Myth and Ritual in Yoga, with Carlos Tao

0:00 Hey there, Before we get started on this week's episode, I would love to ask for your support by reviewing this podcast. We want to share yoga with as many people as possible and this free resource. This podcast is one of the ways that we can do that. And the best way that you can help support us is by giving us a review.

0:16 So if you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever podcast platform you use, Scroll down until you find that star review and then give us some love. Thank you so much, and let's get started with this week's episode. We have at least two different ways of seeing the world.

0:31 One is our left brain capacity to to focus in and manipulate the world and it's it's served us well. I mean look at the technology around us that comes from this way of saying and then there's this right side of ourselves that isn't where our representational language lives this this right brain capacity but it can sense the fullness of the world outside of its part, the gestalt of the world.

0:55 So that immediate it's like, OK, So what do I do? That's a very left brain. But we've we've taken this way of seeing this left brain, this way of saying and we've put it above the right brain way of saying and there's a lot of researching and McGill Christ has done a lot of research on brain lateralization and we've kind of flipped this like the left brain should be in the service of the whole way of saying that the right brain has. So it's not necessarily just

1:22 what do I do, like what the next thing is to do, but it's. It's a shift in perspective. It's a shift in in the way of saying welcome to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do then this podcast is for you.

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2:01 Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga. Related and we're trying to talk from the teacher's perspective and also the student's perspective to make sure we get a full 360 degree angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast.

2:19 All right, welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. Michael here. And I'm excited we have a new guest in our presence. Carlos Tao, welcome to the podcast. Carlos, how are you? Thank you, Michael. I'm good. Thank you for having me. Great.

2:31 So I've just met Carlos. Actually we, we've known each other a little bit because we worked with radiantly live trainings before. So we've crossed paths a few times. So we've never actually had formal conversation. So this is the first time we were going to get to do that. So I'm excited and because I don't know Carlos as much as I'm going to know him, I'm just going to let Carlos introduce himself.

2:53 So Carlos, why don't you just, you know, let people know a little bit about who you are, where you're from, and yeah, then they can subscribe to this conversation. OK, never know where to begin with this. Where is, where is it appropriate?

3:09 So I was born in the United States. My parents are Cuban. Some of Cuban descent born in the United States move to Bali more or less. Spend about half the year here for the last six years, seven years. At this point in my life, I'm not sure exactly what it is that I do.

3:29 It's yoga teacher does not encompass it and I'm still struggling to find words. Words that can point to the ineffable and I I think those words are, are becoming more clear there's there's something to do with with a revocation revivification of myth and ritual of of breathing life and in to old traditions in a way that's not only intellectually respectable but intellectually responsible and.

4:11 And helping shift not just what we do but what we see and and how we are available for a presencing living world. Those are a lot of words that don't that don't give themselves easily to a sound bite. So somewhere within the realm of a philosophy and I don't think it's philosophy in the way that we think of it now as a course in university or.

4:38 A memorization of old words, but a way of life that is different from the ordinary, that that's that's something that is attempting to come into a relationship with with the familiar and with the mystery of what we are. Maybe that'll give us something to there's a lot.

4:59 There's a. Lot there. A place to start? Yeah. Yeah, beyond the ordinary. I mean there's lots of things that you said and you're you're you're evoking for me an interest and a curiosity to know like what's what is, what is he talking about? Like what does he mean exactly.

5:16 So I'm just thinking of some people that might be like tuning in and being like, OK, So what is it that like where maybe we can start with something like this embodiment or this stance that you're you're sharing with us now?

5:32 This wasn't always probably present, I would assume. And therefore at one point in time you said you, you're you're raised in the United States. That was right. Yes. So there, you know, maybe there's a little bit of Carlos before and then there's a Carlos now. So what I think I just heard is a bit of Carlos now. So maybe give us a little bit of Carlos before and maybe that'll help give us a bit of an idea of how now is, is is different because not knowing anything

5:59 about you, it's always helpful to get a bit of a back story. Yeah. If you're willing to share. Of course, sure. It's stories are rarely just recordings of the actuality of events that happened. Yeah. So there is this even evolution and morphing that's happened around, I guess the context of how I see those moments. But I'll give you, I can give you some vignettes. Sure about them or some some clips about what that was. I smiled when you said raised in

6:33 the United States, because being raised in Miami with Cuban parents, it's it's it's a stretch to call that. Being raised in the United States, that's much more a second Cuba, right? It's kind of what that was. You can you can get along very well in Miami, not speaking English at all. You'll have a very difficult time getting around in Miami if you don't speak Spanish.

6:57 So Spanish was my first language. The culture was was full of life and and very different from those that I've gotten to know that were raised in in other states or a little bit further north. Ethnic parents, Catholic culture, not not very religious, but you know, Sundays. Sundays was from Mass.

7:16 My grandparents especially. I was an altar boy. I went through 12 years of Catholic school. My my high school was four years of all boys. Catholic school. I was in the choir. You. Were in the choir. There we go. I hit puberty and then the boys went out the door. Well yeah my my voice didn't matter that much. I was silent.

7:34 So I I lasted a little longer and it and it was this at least where where the circles that I was in it was it was the place to to come in contact with with something ephemeral, something outside of. Let's say the material, the the strictly material world it was. It was the place where where where magic and enchantment was. It was the strange smells of the incense. It was the choir sounds.

