Episode 30 – Shortcuts to Enlightenment That Don’t Work – and the Path That Truly Leads Home

Many who long to wake up want it done in a month: an ayahuasca weekend in the mountains, a guided meditation to activate the pineal gland, a hit of DMT when they have 30 minutes. Pål-Esben has seen people come home from a week’s ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon with a totally destroyed third chakra, and it often takes at least a year to ground people like that again. Amina, who went through traumatic plant-medicine ceremonies, now sees that even her most exalted experiences there were part of the dream.

In this thirtieth episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the shortcuts to enlightenment that don’t work, and the path that truly leads home. They explore psychedelics, superficial meditation, spiritual consumption, AI gurus, spiritual bypassing and energetic transmissions, and why real experiences of oneness take a silent mind, a process of cultivation and a guide who sees you. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• Amina’s state after her experiences of oneness: a foundation that is always there, and life without the inner whip
• Why becoming something else is different from cognitive routines and affirmations, and what it means to wake up from the sleepwalking state
• The instant society, the attention span of digital media, and why so many people look for shortcuts
• Psychedelics: what research on psilocybin, ayahuasca and MDMA in therapy has found, and why they are useless on the path to oneness
• Guided meditations, the pineal gland and DMT, and why the preparation rituals matter as much as the meditation process itself
• Spiritual consumption, 20 teachers with 20 cake recipes, and why no AI guru or internet guru can replace a human guide
• Spiritual bypassing, protection against negative energies and the cleanliness syndrome
• Energetic transmissions, the doctoral thesis you have to write yourself, and lighting the light within, one person at a time

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Pål-Esben: A warm welcome to a new episode, Amina.

Amina: Thank you so much. Likewise, Pål-Esben.

The process of liberation: the way home

Pål-Esben: And a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. Today we’re going to talk about some very interesting topics connected to what we started on in the last three episodes: real spiritual awakening, which can also be called spiritual enlightenment or spiritual self-realization. Actually, they’re slightly silly words to use, and in episodes 27 and 28 we talked a lot about why they’re really the wrong words for what we help with. Because it’s about the process of liberation back to our true self: the process we go through to become one with everything, break out of the straitjacket and the darkness, and come home, as we call it. It’s an exceptionally exciting path to experience, Amina. You’ve been through the start of this process, the primordial shamanic path to oneness and spiritual enlightenment, and a few things have blown you away along the way. Can you tell us a little about your state today, and what it has been like so far to dip your toe into this process?

The foundation that is always there

Amina: I can try as best I can. I have to say it, and I’ve said it before too: this path was absolutely not what I thought it was. We’ve talked a lot about personal development, about walking an authentic path and working with our shadow sides and the autopilot, becoming a genuinely good human being, setting healthy and loving boundaries, the Path of the Heart. I keep learning more about this and seeing it from a slightly different perspective. Take pillar number 7, for example: what I thought I understood a year ago, I understand in a completely different way now. And you’ve said very often: don’t think you’ve understood what it’s about, because then you block yourselves.

Seen from a human perspective, there have been ups and downs through this process, but they’ve been important ups and downs where I’ve got to learn quite a lot. I feel that today I have much deeper contact with my true nature. The first times I had experiences of oneness, it was very hard to come back to everyday life again, but now I feel it can blend a little more into my human life. Having contact with that part of myself in everyday life is a feeling that can’t be described. It’s like carrying this with you: everything’s fine, everything’s safe. It isn’t that I walk around thinking that everything’s safe; it’s just a foundation that’s there all the time, whatever happens. That may sound a bit too good to be true. It doesn’t mean I don’t go through difficult things, or that I can’t get ill. It just means I have that foundation with me all the time. And I wish more people understood that these states can be reached without extreme experiences, without psychedelics. I don’t think many people really know that, at least not among those I’ve talked to. It’s a natural way home, and it’s so magical.

From cognitive routines to becoming something else

Pål-Esben: Yes. When we start a journey of development, we often start with cognitive things. We take self-responsibility, we have certain rules we try to live by, and when we end up in a difficult situation, we use the Interrupt Handling Technique to try to follow our heart in everyday life. That’s a very cognitive way, through our thinking: we have to focus on doing the right thing. An ordinary path of development runs like that from start to finish, and over time these become routines that run more and more by themselves. But they’re still cognitive routines that are being drilled in.

What we’re talking about now is something else. When we begin to find the way home, the way to our Sahara, which we’ve discussed in the three previous episodes, the way to oneness, to the timeless and spaceless, to our complete self without limitation, we come back from these experiences as something else. And these are real reference experiences we’re talking about, not some stuff you get through a guided meditation where hormones are activated and you feel bliss. Gradually you become something else: not by focusing on doing a method or technique in everyday life, but by beginning to act from a different perspective, from a different nature that you didn’t have access to before.

The joyful child and the imprints

Pål-Esben: We start off very well, of course, when we come into this life as this joyful child. Our soul comes into a body, fully connected with its whole real self, but at that point the brain isn’t developed enough to handle it cognitively. You see these little children, joyful for no reason, throwing leaves up in the air, and that alone makes them laugh themselves silly with joy. Then life happens: we’re imprinted and learn that this is how things should be, and this is how they shouldn’t be. Somewhere between the ages of 7 and 14 or 15 there’s almost no connection left with our divine nature, with our soul, with what we really are. By then we’re more or less lost in the machine, on autopilot, with imprints that show in what society is like today. People are filled with darkness, with fear, with stress, with unrest, and it ends up the way things are in our society today, with lots of anxiety and the like, chronic illness and emptiness. That’s what most people go through, and that too is by design, the soul’s design, as we’ve talked about before.

