Transform Your Life with Simple Embodied Awakening Techniques | EP 61

We're not either one personality ego, like I am anxious. Oh, I should try not to be anxious.
Oh, let me meditate to not be anxious. Or the other side of it is, oh, there's nobody here that's anxious.
There actually is no self. So the middle one is to realize, oh, part of me is anxious.
If you wake up, you have to continue to grow up. And if you're growing up, at some point you reach a level where you have a strong, healthy ego.
You have to wake up even from that because the emotions and the tenderness and the sensitivity and the healing of everyday trauma, which we all have, requires something greater than our small self. And so waking up for me is a developmental stage.
So it's not just an esoteric thing that's for the Olympic athletes of meditation, or you have to go off, join a monastery or live in a cave. For different learning styles, maybe we could try a few glimpses and then we'll do more of an IFS one.
Let's do one where we're going to go from head to heart space. Today, I'm joined by a dear friend of mine, Ma Kelly, who's an award-winning author.
He's a spiritual teacher and a fellow psychotherapist. And we're going to unpack the different levels of awakening.
He's got a beautiful framework, but also give you embodied inquiries so that you can experience what you are while you are actually diving into this episode. He's going to unpack different levels of consciousness, sharing his map so that you don't get stuck in misunderstandings on the path of awakening, but also on the podcast, you're going to get some of his glimpses practices, which are embodied inquiries.
So you can not just know it, but live it more fully from the episode. I hope that you enjoy it.
Locke, I am so happy to finally have you on the podcast. Welcome, welcome.
Thank you. This is so great to be with you here and to be with you and your audience and talk about whatever you want to talk about.
This is like an advanced training and embodiment exploration of embodied awakening.

And so just to start us off, because I know we're going to go conceptual and experiential,

which I love.

Talk to us because I think people have different definitions of what awakening means.

Can we start with defining what awakening is so that we're on the same page?

Yes.

And so when I talk about awakening similar to you, I talk about waking up and growing up. So in some ways, as Ken Wilber said, they go together.
And that's one thing I've been with the waking up crowd and I've been with the growing up crowd doing a psychology degree and working inpatient psychiatric and outpatient in Brooklyn mental health. And then going off to India and studying with some wonderful meditation teachers, and then just being enthralled, being just like, oh my God, this is real and this works and this makes my life so much better, but I need both.
Yeah, because you can be totally awake to your true nature and have a disintegrated life. And you could be having this like really like controlled and put together life and be unawake to the truth of who and what you are.
So yes. Yes.
Yeah. And this is why I kind of do these stages because people get caught halfway or they get stuck in the initial awakening.
They wake up from a kind of ego-centered feeling of who they are, but then they stop at either a pure awareness or no self or a kind of like, oh, I'm free of that. And then this part takes over that's kind of like an adolescent, oh, everything's relative.
I can just do what I want. And we all know the stories of how many gurus and teachers who had, you know, initial awakenings.
I've actually worked with them. Certainly, I've worked with a lot of people who were hurt by them and helped them with their trauma.
But I've also, with about five different teachers who acted out physically, violently, emotionally, with money, with sex, with drugs, with. And it's just like the curiosity of like, well, what happened? And so in some ways, I'll just say as we get back to our main topic here, in some ways, if you wake up, you have to continue to grow up.
And if you're growing up, at some point, you reach a level where you have a strong, healthy ego, you have to wake up even from that. Because even a strong, healthy ego cannot bear a fully emotional human life.
Because the emotions and the tenderness and the sensitivity and the healing of everyday trauma, which we all have, requires something greater than our small self. And so waking up for me is a developmental stage.
So it's not just an esoteric thing that's for the Olympic athletes of meditation, or you have to go off, join a monastery or live in in a cave. My hope and what I've seen with thousands now of people is it's possible in the midst of any daily life to learn some tools.
And if you're dedicated and consistent, it's just like a stage of development. It's like a school-age stage of being in therapy for some years.
And then it literally, the view of you from where you're looking from and from where you're aware from and what is supporting you just is what all spiritualities and religions are talking about,

and yet we can put it in fairly simple, common language,

and anybody can use any language they want.

But the experience of shifting out of this small thought-based,

I think, therefore I am, or what people call ego identity or small self,

whatever that is, that feeling of where are you listening to me from right now.

So one of the keys in bringing it together is that ego center is an ego function and doesn't need to be killed or gotten rid of.

It's not ultimately an illusion.

