All right, Jordan Bates, what's up? Not too much. How's it going, Atlas? Thanks for coming on the program. Thank you, bro. Good to be here. Hell yeah. What a divine synchronicity that we got the chance to come here together. We're currently at Bentinio Massaro's shift into permanent alignment retreat in Costa Rica. And we're super pumped for it. And we've both been profoundly positively influenced by him. And we've also both come from a somewhat similar exploratory seeking process that has landed us at this always already free. We're free already. Nothing to do, no one to be. It's just this right here, it's doing itself. I don't know how it's doing it. I don't know how I'm doing this, but it's just doing itself. And that's freedom. This just does itself effortlessly, spontaneously. I've liked using a single word to describe Source, the ineffable, as I said. Yet the word that is most fun for me to add a word, a characteristic or a descriptor to, Source is creativity. Yeah. How do you feel about that? Yeah, I think Source is destructive creativity in its aspect of form. When you look at form, it's constantly, the forms are constantly shifting. A new world is being born every moment. An entire world is dying every moment. Another world is being born every moment. So it's the aura borrows. It's the creative destruction. And yet the fundamental substance here, the invisible universal substance that is actually apparently shifting into different forms, never departs from itself. It never changes. It's always just this same essence. So in that sense, actually, nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. There's just this motionless freedom. Just sitting here, just watching itself, just already whole, already complete, already perfect, just doing its thing. That's what I would say. Yeah, I really appreciated the Sanskrit word lila, the divine play for it all. I also really found it interesting as I made that visualization that had the Source light refracting through the diamond, that little prism that was described as the awareness that then goes out into the creation forms and aims 10,000 things. It was cool that you thought that that was somewhat interesting enough to share with some people and that I had even posted this other one that was sort of around these, in a sense, two attractors. You have one attractor, which is that Source and then you have, which has that GPS callback functionality of seeking when people, like in the parable of the prodigal sun, venture outward, hit a breaking point, trying to find happiness in Maya in the illusion and the intoxication, and then they begin investigating their awareness. So in a sense, these little visualizations and explanations of the ineffable, like you just described a moment ago, has been really insightful for myself as well as for other people sort of comparing maps around. Have I become the witness? Am I at least not absorbed in the thoughts and in the clouds, in the perceptions, in the objects, but am I at least aware of myself as the sky, in which they happen that is eternal? Yeah, it's been interesting hearing how you feel about the maps. Unpack a little bit about that for us. Yeah, so I think every map is useful as far as it goes, but at a certain point, you know, you have to kill the Buddha, you have to burn every map, you have to burn every boat that got you to that point, to that particular island on the way. At a certain point, every map loses its usefulness, every word loses its usefulness, even words like absolute, source, consciousness, awareness. At a certain point, you have to say, there is no source, there is no absolute, there is no witness, there is no awareness. All of these are just words. All these are just mouth noises. What are the words pointing at? What is the moon?  When you're in that, when you're just stranger in a strange land, no location, no reference points, you know, that's when you're home. That's when you remember what freedom is, is what I would say. Yeah, I was reading Sri Ramana Maharshi and Srinasa Gautama Maharaj recently and they're both saying very similar, leverage the words and the lexicon for you to better understand the stages and where you're at and then drop the words as soon as possible once you recognize it. Drop the words as soon as possible and just be that freedom that you already are. And so then one of the things is that the bodhisattva comes up. So in a sense, you want to undergo this tantric weaving of your realizations because you recognize that all these other selves that are suffering in this dream that the absolute highest thing that you can do is to, as Ramana Maharshi said, sahaja samadhi, you want to weave your enlightened realizations into the social fabric and you do so by being able to help people with this lexicon because if somebody, you know, you can look out at the fractals, right? We have we have all of these different fractals in the planet's secretions. And when we look at it, when we look at a bird that's chirping, it's not singing to an audience. When we look at a flower that's growing, it's not trying to grow. When we look at a caterpillar, it naturally becomes a butterfly metamorphosis. And so we can, in a sense, use these very simple explainers in this whole already free, free, already style, pointing that then gets the sort of contracted energy to just release to help people. But yet the whole thing with what the Buddha taught and what the Four Noble Truths are about and just the way to liberate yourself from suffering in general, and even the Ten Commandments and Confucius as an elect, all of these projects around morality as well, is that even in the idea of free yourself, you're free already, there's still this importance to having a high amount of morality or having a mastery over your thought stream.   