Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. Again, I say this, Chris, because I have been doing this for a long time. And I think people are so used to hearing me say that they're probably like, when's he ever going to change that up? But at any rate, we have Chris Von Hassett joining us. And here's his new book. If you can see it, if you can't, it's entering the mind. This is a waterside production book. It's great. It's for those of you who are out there that are interested in deepening your practice of meditation, but also Chris is going to give us some opportunities to explore how the mind works is to through the questions I'm going to ask Chris, you're joining us from Joshua Tree, California today. Gotta be 100 degrees already. Yeah, luckily,

Chris von Hassett
luckily, we're in Pioneertown, which is about 4500 500 feet. So, we're in the 90s. Not in the hundreds.

Greg Voisen
Oh, well, that's, that's good. You're at an elevation. So yes, normally, when you get out into the deserts of California near Palm Springs, this is the time of year that it can get very toasty as they say, yeah, so Chris, I'm gonna let my listeners know a bit about you. Chris Von has a writer editor, and the publisher of riot material magazine, of which that website for those of you who are interested, is very easy to get though. Just go to riot material.com. There, you'll learn about the magazine, the art books, film records, Riot sounds, cinema, he's got it all. And he's been publishing that for quite some time. He's also a decade's long practitioner of the chin. I hope I pronounced that right. XO chin. It's those from Z. You know, it's interesting, because I just listened to six different pronunciations on Google. And they're not all the same.

Chris Von Hassett
Well, I'm sure even I've perverted it somehow over the years. So yeah, you know, go to the Tibetan masters to find the real pronouncing

Greg Voisen
I guess so. And so don't Qin Jo. It's actually you don't even pronounce the D. Yet again. So, Jin, Xiao Chen, Xiao Chen chin, that you just take the day off and go Zog ch en, there you go. And then you'll get it a radical, if not revolutionary wisdom, practice which points the practitioner directly toward the recognition of their own mind. But to awaken. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. His first book, the boundary stone is a narrative poem, set in embracing effects of the apocalypse.

Chris Von Hassett
And bring after of an apocalypse

Greg Voisen
And bring after. Gotta get that one, right. Well, this one's not so dark. That's for certain This one's really light. And it's good. Chris has spent much of his life and contemplative retreat. And in the later years in the high desert, which we just talked about a Mojave. And He currently lives between two locations with their two dogs, Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. Well, it is good that you act as actually are practicing what you're preaching. And I think that's really important. So, if you would, please let the listeners know a little more about you. It's very uncommon that in the Western world, we find people that are this deep into this practice. And you're focused on this Tibetan practice which you've learned from a master. You do say though, sometimes people can pick up the books, and actually get it but not usually. And how this has really transformed you. What is it really done to Chris?

Chris Von Hassett
Well, Chris, growing up was, you know, he grew up in Los Angeles, in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And you know, LA was a was a fraught arena for bad behaviors. And, as a boy, you know, just watching and also feeling the energies as well, of that place. I was, I was always in a state of low-grade terror. Very shy as well. very observant, and, but questioning, I was questioning everything. And, of course, that was also the time where on the television as well, you're watching, you know, race, race wars across the United States and the Vietnam War, and then you know, free love and so it's very confusing, but beautiful in many ways. So, I was seeking to understand Not only this world, but my relationship to it right from day one, basically. And so, I was I was reading Black Elk, and, you know, going through all the Native American teachings, which are very similar to the Tibetan teachings. And they eventually led me into towards Buddhism and Buddhism, ultimately through the footnotes of these books that I was reading pointed me towards this obscure tradition called zoek. Chin. And once I started reading these texts on XO Chen, I knew that was it, this was, this was the truth, at least for me. And it just every angle, you approached from made sense, there was no false flags in any of it, there was no metaphors that rang true. So, I just sat with it and just started practicing and learning it and going to masters. And it took a long time to for me, because, of course, being very shy, and also having that low grade, kind of fear in me that that kind of royals, the mind, and it makes it a little more difficult to settle it down. But I did it, you know, so Chen has a beautiful practice that allows anybody who has any kind of issues with depression or fear or anxiety, even anger, so 10 cuts to the center of that and kind of vaporizes it. So that's what

Greg Voisen
did you What did you actually do as a vocation? During all this time, you see, you're, you're growing up in the midst of this turmoil, this time and age, and obviously, you landed, I would assume doing something. And I'm just curious as to what you were doing, because this practice, if you really get as deep into it, as you are now requires a lot more of your attention, your focus and your time. Yeah. So, were you doing that back then? Or were you practicing this kind of part time,

