Episode 7: Falling into Flight — Ego Death, the Illusions of Consumerism, and Cosmic Love

Welcome to a journey beyond the music – Episode 7 of Standing Nowhere invites you into a deep spiritual reflection inspired by Avenged Sevenfold’s album Life Is But a Dream…. Host Jacob doesn’t just review the album; he dives into the human condition it illuminates. Track by track, he explores how life’s frantic “machine gun” pace can spur a search for meaning when the script starts to lose flavor. Even if you’ve never heard the album, you’ll find universal threads – from burnout and midlife awakenings to the timeless quest for inner peace when the material world loses its shine. (You don’t need to be a metal fan to feel what’s happening underneath the noise.)

Mysticism and music intertwine in this episode. Jacob draws on Buddhist and Christian insights – Alan Watts’s humor, Ram Dass’s wisdom, Osho’s zen, Thich Nhat Hanh’s poetry, Lao Tzu’s paradoxes, and the esoteric Gospel of Thomas – to shed light on the album’s themes of ego death, illusion, and divine unity. He discusses the failures of consumerism and “late-stage capitalism” with compassion rather than preachiness, showing how endless desires leave us spiritually empty. It’s a heartfelt look at how letting go of ego and the grind can feel like free-falling into something new. Jacob’s style is poetic yet down-to-earth, making profound concepts accessible without self-help platitudes. Long-time listeners will recognize the familiar thread of mysticism and human experience, while new listeners are warmly invited into the conversation.

The emotional peak comes with a pause on the song “Cosmic.” Jacob calls it “love set to music,” the jewel at the center of the album’s lotus. Here, the podcast becomes a shared sacred space. As listener testimonials about “Cosmic” are read, you might feel chills: one fan thanks the band for a song so beautiful it’s being saved for her final moments; another finds solace in it after personal loss. Jacob himself can’t hold back tears as he reflects on love, loss, and unity. In a powerful moment, he reads “Please Call Me By My True Names,” Thich Nhat Hanh’s famous poem – voice cracking – to honor interbeing (how our joys and sorrows are inseparably one). It’s a tearful, transcendent highlight that captures what Standing Nowhere is all about: sitting with life’s mystery, feeling everything, and realizing we’re deeply connected.

Whether you’re a fan of Avenged Sevenfold, a spiritual seeker, or simply burned out by life’s rat race, this episode offers a refreshingly honest and heartfelt experience. Jacob balances philosophy with story, silence with laughter, and heavy truths with light wit. New and returning listeners alike will find something to love – be it the rich album insights or the gentle reminders of our shared humanity. Tune in for a cosmic ride that just might leave you with goosebumps, a few tears, and a rekindled sense of wonder at the dream we call life.

Fair Use Notice: This episode includes short excerpts from Life Is But a Dream… by Avenged Sevenfold, used under fair use for commentary, reflection, and education. Rights remain with the original copyright holders (Section…).

Chapters

• 0:25 Opening & Setup (Why This Album)
• 1:48 Game Over (Innocence → Machine-Gun Life)
• 9:12 Mattel → Nobody (Plastic Hell to No-Self)
• 24:56 We Love You (Late-Stage Capitalism & Hustle Culture)
• 37:34 Cosmic (Love Set to Music)
• 49:31 Beautiful Morning → Easier (Ego Death & Brighter Days)
• 1:09:27 G–O–D Trilogy (Dogma, Ordinary, Death → Letting Go)
• 1:25:12 Closing Blessing (Tao Te Ching — Water)

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to Standing Nowhere Podcast.

This is Jake, your host, and I'm happy to be back with you.

Today's episode number seven, and this is not going to be a review, but it's going to be a reflection on a piece of art that I really love.

And it's a record by Venge Sevenfold.

It's called Life is But a Dream.

And even if you don't like the band or this album, or if you never listened to it, you're still going to get a lot out of this episode.

I mentioned on the last episode that I really miss my son.

And one One of the pastimes we used to do together on the way to school and back is we would sing together in the car to this album.

So it kind of holds a special place in my heart.

It dives into the human condition.

It's really all about what this podcast is about.

And yeah, let's jump right in.

The first thing I want to say, a little disclaimer, the episode includes short lyrical excerpts from Avenged Sevenfold's Life is But a Dream album, and this is shared for spiritual reflection and commentary.

It falls under fair use, and of course, all credit to the band, this record is a piece of art.

And this album, it came out at an interesting time in my life.

It was, if you have listened to the first episode, I went through quite a bit experiencing burnout, working extreme hours, and this album came out right as I started to kind of take an introspective journey into myself, started meditating, started to really, you know, lose the flavor for the daily grind in life.

The first track kind of sets the tone for the album.

It's almost like an overture.

It's only about three minutes.

It's called Game Over.

And it's kind of like when the script of life starts to lose its flavor, like I was just mentioning.

And I don't want you...

When you first hear the first track, I don't want you to think that the whole album is going to sound like the franticness in the first song.

The first song kind of starts with a poignant, almost sad...

but beautiful and innocent guitar.

I think it's like a...

classical guitar with nylon strings.  And there's one song in particular that really taps into the magic and spirit of life.

And I recommend having a box of Kleenex next to you when you you get to that track.

And I'll tell you what that track is when it's time for it.

But this first track, Game Over, it starts out with that beautiful guitar, and then it gets really intense and in your face and really quick.

And if you don't have the lyrics pulled up, it's easy to not really understand what he's saying.

But it's designed that way because it's simulating how you start out as this innocent baby in life, and then life comes at you like a machine gun.

And the first couple of lyrics says, open, blurry, nurture, loving, crawling, walking, fleeting, glory, ally, teacher, recess, buddy, this daytime TV satisfies.

And then it goes into like a little mantra where he's like, and the way he even sings it he's like, as it may, as it may, as it may, over and over again, kind of pointing to, you know, this is life, this is life, this is life, I can deal, I can deal.

But then he goes into this really poetic lyric where he says, days are fine and come on time, but years leave with nothing to find.

And this kind of points to how, like I was mentioning earlier, the flavor of life, it's like the bubble gum kind of loses its flavor a little bit when you're looking for that ultimate satisfaction in the material, in the external.

You can't quite put your finger on it yet.  But then it continues after that little melodic vocal part.

It goes right back into the intense part.

And you hear him scream in the microphone like, wake up, change his hormones, high school, threesome, roll call, study, license, freedom, questions, doubtful, wedding, family, happy ever after, dead end.

And that points to how in life we're groomed to You know, get to school, kindergarten, and then in first grade, second grade, move all the way up, graduate high school.

Now I got to go to college or get a job.

And then you get married and it's like, now what?

You get to that point where you're like, now what?

And that's where a lot of people reach that midlife crisis.

And the band, they were in their 40s too when they dropped this album.

So you can tell that they've got some dirt under their fingernails.

You know, they've got some experience under their belt.

And they're singing about it.

And then the lyrics continue, the bestest part of waking up, kind of pointing to the slogans we hear in advertisements.

And we try to find meaning in the mundane.

There's the lyric mundane ideation, how half the time you meet people, it's almost like Oh, I'm into that show too.

You know, a lot of common interests in consumer things are what connect us these days, which is okay.

You know, it's okay to have similar hobbies, but when we find our identity in the material, that's where problems can start to arise, trying to find meaning in a consumer world.

And then he goes back into the mantra, as it may, as it may, as it may.

And then the last part of the song is where it starts to get a little sad.

And you can tell the protagonist, who is us, starts to reflect on life.

And the lyrics say, days they come and days they go until no more days set you free.

Well on my way, my way to lose me.

