#321 Scott Ambrose: Mysticism Without the Woo-Woo, From Meditation at 12 to Breathwork

audio Scott Ambrose
[Speaker 2] (0:02 - 0:54)
Welcome to the meditation podcast. You can find all our episodes on meditationpodcast.org. My guest today started meditating at the age of 12, while most of us were still trying to work out how to stay awake in the classroom.

He has spent decades exploring meditation, breathwork, and Kabbalah, and he has had his share of strange and beautiful experiences. By day, he's a trial attorney, which means he can't hide behind jargon because a jury would catch him. He wrote Demystified Mystic, which Kirkus gave a get it recommendation.

His mission is mysticism without the woo-woo, experiencing that everything is connected without needing a red pill, a guru, or anything stronger than a deep breath.

[Speaker 1] (0:54 - 1:05)
Scott Ambrose, welcome to the show. Wow, thank you, and thank you for having me, and what a wonderful introduction. I'm humbled.

[Speaker 2] (1:06 - 1:26)
I mean, it's an interesting kind of background, anyway, but I suppose, I mean, 12, age 12, kind of meditating, that's kind of very rare you'd hear something like that. So you might kind of, I know, take us back to kind of when that started happening and why it started happening, at that young age.

[Speaker 1] (1:26 - 14:19)
Well, it was because of the Beatles and Maharaj Mahesh Yogi. So I was born in the 60s. I grew up in the 70s.

I have three older brothers, and so I kind of grew up in a house full of hippies, and at the time, the Beatles were hanging around with the Maharaj Mahesh Yogi, and he was the yogi who brought transcendental meditation to the West, and transcendental meditation is a mantra meditation. It's very simple. I did not take the course.

My brother did, though, and a friend of mine did later on, but it was very popular, and it's an extremely easy technique. It's a mantra meditation where you, your anchor or your focus of your meditation is a simple sound, usually, and in transcendental meditation, they, when you take the class, there's a ceremony, which is often very typical, and there's, you know, instructions, and they provide a mantra to you. They're actually lists of Sanskrit deities, and, but there's just simple sounds, usually like two syllables, and the Maharaj Mahesh Yogi, he even is quoted as saying that the technique is as simple as brushing your teeth, and it is.

You get yourself comfortable. You sit down. You close your eyes.

You relax, and then in your mind's eye, in your mind's ear, you repeat these two syllables, these syllables, and they don't have any meaning behind them, so some meditations with mantras do. You know, you can meditate on whatever sound, something consistent with your given religion, a nonsense sound, a sound like light, like a word, but in any event, I made up my own mantra, and I was instructed on how to do it by my brother and my friend and found it very, it is very easy, and as you sit there, you repeat the mantra to yourself, and you have that the focus of your attention, and sometimes the sound comes fast, you know, like if your sound, I'll just make something up, like, you know, whatever, so it could come fast. It can come slow.

You just observe it however it is. Sometimes it'll link with your breath. That's okay, too, so you may link it a syllable on the inhale and the exhale, but it doesn't necessarily have to be linked with your breath.

You can invite your mantra just to unlink with your breath and follow it wherever it goes, and then from time to time, your mind will wander. This is a characteristic of all meditation. Your mind will wander off the attention that you are having on your cushion, so the object of your meditation, either your breath or your mantra or a scanning your body or whatever, it will wander towards anything that you're dealing with, and that's okay.

It's part of the process, and all you do when you notice yourself in the midst of meditation, so you've given yourself 20 minutes to relax, okay, and, you know, out of all the things you have to do today, you said, you know, I'm going to sit on the cushion for 20 minutes, and I'm going to give myself that time to rest and digest, and it's recess, right, and so, unfortunately, not unfortunately, it's part of the process that we all know your mind will wander, and it'll go to your taxes or your errands or whatever you have to do, and when that happens, you just notice it. You don't have to judge the thought. You just look at it briefly, and then you return to your mantra or your breath or whatever type of meditation you're doing, and what happens is that's actually a little pocket of stress being released, and when you go back to your mantra from that, your mind wandering off of it, you often find yourself going a little deeper, and so that's how I started with the popularity of Transcendental Meditation, and I took to it, and it creates a state of relaxation. It actually creates a state of higher consciousness.

That's what meditation is supposed to do. Some people struggle, and it sounds a little more woo-woo-y than it really is, so right now, Roy, we all know the three states of meditation, three states of consciousness being a waking state, a sleeping state, and a dreaming state, so those states of consciousness are very common. We all know what they're like.

They have different characteristics with respect to how much oxygen we're consuming and carbon dioxide we're expelling. They have brainwave characteristics. They have muscle electrical activity inside the muscles and how tense they are, and they have different characteristics between the three of them as to what we're conscious of and what we're thinking of.

Meditation creates a state that's called restful alertness, and it's another state of consciousness, and the easiest way to describe it is your body feels like it's asleep, but your mind is alert, like you're awake. You're not dreaming, and your mind isn't turned off like sleeping. Most of us know this state.