Yeah, I would say it depends. If a person truly deeply notices that freedom is, freedom is the case, all thoughts are made out of freedom, all thoughts are entirely made out of the absolute, made out of the absolute radiance that is just totally at home with itself, then it really doesn't matter what thoughts are appearing because you just see that they're not even thoughts actually. The word thought is even an abstraction and a conceptual overlay atop what is happening. What is happening is just radiance dancing in different modalities. You can break it up into modalities, there aren't actually separate modalities. We can say there's the field, the visual field, the thought field, the sound field, the field of touch and taste. These are all actually just aspects on the same continuum and none of it can actually be said what it is. It's all just the same continuum and it's all the same absolute radiance, absolute at-homeness and so if you see that thoughts are made out of that then you see through thought and it doesn't really matter which thoughts arise and it's hard to imagine that you would still really be able to get hooked by too many thoughts if you really see through thoughts to that level. I mean still though the character is going to have some momentum, just the conditioning of your particular karma, your particular environment and upbringing has a certain momentum. Maybe your past lives, if you subscribe to that sort of understanding have a certain momentum and sometimes awakening just blows out like 95% of your conditioning and momentum and sometimes it blows out 10 to 15% and you have to spend a lot more and then you spend a lot more time gradually dissolving the person with all the person's particular idiosyncrasies but there's nothing wrong with the idiosyncrasies. It's actually fun to just not no longer feel like guilt and shame about your character's particular foibles and idiosyncrasies but instead you just kind of gently and humorously and humbly just observe your character behaving how your character is behaving.  Awakening is not about changing your behavior in a particular way it's about relaxing into what already is this freedom that is already here regardless of what may or may not be happening it just is the case freedom is and absolutely there's a lot to be said for for alignment and for the bodhisattva path that that type of thing resonates with you but even more fundamentally than that you know most fundamentally is like wake up and realize the freedom that you are whatever you if you feel like trying to be a bodhisattva and give people red pills after that then that's great that sounds like an amazing way to spend your time if you feel like you know pulling a rio con the whatever 15th century zen poet and just going and being a hermit and like living in your own little shack and writing poetry for the rest of your life then go do that because ultimately freedom is all beings are are already free so you know it's kind of whatever game your soul wants to play just realize what this is realize what you are realize you're already free and it's already perfect and then just play the game you want to play dance the dance you want to dance and just enjoy the hell out of it because that's what that's what we're here to do just dance and play and enjoy that's what i would say hi i love that in a sense there's a already always freedom that is the undercurrent of the eternity that this is the infinity that this is and yet also at the same time there's a perfecting that happens within its creativity so here we are in this evolutionary ascent and although it's dreamed we evolve from a place of more limbic more primal where maya is intoxicating us the illusion is intoxicating us we're reactive we're barely aware of our own true nature and awareness and especially that it's impersonal that it's all one god self and then over time what happens in this multi thousand year long ascent and beyond we perfect ourselves away from maya away from the intoxication away from the illusion away from the primal limbic ego driven behaviors and towards enlightened awakened highest morality bodhisattva style behaviors so to me there's a simultaneity that happens with the underlying undercurrent that is always already absolutely free and yet simultaneously recognizing that the reason why i became so free was because i did the hard work that enabled me to not be reactive to have dissolved my ego to have made it so that i'm only in service to the absolute highest waving awakening into the fabric so you're right in many ways and it's just that there's always this like component to it that there's a preference still for clean water instead of dirty water and that's the sort of thing that i'm talking about is there's a preference for enlightenment there's a preference for awakening a preference for no ego a preference for the dissolving of all self-dealing and the preference for the maximizing abundance prosperity love like wisdom harmony period meeting basic needs actualizing gifts all of that kind of stuff beautifully said beautifully said yeah i would say what comes up for me in relation to that is that i would say that i'm not right i would say fundamentally i'm trying to lie in the most accurate way possible right now because no words we can say can even come close to what this actually this right here this now what is this i can't say it i can't say it none of these words can say it i can only point at it and then you can burn me down kill the buddha and just notice it for yourself what is going on here i would say the story you're telling the story of you know forgetting and remembering and going through these deep contractions and then these these deep expansions and back into remembrance deeply resonates like i i would say that let's call it a mythology is one of the mythologies that resonates most deeply with me and that i feel is