Hi guys. Welcome to the Ultimate Dobbies and Metabolism Channel, Sugar MD. Dr. Aragon, today we are talking about the best foods to lower your blood pressure and dump your blood pressure medications today. Well, let's get started. So one of my favorite is salmon and fatty fish. Now, salmon has, as you know, a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. So, omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory and anything that is anti-inflammatory in your diet will reduce your risk of high blood pressure because inflammation drives the constriction of your arteries, which causes the high blood pressure. Now, the next one is pumpkin seeds. Now, pumpkin seeds you can buy in Costco or Sam's Club, like huge amounts here, and it's great for your salads and what is in it is amazing. It has magnesium, it has potassium, and it has arginine. Now, we all know, or if you don't know, potassium is extremely important because potassium helps with the blood pressure by eliminating the sodium and relaxing the blood vessels, but arginine also is one of the primary amino acid for formation of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is an enzyme that allows relaxation. Even when you exercise, that's what you're producing.  So, that's why exercise is extremely helpful for blood pressure, but that pumpkin seeds, as a food source, will help you produce nitric oxide. So, even studies show the people who consume pumpkin seeds regularly reduce your blood pressure even in studies, not just on a total evidence. Another food source is beans and lentils. Again, it's very high in magnesium, it is high in potassium and fiber.  So, guys, if you are not trying this or didn't give a chance yet, try to slowly incorporate beans and lentils to avoid bloating, because if you're not eating those foods normally, you will get bloated and you'll be like, what's going on? But, yeah, slowly get started and you will see amazing benefits from them. Next in the list is berries, also some berries, also some berries with color. Even actually, mulberries are very good. So, basically, they have something called anthocyanins, the substance that gives the color to the berries. Now, that same product allows to increase the nitric oxide again, but also what they do, they inhibit the production of the enzymes that causes the vasoconstruction, which is closing up of your arteries. So, remember, berries, one portion at least every day. Now, pistachios is one of my favorite nuts. Well, because in Turkey, that is the favorite nut. So, hazelnut and pistachios is all we eat. Peanuts is common in America. We don't really eat that much peanuts. And actually, to be honest with you, peanuts are overly consumed in the United States, but benefits is not as near as pistachios. So, pistachios are amazing with potassium content. Like we discussed, potassium allows your blood vessels to relax and potassium eliminates or help eliminate the sodium in your body, which is a primary driver of excessive fluid in your body. So, if you want to lose some weight, get rid of some of the water retention you have, you try to increase your potassium. So, the potassium-sodium ratio is very important. Stop those foods that are coming a package or coming a can. All the processed foods are full of sodium. So, if you eat sodium, you're not going to get the benefit from potassium as much. So, because it's a ratio game, right? So, the more potassium you have from vegetables and fruits and less sodium you're getting from the processed foods, you're getting the most benefit. Another one is carrot, guys. Carrot is amazing. It's crunchy, sweet, delicious. Of course, too much of it can spike your blood sugar, but carrots, especially when consumed raw, help a lot reducing the blood pressure. They have things called phenolic compounds and they help relax the blood vessels, and they help produce nautical oxide as well. The next is celery. Celery is awesome. They have something called phytolides in that plant source. So, it is also amazing to help lower the systolic blood pressure. Tomatoes are next, and tomatoes are great, especially when they're eaten as a whole food, not necessarily as a ketchup or a sauce. But when you use fresh tomatoes in your dishes commonly, it helps a lot. I actually eat tomatoes at breakfast. It's not a bad combination, actually, to have cucumber and tomatoes and some feta cheese or the cheese of your choice is a really great combination. I also watermelon, some red grapes can be a good option for breakfast as well, especially when there's cheese, some salty and sweet. It goes well, great together. But at any rate, they have something called lycopene, and these lycopene are also very helpful, and tomatoes are full of potassium as well. Now, you guys are going to be saying, like, what about bananas? You didn't say bananas. Bananas is like the poster, right? For potassium. Well, they are. They help with the potassium, but the problem with the bananas, like you all know, especially the ripe bananas and the bigger the bananas, the riper the bananas, the higher the blood sugar spike you're looking for.  You can do that if you want to eat banana, eat banana, but be physically active if it is spiking your blood sugar. And there are a lot of people who will eat banana and they'll be just fine. Their blood sugar is not going to spike, but some people will do have spikes with the banana. And for those people, I either say either have less of it or just be more active in order to avoid blood sugar spikes with banana. But a great source of potassium, it also helps with the blood pressure as well. And how can we skip broccoli, right? Broccoli is extremely popular in popular science or popular health. And there is a reason for it to be popular. They have this pigment forming substance called flavonoids. And they are extremely helpful with antioxidant features and high potassium features. Again, remember, if you want to remember from this video, something out of this video, just eat the colorful stuff. So the nature, God, I believe in God, you may not, but in your eight, what something, somebody puts those colors on those vegetables for a reason. Eat colorful. If you do not have color on your plate, you are missing out. So make sure you have a lot of vegetables and fruits that are full of colors. They are your best friend for your diabetes and for your blood pressure. Now, I am a big fan of Greek yogurt as well. Now, my Turkish audience tell me that, why are you not saying Turkish yogurt? Well, guess what? Greek yogurt is famous. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know, I know. I'm Turkish and people, I love Greeks and I love Greek food and I love Greek yogurt. Sorry, my Turkish friends. There's no animosity between Turks and Greeks. They're friends. Come on. Anyways, the Greek yogurt is great strained yogurt, whatever you call it. It helps with a lot of potassium. Now, it's a great probiotic as well. Now, you may not be a person, like a yogurt person, but try it.  