Casual Temple

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcript is auto-generated; errors are unintentional.)

00:00:03 Merrily

Welcome to the Casual Template podcast. This is episode 23 and I'm your host, Marley Duffy at the Casual temple. We're not just casual observers, we're seekers, explorers and believers. Our mission is to unravel the threads that connect us to the unseen world of spirit and how that empowers us to know our true selves.

00:00:20 Merrily

But before we embark a little favor, hit that heart-shaped like button and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Today, we delve into the profound world of Buddhism with author Joe Singleton, who has penned the book Mara Dawn Buddha Rise.

00:00:33 Merrily

Awakening Joe takes us on a tour, discussing the concept of Dharma in Buddhism as an enlightening way to contemplate and practice life. We'll delve into the concept of impermanence, which is central to Dharma, and discuss the importance of authenticity and self knowledge. Join us as we explore the path to self realization, recognizing that we are both the source and solution to our problems.

00:00:53 Merrily

So sit back, relax, and let's embark on this journey together on the casual.

00:00:57 Merrily

Tempo.

00:00:59 Merrily

Welcome to the casual temple. This week we welcome Joe Singleton, who's our guest today. Joe is a multi talented, he's an author, editor, publisher, tarot card spinner, Rockhound, and lapidary artist. He's also the co-owner of the local stone, a a crystal tarot.

00:01:18 Merrily

And chakra jewelry boutique in Galveston, TX.

00:01:22 Merrily

Joe's literary journey spans from exploring existential philosophy to venturing into spiritual realms of the Buddha verse, all in pursuit of the ancient wisdom of know thyself. Joe, I'm so happy to have you on the casual temple.

00:01:38 Joe

Thank you, Mary. I'm super happy to be here. Let's have some fun tonight.

00:01:42 Merrily

Yeah, me too.

00:01:43 Merrily

And I I know we're definitely going to talk about your book. You were so kind. And you sent me a copy of it. And it's really wonderful. I had a chance to read it.

00:01:51 Merrily

All in one day. It's such a great my take away from it kind of an overview is it's a great introduction to the concepts of like Eastern Buddhism and like kind of philosophy and modern philosophy mixed in. You drop some philosopher names in there, which is cool.

00:02:11 Merrily

And do some comparisons so.

00:02:14 Merrily

Yeah. And I think it's just like a really nice conversational style. I feel like it. It's like I'm sitting next to you or kind of having tea and you're just kind of telling me all about, like, your thoughts on on Eastern Buddhisms that was very cool.

00:02:30 Joe

Well, that's, that's. I'd love to hear you say that because that were exactly my intentions with the book. And it's just that it's it's music to my ears. As an author, you know, when you work on a book, it's a long, hard, lonely journey. Rd. into here. I've got, you know, it, I've, I've I've had a few reviews. The book just got published. Right and.

00:02:43 Merrily

Yeah.

00:02:49

MHM.

00:02:50 Joe

They flip, set that you know they're reading it in the day and it's it's, you know, opening some minds to some new things and things like that. And that's what I've always been about, you know, my background is in Philly.

00:02:59 Joe

Took me and I was on a project. You know that that that as an editor and and the whole goal of that was to help people understand philosophy that don't want to read thousands and thousands of drive words and academic styles. So I like to think that I did all that hard work and I'm just trying to make it easy to bring out. So that's.

00:03:16 Joe

Beautiful to hear you say that. Thank you very much.

00:03:17 Merrily

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'm, I'm so happy that you made the effort and you wrote it. And it is such a big undertaking. And like congratulations. So that's really cool.

00:03:30 Merrily

So kind of.

00:03:30 Merrily

How you know, we're definitely going to talk about your book because there's a lot of really cool stuff in there, but just to kind of get the audience sort of acclimated to who you are, we tend to kind of talk about sort of a little bit of background on you, kind of like giving us an idea of who you are and like what were sort of the.

00:03:49 Merrily

Events that led to you writing the book, really, that that you could pinpoint.

00:03:54 Joe

Very cool. Well, that is a long and winding Rd. story. And I'll I'll encapsulate it and I like to say it's it's it's been.

00:04:00

OK.

00:04:02 Joe

Three years of intense writing and research in the book, and 57 years of living to get there.

00:04:07 Joe

So you know, I I'll have to stay. It started. I grew up in the MTV generation back in the 80s, right. And one night probably I was around 14 years old and I was watching a show called Monterey Pop, which was a it's a. It's a movie about an old festival in the late 60s with The Rolling Stones and all that. And it ended up with The Who, right. And I ended.

00:04:14 Merrily

MHM.

00:04:28 Joe

Seeing if it ends with Pete Townsend of The Who smashing his guitar, and there's drums rolling and you see The Who and and when I was 14, I said that's what I wanna do. I wanna smash my guitar. I wanna be a rock star. So it all started out really wanting to be a rock star. And you know where that takes you down you.

00:04:40 Merrily

Yes.

00:04:43 Joe

Know through the 80s and through the 90s.

00:04:46 Joe

And I played music for a long time, and then, you know, Rockstar didn't work out.

00:04:52 Joe

Wife House baby came along and I spent 30 years in corporate America in in healthcare technology sales and things like that, raising a great son who went off to UT and got a degree and did great things. And then, you know, a few years ago everything kind of changed, you know, empty nest came along and.

00:05:12 Joe

And and you know, I found myself kind of free, fresh and and.

00:05:16 Joe

With.

00:05:18 Joe

With a time to write, I guess you could say right? And and I packed up all my stuff, moved out of Houston and bought me a boat and moved to Galveston.

00:05:26 Joe

I was going.

00:05:27 Joe

To fish my life away. But I started riding. I had time to write and and really got back into a lot of the old, you know, who I was back when I was, you know, 18/19/20 back in my kind of.

00:05:39 Joe

Artistic, exploratory days.

00:05:41 Joe

I always kind of consider myself an artist trapped in a corporate, you know, persons, mindset, you know, and you know, I used to dabble in things like the tarot and the cult and stuff like that. And you know it. I was able to kind of pick up on some of that stuff. I got back into reading tarot cards. You.

00:05:48

Mm-hmm.

00:05:58 Joe

Know.

00:05:58 Joe

And all that, and then very fortunately, I.

00:06:01 Joe

You know in my mid 40s I went back to college at UHD. I had a great professor there that I really liked. I studied a lot of existential philosophy and then years later about four or five years ago.

00:06:13 Joe

She knew I was a tarot card reader, and she actually invited me to be an associate editor on her book. It's it was a book called Philosophy Wise. It's bringing 22 of the greatest philosophers of all time. It's a kind of simple, easy kind of what I tried to do with this book. And she made a tarot deck with that right, a philosopher's tarot deck. So I got to see her. Kind of.

00:06:33 Joe

I got to see her write, publish and what it goes through a book. And I said, you know what I need to do that for myself. And one of my jobs doing that.

00:06:44 Joe

Was to track down all of her footnotes and things like that. I heard some of your podcasts. I know you like to go down footnote rabbit holes, and I was down the ultimate one. And there was this book. She had used one of the Buddha was one of the philosophers that she used in there.

00:06:59 Joe

And there was a book by a guy named Rahul Apollo who wrote a book called What The Buddha taught. Very simple little book. And I kept seeing these quotes from them. So that's a cool book. Bought it. Read it.

00:07:09 Joe

And this is kind of a a mystical experience, right? This is how things just kind of bubble up in the universe and and, you know, I started, I started really getting into that book. It's it's really just to treat us on the Dhammapada, which is.

00:07:24 Joe

The words of the Buddha, right kind of like in the Bible. You have the red letters that you got all this junk and then you got the red letters of what Jesus said, which is really cool stuff. You know, it's kind of the same thing. That's what the Dhammapada is. It's the words of the.

00:07:32 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:07:36 Joe

Buddha and this is the the origination of of Dharma, you know, and it just it really lit a a fire in me that said I'm going to write a book about this. I picked out about 8 or 10 quotes. I knew that I really wanted to use and then I I I found the the the the karmic wheel of life which really all came together so.

00:07:56 Joe

It's been a long journey, you know, I've done a lot of things. I I've. I've written a lot of books that will never get read. And finally, you know, I have this theory that you have to really live some life and have some experience instead of trying to writing about something I thought.

00:08:11 Joe

Life should be or what? What I thought somebody would like to read. You know, I finally had something inside me that was true and honest. When you get that, that's a beautiful thing. And that that's the origination of this book. And it's a beautiful thing.

00:08:24 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. Wow, yeah, definitely. You can see sort of the culmination of your, your passion about these subjects that you write about.

00:08:35 Merrily

Yeah, what a cool story, though. You talk about being sort of MTV generation. I'm like the last, I think one of the last years of like Gen. X or whatever. And so I've kind of like like, oh, MTV.

00:08:47 Joe

Yeah, it was. It was very cool in the beginning. And then, you know, it turned into a bunch of soap operas. So, you know, and then I kind of forgot, you know, a really huge part of that.

00:08:57 Joe

You know, I'm a jeweler as well and through that process I've reconnected with, with, with somebody I had been in love with a very long time ago and we've gotten together and started this, this jewelry business where we go out and we actually pick stones and crystals out of the earth and then we bring them back here. We cut them, grind them, shine them, wrap them in sterling silver.

00:09:17 Joe

And sell jewelry. It's kind of an an alchemical process that, you know, just kind of happens with a lot of things. So there's really a lot of things coming together for me late in life. I'm a late bloomer, so I'm I'm one of those who enjoys and invites aging.

00:09:31 Joe

Because that's wisdom, right? And you know, I really wasn't ready until now. And I've got, you know, I feel like I've got 10 or 15 books in me, you know, to go. So it's it's it's it's kind of the beginning of a new journey. It's an awesome thing.