The emptiness and the soul’s push

Pål-Esben: Then you come to a point in life where something deep inside you begins to say: there must be something more. A feeling, an emptiness. Often you have everything you need, with a job and a house and a family, but you still feel this emptiness. That’s where the soul starts giving a push: now we need to engage with other things than materialism. We need to engage with the way home, to find our way back to what we are. That’s the signal many people get around midlife, when you hit the midlife crisis: this tremendous push from the soul saying that now it’s time to start searching. Then the process of freeing yourself from these straitjackets, from these autopilots, begins.

More light, less darkness

Pål-Esben: What’s interesting when we begin that process is that we come closer and closer to what we call becoming more light. Gradually you break out of the straitjacket through your shamanic death, heal the dark night of the soul, lay the groundwork to prepare the second birth, as we’ve discussed, and begin to get a taste of your Sahara, your complete existence, through reference experiences like the ones you’ve had. What happens then is that more light becomes part of us. And the more light we get access to, the less darkness can exist. It’s like a dark room: switch on the lamp, and the darkness is gone.

That’s what you’re in the middle of experiencing now. There’s this darkness, where we often just react destructively and negatively to things: our partner says something we don’t like, or we get ill and don’t want to be ill. You now experience that from a completely different perspective. Because there’s so much more light present, you can’t experience it as negatively. That’s what’s impossible to understand before you experience it. The day you have contact with these Saharas, no anxiety and fear and depression can exist in your life, since you’ve become something other than what you were when you experienced this darkness. And that’s what you’re talking about, in my words, Amina.

Without the inner whip

Amina: Yes, absolutely. It’s lovely to have your words alongside mine here, because these things aren’t always so easy to explain. Many things have changed after the experiences of oneness. After my last experience of oneness, I began to see the inner whip we so often use on ourselves in a completely different light, especially on a journey of personal development where you’re supposed to become more aware of all your shadow sides. I don’t have that whip any more. If I see a less-than-flattering trait in my personality, or a reaction, I can see it and just think: oh, interesting. OK, let’s reflect on that a little. I’m not unkind to myself. There’s no reason to be unkind to myself; I’m a human being doing the best I can. And it’s something completely different when that part really comes from within, compared with when you have to use the Interrupt Handling Technique to stop it.

Another thing I’ve noticed: there are many people who aren’t big fans of listening to themselves. I go through our podcast episodes and pick out clips, and I rewatch seminars, because it’s very instructive. Before, I always skipped them; I didn’t want to hear myself talk, because then I’d think: oh, good grief, did I say that? Did I do that? Whereas now I think: yes, I said that. There are no painful feelings around it. You come back with something completely different. And it’s the same with things that happen in life: even though it was dramatic from a human perspective, perhaps serious too, I brought that calm with me. And when you have that calm with you, you’re able to act from a completely different place, from a place where there’s no noise.

Waking from the sleepwalking state

Pål-Esben: Yes. And when you haven’t experienced this, it’s very hard to imagine it. We’re so keen, for example, on using affirmations: “Every day, things are getting better and better and better,” we say, and then we hope things get better. But you become something else after you’ve had these experiences of oneness, after being in your Sahara where time and space don’t exist, where you’re one with absolutely everything that is. Then you also bring something else home with you into your everyday life. Then you have no need for any affirmations, which are actually very artificial to use. Because you become something else, and from there you find yourself acting in a much more constructive, harmonious and loving way with whatever happens in life. You don’t get so focused on everything ordinary people have lots of anxiety and fear and unrest about. How is our society doing now? What happens when AI comes and takes all our jobs? How is the war in Ukraine going, and what about Trump, who now wants to take over Europe? You don’t walk around thinking about that, because it’s just part of the stone, part of the grain of sand, part of the illusion. It’s part of the dream.

And when you enter these states that have to do with oneness, you’re awake for a moment, or ten, or a hundred. You experience what it’s like to wake up from the sleepwalking state. And when you come back, you begin more and more to recognise what the dream is, that is, the sleepwalking state most people are in. The soul incarnates here, and in reality we’re in the middle of our soul; part of our soul creates this illusion, which is actually a dream that we believe is reality. It’s nice and exciting to hear about in theory, as we’ve done in earlier episodes. But then you begin to experience it. You see the sleepwalking, you see the dream and the people walking in the dream, you see yourself halfway in the dream, and you begin to identify what is dream and what isn’t. That’s when the most spectacular voyage of a human life begins.

And that’s where you are now, in this twilight zone: between the dream, which all your life you’ve believed was reality, and the waking state, which you’re now starting to get a real taste of. At the start this is a bit challenging to handle. When you begin to have your first experiences of oneness, it often takes weeks to come back again and reintegrate, because it’s quite simply a shock: what we thought was reality turns out to have nothing to do with reality. Then the intellect, the ego and the like need time to come back again. But as you get more experience, and are more and more able to bring yourself into these states, you have experience after experience showing that, wow, this is something natural. And it’s beyond spectacular.

The metaphysical is part of the dream too

Amina: Yes, really. And this is also where you can see how to become good friends with the ego and the intellect, and use them as a tool, as a good friend, instead of letting all the old imprints steer you, or treating them as an enemy. And one of the things I found very strange at the beginning was this. When we walk a spiritual path of development and are in the esoteric world, doing energy work and healing and those things, I at least thought it was part of the truth, part of who we really are, because it’s so different from ordinary, run-of-the-mill human life. But I’ve realised there’s a difference between the metaphysical and being in the timeless and spaceless. The metaphysical, too, is part of the dream. It’s a very nice part of the dream, pleasant, but it’s still part of the dream.

Pål-Esben: Correct. Everything is part of the grain of sand. People think the metaphysical is part of something much bigger, but in reality everything to do with the physical and the metaphysical, the dimensional, the different kinds of dimensions, is part of the grain of sand. And it’s spectacular when you begin to experience it. So you could say this is the most extreme form of personal development a human being can go through. You’re not even close when you walk an ordinary path of personal development, where you learn through cognitive routines, practise new routines, take 90 days, and blah, blah, blah. This is very different.