I think it can help you as a great snack for both diabetes and to help your blood pressure as well. And there are a lot of, of course, the herbs and spices that can help your blood pressure as well. A few of them are saffron, lemongrass, garlic, cinnamon, cardamom, sweet basil, ginger, cilantro, celery seeds. You name it. All these spices also are helpful. They're also helpful when you use spices in your diet. You will realize that you need less salt. So, if you have this high salt addiction, if you're the person who just wants to add salt to your diet, add spice. Because your taste buds can be easily diverted from the salt and the spice will give you the taste that you're looking for and will reduce the need for adding salt to your food. So, you may be familiar with me talking about spinach. Spinach is great unless you have a kidney stone problem, but spinach is full of fiber and antioxidants and nitrates, which is the source for nitric oxide. So, definitely spinach is something you can't add on to your salads. You can cook it, but high fiber, high potassium content of spinach makes it a great addition to your diet as well if you have high blood pressure. So, how about the how about the seeds? The flax seeds and chia seeds. Now, as you know, I love chia seeds. You can make a chia seed pudding for breakfast and it's good for your diabetes. They're very high in fiber, high in magnesium and potassium. So, as a result, those these seeds, the chia seeds and the flax seed also is very good for your blood pressure. Now, of course, last but not least, I would say beets are very, very good. You can add beets to your salads. You can drink beet juice or you can just take some beet capsules that are sold as a supplement, but adding beets really boosts your nitric oxide quite a bit. Not only helps your blood pressure, it even helps with your athletic, with your athletic performance as well. So, consider beets in your diet as well, guys. So, guys, I hope that is helpful and I appreciate you watching and learning. Please share, please give a like, write a comment. I'll try to answer the questions from our subscribers. I may not give you an exact prescription, but I'll try to tell you what I know. And stay in the community, guys. We'll talk to you later. Alright, thank you for watching and I want you to be more informed and more educated. So, to do that, go ahead and watch this next video right here.


This is stock number 9659. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Jeep headquarters in Wisconsin today. We are taking a look at this super clean 2015 Jeep Cherokee latitude with the altitude addition on it From this HD video you will be able to tell that this Jeep is extremely clean inside and out for the age in miles You can see it has the gloss black Borders around the front grille LED headlamps projected lamp headlamp I'm sorry LED running lights projected lamp headlamps and factory fog lights. This truck has the 18 inch Painted alloy rims which come with the altitude package There are no major scuffs or scrapes on them does have brand new a Hutu FP 7,000 tires. These are 225 60 r 18s and they are brand new we put these on during our safety inspection in our shop and It has four brand new tires all the way around brilliant black pearl is the color We shoot all of our videos in 1080p So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device turn them on right now because it is like You're right here looking at the vehicle with me No denser dings on that fender or the hood passenger side rim is in excellent shape as well and As you go down this side of the vehicle you can see just how clean the body is how reflective and mirror like that paint is We take these HD videos So if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down You can still see the car hear the car and of confidence what you're looking at before you even get here Back rim is in nice condition as well four-wheel disc brakes and these back tires are brand new too Very clean down this side of the vehicle Got a couple little fingerprints, but Otherwise very very clean and as we come around to the back You'll notice that it has the dual rear exhaust that is because it has the 3.2 liter V6 pentastar motor see the rear gate is in excellent condition you get the blacked out four by four the blacked out Jeep Lettering also part of that altitude package LED tail lights are standard on the Cherokee and this one has a backup camera Back storage area is very clean on this vehicle. You can see it has a little hooks for grocery bags and whatnot Underneath you get a nether storage container and then your spare tire and jack tools are under there But very clean those seats do fold down for extra storage as well And as we come around to this side of the vehicle No denser dings down this side for full disclosure. This back rim is in nice condition as well Didn't see any denser dings.  There are no rips. There are no tears on these seats Driver seat height adjuster both these seats are heated This one has the cold-weather group, which also gives you the all-weather floor mats this one has power windows power locks and power mirrors and auto headlamps as We hop inside the vehicle here. You can see that this one has 35,584 miles You get a digital speedometer outside temperature and compass display You get a leather wrapped heated steering wheel cruise controls on that side Bluetooth audio and information center controls on the other side Steering wheel is in excellent shape. This one has the 8.4 touchscreen radio What's nice about this radio is it does not have nav But you can add nav if you'd like for 595 you have your heated and heated seats and steering wheel buttons right there This is also where your backup camera shows up You have your climate control stability control your start-stop feature Select terrain so you got auto snow sports sand and mud in that controls your four-wheel drive system USB SD card and August jack Pass and receipt is very clean as well. No rips or tears on that and you do get storage in that seat as well Has the all-weather format on that side you get the 911 and assist buttons on your mirror Those are always active with the vehicle You never have to pay a subscription and you can see that the headliner is really nice and clean So that seat just lifts up and there's storage underneath there Which is pretty nice if you got valuables that you don't want to take with you and want to just put some place and people Aren't going to see them. That's where you do it Take a quick look at the back seats The back seats are just as clean as the front seats No rips or tears back here. It does have latch child safety system all other formats back here 115 volt 150 watt plug-in What I like about the Cherokee's 10 airbags in the vehicles including knee bolster airbags So very safe vehicles these seats do go down almost completely flat Which is really nice. You got a haul a bunch of extra stuff Heated mirrors painted mirrors You get the windshield wiper D. Icer part of the cold-weather group You get the blacked out Jeep logo on the hood Under the hood we have the 3.2 liter v6 motor Pumps out 271 horsepower engine