I mean, most of us have felt this state before. It's kind of that state where you're just about to wake up, and you're lying in your bed, and you're coming out of sleep, and you're like, oh, I'm coming out of sleep, and your body still feels very heavy and relaxed. You're not dreaming, but you're like, oh, I'm lying in my bed right here, and you're aware of where you're at.

It's kind of what it feels like. It's a very good state to be in. It's very healthy.

There's a lot of studies on the physical attributes of meditation, and putting yourself in that state can lower blood pressure. It can regulate like hormones and body chemicals like endorphins and lowers cortisol. From a physical standpoint, physiologically, it takes us out of fight and flight and puts us in rest and digest, and it has a lot of great implications.

It's considered in eastern philosophies and religions to be the path to enlightenment. Do you have to meditate? No.

Can you achieve wonderful, great things and become enlightened without it? Yes, I'm sure you can, but it is a wonderful tool, and I hope people are meditated, I hope people are optimized and motivated to meditate. Here's what's happening.

We're all busy. We're all stressed. We all have issues.

We all have our baggage. We're all bombarded with stuff. What meditation does just at the simplest level is, I touched on this a few seconds ago, it's a time that you've given yourself.

It's a time that you've dedicated yourself to, you know what, I'm going to do what I can to put myself in a state of calm, to put myself in a state of peace. I hope it works for you. You can get better at it.

You can find your particular avenue. What works for one person might not work for another. But the thing is, is you've given yourself that time.

Now, whether or not your mind races the entire 20 minutes, you're on the cushion, that's kind of the term I like to use. You know, that's okay. I mean, and hopefully you can get better at that.

The thing is though, you've given yourself a platform and you're teaching yourself, you know, hey, I can do this. I can put myself into a state of relaxation. I can make myself feel peaceful and calm.

And that's a great technique because it carries throughout your day. It carries throughout your life. It allows you, are you going to solve all your problems with 20 minutes on the cushion?

No. Okay. But every day you're going back to that cushion and you've got that place.

You've got a platform that you have, that you know, that you can stand on when you want to. And whether or not you recognize it or not, it's likely carrying you throughout your day. That's my little speech on some of how I sort of came to it.

That's a little bit of meditation, the states, and a little bit of motivation. There's a lot of motivations for meditation, more than I just said. I look at it, the motivations are spiritual, whether or not you're religious or not, and they all fit into any religion.

Meditation and every religion on the planet has a corresponding okay. So meditation can be religious, but it does not have to be. You can have absolutely no faith and meditate.

So it's very useful throughout everybody, but it is spiritual and it can be a road to spirituality. It has significant physical aspects that I've already mentioned, but it also regulates our emotions. So we live in a world, one of the worlds we live in is the world of emotion.

And it's just an aspect of how we live. I like to say we're Venn diagrams, you know, the Venn diagrams with the circles, and then all the circles sort of meet and have a sharing thing. Well, that's our world.

And one of the worlds we live in is a world of emotions and it regulates your emotions. And it also provides you in deeper techniques, pranayama, breath work. I don't want to say advanced techniques, they're deeper techniques.

They're like meditation, but the platform of lying down or sitting down, maybe you've seen breath work people crying and having cathartic releases, not exactly like meditation, but similar. It's a platform where you can regulate your emotions and you can get rid of some of the baggage and let those out. And then it also helps your thought process.

You could become more, you'll get better at manifesting. Everybody's into manifestation. It's not like a huge thing, but you're optimizing yourself, your thought processes for manifestation.

So yeah, that's a little bit about it. I'm not sure what we're talking about.

[Speaker 2] (14:21 - 14:34)
Like, because with the mantra, because you said you kind of created your own. With the cells and the healing and everything, are we really creating a frequency that's resonating with ourselves, creating healing within?

[Speaker 1] (14:36 - 30:11)
Oh my gosh, you mentioned frequency and you mentioned resonating. So this is, and you mentioned the mantras. So in my book, I cover all of these things in significant detail.

I cover all these things. First of all, with the mantra and the sound, I instruct people and I give them a list of like a whole bunch of syllables. And I said, just pick two or three and find your mantra.

And mantra is a sound meditation. And it's the first one that I talk about and teach in the book. And sound and frequency and resonating are all principles of sound.

Those are, and let me chitchat a little bit about that. So sound is the essence of creation. Okay.

So what sound does, it creates things. And that goes back to biblical. There's a little bit of help in that concept going back to most Bibles.

And God said, let there be light. It was the first thing that was done. Sound is like this force of creation.

The book, the four agreements, the first agreement is be impeccable with your sound. And then sound is a vibration of the air that reaches your ears. And so the concept of vibration is enormous, not just in meditation, but in everything, the world is vibrating.

And so we look at this concept and I'll say, I'll fall back on spiritually, but it doesn't need to be a spiritual thing, but it is a new agey type of meditation-y look. We look at our lives, our world we live in, and certainly our practice through the lens of sound. And we look at them as analogies that often apply and have meaning.

