Entrepreneurs House (Founders in Latin America)

Why Chasing Happiness Leads to Suffering | Armin Shafee

• Thomas Geib

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In this interview I sit down with Armin Shafee who shares his transformational experience from living in the "Think And Grow Rich" world scaling his business running masterminds and events to completely surrendering and giving it all up. 

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SPEAKER_01

I'm borderline ghosted, crazy, you know, I touched all those things.

SPEAKER_00

What day are you on?

SPEAKER_01

I think I'm on day six hundred and eighty right now. So it's cars of like balls of undigested emotion and energy stuck in my body. I hit this big wave. And I realized why I was doing everything I've been doing for the last ten years. We did almost a hundred thousand dollars in like sixty days and I shut it all down.

SPEAKER_00

What was the color list?

SPEAKER_01

Some people think the angel's the good side and the devil's the bad side. They're both the devil. Both of them switch a side just to keep persuading you and distracting you from your own self. I started to realize I have three different rooms my mind goes to. And the three rooms were fear, sex, and work. And deeply what really drove me was the loneliness. The more successful I became in my last life, the more distant I felt together. It was all worse. I didn't get the actual feeling I wanted. I always asked every time I talk to someone for the first time, I would say, you're happy with things. Yeah, I am happy. Life is really good right now. You're not a peace, no, I'm not at peace. And really treat me. Happiness is like an itch. Scratch that itch. What's the first emotion you feel? Relief. The more you scratch, the more you itch. We're spiritually living, sick. We kind of piss our life away. Constantly catching the next itch. Peaceness is not something you find. It's not something you achieve. It's something you realize.

SPEAKER_00

Armin, thank you for being here. I have a question I gotta ask at the beginning of this that a lot of people without context might not know, but we'll we'll get into it. What day are you on?

unknown

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01

I think I'm on day 680 right now.

SPEAKER_00

680. Wow. So that's what how many that's two years. Almost two years.

SPEAKER_01

I'm about to hit two years in a month and a half.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so before we go into the like what that means, why did you start? Like what was the catalyst to start day one of that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, the truth is in the beginning, I was inspired by an idea from a book I read, and I thought, well, I'm gonna achieve some great thing. And I had my mindset on an egoic desire. But there was some good behind it. I was like, you know, I really want to document the journey. And it lasted about 34 days specifically, where the reason why I started it changed. Because I had a huge awakening, a realization. And then by day 51, I like I officially changed the purpose of my documentation every day from what it was to what it is now.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. And so now I'm very intrigued. Well a couple things. What was the the book, first of all? What would what was it initially and what did it change to on day 50?

SPEAKER_01

A large part of the influence of the beginning of the challenge was from a book I read years before that that got me out of depression. It was called Outwitting the Devil by Napoy and Hill. I was an avid student of Nepoyan Hill. I taught alongside the president of Thinking Gorich for five years and incorporated all the teachings of the principles of thinking rich and my business and my mentorship, my coaching, everything. And it was responsible for making my first million and all the things that I never thought was possible. I conceived it, I believed that I achieved it. But Outwinning the Devil became my favorite book from No Boy and Hill because whereas all those other books were the principles of success, Outwinning the Devil was the principles of failure. And for some reason, the principles of failure for me was more effective, more powerful to read about and learn and be bring into my awareness than just what I need to do to become successful. It was easier for me to sit and go, what am I already doing that's interfering with success, that's making me a failure, or at least making me drift, which is the term that the devil uses in the book. So when I first started, it actually was like day one uh of Journey to 100 million, which is the grand purpose vision I had for this. I was going to document every day after closing down all my businesses and starting something new. And and I and I would say, and taking possession of my mind, outwinning the devil. And I did it really well. I even have a whole video on YouTube on the 29 lessons I learned in the in 30 days of outwinning the devil, because those are the first 30 days of documenting. It was actually like 45 lessons, but I condensed it. And uh by day 34, I had this huge kind of epiphany as I was sitting there in contemplation recording day 34. And it was at the end, it was unplanned, it was in the flow, and I hit this like huge some scar. Some scars are like balls of undigested emotion energy stuck in the body. But it's directly correlated to your past, things that are controlling you, that are uh essentially keeping you locked, like tied up instead of liberated and free. I hit this big whale and I realized why I was doing everything I've been doing for the last 10 years, and and why I thought it was so important and why I needed it. And I was filling this specific void and I just saw it for the first time and I let it go. The moment I did, I felt this release come through my body. And then after that, I just I would get up and I'd be like, day 35 of journey to 100 million and taking possession of my mind, but it felt weird. I'm like, I don't I don't think it matters, I don't care anymore. Why don't why a hundred million? Take possession of one mind, I already have it. By day 51, it completely changed. If you actually listen to that recording, which none of these are published, by the way. If you listen to it, I actually say, you know what? This is officially day one of my surrender experiment. That was actually the day I I really owned it. And ever since then it's been that.

SPEAKER_00

And we met, I think, originally didn't, if I remember correctly, at the beginning of this. I don't know what day, fairly at the beginning, yeah?

SPEAKER_01

I I came and spoke at your event in Colombia. I think I was on like day eighty. I was in the eighty day eighty, okay. So I was maybe two or three weeks after that moment where I changed the purpose of the documentation, but also it was around a lot of the mystical things started happening in my life. The moment I started really surrendering and letting go of ego. And by the way, it's you don't let go of ego, you just purify. That's a better way to put it. It doesn't ever leave. Like as long as we're ourself, we have ego. Yeah, but my ego was just consumed by the past. Instead of being a servant to me, it was my master because master was at home. And so that awakening kind of changed the power dynamic. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm the one in charge. Ego is just my my servant. It's a great servant, but it's a shitty master. So by the time I came to speak at your event, I think I was in my 70s or 80s. And I remember I came there to talk about Think and Grow Rich. Yeah. Which was the last talk I ever did for Think and Grow Rich.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, was it?

SPEAKER_01

Because right in the midst of it, weeks before I came to your event, I had this incredible meditative experience and I had this kind of like download. I thought I was making it all up, but I had this like kriya given to me, this kind of um sadhana, this practice that gave me this mystical experience. And I have this light open up at the top of my eyes, my eyes closed, and I was like, what was that? And I immediately was indoctrinated. I was being, you know, called into doing more inward spiritual mystical work. By the time I came to speak to you guys about thinking garage, halfway through the talk, I've just I felt far more compelled to talk about what was true for me, not what I've done for years. Instead of telling people how to be successful, I wanted to tell people what surrender the power of surrender is and how, yeah, you can use your mind to conceive and believe and achieve anything you set your mind to. I mean, if you're listening to this, you're probably one of the people that knows you have the power to create anything you want, you have the power to create reality. But my my fascinating question that follows that is how do you know what reality to create? And that became what uh made me far more uh uh fascinated and infatuated to know than to just keep creating realities. And that's where surrender comes in. It's aligning with what's meant for you. And the best way to say it is stop chasing and creating what you think you want and make space to see what already wants you. And I think that's just a far more interesting way to live. And what my uh direct and personal experience in my life has been is that life ends up unfolding in ways you could have never designed on your own. And so from the limited egoic perspective, what you think would make you happy, it's not even the fingernail of I think what God and life would itself show you what you can have and be and do if you didn't create an agenda, but you learned how to surrender. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00