Chris Von Hassett
I was doing it as often as possible. So, I, I ultimately landed on becoming a literature professor, a teacher, a high school teacher, and Fairfax High School in Los Angeles for many years, and then a professor of literature in New York. But you know, this, this job is kind of great, because you know, you're dealing with all these kids who are bumping around all around you and you can really bring the practice into the classroom. And then you also have this one-hour free class that you're, it's yours to prepare for the next classes, or whatever. And so, I would meditate during that hour, I would meditate during lunch. And, you know, meditating was oh, 10 is unconscious zoning out, you're actually really present and you're observing the here and now within your own awareness, and you're actually really trying to negotiate your relationship to your own awareness. So it's, it makes it very doable to do any job and to practice those 10.

Greg Voisen
Well, it, it's really cool understanding what you did, because it now sets the tone for how you got into this. And I think that context is really important for the listener, they're like, okay, where did this guy come from? What did he do before? And I think that's great. Now, in the book, you write that there is a place beyond even simple meditation, a place where you become aware of your awareness, where you become your awareness, where you are immersed in it. How would you, and I hate to use the word advise, but let's just use it advise people to reach this heightened level of awareness during the meditation practice. Because you know, some of them, you know, we'll talk about chakras here a little bit later on, but the reality is, depending on your type, there's so many different types of meditation practices. Yes. So speak with the listeners about that? Well,

Chris Von Hassett
there are so many meditation practices, as you say, and most of them are pointing you toward emptiness. And there isn't there's this continual movement, of recognizing what is actual in the world that things are empty. You know, things aren't what we call them, you know, a hand is not a hand because when you actually go to look at it, you're looking at fingers, you're looking at fingernails, you're looking at skin, you'll never find the hand and the hand. Ultimately, if you analyze deep enough, you'll go right down to space. So this is what they mean by things are empty, they're empty of what we call them. They're not inherently what we say they are. So this is the emptiness that we're seeking to understand from a practitioner’s perspective. What Zhou Chan is, is teaching us to do is not only become a one to one with his emptiness and truly know it through actual insight, but at the same time, what is what is one to one with the emptiness is our awareness. Awareness is the source of if we had no awareness, we wouldn't even know the emptiness if we had no awareness. We wouldn't know anything. We would be dead. So The Zouk Chen says, the emptiness and awareness are singular, they're inseparable. And this is unusual for all other meditations, all meditations are pointing us only to emptiness. And they don't necessarily speak to the awareness being united with that. And so in. So now we have to see these things from when you're initially practicing, you're coming at it from two things, understanding the emptiness and understanding the awareness, eventually they will merge. But to understand the awareness, you got to look for the source. And this is the metaphor of the snake eating its own tail, where we're seeing what's in front of us. But what is it that seeing, you know, first, we think it's our body and our mind, and it's our eyes? And we don't really think too much about it, but we start trying to point ourselves into it, we point to the fabric of ourselves to figure it out. In reality, though, it's coming from a zero point it's coming from, you'll never find it. And this is the this is where you land when you ultimately settle into what's called the natural state. And then once you're there, you kind of rest in the state, and you just get to know it, like you try to get to know an old friend.

Greg Voisen
You know, it's, it would be interesting, I think, when you track many of these meditation practices back by lineage, what was the origination of kind of the lineage of this, because that might interest actually some of the listeners, because how you derive or how you get it this, I mean, I've had several Rinpoche is on our program. And when you talk about, I think, I told you and your wife a story about a meditation retreat I was at and they a Buddhist monk came, and he goes, Hey, I want to watch because I want to know how much time I have left, you know, the reality is the way they think about the present, is really so much different. And so it's so much different to the Western world, that it's just, it's like, we're on opposite ends of the world, right? Where is the lineage come from? How did it get where it is? And a kind of a brief overview of that, I think it would be good for the listeners.

Chris Von Hassett
Yeah. So the first bit might be a bit hard for your listeners to swallow is all of the XO Chen masters speak to this teaching, being timeless, ageless beyond Earth. In fact, they speak to it and being taught in 13 different solar systems around the universe. When you ultimately, when you're meditating, and you ultimately kind of begin to settle into this natural state, you get why they're saying this, because really, there is no time there is there's only space, and there's our awareness. And so our awareness is not bound by the confines of this earth nor time. So you can understand when you become an accomplished practitioner, that you could receive these teachings from higher level beings in different parts of the universe. That makes sense. In the historical lineage, as far as I'm understanding, it's coming through Buddha Shakyamuni, the original Buddha, and in the bond tradition, comes through another Buddha, I can't remember his name again. But they're, they're kind of similar figures. And this is where Zhou Chan has kind of introduced along with Buddhism at the multiple levels that it's being taught at. And Zhou chan at that point, and still today is considered the peak of Buddhism. It's the peak of Bonn. And you really have to kind of go through the whole tree of Buddhism to kind of rise up into being able to even receive these teachings, when Tibet was the high period of this teaching.