It's the meaning behind that we give it. And we live in this world of frequency of vibrations. And we use these terms like, oh, that really resonates with me.

Or that really, that person is, I like their vibe or I like their energy. And so sound, and we're going to put this, we're going to take the characteristics of sound and we're going to analogize them to life. So the two major concepts of sound are frequency and amplitude.

So it's going to be the speed is frequency and amplitude is how powerful it is. So sound has frequency and vibrations have frequency, and it's how fast they're moving. And certain things can seem like a high frequency, like you've got a whole bunch of puppies on you and they're kissing you.

I mean, that's a high frequency type of thing. That's high frequency. Something with a low frequency might be something bad, like a trauma, that's kind of got a low frequency.

In sound, those are like analogizing them to life. In sound, which is one type of vibration, frequency is characterized by pitch. So a flute is high and light and a tuba is low and gives depth.

And in sound, frequency isn't good or bad. I mean, I'm not trying to say the tuba players are saying that we're bad. No, the frequency of sound has nothing to do with the emotional aspect of whether or not it's a high frequency event or kind of a low frequency event.

So there's nothing bad about low sounds. There's nothing really bad about a low frequency of something having meaning. Sound can have amplitude.

It's the volume that you're controlling on your remote control when you raise or lower the things. And emotional events can have the same type of thing. You can find a quarter on the street and that's kind of cool, or you could win the lottery.

Those are the same type of things, but one has a lot more amplitude than the other. And here's the thing. What we focus on might not be the appropriate amount of amplitude that it has.

So let's just say you were traumatized and something bad happened. What do we say? Oh, stop crying.

Oh, chin up. Oh, don't worry about it. We're not really geared to feel the full amplitude of it.

Or it could just be something horrible, like a major assault, and you just hit it because you were embarrassed or you didn't want to reveal it, or you had pressures not to. And so you just buried it. You didn't experience the amplitude of it.

Vibrations. And so when we become aware of is it a high frequency or low frequency, we can live within it. We're not ignoring it.

When we understand the appropriate amount of amplitude that it has and the feeling that it resonates, that's important as well. And so when we become aware of these things, it helps us become knowledgeable. It helps us accept it and deal with it.

Sound has propagation. Sound and vibrations travel. And so we can, the sound itself, all vibrations propagate and move.

Sound moves through a medium. It moves through air or water or even solid stuff. Light travels.

It's a vibration as well. Light is a cycle and a vibration. It can be a wave.

It travels through the electromagnetic field. And a lot of, and we're electrical beings and lots of animals use the electromagnetic field to navigate. Birds use it to navigate other bees, even fungi.

And we may not be aware of our interaction with the electromagnetic field, but most, a lot of scientists and certainly a lot of spiritual folks believe it as well. Emotionally, our events in our lives, emotions, our thoughts, things that we buried, unresolved conflicts, those get buried as well. Certain people, chakras say that we have certain aspects going from the base of our spine up to our crown with different aspects that can get clogged.

And so emotionally, you may have buried something in a certain body area. But just when I think of just reliving a repressed emotion and I processed a repressed emotion, in some ways I'm propagating, I'm traveling to that area where that energy is. So right now I'm not thinking about when I got bullied as a little kid and I repressed it and it affected me, whatever baggage I'm holding onto.

But in breath work and certain meditations, and when you have your platform, you allow yourself to propagate and touch upon repressed emotions, shadow work. When you do shadow work, what are you doing? You're taking your shadowy characteristics, they're not necessarily bad, and you're examining them.

You're propagating your awareness. You're taking your awareness and it's traveling to them. And then this is, I'm finally, after a very long explanation, getting to the word that you used.

When you can propagate and relive these emotions or come into them, you can resonate with them. And resonate is a, and I'm not a scientist, so I have a touching upon the understandings. But when resonating is when two objects or systems vibrate at the same frequency.

And so hit one tuning fork and it makes the other one vibrate. Emotionally, oh, I resonate with that. Oh, that resonates with me.

Well, that means you're vibrating at the same level of whatever you're resonating with is vibrating. And so it's a match. And in the work that I do, it's the cathartic release.

If you're dealing with repressed emotions, I mean, I could resonate with something right now and that could be really good. I mean, two people at a concert and one of them is sitting with their arms crossed leaning against it. And the other one is like into the music, having a great time.

Well, one is resonating with the music and the other one is not. And so it doesn't have to just be repressed emotions, but it's certainly the context of a lot of the stuff I teach in the book. And so going back to resonating, if you have some trauma or repressed emotion or some baggage and you feel that out in a safe area and you do it safely and it's not.

And if you need professional help, that's always important. So when we're dealing with significant traumas, when we're dealing with psychological issues, always want to, you know, this work can be done and it can be done alone and it can be part of your path. But a lot of people may need professional help in touching upon some of these things.

And that's OK. That's actually a sign of growth to go ahead and get that. But when you're resonating with some of your old baggage, you're crying it out.

It's a cathartic release. And it feels like a release. It doesn't feel like you're reliving the trauma.

