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Paul Sugar: NDE, Out-of-Body Travel & Mindfulness Healing
22 Plays1 month ago
To book a session with James contact Journey Mindfulness.
Get ready for one of the most exciting episodes in which we explore my guest, MBSR Teacher Paul Sugar's near death experience (NDE) where he went through a Life Review, 25 years of out of body experiences (OBE/Astral Projection)- in which he went to school to learn about the universe, spent a little time remote viewing with the CIA's Project Stargate and ultimately learning to become a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Teacher helping people reconnect with their bodies and the present moment to heal, come into balance, and find flow in their lives.
From going out of the body and learning to reconnect back into the body this was a really fun episode to explore life, death, and conquering the terror that is dying. Paul shares his wisdom and experiences that allowed him to get to the point where he no longer fears death, and one that is of great value if you do.
Please like, share, subscribe, comment, and ask any questions that you may have, I look forward to engaging with you.
To learn more about Paul Sugar and The Scottsdale Institute for Health & Medicine.
Paul Sugar YouTube.
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Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction 8 Week Online Course
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https://www.journeymindfulness.com/MBSR
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DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical or psychological advice. Please seek licensed medical professionals for help & guidance.
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Transcript
Introduction to Mindfulness with Paul Sugar
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Journey Mindfulness Podcast, where we talk all things mindfulness and awareness and perhaps even psychedelic today. We have an amazing guest today, Paul Sugar, who is a highly experienced mindfulness instructor with over 30 years teaching experience and completed his studies at MBSR with Jon Kabat-Zinn in you're one of the originals, I think.
00:00:40
Speaker
ah and also do MBSR and NBCT. He taught over 100 classes. He's been a pioneer in mindfulness and getting mindfulness taught in schools and a number of different things, an entrepreneur.
00:00:56
Speaker
ah So Paul, thank you very much for being here
Paul's Journey to Mindfulness
00:01:00
Speaker
today. It's a pleasure to have you. Happy to be here, James. so Looking forward to this. Yeah, so we were just kind of talking about...
00:01:11
Speaker
sort of where I was mentioning your kind of beginning with mindfulness, but if you would perhaps walk us into your origin story of of getting into all of this and perhaps even the event that opened you up.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um i didn't realize it at the time, in 1969, in nineteen sixty nine I had a terrible car accident where I flipped my car over about eight times on the highway.
00:01:41
Speaker
and And I thought for sure i was going to die. I didn't even have a seatbelt on. And at one point, I just let go of the steering wheel and figured, it well, that's it. Even if even if somehow and managed to survive the flipping, i I thought I was going to flip into the other lane, the oncoming traffic. And so...
Exploring Meditation and Esoteric Practices
00:02:02
Speaker
When I stopped flipping, I was just waiting for this big tractor trailer to come in and pound me. um But fortunately, i ended up in the in the the middle of the two roads and the median, it was grass median.
00:02:19
Speaker
And um while I was flipping, I had, I guess you could call it a near-death experience. There are different kinds of near-death experiences. Mine was, I guess, what we called life review, where my life flashed in front of me and I i saw my past, my present, and my future.
00:02:42
Speaker
yeah It happened in an instant, um but in it it would it had a profound effect on me. Fortunately, Fortunately, I wasn't even injured in the accident, which was a miracle in itself.
00:02:57
Speaker
yeah um And then I didn't really think much of it at the time, but looking back on it years later now, I realized that that might have triggered something in me, that that life review near-death experience.
The Role of LSD in Paul's Mindfulness Journey
00:03:11
Speaker
Because within a week or two, um I came in touch with some people who were ah studying and practicing yoga, meditation, mindfulness, Kabbalah, Kabbalah being the Jewish esoteric ah meditative tradition.
00:03:34
Speaker
And um got to talking to these people about a lifelong fear that I had had, which which was my fear of dying. I had that experience.
00:03:47
Speaker
um For as long as I could remember, back to the age of two or three, I can remember being terribly afraid of of dying. And so when I met with these people, there were two separate groups. One was a yoga group that was practicing yoga-type meditation.
Paranormal Phenomena and Kabbalistic Symbols
00:04:04
Speaker
The other one was a Kabbalah group.
00:04:06
Speaker
and But they were both weaving mindfulness into it. And so when I talked to them, I said, you know, I've got this terrible fear of dying. And they said, well, you should join our group.
00:04:17
Speaker
You know, we do readings. ah We practice meditation together. And all of these traditions give you the opportunity to explore death and dying and all of the existential questions. Why are we here? Who are we? What are we?
00:04:35
Speaker
What is death? And so forth and so on. So i took advantage of that opportunity and joined both study groups, both meditation, and started learning both traditions, the Eastern tradition. And I guess Kabbalah is considered part of the Western esoteric meditative ah tradition. So I was practicing really both at the same time.
00:05:01
Speaker
and um Before before and the car accident, I had done psychedelics LSD ah for a couple years, 1968, 69.