It's a helpful part of us, but it's exhausted. Yeah.
It's a part of us, not the whole of us. Not the whole of us.
That's right. Yeah.
And I love that you, because we want healthy, integrated egos. Like that's an important, and I love that you're talking about this as being a development.
And I I'll, I'll share this before we can just to give people context, because I love your framework. I know the work goes deeper and we'll talk about the high level and go a little bit deeper.
So you talk about waking up, which is like, Oh, I'm more than my body and my mind. That's like the initial, like Adi Ashanti talks about the first kiss of awakening.
Like, it's like, Oh wow.. And I know we originally met through Adia's community.
But this first awakening of like waking up out of and beyond being identified with a body mind. And then this waking down and how I experience it as a somatic psychotherapist is like embodying like, oh, I'm not just a body mind, but I have a body mind.
And coming back into body, transcending body, knowing I'm more than it. And then waking out, which is awakened doing, enlightened living.
And that's the conversation that I want to go deeper into here. But before we go into some of those, I would love just to hear conceptually how you hold those.
And then later we'll go into an experience of them. Sure.
Yeah. And we'll do a couple of what I call glimpses, which is the way that in the midst of your life, you can literally learn to navigate your own consciousness using technology that is in some ways, some of the more advanced non-dual meditation practices of Jogsha and Mahamudra and these other that have these simple moves once you know the territory.
So the territory is everyday mind is what we walk around in, everyday mind and body, that we're trying our best to survive. So like really a lot of protective parts of us, our main, you know, survive and thrive is our motivation for any animal that we are, right? And then we develop school age, secondary process thinking, where we have to be independent as we grow up from first we're dependent on our parents and we're just responding.
And then we have to be independent. We develop an ego function, which knows how to just crawl around.
And now we have to have an identity that says, what do I need to do? Where do I live? And it starts to create this thinking-centered I, which is an important function. But who is that all occurring to? So the premise of this throughout the world, what's been called awakening in all these traditions, is there is already here this awakeness within all of us.
Many people call it being, or interbeing is what Thich Nhat Hanh called it, or presence, consciousness itself, prior to

personality, but with personality. So it's the ocean that arises as a wave of our uniqueness, and you're a wave and I'm a wave, but we're really a little bit more the ocean than the individual wave.
So finding that dimension, which often is initially found almost as the sky before it becomes the ocean. So let me just say that there's a kind of a physical identification and then a mental identification, so it becomes almost like we're a cloud of sensations.
And then rather than fixing the cloud, which we do with psychology and even some spiritual practices, just calm the body, fix the symptoms, and then we're kind of a calmer ego. But there's an existential dissatisfaction underneath because our identity isn't truly who we are.
So there's always this, no matter how calm and how many people I've met in New York who like, I've got everything going for me. I've got family, friends, success, life.
I do meditation. I eat well.
I got diet. And there's something missing.
Yes. What is this? And this is what this is, that there is this dimension, and it's often, you know, religious language has been the tradition, but then it can be spiritual but not religious, and now you can be consciousness and or any of the other combination.
So there is this awake, aware consciousness like the sky that's alert, and if you just open to the space in the room and just then be aware of the space as the space, the background awareness, and then come back, include the cloud. So step out of the cloud into the sky, recognize you're also the sky, and then come back.
You're not spacing out or spiritually bypassing, you're coming right back. But now you're aware from this non-thought dimension that ultimately is what the most highly functional happy people call being in flow consciousness.
So with open eyes, the fifth level of mind that we're going to is what I call awake loving flow. So it has this awakeness, it has this love, this heart, but then it's operating without trusting that thought, sensation, emotion is available within our consciousness that already knows how to walk and talk and create and relate.
And then you can respond. So that waking up from discovering some kind of new mind, which I call a wake-aware mind, so you're aware of it and then as it, but then pretty quickly you realize you can't stay in the pure awareness for more than a few seconds.
You can stay in it as a meditation, but as soon as you're aware of anything, you either have to go back to the mind to use attention, or you have to come from kind of a mindful witness consciousness, which is disembodied. Yeah, I think it's important to hear that, that it's a stage that sort of like witnessing consciousness is the waking up.
That's a stage, though, there's more than that. Because some people get, in Buddhism, they call it drunk on emptiness.
Like, it's getting stuck in I am awareness, but that's really duality, that there's awareness and then everything else. So thank you.
I just wanted to double click on what you're saying here, because I think a lot of people get stuck there. Yes.
Yeah. And that's a lot of why I kind of talk about these levels.
I'm just trying to say, keep going. Come on, keep going.
That's good, but check out this. Oh, that's even better.
But don't stay there. Come on home.
You come back from that pure awareness, which a lot of people establish as, I'm awake, I'm only pure awareness, everything else is illusion. Whereas this is saying no in this more Buddhist non-duality, that pure awareness is the same, is not separate from the relative everyday appearances, thoughts, feelings, sensations.
And when those two feel together, there's this unity mind, or what a lot of people experience when they do psychedelics, and they experience a kind of a oneness or a feeling of like, oh, everything's the same as me, like I'm the tree and the tree is, you know, they get a, like a hit of that almost, you know, extreme form of a peak experience of this, that when we walk around in more of a unity mind, you just feel like everything's friendly. Like there's not a threat to it from anything because you're not in the survival mode of the brain.
You feel like you can respond,