00:09:33

Ah.

00:09:45 Merrily

Yeah, cool. Yeah, just definitely into all sorts of really cool things. And. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for taking us down that road, that road of your life is very cool.

00:09:58 Merrily

So I know you. You did talk about you, talked about the karmic wheel of life, and I know that's like a big obviously it's like a big centerpiece sort of to your book. But can you kind of give us like?

00:10:10 Merrily

Sort of like what inspired you to kind of write about that?

00:10:14 Merrily

Peace and then yeah.

00:10:16 Joe

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it it's, it's really the spark of everything that that this book came together and you know, as I started, you know, like I said, I had eight or ten quotes. I knew I wanted to use from the Buddha, from the Dhammapada. But I started doing research into more modern thinkers on Buddhism and and some of the old voted stop those.

00:10:36 Joe

And things like that. And I came across this karmic wheel of life and.

00:10:40 Joe

There's actually a little neat little book out there. It's a quick, easy read written by the Dalai Lama. It's called the wheel of life for the karmic wheel of life, and it describes this. It's kind of like a mandala. You have a a horoscope kind of wheel mandala behind you. It's the same kind of thing where from what I understand, the Buddhist monks.

00:11:01 Joe

Back in the day, you know, they would. They would go into their cave or their monastery or whatever to be, you know, clear in their thoughts and away from all of the rabble of the world, right?

00:11:10 Joe

So they would put this mandala on the outside for the, you know, the the common folks, the US people who you know and look at it and and meditate on it. And it really is, you know, in Western terms we can look at it as something almost like Dante's Inferno, right where you have these, we travel up on these different sets of existences, this big wheel.

00:11:25

Is the fish.

00:11:31 Joe

It it has a big kind of devilish looking guy around it. That's Mara, right? And on the inside you have these. They have these levels of like, what's called a hell being or a.

00:11:40 Joe

Hungry ghost or?

00:11:42 Joe

Dimity gods and gods and it's kind of that ladder of, you know, existence that we climb on this car and the wheel in the very center is what really caught my eye. There is a there's three characters in the middle. There is the a pig which represents ignorance and greed and it bites the tail of a Peacock which represents desire and envy and the Peacock.

00:12:03 Joe

Bites the tail of the snake, which represents anger and spite, and the snake bites the tail of the pig and they're going around.

00:12:11 Joe

In.

00:12:12 Joe

This circle, like a hamster wheel in the middle, right?

00:12:16 Joe

And this this one line kind of came to me which said I want to be just like you, you know, and it's kind of we get caught in our cycles of life as either kind of one or two positions. Either we're trying to be like, emulate somebody else or we're try we. Once we get something, we want everybody to emulate us. Right. And we're all kind of caught in the circle.

00:12:36 Joe

All of all, chasing the same thing over and over and over, and that that was really a big a vision for me, right? And it's really the spark that that when that when that came together with some of the things I was coming with, I was like that's the book right there. I've got 2 pictures in the book and that's one of them, you know, so it's a, it's a very important.

00:12:56 Joe

Concept and it's it's it's kind of a mandolin overview in one side of this thing we call some Sara right which is which is the world that we.

00:13:06 Joe

Yeah. Then. And the idea overall, you know, Buddhism is kind of a hard sell in the West because it's all about kind of letting things go, right? What are we trained and educated to do when, when? When we're young from growing up as acquire things get as much as you can, right. This is the. This is the American way. This is the Western way and truth it's.

00:13:26 Joe

All ways it crosses all cultural boundaries in in in a metaphorical sense, we are all kind of caught up in this wheel and. And you know the the whole idea, you know what the Buddha did is I went off of this wheel, right. The world doesn't make sense. It never has it. Never.

00:13:41 Joe

We will if we can't change the world, then what we can change is ourselves. What's inside of us. So it's a really big picture and one mandala it's it's hard to explain kind of all in that, but it was just one of those things that, you know, I know you like to talk about mystical experience and that really well. I've had a million in my. I could tell you I could spend an hour talking about those.

00:14:02 Joe

But that one was really big for me because it it really opened my mind and and encouraged me to dig farther and put this book together, which which was kind of an awakening in itself. Right. So.

00:14:13 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:14:14 Joe

That's a very cool thing. And anybody who's interested in that, or if that piques your imagination, hell beings and hungry ghosts and Demi, gods and gods and all that. And the pig, the Peacock and all that in the middle. Check out that book by the Dalai Lama. It's called the wheel of life. It's I think it's only 110 pages or something like that. But it was a real eye opener for me.

00:14:35 Joe

I'm also a tarot reader, right, and I find a lot of of semblance between the you know, wheels are a big deal with me, right? The Wheel of Fortune, right. And the terror in the old.

00:14:46 Joe

If you go back to the the 1400s, the Visconti deck, which is the farthest deck they can trace back the old wheel of Fortune had kind of a guy and and and A and a noble spot at the top, and then a guy falling from grace and a beggar at the bottom, and then a guy climbing his way to the top back to that and it's just this big circle that goes around so.

00:15:06 Joe

It ties in with a lot of things. It's universal and and like I say it it really. I really believe it crosses all cultural boundaries, whether you're in Beijing, China or here in the USA or in Mexico or wherever you are.

00:15:19 Joe

We all suffer the human condition together, right? So that's kind of what it is in, in, in, in a nutshell. But it was really big for me.

00:15:22

Mm-hmm.

00:15:27 Merrily

Yeah, yeah, yeah. These concepts like, I wasn't like I I'm kind of familiar with these concepts, right. Just by kind of existing. But yeah, they weren't, like super like forward in my mind to where I understood it. But I'm so glad that in your book you kind of pull out these kind of.

00:15:47 Merrily

Bigger pieces to kind of talk about.

00:15:50 Merrily

Yeah, you definitely go through who Mara is and Samsara and talk about the the Peacock and all and all of that and yeah. So it kind of gives you a really good grasp of it. So now I feel like I'm a little a little more knowledgeable. So I thank you for that. And something that was very interesting.

00:15:54

Yeah.

00:16:04

Yeah.

00:16:10 Merrily

Too, yeah, I know that. You know your book is, you know, we want to savory some things for the book, but I'm curious about for.

00:16:19

You're.

00:16:20 Merrily

And just how you described Dharma? Because it my current practices, I look at a lot of like Jewish mysticism. I study the Kabbalah.

00:16:29 Merrily

So the Dharma was like, really piqued my interest. And so how would you describe Dharma?

00:16:35 Joe

Man, that that is a fabulous question and a huge encompassing question. It's once again one of my things is I try to make things simple, right and it's in essence it's two things. First, it's a source of enlightenment, right? It's something that you can, when found, can really open your mind to new things.

00:16:40 Merrily

Right.

00:16:55 Joe

Right. Second, it's it's it's a way of life. Once, once, once found and realized.

00:17:02 Joe

It becomes a way a a way, a new kind of way of life, to find what I call. How many times did I say peace, freedom and happiness in the book? Probably way too many times. But that's that's the goal is we all want to find our peace, freedom and happiness, right. We can. One of one of the things I tried to relay in the book was we we do these things whatever our job is or this or that and we kind of have this distant.

00:17:24 Joe

Thought in our minds? Ohh. If only one day you know that I could get here, achieve this and everything will be easy and free, right?

00:17:29 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:17:33 Joe

That's that kind of that, that distant far off dream that we all have. That and you know what anxiety really is, is that not really our ability just it seems to be always on the table. You know we get it just stays in that background kind of finding that Dharma is a realization of.

00:17:52 Joe

You know, finding what that is and bringing yourself closer to it, and that in itself is an awakening thing, right? It it goes back to I I wish I would have put this in the book, but I've I've put this all on one page. If anybody wants to.

00:18:00

MHM.

00:18:08 Joe

This scribe works publishing@gmail.com. I'm happy to send it to you, but it starts out with the three jewels of Buddha, right? The three jewels of Buddha, the Buddha himself. Right. That's kind of that. That, that symbol for realization. You know, I was never into Buddhist or, but you know, I would like many in the West.

00:18:28 Joe

Had a very negative connotation of Buddhism growing. You know, I I grew up in more of a Christian kind of mindset.

00:18:35 Joe

And you always look at that and it's kind of weird, but one thing you can do, you can you can see a, you know, a a a Talisman or a Buddhist, someone. There's just something very peaceful about it. Right. And he's always just kind of sitting there and and it's this, this peaceful thing, that's that kind of thing that draws you. And that's more of that enlightenment process. Right. The second jewel. So the three jewels of Buddha.

00:18:55 Joe

Buddha.

00:18:56 Joe

#2 is the Dharma. That's right. When we find the Dharma and we and we open our minds to these things, which we'll talk about here in a little bit, that's that's kind of the way, right? And that's the way between and three. Is that what what we call saying and that's that's kind of finding what I call a Dharma bubble or our our Dharma vehicle or our own kind of space. Right.

00:19:16 Joe

We can clear all of the BS of the world out and breathe and kind of operate in our own space. Saying it goes back. It's a term where it's really a group of monks living in a certain community, you know, just with, with, with their what the what, their into right, their meditation, their their, their peace. And all of this kind of.

00:19:36 Joe

Stuff in our kind of lives that translate it, you know, we're we're all not, you know, Buddhists and saffron robes sitting in in the way. It's very different, right. We have to live our lives. We have our jobs and things like that. So I'd like to say we find our Dharma bubble, right, our it's kind of our own personal little Nirvana. You could say, right. So that's that's kind of the.

00:19:57 Joe

That's what Dharma is. It's kind of an all-encompassing it's it's it's a way to think about life and practice.