bay is very clean runs very smooth This Jeep has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change All the fluids have been checked and topped off It has four brand new tires and it is 100% ready to go To see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 400 new and used cars trucks SUVs minivans Wranglers you name it. We got it go to our website www.summitauto.com Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle on our lot videos of every single used vehicle that we have all at Summit auto.com. Thank you so much for checking out the video if you want to make this Jeep yours Give us a call right now nine two zero nine two one Zero eight five zero ask for one of our sales associates to make this Jeep Cherokee yours today once again that number is nine two zero nine two one zero eight five zero and If you want to check out more videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto Remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see here In fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left a link to more Used inventory videos like this one on your right If you haven't been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website Click those check us out and we really look forward to helping with this super clean 2015 Jeep Cherokee Latitude altitude edition. Thanks again


In the mid-70s, I was a teenager living in Lansing, Michigan, and I was having a pretty hard time. Lots of anxiety, tremendous anxiety, lots of depression, things like that. And at that point in the mid-70s in Lansing, Michigan, in my family, there was basically no understanding of what that might be about or what someone might do about that. Calm Down was about as much help as I got. There was no therapist, no meds, no support, really of any kind. So, you know, that was pretty difficult and eventually I was having like immobilizing anxiety attacks. Like, you get so worried, you can't move. And I don't know if anyone here has ever experienced that, but it's unpleasant. It is not a fun experience. And so, you know, I suppose I was about 15 or 16 and I realized if I was gonna get any help with this stuff, I was gonna have to help myself. And so I just started reading everything I possibly could. And my mom's a librarian and one of the first things I remember in my entire life is sorting a card catalog for, you know, and because she's a grade school librarian and so I would be sorting the card catalog looking at all the books. And so reading about stuff is a way that I was really trained to intake information. So I decided I'm gonna have to help myself with these anxiety attacks and I'm gonna do that by reading. So I read a lot of stuff and I was also into science fiction novels. But one day I was in the bookstore and I saw a very interesting hardcover book called The Scientist. Anyone ever read that book here? Really? Well, I would have expected a lot of hints here. It's called The Scientist and it's by John C. Lilly. And it was his biography at the time. And I, of course, had no idea who this person was. But there I am in my room in Michigan, you know, nice Midwestern family and I'm reading about this guy who's like pounding, you know, metal rods into donkey's brains to put electrodes in to guide them. He's talking about trying to learn the language of dolphins and how his wife would get in the tank and have sex with dolphins. You know, it's better than a science fiction novel. And, but the other thing he was talking about was his invention of the flotation tech, right? So, and why he did that and how he did that and, you know, then taking ketamine and going in there and talking to aliens at great lengths. So it eventually did become a science fiction novel. And I really liked it. And I thought, wow, this stuff, this guy's talking about this could really help me. However, again, we're talking mid to late 70s, Lansing, Michigan. I wasn't finding many flotation tanks around.  But it just wasn't available. You know, at least I didn't know, you know, anyone was selling those anywhere. I certainly didn't have 650 bucks to get one or whatever it cost at that moment.  I knew that would help somehow, but the tank was not available for me. And so even though I was so interested, it's fascinating, I still haven't done it. So I'm hoping this weekend to get my first flotation tank experience. It's been a while since 77 that I've been wanting to do that. But what was available to me was another thing that I started reading quite a bit about, which was meditation. So that, at that point, was free. And there were books. I didn't need any gear. And so I started working with that. And so in the ensuing years, since 77, I have dedicated my life to meditating and learning about techniques of understanding the self and working with the self. I've, you know, done a lot of practices in India, in Japan, in Buddhism, in Hinduism, in Native American stuff, in all kinds of stuff. And I've kind of come around after all that, after all these years to working almost exclusively, not exclusively, but almost exclusively in a scientific materialist metaphor. So talking about stuff that we can all agree about, it just works better for me to talk about it in a nice scientific, psychological way because it just seems clearer and easier. So that's the direction I've ended up taking after all these years. And that's what I wanna talk about today. How you can understand yourself better and have the kind of, well, let me ask you, is anyone in here using their floatation take experiences for personal growth? Raise your hand, right? Okay, so that's a large percentage, maybe two, three or three quarters. Is that making a loud noise? Sorry about that. I feel like pacing is something we can do about that. Yeah, so what I wanna talk about is how to use that experience in a way that can be very, very, very helpful for personal growth. Okay, and what do I mean by personal growth? I mean, to have the kind of, first of all, to relieve symptoms of the kind that I was describing, like anxiety and depression, even incredibly intense experiences of that and furthermore, to have the kind of major personal growth experiences that we may have heard about, such as peak experiences or experiences of the deep self or even enlightenment type experiences. And what I've learned about those kind of experiences is that it comes down to, we can describe them in many ways, right? There's a lot of metaphors, okay? We can talk about becoming one with everything, the sense that there is no boundary between you and the world, right? You hear about that a lot. We can talk about the sort of shamanic vision of being torn apart in the underworld, dissolved, and then reconstituted in a new way. We can talk about sort of skanda theory from Buddhism where the self is made of these various components. And all of those have one thing in common as far as I'm concerned, and that is the idea that the experience of being a person is an experience that is an actual experience. You're having it right now, probably, that you're having the experience of being a self, being