This album is very poetic.

Even just reading the lyrics without music, it's very poetic.

And then he says, it strikes me that I don't belong here anymore.

As I observe my own reflection, try a happy face, staring through the warm tears, a sad frown from the cold years.

Adieu.

But the whole album is about losing yourself, kind of turning within, going inwards.

And it's not necessarily about...

actually killing your body, but the idea of yourself.

There's a line where it says, I hang now for my family tree, which kind of points to the death of the idea of yourself in a lineage.

There's a Hebrew word called, or it's shuv, shuv, And that's the original Hebrew word for repent, which means to turn back or to return, to come home.

That's what it literally means.

Today, repent means, we look at it as guilt or self-condemnation, begging for forgiveness.

But the original meaning, if you ever read the Hebrew word shuv as it was written in the Bible, is about turning within, going inwards.

And Jesus had a parable about this with the prodigal son, where he took his inheritance and went out into the world and lived it up.

And there's a part in the parable where he says, quote, but when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger.

And this hunger is not just for food, you know, it's for meaning, connection, belonging.

And then he says, I don't belong here anymore.

And And that's the turning point where the hunger kind of becomes a compass.

So back to the parable with Jesus, he says, And that last part, "...for this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found," To me, that is reflective on what this song is about, how the material, we feel dead in that.

And then we come alive again when we turn within, when we cultivate that space in us that I always talk about.

that I have talked about in the past few episodes.

When you become mindful of what is and you're present for people and you kind of turn within, instead of looking to the external for satisfaction, you look for the ultimate satisfaction in your being.

And there's another line that Jesus says in the Gospel of John where he says, they do not belong to the world just as I do not belong to the world.

So it's like that lyric at the end of Game Over, I don't belong here anymore.

And you hear this echoed in the New Testament.

So this album is very spiritual.

And the point of this song, in my opinion, is that no matter what's happening, you can just always stop and breathe and cultivate that silence just where you are.

And like the Quakers say, you can follow that still small voice that says, come home.

And when it transitions in the next track, which is called Mattel.

It's interesting.

Game Over kind of sets the tone for the album.

And Mattel, this song is called Mattel because it's like the toy company and how there's almost a plastic veneer or nature to our consumerist society.

All the things that the character in the first song is not finding satisfaction in, they kind of elaborate on that.

The opening lyrics of Mattel, they speak of vinyl skin, plastic bones, cast button eyes, reflecting an image.

Everything seems like it should, but nobody's actually home.

Like we're all wearing masks.

We have a false enthusiasm for the jobs we have, the positions we have in life, because they're not ultimately satisfying, at least for the most of us.

And the lyrics, they talk about like our neighborhoods.

It says, quote, "'Cue the breeze that sway the painted trees.

Toy yellow birds upon the rooftop sing in chorus with the buzzing bees.'" Melt in sun, LED beams from the sky being held on a string, while boredom tears me apart at the seams.

Now I know this might sound crazy, but I've smelled the plastic daisies, and it seems we've found ourselves in hell.

And that part, hell, is screamed into the microphone by the bassist, which to me is evokes the idea of our soul desperately crying out for something real.

Everything looks nice, but we're crying out for something authentic, genuine.

There's just a veneer to it.  And that's just the way our society was set up.

It's not...

It's not because of the individuals that are just, it's not an individual problem.

It's a societal problem.

It's an economic problem, which we'll get more into later.

Alan Watts had a comment on this.

He says, quote,  Why is it that in a way, this culture represents in a unique fashion the law of diminishing returns, that our success is a failure, that we are building up, in other words, an enormous technological civilization which seems to promise the fulfillment of every wish almost at the touch of a button?

And yet, as in so many fairy tales, when the wishes finally materialize, they're like fairy gold, they're not really material at all.

In other words, so many of our products, our cars, our homes, our food, our clothing, 'looks' as if it were really the instant creation of pure thought, that is to say, it's thoroughly insubstantial, lacking in what the connoisseur of wine calls body.   That's powerful.

Great observation by philosopher Alan Watts.

And the lyrics continue in this song.

And these lyrics kind of point to the digital world that's kind of taken us over.

They say, quote, round head consumed with major nothings, ears made of wax unfit to hear.

Day after day, it all plays over.

Dedicated loop, same year after year.

You know, that constant bombardment of noise in our pocket, the endless need to scroll.

It's the same And they continue the lyrics by saying, empty as we play pretend send our thoughts with you and to your kin and in case i don't see you again good afternoon good evening and good night obviously pointing to the the truman show if you guys have ever seen that movie it's a wonderful film about a completely fake uh neighborhood and city all around one guy i won't digress into that but the second time in the lyric of this song, when he says, we found ourselves in hell.

Again, the bassist, Johnny, He screams into the mic, a guttural scream, and it just embodies the soul just crying out, please give me something real.

And the drums behind his voice, they sound almost, when you listen to this song, let me know if you feel the same way.

It sounds like the drums are pounding, like somebody pounding on a wall.

Let me out, get me out of this plastic hell.

And the guitars, they come in And they play this amazing guitar solo, just packed with emotion.

And like I said, they're progressive.

So they've done something I've never heard a band do before, which is to put auto-tune on a guitar.

And they do that on purpose to make the guitars kind of sound fake.

You know, there's a lot of musicians that use auto-tune now and they love it.

It's been like 20 years we've been hearing autotune, and hearing the guitars with autotune is just really weird, and it still hits you hard.

But then eventually the autotune melts away at the crescendo of the solo, kind of signifying the soul is just ripping plastic off of itself as it frees itself from this plastic cocoon.

And the lyrics continue.

It says, advertisement, moral scrawl, a semblance of choice when there's no choice at all.

Out of stock.

The end is nigh.

Burn.

We're in hell, basically, is what this section is pointing to.  In Buddhism, there's the idea of samsara, which I mentioned earlier, perpetual wandering, which is really embodied in these first two tracks.

Basically, searching for satisfaction in the external, in the material, which is not to say you can't enjoy it, but it's when you're looking for satisfaction in it or when you get attached to it.

There's a quote from the Dhammapada, which are like sayings from the Buddha, and he talks about this samsara.

I want to read this to you.

It says...

This is from the Buddha, quote, "...through many births I wandered in samsara, seeking but not finding the builder of this house.

Painful is birth again and again.

House builder, you are seen.

You will not build this house again.

All your rafters are broken.

The ridge pole is shattered.

My mind has attained the unconditioned.

I have attained the end of craving." And in Buddhism, the ultimate freedom is the end of craving.

So it goes from this material track of Mattel, and it transitions into the next track, which is called Nobody.

And this is all about the idea that there is no separate individual self cut off from the whole.

Again, our whole society these days is hyper individualistic.

If you're successful, it's because you did something right.

If you're not, it's because you did something wrong.

And I mentioned on, I think episode four, I talked about mysticism and the illusion of measurement.

Well, part of the illusion of measurement is the idea of a separate self.

I mentioned on that episode, like you can't go to the equator and tie up a package with it, as Alan Watts has said.

You can't physically touch the equator, but it's a useful measurement tool, even though it's not ultimately real.

And this points to yourself.

The idea of you as a separate self from the rest of the universe is ultimately illusion.

And the more you wake up and cultivate a silence in you, the more you realize this.

Jesus said, this I say to you, I say to all, stay awake.

And that word awake in Sanskrit is bodhi, which is the root word for Buddhism, which means wakefulness or Buddha, which is one who is awake.

If you've ever wondered what Buddha means, that's all it means, that you're awake.

And this song is so beautiful.

