Episode 35 – The Soul Dreams – and You Think It’s Reality. The Soul’s Journey to Oneness

As a small boy, Pål-Esben would often sit outside under the starry sky, looking at the stars and longing to come home. Around the age of 10 he could put his hand on a book and understand everything in it. Amina came back from her first experience of oneness, at a ritual at Spidsbergseter, feeling as if she had just woken up in the morning: human life is only a dream.

In this thirty-fifth episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the soul’s journey to oneness. They explore why the soul chooses to dream a small part of itself into a human life, why there are no demons, aliens or computer simulations steering us, how karma is the memory the soul carries from one dream to the next, and what is meant by the soul’s doctoral thesis at the elite university for souls. 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

• The soul’s cycle, reincarnation as a simplified linear language, and the myths of simulations, aliens and dark forces
• Women’s power as calm rather than aggression, Perthro and the kundalini, and riding the wave that carries you
• Why there are no external enemies, only human demons, and how belief systems create suffering
• Viktor Frankl, and the bus that proves you have power over how you react
• The soul as a great ball of energy that dreams a small part of itself, and why it wants to taste strawberries and fall in love
• Karma as memory between dreams, the feeling of not belonging on this planet, and the claim that the source is lonely
• The soul’s epic journey, the search from angel courses to a real guide, and the prism that makes things feel familiar
• The elite university for souls, the soul’s doctoral thesis, and why a few percent of humanity could be enough to change the world

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: Hi, Amina, and a warm welcome to a new episode.

Amina: Hi, Pål-Esben. Thank you, likewise.

The soul’s cycle: how Amina saw it

Pål-Esben: Thank you, and a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. Today we thought we’d take a closer look at the soul’s journey in relation to the path to oneness. What is it that really happens? What kind of cycle does our soul have? And why is the path to oneness so important for our soul? And Amina, when you started your process here, you also had an idea of how souls cycle in and out. People talk about incarnation, they talk about life and death, and then you’re born again, and so on. What thoughts did you have about how this worked, at the start?

Amina: I believed very much in incarnations and incarnation cycles: that we were born, and then we lived a life, and then we died, and then we were born again, and that this was the cycle. And that we may also be on other planets and in other star systems; that was something I thought, yes, that’s how it is. I explored a lot. I read about people who had experiences with children who remembered things from past lives, and also adults, and different kinds of regression and things like that. But I hadn’t quite understood: where do we stop? Do we go on, and go on, and go on? Is there a start, is there an end? Those were some of my thoughts about it. At the same time, I’d been served the idea that everything also happens at once, but that was something my head couldn’t grasp at all.

Reincarnation, simulations and other misunderstandings

Pål-Esben: Yes, because this is a bit challenging for a human brain, for our intellect, to relate to. So we need somewhat simplified models when we talk about it. Because in reality you’re of course right: there’s no such thing as incarnation or reincarnation. That’s because everything happens at the same time, in an infinite number of parallel existences that we shift between. And just the fact that our brain starts thinking about how it could work in practice makes us start spinning. We simply can’t relate cognitively to something so complicated and so unfamiliar. That’s why we simplify the language when we talk about these topics, and then we speak linearly. We relate to time, but in reality time is an illusion, as we’ve also discussed earlier in the podcast, when we’ve talked about the path to spiritual awakening and the path to oneness, where everything is one. But so that we can talk about things, explain things and show perspectives, we simplify it by using a linear language. That is: we live a life, then we die, then we go through a process, and then we come into material life again. That’s what many people call reincarnation.

But one of the big challenges with this cycle, if you study different spiritual cultures, in the east and the west and the north and the south, is that you’ll often hear ideas that we’re forced into the cycle. That is, for some reason or other we’ve ended up in a cycle, and we can’t break out of that cycle. For example, you have karma in Hinduism: that you have to pay for your karma if you aren’t good, and go through the next incarnation in a lower caste, because you’re to be punished for something you’ve done wrong. So many people have this idea that you cycle and have no choice in the matter. The idea is that you’re somehow thrown into a cycle, and then it goes on into eternity. That can feel like eternal torture, at least for many people who say: “No, I don’t like this life.” Then it can feel very unpleasant.

And other kinds of misunderstanding you often hear in esoteric circles are that everything is a simulation. Especially that everything is a simulation in a computer that we’re inside, and that simulates us and what we think and feel all the time. Those are very interesting ideas. Other ideas, which are also very well known, are that aliens have us inside some computer-like thing, and that an alien or three sit there steering our whole biosphere, and steering us like marionettes, like Pinocchios. And other theories out there say that dark forces and demons are steering our simulation, and that we’re slaves: they suck energy out of us from the third dimension into the fourth dimension, where they live, so that we’re batteries. All this psychotic stuff is found in abundance out there on the internet and in esoteric circles. And it’s no wonder that people who sit reading and hearing about these things become frightened, full of fear and despondent that they have no power.

The experience that rules out the dark forces

Pål-Esben: Well, in my experience, and now I’m speaking on the basis of experience: experience of coming into contact with oneness, experience of coming into contact with the Sahara, experience of being one with everything that exists, of which you’ve also begun to have several deep experiences. On that basis we can say with certainty that it’s definitely not like that. Because when you break out of time and space, break out of your straitjacket, and manage to crack the code by dissolving what keeps us bound inside the grain of sand, as we’ve discussed in earlier episodes, and somehow find your way out and into your Sahara, into oneness, into being one with everything, then what you experience there will of course be very different from how you experience the grain of sand and your material life. We talked about that in an earlier episode, where you told us about your experiences of oneness. When we’re inside this experience and feel the complete, the tremendous power that really lies behind what love is, which is a hundred thousand times stronger than what a human being experiences as love, or what we can experience when we’re newly in love, then you can say with certainty: “This has nothing to do with dark forces.” It has nothing to do with demons, nothing to do with devilry, and nothing to do with our being trapped in this without the free will to break out of three-dimensional space. It simply can’t be like that, on the basis of several decades of experience in my case, and many experiences in yours. This simply has to be different.

Amina: Yes, and that experience and that truth really aren’t so very far away.

