Mastering Your Life by Facing Fears - Postcard #5

If you're new here, we're Stephan and Adam. We bring the greatest wisdom of the past into everyday life.

Adam and Stephan dive deep into how beliefs shape our reality. With personal anecdotes about facing fears around firearms they explore the transformation that occurs when engaging with fear rather than avoiding it. They also highlight the impact of social media algorithms on our belief systems and share practical steps for uncovering and shifting limiting beliefs. Tune in to discover how to turn fear into opportunities for growth and healing.

00:00 Introduction and Catching Up
01:00 Diving into Beliefs and Spirituality
02:39 Facing Fears: A Personal Journey
08:30 Social Media Shows Us Our Beliefs
12:42 There is No Objective Reality
15:09 Addressing Limiting Beliefs and Meditation
21:02 Practical Takeaways

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Transcript

Stephan: 0:11

Adam. It is incredible to see you and I feel so grateful that I get to talk to you again because I don't talk to you all day every day on messaging apps. So I just want to say what a pleasure it is to be here with you once again.

Adam: 0:28

was some eye rolling there. Um, well,

Stephan: 0:31

But for real, though, we are for those listening. Adam and I are pretty much in touch all day. Most days through telegram, just like sharing like insights and talking. It's not how this whole thing started was we just like talking so much and we've done it for years and years and years now that, um,

Adam: 0:53

Yeah.

Stephan: 0:53

that's how this whole thing started. Okay. So, so today, um, I think we're going to talk about, uh, how belief shape reality. And, um, like, like every day we'll probably wind our way to different places, but I wanted to share a little bit about what I've been going through lately. So one of the things that I have, one of my kind of like habitual patterns in my spiritual development is that I am always like up here. I'm very heady. It's very easy for me to intellectualize things, be intellectual and include spirituality and my like spiritual development and awakening. And I've really made a conscious effort over the past few years to dive into the humanness. Um, you know, there's, um, uh, a great story about a Bodhi Sattva. I think I've, I've told it before on the, the, the, the podcast I first heard of it from Joanna Macy. She was talking about a Bodhi Sattva and a spiritual warrior, and she said A Bodhi Sattva descends into hell, like a swan landing on a Lotus Lake. And I just makes me like tear up just thinking about that. But it's it's that power of taking all of these things that we know all of these, my own personal truths that I've, that I have discovered through my years of practice and then applying them to the nitty gritty human problems that we, that I deal with every day. And that's the setup for this. That's my, in my kind of internal, Awareness for quite some time now, and one of the things that I have really struggled with for a long time is, um, firearms and guns. And I remember the first time that I held one. I was a teenager. I was with somebody who was a police officer, a family member, and he had just gotten a job and he was buying his service weapon. And I remember I was, went to the gun store with him. Cause I thought it'd be fun and cool. And then he handed it to me like at the counter, like, Hey, do you want to hold this? I did. I was like, I was trembling. I was so terrified of like this, this big gun. Power to kill, right? Um, I was so terrified and that, that fear has stuck with me ever since. And, um, I recently decided, I mean, it's like big, like it's like a cloud of haze, a haze of fear, um, that I've has been in my life around there. And I don't know whether that's, you know, maybe that's a past life thing or, you know, I don't, I haven't really dived into why, um, I just know that it's fear. Um, another one of my. Uh, as we've also talked about, my commitments to myself is to continue to show up to continue to move forward. And when my life, when I see a cloud of fear, I know that I have to go there. I can't, it has, I can't think off the top of my head right now of a time in my life when I've just ignored that. And it's gone away and healed. I can't I can't name one of those times for myself. So I decided recently, I was going to learn more about firearms and guns and really dive into that the humanness. That's a very human thing, right? It's, you know, on a spiritual level, I have had, you know, You know, these profound awarenesses and knowings that are even with me now that I'm complete and whole and nothing has ever been wrong and God is all there is and enlightenment is all there is, um, but at the same time I have to eat. You know, I have to, there's human needs that I still have in a human body. And there's a lot of people that think, you know, okay, that's why you're here as a human, right? As a, as a soul, as a consciousness, you're here to do things in a human body. Um, so I've decided to dive into that. So I'm diving into firearms. Um, we're going to get there. We're going to get to beliefs, how beliefs shape our reality really quickly here. Just needed to say some background. So when you get into this world. There is a certain part of this world that is like dudes who are ready to use their firearms. To like, kill a bad guy or whatever, incapacitate a threat, like any moment. It's very like, aggressive, threatening, for me it's completely fear based. It's, it's, it's like, I'm always on the lookout for a threat and assessing the situation I'm in. And I think that has a place probably in like, the military or whatever, when you're like, literally dealing with threats.