Greg Voisen
Well, you said in the book that it's kind of hard to find a master even to teach with and you did, and that's, that's excellent. And I, and I honor that, because this book, exposes something a lot of people are not exposed to, but it gives them a choice now, right, a different choice, a different path that they could go on. And I was very taken about the chapters and the sections in the book, about, you know, you speaking in the Eclipse and revelation, you speak about the Glice of fate, and that attacks the microbiome and then creates havoc with our body. I was reading that I was getting it very much. And then you mentioned that this high incidences of cancer as a result of these chemicals being put on crops, and then you go into talking about finding our higher selves or recognize the nature of our innate mind when the body itself is hemorrhaging from within. Meaning, you know, you're taking in and these substances of which are manmade, many of them, and are affecting our body. But there's all kinds of ways for us to, as you want to call it be bombarded or hemorrhage from feelings, emotions, chemicals, foods, you name it, the world, the environment, the news that everything we're taking in, and you say, if we are to reach a heightened state of awareness, what do we need to be aware of when it comes to taking care of our physical vehicle is my question because the physical vehicle which has to be finely attuned to be able to do the practice, needs to have that awareness. I'm glad you actually put that in the book. Explain more, though, because I think a lot of people are not there ready physically, yet.

Chris Von Hassett
Because there, there's not much out there, that tells us that what we're eating is poisoning us. Most of the food systems in the world are saturated with pesticides. And there's one key pesticide, as you mentioned, glyphosate, that is literally destroying the planet, it's killing off the oceans, it's killing off the barrier reefs, it's killing river systems. These pesticides are meant for one thing they're meant to kill, they're meant to kill something, a plant and a bug. Certain elements of the soil bacterias. And they're doing a great job of it. They're literally just sterilizing the planet. But they're also when we ingest them, they go right into us, and they kill our microbiome. And our microbiome is the soil of our body. And so if we're becoming toxified, and inflamed, and you know, just totally getting sick, this is going to be very difficult for you, if your goal in this life is to kind of awaken to your spiritual purpose, it's going to be very difficult if your body is sick. So it's really easy to clean up the body. And I mentioned organic in the book, organic, as everybody says, it's not perfect, but it's, most people now have access to organic foods, almost every supermarket in the United States that I know of that I've been into, you'll find an organic section. And this, if you just eat only organic for a few weeks, you're going to start to feel better, your depression is going to start to lift your diabetes and start going to start to kind of dwindle away. Your ability to walk arthritis, all of these things. You know, glyphosate is linked to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, autism, I mean, just you name it. And this is in most of the food on the supermarket shelves. So most people have access to organic, eat organic, and this alone is going to help you in live in your spirit and live in your body. And then that allow you to take the next step to whatever you sense is wrong with you next to address that problem. But first, get the soil everybody cleaned up. And then if you really if your practices to enlightened, now you have an opportunity to recognize your own mind and his natural state, because you can't see it when it's covered in a fog.

Greg Voisen
Well, it I think what you say and what you wrote in the book is so important. And it brings awareness to the fact that people should pay attention to that. What I do see happening in this western world, and I'll address that isn't one of my questions, but and I'm not the only one that has this disease. It's it really is the time boundedness of our world. In other words, we live within hey, look, you and I agreed to do a podcast 11. So I have to be here setup, make sure I'm here. One side of us says, oh, darn, I have to do that. And again, it's another thing I have to do today, if you if you get where I'm going? Yeah, because it's just all about time. Yeah, it's about time. And I'm doing a really cool podcast on anti-time management from a guy in Hawaii. And I and I, I asked this question of you, because if people are going to do any of these practices, they need to free themselves, from the boundless in the constraints of their mind associated with time. Yeah. Do you would you agree, disagree? I mean, what comment? Would you say Chris?