and then you start to feel this heart-mind, which is kind of an embracing feeling in IFS, they call it self and self-leadership, where you start to lead from self with a capital S rather than small self, or true nature, or being, or presence, whatever, this sense of who you are now can be aware of parts that are both the manager, the judge, and the critic can come in like, what are you doing? You're going to lose this. You go, oh, thank you for sharing.
Or the shame-based parts start to come up, And this is the only dimension that can bear what seemed to be unbearable. Let's unpack that.
Because I think sometimes when people are deepening in presence or feeling more regulated in their nervous system, some of the stuff, those parts of ourselves or the stuff that we've repressed start coming up and they think they're going backwards. When really it's just, you know that this part of you feels safe enough for that to actually process.
I mean, this is some of the deepest coaching or therapy that I know to hold and help people wake back up to who they are. And everything, as it meets the presence of what you are, dissolves and integrates in such a powerful way.
So I just want to give that to people because they might be thinking you know i'm i this is worse it's like no this is just what's been repressed and it's now starting to thaw out and integrate yeah beautiful yeah that so yeah exactly thaw out as those are the kind of the good phrases just say you're going to thaw out you've been frozen or you're going to detox because you've been agitated. You've been filled with agitation and kind of feels like toxic, and you have to detox that.
Or if you shut down, you're more frozen. So this is the whole picture, is the fully infinite and intimate, the divine and the human, the sacred and the… Human being The human and the being.
It's two words. They go together.
Oh, yes. Yes.
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And so if you want to get behind the scenes access to the Institute with three proven transformational tools for free to help you create the business and life you love, all you have to do is go to alissanobiga.com forward slash tools, or you can find us at alistanobriga.com forward slash apply now to see all the details and apply today. I love that you've got this map of consciousness so that people don't get stuck in these cul-de-sacs, you know, as, as, you know, there's like different schools of thought of like spontaneous awakening and prepare and yes.
And, you know, like there's grace and what's most important is to, to really, I think you and I align with doing both the psychological and the spiritual, like really honoring a deeper truth. I'm curious, just given that you've worked with so many people over the years, are there particular misconceptions or cul-de-sacs that people get stuck in that you can highlight so that they wake up out of these perceived limitations? Yeah.
And in some ways it's kind of like saying, look, these are normal cul-de-sacs. Like don't get too, don't get too worried about them because if you go step-by-step, here's what they are.
And here's where you can set up camp. You can set up

camp. And sometimes they're a little bit better, but they end up kind of getting thin or wearing out like a little, or you have to hold them together.
You've heard of the spiritual bypass, of course, John Welbert. So I talk about the intellectual overpass, which is kind of like, Yes.

People read a lot of spiritual books and, you books and try to, as soon as they get an insight experientially, their intellect grabs it. Oh, I got it now.
Now I understand that I'm one with everything. It's like, well, come on back down to where you feel it.
And then there's actually the psychological underpass, which is people who only do psychological work and never realize there's something greater than themselves. Yeah.
Always healing, kind of stuck in the cul-de-sac of always healing. I am somebody that is deficient.
Yeah. And they don't quite let themselves discover that which is greater than the ego.
Because in some ways, that's the kind of radical premise of both these systems. That's the medicine.
And also just to that part, I do think that there's wisdom in this part of us that doesn't feel good enough. My experience, that was my core story.
And psychologically, that was the story, but it was a gift to wake up spiritually to who I am beyond the story of good enough or not good enough. And so it's like when you're identified with a small self, of course, you're not going to feel good enough because it's not the whole of you.
And so emotionally welcoming the part of you that doesn't feel good enough helps you ironically wake up to or even feeling the part that doesn't feel good enough fully by allowing it helps you wake up to the whole. And so these can be doorways, but there are nuggets in these misconceptions or parts, these patterns in us that have us suffer if we go deeper into it spiritually.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Beautiful.
Because I'd say that's the first like insight or misconception that becomes an insight is that we're not either a one personality ego, like I am anxious. Oh, I should try not to be anxious.
Oh, let me meditate to not be anxious. Or the other side of it is, oh, there's nobody here that's anxious.
There actually is no self. There's just movement of energy and stories.
There's just stories just appearing and coming and going. There's nobody here.
So the middle one is to realize, oh, part of me is anxious. Oh, there is a part of me that's anxious.
Okay, let me see where is that part in or around my body and literally locate it like, oh, this part is like grabbing me by the throat, you know? And it's like, all right, can you thank this part for trying to help you? So there's the next radical thing. So rather than saying, you know, the judge is bad and, you know, stop, you know, being angry at the ego and judging the judge, you know, and then judging the judge for judging the judge, you know.
Another layer of judgment, yeah. You actually start in this kind of parts-based internal family systems approach by saying there's no bad parts.
And so you start to appreciate your intention of even the mean part in you, the rageful part, is trying to help you intentionally. Now, it can act out and do negative things, you may have noticed, but we can talk about that later.
But there's a positive intention in it. There's a positive intention, especially when you start with it internally, when it starts to talk.
And that part isn't just a thought or even a story or a belief. It's a thought feeling sensation that thinks it's an identity, thinks it's you.
So that's what a part is. It's just a different approach.
And it sneaks up and looks out of your eyes and says, I, I am anxious. I can't believe that this person, and then that makes me feel this way.
And so it keeps saying I, but you realize as soon as you can locate it and thank it and appreciate it's trying to help because it's protective. It's a protective part.
It's a managing part. It's trying to survive.
It's a survival strategy. then you can ask it for some space and then you step out or drop down to your heart or step out to be aware of it from another part of you.
And then you can actually open up to be aware of both that mindful witness and your awake, aware mind that's interconnected with it and that has naturally unconditioned love and understanding. And that's what integrates it into the nervous system.
And that's what integrates it. And that's what has capacity to bear, like, you know, rage and terror are just not too big for any ego.
That's right. That has been held down from normal, just life and energy of being a full human being.
You've got to have energy. And if you, you know, move it up another channel to be really nice or to be really workaholic or whatever that is, it'll go through that line of energy.
But if you let it kind of steam off, you get more space for it. That's the key.
You have more space and not spaced out, more space in and out near the sky and the cloud, and then it starts to self-liberate. And you start to appreciate what its motivation, and you unburden it from its belief.
That's where the story comes in. You unburden it from this story that, oh, I need to do this because of what I was doing when I was five years old.
Or because then I think I'll be loved and accepted and safe, essentially. Like I've sort of mapped it as well, where it's like any of these people-pleasing, self-doubt, perfectionism, it just underneath wants to belong and be accepted so that then it feels safe.
So it always goes back to safety survival. This is exactly what we do in my certification program, training coaches on mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, somatically, unconsciously, like everything you're sharing is, I feel so proud of this work because this is the deepest coaching and the deepest therapy know, weight, helping wake people up to the truth of their being, which is the liberating presence that sets it free.
And so I love what you're sharing. And I also know one of the most important parts of my own path was, you know, the distinction between local awareness and non-local awareness, just like knowing beyond the mind.
Can you unpack this for us? Because, and again, this is advanced. So if people are listening, they're like, what? This is some advanced spiritual embodied exploration.
And so just, you know, we'll also get to some embodied experiences. So for those that orient less conceptually and orient more kinesthetically, we're about to get there.
So hang in there. Yeah.
And I'll just follow up what you said about, you know, because the problem is, and the natural human condition is trying to find safety and survival, surviving and thriving. So it wants to survive, but it also positively wants to thrive, wants to, you know, and even desire.
It's not bad. Desire is thriving.
I want to get, I want to connect, I want to, but then it gets addictive or it gets and survive. So the key becomes, where do you find the new safety? So when you go to this pure awareness, and then it is what's called same taste or unity mind or embodied presence, the feeling is of a ground.
You feel grounded and safe. And now the key to embodied action is you've got to trust being flow.
You've got to act. You can't go up, back up to say, okay, now I'm going to do something, so I better think about what I'm going to do.
You stay home, and you have to get like this, like when you're in a flow, when you do a sport or dance or something athletic or music, you play music, listen to music, play with children, gardening, all these activities that people enter to be in this flow, the same principles apply, but you can just do it anywhere, even on a subway in New York City. You can feel safe, you drop, open, and include, you feel the safety, and then you respond, you look out of the eyes of your heart almost, like you're really kind of home and trusting that the information from the office of your head is coming down to your heart-mind and your kind of boundless heart.
And that's the feeling of this potential that isn't so far away. It sounds like, oh, wow, well, there's certainly parts of us like, oh, that's good for him.
He went to India, but I'll never do it. So anybody who recognized those parts, that's a part.
There's going to be a doubting part. There's going to be a trying part.
And that's how we start is often by saying, okay, let's find the parts that are going to protecting us from going to the next level. They're just saying, look, we're safe by staying just as we are.
They're trying hard, and they're doubting, and they're shame-based. I'll never do it.
It's for everyone else. I'm not good enough.
If only I do this first, then it'll be okay. No, how about now? That's right.
You're here. It's there.
The premise, as you say, of local awareness and awake awareness is that when we do these glimpses, which are these practices that can be done any time of day, and that's the thing, you can do them sitting in the morning, you can do it before and then sit, or you can sit and then do them we can do them one of the favorite places is

