Summary
In this continuation of Joe’s personal story, he and Brett discuss Joe’s years-long search following an initial experience of oneness. Joe describes how eight years of meditation and inner work gradually “filed down the fight” in him, shifting from a compulsive search driven by “I’m not good enough” to a natural unfolding.
The pivotal recognition—“I am that”—came in an ordinary moment (in a bathroom at a meditation retreat), followed by the insight “this never ends.” Joe was so unattached to the awakening that he didn’t even notice it for three months. He later went through a phase of defining himself by awakening, subtly putting himself above others, before that identity too dissolved into something as unremarkable as hair color.
Joe explains why he rarely teaches meditation or discusses awakening directly: there are already great teachers for that, and his tools are designed to dissolve the sense of self through relationship and emotional work rather than through sitting on a cushion, which can become another form of avoidance. He notes that many people in his courses have had awakening experiences without ever seeking them—which he considers a healthier, more integrated path.
Key Concepts
- Awakening is not an endpoint—evolution never ends
- Any self-definition limits you
- The dissolution of self happens through many paths
Key Quotes
“The evolution never ends.”
“I’ve seen people get stuck for 10 years thinking that they’re at an end, and they’re just another form of avoidance and self-definition.”
“It’s like hair color. So what?”
“Every epiphany is a future rut.”
“We just keep on dancing. We just keep on evolving. We learn to enjoy more and more and more. We become kinder, more loving, more compassionate to ourselves and others, and there’s really no end to that.”
“You can really sit in a defined sense of self on a meditation pillow because you’re not bucking up against the world.”
Transcript
So how did your relationship to that sort of hero and hip moment of those eight seconds of oneness shift over all this period of time? Like I’m hearing you now describe that you got into all this work and you did like often process and everything you could find just seeing what tools worked for people and trying them. But what was your relationship to the goal or goallessness of your search and how was that shifting? Yeah so there was like so my mind it was like there was I—the main drive was I’m not good enough and if I’m awake, if I’m awake like that I’ll be good enough all the time. Like that was kind of the thought process. And so a lot of my work centered—and because I was very head driven—a lot of my work centered on awakening through like non-dual meditation. And so I’d say half of it was really deeply entrenched in that. And so it started what it just did was it filed down the fight in me over time. The more I meditated the less I was fighting with myself. And so it went from like I have to do this and I’m not good enough to—and in that more big experiences happened and then I stopped chasing them as much and they would just occur. And I would do this emotional work kind of on the side. And so my relationship—it just became—it still was like it was deeply important. Like somewhere early on in the first year the thought occurred to me like what am I? And I would ask that question some version of that question 10–20 times a day for like six or seven years. And I was constantly settling my nervous system from this place of I’m not safe which is what I learned as a child. And so that was happening and that never particularly quit but the search became less and less compulsive. But it was always there. And then I had a meditation retreat where I was in the bathroom and I immediately had this thought that said oh I’m—like the answer to “I am” was answered. It wasn’t answered in a—the thought was “I’m that” but this nonsensical—it was just a recognition that that place that I had touched all those years ago was what I was. And there was just no doubt in it. And then the second thing that happened immediately after that was “and this never ends”—that the evolution never ends. And that’s where I think all that work for those eight years paid off so well because I’ve seen people get stuck for 10 years thinking that they’re at an end and they’re just another form of avoidance and self-definition. So I was very lucky that way. And then the relationship changed even more. At that point I didn’t even know what the fuck I was like—another big experience, who gives a shit? I’m still in this thing. And it was like three months later I noticed—I’m like wow the voice in the head is kind of gone. Like I didn’t even notice. The critical negative voice in the head was mostly gone. The fight was mostly gone. The editor, the one that was telling me about my experience, was gone. I hardly noticed it. And then I was with Case at some point and he was talking about his awakening and I was like oh you know I was searching that for a long time and then recognized oh shit that actually happened to me and I just started laughing hysterically. And that was like the recognition that the awakening that I had looked for had happened in my heart and I didn’t even notice it. Which is really a strange thing. And then I started to define myself by it and then there was like this whole world of people that opened up that were in that thing of like oh we are people who have had this awakening experience. Which is in itself ridiculous. And so there’s a time when I defined myself in that and I identified with it even though it was very subtle. Maybe even in some ways very subtly put myself above people in it. And then just very slowly very slowly over time the whole idea of awakening just became very unimportant to me. Like it’s like hair color. So what? And it is important—I understand that because my system works that way. There’s a lot more ease in my system. My emotional fluidity was easier for me to capture because I didn’t have the story. There’s a lot of benefit to it. But to me it’s just natural. It happens to everybody if you just keep evolving. It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t make you special or better or different. And so that’s the way it sits now. Now it’s like background. I don’t even notice. But if I’m ever asked I can—there’s no place, there’s no time when I don’t feel like I’m part of that.