an ego, but that experience can be deconstructed and shown to be an experience only, not actually pointing to a real entity, okay? So the point is, and the reason that's important is if you can notice, even for a moment, that your experience of being a person is not imaginary, it's a real experience, but is pointing to something that doesn't fundamentally exist. Your problems in life begin to become much easier to handle. I would say that every problem you've got is, or at least most of them, are based on the fact that you believe the story you're telling yourself about who you are. You believe the story in your head that you're constructing about your identity, and that story is something we can, as I said, we can look at and see is a construction, and if you look at it and see it's a construction and you see that clearly, that's an enlightenment experience. Even a small version of that is a small enlightenment experience. A large version of it will change your life forever, but it's not something, in my opinion, after having investigated this in many, many, many different ways for decades and decades, it's not something very hard to do, and it's not something fundamentally trippy or mystical-schmystical. It is simply a process of pointing your attention at the right stuff, at the right time, and noticing what's going on, and if you notice what's going on in your own experience of yourself in the right way, you can't help but have the experience that it is a construction, that it's something that you're putting together as a story, okay? It just has to happen that way, and so it's not hard, and yet it's incredibly important for helping all kinds of problems, and furthermore, I feel like it's always surrounded by a lot of extraneous material that make it difficult, or make it seem impossible, or make it seem like this goal that's gonna happen in the distant future somehow, and so what I wanna talk about is how to, a very practical way to look at this, experience you're having right now, being yourself, and notice that it's a construction, okay? So that's where we're going. Everybody with me? Yes, okay. So I'd like to make a metaphoric illustration of what I'm talking about, okay? I'm not, we could use the idea that Paul just used quite a bit about everything's a dream, or this self is a dream, or something like that. That's an interesting metaphor. The one I'm gonna use is different. It's about pink threads, okay? Pink threads. So let's say I had a whole sheaf, a whole stack of threads, and I showed this to you from the stage, and you saw that it was pink, okay? You could see, I would say, what do I have here? You would say you have pink threads. But if I let you come a lot closer, and closer and closer, and in fact, then gave you a magnifying glass, and allowed you to examine the threads, you might see that, in fact, what I had in my hand was 50% red threads and 50% white threads, okay? Perfectly red threads, perfectly white threads. There's not a pink thread in the whole bunch. Where did the pink go? Where did the pink go? Was it never there? Is it an illusion? Is it some kind of spiritual mistake or a problem? No, it's just a matter of misperception. You weren't looking closely enough. And I've kind of come around after all that, after all these years to working almost exclusively, not exclusively, but almost exclusively in a scientific materialist metaphor. So talking about stuff that we can all agree about, at least in terms of its existence and its materiality, not that I think the other types of information, the other types of belief are untrue or don't exist, but it just works better for me to talk about it in a nice scientific, psychological way, because it just seems clearer and easier. So that's the direction I've ended up taking after all these years, and that's what I wanna talk about today. How you can understand yourself better and have the kind of, well, let me ask you, is anyone in here using their flotation take experiences for personal growth? Raise your hand. Right? Okay, so that's a large percentage, maybe two, three, or three quarters. Not making a loud noise. Sorry about that. I feel like pacing, and of course something we can do about that. Yeah, so what I wanna talk about is how to use that experience in a way that can be very, very, very helpful for personal growth. Okay, and what do I mean by personal growth? I mean to have the kind of, first of all, to relieve symptoms of the kind that I was describing, like anxiety and depression, even incredibly, incredibly intense experiences of that, and furthermore, to have the kind of major personal growth experiences that we may have heard about, such as peak experiences, or experiences of the deep self, or even enlightenment type experiences. And what I've learned about those kinds of experiences is that it comes down to, we can describe them in many ways, right? There's a lot of metaphors, okay? We can talk about becoming one with everything, the sense that there's no boundary between you and the world, right? You hear about that a lot. We can talk about the sort of shamanic vision of being torn apart in the underworld, dissolved, and then reconstituted in a new way. We can talk about sort of skanda theory from Buddhism where the self is made of these various components. And all of those have one thing in common as far as I'm concerned, and that is the idea that the experience of being a person, it's not there. I don't want to get into the ontology of it, but it's not a self anymore. It's some components of experience. So that's the metaphor. And if you just remember that, what happened to the pink? Where's the pink? That's all I'm talking about. It's not magic at all. It's just a matter of looking closely at an actual sensory experience. Okay. So I keep using the word self, but let's use another term, which is ego. Why do we have an ego in the first place? I think most spiritual traditions will tell you it's a bad thing. You shouldn't have one. You should try to suppress it, get rid of it, deny it, tame it, make it nice, whatever. But I tend to come these days from an evolutionary standpoint, and by that I mean like Darwinian biological evolution. So why do we have an ego? Why do human animals, why did they evolve to contain a psychological illusion called an ego? Anyone care to talk to that question? Helps us navigate, let's say physical reality. Yeah, sure does. Interesting, it's kind of metaphoric. See what you're getting at, yeah? Yeah, so you guys have the idea. The human animal needs to coordinate its actions. It has a lot of concepts. It has a lot of different parts of its brain that are competing to tell it what to do. And there needs to be a unifying agent so that you don't walk in two directions at once or you know, both grab a sandwich and throw it away at the same time. And in fact, there's people with unfortunate neurological conditions who do stuff like this, like their own hand is trying to choke them. So the ego is there to help unify your behavior, to help put together all the various parts of what's going on