00:20:04 Joe

That is very enlightening. You could ask that to 1000 different people and you might get 1000 answers. But but you know that's mine. It's a source of enlightenment and and and a new way to live, if that's what you seek.

00:20:06 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:20:18 Merrily

Yeah, very.

00:20:19 Joe

Cool. Does that make sense to you?

00:20:20 Merrily

Oh yeah, for sure. I was, you know, especially when you described it as a vehicle or like the Dharma bubbles in the vehicles and and and like, like I said, I'm looking at Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah, and they talk. There's a lot about the merkabah, right, the merkabah sort of being that vehicle and it's.

00:20:38

Yeah.

00:20:40 Merrily

Which you can come out me Jewish Mystics. Anything wrong? That's fine. Yeah, it's very similar.

00:20:44 Joe

It's the same thing in a different language, Mary. That's that's what that that there's a a big term in Buddhism which is called the great vehicle, right. All of the the great bonus stock goes over time and all that. It's like this wheel. It's always there right the the the wheel of Darma is always spinning wheel of enlightenment is always there 99.9% of it never see it and we miss it.

00:21:06 Joe

But when you find it and you jump in on that, then you're you're in it, right? You're in the great vehicle. And this is this is understanding that we're not just here for 100 years and we do this or that.

00:21:17 Joe

That, that, this, this is an extensive, transient, transcendent kind of nature of ascension. It's a very big thing and a very big concept. And I believe the, the, the, the vehicle you're you're, you know, in in mysticism is is the same thing just, you know, in different terms as many ways to God. Right.

00:21:37 Merrily

Yes.

00:21:37 Merrily

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:21:38 Merrily

Here. Yeah. And I'm always like, very, I'm like, oh, well, yeah, because like, all the different systems, they have kind of similar, very similar concepts. And. Yeah. So I was like, wow, I again. I learned a new thing about Dharma, and that's cool. So I appreciate you. Yeah.

00:21:56 Merrily

And there's something really cool that you said about sort of, I guess, kind of when you talk about clearing the space. But you said that we as humans are always seeking permanence out of impermanent things.

00:22:14 Merrily

Can you tell us about that?

00:22:17 Joe

And permanence is really it's it's, it's all it's, it's impermanence is what what what.

00:22:25 Joe

Dharma is based on right? You'll see a lot of you know, if you, if you look into anything, probably the first thing you'll see if you you know, if you go on TikTok or look at Buddhism or whatever something that's talked about very much is called the four noble truths, right.

00:22:41 Joe

Those are that's on my sheet here. The four double truths are a that that we all suffer the human condition together. You know we cannot, if any, I challenge anybody. If you look back on your life, we like to think everything's beautiful and all this stuff. But it's a lot more suffering than it, you know, we get a little bit of good stuff and a lot of hard work and let you know that since we all suffer together.

00:23:02 Joe

2nd is that all things pass right? The third is that suffering itself passes too. The 4th is that mindfulness and understanding that all things pass. So this understanding a lot of times right we get caught up in these these.

00:23:20 Joe

These kind of what I call like a trap, right where we, you know, my life is sucks. I'm stuck here on this or that, you know, all things pass. I I like to like there's there's a little metaphor. I was thinking of the other day that I think is very cool but anything from a bird let's say to a coin in your pocket right.

00:23:40 Joe

Think of you're outside and you see a beautiful bird come flying by, you know, and you're looking. It's a beautiful thing. It's becoming, right? It's it's coming into my vision in my life and maybe it lights on.

00:23:50 Joe

A telephone pole or something like that. And you make eye contact with it and it's kind of this cool thing, right? And all of a sudden its attention goes, and it flies away, right. So that's becoming right. It arrives, and it flies away. A coin in your pocket. Right. I I do work a month or two weeks ago in anticipation. Work hard work with my hands.

00:24:10 Joe

Ohh.

00:24:11 Joe

That I'll get a paycheck, right? The paycheck hits the bank account. It arrives, right? And then I got some coins in my pocket, and I see some shoes or a record, or a book or whatever. And I want to buy that. And I have to part with that. That's a minor form of suffering. Right? Letting go of that. But you get something back if you magnify that into bigger things, like.

00:24:32 Joe

House job, family, you know, mortality, right, all things come, all things arrive and all things pass and.

00:24:41 Joe

We tend to think, you know, we tend to think that we want to make things permanent in our life, you know, and we kind of push this passing thing away, right? We don't like to think about death or the end.

00:24:51 Joe

Of this or?

00:24:52 Joe

Like getting married, you know, with the with the a divorce. You know that this stuff happens, right? And and this can either be a devastating thing that wrecks you for the rest of your life or you just.

00:25:02 Joe

Understand that from the smallest thing is something you see, you know, fly by you or a coin in your pocket, or somebody in your life or whatever. All things run their course and path.

00:25:12 Joe

And when we kind of put all three of those together and understand that they're all equally part of the experience and there's a, there's a, there's a something calming about that, right. I'm I'm. I don't expect things to be permanent in my life. Right. We we I've got a saying in the Tarot right where this happens all the time.

00:25:32 Joe

To do what's called a first house and 2nd house there and I say, you know, we think we all think you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get. I'm young. I'm gonna go to school. I'm gonna get my career. I'm gonna meet my mate. I'm gonna buy my house. We're gonna have kids and we're gonna come grandma and grandpa. Everything's gonna be great. And that's a life, right?

00:25:48 Joe

90% of the people I talked to in their 30s or 40. What what happens when you get all that stuff when you're 353637? You look around, everything sucks. You know this relationship sector, this House sucks or whatever.

00:26:00 Joe

This is not permanent and that can cause a crisis right that causes anxiety, right? So we always got to know that something else is always coming right when we're open to that, it can make a huge difference in your life from the smallest little thing to the biggest things. You know, all things must come to pass. So this, this, this, this.

00:26:20 Joe

This kind of concept of impermanence, it's it's. If there's one thing you've got.

00:26:25 Joe

Get to kind of find the Dharma. That's the center of Dharma, right? Is that understanding that all things pass right? Everything is in a state of coming, arriving or going in our lives. And when you look at it from a kind of central psychological standpoint, how many things do you have going on in your life? Some of them are leaving. Some of them are here. Some of them are coming this way.

00:26:48 Joe

And that's really what that big meditation at the end about. And that's all kind of tied into the chakras, right, the seven chakras.

00:26:55 Joe

Just balancing all that stuff and understanding that, yes, one day this this will leave it. You know, if I meditate.

00:27:01 Joe

Waiting on my root chakra. Right. What grounds? Me. You know, it's there's there's some things I've got going on in my life. That's not a very ungrounding. But I know they go, you know, and everything comes around and we think back on our lives.

00:27:16 Joe

Devastating things. Good things that have happened, or whatever. It always seems to work out that that we we always fear the worst. Like we we think the worst is going to happen, but rarely does the worst thing ever happen. Right, we we we worry 90% about stuff that probably never will happen. That's a big.

00:27:26 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:27:34 Joe

Part of it.

00:27:35 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, it was definitely like a really good.

00:27:40 Merrily

Thing for me to meditate on and think about. And yeah, you're right. I used to have, like, catastrophe catastrophizing. I think it was like a thing where I was, like, worrying about so many things in the future and exactly what you said. And then I realized like, Oh my gosh, like, I spent all that time worrying and like, 98% of the time.

00:28:00 Merrily

The thing I worry it didn't come true. So.

00:28:03 Joe

Yeah.

00:28:04 Joe

This is huge. I mean, I'm telling you, this is this is really what it's all about. It is, is and that that all comes down to and we're getting some real deep stuff book right, which is.

00:28:06 Merrily

Yeah.

00:28:16 Joe

Understanding that all there really is is right now, right. The past is is a ghost and and the future is just like a what I call a haunt, right? It's it's it hasn't happened yet, but it often haunts us that there's something in the book I call the the 30% rule. Right we we.

00:28:26

Hmm.

00:28:37 Joe

Uh.

00:28:38 Joe

You know we we we're happy 33% of the time we're you know we're come somewhere in the middle 33% of the time and 33% of that that that becoming arriving and leaving part right that's 30% of it right. And and if we don't give our our our due to that 30% that 30%.

00:28:58 Joe

Becomes a a hindrance to 98% of our life. It's like an equation, right? The smallest fear of the.

00:29:06 Joe

Little thing what I find in the tarot a lot is little things that are stopping somebody from becoming what the you know what this whole book is really about is what what my heart tells me to do. But I don't allow it to do because I've got to do the XY and Z, right? What the world tells me you have to do. And that's a big thing. That's a big step for anybody. That's what this book is all about.

00:29:27 Joe

And now we're all in the same boat. This is the human condition.

00:29:27 Merrily

Yeah.

00:29:30 Joe

OK.

00:29:31 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, definitely. Well explained and great examples. So thank you for that. There's also another content that I'm and I'm very big on it, so I'm going to quote you. It's like kind of my. The reason I even started this.

00:29:47 Merrily

Podcast.

00:29:48 Merrily

But so another concept you said was all true.

00:29:52 Merrily

Answers rest within ourselves. So what does that mean to you?

00:29:57 Joe

Indeed, that is, that is the that's the core, an essence of of of my journey. It's the core, in essence of this book and everything, Apollo.

00:30:09 Joe

Right. Let's go back to the Greek mythology. Apollo. Who? You. You do a lot of reading and and and and research on magic and alchemy and and all of that stuff. Apollo is the same person as Hermes. Right? Who is the same person as the off right, the winged God? Mercury. Right. Messenger of the gods.

00:30:30 Joe

Tribe of the gods.