Women’s power: calm, not aggression

Pål-Esben: No, it’s right in front of the tip of our nose, or rather right behind it. Because the divine, the complete, lives in every being, in every human being. Really, we just need to turn the dial on our radio a little, so that we slide into the frequency range that belongs to the Sahara, if we’re to use a rather poor metaphor. Because it lives in you. In the same way, in every woman there lives a tremendous feminine power potential that doesn’t live in a man. The problem is that most of the women I meet are nowhere near being in contact with this tremendous power potential that lives in them, this feminine, all-embracing power. And I’m not talking about the madness we find in our society today, and what people think is feminine. That’s an illness, if you ask me: this business of going around doing all these things to look like something out of a glossy magazine is one of modern people’s illnesses. I’m talking about the tremendous power that lives underneath. And you work with women and women’s circles, where you help women come into contact with this immense feminine power potential. Among other things, it’s there so that a woman can bring forth the most intense magic that exists in our biosphere: bringing a child into this world. Bringing a woman into this is very exciting. But exactly the same applies to what we’re talking about now, the power that lives in us: this complete Sahara, this tremendous soul that we are, is even wilder and more unrestrained. The problem is that it’s right in front of the tip of our nose, but we need to find a way to cultivate ourselves and develop ourselves in such a way that it becomes possible to access these powers, which are really our nature. What are your experiences of this, when you work with people, in your women’s circles, for example?

Amina: What I see when I help women get in touch with this power potential in themselves, and what I’ve noticed on my own journey too, is, as you say, that so few women know what really lives in them. And that’s quite simply because of how society has become: patriarchy and religion came onto the scene, and we were drawn further and further away from who we really are, from the natural rhythms, from how we were in sync with nature. That applies to all people in general, but especially to this women’s power. And more and more women are beginning to open their eyes to the fact that, hm, there’s some kind of power here after all. Then you’re perhaps inspired by someone on social media, and you think: “Oh, I want that too.” And I think it’s really beautiful to see and to witness and be present when a woman begins to have these experiences of what lives in her. And then my focus is: “OK, what might this look like in your daily life? How can you begin to live it out more?” It’s really beautiful.

And while we’re on the subject, I think it’s also an important topic that many people out there say: “Now we have to take our power back.” But that’s often done through a lot of anger: now the anger gets to come out, this is women’s power, feminine power, and then you stand there howling and screaming. I think that’s perhaps more a discharge of emotion than standing in your feminine power. So I think many women out there may be a bit unsure what we’re really talking about when we talk about feminine power. Another picture, of course, is this idea that feminine power is just airy-fairy, that now we just have to rest and flow.

Perthro, kundalini and the power potential

Pål-Esben: Yes, this is exciting. And since we’re talking about women now: if you’re a man listening to this, we’ll have a few goodies for you later on, of course. It isn’t hopeless being a man either. But women are something very special when it comes to this magic and this power, since they are, after all, the only ones who can perform the ultimate magic in our biosphere: bringing new life into this world. And there’s a lot of misunderstanding here, as you say, which has to do with the intellect, the ego and our society: we’re going to take to the barricades, because now we’re going to be right. But what I notice when a woman begins to come into contact with this power that lies deep, deep in a woman’s core is that no aggression comes out of it. There’s a radiance, a radiance of calm, and at the same time this tremendous power. It’s the opposite of aggressiveness, the opposite of taking to the barricades, because this is the real force of nature that lives in the depths.

And we find that power when we begin to talk about the rune Perthro, for example, one of the 24 runes in the Elder Futhark. Then we begin to talk about this kind of power potential, which of course partly lives in a man as well, since it’s connected to a human being’s kundalini energy. This power isn’t quite the kundalini energy, but it’s connected to it. That is, if you’re a man, you also have this kundalini energy, which is also a tremendous feminine power. In Hinduism and in yogic mythology and tradition it’s seen as the serpent power, where Ida, Sushumna and Pingala weave their way up through the spine. There it’s about opening up the power potential that lies inside our spine, so that it shoots up through the spine to the seventh chakra, and then there’s an idea that you’ll be enlightened. But sadly, that’s not how it is. We can talk a little about that later: the misunderstandings around the kundalini energy and, let me say, the raising of the kundalini energy.

Every human being born into this world has perhaps ten to fifteen percent of these powers available from birth, because we need power for our cells to work, for our biochemistry to work, for cell division and all that. To be able to live, we need access to a certain power potential. So let’s say it’s ten percent. And then it’s up to each human being, depending on which path they choose to take, whether they choose to be ten percent of themselves and their power, or whether they cultivate the path to their full potential. Much of what we help with in our tradition, in the profound primordial shamanic process of development you’ve been through, is precisely finding our way back to these potentials, so that we become more and more complete. And some quite exciting things happen when a human being becomes more and more complete. First of all, life changes completely: how you experience your life, how you live out your life, how you react to situations you used to go totally monkey over. And you’ve probably got plenty of experience of how life itself changes when we gain access to this real power and are more available in it.

The wave that carries you

Amina: Yes, it’s like riding a carrier wave of something completely different from ordinary human life. Truly. My experience of life before and after these experiences, of being carried by that wave, is something I can hardly even explain, because it’s so spectacular. You begin to come into contact with what you really are, and with more and more of the great potential. And then I know there’s even more out there, and I think: “Whoa, can that be possible?” Because I’m really very happy; can it get any better in a human life? Because there are quite simply things that just stop being natural to you once you’re riding that wave, without it being some intellectual exercise you have to talk yourself through. That doesn’t mean you don’t face situations where you have to make choices, or that you never have a bad day. But the way you experience the agony of choice, and the bad day, is something completely different from an ordinary person’s bad day. It’s hard to describe, but that’s how it feels.

No external enemies: our own human demons

Pål-Esben: And what we’re getting at is that this lives in every human being, a little differently from woman to man, but we have absolutely everything available that’s needed for us to live a complete life, if we choose to cultivate ourselves to get there. It’s a choice. And back to the power potentials: when we experience the complete, when we experience being one with everything, when we experience our Sahara, then every human being who is truly in such an experience of oneness will understand, through what they experience, that there are no dark forces, no demons, no computer, no aliens steering our existence. Only people who haven’t experienced this can come up with fantasies like that and also believe in them. Because it’s of course much easier to market something dangerous and frightening in the esoteric world than something connected to love. In esoteric circles it’s much easier to market a course where you learn to protect yourself against demons and evil than a course that says: “There’s nothing to protect yourself against. I’ll show you how to light the light in yourself, because where there is light, darkness cannot exist.” People aren’t all that interested in that.

But this idea that you have an external enemy you need protection against, an external enemy that causes us problems in our life, is something we’ve practically been raised on for the last several thousand years, through religious dogmas, for example, where we’ve heard the ideas of hell and demons and fallen angels. It’s partly in our DNA, through our genetics, over several thousand years. So people today are imprinted in such a way that they very easily lean towards what is dangerous. That is: if someone explains to me that there are others out there, whether people, or demons, or dark forces, or beings from the fifth dimension, or reptilians, who are the reason I’m having a hard time, then it’s much easier to accept that this is what I believe in. Because that means I’m not responsible for having such a hard and problematic time in my life.

