Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

 

Guy (00:11):
Beautiful. We’re recording Peter. Welcome to the podcast.

Peter (00:14):
Lovely to be with you guy,

Guy (00:16):
Peter, I’ve been digging around your website and absolutely fascinated the, the depths of work that you have done. And, uh, I, I have no doubt. This conversation could go in many, many directions today, but there’s, there’s one question I ask on every guest when they start. And that is if we were at the intimate dinner party right now, and you sat next to a stranger and they ask you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Peter (00:44):
What I normally say is I dunno how to describe it. Um, what I do for a living, I, I share my own truth through writing, through giving workshops, teaching. Um, I don’t feel I have any particular label. If I have any label at all of just be guide to myself as a guide, not as a teacher, someone who’s an Explorer themselves. And I like to share what I’ve discovered on my own journey, in the hope that it’ll help others. And that’s been my life really. I, I I’ve, haven’t had a job I’ve been fortunate enough just been to survive off writing and the lectures and things that come from it. So, yeah. So I don’t, I don’t have an easy description of myself as you can see.

Guy (01:28):
Don’t I think pretty EV pretty much everyone, every guest has something similar, Peter, you know, they’re like, I dunno about that one. Like that’s why I ask you, cause it always ends up creating, um, a great start. And to be honest, you, if I was that stranger and I hear you say you’re a writer, you’re a guide and you’re an Explorer, the next logical question. What do you write about, what do you explore and what do you guide other people to do?

Peter (01:54):
Ah, okay. Big ones. Um, what I write about, um, the shortest label will be consciousness, um, and that would be what is consciousness? How does science understand consciousness? What do we mean by an awakening of consciousness? Um, why is that important in the world? I like to often look at the bigger picture of humanity where we are and the evolution of consciousness. So that that’s the sort of area that, that I, I work. Um, what was the second two parts of the question?

Guy (02:28):
What do I share? Just the expert. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the exploration.

Peter (02:32):
Yeah. Oh, the guide. Yeah. Um, I think for I, what I’m sharing most at the moment is, is meditation, which I found very valuable in my own life. I started 50 years ago and have learned a lot from that. And so I, I share what I’ve learnt in meditation with the whole idea of keeping meditation, absolutely effortless and enjoyable. So often it seems to be something that’s a, you know, a chore to do. You don’t enjoy it. It takes a lot of effort. My experience is the exact opposite. So that’s one of the things I teach and just, just letting go in general. Um, how do we let go? Um, should I know as part of my latest book, um, and being a guide, it’s just, I’ve been exploring my own mind, my own consciousness for years. And I suppose I work on the assumption that although we are very, very different, you and I, we have probably totally different experiences, backgrounds, personalities, all that stuff.

Peter (03:32):
We’re very, very different, deep down. We are very similar, deep down in terms of our consciousness, uh, how we get caught up on things. What we get caught up on may be very different. What we get attached to may be very different, but the process of getting caught up on things and the process of how do we, how do we let go? How do we awaken? I think our universal down at that deep level. So I, I just trust, I trust that what I find is true for me at that deeper level is also true for other people and the feedback I get, it seems to be so,

Guy (04:05):
Yeah. Beautiful. You, um, I’m, I’m curious to know on your own journey, Peter, where did this fascination come from to explore consciousness in the first place You’ve been doing it, it for such a long time. Yes. You

Peter (04:22):
Know? Yes. It started when I was back in college at university in England, um, I was studying mathematics and theoretical physics because I a, I loved it. I was fascinated by it and I was good at it. I’d won awards and things. So it was a natural thing to study, but always in the back of my mind, I was in interested in the mind. I mean, it’s a teenager. I was reading stories about, you know, for kids who could, you know, be buried alive or lie on a bed of nails in those days, we’re talking 50, 60 years ago, we thought yoga was about sort of doing these weird things. Yoga was just coming into the west. So there’s a, there was an interest in the mind in the background, but what happened with my interest in physics? I, I came to a point where I realized no amount of science was actually going to account for the fact that we were conscious.

Peter (05:10):
And it was like, there was a paradox here because nearly all the science takes place in the mind, apart from the actual experiments, but all the theorizing, the forming laws, all that stuff, the conclusions, the debate all happens in consciousness. And yet, according to science consciousness shouldn’t exist that, you know, we should all just be biological robots doing our thing, but there’s nothing in the laws of physics anywhere that say we should be having an inner experience. And that struck me as being a real sort of anomaly. And so I getting interested in, okay, what is consciousness more, more theoretical level. I, you know, dabbled in philosophy a bit, but then I realized perhaps studying the brain was the way. And so I studied neuroscience, experimental psychology, but no one was really interested in consciousness. I learned a lot about neurons and memory and all that stuff.