There we go, now the dyslexic is starting to ramble. But it’s good that we can have a bit of a laugh; I laugh at myself, laugh at the madness. Now and then I listen to what I say on the podcast and think: Pål-Esben, you have certain phrases you say all the time, which perhaps annoy some people. So I chuckle at myself. That’s just the way I am, take it or leave it.

So anyway: when we go through a process of development like the one we’re going through here, back to our real self, back to our full existence, we have to make a number of leaps. And we’ve gone into those in quite some detail in the three previous episodes, where we’ve talked about the second birth, what shamanic death really is, the dark night of the soul, and topics like being twice born. It isn’t something you just do, just like that. It’s a process of development we need to go through.

The instant society and the attention span

Pål-Esben: And in the society we live in today, most people want things right away. I describe it as part of society’s malaise: that we have to have gratification right away. We have an attention span of somewhere between one and three seconds, at least when it comes to digital media. When you scroll through your feed, you spend somewhere between one and three seconds at most on something before you choose to look at it more or move on. Our attention keeps flitting about. And so it’s natural that most people in today’s society fail at what you’re doing: we no longer have the ability to focus, we’re used to having everything served up, and we want the results right away, preferably without doing the work it takes. Because you can’t go through a process like this with any kind of instant results, without being willing to deal with your own sacred cows, as I call them: your own hatred, your own jealousy, your own compensatory mechanisms, your own destructive behavioural mechanisms. That’s everything that creates a straitjacket and an ego, and that creates the karmic armour around a human being. Without being willing to start working on that, which isn’t done in a week or a weekend, this is impossible.

But I still notice, when I talk to people, that they always want quick ways. Then they say: how long does it take? And I say: you have to reckon on at least 18 months, if you devote yourself to a process like this, before we can begin to guide you into genuine, real experiences of oneness that are stable. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t you have some trick where I can fix this in a month?” No, that isn’t possible. That’s why many people who have this longing to set themselves free look for shortcuts to real awakening that don’t work. I understand why people do it. But now we’re going to discuss the common shortcuts many people try to look for, and explain why people don’t stand a chance with these common shortcuts. What are your thoughts on shortcuts, Amina?

Shortcut 1: psychedelic drugs

Amina: The first thing that comes to me is psychedelic drugs. People look for shortcuts and believe they’ve found the oneness we’re talking about through psychedelic drugs. I’ve been there myself, and as I’ve talked about a little before, psychedelics can be good for many things, but not for this process. And the things I thought had something to do with oneness, through my experiences with psychedelic drugs, are something completely different. It’s pure dreamland. They’re very pleasant and lovely feelings, but it also shows in the fact that I didn’t change in that way afterwards. I got some big insights, but not in the same way as what I’m experiencing now.

Psilocybin in therapy: what the research found

Pål-Esben: Let’s drill into that. In the esoteric world this is a bit of a sore subject; it’s becoming more and more common among esoteric people to seek out experiences with psychedelic drugs. So first of all: psychedelic drugs in themselves aren’t the devil. They can be very effective in certain forms of healing, that is, as plant medicine. Take psilocybin, for example, the active substance in magic mushrooms, such as liberty caps. At Imperial College London they’ve studied the use of psilocybin in therapy for people who are depressed, with spectacular results. But they also found that when they just sent the depressed person on a journey with psilocybin and nothing else, the effect on the depression wore off after one to three months. A journey like that lasts somewhere between five or six and eight or nine hours, depending on the body’s metabolism and the amount of psilocybin you take. What they gradually understood was that they had to do this treatment in a therapeutic setting. Because the experiences themselves opened the way to conversations, to thinking in a different way, to moving out of their own little shell and understanding that our universe is something much bigger. And with talking therapy alongside the psilocybin treatment, they got far better results, in that the results held up over a long time.

We find the same thing with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. There they’ve had very good experiences with ayahuasca, and with what we call ecstasy, MDMA. They’ve seen exceptional results when it’s used in a therapeutic setting, where you have a specialist who can prepare you, guide you through the process and do the follow-up work with you. So, beyond any doubt: these various forms of psychedelics, whether we’re talking about ayahuasca, mescaline from the peyote cactus, psilocybin, DMT or LSD, which is a chemically produced psychedelic, can be used for good things in therapy, and for giving people the experience that our existence is so much bigger than we think it is as human beings. That’s provided they’re used in a healthy, sensible and safe way, with preparation and follow-up afterwards.

But that’s not how they’re used in most cases in our society today. People come along and go up to the mountains for a week, where they’ll have a couple of ayahuasca rounds, and then they’re just sent home afterwards. There’s no preparation and no follow-up work. And then people think it’s the experience itself that will do the job. For most people the experience definitely won’t do what they’re looking for, especially not when we’re talking about the path to oneness. Do you have any comments on that, since you’ve been through these things yourself?

Without preparation and follow-up work

Amina: Yes, I do, at least based on my own experiences. I’ve been through some pretty traumatic things in ceremonies of that kind. And I always went in with an intention. I’ve never been a person who was interested in intoxication or alcohol, but in really working on myself wholeheartedly. But I often came out more traumatised than when I went in. At the same time it’s as you say: there are some big, important aha experiences that can change a person’s life, and that have changed my life too. But if I hadn’t had friends around me I could talk to after the biggest and worst of them, I don’t know where I’d be today. Because it can be very intense. And I’ve talked to all these people who just say: “I decided to go yesterday, and I’m back home today.” Then I think: that’s going to go wrong one day.