So I want to share the story of us meeting because I think this is uh a really cool story for one, and also captures what the surrender experience is, right? Because surrender experience, when you hear that, is like, what is what does that actually mean, right? I'm sure a lot of people think that. So my side of the story was I have a friend, we both have a mutual friend, Icon, and icon contacts me and he's like, Hey, there's this guy that uh I just sold a ticket to to one of my events. Do you remember this? Yeah, I do. So what happened is he was selling tickets to his event, and his event was in the States. And so I don't know how he connected with you, but he got on the phone with you and is like, Hey, I want to, I want you to come to the event. It's a thousand dollars. And you're like, Well, the only thing is I can't go to the event because I can't go to the states or whatever the situation was. Um, but you were like, you know what? I'll buy a ticket anyways. And so you you bought a ticket to his event, and then Icon was like, Wow, I've never had someone buy a ticket to an event who can't go uh to the event. This is like very weird. Like, hey, what can I do for you? I want to help you now. Like, this is amazing. And it and you you shared with him, from my recall of the story, I want to speak more, like I want to have more uh speaking engagements and opportunities to speak in front of audiences, right? And so he's like, I know the guy for you, and that's where I came in and you and he connected us. Yeah, and then from that, you were in I think Mexico at the time, yeah, and you flew all the way to Colombia, yeah, spoke at our event. So this is around day 80, 70, 80. And um, from there you extended your trip as many people do, but you had so many people reaching out to you, and then just kind of full picture contacts. This was, I mean, this was almost uh two years ago. I mean, if you count the days, I mean, I don't know what that adds up to, but since then, you've spoken at other events uh of ours, you've done advisorship, and you're also mentoring people inside of the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur entrepreneurs house uh community. And uh you provided a ton of value, provided a ton of value to me. We actually just got back from Joe Dispenza in Cancun, which is awesome. An experience. And uh, and yeah, it's it's it's looking back and also sharing the story and thinking about it's pretty crazy to how all those, like you said, things happened that you didn't even wouldn't imagine. Like who thought that you buying a ticket would lead you to Columbia and speaking at events?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like I I mean I have a lot to thank you for because you're one beautiful element and variable in the grand unfolding of the life I live now that I constantly remind myself I did not seek, manifest, or ask for. And that led to me meeting my soulmate, me having incredible mystical and awakening experiences, me coming to Columbia, me having a whole new life of friends, me experiencing things I didn't know I was capable of doing, like all of it kind of really started, dude, with us. And to our good friend Icon, the that that moment was very peculiar to me. And this is a great example, by the way, of how ego will constantly sway you and deceive you into thinking something is not right or is not good. But if you surrender, if you challenge that ego and do the opposite of what it's thinking, it's trying to tell you is what you should do, you'll find yourself actually on a path that you're meant for. For example, at the time he icon reached out to me because he wanted to give me coaching advice on my YouTube video. Because he's, I mean, he's good at what he does in content creation. And of course, that was a little, that was a little interesting for my ego. Cause I'm like, well, it's the first video I put out, it was kind of a sensitive thing for me. I was deep in this experiment. And so I'm like, I saw my ego go, coach me. And I said, Oh, you're bothered. We're gonna get on this call. And that was the beginning of how I would out with the devil. Because every time that voice came in my head, the devil inside, who by the way is the wrong voice and the right voice. It's both the voices. Some people think the angel is the good side in like the movie, and the devil's the bad side, and you're like, which one's God, which one's truth? They're both the devil, both of them. They'll con that voice constantly change, switches sides just to keep persuading you and distracting you from your own self. Who's the self? The head in between, man. The presence, the awareness that you are, not the voice that keeps yakking, uh, you know, uh dragging you from one end to the other. So I saw it didn't really like the idea of being coached. So I'm like, let's do it. And I got on, I would feel these things in my body, where you know, the ego's like trying to control you in your life, trying to tell you who to love, who not to love, what to do, what not to do, how to live, how not to live. It's trying to tell you who you are. And the ego can tell you who you've been, it could tell you who you can be, it could tell you who you should be, it could tell you who you should have been, but it can never tell you who you are. That was the first realization I had in my journey. So I got on the call with him and he said, Give me advice. And I'm like, all right, bro, thank you. And like, I didn't, I don't even remember the advice. I just remember loving the feeling of discomfort of my ego not liking this and me being there in surrender to say, listening. And I just let my ego to the side. I'm like, thank you, bro. Thank you for doing this and you know, giving me feedback. He's like, Yeah, bro. And also I wanted to let you know about this event coming up. And I'm like, Oh, so now my ego hits the second one. I knew it, there's something off here. He wants to sell me something. So my ego's coming in the whole time. Yeah, you should have listened to me, Armin. And now I'm listening to him, and I'm like, sure, bro, tell me about it. Now, this whole time at the time, I just closed down my businesses. The most financially responsible thing was to not spend any money, especially on things I don't need to spend money on. Okay. So at that time, obviously, I'm thinking he's trying to sell me a ticket. My ego's coming in, going, dude, we're not spending any money. Screw this guy. He also was assuming you asked for advice. Like, all this, like all this toxic fucking this this energy in my head. I realized I had to find that guy inside that was just living as me. And now as we're just watching him, like, I'm not, you're not me. I'm not you. Like, who are you? So he finished doing the pitch, and it was a good pitch. And he goes, Yeah, it's a thousand bucks for the event. And I looked at him, I said, Where is it? He goes, In in the States. I go, when is it? He's like, then I'm like, all right, awesome. And he didn't know at the time I can't enter, I can't go to the states, you know. I overstayed last time. And I'm like, How much is the ticket? He goes, a thousand bucks. And I'm like, dude, that's a stupid decision. I'm like, oh, you don't like it? I looked right in my ego's eyes. I'm like, you don't like this? Great. Or we're gonna surrender that preference of you controlling this moment. And I said, Cool, bro, send me the link. And I literally bought on the spot with like whatever money I had left from the businesses I closed. And people always think I started my surrender with a bank full of cash. No, that's not an excuse. I didn't. I started with a bank full of faith. That's it. Just knowing that I want to see what it's like, especially I wanted to face the fear of money again. Because it's been so long, I've been rich for so long. I'm like, why am I so afraid to not be? So I pay him the money, he goes, Thanks, bro. Here's the event stuff. I'm like, oh, I don't need it. He's like, why? I'm like, I can't make it. He goes, Why not? But I can't come to the States. He goes, Why would you buy a ticket? And I literally just looked at him and I said, Because I want to support your dream, dude. And he's like, bro, I've never had anything like this happen. He goes, Well, since you're the kind, he this is exactly the words he says, Since you're the kind of guy that does things on the spot to help people, I'm gonna be the kind of person that does something on the spot to help you. Yeah, he goes, What do you need? And at this time, remember, I'm sort of you go out and I don't want to like, I'm like, I don't need anything. And I go, Well, I'm kind of doing this experiment, and it'd be nice to have more opportunities to share my story. And he goes, I know just the guy. And he puts us at a group chat. Now, at the time, you were talking to your ex-girlfriend at the time about Think and Grow Rich.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And he goes, Hey man, I just met the vice president of Think and Grow Rich. And he'd look at it somewhere to speak, and you're like synchronicity. Yes. So that's how it all started. And it was so interesting because I wanted to define that moment because that's the direct beginning version of surrender, which is voice in your head, ego keeps fighting things, and you say yes when it says no, or you say no when it says yes. And my whole life unfolded, dude.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, that's so amazing. Yeah, dude. That's such a great story. I love that story. And now so it's been, you know, I forget what you said, 600 something days.

