Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Farah Garan. Welcome to Sacred Conversations. Thank you so much for dropping in tonight.

Farrah Garan [00:00:06]:
Yes, my pleasure.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:07]:
Well, how are you feeling tonight?

Farrah Garan [00:00:09]:
I'm feeling good. Yeah. I'm feeling really blessed. Seeing and feeling all the amazing people around me. That's. That's the preciousness that I'm feeling these days.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:22]:
Fantastic. Who are you, Farah Garan?

Farrah Garan [00:00:27]:
I am a female human being. I definitely identify with my humanness. Above all, I feel that I am a work in progress, always learning. And, yeah, I find myself really motivated about human potential. Potentially that's a little bit problematic because there's always this gap between where I am and what I know is possible. But it's also exciting because I have so much optimism around what's possible for myself and us as individual humans, but also as a society. So I find myself very motivated to help usher in what's next for society. So that's what I'm identifying with quite a bit right now.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:28]:
Beautiful. Well, the definition of potential kind of includes the gap between what is and what could be, right?

Farrah Garan [00:01:39]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:40]:
There's kind of always going to be that inherent tension in the exploration of potential in terms of recognizing how much farther we have to grow.

Farrah Garan [00:01:52]:
Right. And the paradox of appreciating where one is at and being satisfied with that and knowing there's further to go. It's. It's a. It's a challenging pole to hold those two poles.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:06]:
Would you say that that idea of potential and somehow being satisfied with the current state, but also being motivated to pursue the future state, does that have anything to do with the idea of nature?

Farrah Garan [00:02:22]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I have quite a connection with the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I met my Tibetan teacher in early 2002. So it has been a major focus of my adult life. And while I was not seeking religion, and actually I'd say I had quite an allergy to religion at the time. I was very much exploring Taoism, and I was attracted to it because of the modeling, the looking towards nature as the things to model. And when I found my Tibetan teacher, I really resonated with him, and so I continued working with him. But it took me some years actually to start to understand Buddhism the way that I understand it now.

Farrah Garan [00:03:16]:
And there's much further to go. But this idea of Buddha nature is really at the core of Buddhism. The fundamental belief that we all, and not just humans, all sentient beings, have this potential of Buddha nature, which is clear light, awareness, wisdom. And it is our nature, and it's accessible to all of us. It just gets blocked. And you Know, through imprints or wrong action or ignorance, fundamentally. So the realization that we all have this Buddha nature and it's just a matter of unraveling the blocks and entanglements in order to get there. Yeah, I.

Farrah Garan [00:04:09]:
That's something I reflect a lot about.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:10]:
But there's. There's an entire spiritual practice known as Taoism. Is that right?

Farrah Garan [00:04:16]:
Yeah. Are you familiar with the I Ching? That Book of Divination? So that's the major Taoist text and one of the oldest books on the planet, the Book of Changes, the I Ching.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:30]:
Is that related to the Tao Te Ching or are they related to.

Farrah Garan [00:04:34]:
They're both main texts of Taoism.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:36]:
I see.

Farrah Garan [00:04:37]:
Yeah. But the Taoism is a spiritual tradition, and it was in conjunction with Buddhism in China. And I'm. This is not my area of expertise by any means. I do work with the I Ching quite a bit. And I love very much the idea of the patterns and also the idea that everything's in flux, everything's changing. And that's the same in Buddhism. One of the fundamental principles of impermanence, kind of when we start to understand these patterns and how things move and align with it.

Farrah Garan [00:05:15]:
And the best way to do that is by looking at nature and water particularly. And I just had my birthday a few days ago, and I consulted the I Ching on my. On my birthday, and I. I got water over water. It was changing into water over water. So that's kind of fresh for me right now. But, you know, the idea that, you know, water is always flowing and water takes plunges, it doesn't distinguish or judge between, like, a big leap or a nice meandering flow. It just goes for it.

Farrah Garan [00:05:49]:
Yeah. So apparently that's what I should be embodying right now. Know, just keep flowing, be consistent, and. And the adversity will pass through a connection with your nature. Actually, it was. It was referring to, like, come back to your essence. Come back to who you know you are. And I, I turn to nature and, and I don't.

Farrah Garan [00:06:14]:
I, I do mean nature in the very physical, manifested sense of the five elements of the forest and creeks and rivers, which I love. I absolutely turn to nature for fortification. But on a. In a more subtle way, I'm referring to my inner nature, Nature of mind, nature of heart, and an understanding of how nature functions like the universe. These are the things that we can turn to. When I find myself getting really distracted or overwhelmed by the 3D tasks. Yeah. So what.

Farrah Garan [00:06:57]:
What is my essence? What is my nature?

Vision Battlesword [00:07:00]:
Here we go.

Farrah Garan [00:07:01]:
Here we go.

Vision Battlesword [00:07:02]:
What is Nature.

Farrah Garan [00:07:05]:
What is nature? I mean, nature is holographic. You know, it's. It's reflective, and nature is consistent. I feel that an issue that I see in physics. And even, like, people have gotten so excited about quantum physics over the last few years, and I love that. I think it's great. And I don't think that it's fully understood because it still represents this big division between the really, really small quantum and the really, really big cosmic level. And this is.

Farrah Garan [00:07:43]:
This is a crisis in modern physics, which is. Honestly, it's reached pretty much as far as it can go. I'm not a physicist, so, you know, disclaimer. But anybody who does know physics knows there's. There's a term called the vacuum catastrophe. That's the official term. And it's because of this huge discrepancy between things at the. The quantum scale and the cosmic scale.

Farrah Garan [00:08:08]:
Or said another way, a huge discrepancy between the theoretical mathematical calculations and what's actually observed. And what the discrepancy is is that there is massive energy available to us. And the physicists got kind of scared because their equations were going to infinity, and that didn't make sense. What does infinity mean? We don't know how to work with infinity. So we gotta. We gotta box that up. We got to put it in a closed system, which is also not nature. There is no closed system in nature.

Farrah Garan [00:08:44]:
Everything is completely interconnected.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:46]:
But what do we mean by nature? What is it? What is nature?

Farrah Garan [00:08:50]:
I mean, nature's everything. I don't. It's just. It's existence. It's the game that we're in.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:57]:
Is there anything that's not nature?

Farrah Garan [00:08:59]:
No, I would say I couldn't think of anything that's not nature.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:03]:
How do we. When we make a distinction between something that's natural and artificial, is that distinction meaningful? What do we mean by that?

Farrah Garan [00:09:12]:
I think it's just a few steps removed. The artificial still comes from a human mind. And natural materials, they might go through a synthetic process. But if you keep going back and going back, it's all coming from nature and it's all created from a human. Or I mean, I guess that's what we're talking about is human artificially created things. For me, all of it, all of it falls under nature. I don't think there's anything outside of nature.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:44]:
What if an ant colony builds an ant hill, taking Earth, soil, stone, whatever else it is that they might use and creates an edifice, tunnels, a beehive? Are these things artificial? Because a creature Constructed them out of other materials that they didn't make or manifest with their own innate biological capabilities. Suppose that some other creature. Not a human, let's say an ant colony or a beehive or some other. Any. Any creature that has the ability to construct edifices out of materials that it may find in the world, not things that it secretes from its own body through biological processes. Or maybe that too. Maybe a spider web. Anything, Any.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:35]:
Anything. Any construction that a creature makes. Do we then define that as an artifice? Artificial? Or are these things natural? Is it. Is a house that we might build out of wood or concrete any less natural than an anthill?

