Ep. 77 - The Magic of Pain with Jonathan Foust

When you are visited by the heavenly messenger of sickness pain, feeling old, how do you be with it? You know? This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. Welcome to episode 77 of synchronicity. My guest this week is Jonathan Faust. Pre-warning, this is one of my favorite episodes. I said it in a weird voice. That means it's true. Really, really, really great stuff with Jonathan. We talk about pain, the function of pain, why we have pain, how to deal with pain. Not just physical pain, emotional pain, psychological pain, mental pain. There's all types of pain. And we talk about all of them and Jonathan is just incredibly lucid. Really cool dude. He's also the husband of Tara Brock, one of my favorite people, also on MindPod Network, truly stupendous couple there. That's a real power couple. But before we get to the episode, I want to talk about something I mentioned last week. Creative Evolution, my online course and community that I'm watching in May, I've opened up the beta sign up. So the beta version of this is going to be before the course actually launches next month. We're going to have a small group of people work through it, see if there are any kinks, see if it's delivering, what it's supposed to be delivering, and basically just having kind of a pre-run or a dress rehearsal for the actual course release in May. So if you're interested in that, and what is this, what is creative evolution? A horrible job of telling you what it is. So this course and community is essentially designed to help you start, maintain, and evolve your own creative practice.

It also extends past just creative practices or finishing projects or getting something started. It also informs other aspects of your life. So you've heard of a daily practice for meditation or chanting or some spiritual practice. I'm basically using this same premise, and this is only because it's worked for me, around creativity. So I've basically codified a system that has worked for me. It's 13 brief chapters, 13 exercises. There's going to be four weekly round table discussions between me and everyone who's participating, and there's also a private Facebook community. So if this is something you're interested in, I'm basically cutting the price in a third. Is that that's a way to say it? I don't know.

It's a third of what it's originally going to cost, essentially. So it's 50 bucks for the beta course. Like I said, there's limited spots. I'm not doing that to create the illusion of something. Like there really are only so many spots. I don't want too many people in this because I want to make sure it works before I release it to the general public. The only people who are finding out about this are you who's listening to this, are people who are on the Synchronicity Community email list. If you don't know what that is, go to syncpodcast.com and join that, and also the people in the Facebook group. So you're the only people who are hearing about this, you specifically. So basically, if you're interested, I would love it if you signed up. It's a great chance to connect. I'd also really like to see and test out that this is helping people. I'm pretty sure that it will. But if that's something you're interested, again, you can go to syncpodcast.com/beta. And there'll also be links on this podcast. So if you're listening on your phone, you can go into the podcast episode, click it. You will see links there also on the podcast episode pages on syncpodcast.com. I've said that a million times, I'm sorry. And minepodnetwork.com.

Okay, I'm done hocking my own shit for the time being. I want to get back to Jonathan. Man, you will hear in this episode how cool of a guy he is, how grounded he is. Also, he shares an experience. He was at Cripalu, which is a spiritual center up in the Northeast. For 24 years was also the president of Cripalu for three years and went through some very interesting experiences there, both from a spiritual organization standpoint in terms of people trying to advance themselves and be of service to the world. And also running a spiritual business and having to worry about things like paying bills and conflicts and things like that and how those two can kind of merge and create some interesting dynamics.

But really, this conversation is primarily centered around how we can use pain or what is pain trying to teach us? Is it trying to teach us anything? Right? These are the questions. What can we take away from it and what is pain's function? So that's, I don't have, what else could I possibly say about this episode? Except Jonathan, you will hear how incredibly cool he is. Like I said, his wife, Tara Brock, another one of my favorite people. And we also mentioned at the end, his dog, Katie, oh my God, this dog I met a few months ago, I can attest to the cuteness of this dog. So if you're an animal lover, they have a very cute little doggy. Okay, that's it. We're going to get to the episode. Thank you for tuning in. As always, if this is your first listen to synchronicity and you enjoy it at the end of the episode, not right now, maybe you leave a review. Maybe you rated on iTunes. That would be cool. If not, no worries. Maybe you want to donate. I could, I'm definitely not turning away donations at this point.

So that's all I'm saying about that. Without further ado, here is Jonathan Fauft. Hey Jonathan, how you doing? Hey, I'm good. I'm good. How are you? I'm really good. I, I've been doing the Jonathan Fauft immersion program for the past hour. So I'm pretty good spirits, man. I'm doing pretty well. Oh, that's good. I'm glad to hear it. That's really funny. Yeah, I mean, I've, I've tuned into you before back way back when when I started working with Tara and Janet, she recommended, you know, I check you out. It must have been like two years ago at this point. But it was really nice to kind of reinvestigate what's going on. And it's just, you know, it's an honor to be able to speak with you. And I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Well, me too. Me too. Yeah. Absolutely. I've heard great things, great things about you. Oh, good. That's, that's always good. So, I mean, I'm ready to get started. I have kind of, you know, a direction to go with this, but these conversations are typically pretty free form, you know, we touch on a lot of different things. I'm sure as you are well-customed too with this type of stuff. But yeah, I'm ready to get started. You ready? Good. How long do you want to shoot for? Typically 45 minutes to an hour. That's, that's typically how long these things go. I mean, I, I can go for longer. And if you have time obligations, it can be for shorter. So it's pretty flexible.

That sounds great. We'll just, we'll just go with the flow. All right. Cool. Sounds good. So thank you again for, for doing this. I, I'm glad we got to connect. I know we've been, you know, playing email tag for a little bit, but I'm super excited to do this. So thank you again. That is great. That is great. And so do you just, the audio is good? Yeah, you sound great. There's no feedback from the speaker from you. Good. Not here. Nothing. So you sound, you sound great. And I also, just so you know, I went to school for audio production and engineering. So if there are ever any troubles, I can usually fix them in post. So good. Okay.

