Meditation Master REVEALS Ancient Revolutionary SPEED Technique to MEDITATE! with Richard L. Haight

Alex Ferrari 0:03
And today's guest is author, Richard L. Haight. And Richard is the founder of the mind body training system known as total embodiment method or TM. He is also a master instructor in the samurai arts, and a two time award winning author. He has written five books on meditation and awakening, most notably the Warriors meditation, unshakable awareness and the unbound soul. I had a fantastic conversation with Richard about meditation about the roadrunner and Wiley Coyote, and so much more. So let's dive in. I'd like to welcome the show, Richard Haight, how you doing, Richard?

Richard Haight 1:28
Great, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Alex Ferrari 1:29
Thank you so much for being on on the show. And, and thank you for the work that you do in your books and your programs and everything you're doing. I really wanted to dive in deep on your perspective on meditation, and consciousness and spiritual awakening and, and your path in life. So can we start off with your origin story? How did you get involved in this in the spiritual path?

Richard Haight 1:56
Yeah, it's it actually goes back to when I was about eight years old. I was. In our neighborhood, we had a woman who had a Wednesday night Bible study, practice, Bible study, class, and her son happened to be the eldest kid in the neighborhood. And he convinced us all that, all of us to go saying that if we didn't go to hell, so of course, quite naturally, we we agreed to go and, and that's where it began. I did not know what Christianity really was, at that time, of course, and I didn't know the intentions of this woman. But after some months she had indoctrinated us to be will say, shepherds of the Lord. And that we were to can to convert our parents to her particular type of case, some of the parents were Christian. And some of them I don't know, but but it didn't matter, that you were Christian, you had to be this specific type of Christianity, in order to be saved, otherwise, you would go to hell

Alex Ferrari 3:01
Obviously,

Richard Haight 3:02
You know, rather, rather extreme, obviously, rather than extreme point of view. So I actually, you know, she, they put fear into me, and I really believe that maybe they would go to hell, and it was on my shoulders and eight year olds shoulders to save, you know, my parents. So I went home that night convinced and asked if we could have a conversation on religion. And my parents quite shocked by by the statement, or by the request, actually agreed, and they but they had a caveat that we had to speak as adults. Right. And if I was willing to speak to them as an adult, that they would be happy to have that conversation. So I did. He got out my father was the one who primarily had the conversation he got out his Bibles asked me to get mine and open it up and sort of give me a guided tour of the inconsistencies. And the the areas that deserve some skepticism are really an honest, hard look. And I was really shocked to find it, that there were inconsistencies in what was considered to be an infallible document or what I was told as an infallible document. He directed me primarily to Matthew, Mark, Luke. And John's the very end of their text where they're talking about Jesus, having been crucified is put into the tomb. And what happens there in each account is stated to be factually true, but they all give four very distinct accounts that are irreconcilable. Some of them are, you know, they never went into the tomb. Some of them they went to the tomb, there was a guy in white robes and some of them they went into a tomb and there was an angel there with lightning bolts and you know, it's just just inconsistent. And I was really put back on my heels. But what he did say that was, I think, very helpful is if you're interested in This just you know, do it honestly do it sincerely, if you really want to know God, you know, don't assume that you can just learn this from somebody else, you have to find it yourself. You know, don't be lazy about it, essentially. That was kind of where it started. Because a few weeks later, maybe a month later, I don't know I started having this reoccurring dream. And it was, I would wake up in the middle of night, the the broom was a glow in this warm, for lack of a better term, I wouldn't say love, but actually lit up the room. And I could see on the middle of the floor was this person lying on the floor a man and I felt compelled or drawn to, to go to that person, which of course, makes a little sense. If you had a man lying on the floor in your room, as an eight year old child, you're probably going to be terrified, but nothing like that went to him. And soon as I looked into his eyes, I just had this feeling that this is Jesus Christ, which is a very strange, at the time in the dream, you think it's strange, you know, you're in a dream state altered reality or whatever. So I didn't have the thought that it was strange. That was sort of a retrospective. But there's this deep love and, and compassion and also a sorrow. And he said to me, help, please help me. And so I tried to help him by grabbing his wrist and picking him up, you know, I thought he wanted help up. But his arms squished in my hand, like a water balloon. And I looked at his body, and I could see that he had no bones, it was sagging. And then he looked at me again, he said, Please help me. And at that moment, I get kicked out of the dream. The same dream repeated again. And again, maybe every couple of weeks or something like that. It just sort of random, unexpected times. When I enter the dream, I would never remember that had it before. But upon waking from it, I would remember there was exactly the same moment by moment to every other occurrence and that I'd had it multiple times. And I would always get cat kicked out at exactly the moment when he asked me the second time to help him the moment when I wanted to ask him how I could never ask him how and get that answer. Over a period of time I start I realized that maybe if I set an intention, you know, almost like a prayer before I go to bed to stay in that dream just a little bit longer. Because this was a dream that was haunting me throughout my day. I'm just like, I go to school, I couldn't think about anything but this really. And that's that's basically how it started. Because one night finally I could stay in that dream a little bit longer my body's surged with energy. And I could ask him how. And he says, find my bones for the essence of my teaching, and bring it back to the world. And that's where it started. But I understood that I wouldn't get it from from reading the Bible. Because they're already been too distorted. Right? It's already been turned into religion turned into a marketing game turned into all of the things that happened, you know, historically, through religions just about anywhere, right? It's gets distorted. And whatever that fundamental message was, had been lost. So I'm not going to find it reading it there. Although he did hint that there were that there were some parts of, of what he said in that are reflected accurately in the Bible. I don't know if that was actually Jesus, I have no way of knowing, no way of knowing. If it wasn't, it's just it's just it could have just been a dream. But that's where my journey started. And I understood like in my columns that whatever it was that was going to be discovered, I had to find it through my own life experience. And only after that, would I be able to look back in the Bible go, ah, these are the bones of Christ. This is the foundation of his teachings. Yeah, I really started.

Alex Ferrari 8:56
Yeah, I mean, Jesus's teachings have been distorted a bit. Because to say the least, in in history, I think it was Yogananda Paramahansa Yogananda who said that Christ's teachings, he might have been crucified once, but his teachings get crucified for the next 2000 years. It's pretty great. It's a great quote. It's very true,

Richard Haight 9:23
That explains the sorrow in his eyes. And you walk the earth or this is just some sort of archetypical character that is, you know, I don't know, none of that really concerned me. I wasn't concerned with finding Jesus's truth. That is, as I matured, you know, when I was young, I wanted to find Jesus's teachings and bring into the world but as I matured, I realized any teaching that's that's worth anything is true period is not his teaching. It's just a reflection of a fundamental truth. And I don't need to try and make whatever I find conform to any buddy's teaching, it just has to be true for anybody who actually applies it. And that's was a shift that occurred as I matured, and ultimately went to Japan to study martial arts and looking for more, I would say, an embodied awareness. Because I thought if it was true, it can't just be intellect. It can't just be abstraction. It can't just be your imagination. It can't just be ideology. And it can't just be philosophy. And it can't just be psychology, psychology. It has to go deeper than all of those things.

Alex Ferrari 10:31
How you got started on the path. So Young is pretty remarkable. Because normally as eight year olds, when I was told about hell, because I went to Catholic school, and I still feel guilty about it. When I, when I was told about how I came home, I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. It did exactly what it was designed to do. And as years went on, and I just there's so many different things. I was just like, This doesn't make any sense to me. You mean to tell me that if I eat pork on Friday, I'm going to hell. Like this doesn't make sense to me. And then this other dude is going to murder somebody and he's going to go to hell. There's there's just something that right, even as a young man growing up, I started figuring this out, like, oh, wait a minute, I can go do some atrocity, then go get confession and get cleansed. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, either. Karma makes sense. Karma. Karma makes a lot more sense to me. And then when I started going into the eastern, Eastern philosophies and thoughts, and that's like, okay, but it's like, it's like, I don't know who said this. But every sec, that old joke, not old joke, but old story that the blind man who tells the 7% of people or something like that to go out and tell me what the elephant looks like. And they each come back with a different part of the elephant like, no, the elephant is a trunk. And I think that's pretty much what religion is, and and philosophies and thoughts. It's everyone's got little pieces of it. And there's truth kernels in all of it. But no one's got it all figured out just yet. Is that Is that fair to say?