Overcoming the Fear of Dying Through Out-of-Body Experiences
00:05:15
Speaker
And I had worked up to what the people in the psychedelic field call heroic psychology.
00:05:21
Speaker
dosing. I must have gained some kind of resistance because I was doing it on earth fairly regular basis. But my experiences with LSD were such that I wasn't experiencing what all my friends were experiencing, which would be colors and lights and maybe other dimensions and things like that.
00:05:43
Speaker
For me, it just brought me into the present moment. I didn't have the words to express it back then at the time. but But now I realize that it just brought me to a very focused, a present state.
00:06:00
Speaker
And that was it. And that's why I kept taking more and more because I thought, well, maybe I wasn't taking large enough doses. Finally, my last trip, I took 25 doses. doses and and still ended up in that present moment experience.
00:06:18
Speaker
And so... Interesting. Yeah. By then, it was also embarking on my meditation journey. um And I figured at that point, well, it's 25 years.
00:06:30
Speaker
you know, doses of LSD aren't going to do much for me, then the time has come for me to
Attention and the Universe: Insights from Out-of-Body Experiences
00:06:36
Speaker
stop. And so I stopped the psychedelics and I started to just focus in on my meditation practices.
00:06:44
Speaker
Once I did that, um I started having a lot of what we might call paranormal experiences. Some people call it psi, P-S-I, psi experiences, psychic experiences.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. And um they seemed to be related to my more my study of Kabbalah and using the symbol system of the Kabbalah, more that experience.
00:07:13
Speaker
than the yogic meditations that I was doing because as soon as I started meditating on the Kabbalistic symbols and doing the reading um of the Kabbalah and so forth and so on I started having ah visions and out-of-body experiences and so forth and so on Paul is this the um like the tree of life like studying that and the symbolism of that Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. The tree of life is the basic symbol for the Kabbalah. And then on the tree of life, you can fit
Connecting Mindfulness to Jon Kabat-Zinn's Teachings
00:07:52
Speaker
all different kinds of symbols from all different kinds of traditions. so each, each portion of that tree of life symbol ah parallels to all of the other meditative traditions out there.
00:08:08
Speaker
And, and I was able to draw it. connections to all of these other traditions through the symbology of the Kabbalah.
00:08:21
Speaker
And so i would say within oh ah month or two of focusing on the Kabbalistic symbolism and the meditation and so forth and so on, i started to have these out-of-body experiences and visions ah ah going back into past lives.
00:08:43
Speaker
um Visions, I had a number of visions with Jesus, which was I found interesting because I was I was brought up Jewish, and so I wasn't really ah involved in the tri in the Christian tradition.
00:08:59
Speaker
But then I thought, well, you know, Jesus was Jewish, so said maybe so maybe there's a connection there. So had a number of experiences with Jesus. that That's utterly fascinating.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. we're having past life You were able to go into past lives through your meditation. That's yeah just Yeah, I would i would shift. Through the meditation, i would like shift into,
Mindfulness, Stress, and Body Connection
00:09:30
Speaker
gosh, there's a lot of different ways that people express these things nowadays.
00:09:34
Speaker
But for lack of you know a better expression, I would shift into a different dimension. and And go out of body. i'm I'm guessing that some of your listeners, viewers are familiar with these kinds of things, out of body travel and remote viewing and visions and stuff like that.
00:09:55
Speaker
Well, we, you know, it's interesting, Paul, you know being a a therapist, you know, there was a lot of hesitation for me to talk about some of these things ah until somewhat recently. So, but yeah, some people will know astral projection, out of body experiences, remote viewing,
00:10:16
Speaker
ah And some of these topics have become more ah prevalent its you know in the in the sort of news cycle and in the awareness of the zeitgeist. so Yeah, very prevalent. In fact, I guess like you, um it took me 50 some odd years before I was willing to talk about this.
00:10:38
Speaker
I just started talking about these things oh maybe two, three years ago. and And I think it's because I noticed the same thing you noticed, that it's out there in the zeitgeist now.
Mindfulness in Daily Life and Peak Performance
00:10:50
Speaker
And people are becoming more and more interested in these things. And so I felt that it was okay yeah to talk about my experiences now, even though up to that point, I really felt it was wiser not to talk about these things.
00:11:06
Speaker
Well, I certainly appreciate you doing so and and and being courageous enough to do it um because I'm super fascinated. So you... Yeah, Psy, Psyonix, all that stuff is is kind of coming out now.
00:11:18
Speaker
um So where, and I think I heard you talk about in your out-of-body travels, you had a number of very interesting experiences, almost like going to school.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yes, that's true. ah My most consistent out-of-body experience, which lasted for 20, 25 years, almost I would say two or three times a week, I'd go out of body and I would end up going to a school, more like a university.
00:11:51
Speaker
And I would attend classes and there would be teachers, human teachers and otherwise. And there were other people in the class as well. And the subject of course had to do, the subject had to do with, shall we say, understanding how the universe works.