Well, I'm using a good podcasting mic. Yeah, you sound good. Sound great. Cool. All right. So I want it. Okay. So let's, I want to talk a little bit about how I got introduced to you, you know, at least in terms of a practical way. So I remember I was talking to Janet, you're a lovely wife, Tara's assistant. And I was going through, I was just about to move from New York City to Maryland, back where I grew up. And I started experiencing neck pain, really bad kind of neck pain. I had never experienced it. It started shooting down my arm. I was very concerned. I was basically incapacitated, which for me was a very not good thing. I'm sure for anyone, it's not a good thing. But it especially felt when it was happening to me that this is totally unacceptable. And Janet recommended I checked out a meditation of yours about dealing with pain and kind of like negative afflictions would be at mental or physical. And I remember it was the first thing, and I had been dealing this with with this for weeks, it was the first thing I remember finding that felt like a salve or an antidote to what I had been experiencing, even if it didn't completely make the pain go away. It certainly gave me some perspective on how to deal with it in a mindful and not panicky way, which really, you know, helped the whole second arrow thing kind of I wasn't hitting myself with the second arrow. So I just wanted to bring that up because I think it's an incredibly useful, practical thing, which is when we talk about kind of spiritual practices, or mindfulness, or meditation, we can get pretty esoteric and, you know, intellectualize it. But in terms of a practical thing, focusing on this body centered inquiry that you tend to do is fascinating. And I love if you could talk a little bit about how you got into kind of the body centered inquiry stuff. Absolutely. Well, you know, the really interesting thing about, you know, all the esoteric elements of Buddhist teachings and so forth, what really interests me is what I think of as pragmatic Dharma. Like, how do we actually apply it, right, you know, particularly when we're really caught, and there's nothing like working with physical pain to dive right into the reality of it. Yeah, yeah. So when you did that meditation, focusing on pain, what was the shift for you? Well, the shift at that point is it had been basically, I was getting stabbing pains in my arm every 30 seconds to a minute. And that was my existence and life for weeks. And it was all consuming. So like, even if I could kind of forget about it for a little bit, it was just I was obsessive about worrying about the pain, experiencing the pain, when it would come, how long it was going to last. And when I listened to what Janet had recommended, it gave me some space, not unlike when, you know, I'm meditating, or if I haven't been meditating and my reactions are so quick and there's no real space, you know, I kind of could cultivate that little sense of awareness. So I could begin to respond to what was happening rather than reacting. And up to that point, I went to the doctor, they provide, you know, prescribed like steroids was a herniated disc, all of these things. But up into that point, nothing had been alleviating kind of the mental anguish that I was putting on top of the physical pain. There's a great phrase that a lot of body workers use that says your issues are in your tissues. And the analogy that I come back to all the time is something Joseph Campbell uses, or you imagine a big circle and a horizontal line through that circle above the line is what you're aware of. Oh, I love this. Oh, yes. And below the line is what you're not aware of. So when you practice mindfulness, which I think of as non judging awareness, the line moves, you know, you become aware of thoughts you haven't talked before, you become aware of beliefs that you weren't aware of before, and you definitely become more aware of the sensations and how you're relating to them. And that's the whole key to freedom. It really is.

There's two things. One is talking about the Joseph Campbell thing is I watched a wonderful documentary with Marie Louise von Franz, who was a student and main translator of Carl Jung, and she used this circle with the horizontal line. And then she drew a little box, teeny little square in the center of the circle, overlapping the horizontal line in which she said, this is our ego. This is our, you know, what we can perceive through our filter of experience. And what you were saying about expanding kind of the line or moving the line, it did feel like that box also begins to expand. And you get a little more access to where things are coming from, how they could be potentially coming from the unconscious mind. And then to, you know, go back to the point you were saying about this. I mean, this is the end of the story. Three people in three days recommended I check out a book by Dr. John Sarno. And you know, some variation of mind over back pain, my dad had read it, someone on the internet who I was friends with and another friend.

So I got this book, mind body prescription. And lo and behold, I, you know, I'm reading this book, I'm very resistant, you know, he's talking about Freudian concepts. I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I have unconscious rage or anything like that. Well, and behold, I get to the chapter on, you know, some pains will move around when you start to identify kind of the root causes of it. And my, it started jumping around my entire body. So I started freaking out. I'm like, Oh my God, like, A, this is happening. B, how do I now control this? You know, I read the book, I did some of the mindfulness exercises, I revisited your meditation stuff and lo and behold, two weeks after that, after the move, also my physical move, my transition, pain completely gone. Once in a while, it'll come back. But you know, I firmly believe this was an emotional psychological manifestation of something rather than some physiological, specifically, you know, thing inducing a nerve or something, which is fascinating. And really, mind over matter, crystal clear demonstration of that.

Yeah. Well, and Sarno talks about, you know, he calls it myofascial tensionitis, Yes, which is basically stress, right? You know, and unprocessed stress just sits in the body, and the other thing about pain, working with pain, as you were describing it, where you're sort of like fixating on everything you had to do and all the issues, and you know, we tend to focus on the pain itself, and the mind, the mind fixates on, on what isn't working, what's tight, what's not flowing. And so much of these strategies are all about opening the frame, which is one of my favorite meditations for pain is this zone one, zone two meditations. Yes, yes, yes, yes, that's what I, yes, it's killer, isn't it? It's so awesome. It really is amazing. Yeah, so just briefly to describe it, zone one is unpleasant sensation. And then zone two are the neutral and the pleasant sensations. And the first stage of the practice is to become aware of where those zones are, but then to consciously keep your attention in zone two. So you're moving from the fixation on the unpleasant and exploring everything in your body that is either pleasant or neutral.