SPEAKER_01

680 days coming up 700, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

680 days. I'm sure there's been so many of those types of moments along this journey. What has that been like? How so from that point on we met, how has that evolved in the the the I guess the next 600 days? I know that's uh that's a lot of time in there in between.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Eventually I'm gonna turn this all into a book. So I've already gone through versions of how I can organize the book, and the best so far I got is day zero to 30 was me being under another illusion of my ego that I need to become something, improve something. Day 30 to 50 was the release and awakening of like, oh, I don't need to do that. And I let's explore what it's like to not chase something. But day 50 to 100, things got real mystical. That's when I met you, came here. And then when I came here, that two weeks I was here, dude. I was supposed to be here for like four days. I extended it by two weeks. And I had almost every day someone asking me out to dinner from that event because they had life advice to ask me. And I'm like, I was like at the time trying to put together uh, I just put together like a sales school, and I was like trying to do a whole new venture, and I thought this is the line, it's my new purpose, and all this stuff. I was convinced myself. I spent eight months building up the launch. I launched it, we did almost a hundred thousand dollars in like 60 days, and I shut it all down right away because I'm like, I'm gonna learn my lesson this time. It doesn't feel aligned. Why am I gonna do this? To prove what? I don't care if it makes money. My but the voice came and tried to convince me. I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not again portraying my soul just to prove something and find out at the end it's an emptiness again. So I was here and I didn't realize, and all these people are sitting down with me, and I would never have expected feeling like I'm on a spiritual missionary trip because that's what it felt like, dude. I was sitting there every day, people were like, I'm being sued, or I'm suing someone, this thing happened to me. Like, what should I do? And I'm like, I'm like, I did a talk on thinking grow rich. Like, what does this have to do with anything? But I realized that after when I came back, because that was an initiation for me. I started to also feel way too much energy in my body. My channels were opened up, my heart was widely open. I felt like I was drunk in love with God and love, and and it was like people were feeling the energy. So I was kind of working as a vessel most of the time in those meetings. I felt like I was pushed to the side, and I was like me, the Armin, was just being used as a vessel. Like I was, I was kind of a participant there. But that was a very mystical journey. That was day 50 to 100. Then 100 to 200 became really weirdly mystical. I really sat with a lot of darkness in me, led a lot of shadow work. I wanted to face it with love. I wanted to see what it is. I wanted to, I call my darkness exploration phase, where I went deep into all my indulgences, but with awareness, indulging with awareness. And that was like a lot of insights around that. I mean, I went borderline psychosis, crazy, you know, I touched all those things. Day 200 to 365, like the last kind of three-month sprint or four-month sprint, was a lot of inner child work, lots of like letting go of every possible belief or pressure I felt like was running my life. And then I got really into bachata at the end, which was very unexpected. And I mastered it and I it was incredible. And I ended, believe it or not, I ended day 365 on the same day of the first day of my 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat. Literally fell on the day. April 8th, it finished. April 9th was the first day of meditating 10 hours a day for 10 days straight. And I thought it was perfect. So I was in Mexico for this retreat. I'm like, I just spent 365 days every day using my mind, contemplating, meditating, um, and selflessly serving. And now I'm gonna go into nothingness for 10 days.

SPEAKER_00

And that was the beginning of year two. I'm gonna ask before we go to year two, how was the how was that your first time doing a 10 day?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was my first time being in an organized, like silent meditation, uh, especially a Buddhism because Vipasan is Buddhist. Yeah. Um, yeah, I'd done something similar on my own in the beginning, which is the beginning of my awakening, awakening. And what was that like for you? How was this yeah? Super, super difficult in the beginning. I realized I went out of 10 days of sprinting, doing bachata, like indulging in bachata and feeling the highest level of joy. Like if I died in that moment, I would have been a happy guy. Like my soul would have been crying in joy because it felt so good to just dance and fluently in bachata. I loved it, and it was healing my relationship to women, to feminine, to sensuality. It was a great practice. Um, I went from 10 days of doing that every day, 10 dances a night, because that was my gamification to like get really good at it. And and I went into sitting for 10 days doing nothing. So the first couple of days, I was tired. That's that's for sure. Um, and I was quite literally fantasizing bachata. I mean, it's it sounds dumb, but the first two, three days, I was playing bachata music perfectly in my mind and practicing that's so funny. Um, and and then around day four or five, my mind started to like, you know, I that those attachments kind of dissolved, and then I started to realize I Three different rooms my mind goes through. And I realized this is how it's been kind of most of my life. And the three rooms were fear, sex, and work. And so it would go between these rooms where it would try to distract me and pull my awareness into that sensational room by either freaking me the hell out with the most craziest, fearful scenarios of like people coming and like killing everyone in the room, um, or like gangs coming and like you know, shooting up like the the instructor. Like I just had the wildest fear-driven scenarios. And I'm like, there's a lot of fear in my subconscious mind just popping up, popping its head up. The moment I'm still for hours and hours. Yeah. And then it was sex, you know, it was it was specifically like a lot of uh remembering sexual encounters, but also thinking of people at the retreat. Then I'm like, oh, that person had a really nice smile. She was cute, and I just couldn't get her out of my head for two days. And it was just like, Am I really this attached? I don't even know the person. So that was a lot, a lot of sex energy. And the last one was work. I mean, the amount of courses and events and businesses I built in my mind within a couple of days was like, I would have been a billionaire if I acted. There was like so many courses. I'm like, now I know I'm so clear. Like I had moments where I was like, this is a great retreat. Let's let's leave now. Let's leave now. Let's like go home now and act on this. This is this is the future of the business. Like, let's go back, build a community, and build a course and do this funnel. And it was just like, and I would have to feel all that sense stimulus in the mind, and then just go right back to breathe. Yeah, feel the body, feel every sensation across your leg. And it's like, but but look at all this purpose. I'm so clear now. It's like, feel your left toe. Like, you know, it's just it was just an anchor. Day six, five, six is when I started to really like the veil got dissolved. And at that point, I was like, it was like day five to eight. I was experiencing euphoric like presence. Like, I mean, during the breaks, I had a full-on engagement with a fly. And it was one of my favorite experiences because I remember sitting there, my mind was so clear, so empty, so still that I can connect energetically to this little fly. I'm like, that's a conscious fly, like that's a soul right there. And it was like cleaning its little hands. You know what that's a stake? Yeah. You ever look at them? They like they they like fix their hair or whatever. And I remember just sitting with one, I'm like feeling so much love for this being. And it was just it was amazing, dude. It was like I felt connected to everything, I didn't feel separate. By the last days, I mean, I was kind of sad we were gonna leave. But in the beginning, I was like, let's go now, and now let's go. And there are people leaving, you know, people will leave in the middle of it. Yeah, I remember one guy specifically, he looked at me, he like looked for a sign of life. And I, you know, we can't talk to each other or look at each other, but I looked at him for a moment and he was looking for any expression to like feel human again. And I just looked and I looked away, and I feel like that's why he left the next day. But you know, it was it was tough. But by the end of it, there's definitely something that happened. My my attachment, my grand attachment to meaning disappeared. The meaning, all the meanings I put on things. I would judge all the people. I would call, I had nicknames for everyone. Oh, there's Grumpy, or there's the one who's always moving. That's the one who coughs in the middle and doesn't give a shit about what anyone thinks and disrupts everyone's meditation. I had a judgment for everyone. Yeah, I had a nickname for everyone. I was walking around thinking I know everything. I had meanings. I'm like, yeah, I'm just I'm on with God here. I've already meditated. All of that disappeared by the end of it. It was just like nothing left, no identity. And that's when I had the deepest meditation where I felt my hands dissolve. My body was like not there. And then I'm like, whoa, what's left if I can't feel my own body? So I'm not the body, obviously. And then I my mind became more clear to see I'm not this mind either. So how is it that I'm here, but somehow I'm here and I'm not this body or this mind thinking about this body? Well, there's a paradox. So it was really, it was not what I expected. I wasn't ready. And afterwards, I actually had a like post retreat depression in a way, because I came out and there's no meaning left to life for me. And it took me a week to kind of integrate the wisdom of that. And the wisdom was that life itself is still there, but my attachment to it is gone. And I used to think my attachment is life, and that was a very deep realization. So even my attachment to God and all like what I made God to be for myself, and I would sit there and I love you, God. All of that dissolved, and I felt like even when I tried to come do it again, I couldn't. Like this is not it's an illusion. But God didn't disappear, my attachment to God disappeared, and that was a very clear veil that I got removed. Life actually started breathing for me because I stopped making everything have to mean something. You just take it as it is. You can almost say that deepened my understanding and living in surrender even more. It's a good finale to the 365 days.