Adam: 5:48

yeah.

Stephan: 5:49

yeah, then you want that. But like, I don't need that. And so I've noticed that as I've gone into this world, right, and I've been, you know, Googling, okay, like how to get a firearm, how to like how to go shooting. Um, I started to get served on social media, all these like, um, videos of like people being attacked and stuff that would like psychically If I wasn't aware of it, I'd be like, Oh shit, I really do need a firearm because I have to defend myself and all that. And so I've noticed that, like, by. If I go into that belief, if I go into that belief that life is dangerous, that there are people out there who want to hurt me, which is, from what I can tell, a very common energy and mentality among people who, like, own and use firearms regularly, um, I could become so fear based and and that would just change the way I look at my world as one from knowing that I'm safe and whole and complete to one of people out to get me. I'm afraid and I have to start looking for threats. Um, and it's so interesting because this is something that I've known about for a long time, like this, how beliefs shape reality, but because the whole firearm thing for me was so new in terms of I'd never really probed it. I'm seeing it really clearly show up like, like on a screen in front of me. And so it's just, um, it's been really interesting to see how. Those beliefs completely shape could shape my reality and it's a choice. It's a choice for me to say, like, that doesn't feel good. That whole energy of fear doesn't feel good. And I can engage with this. I can engage with learning about this part of life. Being doing it through fear. Um, so that's what's been going on with me. Is this this really interesting look at what I'm afraid of and how that shapes the way I interact with the world around me?

Adam: 7:59

Yeah, well, it's two things that I'm hearing what you're saying. Uh, well, one is that when there is something that you're afraid of, that you recognize you're afraid of, instead of shying away from it or turning away, you're, you turn towards it. And I think that's great because the, any there's, as you said, there's no healing that happens through ignorance, right. Or, or repression. You have to face it. You have to make that thing be conscious and then dive into it. The second thing, which I think is really compelling is the idea that as you started to look more into this, look more into firearms, the social media algorithm started to reflect what it thought was maybe a new belief system on your part or a new way of looking at the world. Um, and if that was the case, then it would reinforce it. And, and I actually, when we were talking about this earlier, I was thinking that's something we should dive a little bit more into because in many ways, You know, the the hermetic principle as above. So below, think that sort of principle applies here in that the social media algorithm seems to be mimicking the way reality functions, which is to

Stephan: 9:14

Yeah, yeah.

Adam: 9:15

When, when we hold a particular belief it within right? About ourselves or about the world. Like in this case, the, the world is a dangerous place and I can be attacked at any moment. And so I have to defend and attack first if I, if I can't, right? That's just one example of a belief. then reality. We'll start to reflect that same belief. We'll start to see potential threats everywhere. We'll start to think about ways that we can, you know, mitigate those threats or neutralize those threats. Uh, and then the world becomes a world of. Threats and non threats and attack and defense. And that's the lens that you see the world through. I think it's really important because most people aren't aware that they hold

Stephan: 10:09

Yeah,

Adam: 10:09

about themselves in reality. And they think the way they see the world is actually how it is. When in fact it's, you know, their experience is very filtered through. And I will, I'll say just briefly, um, having, owned very briefly a firearm myself when I was in Arizona, don't think everyone that owns a firearm is living from place of abject fear and, and walking

Stephan: 10:35

don't think so either.

Adam: 10:36

yeah, yeah, yeah. I know many great, you know, farmers and, and, um, you know, ranch owners who, it's just. just life. It's just a way of life, you know.

Stephan: 10:46

It's a tool. Yeah.