It almost has like a melodic breathing to it when it first starts with the electric guitars, like an inhale and an exhale.

And the There's a guitar solo actually at the very end of the song, which almost sounds like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon.

This track points to the character on this album, the protagonist, sort of emerging from that plastic cocoon of consumerism and realizing the real self within is the whole thing.

You know, you're not separate from the universe.

There's no universe without you.

There's no you without the universe.

You're an integral part.

You're unique and distinct, but you're not separate.

It's like a wave in the ocean.

You could say there's a wave, but you can't say there's a wave separate from the ocean.

It's part of the same thing.

The ocean waves, just like the universe does you.

You're like a wave of the universe.

So the opening lyrics in this song say, ride in the shadows, wandering beyond the frame, float like a feather through space and time, outside a dream, pirouette with divinity, in a dance we've shared before.

And I love that line because pirouette obviously is like a dancing type thing.

And in the Hindu cosmology, they look at...

life as a divine play, like God is having fun, you know, playing all the parts at once.

There's the idea of the Atman inside you, which is connected to the Brahman.

And of course, these are concepts, but it's a beautiful conceptual model of looking at the universe and yourself.

The universe essentially is not serious, that it's sincere, but it's not serious.

There's quotes from the Upanishads in the are for delight, not from obligation.

Having further increased his spiritual understanding, Bhrigu realized Brahman as spiritual bliss.

From this supreme source of spiritual bliss, all beings arise.

By this supreme source of bliss, they live.

And at death, they return to the same supreme source of bliss.

And There's also a line in the book of Proverbs written by Solomon in the Hebrew tradition that points to this idea that life is essentially playful.

I mean, you could just look at your kids and realize that.

I mean, they're closest to the nature of human nature and reality, the nature of reality, and kids love to play.

There's a quote from Proverbs that says, taking things so seriously.

Sincerely, but not seriously.

Serious is heavy.

You know, life is not meant to be looked at as this serious, dreadful drag that we have to get through.

And it really embodies that.

And then the lyrics continue in this song.

It says, someone dissolution.

This is, I am all as I am none.

Here we fly so high.

There's no I, no coming down.

And this points to the fact that all measurement is illusion.

Again, the wave is not separate from the ocean.

And the character in the song realizes that and experiences that bliss, that freedom.

And the lyrics continue saying, return to the boundless, immerse in the free, letting go as you lose your name and all you've known to be.

And it's intimidating to let go.

Your ego wants to hold on to its identity.

The ego is...

There's a quote that I love, the ego or the intellect is a wonderful tool, but it's a terrible master.

And it is terrified of letting go of its identity.

And there's a quote from Osho.

I took too large of a quote from him, so I'll just paraphrase.

He says, everybody is afraid of being nobody.

Only very rare and extraordinary people are not afraid of being nobody.

A Buddha is needed to be a nobody, meaning you have to really wake up.

And he says, a nobody is not an ordinary phenomenon.

It is one of the greatest experiences in life that you are a It reminds me of that quote from St.

John of the Cross.

God's first language was silence.

And the last thing Osho says in that long quote, which I'll just cut out here, he says...

Be absolutely nobody, and you are one with existence itself.

And I thought that was perfect.

This is so reflected in this song.

I hope you guys listen to this whole album, especially this song.

It really points to your connectedness.

In the West, we view the idea of no self, in a kind of a scary way, we feel like we're gonna disappear or something, or that our stream of consciousness will end after death.

And that is not what Buddhism teaches, that is not what Christianity, any spiritual tradition will always say that you continue on.

And the idea of no self or emptiness The way to look at that from a Western perspective is that you're erasing the imaginary outline around your skin where you think that what's inside your skin is separate from what's outside.

So if you erase that imaginary barrier, you suddenly see that you are part of this huge tapestry that's all one thing happening.

And the lyrics continue.

There's a part where all the music cuts out and all you hear is the lead singer kind of harmonizing with himself, similar to Freddie Mercury, like in Bohemian Rhapsody.

And he says, I see, I see, I see.

And then it just cuts to silence and he says, nobody.

And then it continues and he says, breathe in the silence, ebb and flow among the waves, blur on the spectrum, in light come dark and equal phase.

And this points to that everything goes together.

It's all part of one fabric.

Like I've mentioned in past episodes, you can't have up without down.

You cannot have soft without hard.

You cannot have light without dark or vice versa.

And you can't have self without other.

There's a quote on this that I really love that I wanted to bring up on this note.

And it says, quote, He who knows not that the prince of darkness is but the other face of the king of light knows not me.

Man, that hits you hard.

It's also in the Bible too.

If you read from the prophet Isaiah, it says, quote, I form light and create darkness.

I make peace and create calamity.

I, Yahweh, do all these things.

Some Christians in the West today, the way they interpret the Bible, they don't understand that.

They don't know how to take that.

And you'll hear apologists try to explain that away.

But Isaiah, the prophet, he is saying, look, Everything is Yahweh, which that name means to be, to exist.

I am being itself.

All being has this polarity that we perceive in the human mind, you know, up from down, black from white, good from evil, you know, etc., Now, after this song, Nobody, it's really interesting because it dives back into the material realm.

But instead of Mattel, which zooms in kind of on the individual perspective and how it affects you, We Love You is kind of a zoomed out perspective on the whole system.

You might call it late stage capitalism.

Our economic system, capitalism, is from all the way things look in its final stages.

And all systems arise and pass like anything else in life.

You know, the last episode I did, Gone Like Smoke, it talks about how nothing is permanent.

We had feudalism with kings and queens.

We had slavery, and that ended.

Feudalism ended.

Capitalism came out of feudalism, and it will end as well.

And right now, it is a dying, rotten system that has created horrific wealth inequality and war and struggle around the world.

It had a usefulness, yes, at a certain point in history, but I'm not going to preach politics with you.

This is the law of the universe, folks.

Everything that arises will pass away.

This song, it's not a political song.

It just looks at our system without really putting labels on it and how it affects us.

There's three elements to this song.

It blends sarcasm and insincere flattery to highlight the horrific truth of endless desire, blind profit, and the frantic doing of modern life all the way up until you die.

And it's kind of like, well, let's jump into some of the lyrics.

It starts out really weird.

So when you first put this song on, you're going to be like, what am I listening to?

And these lyrics are designed to evoke that feeling in you on purpose because it's pointing to How corporations tell you that they really appreciate you and that they love you or even from the consumer end, not necessarily the employee end, but even the consumer, you're told that you're special, that you're a unique snowflake, that you deserve this and that.

So the lyrics open up.

There you are.

You've come so far.

Sunny days.

The air tastes so sweet.

Flowers greet.

Birds will sing.

You mean everything.

You can be anything.

And it's right when he says, you can be anything.

It sounds so ridiculous.

And then it just cuts out.

And it goes into the next part of the track.

But this points to our hyper individualism, you know, that you're a unique snowflake.

Success or failure is your own doing.

And right when the lyrics cut out in the beginning, you hear this, just the bass and the drum, just doom, doom, doom, doom, like a machine.

And it jumps into what's underneath that false veneer.

Like it points to in the beginning of this song, what's underneath that falseness, it says more power, more pace, more money, more taste, more sex, more pills, more skin, more shills.

This points to the amplifying of our desires, stoking the flame of your wants.

And as they say in Buddhism, it's desire that creates suffering because you're kind of bent forward out of your position that you want something you don't have or you don't want something you do have.

Essentially, you're not standing directly over your feet right where you are appreciating what you have.

You want something else or you don't want something you have.

And it also points to the fact that everyone's obsessed with their image.