And you let your awareness float around like a little moth and describe the location and the quality of feeling, you know, left left elbow relaxed, you know, right knee open. And something quite magical happens every time I do it. And that's that sense of like, for example, when I have a migraine, you know, we're all realized, you know, 94% of my body feels okay. You know, 6% is completely freaking out. You know, but, but I'm more than just that, that tight knot of pain. And oftentimes there's a bleeding or there's sort of like a, yes, like an expansion of the unpleasant. And oftentimes there'll be a sense of like, you know, I can actually bear this pain. If I can hold it in the context of the whole body. So energetically, what relating it, I'm sure to some Buddhist kind of cosmology or philosophy, what do you think pain is? Is this karma kind of manifesting? Are these negative afflictions? You know, what do you think? I mean, because I'm sure you've dive deep into this stuff, doing body centered work, and kind of really going into the root of this, like, where do you think this emanates from? And also, if you could add function, what's the function potentially of pain or negative, unpleasant sensations? Yeah. Well, oftentimes, when I'm investigating sensation, or I'm working with someone, and they're working with some manifestation, I'll oftentimes just ask, is this field biological or does it feel emotional? And sometimes our pain is purely biological, right? You know, I slept weird, so I've got a crick in my neck, you know, or I'm, you know, I'm really, really fatigued. And well, now that now that I look at this crushing fatigue, you know, I've been drinking too much coffee, not sleeping enough, or it might be like, you know, this feels emotional. There's there's just something here that I, I don't want to be with, or I don't want to feel. I think those are those are really, really helpful issues. But ultimately, what the practice comes down to is really two questions. The first one is what exactly is happening.

And number two, how am I relating to it? And that's where that's where the inquiry gets really, really interesting. Right. Just to see how around pain, we tend to withdraw, freeze, you know, go into, into anger or restlessness, right, go into the ruthless critic, or we feel like we're losing control of our lives, you know, and we catastrophize around pain quite a bit. Well, I mean, it's like, you know, a popular buzzword now is being triggered, or triggered, but pain, I mean, I think is a trigger for almost everyone. And if you don't have a strategy, someone said something to me a couple of weeks ago that it still stuck with me, which is I have a tendency to, whenever something happens, negative or emotional, I go right to anger. So even if I'm feeling hurt, or I'm feeling sad, or I'm feeling scared, I just bypass those completely and go right to anger. And now as I'm experiencing, you know, unpleasant sensations, whether it's pain, emotional or physical, I try to identify the spectrum of emotions I may be feeling. And that, that alone has given me a tremendous amount of insight into like where these things are coming from. And it's incredibly helpful. But that awareness and inquiry, I mean, pain is, it's so gripping, right? It's something that like you can't pretend isn't happening sometimes, like a thought that you maybe can push away, or you know, grab onto it feels, it's one of the stickiest things we deal with. So, you know, get working on strategies or having some resources to be able to deal with it is just incredibly helpful. Yeah, it sure is. And as you've began to see your reactive patterns, as I often say, you know, like some people are angry waiting to happen, right? And some people are depression waiting to happen. Some people are rejection waiting to happen.

So, we get to see our patterns. And one of the things I'm always suggesting is to substitute the words, I'm going to figure this out with the words, I'm going to get familiar with this. And there's a world of difference, particularly when you're working with that amorphous pain. Let me just get more familiar with this. And familiarity, as the Buddha said, leads to insight. So, just a quick story when this really came home for me. This is many, many years ago, I had lived at Cropala Center for Yoga and Health for 24 years. And I've been president for about three years and kind of came to the realization that I wanted to be the guy showing up to TH, not the guy worried about the field bill being hit. And it was just clear, it was just time for me to go. But you know, when you're the head of a large organization, it's never smooth.

Yeah. Part of my transition was feeling pretty betrayed by a few people I thought were allies who weren't and all that kind of stuff. So, after I stepped down, I thought I need some healing. So, I went to a month-long retreat at Spirit Rock. And about, gosh, maybe about two weeks into the retreat, I started developing this ridiculous pain between my shoulder blades. And it was really, really like a stabbing pain. It would build and build and build. And I moved. And it was crick, crick, crick, like a chiropractic adjustment at my back. And then I feel fine for about 15 seconds and then it will start again. And I'm trained in a lot of yoga techniques and all kinds of healing techniques. And I tried everything. You know, I tried, you know, vigorous yoga, soft yoga, hot yoga, cold yoga, meditation, visualization, prayer, the whole thing. And it just kept getting more chronic. So, with one of my teachers, I told him what I was doing. And his response surprised me. He said, "Maybe you're dealing with it superficially. Have you considered just being with it?" And that had never occurred to me.

But then I thought the next sit, I went back and I just thought, "You know what? I'm just going to be with this if it kills me." And so, I just sat with the sensations and I started moving into what's called the kind of the noting practice where you simply label what you're noticing as it's happening. So, as I was describing it, I was just sort of noting to myself, "Well, this is waves of pain. Well, this is red waves of pain. No, this is white pulsing pain. Well, this is now really, this is like a condensed white dots of pain. This is a point that feels like a tip of a knife. This feels like I'm being stabbed in my back. And then suddenly, my eyes opened and like that was it. It was, it was feeling like I had lied, been stabbed in the back. And so, then I continued to note. And then what came through, all these emotions of like, "This is rage. I'd be with this.

