neuroscience Insights: The brainwaves we experience in early childhood and how they hypnotize us into adopting cultural norms and behaviors.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Kate Shepherd: Who are you? What is your work in the world? What's your mission here on on earth?

andrew holecek: I guess you could talk about this from a relative and absolute perspective on an absolute perspective. My. I guess I'm on this planet just to basically wake up.

what that means we could talk about that, you know, just to become aware, completely 100 percent aware. We can riff on this on the relationship to the unconscious to conscious mind and the actual basis of creativity. I explore a lot of this actually. So on an absolute level, to wake up and help others.

I mean, it may sound kind of cliche. but I think what waking up really involves is discovering is. Ramana Maharshi said so beautifully, when he was asked, how do you help others? He said, what others? And so I think that's really quite beautiful. So waking up, that's wisdom, but wisdom is incomplete if it doesn't manifest immediately as compassion.

Kate Shepherd: And so to wake up and help others is, I mean, that's like the only game in town and helping others it's just spontaneous creativity. It's just kind of what you do. It's such a potent image I think a lot of us, we get lost, right? We're like, okay, well, I'm here. I'm having this life. I know I have this call. Like, I think a lot of us can relate to what you said about being in service. Like we,

that we have this drive to, I mean, we're relational beings and we have this, it's deeply instinctual to want to be in service and to help but then we're also living in this very, contracted modern world where we're

supposed to sort of look out for and, and how do you, how do you live the two?

andrew holecek: when you're talking about this longing and this quest and like what it is that we're really after, I think, Fundamentally, we're looking for some sense of fullness, completeness, and if that particular kind of pressure, so to speak, for resolution isn't understood, that's the conventional pursuit of happiness.

When that becomes. understood when that unconscious process is brought into the light of consciousness, and that becomes the conscious pursuit of awakening. So it's the same fundamental generative creative impulse, but one is filtered through all these sedimentation levels of the unconscious mind that leads to all these leads, all these inauthentic levels of satisfaction.

we're basically eating the menu instead of the meal and we're getting fat instead of getting full. And so if we understand this, then Well, okay, um, let's take this journey consciously, volitionally. Let's, let's wake up, realize that's really what's happening, that's really what's going on.

And this is, uh, you can explore this using principles of lucidity like I do in lucid dreaming. Meditation helps you do this, psychedelics help you do it.

Kate Shepherd: Meditation is a, is a big part of your, so you give workshops and you write and how else do you bring that work to life in the world?

andrew holecek: I used to be a classical pianist. So, I mean, I used to do it with my music, but, um, well, not so much. It's hard to do that professionally. So principally, uh, through my writing, through my teaching, through my programs, um, through platforms, I have a number of online platforms where we do it. I have my own podcast that we did a role with, and then what's called my club, which is a supportive platform for the nocturnal meditations.

I also work a lot, um, because I am born as a Westerner, even though my heart is in the so called East, uh, the wisdom traditions, I am, had this particular incarnation that I'm rolling with. And so I work a ton with the scientific community. I'm always either helping design studies, writing science, working with scientists,

Kate Shepherd: What are some of

those blind spots?

andrew holecek: We can talk about this on two levels. there are various, various forms of reductionism, some of which are very healthy.

Not all reductionism is problematic. to reduce complexity into fundamental, simple iterative principles is healthy reductionism, but there's also pathological reductionism, which we know in the West is, you know, Um, materialism,

So that's pathological reductionism. That's obviously a blind spot. Well, the East has its own set of blind spots. One somewhat, um, they wouldn't use this languaging because that's not part of the system is this kind of idealistic reductionism in the sense of philosophical idealism.

and reducing everything to karma. I think that's a fundamental blind spot in, in the traditions because you, you know, everything arises because of causes and conditions. Karma is associated with causes, causes and conditions, and therefore everything is karma. No, it's not. So I think that's a blind spot.

there's a big difference between states of consciousness and structures of consciousness. And the East very elegantly explores states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep, and the process of what Welwood called, waking up.

That's really the, the great gift of the so called East, waking into, increased heightened levels of states of consciousness. Well, that particular approach, is completely unaware of structures of consciousness, um, developmentalism, the vector of growing up.

You cannot introspect those. You don't look at them. You look through them. And so these are archetypal, deep pathological blind spots. And this is, this is the only thing I, I can come across that can any way explain all the, abuses and the sex scandals and all the ridiculous stuff that will never end in the spiritual community.

Because you can have a really high, level experience. It's not even stable as a realization. But let's just say you have a high level spiritual experience. It's a state experience. Well, unless you basically stay in silence, Which the Buddha did for 49 days, basically.

The minute you move, the minute you open your mouth, you have no choice, none, but to express your realization through your structural level of development. And this is where the crapshow starts. Because you can have an authentic high level turiya, dharmakaya, whatever term you want to use. You get it.

You've seen reality. But that does not necessarily bring with it in that in its wake double entendre intended. It doesn't bring with you this ability to see through these developmental structures. And so this is where all the trouble happens. Um, all the patriarchy, all the blind spots. And again, I say this with such homage because I'm a deep student of the wisdom traditions.

I do, I do drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid. But I, you know, I've been behind the curtains. I've been behind the scenes. Um, I know what goes on behind closed doors. And some of it is like, boy, this isn't very awake. This isn't very spiritual. How do you explain that? So that's a major blind

Kate Shepherd: I think the reason it's dangerous is that there's a kernel of truth in the thing that's being expressed, even though it comes through that, the developmental limitations of that

andrew holecek: Oh, for sure.

Oh yeah.

Kate Shepherd: it.

And so somebody who's receiving that goes, Oh, on one level, this is, this totally feels true.

I better believe it. But then you have to take with it all the things that come through. So it's like, so how do we, how do we make sense and share meaning? Of the wonder of it all, of the mystery of it all, of the, of this infinite intelligence that I was talking about at the top of our conversation that's animating the universe.

Like there's no doubt that there's an alive, intelligent something doing all of this, running the show, let's say. How do we share meaning about that without falling into these, you know, reductionist obstacles?

andrew holecek: Yeah.

Kate Shepherd: we, how do we do it?

andrew holecek: Yeah. Well, let me say something very quickly before we get to that, I have to throw this in because it's so important. It's not always the, the, the fault of the master. So called spiritual master, because another thing that happens, um, in, in basic, almost even Freudian psychodynamic approaches.

Is, uh, transference, countertransference, projection. And so there's all, all this stuff. You know, we project on one level. You have to, you have to give these, these, so-called masters, a little bit of slack

because we come in there and we, we basically project the crap out of 'em. This is, this is not shadow boxing, this is shadow hugging.

So we project, we give away these amazing qualities within us. We throw that onto the teacher. And so we basically fall in love with our golden shadows. And so this is another blind spot of the East. This whole transference, counter transference, projection thing that happens. That is also, this takes a little bit of responsibility back onto the student.

Therefore, it's not all the teacher that's gone to hell. The student is bought into it as well. They're projecting. They're not asking the right questions. And so they contribute to it as well. So I think I wanted to throw that in because it's not always just the master that goes astray. Now, in terms of the other question, that's a beautiful one.

Um, this is the essence of upaya in Sanskrit, skillful means is, is fundamentally, how do you communicate this level of truth and reality? Well, a lot of it in my experience, um, depends on your sensitivity and openness to the conditions in which you are embedded. Um, real skillful means is not meeting people where you're at.

Real skillful means is meeting people where they're at. And so that's where the transmission, the communication, it's like, uh, um, George Bernard Shaw said so beautifully. I love this. The biggest problem in communication. Is the illusion that it has been accomplished. I love that that's so great. And so here we come in, you know, we've got our own particular favorite whatever this is a subtle form of reductionism.

Oh, my particular path will explain it all my body work will deal with it, my whatever will deal with it. Well, it's going to deal with part of it. So this is where integral systemic holistic thinking, um, in particular, I'm a huge fan of integral theory, really comes into play. And so to me, for someone who really wants to be a skilled communicator at these deepest levels, it's really incumbent upon them to learn as much as they possibly can about the culture in which they're embedded.

Like in the West, um, psychospiritual principles are really being culturally translated through. Science, and in particular, neuroscience and psychology. And so, and so certainly it's not philosophy, but Therefore, I think if you really want to help people and communicate outside of people inside your own tribe, you know, drink your own Kool Aid, boy, learn about them.

Learn about what makes them tick. Learn about what communicates with them. And so this is why I love, I mean, look at all these silly books behind me. I read all this stuff. partly because I have an insatiable appetite to learn. But also, when I talk to a quantum physicist, I can maybe say something about quantum field theory and quantum entanglement and how that relates to principles of non duality.

When I talk to a neuroscientist, I can talk a little bit about neuroplasticity and the principles of transformation. When I talk to a psychologist, maybe I can say, well, that psychology has something to do with The eighth consciousness of Tibetan Buddhism. And so to me, this is what's super exciting, exciting, and also challenging for any translator communicator is actually taking the trouble.

And this is why I love people like as radical as they can be trunk bar Rinpoche, other really amazing masters, controversial. They came into the West. They didn't come in with their, I mean, they did come in with their robes and stuff, but they realized that ain't working.

They took the trouble to learn our language, to learn our crazy, ridiculous ways.

They drank, they smoked, they did all the silly things that we do. And hence they said, Oh, I can't be a real master. You know, well, what they were doing is like, they're, they're like, you know, they're incredibly attentive students of reality. And so they realize I, in order to reach these peeps, I have to meet them where they're at, not where I'm at.

So I think I'll pause for a second here, because I get pretty excited about this, but. This is where real authentic communication, and this is where your art comes in. I mean, if you really want to communicate with people, you reach them at these levels, and it's not always that real transformation is not going to take place from here.

You know, the intellectual philosophical, whatever, blah, blah, blah is just an avenue for the transformation that takes place with full embodiment. I mean, we, we transform when we feel things.

So the real, the real effective transmute communicators. are the artists, the musicians, the poets that help people feel.

They help them literally get in touch, in contact with reality. And that's an affective expression of bliss and delight. And so to me, along those two lines, you know, somewhere in there comes authentic communication of these, um, these transpersonal principles. But obviously it's not easy because the minute you open your mouth, And you're trying to explore non duality through a, through an inherently dualistic mechanism like language.

Well, good luck. And then you're an artist, I'm a musician. This is where the arts come into play. Um, you're more in contact with truth and the arts than you are in the sciences, in my opinion.

Kate Shepherd: How do we come into contact with that part in ourselves where the honest expression can come from?

andrew holecek: Get out of the way. There's two ways, basically just get out of the way. So this, this is actually, these are wonderful comments and questions. So there's, there's two ways to look at the whole, at least in my experience, the whole kind of psycho spiritual world. Path awakening thing. One is, um, let's, let's just say with meditation, um, completely authentic relative approach to path of effort is you engage in all these meditations.

And I'm big into this. I've been doing this for 50 years. I did a three year retreat. I mean, I've done 50, 100, 200 meditations. They're brilliant. And so at one level you do those and just like any other art or craft or proficiency, the more you do it, the better you get. So this is the process of accretion accumulation.

Well, the more absolute approach is, , the path of effortlessness and the path of opening and discovery that these qualities that we're seemingly trying to cultivate. They're actually inherent properties of the awakened mind. And so in this regard, I mean, really, we could, I'm going to say this, we could both give ourselves the afternoon off, um, conversations over.

The only thing you have to do, I'm not kidding. I'm not being smart here. It's open. Relax. That's it. Done deal. Case is over. Path is over. That's it.

we have this thing we, it's called the path. But on a, on a one level, you don't need it. The two biggest problems with the spiritual path, you want to know what they are?

Number one, use of the word spiritual.

Kate Shepherd: yeah,

andrew holecek: Why? Because if it's spiritual, then it's not merely in contrast to material, it's in opposition to it. And then you run into all these spiritual materialism, spiritual bypass pathologies, where spirituality is put in contradistinction and opposition to materiality.

Then what do you do with your body? What do you do with the world? What do you do with technology? What do you do with form? So that's the first problem. Second problem is, like, number one problem in the spiritual path is spiritual. Number two, path. Outside of that, it's perfect, right? So path to where? On a relative level, this ties into what I said earlier, yes, a path to awakening, a journey to awakening, for sure.

On a relative level, that's totally the case. Not on an absolute level. At the highest levels, striving is the only obstacle. How can you actually achieve something you already have?

So according to the non dual wisdom traditions, you already are a Buddha. You already are awake. The issue is the one of recognition.

The path is perceptual. It's not actual. Let me say that again. The path is perceptual. It's not actual. You're not going anywhere. And if you think you need to go someplace else, what are you doing? You're just rescheduling your appointment with reality. You're just deferring your awakening. You're already awake, but you don't believe it.

Why? Can't be that easy. Can't be that simple. It's got to be something else. No, you're always in nirvana. Or if you like, you know, samsara, you're always in samsara because these are just states of mind, right? So this is, I say, I say this with a little exclamation point because this is a big deal. This is a tremendous empowering proclamation.

But the only thing you have to do, hard stop, open, relax. Consequence of that is recognition. It's like it says in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, recognition and liberation are simultaneous. So I say this because again, you know, I'm on the path. I'm definitely on the path and I'm doing all these relative things.

High five. It works up to a point. And at a certain point, you have to let it all go. Um, the path of no path, the nopaya in the Hindu tradition, and realize whatever you want, you already have this. It's already there. It's a process of discovery. And so this ties into my favorite definition of meditation.

And then I'll pause. My favorite definition of meditation is habituation to openness. I just love that term.

Kate Shepherd: hmm,

andrew holecek: Habituation to openness. Because what are we habituated to Kate? We're habituated to contraction, right?

Because that's what we are. The ego, which is nothing but an arrested form of development. It's the self contraction.

It's the primorial fracture. And so if contraction is the basis of samsara and it's kissing cousin distraction, they're the same. Then the the path of the antidote. The antidote to that is what? Openness, relaxation. So that all ties in. So, what do you have to do? You just open, open, open into wider rings of being, as Rumi put it.

And then you realize, I've been in heaven from day one. I just didn't see. It was literally hiding in plain sight. What a pisser, right? So we go through all this stuff. This huge, torturous path And And

the only thing you need to do is relax.

Kate Shepherd: one of the things that was coming up for me was just. kid art, like children's art.

Why kid art is so good. We love, we're so drawn to it. It's just, it's so free. It's so, I mean, there are grownup artists who are millionaires because they've managed to stay in

that free place

of, right, of being able to express. And I think for me, I guess the challenge is I've, I've probably realized the, the, nature of myself.

I've probably realized that. That God like whatever presence a million times in my life, but it just that presence right where you're just like I can see the eyes peering out of me. I can feel myself breathing. I can see that. I am the tree. I see my connection to the infant like I mean, I have that moment every day at some point. The trick for me is remembering it. I

keep forgetting. I keep forgetting

and then I wake up again and I'm like, Oh no, I just spent the last, however, six months or six years. How do we remember? Because it does seem, it does seem too simple and we, this can apply to whether you're writing music or painting paintings or, you know, studying philosophy or, you know, I've got a path, a spiritual path. It does seem to be that it's just so simple, you just think to yourself, it can't be this. It's got to be

something more complicated than this.

andrew holecek: Yeah, I mean, the essence of spiritual practice is remembrance. I mean, really, that's it. Um, a consequence of contraction is forgetfulness. I mean, we just forget that we're awake, we forget that, that, uh, we already have everything that we could possibly want.

And so, um, distraction, forgetfulness, another way to talk about mindlessness, right? These are just the ways every time we capitulate. See, this is the thing, we're always meditating. We're always, always becoming, the word for meditation in Tibetan, the word is G O M, GOM, literally translates as to become familiar with.

So like William James says, reality is what you attend to. So if you attend to distraction, which is our default, it's literally default mode network in neurological terms. We are always practicing forgetfulness, whether we know it or not. Every time we capitulate to distraction, we're practicing forgetfulness.

We have accomplished forgetfulness. And so therefore, the antidote is working with these practices of recollection and remembrance. That's literally what the word, um, for mindfulness in Tibetan, the word is dream up means to recollect. so you work with this in a twofold way. One is, uh, you remember Reagan, Ronald Reagan and trickle down economics.

You remember that whole thing? So I like, I playfully talk about trickle down spirituality. And by this what I mean is you set this, this absolute high bar of, that's it. It's like they say in Ham Muji tradition. It's so true, so obvious we don't see it. So simple, we don't believe it. So easy, we don't trust it.

It's hiding in plain sight. But, so from an absolute test, absolute approach, this is the trickle down part. It's 100 percent right now, right here. There's nothing but this infinite pure awareness. Hard stop. What creates the illusion that there isn't something there is this lightning fast process of contraction.

that basically creates the very sense of self and other, and this, this rapidity of the contractive mechanism, which I can talk about. And so then that brings about then the relative approach. So this is why they talk about right view. The right view is you already are a Buddha, you already are Christ, you already are awake, you just forgot.

Kate Shepherd: This is just something I wanna know. I hope, I hope this serves a lot of other listeners who are listening to this too. one of the biggest things I've come to. And I find it deeply upsetting because there is this conflict of interest and it's like I feel very ragdolled between these two aspects of my own being.

andrew holecek: No

Kate Shepherd: there are moments when everything is great. Everything is, is peaceful. I understand everything. It's all, there's pure love.

Like I walk through the forest every morning with my dog and Most days I'm just crying, like,

and I'm not, there's not even a real reason why. I'm just so in love with what is, and then I come home and I'm like, I got the to do list comes up and I'm like, I'm angry at my kid because he left a mess on the floor and you know, I, I forget that part of me or, or,

or, or another example is if I've had, uh, a state experience, like a, like a massive unity experience, for example, just for an example, the snap shut. Thing that happens, right? Equal and opposite. Like, I had this big opening and then part came in and was like, uh, hell no. Right? And

slams it shut. How do we reconcile that conflict of interest?

andrew holecek: Well, you know, I mean, you can't solve a problem you don't have. So, the first thing is what we're doing right here. You work at the level of the map, and you understand the, the structure of your identity, the structure of who you really are. both along developmental and spiritual vectors. That's, that's where you start.

That's the power of right view and the power of the map, really just getting a sense of proper understanding. And then the understanding eventually then will lead to certain levels of, um, um, experience and integration where you can then start to apply this. You start to apply this understanding to your experience.

You start to realize. Just like you did this morning, you went for a walk, you were in tears because you're, you're in contact with reality. And by the way, this is one lovely way to know that you're having a non dual experience. It's beauty in relation to objects and love in relation to people. And so when you're having these experiences of beauty and love and it brings you to tears, that's an intimation, a very powerful intimation of the non dual.

And so you come back in because that particular bandwidth of your identity, like a caterpillar or slinky working its way up. It's just not stable yet. It's just the karma hasn't been worn out. So you haven't stabilized the higher level identity. You haven't worn out or released the lower levels of identity.

And so by understanding this, then you start to look at, okay, let me look at my investment portfolio here. Let me look at what I attend to. So if reality is what you attend to, and you find yourself attending to your phone and attending to distraction and attending to everything in samsara. Well, what a surprise that you're stuck on the lower bandwidth of your identity.

So this is where healthy renunciation comes into play. Literally in Tibetan, the word is neijom, which means definite emergence. You realize, man, this, this crap show of samsara is not serving me. The only thing it's serving is my ego. And so then you have to have a little come to Jesus moment, like what's really important for me?

What am I going to do in my life? So then you look, you understand the spectrum of reidentity. You understand you're always meditating, whether you know it or not. And so then maybe you might find out, well, geez, do I really need to be this distracted? Do I need to really be this busy? Do I really need to be this, like Lakha Rinpoche talks about, active laziness?

And so the more we understand this, the more we realize, on one level, yes, there's some beauty. There's some magic. There's devotion. There's blessing and all that. But on another level, there's a lot of pure kind of karma, causality and physics going on here. Look at where, where, where are you putting your investments?

What are you investing in? If you're investing in distraction and Samsara in your comfort plan, well, you're going to reap those dividends. If you realize that market's going to crash, it's definitely going to crash when you die. You take a close look at your life, like, what am I really doing here? What's life really happening?

And then you realize, wow, this life is really short. It's really precious. WTF am I doing here? Do I want to wake up? Well, then I need to make some really kind of difficult decisions. It's called the painful part of dying. I need to let go, release, die to all these dimensions of my experience that bring me down into these devolutionary, um, frequencies and then cultivate those that lift me up.