But when you begin to have genuine experiences of oneness, as you and your fellow students and the other people who experience this have, then you know that it simply can’t be like that. And when you come out of these states, as we often say, it can take several weeks before you’re properly back again, at least the first time you experience it. And then you increasingly begin to acknowledge that the only place evil lives in our biosphere is in human beings. The only place demons exist is inside human beings. And I’m not talking about something artificial that grabs you and takes over, but about your own demons: your own devilry, your own hatred, your own jealousy. That’s what I call human demons, and they’re what give us the chaotic world we have today. There are no external forces, no external entities that come and take over and make you a human being full of hatred. That’s not how it works. And when you begin to experience what you experience in the states of oneness, you begin to understand how this is. Then you also realise that it doesn’t help to try to have external enemies, or explanations about external causes for why I am the way I am. It’s my full responsibility. You’ve experienced that too.

Amina: Yes, definitely. I believed in demons and evil forces and the whole package, I did, until I got completely different reference experiences. And not least the completely opposite experiences, through experiences of oneness, where you don’t even need an explanation of why it isn’t like that. It’s not as if you come out and ask: “Pål-Esben, why is it actually like that?” You just know it can’t be like that; it’s impossible. And I notice it when I talk to people who are very focused on there being something out there, something holding them back. They have a big blockage because they have an entity at their side that just sucks energy, and they’ve been to a medicine woman or a shaman they’ve paid money to get rid of that entity. My whole picture of what demons are has changed, because of my own quite intense experience of it, and here we’re talking about real experience, not some half-baked stuff. After that, I actually thought that when I shared those experiences with people who tell me about things like that, they’d be a bit more open to the idea that, hm, maybe it isn’t like that. But I see that people cling on to the idea that it must be something else.

The belief systems that create suffering

Pål-Esben: Yes. But for those who are interested in hearing more about this, we have a whole episode you can go back and listen to, because you can even get the intellect on board with the process when you listen to how we talk about it. This has to do with the intricate belief systems people are imprinted with, which mostly play out in the unconscious, where people fight tooth and nail for the beliefs in their belief systems. It’s something I come across very often. And of course a human being can cling on to a belief system that creates suffering in their life. Or they can choose to wake up and say: “The way I believe in this evil and these demons is ruining my life, and nothing has got better, year after year after year.” Then perhaps it’s time to start questioning the belief system, and to open up to other explanations of why you have the problem you have. That’s one of the things that belongs to a real path of development: the seeker is constantly taught to question their belief systems. Because really it’s only the belief systems that create problems in our life. One belief system might be, for example, that there are external forces, whether people, or demons, or devils, or fallen angels, or aliens, Anunnaki, reptilians, who make sure I have a bad life. That’s one kind of belief. Or that demons exist, devils exist, hell exists. Those are belief systems of their own too. But they’re always created in a way that creates suffering.

And when you experience oneness, you see that suffering is one hundred percent human-made and has nothing to do with our real nature. That’s one of the most paradoxical experiences when you come into this kind of experience. It’s almost as if it short-circuits inside you; that’s how it is. And when you come out of it, you start asking quite different questions about your belief systems than you were willing to ask before. Because I usually say that human beings are experts at creating suffering themselves. That is: we can experience difficult things, we can experience pain, but suffering is something human beings always create themselves. And when I say this to ordinary people, some of them get very irritated and furious: “So you mean that I, who am ill with illness X, Y and Z, don’t have the right to suffer?” Yes, you do, if you choose it. But illness doesn’t equal suffering. Because I know many people with the illness you have, whether it’s chronic illness or depression or whatever it is, who don’t suffer with that illness. That means there must be a difference between you and them, and that means it’s possible to do something about the suffering.

Frankl and the bus proof

Pål-Esben: Viktor Frankl, Dr Viktor Frankl, is a fine example of this. When he was taken into the ghetto and the concentration camp by the Nazis, and survived, he said: they could take everything from me, they could torture me, they could beat me, they could kill my family, they could do whatever they wanted with my friends, but they could never take from me the power over what I think and feel, and how I act on what happens to me. There I have full power myself. More than 20 years ago, when I read that for the first time, I thought: “What am I going around moaning and complaining about?” Then I began to question my own belief systems. If he managed to have a different attitude to this in a concentration camp, which is the worst thing a human being can imagine, then what we have in our modern world is nothing by comparison. If he managed it, why should I go around being irritated with this person, frustrated with that one, bearing a grudge against a third, being furious if someone doesn’t do what I want? What is that all about, I thought. Because when you act like that, you’re acting on autopilot and believe you have no power over it.

An example: you come home, and your partner says something you don’t like, and you flare up. Then you come to your guide, to me for example, and say: “Oh, my partner said this and that, and that was why it exploded, and I started crying, and it was terrible, and it’s my partner’s fault.” Then I say: “Bullshit. You’re the one who isn’t taking responsibility for being able to handle it and react in an appropriate way. You’re the one who isn’t taking responsibility for being able to self-regulate. It isn’t another human being saying something you don’t like that’s the reason you exploded. It’s you!” And this is very easy to prove, and I’m fascinated by how easy it is to prove. Just take one example. I think we talked about it in an earlier episode too, but I like the example so much, because it proves the point intellectually. Take the example that you normally get triggered by your partner, and that you howl and scream and do all this monkey business because someone says something you don’t like. And now I’m not talking about physical violence, and I’m not talking about psychological violence, but about an ordinary relationship, where this monkey business usually happens very often. That was my experience, at least, before I started the process of development. It’s easy to prove that you have the power to handle this in a constructive way: just get on the bus or the train with your partner. Your partner does exactly the same thing on the bus or the train as they do at home, where you’ve blown your top and gone monkey. Then you’ll see that you sit there on the bus or the train and don’t react at all. Why? Because you have a reason not to react: what would everyone else on the train or the bus say if you reacted like a bloody idiot? They’d think you were mentally ill. That means the only difference between home and the bus is that you have a reason to fear the consequence.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: It’s about attitude. It’s about needing to think it through: if we can handle it perfectly well when there’s a negative consequence, then we have to ask ourselves a question at home, when we come in to our partner: “Isn’t my partner important? Isn’t the relationship important? So why shouldn’t I take the same responsibility at home as I would on the plane or the bus or the train?” We human beings are strange creatures.