This is revenge, fantasy. Can I be with this? This is embarrassment. Can I be with this? This is shame. Can I be with this? This is a feeling of empathy for the person who betrayed me. And I suddenly got like, "Oh, he was terrified of losing his job. So, that's why he threw me under the bus. But it was more out of his own fear. And by the time I got to the end of that meditation, I had such a deep understanding of where that betrayal came from. But was so cool, the doorway was through my willingness after days and days of nothing to actually be with what was going on." Right. I mean, it's, I mean, that's a beautiful, beautiful story. And I have gone through similar things in my professional career related to spiritual organizations. And so, I'm very intimately familiar with some of the emotional and psychological components that can come from that. And there's these added layers of, you know, people, a Kripalu, people who I've been working with, the intention is to do good in the world. So, it's not like we're working for some, you know, skizy, you know, bad lawyer firm who's defending, you know, companies poisoning the world where the intention is supposed to be for this. So, I understand that. But this ability to allow and be with something as a process of inquiry and how that opened up insight and even even the wonderful symbolism of what our mind and unconscious likes to do, the actual physical pain of being stabbed in the back, that's incredible. And that gets back to the function of what pain can be instead of looking at it as something we want to push away that we want to experience as little of as possible.

We know life isn't like that, right? We know this as a general metaphor for life. We can't just have positive. Our baseline isn't like ecstasy all of the time, punctuated by a little bit of things that aren't. I mean, we can change our mind state to relate to things. But as we go through these oscillations, allowing these things to happen and then investigating them can actually lead to transformation. That's a very powerful thing that I don't think enough people really tune into, quite honestly. Exactly, exactly. And again, that brings us back to the question around the function of pain. And I find myself really strongly disliking the word mindfulness.

There's no mind in mindfulness. So, my translation for mindfulness is non-judging awareness. I love it. So, when I'm practicing meditation, I'm practicing non-judging awareness. And then the question comes is, when you are visited by the heavenly messenger of sickness, pain, feeling old, how do you be with it? And that's where the inquiry comes in so powerfully. And I think it's important to acknowledge that the classic inquiry format of RAIN, yes, yes. The R is to recognize or realize what's happening. And sometimes that's enough. Just by noting it, it'll shift or move. But then once you notice it, to really ask if you can allow it, accept it, the A. That's the inviting your demons in for T.

And then the I is to investigate. And that's where you really sit down. And for me, that's the science of body centered inquiry is every emotion, every thought, every belief lives on the inside. How could it not? We're a mind body matrix. So then it becomes the whole practice of how intimately can you locate it? How intimately can you feel it? Oftentimes I describe what's called by Genlin and in the focusing world is the felt sense, how your body is holding something that because it's below the line, it's not formed yet. It's amorphous. And sensations tend to fall into a couple categories. One of them is strong and unmistakable. The wrench in your gut, the ache in your heart, the lump in your throat, the burning around your eyes, like you're about to cry, you can't miss it. It's there. Other times, it'll flicker or blip. It'll be like, wow, this little wave of sadness went through, but now I can't find it. But quite often, and this is where we tend to get lost, is that felt sense is vague and unformed and amorphous. And that is the magic word is something.

There's just something kind of heavy over my heart. There's just something here that's acidic and tight in my gut. We don't quite know what it is. It's below the line. But the analogy I use maybe too many times is that when you come in contact with that felt sense, it's like a wild animal at the edge of the woods. You can't chase it, you can't seduce it in, but you can let it know that you know it's there. And that's a very intimate experience and completely counterintuitive because we are biologically designed to move away from pain. And when you can bring non-judging awareness into recognizing, allowing, investigating, and the end to really nurture what you find with kindness and compassion, that is a really powerful formula. Well, and if you can do it, if you can start with your own pain and we all have pain and suffering in our own lives, once you can get familiar, I mean, this is my general premise and everything for life, once you can start doing it for yourself, you can then shift your focus or be able to shift your focus out to the external world. So you don't have to just look at pain as a physical sensation or an emotional tribulation, but looking out, for instance, at say a Donald Trump administration and seeing anger or righteous indignation or whatever it is, being cast out and trying to invite the same like Mara with tea, the same situation. And that can radically start to change your relationships, your perspective on the world. So this isn't just like a personal like, how do I not, you know, how do I deal with my emotional pain and physical pain better, this becomes kind of a template for engaging with the world, which then opens up countless possibilities. I mean, what we're also kind of not overlooking, but when you aren't dwelling and focusing and spending your energy on reacting or obsessing about a painful experience or even a memory, right, it opens up a lot more opportunity for other pursuits. So whether that's helping other people create creativity, whatever it is your passion is, you actually have the space and ability to figure that out and then actually to pursue it. Because I mean, we waste a lot of time either focusing on past, current, or future, not even happened, you know, pains. That's just how our minds seem to be built in this culture at this point. And I often think about if people weren't thinking about those things and obsessing about them, how the world would look. And I think it'd be a radically different place. Oh, it would be a radically different place, wouldn't it? A reminder, if you're interested in my new course on creativity and community, creative evolution, go check it out at sinkpodcast.com/beta. Sign up. I think it's going to be a really cool experience.