00:12:11
Speaker
And you can imagine. Cosmology 101? Yeah, Cosmology 101. And so I would attend class. And then at the end of class, sometimes we would go on field trips throughout the universe and explore different star systems and planets and so forth and so on.
00:12:31
Speaker
And also, at the end of some of the classes, I would practice dying. And so, you know, my major was understanding how the universe works.
00:12:46
Speaker
My minor, which I also considered to be very important, was to overcome my fear of dying. And so I would go off by myself after class and I would be put in situations where I knew I was going to die.
00:13:02
Speaker
So maybe in a nuclear blast or falling off a cliff or being shot with a gun or a bow and arrow. There were many, many times that I did this. I would say, you know, over that period of time, I practiced dying 15 or 20 times.
00:13:18
Speaker
And in the beginning, when I knew I was going to die, the fear would come up. and um And so when I would die, i would end ah back in my body and I would wake up and that would be the end of the experience.
00:13:32
Speaker
But gradually over the years, I was able to go into these death experiences without the fear. And when I got to a certain point, um where there was very little fear or no fear at all, I would be able to go into the death experience,
Holistic Health Benefits of Mindfulness
00:13:50
Speaker
go through the white light, and then pop out the other end, which inevitably brought me out into the universe like I did with the field trips ah with the class. And when I was doing the field trips,
00:14:03
Speaker
ah there was I had no body. It was just pure consciousness. so and And most of the time, that was the case. you know Some people say that when they do out-of-body travel or astral travel, whatever you want to call it, that they're aware of some other kind of body.
00:14:21
Speaker
I was never aware of a particular body itself. To me, like a light body around them or something. Yeah. They would be aware of that. I was never, I never had that awareness to me. it was just pure consciousness. Nobody at all.
00:14:34
Speaker
What about the other students in the class? um I never really conversed that much with them that I can remember. ah These experiences lasted a long time. And the challenge for me was when I came back into my body to remember as much as possible.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so I've kept the journal all these years and written down all of these experiences to the degree that I can remember what happened. And I've talked to other people who have had similar experiences and they too find it a challenge to remember as much as they would like to when they come back from, from these experiences.
00:15:13
Speaker
So you've been, uh, conscious of, or intentional about trying to record them as much as you can. yeah Yeah, no, that's it's very fascinating. I
Experiencing Other Dimensions and Beings
00:15:24
Speaker
have spoken to other people who have talked about that um and going on field trips and being out, you know, in the universe and and learning.
00:15:33
Speaker
ah What what did you learn that you would be willing to share about the universe and how it works for those that are uninitiated? huh.
00:15:45
Speaker
Let me see. i could go on for days about that, but let me see if I can distill dist still it for you and maybe even relate it to the practice of mindfulness. Yeah. um Before I do that, and remind me where I am, because if I go off on a tangent, sometimes I don't remember where I am.
00:16:03
Speaker
No problem. It was also during that time that I was having um remote viewing experiences. where And it was very different than the classical remote viewing experiences that that people may have heard of through Project Stargate, which was a CIA program yeah back in the 70s and 80s.
00:16:24
Speaker
um For me, i would just be lying in bed completely awake, and then the inside of my head would open up. into ah television screen, and I would be able to go here and there on on Earth um just by shifting my attention and being able to go here and there.
00:16:44
Speaker
As fate may have it, in in the early 1970s, through a series of coincidences, I ended up joining the Stargate Project um They had an office in New York City. I was living in New Jersey at the time.
00:16:59
Speaker
So I went in and spent some time working with them and met some of the leading people in the project, which was very interesting. But but by then, um what we were doing in Stargate, it felt like going back to kindergarten for me.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so I lost interest in it pretty quickly, and I and i eventually eventually just dropped out. Paul, you don't know this, but I am very close here to, uh, uh, the NSA in Fort Meade where some of those guys were based.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. That is true. That is true. Yeah. Um, so, so that was my remote viewing experience and then my Stargate experiences as well. And then,
00:17:49
Speaker
So you have to refresh my memory and bring me back to what I was going to tell you. Yeah. Well, so um for those that may not know what remote viewing is, is essentially projecting your consciousness and seeing things that are not, you know, right, right around you locally.
00:18:05
Speaker
um But I was asking you some of the things that you learned about the cosmology when you were in school um and perhaps, you know, some of those things and how it might relate to obviously death and dying, um but also the practice of mindfulness.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
00:18:24
Speaker
Let me start with two things and I might end with two things. Otherwise I'll go on too long. Okay.
Thoughts vs. Attention: Pure Being State
00:18:30
Speaker
um During, during during my out-of-body experiences, um and particularly in the field trips and with remote viewing, I've learned the importance and the value of being able to pay attention,
00:18:50
Speaker
which relates to mindfulness practice. Now, Remembering that I i started in 1970, I started teaching a blend of yoga, mindfulness, and Kabbalah.
00:19:04
Speaker
But in 1993, I limited what I was going to teach to MBSR. You know, once I studied with John Kabat-Zinn and got certified and all that stuff.