The ball of energy: the soul focuses itself into the dream

Pål-Esben: But let’s go on with what happens to our souls. We’re coming back to the topic now. When we experience real states of oneness, we know that it can’t be these simulations, and the demons, and aliens, and dark forces, steering us through an infinite number of incarnation cycles where we suffer and suffer, and where we’re really slaves to something or other. You understand through experience that it can’t be like that. And then the question is: what is it, then, really? We touched on it a little in an earlier episode, where we talked about the soul’s epic journey, and we talked about Gaia as the elite university for souls. But since we’re now talking about the path to oneness, I’d like to bring this together.

What actually happens is that when you exist as a soul, that is, when you’re complete and simply are your soul, you yourself choose to go into an experience. And in this case you choose a small part, a small focus, of your soul. Imagine that your soul is a gigantic ball, a very, very large ball of energy, just as a metaphor. The soul puts its focus on one part of itself, towards the middle of this ball, so that it compresses itself and manifests a small part of itself into a particular setting: into this material life, into this body. So in reality I, and you, and you, dear listener, are each in the middle of our own soul right now. You’re in the middle of your soul right now. And it’s this part of your soul that has gone to sleep and into dream mode, where you believe that this dream is real. So far I haven’t met a human being who doubts that their existence is real. Of course, you and the others we work with here are beginning to see this differently through experience. But in this dream, where a part of your soul is dreaming, you, who are your soul, experience this in a very limited setting: as a human being in four-dimensional space, with time and space, where we experience our reality.

Why the soul dreams: strawberries and falling in love

Pål-Esben: And the question is: why does the soul choose to go into this dream state, where you, really a small part of your soul, believe that this is where you’re awake, and that this is where you’re in reality? Well, it’s very simple. In its free state, your soul can’t experience what you have the opportunity to experience in this material world. For example, it can’t experience falling in love; it can’t fall in love hormonally, since it has no hormones. It can’t experience heartbreak. It can’t experience the joy of welcoming its child into the world. It can’t experience the taste of strawberries. It can’t experience grief. It can’t experience existential anxiety and these things. None of what we human beings experience can happen in the free state the soul is in. And that’s why it comes in and dreams a small part of itself, which you believe is reality and a waking state: so that it can experience things that aren’t possible to experience in a free state. It really isn’t any more complex than that.

The grain of sand and the Sahara

Pål-Esben: And when we talk about the primordial shamanic path to oneness and spiritual awakening, or spiritual enlightenment, depending on which words we use, we’re saying that it’s about opening our eyes and waking up from our dreams. And when you’ve begun to have genuine experiences of oneness, you begin to have moments where you open your eyes and understand that the dream isn’t real. Then the most spectacular part of our human experience begins. It’s so wild and unrestrained that we can’t really explain it, but we can reflect a little on how it feels, in this podcast. Because our motivation here is to show you as a listener, and inspire you as a listener, that your existence, your being, what you are, is something very much more than you think. And the more of it you find your way to, the more complete you become, the less confusion there is, and the more anxiety, frustration, existential fear and all these things fade away. Because you experience again and again, through genuine, real experiences of oneness, that what you believe is real, the intellect and the ego, isn’t reality. It’s literally the grain of sand. That’s the metaphor we use in our tradition to give an idea of this sleepwalker that humanity really is: the one who believes the sleeping state is reality, and that you’re actually awake in the dream.

And it’s spectacular. Because when I tell you that you’re a grain of sand, and that the real you is your Sahara, the intellect says: “Yes, yes, Pål-Esben, yes, yes, I’m sure it’s like that. Probably not. Maybe it sounds like a very exciting fairy tale, it sounds very tempting, but I don’t believe it.” And that’s OK. That’s why we have an experience-based process of development in our tradition, where you don’t need to believe anything at all. Instead, by experiencing your Sahara, you realise that your grain of sand is a dream. And isn’t that out of this world, now that you’ve just begun to experience it, Amina? Isn’t it paradoxical?

The shock at Spidsbergseter

Amina: Yes, it’s really paradoxical. I remember at the beginning, on the primordial shamanic path to oneness and spiritual enlightenment, this process of development: you talked about this being the grain of sand, and that you’re really the Sahara, and showed these pictures of the Sahara and the grain of sand. Yes, yes, I thought, that’s exciting, and I did believe what you said, this business about the pen not really being a pen, and things like that. I had an idea of what it was, and a small feeling inside me; I could go inwards and actually begin to feel it a little. But I remember the time after the second ritual, after the first experience of oneness, at the ritual you held at Spidsbergseter, a mountain hotel in Norway. When I came back from it, I just thought: “Oh, good grief, this is actually completely insane. What I thought this was isn’t even half a grain of sand of what it actually is.” And it’s as if you wake up in the morning while the dream still feels a bit real. I’m rambling a bit, but that experience, when I came out of it, was like waking up in the morning: “Whoa, life, human life, is just a dream. What do we think this is?” I remember it was such a big shock.

Hope, design and the most difficult setting

Pål-Esben: Oh yes. Now we can reflect a little on this, but it’s also important to be able to give inspiration. If you have a life with difficulties, challenges, illness, turmoil and fear of the world we live in, there’s also something called hope. And what we’re trying to do here is to kindle hope in people, in you, dear listener: your existence can be something much, much more than it is today. Of course, that requires you to be willing to do some work, to be willing to go through some form of structured path of development. Because it isn’t enough just to light the incense and wave the feather and say: “Ommm, now I’m enlightened.” That’s not how it is. There’s work that has to be done, and we’ve tried to describe it throughout our whole podcast, really, from episode number one, where we’ve followed your journey on the way towards your Sahara, on the way towards becoming complete again.

And to go back to the soul: the only reason the soul comes and wants to experience you, the way you experience your life, is quite simply that it wants to find experiences it can’t find in its own state. It really is that simple. And the soul decides for itself how long. No one decides for your soul and says: “Right, soul, now you’re going to have this dream, and it’s going to be dreamt at least ten thousand times, until you’ve suffered and experienced enough.” No one says that, because the soul is free, you are free, and you decide for yourself how you go into these dream states. You even decide where you want to go into them. You can choose to go into the dream state here, in one of the most difficult settings in our universe for a soul to incarnate in, if I use my linear language. Because this is so complex for this part of the soul: you’re robbed of all the insight your soul has, you’re robbed of every connection to how things fit together. And that’s of course by design. Imagine you were born into this world and knew everything. How difficult do you think it would be to go through this life then? Everything would be meaningless. First of all, I’d know from the start that this is just a circus, a dream, a toy box for the soul to find experiences in, but nothing else, and whatever I do, it doesn’t really matter. Then it would be very difficult for us human beings to function. So there’s a reason why the soul, by design, cuts off this access. That’s why I say this part of the soul is in a sleeping state, in this dream we believe is reality: we’re cut off from this knowledge. And that’s important, because without it we can’t learn and experience the way the soul has come here to learn and experience. It really isn’t any more complex than that.