I'm launching the cool course in May. You're getting a sneak peek because you listen to this podcast. That's all I got to say about this. How about we get back to this incredibly awesome episode with Jonathan? All right. Bye-bye. Well, the thing would I find about pain, just as you're saying, is that when we are identified with our pain, we calcify. We get small. We go into what we often use the word "selfing." You become a very tightly bound self. Yes. And with all the different strategies of working with pain, there's a zone one, zone two meditation. There's looking for the space inside the pain. There's identifying how you're holding the pain. One of the most powerful, direct ways when I find, I'll just speak personally, that when I'm caught in pain, for example, I get migraines every now and then. They're pretty crippling. And this is a very simple phrase. Other people feel this too. And when I can sit there in my own little sniveling, just feeling really, really bad for myself, and I can remind myself, other people feel this too.

At this particular moment, there've got to be at least 100,000 people on the planet who are also experiencing migraines at that moment. Something shifts. Something shifts quite powerfully. And it's sort of like, if you're talking with someone, and they are describing the stabbing sensation in their neck, and they're going through a lot of stress and are about to make a move, your heart will instantly open because you've been there. And that's another beautiful thing about the magic of pain. The people who I generally find the most interesting are the ones who've suffered and gone through their suffering, to really steer interconnectedness.

I mean, I often say that as we're going through negative situations, experiences, we don't want to be, and we'll do pretty much anything we can to not. But then when you look back, I mean, this can be the death of a loved one or an end of a relationship, but professional catastrophe, whatever it is, you look back, those are the periods where you were facing stuff head on, right? Because sometimes because you didn't have a choice, and you grow, and you really start to learn and gain some insight into the nature of being alive. And I also like this thing you said about calcifying. I mean, in various psychedelic experiences and meditative experiences, I say this tongue in cheek eye, it becomes clear that this idea of the self, of Noah, of Jonathan isn't as real as we like to think it is. It's kind of these amalgamations of ideas, emotions, concepts, intellectualizations, experiences, memories, kind of all morphing together. And we say, Oh, well, that's me. This is who I am. This is who I'm going to be. But when you can kind of drop that role, right, and go into the soul, as I think Rambas popular, he says that, I mean, that is an amazingly liberating way. And you can tap into what you're referring to. And I love this instead of mindfulness, this non judging awareness. This is something that I've specifically applied to my own creative practice when you can tap into non judging awareness when dealing with yourself or your own creativity, you then don't get caught up into these rigid kind of, Oh, well, this isn't the way it should be. This is the way, you know, this isn't right. This isn't that. And it opens up all of these opportunities, which is amazing. So I love that you said that because I think, you know, the more we identify with an aspect of our persona, or an aspect of ourselves, that that opens up a lot of chinks in the armor, basically, you know, a lot of things can start hurting us then because we've settled on an idea of what or who we are.

Exactly. And when we remember that the practice really comes down to two fundamental wings, you know, with one wing being wisdom, just the capacity to see clearly. Yes. And that's like, okay, not my preference, not my embellishment, not my story, not my preference, what's actually true. When we can really burn into that, and then add that in a complimentary fashion with the wing of compassion. Yes. You know, how, how can I be with this? How can I hold this? What I find is that our pain, not just physical or emotional or mental, that it pretty much all comes down to an unmet need. Like there's something we're needing, there's something we're wanting. And so there's a particular question that I offer when I'm kind of guiding people through body centered inquiry, right? When you can really identify the pain, and you know, maybe it's, you know, here's this, you know, white pulsing, like twisted, acidic, dripping, feeling in your gut that something terrible is going to happen. Like now you've located it, you know, there are two questions I'll oftentimes offer someone who's really investigating pain.

First, I'll invite them to imagine its perspective, you know, from its point of view. And then the one question I'll ask is, is there a sense of what this needs, right? Or the other question that I, that I actually kind of prefer, it's a little more subtle is, when I can come in contact with that sensation and sort of imagine this point of view, I will ask, is there a sense of how this wants me to be with it right now? And that question sets up a very deep intimate inquiry, right? And sometimes what it needs or how it wants you to be with it, oftentimes just simply to be seen. And people say, like, no, I think this just wants me to really notice it, right? Or I think this just wants me to be with it.

It's not that often when people say, oh, it wants me to hold it with like dripping white light and like a lot of times, it's just something to truly be seen in the light of awareness. And that alone is the healing self, if you will. And I mean, it's, it just, it's not how culturally or even intuitively for a lot of us, how we want to deal with something like pain, you know, we want to push it away, which can kind of create this feedback loop of either intensifying or just like chronic pain or suffering and just inviting that openness and awareness and allowing this. I mean, that's, that's a radically transformative kind of approach, which, yeah, I mean, people just don't really navigate gravitate towards that naturally seems, yeah. A friend of mine was going to be giving birth and she was really clear with her family and the doctor. I, you know, I don't want any meds. I don't want any drugs. I really want to go through this be really conscious and birth this baby and the most, you know, the most natural way I can. And, you know, about of the third of the way through it, she's going epidural. That's in my life. Yeah. Don't believe me. Don't believe what I was telling you. Yeah. I know that when we're in it, we're in it. And when you look at the, look at the opioid addiction going on right now. Yes, yes. You know, we have this message in our culture that, Hey, you can make that go away.