SPEAKER_00

It is, it's perfectly timed, and that's a very intense 10 days. Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_01

You've done something similar, haven't you?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, recently.

SPEAKER_01

What was your experience like?

SPEAKER_00

Uh well, somewhat similar. I had the three same buckets of three different buckets, you could say. I like how you kind of uh phrased it, where my mind kept going. Mine was also business and sex, like sexual fantasies. Um, but my third one uh was agitation, like just being agitated, like being annoyed and being like, yeah, like uh, you know, there is uh the girl there was, you know, so part of it there's an hour where they do a lesson basically. And they would rot they rotated in this one male, fem, female, male, female, like two different people each night, so or every other night rather. And the the girl who was teaching, she had this word she kept saying, like she'd she would be teaching, she'd be like, You have to open your heart, you see. And if you do that, you'll be happier, you see. And then and she kept saying, You see, like every every other word, and it was like so many times, and man, I was like so, and this is just one example, but I was like so pissed off and so annoyed. I'm like, I have to sit here and listen to this person keep saying, like, I just it was it was challenging, very annoying, but it was a very like I'm grateful for the experience I would do it again. I don't know, would you do it again?

SPEAKER_01

I would I would, and and it's interesting because at first I went and I was asking the instruction, I'm like, what about God? What about love? What about breathing? What do I and they're like, just sit down and observe yourself? And I'm like, but what do I do with that observation? Just sit down and observe yourself. And by day three, I was kind of getting annoying. And I was like trying to understand it all my butt, what is this what samadhi is? You know, all my spiritual intellect was coming in. She just looked at me, she goes, How about this? Put God aside, whether it's God or no, God doesn't matter. Just treat this as a mind purification process. I said, Oh, I could do that. Purify my mind. Yeah, there's a lot of things I gotta purify.

SPEAKER_00

And this was during the retreat, like you talked to him.

SPEAKER_01

Because you know, you have like five minutes to ask the instructor question at lunch. That's okay. That's all we had. We don't talk to anyone else. So that actually helped me a lot because I I disased, I I'd separated this being a spiritual practice, and I just made it like a as like a physical fitness for the mind. Like I'm like, let me purify my mind, let me meet my mind and purify it. And sure enough, there's a lot of purification that needed to be done. Look at this. I had the same thing. The audio of the guy who would, you know, the teacher who would guide us through, he sounded like a frog. Like it was so hard to listen to him. I was so pissed half the time. It's just like, I feel yeah. I'm like, oh my god. You can't do anything, dude. You can't. So I'm sitting there, and then some guy sneezing or or sniffing, and the sniff feels like a mountain of noise. When you're that still, feels like your whole nervous system gets choked. So 100% that that it's not easy, but it's necessary. You really meet your mind. Yeah, you do. Yeah, I'm like if people are like, I'm spiritual, like Greg, go sit for 10 days in silence. Yeah, I mean, you're gonna you're gonna find out what spiritual is, you're gonna find out what your mind is, you're gonna find out what awareness is and stillness is. I mean, that's that's the real test.

SPEAKER_00

I think it's one of the best things you can do with the with a good foundation and a good support and like integration and before and after to really get to know yourself and your mind. Yeah. It's it's not I mean, it's it's getting to know like you just get this uh uh acute awareness of where your thought energy is being pulled. Yeah. Like that is because we have so many thoughts every day, right? And and that is really gonna highlight it because that's all you can do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and it really shows you your relationship to impulse. Because everything the mind does is an impulse, it's just like this compulsive reaction to everything, which is what we learned at the retreat. That it's just every time the mind hits some type of sensational stimulus, it reacts. And then when it reacts, it determines what it is and if it likes it or not. And you just you really meet your relationship to that mind and the impulses that come out of you. My favorite moments though is um when you become really still and you keep doing it deeper. Like I don't know if it was day six, seven, or eight, but I start having very vivid, like like real life, like I'm there, flashbacks of memories during the meditations, yeah. Yeah, and and I was reliving these memories as a child. I the most random ones, but vivid, like 4K, I'm right there, it's happening again. And I was watching my past. And that's actually part of the retreat. Um, I love the metaphor they kind of use, which is like when you don't feed the body food, it has to burn something. So it burns the fat of the body, the stored fat in the body, instead of giving it new food to burn. The mind works the same way. Whereas if you don't give it new reactions to generate, to work off of, it starts to burn through your past reactions, which is your memories. Interesting. And that's actually the process of liberation that the Buddha was teaching, which is to keep holding awareness over every reaction in the mind presently, and then it stops reacting in the mind in the present moment and it starts working backwards. So it's like fasting, it's like intermittent fasting for the mind. You're burning through all the things in your past that are still holding on to you, and then you're freeing yourself. And I mean the Buddha did it through his whole life and then every life before that. You can imagine that's how he realized there's multiple lives. Because he sat so still, he just kept seeing memories of lives he never realized. He remembered he lived, but he was seeing them like I lived this, I remember this now. But it's pretty cool. That really fascinated me. That's what continues my practice now, actually, with uh the stillness. Why I promote more stillness than just meditation, because a lot of people think meditation is doing things with your mind, but it's not. True meditation is losing your mind, not using it. Um so and stillness is that it's just holding awareness without any response. Eventually, you start seeing in your mind and burns through all those stored memories and some scaras that are kind of stuck on you, holding you down.

SPEAKER_00

Did you find after the retreat that you had better impulse control?

SPEAKER_01

The word control is a funny thing for me. My relationship to it has changed. I understand what it means, but it's not exactly true. A controlled self itself is kind of an illusion, but I understand how we use it in this context. Like if you define impulse control, right? An impulse is something that's happening through you, mind as a reaction to everything. Control, what we would call impulse control, is the experience of having the power to not be taken by the reaction, right? But it wouldn't be actually completely accurate to say that you are controlling an impulse because you don't let it take you over. It's more that you were aware of an impulse and also aware that it's not you while also being aware that you don't have to act on the impulse. So it's not a control, it's more of an impulse freedom. It's like a freedom from impulse as opposed to a control of it. It's and it's and it's paradoxical because by resisting an impulse of the mind, if the mind is resisting something and you're resisting it, there's a paradox of resistance, but somehow in the midst of that, you feel free. It doesn't make any sense. I think the intellect can't follow through with this. But my answer to was I more was I better with impulse control? It's my answer is I was just far more presently aware. And because I was, it was so easy to watch and observe my mind react to everything. Yeah, and I simultaneously feeling I don't have to be the action of the like my mind could react, but I didn't need to.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So I would literally see my mind in a conversation, for example, here's a good practice. Someone's arguing with you or saying something to you, and you, if you don't actually speak, react to the person telling you things, you'll see your mind doing it. Like you'll imagine yourself doing it, and you could watch your mind reacting to the person having a full conversation while you're watching the person talking, and both things are happening simultaneously. Somehow you're the awareness of both. And so you're not letting that thought, that reaction come through you and act out is what we call impulse control. But it's not, it's more like awareness.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So would you say you became more of a meta observer of yourself? Well, I like the word meta because it's like you're taking yourself out of your mind, is kind of how I see it, right? Because a lot of people think that they are what they think, like yeah, that that's them. So, did you have an experience where you felt your awareness became like you became seated kind of almost above your yourself, your body, your mind?

