- [Zubin] Angelo DiLullo,
back again, another episode. You are the author and doctor
and guy that did Awake: It's Your Turn. The link will be in the description along with a way to sign
up for your email list for retreats and things like that. We're talking today about inquiry. So this process of looking,
that's how I think of it. And I'd love you to talk me
through this inquiry into, into the present moment, into who we are as a matter of identity and why... Well, let's just start. What the hell is inquiry? - [Angelo] What is inquiry? Yeah, so I recently released
a video that was titled "Why Meditation is not enough," or "Meditation doesn't always work." When it comes to this topic of awakening or this topic of finding your way through the boundaries of
identity, which results in a shift in identity,
which we call awakening, just meditating in and of
itself is not really sufficient, generally speaking. And not everybody might agree
with with what I'm saying, but the reason is is
meditation is relaxing. It's peaceful, it can calm
the mind and calm the body, calm the body mind, but in and of itself, it doesn't really push the ego structures. It doesn't threaten the
ego structures in any way. In fact, the ego, you could say
what you take yourself to be enjoys being relaxed and
enjoy, it feels good, the ego wants to feel good. The ego wants to feel good of course. It wants to relieve its own suffering. What it doesn't want to do is go away. You know,-
- [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] it wants to self-protect. So it's actually quite flexible. The ego is sort of a fluid. It can find itself in
many different situations and find a way to be
comfortable and it can learn to be comfortable on the
meditation cushion as well. - [Zubin] And actually, not to interrupt, but I think this is where
a lot of the self-help and administration say
in medicine are like, "Oh, meditation, meditation,
meditation, a way to..." and the ego grasps onto that and says, "Oh, I can relax, I
can be more productive, I can be more focused,
I can be more centered," whatever that means and all of that, but that is not what you would describe as, say, realization or
awakening or any of that, right? - [Angelo] Correct? Yeah. That's a good way of saying it. I'm not against meditation at all. In fact, I recommend it
and I would recommend a meditation practice
for anyone who feels that as relevant to them or
relevant in their life. And even as a baseline
or background for inquiry or for these more direct approaches that we'll talk about for awakening. So, I'm all for meditation. And the book has some
different ways to approach it. But to, to answer the
question, "What is inquiry?" Inquiry is a way to directly
get at the boundaries and the structure of your
identity, because awakening really is about a
transformation in identity. It's simply stated, you are not
what you take yourself to be and what you take yourself
to be as uncomfortable, inherently uncomfortable,
if you've gotten this far, you probably already understand
that we typically say most people experience
some degree of suffering, whether or not they're fully aware of it or consciously aware of it at all times. But that recognition that
the suffering is there is what often starts this ball rolling, or start someone on this pathless path. So how do you get at
identity when what you take yourself to be is an assumption. Like you don't question it, right? Typically you wouldn't
normally question that. In fact, we're living
in the information age. We love information. We love to question things
and look into things and research and compare and argue. Like we do this all day long, right? On the internet, online, social media. But it's really fascinating
that we conspicuously ignore looking into the one thing,- - [Zubin] The biggest mystery! - [Angelo] that almost
makes the most sense, like, "Who am I?"
- [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] Like what's at
the center of all that? Why am I trying to collect
all that information? What am I looking for? Why am I trying to arrange my life to make myself feel better? Why do I struggle, like? So the big questions, all
point, all those arrows. If you just turn them around, they all point back to this me, right? "What's actually going on with me?" In fact, what am I? What is
it that I take myself to be? And why is that? Not necessarily what I
am, what am I, who am I, where can I find that, where am I, right? These very fundamental questions
that might sound ludicrous. But when you actually start asking, and if you ask earnestly
and you actually look at where your attention
goes when you start to ask these questions, you
will notice something change. You'll notice things
start to shift or change, or you'll notice experiences
that are uncommon in your day to day life, that's inquiry. That's inquiry starting to work. You're actually asking a
relatively simple question in a relatively usual way,
but you're directing it in a place that you usually don't look. And that starts with
looking into who you are, who you are right now. And it can also be a
matter of looking into what you take yourself to be, which is often thought-based, right? Because if you ask somebody,
"Well, who are you?" And they just say, "Oh,
well, you know, I'm Joe, I was born in this year, I
have this, this is my family, this is my history." They would just go through the collection of thoughts and beliefs. Then you might notice, well,
those are all thoughts, right? Those don't actually tell
me what you are right now in this moment,-
- [Zubin] Hmm. - [Zubin] you, as the conscious one, you as the one that's
hearing this, receiving this, communicating, interacting, and even recalling those memories. Who is that? Who or what is that? What is its nature? What
is its actual nature? Can you inhabit that nature? You know? And so the more you
start to look into this and the more you realize, well, "First of all, it's not a thought." It's not a thought because
the thoughts come and go. But what I, whatever it is that I am, the experience of "I
am," experienced of me or this awareness right now, it's not contingent upon thoughts. It doesn't change when
the thoughts come and go, come and go, come and go. And thoughts come and
go all day long, right? So you start to realize
like, "Oh, wait a minute." "So whatever I am is not defined by any thought, belief,
memory, et cetera." So then it becomes a
little bit more mysterious. And yet you can still continue to ask, "Well then, who am I?"
