Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Actor Jeff Kober on releasing the addictive craving - tapping in, to find not only freedom but profound creative success

• Anthea Bell

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Gorgeous Listeners, welcome to this week’s episode of Finding Your Way Home,

In this special episode, we sit down with Actor, Writer and revered Vedic Meditation Teacher Jeff Kober - a significant presence not only in LA's burgeoning creative scene, but its spiritual circles. 

Jeff is a special friend of the Podcast, and this interview marks his second appearance; an opportunity to dive far deeper into his story, his call to acting and how to let go of the "grasping" of the human mind / desire. It's a fascinating exploration of not only what it is to be human - but what it is to transcend human limitations and enter into true peace. Even if only for a moment...

Together, we explore:

  • The current US political and social climate: how to understand and operate within a context of such challenge & intensity
  • The nature of addictive "craving" - whether for substances, affection or accomplishment. How we can learn to lean in emotionally, let go materially and tap into the undercurrent of spaciousness.
  • Jeff's personal experience of alcoholism, and his path through 12-steps and meditation into powerful connection and faith
  • Acting, "success" and celebrity - the danger of pedestalisation and how we can re-find our equality
  • Transforming social anxiety into social engagement 
  • On the human experience - and finding union between the relative, material world and the intangibility of spirit

Profound, touching, incredibly valuable for anyone seeking a clean lens on their journey of self-development: I can't wait for you to listen. 

To find out more about Jeff and his work:

Find him on Instagram: @jeffkobermeditation
Visit his website: https://jeff-kober.com/

Stay connected with the podcast:

Thank you for listening; it means the world to us. We'd be so grateful if you could rate, review or share this gorgeous episode with someone you love. That small act brings us to new ears and eyes - it builds the movement of health and connection that FYWH is built on. 

For more information and upcoming news on the podcast, follow us on  @ab_embodiment and our website. 

And to explore working together more deeply:

  • Apply for an exclusive space on the Embodiment Coaching Certification 2025 - taking your client work to a profound level of depth & impact
  • Secure your space at our beautiful retreat in Costa Rica this Autumn. 6 days of sacred ceremony, moving you into the body, into the heart and through the emotional / historic blocks that have held you back. Prepare for a depth of connection you have never felt, in one of the most magical landscapes in the world. Be with us...

Sending love, wherever this finds you,

Ax

what becomes more and more apparent to me is that it's not about transcending this relative world in order to live in that oneness. Because I, I'm gonna have plenty of time for that when this body falls away. Rather, it's about if there's only one thing, then in a very tangible way, all of this is illusory. Which doesn't mean it doesn't matter. This matters. Absolutely. And it's not what we think it is.

Anthea:

