Alex Ferrari 0:00
What is your take on spirituality and how you move through life, because you've had a taste of all of it.

Michael Neill 0:07
So the idea that it would be possible to not be spiritual is just not understanding what spirit is. But we're obsessed with the mess, and we miss the amazing bit, but this endless chase to fix it when you've never actually seen it, it's it's never going to work if you do not trust life to unfold, the mind takes over, and it becomes a game of strategy motivated by anxiety.

Alex Ferrari 0:33
If there was one spiritual insight that the world needs to hear right now, or one concept, one idea that the world needs to hear right now, what would it be?

Michael Neill 0:42
The one game is, oh, at a fundamental level...

Alex Ferrari 0:50
Now, before we get started, I want to thank you so much for clicking on this video and getting ready to watch this amazing conversation we're about to have. But one thing I've noticed is that about 40% of you who are watching are not subscribed. It is the easiest way to continue to support the work we're doing at next level soul, and it has been the joy of my life to have these amazing conversations with some of the most remarkable and profound souls on the planet. So from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you so much for giving me the ability and the privilege of doing this work for you. So please just hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, and it really, really helps us out a lot. Thank you so much, and let's dive in.

Alex Ferrari 1:43
I like to welcome back to the show returning champion, Michael Neill. How you doing Michael?

Michael Neill 1:48
Finally made it!

Alex Ferrari 1:50
How you doing, brother?

Michael Neill 1:51
I'm good. Nice to see you.

Alex Ferrari 1:53
Nice to see you as well, man. You know you were one of our early guests back in the day,

Michael Neill 1:59
Back before you had merch. I mean,

Alex Ferrari 2:01
Before we had, yeah, we had no merch. I didn't even have I was still in the court. Yeah, I did record in the corner of my home office, where I set up a little set to to record all of these back in the day. Yeah, you were, you were kind enough to come on our show when we were just starting out. And if anyone listens to that episode, they know how much of a fan I was of yours. That's how I reached out to you, because I read, I think I've, must have read at least three or four of your books over the years, and it's very impactful. And I just adore the work that you do, man, so and we have a couple of mutual friends involved, and that newly connected us as well. So it was, it was a really great conversation. I was like, You know what? I need to, need to bring Michael back on the show. Let's have, let's have another deep conversation. Man, so I appreciate you coming back. Man, yeah, I appreciate you coming back. Man, so my first question, man is, when did you first realize that the way, the way success is taught, might actually be creating unnecessary suffering

Michael Neill 3:05
When I should have realized it, or when I actually I should have realized it when I was trying to do everything the way it's taught, and I was suffering, that probably would have been the first clue. But I think I didn't realize it till I started coaching really successful people, and noticed that there were, there was there was a there were, like two completely different groups. There were the happy successful people and the miserable successful people. And they really went about it in a completely different way, from a completely different place, for a completely different reason. And I hadn't realized that. And so there were you can. You can get successful by working really hard, screwing people over, taking advantage of I mean that, yes, of course you can. But it turns out that not only do you not have to, but that kind of success is pretty miserable. It's never ending. There's never enough of it. I once wrote in one of my early books that there aren't enough cookies in the world to make you feel loved. You know, so when people are pursuing success from a place of just fundamental insecurity, it doesn't end well. And so when I started to meet some people who weren't doing it from that place, were sort of following an inner vision and inner guidance and inner knowing, that was the world that I was excited about being a part of. And so that for me, just totally 180 my approach,

Alex Ferrari 4:41
Then, what was happening in your own life, when the inside out from one of your amazing books, understanding stopped being becoming theory and actually became real in your life?

Michael Neill 4:51
Well, it happened kind of quickly, and continues to happen. I've been I've been teaching this now for 19 years, and I. Still, like, I think, can't think what day of the week it was. But like, last Friday, I was calling people going, Oh my God, I've just seen this. And they're like, you've been talking about this for 19 years. I'm like, No, but really. So, you know, there's not, like, a one and done in that sense. But the absolute turning point for me was when I was watching a SID banks video so Scottish mystic Sydney banks and and he said, every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health. They just don't know it. And I had been anxious and depressed and struggled a lot of my life with with mental health issues and and I just started laughing, because I knew it was true. I don't know how I knew, but I the first thought I actually had was babies don't need therapy. I couldn't have been born broken. And somehow that just changed everything. Yeah, it was pretty well,

Alex Ferrari 6:03
It's kind of like when you're saying that it just, what came to my mind was like, it's like watching a Kubrick film, like you saw it. I you know, you watch the shining and at one level, when you're 20, you watch the shining and it feels one way. But then you watch the shining at 30, and at 40, it hits you completely. So you might have been talking about the shining for the last 20 years, but boy, you're like, No, no, no, no, you don't understand.

Michael Neill 6:31
I've got a black and white golden doodle two dogs, and they will occasionally just stand at the end of this long hallway, Tails wagging in synchrony, and all I can do is think of the twins from the shining and go

Alex Ferrari 6:43
Red, Rob, Red, Rob. But that's but that makes a good point, though, there are things that we might have read the same book, might have might have seen the same movie, might have had the same thought, even under even had had a saying printed on the wall that meant something to you, but it just hits differently at a certain time in your life, you just go, Oh, so that's what the matrix is about.

Michael Neill 7:12
Like I will regularly talk about it in terms of a basic course and an advanced course. And the basic course is kind of two things. It's seeing that we're living in the feeling of our thinking, not the feeling of our circumstances. And it's seeing that we're made of the intelligent energy that animate animates everything in life. And so we're actually made to thrive. We're not born in Original Sin. We're born in original grace, and then we learn all this other stuff that makes it really seem because we're living in the feeling we're thinking like we are messed up and we are problematic, and we do need to fix ourselves and and change ourselves in order to be okay.

Alex Ferrari 7:55
But Michael, why is it, and this is predominant in society, in human society that we are from the moment we're born, and not everybody. But I would, I would argue, most people are told that you are not enough, you are limited, you are not powerful. You must give your power to somebody else, something else, some organization other than what's in yourself, where two of the greatest teachings that Jesus Christ ever talked about, or the kingdom of heaven is within you. And everything I could do, you could do it more like everyone skips by that stuff with the original sin, all this other crap that Paul wrote into the Bible comes out. But you know what I you know what I mean. But why? Why?

Michael Neill 8:41
Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is, you have, you have millennia of the blind, leading the blind.