SPEAKER_01

So this is a great question. How I've experienced it, and like you know, my intellect is so like it wants to get the word, but you can't, you can't describe these indescribable things, but you some of you experience. But the closest I've got to is I don't feel like I'm above myself, I feel like I'm behind myself. And it's almost like the ego is a stage, and I'm behind the curtains now. And the more I spend time behind the curtains, watching the ego on the stage from behind, doing its thing for others, I start to realize that even the backstage is a stage where I'm being an awareness. So I go behind that stage. And now I'm behind the backstage of the stage, and I'm just watching myself, watching myself. Another way to put it is I meditate on the meditator or I'm thinking on the thinker. And and somehow it's like it's all inwardly behind. I mean, the best, you know, funny enough, the best description of this is like in the Ant-Man movie in the quantum realm. You know, they they they go smaller inward into reality. They don't go somewhere else, they go downward, inward, like inside. And I feel like that's the best way I've experienced um awareness to be is it it's more of an inward unfolding, like you keep peeling back and you go in in in, and it's like it's kind of behind, but not really. It's not like dimensional in 3D, it's more like it's going into nowhere, but that nowhere is behind the whole screen of everywhere. You know, it's it's kind of like you're the sky, and everything happening is weather changing, but you're the whole sky containing it all, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I definitely had that experience, or somewhat to that experience, you could say, of that awareness, that meta-awareness, I like to call it. That's a good name for it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's like super consciousness, it's like beyond just consciousness, it's your super, it's like your super solars. A lot of people have names for it, but yeah, it is. It's like awareness of awareness. You know, even the awareness is being something, and there's something behind it. My favorite way is how Rupert Spira talks about it, it's that consciousness is like a screen, like a TV screen. It it's it doesn't know it's a screen, but it's the screen. And then what's playing on the screen is the mind's outplay of the ego. And the awareness for consciousness is just the screen, and whatever's playing on it, it like the character in the screen doesn't know it's on a screen, right? It thinks it's in a neighborhood on the street, and that's ego. But if you like zoom out, or you know, like I don't know how to call it, you you don't go up, you don't go out, you kind of just emerge. You could almost say emerge out, you dissolve it, but it's really a dissolving process, it's not like a becoming thing, it's an unbecoming. Yeah, then you realize I'm just the screen that the character's playing on. You're looking what do you do with that? Well, I'm just the screen. There's it's just a platform where things are consciously happening.

SPEAKER_00

The best word is awareness, right? Because it's like the nose. Like the nose is in your sight all the time. Like if you look down, you could see your nose, but you're never aware that you're no, you're not thinking about your nose until you are.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Now you're thinking about your nose.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, now I am, and now I should just look at it. So, okay, so that that was the end of your first first year of uh the surrender project, is what you call it. That was a good detour. It was. Uh and by the way, before we close that chapter in transition, would you I know I know I certainly would, at least I know the answer to if someone asked me, would you recommend that people do this? And if so, why and why? And if and and if not, why? Like some people silent meditation retreats? Yeah, like a 10-day silent retreat, for example.

SPEAKER_01

If you want to directly meet and face your mind and know its nature, this is the exact thing this does for you. And if you truly want to feel free from the compulsions of the mind, of every thought, every belief, every emotion, every habit, this is the place you do that. It's a purification, you know, like a boxing ring. You watch the mind fight and you observe. It's it's probably the fastest form I've ever seen of like you're kind of living like a monk for those 10 days. That's that's the whole point of it. You know, they're feeding you, they're taking care of it, uh, your accommodations. You don't pay. I don't know. I mean, I donated, but you don't even have to pay for a vipassana, which is crazy. But you go there and like you just sit with your mind, not even yourself. I mean, it's yourself, but then you go, my mind, look at the nature of this mind. So, yes, if you want to purify your mind, like I'm I'm sure people can go there with addictions or alcoholism or you know, depression, like meet that, observe it, and let it dissolve. I think it's it's very difficult. But here's an encouragement, here's an encouraging fact for you. I was a meditator when I went in, and I constantly thought about okay, now this is enough, five days in, it's good, let's leave now. And I it got really tempting. And there were people sitting next to me that had never meditated in their life and they were like in their 40s or 50s, or they were like a father of three or a mother, and like they had whole lives and they never done this, never anything like this, and they sat through the whole 10 days. That humbled me real quick. So, if you know, if anyone could really do it, but you gotta will through it. If you also want to see the power of your will, this is a perfect place to test it because it really is will to just stay there.

SPEAKER_00

It's very challenging, yeah. Especially for entrepreneurs, which I'm sure a lot of the audience watching is it's like, man, the challenge of not doing anything. Like for most people, they dream about not having to do anything. Yeah, but as an entrepreneur, you're like, Man, how like I need to get out of here. I gotta be, I gotta do something. Yeah, at least that was my experience.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I feel like a lot of people define freedom as only doing what you want, but real freedom as being able to do nothing and still feeling peace.

SPEAKER_00

Be happy with your own company. Well, I have a I have an interesting relationship between happiness and peace. Well, let's talk, let's talk about it. You know, I think um I think happiness and a lot of people use the word happiness. Yeah, right. So what what is happiness to you?