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

Oh, hello, gorgeous listeners and welcome to a very special episode of Finding Your Way Home. We are back with a repeat guest, which is such an honor and a privilege Jeff Coba is the human being sitting in front of me and those that have listened to his first episode. We'll know that this is someone not only with a phenomenal amount of creative talent, a photographer, a very well-known actor, he's written many, many things. He's now increasingly featured on an incredible podcast with Soul Boom. But actually the thing that I know him for is the depth of his spirituality, commitment, and integrity. And so I said to Jeff just before we started the record button that I have been so looking forward to this second edition, which is four months after the first, and what a different world we are stepping into. In this beginning of 2025 compared to the closing of 2024. Jeff, I wonder if you'd be happy to start with your experience, your take on that differential. Where are we finding you and where are we finding the world in your eyes at this point? First of all, thanks for having me back. It's always a delight to talk to you and you, you you talk about things that are, are near and dear to my heart and that I think bear talking about. And that said the difference oh my God. It's the, the good news is that there is so much. Awful in the world right now, that it becomes clear that you can't, you can't wait for awful to be gone before you. You're okay. You know, it's interesting. I was my one of my teachers Shrim w with whom we had five days in at Cumba Mela in, in India just recently. I was just listening to a teaching that he just finished at Cumba Mela on Vatas yoga. And there was a teaching in it that I've always, I. I, I, I, I've never until now, enjoyed, which is the idea that we must be rid of all craving, desires, hope and expectation. And, and I heard it in a different way today, and I, I bring that up because in, in answering your question, the last time we spoke, I had hope and now I, it, it's, it boggles my mind that hate so, thoroughly won in our political system. And that hate is so, vigorously. Allowed in people's lives and in their their languaging and their, their participation in the world and their opinions about the world. hate is reveled in and by people who clearly must be terrified and they need to find what they're terrified of. So there's a lessening of hope and there's a complete letting go of expectation because I don't know what the hell comes next, who, who does. We've never been at this juncture in, in, in the world. I, I don't know. But what I heard today in listening was different than I'd heard it before, shrim described what Vata was talking about by saying, you know, when you accomplish something great and you have a, that experience of, of joy or happiness at that accomplishment, and then it fades away rather than it being the accomplishment that gave you the joy, it was the fact that you accomplished the thing you were craving, and it was the lack of craving that allowed you to feel the bliss of fullness. That underlies all of our, our, our ideas of how the world is supposed to be and, and how we're supposed to be, and what it is we need to accomplish in order to be okay. Yeah, I mean, I, I couldn't agree with that more, not least from a biological perspective. You know, when we think about that dopamine spin that is so consistent with the addictive craving, I kind of feel that as humans we are looking for completion again and again and again, we're looking for the closing of the loop. And probably that is because as you say, there is no closing of the loop. The human experience is that it's just loops open all the time. And the only way that we can make our lives manageable is by piecing them down into frameworks and solid understandings and labels, and in some ways boundaries and limitations. And part of the beauty of moving into any form of meditative practice or spiritual connection is you're suddenly like palpably aware of the quality of internal spaciousness where all of that has opened and nothing is needed. It's not the same as a kick or a hit or anything like what you're describing. It's a, it's a truly enlightening experience. And then of course, we are back in human bodies, back in the world, back in a lot of circumstances that we can't control, nor should we really try to, and the desire then to get satisfaction in our day to day and to control the the rovings of the mind brings in that desire then to complete again and to achieve again and to do again. It's funny actually, if I think about the most profound conversations that I've had about letting go of control and letting go of that itch, it's always with people that have struggled with some form of addiction and come through it. It's always where my conversations come, right? Yeah. Yeah. And hands down, those are also the people that I know that are the most creative, the most impactful that, that the most. In it, they're right in it, right in the thick of it, even maybe to the detriment of their own emotional or mental wellbeing sometimes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So many ways to go with that. What, what, what I think a, a, a thing that I, when I teach someone meditation, the last, it's a, it's a four day course, and the last day of the course, I, I talk about what is essential to change one's experience of life in addition to meditation. One of the things is I, I, mindfully becoming present again and again in, in this moment. And one of the things is a study of different paradigms so that we can replace the paradigm in our head that has been giving us the life that we didn't, that we no longer want to have. And the other is to build a paradigm for ourselves where we can begin to know that that place of spaciousness, as you described it, and the experience of what the ancient rishis called ananda or bliss, that that's here and, and that our craving and our need to accomplish or to get or to take in is about. We feel the deep desire of nature to know itself and love itself from that profound place within, but we're seeing