But the reason I started talking about it is that, in my experience, it’s something completely different from what we’re talking about now. You can have very exalted experiences, but the way I see it, those exalted experiences have been part of the dream. If I talk to someone about walking a path and studying shamanism, they think they know what shamanism is: the four directions and the elements and the drum. Then I explain a little about the path we walk, because it’s something not many people associate with shamanism. And then I often get feedback like: “Oh yes, those things, I do that too.” And then perhaps they’re working with psychedelics, and think we’re talking about the same thing. I can understand that too, because the person doesn’t have the background to understand what we’re doing. In the beginning I found that kind of thing hard to deal with, but now it’s fine. But there may be someone listening to this episode who thinks: “Yes, yes, but oneness, wholeness: I’ve been one with a tree, I’ve been one with the ground, I’ve been one with everything that exists.” Because you can feel that on plant medicine. But I just wanted to make clear that, in my experience, it’s something completely different, because I now see that everything I’ve experienced in those settings has also been part of the dream.

Pål-Esben: Correct. And now that you’re walking a real path of development and beginning to have genuine experiences of oneness, you can see that it’s very different from what you experience in an ayahuasca setting. The two have very little to do with each other. The reason we’re talking about this is that I don’t want to demonise psychedelics if they’re used in a healthy, therapeutic way, with professional guides who prepare you and do the follow-up work, which all in all takes at least a year. If I were to guide someone through a process like that, there’d be a minimum of six months of preparation, then you’d go through the ritual with the psychedelic substance, and then there’d be at least six months of follow-up work. Then it could make sense. But that’s not what I see today: people go off for a weekend on an ayahuasca trip in the mountains, the next month there’s a psychedelic thing somewhere else, and so they go from trip to trip and think it’ll make them more spiritually enlightened. That’s one of the biggest blunders you can make.

Because when you use a psychedelic drug, your default mode network and your autopilot are also calmed right down, largely switched off. And the stronger the drug, the more they’re switched off, but the more psychotic you become too, in the sense that you don’t know what’s what. Anyone who has experienced a ritual like that knows that you’re shifting all the time: colours shift, experiences shift, emotions shift. You shoot from one thing to another, and perhaps you land in the sun and think you’re one with everything. I’m not saying it isn’t possible to be in contact with your Sahara for a moment or two in a state like that. The problem is that you aren’t present with focus. You’re thrown in, and then you’re thrown out. It’s completely unsuited to a real process of awakening, since that requires focus and presence in the silence. In an experience like that there’s chaos, and you have very little control over where you’re thrown, depending on the emotions, depending on the music being played. As a healing remedy for depression, PTSD and the like, it can be brilliant. But for what we’re talking about in these episodes, the way back to your true nature, to oneness, to your Sahara, it’s completely useless.

Ruined energy systems: the warning

Pål-Esben: And if you study those who have been doing this for many thousands of years, for example in the yogic culture, you’ll see that most of the best-known yogis in history say the same thing about using psychedelics: psychedelics are something we absolutely don’t recommend for a process of development. Nor is there any need for them. What I’ve seen many times over the last 20 years is reckless use of psychedelics. People go in without thorough preparation, without anyone who is an expert in actually carrying out the ritual, in the emotional and physical framework, in the set and setting that need to be in place, in the energetic settings. And they go in without the will to do the follow-up work, with individual conversations for months afterwards to do the integration. Very few people do that. So I’ve seen many, many times that people have come to me completely shattered. Their whole energy system is in chaos. They’re in a state where they’re no longer emotionally stable, and they have trouble relating to their life and to the people around them. And it often takes a long time to ground them back into their life, at least a year. And how many times do you think I’ve seen people come back from the Amazon jungle after a week’s ayahuasca retreat with a totally destroyed third chakra? All that comes out of them is rambling and nonsense, and you can’t relate to them any more. It happens again and again. That’s why I strongly advise against using psychedelics without a professional process around the whole session.

Because a permanent or stable state of oneness, which is what people are after when they use psychedelics for this, requires exceptional silence and calm. That’s the precondition. If you don’t have that silence, the ego, the intellect and everything buzzing around in your conscious and unconscious mind keep churning away, and psychic spaces open up from the subconscious. And that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about now. So going through a process like that once in your life with a professional, a year-long process as I call it, can be really valuable for some people, especially if you’re wondering whether there’s anything more than the hamster wheel.

Amina: Yes. And it’s perhaps not suited to a process like the one we’re talking about now, the path to oneness and the meditation process. That’s because of everything you’ve been talking about, but not least because the nervous system stays on edge for a long time afterwards. You don’t get any silence in the mind then.

Pål-Esben: Exactly. And that’s the thing: to get access to your Sahara, you have to break out of the grain of sand one way or another. The grain of sand consists of many defence mechanisms; we call it the straitjacket. After you’ve gone through your shamanic death and begun to dissolve the straitjacket, you need to find states where you’re completely present in the silence, as we do, for example, through our meditation process. When it’s quiet enough, and you do it the right way, with your attention on this silent space, sinking deeper and deeper, then you’ll break through. You pop into something completely different, which is even quieter than the silence, but which is everything. It isn’t possible just to go and use psychedelics. There’s work that has to be done, but very few people are willing to do the process of cultivation that you’ve done. So for our purposes, the path to oneness, spiritual enlightenment and real spiritual awakening, psychedelics are really completely useless. If anything, they create bigger problems, because you may have an extreme experience. You have to remember that states like that also generate massive amounts of hormones: melatonin and serotonin and dopamine and the whole lot. It’s a massive hormone cocktail that’s released, and you can feel exceptional bliss for a moment. But it has nothing to do with oneness.

I don’t think we should say any more about it now; perhaps we’ll do a whole episode of its own where we go through psychedelic drugs one by one and talk about them in detail: what you should do with them, what you shouldn’t, and what a real process looks like. So if you, dear listener, feel that this is something you want to try anyway, for example ayahuasca or psilocybin, then I’d say this. Make sure you find a therapist or an organisation or a guide who takes you through a complete process that takes no less than a year. Don’t just throw yourself into it. Because in the worst case, if you’re unprepared and also have an unstable personality, perhaps struggle with various mental illnesses or have challenges with emotional stability, this can turn into a bad trip, a real horror trip, that leaves you completely shattered and destroyed by the experiences you have. Because nobody knows what experiences they’ll have when they start a ritual like that, if they aren’t prepared before it happens. I have a lot of experience with that, which we can discuss another time: what a bad trip like that feels like. And you know yourself how extremely unstable you were, until we managed to work our way through it and stabilise you. Yes, it got really bad, Amina.