Karma and the memory of another home

Pål-Esben: And when we talk about karma: in reality there’s no such thing as karma. But if we talk linearly again, our soul, yours and mine, has an idea and a wish to go through a kind of learning experience that normally isn’t done in one dream. That is, a learning experience that runs through many, many dreams. And if the soul has a meta-theme, an overarching theme it wants to engage with through several dreams, then karma is really the memory your soul brings with it from one dream into another dream, so that it’s easier for the next dreamer to understand what this is about. So karma is a set of hints. And that pressure, that push, the karmic pressure we feel, gradually gets bigger and bigger the more we ignore our learning themes. It’s the memory the soul lets pop up in each dream. That’s what karma really is. And that may be a bit sad to hear if you’ve read 18 books about karma, but it isn’t quite the way it’s described in the books. Because your soul is complete. It has its cycle of dreams for going through certain overarching learning themes, and these can be learning themes that span millions of years, if we speak linearly; then I’m talking about the perspective of time. In reality it’s parallel existences, but that explanation gets a bit much if I start on it now. Then things get muddled, so we’ll stick to the linear. So the soul often has several million years in which it dreams these dreams. They can be dreams that start, for example, in one place in the universe, where it experiences through the kind of form and the kind of existence that’s there. And then there are various reasons why the soul chooses to begin dreaming in other parts of the universe, for example in this biosphere, often as a continuation of learning themes that started somewhere completely different in the universe.

And people can carry much of that memory with them, for example as a feeling that they don’t quite belong on this planet. That’s how it’s been for me almost since I was born, at least since I was a small child, for as long as I can remember: I felt very alien on this planet. And of course, when I was small, I didn’t understand why I had this melancholy, why I often sat outside when the sky was full of stars, looking at the stars and wanting to come home. I’ve had that feeling ever since I was small, and in my teens it became more and more extreme, also as a young adult, and I never wondered why it was like that. So there was some memory or other lying there, something the soul has gathered through some experience or other, and which has been made available. And as I began to understand how everything fits together, I began to understand these things I’m talking about now.

So the point is: your soul, Amina, my soul, and your soul, dear listener, each has its own unique journey. And absolutely no one has any say over that journey, except you as a soul. Now your soul has chosen to come into this form of dream, in this world we believe is reality, to gather certain kinds of experiences. This is it. It really isn’t any more complex than that, if we’re to keep it fairly simple.

The strawberry proof and the AI noise

Pål-Esben: And the coolest thing of all is that what I’m talking about here is very easy to prove. The proof comes when I, or someone else, brings people into a genuine and real state of oneness: not a hormonally conditioned, energetic state of oneness, which is something completely different, but a real, genuine experience of oneness. Then you experience for yourself, as you did, what I usually talk about, what you perhaps understood intellectually and perhaps believed a little. That’s how you prove these models: you bring people into the relevant, deep experiences, and then they see for themselves how things are, and then there’s nothing more to discuss. But until you’ve cultivated yourself enough to get there, it’s only intellectual; then you have a belief system. But when you experience it, you no longer need to read a thousand books about the taste of strawberries. Because when you taste strawberries, you know exactly what it’s like.

Amina: Yes, then it doesn’t matter what it says in the book either.

Pål-Esben: No. And then you see that most of what’s been written about this has very little to do with what you experience. That’s perhaps the most challenging thing in the society we have today. Many people write books, many so-called authority figures and authority gurus, with millions of followers, who claim things and tell stories people believe, but which have very little to do with reality. That’s one of the challenges we have in the world today, with the internet, and now AI especially is coming in. On YouTube now, I think at least 50 percent of the content is AI. So you get stuffed full of all kinds of information, but most of it has little to do with the real reality. That’s my experience, at least. We can discuss it until we’re blue in the face, but after all, when we bring you into an experience, you say: “I don’t need to believe anything, because I experience that this is how it is.”

Is the source lonely?

Amina: Yes. I have a question. I recently saw a person from the esoteric scene in America talking about her experience of oneness; these videos are everywhere, of course. She said she was in shock, because what oneness really was turned out to be rather sad: the source was so sad at being lonely that it had to experience itself to have something to do. So I’m curious what you think about that, Pål-Esben. The first thing I thought was: “Whoa, only a human being could say that.”

Pål-Esben: Yes. What she’s been through is a visit to her own psyche. Anyone out there who has had a genuine experience of oneness will say that it isn’t like that. Imagine that life, everything that is, the complete consciousness, the complete creative power, call it what you like, which is one with itself and one with everything, should be lonely in oneness. How completely wrong is it to say something like that? And that’s the challenge with this topic, with spiritual awakening and things like that: people talk about it endlessly, but very few have had the real experiences. Because then you experience the exact opposite. When you’ve had enough deep experiences of oneness, you no longer have any need for other people around you to feel complete. You are complete, you are fulfilled, you are everything that is. And then the only reason to have anything to do with people is that it’s pleasant: it makes life even more exciting to live. But I don’t need a single other living soul in order to be continuously happy from morning to evening. In fact, I prefer not to have anything at all to do with people, because then it’s quiet, and then I’m complete. But we are alive, after all; I understand what my soul is, and I live here to interact with people, and for me in particular it’s important to inspire people. That’s why I go out and help the students and clients who come to me, and some come in and go through the primordial shamanic process of development. I do it because it’s important to be able to help inspire other people to find their way back to themselves. But I no longer need it in order to be complete, to be totally complete.

If you talk to one of the older masters, who have lived in a temple in Tibet for several decades and gone through a very extreme process and their real process of awakening, you’ll hear exactly the same thing. A friend of mine, someone I talk to regularly, has been through just that: “I don’t need people around me any more. I’m completely happy. The only reason I still have anything to do with people is that I have a craft I’m very skilled at, which I can use to help the people around me. But it isn’t something I need.” So when you hear the opposite, alarm bells should ring a little.