It kind of transitions into, you know, you're great.

Look at the way you've been handling yourself.

We love you.

And the we love you is sarcasm.

And then it goes right back into the system again.

More power, more performance.

Build tall, build higher, build far, build wider, build here, build down, build up, build now.

You know, this endless growth that's baked into capital.

Our planet is dying.

We have certain individuals saying, drill, baby, drill.

You know, like we're running off a cliff.

our economic system is killing the planet and we're accelerate, we're mashing the gas pedal and none of us can stop it, it seems, you know?

Mark says, there's a quote from Marks.

He says, accumulate, accumulate.

This is the new Moses and the prophets, like the new law.

And he says, capital is dead labor, which vampire-like lives only by sucking living labor and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

It points to this vampiric system that's squeezing you for as much as possible, giving as little back and squeezing the planet at the same time.

And at the same time, it's it converts people to this mindset that you have to hustle.

There's another quote I got from Herbert Marcuse.

It says, quote, the people recognize themselves in their commodities.

They find their soul in their automobile, their hi-fi TV set, split-level homes, kitchen equipment.

And this points to the fact that endless growth is not a means to an end.

With our system, it is the end.

Endless growth is not going somewhere.

It just is, and it won't stop, and it's getting bigger, and it's unsustainable.

I know this song is a little depressing, but again, this album, it's introspective.

These things affect us.

I would have never started this spiritual journey.

I'm grateful for my work hours that I've had to endure just to survive because it's caused me to go within.

It kind of accelerated my ending of material identity.

And it's why your rest feels like guilt and your value is measured in your output.

When I take days off, I'm always thinking, man, this is like 200 to 300 bucks that I'm not making this day.

Now I feel guilty if my bills are backed up.

So on my rest days, when I let my body rest, my mind can't rest.

And a lot of you probably feel like that too, like just burnt out.

You can't even rest.

How many jobs give you days off these, you know, actual meaningful time off these days?

Barely any.

And You know, our society is shaped by the way society is run.

I mean, look at homeless people.

There's a lot of judgment.

It's like baked into your brain.

It's not a natural thought when people look at homeless and they say, oh, he's probably addicted to something.

It's like he's either crazy or addicted to something.

And either way, he has nowhere to go.

But there's like that judgmental layer we have between them.

Or a friend or family member that might be struggling financially, they get looked down upon these days.

Although most people are feeling the pressure now, so there's more empathy.

But it's like, There's always the thought, oh, they're lazy.

They're not managing their money right.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm projecting.

That's old thought patterns that used to run through my head because it's tough to be in a financial bind.

To ask for help and receive help, you feel like you didn't do something right.

And there's more lyrics I have here.

Look at the way you go.

You're one in a million and you know it shows.

We love you.

And then it's like, onto the mud.

So it kind of like, it gives you the sarcastic, we love you until you're dead from working, you know?

It's like this false appreciation of labor, pizza Fridays, company mugs or merchandise, humiliating pay, endless hours.

Yeah.

Like DoorDash for me recently, they started this thing called the Platinum Program where I have to accept seven out of 10 offers they give me or I get no offers.

And they send me these little messages like, thank you for being a Platinum member.

We appreciate it and love to give drivers what they love.

You know, it's so false.

So that's what this song is all about.

And it It transitions into the end of this song into a very somber and solemn reflective mode.

There's a part, the final part of the song, it says, do unto the mud, mud.

And then it screams, race to scale the body stack, lay foot to face a top broken back.

A failure here is a failure earned.

So do unto the top, Do unto the end, do unto the mud, do.

And this points to our relentless activity in life just to survive.

You know, when I'm driving, All day, I'm juggling three apps.

My brain is a mess.

I'm glad I found meditation and cultivating mindfulness.

I probably would have gone insane a long time ago.

And that's why I wanted to make this podcast so that we can all stop, reflect on what our lives are like being human in today and try to cultivate that space.

These lyrics point to the brutally an inhuman competitive design of society.

You might have friends or family that think competition is human nature, but for every argument of competition being human nature, I can make a hundred where cooperation is more to our nature.

We've always been a cooperative society throughout history, and now it's like everyone's against each other.

Climbing over others to get up the swelling after you get promoted?

How many managers do you know that lack that basic human empathy, you know?

And they're stressed out as it is too, because they're the middlemen between the owners of the company and the workers, and they're trying to make everyone happy.

So eventually they just go cold on you.

That's why, in my opinion, so many managers lack that empathy.

And it's at this point in the song that the guitar...

it takes the shape of kind of the rat race, always uphill, always running, never arriving.

And it gets really frantic.

And I've experienced that not only in my gig work now, but also call centers.

They track every minute.

I've had managers pull me aside saying I went over on my bathroom break by one or two minutes.

I've been written up and suspended for being late to work by one or two minutes logging into my shift, driving across town to get there, occasionally being one or two minutes late.

I mean, it's a sickness.

And my time away from my family has killed me.

I worried about recording this because this album is a special place in my heart because the very little time I do have with my kids and my son when he still lived with us was singing with him to this album.

Date nights with my wife are gone.

They don't exist anymore.

I don't have the time or the money.

If we want a date night, she comes with me to go deliver in the evening hours.

while somebody watches our kids.

Does that sound dystopian to you?

This is the quote-unquote freest country.

How do you measure freedom if not through free time?

So, you know, just feeling guilty taking days off, it's rough.

I don't even get to rest when I'm home.

And I recorded an episode or two ago when my clutch failed and I couldn't drive.

And my son said the sweetest little thing to me, my four-year-old, he was asking me about the car and why I couldn't go to work.

And he said, dad, I hope your car doesn't get fixed soon so you can stay home with me.

That, this is sick.

This is sick that we've got into this position in life, guys.

The inflation, the cost of living is sick.

The amount of billionaires coming out of the walls now.

You look at the World Wealth Report, 66% of all wealth went to less than a single percent of people, while the remaining 33% of wealth in the world went to the remaining 99%.

It's not just things that are a little imbalanced.

They are sickeningly imbalanced.

And I'm not here to preach in terms of economics and politics, but something has got to give.

At the end of this track, it concludes with the most poignant and sad and haunting guitar and vocals.

It's just this simple strumming of a guitar, the saddest guitar you've ever heard playing by itself, and these haunting vocals behind it.

You know, it ends with the, we love you, we love you, we love you, and the sad guitar comes up behind it, and it just makes you reflect.

Man, it hits you in the feels.

And speaking of hitting you in the feels, the next song that I'm gonna talk about on this album is Cosmic, and it is the jewel in the center of the lotus of this album.

It is, I can only describe this song as love set to music, you know, all the joys and sorrows of life that are bound into love, they're woven into this great cosmic dance and it's reflected so well in this song.

And this is the song that you must hear if you listen to none of this album, this song you must listen to because you will hear people you have lost speaking to you from this song, you will hear Parts of your soul speaking to you.

You will hear the universe itself speaking to you through this song.

This song is a miracle.

It is the most important song I've ever heard in my life.

And I put it at the top.

And it's always hard to say this is my favorite song or this is my favorite album.

But this one, it's hard to find.

It's a meditation.

This whole album is a meditation.

The lyrics to this song open to fade away.

from all that was before.

We shut another door, but not a last goodbye.

Fate has taken once again.

A fight will never win, and time again we try.

We can't escape from these rhythms of life, you know, this this divine pulse, the sacred pulse beneath it all, the rise, the fall.

But we can learn to dance with them, to move with grace, not resistance.

And that happens in silence.

You know, in the book of Job, in the Bible, which is a very profound book, a wisdom book all about suffering, there's a simple little line from Job after he's lost everything.