Amina: Yes, my goodness. I have a bit to tell there, so we’ll definitely have to give that an episode of its own some time.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And the more energetically sensitive you are, and the more direct access you have to your ESP antenna, the more on your guard you need to be. Like you: you were very connected to this ESP antenna, you were energetically sensitive, you were emotionally sensitive. And putting someone like that into a process like that without it being done in a professional way can end extremely badly.

Amina: Yes.

Shortcut 2: superficial meditation and mindfulness

Pål-Esben: That was my warning. OK, let’s jump over to the next typical shortcut, which perhaps comes more naturally to most people: believing that superficial meditation, guided meditations, mindfulness and so on can lead to enlightenment. But that’s not how it is. You can be guided into some meditation or other where you lie there seeing some angels, or be guided to a place where you feel incredibly good. Perhaps it’s a meditation that pushes energy up through the spine into the pineal gland, so that you activate a hormone cocktail and feel bliss. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it has nothing to do with the path to oneness. Because that requires more than a few minutes of meditation a day, and more than a few guided meditations to a place where you feel good and relaxed.

To be able to walk a path of development like this, we need in one way or another to cultivate a silent mind. And by a silent mind I mean silent, silent: not one thought. I don’t mean shifting your attention once every three seconds; I mean being present in the silence, fully and completely. Superficial meditation and a bit of mindfulness here and there aren’t suited to that. It’s a special kind of process of cultivation we need to go through, which for most people is incredibly difficult at the start. It takes patience. Can you say a few words about how challenging it was at the start, when you began with the meditation process, and we had to take that goldfish attention span of yours and bring more stability into your focus, and about how frustrated you were at times?

The goldfish attention span and the frustration

Amina: I’ve had a lot of frustration. For one thing, when we started the meditation process, that’s when I really saw what lay in the unconscious; it was forced up to the surface. But this business of getting a silent mind: I remember asking a question once, because I was looking for that silence. I couldn’t find that silence. Where is it? It’s the ego and the intellect that want to look for something; they have to pigeonhole something, they have to get something in place. And focus is something I’m still working on getting better and better at, but it was something I struggled with a lot in the beginning, especially with an ADHD diagnosis. You don’t need to have ADHD to struggle with focus today, because that’s something most people struggle with. It was extremely difficult. I’ve now been doing the meditation process for two years, and I notice it gets better and better with every month that passes. That goes for surrendering to the silence too.

But I have every sympathy with those who say meditation isn’t for them, because they can’t do it. And then I just have to say: you can do it, but you have to want it enough. It isn’t just a matter of pressing a button, that’s not what I mean, but it isn’t comfortable at the start, and there are many things you have to learn through perhaps not managing it. And some people perhaps have more natural talent and get there faster than others. But it hasn’t just been easy. What I’ve also found is how much diet matters for the system, the nervous system, how things work. It’s perhaps best not to eat the biggest meal right before meditation; that’s where I’ve really learned by trial and error. And not least, it matters what state you’re in before you go into the meditation. If I’ve been to a heavy metal concert and am going home to meditate, I can’t just sit down straight away and go right in. It’s about spending a little time before you go into the meditation, so you have easier access to it. But it has been really hard along the way.

The meditation process: months, not decades

Pål-Esben: And that’s how it is for most people at the start. That’s why most people give up, when they don’t have a suitable guide and mentor to guide them through the process. In all these years I’ve never seen anyone fail at the meditation process if they’ve done it and had guidance along the way. It normally takes somewhere between one and, at worst, three, four or five months before you really settle, if you resolve the blockages that come up, through guidance. But if you try this on your own, and also have problems with attention and focus, it’s very challenging. A digression here: the way we put it, it’s only meditation when you’re one with your nature; then you’re meditating. Until then it’s a meditation process, which is what most people call meditation.

It’s something you have to cultivate, or this will never work. You’ll never be able to have a stable state in the Sahara and oneness unless it’s quiet enough, and unless you have enough focus and attention in the silence. And you’ll hear the same in any great spiritual tradition: the yogic tradition, Buddhism, Zen, Sufism. They talk about exactly the same thing. But it isn’t something you need to practise for 20 years to manage. As a rule, six months at most is enough before you begin to notice the gears meshing, the tyres gripping the road, and you begin to get traction and acceleration.

The pineal gland, DMT and the businessman’s trip

Pål-Esben: But the challenge is that most people look for shortcuts. So instead they go on YouTube or somewhere else and look up videos about how to activate the pineal gland, because when you activate the pineal gland, they say, you can enter oneness. That’s complete bullshit. There’s nothing wrong with activating the pineal gland; one of the nice things when you activate it is that it creates and secretes hormones such as serotonin, and also DMT, dimethyltryptamine. And DMT is actually a psychedelic. Today it’s becoming more and more widely known that people smoke DMT, and it’s one of the most extreme ways of experiencing a psychedelic trip. You smoke DMT, it takes 15 to 30 seconds before it kicks in, the whole ego and the default mode network are completely dissolved, and you’re in this intoxicated state for 5 to 15 minutes. As a rule you remember nothing of what you’ve experienced, but as you do it again and again, you come into contact with what are called DMT entities, or at least that’s what people believe, and they believe these are very intelligent beings. But that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about now either. They also call it the businessman’s trip: when you smoke DMT, everything has to happen so fast. Yes, I’ve got 30 minutes, let me have a hit of DMT, and then I’ve had a so-called spiritual experience. And so the world becomes more and more unhinged. But it won’t lead to what we’re talking about.