it through the lens of the relative world, and it feels like it needs something from out here to fill it up in here, whereas that, that thing can't be filled in. It can never give us what it is that we're craving. And as long as we're doing this, we never let ourselves have this other thing, this deeper thing. So I think one of the passages that we go through is the, the one where we begin to recognize that that doesn't go away just because I can't feel it at this moment. Such a good reminder it's ever present. I, I mean, it's also, there are so many simple ways of bringing yourself back into remembrance, right? So I was thinking before we joined the call, this has been in our calendars for what, about two months and always am I putting questions together and, and thinking about like, really what's gonna be in the greatest service for the listeners in this conversation. And as I came toward the screen, I got a little email notification saying, Jeff Kober has arrived to your Zoom meeting. And I said, oh, Jeff, Jeff Coba has arrived. And as I sat down, the knowing inside of me was, it's in the space between, it's in the space between that everything is created. So as I sit here with you, my deepest bliss is that I'm sitting here with you feeling into just even the energy that lives between us that connects to so much more beyond us. Mm-hmm. And my mind doesn't have to understand that for my body to feel it on a very intimate. Level part of my sadness is I feel as though, you know, when I talk about the phrase embodiment, peoples think I'm, I'm meaning, we'll go and do a, a yoga class. I mean, do it, it's wonderful, but it's not really, that's not really what we're talking about. What we're talking about is being so in touch with what's really moving through your system that you can feel thi this, thi this is the beauty, this is the joy, and this is the fertile ground from which everything comes. That's my take. It might not be yours sitting on the other side of the screen. I'd love to know. Well, it's we, we, we thought about talking about acting. So, I, I will speak to that when we talk about acting. Okay. Okay. Well, let's dive into it then. Let, let's go then. So, well, so what, what, what the, the way that I, the way that I would go with what you just said is this, this paradigm I. That, the Veda teaches is, that there is a reality underlying this relative world and that this underlying reality is a oneness and that this oneness gave itself the supreme gift of forgetting its oneness with itself, in part, in order to have the joy of everything that could possibly be experienced from the most heinous to the most refined. And through all of that, to find its way. Piece by piece back to wholeness and back to remembering the truth of itself. And, and that that's the assignment that we have here. And with that in mind, what becomes more and more apparent to me is that it's not about transcending this relative world in order to live in that oneness. Because I, I'm gonna have plenty of time for that when this body falls away. Rather, it's about if there's only one thing, then in a very tangible way, all of this is illusory. Which doesn't mean it doesn't matter. This matters. Absolutely. And it's not what we think it is. And the way that the, the Bava Gita ex expresses it is, we must go beyond the relative world in order to become established in being capital B. That place, deep within, become established in that standing on that, and from that established in being perform action. And when one is established in being, then the actions that one performs are the actions of being, which are the actions of loving itself, uplifting itself, enlivening itself, recognizing itself, reflecting itself back and forth. I. That what you described as the body aware of this., I would call process because this is the relative world and that means life exists in the relative meaning it has to exist within relationship. So it's the relationship of established in being here, connecting to individuality over there and seeing what, that connection. has to say for itself or how it wants to go, how it wants to be, what, what happens, you know, what wants to happen next. And it's that aliveness that, that's acting. To me, that's the, the great joy of, of being an actor. If I ever get another job,'cause all actors are unemployed, they'll never work again. That's me In between jobs, could be, you know, years, decades. Did, did that this is a slight sidetrack, but did that sporadic nature of acting work well for your temperament? found? Oh, yeah,, I was talking to my son last night and he was talking about his, dealing with his, his bosses and the corporate world that, that he works in though he's an engineer, it, it's, it's about being alive and doing something. But still, he's got these people above him and these people below him, and he's gotta be in the middle of all that. And I said, I said I was never capable of working for anyone. I, I, I just, I don't, I I am, I'm missing that, personality trait apparently. Well, it's funny that you say that though, because if I think about the, the interactions that we've had, and I think about what I know from mutual friends, and I think about even you guiding these incredible retreats overseas. So there's the listening. Jeff has just gotten back a couple of weeks ago from an incredible trip to India, which was very much a spiritual discovery both for him and for the people that came. bUt if I think about you in all of those roles, and even I think about you on these multi-year long sets, you might not be great at working for people, but you are very good at working with people, your ability to feel the room and to feed off the signals that are both explicit and implicit. I would argue that that's a fundamental criteria for a good actor, and I think you're probably naturally very good at it actually. I suspect you read people in the same way that I do or albeit filtered through the, the lens of Mortal Jeff. Yes. And. And it, it was, it was hard one because you know, in the early years of acting, there was so much life junk, so much traumatic experience that I could not get to a