most generative most useful at this point in human history at the at this stage of the zeitgeist i can't think of a much more beautiful mythology to put forth of what's happening like we're being summoned back into a golden age or summoned toward a collective awakening and there's this gorgeous opportunity we have to remember what we are and to redesign the dna of civilization based on these awakened understandings of what's happening here i do still feel though that that again is ultimately just another story and i don't actually fundamentally know i don't even know if we're evolving or devolving i i don't know i don't know what this is i don't know what's happening here i don't know what humanity is i don't know what the world is i don't know what beings are i don't know what any of that stuff is it's all it's all mysterious already awake already free god nectar just existing as it is and we in every story we can tell any beautiful story we want and every story is true within its own context every reality tunnel is true within its own context it's true as far as it goes but from the absolute lens every story is a very involves a very heavy-handed cherry picking process where we're cherry picking different data points and using confirmation bias to say yes i see this data point this pattern this data point this pattern and we're we're giving ourselves this feedback loop that reinforces our particular narrative and everyone is involved in this all the time but the the truth is that the number of data points we're cherry picking is just vastly vastly smaller than the amount of information that's actually happening here because even in this moment where i'm apparently talking to you there are infinite bits of information happening here i could dial in on this tiny shade of brown over here and say what's going on with that shade of brown that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the cosmos like forgetting what it is and then remembering and going through this crazy evolution process it just seems to be a little speck of radiance doing its thing and it's really only our linear storytelling narrativizing minds that give this impression of a linear narrative that does x or y and ultimately there's just this there's just this self-awake radiance just right here now just already free already fully at home with itself and it's like the only thing blocking you from noticing that is just the clouds in front of the sun the the sun is already here the clouds don't really exist but they're created by your identification with thought you're believing that your thoughts are actually saying something real about reality creates the clouds in front of the sun when you stop believing your thoughts and just drop concepts and just return to pure infant mind all that's here is just this completely unsayable kaleidoscopic already at home awakeness and um that is the absolute that is god you are god it's right here it's right now it's not a secret it's it's that's the cosmic joke it's the only thing you've ever seen just right in front of you right now um fuck yeah i love it your focus on pointing to when rumi says that we go from room to room looking for the diamond necklace that's already around our neck typically the first things that come to mind in that pointing are to say that we're looking for happiness in what is not awareness we're we're looking for happiness in maya we're looking for happiness in the intoxicative illusion seeking peace and happiness that i will extract it from objects and experiences and substances and relationships and all that stuff and so typically if we're in that process especially we're associating ourselves with our thoughts with our perceptions with our layers of identity i like how joren's been using this kaleidoscopic it's a really good way to explain it because it's very similar to the mandelbrot fractal as well the fractaling that happens and so the kaleidoscopic nest to it is why he gets these layers of identity and i get these layers of identity but we become enslaved to form ego enslaves us to form and so we in a sense shed like an onion those layers of identity off off off i'm i'm not my body i'm not my ethnicity i'm not my career i'm not my thoughts perceptions objects experiences subsystem not any other things i'm just the pure bare empty awareness that very awakeness right there together that's impersonal that's impersonal that we share that is eternal and that the appearances of form are endless they'll never stop this is what is most transient what is most transient is these appearances of form creativity and yet what's permanent what stays the same forever is the very shared eternal agent of awareness itself that is always going to be witnessing the movies that are playing you are the white source light abide as that abide as that which makes the witnessing possible abide as that which makes perception possible abide as that which watches the endless beautiful appearances and beautiful yeah the clear light just happiness is so it's a paradox for happiness to go looking for happiness looking for happiness somewhere else when happiness is it's what you are so why would happiness reach over here for happiness come to me but i'm entirely made of happiness this is what i am i'm just made of happiness i'm made of that clear light i'm made of that that awakeness and yeah that which enables awakeness that zero space of infinite possibility it's just yes this moment now yeah yeah one of the big things that i'm noticing about this already always free being our true nature and that the sort of headless centerless hurricane like process non-dual is that it's both perfect and it's perfecting happiness is already here period like you said it is our true nature yet like in the sufi metaphysics only the ignorant sequence already there yet it remains for you to