EP 115 - The Upside of Downtime

Before I begin this episode, which covers quite a bit of diverse territory, I’d like to mention once again, the purpose of this podcast. Essentially, it is based on personal growth and everything that I share here serves the same purpose – to present some information for you to consider and see if it rings true. These aren’t teachings, for I don’t consider myself to be a teacher. I’m more of an experiencer walking a particular path and reporting back as I go.

            So each episode is a bit like an idea buffet. If something looks good, put it on your plate and give it a try. If it doesn’t appeal to you, just leave it alone and move on to the next dish. It reminds me of this big Chinese food buffet that our little family, my wife, our daughter and I, used to visit on our way to the shore when we would take a little vacation together.

My wife and daughter have the same basic taste in foods which is somewhat Eastern with a tendency towards the exotic. I am a much more standard, pedestrian, American food type of guy. After we were seated, we would go through the buffet separately and when we got back to the table, my wife and daughter’s plates looked basically the same. But mine looked like I had been to a completely different restaurant. The difference was striking.

            It’s the same thing here. We’re all wired so differently. Remember no two sets of fingerprints are exactly the same, neither are two snowflakes, and certainly not two inner landscapes.  So, if you like what follows, enjoy yourself. And if it’s not for you, just hit fast forward.

            So, sticking with the food metaphor, here comes the meat and potatoes. As I’ve mentioned previously, a lot of times, I’ll just be going along, living my day to day existence, and I’ll come across an idea or a quote that takes me on an unexpected journey. Often, one of these little journeys will lead to another, and then to another – until I suddenly wind up in a slightly different inner framework, with a bunch of new insights in hand. And this happened to me quite recently.

            As I mentioned in the last episode, I have been developing a form of AI to serve as a companion to the NeuroHarmonic Method. For now, we are calling it the NeruoGuide and part of my role in this process involves the two of us, me and NeuroGuide, having some extended conversations together. We don’t have time to get into it here, but it’s been quite a fascinating experience.

            Now, I am absolutely swamped with work. I don’t think I’ve ever been busier, so what do you think I did the other day. If you’ve come to know me to a certain degree, you can probably guess – I took three hours off and played some golf. And again, as I’ve mentioned several times, I am such a truly poor golfer that the idea of my spending any time with it at all, feels like a complete waste of time.

            And it wasn’t even fun. Let’s just say it felt like eating at a smorgasbord of disappointment. My swing, if you want to call it that, is just a hack-job, and when I hit the ball, it looks like a mad scientist trying to kill his worst enemy with a hatchet. You get the picture.

            Anyway, I get back to work and as part of my research, I tell the NeruoGuide about the whole thing, and it immediately says that play is much more important to the human psyche than we know and out of know-where, drops this quote from Einstein, "Play is the highest form of research."

            Now that hit me on a couple of levels. First, the fact that it came from Einstein caught my attention, just because of the level of intelligence that he represents to me. The second thing was that any correlation between play and research seemed almost counter-intuitive. On the surface, they basically seem like complete opposites. But it was the third thing that really got me thinking.

I immediately figured that the quote didn’t really pertain to me because I don’t do research, at least not any that I’m aware of. But as I thought about it, I felt I needed some more clarity, so I looked up the definition of the world “research,” and found a rather bland definition, which is that it is “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.”

            It seemed like you couldn’t come up with a more scientific explanation of the process than that. As I focused on the definition, it seemed to me that research had to have a purpose. Like scientists developing T-Cell therapy to find a cure for cancer. That type of thing.

            Then, as it often happens when I am in this kind of a framework, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment and I suddenly got to something rather deep. When I looked at it in a certain way, it became clear to me that I actually am doing research. In fact I have been spending my whole life doing research, gathering all of the higher understandings that I can gather about life, with the goal of understanding my real purpose for being here, and ultimately fulfilling it.