place of being within. And what I would do is I found ways of going past all terror, all fear, all shame, all resistance to getting to the place of the deepest emotions. And then. Connecting those emotions to other, and then within the world of the play the paradigm of the story allow that flow to occur. Hmm. And go along for the right and it it, it's freedom and it's, it's fantastic. And I was, I was completely socially inept. I was, I was you know, I was what I got over and over again. I was, God, you're really intense. You know, God, he's so intense. And, I, I needed every ounce of myself just to show up. I didn't have any, ability to take in. The room. All I was taking it in. But I, I, as I'm saying this, there was a very real sense, and I think this is shared by a lot of people who have come through addiction and or alcoholism. Is, is that I had a very real sense that they were the real people. Yeah. And that I was just, I, I was just in here pretending and because there's this narrowly proscribed alley within which I have to pretend I'm this character, then I can fulfill this role. But beyond that, it was really challenging to be a part of the greater whole. And now today, it's like I, I just, you know, I. I've, I've just become extremely curious about everyone and everything. Like, why are you doing that? Or, oh my God, you know, how are your kids? And, you know, you know, tell me about you and, and with, with everyone there. Not just the cast members, not just the above the line people, not just, just anyone I come in contact with. It's like, we're having an experience here. Let's have a human experience and tell me about yourself because, and, and here's the thing, it's not because I want to be a saint. It's because I spent decades thinking about myself to no avail. And it was hell. There's nothing different in here. I don't need to look at this anymore. I wanna tell me about you. Yeah, I really relate to that. I really, really relate to that. There's a recent, some statistic that's been published that says that 80% of the time either ruminating, lamenting on a negative past Or negatively perceived past, or we're projecting into the future, which is obviously being influenced by the negative ruminations about the past. So the, the average statistic is 20% of the time maximum we're in a, a space of true presence. And I'm, I'm almost picturing. There's something that you're describing there when I picture you way back when on set that there's something you were saying the other people feel real and, and that you're sort of almost, almost floating, which is what happens when we are both disconnected from our own experiences and trauma and everything else while navigating the chaos of the mind. And as you say, it's much easier to just drill your attention down into the one thing that you might have some agency over, which is the material, which is the, the performance. And I think fundamentally, if you've, if you've developed or cultivated a belief that the world and its people are unsafe, which is also what will naturally happen, if you feel that you are unsafe, you and they are, are equivalent in that sense, it's very difficult really to be present because your body and your mind. And on some level, your spirit are always searching for or perceiving danger. Why would anyone psychologically want to land grounded in that state? It's much easier to go off into the clouds. I wonder in, in your own words, what was the shift that happened for you that now makes you, aside from the fact that you realize that your mind wasn't particularly interesting, what was the shift that happened for you that allowed you to come into this place of much greater? I'd almost describe it as it's not just human curiosity. There's a level of playful charisma that, that kind of experiences delight. Was that through meditation? Was that through spiritual practice? Was that just time? What created the shift for you? Yes to all of the above. And, acting as this extraordinary practice. I. Where, you know, no one gets into acting out of a surface of mental health or emotional health. And we go into it, many of us, with the need for approval. Enough approval to feel okay, you know, once again, we're looking in the relative world for what is only available deep within. But you get the approval and you find out it doesn't change a thing and is no longer the thing you can work toward. So you have to find, you have to find what else life is for, what else acting is for, and they, they're synonymous. and acting is the thing that brings me alive unlike anything else. So, I, I, I, I couldn't stop. I couldn't leave it. But in working on how to be a better actor, how to be more alive as an actor it, they're the same tools as being alive as a human. And i, and I've been writing about this lately, and I just, I realized that I would have these cha, I was a taxi driver in Los Angeles. I was making this was, oh God, this was God, a long time ago. This was 35, 40, 40 years ago maybe longer. And I, I was making a hundred, 125 bucks a day. That was a really good day. And working five days a week. And that was enough to pay my rent, get enough weed and, and whiskey to get through the days and everything else I spent on, I. Acting classes and therapy, because I was so messed up. Everything I did was about finding out how this thing worked. At first, it was about finding out how you real people do it. And, and then it was about like, that's too much. I just gotta find out how this thing works. And, and then through the years, through the years, through the years, progressively giving up whatever it is that I'm trying and then discovering another way, like clearly that's not gonna, like when I learned Vedic meditation, six weeks prior. I had a conversation with myself, and those don't happen all that often, but this was, I was just like, you know what? I was 48 years old. I, I said, if it hasn't changed by now, it ain't gonna change. And I, I did an assessment and in my assessment I said, you got about 70% of yourself back. You started out with a lot. So that's, that's pretty good. And, but you're gonna have to make deal with that man.'cause