00:19:16
Speaker
So since then, I've just been focusing on MBSR. And one of the one of the main things that we do in MBSR is we talk about the importance of attention, present moment attention, ah in a very specific way, being connected to the body, which would include you know the body scan, body sensations, the breath,
00:19:37
Speaker
ah emotions and thoughts, all of which are part of the body. So it's a very body-centric practice is mindfulness, which employs the skill of attention.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so what happens is you
Continuing the Journey: Teaching and Advocacy for Mindfulness
00:19:54
Speaker
make that connection to the body its through the medium of attention. And we'll we'll get back to that and a but in a little bit.
00:20:02
Speaker
And so when I was doing the remote viewing and and the traveling through the universe, it was done through the means of attention.
00:20:12
Speaker
In other words, if i shifted my attention, I would end up going wherever I shifted my attention to. There's an old saying that I started hearing about in the 60s, where attention goes, energy flows.
00:20:27
Speaker
yeah yeah and that's And I discovered that that is so true. And I discovered that through these experiences that I were i was having in the in the early 70s and out at the present day.
00:20:42
Speaker
um And so i learned how important being able to control my attention was otherwise I would end up going here and there because what I discovered out there, put that in quotes,
00:20:59
Speaker
what I discovered out there is that there are tides and currents and waves, just like in the ocean here on earth. There's another saying, as above, so below.
00:21:13
Speaker
and and um And I discovered that to be very true, that the tides and the currents that exist out there ah also exist here on Earth.
00:21:24
Speaker
And so i i ended up learning how to really focus my attention um Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to go where I wanted to go and and do the things that I and i wanted to do.
00:21:38
Speaker
So that was one of the skills that I worked on. mom And then when I met Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1993 and went through probably the first one of the first trainings that he did um and started to really zero in on the importance of attention in the practice of mindfulness.
00:22:02
Speaker
I made the connection with all of the experiences ah that I was having. i said, aha, you know, mindfulness must be a big deal because it's teaching us primarily the first skill that we're learning is how to focus our attention.
00:22:22
Speaker
Okay. And i had already experienced for many decades, the importance of, uh, ah honing that skill of attention.
00:22:33
Speaker
And so when I went through the training with John and and the emphasis was placed on attention, I connected the dots and I said, this mindfulness stuff is really important.
00:22:46
Speaker
And that's when I decided i was going to just limit my teaching to mindfulness through through MBSR. because i Because I had that realization and I connected the dots between those psi experiences that I was having, paranormal experiences that I was having, and what was being taught at MBSR. yeah so And then the second aha experience that I had
00:23:19
Speaker
which connected me to the MBSR program was I came to learn that most people to some degree or another are not fully connected to their bodies.
00:23:34
Speaker
Okay. Because I was able to see it. I could see the energy on the other side. And we now know through over 10,000 studies out there behind MBSR that When people go into the stress response, the main way that they cope with the stress is we have this um hardwired ability to disconnect from the present moment.
00:24:04
Speaker
The body being our connecting point to the present moment. So i've I've learned that the body connected. the present moment. Okay. And that's why the body is so important.
00:24:18
Speaker
And so during that fight or flight response, fight, flight, or freeze during that response, we're we're hardwired to be able to disconnect. And of course, the only thing and that we can disconnect from is our bodies.
00:24:32
Speaker
yeah and And as long as we stay disconnected from our bodies, we're going to stay in that fight or flight mode to some degree or another. And it varies from person to person.
00:24:44
Speaker
And so when you think about all of the physical, mental, and emotional changes that take place when we go into fight or flight, and then when we push them down below the surface because we don't want to deal with it during our everyday activity, we can see how stress is really connected to the majority of issues that we deal with, health issues that we deal with mentally, emotionally, and physically.
00:25:09
Speaker
And so what I've learned is that the body can sense when we're disconnected. And that it interprets that disconnection as meaning that there's still a danger out there to our survival, a threat to our survival.
00:25:24
Speaker
So as long as it senses that disconnection, it's gonna keep us in fight or flight. And, you know, over the years, I've worked with thousands of people, including myself, because this was one of the ways that i overcame my fear of dying. I realized that I was born stuck in fight or flight and and disconnected. And, you know, part of the major motivating factor in fight or flight is, you know, we get the opportunity to have that fear of dying. That motivates us to survive.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. mean, that's in trauma too this disconnection and, you know, learning to come back into the body and to feel safe and to engage in the present moment again.
00:26:12
Speaker
It's ah fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, um, You would think, you know, I would think anyway, that the body would be set up genetically where when you go into fight or flight,
00:26:31
Speaker
and whatever is is threatening you is resolved, then you would automatically come out of fight or flight. Well, this apparently is not the case. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people getting stuck in fight or flight.
00:26:45
Speaker
So I consider that to be a genetic defect. that That was a joke. yeah people out Well, you know, it is also interesting as I'm listening to you talk about that, you know, I hadn't necessarily made the connection with where the attention goes, the energy flows, but mindfulness being an energy practice because it's so easy, you know, especially if you're stuck in fight or flight to have your energy being poured out, you know, in any other direction than where you might want it to be.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. um Mindfulness is an energetic practice, for sure. course, the quantum physicists would say that everything is energy. Yeah.
