Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm so excited that you're here because I feel like the modern world is lacking self-discipline, self-knowledge, and they're lacking connection to their authentic selves as human beings. And I've been there in my life where I've lacked these things as well, and it's a constant process. of learning, staying accountable and disciplined to these teachings that you have.
So I'm very excited that you're here. And I wanna make this a very special long format episode in the interview. And I wanna ask you first about the five hindrances that you've talked about online before.
Chapter 2: What are the five mental hindrances that block self-mastery?
These hindrances that hold people back from mastering themselves and their inner world. I'm curious if you can talk about what those five are first.
So when it comes to developing something about yourself, it doesn't matter what it is. If it is just following up in becoming great in any type of sport, or even if you want to build up like a small community or something for yourself, it's about if you want to go somewhere, if you have a goal and want to go somewhere along this way,
you will meet different type of hindrances that we call that will sometimes make it difficult for you to, let's say, reach the goal where you would like to go and to very easily explain it. One way, for example, is if you are too easily being caught by positive emotions. Which type of positive emotions?
All types that is raising something inside of you that you are relating to that feels really good now. But it takes you out of your ordinary. So that means you have a goal on the mind what you want to achieve. You start walking, you start doing your jobs and your obligations, but along this way you are meeting a distraction, which is giving you a lot of positive emotions.
Because you are in that average state of the mind, that overall, let's say, normal state of the mind, now if it takes you out of the average, of being positive, it's very easy for us that we get attached to these type of feelings.
So what it ultimately means, you're going to lose track of your goal because you would prefer right now to spend more time with all of these things that give you positive emotions.
Can you give an example of one of these positive emotions or a situation that someone might have?
Positive emotions, for example, let's take a very nice one, fame. Yes, you have a goal in the mind, what you want to achieve, but along this way you feel there is that word of fame. And so what does it mean? It means you are getting the views, you are getting the sight of different people, and now you are encountering something that you haven't planned about it before.
But now that you meet it, and now that you feel it,
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Chapter 3: How does intention affect goal sustainability?
Either you see something that you start to judge, you smell something that you start to judge, you taste something, you hear something, or you feel something. So it's the five senses actually that are building the bridge between what we regard as the outside impacts and what you internally are then afterwards reacting to. And this is not to say that sensory desire is good or bad.
It's really important to understand I'm not talking about good or bad. I'm talking about if you have a specific desire, Goal on your mind. There are things that can happen to you which will be useful to have, and there are other things that are going to hinder you along this way. Hindrances, yeah. Hindrances. And so right now it's not about good or bad, it's about a hindrance.
If you have a goal, just take care that these things are existing, the positive emotions, Just like the negative emotions. Negative emotions meaning you have a goal, you are already preparing yourself to go there. But now things are becoming difficult. Your daily schedule is not going according to plan how you wrote it down in your schedule. Things are coming in that you didn't expect.
Because you didn't expect it and maybe are not prepared for it, it can easily happen that you are getting stressed out by so many different impacts. So that means there are now events coming along this way. that are giving you, that are raising negative emotions inside of you. And so what does it also mean?
It means that the chances at these type of mental states, it's easy right now to find an argument and give up and stop the journey. And this is exactly, it's the five hindrances of the mind. What I'm talking about is mental states. Beware of your mental state. Now sometimes in different traditions, you hear it already, we have the body and the mind.
Sometimes you also have traditions where we talk about the body, your thoughts and your emotions. So now you suddenly have three areas. You can make as many areas as you would like because these are just concepts. They are there to help us humans Just get into the right direction that you can work with.
And now the reason why very often we are only in our tradition say there's the body and the mind and are not separating anymore into the feelings is simply because of this. feeling and mindset mental state and the way how you feel i think they are very very close related to each other and what you can try to just observe about yourself is
The feeling, no matter what it is, very, very often is just the postponed, let's say, the postponed reaction of what way before that was already implemented inside or cultivated inside the mind. Can you give an example of that? Yes. You go to any type of meeting where you have persons that you maybe meet for the first time. Just choose any of them.
before you talk to this person, sit somewhere in the corner, always observe the person and pay attention to everything that you can criticize. So that means consciously Educate the mind to always find the mistakes in that person. Look how he dresses. Look how he's walking. Look how he's talking. Look how he's behaving.
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Chapter 4: What is the four-step RAIN method for overcoming mental hindrances?