8:06 It was words in a language that I didn't understand, that that spoke to something, that that kind of implicitness spoke to something in me. There there was some. And I don't think it's just me. I talk a lot about a universal or a fundamental. Ache and longing that that we have not not as a problem but but it's something that calls to us that we can Joseph Campbell's words that we can we can answer the call or not. But there is something essential

8:36 in us in that ache. And it was the place that was at least at least respectable to to go in there and and deal with these dark, mysterious waters outside of of the light of the everyday. So that was fascinating to me and I and I wanted so badly to to continue to believe, to continue to to feel it, to give myself over to that.

9:03 But we can go more into this. I don't want to get too too lost already in in where I'm going with this, but the the, I'd say the protestantization of what formalized or traditional religions had become where the the mysterious aspects are.

9:22 Are kind of padded down and and and watered down and and it's the morality and the propositional in the words that are given a high standard. So the the the priest telling you how you should live and how to how to live in your work how to how to be in school, how to be a good little boy or good little girl was paramount. And these other mysterious esoteric aspects were were pushed to the side and and and there's something deeply missing in that we've we've.

9:52 We've made we've made a grave error in thinking that that that was just something primitive and superstitious and extra that that we can get rid of within our modern minds. So as as our our left brain capacity, as my left brain capacity as we all do started to develop as as I got older it was less and less viable for me to believe just in the propositions as as far as. Historically did these things happen exactly how they were said is taking myth in that

10:28 infused way of did it happen or did it not happen Was was difficult to to balance out. So I I started to look in other places in any other places philosophy different religions different traditions new age ideas. People like Wayne Dyer and it's been a while, but Wayne Dyer was like APBS guru back then that. That you know this is before cable and definitely before the Internet, but Wayne Dyer had had a working knowledge of a lot of Eastern thought melded with some

11:02 someone's western sensibility. So that was interesting and at least opened possibilities to other ways of of thinking. And going further than that, things like psychedelics were. Were calling to me and and and other ways that again were were in direct rebellion to what I saw now as a confused world, a world that a world in which something essential was missing and and doing psychedelics or mind altering substances was.

11:42 It was a way to see something else and and it wasn't just a proposition, it wasn't a story in a book. There was a direct experience of something different and that was addictive, literally addictive. It it it, it moved and morphed then from this deep longing for something real and profound.

12:04 The path, even though it came from a good intention and there were moments of. Opening up to the possibilities of a world outside of the world. As I was told, the cost is very high when you start to go through those circles.

12:18 And for the cost for me was a heroin addiction that lasted about a decade almost to my 30s eventually. But again, coming out of that, it was, it was a gift. It was a gift to move in that way. It was a gift to. To get lost in a sense there there was something like a life preserver, which is what that was. Because to me that the the most dangerous and the most scary thing wasn't to get lost in that world, but it was to get lost in this two-dimensional world as I

12:57 saw at this world devoid of enchantment, the devoid of mystery, where the the ultimate orientation is, is towards. Resource and comfort and a subjective sense of well-being and and meaning and and difficulty and challenge and and and the poetry of a living world was was at at the very best, a weekend endeavor for tourists. You know, you'd you'd live your life and then maybe you'd go to church on a Sunday, or you'd live your life and maybe you'd do something like, you know,

13:30 take a yoga class. Not as a transformational experience that would open up portals into another way of being, but just as a pacification for you to be able to go back into the world as you knew it, but to be more OK with it. And there was something off in that. These practices were meant to be rebellious in nature, were meant to rip a gash in the veil, to be able to step beyond it into an encounter with.

13:59 Leviathan and encounter with reality. And so that again took me up. And I and I say I there's a humility here of there's a lot, there's a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me. That didn't make it out of what I wasn't. It wasn't that I was so smart or I was so good or I made so many great decisions.

14:20 There's these moments of of grace that I don't know why my friends seem to. Be completely OK with the world around them like like fine they were just like well this is what you do and and they seemed happy enough and I and and it's not that I was resistant to that kind of well-being or comfort I wanted it it just wasn't there and no matter what I did there was this nagging feeling of this isn't right so this isn't there this isn't enough and while at those moments.

14:56 Like a lot of things are, at those moments, it felt like a curse. Eventually it was, Oh my God, what a gift, what a gift. Because it was that sense of inadequacy. Not a sense of adequacy, not a sense of me being good. Just the way that I was.

15:09 Of everything is perfect and I have nothing else to do but that. That something needs to be annihilated. That there's something on the other side of an annihilation that needs to come, that is worth the sacrifice. That I'm going to sacrifice the days of my life no matter what cords what?

15:26 And what can I move towards that has the ultimate meaning that I'd make the sacrifice and I'd make it gladly. So it was a slower journey than this, towards being able to to enunciate it or or put it to words or to even understand beyond just this feeling or these dreams.

15:49 So it was a slower journey and I began to read again everything that I can get my hands on looking for the answers. In a book or in a tradition and you know, wanting to turn to page 67 and find the five steps to the answers of everything that I had been looking for. But that wasn't to be.

16:07 That wasn't to be. Every every tradition that I looked into from the place that I was looking ended up being eventually a dead end. So again the dark night of the soul came up again. If like, well, if there is no answer then what is this? And and the question became.

16:26 Much more interesting than the answers, because what I was looking for, I was looking for answers in the propositional. I was looking for answers within the linear way of thinking and being. This is lateralization of the brain. This, this left brain way of seeing the world that only the things that we can put into words and define accurately and concretely are what's real and this other. Capacity to hold the implicit as real and a real beyond our capacity to to wrestle it down

17:02 into words, but real none the less. That started to to build something in me and and from those moments I was never into yoga. Yoga was never something that the physical aspect and the philosophy was interesting to me, even though I found it extremely messy and I. I found out later why that I I felt that way but but it but it intuitively felt like there was some kind of physical practice that needed to happen.