It feels like you're making friends with it on some level. And then better than resonating is entrained, is entrainment. And so entrainment is when two systems don't just resonate with each other, but they change their frequency and they move with each other in a dance.

So now you're entrained with something. It's even better. It's no longer conflicting with you.

You are now moving with it. And it's like one thing is now you're invited to the dance. And entrainment is when two systems, again, are not just resonating, but they change their frequencies and amplitudes and they match each other in a sense of movement.

And if you want to put the analogy to some of the baggage and the purification work that we've sort of talked about. So let's just say you have some baggage of some kind, an attitude about how you, it can be anything. We all have them.

You don't like your body image. There's a certain part of you that people teased you when you were a little kid and you hid or whatever. Most people have aspects.

And when you process that and you cry that out and you resonate with it and then you entrain with it, it's still there. You were traumatized. They picked on you.

You were abused. Whatever it was, it doesn't have to, it can have a gamut. That's who you are.

It doesn't go away. But it doesn't have to fester and rot with you. You can entrain with it and become essentially kind of friends, if you will, where it's no longer pulling on you.

And that's where the entrainment comes in, where it's no longer a festering energy within yourselves, festering, causing cancers. There's a lot of, there's a lot of scientific proof that repressed emotions, repressed traumas, unresolved conflicts sit in within us and they cause physical and mental illness. And when you do this type of work, it is, it's very releasing.

And then these issues are no longer working against you. And they may even be some form of strength. So for example, if you were picked on, you know, the bad result would be that you pick on other people.

I think there's, I think we all recognize that the parents and the fathers who hit their kids were probably hit themselves, you know, I mean, you know, and so if they can release this horrible negative energy and process it and then become entrained with it, it may turn into empathy. You know, they might, it might go from something bad to something good, but whatever it is, it's no longer working against us. And so thank you for mentioning resonating and frequency, because you just got my speech about sound and vibrations.

All of this is in my book. So if you're, if your listeners are interested, you can, they can buy my book, which just came out. So didn't mean to put a sales pitch in there.

It was pretty, pretty obnoxious, but I'm going to take it. It is in the book. So yeah.

[Speaker 2] (30:11 - 31:03)
And like, cause you mentioned about, you know, people, they have said that traumas and it, they can be released and it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, but they, but what I've noticed is when, when you see that somebody has kind of surpassed it or they've worked through it, the emotion doesn't kick in. Whereas you see sometimes when people are telling the story of what happened to them, they're reliving it and they're going back into that emotion. And they're constantly, I suppose it's just making it worse by doing that instead of setting it free and being able to have the conversation.

Cause you can help people by the trauma, whether somebody was abused or whatever it is. But I think when they're reliving it and they're making that their career around reliving, and that's kind of telling people that that's worse for you because they think the cells you're hurting yourselves within.

[Speaker 1] (31:05 - 42:45)
Yeah. Well, the bigger pic, yeah. I mean, all of that makes a lot of sense and that those are great, great observations.

So we can get into the detail of that. You know, the bigger picture here, Roy, is we're dealing with what I call the purification stage of kind of the spiritual path that I discuss in the book. And so I lay it out, this mysticism or the mystical path, which really is not any different than the spiritual path.

Okay. I lay it out in three major phases. And the first stage is stabilization.

And it includes many things, but it certainly includes meditation. So what you're doing is you're building a stable platform, kind of going back to that little place where I said, you could go and rest and digest. You know, you're having that, and there's lifestyle issues and there's food issues and there's all sorts of ways, customs, building customs, having community.

There's all these things we can do to become stable. Okay. Then the next phase, which is what we're now talking about, is the purification phase and dealing with these repressed emotions.

Okay. And so every spiritual path, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, they all recognize a stage of purification. So we need to kind of have a stable platform to do the purification work.

And then we're talking about this concept of purifying ourselves, which allows us to open up to greater expansion. And the expansion is the third phase where you're connecting to everything. So my book, Demystified Mystic, the tagline is a modern guide to experience the interconnectedness of everything.

And the interconnectedness to everything is kind of my non-religious aspect of these transformative experiences, feelings of unity. If you're religious, it can be source or God, whatever fits with your particular belief, but you're connecting to these things. And so in order to expand into this greater field of interconnectedness and touch upon this great energy, I like to say, I have a funny saying, and sometimes I use the S word, you don't want to meet God when you're carrying a bag of crap, you know, or the S word, and so what I mean by that is these experiences of great unity, they're very energetic.

And in nearly every tradition and in psychology, there's a very well-recognized phenomenon of a spiritual emergency. Maybe you've heard of a Kundalini psychosis. Islam has stories of people going crazy.

Kabbalah actually forbade the study of the Zohar, its primary text, unless you were 40, male, learned in certain aspects. And Christianity has the dark night of the soul. There's all these aspects.

And so when we do the purification work and we do it safely, the spiritual path doesn't have to be marred with a destabilizing. And unfortunately, a lot of people can be destabilized. A lot of people have these spiritual crises that they go through, and this is actually recognized in psychology.