with you into a coherent narrative so that you can have coherent behavior. And it turns out, guess what, to be really important and really useful. What do we call people who do not have functional egos? Crazy, yes, it's psychotic. If you can't form a functional ego, that is called being psychotic because you can't make a coherent external narrative to do, to make behavior that makes sense, okay? So if we destroy, negate, deny, somehow get rid of our ego, it's probably not such a good thing, right? You don't want to, we're not trying to make the pink go away, right? So to speak, we can't anyway, but that whole move of trying to get rid of that, I think is actually not only not beneficial, but harmful. And instead, the idea is to simply see it for what it is. Okay, if you can see that the pink is made of red and white, there you go. That's really all it takes. And the deeper that realization is, the more profound the awakening is, the more profound the psychological health will be. Okay, so it's just a matter of getting in there further and further and clearer, more clearly and more clearly, and seeing that for what it is. So to me, this is tremendously exciting. Having been in a lot of traditions that want me to do a lot of very difficult stuff to have some magical realization, it turns out it's not that hard and it's not that weird. It's just about seeing certain parts of your experience in a very clear way. Bingo. Okay. So, where did egos come from? Do any animals have egos? Turns out they do. Anyone heard of the mark test? I don't know what a mark test is. It's funny, it's a funny test. It's cute. They will, for example, while let's say a chimp is asleep, they'll put an X on its nose in white paint or chalk or something. And then when it wakes up, they'll show it a mirror. The mirror's already been there, the chimp knows about the mirror. And the chimp will walk up to the mirror and see that it's got a white X on its face. How does the chimp react? Does it think there's a funny monkey in that mirror with a white X on its face? Touches its own face. Okay, that's interesting. That's really interesting. Touches its own face.  If you show a lower monkey that same test, it thinks there's a funny monkey in the mirror with a thing on its face. It has a totally different reaction.  But around 18 months old, all of a sudden they go, oh, wait a minute, there's something on my face. Okay, is it totally, something grew in them, the idea of me. Okay, there's this thing that I would call the idea of me. And you need to have a certain amount of brain power to have the idea of me. So little children can't demonstrate that yet. Their brain is not developed enough. And there's some controversy about the mark test means and which animals pass it or whatever, but it seems pretty clear that children are having a non-egoic oceanic type experience and that at a certain point they begin to develop an ego as their brain develops. And the mark test tracks that perfectly. And then very soon after that, they'll start using the language of I, me, mine quite a bit. As that idea of me gains strength. And it's funny what other animals pass that, although it's hard because if they're not chimps, it's difficult to see what their reaction is. For example, elephants seem to pass it, but are they touching their own face with their trunk? It's weird. There are those who say dolphins pass it, but you've got a mirror in its tank, how are they gonna touch their face? But people work really hard to figure this stuff out and it does seem that the more brain power you've got, the clear it is that you have an idea of me. And as you go into animals with smaller and smaller brain power, they don't have that at all. So this ego that we have did not appear out of nowhere. It came from, it evolved. It evolved just like everything else. And that's what's so interesting about it to me. It has a history and evolution. It has a background.  The egoic function in your brain is doing its function that it evolved for. It's not something you wanna cut out.  It's not something you wanna destroy. It's doing its job. And the freedom that we can have psychologically and the growth and the huge experiences and the depth and even I would use the term enlightenment comes from just seeing what its job is really clearly. It's a very different model of freedom. So how do you know you got one? Right now, how do you know you're having the experience of being a self? This is an important question, because this is how we're going to learn to take this thing apart. This is a whole talk about deconstructing this thing, seeing the construction. So how do you know you got one to begin with? Anybody wanna venture a guess? And I'm talking experientially. Right now in your own experience, how do you know you have an ego? Do you have one? People seem to be nodding their head. Yep, I have one. Okay, how do you know? Nobody? Okay. I would say that you know it because you're having certain kinds of experiences. One kind of experience is that you're having self-referential mental experiences, i.e. the idea of me. You're thinking thoughts about yourself. They're self-referential. And that's a special category of thought. You might be thinking, sometimes you're thinking about ideas out there, you're thinking about buildings, you're thinking about cars, you're thinking about other people, but sometimes you're thinking about this thing. And that's the idea of me. So that's one part of it. Another part of it is emotions. Right, you're having emotions and most of those seem to be yours. Something about you and about your experience and they're pretty important to how you feel about your life and your day and what you're doing. And then there's some other stuff such as certain just normal body sensations like the feeling of breathing and things like that. Again, self-referential body sensations. Okay, and that's it. That's it. Anybody think there's anything more to add to that? I'm open. I think that's it. Okay, interpersonal stuff, right? Super important. Half of who you are is other people, but that's still an idea of me and another person, okay? Or a physical interaction, but it's me plus. So memory, that's an idea. Again, that's self-referential. Like autobiographical memory is a huge part of the human ego. This is one of the things that it appears that animals have very little of. A dog's now lasts about three seconds, but a human's now can last a very, very long time and we can remember stuff from 60, 70 years ago, right? So that memory is very important, but that's a thought. So again, that's self-referential thinking. So what I'm saying is the ego or your experience right now of being a person is made of some pretty basic stuff, pretty direct, pretty simple stuff that you can touch with awareness, with attention right now, okay? It's not, again, it's not magic, it's not an esoteric thing, it's a simple experience. So picture the house you grew up in in your mind's eye right now. Everybody able to do that? At least one of those houses? Okay, that's part of the experience of being