17:30 So that moved me in that direction. OK, thank you for that. I got for me might be a little bit helpful. Just you kind of give a bit of a timeline, you said from 20s to 30s and you shared a lot. So I really appreciate that. And it really kind of gave me, like, I was leaning and being like, wow, this is, this is more than I feel like I've experienced in my lifetime already. And a lot of the words that came up for me was wanting to know more, a curiosity.

17:57 And what else did I write to him? Oh, I wrote magic, as you said, a few things that I was like, I think he was looking for the magic. He's looking for something beyond this 2D, beyond what, you know, is the usual day-to-day. And I mean, I was trying to imagine a younger Carlos that was like and just curious and just like wanting more and like looking for this what you can't see necessarily. So I don't know if that's, yeah, we see you nodding. So I'm assuming that's around

18:22 the same realm, but I'm thinking just digestively for some people that's kind of a little bit easier for them to kind of grasp onto, sure. Sure magic. Magic was a word that I that I've that I used to use a lot more than I use it now and and the reason that I I don't use it that much because magic again has this sense of outside of the real right. Here's the real and then there's the magical and these are incompatible right in a sense and and what I'm Speaking of is. Is something that's very real,

18:51 that that's something that that is that is available to us if if we open up to a different way of of seeing in a different way of experiencing what's what's already here. Something that that Jung said was it is useless to preach the lights if no one can see it. It's much more needful to teach the art of seeing. So then roused was, you know, the real voyage of discovery consists not in.

19:18 In finding new landscapes but in having new eyes. So again it's it's it's the world as as is present. It's our impoverished understanding of ourselves and our impoverished a city to sense and experience what's there. So it's it's it's true reality. It's a reality beneath the the costume or the film that we've put over it in our representations that, I mean that's.

19:47 A much longer conversation when we talk about the movement towards a linear language and something like the the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and you know, the Cardian split and all of these things that started to move us towards a glorification more of our representations of the world than the living presencing world.

20:07 So Cardian split. I don't know that it's. So Descartes that Descartes Rene Descartes father or grandfather of of science. There was. I don't want to get too deeply into this, but but from him and and possibly further back, there was this idea of the material being the real and everything that was outside of the material being the unreal. That and and we used to have a much, much richer understanding of what reality was, a metaphorical capacity to hold the world.

20:42 It wasn't so long ago that we even considered. The voices in our heads. Not as ourselves like oh this is my conscious speaking. We considered these voices in our heads. The gods these voices were were were divine voices. There were voices of the other not other or the eye not eye. So there was this movement towards a relationship with the world as mysterious and divine and and animate and conscious. And our our movement towards what we called reason was. In a sense a a closing of the

21:18 door on that way of of seeing, of that way of experiencing the the metaphorical world, the world as presencing and alive. And we started to glorify our concepts and abstractions about the world at a higher order than the the animate world and right in front of us. So when I say that the Guardian split, it's that that that separation between the real and the magic. Basically, exactly, exactly between the let's say between the implicit and the explicit,

21:47 right? Between our our mythic understanding of ourselves as opposed to just what we can touch and put it towards. Yeah. And I was thinking like the census, right. Whatever our senses. And this is, you know, just to kind of say things in a different way.

22:06 Whatever our senses allow us to gather information from to us, that's the only thing. Not to us but to a lot of people, that is what is real. If I can see it, I can believe it. If I can smell it, then obviously it exists. If I can touch it, then it's it.

22:18 You know it has form the outside of those senses. You know, you could call it magic. You can call it something else, energy, whatever word might resonate. But I actually believe that we're we'd be very naive and very selfish to think that what is within our five senses is all that is.

22:39 And I think there's just so much more And and that's kind of what I'm hearing you say is you had a, you had a young curiosity of what that was and you explored it in many different ways and that kind of, you know, popped off some lids, if you will, for you to explore that. And also at the same time you said in different words, but basically, you know, going to ashes and then rising up from that and you know, basically coming to a place of maybe a little bit more where you are

23:07 now coming to Bali for the last 6 or so years. And I'm not sure where else you said six months of the year here. I'm assuming other places you move around. I don't know if you go to Columbia or Miami or anything like that.

23:18 But yeah, I'm just kind of like piercing it all together what I'm hearing. Yeah. Sure at at that I I like what you said about senses but we don't take the world in just as is from our senses and that's that's part of the issue we even.

23:39 What we pay attention to, what we Orient. Because right now, as as you're looking at me, there's an infinite number of things that your senses could be oriented hordes. Are you paying attention to the color of my shirt? Are you paying attention to, you know, the different shape of both of my eyes?

23:55 Are you paying attention to what's going on behind me and even within my voice? Are you paying attention to inflection? Intonation, The way that my face moves when I speak so? The amount of information that's available to our senses is is literally infinite.

24:09 It's combinatorially explosive. There's too much. We need to be able to narrow it down and one of the things that and and a lot of research it says that the main things what our brain does is actually not open up but limit.