recognize it so it's like the perfection perfecting and just like in the happiness one as well there are still a billion people that don't have access to clean water and if you're truly an impersonal witness you know that you are that which experiences through a billion people the lack of the basic need not being met and that's the sort of perfecting that happens at the same time which is that we recognize that via that impersonal witnessing and as that basic need gets met we entrepreneurially maximize the social fabrics potential those basic needs get met and then those billion people get to flower their unique contribution their unique gift in this appearance and so that's it's it's been a core to sort of be able to simultaneously hold perfection and perfecting because i remember five years ago it doesn't even matter if somebody told me that i'm always already free i would have no fucking idea what they're talking about period so in a sense it took five years of sort of studying the mystic traditions attending meditation retreats quieting the mind down becoming the witness making that impersonal recognizing that this is all already free and so that's the sort of perfecting that happens with the already perfect how do you feel yeah beautifully said beautifully said and yeah eventually when you do remember that it it is this always already free and awake perfection you realize it was that the whole time even while it was even while it was perfecting and remembering and when it was apparently not remembering even when it was apparently not remembering it was still remembering at the same time it was still perfect it was still awake that whole time and what may have seemed like you know long decades of human suffering are eventually seemed to have just been like a stabs a spark in a bonfire like just a micro drop in an oceanic eternity that just knows no suffering at all that knows no suffering at all and yeah it's tricky how we dance between these perspectives of you know the apparent absolute versus the apparent relative in actuality there is no there is no distinction the absolute is relative the relative is absolute and yet at the same time yeah i also deeply resonate as a as a um a heart opened human being at that perspective i totally resonate with the view of yeah we have an amazing opportunity at this juncture in history to liberate mankind's apparent situation to a degree never before experienced and recorded history on this planet there's a possibility for universal abundance raising the universal baseline of prosperity to never before seen levels and just see okay we sorry we got a phone call let's see if we get the we got the counter going okay we're counter back on all right okay okay yeah so i resonate with the perspective that we have a totally unprecedented opportunity right now from the relative perspective as apparent human beings in this apparent realm this is a playground we can play like to the max we can generate never before seen levels of abundance and prosperity creativity we have the technology we have the imagination we're capable of so much more than what within what we're currently doing and it's it's a beautiful game to you know play this game in this earth realm and see what kind of gorgeous possibilities we can we can actualize and that game is especially fun when you know that you're already home and that you're already free and that it's all a game and that at the end of this show this theater play we're all going to take off the mass and we're all going to have a beer and a joint and we're all going to laugh and remember that it was all a dream and it was all for fun and that what we really are is completely untouched by all of this it is just that already awake radiance that is just here now this completely inexplicable suchness that is just that dimension of presence the direct felt presence of experiencing here now that is what you are and the more you know that and come from that and embody as that that in itself has the biggest impact on this apparent human game that we're playing as well yes the more you know that the more you embody that the more you exist at that level of beingness your beingness is the most fundamental thing all your actions all your actions are permeated by your level of beingness the energy you're operating from the energy you're coming from so where you're coming from is most fundamental what you do is secondary so the biggest gift that you can give to the world is just to remember what you are and then from there just joyfully share your gifts playfully share your gifts do the thing that lights you up do what ignites you do what electrifies you do what excites you because that's when you truly like radiate at the next level that's when you're just you just become a beacon and you're like oh my fucking god i love life this is insane look at what the fuck is going on here we're in this insanely futuristic techno wonderland narnia we have insane possibilities i can just rap and sing and dance and laugh and play and you know that's when you really inspire people on the next level to remember that we are joyful creators what we are is joyful creators some of us have forgotten that and we're and are identifying as victims and as small separate beings but we are the one joyful creator we are the one blissful creator of all of this and creator and creation are not separate this is this is the creator this is the creation this is the body of god you are it and you can do whatever you like just have fun it's it's fun it's all for fun beautiful nice to meet you today i know wow we had so many funny non-dual jokes in my car and we've just been kicking it today it's been great i didn't even know that yeah you built with jordan lejuan your business and yeah and he's been a big influence on a lot of the ways that as well and so yeah jordan