hit the snooze alarm in bed five five minutes like don't even get up and meditate just like you're in the sleep state you come into a liminal state and you hit the snooze alarm roll over and either listen to or like a glimpse or do a glimpse and then get out of bed.

Yeah, let's experience them. Let's do it.
Let's do it. Yeah.
So for different learning styles, maybe we could try a few glimpses and then we'll do more of an IFS one. Okay.
Let's do one where we're going to go from head to heart space. Okay.
So this shows local awareness and, and what's called awareness, or effortless awareness. So the premise is, so you just have to have a premise, it's like an experiment.
You don't have to believe anything, you just have to try to have beginner's mind, but it's a different hypothesis, and then we do the experiment, and then you report the results. That's all.
So, no, no pressure. So, the premise is that the awake consciousness is already here within us.
It's not thought-based. It can move your hand, and it can use thought, and it can put your hand down, and it can put thought down and remain alert.
But where we are in our survival mode is in this negativity bias of the brain projecting worst case scenarios from the past into the future and scanning for danger so in that location awake awareness is just identified or attached or blended it can unhook and de-center and drop. So it's blended, and the whole field is available, but it's a cloud.
It's in the cloud. It can drop below the cloud and come into your body, and you can feel your body directly from within.
I've had ballerinas and yoga teachers crying, saying, oh my God, I felt my body for the first time from within, because they were using it like it was a thing, appendage that they could move. But literally, the first feeling is you're aware of your body from within, and then you go to this safe space somewhere below your neck.
Some people find it here. Some people feel it in their whole body.
And then you're just aware of it. You're aware behind, within, and in front.
So we'll try that. So that's the premise.
So you won't know how to do it. So the radical thing is I'm not talking to you, the personality or the doer.
I'm talking to you, the awake consciousness. Hello.
Nice to meet you. Introduce yourself to yourself.
And then somehow you, the awake consciousness, since you're going to want to live this life, why not start now by unhooking yourself from being identified and just drop down, come home. Yeah? How's that sound? So just simply be aware of listening to my words and hearing what I'm saying and noticing that your hearing's happening in your head and you maybe have a part that's preparing, wondering if you're going to do it right.
And then simply just feel as if awareness is identified. Somehow this awareness, like a bubble, invisible bubble, can simply unhook and de-center and drop down so you're aware of your jaw, your smile from your jaw and smile.
And then feel as if this bubble, some people feel like it's an invisible elevator or like an invisible leaf. It just moves down to your throat or your neck.
And then, so the key is just don't look up to thought and don't look down from attention that you literally you're directly perceiving the effervescent aliveness, the space,

and the awareness from within your throat,

and then let your awareness drop below your neck into your upper body.