Chris Von Hassett
Well, I you know, as conceptual beings, we're in a state of time. You know, one of the three times we're in all the time, it takes practice, actually to begin to understand that. There's the fourth time which is the no time and this is the time of the awakened beings of and also the nature around us. Nature is totally in the fourth time it doesn't. It doesn't align itself with past, present and future. It's just simply here and now. So we're one of the only beings in the universe that really are bound into the structure of time. But it takes practice. So you can't just you can't just tell yourself, I'm going to step out of time and, and understand it. But you will come to understand that if you begin to practice and especially with XO 10, as you begin to settle into the awareness slash, emptiness, nature of mind, you'll see it you see it firsthand, and you totally understand it from an experiential place, not an intellectual place. And then only then can you begin to start moving through the world, with that sense of knowing, and feeling no longer strongly bound to the timeframes that we're in our calendars, you know, our appointments, everything about this world. So

Greg Voisen
yeah, it's a conundrum I think that people have. And that conundrum is, I live in this world where it is I have to do certain things to survive, to exist to feed my family to do whatever. Again, those are the constraints, the non-constraints would be the time that they can free up to do this practice, is to take a walk in the woods, to walk on the beach, anything with that which is contemplative. That gets their mind away from all of the activities associated to time boundless. Now, in your chapter returning to light, you speak about the practices we can do to teach a heightened consciousness. And can you discuss some of the practices of becoming a better sensor of the body and feeling the chakras now, you know, we talked, I'm devotee of self-realization fellowship, chakras are talked about a lot, where the energy gets in the crown chakra all the way down through all the chakras, I think it'd be a good idea because people, when they do understand the significance and power of the chakras, and how they when they're aligned, the whole bodies aligned, when the whole body is aligned, the experience of meditation actually shifts. Yes, totally. So let you take it from there, we turn it into light.

Chris Von Hassett
So the book, the book is kind of structured in such a way as okay, we've, we need to retrain ourselves to be aware. And the first place we put that awareness is getting the body healthy, cleaning up choosing which what we want to put in the body. And then once we start to feel better, because we're eating organic, or drinking less, maybe doing less smoking, or whatever, then now you use that same awareness and you bring it inward and you start to focus it on these places in the body that you haven't paid any attention to all your life, perhaps like your feet, bringing the awareness down into the feet, bringing into the legs, and you're consciously placing the awareness there. This is a training of sorts, because now you're learning to manage your own awareness. And you're placing it in very key areas that are desperate for because when your awareness is in the body, it makes it hard for illnesses to enter. If the awareness is elsewhere, then illnesses just come right in, you know, the Kings gone. Here, come here come the people to steal everything you have. So then as you say, as we move up, the move the awareness up in this practice, you play start placing in the chakra, and you start feeling the chakras and energy centers of the bodies. And these are key centers of the body, that when they're close, they make it very difficult, they become obstacles to holding your awareness steady. And for me, I can speak to at for many, for many years of my life, I felt my heart was closed or stopped or had some sort of obstacle that get some a wound. And I felt just through putting my awareness in this practice right in my heart and just observing it all and just observing and move in and out of that chakra. That That alone totally, I mean, I started feeling my heart in ways that I hadn't felt since I was a child and feeling emotion again, and then in my throat and then so this whole region, just say so my point is you could start now placing your awareness with purpose. And this is just the beginning of learning to kind of handle your awareness and get to know your awareness and ultimately become one with it and stabilizing.

Greg Voisen
The conditioning in which we are brought up in a has a huge effect on what you basically just said, you know, the openness of your heart, a feeling that or, you know, we look at all the chakras, the throat, I mean that the stomach you know, your reproductive organs area, I mean, you know, you can look at the energy that's flowing in and you can feel it like you said, you were feeling constricted, and when you get to the root cause of it, it's quite a release. This practice of meditation, I will tell my listeners can help you get to the realization of the root cause of it. Right, and effectuate a change, effectuate A positive changes should say. Now you mentioned that every thought, every sound, everything that passes through your site takes place in the present. I couldn't agree more. And that's all we've really got. And we just you talked about this a minute ago. Can you speak with the listeners a little bit more in depth? About the fourth time? And what you refer to as insight meditation, because that maybe many of my listeners haven't heard of before?

Chris Von Hassett
Well, again, yes, like you said, you could speak to the same things from different places, different perspectives. And this is another one where, you know, when we speak of the present, what, especially in meditation, what we're really more speaking to is this idea of presence. Because present being present is a construct as so as the past. So as the future is part of this whole time construct that we as conceptual beings have just, it's kind of almost a natural, natural way of seeing things. But presence is something that kind of allows us to enter into what is known as the fourth time, if you were to look into deep space, from anywhere and just look at the sky and look deep, deep into space, you would recognize that there is no time out there. There's simply this gigantic emptiness. So