Richard Haight 12:02
To say, I don't actually, I don't believe it's even helpful. That you use the term religion. But so if we, if we, if we step away from religion, because religion is, it's sort of like, it's where we reef we, where we make God and our image, that's religion. That's been my experience so far. And we can step away from the word God, because that's a highly loaded term. And I've never met any two people who have the same like, if you dig down a little bit when someone asks you, if you believe in God, and you dig down, what do you mean by God? No one has the same two understandings, although there's a common theme among Christians are sort of this guy on a boat with a long beard, old man with a long beard on a cloud, which sort of looks like Zeus or maybe Moses. Right. And it's an unconscious thing, they hadn't even considered it. But that's their view, unconscious association with God. And I would suggest that that's probably far from the reality. And it's not and that in essence, is a mental idol. That's idol worship, according to it is not a physical idol. But it is a mental idol. And it's not going to actually fit a reality, whatever that is, from my perspective, whatever the fundamental fundament of reality is, can be, it can be experienced, I've experienced it multiple times. But I will never understand it. Because to understand something, you have to be able to measure it. And to be able to get an accurate measurement of something you have to be able to get something else to compare it to, to measure it by, and if it is the foundation of being and there is no other than it, then there's no way to get out of it in order to measure it, which means the mind can never encapsulate it. And our measurements will only be biased measurements based off of our ideology, our assumptions. And it will always distort and it will always lead to inner disharmony. So it is best to keep it as the great man great mystery in a sense, understanding that it can be experienced. But it will not be understood.

Alex Ferrari 14:08
And that's the thing when when you start studying great spiritual teachers, yogi's, you know, people who have found enlightenment in one way shape or form. They they even don't there's no explanation to it. They try to explain it but words can't really do it justice. It's a feeling it's a thing that it's it's so hard to explain. How can you explain enlightenment like that? Is that such I mean, you could write volumes and volumes and volumes and never get the answer that you would get in a feeling. It's so difficult and all and all the great and all the great. Masters have done that. It's hard. It's very difficult. They try with little nuggets and little things but no one's ever been able to just go okay here is Is enlightenment here is your spiritual path here is consciousness, it's it's difficult to say the least.

Richard Haight 15:08
There are some things that could be passed on that are helpful, but they will never be perfectly accurate. Like just changing enlightenment to E and hyphen, l IG ht, hyphen meant, like, lighten up. It's really what happens when you start to experience this thing is you start to actually lighten up a bit, you start, you stop being so darn certain about everything, right. And that's a, it's actually a beautiful thing that keeps you more present and more aware. And another aspect of the enlightenment experience, especially if it was an awakening experience, especially as it starts to kind of flow in your life more and more. And the volume of it turns up is there's a kind of clarity, that's more than mental clarity. It's, it's not just emotional clarity, it's a bodily clarity. And I don't mean like your body is physically healthier. I mean, that your feeling, which is something that's throughout the body, the capacity to feel that itself becomes clearer. You become aware of the content of the subconscious, much more, you can ask questions like, you know, why did I have that dream? And you know the answer? Why am I thinking that or feeling this particular thing? You know, sometimes we have strange compulsions and motivations, we don't know. And you understand the answer, right? There's that kind of a clarity that's very functional, and very helpful. And which you can use them in a productive way to improve all aspects of your life, to the best degree that they could be improved in any case.

Alex Ferrari 16:51
Yeah, I, you know, when I was growing up, you know, I always was very curious about this path. I didn't jump in as early as you did. But I've noticed that just living, there's so much noise, so much fog, so much emotion, so many things that are all around you that cloud, any sort of light from coming in, almost. It's like this dark cloud that's always around you. And there's noise and there's things and it's, it's pretty insane. But when you start to go inward, which is where the answers lie, in my opinion, when you start going inward, through meditation, through prayer, whatever the word you want to use, you start clearing that stuff out, and the word clarity that wanted to kind of hook on to that word, you're saying, that's exactly what happened to me. When I started meditating five years ago, you know, heavy metal, I do a lot of very heavy meditations every day. And my life started to clear things that were questions that I had always asked never get an answer to the answer started to flow and light started to come and things start to see clearer, I started to see people clear situations clear. When something happens to you, you don't say, Oh, why did it happen to me? You go? What is this trying to teach me? What is the universe or whatever word you want to use? Trying to push me in what direction? Because I don't, I don't believe in accidents and things like that. I think everything happens for a reason. You know, something as simple as you know, me breaking my foot. You know, at first I was angry as you would be. And you go what, but then you sit down for a second and you go, why did this happen at this moment in time? What is this trying to tell? What is the universe trying to tell me that I was so stubborn, and couldn't hear the first five times that they just whispered it? And apparently the universe said, okay, he doesn't get it. Let's do this. And that could be a car accident, that could be a relationship that could be so many different things. I always feel that that's what's happening. But the again, that word clarity is is is I think what happens with meditation, do you agree?

Richard Haight 19:12
Yes, it's a natural effect of, of any authentic meditation practice. Now, if the person is trying to go into meditative practice through escapism, like their goal is to escape. I don't know, is it necessary going to have any effect that's just a useless mindset. It's not helpful. And so if a person is trying to escape their their inner disharmony or the difficulty of their life, the first step is to change that, that mindset, right to realize that meditation, if it's going to be effective, is not about escapism, but instead it's the turning into it's the centering and allowing a fuller vision, a fuller sight, a greater contextual awareness through the body, not intellect. And that's where the clarity comes from. One of the things that I really appreciate about what you said Really, you're referring to attitude, and persistence attitude that you can learn from anything. That each moment is an opportunity to learn whether it's pleasant or unpleasant is irrelevant. Actually, oftentimes, the more unpleasant ones are the things you're going to learn most from the only area where I would, where I would suggest that I might not embrace is that I would project that the universe is doing something to me, because it creates a perspective of self and other as if there's the universe, and you are separate from it, and it's doing something to you. Whereas I see it, it's just, there's just a continuum that I don't fully understand. But it is one one thing, whatever it is, and I don't know, if it has an intent to do anything to me, or, or the reverse. It's just a continual relationship, that is a learning from all individual perspectives in that unified continuum or field. So even the insect, even the tree, even the wind, all of it is experiencing, all of it is, I don't know if the learning is the right term, but all of it is experiencing and flowing. Human beings have the capacity to reflect and learn so we can take an extra advantage. Maybe others do, too. I don't know.

Alex Ferrari 21:13
Yeah, I just had on just had a few guests on the show. Talking about I did a whole documentary on consciousness. And in there, they were talking to neuroscientists. Or her, or I forget the term when you study plants, or herbal ologists, I guess, botanist, thank you, thank you, a botanist. But what was so amazing is like, they were figuring out if consciousness lived in plants, if there was if it was just a thing. And the, the amazing thing is, which will lead me to my question, my next question is that they actually were able to trick the plant into the roots to go where the water was, and wasn't based off of sound. So you would see the plant, look for water, based on sound or based on. So like, when you start seeing things like that you're like, wow, but that's not. They're just inanimate objects who just kind of grow. They're not there is a sense of consciousness, and then trees, there's a whole documentary on trees, and that and mushrooms, all of these, the consciousness of these kinds of

Richard Haight 22:25
We assume because they don't look like us. And they don't have a nervous system that's like us that they don't have a tip. They don't have consciousness. Right. And that A, that is an assumption. It is an unscientific point of view. And it's just requires that we be a little bit less humble. We, you know, back in the days of Galileo, when he's saying, you know, we're not the center of the universe, we rotate around the sun. But still today, many of us believe that human beings are the centers of consciousness. And I will suggest that that's not true. At least it would be helpful for us to, to dispel that assumption and consider that everything may be conscious, that consciousness is a, not not only an aspect of the universe, that is the foundation of the universe, we should at least consider that perspective.