Alex Ferrari 8:48
I don't think it's changed much,

Michael Neill 8:52
Right! So, so it's like if the first person who explained it explained life as, oh, this makes sense. We're broken. That caught on, and so that became the explanation, and that just became so much part of the furniture that people didn't question it. It was given that we're broken. How best can we live given that we're broken? What's the best we can get out of ourselves given that we're broken? But being broken has been a given for 5000 years, when you don't start with that premise. I remember, actually, I was in Austin, but year and a half ago, yeah, little over a year and a half ago now, and I had the most extraordinary experience. Somebody shared a story. You know, Anthony de Mello, the Enlightened Jesuit. He was this amazing teacher who wrote a book called awareness, and he he's been dead for a long time, but he just a beautiful teacher, and one something I hadn't seen of his was a little story where he said i i used to be kind of annoying to be around, and everyone told me I needed to change, and, and, and I hated. Them for it, and I agreed with them, and I didn't know how to change. And it really got me one day when my best friend said, you need to change. I I know, but I don't know how, and I can't and he said, and then one day, his friend turned around and said, You know what, I was wrong. Don't change. I love you as you are. And he said it completely changed his life. He said those words just like, don't change, don't change, don't change. I love you as you are. And he said he settled for the first time in his adult life, and he got really present. And then he changed, like we're actually made to change and evolve and grow, but our all our attempts to fix ourselves get in the way of what's natural. So I'm standing in front of a group in Austin, and there's 100 people in the audience, and for the first time, I got up on stage, and I've been doing this at that point for over 30 years. I look at an audience and I literally, I not on purpose. It was obvious to me, nobody in that room needed to change. Now, if they wanted to, I also knew I could help them. But I didn't start from the idea that there was anything wrong with anyone. And it turned out there really wasn't. And I do that as an exercise sometimes with people, with clients, I'll say to them, okay, I want you to give me, like, three things that that went wrong, or places where you you're stuck in your life, and I want you to explain each one of them to me, but you're not allowed to explain it by there's something wrong with me. This is evidence that there's something that I need to change in me. And what's interesting is they can always come up with really plausible explanations that don't involve them being broken.

Alex Ferrari 11:47
It's a beautiful explanation that has just been in the furniture, because it just seems that way, because it is constantly a thing that you're not enough, you're the original sin. That ridiculous, that ridiculousness. You look at a baby's eyes and you're like, well, they're not perfect. This one's gonna be trouble. Well, we do see that that I have kids, you definitely. You're like, this one's gonna give me a little run for my money, but, but it is really interesting about how people are constantly feeling that they are not enough. And I think there is a movement, especially in the personal development space self help, even in the spirituality space where you're starting to go, no, no, no, you you have the power within you. I was just mentioning the other day to somebody that if there's a teacher out there who says, I am the way, you must follow me, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. A true teacher teaches you how to find the power within yourself, to heal yourself, to move over and to and to find that power that helps you work through life.

Michael Neill 13:09
There was a great book title in I think it was in the 1970s I wasn't, I didn't read it live, but, but if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. And it wasn't obviously saying that, literally, it was just pointing to the idea that this image of perfection that people put out into the world, it's not helpful and it's not true. So if somebody appears as this perfect being, just watch yourself now they might be, they might do some wonderful things, but the there is no teaching I have come across, and I've, I've done my best to study all the world's teachings, and there's no teaching I've come across that says, you know me, not you us, not them, right? You know, later interpretations at that bit in but they all say some variation on the kingdom of heaven is within you. You're made of. This is the way I talk about it. And so it's, it's like, other than being the perfection of life and form, what else do you need? And maybe you need some life skills. Sure, yeah, doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, that there's something more for you to learn to be better at a skill

Alex Ferrari 14:35
You know, you and I are of similar vintage, and there was a moment in our lives when our parents were godlike to us. You know, they knew everything. They were obviously perfect. It was a short month time, but it was a time period,

Michael Neill 14:53
Tuesday, November. Yes, it was late,

Alex Ferrari 14:55
So it was, it was a moment where, you know, you, you were like, Oh, my God. God. And then as you get older, you start to look back upon what your parents did and and especially when you become a parent yourself, that's when it really hit me, when I was like, Oh, my God, they were just doing the best they could with what they had at the time. So if you know, your parents didn't do this for you, or didn't do that for you, or they treated you in a certain way that was, honestly all they could give at the moment that you were born, and you were born into that situation. And the more I kind of go back to that we're all just trying to do the best we can to make sense of this insanity that is life, the good, the bad, the indifferent, all of it, because this is crazy. Living life is absolutely insane. And then if you start to pull back, like in interstellar or contact, where I think was contact, when you pull back from Earth and you're going through the solar system, you just keep going back and back and back and back and all that stuff. Then you, if your head starts to wrap around how insignificant our planet is, let alone we are on the planet in the scope of the universe. It really starts to make put things into perspective. But on the flip side of that point, how important we really are to the universe is, I think what scares people,

Michael Neill 16:21
There's a there's a phrase that a friend of mine uses that I really like and and it's that we make a difference to the whole because we are the whole. So at one level, yeah, we're insignificant little gnats on the, you know, hindsight of a dog on a planet in the unit, I mean. But on the other we are literally the entire universe and form. We are the formless reality out of which all form is created. So we absolutely are a big deal, but it's no big deal because so is everybody else. We're all this. And so it's really it's really ordinary, but so is having a kid. And I think we both know there is nothing more significant than the ordinariness of having a kid,

Alex Ferrari 17:12
Especially at three o'clock in the morning, when they're about one year old, one years old, and they don't

Michael Neill 17:17
I remember because my wife's British, we flew back and forth. And somewhere around six months, we did one of these trips, and it was a nightmare, and totally stopped sleeping. And I went on one of these early message boards and said, Hey, anyone get advice for like, a six month old with and all I got was crap. It's like, yeah, my kids four, and he's jet lagged all the time, and we've never been on a plane.

Alex Ferrari 17:44
Michael, what I love about what I love about your work and everything you've been doing for the last you know, years that you've decades that you've been working on this stuff, is that you you approach your work with a very grounded point of view, but there is a spiritual undertone to it that is there for at least I sense it. Maybe I'm wrong, but there seems to be a spiritual or a deeper like underneath the surface. There's something else there that certain people will grasp. Other people will grasp the grounded stuff, the practical stuff, the tools, all that stuff. But there's something deeper underneath that. For the for the the seeker who is reading your work or following what you do can sense a little bit, and that's one of the reasons I asked you back on the show, is because of that, is that thing underneath that you have a need. So from your point of view, after all the reading and all the teachings and all the people you have met you know around the world, in the spiritual space, in the personal development space, what is your take on spirituality and how you move through life? Because you've had a taste of all of it in very similar ways. I've spoken to 700 people about this at this point, but you're not jaded. You're still loving. I love all of it, no but, but I've had so many different points of view that I have to melt them all together into a view that makes sense for me. I lean one way that because that way makes sense to me, but I respect always, because always lead to the same destination in my eyes.