It's interesting because when I meet people, like for today, when you were coming here, I just said to myself, I'm excited to connect with you. I'm excited to learn. I'm excited to... learn about your lifestyle and your lessons. And that excitement, when you walked in, I was excited. And I enforced that belief of thinking, that prejudgment of excitement to learn.
So hopefully you felt that excitement, right? As opposed to, who is this guy, you know, this Shaolin master, and what does he know? And, you know, I didn't come in with that belief system. Is that correct? Yes, thank you very much. So that's a good example. I love this feeling and mindset conversation. Which influences the other?
Is it the thinking that influences the feelings or the feelings which reinforce and influence the thinking?
I'm sure that this could definitely lead to any type of scientific discussion. What I'm saying is the easiest way to test for yourself without trying out too much, reading too much, is just like this. Next time you go into this situation or you have a feeling coming up inside of you, no matter which one it is, just ask yourself where is the root of that feeling right now.
Could it be that the way how you feel right now in regards to that situation? What is your relation? What did you thought about this type of situation, let's say weeks before, months before, in the past? When was the last time you had such a type of situation?
Is it the first time you go into this situation and actually you just heard from your friends, from your parents, from your teacher, this type of situations exists and then you need to be careful of this and that. So where is that feeling rooted in? And this you can do with many, many things.
And what we call in our language or in what we're doing nowadays, this idea of why is it called self-mastering? Because it is something you need to discover about yourself. It is not something other people are going to discover about you. It is you take the time and watch yourself. This is the path to go.
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Chapter 5: Why is gratitude essential for a fulfilling life?
Sometimes we call it also turn the view inwards. Because you see there's this nice picture. It's always something goes wrong. And then it's always easy to say yes because of you, you and you. It's always easy that one. The hard part in this world is this one. is the hard part and it is the one that opens the greatest doors.
I'm curious, what have you been looking inward at yourself over the last few months that you've been able to see in a different perspective that is opening up for you personally? whether as a master teacher, or as a human being, or a friend, or what are you seeing and learning about yourself at this season of life?
It's not just in the last months, let's say. I do think that it is a progress. The general idea is that from time to time it absolutely makes sense to take that conscious decision, okay, I have a family, I have friends, I need to take care of them, I need to take care also of my job.
So that means you're investing a lot of your lifetime trying to support, trying to build up, trying to establish something, let's say, outside of you. At the same time, what we then have is the teaching of yin and yang. Everybody knows that symbol. What does it mean? Inside and outside, up and down, black and white, hot and cold, success and failure, outside and inside belong together.
And so besides the time that you spend outwardly oriented, I think it is normal and it's necessary I think there is no choice to decide from time to time for yourself that you take your personal breakout, your personal time out. You can take care, of course, but you also need to take care of yourself in the first place. So reason for that until I come back to the question.
You're responsible for your team. You're responsible for your employees. You're responsible for your family. You're responsible for your children. Responsibility. What is it essentially? Is it the way how you behave? Or is the behavior which comes out of a responsible feeling what we're talking about?
So that means how can you be responsible for something around you if inside of yourself, your body, in the world of your feelings, you don't know how does responsibility feel. So that means we're talking about it's a feeling. Just like you love the world. How can you love the world if inside of you, you do not carry the feeling of love?
Why is it important to respect your parents, to be thankful and grateful towards your parents? Because if the people that granted you this life right now, you are not even grateful for, to who else you want to be grateful in this world then?
Interesting.
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Chapter 6: How do you calibrate your vision for personal growth?
Number one is you need to have it. So this is the baseline. This is the main idea.
So if you want to express love to the outside world, you must have love within you. Yes. But if you have anger within you, it's going to be hard to express it to your friends, your family, or the world.
Yes, but that's way easier because anger is something... People are sure how this anger feels nowadays. With the other attributes they are not so easy, because anger from its quality, it's a quality that naturally starts to separate things. Actions out of anger, thoughts out of anger, what is their nature? The nature is you are separating stuff.
You're protecting yourself, is that right?
Yes. Loving is not the way of separating. Loving, if you carry love inside, you always, let's say, understand you, me, in a way, we come from different mothers, we come from different areas, but there's still something that's connecting us. And so that means even if you have been mean to me, acting out of love or acting out of the feeling, no matter what, still we are connected. It's different.