00:30:33 Joe

Apollo went on a journey. He he was. He was a seeker ride and his, like many of us who who travel these spiritual realms. We want to know what that one question. What is that one special question, what is the meaning? What is the purpose?

00:30:47 Joe

What is the essence of life? Well, Apollo had many meetings and he went on this big journey and where he ended up was the Oracle of Delphi, right? That these were kind of like the three witches who would boiling the stuff and they would tell, you know, they would say the king. You're gonna win this battle. Are you going to lose, you know, the.

00:31:03

Works.

00:31:03 Joe

Big decisions were relied on the Oracle at Delphi, right? This is the ultimate Oracle and what he found there was the answer to it and was simply 2 words. It was no thyself, right. We let the world define us merrily. We're we're from the minute we're born. You know, the book starts out with the baby being born and talking about reincarnation.

00:31:24 Joe

And this thing about.

00:31:26 Joe

Mara and Samsara, you know where it's a world where you know the the the sin of any author is to lose your audience. In the 1st 30 pages I it the first part of this book paints a very dark picture of this world. But but really the way it's set up, you know, forwards us backwards. We want, you know, we all wonder like.

00:31:45 Joe

No matter what side of the fence you fit on, if you're into politics, it's like, how do these people get into, you know, how is these people? These are the dumbest people. I mean, isn't can't they see, you know, so the world kind of turns us backwards and turns us around down here in the South? I don't know. Y'all have in the Pacific.

00:32:03 Joe

Yes, but at birthday parties, when we're kids, we have what's called a pinata, right? It's a little a little animal or something filled with candy. And they put a blindfold and turn you around and you're holding a bat and you're swinging at nothing and all that. That's kind of how we are dropped into this world, right?

00:32:19

The.

00:32:20 Joe

The the the term know thyself, or that that kind of thing is is to.

00:32:26 Joe

Bypass what? One of the what? What we have in there, the five hundreds is a skepticism, right? The world teaches this is how the world is. Come opening our mind and and opening our minds to ourselves. Finding out who we really are inside.

00:32:40 Joe

That's the key to finding whether it whether it be God or whatever you're looking for. The key lies inside of us in in, in Buddhism there's there's it's called the seed of Tathagata Garba. Now, that's a long word. For what? What some people call the seed of Buddha. Right. It's that little light within us. It's a seed within us once we find.

00:33:00 Joe

It we cultivate it like like a garden. Cultivate that seed. When you light that up, that's Dharma, right, that that opens up and it's it's it's self enlightenment right. Finding our path. I know I talk about the terror a lot but there's so many that that I've it it what the terror reveals is is what's.

00:33:10 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:33:20 Joe

Inside that, people really feel what your heart really tells you. Opening that up and opening that up into the.

00:33:26 Joe

Well, finding your experience, whether you be artistic or whatever your art is, we're all artists in one way or another, right? Finding that art. Who am I? What is my essence? Opening that up and becoming that right, that is to know thyself. It's enlightenment, it's wisdom.

00:33:33

MHM.

00:33:45 Joe

It takes it takes sometimes years, 57 years to find, so you know a lot of digging.

00:33:51 Joe

And and footnotes and and books that you'll never read. But they're all on your on your bookshelf, you know, and you you've read a few pages in it.

00:33:59 Joe

Threw you over here, right? It's kind of that, that journey that we take and and I find that there's a whole universe within ourselves, right. And opening up that universe is a huge, huge deal. That's the best way I can say to know thyself.

00:34:15 Merrily

Heard of it? Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, it's definitely something I has been central and sort of what I I personally practice and then.

00:34:24 Merrily

What I'm hoping to do for people like listeners is to know yourself like a path to that is maybe you know.

00:34:32 Merrily

Going down the path of Eastern philosophy and Buddha, that kind of help you kind of Orient Orient yourself, but even like the small things like know myself like I told my husband the other day, it was something like.

00:34:46 Merrily

I know that I'm not. I can't remember exactly what it was. Something like ohh. I know I'm not going to do that. Whatever. Like it was like an activity I was like, I know I'm not going to do that. So I'm going to need to pay somebody else.

00:34:55 Joe

Yeah.

00:34:56 Merrily

Do it even like I know I'm never going to do it. I will just pay somebody to do it or whatever the thing was so not pretend that I can.

00:35:01 Joe

Yeah.

00:35:06

And it.

00:35:08 Joe

In in a way, it goes back to kind of that big idea from that that the the pig shape fighting the pee and all that which is, you know, I I that thought was I want I want you to be just like me or I want you know we just need to be us right. That's what we're we're we're we're so caught up with what everybody else what we're supposed to do that we don't find ourselves right.

00:35:13 Merrily

Yes.

00:35:28 Joe

They're not our true authenticity, right? This is a big word in philosophy, authenticity finding.

00:35:34 Joe

Our authentic self, that beautiful you taught me something tonight. That's to know thyself as defined your authenticity. A lot of writers like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, a lot of the, the, the existential philosophy talks about authenticity, right? Breaking out of the mold that the world puts us in.

00:35:55 Joe

And and kind of coming out of our shell and becoming who we are, it can be a huge thing. That is the awakening, you know, the awakening starts now. When you find that beautiful thing.

00:36:05 Merrily

Yeah.

00:36:06 Merrily

A lot of it, yeah, for sure. And a lot of it is shedding sort of exactly how you explained it is like shedding the things you are not right to get to the things you are. And so and and sometimes that's scary because you're like, oh, I thought I was a rock star. I thought I was, you know, like, I thought I was.

00:36:14

Yes.

00:36:21 Joe

Yes.

00:36:23 Joe

Yeah.

00:36:24 Merrily

Going to do that.

00:36:25 Merrily

Yeah, yeah.

00:36:26 Joe

Shedding that, it's like an onion, right? The the another way that has been described is the peeling of the onion, right? Where is the center of the onion? There's layer and there's layer and there's layer.

00:36:28 Merrily

Yeah.

00:36:36 Joe

It's almost like a transcendent eternal onion, right? That we're unpeeling.

00:36:41 Joe

The cool thing about Dharma? I was thinking about that today. I'm. I'm. I'm already thinking about volume to of this series, which there's there's actually some things are changing because in lightning just builds upon itself, the deeper that you go. And I don't think there's really ever any into it. I think that's that's why why we're here, right.

00:37:01 Joe

You know, **** Carts said a long time ago. In the 1500s. I I think therefore I am and.

00:37:06 Joe

I almost like, you know, I've been in a lot of philosophy. They almost could have shut the book, right?

00:37:10 Joe

There and that's it, you know.

00:37:11 Joe

That's all we can really know, right? I am a thinking thing and beyond that, I don't know. Everything's electric, right? Our we're electrically charged our every vision we see. It's like a projector, you know, I was thinking today you look, look, you look at one of those old projectors. It's like a bright light. I was looking at the sun today. It's kind.

00:37:29 Joe

Of like that, isn't it, you know? Yeah.

00:37:32 Joe

Into a.

00:37:32 Joe

Letter that goes into like, you know, Socrates, the, the the parable of The Cave and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's an unfolding onion that we just find, you know, the more we enlighten ourselves, the more enlightened we become. And then hopefully we enlighten the world as well along with us.

00:37:49 Merrily

Right. Yeah. Beautiful. You've you've been brought in like Plato and The Cave and everything. That's so cool.

00:37:58 Joe

With Socrates right that the.

00:38:00 Joe

We talk about that. It's hard to we really haven't talked about that first part of the book and this this is a hard thing. It was a hard thing for me to overcome. There's a few things in in Buddhist terminology and Dharma and and one of them is the word ignorance. Right. And and part of that kind of thing about Samsara, we're trapped in this wheel that we, we just go over and over and over.

00:38:22 Joe

It's a form of ignorance, right? It's it's non and.

00:38:25 Joe

Right it the the the Enlightenment is, is, is the unfolding of unenlightened right become from taking unenlightened Ant to enlightenment. That's enlightenment right. This kind of this kind of tracks Socrates but you know way back in the day I'm a big Socrates guy. Right you you read play dough.

00:38:46 Joe

I've got a book. It's about this thick of Plato's complete works. It's 1700 pages. I'll never finish it.

00:38:50

What happened?

00:38:53 Joe

I was stuck on one page for three years. One time. You know, it took me that long to get past one page, right. But, you know, they had this contest back in the day, kind of back in the Apollo days. Right. And it was. Who's the best philosopher of them all. And they had a contest. Soccer teams was the winner, and they asked him to have, like, a little speech or something. And and what he said this.

00:38:59 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:39:11 Joe

Is what Socrates is famous for.

00:39:14 Joe

He said I am only the the wisest among us because I realize that I know nothing right and it sounds.

00:39:20 Joe

It's like that's hard to comprehend, right? How can I know nothing and be the smartest guy? It took me a long time to figure that out, but if you read those dialogues, that's what it, you know, somebody would tell me what good is and they would start saying, well, it's somebody who has this and that, you know and.

00:39:37 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:39:37 Joe

Well if it.

00:39:38 Joe

What about a man who doesn't have this or doesn't have that? Does that mean he's not good and he would?

00:39:42 Joe

Turn them around until every people just realize, you know, we really don't know what this world is.

00:39:48 Joe

What we're what we're doing and what our purpose is 99.9% of us. So you know, that's enlightenment, right? It's it's the the the unbinding of our ignorance, you know and and 1st accepting that.

00:40:02 Joe

That, you know, maybe what I thought all in my life is not.

00:40:07 Joe

The truth right, that can be a hard thing to face. That's that that you just said. It can be a scary thing, right? And that fear, that's what I was talking about that like.