Farrah Garan [00:10:55]:
I think it's all natural. Nature, for me, is everything. It's a few steps removed to say. I mean, even plastics, you know, but it's. It's still derived from nature.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:12]:
So then what is this distinction that we make between natural and artificial? I mean, everybody kind of knows what we're talking about. Or there's like something in the cultural consciousness where it's like, oh, yeah, plastic bottle, not natural. You know, tree natural. Like, we can. We. We certainly can categorize these things. But what does it even mean? Is there a meaningful distinction or is it all just kind of arbitrary? What do you think?

Farrah Garan [00:11:41]:
I think that there is a meaningful distinction, and I think it's more about process.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:46]:
Okay.

Farrah Garan [00:11:46]:
There are natural processes, and they've evolved beautifully and elegantly over time, and there is no waste. Anything in a natural process is then useful for another step in the process. And it's just this beautiful cyclical process. However, when humans have created things, they haven't thought through those processes, and they've put, like, a bit of a wrench in it. So that plastic bottle, it just kind of ends up sitting there and it's no longer useful. And that's what's unnatural, is that it's outside of this cyclical process where everything is useful. So, you know, and I think about. There's multiple angles, but in general, what I want to say right now is just that it is natural for one being to die and therefore feed another beating.

Farrah Garan [00:12:48]:
Whether that's a tree that falls in the forest and then so many things grow off that dead tree trunk, becomes life for other things or the decaying process of animals that die and. And animals eating other animals. So I feel that that is very natural for animals to eat other animals, whether they be worms. What becomes unnatural is humans taking that to such a scale where now we've, you know, caged all these animals and full them Fill them with hormones and, and eat them. And then now many, many other moral issues come into play. But ultimately, in the simplest form, nature is about this recycling of energy. And nothing is lost. Everything is usable, and it's all important.

Farrah Garan [00:13:46]:
Nothing is more or less important than anything else. That's what I feel is nature is the process.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:54]:
I tend to agree with you about what you consider to be natural or unnatural in terms of how we, let's say, how we treat other animals and how we. Specifically the way that we use animals for food. I tend to agree with you and just to sharpen the conversation a bit though, to like, kind of really get clear on what exactly it is that we're talking about. There are certainly other creatures in this world who farm, harvest, even enslave other species sometimes. Like, I believe there are certain types of ants, if I'm not mistaken, who treat aphids in a very, very similar way to the way that we treat livestock. Seems to farm or maintain stocks of aphids and uses them in various ways for food. And there, I think there's other creatures that we can look at in the world that do that sort of thing. Would we consider that behavior to be unnatural in the same way as us and the way that we raise livestock? In other words, can.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:05]:
Can other species besides humans behave in unnatural ways, do you think?

Farrah Garan [00:15:11]:
No, I think that they are very connected to their instinct and their codes that they receive. I feel that humans are distinctive because of our consciousness and we can make conscious choices. And I also believe that humans are very interestingly positioned. Even again, if we look at the scale of the cosmos, from the very, very small to the very, very big, humans are right in the middle. Like, it's crazy, uncanny, like just scaling wise. And also in Tibetan Buddhism, we talk about how humans are just like, right. Like even if you talk about the different realms, but, you know, below is the animal realm and then like hungry ghost realm, and then above you get into like the go realm. But actually it's the human realm that's the most juicy and full of potential.

Farrah Garan [00:16:12]:
Because in the God realm, it's like they can get too comfortable. You need that little bit of discomfort, that little bit of suffering to want to evolve. And so we're. We have this potential to become enlightened because we're kind of have this little bit of friction and we see what's possible. So I think that for an ant or whoever it is that's domesticating the aphids, I don't put any blame on them. I feel like they're probably just behaving naturally in whatever instinctive, innate way that they've inherited. But for a human to do it, it's like we could know better. You know, we, we have the potential to know better not only because of our hearts and morality and compassion and, but also that compassion, compassion really comes from an understanding of nature.

Farrah Garan [00:17:15]:
And so now, like, if I'm thinking in the direction of the nature of reality, and the nature of reality is one of interconnectedness. So that's in Buddhism when, you know, emptiness is a really, really big important concept in Buddhism and it's difficult to understand. But really what emptiness is about is we're empty of a separate inherent self. Meaning there's nothing can exist without also including all the rest of existence. For example, like a plant, right? A plant needs sunlight, it needs soil, it needs nitrogen and nutrients and water. And it includes all these other conditions that is true for every single thing in nature. It's all interconnected and interdependent. And understanding that compassion naturally arises.

Farrah Garan [00:18:19]:
It's an expansion of the sense of self. And from that deeper understanding of nature which humans are capable of, it wouldn't be okay to treat another being like that and to be extractive like that. And that's exactly the problem that we're in right now. Our society, this industrial growth society, is extractive by nature. It is. The reason that we're on this kind of death train is because we are misunderstanding nature. We're miss disrespecting nature and we're not understanding that you can't just take and take and take and take without an equal and opposite giving.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:06]:
Wow, you said a lot there.

Farrah Garan [00:19:09]:
I know. I should have let you jump in a little sooner.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:13]:
Let me see if I can successfully hold all the thoughts that I had while you're talking. So first thought, there's something that you're speaking to which has something to do with compassion or it has something to do with how we treat other creatures and whether that's something that we might call cruelty. And so what I'm hearing is from your perspective, there's not necessarily anything unnatural with consuming or harvesting or even domesticating other creatures. And other species may do it as well as we do. But there's something important about a level of consciousness that you bring to that sort of equation and a level of empathy or compassion that you also bring to that equation. Whether you can morally justify the way that you harvest or the way that you consume those other creatures from a perspective of if you're treating them, using them in an extractive way, which we haven't exactly defined that word yet. But I just want to put a pin in that for now. Then there's something else that you said where you brought spirit to the party, which is beautiful, because I think that's a really important aspect of this whole nature conversation.

Vision Battlesword [00:20:40]:
Because in at least one model that I've become familiar with, we sometimes think of nature as one half of the divinity equation, where we have the Father, which is spirit, and then we have the Mother, which is nature. And they're equally aspects of God, they're equally aspects of the divine. And yet one is more of a masculine expression, one is more of a feminine expression. And they mix together to create this universe and this life that we experience. So I want to put a pin in that. And then you use the word nature in a wholly different way when you talked about the nature of reality, which I think is actually a different way that we use the same word, but to mean something more like the essence of a thing. When we say, what is the nature of this or that or the other? What we're asking is almost like, what is its form or soul or pure expression, maybe? So I think it's interesting when we kind of shift and in some ways, when we use the word nature. There's at least a few different ways that I've heard us use the word nature in this conversation so far, one of which seems to be everything that's outside of ourself, meaning everything that's outside of the direct sphere of human creation.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:15]:
Outside that boundary is what we call nature. It's like the other. It's almost like description of everything that is not our self. If we were to treat the entire human species as an individual. And then another way that we've used the word nature is kind of to describe an evolutionary process which is not interfered with. I'm not entirely precise on that nature as a process piece that you brought up. But there's something unique about that, it seems to me, that's different than the other versions. And then we've talked about nature kind of as a divine spirit or force.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:00]:
And then we've got nature as a kind of a description of the essence of the thing. You think we've covered all the bases, or is there anything else left to explore?