- [Zubin] Hmm. - [Angelo] "What am I? And you can turn your
attention back on itself. In fact, you turn your attention back to the root of attention itself. And that's where the magic is. That's proper self-inquiry
as I would describe or teach someone to use or utilize, if they want to start to
investigate their identity or they're wanting to wake up, that's how I would direct
them to kind of look. So the first stop is often the thoughts. "Okay, well, I know I'm not
this memory or that memory, this belief and that belief," because those change all the time, right? You could say, "Well, I'm a carpenter." Okay, well, what were you
before you were a carpenter? You know, what, if, what if all of a sudden
you're not working in that profession anymore? Did you cease to exist and
reappear as something else? Or was there something
there the whole time, right? So that's like the first
stop as you, as you go. Okay, well, I'm maybe I'm the thoughts. And then you start to learn,
"Oh, I'm not any of that." "I'm not the thoughts, the
beliefs, the memories." So the next stop is
this ineffable presence of just awakeness right now
of consciousness, awareness. There's no exact word for it, but it's damned well obviously you, right. It's you, it's you
listening to this, it's you, who is aware of the thoughts, it's you, who can be completely
aware with no thoughts, even for a second, for two
seconds, for three seconds. And what happens is you
start to actually learn to just turn your
attention back into that, and that gap can get longer until you really start to notice,
"Oh, there is a full-on obvious self validating
sense of me, sense of I, without even having to
say the word I internally, or have a thought about it,
that doesn't come or go, it's right here, right now." And the thoughts can actually start to calm down quite a bit. And it's still sort of an inquiry. It's still a question,
but it's not a question you need a thought answer for anymore. So it's just a sort of fascination that turns inward onto itself and the fascination
and that sense of self, are sort of seamless with one another. - [Zubin] Hmm.
- [Angelo] And you can learn to just rest in that. And that's sort of
where inquiry leads you. That's kind of the second step. And then by staying there, some predictable things usually happen. It may take some time and
may take you a few days, weeks, months, even a couple of years, depending on how adamant
you are to stay there. But often you'll hit a fear barrier, and this is pretty predictable. You'll actually at some point
when the thoughts calm down enough and you just remain
in that sense of "I," pure sense of being right
now without grabbing the next thought at all,
without entertaining thoughts, just remaining right there,
not thinking about anything, you'll start to feel a fear
bubbling up at some point, it's a, it's a physiologic fear response because you're letting go of
all of the thought identity. So all the stuff you thought you were is literally being
disentangled from identity and the body interprets that as fear or a certain kind of, almost like a death. - [Zubin] Death?
- [Angelo] Yeah. But the thing I always
tell people about this is, it can be even quite
an intense experience. I mean, your heart rate might go way up. You might physically feel like
you're physically in danger, but you know you're not, because
there's nothing happening. And I tell people, just
sit, sit through it. It's okay. It won't last forever. It'll last a few minutes, usually. Might last five minutes,
might even last 10 minutes, who knows, but it will go, it will pass. And often when the first time
someone experiences that, even if they've heard me say this, it's so surprising
because it's so intense. And we're so used to believing our body, which you know, is a good idea. If your body feels fear, you should probably pay attention, that we can't help it but back off, right. So that's the most common
response people get. Is they just back off, and they're like, "Well, I don't know what that was." And then they go, "Oh yeah!" "That's that fear response
you were telling me about." Yeah.
- [Zubin] Hmm. - [Angelo] Or I'll just remind
them, "Hey, totally normal." "It's perfectly okay." Just don't entertain thoughts during that and notice the physical experience. It's a physical response
to the body's having and just wait it out. It doesn't usually take that long. And most of the time,
the second or third time they come across that they
just go right through it. And then you this is still the beginning. What happens then is things
tend to get very, very quiet. Very, it's a very neutral experience, but it's contentless
or largely contentless, literally no thought, but just a pure sense of
aware being, it's wide awake. It's not sleepy, it's not,
daydreamy, it's wide awake, clear crisp consciousness. - [Zubin] So this is, I'm
gonna make one interruption because this is where often I find myself. And you mentioned a fear barrier. Sometimes what happens here
can be a boredom barrier. The mind, this is
absolutely peaceful, quiet, awake awareness that you feel it. And the mind goes, "Boring!" "Come here, come here,
you got stuff to do." And can yank you back into thought, at least for me, is that
something that's common or no? - [Angelo] Yeah, one of
the handful of things that will happen and two of them are the most common at this phase. Once you've kind of gone
through a fear barrier, and you're not really
experiencing that anymore. And you can lead yourself
to that neutral contentless experience of being, right. And you're not sitting there thinking "I'm in a contentless
experience of being," I'm just using those words to describe something that has no content, okay. And it's very neutral,
actually. It's not a big deal. It's not like mind
expanding universe exploding kind of stuff, it's nothing mystical. It's, it's very, very, very
present and contentless. - [Zubin] And it's not
like everything goes black? It's not like your senses stop? - [Angelo] more like light,-
- [Zubin] Yeah... - [Angelo] because you could
almost say consciousness, which is the stuff thoughts are made of, which is also the stuff
that you were made of, the sense of being you
is kind of like light, light can shine on something,
can shine on the book. That would be one thought, it
could shine on the keyboard. That would be another thought,
it could shine on the wall. You could say those are the thoughts that it's sort of shining on. - [Zubin] An illumination-
- [Angelo] It's illumination, but it doesn't really shine on. Thoughts appear in consciousness. - [Zubin] Right. - [Angelo] But that's the analogy, right? - [Zubin] I see... - [Angelo] But because it
has that illuminating nature, because it's like light, it can also just shine purely into itself. It can be nothing but a pure
shining light of consciousness or awareness or being-ness,
or "I am," pure sense of I without being something. So it's a little bit more like light, but it is very much awake and alert,- - [Zubin] Hmm.