But going back to the purification phase, there's lots to purify. There's the repressed emotions is a big one. There's the concepts of how we look at ourself, self-hatred, self-criticism.

Do we hate our bodies? Do we love our bodies? I mean, look, you know, our parents, I had loving parents.

They didn't abuse me, but I was the fourth boy of four boys. So I got a little neglected. I mean, frankly, my parents were probably done parenting by the time they raised me.

And they were like, Scott, just do whatever you want, you know? And I don't think I was significantly neglected, but I've dealt with that. And whatever your issue is or your listeners issue is, we all have them to varying degrees.

Traumas, there's traumas, repressed emotions, self-criticism. I call it the baggage, whatever our baggage is, and it can creep up. Another aspect is the shadow.

So maybe you've heard of Carl Jung and shadow work. So the shadow isn't necessarily baggage or bad things that happen to us or even bad beliefs that we have. The shadows are common, universal characteristics and that we all have as part of our personalities and our psyches.

And what Jung did is he put them into one of these archetypes. And so let me just sort of take the science out of it. Inside of us, Roy, is everyone's got a mean, nasty monster in us, and it's part of who you are.

And we're not giving it permission. So shadow work is, oh, don't recognize it and become a mean, nasty monster. But every part of us wants to like, if your boss criticizes you, there's a part of you that wants to chop off his head and rip out his heart and eat it, because that's what our ancestors did to their enemies.

They obliterated them. And this is not permission. I am not saying go out and do something bad.

But that little monster, that troll inside of us, and that's just one archetype, is it has a power behind it. And every archetype, even though it's shadowy and lurky and dark, when you acknowledge these aspects of yourself, there is a corresponding strength. So another aspect is inside of us is everyone's like an abused ragdoll.

Sometimes we just feel like a dishrag. We're just, everyone's stepping on us. And inside of us, there's this harmed little child, you know, not that we need to, in the shadow work.

And then there's a critical aspect of us, an overbearing father and a controlling mother. And there's all these different aspects. And I discuss and outline all of them.

And each of them has, and what Jung is saying, and he uses these archetypes to sort of universalize them. And in shadow work, we're accepting these aspects of ourselves, we're feeling them, we're getting them out, and we're processing them. And in doing so, they're no longer controlling us from behind the scenes.

These aspects of our personality are no longer, we kind of cut the strings to them being, you know, us being puppets on them, and we're corresponding. And that's part of the purification process as well. And then the last type of major aspect is the ego, okay?

So the ego isn't your, and again, it's like a Venn diagram. The ego can deal with your repressed emotions, and it can partly live inside the world of your baggage that you had and your shadowy characters that you need to live within and accept and in a nice, honorable way, you know, deal with without giving them permission to rule your life, but still acknowledging them. The ego is the part of the self that is the sense of I and your individual nature.

And the ego can be healthy, it can be inflated, or it can be under inflated and a weak ego. So, you know, we all know people who have huge egos, and we all know people who are like probably need a little self boost of some more confidence. And we all feel that within our nature.

And then that's the balancing of the ego. But then even then, when we enter into these very deep meditation practices, and we are connecting with the whole universe, and we are experiencing light within everywhere, and we're having this experience of total joy and love, this requires some element of ego dissolution. I don't like the term ego death.

Because as long as I have this meat suit, and I'm living in a meat suit, I'm probably going to have some ego. But there are characters in history whose egos are very, very well, like diminished in that aspect. And I described some of those.

One of my favorite is this lady, Ottoman, I can never pronounce her first name. Ottoman Anya Ma, she was a Hindu saint, lived not too long ago. And one of her defining Ma's favorite character, and there's a lot of books, especially a couple books that just came out.

I've read them, they're good about Ma. One of her defining characteristics is she really had an ego that was hard to even appreciate. She just lived in a non-ego type of state.

These are part of the character, and she often would say, she wouldn't even use the word I, she would refer to herself as this body, kind of a characteristic of how resolved her ego was. And so that's the purification work, I gave you a big, and we need to do it safely, we need to avoid the spiritual emergencies. And by doing this type of cleansing work, this purification work, it greater allows us to expand.

And it all starts with meditation. That's why the meditation podcast is such an important thing. And I've enjoyed listening to many of the episodes in preparation for today's meeting.

Meditation is a big part of doing all this type of work.

[Speaker 2] (42:46 - 42:55)
Excellent. I'm just curious, from 12 years of age to know how your own meditation has evolved.

[Speaker 1] (42:57 - 59:27)
Yeah, so I'm not a particularly religious person. And so, when I learned Transcendental Meditation, because again, it was very popular, I took to it, I felt like it felt like a high, like I, it felt good. And I, at the time, there was this TV show called Kung Fu, with David Carradine.

And he was this Chinese priest who got exiled out of his community. He made a mistake and he got shoved over to America. And he was wandering around.

And he's a Jesus figure in literature. He's the type of figure in literature, like Superman or Jesus. He doesn't change.