Michael Neill 19:23
For me, Spirit is the word that we use for the Formless Intelligence of life, like whatever it is that everything comes out of. That's what I would call spirit. So the idea that it would be possible to not be spiritual is just not understanding what spirit is. It's like saying, Well, you know, you only breathe if you believe in breath. No you breathe whether you believe in breath or not. You're spiritual whether you believe in spirit or not, but, but I think for a lot of people, they embrace. The material and reject the spiritual, or embrace the spiritual and reject the material. And that's equally insane, because the material is made out of the spiritual, like one of my, one of my, you know, favorite one liners that Sid banks, the Scottish mystic I mentioned earlier that he, he said, is once you can see that everything is God, that's it. Now he wasn't saying God like person separate again, it was just his word for the allness, the isness and the nothingness. So there's a formless reality and and, and my mug is made out of it, and my body is made out of it, and this microphone is made out of it, and everything around me is made out of it. And how cool is that? I mean, we love movies. How cool is that we know they're not real. We were there when we made them. But how amazing is it that we can get lost in them and get scared by them and get frustrated by them and get excited by them like That's life. Like that is the beauty of being alive. But if you don't notice that you're part of the very thing that everything is made of, life can be terrifying. When my son was little, the the Jim Carrey version of Grinch came out, and if a preview for that movie came on, he would run screaming, burst into tears. We had to, we had to ask people when we'd go to movies back then, is there a preview for the Grinch? Now, two years later, we took him to see the Grinch at Christmas time, and he loved it, because he understood enough about movies to not be terrified anymore.

Alex Ferrari 21:49
Well, it was, it's like when they played the first movie of the train. Yeah, it was Edison or the Lumiere brothers one of the two.

Michael Neill 21:59
I've heard it. I've seen a clip that's Lumiere brothers, train coming into the station.

Alex Ferrari 22:03
Yeah, train coming into the that's it. So the train's coming into the station. And people ran out of the theater because they literally thought it was a train. They didn't understand anything. No one had ever seen anything like that. So it was terrifying for people. Now people are critiquing, oh, that's bad green screen, oh, the CG's. Like, obviously they didn't, they didn't use that proper software. Or this kind of like, it's gotten, it's gotten insane. So now people are completely movies. But there was a moment where they were terrified of it, and when it's and you can see it with young kids when they watch certain things, like my, my my kids. When I lived in Burbank, I would drive by the Warner, the Warner lot. And in the warrant there was the ranch, the ranch Warner lot, the one down we were like, walking distance from there. Every time we drive by it. There was a Halloween Horror Nights, big banner out in front, yeah, and it had Pennywise on it. Nightmares for weeks and weeks. They just knew enough that there was this thing called Pennywise, and they didn't know. And now they laugh at but now they're like, Can we watch a horror movie? And they watch it, and they've watched the show, and they watch all that stuff, but it's, it's pretty, but with all that said, they still would watch it in the daytime with the fight.

Michael Neill 23:26
They're not idiots. You did not raise fools. I understand, no, but this is the thing. Look we, we because thought, you know, our brains are these amazing simulators, right? And they can create all these simulations that we call the past or the future or just utter fantasy and and we don't understand that we are the ones behind the simulation. So we get lost in the simulation and start to think that's our life, and we try to deal with things, but when people start to wake up to that, there is this other dimension of life, this spiritual dimension of life, this formless dimension of life, and there is a feel to it, and you can be in that feeling while you are in the midst of the chaos. So you really can be in the world, but not of it, not in a rejecting the world, kind of a way, but just recognizing that who you are is before the form, and then you can play in the form as if your life depended on it, knowing full well that it doesn't

Alex Ferrari 24:30
Michael with every everybody you've met, and all the traveling you've done around the world, I'm sure, and spoken around the world, and probably met mystics. And I know I'm in six

Michael Neill 24:41
6 continents, and I don't think I'm ever going to get to the seventh. I don't think there's any seminars to be done in the seventh

Alex Ferrari 24:46
And in the Antarctica Exactly. Well, as as everything continues to warm up, there might be some maybe, I don't know, there might be a Hilton opening. There might be a hotel opening up soon.

Michael Neill 24:56
I think I've still got points. This is great.

Alex Ferrari 24:58
Um, but with all that said, what, what is the most profound spiritual experience you've had in all of these travels and all these people you've met? Have you had something that just rocked you to your core and gave you real, real evidence in your own mind that, like, oh yeah, all this stuff I've been seeing and suspected I really have a feeling about now, or is it always just been something?

Michael Neill 25:24
I think it's just been a deepening with highlights like, you know, I said at the beginning about how there's a basic course in an advanced course, I didn't get to well, the advanced course is no, really, no, really. It works this way? No, no, you really are made of this. No, no, the world really is made of this. No, thought really is creating a reality that once you're in that reality, what you do or don't do is kind of obvious, because this is the world you think you live in. So of course, you are going to behave the way you behave. So for me, I can, I can point to moments I remember being in in Concord, Massa, Massachusetts, once, and I walked into the park, and just everything went and it just went completely quiet. And I couldn't tell you how long I was there, but it was utter, quiet, utter bliss. Everything up until that point that I was worried about looked ridiculous. I have a bunch of those for me. The journey has been about letting it normalize so I'm not waiting for the next big bang, so that it's part of my ongoing experience, even though it's not always dramatic. You know, I can be functionally stoned most of the time, because that's what it's like. You know, it's just like, it is kind of trippy, but it actually is not a conflict with anything that we do. There's nowhere you can be that spirit isn't there before you. There's no such thing as an unspiritual person, an unspiritual situation and unspirit It's it just depends. Are you present to presence when you're there or not? Presence is there? But you might not notice,

Alex Ferrari 27:19
Well, I have to, I have to play devil's advocate. Michael, when you say every there's spirit in every there's spirit and everybody, right? I agree with you 110% but I'm gonna play devil's advocate for someone watching right now. Who's gonna go?

Michael Neill 27:25
Because, no, I think the devil needs an advocate. I don't think he's, he's had,

Alex Ferrari 27:25
He's he's had a rough go of it. His argument's not nearly as good as Jesus.

Michael Neill 27:37
So no, why did you take the job? What's the pain? No, sorry.

Alex Ferrari 27:45
I'm getting exactly my work here is done my work. I'm like, you fried me, sir, you fried me. Over 700 conversations on this stuff, and I'm you fried me.

Michael Neill 27:56
Okay, devil's advocate, I said that everybody is made of spirits.