SPEAKER_01

So here's the thing. So a lot of like um spiritual teachers, you know, they talk about happiness. You know, I'm pretty sure in Buddhism they literally talk about happiness. The way I think spiritual teachers talk about happiness is what I'm defining as peace. Um, because that's that's become a more clear as an entrepreneur myself and as running companies with all these employees and clients. Like I've been in that kind of the grid of egoic self-actualization and becoming and manifesting. I found that I was happy, but not at peace. And it's funny because it was on this particular week where I was giving away all my time just meeting people, and I had like 30 plus one-on-ones. I was just calling them peace of mind calls, helping my friend's company out because they're having a lot of market issues and volatility and they're investors. So I said, hey, let me just do these calls to everyone, maybe help them stabilize all their fears and emotions in their mind to create some equanimity because I was living in total peace at the time. And I got on these calls and I would, I didn't have an agenda. I just would go on and be like, So what's going on? And they would just open up and say things, and all I would do is ask them to define stuff. Most of the time, what people were feeling stressed about, they couldn't even define correctly. Like they didn't even know what it was. They were just feeling it. I'm like, isn't it interesting? You're like suffering on this thing, but you don't even know what it is. And I asked the same question all 30 plus investors, and it became the main question I always asked every time I talk to someone for for the first time. I would say, Well, are you uh are you at peace? And like it was almost like every person knew that that that they're not, and they knew what that was. When I said, Are you at peace? They're like, No, but like, but you're grateful for your life. Yeah, I am very grateful. Okay, you're happy with things. Yeah, I am happy. Life is really good right now, but you're not at peace. No, I'm not at peace. And it really intrigued me why so many people unanimously knew that they could be happy but not at peace, they could be grateful but not at peace, they can be excited. Their life, but not at peace. So I started to really wonder what is peace then? Because everyone knows there's a difference. And I started to kind of try to explain to them from the place that I was. I was in this really beautiful present place. I was experiencing peace every day, and I wasn't chasing happiness anymore. And the best way I started to describe it was I said, happiness is like an itch. If you have an itch, first thing you want impulsively do is scratch it. Now you scratch that itch. Oh, what does it feel? What's the first emotion you feel? Relief. Immediately it became clear to me that happiness is just relieving yourself of something bothering you. And I looked at that, I'm like, man, this seems so true for me in all the years I spent chasing things because something bothered me. I wanted it and it was really irritating to not have it. Or I was like, it was itching for me. And when I get it, I scratch, I have that 15 seconds of, oh, yeah, I did it. I won a million dollars. You know, I did it. I got the award. I got the girl. I got that, whatever it was. And then it would fade. And the worst thing about itches is that it doesn't end there, does it? You scratch one, you feel good, but then a couple more itches pop up, doesn't it? And now you're scratching everything. And the more you scratch, the more you itch, and the more you scratch it, the more you itch and it multiplies. Now, if you cross the street and you saw me on the sheet sitting like this, like that, would you think I'm a really healthy, happy guy? No, you would think I'm sick. But that's how we're spiritually living, sick, scratching every itch that comes up. Because if we don't, we're feeling we're suffering. Now, if you don't believe me, next time you have an itch, try not to scratch it. Just watch it. It's gonna be very hard because everything is screaming, scratch this itch, it's gonna feel so good. And that's all the itches that run our lives. I I need to hit the, I need to get the award, I need to hit that revenue stream, we gotta hit the next thing, I gotta get that girl, I got, I gotta lose this much body fat percentage. It's like all this itching. And you think this is this key to feeling complete inside. But every time you itch, the fine print that it doesn't tell you is that more itches come. So you just become the sick person scratching yourself. And my and my favorite way to put it is like if you sit at the dinner table and you really got to piss. Now you're sitting with your friends or family or whatever it is, and you're trying to eat your dinner, but you really gotta pee. Can you focus on eating your dinner? No, you're fantasizing about a toilet, but you're sitting there, you're trying, you're trying to eat. You can't. So even if your favorite meal's in front of you, you can't even enjoy it in the present moment if you really got to take a piss. So you run to the washroom and relieve yourself, and just like that, we kind of piss our life away, constantly catching the next itch. And peace is nothing like that.

SPEAKER_00

So let me ask, yeah, how do you stop scratching the itch? And should you stop, I mean, should you stop scratching the itch? And how do you obtain peace?

SPEAKER_01

Well, let me okay. So this is a great question. Should we stop scratching? Because a lot of people, there's this whole industry is built around convincing you scratching your itches is the purpose of life. Whole world is designed from the moment he comes in to tell you, to convince you, life is about maximizing pleasure, comfort, and convenience. It's about becoming the most, having more, being better, better version of myself. All of these are illusions. All of these are subtle lies against your true nature. True nature meaning you're starting from completion, you're not incomplete and need to do something to complete yourself. So should you stop scratching itches? Wow, let me ask you. You've tried it your whole life. Where'd it get you? Now some people go, Oh, I'm actually really happy with your life. Are you at peace? Are you? Only you can know. Do you know if you're at peace or are you just happy with your life? You know how many people I meet? They're very happy on paper, very grateful. They do all the stuff, positive stuff. But when the curtains close at night and they're sleeping in bed, or silence comes into their day for five minutes, in that silence they're restless. Something's off. There's always this subtle feeling something's missing. Also, that's not peace. Peace is a feeling of completion. Just being nothing. That's what you experience in the retreat when you eventually surrender. So should you stop scratching? I was sitting in a sauna with one of your events with this really interesting guy next to me. And he had just made, I don't know, 100, 200 grand in his month or whatever. I remember those days. It was fun. So, you know, I have all these like, I feel like everyone's a mirror to me. And I'm sitting with them, and he goes, He goes, Yeah, we just did this or scaling. I'm like, I'm happy for you, bro. I just met the guy. And he goes, What do you do? I'm like, Oh, I help people with uh finding peace. You're like, you know, I'm at peace, I'm just surrendering in my life. He goes, Oh, peace, I don't need that. I'm like, interesting. I've never had someone tell me they don't need peace. I said, Why not? And he goes, Well, I don't I don't want to relax. I like my drive. I want to be motivated. I feel like peace would get in the way of that, would take my drive away. And I said, interesting. So you think peace is relaxation. You think peace is slowing down, you think peace is doing nothing with your life. I'm like, well, let me ask you a question. If you if something happened in your life and it was really bothering you, your stomach's churning and your mind is absorbed from this issue in your life, could you accomplish finishing your dinner? If you have no peace, take your appetite away. Can you finish your dinner? He goes, Well, no, it'd be very hard. I go, so you can't even achieve finishing your dinner without peace. How are you achieving anything in your life without peace? Imagine what you could achieve if you were at peace. You can't even finish dinner without it. So to me, peace is the starting point. And I think a lot of people think they have to, you know, sacrifice everything or whatever to get or become someone to get somewhere before they can enjoy what they think is peace. And this is completely reversed. This keeps you into a this puts you on a life of chasing things to feel whole, making you deeply insecure, giving you an inferiority complex where you can't be around people and feel equal. So you look up to people, you look down to people, everything is pressure or stress. You'll have moments of gratitude, fawn, whatever. Those are called distractions. But the moment there's no distraction, you got to just be with yourself in your life. You will deeply feel lost, disconnected, uncertain, uncomfortable, restless. That's in the soul. Soul is telling you the truth, the mind has been distracting you. So should you stop scratching itches? I mean, if you want to live your own life, you can't really say you are until you stop compulsively chasing every itch to scratch. Because who's to say? Whose itch is that? Who put that there? Is it really yours? You can't even trust if your desires are true, are coming from a true place until you stop your mind. And if you can't stop your mind or slow it, then you really don't know who's living your life. And that's at least a that's at least a fair observation to make. I'm not even saying you're not, but consider that. That's what I had to do. I was 10 years of tracing and I was good at doing it. But then I first day 34. Why am I doing all this? So the first time I saw the impulse on my desires weren't coming from a place of completion or peace or truth. It was coming from a place of lack, fear, incompletion. The lie that something's wrong with me, so I need to do something to fix it. And everything became an outlet for that. And deeply, what really drove me was loneliness. I think a lot of people, if they really just stop and be with themselves, they realize they just feel deeply lonely. And they think more success, more sex, more drug, more rewards, more reputation, more everything, better everything is going to make them feel less lonely. But the more they itch, the more they scratch the itch, the itchier they become, the lonelier they feel. That was the paradox, dude. The more successful I became in my last life, the more distant I felt from everyone. It was all worse. I didn't get the actual feeling I wanted. So, yes, I'm a living example. If you stop scratching your itches, then life will start to unfold in such a beautiful way, better than you could ever imagine. But you have to have patience. And now, how do you stop scratching the itches? What is peace? Peace is either having no itches, or even better, having an itch and not needing to scratch it. Now you go, well, that sounds like being lengthy, having motivations and not acting on them, doing nothing. First of all, my challenge to everyone is try to do nothing. It might be the hardest thing to do. I mean, you know this and I know this. So not doing is the wisest, the most difficult doing there is. If you can't get yourself to not do, to inact, to be a non-doer, that alone would breach enlightenment for you in the moment. But try to do that, you can't even do that. Now, you have all these impulses coming up, and if you can be free of, I don't need to have them, to feel anything or get anywhere, you are in power of your own mind. You are present in the moment. You are in your own hands. If every impulse takes you and convinces you you need it, then you're you're not yourself. You're not for yourself. So my favorite way to put peace is peace is not about doing nothing, being nothing, or having nothing. It's not about living less. It's about living fully. It's about being fully engaged with your life, but with no interference, no stress, no suffering, no attachment. Peace is about not letting anything own you. And so the main message I keep sharing with all my friends who are in business or in entrepreneurship or our investor, whatever they're doing, is prioritize peace because peace is without peace, you have nothing. You have without peace, you have nothing. You're not living your life. Your mind is in yours. You're easy to manipulate or influenced. But to be a presence, you need to be at peace. Peace is like a sign that God is in you, that you're you're awake. My favorite metaphor is if you look at a distance in the distance on a mountain, you see smoke rising. What do you immediately know is there?