It's the characters that he meets change. So in any type of story, when you tell a story or listen to a story, usually the main character, the hero of the story, goes through some sort of growth and change. And then at the end of the story, they're rewarded.

But in some stories, when we have Jesus figures, like Cain was in the story, he changes other people. Anyway, I digress, because you really wanted to know about my story. My story is not a Jesus story by any means.

So please don't think that's what I was saying. I am not a Jesus figure. I'm just telling you what I emulated that helped foster my practice.

So I really liked this thing, and he meditated. And I became convinced that, and I took to it, I was feeling that good feeling. It was almost like getting naturally high.

And I knew and I felt that it would allow me to fight off stress. And I truly believe that meditation would be able to allow me to release the stress that I have, but also create a barrier where I don't internalize new stress. And I studied this.

And even as a young kid and throughout high school, I gave, whenever it was time to give a speech, sometimes I was giving a speech about meditation. And I was studying around what I could. A next major development in my path was, there's a guy named Jon Kabat-Zinn.

And he wrote several books. And he's very well known for introducing meditation into healthcare. And he has a course that's very famous that it's like a six-week course or eight-week course.

And you learn meditation and you learn these techniques. And from there, I learned breathing meditations and body meditations, like a body scan, where your focus isn't a sound, it's either your breath. And I felt that having these additional techniques really helped my practice.

And for years, until I was like a young man with married and kids, this was just my practice. I wouldn't say it was very deep. I wouldn't say it was very spiritual, but I did continue to meditate regularly.

And then I was introduced to conscious connected breathwork or breathwork, which has become very popular lately. And this was decades ago. So I've been doing breathwork for 28 years or so, right when my kids were babies.

And I stumbled upon it. And I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's several techniques and they're all over the place now. And it's often called breathwork.

The ancient tradition is pranayama, where you're controlling your breath, breath of fire. There's different techniques that are ancient. William Hoff is a new guy.

And these also became popular like in the 70s and the 80s, these breathwork techniques. And at first I was very skeptical about them because I knew about them. One of the more famous ones is called rebirthing.

And rebirthing, the major concept is it's a technique that allows you to release past traumas, including the trauma that you experienced of being born. Because when you think about it, we're all relaxing and resting in the womb, connected to our mother's heartbeat and everything else. And then all of a sudden we're being forced down this narrow canal, into a room with bright lights and doctors and nurses are slapping our butts like they used to do.

And so this was a traumatic event. And I actually dismissed it for many years. I knew about it and I heard about these techniques, but I was always like, oh, that's hogwash.

I'm a skeptic by nature. I was like, that's not meditation. That meditation is supposed to be calm.

I'm supposed to be deep. And frankly, I didn't think I had many traumas to even relive. And boy, was I kind of wrong.

I didn't think I had traumas to really relive. And I kind of put it on the fringe. I didn't really know too much about it.

And then at the time there was, you know, when we had Sony Walkmans and stuff there and everything else, there was this one podcast or this one aspect that it was this breath technique called transformational breathing. And at the beginning of the, I was into binaural beats, which the Monroe Institute is really big at pushing. And so I would listen to tapes with binaural beats.

And if there was a meditator who put out stuff into the world of the early internet, I was trying to find stuff with binaural beats. And one of them was this breathing technique. It's a circular conscious connected breath.

And at the beginning of the recording, the guy says, now this is a very dynamic breath where he had a little warning. And it was something like, this is a very dynamic breath and you may experience the release of emotions and you may build up all this stuff and you should do it with a facilitator. And I was like, oh, this is like rebirthing.

And I didn't even play it. Like I listened to it at the beginning of it and I went to another recording. And then one day I hit play and I was in like a separate room where my family wasn't in.

I was all by myself. And I did this technique and I wasn't expecting much. And again, I was a little cynical and I'm doing this conscious connected breath work and it's through your mouth and it's like panting.

And out of nowhere, out of nowhere, I'm back in like grade school, like in fourth grade and I'm being picked last for the baseball game, which probably was common for me because as you can kind of tell, I was a little chunky. I was always well liked as a kid, but I'm not very graceful. Like when we did play baseball, I was the catcher because I was always the husky kid.

And so here I was back on the field and I literally could feel it. Like I felt like I was back on this field, like there was a visual sensory aspect to it. And I was releasing, resonating with this event that happened in my childhood that I had no idea that I was still holding on to it.

It happened. I mean, it was, it was happening and I didn't know that it bothered me. I mean, I wasn't thinking about this thing and I literally had this release of this old trauma or this old event and it was like this cathartic release and I was like crying it out.

And from there, I became a breath worker. I studied this stuff. I was, I still remain skeptical.

I was like, am I hyperventilating? I go, why is this happening? And as I continued and developed this practice, it's developed over the years, this conscious connected breath work, you know, this stuff that you might see, like if you're scrolling on your phones and you see these people on the mats, like I said earlier, and they're crying.