Alex Ferrari 27:59
Okay so someone's gonna say so someone's gonna be watching this, and I can see the comment being typed up as we're speaking, which says, Well, how can there be spirit in rapists and serial killers and homicidal Maniacs and Hitler and Genghis Khan and all this? How can you see spirit in those creatures? Because as a storyteller, you need a villain. You need someone to to put that's how people are controlled. There's always like you're having a tough life. It's their fault. That's how wars start, essentially. So what do you what do you say to those people who are

Michael Neill 28:32
One of my, one of the metaphors I use for consciousness, which is sort of the basic present, spiritual presence is a mirror. So often the Zen mystics will talk about the lake doesn't mean to reflect the geese flying over it, the wild geese. It just, it's just still and so it reflects what's there. Now is a mirror, any less a mirror if it reflects Hitler than if it reflects Gandhi, is it any less? Is it changed as a mirror by reflecting a politician you like than by reflecting a politician you don't like? The mirror is unaffected by what goes on in it. So from a spiritual perspective, there's no less spirit in anyone, and there's no more spirit in anyone. From a practical perspective, we live in movies. We live in a world of thought. And if my thought created world involves everybody being an enemy, and they're not being enough, and everyone for themselves, and the skinniest person wins, then I'm going to behave in some pretty hideous ways. If I think my bad feelings are coming from them, and if I do something to them, it will fix my feeling, then I'm going to do something to them because of my misunderstanding. Thing, not because of a lack of spirit. That doesn't make it okay, but it does make it understandable. And it's when I see, when I can see the difference between the spirit in someone and the behavior, the form I go in and I talk in prisons, and to be honest, I don't want most of those guys back out on the street anytime soon. But that doesn't mean that I don't see the light in their eyes. It doesn't mean that a lot of them, not all of them at all. A lot of them, don't find something that that if they'd found it earlier, they would never have done what they did that wound them up in prison. I'm not. I'm not anti punishment, I'm not. I'm just saying that it doesn't there's no version of reality where the energy that all things are made of excludes something

Alex Ferrari 30:57
That's profound is profound. You're absolutely right. It's just the lake doesn't really care what flies over it. It's just going to reflect whatever's there.

Michael Neill 31:08
No, that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that I don't care. Right, very different from a place of understanding than from a right, wrong, good, bad. You know that world. We know how that world plays out. We've been playing it out for 5000 plus years. It doesn't end well for anyone ever. I mean, to the victor, go the spoils until they lose, and then it flips, and then it flips, and then it flips, and then it flips. It's endless. It's endless. The one game that that is the pullback you were talking about from contact, that the one game is, oh, at a fundamental level, we're all the same individually. So much cool difference, but, but it's a very different conversation. If I actually think I'm spiritual, you're not, or you're spiritual I'm not then if I see look, we're all made of the same stuff. And it just turns out that we really misunderstand where our experience comes from, and we think it's coming from outside us. So we think we need to control the outside to have a better experience.

Alex Ferrari 32:15
Have you seen that clip on social media from Pete Holmes, the stand up comic about God?

Michael Neill 32:20
Maybe because my son loves him, but I don't know which one you mean.

Alex Ferrari 32:23
He's the he's saying. He's like, you know, a lot of people say that God isn't real, you know. And so you either believe that God's this big guy, white guy in the in the sky with a big beard, or you believe it's nothing. Now, you know what's crazy is to believe that there's a guy in the sky with a beard. That's crazy, but you know what else is weird? Because believing in nothing, what happens to you when you die? Well, he goes well, nothing. So when you die, nothing happens. So you return to your Creator. I know No, and he just keeps going on long bit, and it was just so, but it's so, it's just a beautiful idea. He's approaching it from a comedic standpoint, but his idea is very profound, and it bears to what you're just saying. No pun intended. It mirrors. It mirrors, ideally, what you're saying that the positive and the negative that we that we attach to something is in many ways cultural. It's many ways based on country, based on society, based on community. Because this conversation, even as non woo, woo as this is, for many is we're talking, this is the work of the devil. Just this conversation. Not crazy. We're not going crazy off the off the rails here. You know, in certain areas of the world, certain things that we would consider illegal are legal, and vice versa. You know, you remember you can't, like Amish women can't, can't show an ankle, you know, and neither can women over in certain Middle Eastern countries. So it's, it's fascinating to me, what we find right and wrong. It just varies

Michael Neill 34:14
For me. There really does come back to if there is a right way to be, then our goal in life kind of has to be finding out what the right way is and trying to follow it correct. If there isn't a right way to be and just an objectively right way to be, then we've got to find a different nav system, and it's actually built into us. What I what I find that that people just don't realize how well we're made as humans. Is our wanting, I don't mean our lust, our, you know, crazy desires for more, but our simple wanting, like I want a sandwich, right? That is how this intelligence guides us. Like a sunflower follows the light. We're made to follow this inner sense of direction. And so the question is, is it good? Is it bad? And if it's good, I should do it, and if it's bad, I shouldn't do it, which just doesn't work. It doesn't feel good and it doesn't work, which is why I reject it. No other reason but. But if you check in and go, do I want to, like, really, like, not. I want to, like, just in a in an honest, settled way, do I actually want to that will guide you through anything? And there's only three answers, yes, no, or I don't know. And I had a guy come. He was sent by one of the huge global asset companies, and he was one of their top quants, and he was an absolute genius, and he was an absolute nightmare. And HR sent him as a last resort. They said, We're either going to promote him or fire him. Do your thing, right? And He came in, and he was, he was tightly wound like and, but he so he wrote down on, I keep a flip chart in the office, and he wrote down 50 plus things, decisions that he was trying to make, and he was quantifying them all in terms, as he did at work, in terms of, here are the variables here, the weighting of the variables. You know, if I move to this place, school district is more important than crime, but this is more important than this. Oh, Jesus. And he went for like, 45 minutes, and I am dizzy, like I'm just exhausted.