Greg Voisen
we label it as we label. It's like David Bohm, you know, the quantum physics, right? Guy? Did you study any of his books or read any? Definitely. So, you know, like, we, the mere fact that we put labels on stuff and categorize stuff, starts to then create the structure in which our mind automatically defaults to yes, you're asking people and I get this, to deconstruct that, to find the point at which they can enter the wholeness at which they would like to become the freedom in which they would become deconstructing is not an easy thing, Chris,

Chris Von Hassett
inside meditation comes in meditate, because the beautiful thing about this practice that you're not actually doing anything except for the practice, and in doing the practice, things begin to fall apart on their own. So the idea of deconstruction is, it sounds like something active is taking place. But in reality, all you're doing is observing, you're sitting down and observing your own awareness. That's the Insight part. Because otherwise, when you're looking at emptiness, and you're just trying to focus on emptiness, you're still in a mode of grasping or motive, you're grasping the emptiness. But when you're allowing the awareness to observe the emptiness without doing anything else without thinking about it, now you're in now you moved up into what's called Insight meditation. And this is where the insight of simply resting in the observance begins to feed in knowledge. And this knowledge, on its own begins to break down the fabric of our conceptual constructive mind, which includes the idea of time,

Greg Voisen
when I think over a period of practice, you would start to recognize that deconstruction and recognize what you're actually doing to yourself during the construct. Yes, I mean, I mean, I know that sounds kind of silly. But in reality, people do things blindly, and don't even realize they're doing them. In essence, this practice makes you aware of the construct you've created, so that you can modify that construct, does that resonate with you at all, and

Chris Von Hassett
it's, it's also moves in a logical fashion, the constructs that begin to break down are the larger, more apparent ones, right. And then you think you're making progress. And then you recognize that you have these more nuanced constructs that you're still, you know, tripping up over, and you begin to recognize those and then those begin to break down. And then it gets subtler and subtler. So even as you move through the practice, and you get more advanced, you begin to recognize that you're still tripping up over your own feet half the time. Because you've emotionally connected in a way that, you know, you've been triggered somehow. So

Greg Voisen
because you have to be with it. And let go of it. Yeah. And that's, you know, the Dalai Lama says that a lot. You know, you're what you're going to be remembered by in this world is, how much you loved how many people loved you, and how much you let go? Yeah, well, the letting go part is really the construct. Or so that's, that's our story. Now you state in the chapter on transmission, that the chin instruction is almost always taught by a qualified master. And you mentioned that some individuals are naturally inclined and can read the teachings on the page. And they can solidly make some way or change on their own, but you said not very many. You said it's not very many. How would our listeners that are in Interested after we're now talking about this, find a qualified master to work with in this lineage.

Chris Von Hassett
Well, I mentioned five right at the beginning of the book, I kind of dedicate the book to these five, I think three of them are still alive. Sonia Rinpoche is a great master. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is another great master. The Dalai Lama is still out there. He's his old chimp practitioner. You know, there are many masters. In fact, there, I think there are now becoming more and more accessible now that the internet is, is up. There are so many masters that have just been teaching in their little monasteries for decades, and totally unrecognized, these guys are, are now becoming a little more known.

Greg Voisen
But you mentioned them. So if our listeners typed into the internet and looked for them, some of them may have websites, there's some way to reach them. There's some way to get involved with a practice because of now with, you know, who knows how you would do it, but I would think it would be one on one, but maybe they're doing it via zoom. I don't know,

Chris Von Hassett
they happen that I know, in the past few years, they've been doing very well over zoom. This live, you know, this way, you know, like, the old days, I think are gone in the sense that you had to go sit with a master and spend years with them. And only then did you have any chance of enlightening. It's not so true anymore. Not only because consciousness is evolving, and humanity's evolving, and the teachings are evolving. But now we have all these access points including zoom. But there's also the these masters of traveling, they're coming skinny somewhere near you once or twice a year. Yeah. So you can avail yourself to them whenever you want. Whenever you're ready.

Greg Voisen
Well, I'm glad that you've actually brought awareness to the fact that this is a practice, and that there's access to these masters that they can take lessons from. He also mentioned that when sitting in meditation, you and you observe the space of empty mind to see. And indeed, just as a master pointed out, it has no shape, no color, no location or destination. It has no inside or out or up or down. It is it is not past, when a past is directly looked for. And you find no future either. That's quite a statement. Because what you're saying is it's nothingness. It that's kind of my awareness. But use explain here is a state of emptiness. How does practicing this meditation help us open to greater levels in this is my own spin on this? Creativity, because you would think that at that heightened state of awareness that you could be an extremely creative state, meaning you could channel through or bring through some energies, that would make you much more creative.