Farrah Garan [00:23:10]:
I don't necessarily agree with a lot of what you said.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:14]:
Oh, wow.

Farrah Garan [00:23:16]:
Well, first of all, that nature is a process. Mostly that was a response to why we might consider a plastic bottle unnatural. And I was just saying that what's unnatural about it is that it's not part of the web. I still think it's nature because if we go back to what the materials are and the minds that created it, but it's outside of the process. But. But the first thing you said it. You made it sound like you weren't including yourself in nature when you said everything outside of us. I don't know.

Farrah Garan [00:23:54]:
You wouldn't include yourself in nature.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:56]:
Well, I wasn't articulating what I personally believe. I was just. I was just trying to get a landscape of all of the different ways that I hear people using this word.

Farrah Garan [00:24:08]:
So maybe that first one, you're. So I also think a lot in terms of the five elements. And there's different. There's like a gross, subtle and great subtle level of the five elements. So perhaps the gross level of the elements, which is the physical manifestation of the elements, the rocks, the water, the fire. That's definitely, I think, what most people think of when they think of nature.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:35]:
Yeah, I think where I was going with it is, and I feel like it was coming up in this conversation already and like, some of the things that you were saying were sort of reflecting or surfacing this, like, cultural idea of what we think nature is. But what I'm trying to say is that if you ask most people, without thinking about it too much, show me nature. They're going to point out there.

Farrah Garan [00:25:04]:
Yeah, right.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:05]:
They're going to point at a mountain, they're going to point at trees, they're going to point at squirrels running around. They're not going to point at anything inside this house or themself. That's what I'm talking about. There's a zeitgeist.

Farrah Garan [00:25:20]:
Yeah. It's a separation.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:22]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [00:25:23]:
But I don't have such a clear boundary when I think of nature. And even I think the five elements are helpful here and illustrating this. So the gross level. So first of all, the five elements, fire, earth, water, space and wind is what we would say in the Tibetan tradition. You know, the gross. First of all, the five elements are archetypal energies. Basically, they're a collection of different characteristics. You know, like fire is hot and it's upward moving and, you know, it's just so like a collection of characteristics of archetypal energies.

Farrah Garan [00:26:04]:
So at the gross level, it's the. It's environment. You know, it's the physical manifestation.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:10]:
And by gross, I just want to. I believe I know exactly what you're talking about. And I just want to make sure that when you say gross, you mean the Material world.

Farrah Garan [00:26:20]:
Yeah, physical. Not like, ew, gross. Right? Yeah, like you can touch it gross.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:26]:
As compared to subtle or causal.

Farrah Garan [00:26:28]:
Exactly. Right, right. So that gross level, you know what most people, like you said, if you ask them, what's nature? Those are the answers. You know, the rocks, the trees, the oceans. But also we talk about the elements just being present in the atmosphere and that they're also going through a pattern. Like there's this natural shift in the elements that changes us. So then when we talk about, like, the. Those are the outer elements, then we can talk about the inner elements, which is our body.

Farrah Garan [00:26:58]:
And we can also talk about our physiology and how the elements are in our physiology. And then we can talk about Tibetan medicine and the three humors. And then there's the secret level. And this is the mind, and this is the emotions, which are also very much associated with the elements. And we. We instinctively know this. Like, if I were to ask you, which emotion is associated with fire?

Vision Battlesword [00:27:25]:
Anger.

Farrah Garan [00:27:26]:
Yeah, there you go. You know, and so we, you know, when we work with the elements, we can also work with the outer elements and then the physical elements and then the elements of our mind. And I'm. I'm currently working on a book. I didn't write the book, I'm editing the book, which is on Buddhist psychology. And it's. It's called Nature of Mind. And so there is also a whole other discussion of nature of the human mind.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:53]:
That's fascinating. I'd love to hear more about that. I feel like we're getting somewhere. You know, I think this exploration is actually really important because, like you, I've often thought, or, I'm sorry, I shouldn't put words in your mouth, but what I'm sensing from you is that we share a similar belief system, which is that the distinction between natural and not natural, or maybe we would say natural and artificial, is somewhat arbitrary. At least that's the way I've been thinking about things, you know, recently in my life. And yet there's something I can point at my mixing console or my computer, you know, or any number of things in this room and say, this doesn't seem like it's congruent with what I understand to be nature or natural. But I also think that that's just kind of like an arbitrary definition that I learned at some point in my life and that I'm still kind of holding onto. But yet there's something important that you're also putting your finger on, which is that there's some way that we behave.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:05]:
There's some things that we do that seem to be contrary to or that seem to be out of alignment or out of integrity with some other way things can be. And that other way things can be seems to be the way things have been for the vast majority of our existence. Meaning life in general or this universe. The physical material, gross and even subtle and energetic universe. That evolutionary process that has led to up to this point seems to have certain, okay, it's about like a rule set. Like there's a certain rule set or there's certain maybe fundamental laws that are kind of built into the way this process unfolds. And the way you can look at all of the other creatures in this world and how they behave, that they seem to be in alignment with whatever these fundamental rules or laws are. And then there's some of our behavior that seems to be going contrary to those rules or laws.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:15]:
And that's the kind of behavior that we describe as not natural. Am I making any kind of sense here? What do you think about that?

Farrah Garan [00:30:24]:
Yeah, I think it's our conceptual mind. You know, we can make a distinction between our perceptual awareness, which would be more sensory, and it's also very direct, and then the conceptual mind, so that thinking mind. And it's gotten us into trouble. It's ego as well, but it creates resistance in us somehow. Like if we could just really surrender to natural rhythms and natural laws, that we would do a lot better. But we start judging and classifying and making distinctions and thinking about things and it gets convoluted and somehow there's a resistance. I don't know. I often think about surfing.

Farrah Garan [00:31:22]:
I think I. I want to be more of a surfer. I haven't had a lot of opportunities, but that flowing with, you know. So I often talk about this like in my own life when I feel that I'm not in flow and that I'm just like paddling against the wave. I'm like working so hard, I'm putting so much energy into this and I'm not going anywhere. And then imagining what it would be like to catch a wave. And now I'm harnessing the natural energy of that wave and just flowing with it in a non resistant way. And I feel like a lot of what we're doing as a society is paddling against the wave.

Farrah Garan [00:32:03]:
I would still call it all natural. It's all part of an evolutionary process. This may be a growth thing that we need to do, but I feel that the way through is really looking to nature. What is inflow with Nature, what is in harmony with nature. And even in terms of space travel. Like, we've gotten really far as a society looking at the material world, and that's really what our Western society has done. We have put all of our resources, all of our eggs in the basket of looking at the material world, and it's gotten us really far. We.

Farrah Garan [00:32:43]:
I mean, look how much we've created. Look at that mixer console and your computer and WI fi and. And space travel. And yet it feels really adolescent to me. I feel that we're missing some real deep understandings of how nature functions. I mean, we're getting them now. There's. There's those of us, okay, not us.