00:40:08 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:40:17 Joe

5% of fear within us can stop us from doing so many things right from opening up our shell and becoming who we are. That's what Donald comes from us, right? It allows us to accept.

00:40:30 Joe

In a way, our ignorance right, once I do that, I can't. I can't be enlightened before I first realize. Wait, I've.

00:40:38 Joe

Got a lot of enlightening to do right, so it's a huge thing to overcome. You know, that's why it's such. That's why I try to make this as easy and readable as possible for Western minds, because we're not trained to think like that, right? We're trained to think that that, that.

00:40:42 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:40:45 Merrily

Yeah.

00:40:57 Joe

I need as much stuff, you know, everything we we a house, a car, a this or that. Everything we get is like a small form of *******. And the more stuff we get, the more bound we are learning to let go of things can be very hard. But but it can also be very freeing and enlightening.

00:41:17 Merrily

Yeah.

00:41:19 Merrily

Yeah, that definitely hard for our western minds. You got that.

00:41:25 Joe

Especially this one, all of us. That's why I that's why my book you say sounds like a conversation. I love that because everything is we right? It's all all suffer this stuff together and just bringing a little bit closer, you know?

00:41:27 Merrily

Uh, yeah.

00:41:40 Joe

Every day or every week I get a little bit closer. I can let go of this a little bit more and and you know, I've gotta say, what do you got to lose? You know, I mean, I tell a lot of people in tarot readings, you know, when when they're stuck on something and they know what it is, it always comes out what it is and.

00:41:56 Joe

Say look, the answer is very simple. Either say no to something you always say yes to or say yes to something you always say no to. Try it one time. See what happens right.

00:42:09 Joe

It can be that easy to overcome some really big things and find some some really enlightening pathways in life. So letting go is a big deal.

00:42:17 Merrily

MMM.

00:42:20 Merrily

Beautiful. Yeah, definitely something I've learned recently that I keep. I don't want to call it jinxing, but I have. I have to stop saying I'm never going to do that because invariably like a year later I'm doing that thing I said I would never do.

00:42:35 Joe

Yes, exactly. And that's, yeah, that's kind of our ignorance, right? Have this thought? No. I would never do that. And and and that's why I talk about some Sara is kind of this backwards world like Mara is like this ruler of this hermit Kingdom. I describe him as like a a shell game guy.

00:42:54 Joe

Right. And and we take you know we take one step towards him and he takes one step back. He puts this shiny thing in front of us and we grab at it right. And then that Withers and gets old and we don't learn our lesson. It burns us. Right. And then there's another one over here and we grab on that and we just keep grabbing and nothing is ever the answer. I think if I could just.

00:43:14 Joe

Once I get to this level of my career, I'll have this. I've been there, you know. I'll buy the boat. I can go fishing all I want. I bought a boat and I never went fishing, you know, and I was still, like, missing.

00:43:18 Merrily

Right.

00:43:24 Joe

Something, right? It's never the answer.

00:43:25 Merrily

Yeah.

00:43:27 Joe

And and sometimes that that just chase, it's like this eternal chase. We're all chasing the same. It goes back to that pig, the Peacock and the snake. You know, it's anger. It's fight. It's envious desire. It's it's it's it's.

00:43:41 Joe

All of that together, we just kind of spin in this big circle and and really what the Dharma is all about, what the Buddha did and everything that, that whole story is just letting it all go right.

00:43:53 Merrily

Yeah, yeah.

00:43:55 Joe

Ascension. That's ascension. Yeah, there are higher levels of Ascension than this place that we live. You know, we all hold on to it so dearly, but I think it's almost like a little preschool or so, you know, we gotta get out of this and go up to the next level. Right. That's that's letting go. It's hard to do.

00:44:10 Merrily

Yeah.

00:44:12 Merrily

It is hard to do ohh.

00:44:15 Merrily

Yeah.

00:44:15 Merrily

Yeah, but and then sort in your you kind of hit on some of the talking about some of the hindrances, right and answer your meditations at the end of the book sort of kind of address that and assist with it. And I've never heard of these before. So like I don't know, I didn't know if you wanted to talk about the.

00:44:35 Merrily

Hindrances and the seven helpers that.

00:44:37 Joe

I would. I would love to. It's the whole point of the book. It that's. I would there's, I don't know if you remember in the book towards the end there I put in big bold letters read the Dhammapada exclamation point right off in there.

00:44:39 Merrily

Perfect.

00:44:47 Merrily

Yeah, yeah.

00:44:50 Merrily

Yeah.

00:44:50 Joe

These are the words of the Buddha. This is what he said. And you know, it's what's cool about what's cool about Dharma. It's it's very simple, OK? Everything has its its opposite or it's counterbalancing feature. Right. So he came up with these, these five hindrances, right, which are kind of the five big ones that get us. They're lust.

00:45:10 Joe

And.

00:45:11 Joe

Laziness, skepticism and angst, right. All of the things. Those are those things that hold us back right that keep us from being our true or keep us chasing us. You know, I've always gotta have this right. So I'm always chasing this. How much time have I wasted my life chasing this thing that every time I get it, it doesn't really bring me anything? It wears out, and then I want to go get a new one.

00:45:33 Joe

Start over and do it again. There's there's. There's. Those are the five hindrances. The seven helpers are kind of the opposite of that awareness, intelligence, energy, joy, calm, concentration, equanimity. So like a a good thing for for.

00:45:50 Joe

Let's say skepticism, right? We talked a little bit about skepticism tonight, that kind of thing, like the world keeps us kind of in this. You can't, you know nothing. I talk a little bit in.

00:46:01 Joe

The book about.

00:46:02 Joe

Where, where, where, science ends, spirituality begins and where spirituality.

00:46:09 Joe

Ends science begins. They never quite get together, and that's the old magical thing you love about science and religion. Everybody wants to bring it together, but it never can seem because.

00:46:20 Joe

Science cannot see beyond the physical things, right, and in a way, spirituality can't really relate with the physical things. So you've got these two separate polarities, right? Yeah. So so something like, you know, skepticism can be, you know, if I find myself skepticism.

00:46:40 Joe

Can be related to a specific chakra when we cycle through our chakras and our meditation, you know the the the answer or the fix for skepticism can be intelligence, right? I can open my mind to something I've always believed is no. What if that was? Yes and I open.

00:46:58 Joe

That I used to have this one philosophy professor and he's always so free. To what? Watch what you're saying there, that's that's not correct. Or you've gotta be correct in every. And I would tell him. Look, I'm not afraid to be wrong. Right. I'm, I'm throwing this idea out there. It may be stupid or whatever, but what does everybody else have to say? You know, maybe we can find something new here. Whatever.

00:47:18 Joe

Like expanding our opening our minds a little bit. So it's just kind of a way to look at, hey, you know, when I look at something, some part of myself.

00:47:29 Joe

Inside and it. If it's something that I feel that has me out of balance a little bit, I just find the counterbalancing thing for that right. Like for lust, right is is, is energy. So you know, if I'm lustful for, for for clothes or shoes or for, you know, another person.

00:47:49 Joe

Or whatever. I can redirect my energy. Speaking of the chakras, when we get that that sacral chakra, that's our second chakra, right?

00:47:58 Joe

It's probably the most complicated of all of them, because not only is it our romance and sexual, you know, urges, needs and desires, but it's also our creative urges, needs and desires, and it's also our spiritual intuition. Think about all of those things, right. And that's what a lot of you can spend a lot of time.

00:48:17 Joe

A lot of extra rounds on your your sacral chakra, right? But if I am and and I think anybody can attest to this at one point I certainly can as you can get caught up in lust in many ways, right. And it can take you to some dark places, right? No matter what you're doing, excessive.

00:48:34 Joe

Amounts of lust are not a good thing in many circumstances, right? So I transfer that to creative energy, right? I transfer that energy to something creative. If I'm artistic. If I'm. If I'm into, you know, whatever I'm into. If I'm into banking or playing the stock market or whatever, you know?

00:48:55 Joe

I can I can transfer some of that over there, right and balance myself out a little bit rather than a big difference between the Dharma and say like, you know.

00:49:05 Joe

Stop.

00:49:07 Joe

A judeo-christian religion as we kind of, you know, we get in these foxhole situations. Ohh God, I I've gotta just Get Me Out of this and we'll be OK, right? And putting hope on that.

00:49:17 Joe

What I love about the Dharma, it's not like the Bible talks about. These are sins. Don't do it right. And it pretty much ends there. Donna says, OK, this is sin that that, this, this is these are the five hindrances, right? Lust anger. These are what they are.

00:49:32 Joe

This is where they can take you, and here's how to balance that when we kind of rather than having to to, to put all of our hopes and whatever and something we're not even sure is out there are going to help us. You know, we can take charge of this ourselves. That's that seed of Dharma within. And Dharma, we are actually.

00:49:52 Joe

God within ourselves, right? But if I wanna see God, I look in the mirror. That's Dharma. Right. That's, that's, that's that's that's understanding that we're like you've heard this term like we're we're one.

00:50:07 Joe

Nerve and the finger of God out here in this physical world, right? If that's true, then that means we are God. God is within us, right? There's a line I have in the book. If we want to see God, we need to look at the mirror. We want to see the devil. We need to look in the mirror, right. In essence, we're both right. That's the yin Yang. It's both forces are.

00:50:26 Joe

Interactive with each other.

00:50:28 Merrily

Yeah, beautiful.

00:50:30 Joe

Hopefully I didn't go too round a big rabbit hole there, that was.

00:50:34 Merrily

No, it was great. I like that you, you know, kind of brought it back again to what we were talking about sort.