Peter (06:02):
And I realized the people who’d studied consciousness really were not scientists who put electrodes on the skull, but the, the sort of spiritual depths, the monks, the people who’d actually sat down and looked at their own mind. And I realized consciousness being a totally subjective experience. It’s a subjective investigation we need to do not an objective one. And so that’s how I started getting interested in meditation. I mean more just initially from a point of view of interest of exploring consciousness. And then as I got more and more involved in meditation, I began to understand, wow, something really significant going on here, because I think as a kid with my sort of scientific leaning, I I’d given up religion about age 13. When I went through, you know, I was brought up as a Protestant protest. You go through the sort of age 13, you know, the process of confirmation, uh, which I was told, you know, the nice scene crew was something I should believe it was a creed.

Peter (07:00):
It was a belief system. I thought what? I can’t believe that stuff. And so I just left religion behind, but what I began to realize, as I idea of more and more into study meditation was there was something behind all the great religions. There was, there was a very basic key element there, which was real early talking about how we get caught in, you can say materialistic or self-centered modes of consciousness, how that hinders our full potential, how it interferes with our relationships. And they were all in one way or another offering paths to begin to let go of that old mode of consciousness and sort of awaken our true self if you want those different ways of putting it. And so that’s how I became interested in the actual, you know, what is going on here, the actual nature of consciousness and my own consciousness. And that started me off on the journey of that inner exploration.

Guy (07:53):
Amazing, amazing. I, I, I had to get hit across the head with the universe to, to start looking on. I was, it never even occurred to me for, for, for like 30 odd years of my life. Uh, Peter, you know? Yeah. I, um, I, I was, I was gonna, I wanna ask you for me, what feels the next question, I’m thinking to everyone listening to this as well. And I dunno if you can probably take 10 podcasts, but how do you summarize with all your years of experience and studies? And like you say, you’ve been looking at this for 50 years. Like, how would you actually summarize the conclusions you’ve come to so far of what is consciousness?

Peter (08:32):
Ah, okay. The biggie, um, I think the question is wrong. What is consciousness? I’ll tell you why, um, the word consciousness is wrong because it’s a noun. And that when we add N E SS to a word, we’re taking an adjective and we’re creating a sort of an abstract noun in order to talk about it. So, you know, happiness, isn’t actually a thing, but it’s a way of talking about being happy. And we all know what being happy is or being sad or, you know, softness is, you know, we know the quality of being soft. So I don’t think when we, when we talk about consciousness, what we are really talking about is the state or quality of being in conscious. And I think that’s a very different way of looking at it because we all know what it means to be conscious. We all experience that the quality of being conscious, it’s the one thing that’s always there behind every experience.

Peter (09:29):
And so if you reframe it that way, instead of asking, you know, what is consciousness, which puts us into a, you know, a subject object thing of trying to define something out there, which is what science does. I think a lot of the time with consciousness, which to me is the wrong approach. Cause it’s saying, okay, there’s something out there called consciousness, which we’re trying to study as opposed to saying what it’s referring to is the very fact we all know for sure is that I am and aware being. And so that’s when I, when I talk about consciousness, I’m referring to the fact that we are all aware and it’s the one, probably the one thing we absolutely know for sure. I mean, right now we could be sitting in the matrix, but you know, having a losery experience or whatever, an AI experience, but we would still be aware. It’s what is always there. And that feeling of being aware is the same as it was yesterday last year, way back when I was a kid, it it’s always there. So, so that’s what it’s pointing to for me. So it’s a, it’s a personal subjective thing rather than looking for some thing outside there.

Guy (10:37):
Okay. And, uh, and would it be fair to say then that the more you kind of study the self, the more aware you become and that then starts to change perspective or,

Peter (10:52):
Um, difficult. I, I’m always a fiddle of a word, so you’d have to excuse me that please. I don’t think

Guy (10:59):
We, yeah.

Peter (11:00):
Right. I don’t think we ever become more aware because we are just aware that’s it, what we become aware of may change, but so we don’t become more aware. I think that’s, I don’t like that language in a lot of spiritual circles. You’re becoming more aware. We are aware and it’s just that’s it. But what happens is what we are aware of changes. And we may become aware of aspects of ourself that we weren’t aware of before. So I think, you know, as we explore the self and for me, the way to exploring the self is actually by stepping back from the mind activity, think all that mental activity, which takes us outta ourself, it takes us out into the world or into the world of thought when we’re exploring the self. For me, it’s about stepping back from that mental activity of thinking and doing.