00:27:33
Speaker
So, you know, there you have it. But, you know, for for us mere mortals, yeah, it's an interesting realization um that mindfulness is, in fact, a a pure energetic practice. and so And so, because the body isn't set up to come out of fight or flight automatically, we need to be proactive.
00:28:00
Speaker
Otherwise, we're going to be stuck in fight or flight for a long time, which most of my participants in my MBSR classes ah come to the conclusion that they have been. Most of them, after two or three weeks of practice,
00:28:14
Speaker
you know, and talking about being stuck in fight or flight, say, you know what? I just realized that I've been in this stuck of fighter suck and fight or flight for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.
00:28:25
Speaker
And i wouldn't have realized it had I not come to the practice. Yeah. So when we think of the body as the gateway into the present moment experience, right?
00:28:38
Speaker
um then we think that it's a very wise decision that mindfulness practice made when, course, there's a choice to pay attention to an infinite number of things.
00:28:51
Speaker
But in mindfulness, we've chosen to pay attention to the body, which includes the thoughts, the emotions, the breath, the five senses, so forth and so on. And in the wisdom of deciding that our attention should be focused on the body, we have set in motion the body to understand that we're now reconnecting.
00:29:17
Speaker
And just like the body senses when we're disconnected, it also senses when we're connected. And so when it senses that we're going through this reconnection process, it comes to the conclusion that the survival threat is no longer there.
00:29:35
Speaker
And so when it realizes that the survival threat is no longer there through the medium of the autonomic nervous system, it takes us out of fight or flight and brings us back into into balance, into homeostasis.
00:29:52
Speaker
And so between me realizing the importance of attention and then between me realizing the importance of attention to the body,
00:30:05
Speaker
i came to the conclusion that mindfulness practice is the place to be. Mm-hmm. You know, yeah, there's it's you know it's interesting. It can be fun to explore these other traditions and other other meditation practices, which may or may not take you into altered states and, you know, so forth and so on.
00:30:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But if you can't find your way back to your body, you're just setting yourself up for health issues. Interesting. So those were the two main things i learned in the universe. course, you know, over a period of 25 years and continuing, there were a lot of other things that I learned as far as how things work there and here in the body.
00:30:53
Speaker
But those were my two major um takeaways. And that's why I teach MBSR, because of the realization of how important attention is and and the realization of how important attention is to the body in creating that homeostasis um physically, mentally, and emotionally and you know getting back to that baseline.
00:31:17
Speaker
yeah and And then lot of people will ask me at that point, well, once I come out of the fight or flight mode, I guess I don't need to practice anymore, do I? And I said, well, let's talk about that.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and ah first of all, what I discover, if you don't have a ah regular practice, the benefits of the practice gradually go away.
00:31:44
Speaker
The other thing I realized is if Once you get back to homeostasis and you're back to balance and so forth, if you continue to practice, you start to discover what we discovered through research, mostly in sports.
00:32:03
Speaker
You start to discover that there's something called flow states or peak performance or being in the zone, and and a lot of which professional athletes have pioneered for us.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's so a lot of these athletes would, would find themselves in these flow states and have no idea how they got there. And it wasn't really until i think the turning point was back in the nineties when Phil Jackson, who at the time was coach of the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan and all those other people. wasn't until Phil decided to have somebody from UMass Medical Center, MBSR Center, ah come and teach the Bulls MBSR. It wasn't until then
00:32:54
Speaker
that other athletes started to take notice that this mindfulness training would allow them to choose to go into the flow states, not just stumble into the flow states and and have no idea how they got there.
00:33:13
Speaker
So what I tell everybody is, if you continue to practice, once you've come out of that fight or flight mode, you will discover that these flow states are available to you 24-7 during activity, during meditation, so forth and so on.
00:33:32
Speaker
And that's what I've discovered for myself, that a continuation of the practice and making it a lifelong regular practice gives you the opportunity to experience these these flow states twenty four seven That's really interesting to hear you say that because that's always, i mean, there is that, I don't know idea in, ah you know, the community that you can be in flow versus resistance or, you know, in a more loving state versus like a fear state.
00:34:11
Speaker
um If you are able to do that, to pay attention and to be in that, because you can be in flow essentially doing anything, Yeah, you don't have to be a professional athlete. You don't have to be Phil Jackson or Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen or... you know And Phil also brought...
00:34:29
Speaker
the MBSR program to the Lakers when he coached the Lakers. So, you know, if you go to YouTube, you can look up Kobe Bryant talking about mindfulness a hundred times and how it changed his life.
00:34:41
Speaker
And so, it you know, it happened with the Lakers and then gradually all the other professional teams and, and then not just athletes, it went into other performing fields, uh, as well.
00:34:54
Speaker
And then gradually, Mere mortals like you and I, you know, who maybe don't excel in those in a particular field like that, um discovered that we could have those same experiences just through the practice of mindfulness.