This is not easy because this is the extraordinary power of, of, of peer pressure, our culture, our society, you know, the developmental level, you know, just look around this world. It ain't so high. It's not so great. So spiritual communities, pockets of sanity, sane asylums, where you can take refuge to develop the stability because like, um, what did Houston Smith say so the process of the path is to transform flashes of illumination.

into abiding light.

say more about karma. You've talked, you've talked about karma, you've with, and you've linked it to science a couple of times. I've never heard anyone do that. And you talked about the physics of karma. And I actually did want one of the things I want to ask you is you are somebody who sort of lives at the intersection of spirituality and science. what is the relationship between, what is karma? Maybe you could define it for us first of all.

Kate Shepherd: And then, and then, and then tell us a little bit about karma from a science perspective. Because I think we've only heard of it as like a, you know, you hit your brother, your brother's going to hit you back.

Like,

you know, it's like a superstition almost. Karma almost

feels like easy to dismiss because it's got this sort of superstitious connotation.

andrew holecek: this is a great question. in a certain colloquial sense, like you're talking about, it's like everybody knows what karma is. Well, This is one of the most complex topics in all of Eastern philosophy and thought.

it's said that only awakened ones, only the Buddhas really understand karma. So we use this topic flippantly, what goes around comes around. but it is an extraordinarily sophisticated, complex, description of reality. And so just to give some sense of it, you know, you have individual karma, you have family karma, um, You know, global karma, cultural karma, you have all these different forces.

You have the laws of transitional karma. You have the laws of a fully loaded karma. And so I've explored this in tremendous detail because these laws are absolutely instrumental in terms of understanding the behavioral components of reality. And just to tie it briefly to what I said earlier, one major limitation I see with the so called yeast.

Is this facile reductionism into everything actually being karma? No, it's not. Everything is due to causes and conditions, but karma works with causes and conditions. That's how it's somewhat connected to science, but just because it's related to causes and conditions, you can't conflate and say everything's karma.

Everything's causal. And even then, Boy, we have to temper that when you get to quantum mechanics. But so, um, yes, again, I, I stutter a little bit here just because the topic is so big, but for most of us, the most important thing to understand is that there are behavioral consequences that, that behavior does have causative effects.

It's not the principal driver as, as many Eastern approaches assert, but it is a massive driver. In what constitutes our experience, what, what actually creates future experience. And in terms of applicability, cause I don't want to get too abstract and heady here. Karma can really quickly fall into. Kind of techno speak and become somewhat theoretical, but.

Um, basically karma is created. Every time we contract away from experience. Every time we relate inappropriately to our experience in a, in a reactive and not responsive way. We're creating karma. So the word literally, uh, means action and Tibetan lei, L E H, literally means action. action. And so therefore, every time we move in a non lucid, habitually driven way, not only is that habit pattern driving that karmic activity, it's generating more karmic activity.

And this is why it's so hard to purify karma. It's really hard to purify habits. So habit is just the Translation for karma and so this is this is super important to understand because it basically shows you that until we clean up our habit patterns until we we basically get away from this relentless self referential relationship to to reality.

We're always going to be creating karma because we're always contracting away from reality referring everything back to to me. Well, why do we do that? Because if we don't do that, the sense of me disappears, right? This is what happens in meditation. When you sit in complete non referential spaces and you're no longer referring experience back to self, you're no longer contracting.

Well, what happens? The opening that, that constitutes no self, that's a spiritual experience. But because again, we're not habituated to that, we're not familiar to that. When those spaces are open, this is what, why the experience isn't stable. Part of your ego is back there saying, well, that's not me. I'm not divinity.

I'm not perfection. I'm not the Buddha. I'm not Christ consciousness. I'm whatever. Joe show schmuck. Well, you kind of get what you believe. So the experience is whiplashed back to create the relative sense of self, because there's no place for personal identity in that big, infinite, open space. So there's so much to say here, Kate, I want to pause and just make sure I'm going in the right direction, because this is a really big topic and I want to make it practical for people.

Kate Shepherd: what might be helpful for people is, you know, for somebody who's had some of those, you know, A lot of our listeners are, are going to be coming at this from a, from a sense of wanting to deepen their relationship to their creativity and their intuition and their,

their self, you know, their, their capital S self or their God self, I, you could say,

It can be really difficult.

I think one of the challenges a lot of us feel is it can be really difficult to, we have these open state connected experiences where we aren't the self and when we know it, and it's such a relief if, I mean, for me it is when I have those moments, it's just

like, yeah, I would love to live like this forever. But then the, the thoughts come back of like,

you've got two kids, you've got a mortgage to pay, you've got, how do you live in this world? Because that, there is a rea that is reality too. How do you live in this world? And how do you reconcile those two? They seem so different.

They

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a great one. Okay, so here we go.

this also ties into this notion of the immediacy of the whole thing, right? And so the way you balance this that relates both to non duality and also karma is that, um, like I mentioned earlier, what, what creates, uh, karma, what creates the ongoing illusion of duality and separation.

Is this relentless habituation to contraction, this eventual, habitual, relentless habit pattern. We have to refer everything to self. We do it all the time. I mean, it's our default, whether we know it or not. And actually

We need this level of development. That's what ego represents. So you're talking about basically about egoic structure, which we tend to dis. Well, we have to be a little bit careful here because if we didn't have an ego, we wouldn't be here talking about the nature of the ego. So the ego is a very important critical ingredient in evolution.

It's just an arrested form of evolution. It's arrested form of development based on exclusive identification with form. That's the best definition I can come up with. So we need this stupid thing. If we weren't able to provisionally separate self from other, We would be like, like I like to say, we'd be a chicken McNugget on the Serengeti.

We would have never evolved. Flight, fright, freeze would never evolve and we would be dead. Our immune systems operate on the ability to separate antigen from antibody. We need to be able to separate self from other for biological purposes. So what you need to understand is there's nothing inherently wrong with ego.

It's just an arrested form of development. So now what the challenge is to transcend, but include the ego. And this then becomes back to an issue of skillful means, because you can have a really high Buddha level, whatever. But if you egoic bandwidth, And talk to people who are still operating from that level.

Well, good luck with your communication strategies.

It's like a parent talking quantum mechanics to a 10 year old. It's just ain't gonna happen.

And so the way this relates, now let's get really practical here. So, the way this relates in terms of reconciling and bringing a path quality to this, and this is a big deal.

Is that the next time you actually any, any moment, any experience at any time, and one of the challenges is, is this is so available to you, it becomes almost intimidating because there isn't a moment where you can't do this, but let's just take, let's just take one experience to highlight this and then you can extrapolate it to anything.

Let's take an experience of heartbreak.

And so the invitation here, and this is a wonderful, practice I do all the time. So the next time you're having some real heartbreak or let's just fill in the blank, really unwanted experience, your usual default contraction is reaction is in fact to contract to get away from it.

distraction therapy, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever, anything you can to move away. So phone, anything, all these weapons of mass distraction. So here's the practice and how it ties into non duality. The next time you have this heartbreak, feel it as fully as you possibly can.

Instead of trying to run away from it, go 100 percent into it.

Tungpa Rinpoche said, there is no way out. The magic is to discover that there's a way in. So it doesn't matter. Fill in the blank. But you have a heartbreak experience. Don't try to dilute it. And this is what we do. We dilute it because it's too intense for ego. It's too bright. Go into it. Dissolve into it.

Become one with that unwanted experience. And most people are going to say, Okay, well I was with this guy until he started talking about this BS. Are you telling me that you want me to be one with my pain, with my heartbreak, with all these unwanted experiences? And I'm saying yes. Because and check this out.

Don't take my word for it. See if it's not true. If you become one with your heartbreak or your pain, there's no one to hurt. There's no one there to feel the heartbreak. This is the actual immediate practice of non duality on the spot. The absolute, here's the, here's the punchline. The absolute experience of duality is nonduality.

Let me say that again.

Kate Shepherd: Yeah.

andrew holecek: The absolute experience of duality is nonduality. Oh, wow. If this doesn't give you a cardiac arrest, I don't know what does. So this ties in and immediately gives you the ability to practice non duality. Stop practicing duality by breaking away and distracting. That's the practice of duality.

Stop. Shamatha, if you know the terms, turn directly into it. Vipassana, look, step into it, become one with it. If you allow yourself to go and experience Whatever you're experiencing, it doesn't matter the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn't matter. Experience it 100 percent without reference, without contraction, and you will discover that's nonduality.

And so therefore, my God, this changes everything. This means my pain becomes spiritual. Matter becomes spiritual. Heartbreak becomes spiritual. Everything becomes spiritual because you're no longer making it not. You're no longer contracting away from it. Not only is this tremendously empowering and liberating, it really brings forth the immediacy like we were talking about earlier.

This is the way you practice the immediacy of the awakened state. You know, through the map, this is it. It's true. This is it right here. You are in Nirvana. This is it. What am I doing that doesn't allow me to discover and see that? Well, my lack of full participation in this experience, the contraction away from it.

And in that very moment of contraction, distraction, avoidance, right, which is all based on ego, you're creating some sorrow moment to moment. And this is happening so fast. This is where the neurosciences can come in and help us. You know, the speed of the mind is unbelievable. This flickering takes place so fast.

This pulsation of consciousness takes place so fast that we actually don't see the immediacy of how it is that we're creating duality moment to moment. And so if duality, space, time, causality are all constructs, the physicist will tell you this, then if they're constructs, they can be deconstructed. What do you do?

Open! Relax! Embrace whatever arises 100%. You're going to disappear, the sense of other is going to disappear, and you're going to unite with the dualistic world, and in that moment achieve non duality. Not even achieve it, that's a mistake. You can't achieve something you already have.

You're going, you're going to experience it. You're going to recognize it.

Kate Shepherd: So that's what we're practicing for. So meditation feels like kind of like if you've got a track meet coming up and that moment you just described is the event. Meditation feels like all the practices you do, right? Is that, is that what we're practicing for when we're in meditation?

andrew holecek: It depends on which meditation you're talking about, Kate. So the, you know, meditation is like sport. It's a multivalent term. So when you say sport, there's hundreds of sports. What are you talking about?

So when you say meditation, this is why I'm writing all these. I mean, I've written nine books. Now they're all on meditation.

when people say meditation, like what meditation are you talking about? If you're talking about mindfulness, bravo, fantastic, very specific domain of applicability. If you're talking about open awareness or insight meditation or analytic meditation or meta, another form of meditation with tremendous applicability.

But all these practices are basically designed to open us to the complete spectrum of our being. to allow us to relate skillfully to the contents of our minds and hearts, and then by immediate implication, the so called external world altogether. So I'll back up and put it back in your court. When you're using that word meditation, maybe a little bit more clear to me about what type of meditation are you referring to?

Mindfulness.

Kate Shepherd: who probably think of meditation as, Mindfulness

it gives me another question for you, which is what is a good formula for somebody who's listening to this going, okay, like I want a little bit more of what he's talking about. I want to contract less. I want to experience more reality and more of myself and more of my creativity and more of what is here that I keep covering up with this accidental programming. That's not my fault. Like, you know, I just lived my

life and here I am. Thank you

andrew holecek: Yeah, you are not your fault. I love that. That's a good one.

Kate Shepherd: Well, I mean, a lot of our, a lot, this personality and the ego that we develop, it does happen, uh, by default, you know, it just sort of seems to get built like a Lego, Lego wall that

andrew holecek: Well,

you want it? Let me let me tell you where it comes from. Can I say just one thing about this? So there's there's several vectors associated here and then and then I will return to your question about like what what someone can do. Again, if you if you really abide by karmic theory principles of rebirth and that sort of thing.

So they're getting a little bit wide cosmological thing. A lot of people don't subscribe to this. But, you know, according to most of the non dual world wisdom traditions, you don't quite come into this world with a clean slate. it's, it's exactly the type of experience that happens when you enter the dream arena.

You don't enter the dream arena with a clean slate. You come in with habituations and the patterns and the predispositions of your day. Well, so you come into this world with a particular set of habit patterns. And this gets really, really deep. This is where the death and dying literature has some super profound things to say.

But again, I don't want to have too much roadkill, so I'll be a little careful here. You come into this world, you have a particular set of dispositions already inherent in the fact that you're in this particular body. But now check this next thing out. This is a mind bender. So, basically from age zero to age seven, roughly, um, this is where a tiny bit of neuroscience can really help.

Basically from age zero to two, again, kind of shady gray area, you're mostly in what's called delta states of brain frequency. This is the delta waves, zero to four cycles or four or four Hertz per second. This is the type of experience we have every night. When we're in deep dreamless sleep, and so for the first number of months and years, this is why babies are, what are they doing?

They're sleeping all the time because they're in Delta human growth hormone is released. All these amazing generative restorative processes are taking place because they're principally in Delta. The really interesting thing is roughly from age 2 to 7, you're in Theta. Now, Theta is super interesting. for listening.

This is also recapitulated every night when you go through the sleeping dreaming cycle. The same kind of fractal process is reiterated every night. Well, when you're in theta, this is uh, four to, um, four to eight hertz. This is the, the dimension, uh, frequency of mind experience that hypnotists will take you into to bring about their post hypnotic suggestions.

So just think about this for a second. This is mind bending. Basically from age zero to seven, this is not a metaphor. You are literally being hypnotized. You're literally being hypnotized by your families of origin, by your peers, your culture, your world. And basically then you, you soak in, you have no choice.

You have no choice, but to basically literally learn how to perceive the world from others around you. The brain is so sophisticated. That the human brain can literally learn perceptions from other people. So we literally are trained. to learn to see the world in this dualistic samsaric way. It's part, even considering, not considering the karmic rebirth thing, just from ground zero here.

And so then what happens, you know, for the rest of your life, the rest of your life is a readout of these loops of these programs. And this is why whenever you go to a therapist, they may not have this data, but what are they going to tell you? Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your families of origin.

Tell me about what you did at the stem cell level of your life. And you can spend an entire life. In fact, we do basically playing out these, um, post hypnotic suggestions that have been installed in our unconscious mind from age zero to seven. So give me a break. Talk about the forces of the dark side, cut yourself some slack.

So this is part of the 95 percent of the unconscious mind that obscures all the stuff that we're talking about. And so we're basically running on automatic ignorance where we're, this is what it means to be asleep. This is what it means to be sleepwalking, forgive them father for they know not what they do.

We're living our lives on these readout patterns. So in terms of how to work with this, um, so much to say here, this is an instance of shameless self promotion. So my last two books are about this, right? The, the one that came out last year on reverse meditation. This book, It's the first time I've ever really talked at length about the process of contraction and openness.

Um, I view contraction and openness as the kind of the combustion cycle of the whole path. It's just a massive Explanatory, process for what describes so much in the world. So to really learn about contraction, that's a great place to go because that particular process is described in tremendous detail.

Um, and then the antidote to it, the practice of open awareness is described. Now, this is a genius meditation that's not taught enough in the West. That is unbelievably powerful for releasing these contractions and opening opening. The other one that's just coming out, um, this summer is, um, I'm mindful.

Now, what moving beyond mindfulness to meet the modern world? This is where in relatively short, this is my most user friendly public book. I talk about, I don't know, 12, 15 meditations that are post mindfulness meditations that transcend, but include mindfulness that allow people to work with lots of what we're talking about here.

using a host of meditative traditions that basically unfold these principles and allow you to actually practice them. So that I want to say this right at the outset, I'm sitting here flapping my lips, blowing out all the smoke. I mean, I'm good at this stuff. I love it, right? I mean, this is just kind of what I do for my day job.

But the most important thing, and I have to really put an emphasis on this, even though I amspeeding through all this material, by far the most important thing you can do are these meditations. And so, both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions have this threefold, um, kind of pedagogical approach, or this learning approach, as you may have heard of it, hearing, contemplating, meditating.

ingest, digest, metabolize. This is super important because otherwise I'm sitting here for an hour and I'm just blowing out all this stuff. It's all mere philosophy. It's all mere theory.

So all this stuff about quantum theory and you name it, it's all about supporting this view.

How do you wake up to the true dimension of your being? So you start with all this information, that's the hearing part, but we got to be really careful in this age of information. Um, we confuse information for experience. Let me say that again. We confuse information for experience. TMI is a major issue.

And so we don't really learn how to walk the talk. Second step, slow down. Pause. Contemplate. Does this speak to me? Does this relate to my lived experience? So you massage the teachings. You allow them to drop less conceptual, more embodied. You're testing them. Is it true? Is it true? Wow, maybe, yeah, it kind of seems to be true. Drop even further. This is the process of waking down into the wisdom of your body.

Ingest, digest, meditation, metabolize. now it's in your body. Now you're really getting it. And this is, you know, you're now it's, it's, it's non conceptual. See, when you're up here, it's all conceptual. As you start to drop down, it's like a filtration and purification system.

that's where you're changed. You change when you feel things. And so you stay, you work, you incorporate, and then what happens is you literally, not metaphorically, you literally become the teachings. You've literally incorporated the teachings.

And so, if you've been around great masters like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Karmapa, the great spiritual beings, they don't have to say a word to transmit these teachings. Because they live them. They're breathing them. They are the teachings. And so this is incredibly important. Especially when I'm doing somewhat speedy, clippy podcasts, which I love doing.

my whole thing is like, Throw all this stuff away. Contemplate. Meditate. Get it into your system. I mean, I've done 40, 000 hours of meditation. There's a reason I do it because this is by far the most transformative thing you can do. So everything I do is really to inspire people to get on some level of inner work.

I don't care what you call it. I like the word meditation, but some level of interiority, some level of inner work to find out what is really going on here. Because when you do this again, tying it in to the earlier riff about the immediacy. This is where the remembrance comes from. Aristotle talked about it as an analysis.

The real journey of the path is recollection. Plato knew this. It's a process of discovery. And so you learn all this stuff and then you're literally discovering, uncovering. Your body knows this. Your body knows all these truths. And so if you wake down into the center of your centerless self, what are you going to find there?

Nothing and everything. You'll find the Buddha, you'll find Christ, you'll find all the divine beings. These gods and goddesses and deities are the essence of who you really are. So this is another way, we talked a little bit about the kind of external manifestation of the immediacy of it. The internal embodied manifestation is just wake down into who you are right now.

Be fully human. This is come back to the 100%. Of, uh, participation and experience. Be human, 100%. And you may find that by being human 100 percent you are Buddha. You just have to be who you are right now with all your warts and all your foibles and all your faculties and all your pain be with who you are right now.

100%. That's Buddha. That's who you are. It's right here.

Kate Shepherd: It's, it's, it all sounds so much easier than, you know, okay, I'll go do that. And then you go and sit down and do that. And you're like, no, I can't. I'll just,

maybe I'll edit out that part or this part or that

part. Or Right.

I guess That's the work, right? What's your, what is your meditation practice look like these days?

andrew holecek: my goodness. You know, I've been so blessed, Kate. You know, this is the reason I drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid and also Nandu Shaiva Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism. I love these two traditions, um, but my, my so called facility is in Tibetan Buddhism. And the reason I drink this Kool Aid is because it has so many skillful means, it has so many meditations, um, Dream yoga, sleep yoga, body yoga, sexual.

I mean, if there's an experience, a state of mind, these, these two traditions, they have a practice for it. So I, I literally Kate, I, I, I practice under all like every particular human experience. I have a meditation for it, but my big thing these days is, um, and this is may, may take us. This is the next series of books I'm writing.

Um, I'm super interested in, in, um, practicing and what's called dark retreat, doing really intensive dark. In fact, it's right here. Right behind this curtain is my little dark holding cell. So this may be like, Oh God, no. And I know this guy is a really weird, um,

there's true.

Kate Shepherd: what it is.

andrew holecek: Yeah, it's a very powerful practice.

That's basically like meditation on steroids. Um, it's just an incredibly intensive, concentrated way to work about everything I've talked about in the last hour plus, um, in really restricted, highly controlled, sensory deprived environments.

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: where basically you're working with mind and heart in the most non distracted way possible.

And so we talked earlier about distraction, contraction, all these things. Absolutely everything that I've talked about in the last hour goes into so called hyperdrive or is, is really, really worked with. In the dark and darkness. And so this is the Greeks did it. You'll find this in the ancient Taoist traditions.

You'll find it in Columbia and shamanistic traditions, but it's really big in Tibetan Buddhism. Um, and I've been mum about this. I've been doing this for decades, but I'm now for the 1st time talking and writing about it because it's getting a lot of press and some of it's not that great. And so, as a way psychedelics, 50 years ago, psychedelics were really screwed up 50 years ago.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I see very similar parallels to dark practice that if it isn't done right, if the right guardrails put up, um, it's going to be problematic. So I'm working with a bunch of scientists. We're going to be doing some studies. But that's like my main retreat practice now. I go into a completely secluded dark cave or cabin for a really long time to work at my mind in a really intense, non distracted, concentrated way.