clearly it's not gonna change. So just get okay with 70% and stop, stop torturing yourself. And then, you know, six weeks later I learned Vedic meditation and had this experience of transcending the whole mess of me. And within a year I remembered that conversation and thought, oh, that I don't know, but I'm past a hundred percent and moving towards something else. But it took that giving up. That surrendering of whatever the hell it is that I was doing in order to have room space for this other thing to, to occur. And then that was a huge shift because in having a meditation practice that actually allowed me to transcend my thoughts and feelings and body awareness and opinions and everything else, suddenly I had the enlightening experience of I'm over here and that's over there. Yeah. And, and you know, Eckhart achieved enlightenment by realizing there was more than one voice having a conversation here. Roman Maharshi had the experience of popping out of his body and going like, wait a minute. I'm here and the body's there. Who am I? And, and so it was, it was an enlightenment, but it, it got me in the game. It also sounds like what you gave up in the initial conversation with yourself was almost the structures of the identity that believed that only seven 70% was possible. It's, it's, it sounds like there's something around identity here as you had understood it before then having the Vedic experience. Well, I think the, the, the, the idea of the 70% was contained within the paradigm of, or, or the idea that I was broken and needed to be fixed. Yeah, exactly. And by giving up the idea of fixing myself, not because I gave up the idea of needing to be fixed, but because I was just like, you know, if, if this is the way it works, just, just find out what that's like. Mm-hmm. Can I ask you, Jeff? I've been thinking a lot recently about Pedestal, where we place people above and then of course place ourselves below. And, and it partly comes up because I get I get a lot of clients wanting to move through their own version. I think it also comes up because the more that I am with this concept of fame and success and celebrity and, and money and, and all of these things the more aware I become of the sweet, simple way that we create hierarchy. Again, if we go back to that conversation we were having at the beginning about how do I make the world feel safe? Will I create structures in which I can understand where I sit relative to where everything else is? Especially if it feels chaotic, And, and I suppose it's just come up for me in listening to you speak, because I'm also aware that for someone that has been navigating, letting go of addiction and letting go of control for, you know, decades, I'm really curious about your experience with success and fame and visibility and pedestal either of yourself or others. I, I don't quote Maharishi Mahesh Yogi very often, but he, he, one thing that he said was we have a very serious responsibility not to take ourselves too seriously. And I, and I love that one. I, I guess the p process I have gone through is really finding out. I mean, I think, I think what we're always doing is shifting our translator, our translating mechanism. Like if someone says something to you, you hear it a certain way and, and if you hear it one way, it, it can. Send you into a place you don't want to go. If you hear it another way, it can, it can be useful to engage more fully with somebody. And like for example, I was talking to a friend who's in a new relationship and, and, and they were saying what this their, their partner was saying and they were taking it one way. And I just, I said, well, that's, you know, I said, be careful of assessing what someone else does or says based on what it would mean if you said or did that thing. Because it, the, what, what you're thinking about it is based in, in your trauma and your history and, and, and your fear and your need to take care of yourself. And so likewise, if, if someone is pedestal rising, that sounds so close to pedophilia that it's, it's, it's scary for me to say it. If someone is putting you on a pedestal, then there's a, a, a sense of, I I, I, I've never put this into words, so I don't know if I, I can, but what I do is just try to become more human with people because I also, for me, the, the realm of using anything out here to feed the ego it is so painful to lift oneself up and then crash back down That I, I, I. Really try to avoid lifting myself up. And I try to hear everything through the idea that the paradigm, that this is all consciousness working out. everything that stands in the way of flow. Everything that stands in the way of love is another way of saying that. And, and not in some woowoo fashion, but in the fashion of it's the only thing that matters. We, we try to have success because we think we will be loved or lovable if we have it. And, and, you know, we, we try to have success because if, if enough people love us, then we'll feel that that ache filled within and, and that's not it. There's not enough of that. Anywhere in the world. And what we see is the, the outcome of that need to feed on attention is, you know, we're seeing that in our political system and, and it's, you know, it's, it's horrifying because it doesn't take into account anybody else. So, the key for me is to find the fulfillment that lives within me always. Mm-hmm. And when I. Am in touch with that fulfillment and know that as the, the, the truth of me, I don't need anything from you. Mm-hmm. And because whatever you offer me cannot possibly add to the fulfillment that I already feel, nor can you take away anything from the fulfillment that I already feel that leaves me then free to engage in the work that consciousness is here to do, which is to experience itself, enjoy itself, love itself, uplift itself, come back to together with itself., if someone approaches me because they, they think I'm something other than they are. Mm-hmm. It doesn't matter why they approach me, here's a place I can interact with someone. We were just, Cumba, Mela is this massive gathering of humanity. There were 400 million people in this one space over the