24:24 The amount of information it's it filters out most of what the world is to a little tiny sliver, so becomes usable. For us it's it's too much. It's we can't do anything. Otherwise the system gets overwhelmed. There's too much. But then there's an interesting question as to how do we choose what we pay attention to and what we lay in, what we let in. And this is where John Bervecki does a lot of work with the relevance, relevance realization that that we have this. This way through different I

24:55 don't want to call it machinery. I think the metaphor of machines has been overused. But we have these processes of of relevance and words. We pick what's most important to us, and it's subconscious at this point or unconscious at this point where we're not paying attention to everything in front of us, but based on what we believe, on what we've been taught on our culture and our society, on our orientations that. What we filter out even within the world of our senses, and that's part of the issue that

25:28 we're dealing with now, that even though this world is right in front of us, even though the world is right in front of us, even though that magic, that enchantment is right there, we are filtering out most of the world to allow the sliver of the familiar in. So you can think of of two things. It's the image of of the cross, but we're not going to get too much into the symbolism of that.

25:50 But there's. There's two ways to move. There's this linear horizontal way of moving where we can change, but we change more in quantity than in quality, meaning we get a little bit better at what we already are, a little bit better what we already are.

26:05 So this is horizontal movement, but from the horizontal, we don't shift a lot in our capacity to see and absorb more of what the world is. So what mystical experiences are and transformational experiences are there? There are opportunities to shift outside of the horizontal and into a movement into the vertical.

26:27 And it's this vertical movement that allows us to see beyond the lenses that are already filtering out the world in a familiar way. For us, that allows us to shift from the horizontal. And all of a sudden, mystical experience happens as I whether it's psychedelic, whether it's a breathwork journey, whether it's a religious experience full of awe, we are. Shifted and skyrocketed up above the horizontal and now we have a higher quote UN quote, not, not

26:56 as I don't want to make that hierarchical of better or worse, but we move upwards and from this different place now in the vertical we are higher up. So we can see more than we can see before. So that is shifting our relevance realization, that's shifting our orientation.

27:17 That allows us to see beyond our lenses for a moment, so more of the living world is available to us and. The things that we. Had at our disposal throughout time that would allow us to do this. They were things like myth, things like ritual and and in a sense myth is intergenerational wisdom being moved forward throughout time. It's a way to.

27:45 To Orient ourselves to the truly meaningful and and we're talking about thousands of years of us as a species, as beings trying to figure out what is important in this infinite this infinite world. What do we point ourselves at?

28:02 What's important where, where do we aim to to. To to fulfill what we are as existence itself. And and myth was helping us do that and ritual was helping us. Shift out of our normal ways of seeing to have this world, this presencing living world, open up to us.

28:23 And one of the issues that we've had thinking about something like myth and ritual as superstitious and primitive and unnecessary, and dealing strictly with the propositional means that we're staying strictly in the horizontal, with very little access to movement beyond our current sense of relevance, meaning whatever we do.

28:44 We're doing it from within the same vision of the world and and what do we do is is like where we're focused on now yet. Well we have this problem, well what do we do? Like quickly let's come up with a plan, let's do it.

28:57 But if we're continuously looking from within our current framing. At what to do? We're going to end up in the same place that we already are. So these these practices and religion used to to to do this for us, these practices that allow us.

29:13 Ways to move beyond our current framing, ways to move beyond our current lenses, to to widen and broaden our vision of an enchanted world are what? We do. I guess that's. That's a simple maybe it's not simple way of saying what it is that we're doing in Fluidus and and what the the purpose of. Of the call.

29:36 That's dragging me towards it. Whether I like it or not. Is it? Is it is, yeah. Oh, OK Well, I wrote a lot of things down, lots of words. Let's see. The first word I wrote down was I got to go back because I was just tuning in to just really pay attention to everything and writing notes as I was going through. So we'll see if this comes up.

30:01 But I wrote the word judgement down. Sure. And I think the word judgement was coming from the place of. Moving outside of the familiar and trying to use beyond, let's say, our senses or just go beyond that, you know, horizontal and the fear, the worry of judgement. Maybe from the outside or maybe from the inside, sure. And how that would pull us back into that horizontal, pull us back into that familiar.

30:27 And, you know, for a lot of people that's, you know, a sense of safety, a sense of, you know, wanting to have their needs met. And some of those needs are a sense of belonging or a sense of feeling, love or connection and going outside of what would be considered normal. Or expanding outside of normal when it is, you know, very large of an expansion outside of, let's say the horizontal as you described it.

30:51 It's scary because of probably many reasons, but I would say one of them is the judgement of being different or the judgement of doing something that is not so much familiar. Sure. So would you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, that's that's.

31:04 That's beautiful. And here's an interesting thing because I, I, I agree. I agree with what you're saying that that is a very necessary. Necessary need. Sounds redundant, but that there is something in US that that requires that it and at the same breath, well outwardly we've never been more connected. We've never had more access to more people. We've never had so much comfort and free time to connect and be within that.

31:39 We've never had, let's say a society that's so quote UN quote, at least externally free. That allows us to find whatever communities we want and and find our way into that. We've also never been so anxious and so depressed and we've never felt so alone so while. You're.

32:01 Right, that this is something necessary. And there's a fear that in doing something outside of what is the norm right now, may take us away from those connections. I would offer that they're already away from those connections. We've already lost our our sense of center, our our sense of home, our our our deeper sense of community, our relationship with something beyond the external. That that gives us that deeper sense of meaning and connection. Where do I, where do I exist

32:37 between the material and my capacity to contemplate the infinite. That's where do I land? Where, where is my home at John Vervaiki. I mentioned them before. I think he coined the term domicide or domicile. Domicile, I think he called it.