And then just feel your upper body directly from within,

just like you almost take a little deeper breath and let out a sigh.

Ah.

So we let it center down.

So now your head is like your feet.

Thank you. deeper breath and let out a sigh.
Ah. So we let it center down.
So now your head is like your feet. It's still part of you, but it's no longer the center.
Your feet aren't the center and your head's not the center. So you're now looking for a safe space that people say, this is me, like your heart mind, heart space, and see if you can go subtler and subtler,

and now just go into the awake space within the cells, within the atoms,

into this heart-space.

And just rest, almost like you're received in this open presence. And then just being aware of the heart space, it's like you're aware from the heart space.
Inside, and maybe even you can feel behind you and notice that awareness has your back. The local awareness can open behind you to discover this field of awareness that's always been there without your help and now is coming forward mixed with aliveness in your body like a wave and then kind of feeling interconnected from your heart space out and any thoughts and emotions come down, like Wi-Fi from the office of your head, just staying home, sweet home, in your heart.
And it's not your emotional heart or your heart chakra or your physical heart, it's another center. Some people need to go kind of behind and below their emotional heart to get here.

So here is another view and another location to be aware from.

It's beautiful. Yeah.
There's less of the top heavy. It's just really sinking deeper, and there's more presence.
It feels more natural, less hypervigilance in the mind orientation. And I know that part of kind of this unhooking, dropping back down and in, right? Because it's no longer this like looking from the head down.
That's it. It's back, awareness back, like notice what's noticing, like just stepping Back and then back and then down and in.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're getting out of that, that thought's going to thought, going to scan for danger, eyes, head, and then you're stepping out of that. But you're not spacing out.
This way you're coming into the space within. And this would be nice to do every hour or so, just as a way to reprogram this kind of hypervigilance in the mind, especially for more conceptual types, that there's an intelligence.
I remember actually you stayed at our house, our old house. And around that time, I love these experiences and like testing of things.
Because I remember testing how intelligence is this presence? Like, does it really need the mind? My mind, the mind that was like, that part was holding on thinking, you really need me. And so I explored, I'm like, well, what happens if I really just live from this heart-based awareness.
And the moment I needed something,

it would come into my conscious mind.

But I can't tell somebody that.

You have to run your own experiment

to find out if that's true.

As soon as I was leaving the house, it was like keys.

I was like, oh, just these little things

that I thought I needed the mind to tell me,

it just weren't true.

And I needed to find that out for myself.

So I love these experiences for people. Will you share with us an embodied IFS emotion-based glimpse? Yes.
Yeah, I can do a couple more quick little glimpses because they're so short. Yeah.
And that's the thing. So the thing about that one too is the intelligence of that and the trust, like you're saying that, and particularly the automatic thoughts, which is chattering mind, do not have to be listened to.
They can move to the background. So they're still there.
There's still mental sensations like sensations in your hands. But you don't have to check with them.
You start to trust if, oh, remember your keys comes up. It comes up usually from a part, which is different different than mental chatter that's one of the habits that when we're in our head we think because thoughts are going by they must be important so we have this habit of like oh what is that oh what's that oh i remember that oh that reminds me of that so as soon as you get out of that you start to realize which is what Tai Chi masters and martial artists do, is they're safer physically, emotionally by being soft and open and not mentally like a guard at a...
And I want to speak to this because I know a lot of women don't feel safe moving through the world. And there was a time where we, in one of our homes, we got robbed and I walked into the room and I couldn't, because there was so much presence on board, it was not from the fear-based mind.
I could smell somebody else's detergent. Like that's how, how tuned in I was.
I had even had a margarita going somewhere else, but this like awake, aware presence was very alive. And I walk into my bedroom and I could feel something was off.
Like somebody had been there. And then I smelt a laundry detergent that wasn't ours.
And I said, let's look at the cameras and it wasn't from fear. And so this was a test and a confirmation that presence will keep me, me safe, the body safe, much better than the fear-based mind, that hypervigilance.
And so, you know, I would just encourage people to test this, that it is intelligent. It will show up in the moments how it's needed most.
And there wasn't fear in that. It was just like, oh, it was like the next most intelligent step was obvious.
So as a woman, you know, I know I'm a woman and I'm more than a woman. Yes.
Yeah. And that's so important because the awakeness has to be safe and it has to be functional and it has to actually be more intelligent, meaning optimally responsive and active, right? Right.
Yeah. And so that's why it's a developmental stage is to get exactly what you're saying.
You've got to get the trust to try it. And then you've got to confirm the experiment.
Oh, I was actually more aware and less, even though I wasn't scanning everything and being, you know, looking at everything as I walked in, I just was open and then, oh, there's the information. That's right.
Yeah. And it feels so nourishing in the nervous system, just in terms of health and longevity.
I know a lot of, you know, spiritual teachers look young. And I think this is why they're less in this like reptilian fear-based consciousness.
And that's, there's nothing wrong with it. Right.
But we're waking up beyond

it. We're, we're including that to experience the safety of our being.
Yes, that's right. I'm 120.
Thank you for saying I look well. You look great luck.
So, so, so taking it now, do it when you do this dropping from head to heart space, you know, and certainly there's a bunch of ways to listen to it on a phone, and while you're walking, like while you're walking in nature, it's like your being takes your body for a walk, or your heart takes your body. it's like, oh, wow, you just start to really get this feeling that's even more like flowy and like a cat.
You become like a, and you're just connected to nature and you're feeling, so it's quite a little shift. And again, it's like, literally, once you get it, you don't even, you know, you listen to somebody lead you through it.
Then you lead yourself through it.