The process of cultivation: preparation is half the job

Pål-Esben: Because it’s a process of cultivation we have to be willing to go through, and it’s actually very spectacular and exciting, the way we do it. We use energy work, certain beings of light and certain dragons as part of our tradition, which help the student through this process, and which make the process of cultivation spectacular in its own right. It isn’t as if you have to sit and meditate and meditate and hope it turns out well. We do it in a much cooler way, at least in our tradition, where we have lots of help and a tailwind in the process, so it doesn’t take very long.

In our tradition we also stress that the rituals of preparation before the meditation process are just as important as the meditation process itself. There you learn methods for bringing the physical body into a parasympathetic state, where you activate the vagus nerve and the whole physical body relaxes. Because if you bring stress into the meditation process, it becomes unbearable: this inner stress makes the whole body vibrate, and you never settle. As long as the body is stressed, it’s pointless to start a meditation process like this. First the body has to be balanced, and there are many ways of doing that. I love things like yin yoga, for example: you might do ten minutes of stretching, a couple of long stretches to activate the vagus nerve, so the body calms down again. And then we do rituals to calm the mind enough before the meditation process, certain kinds of energy work, certain kinds of shamanic rituals and other cool things, so that you’re primed, or prepared, for the meditation process to slide smoothly into silence. Then it doesn’t have to be so terribly difficult.

So guided meditations and all these things out there aren’t usable for what we’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with them: you go on YouTube and do a guided meditation to activate the pineal gland, and feel incredibly good and feel love and feel blah, blah, blah. It can be a wonderful experience, a healing experience. But it has absolutely nothing, zip, nada, to do with the path to oneness. That’s often what gets misunderstood when these YouTube people talk. When you feel this and that, and do that in meditation, are you in oneness? No, you definitely aren’t. And you’ve experienced both, so you can say something about it from experience: what it’s like to activate the hormone system, feel well-being, feel the love, feel bliss through a guided meditation, compared with a real experience of oneness in the Sahara. They’re two completely different things, aren’t they?

Amina: Yes, they’re two completely different things. I also look at it differently now when people say, “I’ve meditated; I meditated while I was knitting.” We use the word meditation because it’s in common use, and it’s what people understand. My experience is that in a guided meditation, or on inner journeys that others have taken me through, there can be a feeling that I’ve felt coming from within me and out into my whole body and all my cells. But in the meditation of the meditation process, those emotions and feelings come from a completely different place. It has nothing to do with the same system. That’s my experience of it, at least.

Pål-Esben: Yes, they’re two different things. One has to do with the grain of sand: it’s a grain-of-sand experience. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It can be very healing and lovely, and if you have a dark and sad life, it can perhaps be very good to go into these states to feel good, to get hope. It’s definitely not just nonsense. But in relation to the path to the Sahara and to your full nature, it’s useless.

Another thing that won’t work either is trying to activate the kundalini energy. That won’t lead to these Saharas either. It can lead to what some yogis or gurus in India call energetic enlightenment. And that has nothing to do with the Saharas either. It’s just that you activate the energy system so extremely that you get a tremendous feeling of bliss, a tremendous feeling of happiness. But you’re still in the grain of sand. So when people go on YouTube and learn methods for activating the kundalini energy and Ida, Sushumna and Pingala and the like, and believe it leads to enlightenment, it’s unlikely to do so. Because after you’ve activated this energy, there are other things that have to be done to move from the sixth to the seventh chakra, which we’ll talk about next time. And despite its name, the kundalini energy doesn’t really have to do with energy; it’s a consciousness you become aware of. But that’s a completely different story. We can perhaps talk about that in the next episode.

The challenge is that all these things you find, whether in books or on YouTube or on social media, claim they’ll take you to oneness and enlightenment. But most of them will never take you there. They take you to lovely experiences, but not to genuine ones. That’s why I’m very glad you’re here with me, and that we’re talking about this together; otherwise this would just be words from me. You’ve experienced both and can underline that they really have nothing to do with each other. They’re two different things. We can say “Both, please”; it isn’t that the other things are bad. It’s just that they won’t lead to the liberation we’re discussing here.

Shortcut 3: spiritual consumption

Pål-Esben: So let’s jump to the next typical shortcut people often resort to: what I call spiritual consumption, or spiritual consumer habits. People believe that the more books they read and collect, and the more courses and seminars they go to, the more spiritual they become. That’s not how it is, in my eyes. You can learn lots of exciting things, but unless you’re willing to integrate the learning into everyday life, it’s just theory. What it takes to walk the path you’ve walked is a kind of deep reflection and contemplation around what we’re doing, and being able to enter suitable reference experiences. And consuming will never lead you into reference experiences of that kind.

I notice it now and then when I come across people who have been on the spiritual path for many, many years. They’ve learned an enormous amount; they’ve perhaps read 100, 200, 300 books. They’ve studied one guru after another, and they know all the theory about what the gurus say about enlightenment. They know the names of all 114 chakras, they know where all 72,000 nadis are, and they can tell you all the theory about what it is. But they have no relevant reference experiences of what the theory describes. And that requires a process of cultivation, as we’ve talked about in recent episodes. It’s easy to get lost here, because you think that the more theory you know about enlightenment or self-realization, the more you know about what it’s about. That’s not how it is, because a great deal of what has been written on this topic doesn’t actually have much to do with oneness and enlightenment.

20 teachers, 20 cake recipes

Amina: Yes, and it’s something that confuses you: if you’re going to listen to 20 teachers and walk one path, you end up with 20 different recipes for the same cake. It goes without saying that it’s confusing. With one teacher, one guide, this is how I’ve experienced it. One part is the theory you talk about. Then there are the deeper things: these various healing processes you take us through, the rituals and so on, though I don’t really like using the word energy work for them. But a big, important part is also your being, who you are: the path you take us through, which you’ve been through yourself, the place you radiate from. That, at least as I experience it, is just as important a part of this path. And that really goes for everything, if you ask me. Take a psychotherapist who is authentic in the process, who has been through the difficult processes themselves, who has learned, who has reference experiences: just being in the room with a therapist like that is something completely different. And walking a path like this one is impossible without a suitable guide. Because you come up against the straitjacket, the ego and the imprints straight away. The ego thinks this is what we need to do, this is how we need to do it, now we’re right, now we’ve had the right experiences. But that will very rarely get you there. So in a process like this you need a suitable guide, mentor, guru, whatever you call it. Otherwise this is very, very heavy going.