Alex Ferrari 23:17
What is the difference? What is your definition?

Richard Haight 23:19
It's important. What's important that we separate out in consciousness from intelligence, right? And that's what people and that's where people get confused. So I define intelligence, just as it's defined in the dictionary is essentially the ability to manipulate information. That's all it intelligence is. Consciousness is the capacity to perceive. And I do not necessarily mean a specific sensory perception. It is the it is the awareness of being. And that's it. And everything else are just senses stacked on top of that awareness of being. So the reason, I would suggest that as as you go down into a meditative state, deeper and deeper, sense of self falls away, your senses might turn off, all perception of specific things can turn off. All this left is a vibrant awareness of being that is completely transcendent to your sense of personal identity. You can't say I am Richard at that state. I am Alex at that stage. There's just been there complete vibrant silence. And basically, everything else in the brain is shut off.

Alex Ferrari 24:30
Yeah. When you when you do it, right, when you do it, right. And it takes you a minute to get to that place in meditation, at least from my experience. You know, I tried meditating multiple times over the course of my life. And I was always I can never get past the Oh, it's too noisy or this and that you're trying to silence the mind and all that stuff. And I just came to the realization like can't silence the mind. If you try. In my opinion, this is just my personal opinion. I'd love to hear yours and as far as meditation is concerned, but when I meditate There's the the mind is going to go, the thoughts are going to go. But as you just let them keep flowing in and out, they start to start to settle themselves. Because you're not paying attention to them anymore. They're like, Well, I'm not going to keep talking and no one's gonna listen. And then finally, to a point where it's silence. And when you're at that state, you're, you're, I feel that you're gone. Me personally, I go, I don't, I'm not saying I fly somewhere else. But I am. I'm so deep in my meditation that time flies. I've been so deep in meditation. I've come out of it an hour later. And I go, what happened? You know, and I pray every time I go to meditate, I pray for that. Because you come out so rested. so vibrant. So enter like life, you have a glow about you, when you when you and my kids see it, too. Like, they'll come out. They're like, Oh, Daddy, you just meditated. Were you like, Yeah, but it takes, it takes time to get to that place. You know, it's like a muscle, you have to work it. And the mindset. So that's, that's my meditative state. So now it's like, How deep can I go? And what can I see? When I go down that deep? Because I've, I've seen things I've had experiences as well. I, a lot of times, I'll have a question in life. I'll go, let me just go meditate on that. And the answer comes, quiet just comes, you ask the question you meditation at the beginning. And by the end of it, you know what the answer is? It's, it's pretty remarkable. So I'd love to hear your point of view. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Richard Haight 26:43
So from how was it so I went to Japan study, the martial arts got to a very high level received, what you would call the mentor guide and or like, like the 10th degree black belt kind of thing for the exposed to the entire system and asked to teach it. And what I realized is when I got to the advanced levels, that there was a certain barrier that was very difficult to get beyond. My teacher used to have us this is also true. When I started karate, as a child, I meditate at the beginning of class, and at the end, and it was like, just a few minutes, or maybe a minute, for example, my karate dojo was like meditate, and then we'd be meditating for like a minute, they'd say, stop meditating, and then you start the class, that kind of thing. I'd ask the teacher, what is this meditation we're doing? Because it was never explained to me. I was like, 12 years old when they started. Just you just sitting there, quiet, I guess, with my legs crossed at that time, doing meditation not having any idea. So I asked one of my seniors after a couple of months, I built up the courage to ask, and he says, Oh, I just use that time to visualize the technique. So that's all I ever did. That's what I thought meditation was, was until I was 16. And I was dating a girl who had had been practicing a kind of meditation, which I suspect now was was mindfulness. But what I saw her sitting cross legged on the washing machine, at my home, like, what are you doing? She's meditating what's meditation, she explains it to me. That night, again, to a terrible argument, my mother, I'm so frustrated, I go up the hill, we live in, we lived in the countryside. I sit under this right for this eucalyptus tree, and I got to meditate. And I'm just furious rage. And it just kept, you know, kind of going back to center going back to center, eventually, all that just disappeared, I disappeared. I was one with the environment. It was it was completely amazing. And I remember opening my eyes because I felt something pulling me off to the left like something was like, like there was a strain or something connected to the side of my body, it was slightly being totally looked over there. And maybe 1015 feet away. Not not very far at all. There's a coyote right in the middle of the trail, who stopped and looking at me. And so I'm looking at it now these things my head turned. This is not intention. It's all this is happening is my body's just doing it. And I'm observing my body doing this if you've been to that place where you they experience and there's this feeling of like, it almost like bowing to each other. Right like acknowledge me, I acknowledge him. We both were silent watching it. His ears were picked up. It wasn't nervous. It was totally call your head a little bit low and sniffing and I was just like this kind of a communication that happened for, I don't know, 1015 seconds, fairly long period of time, because during that it's calmly walked off. My head turns back and go back in the meditation. Like 1520 minutes later I hear this sound. Something going up the tree in front of me. Get my eyes open and look and there on the branch above my head is a bobcat. Okay, it had to end it. This was just finished walk right in front of me climbing that tree. Now I'm a teenage kid, like 16 year old boy, body odor on a summer night. Right? Right there. Obviously, it just wasn't afraid of me. Right? It was not afraid of me. So all this happened, and maybe an hour later, my body gets up on its own and starts walking down the hill. And I'm still not Richard. Right? There's just clarity. And all I can describe is clarity in this feeling of seamlessness that I could never get back to. And I tried day after day, and I tried for months, I tried, I couldn't get back there. And it was so frustrating. Largely because of the expectation. But that's not the goal. Like to try to get back there is not helpful. Each time it's fresh each time is new. But then I also thought, well, you know, if I, when I started to get better at meditation, because I eventually, few years later, I got more capable at it. I thought, well, I need to be able to make this a full time thing not like where it's a retreat from life. But I need to be able to function in my active daily life, I want to be able to incorporate this into my martial arts, I want this to be just everything. So I started developing my own kind of a way to be able to integrate it into everyday life. I went into going to Japan studying with a really amazing instructor there. And he would do like two second meditations. He would say, mock, so a Drs. Again, against begin meditation. So we're just sitting for like two seconds watching this. So it's like, just start, don't stop. And then we're gonna get practice. And I'd practice for there for I don't know, probably nine years, 10 years before I actually, you know, he, we started training privately, when I got to high levels, we'd spend like half a day together train privately, every day. At some point, I just said, What is this thing? We're doing it the beginning? And of course, like two seconds long. What's the purpose of it? You know, what are we supposed to be doing during that time, he says, I want you to figure that out. And I think there's a secret teaching there, I want you to find it out and eventually occurred to me. That's just simply what you would need. As a samurai warrior, you need will to slip into a fully expansive state of clarity in an instant, even two seconds is too long. So that then became my goal. And eventually now I teach what I call the Warriors meditation. And it's this meditation that is, it's not a retreat from life. You don't have to sit doing it. It's it's lifetime, all of your senses. And there's this expansiveness that just spreads into your spreads from your being or to your being. It's both simultaneously that people practice throughout their day. And so that's it's a different, very different approach. But it is also has that mindset that you can learn that any pressure doesn't necessarily prevent you from being in that state. And then the common question is, how can you be in that state under any pressure? You could do it in a heavy metal concert? You could do it? running, swimming, working anything?

Alex Ferrari 33:17
Yeah. And that's what I I love that because you're absolutely right, you know, looking at a samurai, if he's about to go into battle, you know, in a duel, he needs to be centered. And in that state, instantly, he can't go give me an hour, I'll be right back. That's generally not the way it works. I've never really quite thought about it that way. But it's absolutely true. And if you have the ability to get into that state that normally takes people, even even heavy meditators to take some, you know, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes to go down that deep, if you can get there really quickly. With practice, it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable in its I think that there's definitely a it's it's an everyday place of meditation, I think that you find, and this is my opinion, I think you would find more. The deeper the meditation you go, the longer the meditation goes. Other things happen that a two second meditation doesn't give you the opportunity to do, but it is part of the arsenal that you have.