Alex Ferrari 36:27
I'm exhausted already,

Michael Neill 36:28
Right! And so I start talking to him about, look, that might be great if you're predicting probabilities with numbers, but that's not how we're made to live. We're made to follow a really simple inner knowing and inner sense of direction, a common sense and and he kind of argued with me for a bit, but at some point we'd settled enough that he was like, Okay, I get you're not a complete idiot. Let me at least listen to you. And, and so he said, Well, you're really saying that I can look at every one of these things on my list, and just go, yes, no, I don't know. And I said, Yeah. And he spent the next sort of, I think, 30 minutes, and he went through every single thing. Do I want to, yeah, this, or this, this? Do I want to? No, do I and he there were only, like, three, I don't knows on the whole list. And he got quieter and quieter. And I don't know if you've seen it, but like, when people get settled, they get prettier, handsomer, like younger he did, like he was a different guy, and at the end, he went, right, I'm done now. Full disclosure, they paid me for three days, and this was lunchtime on day one, and I was thinking, I don't want to give the money back. So I I kind of said to him, Well, you know, I mean, I mean, you know, look, how about this? Why don't you come back, just, let's just, well, yeah, look, I wasn't gonna be a jerk about it, but I also wanted to check, so I said, Look, I get this has been huge for you. Why don't you come back in the morning, tomorrow morning, and if you're still done, I'll take you to brunch, right? And if not, we'll keep going. Wait. King guy, he went, he was done, comes in, he's like, so clear, so present. And, and I took him to brunch. He went back. I get a call from HR at the company later in the week, and said, What did you do to him? I said, What do you mean? Because I didn't know which way it went. And they said, he's a different guy. Said he's so clear, he's so present, he's really easy to get along with, and and I tried to explain, and she was like, Yeah, whatever you did. Thank you. Here, keep the money. But it was, it was, it's, it's how simple this can be, even though, for most of us, experientially, it isn't.

Alex Ferrari 38:32
But Michael, so when you're explaining what this guy was doing, it sounds like, at least from my perspective, that there was a lot of fear. He was trying to control everything. He was trying to quantify everything. He was trying to just like he was, that's a next level control freak, and he could hide behind the quantifications and like the variables and all that stuff. It sounds like fear to me, but when he let go.

Michael Neill 39:01
It's different. It is fear. I'm just somebody sent me this quote this morning, and I thought I knew I'm going to get this quote in somewhere. I'm getting it in with you. It's a Mooji if you do not trust life to unfold, the mind takes over, and it becomes a game of strategy motivated by anxiety. This mistrust is unfair. Life has given us so much, and yet we do not trust it. And that's exactly it. But if you give me 100 people, you'll see that 99 of them are motivated by fear, at least a big chunk of the time,

Alex Ferrari 39:35
Most of us are, yeah, well, most of us are that.

Michael Neill 39:38
So it's really interesting to begin to move into the possibility of a life that isn't driven by insecurity and fear,

Alex Ferrari 39:46
But isn't insecurity and fear in so many ways a defense mechanism to keep us alive, as opposed to, generally speaking,

Michael Neill 39:55
Awareness of danger, is the defense mechanism in. Security and fear is the neurotic adaptation of that defense mechanism, of that genuine awareness of danger that the mind does. It's not that's no it's normal, but it's not natural. Awareness of danger is natural. And the irony is that when we're all up in our heads trying to calculate risk, we're not actually present to the awareness of any actual danger there might be. I saw an interview with Alex Honnold a couple of weeks ago, you know, the after he climbed the tower, which, which was amazing. I mean, you know, and he was talking about how he thought more people needed to, in some ways, be in life threatening situations. And the interviewer is kind of like, you know, why are you saying this? And he said, he made this case. He said, Look, we've lost touch with actual fear. Actual fear is great, sharpens the senses, keeps you alert, really, presences you. He said, we've so we kind of busy our minds with this artificial fear, and it kind of keeps us in this state of heightened autonomic arousal, and it messes with us. That's actually not necessary to function well in the world, awareness of danger is but that's built in.

Alex Ferrari 41:12
But also back in the day, like he was saying, is that when you were out in the Savannah hunting, you were in a state of alertness all the time, because at any moment, there could be a tiger.

Michael Neill 41:24
But there's a difference between there's a difference between presence and fear. You can be alert presence and you are aware of any movement from miles around, or you can be in your head worrying about it, and you're not aware of the Tiger that's right behind you. It's not really behind you. Alex, don't worry. Don't worry. I can see it's not behind you.

Alex Ferrari 41:44
Okay, good. Just want to check how to get in here first of all, but that, but, but that kind of goes into a deeper conversation about what motivates us and and how do you how do you control a large populace. Fear. Fear is the easiest thing.

Michael Neill 42:03
Look, sorry if you're if anyone is listening to this to learn how to control the masses, what I'm saying do the opposite of everything I'm saying. If you're actually interested in liberating yourself from that, then maybe have a list,

Alex Ferrari 42:18
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, because most of us, you know, every, every aspect of our life, has fear involved in it, constructed fear by marketing agencies, by religion, by governments, by all of it.

Michael Neill 42:35
I went to talk on I called Satan's Handbook of hypnotic marketing, and it's based basically tweak the insecure thinking of your potential client or customer and then offer them relief in the form of your product or service.

Alex Ferrari 42:51
Yeah, that's, that's marketing 101, yeah.

Michael Neill 42:54
But it's also, it isn't the only way. It's just really very, very popular.

Alex Ferrari 42:59
Well, because it's the it's the lowest hanging fruit,

Michael Neill 43:03
Right! So it's the lowest so I sometimes talk about lowest common denominator marketing, highest common nominator marketing. And, yeah, no question, lowest common denominator marketing works up to a point, but it doesn't work. If what you're trying to do is build trust, it doesn't really work, right? You're trying to do is increase possibility. It just works to shift stuff, and if that's what you consider your job to be, yeah, go for it.

Alex Ferrari 43:29
I think there has been a backlash against this more and more now people are things that you and I grew up with would obviously, there's many things that you and I grew up with would never pass it today.

Michael Neill 43:43
I sometimes watch 80s television and go, Oh my God, we watched that.

Alex Ferrari 43:46
Oh my Oh, my God. She's some of the things that were said and done. I'm like, Oh, good. It's insane. But, but on the on the marketing side, you know, there's things that that were, you know, the how we were marketed to growing up, that isn't working as much anymore. Now, there is a different flavor of it with, like, a lot of the Tiktok and Instagram and social media influencers that are still, instead of the fear of like, you're not good enough, it kind of leans on that. It's like, well, if you don't do what I'm doing or buy the product I'm doing, you're not going to be cool enough. And there's a different version of that. It's just different kind of,

Michael Neill 44:34
Well, it's the same thing. It's still tweaking the insecure thinking of your potential client or customer. It's just,

Alex Ferrari 44:35
But you're not right, but you're not going to connect to that on a deep level. So in other words, watching a Super Bowl Budweiser commercial where two bikini clad girls fight in a fountain over a Budweiser. I'll send you a link right away, sir. That's an action. That's an actual commercial. Okay, that's an actual that was an actual commercial for I never forgot it because I was a young. Man, when I saw it, but that doesn't build a real connection with the product, where people are looking for authentic connections now. So there is a backlash to that kind of stuff now, and there might still be tweakings of all that, but I feel that the brands and the companies and even the institutions who are becoming more, leaning more towards this positive, reinforcing the good in things, where people are starting to search for,

Michael Neill 45:29
Well, we are. We have a sort of a policy in our own marketing where we, there's a company in the in the UK called Ron seal, and it's, it's a sealant for decks and and their their motto is it Ron seal. It does exactly what it says on the tin. And that's what awesome is like. There should be no gap between what we say is on offer and what's on offer. And now somebody could come along and go, Yeah, but you could make so much more if you did this, and, yeah, maybe I don't actually even believe it's true, because so much of our audience has been with me for years, because they know that it does exactly what it says on the 10 maybe for one off customers, not so much. But I'm looking for people who want to be a part of this for as long as they want to be a part of it. I'm not looking for Okay, let me run through as many of them as I can, as quickly as I can,

Alex Ferrari 46:25
With all the clients and people you've worked with over the years, what do you what do people spend years trying to fix that were never, was never really broken within them?