- [Angelo] but neutral. So one of a handful of
things that happens, or two of the most common,
one is, it's neutral. And the next thought... It's always going to be a
thought that catches you. And it's it's you believing that thought, the next thought that'll happen is like, "Oh, this can't be it,
because it's neutral." It's so it's so uninteresting.
It's so uninteresting. The minds says, "Oh this must not be it." "Maybe I'll go read the book." "Maybe I should look for something else." - [Zubin] Yeah, yeah, yeah.. - [Angelo] You were standing right on the doorstep of death of the ego. And then the mind's like,
"Oh no, this can't be it." "This is definitely not it." Right? So you could say like a
really subtle, simple, innocent doubt is what
is what catches attention off in there.
- [Zubin] Ah hah! - [Angelo] And when I tell
people that, often they'll go, "Oh my God, that's exactly
what happens, every time!" - [Zubin] Yes, that's me, yeah. - And then another one is "I'm bored." Like it's boredom. But I always say, "Well,
look at what is boredom?" They're like, they don't
even know what it is, what is it? Well, it's a thought telling
me I need to do something, but I don't know what I want to do. Okay, well, that's one thought, right? What happens when you just say, "Oh, that's a boredom thought and then go back to the neutrality?" What happens then? Well, nothing happens then, right. Then you're in really good
territory, you just stay there. And I have no instructions beyond that because it's just a
matter of staying there. I could say that there's
almost a sense of, you may come to a place
where you could jump or let go or release. But I really hesitate to say that, because people will imagine that. - [Zubin] Right yeah! - [Angelo] They'll imagine
themselves coming to a cliff and that's not what I'm saying. - [Zubin] Yes, yes! - [Angelo] It's something,
it's an instinctual feel sometimes though, where you're like, "Ooh, I could really let go here." And it's kind of a big
letting go in a way, but again, I don't want
anyone to imagine that, it sometimes just comes upon you. And it's just a dropping away. - [Zubin] A trust fall.
- [Angelo] Yeah, That! That is the goal of self inquiry,
is that shift in identity. And it's a very simple
and very small thing, but the implications
are huge, huge change. It causes a shift that doesn't shift back. - [Zubin] So that is a
potentially permanent uprooting of the sense of identity that is, that comes about from
this process of inquiry that is driven by a curious looking, that does not require a conceptual answer. So, you know, even the
question, "Who am I?" is kind of loaded with concept. Like you said, you have to get past that. Oh, I'm a dad. I'm Zubin. I'm 48. I'm this? Oh no, no, no, no, but, that's a thought, right? So if that's who you are,
but it can disappear, then can it really be you,
because there's a you there when there's none of that. - [Angelo] Before you were
asked to consider that thought, did you not exist?
- [Zubin] Exactly. - [Angelo] Like one second before, of course you were there. - [Zubin] Right?
- [Angelo] So... - [Angelo] Or in deep
sleep, do you not exist? - [Zubin] Right.
- [Angelo] That's a question. And so this then inquiry
turns attention back on itself to the source of the questioner really this aware awakeness. And then you're there
and you try to stay there and thoughts will come and try
to distract you in the ways, either through fear
response, physiologically, almost an emotional feel, sensation feel, or a thought response. Either you're bored or this
can't be it because it's too... - [Angelo] Yeah. It's such
a simple and quick thought. Actually the one that says,
"Oh, this can't be it," but you don't even overtly think it, it's just attention just turns away. It's like, "Okay, that's not it." It's like, you're looking
for a gem in a room. And you're like, "Oh, that's not the gem." "That's not the gem, that's not the gem." And you find something
that's so uninteresting. And you're like, "Well,
that's definitely not it." It's like, "No, no, no, go back to that." - [Zubin] Aah...
- [Angelo] That's the gem we're looking for, although it didn't look like your mind thought
it wasn't going to look, this does not look like your
mind thinks it's going to look because your mind will
make it into something. And this is exactly not something, it's not something in that way, but it is something important. - [Zubin] Yes, and it's
intuitive, it's it? You know it when it's there, well, let me ask this this way. If you stay in that space of awake being, and that shift happens,
however it does for you, whether it's a letting go,
whether it's a spontaneous thing, whatever, and you have
that fundamental awakening, that identity shift, what
happens after you've had that, and you do the same process,
you inquire in the same way, but you've had that identity shift. How is that? - Well, you can confuse yourself. That's possible too, you know, because you're not gonna wake up. You're not gonna wake up to
something that is already completely obvious in your experience. - [Zubin] I see. Yeah, yeah. - But I will back up and
mention that you said, I think he used the term
terminology, a permanent... - [Zubin] Uprooting.