Farrah Garan [00:33:08]:
I'm just listening and learning. I'm not including myself there. But there's many who have really elegantly been looking at the laws of nature, and what it opens up is a harmonic resonance. So in the example of space travel, the way that we've gotten to space right now is really focusing on combustion and explosion. We're strapping a human to a huge rocket and crossing our fingers and. And, hey, we got to the moon.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:41]:
When you thought, yeah, I'm sorry to cut you off, but I just think this is really funny, and I want to. I just want to resonate on it for a minute. We're still really just dealing with more and more sophisticated versions of fire. Do you notice that? I mean, even the way that we make energy, we're just burning rocks, you know, or even when you even think of nuclear energy is still a kind of burning rocks in a weird sort of way, when you think about it, it's just funny. It's just. It's just better and better. Fire. That's what we're working with.

Vision Battlesword [00:34:15]:
And yeah, to your point, I think it's. We like to think of ourselves as so advanced technologically because, you know, we look at all of these gross toys that we can make for ourselves and even ways that we manipulate certain forms of energy in a, I think, probably relatively sophisticated way. But, you know, we compare ourselves to all of the other creatures on this planet that we would call nature creatures as opposed to us for some reason. But anyway, it looks like we've got all of this magic and such incredible control of this material world and our environment. But when we start to broaden our consciousness into what could be possible, what likely is possible in these subtle realms, these energetic realms, the psychic realms, and if there. The possibility, like Nassim Harriman. Did I pronounce that right? You know, seems to believe is Correct. And makes a lot of sense to me when we come back to that whole problem of the infinities in all of our physics equations.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:26]:
And what do they actually mean? If there's literally just infinite energy residing at every point in the universe, like Nassim Harriman believes is true, then whatever it is we're doing with all of these gross toys is really crudely primitive compared to what could be available to us, and maybe is just sort of just waiting to be tapped through the power of our own consciousness, even if we just knew how to access it.

Farrah Garan [00:35:56]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing, is that while we have put our resources as Western society into studying matter and, you know, let's just try to find the smallest particle, and we spend billions and billions of dollars at the CERN hadron collider. And it. It's just. There's always something smaller. There's always something smaller. Well, there's those mystics.

Farrah Garan [00:36:22]:
I mean, I'm affiliated with Tibetan Buddhism, so I'll refer to that, that have gone deeply within, and they have uncovered mysteries of the universe by going within. And, you know, there's a very famous sutra, a teaching in Tibetan Buddhism. It's called the Heart Sutra. And there's a line in there that says, emptiness is nothing other than form. Form is nothing other than emptiness. And I remember, you know, a decade plus ago when I was getting into Nassim's work and I started understanding a little bit about what he was talking about, I was like, oh, snap. That's. That's what that sutra is saying.

Farrah Garan [00:37:05]:
Emptiness is nothing. Nothing other than form. Form is nothing other than emptiness. Because what he was talking about in his model is that there's this pixelation or voxelation like that all. There's this fabric, I guess you could say, of the universe, and that matter protons are not something separate, it's part of that fabric. It's just cohesively spinning. And he'll use the example of a bathtub. You know, when you pull the drain in a bathtub and that vortex that's created by the drain, it looks like something different, but it's still water.

Farrah Garan [00:37:44]:
It's just cohesively moving at the drain. And it also has the function if there's something floating, like a rubber ducky, he'll say it looks like gravity being pulled towards it, but it's all made of the same stuff. And so this is the thing. While we've been focusing on matter, matter is actually 99.999% space. So maybe we've been looking at the wrong thing. And when we look at the space between things now those things that you were mentioning, consciousness and, and psychic abilities, remote viewing, spooky action at a distance. It starts to make sense when you think of everything as just a field. Understanding reality in a more pure, deeper way will absolutely transform our society.

Farrah Garan [00:38:40]:
And instead of explosion and what feels like a bunch of adolescent boys blowing things up, we can have much more elegant ways of gravity control and space travel and just resonance right here on the ground on Earth. That I genuinely believe in a just beautiful, harmonious paradise of a society, vibrant, verdant, because we better understand nature and are living more harmoniously with it.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:17]:
Well, make no mistake, explosions are really cool.

Farrah Garan [00:39:20]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:21]:
Fireworks, we got to keep that part of it because it's just too much fun. But.

Farrah Garan [00:39:26]:
And then there's the other side. Yeah. There's the implosion. You can't forget about. It's like a black hole. There's both, you know, there's both. It might be sucking things in on one end and on the other end it's putting it out.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:37]:
True. And if you believe Nassim, there's a black hole in every single point of the. Well, every proton is a black hole.

Farrah Garan [00:39:45]:
Every protocol that are in galaxies.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:47]:
It's basically we're living in fractal black holes. It's black holes all the way down and all the way up.

Farrah Garan [00:39:52]:
They're toruses, actually.

Vision Battlesword [00:39:55]:
And there's infinite energy inside every single one of them, apparently. Which would mean that all of this obsession, if that's true, all of this obsession that we have with this material world and with this last several hundred years of science, so called, has created all of these miracles that we find ourselves with today is like us colonizing the tiny, tiny, tiny tiniest tip of an iceberg above the water level and congratulating ourselves on, you know, having dominated all of reality when, you know, there's a million times as much below the surface that we like, don't even try to look at.

Farrah Garan [00:40:39]:
Well, and the side effects of it are that we have piles and piles of plastic bottles that we don't know what to do with.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:44]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [00:40:45]:
You know, so there's. It we're not clear closing the loop.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:48]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's just short sighted in my opinion, you know, that it seems to me, and this causes me to reflect back on some of the other conversations that we've had, especially that deal with, for example, money. And I had a conversation about abundance and anything that's. That deals with economics tends to bring this point to the surface for me, which is that there's just something really, really short sighted with the way that we manage resources. And I think it really does tie back into this conversation of nature and what a natural process looks like. To your point about cycles and recycling or recirculating, that, you know, every give hasn't has an equivalent take or vice versa and all this different stuff. I feel like at some point we got really unhinged from being in integrity or in alignment with nature. And I don't say this, although I am, you know, very ecologically conscious and have a lot of compassion for all other life on the planet and think it's all very beautiful and important that we live in harmony with it.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:09]:
But I'm not speaking from the perspective of an environmentalist right now per se, but just a pragmatist to say it's like very, very short sighted the way we've somehow managed to disconnect our idea of resource movement and management to the point where we have convinced ourselves somehow that this fiction, this, this fictional concept that we call money is somehow, somehow allows us to break the rules to the point where we can take really valuable resources from one place and turn them into something that's completely unusable and then dump them somewhere else. And that, that can just go on forever because some numbers in a computer screen are going up and it's like, it's really frustrating for me a lot of times to try and have that conversation with people who can't see that the obviousness of that fact that we've got to like reconfigure our overall resource management strategy and that the monetary system is not helping us to do that. But I don't know, I guess I got on a soapbox there for a minute.

Farrah Garan [00:43:21]:
Well, it's a fundamental problem of economics is that it's kind of assuming that there's endless growth is possible.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:30]:
Exactly.

Farrah Garan [00:43:31]:
Based on a complete unnatural something you never ever see. Just like physics with a closed system. There's no such thing as a closed system. It might be convenient to study it. Or they take away spin, you know, like it's a little complicated for our equations to have that spin in there. So let's pretend. But like everything's spinning. So same thing.

Farrah Garan [00:43:51]:
Like our modern economics are based on, you know, incessant growth.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:57]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [00:43:58]:
And extraction of resources. And that also, you know, the externalization of costs with corporations, same thing, you know, like they create a product and then, well, it just goes into the dump, you know, at the end like, there's no. Yeah, it's. I fundamentally believe that when we really take a good hard look at how we're functioning as a society and ask ourselves, does this align with natural principles?