I mean, that's what they're doing. I think it's a master key for purification work. So you could do purification work on many ways, but if you develop this stability and then you develop a practice of conscious connected breath work, you should do it with a facilitator.

It's often very well done by a facilitator. I still get facilitated the connection of having a person just sit, they're called sitters. In William Hoff's holotropic breath work, the sitter is like a major player.

Having that person over you, it provides a sense of safety. And so I still get facilitated, but I do the practice on my own. And this practice has been very spiritual and mystical.

And so in this type of practice, you enter states of deep meditation, consistent with deep meditation. And so I don't know if you've had breath workers on your show. I think there were some episodes with breath workers, and it's kind of what I'm describing.

This type of practice, again, and from there, I started studying mysticism. I was like, because I would, I sort of stumbled on like a Kundalini experience or a Kundalini awakening. And although I don't remember, I've had some big experiences.

I don't remember having energy go up my spine. I have had that to some degree, but the overwhelming thing I've, you know, I've had these deep experiences and connections and visions and kind of through breath work. And so my calming practice then developed into breath work, which is more of a dynamic practice.

I think these breath work techniques, again, they're breath work or conscious connected breath techniques. The one that I developed, the one that I stumbled upon and developed is called transformational breath. And they're still out there.

If you go to transformational breath, they have a monthly gathering online where they divide you into groups. If it's your first time, you can learn the technique online for free. And I've met her and I've taken courses and seminars from them, and I know their community very well.

I'm not a facilitator. I haven't, I'm not, I mean, I could probably teach it, but there's an organization of breath work facilitators. It's, I forget the name of it, but it's an international organization that has standards for training and standards for certification to become a facilitator.

It's not a licensed healthcare. You could go to somebody who's not licensed or not credentialed. It's not a license.

There is no license, at least not in the States. Are you in Australia? Holland.

Okay. I apologize. I should have known.

Australia has a lot of great regulations and stuff, but in any event, transformational breath work, there's a monthly class. And if you go on it, you'll probably see my face on the Zoom meeting because I'm often in there and it's free and it's online. And then, you know, it's a conscious connected breath work.

And then, so just sort of answer it, but what a long answer to your question. You sort of wanted to know my deeper mystical path. I think that was what your question was.

And then from there, I've been a study of these events from a psychological, scientific, and spiritual nature, because this breath work and these events and these transformative spiritual experiences that anyone can have, you do not have to be religious to experience this great sense of unity and this wonderful sense of feelings of light and love that can occur. In studying some of the things I went through in these experiences, it's consistent with religion. And so, I mean, when you think about it, if you have a feeling of source, I mean, that's where religion sort of falls in.

And so, I studied the mystical traditions of many religions. As I indicated earlier, every religion has one. So, in Islam, it's Sufism.

So, a Sufi, if you've ever heard Sufis, those are the mystics of Islam. And Buddhists and Hindus, it's sort of more ingrained into the whole path. There's not like, but there's definitely different aspects and different events that are consistent with the mystical experiences.

So, within those traditions, they have techniques and things. Judaism has Kabbalah, which is its tradition of mysticism within its aspect. And then Christianity, Christian mystics, there's modern ones, and it's through contemplation, through prayer, through meditation, you can have a total connection to the Trinity and experience that.

There's certainly significant Christian mystics, both historically and in modern times as well. So, it's not that in mysticism, we haven't talked about even what it is. Mysticism isn't the study of Scripture.

It's not the study of learning the ancient tales. Mysticism is the experience of source or unity. And again, you don't have to be religious to experience these feelings and have these events.

But mysticism is more aligned with the direct experience of source or God, or if you're not religious, just the inner, you know, the universal field or the electromagnetic field and the feeling and sensing the connectivity. Or if you just want to boil it down to a bunch of endorphins, you know, that are flooding your brain and the activation of your pineal gland behind your base of your skull, your pineal gland, you know, that's what Joe Dispenza talks about, got to activate your pineal gland. It's not as easy as he likes to sell people, but it is possible and it can be done.

And I urge people to look at it, but it can be elusive, activating your pineal gland. In any event, yeah, that's, I think sort of answers the question.

[Speaker 2] (59:27 - 59:46)
Absolutely. And just curious, because, you know, at the start I mentioned you were 12, which is kind of unusual at that age. It's fantastic.

But being a father, you know, have you encouraged them or have they got involved in meditation or breath work?

[Speaker 1] (59:47 - 1:01:20)
So I've taught, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. And so I will tell you, I have two boys. I have loved them.

I had a wife. I have a live-in girlfriend now. I don't have a lot of people in my life that meditate to the degree that I do.

I mean, they touch upon it and they've done it, but I don't, you're either going to do it or you're not, you know? So I have more of a, the invitation is always open to talk about it, you know? And so, yeah, I think one of my sons probably meditates a little more than the other one, but their path is their path and they're going to find their way.

So I don't preach it or anything. When you're interested, I'll talk to you about it and teach you about it if you want to know, but I don't say you got to do this, you know? I mean, I truly believe that the number one problem with humanity is we hold on to our baggage.