Michael Neill 46:34
Well, I think probably the biggest one is themselves, right? People just are so sure there's something wrong with them, and have so much evidence, and can tell me so many stories that that, and they think, I just need one more thing. Maybe this person has the answer, maybe this person has the answer. Maybe this person has the answer, and for a little while it feels like they that person did have the answer, because the actual answer is when I'm not thinking about it, it's not a problem. So if you give me an answer and I stop thinking about it, it won't be a problem, and I'll feel so much better, but then at some point, I'm going to start thinking about it again, and I'm not going to realize that's why it's become a problem again, and the cycle continues. So one of the biggest shifts that people make, and that I work with people to make, is to really see that, but for unrecognized thinking about who we are, you're freaking amazing. Now, I'm not saying you can't also be a mess. I mean, pretty much everyone I know is both, but we're obsessed with the mess, and we miss the amazing bit. And it's not like, oh, think, think better things about yourself. There's here's here's probably the quote. This is a quote at the front of my new book, which is not yet. It's not fully written yet, but it's this. It's if you drop your ego, your image of self importance. So by ego, it just means your self image, the way you think about yourself. If you drop your ego, your image of self importance, and just be you, whoever that is, you'll find the secret to heaven. Here on Earth, you'll discover that you're not who you think you are. You're something nicer, far better, really nice. And so when we start to actually experience and identify with who we really are, everything starts working better. Our intelligence comes online in a whole different way. Our creativity comes online in a whole different way. We still have crazy movies in our head, but they look like movies, and so we're not impacted by them in the same way. We still have nutty thinking, but it looks like nutty thinking. I used to say I think it's not politically correct, but I don't think it's that bad, like if you're drunk, but you know that you're drunk, you're not that drunk, right? If, if you're, if you're really in your head, but you know, you're really in your head, you're not that in your head. That's right. It really is game changing to start to see, Oh God, I am not all the madness that goes on in here.

Alex Ferrari 49:15
If you're questioning it, you're not really that deep into your head. If you're not questioning it, you're gone,

Michael Neill 49:19
Well, right? And then you're gone. So there's nothing to do about it anyways, right? It's, you know,

Alex Ferrari 49:25
Until you start to realize it,

Michael Neill 49:26
Yeah, but this endless chase to fix it when you've never actually seen it, it's, it's never going to work you. There's no such thing as a solution to a feeling, and yet, that's what almost everybody is chasing. Why do we feel that we're not enough? Well, I think there's two reasons. One is, we've been told you're not enough, explicit but, but it's back to it's in the water, it's in the furniture, it's, it's, if you look around, everybody seems to be having a better life than you

Alex Ferrari 49:57
Now, more than ever. Geez, what? Instagram.

Michael Neill 49:59
So that's. So, of course, and they're subtly and sometimes, not so subtly, intimating that it's because you're not enough. Now, I've met a lot of these people. You've met a lot of these people. They're just as messy as everybody else,

Alex Ferrari 50:13
Every single one of them, absolutely.

Michael Neill 50:15
So it's, it's it's a it's just, again, it's the blind leading the blind. You know, there's that saying that in the in the kingdom of the blind, the one.

Alex Ferrari 50:24
Yeah,

Michael Neill 50:26
Right. So, so, so you don't even need to be that awake to have a huge advantage in the world.

Alex Ferrari 50:33
That's, that's a powerful statement, that you don't have to be that awake even because everyone thinks that I have to be Buddha, you have to be Christ, you know, I have to, have to have a be a guru somewhere.

Michael Neill 50:46
Like, it's like the old joke about, you know, you know, you know, you're with a group of campers, and you come across a bear. How are you going to get away from the bear? You don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your buddies, right?

Alex Ferrari 50:58
Like it's the slowest you have to run the slowest runner in the group.

Michael Neill 51:02
That's a terrible spiritual analogy, but it's but it's not like is really, if you even start to glimpse how much of your struggle and suffering is happening up here and not out there, if you even begin to sense every now and again, that when you get really quiet, something more comes through you. You're way ahead of the game. And then if you really start to see it, if you start to self realize just how amazing you actually are. But again, no different to anybody else. Just it's different because you notice it, then life becomes a very different game. And that's where that happy success, that I'm not saying everyone who is happy and successful was self realized, but I am saying that they had elements of it where they saw through. They got over themselves more quickly, they could see through the ego and the image and all of that, and they could navigate it pretty well.

Alex Ferrari 52:07
I have to believe that at a certain point in your career, you've worked with a lot of people in Hollywood and musicians and people in the entertainment field. I've known many of them who won Oscars and one the top of the top and the biggest movies in the world and all that kind of stuff. And there's some of the most miserable people I know that just absolutely one. One guy even said, like, after I got the Oscar and, like, I didn't know what to do with my life,

Michael Neill 52:34
It's actually calm in my experiences,

Alex Ferrari 52:37
Exactly. It's not, it's very it's that's why I love Jim Carrey's awakening. I adore, I adore Jim and Jim. If you're watching, please come on the show anytime you want, sir,

Michael Neill 52:49
The Grinch costume, because my kid is scared,

Alex Ferrari 52:52
Obviously, not in the obviously,

Michael Neill 52:55
So he's probably not scared anymore. But, you know,

Alex Ferrari 52:59
But hey, that's could be triggering, sir. But Jim was so powerful because he's come out so publicly about his spiritual awakening and and he's he's put his money where his mouth is, in many ways, but he says, I wish everybody could get everything they ever wanted so they could realize it means nothing what? And it's easy. If you and I say that, it'd be like, yeah, that's kind of nice, yeah, but, but Jim was the biggest movie star in the world, had everything anybody in that field could have ever wanted. And he was like, Yeah, this is this.

Michael Neill 53:37
But you know what I have found, because I've been doing this for a long time, as much as anything. I mean, I'm it's 35 plus years now, I've been working with people. The easiest people to work with, in the sense that they see this, the quickest, are the incredibly successful or wealthy and the incredibly downtrodden, because both of them have realized they're not going to find what they're looking for in the world.