32:51 It's it's the death of home. It's the death of our center. So and and we're we're like hungry ghosts now trying to fill. That sense with with another initial tour name, with with with some niche category that I can put myself in and maybe I can find other people in that niche category. And then that niche category subdivides into 10 more categories and then from that one into another 10 categories. Because we're trying to find this. But in a sense it's it's trying

33:18 to eat menu after menu after menu after menu and wondering why we're not getting full, why there's no nourishment within the menu. Because there's something deeper that's missing, and you're right. That the the quest for the soul, the quest for this encounter with our depths is is not for the faint of heart.

33:36 You said something at the beginning and I I wrote it down, but we we moved on. That maybe you said inspired, you felt inspired and. That is important and. Curious as well. Curious, curious and. Inspired and and a lot of that. What I do within these, within podcasts and within the message and even within the movement, it's. They're, they're.

33:59 Mystical experiences in in a sense where it's it's these moments, these quick moments that that would glitch the way that we normally see the world, that give us a taste just for a moment of there's something beyond this that that that sense of who I am. There's more to what I am than what I thought that I was. There's more to the world than what I thought it was. And the issue becomes if we stay within the propositional, we stay within the words and we

34:24 just continue to have conversations about what this means and what this is and. And that does not go deep enough to other parts of ourselves. So the the enactment and the embodiment of of myth and ritual work at a level underneath our quote, UN quote, linear understanding of the propositional meaning of what we're doing, the propositional meaning of TS, Eliot said, because they would ask him what his poems mean. And this would drive him crazy because in his mind it's like, well, if I could tell you what

34:55 my poem means. There was no reason for me to write the poem. Like, if I could tell you what that painting means, why would Why would I write that painting? If Bach could explain in words what his Symphony means, there was no need for the Symphony at all.

35:09 This is beyond that. So TS Elliott said that that meaning is the bone that the burglar throws to the dog while the real work is being done in the dark. So it's almost giving our left brain something to chew on. While the real work is happening underneath, in implicit places in the collective unconscious, and that our capacity to into it and sense the mystery of what we are beneath our under our our attempt to imprison it within our representational words,

35:43 Pascal says something that I that I keep in mind because Pascal wrote the philosopher. Pascal wrote volumes and volumes and volumes and. He was asked once about his writings and he and and he stopped them. And he said, I write the millions of words that I write in order to convince you to go and light a candle.

36:02 Meaning the words were an attempt to inspire someone to take on the philosophy as as an act, to take on the ritual, to take on the myth, to take on the the living in the world from this vision, which is really what's. What's necessary, which is really where the transformation is where, where the fulfilment of of what we are is we have an impoverished understanding of what we are.

36:27 And that's not going to be satisfied from within the abstract, from within the effable. There's something beneath that. So for the people who are curious, interested in there, you know, because we've been talking for about 3035 minutes and there's a lot of like depth to this conversation, which you know how it's being received.

36:53 We don't know right On the other side of this mic. We don't know how it's being received. But I'm thinking maybe for some people they're like cool, like I'm, I'm inspired, I'm interested, I'm curious and like I I feel that way. I resonate with this, but like what do I do? Like how do I like what?

37:06 What do I start with? Like how do I move myself away? Like what? You know, it's kind of like the what's, what's the next thing I can do? Do I put my right foot forward, my left foot forward, like, what is it, You know? So is there something there?

37:17 Sure. And I'm. I'm I'm smiling also because it's again it's that again too too too deep to go into in in in our short time together maybe we'll do we'll do more later but this this way we have at least two different ways of seeing the world one is our left brain capacity to to focus in and manipulate the world and it's it's served as well I mean look at the technology around us that comes from this way of saying and then.

37:42 There's this right side of ourselves that isn't where our representational language lives, this this right brain capacity. But it can sense the fullness of the world outside of its part, the gestalt of the world. So that immediate it's like, OK, So what do I do? That's a very left brain.

37:59 But we've we've taken this way of seeing this left brain, this way of saying, and we've put it above the right brain way of saying and there's a lot of researching and Mcgillicrist has done a lot of research on. Brain lateralization and we've kind of flipped this like the left brain should be in the service of the whole way of saying that the right brain has.

38:18 So it's not necessarily just what do I do, like what the next thing is to do, but it's it's a shift in perspective. It's a shift in in the way of seeing. So the easy answer is that this is my life's work. What are we moved to? I mean that's that's the simple answer. So it's we've.

38:40 We're working towards reviving ancient traditions to to to to in a sense to go into the depths and resurrect the father, which is you know, the symbol of the father is the tradition, the tradition. The mother is is, you know, the newness and the mystery. But to to resurrect the quote, UN quote father the the ancient traditions to breathe new life to them, to to look at them differently than whether they would just. True in detail because a lot of

39:09 these things we we, we we missed the mark in thinking that they were true or untrue in detail. They may not have been true in detail, but what they were is true in pattern. Myth isn't something that supposedly happened the long ago myth is something that continues to happen that we were living out in our in our day-to-day lives.

39:28 Right now myth is alive. That's that's the mistake that we've made so. To revivify these practices and do it in a way not that's outside of our capacity to believe, but to do it in a way that's intellectually respectable or responsible. To bring our our modern capacity for reasoning into the same realm as our mythic, our mythic center, our our our attempt at ritual.

39:55 So what I would say is come and find out because it is this we're so. We're so capable of the same thing that makes us as human being so adaptable also makes us very prone to self deception and it's one of the one of the one of the problematics with with this new age concept of we can just cherry pick out of different traditions.