Richard Haight 34:26
No, I don't. I don't mean it's a two second meditation. I'm saying it takes less than two seconds to get into that meditation. It's a it's an all day long a life experience. Is that the aim? It's not a guided meditation. God. It is. It is that is the process of getting into it. And that is too long. It is quite literally at some point. It just is there isn't a start and a stop. So you're going

Alex Ferrari 34:51
Yeah, it's a living meditation. Exactly. So your goal is to be it that's in that state throughout your day, without having to sit underneath a eucalyptus tree. You

Richard Haight 35:00
Yes, and it's also helpful to look at the brain brainwaves. If we look at like alpha, for example is the first brainwave state that one enters into when going into a state of meditation. So normally peoples are in a beta brainwave state in their active daily life until they get exhausted in which case is slumped into their chair and their brain shifts into what I'll call an unconscious Alpha brainwave state. And that unconscious Alpha brainwave state is a rest and digest process going on in the body, the autonomic nervous system has gone into a rest and digest phase. But they're not spatially aware, they're they're kind of zonked out, it's, it's not a conscious Alpha. But you can actually go into a conscious alpha, which is likely what happens when you're meditating, where you become actually highly aware, at least on an inner level. So you're not just slumped in front of a TV or just exhausted, you can also go deeper into a theta state where you almost sounds like Twilight between consciousness and sleep. Right? Right. And you can get a lot of information from the subconscious from there. And you can also go into a conscious Delta State, which is normally unconscious states that you achieve it at sleep, right? And this that you really you can't move your body you're just you're you feel like a rock. And there's like, no mental movement whatsoever is complete, vibrant silence. But, but it's, it's like your blood pressure is your blood pressure is gone down, your heart beat has lowered so it's a dysfunctional state in terms of being able to move around. If there's another brainwave state that we make use of in the Warriors meditation, which is gamma. This is this. This is a frequency it's actually above beta. And this is a frequency that mastered up when when they when brainwaves were being investigated using EEG machines. Well, you got electroencephalograph EEG, I think it's the term they will there are the four brainwave states and also gamma. But this gamma thing is something that people can't just get into easily, it's a rather rare state. So they started to see if I could find people that could consistently get into it. And they tried regular meditators and most couldn't get into it. The master Buddhist meditators get into it consistently, a few sports athletes get into when they're in the zone, but they can't intended it. And it happens, it sort of just happens naturally, like a Michael Jordan type, right into gamma ray in the game. But he can't just sit and talk with you and say I'm going to be in gamma. That's not how it works. It's triggered, it's associated with a specific type of experience. And most athletes don't get that on a regular basis. The ones that are really amazing, they have the skill and Matt. And so what the word meditation does is takes us into gamma during our active daily life, when we're in a seated state, or lying state, we might want to go into the other options which are delta, they are alpha, for example, the gamma is what really allows us to go about our active daily life in high awareness.

Alex Ferrari 38:14
It's It's remarkable that throughout history in specifically in the last 100 150 years or so, there's been so much more talk about meditation and, and and getting to certain different states, ROM das famously used at least LSD. And he said, the term is like, oh, LSD will get you in the room with Jesus and Buddha, but you only got 15 minutes. But you got 15 minutes, and then you got to go. And there has been scientific research on what you know, certain mushrooms and certain psychedelics and things like that. They definitely take it to different states. And then heavy meditators go to those same states, as well without some of the some of the the bad stuff that happens with those other things. There's no bad trips when it comes to meditation, generally speaking. So but I've noticed that with you were saying the zone and athletes and trying to get to a certain level as far as gamma and theta, and these different outfits, these these mental states, right, finally, break when we say thank you. It seems like we are living it. There's level one, which is where we live on a daily basis, which is noisy, dirty, crazy. Confusing, that dirty space that I was telling you about cloudy, that's bad. Yeah, that's that's confusing. There's so much stimulus. There's no real control. It's difficult to get static. It's a lot of static going on, where we're even athletes, they're trying to get to a different state that shuts all that off. I've been in this I've been in this and you could be in the zone when you write, you can be in the zone when you, when you're an athlete, I was an editor for a long time as a video editor. So I would sit there and I would edit something I directed, and I could sit there eight hours. And time would just go because you were just so in the place. And I think we're always searching for that. And meditations, arguably the fastest way to get it turn fastest. But if you are meditating and constantly meditating and using your techniques as well, it gets you to that place where you can start seeing things a little bit clearer. And again, that word clear and clarify. Because as a warrior, as a martial artist, you want to become, you want to be the calm lake, you don't want to be the raging river. Because when you're angry, you make mistakes in martial arts, you you're not thinking your emotions are running the running the show, whereas when you're in this other state, the calm state, you can see everything coming towards you, you can adjust effortlessly. And I think that's what we we our goal is on a daily basis to get to that calm state, regardless of what happens in our life in some of these master meditating Buddhists and things that they just doesn't even bother them. Something happens, like, Okay, let's move on. That's right, it did. They just kind of just play like, you know, parlay, and then just move on, as opposed to someone who's just like, Oh, my God, I'm five minutes, I'm going to be five minutes late to the movies, and that ruins our entire day. It's just about perspective and get into that state. I think meditation is probably the easiest way to get there without any bad tricks.

Richard Haight 41:50
Yes, well, you know, it's interesting. I actually, as I did, I did meditation for years. I didn't actually have any psychedelic experience I did. In 2009, I had a second first psychedelic experience, which was to go to the Amazon. Oh, I lost Oh, wow. And it had it's in cat incredible bins is very, very helpful. But it's not something you can take with you. This is the issue with I think psychedelics. Personally, I don't, I don't mind what people call bad trips, I think they had the mindset that it is a bad trip, in itself is unhelpful. Because you can learn from a fact, you might find that you will learn a lot more from those things than you will from that pleasant stuff. Because that stuff, whatever it is, you're experiencing that bad trip is almost without exception, attitudinal, you have an attitude against whatever is being presented to you, you're trying to run from it, and it will chase you for the rest of the trip. And if you're stuck in there for another four or five hours. And you don't want to you may not even realize that you're on something because that's how deeply you go, you forget that you took something and you don't realize you don't remember, this is gonna wear off in five hours, and you don't even know what the meaning of five hours is anymore. And it seems like you're going to be here forever. And you may not even know who you are. And you're running from this inner monster that you don't even realize is an inner monster. That's, it's like forever, hell, that's why they call it bad trips, it should be a horror trips. Whereas if you just have if you have enough conscious awareness and embodiment, in the trip, you're lucid, you're lucid within the experience. And that allows you to actually have the realization, whatever this is, is a learning opportunity. And it's no longer a bad trip. But that same attitude applies to our daily life. You don't necessarily need psychedelics, to embrace that attitude. Whatever is happening right now is an opportunity. Even if I don't see what the opportunity is, there is an opportunity, and I just don't want to, I don't want to dismiss or be disrespectful to psychedelics, because there can be a lot that's learned from them. Oh, yeah. In fact, most people that have had strong psilocybin, for example, journeys, like 80 90% of them say it's the top five experiences of their life. That's not accidental, like the most important experiences of their life like next to their child being born, or, you know, their, their, you know, winning a gold medal or whatever, that kind of thing getting married. So I just find that, that meditators, this, I don't mean this against you. But I find that meditators can be quite arrogant in this area, where they dismiss where they dismiss other avenues. I'm not a proponent of psychedelics, nor am I, a proponent of like to exclusion, or meditation to exclusion. Different people will take or have different avenues that they're going to want to take or may need to take. And maybe meditation for most people, I suspect that it is, but even those meditate or some of those individually Those may benefit from a psychedelic experience every now and again. And some people are never going to do meditation, no matter what we say. Maybe from a psychedelic experience, I don't know.