Chris Von Hassett
Yeah, I think even Lynch, David Lynch speaks to this idea of, you know, he meditates to catch the big fish that you know, so when he when he goes deep into his meditation practice, this is where some of his greatest ideas come from. So creativity and kind of resting in this natural state that we speak to Enzo Chen, they are kindred, they work together very well, you can really come out with a lot. And you know, the creative individual is, is a meditative individual, in many ways, they're working alone in their studios, for long periods of time, they're tapping deep into themselves to kind of draw out something that is unique in the world of art. And you know, with magazine right material that I have, I'm always kind of looking for that, that art, that expression that is interesting and unique and current, it's not derivative in any way. And our inner world is current, it's not derivative. And so if you just want to enter in that world, and kind of have access to all the creative energies you'll ever need, this is the place to find it, you won't find it out there, you can study the masters. And this is unique to as a literature professor, as a writer, you begin by reading your favorite authors, and you begin by setting all the great writers, but at some point, you let them all go. Because if you have to, if you're going to be one of those creative individuals that's on par with those greats, you have to let them go. So this is what going within does that allows us to kind of own our own our own interior world and bring it out.

Greg Voisen
It's the only way you're going to be truly Uniquely Creative. Yeah, you know, I know. People say, well, I borrow an idea from here, or I borrow neither. And I hobble something together. And that's fine too. I mean, it is it is a creation, and if that's the spark that you need, that's awesome. But if you can go into this meditation, I think most of the time It's going to be Uniquely Creative versus borrowing a piece here and borrowing a piece there. Because you have emptied the mind. You know, you do walk people through kind of these stages of this meditation in the book, I was reading that part. And they didn't ask a lot of questions about that. But if you would, would you give the listeners kind of an idea of XO chin? And I mean, you talk about the breathing, you talk about the practice. And I wanted to get that in, because I hadn't thrown a question in, but I thought you could address it a bit here.

Chris Von Hassett
Yeah. Well, the kind of questions you brought up a few minutes ago about you know, is it? Is it have it? Does it have a shape? Does it have a color? Does it have, you know, a pass to it? Where does it begin? Where does it go? How far away? These are the questions that the master will ask you when he's saying, I want you to look into your own mind. And I want you to, when you're looking at this mind, do you see a shape? No, I don't. And it's always the answer is always the negative. But this is it's, it's an affirmation when you recognize when you're actually seeing that what I'm seeing has no shape. It has no color. No, no, now you know, you're at the door of your own awareness, the source of your own awareness in southern The Master is a stay right there, rest there, observe it. And in observing it, this non space begins to kind of open up and what's what enters it is our awareness. And we then begin to observe our awareness as it's entering the space of emptiness. And that's all we're doing. And so too, in practice, and you just do this day in and day out. And as you do, this space begins to open up and become it begins to just kind of reveal itself in and as an entirely new world. In many ways. It's the same world we're in, but it's magical.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, I had rom das on here many years ago. And obviously, he and Timothy Leary experimented with LSD and all kinds of psychotropics. And so my point was, in today's world, you see people doing micro doses, where do you stand on kind of this opportunity to open the mind to enter the mind because they're going to places that they couldn't normally go, or they're doing ayahuasca, or whatever it might be, that's giving them this, this bit of a trip, so to speak. Yeah, I say

Chris Von Hassett
if the opportunity arises, take that opportunity. These, especially ayahuasca, especially in mushrooms, they bring you right to the very state that all zoek 10 practice or practitioners are trying to access, it takes you there and allows you to see it allows you to get familiar with it. And then of course, you leave it right, you don't have the skills to get there on your own. But through XO Chen practice, you've developed, you're developing the path that ultimately takes you there. And actually, it's true. There was I did a mushroom trip a couple of years back that utterly affirmed my practice. And it was from that moment forward that I began to stabilize in my practice, because I now had an experience of one to one knowing that the mushrooms themselves, which are a gift from our Earth, they're perfectly in sync with our psychic systems, that if and micro dosing doesn't take you there, you got to do a kind of a macro dose, you got to do a big dose to kind of like move past the body and move past all of our, the constructs of mind obliterate all those and then you're there, you're there. And you're recognizing you're experiencing, you're tasting this world, this, this this perspective. And then you can go back and meditate for six months a year, you don't have to do micro you don't have to do another dose, you just use that experience as a one to one kind of pointing out for you because we call them the pointing out instructions that the master will give you from his mouth to your ears. Mushrooms will do that too. If you have an understanding of what you're looking for. You don't know what you're looking for. You're going to miss it. But if you already have an understanding what you're looking for the mushrooms will say there it is also, so they're great.