And it's the biggest bang for my buck in terms of the practices that I've ever done. So, it's basically everything I've talked about is just intense, that's all. It's nothing special, there's nothing magical about it. It's just intense, um, because you can't move, you can't distract yourself, mind becomes reality, appearance has no meaning.

I mean, it is beyond profound.

Kate Shepherd: I'm thinking about that. Um, I don't know the name of it, but there's, I think it's owned by, maybe it's Microsoft owns that space where it's like, it's completely dark and it's completely, it's really, really soundproofed. So when you go

andrew holecek: Oh, cool.

Kate Shepherd: Um, you, and

andrew holecek: Oh, I didn't know

Kate Shepherd: there for more than a minute.

Like there's, cause you can hear your heartbeat. You can

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have these chambers.

Yeah, cool.

Kate Shepherd: like a really trippy, maybe that's your next thing. Um,

andrew holecek: Well, yeah, I mean, that's, well, that's actually an interesting point because it's one reason I was slightly hesitant to even say it because it can appear kind of trippy. It can appear like, Ooh, why, like, really, why are you doing this? So part of the reason I'm mentioning it now is because it is getting a lot of press a lot of athletes.

I mean, the two NBA. Superstar players, Dwight Howard, Rudy Gobert, defensive players of the year, both my names are Dark Ritchie. They're starting to talk about Aaron Rodgers, writers, authors, the word is getting out. And on one level, it's great. On another level, it's not so great. Um, because it can be a little sensationalized.

Um, you can go in there with a completely wrong kind of attitude and approach. And you can hurt yourself, um,

because it's just so intense.

Kate Shepherd: I recently talked to, um, to Nate Klemp. Do you know Nate Klemp?

andrew holecek: Uh, is hein Boulder? I think I

know.

Kate Shepherd: Boulder. He just, he has a new book out called Open

Yeah, he, um, so he, I mean, at the very beginning of his book, he's talking about how, you know, he want, we're living in a really distracted world and how can we, you know, nobody can really even feel an idle moment without trying to escape from it.

And what do we do basically? So he wanted to go on this journey to figure out how to answer that question. And a friend of his on a hike one day said to him, well, okay, well, if you're going to open to everything, what about psychedelic experiences? And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, that's, that's, that's, that's not for me. And through the course of his, the next couple of years, he ended up going down this road where he ended up doing ketamine assisted psychotherapy.

andrew holecek: Yeah,

sure. Good stuff.

Kate Shepherd: like anything though. I think, you know, you could take a bunch of ketamine at home or at a party and if the context is wrong, you could really hurt yourself.

You know, or if you

get the wrong hypnotherapist, you know, or even a massage, I mean, I've gotten hurt just getting a massage at a, you know, regular like massage therapy place. Like if somebody doesn't really know what they're doing, if they're not a good guide, and for a lot of these things, I think we probably do need a guide. You

can get hurt. So I guess it's just like, it's

andrew holecek: It's the same. That's well said. It's totally spot on. These are all just tools. They're, I mean, I don't really like to use the word spiritual technology, but I think you get the idea.

Darkness is fundamentally neutral. I mean, these agents are all a lot of them are fundamentally neutral. Um, just like technologies are neutral.

It's just how you use them. It's how you engage in them. Psychedelics. I used to be ultra purist conservative. totally change my tune with these agents, I think they absolutely have a place.

And so this again ties into what we talked about at the outset, is that all these, anything that arises can be used as a skillful means, anything.

And so there are certain types of methods that I think are particularly applicable in this day and age. I think psychedelics are one. I think they have tremendous potential if they're used properly. Um, I'll mark my words on this. I think in 10 years, you're going to see a revolution because of the dark practices, especially when we start collecting our data and publishing it.

Kate Shepherd: You take it in and then you are a finely tuned instrument regardless of what you believe about yourself. And if you take something in and you just ask yourself really honestly, is this the right thing? Like, I feel like the answer is gonna be inside of you. For you, you,

andrew holecek: yeah, if you can, if you trust it, yeah, the ultimate teacher is within. If you're open to that voice,

Yeah.

if you listen to that right voice and you connect to it, yeah. That's the other thing connected to this waking down process, you know, that fundamentally the ultimate teacher is within your heart. That's really where you want to take ultimate refuge and all these other provisional teachers and teachings and everything.

They're all fundamentally empowering and directing you to the center of yourself, where you can listen to your own innate, inherent wisdom. And then you put people like me completely out of business. I mean, that's, that's the best thing you could possibly do is you, you become your own guide, your own guru.

You don't need any of these other things. But until then, people can help you. They can also hurt you. Um, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, but you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by working with somebody that you trust that can guide you. But anybody who's worth their salt will basically tell you my highest aspiration is to put myself out of work, where you just turn within, discover your own awakened properties, and you realize, you know, you're the teacher.

Um, so, but because again, like you were talking about earlier, because of our enculturation, the Abrahamic traditions and the original notion of original sin, We have this kind of poverty mentality that we have to reach some level of purity or heaven outside of us. Who says

Kate Shepherd: Well, that

conditioning between two and seven, I guess, I'm guessing that's who says,

andrew holecek: spot on,

spot on. And so the so called non theistic traditions, which to me are more empowering, makes more sense to me. Again, I categorically dismissing these. There's, there's room at the table for all these skillful means, but, uh,

Kate Shepherd: we go back and,

and re, that two, that two year, there were that years between two and seven, I think you

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, right.

Kate Shepherd: Is it possible to actually go back and reprogram ourselves? Or is

that just done? That

andrew holecek: You can't go back in time. But what you can do is you can work with the dimensions of your being where that history is lodged. Well, where is that history? It's in your unconscious mind. Where is your unconscious mind? It's your body. Your body is your unconscious mind. So the way you unearth it, is you do this archaeology, this excavation project, by dropping into the sedimentation levels of your own heart and mind.

And if you do this kind of inner work, then you will actually find either through therapy, the deep inner work of these, meditations, certain psychedelics like ketamine and whatnot, psychedelic assisted, um, psilocybin therapy.

You bring these unconscious processes into the light of consciousness. That's a massive part of the psychospiritual path. So you don't have to go back to the past because you can't. You go down within yourself because that's where the past is stored.

, the habit patterns that are burned into your unconscious body and mind.

All that stuff out of sight is not out of mind. Out of sight is into the unconscious mind, into the refuse heap of the darkness of the unconscious mind.

And there it festers and lurks as part of this 95 percent that dictates your life. Do you think you have free will? No way. You think you're living your life based on the dictates of your own whatever? No way. This is what it means to be asleep. So, you work with the history as it's lodged in your unconscious body mind.

, you do the trauma work, you do the meditation, you basically decondition, liberate yourself from all these habit patterns that are burned into your hard drive. And then guess what happens? It really gets lighter, freer, more open. You have more energy.

Because all this stuff is, is also what locks down the channel systems in your subtle body. That's all the energy that makes us feel stuck and trapped. And this is why the deep inner work is worth it. Because otherwise, like we said, way back, everything else is a substitute gratification. And then all this energy that's, that's trapped up in our bodies from all this rejection, you know, every time we say no, we're throwing that rejected experience into our unconscious mind.

So we have to open, open meditation, this habituation to openness. It's not just opening your mind, it's opening your heart, it's opening your body, and then all this energy comes up, you literally become lighter, it's a somatic reference to enlightenment, you feel freer, more energetic, because these energies have just been released through this process of opening.

Kate Shepherd: I wanted to ask you about lucid dreaming.

What is it? And how do we, how do we benefit from it? And what, how do we get there?

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a really big, wonderful big topic. , I Work with my languaging five nocturnal meditations.

Just to give listeners a sense of what they are. Um, liminal dreaming, number one, lucid dreaming, number two, dream yoga, number three, um, What's called sleep yoga connected to yoga, Nidra number four, and then art of yoga, the death practice is number five. And so lucid dreaming for those who may not be familiar with it, it was this magical state.

Um, lucidity is basically a code word for awareness. So lucid dream is a dream where you're aware that you're dreaming while you're still in the dream. So something will clue you into the fact that you're dreaming while you're in a dream, you attain consciousness, lucidity, you're fully awake. I'm dreaming, but you're still in the dream.

And so connecting it because the topic is so big, connecting it to some of what we talked about. One of the reasons you want to explore this is because it provides a very rare opportunity where the conscious mind can meet the unconscious directly. That's what makes it so transformative.

The practice is to engage that lucidity, engage the contents of your dream. And then, um, always helpful to remember what are dreams made of? Well, they're made of your mind. You're just working with your mind in this really distilled environment.

Okay. And so then you work to transform it, transform the contents of your dream. There's, you know, nine stages here going from somewhat accessible to really super deep and quite profound. But the idea is to, is to take, um, and transform the contents of your unconscious mind and then take the insights from the dream arena and bring them back with you into daily life.

Lucid dreaming leads to lucid living.

Um, once you realize that fundamentally. This is just a dream. So there's just so much to say here, but I'm really big on this because, um, it's a form of, you know, I talk about playfully night school, you know, there's so much you can do in the dream arena. And here's some basic numbers.

We enter. The dream world about half a million times during the course of a life about 25 percent of our nighttime experience is spent in REM sleep. That's mostly when we dream. That's about a month a year. That's over six years in an average life. You can get a PhD in less than six years. So if you can maintain lucidity in this kind of night school, not only do you bring more years to your life, while you're also working with a deeper foundational dimension of your being, the tantric texts tell you that the practices you do, your meditations that you do in the dream state, are seven to nine times more transformative.

They're more efficacious than what you do in the waking state because they're more foundational. And so you can have like what's called a hyperlucid dream, um, which is a dream that's more real than this. You know, you wake up from one of those game changing dreams. This appears to be the foggy dream.

You have one of those.

They'll change. It'll change your life.

It's like having a near death experience. You don't need to have a near death experience over and over. You just need one. Your life has changed forever.

And so, um, I'm really big on this because life is short. I want to extract every essence I can out of this life.

And so if I can learn how to meditate and practice while I'm sleeping and dreaming, uh, wow, I'm, I'm all for it.

Kate Shepherd: What would be a good place for somebody to start? So you said you've written a couple of books. Is there, are there practices in there that we

andrew holecek: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Three books, um, and they're somewhat in order. So the first more accessible book in this dream trilogy is my Haberdasher Press book. Um, The Lucid Dreaming Workbook,

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: a guide by, step by step guide to mastering your dream life. This is a workbook that has all kinds of exercises and things you can fill in.

That's a great place to start,

really easy read, um, super simple, super easy. The next book is a deeper dive dream yoga, illuminating your life through lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep. That's a quite a bit deeper dive. And then the third one's called Dreams of Light, the profound daytime practice of illusory form.

This is where I bring in a really beautiful, sophisticated daytime practice. It's called Lulus Reform. This one's pretty, this is the deepest of my books. Um, pretty profound about the, the light nature reality, the nature of the light of the mind. It gets pretty deep. So, I recommend people start with the Harvard Press workbook.

And then I also have a platform. Thanks for the opportunity to put in my Kool Aid stand. The platform is called Night Club. We started it like, 5 years ago. It's a really robust, super active program platform. We have like, 5 events a week

with all kinds of guests, faculty and lectures and book study groups and meditation.

It's a super active platform.

for anybody interested in this arena from entry level to really pretty deep levels. And so, that's probably a really

Kate Shepherd: That's a great start. What's

something that I could do tonight when I went to bed tonight? What's something, one little simple thing I could start to

andrew holecek: Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly powerful. Intentionality is massive. Intention.

Intention. The word literally means to stretch towards. And so what you're trying to do with the lucid dream is a kind of consciousness hacking You're trying to hack into previously restricted, um, domains of consciousness, in this case, the dream arena.

And one way to do that is to incubate and set the intention. Literally, literally, heartfelt, not just flapping your lips, heartfelt. Tonight, I'm going to have many dreams. Tonight, I'm going to remember my dreams. Tonight, I'm going to wake up in my dreams and really mean it. And then tonight when you lie down, meditation is great to settle you, reinstate this almost like a mantra.

As you're falling asleep, let that intentionality kind of perfume the night. And then it will, it will infiltrate, perfume your, your sleeping, dreaming mind. And you might be surprised, just this one technique alone, if you really lean into it with real heartfelt intentionality, it's, it's pretty powerful.

That alone will help.

Kate Shepherd: I'm excited to go to

bed tonight.

If you had this magical billboard that all these people who were out there, you know, wanting to connect with a truer version of themselves, wanting to find their creativity and trust it, really trust this inner self that we have. But for all of the conditioning that you talked about that we've been through, the hypnosis we go through from the time that we're two to the time that we're seven, the layers of limiting belief, the culture around us that tells us it's not true, it's not available, can't have it,

um, It stops them from believing that it's possible, but you could put this message on this billboard and it would reach into their hearts and inspire them to believe that it was possible for them.

What would you, what would your words be to them?

andrew holecek: I keep it completely blank.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I leave it completely open. Meditation is habituation to openness. And I would let it just basically stop their minds. And say, there's nothing there, right? By doing nothing, nothing is left undone. I would keep it completely blank,

where people come across it and they just want, Ah!

Right there in that moment, they can touch reality. They don't need more words. They don't need more teachings. They need to connect to the openness and the spaciousness of their own hearts and minds. So I, I would just leave it utterly. Best thing to do is actually have it blank and then even have the blank world just like fall back.

Thank you.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm. Real nothingness.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Just like boom. That's that's a transmission right there.

Kate Shepherd: I love it. Thank you. Thank you for your time today.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for a great, very thoughtful questions. I super appreciate it. I'd like to spend some time with you, Kate.

​
Kate Shepherd: Who are you? What is your work in the world? What's your mission here on on earth?

andrew holecek: I guess you could talk about this from a relative and absolute perspective on an absolute perspective. My. I guess I'm on this planet just to basically wake up.

what that means we could talk about that, you know, just to become aware, completely 100 percent aware. We can riff on this on the relationship to the unconscious to conscious mind and the actual basis of creativity. I explore a lot of this actually. So on an absolute level, to wake up and help others.

I mean, it may sound kind of cliche. but I think what waking up really involves is discovering is. Ramana Maharshi said so beautifully, when he was asked, how do you help others? He said, what others? And so I think that's really quite beautiful. So waking up, that's wisdom, but wisdom is incomplete if it doesn't manifest immediately as compassion.

Kate Shepherd: And so to wake up and help others is, I mean, that's like the only game in town and helping others it's just spontaneous creativity. It's just kind of what you do. It's such a potent image I think a lot of us, we get lost, right? We're like, okay, well, I'm here. I'm having this life. I know I have this call. Like, I think a lot of us can relate to what you said about being in service. Like we,

that we have this drive to, I mean, we're relational beings and we have this, it's deeply instinctual to want to be in service and to help but then we're also living in this very, contracted modern world where we're

supposed to sort of look out for and, and how do you, how do you live the two?

andrew holecek: when you're talking about this longing and this quest and like what it is that we're really after, I think, Fundamentally, we're looking for some sense of fullness, completeness, and if that particular kind of pressure, so to speak, for resolution isn't understood, that's the conventional pursuit of happiness.

When that becomes. understood when that unconscious process is brought into the light of consciousness, and that becomes the conscious pursuit of awakening. So it's the same fundamental generative creative impulse, but one is filtered through all these sedimentation levels of the unconscious mind that leads to all these leads, all these inauthentic levels of satisfaction.

we're basically eating the menu instead of the meal and we're getting fat instead of getting full. And so if we understand this, then Well, okay, um, let's take this journey consciously, volitionally. Let's, let's wake up, realize that's really what's happening, that's really what's going on.

And this is, uh, you can explore this using principles of lucidity like I do in lucid dreaming. Meditation helps you do this, psychedelics help you do it.

Kate Shepherd: Meditation is a, is a big part of your, so you give workshops and you write and how else do you bring that work to life in the world?

andrew holecek: I used to be a classical pianist. So, I mean, I used to do it with my music, but, um, well, not so much. It's hard to do that professionally. So principally, uh, through my writing, through my teaching, through my programs, um, through platforms, I have a number of online platforms where we do it. I have my own podcast that we did a role with, and then what's called my club, which is a supportive platform for the nocturnal meditations.

I also work a lot, um, because I am born as a Westerner, even though my heart is in the so called East, uh, the wisdom traditions, I am, had this particular incarnation that I'm rolling with. And so I work a ton with the scientific community. I'm always either helping design studies, writing science, working with scientists,

Kate Shepherd: What are some of

those blind spots?

andrew holecek: We can talk about this on two levels. there are various, various forms of reductionism, some of which are very healthy.

Not all reductionism is problematic. to reduce complexity into fundamental, simple iterative principles is healthy reductionism, but there's also pathological reductionism, which we know in the West is, you know, Um, materialism,

So that's pathological reductionism. That's obviously a blind spot. Well, the East has its own set of blind spots. One somewhat, um, they wouldn't use this languaging because that's not part of the system is this kind of idealistic reductionism in the sense of philosophical idealism.

and reducing everything to karma. I think that's a fundamental blind spot in, in the traditions because you, you know, everything arises because of causes and conditions. Karma is associated with causes, causes and conditions, and therefore everything is karma. No, it's not. So I think that's a blind spot.

there's a big difference between states of consciousness and structures of consciousness. And the East very elegantly explores states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep, and the process of what Welwood called, waking up.

That's really the, the great gift of the so called East, waking into, increased heightened levels of states of consciousness. Well, that particular approach, is completely unaware of structures of consciousness, um, developmentalism, the vector of growing up.

You cannot introspect those. You don't look at them. You look through them. And so these are archetypal, deep pathological blind spots. And this is, this is the only thing I, I can come across that can any way explain all the, abuses and the sex scandals and all the ridiculous stuff that will never end in the spiritual community.

Because you can have a really high, level experience. It's not even stable as a realization. But let's just say you have a high level spiritual experience. It's a state experience. Well, unless you basically stay in silence, Which the Buddha did for 49 days, basically.

The minute you move, the minute you open your mouth, you have no choice, none, but to express your realization through your structural level of development. And this is where the crapshow starts. Because you can have an authentic high level turiya, dharmakaya, whatever term you want to use. You get it.

You've seen reality. But that does not necessarily bring with it in that in its wake double entendre intended. It doesn't bring with you this ability to see through these developmental structures. And so this is where all the trouble happens. Um, all the patriarchy, all the blind spots. And again, I say this with such homage because I'm a deep student of the wisdom traditions.

I do, I do drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid. But I, you know, I've been behind the curtains. I've been behind the scenes. Um, I know what goes on behind closed doors. And some of it is like, boy, this isn't very awake. This isn't very spiritual. How do you explain that? So that's a major blind

Kate Shepherd: I think the reason it's dangerous is that there's a kernel of truth in the thing that's being expressed, even though it comes through that, the developmental limitations of that

andrew holecek: Oh, for sure.

Oh yeah.

Kate Shepherd: it.

And so somebody who's receiving that goes, Oh, on one level, this is, this totally feels true.

I better believe it. But then you have to take with it all the things that come through. So it's like, so how do we, how do we make sense and share meaning? Of the wonder of it all, of the mystery of it all, of the, of this infinite intelligence that I was talking about at the top of our conversation that's animating the universe.

Like there's no doubt that there's an alive, intelligent something doing all of this, running the show, let's say. How do we share meaning about that without falling into these, you know, reductionist obstacles?

andrew holecek: Yeah.

Kate Shepherd: we, how do we do it?

andrew holecek: Yeah. Well, let me say something very quickly before we get to that, I have to throw this in because it's so important. It's not always the, the, the fault of the master. So called spiritual master, because another thing that happens, um, in, in basic, almost even Freudian psychodynamic approaches.

Is, uh, transference, countertransference, projection. And so there's all, all this stuff. You know, we project on one level. You have to, you have to give these, these, so-called masters, a little bit of slack

because we come in there and we, we basically project the crap out of 'em. This is, this is not shadow boxing, this is shadow hugging.

So we project, we give away these amazing qualities within us. We throw that onto the teacher. And so we basically fall in love with our golden shadows. And so this is another blind spot of the East. This whole transference, counter transference, projection thing that happens. That is also, this takes a little bit of responsibility back onto the student.

Therefore, it's not all the teacher that's gone to hell. The student is bought into it as well. They're projecting. They're not asking the right questions. And so they contribute to it as well. So I think I wanted to throw that in because it's not always just the master that goes astray. Now, in terms of the other question, that's a beautiful one.