And my gosh, what a, what a tragic well setup it is. I mean, it's, it's one of the worst things I've seen. And I am my avid and big proponent of cannabis. And one of the reasons, and it's come up a couple of times as we've been speaking, that I enjoy cannabis so much is, you know, a lot of people get paranoid sometimes when they smoke or ingest. And for me, I remember a very specific point in my life in my, in my teenage years, my later teenage years, where I realized that a lot of my paranoia wasn't anything that was being put on to me, but rather was kind of springing up from inside of me and was providing me opportunities to deal with this internal stuff. And once I started relating kind of those experiences to that, they often became very transformed into the point where the paranoia, I don't get paranoid anymore. But also when it comes to the medicinal use, is I don't think it's meant like when people say, yeah, I'm just going to smoke or I'm going to, you know, enjoy marijuana to alleviate or get rid of my pain. It's not its only function. The function is to become aware of what's going on. And it does provide a lot of people, especially medicinally, in a way to engage and approach their pain and suffering. Now I have a complicated theory of this that it's the female part of the plant, which is ingested and has the medicinal components and the association of this openness or compassion or this loving awareness can be considered a feminine principle, not sexual in any way, but the feminine quality. And I think that is something that it's doing for a variety of people. And I think opioids, on the other hand, are something that are basically designed in labs to block the sensation of pain. So to not even allow it to happen. And that is cutting off this huge opportunity that we've been discussing about the function and pragmatic use of pain and what it can lead to. And we see this not only manifesting in terms of psychological issues, but the physical addiction, the kind of hyperbolic relationship that begins to manifest when people get addicted to these substances. We're going to look back in 20, 30, 40, 50 years and just be appalled that this is something that we allowed to happen primarily through corrupt institutions. It's pretty sad for sure.

Well, one of the big things about cannabis from what I've read, of course, is there really two things. One is it actually enhances sensation. It actually amplifies the felt sense. And number two, it also affects your sense of time. So it actually allows you to be more intimately present to the sensations. And of course, if you hang out in the realm of the senses, inevitably, you're going to begin to see its relationship to consciousness. There's a whole sort of whole manifestation that occurs. When you think of energy at its most primal level, it's undifferentiated. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just pure, pure vibrating energy. That's right. Yes. So now the next level of energy is that without you being aware of it, the energy is going to form into one of three categories. It's referred to as vedna in Buddhist practice. There are going to be energy that feels unpleasant, energy that feels pleasant, and energy that feels neither pleasant nor unpleasant or neutral. So all energy can be fit into one of those categories. Now, then, without you even knowing it, if you're not aware, if you're not practicing non-judging awareness, then you'll move right into a thought form.

This is unpleasant sensation. Oh my god, this reminds me of the time. So if you're not aware of the thought form, and you think the same thought over and over and over again, the thought calcifies into a belief. That's right. And if you're not aware of your beliefs, your belief becomes your habits. If you're not aware of your habits, your habit becomes your character. And if you're not aware of your character, that becomes your destiny. And that's the beauty of vipassana and Buddhist meditation. It's actually guiding you back to that fundamental level of arising energy, where you can begin to see the relationship between energy, feeling tone, and the whole realm of thought and belief and so forth. I mean, that's an incredibly succinct way of outlining exactly what's going on there. I remember one specific, not to delve back into the entheogen territory too much, but I remember taking psilocybin mushrooms one time and actually being aware and visually in my mind's eye, being able to see those thought forms, turning to thought forms like actually from this energy, manifesting a little kind of spark into an actual bubble of thought. And then I'd see it kind of go off into the distance. And it was just an amazing kind of experience to see like we identify with these things so often without even being aware that we're creating and kind of, you know, latching onto them. And what you said exactly, I mean, it turns into belief. Once it then it goes into a habit, then it turns into our persona or character. And this is just a process that if we don't have a tool to kind of know that this is happening, what makes who or what begins to make our decisions for us, right? We relinquish the control and kind of this divine gift we have of being able to be aware of what's going on. And you say, okay, well, it's not really that important in our lives. It doesn't really hold that much sway. You know, this is just how life is and not even recognizing that some of our thoughts, ideas, emotions, may not even be ours, right? That's another thing like, we just take it for granted that everything that we think in our head or a lot of us do. Well, those are our thoughts. I came up with those not recognizing that there's any number of ways to influence people either consciously or unconsciously out in the world. And we kind of get this weird cognitive dissonance, which I think we're, you know, we're seeing playing out in the world, which is why when we talk about these things, it's not just to say, Oh, well, this is going on, but it can have a pragmatic and practical influence in our lives and thereby the world at large. Okay, I want to kind of shift gears just a little bit because I was reading your bio. And there was something that caught my attention. You mentioned that in around age six, you had a mystical experience that sent into motion a restless inquiry into your true nature.

I had a mystical experience when I was 20, somewhere around there 22. What was your mystical experience like when you were six? And I mean, as detailed or as you'd like to be, I'd love to find out kind of what sent you on this trajectory of your life. Well, that's such a cool question. I have a big smile on my thing about it. Cool. Yeah, I grew up on a farm in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. And for whatever reason, you know, I kind of walked out of the house and if there's a big pine tree by the house, like one of those monster, you know, like a 60 foot pine tree. And I was just leaning up against it for whatever reason. And the only way I can describe it, I'm kind of accessing a six year old's brain. Yeah, is I found myself just merging with the tree.

And then, and again, this is my six year old language is that it was like the stars in the sky were cells in my body, which is actually really beautiful, beautiful description. Yeah, this just this deep sense of, of ecstatic presence, you know, just very, really, really deep static experience experience. So, of course, the paradox of that was after in that very powerful resonance, you know, I went in to tell my mother. And I told her, and she looked at me and said, wash your hands this time for lunch. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. And then I tried telling my brothers, and you can imagine that, you know, but, but what that did is it kicked in a very, very deep search. But it also kicked in a very deep commitment to, to create a space for other people where they could actually experience and find a language for that. Ah, yes. Yes. That's pretty much been my life, you know, from there. I mean, I love that you described it like that, too. I mean, it's I've had many experiences that retrospectively looking at would be considered mystical, or transcendent experiences, you know, ranging from when I was very young, you know, to present day. And, you know, after I'd formed kind of more of my ego structure, not in a pejorative sense, but, you know, figuring out my way in the world, it immediately, like, the next thing after I'd have an experience was how A is everyone having this happen to them? B, if they are, why isn't everyone talking about this all of the time? C, if they're not, how do we start to create some template or way to get people like this? And then, you know, as you do readings, as you meet other people, the internet was a huge thing. You know, I was pre internet when a lot of this stuff was happening. But then once that happened, it really is a gateway for a lot of people.