40:20 I can take a little bit of Buddhism. Oh that part I don't like. So I'll just take this part because I like it and out of yoga I'll take a little bit of here and out of the western philosophy, I like Stoicism, but I don't like that part. I'll take this.

40:30 Well who's to say that you're not cherry picking your way out of moments and and and the practices that are going to help you shift out of that. She's the same thing as telling someone when they first come into a yoga class.

40:41 Well, you know listen to your body They they're not going to sit straight up if they listen to their body because they've they've convinced their body that slouching down it's like oh this is so much more comfortable. We're we're we're inviting them into into challenge.

40:56 We're inviting them into difficulty. We're inviting them into sacrifice. We're inviting them into, into sweat, into confrontation with Dragons. We're inviting them into the depths, into the darkness and or deep meaning for sure, but this isn't necessarily going to be a smooth journey if it's done well. So an ecology of practices, a set of practices that that meet each other from different planes. So for us it's it's movement, it's breath, it's myth, it's dia logos within a community.

41:31 So these practices together we're moving towards. We can't know truthfully, but we can move towards the horizon of it and we can move further and further away from what we know to be untrue. In a sense. So moving towards the horizon of wisdom, allowing ourselves to be shaped and the humility of what we're doing is we're putting ourselves in confrontation with the mystery of existence.

42:02 This isn't to manipulate the world. It's it's like saying that that you know that you're going to come face to face with God, but you know exactly what God is and what that's going to do to you when you face that. It's the part of our movement practices is a developing of a physical resilience and emotional resilience.

42:20 So you can stand to be in the face of the mystery longer before you have to rip yourself away for fear of being burned. And that that idea of if you look into the face of God, you'll catch fire because you can't stand it is a very old mythic idea because it's it's almost too much so.

42:36 So we practice, we can stand in those moments and those experiences. We can stand to be there a little longer, a little longer. So we we all live from a religion whether we know it or not. I mean scientific reductionism is a religion.

42:52 There's certain set of ideas that Orient even what I choose to take on is questions and what I don't. The word religio means to bind. We bind ourselves to something so realize that to realize that we're already bound, we're already living from a religion. And to put ourselves, you said you use the phoenix image of putting ourselves to the fire being burnt to ashes so we can rise up from those ashes.

43:18 The idea of the the butterfly being the Caterpillar being completely dissolved, like in the cocoon, like almost liquefied before, it can emerge from something else. But if you ask the Caterpillar, hey, you want to you want to be liquefied, the Caterpillar might say no, I'm not sure.

43:36 But that idea of of we put ourselves to the fire, we put ourselves to the mystery again, it's not for the fate of heart. These, these, these myths aren't saying it'll be easy even, but there's something meaningful in that.

43:48 And what we're aching for, what we're longing for, is not comfort. We've never been more comfortable. We've never been so full of resources. And as a world, we've never been so rich. We've never had so much time and we've never been so lost for meaning.

44:03 So we're not looking for easy. We're looking for great. We're looking for a way to connect to the deepest possible meaning for the greatest good that we can, and to move towards it and to and to sweat towards it and to challenge towards that. We're going to sacrifice ourselves. We're going to bind ourselves to something, let it be the most meaningful thing that we can imagine. So it's not going to be just one thing, it's going to be. Seeing the world in a different

44:31 way. And then we have, I mean, this is, this is what we do again, it's it's revivifying ancient traditions. It's movement and breath. It's dialogue. It's it's turning the mind in on itself. And it's not that we don't take reason, It's not that we go too far with our reasoning.

44:47 I'd say it's the contrary. You don't take reasoning far enough. We've we're, we've lost the deep patience of of sitting and wrestling with the questions because we're we're we're glorifying and giving medals at in school to the one that raises his hand fastest and knows the answer quickest instead of the one that's like, well, I don't know yet. Let me wrestle with that question for the next 15 years and let's see what it does to me. Not just what the answer comes,

45:15 but what it does to me with the wrestling, with the question does to me. And to put yourself in the arena, to put yourself in the arena through different practices would be the thing. So come ask, come ask. I share a lot of different practices that that you can start with. And they're they're simple.

45:35 They're simple practices that that, that, like Pascal said, that inspire wonder in us, that give us a peek at the magic, at the possibility, at a depth in ourselves that we're no longer shown that we are. And and from those moments when you touch those deeper waters, when you invite those deep waters up to the surface, those waters will start to carry.

45:58 Amazing. So the word that comes to me is, and it this comes up from a previous guest Amara, who's been on the podcast before and she said, you said it's not for the faint of heart or some words and she she said it's for the courageous ones. That's when she would describe it in her own words. The brave ones, the courageous ones, the ones that are ready to move into the fire, the ones that are ready to move into that unknown and and just, you know,

46:23 find the truth, a truth. So that's, that's what came up for me there. And if you are feeling that courageousness that that, I don't know if bravity is a word, but it will be in this moment to be able to explore, to be curious, to be inspired, to find out what that is, whatever that is, is. And not knowing what it is and being OK with just moving that way, it's like, like you said, throwing the bone to the dog. But then the works that happening in the black in the darkness, it's like, are you

46:54 willing to step in the darkness? And it's kind of like the analogy. Well, it's not even an analogy, but it's AI don't know. Maybe. This won't resonate with people. But it's like if someone has a box and you can't see inside the box and there's a black hole and it's like covered with a like a black felt and they're like, put your. Hand in the box, They're like, well, what's in the box? Like, well, you put your hand in to find out. And then a lot of people are

47:16 like, I'm not putting my hand in there because, like, who knows what's in there? Maybe there's a snake in there, there's a spider or whatever, right. So that fear of, like, are you courageous enough to put your hand in? Because what's inside, who knows? Maybe it's something that is of value to you and you just don't know it yet, even though we fear what we don't know. Yeah.