Alex Ferrari 45:14
Yeah, there was there's a doctor in John Hopkins, I forgot his name, but he's leading sail asylum, asylum. I forgot how to pronounce it. Suicidal researcher in the world. And he's had I think 2000 People go through that, that that the test, he said, he said, he has never had one bad trip. None of those people that are at a bad trip. And 80 to 90% say it's it's top five experience of their life. So rolling? Yes. That's Empire call. Yes, yes, yes. I know him because he was in that documentary. So I was I was watching and seeing what he was doing. And it's pretty remarkable. And it's, it proves, you know, because, you know, you started with LSD, and mushrooms and all these other things. But there is different paths to that it could be sitting underneath a eucalyptus tree, and, and finding enlightenment, that way, it could be on a trip with Salah Salem, it could be a million different ways what it's like every person has a different path in life, however you get there. Yeah, it's up to you.

Richard Haight 46:24
What I what I would say there's one commonality amongst individuals who get there on what will say a kind of what you might, I don't like the word permanent, because again, there's a kind of arrogance to it. Where it's, it's there like it's essentially their daily life experience, doesn't mean that they will never have moments where they're not in a perturb state. I don't believe that that mindset is helpful to think in that way, because you're not paying attention if you assume I'm perfect now.

Alex Ferrari 46:52
I am the I Am the humblest of the humble, you've never saw anybody as humble as I am. I mean, seriously.

Richard Haight 47:01
What I can say is so let's let's, let's imagine that we do have someone who has a relatively healthy mindset regarding meditation, that it is just about making incremental improvements and, and inviting a little bit more through our daily lives is that those who do make it, for those whom it becomes a normal, conscious awareness or this, this feeling of inner clarity we talked about becomes the default mode of their life. They have a certain attitude, a desire, somewhere deep inside to have it be the default mode of their life. And they're going to start to prune or let's see, we their inner garden. You know, these these thoughts are not helpful. These emotions are not serving any purpose. What is it that's generating these? What is my mind? What is the mindset, the patterning, that I didn't necessarily choose or even create this as long as he's just momentum of ancestries coming down, we like inherited from our parents attitude unconsciously, and develop our sense of self around it. When all of these patterns, what do they look like? What do they feel like in the body and then and find that clarity and allow them to release so that it's kind of his inner weeding that happens, and that staticky quality we were talking about starts to diminish. Eventually, there's clarity.

Alex Ferrari 48:22
I always I always find that spiritual masters throughout history. I always like saying, I'm like, well, they were spiritual. They had no kids, obviously. I mean, they had no kids. I mean, that's because you're like I could, I could find enlightenment like Buddha, but I've got kids, you know, and they're young kids. But it's so wonderful. About Jesus Christ children, right. You know, Bob and Sarah, you know, you never hear about Bob and Sarah. But no, but there was one. There's one guru, Indian guru. His name is Lahiri Mahasaya, who actually was a father and had kids. And he was I think he was an accountant. And then towards later like, once the kids had grown up a bit, that's when he started really going down deep down the spiritual path. But I'm like, hey, you know if you've got five year olds, God bless if you see a spiritual master twins.

Richard Haight 49:36
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I remember when I was in Japan, my profession was teaching junior high school and middle school. And so I taught middle school for was there for 15 years. So I guess I taught middle school for about 13 out of 15 years. And you know, they're basically insane. Effect stages going through puberty, they can recall what it was like when you're going through Oh, I don't think that half of them don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They have no clue why they feel what they're feeling. It just, it's,

Alex Ferrari 50:07
It's horrible. It's horrible. Oh my god!

Richard Haight 50:12
You're hurting scorpions, no matter what you do. Some days were set the nicest kid you're ever seen the next day? Like who is this little monster?

Alex Ferrari 50:20
I just got stung.

Richard Haight 50:23
It was very was it was a very helpful experience for me because I would always would make it a goal would before I entered my classroom to be in at least a conscious alpha state or possibly a gamma waves, brainwave state, so meditative state, one that's slightly below or more lower blood pressure state rest and digest, or one that's a higher blood pressure on a higher blood pressure. What would it be? It's not a higher blood pressure state. It's probably an even blood pressure state. But it's it's vibrant, vibrant, expansive, feels expansive like this, like love is everywhere kind of thing. You got to get fuzzy, it's crystal clear. First out. So that was the goal. And then I would just notice, what was it that would happen that would put me out of it? In the classroom, and that would then be my challenge, right?

Alex Ferrari 51:18
Yeah, it was, but at least you got to go home.

Richard Haight 51:21
Go home. Yes, I got to go home.

Alex Ferrari 51:26
No, and you know, it's, it's it's really interesting. I mean, when you when you're trying to walk a spiritual path, and look, children are wonderful, I love them. And I love my skin. My kids. I'm not saying anything about them. But but you know, I always tell people, I'm 25 Look what they've done to me. I mean, it's just, it does age you is Yes, I have girls, so they it's like, like dog years and aging. It's pretty insane. But, but I always found that very fascinating. I'm like, you know, these spiritual teachers have kids, you know, none of that can recognize so I was always I was always looking for someone. So here is my, my go to guy that the yogi master that I, I go to I'm like, okay, he helped me out here, man. Because I feel like I'm gonna kill these two. Girl right. Now one thing that a lot of people, I think it's it's one of the most meditation has been studied for decades. And it's one of the most heavily studied things in history. Really, it's really there's just 1000s 10s of 1000s of 10s of 1000s of studies about this. Can you talk a little bit about the health benefits of meditation because I just from my point of view, I actually had my blood test done about three or four months ago, by a nutritionist, and I was like, Okay, let's, and they went in and did everything. And they just started looking at my numbers. And they're like, she was like, you meditate, don't you? And I go, yeah, it goes, yeah. Because this, this, this is down and this is down. And you This is like, of someone who's 25 years old. And this is like, Oh, wow, really? She's like, Yeah, oh, yeah, meditation does, definitely has an effect on your, on your body? No question. So I'd love to hear your love to hear your point of view.

Richard Haight 53:29
Yes, in fact, a similar thing when I'm doing health checks, it's my thought about this body is 48. Now, whatever it is that you that I actually feel is me is timeless. The bond is for you. And I my heart rate is 120 over 65 or 70. Like my blood pressure, sorry, it's it's it's like the doctors. What do you do? What do you do? When they draw my blood? Yeah, they're gonna take a blood pressure here and then drawing my blood. At the same time, my blood pressure doesn't change at all. And I'm watching and put the needle in there. Nobody can do this. How do you not your blood pressure hasn't changed at all in the process of putting the needle in and taking it out? How are you able to remain so clear? That's meditation. I've been doing meditation, I teach it. Right. And so if you go into the state of avoidance, you're not gonna look right. That's a fight flight response. Right? That's a heightened beta brainwave state, it's gonna cause your heart to go crazy, right you're gonna go it's gonna elevate and so what what meditation is doing is essentially keeping the body from going into this fight flight response habitually under you know, any given circumstance stress, what we call stress is keeping your body in a constant fight flight response that is ruinous to the circulatory system to the hormones to just inflammation. Patient Yeah, everything is right As your sleeves gonna suffer, you name it. The only thing that I have that's actually gotten high is my blood, my cholesterol. And that's basically it. I spent the last three years writing a lot there's so much information, especially in this stress is getting higher and higher the more compelled I am to get this meditation out to the world so that it can be of use to people. You know, we we still need to go about our days, how do we do it in a way that's going to be healthy. So I just need to get off my button we're off and get away from the keyboard more often and spend more time exercising, which is something I used to do constantly in Japan, but since the since COVID-19. Dojo closed, the Dojo is gonna start

Alex Ferrari 55:48
Don't get me started, man, those COVID pounds are serious sprint.

Richard Haight 55:52
Two years, I'm not going to pound but I cholesterol is gone up. So yeah, I like 10% body fat.

Alex Ferrari 56:01
God, you know, I hate you and love you at the same time, sir. Because I'm, I'm 47. And COVID has done a number did a number on me as far as pounds are concerned. So it's I was I was in the best shape of my life prior I was like at, I don't know, probably 15% body fat. And then the gym closed. And you tried, you tried, you're like, well, I'll just keep doing something at home and just like slowly just starts weaning and weaning and waiting to the point where just like, like, it's, it's tough. No one's perfect. No one's perfect. You know, everyone's got something.