I mean, I think everybody needs a platform and a safe place to get rid of the crap that they hold on to. And I wish that for everybody, but again, everyone's path is where they're at and they'll find their way. If not this lifetime, maybe another one, but I'm not sure I believe in that, but it's certainly a thing that's often said.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:23 - 1:01:51)
So I've noticed that with a few other guests as well, or just people that I know that you would think that because the person is heavily involved in it, that the kids would be the same and it's not. It's just, they have their own life. It's there from when they want it, there's nothing you can do.

And just finally, because you've touched a lot on the book, but you might just mention what else you cover in the book for those that might be interested in getting it.

[Speaker 1] (1:01:53 - 1:06:22)
Well, I mean, the book lays out that three-arc phase pretty well. And so, I mean, it's a regular size book. It's not the four agreements, which you could probably read in an afternoon.

It's and, you know, it talks about all the avenues of those plans of those phases. When you have these mystical experiences, and many of us have, I mean, many of us have had these transformative events. A major part is how do you put them into your life and how do you process them and integrate them?

And so, there's an aspect of, well, you've had this big, wonderful event and you've seen, and you've touched upon this. What do you do? And I present a drug-free event.

So there's a lot of people that are finding the road to spirituality is through drug-induced spiritual events. So there's ayahuasca ceremonies have become very popular, ketamine, psychedelics. I will tell you, I say right off in the beginning of the book, there is great honor in plant-based traditions.

So there's cultures where these, and I honor those cultures. Those are great. I haven't been to those cultures.

I don't know. There is significant scientific evidence that psychedelics and certain types of psychedelics are beneficial in treating certain conditions, mostly PTSD and anxiety, but I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. So I recognize this, and I also recognize the meaning behind those events, people who have those, but they're often destabilizing.

So a lot of people go on an ayahuasca ceremony, they come back, they can be destabilized. I mean, they think they're going to die and it's very difficult for them. And I'm going to tell you, you do not need drugs to experience the most profound type of transformative astral projection-y type of events.

You don't need drugs to induce these. You can do it naturally. But the issue isn't how do you process them and integrate them into your life with meaning?

And that's another part of the book, not just having them, but providing them with the proper meaning. I mean, I get past whether or not it's true or not. So people who touch upon this stuff often have ancestral contact.

Okay. Oh, I saw Aunt Gladys and she told me stuff, you know, okay, well, your Aunt Gladys has never come to my house during my methods. I mean, if she's out there, why isn't she visiting me?

You know? And so did you talk to Aunt Gladys? Is she truly out there living on a cloud?

And one day the two of you, I don't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

The credibility of whether or not you're, you know, like Bashar, is that guy truly channeling an alien? I mean, there's a guy on the internet and his name is Akin, but then he turns himself into this guy named Bashar, who's a condescending, rude alien who's mean to, who's like, who knows everything. And he's condescending to everybody, you know?

I mean, frankly, I've had those experiences. I've had experiences where I felt that I'm channeled and connected to another alien species that is, you know, that I could describe. I'm not going to tell you it's true and I'm not going to tell you that they are out there.

I'm not going to tell you I even connected to them, but I am going to try to find meaning in it and what it means to me and my concept of what the world is, whether or of the book.

[Speaker 2] (1:06:24 - 1:06:30)
Excellent. Well, listen, Scott, totally enjoyed the conversation. You might let the listeners know where they can find you.

[Speaker 1] (1:06:31 - 1:07:40)
Yeah. So there's my website, demystifiedmystic.com. There's the book on all avenues of retail.

You can get it pretty much Barnes and Noble, everywhere. It seems to be pretty well distributed, obviously Amazon. It's called Demystified Mystic.

I have a small, but burgeoning social media content. I'm not a major media creator, but on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, and then I'll probably get a TikTok, but I don't have a TikTok right now. You can just search for Demystified Mystic and you'll stumble upon me.

That's the handle on all those things. But if you really, the main thing would be to purchase the book, that would be great. And I welcome, it just came out.

And so I welcome honest reviews. If anybody does pick it up and they can put an honest review on Amazon, it's not obligatory, but it would be greatly if you've appreciated this talk. I'd love some reviews because it helps the algorithm, but again, honest reviews are all that are needed, if you're so inclined.

[Speaker 2] (1:07:42 - 1:08:29)
Make sure I put the link spot on the audio and the video. Thank you very much, Scott. Thank you, Ray.

So that's all for the meditation podcast. You'll find all our episodes on meditationpodcast.org. You'll find everything about me, scan the QR code or go to roycon.com and you'll find there all my podcasts along with my science podcasts as well. There's over 20 now at this stage. And also I've got PEMF and EMF products. You'll find the links for that.

And if you're looking for virtual assistance, go to va.world. And if you're into business, we've got two private business groups and you'll find links for that as well. So be sure to give us thumbs up, five-star rating. And as Scott said, it does really help.

So when you do get the book, just give it a five-star rating and a nice review because more see it. Until next week, take care.