47:34 And there's something that you said and that you might have even said these words but what we one of the things that I call fluid is is or the Fluidist Fellowship is it's the way of what is it's it's not the way of what I want it to be.

47:46 It's not the way of what I can control and and a lot of our practices and even the the absorption of something like yoga which used to be much more rebellious act by culture is well here are here's what you can use yoga for.

48:03 You can use it to manipulate the world to be like this to help yourself feel like this to manipulate your emotions and and not that that's not possible within the realm of those practices but what we're talking about is the way of what is is that I don't know. But what I do know is that I want a relationship as intimate as I can have to the ground of being itself. That's that's what we're saying what that's going to be what that's going to look like and

48:31 whether it's always going to be easy and whether you're going to be able to stay exactly as you are in the face of that, that I can't tell you but if you want more I know we're getting we're getting short on time but but and and this this experiment has been done before. I think it was Plato that said that we have two drives one. Was to have a good relation with the world, to have a good life. And the other one is to know that the relationship that what I have, the relationship with is

49:08 is true, that it's not only I want a relationship with the world. Like think about the Matrix that that that mythology of the Matrix of like, well, we can just program this computer and you could live a perfect life, we can program it so you're completely happy.

49:23 You have, you know, money, sex on tap, resources, status, respectability on tap. Or you can realize that this is all a machine, this is all a game, and you can wake up to the real. There's an experiment that's that's been done a lot where they bring a group of people together that are in a relationships that they find fulfilling and you tell them, well, let's say that your relationship is even more fulfilling.

49:48 It's the best thing that's ever happened to you or you can even imagine happening to you. Now we give you 2 options. One, you can stay thinking that this relationship is the best thing in the world for the rest of your life.

50:00 You will never know anything different than this. You will always think it's fantastic. You will live within the happiness of that relationship. Or option two, we can tell you the truth, that the relationship that you have, that you're being betrayed, that someone is turning their back on you, that they don't really love you, that there's something lurking behind the relationship.

50:22 The relationship is not what you think it is. Which one would you choose? Would you choose to stay in the relationship? Ignorant, blissful, and just stay with this relationship. It'll make you happy for the rest of your life and you'll never know any better, or it will destroy your relationship. It'll destroy the way that you see things. Would you want to know the truth? Almost.

50:43 I mean the the statistical answers are massive. Almost everyone will choose to know the truth, even though it's going to mess them up. So there's a drive for us to be an intimate relationship with something real, with as close as we can get to whatever the truth is the ground of being, whether or not that is painful in the moment, whether or not that that tears apart the world as we see it so.

51:15 While you're right, there is that scariness of it, I. Think we're built for that. We are built to move towards something. We are being called forward towards a relationship with the real with what is and. The more that you stay on this journey, you start to realize that. It's mysterious and it's scary.

51:39 But that same scariness. I mean, courage is impossible without fear. Courage without fear doesn't exist. And current, like the prerequisite for courage is fear is something scary. So we're moved towards courage, all of us.

51:52 This isn't, I say it's for the fit, it's not for the faint of heart. But at our very essence, we have that we're not meant for easy, we're not meant for safe. There's a confusion in us in this world that we're trying to make everything so safe and so soft and not offend anyone and be nice to everyone and include everyone and tell everyone that they're adequate just the way that they are.

52:13 We are killing something in ourselves that's aching to move forward towards the really real. You could call it a. Higher level of evolution, if you will. Yeah. It's kind of what it came up for me when you said that. Wow, I love it.

52:30 This is great. Thank you, Carlos, for all those things. I'm just having a look at my notes here. Yeah, none of that's really probably important anymore. I wrote down Truth, which kind of already touched on that a little bit.

52:43 The breath was a you mentioned the breath a couple times. And I mean, I talk a lot about the breath. You probably don't know this that much about me, but my background is all science, so very left brain. But I do incorporate a lot of right as well, so helping people to connect with them, those parts of themselves can start with just a simple breath. Yes.

53:01 So to answer my. Own question. You know you already did, but you have the breath. Just connecting with the breath and being curious about that. And you know whatever happens after that, let it happen or and even within the scientific and it's again, I'm very like I I'm very cynical. I I want to try to tear everything that I'm saying down because it's only in that way that whatever still remains that I can't tear down, I'm like OK, there's something there. So even within the breath, yes,

53:30 we can tell them, you know, how the diaphragm works and the decor connections and intra abdominal pressure and the movement of oxygen and and all of these these different things and how it affects the the movement from sympathetic to parasympathetic and all these things.

53:43 But again we're still within the proper the depth of what the breath actually is is much grander than anything that we can put into words. So again, even for the scientific minded, like I'm, I've been doing this for 10 years, also going deeply into the scientific literature of these things. Again because like Pascal, it's it's to invite someone into the experience of it all.

54:05 Here's here's all the reasons that it's good for you. But these reasons aren't going to touch the surface of even something like breath. Like the the depth of the experience of breath is is fantastically deep. Yeah, it's got a ceiling. Silence.

54:17 It's got. A ceiling, right? Yeah. It'll only expand as fast as the collective science world agrees, more or less. Right. Which is limiting in, you know, to kind of bring it back to to yoga a little bit like yoga's been around for thousands of years, you know, elements of yoga that. You know, there's a lot of this conversation that blends with yoga in a lot of ways.