AI gurus and internet wisdom

Pål-Esben: And the next thing, while we’re talking about this: more and more people in recent times are starting to look for guru figures and guides on social media and on YouTube, and now, in the last few years, with AI. They want to have their own AI guru to lead them towards enlightenment. That’s of course very problematic, since no AI can ever know exactly where you are in your process of development, exactly what’s needed, exactly where your blockages are. We have something that’s been programmed with masses of text, perhaps everything that’s been written about enlightenment, but it’s more or less useless in a real process of development. And when you look for guru figures on YouTube and the like, you can get lots of words of wisdom from lots of people, very many of them with fine clothes and long white beards, who are very wise about how to handle your life and create a happy life. They definitely are. But you mustn’t confuse wisdom, and the ability to use language poetically, with what makes up the path towards real experiences of oneness. There’s nothing wrong with watching these people and picking up wisdom for life that you can use to create a better life for yourself; that’s great. But it won’t help you on the path towards oneness.

Because there you need something that runs over a longer time: someone who sees you, someone who’s willing to shine a light on your sacred cows, who’s willing to shine a light on your shadow sides. It’s like when you sometimes get a bit angry with me when I mirror you and say: no, Amina, would you take a look at this shadow side? Why are you reacting like this? Where’s your heart in this? “Yes, but that person did that, and I’m entitled to do this and that.” Well, is that the Path of the Heart, then? It can be very uncomfortable at times to have a guide you talk to, but it’s absolutely essential. It’s how we identify where the compensatory mechanisms are, where the suppressed parts of your personality are, where the destructive behavioural mechanisms are, so that we can become aware of them. Because it’s only when we become aware of them that we can set about treating them, healing them and integrating them. Without that it’s impossible to dissolve our straitjackets, which we were imprinted into as we grew up. We lose contact with our soul between the ages of 7 and 14, and gradually we become more or less robots on autopilot, where we think we have free will but perhaps use a tenth of a percent of the free will that’s available. That happens easily, because most of it runs on autopilot.

And if you then use an AI, or an internet guru, or some short soundbites on TikTok, and think that will lead you along the path Amina is walking, that isn’t possible. Because it requires someone to shine a light on these sides of you, and to be willing to identify something you’re blind to, something you even find uncomfortable when it’s brought up. You think you’re such a loving person: I’m so loving, and I live so fully in love. And then, when your behaviour is brought out into the daylight, you see that perhaps you’re not such a loving person after all. You see that you have lots of resentment, frustration and hatred that you’ve suppressed through spiritual bypassing, through having learned some angel meditations, or learned to “live in love”, which doesn’t help you identify it. For that you need a human guide. That process is almost impossible to do yourself, since we’re subjective about ourselves.

Amina: Yes, and not least, on the path towards oneness there are all the experiences you have, and you need feedback on them. Was that an experience of oneness? Were you up in fantasy land? Were you in an astral pocket? Was that light you saw there oneness? Is there a bottom to the meditation process? You can get lost in all those things too, not least on this path.

Pål-Esben: Yes. So it’s a typical blunder many people make: they want the path to full liberation, but they walk a path where it’s impossible. And that’s why we’re discussing this: to give tips and insight to those of you who are searching, about what the typical traps are in a process of development like this, and why most people fail on the path towards oneness. It has nothing to do with quality, nothing to do with the willingness to make an effort, nothing to do with abilities, because everyone has those. Everyone has the full Sahara within themselves. It’s just about how we let go of what blocks us from these Saharas. We all have everything it takes to wake up. But we need someone to guide us through it, since our own world of chaos isn’t so easy to deal with. And you notice it yourself: when we begin to talk about the experiences, at the start it’s very hard to separate what’s an emotional, energetic, fantasy or psychotic experience from what’s a real experience of oneness. But gradually you learn to separate what’s what, and to say: yes, I say “Both, please” to everything, but I can tell chalk from cheese. So you need a bit of help there.

Shortcut 4: spiritual bypassing

Pål-Esben: Next, and we’ve also talked about this a little, is a typical trap many people fall into: something called spiritual bypassing, in other words spiritual avoidance. You do spiritual things to avoid doing what you actually need to do. Instead you choose to go into some energy to “live in love”, rather than dealing with the cause of uncomfortable feelings, problems with your personality, compensatory mechanisms and everything that’s a bit challenging and difficult to work with. You spray-paint over the rust, go into a spiritual experience instead and simply skip over what actually needs to be done. And that will never get you there either.

Amina: Yes, that’s absolutely right, and it’s a trap that’s very easy to fall into. Say you’ve just learned about setting boundaries, and then perhaps someone close to you comes along and tells you, “Listen, that attitude you had there perhaps wasn’t so good.” “No, now I’m setting a boundary, because I don’t want those negative energies on me, because now I live in love,” you say. And then you don’t really deal with those things.

Protection and the cleanliness syndrome

Pål-Esben: There’s a great deal of this in the esoteric world, because it seems there are many teachers who teach these things. The same idea applies to learning protection against negative energies, which we talked about in an earlier episode, where we talked about shamanism. Protection against negative energies won’t lead anyone anywhere at all. It’s also a form of spiritual bypassing. First of all, most negative energies are within yourself, not around you. The only place evil lives is in a human being. The only place demons live is also in a human being, as we’ve talked about. So believing you can solve so-called negative energies by putting yourself inside an energy bubble won’t solve anything at all, since the problem is within ourselves. When we kindle a light within ourselves, the darkness will automatically disappear, and then there’s absolutely no need for any protection.