course of six weeks. We got there, they were starting to close the roads down when we were trying to get in. And our guide we were, he was, we were talking to the, the military trying to get through, and they're like, no, you can't go through. And, and I see my guide over there talking to him and looking over at me and tell, he says, come here. And he said, tell him the shows you were on, and so it was like, oh, man. I just, oh man. I was on thi I was on Walking Dead and The Sons of Anarchy, and you might know me from this. And it was, and I just, I pulled it up on I-M-D-B-C. That's me, see? Same guy. And I just worked the hell out of it. But that's the, the extent of me working my semi celebrity. So, and, and for the, for the benefit of the wider collective. You always say to me at the beginning of these, you know, I'm just here to be of service and I actually do as glib as we're making this sound. I actually do believe that that is fundamentally at your core, not, not least, because that is the path of least suffering for everyone involved. You, you shared so much in that last passage. I'm sort of, I know that with each of these conversations I gain kind of triple fold as we listen to the edits and, and everything else. So there's even more that I get to pick up on. But there is something that's coming up for me, of course, around the beauty of human connection and. That, that is distinct from what you're describing in the sense of what you are saying very radically, is that even in a world that is constantly trying to get us to go out there into it and draw attention and, and instigate action and everything else, what you are saying to, to me and the listeners is okay, coming back here, coming back inwards and finding ways to move through enough that you then can open and experience the divine that is something greater and and different to anything that you could experience even in the relational field. And what I know from a biological level, what I know from a primitive level is that there is also something that's very magical when two human beings or many human beings come together and mm-hmm. Certainly when I was navigating my own transition from radically distrusting myself in the world to starting to. Ever so gently feel into the baby steps of, you know, some sort of mental recovery. The fundament of human beings, other human beings, kindness, other human beings, service this giving for fun and for free. You know, that really deeply transformed my experience of the world, and it, it fundamentally changed my relationship with myself. I was able to receive their kindness and start to practice it internally, which was one of the gateways to deeper spiritual connection. I, I offer that preamble because A, I'm really curious about where you sit with human connection now. It sounds from what you're saying as though it's pretty integral to you. But b, I'm wondering on this same theme of not being dependent, whether navigating, not being dependent on the affection of intimate relationships was something that you had to work with or work on. So you have two questions. Absolutely. It, it, it's, it's, so the two questions are is that, do I have to work on not having to depend on getting something from someone else? Yeah. And, and, and the, the primer was what's the significance of connection for you? The significance of connection is, it's the relative world and life only occurs in relating, I'm relating to my hand at this moment and to my thoughts and to you and to the, the surroundings I'm in. The one thing I'm trying, I never want to get in relationship with is my perseverating mind. This as you said, the 80% of, of speculation about what I should have done last week or what needs to happen next week. So connection is absolutely essential for me to be alive and for me to practice. Okay, here's the real answer. If there's only one thing, which the, the, you know, the, my paradigm of the universe in the Veda says that consciousness is primary. Everything is an expression of consciousness. There is one thing I am that I am, that I also know absolutely that there is that the divine is that higher power, supreme being is a truth if consciousness is the whole of what is. The whole of what is, is a consciousness. That whole consciousness is by definition, greater than this limited consciousness than I am. But I am that. So I am God is, there's only one thing, you know, do the math. And now how can I bring that alive? Well, I'm in the relative world. So the way I bring that alive is by being of service, by offering to the world. And, and then this is, this is the, the work along with healing all of the childhood trauma and the codependency that we have and getting clear with our own mental, emotional structure and system. There is a paradigm that 12 step program stumbled upon that is also the paradigm from the Veda. And in 12 step programs, you do all this work to clear yourself of all the garbage you're carrying and all of the reasons you have for self denigration or a self-hatred. And then on a daily basis you keep assessing, how did I do today? Was it about giving or taking? And we want to err more in the direction of giving And then and then praying and meditating on a daily basis. And the meditation is about can I get beyond all of this mess of me, the circus of the mind and settle into the truth, and then praying to. Asking for help to become aligned with what's going on here, which is the flow of consciousness, the flow of love, and then stepping into each situation, asking How can I be of service? And not figuring that out, but being willing to learn it on the fly in movement. And so that's the way the 12 steps say it. You know, service is always the answer. Go work with another alcoholic, says, bill Wilson, the Veda says, smile and radiate. If I know that my job is to be in touch with the deepest experience, the essence of what I am, the truth of what I am, and then bring that into the world, that means I'm going to radiate into the world and. When I'm radiating into the world, it is no longer transactional. And so relating does not mean transactionality. It means giving without thought