And so this is what I regard as being really important to cultivate first of all before we, let's say, do too big stuff on the outside world. And this is the point where it comes back again to this personal retreat, to the time where you watch inside yourself. What do you have inside of yourself?
what is your yeah take off your clothes take off the jewelry take off the tattoos you have on the body look into the mirror and then just see who is standing there if you take off everything that let's say artificially came on top of your being. Take everything away and then what is it that you see in the mirror? Do you see there is the loving heart inside?
There is the strength or the willpower inside this body. There is the discipline inside this body. There is a loyal person standing. There is pride inside of this. And these are all things, how do I put my pride here on the table? How do I put my discipline here on the table? This is the area now where we talk about these are things, they are just don't belong to the world of forms.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 7: What role does self-awareness play in developing discipline?
And the same is like ill will. Ill will is a state of the mind. It doesn't matter if it's towards yourself, towards another person, towards an animal, towards your colleagues. It's always the same ill will. It is something inside of you, which if you don't pay attention to, is going to be a hindrance along your way of walking. How do we...
heal or integrate ill will so that it's no longer inside of us? How do we re-evaluate it, mend it, heal it, go beyond it?
Go beyond it I think is the more proper expression because This is now really playing with the words, but it's still important because we don't try to get rid of all of these things. You don't want to get rid of the body that it's never going to be inside of your body anymore. You don't want to get rid of your jealousy when it comes up. You don't want to get rid of the joy that you feel.
You don't want to get rid of your feelings. You want to have a very great variety of different feelings that you can tap into. The only thing which makes the difference is if you are tapping into this world of feelings consciously or if that world of feelings is just unconsciously imploding inside of you. This makes the difference. And so to overcome it, Means to realize it is there. Yeah.
But now, like sometimes, what to do? You need to find something, a state of your, the state of level on which you are coordinating. Which means you have to stand above you. Learn to get into a perspective where you are standing above you, which means this is not about you at the moment. This is not about you. Stand above it.
It is about you see, okay, you see that person at the moment has an issue. How would you, as somebody watching at you, help him? How would you coach, guide, teach? How would you coach yourself, guide yourself to the better version? And this is what it only means to sometimes de-identify yourself with this one. If you are caught inside here, I think it becomes difficult.
There's some neuroscience that talks about that. We're really good at being a negative or a critical coach to ourselves and putting ourselves down in those situations as opposed to stepping aside and coaching from a different perspective to ourselves. And there's neuroscience that backs the importance of that as a tool to go beyond it as well. So I think it's really important.
How often do you feel... These emotions or feelings of ill will, anger, jealousy, frustration, how often do you feel them and how do you teach or coach yourself beyond them?
If I want to, I can tap inside of it right away and my whole day is filled with it. No matter where I watch around on the street, there's no problem at all for me to generate the feeling that ill will starts to dominate.
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Chapter 8: How can we use breathing techniques to manage emotions?
Is it someone with a lot of money that triggers you? What's the root trigger?
Actually, this is now the question where, for example... I say it's so super helpful if you already have, let's say, some type of concept, some type of teachings. They tell you already where it comes from, very simply. And this ill will, to a hundred percent, in all its different variation that it comes in this world, mainly from three reasons. Oh, what are these? Either from greed. Mm-hmm.
Greed of not getting more than you want. Hate or jealousy of not getting what you want. And sometimes it's called, let's say, ignorance or not knowing. Greed, hate, ignorance. And especially ill will easily falls into one of these categories or sometimes a combination of these things. So ill will can be Why does he get it? I deserve it. Why you deserve it?
Because you think about yourself, you are the more hardworking person in this room. So what is that combination? In that combination it is like there's unfairness from your subjective view, unfairness, jealousy. no respect towards yourself, so which then also can maybe mean a low level of self-esteem, self-confidence, a lack of it. So it's very often like a variety of these attributes, I think.
But ultimately broken down, I think that's it. Greed, hate, not knowing.
When does ill will enter your emotions, for you personally? Like what is it that you see where you feel it for a moment? Obviously, it sounds like you know how to catch it and go beyond it pretty quickly. But when it happens to you, what do you struggle with?
I would say then when it is like a very subjective, I have to say, because this is the reason why I always catch myself back and why then afterwards it's not so bad anymore. But subjective unfairness.
Unfairness in the fairness in the world, or is it some like a jealousy unfairness? Like, oh, they have something. No.
It's not about they have something. It's about they project something upon you, not knowing the full truth.
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