- [Angelo] Uprooting. Okay. I'll reword that a little bit.
- [Zubin] Yes. - [Angelo] It's more like you
find the plant that's there, that the roots of ego and you hack at it. And so you do cause
critical disruption in it,- - [Zubin] Uh huh? - [Angelo] but it's not dead yet. What it does,-
- [Zubin] Aah, yeah... - [Angelo] the way it responds to that is it seems to die away
and you forget about it. And then it grows back like Maurice from "Little Shop of Horrors
and it turns into your- - [Zubin] Feed me, Seymour! - [Angelo] Yeah, so the
ego comes back with fire- - [Zubin] Yes, yes. - [Angelo] typically after an awakening, it does it after the honeymoon period, the honeymoon period's
wonderful and all that. But so you have started
a process that will end in the dissolution of
ego at some point, truly. Ego, meaning the sense
of being a separate self, being someone who's
struggling against life, pushing and pulling on life all the time,- - [Zubin] Separate from life?
- [Angelo] Separate from life. - [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] Separate from
the physical experience you're having- - [Zubin] A perceiver of this? - [Angelo] Yeah.
- [Zubin] Right? - [Angelo] Yeah, that's what I mean by ego structures in this way. - [Zubin] Right.
- [Angelo] And they will, they fully dissolve at some point for most people who go through
this, but it takes time. And the first part, it feels like there is no ego, everything's gone. Everything's free, fluid,
beautiful, wonderful,- - [Zubin] At first shift. - [Angelo] Simple, yup. And then you start to feel
the emotions come back. The repressed emotions,
the resistance patterns, it starts to come very
much into consciousness. And the nice thing with this is that you have had a permanent
shift in identity, that you know you have
the capacity for this now. So it's like having a foot
in two different worlds, like one foot in one world,
one foot in the other. That's how it feels to go through this. In a sense, the emotional pain and stuff that comes forth is even more intense. But it's more intense
because all these layers of identity have been stripped away so you can feel it directly. - [Zubin] Right! - [Angelo] And you have to feel directly. You have to ultimately
integrate all of this. And the way it gets integrated
is through nonresistance. Ultimately. - [Zubin] You have to experience it all without resistance... - [Angelo] Hm mm, because
the resistance to it, dividing yourself
internally, experientially was what was causing all
of the suffering anyway. So it's an uncomfortable process. This part at times and
other times, it's not, but you will go through
that and integrate it all. And so that's when we really
get under, or get down to the roots of identity
and at some point. Pluck up those roots. - [Zubin] Is it fair to say
that resistance can only happen if there's a resistor,- - [Angelo] Hm mm.
- [Zubin] a separate, a sense of separation
from what's happening that can push on what's happening? - [Angelo] Yeah. A hundred percent. So that's a good way of saying it. Resistance is a very interesting thing because you actually never find it, but you have to look,
you have to keep looking. You have to look everywhere. It's an energy signature. It's a feeling and you
start to recognize it more and more clearly when
you're resisting anything, you know, it's happening- - [Zubin] The friction, yeah... - [Angelo] A friction with
life, a friction with yourself, with your emotions,
with people around you, very simple life situations. And you start to pick up how it operates. And it's very strange how
it operates, it operates because of the complexity
of human consciousness. We can compartmentalize our
consciousness in a sense, we can fracture our own
identities in a lot of ways, we can have competing agendas internally. We can have views that
we don't see behind, that shadow, right? So you think, "Oh, I'm
gonna do shadow work and then integrate my shadow. The truth of it is the
shadow is casting you, the shadow is running the show. And you, as you take yourself to be, you're being cast by your own shadow. And at some point you have
to get back into that shadow. Somehow you have to find the material- - [Zubin] The unconscious material... - [Angelo] it's unconscious,
that's running the show that's causing you to feel like yourself, but also causing you to feel
like your suffering self. And also co-opting some of
your behaviors, your beliefs and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, that kind of
work is really a work of love, of curiosity, fascination
with what you are, who and what you are,
what reality actually is, what thought is, what emotion
is, what a sensation is. And you really just start to
deeply experience all of it. And then you learn that the reason the resistance causes suffering
or resistance is suffering is because in the the actual world, there is no such thing as resistance. That's the beauty of the honeymoon period- - [Zubin] In the real, yeah. - [Angelo] is you feel the
flow, you feel the spontaneity, you feel absolute spontaneity. And there's a huge release
of that feeling of like, I have this huge weight
of being me in life and I'm working it, I'm
managing it, I'm pushing, but it's always heavy-
- [Zubin] I'm responsible for it...