SPEAKER_00

Fire.

SPEAKER_01

Fire. So smoke is the sign that fire is there. Same way peace is the sign that God is there. Peace is the smoke that shows you there's God in someone. There's God in everyone, but that they're awake, they're connected, they're conscious, they're there. They're not living in sleep.

SPEAKER_00

You reach that by stopping itching, stopping the itch, or stopping itching the itch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So how you actually do this is by slowing down the mind. And the three S's, this is what I call my surrender experiment for me. Surrender is how you stop the itches from running your life. And surrender is broken into three S's for me, the way my journey unfolded. The first is self-study, it's developing the skill of self-awareness to catch patterns, catch every belief, thought, emotion, which is what I've been doing every day and documenting. So that's awareness itself. The second one is stillness. And I didn't say meditation, I say stillness because meditation is a path to stillness. A lot of people think meditation is sitting down with visualization or to focus on something, uh, on a picture of what they want or to hear a beautiful noise. No, it's about, it's not about using your mind, it's about losing your mind. It's how you go beyond the mind. So stillness is kind is quite literally this the state of God, of consciousness. I I from a really cool quote from a movie that I love is a fast mind is crazy, delusion. Slow mind is wise, but a stopped mind is God. So the slower you can make your mind to stillness, the closer you return back to truth of your own nature, of your own conscious nature. So stillness is that. That's where you start creating a gap between you and that mind, all the movement of the mind, because stillness is the opposing energy of the mind. So mind always has to be moving, has to be doing something. Stillness becomes awareness. And the last one is selfless service or selfless action. I experienced it as you could do selfless action right in the beginning to start challenging your ego. It's a lot of things I did. But I feel like when you start to do all these three three things in tandem perfectly, it's like a trinity, it has a very powerful effect when all three are happening at the same time. You're practicing stillness every day, you're watching yourself and self-inquiring, introspecting, and you're selflessly acting, which means every chance you get to go out of your way to do something that you don't get a gain from, you don't like, you don't want to do, and you, or better it, you do it for somebody you don't like. Every time your ego is, oh, and you're like, I'm gonna do it anyways, those three things start to create kind of a momentum of awakening, a momentum of peace coming through. And peace is less about something you do, it's more about more of what you don't do. I like to think that spirituality isn't an addition game, it's a subtraction game. So it's not about adding more to yourself and adding more practices or adding more beliefs or adding more anything. It's about removing everything you're not. And what's left is going to be the fragrance of peace because you're in presence in truth. You're in your original nature. I have a good metaphor for this to know the difference between playing the game of life, between happiness and peace. Playing the game of life, it's like playing a game of golf. Let's say we're playing a game of golf, and and I go, hey, let's play this game. Um, and uh let's play. No worries, you're good, I'm good, whatever. If uh if you win, good job. If you lose, we're gonna kill you at the end. Let's start. And you go, well, hold on a second. What do you mean? Let's start. And you go, well, not a big deal. Just don't lose. Now, how do you think you're gonna play that game?

SPEAKER_00

Stressed.

SPEAKER_01

Stressed. Now, a lot of people go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure I win. I'm like, yeah, you're gonna think you're gonna, you're gonna be really focused on I can't lose. But all the I can't lose pressure is gonna put you in a state of fear. Now you're scared because you're dreading the outcome. You're dreading the outcome. You're telling yourself, I can't let anything but this happen. I have to win. So you're gonna play extremely bad. Now, you know, golf is a great example because golf is a game of relaxation and peace, and it's about mind. So you can't let every small little thing get to you, or else your tense, your shoulders tense up, and then that one little inch of a tense makes you miss the ball. So it's all about it's a perfect game for knowing how your mind is reflecting in the body. Now, let's say we play the game and I go, hey man, let's play a game of golf. If you win, you get $100,000. I'm gonna pay you. If you lose, you lose, it's not a big deal. Actually, you know what? Better yet, I'll just give you the $100,000 right now. Just for playing. Really? Yeah, man. If you win or you lose, here's a hundred thousand dollars. Just thanks for being here. Let's go play. Now, how do you think you'll play?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I said amazing. I play amazing.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing, right? Here's what the chronic doer most entrepreneurs archetypes are gonna say. I want to play as good. Because I'll be lazy. I'm not motivated, I wouldn't care. This is the this is a good sign that you're running off scarcity energy because you think peacefulness won't bring the best out of you. But if you play, the real truth is not only are you gonna play good, you're gonna play better than you've ever played. Why? Because not only is there no stress at all to the outcome, you don't care, but you feel like you already won. You got the prize in the beginning as you started. So you're gonna start trying things you've never tried and playing it away you've never tried. There's just no fear. So you start to express yourself, you start to create and act from a place of total freedom because you're at total peace. The best way to explain this is I had a third grade teacher that changed my life. I remember every class I went to in uh elementary school, I was terrible at. People said I had like I was mentally disordered, they put me in ESL class, so they thought I had some type of mental disorder because I couldn't speak English. I was slower, I was eight-ishy, whatever it was. But this one class, dude, I got like A's only. Every other class was like C's, B's, D's. This one class, only one thing was different. When I walked in on day one, the teacher, Miss, I think it was like Miss Kumar or Umari or something. I still remember it, man. She comes in and goes, everyone in this class starts with an A. And I'm like, I've never had an A plus. I have an A plus right now. And she goes, Yeah, everyone has an A plus. All you gotta do is work to keep it there. And it was a complete reverse of everything else. Everyone else is your shit. You got to get, you gotta earn A plus. What she taught me, I did, I did really good in that class. What she taught me stuck me for the rest of my life, which is if I start at 100%, I won't have a feeling of lack or incompletion or fear in why I'm doing it. So if you start as a winner, you play the game as a winner. But most people start as a loser trying to win. If you start as a loser, you play as a loser trying to win.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And the key is to start as a winner. And that's what playing a game of golf with peace is like. That's what playing business with peace is like. When you start with peace by resisting all the impulses, temptations, and illusions and itches of the mind for happiness and excitement and drive and motor and all this shit that you told yourself is actually what's better for you, you're gonna see the real powers and peace. A peaceful mind is the most productive mind. You're not at peace, you can't finish your dinner. You're not at peace, you can't even make a to-do list. You're not at peace, you can't even do a meeting without your mind being in 15 places. Don't kid yourself. Everybody knows if you're not at peace, you can't produce. But the best production comes from a peaceful mind because it's a clear mind. And this is the whole backwards thing I think entrepreneurs have gone, me being one of them in the past. And this is the main thing I want to help people kind of unveil the distortion around. Because it's it's like a culture of hustle and a culture of ego and a culture of earn the your worthiness. And it's just bullshit. You operate from there, it's only going to make the whole deeper. You're never gonna actually feel the completion. And it more closer to home for me is it's a direct line attack on your original nature on God in you. Because God in you is that you're one with everything. You're already complete. There is nothing you need to do. Therefore, the ego says, I need, but the soul says, I am. And when you operate from I am and not I need, you start become the presence, you start becoming the presence that walks in a room. You don't look down to people, you don't look up to people, you look at everyone eye level as God would, equal, one with the other person. And people gravitate towards you. And just like dating or anything in life and around social life, when you don't need anyone's attention, validation, or approval, everyone wonders who you are. They gravitate towards you. When you don't need things come to you. This is living in a state of peace, living in a state of completion and living in a state of abundance. And so when you're when you're radiating your true nature, you don't need to sit down and manifest something specific. The thing that's meant for you shows up, and I promise you it's better than whatever you could have thought about.