a self. Think of something you said to your relationship partner today, right? Some sentence, that's another part of the experience of being a self. Feel, remember the feeling of an emotion you had today. I'm on your having right now, if you're having one right now. That's part of the experience of being a self, okay? That's it, that's it. There's nothing else. And the idea is that these, what I'm calling red and white threads that make up the pink, are these sensory experiences that I'm pointing to, okay? So once you start seeing these sensory experiences separately in the way I'm describing, like visual memory, visual imagery, verbal mental type activity, emotions, it starts to pull apart that experience, starts to pull apart the pink and you're able to see the red and the white, okay? So let's talk about, let's start with what came first in evolution. So emotions. We don't necessarily know that animals have emotions but it sure seems like they do and they have the brain structures or the same brain structures we do for them and stuff like that. They don't report having any emotions but in every other way they seem to have them. So what's an emotion and why do you have one? You ever wonder why they exist? Your whole day is made up of emotions, right? Wanting to do this, not wanting to do that, feeling happy about this, feeling worried about that, feeling sad. What is that? What's it for? Why did it evolve? Defense mechanism, some of it. Coping mechanism, that's what I would say is the closest. All of those are included. Defense mechanism, coping mechanism but more fundamentally it's a guidance system. It's to motivate and direct behavior. Simple emotion, fear, right? What's fear for?  My behavior is now motivated and directed. That's a simple example. But all of the emotions fall into that category. It's going to show you what to do next and give you the motivation to do it.  So embarrassment arises, guess what? They've done tests. If someone knocks over all the cans of soup in a store and they pick it up, they pick up all the cans of soup, they put it back but they don't seem embarrassed about it. The other people in the store don't like them. They report not liking that person even though the person sat there and put everything back. However, if the person looks embarrassed and doesn't put any of the cans back, everyone still likes them. Why is that? Because we're social creatures and these social emotions we have are there for a reason. They do something and one of the things they do is let everyone know that you know that you transgressed and you did something wrong. It's demonstrating that and so people then forgive you for it and if you don't demonstrate that, you're in trouble. It doesn't matter what you do to make it up. So again, social emotions and even personal emotions like fear or anger or something, they're there for a reason. And again, to me, this is really liberating. I now don't have to, it's not that there's bad emotions and good emotions. It's not that there's some kind of poisonous emotions and there's emotions that are wonderful for the world. I mean, yes, it's nice if we're nice to each other. I'm not saying that. But it's really important to see that every emotion that's arising in you has a purpose just like your liver. It has a purpose just like your brain. It evolved for a reason. It's not just something to judge and deny. It's there for a reason. So how do you know you're having an emotion? Feel it where? In your body. Okay, you guys have had a lot of experience sitting there feeling emotions. Most Americans, if you ask them how they're feeling, they'll say, you know, how are you feeling? And the person will say, I'm angry because, right, there will be a whole list of reasons why they're angry. They're angry because, because, because, because, because. And none of that is like, how am I feeling? Well, I'm feeling some heat in my face and I'm feeling some constriction in my brow and my throat is tightening and I'm feeling this upwelling of energy and my pissorballing, you know, the embodied sense of anger, right? It's very different than, reason, reason, reason, reason, reason. There's a, especially because we've had so many years of cognitive psychology, which I really like by the way, but there's this idea that emotions are really mental events and it's true that the brain triggers emotions. It certainly has to come through the brain's appraisal, but the way you know you're having one is an experience in your body. So like modified James Lang theory to get technical. It's a body experience, okay? So one of the easiest, deepest, most powerful ways to cope with the emotions you're having is to let go of all the mental talk about it, just feel the embodied piece. You know, wow, I'm anxious. I have some tension in my belly, my breathing's a little fast, like that, right? Like mindfulness meditation, how you attract that experience in your body. As I said, emotions are present in most mammals. Mice seem to have emotions, rats, ocelots, otters, what do we have in Portland? Deer, bears, all these creatures have emotions. So do you think they're having a mental event? You know, not much of one probably. I mean, they might, but the structures for higher level mental events do not appear to be there, but the structure for a solid emotion is. And so that embodied experience of feeling the motivation in your body, feeling the readiness for action and the desire to take action is a very noticeable thing. So where I want to give you a pointer as to how to begin deconstructing the self, check out your emotions. And in order to check out your emotions clearly, you do not deny them, you do not make any of them bad, you do not make any of them wrong, you do not try to get rid of them or suppress them or sell them or ship them to China. You feel them in your body. There it is, wow. Okay, I'm having this experience, it's arising. Guess what? That experience was programmed in evolution. It's a natural response. It's in my body, there it is, nothing else. Okay, it doesn't mean you're a good person or a bad person. It doesn't because the whole idea of the self is an idea of a person. The minute you extract one of these elements from that idea, it loses that potential, it loses that power of meaning something about, quote, you. Instead, it's a physical reaction that you can track. And guess what? Emotions change constantly, constantly. They're moving things in your body. So if you want to begin to notice the experience you're having as a self in order to let that experience deconstruct, check out the experience of emotions in your body. It's very powerful. And what's great is you don't have to have a full experience of the self falling apart or noticing the construction of the self, noticing the ego's pink-like nature in order for that emotional meditation, that emotional contact to really be a big deal. Just that is tremendously powerful, tremendously helpful. If you've ever done mindfulness meditation, there's a lot of it where you work with feeling emotions in the body. And it will help you