The problem when you use protection of an energetic kind is that your energy system gets weaker and weaker. It’s the same as with this cleanliness syndrome: children who grow up in sterile homes often have a very poor immune system as adults, while children who grow up in a home that isn’t sterile, on a farm for example, often have a very strong immune system as adults, since they’ve had their immune system trained. That’s the difference between using protection and not using it: we do something about the underlying problem instead. Because this is something I often see: people who have learned protection often get weaker and weaker, and can have less and less to do with other people. They can’t even sit on the bus. It gets harder and harder, the more protection they use.

Amina: Yes. And my experience is that it’s better to build up your own foundation, so you can cope with the world, than to wrap yourself in cotton wool and not be able to cope with the world. Because then you become very limited.

Pål-Esben: Yes, that’s actually how it is. My task with you, for example, is to teach you how to light this light inside you. And the more light you have inside you, the less room there is for darkness. So how simple is it really, in theory? In practice it’s of course a bit more of a challenge. So, dear listener: those of you who have been with us since episode 1 know that this hasn’t always been easy. But just look at where Amina started and where she is today, in such a short time. It’s exceptional what’s possible once you have a suitable structure, a suitable system, a suitable mentor and guide who can do this. Then you don’t need to spend 30 years on it. It can go lightning fast, if you have the right setting.

Shortcut 5: energetic transmissions

Pål-Esben: So the last shortcut, which is also well known in the esoteric world, is believing that energetic transmissions, for example through shaktipat, will take you onto the path to oneness. In the yogic language it’s called shaktipat: when the disciple lays their forehead before the soles of the guru’s feet, or on top of the guru’s feet, the disciple receives an energetic transmission that’s meant to help the kundalini energy rise. There are also other kinds of energetic transmissions with different names, and some people become dependent on these energetic transmissions from their guru. But none of these energetic transmissions will take you where you’re heading today, Amina, since it’s work we need to do ourselves. Our soul has set these challenges for us. When it comes to getting through our doctoral theses at the elite university for souls, which is really what we’re talking about here, it’s impossible to buy your doctoral thesis on the internet. It’s actually something you have to write yourself.

So those are examples of some of the shortcuts that are common today, which many people resort to, but which won’t lead to the Sahara and to oneness and real spiritual awakening. There’s a piece of work that needs to be done. But it can be done in a fun way too, once you learn to see it from that perspective. It isn’t always so easy, and even on a good day I won’t sit here and be cocky about it, but it’s truly worth it. Nothing in life is more worth it than this, from my perspective. And it can go lightning fast.

Lighting the light: the path that works

Pål-Esben: To wrap up: I don’t think the process itself needs to take a long time, and it’s incredibly rewarding. Because every time you dip into your Sahara, into this genuine experience of oneness, you bring more of the wholeness of yourself back to the grain of sand. And the more of that wholeness you bring back to yourself, the more of this light is lit in a person, without them needing to do specific things for the light to be present. And in the society we live in today, which is full of more desperation, anxiety, fear, hatred and darkness than ever before in modern times, I believe the most important thing for a human being, and the most spectacular, must be to go through a process like the one you’re going through. Because through that, none of this darkness will get its hooks into you any more. You can live in this rather chaotic world of ours without going around afraid, without having anxiety, without being uneasy, without being afraid there’ll be a war. Because then you know what the Sahara is. Then you know that everything that exists around us here in our society is the grain of sand. And it isn’t something you know cognitively; it’s something you know deep inside, through reference experiences, through a deep knowing.

In that way we can create a better world, a more loving world, a more peaceful world: through people lighting this light in themselves, one by one. The more people who light this light in themselves, the better the world around you becomes, and the better your family gets it. Well, perfect grammar, just ask me. The better things get for your family… OK, do you see what I mean? This is where the dyslexia trips me up completely. Things get better for your friends too, as you become more and more of a light, which is the opposite of the darkness that rules in our society today. You can’t imagine anything more important for a human being to engage in.

Amina: No, I agree.

Pål-Esben: That’s why we’re talking about this, and that’s why we’re doing this podcast. It’s to inspire: to show what’s possible, that it isn’t really overcomplicated, and why that is. That’s my contribution and your contribution to creating a better world. Because I don’t believe you can create a better world by having a hundred people sit and meditate together and wish for world peace. That may be nice to do, but it isn’t what will create a better world. What will create a better world is people waking up, one by one, and beginning to see what is reality and what is fantasy. Only then can we begin to build the world so many people long for.

Amina: Yes. We start with ourselves.

Pål-Esben: Correct. Do you have any words of wisdom or thoughts to wrap up with now, dear Amina?

Amina: Well, closing words: there are no shortcuts home. And every shortcut you take only takes you further away.

Pål-Esben: Those are very wise words. With every shortcut, you get further into the thick forest, and further away from the motorway. Because in reality this is very simple. It’s spectacularly simple, in fact, since everything lives within us. We just need to rediscover what we are. We are our Sahara, we are the creative force, we are the complete consciousness. It’s just that we’re walking around in our dream and believe we’re something completely different. And that’s what’s so spectacular here: on the one hand it’s so simple, and on the other it’s so complex, since our imprints, the straitjacket and the ego keep throwing spanners in the works. But it is possible, definitely, Amina.

Amina: Yes, a hundred percent.

Pål-Esben: Yes. In the next episode we’ll talk about the journey of development from the first to the seventh chakra, that is, the process of cultivation itself. We’ll talk about the chakras, and how we describe a process of development like this through the chakras. We’ll talk about falling upwards from the sixth to the seventh chakra, where the really cool things start to happen. And we’ll also discuss kundalini and those things a little more. I think that’ll be interesting, Amina. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.