Vision Battlesword [00:44:27]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [00:44:27]:
Philosophically speaking, I think it's all still natural because we're humans and we're doing it and we're nature, but we're not aligning with natural principles. And so what nature does eventually is.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:39]:
It catches up with you.

Farrah Garan [00:44:41]:
Yeah, yeah. It's just not going to work. That's going to die. You're poisoning yourself. You're poisoning your land base. Yeah, it's not sustainable.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:51]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [00:44:51]:
Let alone regenerative.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:55]:
Okay, but see, here's where I think, this is why I think I keep coming back to this question of like, what is nature? Well, like, what is our definition of that? Because we keep doing this little dance.

Farrah Garan [00:45:06]:
What do you think nature is? Visual?

Vision Battlesword [00:45:07]:
Well, I'll try and tell you, but like we, we keep doing this little dance, you know, back and forth with, okay, well this isn't natural, but now everything is natural. Don't get me wrong. Philosophically speaking, everything is part of nature.

Farrah Garan [00:45:20]:
But seriously, saying we are, we are more successful when we align with natural principles. And when you go against natural principles, you're going to fail eventually.

Vision Battlesword [00:45:29]:
Agreed, I do agree with you, but, but also, like, what is that? Because we, we, you and I both also believe that everything is part of nature and there's nothing that we can actually really do that isn't natural, philosophically speaking. So it's like, I feel like we're kind of talking out of both sides of our mouth here. And I just want to get a little bit more, more clear cut on, like, okay, if we're going to say that there are these things called natural principles, and when we get out of alignment with them, we do so at our peril. What are natural principles? And also when we talk about this fallacy of infinite growth that our economic and monetary system seems to be based, on, which I again agree with you wholeheartedly that it is a fallacy. And yet circling back around to Nassim and the physics and the infinite energy available at every point in the universe, is the universe not infinitely growing? Or like, how do we, how do we square that circle? How do we reconcile the idea that we don't really believe that an infinite growth paradigm is inherently natural with the possibility that the universe itself is infinitely growing? Or is it? What does the universe look like? What does the cosmology look like in this new paradigm? Like Nassim's ideas.

Farrah Garan [00:46:51]:
I think there's boundaries to the universe. I think there's more than one universe.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:55]:
Oh, that's right. He says that the universe is bounded, but that it may be contained within another universe. And then fractal that. That's what his claim is. That's right. Okay, so we've got a bounded universe. So within that, what do we call natural principles? What is an example of one natural principle?

Farrah Garan [00:47:20]:
Cycles comes to mind, you know that things are reach balance through cycles. Like when something gets too far in one direction. And this also goes back to the I Ching.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:35]:
Yeah.

Farrah Garan [00:47:35]:
Then it changes into the other. So there's this natural balance that's kind of encoded into the system via cycles.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:46]:
That reminds me of the principle of rhythm from the kind of seven. What are they? Yeah, yeah. There's these principles like rhythm, polarity, mentalism, gender correspondence.

Farrah Garan [00:48:06]:
What is correspondence?

Vision Battlesword [00:48:08]:
As above, so below. As below, so above. And rhythm is, you know, all things oscillate. There's also, I believe. Yeah. The principle of vibration. Nothing is ever static. All things are always in motion.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:22]:
All things are always in inherent state of change.

Farrah Garan [00:48:24]:
Bam.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:25]:
Yeah. Maybe these are kind of like natural principles, actually.

Farrah Garan [00:48:28]:
Sounds like it.

Vision Battlesword [00:48:30]:
Yeah. Cool. That actually makes sense. We've known these things for a long time, haven't we? And they just keep showing up in one tradition after another after another. Are we, like going through some kind of. Are we playing some little game of hide and seek with ourselves where we pretend to forget these things for a while and then have to rediscover them?

Farrah Garan [00:48:50]:
I think it's about complexity. And I was thinking about that when you're using the example of the mixer in your computer. Yeah. They don't feel natural if we go back in iterations that they all come from natural object, natural things in the earth. But it's like these iterations of complexity. And I feel that that's what we've done as a society. And with our conceptual mind, we've just really complicated things. And going back to the essence, it is the way through.

Farrah Garan [00:49:25]:
There are these. It's great to reflect on these basic principles. Yeah. Rhythm, vibration.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:33]:
Yeah. And that's great that you brought back the word essence, because that's another aspect of nature that we surfaced. And so these things are all kind of coming together now and making a lot more sense. So what did you come here wanting to say about nature? I remember you had some things in mind. And in fact, I think even the nature of mind was one of the things that you said. But I'm just curious what was on your mind?

Farrah Garan [00:50:01]:
Well, I think that karma comes to mind at the moment, actually, which feels like a. A natural law, that the more we understand it and work with it, the better circumstances are. And so just understanding nature. So I'm in the moment really thinking from the Buddhist perspective about emptiness and interdependence and impermanence and karma and that each of these really describe the fundamental of nature. Like I said before, emptiness being like understanding these Planck spherical units as the fabric of space, time and impermanence, like the I Ching, everything's changing and you don't want to grasp onto things and that there's nothing solid. And understanding these principles helps reduce our suffering. And the nature of mind being one of happiness. What our nature really is is one of clearness and light and wisdom and happiness.

Farrah Garan [00:51:24]:
And the more that we don't understand these natural principles, the more resistance and blocks there are and therefore suffering. So the idea of a separate solid self, Buddhism would say, or my teacher would say, that this is the fundamental cause of suffering is the ignorance in thinking that there's a separate solid self rather than the interdependence. So all of that to lead up to karma and karma being my understanding of karma, Karma's action. And karma is a law of nature, just like gravity. Like whether you believe it or not or you understand it or not, you're subject to it, just like gravity. And basically it's cause and effect. And maybe it's similar or there's some connections with correspondence, like you were saying, like when.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:24]:
Actually that's another. That's. If I didn't already name seven, then that would be the seventh one.

Farrah Garan [00:52:29]:
What? Karma.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:30]:
Causation.

Farrah Garan [00:52:31]:
Causation.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:32]:
The principle of causation is in there. I was sitting here thinking. I was. I was actually sitting here thinking, as you were speaking. I was like, yeah, karma doesn't actually show up on the hermeticism list, but yeah, it does. Principle of causation.

Farrah Garan [00:52:44]:
Causation, yeah. Right. And the same as we would think in the physical world, like you plant a seed, you plant a tomato seed. As long as you give it the right conditions, you're going to come up with a tomato plant. That's obvious and trackable. But that the parallel is it's similarly happening on the level of mind, but we just don't see it as quickly and clearly. And it can be over a long span of time, maybe lifetimes even. But that with every action, whether it's a physical action or a thought or verbal action, there is a ripple that's sent out, there's some sort of effect.

Farrah Garan [00:53:29]:
And this isn't good or bad, it just is. But it's the degree to which you understand it and work with it. You can direct what those causes are. And that's why being a good, kind person is a really good strategy in life. I mean, it's a good way to be morally and ethically and you get more of what you put out. If you want more love, give more love. So it's kind of like learning the rules of the game. And in the same way that as a society, the more we align with the principles of nature, the more, you know, verdant, fertile society we could have on a human, individual level, the more one understands karma and how those hermetic principles work, the more joyful and happy your life would be.