Richard Haight 56:43
If, if I took maybe every two hours, took 15 minutes and use that time to do you know, finger push ups and some, some planks and some situps and some jogging in places. But I get, I get absorbed in whatever's coming on through, it's a strong conveyance, and I'm writing, you know, for eight hours or some long period of time. And then, you know, as you talked about, oh, that time was gone. Where'd that go?

Alex Ferrari 57:11
With that guy and I didn't work out during that time, my cholesterol now has gone up.

Richard Haight 57:18
That's something that I can learn from set an alarm to, you know, every couple of hours, it's gonna go off, I got to do my work.

Alex Ferrari 57:27
I think and I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people look at, like, you know, hate to use the term gurus or people who are at a different state, or a different level of in their own lives. As Oh, like they got it all figured out. We're all human, we all have issues with being a human, you know, they're no matter who you are. ego plays a part of things. And, you know, all there's always what, whatever it is to be human. It is suffered by all of us and experienced by all of us and enjoyed by all of us. And I've had the pleasure of talking to I'm sorry, I'm injured. I've had the pleasure of talking to some of the, you know, biggest people in the film industry. And I just, you know, you put them up as an idol sometimes. And then you talk to them, you're like, Oh, they're human beings, be free. You're human beings, no matter how big they are, no matter how many Oscars they win, no matter how many, what movies they've made, or written or anything like that. We're all have we all have to deal with the exact same thing. And I had a, and I'll let you let you answer. There was a guest that had that happened to meditate with the with the Maharishi in India with The Beatles. He was one of the five people that happened to be at the ashram that week. And when he was walking after he learned how to meditate, he was in this state, and he's walking and he's like, oh, there's John Lennon. And Paul McCartney sitting at the picnic table, and he just starts walking towards them. And as he starts walking towards them, he feels nothing like his state is fine, but his heart starts starts going faster, because arguably, they were the biggest stars in the world. They were the most famous people in the entire planet in 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney. And as he walks in a voice talk to him and said, hey, they're just human beings. They fart and are scared of the dark. And it's something that is like that makes such a perfect, profound statement about humanity. We all fart scared of the dark

Richard Haight 59:52
And if we can keep that in mind that that's very helpful. So again, the idea of perfection is it creates an expected inequity. and a wall to, to the type of awareness we're talking about, right? It's actually more helpful just to say you're you're not fundamentally different than a rock or a tree or the wind or anything else, you know, a pond, even a still pond can become polluted.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:17
Right! Exactly.

Richard Haight 1:00:19
So we want, we want the flow, we want a flow in our lives. But we also have to recognize that flow is a was a hidden force. It's, we've got an order and chaos, we've got 24 hours a day, we need to put food on the table, which means a certain amount of our energy needs to be productive. Or I can have any money. So that we have to time manage, right? These are not problems or mistakes. They're just challenges. Right? And those challenges are going to be there, whether you're awakened or not, unless, unless, you know, by some means you maybe you follow the rainbow and hit a particle. So you didn't have to have money. But in my case, I'd still be writing the books. I'm not doing it for money. I mean, I charged i the books have a price. But that's not the primary motivation, right? Is this information just needs to, to be given our conveyed? And so I've still have those time constraints. In fact, I would say if anything, since right is the sort of, I've written this, I'm on the sixth book now. If anything, yes, is, as my audience has increased the readers audiences, my student base is increased. I teach an online meditation every day. And so we get lots of people. I get emails, you know, asking questions throughout the day, I mentor some people on the side, I teach courses, and if anything, time has gotten tighter. Right? It's actually it's actually more difficult to manage that time. Right? Not not easier. And it is more difficult, precisely because the meditation works. And I'm sharing with people and then they have questions about it. There's only one of me to answer those questions. And I'd have to answer those questions by moving in as little, you know, loves them into my hands. That takes physical time, as a Seabee way, in a way of getting around that. But I don't see that as a as a mistake or a problem. It's more of a challenge. How do I how do I find a balance between the yin and the yang, the order in the chaos?

Alex Ferrari 1:02:36
I want to ask you, I love to hear your opinion on this. We as human beings throughout history have wanted our, our spiritual teachers, whether that be Jesus Buddha, you know, an Indian Yogi whoever to come literally from the womb enlightened. And they don't. You know, I mean, Jesus is a perfect example. You know, he was born and then 30 years later, he shows up, and he's ready. Well, there's a big gap there, buddy. Like what happened during that time? And same with Buddha? Same with many of the spiritual teachers. What is it about? Why can't humans just realize that, that someone like Jesus, I'll just use him as an example. He was born human, and learned his lessons and figured his path out. And when he found that Jesus Christ consciousness, that's when he showed up, or at least that's when he starts being written about or whatever you want.

Richard Haight 1:03:43
That's when you become noticeable and gaze

Alex Ferrari 1:03:46
Right, Exactly when he gets that place, but it's a journey for everyone. You look at Yogananda, you look at all any of the any of the the Indian gurus, they all none of them, just show it up and go. I'm a two year old. I know how to fix your life. Follow me to spiritual paradise. It doesn't work that way. But but so many religions in the world and so many. I wouldn't say philosophies but more the religions of the world are based around perfect beings. And they might have attained perfection. It can hit them toward us perfect, but they might have hit a level of consciousness that is far beyond what we can do. And they're trying to teach it to us. But they didn't come out that way. Can you talk a little bit about your perspective on that? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Richard Haight 1:04:52
Yes, it's a human beings unfortunately, view ourselves as separate from God. Doesn't matter if you're religious or not, we view ourselves as separate from the universe. And I remember the first time this really hit home for me, I was in the Amazon, the artwork tribe that we were staying with, they had a tribe, tribal member who guided us through the forest, we took us a long walk basically half a day. At one point he stopped in for this massive tree that you know, has a curse, like you would imagine, the giant the largest Redwood would have, it's not quite as tall. But it was massive. I don't remember what the tree was. But it's the biggest it's like the tree of life if you ever saw one. Right? It was just amazing. So he's talking about this tree and how it's being cut down in the forest. For wood, it this thing takes like 5000 years to mature, something really, maybe not quite that long, but over 1000 years in any case, and but that its existence actually allows for many kinds of fungi to exist that that nourish the other plants. And so you remove this tree from the forest, it's not the same forest anymore. It's fundamentally it starts to die. It did talked about shell and Chevron going in and cutting down the forest and just dumping oil on the float forest floor that would you call the chaff for whatever you call chemicals gets into rivers and people getting cancer you live in the jungle. They're sad about all this stuff. And then after, after you finished speaking one of the people that I was one of the woody call it tourists that I was there with asking what are you going to do when the forest is gone? I remember the look on his face. He was perplexed, obviously perplexed, like he didn't understand the question, which to us seems like an obvious question. And then he looked down and thought about it from him. And it says, Well, I am the forest. And the forest has gone, I'm gone. This is the earth. You are the Earth. Right? It was like I just to him this idea. And it wasn't just an idea, this was a felt reality for him, we could kind of mentally play with that concept of it, most of us don't really feel that way. We think of the Earth as a resource, we don't think of it as a living being that we are, and that these bodies are an expression of the Earth, which is an expression of the solar system, which is an expression of the galaxy, which is an expression of the entire universe, every single cell in your body is a reflection of the totality of being. And there's no getting around that now, you may not acknowledge that and you may not feel that, if you'd like to feel it, that's what meditation ultimately is possibly for. But going back to why people have this perception, and why we would expect our masters to be born perfect is because we don't believe that we are one with all that is and we don't respect ourselves, we're looking down on ourselves. And we're looking up to God, when needs to happen is when you look down right below our feet and go, Oh, that's God too. And so was this. And so is that every breath I take, and every move I make getting into a nice police song here. I'll be watching, I'll be watching. And we'll be watching me. And that's the relationship with the environment. And there isn't an inner dimension and an outer dimension. And there isn't a guru who is above you. If you want perfection, see that and allow that to mirror in your life. And you don't need to then follow this idea, some external measurement of perfection. Perfection is not relevant anymore, because you're not measuring this versus that. Yeah, the left the parallel processing part of the brain, the human brain, which is generally on the right, which is on the right side for almost everybody. That is the thing that allows this sort of continuum of awareness, the left hemisphere of the brain, it's a serial processing brain, it focuses on one thing at a time and it loses context. That's the thing that's driving everybody crazy. It has its purpose. It's not evil, but when there's an imbalance of forces, we suffer a properly balanced human being is resting right between the hemispheres.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:13
And, and I think I think also ego plays a big part of, you know, separation of self like it's me versus me.