Greg Voisen
Well, Zo Chan is a way to get there people have some type of fear about doing that. And I know there is apprehension and fear about it because it's a place people haven't gone yet. And so it's interesting to look at now, you state that the mind looks itself sees itself recognizes itself and then it rests in recognition. Mind see mind and in this reorientation view of the subject object duality that momentarily dissolves. And you were talking about this earlier, the serpent that's kind of eating its tail. And I, I assume it's called oroboros or burrows, that was the chapter title that you had represents the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Can you speak about that, because in essence, we said this earlier, you know, if you have a construct, and you deconstruct the construct, and you kind of it goes to death? In other words, you're it's dying, and reborn and dying and reborn and dying and reborn. comment about this overdose.

Chris Von Hassett
So when you're looking, what you're doing is you're turning your awareness back in on itself, because, again, habitually, we kind of observe the world, from our eyes outward. And really, what Zouk Chen is asking of us is okay, what is the source of that awareness what you know, find the source. And so we begin to look inwards. And as we settle in there, we begin to what this destruction that you talked about, and rebirthing, what dies is the ego eventually, because you understand as you turn the awareness in that there is no source, it's not the body, it's not, not the physical mind. And this is a big blow to the ego. Once we once the, you know, the we move beyond the ego and recognize that the ego, again is another construct, it arises out of the thinking process. Where do thoughts begin? You look for that, as well. You see, they come out of nothingness. So this, it's just this internal looking, that begins to obliterate the ego. And when the ego begins to fall away, the awareness of the awareness being the eyeless entity rises. And this is the entity that we see in all awakened beings, including the Dalai Lama.

Greg Voisen
Well, you speak about that in your chapter I entity and you discuss the concept of the body as 99.99%, empty, probably hard for a lot of listeners listening to like, conceive that that 99% empty. It seems so strange, the only relation I have to it is, you know, they do say when a person dies, they can measure the small amount of energy that actually moves because the body's weight changes, right? It might be a very small amount, but it's a small amount, call that what you will, I think some people out there they're listening might be agnostic, might not have a belief in a higher world or higher power, and many of them do. And again, this concept seems strange. Can you explain the concept and discuss what you refer to as plank and the ps use that you referred to in the book?

Chris Von Hassett
right? So you know, quantum physics is now affirming what the Buddhists have been talking about for centuries, that we are virtually total emptiness. And what quantum physics is telling us today is we're not only just total emptiness, we're almost total space. So when they, when they get those micro microscopes, those quantum microscopes on the body, they go right past the flesh past all the material within and your into your entire universes of space. And all that space is taking place within ourselves structures of within the atom between like the proton and the atoms outer shell, right? There's so much space between that, that it's just mind boggling. And then between the proton and what is known as the plunk. And quantum physics, again, is speaking to the Planck and the Planck spherical units, which is the ocean of planets that moves throughout the universe. This is basically the full energy of the universe is taking place in the plunk energy right in front of us, you can vaporize all the oceans on the planet just through the energy of like a cup full of this plunk energy right in front of us. It's because there's so much spin going on in this in these plants. But they're way down there on the I don't even think they can see them on with quantum telescopes, but they've calculated them, they understand their mass, they understand their spin. So this is all the essence of our body. If we were to look at the body from the level of the plank or even the proton, you would see what we see when we look up at the night sky, we would see a universe that seems to be sparkling and seems to be way far apart. But in reality, it's a human body. And this is true for all mass in the universe. All mass is point zero 1% matter and the rest is space. So this is a space that we're trying to engage with in our meditation practice and with our eyes, we can't see it but when we actually get into the what we call this natural state the net the net To remind this, this essence of ourselves, you very much see it, you very much see the body as this spacious, empty thing. That is a beautiful, beautiful kind of vessel for us to remain stable in this life. So we can receive the teachings so we can develop our higher selves, the body gives us that, but the body is, is kind of an illusion in terms of from the other perspective from the spiritual perspective,

Greg Voisen
right? Well, I like I explained it. And I think one of the ways that people might relate is, you know, you look at Earth, and you look at all of the other galaxies, you look at all the stars, and you really start to begin to realize how small this is in the overall. Yeah, and we don't know how many light years out there, and how many other planets Nether, the stars and black holes there are and all that kind of thing. So you can see that the amount of space is an infinitum, okay, it's infinity. Now, Chris, what takeaways would you like to leave our listeners with regarding entering the mind? And how can they start to create a practice of meditation, XO chin, that would totally transform their perception of their current reality. And I think when you do start a practice like this, you do actually transform your perception of reality there, it'd be impossible not to. So I would ask you, as somebody who's been practicing this for years and years and practice with a master, maybe what maybe the other question is, what could they expect? If they're not attached? If let's go to non-attachment here, I don't want to have any expectation of what's going to occur, what could occur. But for somebody who's been through it to give some people a foundation, what made what might they expect?