Farrah Garan [00:54:28]:
And same that. That's Buddhist psychology as well, that when you understand impermanence and interdependence and conditions, you're happier. And that that is what's natural, is to be happy.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:41]:
Can you tell me more about interdependence?

Farrah Garan [00:54:45]:
Just everything exists in relation to something else. There's so many conditions and all the things that had to come together for this moment. And, you know, like there's a. There's a blessing that I developed that I say before I eat. Essentially, it's just taking a moment to acknowledge all the beings that played a role. I mean, like the stars and the moon and the rain and all that, but also all the beings that play played a role. Like just to have this food on my plate, to just take a moment to pause. And it's big.

Farrah Garan [00:55:23]:
Like, if you really think about all the things that needed to come together so just that there is no such thing as a separate, solid, independent anything. It's all in relation to everything else.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:39]:
Okay, so we touched on, and I didn't articulate them in perfect order or completeness, but I talked about the hermetic principles. Now you're talking about these kind of Buddhist laws of nature, if you will, which is also a way of saying the essence, because we said nature also equals essence. The essence of reality is emptiness, impermanence, interdependence, karma, which also sort of means action or cause and effect. And that the nature of mind is happiness, that sort of our default resting state or resting place or center of gravity is happiness, is not suffering. And that it's only by misunderstanding or being out of alignment with these other laws or principles that we experience suffering. Is that about right? How does understanding or coming to terms with the reality of Emptiness help reduce suffering.

Farrah Garan [00:56:49]:
It's connected with impermanence. I think that what we often do as humans is we try to cling to things, and it's like grabbing at sand that just pours through your fingers. And then we lament that it's gone, but understanding that. That everything's changing, but actually emptiness is also circling back to potential. It's the. It's like the source of everything. It's zero. And emptiness is not about nihilism or nothingness.

Farrah Garan [00:57:25]:
It's really pointing more to potential, that from this field, anything is possible. Everything is possible. So emptiness can be a source of great motivation and comfort. Don't get me wrong. I'm not pretending to understand emptiness fully. Like it is a deep, deep subject. I would be an enlightened being in front of you if I claim to understand it. It's.

Farrah Garan [00:57:53]:
It's a journey. But from where I'm at now, thinking of emptiness as the potential for possibility, like the source, and we use that word a lot in our spiritual community. Emptiness is source.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:09]:
Right. Okay. And then I've often heard also kind of almost a paradox or a koan kind of statement, which is that emptiness is infinitely full and fullness is infinitely empty. And that kind of reflects back to what we were talking about with the sort of infinite energy in each Planck cube of the fabric of the universe, or a black hole at the center of every proton. It kind of all reflects back on that concept that it is a paradox. But it's also true that infinite and inherent emptiness of the universe and existence itself is the wellspring of infinite possibility that everything can arise from. Well, that's kind of an optimistic thought. I can see how that understanding that sort of helps reduce suffering.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:04]:
What about. And you said it's connected with impermanence, but how about we just visit impermanence for a moment? How does coming to terms with impermanence help reduce suffering?

Farrah Garan [00:59:15]:
Yeah, again, it's this attachment or grasping quality often. So we. We talk about different kinds of suffering. There's the. The suffering of suffering, which is just like pure pain or starvation or cold. You know, that's clear suffering. And it's more simple to understand. But there's also changeable suffering, which comes from having happiness and then losing it.

Farrah Garan [00:59:42]:
But that's really attachment. If we understand that nothing's permanent, everything's going to change, then we don't get too attached to the way that things are. We're not surprised when it changes. And it's like, you know, surfing those changes more so than being rigid and grasping on to something. So, yeah, just recognizing from the outset that everything's impermanent and, you know, it's. It's also about being in the present moment, then just really fully being in the moment and accepting what is. Is a much happier way to move through life than attached to some condition.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:26]:
Yeah. The way I think of it a lot of times, I think the principle of impermanence in Buddhism is one of the first things that really. That I found really both attractive and helpful. Like one of the most helpful things for me in coming to terms with my own suffering and happiness. And for me, the empowering thing about that concept is it really gives you permission to relax about a lot of things, you know, because you. If you can hold that idea that these things will change and that is actually the essence of reality, there's nothing I'm going to do about that except, like you say, go with the flow. It really lets you relax a lot because it's like, great. I don't.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:18]:
I'm not responsible to hold on to this. I'm. I'm not. I don't have the power to keep this fixed in time or space or in my experience. And that, that actually just allows me to let go and then enjoy it while it's here, whatever it is, and then also enjoy whatever the next thing is that might come along without, as you say, that kind of pain of loss that is really created by the false belief system that we could actually keep whatever that thing is that we enjoyed in that moment.

Farrah Garan [01:02:01]:
I love that you brought up relaxation. I feel that relaxation is the way to connect with our nature. And that relaxation is power. And even like, it's. It's the rigidity of things as opposed to the relaxation that causes issues and friction and suffering, but somehow just relaxing. But, you know, I think we misunderstand relaxation in our society a lot, that it goes in the direction of laziness perhaps, but real relaxation still has a quality of awareness, but that the relaxation is just a letting go of resistance. And then we can harness the power of our essence and of nature.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:50]:
That's awesome. I'm writing that down. Relaxation is the letting go of resistance. I love that. Yeah. I think that relaxation can certainly be a big power move. You know, there's all sorts of different ways you can think about that. And it's also a form of.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:08]:
I've been thinking about this a lot recently. It's a form of conservation of energy. Relaxation.

Farrah Garan [01:03:15]:
Right. Like not paddling against the wave.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:17]:
Yeah, yeah. Or, I mean, you know, a certain Certain forms of relaxation could absolutely save your life if you tried to, I don't know, press yourself against a rock and resist the crashing wave. That's probably going to create a lot more suffering than just, you know, relaxing and letting the water take you where it's going to take you. So that's cool.

Farrah Garan [01:03:39]:
Like, like. And heard someone say recently, the example of someone who's asleep during a car accident is often the one who comes out the least injured.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:50]:
Right.

Farrah Garan [01:03:52]:
Because they're not bracing against it.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:54]:
Yeah.

Farrah Garan [01:03:55]:
But relaxation is. Openness is how I feel. So in the, the Tibetan tradition that I'm in, Tantra Ghana, we use the body as a vehicle to. I mean, ultimately it's all about getting to Buddha nature. But the. They're very physical practices and they're all about releasing tension or dissolving blockages to cultivate more openness and in a physical way in the body. First, in the gross physical body, we work with the spine and the organs, but it gets increasingly more subtle. And then we're working with the subtle body, but it's all.

Farrah Garan [01:04:33]:
And it's still. It's very much a spiritual path. Yes, it's health and. And vitality. And vitality. But it's when you release the blockages and have more openness, then the energy is flowing as well as the mind is flowing, and you start to open to nature and realizations and spontaneously one has realizations about non duality, for example, but it's relaxation. It's letting go of the tension and the blocks and becoming more open and thereby getting closer to Buddha nature.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:11]:
Nice. Well, I got one more on my list. What about karma? How does internalizing the reality of karma help one reduce suffering or get closer to that nature of mind, which is happiness?