54:39 And science is only recently starting to, yeah, meditation is good and yeah, you know, these things are good for you because now we have proof of it. But it's like thousands of years ago, there was no official scientific proof, at least not that I'm aware of yet. You know, it was working.

54:54 So yeah, I I the science has its limitations. And I I acknowledge that of myself because I've always. When I was younger, would grasp to the science, to the knowing the the math. You know this is what it is. The answer is this. So it's very easy for my brain to feel comfortable, right? If you will.

55:11 But as I grew older and evolved, I realized that science is limiting. It's helpful, but it also could be not helpful, right? Aging. Aging is fantastic, huh? Is it? You start you start to like the humility of you, don't you?

55:24 You start to know more. But really what what age does is you start to see the limits of of what your understanding is. And the more that you know the more portals and branches out. It's like yeah, you start to be you know in wonder and awe of the mystery beyond our understanding.

55:38 And yeah, there's there's things that if you put just and that that's the that's the issue with the religion of of Not science as a method, which is fantastic, but the religion of reduction is science because all you have to do is put just in front of anything with a scientific explanation and if you're unaware, you can become confused.

55:57 That's somehow, let's say, well, love is just chemical reactions in the brain. Is love chemical reactions in the brain? In a sense it is. But is that really just what it is? And just putting the word just makes it seem that somehow we've got a complete hold on it? Yeah, it's like diluting the it's. Diluting the experience again in in favor of our representation of our limited understanding, even the idea that that consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries. So we're we're we're able to do

56:26 science based on our consciousness. But the round of what we do science on, which is our consciousness is the biggest mystery in science. There is no understanding, you know, cohesive understanding of what consciousness is. So we're basically at at at a litmus test limit of what we can understand.

56:46 Basically. It's like, well, I do science to understand things. Well, how do you do science? Well, because I'm conscious. Well, what is consciousness? What? We don't really know. And so there's this circular thing that's going on there, which is, which is fine. We can still do a lot of great things with it. But again, it's the humility of even the way that we do things go back far enough, if any scientist worth its salt at the highest level.

57:10 If they go deep enough, they start to sound like Mystics and poets, because we've reached the limit of our capacity to wrestle the living world down into an abstract concept. So it's it's useful for sure, try to tear stuff out, but let's not get confused that that somehow our maps are the same things as the territory. Beautiful.

57:30 I love it. Awesome. Well, OK, Well, we're at 55 minutes in. I feel, I feel pretty good. How do you feel? I feel great. Yeah. Yeah, a great conversation. I mean, that time went by pretty quick for me. Yes. So. If someone is curious.

57:47 A little bit more about you. They want to be like, wow, this guy's really profound. I want to, I want to learn from him. I want to reach out to him. I want to work with him. Any of those, What would be a way that they could do that? If someone is in what?

58:02 We can put this in the show notes of course, but sure the easiest way, the easiest way since if you have social media where if you want to get a glimpse of of a lot of the different thing that we do different conversations.

58:15 Some of the movement practices it would be Carlos Tao movement, Carlos Tao movement on Instagram I check or somebody checks that for me often so you can send the message there it'll give you a good idea and from there you can you can branch out into the website which is which is the Fluidus website the Fluidus Academy website and we have other other places we have a YouTube channel but again the the easiest way it would be Carlos style movement and then I can I can guide you and send you

58:44 into other places from there. Great. And then what if? Someone is actually here in Bali. Beautiful if they're here in Bali for I I rarely teach public public classes anymore but at Radiantly Alive I am teaching now one more Sunday, did a few Sundays, Sunday morning at 8:30 AM.

59:02 So I'll be teaching this Sunday 8:30 AM and it'll it's it's ritual it's it's movement as ritual. So again it's this, this felt sense of everything that we've been talking about and on from October 22nd through the 27th that radiantly alive. Also there is a six day journey into this where we'll discuss myth, we'll we'll do practices as ritual, we'll take on myth as stories and and and speak about our capacities to see. But it really is less of a reigning and more of an experience of of what we're

59:37 talking about from within these different planes. So we can develop our capacity to see a grander and more enchanted vision of the world that's consistent with the evidence and true across planes that's nourishing to the spirit and and again responsible or respectable to the intellect.

59:56 Perfect. Yeah. And this is Ubu Radio Live. Ubu Radio Live Ubu, yeah. Just to be sure. Amazing. So as we wrap up. You've already said so many things, and I thought I'd give one more opportunity if there was one last thing that you wanted to share that just comes through a stream of consciousness or for your heart before we end this episode, For those who haven't been listening up to this point, before we sign off, you are more than you think you are. There's there's the tiny island

1:00:30 of you, of your name and of your memories of the familiar. And that tiny island is just a little bit that peaks above the surface of the deep waters. And dive beneath. We are lived by powers that we pretend to understand.

1:00:48 So you're greater than you think you are. So it's it's it's worth the sweat, It's worth the sacrifice of your life. Aim yourself. Orient yourself to the deepest meaning that you can find. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you Carlos, for your time, for your energy, for your experience, your stories, and thank you everyone for listening. And for joining us this week and. We will see you next week.

1:01:15 Thank you. Take Care now. All right, before you go, let me. Just tell you about the going proyoga.com platform. So right now you can go to goingproyoga.com and check it out for free for seven days, where you can actually learn more about yoga. In the ways of alignment, queuing, sequencing, yoga, anatomy.

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