00:50:40 Merrily

Like know myself kind of know who you are. It's sort of like all kind of combined together. Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. And I like sort of taking care. I do feel like that's where people are going to go in the future as far as, like, their spiritual path, obviously the.

00:50:59 Merrily

Like you said.

00:51:00 Merrily

I feel like the bigger religions aren't having the the whole that they have had and people are seeking something new and I think that is going to come from each individual to kind of.

00:51:12 Merrily

You know, find what resonates and work it out so.

00:51:16 Joe

This is this is the essence of samsara, right? This is the world we live in. It's our parents, it's our teachers, it's our educators, it's our boss. It's the president. It's whoever. Right it's we're conditioned right to these kind of these, these these.

00:51:19 Merrily

Yeah.

00:51:29 Merrily

MM.

00:51:35 Joe

This almost like matrix. This is the boundaries that you live in. You can go a lot out, a lot of rabbit holes and a lot of spiritual stuffs and paranormal stuff out there. But there's a lot of people are coming to the stuff that we're almost bonded and we're almost kept. Our souls are like in in ******* for some reason that we really don't know.

00:51:40 Merrily

Yeah.

00:51:56 Joe

Being used for something. Yeah, you can go down that line. I don't like to go that far out there. I'll just stay right here within ourselves. Yes, but that's really what this this book is all about. It's unbinding all of those little chains that we can. And then just finding more peace, freedom and happiness in the world.

00:52:01 Merrily

Right.

00:52:13 Joe

Well, this is this.

00:52:15 Joe

Freedom, right? This is freedom. Freedom is liberation. Liberation is wisdom. Wisdom is enlightenment. It's a latter right that that.

00:52:23 Merrily

Yeah.

00:52:24 Joe

Grow up and that's really what this is all about and just being able to find that and kind of go on that journey just.

00:52:31 Joe

You had asked what is Nirvana? You know that is just stepping on that first step of the ladder and seeing that there's a much bigger world than I have thought. That's Nirvana because that opens up our minds. Just just a million fold, right?

00:52:44 Merrily

M.

00:52:45 Joe

That's that's. That's part of that's part of the answer to that question. That's, I'm glad we're kind of not there.

00:52:45 Merrily

Yeah.

00:52:51 Joe

Because it's many things.

00:52:53 Merrily

It is many things and I like that you said change because every time I so I like the tarot as well and like the double card, right is one of my favorites because.

00:53:01 Joe

15 day. Yeah, one of those two. Those two people. What are they? They're chained to his author. Right. I call it. It's one of my favorite cards and that because I, I called the devil as a block and that card represents fear. You like the tarot? We should do a tarot. Should have all your friends over with.

00:53:02 Merrily

They're big.

00:53:05

What are we doing?

00:53:09 Merrily

Me too.

00:53:14 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:53:17 Joe

Wine and we'll be.

00:53:17 Merrily

Oh my God, I love it.

00:53:18 Joe

Reading on.

00:53:20 Joe

But that that.

00:53:21 Joe

Card I call a blocker.

00:53:22 Joe

That's.

00:53:23 Joe

That's overcoming your fear, right? That's that's that. The Emperor is one of those blockers. Kind of the heavy man on on that right, the, the, the, the five card. The old Pope. The Hierophant, right, that's that's that kind of Catholic priest standing there. These these are blockers. These are things that tell us thou shalt not.

00:53:30 Merrily

Hmm.

00:53:43 Joe

Right.

00:53:44 Joe

I got as a personal card the other day the devil reverse, which is a beautiful thing, which means I that's an unbinding right. The overcoming of a fear of the coming into something new. So yes, I I understand. I'm. I think that's where you're going. Hopefully I didn't interrupt. You were talking about that card. But.

00:54:00 Merrily

No, no, that was good. That was it.

00:54:02 Joe

Yeah, it's, it's that goes way back with me. I have a I have the 15 DI call him. He he you know the devil is the friend of mine. So is Mara. Mara is the devil and and and I talked about this in the book. We should not look at the devil as our enemy.

00:54:17 Merrily

Yeah.

00:54:18 Joe

The devil is our like this is what we have to overcome to find that enlightenment, right. He's there for a reason. To give us a a bar that we have to jump over, right?

00:54:30 Joe

That's that fear. Releasing that fear, finding the way out of that chain, and putting trust in in, in yourself, and instead of some force that's binding you down. That's that's that's liberation. That's peace, freedom and happiness. Right. Cool stuff.

00:54:44 Merrily

Yeah, it is cool. Ohh yeah. I love that you walked down the devil.

00:54:51 Joe

I spent a lot of.

00:54:52 Joe

Time I saw I saw Alistair Crowley. I used to use the Crowley back a long time ago. I saw him in a dream one time when I was about 19 or 20 years old and it was not good. It was one of those. What do they call that when you're a dad and you can't move and you're like, you're completely powerless and and and.

00:55:13 Joe

I remember you said look into the eyes of the devil at me in a dream. Right. And then I see, you know. And there was something like uh, he's not ready and I boom. I was out of it, you know. But it was a very real thing, you know, I talk about I just barely touch on dream yoga in the book volume 2.

00:55:26 Merrily

Yeah.

00:55:30

Hmm.

00:55:32 Joe

Usually starts out with with with a dream yoga episode a A dream I had that was very powerful. It's the 1st 4 pages of the next book and it's going to be something very cool. Dream yoga kind of takes what what I talked about in the book. This is called meditation. Yoga. Right? That's what this.

00:55:52

OK.

00:55:52 Joe

Is people think of yoga and I'm doing, you know, stretching and all this stuff back in the day with the, you know, with the boot of the Dharma.

00:56:00 Joe

This is meditation. This is mind yoga, right. These all these exercises, you know, cycling through chakras and meditations, thinking about the hindrances and the helpers as they represent our shockers inside of us and maintaining balance.

00:56:14 Joe

That's mental exercise, right? One of the things I tried to get into it took me for, I don't know if you meditate, but it took me forever to find people.

00:56:23 Joe

Most people think meditation is go into a quiet place. Dark. Find a candle, close your eyes and just, you know, let the.

00:56:29 Joe

Day go.

00:56:30 Merrily

Right.

00:56:31 Joe

That meditation is more than that's a little bit part of it, but it's about working on what's going on. And so once you get there now, I can organize my thoughts right? That's the place where we organize our thoughts. Let me get to that third eye crown and we can rest and be and all that stuff. But it's a bit of work, you know, as as we as we as yoga isn't stretching.

00:56:52 Joe

Today it's, you know, back in the day yoga was originally called Yogam, which is this is the Bhagavad Gita which is.

00:57:00 Joe

The the practice of union with the science of the supreme think about that.

00:57:07 Merrily

Awesome, very cool.

00:57:09 Joe

The science of the supreme that's what we're talking about here. It's it's the big stuff, man.

00:57:12 Merrily

Yeah.

00:57:13 Merrily

No little thing. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thank you for walking through that. Yeah, I do. I've been doing a kundalini yoga practice. And I'm very fortunate to have, like, really good, like teachers and a community here in Seattle. And so it's very much something that.

00:57:15 Joe

No little thing. Yeah, no, it's.

00:57:23

M.

00:57:30 Merrily

Yeah, it's like it's like it's about the whole kind of the whole system.

00:57:34 Merrily

Is a human right? You're.

00:57:36 Joe

Yeah.

00:57:38 Merrily

Combining with the supreme. So that's cool.

00:57:40 Joe

And if if you want to talk about that briefly, that's that's really what the book. So that's the the big finish of the book, right is the three breaths of the seven chakras. Meditation. So, you know, as we go into our meditation it's it's hard to, I don't know if you're a writer, but I thought, OK, I've gotta write a a mantra for a meditation it's I've got in my mind but it's very hard to put in.

00:57:46 Merrily

Yeah.

00:58:00 Joe

Bird.

00:58:01 Joe

What happens during a meditation? Right and and it's it's like kundalini snake, right? And and that all up and down our spine, you know we start with the root shocker, right? These are the things that ground us and then we cycle up to the sacral chakra which we talked a lot about earlier that kind of creative part of us. Then we go through a lot of people called solar plexus.

00:58:04 Merrily

But.

00:58:06 Merrily

MHM.

00:58:21 Joe

I call it the belly. That's where our wheel is, right? We think about our will past coming. Arriving all of that kind of.

00:58:28 Joe

The the heart is kind of the central point between the the Crown and the root, right? That's where those two things meet. Those are those are these lower things are kind of our our grounding principles. Then we get the heart which is our courage and our compassion. People think it's love. It's a love not so much love but the heart is a lot about courage that's our that's our will to be able to.

00:58:49 Joe

Overcome and dream. Yeah. Like they talk about fearless heart. Right. To be able to overcome these boundaries that constantly stop us. Right. That's where our courage and our compassion comes in. Then we we got our.

00:59:01 Joe

So this is where I don't know if you read in the book, but I have to really ease up to the throat because you know, I've I've kind of been over having a big mouth for a long, you know, like you be careful what you say, right? This is probably more than anything learning all of this is more from me because.

00:59:14 Merrily

So.

00:59:19 Joe

What we say to the world.

00:59:22 Joe

It's vastly important, right? It affects everybody that hears us, right?

00:59:27 Joe

If we could look at a projector of ourselves during the day and some of the crap that we say, you know, we would go, Oh my God, did I really, you know, so one of the cool things about cycling up that, you know, awakening that snake as it rises is I think about, you know, what did I say to the world in the past? What am I saying?

00:59:46 Joe

To the world now.

00:59:48 Joe

How might that affect how I speak to the world in the future? This is how we can really change ourselves. Does that make sense to you? This this is this cycle of meditation yoga, right? Where we're all, this is mindfulness. It's all about mindfulness, right? That last part of the four noble Truths is, is the mindfulness right? How we live our lives?