Chris Von Hassett
Well, I like the fact you use the word attachment, because we're all attached to our own stories, we're attached to our history, you know, I could be proud of being a teacher and, you know, be proud of being a meditation practitioner. And I've done so many things in my life. And these are these great stories that we are attached to families that we are attached to. This is This is beautiful. But what this practice does, it allows us to see that those are kind of like constructions of our lives. And we can become less attached to all the stories including stories of abuse, stories of, of trauma, all the stories that kind of keep us constricted. So that is the initial thing that you can expect, you can expect to kind of awaken beyond that and kind of lose your attachment to your own fear. Lose Your sense of definition of I'm a depressed person or I'm unlovable. I'm an angry person or I'm abusive, any of these stories that are fixed in place will begin to lose their toehold with this practice. The beautiful thing about Zouk Chen is that you, you cannot and you never will become bored. And this is a problem. I think with many meditation practices that most people don't know why they're meditating, you know, they, they, they think they're meditating to relax, or they're think they're meditating, to kind of like, become a little bit more open in the world. But zoek 10 is giving you a real purpose. It's saying, if you do this, you are going to become enlightened at some point, it could be in this lifetime, but it could be in the next lifetime, could be in the death process. And the philosophy alone on an intellectual level is just fascinating. So you can be reading it, I've been reading the same text for 30 years and trying to find new texts by new teachers and getting a new take on it. My take on it is very different than the great masters because I wanted to contribute something new from a kind of Western practitioners’ perspective. So there's all these amazing takes on it that keeps you intellectually stimulated. But then as you begin to move inward and begin to explore your own inner world, it literally is like stepping into the seven wonders of the world. Like looking over the Grand Canyon, you are in awe of the inner space that you're seeing. And this again, brings a certain joy and uplifting into the general perspective in the world where all the things that used to weigh you don't begin to fall away. So you won't get bored. You're intellectually stimulated. I think. This is the great things that you can expect from a beautiful practice. That is entirely your own. Nobody else can touch this, this is yours and you can nurture it the way you want to nurture it.

Greg Voisen
Well and I, I would assume and I've been practicing, but that it would help people to remove many of the fears that they have are self-imposed. Now, they have the saying in personal growth books, 99.9% of all the things you think are going to happen really aren't going to happen to you. But you've already conjured up some story and start to live it out, right. So this is a way for you to disengage from that store. This is a way for you to regularly get away from those combative energies, which are trying to occupy the space in your mind, to fill it with something. And you said, the ego and we know, frequently, that's, you know, I have a friend that you've seen when the ego was edging God out. You know, and, and find this place of whether you're spiritual not, but I look at it, and I say, Mind, Body Spirit, there is this huge spiritual element to all of this. And it is for you to awaken to and figure it out and understand it. And no matter what form it takes to do the practice, because the longer you do the practice, the better it gets. And I would say with that, I would invite all of my listeners to go out to Amazon, we're going to put a link. The book is called entering the mind. And we've been on with krint. Chris Von has it. The other place to go is riot material.com. There, he's got all kinds of resources for you. I think everyone will find that website. Quite interesting. You also sent in the thing that you sent to me a link to a three-part series interview that sounded like your wife was doing it with you.

Chris Von Hassett
You met Rachel, Rachel and I speak for a couple hours as our own little podcast that you'll find on writing material. Yeah, go to entering the mind.com. And it takes you to the same region.

Greg Voisen
It's a great three-part series, and I'm gonna bite my listeners to go and to get the book. Chris, it's been a pleasure. Namaste to you. Thank you so much, Greg. It's been wonderful. Thank you for being on and taking a few minutes to talk with, with my listeners about dou Chen and entering the mind. And you really did a very good book, a really good book here of just giving a I'm gonna call it a big overview of a lot of things, but you distilled it down into bite sized pieces that I think are digestible. So that's what's important because I think when people are reading something, and they you don't know what level they are, you have to meet them where they are. And I will say to my listeners, Chris, did a good book to meet you where you are or and or you want to go to. How's that? So wonderful. Thanks. Thanks for that, Chris.

Chris Von Hassett
What a great show. You're doing amazing work and I'd love to come back on anytime.

Greg Voisen
I'd love to have you.

Chris Von Hassett
Great! Take care of Greg.