And it's this attitude that we all need to hold.

It says, Yahweh gives and Yahweh takes.

Praise be to Yahweh.

And again, I always like to remind you guys, Yahweh, if you don't want to imagine a personified God, remember Yahweh, the Hebrew names have deep meaning and that name means to be.

So your being, you are going to experience giving and taking praise.

And you've got to be with it and you've got to love it either way.

When it takes something from you, you've got to love it.

You know, it's hard to do that.

The lyrics continue.

Pain, it found its way back in until we meet again into that good night.

None too far as we chase through the stars beyond forever.

I'll follow you.

And I want to read to you guys some comments that people have left the band about this song.

And some of these might make you tear up, might make me tear up to reading them.

From commenter Ben Young, 1824, from a year ago, he says, quote, my mom's dying of cancer as we speak.

Only a few days remain before her mortal body fails.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Cheers, Mom.

May you shine forever.

I have another comment here from SinfullyWicked67 a year ago.

Quote, I am terminal, and my hubby and I...

Man, these are...

Why did I pick the toughest ones to read?

I'm terminal, and my hubby...

Well, it doesn't get any better than that, does it?

I mean, as far as a review for a song goes, you know, somebody who's about to pass away is thanking you for something so wonderful. 

In the middle of the song, after the lyrics I've read you, there's a guitar solo that I can only describe as the dance of the universe, the dance of life.

It crescendos in ways that I can't even imagine how you'd play this on the guitar ever.

And it sounds like the Big Bang.

It sounds like just everything.

And it fades away, and it introduces a very soothing piano melody with almost what you would call a mantra sound.

reminding us that we are in everything.

Our loved ones are within us, speaking back to us when we get quiet and we listen.

And I want to read that next part to you.

These are the lyrics that are sung over the piano, and it's so good.

It says, "'Dancing in the wind as roses born again, there you'll find me.'" Before the dawn of man in castles made of sand, there you'll find me.

Riding in the caves as fire lights the way, there you'll find me.

Mask of royal glow, dawn in Pharaoh's clothes, there you'll find me.

Let it go.

Rings of dust and ice, weightless in the night, there you'll find me.

Let it go.

And the first thing that came to mind when I heard these lyrics is a quote from Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, which the Catholic Church left out of the Bible for some reason.

But Jesus said something very similar.

You can tell he had the same reflection inside of him.

He said, and when he says, I am, he is invoking the name of God, Yahweh, by the way, which I've used in this episode and many before as that being.

So every time you hear I am, just remember that.

I am the light that is over all things.

I am all.

From me all came forth, and to me all attained.

Split a piece of wood, I am there.

Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.

And that was in saying 77.

And after that beautiful piano and those lyrics that I've just read you, It's kind of like the center point of the song where it collapses into this little innocent, beautiful little, I don't even know how to describe the sounds, but then it just explodes.

And the explosion I can only describe as love.

It's the feeling of love.

It's all the joys and all the sorrows wrapped up into this glorious explosion of music.

And I think it's that part that really hits people hard.

It almost sounds like there's angels singing in this song.

It's just beautifully all melded together.

You can imagine all the sorrows and joys in life wrapped up into this moment when it explodes and you hear these, to me, sounds like angels.

And then the song kind of continues and it...

it almost starts from the middle and works its way back out again.

Like the song starts from the outside and works its way to the middle, and then the middle works its way back out.

And the lyrics reflect that in kind of a mirror.

And the way they're sung, it's almost like that person you lost is singing back to you, like a voice from the other side.

And it harmonizes with the original lyrics and melody, but it changes the melody just a little bit in the way it sings.

It really encaptures the dance or the ebb and flow of life.

And the lyrics say, you know, the same thing that I read to you before.

And they say at the end, I'm gone, I'm gone, I'm gone.

You know, that you can't hold on.

You appreciate it while it's here.

You mourn it when it's gone.

But that's just life.

And there's a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh that I would love to read to you guys that this song really reminds me of.

It's called Please Call Me By My True Names.

And this one hits hard, so keep the Kleenex nearby.

It says, Don't say that I will depart tomorrow.

Even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply.

Every second I am arriving.

To be a bud on a spring branch.

To be a tiny bird with still fragile wings.

Learning to sing in my new nest.

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosizing on the surface of the river, I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones.

My legs are as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda, I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

Man, I'm really letting the waterworks flow with you guys today.

I'm sorry.

I am a member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the earth.

My pain is like a river of tears.

And that's from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

You know, if you guys have ever wondered what Buddhism is all about, that poem, that just hits it.

So then the album moves on to a song called Beautiful Morning.

And this song is very mysterious to me, and I've struggled understanding what it meant.

And for me, it evokes the idea of the mysterious illusion of duality, of me and you being separate.

Also pointing to ego death.

It's personal and cosmic, and I kind of look at it as a meditation now on the death of the ego and the intellect.

There's an opening lyric for this next song.

It says, "'I sit stoic, touch of the divine upon my neck.

Lay me gently, take my body down, let me ascend.'" And it's interesting because there's like a paradox there.

It's like my body is going down, but I'm ascending.

And transcendence, you've heard that word, is when you start to realize, when you really notice that your thoughts are just kind of happening.

They're like clouds passing through the sky.

There's no me doing the thinking.

Me was just one of the clouds.

In fact, the moment I realized that, I remember I was on a delivery and I laughed a little bit and then I cried a little bit because my whole life I've had this voice in my head that I thought was me.

And then practicing stillness and mindfulness, I realized that all along I have been that being or presence behind it, observing the thoughts and just for some reason identifying with it because I think it gets drilled into us when we're young.

Ram Dass has a saying, you know, when you're young, you go into somebody training, and then later you have to learn how to become nobody.

There's a great movie on that called Becoming Nobody that I highly recommend.

It's that moment, though, when you realize your thoughts are kind of doing themselves and they're clouds and you're the sky, that something shifts in your life.

There's a spaciousness between you and your thoughts, and it's a wonderful feeling.

There's a quote from Jack Kornfield.

I've listened to him for many hours.

He's a Buddhist teacher.

And when he helps people meditate, he uses a short little phrase, which I think you guys might find helpful as well.

You don't have to use it just in meditation, but just in your life, because you can meditate while you're on the go.

And he says, quote, "'Thank you, brain, for keeping me safe, but you can relax now.

I've got it from here.'" Love that.

And the lyrics in this song continue.

It says, let me inhale my passage to hell while slowly exhaling the scar.

And this reminds me of Dante's Inferno, where the only way out of hell is through the center of it.

And you've heard me talk about this on several episodes now.

I think the first time I really mentioned myself doing this is on the third episode.

When you embrace your pain, you can exhale the scar.

but not until you've embraced it.

If you keep running from it in a bottle or smoke or distraction, it's still there and it's still causing you just as much pain, but you're not dealing with it.

And it's not something, again, that you need to confront like an enemy.

It's something you need to embrace with arms open and compassion.

And these lyrics, they continue.

They say, you walk on water, but the water swallows you.

And I kind of take this as the viewpoint of Peter seeing Jesus walk on water, and then Jesus sees Peter sink into the water, and he says, you know, ye of little faith, and he pulls him out.

And it's interesting, if you read the Amplified Bible, they have a lot of their own interpretations on things that they expound on.

And one thing that I really liked in that Amplified translation of that, and you can look this up, it says, ye of little faith, and then they expand and they say, drawn in two directions.

And we know the metaphor, when Peter was walking on water, if he kept his eyes on Jesus, he was fine.

But when he started to look at the storm, that's when he sank into the water.