of return, but giving from the place that is constantly filled up by the truth of me. That is never about me. If I'm, if I'm giving and it's costing me, that's not giving, that's me hoping for a transaction to occur. and it's, it's wrong for me and it's wrong for the other person. But if I've done the work and continue to do the work, to get in the touch with and identification with the essence of me, it is fullness itself. The only thing it can do is to offer from itself to the world. And by definition, that offering is very present. Because anything else that we're doing, especially if it's transactional, it's either future based or it's past based. It's not really, here you are acting out a role with a desired outcome and people feel that, you know, it's so beautiful listening to you because I'm, I'm aware of, my mind keeps on coming back to this during the conversation, but I'm aware of energetic resonance and even the studies that have been done on, on heart resonance, which is considered to be as an organ. The heart is considered to be somewhere between 505,000 times more powerful than the brain. So that there is a really direct feedback mechanism between the thing over here and yours over there, and the impact that that has on a, on a regulation basis. The, the capacity that I have in a center of heart to co-regulate you through a screen and bring you into the same literal s-curves of your heart is now widely publicized and. That is so different being in that space of center or presence or radiance to, as you say, any way that we might try to manipulate the world and its people to create whatever sense of achievement or pleasure. I am attaching my feeling of radiance to, it's, it's, it's a really different thing. And I get asked a lot about codependency and people pleasing. And they're so fundamentally different that stance to what you're describing. And I suspect, I, I wonder if this is your experience. Most people have to go quite deeply into the coercive side of things and then feel the ick of knowing that, the disjoint feeling, the way that that actually separates them from the other person because of the resentment it creates or because of the. The superficial way of relating that it encourages, they have to go through that and almost get a visceral experience of, I really don't wanna do this anymore in order to work their way back into, can I stay inside of me and connected to my source, my center, and can I be loving with you and relate to you? Yeah. I, I don't know what it's like for other people. I, I know what it's been like for me and, you know, I know that I was raised to I mean, the basic paradigm is you know, you're here to serve, not be of service, but to serve and, and whatever you do reflects on. I'm, you know, my parents. And you know, I had a great gift when I was 15 years old. I was involved in this fatal accident that because of the way I was raised in the paradigm I lived in, I saw myself as no longer worthy of life and I couldn't take my life. And so I was in hell for a good long time. And I guess that became boring enough that I started trying to crawl my way out of it. And when that is your path, you notice the things that move in the direction of not hell. I. And the things that are just as a side channel in hell Yeah. And codependency is a side channel in hell. It's like, yeah. You know, I, I love the fact that I just made you smile, but if, if that's what I'm working toward, then it, it's gonna be a, a really shallow and not interesting conversation. and ultimately it'll never get you what you want. This is the thing that I learned is the codependency is so desperately oriented to trying to secure something. I've never even quite been able to put my words on exactly what is it that I'm trying to pin down in its individual that does not want to be pinned down, but I'm grasping and I'm grasping and I'm grasping, and it's only when I'm willing to go through the withdrawal of pulling back and coming back into some form of sanity that I realized there was nothing to get over there exactly as you, as you said. what is it, what's the answer to that question you just posed? It's, there is something, if I think about if I think about my biggest example of that, there is a spark of life and possibility in that person's eyes in certain moments. And this is the. Brilliant, irritating thing about codependency is, is it's like 5% of the actual time of your experience with that person. The majority of the time it's hell. But the fantasy in you attaches to that one moment where it feels 10 times as intense and beautiful than anything else you've ever experienced. It's like being born again. And of course you couldn't even survive the consistency of that. So there's no point really in wanting it. But the, the, the stickiness of it is such that if I really am honest with myself, what did I feel in that moment? I finally felt that I was loved and seen, and in somebody else's heart I belonged. And that was the antidote to the existence that I had had up until that point. Yeah. And of course, because that gaze came from someone that was just as terrified and broken as me, it could never have been sustained, nor could he sustain my gaze. So the two were working completely in opposition to each other. And yet the draw, the mutual draw of it was so sticky that we played that dance for seven years. And you know, you know how that story goes. it really did take me allowing myself to cool down from that. It's like, I think sometimes we can get into this space where we think I'm gonna be able to close the loop without taking a proactive action to, to draw myself back. I'm gonna be able to change my experience with this troubling thing through the power of my mind. And no, in my case, I had to radically step back in order to mm-hmm. Over time get sanity and then to no longer approach the flame, you know, the way it's as beautifully described. And thank you for that. And I, it what, what occurs to me is it, it's. It's not possible to turn away from what you described as that feeling. And, and there are two ways that, that feeling dooms me. And, and the first is that it's, it's the, it's