Peter (11:52):
Um, we begin to notice that there’s a sense of, um, inner peace. There’s a sense of quietness. So I would say those are qualities of the self that are there, that we begin to discover. It’s like, ah, peace. You know, we, we can find happiness and peace in the world, um, which tends to be condition law on something happening. I’m happy because of this or that I’m at peace because whatever it is, as we begin to look inside, we discover that quality of peacefulness is actually already there without us having to go to look for it, which I think, you know, begins to have a major impact on our life because it means we don’t need to be chasing things so much in order to be happy. It’s almost the opposite by not chasing things. And beginning to let the mind relax, we can discover, ah, here’s the piece that I was actually looking for. Here’s the happiness I was looking for in what, in terms of getting things. So it begins to change our whole, really our whole attitude to life. It it’s gentle, it’s slow, but it changes our whole attitude to life. And so ultimately we start becoming less materialistic, less, less self-centered and I would say more, more composed in ourselves, more stable in ourselves.

Guy (13:11):

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. I’m fascinated as well. And I think this will lead into your, your book letting go of nothing. And when I, when I first hear that title, my ears pricked up and I thought, wow, what, what exactly are you meaning by that? Because if we’re, if there’s nothing to let go of first place.

Peter (13:35):
Right.

Guy (13:36):
You know?

Peter (13:36):
Yep. Yep. I’m glad, I’m glad your air’s picked up. It was deliberately a provocative title.

Peter (13:43):
Um, yes. Um, what we normally think when we talk about letting go, we think, oh, I’ve got, you know, first of all, I’ve gotta let go of things. You know, if you want say you’ve got an attachment money or something, we think I’ve gotta let go of money. And one interpretation of that is I’ve gotta give up, you know, finances, I’ve gotta be a be or be poor. It’s not letting go. It’s not changing the thing. It’s not, it’s about changing our relationship to things. Or we may think even, you know, I’ve gotta let go of these thoughts about money or whatever it is, but it’s not even that it’s going deeper. It’s letting go of what we’re letting go of is our attachment. And our attachment is not actually a thing in itself. It’s more a way of seeing things. It’s um, I started to draw an analogy.

Peter (14:29):
If you’re wearing blue spectacles, you see the world with a blue tinge, you don’t see vectors themselves. So, so they are not a thing in the world. You see? But that, that is what you see the world through. In the same way. Our attachments are basically a way of seeing the world is what psychologists call a mindset. It’s a filter for which we see the world, but we don’t see that filter itself. So it’s not actually a thing in the world we experience. So we’re not letting go of nothing really means letting go of non things, no things. We’re not letting go of things. We’re letting go of the non things, which is our filter, our mindset, how we, how we see the world. So it’s really about a change of mind rather than a change in the world, or even a change in what we’re thinking, et cetera. It’s, it’s a much deeper thing that we’re really letting go of. Yeah.

Guy (15:25):
Got it. Like we live in a world of materialism, you know, we are constantly bombarded constantly, like it’s mind blowing. And why do you think it is then as humans in general? We, we, we struggle to let go. I mean, I, one thing I think about as well is even our beliefs and, and how they guide us, like, uh, how rooted to everything we seem to have. We wanna that’s ours, you know?

Peter (15:55):
Right. Uh, this is it’s, it’s a sad thing that I think it’s, it’s endemic in our society. It’s really BR into us from the moment we are born this belief system, that if we are not happy, we need to do something about it. We need to get something, change something, whatever it is, change the world, get people to be a certain way. So whenever we’re feeling discontent, the way our society works and it’s reinforced, you know, through the media or, you know, through advertising, everything is saying, if you’re not happy, do something, get something, change something. And that does work to an extent, but it’s, it’s never, it’s never permanent. And so we get caught up in doing and doing and doing so, you know, for example, you know, you’re feeling unhappy because some advertisement tells you, you need a new jacket or something. I mean, advertisements prey on this, they tell us you are missing something.

Peter (16:52):
You can’t be happy without this. So you go out and you, you buy a new jacket or something and you feel, you feel better. And you think it’s actually buying the jacket that made you feel better. And so when you feel down again, you go and buy some more clothes is an example. But what I find fascinating about the internet, because it sort of put this gap in between the deciding to buy natural GI it, instead of going into a store and buying it and thinking the jacket made you happy, we now go online and we look around and we find the right size, the right design, the right color and everything. And finally, we press buy now

Peter (17:34):
A and then we feel better. The jacket may be three days before it arrives, but when we press buy now, what’s actually happening. When you look at it more closely, we’ve been making ourselves discontent because we feel we are missing something. And so when you hit by now, you are no longer creating discontent. And so you feel better. And, but we fall into the trap of thinking it’s the buying something that has made us feel better. Whereas what’s actually happening is the discontent about not having it, that we’ve created for ourselves, that discontent goes away. And so we feel better. And this I think is almost universal. And so, you know, the lesson that I see really throughout life is to recognize how much we are creating discontent about how things are in the world, what we’ve got, what we haven’t got, whatever it is, are continually creating discontent.