00:59:55 Merrily

Oh for sure.

01:00:08 Joe

With this new understanding of what's going on inside, I was so our vocal communications to the world that throat chakra is very important in our third eye. This is where this is like the swords and the and the terror, right? Our intelligence, our, our, the all of that kind of understanding and wisdom.

01:00:27 Joe

I'm gonna tell you something. It took me a couple of years to get there, but these days in my.

01:00:34 Joe

In in the third eye part of my meditations, it gets very powerful. I meditate with my eyes open and we're we're looking me in the book we're looking at right at each other. And there is a transference there. I mean you can feel it happening and it's it's almost like a a transfer of information. Many of the words, parts and even chapters of this book.

01:00:55 Joe

What you read were direct.

01:00:59 Joe

Energy transfer through that, that kind of third eye connection and then the Crown just takes you up to the spirit. So if you think of that whole process we've gone from.

01:01:10 Joe

The very root of what grounds us in life, which is so important to the very top of spirit, right which which which, which elevates us.

01:01:19 Joe

When we go back to that part, we were talking about earlier of kind of where we're science in and religions that never can't seem to get together in the kundalini. You know, when when we, when we, when we experience and balance all seven of our chakras, we're we're bringing all of those things together within ourselves, right? We're bigger than that.

01:01:40 Merrily

What is thicker than that? Yeah.

01:01:42 Joe

I know of nothing. It's a very powerful thing and and all along those lines, you know there's five hindrances and seven helpers. It's really good to know that and what balances because it's really, you know, if if everything is right now then then that we're a series, right. We're a series of things coming. Things that have arrived with us and things that are leaving us.

01:02:02 Joe

I call that in the book at 3:00 to when we start to see ourselves. I call it Dharmic vision, right? This is a three-dimensional prism, right? We see ourselves in this kind of three-dimensional state of.

01:02:13 Joe

Of of impermanence, right of everything, always moving forward, right. We're moving forward with things within us are coming and going and all that kind of stuff. That's how we we can find a balance. You know when you cycle through one of your chakras is out of balance, believe me. And there it, you know rarely all those days when everything's all in unison. It's a beautiful thing when they are but usually you kind of know here.

01:02:18 Merrily

Hmm.

01:02:36 Joe

Alright, I've got some. You know, some some work to do right here, you know.

01:02:40 Joe

Take a day, two days, three days, a week, 3 months, you know, to get it back in order. But just having the ability to do that is a beautiful thing. That's what meditation all about. And that's that's really where this book finishes, which is a basic introduction to that. Right. And and just helping people to find that.

01:02:58 Merrily

Yeah, yeah. And you do such a great job. So I'm thank thankful that you ended with meditation because it was.

01:03:03 Merrily

Very important so.

01:03:06 Merrily

Oh wow. Yeah, thank you for going through. So the questions I had for your book and yeah, just full of wisdom. And so I'm very.

01:03:14 Merrily

Very honored. Thank you so much.

01:03:17 Joe

Or that is likewise this is. This is a fabulous conversation. You know, it's it's a it's a beautiful thing to be able to talk about spiritual things, you know, real spiritual things.

01:03:18

Yeah.

01:03:25 Merrily

Yes.

01:03:27 Merrily

Yes, I love it. So I know you mentioned that you were putting together a terrible book, and it sounds like another companion book to to this one that we're talking about. So can you talk more about that or other projects that you're working on?

01:03:43 Merrily

That you want to really know.

01:03:44 Joe

Yes, I'm torn. Maybe you can help me. And they said our conversation. I just recently I I mentioned that that kind of dream yoga incident and I started volume to of this this is originally meant to be a three-part series.

01:03:46

Sure.

01:03:51 Merrily

Hmm.

01:03:56 Joe

That's right. And it's called wheels of the mind volume to of of Maradon Buddha rise and it's going to get very intensely and I've got kind of a 3D vision of of that whole process and meditation that ties in with, with kind of personal experience and it's going to be very that it's it's going to be a very cool thing you know.

01:04:16 Joe

Try and get more into dream yoga and things like that.

01:04:19 Joe

And then my tarot book. It's going to it's called tarot clarified. I'm about third. The way through it. I'm through the sixes right now. I've got to get 78910. The knight queen. King Page Queen king. And then I've got to do all 22 of the Trump cards. But that's that's flowing like butter because I I do readings here at the shop, you know, not daily, but.

01:04:40 Joe

You know, I probably do five or 68 readings a week and it's just what basically what I say in readings and and it's.

01:04:50 Joe

That it's designed to help people kind of like this book. You know, if if, if you to really understand the tarot, you're always pointed back to the old magic stuff, right? You know, I got, like, the if it's Levi and that kind of stuff and, you know, that is all masked, hidden and for good reason, they would get persecuted and killed if they didn't. But.

01:05:10 Joe

It's almost an impossible matrix to get through and really make any sense out of it. I did it though. You know, there's numerology. There's a lot, lots of things. So I try to get rid of all of that kind of magic mumbo jumbo stuff from the and and just put it in easy. Kind of.

01:05:26 Joe

Terms and kind of like the you know in this you know if you can, if you can know what one through 10 represents and the four elements right, Earth, air, fire, water actually 5 and spirit you can go a long way in the tail right it it's it's it's all about movement we call the tarots the journey of the full ride it starts out with 0.

01:05:47 Joe

The full.

01:05:48 Joe

The magician, the High Priestess, the Empress, the emperor, all the way around to. You know, there's, there's these chasms you cross. One is at the chariot, one is at the devil and the tower. And basically we're going from our, our, our personal development through the virtues and then we get to the star, the Moon, the sun and all that. And that's that's finding our spiritual self.

01:06:09 Joe

So it's very in tune with this kind of stuff. So one of those two will be the next book and then one day volume three of Martin on Boot arrive. So which one should I should I finish Terra clarified or or get going with the volume?

01:06:13 Merrily

Yeah.

01:06:22 Joe

Two, what do you think?

01:06:23 Merrily

Oh, gosh. Well, that's hard to say. I I work on things all at the same time, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. I do love tarot, but I do. I am interested in the sort of the the was it dream yoga? I've never really heard about that.

01:06:26

Yeah.

01:06:36 Joe

There you go.

01:06:42 Joe

Yeah. Well, let me tell you, let me let me give you a teaser, OK. The 1st 4 pages, have you ever merely had a dream?

01:06:44 Merrily

Yeah.

01:06:48 Joe

Mean where? Like you were falling or something and you knew you were about to die, right? Right before you hit the ground or whatever happens, you wake up and your heart's racing and and beating and all that kind of. Have you had that kind of dream before?

01:07:01 Merrily

Yes.

01:07:02 Joe

What if you had a dream and you didn't wake up before you reached the bottom?

01:07:09 Merrily

That would be interesting.

01:07:11 Joe

That's the 1st 4 pages of Mardon book arrives. It's going to be really cool, it's it's dream. Yoga is real. I after that dream I found out and there there's there's, you know, line in that book. I've got a reference to it in my book. But it's reminding yourself that this is all a dream. Merrily, merrily.

01:07:31 Joe

Life is but a dream, right? And it's when we can overcome certain fears in our dreams. It's very powerful. Because then that translate to real life because.

01:07:33 Merrily

That's right.

01:07:41 Joe

I talked. We didn't even get into this. I talked about the dream within the dream. In the book, this is a huge thing, right? Understanding that samsara is like a dark, heavy dream that we're having inside of this dream, which is our light dream. Right. So we're we're kind of stuck in this dark dream within our main dream, the dream within a dream.

01:08:01 Joe

But the the the point of drinking yoga is to understand that this really is all a dream. And and anytime something you know when the when, when the stuff hits the fan, understand this is just a dream. It's cool. We're going to be alright right? And and it's pretty powerful stuff so.

01:08:16 Merrily

Yeah.

01:08:19 Merrily

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I remember you wrote that in the book. And for some reason I was thinking some David Lynch fans. So I made me think about David Lynch. And like, all of his work. And I was like.

01:08:29 Merrily

That's another rabbit hole, but yeah, because he definitely explores dreams and the concept of, like dreams within dreams. Or does that mean?

01:08:39 Merrily

And yeah, so a lot of a lot of correlations in what you were talking about for sure.

01:08:45 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know which book. I don't know. Honestly, I'm sorry that you have to, like, work on two at the same time, but they both sound really.

01:08:55 Merrily

Good.

01:08:56 Joe

Yeah, I think it's good right now it's volume to I'm like you though, it'll go back and forth, but you know, people love the tarot. So I got a feeling I could sell a lot of.

01:09:00 Merrily

Yeah.

01:09:02 Merrily

OK.

01:09:05 Joe

Tarot books, so I.

01:09:06 Merrily

Yeah, well.

01:09:07 Joe

Yeah, I finished that book and I'm really I'm very passionate about the tail, right. I tell people I've been reading it for thousands of years.

01:09:14 Joe

If it lies to us today, please let me know because I will be free from the right.

01:09:19 Joe

I don't know if you've ever done any of that, but but reading tarot cards that there but like, oh, that'd be so cool. And I always think I did.

01:09:24 Merrily

Ohh.

01:09:25 Joe

Yeah, it's exhausting, man. You get in and you get into peoples lives, right? It's heaven stuff. A lot of tears. A lot. I mean, this is a very personal thing. You know, when we see our lives. I I'd say the tear I say we we experience life.

01:09:29 Merrily

Yeah.