00:35:09
Speaker
And so gradually it became understood through experience and research that these flow state experiences were available to all of us, not just, you know, the elite people in the various fields.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, everyone listening has some area of performance that they are working on. Yeah, exactly. And and even not even,
00:35:36
Speaker
not even necessarily defining it as performance because, you know, as we know, as MBSR teachers, ah one of the things that we do is we encourage people to eat mindfully, brush your teeth mindfully, to walk the dog mindfully.
00:35:52
Speaker
All of the mundane, everyday activities um we teach that it's important to bring that mindfulness skill set to that because what I discovered with meditators many, many years ago,
00:36:05
Speaker
is that if you don't set the intention to create a bridge between your meditation practice and your everyday activity, you're going to end up using your meditation as a means of escape from reality.
00:36:21
Speaker
And you're going to end up being stuck in meditation and just using it as that escape. So you feel really great when you're meditating. But when you're not, it falls apart for you. And so as MBSR teachers, you and i know the importance of transferring that skill set into everyday activity.
00:36:42
Speaker
Otherwise, we just end up using meditation as an escape, maybe even an addiction. You know, which, and I know people who use it that way because they haven't set the intention or done the practice to build that bridge between the formal practice and the informal practice as, as we say in MBSR.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's a really important point to kind of hammer that, you know, the meditation is is woven into your daily life in an everyday moments.
00:37:14
Speaker
ah Yeah, that's really wonderful, Paul. ah what how When did you overcome, would you say, your fear of dying?
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's another thing that I learned. as far as the relationship between there yeah you know, and here, because eventually I got to the point, eventually i got to the point where,
00:37:47
Speaker
bring me back to my train of thought. Uh, we were talking about like when you got over the fear of dying. Okay. Yes. Okay. So this is another thing that I learned between the here and the there. Um,
00:38:00
Speaker
I eventually got to the point where I had no fear of dying when I was there in my in my light body, so to speak. um But when I came back to my physical body, I realized that there was still some fear of dying while I was in my physical body.
00:38:21
Speaker
So I came to understand that there's a lag time. between what's happening over there and what's happening here on the physical body. um And so what I discovered for me was that
00:38:39
Speaker
it takes time, that the physical body works slower than the light body. and okay and And in order to transform the cells, in the physical body to the point where i no longer feared dying. In other words, I was and felt that I was really focusing and on and on the autonomic nervous system.
00:39:00
Speaker
But every cell, not just the autonomic nervous system, every every cell in my body needed to go through that transformation of of learning how to not fear death because of the understanding that that death is just a physical thing and that we continue on and so forth and so on.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah. So I learned that there's that lag time. Um, and, and then in so doing, i I also learned a lot about various other dimensions.
00:39:33
Speaker
Um, and,
00:39:38
Speaker
And the understanding of time, as far as how it relates to past, present, and future, yeah how how it's so much in flux and so malleable two to our minds and our beings and so forth.
00:39:57
Speaker
And um I'm just going to free associate here. up I also want to say that it's important to understand the difference between thinking and attention.
00:40:09
Speaker
Okay. It's another thing that I learned. Um, and the way that I learned it is once I got to the point where I could stop all of thought, I realized that I was still there.
00:40:28
Speaker
I still had consciousness and I still had the ability to focus my attention here and there. And so there are a lot of people who feel like they are their thoughts and um and that they have to believe everything they think.
00:40:47
Speaker
And so another important thing that I learned is that's not true, that we're not our thoughts and we don't have to learn everything, that we we don't have to believe everything we think because When you get to that point where there are but are no more thoughts and you're just in that pure being, that grounded, as John Kabat-Zinn would say, when you're in that pure being state, we still have awareness, consciousness, and in attention.
00:41:14
Speaker
Attention being, I think, a quality of that pure being, an attribute of that pure being and consciousness. and awareness. So there's that lag time.
00:41:24
Speaker
And that was an important thing because it opened up my understanding of how past, present, and future work, how it's malleable, um how the different dimensions work.
00:41:36
Speaker
It was another thing that I learned um as it relates to mindfulness and bodies. When I would go other stars and other planets, when I was hovering over a planet or a star, I could see every dimension.
00:41:51
Speaker
because all of these heavenly bodies are multidimensional, just like we are. yeah we're We're multidimensional as well. Yeah. And so I learned that if I wanted to experience these these different stars and planets on on these in these different dimensions, I learned how to create a body that was comprised of, shall we say, the substance of of of the dimensions.
00:42:22
Speaker
So even though these other dimensions are less dense than this physical dimension, there is still matter in all of the dimensions, just less dense. So I learned how to create a body.
00:42:35
Speaker
and then if I wanted to experience that particular dimension, I would clothe myself in the body. And that would be, was, that would be how I would be able to experience those other dimensions.
00:42:47
Speaker
And do like material. well Well, I don't know if that's the right word materialize, but create. Yeah. ah Yeah. In a sense, materialization. um Yes, but not as we understand it.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's very different in other places. Did you, were you on your own or was someone guiding you through this? Usually I was, I was on my, usually I was on my own.