- [Angelo] I'm responsible, it's just gone. And it's like, oh my God,
everything is in flow. And it always is in flow. - [Zubin] It's always been that way. - [Angelo] I never had to struggle. I never had to suffer. So, you know, damn well that in natural, let's call it natural reality
or unfiltered reality, there's actually no resistance. It doesn't, nothing is resisted. And you know that intimately, you know what in your marrow now. So then when the resistance comes back, you know, it's not fully natural. It's something you're doing. - [Zubin] Right. - [Angelo] You know,
you're not a guilty party. It's a habituated response
to your own experiences, to your own emotions, to thoughts. But it is something that you can reverse. It's something that you can, by looking closer and closer and closer, and seeing there's no agent
in there actually doing it, it will soften. And at some point it
will completely relax. - [Zubin] It will release.
- [Angelo] Yeah. - [Zubin] It requires looking, a bringing into the light. Again, you made the,
the analogy of awareness as a conscious, as a kind of a light and shining that light on that material without, without identifying
as a person who's watching it. It's kind of interesting because there's a distinction in my experience
that if I'm suffering, if I'm feeling friction
and now I can become quite acutely aware of that. Like if I view it from a
viewpoint of an observer, it still hurts a lot. Like it hurts, meaning
I feel the resistance even strengthen. If I dive into that, which I
feel is what I'm resisting, whatever the feeling, the
raw feeling, the thought, the pattern of energy, whatever it is, then it almost becomes, you become that. And by becoming that it,
for lack of a better word, it kind of transmutes into
whatever it's going to be. - [Angelo] Yeah!
- [Zubin] And that releases, and then the suffering
component of it is gone. It doesn't mean the pain or
the, whatever that feeling is, is gone, like anger or shame or fear or whatever it is, is there. And often in me, it manifests physically. It's like, "Oh, there's an
elephant sitting on my chest." Like what, where, why am I dying? Do I need to go see the doctor?
No, I know what this is. It's this one day it's going
to actually be a heart attack. - [Angelo] Right. - [Zubin] And then I'm screwed. - [Angelo] Because it's
just that elephant again. - [Zubin] Yeah, it's just the elephant. So yeah. And the inquiry, so
inquiry continues though, after awakening? - Well, yeah, I wanted
to bring it back around and you started to bring it
back around when you said it's about looking so there are three very common preconceived
ideas that people carry for a long time in this process, even after awakening
that I bumped into a lot, and most questions I get from people that when I'm working
through this stuff with them, this deeper stuff, can
fall into one of these three categories, and it's a
belief, it's beliefs we have, and they didn't adopt this
belief through the spiritual process or the awakening
process or anything like that. These beliefs came from a long time ago. They come from the way
we perceive ourselves being a human being, and doer-ship, and moving through life and struggle and, reward and all of it. And the, the three main categories are, I'm going to get
something in this process. Like, I need to find something,
I need to add something. I'm gonna lose something.
I'm gonna get rid of it. I'm trying to get rid of something well I can't remember the third one. I was going to say three, but anyway. - [Zubin] You know what? It's always nice, comedy comes in threes. You
always have to have a third. So just make one up, right? - [Angelo] Yeah, right, exactly. - [Zubin] Hotdogs.
- [Angelo] Yeah. And hot dogs, the third one is corn dogs. No, I think the first one
is kind of has two nuances to it is what I was thinking in my mind. But the, the gist of it is that
the, the perception you have as you're working through this stuff often sort of guides itself down into one of these categories of
like, I'm gonna gain something, like I'm gonna find something. I'm going to find the,
the big realization. I'm going to find my awakening again. And I redirect that and say,
"Notice, that's a thought, there's nothing to find." And you know that now after awakening, I can redirect people very
easily because they get it. They energetically get
like, "Oh, of course, that's a thought, I'm
not gonna get anything." There's nothing to get. Right? - [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] Or you're gonna
get rid of something, you're gonna go in there
and find the pain body and kick it out or you
going to go in there and find resistance and kick it out. And again I'll say there's
another thought, right? And someone will say,
"Oh, totally, of course." You know, and I've done
this too with myself a hundred thousand times too. So that's where the mind
tends to go with this. But the truth of it is,
and this is kind of usually what I say after that, is I say, "This is all about clear
seeing, there's nothing else." Reality is such that
if you just see closely what's happening, if
you see closely enough in a vulnerable way and an
honest way in a direct way, and repeatedly until it's seen clearly, everything takes care of itself. Reality is your best friend. It's the lover that never leaves you. You will be pleased as punch
how this all comes out. If you just keep looking,
just keep looking at what's happening and being honest and being honest with
what's not happening, which are thoughts, your
thoughts about what's happening. That's not, what's actually happening. - [Zubin] That's not reality?