Um, this is the essence of upaya in Sanskrit, skillful means is, is fundamentally, how do you communicate this level of truth and reality? Well, a lot of it in my experience, um, depends on your sensitivity and openness to the conditions in which you are embedded. Um, real skillful means is not meeting people where you're at.

Real skillful means is meeting people where they're at. And so that's where the transmission, the communication, it's like, uh, um, George Bernard Shaw said so beautifully. I love this. The biggest problem in communication. Is the illusion that it has been accomplished. I love that that's so great. And so here we come in, you know, we've got our own particular favorite whatever this is a subtle form of reductionism.

Oh, my particular path will explain it all my body work will deal with it, my whatever will deal with it. Well, it's going to deal with part of it. So this is where integral systemic holistic thinking, um, in particular, I'm a huge fan of integral theory, really comes into play. And so to me, for someone who really wants to be a skilled communicator at these deepest levels, it's really incumbent upon them to learn as much as they possibly can about the culture in which they're embedded.

Like in the West, um, psychospiritual principles are really being culturally translated through. Science, and in particular, neuroscience and psychology. And so, and so certainly it's not philosophy, but Therefore, I think if you really want to help people and communicate outside of people inside your own tribe, you know, drink your own Kool Aid, boy, learn about them.

Learn about what makes them tick. Learn about what communicates with them. And so this is why I love, I mean, look at all these silly books behind me. I read all this stuff. partly because I have an insatiable appetite to learn. But also, when I talk to a quantum physicist, I can maybe say something about quantum field theory and quantum entanglement and how that relates to principles of non duality.

When I talk to a neuroscientist, I can talk a little bit about neuroplasticity and the principles of transformation. When I talk to a psychologist, maybe I can say, well, that psychology has something to do with The eighth consciousness of Tibetan Buddhism. And so to me, this is what's super exciting, exciting, and also challenging for any translator communicator is actually taking the trouble.

And this is why I love people like as radical as they can be trunk bar Rinpoche, other really amazing masters, controversial. They came into the West. They didn't come in with their, I mean, they did come in with their robes and stuff, but they realized that ain't working.

They took the trouble to learn our language, to learn our crazy, ridiculous ways.

They drank, they smoked, they did all the silly things that we do. And hence they said, Oh, I can't be a real master. You know, well, what they were doing is like, they're, they're like, you know, they're incredibly attentive students of reality. And so they realize I, in order to reach these peeps, I have to meet them where they're at, not where I'm at.

So I think I'll pause for a second here, because I get pretty excited about this, but. This is where real authentic communication, and this is where your art comes in. I mean, if you really want to communicate with people, you reach them at these levels, and it's not always that real transformation is not going to take place from here.

You know, the intellectual philosophical, whatever, blah, blah, blah is just an avenue for the transformation that takes place with full embodiment. I mean, we, we transform when we feel things.

So the real, the real effective transmute communicators. are the artists, the musicians, the poets that help people feel.

They help them literally get in touch, in contact with reality. And that's an affective expression of bliss and delight. And so to me, along those two lines, you know, somewhere in there comes authentic communication of these, um, these transpersonal principles. But obviously it's not easy because the minute you open your mouth, And you're trying to explore non duality through a, through an inherently dualistic mechanism like language.

Well, good luck. And then you're an artist, I'm a musician. This is where the arts come into play. Um, you're more in contact with truth and the arts than you are in the sciences, in my opinion.

Kate Shepherd: How do we come into contact with that part in ourselves where the honest expression can come from?

andrew holecek: Get out of the way. There's two ways, basically just get out of the way. So this, this is actually, these are wonderful comments and questions. So there's, there's two ways to look at the whole, at least in my experience, the whole kind of psycho spiritual world. Path awakening thing. One is, um, let's, let's just say with meditation, um, completely authentic relative approach to path of effort is you engage in all these meditations.

And I'm big into this. I've been doing this for 50 years. I did a three year retreat. I mean, I've done 50, 100, 200 meditations. They're brilliant. And so at one level you do those and just like any other art or craft or proficiency, the more you do it, the better you get. So this is the process of accretion accumulation.

Well, the more absolute approach is, , the path of effortlessness and the path of opening and discovery that these qualities that we're seemingly trying to cultivate. They're actually inherent properties of the awakened mind. And so in this regard, I mean, really, we could, I'm going to say this, we could both give ourselves the afternoon off, um, conversations over.

The only thing you have to do, I'm not kidding. I'm not being smart here. It's open. Relax. That's it. Done deal. Case is over. Path is over. That's it.

we have this thing we, it's called the path. But on a, on a one level, you don't need it. The two biggest problems with the spiritual path, you want to know what they are?

Number one, use of the word spiritual.

Kate Shepherd: yeah,

andrew holecek: Why? Because if it's spiritual, then it's not merely in contrast to material, it's in opposition to it. And then you run into all these spiritual materialism, spiritual bypass pathologies, where spirituality is put in contradistinction and opposition to materiality.

Then what do you do with your body? What do you do with the world? What do you do with technology? What do you do with form? So that's the first problem. Second problem is, like, number one problem in the spiritual path is spiritual. Number two, path. Outside of that, it's perfect, right? So path to where? On a relative level, this ties into what I said earlier, yes, a path to awakening, a journey to awakening, for sure.

On a relative level, that's totally the case. Not on an absolute level. At the highest levels, striving is the only obstacle. How can you actually achieve something you already have?

So according to the non dual wisdom traditions, you already are a Buddha. You already are awake. The issue is the one of recognition.

The path is perceptual. It's not actual. Let me say that again. The path is perceptual. It's not actual. You're not going anywhere. And if you think you need to go someplace else, what are you doing? You're just rescheduling your appointment with reality. You're just deferring your awakening. You're already awake, but you don't believe it.

Why? Can't be that easy. Can't be that simple. It's got to be something else. No, you're always in nirvana. Or if you like, you know, samsara, you're always in samsara because these are just states of mind, right? So this is, I say, I say this with a little exclamation point because this is a big deal. This is a tremendous empowering proclamation.

But the only thing you have to do, hard stop, open, relax. Consequence of that is recognition. It's like it says in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, recognition and liberation are simultaneous. So I say this because again, you know, I'm on the path. I'm definitely on the path and I'm doing all these relative things.

High five. It works up to a point. And at a certain point, you have to let it all go. Um, the path of no path, the nopaya in the Hindu tradition, and realize whatever you want, you already have this. It's already there. It's a process of discovery. And so this ties into my favorite definition of meditation.

And then I'll pause. My favorite definition of meditation is habituation to openness. I just love that term.

Kate Shepherd: hmm,

andrew holecek: Habituation to openness. Because what are we habituated to Kate? We're habituated to contraction, right?

Because that's what we are. The ego, which is nothing but an arrested form of development. It's the self contraction.

It's the primorial fracture. And so if contraction is the basis of samsara and it's kissing cousin distraction, they're the same. Then the the path of the antidote. The antidote to that is what? Openness, relaxation. So that all ties in. So, what do you have to do? You just open, open, open into wider rings of being, as Rumi put it.

And then you realize, I've been in heaven from day one. I just didn't see. It was literally hiding in plain sight. What a pisser, right? So we go through all this stuff. This huge, torturous path And And

the only thing you need to do is relax.

Kate Shepherd: one of the things that was coming up for me was just. kid art, like children's art.

Why kid art is so good. We love, we're so drawn to it. It's just, it's so free. It's so, I mean, there are grownup artists who are millionaires because they've managed to stay in

that free place

of, right, of being able to express. And I think for me, I guess the challenge is I've, I've probably realized the, the, nature of myself.

I've probably realized that. That God like whatever presence a million times in my life, but it just that presence right where you're just like I can see the eyes peering out of me. I can feel myself breathing. I can see that. I am the tree. I see my connection to the infant like I mean, I have that moment every day at some point. The trick for me is remembering it. I

keep forgetting. I keep forgetting

and then I wake up again and I'm like, Oh no, I just spent the last, however, six months or six years. How do we remember? Because it does seem, it does seem too simple and we, this can apply to whether you're writing music or painting paintings or, you know, studying philosophy or, you know, I've got a path, a spiritual path. It does seem to be that it's just so simple, you just think to yourself, it can't be this. It's got to be

something more complicated than this.

andrew holecek: Yeah, I mean, the essence of spiritual practice is remembrance. I mean, really, that's it. Um, a consequence of contraction is forgetfulness. I mean, we just forget that we're awake, we forget that, that, uh, we already have everything that we could possibly want.

And so, um, distraction, forgetfulness, another way to talk about mindlessness, right? These are just the ways every time we capitulate. See, this is the thing, we're always meditating. We're always, always becoming, the word for meditation in Tibetan, the word is G O M, GOM, literally translates as to become familiar with.

So like William James says, reality is what you attend to. So if you attend to distraction, which is our default, it's literally default mode network in neurological terms. We are always practicing forgetfulness, whether we know it or not. Every time we capitulate to distraction, we're practicing forgetfulness.

We have accomplished forgetfulness. And so therefore, the antidote is working with these practices of recollection and remembrance. That's literally what the word, um, for mindfulness in Tibetan, the word is dream up means to recollect. so you work with this in a twofold way. One is, uh, you remember Reagan, Ronald Reagan and trickle down economics.

You remember that whole thing? So I like, I playfully talk about trickle down spirituality. And by this what I mean is you set this, this absolute high bar of, that's it. It's like they say in Ham Muji tradition. It's so true, so obvious we don't see it. So simple, we don't believe it. So easy, we don't trust it.

It's hiding in plain sight. But, so from an absolute test, absolute approach, this is the trickle down part. It's 100 percent right now, right here. There's nothing but this infinite pure awareness. Hard stop. What creates the illusion that there isn't something there is this lightning fast process of contraction.

that basically creates the very sense of self and other, and this, this rapidity of the contractive mechanism, which I can talk about. And so then that brings about then the relative approach. So this is why they talk about right view. The right view is you already are a Buddha, you already are Christ, you already are awake, you just forgot.

Kate Shepherd: This is just something I wanna know. I hope, I hope this serves a lot of other listeners who are listening to this too. one of the biggest things I've come to. And I find it deeply upsetting because there is this conflict of interest and it's like I feel very ragdolled between these two aspects of my own being.

andrew holecek: No

Kate Shepherd: there are moments when everything is great. Everything is, is peaceful. I understand everything. It's all, there's pure love.

Like I walk through the forest every morning with my dog and Most days I'm just crying, like,

and I'm not, there's not even a real reason why. I'm just so in love with what is, and then I come home and I'm like, I got the to do list comes up and I'm like, I'm angry at my kid because he left a mess on the floor and you know, I, I forget that part of me or, or,

or, or another example is if I've had, uh, a state experience, like a, like a massive unity experience, for example, just for an example, the snap shut. Thing that happens, right? Equal and opposite. Like, I had this big opening and then part came in and was like, uh, hell no. Right? And

slams it shut. How do we reconcile that conflict of interest?

andrew holecek: Well, you know, I mean, you can't solve a problem you don't have. So, the first thing is what we're doing right here. You work at the level of the map, and you understand the, the structure of your identity, the structure of who you really are. both along developmental and spiritual vectors. That's, that's where you start.

That's the power of right view and the power of the map, really just getting a sense of proper understanding. And then the understanding eventually then will lead to certain levels of, um, um, experience and integration where you can then start to apply this. You start to apply this understanding to your experience.

You start to realize. Just like you did this morning, you went for a walk, you were in tears because you're, you're in contact with reality. And by the way, this is one lovely way to know that you're having a non dual experience. It's beauty in relation to objects and love in relation to people. And so when you're having these experiences of beauty and love and it brings you to tears, that's an intimation, a very powerful intimation of the non dual.

And so you come back in because that particular bandwidth of your identity, like a caterpillar or slinky working its way up. It's just not stable yet. It's just the karma hasn't been worn out. So you haven't stabilized the higher level identity. You haven't worn out or released the lower levels of identity.

And so by understanding this, then you start to look at, okay, let me look at my investment portfolio here. Let me look at what I attend to. So if reality is what you attend to, and you find yourself attending to your phone and attending to distraction and attending to everything in samsara. Well, what a surprise that you're stuck on the lower bandwidth of your identity.

So this is where healthy renunciation comes into play. Literally in Tibetan, the word is neijom, which means definite emergence. You realize, man, this, this crap show of samsara is not serving me. The only thing it's serving is my ego. And so then you have to have a little come to Jesus moment, like what's really important for me?

What am I going to do in my life? So then you look, you understand the spectrum of reidentity. You understand you're always meditating, whether you know it or not. And so then maybe you might find out, well, geez, do I really need to be this distracted? Do I need to really be this busy? Do I really need to be this, like Lakha Rinpoche talks about, active laziness?

And so the more we understand this, the more we realize, on one level, yes, there's some beauty. There's some magic. There's devotion. There's blessing and all that. But on another level, there's a lot of pure kind of karma, causality and physics going on here. Look at where, where, where are you putting your investments?

What are you investing in? If you're investing in distraction and Samsara in your comfort plan, well, you're going to reap those dividends. If you realize that market's going to crash, it's definitely going to crash when you die. You take a close look at your life, like, what am I really doing here? What's life really happening?

And then you realize, wow, this life is really short. It's really precious. WTF am I doing here? Do I want to wake up? Well, then I need to make some really kind of difficult decisions. It's called the painful part of dying. I need to let go, release, die to all these dimensions of my experience that bring me down into these devolutionary, um, frequencies and then cultivate those that lift me up.

This is not easy because this is the extraordinary power of, of, of peer pressure, our culture, our society, you know, the developmental level, you know, just look around this world. It ain't so high. It's not so great. So spiritual communities, pockets of sanity, sane asylums, where you can take refuge to develop the stability because like, um, what did Houston Smith say so the process of the path is to transform flashes of illumination.

into abiding light.

say more about karma. You've talked, you've talked about karma, you've with, and you've linked it to science a couple of times. I've never heard anyone do that. And you talked about the physics of karma. And I actually did want one of the things I want to ask you is you are somebody who sort of lives at the intersection of spirituality and science. what is the relationship between, what is karma? Maybe you could define it for us first of all.

Kate Shepherd: And then, and then, and then tell us a little bit about karma from a science perspective. Because I think we've only heard of it as like a, you know, you hit your brother, your brother's going to hit you back.

Like,

you know, it's like a superstition almost. Karma almost

feels like easy to dismiss because it's got this sort of superstitious connotation.

andrew holecek: this is a great question. in a certain colloquial sense, like you're talking about, it's like everybody knows what karma is. Well, This is one of the most complex topics in all of Eastern philosophy and thought.

it's said that only awakened ones, only the Buddhas really understand karma. So we use this topic flippantly, what goes around comes around. but it is an extraordinarily sophisticated, complex, description of reality. And so just to give some sense of it, you know, you have individual karma, you have family karma, um, You know, global karma, cultural karma, you have all these different forces.

You have the laws of transitional karma. You have the laws of a fully loaded karma. And so I've explored this in tremendous detail because these laws are absolutely instrumental in terms of understanding the behavioral components of reality. And just to tie it briefly to what I said earlier, one major limitation I see with the so called yeast.

Is this facile reductionism into everything actually being karma? No, it's not. Everything is due to causes and conditions, but karma works with causes and conditions. That's how it's somewhat connected to science, but just because it's related to causes and conditions, you can't conflate and say everything's karma.

Everything's causal. And even then, Boy, we have to temper that when you get to quantum mechanics. But so, um, yes, again, I, I stutter a little bit here just because the topic is so big, but for most of us, the most important thing to understand is that there are behavioral consequences that, that behavior does have causative effects.

It's not the principal driver as, as many Eastern approaches assert, but it is a massive driver. In what constitutes our experience, what, what actually creates future experience. And in terms of applicability, cause I don't want to get too abstract and heady here. Karma can really quickly fall into. Kind of techno speak and become somewhat theoretical, but.

Um, basically karma is created. Every time we contract away from experience. Every time we relate inappropriately to our experience in a, in a reactive and not responsive way. We're creating karma. So the word literally, uh, means action and Tibetan lei, L E H, literally means action. action. And so therefore, every time we move in a non lucid, habitually driven way, not only is that habit pattern driving that karmic activity, it's generating more karmic activity.

And this is why it's so hard to purify karma. It's really hard to purify habits. So habit is just the Translation for karma and so this is this is super important to understand because it basically shows you that until we clean up our habit patterns until we we basically get away from this relentless self referential relationship to to reality.

We're always going to be creating karma because we're always contracting away from reality referring everything back to to me. Well, why do we do that? Because if we don't do that, the sense of me disappears, right? This is what happens in meditation. When you sit in complete non referential spaces and you're no longer referring experience back to self, you're no longer contracting.

Well, what happens? The opening that, that constitutes no self, that's a spiritual experience. But because again, we're not habituated to that, we're not familiar to that. When those spaces are open, this is what, why the experience isn't stable. Part of your ego is back there saying, well, that's not me. I'm not divinity.

I'm not perfection. I'm not the Buddha. I'm not Christ consciousness. I'm whatever. Joe show schmuck. Well, you kind of get what you believe. So the experience is whiplashed back to create the relative sense of self, because there's no place for personal identity in that big, infinite, open space. So there's so much to say here, Kate, I want to pause and just make sure I'm going in the right direction, because this is a really big topic and I want to make it practical for people.

Kate Shepherd: what might be helpful for people is, you know, for somebody who's had some of those, you know, A lot of our listeners are, are going to be coming at this from a, from a sense of wanting to deepen their relationship to their creativity and their intuition and their,

their self, you know, their, their capital S self or their God self, I, you could say,

It can be really difficult.

I think one of the challenges a lot of us feel is it can be really difficult to, we have these open state connected experiences where we aren't the self and when we know it, and it's such a relief if, I mean, for me it is when I have those moments, it's just

like, yeah, I would love to live like this forever. But then the, the thoughts come back of like,

you've got two kids, you've got a mortgage to pay, you've got, how do you live in this world? Because that, there is a rea that is reality too. How do you live in this world? And how do you reconcile those two? They seem so different.

They

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a great one. Okay, so here we go.

this also ties into this notion of the immediacy of the whole thing, right? And so the way you balance this that relates both to non duality and also karma is that, um, like I mentioned earlier, what, what creates, uh, karma, what creates the ongoing illusion of duality and separation.

Is this relentless habituation to contraction, this eventual, habitual, relentless habit pattern. We have to refer everything to self. We do it all the time. I mean, it's our default, whether we know it or not. And actually

We need this level of development. That's what ego represents. So you're talking about basically about egoic structure, which we tend to dis. Well, we have to be a little bit careful here because if we didn't have an ego, we wouldn't be here talking about the nature of the ego. So the ego is a very important critical ingredient in evolution.

It's just an arrested form of evolution. It's arrested form of development based on exclusive identification with form. That's the best definition I can come up with. So we need this stupid thing. If we weren't able to provisionally separate self from other, We would be like, like I like to say, we'd be a chicken McNugget on the Serengeti.

We would have never evolved. Flight, fright, freeze would never evolve and we would be dead. Our immune systems operate on the ability to separate antigen from antibody. We need to be able to separate self from other for biological purposes. So what you need to understand is there's nothing inherently wrong with ego.

It's just an arrested form of development. So now what the challenge is to transcend, but include the ego. And this then becomes back to an issue of skillful means, because you can have a really high Buddha level, whatever. But if you egoic bandwidth, And talk to people who are still operating from that level.

Well, good luck with your communication strategies.

It's like a parent talking quantum mechanics to a 10 year old. It's just ain't gonna happen.

And so the way this relates, now let's get really practical here. So, the way this relates in terms of reconciling and bringing a path quality to this, and this is a big deal.

Is that the next time you actually any, any moment, any experience at any time, and one of the challenges is, is this is so available to you, it becomes almost intimidating because there isn't a moment where you can't do this, but let's just take, let's just take one experience to highlight this and then you can extrapolate it to anything.

Let's take an experience of heartbreak.

And so the invitation here, and this is a wonderful, practice I do all the time. So the next time you're having some real heartbreak or let's just fill in the blank, really unwanted experience, your usual default contraction is reaction is in fact to contract to get away from it.

distraction therapy, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever, anything you can to move away. So phone, anything, all these weapons of mass distraction. So here's the practice and how it ties into non duality. The next time you have this heartbreak, feel it as fully as you possibly can.

Instead of trying to run away from it, go 100 percent into it.