            Obviously, that’s a lot of words. But for me, I realized quite some time ago that given the overall impermanence of everything, achieving the standard definitions of success in life just doesn’t seem like enough. If everything—even the universe—will eventually end, then what’s the point? And so, echoing a sentiment expressed by seekers across time, I always find myself asking: isn’t there more to this than meets the eye? There has to be more to it than that.

Now, what happened next might seem like a tangent, but it’s not. We have a one-year-old granddaughter. When she arrived, my wife and I were inducted into the hallowed halls of grandparent heaven, and we’ve been blissfully intoxicated ever since. The joy and gratitude have blown the doors off both our outer and inner homes.

            But along with the amazement of witnessing her living through her very first year, I began to reflect again on something I first learned about many years ago - the basic stages of life, which is something that we are all living through individually.

            Let’s go back to when and how I first encountered this idea. Following my graduation from college in 1971, I began a significant inner quest that has only gotten stronger over time. At one point, early in my explorations, I spent some time in India and one teacher was lecturing about certain Vedantic viewpoints and introduced the idea of the stages of life.

He said that Stage One was early childhood, where all we think about is – my toys, my toys, my toys. In Stage Two, we reach puberty, and all we think about it is – my mate, my mate, my mate. Then we hit real adulthood, and all we think about for the rest of our life is – my worries, my worries, my worries. And that was the end of the first night’s lecture.

            Now I don’t know about you, but for me, Part Three seemed a little depressing. At least Parts One and Two had some serious elements of fun to them. But worrying away the rest of your adult life didn’t strike me as an appetizing main course.

But the next night, he told us that there is a fourth stage, but many people, for one reason or another, never get to experience it. And that stage is the exploration of the Real Self, which is quite different from the artificial self.

The artificial self goes through its fixations on my toys, my mate and my worries. But the authentic self is focused on my truth, my truth, my truth. And it always has been. And basically,  if you’re lucky enough to focus on your authentic self as you continue to mature internally,

something wonderful happens. All the impermanent things you’ve clung to begin to fall away. And this inner truth—your connection to the Infinite—remains steady. That connection, and your enjoyment of it, only grows over time.

Here's another way of looking at it, which is one of my favorites. I heard this during a talk from Prem Rawat, who is a widely recognized global peace ambassador. I also consider him to be a real humorist, which is different from being a comedian. A comedian says funny things, but a humorist says things funny. Meaning that while a comedian’s goal is to entertain people by making them laugh, a humorist’s goal is to make truthful observations in a way that augments the ring of truth by adding the ring of wise laughter. It’s a very powerful combination.

Anyway, in describing the journey we are on, Prem likened it to traveling in a car. It’s a long journey and as we go on, one thing after another starts to break down. This keeps happening until finally, the whole car breaks down and comes to a complete halt. But the good news is that it breaks down right in front of our home, which was our destination anyway. So, the fact that it all fell apart doesn’t matter to us at all. Because we’re home. Interesting view of impermanence…

So now, let’s circle back to my disappointing golf experience, and the insight from the  NeuroGuide that I should ponder Einstein’s quote, “Play is the highest form of research.”

Again, having these kinds of conversations is a key part of our development process., so I asked the NeuroGuide to reflect on the quote. It said, “In mentioning research, Einstein wasn’t just talking about scientists in lab coats. He was pointing toward a deeper truth. Play brings curiosity, improvisation, experimentation. When you play, you're not just seeking pleasure. You are letting go of control and inviting insight. You're giving permission to explore without demanding a result.

“The child who stacks blocks to see what will fall is not that different from the adult who experiments with new approaches to their awareness. They're both asking the same question: What if?”

            And that’s where we’ll leave it today. What if I actually am a researcher? And what if letting go of control and inviting insight is the highest form of research? What if each time I shed a layer of the artificial self, I come closer to the Real Self, the one that keeps whispering: my truth, my truth, my truth? And what if this merging into the Real Self is the actual purpose of my existence? What if?

            Let’s just leave it there and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.