Richard Haight 1:09:20
Story of yourself.

Alex Ferrari 1:09:23
Right. And that's it which comes which brings us back to the very beginning of our composition, with meditation in the sense that when you are in meditation in a deep meditation, you there is no Alex there is no Richard, you are just one with it's very bored like Star Trek fans might not understand you like we've assimilated. I know you've probably never heard that reference.

Richard Haight 1:09:54
Without malice is the aim. Yes. That's the difference between the board but yes

Alex Ferrari 1:10:00
Yes. But it's this kind of

Richard Haight 1:10:02
We reached the common ground of being right. Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 1:10:06
And there is no separation anymore. And that's, I think the cause of most of the problems in our entire world and in our lives is the need to separate ourselves, like, you're part of that group. And you're part of that group. And, and I'm this, and I'm a man, and you're a woman, and this, that's what these roles are, and, and race and all these other things. There's, we're always looking for things to separate us, where we should be bringing, looking for things to you never see, you know, the Sequoia and the redwoods arguing, going oh, well, you know, that

Richard Haight 1:10:40
You do under the surface there we battle. Wars under the surface that so? So I want to stress, this is something that you pardon me for maybe saying something that's counter to what you were suggesting, sure, go for the forest, courses it wrong. Categories are not wrong. They're unnecessary. Like, you have to be able to prioritize one thing in order to do anything. Right. So for example, if I'm going to reach for a cup of water, I first have to believe that the water will nourish me, which is a category, which isn't exclusiveness. Okay, right. Yeah, I have to actually understand that this hand, or this hand has to reach not the foot, there is a specific identity, the hand which has a certain function needs to be one reaches over grabs, it puts it to the lift, which have another function. So all these categories have a purpose. In the same way. Every category in our life has its function. So long as it's, it's actually meant as a function. So it's not a shadow content. Right. So it's functional, not just shadow con, not just your belief that that you want to force everybody else to have, it's not that the categories are wrong. By default, it's just, we become too hard. Which means that the left hemisphere of the brain has become overly dominant,

Alex Ferrari 1:12:07
Rigid, right!

Richard Haight 1:12:08
Rigid, it's the rigidity, that's the issue. So if you look at our body, we have this flesh on the outside, which is soft compared to the bone. So this would be a yin energy compared to the bone, which would be a yang energy, it's relative, one softer than the other. Inside the pound, again, there's miracle I'd say, again, energy, right inside the mirror, we got cells that have that have structures that are Yang energies, and then we have liquids that have it just throughout all of existence. There's this layers of yin and yang. And when the human being is aware of those layers and maintains that balance between the hemispheres between the sides of the body, between technique, and awareness, that's whole, that's balance that's functional. But we can go into an ideology and say, the left hemisphere is evil. The categories are wrong, in which case, your house stand. Right?

Alex Ferrari 1:13:03
I was when I was, when I was talking about categories. It's more in regards to self and ego as opposed to different categories of life. I agree with you 110%. But the separation of us as, as humans, as souls is what I was talking about, where's that, you know, there's much more in common with, we have much more in common than we have.

Richard Haight 1:13:25
The 9.9% of our experience is common to other people.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:29
We all have mothers and fathers we all love. We all want to be loved. We all want security. We all want spiritual awakening, in one way, shape, or form, hopefully, depending on what level you're at. When you walk into this.

Richard Haight 1:13:43
Almost everything you just said there is not correct.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:45
So tell me, so we don't all have mothers and fathers,

Richard Haight 1:13:48
Not everybody has mothers and fathers that they've never met.

Alex Ferrari 1:13:51
Never met, but they but there has to be a mother and a father to genetically genetically. I'm talking about

Richard Haight 1:13:58
Yeah, yeah. But that's not what people mean when they say Mother and Father, is it?

Alex Ferrari 1:14:02
Well, no, no, I was meaning it literally. Like that's physic physiology. Yes, you're absolutely right. Your

Richard Haight 1:14:07
We all experience love either. Oh, yeah, that's true. That's actually workflow, because we get to love requires that you trust requires that you see somebody that there's a lot of people out that are suffering. Yeah, you're right. Like to a degree that we can't hardly imagine. Unfortunate. I mentor these people. And I see things that that that it's like I could not have imagined prior to hearing and seeing these people's lives. Those people need meditation. Me, me, me, maybe they need meditation. Some of them want meditation. But they don't know that they want love. That's true. Because love takes trust and they've been hurt badly. Right? These Are the harmless it's it's an unfortunate state to be in. Because they don't view any state is,is lots of learning.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:08
It's learning like anything else.

Richard Haight 1:15:10
If they take it, and I certainly, it's not on my part to make them take that, you know, I can invite and support and that's all that all that I can do all that any of us can do. But I guess the key point that I would like to suggest is going back to that, that eternal question of not knowing, being less certain of our of our conclusions. I have a comment saying that Lucifer expresses through our convictions and conclusions about the truths of life of metaphorical Lucifer. It's always this, it's never that this is certain I know this to be true. Like, somebody stepped out of the right hemisphere, and is completely laid their eggs in the left hemisphere, at least with regard to that particular topic. And no matter what we believe to be true, right now, if I asked you 1000 years from now, will we still say that that's true?

Alex Ferrari 1:16:08
Of course. Galileo asked lol.

Richard Haight 1:16:13
Yeah, I mean, some people thought they were never going to go past Einstein. Well, we're already going past that Einstein, people will, you know, we're starting to see new things that he didn't anticipate, right. And it's not been that long.

Alex Ferrari 1:16:25
It really has it, it really hasn't. And these last 200 years have been astronomical in regards to the advancements that we've made as a species. And it's really interesting why it's all happening now. And for the last 3000 years, I mean, everything was still here. All the materials were here, everything oil was here. But it just happened that the last couple 100 years really sped up. I mean, I mean, I when I was born, when you and I were born, I my first television, which was my grandfather's had no remote, I was the remote. There was three channels. I remember, there was three, there was three channels there, you know, in our lifetime, how many things have changed the internet, all this kind of stuff? In my grandparents lifetime. They came they were born at a time when there was no airplanes. Okay, no cars, like can imagine and then then then the war on the moon. Like,

Richard Haight 1:17:30
If you think about what you just watched, you said there, it's amazing what we've lived through. There was, if we look at the the ages of our exit human existence, we had the Stone Age, right, which was like 100,000 years. For modern humans, like you could say that modern humans existed 200 million years. 200,000 years ago, if I recall, they suggested that that's when anatomically modern humans came into being in the stone age for like, all that time, except for the last five, 6000 years. And about five 6000 years ago, we entered the Bronze Age, Bronze Age. And then later on a few 1000 years later, we entered the Iron Age. And that continues on until we get to the manufacturing age, industrial Industrial Revolution. Right. And that continued until we hit that we say that automobile or oil age, right, the oil age, and that continued until we hit the electric age. And that continued until we hit the computer age that information age and then that cell phone age and then the zoom or you know Google age and then the you know, it's like oh no, we're about to go we're just a few years away from

Alex Ferrari 1:18:46
Oh chips the matrix where where we are

Richard Haight 1:18:49
Liviving cyborgs

Alex Ferrari 1:18:52
I know it's a we

Richard Haight 1:18:53
Actually all lifetimes I've encountered the vast majority of the ages that have existed since modern human existed there were like three before before before us. The Industrial Revolution being like, really the only thing was before us right?