Alex Ferrari 54:01
Oh, the extremes.

Michael Neill 54:02
It's all of us in the middle who think, yeah, but if I just get one more award, if I just get a little more money, if I just get one more level of success, then I know it. But it's like at the extremes, people are very receptive to it, because they've already figured out it's not going to happen out there. And that's why the Inside Out understanding, because when you start to see how it actually works, it you're not waiting for your circumstances, and you can often create some pretty cool circumstances. And what I love is this, this program could have been recorded 150 years ago, and that would still be true. But, yeah, go ahead,

Alex Ferrari 54:38
Yes, but 150 years ago, we weren't as aware of everything that was going on. Yeah, we didn't know if there was a war going on three, three or four miles down the road. Yeah, because we didn't have, we didn't know. But now we're so overly connected. You know, before it was, you know, radio and movies, radio, television, and now we have internet and social. Media that I know, when you know something happens on the other side of the world instantly as it's happening, you're fine. So you feel this kind of bombardment of all these craziness things happen. But with it, with that said, think that was happening 150 years ago is not happening today, where a lot of our preconceived ideas of what institutions were, what the world was like, what the truth was, is completely crumbling. You know, we got a taste of it in the in America. Got a taste of it in the in the 70s with Nixon, that was the first time that we're like we were disillusioned a bit with, oh, wait a minute, what

Michael Neill 55:45
I think some of my friends from the civil war might disagree with you about yourself.

Alex Ferrari 55:49
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Saying I agree with you 110% I'm saying in modern or modern or times.

Michael Neill 55:58
No, no, I'm waiting all right. Oh no, we will go back to the white so pedantic.

Alex Ferrari 56:03
Wait, listen, we could go back to the pilgrims. All right, if you like. I mean, yeah, there's always craziness happening. There's always things, you know, it

Michael Neill 56:11
Was on our side,

Alex Ferrari 56:14
Those damn Aztecs with the blood sacrifices. No, there's always something going on, but there seems to be a lot more like perfect example, man, I was raised Catholic. The Catholic Church was an infallible, infallible institution, the Vatican infallible. Obviously, a few things have happened over the last few decades that has shined a different light on that, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, the government, in general, all these things that were sometimes some of it was conspiracy theories. All of a sudden, are now coming out, going, nah, they were kind of right. So Bigfoot. Bigfoot should be, Bigfoot should be riding in on the Loch Ness monster on a UFO anyday.

Michael Neill 57:01
Well, he's with the tiger that's behind you.

Alex Ferrari 57:07
But with all so this, that's what I'm saying that now this is added, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. It's added a different level of crazy or instability in our psyche, because things that we thought were foundational are now being shaken, and that happens to that that's a surprise master.

Michael Neill 57:31
I think that is breathtakingly healthy. I think it's one of the best agreed possibly happen, because as long as we are trying to find our stability in the outside world, in another person, an institution, anything, the world of form, by nature, is crumbly. Things come and go. That which is born dies. We know that Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So when we finally stop trying to find our solid ground in the form. There's really only one other place to go, and it's back inside. And that shift back to spirit, back to just pure spirit, not any particular form it takes, but the formless reality out of which all form comes. That's ironically, given that it has no form that's as close to solid ground as there is in the universe. So while obviously it can be very disruptive, and it's easy to get caught up in very scary thinking about what this means about the future, and what this means about this, the actual reality of it, if it points people back inside, is one of the best things could happen for the evolution of humanity.

Alex Ferrari 58:46
And I think that's exactly what's happening now. People are being, you know, 2020. Was that first year that everyone had to stop, and everyone had to look inside, and it kind of and your phone probably was ringing off the hook back then,

Michael Neill 58:58
Oh my God, it was so it was so weird. We went in the in the space of less than a month. We went from thinking we were going to go out of business to realizing that we were going to double our business. One of my clients actually said, you went from being a luxury yacht to a lifeboat. Oh, so we actually just opened our doors. We just opened up our memberships for free to everyone. And so many, so many new people came in. And then when it was done, and we started charging again, a lot of them left, but some of them stayed. And that was fine, like that didn't that didn't strike me as problematic. It's I have so much faith in the human spirit and in the intelligence of life, and sometimes I don't like the way it's going either, but I don't think that changing the way it's going is going to fix it. I think until people start to wake up to this deeper dimension of life, it's still going to feel like I got to stop the people who are. Causing my problems. Of course I do. When I start to see that's not the way the universe works. Very different things make sense to me to do.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:09
Do you believe that we're so caught up in the illusion that things are actually solid and that things don't change? Is the great, one of the great illusions of humanity. Because, you know, as you as we've gotten older, things that we didn't think about in our 20s we thought about in our 50s and in our 60s, because we didn't think it would ever catch up to us. Oh, I've been smoking for the last 20 years, and all of a sudden, like, what my

Michael Neill 1:00:32
Nobody told me that would be a problem.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:38
I mean, I mean, there was a smoky section of the airplane. I don't understand but, but everything's so slow and change you obviously, one day, I know this happened. I'm sure this happened to you. One day, you just wake up and you look in the mirror and you're like, Who is this guy? Like, where did this guy come from? I The guy is the guy that I see in my brain. He's 20 something, and he's like, jumping and doing things. And then, do you ever, Does this ever happen to you? Mike, you forgot that you're your age, and you do and you do something horribly wrong, physically, like, you're like, I think I can make that jump. I think I could. I could do that. And all of a sudden you're just like, oh God, son of a I forgot.

Michael Neill 1:01:21
Yeah, we're still young man up here. No, no, I know. I know what you mean. Occasionally I see a picture of me and go, Oh, who's that old guy with my wife? You know? But you know, he seems nice.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:37
I'm glad she found someone

Michael Neill 1:01:40
Me too. It's been a long time,

Alex Ferrari 1:01:44
But, but I even I forgot what we were talking about,

Michael Neill 1:01:49
Two for two, this is never air it. But I'm doing great.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:57
We'll air it, sir, don't worry. We'll air it. Um, but it's just, it's just kind of fascinating how we forget that we're all gonna die. Nobody wants to talk about it, but we're all it's a process. It's secular. Constantly. The universe is secular to the the exp, the just the reality is that, you know, our cells are dying and being reborn every second of every day.