00:43:16
Speaker
that I was aware of. Okay. Um, but I've had for many, many years, the experience of knowing that there are others interacting with me, non non-physical others.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah. And i first became aware that late 1969 where could actually see, um, i could actually see um
00:43:45
Speaker
angels. Angels were, and that's another experience. and Many, many, I saw many, many angels in different forms and and so forth, along with the Jesus type of thing. But I also saw other beings, usually cloaked beings, and I rarely saw their faces.
00:44:02
Speaker
But I i was became very aware of them, particularly during meditation, of them just being there, maybe watching me, interacting with me energetically.
00:44:13
Speaker
um But I never and never really paid attention much to them. I just knew they were there. Yeah. Were they just comforting? or it um In the beginning, it was discomforting.
00:44:29
Speaker
yeah I became very self-conscious. Like, I felt like they were watching me all the time. Who's around me right now? Yeah. And so, yeah I was very young. I was 21 at the time. And so I was just, you know I'm out on a date interacting with my date.
00:44:48
Speaker
And yeah are they watching? Aren't they watching? But I, you know, I overcame... ah that self-consciousness after a period of time. And and i kind of maybe developed an understanding between them and myself where was like, yeah, if you want to interact with me energetically, that's fine. But basically, you know, don't interfere with my life.
00:45:13
Speaker
You know, just let me do my thing and you and I will get along just fine. You came to an agreement with him. Yeah. So that was kind of the message that I sent telepathically, you know, and the relationship has been that way.
00:45:30
Speaker
ever since. So, um you know, I'm very happy with that relationship, you know, with those other beings and the angels. and so Did they ever identify themselves to you or did you ever ask who who they were?
00:45:44
Speaker
I never did ask names. I was more plugged into the energetic presence. and To me, I could recognize energetics And to me, the name, it didn't even occur to me to ask the name, you know, because i i think maybe over there,
00:46:10
Speaker
Those names aren't that important. And yeah, they're just for for a lot of reasons. there They're just, my word for it, they're just not important.
00:46:22
Speaker
Yeah. They're more important to the humans than they are to them. That's what I've heard from a number of people who you know, it's like we we we feel the need to put a label on them and whatnot. But yeah.
00:46:35
Speaker
They don't. ah Wow. So you've had so many interesting experiences throughout your life. And yet going out there, as you put it, made you focus your work on helping people here be present in their lives. It's it's very fascinating to me how that happened, that dichotomy.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, it really brought me to understand the importance of the mindfulness practice. Um, and you also, and you, you focused on that.
00:47:12
Speaker
Um, know you do some other energy work with Tai Chi and other things. Um, but yeah, no, I, I'm fascinated by, I had a, um, It wasn't a near-death experience, but around the same age as you, um an experience where I thought I was going to die. And I became aware of my guardian angel.
00:47:35
Speaker
ah And I heard them talk and and and guide me through an experience. um But it was through that that I probably... I guess maybe I was fortunate, but to sort of ease my fear of dying, just knowing that there was something else out there that I didn't see.
00:47:58
Speaker
ah But it is very interesting to me too, how, you know, I think part of sharing your message and and what I really wanted to get out of it was a just, you know, the importance of mindfulness and, and integrating that into your life, but also this lack or you don't need to fear dying.
00:48:19
Speaker
Correct. Correct. And by the way, I want to add that all of these experiences that I've had, i didn't try to have any of them. It's, it's all been spontaneous.
00:48:32
Speaker
And, and all of my experiences, it seems like I'm following a very
00:48:41
Speaker
sequential, logical curriculum. You know, it's like ah it's been laid out in a very organized way and nothing haphazard about it at all.
00:48:53
Speaker
and And so um so i sort of, you know, just let go into these experiences when they happen spontaneously. At one point, I did actually, it did allow me to remember when I was a youngster, maybe from the age of seven to 12, I did have the ability to go out of body consciously.
00:49:22
Speaker
And the way it would work for me was I would just be laying in bed, getting ready to sleep. And through focused attention, I could bring myself to a point where I could feel pins and needles all over my body.
00:49:39
Speaker
And then I would see little d little dots of color. And then once I saw the color, it would just go out of body and and have the experiences.
00:49:51
Speaker
But in hindsight, I'm looking back and I'm figuring, you know, I gradually lost that ability as I approached puberty. And I think once I hit puberty, and things changed and I wasn't able to consciously go out of the body anymore. and And I completely forgot about it until I was deeply entrenched in these other experiences years later. And I said, oh my gosh, I could do this when I was a kid and then I lost the ability and and now it's back and
00:50:23
Speaker
I don't really have a desire anymore to consciously go out of body. But if it happens spontaneously, that's fine with me. And it's always, always interesting and a learning experience.
00:50:35
Speaker
Okay. So the, the, the classroom has, has ceased. You're not doing the out of body experiences anymore. um The classroom ceased after about 25 years. I do go back every once in a while.