Then you don't even need words.

So, so this is the, you know, for those on the podcast,

this is not so good, but.

Yeah.

For those not watching.

I love it because I'm a kinesthetic learner.

So for those who are kinesthetic, watch it on YouTube, because I'm,

I feel that.

So thank you for doing that.

Yeah.

We're using.

I do a lot of that, you know, for that group. So I'm doing like, you know, and then, you know, this kind of heart thing like this.
And then, you know, so that you get that feeling. So let's do this short one, which is a little more out.
So that's an inner door. Here's an outer door.
And then we'll do an IFS door too. So the outer door is, again, we'll go back to this survive and thrive as the primary.
So then the smart, thrive, and survive is the manager, which we take to be me and certainly this part. It basically becomes a problem solver.
So it's very nice. It's very like, oh, I'm just checking for problems.
Are there any problems out here? Are there any problems in here? Are there any problems out there? Are there any problems in here? And it binds it in this scanning to the past, projecting the future. And if that problem solver could relax, could we discover that both outside and within here, there's this alert, awareness-based, non-thought-based, safe presence? That's the premise, is for me to say an inquiry to you, eyes open or closed, no big deal, and then you'll understand the words, but then look with awareness, with local awareness, to see what's here, inside and out, that's not a thought, that's not the problem solver.
Yeah, so that's the setup, and here's the inquiry. So what's here now when there's no problem to solve? So just now, if the problem solver just relaxes, steps back, What's this that you're aware of? And what's this that you're aware as? Just for a glimpse.
And then, what's the relationship between this kind of open, spacious, pervasive awareness that's alert? Does it have to go to thought to be smart and responsive? And then what's the relationship with the sky-like awareness to the vibration, sensation, emotion, thoughts, feelings, your body, and and the room if it's more same taste there's not two things going on what's this this happens oftentimes looking into emilio's eyes my husband it feels like this painting that gets smeared and everything gets blurry and there's not even connection, right? It's just one experience. It's beautiful.
Yeah. Kind of unity mind.
Yeah. And then you can tune it in a little clearer, but stay in the less left brain.
So some of it's left brain, right brain too, because we're so left brain and left

brain is very much about discerning and labeling and, and even a lot of meditation systems will label and look at that and name that and notice that. And, and it's like, well, if you see the right brain, we'll see everything at once.
And so you can have both of them on and drop into actually the third, which is awake mind or heart mind or unity mind, whichever of those. And then left brain and right brain work as functional tools rather than going to left brain to be safe.
Yeah. Yeah.
I like that you said as and from. It's like relative and non-relative, like yes and.

Beautiful.

And it's so nourishing. It is so nourishing.
The thing that I am most interested in is living clearly from here. It's like as is always, but just more consciously from this, even when doing very head mind-based things.

I don't know if there's a story or specific practices of like that waking out third stage of like, it's not, you know, because I used to think I needed to stabilize and I would always check like, oh, wait, it's here. It's here.
That was an important stage. And, and yet awakened living.
I'm curious for you to speak. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the one recent story is that I got, so during the pandemic, I got COVID, and then I got long COVID. And both my wife, Paige, and I and my sister got at the same time, and they each had it for about six months, and I had it for about a year and a half long COVID.
And so it was like I was, it was like I was, my body was like a hundred years old. It wasn't, when I got up, it wouldn't fire, the nerve endings wouldn't fire, and I had this brain fog.
And so when I had this brain fog, I thought, okay, well, I guess I'm not using that, you know? So I started trusting. So I'd go on and I'd teach her.

I'd go and talk.

And I was like guess I'm not using that. You know, so I started trusting.
So I'd go on and I'd teach or I'd go and talk. And I was like, I'm not even going to prepare, you know.
And just the stuff that would come out, it'd be like, that was pretty good. I don't know who said that, but I like that.
You know, but there started to be almost a trust of this heart mind that isn't using self-referencing all the time.

And so when the body and the mind were, they weren't in pain, you know, that was the good thing. It wasn't pain, it was just almost like a disability.
It was like a less strength, a less coordination, less firing of things. so then I was able to open up that and that opened up a kind of

you know a kind of a, you know, a kind of a tenderness too. I started to kind of be more tender and, and kind of like, you know, make calls and, and I was like, well, we want to know how you are.
I said, yeah, I'm okay. How are you doing? You know, I was just like, I was just like, I just feel like, you know, I wanted to connect and talk to you and you know i don't know there's some more uh less left brain uh personality and more uh heartfelt emotional life for male you know in our culture that often isn't you know emphasized so i started to um optimally functioning and, you know, kind of more fully human during a time where I was disabled.
That's actually really beautiful. I mean, I hear the trust and also running these experiments and maybe even setting a timer just to shift the orientation if I don't have long COVID and I have the ability to go back into from the mind or, you know, and just a little, just noticing the spaciousness and this new orientation.
But also I think I'm hearing as I'm talking, I'm hearing myself talk about the psychological of, of what the fear or the desire that is gripping that. If there is that there to really face the thing that I'm trying to avoid in service to getting free of it, I think that would be worthy.
And that's definitely for people that have a strong ego structure. I would not say for anybody that has big T trauma to do that work and definitely get a trained professional to hold space when you're doing real deep shadow work.
But I love that you're bringing in the heart because I think in some traditions, people can be very heady spiritually, or they even go into the body sometimes, but there's not this love based or they just do the love based and there's not clear seeing. So both are really important.
Yeah. I came out of the, out of the pandemic and started getting, and then I, I went into one of the most intense business and I created an app.