Tungpa Rinpoche said, there is no way out. The magic is to discover that there's a way in. So it doesn't matter. Fill in the blank. But you have a heartbreak experience. Don't try to dilute it. And this is what we do. We dilute it because it's too intense for ego. It's too bright. Go into it. Dissolve into it.

Become one with that unwanted experience. And most people are going to say, Okay, well I was with this guy until he started talking about this BS. Are you telling me that you want me to be one with my pain, with my heartbreak, with all these unwanted experiences? And I'm saying yes. Because and check this out.

Don't take my word for it. See if it's not true. If you become one with your heartbreak or your pain, there's no one to hurt. There's no one there to feel the heartbreak. This is the actual immediate practice of non duality on the spot. The absolute, here's the, here's the punchline. The absolute experience of duality is nonduality.

Let me say that again.

Kate Shepherd: Yeah.

andrew holecek: The absolute experience of duality is nonduality. Oh, wow. If this doesn't give you a cardiac arrest, I don't know what does. So this ties in and immediately gives you the ability to practice non duality. Stop practicing duality by breaking away and distracting. That's the practice of duality.

Stop. Shamatha, if you know the terms, turn directly into it. Vipassana, look, step into it, become one with it. If you allow yourself to go and experience Whatever you're experiencing, it doesn't matter the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn't matter. Experience it 100 percent without reference, without contraction, and you will discover that's nonduality.

And so therefore, my God, this changes everything. This means my pain becomes spiritual. Matter becomes spiritual. Heartbreak becomes spiritual. Everything becomes spiritual because you're no longer making it not. You're no longer contracting away from it. Not only is this tremendously empowering and liberating, it really brings forth the immediacy like we were talking about earlier.

This is the way you practice the immediacy of the awakened state. You know, through the map, this is it. It's true. This is it right here. You are in Nirvana. This is it. What am I doing that doesn't allow me to discover and see that? Well, my lack of full participation in this experience, the contraction away from it.

And in that very moment of contraction, distraction, avoidance, right, which is all based on ego, you're creating some sorrow moment to moment. And this is happening so fast. This is where the neurosciences can come in and help us. You know, the speed of the mind is unbelievable. This flickering takes place so fast.

This pulsation of consciousness takes place so fast that we actually don't see the immediacy of how it is that we're creating duality moment to moment. And so if duality, space, time, causality are all constructs, the physicist will tell you this, then if they're constructs, they can be deconstructed. What do you do?

Open! Relax! Embrace whatever arises 100%. You're going to disappear, the sense of other is going to disappear, and you're going to unite with the dualistic world, and in that moment achieve non duality. Not even achieve it, that's a mistake. You can't achieve something you already have.

You're going, you're going to experience it. You're going to recognize it.

Kate Shepherd: So that's what we're practicing for. So meditation feels like kind of like if you've got a track meet coming up and that moment you just described is the event. Meditation feels like all the practices you do, right? Is that, is that what we're practicing for when we're in meditation?

andrew holecek: It depends on which meditation you're talking about, Kate. So the, you know, meditation is like sport. It's a multivalent term. So when you say sport, there's hundreds of sports. What are you talking about?

So when you say meditation, this is why I'm writing all these. I mean, I've written nine books. Now they're all on meditation.

when people say meditation, like what meditation are you talking about? If you're talking about mindfulness, bravo, fantastic, very specific domain of applicability. If you're talking about open awareness or insight meditation or analytic meditation or meta, another form of meditation with tremendous applicability.

But all these practices are basically designed to open us to the complete spectrum of our being. to allow us to relate skillfully to the contents of our minds and hearts, and then by immediate implication, the so called external world altogether. So I'll back up and put it back in your court. When you're using that word meditation, maybe a little bit more clear to me about what type of meditation are you referring to?

Mindfulness.

Kate Shepherd: who probably think of meditation as, Mindfulness

it gives me another question for you, which is what is a good formula for somebody who's listening to this going, okay, like I want a little bit more of what he's talking about. I want to contract less. I want to experience more reality and more of myself and more of my creativity and more of what is here that I keep covering up with this accidental programming. That's not my fault. Like, you know, I just lived my

life and here I am. Thank you

andrew holecek: Yeah, you are not your fault. I love that. That's a good one.

Kate Shepherd: Well, I mean, a lot of our, a lot, this personality and the ego that we develop, it does happen, uh, by default, you know, it just sort of seems to get built like a Lego, Lego wall that

andrew holecek: Well,

you want it? Let me let me tell you where it comes from. Can I say just one thing about this? So there's there's several vectors associated here and then and then I will return to your question about like what what someone can do. Again, if you if you really abide by karmic theory principles of rebirth and that sort of thing.

So they're getting a little bit wide cosmological thing. A lot of people don't subscribe to this. But, you know, according to most of the non dual world wisdom traditions, you don't quite come into this world with a clean slate. it's, it's exactly the type of experience that happens when you enter the dream arena.

You don't enter the dream arena with a clean slate. You come in with habituations and the patterns and the predispositions of your day. Well, so you come into this world with a particular set of habit patterns. And this gets really, really deep. This is where the death and dying literature has some super profound things to say.

But again, I don't want to have too much roadkill, so I'll be a little careful here. You come into this world, you have a particular set of dispositions already inherent in the fact that you're in this particular body. But now check this next thing out. This is a mind bender. So, basically from age zero to age seven, roughly, um, this is where a tiny bit of neuroscience can really help.

Basically from age zero to two, again, kind of shady gray area, you're mostly in what's called delta states of brain frequency. This is the delta waves, zero to four cycles or four or four Hertz per second. This is the type of experience we have every night. When we're in deep dreamless sleep, and so for the first number of months and years, this is why babies are, what are they doing?

They're sleeping all the time because they're in Delta human growth hormone is released. All these amazing generative restorative processes are taking place because they're principally in Delta. The really interesting thing is roughly from age 2 to 7, you're in Theta. Now, Theta is super interesting. for listening.

This is also recapitulated every night when you go through the sleeping dreaming cycle. The same kind of fractal process is reiterated every night. Well, when you're in theta, this is uh, four to, um, four to eight hertz. This is the, the dimension, uh, frequency of mind experience that hypnotists will take you into to bring about their post hypnotic suggestions.

So just think about this for a second. This is mind bending. Basically from age zero to seven, this is not a metaphor. You are literally being hypnotized. You're literally being hypnotized by your families of origin, by your peers, your culture, your world. And basically then you, you soak in, you have no choice.

You have no choice, but to basically literally learn how to perceive the world from others around you. The brain is so sophisticated. That the human brain can literally learn perceptions from other people. So we literally are trained. to learn to see the world in this dualistic samsaric way. It's part, even considering, not considering the karmic rebirth thing, just from ground zero here.

And so then what happens, you know, for the rest of your life, the rest of your life is a readout of these loops of these programs. And this is why whenever you go to a therapist, they may not have this data, but what are they going to tell you? Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your families of origin.

Tell me about what you did at the stem cell level of your life. And you can spend an entire life. In fact, we do basically playing out these, um, post hypnotic suggestions that have been installed in our unconscious mind from age zero to seven. So give me a break. Talk about the forces of the dark side, cut yourself some slack.

So this is part of the 95 percent of the unconscious mind that obscures all the stuff that we're talking about. And so we're basically running on automatic ignorance where we're, this is what it means to be asleep. This is what it means to be sleepwalking, forgive them father for they know not what they do.

We're living our lives on these readout patterns. So in terms of how to work with this, um, so much to say here, this is an instance of shameless self promotion. So my last two books are about this, right? The, the one that came out last year on reverse meditation. This book, It's the first time I've ever really talked at length about the process of contraction and openness.

Um, I view contraction and openness as the kind of the combustion cycle of the whole path. It's just a massive Explanatory, process for what describes so much in the world. So to really learn about contraction, that's a great place to go because that particular process is described in tremendous detail.

Um, and then the antidote to it, the practice of open awareness is described. Now, this is a genius meditation that's not taught enough in the West. That is unbelievably powerful for releasing these contractions and opening opening. The other one that's just coming out, um, this summer is, um, I'm mindful.

Now, what moving beyond mindfulness to meet the modern world? This is where in relatively short, this is my most user friendly public book. I talk about, I don't know, 12, 15 meditations that are post mindfulness meditations that transcend, but include mindfulness that allow people to work with lots of what we're talking about here.

using a host of meditative traditions that basically unfold these principles and allow you to actually practice them. So that I want to say this right at the outset, I'm sitting here flapping my lips, blowing out all the smoke. I mean, I'm good at this stuff. I love it, right? I mean, this is just kind of what I do for my day job.

But the most important thing, and I have to really put an emphasis on this, even though I amspeeding through all this material, by far the most important thing you can do are these meditations. And so, both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions have this threefold, um, kind of pedagogical approach, or this learning approach, as you may have heard of it, hearing, contemplating, meditating.

ingest, digest, metabolize. This is super important because otherwise I'm sitting here for an hour and I'm just blowing out all this stuff. It's all mere philosophy. It's all mere theory.

So all this stuff about quantum theory and you name it, it's all about supporting this view.

How do you wake up to the true dimension of your being? So you start with all this information, that's the hearing part, but we got to be really careful in this age of information. Um, we confuse information for experience. Let me say that again. We confuse information for experience. TMI is a major issue.

And so we don't really learn how to walk the talk. Second step, slow down. Pause. Contemplate. Does this speak to me? Does this relate to my lived experience? So you massage the teachings. You allow them to drop less conceptual, more embodied. You're testing them. Is it true? Is it true? Wow, maybe, yeah, it kind of seems to be true. Drop even further. This is the process of waking down into the wisdom of your body.

Ingest, digest, meditation, metabolize. now it's in your body. Now you're really getting it. And this is, you know, you're now it's, it's, it's non conceptual. See, when you're up here, it's all conceptual. As you start to drop down, it's like a filtration and purification system.

that's where you're changed. You change when you feel things. And so you stay, you work, you incorporate, and then what happens is you literally, not metaphorically, you literally become the teachings. You've literally incorporated the teachings.

And so, if you've been around great masters like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Karmapa, the great spiritual beings, they don't have to say a word to transmit these teachings. Because they live them. They're breathing them. They are the teachings. And so this is incredibly important. Especially when I'm doing somewhat speedy, clippy podcasts, which I love doing.

my whole thing is like, Throw all this stuff away. Contemplate. Meditate. Get it into your system. I mean, I've done 40, 000 hours of meditation. There's a reason I do it because this is by far the most transformative thing you can do. So everything I do is really to inspire people to get on some level of inner work.

I don't care what you call it. I like the word meditation, but some level of interiority, some level of inner work to find out what is really going on here. Because when you do this again, tying it in to the earlier riff about the immediacy. This is where the remembrance comes from. Aristotle talked about it as an analysis.

The real journey of the path is recollection. Plato knew this. It's a process of discovery. And so you learn all this stuff and then you're literally discovering, uncovering. Your body knows this. Your body knows all these truths. And so if you wake down into the center of your centerless self, what are you going to find there?

Nothing and everything. You'll find the Buddha, you'll find Christ, you'll find all the divine beings. These gods and goddesses and deities are the essence of who you really are. So this is another way, we talked a little bit about the kind of external manifestation of the immediacy of it. The internal embodied manifestation is just wake down into who you are right now.

Be fully human. This is come back to the 100%. Of, uh, participation and experience. Be human, 100%. And you may find that by being human 100 percent you are Buddha. You just have to be who you are right now with all your warts and all your foibles and all your faculties and all your pain be with who you are right now.

100%. That's Buddha. That's who you are. It's right here.

Kate Shepherd: It's, it's, it all sounds so much easier than, you know, okay, I'll go do that. And then you go and sit down and do that. And you're like, no, I can't. I'll just,

maybe I'll edit out that part or this part or that

part. Or Right.

I guess That's the work, right? What's your, what is your meditation practice look like these days?

andrew holecek: my goodness. You know, I've been so blessed, Kate. You know, this is the reason I drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid and also Nandu Shaiva Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism. I love these two traditions, um, but my, my so called facility is in Tibetan Buddhism. And the reason I drink this Kool Aid is because it has so many skillful means, it has so many meditations, um, Dream yoga, sleep yoga, body yoga, sexual.

I mean, if there's an experience, a state of mind, these, these two traditions, they have a practice for it. So I, I literally Kate, I, I, I practice under all like every particular human experience. I have a meditation for it, but my big thing these days is, um, and this is may, may take us. This is the next series of books I'm writing.

Um, I'm super interested in, in, um, practicing and what's called dark retreat, doing really intensive dark. In fact, it's right here. Right behind this curtain is my little dark holding cell. So this may be like, Oh God, no. And I know this guy is a really weird, um,

there's true.

Kate Shepherd: what it is.

andrew holecek: Yeah, it's a very powerful practice.

That's basically like meditation on steroids. Um, it's just an incredibly intensive, concentrated way to work about everything I've talked about in the last hour plus, um, in really restricted, highly controlled, sensory deprived environments.

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: where basically you're working with mind and heart in the most non distracted way possible.

And so we talked earlier about distraction, contraction, all these things. Absolutely everything that I've talked about in the last hour goes into so called hyperdrive or is, is really, really worked with. In the dark and darkness. And so this is the Greeks did it. You'll find this in the ancient Taoist traditions.

You'll find it in Columbia and shamanistic traditions, but it's really big in Tibetan Buddhism. Um, and I've been mum about this. I've been doing this for decades, but I'm now for the 1st time talking and writing about it because it's getting a lot of press and some of it's not that great. And so, as a way psychedelics, 50 years ago, psychedelics were really screwed up 50 years ago.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I see very similar parallels to dark practice that if it isn't done right, if the right guardrails put up, um, it's going to be problematic. So I'm working with a bunch of scientists. We're going to be doing some studies. But that's like my main retreat practice now. I go into a completely secluded dark cave or cabin for a really long time to work at my mind in a really intense, non distracted, concentrated way.

And it's the biggest bang for my buck in terms of the practices that I've ever done. So, it's basically everything I've talked about is just intense, that's all. It's nothing special, there's nothing magical about it. It's just intense, um, because you can't move, you can't distract yourself, mind becomes reality, appearance has no meaning.

I mean, it is beyond profound.

Kate Shepherd: I'm thinking about that. Um, I don't know the name of it, but there's, I think it's owned by, maybe it's Microsoft owns that space where it's like, it's completely dark and it's completely, it's really, really soundproofed. So when you go

andrew holecek: Oh, cool.

Kate Shepherd: Um, you, and

andrew holecek: Oh, I didn't know

Kate Shepherd: there for more than a minute.

Like there's, cause you can hear your heartbeat. You can

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have these chambers.

Yeah, cool.

Kate Shepherd: like a really trippy, maybe that's your next thing. Um,

andrew holecek: Well, yeah, I mean, that's, well, that's actually an interesting point because it's one reason I was slightly hesitant to even say it because it can appear kind of trippy. It can appear like, Ooh, why, like, really, why are you doing this? So part of the reason I'm mentioning it now is because it is getting a lot of press a lot of athletes.

I mean, the two NBA. Superstar players, Dwight Howard, Rudy Gobert, defensive players of the year, both my names are Dark Ritchie. They're starting to talk about Aaron Rodgers, writers, authors, the word is getting out. And on one level, it's great. On another level, it's not so great. Um, because it can be a little sensationalized.

Um, you can go in there with a completely wrong kind of attitude and approach. And you can hurt yourself, um,

because it's just so intense.

Kate Shepherd: I recently talked to, um, to Nate Klemp. Do you know Nate Klemp?

andrew holecek: Uh, is hein Boulder? I think I

know.

Kate Shepherd: Boulder. He just, he has a new book out called Open

Yeah, he, um, so he, I mean, at the very beginning of his book, he's talking about how, you know, he want, we're living in a really distracted world and how can we, you know, nobody can really even feel an idle moment without trying to escape from it.

And what do we do basically? So he wanted to go on this journey to figure out how to answer that question. And a friend of his on a hike one day said to him, well, okay, well, if you're going to open to everything, what about psychedelic experiences? And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, that's, that's, that's, that's not for me. And through the course of his, the next couple of years, he ended up going down this road where he ended up doing ketamine assisted psychotherapy.

andrew holecek: Yeah,

sure. Good stuff.

Kate Shepherd: like anything though. I think, you know, you could take a bunch of ketamine at home or at a party and if the context is wrong, you could really hurt yourself.

You know, or if you

get the wrong hypnotherapist, you know, or even a massage, I mean, I've gotten hurt just getting a massage at a, you know, regular like massage therapy place. Like if somebody doesn't really know what they're doing, if they're not a good guide, and for a lot of these things, I think we probably do need a guide. You

can get hurt. So I guess it's just like, it's

andrew holecek: It's the same. That's well said. It's totally spot on. These are all just tools. They're, I mean, I don't really like to use the word spiritual technology, but I think you get the idea.

Darkness is fundamentally neutral. I mean, these agents are all a lot of them are fundamentally neutral. Um, just like technologies are neutral.

It's just how you use them. It's how you engage in them. Psychedelics. I used to be ultra purist conservative. totally change my tune with these agents, I think they absolutely have a place.

And so this again ties into what we talked about at the outset, is that all these, anything that arises can be used as a skillful means, anything.

And so there are certain types of methods that I think are particularly applicable in this day and age. I think psychedelics are one. I think they have tremendous potential if they're used properly. Um, I'll mark my words on this. I think in 10 years, you're going to see a revolution because of the dark practices, especially when we start collecting our data and publishing it.

Kate Shepherd: You take it in and then you are a finely tuned instrument regardless of what you believe about yourself. And if you take something in and you just ask yourself really honestly, is this the right thing? Like, I feel like the answer is gonna be inside of you. For you, you,

andrew holecek: yeah, if you can, if you trust it, yeah, the ultimate teacher is within. If you're open to that voice,

Yeah.

if you listen to that right voice and you connect to it, yeah. That's the other thing connected to this waking down process, you know, that fundamentally the ultimate teacher is within your heart. That's really where you want to take ultimate refuge and all these other provisional teachers and teachings and everything.

They're all fundamentally empowering and directing you to the center of yourself, where you can listen to your own innate, inherent wisdom. And then you put people like me completely out of business. I mean, that's, that's the best thing you could possibly do is you, you become your own guide, your own guru.

You don't need any of these other things. But until then, people can help you. They can also hurt you. Um, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, but you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by working with somebody that you trust that can guide you. But anybody who's worth their salt will basically tell you my highest aspiration is to put myself out of work, where you just turn within, discover your own awakened properties, and you realize, you know, you're the teacher.

Um, so, but because again, like you were talking about earlier, because of our enculturation, the Abrahamic traditions and the original notion of original sin, We have this kind of poverty mentality that we have to reach some level of purity or heaven outside of us. Who says

Kate Shepherd: Well, that

conditioning between two and seven, I guess, I'm guessing that's who says,

andrew holecek: spot on,

spot on. And so the so called non theistic traditions, which to me are more empowering, makes more sense to me. Again, I categorically dismissing these. There's, there's room at the table for all these skillful means, but, uh,

Kate Shepherd: we go back and,

and re, that two, that two year, there were that years between two and seven, I think you

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, right.

Kate Shepherd: Is it possible to actually go back and reprogram ourselves? Or is

that just done? That

andrew holecek: You can't go back in time. But what you can do is you can work with the dimensions of your being where that history is lodged. Well, where is that history? It's in your unconscious mind. Where is your unconscious mind? It's your body. Your body is your unconscious mind. So the way you unearth it, is you do this archaeology, this excavation project, by dropping into the sedimentation levels of your own heart and mind.

And if you do this kind of inner work, then you will actually find either through therapy, the deep inner work of these, meditations, certain psychedelics like ketamine and whatnot, psychedelic assisted, um, psilocybin therapy.

You bring these unconscious processes into the light of consciousness. That's a massive part of the psychospiritual path. So you don't have to go back to the past because you can't. You go down within yourself because that's where the past is stored.

, the habit patterns that are burned into your unconscious body and mind.

All that stuff out of sight is not out of mind. Out of sight is into the unconscious mind, into the refuse heap of the darkness of the unconscious mind.

And there it festers and lurks as part of this 95 percent that dictates your life. Do you think you have free will? No way. You think you're living your life based on the dictates of your own whatever? No way. This is what it means to be asleep. So, you work with the history as it's lodged in your unconscious body mind.

, you do the trauma work, you do the meditation, you basically decondition, liberate yourself from all these habit patterns that are burned into your hard drive. And then guess what happens? It really gets lighter, freer, more open. You have more energy.