lejuan founded high existence dot com and i became a co-owner of high existence co-creator some years ago and worked on that for a while and now been doing my my own thing for like the last year or so i also had my own blog that whole time refine the mind dot com and then yeah more recently i'm creating something called aura boros so that's what i'm up to uh in in the 3d yeah and you're hosting in mexico after this two two retreats so there's some plant medicines and some non-dual teachings yeah having an ayahuasca and bufo and direct non-dual inquiry retreat with also dance and music and rap and fun in mexico in april and then having a similar retreat with with yahe which is a close cousin of ayahuasca basically ayahuasca in the sequoia tradition having that in costa rica in june so um working people find that um so if you follow me on instagram or twitter at um at underscore jordan underscore baits or if you go to yeah from there you can just find my link tree subscribe to my newsletter if you like or go to refine the mind dot com you can also find my newsletter um that's probably the best way to go at this point we'll put the links in the bio below and then in the macro level picture what i really like about this one infinite creator eternally expressing itself i really like how as you described that there's this you know ramdas talks about it a lot as well is that and ekratoli does as well as that you basically have to die before you die and that's your ego death and then you become that one god self and then ramdas also talks about it like when you do die it's like taking off a really tight shoe and so in a sense it's like stripping off of this costume in its fullest but then what's really interesting is that as it's talked about in the traditions if you've really achieved nirvana regardless if you have ended your cycle of births and deaths in this creation as is taught about in the law of one by raw is that you end up regardless serving as your higher self to all of these other in this multiverse all of these other little jordan bates characters that are at all of the other lower densities and you just serve that for a long long long time and that then then after you played as the jordan bates character as is talked about in the law of one it's like the whole creation uses all of what's learned and explored as its passport into the next creation the next exploration you get to put on some sort of other costume and identity and layers all of us do and that's the soul and that's the playfulness the end the endless childlike laughter of the infinite as orabindo says and so in a sense the perfecting process in each one of these creations is you slowly find the well of honey that's under the rock you are already the well of honey you're already that this is already free and yet there's a little egoic contracted rock that needs to be you know really looked at if you look at the seer at consciousness long enough that you'll dissolve that rock you'll recognize that your true nature is what is eternal and shared here that is endlessly exploring all possibilities of transience fractaling kaleidoscoping as you said and so that that's just been really important is to know how to Jedi navigate across that because I think it's a little bit too easy sometimes to just give only one layer of exploration of what explanation of what it is the one layer of exploration is you're already perfect it's already it we're already free done end of story just be exactly what is happening that and yet the other layer within that that is typically brushed off this is why the tight jit too has the monist which we just talked about and then it has the yin yang the dualist within it in one symbol because then that's the perfecting it's awareness forgetting that its nature is that and that it gets intoxicated by Maya and it undergoes that process of suffering being the drill sergeant for it to go and investigate its true nature again like you said it's all story like you said it's all story but it's the closest stories we can get to explaining the ineffable in a way that helps the ascent of other people to this recognition and that's the point of sort of refining the maps and refining your Jedi like ability for each of us yeah beautifully said again and yeah i would say you know that resonates that the additional mythological elaborations there about what all this is where it's going through these different densities these different creation bubbles reaching completion and then morphing to the next stage all that sounds super epic i really like the the heuristic that like whatever the most epic story you can tell is that's probably how it is because god seems to love epic stories that's a good one but but at the same yeah at the same time though i also just yeah i have to say again that i just i don't know i don't know about i don't know about those stories i don't know the truth of that you know it's like the the trap of the stories is that you can get your mind can really grab onto the stories you can get really lost in all these mythologies and you can think you know you can weave the super elaborate very serious seeming web of like cosmic evolution process and and and it can just become another another dogma another ideology another ism and so you know hold those lightly those are fun to play with great point but also just continually burn them down continually burn them down continually say what is the law of one who is raw that's nobody that's nobody kill the buddha kill raw kill the law of one you know kill the kill non duality kill duality kill perfection kill already free kill suffering kill the ego yeah yeah kill jordan bates kill the absolute kill the atlas kill the atlas character yeah yeah interesting yeah exactly yeah that's the true surrendered process too as you've been using it sort of to the bonfire