Peter (18:31):
And rather than trying to deal with what that self created discontent, if we can just let it go, if we can just like, you know, stop that thought that tells us we’re missing something, we can let go of the discontent. Then we naturally fall back into what I call the natural state of contentment, which is how we are, if we’ve got, if everything’s okay and we’ve got no worries. So yeah, that, but I think sadly, you know, we, our whole society is caught in this almost like a hypnosis of telling us, we’ve gotta keep doing things, finding things in order to be happy. And it’s what in Eastern teaching, it’s called Samara that endless wandering on from one thing to another thing to another thing, each of which brings some temporary satisfaction, but then another thing comes up and then another thing comes up.

Guy (19:20):
Yeah,

Peter (19:20):
Yeah,

Guy (19:21):
Yeah. No, it’s, it’s quite amazing. Uh, what do you, uh, I’m just trying to think of the right question here, cuz it’ll just go off in a complete, the different area. Um, but in terms of then that becoming, you know, like you say, there’s a, there’s a becoming, I guess, becoming aware of, of that, that is happening in a, in our personal life. What, what do you suggest then to people to start to change that, that aspect of themselves that’s if they want to, because sometimes that’s a challenge as well, right?

Peter (19:57):
That’s that’s the first step is wanting to the first step is beginning to recognize that, you know, whatever it is, having all these things you wanted, it’s okay. You feel a bit better, but it’s not really lasting is that there’s a recognition, which I think happens to most people as part of their path is there’s something, something wrong here. There’s another way of living. So that becomes the motivation. You know, maybe I will actually be happier if I’m not so attached to things. So what I suggest to people as, as a basic practice, and it’s not, it’s one you, I mean, I keep on doing it is this is the practice you can keep I’m doing forever. Cause I find it so valuable is to, from time to time as many times, as you can remember in the day, just to pause, just to pause what you are doing more important, pause what you’re thinking like I do, you know, between two things like, you know, when I finish talking to you, I may go make a cup of tea.

Peter (20:54):
But between, between that, just to stop and just to notice my thinking, cause most of my thinking is about what I need to do or have done or need to change. Most of my thinking is when you look at it in one way or another, it’s about, you know, what I need to do or whatever, in order to be happy. It’s, it’s all around that, that way of, you know, or, you know, did I say the right thing to you? I should have said this better, whatever to notice the thinking. And we do have this power to pause our thinking. Even if only for a few seconds, we can just say, Uhuh, I’m not gonna follow that thought anymore. I just choose not to follow that thought. And in that space, two things happen generally one, the present moment reveals itself again like, oh, oh this bird song outside or whatever it is, or there’s a sound of the conditioning even, it’s just like the present reveals itself to me, it’s like, ah, so I become more present.

Peter (21:54):
And secondly, there’s always this sense of relief. It’s like, ah, we don’t realize how much tension this thinking is causing. And so always when I just pause a thought, there’s always this contrast. It’s like, ah, that feels better. And that’s important because that becomes the motivation to do it more often. It’s like, ah, yes. I realize by just, just doing this, just pausing, what I’m caught up on, I do feel better. I’m more present. And then, you know, five seconds later, 10 seconds or whatever minute later, it, you off on something else, this isn’t the, this isn’t the, you know, solution to everything, but it’s a practice. And the more we do that, the more, the more we taste, how it feels to pours our thinking. But also we begin to recognize deeper patterns that are going on, not just the surface thing of what I need to do, but we realize, oh, there’s a, you know, a deeper sense of here. I can recognize that. And just, just pause that. So that that’s a very basic practice, which as I say, I think we can all do. Um, and we, we get better at it. We be get, get better at recognizing when we’re caught up in some story and also better at recognizing how it is. It’s like, oh yes, there is this sense of quietness. I can chew into that. Yeah. So, so, so that’s what I suggest to people and it’s very, very simple.

Guy (23:18):
It, it doesn’t feel intimidating either. Does it? Because, um, sometimes if you’re thinking about, oh, I must meditate. I’ve gotta find time to then fit that in where this actually is. There is no more time needed to do at that in your day. No,

Peter (23:32):
It just no more death. It’s just, it just takes however long it takes. Sometimes I’ll pause and I’ll just sit there, just like listening to the world or whatever it is for half a minute, but that’s half a minute very well spent. And you mentioned meditation and I think meditation as a practice of sitting for 15, 20 minutes, something like that is also very valuable and really in the sort of meditation I teach, we’re doing, we’re doing the same thing, but on a longer scale, it’s like, we’re just sitting, noticing when we are getting caught up in a thought coming back to being in the moment and gradually over a period of 15, 20 minutes, whatever the mind begins to settle down. And it’s like in that practice, we’re actually practicing that, stepping back from thought, we’re practicing the letting go so that when we do go out into world, we can take that practice into the world and the letting go becomes easier. Yeah. So, so they’re both there for me. I like to have a, you know, a regular sitting practice and to have this, I sometimes call a micro meditations, you know, just a few seconds here and there. Just stepping back, lots of micro meditations in the day.