Farrah Garan [01:05:30]:
I think understanding karma is really empowering. Often when, you know, people don't know as much about it and they've just heard a little of this or a little of that, it seems to have a negative connotation. And it seems like many people think it's like this anchor rock that you're carrying from your past. Oh, that's my karma.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:51]:
Or even like punishment. Yeah, doing wrong deeds.

Farrah Garan [01:05:55]:
Exactly. But really it's about in every moment you're creating your karma. With every decision of every action, thought, word that you say, you are creating your karma. So you are empowered in every moment to make a choice. Do I want to create more positive imprints, a positive ripple that's gonna come, you know, boomerang back at me or not? So it's not something that you're just a victim to. It's the. The law of the game, you know? And so this is still within this worldly, conditional world that we're in. It's not.

Farrah Garan [01:06:40]:
We're still playing in this game of conditions. So basically, it's. It's the world of dream. But you can create a good dream if you understand karma, which is, you know, whatever you want to receive more of, be that. Put that out there. So it's empowering.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:58]:
Yeah, I can see that. I. And I can also see how it's super empowering just to have a deep realization of one's own creative nature. The actual magnitude of the power that we have and the influence that we have to shape our own experience and our own reality, and the influence that we have in the dream of the world or this universal dream as our ripples, whatever they are, not just our actions, but our words and even our thoughts as they ripple out from our consciousness in our being. That's a very empowering mindset, I think. But it's like that old. The old cliche also carries a huge responsibility. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:46]:
Does that ever feel like a burden to you? That responsibility of, like, oh, man, I gotta clean up my thoughts? You know, like, what am I rippling out into the world right now?

Farrah Garan [01:07:55]:
Yeah. I mean, this takes me back to the. That idea of potential and being overly focused on the gap from where I am and what I know is possible. So, yeah, that feels like a burden. Like, I need to do more. I need to do it better. I really just need to relax more. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:14]:
Yeah. That's what I'm picking up from this conversation.

Farrah Garan [01:08:16]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is a big responsibility, for sure. You know, let's be conscious of it and let's use it in a positive way.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:27]:
You used a word a little while ago, which is something I wanted to pick up on earlier in our conversation, but you used the word good. I don't remember exactly what the sentence was, but it reminded me that there seems to be a judgment contained in a lot of the things that we're saying back and forth here tonight, which is that we seem to judge natural nature, all of that sort of stuff, as like, the good or the right or the better. And then we seem to judge the other as the worse or the bad, the not so good. What do you think about that?

Farrah Garan [01:09:08]:
I think it's an excellent point. I think that we're all here to just encompass all of consciousness and reality and growth. And so we need the light and the dark. We. We're in A world of polarity. And that is how we learn and grow. So, yeah, I mean, there is dark in the absence of light. And I don't know if I'm going in the direction that you were thinking.

Farrah Garan [01:09:42]:
When you, when you say good, you're saying like versus evil.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:47]:
I don't know. Yeah, no, I, I think I'm not necessarily bringing evil into it, although that's an interesting direction of exploration. But I was just more thinking of like, good versus bad. Like, for example, if we were to say that happiness is good and suffering is bad and living in a more natural way is better for us because we might experience more happiness or we might experience more health or we might damage this planet less by different ways that we could measure that. I just was noticing the judgment there and. But I like the direction you're going with it, which is to notice that polarity is one of these laws of nature, the rules of this game, and that our existence seems to encompass all of the shades, from the lightest to the darkest, and that that all seems to be part of nature. That all seems to be natural. I don't know.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:48]:
I was just noticing that though, because. And I do think that's a sort of a very common unstated assumption that people have.

Farrah Garan [01:10:56]:
Yeah, well, I mean, nature also has a destructive quality. You know, big raging fires that burn everything down, or the decay. You know, there's. There's cycles of growth and there's cycles of decay, and I think we need all of it.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:12]:
Well, coming back to the principle of interdependence, all of those judgments are kind of relative in a way. Right. One, from one perspective, nature might seem to be destructive and. But from another perspective, it may seem to be regenerative or restorative.

Farrah Garan [01:11:29]:
Right. Depends on your point of view. We all have a unique perspective in the universe, which is also interesting to think about. Like one hand, we can say we're all one. You know, we're all the same stuff. But it is true that we all have a completely unique perspective. And so that's why there's multiple truths. Because if I was moving this glass towards you and I ask you, is it coming or going? You have one answer that's true.

Farrah Garan [01:11:59]:
And I have a different one and same thing with the destruction. Well, out of the destruction we get, you know, after the fires, we have morel mushrooms. They love those fires. Those are life giving. Those fires are life giving to the morel mushrooms.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:16]:
Sure, yeah. I mean, one could say in from some perspective, all natural processes, let's call them or geological or cosmological processes are life giving in some way. You know, even the. Even the ones that would seem to be maximally destructive, there's still some perspective there that paves the way for new growth, new evolution, the next level of the unfolding, whatever this thing is.

Farrah Garan [01:12:48]:
That makes me think of the Taurus again, which is the fundamental geometry of our universe. And you think of the Taurus like, yeah, there's that singularity in the center, which is the still point, but then things travel away from that, and then I feel like it would get increasingly chaotic on the horizon of the Taurus, but then it comes right back around and comes to the still point. So that. That is the cycle from stillness to movement and chaos and back. And, you know, that's growth and destruction and stillness and movement.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:26]:
I love that. I love that you keep bringing me back. And this has happened over multiple conversations that we've had, but I love that you keep bringing me back to that Taurus shape, because that's so. Yeah, there's something just so perfect about that, to encompass all, like, almost all of those different principles. Polarity and rhythm and vibration and correspondence and all of the different things that the Taurus. There's something very magical about that shape. I wanted to investigate a little bit this piece about the separate self that you brought up a while ago. That's.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:04]:
That seems so core, especially to Buddhist philosophy and spirituality. And I wonder if you're familiar at all with a spiritual philosopher by the name of Mark Gaffney. So he's doing a lot of, I think, really innovative work building on traditional Jewish philosophy. He's a rabbi. Kabbalah, hermeticism, integral theory, which. Are you familiar with Integral Ken Wilbur, Ken Wilber. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. Building on all of that sort of stuff and like, taking it even further.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:43]:
And he's got a particular framework that he calls the evolutionary unique self. And it's very interesting to me, and it's. To me, it's very. It fills in a lot of gaps, and it helps me feel better about some intuitions that I have when I hear certain perspectives that to me, feel incomplete or like there's some. I feel. I just feel like that doesn't feel quite right to me. And so I want to run this past you and see what you think about it. And this.