burn burn bird surrender surrendered devotional surrender yeah give it all back to god yeah just give it all back to god and yeah but yeah i do i've seen on ayahuasca you know visions of like this upward spiraling process across you know infinite omniverses where all the diamonds are being perfected i love that that's my fucking fave i love that one oh it's my fave i'm so glad you brought that one out yeah yeah that like i mean i've seen that and it looked fucking astounding and i've seen how also every diamond the whole time it's like indra's net and every single diamond on this upward spiraling path is the microcosm perfectly right reflecting the macrocosm and every diamond is constantly the perfect diamond buddha reflecting all the other mirrors in the exact perfect way every mirror giving every other mirror exactly what it needs in all moments at all times even hitler and trump giving everyone the perfect mirror that they needed at that time not a single thread out of place and i love that story and yet i also have to burn that down and just and just say that's also a story it's fucking beautiful story you know we're here to tell beautiful stories and live in them and enjoy them and play play in them but just remember that their stories and just keep burning them down and come back to living mystery living on speakable mystery completely unsayable isness here now emptiness dancing don't know what it is a non-conceptual totality non-conceptual totality of what is that is what is here that's all that you can actually that's all that's actually here non-conceptual openness you can't find anything else other than that you can't find non-conceptual openness either it's all you can't find any particular thing look go look for the upward spiraling path of perfect diamond perfection you won't find it you can't find any particular thing particular things are the domain of concepts in the mind so if you want to find what's really here you have to go through that portal of unfindability to the no particular thingness yeah you have to shut the fuck up and and and look at the the dot dot dot the no particular thingness the blankness the blank slate go back to the blank slate wipe the cpu clean the silence between the notes yeah the blank canvas that gets colored the infinite amount of ways that you can modulate a screen to make movies the endless amount of ways that you can vibrate your vocal chords to make languages the endless amount of ways that you can combine food to make recipes yeah go ahead and as well just want to say that these are also totally notes to self because still i noticed my mind all the time like going down these rabbit holes and wondering about these elaborate stories of like hmm is the absolute like you know beyond awareness and stuff like this these very like subtle points of non-duality my mind still totally like like choose on that stuff and like spins and circles and then i keep coming back to yeah but i gotta burn all that down that's all that's all bullshit absolute awareness every word is pointing at the exact same thing every the actual the actual thing that every word is pointing at is just this unspeakable isness now every word has the same meaning ultimately it's all referring to just that this unspeakable isness endlessly boom beautiful bro it's a good note so good dude if you like yeah of course i'm feeling it i was so feeling that like that electricity for that rapping and maybe you should rap yeah oh yeah oh and rapping actual rapping all right let's let's let's go post a motherfucking rica here at bentino massaro retreat though okay bro whatever though non-dual flow the oneness is so fun kid you could just play and just let it fucking jump and jack itself kangaroo type of flow up to the next echelon the diamond spiraling process the indra's net you know just let that go ahead and let that do what they want to do i'm right i was gonna i'm seeing visions the magic is written i see it i live it when i get to go in the haters be trippin in korea bmj and i scottie pippin and when i start purging i really be tripping we trust the device we never be slipping i'm feeling like nothing shit it was written we took it from i will you know it be gifted we smoke them a patch of this jungle tobacco we're in this space so i burn polysandrum my medicine i tell all my haters tomorrow wow you went speed yeah that last part i gotta say it was a written verse the first part was pure freestyle then i jumped into a song that i had written before i just like i felt like dropping that verse so yeah yeah wow uh can you drop something slow for me yeah yeah i like i like slow you were so fast i have to re-listen to it okay drop me some slow yeah yeah yeah awareness baby uh look at your awareness look at the seer feel how near it's dear right there in your heart right there in the center all is perfect let it go let every single thought go let every single cloud go you are the eternal sky yes you know you have just forgotten about it don't forget it though remember it remember it yo that is exactly what you are moment to moment your status peace and happiness bliss non-dual world win you are not even here it's only freedom you are not even here it's only freedom you are not even here it's only absolute freedom so good to meet you brother me too hi vibes to start the retreat hi vibes to start the retreat damn yeah that was so solid i'm so okay here we go boom all right check out the links in the bio below to jordan's profiles as well as all the places you can join them on retreats check out all those links below let us know your thoughts about the episode we would love to hear from you in the comments below if the video brought you value give it a like subscribe if you haven't shared the video with other people you feel like it could bring value to we adore you infinitely already free