with everything throughout your day because emotions tend to lose their painful negative quality when you see them and experience them that way. What's really happening? You're just letting go of the idea of an emotion and what it means and instead just feeling it. Again, it's not complicated. You're just letting go of your ideas about it and feeling the physical manifestation. And so that's, you know, in my own journey that I was describing, working with anxiety in that way. Feeling it, feeling it, feeling it, feeling it, not thinking about it, not perseverating about it, but just checking out, wow, that's kind of an unpleasant feeling in my belly. Took a while, but that ended up completely dissolving that anxiety attack reaction. Absolutely. Okay. So I need to hold this closer to our mouth. Okay, sorry about that. So yeah, just that little bit of deconstruction is hugely powerful. And of course, in the reduced sensory state in a flotation tank, I imagine it's much easier to contact because you don't have the distractions of the external world as present. Okay, so that's emotions. What about thinking? This is where the real problem begins. We're probably the only animal that has higher cognitive function. We don't know that in any, you know, final way, but we can examine animal brains and they don't have the parts that it appears it would take to have those kind of thoughts. So how do we, so we have this advanced cognitive function. What do we use it for? Why is it there? Why did evolution favor monkeys that had that? Why can we think? Anybody? Great, so there was a feedback loop with technology and thinking, right? And that's true, or it's probably true, you know. Proto-humans that could make better tools, got better food and survived longer and it's a feedback loop and they got smarter. So part of it is to make stuff. But what's involved in making something? The ability to picture what it's gonna be, right? It's not just the fact, you're not just making it like in a rote fashion, you have to imagine what it's gonna be. And that leads us to the sort of more fundamental part about thinking which is planning, right? Our higher cognitive functions are there so we can predict and plan. You want to get something done, you have to imagine what it's gonna do in the future.  That's what that's there for. It appears. And yet, there's some interesting things about that. It's a very, very useful feature. Boy, time goes fast. I often meet people who think that thinking is bad because it can make you crazy. But it's obviously incredibly important. Just like an ego, you wouldn't wanna be unable to think. Just like you wouldn't wanna not have an ego. So being able to think is really important. I'm gonna go really fast now because I've only got a few minutes. But the trouble is that with human beings we still use our emotional system to evaluate the choices we're predicting. So are we gonna go north to get fish? Are we gonna go south to get deer? You think about all the rational differences between those two things, but the final decision is always mediated by an emotion. One feels right, one feels better than the other. So you've got an actual physical response to thinking. You've got an emotional response. And that's fine too, that works great except the whole idea of being able to imagine stuff has an unintended consequence, which is we can imagine stuff that doesn't exist. That's great because it allows us to build new things, make new technology, build a more beautiful world in some way. But it's also extremely debilitating because you can imagine a problem and then have a totally imaginary problem that's never gonna happen and then sit there and have a real emotional response about it, an actual physical response that's real. So you're suffering for something that's imaginary and never gonna happen. So be that as it may. And again, I'm going to just move quickly here. You want to notice thinking and I would suggest you divide it into two parts and I was gonna go into these two parts, but we don't have time. But one of them is the visual part of thinking. So the pictures and the other one is the verbal part of thinking. So the words in your head. And if you just notice the difference between those two things, that's another huge element of deconstruction. The pictures versus the words, the stuff that you're hearing versus the images. You'll have images of your body, you'll have images of the world, you'll have images from memory, but those are separate from the talk. And if you separate images from talk, thinking starts to deconstruct. Okay, again, it's still there, but you're experiencing it in a new way. And when thinking starts to deconstruct, you can then also separate it from emotion, as I was describing.  You can look at them as a separate experiences. They're not separate, it's pink, right? But you can see that they're separate threads of red and white and a third color that we didn't include in the metaphor. So once that happens, again, especially when you notice the difference between feeling and thinking really clearly and you track it, track it, track it and notice how each thought that arises triggers an emotional, evaluative response. Again, that sense of self begins to break up, begins to loosen, begins to become soft and open. And eventually, if you keep tracking this very, very deeply in as simple way as I'm describing, just noticing your feelings versus your thoughts, the difference between emotional-type feelings and regular physical-type feelings. So the difference between a twinge in your foot and an emotional-type feeling, that's something you can separate. And the difference between a visual-type thought and a verbal-type thought, and you track that very closely in a really quiet, concentrated environment like meditation or a flotation tank, you'll begin to notice that moment by moment those elements, those threads, the visual thinking, the verbal thinking, the emotional-type body sensations, the other-type body sensations are coming together. Even it feels like there's a subjective feeling of it coming together. And that is what? That is you, okay? That's the sense of self. That's not the organic physical animal person sitting there, but that's the idea in yourself of you. It's made of those components. And once you see that happening, which is very simple, it's not hard, once you sit there and you actually notice that happening, it instantly begins to change your life. Because you've been believing that's pink forever. And now you notice it's a construction.  Now, all the concerns of that being, all the problems of that being, all the suffering of that being, it's not that they're not real, but it's experienced very differently. Very, very differently. And that, I would say, is what people are referring to as enlightenment, or at least a early version of enlightenment. Deeper experiences of the same kind of deconstruction are deeper forms of enlightenment. And that is the freedom that's available to you very simply, very directly, right now, if you want it. So thank you. Thank you.