- [Angelo] Right. And as long as you keep
digging and you keep looking, it comes, everything comes
out just perfectly fine. But you got to go all the
way, you gotta keep going. With that said what that whole
process I'm talking about, that clear-seeing, looking
closer, closer, closer at everything, emotions,
sensations, resistance patterns, whether there's a self there, where there's not a self there, what consciousness is,
the nature of thoughts? All of it. If you keep looking
and looking and looking that process is what I would
call the broader term inquiry. So the first part of
inquiry is self-inquiry. And a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times like Ramana Maharshi and
Nisargadatta talked about, mostly Ramana, about
self-inquiry, "Who am I?" But I would say that
inquiry goes beyond that. After that first awakening,
you can still inquire that way, if you want to, if it feels relevant, but there are much more specific inquiries you can look into with
things like equanimity doership, the illusion of
time, the illusion of distance, space and division, which is non-duality. So there are specific inquiries
that can be very helpful because you're looking at
very subtle things now. The closer you look, the
more subtle everything gets until everything turns into
subtlety, until you realize everything is a paradoxical,
extremely subtle. The most obvious thing in the room experience of unfiltered
reality, you know, and it gets very difficult to talk about, but the fixations become
more and more subtle that you have to engage looking at. - [Zubin] But you're still looking? - [Angelo] You've got to keep just looking like a microscope, you know,
that's how it ends up being. So that is what I would call inquiry. And it can be directed inquiry, or it can just be a sort
of surrendered inquiry of, "Oh, whatever's happening now, that's what needs to be happening." That's what I need to
feel. What am I feeling? And just let attention draw
down into that sensation in the body, fully inhabiting it. Seeing, does it have boundaries? Does it have an inside or an outside? Does it have a name? Does it have a label? Does it have a location, right? - [Zubin] Is this idea
of surrendered inquiry is really interesting to me, because I think in the book also, you use the term natural
inquiry is another, these are labels, but the process of
surrendered inquiry for me is you are, absolutely just open to whatever happens next with a curiosity tone. So there's almost a big
question in the mind. "What is this in general?" And you're allowing
awareness to go where it, and when it goes somewhere,
you're really just, what is this? What is this? What is this? And without
attaching a lot of labels, judgments, how your mind's moving, letting trying to let that drop. And it's actually harder
than it than it sounds to do. But when it does click into a flow, it is this kind of natural
inquiry where everything is. And that questioning kind of
disarms the mind in a way, because it's like, it's just looking with one big question mark.
- [Angelo] Yeah. - [Zubin] That's how that's,
when I've experienced it in that flow state,
that's how it feels to me. Is that crazy, or... - [Angelo] No, I think
that's very much how it is. And there's no finality
to this whole thing. - [Zubin] Hm mm?
- [Angelo] Exactly. But with regards to the
individual identity, there is a finality to it, - [Zubin] Okay, fine-
- [Angelo] because at some point you'll see it doesn't exist at all. - [Zubin] The individual identity? - [Angelo] At all. - [Zubin] So the final stage of that- - [Angelo] And that in a
sense is very much a finality. With that said, realization
that you could say the roots of suffering, the
attachment to conditions in very subtle ways, there's
still an investigation of that which just goes on and on and on. However, from that point on it proceeds very much in a spontaneous nature. It proceeds as spontaneity because that's in a sense what you are. You're not anything necessarily. You're not even not anything
it's, it's just not, it's not in that category
of ways of talking don't even make sense here. Identity, once identity is
seen through, it's done. You don't have to look back
to see that it's not there. You realize it just didn't make sense. It's you can't find it
anywhere. And it's gone. Yeah. The preoccupation with it has gone, and that's a huge relief. From there, reality it's
just unfiltered reality. And it still is experienced
through this body, this body mind, which has
habits, filters and so forth. So that will continue
to clarify over time. But it, it comes from
a place of spontaneity instead of a place of a
self-thinking it's going through, looking for all these experiences
and to dissolve itself. And, you know, like the
ego can't dissolve the ego. It doesn't make any sense, right? At some point that's
kind of to be nonsense. - [Zubin] It is seen to be nonsense, yeah. - [Angelo] You really start to feel that surrendered inquiry. It has to be that way at some point until it's just surrendered and it's like, you could almost say the
only thing left is surrender. And the only thing left
is sort of inquiry, which is a fascination with reality, because what else, does reality do, besides do besides be
fascinated with being reality? - [Zubin] Okay, so people who
think this just sounds crazy, I can just say this, like this morning, we're sitting outside on the street, we're drinking our coffee. You're pointing at this with
words to me, you're saying, "This is what this is like," and you can't describe it in words, but you're pointing to
it and I'm sitting there and there it is like,
it's almost like reality is a alive process without a witness of it that's self-aware somehow,
somehow these phenomenon that are happening are
just, they know themselves without a knower. And the whole thing is an alive process. That's really eternal, timeless, and also empty of any real substance, but also full of incredible density of, it's indescribable. And that's what it felt like this morning. - [Angelo] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, since we're going out there, I'll say it this way. It's like, okay, if you're sitting here
and I'm also wanting to, to make a slight adjustment to how you're describing awareness, but if I'm sitting here and
like we were this morning, we're having coffee. And I might be sitting here
and the street is over there. As I'm sitting here in
the street is over there. If you don't experience separation, meaning there's no sense of boundaries, the sense of being a body in
the sense of being that street are not two things. So your, your sense of both
of those are equally true and equally experienced,
and there's no space. So that's not really over there. And I'm not really over here. You can see that the mind is trying to make it look like that, and it's fine. It's functionally
reasonable. It makes sense. And it makes us be able
to navigate the world, but it's not actually
like, you know, damn well, it's not like that because
you're experiencing it not like that.