And that’s the challenge in the world we have today: there are so many false, so-called gurus claiming all sorts of things. So I think having a good dose of scepticism in this field is important. People can say what they like, but the important thing here is to find the way to real experiences. Because there you don’t need to believe anything at all. The problem comes if you find a teacher like that lady, who claims she’s spiritually awakened and enlightened, and claims it’s a sad business because oneness feels so alone, and you have her as your guide and teacher. Then we have a serious problem. That’s the problem with having a guide who isn’t authentic: you’re almost guaranteed to lose your bearings. So there’s a lot of tricky stuff around these things.

The child who throws leaves

Pål-Esben: So, as for the soul: our soul is free, and it has chosen to come in and play this game you believe is your life, or that you’re quite sure is your life, and that you’re quite sure is reality. That’s what your soul, that is, you, your real self, has come here to do. And we’ve discussed this earlier. When we’re born into this world, or when the soul goes into its dream, which to us will look like a child being conceived and eventually born, the child who comes out is still very connected to the memory, and to what the soul is. It’s still connected to the moment and everything that is. The problem is that the brain isn’t developed, the interface isn’t developed, so it can’t communicate and express these things. But we see it: the child who just sits in nature throwing leaves and laughing for no reason at all. That’s something different from an adult, who asks the question: “Why should I spend time sitting in nature throwing leaves in the air?” What happens between the ages of 7 and 14 is that we mostly disconnect the contact with our soul, also by design, through the imprints: that’s a man, that’s a woman, that’s good, that’s not good, this is how you should be, this is how you shouldn’t be. Then we gradually become these robots in our straitjackets on the hamster wheel, and then we live our life, as you and I have also experienced: the ordinary monkey life, where we react, and live, and try, we fall in love, we have heartbreak, and we hate. We go around here believing that this is what life is. And we often feel like a ship out at sea, without a bow and without a rudder and without sails. We feel rather at the mercy of the currents and the winds, wherever this boat ends up.

Rock bottom: the epic journey begins

Amina: Yes, goodness, I’ve really been a victim of that, like so many others: you think that this is it. And so many times I’ve been in deep suffering and thought: “This can’t be all. It’s impossible that this is all.” And I think most people actually feel it a little deep down, and that perhaps that’s what makes you turn around when you’re at rock bottom: there’s something that just says this can’t be it.

Pål-Esben: Yes, and that’s what often happens, somewhere in life. For me it happened in my early 30s, and for you it also happened very early, and for most people it happens around 40, 45, or 50, around midlife, in what we call the midlife crisis. Something or other, some setting in our life, makes us question absolutely everything. For me it was the burnout in 2003, when I collapsed and nearly lost my life, and realised I had to see life and reality in a different way than I had so far. That’s where my epic journey started. Because when we talk about a soul’s epic journey, I can say: OK, it’s pretty epic when we’re in the monkey world too, where our life is real and we just act and react. But the really exciting journey for a human being happens the day the epic journey starts. And it’s usually triggered by something or other. For me it was burnout. For you it was perhaps everything from frustration to anxiety to a deep inner longing.

Amina: Yes, but it was that big incident with my ex-boyfriend, of course, that violent situation where I was strangled and vanished into myself and came back and thought: “No, that’s enough now. There’s something more.” And then things really got going.

Searching everywhere: from angel courses to the path

Pål-Esben: Exactly, that was the trigger, and then everything that had built up came to the surface in earnest, and the real search for what you long for began. And you don’t even know what it is you long for, but you notice that there’s a longing. You notice that there must be something more. This can’t be it; this is not it. Many people experience this somewhere between 40 and 60, when perhaps they have everything it takes in the life we live: they have a house, a holiday cabin, a car, a job, a family, children, everything that makes a normal person say: OK, it’s a good life. But they still feel this strange, odd, uncomfortable emptiness inside. They have everything, but still feel empty. They have everything, but still aren’t glad and happy. They have everything, but joyfulness isn’t what marks their life. And then this impulse starts, and they begin to search for whatever this longing is pointing to. And that’s exactly where the epic journey can start. It’s an impulse from the soul, an impulse from the awake part of the soul into the dreaming part, which the human being believes is reality, saying that it’s time to begin finding the way home again. It’s time to find the way home. And by home we mean home to what we really are, home to our complete self.

The challenge at that point, when this longing is there and you begin to search, is that you have absolutely no idea where to search. So you start everywhere, as both you and I did: you’re on an angel course there, and you learn channelling there, and you read chakras there, and you learn astrology here, and so on. You’re everywhere, trying to find the source of what’s missing. Then you go from one thing to the next, from teacher to teacher, and guide to guide, and the emptiness doesn’t fill up; you’ve learned lots of exciting things, but you still feel the same. It’s a very challenging state to be in: you long for something, but it’s almost impossible to find anyone who can help you find the source of this longing, so that it’s filled. That’s the hardest part of the start of the soul’s epic journey: finding a suitable teacher, guide, counsellor or guru who can help us and show us the way to the source that can fill this void. That’s the biggest challenge, and I travelled all over the world to try to find this, and eventually I found the way. But for me it took a very long time, and for you it took a very short time.

Amina: Yes, it took a year from when I started diving into the spiritual scene. I’d been working with tarot cards for seven or eight years before that, but that was something I did because I could do it, and it worked, and I liked it. But from when I started going into the esoteric world, with the idea that there’s a soul and there’s something more here, it took no more than a year. And I’m a bit glad about that: that I didn’t come across very many other spiritual teachers, who could surely have taught me something, but who could have led me down very much the wrong path. I didn’t have very much to unlearn; I was still quite fresh and green at it. At the same time, I’ve felt that what has been dug up in me, what I’ve been through in the process of development, feels very familiar. It feels as if I’ve done it before, as if I’ve been through a process of development like this before.

The prism: what feels familiar

Pål-Esben: And many people experience that. It’s part of the memory your soul makes available to you. It’s part of your prism, which we’ve talked about in an earlier episode. It’s part of your real identity, part of the resources, the capacity and the talents that the soul lets you bring into this dream. And it’s through this prism that the soul’s energy shines, and what’s projected onto the wall is our experience of reality, to put it a bit metaphorically. It’s very fascinating when you notice: this is it. And it isn’t the intellect that notices it; it’s something deep, deep within you. I often notice the same thing when I teach my students about runes. Many of the people who come in and begin to learn about runes say that they have a feeling it’s something they’ve come across before.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: You may notice that too. And as a rule it isn’t the runes themselves that you’ve come across before, although it can be that too, but what lies behind the runes, which is a very familiar part of your own nature: what the runes represent. And you notice that, and I think it’s a good inner compass to have. It’s something worth noting: when someone says something, and you notice deep within yourself that this must have something to do with reality, it’s a very special feeling. Because it’s very different from when the intellect says it must be like that, or when fear says it must be like that, or when the ego says it. It’s something completely different.