So that's kind of what is evoked for me when I hear those lyrics.

And it's a reminder to be with your being, be with what is right in front of you.

Don't be in your head.

And there's lyrics that continue.

It says, you're like no other.

You're the other one in view.

And I remember Alan Watts pointing out, you're in my external world and I'm in your external world.

So we're all in the external world.

We're all part of the external world.

There are two points of view in one consciousness, one awareness.

And that one awareness is indivisible.

Even though from my perspective, it feels like I'm looking out from my eyes and you're looking from your eyes.

Consciousness is not divisible.

All measurement is illusory.

That's why Jesus says things like, love thy neighbor as thyself, not like you, like yourself.

Treat everyone as if it was you because it is you.

Spoiler alert.

And this song kind of points to looking beyond duality, looking at your neighbor as yourself.

That's why you feel good when you help people.

Instinctively, when we hear the word selfless, we think of good thoughts.

When we hear selfish, we think bad thoughts.

And that's not by accident.

There's a truth inside of us that we all know that we're all one.

It's one love, baby.

And the lyrics continue, don't let it be, don't let it be.

And to me, that's like the ego trying to maintain control.

Keep thinking.

Don't just be.

Don't trust the moment.

You got to think about something.

You got to think about what you need to take care of.

Don't let it be.

It's like the opposite of the Beatles song where it's like, just let it be, let it be, you know?

And then the lyrics continue and they go into kind of like a little Beach Boys section, which is really interesting.

I told you guys, these guys are progressive.

You know, they go from metal to Beach Boys.

And the Beach Boys sounding section, it says, it's a beautiful morning.

It's a beautiful day.

Everybody's smiling in a beautiful way.

I took a walk to paint the flowers and the trees.

The sun reflected, gazing fondly on me.

I made a picture and I put it in the rays outside.

It washed the paint away and carried me home.

I finally arrived.

There's no one but you, too.

And to me, these lyrics point to the fact that if we all are one thing, that is the ultimate definition of aloneness.

And aloneness is is not a bad thing.

It's different from loneliness.

Aloneness, the root of the etymology of that word means all oneness.

So there is the realization that it is all one, but it's not a lonely feeling.

It kind of gets mystical and in the weeds with that.

And some of you aren't ready to kind of think about those concepts.

And to be honest, they're not really too useful in my opinion.

When you start thinking about the philosophical concepts of being one thing, pretending to be the many, because human thought can only rise to its own level.

It can't rise above its own level.

So you kind of have to get out of your head.

And that's why I love music.

That's why I wanted to review this album with you guys, because when you're listening to music, you're not split into two.

You're whole.

And if you think about it, music is just vibration like everything else in the universe.

And it's amazing how vibration can make you feel a certain way.

But on this notion, Lao Tzu did write something in the Tao Te Ching, which I think speaks to this lyric.

And it says, the Tao, which is just a reminder to those not familiar with the Tao.

Tao is another word for the way of things.

It's just the way of nature, the way of life, the way of the universe.

The Tao gives birth to one.

One gives birth to two.

Two gives birth to three.

Three gives birth to all things.

All things have their backs to the female and standing facing the male.

When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony.

Ordinary men hate solitude, but the master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

And that kind of ties up in a bow what I was talking about, those lyrics, you know, the end of that Beach Boys section where it says, there's no one but you, two.

He's not saying T-O-O, T-W-O.

And the Tao points to the fact that the best way I've interpreted that verse is that the one singular consciousness, whatever you want to call it, gives birth to form, and then form gives birth to duality, right?

you know, white and black.

But Alan Watts has been said, he has a saying where he says, it's like the finger that can't touch its own tip or the eye that can't see itself.

You know, that's what you are.

You're looking at all the material.

So that line in the Tao Te Ching where it says, All things have their backs to the female.

If you've ever seen the yin-yang, the darker aspect is the female.

It's the hidden aspect.

It's the shady side of the mountain.

We're all facing forward, but you can't see the back of your head.

But your real nature is that background that you ignore all the time, that stillness, that quietness.

That's why it says the master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness.

And then Jesus echoes this a little bit in the Gospel of Thomas again.

And I'm going to read that to you because the Gospel of Thomas is very powerful.

It says, Jesus saw some infants who were being suckled.

He said to his disciples, these infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.

They said to him, if then we become children, shall we enter the kingdom?

And Jesus said to them, when you make the two one, when you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the upper as the lower, and when you make the male and the female into a single one so that the male is not a male and the female is not female, but when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you shall enter the kingdom.

And that last part, the first part probably sounds familiar, what I've been talking about.

The last part is where he's basically saying, like when he says a hand in place of a hand, he's saying, like, look at your hand right now.

If you're listening to the podcast and you're able to, look at your hand.

Now, when I say hand, that's just a sound.

It's a verb.

It's not a verb.

It's vibrations coming at you.

But when you look at your hand, that's a hand.

And he's saying when you can stay there, completely with your hand and not be in the concept of, oh, my hand hurts.

It's like if I ask you to open and close your hand, you don't know how you do it.

You just do it.

And this verse that I just read to you from Thomas was abbreviated or paraphrase a little bit in the Gospel of Matthew.

He says something similar.

He says, truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

And to me, that also points to the fact that if you look at your kids, they don't really see the world in duality like you do.

We kind of bake that into them as they grow up, especially if you watch young kids when they're first learning their name.

Like my son, I was paying real close attention to him, Leon.

when he was learning his name, and he would say, he would refer to himself in the third person, like, look, Leon did that.

I'm Leon.

You could tell he was like fusing his identity with a name, essentially.

And we all do that.

You know, I can say I'm Jacob, but Jacob is a word.

And what I am is beyond description, you know.

Jesus also echoes this sentiment in the Gospel of Matthew as well, when he says, the light of the body is the eye.

Therefore, if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

And that word single also means complete or whole, which is to say not split in duality, not fractured, but I almost did a South Park joke there.

Basically, when you are seeing things as they are in their suchness, not lost in concepts.

And I won't digress too much more into that.

The lyrics in the song continue.

They say, dressed in armor, just the hollow shell of what I was before.

Help me to turn my attention on me so empty just as I was before.

And to me, that points back to the old concept of self, how it's hollow and false, you know, all we've been talking about.

And it also points to a method of meditation.

Like when he says, help me turn my attention on me, attention on self or self-inquiry.

This is a meditation method.

And it was really popularized by an Indian saint named Ramana Maharshi.

He has a method of asking, who am I?

And don't answer it.

You just ask the question.

And some people will expand on that.

Like, am I my foot?

Am I my arms?

Am I this thought?

You can go thing by thing and be like, well, I would still be here if I didn't have my foot.

I'd still be me if I didn't have my arms.

And then eventually you get to the point where you go in and in and in, and you realize, man, I'm not even my thoughts.

What am I?

I'm that unnameable background behind everything, that eternal background, that sky.

And notice that word sky also means heaven, kingdom of heaven.

Connecting the dots here.

Let me exhale concession to hell while slowly embracing the scar.

The lyrics continue there.

And that echoes the beginning of the song, let me inhale my descent to hell, I think it said.

And this points to me of letting go of control, no matter how hellish, embracing the scars of life.

You know, calls back to the beginning, but basically nirvana means to exhale, to blow out the flame of desire.

And again, that can be the desire not to experience what you're experiencing.

So you let go of that.

If you can't get out of what you're in, If you can't do anything about it, you have no choice but to embrace it or you're going to experience pain.

That's the definition of suffering, of dukkha in the Buddhist tradition.