This is the story of CRAF, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, founded on an agreement between U.S. Airlines and the U.S. government, by which certain airlift resources are committed for use by the military airlift command in a national emergency. More than 300 aircraft and thousands of civilian personnel are part of this program. In an emergency, these resources will be combined with those of active duty Air Force, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard. Together, they comprise the greatest total airlift force available in the world today. During a national emergency, we'll be dependent upon all components of our national transportation system, railroads, trucks, and ships as well as aircraft. However, airlift does serve a need in a national emergency. It is the spearhead of our planning to move the initial forces, which are critical during early phases of conflict, to prevent escalation into an all-out war. The use of U.S. civil airline resources is not unique to this day and time. Prior to and during World War II, extensive use was made of U.S. airline capabilities. Expert navigators of Pan-American Airways provided training to U.S. Army Air Corps aviators. But an arrangement was needed to permit the military to plan for optimum use of the airlines in an emergency. The need for such a relationship was again highlighted during the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949. During this international crisis, the great city was virtually cut off from food and supplies. Most of the available U.S. military transport aircraft were pressed into direct use of support of the city. More than a quarter million cargo flights were required to keep Berlin alive. The Department of Defense found it necessary to fall back on the civil airlines to pick up the slack by providing airlift support to other areas of the world. The crisis pointed up the fact that military airlift alone could not provide all transportation requirements in a major conflict. One year later, the Korean War again strained our ability to rapidly respond to a crisis. The brunt of the North Korean attack had to be carried by a relatively small number of United Nations troops. These troops, facing a far larger force, were placed in great jeopardy and had to yield large areas of South Korea to the aggressor. If the U.S. had been able to rapidly reinforce the U.N. troops at the beginning, the invasion could have been installed quickly, thus forcing an early settlement and saving thousands of lives. It was apparent at that time that airlift would be a vital trump card in future military engagements. In 1951, the President issued an order which charged the executive branch of the government with planning for the use of civil air carrier resources to meet emergency defense needs. The financial benefit was obvious. It provided a way to utilize our country's total national resources and save the taxpayer from duplicating the same capability in the military. This was accomplished by making available the vast resources of the commercial airlines in the event of national emergency, a very low-cost method of achieving the objective. In 1952, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet was organized in response to the executive order. It was composed of the airlift and support capability of the United States civil airlines, its purpose to establish a partnership with the industry. To apply that capability in the most efficient manner, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet of today is composed of four segments, international long range, international short range, domestic, and Alaskan. Aircraft of the Alaskan Fleet provide airlift in support of the Alaskan Air Command and the radar sites of the Dew Line, the distant early warning line of the Aerospace Defense Command. The domestic fleet includes short and medium-range cargo aircraft, most of them operating during peacetime for the Air Force and the Navy to support logistics bases in the continental United States. The international short-range fleet is composed of medium-range passenger aircraft which can be converted to cargo and cargo aircraft which augment theater airlift forces. The international long-range fleet is made up of aircraft capable of trans-ocean operations. This fleet will augment military aircraft when an emergency arises. This arrangement provides flexibility to the total airlift force by permitting the use of all or just a part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet depending upon the situation. Personnel problems would be minimized because the air carriers would continue to manage their aircraft with their own personnel and resources. The aircraft missions, however, would be directed by the Military Airlift Command. Participation is encouraged in the CRAF program by awarding Department of Defense peacetime airlift contracts to U.S. Certificated Airlines to operate aircraft suitable for military requirements. The contracts contain stipulations which encourage airlines to modernize their fleets to participate in the program. Looking back, there is ample evidence of private industry's contribution to national defense in peace as well as war. The role played by this nation's Civil Reserve Air Fleet is perhaps the most consistent example of that contribution. For example, the civilian airlines were employed to move Cuban citizens seeking refuge from the communist regime, from Cuba to Homestead Air Force Base near Miami. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, U.S. civilian personnel were evacuated by military aircraft from Arab countries to secure staging areas in Spain. After a short rest period, they were then transferred to aircraft of the civilian fleet and returned to safety in the United States. During the Vietnamese War, CRAF aircraft and crews airlifted personnel and equipment directly into Vietnam from all parts of the United States, in this long and costly conflict so familiar to all of us. The members of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet worked alongside their military counterparts to provide a continuous flow of support over a 10,000-mile pipeline. In fact, during the twin crises of the 1967 Tet Offensive of the Viet Cong and the subsequent seizure of the Pueblo by the North Koreans, airline volunteers helped provide the additional airlift necessary to counterbalance the potential disastrous effects of these actions. In Cambodia, during the siege of Phnom Penh, resupply was carried out by aircraft from Flying Tiger, Trans-International, Seaboard World, Airlift International, and World Airways. Some of these received combat damage. That same year, humanitarian rescue missions were flown by both military and civilian aircraft from Vietnam. This airlift team worked together in the evacuation of Vietnamese orphans, relocating them to new homes and foster parents in America. Later, with the impending downfall of Saigon, this same team completed the evacuation of thousands of Vietnamese refugee families in imminent danger from the advancing North Vietnamese. While these are only a few examples of CRAF's 25-year partnership between the Department of Defense and the airline industries, the relationship continues and flourishes. The C-5 and wide-bodied airliners represent the ultimate in our current state-of-the-art. The future of CRAF, however, lies in the development of a new generation of more efficient cargo and passenger aircraft designed to conserve energy and preserve the clean environment. Working together, the Air Force and the civil air industry will achieve this goal. And at a cost, this country can afford.