01:09:39 Joe

Right through from our soul, through our eyes, to the action in the world happening upon us. It's like tunnel vision. What the Terrell does when we sit down and start, I do a spiral draw. Right. What you're doing is you're raising out of that and you're looking down upon your life, right? Almost like you're being raised up to a new level and and a lot of times.

01:09:57

Hmm.

01:09:59 Joe

Really it's very simple. I call what I do practical terror right is the 1st House and 2nd house usually ripping. So what's been going on?

01:10:06 Joe

Lately, and what's potentially coming up in the future and how do I cross this chasm right when people either have crossed that and it gives them confirmation they feel great and lot of times AA reading like that happens and I feel like I, you know, should I even, you know like give this guy money back right there? What am I telling? But it's a confirmation of understanding that other people see.

01:10:07

The.

01:10:25 Merrily

Hmm.

01:10:27 Joe

Oh my God, this is really what this. This is what I think it is and I've gotta make this move right. My favorite car is the two of swords. It's the lady. She's got a blindfold on and she's holding two swords here. Do I go this way or that?

01:10:37 Merrily

Oh yeah.

01:10:41 Joe

Or the wheel of Fortune, because the next card after that card always reveals something amazing, right? Terrible. Very cool thing. I think I'm gonna finish tarot clarified. I think you.

01:10:46 Merrily

Yeah.

01:10:48 Merrily

Yeah, it is.

01:10:51 Joe

Help me. I'll just do it.

01:10:53 Merrily

Ohh yeah yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to anything that you put out because it's very passionate and very knowledgeable.

01:11:02 Joe

Well, that's awesome. I hope you know it's on Amazon.com and and you know it's it's my first published book. Right. So anybody if it you know if you go out and get it, blessings to you and your family for helping us on the journey. And I I dream of the day when I can all I have to do is get up and worry about making jewelry and writing you know I I.

01:11:02 Merrily

Hello.

01:11:06 Merrily

Yeah.

01:11:22 Joe

I still have jobs so.

01:11:24

Yes.

01:11:24 Joe

We're working. Arthur. Arthur, it's it's, you know, it's any anybody read the book, please go to Amazon and give me a review. If you like it. If you hate it, go drop it off. I say at your nearest resale bookstore. Either way is a beautiful thing.

01:11:38 Merrily

Yeah. Perfect. So definitely like check out Amazon for your book. Is there anywhere else that you want to direct people to kind of learn more about you and all the things that you do?

01:11:50 Joe

You know our our store is called actually our our little jewelry store. If you're into chakra, tarot crystals, things like that. Our store is local stone. We're in Galveston, TX and if if you friend us on Facebook or Instagram at local stone, I do photos and videos just about every day of jewelry that me and Noel make all day long.

01:12:10 Joe

And we ship and.

01:12:11 Joe

And much of it has great meaning, and I see one of my my thing came loose here. But you know, we do a lot of we get a lot of crystals in Arkansas we do a lot of of rock hunting in West, TX Big Bend area and New Mexico. But we just make beautiful stuff. This is my Master of destiny necklaces. That's all six elements of the tarot.

01:12:32 Joe

Yeah.

01:12:33 Joe

The ones in the middle are dark energy and high energy. Dark so and then of course you can't do better than your big.

01:12:36

Yeah.

01:12:42 Joe

Crystal that you know it's there's a lot of and I was never a believer in in stones and crystals having energy. But the more you know we just made a run to Arkansas about a month and a half ago and we did. We dug some. We got some little ones, but we also bought some really nice chunky crystals and we bought them all in the shop and put them on display and.

01:13:03 Joe

The energy around here just kind of blew up on us, so it is real. You know, there's a lot of people who it, it makes people very happy and gives people a lot of good energy. So we're doing a lot of cool stuff with that. And then, you know, any specific questions or you want me to send this thing to you? Scribe works publishing@gmail.com.

01:13:13

OK.

01:13:22 Joe

I'm happy to talk to anybody you know along those lines.

01:13:26 Merrily

Perfect.

01:13:28 Merrily

OK, I do have one question because you brought up crystal lot, of course I love crystals. Have you ever tried because somebody suggested this and I've done it before where you kind of sit with a crystal and you talked to it. Have you done that?

01:13:43 Joe

I have. I have people coming here that do all kinds of things with crystals, right? They'll come around. I've got a selling crystal ball where I do my tarot readings and you know, they'll have to clear it or charge it or whatever, Noel.

01:13:55 Merrily

Right.

01:13:57 Joe

My better half she has all she could tell you all about that, but yeah, there, that that is.

01:14:02 Joe

That is, that is like a thing. You know, that that represents a lot of time. I think that, you know, when I'm doing tarot readings, I say that the the Trump cards, right, represent what I call forces. Some people call them angels, spirit guides or whatever. And Noelle actually turned me on to this a little bit. And I started thinking about, like, you know, a lot of times those forces that we think are kind of some.

01:14:23 Joe

Odds or something? You know, it's our higher selves in the background trying to direct ourselves. Right. I believe that connection between those when you're talking to that, you're talking to your higher self.

01:14:36 Joe

Through that crystal, Crystal energy has that kind of transparent multi dimensional thing.

01:14:37

You know.

01:14:42 Joe

And if you look at a lot of important places, I was just hearing some stuff last night, the pyramids at all of these, you know, cheeks and Itza, where we visited Scotto's pyramid down in Cancun, Mexico and all that stuff. And you look at lay lines, all of those places where those sacred grounds are. And there there's a common theme.

01:15:03 Joe

Of quartz and limestone that go together. So Quartz is a big deal. All those ghost hunters say it. High courts, right, we're on high courts territory. There's lots of ghosts. So there's a lot of paranormal stuff.

01:15:14 Joe

Happens. It's always when the mountains where the high courts is and man, do we love roaming up around there and digging for crystals in the in the mountains and stuff like that. It's it's a lot of great fun. But to answer your question, I believe yes, I believe that when you're doing that you're you're speaking to your higher self which is a cool thing.

01:15:29

Heart.

01:15:31 Merrily

That's cool. Yeah. Wow. That sounds really fun too. Just going and treasure hunting for crystals. So that's really cool. Yeah.

01:15:39 Joe

That's fun. Well, next time we go our our goal is to kind of get out more or less. You know, we've been as far.

01:15:45 Joe

Whereas we we kind of stopped it in New Mexico, but we really want to get to Nevada and Arizona and even up there near you. Y'all got a lot of cooling city and spots and there's some and up there in Oregon there's some cool rainbow agates that we want to get to 1 day. So maybe we can meet in the middle, we'll meet here at mountain top somewhere in Utah and we'll go digging.

01:16:06 Merrily

That'll be fun. Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome. Oh, well, thank you so much, Joe. So kind of the final thing. We tend to leave with is, what are your very shared? Lots of words of wisdom with us. But is there a particular words of wisdom that you would like to?

01:16:21 Merrily

Leave us with today.

01:16:24 Joe

You know there's a million, but if there's one, if you had to pin me down to one, you know, when we talk about those five hindrances, right? One of those and we talked a little bit about tonight is skepticism, right.

01:16:36 Joe

Open our minds. Right. I I like to say that that that my book is a mind opener. Right. And and to do that, it's a really hard chasm that we we talked several times about the the difficulty in crossing these.

01:16:49 Joe

Of them to overcome our fear. To do that right. Skepticism is that, you know, kind of what we described earlier that that, that parent, that teacher, that what, whatever that was that told you this is this is the world and this is how you operate in it. Right. But I do that I operate in that world.

01:17:10 Joe

I still don't feel good inside. I'm still have anxiety or fear or I don't feel it's not what my heart, you know, it's what the world tells me. But my heart tells me something different.

01:17:21 Joe

When we open our minds to skepticism when we open our minds to new things, say yes to something we normally say no to or say no to, something we normally say yes to give that a chance. Every once in a while and maybe you'll find out something that that, that, that can be very mind opening that you had.

01:17:40 Joe

Always said no, I'll never do that. I'm gonna tell you right now. I will never do that. I promise I'll never do that. And then how many years later? Now you're doing it? Did.

01:17:49 Merrily

You say? Yeah. Like a year later, yeah.

01:17:52 Joe

And it's a good thing, right? Yeah.

01:17:54 Joe

That's crossing the chasm of skepticism. That's that's that's opening our minds kind of beyond sense. Our right this world that we're conditioned to live in. And it's all a dream. Marley, this has been a dream. This conversation with you. I've.

01:18:08 Joe

Had a blast.

01:18:10 Merrily

Oh, well, thank you, Joe. Yeah, thank you for sharing your wisdom. And thank you for sharing and writing your book and your knowledge about tarot. So many good things. And yeah, I'm just very grateful that we tried.

01:18:23 Merrily

Today.

01:18:24 Joe

Very beautiful. I'm glad you did. Go give me a good review at Amazon. If you get the book, enjoy it. And and it's just it's a beautiful thing, you know, all of us sharing together and that learning and growing together. That's that's that's the seed within us, right. That we find the seed of tap I gotta garba find.

01:18:27

Yeah.

01:18:41 Joe

It.

01:18:42 Joe

Light it up. Let's go. The awakening.

01:18:44 Joe

Starts now.

01:18:46 Merrily

Beautifully said, thank you so much.

01:18:49 Joe

Thank you.

01:18:52 Merrily

It.

01:18:52 Merrily

My pleasure having the delightful Joe Singleton on the show today. Please see the show notes to check out his book Mara Don Butter Rise the Awakening, and to be informed of his next book and all the wonderful projects he is currently involved with supporting the casual temple is easy. Do you like follow and subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform?

01:19:10 Merrily

It really helps us grow. Thank you for listening and being an important part of the casual temple.

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EPISODE 23 - JOE SINGLETON

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