Adam: 10:47

their cattle. Exactly. It's a tool. It's a very, sort of, sort of a neutral thing, but like, like a knife, you know. You can use it to spread butter, uh, cut your food, or you can kill with it. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? The, uh, you know, social media, um,

Stephan: 11:03

Yeah. I, there's so, there's so many, um, yeah, it's interesting because social media, I have a couple of things I want to say. So the first that you know, social media, the way the algorithm works, it isn't, it's You I'm gonna say praying because I do think it's praying not in a, not in a bad way, but it's, its job is to like, tap into

Adam: 11:23

Mm

Stephan: 11:24

PRE. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, PREY praying like a predator, um, on our subconscious, right? Like social media wants to, that the people who designed it, it's a, it's a like a dopamine, addictive, addicting like algorithm, right? So it knows, like, for example, if you watch a video for five seconds. It's going to show you more of those videos. If you skip a video immediately, it won't show you more video. Like it's, they know it happens so quickly because like, even on those videos, like, okay, some, something shows up. I might even not be interested in the topic really, but I'm curious. Cause like, Oh, that's interesting. If I, what for five seconds. It's going to show me more of them because it knows that I was curious about it enough to not just get past it. So it really is an interesting look at our subconscious and what we believe about the world. Because if we're, if we're, yeah, it's just showing you what your subconscious wants, right? Like you're a bitch because it's a for so many of us, it can be a habit of like just on social media browsing. And, um, it's just tapping into some sort of subconscious desires that we have to see. So the second thing I was going to say. Is about this notion of reality and objective reality, and there have been people like, like, for example, like my wife, if she's on social media and she's looking at a topic and she's getting certain things fed to her about a certain topic, and then I go and look up that same topic where I haven't seen that topic before, like I haven't. Like, let's say maybe she's looking on like TikTok and I just don't use TikTok. So, but then I go to TikTok and then I Google it or search it. I will get shown a different perspective of the same topic than she is.

Adam: 13:13

Yeah.

Stephan: 13:14

she might get one perspective and I'll get another perspective. It's there is no objective reality to it, right? Like there are there are multiple sides. There are multiple ways to look at everything. Um, it is like, uh, It's like a choice that you have, you can choose the way to look at your own reality. And, and I think we're just using social media as kind of reflection of how we can see that happening in our own lives externally, but we do this internally as well. You know, just like with, with firearms, like before there was this fear, my story. Was that firearms are inherently bad because they're so dangerous that you don't, you don't need, like, you don't need them. Um, they're like, the only reason to have a firearm is to kill something. Uh, and that's just that's bad. Like, I don't want that in my life. Um, and now it's like, I mean, yeah, it's a tool. It's literally tool. It's uh, yeah, of course, there's a risk to it. Just like there's a risk to everything else in life. Um, you just have to treat it with respect and be responsible with it. Um, but it's neutral. If you can do that, it's neutral unless you choose. to make it not neutral, but it's a choice. It's not, it does, it's not an inherent truth to this thing. And I think we could take that with, um, you could look at anything in life and you could find that same, yeah, you could find that same, um, perspective that there's multiple perspectives. I'm trying to try to think, do you have anything off the top of your head that like, what about, okay, we're talking about like very real world stuff, but what about like a spiritual topic? What about do you have any like spiritual topics to come to mind? There's

Adam: 14:58

I can't, I can't think of anything off top of my head, but I,

Stephan: 15:01

no spiritual topics left.

Adam: 15:04

a world where I'm all spiritual doubt, uh, you know, one, one thing in the, you know, the few minutes that we have left in this postcard, I did want to share was, let's say you do become aware that there is a limiting belief. What do you do with it? And I'd like to share sort of my general approach to that, which leads to a deeper conversation around, um, going within, uh, and, and meditation. But so basically what, what I do is key for me. Is when there's some discomfort of any kind, when my, I generally feel at peace most of the time. when that piece is disturbed, when I feel uncomfortable, when I feel anxious, depressed, sad, regretful, resentful, angry, you know, any of those sort of negative emotions, it's usually a clue for me that there's some underlying belief that I haven't brought to conscious awareness. So then I, I it. I. Try if I can get myself, remove myself from the situation that's triggering the feeling. I closed my eyes and I go within and you can call this meditation or not, but really I just go within and there's a surface level, a surface level chatter. Um, that I try to go beneath and then I start to realize, okay, I'm afraid of something, right? So, for example, I, this episode, just for everyone listening, we tried to record once and by my mistake, I

Stephan: 16:45

Once

Adam: 16:46

ruined it. Oh, twice, twice,

Stephan: 16:48

this is the third time

Adam: 16:49

This is the third time that we're doing this episode. Um, and I deleted the files without realizing what I was doing. Um, sort of a moment of mindlessness. The. Hours afterward, I felt a lot of guilt. One, because I, I'm, you know, my friend Stephen went through

Stephan: 17:06

wasted so much of my time in my life, but I will never get back.