00:50:51
Speaker
um And I still have the out-of-body experiences in different ways. um In fact, just last week, I had an experience where somebody came to me and asked permission to shoot me in the forehead and kill me.
00:51:11
Speaker
And this was a oh lucid dream state, I guess you could say. and and i And I said, well, wait a minute. Let me see if there's any fear before you kill me.
00:51:24
Speaker
And there was a little bit, but then I just shifted my attention a little bit, and the fear went away. And I said, okay, I'm ready. You can shoot me now in the forehead. And kill me.
00:51:35
Speaker
And so he did. and and I died. And I immediately found myself on the other side. And he was there and he was a teacher. um his His personality changed from one side to the other.
00:51:49
Speaker
And as a teacher, he handed me a certificate. And on the top, it says, Certificate of Completion. And then there were a bunch of words below certificate of completion.
00:52:01
Speaker
And so I felt, you know, that's pretty cool. You passed the test. Yeah. Yeah. And then two or three days later, ah had another person come to me and teach me how to go out of the body unconsciously.
00:52:18
Speaker
And so we practiced that a bit. And the first time I couldn't do it, second time I did it. And then together we went out and explored some out-of-body locations and so forth. And so that was interesting. and That was just last week.
00:52:34
Speaker
um But I haven't, I'm not really motivated anymore to go out of the body. So I haven't even tried yeah to go out of the body For me, all of those experiences were in service of me overcoming my fear of dying, which it was more than fear. It was terror by the time I turned 21. And it was something that was overshadowing in my life. And i I knew I had to address it in some way. And i fortunately, coincidentally, I was able you know to find the means to do it.
00:53:12
Speaker
And now i'm very happy that I was able to accomplish that. And it's, you know, made a big impact on who I am and how I live my life. And how you impact other people, because this is, you know, is a very valuable service that you're providing, sharing your story.
00:53:32
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so. I hope this this benefits ah people out there. That's the whole purpose of sharing the story and teaching MBSR and doing the energetic work and so forth and so on.
00:53:45
Speaker
Are you familiar, Paul, at all with the concept of like indigo children or rainbow children or anything? I am. ah am. Okay. and um And I've met a lot of them.
00:53:56
Speaker
One of the things that I've done that you mentioned in the intro is I've worked with school mindfulness programs. I did the first research program in school mindfulness back in the late ninety s And it was a two-year research program. i partnered with Arizona State University on this and taught mindfulness to first, second, and third graders for two years. And during the program, I came across a lot of these indigo kids.
00:54:27
Speaker
yeah These kids pick up mindfulness just like that. You know, they're they're just so quick ah to be able to pick up the practice and get benefits from it. yeah um And so, yes, I'm very familiar with these indigo children. There are more and more of them.
00:54:46
Speaker
And I'll ask you a question. Recently, I came across some interviews um having to do with nonverbal disconnected autistic people.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yes. They call it ataxia with the disconnection. So you're aware of the, the, um, the telepathy tapes. Yes. Um, yeah, there is, um, a guy that I know Ruben Langdon, he has, um,
00:55:21
Speaker
what is her name? Essentially, a nonverbal autistic woman who channels to her mom and she communicates.
00:55:33
Speaker
ah And this was i mean, this has been going on for a while. But with the telepathy tapes, I don't know how recent they they came out. um But yeah, I mean, it's utterly fascinating.
00:55:46
Speaker
um That they're able to communicate not, I mean, telepathically. And and that's one of the the gifts that, you know, I think is coming online with some of these, these children, this wave of children that's coming in. I've met um kids who remember, they remember all of their past lives.
00:56:03
Speaker
which ah you know blew me away the first time I encountered that. um Or you could see angels or other beings or spirits and things like that. It was the work that I tried to do in educationally through this podcast is to ah you know alleviate people's fear of some of these things or fear of dying or you know whatever else is out there.
00:56:27
Speaker
ah so really trying to empower people in to hopefully focus their energy on on making the world better. Yeah. You know, and once you know, there's a general statement, but once people come back into their bodies fully, that fear of dying will go away.
00:56:48
Speaker
Well, you certainly inspired me, you know, hearing you talk about MBSR and really the work and the value that that is, you know, mindfulness-based stress reduction to to help people get out of fight or flight and back into their body and to heal and to kind of be more ah more in flow in their life.
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. so It's a kind of great great program. you know Mindfulness, is it really needs to be the foundation stone of people's lives, which is why i ah decided to focus a lot of attention on the school mindfulness training.
00:57:31
Speaker
Well, Paul, I just want to say thank you very much for sharing your story and you know all of these things. It's ah been delightful to hear, and ah there's a lot of value in it. So thank you.
00:57:44
Speaker
You're very welcome, James. It was pleasure talking with you and you're doing great stuff, you know sharing this information with people. Thank you so much for tuning in today and being with us. May you find joy, flow, and adventure on your journey.
00:58:00
Speaker
And if you got something from it, please like, share, and subscribe and or comment. It means a lot. Thank you.