Because all this stuff is, is also what locks down the channel systems in your subtle body. That's all the energy that makes us feel stuck and trapped. And this is why the deep inner work is worth it. Because otherwise, like we said, way back, everything else is a substitute gratification. And then all this energy that's, that's trapped up in our bodies from all this rejection, you know, every time we say no, we're throwing that rejected experience into our unconscious mind.

So we have to open, open meditation, this habituation to openness. It's not just opening your mind, it's opening your heart, it's opening your body, and then all this energy comes up, you literally become lighter, it's a somatic reference to enlightenment, you feel freer, more energetic, because these energies have just been released through this process of opening.

Kate Shepherd: I wanted to ask you about lucid dreaming.

What is it? And how do we, how do we benefit from it? And what, how do we get there?

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a really big, wonderful big topic. , I Work with my languaging five nocturnal meditations.

Just to give listeners a sense of what they are. Um, liminal dreaming, number one, lucid dreaming, number two, dream yoga, number three, um, What's called sleep yoga connected to yoga, Nidra number four, and then art of yoga, the death practice is number five. And so lucid dreaming for those who may not be familiar with it, it was this magical state.

Um, lucidity is basically a code word for awareness. So lucid dream is a dream where you're aware that you're dreaming while you're still in the dream. So something will clue you into the fact that you're dreaming while you're in a dream, you attain consciousness, lucidity, you're fully awake. I'm dreaming, but you're still in the dream.

And so connecting it because the topic is so big, connecting it to some of what we talked about. One of the reasons you want to explore this is because it provides a very rare opportunity where the conscious mind can meet the unconscious directly. That's what makes it so transformative.

The practice is to engage that lucidity, engage the contents of your dream. And then, um, always helpful to remember what are dreams made of? Well, they're made of your mind. You're just working with your mind in this really distilled environment.

Okay. And so then you work to transform it, transform the contents of your dream. There's, you know, nine stages here going from somewhat accessible to really super deep and quite profound. But the idea is to, is to take, um, and transform the contents of your unconscious mind and then take the insights from the dream arena and bring them back with you into daily life.

Lucid dreaming leads to lucid living.

Um, once you realize that fundamentally. This is just a dream. So there's just so much to say here, but I'm really big on this because, um, it's a form of, you know, I talk about playfully night school, you know, there's so much you can do in the dream arena. And here's some basic numbers.

We enter. The dream world about half a million times during the course of a life about 25 percent of our nighttime experience is spent in REM sleep. That's mostly when we dream. That's about a month a year. That's over six years in an average life. You can get a PhD in less than six years. So if you can maintain lucidity in this kind of night school, not only do you bring more years to your life, while you're also working with a deeper foundational dimension of your being, the tantric texts tell you that the practices you do, your meditations that you do in the dream state, are seven to nine times more transformative.

They're more efficacious than what you do in the waking state because they're more foundational. And so you can have like what's called a hyperlucid dream, um, which is a dream that's more real than this. You know, you wake up from one of those game changing dreams. This appears to be the foggy dream.

You have one of those.

They'll change. It'll change your life.

It's like having a near death experience. You don't need to have a near death experience over and over. You just need one. Your life has changed forever.

And so, um, I'm really big on this because life is short. I want to extract every essence I can out of this life.

And so if I can learn how to meditate and practice while I'm sleeping and dreaming, uh, wow, I'm, I'm all for it.

Kate Shepherd: What would be a good place for somebody to start? So you said you've written a couple of books. Is there, are there practices in there that we

andrew holecek: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Three books, um, and they're somewhat in order. So the first more accessible book in this dream trilogy is my Haberdasher Press book. Um, The Lucid Dreaming Workbook,

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: a guide by, step by step guide to mastering your dream life. This is a workbook that has all kinds of exercises and things you can fill in.

That's a great place to start,

really easy read, um, super simple, super easy. The next book is a deeper dive dream yoga, illuminating your life through lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep. That's a quite a bit deeper dive. And then the third one's called Dreams of Light, the profound daytime practice of illusory form.

This is where I bring in a really beautiful, sophisticated daytime practice. It's called Lulus Reform. This one's pretty, this is the deepest of my books. Um, pretty profound about the, the light nature reality, the nature of the light of the mind. It gets pretty deep. So, I recommend people start with the Harvard Press workbook.

And then I also have a platform. Thanks for the opportunity to put in my Kool Aid stand. The platform is called Night Club. We started it like, 5 years ago. It's a really robust, super active program platform. We have like, 5 events a week

with all kinds of guests, faculty and lectures and book study groups and meditation.

It's a super active platform.

for anybody interested in this arena from entry level to really pretty deep levels. And so, that's probably a really

Kate Shepherd: That's a great start. What's

something that I could do tonight when I went to bed tonight? What's something, one little simple thing I could start to

andrew holecek: Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly powerful. Intentionality is massive. Intention.

Intention. The word literally means to stretch towards. And so what you're trying to do with the lucid dream is a kind of consciousness hacking You're trying to hack into previously restricted, um, domains of consciousness, in this case, the dream arena.

And one way to do that is to incubate and set the intention. Literally, literally, heartfelt, not just flapping your lips, heartfelt. Tonight, I'm going to have many dreams. Tonight, I'm going to remember my dreams. Tonight, I'm going to wake up in my dreams and really mean it. And then tonight when you lie down, meditation is great to settle you, reinstate this almost like a mantra.

As you're falling asleep, let that intentionality kind of perfume the night. And then it will, it will infiltrate, perfume your, your sleeping, dreaming mind. And you might be surprised, just this one technique alone, if you really lean into it with real heartfelt intentionality, it's, it's pretty powerful.

That alone will help.

Kate Shepherd: I'm excited to go to

bed tonight.

If you had this magical billboard that all these people who were out there, you know, wanting to connect with a truer version of themselves, wanting to find their creativity and trust it, really trust this inner self that we have. But for all of the conditioning that you talked about that we've been through, the hypnosis we go through from the time that we're two to the time that we're seven, the layers of limiting belief, the culture around us that tells us it's not true, it's not available, can't have it,

um, It stops them from believing that it's possible, but you could put this message on this billboard and it would reach into their hearts and inspire them to believe that it was possible for them.

What would you, what would your words be to them?

andrew holecek: I keep it completely blank.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I leave it completely open. Meditation is habituation to openness. And I would let it just basically stop their minds. And say, there's nothing there, right? By doing nothing, nothing is left undone. I would keep it completely blank,

where people come across it and they just want, Ah!

Right there in that moment, they can touch reality. They don't need more words. They don't need more teachings. They need to connect to the openness and the spaciousness of their own hearts and minds. So I, I would just leave it utterly. Best thing to do is actually have it blank and then even have the blank world just like fall back.

Thank you.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm. Real nothingness.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Just like boom. That's that's a transmission right there.

Kate Shepherd: I love it. Thank you. Thank you for your time today.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for a great, very thoughtful questions. I super appreciate it. I'd like to spend some time with you, Kate.

​
Kate Shepherd: Who are you? What is your work in the world? What's your mission here on on earth?

andrew holecek: I guess you could talk about this from a relative and absolute perspective on an absolute perspective. My. I guess I'm on this planet just to basically wake up.

what that means we could talk about that, you know, just to become aware, completely 100 percent aware. We can riff on this on the relationship to the unconscious to conscious mind and the actual basis of creativity. I explore a lot of this actually. So on an absolute level, to wake up and help others.

I mean, it may sound kind of cliche. but I think what waking up really involves is discovering is. Ramana Maharshi said so beautifully, when he was asked, how do you help others? He said, what others? And so I think that's really quite beautiful. So waking up, that's wisdom, but wisdom is incomplete if it doesn't manifest immediately as compassion.

Kate Shepherd: And so to wake up and help others is, I mean, that's like the only game in town and helping others it's just spontaneous creativity. It's just kind of what you do. It's such a potent image I think a lot of us, we get lost, right? We're like, okay, well, I'm here. I'm having this life. I know I have this call. Like, I think a lot of us can relate to what you said about being in service. Like we,

that we have this drive to, I mean, we're relational beings and we have this, it's deeply instinctual to want to be in service and to help but then we're also living in this very, contracted modern world where we're

supposed to sort of look out for and, and how do you, how do you live the two?

andrew holecek: when you're talking about this longing and this quest and like what it is that we're really after, I think, Fundamentally, we're looking for some sense of fullness, completeness, and if that particular kind of pressure, so to speak, for resolution isn't understood, that's the conventional pursuit of happiness.

When that becomes. understood when that unconscious process is brought into the light of consciousness, and that becomes the conscious pursuit of awakening. So it's the same fundamental generative creative impulse, but one is filtered through all these sedimentation levels of the unconscious mind that leads to all these leads, all these inauthentic levels of satisfaction.

we're basically eating the menu instead of the meal and we're getting fat instead of getting full. And so if we understand this, then Well, okay, um, let's take this journey consciously, volitionally. Let's, let's wake up, realize that's really what's happening, that's really what's going on.

And this is, uh, you can explore this using principles of lucidity like I do in lucid dreaming. Meditation helps you do this, psychedelics help you do it.

Kate Shepherd: Meditation is a, is a big part of your, so you give workshops and you write and how else do you bring that work to life in the world?

andrew holecek: I used to be a classical pianist. So, I mean, I used to do it with my music, but, um, well, not so much. It's hard to do that professionally. So principally, uh, through my writing, through my teaching, through my programs, um, through platforms, I have a number of online platforms where we do it. I have my own podcast that we did a role with, and then what's called my club, which is a supportive platform for the nocturnal meditations.

I also work a lot, um, because I am born as a Westerner, even though my heart is in the so called East, uh, the wisdom traditions, I am, had this particular incarnation that I'm rolling with. And so I work a ton with the scientific community. I'm always either helping design studies, writing science, working with scientists,

Kate Shepherd: What are some of

those blind spots?

andrew holecek: We can talk about this on two levels. there are various, various forms of reductionism, some of which are very healthy.

Not all reductionism is problematic. to reduce complexity into fundamental, simple iterative principles is healthy reductionism, but there's also pathological reductionism, which we know in the West is, you know, Um, materialism,

So that's pathological reductionism. That's obviously a blind spot. Well, the East has its own set of blind spots. One somewhat, um, they wouldn't use this languaging because that's not part of the system is this kind of idealistic reductionism in the sense of philosophical idealism.

and reducing everything to karma. I think that's a fundamental blind spot in, in the traditions because you, you know, everything arises because of causes and conditions. Karma is associated with causes, causes and conditions, and therefore everything is karma. No, it's not. So I think that's a blind spot.

there's a big difference between states of consciousness and structures of consciousness. And the East very elegantly explores states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep, and the process of what Welwood called, waking up.

That's really the, the great gift of the so called East, waking into, increased heightened levels of states of consciousness. Well, that particular approach, is completely unaware of structures of consciousness, um, developmentalism, the vector of growing up.

You cannot introspect those. You don't look at them. You look through them. And so these are archetypal, deep pathological blind spots. And this is, this is the only thing I, I can come across that can any way explain all the, abuses and the sex scandals and all the ridiculous stuff that will never end in the spiritual community.

Because you can have a really high, level experience. It's not even stable as a realization. But let's just say you have a high level spiritual experience. It's a state experience. Well, unless you basically stay in silence, Which the Buddha did for 49 days, basically.

The minute you move, the minute you open your mouth, you have no choice, none, but to express your realization through your structural level of development. And this is where the crapshow starts. Because you can have an authentic high level turiya, dharmakaya, whatever term you want to use. You get it.

You've seen reality. But that does not necessarily bring with it in that in its wake double entendre intended. It doesn't bring with you this ability to see through these developmental structures. And so this is where all the trouble happens. Um, all the patriarchy, all the blind spots. And again, I say this with such homage because I'm a deep student of the wisdom traditions.

I do, I do drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid. But I, you know, I've been behind the curtains. I've been behind the scenes. Um, I know what goes on behind closed doors. And some of it is like, boy, this isn't very awake. This isn't very spiritual. How do you explain that? So that's a major blind

Kate Shepherd: I think the reason it's dangerous is that there's a kernel of truth in the thing that's being expressed, even though it comes through that, the developmental limitations of that

andrew holecek: Oh, for sure.

Oh yeah.

Kate Shepherd: it.

And so somebody who's receiving that goes, Oh, on one level, this is, this totally feels true.

I better believe it. But then you have to take with it all the things that come through. So it's like, so how do we, how do we make sense and share meaning? Of the wonder of it all, of the mystery of it all, of the, of this infinite intelligence that I was talking about at the top of our conversation that's animating the universe.

Like there's no doubt that there's an alive, intelligent something doing all of this, running the show, let's say. How do we share meaning about that without falling into these, you know, reductionist obstacles?

andrew holecek: Yeah.

Kate Shepherd: we, how do we do it?

andrew holecek: Yeah. Well, let me say something very quickly before we get to that, I have to throw this in because it's so important. It's not always the, the, the fault of the master. So called spiritual master, because another thing that happens, um, in, in basic, almost even Freudian psychodynamic approaches.

Is, uh, transference, countertransference, projection. And so there's all, all this stuff. You know, we project on one level. You have to, you have to give these, these, so-called masters, a little bit of slack

because we come in there and we, we basically project the crap out of 'em. This is, this is not shadow boxing, this is shadow hugging.

So we project, we give away these amazing qualities within us. We throw that onto the teacher. And so we basically fall in love with our golden shadows. And so this is another blind spot of the East. This whole transference, counter transference, projection thing that happens. That is also, this takes a little bit of responsibility back onto the student.

Therefore, it's not all the teacher that's gone to hell. The student is bought into it as well. They're projecting. They're not asking the right questions. And so they contribute to it as well. So I think I wanted to throw that in because it's not always just the master that goes astray. Now, in terms of the other question, that's a beautiful one.

Um, this is the essence of upaya in Sanskrit, skillful means is, is fundamentally, how do you communicate this level of truth and reality? Well, a lot of it in my experience, um, depends on your sensitivity and openness to the conditions in which you are embedded. Um, real skillful means is not meeting people where you're at.

Real skillful means is meeting people where they're at. And so that's where the transmission, the communication, it's like, uh, um, George Bernard Shaw said so beautifully. I love this. The biggest problem in communication. Is the illusion that it has been accomplished. I love that that's so great. And so here we come in, you know, we've got our own particular favorite whatever this is a subtle form of reductionism.

Oh, my particular path will explain it all my body work will deal with it, my whatever will deal with it. Well, it's going to deal with part of it. So this is where integral systemic holistic thinking, um, in particular, I'm a huge fan of integral theory, really comes into play. And so to me, for someone who really wants to be a skilled communicator at these deepest levels, it's really incumbent upon them to learn as much as they possibly can about the culture in which they're embedded.

Like in the West, um, psychospiritual principles are really being culturally translated through. Science, and in particular, neuroscience and psychology. And so, and so certainly it's not philosophy, but Therefore, I think if you really want to help people and communicate outside of people inside your own tribe, you know, drink your own Kool Aid, boy, learn about them.

Learn about what makes them tick. Learn about what communicates with them. And so this is why I love, I mean, look at all these silly books behind me. I read all this stuff. partly because I have an insatiable appetite to learn. But also, when I talk to a quantum physicist, I can maybe say something about quantum field theory and quantum entanglement and how that relates to principles of non duality.

When I talk to a neuroscientist, I can talk a little bit about neuroplasticity and the principles of transformation. When I talk to a psychologist, maybe I can say, well, that psychology has something to do with The eighth consciousness of Tibetan Buddhism. And so to me, this is what's super exciting, exciting, and also challenging for any translator communicator is actually taking the trouble.

And this is why I love people like as radical as they can be trunk bar Rinpoche, other really amazing masters, controversial. They came into the West. They didn't come in with their, I mean, they did come in with their robes and stuff, but they realized that ain't working.

They took the trouble to learn our language, to learn our crazy, ridiculous ways.

They drank, they smoked, they did all the silly things that we do. And hence they said, Oh, I can't be a real master. You know, well, what they were doing is like, they're, they're like, you know, they're incredibly attentive students of reality. And so they realize I, in order to reach these peeps, I have to meet them where they're at, not where I'm at.

So I think I'll pause for a second here, because I get pretty excited about this, but. This is where real authentic communication, and this is where your art comes in. I mean, if you really want to communicate with people, you reach them at these levels, and it's not always that real transformation is not going to take place from here.

You know, the intellectual philosophical, whatever, blah, blah, blah is just an avenue for the transformation that takes place with full embodiment. I mean, we, we transform when we feel things.

So the real, the real effective transmute communicators. are the artists, the musicians, the poets that help people feel.

They help them literally get in touch, in contact with reality. And that's an affective expression of bliss and delight. And so to me, along those two lines, you know, somewhere in there comes authentic communication of these, um, these transpersonal principles. But obviously it's not easy because the minute you open your mouth, And you're trying to explore non duality through a, through an inherently dualistic mechanism like language.

Well, good luck. And then you're an artist, I'm a musician. This is where the arts come into play. Um, you're more in contact with truth and the arts than you are in the sciences, in my opinion.

Kate Shepherd: How do we come into contact with that part in ourselves where the honest expression can come from?

andrew holecek: Get out of the way. There's two ways, basically just get out of the way. So this, this is actually, these are wonderful comments and questions. So there's, there's two ways to look at the whole, at least in my experience, the whole kind of psycho spiritual world. Path awakening thing. One is, um, let's, let's just say with meditation, um, completely authentic relative approach to path of effort is you engage in all these meditations.

And I'm big into this. I've been doing this for 50 years. I did a three year retreat. I mean, I've done 50, 100, 200 meditations. They're brilliant. And so at one level you do those and just like any other art or craft or proficiency, the more you do it, the better you get. So this is the process of accretion accumulation.

Well, the more absolute approach is, , the path of effortlessness and the path of opening and discovery that these qualities that we're seemingly trying to cultivate. They're actually inherent properties of the awakened mind. And so in this regard, I mean, really, we could, I'm going to say this, we could both give ourselves the afternoon off, um, conversations over.

The only thing you have to do, I'm not kidding. I'm not being smart here. It's open. Relax. That's it. Done deal. Case is over. Path is over. That's it.

we have this thing we, it's called the path. But on a, on a one level, you don't need it. The two biggest problems with the spiritual path, you want to know what they are?

Number one, use of the word spiritual.

Kate Shepherd: yeah,

andrew holecek: Why? Because if it's spiritual, then it's not merely in contrast to material, it's in opposition to it. And then you run into all these spiritual materialism, spiritual bypass pathologies, where spirituality is put in contradistinction and opposition to materiality.

Then what do you do with your body? What do you do with the world? What do you do with technology? What do you do with form? So that's the first problem. Second problem is, like, number one problem in the spiritual path is spiritual. Number two, path. Outside of that, it's perfect, right? So path to where? On a relative level, this ties into what I said earlier, yes, a path to awakening, a journey to awakening, for sure.

On a relative level, that's totally the case. Not on an absolute level. At the highest levels, striving is the only obstacle. How can you actually achieve something you already have?

So according to the non dual wisdom traditions, you already are a Buddha. You already are awake. The issue is the one of recognition.

The path is perceptual. It's not actual. Let me say that again. The path is perceptual. It's not actual. You're not going anywhere. And if you think you need to go someplace else, what are you doing? You're just rescheduling your appointment with reality. You're just deferring your awakening. You're already awake, but you don't believe it.

Why? Can't be that easy. Can't be that simple. It's got to be something else. No, you're always in nirvana. Or if you like, you know, samsara, you're always in samsara because these are just states of mind, right? So this is, I say, I say this with a little exclamation point because this is a big deal. This is a tremendous empowering proclamation.

But the only thing you have to do, hard stop, open, relax. Consequence of that is recognition. It's like it says in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, recognition and liberation are simultaneous. So I say this because again, you know, I'm on the path. I'm definitely on the path and I'm doing all these relative things.

High five. It works up to a point. And at a certain point, you have to let it all go. Um, the path of no path, the nopaya in the Hindu tradition, and realize whatever you want, you already have this. It's already there. It's a process of discovery. And so this ties into my favorite definition of meditation.

And then I'll pause. My favorite definition of meditation is habituation to openness. I just love that term.

Kate Shepherd: hmm,

andrew holecek: Habituation to openness. Because what are we habituated to Kate? We're habituated to contraction, right?

Because that's what we are. The ego, which is nothing but an arrested form of development. It's the self contraction.

It's the primorial fracture. And so if contraction is the basis of samsara and it's kissing cousin distraction, they're the same. Then the the path of the antidote. The antidote to that is what? Openness, relaxation. So that all ties in. So, what do you have to do? You just open, open, open into wider rings of being, as Rumi put it.