Adam: 17:10

We had great conversations, but anyway, uh, nothing was saved. And so I felt a lot of guilt. Now that's the clue for me. Okay, look, okay, I feel guilt. Why? What underlying belief it that when this happened, my, my emotional response was guilt. I closed my eyes. I went within, I went underneath the chatter of self blame. How could you, Oh my God, you're so stupid. How did you forget that? And it's so simple, you know, right. That's the surface level. And I went underneath. And I, I, I was like, what is, what's this feeling? And it was, it was anxiety. It was guilt and it was fear. And I afraid of? I'm afraid. What does it mean to have not done something right? Like I'm not Right. And okay. did I, do I feel like not producing an episode, uh, makes me not worthy because productivity and getting something out there is Related to my sense of self worth. Oh, wow. Okay. I just realized stumbled upon a belief my sense of self worth is based on what, how I show up in the world rather than believing inherently that I am worthy and it doesn't matter what I do, so I recognize that. And this is what I mean by like, a lot of our beliefs just remain hidden, unconscious. And so I, I had that. to conscious awareness. And this, you know, in our last episode that we recorded, that is now lost forever in the ethers. Um, I talked about this idea of

Stephan: 18:40

Can't get over, I still can't believe you did that. Okay.

Adam: 18:43

Don't worry. You can keep blaming me. Um, but, uh, this idea of like, you can like, like YouTube, you can subscribe to a channel or you can unsubscribe. Uh, and so I feel like when we go within, we recognize that there's If it's limiting and that belief is causing us to feel bad about something, in my case, that my self worth was tied to what I do in the world, um, I can choose to unsubscribe. But it needs to be a conscious decision. I need to consciously click and that, let that belief dissolve, let that belief go. And in its place, I remind myself Of what truth has always been there. And the truth that's always been there that I've covered up with this false belief is the truth that I'm always unconditionally loved. I am love itself. There's nothing wrong with me. Like you said, at the very beginning of this podcast, uh, episode, there's nothing wrong and there's nothing I need to do in the world to prove that I'm worthy of love. I just am. I just am.

Stephan: 19:53

Yeah.

Adam: 19:53

I watched yesterday I let go, as I unsubscribed. This false belief and recognized and looked at subscribed, if you will, to the new truth, the truth that's always been there all along, which is that I am love. And I am loved always unconditionally. And that made me just the guilt dissolved because I realized it doesn't matter whether the episode gets recorded. I'm, I'm worthy, whether or not an episode gets out there in the world. And there's a great, I mean, you can probably feel it now. There's a great feeling of like, like I can, I can breathe now I can relax. And I felt happy with myself and I felt joy come back. And I feel like now with maybe the introduction of this new perspective, if you and I fail to record another episode, or I make a mistake, that intensity of emotion won't happen again.

Stephan: 20:49

Yeah,

Adam: 20:49

Unless you make me feel really bad and guilt trip me.

Stephan: 20:53

yeah, absolutely. I'm so good at that. That's a great takeaway. And it, um, it's like with all of these, all of the things that you and I talk about and probably all of the, oh man, the, just the spiritual path in general, it's, you know, we're, we're like always fighting against just coming back to a space of knowing that we're loved and whole and nothing needs to be done for that for like, For us to be worth worthy of that love. And, and like everything that we do in life is just trying to find a ways around that because it's boring.

Adam: 21:39

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. man. Well, I, I know we, we went past our 20 minute marker more or less,

Stephan: 21:47

Yeah.

Adam: 21:48

think this was, is great. And I, um, I'm, I'm grateful that we tried twice and didn't succeed because it led to this recording, which I think was a, was a very nice one.

Stephan: 22:00

Yeah. Well, man, that was a lot in 20 minutes. Good Lord. Uh, okay. I feel good. I feel good too. I guess we can, uh, no, I hope that I just hope that, um, you know, our intention for those listening, our intention is that these little postcards are really practical and useful and I hope that if you're listening to this, that you learn something new about yourself and a moment of healing.

Adam: 22:32

Yeah, yeah. And, and if you're listening to this and you have the time and are inspired to do so, you feel when you feel, um, so called negative emotion, just take a moment, close your eyes, go within, go beneath the chatter and see what beliefs you might be subscribed to. And then try clicking unsubscribe and,

Stephan: 22:53

See ya.

Adam: 22:54

under is underneath that. All right, everyone. See you on the next postcard.