And then the song continues, don't let it be, don't let it be, don't let it be.

And you hear the ego screaming that.

It's kind of like screaming to hold on, you know.

Don't let it be.

And he sings that in the background over the main lyrics.

So that's my interpretation of the song.

That's my hardest song to really kind of extract nuggets from, but I think it's a good one.

And then I'm going to wrap up pretty soon here.

There's a couple of tracks left, but I'm not going to be as in-detailed on each one.

I don't want to interpret the whole album for you guys.

Some of the tracks have been pretty on the nose.

The following song is called Easier, and...

In my view, it's kind of a short little song.

It's like a pat on the back song, like it's going to be okay.

And it asks that ultimate existential question, do we walk away from life or do we stick it through?

The only real question in philosophy is whether or not to end your life, basically, according to Alan Watts.

He's said that before.

And I like a quote that I've heard from Jack Kornfield where he said, People who have suicidal ideation, and I'm paraphrasing him, but he said people who do have suicidal ideation, they are right in a way that something does need to die.

But it isn't the body.

It's the ego.

It's the thoughts.

You got to let those go.

Let those die.

And I think that really speaks to the idea in Christianity of dying and being reborn.

Because If you're in the moment, you're constantly being reborn to new things.

Otherwise, you're in your head and the same old self, you know?

And the lyrics in this song, they start by saying, it's easier to just walk away.

And then in the background, you'll hear like this, whoa, whoa, whoa, kind of like...

If you've ever had even a glimmer of suicidal ideation, there's that part of your brain that's like, whoa, okay, stop that.

And then the next lyric says, I know you'll see brighter days along the way.

And then you hear that background voice like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is the battle we all feel of overwhelm, not being able to cope, but sticking it out.

You know, it gets easier.

All things pass, including the tough times.

And I have an important quote for you guys from Thich Nhat Hanh on this very topic of tough emotions that lead into these dark thoughts.

The lyrics continue.

They say, I've been shaped by peaks and valleys, and I found a plateau where I cursed at the sky.

Sometimes I feel that the rain falls for me, bound to this flesh till the day that I die.

And when we have these dark thoughts, it's really good to remember that they pass like storms.

And this is a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh on this very topic.

The guy that I read earlier, who's very, this guy is the closest I've seen to like someone who's like fully with it as much as you can be, you know?

And this quote from him says, one emotion is just one emotion.

Emotions are impermanent.

They come, they stay for some time and they have to go.

And we are much more than one emotion.

During a storm, if you focus on the top of a tree, it seems very vulnerable.

But if you look at the trunk, you see it is deeply rooted.

We are like a tree.

The brain is the top.

During the storm of emotion, we should not stay there, thinking and imagining.

We bring our attention down to the navel, We breathe mindfully and we feel safe.

The emotion cannot do anything to us.

There is only one thing to remember.

An emotion is just an emotion.

But we should not wait until we have a strong emotion to begin learning because we will forget.

That is why we have to begin the practice now.

And after we have survived an emotion, we have confidence in the practice.

So that is really powerful.

I love that quote.

He reminds us, like, don't trust your thoughts.

Don't stick in your head.

Get out of your mind and come to your senses.

And you can always come back to your breath, which is another word for spirit.

I know, and the lyrics continue, I know you'll see brighter days along the way.

And I'm always reminded of that quote that we always think is from the Bible, this too shall pass.

It's actually not in the Bible, but it's a common quote.

This too shall pass.

It's a storm.

You are the sky.

Wait it out, and you'll see it pass.

It's like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes.

There's a time for joy, and there's a time for sorrow.

You're going to be okay.

Just bring your awareness to your roots, and again, get out of your mind and come to your senses.

And then the album transitions into the last three songs, which are a little bit shorter, but they kind of clump together in a little trio of songs.

And they spell out the word God.

So the first song is G.

And this song is going to be touchy for some people because it is a commentary on modern dogma and doctrines, particularly in Western faiths and Christianity.

And it's not making fun of Christianity.

It is poking...

It's a little playful jab at...

some of the interpretations that have kind of sprung up out of, I don't want to say misinterpretations, but, you know, there's many ways to understand scripture.

And it's kind of a commentary on that.

And how the word God has become dirty.

The music is a little deliberately bizarre, echoing kind of modern concepts of God and divinity.
And
And you'll see their technical prowess in this song.

It almost reminds me of a dream theater song in some ways.

It's pretty cool.

In the lyrics, they start out kind of with somebody speaking as like the ultimate personified version of God.

He says, I am the man, six days of bullshit, a wave of my hand.

And this points to the literalness interpretation of Genesis, like a six-day creation event.

This is also the beginning of the idea of the spirit-infused sort of clay model of the universe, and how it led to the opposite, which is nihilism and atheism.

Because the church originally said, all matter in the universe is dumb, blind energy bumping into itself.

And without God to infuse it or inform it and make it something, it was just dumb and lifeless.

So people eventually got tired of the idea of this God- you know, father figure looking down on you for everything.

And we did away with it after.

Newtonian physics came out.

That was the rise of nihilism and atheism, like there's no God and the universe is dumb.

So we kept the dumb universe model, but we got rid of the informer, if you will, and that's where we are today.

The prevailing theory of the universe is that everything is completely random and human existence is a blip and our life is just a spark between two eternal darknesses, you know.

And then the lyrics continue.

It says, And this points to the fact that we view God as a royal monarch model of the universe, which is ironic.

In today, we value democracy, but Here, the lyrics are pointing to this monarch demanding loyalty or else, quote unquote.

And throughout the centuries, scripture has been distorted to present us with this heaven-hell model that After death, you'll either go to heaven or hell depending on a quote unquote thought you believe.

And if you don't have a certain thought in your head, then you're completely screwed, you know, for all eternity.

You'll burn forever or modern people will say, well, you just get annihilated forever.

And this is not to say that there's nothing, there's something wrong with devotion to the idea of an aspect of divinity or a deity.

It's a beautiful way to transcend the ego and realize our oneness with the whole works.

Christian mystics have echoed this throughout the centuries.

For example, Meister Eckhart, he says, quote, when the soul is totally lost, it finds that it is the very self which it sought for so long in vain.

Here, the soul is God.

So this is a good example of a man who dwelt in stillness and he read the same Bible that other believers read and And he got so lost in his devotion to God that he lost completely his idea of God, his idea of himself as separate from this idea of God, and he just experienced union with the divine.

And if you read these Christian mystics, they all speak about that unity with God.

You know, that's what yoga means in the Hindu tradition, union with God.

The word itself just means union, but it always points to that union with God.

with the Brahman, with God.

And the lyrics continue.

And this part is really kind of funny and it points to, well, let me just read it.

It says, thought about a name that came to me.

Can you explain why the phone would ring?

I prayed so hard and oh my Lord, I got a spot at the front of the lot.

Can't be late for my weekly date because we're going to save someone.

And this points to the excessive looking for little miracles or synchronicities in life.

It's not to say that synchronicities don't actually happen in life.

I personally believe very much in the potentiality of miracles and synchronicities.

This whole universe is magical.

Who am I to say that the laws of physics as we understand them now is the only way things can happen, you know?

Science still doesn't know why anything happens at all, only how things happen on small smaller and smaller event scales or larger and larger detail.

But these lyrics are pointing to those friends who might say like, oh my God, I was thinking about it and then the phone rang and there's no way that could have happened.

You know, it's like you're looking a little too hard.

Like when Jesus said, a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.

And Or at the end where it says we're going to save someone.

What does salvation mean?

You know, just thinking a certain thought, clinging to a belief.

Saved from what?