The metasouls and the elite university for souls

Pål-Esben: What we’re getting into here is that once the epic journey has started, the path begins with finding the way home. And what does that mean? Well, you begin to find the way home, towards beginning to wake up. And here we come to the elite university for souls, which we talked about in an earlier episode, where this planet and this biosphere, a bit metaphorically, is a dream structure. Because of course it’s a structure that has been set up, not by the soul, but by the metasouls, though that’s a completely different story. A structure has been set up, a template for how things are to work, with regard to the laws of nature, in relation to certain objects, such as planets, star systems, galaxies, and so on. It’s set up by the metasouls and what lies above them, so that it’s a structure that we, our souls, dream into. And it’s a structure set up by all the souls that are on this planet, and the metasouls of all the souls, so that when you see your dream, it relates very closely to how my soul dreams. That is: your dream and my dream have the same gravity, we have the same sun, we have the same planet, the grass is green. So there’s a structure in all of this. And if we really must talk about a simulation here, as we started with, then we can certainly use the word simulation, but then it’s your soul that runs the simulation. It’s you who simulates the dream. That’s what this is really about, and not an external entity, dark demons or evil forces keeping us as slaves in this reality. It’s we who dream, we who create this illusion, we who create this context, we who create the playpen, the sandpit, the circus, call it what you like.

But this is one of the most complex settings, one of the most complex structures a soul can choose to come into, because we have none of the knowledge or talents available that our soul really has. So I like to call our biosphere the elite university for souls. These are souls with real experience, who come in to test themselves. That means that all the people on this planet have souls testing themselves on something that’s really ultra-complex. Every one of us has a maverick soul that isn’t afraid of the dark. It would be much easier to dream yourself into a structure where you’re a Pleiadian, one of those Pleiadians who are several hundred thousand years ahead of us in development, where you fly around in your spaceships having a lovely time. That’s a dream structure that’s child’s play. Or you might choose to go into a dream structure among those who are millions of years ahead of us. Because the further ahead of us a structure is in development, and again we’re using years to simplify, the stranger and more foreign the ideas to do with aggression and war and anxiety become. Imagine you have civilisations that are several million years ahead of us in development: do you really think that they, with everything they do, spend their energy on war and strife and conflicts? It’s simply absurd. But we monkeys who live on this planet are very undeveloped on a scale of development. We still have a lot of aggression, but there’s a gigantic potential. So when your soul chooses to come here, it’s to really test itself on something incredibly difficult.

The soul’s doctoral thesis

Pål-Esben: And what we’re doing here now is really the last part of the elite university for souls. That means you’ve perhaps spent millions of years, many, many dreams, getting to the point where you’re really ready to do the most difficult, or at least the second most difficult, task a soul can take on: taking the last step and waking up from the dream you believe is real. It sounds simple, but it’s very complex, because the human being is fully and completely convinced that the body is real, I’m real, Amina is real, the pen here is real, the food you eat is real. We believe that fully and completely. And then we’re supposed to say to a human being: “Now you’re going to wake up from this dream you believe is reality.” That’s really something hyper-complex. That’s why I say it’s one of the most difficult tasks and challenges a soul can take on in this dream structure we’re in right now. And that’s where you are. You’ve come to the point where you’ve started what I call the soul’s doctoral thesis at the elite university for souls, which is the last part of the elite university. There it’s about one thing: finding the way to wake up from what’s really close to impossible for an ordinary human being to wake up from. And when your soul manages that last big task, which lies at the end of a long series of dreams, it no longer needs to have a dream in this structure. The exception is that it can come and dream again to inspire other people to wake up, as several spiritual teachers and gurus throughout history have done in the world we live in. The soul doesn’t do that because it needs to come into this dream structure again. It chooses to, so that it can contribute to its fellow souls and help them manage this task too.

Have the enlightened been there before?

Amina: Would you say that everyone who is spiritually enlightened and has a stable state in oneness has been there before?

Pål-Esben: No, not necessarily.

Amina: No, no.

Pål-Esben: Those who have been there will begin to notice it early in life, but most often they won’t understand what it is they’re noticing. For example, I began to notice it as early as around the age of 10: strange things were going on, but I didn’t understand anything at all of what it was. Suddenly I could put my hand on a book and understand everything that was in the book. What on earth is that about? Very handy when you have dyslexia, of course. So, thank goodness, I had a counterweight to my dyslexia in my learning, which meant I had no problems going through university to a master’s degree without being at the university, because I had quite different ways of learning. And I began to experience these siddhis; suddenly things began to happen by themselves. You notice this veil, that you slip through it, it’s almost as if you become porous, but you don’t understand what it is, because no one has told you what it is. You just think you’re a bit strange and a bit alien compared with other people, and especially if you start talking about it, no one understands what you’re talking about. So it often comes as early as around the age of 10, and for many people images come too, and then bang, bang, bang, one thing after another. But those who are experiencing this for the first time will notice it when they drop into oneness: this is it. You also notice whether it’s the first time you’ve really, kaboom, come in here. It may be that your dream structure has been through this before, without your soul bringing that memory along; then you would have a different starting point, for example. And it’s completely unimportant.

But what we often see when souls pull off this masterpiece, waking up from the dream you believe is reality, is that they’ve then of course often chosen to go back to help others. And then this comes back to you, usually in your 20s or 30s; that’s when things begin to happen. You typically get a serious wake-up call if you’re on the wrong track. One example is my burnout, when I came close to collapsing completely: a crystallisation point in the soul’s corridor. We’ve also discussed that in an earlier episode, where we talked about dharmic synchronicity, karmic synchronicity, the soul’s corridor and the crystallisation points the soul sets in the dream. Then something often happens, and kaboom, things turn around, and you understand why the soul is dreaming this dream. And then the calling is very clear and distinct. That’s how it’s been for me for almost 25 years: the calling is very clear, as it is for you too. It simply goes without saying that there’s a reason for this. And whether you’ve been through these states in earlier dreams is completely irrelevant, because your real nature is like that all the time. We’re only talking about whether you’ve been there in earlier dreams. So it’s really very unimportant. What’s important is what we choose to do now: what we choose to do in our dreams, what we choose to do for ourselves, for our fellow souls and fellow human beings, to help spread hope and help other people. And some of us choose to do what I characterise as the most difficult task a human being can have: helping other people wake up. It’s a very complex business, really. That’s what makes my life very exciting where people are concerned, and it’s also challenging, because you’re dealing with these straitjackets. You’re dealing with people who believe their dream is the waking state. Then you have to be very patient and do this step by step, in a structured way, where you gradually open up a little more and more through reference experiences. You go on until you come to the point and get the final reference experience that brings about the breakthrough: you understand, as you did, that it’s actually this doctoral thesis you’re in the middle of.