Vision Battlesword [01:15:22]:
This model, this is like the seven layers or stages of the unfolding of the self, as per Rabbi Mark Gaffney. And this makes a lot of sense to me. I just want to see what you think about it. Because what, what he's saying is that we go through a developmental, like a stage development sequence, which resonates a lot with some of the other stage developmental models like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or the integral model or spiral Dynamics, where it's like we progress through these stages. But in his model, he's talking specifically about the unfolding and the evolution of the self. And he says it starts with the pre personal self. So this is like how we are from conception through, you know, shortly after birth, maybe, you know, within the first few months to couple of years of our life. We're actually in a pre personal state of consciousness, meaning we have not even yet separated ourself from the rest of the world.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:39]:
We have no concept of a separate self at all. And of course there's a lot of other schools of psychology and other things that support this idea that we go. We do indeed go through this phase. So the pre personal self. But Mark Gaffney also describes all of these things from a spiritual perspective, which I can't fully articulate because I don't know it well enough. So I'm giving you a very crude representation of what this is all about. But anyway, we have this pre personal self which is sort of like still kind of in this non dual state, spiritually speaking. And it's also non separated, psychologically speaking.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:19]:
But then we do indeed separate. We go through this stage of growth or development where our psychology and our spirituality develops to the point where we recognize ourselves as a separate being from our mother, father, even the material world around us. And we start to like go through this period of separation which he calls the separate self. And each of these stages of kind of the development of the personality or the, or the self, as we might call it, also kind of have like different philosophies or belief systems that are kind of associated with it, which is again, this is similar to integral theory, where we can kind of get stuck at these different phases or stages of the evolution of ourself. So the separate self is that sort of phase of independence. It's that phase of I, me, mine. It's that phase of. It's for me to get my needs met because I am this individual, this separate being.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:30]:
And the rest of the world is kind of like here for me in a certain way. So you can kind of see where that psychology can perpetuate into, you know, into adult life and you know, through the end of life. Even then, Gaffney says we may begin to acquire a false self, the false self is like our belief system. This is what comes to us through our conditioning, through our learning. It's the stories, the assumptions, the whatever those belief structures are. This kind of reminds me of Don Miguel Ruiz and the four Agreements Toltec philosophy. So all of these agreements, stories, beliefs, assumptions, however it is that we want to think of them start to accumulate on top of our separate self and give us this new sense of an identity which is not just us as these kind of pure pre personal, non dual beings that we came into this existence with. Not even that, but separated from the rest of the world with an individual sense of desires and needs and survival instincts and so forth.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:46]:
But now also where this like sort of meta construct of our belief system now going through the world and continuing to accumulate those aggregations of false self structures. Beyond the false self though, is the possibility of reaching our true self. The true self is the separate self reunified with source. And now this is where, this is the point that I wanted to kind of reconnect with you in this realm of the Buddhist philosophy. Because this is what I see. I see the Buddhist philosophy as existing at this level four of the true self. And I think there are several different, you know, wisdom traditions or spiritual traditions that kind of go here and think that this is the destination, the ultimate destination or the place where we stop or like the thing that we're trying to get to, which is the reunification into this true self where we disbelieve in the false self. We realized that that whole thing was completely a construct like of our own psychology or culture or environment.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:09]:
Then we even disbelieve in the separate self. And we realize like, oh wait a second, we were never this whole separate thing to begin with. That's all just an illusion. We may either disbelieve in or reintegrate the pre personal self and say, oh yeah, actually this state of nature that we were born into is actually, the state is actually at its core a non dual state. And so this reunification with all of the rest of creation, this idea of re merging into this collective consciousness, we recognize as their true actual self. I am you, you are me. We are she, she is he. All of us are the same.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:51]:
And we get to that point where we recognize that we're part of this universal consciousness. But then Gaffney says we can go further than that. He says, actually yes, all of that is true. The false self and self, even to a certain degree is true. The separate self is also correct. The prepersonal self is in there too. But what we can do is we can actually transcend the true self even and reemerge from that as the unique self. Which is coming back to what you were saying before, which is recognizing that, yes, I am in fact this unified universal consciousness.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:41]:
And also I am a unique individuation of that which is in his own words, and I love to repeat this because it just very beautiful and eloquent to me, which never was, is not, and never will be ever again. This specific particular perspective of that true self, of that universal consciousness experiencing itself and moving in me as me and through me on its way to a grander self experience, which is the next level, which he calls the evolutionary unique self, which is the recognition that. Oh, hang on a second. It's not even just that I am this unique individuation of the collective consciousness of that true self. The separation is correct, but the unification is also correct. But it's also in a state of change. It is never, ever static. It is constantly evolving.

Vision Battlesword [01:23:50]:
It is the evolutionary process of the unfolding of this consciousness which is motivated by my desire, which is in fact the energy, the power, the erotic life force, as he calls it, of the cosmos, which is what drives this process of evolution. And my unique self has the privilege and the honor and the responsibility of making a unique contribution through my own desire. What it is that I would like to see in this world, what it is that I would like to experience. What is my personal take on this whole crazy circus of this material, subtle and causal world that I get to contribute. And then the collection of all of our individuations, our infinite individual perspectives and erotic evolutionary processes is the evolutionary self symphony, as he calls it, the returning once again to the collective. That overall, that super mind, that over mind, whatever, however it is we want to think of it, that that universe of mentalism that is orchestrating at some level this entire symphony of each of us as our individual instruments that we get to play under the direction of that kind of universal conductor. What do you think about that?

Farrah Garan [01:25:33]:
I love it. I. I love the. When you said symphony, that lit me up. So it's like if each person really connects to their natural essence and finds their true self expression, then that collection of everybody doing that creates a super intelligence. That's just this harmonious song. Right. I love that.

Farrah Garan [01:25:59]:
I. I think that's. Let's go for it as a society. Yeah. Like if we can peel away those layers of blocks and stories and restrictions and come back to the true self and have that. That unique self expression, each person Playing their pure note. Yeah, because it's. It's the universe learning about itself, and we do all have our own unique perspective.

Farrah Garan [01:26:31]:
And what's the purest expression of it? Yeah, that's a beautiful harmony.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:38]:
Yeah. Cool.

Farrah Garan [01:26:41]:
And before that, I was thinking of the Taurus again, because it sounds like, okay, you start here as a child and you're not individuated as pure, and then you kind of pick up all this stuff and then you come back, it was like, oh, traveling on the tourists.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:54]:
Yeah.

Farrah Garan [01:26:55]:
And then you start singing your song cycles.

Vision Battlesword [01:26:59]:
Wow. I've been. Yeah, I've been really, really getting into learning about cycles recently. I did a sacred conversation with Brent a few. A few cycles ago on that. But, yeah, it's. It's really cool, this whole exploration of nature and what does it even mean and what it. Like, what do we mean when we talk about it and what is our true nature has been a really beautiful and interesting exploration.

Vision Battlesword [01:27:31]:
Is there anything else that you want to say about it that's important to you or a question that you wanted to dig into before we wrap this up?

Farrah Garan [01:27:39]:
Well, I really like where. Where we landed, and thank you for sharing that. I do think it is the. The power is in each person just genuinely being their true essence and. And that's difficult. You know, far easier said than done, especially when we're in this society that, with all these conditions put upon us and, you know, needs of fulfillment. But for me, that comes back to the heart. Really being true to one's heart and using the heart as a compass through all of that is the way back to our individual nature and to our nature as a society.

Farrah Garan [01:28:29]:
So thank you for this exploration and being a guide along the way and having this beautiful sacred conversation with me.

Vision Battlesword [01:28:39]:
Ah, well, thank you so much. Yeah, it was super fun. And thank you especially for bringing the topic because I wasn't. This wasn't on my list, and I wouldn't have thought of it, but it was so perfect. I'm really glad we got to open this one.

Farrah Garan [01:28:54]:
It's so big and you can go. I know so many directions.

Vision Battlesword [01:28:56]:
Exactly. And yeah, we can. We can continue to build on this more and more because there's just so much to explore in it. But this was a really great, really great opening act for nature, so thanks a lot, Farah.

Farrah Garan [01:29:11]:
Thank you, Vision.