Guy (24:44):
Yeah. Beautiful. How, what I found in my own journey is that once I started opening Pandora’s box, I started looking at this and there was a lot of things I wasn’t aware of. And one of them was my emotions and allowing myself to feel, you know, and that’s one common occurrence that just constant, it seems to come up is, you know, we suppress our emotions. We use external world to deny them, to feel them. Yeah. How do we then begin to like, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and, and letting go of emotions that can hold this back.

Peter (25:21):
Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Um, particularly what, what I call the uncom emotions, some emotions are fine, but the emotions which are getting in our way, um, you know, we may be feeling frustrated or angry at something or whatever. Um, I, you know, years ago, well, not so long ago, like 20, 30 years ago, I was very similar. Like I, I was thinking, you know, I’m not feeling my emotions. I dunno what they are. And what it’s interesting, what we talk about is an emotion as it’s a feeling I’m feeling sad or whatever it is, but feeling is also about the body. And what I learned is when there’s some emotion, I, I may not be able to put a word on, I I’m just feeling uneasy about something. I dunno what it is. I’m just feeling Anea for some reason. And rather than trying to put a label on it, which is actually going to the head again, it’s going to the mind, it’s like, oh, what is this?

Peter (26:15):
I’m feeling frustrated or whatever, go to the body. It’s like, because there’s always some aspect, any emotion, there’s something going on in the body in some way or another. And it’s because, I mean, what psychologists called an action tendency, any emotion has some aspect to it, which is wanting the body wanting to act, whether it’s to run away or to hide or to whatever it is. There’s something there there’s something going on in the body. And so tune into that, just being curious about what is there what’s actually going on. And there may be obvious things. If you’re feeling angry, you know, you may feel your fists are clenched, say, okay, fine, but what else is going on? Oh, there’s a tightness in my chest. Oh, the quivering in my stomach. Like almost becoming friends with the feeling quality that’s there. I mean, and that is, you know, for me, the first part of letting go, which is letting in.

Peter (27:08):
And I, you know, I was actually fascinated by your podcast is, is netted in that to me is the first thing within emotion is let it in, but let in the feeling in the body and often there’s a, there’s a lot of insight and wisdom there. I mean, a little while back I was feeling, what was it I was feeling if I put, if I put a labor on, I I’d say I was annoyed. I was annoyed with how our friend was behaving and I just sat down and I just looked tuned in like, what’s going on here? What’s going on in my body. And what came up was complete surprise that he was actually reminding me of something that went on with my parents. It wasn’t a big trauma or anything, but just a pattern I’d got into, we all get into patterns with our parents, you know, cause we need to be loved and think it just, I, I saw what was being triggered, was a pattern I had with my parents.

Peter (28:00):
And I’d, if I’d analyzed it mentally, I had never come up with that. But tuning into the body, it’s like something showed me, ah, this is what’s going on. So that’s the first thing it’s, you know, just let it in. And what I say is let it in and let it be, don’t try to change it. Just, ah, this is what’s going on. And just, just to sit with it, just allow it to be there. And then there’s a second part to any of emotion, which is the something we are telling ourselves. There’s some story going on in our mind, if we’re angry at somebody, it’s usually because this person didn’t behave the way I wanted them to or the way I expected them to, to in order for me to feel. Okay. And so, you know, begin to look at, let that story in, just see what is it?

Peter (28:45):
It I’m telling myself about the other person. Uh, cause usually it’s not that, you know, we just assumed this person did wrong, but like, what is it? They actually did that upset you and then go deeper. It’s like, what might they have been thinking? What might they have been expecting of you had you said something that caused them to respond this way or had they just got outta bed the wrong side today, or is there something going on in their emotional life? It’s like begin to put yourself in the other shoes and the story begins to soften and dissolve and you realize it’s not so black and white as you initially imagined. And as you let the story soften again, the emotional begin to soften and decrease. So it’s it, it’s, it’s really important point. Cause we all get caught up in emotions. And for most people, you know, we talk about letting go.

Peter (29:31):
That’s what comes up. First of all is not necessarily letting go of money or whatever like that, but it’s letting go of emotions, which are uncomfortable and we don’t want there. But as you say, the initial response to any emotion that’s uncomfortable is to push it away. We don’t want to feel it. And so we push it to the back of our mind. We sort of banish it. We don’t wanna think about it. And yet, you know, as Carl Young say what you repress still is still there still controlling you. So that’s why I suggest do the opposite rather than pushing it away to the back of our mind in order to make ourselves feel comfortable is to do the opposite from what our, you know, normal response is and actually let it in and let it in, see what’s there and feel it in your body. That’s what must keep emphasizing, notice what’s going on in the body. That that’s really important key for me.