You realize that this is just how does happen to people and has been happening for thousands of years since the dawn of society. And depending on where you live, what was pointed out to me once is, you know, if you had had that experience in, let's say, India, and you went to your mom and you were in a religious family, she wouldn't be like, hey, you know, go wash your hands. She'd be like, oh, my God, like, you just had a transcendent experience. You know, we got to go get some insight into what was going on. You know, what would that? So there's, it's interesting how our culture also dictates how we relate to kind of the unseen esoteric, you know, experiences. But I can only imagine what that was like as a six year old. I don't think I have any clear memory of a mystical experience from then. But, you know, what? So you're six. What happens from that point forward? Do you start kind of like going to the library to read about stuff? Like, how does this kind of integrate into your life from that point forward? Oh, wow, what a great question. You know, there's something, you know, in the forum and, you know, when our air hearts work that was so powerful, where he talks about how this summarizing very, very quickly, but where he says, you know, look at what you do really well, you know, and that will point toward what he what he calls your winning formula. So what's the strategy that you have for getting by? And then he says, take a look at when you're young, what they refer to as a, as a break in belonging, like a time when you got for the first time you're on your own and no one gets you. Yes. And look at the relationship between that.

And so I was doing one of the courses and I realized, well, you know, what I do really well is, you know, I'm really committed to creating a safe space for people to have an authentic experience of themselves. It's all I do. It's all I think about. You know, I create products that write about it. I give talks about that's pretty much it. Yeah. And then then what I thought about that break in belonging and it was that moment when I tried to describe my non-ordinary experience and having it utterly not seen and not heard. Like that was, that was actually a really searing experience for me. Like no one gets this. Yeah. Yeah. But then from there was really like, I want to make it possible for other people to have this experience. You know, so, so a lot of my initial response was feeling pretty darn lonely, you know? Yeah. I know what that's like. I mean, mine happened much later, right? I tapped into, I got some type of cosmic download where I just tapped into this sense of unconditional love. What we would call non-judging awareness, which I was calling unconditional love and just being utterly incapable at the time of translating it into any language or system or symbol set that people could understand at all. And it was such a crippling, it actually led to the only depressive, you know, incident in my life where I was just like, I felt completely isolated and alone that I had had this amazing experience that I wish so much to other people could have, but just couldn't even communicate what was going on, you know? And luckily, as you know, and I know, as you move farther in time away from the actual experience and really stay attuned to it, you begin to be able to express and provide the spaces as you're putting it where people can get in touch with that. And there's nothing you can do other than kind of create the conditions to allow those types of experiences to manifest in other people. And that alone, I mean, that's one of the best things you can do for anyone in life. So, I mean, I get it. I get why that would become a calling. And I see how it kind of, you know, fed into your time at Cropale. Could you talk a little bit about how you got tuned into Cropale?

I mean, you were the president for a little bit, you were there for 24 years. What kind of led you there? And, you know, what kept you there too? Well, you know, I think in many ways when there's, I mean, we're all in a search. And, you know, for some of us have sort of been gifted by a non-ordinary experience like that, it really amplifies the search. So it's like, oh, well, these chemicals, maybe that's it. Yeah. Oh, the orgasm. It's the orgasm. You know, oh, maybe it's this, you know, oh, it's in literature. I can find it there. And so, you know, that very restless search was very much a part of my life. I lived in West Africa in the Peace Corps for a number of years, teaching in a university, then I would try to cross the Sahara Desert on my bicycle thinking, that's it. Maybe this will be it, you know, to get out in the middle of the desert where there's, you know, nobody there. And I ended up getting very sick on that trip. And I ended up going back to the last place on earth I wanted to be, which was the East Coast on my parents' farm. And it just so turns out that when Cropalo Center was down in Pennsylvania, one of their satellites was kind of over the hill from my parents' farm. So I went to see a doctor because my allopathic doctor couldn't figure what was going on with me after my experience in the desert. And then suddenly, you know, in this ashram, here's a community of maniacs like me, you know, people who really wanted to practice. And it was sort of an instantaneous sense of like, I think I just found my tribe. And again, by tribe, you know, really meaning like, here are people who really value the practice, you know, who are putting themselves on the line in order to practice.

And back in those days at Cropalo, it was a, we were pretty intense. You know, in order to live there, you had to be celibate, you had to take a poverty vow. And I loved the focus and the intensity of it. And then of course, everything, things change. Well, it's how it's the nature of life, right? I mean, that's the one thing we know for sure. Well, as you were describing your experience in spiritual communities and so forth, I often describe, you know, many spiritual communities and many nonprofits, just in my experiences, they are filled with highly idealistic, undertrained people. Yeah, I got to include myself in that, I include myself in that category.