And then you realize, I've been in heaven from day one. I just didn't see. It was literally hiding in plain sight. What a pisser, right? So we go through all this stuff. This huge, torturous path And And

the only thing you need to do is relax.

Kate Shepherd: one of the things that was coming up for me was just. kid art, like children's art.

Why kid art is so good. We love, we're so drawn to it. It's just, it's so free. It's so, I mean, there are grownup artists who are millionaires because they've managed to stay in

that free place

of, right, of being able to express. And I think for me, I guess the challenge is I've, I've probably realized the, the, nature of myself.

I've probably realized that. That God like whatever presence a million times in my life, but it just that presence right where you're just like I can see the eyes peering out of me. I can feel myself breathing. I can see that. I am the tree. I see my connection to the infant like I mean, I have that moment every day at some point. The trick for me is remembering it. I

keep forgetting. I keep forgetting

and then I wake up again and I'm like, Oh no, I just spent the last, however, six months or six years. How do we remember? Because it does seem, it does seem too simple and we, this can apply to whether you're writing music or painting paintings or, you know, studying philosophy or, you know, I've got a path, a spiritual path. It does seem to be that it's just so simple, you just think to yourself, it can't be this. It's got to be

something more complicated than this.

andrew holecek: Yeah, I mean, the essence of spiritual practice is remembrance. I mean, really, that's it. Um, a consequence of contraction is forgetfulness. I mean, we just forget that we're awake, we forget that, that, uh, we already have everything that we could possibly want.

And so, um, distraction, forgetfulness, another way to talk about mindlessness, right? These are just the ways every time we capitulate. See, this is the thing, we're always meditating. We're always, always becoming, the word for meditation in Tibetan, the word is G O M, GOM, literally translates as to become familiar with.

So like William James says, reality is what you attend to. So if you attend to distraction, which is our default, it's literally default mode network in neurological terms. We are always practicing forgetfulness, whether we know it or not. Every time we capitulate to distraction, we're practicing forgetfulness.

We have accomplished forgetfulness. And so therefore, the antidote is working with these practices of recollection and remembrance. That's literally what the word, um, for mindfulness in Tibetan, the word is dream up means to recollect. so you work with this in a twofold way. One is, uh, you remember Reagan, Ronald Reagan and trickle down economics.

You remember that whole thing? So I like, I playfully talk about trickle down spirituality. And by this what I mean is you set this, this absolute high bar of, that's it. It's like they say in Ham Muji tradition. It's so true, so obvious we don't see it. So simple, we don't believe it. So easy, we don't trust it.

It's hiding in plain sight. But, so from an absolute test, absolute approach, this is the trickle down part. It's 100 percent right now, right here. There's nothing but this infinite pure awareness. Hard stop. What creates the illusion that there isn't something there is this lightning fast process of contraction.

that basically creates the very sense of self and other, and this, this rapidity of the contractive mechanism, which I can talk about. And so then that brings about then the relative approach. So this is why they talk about right view. The right view is you already are a Buddha, you already are Christ, you already are awake, you just forgot.

Kate Shepherd: This is just something I wanna know. I hope, I hope this serves a lot of other listeners who are listening to this too. one of the biggest things I've come to. And I find it deeply upsetting because there is this conflict of interest and it's like I feel very ragdolled between these two aspects of my own being.

andrew holecek: No

Kate Shepherd: there are moments when everything is great. Everything is, is peaceful. I understand everything. It's all, there's pure love.

Like I walk through the forest every morning with my dog and Most days I'm just crying, like,

and I'm not, there's not even a real reason why. I'm just so in love with what is, and then I come home and I'm like, I got the to do list comes up and I'm like, I'm angry at my kid because he left a mess on the floor and you know, I, I forget that part of me or, or,

or, or another example is if I've had, uh, a state experience, like a, like a massive unity experience, for example, just for an example, the snap shut. Thing that happens, right? Equal and opposite. Like, I had this big opening and then part came in and was like, uh, hell no. Right? And

slams it shut. How do we reconcile that conflict of interest?

andrew holecek: Well, you know, I mean, you can't solve a problem you don't have. So, the first thing is what we're doing right here. You work at the level of the map, and you understand the, the structure of your identity, the structure of who you really are. both along developmental and spiritual vectors. That's, that's where you start.

That's the power of right view and the power of the map, really just getting a sense of proper understanding. And then the understanding eventually then will lead to certain levels of, um, um, experience and integration where you can then start to apply this. You start to apply this understanding to your experience.

You start to realize. Just like you did this morning, you went for a walk, you were in tears because you're, you're in contact with reality. And by the way, this is one lovely way to know that you're having a non dual experience. It's beauty in relation to objects and love in relation to people. And so when you're having these experiences of beauty and love and it brings you to tears, that's an intimation, a very powerful intimation of the non dual.

And so you come back in because that particular bandwidth of your identity, like a caterpillar or slinky working its way up. It's just not stable yet. It's just the karma hasn't been worn out. So you haven't stabilized the higher level identity. You haven't worn out or released the lower levels of identity.

And so by understanding this, then you start to look at, okay, let me look at my investment portfolio here. Let me look at what I attend to. So if reality is what you attend to, and you find yourself attending to your phone and attending to distraction and attending to everything in samsara. Well, what a surprise that you're stuck on the lower bandwidth of your identity.

So this is where healthy renunciation comes into play. Literally in Tibetan, the word is neijom, which means definite emergence. You realize, man, this, this crap show of samsara is not serving me. The only thing it's serving is my ego. And so then you have to have a little come to Jesus moment, like what's really important for me?

What am I going to do in my life? So then you look, you understand the spectrum of reidentity. You understand you're always meditating, whether you know it or not. And so then maybe you might find out, well, geez, do I really need to be this distracted? Do I need to really be this busy? Do I really need to be this, like Lakha Rinpoche talks about, active laziness?

And so the more we understand this, the more we realize, on one level, yes, there's some beauty. There's some magic. There's devotion. There's blessing and all that. But on another level, there's a lot of pure kind of karma, causality and physics going on here. Look at where, where, where are you putting your investments?

What are you investing in? If you're investing in distraction and Samsara in your comfort plan, well, you're going to reap those dividends. If you realize that market's going to crash, it's definitely going to crash when you die. You take a close look at your life, like, what am I really doing here? What's life really happening?

And then you realize, wow, this life is really short. It's really precious. WTF am I doing here? Do I want to wake up? Well, then I need to make some really kind of difficult decisions. It's called the painful part of dying. I need to let go, release, die to all these dimensions of my experience that bring me down into these devolutionary, um, frequencies and then cultivate those that lift me up.

This is not easy because this is the extraordinary power of, of, of peer pressure, our culture, our society, you know, the developmental level, you know, just look around this world. It ain't so high. It's not so great. So spiritual communities, pockets of sanity, sane asylums, where you can take refuge to develop the stability because like, um, what did Houston Smith say so the process of the path is to transform flashes of illumination.

into abiding light.

say more about karma. You've talked, you've talked about karma, you've with, and you've linked it to science a couple of times. I've never heard anyone do that. And you talked about the physics of karma. And I actually did want one of the things I want to ask you is you are somebody who sort of lives at the intersection of spirituality and science. what is the relationship between, what is karma? Maybe you could define it for us first of all.

Kate Shepherd: And then, and then, and then tell us a little bit about karma from a science perspective. Because I think we've only heard of it as like a, you know, you hit your brother, your brother's going to hit you back.

Like,

you know, it's like a superstition almost. Karma almost

feels like easy to dismiss because it's got this sort of superstitious connotation.

andrew holecek: this is a great question. in a certain colloquial sense, like you're talking about, it's like everybody knows what karma is. Well, This is one of the most complex topics in all of Eastern philosophy and thought.

it's said that only awakened ones, only the Buddhas really understand karma. So we use this topic flippantly, what goes around comes around. but it is an extraordinarily sophisticated, complex, description of reality. And so just to give some sense of it, you know, you have individual karma, you have family karma, um, You know, global karma, cultural karma, you have all these different forces.

You have the laws of transitional karma. You have the laws of a fully loaded karma. And so I've explored this in tremendous detail because these laws are absolutely instrumental in terms of understanding the behavioral components of reality. And just to tie it briefly to what I said earlier, one major limitation I see with the so called yeast.

Is this facile reductionism into everything actually being karma? No, it's not. Everything is due to causes and conditions, but karma works with causes and conditions. That's how it's somewhat connected to science, but just because it's related to causes and conditions, you can't conflate and say everything's karma.

Everything's causal. And even then, Boy, we have to temper that when you get to quantum mechanics. But so, um, yes, again, I, I stutter a little bit here just because the topic is so big, but for most of us, the most important thing to understand is that there are behavioral consequences that, that behavior does have causative effects.

It's not the principal driver as, as many Eastern approaches assert, but it is a massive driver. In what constitutes our experience, what, what actually creates future experience. And in terms of applicability, cause I don't want to get too abstract and heady here. Karma can really quickly fall into. Kind of techno speak and become somewhat theoretical, but.

Um, basically karma is created. Every time we contract away from experience. Every time we relate inappropriately to our experience in a, in a reactive and not responsive way. We're creating karma. So the word literally, uh, means action and Tibetan lei, L E H, literally means action. action. And so therefore, every time we move in a non lucid, habitually driven way, not only is that habit pattern driving that karmic activity, it's generating more karmic activity.

And this is why it's so hard to purify karma. It's really hard to purify habits. So habit is just the Translation for karma and so this is this is super important to understand because it basically shows you that until we clean up our habit patterns until we we basically get away from this relentless self referential relationship to to reality.

We're always going to be creating karma because we're always contracting away from reality referring everything back to to me. Well, why do we do that? Because if we don't do that, the sense of me disappears, right? This is what happens in meditation. When you sit in complete non referential spaces and you're no longer referring experience back to self, you're no longer contracting.

Well, what happens? The opening that, that constitutes no self, that's a spiritual experience. But because again, we're not habituated to that, we're not familiar to that. When those spaces are open, this is what, why the experience isn't stable. Part of your ego is back there saying, well, that's not me. I'm not divinity.

I'm not perfection. I'm not the Buddha. I'm not Christ consciousness. I'm whatever. Joe show schmuck. Well, you kind of get what you believe. So the experience is whiplashed back to create the relative sense of self, because there's no place for personal identity in that big, infinite, open space. So there's so much to say here, Kate, I want to pause and just make sure I'm going in the right direction, because this is a really big topic and I want to make it practical for people.

Kate Shepherd: what might be helpful for people is, you know, for somebody who's had some of those, you know, A lot of our listeners are, are going to be coming at this from a, from a sense of wanting to deepen their relationship to their creativity and their intuition and their,

their self, you know, their, their capital S self or their God self, I, you could say,

It can be really difficult.

I think one of the challenges a lot of us feel is it can be really difficult to, we have these open state connected experiences where we aren't the self and when we know it, and it's such a relief if, I mean, for me it is when I have those moments, it's just

like, yeah, I would love to live like this forever. But then the, the thoughts come back of like,

you've got two kids, you've got a mortgage to pay, you've got, how do you live in this world? Because that, there is a rea that is reality too. How do you live in this world? And how do you reconcile those two? They seem so different.

They

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a great one. Okay, so here we go.

this also ties into this notion of the immediacy of the whole thing, right? And so the way you balance this that relates both to non duality and also karma is that, um, like I mentioned earlier, what, what creates, uh, karma, what creates the ongoing illusion of duality and separation.

Is this relentless habituation to contraction, this eventual, habitual, relentless habit pattern. We have to refer everything to self. We do it all the time. I mean, it's our default, whether we know it or not. And actually

We need this level of development. That's what ego represents. So you're talking about basically about egoic structure, which we tend to dis. Well, we have to be a little bit careful here because if we didn't have an ego, we wouldn't be here talking about the nature of the ego. So the ego is a very important critical ingredient in evolution.

It's just an arrested form of evolution. It's arrested form of development based on exclusive identification with form. That's the best definition I can come up with. So we need this stupid thing. If we weren't able to provisionally separate self from other, We would be like, like I like to say, we'd be a chicken McNugget on the Serengeti.

We would have never evolved. Flight, fright, freeze would never evolve and we would be dead. Our immune systems operate on the ability to separate antigen from antibody. We need to be able to separate self from other for biological purposes. So what you need to understand is there's nothing inherently wrong with ego.

It's just an arrested form of development. So now what the challenge is to transcend, but include the ego. And this then becomes back to an issue of skillful means, because you can have a really high Buddha level, whatever. But if you egoic bandwidth, And talk to people who are still operating from that level.

Well, good luck with your communication strategies.

It's like a parent talking quantum mechanics to a 10 year old. It's just ain't gonna happen.

And so the way this relates, now let's get really practical here. So, the way this relates in terms of reconciling and bringing a path quality to this, and this is a big deal.

Is that the next time you actually any, any moment, any experience at any time, and one of the challenges is, is this is so available to you, it becomes almost intimidating because there isn't a moment where you can't do this, but let's just take, let's just take one experience to highlight this and then you can extrapolate it to anything.

Let's take an experience of heartbreak.

And so the invitation here, and this is a wonderful, practice I do all the time. So the next time you're having some real heartbreak or let's just fill in the blank, really unwanted experience, your usual default contraction is reaction is in fact to contract to get away from it.

distraction therapy, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever, anything you can to move away. So phone, anything, all these weapons of mass distraction. So here's the practice and how it ties into non duality. The next time you have this heartbreak, feel it as fully as you possibly can.

Instead of trying to run away from it, go 100 percent into it.

Tungpa Rinpoche said, there is no way out. The magic is to discover that there's a way in. So it doesn't matter. Fill in the blank. But you have a heartbreak experience. Don't try to dilute it. And this is what we do. We dilute it because it's too intense for ego. It's too bright. Go into it. Dissolve into it.

Become one with that unwanted experience. And most people are going to say, Okay, well I was with this guy until he started talking about this BS. Are you telling me that you want me to be one with my pain, with my heartbreak, with all these unwanted experiences? And I'm saying yes. Because and check this out.

Don't take my word for it. See if it's not true. If you become one with your heartbreak or your pain, there's no one to hurt. There's no one there to feel the heartbreak. This is the actual immediate practice of non duality on the spot. The absolute, here's the, here's the punchline. The absolute experience of duality is nonduality.

Let me say that again.

Kate Shepherd: Yeah.

andrew holecek: The absolute experience of duality is nonduality. Oh, wow. If this doesn't give you a cardiac arrest, I don't know what does. So this ties in and immediately gives you the ability to practice non duality. Stop practicing duality by breaking away and distracting. That's the practice of duality.

Stop. Shamatha, if you know the terms, turn directly into it. Vipassana, look, step into it, become one with it. If you allow yourself to go and experience Whatever you're experiencing, it doesn't matter the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn't matter. Experience it 100 percent without reference, without contraction, and you will discover that's nonduality.

And so therefore, my God, this changes everything. This means my pain becomes spiritual. Matter becomes spiritual. Heartbreak becomes spiritual. Everything becomes spiritual because you're no longer making it not. You're no longer contracting away from it. Not only is this tremendously empowering and liberating, it really brings forth the immediacy like we were talking about earlier.

This is the way you practice the immediacy of the awakened state. You know, through the map, this is it. It's true. This is it right here. You are in Nirvana. This is it. What am I doing that doesn't allow me to discover and see that? Well, my lack of full participation in this experience, the contraction away from it.

And in that very moment of contraction, distraction, avoidance, right, which is all based on ego, you're creating some sorrow moment to moment. And this is happening so fast. This is where the neurosciences can come in and help us. You know, the speed of the mind is unbelievable. This flickering takes place so fast.

This pulsation of consciousness takes place so fast that we actually don't see the immediacy of how it is that we're creating duality moment to moment. And so if duality, space, time, causality are all constructs, the physicist will tell you this, then if they're constructs, they can be deconstructed. What do you do?

Open! Relax! Embrace whatever arises 100%. You're going to disappear, the sense of other is going to disappear, and you're going to unite with the dualistic world, and in that moment achieve non duality. Not even achieve it, that's a mistake. You can't achieve something you already have.

You're going, you're going to experience it. You're going to recognize it.

Kate Shepherd: So that's what we're practicing for. So meditation feels like kind of like if you've got a track meet coming up and that moment you just described is the event. Meditation feels like all the practices you do, right? Is that, is that what we're practicing for when we're in meditation?

andrew holecek: It depends on which meditation you're talking about, Kate. So the, you know, meditation is like sport. It's a multivalent term. So when you say sport, there's hundreds of sports. What are you talking about?

So when you say meditation, this is why I'm writing all these. I mean, I've written nine books. Now they're all on meditation.

when people say meditation, like what meditation are you talking about? If you're talking about mindfulness, bravo, fantastic, very specific domain of applicability. If you're talking about open awareness or insight meditation or analytic meditation or meta, another form of meditation with tremendous applicability.

But all these practices are basically designed to open us to the complete spectrum of our being. to allow us to relate skillfully to the contents of our minds and hearts, and then by immediate implication, the so called external world altogether. So I'll back up and put it back in your court. When you're using that word meditation, maybe a little bit more clear to me about what type of meditation are you referring to?

Mindfulness.

Kate Shepherd: who probably think of meditation as, Mindfulness

it gives me another question for you, which is what is a good formula for somebody who's listening to this going, okay, like I want a little bit more of what he's talking about. I want to contract less. I want to experience more reality and more of myself and more of my creativity and more of what is here that I keep covering up with this accidental programming. That's not my fault. Like, you know, I just lived my

life and here I am. Thank you

andrew holecek: Yeah, you are not your fault. I love that. That's a good one.

Kate Shepherd: Well, I mean, a lot of our, a lot, this personality and the ego that we develop, it does happen, uh, by default, you know, it just sort of seems to get built like a Lego, Lego wall that

andrew holecek: Well,

you want it? Let me let me tell you where it comes from. Can I say just one thing about this? So there's there's several vectors associated here and then and then I will return to your question about like what what someone can do. Again, if you if you really abide by karmic theory principles of rebirth and that sort of thing.

So they're getting a little bit wide cosmological thing. A lot of people don't subscribe to this. But, you know, according to most of the non dual world wisdom traditions, you don't quite come into this world with a clean slate. it's, it's exactly the type of experience that happens when you enter the dream arena.

You don't enter the dream arena with a clean slate. You come in with habituations and the patterns and the predispositions of your day. Well, so you come into this world with a particular set of habit patterns. And this gets really, really deep. This is where the death and dying literature has some super profound things to say.

But again, I don't want to have too much roadkill, so I'll be a little careful here. You come into this world, you have a particular set of dispositions already inherent in the fact that you're in this particular body. But now check this next thing out. This is a mind bender. So, basically from age zero to age seven, roughly, um, this is where a tiny bit of neuroscience can really help.

Basically from age zero to two, again, kind of shady gray area, you're mostly in what's called delta states of brain frequency. This is the delta waves, zero to four cycles or four or four Hertz per second. This is the type of experience we have every night. When we're in deep dreamless sleep, and so for the first number of months and years, this is why babies are, what are they doing?

They're sleeping all the time because they're in Delta human growth hormone is released. All these amazing generative restorative processes are taking place because they're principally in Delta. The really interesting thing is roughly from age 2 to 7, you're in Theta. Now, Theta is super interesting. for listening.

This is also recapitulated every night when you go through the sleeping dreaming cycle. The same kind of fractal process is reiterated every night. Well, when you're in theta, this is uh, four to, um, four to eight hertz. This is the, the dimension, uh, frequency of mind experience that hypnotists will take you into to bring about their post hypnotic suggestions.

So just think about this for a second. This is mind bending. Basically from age zero to seven, this is not a metaphor. You are literally being hypnotized. You're literally being hypnotized by your families of origin, by your peers, your culture, your world. And basically then you, you soak in, you have no choice.

You have no choice, but to basically literally learn how to perceive the world from others around you. The brain is so sophisticated. That the human brain can literally learn perceptions from other people. So we literally are trained. to learn to see the world in this dualistic samsaric way. It's part, even considering, not considering the karmic rebirth thing, just from ground zero here.

And so then what happens, you know, for the rest of your life, the rest of your life is a readout of these loops of these programs. And this is why whenever you go to a therapist, they may not have this data, but what are they going to tell you? Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your families of origin.

Tell me about what you did at the stem cell level of your life. And you can spend an entire life. In fact, we do basically playing out these, um, post hypnotic suggestions that have been installed in our unconscious mind from age zero to seven. So give me a break. Talk about the forces of the dark side, cut yourself some slack.