Guy (30:25):
Why do you think we are so frightened to go there quite often and to allow ourselves to feel that emotion, especially with what’s on the other side of allowing ourselves to feel that is actually everything that we’re wanting to bring into our life now?

Peter (30:44):
Yeah, I think, I think we’re scared of it. I think we’ve, we’re scared that, you know, if I really let it in, if I let it in my anger, if I really let it in, I’d go and punch somebody. Um, or if I, you know, if I let in my sadness, I’d start bursting out in tears, in public, which would be, you know, not a good social thing to do. So I think those sorts of fears are there, but my experience is that it doesn’t happen that way when we actually do let in the experience, it’s like, I can notice that feeling of wanting to hit somebody, but when I let it in, it doesn’t control me so much. It’s like, ah, it’s there. Or, you know, I was actually doing this with sadness a little while back I was, I was just feeling this sadness.

Peter (31:28):
And I was like, I noticed I wasn’t, you know, really letting it in. And when I let it in, instead of wanting to burst out into tears, what I noticed was like this, it was strange, it’s deep sort of very deep sense inside almost a sort of, uh, how can I put it? Um, it was almost comforting. There was something going on in me, which I allowed in which, which was almost almost comforting. So, you know, the fear that I’m gonna burst out in tears didn’t come true at all. So I think it’s just because, you know, we are scared. We’re socialized beings. We live in society and we want to behave well and fit in. Andt want to do things which upset the apple cart too much. And so I think most of our fears about that, or even just, if I really let it in, it would be too much for me. I couldn’t bear it. And so I, I don’t go there cause I just like, I couldn’t bear to feel this pain or this fear, but when you actually just SEP, I just feel what’s going on in the body, the slow problem. That’s what I find.

Guy (32:27):
Yeah, yeah. No same. It’s, it’s been a game changer for me, absolute game changer over in my life, you know? Um, I, I got a question. I, I got written down here cuz it, it caught my attention earlier and it kind of leads into what we’ve been chatting about. But you, you said there’s no such thing as ego and that ego is that we, um, we get, it gets thrown around a lot. You know, we caught up in the ego and it’s like, I was just curious to know what you meant.

Peter (32:55):
Yes. Again, my sort of being, I mean we use ego in different ways. You know, psychologists talk about having a healthy ego, which is, you know, sense of, you know, who we are in the world, et cetera, maturity. What I’m talking about ego here is when we say, oh, it’s my ego. My ego got in the way I was doing this for my, you know, my ego, you know, or that person’s got a too big, an ego know, we, we treat it as a noun as if there’s something called ego. But when I look inside myself, I don’t find a separate part of me called ego. I don’t find some entity called ego, which is there controlling me or running me or anything. What I do find is I, I find a lot of what we call egocentric thoughts, maybe thoughts about what I need, how I need to be in control of things.

Peter (33:45):
E so I find egocentric thoughts there. So I see what we call ego is not a thing, but it’s a mode of thinking that we get caught up in. And a lot of it probably comes back to this thought system we were talking about earlier that, you know, I have to get the world right. In order to be happy. I think a lot of our egoic thinking comes from, comes from that belief. So it’s like, it’s thinking, how do I get things to be the way I want? So it’s ego thinking rather than a thing called ego. And we just, we call it ego as a loose way of talking about, about it. But just to see, it’s actually a way of thinking. When we see it as a way of thinking, then it changes our whole approach to it. If we see ego as something that’s in the way, we often see it as an enemy, we’ve gotta get rid of it.

Peter (34:32):
And you see spiritual circle saying, you know, you’ve gotta transcend the ego, get rid of the ego, banish, the ego, concrete, whatever, if you see it just as a way of think that we get caught in, then our approach becomes again very different. And for me a lot softer, it’s saying, okay, you know, I can just pause. We were talking earlier about, you know, pausing our thinking. We begin to notice, oh, I’m caught in an egocentric mode of thinking here and I can choose not to follow it anymore so I can step out of the ego. And as often as I notice it, I can step out of the ego. So rather than seeing ego as something to get rid of, seeing as a mode of thought, I can choose to step out of and not follow anymore. So becoming free of ego is a, is a process we can do on goingly many, many times, rather than being some goal that we’re trying to achieve after years of spiritual practice. Yeah. So that, that to me is, is very important. Yeah,

Guy (35:31):
Totally beautiful. Um, Peter, I’ve got, um, set of questions. I ask people on the show and it helps get to a different insight. And I think that this question I ask quite often would support right now because I guess, uh, the question I ask is what’s there, uh, been there a low point in your life. That’s later been a blessing. And for me, uh, has there point as well where you are using the work that you teach and you do that apply to in our life to allow you to transition and, and see that blessing.