I definitely can relate to that. Well, you know, my whole premise, you know, doing what I do with the digital strategy is I thought, you know, if I'm working with spiritual organizations and non-profits, there's going to be way less ego. Of course, they're spiritual and no one's really going to have any sense of ego in these things. And that did not turn out to be true because there's nowhere I have found. And there are certainly groups and communities and organizations whose intentions and aspirations are totally aligned and people are willing to grow, but we live in the world. And personalities bump up against each other, ideas bump up, you know, stuff happens, basically, for lack of a better term. But I love, I mean, you're talking about the Sangha, the community, and this is something that has become increasingly more and more important in my life. I consider myself kind of a extroverted introvert. So I, my natural inclination is to do things alone and solitude and kind of build what I'm building. But over the past few years, especially as I've linked with more and more people, it's just incredible to see how community and like-minded people talking about just talking about things alone can be such a transformative practice in and of itself, not even adding any other layer or ritual to it, but just having conversation, which is why I love doing these podcasts. You know, I love having a podcast network where people can approach this stuff from different angles. I mean, it's just, you know, I believe in the future Buddha basically being the community and the Sangha that to me is quite clear. And I love that you touched on that with Cropalo. So yeah, I think part of what I just saw over my decades at Cropalo and on-profits is like in any relationship, but particularly when it comes to community, we tend to project our idealized family on the community. Yes. And then we're deeply disappointed.

Yeah, like anything. Yeah. And then we, and then we act out, you know, according to our kind of our sort of unseen, unfelt, unprocessed emotions. Yeah. And that's why oftentimes in spiritual community, where everyone is trying so hard to be aware that they're so rife with communication issues and strong emotional issues. And it's interesting in the business world, it's a lot more cut and dry. Yeah. You know, like, hear the rules and you say what you think and and it takes a tremendous amount of skill to navigate being in conscious community. And when you look in the, when the Buddha was forming, you know, the communities back in his day, they had all these rules around communication, a long list of what you couldn't talk about. And then a list of what you could talk about. And I see why after my years of, of being in community.

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly the more that the platform has kind of opened up and the more people that get into anything, you know, the more opportunity there is for both harmony and discord. So it's just one of those things that happens. There's, there's nowhere else to go. So what I'd love to do is I ask three questions at the end and then one or three quick questions and then one larger question. So I'm going to ask you those now. And I just want to say, this has been such an awesome conversation. I've really, really enjoyed this. And I would love to do this again. And also, next time I'm in the kind of the DC area, I'd love to go to one of your talks too. And I'll have links for everything that you're doing up on this podcast page and other places too.

So here are the questions. What is your favorite color? Favorite color? Wow. You know what, black? Cool. Cool. I love it. What's your favorite number? Seven. Very great choice. Very great choice. What's your favorite animal? Oh, I have to say a dog. Cool. I love dogs. They're so great. I think I met your dog when I was at Tara's in your house, I don't know, six or eight months ago. What's the name? Her name is KD. Oh, yes, KD. It's KD, which is short for a cute dog. Oh, well, it makes total sense because a doll, a doll. Yeah, ridiculous. Yeah, really, really is. That little face has gotten her out of so much trouble. Tell me about it. We have a little golden doodle and man. He really knows how they know how to ham it up. They know what they got. They work it.

Okay. And the last question is, for people listening, if you could share a practical tip that has helped you in your life, that would be great. Wow. Here's something that I have found very, very helpful in my life. And it has to do as it with a strategy for creating intention. And that is, for example, to be totally honest, I forgot to do it for this conversation. But when I'm really aware, let's say I'm heading into a meeting, I ask myself, how do I want to feel at the end of this meeting? And then I sort of fill in the blanks. Well, what attitude would I have to go into? What behaviors would I have to cultivate in order to cultivate that feeling? And that has been a really helpful little tool for me. Like, when I give a talk on my Monday nights, you know, at the beginning, oftentimes we'll just ask, how do I want to feel at the end of this talk? Well, I want to feel connected. I want to feel relaxed. I want to feel inspired. And then when I can take those qualities and fold them into my presentation, it really streamlines things. Oh, man, I mean, this is that's an amazing tip. And also, it's something I actually do for my product launches. And my, you know, business stuff is it's a backwards plan. You know, I come up with what is the finished product? What is the finished finished project? And then I work back, what would I need to have this done tomorrow? And then if I come up with a whole list of things, what would I need to come up with those things? And applying that with intention for situations I never thought of, but is like a genius idea. So that's really, really, really great. Thank you for that. It's really cool. And you can see how just as you describe it, you sort of like building it backwards. But also, it's like really going for the feeling.

Yes. Because again, it's back to like the embodied, that embodied space out of which everything arises. And maybe in our next conversation, we can talk about that embodied space. Because I had a blast. Thank you so much for doing this, Jonathan. So much fun to connect with you. Yes. Great. Yeah, we'll do it again in the not too distant future. Cool. Cool. Thanks so much. Okay, take good care. All right. Bye bye. He too. Bye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to find more out about Jonathan, go to his website, JonathanFals.com. You can find out about him, what he's up to. He teaches in the DC metropolitan area regularly. You can connect with him in a variety of ways. There'll be links, as always, on the podcast page for this on SyncPodcast.com, MindPodNetwork.com. Join the synchronicity community on Facebook if you're interested in taking this to another level. Also, there's the email list. There's different forms of communication with the podcast that you can have.

And as a reminder, if you're listening to the end of this, hopefully you enjoyed what you're listening to and you didn't just pass out, you didn't fall asleep and it's just running and I'm talking to no one. If you've listened this far, do and you have any inclination to check out something that's going to help you home, tap your own creative potential or you just want to learn how to make time for creativity. Maybe you just want to explore it. Do check out the beta version of creative evolution, which is the online course and community that's officially launching in May, but the beta course starts April 11th. Again, that's SyncPodcast.com/beta or just send me an email, Noah@syncpodcast.com. So that's it for this week and I will see you next week.