So this is part of the 95 percent of the unconscious mind that obscures all the stuff that we're talking about. And so we're basically running on automatic ignorance where we're, this is what it means to be asleep. This is what it means to be sleepwalking, forgive them father for they know not what they do.

We're living our lives on these readout patterns. So in terms of how to work with this, um, so much to say here, this is an instance of shameless self promotion. So my last two books are about this, right? The, the one that came out last year on reverse meditation. This book, It's the first time I've ever really talked at length about the process of contraction and openness.

Um, I view contraction and openness as the kind of the combustion cycle of the whole path. It's just a massive Explanatory, process for what describes so much in the world. So to really learn about contraction, that's a great place to go because that particular process is described in tremendous detail.

Um, and then the antidote to it, the practice of open awareness is described. Now, this is a genius meditation that's not taught enough in the West. That is unbelievably powerful for releasing these contractions and opening opening. The other one that's just coming out, um, this summer is, um, I'm mindful.

Now, what moving beyond mindfulness to meet the modern world? This is where in relatively short, this is my most user friendly public book. I talk about, I don't know, 12, 15 meditations that are post mindfulness meditations that transcend, but include mindfulness that allow people to work with lots of what we're talking about here.

using a host of meditative traditions that basically unfold these principles and allow you to actually practice them. So that I want to say this right at the outset, I'm sitting here flapping my lips, blowing out all the smoke. I mean, I'm good at this stuff. I love it, right? I mean, this is just kind of what I do for my day job.

But the most important thing, and I have to really put an emphasis on this, even though I amspeeding through all this material, by far the most important thing you can do are these meditations. And so, both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions have this threefold, um, kind of pedagogical approach, or this learning approach, as you may have heard of it, hearing, contemplating, meditating.

ingest, digest, metabolize. This is super important because otherwise I'm sitting here for an hour and I'm just blowing out all this stuff. It's all mere philosophy. It's all mere theory.

So all this stuff about quantum theory and you name it, it's all about supporting this view.

How do you wake up to the true dimension of your being? So you start with all this information, that's the hearing part, but we got to be really careful in this age of information. Um, we confuse information for experience. Let me say that again. We confuse information for experience. TMI is a major issue.

And so we don't really learn how to walk the talk. Second step, slow down. Pause. Contemplate. Does this speak to me? Does this relate to my lived experience? So you massage the teachings. You allow them to drop less conceptual, more embodied. You're testing them. Is it true? Is it true? Wow, maybe, yeah, it kind of seems to be true. Drop even further. This is the process of waking down into the wisdom of your body.

Ingest, digest, meditation, metabolize. now it's in your body. Now you're really getting it. And this is, you know, you're now it's, it's, it's non conceptual. See, when you're up here, it's all conceptual. As you start to drop down, it's like a filtration and purification system.

that's where you're changed. You change when you feel things. And so you stay, you work, you incorporate, and then what happens is you literally, not metaphorically, you literally become the teachings. You've literally incorporated the teachings.

And so, if you've been around great masters like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Karmapa, the great spiritual beings, they don't have to say a word to transmit these teachings. Because they live them. They're breathing them. They are the teachings. And so this is incredibly important. Especially when I'm doing somewhat speedy, clippy podcasts, which I love doing.

my whole thing is like, Throw all this stuff away. Contemplate. Meditate. Get it into your system. I mean, I've done 40, 000 hours of meditation. There's a reason I do it because this is by far the most transformative thing you can do. So everything I do is really to inspire people to get on some level of inner work.

I don't care what you call it. I like the word meditation, but some level of interiority, some level of inner work to find out what is really going on here. Because when you do this again, tying it in to the earlier riff about the immediacy. This is where the remembrance comes from. Aristotle talked about it as an analysis.

The real journey of the path is recollection. Plato knew this. It's a process of discovery. And so you learn all this stuff and then you're literally discovering, uncovering. Your body knows this. Your body knows all these truths. And so if you wake down into the center of your centerless self, what are you going to find there?

Nothing and everything. You'll find the Buddha, you'll find Christ, you'll find all the divine beings. These gods and goddesses and deities are the essence of who you really are. So this is another way, we talked a little bit about the kind of external manifestation of the immediacy of it. The internal embodied manifestation is just wake down into who you are right now.

Be fully human. This is come back to the 100%. Of, uh, participation and experience. Be human, 100%. And you may find that by being human 100 percent you are Buddha. You just have to be who you are right now with all your warts and all your foibles and all your faculties and all your pain be with who you are right now.

100%. That's Buddha. That's who you are. It's right here.

Kate Shepherd: It's, it's, it all sounds so much easier than, you know, okay, I'll go do that. And then you go and sit down and do that. And you're like, no, I can't. I'll just,

maybe I'll edit out that part or this part or that

part. Or Right.

I guess That's the work, right? What's your, what is your meditation practice look like these days?

andrew holecek: my goodness. You know, I've been so blessed, Kate. You know, this is the reason I drink the Tibetan Buddhist Kool Aid and also Nandu Shaiva Tantra, Kashmir Shaivism. I love these two traditions, um, but my, my so called facility is in Tibetan Buddhism. And the reason I drink this Kool Aid is because it has so many skillful means, it has so many meditations, um, Dream yoga, sleep yoga, body yoga, sexual.

I mean, if there's an experience, a state of mind, these, these two traditions, they have a practice for it. So I, I literally Kate, I, I, I practice under all like every particular human experience. I have a meditation for it, but my big thing these days is, um, and this is may, may take us. This is the next series of books I'm writing.

Um, I'm super interested in, in, um, practicing and what's called dark retreat, doing really intensive dark. In fact, it's right here. Right behind this curtain is my little dark holding cell. So this may be like, Oh God, no. And I know this guy is a really weird, um,

there's true.

Kate Shepherd: what it is.

andrew holecek: Yeah, it's a very powerful practice.

That's basically like meditation on steroids. Um, it's just an incredibly intensive, concentrated way to work about everything I've talked about in the last hour plus, um, in really restricted, highly controlled, sensory deprived environments.

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: where basically you're working with mind and heart in the most non distracted way possible.

And so we talked earlier about distraction, contraction, all these things. Absolutely everything that I've talked about in the last hour goes into so called hyperdrive or is, is really, really worked with. In the dark and darkness. And so this is the Greeks did it. You'll find this in the ancient Taoist traditions.

You'll find it in Columbia and shamanistic traditions, but it's really big in Tibetan Buddhism. Um, and I've been mum about this. I've been doing this for decades, but I'm now for the 1st time talking and writing about it because it's getting a lot of press and some of it's not that great. And so, as a way psychedelics, 50 years ago, psychedelics were really screwed up 50 years ago.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I see very similar parallels to dark practice that if it isn't done right, if the right guardrails put up, um, it's going to be problematic. So I'm working with a bunch of scientists. We're going to be doing some studies. But that's like my main retreat practice now. I go into a completely secluded dark cave or cabin for a really long time to work at my mind in a really intense, non distracted, concentrated way.

And it's the biggest bang for my buck in terms of the practices that I've ever done. So, it's basically everything I've talked about is just intense, that's all. It's nothing special, there's nothing magical about it. It's just intense, um, because you can't move, you can't distract yourself, mind becomes reality, appearance has no meaning.

I mean, it is beyond profound.

Kate Shepherd: I'm thinking about that. Um, I don't know the name of it, but there's, I think it's owned by, maybe it's Microsoft owns that space where it's like, it's completely dark and it's completely, it's really, really soundproofed. So when you go

andrew holecek: Oh, cool.

Kate Shepherd: Um, you, and

andrew holecek: Oh, I didn't know

Kate Shepherd: there for more than a minute.

Like there's, cause you can hear your heartbeat. You can

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have these chambers.

Yeah, cool.

Kate Shepherd: like a really trippy, maybe that's your next thing. Um,

andrew holecek: Well, yeah, I mean, that's, well, that's actually an interesting point because it's one reason I was slightly hesitant to even say it because it can appear kind of trippy. It can appear like, Ooh, why, like, really, why are you doing this? So part of the reason I'm mentioning it now is because it is getting a lot of press a lot of athletes.

I mean, the two NBA. Superstar players, Dwight Howard, Rudy Gobert, defensive players of the year, both my names are Dark Ritchie. They're starting to talk about Aaron Rodgers, writers, authors, the word is getting out. And on one level, it's great. On another level, it's not so great. Um, because it can be a little sensationalized.

Um, you can go in there with a completely wrong kind of attitude and approach. And you can hurt yourself, um,

because it's just so intense.

Kate Shepherd: I recently talked to, um, to Nate Klemp. Do you know Nate Klemp?

andrew holecek: Uh, is hein Boulder? I think I

know.

Kate Shepherd: Boulder. He just, he has a new book out called Open

Yeah, he, um, so he, I mean, at the very beginning of his book, he's talking about how, you know, he want, we're living in a really distracted world and how can we, you know, nobody can really even feel an idle moment without trying to escape from it.

And what do we do basically? So he wanted to go on this journey to figure out how to answer that question. And a friend of his on a hike one day said to him, well, okay, well, if you're going to open to everything, what about psychedelic experiences? And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, that's, that's, that's, that's not for me. And through the course of his, the next couple of years, he ended up going down this road where he ended up doing ketamine assisted psychotherapy.

andrew holecek: Yeah,

sure. Good stuff.

Kate Shepherd: like anything though. I think, you know, you could take a bunch of ketamine at home or at a party and if the context is wrong, you could really hurt yourself.

You know, or if you

get the wrong hypnotherapist, you know, or even a massage, I mean, I've gotten hurt just getting a massage at a, you know, regular like massage therapy place. Like if somebody doesn't really know what they're doing, if they're not a good guide, and for a lot of these things, I think we probably do need a guide. You

can get hurt. So I guess it's just like, it's

andrew holecek: It's the same. That's well said. It's totally spot on. These are all just tools. They're, I mean, I don't really like to use the word spiritual technology, but I think you get the idea.

Darkness is fundamentally neutral. I mean, these agents are all a lot of them are fundamentally neutral. Um, just like technologies are neutral.

It's just how you use them. It's how you engage in them. Psychedelics. I used to be ultra purist conservative. totally change my tune with these agents, I think they absolutely have a place.

And so this again ties into what we talked about at the outset, is that all these, anything that arises can be used as a skillful means, anything.

And so there are certain types of methods that I think are particularly applicable in this day and age. I think psychedelics are one. I think they have tremendous potential if they're used properly. Um, I'll mark my words on this. I think in 10 years, you're going to see a revolution because of the dark practices, especially when we start collecting our data and publishing it.

Kate Shepherd: You take it in and then you are a finely tuned instrument regardless of what you believe about yourself. And if you take something in and you just ask yourself really honestly, is this the right thing? Like, I feel like the answer is gonna be inside of you. For you, you,

andrew holecek: yeah, if you can, if you trust it, yeah, the ultimate teacher is within. If you're open to that voice,

Yeah.

if you listen to that right voice and you connect to it, yeah. That's the other thing connected to this waking down process, you know, that fundamentally the ultimate teacher is within your heart. That's really where you want to take ultimate refuge and all these other provisional teachers and teachings and everything.

They're all fundamentally empowering and directing you to the center of yourself, where you can listen to your own innate, inherent wisdom. And then you put people like me completely out of business. I mean, that's, that's the best thing you could possibly do is you, you become your own guide, your own guru.

You don't need any of these other things. But until then, people can help you. They can also hurt you. Um, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, but you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by working with somebody that you trust that can guide you. But anybody who's worth their salt will basically tell you my highest aspiration is to put myself out of work, where you just turn within, discover your own awakened properties, and you realize, you know, you're the teacher.

Um, so, but because again, like you were talking about earlier, because of our enculturation, the Abrahamic traditions and the original notion of original sin, We have this kind of poverty mentality that we have to reach some level of purity or heaven outside of us. Who says

Kate Shepherd: Well, that

conditioning between two and seven, I guess, I'm guessing that's who says,

andrew holecek: spot on,

spot on. And so the so called non theistic traditions, which to me are more empowering, makes more sense to me. Again, I categorically dismissing these. There's, there's room at the table for all these skillful means, but, uh,

Kate Shepherd: we go back and,

and re, that two, that two year, there were that years between two and seven, I think you

andrew holecek: Yeah, yeah, right.

Kate Shepherd: Is it possible to actually go back and reprogram ourselves? Or is

that just done? That

andrew holecek: You can't go back in time. But what you can do is you can work with the dimensions of your being where that history is lodged. Well, where is that history? It's in your unconscious mind. Where is your unconscious mind? It's your body. Your body is your unconscious mind. So the way you unearth it, is you do this archaeology, this excavation project, by dropping into the sedimentation levels of your own heart and mind.

And if you do this kind of inner work, then you will actually find either through therapy, the deep inner work of these, meditations, certain psychedelics like ketamine and whatnot, psychedelic assisted, um, psilocybin therapy.

You bring these unconscious processes into the light of consciousness. That's a massive part of the psychospiritual path. So you don't have to go back to the past because you can't. You go down within yourself because that's where the past is stored.

, the habit patterns that are burned into your unconscious body and mind.

All that stuff out of sight is not out of mind. Out of sight is into the unconscious mind, into the refuse heap of the darkness of the unconscious mind.

And there it festers and lurks as part of this 95 percent that dictates your life. Do you think you have free will? No way. You think you're living your life based on the dictates of your own whatever? No way. This is what it means to be asleep. So, you work with the history as it's lodged in your unconscious body mind.

, you do the trauma work, you do the meditation, you basically decondition, liberate yourself from all these habit patterns that are burned into your hard drive. And then guess what happens? It really gets lighter, freer, more open. You have more energy.

Because all this stuff is, is also what locks down the channel systems in your subtle body. That's all the energy that makes us feel stuck and trapped. And this is why the deep inner work is worth it. Because otherwise, like we said, way back, everything else is a substitute gratification. And then all this energy that's, that's trapped up in our bodies from all this rejection, you know, every time we say no, we're throwing that rejected experience into our unconscious mind.

So we have to open, open meditation, this habituation to openness. It's not just opening your mind, it's opening your heart, it's opening your body, and then all this energy comes up, you literally become lighter, it's a somatic reference to enlightenment, you feel freer, more energetic, because these energies have just been released through this process of opening.

Kate Shepherd: I wanted to ask you about lucid dreaming.

What is it? And how do we, how do we benefit from it? And what, how do we get there?

andrew holecek: Yeah, this is a really big, wonderful big topic. , I Work with my languaging five nocturnal meditations.

Just to give listeners a sense of what they are. Um, liminal dreaming, number one, lucid dreaming, number two, dream yoga, number three, um, What's called sleep yoga connected to yoga, Nidra number four, and then art of yoga, the death practice is number five. And so lucid dreaming for those who may not be familiar with it, it was this magical state.

Um, lucidity is basically a code word for awareness. So lucid dream is a dream where you're aware that you're dreaming while you're still in the dream. So something will clue you into the fact that you're dreaming while you're in a dream, you attain consciousness, lucidity, you're fully awake. I'm dreaming, but you're still in the dream.

And so connecting it because the topic is so big, connecting it to some of what we talked about. One of the reasons you want to explore this is because it provides a very rare opportunity where the conscious mind can meet the unconscious directly. That's what makes it so transformative.

The practice is to engage that lucidity, engage the contents of your dream. And then, um, always helpful to remember what are dreams made of? Well, they're made of your mind. You're just working with your mind in this really distilled environment.

Okay. And so then you work to transform it, transform the contents of your dream. There's, you know, nine stages here going from somewhat accessible to really super deep and quite profound. But the idea is to, is to take, um, and transform the contents of your unconscious mind and then take the insights from the dream arena and bring them back with you into daily life.

Lucid dreaming leads to lucid living.

Um, once you realize that fundamentally. This is just a dream. So there's just so much to say here, but I'm really big on this because, um, it's a form of, you know, I talk about playfully night school, you know, there's so much you can do in the dream arena. And here's some basic numbers.

We enter. The dream world about half a million times during the course of a life about 25 percent of our nighttime experience is spent in REM sleep. That's mostly when we dream. That's about a month a year. That's over six years in an average life. You can get a PhD in less than six years. So if you can maintain lucidity in this kind of night school, not only do you bring more years to your life, while you're also working with a deeper foundational dimension of your being, the tantric texts tell you that the practices you do, your meditations that you do in the dream state, are seven to nine times more transformative.

They're more efficacious than what you do in the waking state because they're more foundational. And so you can have like what's called a hyperlucid dream, um, which is a dream that's more real than this. You know, you wake up from one of those game changing dreams. This appears to be the foggy dream.

You have one of those.

They'll change. It'll change your life.

It's like having a near death experience. You don't need to have a near death experience over and over. You just need one. Your life has changed forever.

And so, um, I'm really big on this because life is short. I want to extract every essence I can out of this life.

And so if I can learn how to meditate and practice while I'm sleeping and dreaming, uh, wow, I'm, I'm all for it.

Kate Shepherd: What would be a good place for somebody to start? So you said you've written a couple of books. Is there, are there practices in there that we

andrew holecek: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Three books, um, and they're somewhat in order. So the first more accessible book in this dream trilogy is my Haberdasher Press book. Um, The Lucid Dreaming Workbook,

Kate Shepherd: Okay.

andrew holecek: a guide by, step by step guide to mastering your dream life. This is a workbook that has all kinds of exercises and things you can fill in.

That's a great place to start,

really easy read, um, super simple, super easy. The next book is a deeper dive dream yoga, illuminating your life through lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep. That's a quite a bit deeper dive. And then the third one's called Dreams of Light, the profound daytime practice of illusory form.

This is where I bring in a really beautiful, sophisticated daytime practice. It's called Lulus Reform. This one's pretty, this is the deepest of my books. Um, pretty profound about the, the light nature reality, the nature of the light of the mind. It gets pretty deep. So, I recommend people start with the Harvard Press workbook.

And then I also have a platform. Thanks for the opportunity to put in my Kool Aid stand. The platform is called Night Club. We started it like, 5 years ago. It's a really robust, super active program platform. We have like, 5 events a week

with all kinds of guests, faculty and lectures and book study groups and meditation.

It's a super active platform.

for anybody interested in this arena from entry level to really pretty deep levels. And so, that's probably a really

Kate Shepherd: That's a great start. What's

something that I could do tonight when I went to bed tonight? What's something, one little simple thing I could start to

andrew holecek: Yeah. Yeah. Incredibly powerful. Intentionality is massive. Intention.

Intention. The word literally means to stretch towards. And so what you're trying to do with the lucid dream is a kind of consciousness hacking You're trying to hack into previously restricted, um, domains of consciousness, in this case, the dream arena.

And one way to do that is to incubate and set the intention. Literally, literally, heartfelt, not just flapping your lips, heartfelt. Tonight, I'm going to have many dreams. Tonight, I'm going to remember my dreams. Tonight, I'm going to wake up in my dreams and really mean it. And then tonight when you lie down, meditation is great to settle you, reinstate this almost like a mantra.

As you're falling asleep, let that intentionality kind of perfume the night. And then it will, it will infiltrate, perfume your, your sleeping, dreaming mind. And you might be surprised, just this one technique alone, if you really lean into it with real heartfelt intentionality, it's, it's pretty powerful.

That alone will help.

Kate Shepherd: I'm excited to go to

bed tonight.

If you had this magical billboard that all these people who were out there, you know, wanting to connect with a truer version of themselves, wanting to find their creativity and trust it, really trust this inner self that we have. But for all of the conditioning that you talked about that we've been through, the hypnosis we go through from the time that we're two to the time that we're seven, the layers of limiting belief, the culture around us that tells us it's not true, it's not available, can't have it,

um, It stops them from believing that it's possible, but you could put this message on this billboard and it would reach into their hearts and inspire them to believe that it was possible for them.

What would you, what would your words be to them?

andrew holecek: I keep it completely blank.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm.

andrew holecek: I leave it completely open. Meditation is habituation to openness. And I would let it just basically stop their minds. And say, there's nothing there, right? By doing nothing, nothing is left undone. I would keep it completely blank,

where people come across it and they just want, Ah!

Right there in that moment, they can touch reality. They don't need more words. They don't need more teachings. They need to connect to the openness and the spaciousness of their own hearts and minds. So I, I would just leave it utterly. Best thing to do is actually have it blank and then even have the blank world just like fall back.

Thank you.

Kate Shepherd: Hmm. Real nothingness.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Just like boom. That's that's a transmission right there.

Kate Shepherd: I love it. Thank you. Thank you for your time today.

andrew holecek: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for a great, very thoughtful questions. I super appreciate it. I'd like to spend some time with you, Kate.

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