Peter (36:12):
I’m sure there have been nothing is immediately coming to mind. Let me just ponder a minute. Uh, I can see to be honest, nothing, nothing. I mean, I can see there are low points, but don’t really answer your question. Um, I’m sure there are things I’m sure. I hadn’t notice at this question. I’m sure there are things, but you know, nothing be honest is popping into my consciousness at the moment.

Guy (36:49):
That’s okay. That’s okay. Um, a question I did wanna ask is with everything that’s been going on over the last few years, especially it’s been in our face. What are, what are your thoughts, uh, of what’s been going on as in collectively from, from, I, I guess the vantage point that you, you might see things as is the world changing? Is it changing rapidly? Do you think? Uh, that there’s yeah. You know, there’s so many ways you could, you could look at it and skin it, I suppose.

Peter (37:24):
Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think the world, the world is changing rapidly and more and more rapidly. And it’s gonna a key on changing more and more rapidly. We haven’t seen nothing yet. You know, we talk about the pace of life, speeding up. The pace of life has been speeding up eternity. And what we see today is gonna get even faster in the future. Particularly the way technology starts in technology are going, they’re just pushing the acceleration, which is so pushing, you know, the environmental problems, et cetera. You know, a lot of those, you look at our problems and they come from accelerating growth, accelerating technology, accelerating, consumption, accelerating waste. So I see two trends going on together, both accelerating, you know, in, in technology where that’s taking us. And so accelerating problems that, that we are confronting. So I think I see we’re moving into more and more challenging times.

Peter (38:21):
And with a lot of unexpected changes, I think things are gonna suddenly come at us unexpectedly. Um, sort of, you know, you mentioned the last few years we had COVID know, it could be expected. Lots of people were saying, you know, we’re very vulnerable to a pandemic, but it wasn’t expected at a particular time on it. It just suddenly happened. So I think more and more, we’re gonna find ourselves faced with unexpected change. And for me that means we gotta learn. I think two things, both of which, you know, come back to letting go. We got to let go of our expectations about how things should be. Um, and that, you know, any major change is like change in the world. It’s like, oh, I thought my life was gonna be like this, but maybe I gotta make, it’s gonna be like this as some shift happening.

Peter (39:10):
If we hold onto our old expectations, all we do is we just make our visible and discontent again, if we can let go of them, say, okay, this is the world I’m facing now, how do I, how do I respond to this? Which means also letting go of past ways of dealing with situations the past it’s, you know, sometimes the past may be totally appropriate, but sometimes the new situations are gonna call for completely. And so the more we can be more creative, more flexible in our thinking, I think the better we are going to be able to face the changes that are coming in our personal life, whatever they may be. So, yeah, I, I see we are, we are in a very, it’s both exciting and challenging. I mean, where the technology five years time, I think we have no idea where we’d be, I mean, remember, you know, look over 20 years ago, none of us really saw the in worldwide web at least, and where that was going, let alone, you know, all the stuff, this streaming, the shopping, where we’re moving into the, I think moving into the intelligence age and where that’s gonna take us in five years is gonna be tenure beyond something most people can imagine, and there’s gonna be other side.

Peter (40:21):
So it’s gonna be most exciting times and the most challenging times and more and more, the more we can, you know, what we’re talking about here is awaken and step out of our sort of more dysfunctional thinking, the better we are going to be a able to be to manage that for ourselves.

Guy (40:39):
Yeah. I was gonna say it just really, um, highlights the importance of everything that you’ve spoken about today and allowing us to help navigate these these times a lot better. I mean, on a personal load, you know, we’ve had the pandemic, we’ve just had the biggest floods in history here in Northern new south Wales where I live. And if it wasn’t for having really a passionate intrigue into this work, I don’t know how I would’ve coped to be honest with you, you know, uh, and being able to see from a different perspective. Absolutely. So there’s yeah,

Peter (41:15):
Yeah. And that’s what it’s about is seeing things from fresh perspective.

Guy (41:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, personal question, what’s your morning routine look like?

Peter (41:27):
Um, fairly simple. I tend, you know, first of all, I have have cup of tea or coffee, usually tea and finding coffee’s a bit bad. And then I just, I sit quietly, um, just checking on myself, how I’m feeling, what, what, what the day ahead looks like, but also then just meditating a bit, just being quiet and just coming back to myself, that really sort of, it’s important to do that rather than just rushing into the world, sort of come back, ah, here I am just meditate and touch into, into that quality of being this and, and the quietness that’s there. And then, you know, then I think like most people, um, I probably have a second cup of tea

Peter (42:10):
And then start looking at the computer, you know? Okay. What are the, any urgent things, any urgent emails that be tending to do that. And then depending on the day you, if I’m writing, I like to work the first half of the day, I find the first half of the day is my more creative times if I’m writing or gotta do other things, I I’ll I’ll do those. And then generally to the afternoon, more relaxed, I meditator again towards the end of the afternoon, unless I’m, you know, something else that gets in the way, um, fairly, fairly straightforward. Yeah. In that sense. Nothing.