Amina: Yes, a memory comes back to me from Spidsbergseter, when all your students wake up and come back from, well, I don’t know if you can call it a journey. At any rate they wake up back into physical life, and just look at each other: “Wow.” It’s really beautiful.

Free will and the tipping point

Pål-Esben: Yes, it is. And what’s so lovely, which we can perhaps finish with, is that all of this lives in every human being. We’re equipped with free will to be able to choose what we really want. We can choose to stay in the straitjacket and live the life that’s normally full of a lot of stress and fear, irritation and hatred and grudges, and whatever else is buzzing around for people. But we can also choose something else. And what’s exciting is that it isn’t really complicated; you just have to be willing to go through a process that takes a year or two. And what is that, compared with all the dreams your soul has had in this meta-structure you’re in? One or two years isn’t even a drop in the ocean. It’s possible for everyone, since this lives in all of us.

And I think that the world we live in has never been as mad as it is now. Perhaps that will change soon; hopefully it will get better. Perhaps this is a tipping point, where we’re heading towards the zenith of development, in this parallel existence we now experience as our earth, as humanity. Astrology shows this too, through the long cycles: you can see that we’re in a phase of upheaval, that a process of change is happening. But it’s up to us human beings whether we destroy ourselves, or whether we choose to find the light in ourselves and create the paradise, or the world, that this planet could have been if the aggressive monkeys had woken up and begun to take self-responsibility and really begun to cultivate themselves. Perhaps that’s exactly what’s happening now. It looks dark, it looks chaotic, but I’m an optimist on humanity’s behalf. On behalf of all the dreams, I’m optimistic. And if this shouldn’t go well, we’ll get many other dreams anyway; our soul really has very little to do with this construct. But I believe the possibility is there for humanity as it is now to make a positive change, if more people take more self-responsibility for lighting a light in themselves.

Because I don’t think it’s about trying to save the world; that’s not how this will work. I think this can work if people take this responsibility and say: “OK, let me take my responsibility for myself, let me take my responsibility for healing the darkness that pervades me, let me take my responsibility for lighting a light in myself.” And just through a choice like that, your life of course changes quite considerably, but the lives of the people around you are affected too. It isn’t the case that 50 percent of the world’s population needs to have their real spiritual awakening for this to change completely. It’s enough for 1 percent to reach that point, because one human being certainly has the power to influence a hundred people around them over a lifetime. So you see that it isn’t about very many people. It’s about a few percent of the population of this world being willing to take that responsibility and go through what I call the soul’s doctoral thesis, both for themselves and for all the other dreaming souls in this existence. Then I think we can help create the new world, or paradise. Because this planet can look like a fantastic paradise. That’s my wish, and I try to do as well as I can with what I can do, and you do as well as you can with what you do. And if more people did the same, I think it’s absolutely possible.

And all over the world there are of course many who have the same search as we do, so it isn’t just a few; quite a lot of people are beginning to do this in a genuine way, and that’s very good. Sadly, it’s often soured by all the false gurus, who often get a lot of wind in their sails from social media. They create challenges for those who are genuine, who constantly have to try to get people to unlearn the madness in order to show the natural rhythms through reference experience. That’s how I see it, at least. I’m a born optimist, I am. Even if it looks dark, even if there’s a lot of madness in the world, I see that this is absolutely possible, and I think a lot is possible even in my own lifetime, in fact. What do you think about this, Amina, as we come to the end here?

At the end: hope without fear

Amina: I think I’m very lucky to have got to walk a path like the one I’m walking. And I recognise myself in much of what you’re talking about, even though I’m not where you are. Because I feel that the only thing I want to do is to help people home to themselves. For a long time I’ve thought: “Should I do this, should I do that, what about this, what about a bit of that?” No. This is what I want to do; it’s the only right thing. And I can see now, as the world becomes really chaotic, and I think it’s only going to become more and more chaotic, and more and more is going to come to light in the coming years, that not having fear around it is something I wish for everyone. Because there’s really nothing to fear, nothing at all. And it’s also important to say that even if things are chaotic, and perhaps become a bit more chaotic, it’ll be all right. And I get to experience life, with so much chaos in the world, and still not fear it. I have no anxiety and no fear about whether the world might end, or what’s going to happen. Because I know that whatever happens, it’ll be all right.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take responsibility. Because believe me: if we don’t take responsibility and learn what we’re meant to learn, the soul simply pops out another dream with you in it. Your soul won’t give up; it’s very focused on learning and experiencing what it came to learn and experience, however many dreams it takes. So why not make the best of it now? And again: it’s our mission, Amina, to try to inspire people towards what we’re talking about. That’s why we have our podcast: to show a little of how this is done in practice, to show a little behind the curtain, how it can feel, and what we think about these things. Do you have any words of wisdom to finish with?

Amina: Yes, I can say this to you as a listener: you are so incredibly much more powerful than you perhaps think you are. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that you’ve found your way to this episode either. Perhaps it’s the first episode of this podcast you’ve heard, perhaps you’ve been with us right from the start, perhaps you popped into the episode and started listening. But at any rate you’re here right to the end, and perhaps there’s a meaning in that. Who knows?

Pål-Esben: Yes, and we really appreciate that you’re here, because it’s for you that we do this. And I certainly enjoy it every time we have a conversation, Amina. And of course, if there’s a topic you’d like us to take up in our podcast, get in touch with us, either via Instagram or the other channels we’re on. Because soon we’re starting on new episodes of our podcast, where we take up themes from the esoteric world and discuss them, typically based on questions from listeners. Then we’ll get into some of the stranger topics: perhaps a few UFOs and tinctures, and who knows, aliens and dimensions and densities and whatever else is buzzing around out there. We can dig into all these exciting, cool things. So if there’s something you’d like to know more about, or at least hear our point of view on, feel free to send us a message, and we’ll put it on our list. We hope you’re inspired by our conversations, and in the next episode we’ll continue our conversations about the path to spiritual awakening, with a slightly different kind of topic from the one we’ve talked about today. 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.