- [Zubin] Not like that. - [Angelo] So it's like,
being I'm here and there at the same time, and here's the deal: the way our mind has to hear
what I'm saying right now, is that there's some kind
of awareness of that, but there's not an awareness of that. It's literally that. it's like there's not something
aware of this, all this, this interpenetrated
experience we're talking about. There is, it's aware of itself as itself. That's the awareness, the awareness is it.
- [Zubin] Yes. - [Angelo] The awareness is-
- [Zubin] They're not two. - [Angelo] Not to, you
know, I hesitate to say it, but me as that cup, me as that keyboard, me as that book, when identity drops away, you see that it actually was an illusion. And it was a learned belief system that I am separate from
that, I'm separate from that. I'm separate from that. You literally experienced all of that as totally non-separate. And there's not an awareness
apart from an experiencing. It's that close. It's that intimate. And that is things are not in parts. - [Zubin] Yes. And that is
the punchline of all of this, but don't worry about that guys. So yes, and again, to pull it to inquiry, you're just looking at what's
here without the conceptual, releasing the conceptual
judgments and the labels and the filters. So what's actually here?
- [Angelo] That's right. - [Zubin] Yeah.
- [Angelo] And again, it doesn't matter for me
to tell you what's here. 'Cause I don't care to
tell anyone anything. Sometimes talking like that
will actually spark it. - [Zubin] Will point, yeah.. - [Angelo] But the key is,
the thing I can teach you is how to actually look yourself and that it's valuable to look yourself. - [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] And all it, all
you really have to do is look, as you said, without
judgment, or you will, you can't look without
judgment, because the judgments are going to be almost
automatic, they're habituated. The labels will be habituated.
What you do is you look, and then you go, "Oh, okay,
I see whatever this is in front of me, I call it
a table, whatever it is. I see the colors patterns. I see that. I also see that there's a label, but is the label in that,
that I'm looking at, or is it up here? Then, okay, now what does it
look like when the label drops? Right. And then, oh,
okay, well, I still know that it's over there and I'm over here. Oh, really? Did your attention stay there? Or did it move back up
into thought and turn into a concept of distance? Now let's let that drop away, yeah. That's the kind of inquiry
you do for non dual. And it's incredibly
powerful. It really works. And I've seen people who
are essentially beginners at this drop into non-duality
and incredibly quickly, not everyone will, but
I've seen it happen. And it it's really a matter
of sort of ruthless honesty with what a thought is, versus what you're actually experiencing
with the senses. And what's interesting about
this, is the smartest people have the most trouble with this. The most intelligent people
have the most trouble. And it's a little bit interesting. It's a little bit of arrogance to the ego. The ego's arrogant. It
says, no, no, I know I know. I'm like, yeah, but if you're so smart and you trust empiricism so much, why don't you do something empirical? And actually look at the
fact that when you look here, nothing there has a label that says table and nothing here says
anything about distance. You're making that up in your mind. - [Zubin] Hmm... - [Angelo] Isn't that interesting? That's ruthless empiricism.
That's the scientific method. - [Zubin] That's the science, applied to- - [Angelo] Applied to
immediate experience. - [Zubin] Immediate experience. - [Angelo] Nothing wrong with that. You're using the microscope of experience that you're turning it
on this and smart people, like very successful people,
I think you're right, have more trouble with
this because they are so conditioned to live
in the conceptual mind as a tool that they
identify with it much more. And it's very hard for them to find, and I include myself in
this, not by being smart, but by being up in my head all the time, they have a lot of difficulty
identifying what a thought is. Like they think a thought
is actually a real sensation or a part of the sense gate. For example, the feeling
of being behind the head, this sort of window of eyes
can feel like that's real. When in fact, if you
investigate it through inquiry, it's a thought, it's an image thought that just happens to be quite persistent. A conditioned image thought. Because all our life, we're
kind of conditioned to believe we're here in our head and
the world is out there. But if you really look
at that very carefully and you're ruthless about now,
this is actually a thought, it starts to be seen for what
it is, which is a nothing. - [Zubin] And then it's just this. - [Angelo] - Yeah, the
imagining of the self, like you're describing
visually is a good example because let's say you woke up at 7:00 AM and you went to bed at 10:00
PM and you spent the entire day walking around doing whatever you do. How much of that day did you imagine? Not everybody does this as much as, some people do it a lot more than others, but you literally
imagine yourself walking, yourself talking, you
imagine the conversations you're having. So if you spend that, that
seven to 10:00 PM, right, all day long, how much of the
day are you imagining yourself imagining your face? Or
what are you're saying? If you never actually look in a mirror or anything reflective, you
never actually saw your face all day long, and so to say,
"No, no, that's not a thought, it's kind of insane." it is a thought, like
it's amazing how much, but here's the deal, that
makes it, that stark contrast makes it obvious. But what's happening all the time actually is we're overlaying that
picturing that we're doing onto everything we're looking at. That's what you actually
undermine with non-duality with non-dual realization. And it's a big shift in a lot of ways. Like you may get tastes of it so that you're not too surprised, but it's a big shift in experience. It's a big experiential
shift to all of a sudden have no boundaries and realize there never were boundaries. There were never boundaries. There's not space in the