Alex Ferrari 1:19:06
Yeah, and it's in its honor. We're not too far away. We are not too far away from the matrix where you know, I want to learn Kung Fu and they just plug you in and then you have kung fu like it. We're not too far away from that. Honestly, we're just not and as scientific as sci fi as that sounds, try explaining zoom or Skype to someone in the 80s possible

Richard Haight 1:19:33
He had told me if you told me if you ever watched Star Trek, the first Star Trek came out let you know what it was before we were born but it was on TV at the time and we have those we have.

Alex Ferrari 1:19:47
We have the Dick we have the Dick Tracy. We have the Dick Tracy watches now. We have did Tracy watches I mean it's it's insane what we've been able to accomplish as but but I think At the moat,

Richard Haight 1:20:01
The beauty of that is all of that was accomplished primarily with the left hemisphere of the brain.

Alex Ferrari 1:20:05
Right. And I think now we're starting to get to the place. But in with all of this, you know, with everything that's happened and all our technological advances in life, people seem to be more in pain, more struggling, more disconnected, even though we're more connected than we've ever been in the history of our species. You know, it's it, I think, now we're starting, I'm hoping we're going to get into the new revolution, which is the spiritual revolution where people are, we're all searching, Everyone's searching for something else. Because, you know, when you don't have to worry about the basics. And you know, life is there's so much technology around you and advancements that you're like, Okay, I have all this now. What? Like, not now what I think, and that spiritual transformation has been happening, probably, you know, obviously, for the last couple, 1000 years, but I think it's now really, especially in the West, you know, with meditation, spirituality. I mean, can you imagine like, in the 80s, or in the 70s, talking about meditation, I was like, You are out there. You were like, in a completely. You were completely. You're a hippie meditation. What are you vegan? What do you eat grass? Like, it's like, it's this whole. But now those kinds of things, meditation, mindfulness yoga, that's part of our daily life. That's part that's completely part of the Zeitgeist now. And I think we're all starting to get to that point. I mean, there's, there's meditation apps. There's so many things that now when we were young, we're absolutely not only heresy, depending on what household you grew up in, but, but it was it just seemed completely out there. Like my mother meditated. When she was in the 70s, and my, my Latino Mother. Mother in law would look at her and go, she's crazy. She's crazy. She was feeding me carrot juice, as opposed to cow's milk. When I was a kid, and she and they go, Oh, my God, that kid's gonna die. Because it was outside of their reference point. And I think so I'm hoping that we're, I think you're doing a great job with your work. And I'm trying to do it in my small way with the work that I do, to try to get people to that to that next revolution. I think that spiritual evolution is, I'm hoping is where we're going to go because I don't think we can continue the way we're going. I think this whole thing, this train is going to crash. It's gonna fall off the tracks soon. It's already squeaking pretty badly.

Richard Haight 1:22:52
Yeah, I have this this vision in my mind of you remember the old Warner Brother cartoons and the Bugs Bunny and the roadrunner and all that kind of stuff. Coyote, younger people might not know this. Basic. You know, it was after this battle, the Congress tried to get the roadrunner and sometimes go to the roadrunner and run off the cliff and the coyote would follow the road. And the coyote would stay suspended in the air so long, so long isn't getting worked out. Right.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:20
It was the belief the belief,

Richard Haight 1:23:25
Yes is to me, that's kind of where society is. Now we've really gone off the cliff. Right? We just haven't looked down yet.

Alex Ferrari 1:23:33
We look down to great analogy. I love that analogy. And I was I always read it for the coyote because I could stand back. Cocky Roadrunner constantly. I mean, I feel so bad for this poor guy. He buys all these Acme products that don't work.

Richard Haight 1:23:51
So here's the question. Why did the road runner fall?

Alex Ferrari 1:23:56
That's the question how he looked down. He was the Enlightened spirit. The Enlightened One, the road was the was the enlightened one. Because his belief because he did things that nobody else could do. Like he would go through a painted side of a mountain that looked like a tunnel, he would, he would go right through it. And then he would crash into it. So I think our hypothesis here today for everyone listening is that the Road Runner was an enlightened yogi and could do things. He could go through materialistic he could he could walk right through material things. He can teleport himself he could didn't didn't matter. Anyway, he had complete powers of his yoga yoga powers. And yet the coyote was just this fool who thought he had things but he just couldn't figure he was very left brain. Let's just put it

Richard Haight 1:24:52
He was knowledge based and the road runner it was faith based maybe

Alex Ferrari 1:24:56
It was completely at a completely different level. But um, So glad we've broken that down here today. I think that's if anything of a value in our conversation is, we have established that the Road Runner is a is a very powerful yogi. In the Warner Brothers. I have to just two questions I want to ask you. What do you believe your mission in this life is?

Richard Haight 1:25:20
I'm not sure I I'm not sure I know, like, logically what my mission is, I can only refer to what I see happening. And that's just spreading something that hopefully will be some people might find helpful in our lives. That's really it. And in a sense, maybe,

Alex Ferrari 1:25:35
Okay, and why do you think we are all here?

Richard Haight 1:25:39
I don't know. But, but that being said, I do have a perspective on it that we might find helpful. And that is that universe is not actually it's fundament time. But it's just potential. And when all potential is seen, for example, I don't know if through whatever means that you've had this experience, where essentially you whatever it is, that you are is gone, and you are experiencing the consciousness that people would call God, like a complete vibrant oneness with oneness. Yes. That space is the space of potential. It is it is the space that if you were to give it a mindset it is the mindset is there is no other non otherness. It's not caught up in any specific potential. But because it is all potential, the potential for limitation the potential for specific identity is also a potential within this possibility. And so it can go into dreamlike states that are what I see is the hologram of the universe. And within those holograms, the universe are infinite stories of specific experience, it's always made up of positive and negatives, that all potential consciousness we're talking about is equal to zero, the dreams are always yin and yang, positive and negative, that balance out to zero, the entire equation is zero. We're here not because we're supposed to do something, this just dream of God. And the interesting thing about is, once we're aware of that on an embodied level, everything feels meaningful. And when we're not aware of that unembodied level, we are constantly searching for meaning. But the way that we will search for meaning will be in specific things like what will be my legacy? Or how I can do you know, how it can be the best at this or that or, you know, raise a good family or right now those things are wrong? I'm not it's not a judgment against those things. I'm just saying that a lot of ways those are compensations for the lack of the felt experience of a fundamental being, and meaningfulness that. That is, that is actually the very foundation of each individual's being. And we don't experience that because we don't believe and trust and have faith in our truest nature. We have, we have xenophobia of ourselves and meditation, if it's effective, undoes that xenophobia, so that you can be truly a capital Y O U.

Alex Ferrari 1:28:37
And on that note, we we will leave our conversation. Richard, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been wonderful. And I would I know we could talk for at least another three hours, just on the Road Runner alone. But where can people find out more about you and in the work that you do?

Richard Haight 1:28:56
RichardLhaight.com. The spelling is haight transitioners height. I teach daily meditation they might enjoy. And you can find that on the website. There's also the book of warriors meditation, which is probably the most I buy books out currently. That's the one that I think most people would benefit from because it will teach them the method through which they can find that capital while you aspect of themselves in their active daily life. Assuming they practice.

Alex Ferrari 1:29:24
There's that Richard, thank you again. Thank you again for being on the show my friend. I truly appreciate what you do and and for being here. So thank you, my friend.

Richard Haight 1:29:34
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was a joy.

Alex Ferrari 1:29:38
I know we can all use a little bit of meditative state in our lives and to be able to get to it instantly is a very powerful tool to have in your arsenal. So if you want links to how to buy Richards books, head over to the show notes at nextlevelsoul.com/020 And me and Richard might have another episode in the future about the Road Runner, being a yogi, the ego and so much more. And if you haven't already, please subscribe and leave a good review for the show, wherever you're listening to it. Thank you so much for listening and as always trust the journey. It is there to teach you. Talk to you soon.