So I started getting into like working with coders and like all these details and like, you know, on the computer all the time. And it was like, it was like a little bit of a, you know, like, you know, the brakes were on and the gas was on.
But eventually, like you're saying, it's what I call almost now panoramic flow when I'm in the heart and flowing and relationally and then absorbed flow. So I would enter into the world of a task that takes a lot of left brain stuff and I would just go right into it and go like, oh, yeah, look at that.
That works like that. And this is like, oh, and then there's this and that and that's okay.
Oh, we could do that or we could do that this like oh yeah that's right okay that's good and then i'd like come out like oh an hour went by okay well but i i got you know that was interesting so it's kind of this you don't need to not do you know technical stuff as well you know yeah i mean i'm really hearing that this is the medicine for burnout, which is hyper-focused in the mind where it does burnout versus this awake, loving flow. This is intelligent, it's nourishing.
And to really be able to create from this space is, I think, what a lot of people are interested in. So I love these glimpses as a bridge to help reorient

and also to know that it's possible to step into this.

Yeah, and just one more thing about that

is that there's what I call effortless focus,

which is basically when you open,

again, I won't do this glimpse because it's visual,

because it makes you open your awareness up. But when you open to be aware from a more awareness-based rather than thought-based knowing that's embodied and has a feeling of unity, you are no longer using attention to focus.
You're using local awareness, which is part of the field. So you're literally focusing from this mind, which isn't moving.
So I had or have some ADHD that as a kid. So I just don't use the ADHD mind.
And if the ADHD mind comes up and goes like, I want to help. It's like, you don't have to help with this.
You can help with some other stuff later on. Okay, good.
I'll go play. But the focus is literally an effortless focus because you're focusing from the field, but it feels like the field of awareness, aliveness.
So when you try to meditate, the classic thing is the first stage is often watch your breath when your mind wanders, Let it, you know, bring it back.

So the wandering mind is the small mind and the chattering mind.

You can be aware of that as an object.

When it's no longer the subject, it's like, you know,

a shoulder that has a lot of activity in it,

maybe even a little pain.

So this may have a little pain.

Let's have a little activity.

It's trying to do this.