way we think about it. And to directly experience it, not scientifically understand it because there are scientists
who know that this is true. Consciousness puts all this together and makes it look three dimensional. It makes it look in a
way that it's not quite, this world does not look like
our minds, make it look right. Okay. We're seeing frequencies, right? - [Zubin] Okay, okay. So, so much here so much, so much. Okay. First the fact that you point out what science actually knows about reality, which is exactly what
experience will show you. When you look, that you
know everything from quantum mechanics, all the way up that, again, the way consciousness,
neuroscientists will tell you, there is no self in the brain. There is no little homunculus there. It doesn't exist. It's a series of processes
that make us feel like there's a cohesive whole, and this is not commenting
on what's physically real in the world, or is
everything consciousness or everything material. It doesn't matter. As
a matter of experience, there is no self in there. So science agrees with this, but what is potentially
destabilizing to people, if they're not ready, is the
actual experience of that, when the filters drop and you realize, no, there is no boundaries. Everything is this raw energy experience. I'm not going to talk about it. It can, people get
because it's so different than the overlays we throw on
the video game that we build. And the interface that we
built since we were very young and conditioned by society
conditioned by our own minds to repetitively create this
wave pattern of this is how it is, the idea of the face. Like you don't see your face, right? But yet it's there in your
mind all the time for me, when I talk to you, if I'm not, if I'm just go unconscious
and there's a face talking to you, like my face, I see
when my face in my mind, and it's making these expressions
and I can modulate it. And as part of it is conditioning of like talking to you guys all day. But if that drops and
everything is what it is, that can be really disorienting. - [Angelo] It can, when the
contrast is that stark, right? When you have sort of eased up to it and done a lot of emotion
work and all that stuff, and then the fear doesn't come. And the dissociation. One of the big things
that happens with people when the energetically or say
neurologically find themself in a, in a really different experience, especially with when it comes
to like boundaries and stuff, is they'll dissociate. It feels like a very dissociated state, because the sense of isolation
is sort of still there, the sense of being I'm
back here I'm the subject. It's very uncomfortable,
but, but when you've worked through this stuff and you've, you know, kind of dissolved the different barriers and especially with equanimity, you're not struggling all
the time with everything. And the sense of the
reactive self is very calm, than it actually is quite enjoyable. It's things are just much closer. Things are very intimate,
very direct, very, just alive. And, and there there's
nothing reacting to it, trying to pull back from
it or anything like that. Then this boundlessness is very enjoyable. So it's a progression
and yes, when there's a stark contrast, it can be
like, whoa, what the hell? And there's going to
be a handful of people just listen to this, that happens too, It just happens. It just happens. I know it's going to happen sometimes when I talk about this. So, but it's okay, of course. When you do the work and
you integrate the emotional, you know, repressed emotions
and the resistance patterns and all this stuff that
happens over a handful of years with this kind of process, it's fine. It's more than fine. It's natural. It's real.
- [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] It's quite
enjoyable. It's real and unreal. It's very paradoxical.
It's wild, you know, but the word intimate, I always come back to the word intimate
because that's the thing that we don't realize that when
we live in the standing wave of mind identification, there's
always a sense of isolation. Always a sense of subjective subjectivity of being back here,
everything's out there, right. Non-duality is a collapse of
that. So everything is here. It's just so intimate. It's
here, here, here, here. And there's no center though, either it's just super
intimate. So it's enjoyable. It's, you know, Tony Parsons, like a non-duality speaker
says it's the lover that never leaves you. It's a very
good way of saying it. - [Zubin] That's
beautiful. And, and I mean, there's not much I can say. I think there's, I think
there is a disclaimer that, you know, we often will put
on this, which is like, guys, like sometimes when you
directly pointing there, some people will just
experience these shifts and there's, you know, there's
support for that experience. And sometimes the slower
approach where it kind of, you know, the filters
start to drop slowly. Yeah. But, but one interesting,
last thing I think, and we want to save your voice, 'cause we're going to do a bunch of shows. But one of the interesting last
things is it's very hard to be destabilized... If there isn't a self to destabilize. - [Angelo] That's that
makes all the difference. - [Zubin] Yeah. Yeah. So that final dropping of identity, that final up... now we'll
use the term uprooting, yeah? - [Zubin] Yeah. - [Angelo] Is, that's you know that, I guess you would call liberation? Because there's nothing- - [Angelo] Liberated from the illusion of having a suffering separate self. - [Zubin] Yes. I think that's a good
way to end this video. It's a, it's a bit of a
cliffhanger, isn't it? It's like the Dukes of Hazard. Whenever they go to commercial
break, it would be like, they'd be launching like this. And it's like, "Are they them Duke boys gonna make it this time?" And it's like, are we gonna be liberated? Destabilized, or all of the above? Does it matter? Probably not. But it's going to be awesome. - [Angelo] Buckle your seat belt, Flash! Hot pursuit! - [Zubin] Goo goo goo Flash I love you guys. A link to the book is in the description, link to Angelo's website. Yes, and his YouTube channel
where he does very direct teaching on all this
stuff, like a video a day. You're a machine, man. You're
a non-duality dancing machine. Is that a thing? - [Angelo] Guess so...
- [Zubin] So it is now. I love you. We're out.