You know, it gets muddy.

And the lyrics continue.

It says, I am the plan.

Cheap imitations by obsessive fans.

But you're great and fun to watch.

On the seventh day, I thought about world peace, but I decided to take it off.

And, you know, this...

This really points, in my opinion, to the prosperity gospel people, the televangelists.

There's a lot of terrible people out there that take advantage of people, innocent people looking to better themselves and go within, and they're You know, they're the wolves in sheep's clothing.

A show that comes to mind, which I highly recommend on this topic, is called The Righteous Gemstones.

It's on HBO Max.

And my wife and I have binged the whole show since it started.

It's great.

It's a Danny McBride series.

It's extremely well written.

And it's a total parody of these prosperity preachers who are like millionaires with private jets.

There's a certain other church called that comes to mind on this, and I won't call them out, but you all, I'm sure, have seen them around.

They have about $200 billion in assets, completely tax-free.

Whistleblowers have revealed that less than a single percent goes to charity.

If we want to compare...

You know what, I'm not gonna go too into detail because I don't want these churches to come after me, but it's like Jesus said in the Bible, you will know the quality of a tree by the fruit that it produces.

And if you got $200 billion in your bank account in investment portfolios and whatnot, and you're spending less than a percent or a few percent, I don't know the exact figure, on helping people, that speaks for itself.

I don't need to say any more on it.

Spiritual egoism, you know, these lyrics talk about People who identify as like, oh, I'm a Christian and you're not, you know, we're in the in group, you're in the out group.

Look, I've got the bumper sticker to prove it, you know.

So that's really what this song is about.

And the part where it says, on the seventh day, I thought about world peace, but I decided to take it off.

This really, in my interpretation, this points to the modern church's interpretation of suffering, and it really has no answer for it.

They want to keep God's skirts clean, and they ignore the end of the book of Job, where we don't know how it works.

We don't know how it all fits together, only that it all does fit together.

And There's a guy, Krishnamurti, I love the guy.

He says, the unknown is the, the unknowing is the knowing.

And when we try to stuff God into a concept, a box of concepts, weird things start happening.

Like, well, what about suffering?

How could, we've all heard the quote, quote, how could God let this happen, right?

So you see where these problems arise when we overly personify and overly literalize everything about him, right?

The whole pie is part of the package.

You know, we have to accept it.

It reminds me of a quote from, which is attributed usually to St.

Francis of Assisi.

Say that three times fast.

He says, quote, preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words.

Or from Jesus, straight from Jesus' mouth in the Gospel of John, he says, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

And he's also said many times, give it all up to the poor.

Trust God.

So again, if you've got billions of dollars in your church and you're using barely any of it for charity, I hate to say it, but shame on you.

And then the next track after that is Ordinary, which is an homage to Daft Punk.

They've said that in interviews.

And these lyrics, they say, will you give me my own soul, control?

Tell me how to dream.

Tell me what it means.

Tell me how to feel.

Tell me you believe.

And tell me all the things you wanted me to be.

Tell me when I'm really alive.

And I'm not going to go too much into the weeds with this one, but to me, this It kind of points to human intelligence and how limited it is.

And it also points to artificial intelligence and how when we put too much stock into our own intelligence, it's almost like society is offended now that we have AI, which can do a lot more.

that our regular intelligence can do.

But we forget that AI can't create things like we can.

I mean, it can take what we've already created and put it in a blender and make it look new and packaged and clean or unique, but to truly create something from the void.

I'm sorry, but that's from the human heart.

This album, for example, Avenged Sevenfold they couldn't sit down on an AI and make a really good prompt to make this album it just isn't possible especially if you listen to that song Cosmic you know so you know AI can make music that sounds real but you know it's not a substitution for the real thing it might be useful for doing a podcast intro or something like that but as far as like real from the heart music like this it just there's no way it can do any of that And the last song that I'll touch on here, well, technically the second to last song is called Death.

So you've got G and then O for ordinary and then D for death, spells God.

And death, I'll read the lyrics.

It says, "'As I make myself more comfortable with the edge, "'I leap into the darkest night. "'Wind on my face, it satisfies. "'I never have felt so alive. "'And in my dreams, I fly away.'" And that's the last lyric of the whole album, I Fly Away.

And man, M.

Shadows, his voice is amazing, especially on this song.

And my son, Trent, he actually sang this song in front of his high school when they were doing a little talent show.

That's why I love my son.

He has balls of steel.

I would never do something like that.

He just gets up on stage and sings it.

Because we've sang it together so many times in the car.

And he's like, fuck it, I'll sing this song.

And it was great.

And at first glance, this song might sound like a reference to literal death or suicide.

But to me, the whole album is pointing to something deeper, ego death, embracing what is, letting go, trusting the fall.

And I choose to look at this song in my interpretation as like when he says...

as I make myself more comfortable with the edge, you can look at that as like somebody who's just about to jump off a building and kill themselves.

But in my opinion, based on what we've learned from the whole album, it's him pointing to, I'm ready to let my ego go.

I'm ready to be in the moment.

It's going to be scary to let go of my thoughts or reduce them, but I'm going to trust the fall.

Ram Dass, who I've mentioned before, major inspiration in my life.

He actually has a a mantra, which is on this album art, if you get the vinyl edition, Ram Dass has a mantra where he says, I am loving awareness.

I am loving awareness.

And they put that on the back of the album.

So you can see they pulled from a lot of different sources.

And I didn't have time to touch on all of them.

But on this note of flying away and letting go of the ego, Ram Dass once compared surrendering your ego or intellect to jumping out of an airplane, because it's scary.

And he says on the way down you realize you forgot your parachute and then a little way further you realize there's no ground it's just falling you know at first it's terrifying then halfway down there's no parachute and then there's no ground it's this moment of leaping into the unknown it's not the end it's actually the beginning it's making all things new you're not falling you're flying And that's what it feels like.

I've touched on this in other episodes, I think episode four, where the more you cultivate mindfulness and continuity of mindfulness throughout your day, it does feel a little bit like you're floating, maybe like you're falling sometimes, because your brain is not gripping every moment in thought.

You're actually experiencing life.

And that pretty much wraps up the album.

There's one last track, which is the title track of the album, Life is But a Dream, and it leaves a little ellipses at the end, like, ooh, what's next?

And it's just a little poignant closing melody on the piano.

And the piano is played by none other than the lead guitarist, Sinister Gates.

And it's a very mysterious melody.

It signifies like the end of the album, but it also has joy and sorrow kind of wrapped into it.

And it's really interesting because the very last chord, he plays the highest and the lowest note on the piano at the same time, kind of symbolizing it's all one thing, you know?

And before we wrap up this episode, guys, I want to say thank you.

I don't know how long this episode's gone, but if you've stuck through all of it, thank you so much.

I hope you enjoy the album if you listen to it.

It's Life is But a Dream.

It's streaming everywhere, of course.

And they've got an amazing back catalog before this as well.

And before we close out, if you'd like to, I would love it if you'd follow the show or subscribe, leave me a comment, review that really helped the show grow.

If you'd like to help me even more, devote more time to this and shift away from gig work, you can also go to patreon.com slash standing nowhere podcast.

In the description below, I also have links if you'd like to get in touch with me.

And I'd like to read you a closing passage.

And it's from Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching.

It says, the master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings.

He knows that he is going to die and he has nothing left to hold on to.

No illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body.

He doesn't think about his actions.

They flow from the core of his being.

He holds nothing back from life.

Therefore, he is ready for death as a man is ready for sleep after a good day's work.

Thanks for listening, guys.

Blessings and have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day.