It has a habit of trying to focus. It's like, we don't need to focus from there.
Let's focus from this field of this awareness-based mind. And it's amazing that, again, that's what people in flow, this guy, Chikset Mahai, who did this study of flow, said there are seven qualities of flow, which you're totally in the present.
You're able to, you know the activity you're doing, but you have a sense of joy or ecstasy and the task itself is enough. And you feel there's a timelessness and a feeling that you've gone beyond your ego.
And there's a feeling of interconnection with this field. And that's like people in any flow playing music or sports or even studied middle managers who were in flow.
You're five times more productive. So like you could go to work on Monday and take the rest of the week off and be as productive as others who work just solely from mind-based, which isn't as fun.
And it really deepens this dependency on something that could never really, it actually fixes, tries to find and then fix the problems. That's the orientation of mind, nothing wrong with it, but it's just never going to end from that place.
And so I love, I love this alternative way and that it is the stage of development. I love putting it like you're sharing because then it just feels like, oh, we all graduate from kindergarten to fifth grade to 12th grade.
It's like, okay, this is natural. This is already here.
And how, what's the map to just shortcut the cul-de-sacs? And, but I, but what part of the, what I really want to highlight, and this is also what I align with in teaching my certification, is like any of these parts of you aren't bad. We can see how they're trying to serve us.
And when we have that compassionate lens, they soften because they're not defensive. They feel seen and accepted and then they integrate.
So don't judge, don't identify. And then we can change the orientation.
And I love these maps that you have. I think it's so brilliant.
Yeah, and one of the IFS maps that I've added, Dick Schwartz, who created it, and I have co-taught together on things like accessing self, because he's mapped out parts so brilliantly and exquisitely, and I've kind of mapped out self or true nature or awareness. And so the key is that most therapies do good therapy and good work from a compassionate part.
So bring compassion to the part, but that's like small C, compassion, and you only know that when you upgrade to this awake, aware, heart, mind that is who you are, is greater than yourself and essentially who you are, that then isn't looking from outside to apart as if there's two. It's like ocean is now, oh, we're the same.
Oh, same, same. And you're part of me and I'm part of you.
And I see you're trying to help and I can see your struggles. And do you feel me? Do you feel I'm with you? And I'm the one you've been looking for.
We're both looking for love and connection. And you've been trying and you've been stuck in this kind of time prison, which is like a childhood view of the world.
And that you don't even know it when it comes up. It just sees the world that way.
And it feels that, you know, there's threat around based on what was going on there, but it projects it onto this. So, you know, that was a great healing for me is working with these parts and finding, you know, the deeper shame based parts or ones that were younger or some pre-verbal ones where you can't even they have no words they're just like a mother tiger in the root you know that was just like yeah no to life it was just like okay i got i got you yeah but i'm stronger than you and yeah we're not gonna let anyone mess with sweet, because from the perspective, and this is like, and this is what I love that you're speaking to, and I so align with from the perspective of essence, as I call essence and ego, it welcomes all of it, it is all of it.
And so without that coaching therapy that it can only go so far, and they're beautiful, and they both have a place. But what really goes beyond which is is coming back to ourselves and to really shift this how do i fix this to to let me love this like yes a welcoming and so it's it's so beautiful and i love i think parts work is great i just started diving into it in the last year i really unintentionally discovered parts work on my own through gestalt psychotherapy because it's same.
It comes from the same root. And I knew that work.
And I was like, oh, there's a part that wants it, a part that's scared of it. But it's a great map.
But this work around truth, around waking up to who and what we already are, I say who, but it's really what. And I say both just for people at different stages, that's the magic.
And that's, that's the healing presence that liberates all of it. And so you are such a stand and an embodiment of this work.
And I love, love not only your frameworks, but I love that you say yes to both, that it's not about awakening in another life where you have to be so committed to, you know, there's a lot of teachers that do the monastic life that it's like living in a cave and away from society. And so your teachings are very practical and in the world, you living in New York City, me in Los Angeles, it's like, yes, this is where deeper truth gets to be integrated and lived.
As an example, I'm just a yes. I'm just so grateful for you.
Yeah, thank you. Me too.
It's great to kind of like immediately connect and have our mutual appreciation of the work because I appreciate you and your willingness to share with people to be that beacon and to willing to go into the darkness too with your beacon with people because that's the harder work. And yet if you have the light, it's like, it's okay.
It's okay. It's going to be okay.
We're going to be okay. Without that, then I wouldn't do it with myself.
I wouldn't't take people there and and with that you're right it's like that love wants to embody and know and say yes to all of it and that's the deeper integration and that's the freedom that we really are desiring yeah and that you know just to say that that how i discovered it i came back from doing this kind of meeting this Dzogchen teacher that I had done long retreats. And all of a sudden, within three minutes, he kind of showed me my own mind or just pointed it out.
And I was like, what am I going to do with this? You know, like, well, probably, you know, just whatever it is, that's what I'm going to do with my life. And then I came back and finished this joint degree with clinical social work and Master in Divinity in New York and went into outpatient psych.
And all of a sudden, I was bringing it up with people who were, you know, coming out of psychiatric hospitals, halfway houses and stuff. And one person, a woman who I had known and she'd been in and out of hospital and she'd said, you know, there's a part of me that's, you know, today I need to, you're the only one I'll tell that I feels like hurting myself.
And I said, okay. And I said, and are there any other parts around? And she went, well, yeah, there's another part that wants to figure this out and make it okay.
And I just said, well, who's aware of both those parts? And she said, me. And she said, me.
I said, what do you mean me? She goes, I don't know me. You know, like, it's me.
I'm aware of those parts. And she just like, well, like, right.
I know me, but how come I forgot me? You know, like, and so it literally is that close and doesn't require, you know, long study and reading all these books and doing long retreats and stuff. It's just finding your own way of navigating your own consciousness and which doorways.

So, you know, in this app that I have, I create different doors for different learning styles and obstacles because not everyone can do the what's here now when there's no problem to solve.

Not everyone can drop into their body.

But once you learn your little, okay, oh, just have awareness, go back, and then drop down, open up, and include everything. That's it.
Once that is real, and you just shift into the natural, because it's already installed in us. That's right.
It doesn't need any maintenance. It just is always now.
Yes. My favorite quote is from St.
Francis of Assisi. He says, what you're looking for is what's looking.
So it's like, what is aware? What is looking through these eyes? Oh, so good. I can talk to you forever.
And I love that you're my friend and I want to keep doing this. I'm so grateful for you.
And I know my audience, talk to us about your app, what you're up to. They're going to want to stay connected.
Yeah, I mean, that's the kind of my, what I spent my time creating is, I just felt like, okay, I've written two books and I have these courses and they're good. But the app, I know some people don't like using their phone, but it's just like, well, give somebody a short way to do a glimpse in their pocket.
And once they don't need, you know, the role of a teacher is to introduce you to your inner teacher. So you don't need to have a teacher.
Once you get some fine tuning and get a little understanding, you can find your own way home and see what works for you and make it your individual style and then check in with friends and colleagues and support and therapists as well. So I created this kind of non-dual app called Mindful Glimpses.

And then I'm doing a teacher facilitator training program that has three parts. So I started the first part now and will probably continue for those who want to kind of go deeper.
So it's not somebody who necessarily wants to teach it, but kind of what is it? How do you do it? How do you maintain? How do you go through all five levels so that you can live it? Because that's what needs a little bit of a teacher support once you get to the cul-de-sacs. You need a little pointer because you can kind of stay in those round and round in the whirlpools.
No, I'm a fan of getting support from people that are further along in their own maturity and development. A huge fan of it.
Well, I will put all of the links in the show notes below. And Locke, again, thank you for your presence in the world.
I love you. I'm so grateful that you've come on.
I love you too. And please give my heart to Emilio as well.
I will. Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself.
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I can't wait to share with you. And you can find all this information in the show notes below.
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