the, it's the answer. It's what, it's what, it's what soul is yearning for. You know, it's what, it's soul gave itself the gift of forgetting the truth of itself in order to crawl through all the mud to find the truth of itself again. And the, the soul apparently think that's fun. You know, that's why we're doing this. So you have that and it's, it feels the way oneness feels. So that's a, and then b. We're set up such that we're so having a human experience, a human experience is a nervous system experience. Nervous system experience means we're at the effect of, and the mercy of the, the need to survive. And it's survival of self first survival of species second and comfort third. And we just got a, a, a speed ball of all three of those. This is gonna save my life, it's gonna make babies, and it feels better than anything has ever felt. And now you tell me, I I shouldn't go after that, you know? So, for me, I have a my disdain for my own perceived weakness. Is such that when I discovered that within myself, I, I couldn't, I just couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't stand it. So I had to work to find my way through that. It's one of those rare examples where self hatred would ends up being a really good change. No, not often. The case you know, what's funny about, well, as I sit here listening to you, you know, the other thing that I guess I'm now, if I'm being very honest I'm aware of is that if I take that, that man as an example. I still love him. And, and it's not the same. It's of course not the same. It doesn't have the, the need of it. But I mean, if you put that person in front of me to tomorrow, I mean, you just would see my face just, I'm the sort of person, I've never been able to hide that. So I am unfashionably warm by comparison with the rest of my family and most British people. if I'm engaged by you, I'm, I'm all, I'm all here. I'm all in. Like, so I think that ends up being often for people disconcerting because it feels very truthful to me. I just. I think other people are wonderful and fascinating. And, and I do, you said earlier, you know, in the, in the sense of having a human experience, the relational field is where we come alive. And I suppose perhaps what I'm realizing by virtue of this conversation is that is very much true for me. I love the fact that as part of my job in this play of life, I get to do this. If I could do this, you know, all the time, I probably would because it is my, like you said about acting. This, this is, this is that for me, these sorts of conversations. You, you, you're delighted. You're delighted by the experience of talking to others. And, and I'm enraptured by it, the whole thing, the whole dance of it. So I think probably on that note, we should allow Jeff to go about his day of service and creativity and joy. Thank you so much for everything you've shared. It's been really, as we've just established, utterly delightful to speak to you And I'm wondering is there anything that you would like to leave us with as a final He strokes his beard Contemplatively listeners that can't see him., I guess two things. The first is because I was quoting this VA yoga, there was a line that occurred to me when we were talking about codependency and and one of the things that this teacher says to his, his student, is that even a strong man will not reach his destination if he does not move towards it. And, and the, the Sufis say if you're, if you wanna travel west, don't start out traveling east. What I would just like to say that I, I, I, I wish I could say to everyone is that, you know, you're, you're worthy of love and you're, you're worthy of, of delight, and, you're not having problems because you're unworthy of those things. Mm-hmm. You're, you're having opportunities to see things in a different way and you know, as, as horrifying as the world can be. And, and this is just from a western perspective, when, you know, we have idiots working in our political system, I, I, there are horrifying things happening to people all the time. And if we had to think about all those horrifying things all the time, we wouldn't be able to raise our heads. At all. And tho there are people that are in those horrifying experiences. And there's nothing that I can say that makes sense of that to anyone else. I can make sense of it for myself, but we're not being punished for who we are. We're we're, I, I feel like we chose this. Yeah. And everything in it, in order to find a way to just see it a little differently, see it a little better, and, and, and, and just find those moments of delight and flow in the world. Yeah. It's a very beautiful way of changing the perspective for those that particularly at the moment are experiencing the lack of agency of this compressive suffering. It's also a place from which, although in theory we're not allowed to think about hope, it is a place from which hope becomes possible. can I, I need to say one thing about hope. Yes. Hope and faith. I've, I've never really liked these words, but I've recently learned Vedic chant about that has to do with shr ha and shr ha is a Sanskrit word that means devotion and commitment. What it really means is that which holds the truth. And when I can have shr ha when I can hold in myself the truth that this is all God from the most ugly to the most beautiful, it's all God hold that truth, then I can, I. Look at the world and not have to demonize it or see it as better than it is, but be present to it. But I've gotta, I've gotta hold the truth that it's all God and I'm a part of that. Yeah. Which also means that you don't resist it. And the resistance actually is a huge amount of what causes the suffering. We either resist or we personalize. And either of those two strategies create no beneficial outcome. Yeah. What a note to land on. Thank you so much and we will very much look forward to having you again soon. And in the interim, please take care of yourself, listeners, take care of yourself in your various corners, and we will connect with you again soon.

Anthea:

Gorgeous listeners. Thank you. So. So. much. For your ears. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.