SPEAKER_00

So, what what about the person that's sitting here and saying or thinking, Armin, that sounds great, but I still want to do all this, be successful, but I also want to be peaceful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I would say there's still something you're not getting. Peace and surrender is living completely, fully involved in life and not being attached to any outcomes. It's not about doing nothing, it's about letting nothing own you. So you walk right back into that meeting, but you don't change what you're doing, you change where you're doing it from. It's like a good example is this. People think uh that surrender peace changes your life. I mean it does, but in ways you can't understand right now. It will like break open your life and blossom it. But people think they gotta lose things or they gotta be less of what they are, in a sense, sure, but less of what you're not, not what you are, which is all the stress. The perfect example is look at sex. Sex is an action, right? You can have sex with someone you just met and have a one-night stand, and you could do it from the place of just wanting to get it off, have a little fun. And they have an orgasm, you have an orgasm, it's you don't know each other, ends the next day you you don't, you know, you go your separate ways. Sex like that would leave you empty, right? There's just a short-lived little moment of why you did it, or you could be in love with someone and you know you want to have kids with them, and you can go in and do the same activity, same action, which is sex, and create life. Quite literally, be God as an expression of creating life. So the same action, one is a sacred, magical, supernatural act, and the other one is an empty, shallow, pleasure-seeking moment. So it's not that the things you do in your life change when you start living at peace from peace and surrender, it's that where you're doing it from changes. So now the question becomes are you doing business from a place of ego, attachment, fear, convictions that are false, beliefs that aren't true, or are you doing it from a place of alignment, truth, love? Now, this is a tough one. Ego's very, very, it's a brilliant, you know, actor. It could change form. I dealt with mine directly. And it could change and go, of course I'm doing it for love. I love this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01

Are you at peace? No, not at peace. So peace is the only sign that you're in truth. It's the smoke to the fire and you can feel it off someone's energy. It's not something they could tell you about, it's not something they can convince you or themselves of. It's something that they just are. It's a sign of I'm awake. Nothing owns me. So if you really do this right, you're gonna be working harder. I mean, when I started surrendering, my my calendar got packed. I was just being of service, I was being used as a vessel. And it was every moment was love because the more I served selflessly, the more my love multiplied inside me, the more my connection to life and God multiplied. But when I did it from ego every time, it felt a little bit more of a gap between me and life and connection and God. And so you can only know, I can't tell you, you can't tell them. Only you can know sitting there, am I doing this from a place of peace or not? And if you have to ask and you kind of got to think through it, it's not peace. You either know it or it's like pregnancy. You're either pregnant or you're not, you know, like you just say and you're like, oh yeah, I am. I'm at peace. So it's a tough thing. It's a slippery mind, this game. Um, but there are real signs, and that's the whole three S's I talk about and the discerning from truth and ego. It takes a lot of practice. You got to take all the time away from all the illusions of the mind and all the itches and put it into inward. It's like uh if you're an entrepreneur, my favorite way to put it is like you have all this drive and will to like achieve things. Well, take all the energy that goes into external validation, external achievements, and turn it inward. Don't try to build a bigger business, try to become more still. It's the same kind of energy you got to go inward and challenge yourself, but can you be more still? Instead of proving that you can make more money than the next person or you can build a business to a certain thing, or you can get that relationship or whatever it is, or build that body, turn out all that inwards, knowing that all these are just itches, that none of them are going to complete you. Go inward and go, how still can I become? How much can I dissolve this ego? How quiet can I make my mind? All that same energy, go inward. When you do that, the fruits are far different than the outside. The outside is always a show. Everyone else will tell you it's great, but inside you don't feel that great. But when you go inward, everyone else might just feel you're a little different. I'm like, dude, you're at PC good. Some people might even think you're lazy because you're moving slower than them. But the joke on them is a slower mind is a faster outcome. When you slow down the mind, you speed up life. And a fast mind breaks everything. That's why I can't work with anyone where I see their mind isn't stable, it's not slowed down, they're not present because they can only produce more illusion because they're in illusion. Only a person who's in presence, you kind of know when you meet someone, you do business with them, it's very different energy. Total alignment, everything feels joyful and fun. Everything feels like two little kids playing in the playground together. It's just all clear, it all makes sense. There's no forged or pressure. Same thing with relationships. I mean, the kind of stuff I'm saying will end some relationships and might start some new ones because the things we're measuring our decisions by mostly are coming from an compulsive egoic mind. And that's why it doesn't feel like it really fits. It's like putting on a suit, it looks good. Everyone's complimenting you, but it doesn't fit right. And it's kind of uncomfortable. But you keep wearing it because everyone's saying it looks so good. And then you start feeling guilty, like I shouldn't not feel good if it looks good, and everyone thinks I should be happy. So you have all this pressure of, well, I can't show anyone this this is uncomfortable to wear. And that's what the ego is like. It's like putting on this uniform that doesn't fit, isn't you, but you feel a friend you can't take it off. But once you take it off, you become your real self. Yeah, man. You you return home to truth, to what you are outside the illusions, and then you get to see other people playing in their illusions, and you look at them and go, ah, that looks like fun. One of my favorite responses is when people tell me anything, and I'm like, sounds like a lot of fun. And it could be like my ego have a lot of judgments about it, like, oh, this person's deep in this or deep in that. I'm like, you're on a fun journey right now. Because I just realized it's all that we're on different journeys, different masks we're wearing, different uniforms. But peace, man, peace is the the indicator, and peace is presence and and and presence is power. And so peace lives in the eternal now. So if you're in the eternal now and out of the mind, you start to operate from peace. And that's a skill. It is a skill you got to concentrate the mind on, but it's your true nature. Peace is key.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Is there anything that you would add someone listening that is on this journey or wants to be on the journey that you've been on? Any advice or maybe insight, uh, guidance that you could share and peace to someone?

SPEAKER_01

Peace is not something that you find. It's not something you achieve. It's something you realize as what you already were. And it's gonna feel like waking up from a dream that felt so real. That the moment you wake up, you have this relief, this kind of funny joyful moment of realizing oh, it was just a dream, and now I'm awake.

SPEAKER_00

All of a sudden, and where can people uh find you? Someone wants to reach out, be in touch, maybe work with you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I have uh my Instagram is the most active. Uh it's the Armin Shafi, A-R-M-I-N-S-H-A-F-E-E. And then I have a free surrender school, you know, about and uh you do weekly calls in there, weekly meditations, tons of courses, which is really just me teaching live in real time all the lessons and realizations I learned along the journey of the documenting every day. Um, and then we have other cool things that happen there too, like group healings. Now I do that and um in conscious conversation. So that's that's the community where like everyone that's on the same journey gets to walk it together so you don't feel crazy, so you don't feel like you're uh you know all alone and you're not. There's a lot of people having the same kind of awakenings, so you could do it with other people, and it makes it a lot easier to go through the uncertain phases of the journey.

SPEAKER_00

Amazing. Well, Armin, thank you so much. It's been an honor getting to know you and yeah, I'm excited to see what continues to unfold in the journey together.

SPEAKER_01

Same brother. Thanks for uh getting me on here. It's uh been a pleasure having this conversation.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much.