Guy (42:46):
Yeah. Beautiful. It’s always, and

Peter (42:48):
It’s not, and I’d say it’s not always like that, but you know, that thats generally how it is for

Guy (42:53):
Me. No, it’s was nice to get an insight, you know, cuz this, the varying people and perspectives that, that bring these conversations on, I’m always intrigued. And, and I think, um, the morning is such a great opportunity. Like you say, to set yourself up for the day, as opposed to just getting up, checking your phone and yeah. Sleep walking into the, into it, you know, it’s

Peter (43:15):
Oh. And also most mornings I do, you know, a period of just stretching, exercising, that sort of thing. Flexibility stuff. Yeah.

Guy (43:23):
Your, your book, um, letting go of nothing. What, what is your wish for the, for it moving forward? You know, um,

Peter (43:34):
Oh, I think it’s read by everybody.

Peter (43:39):
Um, my wish for it is that it really, it really helps people. Um, and the feedback I’m, I’m getting a lot of very good feedback for two things. One, I mean, again, lots of people saying, can I, by multiple copies, I want to give to friends, which is really nice feedback that, you know, means the word, the book is spreading by word of mouth. But also I wrote the book. It’s not a book of, you know, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, you know, unfolding a whole exposition. I tried writing it that way, but I was getting bored. I wasn’t excited by it. So I let go of writing it that way. And then the way it turned out is, you know, as you know, just a series of sort of 40 or so little pieces, little essays, little pieces, which each one is sort of independent and has a point to it and they sort of build on each other.

Peter (44:34):
But what this means is people can just dip into it. And you know, many people said, you know, I, you know, I had, I read this piece three times now and each time it gets more meaningful. Cause what I’d like doing is crafting stuff and making stuff very concise and tight. And so each of these is I hope is not waffly. It’s almost the opposite. It’s like very tight and you ha by reading it, you need to read it slowly. It’ll sink in of what I’m trying to say. So, so I hope is that people will, instead of just picking up and reading it through is people will find it a useful thing. They can come back to time and again, and each time they’ll get more value

Guy (45:12):
Out. Amazing. Amazing. I have no doubt today. People listening to this will, will, will jump on board for sure. Peter, where would be the best place to send them? Is it back to your website? Is it on Amazon? Like all available bookstores or

Peter (45:24):
Yeah. Um, well for the book, um, all good bookstores or online where wherever you go. I mean, I know it’s, it’s been around for a while. It was held up for a while with the sort of global supply chain problems, but I know it’s around. I mean, any good bookstore, wherever you go for books, I would, I would say, um, support your local bookstore. If you can keep them going, I think is always important. And then, you know, my website is much more information there, which is just Peter russell.com and get all the information on me and my books and videos and meditations and things.

Guy (45:58):
Yeah. Which is a great resource by the way I was, I was having to dig through and starting to drop into some of your YouTube videos on there as well. And, uh, yeah, it was fantastic. So I definitely recommend people will check it out. The, the links would be in the show notes below for every one anyway, uh, listening to this, um, one last question, Peter, before we wrap things up and that is with everything we’ve covered today. Is there anything you’d like to leave the listeners to ponder on?

Peter (46:29):
Yes. I think a very simple thing, which is something we touched on earlier, like deep down, we’re all the same, you know, deep down, we all want to, to be respected and loved and we don’t wanna be rejected or attacked. And this to me is the golden rule in all spiritual traditions is treat each other like you would like to be treated, which for me just comes up, the word kindness is just the more we can be kind to each other or even kind to ourselves, but the more we can be kind to each other is really taking care of another person’s inner wellbeing. So I just like to always to emphasize that whatever you are doing, whoever you are interacting with, just think, how can I do this? That the other person feels appreciated rather than attacked? How can I allow kindness in, into my life?

Guy (47:15):
Beautiful, beautiful. I I’m seeing a lot of that lately up here. Uh, since the floods it’s been incredible. You’ve been incredible. Uh, Peter, I just wanna thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and thank you for all that you do. It’s greatly appreciated. And I certainly hope, uh, this brings some much, uh, awareness to your work as well. Uh, the world needs it. That’s for sure. So thank you.

Peter (47:41):
Well, thank you. Thank you. I really, really enjoyed chatting. You’re welcome. We really enjoyed it. Thank you.