Michael Neill 1:02:23
I think there's a couple of levels that it's worth looking at that from, please, this thing, this body thing, definitely gonna die, no question about it. I don't even the really cool people doing really cool things on Tiktok. This thing's going right. The brain thing, which is part of this thing, that's, that's, that's, that's going to wear out. But we are not our bodies. We have bodies. I was trying to explain this to somebody, a young kid who's a gamer the other day, and and I was like, he was talking about Spider Man far from home the video and I, which I think is a great game, so, so I was going, like, when you're playing that game, right? You're, you're Spider Man, right, yeah, but you do know that Spider Man's not you, right? So, yeah, I am my body, but I'm but my body's not me. I have a body, so I don't know what happens when the body dies, but it but, but for me, it is helpful to know that the body is going to wear out, because I'll treat it differently and care for it differently and use it differently. But it's not actually all that helpful to think that when the body goes That's it. I don't know whether it's it or not. I have no insider information, but I know that there's a wonderful line from William Blake I see through my eyes, not with them, the presence that we are definitely transcends the physical form that we're in, that I know. I don't, I don't pretend to know beyond that,

Alex Ferrari 1:04:05
Isn't it perfect, in the in the grand scheme of this entire experiment that we're all in, if you will, this reality that there is an expiration date, because if there wasn't, if we were vampires, and there was no end in sight. No, what do you mean? We, but if we, but if we were mythical creatures who did not die. I think about that sometimes, as one does, and I'm not to be a vampire, but just like you know what? What if I was around for another couple 100 years, because in the Bible and in many, in many spiritual texts, long life is a given Moses was 900 Yeah, yeah. Baba Ji is still 250 2500 years old walking around the Himalaya somewhere right now. So there is, there is precedent for that, yeah. But. I can't even wrap my head around it, because if I was going to be alive for another three or 400 years, that and nobody else, by the way, nobody else around you, is going to have that privilege. That's the key. If your kid you're going to watch your kids die, you're going to watch your grandkids die. You're going to watch your great grandkids die. That's I can't even and everything that you know it's going to change constantly. I can't even imagine psychologically, what that would do to a human being. So it is helpful that you're going to do,

Michael Neill 1:05:30
Yeah, I think, I think it would be messy, but I also think that that not knowing is part of the fun, right? Like, you know, there's my favorite theory about enlightenment, like, why some people get enlightened and others don't, is, is everyone gets enlightened in their 10,000th lifetime. So you know whether or not it's your 10,000th lifetime, because if you're not enlightened, it isn't and if you are, it is sure. But the reason that I like that as a theory is because there's no point in striving for it.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:05
That's a theory.

Michael Neill 1:06:07
And so and so the thing, it's the same thing with with long life. I, you know, I wish anyone who wants it long life, sure, and if, if it's in the cards, you'll have it. And if it isn't in the cards, no matter what you do, you won't. So, yeah, to me, it makes a lot of sense to take care of this thing, but it doesn't make sense to kill myself trying to make myself live longer.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:28
Beautifully said, my friend. Beautifully said, if there was one spiritual insight that the world needs to hear right now, or one concept, one idea that the world needs to hear right now, what would it be?

Michael Neill 1:06:40
If they could actually hear it, but as in, it would land, for me, it would be, Be still and know that you are God, that you are this the same energy that animated the Buddha that animated The Christ that animated all the great spiritual teachers. You are that and and then you think. And because you think and your thinking looks real to you, it's very easy to get lost in the movie. But if you see those two things, you'll do fine. In fact, you'll do a lot better than fine.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:21
You know, one of my favorite quotes from Yogananda, the great mystic, who's right behind not the tiger, but he's actually right behind me. He says, It's like life is but the movies. And when you're watching a movie, you see death and violence and happy and joyous and all of it. And you get wrapped up in the movie. He goes because your attention is on the movie. What you really need to be focusing on is, where is the light coming from? Where is the light from, the projector coming from? That is where your your focus should be. I thought there's such a profound kind of idea and concept. It's the all gory of the cave.

Michael Neill 1:08:00
Essentially, it's totally The Allegory of the Cave. But, but for me, the other half of that is we don't go to the movies to keep telling everybody around us, hey, you know, it's just a movie. Look at the light. We go to the movies to get lost in it. So I think if those two things combine the realization of the light, but the the ability to still enjoy the movie, that, to me, is what's on offer here on Earth. That's, that's what's on offer in a life well lived, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:08:32
We didn't come to watch this movie. We came to be part of this movie, to enjoy this, this experience.

Michael Neill 1:08:39
We didn't come here to leave, right?

Alex Ferrari 1:08:41
We came here to, like, for as long or as short as we have time on here, on this in this film, on this set, if you will. Sir. So Michael, where can people find out more about you? Pick up your books and the amazing work you're doing in the world?

Michael Neill 1:08:56
Yeah. So two places. michaelneill.org, is sort of the big hub online, and then we're just, I don't know how it'll time out, but we're just launching the AI version of me at michaelneill.ai so those would be the two places where you can, you can go exploring and have fun and learn heaps.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:15
So so your AI, so that means, once you pass you will live on forever.

Michael Neill 1:09:19
Well, you know, I they've been trying to get me to do this, this, this whole team of AI developers in Europe, and I was like, and then one day, I just kind of woke up and went, you know what? Let me, let me see what it's like. And it is so good, you know, it's been trained on, I've been interviewed by it dozens of times. It's, it's gone through and, you know, my all my good stuff, you know, it's, it's read my books, it's, it's done my trainings, it's, and it, it is kind of extraordinary to me. And I've had conversations with it, in fact, where I outed myself to it, and said, hey, you know, actually, you're based on me. And we've had these incredibly surreal conversations. So. It's, it's kind of cool as a sort of a next evolution of what's possible. So I'm really excited for it to get out into the world in a big way. It's, you know, the 50 people who've tried it so far, loving it, but, but I can't wait to see what it does when it when it gets out there, big

Alex Ferrari 1:10:17
Before we leave. Man, what do you think your what's your opinion on the AI?

Michael Neill 1:10:20
I think it is like any evolution in technology. There is the potential for extraordinary amounts of good and the potential for an extraordinary mess and and what I do think somebody, somebody, one of the AI people that I work with said to me is, he said, Look, AI is right now like a preteen. Oh, you don't want to leave it to other people to raise it. So, so, so that was part of what got me to step in instead of away, was just thinking, You know what? Yeah, that makes sense to me. So I don't know where it's going, but I know that I, if I get a say in it, I have a little more hope. And I think if other people who are on this kind of path get a get involved, there's there's a lot of hope for it, and it could be an extraordinary mess, everything to play for Tune in next week.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:23
Michael man, it is a pleasure talking to you again, brother, next time you're down in Austin, please stop.

Michael Neill 1:11:28
Oh, I will. No, I forgot you were down there. I'm sorry I missed you, but I can't wait. No, be great.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:35
Appreciate you and everything you do and awaken the planet. Brother, thank you again.

Michael Neill 1:11:38
Thank you.